Airborn: Create and edit files online, securely - <AUTHOR> https://www.airborn.io/ <comment><USER2> This looks potentially nice.

The initial assumption with these types of services is always that an attacker, having compromised their servers, could simply inject malicious code into the browser.

From their docs:

> _Normally, when hackers get access to your server, they can change the code > that gets sent to customers. For example, they could make the code say "send > your password to us". Then, even though they can't read documents > immediately, passwords start coming in and they can soon read them._

> _To solve this, we 're using a relatively new web technology (Service > Workers) to install some code which can't be changed without setting off a > warning to you. That code then keeps taps on all other code, and checks that > it matches the publicly available version on GitHub._

Interested to see how robust it is...

<comment><USER3> That's because the Web is not secure in precisely that way.

But how would you know an app developer wasn't compromised and signed the next version with a backdoor also?

<comment><USER4> The Service Worker doesn't simply check a signature from the developer, it checks the source code against the version on GitHub. So, to know whether it contains a backdoor, read the code on GitHub.

<comment><USER2> It's similar to the keybase.io identity model (using popular services as defacto authories). It might be overkill but it could be nice to supplement that with a check of the repo mirrored on e.g. Bitbucket and Gitlab.

<comment><USER4> Yes, definitely. GitLab's API is very similar to GitHub's, except that it doesn't support CORS. If that's fixed it should be pretty simple to add support for GitLab.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like how they don't flaunt crypto terms all over the place. Calling encrypted content "gibberish" is fun.

And I think it's a genius use-case for Service Workers. From their security page[0]: "we're using a relatively new web technology (Service Workers) to install some code which can't be changed without setting off a warning to you. That code then keeps taps[sic] on all other code, and checks that it matches the publicly available version on GitHub."

Combine this with HSTS, and you can be certain the code running hasn't been modified by a third-party.

[0] [https://www.airborn.io/docs/security](https://www.airborn.io/docs/security)

<comment><USER6> > you can be certain

To be precise: If it works as described, it makes it (a little? substantially? orders of magnitude?) more difficult for third parties to modify the code.

"Certain" is not a word used in security, IME.

<comment><USER5> Very true. You probably still need to trust that the developers' Github accounts aren't compromised. I was looking at their repo[0] for this Service Worker verification, and their "So what's the problem this solves?" section confuses me, as it doesn't explain the how. :/

[0] [https://github.com/airbornio/signed-web- apps](https://github.com/airbornio/signed-web-apps)

<comment><USER4> While a hacker gaining access to the developers' GitHub account would be bad, they would still have to _actually push_ the malicious code to GitHub before they can serve it from airborn.io. So, if people pay attention to pushes to GitHub, this attack could still be detected (but not prevented). For prevention, one possibility would be to require all commits to have been on GitHub for at least 24h or so. Then, the devs would have some time to try and get their accounts back. We don't implement that today, though.

That section attempts to explain how web apps work today, if you don't use that library. Reading the entire thing back, I agree that the how is never explained very well, although [https://www.airborn.io/docs/security](https://www.airborn.io/docs/security) does explain it.

<comment><USER7> This is pretty revolutionary. Servers sending bad code is one of the biggest set-backs to JS crypto being useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> You need Patrick from PriceIntelligently to analyze your pricing page. Maybe tweet at him or Hiten Shah and see if either will help.

I'd recon they would suggest you keep 2 tiers and add a call us tier for b2b enterprise.

I see where decently sized companies would pay a lot more than $10/month/user to ensure their sensitive docs can't be stolen.

 __I certainly am no expert but if the product works as it seems this should be more valuable than $100 /year/employee.

<comment><USER3> What are their emails? Write it in an antispam way, we'd be interested also

<comment><USER9> patrick[at]priceintelligently[dot]com

Always happy to help where I can when it comes to pricing.

PC

<comment><USER8> The man, the myth, the legend.

He's going to roast your pricing but I'm sure you'll grow a ton from it.

<comment><USER9> Ha! I do it respectfully and only backed by data though. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Better headline:

"Airborn: Create and edit files online, securely."

HN has too many submissions with single-word headlines that tell you absolutely nothing about what you're clicking on.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Airborn needs to charge more for their business users. If there's one common lesson on Indie Hackers, it's that everyone (including customers) stands to gain from charging more.

If Airborn creators on on this thread: how did you think about getting people to pay while making the source available? It doesn't seem commonly done.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I'll look at increasing prices. Thanks.

We're basically banking on medium-size businesses finding it more convenient to use a hosted service, especially when it offers the same or a higher level of security.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> As usual, the discussion about whether something is secure enough or not should start from describing various attack vectors (which will be different for different class of users). AFAIK, the airborn product tries to eliminate an attack on its own servers / data stored on servers and in transit. While it is a good thing but by itself it doesn't necessarily make all the users of the product secure. In particular, they ignore attacks on the client itself, injection on the network, and several other "offline" attack vectors (e.g. taking pictures of user's screen). I understand the desire to make marketing simple for end users, but I really don't think that it helps people make rational decisions about security.

</comment><comment><USER13> few questions:

\- here [0] "All documents are encrypted before they leave your computer" how then one can collaborate as in gdocs (from the pic it seems like that)

\- what key do you use for encrypting the docs? is it the user password? if so it can't be recoverd (as dashlane for example [1]) is this the approach?

PS: the login seems broken [https://www.airborn.io/app](https://www.airborn.io/app)

[0][https://www.airborn.io/docs/security](https://www.airborn.io/docs/security) [1][https://support.dashlane.com/hc/en- us/articles/115003111325](https://support.dashlane.com/hc/en- us/articles/115003111325)

<comment><USER4> \- When you create a collaboration link, it contains an encryption key. (You can additionally also set a password.) All messages sent to the server by collaborators are then encrypted with those. The collaboration algorithm is currently quite simple, and paragraphs are locked when editing them. In the future we'd like to use a P2P algorithm, e.g. using Y.js. [1]

\- When you sign up, the page downloads a file on your PC which contains your username, and your password encrypted with a "password recovery key". When you lose your password, we send you your password recovery key and you can decrypt your password with it.

Login being broken is weird, do you see any errors?

[1]: [https://github.com/airbornio/airborn/issues/15](https://github.com/airbornio/airborn/issues/15)

<comment><USER6> > When you lose your password, we send you your password recovery key and you > can decrypt your password with it.

Having the password recovery keys, can you decrypt user passwords? Does that matter in this scenario?

<comment><USER4> No, because the password encrypted with the password recovery key is never sent to the server. It's encrypted and downloaded entirely on the client.

<comment><USER13> then, if i format the pc or my hd breaks I can't do anything?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Great way to comply with GDPR! Also presumably reduces your data management overhead slightly, although it seems you're still storing data on your own systems[1]. This reminds me of SpiderOak's "No Knowledge" claim[2].

[1] [https://www.airborn.io/docs/security](https://www.airborn.io/docs/security)

[2] [https://spideroak.com/no-knowledge/](https://spideroak.com/no-knowledge/)

<comment><USER4> Thanks! No, all data is stored either on Amazon S3 or on our servers. The way we make sure that nobody can read your data is using encryption.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> (Disclaimer: I don't know much at all about the current standards of encryption)

Is this security not already standard, and not practiced by companies like Dropbox? As a side note, I like the collaboration aspect and one-person-per- paragraph is a pretty smart idea!

Edit: To those downvoting, sorry, I'm just curious and I think some of us were unaware of the differences between Airborn and other services, which I've now learned can still view your data

<comment><USER16> Most "encrypted communications" means that no unauthorized third parties can view the data as a result of the encryption. However, even if Dropbox stores your files encrypted, they still have the keys to those files and so could be coerced into decrypting (them through a warrant, for example).

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Have you considered increasing your pricing, and adding more premium features? As a supporter of client-side encryption in cloud apps, I really want to make sure you have a sustainable business. [https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/saas_pric...](https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/saas_pricing)

<comment><USER4> Yes! What kind of premium features do you have in mind?

<comment><USER18> A Premium Enterprise support Platinum Plan for $500/mo can be a big seller and allegedly the minimum expense report you can file in some large orgs [1].

1\. [https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/08/13/doubling-saas- revenue/](https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/08/13/doubling-saas-revenue/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I just tried using this app with one of my friends and I found that editing in real time between two people wasn't working as intended. When someone else wrote text, the text I wrote (in a separate paragraph) would disappear.

Is anyone else seeing this? It needs a bit more polish before I could use it for encrypted collaborative editing.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the report, I'll look into it. But yeah, the collaboration is still a bit rough around the edges currently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Like others, I also like the novel service workers solution (mitigation might be more accurate) to client side code integrity.

I'm more interested in how you handle the encryption keys. Specifically, how does a user share a document with another? You mentioned that the "share group" has its own private key; where is this stored?

<comment><USER4> The encryption key is in the share link, and also stored encrypted in all collaborating users' accounts (if they have one - an account is not required to collaborate).

<comment><USER20> So the user is responsible for securely transmitting the share URL? i.e. Secrets are shared out-of-band?

