Don't Fix Facebook, Replace It - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/03/opinion/facebook-fix-replace.html <comment><USER3> We did replace it, almost 10 years ago. It was called Diaspora[1], no one cared about privacy then. No one really cares about privacy now, at least not enough to do anything about it.

1\. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_(social_network)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_\(social_network\))

<comment><USER4> Man I remember the enthusiasm behind Diaspora like it was yesterday. I can still see in my minds eye that NYTimes article photo of the creators sitting around like they just invented cold fusion or something.

<comment><USER5> Allaire ColdFusion wasn't that big either ;)

<comment><USER6> Still crankin' w' Lucee today, dude.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I tried explaining my 20 year old cousin about FB. Her constant argument was "I don't share anything private on FB". She checks in on FB everywhere she goes. Posts her pics all the time. I could not instill any sense of concern for privacy.

What I could conclude is that the appeal of social is too great to have any caution. Call me a pessimist, but I don't think FB is going anywhere. People will keep using it inspite of the risks. It's like a smoking addiction. It's bad but very difficult to give up.

<comment><USER8> _> It's like a smoking addiction_

It's awesome to watch massive shifts in values and priorities.

Smoking used to be seen as cool, sexy, even healthy. Now it's widely seen as unhealthy and disgusting.

Same thing with high-fructose carbonated beverages.

I remember people using terms like "retarded" and "gyp" without hesitation. Today even people who hate political correctness don't talk like that in public.

It wasn't long ago that men abusing women in the workplace was routine and unremarkable. Now it's outrageous and shameful.

Things change, slowly at first, and then all at once. People are waking up and it will never be the same for Facebook.

<comment><USER7> That is a good point. What baffles me is it took so much evidence from the medical community to convince people about smoking. And many still do it! Adverse effects of technology/social in general wouls be even more difficult to prove. I see technology addicts' rehabilitation centres a reality in near future.

<comment><USER9> > What baffles me is it took so much evidence from the medical community to > convince people about smoking.

That isn't really the issue, smokers have been aware of the negative consequences for quite a while. Many are okay with it due to the relief the smoking brings them from stress and other issues, it's a trade-off. Just like alcohol ain't that healthy for you but many people still chose to drink it.

But on the other hand you have massive companies who've spent decades and billions of $ in making tobacco as addictive, and easy to smoke, as possible. So once the customers are hooked it's extremely difficult for them to kick the habit and even when they manage to kick it, many will still get cravings for years, if not decades, to come.

Which could be explained by this: [https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/01/11/schizophrenia-no- smoki...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/01/11/schizophrenia-no-smoking-gun/)

<comment><USER10> For the effect on schizophrenia to explain the people who have difficulty quitting smoking, the population of people who have difficulty quitting smoking would have to be similar in size to (really, smaller than) the population of schizophrenics.

But I would bet that it's much larger.

<comment><USER9> Afaik schizophrenia is a spectrum, so some are bound to be affected worse than others. I also didn't say it was the only reason for people having trouble kicking the habit, only one of the factors for it, so there's still plenty of room for non-schizophrenics not being able to kick the habit due to tobacco (and the additives tobacco companies add to it) being highly addictive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's interesting that Tim Wu discussed the cycle of technology starting amongst outsiders and then becoming monopolized in his (phenomenal) book The Master Switch. The cycle always repeats itself by the next new technology coming along, making the prior one less significant.

We seem to have accepted that the internet is essentially the final communication tech. Maybe that's true, but it seems improbable. Simply based on his past writing, I'm surprised he isn't advocating for a solution based on the blockchain.

I'm not suggesting that's the right answer; I merely find it curious that he didn't apply the same assumptions to the future as he did to his historical analysis.

<comment><USER12> I'm not really sure how blockchain is related to a potential "next" communication technology. Why not AR? Why not lasers n shit?

<comment><USER13> Wait for it . . . "Quantum Blockchain" \- Boom!

<comment><USER14> Qubitcoin!

[1]: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qubit](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qubit)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think in the long run we will use a decentralised/federated system. Privacy concerns aside, it just doesn't make sense to rely on one service or expect one social network to meet everyone's needs/desires.

<comment><USER16> I think this is exactly how health/medical data should exist. My family should have their own health/medical network node and only my direct healthcare providers should be able to access the data from it and only _after_ I authorize them with a digital signature. Whatever data they generate about my person (or persons in my family) should be owned by me, stored in my family network, and only available to others _after_ I explicitly authorize it.

The massive collections of monolith data sets for financials, health/medical, credit history, employment records, taxes, census, etc are far too valuable to not be highly valuable to criminal orgs and/or government entities. Centralization into monolithic organizations will lead to irreversible issues of data non-privacy for a generation or more..

<comment><USER17> Uhmmm...just thinking out loud here.

How feasible do you think it would be to use Mastodon for this?

If you have a "Medical Node" as you put it (which I find apt btw), you could share it with your doctor(s) and provide access (maybe using Keybase? Auth0?) for them to either add "their own posts" with the analysis results, their findings, etc, or just to read the relevant data (e.g. for a dentist).

Again, just thinking out loud, but they way you put it sounded interesting :)

<comment><USER18> Does Mastodon have a fax interface?

[https://www.vox.com/health- care/2017/10/30/16228054/american...](https://www.vox.com/health- care/2017/10/30/16228054/american-medical-system-fax-machines-why)

<comment><USER19> nice article.

"It turns out there are strong economic incentives for doctors to keep patient information to themselves — and even stronger incentives for electronic medical records not to play nicely with each other."

"While patients might want one hospital to exchange information with another hospital, those institutions have little incentive to do so. A shared medical record, after all, makes it easier to see a different doctor. A walled garden — where records only get traded within one hospital system — can encourage patients to stick with those providers."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Has anyone seen a product that was functional, polished, and enjoyable to use that would be capable of replacing Facebook? I haven't. Diaspora, Mastodon, Ello are the only things that I can think of, and none of them come close to matching the basic functionality and the "it just works" factor of Facebook.

Maybe someone should put in some resources to create a polished product and see what happens? It doesn't even have to be some idealistic p2p distributed system or anything like that, just a company who actively works to minimize the data they store and to allow users to control and manage their data effectively.

<comment><USER21> Try this one. It's the most user friendly I've seen: [https://mewe.com](https://mewe.com)

<comment><USER22> OK- just signed up

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "Another "alt-Facebook" could be a nonprofit that uses that status to signal its dedication to better practices, much as nonprofit hospitals and universities do" -> Honestly, I don't think this would be sustainable to function as a social network. At least I don't think it would work in a capitalist society.

<comment><USER24> I've had the same thought. Charge a small monthly fee in lieu of running ads or selling user data. Might cut down on fake/spam accounts as well.

But I don't think it would work (and I'd totally work on something like this if I thought it would). People _say_ they care about privacy, but when you present them with the option of paying $5/mo for a service that respects their privacy or using a "free" service that tracks everything they do and sells that data to anyone who'll pay, they'll almost always opt for the latter.

Now, _I_ would certainly pay a monthly fee for a non-user-hostile social network experience. And I would consider the smaller user base a feature, so long as it wasn't _too_ small.

<comment><USER25> $60/year to post about taking the kids to visit Grandma is pretty steep for most users.

<comment><USER26> Maybe we should take that as a sign that announcing every trip to visit grandma to the world just isn't a thing we need to be doing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The only possible thing for which I might need Facebook would be for groups, as some hobbies seem to have almost entirely moved there for event organisation and general discussion.

Previously we used to use forums such as phpBB, but setting up one of these involved finding someone able to host the forum software on their server. Tapatalk could be set up to improve the mobile experience, but most users seemed to find that somehow difficult. There was also a constant battle with spam and malware.

I'm not sure what would suit - Mastodon and Diaspora don't seem to me to be the right solutions here. Currently, I am making do with being out of the loop and missing things.

</comment><comment><USER28> I think we need alternatives to text only communication. If we could judge each other's tones maybe we would chill out a bit.

<comment><USER29> Text can work OK between people who know each other well and are familiar with each other's patterns of speech and sense of humor. Not perfect, but generally OK.

Much worse between people who aren't so well acquainted. I'm actually in the middle of trying to mediate a disagreement based mainly on two entirely different perceptions of intent in some stuff that was written in an email.

</comment></comment><comment> pi-squared I wonder what is the penetration of these kind of news outside our bubble here at HN, reddit and the like. I'm wondering the rest 2 billion people (which to a first approximation is probably just about everybody) care about this or are willing to care if few of their techie friends leave facebook. Is there some mathematical model + social science that could estimate the network effects of say, every techie person does leave facebook for good - what would happen to the rest?

Most of my non-techie friends have heard briefly about "some kind of scandal with facebook" but I cannot possibly appeal to them talking about "privacy" or they are stealing and selling your data - "Oh, everybody does that, you can't not use the Internet".

<comment><USER30> DuckDuckGo did a survey of just over 1,000 random US adults after the Cambridge Analytica story: [https://spreadprivacy.com/cambridge- analytica/](https://spreadprivacy.com/cambridge-analytica/)

<comment><USER31> A lot of people might say they are going to do more for privacy or interact with FB and other social media less, but until there's a proper followup study in day 6 months, I don't know if I believe all the respondents. I believe that they tried to truthfully answer the questions. But that some of it is reactionary and/or the right thing to say at the time. Maybe I'm wrong though?

