Ask HN: How to respond to software cost objections? - <AUTHOR>

I am working with a b2b startup company.  The core value proposition of our product is that by putting your data into a database and out of the spreadsheets (the way everyone does it now) you can potentially save a lot of money.
The software system is expensive and one objection people raise is that they could hire a lot of people for the cost of the software to update the spreadsheets more accurately.
Any thoughts on how to respond to this objection? <comment><USER2> As you most probably know there are several stakeholders in business purchasing decision, which stakeholder you were talking to will be the key to figuring out how to answer this objection? And what is your value proposition.

A potential response may be "Then why are you not hiring more people to update spreadsheet." Another response may be "How accurate do you think more people will be with updating a spreadsheet compared to a automated process." Another one could be "How important is accuracy to you?"

It all comes down to whom you were talking to, what is your value proposition, what is in it for the business you are selling to, and what is in it for the stakeholder you are talking to.

</comment><comment><USER3> If your main value proposition is that you can save customers money, then it seems natural that you'll encounter this. Is your expensive database approach cheaper than hiring people to update spreadsheets? If so, then communicate this, perhaps through ROI calculations, case studies, etc. If not, then your value proposition is weak.

A better approach may be to not focus on cutting costs but gaining profit. What extra functionality does your database provide, that can make their businesses more profitable? What extra value can you deliver to them?

In general, convincing people to give you money so that they can theoretically lose less money is usually harder than selling them on benefits and solving their pain points.

<comment><AUTHOR> The ROI thing is an interesting idea. We have done some case studies and trials for potential customers. This is more of a knee jerk reaction to the cost, and a negotiating tactic.

It's a tool for purchasing so not sure how it could translate to profit, but interesting idea.

The value proposition breaks down differently for different stakeholders.

For low level employees that currently email and work on the spreadsheets all the time, it would make their lives a lot easier. Although it does run the risk of eliminating their job.

For mid level managers that typically make the decisions based on all this data, it would make their decisions easier and better informed. They are likely to be able to save a lot of money. Perhaps as high as 4 or 5 percent of the budget off a 10-200 million dollar spend. The possible downside is that it will be less at their discretion who to choose for the vendor. Cost is not the only consideration, but it will easily quantify the difference in choosing one vendor over another. Currently I think the vendors schmooze the decision maker and that influences their decision. This tool will make that hard because they don't have control over how the "numbers" are presented to the higher ups.

For high level managers, they are interested in the savings. Although this system would make it easier to replace the mid level guy because all the info isn't buried in their email and spreadsheets on their desktop.

One other issue is that the ultimate decision maker will come from the high level guys because the cost is so high.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's like I'm looking for a succinct way from a sales perspective to undermine that argument. Like... you could just hire a lot of people and get rid of your ERP.</comment></comment></comment>


Bill Dally: Life After Moore's Law - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/2010/04/29/moores-law-computing-processing-opinions-contributors-bill-dally.html

<comment><USER2> Feh. Yeah another example of why I stopped reading _Forbes_ : if their articles in an area I know well are abysmal then how can I trust anything they say in areas I know little or nothing about?

In this case, the author confounds the real Moore's Law, which states that in a certain time period---1 year in 1965, 2 years later---the number of transistors of the lowest cost you can put on a die will roughly double with the resulting "speed".

Amazingly, Moore's Law is still holding up, but not the implicit promise of increased speed:

There was a corollary of generally increased clock speeds as everything got smaller, but as noted in the article we hit a brick wall there due to power dissipation (e.g. see the Netburst (P4) microarchitecture disaster).

But from my informal understanding of CPU speed, the greatest gains have come from better microarchitectures. There are fairly clean examples of this in e.g. the evolution of the 680x0 and 386 and beyond lines of microprocessors, and we can see this today in examples of x86-64 and ARM processors that are superscaler (or not?) and in or out-of-order (Atom vs. most everything else, Cortex A8 vs A9, etc.)

Our problem here is of course that the microarchitects have run out of the big wins, e.g. "Per Core, clock-for-clock, Nehalem provides a 15–20% increase in performance compared to Penryn" ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nehalem_%28microarchitecture%29...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nehalem_%28microarchitecture%29#Performance_and_power_improvements)). Nice, but not a _big_ win, not like the 386 -> 486 -> P5 -> P6 steps, where among many other things cache was added, it went superscaler and it went out- of-order superscaler.

Maybe the author gets this but it didn't emerge in the final draft, but I have no way of knowing that....

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, the author's the former chair of Stanford's CS department and author of a standard computer architecture textbook, so whatever the reason, his lack of knowledge about computer architecture seems not likely to be the reason...

On the other hand, he's currently a VP at NVIDIA, so isn't entirely unbiased, either, when it comes to spinning the current trajectory of CPUs/GPUs.</comment></comment>


What You Need To Know About Touchpads Before Buying Your Next Laptop - <AUTHOR> http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/touchpads-buying-laptop-technology-explained/ <comment><USER2> The touchpad on the MacBook Air is the best I ever experienced: it approaches the usuability found on the iPad. It even has a finish of a low-friction plastic, in contrast with my old E520 laptop which seems to _resist_ my fingers gliding over it.</comment>


"Go to Home": A very simple bookmarklet to go the base of a domain - <AUTHOR> http://anerroroccurredwhileprocessingthisdirective.com/2008/03/22/go-to-home/ <comment><USER2> Great little addon!</comment>


How Complex Systems Fail (1998) - <AUTHOR> http://www.ctlab.org/documents/How%20Complex%20Systems%20Fail.pdf <comment><USER2> A core fundamental here is that people inherently misjudge the competency of their peers / the state of other projects / components / departments. Thus when they have a "problem" they make an assumption that their single point of failure won't be catastrophic (because everything else is okay), and that there's no need to sound an alarm over it (and potentially jeopardise their career).

Besides, it will be fixed soon enough. Except, then something else comes up, and the last fault goes unresolved.

If our work-culture was less focussed on success and blame and more focussed on communication and effort, fewer catastrophes would happen, I'm sure. Unfortunately, the world doesn't work like that.

<comment><USER3> Closely related are Celine's Laws, particularly the 2nd:

Accurate communication is possible only in a non-punishing situation.

From Robert Anton Wilson's _Illuminatus!_ trilogy.

From Wikipedia: ""communication occurs only between equals." Celine calls this law "a simple statement of the obvious" and refers to the fact that everyone who labors under an authority figure tends to lie to and flatter that authority figure in order to protect themselves either from violence or from deprivation of security (such as losing one's job). In essence, it is usually more in the interests of any worker to tell his boss what he wants to hear, not what is true."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celine%27s_laws](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celine%27s_laws)

<comment><USER4> This reveals the main point emergent from (but not necessarily within) the article: the failure of complex systems is most often the result of poor management practices.

Management, above all, is responsible for an organization that can enable quality through systematic means. There are no other means.

<comment><USER3> In the case of smaller organizational systems (projects, companies, possibly even states), yes.

At the largest scale, I find the analysis of Diamond and Tainter comes into play. The capacity to survive smaller crises and overcome them just increases the magnitude of your final failure, though Diamond suggests a few means by which failure may be averted (Tainter seems to find it inevitable).

Ultimately, the resources required to maintain a system prove insufficient.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> At a previous place I worked we used to run a couple of DRBD'd databases. For every downtime they averted they seem to cause two. It's really tempting to just build simple monolithic apps on a single high performance server. For a lot of companies where tech isn't their core competency - they can more or less scale with moore's law and avoid the complexity of distributed systems altogether.

<comment><USER3> Your fail-safes are themselves the source of faults and failures.

I've seen, just to list a few:

Load balancers which failed due to software faults (they'd hang and reboot, fortunately fairly quickly, but resulting in ~40 second downtimes), back-up batteries which failed, back-up generators which failed, fire-detection systems which tripped, generator fuel supplies which clogged due to algae growth, power transfers which failed, failover systems which didn't, failover systems which did (when there wasn't a failure to fail over from), backups which weren't, password storage systems which were compromised, RAID systems which weren't redundant (critical drive failures during rebuild or degraded mode, typically), far too many false alerts from notifications systems (a very common problem even outside IT: [http://redd.it/1x0p1b](http://redd.it/1x0p1b) on hospital alarms), disaster recovery procedures which were incomplete / out of date / otherwise in error.

