9 Gigapixel Image of the Milky Way - <AUTHOR> http://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1242a/ <comment><USER2> Zoomable: <http://www.gigapan.com/gigapans/117375>

<comment><USER3> Official zoomable version: <http://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1242a/zoomable/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hundreds of billions of planets, and this is just our one small galaxy.

Just given the sheer scale of the universe, I think we almost have to be foolish to think that we're the only life forms that exist in the whole thing.

<comment><USER5> It's also foolish (no pun intended) to think that the Universe was meant to have life. We tend to believe that life is what gives meaning to all that vastness but Cosmos doesn't need a reason for its existence, it's just there.

Furthermore it's not about just life but intelligent life. Life in form of microbes could be all around the Universe. But intelligent life could be extremely rare or it could be just too early and we could be the first of many species to come. It's not egoistic to think so, it doesn't make us feel unique and special, more likely it makes us feel depressed thinking that we are the only ones or the first of many to come.

If you take the Drake equation for example and tweak a couple of pessimistic numbers you realize it doesn't take long before you come to the conclusion that life is extremely rare. A very good implementation you can find here: [http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120821-how-many-alien- worl...](http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120821-how-many-alien-worlds-exist)

I would also like to point to the Fermi paradox. Given the aforementioned Drake equation many scientists have made estimations about the number of civilization in our galaxy. Estimations vary from a few dozen to the thousands. But if there were even one advanced civilization in the galaxy they should already have made contact somehow. That is the basis of the Fermi paradox, you can find more at Wikipedia: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox>

<comment> stargazer-3 It is also foolish to take Drake equation seriously or assume that we know what intelligent life is. Drake equation should be used for demonstration purposes only. As a side not, it is good to keep in mind that all we did for ETI search was looking out for a human-like radio signal with a narrow bandwidth, which is probably not the best way to transmit information through the Universe.

<comment><USER5> If you read the link I gave for the Fermi paradox you'll see that this is one of the dozen explanations on why we haven't been contacted yet by an alien civilization. So, yes, we might be trying to contact the wrong way.

Actually though it's not exactly wrong, we managed to capture once a significant signal that could be of alien origin. It's called the wow signal and you can find more here: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow_signal>

The basis of the Fermi paradox though isn't about what we did/do to contact alien civilizations but the fact that even if one advanced existed in our galaxy they should have already found us even if we weren't looking for them. Which brings us back to the conclusion that there might not be advanced civilizations around and life could very well be in the beginning.

As for the Drake equation it's not a law of physics. It is just a way to estimate the number of habitable planets in the galaxy and from there to make an assumption of the number of alien civilizations able to make interstellar contact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is amazing. When you can zoom in on a bright speck and discover that it's actually a giant cluster of stars, and then continue zooming in on that cluster until it doesn't seem dense anymore, it actually lends context to the static photos of space we've all seen before.

</comment><comment><USER7> Very cool. Does anyone know why some areas are somewhat blueish. And what about the very bright stars?

<comment><USER8> The colors are a bit arbitrary. The sensor that takes these images only records intensity and not color. Different filters are placed over the sensor to record different wavelengths. Not all of these wavelengths are visible light. The colors are a mapping of these wavelengths to the visible spectrum.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It'd be REALLY cool if someone could turn this into a screensaver, where it progressively pans and zooms in/out. Then when you're mind is just about to be blown at full-zoom-in, it should rotate like a boss and slap a new perspective of life into your life.

</comment><comment><USER10> Are there some well known features on the picture?

</comment><comment><USER11> Here's a similar thing also made from infrared images of the milky way [http://djer.roe.ac.uk/vsa/vvv/iipmooviewer-2.0-beta/vvvgps5....](http://djer.roe.ac.uk/vsa/vvv/iipmooviewer-2.0-beta/vvvgps5.html)

</comment><comment><USER12> abstract <http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2012A%26A...537A.107S> with link to paper (i think; still downloading paper).

update: the paper is fairly large and doesn't have pretty pictures (it has lots of technical plots, but i imagine it's not what most people think of as a fun read). also, this image is more a "public view" of the data; the paper is for the underlying survey.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm not sure if this is by the same photographer, but the image used in the Sky Survey app is pretty incredible as well. <http://skysurvey.org>

I'm really looking forward to being able to combine detailed visuals like these with the rift 3d headset or like.

boom!

</comment><comment><USER14> Why is the milky way (I assume that's what we call the fat strip) not centered? Is that just a projection thing? Does the edges of this image wrap?

(I know shamefully little astronomy)

<comment> stargazer-3 What do you mean by 'not centered'? Imagine you are standing on a field of corn. To you, the field looks like a line encircling you, although it may look like a square or circle from above. There's your projection thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Ok, where do I get the 9 Gigapixel version? :-)

P.S. Yes, I know I don't really need that much resolution, but still.

<comment><USER16> > P.S. Yes, I know I don't really need that much resolution, but still.

I call bullshit ;-) as at 15" retina is 4Mpix. In a short time span we'll have 20~30" retina)class at that size and they could very well be 9~15Mpix. Of course billion pixels is way too much, but it means that it will scale to the future (I'd love to have a wall-screen with this)

Anyway, multiple links are on the lower part of the rightmost column, available from 1024x768 to full res in a variety of formats.

<comment><USER17> How does ~275Gpix sound? [0][1]. I did a stint at UCSD for two months as an undergrad, and sat next to this monster while they were playing with it.

It might sound stupid having that much resolution, but it really is cool to be able to see that much information in front of you. It's especially good if you have a number of people standing around who are interacting with various data sets.

And if you want one yourself, it is all COTS hardware, and you can start with just a few screens then add later [2].

[0] <http://www.calit2.net/newsroom/release.php?id=1307> [1] <http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/newsrel/general/07-08HIPerSpace.asp> [2] [http://optiportal.org/index.php/Main_Page#How_to_build_an_Op...](http://optiportal.org/index.php/Main_Page#How_to_build_an_Optiportal)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> How long until we have a macbook with 108,500 by 81,500 resolution?

</comment><comment><USER19> ... in a lightbox!

</comment><comment><USER20> It's really really big. What gets you is that it's really there, go outside and look up. All those stars, all that energy running down, without anything harnessing that energy.

There it is, running down like a forest fire. What will it turn into next? I see the universe as an egg. And it's designed to become a single super sentient entity someday that makes our sentience look like inanimate energy. Our sentience will be the inanimate matter building blocks for something we can't comprehend.

We will comprehend it as much as a carbon molecule comprehends the human mind.

</comment><comment><USER21> If you zoom all the way in, it's blurry (I know, I waited for the tiles to load). There's no single-pixel detail. That means it's not really a 9-gigapixel image, you can easily reduce it by 2x2, and make it a 2.3-gigapixel images. Save space, bandwidth and time for everyone.

<comment><USER22> I found the same thing, but see chaosmachine's reply above. The unofficial version actually works.</comment></comment>


Is Premium Mobile Gaming Viable? - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/08/is-premium-mobile-gaming-viable/?ncid=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29 <comment><USER3> At least part of this is the amount you leave on the table by not doing freemium.

Freemium costs more to make, and to run, but the returns are higher - if it works. The logic goes that the more you spend (generally on branding/marketing/external IP) the surer a bet it is. This does mean investments are huge (tens of millions to get started now) but returns are potentially massive.

Frankly, given the exposure Monument Valley received, such as being used by Apple and others in ads, the revenue is disappointing. Steam and the console indie markets are much safer.

Part of the problem here is that freemium has devalued the mobile games experience for the 90% of players that play but don't pay. They now largely won't pay.

<comment><USER4> Because there is no viable "try-before-you-buy" experience on mobile - <USER2> entirely to the refusal of Apple and Google to build in such systems - "Freemium" is the new "Shareware."

It turns out, however, that putting an absolute time-lock on a game that is removed with a single IAP is far _less_ lucrative than building in a recurring consumable purchasable IAP model that some players will buy over and over.

So developers were forced in to a marker without a viable shareware solution, where downward market tends still pushed the initial value to $0 (as was shareware) with little recourse except IAP, where an even better model was discovered.

So I not only disagree with this article, but I believe IAP isn't quite as evil as it's made out to be (except in a few rather blatantly manipulative examples).

Source: I own a successful casual mobile game development company and follow gamer market trends closely.

<comment><USER5> As a potential customer and not a developer, IAP can be a great implementation of that same "shareware" model or it can be the equivalent of many old arcade games where the only confounding factor to progress in a game was how many quarters you fed in.

By far my favorite way to find and buy games is to have a free app with the first (x) levels and then a single IAP of $1-10 depending on the game to unlock the full package.

That way I get to see if I enjoy the game and if it runs well before hitting that "buy" button and I'd imagine this helps to get people to try out a title in a marketplace full of free options.

The only issue from a my standpoint is how so many games are designed to be seriously unplayable (or at least un-fun) unless I keep paying a dollar or two every day. Whether it's time limits (less annoying) or needing in-game currency to progress, so many games start to feel like the only thing holding you back isn't skill, practice, or puzzle-solving but the fact that you haven't spent $10, $20, or $50 on IAP.

I can only imagine that this has proven to be the more profitable setup since that model seems to have taken over the Apple and Google app stores and I doubt developers would be doing it if it wasn't for a reason.