It's pretty clever, I like it. Definitely not the holy grail of client side browser-based multiparty encryption, but you've found some innovative techniques. Bravo, good luck with it.

<comment><USER4> Yep. Or, you can also set a password on the document and share that out-of- band, if you don't trust whatever it is you use to send the URL.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> So I remember trying this before, and it had a 'desktop' and an app store where you could add more apps, but right now the demo seems to be limited to documents and presentations.

Is that a change in focus or a limitation of the demo?

<comment><USER4> Yeah. I've been focusing on office apps rather than "any apps", and I removed the window manager based on feedback here and elsewhere that it felt too "heavy" and unnecessary. Also, the app store was actually the Firefox OS marketplace, which was shut down. (And to be honest, the apps in it weren't super useful for Airbon to begin with. There weren't very many apps for "serious work".)

Under the hood, it's theoretically still super easy to add/install apps in Airborn, though, and Firefox OS's marketplace server is open source, so maybe in the future?

<comment><USER21> I can agree with that, the window manager was really neat (as I've always indicated these sorts of cloud platforms are like virtual OSes), but probably didn't add much to usability.

Performance seems really smooth, I'm glad to see this is still coming along quite nicely.

Even if it isn't the best UI, I think you really do still need to get something like EtherCalc on here, even for personal use, I love spreadsheets for storing structured information, and for business users, it's almost definitely a need.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Interesting strategy to list updating the software as a premium feature. Will you make old versions of the software permanently available to customers to install on new devices? Will you support your v1 API forever?

<comment><USER4> Non-business accounts update to the latest version automatically. If you login to an old non-updated account using a new device, you get the old version. We might eventually notify old accounts that they have to update, but we haven't needed to do so yet. If you pay close attention to the requests by [https://www.airborn.io/demo](https://www.airborn.io/demo), you can see "v2" :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> On the document editor, is it just me or are you missing a blockquote control?

Also, is there a reason you're using inline styles to do italics and bold instead of the specific tags for those things?

(Deleted question you answered downthread.)

<comment><USER4> You can create a blockquote element by pressing Tab, although it won't have any special styling. If you want, you could add some CSS in Raw view. I'll look into making a control for this specifically, although IIRC browser support for blockquotes in contenteditable is a bit inconsistent.

Regarding inline styles, I don't remember why, sorry. It might again have been to fix some inconsistency between browsers.

<comment><USER22> Thanks for the information. FWIW my main issue with inline styles is, my use case would be taking the HTML into another system, and the more pervasive the inline styles are, the more likely they are to override our the desired styling contained in stylesheets produced by that system. They may help your product work better on purely its own terms but they are (IMO) highly suboptimal when HTML leaves your system and travels.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This made the rounds on Reddit a few months ago, and it was called airbornOS back then. Glad to see they dropped the "OS" part, as it really isn't an OS.

</comment><comment><USER24> > Even if we get hacked, they can't read your documents.

Unless e.g. they make the system serve up malicious javascript.

<comment><USER4> Please see [https://www.airborn.io/docs/security](https://www.airborn.io/docs/security) for a description of how we solved that :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Does Airborn have paying customers? How important is the issue that they are trying to fix?

</comment><comment><USER26> Is there a open source alternative to this? Something I could deploy on my own server?

</comment><comment><USER27> Nice idea, but the design of this leaves a lot to be desired.

<comment><USER4> Do you have some more specific criticism on the design?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> How are encryption keys established between the clients?

</comment><comment><USER29> Is Google Docs not secure enough already? I haven't heard of any hacks on that platform. What additional features are offered here besides security?

<comment><USER30> Google can read your documents, if I understand correctly. Airborn can't.

Whether that's important to you, only you can judge.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to deal with all of these customer requests? - <AUTHOR>

I run a small software as a service company, and customers constantly make requests like "my old software put X in a black border, but yours doesn't. Can you put a black border around it for me?" or "on the dashboard I see X-Y-Z, but I hate looking at Z. Please hide it for me."
I don't like telling the customer "no", but at the same time, I don't like to muddy up the code with all of these one-off changes for specific customers. Also, a lot of these changes are typically not worth the effort to generalize enough for other customers to use (e.g. having a setting to hide Z, or a setting to turn on a border, etc).
Note that these customers are paying a decent amount of money (like $1,000/mo), so it isn't always that easy to just tell them "not gonna happen" especially if it is a seemingly simple change.
I'm sure this is very common in business, so how do you deal with these customer requests without 1) pissing off your customers and 2) making the codebase unmanageable? <comment><USER2> Some ideas:

Change the pricing model, with say a lower retainer and a higher cost of change. When the client knows it's going to cost them $$ to change that border they would think thoroughly whether this is a value worth pursuing.

Offer a re-visit to the app after few months if usage where you can address all if the requests together, and maybe outsource it (as it's not core to you).</comment>


How to tear down the walls of your echo chamber - <AUTHOR> http://cdevroe.com/notes/tear-down-that-wall/

<comment><USER2> How about watch more TV? None of the people I know in Silicon Valley watch the top 10 shows in America, among those that even have a TV! When I go home for the holidays I get an education in how the rest of the country thinks through the television.

<comment><AUTHOR> Besides seeing what other people are watching I simply do not see much value in the top 10 shows on TV in the US.

<comment><USER3> So your post is about broadening your experience, but you're dismissing TV because it's only use is to show you what other people are experiencing?

I'm not a big TV watcher, but I would certainly say there's some value to a walled in, introverted person in figuring out why "American Idol" or "Two And A Half Men" are some of the most popular shows in the US. Most people around here just assume it's because everyone else is a dumbass.

BTW: <http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/once.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> How about have kids? My kids are constantly challenging me to reexamine why I do the things I do. More so challenging me to explain why I make them do the things I make them do. Not to mention introducing me to new music (I get to introduce them to my music too) and shows.

<comment><USER5> I can't up vote this enough. Things from _way_ outside of my confort zone, just from the last week due to my kids (I have 2 teenage girls):

Coaching Softball (I generally dislike base/softball) Sewing Marathon training teenage interpersonal relationships

Kids are great for new experiences. Especially if you encourage _them_ to take on new experiences, invariably you will also get to experience new things.

<comment><USER6> Parent/Children interactions are a bit sci-fi to me. Completely modern foreign for both.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One thing I like to do is try to start conversations with people who believe very different things than I do. For a while I was doing weekly bible readings with a very interesting group of Christian people (I'm not Christian and have never been religious). It got heated. I was very challenged and forced to analyze my own beliefs and the presuppositions I brought to the table. I'm sure they felt that they had to do the same as well and I think we all became better people for it.

<comment><USER8> My experience has been this is a recipe for becoming an admirably open, yet unlikable person.

I'm actually in the process of heading in the other direction. In fact, I think that I recently lost a budding friendship because of a heated political discussion.

<comment><USER9> Sorry to hear that, but its been my experience that a friendship that gets tripped up by relatively superficial differences like that is probably not a strong friendship to begin with. I am not old, but the older I get, the less I feel like religion and politics are relevant to a person's personality. At the risk of trivializing them too much, I almost think of them as a team allegiance like rooting for the Packers vs the Steelers... While there are consequences for what people believe, in terms of a friendship, these things really don't matter to me.

<comment><USER8> Well, in my defense I did say it was a "budding friendship".

However, I literally have never had a positive experience discussing religion or politics, except with people with whom I already agree.

I have a personal rule to never do so, and I've even attempted to apply that to the Internet and failed on several occasions. Yet, I regret having tried in each case.

<comment><USER7> I actually made a pretty good friend out of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Good list, but what's with the "What 90% Less TV" quip? I get it, TV is an idiot box, there's nothing good on, blah blah. But not all TV is equal. Does this include content you actively seek out on Netflix or some other on-demand service that you happen to view on your TV?

This appears as another, "I don't even own a tv" kind of elitism advice. Without a reason as to why I should stop watching so much tv, or even a basis for the seemingly arbitrary 90% number I can't take this advice with any kind of seriousness.

<comment><USER11> I can't stand this either. People constantly blame the medium (TV) but in reality, it's (some of) the content that's bad, not the medium. There is plenty of good television out there.

I enjoy watching certain TV more than others, for various reasons. Sometimes it's to learn, sometime it's for relaxation.

Where does it stop? Are movies bad too? They're just like TV, except (usually) on a bigger screen and longer. What about theatrical plays? Are those making me dumber too?

</rant>

<comment><USER10> And why even stop with only visual mediums, why is listening to music any more fulfilling or beneficial than watching a 30 minute sitcom?

This might really come down to passive viewing versus active viewing,where in the passive case you're just sitting there flipping channels to pass the time, consuming whatever is presented to you. This isn't inherently a bad thing though. If it is relaxing or enjoyable to you, then there is no reason to stop. Not everything you do in life needs to improve you as a person on some deep level.

Sometimes, sitting there twiddling your thumbs to relax or recharge is just as beneficial as reading, learning, growing, coding, building, shipping, etc.