That's all direct personal experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> As it happens, I was just reading [http://www.macroresilience.com/2012/02/21/the-control- revolu...](http://www.macroresilience.com/2012/02/21/the-control-revolution- and-its-discontents-the-uncanny-valley) today, the high point of which is describing "defense in depth" as a fallacy because of its tendency to increase fragility in complex systems in the long term.

</comment><comment><USER7> Working in the design of large scale engineering systems, and watching safety / risk reviews, its a little disturbing to read this, and note that almost all hazard and safety analysis performed goes almost completely counter to these concepts.

It generally assumes there's one super-cause, and maybe some things that contributed. (Usually even pre-specified as "root cause" analysis when trying to find a problem)

The ultimate (although unstated) goal is almost always to find out how a specific person messed up, and then note what they did wrong. (Kind of human nature)

The culture usually assumes humans are inherently unsafe (ie, they don't create safety), and we're protecting them from themselves. (Does probably meet the statement that complex systems are heavily layered with protections against failure)

It often assumes that we can achieve a level of omniscient safety, where no- one is ever unsafe and we see all problems before they occur (safety culture names that imply "less than zero problems" or "we make you safer working here").

The probabilistic nature of accidents is not acknowledged, and its usually whack a mole instead. (This often ties in with the hindsight bias to note how a practitioner messed up the perfect safety system)

Problem is, I'm not sure how you would actually implement a good, probabilistic safety system that largely keeps people safe, but acknowledges bad, random things occasionally happen, and that line folks are your best defense for seeing and stopping it. Its counter to the whole leadership meme of decisive action and quick resolution to project strength. Its not very satisfying to hear "we could have spend $1M more on our safety program, but Bob still would have been burnt because it was due to three unlikely things occurring in quick succession."

<comment><USER8> _Problem is, I 'm not sure how you would actually implement a good, probabilistic safety system that largely keeps people safe, but acknowledges bad, random things occasionally happen, and that line folks are your best defense for seeing and stopping it._

Through the engineering process though you can generally have an idea where your weakest/unsafe points are based on previous studies. I see no reason that one couldn't stack those failure points into a probabilistic matrix and then apply mitigation methods around those points.

The acceptance of random failure as something largely unavoidable though is something that can't be engineered away it's a human trait. Just as tire blowout on an 18 wheeler doesn't necessarily mean you failed in safety design for that tire, the subsequent balance load shift is the un-recognized catastrophe mitigation built in to the system. Yet people will still focus on the tire.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> _" Hindsight bias remains the primary obstacle to accident investigation, especially when expert human performance is involved."_

I wonder if it might be possible to blind investigators to whether they are looking at facts preceding an accident or from an audit without a following incident.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think Joe Armstrong's thesis:

[https://www.sics.se/~joe/thesis/armstrong_thesis_2003.pdf](https://www.sics.se/~joe/thesis/armstrong_thesis_2003.pdf)

is an interesting read and provides a more concrete example of how to run a highly concurrent and fault tolerant application.

It doesn't talk about the social or psychological bullet points in this article, it is more technical. But I found it very readable.

As an addition, I can think of these patterns (just thinking about it in 1 minute, mostly remembering Erlang talks I've listen to, some from practice):

* Build system out of isolated components. Isolation will prevent failures from propagating. In Erlang just launch a process and don't use custom compiled C modules loaded in the VM. In other cases launch an OS process (or container).

* If your service is running on one single machine, it is not fault tolerant.

* Don't handle errors locally. Build a supervision tree where some of part of the system does just the work it is are intended to (ex.: handling a client's request), and other (isolated part) does the monitoring and error handling. Have one process monitor others, one machine monitor another etc.

Once a segfault or malloc fault has occurred installing a handler and trying to recover might not be the best solution. Restarting an OS (or Erlang) process might be easier. Another way to put it, once the process has been fouled up, don't trust it to heal itself. Trust another one to clean up after it and spawn a new instance it.

* Try not to have a master or a single point of failure. Sometimes having a master is unavoidable to create a consistent system, so maybe it can be elected with a well defined algorithm or library (paxos, zab, raft etc).

* Try to build a crash-only system. So that isolated units (OS or Erlang processes) can be killed instantaneously for any reason, any time and system would still work. If you are controlling the system you are building use atomic file renames, append-only logs, and SIGKILL (or technologies that use those underneath). Don't rely on orderly shutdowns. Sometimes you are forced to use databases/hardware/system that already don't behave nicely. Then you might not have a choice.

* Always test failure modes as much as possible. Randomly kill or mess with your isolated units (kill your processes), degrade your network, simulate switch failures, power failures, storage failure. Then simulate multiple failure simultaneously -- your software crashes while you detected a hardware failure and so on.

* As a side-effect of first point and the crash-only property. Think very well about your storage. In order to be able to restart a process, it means, it might have had to save a sane checkpoint of its state. That means having reliable, stable and fault tolerant storage system. Sometimes recomputing the state works as well.

<comment><USER3> Armstrong's thesis is more complete, but at 295 pages vs. 5, lacks the ready assimilation of the 5 page treatment. There are trade-offs.

Moreover, Cook's piece is very broadly applicable, it doesn't apply just to software systems.

<comment><USER11> Nothing beats reading papers like Armstrong's and making your own condensed notes and eventual summary.

These two documents are complimentary, not mutually exclusive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was intrigued by this observation, near the end:

 _> 18) Failure free operations require experience with failure._

 _> Recognizing hazard and successfully manipulating system operations to remain inside the tolerable performance boundaries requires intimate contact with failure. More robust system performance is likely to arise in systems where operators can discern the "edge of the envelope"._

This maps interestingly to the work of strategic thinker John Boyd ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Boyd_%28military_strategis...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Boyd_%28military_strategist%29)). (I summarized the general thrust of Boyd's thought in a blog post here: [http://jasonlefkowitz.net/2013/03/how-winners-win-john- boyd-...](http://jasonlefkowitz.net/2013/03/how-winners-win-john-boyd-and-the- four-qualities-of-victorious-organizations/))

In analyzing what separates organizations that win victories from those that do not, Boyd wrote of a quality he called _Fingerspitzengefühl_ \-- a German word that can be understood as something like "intuition." (The literal translation of the German word is "fingertip feeling," as in how a successful baseball pitcher can tell where the ball is going to go solely from how it feels rolling out of his hand.) His point was that winning organizations exposed their people to both training (good) and experience (better!) enough so that they could learn to react to emergent situations on instinct, rather than by consulting a manual or waiting for instructions from above. The point quoted above sounds like a call for people working on complex systems to get opportunities to develop their own _Fingerspitzengefühl_.

Which leads to the thought that maybe a _completely_ failure-free system is not something we should strive for. After all, in a completely failure-free system, nobody would ever get enough experience groping around the edge of the envelope to learn how to intuit where the other edges are. All they'd have is "here there be Dragons!" warnings from the past, which would become less compelling the farther into the past they come from. People are quick to discount warnings that contrast with their personal experience, and if your experience is that the System never fails, it's not hard to imagine people starting to believe that the System _cannot_ fail. Which is fine, until it _does_ fail, and nobody has any idea what to do to fix it.

It's sort of the same thing that happened to the financial sector in the US. After the Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression, a whole set of legal and institutional safeguards were put in place to prevent those things from happening again. But as time passed and generations grew up that had not experienced those crises directly, people began to decry those safeguards as needless bureaucracy. Eventually enough people did so that most of the safeguards were stripped away; at which point the system promptly collapsed again.

<comment><USER13> That seems similar to the anti-fragile mindset.</comment></comment>


IPhone 5 Benchmarks: 30% to 160% Faster than iPhone 4S - <AUTHOR> http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/iphone-5-benchmarks-faster-than-any-previous-ios-device <comment><AUTHOR> Pre-release benchmarks didn't lie. The iPhone 5 is dramatically faster than the 4S and even the iPad 3 in some tests.

