Ask HN: What are your favorite posts on the Internet? - <AUTHOR> I find these posts very useful...what are your favorites?
http://blog.samaltman.com/how-to-be-successful
https://steveblank.com/2011/09/22/how-to-build-a-web-startup-lean-launchpad-edition/
http://blog.samaltman.com/non-technical-founder-learn-to-hack <comment><USER2> Not necessarily useful, but a great read.

[https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming- sucks](https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks)

</comment><comment><USER3> Pretty sure I found this here:

[https://hackernoon.com/how-it-feels-to-learn-javascript- in-2...](https://hackernoon.com/how-it-feels-to-learn-javascript- in-2016-d3a717dd577f)

</comment><comment><USER4> I really enjoy the following series by Aaron's.

[http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/rawnerve](http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/rawnerve)</comment>


Reasons not to use the Discord communications system - <AUTHOR> https://stallman.org/discord.html <comment><USER2> I understand that some people value their privacy above all else, but balancing this with decent anti-spam is really tricky. As someone who runs a (not large, not small) Discord guild, I personally would find it impossible to keep any public guild of any decent size running if the anti-spam were any less protective than it currently is.

It's unfortunate that this excludes some users but I think those users end up being a vocal minority. I think the benefit here (conversations without spam) outweighs the cost of privacy. And could one not just get a burner phone or something to satisfy the phone requirement?

Obviously there is a place in the world for FOSS services that preserve privacy or federate so you can manage your privacy effectively, but I think Discord eschews this for user convenience and it ends up being a tradeoff that a lot of people agree with.

(note that I will be experimenting with Matrix bridging and such in the near term future, because I too don't absolutely love Discord. But I can at least say I understand and agree with the tradeoffs and the intentions behind them.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately no, burner and even prepaid phones will not work.

[https://support.discordapp.com/hc/en- us/articles/36000096121...](https://support.discordapp.com/hc/en- us/articles/360000961212-Invalid-Phone-Number)

<comment><USER3> Interesting. I have an att prepaid as my actual number, works fine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I found out accidentally that discord was broadcasting when I had OBS running and when I played games and the games names as part of my status. That is extremely invasive. The last thing I want is some chat app scanning all my activity. What do they do with the data they don't broadcast to everyone I know?

<comment><USER5> Discord is for gamers, and that's a feature they expect.

You can use the web version of discord if you want, which can't collect information like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's sad that Stallman is citing a fake news website... /s

<comment><USER7> The last bullet point addresses that...</comment></comment>


Any good hardware book for software people? - <AUTHOR>

Hi all,
I am currently studying computer science only, and i would like to understand more about hardware side of things (from basic circuit to micro controllers and others). Is there any good books/lectures for such a endeavor?
Thank you very much for your help!
Jason <comment><USER2> I'm unaware of a truly great basic circuits book, but if you get one, choose one for electrical engineers. Physicists flip the direction of current flow, which is mathematically equivalent but confusing. Once you learn basic circuits, Sedra and Smith's "Microelectronic Circuits" is an awesome text for analog transistor design. Lots of people use Razavi's "Design of Analog CMOS Integrated Circuits" for advanced analog design, but I found the text full of contrived examples that don't teach you practical design principles. Most people don't go that far (senior-level EE electives), so you'll probably be fine stopping at Sedra and Smith.

Hennessy and Patterson's "Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach" is a comprehensive look at principles of computer architecture, but if you want to actually design the digital circuits beneath them, you'll want something more specialized. I used Wakerly's "Digital Design Principles and Practices." In retrospect, I found it lacking on different types of arithmetic circuits, but it was good enough for me. Keep in mind that most large-scale modern circuits will be designed using hardware description languages, so you may want to invest in a Verilog or VHDL text to continue your study but only after you have come to understand digital design. (HDLs require a different type of thinking than sequential programming languages.) AFAIK, Verilog is more common in industry, whereas VHDL is more common on government and university projects.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER3> Hennessy and Patterson's _Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach_.

</comment><comment><USER4> Petzold's "Code".</comment>


Have a website? Fix these 2 mistakes right now - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mikekhristo.com/have-a-form-on-your-website-fix-2-mistakes-right-now/

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately, I don't think it's as simple as "just use the 'url' and 'email' input types for their respective fields."

Using the "url" input type can be a problem, due to strict validation - <USER2> validator requires a URI as specified by RFC 3986, meaning that if the user enters "example.com" rather than "[http://example.com"](http://example.com"), the browser considers this invalid, blocks the form submission, and displays an error like "Please enter a URL".

This effectively breaks the form for most users, on mobile or not, so you'd need to disable HTML5 input validation on this form or field.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, however, I'm not sure I can recall a time during which someone intended to collect a URL from me but allowed just "example.com" as a valid input. I'd venture to guess that the validation enforced more often than not actually helps the site owner achieve their intended goal.</comment></comment>


Proton-size puzzle deepens - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/proton-size-puzzle-deepens-1.22760 <comment><USER2> The article keeps talking about "the size of the proton", its "radius", etc., but I would like to point out that the proton is not a sphere and does not, in fact, have a size in the normal sense, being an aggregate of three other particles; so in this case the notion of "size" itself must be _defined_ in some pragmatic fashion before any meaningful statements about it can be made.

<comment><USER3> It's true that there's a sense in which the size of the proton is undefined. But there is also a sense in which it is very precisely defined, which is the root mean square of the electron scattering cross-section. This can be measured very accurately. And that's what the article is talking about.

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

<comment><USER4> While you can measure it via scattering, it's not the square root of the scattering cross section. The radius is defined via the slope of the proton electric form factor at Q^2=0. This translates to the root mean square radius, that is the sqrt of the integral of r^2 weighted with the density, i.e. sqrt ( Integral r^2 rho(r)).

<comment><USER5> Hmm...perhaps it has been edited since but that's exactly what the parent says.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can someone who is more well-studied in physics tell me: what are the implications of this? Is it a curiosity, but of no practical matter? Or is it "Oh my god, a 4% smaller proton could mean cold fusion and jetpacks"?

<comment><USER4> The proton is very fundamental. Almost all of the visible matter around us is either protons or neutrons, and their mass is almost completely generated dynamically from QCD (forget Higgs). Its size and mass are cornerstones. Being able to calculate them from first principles would be an enormous achievement.

For me, it's mainly interesting because two different fields of physics meet, nuclear physics (electron scattering) experiments, and atomic physics (spectroscopy).

Otherwise, it's the same as with all basic science. We don't know what it is "good for" until somebody figures out how to cure cancer with it.

The paper this article refers to is in particular interesting, because it finds a value not in agreement with earlier measurements of the /same/ type. The indicated 3.3 sigma shift in the Rydberg constant, one of the most exact measured quantities in existence, is a little bit worrying, but such shifts happen more often than they should.

<comment><USER7> I'm a physics major, and still in science 20 years later, cancer research. I originally came here to ask, in general, why would anyone care about this result?

Since you asserted an answer to the question before I managed to ask, I'm happy to subordinate my question. But I will also suggest your specific answer, cure cancer, won't work. I need to kill cells, which requires a cascade of large molecules interacting at energies on the order of a fraction of an eV, or massive amounts of high energy radiation.

I can kill cells directly with high energy radiation, however, the energies for this investigation, the hydrogen 2s-4p transition, (1,2) are trivial (486 nm is visible light). Also, radiotherapy isn't really good at interrogating cell type, the current standard for new cancer therapies (immunotherapy).

(1) [http://science.sciencemag.org/content/358/6359/79](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/358/6359/79)

(2) [https://indico.mitp.uni- mainz.de/event/14/contribution/11/ma...](https://indico.mitp.uni- mainz.de/event/14/contribution/11/material/slides/0.pdf)

<comment><USER8> I don't think the parent comment meant that literally.

Sometimes we don't know what new knowledge will enable us to do until the PhDs, engineers, and technicians get their hands on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Are the old measurement method still being used today? What a wonderful oddity it would be if those measurements changed as well.

</comment><comment><USER10> My interpretation of this is that the muon measured radius of the proton is the correct one. This rules out the speculation that the muon measurement was accessing some sort of new physics which caused it to be 4% off. The key quote is here:

"Some researchers speculated that perhaps some previously unknown physics could make muons act differently than electrons. This would have required a revision of the standard model of particle physics, which predicts that muons and electrons should be identical in every way except for their masses — and might have pointed to the existence of yet-to-be-discovered elementary particles."

This is the reason for this precision research: it could give you the hint for where to look for new physics. This result, far from "deepening the proton- size puzzle", says that muons do not have any new physics. In other words, it's a null result.