<comment><USER9> Absolutely. I've noticed that after days of really hard, fulfilling work, I find even the dumbest tv still kind of entertaining. Its a one of a number of ways to be idle without being asleep, and you can be around other people too. It can be very relaxing. But if I'm not tired, and haven't done a lot of work, I hate it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Go to Burning Man.

Along with the outrageously friendly crowd willing to strike up conversations about anything, it's has the greatest density of diversity that I've ever seen. In one day, you could easily discuss politics with Republicans, Democrats, moderates, and extremists; religion with Atheists, Muslims, Buddhists, and Christians; and science with research scientists, conspiracy theorists, and mystics.

</comment><comment><USER13> Good list.

Add to it: Get out of the building and talk to customers. Real customers. In other parts of the world.

<comment><AUTHOR> Another great addition. The company I work for, Viddler, has been doing that a lot more recently. Actually visiting our customers in their offices or in "the field" in which they work to really learn how they use our product. And it has been a boon of product information for us.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'd love to know if the HN community has any other tips to add to this list that I've jotted down.

<comment><USER14> Great list. I'd add: rather than ask someone what they do, ask them what they enjoy doing.

<comment><USER15> That's an excellent suggestion -- good way to change up a tired conversation starter.

My addition to the list would be to learn/practice something that you find frustrating or just don't know well. E.g. I know C/C++/python well, but I'm a terrible javascript programmer, so I could "de-echo" by learning JS and listening to some of the things coming out of the community. Going broader, I try to do achieve some larger (or smaller) non-programming project on a regular basis -- build something, grow fruits & vegetables, learn the Cyrillic alphabet (as an example of something smaller), etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think learning a new language might be a big gateway too

</comment><comment><USER16> > It is good to know what's new. But don't forget to learn from the past or > from something new.

I have a feeling this post was dashed off rather than thought through.

</comment><comment><USER17> +1 Project: How to turn an echo-chamber into a concert hall =)

(Ask HN?)</comment>


Introducing Kirk - <AUTHOR> http://ian.roon.io/introducing-kirk

<comment><USER2> I take quite a big issue with the statement "The lack of information and documentation on developing OSes is, in my opinion, a pretty big problem"

There are entire forums for this, ie osdev [http://wiki.osdev.org/Expanded_Main_Page](http://wiki.osdev.org/Expanded_Main_Page)

There are entire books for this [http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_ex_n_1?rh=n%3A283155%2Cn%3A5%...](http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_ex_n_1?rh=n%3A283155%2Cn%3A5%2Ck%3Aoperating+systems&bbn=5&keywords=operating+systems&ie=UTF8&qid=1379950869) amazon lists about 57,000 results for operating systems books

You will get out of LFS what you put into it. It tells you how to download the source, extract and install it. When you have the source, nothing is preventing you from looking at it.

I also take issue with "how can we hope to continue developing and innovating on the OS level when it's practically impossible to figure out what anything does or how it works."

There are general concepts that you will learn from getting a book on os development (including the kernel) and writing a minimal kernel yourself will give you insights into the work that goes into a full kernel such as the linux one. The concepts, not the specifics are what you need to learn, and you do this through theory, you pick up the rest from implementation (but starting with a kernel, half of the os is already developed fof you).

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely agree with you. I struggled with wording this for the longest time - and when I talk about OS development, I'm referring much more to the userland development - package managers, core utilities, shells, init systems, and the like, than I'm referring to kernels. Sorry for the confusion.

<comment><USER2> I think some of the less explored portions of LFS contain well-documented reasoning for implementing some of these things yourself. For example there is a single solution (out of the many ways to solve this problem) to the package manager dilemma in the hints section of LFS

[http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/hints/downloads/files/packag...](http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/hints/downloads/files/package_management_using_trip.txt)

which explains reasoning for the package manager and how to implement it yourself (in a much less copy-compile-execute manner than LFS itself).

Implementation is a great way to learn but generally people will survey the literature first to understand why things are implemented the way that they are. Understanding what all package managers have in common will allow you to distill it down to the simplest factor and implement that.

A lot of the core utilities and why they are expected should be covered in the standard (POSIX in this case).

I guess what I am trying to say is that implementation is a useful way to learn but it requires you to know the details whereas understanding the literature first will give you a better idea of what to implement.

Good luck with your project.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3>
      For as long as I can remember, I've wanted to create my
      very own operating system, one which I have complete and
      total control over. Because I have neither the time, nor
      the skill to write my own kernel, this means that I'd
      eventually land up creating a OS based on the Linux
      Kernel.

Non sequitur. If you want complete and total control, you're going to have to learn the ins and outs of a kernel.

I applaud your decision to go forth with this, but is it really worthy of an HN self-post given that Kirk does not exist and is just a blog post at this point?

<comment><AUTHOR> For me, at this moment, it's simply not a feasible goal to learn the ins and outs of a kernel in any reasonable amount of time. And Kirk doesn't just exist as a blog post, I've done a relatively large amount of work on it, but am just now starting to write about it by request of a friend.

<comment><USER4> I think it's a worthwhile endeavour to stick a distro together, however I agree with a lot of the other commenters here. If you really, truly want to learn about how an OS works, you're going to need to get your hands dirty and learn about the kernel. There are so many tradeoffs made on the kernel side of things which impact userspace, and knowing about them impacts the decisions you're going to make in terms how how you configure software and which software you're going to use.

If you can afford it and have a week to spare, I'd really recommend taking the Linux Foundation's one week crash course on the kernel. It talks about how the scheduler works, gives you insight into modules, how processes and threads work and hooks the kernel libraries give you for semaphores, mutexes, etc. It's expensive, but it's well worth the money.

[http://training.linuxfoundation.org/linux- courses/developmen...](http://training.linuxfoundation.org/linux- courses/development-training/linux-kernel-internals-and-debugging)

<comment><USER5> I'd actually really love to take a course like this, but a non-profit foundation charging $2750 for a virtual 4-day course?

I understand that they have probably have access to incredible kernel expertise, and hopefully the teaching is excellent, but even that doesn't warrant nearly $3000 for a 4-day course.

I mean, even training companies in the pharmaceutical industry doesn't typically charge quite that much for short courses! They're probably close, but is that really who the Linux Foundations wants to model their pricing on?

It's great if they can find corporations that can pay these kinds of prices, but it means that independent open source developers are virtually shut out, which means that many of the very people who would be interested in making contributions to the kernel will not be able to take what is probably the best introduction around to kernel programming.

Does anyone know of any good alternative resources for learning the kernel? There's a lot of good stuff on kernelnewbies.org (when it's not offline). Other ideas?

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I know it's expensive. I took the "in person" version of this course though and it was phenomenal. I'm not sure if it cost the same (the company I worked for payed for it), but if it is, it works out to $70/hr which is cheaper than getting specialized instructors in other disciplines like flight instruction.

For a virtual version of the course $2750 does sound pretty steep. It'd be nice if there were a "Khan Academy" type version (ie. pre-recorded) for a lot less.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Kirk does not exist, this is a blog post. Just a reminder to everyone like me who went looking for it.

And the blog post is about the same dust that was relevant 10 years ago and sparked the creation of LFS. Nothing new to see here.

</comment><comment><USER7> > an OS without limits, built to be open from the ground up - with as open of > a development process as possible.

I see the benefit of documenting each step. The result will be a pretty great tutorial, or at least a very interesting series of blog posts. But what is closed about the development of the current distros?

I hope that Ian is hoping to build a very different kind of distro, breaking the mold. NEXTSTEP was fundamentally a Unix, but everything about it was synthesized to create a totally new organism. Same with OS X. This kind of experimentation hasn't been attempted very much with Linux distros, which mostly amount to different installers and package managers. Etoile comes to mind, and apparently CoreOS is discarding much of the mold, but a completely new, holistically built system would be quite interesting to see. I suspect it hasn't been attempted much because the sheer amount of work is overwhelming. Writing a new shell is a lot of work. Writing a different init, shell, filesystem layout, and window manager, all unified around some new concepts, would be a lot of work. If that's what he's aiming to do, the result will be really interesting to use and learn from.

<comment><USER8> > Same with OS X

OS X is BSD with a fresh coat of paint. It really depends if you want to consider the whole experience (which I consider less stellar than most people would care to admit) or the internals (which are the same old unix stuff).

<comment><USER9> Mach and IOKit and and a gazillion other things are hardly "the same old Unix stuff", if you're talking about the kernel. If you're talking about everything above that level, read Amit Singh's book if you really think there are just splashes of superficial changes at and above the POSIX layer. If you have and you still feel this way, I don't know what to tell you. I'm not saying it's all great, but there's a LOT there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I like the concept, but wish this announcement would have come with at least one or two concrete steps taken towards the stated goal. Maybe your experience getting a basic shell working or something similar. At this point I have no reason to believe anything will come of this. Was maybe a bit too early for an "announcement".

</comment><comment><USER11> Dreams: "I've wanted to create my very own operating system, one which I have complete and total control over."

Reality: Another Debian clone out there.

