If You Build It, They Will Complain - <AUTHOR> http://www.techvibes.com/blog/if-you-build-it-they-will-complain-2015-12-28 <comment><USER2> _> Just like the IT departments at large companies, I had created a scenario where I was building internal tools that I wasn't prepared to support and service. The excitement clouded my foresight - and I didn't consider that each new project would require regular maintenance and ongoing support. I would get asked to add functionality or work on bug fixes, which amounted to several hours of additional work each week. Worse yet, I was on the hook when something stopped working at the worst possible moment._

Woah, he actually writes this off as a bad thing. The only real issue here is that he just created himself a new essential department with himself as the head. Most people would be thrilled - he needs to go approach executive leadership with a simple report on how much he is helping the company and how he needs to hire on additional help. It doesn't really matter that there are possible 3rd party solutions that would work - his solutions are already working and creating obvious value.

This is the opposite of a bad thing - he's probably just created himself a new position and massive raise. I think people talk a lot about all sorts of things missing from CS education, but clearly the best thing a school could do is shove in a bunch of business classes into the CS curriculum to prevent people thinking this is somehow a bad thing.

<comment><USER3> _he 's probably just created himself a new position and massive raise_

This is not how the real business world works. It's just as likely to get a negative performance review for insubordination, not following procedure, and neglecting assigned duties.

<comment><USER4> It's a gamble, but one that makes a lot of sense, in a very selfish way: Building a career in one place without trying to take shots upwards is not good: Programmers get more pay by changing jobs, not by being very patient and hoping they'll get noticed eventually. So once you are in a place that isn't a tiny startup (which is in itself a risk), you should take risks for big internal payoffs. If those risks pay out, great. If they don't, then just go somewhere else and try again.

Few things are sadder to me than seeing to talent that is mildly disgruntled, being a key part of their organization, underpaid, not taking risks, just hoping that someone would notice them and pay them appropriately: Providing value without immediate recognition is just asking people to find ways to make you provide more value without reward, as you've already proven that you are too afraid to demand fair pay. I've worked with people that had spent 10 years at a company, working on my team, as pillars of the company, getting paid 60k/yr, sitting next to a contractor billing 125/hr

<comment><USER5> > Building a career in one place without trying to take shots upwards is not > good: Programmers get more pay by changing jobs, not by being very patient > and hoping they'll get noticed eventually. So once you are in a place that > isn't a tiny startup (which is in itself a risk), you should take risks for > big internal payoffs. If those risks pay out, great. If they don't, then > just go somewhere else and try again.

> I've worked with people that had spent 10 years at a company, working on my > team, as pillars of the company, getting paid 60k/yr, sitting next to a > contractor billing 125/hr

The lesson isn't to take big internal risks. The lesson is to engineer your finances to allow you to weather the volatility of being a contractor, and then be the contractor.

Everyone shits on the idea of the contractor, when they're doing exactly what they're incentivized to do: maximize the value they extract in the shortest period of time possible, while providing value to the organization they're working for.

Screw your equity, your business culture/hierarchy, and paying your dues (colloquially known as "F*ck you, pay me").

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you write it they will complain too.

The article isn't so much about end-users who will complain as much as it is about properly designed software systems as much as it is about in-house and ad-hoc created solutions that are not much more than cobbled together glue.

> Considering that it can take a SaaS company several years just to build an > MVP

That's a pretty bad MVP then. Usually it takes a lot shorter than that, even for a fairly complex MVP.

And why limit the comparison to SAAS, there are pretty good reasons why companies may decide _not_ to hop on the SAAS bandwagon that have nothing to do with not-invented-here, it may simply be that they are concerned with the privacy of their users, with the degree of integration that they can provide and with the dependency on an outside party for a (possibly) critical part of their business. They also may not like to leak information that is sensitive to the company or the end-users to third parties only covered by an SLA and not much insight into the design parameters and the degree of care for detail.

A better comparison would be between a piece of closed source off-the-shelf software or a piece of bespoke software created by outsiders but hosted by the company, preferably one for a fixed price to create and a monthly fee to maintain.

Ad-hoc glue stuff is usually extremely fragile (because any changes in the underlying software will break it), uses all kinds of interfaces intended for humans rather than proper APIs and is hard to maintain because of that.

TL;DR; Stuff I build is fragile, therefore you should use SAAS.

<comment><USER7> > That's a pretty bad MVP then. Usually it takes a lot shorter than that, even > for a fairly complex MVP.

I don't think most SaaS companies follow Lean Startup principles. Most of the ones I've had to integrate with have had horrid infrastructures and extremely brittle interfaces. It's a delight for me to actually have properly-maintained documentation available on the web and not an out of date Word document that I have to go back and forth with one of their engineers to understand. Non- standard format implementations are the norm and not the exception.