Thanks for the link of course! Great write up and charts to look through.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I find Zuckerberg's argument that Facebook needs to be the way it is so that "people who can't afford it can have access" pretty repulsive and incredibly sleazy.

If people can't afford a few dollars a month, why in the fuck would it be acceptable to expose them to manipulative ads that encourage them to hand over money that Zuckerberg claims they don't have? He tries to paint himself and his company as altruistic, while simultaneously exploiting the hell out of the people he claims to be "helping".

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm captivated by the phrase "free content (sic) is the creature, the servant and indeed the prostitute of merchandizing". -Walter Lippmann

</comment><comment><USER32> Why can't I just pay for FB a monthly fee and as such they have no need to make money by selling my data or spamming me with crappy ads?

<comment><USER33> A usual CPC (cost per click) that an advertiser is willing to pay is somewhere between 50 to 150 cents. Let's say it is 100, and you clicked on 10 ads in a month. So, Facebook earned $10 off you. Now, you should be willing to pay more than that for Facebook to prefer the model you are suggesting.

My math above is highly simplistic. For e.g., you'd say you aggressively use an ad blocker and never click on ads. Fair enough, but what about non - <USER2> people unlike us? For e.g., when my dad starting using Facebook at an age of 50+ couple of years, he just _tried_ an unknown plumber through a Facebook ad. Moreover, you'd be willing to pay a monthly subscription, but would _all_ of your friends?

So, what I am getting at is that at Facebook scale they'll earn more though ads than through a subscription model.

<comment><USER34> The value you represent to Facebook is also dependent on your location. People in the US are worth the most, around $60 per year: [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jan/28/how- much-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jan/28/how-much-are-you- worth-to-facebook)

For heavy Facebook users $60 isn't much, but for everyone else it seems a little much.

<comment><USER35> If they really focused on delivering quality tools for organizing groups I'd pay that. $60 is a bargain compared to MeetUp.com admin fees.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I briefly spoke with Wu some weeks ago about platform cooperativism. I suppose he wasn't impressed.

[https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qvxbgq/its-time-for- mark-...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qvxbgq/its-time-for-mark- zuckerberg-to-give-up-control-of-facebook)

</comment><comment><USER37> What a naive article!

The reality is that we can either have a paid-for walled garden so that bad actors cant leach data, or a decentralised and trust-driven network.

It only takes a "friend" using a nefarious client/implementation to send all your data to a 3rd party.

<comment><USER38> Even a paid-for walled garden is likely not sufficient. Plenty of services you pay for and/or are the customer of still resell your data (see: banks & credit card companies).

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Better will be _hard_. If you want people to come, you need to build something that Facebook doesn't provide. I have no idea what that will be but I do not think just privacy protection would be enough. By far.

</comment><comment><USER40> Do we really need another crap to replace it? just shut it down.

</comment><comment><USER41> Why even replace it? Pseudo chronological single wall views are simply not a modern way to consume information anymore.

Not to mention, which crazy brain even proposed to fix it?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I don't necessarily agree with the sentiment but respect Dr. Wu's option. I'm also interested in the HN community's options.

</comment><comment><USER42> A quick research job has revealed that most of the interesting features of facebook, in particular "liking" posts and friend suggestion, are patented by facebook. It would be difficult therefore for a new entrant to copy its features.

<comment><USER43> > A quick research job has revealed that most of the interesting features of > facebook, in particular "liking" posts ... are patented by facebook.

I find find this hard to believe. Don't competing networks have similar functionality (e.g. "hearting")? What exactly about "liking" has Facebook patented?

I'm much more ready to believe "liking" is _trademarked_ , though I'm still skeptical of it, given that it's an everyday word used with its everyday meaning.

<comment><USER44> Facebook has likes, Reddit has upvotes and downvotes, I don't know the name on HN or Stackoverflow.

Just calling it something different seems to be enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> If privacy is really a concern, one should live like Jack Reacher, even not use credit card. Current situation is that, we want to happy share and attract attention on facebook. If it did something wrong, let the court sues it.

</comment><comment><USER46> NY Times was among the numerous media companies that slobbered over Facebook for years and gave them free publicity. And now I'm supposed to listen to them when they say to replace Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER47> I think my ideal social network would be something like reddit + medium + slack.

and it will be for expanding my social network and finding people alike, not for watching daily bullshit from existing friends.

</comment><comment><USER48> Orkut, please come back.

</comment><comment><USER49> It will neither be fixed or replaced

<comment><USER50> But it could be destroyed. I'll settle for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I don't want my stuff in the "cloud", I want it shared from my lawn. My own personal space to where people can access my stuff, that I share, and we can converse over whatever that is ... my own GDPR rules.

<comment><USER52> Have you seen Beaker [0]? It doesn't require you to setup a complex web server and configure a bunch of stuff, you just run the browser and it'll start sharing your website. It's a move back to a truly decentralized web.

[0] [https://beakerbrowser.com/](https://beakerbrowser.com/)

<comment><USER53> I actually tried this a while ago, and found that the audience also had to use Beaker to access the content. That's a huge barrier if current browsers don't support this.

<comment><USER54> Beaker uses Dat protocol as opposed to HTTP under the hood. Dat protocol support is coming to Brave browser, probably Firefox next. The P2P web is about to take off.

<comment><USER55> I like the idea of dat/ipfs/p2p web, however , I'm hesitant to use my personal computer as the "peer" for this sort of thing.

Can you just host/peer your ipfs/dat webpages/services/stuff from a Linux VPS/server?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> For photo sharing, I set up www.famipix.com in 2005...

</comment><comment><USER57> Prof. Wu makes a couple of assumptions when he gives suggestions for Facebook alternatives or successors. I dont see those suggestions as the most important point of his argument however. I believe the most important point is that there must be competition, that trying to "fix" Facebook will not suffice.

Nonetheless, these are the assumptions I see:

1\. The software alternatives or successors _must be commercial_.

2\. The software must attract a _certain quantity of users_ to be viable.

3\. The software must enable networks _comprising large numbers of people_ , perhaps in the millions or billions.

This scale is far greater than the average size of any Facebook users group of friends.

Over the years Facebook may have morphed into a "public square" for exercising "Free Speech" but in the beginning as I recall it was _not_ a means to broadcast to other users outside of ones social circle.

Its primary utility is arguably still in enabling communication within small groups, _not_ enabling broadcasting to the general public.

Wu's assumptions point toward a Zuckerberg-like _centrally-managed_ approach to what I see as historically a _locally-managed_ activity: the human tendency to form _small groups_.

For many years, gamers and others have been writing software to enable small groups to communicate over peer-to-peer networking, without any funding from advertisers.

Wu writes, "So what stands in the way of a genuine Facebook alternative? _It isn 't the technology_."

Thats exactly right. IMHO.

<comment><USER58> > This scale is far greater than the average size of any Facebook users group > of friends.

Yes, but only _an individual Facebook user_. The problem is that my friends' friends' friends' friends' friends' friends encompass the entire human race: at some point, as I invite people who invite people who invite people, the underlying technology has to be able to support all mankind.

Indeed, I suspect that this — not some momentary privacy-failure flash-in-the- pan will be what leads to Facebook's _actual_ downfall. It's ultimately building a proprietary Internet (in the sense of a fabric which connects people), and that's _extraordinarily_ expensive. At the end of the day, the actual Internet is able to do that far more cheaply.

I imagine that the replacement for Facebook will be something like email: something under the control of its users, something anyone will be able to add himself to and anyone will be able to block.

<comment><USER55> Could a viable Facebook competitor be built on a distributed/p2p type network, perhaps something like ipfs and/or mesh networking?

<comment><USER59> Have you heard of Mastodon?

[https://joinmastodon.org/](https://joinmastodon.org/)

<comment><USER53> Isn't Mastodon more of a Twitter replacement than a replacement for Facebook (which has time line, groups, pages, etc.)? I'm curious to know what's closer to what Facebook provides and is decentralized.

<comment><USER60> Diaspora?

<comment><USER61> I think no ActivityPub support should be an instant "nope" nowadays for any project willing to be considered as Facebook replacement/alternative: [0]

0: [https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/issues/7422](https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/issues/7422)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> "Poll: Do you trust Facebook?

...

THIS MORNING, IT emerged that nearly 45,000 Irish Facebook profiles may have been affected by the giant data breach involving as many as 87 million accounts harvested by UK data intelligence firm Cambridge Analytica.

Those 45,000 accounts could have been breached due to just 15 Irish people accessing a questionnaire app, thisisyourdigitallife, which included in its permissions the granting of access to all an individual's friends' profiles."

Source:

[http://www.thejournal.ie/poll-do-you-trust- facebook-3941194-...](http://www.thejournal.ie/poll-do-you-trust- facebook-3941194-Apr2018/)

</comment><comment><USER57> "These days, you might get more applause for _not_ being on social media than for reaching a follower milestone in Europe's liberal hubs such as Berlin or Paris.

...

The mechanisms used by Cambridge Analytica and the "malicious actors" cited by Facebook appear to have been legal and do not constitute a data hack, but rather a _deliberate exploitation_ of information through tools or loopholes Facebook itself provided in the past.

...

At least two foreign governments, Australia and Germany, threatened or launched investigations into the practices on Thursday.

...

Meanwhile, in India, where more than a half-million users are estimated to be affected, the allegations have resulted in a governmental request to Facebook and Cambridge Analytica for more detailed information, with a Saturday deadline.