Of course, this only has value for those looking to stay within the iOS ecosystem. Many current and upcoming Android phones score as high or higher than the 5.</comment>


Teenagers and the Internet - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/sep/08/beeban-kidron-inreallife-interview-teenagers

<comment><USER3> I've had the internet for twenty years (since I was 8) and computer access since I was 3. Most of my friends had access since they were 10 or 11. We turned out fine. Some kids who have poor role models are going to ask for oral sex from boys or girls that like them. This was true 3000 years ago. It is true today. It will be true twenty years from now regardless of what silly idea the person who made the documentary has. "Part regulation, part cultural shift." Please. I'm not taking any more "think of the children" arguments for laws.

Also, I'm sick and tired of "child porn" including 14-18 year olds. It isn't child porn. They arn't children. They are teenagers. Some of them have been having sex for years. It should be a different offence to posses and it should not be an offence to posses if you were in a loving relationship (and similar in age, a 14 year old and a 16 or 17 year old, not a 40 year old and a 14 year old).

You know those dirty letters you got from your sweetheart when you were 17? Sexting is the same damn thing.

<comment><USER4> I'm very upset that this is the top comment on here. 14 year old teenagers are definitely children and they do need to be protected by law from predators. Just because they are old enough to have children of their own doesn't make them adults. Is not OK for sites or individuals to be collecting sexual images of children and distributing them.

Also, to all you folks on here saying that this is all fear mongering to take away or rights, you're missing the larger point here which is that the recent cultural shift with the prevalence of handheld computing has a lot of negative side effects and we need to rethink the norms. It is very rude to sit at the dinner table with people and be interacting with your mobile device rather than your real life companions. It wouldn't have been OK for a parent to sit at the dinner table having a phone call with colleagues back then and just because mobile Internet makes it silent it's still not OK.

That is just one example in a long list of things related to mobile computing that are considered OK but are actually rude or unhealthy.

<comment><USER5> > the recent cultural shift with the prevalence of handheld computing has a > lot of negative side effects and we need to rethink the norms

One possible rethinking of the norms would be to worry less about teenagers, letting them sext if that's their thing, and advising them to not let societal abuse (e.g. bullying) get to them.

Scenario: a teenager sends a nude picture to a friend and the picture becomes public.

Possible solutions:

1\. We keep teenagers from sexting, and people from seeing pictures that teenagers sexted.

2\. We learn to not abuse teenagers who sexted and had their pictures leaked.

The latter is harder, but it's better long term. You can force people to not do what might harm them somehow, but you should look at the fundamentals: _why do people suffer consequences when they sext?_ Is it because of the sexting itself, or the reaction people have to it?

> I'm very upset that this is the top comment on here. 14 year old teenagers > are definitely children and they do need to be protected by law from > predators. Just because they are old enough to have children of their own > doesn't make them adults. Is not OK for sites or individuals to be > collecting sexual images of children and distributing them.

Age is a spectrum. A better definition of, say, a 16 year old would be "not quite an adult, not quite a child". They're closer to adulthood than to childhood, but still don't have some of the baggage of adulthood. Talk to a 16 year old and you'll find out that they don't want that lack of baggage to keep them from enjoying the benefits of being treated like adults. I doubt having a line drawn that says you're not an adult until you're 18 years old, and until then you're still a child will keep working in this century. It worked when social dynamics between teenagers and adults were different.

<comment><USER6> > I doubt having a line drawn that says you're not an adult until you're 18 > years old, and until then you're still a child will keep working in this > century. It worked when social dynamics between teenagers and adults were > different.

I'm not sure it ever really "worked", and seems to be an idea that is less than 100 years old. If it's failing already, I'm not sure we can count the couple generations it happened to it "working".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Given the absence of real data (as in, studies that demonstrate conclusively that watching too much online porn has certain downsides), it's not surprising that a lot of comments are resorting to anecdotal reasoning of the form: "Well, I use the internet and _I 'm_ ok..."

Nonetheless, I think it's worth entertaining the hypothesis that in many ways the internet is like candy for your brain, and constant exposure might have subtle -- perhaps not yet fully recognized or appreciated -- effects on our cognition. We're running a vast uncontrolled experiment, and when things go wrong we (tech elites) tend to dismiss it with some variation of "Well, _they_ had mental health issues or a parental problems or they would have been bullied anyway etc... etc... etc... It couldn't have been _the internet._ "

The problem is that these are the same sorts of arguments that have been deployed in the face of every technological advance. "It's not that video games are addictive, it's that people already prone to addiction choose to become addicted to video games. 100 years ago they would have been addicted to whist."

I find this to be rather unpersuasive, generally, but I'm honestly also at a loss to articulate a compelling counterargument of my own. I have vague misgivings and a handful of anecdotes and not a lot of sound science.

<comment><USER8> Do we need real data to know that too much porn is a bad thing?

> The problem is that these are the same sorts of arguments > that have been > deployed in the face of every technological > advance

I agree and at the risk of sounding like my parents, I think the internet is different. Never before has their been a technology so all encompassing and so powerful (and dangerous).

If I wanted to look at pictures of girls when I was a horny teen, I had the bra section of the JC Penny catalog. The jump from that to the type of online porn that exists today is pretty big. Add to the fact that online porn is so much more accessible than visiting a porno shop, it's no wonder kids can fall into it more easily.

<comment><USER9> But lets turn back the clock a few thousand years, where pre-teen boys were practically expected to engage not only in sexual acts/experiences, but often with those FAR older than themselves. At the risk of more unsubstantiated statements (qualifier, I spent 7 years studying latin+latin history), I feel like the amount of sexual content exposed to children in that era was FAR greater than now, even with the internet+porn, just in different media, and handled in very different cultural and social light, with much less stigma.

There seems to be a lot of paranoia around this issue, but observe that there have been HUGE ranges of how humanity has handled sexual content over the last few thousand years around the globe, and generally "we've turned out ok." This is a question that answering empirically will be VERY difficult, due to the sheer complexity of the human development process and the number of confounding variables, and I think a degree of faith needs to be had in the resiliency of our species and social structure to adapt.

<comment><USER10> I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here. That exposure to hardcore porn online is okay because it's better than being raped as a child? Or it's okay because we can adapt to its negative influence and come out alright?

What if I want something better than "ok" for my kids?

<comment><USER9> Firstly, to say that the older/younger relationships from that era would be generally considered rape even by todays standards would be quite a stretch.

Secondly, I must apologize in advance, I'm having a lot of trouble stating my point, probably because I'm sitting in a cluster computing conference, and will try to give this a better shot when I can devote more focus to it, but in short: I think we have some very skewed ways of looking at sex and sexual act. A stigmatization of the topic as a whole even makes it very hard to talk about. There are examples of rape and "improper" behavior in sexually liberal, and sexually conservative societies. There need to be new and less black and white ways of looking at and judging both sexual maturity, "appropriate" behaviors, and conduct. It is not productive to point the finger at a prevelence or lack of sexual material and then yell "THINK OF THE CHILDREN", this is going to be answered I think by a better understanding of human behavior and cognitive function, and right now we're grasping in the dark for useful metrics and basing decisions on questionable logic.

Anyway, I feel like I may be going away from the answer you wanted/rambling a bit, so I'll cut this short and perhaps reread/reedit my response. I also want to brainstorm a bit with my female, who as a psychologist/cognitive scientist, works with the most extreme cases of sexual deviance/criminals, and in positions of sexual assault support, and I'm sure has some relevant thoughts on the issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's interesting, the Internet has become a micro-society and people are beginning to have expectations that the major players have a responsibility to perform a similar service as that of a government (contributing resources to fight child porn as the example made), whilst also expecting governments to rule it. Can we have it both ways? And should we expect that as a norm?

The internet doesn't have a morality, it's a tool and usage is defined clearly by the user. The fact that more teenage boys are accessing pornography and have warped approaches to conventional relationships is a problem, but how much of a problem is it due to the internet? My generation (approaching 30) were among the first to have always on, reasonably high speed internet and yes that did mean easy access to pornography but despite that the majority of us are in long term relationships.