Still sucks for somebody like me who has no problem paying $5-10 (I mean, come on...it's the equivalent of eating lunch at a restaurant instead of packing one at home) for a game as long as I can play a few levels first to see if it's something I'd be interested in. Instead I end up buying the few I can find like that and when I finish them, it's back to the pile of time-limited freemium titles I have installed and cycle through any time I want to kill more than 5 minutes screwing around on my phone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If Microsoft would incentivize Steam game builders to make their products touch-friendly, I would rush to buy a Surface... The only thing worth looking at on mobile at the moment is Vainglory.</comment>


Israel Says That Hamas Uses Civilian Shields - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/24/world/middleeast/israel-says-hamas-is-using-civilians-as-shields-in-gaza.html

<comment><USER2> Buried in the article:

 _There is no evidence that Hamas and other militants force civilians to stay in areas that are under attack — the legal definition of a human shield under international law._

<comment><USER3> The debate on _Democracy Now_ between Noura Erakat and Joshua Hantman was pretty chilling in the same way.

NOURA ERAKAT: ...As to the human shields, Israel continuously and repeatedly uses this mantra of Palestinians used as human shields. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Israeli Breaking the Silence, a group of former soldiers, have all testified to the same—

JOSHUA HANTMAN: Hamas admit to it. Hamas say they do it. They're proud of it.

NOURA ERAKAT: —to the same allegation—reports about this same allegation—and I encourage listeners and viewers to look up those reports—and have disproved that Palestinians have been used as human shields. Hamas might ask Palestinians to be human shields, but are Palestinians robots? Do they not have minds and hearts, and care for their children? Why would they—why dehumanize them and accuse them of mindlessly listening to Hamas, to whom they protest against? This is a dehumanizing discourse, and we should reject it vehemently.

Hantman's entire side of the interview looked like a studied attack to try to white-wash deaths with pay #6732B from some intelligence playbook. It is pretty interesting. I'd encourage people to give a listen or watch the video

[http://www.democracynow.org/2014/7/11/gaza_debate_as_palesti...](http://www.democracynow.org/2014/7/11/gaza_debate_as_palestinian_deaths_top)</comment></comment>


Proof of stake – an unexpected catalyst for the next crypto bubble - <AUTHOR> https://4thquadrant.io/business-model2/the-catalyst-for-the-next-speculative-crypto-bubble/ <comment><USER2> The article is both assuming knowledge of how blockchain work but also seems to stem from poor comprehension of how blockchain work.

For example at no point are consensus algorithms challenge explained (protect against attacks by having the attacker expense a rare resource).

Furthermore, Proof-of-Work is associated with potential gain (if you don't do PoW due to no network for example you gain nothing i.e. opportunity loss) while Proof-of-Stake is associated with potential losses (if you do nothing, your stake is slashed, i.e. you actually lose something). This is contrary to

        Yields on a Proof-of-Stake network represents a passive income avenue for a spectrum of individual/retail investors all the way to institutional players. This differs from the Proof-of-Work mechanism, most popularly represented by Bitcoin, which consumes electricity (mining) to secure the ledger. [...] a chicken and egg problem perhaps sped along by the more consistent rewards associated with Proof-of-Stake.

i.e. You lock your stake to secure the ledger (can't use it to earn on higher yield/risk products), it's also for security first and not for earning and lastly, the rewards are not that consistent either as you can lose your stake while in PoW you may lose electricity but you don't lose your investment in mining equipment

</comment><comment><USER3> > providing yields for no inherent value due to lack of use case, appears more > like a Ponzi scheme than investment in a nascent technology.

I think people are trying to assign a narrative to DeFi and its use cases, when buy and large it's nothing more than a new financial instrument. Calling it a Ponzi scheme or trying to attribute its longterm benefits are both, in my opinion, meaningless because for the time being there is a purpose (being a financial instrument) that it's serving.</comment>


Show HN: The Java Web Scraping Handbook - <AUTHOR> https://www.scrapingbee.com/java-webscraping-book/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey Hacker News,

Today Pierre and I are releasing the Java Web Scraping Handbook for FREE!

And by free we mean you don't even have to give us your email address!

Some backstory about the book: I originally wrote it in 2018 after working in different web scraping projects for startups (Mint.com like) and banks.

The first four chapters are language agnostic, and the last can be applied to any language, so don't be scared if you don't know Java!

By the end of the book, you will know:

\- How to scrape any website

\- Just enough XPath / Regex / DOM knowledge to be dangerous.

\- How to deal with Javascript-heavy websites (Single Page application...)

\- How to programmatically perform actions on a website behind a login form

\- Parse information inside PDFs

\- Bypass captchas

\- Deploy your scrapers in the cloud

I'm happy to answer any questions about the book :)</comment>


Markov Chain Monte Carlo and the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest - <AUTHOR> http://mewo2.com/nerdery/2013/05/12/eurovision-2013-first-predictions/

<comment><USER2> I love Eurovision. I don't really care for most of the music (some is enjoyable, though), but it's so fun trying to predict who will vote who.

Europe is so predictable...

<comment><USER3> But its not the same since Terry Wogan retired from hosting it here in the UK. He always did a very good job of joking about the entries while slowly getting a little tipsy all night.

</comment></comment><comment> iso8859-1 That Swiss 2004 song sure is comical. I'd think a song that bad would gain a cult following and actually get some points.</comment>


Show HN: Open-source web app for playing hearts with friends - <AUTHOR> https://www.playhearts.cards/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN,

This past weekend, I had an itch to play hearts with three of my friends. Other sites were asking me to make an account, download an app, or play with strangers/computers. I threw together my own version where all you have to do is send your friends a link. There's aren't many bells and whistles, but let me know if something is missing--I would love to build this out.

I've open sourced it ([https://github.com/zchr/hearts](https://github.com/zchr/hearts)). It's a Node app with a Vue component for managing game state. State is shared between you and your friends with Socket.io. It's my first time using Vue/Socket (and publishing a web app, really), so I look forward to hearing thoughts on the stack.</comment>


Amethyst – Rails inspired web-framework for Crystal language - <AUTHOR> http://codcore.github.io/Amethyst/

<comment><USER2> This looks fun, and it's nice to see third-party software starting to appear for Crystal.

While parts of it do indeed appear to be inspired by Rails (the routing and the controllers in particular), it feels like it's much more at the Sinatra level right now - by which I mean that Rails, out of the box, does an awful lot more than this, but Sinatra does a similar amount.

</comment><comment><USER3> Amethyst is getting towards a useful base feature set really quickly.

When I looked at it about a week or so ago it didn't have the View portion of MVC, so I'm hoping the project keeps on going with the speedy addition of Rails-like functionality.

As for Crystal itself (a new statically type-checked, compiled, Ruby-like language), I look forward to using it more when its a little more complete, as the language is still in flux, and only at version 0.7.x.

I did some playing around with Crystal at the weekend, mainly by investigating what it would take to convert a couple of pure Ruby only gems to Crystal. I was stymied somewhat by the Crystal standard library still being a work in progress, for example classes such as Array still need some work if the eventual aim is to provide a similar set of methods to Ruby itself (e.g. the pack method was missing) , and bindings for common libraries like zlib don't seem to exist yet. However, that is no criticism to Crystal - its simply due to the newness of the language, and will undoubtedly improve as more people start using Crystal and contributing.

</comment><comment><USER4> Not to be confused with Amethyst, the tiling window manager for OS X.

[https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst](https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst)

</comment><comment><USER5> What are the actual benefits of using Crystal and Amethyst vs. Rails and Ruby? I kinda missed the whole Crystal hype when it was originally announced.

<comment><USER6> There is no hype (yet). Crystal as a language is still very much a work in progress.

That is why Amethyst is kind of a big thing. It is not an alternative to rails (again: yet), but as a real world application it may help shape and advance Crystal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> TIL: there's Crystal programming language. However it looks more like Sinatra to me. Cool work tho.

</comment><comment><USER8> To me Crystal is like Ruby 3.0.

<comment><USER9> I'm generally interested in new languages, and when reading about them, I always try to figure out to whom or which contexts they cater to. With Chrystal, I don't know. Is it just "someone who digs the Ruby syntax but prefer static typing, would enjoy more efficient target code and would like to call C directly"? That doesn't seem like a strong value proposition to me, especially with optional static typing (maybe?) coming in Ruby 3.0.</comment></comment>


The Invisible Bank: How Kenya Has Beaten the World in Mobile Money - <AUTHOR> http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2012/07/04/the-invisible-bank-how-kenya-has-beaten-the-world-in-mobile-money/ <comment><USER2> (Kenyan here) I think that the fact that Kenya did not have such a large banking industry helped M-Pesa succeed. By the time the local banks realised that it threatened to eat into their business, it had become too big and popular to beat. We had the local banking association petition the Central Bank to introduce regulations on it, the cost of compliance to which would have made it a lot more costly than it is, and subject to a lot more bureaucracy. Luckily, the proposal did not go through.

<comment><USER3> At the same time... Vodafone doesn't have any banking regulations like deposit insurance does it? That seems like a big deal to me. What happens if Vodafone goes out of business? What happens if they decide to just keep the money and shut down the service?

These are low likelihood events, but then, so was the financial collapse of 2008.

<comment><USER4> The financial collapse was caused by highly-leveraged banks relying on complex opaque models to "manage" risk while making loans and purchasing financial assets.

Since neither Vodafone nor Safaricom are engaging in lending, borrowing or betting on assets those risks don't exist. It is more akin to pre-paid credit cards than traditional banking.

<comment><USER5> I don't think you can know what Vodafone does with money in it's care.

<comment><USER6> If they were doing those sorts of things, they'd presumably be regulated as a bank in Kenya.

<comment><USER7> Like most start-ups the established players underestimated the capacity of the new kid on the block to eat their lunch[1].

By the time banks ganged together to lobby against the service it was too late [2].