Even though India is now Facebook's biggest market - ahead of the United States - no Indian media outlets were able to ask questions in a conference call with CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday.

The heavy U.S. focus immediately triggered criticism because privacy advocates are still looking into reports that Cambridge Analytica may have used Facebook data to influence Indian politics, as well.

...

German justice minister Katarina Barley already called for an E.U.-wide investigation into the misuse of Facebook's data by Cambridge Analytica and other companies on Thursday.

"Facebook has gambled away people's trust," Barley said.

...

But in Europe, Germany's justice minister and others already fear that _the latest regulations aren 't enough_."

Source:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/04/05...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/04/05/as- facebook-confronts-tough-questions-on-data-misuse-europe-might-force-real- change/)

</comment><comment><USER57> "Do these hundreds of millions of people who cannot wait to tell the world what they are doing practically minute by minute not realise that anyone with an ounce of brain can find out everything about them just by reading their posts?

As the FBI admitted a while back, Facebook was the best thing that happened to collecting intelligence and saving money (because everything is in the open).

By having "free" access and use of Facebook, these people have made Mark Zuckerberg a multibillionaire."

Source:

[https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/letters/2018-04-04...](https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/letters/2018-04-04-letter- facebook-is-not-free/)

</comment><comment><USER57> "Australia's privacy commissioner has launched an investigation to determine whether Facebook breached the Australian privacy act.

...

Facebook has admitted 311,127 Australian users are likely among the up to 87 million users worldwide whose data was unknowingly and "improperly" shared with the British political consultancy agency."

Source:

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/05/facebook-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/05/facebook- suspects-300000-australians-had-data-shared-with-cambridge-analytica)

</comment><comment><USER62> It's too messed up now anyways. The privacy settings sucked right from the beginning of Facebook. And it just kept getting worse. Guess people are just used to it now just like slaves get used to slavery and can't get out of it.

</comment><comment><USER57> "In 2013, Brandon Copley, the CEO of Giftnix, was threatened with legal action after using the technique to demonstrate how personal information could be easily gathered at scale.

"Multiple Facebook profiles were extremely easy to scrape," he explains. In a series of conversations with Facebook security developers Copley explained the issue and was told there was "no security vuln here, even though it does seem like one on first glance."

The method of scraping can work in multiple ways but largely relies on feeding Facebook's API a list of phone numbers or email addresses that have been automatically generated. These could also have been obtained from data breaches or leaks of information online.

"Just query Facebook as often as possible until they ban your IP for querying too fast, and at that point you just slow down until the queries stop," Copley explained in an email. "I was doing my work purely for research and exposing the vulnerability for Facebook".

...

The issue was again raised by researchers in 2015.

Reza Moaiandin, who founded cybersecurity company CyberScanner, published a blogpost about the "loophole". he said he was able to gather thousands of users personal information by guessing their mobile numbers. Within this information were details of names, locations, and profile pictures.

In response Facebook told him it didn't "consider it a security vulnerability" but had controls in place to stop it being abused. Zuckerberg's most recent statement goes against this, admitting Facebook's efforts to stop malicious actors hadn't worked."

Source:

[http://www.wired.co.uk/article/facebook-news-data- scraping-m...](http://www.wired.co.uk/article/facebook-news-data-scraping- mark-zuckerburg)

"A few months ago, I discovered a security loophole in Facebook that allows hackers to decrypt and sniff out Facebook user IDs using one of Facebook's APIs in bulk - therefore allowing them to gather millions of users' personal data (name, telephone number, location, images, and more). This post is an attempt to catch Facebook's attention to get this issue fixed.

By using a script, an entire country's (I tested with the US, the UK and Canada) possible number combinations can be run through these URLs, and if a number is associated with a Facebook account, it can then be associated with a name and further details (images, and so on).

...

For those of you who are wondering why I haven't notified Facebook about the issue, the truth is that I have - back in April (2015).

Although I did receive a reply, initially the engineer I was in contact with was unable to reproduce the issue himself, and therefore failed to understand the technical details of how it should be _fixed_.

...

After a couple of months of waiting, I initially thought someone else will look into it and _fix it_ but I heard nothing, so I raised the flag with them again. They finally came back to me and told me that this is not a big issue - they have set limits and I should not worry about this problem. But frankly, I am very worried.

...

Comment from reader:

Great blog post. I reported an almost identical issue (albeit a different API) to Facebook in January 2014 but faced similar difficulties getting them to recognise the scope for abuse. I was able to lookup contiguous blocks of mobile numbers (in blocks of 5,000 at a time) with no discernible rate- limiting - I could pull them down as fast as my connection could handle (maybe ~50k numbers/min).

If you make any headway with Facebook let us know and I will try pinging them again. It was especially worrisome as the number range I tried (NYC) had a hit-rate of about 20%."

Source:

[https://salt.agency/blog/facebook-security- loophole/](https://salt.agency/blog/facebook-security-loophole/)

</comment><comment><USER63> Normies don't care about privacy enough to stop using Facebook.</comment>


Be More Unlikeable - <AUTHOR> https://www.gritlist.co/be-unlikeable/ <comment><USER2> Money quote:

> Personally, I've long idolized Steve Jobs and Elon Musk. But most of our > heroes got to where they are by being unlikeable, not likable.

I fundamentally disagree with that view of being an asshole as an important part of success, but I also feel it has been rehashed an incredible amount of times already.

A slightly different take on this is the "don't rock the boat" mentality. This is usually a counter productive advice for anyone in a creative field, and pushing against settled ideas, trying things that people are not comfortable exploring is a valuable trait.

It can mean confrontation, refutal from a majority of people, and pushing these ideas requires a strong character. But I think there is a fine line between being firm and strong on ones opinion and being a jerk.

<comment><USER3> Every co-working venue seems to have at least one idiot wandering around in a black turtleneck being deliberately selfish and rude to everyone.

Never seen one of them actually be successful at anything except annoying people.

So far my personal "black turtleneck success ratio" is about 100:1 failure/success, and I never met the single success. I include Elizabeth Holmes, who I haven't met either, on the failure side.

<comment><USER4> They just get the order wrong. It's more like, being very successful means you can get away with being an a-hole a bit more. Steve Jobs really put himself in danger doing elevator interviews. That isn't someone I would mimic the behavior of.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't think the current social climate is conducive to this advice anymore. It was probably helpful in around 2008 to 2015.

It's hard to think of a situation where being unlikable is an advantage, today. Even in situations pg likes to point out – for example, if you think for yourself, you often upset others – you can do that privately rather than publicly, and still get the same advantage.

EDIT: there is one situation where you must be "unlikable" in a certain sense: if you think a company should do x, and someone else with equal authority thinks it should do y, and the decision is important. But even then, it's probably easier to convince them with social aikido (or to let yourself be convinced), not assert dominance.

<comment><USER6> I think the article's title is click bait. It goes on to essentially say that not conforming to others' ideas isn't necessarily a bad thing, and often contributes to success. Seems pretty obvious to me.

The author misconstrues (maybe only in order to twist the message to fit the title) being a jerk with being independent and taking risks.

Were some change-makers also jerks? Yeah, but it's not a rule, it's just more visible when that's the case.

<comment><USER7> If you're uncompromising on some issue, someone, somewhere will perceive you as a jerk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For those who can't read the article (site is crushed under the load): The article is about resisting pressure to cave to the status quo. It's not about being a jerk for the sake of being a jerk.

I agree with the general message (don't unquestioningly accept the status quo just because you want to be liked). I disagree with the idea that being a pioneer in your field will necessarily make you disliked. If anything, the society of 2020 reveres people who go against the status quo in a push to innovate, even if they fail.

The trap is when people confuse being a jerk with being successful. Or when they assume that being creative or successful is a license to be a jerk. Neither are true. People like Steve Jobs are the exception, not the rule. If you want to accomplish anything in a modern organization, you need to make an effort to be at least somewhat friendly. This doesn't mean you should become a pushover, a yes-person, or otherwise flatter people around it. It does mean that you need to listen, demonstrate mutual respect for others, and behave in a professional manner.

</comment><comment><USER9> This article is gross, and by this point, the advice is trite and uninteresting. There have been hundreds of books and articles about the benefits of being an asshole, but the author wants to be on hacker news (pursuit of the approval of other users?), so here we are. Maybe that impression means the author is winning.

The central point: "praise by the masses won't make you successful" and within the same breath, "Movie stars, professional athletes, and a business visionaries–we all want to be them." Perhaps they're more likeable than you think? I promise you you're not alone among the legion of boys who idolize Elon Musk.

Conflating being likeable, popular, and conformist, is reductive and wrong -- but maybe it's accurate through the narrow lens of how Silicon Valley defines "success" and "progress."

It is an ideology of individualism and cancerous growth, and it is a culture that hates difference, community, and visible flaws (from the article: "Change comes from differences", "Society can't exist without collectively agreed upon rules," "Be likable and hide your 'flaws'"). _Of course_ you'd associate the rejection of those traits with success if you've measured your self worth in units of Elon Musks.

You can be likeable, even with flaws and differences. You don't have to be an asshole about it. Be better.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's 404ing for now, so maybe the contents actually defy the title when I finally will get to RTFA. I have to say, I'm amused by a lot of the contrarian articles showing up on HN recently. There seems to be a growing tendency to shed a lot of the saccharine optimism of the last decade.

       "Work on unimportant problems"
       "Be more unlikeable"
       "How to cope with <insert worksplace horror>"
       "Why you should kill your parents"

I wonder if these are portent to the developing zeitgeist.