I think there's a lot to be made of how the internet has impacted modern society, but it doesn't exist in a single point of impact. There's also a dozen other factors that have to be taken into account, ranging from parents being less available due to increased workloads to an education system that's not encouraging people to want to learn.

<comment><USER12> " My generation (approaching 30) were among the first to have always on, reasonably high speed internet and yes that did mean easy access to pornography but despite that the majority of us are in long term relationships."

My impression is that this generation has historical low levels of involvement in long term relationships and family formation

(not arguing that causality is internet porn ---> people don't get married, but it's an interesting data point)

<comment><USER11> Sure, marriage does seem to be down amongst the people I know in long term relationships but that mostly seems to be (in my circle) down to apathy about the concept, as they deem it pointless. "Who needs paper and a £10k party to show your love?" sort of thing.

There's a big melting pot of changes in our society, and I do think the internet has played a part as has changing opinions on religion, finance and wealth and so on.

<comment><USER12> I don't have links on the tip of my fingers, but my impression is that family formation among young people is down, and its not simply a matter of symantics

I'm not even a believer that that's necessarly a terrible thing

but I do think its a real trend, not just otherwise committed people deciding that they don't need a piece of paper

I think internet == food is the right analogy, too much of certain types of internet usage seems obviously not healthy for you, I think as a culture we should make efforts to make sure that message is widely dessiminated

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm a teenager, and from my own experience, teenagers will do idiotic things even without the Internet. Pointing the finger at the Internet for parents' problems with their children is an easy thing to do because the Internet can't defend itself, especially as a whole.

<comment><USER14> In the 60's the teenager label emerged. These were just kids that had found a sense of community in sharing music, rebellion against the system, and unique dress. There's nothing new here. Teenagers will be rebellious, as they always have. If the older people in society find ways to prevent them from accessing material they want to see, they'll just find another way.

Teenagers have their own tastes in what the internet provides, and that interests/excites them, through social media, and other specific sites (like ask.fm). Nothing around this is new. Saying we should protect the poor teenagers is very demeaning to a group that are becoming adults, and protecting them by censorship helps no one in our society.

<comment><USER15> And yet, before the 60's and before the rise of proper education, teenagers went to work after elementary school (if that) and became mature, responsible adults much sooner. At least, so I heard. They couldn't get together and have orgies or whatever, because they were expected to be either at work, or back at work at 6 AM.

[/faux history teacher]

<comment><USER16> Work now requires more education. A PhD student is not less mature than a bachelors student just because he's in school for more years. He doesn't lose the right to make decisions for himself.

Prolonging the socially defined period of childhood didn't magically rewire brain chemistry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's great that someone so attentive to teens is candidly exploring this subject on film. Unfortunate that it seems to be focussed primarily on negatives.

Yes I spend a lot of time on the net: unlike the TV which consumed thousands of passive, scripted hours in my youth, the net is interactive, the outcome within my control. For most of my life, the many things I couldn't learn more about for lack of time or helpful resources were out of reach; the amplification is awesome. For most of my life, I had to imagine being connected with communities of shared interests, never imagining having the focussing luxury of needing to choose from among them.

Those changes in my life are all positives. So while teens are doing teenish things with this tech, they are learning - just as we adults are. And when they become parents, they'll know from experience (just as in the middle ages and in the 1800s and 1950s) the impact of these new things.

The social impact of emergent technologies has always been unpredictable. Luckily humans adapt. And so far, ever since the first piece of flint changed lives, we've muddled on somehow. Not that worry-warting is worthless; reflection is in fact the mother of adaptation.

</comment><comment><USER18> As usual mass media newspapers, or the shadow left thereof, are decades out of touch with subject matter that has been covered in the blogosphere extensively, making the same old observations ("warped perceptions of women/sex/life/etc.") that were made about television and games in past eras, treating their audience like sheltered idiots. I don't know why anyone reads this tripe or bothers to watch these 'documentaries'.

</comment><comment><USER19> Apparently there's some proof that too much pornography is bad for you. [1] Not too mention all the multitasking. Other than that the Internet is like every other thing. It has good and bad sides. I, for one, have faith in teenagers. They'll turn out alright. It's usually the old folks that make the bigger/worse mistakes.

      [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSF82AwSDiU

<comment><USER20> But it's the teenagers who turn into those old folks. So they don't turn out alright.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's unfortunate that answers to internet pornography always come in the form of these unworkable filters. Politicians can only justify censoring pornography as "Parent's don't want their kids to see it!", rather than acknowledge it as a public health problem.

After seeing some of my friends fall prey to porn addiction, I think the sheer amount of porn on the internet is a problem. When porn was something you had to go get on your own, you were limited to a small selection. However, now new and harder materials are avalible instantly, and it creates a feedback loop where people can't have sex without it.

Really, a better answer would be to discuss pornography addiction as part of the sexual education curriculum, but too many people would consider it "teaching children porn".

<comment><USER22> >a better answer would be to discuss pornography addiction as part of the sexual education curriculum, but too many people would consider it "teaching children porn".

Sort of like how DARE teaches children drugs?

<comment><USER23> About that....

> the program was sometimes counterproductive in some populations, with those > who graduated from D.A.R.E. later having higher than average rates of drug > use

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_Abuse_Resistance_Education...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_Abuse_Resistance_Education#2001_-_Surgeon_General_categorizes_D.A.R.E._.22Ineffective_Primary_Prevention_Programs.22)

<comment><USER22> Normally the phrasing I used indicates satire. In my case I was entirely serious. (That is, I'm well aware that DARE does in fact seem to teach drugs.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Both The Guardian and The Daily Mail, who enjoy huge web audiences, and who campaign passionately for freedom of the press, also campaign incessantly against freedom of expression on the internet, giving our politicians the wide political grip they need to clamp down on technology. It's ironic how much these two papers can be alike sometimes.

</comment><comment><USER25> Those men who retain their privacy by abdicating social media pay an impossible price. The gradual fade of their relationships and social livelihood. Only one who has spent so long starved by it's lack that their ache has forgotten to bother them can hope to pay it. Thankfully current business is email. But our peers are eager to change that.

Tales of young women giving themselves to multiple men is a common trope in hysterical portrayals of social ills. If one would like an example of what these tropes look like, 'Reefer Madness' is on netflix. This article almost reads like a paid endorsement of david camerons internet filter. It is a outrageous story about internet porn, men who dare anonymity, and youth corrupting youth designed to generate panic in the minds of ordinary men.

I have no idea what the situation is in the UK, but I know I've never been invited to any sex parties. Nor have I ever heard of such a thing happening in my area. This might be because such sex parties don't exist, or because men who obviously wouldn't participate aren't invited.

But then, who can argue with such wonderful anecdotes?

</comment><comment><USER26> Ugh, "the girl who let herself be gang raped"? I expect much better than this from the Guardian.

<comment><USER27> Yeah, then you read the article and it says "molested."

I went back to verify this and couldn't find it (!). Until I searched for "gang" instead... That's when I found The Guardian had changed the wording in the last few hours! If you scroll down to the bottom you'll find this:

"The standfirst to this article was amended on 12 September 2013. It originally referred to a girl who "let herself be gang-raped" to get her BlackBerry back. The misrepresented the text of the piece, which says she allowed herself to be sexually assaulted."

So, go ahead and blame technologists for allowing the internet to cater to our more prurient interests, but the newspaperpeople seem to the ones directly responsible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> The Internet isn't the problem here, consumption is, just like TV wasn't the problem 20 years ago, or computer games wasn't 10 years ago.

Let us not forget the 7 deadly sins: Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy, Pride.

Teenagers simply aren't equipped to deal with these issues like adults are, hell even some adults struggle.

<comment><USER29> It's not Pride, it's Vanity.

<comment><USER28> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_deadly_sins#Pride](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_deadly_sins#Pride)

<comment><USER29> Pride can have positive connotations, vanity not.