[1] [http://www.moneyweb.co.za/mw/view/mw/en/page292681?oid=55103...](http://www.moneyweb.co.za/mw/view/mw/en/page292681?oid=551037&sn=2009+Detail&pid=287226)

[2][http://kenyaaudit.blogspot.com/2008/12/banks-now-gang-to- fin...](http://kenyaaudit.blogspot.com/2008/12/banks-now-gang-to-finish-m- pesa.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I read about halfway through this article thinking it sounds good, but they used insubstantive marketing language terms like "new innovations", "big ideas", "safely and securely", "flexible adaptable technologies", and "dreaming big but thinking locally" so many times that it gave the game away. In addition there are no down sides described, the alternatives are demonized, and there is no real technical explanation. It's indistinguishable from a full page magazine ad. It is clear is a paid placement by advocates for a concept, and not a real article from a journalist. I then glanced up to see what site is running this sort of puff article and was genuinely surprised to see National Geographic is now doing this sort of thing. I guess the journalist needs some practice so he can learn to hide his tells in future product placements.

<comment><USER9> I didn't get that impression. The company I work for sells services in the area of mobile payments, and M-Pesa really is the "holy grail" that many companies worldwide are trying to imitate. I visited Kenya in April, and it is everywhere. In the middle of nowhere along the roadsides you see little green shacks with the M-Pesa logo where you can collect money that has been sent to you. However, M-Pesa is not without its downsides. Safaricom is stagnant on adding features, and getting a "pay bill" number for your business so that you can accept payments from customers is a lengthy and somewhat complicated process. On the other hand, this opens new doors for entrepreneurs to fill in the gaps.

<comment><USER10> I don't think the argument was that M-Pesa isn't something real and substantive, it's that the article was a poorly done puff piece. Honestly, I got as much from your one paragraph write up about M-Pesa as I did from the original article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I previously founded a credit and savings bank using mobile money in the Philippines. M-Pesa is a fantastic success in Kenya but replicating it's success in other countries has been very difficult. There are several reasons for this: 1) There were no alternatives when it was launched, eg Western Union. The best way to send money home to your family was literally to trust it to a bus driver, you can imagine how well that worked 2) The regulators were very 'soft' touch and allowed Vodaphone to launch a service which was illegal in many other countries (for money laundering reasons) 3) Vodaphone had an 80-90% market share in most segments, this prevented the 'cross- network' problem

I believe that until android (or other) smartphones become affordable to poor people, freeing innovation from the carriers, we won't see M-Pesa's success get replicated around the world. Then we will see rapid growth shortly after that tipping point is reached.

<comment><USER12> Stereotypical POV about Africa(that bus driver shit). There was Western Union & Moneygram before M-pesa. M-pesa was just better(cheaper, faster, cellphones everywehere,).

<comment><USER11> There was no Western Union in Kenya villages before M-Pesa launched...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> In Africa, many homes do not have electricity but increasingly everyone has a cell phone. Prepaid cell phone minutes have become a defacto currency in many African countries. Africans are in many ways more acclimated with using privately issued digital currencies (such as M-PESA)...

<comment><USER13> Where do they charge their phones? Are portable hand-powered generators common, like wind-up radios?

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.viewchange.org/videos/kenyan-solution-for- chargin...](http://www.viewchange.org/videos/kenyan-solution-for-charging- mobile-phones)

<comment><USER14> video2text: They extend the light machine on bicycles with just enough circuitry to make it suitable as a charger.

<comment><USER15> Hooking up a bicycle dynamo to charge your phone is a popular african hack: [http://www.ted.com/talks/william_kamkwamba_on_building_a_win...](http://www.ted.com/talks/william_kamkwamba_on_building_a_windmill.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Can anyone explain how it actually works?

I am guessing you give vodafone 10 dollars, they give you a txt with a random code anyone with that random code and your number can request the 10 dollars to come off your account and onto theirs

but ...

What is the strength of the code ? What is the security around the transmission to your phone? It sounds bruce schneir might no like it

<comment><USER2> You register with Safaricom (The Telco) with your Identification Card Number/Passport Number. You get a 4-digit PIN to use as a password. After this your phone number is your 'account number', in a manner of speaking.

An M-Pesa application comes installed as a SIM application (I don't know the technical details, I access it from the "SIM Toolkit" menu in my phone) on all Safaricom SIMs. The application allows you to Send money, check your balance, and pay bills to registered corporate accounts. You need to know the account PIN to perform any of these actions.

To deposit money in your account, you need to go to an agent (these are numerous all over the place) and pay them. These are registered business who can deposit money in your 'account' (a normal customer cannot deposit money directly into another person's account), and you get a Text message confirming that the transaction was successful, and your account balance has been updated. When you receive money, you receive a text message, and you may withdraw it from any agent. You need photo ID to withdraw money from an agent.

\-- edited for clarity.

<comment><USER17> Is the value purely stored in the SIM? ie does this all work without any form of cellular connectivity, or is there some sort of synchronization over cellular.

How do they deal with rogue agents? Presumably a rogue agent can claim you have handed over a large sum of money but it would take a while to discover they have lied.

<comment><USER2> No value is stored in the SIM, the transaction record and balance is stored in Safaricom's servers. Agents have a registration number prominently displayed, and all transactions are immediately confirmed by SMS to both parties. I think agents also need deposit a (significant) amount of money to get registered. Daily transactions for individual accounts are capped at 70000 shillings (about 900 dollars), so is the balance in the account. It would be difficult to carry out fraud of any significant scale with the system.

<comment><USER17> So that means all transactions have to take place where there is cellular connectivity then?

I live in the US - our connectivity is highly volatile and connectivity concerns are still a major part of the cellular consumer experience.

<comment><USER18> I was on the lookout for lions in a wildlife park in Uganda while checking my email... It's all possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Does anybody have a term for the phenomenon where a technology achieves enough critical mass among early adopters for network effects to arise only to have the technology improve as it matures so the late adopters wind up leapfrogging the early adopters?

I see this all the time, a simple example being self check out machines. A chain in Atlanta adopted them in the late 90s (this is from memory, could be later) and they were fairly common in the city in early 2000s. They were awful/clunky to use but 5-6 years later I'm in the middle of nowhere South Carolina and find the process to be comparatively painless on an obviously newly-installed machine. Meanwhile the original technology is still installed/operational in the city.

<comment><USER20> Last mover advantage?

Sort of like magnetic strip credit cards in the US vs chip cards in Europe. Or the reasons Eastern European countries have the highest broadband speeds, having never dealt with investments in ISDN and other networks.

<comment><USER21> I am not sure cards are a good example.

In the UK at-least we had magnetic stripe and signature cards everywhere for years and years.

When chip and pin was introduced all the merchants had to get chip and pin terminals and all card holders had to get compatible cards.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> That is a very interesting article, I love to see the innovation in these scenarios. I also kept clicking around on articles there, it seems national geographic has some very good/interesting articles. I particularly enjoyed this one involving pay as you go solar power, for lights and phones: [http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2012/04/17/pay-as- yo...](http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2012/04/17/pay-as-you-go- sunshine-how-solar-energy-and-mobile-phones-are-powering-the-developing- world/)

</comment><comment><USER23> It look like the fees can be summarized as ~2% (with a ~$1 minimum) split between sender and receiver with the full fee covered by the sender for out of system transfers. [http://www.ifc.org/ifcext/gfm.nsf/AttachmentsByTitle/Tool6.7...](http://www.ifc.org/ifcext/gfm.nsf/AttachmentsByTitle/Tool6.7.CaseStudy- M-PESAKenya+/$FILE/Tool+6.7.+Case+Study+-+M-PESA+Kenya+.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER24> I thought the Philippines had cash transfer and payment by sms since 2006 (article is 2007) my friends use this so it is not vapour.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/19/news/19iht-20oxan- PHILIPPI...](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/19/news/19iht-20oxan- PHILIPPINESMobile.7959871.html)

<comment><USER25> While this Phillippines SMS mobile payment service looks superficially similar and 7 years older, it is much more tightly linked to existing financial infrastructure, including bank accounts (optional) and cards (required).

Kenya's M-Pesa only requires a mobile.

Both country services require registration with government ID documents.

In addition, what has been partly astonishing about M-Pesa is the incredibly rapid growth in its use. Within 8 months of its launch in April 2007, it had over 17 million subscribers (50% of the population), i.e. on average over 2 million subs per month for a non-Internet service!

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm not sure if it's exactly the same thing, but this sort of service has been available in Pakistan for a while now - <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kL-- YSnFPo>

</comment><comment><USER27> M-pesa is awesome, it's been intriguing to me that at Kiva we've been able to do mobile payments for microloans in Kenya long before they will be easy enough to transact in the U.S.

</comment><comment><USER28> With this system, you're giving your location, real social graph and financial transaction data to a single company. I think I'd pass.

</comment><comment><USER29> Was I the only one avoiding this article because they thought it's about Kanye West?

This trend of third world countries taking a technology and running with it doesn't surprise me one bit. It's much more difficult to disrupt an established industry with new technology than to adapt a mature technology to create new industries.

</comment><comment><USER30> I thought I read a story recently about how the Kenyan system was being plagued by mistrust. I'll see if I can find a link.

Edit: can't find the story.

</comment><comment><USER31> It's a halwa network. It moves debt. It's not at all innovative. The only reason we don't do this here is because it's illegal.

</comment><comment><USER32> In the us you'd have to pay $30/mo for unlimited payment via mobile phones in a 2yr contact.

And it would only work for the first $1000, then it will cost extra per dollar.

And it doesn't matter it works over means already provided/charged by the telcos, they will go out of their way to make it billable.

</comment><comment><USER33> No offense, but Bitcoin already did this.

<comment><USER34> I don't know much about Bitcoin, but I think the distinction is in how many people are using the service. A big part of that seems to be platform compatibility. These people are able to use it on their cheap Nokia cell phones rather than needing a computer to use Bitcoin. The impression I got from the article was that payments are done via text message, so you may not even need a data plan for it.

<comment><USER35> I would agree, totally different use-cases.