</comment><comment><USER11> If the muon is 400x more massive, then is there not a f(400x) error rate, which has to be imputed to the radius of the proton, influenced by the significantly larger mass being made to act as an electron in orbit around it?

Radius being understood to be somewhat metaphorical here.

<comment><USER12> Why would the error be linear in the mass of the electron or muon? I mean, maybe it is... but it's not at all obvious to me why that would be so.

<comment><USER13> They didn't say the error was linear in the mass, only that it was functionally dependent on the mass in some manner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Slightly off topic but I strongly recommend subscribing to this amazing YouTube channel: PBS Space Time. It'll give a bit of background and I've enjoyed learning it.

[https://youtu.be/z3rgl-_a5C0](https://youtu.be/z3rgl-_a5C0)</comment>


On personal data and privacy violation: The Science Behind Tabi - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@francis_49362/the-science-behind-tabi-adc0541b5caf <comment><AUTHOR> A lighthearted discussion about what personal data is, and what constitutes a privacy violation. Going along with it (or rather the other way around) is also this comic series on Tabi and her journey to becoming personal data: [http://is.gd/TabiCom](http://is.gd/TabiCom)

Quite entertaining!</comment>


macOS beta hints at future 'Pro Mode' to boost performance on portable Macs - <AUTHOR> https://9to5mac.com/2020/01/13/macos-beta-hints-at-future-pro-mode-to-boost-performance-on-portable-macs/ <comment><USER2> Did this make anyone else think of the "turbo button" you used to get in PCs back in the day? (I know they didn't make your PC faster, but it came to mind!)

<comment><USER3> Turbo was enabled by default, disabling it made the PC slower. I think that's similar enough.</comment></comment>


Show HN: AtomStore – The missing piece for an immutable flux architecture - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/rricard/atomstore

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN !

I wanted to submit that to you because I think it is currently completely useless (It could be more of an API draft in fact).

I just wanted to create a mechanism to enforce immutability in the whole flux architecture. If I manage to get more safety, I'm sure it can get more useful. For now I just want to know if you would use it...

<comment><USER2> The only thing that would make me interested in yet another flux lib is that it had more useful, complete things built on top of it that are better than the useful, complete things built on something else.

I guess I'm saying that at this point I don't really care about the API of your flux lib. I just want an ecosystem where I don't have to reinvent several wheels to get back to the convenience tools I currently enjoy without flux. First project to give me that and a thriving community around it wins.</comment></comment>


Is this startup accelerator a scam? - <AUTHOR> https://launch.newchip.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Just got this e-mail in my inbox. Just replaced my company name.

Subject: What's Beta's post-COVID plan?

Hey Tima,

Looked into Beta today--pretty cool what you're doing.

As a remote accelerator, we've had a spike in applications recently from startups forced to go remote because of the quarantine, and much of our investor network is still investing.

We're interested in what you're building, and since many companies are gearing up for the post-pandemic economy I thought Beta would be a good fit for our accelerator.

Just to give you a quick run down:

-We run several cohorts per year for startups in the Pre-Seed, Seed, & Series A stages, investing up to $250k into the top companies. -We've helped companies raise over $150m+ in funding. -We help companies with marketing, fundraising, growth-hacking, and even exit plans in our curriculum and 1-on-1 advising. -Our program includes free resources like Foundersuite, AWS credits, Microsoft Azure, etc. -We've always been a remote accelerator well before recent events--our entire program is designed around connecting founders with mentors and investors remotely.

If you're interested, you can read more about the program and apply here: [https://launch.newchip.com/apply-now](https://launch.newchip.com/apply-now)

-Ryan

P.S. We've been working 24/7 reviewing investments for our cohort companies from our demo day, but feel free to message me if you have any questions (might take me a day or two to respond but I will!)

<comment><USER2> > _We're interested in what you're building, and since many companies are > gearing up for the post-pandemic economy I thought_ ${NAME} _would be a good > fit for our accelerator._

I´m not sure if it is a scam, but it definitively looks like spam. They have some generic template an a program that replaces the variables.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> By all accounts, yes they are a SCAM.

They may have good intentions, not sure. I talked to them, then talked to a "graduate" I happened to know. They will teach you basic stuff about raising a round, not about building a business or something people love. So they are after people who are desperate to raise money. They lure you in with "investors" but there aren't really any.

I say stay far away.</comment>


MIT Professor explains OLEDs using a pickle [video] - <AUTHOR> http://bitstream.soundandvisionmag.com/blog/2009/09/mit-explains-oleds-using-a-pickle.html <comment><USER2> After following a lot of "via" links, it seems the original post is here:

[http://techtv.mit.edu/genres/19-engineering/videos/3175-vlad...](http://techtv.mit.edu/genres/19-engineering/videos/3175-vladimir- bulovic-on-oled-displays)

</comment><comment><USER3> Here's the original pickle experiment, as documented in the DEC Western Research Lab publication: <http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/Compaq-DEC/WRL- TN-13.pdf> Worth a quick read.

No mention of the short lifespan of current OLEDs, either.

<comment><USER4> That paper claims that the light is due to an arc, and involves vaporizing the liquid in the pickle. Presumably this is not true of OLEDs. Who's right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a wonderful example of how to demo an idea to the public. Yes, yes, it's cool that it's 100x thinner than our hair and twice as energy efficient, but seeing a pickle glow just makes the video pop out.

</comment><comment><USER6> 1.7 mega-pickles

</comment><comment><USER7> great post</comment>


Why should I make a job my primary focus in life? - <AUTHOR> http://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs/18185/ruby-on-rails-engineer-desk-com-salesforce-com?a=lu6n2mY This job ad doesn't make sense. Why would you make a job your primary focus of life? <comment><USER2> "Why should 'I' make a job my primary focus?"

"You" shouldn't, but there are plenty of people who will. Everyone wakes up most mornings, and you have to do something until you go to sleep. For some people, this is it, but it could be anything else. It doesn't really matter what, unless that matters to you too.</comment>


Blockchain Phone - <AUTHOR> https://www.extremetech.com/mobile/277453-htc-talks-security-for-its-upcoming-exodus-blockchain-phone <comment><AUTHOR> "HTC has developed a concept called Social Key Recovery."

</comment><comment><USER2> yes look at [https://www.programsnow.com/](https://www.programsnow.com/)</comment>


The Rise and Fall of Silk Road - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/04/silk-road-1/ <comment><USER2> >Force was an athletic guy, and coming up through the agency he'd loved the physical thrill of bursting through a door at 6 am in Doc Martens and a tactical vest

... So he literally likes being a jackbooted thug.

Anyways the main takeaway, again, is opsec. Use delayed messages instead of chat. If for some reason you have to write to people and talk to employees, invent another persona that you use. Not just on the surface, but underneath. So you're posing as DPR, but talking about paleo and how the FDA food triangle sucks? That's your real persona leaking through. Instead, pickup someone else's point of views, location, cultural references, etc.

Same happened to one of the Lulzsec guys. "Yeah I was in jail for pot" (or something like that). Bam you just leaked like 10 bits of ID right there. But if he had said "I got arrested for heroin possession but struck a plea because I was X years old" \- you just provided fake bits. And if an agent was thinking they're so clever picking up on these bits, they've now narrowed down their search to people that aren't you.

I wonder how deep this goes - do criminals do this often enough that LE is actively trying to figure out what personal details are fake?

<comment><USER3> I've often wondered what happens psychologically to people who inject "noise" into their virtual personas to evade being identified. Does the fake persona start to leak back into their everyday personality? If you do this long term does your personal identity start to erode?

<comment><USER4> The BBC did an interesting two part dramatization on Kim Philby recently not sure if its been on PBS

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0406w88](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0406w88)

They actually showed Philbys press conference where he was proclaiming his innocence - still used as a training aid apparently

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Note how Curtis Green was raided: they delivered some drugs, then searched his house on the grounds that he was in possession of drugs. This is a standard US Postal Inspectors tactic: it was used many years ago (see [http://totse.mattfast1.com/en/law/high_profile_legal_cases/a...](http://totse.mattfast1.com/en/law/high_profile_legal_cases/aabust.html)) and it looks like it is still being used.

If you are thinking that this looks like an end-run round the fourth amendment, then you have been paying attention.

<comment><USER6> It does not seem likely that evidence predicated on an unsolicited drug shipment from USPS would survive in court.

<comment><USER7> [http://theadvocate.com/home/7031641-125/postal- investigators...](http://theadvocate.com/home/7031641-125/postal- investigators-target-drug-trade)

> "The trick is figuring out who's supposed to receive it," said Chief Deputy > Tony Bacala of the Ascension Parish Sheriff's Office, whose deputies > arrested a St. Amant man in June after he accepted a package containing > marijuana.