<comment><AUTHOR> I assure you that I won't do that. If I wanted to make a Debian clone I wouldn't be doing this

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> > the development process of Kirk be accessible enough for anyone interested > to jump right in and contribute

Would be a good idea to host it on Github.

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely 100% will be, don't worry

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I want to echo the recommendations of others: learning about kernels and writing your own would be a lot more valuable.

I'm speaking from experience when I say that trying to provide a userland sucks. You've said elsewhere on this page that you want to write your own shell and such; the problem is that people don't want IanSH, they want bash or zsh or whatever. If you write IanMACS, they'll ask how to run emacs. And I hope the libraries you write can compile Firefox.

Or if you just want to write init replacements, modify how configuration is managed... remember that Ubuntu (and Gentoo, but nobody cares about Gentoo anymore) did a ton of this and everyone I've talked to hates it.

So here's my concerns:

\- If you intend to write an entirely new userland, you're going to spend a lot of time replicating existing work, only to have people complain about it.

\- If you intend to do a new init, improve configuration management, change how logging works, whatever, your life will be consumed with modifying every program to use your stuff.

If you want to learn about operating systems, I'll echo the others and say write your own kernel and a minimal userland.

</comment><comment><USER14> The open source desktop is kept alive mostly through donated spare time. This time is limited. We would do well to maximize the impact of time spent creating and maintaining open source desktop software.

Right now the standard language to build Linux software is C, which is great for performance, but not great for development speed. There are ports of things like GTK+ to other languages, but ports are less supported and usually don't take full advantage of their language's unique flavor.

To maximize impact per unit of time spent developing open source software, and also perhaps to entice more people into contributing to open source software, I believe it would be a good idea to build a desktop environment/widget toolkit with an opinionated API in Ruby. Anyone who has experience writing Ruby on Rails code with an automated red-green-refactor cycle likely could testify that it is pleasant and fast. Why not bring that sort of experience to building desktop software?

<comment><AUTHOR> I considered Ruby and have worked heavily with it in the past, but it's simply too slow/heavy for this type of programming.

I can't believe I left this out of the post, but all/most new code will be written in Go - I'll explain why more clearly in my next post

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you're interested in how a simple version of unix works, I highly recommend checking out Xv6, a teaching OS based on UNIX version 6:

[https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2012/xv6/book- rev7.pdf](https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2012/xv6/book-rev7.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER16> I applaud his efforts - but how is it so many people find main stream Linux distros that non-configurable that they _need_ to create their own?

I mean, even distros like Ubuntu are highly configurable. You can kill off as many packages as you want and even compile your own kernel if you really want to.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! There's no problem with them not being configurable enough, the problem is with understanding how they work behind the scenes. The best way, IMHO, to address this, is by starting from nothing, and building it from the ground up - not just compiling things, but writing basic replacements for things like bash, init, etc. Along the way, this gives me room to try new ideas out on a much lower level - rather than just trying to hack them into Ubuntu/another distro.

<comment><USER17> In that case wouldn't you be better off with something like Minix that's designed for this?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, I'm much more interested in the state of the Userland, not the Kernel itself. And since Linux is the de-facto FOSS Kernel, it makes sense to base it around that, instead of trying to port the various compilers/tools that I've used to Minix. It's just easier to do on Linux, but I've tried using the FreeBSD Kernel, as well as XNU - both ended pretty horribly, so I'm sticking with Linux for the time being.

<comment><USER17> Minix comes with its own unix-compatible userland. It won't be as performant or featureful as the GNU versions, because it's designed for teaching - but I would've thought that would be what you'd want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I completly understand the feeling and it's something that I wanted to do for a long time. I thought of starting with LFS but never got much time to play with it.

I'll definetly follow your posts about this.

I don't get why so many negative comments here. There were many times that I really wanted to understand and configure all my machine just for the sake of it.

Understanding and learning, it's simple. That's the main reason I use Arch, but even with it I don't usually go really under it to understand what program calls what and what is the function of program foobar, why it really is needed or how many switches and power can it give.

This is great :).

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm curious about the result, I share his idea about LFS being a little bit too 'automatic' and the feeling of blindness that resulted. The joy of booting a system build from source was there, but didn't last long, in fact I quickly hit very weird network issues such as elinks seeing the network but not wget, reinforcing the notion that I there was a need for a different kind of information about the system.

</comment><comment><USER20> I don't understand. You want to do a non-GNU/Linux OS or what? Or "just another GNU/Linux distro"?

<comment><USER13> It sounds more like Kirk/Linux.

<comment><AUTHOR> Which is exactly what it'll be. I really hope to keep the userland portable - so Kirk/FreeBSD or Kirk/Darwin could happen in the distant future

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Arch Linux strikes perfect balance between usability and learning. I am looking forward to what you have to say.

</comment><comment><USER22> How in the hell is this kind of vaporware garbage on the front page?

Shut up and code.</comment>


Live browser interaction for VIM. - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Bogdanp/browser-connect.vim

<comment><AUTHOR> I hope submitting your own stuff isn't considered unethical. I just thought some of you guys might find this useful.

<comment><USER2> It's not - though usually you should add a Show HN: to the front of it. Looks great, mate.</comment></comment>


Despite money and effort, homelessness in SF as bad as ever - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Despite-money-and-work-homelessness-in-SF-as-bad-11242946.php <comment><USER2> Having a safety net and more homeless services certainly does not make anyone "want" to be homeless, but it does attract homeless people from areas of less support. I personally know of people who have literally been given a greyhound ticket to SF from e.g. Michigan[1]. At the same time, the roots of much homelessness, e.g. issues surrounding mental health, drug dependency, etc. are not solved with housing availability and clean needle deposits.

Not sure what the solution is.

[1] I'd like to see the numbers people have researched, as anecdotes do not make for good data.</comment>


Hackers: We Will Remotely Wipe iPhones Unless Apple Pays Ransom – Motherboard - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/hackers-we-will-remotely-wipe-iphones-unless-apple-pays-ransom <comment><USER2> Not Apple, but my recommendations below:

Since I am guessing that the data set will not be obtained until it is too late, I recommend changing your password and turning on Two Factor Auth and you'll essentially prevent this from happening to you at all.

</comment><comment><USER3> This could be a plot for a future episode of Black Mirror....</comment>


Ask HN: Would any of you consider hiring a dev with 16 weeks training - mat-mcloughlin

I've seen some advertisements around saying that you can become a developer in 16 weeks and land a job earning £30K. Would you hire somebody with 16 weeks training? <comment><AUTHOR> Short answer: Yes.

We interviewed one of the first graduates from [http://www.makersacademy.com/](http://www.makersacademy.com/) and we were blown away at how much potential he showed after only 12 weeks of training.

We made him an offer however he ended up taking a role with a company that required less of a geographical upheaval.

From what I recall, he had three offers from three different companies, all above £30k and he was worth every penny.

*Edit: I just realised that my effusiveness for Makers sounds like I am promoting the company. I am not affiliated to Makers in any shape or form. Purely a fan of their work.

<comment><USER2> I very much expect this is the exception to the rule.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not necessarily. We had access to the entire group and whilst this particular candidate was clearly the strongest, the average level of talent and potential was exceptionally high.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hire for character. Talk to him about the 16 week experience. Can he recount everything? Is he excited when he talks about it? Is he enthusiastic about learning more? It's a great, focused, conversation point.

Skills can be taught. You can't teach character. True, there will definitely be some up front investment. But I think it'll pay off.

</comment><comment><USER4> I guess it always depends on the job, but most likely not. I actually had someone apply like that who had taken some Ruby course. It was a pretty much a no because I knew I was going to have to babysit them no matter how smart and talented they were.

</comment><comment><USER5> I wouldn't rule that sort of person out straight away. I think it depends on their other background. I think you can learn enough to make cool things in that time period, but it may be a tough sell.</comment>


What has Apple got against Eastern Europe? - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displayStory.cfm?story_id=16056150

<comment><USER2> Ah, it's about iTunes? Get over it. I'm pretty sure the record labels are to blame.

For example, I live in Belgium, but I can not buy mp3 files from Amazon:

* amazon.com doesn't sell to people in Europe

* amazon.co.uk only sells to people living in the UK, and I don't live in the UK

* amazon.fr only sells to people living in France, and I don't live in France

* amazon.de only sells to people living in Germany, Switzerland and Austria, and I don't live in Germany, Switzerland or Austria.

What's left? Nothing.

<comment><USER3> What's left? there's always an option to go to thepiratebay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article is largely ignorant of the larger issues in play. Media companies only sell the rights to distribute in certain geographic markets. If Apple could let everyone buy from the US store tomorrow they would. Granted there are not iTunes Stores for every country, but a larger number. Many of these only have Apps and iTunes U, but that's because Apple doesn't have the legal rights to distribute music or movies in those markets. While perhaps some markets have been ignored, I bet that largely it's not because of a lack of trying. The groundwork for the iTunes Store has already been done in many cases. Every thing I've heard has presented the iTunes Store as targeted to be revenue neutral, designed to help drive sales of Apple hardware.

