Details on the Oracle failure at JPMorgan Chase - <AUTHOR> http://www.dbms2.com/2010/09/17/jp-morgan-chase-oracle-database-outage/

<comment><AUTHOR> Short on details, and I thought the speculation on transferring the user info to a NoSQL solution sounds naive, but interesting to get a peek into the internal operations at a large enterprise. I think I want to go validate some of our database backup right now.

<comment><USER2> I agree. Also his comment about "over engineering" making the system "more brittle" was odd.

For data that important, I would have mirrored the databases to "warm standby" servers. They could have been back up in minutes with no data loss. Sure it would have doubled the cost, but how much money did they lose during the outage.

<comment><USER3> You completely failed to read the article.

Otherwise you'd know that they had a fault that propagated to the hot spare. It's also utterly daft to think that a financial enterprise as large as JPM/Chase wouldn't already be running a HA setup. In this case it appears to be Oracle RAC.

I'm astounded how often I have to remind people that replication and backups are very different things, and that you need both.

I'm also depressed how many utterly thoughtless comments are made here on hackernews lately.

<comment><USER4> No Oracle RAC shares the same storage between two or more nodes.

What they had here would appear to be database A running on storage A which is replicated at the storage level to storage B where database B waits in an idle state. Because the replication system is "blind" - it only sees its own filesystem containing bytes, not Oracle data structures - it can't tell a good Oracle block from a bad one and copies it.

I do this sort of setup for a living and you would be amazed at how many "architects" there are around who have completely drunk the storage vendor kool-aid and don't really understand how anything works (not even storage...).

<comment><USER5> This is likely the case since the post mentioned that storage controller was initially blamed (but cleared).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _caused by corruption in an Oracle database._

Could happen to any database. Not just Oracle.

</comment><comment><USER7> So do those 8 machines and the code on it represent the system before or after the Wamu merger, or something in between? I've heard many of these banks such as Citigroup have something like 13 different databases or systems, many of which duplicate functionality.

</comment><comment><USER8> having worked at an enterprise software company and working with several big clients (including banks), I find it surprising (and shocking to some extent) that JPMC didnt have a more efficient disaster recovery process in place.

I am not saying they didnt have one, just that disaster recovery scenarios should factor into such outages. Hypothetical fire drills etc. are needed at such critical businesses like banks.

My guess is that a bunch of people @ jpmc will most likely be losing their jobs over this.

<comment><USER9> And bunch of people getting the jobs/contracts. Like anybody who've been working with big enterprises, i'm sure it would be a net positive effect :)

Btw, while everybody's salivating over "Oracle failure", was it really Oracle failure, ie. like failure of Oracle?

<comment><USER8> ohh yeah. i totally agree. I'm pretty sure if its an oracle issue, ibm is going to put its sales pitch for db2 in overdrive to jpmc

<comment><USER10> They should have used MS SQL Server instead :-)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to read Plato (1995) - <AUTHOR> http://plato-dialogues.org/email/950404_1.htm <comment><USER2> "Make the assumption that Plato was a smart guy (A. N. Whitehead once wrote that all western philosophy is but a set of footnotes on Plato's dialogues...) and, if you find some place where there is a dumb way of reading the text and a smart one, assume Plato had the smart one in mind"

So if Plato is misunderstood, it is because he failed to make himself clear by clearly stating that an easy way of misunderstanding him is not what he actually meant.

"most of what is good in Aristotle is Plato's, often ill digested; but if you haven't heard of Aristotle yet, you are lucky and enjoy your luck as it last, and forget about Aristotle; only be aware that even if you don't know it, Aristotle had a great influence on our way of understanding the world, and contributed to instilling in our mind the wrong notions about Plato, this picture of Plato as an idealist dreaming in a world of "ideas" or "forms" unconnected with the real world).

So the author believes that Aristotle was part right in his philosophical beliefs and part wrong, and that the parts he got wrong, Plato got right. And that the modern world follows Aristotle, and so we need Plato to correct our beliefs.

I wonder what the author's metaphysical and political beliefs are, and how they would stand up against critiques from Aristotle and also various modern philosophers if the author presented them as such in a well-organized fashion. My guess is they would fair quite poorly, and he hiding behind Plato as a way of keeping this from happening.

<comment><USER3> >So if Plato is misunderstood, it is because he failed to make himself clear by clearly stating that an easy way of misunderstanding him is not what he actually meant.

I think your inference is partly true, but partly not true. In some cases, of course it is the case that by not saying "this is an easy way of misunderstanding" a particular claim does lead to Plato being misunderstood. But Plato is very much unlike Aristotle or the vast majority of other philosophers in that he wrote dialogues. These dialogues are (almost entirely) fictional, but they read more like a play than a treatise. So, it's not always the case that Plato is trying to be clearly understood in terms of propositions being conveyed in language.

For example, in the dialogue the Phaedo, Socrates is talking to two Pythagoreans about life and death. They ask Socrates to make arguments supporting their quasi-religious beliefs that the soul goes on after death, which Socrates does. But he does so in a very interesting way: the sequence of arguments keep pushing them until they become uncertain about their beliefs concerned the afterlife (which they then express).

So the question is: what does Plato actually want us to take away from this sequence of arguments? It seems, at least, that he is not coming at it head- on. He is not saying you should believe proposition P. Hence my scepticism that you claim is wholly true — that Plato is misunderstood because he failed to make himself clear. I do not think it is obvious that being clear was always Plato's ultimate goal. My suspicions are that he wanted to put the readers into a position where we have to figure out what we actually think is true, and what we think about the arguments themselves. I guess what I want to say here is that making himself clear, in the sense of stating propositions, is not obviously the goal of Plato.

<comment><USER2> _My suspicions are that he wanted to put the readers into a position where we have to figure out what we actually think is true, and what we think about the arguments themselves. I guess what I want to say here is that making himself clear, in the sense of stating propositions, is not obviously the goal of Plato._

You are coming at this all wrong. The important question is not what Plato did and was trying to do, it is what is the truth and how can it be clearly communicated to people so they can make use of it. If Plato communicated in a way that in fact lead many of those who read him to not actually arrive at the truth, which seems to be what has happened, then it doesn't matter if he himself knew the truth and wanted people to understand it correctly.

(Oh, and by the way, the author's claim that Aristotle misunderstood Plato seems quite dubious, given that he was Plato's student for many years, and so Plato had abundant opportunities to test out his understanding and correct it if it was wrong.)

Here is a way of looking at it. Take two scenarios

1) Plato is wrong, people correctly understand him, and they are persuaded he is correct, and so live according to mistaken ideas.

2) Plato is wrong, people misinterpret him as believing ideas that are in fact true, and they themselves are persuaded of those ideas, and so live according to the truth.

Now which is the better state of affairs? Obviously the second one. So the philosophical search for truth is more important than correctly interpreting Plato. And if you are sincerely interested in finding the truth, then you should read many more philosophers than Plato, and above all try to think independently rather than slavishly following any particular philosopher.

And if after doing this you conclude that Plato's ideas are correct, what you definitely should not do is urge everyone to spend their next ten years reading Plato according to your interpretation, as veryfew will do that. What you should instead do is present Plato's ideas to the world as an organized philosophical work,complete with arguments, making occasional reference to Plato, and then see if these ideas stand up to critical examination by other philosophers. When philosophers who are Plato-enthusiasts don't follow the correct route, I assume it is because they sense, correctly, that their beliefs could not stand up to critical scrutiny, but don't want to admit it to themselves.

That is why I turned to the question of what the author thinks is true, and could it stand up to critical examination. As I said, I think he is hiding behind Plato, and it seems to me you are doing the same, turning the question away from what is the truth to your interpretation of Plato.

And with that in mind, let me ask you, what is your metaphysics and what is your political philosophy? Also, for one particular topic, namely biology, do you agree that Aristotle invented scientific biology, and that this was a great advance? Or do you claim that Plato actually invented it, or do you agree that Aristotle did but that it was invalid and unimportant, or what? Ditto formal logic.

<comment><USER4> What if Plato thought that (at least part of) the truth was that it was more beneficial for people to _think_ and _seek_ than to be told the pre-canned truth? Then getting people to actually read and think about Plato (or other Plato-ish philosophers) would be more valuable than to "present Plato's ideas to the world as an organized philosophical work".

> Also, for one particular topic, namely biology, do you agree that Aristotle > invented scientific biology, and that this was a great advance?