> From there, law enforcement officials arranged for a "controlled delivery" > of the package to Allen and later found marijuana, equipment used to > cultivate marijuana and steroids during a search of his residence, > authorities said.

They don't seem to concerned about that part.

<comment><USER8> Those weren't "unsolicited". The Feds intercepted them, and than let the delivery go through. But the packages originated with the Suspects business partners, not the Feds.

The original article is annoyingly unclear, but I'm pretty sure that's the case with Green as well. The Feds didn't send a fake package, they just followed a package they'd interecpted.

I don't really think there's a problem with this practice. Having a bunch of packages with drugs addressed to particular residence seems like reasonable grounds to get a search warrant for that residence.

<comment><USER7> The problem is, they aren't really proving they are "solicited". They are just proving they were sent to an address.

I can ship 5 packages to your address and it'd trigger the search is the standard of evidence they are using. Its how people have been swatted.

[http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/06/the-fly-has-been- swatted/](http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/06/the-fly-has-been-swatted/)

[http://www.vice.com/read/i-interviewed-the-fraudster-who- fra...](http://www.vice.com/read/i-interviewed-the-fraudster-who-frames- people-for-heroin-possession)

[http://krebsonsecurity.com/2013/07/mail-from-the-velvet- cybe...](http://krebsonsecurity.com/2013/07/mail-from-the-velvet-cybercrime- underground/)

The only reason he didn't get swatted again was because _he called the police because before it happened because he was monitoring the people_. [Hint: He has been swatted before]

This is precisely why this "standard of evidence" is such bullshit. It can be used to harass anyone and is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> >Curtis Green was at home, greeting the morning with 64 ounces of Coca-Cola and powdered mini doughnuts. Fingers frosted synthetic white[...]

>Green waddled to the door, his two Chihuahuas, Max and Sammy, following attentively.

How do the authors know any of these (useless) details? They weren't there. Is this a factual recount or fiction?

I hate it when these failed novelists try to make a run-of-the-mill story sound like an Hollywood movie. Next time, just stick to the facts and save me a couple of pointless pages of unsubstantiated claims. Is is that hard to do?

<comment><USER10> Sometimes I think I'm bonkers because I want things like this to be an ordered, bulleted list of what happened and that's all. Have you ever been in a group where someone is telling a story and wished you could hear it without all the dumb narrative flourishes, instead just "this happened, then this, then this"?

<comment><USER11> I want to do a news site like this someday.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wow. Not in a good way.

Sorry to cut ahead in the story, but Agent Mark Force is under indictment for abusing his position to commit theft and fraud. It is ridiculous to think of a long-term officer talking to the police without a lawyer. The idea that he would talk to a reporter is flatly unbelievable.

All this stuff about him sitting up and taking notice in a briefing or musing on his career or fluffed pillows is straight-up invented. Making up stories is not journalism. Reading this can only mislead people. This is a terrible take on an incredible story.

<comment><USER13> You're jumping to conclusions. It's possible the details are accurate (or at least come from the horse's mouth).

You don't know what the reporters got from interviews or when. He may well have been interviewed earlier, or advised by his attorney that cooperating with a piece that would portray his earlier actions in a positive light couldn't hurt him.

I don't know how high WIRED's standards of fact-checking are. Customarily, they'd need two independent sources for any statement of fact. (I believe the _New Yorker_ , at least, cleaves to this standard.) I suspect this presages a book on the subject.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This whole thing is so bizarre.

I went to college with Ross. I didn't know him personally, but we had a few friends in common (even looking at his Facebook page now, we have a few mutual friends, and I know others who were friends with him but don't have him on FB).

To think that something as huge and infamous as the Silk Road was created by a dude I went to college with just blows my mind.

On top of that, the article also mentions Richard Bates, who I knew personally. We were in some of the same clubs, we had a couple of classes together, and we were even friends for a short time before we had a falling out, involving Richard treating one of my best friends like shit and then treating me like shit when I tried to play mediator. After that, the aforementioned friend and I ended up coming up with a few juvenile nicknames for Richard Bates based on his name... I don't think I'll post them here, but you can probably guess, because his name is very unfortunate. By the time I graduated, Richard wasn't very well-liked... IMO, he wasn't a good friend or a good person.

As mind-blowing as Ross was, this was even more shocking, and it's still hard for me to believe that Richard, somebody I personally knew, was part and parcel of the Silk Road.

<comment><USER15> You sound like you have a knack for stumbling upon all the right people

<comment><USER16> You might find this interesting. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small- world_experiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small-world_experiment)

It blew my mind when I first encountered it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I have some questions:

1\. Recently it has been revealed that USPS photos ALL mailed articles to store the send and rec metadata. Are 3rd party shippers under the same blanket secret surveillance ?

<comment><USER18> Why would they not be? It is all meta data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Haven't even read the article yet but had a quick scroll through to see how long it was and already enjoying the graphics!</comment>


We build GEOcities-style websites for 99$ a piece - WebKing - <AUTHOR> http://www.webking.com/

<comment><USER2> I don't know anybody insane enough to buy a website like THAT for $99.

<comment><USER3> hipsters.</comment></comment>


IBM Names Itself Worst Company For Fixing Critical Software Security Bugs - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/08/31/ibm-names-itself-worst-company-for-fixing-critical-software-security-bugs/?partner=yahootix

<comment><USER2> As Bill Belichick would say, it is what it is.

</comment><comment><USER3> The question is why they don't patch the security holes??

<comment><USER4> A bug is classified as Critical based on how much access/damage the an attack could create, not based on how it would affect customers. It is possible to have a critical vulnerability that you can expect very few customers to see.</comment></comment>


Notes on The Timeless Way of Building (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://lethain.com/timeless-way-of-building/ <comment><USER2> A Pattern Language is a fascinating read, and an online copy can be found using DuckDuckGo if you persist.

It's interesting both from an architectural/societal point of view, as well as providing a great example of a wiki-like organisation of ideas and patterns that build on and enhance each other.

<comment><USER3> A physical copy can be ordered from Amazon with a credit card. Books are precious - there is nothing bad in buying them.

<comment><USER2> I completely agree, but this book tends to be more expensive than people want to commit to out of passing curiosity. I hope that people would be led to purchase the book if they find it worthwhile. I appreciate your remark!

(Though I would try to find somewhere other than Amazon to order it. Book_stores_ are also precious.)

<comment><USER3> I totally agree on all points! Sadly, in my area bookstores have more or less degenerated from their original format to gift and office supply shops selling sundry items, some of them perhaps being books. A good book shop _would_ be precious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Once crucial concept is the idea of generative codes (like L-Systems for construction/architectural design), that 's the "language" part of _Pattern Language_. It's like a poetic meter for physical expression that guides and is guided by the flow of events.

See Living Neighborhoods: [http://www.livingneighborhoods.org/ht-0/bln- exp.htm](http://www.livingneighborhoods.org/ht-0/bln-exp.htm)

\- - - -

> Something that turned me off was this book's emphasis on quality being a > mystical characteristic that requires secret knowledge to understand. As the > references to "the quality without a name" built, I wondered if I had > accidentally switched to reading the Tao Te Ching.

Ach, well, don't read his magnum opus "The Nature of Order" then. :-)

He goes further and develops a fusion of form and mysticism. It's fascinating to me that the pursuit of the intangible in arguably the most concrete art form (no pun intended) has lead C.A. to statements that smack of the Tao.

\- - - -

> I think that we, as practitioners, have an obligation to make entry into our > fields accessible and attainable to as many folks as possible, and that we > curse ourselves to an impoverished and impoverishing field if we narrow it > to folks with enough ego and resources to self-nominate against a pervasive > pressure to opt-out in self-doubt. This is, in my opinion, the book's chief > failure, and one I hope I can avoid repeating.

This interpretation seems bizarre to me, C.A. makes a very big deal of including the "end users" of a building directly and intimately in the process of architectural design. Few architects have been as radically committed to making their field accessible and attainable as he.

Vol. 1 "The Oregon Experiment"

> It describes an experimental approach to campus community planning at the > University of Oregon, in Eugene, Oregon which resulted in a theory of > architecture and planning described in the group's later published and > better-known volumes A Pattern Language and The Timeless Way of Building.

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

He literally wants the "users" to walk the site and layout the plan with sticks and even build the building themselves (he developed whole experimental building methods that normal folks could use to "sculpt" their own space!)