<comment><USER5> I agree with you that the record labels are probably the root cause. However I don't like the idea that "It's not Apple's fault, it's the labels". Apple claimed the record labels forced them to put DRM on iTunes, but then Apple put DRM on the AppStore. Did the record labels really insist on DRM for indie app developers? Fact is Apple likes DRM and control.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Apple actually has a giant physical store in Beijing.

<http://www.apple.com.cn/retail/sanlitun/>

I know it because of this video:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8vqSJAOC7I>

They're also building a big one in Shanghai.

[http://gizmodo.com/5279167/apples-massive-shanghai-store- mix...](http://gizmodo.com/5279167/apples-massive-shanghai-store-mixes- minimalism-and-classic-chinese-architecture)

Interestingly enough they don't sell anything online. Maybe it has to do with Chinese buy everything in cash.

</comment><comment><USER7> I had similar problems with Google and Android here in Poland. I wanted to order Dev Phone 1, fortunately Poland was one of the countries that could do that, but I was shocked when I saw shipping costs: $ 235.65 total for 399$ phone. And of course we can't buy anything on Android Market. Fortunately there are other markets available with support for more countries.

Same problem with games. I bought Street Fighter IV to play online, but Windows Live doesn't support Poland. I coudn't believe it! Why are they selling me not working product? I had to make british Live! account in order to play online.

<comment><USER5> Same here. I got a Dev Phone shipped to the UK, and it cost loads more. The extra cost was to pay for customs and import tax AFAIK.

<comment><USER8> I got ADP1 shipped to Austria and it was €390 at the time (phone + s&h + duties + vat). From what I remember, the most expensive shipment at that time was to... Canada.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Another question is why is apple merchandise so much more expensive in Europe? Most european countries have around 20% VAT, but the prices sometimes are even 50% higher.

<comment><USER10> Everything is sold with the same price but a different currency sign. Just replace $ with € and you're done. Games, consoles, hardware...

Example:

<http://store.steampowered.com/app/47700/?cc=US>

<http://store.steampowered.com/app/47700/?cc=DE>

(I know this isn't true for everything, but it certainly feels that way)

<comment><USER11> So, order abroad and be done with it. One more reason Apple doesn't want people to order more than 2 ipads I guess, it will cut in to their future profits.

<comment><USER12> In fact I just did. Bought a high-end pen tablet on ebay from a seller in the US. Even including overseas shipping, it was half the asking price here, so I felt lucky. The only problem, the package arrived with the box tampered and the tablet itself missing. So I am now stuck with a grip pen and a bunch of driver CD's :)

<comment><USER11> Man that sucks, I hope you can somehow get your money back.

Was the delivery insured?

<comment><USER12> Thanks, I really felt depressed that day. Not as much about the money (although it put a dent in my ramen budget), as the feeling of being robbed of a new toy :)

Yes, since it was Express Mail, it was automatically insured for 100 bucks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> When movies and music are not available in an iTunes store, isn't it due to licensing issues with the studios? I'm in Singapore, and we never had iTunes store, just the App store.

Edit: English.

</comment><comment><USER14> I live in Ukraine and just use a jailbroken iPhone with pirated apps.

<comment><USER15> For ten years I've used a Windows PC with pirated apps, games, and media. As did everyone I knew. Sneaker-nets were extremely well developed, until P2P took over later.

Now that I'm a software writer myself, I see things differently, but that's just self-interest talking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> A small nitpick: _"Estonians invented another icon of internet cool: Skype."_ Skype was invented by Janus Friis, a dane, and Niklas Zennnstrøm, a swede. They did outsource a lot of their development to Estonia though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Depends what you consider "inventing". The Estonian technical co-founders of Skype were working together with Janus and Niklas already during Kazaa times, and were co-founding shareholders and behind the whole Skype architecture from day one. I would not call that outsourcing. Of course they don't mind you calling them whatever you like, as they got their 200 mUSD part :)

<comment><USER16> I didn't know that, thanks for the clarification.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Related issue is becoming an Apple developer in many countries, which used to be almost impossible or just take months. In many cases they did not accept credit cards issued in most countries of the world, when signing up. In other cases it was just delayed for months and months.

</comment><comment><USER17> he he, this is how my dislike for all things apple began ;)

I had to write to their support in order to get an iTunes account for my iPod Touch. I got it working in the end, after several emails, but it left a bitter taste in my mouth. When the controversies around iPhone app store approvals and developer accounts started, I swore to my self I would get rid of all Apple products, and I did.

Frankly, a company that displays such arrogance doesn't get to get me as a customer. Their software is limited, hardware overpriced, policies ridiculous, and in my opinion, only thing they got going for them is the design.

Computers are devices, not fragrances, they should be feature-full and powerful, not beautiful in a chick magazine sort of way.

<comment><USER18> > Computers are devices, not fragrances, they should be feature-full and > powerful, not beautiful in a chick magazine sort of way.

Okay. So _you_ want "a man's computer." You are a member of one niche market.

Apple goes after a different niche market (though I think "chick magazine" does not capture its essence).

In any case, Apple makes _business_ decisions. _Some_ who evaluate their growth, earnings, and prospects conclude there is some business savvy in their business model.

<comment><USER17> they are savvy, yes. no argument there ;).

p.s. i may have gone overboard with my description there :).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Finally someone noticed. I've been ranting about this for years now. And there are two parts to it: media companies having stupid dinosaur-age licensing policies and Apple not treating all markets equally. One is often a smokescreen for the other.

</comment><comment><USER20> On a related note:

In India:

<http://smokingapples.com/india/apple-support/>

<http://smokingapples.com/india/apple-india-sucks/>

[http://smokingapples.com/india/demystifying-iphone-3gs-in- in...](http://smokingapples.com/india/demystifying-iphone-3gs-in-india/)

Apple completely ignores India.

</comment><comment><USER21> Our level of income is roughly 1/3 of that in the U.S, but Apple stuff costs roughly 50% more. That's why I buy all my Apple stuff on ebay.

</comment><comment><USER22> It is not only Apple, and it is not only media rights, there are other issues.

For example shop.lego.com has a strange list of countries where they ship to: Poland is included, but Norway is excluded.

</comment><comment><USER23> Why would anyone want to not sell stuff in some contries?

<comment><USER24> Because selling media costs money, and some countries can't really offer much reward. To sell music you have to deal with labels and, sometimes, local authorites, while risking small profits. Here in Poland we have some archaic organizations like ZAiKS, and most people view paying for music as insanity. That means that we have no major mp3 store in Poland at all (afaik 7digital and Beatport sell to Poland, and we have some niche stores, but that's all unless you want to import scrap cards)

<comment><USER23> In Czech Republic the situation is very similiar. But there are still many people who would like to pay for video and music on iTunes, because it is really easy and fast. Why we in 21st centure have to go to store and buy physical media? "Stoneage!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's not just eastern europe; I still can't buy movies from the Netherlands, but there's no other service I can use here either.

</comment><comment><USER26> iphones are very popular in ukraine/russia, but russian MTS mobile operator couldn't sell as much iphones as they bought from apple. here in eastern europe is all about price. people like overpriced stuff even if they can't afford it. if iphone would cost 200$ with contract noone would bother buying it - there's always expensive nokia:)

</comment><comment><USER27> My guess is it's the 80/20 rule applied to customers and Apple likes profit margins much more than just revenues.

Also, it's stereotypical that third world folks abuse store return policies and customer support in general.

<comment><USER28> > My guess is it's the 80/20 rule applied to customers and Apple likes profit > margins much more than just revenues.

Speculating is one thing...

> Also, it's stereotypical that third world folks abuse store return policies > and customer support in general.

...but it's inexcusable when it leads to unsubstantiated claims that tar so many people with the same brush.

Also it's a massive stretch to call any but a very small handful of Eastern European countries "3rd world". (I need not defend Eastern Europe, since I'm South African myself, but it's plain as day that a lot of Eastern Europe is not doing too badly).

<comment><USER15> Uhmm, you may all want to brush up on your geopolitics and what "3rd world" means. Eastern Europe is and always was in the "2nd world" (the label that never stuck, just like "1st world").

<comment><USER29> Which is a label as relevant as "communist world", and "non-aligned world" isn't it?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Butterfly Labs mined Bitcoins on customers' boxes before shipping - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/09/feds-butterfly-labs-mined-bitcoins-on-customers-boxes-before-shipping/ <comment><USER2> As someone heavily involved in the bitcoin mining scene, this is not news.

Reports of dusty, obviously used machines were shipped to many a a BFL sucker.

It's a legal grey area at best... companies should indeed test their products before shipping them to consumers.

The problem here is that BFL tested them for "too long" before they arrived in the consumer's hands according to some, but not according to butterfly labs.

<comment><USER3> If they wanted to test they should have mined on testnet.

<comment><USER4> Why? Using "real" net a manufacturer can test their equipment and make some money at the same time. That on it's own doesn't seem unethical or shady to me. The potentially shady part is using the machines for straight mining before shipping them to customers.

