Uber's $25-a-month subscription service is now available across the US - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/18/21374105/uber-ride-pass-subscription-cities-us-price-food-delivery <comment><USER2> From a consumer perspective this just doesn't entice me. I feel like you have to use Uber as your main form of transport for this to be worth considering at all at this price point. Haven't really run the numbers though and maybe I am indeed not the target for this but from first glance I can't see this working out, especially with our good friend Covid making Uber so attractive!</comment>


Do Me a Favor and Change Your Email Signature - <AUTHOR> http://www.getmailbird.com/do-me-a-favor-and-change-your-email-signature/

<comment><USER2> OK, but only if you do me a favor and disable that enormously irritating popup ad

<comment><USER3> And fix the grammar. And fix the annoying thing where about 2-3" of the whitespace to the left and right of the thumbnails cause a full size image to pop up. And the glitchy little header effect that doesn't seem to serve any real purpose except to get in my way when I want to re-read a previous paragraph. This is a seriously unpleasant website to use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I realize that the great majority of people view their e-mails in HTML but some of us still prefer plain-text and none of the e-mail signatures highlighted in the article would be viewable by me.

From RFC 1855 [0], "Netiquette Guidelines":

      If you include a signature keep it short.  Rule of thumb
      is no longer than 4 lines.

My .signature is two lines (not counting the "dash-dash-space" delimiter): my full name and e-mail on line one and my title and phone number on line two. If you need other information about me or my company, you can send me an e-mail or give me a call to get it.

A huge pet peeve of mine is the legal disclaimers and I will often respond to an e-mail that includes one with my own that's similar to the one mentioned in the article, just to be a snarky asshole.

[0]: [https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1855.txt](https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1855.txt)

</comment><comment><USER5> McQuary or nothing.</comment>


Translating mathematics into code - <AUTHOR> http://matt.might.net/articles/discrete-math-and-code/

<comment><USER2> Nice to see this.

I'm convinced, from long experience, from long experience, that functional collections are stylistically superior to imperative collections, even in otherwise imperative code.

In fact I'd go so far as to say that the worst mistake van Rossum made in designing Python was not to use functional collections. Then we wouldn't need to discuss how to copy them: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3201033> There also wouldn't be this bug where using an empty list as the default value of an optional parameter would do the wrong thing (the same list object is reused on subsequent calls, when it is no longer empty).

(Yes, I understand, Python does have functional sets, but not AFAICT functional sequences or maps.)

It's great to see that Rich Hickey has designed Clojure around functional collections. I'm sure he'll do more for the cause than my own FSet library for Common Lisp, but I'll plug the latter anyway: <http://common- lisp.net/project/fset/>

<comment><USER3> > There also wouldn't be this bug where using an empty list as the default > value of an optional parameter would do the wrong thing (the same list > object is reused on subsequent calls, when it is no longer empty).

That's not a consequences of not using "functional collections" - lisp has non-functional collections, yet the empty list doesn't have that behavior.

Note the difference between "an empty list" (correct for python) and "the empty list" (correct for lisp). That reflects a design decision that has consequences. Neither is superior in all circumstances.

In some sense, this is an instance of an overloading error. Python's lists aren't lisp's lists and there are many other definitions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Okay, 94 points and still no comments, I'll bite.

I think the difference here is, and I don't think this is a subject that has been thought about quite enough, is that mathematics typically describe _calculation_ , while code describes a superset of calculation, _computation_.

When we spend all our time working with the more expansive set, computation, we sometimes forget that calculation is in many ways less expressive and has fewer ways to express a thing. Many of the ideas in the article seem to be about getting over things we take for granted in computation, and understanding how to operate in the more limited framework offered by calculation, and/or understanding that even if things look kind of alike (what's a good word for this concept? a homoscript?) in computation vs. calculation they can be subtly different with a range of pitfalls.

<comment><USER5> The main issue with automatic translation of mathematics into code is that mathematicians often define concepts without regard for their computability.

Here are two examples:

1\. Consider the set of Turing machines that halt on a certain string. This set is logically sound, but it's impossible, in general, to create a computer program that can decide membership on the set.

2\. Non-constructive "there exists" style proofs. For example, take Peano's existence theorem. This helps characterize an important class of ODEs that clearly have solutions but lends no help towards actually constructing solution(s).

<comment><USER6> Mathematicians just tend to talk about this as "constructible" instead of "computable" though. My favorite illustration of this is here: <http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=103>

<comment><USER4> Interesting distinction that rings really quite true.

Interesting but recent thread on it <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3227620>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Math has no side effects" might be the most concise explanation of every computer science problem since 1970.

</comment><comment><USER7> "Pearls of functional algorithm design" by Richard Bird is a fabulous book along these lines. It's not exactly light reading, but the chapters are short, and some of the results are surprising, like the faster implementation of nub (unique elements in a list).

An aside: I was trying to brush up on Python and looked at Learn Python the Hard Way, and found exercise 25 absolutely appalling. I hope that's not idiomatic Python.</comment>


Facial recognition: Shop where everybody knows your name - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-30219820

<comment><USER2> This idea of a future where everybody knows your name is creepy and dangerous. It's a world I would not want to live in.</comment>


Google faces up to $5B fine from Competition Commission of India - <AUTHOR> http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/internet/Google-faces-up-to-5-billion-fine-from-Competition-Commission-of-India/articleshow/31724382.cms <comment><USER3> The interesting thing is that there is a large historical precedent for such activity by the Indian government. In 1977, they tried to do the same thing with IBM and Coca-Cola.[1] Both of the companies pulled out of the Indian market in a move that had widespread impact upon the nascent Indian economy. It is alleged that the desire for an equity grab by the existing power complex in India was the prime motivating factor for the acts that were sprung upon those companies. These acts were designed to force them to "partner" with an Indian company. At that time the market just wasn't big enough to warrant such sacrifice - even today Ikea refuses to enter the market because of this - <USER2> they pulled out.

Although there are several parallels over here, one of the key take-aways for me from this news is that India is just not a good place for anyone (other than its citizens perhaps) to do business. The system is inherently broken and flawed to the degree that any smart startup should look elsewhere if they're considering expanding to this market.

\----

[1] [http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,919167,...](http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,919167,00.html)

<comment><USER4> You did not factor in a few important aspects into your analysis:

a. A law was passed in India called the "Foreign Exchange Regulation Act" in 1973 with the aim of regulating payments and foreign exchange. It contained language that was extremely restrictive for any foreign investments, by all foreign entities including Indian citizens living abroad.

b. This was not initially a concern, but became a huge problem during a 21 month period between 1975-77 when a state of emergency was declared in India [[following the assassination of the then Prime Minister]] edit: incorrect attribution, emergency was declared, but the prime minister was assassinated a few years later.

c. The law was fixed/made more flexible in 1993, and foreign investments immediately started returning.

d. The act was repealed in its entirety in 1998.

e. The issue mentioned in the article revolves around a complaint being made to CCI and as "a complaint filed with CCI cannot be withdrawn" there is no choice but to investigate.

f. The $5B amount is baseless and pure conjecture with no source/comment from either the Competition Commission of India, Lawmakers or Google.

Strangely there are very few to no parallels over here. It definitely does not warrant a statement as broad as _India is just not a good place for anyone (other than its citizens perhaps) to do business_.

<comment><USER3> >>>a. A law was passed in India called the "Foreign Exchange Regulation Act" in 1973 with the aim of regulating payments and foreign exchange. It contained language that was extremely restrictive for any foreign investments, by all foreign entities including Indian citizens living abroad.<<<

I'm pretty sure that you have misunderstood the law. Here's a report prepared by a group at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 1987;

"""During 1977, IBM was asked to withdraw from India due to its unwillingness to comply with the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (FERA) of 1973. Earlier, IBM commenced operations in India in 1952, with long term objectives of growth and increasing market share in the world com- puter and information systems market through an improved competitive stance. During a period of 25 years, IBM made total profits of approxi- mately U.S. $5 million on a total investment of $8 million. Total remittable profits, at the time of phasing out its operations in 1970, were approximately $10 million. These profits included a net asset value of approximately $5 million.

This poor performance was largely attributed to several factors, including compensation of approximately $7.5 million paid to employees and assets sold at less than book value. Other factors included a high rate of effective taxation of 80% to 85% as well as low rates of depreciation on equipment. IBM- India operations constituted only 0.06% of IBM Corporation's total business. IBM's activities in India during this period and the events leading to the IBM-India withdrawal are summarized in Appendix A.

During this period, the Government of India (GOI) alleged that a large number of foreign-owned and foreign-controlled corporations operating in India were making excessively high gross revenues and before-tax profits. Further, the repatriation of large amounts of capital by the multinational corporations constituted a serious drain on India's scarce foreign exchange reserves. The GOI contended that the multinational corporations were using monopolistic power to stifle competition in the Indian market. In addition, the multinational corporations, according to the GOI, gained favorable rates for large financial credits, thereby competing with domestic firms for scarce capital. Finally, the GOI per- ceived that the multinational corporations were transferring obsolete technology or current technology of minor importance for developmental purposes.

Surveying the industrial scene, the GOI found that most foreign direct investment had occurred in the consumer goods sector. These ventures yielded high rates of profit and required simple technology which could be furnished by domestic entrepreneurs.

Based on these findings, the GOI formulated its own priorities with regard to the country's development. With an abundance of natural re- sources and a large supply of low-cost skilled labor, India provided the multinational corporations with a large, untapped market and opportunity to enhance their international competitiveness.