<comment><USER11> > the saccharine optimism of the last decade

You and I must've hung out in completely different circles, including online :D

But yeah the media is like this because once some "trend" gets oversaturated, someone starts another one (or more likely, revives an old one) and soon everyone jumps on that ship. Actually, it applies to most things. Personally I can't wait for flat design to die out.

<comment><USER10> Probably so! Just HN/Youtube as far as my media consumption goes for the last while. HN has tended very much towards the optimistic entrepreneurial advice end of the spectrum for a decade, for understandable reasons. My youtube channels are nearly devoid of the shrill screech of contemporary political discourse. It leaks in occasionally, like witnessing an occluded star by gravitational lensing. I don't know how people stand the unoccluded version.

I've been doing my part to help kill flat design by pitching depth and shadows every chance I get.

I'm nearly in the stockades. :D

Also, down with the cult of monochrome!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Gcached version: [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.gritlist.co/be- unlikeable/&prmd=ivn&strip=1&vwsrc=0)

In terms of the content, I was hoping for more concrete data rather than speculation. I myself come from a worldview where this is somewhat alien, in that, in my understanding of Christianity I am not trying to be this big achiever that the article wants to be. Likeability however is not directly a virtue in itself for us, and indeed our other virtues like being present in the moment and authentic with others sometimes require unlikeable conversation, for example "hey, I noticed that you have been on your phone composing this post to tell someone on the internet that they are wrong for about an hour, and I don't think you are getting as much out of that as maybe you seem to think... maybe let it go and let them be wrong and have the last word and trust that onlookers will judge properly without trying to sway their judgment?" rarely goes over well until sometime gets some more distance from the addiction.

So, like, I would have been really interested in the precise deployment of unlikability to further wisdom, but this article is about the shotgun deployment of unlikability to further personal achievement.

</comment><comment><USER13> CEO of a company that I used to work at is one of the most likeable people I've ever met. He spoke softly and gently with sage wisdom, kindness, and careful consideration. And when he wanted something done it got done, and when he suggested an idea, people listened.

There's more than one way.

</comment><comment><USER14> Like others who have posted here, I don't think you _have_ to choose to be unlikable to be successful. And I don't think being unlikable is the key to be successful.

The advice to be more unlikable is akin to the Galileo defense. "Galileo was persecuted for his correct beliefs. I'm being persecuted for my beliefs, therefore they must be correct." They believe that something is related when it is not. Because as Sagan later said, "But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."

I think the key to being successful is to be ok with not being liked.

The big difference with people like Galileo is that he was right. Jobs may have been an asshole, but he was right more often than wrong. Gates was an asshole, but he was often right as well. They were not concerned with being liked, they were concerned with being right. And not "being right" as in "winning the argument", but "being right" as in "coming to the correct conclusion".

You don't _have_ to be a contrarian to be successful, but you can't be afraid to be either.

</comment><comment><USER15> I think skillful communicators are brave enough to express their opinions and endure critique of those opinions. And I certainly think those people are willing to engage in meaningful conflict to find better solutions. With that, I also believe that a person can be compassionate and cordial while engaging in conflict (and I think the people who are tend to be conductive to better solutions). It's quite a slippery slope to conclude that unlike-ability is the secret sauce here.

</comment><comment><USER16> It's astonishing to me that people believe that Steve Jobs was unlikeable or that Elon Musk is unlikeable.

These are people who have consistently been able to recruit, hire, and retain a lot of very high-performing people... the kind of people who can choose where to work. And as leaders, they have been liked and admired by the vast majority of their staff, and millions of customers and fans.

Furthermore these are people for whom being popular is incredibly important, and they have spent a tremendous amount of energy on it. Steve Jobs was famous for how much personal time he put into marketing, press relations, and his own personal brand. Same with Elon Musk, which is why he is so active on Twitter, for example.

Were they nice to every single person they ever met? No, and sure, that's good advice: don't feel like you need to suck up to everyone. But IMO that's very different from the idea that one should strive to be unlikeable.

PLENTY of people are unlikeable already, with not much to show for it. What made Steve Jobs and Elon Musk remarkable was that they were _right_ so often, about complicated and important things. So: maybe we should instead strive to be more right about things that matter.

</comment><comment><USER17> Balance. As in most things.

Were you raised to have a pathologically strong need to be liked? Find it prevents you from speaking up when something needs to be said? Does your need to be liked control you?

Then you should probably fix that.

But not by going to the other extreme. The criterion for success shouldn't be whether you are ruffling feathers often enough. It should be whether, when you need to, you are willing and able to do it.

Everybody loves simplicity and certainty, but with social interaction you need to navigate complicated situations and make a lot of judgment calls. If a source of info (whether people respond positively) is weighted too heavily and your response is to completely remove it from the equation, then you've thrown out a simplistic rule that you were taught and replaced it with a simplistic rule that you invented.

Also, whether you are liked is a very self-focused way of evaluating others' reactions. Sometimes being positive/nice/friendly/whatever is about building rapport, encouraging cooperation, etc., not about how it affects your feelings.

</comment><comment><USER18> It's a bit imprecisely worded, but the message isn't very controversial I would say.

To get things done you can't be afraid of disagreeing with people. You can be a jerk about it or not. If you're a jerk you likely free up resources for getting things done since you're not spending energy being sensitive to other people's feelings. On the other hand, if you're a jerk, people might work against you just because they don't like you. Also, it's easier to effectively lead if you're not a jerk, which is more effective than working on your own.

Most people can be adults about it, disagreeing civilly, and laughing about it afterwards. But the people who change the world are the ones who care enough to risk becoming jerks over the things they care about.

</comment><comment><USER19> The only grime I have to pick with this article is it's applicability to all groups. The ability to behave as a jerk or be unlikeable without experiencing retaliation (not simply push back) is a privilege that a lot of underrepresented minorities don't have

<comment><USER20> > underrepresented minorities

To paraphrase Brene Brown, any conversation on privilege that excludes class is bullshit. The ability to be unlikable without it ruining your life (never mind using it to your advantage) is largely a privilege of class. No one in 2020 is immune to being "cancelled". But if you have money, it won't ruin your life.

<comment><USER21> The list of "non-cognitive" soft skills in one of yesterday's posts contains a substantial number that could be described as "being likeable", and I supposed that made them parochially targeted at children who will need to have a middle-class job: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23809211](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23809211)

As far as cancellation being a 2020 thing, Orwell observed in 1948 that: "As a rule, luckily, there is more than one group, but also at any given moment there is a dominant orthodoxy, to offend against which needs a thick skin and sometimes means cutting one's income in half for years on end."

[http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part50](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part50)

Diogenes: _eating lentils_

Aristippus: You know, if you learned to be ingratiating to the king, you wouldn't have to continue eating lentils.

Diogenes: _chewing_ If you learned to eat lentils, you wouldn't have to continue to ingratiate yourself to the king.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Power differential is everything. Jobs and Musk founded companies. They were always the boss. The boss can afford to be belligerent. Can employees afford that?

Here's my question: Did Jobs and Musk allow their employees to berate them as much as they berated their employees? If so, then good for them! But I suspect not, in which case, they're just hypocrites and bullies. If some belligerence is required for success, who gets to succeed? Only the boss?

</comment><comment><USER23> > Humans evolved as social creatures and we crave attention from each other

this is not entirely true. Humans evolved to crave attention from their tribe or extended family. Since we don't have tribes anymore we try to please random people who do not care about us. The instinct to be likeable is a correct behavior from evolution point of view, but is bad in a modern society.

</comment><comment><USER24> > Actually it's more likely that popularity will prevent you from being > successful.

What a load of BS. Maybe in some specific cases. But in almost all of corporate culture and politics, success is mostly a popularity contest. The more popular you are, the more likely you'll have people not p __ __*g over your success.

</comment><comment><USER25> I _think_ that being unlikeable is a side effect of having a strong opinion that many people do not agree with. Simply being an asshole won't help. But if you have a goal, if you strongly believe in that goal despite everyone else telling you to stop, then yes, be an asshole and tell them all to f*ck off.

</comment><comment><USER26> You're only an asshole when you're in opposition to me :-P

</comment><comment><USER27> Another one of these articles. There is unfortunately not much real content here. The advice to be your own person just like Elon Must or Steve Jobs is oxymoronic on its face. And certainly the advice to be less likable _without a concrete reasony why_ is unhelpful.

Here's my take:

If you place a premium on pleasing everyone around you all the time, you have effectively taken away your own agency and given to them. You are under the control of everyone else's emotional reactions. That's not mentally healthy for you, nor is it good for achieving your own goals. It also makes you a giant target for the kind of emotional vampires who prey on people like this.

At the same time, if you simply disregard the consequences that your actions have on the emotional states of the people around you, you become a selfish sociopath. Remember, for every Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, there are a million petty assholes who make the world worse every time they open their mouths. If you are unlikeable, the odds are very much _not_ in favor of you being a visionary genius. You're probably just that jerk that no one wants on their team.

If you are _choosing_ to be unlikeable because you think it improves the chances of you being great, I think that is a sign that you are _less_ likely to be that. Real visionaries don't decide to be unlikeable. They are unable to be likeable because they are so consumed by their passion. Opting to be a jerk is not going to magically create space in your life for brilliance. If the brilliance is there, it will have already driven out the compulsion to be a constant people pleaser.