</comment><comment><USER5> This is one of my all time favorite books. It's actually had a significant influence on a wide variety of fields. I've heard it said that Object Oriented Programming was inspired by Alexander's book. He gave a talk in '96 on what he thought software had gotten right, and gotten wrong, about A Pattern Language:

[http://www.patternlanguage.com/archive/ieee.html](http://www.patternlanguage.com/archive/ieee.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> Brilliant book. Thought provoking. It is one of those books that when you read it again, new insights emerge. The principles apply far beyond architecture. Fun to introspect and apply socratic thinking methods to see how it relates to aspects in our modern day life.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've been working my way through this for the last few days and I am undecided whether it is too generic to be of practical use or not.

<comment><USER4> It's been used a few times (see sib comment; there's also a school in Japan) and the results are heartbreakingly beautiful.

[http://greatbuildings.com/buildings/eishin_school.html](http://greatbuildings.com/buildings/eishin_school.html)

[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Eishin+School&kp=1&iax=images&ia=i...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Eishin+School&kp=1&iax=images&ia=images)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How was your experience using parse.com? - <AUTHOR> There is lot of fuss going around why to use parse.com, is it really worth it. Assuming my app will have 100 active users, $800/month isn't quite expensive ? <comment><USER2> The iPhone client was really good and really solid. Unfortunately we had to migrate off of Parse though because of pretty consistent downtime and really slow speeds. It wasn't unlikely for Parse to go down for at least minutes at a time once a day. Migrating off of it is not easy because you have to then replace the really solid client which can take some time to reproduce some of the features you have ended up relying on.

The dashboard also left a lot to be desired. It limits how many tables it shows on the left so you end up having to hack the URL. I believe they finally offered a "fullscreen" mode rather than having a fixed width and height which is nice. Basically we would have to drop down to the Ruby client to audit the data often which isn't the worst.

Parse would also just write random blank rows all the time whenever we did concurrent writes (this is a known bug [https://www.parse.com/questions/duplicated-empty-objects- cre...](https://www.parse.com/questions/duplicated-empty-objects-created-by- concurrent-saves)). They have just moved over to the Facebook Developer bug tracking which is pretty awful as well.

Parse was really good to prototype on which was nice, but it is extremely likely if you want to launch anything to the app store and don't want to deal with downtime you have no control over you will need to rewrite it. For this reason I would suggest with just using something home grown.

<comment><USER3> Hey there, I work on Parse. This is good feedback.

Improving reliability is our #1 priority right now. The bulk of our team is solely focused on it. We've made some good progress and hope to have things in a much better place by the end of the year. You can follow it all on our status page. We try to be very transparent with post mortems and such.

That bug sounds nasty. I'll take a look to see if it's still an issue but I believe it was fixed a while ago.

The Facebook bugs flow has its pros and cons but I believe it's been great for our community on balance. We have an awesome team of folks triaging and repro'ing bugs and interacting with the community thanks to our integration there.

Drop me a note at email@example.com if you have more thoughts about the dashboard or anything else.

<comment><USER2> So I would recommend using Parse after the end of the year once they figure out their reliability. Infrastructure as a service that is in the process of improving reliability is not very confidence boosting, though.

But I do appreciate that yall have started posting on status.parse.com! That is a major improvement in the right direction.

<comment><USER3> That's a totally fair assessment.

I just mean to say that we've prioritized it above all else and are really crunching to make it a non-issue for our developers. Our traffic has exploded in the last year so we need to rework some things.

<comment><USER4> If object goes to MySQL, hire me to scale.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have had tons of problems with parse. Our app has both the iOS and website backends using it. While it is useful, and a lot of stuff is well done, when you operate at any kind of scale you keep running into all kinds of hidden limitations. We have ~30k+ weekly actives.

For example - Horrible limitations on queries. You can only get 1000 total objects at any time, batch requests are limited to 50 objects, limit of 100 count requests a minute (not sure the exact number but it's really close). Not just for each client, for your ENTIRE APP.

No good backup solution. They say they back up their servers, but backing up your own data is left to you. Which is a pain in the ass because of point one.

Awful support. I get that they have a lot of people and can't support everyone well, but I have always gotten the feeing that Parse just doesn't care that much about users. Maybe they do if you pay them a bunch of money, but until then you're on your own. Half the time my support requests go unanswered, sometimes the rep just stops responding midway through the conversation. Only recently did I ever have a good experience with Parse support (thanks Christine!)

To top it all off, apparently they silently changed the way batch API requests were counted and never told anyone. Instead of a batch request counting as 1 request, apparently it now counts as each individual object inside the request. So batching 10 objects is one http request but 10 Parse API requests. Sketchy. When you reach over 30 requests per second, they just start dropping requests.

</comment><comment><USER6> With a 100 active users at any one time? No it's not expensive since over the course of the month you would have hundreds of thousands of users. If you have 100 active users for your app you most likely could use the free/$100 option as it looks like it scales to requests per second which to be at 800 requests per second you would need a LOT of traffic. Highest I've worked with was 500 requests per second on a site handling 250,000 users a day and they only had that at peak times when they got 50% of their traffic in two hours.

I think you would need to look at your http logs to see how many request per second you're currently getting, I highly suspect it'll be nowhere near what you think it is.

<comment><USER7> Agreed. Our games are played by ~200k players a day and before we added fast- polling for live-play, our peak was around 500 requests/second. That's 65k new games a day and millions of moves - obviously not directly analogous but you get the point.

I looked at parse.com for a colleague and the pricing before you become enormous seemed quite reasonable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> From an Android devs perspective, I will say that the Parse Android SDK is really well made. The API allows for idiomatic, fairly concise, and consistently patterned code. It also adheres to a lot of the coding conventions that android devs are used to like callback functions for asynchronous operations. Set up is super easy too. The offline caching feature is really easy and useful.

That being said, if you have the skill set and time as a developer to be able to implement all of those features and a server/db component, I would. It may not be as robust or clean as the Parse API but hey if its your code it shouldn't be terrible to work with. If you do it yourself, then you get the added benefit of just having to pay for hosting of your server and db.

</comment><comment><USER9> As some people mentioned, you're over estimating the number of requests per second for the number of users you have. I would recommend writing a small application to get a feel how it feels to develop on the platform.

I personally found it to be incredibly valuable to be only writing client side code. It let me focus on my end users experience and iterate mich faster. After writing an application on parse, I found myself missing it on non parse projects. I used the parse js SDK to create a SPA.

I did think the on boarding experience could be a bit better. The docs are good, not great. I haven't had any issues with down time but my app is probably much smaller. I would definitely use it again.

</comment><comment><USER10> The downtime is extremely frustrating. They are pretty nonchalant about it as well, which is actually more of a concern than the fact that there was an issue.

Beyond that, there are some good use cases for apps to be built upon Parse and bad ones. It turns out that the thing I'm building is one of those bad use cases.

Parse appears to frown upon background processes. They have very tight restrictions on what can be done in the background and how fast it must be done.

If you have a social-esque app, at any kind of scale, fanning things out becomes a problem.

We're in the middle of packing up our toys and heading over to GAE.

<comment><USER3> Hey there, sorry to hear you're taking off.

I'd love to hear more about why you think we're nonchalant about downtime. We definitely need to improve reliability and are working hard to do so but also spend a lot of effort on writing up detailed postmortems (e.g. [http://status.parse.com/incidents/j336l474l8h4](http://status.parse.com/incidents/j336l474l8h4)) to be as transparent as possible even if it's painful.

You're right that there are some applications that are a good fit for Parse and others that aren't. We have many social-esque apps that are doing fine so I'd love to hear more. That said, we know it's not "one size fits all" and are working to productize/integrate some Facebook technologies that should make fanning out and other things way better.

Feel free to drop me a note at firstname.lastname@example.com.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have been prototyping an app on parse over the last month, I've been pretty disappointed. Mainly with regards to their database system. As others have pointed out there's insane limits on things like count queries. There is 1000 record limit on queries in general. The performance of cloudcode between the db is awful, you have to batch everything into tiny operations or risk timeouts. Skip has a 10k record limit. Their web based data browser tool seems unfinished, for instance you can't even insert into relational columns and deleting 100 records at a time locks up my browser.

This guy has compiled a good list of limitations: [http://profi.co/all-the- limits-of-parse/](http://profi.co/all-the-limits-of-parse/)

It may be okay for very simple applications but for anything non trivial or with a large db I would not recommend it. Any time saved by having a PAAS out of the box is lost trying to work around all the weird data access limitations.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm wrapping up an iOS project using Parse and wrote a Core Data <-> Parse "offline mode" / sync engine for it. From a development perspective I'd say it's relatively painless.

I did encounter a "bug" wherein certain queries can't be cached effectively which I solved by using vanilla arrays instead of Parse's PFRelation. No downsides to doing it that way (for this project) but it felt awkward. It would be better to have more consistent caching behavior.

I encountered other issues but that one is top of mind at the moment.