Also, M-Pesa was launched in 2007, Bitcoin in 2009. So the "already" is a bit imprecise, too.</comment></comment></comment>


Planet Earth makes its own water from scratch deep in the mantle - <AUTHOR> https://www.newscientist.com/article/2119475-planet-earth-makes-its-own-water-from-scratch-deep-in-the-mantle/ <comment><USER2> There is russian book called "Unknown Hidrogen"[1] and reflection on it in [2]. In short Earth core is much like iron + hidrogen. Hidrogen lefts core and travels to crust. Hidrogen bounds with oxygen and gives water.

I thing Google Translate will translate article well enough.

[1][https://www.ozon.ru/context/detail/id/3277980/](https://www.ozon.ru/context/detail/id/3277980/) [2][http://lah.ru/text/sklyarov/earth- text.htm](http://lah.ru/text/sklyarov/earth-text.htm)</comment>


The Virtual HQ for Your Remote Team - <AUTHOR> https://branch.gg/ <comment><USER2> Here's a free alternative that doesn't require participants to sign up: [https://gather.town/](https://gather.town/)

I doubt it has as many features as Branch, but it's still useful (and fun to try!).

<comment><USER3> The art style is better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Preface, I recognize this had it's place. Just sharing my view.

As someone who has spent years participating in online worlds and communities in the form of videogames, you would think I would be stoked by stuff like this. But it is pretty scary to me. It is one thing to participate in an online community for fun. To think my contributions to "real" life is to be represented digitally is terrifying.

The day we put on VR headsets to have a virtual meeting will be the day I move to an esoteric cabin in the woods and live off of spiders and disappointment that the world fell apart.

The trouble is that I know it is fun, and I know it can work well. I believe in the technology. But it is only satisfying because I have a real life to work on too. Working on software is already an ephemeral experience, this would be my life jumping the shark.

</comment><comment><USER5> Looks a lot like [https://www.sococo.com/](https://www.sococo.com/)

</comment><comment><USER6> I think the font makes the copy look strange.</comment>


MySQL so busy becoming PostgreSQL it forgets its community - <AUTHOR> http://blog.milkingthegnu.org/2008/04/mysql-the-perve.html

<comment><USER2> "Why not release a proprietary licensed PostGreSQL under the name MySQL 7.0?"

ROFLOL. YES, we'll skip a whole major revision, we have so many improvements we thought it worth 2 revisions.

and yes postgres is 99% better than msyql. The only thing I can think of bad is lack of in place updates (which someone is working on).

PosgtreSQL ftw.</comment>


Nigeria has started issuing e-passports to citizens - <AUTHOR> https://www.iafrikan.com/2019/04/29/nigeria-has-started-issuing-e-passports-to-citizens/ <comment><USER2> Good progress. Following suit here in Kenya. One thing that is saddening though is the fact that these contracts are done by mostly contractors who we don't know what their intentions are with our data (at least for Kenya). We have all seen the 'bad-actor' moves in China already. What about our economies, our people, our data.</comment>


IBM object storage leave openstack swift for S3 compliant API - <AUTHOR> https://www.ibm.com/blogs/bluemix/2018/05/end-marketing-object-storage-openstack-swift-paas/ <comment><AUTHOR> I really do not understand IBM move here. Openstack swift is an opensource standard, interoperable & available through different cloud provider (IBM/OVH & co).

Now, they're putting themself behind AWS and loose a way to differentiate their service (i'm still waiting for hardlink / move object APIs)</comment>


Smallest Linux desktop PC, smaller than an apple (fruit) - <AUTHOR> http://www.handlewithlinux.com/smallest-linux-pc

<comment><USER2> The image of the setup with the keyboard and the monitor gave me an idea: Open a coffee shop/internet cafe type place where people could bring tiny computers and/or cell phones in and plug them into a docking station attached to a keyboard and a monitor.

<comment><USER3> I'll bet that's the future of the desktop/notebook, when cell phones become a little more powerful.

<comment><USER4> The hard bit isn't even the hardware. It's the ui. Phone ui and desktop ui going are always going to be different, so how jarring is it going to be to have two different uis on the same machine?

<comment><USER5> If you have a Mac and an iPhone, it's all OS X. Just have the system start up the "Desktop" window/UI management system when you dock the phone. Lots of Linux users are familiar with the same machine, with the same OS having 2, 3 or a dozen different window managers.

People are already used to having one set of UI conventions on their phone and another on their laptop/desktop. Doesn't seem to jar too many from where I'm sitting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You can get this thing for $200. Not quite as small, but it has a 1.6 GHz Atom and it will handle streaming of HD video.

<http://amzn.com/B002O3W44Q>

If I were Apple, I'd be releasing an upgraded Apple TV using the tech that went into the iPad. (But trade off a bunch of speed for efficfiency.) Otherwise things like the Acer AspireRevo are going to eat away at sales of the Mac Mini and Apple TV.

<comment><USER6> Speaking of the Atom I have noticed that just about everyone had put out little mac mini type computers except that they use the Atom. The mac mini on the other hand is pretty much a laptop in a box. It uses a mobile core 2 duo which results in better power usage and _way_ better performance. Why hasn't any manufacture out there created a mac mini clone? I spent last weekend trying to find one to buy, but in the end it looks like I will be buying a mini to put Linux. The closest I came on the PC side was to get a laptop and turn off the screen.... I was honestly expecting it to be easy to find a PC version of the mac mini.

<comment><USER5> The thing is, a modern laptop in a box is _way_ more power than lots of typical users need. If you're not a gamer, all you really need is something like an Atom and some hardware assisted video decoding.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _desktop_?

You know... You could hook up VGA and a couple USB ports to a microcontroller, run Linux and call it a desktop computer, but you would be lying.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, because how could anyone use a computer without wobbly windows!?

(Go back in time 20 years, and multiuser timesharing systems had lower specs than this. And a lot of good CS work was done on these systems; UNIX written, Emacs written, Vi written, gcc written, etc.)

<comment><USER9> Well, and then there was Firefox. Which simply won't run on old hardware, at least not in a current version. And not at all to mention YouTube or anything a more powerful computer requiring site. (GMail anyone?)

As much as I love keeping old computers alive using Linux, the nowadays common way using the web puts the spoke into the wheel.

<comment><USER8> _the common way using the web puts the spoke into the wheel_

Wheels fall apart if you take the spokes out. Pretty sure this was not the analogy you were looking for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It says "300MHz Atom", which would be a nonsensical clock rate, the manufacturer's website says it is actually a 300MHz MIPS cpu. That isn't a lot of horsepower by desktop standards of even a decade ago.

</comment><comment><USER11> I like these small devices, but as a practical setup, a good choice is just a very small Ubuntu laptop with a large external monitor for when you happen to be working at your desk. Inexpensive, not a lot of wires, and portable when you need it.

</comment><comment><USER12> <http://www.linutop.com/index.en.html>

</comment><comment><USER13> Looks like the wearables.stanford.edu stack from a few years back.

</comment><comment><USER14> That's pretty funny

... but basically useless</comment>


Could Quantum Computing Kill Copyright? - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/could-quantum-computing-kill-copyright-110731/

<comment><USER2> No it couldn't, a judge is not a program and law does not work like engineering.

I highly recommend reading this essay, it answers a very similar question. <http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/lawpoli/colour/2004061001.php>

<comment><USER3> This should really be required reading. Far too often geeks try to classify legal issues using technical classifiers, or even worse, to solve them with technical means. Arguments that make the assumption that the same bits produced in different ways should have identical legal status are very flawed!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't think copyright is _compatible_ with the Internet. It's time for everyone to realize that. Times change, and some laws become obsolete. It's not the first time it has happened and it's not going to be the last. Then a couple of decades later you look back at them and realize how absurd they have been. Not all industries have copyright, and they seem to have done pretty well so far without, most likely much better than they would've done _with_ it.

These are some good videos on this, if you haven't seen them already:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q25-S7jzgs>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL2FOrx41N0>

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Plm1ulrp2s&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Plm1ulrp2s&feature=related)

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

<comment><USER5> I have some pretty strong feelings about IP (I oppose software patents and I think copyright terms are too long) but I suspect that IP will become more sophisticated and pervasive. Robin Hansson has a post about what he calls "IP+" ([http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/07/ip-like-barbed- wire.ht...](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/07/ip-like-barbed-wire.html)). I don't like the future he paints but it is better than today's setup.

A large (and growing) part of the world's population will want some kind of guarantee that they'll be compensated for their time and they'll be pushing for some kind of IP. Whether or not this will be better or worse for society, only data can tell us. But regardless of that, people want to optimize for what they think is best for themselves and their offspring and will vote on the basis of that.

<comment> muuh-gnu > people want to optimize for what they think is best for themselves and their > offspring

Copyright is a form of for-profit censorship. There are always people who will vote for censorship and slavery in order to maximize the exploitation of other people fot the benefit of themselves and theif offspring. the fact that there are always people willing to support and profit from opression does not mean that everybody else should not condemn, fight and try everything they can to end it.

As of now, copyright is not democratically supported. It is directed and enforced against the majority for the benefit of a influential minority, but it was never, anywhere on this planet, supported by any kind of democratic vote by the people. It originated in a dictatorship and has been spread behind closed doors and shielded by various party mechanisms from a direct popular vote, because the probable result of this vote would be a "no".

The turmoil around ACTA, where even talking about the negotiations was a no-go disguised as "national security" to prevent any opposition to even form, has shown that the politics around copyright is as undemocratic as ever.

I do not feel any moral obligation whatsoever to obey such a authoritarian law clearly not backed by the majority of my peers. Copying and sharing stuff is simply not _wrong_ as long as the majority of my peers does not condemn it. I will never let a authoritarian, profit-oriented minority legislate my morals.