Taking stock of its developmental priorities and increased bargaining strength, the GOI formulated its desire to influence the course of foreign direct investment in India. The primary objective was to ensure that foreign direct investment in India would fall in line with the nation's developmental priorities. The means adopted to achieve this objective was the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (FERA) legislated on January 1, 1974.

Foreign Exchange Regualtion Act— The FERA affected all foreign companies with foreign equity exceeding 40 percent. According to FERA, four levels of foreign equity participation were permitted.

First, all trading companies engaged in purely commercial activities as well as manufacturing enterprises utilizing "non-sophisticated" technology, were required to reduce their foreign equity to 40 percent.

Second, "high technology" companies, utilizing "sophisticated" technology and/or engaging in "special" activities, as designated by the GOI, were permitted to retain a foreign equity holding of 74 percent.

A third intermediate level of 51 percent foreign equity was established for multi-activity companies engaged in both sophisticated technology fields and other commercial and trading activities.

The fourth level of 100 percent foreign equity was permitted only in those instances where foreign firms were engaged in purely export activities."""

[https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/28913/...](https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/28913/changingmultinat1332nega.pdf?sequence=1)

That sounds like an equity grab to me.

>>> b. This was not initially a concern, but became a huge problem during a 21 month period between 1975-77 when a state of emergency was declared in India [[following the assassination of the then Prime Minister]] edit: incorrect attribution, emergency was declared, but the prime minister was assassinated a few years later.

c. The law was fixed/made more flexible in 1993, and foreign investments immediately started returning. <<<

The assassination in of itself was a result of an intense power struggle in the Indian state. It's not so hard to look at it and see that these people needed additional revenue and decided to pressure successful companies to get a cut of their business. You can call that market protection if you want or attach any other label, but the fact is that they saw (from their perspective) a potential source of revenue and they flexed their muscle to get a slice of the pie. It backfired and they had to drop the changes they made to get people back on the table.

>>> d. The act was repealed in its entirety in 1998. <<<

The protections were enshrined elsewhere. The only thing really changed was that now the Indian market was large enough and that the power players were willing to make nudge-nudge-wink-wink exceptions for much smaller fee.

>>> e. The issue mentioned in the article revolves around a complaint being made to CCI and as "a complaint filed with CCI cannot be withdrawn" there is no choice but to investigate.

f. The $5B amount is baseless and pure conjecture with no source/comment from either the Competition Commission of India, Lawmakers or Google. <<<

I've said nothing about the amount or the complaint, just that such shenanigans aren't out of the ordinary from the Indian power players.

>>>Strangely there are very few to no parallels over here. It definitely does not warrant a statement as broad as India is just not a good place for anyone (other than its citizens perhaps) to do business.<<<

So a country where you have to get a permit for doing every small thing and there's a bribe associated with each permit is a good place to do business?

<comment><USER4>
       That sounds like an equity grab to me.

That sounds more like a subset of protectionism. Its a simple economic concept where policies or doctrines are implemented which protect businesses and workers within a country by restricting or regulating trade with foreign nations.

I prefer free markets and am generally biased against protectionism, but at times its required.

The most common argument for Protectionism is the "infant industry" justification. Considering in 1973 India was 25 years old. The infant theory can be given some merit.

Also note the "Indicators of foreign direct investment regulation in 87 economies"[0] study by world bank, which gives more insight into this.

       The protections were enshrined elsewhere.

Please find me one economic law that was repealed anywhere due to being restrictive, where the sections of laws that worked or were still needed were not enshrined elsewhere.

Actually I know of one that was not enshrined elsewhere i.e. Glass–Steagall Act. But that's a whole different story.

       such shenanigans aren't out of the ordinary from the Indian power players.

Such shenanigans aren't out of the ordinary from power players in ANY country that has ever implemented or enacted protectionism.

       So a country where you have to get a permit for doing every small thing

I must be missing something here, I think procedures and permits are a sign of a developed or developing economy. Can you tell me a business in North America or EU where a Foreign Corporation or even a citizen could do business without getting any permits or licences? Some may have more streamlined systems to get the licenses, but I doubt the streamlined process was version 1 of the system.

       There's a bribe associated with each permit

Finally something I agree on. I find the whole business with bribing extremely morally challenging. And I'd try and stay away from businesses and countries where this is required by default.

But I have to ask, from a capitalist point of view, if a corporation wants to do business in such an atmosphere, could this atmosphere be concluded as the cost of doing business?

Also read up on this a bit further, turns out Coke was the largest contributor to the previous government's political campaign in the early 70's which resulted in the opposition party exerting extra pressure on Coke when the opposition came into power in India.

       I've said nothing about the amount or the complaint

Thank you for stating this. The topic is a discussion on Google being potentially fined for anti-competition and anti-trust behavior similar to the one's pursued and later settled by the FTC and EU. The complaints have been around for a few years, and not necessarily a money grab. Also as their(India's) current law does not have a provision for settlement or withdrawal, the country has no choice but to investigate the original complaint.

The alternative solution would be to make nudge-nudge-wink-wink type of settlement with a bribe or just letting it slip between the cracks and do nothing.

[0] [http://iab.worldbank.org/~/media/FPDKM/IAB/Documents/IAB- rep...](http://iab.worldbank.org/~/media/FPDKM/IAB/Documents/IAB-report.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here are the only words that people should pay attention to in the article "a complaint filed with CCI cannot be withdrawn". Also there is no source for the $5 billion in fine.

With a bit more digging I was able to find extracts from the original complaint/concern.

 _CUTS believes that Google can potentially engage in anticompetitive activities to the possible detriment of these markets in India and that therefore such activities in this regard need to be thoroughly investigated by the CCI._

This is further explained using the following example:

 _CUTS conducted a thorough study on Google and we have come across instances where the firm is abusing its dominant position.CCI had asked us to further investigate. For instance, if you search for Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg on Google, the first five results are on his Google Plus pages. His Facebook page was the 8th result._

This case may have been inspired by those filed in other countries:

1\. In Canada: [http://business.financialpost.com/2013/12/13/google-inc- abus...](http://business.financialpost.com/2013/12/13/google-inc-abusive- competition-bureau/?__lsa=a702-ed81)

2\. EU: [http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/eu- commission-i...](http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/eu-commission- investigates-how-anti-competitive-is-google-a-680259.html)

3\. United states: [http://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press- releases/2013/01/google...](http://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press- releases/2013/01/google-agrees-change-its-business-practices-resolve-ftc)

</comment><comment><USER5> The article is bylined to the news agency Press Trust of India, so expect even less rigour and fact-checking than you would from the newspaper that's carrying the report (Times of India).

While I can't comment on what the CCI will or won't do, I do find it silly the journalists think CCI can impose a fine which is a function of Google's global revenues (over which it has no jurisdiction).

Google India's revenue was around $330M last year, 10% of which will be $33M.

<comment><USER6> Just to add: Google in India is Google India Pvt. Ltd.

<comment><USER7> That does not matter. The fines will apply over global revenue and not just G' revenue in India.

<comment><USER8> Do have a source for that, because it would make very little sense and seems highly unenforceable.

<comment><USER9> India is a sovereign country, their laws don't need to make sense.

EU antitrust fines are also capped at 10% of the total turnover. [http://ec.europa.eu/competition/cartels/overview/factsheet_f...](http://ec.europa.eu/competition/cartels/overview/factsheet_fines_en.pdf)

<comment><USER5> I will grant you your first point if you can point me to a specific Indian law that says cartelization fines are a function of a multinational's global sales?

As to your link on EU fines, it very clearly states that fines are a percentage of "relevant sales", defined as "usually the sales of the products covered by the infringement". I don't know how you came to the conclusion that means global sales?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Elections are around the corner. This seems like an indirect request for donations or other favors by parties and groups in power. Or it could just be arm twisting to make it disclose user information. India's politicians are beginning to believe that there is too much freedom online and would like control.

India's politicians and crony capitalist class are India's worst enemies.

</comment><comment><USER11> This seems a little extreme? I wonder if they're doing this because they want something else from Google that they know are not going to give as easily, such as helping them build the surveillance state in India:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9A91idibgT0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9A91idibgT0)

Then again, I remember reading about Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Blackberry and others already giving in to their surveillance requests a couple of years ago, so they might've already done that.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm surprised by Hacker News' apparent general distaste of anti-trust authorities in this thread. Starting a company is about changing the _status quo_ established by dominant players; if you can't do that because they use their market share to price you out of any revenue stream, poach your engineers, threaten anyone carrying ads for your service, or in Google's case, simply put their service ahead of yours no matter what the CTR and retention of your offers are… Well, there is no investor who's going to look at you.

From a community that was hailing Duck Duck Go's success a week ago, you seem barely concerned by allowing an Indian equivalent to emerge. Yes, the FTC is satisfied for the efforts in the US market -- but Google is not just in the US. Even if many of your decisions don't reflect that, your service impact other cultures. Google realised that early on, and considers how Indians search (in several languages) write (with many alphabets) give directions (using visible facades rather than map-inspired cardinal points); LibertyMail, Duck Duck Go, Open Street Map don't take that into account nearly enough, and if you want a billion person to have the luxury of not facing a 'take it or get off the internet' monopoly… That decision, as imperfect as it is or excessive as it might come of, needs to be defended.

Corruption? Do you really think that's a point to be made without proof? Just because… you don't know of India but you have prejudice about that?