I have seen downtime during development. It's usually short-lived but it's there nevertheless.

</comment><comment><USER13> Parse gets you up and running crazy fast. So it's extremely useful in that way. If you're making a mobile app the speed the SDK gives you in working with a pre-built backend cannot be underestimated.

Recently I started a project with Parse but eventually moved off it ( with some pain ). The pain points for me were random requests timing out or randomly taking 20+ seconds to respond. Also the SDK wasn't as flexible as I needed it to be ( which is typically the case with any ORM ). The forums/support isn't great so if you run into a showstopper, you're pretty much on your own.

</comment><comment><USER14> I tried out their PHP SDK, intentionally willing to try out Parse on the backend side of things. I intended to use it as an ORM layer, abstracting out the data structures. However, my experience was that making multiple queries (even 3-4) would make the app appear slow. This is in no way a fault of Parse, just how it is.

So, I'd recommend using Parse with any of the frontend SDKs (JS/Android/iOS), but would warn you against trying it on the backend side of things (where PHP is the only offering so far).

</comment><comment><USER15> I have been using Parse for a couple of years now. Some of my clients are currently on it and is being used in production. The most compelling part of the offering is a well thought out SDK which helps in time to market by reducing the development time. Parse has a lot of potential but unfortunately they will need improve in some areas pretty soon. The first issue is documentation, it is bad. What makes it worse is not being able to build a large enough developer community around the product. If Parse would only listen to the developers using their platform, take constructive feedback and improve their offering it will go long way. The response from Parse when things are bought to attention is much to be desired. Part of the problem is Parse needs to solve is to partner with companies/developers to help out their customers with the common issues that people face when using their platform and concentrate on the real issues of the platform. This should also help them with their support as well, which is bad even for paying customers. I really think Parse can learn from companies before them like Microsoft, Salesforce, Apple on how to go about building a strong developer community around a platform. I also think Parse can help a wider range of customers, like make a serious play in the enterprise market if these issues are looked into.

</comment><comment><USER16> I can't comment on anything but the Push notification service, but we've been super impressed; it's so much easier having our backend just call the Parse REST API and have our iOS clients register PFInstallation objects and assign themselves to channels than it was to setup enduring TLS sessions to APNS on App Engine.

</comment><comment><USER17> I did mobile contract work for 2 years and built most of my products on Parse.

The free tier goes a long way. In my experience, if you are thoughtful with the quantity of requests you send from the clients, it will take over 1000 users to push you into the paid tier. This really depends on the nature of your application though.

As for development, there are a few nuances that you have to get right to use Parse at full capacity. First, delegate as many operations to CloudCode as you can. I do this for separation of concerns (clients should focus on displaying data, not retrieving and formatting it) and more importantly, to make cross platform applications consistent and easier to write. Also, you can change behavior on the fly instead of creating new builds of your client when you just want to change a small detail, like the number of results to return. When using CloudCode, take advantage of Parss's implementation of JavaScript promises. And avoid mixing promises with the "backbone-like" callbacks. There's a bug I've found when mixing the two that will occasionally cause the operation to finish before executing all the callbacks.

And speaking of bugs- the biggest drawback of Parse is the documentation and support. Some entries in the docs will actually be a one sentence reiteration of the title of a method. It's mind blowing how shitty some parts of the docs are. The support is even worse. Looking through the help archives (they've now given up on internal support and moved their entire support platform to stack overflow) you will frequently find smug answers from the Parse team. It's common to see a Parse support teams response get tens of downvotes. It's bad. I once found a bug in Parse's method to save multiple objects at once (if the first request failed, all subsequent requests would fail too) and getting a fix implemented was a huge pain. I had to go through Facebooks bureaucratic big reporting process only to be told the bug was a 'feature' weeks later. I resubmitted the bug with all kinds of proof and demo projects, and finally after a few months I got the email saying the big was fixed. Huge pain.

Overall, if a prototype backend will suit your needs, I highly recommend Parse. It's certainly not the pie in the sky it could've been, but it gets the job done and lets you quickly get to market.

The free push notifications, data dashboard, and analytics are some nice sugar on top too.

I will probably continue to build my products on Parse, unless I know I will need immediate scale, or a client requests a specific backend configuration.

Been wanting to try Firebase too. It's a Parse like BaaS where everything is done in realtime. Very cool, but still somewhat unproven and new. Has anyone used Firebase?

<comment><USER10> Agreed, 100%, about the tone of the "community advocates" parse has answering questions and supporting the forums (their internal + s/o). Huge turn off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm in the process of helping a client migrate a large data set (5m users) off parse due to the issues they've had. They had a fairly consistent rate of 1 in 100 requests return a ECONNRESET error in node. After over a year of haggling with the parse support team the errors finally disappeared about a month ago. They needed at least 10 fetches so you can imagine that 1 in 100 not returning doesn't bode well.

I don't have all of the specifics as to how or why the errors went away, but no changes in the client's codebase were made that relate to this.

Summary: seems brittle, tech support was useless, customer wrote huge checks to parse every month and didn't get traction fixing the problem. Even though things have improved we're continuing with the effort to help migrate the client away from parse.

</comment><comment><USER19> The new pricing is very good, and you shouldn't need to pay until you're running a lot of traffic.

I find the iOS SDK to be pretty solid. Push notifications also work really well.

I have also noticed requests fail from time to time , but it hasn't been too much of an issue.

What I don't like is the query system. What would be trivial in SQL is sometimes difficult or impossible.

I also just don't like that cloud code queries are all asynchronous. Promises help, but complex operations end up as a huge nest of promises. I just have no need for server-side code to be asynchronous.

The console has been slightly improved, but the data browser is still a bit painful. They like to break the back button quite a bit too.

I have one large app using Parse as a back-end, but otherwise I just use it for push.

</comment><comment><USER20> Aside from the price there seems to be a few bugs that have been lingering around for a year or longer with no fix in sight.

One that I have encountered is when uploading files, the progress callback jumps from 0% to 100%. [https://www.parse.com/questions/parsefile- progresscallback](https://www.parse.com/questions/parsefile-progresscallback)

The annoying thing is the documentation states: "It's easy to get the progress of both uploads and downloads using ParseFile by passing a ProgressCallback to saveInBackground and getDataInBackground." and provides a code snippet that doesn't work and hasn't worked for two years. Please fix the bug or change the documentation!

</comment><comment><USER21> Our experience with Parse has been absolutely terrible. A couple weeks ago, their servers went offline for hours in the middle of the day. When they came back up, all of the relation columns in an entire production database for one of our client's apps were magically deleted. This created a myriad of issues that we had to painstakingly traverse. To make it even worse, they have no true concept of backup and restore. Sure, you can backup and restore regular data columns and pointers, but there is no way to restore relational data through their data browser. Go ahead, try, it just errors.

If that's not enough, they constantly change the way things work on the back end. Is your app working perfectly this week? Great, it won't be next week. All of the sudden you could no longer check if an object was equal to [NSNull null] - the way I'd seen as a recommendation on their own forums multiple times, and something that was working perfectly until one day, it simply stopped working without any client or cloud code changes. This caused queries in a production app to suddenly start returning wrong data, and chaos followed.

As far as support, it has been a joke. We have reported showstopper bugs multiple times, and every time we are met with rude responses, followed by NO ONE addressing the issue for weeks, then the issue magically gets closed. I'm sorry, but if you can't backup or restore data on their platform, they probably shouldn't be spending so much time redoing your website every other week. It'd be nice if they'd fix mission critical features instead.

Lastly, the downtime and limitations. They go down literally 10 times a day for short periods. If you're an active developer, you've definitely noticed this. The least they could do is acknowledge the regular service interruptions on their status page, and have some accountability for the slowness. We will be developing a data migration tool for people who want to escape this terrible platform, and the tool will allow for migration of their data to a MySQL setup. In the time we've wasted trying to work around their countless limitations, we could have build complete custom REST APIs for our clients.

</comment><comment><USER22> My experience has been quite good with Parse. We have push notifications service for iOS and Android and both of them work as intended. Though, I feel the dashboard could be better.

</comment><comment><USER23> I tested it for a tiny project and was very surprised. It's very easy to use, though I wouldn't use it in production because of the price / lack of customizability.

</comment><comment><USER24> Same as what everybody else is saying. Solid SDK, but downtime is a major issue. Worse, some partial downtime scenarios or bugs get next to no attention for days. It may not be a "site down" situation, but it may be critical for your app. And yes, documentation is extremely sparse, with few real world examples if any.

</comment><comment><USER25> From what I've read in this thread, Parse isn't that good for production, but there isn't anything better, is that correct? If not, what are good alternatives to it?