I don't know. If I understand correctly, Aristotle said that women had fewer teeth than men. He was married twice, but apparently never bothered to open either wife's mouth and count. That may have been biology, but it wasn't very scientific.

<comment><USER2> _What if Plato thought that (at least part of) the truth was that it was more beneficial for people to think and seek than to be told the pre-canned truth?_

And what if was wrong about that? Or is it your assumption that Plato was right about everything, and so therefore he must be right about that particular idea?

As to Aristotle's specific empirical claims in the realm of biology, the great majority have been confirmed by modern science.

<comment><USER2> Here's a further point. The question with Plato's dialogues is not whether a personal dialogue with a philosopher might be the way to go, but rather is a published dialogue better than a published work of straightforward exposition.

The fact that people disagree so much as to Plato's ideas, but far less over works of straightforward exposition, would seem to indicate that, when it comes to written texts, the latter is far superior.

In fact, the dialogue boosters actually seem to believe this. I say this because when they are writing their interpretation of a dialogue, and they get to a point people disagree on, they don't write more dialogue, but rather use a series of propositions to present what they think Plato actually meant.

Beyond that, my impression with the dialogue boosters is that at least most of them are more devoted to the idea of promoting the superiority of dialogue than to rationally determining if Plato's ideas are actually correct.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My favorite is to read Plato as a set of advertisements for the Academy. "Come to the Academy," they say, "and partake in conversations like this!"

(This is why Phaedrus ends with Socrates arguing that you cannot learn anything by reading, only through discussion with a teacher.)

<comment><USER6> Funny viewpoint, but let's not forget that Socrates was part of the oral tradition and skeptical of the worth of writing. It's why we're reading Plato's account of Socrates' teachings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This guy says ignore the scholars, then says, this is the order the dialogues were meant to be read, and lists "tetralogies." Nobody knows what the order of the dialogues is or how they are grouped, if at all. The best way to group the dialogues is probably the dramatic order, for instance Theatetus-Sophist- Statesmen-Apology-Crito-Phaedo, but there are other ways to group the dialogues too. For instance, some dialogues are narrated by Socrates (Lovers, Charmides, Menexenus), others are narrated but not by Socrates (Theatetus, Symposium), others are straight dialogue (Crito, Euthyphro) etc etc. There are a lot of ways to look at it and the best way is probably just to pick up the Apology and start reading it.

Second, he says that the dialogues should be examined as a whole. Well, how would we understand the entire corpus of dialogues without first understanding each individual dialogue on its own, and vice versa? An individual dialogue is easier to understand on its own, that's probably where we should start.

<comment><USER8> I don't think he's contradicting himself. His scholar opinion is about the _form_ of Plato's work (i.e. the order it should be read), and not about its _content_. I think he recomended people to avoid the second, as following the first is very helpful for the beginner who sees themself without knowing where to start, even if the suggested order is very opinionated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you're interested in Plato and Platonic thought, I highly recommend looking into the work of Pierre Grimes and the Noetic Society. Pierre has done dozens of lectures on Plato, see this channel[0].

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwpMRCoVgSJ- rKyV1yhWljg](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwpMRCoVgSJ-rKyV1yhWljg)

</comment><comment><USER10> I find the earlier/Socratic dialogues, from Symposium to Apology, much easier to read, more fluid and dynamic - that probably has to do with the character of Socrates himself.

Works such as the Republic are a bit too heavyweight / scholarly for me..

<comment><USER11> You make an interesting observation. By way of example, those who were taught rightly by Gautama Buddha apparently were trained to prefix their accounts with "I heard that…". The reason was that they were told when they say something they don't know then it makes karma in themselves which obscures their view of reality and can also come to ruin themselves. Simply put, if 51% of your knowledge is falsehood then if you were to try to teach others, it would make you change for the net worse by accumulating falsehood. So karma is something in a person which tries to make itself exist through its own activities and comes from what happened to that person, and makes a person see 'what was' instead of 'what is'. Anyway, I notice a lot of people saying Plato was a terrible person. He may have had an idealistic streak due to lack of specific training (the limitation of Socrates, perhaps). I believe it's true that idealism can kill. But suppose he had just stuck to reporting what happened during the trial and during the actual conversations with Socrates (and perhaps even himself). Do you suppose there would be nearly the surface area upon which to mount a campaign against Plato (culminating in accusations of being complicit in inciting totalitarianism etc) if Plato had said "I heard that…"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Check out:

[http://www.patheos.com/blogs/eidos/](http://www.patheos.com/blogs/eidos/)

The author is currently writing a series of articles on his reading of the Republic.

</comment><comment><USER13> Recommendation for _Plato at the Googleplex_ by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein. A very fun set of thought-experiment/narrative dialogues exploring why philosophy (still) matters.

</comment><comment><USER14> The author's conclusion that Plato was working for the betterment of humanity is simply laughable. He was an Athenian aristocrat, deeply resentful of his loss of social standing by the newfangled invention of democracy. Like many of Socrates' students, he was disloyal to democracy (his uncle Critias, also a Socrates associate, was the leading member of the quisling Thirty Tyrants imposed by the Spartans when they defeated Athens in the Peloponnesian War).

That's why Socrates was executed, for treason really but under different charges because of an amnesty on collaborators imposed by Sparta in exchange for the restoration of democracy. And why Plato was exiled to Syracuse, where he failed to worm his way into Dyonisios' favor with his transparent flattery.

The Spartan-inspired political system advocated by Plato in The Republic is totalitarian beyond the wildest dreams of a Hitler, Stalin or Pol Pot. It does suggest philosophers ought to be the supreme rulers, which may explain that useless profession's fondness for the guy, and the excuses they make for him.

Far better to read Karl Popper's "The Open Society and Its Enemies", volume 1, "The Spell of Plato" to understand how abominable Plato's influence has been for mankind.

<comment><USER15> Right, but those supreme rulers (not a single ruler, but many) may not marry, they may not own stuff (kind of a monk caste), and they are not hereditary, but relentlessly sieved out until they reach that ruler status in old age.

I doubt that would have appealed to Hitler or Stalin.

I think your judgement is clouded by "democracy is good" which is (a) a very modern stance and (b) one that many philosophers through the ages opposed.

<comment><USER16> "I doubt that would have appealed to Hitler or Stalin."

Probably not. But it could appeal to many popes, and it didn't prevent many of them to be scheming manipulating power-hungry a</comment></comment></comment><comment>s. (The "may not own stuff" is not really different from "I am a CEO with no salary and a company plane.")

I just don't see a smart and reasonable person wanting to rule over other people. And even if you wanted to, I don't think there is a good strategy on how to do it.

For any benevolent enlightened dictator, I see an analogue of the classical Epicurus quote about God:

Is the ruler going against the will of the people by manipulation? Then he cannot claim to be enlightened.

Is the ruler going against the will of the people by force? Then he cannot claim to be benevolent.

Is the ruler not going against the will of the people? Then he cannot claim to be a dictator!

What Plato is describing is simply a fantasy that glosses over many real-world complications of ruling. Such as, even if you were a genius ruler, how do you select your associates and underlings? You need a system anyway, there is no way around it.

(It is also kinda similar to fallacy of Cartesian theater - if only we had a perfect component where all the decisions are made, we wouldn't have to deal with all the complicated details of how that component actually arises from more elementary things.)

<comment><USER11> It's natural that you don't realize the answer yet. If you did, you'd be capable of being such a leader because the world would be filled with enough people who understood how they must behave in order to keep such a leader. Such a leader would not need underlings. The whole of society are the members of his society. The leader is in a special role because he can do or does do something the others can't or don't: he uses a single formula in order to correctly answer endless questions that are brought by people who realize that the leader can see something. It's like how a mathematician operates. The answers can still be correct despite the leader not yet having achieved 100% truthfulness (e.g. 98%). There is a certain threshold such a leader needs to have crossed in order to have the ability that others can't have. However, I'm extremely confident there have only been one or two men in history who had the ability and realized it. That's why you ought to be more careful using the word enlightenment. It's probably true that none of the people you think of in that set are actually close. If you yourself are not close, how can you use the term with confidence? If you say you can, I merely have to check your clear definition of the term. The genuine answer to the definition of it is very obvious and can be confirmed by anyone. Everything in the world is made according to one principle (which someone taught me). Every substance, material, and product are all made by very specific causes. That's why it's very easy for me, specifically, to tell who really knows about this subject from who doesn't after hearing only a little from them. But if even someone like you can't find out the real meaning of the term and confirm it then it's not right to expect people will simply recognize the leader and have the ability to actually question and learn from, MUCH less follow such a one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Make the assumption that Plato was a smart guy (A. N. Whitehead once wrote > that all western philosophy is but a set of footnotes on Plato's > dialogues...) and, if you find some place where there is a dumb way of > reading the text and a smart one, assume Plato had the smart one in mind, > even if Aristotle tried to make us believe he had the dumb one, ...