Threats of leaving? Really? Because that's exactly what all Google engineers of Indian descent want to say to their family in India: you know, there are commenters on Hacker News who think that the country where I received the education that lead me to be SVP is such a backward cesspool that they'd rather strike out the entire sub-continent where I grew up and where the people I love and for whom I work all live… Google invests in incredibly creative ways to offer connexion to remote places, ethnographers to understand what services they need and how to design them, because having more people on- line is their only hope of growth, and you'd think they would react out of spite, and throw that away? What you are projecting on them is your own blatant racism, stefan_kendall3, and no one here has failed to notice.

</comment><comment><USER13> Indian here

\- Indiatimes is a hype machine

\- They write stories for headlines with little or no depth

</comment><comment><USER14> "Under competition regulations, an entity found violating the norms could be slapped with penalty of up to 10% of its three-year annual average turnover" Surely they don't mean their annual GLOBAL turnover, but only that in India? $5B just for their activity in India looks largely overstated to me.

</comment><comment><USER15> What I know is, India is the most corrupt country. If you want to do business in the best ethical way, this is not the place. Try something else, or learn dirty politics and exploit peoples before you enter..... I am Indian..

</comment><comment><USER16> It would be nice if we could do that here with comcast.

</comment><comment><USER17> I hope they try to fine Google and they pull out of India entirely.

<comment><USER18> ok i will bite: why ?

<comment><USER19> There is no reason for them to hang around with such a big fine, since they make so little money India. This is like how google mostly pulled out of china, the costs and risks just were not worth the benefits.

<comment><USER20> can you provide any sources to how they make so little money in India?

as far as I know, India is one of the countries where google dominates in search. Which is not the case in China, google is not a major search engine in China. I just can't imagine they pulling out of India.

They just recently had heart warming google advertisements in TV which is very rare for google to do.

<comment><USER19> I think they made only 300 or so million revenue in the last 3 years, and as for profits much less, which completely out of proportion with the proposed fine (no sources for this, just word of mouth). India is still a developing market, advertisers don't pay as much as in the developed world.

The ad is probably ran because of the government...they want to build some support with the people so they are treated better.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Offer HN: Buy my file sharing site - <AUTHOR>

http://fileslap.com
Fileslap is a file sharing site with built in file preview that's built on Django. Files are stored at S3 (currently costs about $25/month) and billing is handled by CheddarGetter. The site itself is on a basic shared host (Webfaction) and could be moved anywhere that supports Django.
I'm eager to sell due to me losing interest about a year ago and the fact that I never marketed it so it's not very well known. The site works well but has no paying customers and a small user base on the free plan (the site gets about 100 unique visits a day).
Reply here if you're interested or email me at firstname.lastname@example.com ...I'd be willing to consider just about any offer.
http://fileslap.com <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: [http://fileslap.com](http://fileslap.com)

</comment><comment><USER2> Sell it on flippa. You'll get more interest and bids.

</comment><comment><USER3> The site actually looks pretty good

I'm a little tempted to buy it even though I have absolutely no time to do anything with it.

Seems like it shouldn't be too hard to get it slightly profitable. I would just:

      1. Make a cheaper tier of around $1/month (maybe for 1GB files, 1TB max or something)

      2. Make the free tier better. 500mb files maybe

      3. Make the non-logged in files last forever

Link rot is bad and makes you look bad. People using the free tier is free advertising. If the files last forever people are more likely to actually use it.

<comment><AUTHOR> But if free users get unlimited files that last forever, why would anyone pay?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What would the asking rate be ?

<comment><AUTHOR> No asking rate really, just wanted to see what (if anything) people might offer. I'm willing to consider anything.

<comment><USER5> Neat site - Just a FYI- I second the flippa suggestion. You might also want to post relevant data, such as #users, techstack, etc, etc.

GL.</comment></comment></comment>


Airbnb Agrees To Provide Anonymized User Data To New York Attorney General - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/21/airbnb-new-york-agreement/

<comment><USER2> Anonymizing user data is very very hard. See [http://www.uclalawreview.org/?p=1353](http://www.uclalawreview.org/?p=1353) Broken Promises of Privacy by prof. Paul Ohm. Also see the AOL search debacle:

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

AirBNB seems to be bound to release other data as well though, the document linked says:

"(3) for a period of twelve (12) months from completion of production of anonymized data Airbnb shall further comply with the subpoena by producing the (a) name, e-mail address, telephone numbers, social media account information; (b) website user name, HostID, listing ID; (c) unit/apartment number(s); and (d) tax identification number(s) for individual users about whom anonymized data is produced pursuant to paragraph 2 above and who are then the subjects of an investigation or potential enforcement action by NYAG or the NYC office of special enforcement."

So it looks as if this is just the beginnings of a much more detailed request and that second request will _not_ be anonymous at all.</comment>


New way to view news - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2007/10/22/new-way-to-view-news/

<comment><USER2> that 'outline view' is a pretty terrible way to view the news, if you ask me.</comment>


The tasting of surströmming - <AUTHOR> https://matija.suklje.name/the-tasting-of-surstromming <comment><USER2> There are so many mistakes made with surströmming, I hardly know where to start.

Although it comes in a can, it should be stored cold. If you open it and it looks something like mushed up tuna, as I have seen in some Youtube challenge videos, something has gone terribly wrong. Don't eat it!

Unless you have a can of filets, you should gut and clean out your strömming. Keep the roe if you get a lady fish, the rest of the innards you don't want. I have never seen a properly gutted strömming on Youtube. And of course you get the bones out. Unlike pickled herring, where the acidity softens the bones, the spine of a surströmming is not pleasant to eat.

Eating it indoors is fine. You don't need a bucket of water to open it in. A napkin to protect against spray due to the pressure is fine. Pros just tilt the can slightly and open it without even a napkin. The smell is admittedly potent but it's not a chemical weapon. All the crazy stories about how the smell is impossible to get rid of are told by people who don't eat it themselves, in my experience.

The taste is obviously quite strong. A little bit goes a long way together with plenty of bread and potatoes. It is also very salty, so you will probably want to drink something.

And most importantly, expectations matter. Presentation matter. The reactions of people around you matter. If you have brought a can of the most disgusting food in the world, a bucket to barf in and your mates are giggling and ready to record your reaction, you will most likely not enjoy surströmming.

However, if you come to a set table, where the strömming is presented as actual food, you can feel how the other guests are enjoying themselves and you are also there to do the same, you are much more likely to actually do so.

I have been present several times when people have had surströmming for the first time. Some people liked it, some people didn't. Most make a comment about the smell. But they have all tasted it without hesitation. Not a single one gagged the slightest. None of them were in it for the thrill or the challenge. They were just guest there to enjoy a dinner with friends.

<comment><USER3> I ate it here in Denmark with a friend from Luleå, in far northern Sweden.

1) He bought fillets, because that was easier to find in Malmö, but said the real northerners wouldn't approve. Hence he hadn't tried the fillets before, but said the taste was the same, and it saved the annoying gutting. So buy the fillets.

2) We went outdoors; it makes for a nicer party without worrying about someone spilling the brine. Open the can, then _rinse the fillets in water_. I'd eat it in a house, I'm not sure I'd eat it in an apartment outside Sweden.

3) Have prepared all the rest: flatbread (tunnbröd), crushed small new potatoes (almond potatoes if you're in Sweden), finely diced red onion, chopped fresh dill, chopped fresh chives. Crème fraîch is optional, but a good idea for first-timers to mask the taste a little.

5) Serve bread + potatoes + a little fish (3cm cut up and spread around) + optional cream + dill + chives.

I've done this three times now, with the Swede and later alone. I/we haven't forced anyone to try it, and almost everyone has eaten at least one whole open sandwich. Several came back next year, which — as you say — helps normalize it.

I think it tastes like an extremely strong hard cheese. Once a year is enough, however.

<comment><USER4> Please don't eat it in an apartment, not even in Sweden. That shit is neighbor cruelty

//Concerned Swede

<comment><USER2> I've never had a single complaint, nor have anyone I know. Have you ever had reason to complain about the smell of surströmming from a neighbor?

<comment><USER4> I don't think any of my neighbors ever tried, at least not since I moved to an apartment. That move did coincide with me moving to Stockholm though, and it seems this atrocious tradition has less foothold here then back home in Dalarna(and I would guess, northern sweden too). I have had reason to complain about neighbors eating it while living in a villa, but it seemed unfair to complain so I used incense instead :)

i guess maybe I'm just sensitive

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've tried it (at the Herräng dance camp as it happens, an experience in itself).

I'd describe the texture as being a little sponge-like compared to, say, tinned tuna. The flavour is strong and slightly acid. The smell was pungent but not particularly awful.

On the whole I think people exaggerate; it's no more revolting than a strong cheese might be, and the "rotting herring" description you sometimes hear is about as indicative as "rotted milk" would be for cheeses.

On the other hand we had it outside and they do say it's much worse indoors. It was noticeable that the moment the tin was opened it attracted flies though!

Our host opened the noticeably swelling tin without a bucket of water, but he was an old hand at it.

<comment><USER6> I also think the "disgusting" aspect is way overrated. It's basically fermented fish. The smell is very concentrated because it's been canned. A good video on how to eat it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGRyr8yIo9w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGRyr8yIo9w)

<comment><USER7> > It's basically fermented fish

I've personally only ever heard it described as exactly that: fermented fish.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The important things:

1\. the smell varies from can to can (age etc). That's why people have very different experiences when opening one.

2\. The smell is not like the flavor. It tastes like salty anchovies with a bit more punch.