<comment><USER6> Guess what, by violating copyright you're _enabling_ the very people that seem to outrage you so. If you really cared so much about this, you'd put your time and money where your mouth is and support the people working outside copyright.

More likely, you're just another pirate stealing food from the dinner table, all the while complaining how bad it tastes and how small the portions are.

<comment> muuh-gnu > you're just another pirate stealing

Keep talking yourself into it, and keep calling people with different political opinions names, if it makes you more easily cope with the undemocratic authoritative nature of today's copyright.

<comment><USER6> In what way is it undemocratic? If you're talking about the continual extension of copyright terms to prevent older works from falling into the public domain I agree. Copyright is also the bedrock of the GPL.

<comment> muuh-gnu > In what way is it undemocratic?

I wrote about this in my original post, you can read it there. Copyright is a new, unnatural form of "property" and only a minority has such a kind of property and it is enforced against the majority. But the majority was never asked whether they want this new type of property to be enforced against them, it has just been postulated as "beneficial" a few centuries ago and then enforced. No one, never ever on this planet has ever voted about it, it has since it's beginnings been enforced top down, and never legitimated bottom up.

You cant just go out and define a new type of property which resides inside others people communication and then enforce it by monitoring their communication, without ever asking them about it in the first place. Of course, you can do it, but then its an authoritative, not democratic feature. But do not expect those of us who believe in democracy to feel morally obliged to obey somebodys profit-oriented authoritative laws.

<comment><USER6> You could say the same things about any kind of property. Did we ever have a formal, democratic vote on land ownership?

As more and more people transition to work producing only digital information, do you really think that protections for that work are going to become _less_ popular?

<comment> muuh-gnu > do you really think that protections for that work are going to become less > popular?

I dont know. What I do know is that the majority of my peers does _not_ support IP in its current form...

> Did we ever have a formal, democratic vote on land ownership?

...while the majority of my peers _does_ support the notion of ownership of physical items. I also personally do not know anybody who doesnt, so the motivation to push for a vote on something where the result is "obvious" is relatively low, but I of course wouldn't oppose it.

> You could say the same things about any kind of property.

So you in principle do agree that the public should be more directly involved in the creation of laws which it is required to abide by.

The whole concept of trial by jury of peers implies that the peers had a role in the creating of the law, and that they do not merely decide whether a law created by a authoritative, undemocratic body, which the majority of them might not even agree with, has been disobeyed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yet another article that completely misses the point of copyright. What's the article trying to say? That you can create all images, therefore you own the copyright?

As a poster on that page says, this will explain it:

<http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23>

<comment><USER8> There is an interesting IP minefield in the fledgling area of procedural generation. That is, if you can define a procedural texture that looks the same as another procedural texture (but different generating rules), are you breaking copyright? Can you patent the algorithm that generates a tree?

<comment><USER9> I agree that that one is an interesting angle. I think the quantum-computing angle is unnecessary buzzword intrusion, though; most (all?) of the same difficulties can be posed with procedural-generation systems using classical computation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> tl;dr : a quantum computer could create every single pixel permutation of an image, which you could then claim copyright for.

However, fundamental difference: in a qc this data is represented by a super- position of states. Which is fine, but I would argue each image has not been individually created. And to write out 9.2 x 10^600,000 images is going to take a fair amount of disk space (and time). Which is what I'd imagine you'd have to do to claim copyright over them all.

<comment><USER3> If you create a 500x500 pixel image on your computer, you own the copyright on that image. But copyright isn't like patents or trademarks with "prior art": If I also make an image through some means (take a photograph, paint a picture, etc) that ends up being identical at 500x500 pixels, you don't own the copyright on my image.

<comment><USER10> Makes sense, I'm sure you're right - which further invalidates the article's supposition!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The article quotes 9.802 * 10^602059 possible images. And that storing these would require _massive storage_.

Excuse me? The number of atoms in the observable universe is estimated to be 10^80. This idea is obviously complete nonsense, quantum computing or not. Next thing they'll be telling us that they'll find SHA256 collisions by simply trying 2^256 messages...

</comment><comment><USER12> The Law isn't just going to roll over and admit defeat. Copyright will continue to exist so long as the minority it serves is louder than the majority it hurts. If we want to protect our tubes, at some point we in the Internet industry are going to have to get our hands dirty in DC. The only way to beat them is to out-lobby them, and that's a long game. Google's taken a few tentative steps, but it will be at least a decade before the tech lobby is anywhere near as powerful as the entertainment lobby. Even then, we have to ask ourselves: Is it worth it? Do we really want tech lobbyists writing laws? Do we want Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Oracle deciding what's best for tech and encoding that in law? Or are we better off, in the long run, simply staying faster than the law and letting them legislate against whatever we were doing a year ago?

<comment><USER6> The question of whether copyright serves the minority or the majority is going to depend very much on who you ask. If you ask the typical hacker, who tends to see digital works as generic stuff in the "tubes", copyright is annoying inefficiency. For people that create that content though, copyright is what makes it possible for them to put food on the table and, more importantly, focus with the attention that good work requires.

If it becomes impossible for people to make a living creating digital work you're soon going to have a super-efficient network of tubes full of nothing but shit.

<comment><USER12> The history of technology is one of disrupting old industries. The death of quality, be it content, hand-made goods, or mom and pop shops, has been heralded many times. Each time, somebody manages to find a way to make good products.

If the movie industry refuses to sell movies that aren't on plastic, the Internet will obsolesce them. That will not spell the end of video as entertainment, as it will leave a void to be filled by somebody smarter and faster. MP3s didn't kill music, despite all the dire warnings. The news is struggling, but sites like huffpo have shown you can make money giving away news. There's no reason someone can't come up with a model whereby they can make money making good news.

Copyright, as it was intended, is fine. I make something, that means I can sell it, not you. I'm okay with that. I'm not okay with limiting users, and I'm certainly not okay with suing them or charging them with crimes. The laws, as they are being written, enable copyright holders to pursue the latter course of action as an alternative to innovating and adapting. That, I am not okay with. There's nothing stopping anyone from making money with quality content on the Internet, save the confines of their own lack of imagination.

<comment><USER6> I agree that the music & film industries have done dumb, counter-productive things and I agree also agree that the way forward is to provide better and more convenient service, like Netflix.

But I also hear a lot of people use these arguments to rationalize violating copyrights, and I think that's wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Ignoring the technology bit, the legal side of the article is naive speculation.

</comment><comment><USER14> I can't make all possible 256x256 images, but I COULD describe the space with an algorithm that would make them all. If I walk into the patent office with the algorithm, and tell them that if a new person comes into the patent office, you have to run my algorithm to see if my algorithm hasn't already defined the picture, obviously of which it has. then I can sue them, and take them to court for infringing on my inventions.

Brilliant! Someone do this please.

<comment><USER15> Patents and copyrights are different things. The linked article is about copyrights, not patents.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: AngelList jumped the shark? Feedback please. - <AUTHOR> http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/angel.co#

<comment><AUTHOR> To get clear: please no discussion about Alexa's relevance.

I've just the feeling that not too many seriously try to raise money on AngelList, anymore and prefer the classic way over intros and that being on AngelList too long w/o any success can even backfire on your startup's reputation.

What you think?</comment>


Google's Numbers Every Developer Should Know - <AUTHOR> http://surana.wordpress.com/2009/01/01/numbers-everyone-should-know/

<comment><USER2> Please don't post a link to your own blog when all it does is link to another post. Just link to the original.

<comment><USER3> Anyone know where the original is?

<comment><USER4> That's my blog, but I didn't post it here. The original link is in the post: [http://moderator.appspot.com/#15/e=c9&t=10c](http://moderator.appspot.com/#15/e=c9&t=10c)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> He may have meant this when he created the slide, but precise numbers here seem less important than relative magnitude as long as one is reasonably close.

One could be a few ns off on how long a L2 cache lookup takes, and endure in all but the most time-critical situations. Far bigger problems occur when one failed to account for drive seeks being around eight orders of magnitude slower than L2 cache lookups.

It doesn't strike me as a list of numbers to memorize and be able to recite, but more the sake of cultivating an intuition of where to start looking for places to optimize communication, and the relative order of things one should focus on.

</comment><comment><USER6> "# Read 1 MB sequentially from network 10,000,000 ns # Read 1 MB sequentially from disk 30,000,000 ns"

That seems weird - wouldn't the 1MB be read from a disk at the other end of the network? So how can disk be slower than network (unless the network is all RAM-Disk...).

<comment><USER7> It doesn't have to be read from disk at the other end. It could be data that's already cached in memory, you just have to talk to the cache server over the network.</comment></comment>


HTML 5.2 – W3C Candidate Recommendation - ezequiel-garzon https://www.w3.org/TR/html52/ <comment><AUTHOR> Reminder: The W3C is no longer a definitive source for HTML standards. The real source is WHATWG, which does not version the HTML specification:

[https://html.spec.whatwg.org/](https://html.spec.whatwg.org/)

</comment><comment><USER2> I wonder what if the W3C did something similar to the web developer edition of HTML and version that. The lack of things like implementation details means that it should be much easier to take to Recommendation. Trivia: At one point, HTML5 was predicted to take until 2022 before it becomes a W3C recommendation!</comment>


Ask HN: Is it worth joining a startup that plans to sell in the next 5 years? - <AUTHOR> Context: the startup hopes to sell or be acquired in the next 5 years. <comment><USER2> Totally depends on the deal.

I was once offered a job with a good, but not great, salary in a geographic region that was lite on IT jobs to which I would have to move.

The plan was for them to sell to a larger company in 2 years at which point any sane buyer would move this remote facility to their HQ.

Based on my equity and they're target sale price I would gross 40k from the sale, IF it ever happened.