This is not starting off well. The first rule is to interpret him in the most favorable way possible... (And the second rule btw is that Plato is better than Aristotle—which incidentally also makes up most of the first rule.)

I've read some plato and been very impressed with what he was doing _at his time_. That said, I've run into a number of folks who insist that he is _still_ one of the most important philosophers to read (in the sense of being capable of benefitting modern readers)—but I can never get them to say what any particular idea(s) he has that's useful or true/important but not already well known. And any ideas I came across in my own reading were either easily demonstrable to be incorrect (and which someone as intelligent as Plato never would have espoused if he lived with our modern knowledge), or I'd already run into them in other contexts.

<comment><USER3> >This is not starting off well. The first rule is to interpret him in the most favorable way possible

Actually, as a principle of reading in general, this is not a bad one. It does not mean that we have to decide that the most favourable interpretation is the one correct interpretation, but it does mean that it is reasonable to search for such an interpretation in the beginning. This is called the principle of charity. The reason the author recommends it is that often people will impute a particular view to a philosopher that implies the philosopher made elementary errors in reasoning or obvious falsehoods.

This may, of course, be the case. It is trivially true that philosophers make invalid or weak inferences, and false claims.

But there are two good reasons to adhere to the principle of charity that the author does not make explicit. First, if we do not, then we often end up short-circuiting our understanding of what the philosopher may be trying to say. That is, we may prematurely dismiss the claim as absurd instead of trying to sort out what might be the actual claim. Second, while part of philosophy depends on what philosophers are actually saying, a good part of doing philosophy is figuring out what our response to a particular claim is, how we ourselves would support that claim (if the inference is invalid), and what claim we would put in its place (if the claim is false). If we do little more than dismiss a claim as absurd, then we are not really doing philosophy.

So I guess what I am saying here is that making the assumption "Plato is a smart guy" is actually not a bad start for one taking a serious study of what he has to say.

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

<comment><USER18> I would be careful about applying this principle to Plato because he himself advocates lying to students, insofar as you can take him at face value -- and if you can't, well, here we are. Plato seems to have been a smart guy with an agenda and no qualms about manipulating his readers. That it's manipulative doesn't mean it's false or worthless, but I won't read it in the usual Gricean way.

<comment><USER3> Does Plato actually advocate this? If you are referring to an argument Socrates makes in the Republic regarding politically motivated lying, it seems to me not unreasonable at an initial glance to say that Socrates represents Plato's position.

But it also seems to me that there are other ways to take this. First, the Socrates in the Republic is a character in an exchange — and so it seems not unreasonable to think that perhaps that character is not a simple mouthpiece of the author. For example, nobody would say Hamlet is Shakespeare's mouthpiece. Second, there are dialogues where Socrates gets completely trounced by his opponent — in particular, the Parmenides. Interpretations of what is going on in the Parmenides are diverse; but at the very least it seems that Socrates is not Plato's mouthpiece. Third, if (contrary to the previous two points) it turns out that Socrates is Plato's mouthpiece, but that mouthpiece is telling us that Plato will manipulate the reader as he sees fit, then it seems at least possible that the whole idea that Socrates is Plato's mouthpiece is itself not a straightforward claim. Thus, the grounds for your claim that one should be careful about applying this principle to Plato — assuming I am right that you base it on evidence in the dialogues — is not entirely solid.

As an additional point, it seems to me that even if the author wants to manipulate the reader, it still stands us in good stead to have a principle of charity. It is a starting point, not an ending point.

<comment><USER18> Yes, it's a passage in the Republic that I'm particularly thinking of. I have only the vaguest memory now, something like that only a few of the oldest and wisest should be told the real reasons for rules, and the rest should get various levels of cover stories?

Agreed that there's a deliberate indirection in dialogs; that's why I included the caveat. But to take another example, the Turtle is not always Hoftstadter's mouthpiece, yet Hofstadter doesn't seem especially manipulative to me. Plato (at least in translation) does. The passage I brought up just crystallized that reaction. I started out reading Plato from the usual charitable standpoint, and ended feeling that's a mistake: whatever's he's up to, it's not primarily to help the reader become a better independent thinker, or to accurately report events.

I've read less Aristotle, but he gives a different impression: someone with faults like overconfidence, but who's honestly pitching in to the project of improving collective knowledge and thinking.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Too much to read on HN - <AUTHOR>

I find that HN community is bringing too good articles, blogs, SHOW HN, advice, libraries, demos, etc on front page. However I am not able to cop with all this information.
I want to read all, but do not have time and end up upvoting+saving for later read which I never ever open again.
What would be your advice? How do I control my desirableness to know new things?
Should HN tag some of the stores as 'advice', 'lib/package', 'news', just like 'Show HN' and 'Ask HN'? and I can subscribe to all advice tag. <comment><USER2> I'm a big fan of HN Digest. Weekly email of the top stories, not great for discovering content that didn't make the top spot, but it's useful to catch up when I'm too busy to hop on throughout the week.

[http://www.hndigest.com/](http://www.hndigest.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> First world problem !

Yes, it is like trying to drink from a firehose. I find that the only solution is to skim the headlines and only read what is relevant to my work and immediate interests. Just have to accept that I will never read or know everything.</comment>


Dash for iOS is now open source - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Kapeli/Dash-iOS <comment><USER2> Relevant HN threads:

Apple Has Removed Dash from the App Store: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12646919](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12646919)

Apple Responds to Dash Controversy: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12680131](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12680131)

</comment><comment><USER3> I stopped using Dash long time ago.

[http://devdocs.io/](http://devdocs.io/) is enough for me.

<comment><USER4> Is there a way to open devdocs with a shortcut like Dash?

<comment><USER3> They suggest this plugins ([http://devdocs.io/about](http://devdocs.io/about)):

\- Chrome web app

\- Sublime Text plugin

\- Atom plugin

\- Brackets extension

\- Emacs Package

<comment><USER5> Can't beat using Alfred to search Dash from anywhere

<comment><USER6> Yup, just make a custom search for "[http://devdocs.io/#q={query}"](http://devdocs.io/#q={query}").

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am not the author but here is a similar app for Android users. Previously it was a paid app but now it is free.

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lovelyhq.a...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lovelyhq.android.lovelydocs)

<comment><USER8> I have already tried this kind of app and I feel a bit stupid : I don't understand the use case.

In which situation do people read documentation on their phone ?

<comment><USER9> It's not well documented online, but if you use Dash on Mac, then you can set up an iOS device as a 'Remote', which lets you use your phone/tablet as a second screen for documentation, which you control from your Mac. I think that's the primary usage scenario.

<comment><USER8> ahhh I see, thank you !

It makes sense that way.. I was wondering why would anybody really need that much to look at documentation while on the go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Pretty interesting - on the Dash blog in October[1], the developer said that open-source wouldn't be a great option because compiling iOS apps is difficult for most non-iOS developers.

It's a shame, IMO, that iOS apps only have two wide-distribution models: paid, with Apple, on the App Store, or open-source and, by that nature, free. There's a lot of really great software on OS X that is distributed outside the Mac App Store. Clearly there's no plan for something similar to that on iOS.

[https://blog.kapeli.com/dear-dash-users/](https://blog.kapeli.com/dear-dash- users/)

<comment><USER11> > that iOS apps only have two wide-distribution models: paid, with Apple, on > the App Store, or open-source and, by that nature, free.

Please correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think that's true. Just because it's open source doesn't mean it's free, it just means that technical users could, if wanted, compile it from source. But, especially with iOS apps, this is not even true since you do need to have a developer license and a Mac to be able to compile and run it on an actual iPhone.

So in reality, while this is open source, only developers who pay Apple, are able to install this application, even if it's open source.

<comment><USER12> Here's the correction you asked for :)

You don't need developer account to build XCode projects on your phone anymore, you can just sign in with your Apple account and sideload it.

<comment><USER13> And resign it on your computer every 7 days? Not exactly a walk in the park.