3\. Other than a few hardcore fans, people generally don't eat the fish alonelike you would e.g with pickled herring (the other Swedish herring staple). You have it (sometimes quite little, depending on how much you like it) on a huge piece of hard bread together with lots of other things like potatoes. The exact combination of things on the sandwich is the cause of family feuds. It's like anchovies on a pizza vs eating a can of anchovies...

4\. If you meet a Swede they will most likely have tried it, but probably don't like it. It's only commonly eaten in the northern half of the country, while most people live in the south.

<comment><USER9> Isn't tunnbröd also often soft?

<comment><USER8> Both kinds exist, but I think the hard version is more common in the north, meaning the combination soft+surströmming would be less common (If it's not criminal, it should be :)

<comment><USER4> You're right, I'm from what people usually call the North of Sweden, and while we have plenty of soft tunnbröd eating it with surströmming is just wrong. Surströmming goes with tuttul(local hard tunnbröd variant) sourcream, potatoes, dill, and chopped red onions. I don't enjoy it though, mostly because my tummy didn't agree with it, and I was farting that less than lovely smell of freshly opened can, almost constantly for a week! I'm not likely to eat it again, even though my family does at least a couple of times a year

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's not surprising that the cashier in Malmö didn't have any suggestions: surströmming is from the other end of the country, and all the southerners I've spoken to about it have got that "those crazy norrlännings" expression on their faces.

</comment><comment><USER11> When I lived in a dorm in Uppsala there was a girl there, an exchange student from China, and she purchased surströmming for cooking, thinking it was regular fish. So she opens up the can and, boom, smell. Still thinking it is fish ("Sweden is a strange place, maybe they don't get the fresh stuff here?"), she proceeds to rinse it it under the faucet and then makes a chinese dish with surströmming as the fish ingredient.

Surströmming is great - in small amount together with fresh potatoes and melted butter, on thin crispy bread.

<comment><USER12> Almost anything is great in a small amount with fresh potatoes and melted butter on thin crispy bread. Why not just use regular pickled herring? Or something similar that doesn't taste and smell bad?

<comment><USER2> The taste really is special. It's the most savory, salty, fishy food I have ever had. It's something like anchovies with parmesan and tuna cranked up to eleven.

Pickled herring is not really the same kind of taste at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A funny true story with surströmming:

A relative attended a school in in London during the 60s, living in a dormitory. One of the students didn't wash his socks. So my relative and his friend opened a tin of surströmming and placed it in this guys trash bin.

The guy with the smelly socks friends entered the dormitory and smelled the surströmming thinking it was his socks. So they throwed them away.

Well now my relative and his friend had to swiftly remove the tin with surströmming, so they placed it outside in a tree.

Then the school directors 2 poodle dogs came along and found the surströmming ton and eat it up.

The directors wife was a piano teacher and had a lesson with a student when the dogs entered the piano room. The directors wife shouted something like "O my dear dogs, where have you been.." and having no clue what it was. Well, she gave this dogs a good bath.

</comment><comment><USER14> As a Phd student me and a couple of office mates did this at work one day. The fish, the white crispy bread (whatever it's called in English?), potatoes etc. for a proper "klämma" sandwich. Once you get over the smell, it's quite good actually.

Oh, the smell. We did chase everybody else out of the coffee room when I opened it (using the bucket trick, yes). A bit later the lab engineer called me:

\- I got some complaint about the toilet drain malfunctioning, and that you might have something to do with it?

\- Uh oh...

Sometime later one of my co-conspirators moved on to do a post-doc in another country, where he eventually repeated our stunt. Except he forgot the bucket thing, and sprayed the foul smelling bile on some poor bystander.

<comment><USER3> > The fish, the white crispy bread (whatever it's called in English?)

Flatbread in general, there isn't a word for the specific Swedish type. ("Swedish flatbread.")

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have to eat surströmming once a year, preferably close surströmmingspremiären, which is the 3d Thursday in August.

Living in Stockholm, you call friends and relatives who like surströmming and set a date and time.

If you have neighbours from other cultures, it is adviced to set up a notice in the entrance. Otherwise they maybe will call for a plumber.

Everything that is present during a meal with surströmming will probably catch the smell. Therefore it is advised to not have your finest suit on. And the best way is to eat outdoors.

Eating outdoors could bring along insects to the table. To mitigate this you could pour some of the brine in a coup or two and set them some meters from the table and the insects gravitate to them instead.

</comment><comment><USER15> I once made a client bring a can from a visit to Sweden. Luckily it did not explode on board - I keep thinking what would have happened if the airline presented him a bill worth several millions with a nice letter stating that they tried every option to get rid of the smelly leftovers without any success... ;-) We had a very funny evening (including some Aquavit) and built a good friendship on top of it. Surstromming actually does not taste foul, only strong.

</comment><comment><USER16> Clive and friends did some sampling of surströmming recently, as on [https://youtu.be/4vjT_fFUFLs](https://youtu.be/4vjT_fFUFLs) starting at 4:15 if you want the experience of 3 folks not previously exposed to it but appropriately prepped.

The rest of the channel tends more towards the disassembly of electronic devices and analysis of their construction.

</comment><comment><USER17> I've watched this buzzfeed clip a few times...pretty funny. [https://youtu.be/_haw_YDC_zo](https://youtu.be/_haw_YDC_zo)

<comment><USER3> But as many others have said here, it's completely the wrong way to eat it.

This is what American YouTubers and Danish students on initiation rituals do; it's not how Swedish people eat it.</comment></comment>


In Cryptography, Advances in Program Obfuscation - <AUTHOR> https://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140130-perfecting-the-art-of-sensible-nonsense/ <comment><USER2> Fun fact: The Flame virus had several layers of self-encryption. It was basically an onion, with each "layer" being encrypted executable code. The outer layer was typically the only one that was active at any given time. It would then detect some part of the system configuration (like part of the list of the installed programs) and derive a decryption key from that, and try to decrypt itself. Therefore, if(f) the system had a certain set of installed programs, then the Flame virus would decrypt its next layer successfully. That way it would avoid exposing its entire codebase to virus researchers, because the researcher's systems probably wouldn't have the correct list of installed programs. (Is there a name for this technique?)

Apparently, it didn't work very well iirc. The researchers figured out how to get into all of the layers somehow, though I forget how. But the idea was clever... I wonder if something similar could work well in practice.

(This isn't the same thing as what was presented in the article, of course, but it's a lot easier to accomplish in practice.)

<comment><USER3> Anything like that is not really fundamentally different from a password, and for the program to work correctly (decrypt itself) it has to collect the password somehow. The outer layer that does this really has no defense other than obfuscation, which is difficult to do because in order to do anything useful you almost always have to interact with the system on which you're running anyway, and those interactions give away what you're doing.

And if you're decrypting a program and doing something that people notice, it's a matter of time before someone is able to capture the decrypted code and work backwards from that.

The decryption routine is a rather obvious place to look; does the routine check if something is decrypted properly before jumping into that code, or does it decrypt, jump, and crash if the key is wrong? If it checks, then that's the ideal place to stop the program, dump the memory, and see what's going on. If it doesn't check, you're going to have malware that's crashing all the time and fairly easy to detect for that reason. If you're trying to do something under the radar, the last thing you want is unstable malware.

So yeah, traditional obfuscation is just a speed bump, and too much of it might make things detectable. The underlying problem is that the software has to DO something useful (read a file, send network packets, etc), and it's extremely hard to hide that on hardware you don't control.

But like any security, depending on the goal, maybe a speed bump is good enough.

<comment><USER4> But consider that the decryption key for the outer layer is something that is unique, such as the machine key. Or the serial number of a device attached to the box. Or even the mac address of a network device.

Thus, only in that particular targeted environment will the next layer be revealed. While it is true that, as you say, _Anything like that is not really fundamentally different from a password_ , that password might require physical possession of the target machine.

<comment><USER5> This is an amazing idea. Someone might have been able to do this for the final code for something like Stuxnet since they knew the target software. Really brilliant.

<comment><USER4> It seems like with stuxnet it was a serial number from the attached hardware.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6>
        But if you have a black box obfuscator, creating a
        public key encryption protocol becomes a simple matter
        of choosing your favorite secret-key encryption scheme,
        expressing its workings as a computer program,
        obfuscating the program, and making the obfuscated
        version widely available. Anyone can then use it to
        encrypt a message to send to you, but no one can tease
        the decryption key out of the obfuscated software.

I cannot imagine downloading and running such an application for which nobody could feasibly determine it was safe, except to run it in some sort of secure sandbox.

<comment><USER7> Then you're not being very imaginative. Instead of assuming that this some giant EXE, assume instead that the (open source, carefully vetted) host for this code exposes a small VM, with no linkage to system libraries or direct access to memory, whose sole purpose is to unwrap small encrypted blobs.

<comment><USER8> Hence a secure sandbox, as the parent suggested. Careful when you insult people.

<comment><USER7> Hm. You're right. That came out way snippier than I meant it too. Thanks.

<comment><USER8> This combo really is something. I saw your other comment about private-key being the interesting part (and not high-speed symmetric operations). This really is a breakthrough but I am not sure today where it will go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I haven't read carefully, but this is a description of something akin to white-box encryption, right?

[http://eprint.iacr.org/2013/104.pdf](http://eprint.iacr.org/2013/104.pdf)

<comment><USER9> In the follow-up paper, Sahai and Waters turn the weak indistinguishability obfuscation (which, by itself, is not strong enough for the white-box setting) and one-way functions into public-key encryption. This is what white-box (symmetric) encryption does, so presumably it's doable.