The advice I would give is this:

1\. Surround yourself with a small group of trusted friends and family whose regard deeply matters to you. These people exist to help maintain your moral compass. If you do something they don't like, you really did fuck up and you want them to hold you accountable.

2\. Try to be a good person who improves the lives of all people you encounter. Default to likeable.

3\. Sometimes you will have to make choices that harm some people. Pay full attention to the cost to those people and make sure the benefits to the world and not just yourself clearly outweigh it.

4\. Accept that some people simply won't like you through no fault of your own. These people are relatively rare. If you find yourself frequently placing people into this category, reflect that it may be you who is the asshole.

</comment><comment><USER28> The author looks like he speaks from experience at least.

</comment><comment><USER29> This reminds me of a short documentary called "DICKS: Do you need to be one to be a successful leader?"

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

tldr; You don't have to be a dick, but being a strong and passionate leader will result in making tough choices that will inevitably not make everyone happy.

tldr 2; People don't want a boss who is a friend, they want a leader with a vision.

</comment><comment><USER30> "Some number of successful people were assholes, therefore in order to be successful you should be an asshole."

I cannot fathom how this logic even works.

<comment><USER31> Even you look from perspective of warfare evolution it does not work nor make sense.

But objectively, you can play this game of cooperation to see when to be assholes is favorable strategy.

link: [https://ncase.me/trust/](https://ncase.me/trust/)</comment></comment>


Forgotten Greats of Science Fiction - <AUTHOR> https://www.tor.com/2018/09/04/who-are-the-forgotten-greats-of-science-fiction/ <comment><USER2> George O. Smith's _Venus Equilateral_ stories from 1942–1945 are wonderful—if you like the idea of vacuum tube technology taken to extreme lengths.

Lots of fun in those stories for engineers and hackers: spaceships that can accelerate at six gees but the passengers can't, capacitors charged up in the gigajoule range, walk-in electron guns (why bother with vacuum pumps when you're in space and can just build devices in the "open air"?), stock market manipulation by means of speed-of-light delay, and SLAs.

<comment><USER3> I'll piggy back on this and point out H Beam Piper wrote some really great action adventure sci, that although dated is a hell of a lot of fun.

I'd also note how remarkable the cover art on those old publications is. I'm constantly amazed, even the covers in the present article are extraordinary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not forgotten, but not well known either, Lois McMaster Bujold's science fiction series, the Vorkosigan Saga is one of the best reads I ever found.

The first couple of books, Shards of Honor and Barrayar, are a superb mixture of futuristic technology, society, and humanity. The protagonist, Cordelia deals with a number of situations that would bring the best of us to our knees, with strength and compassion.

Unlike most "aseptic" or cold SciFi out there, including Star Trek, these works put the human element up front. I cannot recommend them highly enough. The rest of the saga follows different characters and is worthy in itself (I'm especially fond of Falling Free and a couple of the later books) but the first two books shine in my opinion.

She won several Nebula and Hugo awards, but she remains not well known. Several sci-fi friends of mine had never heard of her.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is a modern thing too: current SF also has long-time authors that are completely neglected, who are on a par with the great authors of the past. Case in point: Linda Nagata ([https://mythicisland.com](https://mythicisland.com)), who started in the 80s, but has yet to win a Hugo Award. Her most recent (and arguably finest) novel, 'The Last Good Man', wasn't even nominated.

While she's probably best known for her rolicking military SF 'Red' series, her other novels are astonishingly mature and prescient.

</comment><comment><USER6> Kornbluth's "The Little Black Bag" [1] [2] is another good read.

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

[2] [https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/kornbluth- littleblack/kornbluth-...](https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/kornbluth- littleblack/kornbluth-littleblack-00-h.html)

<comment><USER7> "The Little Black Bag" was also done as an episode of Night Gallery. I saw this first before reading the story. [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0660832/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0660832/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> A few of the authors mentioned in some comments here, or in comments on the article, are referenced in Blake Hodgetts song "The Reader" [1]. It's an interesting challenge if you consider yourself a well-read science fiction reader to see how many you can catch.

If you give up annotated lyrics are available [2], but it is more fun to see how many you can figure out without looking.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRsVkmC-N3Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRsVkmC-N3Y)

[2] [http://members.efn.org/~bch/songs/thereaderframeset.html](http://members.efn.org/~bch/songs/thereaderframeset.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> F/SF, as a publishing field, seem hell-bent on 'forgetting their greats'. Until the excellent Fantasy Masterworks and Science Fiction Masterworks series appeared, it was more or less routine that books considered 'classics' of these genres would be out of print more often than not.

Meanwhile, anyone who can manage the sleight-of-hand will ensure that their F/SF books are filed under 'literature', regardless of how shamelessly they pillage the F/SF world for ideas (looking at you, Atwood).

<comment><USER10> I don't understand the hate against Margaret Atwood.

Who cares what shelf her books are on in bookstores. If she makes more money under "Literature", then good for her. She's not "pillaging" anything; she's _adding_ to the established body of published SF/F with her excellent works, regardless of what shelf they're on at the bookstore. You're free to shelve them properly at home.

<comment><USER9> It's not the fact that she is shelved in fiction. It's the fact that she openly derides SF as "talking squids in outer space" while freely pillaging the SF treasury of ideas for her (imo increasingly schlocky and lurid) writing.

<comment><USER11> I can't see a lot of harm in this. Writers talk shit across genre boundaries (in this case, maybe in an attempt to define one!) all the time. The "arguments" they present are almost always terrible.

<comment><USER9> I can't see that much "harm" in it either. I'm not asking for Atwood to be arrested. I'm just explaining one of the reasons I don't like her (that, and her increasingly schlocky writing, jmo of course).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> And if you haven't heard of him, Cordwainer Smith is well worth reading too.

<comment><USER13> Agreed, Cordwainer Smith made quite the impression on me, not only for the ideas, but for his writing style.

Cordwainer Smith is mentioned in the article: "The Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award was founded in 2001 to draw attention to unjustly forgotten SF authors."

Like the article says, I wish they collected the award winners in an anthology.

<comment><USER10> Unfortunately Gardner Dozois died recently -- he would have been the ideal person to put together such an anthology (given his background of already having produced dozens of SFF anthologies).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> An article about Murray Leinster came up on HN a few days ago ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17882571](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17882571)), which, sadly, passed everyone by. Another great author who deserves rediscovery.

</comment><comment><USER14> A Lafferty story linked from the comments: [https://www.baen.com/Chapters/9781618249203/9781618249203___...](https://www.baen.com/Chapters/9781618249203/9781618249203___2.htm)

<comment><AUTHOR> Six Lafferty stories: [http://ralafferty.com/category/read/](http://ralafferty.com/category/read/)

His books are available on UK Kindle or other means.

<comment><USER15> Here[1], have another: "Been a Long, Long Time"

1: [https://pastebin.com/raw/d9ZXakAB](https://pastebin.com/raw/d9ZXakAB)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Surprised not to see Theodore Sturgeon in there. _Microcosmic God_ is a good story from the "golden age" era.

<comment><USER17> He's not a household name, but he's definitely not forgotten.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Older sci-fi can be great until it starts being laughably anachronistic. I'm re-reading the Foundation series and there are some howlers. From a hologram continually insisting that his viewers can go ahead a smoke cigarettes (as he won't mind), to a breathless description of what is just an automatic train ticket kiosk, to a machine that 'types' by translating voice into neatly hand- written words on a page (where if you misspoke, you need to start from scratch again like a typewriter.)

I think it's hard for many modern readers to digest science fiction that was written before the transistor was invented. Some things just seem ridiculous.

<comment><USER19> Science fiction futures exist in a two-dimensional space; one axis is the time the story is set in, and the other axis is the time the story is written. You just have to get used to the fact that "2000 as written in 1950" is different from "2000 as written in 1990".

<comment><USER20> Honestly, I find it very refreshing to read SF from different decades — if only to occasionally get away from the dystopias of today's tomorrow.

Sure, space rockets with paper printouts (Heinlein's juvenile bildungsroman _Starman Jones_ ) may seem silly today, but I find that it adds to the flavor of yesterday's tomorrows.

<comment><USER10> And there is still a lot of paper used on the space station in the form of manuals. You need documentation that you absolutely, positively can always read, regardless of whether your computers go down from cosmic rays, electricity goes out, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Although my heavy scifi reading occurred many years ago, during the 60s and 70s, I must admit I've never heard of any of those authors. Granted, I focused on a smallish group of the more well-known authors, its still a bit surprising that I'd never come across at least some of these people.

<comment><USER22> Olaf Stapledon I've heard of and gave First and Last Men a try at one point and gave up as I recall. Ambitious but a real slog.

My most intensive SF reading was more in the 70s through 80s/90s but I likewise don't recognize any of the names other than Stapledon's.

<comment><USER23> Olaf Stapledon is amazing but he isn't writing adventures or even narrative in the traditional sense. He is very well known among science fiction authors because they use his material heavily [0]. I often wonder if there is some secret argument among some scifi authors never to speak of Stapledon. For instance one interesting line was that C.S. Lewis was inspired heavily by Stapledon to write "That Hideous Strength" which in turn inspired George Orwell's 1984.

If in one thousand years one science fiction author will be remembered from our time there is a decent chance it will be Olaf Stapledon.

