Physician transitioning to Start up. Completely lost. Advice needed.  - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN,
I am a long time lurker, and I have learned immensely over the last few years. With all the knowledge and advice found on HN, I thought I could solve a problem I encountered in medicine by using the internet and technology.
I did all the research in this particular segment of the market and started on my journey to create my first MVP. I realized I didn't know how to program, so I sat down and learned how to use Drupal. Drupal became too restrictive for my needs. I started learning Ruby and Rails. Learning how to program from scratch was not getting anywhere.
This is where I need your advice. I really want to get this product completed. Even if it doesn't make me any money, I think it fills a need and I think it would be great for society in general. I don't have the programming skills at the time to do it myself.
This brings up a few questions: (Please bear with me, I am new to this field)
1) I really believe in this idea and will invest to get a developer/programmer to do this for me. I looked at elance but there are wide ranges in prices. What resources do you guys use to get developers, or does everyone make their product by themselves?
2) I honestly believe in my product and I have the expertise for the medical part of it, however I would love to work with someone who has the other skills necessary for a start up. How do you guys find a cofounder?
3) I am willing to leave my high salaried physician job for this endeavor but how do you guys get mentors/investors/cofounders. I looked into RockHealth, etc, but they all seem to cater to 20 something out of college students with multiple founders.
Thanks in advance. Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks again.
If anyone is interested in chatting, email me at email@example.com <comment><USER2> As a consultant that builds such systems under similar circumstances:

\- The cheapest option is not the best option.

\- Chemistry is more important than price.

\- A very busy consultant will not be very fun to work with. Will miss deadlines.

\- Find someone who is good, but does not take a lot of work at a time.

\- Don't stick to one languge/framework. Let the consultant help you pick.

\- Pay for a sit down. This is when you talk to the consultant in order to weed out any details about your goals. Well worth the money.

\- Don't focus on hourly costs. A weekly or monthly charge ends up being easier for both sides.

Now, in #3 you let me know that this is a busines syou believe will get traction. How good are your business skills? If you are like most physicians out there, then you don't have a good clue as to how to market a product. This is the most important part of the business. If you havent thought about marketing then do so _now_. Don't invest a penny until you have proven _beyond reasonable doubt_ that this will actually sell.

If you'd like, we can chat more about it privately. My email is in my profile.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would say notahacker gave you some good advice. My other comments are based on knowing nothing of what you are trying to put together, just some personal experience and some knowledge.

Having spent 7 years doing development and consulting in healthcare, you can't underestimate the cost to building and deploying products in that space. Unless it is consumer oriented, the adoption rates are slow in the enterprise space but pricing is better. It is better now than it has ever been from my knowledge, but 6 months to a year is still not out of the question on an enterprise product sales cycle. Individual physicians are also feeling squeezed so they are anxious to get new tools, but at the same time many of them are very price focused from what I have seen. I know a couple of people doing startups in healthcare and it took the better part of 6-8 months for them to get a few paying clients, so having funds saved was critical for them (as was consulting).

Also, don't underestimate how much HIPAA and FDA rules play into what you do in the health care software space. Nothing is insurmountable and honestly good common sense gets you past 80% of the rules/laws. Unless you are doing something with medical device + software, in which case the FDA clearance gets to be a pain if you have never done it. This is probably stuff you know about. Just mentioning it, as I have been through it.

My email is in my profile if you want to chat. I love the healthcare space, it is just a tough place to be without the proper team and reasonable funding or smart bootstrapping (my personal choice).

Either way, I say notahacker gave you the best advice so far, keep your day job while you get that MVP built.

</comment><comment><USER4> \- In the long term you should be more interested in developers you can work with than their ability as programmers.

\- You're a skilled professional attacking a specific problem relevant to your profession, and you've bothered to try to learn to code even though it's probably not your strength. You're not as much of a timewaster as the other "idea guys" developers run into, which means that people who are genuinely good at what they do and ambitious will sit down and talk with you.

\- In the short term, you should build something and test something before you leave that highly salaried physician job. Luckily, with your high salary you can pay someone before you go about forming a company.

\- Pay someone you'd think about forming a company with - the sort of person that's not afraid to suggest ways of changing your idea to make it better. Even if they cost a lot more than an Indian outsourcing firm on elance. Get round to forming the company and giving them equity once they've earned their money and proved you want to work with them.

</comment><comment><USER5> Congrats on digging in and trying to learn coding for your MVP. That will go a long way to helping your recruit a co-founder.

+1 on orangethirty's "A weekly or monthly charge ends up being easier for both sides." Hourly wage isn't a great way to hire. For an MVP, focus development items in terms of days and ( at most ) weeks. Go to a developer and tell them what you are looking to do. Then, ask them what part of it can they implement in one day or one week. If you like what you hear, hire them for that time frame and see how they do. If they're terrible, you'll know quickly and won't be out a terrible amount of cash.

I'd be interested in chatting. I'll shoot you an email

</comment><comment><USER6> As a developer, I don't dislike this guy. He is investing his own experience- based career skills into the bargain, which is a whole lot better than guy- with-idea-wants-half.

</comment><comment><USER7> You could consider going to a hackathon... Its a good way to meet people, kick your idea around. There are sometimes health based hackathons. I don't know where you are based, but every fall there is a Hacking Medicine event at MIT.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome idea. I am actually moving to boston this July. I will definitely check that out. I always thought hackathons were programmers hacking out a MVP in 24/48 hrs etc and I wouldn't have anything to contribute.

Thanks.

<comment><USER7> Each hackathon is different. Often there are industry experts, etc. Its probably better if you have a partner who can code going into it, but at the Hacking Medicine event there was a pitch time where people could share ideas and try to get a team together.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> You may want to check out <http://www.theprotoshop.com> for creation of MVP/prototype.</comment>


Tablets Are Not Killing Laptops - <AUTHOR> http://www.iafrikan.com/2014/05/31/tablets-laptops/ <comment><USER2> Laptops were supposed to kill the desktop, but they're still around. The obsolescence rate for desktops dropped off sharply so sales have slumped, but they're still being used a _lot_. Laptops, especially small form-factor ones, have historically been underpowered. However, they're also reaching the point where they're going to last for years and years if they're not deliberately hamstrung by soldered on batteries, etc.. No doubt manufacturers saw this coming and hence, tablets became the next big thing.

Tablets, at present, are almost all underpowered. Even the performance king, the Surface 3, reportedly doesn't have quite enough horse-power to push its newly expanded stable of pixels. For this reason, tablet sales are going to remain hot for a few years at least, even if tablets claim relatively few hours of use versus laptops or computers.

A big question of concern for electronics manufacturers is: What's next? Once tablets start lasting for years and years, what is the next big thing that will let them keep growing sales?

<comment><USER3> > A big question of concern for electronics manufacturers is: What's next? > Once tablets start lasting for years and years, what is the next big thing > that will let them keep growing sales?

It seems as though people are hoping wearables will become the next big thing. If the UI, battery life, and independence (i.e., making them usable without needing a phone) can be sorted out, I think it's a possibility. But the margins will be much smaller.

<comment><USER4> Wearables seem to be more about sensors versus where people spend their time with media, doing work, or socializing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Only semi-relatedly, that Facebook sharing overlay is horrible. It comes up three seconds after the page loads -- I haven't even had time to read the piece yet, how could I possibly know whether I want to share it! And reading the piece? Can't with that monstrosity in the way. And there's no obvious affordance to make it disappear, you have to guess that clicking somewhere makes it go away.

Poorly conceived on every level.

<comment><USER6> I had no such thing happen to me, don't know if it's because I block everything facebook or because I disable javascript by default.

Point is nowadays most websites try really hard to get in the way between visitor and content to push for some pointless marketing. Disabling javascript or at least third party javascript is the modern popup blocker.

Maybe give a try to noscript or requestpolicy with firefox, no advice for opera which used to be something but now is just a skin for google chrome, speaking of which if you're using google chrome you deserve to suffer through overlays.

</comment></comment><comment> martin-adams >> The Surface Pro 2 can run full Windows 8 apps and services too, but it is with the Surface Pro 3 that the Surface has finally matured.

I've been running a Surface Pro 2 since February and I can say that this is a very mature product. It has replaced my quad core laptop with 24GB RAM because it handles exactly what I need.

I'm running PHP Storm, Photoshop, 2 x 1080p displays + the surface display, Virtual Box with 2-3 Ubuntu VMs running, all while using Skype, Spotify, Backblaze, Google Drive, etc, etc.

<comment><USER7> I've had a Surface Pro since it was released and I love it.

It's better than any Apple product that I've ever owned. Instead of forcing opinionated workflows on me and artificially limiting my options, I get to work the way that _I_ want to and if I need Unix, it's running in a VM.

<comment><USER8> It's weird of you to say that given that the Surface RT has the artificial limitation of only being able to run apps from their app store.

<comment><USER9> The RT and Pro are not the same thing. Notice how everyone is praising the Pro specifically. You're more comparing a MacBook Air to a iPad and asking why is everyone developing on OS X when the iPad is so limited.

The RT really should have never existed, it's a horrible mark on the Surface line.

<comment><USER8> How are they "not the same thing"? The only difference is the chip architecture. That's like saying a PowerPC Mac and a first-gen Intel Mac are "not the same thing". That's ridiculous. That they placed artificial limitations on the ARM version definitely is a black mark on the Surface.

I really don't get the love of the Pro though. They are heavy and don't get good battery life. That's fine for a laptop thing, but not for a tablet. And because of the compromises necessary to make it _both_ , it just strikes me as a poor laptop and a poor tablet.