It's worth reiterating that this is very much not practical by any standard, and doesn't look anything like the usual software obfuscation used today, even white-box. This thing requires at the very least that multilinear maps and fully homomorphic encryption are anywhere near practical, which is not the case today (and may end up being like quantum computing, always 10 years away).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This will remain nothing more than a parlor trick. It's pretty much a guarantee, based on how a modern CPU works. You're sure to screw up the branch predictor, caching, and everything else that works to prevent your program from making it feel like 1993 all over again. It would seem like the halting problem would also make an appearance in there somewhere, once you go rearranging how things work. On the upside, I guess compiler writers can drop all their work on optimization.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, exactly - very similar to the issues with homomorphic encryption in terms of performance hits: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption)

Maybe if we do eventually outgrow the computational power we have access to this could happen, but not in the near future I don't think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> '''The team's obfuscator works by transforming a computer program into what Sahai calls a "multilinear jigsaw puzzle." Each piece of the program gets obfuscated by mixing in random elements that are carefully chosen so that if you run the garbled program in the intended way, the randomness cancels out and the pieces fit together to compute the correct output. But if you try to do anything else with the program, the randomness makes each individual puzzle piece look meaningless.'''

I know nothing about crypto and AI and even less about neuroscience and this probably sounds stupid - but, is it possible that all the sensory input we receive is just random "sensible nonsense" and our brains partially solve this "multilinear jigsaw puzzle" using a vast neural network?

Considering the fact that brute force AI has been a total failure in recognizing anything, I wonder if our world is similarly obfuscated by sensible nonsense (from the robot's perspective).

<comment><USER13> It doesn't sound stupid. Given we may exist in a shared CPU space which renders this universe, it would make perfect sense for implementing said universe and our awareness of it. Obfuscating the universe's rules would keep people from jacking with it to the detriment of others. It's bad enough we can screw up other's lives in here as it is. Being able to alter the universe's infrastructure at will wouldn't work out so well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> There is something I don't get it there though. Wouldn't you, with a debugger for instance, be able to see the program as it would have to deobfuscate itself for the processor to understand it ?

<comment><USER7> That presumes that being able to "see the program" reveals anything about the cipher or its key. In the white-box crypto model, it doesn't; the source code is itself "encrypted", so that its basic operations are visible but the precise sequence of operations it will taken _given a specific input_ are Hard to determine.

<comment><USER15> But this can't work without blackbox TPM chip that are not under your control anymore... Thus for this to work you have to give up general purpose computing?

<comment><USER7> No, it does not depend on a tpm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The picture of Craig Gentry in the article shows him standing in front of the National Cryptologic Museum at the NSA. :-)

</comment><comment><USER8> It's an absolutely fascinating proposition. The implication of the technology is that such a program would consume many orders of magnitude more CPU and memory to achieve the same result as a non-obfuscated program, so you'd only use it for core cryptographic processes.

<comment><USER17> Generally you want cryptographic primitives to run extremely fast though. This just comes across as something useful for the "I need to protect my source from hackers!!!" types who don't care if it makes their program stupidly inefficient. The only difference being that here it can't be reverse engineered (usually a bad thing for people who like FLOSS). Yeah there are imaginary uses for running code in an insecure environment but that comes across as an afterthought and has the same problems.

<comment><USER7> You want bulk encryption to be fast, but can often handle slow key derivation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'd like to know how this affects code generation. Won't it create a huge mess of intructions, and run ridiculously slow? Article seems to imply yes:

>However, the new obfuscation scheme is far from ready for commercial applications. The technique turns short, simple programs into giant, unwieldy albatrosses

<comment><USER7> Presuming it's anything like White Box AES, then yes; that's what it will do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is this something like being able to come up with a Malbolge program? Being able to read the instructions or trace execution is not relevant, since the execution depends on some being able to solve some difficult problem?

</comment><comment><USER19> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption)

<comment><USER15> That's a different question, you are acting as the reverse "TPM" chip and sending the processing away and then deciphering the result in protected space: your computer.

I can't see how you can't trace a program on a computer without such a black box part. Just ask any software cracker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> eh... what happens when it starts to do io?</comment>


Docker Hack Day Highlights - <AUTHOR> http://blog.runkite.com/2013/07/31/highlights-from-docker-hack-day-6-talks/

<comment><USER2> "Sebastian's team needs docker for a simple reason: they build Debian packages for anything they send to production. But they don't want to SSH into a build server, clone the git repo, build the package, then copy & upload it. This just takes too long and is annoying."

I hope I'm misunderstanding this. Instead of improving their central build infrastructure, they gave up on it and have the developers produce builds for production on their individual computers? That seems like a step backwards to me. The benefits of a continuous integration are well-known; that's the logical place to produce your artifacts whether they be debian packages or anything else.

Here are a couple projects demonstrating how to build deb and rpm packages and publishing them to repositories from Jenkins.

[http://jenkins-debian-glue.org/](http://jenkins-debian-glue.org/)

[https://github.com/jhrcz/jenkins-rpm- builder](https://github.com/jhrcz/jenkins-rpm-builder)

<comment><USER3> Nobody said we gave up on continuous integration. Quite the contrary! We use jenkins and other CI tools on a daily basis.

Once we have tools to build debian packages easily in a controlled environment (containers), the CI server will be able to use the same tools to build and test the final package. The advantage here is that a developer can test the whole workflow and build local test/dev packages with the same tools and environment as the CI server.

<comment><USER2> I'm glad to hear I was reading too much into the summary. So you plan to use docker as a replacement for tools like pbuilder?

<comment><USER3> Yes packages are built in a fresh container every time. It's has a lot of functionality in common with pbuilder.

Of course, building packages is just one of many use cases. You also want to test the installation of the new package, run integration tests...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am slightly embarrassed to say, even when I see all these folks say amazing things about how Docker made their lives easier, I still can't wrap my head around exactly what it is. (This when I KNOW I want jail-like isolation between many of my rails apps on one server)

Is it like a jail in BSD? Ok but then what are the chef-like recipes for? (the docker recipe-like stuff is leading me to think that)... I get the benefits of shipping containers, but what does this do for Quotas? for differing paths? How does it solve init.d vs Upstart vs launchd issues?

Also, on index.docker.io, how do I view these recipes? What do they look like?

Hopefully there's a youtube video out there where a speaker gets a little less abstract and more detailed about where these pieces fit in, actually looking at an SSH prompt on a server.

<comment><USER5> Hey Antonse,

Does this presentation help you understand? [http://www.docker.io/about/](http://www.docker.io/about/)

<comment><USER4> I've seen this presentation and it's a great higher-level introduction to the benefits. The shipipng container analogy is great. Where I'm stuck now is how that maps to "what do I type in SSH, and how is it modifying my server's filesystem?" \- just the getting started phase. But this page ([https://github.com/dotcloud/docker/wiki/Docker-external- reso...](https://github.com/dotcloud/docker/wiki/Docker-external-resources)) seems to be really helpful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting to see emacs on its lonesome in one of those boxes. How does that work? Emacs client into an exposed port or something else?

<comment><USER7> In your .emacs

(defun create-docker-terminal (buffer-name) (interactive "sshell name: ") (ansi-term "~/docker/launch.sh") (rename-buffer buffer-name t)) (global-set- key (kbd "C-c d") 'create-docker-terminal)

In your launch.sh

docker run -u user -i -t -v local-dir:dir-inside-container /bin/bash --rcfile your-rc-file

<comment><USER6> So you are just running docker from within emacs rather than the other way round?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Videos seem to be unavailable at the moment.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, sorry about that.

The Youtube live video from last night doesn't seem to be available anymore, but according to [http://www.docker.io/live/](http://www.docker.io/live/), a better version of the videos should be up by the end of the day. I'll fix the post.

Thanks!</comment></comment>


What The Rich Don't Want You To Know About Taxes - <AUTHOR> http://www.wweek.com/portland/article-17350-9_things_the_rich_dont_want_you_to_know_about_taxes.html

<comment><USER2> Many of the tricks used to lower taxes on the wealthy are available to small and medium sized business owners. We can borrow against unrealized gains. We can distribute income that is not subject to social security tax, If one can get a real estate loan these days, we can shelter real estate income with depreciation. We can even pay ourselves rent, thereby changing it from SS taxable to not. Indeed, in the internet industry we can certainly keep gains unrealized much as Hedge fund managers do. All it takes is some education and a creative, thoughtful accountant or tax lawyer. The article makes it seem that one has to be rich to take advantage. In my experience that just isn't true. The laws are applied equally. Its the employee that takes it in the ear. Not the employer.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am one of "those" tax lawyers. Insert disclaimer here.

1\. I get tired of references to these "secrets of the rich" stories. There are no secrets. There are giant holes deliberately inserted into the Internal Revenue Code.

2\. I get tired of snide comments about the Republicans. When I read articles like this it is hard for me to concentrate over the noise of partisan axes grinding. Listen up. The Democrats are just as bad when it comes to inserting giant holes into the Internal Revenue Code.

3\. When I look at articles like this and clever statistics, I think of my undergrad statistics courses. I get the feeling that the old "lies, damned lies, and statistics" line is coming true yet again. I don't know whether this author is competent with statistics. Even if he is, given the clearly partisan bent of his writing, I question whether he is unbiased in application of his statistical skills.