<comment><USER14> From my experience apps only need to be re-signed once every 90 days. Not quite as much of a hassle but still one nonetheless

<comment><USER15> It used to be 90 days, but AFAIK it's now 7 days if you don't have a paid subscription (1 year if you do). Also there's a 10-app limit.

I discovered this recently as I wanted to install Kodi on my iPad. I'm not an iOS developer, and can't bring myself to pay an annual subscription just so I can install open source software on my own device.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I applaud him for doing this. I'm sure he's spent a lot of time building this product and to open source it is pretty awesome. I've seen lots of other products I like just disappear after they are taken down.

</comment><comment><USER17> A similar program on Linux (or, I guess many platforms) is Zeal:

[https://zealdocs.org/](https://zealdocs.org/)

It's alright.

<comment><USER18> I've used it on Windows - unfortunately it created so many files in one structure I was unable to remove the folder with Windows Explorer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think it's an apology :)

Regardless, I've happily paid for it and I'm a user.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm happy to see that he was able to make it open source and under GPL3. I wonder if the developer will be responding to issues and pull requests, since those are open for this repo.

</comment><comment><USER20> Oh, lord, I hate to be That Guy, but it looks like Bogdan has included an older version of Gus Mueller's FMDB library <[https://github.com/ccgus/fmdb>](https://github.com/ccgus/fmdb>) but has failed to include a copy of the MIT License that governs them. Probably just an oversight, but...

</comment><comment><USER21> I'd never seen this before, but it sounds a lot like `zeal`, the desktop app [https://zealdocs.org/](https://zealdocs.org/)

Upside of Zeal, is that desktop is usually more comfortable for developers.

</comment><comment><USER22> Nice that he did opensourced it.

I personally never understood why this tool was so popular to start off with though. I often found myself using the original doc sites instead.

<comment><USER23> When you have a fast and stable internet connection you hardly appreciate how useful it is to read offline docs.

When you don't, it is a godsend.

<comment><USER24> Definitely. When I got the train from the Gold Coast to Brisbane (1 hour, with really spotty phone coverage) it was my life-saver!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Really unfortunate Apple got rid of such a useful app. Oh well it was saved by open source.

</comment><comment><USER26> Does that mean that we could see an open source free alternative for MacOS too?

<comment><USER27> Why? Dash is still for sale on Mac through the web.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Thank you. I've been missing this from my toolset after paying for it.

<comment><USER29> Just curious to know, what are the other apps in your toolset?

<comment><USER28> Nothing on the iPad. I like the second screen for documentation and music.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is not related to Dash cryptocurrency I suppose?

[https://www.dash.org/](https://www.dash.org/)

Dash (the cryptocurrency) has an iOS app, that has not been approved by Apple[1].. I wonder if it is related because of the name.

1: [https://dashpay.atlassian.net/wiki/display/DOC/Download+-+In...](https://dashpay.atlassian.net/wiki/display/DOC/Download+-+Install+-+Guide)

<comment><USER31> Nope, it's an offline API docs browser.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> So this is the Romanian guy who was called out for blaming his "family member" for spamming the app store with paid ratings of his apps, while using his bank account for the Apple Developer connection? ... All after pretending to be innocent and causing many, many developers to rally for him, without knowing he manipulated them?

How about we just ignore him and don't continue to reward him with attention?

<comment><USER33> Let's not judge so quickly and surely. There are still many things we don't know, and we have heard a story from him that makes sense, and I find plausible.

What if he really is mostly innocent? More importantly, Dash app is still great, probably the best for documentation browsing, and now iOS counterpart is restored in some way. Isn't it a great move from his side, considering the circumstances? Shouldn't we celebrate his efforts instead of blaming him?

<comment><USER34> Actually after a little digging it turned out that Kapeli was a shovelware writer who's gone legit. The whole "relative" thing was fully made up:

[http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apple- says-1-000-fraudul...](http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apple- says-1-000-fraudulent-reviews-were-detected-across-two-accounts-owned-by-dash- developer-update-developer-responds.2005850/page-12#post-23708918)

<comment><USER35> _"moveAddict … provides a functionality the Finder was missing, the ability to move files using the keyboard. It's meant to replace dragging and dropping for anyone that would rather use the keyboard instead of the mouse."_

 _"Switché … can be used to switch between applications or individual windows, ordered by last use. Switché uses CoverFlow to display previews in a visually appealing way. It helps you easily find the window or application you are looking for."_

 _"DockView … extends Apple's Dock and shows window previews whenever you hover your mouse over an application or while using CMD+Tab. It helps you visualize the windows you currently have open and easily find the window you are looking for."_

 _"iGuard … protects your Mac by keeping an eye on the currently logged in users. Even though Mac OS X is already protected from most threats, iGuard adds an extra layer of security and will protect you from hackers that could gain remote access to your Mac."_

While these may not be the most useful programs in the world, there doesn't seem to be anything illegitimate about them; in particular, they are neither adware nor malware.

It also doesn't seem fair to label these programs "shovelware", which is apparently a term that describes "large amounts of public domain, open source and shareware demos and programs … copied onto CD-ROMs and advertised in magazines or sold at computer flea markets".

Why would Popescu need to escape his dark and terrible past of writing mildly useful programs?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Everpix, Snapchat, and the Startup Lie - <AUTHOR> http://subimage.com/blog/2013/11/07/everpix-snapchat-and-the-startup-lie/ <comment><USER3> For what it's worth, I emailed with the CEO of Everpix a couple of days ago to tell him that my organization may be interested in buying the app so that they wouldn't have to shut it down.

All I was asking for was a telephone call to discuss the possibility, but I was denied even that opportunity. I wish I knew what was going on behind the scenes at this point that would lead to the decision not to field last-minute offers.

<comment><USER4> One of the articles mentioned they already sold some of the tech (but not the branding) to fund the orderly shutdown. Not sure what that involved, maybe just someone wanted the source code.

<comment><USER3> That makes sense. It's too bad that the existing service wasn't part of the package.

<comment><USER4> Ah, too late to edit my previous comment but here's the tweet:

[https://twitter.com/sameersundresh/status/397791703391670273](https://twitter.com/sameersundresh/status/397791703391670273)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yes it is fun to hate on VCs as there is a lot wrong with the model, but this article is misguided. If you want to run a business growing linearly which makes a profit, don't take VC. There is nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't fit their model.

But if you take VC, go in knowing how they measure success. And it's based on mega-wins - not on profitable, dividend-paying companies.

Everpix might have been a great co. They just weren't a great VC- backable biz.

<comment><USER6> _They just weren 't a great VC- backable biz._

Can someone explain why a fund cannot be structured to make wins at the $100m level as opposed to the $1b level? Its bizarre that free money creates funds so big they need insane 1,000x deals to return a net 15-20% portfolio premium over bonds trading at (yield-equivalnt) peanuts.

The problem in going for $1B's (as an investment thesis) is that these companies are outliers so extreme you are beyond lucky to predict them, and even if they show up on your radar, and you can get some edge, they are so small in number that they cannot sustain N=Large number of VCs. Its just not a strategy 200 funds (20? maybe) can pursue rationally at the same time. Or am I missing something?

<comment><USER7> Those funds exist. They're smaller funds. Everpix was going to the "best" (biggest) VC funds and asking for a relatively large amount of money for a Series A. VCs typically aim for 10x return (let's keep the hyperbole out of this discussion, please) so Everpix indicated they expect a return of at least (1.5M + 5M) x 10 = 65M. Add in later rounds of funding and the ~1B goal is not unrealistic.

It takes a roughly constant amount of time to do a deal, so funds have a minimum deal size below which they aren't interested.

<comment><USER6> _VCs typically aim for 10x return (let 's keep the hyperbole out of this discussion, please)_

Thats why I said $100m should work. You suggest $65m. That's the same order of magnitude. It was reported that the VCs were turning them down because $1B was "never gonna happen"[1]. That's why the math piqued my interest. If its just reporting hyperbole...that would be one explanation.

[1] Which implies they were looking for that extra _~order of magnitude_

<comment><USER7> You're assuming their business plan included only the one round of funding. I'm assuming they were planning extra rounds or the VCs believed they would need extra rounds.

If they went up to, say, a Series B at 10M and a Series C at 20M, which are reasonably conservative multiples, they are at ~36.5M, so looking for a ~400M exit. It's not hard to need that ~1B exit if your business plan is "everyone in the world using my product," and it appears this is what Everpix were aiming for.