[0]: [http://www.nyrsf.com/2013/11/thomas-f-bertonneau-contact- com...](http://www.nyrsf.com/2013/11/thomas-f-bertonneau-contact-communion- and-the-marriage-of-minds-olaf-stapledon-in-context.html)

<comment><USER5> Arthur C Clarke wrote frequently of him, crediting Stapledon as one of his earliest influences!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've randomly picked up a number of these over the years by buying boxes of cast-off scifi from ebay.

</comment><comment><USER13> Folk here might enjoy the "Foundations of Science Fiction" videos from Extra Credit:

[https://youtu.be/CIG6I_SpYs4](https://youtu.be/CIG6I_SpYs4)

I may never read all the books they mention, but it is entertaining to know about them.

</comment><comment><USER24> It's too bad that eternal copyright has doomed these authors to oblivion.

</comment><comment> ur-whale Not a single mention of Jack Vance in the article ... disappointing: Jack Vance was one of the most profilic yet under-rated sci-fi author of the so- called "golden age"

<comment><USER25> This sort of question is hard, because ... is he under-rated (or "forgotten", as the original article had it)? I would have said he was both well-respected and still remembered.

Personally, I don't think I've read more than a novel's worth from any of the authors in the article -- hadn't even heard of half of them -- whereas I've read maybe ten of Vance's? He's maybe more remembered for his fantasy than SF, but I'd say he's frequently mentioned and reprinted.

<comment><USER9> Vance is found increasingly rarely on shelves since his death, I've noticed. It's easy to find the spot now; look for the enormous Vandermeer section :-) but in my experience there will be a token 1-2 Vance books there if that. Often it begins and ends with the books of his that made the F or SF Masterworks.

Part of the problem is that there's no almost no such thing as a uniformly good Vance book (and I say that with regret, as he is one of my favorites). I love him, but one must navigate past a lot of things that maybe someone who didn't grow up reading JV might be less tolerant about. He is quite frequently lazy about plotting (repeating himself or just chucking the story on the floor), many of his main characters are enjoyable omni-competent ciphers who could easily be mistaken for each other, is a bit prone to using rapes and murders of women as a primary plot driver (Araminta Station!) and there's some weird if lightly-worn race and politics stuff that is best not examined too deeply.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> F.M. Busby was pretty good.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._M._Busby](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._M._Busby)

</comment><comment><USER27> The Death Guard by Chadwick -- fleshy robot armies

[https://www.amazon.co.uk/Death-Guard- Roc-S/dp/014017060X](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Death-Guard-Roc-S/dp/014017060X)

Stand on Zanzibar by Brunner -- notable for hip-crime vocab

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

</comment><comment><USER5> Arthur C Clarke's 'Astounding Days' was a nostalgic tour of the 'Golden Age' science fiction world. He mentioned many stories and authors that have been neglected by modern readers. But then, I'm finding that even he's gradually fading from the modern collective memory...

</comment><comment><USER7> Judith Merril might be familiar to anyone from Toronto. The Toronto Public Library holds the Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation & Fantasy

[https://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/merril/](https://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/merril/)

<comment><USER28> I dare not go there anymore.

The last few times reminded me not only how many books I have not read, but also how many books I wanted to reread.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> One of my favorites from just after world war 2 is "With Folded Hands ..." by Jack Williamson.

He was certainly well known in the early days of pulp science fiction.

</comment><comment><USER30> By all means, get Lafferty's collection _Nine Hundred Grandmothers_, and if you read nothing else, read the stories about the Camiroi.</comment>


Las Vegas mayor called reckless for suggesting Vegas be test case for reopening - <AUTHOR> https://time.com/5825955/las-vegas-mayor-reopening-coronavirus/ <comment><USER2> _Someone_ has to reopen first...</comment>


Ultimate Guide to SaaS Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/chartmogul/the-ultimate-guide-to-saas-ltv

<comment><USER2> I find the adjustment of LTV by 0.75 to be a smart shortcut. You could probably spend hours and hours of calculating just to reach an average of 0.8342 or something, though the exact number wouldn't make much difference to your CAC spending.

<comment><AUTHOR> One important thing LTV misses is payback period. E.g. due to very low churn your LTV could potentially be huge but the value would take many years to realise, depending on your cash reserves CAC spending well below LTV still may not be economical if it takes too long to realise the ROI.

<comment><USER2> Agree with you here. For my previous start-up I used to calculate LTV only based on people that churned. Knowing your LTV is much higher can only be great, at least as long as you can work with a CAC/LTV value.</comment></comment></comment>


Absolute knowledge is absolute power - <AUTHOR> http://peternixey.com/post/52942971550/absolute-knowledge-is-absolute-power <comment><USER2> I do not like the title, but the central point is good.

The real problem with PRISM is not that you, individually, are going to be targeted. It is that the tools have been put in place to subvert the political process by personally targeting anyone with views that are inconvenient for those of influence. These tools may be being used fairly now, but based on past history, we cannot assume that they will continue to be so.

And the past history to look at is not even that of distant times and places. Take a look at how the FBI under Hoover tried to affect the political process in the USA with COINTELPRO.

<comment><USER3> Christ, imagine if Hoover had today's tool available to him. Imagine the reach and power of McCarthyism.

I guess many would suggest that is exactly what we have right now. Just more subtle, opaque, and deniable.

<comment><USER4> > I guess many would suggest that is exactly what we have right now. Just more > subtle, opaque, and deniable.

I can't see how anyone who has studied American history could think that what we have now even approaches what existed at the time of McCarthyism. McCarthyism required a level of public acquiescence and homogeneity of thought that could only exist under the threat of Soviet domination and nuclear holocaust. The bogeyman of terrorism doesn't have nearly that kind of grip on the public consciousness.

Heck, just look at the wars that were justified by the two fears: Korea (36,516 Americans dead) and Vietnam (58,209) versus Afghanistan (2,229) and Iraq (4,488). Not to minimize the causalities of those wars, but if you can measure the power of a scary idea by the number of U.S. soldiers that die before the public puts a stop to the war, then there is no comparison between the specter of communism versus the specter of terrorism.

<comment><USER5> But communism was a made-up threat, just like terrorism is. They can ramp up the fear factor any time they want and now they have all that infra in place to support it.

<comment><USER4> An aggressive, expansionist power with nuclear weapons pointed at us was not a "made-up" threat. Neither is international terrorist organizations conspiring to attack us. Both are factually verifiable threats.

Reasonable people can disagree about the appropriate responses to those threats, but it's factually incorrect to say they are "made up."

As an aside, for those claiming that terrorism poses no threat because it kills so few people, I'll offer the example of the Beltway Sniper attacks. More people probably died in traffic accidents in the D.C. metro area than were killed by the Beltway Sniper. But the chilling effect on everyday life was so much greater. It's hard do convey to someone the feeling of putting gas in your car on a sunny weekend day with the hair on your neck standing up because even though you know that there is a negligible chance of your being the victim of a sniper attack, the possibility scares you in a way that the possibility of death through heart disease, or hell the certainty of death through old age, cannot.

<comment><USER5> I see the nonsense works pretty well on you.

>expansionist power with nuclear weapons pointed at us was not a "made-up" threat

At the time of McCarthyism this wasn't really what was going on. What _was_ going on was that capitalists were afraid communism would _work_. They saw rich and powerful people getting killed or displaced and the "plebs" running things and they were going to make sure it couldn't happen here.

>Neither is international terrorist organizations conspiring to attack us

International terrorist threat conspiracy theories. Nice. You mean the global terrorist group with all kinds of secret cells hidden under ever rock? Yea, that was all made up bullshit. Al Quaeda is a name _we_ made up to be able to apply our own RICO laws after the first WTC bombing. And you may not realize it, but terrorist groups tend to hate each other as much as they hate anyone else. They are religious extremists after all.

>but it's factually incorrect to say they are "made up."

They are either utterly non-existent or so small as to be ignorable.

>putting gas in your car on a sunny weekend day with the hair on your neck standing up because even though you know that there is a negligible chance of your being the victim of a sniper attack, the possibility scares you in a way that the possibility of death through heart disease, or hell the certainty of death through old age, cannot.

What you are describing is irrational, emotional response. None the less, we can't make policy decisions about how you _feel_. And the media is largely to blame about this. The reported news should be proportional to the effect. The Boston marathon bomb should have been a byline on the local Boston news if it was mentioned at all.

<comment><USER2> Let me ask you. Do you personally know anyone who lived on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain during the cold war? Were you living in NYC during 9/11?

For me the answer is yes to both. Communism was not a made up threat. Nor did it just impact a few rich people. The Soviets took control of hundreds of millions of people, and maintained control with tanks and guns. For instance ask any Czech who was around in 1968 how fun that was.

As for 9/11, someone flew those planes. (If you're one of the morons who thinks that missiles were used, then go talk to one of the millions of eyewitnesses who watched the second plane fly low and slow over Manhattan - half my workplace at the time was on a balcony and watched it.) Osama bin Laden took public credit. Al Qaeda was both real, and had appeared in lots of stuff before that. After 9/11 they had great branding.

This is not to say that the threats were considered realistically. The domino theory under which we fought in Vietnam was invalid. Supporting every anti- communist power we could just because they were anti-communist lead to our supporting everything from genocide in Cambodia to military coups in Chile.

Likewise this time around, Al Qaeda was not a force in Iraq. (Well, not until we invaded, and then people who wanted to freak us out began calling themselves Al Qaeda.) I do not believe that our response has been proportionate to the threat.