<comment><USER28> I'm aware of how words work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Bit off-topic, but interesting that in this sentence:

> Kidron, who carries lightly the title Baroness for her pioneering work not > just in making such films as the BBC's _Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit_ but > in spreading the narrative wonder of great movies to schoolkids across the > country through her FilmClub, says that many of her friends have said the > same thing

where would you except the "Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit" link to lead? Maybe another Guardian article about the film? Wikipedia? IMDB? Homepage of the film? Trailer? I for one would not have excepted a credible paper like Guardian link to a crappy and most likely illegimate rip of the film. That's barely above linking directly to The PirateBay.

</comment><comment><USER31> The only practical approach is to give teenagers the tools necessary to deal with this and make sensible decisions based on their own values and respect for others (as if being a teenager wasn't hard enough already). However, good luck in getting PE (Porn Education) taught to ten-year olds, never mind being able to filter out all the agendas of concerned parties and being able to create the materials necessary with essentially nothing to base it on - <USER2> terms of the effects it's having on teenagers development.

The ship of consequences sailed a long time ago on this one and it's not clear where it's headed.

</comment><comment><USER32> I've always thought the problem was letting kids alone on the net. You wouldn't let you kid alone in a shaddy neighborhood for hours without checking up on them, would you? So why do exactly that with the internet?

I think the main problem with the web is that it makes you lose your right to be forgotten. Think of those kids who post stupid videos of themselves on youtube that go viral. It won't go away, people will be able to find that 10, 20 years from now in New York, Paris or Tokyo.

<comment><USER16> Would it have been okay for your parents to wiretap your phone? No? Then why is it okay to demand to read your children's private conversations?

I am terrified we're going to have a generation of kids who have no concept of private. Who've never been allowed to speak or be curious about anything their parents wouldn't approve of. Who are used to having to explain conversations and reading to people who were never supposed to be part of them. Parental Thought Police are orders of magnitude more terrifying than state Thought Police.

Can you _imagine_ an adult who has never had a private experience as a child? Maybe to a collectivist culture, that isn't so scary, but to me it's dystopian.

<comment><USER32> _My_ phone? I didn't have a cell phone while growing up, the only phone at home was in the living room. So no wiretapping really needed...

And seriously, your parents aren't the NSA. Of course they should do what you are doing and of course you will do what you can so that they don't find out. It doesn't mean having a GPS tracker on you at all times.

I stand by my original point: the internet can be a very dangerous place filled with strangers, it's irresponsible to let your kids browse it unsupervised.

<comment><USER16> Funny you mention GPS, because lots of parents do exactly that. [https://wbillpay.verizonwireless.com/vzw/nos/safeguards/Safe...](https://wbillpay.verizonwireless.com/vzw/nos/safeguards/SafeguardProductDetails.action?productName=familylocator)

As far as the phone, I guess houses with one central telephone aren't really what I'm talking about, so much as _Bye Bye Birdie_ "The Telephone Hour"-type situations. Teenage girls in the 50s and 60s were able to talk about boys, criticize authority figures, and generally be themselves and develop as their own people using technology without supervision or censorship. You probably didn't have that experience, but my parents did, and it would have been creepy and invasive then for their parents to demand to be part of those conversations, just like it's creepy and invasive now.

The NSA is (ostensibly) only looking for terrorist plots. Your parents are looking for criticism, attitude, impure thoughts, differing political beliefs, ingratitude, and a whole bunch of other things that are part of being a young human being. There is no question in my mind that given the choice, I'd take the NSA.

You know what else is a dangerous place filled with strangers? School. Sidewalks. Libraries. Not just strangers, but dangerous ideas. College. Especially college. At some point kids have to learn to navigate those things independently, lest they self-destruct the moment the leash is removed. Not as 5-year-olds, sure, but definitely by 16/17 (depending on maturity, of course).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Do bear in mind that there are effectively two alternatives:

\- uncontrolled internet access, where other people's kids have access to a lot of awful stuff (not just porn but "shock" videos; goatse and worse)

\- State- or business- controlled internet access, where someone else gets to control what you see, potentially eliminating access to inconvenient stories like Snowden.

We could really do with a "third way", but it needs someone to imagine what it could be, how it could work, and how it avoids the usual attempts to ruin it for everyone.

</comment><comment><USER34> I am a teenager who was watching internet porn daily. I was forced to stop during a 2 week long holiday in which I shared a room with my family and had limited internet access.

I immediately started noticing girls more and being more outgoing in life. I know this is anecdotal evidence, but I can't help but feel like it is unnatural to masturbate so often.

I think those chemicals in our body help us function and relate during crucial years and that such easy access to internet pornography is upsetting some balance.

</comment><comment><USER35> If I live outside of the UK, what's the right way to go about seeing "In Real Life" legally? There appears to have been a showing at the Toronto International Film Festival on Monday, but apart from that there appears to be nothing.

</comment><comment><USER36> Or maybe the reality is a lot less interesting: a tiny percentage of teens will go off the rails, a tiny percentage will benefit hugely and the vast majority will do stupid things and reach adulthood more or less unscathed.

</comment><comment><USER37> The Internet is not to blame.

 _" One of the motivators for me making the film was that a friend of my daughter came round to talk to me about a boy she had her eye on and he said she could be his girlfriend if she gave him a blowjob."_

How can any rational person believe this is different from 40 years ago? You don't think teenage guys were asking for blowjobs in the 70s?!

The sexual pseudo-revolution changed our society's norms forever, well before the internet, and modern ADULT culture keeps them alive in ways that affect young people. Really, adults should be looking at themselves as the reason for why kids act the way they do.

But what adult would possibly blame themselves for what they can blame on the internet?

 _" Most of the responsibility has to lie, however, she thinks, with the corporations."_

And telephone companies should be held accountable if someone calls you bad words on the phone. Look, there is a certain amount of personal responsibility that parents and our society as a whole have to take on, because no amount of litigiousness will stop people from behaving badly. Social change requires _social change_.</comment>


The Boom of Big Infographics - <AUTHOR> http://flowingdata.com/2010/05/06/the-boom-of-big-infographics/

<comment><USER2> Uh, Wade Meredith here. That second infographic is mine. It was the most successful blog post on Healthbolt.net (my blog at the time, I ended up selling it to b5media a few months later). I had a couple of other big hits, but this was my favorite.

I'm glad they remark in the OP about the post taking on a life of it's own. It has 4k+ comments and has turned into an informal support group for people to share stories about quitting successes and failures.

It's pretty much the first big graphic design project I ever undertook (I had built a Wordpress blog and was reskinning it every month or two to teach myself how to code, so I thought should start getting serious about design as well). It was by far the most rewarding post I made on that blog out of about 400 over the course of 9 months. I think it's helped a lot of people and I'm glad it seems like it's going to help more in the future.

The actual post finally ended up here with an add-on article tacked onto the front of it ([http://blisstree.com/feel/what-happens-to-your-body-if- you-s...](http://blisstree.com/feel/what-happens-to-your-body-if-you-stop- smoking-right-now/))

While the content changed hands a few more times over the last 3 years apparently on of them involved the first ~400 posts on the blog, which I wrote, getting attributed to "Liz Lewis". (Disappointing.) Considering I sold the blog and the content with it, though, there's nothing to be done about it. Such is life.

The important thing is that the post itself, originally published in 2007, now has 4,239 comments and the last one was left 20 hours ago. Pretty cool stuff.

TL;DR I made the "most popular" infographic of 2007 while I was still wet- behind-the-ears as a designer, and it's cool to see it leading a life of its own 3 years later.

<comment><USER3> Nice work. It doesn't suffer from the problems of many of the other infographics, since it's not claiming to be some kind of unbiased presentation of data; rather it's an unashamed advertisement for the idea that you should quit smoking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I read this entire article.

When I got to the end I realised I actually _hadn't_ read this article. I'd just looked at the pictures and felt like I'd read an article anyway.

I went back to actually read the article but the ten-point text next to the 90-point text made the 90-point text far too mesmerising.

This may, perhaps, explain some of the appeal of giant infographics.

</comment><comment><USER4> Info graphics irritate me, they dumb down what is already trivial to digest. I'm sure it fits right in with 'talking points', 'power points','infomercials' and 'advertorials' but it isn't for me.