4\. The author makes it sound as if tax law since Ronald Reagan is all an experiment gone awry. Can anyone spot the error in his logic? Hint: it is spelled "uncontrolled variables."

5\. He trots out anecdotes. Donald Trump. Etc. Ooookay. For every anecdote there is an opposite and equal anecdote.

Conclusion: this is utter partisan bullshit. Entertaining, possibly. Makes you feel good, if you agree with him. But of no value whatsoever.

Note: the clowns on the other side of the taxation argument are no better. They are selective in their use and abuse of statistics and they wear the same ridiculous ballet shoes as they leap from improbable assumptions to absurd conclusions.

A pox on both sides.

The truth is much more subtle. Tax does undoubtedly affect choices and behavior. But in my experience the marginal tax rate on income is only one of many factors affecting decisions. I do international tax work for very, very wealthy humans and the companies they own. In my experience I have seen repeated decisions AGAINST inbound investment recently. There is a manufacturing company in the Midwest that will probably go out of business, costing jobs, because my client (a foreign investor) decided the overall layers of bureaucratic bullshit were too damned much. Accounting, environmental, equal opportunity, this, that, the other. We torpedoed the deal this week.

There is a gigantic real estate project here in California that is not happening for similar reasons. There could be a few thousand construction jobs going right now. But there aren't.

The decisions here are partly driven by tax considerations. But intelligent investors (and I submit to you that Donald Trump, the McCourts, etc. are all intelligent investors) look at the overall after-tax return of a particular investment and act accordingly. After-tax returns are partly driven by income tax rates. But they're also driven by nontax considerations.

I'll give you a tax-related example. The IRS is currently on an amphetamine- fueled jihad against offshore bank accounts. The primary weapon is a form called Form TD F 90-22.1. Traditionally it applied only to U.S. citizens and residents. It requires U.S. persons to declare the existence of foreign accounts.

In the next-to-last iteration of the update to that form, the IRS attempted to expand the application of that disclosure requirement to nonresidents who were (defined messily) in the U.S. on business.

Assume for the moment you are a really wealthy non-U.S. person. (I have them as clients). You are extremely well connected politically in your home country. (I have them as clients). You have a few personal investments in the United States, such as a summer house, an account at JPMorgan, etc.

You come to the United States. You talk to your banker here about your money. Arguably, the IRS could tag you as failing to comply with the requirements of Form TD F 90-22.1, under the definition they tried to expand. You -- the extremely wealthy non-U.S. person, brother of a King or a Prime Minister -- might have to declare to the IRS your worldwide bank accounts? No fucking way.

I had people backpedaling from the U.S. so fast you could not believe it.

Noise erupted. The IRS backed off. For now.

THESE are the types of things that slow down inbound foreign investment and trade in my experience.

Entropy applies in government. This is the best we're ever going to have, government-wise. :-) Entropy takes over in the form of layers of bureacratic crap, one on top of the next, just like sediment in a lake.

TL;DR

1\. David Johnson is partisan, selective and misleading; his argument has a counterpart on the other side of the political spectrum that is just as partisan, selective, and misleading.

2\. Income tax rates are only one factor in decisions made by human beings, and are frequently swamped by other factors.

3\. The world is going to hell. Have a beer. :-)

Phil.

</comment><comment><USER4> Bad link used. Use this one instead:

[http://www.wweek.com/portland/article-17350-9_things_the_ric...](http://www.wweek.com/portland/article-17350-9_things_the_rich_dont_want_you_to_know_about_taxes.html)</comment>


Kerry warns of Snowden consequences for Russia and China - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23031801 <comment><USER2> americans think they rule the world? it's out of your "jurisdiction" and they are only acting according to their laws! not yours.</comment>


15 Current Technologies A Child Born Today Will Never Use - <AUTHOR> http://m.yahoo.com/w/legobpengine/news/15-current-technologies-child-born-today-never-142409696.html?orig_host_hdr=news.yahoo.com&.intl=US&.lang=en-US

<comment><USER3> A bunch of these (optical disc, hard drives, fax and so on) are shooting fish in a barrel, technologies that are already in their death throws.

Others I'm sceptical about though - movie theaters as the main one. My dad worked in the film industry and predicted it's demise time and time again over 40 years (though has stopped now) but I think there's something about the shared experience of sitting in a room with a bunch of people, away from (your own) kids and (hopefully) phones and other distractions.

It's not about widescreen TVs, it's about a dedicated environment for doing something and a sense of occasion. I've got a large flat screen, surround sound, blue ray and all which is great, but I still loved going to the cinema this Saturday night.

A bunch of the other things can be summarised in a single point - the death of the single use device whether it be a remote control, a camera, a phone (because landline phone will exist, it'll be over the cable to your house but won't terminate in a dedicated handset, it will route to a smartphone or computer).

<comment><USER4> I agree, but for a different reason. "Movie Theaters" and "Prime Time Television" are much less "technologies" and more like entertainment business models.

<comment><USER3> That's completely it - it's a commercial and cultural thing, rather than a technical thing.

Much of the technology involved in a cinema today is a world apart from how things were 50 years ago, but at the heart of it it's the same experience - <USER2> big picture on a big screen being shown to a load of people sitting in comfy chairs who are getting aware from their normal lives for a few hours.

Do what you want with the technology, that sounds like a great experience to me and something I'll want to do for a lot longer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The "author" lost credibility when he suggested that wireless can replace wired connections as the norm.

<comment><USER6> Good call. This is one of the reasons why I currently prefer the government in Australia over the opposition. They are rolling out a national FTTH network [0], rather than the opposition which seems to think that wireless broadband is the way to get fast internet into homes.

As an example of the attitude of the opposition (from 2009, but their views are the same as far as I'm aware) [1]:

"What they are proposing is the effective re-nationalisation of the fixed line network in this country ... But it certainly should not please the rest of Australia to have the re-nationalisation of a fixed line network in this way, particularly when there will be some $20 billion at least of taxpayers' money put at risk in an investment in a particular fixed line technology which many have noted will take another 10 years to roll out. And by then we have no idea what the capacity and possibilities will be with alternative communications technologies—most particularly, of course, mobile and wireless. There is a massive flight from fixed line to mobile and wireless broadband going on right now. What will it be like in 10 years time when this thing is finally built? I suspect this will be one of the all-time great white elephants this country has seen."

[0] - <http://nbnco.com.au/>

[1] - [http://www.openaustralia.org/senate/?id=2009-05-12.77.1&...](http://www.openaustralia.org/senate/?id=2009-05-12.77.1&s=%22wireless+broadband%22+speaker%3A10460#g80.1)

<comment><USER5> Yes - I was until 5 weeks ago living in Melbourne, I'm aware of the NBN and Tony Abbott's delusions about technology ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is anyone else getting tired of the endless predictions of the doom of the PC as tablets take over?

Tablets are wonderful for "consumers": People who want to use apps, read web pages, etc. They just aren't useful for actual WORK: If you want to so much as write a letter, you'll long for a real keyboard if all you have to hand is a tablet.

If you want to sit down and code.. well, I can't see xmonad and vim going touchscreen-based any time soon :)

<comment><USER8> Tablets don't preclude keyboards (see the Microsoft surface pro for their take on the problem). Also tablets don't preclude attaching to a 30" monitor and your external keyboard and mouse combo of choice. I suspect that in two-three years time I'll be running xmonad and vim on a tablet more powerful than most current laptops and with a choice of keyboard solutions every bit as good as the one on my macbook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here's the non-mobile version - [http://news.yahoo.com/15-current- technologies-child-born-tod...](http://news.yahoo.com/15-current-technologies- child-born-today-never-142409696.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> > movie tickets in New York cost around $13 each

That's cheap! I pay $ 14-18 here in Sweden. And there are still new theaters being built.

<comment><USER10> The Senna documentary last year cost me £12 in central London, around $19 at current rates - I can't imagine it has changed massively. I was as surprised as Axel Foley: "I could get blown for 12 bucks!"

<comment><USER3> He's not been to Soho for a while....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I see 11 invitations to "read more". Thanks, but no. I waste enough time as it is.

</comment><comment><USER12> They forgot driver licenses.

(OK, that's not a technology. I think there's a fair chance that children born this year will not need to learn how to drive just to use a car.)</comment>


Appointment Reminder Launches - <AUTHOR> http://www.appointmentreminder.org/appointment-reminder-launches

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks in advance guys. I mean this sincerely: I probably couldn't have done it without you.

I don't generally ask for things on HN, but just this once: y'all know that links my website gets gives me more ability to rank for search terms of importance to me. If I've said something which helped you or you otherwise want to go give me a Christmas present, please take a few minutes out of your day, go to your blog, and write up a few sentences with a link to the front page. I'd really, really appreciate it.

<comment><USER2> I know you probably worked hard on this, but I'm extremely disappointed that you might have just lifted Twilio's appointment script example (<http://www.twilio.com/docs/howto/appointmentreminder>), set up a billing frontend, and charging $79/month for this product. I wish you would've credited Twilio for much of the hard work.

As much as I want you to succeed, I don't know if this is the right way to do it.

<comment><USER3> If you think that all it takes to build this business is copying Twilio's code, then you should try making money off printing bingo cards.

<comment><USER4> Is this the new paradigm in Tech/Silicon Valley? Copying the crucial component of others' work and just building a business off of it?

I hope this is not how we create innovation going forward.

<comment><USER5> Which part of Silicon Valley do you think patio11 lives in?

When, exactly, did he claim that "innovation" was some critical portion of his business models?