<comment> martin-adams >> How are they "not the same thing"? The only difference is the chip architecture

A change in CPU architecture has a much wider impact. Windows on ARM cannot run all the legacy windows applications. That definitely "not the same thing" when you need those applications.

When Apple moved from PowerPC to Intel, my next Mac meant I had to throw out hundreds of pounds worth of software because, "they are not the same thing" and Final Cut Pro PowerPC version didn't not emulate on Intel.

Yes it's heavy compared to other tablets, but far more comfortable in a tablet environment than any laptop.

<comment><USER8> Windows on ARM can run any software compiled for Windows on ARM. It can run Notepad because they compiled Notepad to run on ARM. It can run Office because they compiled Office to run on ARM.

They arbitrarily disallowed anyone else from doing the same thing. This is what killed RT. It's a computer that they gimped so that they could call it an appliance.

<comment><USER7> "It's a computer that they gimped so that they could call it an appliance."

So what? Nobody was even talking about RT, but besides that - Apple does the same thing with OS X - it can run on any Intel architecture but I'm _artificially limited to running it on Apple 's outmoded and overpriced hardware_.

Can we get back to discussing the awesome Surface Pro though? Because that's the machine that represents the future of computing, not the RT and not any Apple device that I can think of. Regarding the battery life (on the Pro) - you couldn't be more wrong. Have you actually used one for 7-8 hours? That's about what I get on my original Surface Pro and the battery life has only gotten better in the newer models.

<comment><USER8> Anything less than 10 hours on a tablet is not-good-enough, IMO. Also, is the Surface Pro 3 light enough to be used without making your arms tired? I had that problem with the original RT.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The article starts out strong then becomes an ad for the Surface Pro 3 without actually stating what's so great about the SP3. Sure tablets are not killing laptops for all the reasons outlined and more. This isn't news. What also isn't news is the existence of the Macbook Air (and similar non Apple models) and its ability to run regular programs since its inception, including _windows_. It's easily powerful enough to develop apps on (that's what I use for consulting) while being light and small enough to be carried. In other words, the Air and other ultrabooks have been able to do for years exactly what the author touts the SP3 as finally being able to do: run regular applications with a keyboard. No one needs need a poorly written, wandering article to them that.

<comment><USER11> The SP3 has the form factor and touchscreen of a tablet when you want it, reportedly doing a more convincing impersonation of a decent tablet than other touchscreen laptops.

The Macbook Air or my cheap four year old Samsung almostultrabook, on the other hand, are far more competent than tablets at most things, but no good at actually being a tablet on the rare occasions that touchscreens are useful or the laptop form factor gets in the way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> "People are abandoning their tablets, being less fulfilled with the purchase"

Are there any sources for these 2 claims? Neither follow immediately from the (sourced) claim that tablet sales are slowing - nor are they obvious.

<comment><USER13> I don't have any sources, but it certainly tracks with my experience.

I use my ipad 3 for pulling up info when I don't want to move. Watching a movie and wonder who that actor is, that sort of thing.

But for normal, consistent use? not really.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have a tablet and a laptop. I want a convertible badly. I'm tempted to leave OSX for one (a Surface 3 most likely).

Catch up, Apple. You used to innovate. If 10.10 is another nightmare for my dev environment like Mavericks and the recent xcode updates the decision will be even easier.

<comment><USER15> If you rely on XCode is moving to Windows really an option? (honest question - I know nothing about XCode but I was under the impression it was used only for OS X and iOS development).

<comment><USER14> You need xcode at some point to sign and publish apps. What I have setup is a continuous integration server (bamboo) on a mac mini that I tell to build the apps for testing. I haven't actually set it up for signing/publishing.. but theoretically I could have it do that as well. So I should have no problems writing the actual code in linux but then I'll wind up with a few additional steps along with extra hardware.

I'm surprised that Apple hasn't locked down xcode to only be installed on specific devices, like MBPs and Mac Pros. That would be a huge slap in the face but I can totally see it happening if doing what I mentioned above becomes more popular.

Personally I'd rather just code for the web and be as OS agnostic as possible, html5 and javascript

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't want to replace my tablet with a laptop, and I don't want to have a kickstand keep my screen up. I want a tablet that docks into a keyboard. I want the stability of a laptop whenever I need it and the comfort of a tablet whenever I want it. Asus did it with their Transformer Book T100, but I don't know of anyone else doing it.

I don't want a Yoga, that's the same old convertible laptop we've had for years. I want the entire screen to detach and become semi-portable. And I want the keyboard dock to have a big battery in it, so the tablet can run for 10 hours and as a laptop it can run for 15 or 20 hours.

Why is that not a thing?

<comment><USER17> Lenovo has the Thinkpad Helix.

But why not just have two devices? When you detach the keyboard you practically _do_ have two devices, but one of them is useless. This is my guess as to why this hasn't really taken off - because the keyboard doesn't fold itself into another dimension when you don't want to use it.

<comment><USER18> >But why not just have two devices?

There's some convenience to not having to sync data between devices, which is why a lot of people ditched their desktops when 10 or 15 years ago it started to become affordable to get desktop-like power in a laptop form factor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is because 'X is killing Y' is almost always a meaningless analogy designed to generate controversy rather than understanding.

</comment><comment><USER20> Tablets should not aim to kill laptops. Tablets, and a new generation of LoB apps and collaboration tools, should aim to kill cubicles. Laptops will just be collateral damage once you rip out the cubicles and spend more time face to face with your co-workers.

</comment><comment><USER21> what will kill laptops? time. just like what it does to typewriters: old people fade out, new people come with what they are familiar with. there will be much better input methods (e.g. voice + virtual keyboard hybrid), much better UI paradigms, much better devices at much better prices.

to be honest, i don't see anything in everyday office work requires more computing power than what iPad offers. Most heavy-lifting computation will (if not yet) be done on cloud.

in fact, I'd argue the single thing blocks the transition from laptops to tablets is the ridiculous long review process Apple imposes. It mandates a 1-week per iteration of software evolution rate. how many startups can live with it?

</comment><comment><USER22> Laptops are not innovating and to me that's what really killing laptops. Sad that people are hardly innovating in the laptop space and blindly following the tablet money without understanding why tablets are making money

<comment><USER23> I'd say what's killing laptop sales is older laptops. The software most people run on their laptops is not especially more demanding than it was say... five years ago. Even for hackers, a five year old Thinkpad or Macbook Pro with its RAM maxed out and an SSD is a perfectly viable computer.

We've seen plenty of innovation during that period in the laptop market. Entry level machines haven't changed a lot, but they cost half as much. At the high- end, much of the focus has been on size, weight and design. The Macbook Air, when it first came out in 2008 was pretty revolutionary. Then, a laptop was considered thin if it was under an inch thick. Now it's common to hear people protest that they couldn't possibly lug around anything so bulky.

Maybe these aren't the kinds of innovations you care about. I'm with you there, and a lot of the features I'd like to have aren't even available, but there has been considerable progress.

<comment><USER24> As someone using a four-year-old MacBook Pro I can tell you that the thing got a whole lot better soon as I put an SSD in. It's not that heavy and it's easy enough for me to use so I don't really have a compelling need to replace it. It's got more than enough power for my everyday tasks.

I think the other thing it's really killing laptops is people who didn't want to buy one in the first place. There are a lot of people who just wanted a portable computer they could use to play around on the Internet. They were the people drawn in by $300 laptop, since laptops no longer needed to cost thousands of dollars. But now that you can get a smaller lighter tablet that's easier to use for about the cost of a poor netbook that market has mostly dried up. At this point people who are buying laptops are people who need real computers. Just like desktop sales are down, but are still purchased by the people who need to power and don't mind immobility.

Another way to phrasal this might be "the laptop bad fad is over".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> For me the MS Surface would be more appealing if they had built something like the Thinkpad Helix convertible, but i can't see the benefit in the typecover thing and the kickstand.

</comment><comment><USER26> Needs an editorial once-over for spelling and grammar.</comment>


Augmenting Human Intellect (1962) - <AUTHOR> http://www.dougengelbart.org/pubs/augment-3906.html <comment> awinter-py One truism of AI research (and 'human augmentation' is fairly in the AI space) is that the best brains have overestimated our ability to write useful rules. In a sense our legal systems and national economies are large-scale structures for organizing human effort into something greater. In the 50s people thought white-collar bureaucracy was the crowning achievement of the 20th century (read about White Collar by C Wright Mills).

Other than 'faster mail', it's not clear that any rule systems of the consumer internet make people more efficient workers. No futurists predicted that grindr & SMS would be the best our century had to offer re: automating human resources.

Neural nets were certainly hampered until the 2000s by weaker CPUs, but I wonder if part of the problem was the expectation and hope that humans would be able to write useful rules. This is a very old illusion.

<comment><USER2> grindr & SMS?

Try: e-commerce and search engines. We are pretty good at getting used to technology, to the point that we forget we ever had to search anything in books and encyclopedias, or call a travel agent to book hotel reservations halfway across the globe, or seek a distributor for a part we needed in the yellow pages. Now, is not that I don't agree that the march towards automation advances more slowly than predicted in a lot of areas, but we have definitely come up with systems that improve significantly how things are produced and distributed when compared to mid 20th century...

<comment> awinter-py e-commerce is cool but not because we've invented smarter rules for it. amazon isn't that different from sears 116 years ago; collab filtering is a difference, but that's a stat algo, not something humans design. They also use TLA+ for their distributed systems -- i.e. they're solving problems at the limit of unassisted human understanding.