<comment><USER6> I hear what you are saying. But i still feel like there is some mixture of thought that should let these guys take a shot at a 50 to 100m exit, without (on the one hand) tripping over 35k aws bill; and on the other blowing through 50-100m of invested capital. because clearly, if the team is pitching those are the only options, its gonna make people nervous. but now it seems the mirror is pointing back at the guys and not at the VCs...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There is a very good reason why investors and a lot of entrepreneurs in the consumer space tend to support free or freemium products and that is because building a paid for consumer service is extremely difficult.

Reaching users is incredibly expensive (once you have the audience, you can charge others to access it - see how it works), conversion rates are low and consumers are reticent to spend.

By being free your product becomes your marketing. You either have a paid product and start paying $50-500 to acquire each user, or you have a free product and pay $0.05-10 to acquire each user.

You can't just cut out the free product part and magically retain the paid part, as this example does with Everpix.

There is also an element of network effects in a lot of consumer business models, with a winner-takes-all (or most) landgrab.

Things are entirely different in the enterprise sector, or selling to people at work.

<comment><USER9> That doesn't explain why investors wouldn't support everpix, because they _did_ have a free product.

<comment><USER8> The article in The Verge and Andrew's post[0] do a good job of explaining that

With the amount of money they had raised, the expectation from investors was that their flywheel would already be setup and working and new funding would accelerate it (Series A being the new Series B).

Media coverage of startups is all at the pointy end - companies that have raised money and are successful, most startups don't raise continuing rounds and the "Series A crunch" is real. The question should be inverted, why _should_ Everpix get funded.

Despite having a product that was loved, was free, had good word of mouth and coverage etc. they still didn't get funded. Not a unique or unusual situation, and only covered in this case (as opposed to the startups that die out quietly) since the founder was willing to speak to a journalist about it.

Could it have worked with no funding, a leaner startup and as a paid product? Who knows, but I wouldn't use their freemium numbers to make that case.

[0] [http://andrewchen.co/2013/11/05/when-a-great-product-hits- th...](http://andrewchen.co/2013/11/05/when-a-great-product-hits-the-funding- crunch/)

<comment><USER10> I think it was covered so widely because everpix did a great job on pr and getting the story out there. I assume the story will help with either generating more offers for investment, sale, or employment for the team.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm not sure that Everpix is the case study some are making it out to be.

Yes, there were obviously things the company could have done differently, but at the end of the day, you still have a business that, according to the original Verge article, only generated ~$250,000 in subscription revenue against spend of more than $2 million.

Forget headcount and payroll (both of which are arguably "modest" by Bay Area standards today): operating expenses alone exceeded revenue by $100,000. Everpix could have halved salaries and even if you mistakenly assume that the company could have attracted and retained employees talented and motivated enough to continue building a great product, it wouldn't have made a difference.

If Everpix transitioned from a freemium to paid model, it wouldn't have made a difference either. Operating expenses would decrease, but user acquisition costs would almost certainly skyrocket (as nikcub points out above).

Venture capital can help build great companies, and it can lead companies to pursue a high-risk growth strategy that ends in failure. But in this case, based on the numbers and story as told, it appears that we simply have a very good product that was _never_ likely to be the foundation of a sustainable business, with or without venture capital.

<comment><USER12> It seems like there are two paths to sustainability in a startup:

1) Become profitable early and stay profitable. This gives you the luxury of not relying on outside investment, though the option to take funding still exists.

2) Grow, grow, grow. If you take a million dollars today and come back for more money a year from now, you need to justify that the million dollars produced something.

Everpix did neither. They weren't profitable and their growth did not justify the money the took.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Unfortunately this line of thinking is pretty infectious and affects more than just the Valley's pre-IPO startups.

I work for a large-ish company (will be approx 3000. employees by YE 2014) that has been public since the last tech bubble. We've run in the red for the last six years pivoting into an entirely new line of business -- essentially new investors bought an already public company and sold off the existing business to avoid having to IPO. Their exit strategy for the business is to eventually have one of our client companies buy us out. All of our contracts are structured to make such an acquisition a (from our management's perspective) sweetheart deal.

Only the way we've been going about it is all wrong. Basically these "very large companies" that we work hard to land contracts with we allow to give us very unfavorable terms and to pay us below cost. This is in a market where we have only one competitor and they can't come close to providing our level of service. It's blatantly obvious that they're getting better deals at the price for service they have now while we take all of the risk/loss.

We had our very first break-even quarter sometime this year (even by GAAP principles!) and the board cut everyone very big checks that put us back in the red (even by our non-GAAP principles!). Our executives are not tech executives, they're MBA-types from the retail and call center industries, but they drink the exact same Kool Aid.

I think their line of thinking goes something like this:

1) We have a really awesome product.

2) We lose tons of money providing that product. (Aside: Holy shit, employees that actually are our product are expensive! We couldn't possibly afford to hire developers to make our large staff more efficient! No way! We're a technology company!)

3) ???

4) Our customer base that we're totally supplicant to will buy us out because fairies.

Eventually this is going to end in tears and 3000 very overworked people are suddenly going to be much less so.

</comment><comment><USER14> > 1 - PAY OUT LOWER SALARIES

No self-respecting engineer should or would take $50/60k a year in the Bay Area (heck, most of the country). It's fine for founders to pay themselves that (and, indeed, they probably should) but asking employees to take that tiny salary for your dream is never going to fly.

<comment><USER15> Depends on the type of business, if they are going for the get big fast model that is probably true. If they are in it for the long haul something more sustainable will prevent founders from eventually loosing motivation due to finding it hard to make ends meet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Everpix got beaten by Google, Apple and Yahoo who offered free personal photo libraries. Sure the big companies don't have all of the features of Everpix, but they have the ability to instantly advertise to their 100 million user+ networks. This is why VC's always ask you what you're going to do when Google does "your idea."

The thing about ephemeral messaging is that no one would trust Apple, Google, Facebook or Yahoo to actually delete your content because their business models are based on collecting and mining your data. Snapchat is in a position that could only have been achieved by being the "little guy" and no other little guys are contesting them right now.

</comment><comment><USER17> How on earth does one spend $35,000 on hosting/storage a month? It simply baffles me that people would even consider this an option.

There are so many better ways than just blindly throwing money away like this. Heck, you could buy your own servers and have a dedicated guy for it and still be off cheaper. Geez...

<comment><USER18> The echo chamber has blinders on when it comes to AWS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The article's main point seems to be that Everpix could have done well by paying employees well under (half?) market rates and succeeded. Maybe by handing over a lot of equity to employees (probably most of it), it may have even worked. But I think the author is missing the opportunity cost here. All of these Everpix employees could likely have easily found employment in other startups with more VC money and received twice the pay Everpix could give them. This is the market in action - we have enough of these photo sharing gimmicks already. Those employees are better used in other startups who can actually make enough money (read: fulfilling market needs better) to pay them properly, and so I think it was the right move to shut down and move on.

<comment><USER20> RE: "we have enough of these photo sharing gimmicks already" RE: "I think the author is missing the opportunity cost here"

The fact that there's already entrenched photo sharing kings means that you don't have to be first to market, overspend, or rush. There's no time crunch here, meaning that a great product could have been built well - over time - <USER2> budget, and still have had success.

Did you even read the article? The photo storage / sharing / librarian market is HUGE. Definitely large enough to support multiple players, even marginal ones that make $3-400k/yr.

<comment><USER19> Instead of paying employees half market rates, those employees can go and work on creating a VR app that could be used by millions of people, or some other opportunity. And they could receive full pay.

Why should these employees need to receive half pay when there is opportunity for them to receive full pay working on a different problem? I'm sure they could make great waiters at a local restaurant and receive a livable wage, but is it the best use of the opportunities they have? I'm going to go out on a limb and assume those 6 employees were excellent given how well Everpix was run.

<comment><USER21> > Instead of paying employees half market rates, those employees can go and > work on creating a VR app that could be used by millions of people, or some > other opportunity. And they could receive full pay.

Yes, you're right. But does a photo sharing service really need those kind of employees? Is there a need to be located at a technology cluster like the SV where developers are expensive and a scarce resource?

Services like Everpix are - in terms of technology - pretty trivial. They can be built anywhere in the world by average developers. No need to hire expensive Stanford PHDs to do a job a kid from the local community college in Kentucky could do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> plus- Eric Ries sum it up already in the Lean Startup:

 _Zero invites imagination, but small numbers invite questions about whether large numbers will ever materialize._

</comment><comment><USER22> What really scares me about the US economy is that truly innovative and sustainable companies like Tesla are only possible because there's a single huge investor, and the unwashed masses of investors throw money at handwaving feel-good agencies like Facebook and Twitter.