I prefer to read some solid text, graphics optional, if they have to be there to illustrate the points in the text then so be it.

People are lazy, and infographics seem to tap in to that so I don't doubt they'll be successful, but it is just another step on the road to idiocracy. Keep those gray cells working, use them or lose them.

</comment><comment><USER5> Someone ought to write about the scourge of infographics.

<comment><USER6> they pretend to convey unbiased information

<comment><USER7> I understand that images and visual representations are powerful, and impact more people in large part because they require less in terms of time/attention, so they have the power to mislead. But to label all infographics as a scourge and as automatically biased is quite a generalization. For that matter, how do they claim to be unbiased in the first place? Data and studies are spun towards researcher bias at times regardless of the end format. To disregard infographics or despise them versus black and white text and Excel tables doesn't make sense. It is a medium, and a powerful medium at that, but so is text, photography and videos, and they can all be used to objective ends or subjective ends, and none is ever pure and holy or automatically accurate (nor are Excel tables and the raw data used to inform the stylized infographics).

<comment><USER6> Text may be black and white physically, but can express a wider range of nuance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Could anyone point me to some source of good vector graphics "clipart"? The pictures in Infographics are pretty and would be awesome if I could use some in presentations as well.

</comment><comment><USER9> Can anyone suggest a good app/tricks to make infographics?

<comment><USER7> Here is a good post if you are looking to get started. There isn't really a 'best' program or a shortcut, just go with what you feel most comfortable with and start exploring datasets (census, BLS, data.gov, Guardian UK are all good sources) to get a feel for what is most intuitive.</comment></comment>


Why Does the Fed Worry So Much About Recessions? - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-05/a-better-way-to-measure-economic-success <comment><USER2> The fed has a triple mandate 1. help lower unemployment 2. control prices 3. Bailout their friends (sounds like a sneer but central banks kind of all do that to protect the markets or banks from a run). But using the levers of the fed to prevent expensive assets from normalizing does't seem wise.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you get over the executive wall? - <AUTHOR> Hi! Long time lurker.
After a six or seven year career spanning different generalist tech roles (everything from product designer to front-end engineer to platform developer), I founded a startup, raised seed, and sold for a 5x return. Yay.
I've spent two years at my acquiring company, mostly making sure that our IP gets integrated and has a good home. It's clear however that the acquiring company is not a growth company by any means, and I find myself incredibly stifled by the slow pace, the lack of vision, and frankly, the denial about the situation.
I report into to our CPO, but have found myself unable to find a realistic vector for also becoming a C*O in the company, as he is unlikely to leave as a founder and they do not appear all that interested in exploring alternatives that might cause his role to be diminished or otherwise carved up. I likely wouldn't be all that interested in sticking around anyway, given the cultural problems I mentioned above.
As I look out into the job market, I'm concurrently finding myself being a week late to opportunities. By that I mean, by the time I find them and/or a recruiter reaches out to me, a candidate is already deep in the process. It's frustrating, and I'm finding myself wondering if my long-standing aversion to networking is causing me to miss these opportunities, as I assume that most of these jobs are filled with internal recommendations from people within the professional network of the other executives.
(I should note that I'm actually an extrovert by personality, and have a..decent-to-good sized network within my industry. I just find networking and the typical post-conference drinks to be incredibly tedious.)
I'm at a bit of a loss for how to accurately phrase the question, but hopefully some of you will understand where I'm coming from. Is the right move simply to suck it up and pretend to enjoy forced conversations? Is there a recruiting firm who is actually somewhat good at handling generalist/entrepreneur types? Or is this just the narrowing of the pyramid as you get closer to the top? <comment><USER2> There are some recruiting firms that specialize in executive recruiting. That may be an option for you and is worth exploring. Another option is to reach out to some of the tech recruiting firms and let them know that you're looking for an exec position (director/VP/CPO/whatever) and to reach out if they see one. I've occasionally seen those pitched. You may also want to look at consulting firms, as those can turn into executive positions if the hiring company wants to keep you.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's helpful, thank you. I should also state that I previously may have been too prideful to look into something like that in more depth, but I'm increasingly concluding that viewpoint is silly.

<comment><USER3> In technology it is VERY common as these exec recruiters are paid handsomely. 100K+ to find the right executive and place him/her at a company. These are not the low level recruiters spamming your inbox.

These people have a network, and know who has been where and for how long. After that 3/4/5 year mark, they start pinging people to let them know of interesting opportunities. That said, you DO want a good recruiter who's well respected.

I'd do your research on who some of the best are, and target them to work with. Perhaps people here can make suggestions?

<comment><USER4> Indeed, but I'd like to add that these recruiters are often penalised if the candidate leaves the business before a set period.

So they have a financial motive with not just placing a candidate, but also them staying there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Another opportunity you might consider is connecting with venture capital or private equity firm partners. They are constantly monitoring their portfolio of companies and at anytime may want to bring in someone with your significant experience to help scale their startups.

Another avenue you could try is cold-calling another executive and essentially selling yourself: [https://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2014/04/22/how- cold-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2014/04/22/how-cold-calling- can-land-you-a-job/#6b4b64ac3a3e)

Outside of technology, most companies usually find executives through their network - it's the safest way to be relatively assured that they won't be hiring wrong. If you're not into networking at a large scale, what about taking people out for coffee 1:1 and build the relationship that way?

</comment><comment><USER6> It sounds like you've already made some people a decent chunk of change. Why not reach out to these same investors and tell them what you're looking for.

</comment><comment><USER7> Contact people from your network and tell them exactly what you are looking to do.

If you really do have friends from the industry who honestly and truly believe in you and want to see you do better it is a great place to start.

Also, marketing yourself as a generalist/entrepreneur is a bit of a red flag. Chief "Big Idea Guy" is a tough title to get from the outside and without some serious bona fides.

I'd suggest taking a little time to really think about what your industry needs to grow in the next few years and map out a VERY specific strategy.

Then find a company who could benefit from that knowledge. It will at least give you more to talk about when you sit down for an interview.

If you can't be a specialist in practice be one in strategy.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Helpful feedback on it being a red flag - I think that skillset has worked for me in the two capacities I've used it in; first, being a utility player for an early-stage company and second, as an entrepreneur. How that fits into something that isn't either of those two poles is a challenge.

Good advice though, thank you for the thoughtful response.

<comment><USER8> I in agreement with jsonderulio, but think of it this way. Just because you may end up doing a lot of "Big Thinking Generalist" work, it may be a difficult sell to go in thinking that title would exist.

Are you a good fit as CPO, CTO, etc and then the your capabilities as "Big Idea Guy" can be leveraged from those positions.

Think about it another way, how many company CEOs or Boards have ever thought "What we need is an Big Idea Guy".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Food for thought... Whilst you might find the 'typical post-conference drinks to be incredibly tedious', you will find that this same thing (or something similar, in principle) will encompass part of being an exec at most businesses...

These businesses are looking for 100% the right person when filling these roles. And if you look like the right person, and they haven't yet filled it, then it won't matter when you apply.

But to answer your questions directly.

\- I wouldn't waste yours and the other person time trying to force yourself to enjoy a conversation. Just chalk it up as one of your weaknesses when asked in an interview. \- Yes there are specialist firms, and they typically have headhunters, and in my experience are quite good at finding candidates. \- There is indeed a narrowing of the pyramid... Execs are at the very least highly motivated and highly intelligent. There are also very few jobs!

</comment><comment><USER9> Reach out, either through a respected intermediary or directly, to CEOs of companies that are about to need executives but haven't made a bunch of external executive hires yet. Get on their radar before they start their recruitment process.

Sure, this is networking of a sort, but taking a half hour to talk with the CEO of a company you might join is hardly a 'forced conversation'.

</comment><comment><USER10> why not start another company? if your going to network why not network for a co-founder. and/or a bigger team. I imagine you could get a seed round again.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question. Different risk tolerance than before; wife, kids, mortgage.

<comment><USER11> You made no savings from the 5x sale?