But do try to keep facts in mind. In the Cold War we did face communist countries. We do face terrorist organizations today. Those are not made up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think a key feature of privacy is empowerment or control. People generally want to feel that they are in control of their lives. By being selective about what information you make available to others or even generally available to all, is a very important way to express your sense of control over your own life. Even if you like to broadcast as many of your thoughts, photographs, likes, and geolocations as possible, you do that with a sense of control. You decided what to release. When the NSA sifts through your data, they decide what to collect, what to use, who to share it with. And they never tell you any of it. I think that loss of control is one of the factors that makes people uncomfortable with loss of privacy.

</comment><comment><USER7> And now we find that the gummint is gathering information from all sorts of corporations. It's as if the ACLU's nightmare overview surveillance system was used as a blueprint by the government to design PRISM et al.

So your credit card, supermarket, gas card, library card, debit card, pharmacy card, prescriptions, public records (home and auto ownership, license tags, taxes, school records, etc.) are all Hoovered (as in "J. Edgar Hoover") up and ready for analysis. This is tied into your state's automobile licensing system: police cars have scanners that incessantly search for all license plates in the visible roadway and, for each, perform an automated search for outstanding warrants and criminal history in the state's database.

And if the driver is good-looking and has a clean record, the officer can _still_ force a search of state records to retrieve addresses, phone numbers, etc. so he can stop her, talk to her and then optionally, hit on her later at his convenience ("What a small world, what are the odds of us meeting again! Must be fate.").

<comment><USER2> You remind me of a true story from the 1990s. Woman, on her way back from Canada, is pulled over in NY for speeding. She's got a plate of home-made cookies in the seat next to her and offers the officer one.

About 200 miles later, not speeding, she's pulled over again. As the officer approaches she says, "What did I do wrong?" He replies, "Nothing, but I heard that you've got the most amazing cookies!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Site broken on nexus 7

</comment><comment><USER9> "Absolute knowledge is absolute power and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

This is simply not true, rather a cobbled together bit of psychobabble.

Okay... I have absolute knowledge a freight train is coming towards me and I'm tied to the rail. I clearly do not therefore have absolute power to change the outcome.

The government could likewise know everything and not be able to stop a bad outcome ( say their overthrow ).

\---

Nicolae Ceaușescu had an impressive surveillance state... it didn't stop him being shot ( in the street? ) along with his wife

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolae_Ceau%C8%99escu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolae_Ceau%C8%99escu)

<comment><USER10> I think the context here is different than the strength of the quote. The context is about the government knowing everyone's petty mistakes in life, or Achilles heal. If they know this for everyone, then they can push or manipulate people as they see fit.

<comment><USER9> I don't agree with the context either.

1) If the Government has a problem with you, then a few IM chat records and your pr0n site subscription history will be the least of your problems.

Previously 'undesirables' would be tailed by agents or a private eye.

2) They can simply frame you. Child pr0n planted on your computer somehow, hell even your best friends / wife would disown you.

3) Is "recording more" either "finding needles" or just "making the haystack bigger" ?</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Working as international Remote Worker - <AUTHOR> I'm considering a job offer as international remote
worker.
I would like to know if international remote worker needs to work as freelancer or contractor?
How do remote workers take care of tax payments, pension and health insurance? Do I need to use account services or I can do it by myself?
Is there anything else I need to take care of as international remote worker? <comment><USER2> All answers depend on the country you live in, the country hiring you, the country where the payments come from, etc. It can be anything from "you can't work for them" to "treat it as local salary".

Talk to your tax office, or your accountant. You can even pay for a one-off consultation which should give you a summary of the basic rules. Alternatively you can find a freelancers' forum local to your country and ask that question there.

My own suggestion - pay someone to explain it to you for your specific situation and have them look at the contract too. Nobody else online should be trusted to give you the right answer.

</comment><comment><USER3> To me, these are questions for your prospective employer.</comment>


What Would be a Good Lisp Project? - <AUTHOR>

I've been going through SICP and I'm currently on chapter 4. I was wondering if there are any projects (open source) or new ideas that could keep me busy for 3-4 months?<p>I'm also contemplating if I should learn another lisp like Clojure since it seems that it's a bit impractical to build something big with Scheme alone. <comment><USER2> The best lisp project is a lisp interpreter/compiler in Lisp.

Take a look to Lisp in Small Pieces[1] if you are interested in something beyond the metacircular evaluator from SICP.

Read the code of Racket, you will learn a lot from it.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Lisp-Small-Pieces-Christian- Queinnec/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Lisp-Small-Pieces-Christian- Queinnec/dp/0521562473)

</comment><comment><USER3> There are several Scheme implementations that are well suited to building "something big". Someone mentioned Racket, but there's also e.g. Chicken Scheme or Gauche, both of which come with a sizable collection of libraries to do real-world stuff. Then there are implementations like Scheme48, which seem to be tailored to building something "on top" of it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Considering that the lack of a well implemented GUI is holding back broader adoption of Scheme, how about a windowing solution that leverages ubiquitous browser technology. You might want to take a look at Lively Kernel for some ideas. But since then, HTML5 support for Canvas in both 2D and 3D has greatly improved so might be better option than SVG.

<comment><USER5> When used as advertised, SVG is slow. But there's a way to use it that's actually much faster than Canvas for some purposes: batch up everything you want to render into a single blob of SVG text and then splat it on to the screen in one go using innerHTML. This is faster than drawing the same thing with a series of Canvas API calls and far faster than making incremental modifications to the SVG DOM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I personally dream of making a web community application with Scheme in which users can program bulletin items. Inspired by LambdaMOO, but with a focus on typical web facilities such as threaded discussion and wiki articles.

</comment><comment><USER7> People are using Racket Scheme.

<http://racket-lang.org/>

Build a website. Instant gratification and you can always grow it into something big.

</comment><comment><USER8> A lisp version of matplotlib wouldn't suck...</comment>


Ask HN: Document templating for automation - <AUTHOR> I'm trying to build an automatic document generation process and have multiple types of documents to automate. These documents will have standard language but also dynamic language. I'm looking for a template engine similar to the templating used in current web frameworks (e.g. React uses curly brackets to escape and execute an expression within HTML or for control flow). I'm looking for something similar so I can embed some logic in the document output. For example, if a certain variable is less than zero, a different paragraph is displayed rather than a standard paragraph. Any ideas or technologies to leverage here? <comment><USER2> Almost every programming language has one or more libraries for templating. That's how PHP started early on. The author started with if/then, then added loops ... and users demanded more and more features.

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

Have a look at [https://github.com/wycats/handlebars.js/](https://github.com/wycats/handlebars.js/) based on [http://mustache.github.io/](http://mustache.github.io/) which has libraries for many programming languages.

</comment><comment><USER3> You haven't specified a language preference so I'll give you my preferred choice: Mako templates for Python. It feels similar to PHP but with more features such as:

\- Inline expressions with filter functions. Mako uses _${expression | filter}_

\- Reusable template blocks which can be called like functions. Mako uses _< %def>_ and _< %block>_.

\- Supports full Python expressions instead of a limited subset like Jinja.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you're using python, maybe jinja would work. I like twig in PHP, but that's because I like php.</comment>


Request HN: Tell us what to build. Or hire us. (Group of Stanford Students) - <AUTHOR> Summer internships are coming to an end.
Me and a group of friends, all Computer Science students at Stanford, are ready to build something.
Technologies we work with: iOS, JavaScript, Rails, Django.
What we do: Frontend and Backend. We aren't photoshop wizards, but we can design a nice looking interface - we focus more on the UX than graphic design.
<comment>
If there's an interesting project posted in this thread that seems cool, we will build it and report back to Hacker News.
</comment><comment>
Also - we have some extra bandwidth - if you want to hire us to build your MVP, email firstname.lastname@example.com with a rough project outline and a budget (we specialize in iOS and single page JavaScript applications). </comment><comment><USER3> Build an app which collects medical data, behavioral data (e.g., what did you do today?), and dietary data from users who agree to a "do anything, as long as my data is kept anonymous"-ish agreement, then use their data to figure out correlations between serious illnesses, and the activities / diets that "cause" them (yes, correlation == causation _once_ you have enough data points - else, what _is_ "proof"?). You can provide a mobile app (HTML5 launcher to get started more quickly) and make it easy for users to cram as much data into the app as possible.

The goal of such an app would be to glean information from all the non-DNA, non-race, non-age, non-economically influenced data points, since most every other medical company (a "company" is what a startup used to be called - <USER2> yesterday) cares about the bleeding edge of science. Applying science that matters to data that matters means results.

</comment><comment><USER4> Here's an idea that has been on my list for years that is doable in a short time but I just haven't gotten around to it:

Build a URL shortener for directions to physical addresses. Huh?

1) get a domain, say [http://right.to](http://right.to) (I'll give that to you if you build this)

2) Users can register a nickname and location:

daves_house

123 Main St, City CA, 90210

3) When someone requests [http://right.to/daves_house](http://right.to/daves_house) the page uses HTML5 to get the requestor's location and responds with a map with a route (and turn by turn directions if you wish) from where the requestor is at that moment, to the address that is registered. The directions come from Google or Bing maps or any other open directions API that your back-end fetches.

The value is that I (your customer) will have a URL that I can always give to people for directions to my house or business no matter where they are.

Bonus points: A phone app that sends SMS or email messages containing the URL [http://right.to/p/xxxxx.yyyyy](http://right.to/p/xxxxx.yyyyy) where xxxxx and yyyyy are not previously registered nicknames but rather encoded lat/long of the sender. Huh?