</comment><comment><USER23> This wouldn't have been enough to save them, but if your AWS bill is $35,000/month, it's likely much cheaper to buy (or even lease) hardware and co-locate -- even if you factor in making 1-2 new hires to support the hardware.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm guessing the effort to switch to a different cloud wasn't something they wanted to invest in?

<comment><USER24> I'm guessing they just didn't care, because they were VC backed, and didn't understand that 2M is not that much money if you have 6 people and a storage- based hosting service.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I am really starting to dislike this approach to building tech companies. I have been speaking out about it too. There are too many startups that have no real value besides the fact that someone has invested in them. The cycle is: fund a company, make it appear successful so others invest in it, cash out and let it fail. 99% of startups will never be as big as facebook and it's ridiculous to treat them the same. Silicon Valley is really strewing shit up for the rest of us. I want a long term, viable career and all venture capitalists seem to be interested in is mining wealth from the industry until it's dead. Essentially every company that is propped up by investment is a small bubble ready to burst. There should be a law against investing so much money in otherwise worthless ventures. It's not a level playing field and it's barely a free market. I have to go with crappy companies because the good ones were put out of business by bloated subpar startups. I don't always want something new. I want things with long term value and use ability. Don't get me wrong. I apply for funding in ycombinator an others but it's not because I believe in what you do, it's because I want your money. Money equals power and I want to change some stuff.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> So what's the link between charging money and growth?

P/M-fit is easier to achieve when price is $0.00, but that isn't a sustainable business model.

Perhaps the ideal is achieving P/M-fit in a large market at price that moves the needle for the business (i.e. demonstrates revenue traction) but does not appear to hinder growth.

<comment><USER26> Growing Virally (where virality coefficient and cycle are really important[1]) is different than growing with Paying Users (where Lifetime Value (LTV) and Cost to aqcuire customers (CAC) is really important[2]) that its different than growing through very high retention rates[3]. You can achieve P/M fit with any of them.

You can argue that you don't need growth. Which investors won't particularly like (in particular, VCs have LPs to give a return on investment[4]). But ultimately, if your company is not growing in any way, is any of your work actually making a difference? Are the people working on the company getting a return on investment on their _time_ investment?

Growth also doesn't need to be about money (or eventual money, as it can be the case if you are growing virally). Think of Khan Academy (which is a Non Profit[5]): they can grow on more people using them, and on people using them more. They can also grow on impact they have on the students.

[1] [http://www.forentrepreneurs.com/lessons-learnt-viral- marketi...](http://www.forentrepreneurs.com/lessons-learnt-viral-marketing/)

[2] [http://www.forentrepreneurs.com/startup- killer/](http://www.forentrepreneurs.com/startup-killer/)

[3] [http://larslofgren.com/marketingbasics/the-three-engines- of-...](http://larslofgren.com/marketingbasics/the-three-engines-of-growth- with-eric-ries)

[4] [http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2010/08/vc-insanity- economics...](http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2010/08/vc-insanity-economics/)

[5] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khan_Academy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khan_Academy)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Although, Everpix was great as a product it was market that killed their chances. Today, for every photo I take from iPhone it is backed to Google+ and iCloud. And then there are other platforms like Flickr etc. However, I believe Everpix had superior organization technology. But did that matter to masses?

Institutional investors and VCs don't take market risks. They are willing to take risks associated with product, technology and even the team. But they never take risks with the market opportunity.

In the verge article, what did they get in terms of feedback when investors passed their opportunity -

"The reaction was positive for you as a team but weak in terms of whether a $B business could be built."

Also, I'm surprised why didn't team focus on any other revenue streams?

</comment><comment><USER28> While the first part covers my feelings very well about the current 'state of the nation', I'm more concerned that newly minted millionaires (not just from a recent IPO, but others too) see this as status quo as they join the Angel/VC group.

This is not the trend, and making it so is very dangerous.

Silicon Valley has a great opportunity to become an integral part of the resuscitation of the US economy. This is a bad time for a bubble burst.

If the bubble is about to burst, smart money will start making safe bets.

</comment><comment><USER29> Interesting that this story is popular the same day Twitter goes public. Twitter didn't focus on revenues or profits early. Twitter didn't take months and months to get to market and agonize over every product look and feel decision. Twitter made it's early investors billions of dollars. Twitter is a household name. Twitter may or may not end up generating billions from mobile. FB certainly showed it can once that became critical.

</comment><comment><USER30> i'm getting tired of all these people that don't understand how the startup world works and feel like they need to write whinny blog posts about it.

<comment><USER20> Yeah, I don't understand it at all. I've only been involved with startups since 1999, and run one myself.

I'm a huge fraud. You've exposed me!

<comment><USER31> I don't know what you do or don't understand, but your post isn't entirely accurate. VCs invest in early-stage companies with strong potential for high growth. That means companies like SnapChat, yes, as well as companies like Amaranth Medical [1].

Your post takes the example of two startups in the consumer photo industry and generalizes it to startups and VCs operating across an entire spectrum of industries. That alone suggests a limited understanding of VC funding.

I won't suggest taking VC funding in all (or even most) cases. But it is the right thing to do when your company's interests are aligned with the VCs.

[1] [http://www.mddionline.com/article/bioresorbable-stent- startu...](http://www.mddionline.com/article/bioresorbable-stent-startup- raises-20m-series-b-round)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> So, I'm trying to wrap my head around this. In order to be like Snapchat[Facebook|Twitter|and the like], you must defer monetization. But when you're starting up, cash is scarce and you need money ASAP. Since you can't always depend on getting external funding, you need to charge customers early.

How do you start a business if you can't convince investor to put money in, and not allowed to receive money from customers?

<comment><AUTHOR> If you can't convince an investor like Evan Williams could, then you need to either be extremely frugal and keep your day job for a while, or quit your job and bet your life savings, or don't bother. There isn't a "bootstrap to become the Next Facebook" path.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I think it is a good idea when founders are able to always project what is going to happen with money and adapt earlier, instead of waiting to be out of money or hoping in the next round. This mindset not only saves you from early failing, also is very valuable once you turn your startup into a profitable stage.

</comment><comment><USER34> I wonder if Facebook though of becoming the next MySpace when they built their platform.

I would wager not. The goal was to build something useful and they were never looking to be acquired if they were we would probably never have heard of Facebook but good look recreating the great successes with a failed paradigm.

</comment><comment><USER35> what's 6800 paying users of everpix to millions of non paying users of snapchat? snapchat has the sporadic but consistent attention of millions that has considerable value and should not be written off because it hasn't been monetized... yet

<comment><USER36> There's nothing about Snapchat that is valuable. It's an app that could be thrown together in a few days, and a userbase that is fairly fleeting. If they incorporate invasive advertising, then people will just move to a clone of it. How else would you make money with the retched thing?

<comment><USER37> I was at a social apps conference a few months back and some interesting statistics were shown about Snapchat. One of the statistics was that Snapchat allows picture messages to be sent 10x faster than regular SMS. I found this fascinating because this is when I stopped looking at Snapchat as an incognito picture sharing app and more of a new, more efficient communication channel.

I don't know how Snapchat plans to monetize. It might be advertising. It might not be. But it's hard to dismiss Snapchat as being valueless when clearly millions of users are using it every single day.

<comment><USER38> Yeah, Snapchat is much more than a new way to send dick pics to unsuspecting girls. I use it more than SMS these days for legitimate communication with friends. Not the kind of serious communication which requires precision, but the informal type of chitchat you have with people when you hang out. People are underestimating the concept, some form of picture-based communication is around to stay. But I can't say that it'll be Snapchat which is the end of the line, and I do think they will have trouble monetizing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> There was a comment on this page that just disappeared when I tried to reply to it - not [deleted], just gone. id=6695365. And nothing obviously trollish about it to merit deleting. Database problem?

</comment><comment><USER40> Path is another interesting example. They seem to be circling the drain right now, but they might still be able to raise funding at a flat valuation (same valuation as last time).

</comment><comment><USER41> The crux is that this blog post compares Everpix with 55,000 users to Snapchat with 26M users and them having been around for the same amount of time.

See the crux?