(TLA and CF are definitely solid examples of human augmentation; but that doesn't mean e-commerce is. the merchant is being augmented, not the customer).

grindr as a proxy for any service that says 'match me with an arbitrary person with these characteristics at this place and time'. grindr was one of the early successful ones. stackoverflow careers (or monster.com, god help us) also belongs on this list.

and SMS as an alternative to making plans and sticking to them; remember when you had to be on time and couldn't edit plans on the way?

<comment><USER3> Taken individually, all the improvements might seem merely like changes in degree -- Amazon is an improved Sears, Roebuck; Wikipedia is an online version of Britannica, etc. -- but in the aggregate it creates a difference in kind. By making things easier and faster, it becomes possible to _do_ more.

I'm sure I'm not the only person who has done more -- and I don't necessarily just mean work at my job, I mean hobbies and projects and artwork and things that I want to do, completely disconnected from _needing_ to do them -- because it's a lot easier to find information, order things, talk to other people, etc. Projects that would have just been too complex to get off the ground a few decades ago, because they would have involved multiple library trips and probably bunches of ILLs and perhaps correspondence with various people, each letter having a significant roundtrip time, are the work of a few nights of reading online, a couple of online orders, and a weekend.

It's not AI, but it's certainly an enhancement. I'm not sure that there are any entirely new categories of things that people, as a group, can do that we weren't able to do before computerization, but it's certainly possible for an individual to do more, and a number of artificial limitations have basically disappeared.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So did we make any progress in the last 50 years? Is the Flynn effect ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect)) a natural side-effect of the increasing complexity of a society, or the result of active work and research toward increasing society's intelligence? I'm very fascinated by this area, as I'm sure many of you here on HN are as well.

<comment><USER5> > a natural side-effect of the increasing complexity of a society, or the > result of active work and research toward increasing society's intelligence?

I think the two are interrelated, and maybe one might be a function of the other– that is, "society's intelligence" is a function of the operations we can perform unconsciously. We are more intelligent than before because we don't have to reinvent everything from scratch, we can build on what others have learnt and discovered before us.</comment></comment>


Reflection Removal Using Ghosting Cues - <AUTHOR> https://dilipkay.wordpress.com/reflection_ghosting/

<comment><USER2> Great result, I won't be surprised if this appears in Photoshop soon. I'm continually impressed by William T. Freeman and his students' work.</comment>


30 seconds of code: Curated list of useful JavaScript snippets - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Chalarangelo/30-seconds-of-code <comment><USER2> Besides the " _Hey I can write stuff you can 't read_" factor, what's the point of the array and scientific notation here for the UUID generator[1]?

        var uuid = _ =>
          ( [1e7]+-1e3+-4e3+-8e3+-1e11 ).replace( /[018]/g, c =>
            (c ^ crypto.getRandomValues(new Uint8Array(1))[0] & 15 >> c / 4).toString(16)
          )

The first piece evaluates to the static string '10000000-1000-4000-8000-100000000000'. Writing it using the array toString and scientific notation saves 8 bytes (or 10 if you remove the other whitespace) but is otherwise pointless.

It'd be even better to use '00000000-0000-4000-0000-000000000000' as the "1" and "8" values aren't special. That would let you replace the /[018]/ with just /0/ too.

[1]: [https://github.com/Chalarangelo/30-seconds-of- code/blob/mast...](https://github.com/Chalarangelo/30-seconds-of- code/blob/master/snippets/UUID-generator.md)

<comment><USER3> I'm with you 100% that this is silly, show-off-y code golf at its worst. The fact that its purporting to generate something a bit sensitive (why else would you use the awkward `crypto.getRandomValues` interface?) is especially troublesome - sensitive code should be clear at all costs.

I spent a bit longer than 30 seconds looking at it though, and I think the 8 is actually significant - according to the RFC,

> "Set the two most significant bits (bits 6 and 7) of the > clock_seq_hi_and_reserved to zero and one, respectively."

The right shift by `c / 4` seems to be taking care of this, at least if JavaScript's shift operator works the way I think it does.

The `1`s are to facilitate the goofy string creation trick.

The fact that there's some discussion around the meaning of the code on HN is a bad thing, of course!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is brevity (in terms of kb) important for this snippets? If not, I think having more explicit variable names (`string` or even `str` instead of `s`) would be better for the purpose of understanding them in less than 30 seconds.

Otherwise, I enjoy reading some of them.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am not the owner of the project, but from my point of view, brevity should be quite important. Some names could be more descriptive, though.

<comment><USER5> I agree with you, brevity, as far as quantity of code required to accomplish the goal is concerned, but too many times brevity is confused for _compactness_ , which to me, is the opposite of what you would want with these.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's been while since I've had to code heavily in JS (when ES6 required transpiling from Babel), so I'm fuzzy on the syntax. But what does the underscore and the use of the fat arrow mean in this context?

[https://github.com/Chalarangelo/30-seconds-of- code#current-u...](https://github.com/Chalarangelo/30-seconds-of-code#current- url)

> Use window.location.href to get current URL.

          var currentUrl = _ => window.location.href;

<comment><USER7> Fat arrow is used to define a lambda function. The left-hand side of the arrow is argument list (_ is used to indicate lack of used arguments) and the right- hand side is the function body. It is equivalent to:

       var currentUrl = function () { return window.location.href; }

<comment><USER8> It is not the same as that. the fat arrow doesn't change the value of "this" while the function definition does.

<comment><USER9> Given that "this" isn't referenced in the function, though, it's practically equivalent.

<comment><USER10> I think one is more efficient memory wise but I'm not sure which one.

<comment><USER11> The non-fat-arrow one, as it does not need to carry around the context of `this` with it.

<comment><USER12> Do you have a reference for this? I always thought arrows were _lighter_ weight because their `this` is static rather than dynamic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Note that not all of this code is performant.

The Difference Between Arrays[1] snippet is O(n^2), but you could make it much more performant for many data types.

[1] [https://github.com/Chalarangelo/30-seconds-of- code#differenc...](https://github.com/Chalarangelo/30-seconds-of- code#difference-between-arrays)

</comment><comment><USER14> Given recent discussions mentioning tools like Black Duck Software that looks for per-line signatures from open source projects, is there any information on any needed licensing for any of these? I know they're snippets, but I also know there are companies like SCO out there.

</comment><comment><USER15> In the current JS world of ever-increasing complexity, it's a breath of fresh air to see a useful and simple display of JS code. Thanks for sharing.

<comment><USER12> All that's left is to copy-paste all of these into a module and publish it to NPM.

/s

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The "Randomize order of array" snippet isn't actually random. It would just confuse the sorting algorithm.</comment>


Will Poonam Pandey discover Frrole?  - <AUTHOR>

Well, she will, if she listens to this guy:  https://twitter.com/#!/_iLiveLaughLove/status/141763927926251521
Now the first question is - what is Frrole? Frrole is a social newspaper for your city that we launched last week. Check out SF at http://frrole.com/san+francisco and see for yourself what it is all about.
Next question - Who is Poonam Pandey? Well, she is the girl, who, umm, well, broke a promise. A promise that let half of India down it seems. Check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BheVyS7c3UU and find out for yourself;-) <comment><AUTHOR> If the links don't work above, then adding them here hoping they will work: First: [https://twitter.com/#!/_iLiveLaughLove/status/14176392792625...](https://twitter.com/#!/_iLiveLaughLove/status/141763927926251521)

Second: <http://frrole.com/san+francisco>

Third: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BheVyS7c3UU>

</comment><comment><USER2> interesting site. A bit noisy at first so I had to struggle to work out what was going on.

I'd suggest maybe defaulting to Deals or Events instead of everything. That way there's something more useful immediately for people landing on your site.

Best of luck, Robin

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, removing more noise from 'Everything' is high on the agenda. Other categories are pretty clean though, because they are focused on topics.</comment></comment>


An Inside Look at how a VC Evaluates Startups - <AUTHOR> http://blog.thomvest.com/vcevaluatingstartups/ <comment><USER2> This is a pretty old school take on VC evaluation (maybe because he hasn't been a VC for very long?).

Things that matter in today's world:

1\. Team (how do they know you/what have you done)

2\. Traction

3\. Industry (to some degree, more as a blacklist)

That's pretty much it for anything Series A and earlier. If you don't have a very high ranking in one or both of the first two categories, you will not be raising money.

<comment><USER3> I'd especially second #3, which _is_ a popularity contest. In my experience (raised money twice before, doing it again now), it's basically impossible to raise from VCs/Angels who are not actively looking to invest in your industry already, no matter how good your business is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Another thing for entrepreneurs to keep in mind is that VC's deal with bigger chunks of money these days. Angels have take on a lot of the early stage risk, so if the process outlined in this article seems overly cautious or insular it's because there's just no need for a VC firm to take on high risk, that should have already been done by FFF and/or angels.

</comment><comment><USER5> Has anyone gone back and attempted to correlate these scores with ultimate success of the start-ups? Obviously there is the possibility (even probability) of self-fulfilling prophecy, but it would still be interesting to see if the scores have the potential for real predictive value, or are mere rationalization.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Vannevar,

This isn't an exact science and still has levels of subjectivity that make it less of a predictive tool and more of a simple litmus test for the fit between the startup and our investment focus. Just because we aren't a fit doesn't mean that a startup will not be successful. Many of the companies that score low will go on to do very well, and conversely there will be some high-scoring startups that don't live up to expectations.

Thanks for the comment.

<comment><USER5> Forgive me, but that seems like an awfully cavalier attitude towards a process that you say you're putting a lot of time and effort into, and on which hinges such large investments and potentially large returns. Hasn't anyone there been curious whether the process actually works and how it could be improved?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great article -- thanks for sharing this article, and these insights :)

</comment><comment><USER7> Something I have noticed about the VC community is that it is very much dominated by an insular mindset that only permits introductions by companies that are already connected in some way. Companies without these connections don't have a chance, regardless of idea, model, revenues, or earnings.