<comment><USER5> You don't see anything unethical about competing with your own customers when you promised them that you wouldn't? Cause that's exactly what happened.

<comment><USER6> Honest question here: did they promise that they wouldn't?

<comment><USER5> The closest I've found so far is this person[1] Transisto asserting that they specifically said this. I remember hearing it and I have no reason to doubt Transisto; he is clearly a person you can trust (and at least in this forum thread, nobody came and said he was wrong.)

[1]: [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=110290.msg1202262#ms...](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=110290.msg1202262#msg1202262)

<comment><USER6> Ok, good to know, thanks!

<comment><USER5> Here is at least one statement to this effect, directly from the main BFL employee who represents them in the forums, BFL_Josh:

[https://forums.butterflylabs.com/archive/index.php/t-52.html](https://forums.butterflylabs.com/archive/index.php/t-52.html)

It is linked in the pre-sales FAQ in the archive, post is only two years old (number 13):

[https://forums.butterflylabs.com/archive/index.php/f-4.html](https://forums.butterflylabs.com/archive/index.php/f-4.html)

This is not the promise I remember, there was a much stronger statement issued at some point that I remember where they stated that they would _never_ be in the mining business for themselves, but I can't find it. Still, this is pretty clear, he says 24 hours and testnet. Not two weeks and "into our pockets."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If their boxes were true money printing machines, it's confusing to me why they'd bother selling them at all.

<comment><USER8> Quickest means to high starting capital. They had to get as many machines as possible up and running before everyone else did, so they used customers' money like an investment.

<comment><USER7> That's what I've heard. It just seems weird that given the glut of VC money these days, they'd have to resort to skulduggery to raise capital for a Sure Thing™.

<comment><USER9> Raising capital from a VC for a real Sure Thing would generally be scamming yourself - it would be cheaper to raise a loan in almost all Sure Thing situations. Obviously Bitcoin is a bit different since it's not the kind of real thing you could get a loan for.

Anyway, I don't think it's weird at all. Pre-order suckers grant money on much more favorable terms than even a loan, much less a VC. Doubly so if you're scamming them the whole time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What people don't understand is that when BFL mined with the hardware they sold, they effectively made the difficulty of the block chain rise stupidly fast, thus lowering the value of the system. Any advantage customers (like me) would have had was thrown out the door.

It is essentially the equivalent of a car dealer selling you a car claiming it is new when in fact they drove it 150,000 miles.

I was told by a BFL employee that my order would have been shipped before the end of july 2013... I didn't get my units till 11/4/2013

During that time I watched what could have been my returns fly out the door.

To read the one skype chat log makes me sick

</comment><comment><USER11> Again and gain, Bitcoin doesn't seem to attract the purest minds...

<comment><USER11> A friendly warning to all! Don't say _anything_ negative about Bitcoin here or on /r/Bitcoin as you'll get gang-downvoted. A lot of people have a lot of built-up aggression by the ever-declining Bitcoin price and want you to pay for their loss in some sick weird way!

<comment><USER12> I downvoted this comment because it is completely pointless.

I almost downvoted your first comment because (setting aside the problems with the very idea of "purest minds") there basically isn't any human activity that manages to only attract said "pure minds".

I don't own bitcoin and fairly regularly post antagonistic comments about it here. They usually get no votes, or maybe one or two upvotes.

<comment><USER11> Pointless how? As we're all data nerds here, try posting negative comments when price is going up (maybe they are too busy doing what I mention later) - you won't see much downvotes unlike when it's going down. I'm sorry, but the Bitcoin community is just disgusting! With "VIPs" like Charlie Shrem, Mark Karpeles, and the likes, it's doomed to fail! When PayPal announcement temporarily spiked the price, you can read comments like "I just jizzed in my pants" over at CoinDesk. This is the kinda human material that's building the Bitcoin community, unfortunately! Computer scientists made Bitcoin possible, but it's all in the wrong hands now, so, we should rather embrace things like Stellar now (I was a fan of Ripple, first, as a great piece of technology, but Stellar doesn't have much of the Ripple baggage)!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't see a problem with this burn-in process. EMC sells harddrives which they ran for two weeks in both a freezer and hot room (based on a company tour I took ages ago). They just want to make sure the hardware components they ship won't fail under heavy long-endurance load. I see that as a service to the customer.

<comment><USER5> You might think that, having never been a customer of BFL, but I can tell you I bought BFL hardware on pre-order at a point when they were telling their customers they would never be a mining company, but only a hardware company, and they were not ever going to mine bitcoins with customer equipment.

It's not a service to the customer. The most valuable time spent mining with new mining hardware is the first week to two weeks. The next two weeks are going to be at an average of 10-20% reduced efficiency as the difficulty increases every two weeks or less. The next two weeks after that will have reduced efficiency by a similar amount again, until you reach the "break-even point" where each watt-hour of electricity you buy and pump through the mining equipment is going to yield an amount of bitcoins equivalent in value to the energy you put in. And then, you hope, the price of the coins increases or at least remains stable, and the difficulty levels off.

(Protip[0]: it doesn't seem to be leveling off yet, and my first-gen ASIC hardware is already well underwater.)

[0] [https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty](https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty)

<comment><USER14> Additionally the FTC argues there is a specific network for testing that does not incentivise prolonged "burn-in".

<comment><USER5> Yes. I can confirm they did tell us customers they would use the testnet and not the live net. There is no excuse for this. For anyone who is not "in-the- know" of Bitcoin, that testnet is absolutely a thing and reversing their position on that promise is absolutely a violation of trust.

As a customer of a company that sells mining equipment, you don't ever want your supplier to be in the mining game. When you own 1st-gen equipment, you'd like it if the 2nd-gen equipment is delayed as long as possible because when it comes out, your equipment is almost immediately going to be made irrelevant as new investors have 10x equipment with significantly reduced marginal (electricity) cost. Some manufacturers I'm sure are forthright about their conflict of interest because they do mine (openly, like I believe KnC does), so their customers shouldn't be shocked to find out.

If they tell you they won't, that's a benefit to you because you, the fulfilled customer, are usually incentivized to give up some of your profits to get the next generation of hardware, to protect yourself from irrelevancy in the coming years. You are trusting that your order will be delivered in the order of purchase and that the company does not have incentives to delay your shipment.

Owning 2nd-gen hardware, I always knew that the arrival of the 3rd-gen (28nm Monarch) would signal the end of my operation if I couldn't secure one. After the horrible experience of waiting for my 2nd-gen hardware to arrive, I was not biting again. It's been clear to anyone with a stake in the game that there has been something fishy at BFL and that most people were getting screwed, even when their equipment was finally delivered.

When I heard that Vleisides was involved in a "multi-million dollar lottery scam" pyramid scheme before, pled guilty to mail fraud, and was barred by court-imposed restrictions from any business that "solicited funds through pre-order"[1], I knew it was time to start getting the popcorn ready.

[1]: [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/04/digging-for- answe...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/04/digging-for-answers-the- strong-smell-of-fraud-from-one-bitcoin-miner-maker/)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What technology should your startup use? - <AUTHOR> http://matt.aimonetti.net/posts/2013/08/27/what-technology-should-my-startup-use/ <comment><USER2> Honestly? I think the answer is "the one you already know". Most of the languages covered in the article are capable of doing 90+% of what the average tech startup needs (a web site, an API, database connectivity). Save yourself the trouble of heading towards the latest hip technology and just write with the stuff you already know how to use. Worry about how flexible and scalable it is once you've actually proven your idea works.

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here, when you build a company, you need more than one person so you also need to think about your product needs (what tech better fitted) and who you will hire to help you build it.

<comment><USER2> That still seems backwards. Hire developers. Use a language those developers are comfortable with. Don't choose a language then hire developers for it.

In any case, I'm not sure that many (any?) product needs could dictate choice of language in the vast majority of cases. Yes, if you need to do a ton of realtime stuff then maybe think about Node etc., but most people want the same standard stuff.

<comment><USER3> "hire developers, use a language those developers are comfortable with."

So you can use that method when hiring the first developer.

When it's time to hire the second developer, are you looking for only developers that are comfortable with the same languages as the first developer? If so, you are hiring developers based on language, and no longer following your advice. If not.... then you get a bunch of developers comfortable with different languages, and now what?

Often the answer might be "good developers can learn to be effective at any language." Which while on the whole (if not always) true, nevertheless only sometimes works for an enterprise (sometimes you don't have time to wait for them to learn it). But even so, now that turns into different advice: Hire your first developer, have her use a language she's comfortable with, then hire subsequent developers that either already know that language or are capable of learning it, and have them learn it. Which doesn't sound quite so obvious as your original advice, although it's not neccesarily an unreasonable approach.

<comment><USER4> So use what you are comfortable with - as long as it's not something that's so completely obscure that no one else knows it. If you just chase popularity, you're also probably likely chasing mediocrity. On the other hand, no, Visual Object Forth ++ from Borland is probably not the best thing to build a web site with.