</comment><comment><USER42> I'm wondering what was the reasoning behind not raising the price when they saw that their costs were over what they were spending.

</comment><comment><USER43> I'm so sad about this. I really, really love Everpix. It's one of the best photo-related startups out there.

</comment><comment><USER44> All these heavily-funded companies just waste too much money on unnecessary bureaucracy.</comment>


Web based Emacs-like code editor  - <AUTHOR> http://robrohan.com/projects/9ne/ <comment><USER2> I like how both the app and the screencast are a bit rough - yet he still released them without being concerned that they aren't 'perfect'. Super great start on this - I'm sure he'll get some great feedback.

</comment><comment><USER3> ctrl-y doesn't work.

<comment><USER4> C-a doesn't work either.

<comment><USER5> Both work for me in Kubuntu on Firefox 184.108.40.206.

<comment><USER6> C-n opens a new browser window...

Awesome idea though!

<comment><USER5> In the demo, he says your keybindings are dependent on your OS. I use Linux, which is probably part of it. If you're on a Windows box, it's supposed to make it more like Windows keybindings. Presumably at some point he'll make it a preference option thing.

edit: oh duh, you mean firefox. yeah, you'd have to change your firefox bindings.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What human language is most useful to learn for an American engineer? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Depends on what you want: \- if you want to engineer the space station, better learn Russian. \- if you want to engineer robots, better learn Japanese. \- if you want to engineer consumer electronics, better learn Chinese. \- if you want to engineer cheap space missions, better learn Hindu. \- if you want to engineer pharmaceutical products or perfumes, better learn French. \- if you want to engineer oil refineries, then American English will do.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you're an American who happens to be an Engineer, then Spanish is probably the best bet. It's by far the second most common language in the USA with (according to the 2013 census) 37m speakers out of a population of around 300m. Statistically, you already deal with numerous people in your daily life that you could communicate in Spanish with. In addition, there's a common market arrangement with Mexico and liberal trade policies with the rest of Central and South America.

Next highest is generically "Chinese", with a bit less than 3m speakers. FYI...Spanish is generally a _lot_ easier to learn for the average American than Chinese. YMMV.

If you're an American who is looking for a language to further his Engineering career, then user:informatimago has excellent observations, to which I'd offer very minor corrections:

\- There is no "Chinese language". There are lots of Chinese languages. Mandarin is _alledged_ to be universal, but even the various Mandarin dialects aren't always mutually intelligible, especially to a non-native speaker. And in the South (HK area), where much of the high-tech industry is, Cantonese, Hakka and some other dialects are spoken in addition to Mandarin. I can tell you Cantonese and Mandarin aren't mutually easy to understand. Did I mention how hard most Americans find learning Chinese of any sort?

\- If you're working the refineries and oil biz, especially around the Gulf of Mexico, French is actually a good choice. Lots of Louisiana Cajuns and Vietnamese immigrants in that biz, and you get a lot of _patois_ French creep into the conversation. Knowing some half-assed high-school French gave me an in with the Vietnamese in outside of work things (like food and such).

\- Hindi is potentially good for outsourcing work as well as budget space flight. But Hindi has sort of the same issues as "Chinese"; Hindi is but one of many "Indian" languages and members of your outsource group might be native Punjabi or Gujarati speakers.

\- If you're into industrial manufacturing, materials or armaments, German is hard to beat.

\- There's still 37m Spanish speakers in your back yard. Unless you're career is going to make you a world traveler where all these other languages make sense, odds are there are going to be Spanish speakers above, below and equal to you wherever you work. That doesn't even count Central and South America and, or course, Spain.

</comment><comment><USER4> This question is poorly thought out. Engineering is a big field buddy, might want to make your question a little more specific.

But to save anyone else the hassle of replying, lots of products are made in China, you should be able to work out the rest.</comment>


Our Universities: The Outrageous Reality - <AUTHOR> http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/jul/09/our-universities-outrageous-reality/

<comment><USER2> "2010, private nonprofit universities, whose students tend to be relatively affluent, spent on average nearly $50,000 per student—with the wealthiest colleges spending nearly double that amount. At public four-year institutions expenditure per student was $36,000, while community colleges, where minority and first-generation students are concentrated and which stress vocational training and offer associate rather than bachelor degrees, could spend just $12,000 per student."

Two questions occur to me: First, how much of the discrepancy between private, non-profit schools and public schools goes into matters related to instruction, namely faculty salaries, labs, libraries, academic support? Second, is the community-college difference adjusted for the largely part-time status of the students?

<comment><USER3> I think the key here is this statement from the article: _A deeper cause is the dual purpose of universities—to create new knowledge while transmitting what is already known. New fields of inquiry arise (pursued in new departments by new faculty), while old fields are rarely relinquished—at least not at the same pace. Thus costs almost always grow faster than savings._

Community colleges are going to have a narrower scope of subjects that they teach, and those subjects probably aren't going to expand very much (thinking of CC either being pre-university courses which are going to be rather standardized or courses to get an Associate's degree, which are a much smaller subset of degree types than you can get with a Bachelor's.) Add into that the fact that CC's don't have to maintain dorms or cafeterias or common spaces and that they probably have much less real estate and square footage to maintain. And yes, part time students might account for some of that monetary gap, but to me it seems more likely that CC's are much more focused on student needs, in a "OK you're here for 2 years here's exactly what you can take and exactly what we offer and that's it" kind of way, whereas universities are more "Here's your dorm and here's your meal plan and here's your gym pass and here's your 100+ different choices of major and minor and here's the bus schedule to get to East campus and West campus and here's where the four cafeterias are and the six food courts and oh by the way your adviser is in a building 2 miles away and only has office hours every other Tuesday which is when you're taking your underwater basket weaving elective."</comment></comment>


WebGL raindrops animation that took realism way too far - <AUTHOR> http://www.webdesignernews.com/external/web-s-most-realistic-raindrops-animation?gl <comment><USER2> This just redirects to [http://rainyscope.com/](http://rainyscope.com/) Very cool though!

</comment><comment><USER3> I think this is neat, but it really bothers me that the large drops are out of focus while the really small ones are super-crisp. It looks almost like there's multiple panes of glass and there's mist getting between them, while the large drops fall on the outside.

EDIT: Also, for winter... Very liquid rain when there's snow on boughs of the distant trees? That strikes me as not-right as well.

<comment><USER4> I love this but the focus issue messes with my brain. Also snow on the ground and rain on the glass. Should be snow flakes stuck to the window. But I'm being picky now.

<comment><USER3> If you have good double-glazed windows, the snow doesn't usually stick. It'll build up in the corners, though... Or of there are screens over the windows it can stick to the screen.

(This focus effect is almost as if there is a screen, where the large drops run down the screen and the spattered mist is on the glass, and the edge of the depth of field is between the two...)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For Google Chrome RainyScope error "Sorry, but your browser does not support WebGL!": [https://superuser.com/questions/836832/how-can-i-enable- webg...](https://superuser.com/questions/836832/how-can-i-enable-webgl-in-my- browser)

Note: I'm running Google Chrome Version 51.0.2704.84 m and had to enable "Override software rendering list", at chrome://flags/, after following linked instructions, above. As noted, this can do bad things.... ; o )

<comment><USER6> Not RainyScope's fault: Chrome thinks your graphics card can't handle WebGL.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Haha, I think sound is not coming because soundcloud is overloaded due to this.

Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 429 (Too Many Requests) - [https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/240717213/stream?secret_to...](https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/240717213/stream?secret_token=s-690fs&client_id=fd4fc8915ce5300d46dc83bbfc889e12)

</comment><comment><USER8> i reverse-engineered this raindrop demo so you can run it on your own PC with your own background image. PM me on Twitter @markentingh if you want the code

<comment><USER9> Congrats. You stole JavaScript via curl. You are the 31337 hax0r. I hope not a single person reaches out to you

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Pretty rad.</comment>


iOS7 marks the best time to get started in app development - <AUTHOR> https://www.codefellows.org/blogs/5-reasons-ios7-marks-the-best-time-to-get-started-in-app-development

<comment><USER2> I would assert this is the _worst_ time in history to get started in app development. I have been building apps since 2008, and things have been going downhill for indie developers. Back in 2008, many large companies didn't understand the space, and indie devs were able to carve out very lucrative niches. Now, with the abundance of simple toolsets, tutorials and classes, there is an app for seemingly everything. Worse still is the price for apps has been pushed down to effectively $0. Without creative marketing or a sizable marketing budget, creating an app in today's market is brutally challenging. Sure, you can hack up a quick utility now, but the chance it pays your rent for a month is approaching zero, quickly.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you're experienced I'll bet you could get a great job at a dozen companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Worth noting that Letterpress is _not_ implemented in UIKit, it's pure OpenGL ([http://www.imore.com/loren-brichter-talks-opengl-tweetie- let...](http://www.imore.com/loren-brichter-talks-opengl-tweetie-letterpress- and-future-interface)).