It is a lot easier to have a less stable job if you have a few mil in the bank.

<comment><USER12> What does 5x mean? How is that millions?

<comment><USER13> I read it as they sold for 5x their seed valuation, which is typically at least a few million, and is occasionally as high as $15M.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, this is correct; we returned 5x the value to our investors. Apologies for the inelegant wording.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> q-base Thanks a lot for asking this. I actually find myself looking somewhat in the same direction without really having found a clear path. But a lot of good answers here that I will look further into.

I just made my life a little more complicated by doing freelance development work and now in the short run probably will have to accept a major pay cut to prove myself in a VP/C* something role of a smaller company, until I would be able to break into larger firms and better pay.

</comment><comment><USER14> It can take months to fill executive level positions.. and even then dealing with unknowns on both sides hence a bias for filling from within.

Reach out to a few head hunters. Professional ones you feel comfortable with, avoid recruiters, and build a relationship with them.

</comment><comment><USER15> Taking some time off to purely focus on networking could be a good option. Networking is great fun when you have spare cycles. Networking when you have a full-time job - not so.

Maintaining a network when you have a full-time job is much easier than building one.

</comment><comment><USER16> my 2 cents, you're either going to have to be so successful on your own that people are trying to pry you away from your own goal... or you're going to have to hit it lucky.

Unless you've found yourself "a week late" on dozens of opportunities, I'd just keep trying until you get a reasonable sample size.</comment>


6 things Android Wear smartwatches can do that the Apple Watch can't - <AUTHOR> http://news.hirevahere.com/#sthash.4G60aMkV.dpuf

<comment><AUTHOR> 6 things Android Wear smartwatches can do that the Apple Watch can't - <USER2> more at: [http://news.hirevahere.com/#sthash.4G60aMkV.dpuf](http://news.hirevahere.com/#sthash.4G60aMkV.dpuf)</comment>


Lynne Jolitz: The Curse of BSD and the Four Mistakes (2005) - vezzy-fnord https://lynnesblog.telemuse.net/c/fun-friday-the-curse-of-bsd-and-the-four-mistakes/191

<comment><AUTHOR> Apparently, if you didn't go to Berkeley, work in CSRG, when Bill Jolitz was there, you can't possibly understand enough to contribute to any later BSD. Who knew.

I remember the Jolitz's being a bit...proud of themselves...back in the day, but that's some pure, distilled ego right there.</comment>


Netflix says next quarter a majority will stream more video than watched on DVD - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_technews/20101021/tc_yblog_technews/netflix-is-a-streaming-company-which-also-offers-dvds-ceo-says

<comment><USER2> Optical media is pretty annoying. This makes perfect sense provided the subscriber has fast enough network connection available.

</comment><comment><USER3> If I could stream all titles available for rent, I would never receive a DvD in the mail anymore.

For a full stream access to all titles I would even pay around $20/month.

However, without rented titles you just don't get a lot of good stuff.</comment>


How New Ideas Almost Killed Our Startup - <AUTHOR> http://viniciusvacanti.com/2010/08/03/new-ideas-can-kill-your-startup/ <comment><USER2> I think you can go further, this post talked about ideas that are completely unrelated to your company.

In my experience, completely related on topic great ideas can still kill your startup, its an easy thing to bury your head in code and produce feature after feature without looking up and evaluating what that feature gave you apart from more code to manage. Microsoft can afford to make massive bloated software that does everything and the kitchen sink "decently" startups can rarely afford to do anything more than one thing very very well.

<comment><AUTHOR> The OP is writing about choosing that one thing you want to do very very well, which I think is a bigger problem than feature creep.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> People usually "fall in love" with ideas, which is why its so hard to pull away from it. Its hard to be rational and objective when you're in love. This isn't so much of an issue in a relationship (in love with a person) because how you feel is what matters. However, in a startup, what matters is how the customers feel, and that love potion will be your Archilles heel if not treated carefully. I generally try to fall in love with problems before an idea (solution). When the idea comes before the problem, its been disastrous. Customer Development helps, but its still a rough ride.

<comment><USER4> "I generally try to fall in love with problems before an idea (solution). When the idea comes before the problem, its been disastrous. Customer Development helps, but its still a rough ride." i think that's a great way to put it...the problem will remain until somebody fulfills, but there can be a variety of potential solutions to just about any problem.

reminded me of a quote i tweeted recently & then saw @bmull include today: "As long as I listen to my customers, I never need to have another original idea" -@nielr1 in Do More Faster

<comment><USER5> Sometimes advice sounds perfect for any situation but actually needs to be applied judiciously. It is easy to succumb to the "wow" factor of another person's story of their success. I will use Henry Ford to counter nielr1:

"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."

<comment><USER4> agreed. the way i interpreted neil's quote was that a startup has a certain trajectory in mind, but once they release and start collecting feedback (surve.io anybody?), then the inspiration for the pivots will come from the users of the product.

of course you can't listen to what everybody says, but as a team, take all of the generated ideas and determine which are the best. i think it removes a lot of the assumptions that are present going in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sometimes ideas are necessary intermediates to the next-big-thing. SimpleGeo comes to mind: _The original plan of CrashCorp was to create mobile games using augmented reality, but the young company soon learned that the hardest part was developing the back-end geolocation infrastructure that would support their applications. Thus was born SimpleGeo._ [1]

[1] - [http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/most_promising_company_...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/most_promising_company_for_2011_simplegeo.php)

</comment><comment><USER7> Thanks for this link; it could not have arrived at a better time. Need to go paste this into a couple email threads... ;)

<comment><USER4> no surprise this topic comes from yipit's founder as i think it's pretty ironic that so many of the daily deal startups started as something entirely different.

plenty know about the groupon story, but who remembers when livingsocial was emerging by having people share their top 5 lists on facebook? what about scoutmob which began as a wifi provider?

both of those companies noticed that they were sitting on an large amount of consumer data, and they both figured they could use it to pivot their model towards the emerging group discount space.

<comment><USER8> Or that Twitter started as something completely different? And Microsoft? Google, Apple, and Facebook are counter-counter-examples.

But the point remains - don't be fooled into thinking that the grass is always greener. Unless it really is.

<comment><USER9> Apple and Facebook also both started as different things than they are now (computer manufacturer, college social network). It becomes increasingly hard to recognize the pivots/changes over time because people tend to be very forgetful/associate brands with their current product or service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I bet the guys at Twitter are glad they didn't take this advice.

<comment><USER11> Why?

<comment><USER12> Read up on <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odeo> ... Twitter was a side project that ended up taking over.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As entrepreneurs I believe we are hardwired to search for the "next big thing." I agree with this article in that it can be detrimental to our success as entrepreneurs. With my first business we launched and had decent revenues for almost two years. Then things started going south and instead of searching for a solution within our business, we tried starting another company to support it. And when that didn't work and I returned to "tie myself to the masthead like Odysseus" my ship had already sunk. Moral of the story: Stay focused!

</comment><comment><USER14> Argh, this article is so true and should not be ignored.

I have recently been building projects, when in the middle, I suddenly get an idea for another project, I would down all tools to kick start something new with the belief I could multitask and do both.

The truth is, you can't! Give your initial project 110% and get it out of the door before you try anything new. That way all of your products will have the quality they deserve.

Great article.

</comment><comment><USER15> Counter point: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2035316>

</comment><comment><USER16> I discovered notepad really helps me when new ideas sweep me off my feet. I write down my idea and a few key nots about it. That way I don't lose the idea and spend a lot of time thinking about it. If the idea still sounds good after a month or so, then I might spend a few more hours clarifying the idea into a more concrete concept.

<comment><USER17> I've developed this habit, too. One problem I've run across (which I'm thinking you also might have) is I end the day with a whole bunch of notepads open and it is a pain to save/close them.

If you have that problem, too, you should check out a program I wrote called Notepad Consolidator (<https://github.com/jaredsohn/NotepadConsolidator>) that writes the contents of all open untitled notepads to an autonamed file.