This article does a good job of confirming this reality, from the initial introduction, to the diligence process. It's unfortunate that capital allocation has turned into a popularity contest.

Not to detract from this article( I don't know if minor self-promotion breaks HN etiquette )but I wrote on this topic recently, with particular emphasis on the AngelList model: <http://haploid.com/post/10453313166/the-cool-kids-table>

<comment><USER8> This is an interesting perspective.

"This article does a good job of confirming this reality, from the initial introduction, to the diligence process. It's unfortunate that capital allocation has turned into a popularity contest."

I think you've arrived at the wrong conclusion, allow me to share an anecdote which illustrates why I think that.

I came to Silicon Valley in the 80's and went to work for Intel. Intel at the time joked they were the biggest semiconductor company in the world because they were losing money less fast than everyone else. I had a freshly minted EE degree and unlike many of my peers I actually had been building microcomputer systems for 6 years already (I soldered together my own Digital Group Z-80 system in high school). As was their policy at the time, Intel started new college grads (they even had a term NCG) on projects which gave them an opportunity to demonstrate their strengths and weaknesses in a relatively 'safe' way. I was handed the 80186 to deal with but there were other, sexier, projects using the 80286 and 80287 at the time. I thought at the time it was 'unfair' and possibly a 'popularity contest' that other engineers had the opportunity to work on those projects in the spotlight when I was 'forced' to work on what was, even then, a 'loser' CPU.

It was later, through a period of some introspection, that I came to realize that it wasn't any of these things, it was simply time. Just like a finance person is loathe to predict a trend based on a small number of data points, or a scientist to come to a conclusion with a small number of samples, engineers and entrepreneurs need 'run time hours' where they have encountered a variety of situations and come away making good and bad decisions and adjusting themselves appropriately. Better test scores, having the 'right' answer now which is validated some time in the future, and being able to reason clearly, are not a substitute for run-time when it comes to evaluating an investment in people.

My conclusion was that what I characterized as a 'popularity contest' was actually the 'understanding my strengths/weaknesses' relative to other folks who might do the same job. The people who had a longer track record were 'lower risk' because the decision maker felt more confident in their evaluation. So lets bring that back to the VC community.

So some times it looks like the VC community is a 'boys club' or a 'walled garden' where if you don't know the right people or go to the right social events you can't 'break in'. And when you do get the introduction but don't get the investment, and that investment goes to someone who has worked with the VC before, it doesn't feel all that great. And yet, from the VC's perspective something completely different is going on.

So a VC or Angel sees your pitch, they pass, but generally they remember that you pitched them something. If the person who did fund it, or if you boot strapped it into existence, and they see that success they get a data point so that the next time they talk to you, rather than being a 'new' thing, you have some run time where they have a data point (your original pitch). So now the discussion can be 'well we passed when you pitched Foobar tell us the story between then and now.' That experience or outcome lets them evaluate your capabilities in a much more objective light. Once you are a 'known' quantity the whole tone of the conversation changes and it becomes relatively easier both to get a meeting and to close a round of funding.

"But it's a chicken and egg conundrum!" is a common retort to this. It does seem that way, but its not. Working in a startup (which is easy to do, just apply) gives you visibility to entrepreneurs who got funding, and depending on scale, to the people who funded them. Excelling in that environment will give you a better understanding of what makes startups successful (or not) and can give you insights into what you would do the same, or differently. While there are always stories of people who turn a dorm room project into a big success, the much more common story is someone who works for an established company and invests in understanding how that works, then works for a smaller company to get a grasp of how all of it fits together, and then perhaps co-founds or bootstraps a company to see what they can do when they have more control over the life and death decisions that startups face every month.

Now if you want to commiserate that it takes 3, 5, or even 10 years of 'minor league' play before someone will trust you with their money in your own venture. I hear ya. I would love to find ways to reliably evaluate the long term success potential of someone with less historical data. Picking entreprenuers who can execute their visions successfully is at least as hard as picking out ideas which will be successful when executed well.

<comment><USER7> I appreciate your detailed and involved response, and I appreciate your experienced perspective. That said, I'd like to make a few points.

First, I suspect you're assuming I'm new to the industry or that I am working on my first startup. In fact, I have done several, had a number of good exits, and am currently building another profitable, growing business in a large market. I am no stranger to building successful businesses, and I've put in my time on the web developer's equivalent to the 80186 project.

Second, my experience is that success in building businesses in no way translates to the kind of popularity or network that venture capitalists look for. Your claim that simply working in a startup gives one visibility to other entrepreneurs and those who funded them is not something I have seen. I have seen tons of contact with vendors, customers, strategic partners, etc, but never venture capitalists. They simply don't move in the same circles that bootstrapped companies move in.

Mind you, none of this is sour grapes. We're doing quite well growing on the basis of our own cash flow. We are happy to have never diluted ourselves and we are happy to have full control over the board and decision-making. But if we ever got to a point where we would like to accelerate our growth with outside capital, there is a no door open to us in the VC community, because we lack access to that network. Bank loans or traditional boutique private equity firms would be the likely targets of our financing efforts.

Anyway, I enjoyed your story of your time at Intel - it's great to see one of the "fathers" of early microprocessors here on HN. Thanks.</comment></comment></comment>


I'm Sorry to Report Instagram Is Bad Now - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeed.com/katienotopoulos/what-if-instagram-is-bad-now <comment><AUTHOR> While I totally agree that Instagram is "bad", I'm not sure why the author ever thought it was less toxic than the other social media properties when the article even says:

 _"A 2017 study showed that Instagram was the worst social media site for the mental health of young people, who said it made them feel loneliness, insecurity, and a negative body image."_

<comment><USER2> I _think_ toxic has generally come to refer to when people treat other people poorly (ie. insults, name-calling, political extremism, uncivilized debate).

You're right that Instagram presents its own set of problems though... mostly related to self-image. But there's rarely any malicious _intent_ on the part of users (compared to Twitter and Facebook).

<comment><AUTHOR> I always took toxic to mean unhealthy or bad (that's the dictionary definition at least) so in that sense it does seem like Instagram is toxic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm happy to see more "social media platform X sucks" articles.

More of these articles means public perception changes regarding social media platforms in general.

</comment><comment><USER4> The change from sorting based on popularity instead of chronological order was the beginning of the downfall. Since then, it's been overtaken by instagram promoters and other junk.

</comment><comment><USER5> Instagram blatantly ripped off Snap and now they're choking on their pilfered feature set. Good. Figure out your own damn innovation.

This reminds me of the time that Larry and Sergey tried to rip off Mark. They built a whole bunch of social stuff without really understanding why. Now Mark is trying to rip off Evan and building a bunch of stuff the kids like without really understanding why.

I know that all the tech giants have essentially stolen basic ideas from their predecessors but it is typically because they can see potential and a future that nobody else has envisioned. Yes, they steal the original concept but then innovate and expand. What IG is doing with Snap features is a desparate ploy to crush a competitor without truly understanding them, their users, or their marketplace.

<comment><USER6> Your mistake is thinking that Larry or Sergey or Mark or Evan knew what they were doing in the first place with their own companies.

<comment><USER7> It was driven by a "this is cool" at the very foundation. They wanted to do a thing and details were largely irrelevant. What GP is describing is adding things to a service which ultimately serve no use and aren't cool either. They're just there to say "there, look, we have it too now!" Which feels cold and loveless to the users.

<comment><USER6> Correct.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Optimized data entry (jQuery widget) - <AUTHOR> http://www.menuoptions.org/examples/MultiSelect.html

<comment><USER2> This is great. A great idea. It is strange no one have thought it before.

</comment><comment><USER3> I may be missing the point of your widget but the Chosen widget does this (selecting items with tab) already. If I am missing the point, maybe you could fork Chosen and submit a pull request with your improvement?

<comment><AUTHOR> that was one of 10 demos, which I thought was the most representative. All the demos (and the rationale) can be found at www.menuoptions.org In short, I wanted the absolute minimum of keystrokes and mouse clicks for data entry. You can select from a list with 1 mouse click. If your most frequent response is the top item on a list, it can be selected with the enter key (one keypress).

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the feedback :)</comment>


Ask HN: Please review my MVP: talk2customers.com - <AUTHOR>

I developed this as a solution to my own pain: contact potential customers to ask questions.
1. How could it be improved? 2. Would this be useful to you? 3. What target customers should I go for?
4. Any other thoughts?
For any useful comments, I'll gladly give 1k emails credit. Just email firstname.lastname@example.com requesting it. Thanks! <comment><USER2> Firstly, Congratulations on launching.

I understand that you created this to solve your own pain point and I commend you for taking the correct first step. However, I am unable to figure out what your software does that I cannot do with MailChimp. I may have missed something on your site, but it seems that the USP of your software is on email personalization through merge tags. This is not a unique feature or a feature re-done in a different way.

Few issues I see

1\. You send email using the customers SMTP connection. Email service providers like Sendgrid, Mailchimp, Mailgun use their expertise to ensure that the emails they sent do not end up in junk mail. This is the single most important reason to use them as opposed to your own SMTP server.

2\. Your pricing for sending emails is a lot higher than any of the above mentioned providers. Sending emails is a commodity. So, I'm not saying that you should be competing with these providers. However, if you price higher for the same service, you have to target a specific niche where you can add value. Like nickler mentions, integrating with merchants to automate followups.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good points, singularity. I don't have a better reply than "I'll be thinking about this".

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nicely done, looks good.