<comment><USER5> I... will admit I just looked up to see if Visual Forth existed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > C#

> We have a better IDE than the Java guys

Biased Java guy here. Completely disagree. Yes VS lets you build nice UIs with drag and drop. But if you compare bare bones Intellij IDEA to bare bones Visual Studio, Intellij IDEA wins everywhere else. All things being equal (that includes programming languages), you can be more productive in Intellij IDEA because its got the fundamentals down and has intuitive shortcuts for doing everything.

Of course I haven't used VS for about 5 years. Keep that in mind. But back then IDEA was light years ahead and .NET devs still thought VS was better.

<comment><USER7> As long as the .NET guys don't have Maven they can't win.

I can check-out a Java project that contains pom.xml using the big 3 Java IDEs out there (Eclipse, IntelliJ, NetBeans), compile, build, run unit-testing, integration-testing, navigate my codebase like crazy.

But you know, I'm gettin tired singing the same choir of Java. .NET guys can sing how great their C# languages and VS.NET are but we know Java ecosystems win hands down End-To-End; we got it cover from distributed systems, big-data, enterprise, "service oriented", dependency management, build, validation (findbugs, checkstyle).

Eclipse + essential plugins are more than enough for me (albeit I'm using IntelliJ these days) and it's free.

<comment><USER3> Ha! I think what might seperate Java lovers from Java haters is whether you consider `maven` to be an asset or a liability!

Those who only occasionally use Java when they have to... tend to find maven incredibly confusing to get working properly.

<comment><USER7> Hahahaha, I think you're on to something there!

I wouldn't call myself a Java lovers as I'm moving away from Java lately but so far I haven't found a comparable tool to build+dependency that Maven provides nor I have found a good ecosystems that adhere to non-breaking fundamental building-block standards (Servlet, JSP, JPA2, EJB3-lite, JMS, etc).

Yes, Maven could be painful to start with especially without someone who had previous experience on your team but feature-wise, nothing competes with it yet. Ruby needs RubyGems and Bundler (and Rake to that extends) to compete with Maven. I heard the philosophy of "Do one thing and do it well" but if you're using those tools altogether every time (Rails) then what's the point...?

<comment><USER3> I don't understand what you mean by "ruby needs RubyGems and Bundler to compete with maven."

Sure, and Java needs maven to compete with RubyGems and Bundler.

?

Oh wait, you think it's significant that on ruby it's two cooperative tools with two different names, compared to one tool on Java? I don't see how that matters too much in practice. (But it does, in real life, is it really _just_ maven, or is it maven, and definitely ant, and maybe ivy too? heheh.)

I will admit that I find bundler a lot easier to use than maven, but I'm definitely a rubyist more than a javaite. I _think_ that someone who only occasionally needs to use ruby will find bundler easier than someone who only occasionally needs to use java will find maven. But maybe that's just my own prejudice, I could be wrong there.

<comment><USER7> Oh I'm not referring to which one is easier to use but merely on the features.

Maven = Bundler + RubyGems + Rake

Maven = Ant + Ivy

Maven = not-sure-what-the-equiv-in-python (pip is more along rubygems?)

I don't think Maven is easy to use if you have to write from scratch (you need an IDE or something to generate the initial POM first ).

I'm also questioning if it's necessary to have RubyGems separated from Bundler when in real-life, you'd almost always use both anyway (along with Rake) to have a more productive workflow.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, it probably would lead to less bugs and easier to follow documentation if they were joined, but such is open source sometimes. And it ends up being not a huge problem in practice, I think.

Don't people similarly often use ivy _with_ maven, as an extra layer that makes certain aspects of maven easier? Maybe I had that wrong. And I thought maven use almost always included using ant. Maybe I had that wrong too. So not a java guy.

Ah, from the Ivy project's own documentation, sounds like I did have it wrong:

> First, the most important difference is that they aren't at all the same > kind of tools. Apache Maven is a software project management and > comprehension tool, whereas Apache Ivy is only a dependency management tool, > highly integrated with Apache Ant™,

That does make it seem like maven isn't neccesarily the "do one thing and do it well" tool you were suggesting it was though! That might be more what ivy is trying to do?

<comment><USER7> People use Ivy with ANT because ANT solves part of the SCM issue: build. Ivy gives ANT dependency management.

Many people keep saying that Maven is a bloated software but the Maven core itself is rather small, everything else is a plugin.

Compile Java? Plugin.

Compile Scala? Plugin.

Unit-test runner? Plugin (surefire).

WAR packaging? Plugin.

Run your CSS/JS via YUI Compressor? Plugin.

The reason why occasionally you see ANT TASK inside Maven may have something to do with the situation where there's no Maven plugin for that particular task and there's already an ANT TASK for that particular job so people just call that ANT TASK from within Maven. All these tools can work together nicely.

BTW, executing ANT TASK from inside Maven? that's a Maven plugin.

So Maven does one thing and do it well: orchestrating plugins. Each plugins does one thing and do it well: solve a particular need. It does make Maven look bloated because it gives the illusion that Maven does everything... like your Operating Systems.

When people refer to Apache Maven as a Software Project Management it is because it can also generate a website for that particular module/sub- modules/the whole projects.

Example of generated Maven websites:

[http://james.apache.org/](http://james.apache.org/)

[http://maven.apache.org/](http://maven.apache.org/)

So you can put everything under your source control and have them build by maven to generate a complete website + documentation + javadoc + release notes for your modules/libraries/javadoc along with other goodies as well (code- coverage result as part of your project website).

Example of the goodies that the maven site plugin can generate:

1\. Display dependencies of your libraries/projects

[http://mojo.codehaus.org/cobertura-maven- plugin/dependencies...](http://mojo.codehaus.org/cobertura-maven- plugin/dependencies.html)

2\. Project reports

[http://mojo.codehaus.org/cobertura-maven-plugin/project- repo...](http://mojo.codehaus.org/cobertura-maven-plugin/project-reports.html)

\- Checkstyle report (does your code violate any coding rules?)

\- Cobertura => check the code coverage

\- Javadocs => brings you to the API

All the links in project reports are generated by "mvn site" command and the availability depends on whether you install the plugins.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The whole "C#, VS and MSDN reek of licenses" is getting a bit staid. I'm writing a thick client/desktop app (almost 300k LoC) using Visual Studio Express , SQL Express and online MSDN. Yes, I paid money for Windows and Office, but that has little bearing on being able to write shrink-wrap quality apps with free tools from Microsoft.

<comment><USER9> I left the .Net world about 3 years ago. There were plenty of things to complain about, but licensing was never one of them. Most of the stack is free until you get to the point where you should be able to pay for it anyway.

<comment><USER10> I recently decided it might be worthwhile to learn the Microsoft stack, and had heard similar things about how you can just get whatever you need for free until you've scaled up. So I went poking around Microsoft's site for this free stuff. Half an hour later I gave up without having gotten my hands on anything but an impenetrable white paper about different versions of Visual Studio. So it seems that either people are exaggerating how free this stuff is or Microsoft is very good at hiding this.

<comment><USER11> 1\. Go to the Visual Studio website: [http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/](http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/)

2\. Click on the Products menu

3\. Click on Express 2012 products

4\. There is no step 4

<comment><USER10> Ah, I didn't realize that when people say they give their stuff for free, they meant they're giving a different product away for free. That is…weird. I can't figure out what this includes. Is this actually enough to deploy a web app with the full Microsoft stack?

<comment><USER11> It is fairly normal for companies that produce commercial products to offer different editions of their products at different price points. Microsoft is not a weird exception.

The Express products are completely functional although they lack certain non essential features. The main limitation of the Express editions is that you can't use third party plugins with them. Third party plugins are used to enhance Visual Studio itself and are not to be confused with third party libraries which you can download conventionally or with the built in package manager Nuget.

The Express editions are distributed by task so you only download what you need. If you don't want to create Windows Phone apps, for example, you don't have to download that functionality.

To develop web apps you have to download Visual Studio Express 2012 for Web.

[http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/eng/products/visual- st...](http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/eng/products/visual-studio- express-for-web)

It allows you to develop ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET WebForms apps with C# or VB.NET right out of the box but you can also use it to develop web services with WebAPI, regular HTML5 websites, etc. And out of the box you can deploy by using FTP, WebDeploy and Azure but you can also use whatever external tool that you like.

The product includes a copy of MS SQL Express that runs as a process but you're not limited to using Microsoft databases.

<comment><USER10> > _It is fairly normal for companies that produce commercial products to offer > different editions of their products at different price points. Microsoft is > not a weird exception._

Oh, no, you're definitely right about that. What I meant was weird was that nobody seemed to describe it in those terms, so I was looking for the wrong thing.

Thanks for the rundown! Now that I actually have some idea what I'm doing, I'll have to give it another go once I get a bit of free time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This comment[0] interested me. I've never exposed to erlang. Can someone please explain this a bit to me why she said only erlang can do concurrency?