One of Patrick's most charming features is his unwillingness to tie himself up in emotional knots over his status as an "innovator", or fret about whether or not his products sufficiently express the essence of his cutting-edge twenty- first-century personality. He just makes things that people want, and markets them systematically with a great deal of focus. And he writes about that.

My lawyer, my accountant, my dentist, my doctor, my grocer, and my pharmacist don't have particularly innovative business models. They just provide things that I want, and I pay for them. There is no sin in that.

<comment><USER4> "Tech/Silicon Valley". Didn't imply he lived in the Valley.

"My lawyer, my accountant, my dentist, my doctor, my grocer, and my pharmacist don't have particularly innovative business models."

This has nothing to do with his business model. It's about using someone else's work and passing it off as your own. I'm sure I'll get downvoted again, but I hate the blatant disregard for intellectual property. Twilio paid its $90-100K+ developer to program and document the appointment reminder script, and in the end, weren't credited for the crucial component of the work.

<comment><AUTHOR> I yield to no one in my respect for IP, and my karma would be higher if I didn't feel the need to pipe up so frequently on the "we should be able to steal music" topics. But I did not actually use Twilio's sample code for my product. It is _sample code_. Really. Go try running it, come back when you find that it doesn't even have enough for Rails to load.

I didn't even use that code as a base for mine. Again, it is _sample code_. Take a look at the user experience or error handling -- they're clearly inadequate for a real product, but suffice to give a competent Rails developer a taste of what API it takes to actually have Twilio make a phone ring. After you can make a phone ring (in one line -- and, again, one line I don't even use), you only need the other 3,500 lines of AR to actually make that phone call worthwhile for business purposes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Patrick - you may find this useful:

"One restaurant owner greatly reduced the percentage of no-shows (people who booked a table but didn't honour the reservation and didn't call to cancel it) by having his receptionist change what she said when taking a reservation from 'Please call if you have to cancel' to 'Will you call if you have to cancel?' Of course, nearly all customers committed themselves to calling by saying 'yes' to that question. More importantly, they then felt the need to abide by their commitment: the no-show rate dropped from 30 per cent to 10 per cent." (quoted from 'Yes! 50 secrets from the science of persuasion' by Goldstein, Martin and Cialdini)

One other suggestion: Give your would-be customers a FREE split test. Half of the appointments get a reminder, half don't. Get the user to place a 'value' on the outcome of each appointment, then tell them the result of the split test. The user will be BEGGING to give you money.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you -- I've had my head in the trenches so long that didn't even occur to me, and split testing is ordinarily a passion of mine. I'll consider doing that if I can figure a way to sell it to my customers as well as I can sell it to Rails developers.

<comment><USER6> Forgot to say: Thanks for sharing all your bingo card revenue stats - it's been very motivational! Well done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Congrats Patrick!

A small piece of feedback. On this page: <https://www.appointmentreminder.org/a/calendar> \- I am wary of testing it because I'm not sure who'll see my phone number if I do. In other words, it's not clear if this demo is just for me or if this is a "demo sandbox" for anyone to use.

BTW, love the outrageous enterprise pricing that makes the small business plan look better, as well as the blatantly fake "HOT" tag - you shipped today! it gets hot fast in Japan! ;)

Not so sure about this "All questions are answered by our lead engineer. (Your business is too important to trust to a call center..)" - smells a little bit fake. I like Garrett's style better: <http://sifterapp.com/support> (scroll down to the green box).

Just my quick first impressions. Congrats on a new beginning!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback Peldi. I clarified the copy on the demo page, and it should be restarting right about now.

We'll agree to disagree on the "hot" tag: it is my personal recommendation, and _everybody_ who committed to buy AR when I asked them wanted that plan. (The enterprise pricing is mostly because HIPAA is insane -- it is still cheaper than any competitor in the healthcare market. I'll talk at length about that some other day.)

<comment><USER8> One small thing, on this page: <https://www.appointmentreminder.org/pricing>

The strings from the "hot" tag to the "Small business" column are wrong. One of the strings needs to come from behing the column, otherwise it looks like there's some weird bug sitting on the column, holding a "hot" tag.

See: <http://imgur.com/gjVbb>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't know if you're looking for any design critiques, but since that's what I know here goes:

\- The logo is not very readable. The letters are squashed together and the gradients are a little too strong. Subtle is always better.

\- The pure white background behind the tagline is very harsh. I suggest using a light shade of beige instead.

\- Your content needs some rythm. People hate reading big blocks of text, so you should add in some headings and lists.

\- Maybe you're planning to add more slides to the carousel later, but right now you really don't need it. You could take out "who is it for" and put it in the sidebar instead.

\- The two call to action buttons get lost inside the illustration. I suggest putting them in the brown bar instead.

\- The tagline could really use some typographical love. There's a ton of gorgeous free fonts on FontSquirrel.com, just pick one from the top 10 most popular.

\- The sign in link should probably not be placed inside the nav, most people expect it to the top right of the site.

That's just the things that jump out at me from looking at the homepage for 5 minutes. Hit me up on Twitter (@SachaGreif) if you have any questions or you'd like some more advice.

PS: I almost forgot to say, congratulations on launching what looks like a truly useful product!

PPS: I often go to Kyoto, not that far from you!

</comment><comment><USER10> I found the audio on the video really hard to hear. A good quality mic and a little mixing makes a huge difference.

<comment><AUTHOR> I apologize: you know us engineers, 95% of the schedule goes to the engineering and we leave the 90% of the project that remains to the last day. I'll eventually have that video professionally redone.

<comment><USER11> Additionally, I found there was too much talking in the video. It was at least a minute in when the demo started.

<comment><USER12> I also found it "ended twice." Patrick wraps it up, says "thanks for listening" and then still goes on for another 20-30 seconds. It felt a bit long-winded.

Also, the actual phone call was really hard to hear at first. Sound quality/volume was inconsistent throughout.

Personally, I'd probably take the five minutes and re-record it now, even if it's going to be professionally done later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This looks great. Nice work, Patrick, and congrats on the launch. I just sent my mom an email about it, and suggested she try your demo. Hopefully she'll sign up. She's a private tutor, and very frustrated by having students not show up to appointments. This definitely solves a significant problem for her.

Any plans on integrating more tightly with Google Calendar? That's where she currently keeps her appointments, and being able to suck appointment info out of there would be really useful for her. That being said, I have no idea how structured her data in there is (probably not very), so it may not be a super easy problem in the general case.

<comment><AUTHOR> Already on the roadmap, but I couldn't fit it into prelaunch and GC support wasn't a blocking issue.

<comment><USER13> Totally understand - I wouldn't have made it a launch blocker either:) Great to hear it's on the roadmap though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice work patrick - this has big potential! When possible, get a quote on the front page like:

"I save $320 per month with Appointment Reminder!" - Mrs Smith

</comment><comment><USER14> First of all: congratulations! That was an effective November....

I assume that you are going to be aggressively A/B testing this site.

Are you planning to share the results with us? I know I, for one, would find it very informative.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am planning on continuing my usual practices with regards to transparency, with the proviso that I could think of some circumstances where obligations to customers might force that to change. (e.g. If I land one big whitelabel client, and my gross revenues would tend to give away the size of that relationship, then I'd start publishing very incomplete data.)

<comment><USER15> Really looking forward to future discussion. Congrats!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The signup links are redirecting to the coming soon page.

Example: [https://www.appointmentreminder.org/coming- soon?plan=small-b...](https://www.appointmentreminder.org/coming- soon?plan=small-business)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's what I get for not automating that deployment... fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> _< meta name="description" content="Quickly and easily send phone appointment reminders, SMS appointment reminders, and email appointment reminders to your clients. No software, no hardware, no contacts. Start your free 30 day trial today" />_

I think you meant "no contracts".

</comment><comment><USER18> Congrats! Just emailed my dentist to tell them about it. Keep up the good work. :)

</comment><comment><USER19> Caller ID is really important for me. Unless I know who is calling I will probably ignore my phone. Spoofing the phone number of the actual business would be really handy and greatly increase the chance that I take the call.

I can't tell from the site whether one can do this without signing up for an account but if it's not a feature yet I would seriously consider it.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is already on the roadmap, but thank you for the suggestion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> In the video, from the time you answered the call, until the voice started, it took 5 seconds. If that's normal for the system, I'd be worried my clients would hang up before hearing appointment reminder.

<comment><AUTHOR> So just between us geeks: Twilio retrieves your MP3 files when the call starts (and caches them), but my Capistrano tasks effectively bust caches on deployment, and since doing that video took a couple of takes with redeploys in the middle, the shot you saw was live with a cold cache. Actual users will almost certainly have a warm cache for that default script, and the voice will start playing almost immediately. (That said, I agree, if I had a team to do video for me it would have been more polished.)

<comment><USER20> I've been doing a demo video last week, and you can get a long way with powerpoint, windows movie maker, camstudio and audacity. I found I got significantly better results by writing my script, doing the voice over, then the screencast, import all into movie maker, and then edit the screencasts to make it all fit.

('better' when compared to the 'do it all in one go' approach)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Love the idea. Great job. :) This is how I'd summarized things (I didn't watch the video):

Appointmentreminder.org:

\- Automatic appointment reminders for your clients (phone, text message, email).

\- No more meetings where nobody shows up!

\- Get notified automatically if someone is going to be late!

\- Client needs to cancel or reschedule? We'll let you know!