<comment><USER4> Will this make easier to make games like Letterpress?

<comment><USER5> It sounds like UIKit Dynamics will make things like flicking tiles around a lot easier to implement, without creating a physics engine from scratch... And UIKit is generally more friendly to flat designs... And the whole game engine thing is built in now.

But the real value of the best games comes from game-play dynamics, and not just how well the app simulates physics. Hopefully these changes in iOS will allow game-builders to focus more on the things that really matter, rather than redoing the work every game needs to do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Who on earth puts the body text in 25px?!?!

I've been noticing a lot of blog fonts getting annoyingly bigger, where I keep having to zoom-out a couple of times in my browser for good legibility, but this is just flat-out INSANE.

<comment><AUTHOR> What size monitor do you have? I've written about big type on blogs here: [http://mikeyanderson.com/optimal_characters_per_line](http://mikeyanderson.com/optimal_characters_per_line)

<comment><USER7> Here's a data point for you:

For me, the text on that article felt way too big when viewed in a full screen browser on a 1280x800 display. Frankly, it's about as bad as if the font-size were 12px or 13px.

Resizing the browser window to only take half of the screen width makes it better on my eyes (it appears to be 17px). Still, after that, I felt the need to go to developer console and change line-height to 1.4.

I chuckled a bit when, after these adjustments, I arrived at the sentence:

> The fact you've read to this paragraph is proof that there is something to > my argument.

I'm on a 13" Macbook Pro, and lying on a couch, so my viewing distance may be a bit closer than if I were sitting on a desk. I'm 33 years old, with relatively ok eyesight (no glasses), and totally buy your other arguments (I'm a fan of Bringhurst myself).

It's just that anything more than 18px on a laptop display just feels too big.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Any other reasons you can add?

<comment><USER8> i think there might be a small case for the more aesthetically inclined people being in the market for replacement apps that are more in-line with the new IOS design language.

this MIGHT lead to opportunities for a very well written new app in a currently well populated niche to gain an advantage over existing entrants. Provided the competitors don't release a newer re-designed version post-haste.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> probably true on the development side. but on the business side, there are just so many apps popping out left and right for every niche market you can think of.

<comment><USER5> ...which means everyone agrees it's a good time to be making apps?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> iOS 7 SDK stuff is still under developer preview NDA, shouldn't be discussed in the light i think....</comment>


Show HN: Fomo – API for Instant Customer Testimonials - <AUTHOR> https://www.usefomo.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> We built Fomo to make it easy to display recent actions (Github pushes, reviews, recent purchases, website visits, etc.) on your website. We're launching version 1 today along with our API that allows you to pass any data into Fomo's notification tool.

Full documentation here - [http://docs.usefomo.com/reference](http://docs.usefomo.com/reference)

I'd love to hear the community's feedback on our app's V1!

</comment><comment><USER2> PHP wrapper now ready, Node.js tmrw, then Ruby, then Python, then... you tell us. :)</comment>


Half of social game cheaters cheat in real life too - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/39588/Half_of_social_game_cheaters_cheat_in_real_life_too_says_study.php

<comment><USER2> The conclusion is "48 percent of players who admit to using a hack, bot, or cheat in a social game also admit to cheating in some way in real life -- for non-cheaters, that number drops to just 14 percent."

This is different than the summary in the title. An equally valid way to interpret the data is "it's easier to admit cheating in games than in real life."

I downloaded the linked-to PDF, and it doesn't report the information reported in that story. For example, I see nothing about the number of people who cheat in real-life.</comment>


Ask HN: What's something you took for granted before you lost it? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Going to church every Sunday.

<comment><USER3> Oh, I hated it, could not wait to get rid of the need to get those begging grifters off my back...</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to create certified or trusted reviews? - <AUTHOR>

My startup (currently in private beta) is brainstorming ways to implement some sort of credible review system into our site. While I cannot disclose the exact nature of the site, our review feature will be dealing with documenting customer experiences with salespeople.
The issue that we are struggling with is the prevalence of fake or deceitful reviews across the web. Does anyone have any suggestions/ideas/products that could help us in creating a trusted system?
Thanks <comment><USER2> Filtering "fake or deceitful reviews" is a complicated task to accomplish. While you won't find the exact solution, you can research how companies like Yelp and AngiesList have done it.

There are many factors in the formula, but a lot of it revolves around looking at who the user is exactly. By looking at how often they contribute, how long they have been a member of the site, and incorporating a rating system into the review (helpful/not helpful) you can begin to determine which are the best reviewers.

Verifying the user is real is another step you can take. You can do this by adding a verification step into the account creation process (i.e. responding to a email) prior to submitting a review. Setting default time limits to how long the account has to be active before they can make a review also can work (this avoids the random user in the heat of the moment writing a false review or one that is not fully thought out). If your users have "profiles" in the system, similar to Yelp, you can give more credibility to a user who takes the time to fill out their profile info.

Another method is to track IP addresses and compare to where the place of business being reviewed is. Although this will not work in all cases (i.e. someone traveling or logging in from home for a vacation experience), it does lend some credibility.

By giving each method you incorporate into your system a weight, you can then add the weights up to come up a validity indicator. Each method could be weighted on a scale of 1 to 10 and the higher the weight awarded for that method the more credible. You then have to weight the methods in general. In the end the formula combines all those weights together to get a total weight which should give you an idea of how credible the review is.

</comment><comment><USER3> Okay - here's where my mind went when presented with this problem: be like an ombudsman. When I call up the TIO (<http://www.tio.com.au/>) to complain about my mobile phone supplier, the first thing they do is give me a reference number and a phone number at the company that is reserved for "high level" customer service enquiries (ie. I get to speak to a "case manager" rather than having to navigate the layers of support from the ground-up).

So give the company that the review is about a chance to respond _prior_ to publishing the bad review. If they don't respond, publish it. If they _do_ respond, then you can still publish the bad review but the OP may edit it so that it's not quite so caustic.

This could be regulated quite easily by requiring the OP to provide a valid contact email address and URL for the company about which they're providing a review.

Or you could do like the TIO does and provide the customer with a reference number to contact the company they originally dealt with and allow the company to login and use that same reference number to tell their side of the story.

Your company is then like, OmniOmbudsman :) (.com ... take it, it's available)

</comment><comment><USER4> are you looking for a product that you can integrate with your site now? or you want an algorithm?</comment>


An FBI investigation shows Ohio's abysmal energy law was fueled by corruption - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/2020/7/22/21334366/larry-householder-affidavit-ohio-bribery-firstenergy <comment><USER2> I kept a mailer supporting hb 6, the law in question. Or rather, a mailer opposing the petition to put a referendum on the ballot that might have overturned the newly passed law. So much about that process was crooked, including the efforts to foil the petition and keep the referendum off the ballot, up to and including organized intimidation of those collecting signatures for the petition. [1]

The mailer says on one side: _Don 't give your personal information to the Chinese government! _ Blah blah several paragraphs of misinformation. _Decline to sign! Save our jobs!_ The other side says, in part: _In the coming weeks, don 't give the Chinese government your personal information, email, address, cell phone number, or sign your name on their petition._

The thing I noted at the time was that the guy behind that mailing was the former campaign spokesman for our attorney general. The attorney general is sadly still in office, and as far as I know not indicted (yet), but it's nice to know he's not involved in making these prosecutions, which are strictly federal right now.

[1] [https://www.ohiocitizen.org/hb_6_referendum_faqs](https://www.ohiocitizen.org/hb_6_referendum_faqs)

<comment><AUTHOR> The chinese "scare" shenanigan is included in the article:

"The corruption allegedly did not end when HB 6 became law. When groups wanted to let the public decide whether to overturn this draconian policy through a petition for a ballot initiative, FirstEnergy wired $38 million in funds to Generation Now. This money funded ads that falsely claimed the Chinese government would use your personal information if you signed the petition. It also paid for bribery, harassment, and even physical assault of people collecting signatures. "</comment></comment>