Honestly, my instinct is to avoid learning a new program for such a particular use case, and just continue to use MailChimp, is there a value prop I should be aware of?

I could see small businesses using it if you could automate the data capture. Example, adding the capture to the point of sale at time of transaction, automatically sending a follow up email 24 hrs later, with the merchant needing to do nothing except the original setup.

SMB operators are taxed on time, adoption requires a significant overall time reduction in the value prop (imo)and convincing them of that will get trials.

I like where you're headed with it, keep it up!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Nickler!

With MailChimp, the receivers would see the Unsubscribe link at the bottom, which clearly shows it's an automated email. Also, going through New list, New campaign workflows just for a quick email to 10-20 people is a little cumbersome.

Agreed with the automated emails. However, there are already solutions for this, and I wouldn't know how to differentiate it without a significant time investment.

<comment><USER2> I believe that an unsubscribe link is a requirement of the CAN-SPAM act

<comment><AUTHOR> Even for a one-time email to potential leads?

<comment><USER4> Holy moly. Sending unsolicited marketing emails is the very reason CAN-SPAM came about. The fines for violations would crush most early stage startups.

If you are going to continue further with email, please read up on CAN-SPAM, inboxing, SPAMHAUS, DKIM.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Link: [http://www.talk2customers.com](http://www.talk2customers.com)</comment>


Sentiment Analysis on Web-Scraped Data - <AUTHOR> http://blog.kimonolabs.com/2014/12/17/guest-blog-sentiment-analysis-on-web-scraped-data-with-kimono-and-monkeylearn/ <comment><USER2> This is very interesting and well written article. Must admit that the fully online nature of the tools discourage rather than encourage in my case: why take the time to learn complexities of something as ephemeral as, what seems like, brand new web service? Especially when even large player like Google routinely retire whole platforms when they are not popular enough.

All the same, the tech itself seems solid and article is as mentioned superb so I'm really just beating the proverbial drum for proper distributed services here (or plain old offline capable apps).

<comment><USER3> There are lots of open source tools for these niches.

For sentiment analysis, I'd recommend: [http://nlp.stanford.edu/sentiment/code.html](http://nlp.stanford.edu/sentiment/code.html)

For web scraping, a popular option is Scrapy: [http://scrapy.org/](http://scrapy.org/)

And an unknown web scraping option (and shameless plug): [https://github.com/MachinePublishers/ScreenSlicer](https://github.com/MachinePublishers/ScreenSlicer)

For browser automation see Phantom JS or Selenium: [http://phantomjs.org/](http://phantomjs.org/) [http://docs.seleniumhq.org/](http://docs.seleniumhq.org/)

For an open source IFTTT-inspired project: [https://github.com/cantino/huginn/](https://github.com/cantino/huginn/)

<comment><USER4> This is a great list. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you haven't yet attempted to build some sort of sentiment analysis by yourself yet, be it rule-based or on statistical analysis, you should, even just a rudimentary rule based one is a lot of fun to implement, and it works surprisingly well [0].

One of the harder parts of making a decent one based on statistical analysis however is the lack of good training data, other than the analyzed twitter dataset [1] and another movie reviews one [2].

[0] [http://fjavieralba.com/basic-sentiment-analysis-with- python....](http://fjavieralba.com/basic-sentiment-analysis-with-python.html)

[1] [http://help.sentiment140.com/for- students/](http://help.sentiment140.com/for-students/)

[2] [http://www.cs.cornell.edu/people/pabo/movie-review- data/](http://www.cs.cornell.edu/people/pabo/movie-review-data/)

<comment><USER6> Good training data's partly hard to come by because there's often reasonably poor inter-annotator agreement on sentiment datasets -- that is to say, humans disagree a lot in how we interpret a phrase. What reads like sarcasm to you might read like genuine enthusiasm to another.

It's pretty easy to load up a set of data into a crowdsourcing tool and use microtasks to rate it, but my experiences doing so weren't superb (even restricting to native English speakers alone).

A better source of data is starred reviews where you have the star rating and the review itself -- these come free with a sentiment rating, although plenty of caveats around normalization. There are lots of places with review systems like this and some (like Yelp) even make the data available: [https://www.yelp.com/academic_dataset](https://www.yelp.com/academic_dataset)

<comment><USER5> I wasn't aware that yelp provided a dataset, that's very interesting!

Since I had this very problem as I was working on using the output from sentiment analysis to modify sentences so to invert the sentiment polarity (positive to negative, negative to positive), the datasets I found were never general enough (movie reviews, many domain specific terms, hard in the text generation step), or had a lot of noise (twitter dataset).

Though evaluating the system was very hard, due to the reasons you stated, inter-annotator agreement was beyond terrible.

I'll have to look into if other review services expose their data as well, seems appropriate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> this is cool, but you can do the same with beautifulsoup and textblob in far fewer lines of code and you wouldn't need any web services. if textblob isn't your thing there's plenty of svm implementations out there.

for more interesting sentiment analysis approaches check out sentence vectors, that's the current bleeding edge of research in this area.

most sentiment analysis systems need to use an ensemble classifier because the domain of the text is very important. identifying the domain and using the appropriate domain specific model is important.

</comment><comment><USER8> Very cool. MonkeyLearn looks promising. It would be nice if their docs were a little more clear around uploading CSV and the data structure.

It would also be cool if it did unsupervised learning.</comment>


Why I am no longer submitting direct URLs to HN (and neither should you) - <AUTHOR> A while back there was a kerfuffle on HN about link headlines being changed by the mods to the original headline on the article being linked to, on the grounds that link submissions are "community property" and so the headlines should not be editorialized.  The problem with this is that more often than not, the original headline sucks.  Such is the case for this article, which is really the content of this submission:
http://www.salon.com/2013/12/02/thanks_for_killing_the_planet_boomers/
The original headline is, "Thanks for killing the planet, boomers."  But this is a flip headline that belies the serious and important subject matter, and also obscures the part of the article that IMO is (or at least should be) of major interest to most of the HN audience.  That point is that climate change is a generational issue:
"If you're already in your mid-50s or later, and you're lucky enough not to reside in any areas that are traditionally prone to hurricanes or flooding, you'll miss the worst of our imminent destruction. But for those of us who are younger..., who hope to live long, healthy, happy lives — well, tough shit. ... While the AARP spends over $100 million on D.C. lobbyists every year protecting... Social Security and Medicare, no comparable institution exists to lobby on behalf of Mmillennials and "Gen Z," the demographic groups that will face global warming's worst consequences. We've been consigned to the sidelines, turned into spectators of the greatest disaster movie ever made."
So I am no longer submitting direct links to HN because I believe they are too constraining.  From now on I am only doing text submissions with embedded links and a brief summary of the content and why I think it's relevant to HN.  I think that if more people did this, the quality of the content on the home page would be improved.  At least it's an experiment worth conducting. <comment><USER2> Forget the abusive submission tactic and look at the article itself: far from being "important" for HN, it's entirely off-topic; less germane even than a common political article, this Salon piece is a shrill tour of seemingly every political position Salon endorses, tied together not with a coherent thesis but rather an overt suggestion that _the world is ending_.

You submit some great stuff, Ron, but I'd like to suggest as respectfully as I can that we'd all be better off if you took Salon off the list of sites you submitted from. It's not that there's never anything good on Salon (I got my favorite caesar salad recipe from Salon!), but the stuff you pull from it tends towards the (large) divisive, partisan, and unproductive portion of the Salon spectrum.

<comment><USER3> And _bang_ , in tptacek's comment we have everything that's wrong with Hacker News comments in a nutshell.

You just decried an article without once pointing out any errors in the article, then attempted to paint any number of submissions with the same brush. Nah, the article was just _shrill_ and the only things the site is useful for is Caesar salad recipes.

Seriously, this kind of commenting is _the reason_ Hacker News has become known as anything but a hangout for actual hackers - you know, the folks who use little things like reason and facts and logic in discussion.

<comment> __--__ I would argue your comment is a better example of that kind of commenting. tptacek gave us an opinion on the topic at hand. You commented solely to attack him and whine. Which one do you think does more damage to HN?

<comment><USER4> Like your comment whining and attacking him is an even better example of that kind of commenting, just like my comment here.

We could say that we just filled up useless space on this thread or we could simply call it a discussion, two individuals exchanging opinions.

<comment><USER5> I commented last! I win!

e: And don't even think of replying.

<comment><USER6> Too late. I thought of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> From the guidelines - and I think a much better way of adding commentary & changing headlines:

[http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

      Don't abuse the text field in the submission form to add
      commentary to links. The text field is for starting
      discussions. If you're submitting a link, put it in the url
      field. If you want to add initial commentary on the link,
      write a blog post about it and submit that instead.

<comment><USER8>
      If you want to add initial commentary on the link,
      write a blog post about it and submit that instead.

This will immediately get flagged as blogspam though.

<comment><USER9> Yes, there was an instance recently where somebody did just that and the link to the article changed to the original link that was being commented on.

<comment> __--__ That brings up the question: what's considered blogspam and what's considered good commentary? Is that automated, or is there a judgement made by the moderators?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I use HN a lot, but I just don't think this is that big of a deal. One, if a link or article doesn't make first page, who cares? If someone doesn't like the headline you used, so what?

Submit what you want and it will get up/downvoted accordingly. It's not the end of the world. It's just a social news site.

<comment><USER11> The problem isn't bad headlines, the problem is changing headlines in a non transparent manner. It makes the site more difficult to use and overall less useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> How about writing a real post in the real blog, referring to the article you agree to but where you feel the idea is not expressed clearly or appropriately enough?

<comment><USER13> HN will then change the url to the actual article bypassing the blog post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you change a link's title, I won't know if I've read the link previously.