\- Record phone reminders yourself, or save time and have our professional voice actors do it for you!

\- Always on the go? Use it on your laptop or iPad. (iPhone coming soon!)

Never show up to an empty meeting ever again. How much time and money are you going to save?

 _:insert pricing chart here:_

Questions or comments? email@example.com 888-555-1234

</comment><comment><USER22> Your tagline "You didn't go into business to spend the day on the phone. Let us handle that." uses a prime, ', instead of a proper, curly apostrophe, '.

It's also amazing to see a site free of any social network buttons. You don't get to see that often.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am not a fan of social buttons, with the sole exception of Delicious on geek-friendly authoritative reference content. If Facebook wants my help promoting their website, then they can turn some virtual cows into burgers and use the proceeds to pay my consulting rate.

<comment><USER23> Standard disclaimer: actual users would have installed the extension or the bookmarklets and don't generally click the on-page save button.

But the tags were nice to see.

<comment><AUTHOR> I find that I get many, many more saves when I put one of those buttons on an article than when I don't. Subjectively, it feels like about a factor of two for roughly equivalent values of geek-reference-worthiness. Maybe it activates the Delicious neurotransmitters even in bookmarklet users -- I don't know.

(This is, obviously, not something I've spent a lot of time A/B testing.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Welcome to the club! ;)

<http://opencal.com>

<comment><USER25> Very nicely designed site, but one thing bugged me - your brand features a circle and a tick, yet there is no UI element in your app that I could see which uses this. I know you'd likely need to use non-standard interface elements to achieve that (e.g., in place of a checkbox perhaps) but it did stand out to me. "Hey, isn't this place all about ticking circles? I've been lied to!" ;)

Regardless, as I said, the overall design is excellent. Well done.

<comment><USER26> Agreed. What's with the circle and tick? Also, I don't think the name really works. "OpenCal" - it sounds like OpenTable but in that case the name tells me more about what the service is. What is "Cal"? (I know calendar, but calendar does not communicate online appointments, the same way Table does restaurant. At least not for me). My point? You should change your name. I'm sure you love it, but it's holding you back.

Beautifully designed site though. It looks like a very slick service.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Congratulations Patrick!!! I hope the results blow your expectations out of the water.

Also, because of your blog, I discovered Twilio and it's exactly what I've needed for some ideas I've been thinking about over the last year.

</comment><comment><USER28> Well done! So now you've gone from building a successful startup in your spare time, to building another one in the spare time left over from the first one! Very impressive work, inspirational :)

</comment><comment><USER29> Congrats Patrick! Successful entrepreneurs ship, and it looks great. In the thread where you introduced the concept of appointment reminders there was concern voiced that computer calls went in the direction of undervaluing customers by cutting down on human interaction. However, seeing the experience demo'd out I think it actually adds professionalism. If I received such a call I would be impressed, and actually view it favorably because getting a reminder is in my interest, too. Keep going!

</comment><comment><USER30> Congratulations Patrick!

I'm wondering, how did you put together the image with the cartoon characters? Did you have it designed? Do it yourself?

<comment><AUTHOR> Melvin Ram (who posts around here as melvinram), the principal at Volcanic Web Design, did it for me. He knocked it out of the park.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Congrats! It looks great!

A couple nitpick things I noticed which may be helpful:

1\. When you go to the pricing page (<https://www.appointmentreminder.org/pricing>) the top navigation disappears.

2\. You probably want the email address in the top right corner to be a clickable link.

Best of luck!

<comment><USER32> I think navigation disappears on purpose. The idea is that when a user is on a pricing page, you want to let him focus on 'Sign up' process and not distract with other links. [Have you noticed that navigation disappears during Amazon's checkout process?]

<comment><AUTHOR> Got it in one.

<comment><USER31> Fair enough. I thought it was an interface bug, but that is a solid reason. I'll keep that in mind for my next app.

<comment><USER33> I'm going to disagree here. If that is the goal then removing the naivigation makes sense when clicking sign up but not clicking pricing.

The equivalent would be amazon removing navigation when you arrived at a single product page.

The end result IMO is that it looks like a mistake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Congrats Patrick. The link anchor text I used is:

>easily setup automated appointment reminders for your customers

Hope this helps. You can see my post here: [http://marcgayle.com/appointment- reminder-launches-congrats-...](http://marcgayle.com/appointment-reminder- launches-congrats-patric)

</comment><comment><USER35> Hehe. I was considering implementing exactly the same thing, but currently I am working on other projects. Anyway, I wish you luck and I'm curious to see how it works out.

</comment><comment><USER36> Congrats Patrick, looking great!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Jeff! I think I've told you guys before, but Twilio is one of the most awesome things I've ever seen as an entrepreneur. You're going to make several people absolute mints. (I will settle for a mintlet.)

Context for HN users: jeffiel co-founded Twilio and is their CEO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Congrats on launching! But please consider either a. a better microphone or b. a professional speaker service. It's not that your voice is bad or so, it just sounds more professional when representing your company.

</comment><comment><USER38> This looks really cool. I'm not sure what you know about Televox but that's what we use and I have to manage our account. Let me tell you they are very nice people but the service leaves a lot to be desired.

</comment><comment><USER39> Congrats on going live. It looks like <http://www.supersaas.com> provides much of the same functionality at a lower price though (free for small users).

<comment><AUTHOR> Spiffy. They're welcome to folks who think $79 is a lot of money -- I will, seriously, recommend them by name to people who complain to me. I'll happily take the part of the market who thinks calling phones is worth paying for. I didn't ever compete on price with BCC and I'm for darn sure not starting now.

<comment><USER40> AMEN!

You built a ton of value into your product and should not sell it for peanuts. Real businesses pay real money for products and tend to be better customers than those who want it for a "few bucks a month".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Congrats on the launch. One bit of feedback - I might link the Coming Soon! text under "Enterprise" in the pricing page to some kind of e-mail collection form so you can let users know when it arrives.

</comment><comment><USER42> The favicon's blue, while the website green. Sorry, minor nitpick!

</comment><comment><USER43> Small question - why is the blog directly on the root rather than under something like /blog/? And don't you think it'd look better to post under something other than "ADMIN"?

<comment><AUTHOR> You know it is a blog, and I know it is a blog, but does my business gain anything from saying "This piece of content was written by some pajama-wearing shmuck who doesn't know what he is talking about and what it says was obsolete within 30 minutes of being posted"?

Blog? What blog? No blog here, Mr. Person With Decisionmaking Authority At A Law Firm. All I see is experts talking to experts.

<comment><USER43> Not sure I 100% understand the response, but I guess I feel it should either look like a blog or not look like a blog. Even my dad knows what a blog looks like, and right now that post sort of looks like it's part of a half- implemented blog.

If you don't want it to look like a blog, why not get rid of the "06. DEC, 2010 CATEGORIES: UNCATEGORIZED BY PATRICK MCKENZIE COMMENTS OFF" byline completely? And maybe "comments off" at the end too, since if it's not a blog what do you need comments for.

And if it's not a blog, I sort of wonder why you're using a blog engine rather than whatever other CMS or static pages, but I can completely understand if the blog engine is the easiest way to do what you want to do.

<comment><AUTHOR> _And if it's not a blog, I sort of wonder why you're using a blog engine rather than whatever other CMS or static pages, but I can completely understand if the blog engine is the easiest way to do what you want to do._

I use Wordpress for the marketing site because I can concentrate on writing copy and end up with something which looks good very quickly, whereas when I write copy in Netbeans I end up concentrating mostly on balancing my tags and end up with uninspired copy which looks cruddy.

<comment><USER43> Like I said, I completely understand doing what's fastest/easiest, and that definitely makes sense. If Wordpress is what you know, it's completely defensible even if it's overkill.

To be fair though, the choice isn't really "Wordpress vs handwritten HTML" - there are plenty of CMS systems that aren't big gnarly blog engines, and there's even just basic template systems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Curious - why did you opt to launch on a Monday? Everything I've read says Monday is a bad day to launch products.

<comment><AUTHOR> Honestly? No major reason. It wouldn't have been ready on Thursday, and if I had launched it on Friday then I would have had to be up to the wee hours on Saturday and I had a dinner party planned on Saturday and wanted to spend the day cleaning.

I wasn't planning a big splash media launch -- getting it to you guys is sort of the highlight of my day. Tomorrow, I start contacting individuals who I've promised accounts to. After that, the _real_ work starts. My strengths in marketing are more towards the slow-burn acquisition strategies than the burns-bright-fizzles-quickly launch strategies, which makes me care about as much about launch day numbers as Zynga cares about their SEO. (i.e. not much)

<comment><USER44>
      getting it to you guys is sort of the highlight of my day

Good plan! :) Thanks for the reply.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Looks great. Though, the demo seems so locked down it's hard to actually get a feel for how it'd be to use.

</comment><comment><USER46> Nice. I like how you can eat your own dog food by using it yourself to remind and keep customers.

</comment><comment><USER47> I like the white label idea - I think that's going to be pretty successful.

</comment><comment><USER48> Congrats Patrick!

</comment><comment><USER49> love it, had an idea for the exact same service over here in ireland, would you be open to franchising it outside the US?

<comment><AUTHOR> Perhaps. It would depend on the particulars. Send me an email if you're interested in talking more about it later.

I'm really looking forward to first-class support of Japanese by Twilio, although I won't realistically be in a great place to exploit that for at least 6 ~ 8 months.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Congrats on going live and good luck!

</comment><comment><USER51> congrats and looks great!</comment>