1) I launch the app on my phone. It gets my GPS coordinates and creates the encoded xxxxx, yyyyy. It opens my SMS interface with a pre-populated message: "I'm right here: [http://right.co/p/xxxxx.yyyyy"](http://right.co/p/xxxxx.yyyyy")

2) I enter the recipients for the text and hit send.

3) Each recipient, when they click on the link, gets located through their browser and shown directions from wherever they are, to wherever I am.

value: With a few clicks I just sent a bunch of people directions from them to me without knowing where I am, or where they are. Or maybe I tweeted that. Every viewer gets a custom route right to me.

This idea was inspired by [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2093261](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2093261) wherein I discovered that an app I wanted to build already existed, so I tweaked it a little (directions instead of just locations).

*edits for spelling and formatting

<comment><USER5> I'm currently working on [http://ezsend.it](http://ezsend.it) but this sounds like something fun and somewhat related.

It would be great if it also offered public transit directions. One could then market it to businesses as a replacement for the static map on their contact page.

Let's keep in touch once I'm done with ezsend.it

<comment><USER4> Once you have the endpoints, you can return any data you can get your hands on; map with route, transit options, bike paths, turn-by-turn, etc.

And yes, instead of generic directions "From I-5: take exit 999..." you can have a link that gives specific directions from where the view actually is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Please build an application that will allow someone to click anywhere on a map of the world and view an aggregate stream of all photos and/or video uploaded/streamed at/from that location. Content should be available from any photo or video app. Streams should be from the nearest location (if it's remote), or radius defined (if it's an urban location).

</comment><comment><USER7> How might we contact you outside of HN?

<comment><AUTHOR> email@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Build something you care about.</comment>


Startup Mistakes - <AUTHOR> http://dopeboy.github.io/Lessons/ <comment><USER2> I absolutely agree with the writer's point about over-engineering. In start-up / small business land, optimizations are worthless because the main problem isn't that "oh, I have a poorly performing inefficient system", and is instead "I don't have a system and need to build one." So to a start up founder, timing correctly when to do something is far more important than doing that thing amazingly well (passable is enough).

In other words, technical debt is not a bad thing (just humbly apologize for it later).

And regarding building a startup by yourself, I'd like to expand that to never build a network-related startup by yourself. That is, if...

value = k2 * users ^ 2 + k1 * users + k0

never build a product where k0 = 0 or close to it by yourself. This means, for example, if you're by yourself, build an indie game where you jump on platforms, but never attempt "facebook for dogs". This is because you can't get customers to pay $ for no value, so building social networks without an extremely strong initial user base in your pocket (which, unless you're a celebrity, you don't have) is the tech equivalent of buying the lottery. In a lot of ways, social network features on an app is like legal - if you need to worry about it, you've already gotten to the point when you can delegate an employee to do it.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is awesome. When I read the previous post by OP that hit the number one spot (called Consulting), I immediately wished that there was a post-mortem on the failed startup.

This is important for many reasons, but the least of which is that there's too little written on what goes wrong with a startup. Everyone (especially the media) seems to think that every startup becomes one of the billion dollar darlings that saturate the news.

My take on the overall concept was that it was going to be really hard to pull off, because you were building a two sided marketplace. And that's exactly what airbnb is (which is why it's appropriate you called the startup an airbnb for cameras). Even if you had you perfect execution and built a product that was 2x better than anything that existed, getting a two-sided marketplace to work requires an extraordinary amount of luck, marketing, and timing.

The flipside is that once a two-sided marketplace exists, it's really tough to displace (for exactly the reasons that it's so hard to start). So I would have loved to hear your rationale for thinking you could overcome the odds of building a two-sided marketplace. It's twice as difficult as a normal startup because you need both the sellers and the buyers. And one is not valuable unless the other is there at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER4> "We should have built the absolute minimum and then manually maintained transactions through the backend if need be. To hell with formality. We were in the business of proving a hypothesis yet we acted as if it had already been proven"

We do this at my company when we add a new feature that we are not sure will take off. You can get something running quickly that looks good enough to the customer, but behind the scenes is all smoke and mirrors. Then if the amount of traffic starts to grow you start putting in your automation.

It's really hard to resist the urge to build out all of your automation, scaling, etc up front. But, most of the time the new feature goes unused and it winds up being a waste of time.

<comment><USER5> This is where client-side A/B testing frameworks can be really useful, but people get all huffy about it. Inject some custom HTML onto your page! Yes, it looks a little ugly when you look at it closely, but 95% of your customers won't. It'll prove a hypothesis very, very quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I agree with lessons 1-3, but I'm not convinced about the rest of them.

By definition, any engineering on a failed project is "over" engineering. But there are certainly some projects where investing in a little more development at the beginning will have a greater payback later.

Lack of risk subsidizing never stopped craiglist or airbnb (in its early years). If people want something badly enough they will figure out their own way to deal with the risk.

Having a good cofounder is probably better than not having one, but there are tons of successful products and companies started by individual people.

If the market is busy kicking your ass, a little positive encouragement can be helpful. All startups are really tough at the beginning, and this one never made it out of that stage. But if it had, this rule would probably be the opposite. Also if you want some critical opinions, just try to raise money.

Certainly after an failed startup it makes sense to look back and try to figure out what went wrong, but you also shouldn't overfit. I realize the medium of blog posts does reward overfitting and making rules, but the real world is much more nuanced.

</comment><comment><USER7> Sorry, don't mean to be mean, but why is this upvoted so much?

Seems like a lot of obvious things no? I agree it's a lot harder to spot when you're in the middle of it all, but in terms of material for a blogpost, these "learned lessons" are pretty common/generic, right?

How would this be different from, say, "don't forget to file your taxes or you'll waste a lot of time if you get audited". Do you really have to go through an entire failed startup to learn these "lessons"?

Some of the other better postmortems out there have rare insights like "don't talk to corp dev they have an incentive to pretend to want to acquire you to waste your time and distract you", or "don't be tempted to expand to too many geo locations too early or you'll be stretched too thin". Lessons that would be hard to learn without actually going through a startup yourself. Compared to those, the lessons here seems...generic

Sorry maybe I misunderstood. Can someone whack me in the head and bring me back to reality? Maybe it's just me...

<comment><USER8> Apologies for the harshness but your comment makes it clear that you've never run a startup before. Regular office life is like juggling three balls - difficult, but manageable with practice (and they're given to you - so you never need to make a judgement call about what is important). Startup life is like having hundreds of items all thrown at you from different directions. Only `n` are valuable - _and you have to decide which ones those are_. Some can't be juggled, others look promising but are worthless, etc, etc.

It's incredibly easy to get lost in the barrage of objects. Articles like this one help founders refocus and figure out what's important and what's not. Many things seem obvious in hindsight that are completely lost in the present.

<comment><USER7> Ah interesting

Yes I absolutely agree with that. Maybe the 7 "lessons" in the article are not the real lessons--the real lesson is, as you said, focusing on the right/important items.

Also, I think point (3) in the article qualifies as something that would have been difficult for the writer to learn without going through a startup.

I would say, though, advice like "not choosing a confusing name for your startup", seems, well, obvious, no? I definitely respect the guy for starting his own company, but not sure how I should feel about someone who can't even choose a non-confusing name for it...

<comment><USER9> Lmao, find a "non confusing name" that has available .com, .net and .org (because you don't want to buy them after you've started).

Good luck!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> repeating such lessons of missing product-market fit is worthwhile if only to remind us to keep watching out for these pitfalls. otherwise entrepreneurs may think they no longer matter and make the same mistakes.

it's easy to let yourself think you know the market instead of asking it (mistake #1), because marketing research is a hard, ambiguous process, while coding is at least logical and the path (may seem) more obvious (mistake #4). and while you're in this bubble, you need encouragement (mistake #7) to keep you going, especially as a single founder (#6, arguably a mistake). these are all mistakes i've made too.

the statement i disagree with is "I'd like to think I got a very cheap MBA along the way." it's unlikely the author got much of that, since in most cases mba's learn much more about running an existing business (accounting, financial projections, etc.) than starting a new business. to be fair, there is, at the core of an mba program, a theme of making decisions under ambiguity and trying to bring as much concrete information into the decision as possible, and the author may be referring more to that aspect. in any case, building your intuition for good decision making requires learning from your mistakes (like other talents).

</comment><comment><USER11> Another post that shows how important it is to launch MVPs (minimum viable product). I often see friends spending a huge amount of time coding something that when finally released doesn't build any traction.

This article kind of resonate with me. I have a great product that is being used by hundreds of people everyday and I get constant requests for iOs/android apps. If I had more time I would learn how to make a phone app and I would monetize it...

</comment><comment><USER12> "we should have built the absolute minimum"

This is an easy trap to fall into. While not bad advice, because its easy to overbuild - sometimes polish is what gets you to success. If slack built just the bare minimum and didn't flesh things out thoroughly, they would not have been nearly as successful.

<comment><USER13> You don't build the minimum and stop there. You build the minimum to prove an idea is even worth going further on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> For those interested, I work for a startup that does something similar to what Qhojo did [1], but for all kinds of stuff.

Thanks for sharing your experience.

[1] [https://www.peerby.com/](https://www.peerby.com/)

<comment><USER15> That could be useful instead of buying new things but only if you can get enough users on the service to lend stuff. Then obviously you'd stick ads on there like FB or Twttr.</comment></comment>