Also, crappy headlines are often a sign of crappy writing/content.

<comment><USER15> And in this case, the signs are correct.

This is just yet another sensational climate change piece on a pop-culture website. The authors qualifications? _Tim Donovan is a freelance author who blogs about Millennial issues at The Suffolk Resolves._

At his personal site we learn "In 2006, Tim graduated from Emerson College with a BFA in Writing." Nothing wrong with that, but it's nothing that gives him any credibility in a serious discussion of climate change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Unfortunately, I can't click on your embedded link... and it's not easy to cut and paste links from my mobile device. So if people started doing this, I would probably just stop clicking on outside links unless I was on my computer and the link looked extremely interesting.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's odd, HN converts URLs to links in comments, e.g.:

[http://www.salon.com/2013/12/02/thanks_for_killing_the_plane...](http://www.salon.com/2013/12/02/thanks_for_killing_the_planet_boomers/)

It's surprising that it doesn't do so in text submissions.

<comment><USER17> It shouldn't be hard to add for pg if HNers asks for it I guess. I agree with OP's that webpage titles can't be used as-is and a text submission adding context is better than auto-titled entries.

<comment><USER18> It's not hard to add, it is omitted on purpose

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Honestly, does it really matter if someone reads the articles that you submit or not? Come on now, stop taking yourself so seriously.

The rules of Hacker News are pretty simple. The articles are submitted with the titles of the article. Sure, sometimes it doesn't work out well, but most times it does. And it significantly reduces decision making time for the moderators, which given their work, is likely much more important than your vanity of getting karma points.

If you want people to pay attention, why not post it to reddit or some other forum?

<comment><USER20> > Honestly, does it really matter if someone reads the articles that you > submit or not?

Why submit it if you think otherwise?

<comment><USER19> You submit it for fun, in hopes that people read it and that it generates some discussion. But if no one reads it, then don't have a tantrum. Understand that a lot of it is luck-based, and in the end, it's not that important.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> And all I can hear is George Carlin [http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c](http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c)

<comment><USER22> This x1000. Accept that the planet's climate is changing. Accept that it's partly our fault. Accept that it's all our fault. Accept that the changes have a possibility of being catastrophic. Accept that they definitely are catastrophic. In the end - it doesn't matter. If the planet wants to get rid of us, it will. And there is little we can do to prevent it. The recent uptick in antibiotic resistant bacteria is probably the most concerning to me.

Personally I think an extremely virulent disease, another Chicxulub, or a massive super-volcano eruption are way more likely than us fixing Global Warming and living here for infinity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Whenever this issue comes up, usually related to linkbait titles, I feel like I missed something. The guidelines say:

"Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait."

Doesn't this mean it's OK to make a better title if the original is linkbait?

[http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment><comment><USER24> Might have been a better choice to make your point about headlines to not use an example that is flame bait and slamming a significant percentage of HN's readership, pg included. Blaming boomers for everything wrong with this planet is a little over the top. They are one generation among many.

Earth's likely demise will be the massive increases in fossil fuel use in places like India and China, and the failure to control population growth in places like India.

The EPA was created in the 1970's. Its mostly managed to push all the pollution intensive industries off shore to China and elsewhere.

It was also a serious mistake to carry the Western lifestyle to places with billions of people largely unmodified.

Any environmental choices made by boomers in the developed world will trail to insignificance in the face of China and India's choices. India in particular is the one currently obstructing the Kyoto follow on talks in Warsaw.

</comment><comment><USER25> Only write meta posts that complain about community rules and slyly use the article you're trying to promote as an example of how the rule has failed the community. Win/win.

</comment><comment><USER26> Technical solutions are generally better than workarounds or social solutions (but, of course, require signoff from pg and/or other maintainers).

Two that I think would be nicer:

Keep both the title the submitter used and the "fixed" title if a mod fixed it, and allow users to select which they see in preferences (defaulting to "fixed", with a tooltip of the other one, perhaps).

Keep the title the submitter used, but allow duplicates, and combine the discussions for duplicates. May the most popular title win.

<comment><USER27> I tend to think technical solutions are typically crap. They just happen to scale better than social solutions.

Say you're learning a new subject. Would you rather have a meticulously researched guide to articles and books on the subject compiled by an expert (one who has the good form to link to opposing viewpoints if they exist) or Google? I'd take the former. But usually I end up with Google because the search bar is part of my browser.

<comment><USER28> If you're old enough and social enough to remember, librarians were the pre- Internet search engine. While most people only interacted with a librarian to check in or out a book, their primary function is information retrieval. You just go up to a librarian, say, "Hey, I'm looking for information about X", and they come back to you with a hand curated list of books, periodicals, and other materials which are most likely to answer your questions.

<comment><USER27> Old enough to remember, not old enough to have done it outside of school projects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Allow for a small subtext under/side of the title submissions that allow some editorializing to spark discussion. So more is know about the link before having to click thru.

</comment><comment><USER30> Are you a good enough journalist/editor/writer to make the evaluation that the article's title is not appropriate for the content of said article?

<comment><USER31> It's often pretty clear that the original articles headline is link bait to begin with, or may not convey the topic properly to a community such as HN.

<comment><USER32> "Learn Clojure in 24 hours by following this one weird tip."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I love HN's community but don't like a lot of it's policies/design choices. Before anyone says "but maybe that's what made it a good community in the first place", you probably aren't wrong. But I keep thinking there must be a more optimal way to do it.

</comment><comment><USER20> This is how it works on most message boards. I wouldn't be opposed to it being the MO for this site too. I figure the OP ought to be able to frame their submission however they want. The main problem is you'd get a lot more duplicate submissions.

</comment><comment><USER34> I agree, some titles are simply bad, others are virtually impossible to decipher, like "Untitled" or "hj4jh5g4j5h.pdf".

Mods would have a much easier time not needing to edit headlines if they just let the submitters write what the damn thing is about.

</comment><comment><USER35> So you want HN to work more like Slashdot?</comment>


Ask HN: Academic Foundation When Learning To Code? - <AUTHOR>

Often when learning to code, people say "just create something." And while that's certainly valid advice, which I am following, I feel I am skipping out on the entire academic component. When I see ideas that push the envelope, I can't help but feel there are at least basic academic (mathematics, algorithms, etc) concepts involved. Learning to code for the web, from books and tutorials online, seems to just involve tossing text about, unless you're academically trained. So I guess my question is: Should I try to incorporate academics in my pursuit to become a coder? Would you recommend MIT OCW? Or will I eventually learn this through the creation process on a need-by-need basis? <comment><USER2> Data structures, algorithms, language/automata theory, computer architecture, set theory, logic, graph theory, linear algebra, combinatorics, and abstract algebra have been the subjects I got the most mileage out of.

Data structures and algorithms will teach you to do more complicated tasks than "tossing text about." Languages and automata lead into algorithms for text processing. Architecture may be less generally useful, but I find it interesting (and unavoidable since I'm interested in compilers). Set theory and logic are sort of the base language for other topics in math. Abstract algebra seems to be the canonical way to really learn how to prove things. Graph theory and linear algebra have some more direct ties to computer science topics (e.g. linear algebra comes up a lot in 3D graphics). Combinatorics does too, but a lot of it seems to be a quick way to realize that brute force is going to be a bad idea. There are a lot of ties between some of these subjects. Algebraic graph theory applies linear and abstract algebra to graphs (I recently had a chat with a professor on applying algebraic graph theory to characterize finite automata). A lot of graph processing algorithms, of course, make more sense with a good background in graph theory. I've also run into some other interesting topics for which the math background was necessary: for example, error-correcting codes are easily understood with linear and abstract algebra.

The best thing studying math has done for me is to give me many different ways to describe a problem. Chances are one of the ways will have some well- developed theory behind it revealing a nice way to solve the problem. What you specifically will gain from such study will depend a lot on what you work on.

</comment><comment><USER3> The answer to this depends pretty heavily on what you're wanting to program. If you're planning on writing protein-folding software, or CAD, or a database, by all means dive deep into math and algorithms. A typical web or desktop app? Not so much.

A general understanding is helpful to form an intuition about what options are available for a given problem and what the tradeoffs would be, but in most cases you'll rarely have any reason to write the hard bits yourself. That's what library code is for.

That said, if you have an interest in that kind of stuff, learn it! Even if you rarely use the more complicated parts in practice it will give you a solid base for deciding how to implement things, and you'll get a good sense of just how efficient things _can_ be so that you'll be more able to recognize poor solutions when they show up.</comment>


Ezstems: Get audio stems online with Spleeter - <AUTHOR> https://ezstems.com/ <comment><USER2> Ah, I had the exact same idea for a website after seeing the post on spleeter here on hn a bit ago. Just tried an mp3 and it works great! Even though you have beat me to it I think I'll still have a go at making something similar to get some frontend experience :)</comment>


Ubuntu should focus its marketing on LTS versions - <AUTHOR> http://bits.quintanasegui.com/2009/11/08/ubuntu-should-focus-its-marketing-on-lts-versions/ <comment><USER2> So there were a few issues with rolling out a new release. Is that really worth a big fuss on the blogosphere? I still haven't upgraded to Snow Leopard because I have heard about all sorts of issues. If you are worried, wait a couple of months before you upgrade (that goes for any vendor, not just Linux). If not, just upgrade away.

<comment><USER3> It very much is. Canonical purposely picked a release date to coincide with that of Windows 7. The Ubuntu community practically marketed this as the Second Coming and The Age of Linux (redux). And then they blew it.