No thanks. Maybe 20X that would have made it worth while since I'd be losing about 100k a year in total compensation.

<comment><USER3> You should have asked for relocation package. So they give you 20k signing bonus and they rent a serviced apartment for you for first 6-12 months? That's reasonable thing to ask for if you are going to relocate to some remote area.

<comment><USER2> I already had a house in the remote area.

In my experience, very few people have a similar life style to mine, which is to say, complicated. And when explained, most people don't understand how or why I would live like that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Don't most startups have similar hopes?

I am really puzzled about your perspective on job-hunting decisions, such that you see this, and nothing else, as the relevant context which would allow any of us here to give you useful advice.

</comment><comment><USER5> Depends entirely on the salary, option grant on the table, current 409A valuation, estimated valuation (with numbers to back it up) in five years, vesting schedule, etc. Don't forget to ask for a cap table, ask about liquidation preferences, etc.

Also, if they need you badly enough, make sure to include provisions that if an acquisition event occurs or your role changes materially from what you agreed to, your remaining options vest immediately.

</comment><comment><USER6> If startup is defined as a business focused on rapid growth and likely VC funded I'd say that is the hope of nearly every one of them.

</comment><comment><USER7> Would they be a viable business after 5 years in the event they don't get bought? If not, are they banking on the IP being worth something?

</comment><comment><USER8> Yes! Depends on the company of course but if you have a decent amount of equity it could be profitable for you. And sales don't always mean you're out a job either.

Of course it's a gamble since the company might not be worth anything..

</comment><comment><USER9> Beyond compensation-- consider how you might be able to leverage the experience you hope to gain to advance your career goals. Will it help you get to the next thing?

Is the broader industry/niche they serve growing?

</comment><comment><USER10> I don't see why not. You would end up working with the acquiring company. Often post acquisition jobs can be quite good, and it's an easier way to work at something like Microsoft.

</comment><comment><USER11> Nope. In my opinion, Any startup that has that as their exit strategy is not going to hit it big. They already have a ceiling.

</comment><comment><USER12> Get vested, then profit on the sale.</comment>


British Supermarket bypasses Hollywood. Distributes own movie. - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/aug/07/tesco-movie-trolleywood <comment><USER2> Trolleywood is funny (shopping trolley == shopping cart), but DVDs? seriously? is this 1999?</comment>


Results from the State of Clojure, Summer 2010 Survey - <AUTHOR> http://muckandbrass.com/web/display/~cemerick/2010/06/07/Results+from+the+State+of+Clojure%2C+Summer+2010+Survey

<comment><USER2> Myself personally, I didn't find it that surprising that there were a lot of people interested in web work. I think it's self-selection; people in the web industry are far more amenable to trying new (also read as: unproven) technologies or languages.

But at the same time, everyone knows Java's got some really good infrastructural libraries for web work. Since nearly everyone in the web sphere works in some sort of dynamic language, it's unsurprising they'd try Clojure when it'd split the difference between Java's somewhat-famous libraries and a pure dynamic-typed language like Clojure.

<comment><USER3> I'm not certain that's the case. There are a lot of Java web frameworks and libraries, but many of them are orientated around static class-based designs, which don't translate well to a functional paradigm.

Most of the work I see in Clojure web development tends to keep Java at arm's length. Deploying to servlet containers is common, but beyond that I haven't seen an awful lot of overlap.

My experience might be atypical, of course.

<comment><AUTHOR> Most of the work in Clojure web dev so far (that is also publicized, that is) is also oriented towards green-field projects, and not integrating with existing web frameworks. That will change, at which point Clojure will come to embrace Java warmly when necessary (e.g. witness the addition of annotation support).

<comment><USER3> Why do you think it will change? Whilst Clojure has very support for interfacing with native Java libraries, they are fundamentally two very different languages.

The number of "green-field" projects are an indication that a web framework built for a dynamically typed, functional lisp, has a very different structure to one built for a statically typed object-orientated language like Java. If anything, I see Clojure web development relying less on native Java libs in future, not more.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wasn't saying that idiomatic web development in Clojure will change, just that whatever pieces are necessary to support deep integration with existing web frameworks and tools will continue to emerge.

This is a domain-specific problem, not a general one. Simple host library interop is just the beginning -- annotations are a next step, and I can imagine being able to emit Java source being a later step (so that one can deploy applications that include code written in Clojure to environments where one might not be able to ship _with_ Clojure).

<comment><USER3> Maybe. My experience of Java web frameworks is that they mostly tend to be written in very idiomatic Java. So lots of objects and factory classes, XML configuration for the older frameworks, annotations for the newer ones, that sort of thing.

It seems to me that the philosophy of most Java frameworks is so different from that of Clojure, you'd have difficulty reconciling the two. I'm sure you _could_ write a Clojure interop wrapper, but it seems to me as though there wouldn't be many advantages to using it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think the most compelling data here is the languages people came from: Java, Ruby, Python. And the languages they'd go to Scala, Haskell, Erlang et al.

Clojure as a gateway drug on the JVM for functional programming. Cool stuff.

<comment><USER5> Gateway drug? With all due respect to Haskell, it's FP heroin.

<comment><USER4> Well, from this data it is the first functional language/drug for a significant proportion of users, so in that sense it is a gateway.

<comment><USER6> I'm not entirely sure I agree. The data also seems to indicate a significant chunk of users have moved from other dynamic languages. Perhaps they are the gateway drug?

I appreciate that clojure is less hardcore about its FP than Haskell, but it is still 'real' FP rather than the pseudo-fp of mutable-by-default, objects- first python, ruby, and javascript.

Anecdotally clojure delivers on some of the promises that those three languages (implicitly?) endorse (I've written python and javascript professionally for a number of years). I've dabbled in a bunch of FP languages (Clojure, Haskell, F#) as a result but I've settled in clojure. Haskell has many qualities that make me want to settle on it, but its strongest features (amazing static type system, full lazyness) is also the feature that causes me the most difficulty. In the end clojure provides more of what i was enjoying about python and js and much of what I like about Haskell but in a less frustrating way.

(caveat: I don't have a planet-brain - maybe if i did i would have settled on haskell instead).

When i answered the 'languages id go to question', i was assuming 'if clojure disappeared today', rather than 'which of these is clojure a stepping stone too'

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm a bit sad that only few people come from a JavaScript background. My interest in Clojure arises directly from being spoiled by how hackable JavaScript is. I wanted that same level hackability but with performance and concurrency and an extra dose sanity. While I still live and breath JavaScript at work and play, JavaScript is a very crippled language by the very nature of its design (intended to run single threaded in the browser, subsequent snail's pace evolution because of this browser dependency). Clojure is a dynamic language hackers dream on so many levels - the FP stuff is often just icing!

I thoroughly recommend intermediate and advanced JavaScripters to give Clojure a good long look. You'll be blown away.

</comment><comment><USER8> Interesting data, but the comment about political polls is a bit misleading. Political polls are a random sample of a target population and are designed to avoid biases. This is a voluntary survey with plenty of response bias, so I'd keep that in mind when drawing conclusions.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was only referring to the number of respondents, not the overall methodology. But again, I disavow any expertise or sense when it comes to actual polling. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Poor / incomprehensible error messages and stack traces are far and away the most common complaint."

I wonder if this is because of the high slime usage. The slime debugger doesn't play well with java exceptions because the stack gets unwound. JSwat is the advertised debugging option--wonder how many slime users have tried it.

</comment><comment><USER10> I respect Clojure as a language, but I'd respect the community a lot more if they didn't oversell their language and didn't trash on competing languages so often.

As an example, the only time you hear Clojure mentioned in the Scala community is when it is being complimented or porting of one of its features to Scala is being discussed. On the other hand, The only time you hear Scala mentioned in the Clojure community is when it is being derided as an inferior creation to the mighty Clojure!

Even in this article, which is supposed to be about the community's response to Clojure, the author both ignores the fact that Scala is the next most favorite language of those interviewed and also reserves a nice bullet point at the end for putting it down.

<comment><AUTHOR> Scala is discussed frequently in Clojure circles, both positively and negatively. The former isn't fanboyism, and the latter isn't trashing -- it's talking about tradeoffs, experiences, and opinions. These things happen on the internet.

The more non-Java languages gain traction, the better the world is for Clojure programmers, so I wish the Scala community only the best. That said, I'll never hesitate to blow Clojure's horn when it has a striking advantage. I would expect nothing less in return.

Scala _was_ mentioned positively as one of the next most favorite languages. I certainly wasn't meaning to put down Scala by including that respondent's (very, very tame IMO) comment.

Overly sensitive, perhaps? :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> 3% of "I remember when #clojure had 6 people in it" => 200 persons answered this survey.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not sure how you get that. Check out the original data; 13 people responded "I remember when #clojure had 6 people in it" (which seems exactly right, taking timezones into account).

<comment><USER11> Ok, didn't see this "13", and I was assuming they were online h24 (seems ok to me! :D).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> 404

<comment><AUTHOR> Should be only a momentary lapse. The poor thing is only on an m1.small. :-)

<comment> the-kenny Heh, that's the /.-effect</comment></comment></comment>


Why Google (not FB) will build the database of affinity - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.forrester.com/nate_elliott/13-04-15-why_google_not_facebook_will_build_the_database_of_affinity

<comment><USER2> > Google's YouTube and Google Display Network have data on how a billion > people prefer to spend their time.

Have to disagree with you on that one. I doubt many people would subscribe to the notion that what they watch on YouTube is a reflection of how they like to spend their time.