</comment><comment><USER26> it is easy to use, but quite expensive. my debugging activities could use up 10% of the free capacity.

I thought I wouldn't afford it, so I moved away.

it's easy for prototyping, but impractical for individual developer.

</comment><comment><USER27> Great for prototyping, but I wouldn't bet my business on it.

</comment><comment><USER28> Eh. Parse had some downtime over the summer that was pretty bad. I'd recommend going another direction.

</comment><comment><USER29> That is expensive.

</comment><comment><USER30> Hi, If you want to create API, why dont you use onlinewebapi.com It is still in beta stage but looks promising Disclaimer: I am founder of this product. Feedback would be valuable. :)</comment>


Amazon Developing a Free, Ad-Supported Version of Prime Video - <AUTHOR> http://adage.com/article/digital/amazon-developing-a-free-ad-supported-version-prime/311273/ <comment><USER2> The article mentioned that in order to sign on you would need to guarantee X number of hours per week. I don't see the normal YouTube creators being happy with that, especially coming from a do whatever you want system that YouTube has.

</comment><comment><USER3> Please don't.

<comment><USER3> Looks like maybe they didn't:

> _"In the past, Amazon has also denied these reports, we should note. > [Update, 5:03 PM ET – Amazon has now denied AdAge's new report, as well]"_

[https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/13/reports-of-a-free-ad- suppo...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/13/reports-of-a-free-ad-supported- amazon-video-service-resurface/)</comment></comment>


Drug money saved banks in global crisis, claims UN advisor (2009) - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/global/2009/dec/13/drug-money-banks-saved-un-cfief-claims <comment><USER2> The article only makes sense with a certain, fixed view of money.

Money is a social contract, it's worth whatever we want it to be, and we can change the value of it at any time.

The credit crises is not a issue of money, it's an issue of confidence in the system. No confidence, no credit, no system.

During this time, any government can play magic with the balance sheet and do as they please. This is what TARP etc. was about. The issue is really just about 'who wins and who loses' in a centrally planned game of money magic.

The drug industry mightn't have been too affected, by the downturn, and 'confidence' in their economy just kept on trukin'.

But any 'crash' in a post financially literate age that is not due to a true existential shock (like an earthquake that destroys nations) ... then we should be able to handle it ourselves without the crunch. The real issue just comes down to how we're going to divide up the pie when we wave our magic money wand, and it more than likely ends up benefiting the bankers more than others.

<comment><USER3> I agree with you whole-heartedly that money is a social contract. I did disagree with how you've formed your argument:

 _The credit crises is not a issue of money, it 's an issue of confidence in the system._

 _Money is a social contract..._

You wouldn't enter into a contract with someone you had no confidence in that they would uphold their end.

Money is credit is debt is a social contract. I think that maybe you've gone slightly too far in the opposite direction of money being some fixed thing. It represents confidence, and we can't just make it whatever we want, although we can bend it in a lot of ways.

Interestingly enough, with this view of money, it does make sense that at the pinnacle of failure of regulated, government-sanctioned contracts, you might find people (in aggregate) turning their confidence towards organized crime, with a proven record of organizing massive operations to move products.

<comment><USER2> We can make money whatever we want. Fixed currencies that are backed by gold, surely, we can't 'make' gold ... but that's an artificial limitation.

I'm not saying we _should_ make it what we want, but we have to remember that's what's at stake.

Organized crime may have the advantage that contracts are ruthlessly enforced ... so you can't have the totally corrupt value chain as you had with housing, wherein there was fiction from the house buyer, to the lender, to the VP of mortgages, to the bundlers, to the buyers of said bundlers, and to all the people trading on top of that.

Also, there are no derivatives or complex financial instruments riding on top of the drug trade, so the 'house of cards' would have a lot less falling to do if it were to come apart.

But you can't build an economy of killing people who don't pay you or sell to your customer ...

<comment><USER4> The "artificial" or rather "natural physical" limitation on gold is what give it value in the social contract in the first place, so you can't just make it what you want. If you remove the limitations, its very hard to form the contract - but not impossible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Every time I read about this it makes me think back to the video of the cartel depositing perfectly sized boxes at a HSBC bank.

<comment><USER6> Well HSBC ( Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation ) was created by the british after the opium wars to launder opium money out of china to the west. If any bank is adept at procuring drug money, it's HSBC.

It's a shame how little we are taught about the opium wars in the US. It fundamentally changed the world. Some historians describe it as the greatest wealth transfer in human history. The capital extracted from china is what funded some of the largest banks in the world today, the industrial revolution in the US/britain and political dynasties well into the 20th century.

Of course it left china in shambles, but the opium trade was the true gold rush of the 19th century.

[https://www.nytimes.com/1997/06/28/opinion/the-opium-war- s-s...](https://www.nytimes.com/1997/06/28/opinion/the-opium-war-s-secret- history.html)

<comment><USER7> Can you put some numbers on that? How much money was transferred, in today's dollars?

<comment><USER6> It's impossible to say. We can realistically only see the broad strokes of history.

1\. We know that the west was running a significant trade deficit with china. To such a degree that we finally decided war was the only option. We know that soon after the first opium war, china started running a trade deficit with the west.

2\. We know that economic impact was so significant it collapsed much of chinese society and led to the greatest catastrophe in the 19th century. Up to 30 million people died.

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

Putting that into perspective, up to 20 million chinese during ww2.

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

3\. We know that half of the largest western banks were founded in the mid 1800s ( HSBC, Wells Fargo, BNP Paribas, Santander, Deutsche Bank, Toronto- Dominion, Royal Bank of Canada, Societe Generale, etc ). Doesn't mean that all the banks were financed by opium money but that immense capital accumulation occurred in the west making it possible to found a large number of banks.

4\. We know enough capital was accumulated in the west to heavily industrialize. Though we credit britain with starting the industrial revolution in the early 1700s, it didn't become significant until the mid 1800s when britain and primarily the US went on a major industrial campaign.

5\. On the flip side, we know that china didn't have the capital or stability to industrialize.

6\. We know opium money produced at least two US presidents in short time.

As for getting a specific number. I don't know how we'd even get that. We know it was significant enough that it completely tilted the world in favor of the west and ruined china for 100 years.

<comment><USER8> Sources on the Presidential funding? Not that I'm in disbelief or even mildly surprised.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> my armchair finance question isnt whether this is good or bad, but is it going to work again during the 2018/2019 recession? Call me paranoid, but I fully subscribe to the inverted yield curve theory of recession.

A big question is cannabis earnings...With canada's legalization, and most of the worlds decriminalization of cannabis, the drug trade cant be operating at the levels of 2009 profit. heroin and harder drugs are not as popular as cannabis and i suspect the earnings curve is flat as is evidenced by the increased introduction of carfentanyl in the supplychain.

</comment><comment><USER10> Imagine if access to banking was a fundamental human right

<comment><USER11> Imagine if british banks would be prosecuted for all the crime they help finance.

<comment><USER12> Well, access to transactions is not the same as access to financing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Someone watched Ozark?

<comment><USER14> Ozark is a 2017 TV show while the article is dated to 2009.

<comment><USER15> Yea but they mention this in Ozark, so parent might have meant someone saw the show and looked this up.

<comment><USER13> Yep</comment></comment></comment></comment>


3 Injured, One Critically, in Fire at Google IO - <AUTHOR> http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2017/05/18/3-injured-one-critically-in-fire-at-google-io-conference/ <comment><USER2> 3 injured, one with life-threatening injuries, and Google isn't cancelling the event..? Wow.

Google's statement:

> "We're thankful to the fire department for putting it out and ensuring > everyone's safety."

Seems a poor way to phrase it given that 3 people were injured and one might die from their injuries.

> "No attendees were hurt but regretfully, 3 event staff were injured"

Focusing on how no attendees were injured sends the message that the staff don't matter. "No one was hurt, everything's fine. Oh, but 3 event staff were injured, one critically." This is terribly insensitive.

> The press release additionally said that the Google developers conference > would continue as scheduled.

Overall this looks like a hasty and not thought out reaction to a crisis. Very poorly handled.</comment>


Letter of Recommendation: Glass Bricks - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/11/magazine/letter-of-recommendation-glass-bricks.html <comment><USER2> It's weird how he talks about glass blocks like they are an endangered species. You can go on alibaba right now and get literal tons delivered to your port of call for approximately $1 per brick, in an incredible quantity of styles and colors. Have they fallen out of fashion? Sure, but buying your own wall of bricks will do nothing to stop that particular trend. On the other hand, perhaps writing an article about it in the NYT will.