Remember, it's the first impressions that count. Always. Someone who's hardware is wholly unsupported under the default Ubuntu configuration, crashing the PC or fscking up the display isn't going to try Ubuntu - or any other Linux - again anytime soon.

That's not to say that Ubuntu isn't a great distro. But like the article says, if you're going to market something, make that the best you've got. You don't enter a championship with your mediocre offerings when you've got loads better. Ubuntu can do, and indeed in the past has done, better so why this and why now?

Initial impressions == does it work or not. How badly is it going to mess up my existing configuration. How does the upgrade go. Is my hardware supported.

NOT initial impressions == how many windows you can wobble at once. Having the latest (and buggiest) version of framework X just for bragging rights or the need to get it out regardless of quality. Testing extensively under very limited conditions and barely for any of the slightly-out-of-the-mainstream cases.

EDIT: Wow, seem to have _really_ struck a nerve to have reached -4. Would love to know what the downvotes are for, or if it's just a knee-jerk OSS reaction because I think I explained my POV quite well (whether you agree with it or not).

<comment><USER4> One of the reasons you've been downvoted is that Canonical did not "pick a release date to coincide with that of Windows 7." Ubuntu releases on April and October of every year. They've done this since the inception of the distro.

<comment><USER5> In this community downvoting someone into oblivion for getting a detail wrong in a non-trollish comment is out of place.

<comment><USER4> I didn't do any downvoting. I only suggested a possible reason why.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I disagree. I feel that this goes against the principal of "release early, release often". You want a lot of people using the latest release of your software so you can get an idea of where the bugs lie before your next version.

Besides that, what this blog is basically advocating is turning Ubuntu into Debian. Perhaps there's a reason why Ubuntu is getting all the attention that Debian isn't getting?

And no, it isn't "marketing". That's almost always a cop-out answer.

<comment><AUTHOR> I disagree with you.

It doesn't go agains release early, release often, as all geeks and early adopters will continue upgrading every six months, detecting bugs and improving the distro.

In fact, Ubuntu already does what the article says, the article just advocates a change in emphasis.

De article is not advocating turning Ubuntu into Debian. There are no PPA in Debian, so staying with an old distro really means using old software. With Ubuntu LTS+PPA, people would use solid software for everything except for thos programs that need to be upgraded more often.

<comment><USER7> I second your point, it's about running to strategies in parallel: release every six months for early adopters, but limit mainstream efforts to every to years. Which would make a lot of sense IMHO.

From what I can tell, mainstream users don't care about having the latest software, they just want it to work. I've helped people migrate to Ubuntu who were still using Win98...

I wish they kept the applications more up to date in the LTS version though, I keep adding new sources and installing .debs to get newer versions, for instance of OpenOffice, LifeRea or Pidgin.

<comment><USER4> But often, people _do_ want the latest versions of software. Remember when Firefox 3 came out a month or so after Ubuntu did? Everyone was stuck on FX2 for 5 months. Forums were filled with "omg I type apt-get upgrade firefox and I still don't have FX3, wtf???/"</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Simple hack of Google's JS API to geo-locate your users for free - <AUTHOR> Just realized that when you fetch Google's JS API it will include your geo-location embedded in the javascript file it returns. You can verify this by just going to http://www.google.com/jsapi in your browser and looking at google.loader.ClientLocation
You can use this easily in any javascript code you write with the following snippet:
  <comment><USER2> I don't think this is a hack. it's documented api behavior: [http://code.google.com/apis/ajax/documentation/#ClientLocati...](http://code.google.com/apis/ajax/documentation/#ClientLocation)

<comment><USER3> It may not be a "hack", but I wasn't aware of it, so it's interesting information anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a really neat hack. Thanks for sharing this.</comment>


Learn web design? - <AUTHOR>

I've been a professional career for a couple of years now, doing lot on my side projects. I feel very proficient in terms of languages and frameworks, but there's one thing I can't really grasp. Web design, and I don't mean technicalities like JS/HTML/CSS. Whenever I do an application with a we frontend, no matter how interesting it is in terms of the features, it always looks like shit.<p>So, HN reader, do you have any resources on learning how to design (and implement?) a web page that would not be hideous? <comment><USER2> Depending on how much you are looking to invest, take a look at some design courses and books online. A good portion of them are targeted to developers who want to get better at design, as it seems to be your case, not only people looking at design as a career choice.

Some links to check out:

Hack Design - hackdesign.org (free)

Design and Aesthetics course on Treehouse - teamtreehouse.com (25 USD / month)

Design Lab's Design 101 - trydesignlab.com/web-design-course (299 USD, six weeks. You work through the couse with a professional designer from mostly well-known Valley companies and startups, who you send assignments to and they give you feedback. Check out their profiles pages of students, so you can see the feedback received by other students, it's a good way to learn. I'm looking to try it in the near future).

Nathan Barry's books on design - nathanbarry.com/books (39 - 249 USD, depending on if you want the videos and supporting materials too).

</comment><comment><USER3> I like checking out [http://www.smashingmagazine.com/](http://www.smashingmagazine.com/), as well as their ebooks.

The best way to learn design is looking at existing designs and what works about them or what doesn't work. [http://www.awwwards.com/websites/clean/](http://www.awwwards.com/websites/clean/)

Design is an iterative process. Do you rough out ideas on paper before starting to build them? Paper prototyping in the beginning can save hours/days of work down the line.

</comment><comment><USER4> Well here's a short story of mine going from a horrible designer to getting featured on top blogs - [http://kickassinwebdesign.com/blog/featured-on- mashable/](http://kickassinwebdesign.com/blog/featured-on-mashable/)

</comment><comment><USER5> For business purposes, chopping up templates gets the job done. I personally have accepted the fact I do not have the "aesthetic eye" for design.

If I wanted to get that "eye" I guess I would look at successful websites, learn about design and what catches/pleases readers. How readers see websites in general and what is appealing, then just try things.

I cant recommend taking my advice but that's what I would do if I wanted to increase my design knowledge.

</comment><comment><USER6> I bet there are books on the subject, but I'm not a designer myself.

Codeschool has a Fundamentals of design course, but I didn't take the course myself. But judging by the quality of their other content it's probably good material: [https://www.codeschool.com/courses/fundamentals-of- design](https://www.codeschool.com/courses/fundamentals-of-design)

</comment><comment><USER7> To build a web site that looks perfect to you, find a web site that you think looks perfect and inspect its source.</comment>


The Great Toilet Paper Scare of 1973 (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://priceonomics.com/the-great-toilet-paper-scare-of-1973/ <comment><USER2> The old story about John Draper calling up Richard Nixon and warning him about a toilet paper crisis in LA is beginning to make a lot more sense, now...

[https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2015/11/the-hacker-who- inspire...](https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2015/11/the-hacker-who-inspired- apple-john-captain-crunch-draper/)

>The legendary antics of phone phreaks in the 70s are as numerous as they are unverifiable. There's the story of a couple of phreaks — of which one was allegedly Draper — who called up the White House, dropped President Nixon's secret codename 'Olympus' and were soon put through to the President himself — only to tell him of a 'national emergency' that was occurring because Los Angeles had run out of toilet paper.

[https://web.archive.org/web/20060226021102/http://webcrunche...](https://web.archive.org/web/20060226021102/http://webcrunchers.com/crunch/play/history/stories/toilet.html)

>We had the code word that would summon Nixon to the phone. Almost immediately, another person was starting the process of dialing the number. I stopped them just in time and recommended that they stack at least 4 tandems before looping the call to the White house. Sure enough, the man at the other end said "9337", my other friend said "Olympus please!", the man at the other end said "One moment sir!"... About a minute later, a man that sounded remarkably like Nixon said "What's going on?". My friend said "We have a crisis here in Los Angeles!", Nixon said "What's the nature of the crisis?", My friend said in a serious tone of voice "We're out of toilet paper sir!". Nixon said "WHO IS THIS?" My friend then hung up. Never did learn what happened to that tape, but I think this was one of the funniest pranks, and I don't think that Woz would even come close to this one. I think he was jealous for a long time.

>To the best of my recollection, this was about 4 months before Nixon resigned because of the Watergate crisis.

<comment><USER3> I think with some preparation he could have taken it a bit further, the hanging up came too fast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The run on toilet paper started here (San Francisco Bay area) a week ago when the shelter-in-place order was announced. I figured I'd wait for stores to be restocked, since by then all the hoarders wouldn't need to go out an buy more. But I went out yesterday and the TP shelves were still empty. No pasta either. Canned tomatoes and coconut milk (which we cook with a lot in our house) are all gone too.

Happily, we were reasonably well stocked before this all hit the fan, but I'm a little surprised to still see empty shelves after a week. How long does it typically take to restock non-perishables?

<comment><USER5> Here in Australia, one of the major supermarket chains (Coles) made a statement about this. They said their biggest week of the year is the Christmas week. They spend 6 months preparing for this. Each of the last 3 weeks has essentially been a Christmas shopping week. That's the scale of the problem.

We have enough food and supplies. We have the distribution to get it to stores. We have the capability to sell it in store. The only scarcity we have is because of the hoarders. That hoarding and resulting scarcity is creating more hoarders.

It's textbook illusion of scarcity.

<comment><USER6> In Australia here too.

Supermarkets have introduced limits on the number of toilet roll packets you can buy (which is sensible).

However, last weekend I was at the supermarket when it opened, and I observed something I haven't seen noted elsewhere.

Manufactures seem only to be shipping _enormous_ packages of toilet paper (24 packs). This means people buy 1 packet of 24 rolls, because that is all that is available. These huge packets also take more shelf space, which results in more shortages.

Some smaller, independent supermarkets have taken to re-packaging the rolls into smaller packets, which is a win/win for both the shop and the consumer.