YouTube for many is nothing more than modern day trash TV.</comment>


No Man's Sky developer Sean Murray: 'It was as bad as things can get' - noir-york https://www.theguardian.com/games/2018/jul/20/no-mans-sky-next-hello-games-sean-murray-harassment-interview <comment><AUTHOR> It's not just a matter of the game not living up to marketing, or expectations being set too high. On release week, after the game went gold, the guy (and it's not a pr guy or whatever, he is part of the actual dev team, and creative lead) was still doing live interview lying about major features such as multiplayer or fleet battles. The first "release" trailer on the steam store page was showing lots of things that weren't in the game, too.

See bribroder link to the reddit page for an idea of how far what they claimed they sold was to what they were actually selling, and it will help you see that as a cautious gamer, if you actually went out of your way to specifically check for features shown on official release video and/or answered as yes/no question by the game's lead, you would still be fooled. The reddit comment matches direct interview answers with major missing features.

When you see two factions doing some major warring in space, and the guy present it as actual gameplay that's in the game's build and says "Like here, we're at the battle between two warring factions. I could join in, I could take sides." and then there is no fleet battles anywhere in the game, I have a hard time blaming the players for their expectations.

I strongly disagree with the crazyness displayed by a lot of people, and those that go as far as death threat should be refered to the police. But this is not a case of "rabbid fan attack dev who couldn't reach what marketing promised", he put his hand in the fire to grab dollars, he got the money and he also got burnt.

It was so bad, for a while valve made a exception to its refund policy specifically for no man's sky, so that players could refund it even after dozens of hours, because _the dev was hiding behind the "you have not played enough, you will unlock it later in the game" trick_.

<comment><USER2> I fought for a refund from Valve for about a week. Couldn't get one. I'm still a bit salty about it.

I forget how many tens of hours I'd spent expecting to arrive at anything resembling what was alluded to in the trailers or demos. It was probably 20+ hours until I realized that the problem wasn't related to progression-locked content. I'd been swindled. No. More than that. I'd been robbed.

I was mad. Sure. But I was more hurt and disappointed than anything. I can no longer trust Hello Games or Valve. Hello lied to consumers and Valve, from my perspective, backed them up while allowing a select few to actually recieve refunds for the sake of PR.

I understand the desire to protect Developers from unrealistic backlash. You've got to draw a line somewhere which, after crossing, makes one ineligible for the normal refund process. I do think the placement of that line should vary by game (or at least genre) instead of the two hour hard cutoff Valve uses.

For a game like No Man's Sky? At the two hour mark I was still taking in some of the visuals and geeking out about what I _thought_ was coming. I definitely hadn't gotten into any of the completely broken mechanics, lack of depth of characters/worlds, or any other out of a plethora of disappointments and outright lies Hello had baked into the game and its marketing.

So now, for most things, I refuse to pre-order. I might miss a few neat things that I would have gotten otherwise, however; I won't get robbed again.

<comment><USER3> Look, we're all unhappy about how this whole fiasco went down but dude, "I'd been swindled. No. More than that. I'd been robbed." ? That's jumping the shark a little bit.

You'd been swindled, sure. Plain and simple. Not robbed.

Letting anger and frustration escalate beyond the scope of an injustice isn't doing anyone any good. I agree though, a more judicial approach to refunds is probably warranted for a game that SO under delivered on the hype. This isn't in the same ballpark of a let down as Spore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> For those who missed it, the Reddit thread detailing the "expectations gap" on launch: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/4y1h9i/wheres_the_no...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/4y1h9i/wheres_the_no_mans_sky_we_were_sold_on_a_big_list/)

> "[But] if we hadn't released No Man's Sky when we had, and I was sat down > talking to you now after we delayed it for two years, we would not have a > game as good as it is right now"

It seems like Murray's argument is that misleading customers before the initial release is justified because the sales money allowed them to finish the game after launch. It's commendable that they didn't abandon the game afterward, but that doesn't really excuse/correct/justify the deception--which continued even post-launch. It's really unfortunate that Murray / HG get the "underdog" narrative when what they really did was a bait and switch.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have no source on this, but I would not be surprised one bit to learn it's Sony that pushed them hard to support the game properly. They picked the game when it was still indie, gave them lots of money to finish it and make it playstation exclusive, paid for a lot of marketing, and then had a major push for refund on the psn (which they "fought" against, because the psn is not very refund friendly).

Given that 90% of the issue is not "it didn't live up to what we expected" but "why is that guy lying about features that are in on release week", they probably didn't want to let hello games off the hook and screw players completly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> They knew what they were doing. They most certainly reached a point where they realized they wouldn't deliver on the hype and speculation they were generating, so they had the option to either tell people before launch it to dial back expectations, or to double down to sell more and assume people will get over it. They even went as far as not send out review copies before launch so their fans had no warning to cancel their preorders.

This is not the first or will it be the last game to fail to deliver on promises, but the game was practically designed to sell around broken promises. The backlash was understandable, and simply more than they expected. My surprise is that the article doesn't read of regret for making poor decisions but more of victimhood like they didn't deserve the backlash.

The biggest thing they didn't consider about is the fact that there's a large subset of gamers that have tons of time but not a lot of money, so the money is incredibly important to them and when they're duped into buying something like that which drastically didn't deliver, they have a lot of time to spend to make other peoples lives miserable. Just imagine how angry these people got.

</comment><comment><USER6> So, this is totally OT, I just realized that death threats are the human equivalent to DDOS attacks.

To the attacker, it is cheap, writing a letter/email/whatever that threatens someone's life is no more difficult or expensive than a Thank You-note.

To the recipient, however, the situation is inverse: When your life is at stake, you cannot afford to _not_ take them seriously, because you do not know how serious the sender is about it.

That is a really shitty thing to do to someone.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's kind of amazing how much money and faith people dump into games for "nothing". Crowd-funding and pre-orders are both money for "nothing" (no idea if you'll even get what you expected). Gems and other game items are "nothing" (they're not real things, the day the game server dies they go away). The overwhelming majority of previews are _cinematics_ that show an idealized story with NO gameplay, and again people invest based on this "nothing".

Yet heaven forbid Netflix raise its prices by a dollar, or a restaurant, etc. There are so many miniscule investments that people refuse to make. Game company promising the world though? Wallets open!

<comment><USER8> It was weird to watch the NMS train wreck happen in such fashion.

Critical people were actively warning people this would happen, and yet everyone went literally nuts for a scripted cinematic.

The whole thing smelled from the beginning, because there's people showing demos, there's people showing cinematic, but Murray showed a cinematic with a controller on hand pretending it was a demo. That's, like, as red as a flag could get.

I'm glad the studio survived the whole con job, because the 500000 or so people getting sold on a dream actually made possible for them to survive to the NEXT patch, which is making me even consider the possibility of a purchase if the reviews are good and the netcode/servers are proven able to handle the load.

But a word of warning, this is just them doing marketing before a major patch, so I'd be wary of the article content given the suspicious timing.

That said, I wish people could live up to their mistakes instead of throwing death threats and harassing other people. For whatever Murray did, that kind of behavior is _never_ warranted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> While death threats are obviously an overreaction and should never be done, he clearly doesn't realize what he's done either...

> _We definitely messed up a whole bunch of communication_

You lied at pretty much every interview to increase your revenue at launch.

I know a lot of people's advice is to fake it till you make it, but doing that in the middle of the spotlight is obviously just begging to get your day ruined.

<comment><AUTHOR> Let's not forget how after launch he acted like you needed to play longer to get to those features, pushing players past their playtime refund limits on stores. For a while Valve made an exception specifically for this game, so that you could get refund no matter how long you played. That's how much "evil and intended" his trickery had been.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> When discussing system features/status with stakeholders, I've found it can be dangerously easy to shift from concrete certainties to more of a brainstorming, thinking-out-loud type dialogue. The problem is that stakeholders often can't tell the difference between the two and while you're internalizing and assessing the practicality of their request, they're hearing confirmation of the feature's necessity and practicality. Once they have the impression a feature will be there, it is tricky to walk that back. Once I realized this, a simple language shift helped increase clarity:

old: "Idea" -> "hmm, yeah we could...{thinking out loud}"

new: "Idea" -> "interesting, let me look into that, check with some people, and get back to you" or "interesting, there are a lot of pieces to that, how would you prioritize this against {comparable item}?"

That said, it sounds like No Man's Sky team was performing unprompted brainstorming sessions during public interviews, which is really unwise and essentially inviting people to be disappointed...

<comment><USER11> It would be nice and pleasant if that were true but if you go back and watch Sean Murray's interviews it is clear that it wasn't brainstorming. He really did say that the game had things in it that did not have at launch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Tagline: [Murray and] Hello Games coded a near-infinite universe and > survived a harassment ordeal

Murray did survive a harassment ordeal and was a victim. Hello Games was held accountable and was _not_ a victim - gamers who were lied to were victims.

This whole fiasco was at the pinnacle of the industry lying to consumers. Hello Games concentrated this practice and exploited it to deceive gamers into pre-ordering. The resulting fallout corrected this and it is absolutely justified that the worst offender bore the brunt of the consequences.

The game is still full AAA price but plays like an indie title. Their promotional content is not in-game and is deceptive. Hello Games hasn't learned anything at all and really doesn't deserve a pity piece such as this one.

<comment><USER13> "was held accountable" here is euphemism for harassment, which is not fine nor "holding accountable" and make them victim.

Demanding money back, writing articles about game being bad, suing them, reporting them to authorities (lying in ads can lead to fines) are holding accountable steps.

Harassment is not "consequences", it is just another attempt to euphemism it away. A lot of harassment is not from paying people or wronged customers anyway, it is from people who like to do harassment and do it for fun. This excuse making is quite typical for gaming culture, but just leads to more harassment by next confident emotionally unstable assholes.

<comment><USER14> Demanding money back is not harrassment, especially after being conned.