[0]: [http://matt.aimonetti.net/posts/2013/08/27/what- technology-s...](http://matt.aimonetti.net/posts/2013/08/27/what-technology- should-my-startup-use/#comment-1019493802)

<comment><USER13> "Erlang based systems obtain many of the aforementioned properties from the Erlang concurrency model. Erlang handles the concurrency itself instead of relying on the OS. A concurrent entity in Erlang, called Erlang process, is much lighter than a standard OS process or thread, initially using about 3 KB of memory on a 64bit system. In a typical Erlang systems, you can easily create hundreds of thousands or maybe even millions of Erlang processes. The Erlang virtual machine uses its own scheduler which ensures that each process gets a fair share of execution time. The scheduler also distributes processes over available CPU cores, using as few OS threads as possible (by default only as much as the number of available CPU cores)."

[http://www.theerlangelist.com/2012/12/yet-another- introducti...](http://www.theerlangelist.com/2012/12/yet-another-introduction- to-erlang.html)

It is kind of like Node in that it is very easy to do concurrent stuff, except instead of nested callbacks and all that jazz, you write 'processes' which are designed to share nothing. They run akin to OS threads in that one process crashing won't bring down the whole system (unlike Node). As no state is shared it also means that they can easily (i.e. it is built into the VM, and switched on by default) be scaled up to run over many cores. If you are interested, you might want to look at Elixir (a language built on top of the Erlang VM) which has a more Ruby-esque syntax: [http://elixir- lang.org/](http://elixir-lang.org/)

EDIT: Should also point out that I think "Jessica's" comment was just trolling, however it isn't far from the truth :)

<comment><USER14> Is ``Jessica's'' comment not far from the truth because Scala and Go have shared memory for their Actors/Processes? I know Erlang doesn't share memory between their processes which leads to concurrency; is this what she was getting at?

<comment><USER15> In general (apart from run time code loading) one can accomplish a lot of things Erlang does in any language.

Her "how much pain and when" I think implies that she only accepts concurrency as practical when units of concurrency are isolated as that would reduce the number of shared data structures being updated, lock contentions and so on. There is some truth in there that I agree with.

But then again maybe she was just trolling. I for one do not like her tone her comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have a different stance on this. The technology that drives the company is strategic business decision, not a technical decision. Sure - create the MVP in whatever you want, the technology is less import - but don't do that for Rev 2. Rev 2, the true architecture of the company should be based on A) what's the right tools for the use case B) are the resources with that talent available to keep from hindering the company? For example, I wouldn't start a company with Go/Rust/etc anywhere but in SanFran - because to most of the country these languages are still fads.

</comment><comment><USER17> Interesting take, but I'm disappointed that Groovy wasn't broken out into a separate entry. Groovy is a great choice in that you can leverage the entire world of Java libraries, while using a modern, dynamic language that is mostly backwards (syntax) compatible with Java - but without the verbosity. And Grails is a first-class convention-over-configuration framework for building webapps.

IMO, Groovy is absolutely one of the top platform choices a startup could make. We've been using Groovy and Grails at Fogbeam for 2+ years and haven't regretted the decision at all, FWIW.

<comment><USER18> Because Groovy has unfortunately turned into a mere appendage to Grails, with very little independent use, it's generally not considered as a viable standalone language by many people anymore.

</comment></comment><comment> wes-exp Clojure seems to get a lot of attention, but don't forget Common Lisp. If you're tired of the reinvention treadmill and want a great language that is actually mature, CL can be excellent. CL also has great runtime support: SBCL (for super performance) and ABCL (if you need the JVM).

</comment><comment><USER19> There is only one answer to this question: whatever your people are best with. Whether have any "people" (including yourself) who can code or not, you don't need to worry about the technology, you need to worry about your team.

If we're talking about Web apps, technology is much less relevant than the team's abilities. If you're also going for native apps, your options are mostly limited anyway (especially on mobile), but the same principle still applies.

Another reason for going with a familiar technology is that it will be easier for you to find future team members, as you will (presumably) already know the local community, thus avoiding what happened to Reddit.

</comment><comment><USER20> I have similar views to the author, however I generally respond with "LOLCODE, all the cool kids are using it" because its clear they need to do the work themselves to figure it out.

If they ask "is it sane to use XYZ" I could give them some actually useful information, but sadly people often want to be given the answer rather than get advice.

I'd say this question ranks up there with "Can I ask you a question?" to which I usually respond "You just did...". If you want useful information, just ask for it, your friends and peers are not your parents.

NB: I ported a lolcode interpreter so I do actually encourage people to use it... sometimes...

</comment><comment><USER21> Asking this question for many readers is like asking "What kinds of shoes should your startup use?"

Value is important. Say that about a thousand times. Once you are creating value, then you can write long blog posts about various tool choices -- or spend time reading them. Until then? These issues are so trivial as to almost not be worthy of discussion.

The interesting thing is that this is exactly backwards from the way most folks are taught programming. You pick the tool first, learn it's secrets, then set about making someone happy. This is a great paradigm if you want to be a corporate programmer, but if you're looking to form a startup you've got the cart in front of the horse. Sure, bring the skills to use all kinds of tech. But don't spend a millisecond focusing on that crap when nobody wants what you're offering.

A lot of guys who say they're in startups are like a severely overweight and out of shape guy who sits around reading running magazines and ordering expensive gear. Yeah sure, that stuff can be dreadfully important. But only in the context of actually doing something. Otherwise it's just bike shedding.

</comment><comment><USER22> I clicked through in the hope that it would say "it barely matters, just get started and fix mistakes as you go". It started off with promise when he asserted that the people asking this question usually didn't actually care about his answer and that other factors are much more important, but then for some reason we got the long list of languages and bullet points anyway.

</comment><comment><USER6> > My problem with Clojure is that ... Exceptions are often meaningless and > trying to debug someone else's code is challenging since the language itself > is complex and it can be extended by macros. Finally, the Clojure community > isn't really web-oriented, most of the work done in Clojure seems to be > data-centric.

You really nailed it here. I really like the language but I really struggled with debugging code and I'd shit my pants every time I refactored.

I had a much nicer experience with Haskell: If your code compiles, it probably works. With Clojure: If your code compiles, it probably doesn't work. I'll tell you something's wrong, but you'll spend most of your development time discovering the cause. That's very frustrated. But to give Clojure the benefit of the doubt, I never felt like my development pipeline was efficient. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a canonical example of a good development pipeline.

</comment><comment><USER23> I thought this lesson was already learned. You should use the one you're more comfortable with to build an MVP even if it doesn't scale well. You will take care about that later.

</comment><comment><USER24> I don't know what you mean by Clojure being data-centric rather than web centric. Requests are data, responses are data. Plenty of people are doing web-dev in Clojure.

Edit: I would also disagree with the language being complex. I think the only languages that compete with its level of simplicity are mostly other lisps/schemes.

<comment><USER25> The point about complexity is probably fair from the perspective of someone just getting started with Clojure.

Sure, the syntax itself is very simple and regular (like any Lisp). The complexity is in all the other stuff - macros, code-as-data, vars, namespaces, metadata, managed references, persistent data structures, leiningen, paredit etc.

Once you've got up the steep learning curve, I find Clojure is unbelievably productive. It's just a bit tough getting there. I think it's all solvable, but the Clojure community does need to listen and learn from constructive criticism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> > _Does this technology fit my company's core values?_

This is actually a fantastic way of looking at it. All programming languages have philosophies, and certain "cultures" that they bring along with them.

It's important to realize that technology choices are not just about the technology.

</comment><comment><USER27> scala is just great (minus compile time). But really. what you know best . (pref type safe)</comment>


Why Germany now requires people to be trained before using some elevators - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2015/06/01/why-germany-now-requires-people-to-be-trained-before-using-some-elevators/ <comment><USER2> "Germans now need to complete special training before being able to enter the old-fashioned elevators called paternosters.

Those elevators are unusual — they do not have doors and do not stop at any floor. Instead, they operate continuously, and users need to jump in and out of the moving cabins."

It sounds fun if you're a young or able-bodied person.

<comment><USER3> > _It sounds fun if you 're a young or able-bodied person._

Also, if you like wearing a hat and overalls, cultivating a mustache, and your name is Mario or Luigi.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should I Click the Up Button to Save or Vote? - <AUTHOR>

I, like many others, use the up button on Hacker News to both save the story and show that I think it's interesting.
But what's the best way to use it/think of this button?
Are there general guidelines or does it mean anything you want? <comment><USER2> Ultimately, if it's worth saving then it's probably worth upvoting. Content that adds value to the readership of the site should be upvoted.

There are basic guidelines here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)</comment>


Why is Andy Kieffer in Mexico? - <AUTHOR> http://www.altamirano.org/startups-2/why-is-andy-kieffer-in-mexico-besides-the-tequila-and-tacos-of-course/

<comment><USER2> this is so true, you can have a very good quality life in Mexico or south america for less than it cost you to be in US. Working remotely has become a very handy way to make money. Although i wonder how big can you be without having a headquartes? Just rely only on skype, email to handle a team.</comment>