</comment><comment><USER3> These glass bricks are a lot more fun when you put controllable LED strips in them and treat each one like an individual pixel. :)

</comment><comment><USER4> On Brick Tehcnology - Frank Lloyd Wright explored the use of concrete blocks made from locally available materials in the '20s. He made 4 "textile brick houses", one of them being used for a set in Bladerunner.[0]

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

<comment><USER5> Also for "Hercules" with the governator.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Now we can produce them for cheap...

[http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2011/06/markus-kayser- builds-a...](http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2011/06/markus-kayser-builds-a- solar-powered-3d-printer-that-prints-glass-from-sand-and-a-sun-powered-laser- cutter/)</comment>


Beautiful and powerful dashboard: Ant Design Pro 2.0 released and introduce Umi - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/ant-design/beautiful-and-powerful-ant-design-pro-2-0-release-51358da5af95 <comment><USER2> awesome job

</comment><comment><USER3> cool job!

</comment><comment><USER4> cool</comment>


Private School Is Becoming Out of Reach for Middle-Class Americans - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-19/private-school-is-becoming-out-of-reach-for-middle-class-americans <comment><USER2> Is this not by design?</comment>


Why You Need to Ring the Freaking Cash Register - <AUTHOR> http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2013/07/16/ring-the-freaking-cash-register

<comment><USER2> What's infuriating is that over here in Europe, the focus on making money early on with a startup is considered the biggest drawback of the VC and investment community.

"VCs are so risk adverse here, they expect you to get some revenue in the FIRST COUPLE OF YEARS! Man, why can't we be more like the Valley?"

I've long said this is a feature, not a bug. It's refreshing to see this article. Maybe some over here will take note.

<comment><USER3> Try East Coast (US) VC's and angels. "Risk averse" doesn't even start to describe some of these folks. We have angel investors who want you to have paying customers and then still want to do 6 months of "due diligence" before making a _seed_ investment.

<comment><USER4> Had this happen to us in Texas. We had paying customers, and customers who wanted to pay that couldn't afford us (needed to nail down pricing), but we weren't profitable quite yet. Angels wanted nothing to do with us until we were profitable, so that sucked.

<comment><USER5> Why would you need angel investment if you were profitable? It seems like the terminology has shifted a bit or something.

<comment><USER6> Same reason you raise any type of capital, growth.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, but is it still angel investing?

<comment><USER4> Angel investing means that they buy equity but don't have input on decision- making. VCs buy equity but _do_ have input on decision-making (usually sitting on the board). I meant it in that context. If that terminology is different between Texas and the Valley, then I'm not aware of it.

What do you think angel investing means?

<comment><USER5> I'm not exactly an insider, but I took it to just mean early and small. The idea being that you needed an 'angel' just to get started.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Taking cash is _hard_ and leads to an anxiety response.

Selling means you're out there. You're putting your idea on the market and hoping someone buys. If they buy, great. But if they don't, then it's back to the 9-5 grind and the 'change the world' party is over. That's hard to digest for many.

Like in 2000, startups are again becoming the middle income 'phd'. A way to avoid having to face reality, even for just a few years.

Test early, Test often.

</comment><comment><USER8> I am so glad Suster said this. Hell, I would have been glad if any of the most visible VCs said this.

I get the sense that people really do believe that tech startups are actually a different beast, that the basic rules do not apply, and that we really are not building businesses as the rules just don't apply to tech startups... they are different.

We should be calling bullshit on that. The core rule should be that revenue should be higher than costs.

It seems so dumb to say, as it is obvious. So how did we end up in a place where people will tell you with a straight face not to worry about revenue, far better to grow (increase costs) and increase valuation.

As soon as you are in that game it seems that the goal has shifted to the next funding round, the next inflated valuation, and not to have built a sustainable and possibly high-growth business.

The exit should not be the end and your goal. It is the goal of the VC, and your paths may be the same for a while, but before the VC you need to find the right ingredients for a new business, and after VCs have exited you need to have set your company on a path of sustainable growth.

Growth is important, but n times no revenue is still zero. Revenue should be our most important metric, and growth should be second to that.

<comment><USER9> "So how did we end up in a place where people will tell you with a straight face not to worry about revenue, far better to grow (increase costs) and increase valuation."

Because once you start taking money, that is your valuation, more or less.

You've got 10,000 users using your service, growing at, say 30% annually. Once you start charging, say, $30/month, you've put hard numbers to things, and there's a financial framework to work within. Until then, you can keep projecting $x/year, because it could be anything.

<comment><USER10> I see how "playing the game" makes it seem that way, but projections are worth about the same in my hand as a fart. If you have enough VC to keep going and you want to be the next twitter, I wont say you shouldn't, but it seems common sense that you would want to start making money so that you know, you start making money.

<comment><USER9> I completely agree, but 'making money' and 'increasing valuation' really aren't the same ends at all.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, and maybe I want to say something along the lines of "your valuation should be more closely tied to your actual ability to make money." I will ponder it more, thanks for your comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> " _the trade-off between profits & growth_"

There is a financial metric I frequently calculate for private equity firms called zero growth return which allows one to partially disentangle the steady-state business's working capital requirements from investment. The value in figuring it out is knowing, as a manager, how much capital you have to "play" with for capital investment purposes, whether that be servers or devs.

<comment><USER3> I was not familiar with the term "zero growth return" until I saw you use it here, and some Googling led me to this book:

[http://www.amazon.com/Valuation-Measuring-Managing- Companies...](http://www.amazon.com/Valuation-Measuring-Managing-Companies- Finance/dp/0470424656/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374071260&sr=1-1&keywords=valuation)

Just out of curiosity... would you think that the kind of material on valuations contained in this text (or similar ones) would be of value to startup founders, especially vis-a-vis negotiating with investors? Or is it all stuff that doesn't come into play until later, when you're dealing with private equity or trading on Wall Street exchanges?

<comment><USER11> I remember tearing that book out of the box from Amazon and cramming from it for an internship interview as a college freshman, hoping the interviewer would think me at least a junior (it worked). Recommend it for the interested.

That text is not for start-ups - it too precise to be tuned to no track record. I believe start-up founders should focus on understanding their waterfall, revenue models, and the intersection: cash burn projections. Less for negotiating with investors than for guiding decisions.

<comment><USER3> Thanks. It sounds interesting, I may pick up a copy sometime, just to help round out my knowledge of areas that I'm less than strong in. As a developer, I'm admittedly kinda weak on the financials / accounting / valuation stuff. I feel like I need to go take an accounting class or two. Guess I should look and see if there's anything good on Coursera...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's bizarre that this type of essential advice is news to so many founders (including me). It's understandable from the VCs perspective though. Since they're mostly in it for huge exits it's rational for them to prefer companies with zero revenue, but good traction, over profitable (or close to profitable) companies with the same traction. Simply because the close to profitable company will have much more leverage than the zero-revenue one. In fact, a zero-revenue company who has been aiming at a VC Series A will often be forced to accept the term sheet at one or another VC whereas the profitable or close to profitable always can downsize, get a loan etc if they're not comfortable with the terms they can get at a VC. All this is because profitability isn't to the VC that much of a hint of long-term mega success as some growth metrics might be.

Related to this, it's a shame that the VC terms are often not well understood among first-time founders. If they were, I'm sure more people would try the revenue-route.

For a founder, it all boils down to how much this possible revenue will harm overall growth. In some cases (Instagram etc) it really does. In most other cases, it does not (or very little). But the zero-revenue route is easy to decide on since it's less work. "Yeah, let's take sales and all that later on" is easy to say especially when endorsed by the VC industry.

</comment><comment><USER13> I might want to add this advise to coders also: You fix some bug in some free software, to help some other company. Write them a small invoice, don't be shy of asking for money. You win a customer. Coders like me are cursed by infinite ideas, vs limited time. My approach is to wait till more then one possible customer for the idea exists, and the first one offers enough money to pay the prototype. Its then just a question to ask the others to pay a similar price to get into production break even. And any future sale is nearly passive income from old software and maintenance contracts.

Ring the freaking cash register is even more important for lifestyle business, even if it feels as if every customer is your good old friend.

</comment><comment><USER14> The thing that is killing me the most is all of these free companies have changed consumers expectations. While there used to be narry a complaint about paying $49.99 for software at CompUSA, people write me ANGRY emails that I had a nerve to charge anything for a premium version of my software (which costs $29.99 per year), and I still offer a free version! Try charging $.99 cents in the app store and wait for all the furious reviews.

<comment><USER15> If my reading of patio11's business of software stance is accurate, I believe he'd say these irate emails are actually helpful signals to you that these people are not a market you want to bother serving! Because they have so little invested in understanding your product and making the most of it, they need to compensate with volume and vitriol. It's better to focus on people who more strongly need and want what you are selling and are willing to signal that with $$.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is this still that big a problem? From my vantage point, everyone is ringing the cash register. B2B and B2D is huge right now (in SF at least), and all but the most naive of entrepreneurs (that I meet, but I do meet a lot of entrepreneurs) have a B2B focus, with enterprise on the mind.