<comment><USER13> That is what I meant. It is true holding accountable. It is very legitimate action. So is reporting false advertisement etc. Or lobbying for bigger window when you can return game or whatever regulations would make it easier to get money back next time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't feel bad for the guy. Obviously death threats are unacceptable and the perpetrators deserve severe legal consequences, but the bottom line is that Sean Murray received a lot of money and publicity based on very public and explicit lies regarding the tech of his game. As an actual engineer, I think he is especially culpable because he knew he was spinning falsehoods for hype and pre-orders. I also have disdain for the guy on a professional level because it's really easy to bootstrap a product if you convincingly lie about all the tech but take everyone's money anyway then "ask forgiveness" after the fact. It's disgusting.

Edit for the downvoters: Where am I wrong? Do you disagree that he explicitly lied or do you disagree that people who issue online death threats deserve severe legal consequences?

<comment><USER16> The problem is your second sentence which is structured like this:

"Obviously death threats are unacceptable [...] but [...]".

<comment><USER17> I don't see what's wrong with that. The idea he is trying to get across is that death threats are not appropriate, but the CEO Sean Murray is indeed a lier and betrayed a large audience who believed in him and gave him a huge sum of pre-orders. Unhappiness is to be expected from a company who's CEO is a pathological lier.

Watch his interviews - he talks about it being an MMO style game in some of them, where you can meet your friends and explore side by side. Literally claims the game is multiplayer and it is labeled as co-op before launch. Players buy the game and realize there is literally no co-op whatsoever on launch day.

Sean Murray was involved in the engineering efforts, and knew he was outright lying to the media. It wasn't like he was a detached CEO of a large company not engaged in engineering so he didn't really know what was going on. No, he knew all the features he claimed where not real. He flat out took advantage of all of his customers.

<comment><USER18> > death threats are not appropriate

GP's word was "unacceptable", not "not appropriate", but I think yours is probably the better position for such a vaguely defined term as "death threat".

On the more meta level as one commenter points out how sometimes "death threats" can be used as a DDOS attack on a person, they can also sometimes be used to get undeserved sympathies. Making up alleged offenses is not new and many people seem to just take this guy (who we know is a liar) at his word that these vague terrible things happened that he doesn't want to go into more details about. (I should clarify that I don't really doubt that he received hate mail and possibly other communications that could be classified "death threat" by some people, this being the internet, and the people involved being gamers. But hate mail is merely inappropriate, generally speaking; it's rude. A specific piece of hate mail could be unacceptable, it depends.)

<comment><USER19> "Death threat" is a specific term; it has a legal definition in most states. There are no appropriate or acceptable death threats. It doesn't matter if you think they're not consequential; they had the desired effect on the person receiving the threat.

This whole argument is strongly reminiscent of attempts to discredit female game developers who were being harassed during GamerGate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > _"The internet is really good at knowing when somebody has made a mistake,"_

Hmmm, no, it wasn't a mistake, you lied. Many times.

He definitely doesn't deserve death threats, but I have no sympathy for him otherwise. Instead of admitting the promised game features will not happen, he chose to lie.

</comment><comment> rm_-rf_slash I think there is something very sad about people conducting harassment and sending threats to creators of....entertainment.

There is so much wrong with this cruel and unfair world, I understand how some people might want to cope through escapism. But when people get so belligerent about the creators and maintainers of fantasies, one has to wonder how much escapism has replaced the reality for these people.

I mean, who cares that Disney scrapped the Star Wars Expanded Universe in favor of their (imho) mediocre film sequels? The fans didn't buy the Star Wars franchise - Disney did.

Same goes for NMS. It looked interesting until it came out and the reviews amounted to a collective shrug. So I passed.

The tragic irony to me is that as the relationship between the creators of entertainment and their fans becomes more toxic, the acts of the fans (or perhaps more accurately, jerks) serve to make these fantasy worlds as shitty as the real one.

<comment><USER21> Funnily enough, I hadn't payed any attention to the marketing or hype of the game before it came out. I just got a used copy at GameStop, and because I had no expectations, I found it to be pretty fun. If they had just marketed it as it really was, the reviews probably would have been higher.

<comment><USER22> My experience was similar, in that I mostly avoided the promotional content after I'd seen enough to sell me on the concept.

I saw the concept of "open world, seamless procedural planets, wander around and gawk at the pretty scenery", and I was pretty much sold. Any promises past that were either obviously over-hyped, promo bs that could not possibly be delivered in time, or ads/interviews/videos that I never saw.

I wanted a modern take on Noctis, saw that NMS was offering something pretty darn close to that, and was happy with what I got.

This is not to detract from the misleading promotion, but I do think the whole thing would have been so much better received if NMS was published as the beta/early access procedural survival/exploration game that it so clearly actually was on release, instead of the AAA Sony/PS4 flagship must-buy that it was marketed as.

<comment><USER23> >This is not to detract from the misleading promotion

But it wasn't just 'misleading'; it was outright fraud. It wasn't "looks how awesome this feature is!" and then "oh, well it's not quite as awesome as they said". It was "oh, that feature isn't even in the game."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Sorry, I don't buy it. Man kept overpromising (somebody would say "lying") even after release. Now he's on a publicity stunt for the latest and greatest product, addon, whatever, and cheaply plays the always popular victim card. Nobody says that maybe some angry commenters where "overpromising" too, with their enormous and unpractical threats. The journalist is of course thrilled to expose weirdos -- the correct type of weirdos, so to speak -- to his small court of readers, for outrage and clicks. A deal is made to reciprocal benefit.

</comment><comment><USER25> If anyone wants a summary of the situation at launch, this YouTube video ranks among the "all time classic" videos ever made; its an absolutely depressing, satirical, hilarious view into the situation [1]

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8P2CZg3sJQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8P2CZg3sJQ)

<comment><USER26> I hoped that link would be this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvAwB7ogkik](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvAwB7ogkik)

<comment><USER27> That's pretty damning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I was extremely skeptical from the start because I saw the same thing play out 10 years ago when Maxis released Spore. Don't buy into the hype and you can't be disappointed.

</comment><comment><USER29> > I remember thinking to myself: 'Maybe when you're sending a death threat > about butterflies in a game, you might be the bad guy.'"

You might also _really_ like butterflies.

</comment><comment><USER30> I've often wondered why people don't publish names for people who send death threats. Would that help stop it? Is there a reason law enforcement doesn't want them to do so?

<comment><USER31> > I've often wondered why people don't publish names for people who send death > threats.

My guess is the threats are usually made anonymously-enough that that would be difficult to truly expose those who made them, and exposing them would also expose how pretty much all of them lack any credibility.

<comment><USER32> A death threat doesn't lack credibility because it's anonymous. It doesn't necessarily lack credibility even because it reads like an obvious dimwitted trolling attempt. Sure, the vast majority of such threats aren't serious -- but it only takes one that turns out to be real.</comment></comment></comment>


Chute (YC W12) Secures $7 Million Series A Funding - <AUTHOR> http://blog.getchute.com/2013/05/07/chute-secures-7-million-series-a-funding/

<comment><USER2> Also, we're hiring!

Looking for a frontend lead and a senior rails developer. My email is in my profile, ping me if you'd like to hear more!

</comment><comment><USER3> I checked out the site, but I have no idea what it actually does. "Powering the visual revolution" is a little open ended.

<comment><USER4> I thought it was pretty clear. They're the first-to-market ad product, providing its clients with the ability to better ingest, understand, manage and leverage real-time visual content with its arsenal of developer tools and media platforms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> FYI, The demo (<http://www.getchute.com/developers/demos/presenting-media>) is broken on Chrome.

<comment><USER2> What version of Chrome are you using? It's definitely unstyled, but it's functional for me in Chrome.

<comment><USER6> On Firefox (20.0/Mac), your homepage <http://www.getchute.com/#> also seems broken. I can't use the scrollwheel / gestures to move down the page.

<comment><USER2> Should be fixed now, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Congrats Greg, Ranvir, and Team! Exciting to hear about all the progress.

</comment><comment><USER8> isn't the name Chute a derogatory curse word? And of all things, the website is called "Get Chute"

<comment><USER9> Yes, it means pussy in Hindi. Given that the founder are of south asian decent, this is funny: [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=chute&def...](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=chute&defid=5941181)</comment></comment>


Charismatic tech CEOs: Who will garner media attention beyond Steve Jobs? - <AUTHOR>

Will it be Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Balmer, Larry Page, Dick Costolo, or someone else .....<p>Share your thoughts, Hacker News ! <comment><USER2> None of these guys have audience interaction. Ever, as far as I know.

So, none.

Jobs is one of a kind. For now.</comment>


Backblaze: Subscription Updates for Computer Backup - <AUTHOR> https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-computer-backup-pricing-change/ <comment><AUTHOR> this gigantic hike I find startling enough to jump in.

is there a better solution for this price on the market?</comment>


Forget standing desks: to stay healthy, you've got to move all day - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/feb/06/exercise-health-move-all-day-standing-desk <comment><USER2> Does anyone hve a link to the actual study, or know where his list of exercises cones from?

<comment><USER3> Aren't they from the app?

>Instead, I went with a free phone app called Move. It buzzes every 45 minutes and assigns me a random exercise: say, 20 body-weight squats or 15 push-ups. These alerts initially drove me crazy. (Again?!) And their commands can be cloyingly phrased: "It's time to move it, move it." But eventually I welcomed the interruptions. I noticed that I felt refreshed when I returned to my desk, like I'd rebooted my clogged circuitry.

BTW, the original article:

[https://www.outsideonline.com/2113351/always-be- moving](https://www.outsideonline.com/2113351/always-be-moving)

is more than 2 years old, Sep 19, 2016 ...

... The Guardian "selects" doesn't specify the date ...</comment></comment>