But the manufacturer behaviour is interesting and unfortunate.

<comment><USER7> I think most people are happy to buy a 24 pack at the moment (and would probably buy multiples of smaller packs otherwise), and it's probably easier to distribute _only_ 24-packs than a mix of sizes. I'm all for manufacturers prioritising throughput over convenience for the duration of the crisis.

<comment><USER6> Except that means that less households get supply, which forces them into more extreme measures.

People are happy to buy anything at the moment. Making sure each household can get supply seems like it should be a priority.

<comment><USER8> You're assuming people don't split with friends downstream.

<comment><USER6> Not really.

I think that happens, but from observation it's a downstream event usually in reaction to shortages one of the friends is having.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> They might be over-thinking it. Toilet paper is incredibly cheap to produce, but most people put a very high price on their last roll, when they know there might not be more. That makes for some interesting economics.

The "answer", at least for those with space, is to keep and rotate three or six months of it, even though that sounds ridiculous. Or, alternatively, do the bidet thing or even have a standby outhouse in back.

<comment><USER10> An outhouse doesn't actually solve the need for paper though. My backup plan of last resort is to cut up a few old t-shirts into tp-square sizes. Wipe & run them in a washer load by themselves and repeat as needed. I think I'd choose darker ones-- it's not like they'd be any cleaner after a washing, but I'd feel better about it.

<comment><USER11> In India, we'd use a water jug and do a "manual bidet" \- you can even have warm water - just fill up in the sink before sitting down. You do have to use your hands but they're gonna get washed anyway.

<comment><USER12> Would rather do this and wash thoroughly than mess about with strips of cloth.

<comment><USER13> In much of the world, it is considered offensive to shake hands with your left hand, because the left hand is used instead of toilet paper.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My friend owns a pharmacy in Canada. She said that it started with the previous Wednesday when in a single night they suspended the NBA, Tom Hanks announced he had coronavirus, and I think Trump stopped flights from Europe.

Her store and others were caught in a flurry of buying. Her daily sales were double or triple what they normally should have been and her shelves became empty because they didn't anticipate it. It caused multiple days of empty shelves because they order on Wednesday for the Friday and Saturday for Monday, so basically they got hit hard Wednesday evening and then they could only order for Monday. So the shelves were empty from Wednesday to Monday. That creates fear.

However all the stores were hammered so the warehouse was empty. Since then she has been getting half orders and the further shelter orders caused more buying. So it hasn't abated yet.

She has been sold out of masks since January and hand sanitizers for weeks. Only recently did she get sold out of rubbing alcohol and cleaning products. And then after the Wednesday she started selling out of basically everything. It hasn't stopped yet but she is getting shipments of sanitizer and cleaning products but they are getting bought up immediately.

<comment><USER15> I went to a Toronto Wal-Mart last Friday, and they were out of just about every pain-reliever. Like, that's not going to save you your life from anything!

<comment><USER16> One symptom of Coronavirus is a high fever and what we in the UK call paracetamol can reduce the fever thereby reducing the risk of organ damage.

<comment><USER17> Reducing fever, especially with NSAIDs has shown to lead to a higher mortality rate, it suppresses your immune response. Moderate to high fever is good and is natural response to infection Organ damage needs a very high temperature 106+. If you are below this, taking fever reducers is not a good thing to help you recover from an infection. Fever reducers resulted in a 5 percent mortality increase in flu. France has warned of a link between higher mortality in young adults taking anti-febriles and Coronavirus.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) › pmc The effect on mortality of antipyretics in the treatment of influenza infection: systematic ...

<comment><USER18> Paracetamol (acetaminophen/Tylenol) is not an NSAID, is not an anti- inflammatory and there's no evidence that it has any negative effect on outcomes. You're mixing it up with ibuprofen (Advil), which is an NSAID and may result in worse outcomes.

The current medical advice is take paracetamol, but not ibuprofen. [https://www.nhs.uk/medicines/paracetamol-for- adults/](https://www.nhs.uk/medicines/paracetamol-for-adults/)

It helps to understand what you're talking about before writing in such an authoratitive tone.

<comment><USER15> The study linked systematically reviewed animal models of influenza and and antipyretic use and found that aspirin, paracetamol and diclofenac increased mortality.

They lamented that there weren't any good trials in humans available to review, so the impacts of antipyretics on influenza is still an open question, but the animal models aren't looking promising.

In other words: should you take antipyretics for the flu? Dunno for sure, but I'll avoid it based on the data that we do have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Wait till you folk discover a hand faucet or a bidet like we have over here. It will change your world and leave your butts cleaner.

<comment><USER20> As a toilet paper user I've never experienced any problems that I can trace back to having a dirty butt. I don't think my wiping technique is anything special. Are you saying when you use toilet paper you're unable to clean yourself well enough that it becomes an issue for you? What exactly is the issue? What about your world changed other than the lack of toilet paper?

<comment><USER21> If a bird shat on your arm would you just use tissue to wipe it away or would you wash the arm with water, and soap if available?

In most parts of Asia, people use water, in combination with TP. Western hygiene standards seem to be lacking in this area.

<comment> tedk-42 Ahahaha I love this because of how accurate it is.

For most its the unfamiliarity with the idea which prevents the rational thinking behind it

<comment><USER20> It's not accurate at all, though. I use my arm and my asshole for completely different things. There's no danger I'm going to accidentally wipe my asshole across my face. If I shit on my counter I would clean it and disinfect it immediately, but I shit in my toilet every day and only clean it every few days and never disinfect it.

I like to live in reality and not a world of what-ifs. About 50% of my shits are immediately followed by a shower. As far as I (or anybody else so far) can tell, whether or not I followed the toilet paper up with a shower has absolutely zero impact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If you pause to think about it is toilet paper _actually_ an essential good? There are other ways…

<comment><USER23> Two of my siblings were raised in cloth diapers due to our finances in those years. A clean butt isn't difficult to achieve cheaply. It just requires getting a little more dirty than normal.

<comment><USER24> Which only shifts the demand to soap and other cleaning products.

<comment><USER25> Lye and fat and salt makes soap and glycerin. Should lye run out you can make it from hardwood ashes. Should salt run out you can make it by evaporating sea water. Mix glycerin with alcohol to make hand sanitizer.

<comment><USER26> Have you tried getting hold of isopropyl alcohol (or similar) recently? Impossible :(

<comment><USER25> A pot-still seems like a doable weekend project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I wonder what the current toilet paper manufacturers are going through right now? I'm an industrial engineer, so production issues and supply/demand issues are always of interest to me. A few possibilities:

* Adding shifts at overtime pay to meet demand (lower profit/unit, but more equipment utilization and total profit)

* Potentially higher freight charges (entirely unsure how freight rates are going these days compared to normal)

* Calloffs from employees from illness, exposure, or fear

* Lacking supply if they're working on a Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) system - where the supplier owns inventory until pulled by a customer, at which time the supplier gets paid. These agreements often have parameters about stocking and forecast levels, which are typically fine, but then Sales talks about the "customer relationship" and wants to make drastic changes to how the factory runs (sub-optimizing production) to keep $bigCustomer happy.

Per the manager, the grocery store near me averages 10 units/day of toilet paper sold (good size town in the Midwest, with many grocery stores). One day about 2 weeks ago they sold 3,000 units. They have ~75 feet of shelf space (4 shelves high) dedicated to toilet paper. Literal semi's full of toilet paper flying off the shelves. They now have a limit if 1 unit per trip.

I've been to the store twice since then and always check the toilet paper aisle as a gauge of how they're doing. Still completely empty when I visit after work.

COVID-19 doesn't show GI issues as a symptom. Consumption isn't going up notably, but demand has been bonkers. _Everybody_ will have months of toilet paper in their inventory at home, causing demand in the coming months to drop significantly. They may need to reduce the number of shifts or eliminate overtime at the factories.

Shelf space at grocery stores is expensive. If the toilet paper companies pay for less shelf space, they may not get it back. Grocery stores won't be excited to use that much space for a product that's moving at <50% of previous volumes.

It really is a weird issue and I don't envy the people figuring out how to deal with it.

<comment><USER28> You missed one obvious reaction, the one I'd use: business as normal.

Why? Because spiking supply now will hurt them later. Usage hasn't/doesn't actually go up. In fact, usage will go down by whatever percentage of the population succumbs.

<comment><USER27> I agree from a purely production point of view. But then the marketing director says "if we're the one on the shelves, people will remember our brand positively and drive up brand loyalty/future sales".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Discussed a bit at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8648333](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8648333)

</comment><comment><USER30> Related is this video from The Atlantic about the same thing: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX_FTiRB5QI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX_FTiRB5QI)

Johnny Carson jokes about it and then people rush out and buy toilet paper causing a shortage.

</comment><comment><USER31> The shortages in NY could be solved if shops just placed a limit on how much you could buy. It's all these wannabe preppers buying more than they need who make it difficult for everyone else.

<comment><USER32> The reason _not_ to do that is that you don't want to cause customers - especially those from NY - to have "that argument" with your staff, multiple times each day.

The same amount of toilet paper - all of it - gets sold either way.

<comment><USER13> The other day I heard, a store in Denmark put in tiered pricing to counteract hoarding of hand sanitizers. Legally they can't limit the amount per customer, but they can add a "limited quantity discount". So the regular price is $133 but the "just one" price is $5.

[https://nypost.com/2020/03/21/danish-store-instills- pricing-...](https://nypost.com/2020/03/21/danish-store-instills-pricing- trick-to-stop-hand-sanitizer-hoarders/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This reminds me of the current situation we are in because of coronavirus.</comment>