How many people are still making go-big-or-go-home consumer/social/mobile startups?

<comment><USER17> YMMV, but I know a few companies, many in mobile-but-not-games, who have X00,000 or Y million MAUs/downloads/etc and are afraid of cursing that by monetizing. A couple are in your neck of the woods.

No points for predicting my advice to those of them who have asked for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I snickered at "This is certainly one Path you can take if you have the right background." Note Path with a capital P.

Burn.

</comment><comment><USER19> "As an investor that's a no brainer. Hmm. Let's see. Should I write off my $2.5 million or put in 16% more ($400k) to see if we can get to break even and maybe find more money and/or find our magic growth curve?"

That's the "sunk cost fallacy" ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_costs#Loss_aversion_and_th...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_costs#Loss_aversion_and_the_sunk_cost_fallacy)). The $2.5M is already gone and so the ROI should be evaluated on whether the outcome is better worth putting in the $400K (while also looking at the opportunity cost).

<comment><USER20> In the context of that point in the article I think he was just framing that 16% as easily being in the range of the previous investors. He was noting how that $400k would have some legs when augmented with sales and another $2.5+ million round wouldn't be needed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> > if we monetize too early we will scare away our nascent marketplace and not > grow as fast

What about slight, unobtrusive monetization? You don't have to put up a paywall, focus completely on revenue, and ruin your entire site. Add in a tiny premium feature that a small number of users will buy to pay the bills.

<comment><USER22> Can you share any good examples who use this approach?

<comment><USER23> Sounds like Reddit would be an example (though someone else would have to mention how well it's working for them).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> We've been focused from early on about figuring out a repeatable sales model and though it has been a grind, we are now at a point where we are closing sales consistently week to week. We have 25 customers, all acquired via this repeatable sales model.

In our meetings with seed stage investors, we're repeatedly compared to PORTFOLIO_COMPANY_X that may have 3-4x _free_ users, often acquired after the funding.

The other disappointing thing is that most blog coverage regarding traction is often very misleading. You get the real story when you actually talk to the founders. For example, one of the companies that we really revere apparently over $20,000 in sales before they built a product according to the blogs. Then we found out that all of that $20,000 was _commitments_ from the founder's _existing_ rolodex, not via a repeatable sales model. In our eyes, that is an important detail to know; but for the blogs and the mainstream, not so much.

I've made this point before on a Suster post and I will say it again: entrepreneurs for the most part look at the market and adjust. If the VCs keep preferring 4 free users to one paid even in enterprise, they'll keep getting more of that.

That said, I really really dig Mark's example conversations in this post where he clearly admits that the VC and the entrepreneur's interest may not always align on this topic.

</comment><comment><USER25> Dear writers: please stop mincing oaths and just write "fucking". Not "freaking", not "f*%$ing", not "fscking".

It's not any less classy to write "fucking" than "freaking", and the latter just makes you sound like a jackass.

Write what you mean.

<comment><USER26> I hear "freaking" often enough in spoken English that I don't think anything of seeing it in written form. I can't say that I've heard "fscking" said aloud, which almost surprises me, but I bet some folks here have.

Ref: [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fsck](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fsck)

<comment><USER6> I say "Eff Sucking". I'm unsure if I go it from "this fucking sucks" or fsck

<comment><USER25> "Eff ess checking"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Are you managing a business or are you starting something? If you're managing a business, ring the cash register and we'll all thank you for getting a jump on the inevitable. If you think you're starting something, roll the dice. The manager will cash out shortly.

From another comment: "Growth is important, but n times no revenue is still zero. Revenue should be our most important metric, and growth should be second to that."

If your goal is revenue, and you have no revenue, you've done something wrong. But not everyone's goal is revenue. If it were, the open source community would be a graveyard of used-up ideas and remixes.

Revenue is great for companies, but useless for tools. Tools don't need revenue, and if you're building tools, don't try to get paid. People buy hammers, but the inventor of the hammer isn't getting rich. Doesn't mean people don't want hammers.

Revenue should be the most important metric for people who want to make money. That's inarguable. Are you one of those people? There's nothing wrong with it, but that doesn't make it a meaningless question. Answer truthfully, and your path (lower-case p) is illuminated.

<comment><USER28> > Revenue should be the most important metric for people who want to make > money. That's inarguable.

Revenue is a good start but at some point you need to consider profit. And yes, I have been in a room where someone proposed making up the per-unit loss through greater volume (on physical goods).

<comment> a-priori I hope, for their sake, that they were banking on some sort of economy of scale where increasing volume would decrease per-unit costs and therefore negate the per-unit loss...

<comment><USER28> They may have been hoping that the economies of scale could work but they were arguing with people who knew they wouldn't. There may have been a language gap though I don't think that was all of the problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I can't find the link but wasn't there an article, either by Ycombinator or about Ycombinator, that directly contradicted this article. The gist of it was that a VC firm isn't really looking for already-profitable companies that can assure a nickle-and-dime cut of steadily-increasing revenue. The idea is to invest in 10 companies with a high-risk margin, and the one company that (statistically) takes off will earn such incredible revenue, magnitudes greater than any reliable and stable business could hope to earn, and that will pay for the investment lost on the other 9 which, being high risk, will not make a return. The underlying philosophy was that if it seems like a stable, reasonable business idea, then anybody and everybody could have, and would have, thought of it already, and the potential for fantastic growth is just simply not there. They'd rather pay for someone's quirky, crazy startup on the 1/10 or 1/20 chance that it will take off, as the return from that will be so great that it can pay for itself, pay for the other failed high-risk investments, and then keep on paying.

<comment><USER28> I don't see the contradition between the articles. It says why VC's do OK when startups go for the big time but that it isn't always in the companies interest.

I think it should also depend on whether you have genuine (low acquisition cost) exponential growth. If you can show that growth I think funding should be possible without revenue and riding the growth might be worthwhile but if not you really need to be about alternative approaches.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> > This is certainly one Path you can take if you have the right background.

See that capitalization? freudian? sarcasm? dog whistling? :)

</comment><comment><USER31> You can choose to write eloquently, without swear words.

Or, you can go full bore and write titles and content with actual swear words. You can write "Fuck".

Or you can go a third route, and use the word "freaking", "frigging", etc., and make yourself sound like a tool.

Don't do that.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm all for "ringing the cash register" personally. I've said my bit on this before[1], but I'll just re-iterate my position... I'd rather build a business that's designed to actually make money, by selling a product to people for money. BUT... I don't see any conflict between that and a desire go "get big". I see no reason you can't "go big" the old fashioned way... steady, sustainable growth over a period of time. I mean, neither IBM nor Wal-Mart started out as huge megacorps, keep that in mind.

[1]: [http://www.fogbeam.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-point-of- startup...](http://www.fogbeam.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-point-of-startup-is- to-make-money.html)

</comment><comment><USER32> What people often don't see is the loads of money that flow around in a bubble. Yes, maybe Startup Community is a bubble right now. But still there is a lot of money. And still a lot of people get rich by playing these "unrealistic" rules. The bubble isn't bad until the last moment and for those guys who don't see it coming. In my eyes, the solution is not playing a completely different game, but playing better.

</comment><comment><USER33> Key metric appears to be that 99.99% of startups will not be the former FB, Stanford Grads, Suster is talking about so, there's a higher probability that they will succeed if they actually make money. No? If someone isn't willing to pay for your startup, are they really a quality user?

</comment><comment><USER34> A former boss put it as: "We are not the Red Cross. We are here to make money."

</comment><comment><USER35> We agree that's why we created Bellhopr, a new start up that will literally play a cash register bell sound for your team anytime you have a new customer or sale.

It only takes one line of JavaScript to make work, and for the price of a coffee you too can "Ring the Freaking Cash Register".

[http://bellhopr.com/](http://bellhopr.com/)

<comment><USER36> A+ for actually building something that shipped, but in my opinion that idea seems really stupid. Most companies have the developer capacity to build an idea like this quickly, even for the arguably little provided return it offers.</comment></comment>


NaNoGenMo - Generate a 50,000-word "novel" from FanFiction.net - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ianrenton/NaNoGenMo

<comment><USER2> This is a single entry into NaNoGenMo, which is something I started this month as kind of a programmers version of NaNoWriMo. It does not necessarily have to do with fanfiction.net: the Github repository where I'm hosting the event is here:

[https://github.com/dariusk/NaNoGenMo](https://github.com/dariusk/NaNoGenMo)</comment>