<comment><USER18> I converted the lean startup worksheet into a Freemind mindmap. For new ideas, I simply open this mindmap template, fill it out, and store it in my main SVN repository under ideas. It makes documenting a new idea and running a quick feasibility analysis a matter of a few minutes.

Definitely beats notepads :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> that graph is my new desktop background. I hope it will help fight these distractions!

</comment><comment><USER20> You don't want to make any absolute statements. Sites like flickr are siren- like ideas that turned out very well. It's always a tough judgement call for when to get distracted.

The important thing is to make sure you're pursing this other idea because it's actually something worthwhile not just as an escape from your startup not doing so great... Basically, think about things rationally and not emotionally.

<comment><USER21> > _You don't want to make any absolute statements._

All categorical statements are bad, including this one.</comment></comment>


HTML Slideshow Template - <AUTHOR> https://gscode.in/html-slideshow/ <comment><USER2> I'm getting "Resource Limit Is Reached", looks like the site's getting hugged to death.</comment>


Bruce Sterling: Internet (1993) - <AUTHOR> http://www.lysator.liu.se/etexts/the_internet.html

<comment><USER2> It hurts to read this. How did we lose the freedom, the idea that everyone is an equal peer?

Was it just the realities of money, that an end user would rather pay a tiny fraction of the real cost of being truly on line and pay instead with their freedom?

We used to laugh at AOLers because they weren't experiencing the real internet, because they sold themselves out to an online service.

Are today's ISPs with their filtering and port blocking and packet shaping, really any better?

<comment><USER3> The masses.

We lost because of the great masses, the eternal october but on a much major scale. The same people that still watch TV and who become numb from their everyday medium to low-wage work, all those who are fighting against each other to climb the ladder just a tiny amount up.

See the original internet users were scientists, officers, business people, those early adopters who have the resources and curiosity to use and shape it it.

Todays internet user is any modern slave whos interests dont stretch out further than facebook and easy entertainment. Most people dont even have a concept of what the internet is. They just kind of randomly click buttons and call their laptops "plaything".

Ive seen people pay for 4G but their modem only by default runs on 3G. Meh.

<comment><USER4> That reminds me of this awesome picture: [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/Pyramid_o...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/Pyramid_of_Capitalist_System.png)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Learning the Internet now, or at least learning about it, is wise. By the > turn of the century, "network literacy," like "computer literacy" before it, > will be forcing itself into the very texture of your life.

Wow, the prediction is a decade off... but 100% correct for those who live in the developed world!

It's funny, because EXACTLY the same could be said right now about cryptocurrencies, blockchains, and Distributed Anonymous Corporations (DACs). The rapid rise of Bitcoin being just the tip of the iceberg.

<comment><USER6> How is it a decade off? Internet was ubiquitous in developed countries already a decade ago.

<comment><USER5> Rather, in the developed world we are now online 24/7 - with the rise of 3/4G smartphones. However, this is only so since 2009 - 2013 for most people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The Internet is the multiplier of many huge economic forces. Some that come to mind:

\- Productivity of a single worker: Izya, a mechanical engineering friend, used to spend hours in the engineering library trying to find the right part among hundreds of component catalogs. He now spends about 10 minutes browsing the web, on his smart phone, during lunch, at the local sandwich shop.

\- Scale of an enterprise: Wal-Mart, Amazon and all companies of similar scale are effectively IT companies. What they actually sell is simply a side-effect of their IT operations. It is mind boggling to try to imagine the infrastructure and logistics involved in selling $1,300,000,000 worth of consumer goods per day.

\- Return on Investment: Even the oil barons would be green with envy at an Instagram, or Twitter or Facebook and the absurdly low amount up front capital paid in to establish these business.

The Internet has changed everything. All of us, from governments to CEOs to grandmothers will spend our lives running to keep up with it.

</comment><comment><USER8> > The standard fee is about $40 a month -- about the same as TV cable service.

I mean WOW! Americans were able to get internet at 40$ / month in '93? I recall, in 2003, my folks had to pay huge telephone bills even when my internet usage didn't exceed more than 2 hrs a day (dial-up times).

<comment><USER2> Oh, that $40 is the service cost. Even in '97 I remember paying £20/mo for the ISP, phone bills were then on top of that £20.

Then "freeserve" came out[1] and (gasp!) was free apart from the phone call. This was a major shift. There were downsides (only 1 pop3 email account, no newsgroups, no webspace), but it was free!

[1] [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/177467.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/177467.stm)

<comment><USER9> Almost all residential POTS lines in the US were flat-rate, so there were no charges here to make a local phone call. Granted, if you had to dial long- distance to connect to the ISP, then you paid toll rates for that.

<comment><USER2> Oh, thanks for the correction and local knowledge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Apparently, the opening part about the internet spawning from a RAND Corporation study is just a myth:

[http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bl_Charles_Herz...](http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bl_Charles_Herzfeld.htm)

<comment><USER11> Right, and so is the bit about the network surviving a nuclear attack.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> There's some wonderful lines in here, I particularly liked:

 _Planning has never seemed to have much to do with the seething, fungal development of the Internet..._

And this one:

 _Its ease of use will also improve, which is fine news, for the savage UNIX interface of TCP /IP leaves plenty of room for advancements in user- friendliness..._

Notice how www/web isn't mentioned? It existed, but even when the first graphical browser came out (that same year), it wasn't clear what the point was - like many, I was on a 2400 Baud modem so every picture or graphic on a page would take 5 - 10 minutes to "come down the wire".

</comment><comment><USER13> > Military people want it spy-proof and secure.

Ah. That changed.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm surprised articles like this are still posted on HN/reddit. Like most of the tech you use on your iWidgets it has deep roots in the US defense budget. Networks, GPS, digital maps, etc. Surprising this is posted here as it doesn't fit with most of the _evil military industrial complex_ narrative that comes with linked articles.

<comment><USER9> Like the rest of the US government, just because good things occasionally come from the largest financial expenditures on the planet doesn't mean that the balance of those expenditures are a good idea or that the taking of money for those expenditures is morally justifiable.

<comment><USER14> >good things occaisionally come

Understatement of the century.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Much like schools regulate your usage of English when in school, countries will regulate internet use.

</comment><comment><USER16> Weird, no mention of Al Gore's role in creating the Internet.

<comment><USER17> Not sure if you're just being ironic but Al Gore never claimed to have created or invented the internet. Here's what he said:

> During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in > creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range > of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic > growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.

He was referring to the many initiatives he sponsored and promoted during his time as a U.S. Senator that made the internet as we know it possible. In response to the ridicule that followed the out-of-context quote "I took the initiative in creating the Internet," no less than Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn wrote, "No one in public life has been more intellectually engaged in helping to create the climate for a thriving Internet than the Vice President."

<comment><USER16> Yes, I was being ironic. But those quotes don't help his case much. Saying "I took the initiative in creating the Internet" is, with or without context, just laughable.

<comment><USER18> With a context, its not laughable to me. I don't have too much respect to Al Gore, but I don't believe he was so dumb or thought his audience is so that actually anyone would believe he "created" internet from a technical point of view. But he did, unfortunately, took a part in creating internet from a legal point of view.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Ain't that amazing that most human inventions were created to either satisfy military or a porn industry.

<comment><USER15> can you give examples for the latter?

<comment><USER19> Arguably the largest demand for consumer bandwidth over the first decade of the Web's existence was porn. From about 1996 forward (Quake), gaming has also helped move the needle.

These days sites like Xvideos, Pornhub etc are monsters when it comes to bandwidth consumption, and there are dozens of major streaming porn sites.

That constant bandwidth demand has been a great catalyst in terms of encouraging ever faster speeds.

How much content is on sites like YouTube or Dailymotion related to sex appeal?

Facebook had intentionally built-in sex appeal aspects to it. It was for college students after all.

Snapchat? Chat roulette? MyFreeCams & Live Jasmin (both of which generate tens of millions in sales)? There are many porn related sites in the top 1,000 global sites. Titillation moves things forward and always will. Humans are sexual beings.

<comment><USER15> >Facebook had intentionally built-in sex appeal aspects to it

Do you mean the relationship status part? Interesting point.</comment></comment></comment></comment>