The general gist I got is that sales guys pluck mediocre, but hard-working engineers from the corporate ranks and build businesses around them. The whole thing is kept together with long hours and elbow grease when it frequently and inevitably breaks.

<comment><USER6> In my practice I see both. In the SAAS domain I see companies with successful models and crappy execution (but they still remain afloat and sometimes even win the race) and I see companies that are textbook examples of how one should implement a business and scale it. And everything in between as well for that matter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Good article, confusing title. I was expecting something else.

Anyway, it's strange to hear authoritative statements about programmers from someone who says "Ever since building my first VBA script in 2012"

<comment><USER9> Actually my first professional experience was in fixing bugs in and adding new features to an in-house application written in VBA using Access. It's really bone-headed to dismiss someone based solely on the language they choose for a project, especially if what they're saying otherwise makes sense. There are lots of good developers using all kinds of languages, and they all get stuff done.

<comment><USER10> I'd guess that it was more the relatively short amount of time the author has been programming than their choice of language. I skimmed the article and assumed the author had been programming professionally for 10+ years, just from their tone.

<comment><USER8> exactly, that's what I meant

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Teach a man to fish, and you've got to put up with his fishing complaints for the rest of your life.

</comment><comment><USER11> "n McKinsey & Company's 2012 report entitled Delivering large-scale IT projects on time, on budget, and on value, the report describes one example of a large bank that wanted to create a central data warehouse to overcome inconsistencies in their data. In this particular example, the end goal was never properly defined and the IT department embarked on building a solution that never considered the actual business objectives, resulting in 'huge amounts of unnecessary complexity' and significant cost overruns. After 18 months of missed deadlines, nearly $10 million in sunk costs, and no working solution, the bank decided to stop the bleeding and cancel the project altogether."

I don't see how the bank could have got a solution to this from a SAAS vendor... they would still have had to pipe the data to the warehouse, build the reports and management scripts and so on - setting up the data store is a task, true, but so is initialising your store on a cloud provider.

<comment><USER12> The SAAS vendor will be used for its build expertise only. After the build the bank will deploy inner cloud. And the provider will be payed well for the build and for support.

<comment><USER11> I don't think you are using the same definition of software as a service as me! Salesforce.com is a SaaS vendor, it creates a solution that is shared by many users on a cloud...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is like phase 1 in the IT cycle. There's a second phase where because nothing gets done due to cost/value conclusions the IT management gets ousted. New management then goes back to letting these things happen in a effort to become more client considerate. It's a decade long cycle that regularly happens.

</comment><comment><USER14> If you think you build it, it is actually half finished, and left to everyone to finish- who is able to just use git clone on your mind. Cause there is no documentation.

And no- its not snappy to remark upon this after investing a day on fixing your broken code-garbage can, just because its "free" \- cause it was not. Time is money, and if you ask people to work for you for free, you are expensive. Solution: Just do not claim with your project to be what you are not. You're software is not free. You're software is not easy to use. You're software is not plug and play in any way. Do not claim that. Say, that it is a bolted together prototype and warn people who don't have experience with this, that they might be in for a investment of weeks. Everyone stays happy.

<comment><USER15> I thought it was well known that prototypes almost always end up in production.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> OK.

I almost stopped reading when I got to "VBA, 2012" and presumably a few more years of work experience before that.

But OK. If you are actually saying: "Hey - it seems to be a bit complex, maybe we should ask a professional before writing our own excel-based maintenance hell for our internal processes." Then I'm with you.

But don't outsource important stuff! m'kay?

</comment><comment><USER17> I remember a popular unicorn founder (can we just call it that) once referred to himself as "opportunistically lazy". That certainly fits with the technical persona since something within makes us averse to repetitive work.

But now it seems that we've automated pretty much everything we could, so where to now for the technically minded lazy opportunist?

</comment><comment><USER4> There's many reasons to want to avoid writing custom software, but for those that aren't actively living in it, it's easy to forget the dismal results of buying enterprise software.

People buying it start with the impression that 3rd party software is good: We don't write our own mail program, we don't write our own word processors, so of course we shouldn't write anything a third party offers, they say. But that shows a total misunderstanding of what makes software hard: specifications.

It's not difficult to build an application for a good price when we expect tens of thousands of sales, and it's a task that will occupy mind-space, so we expect users to be motivated to learn whatever idiosyncrasies our application has. But when the application should interact with other applications, or there are relatively few users, it's very hard to build it economically: Most of those 3rd party disasters are in those areas.

For instance, we've had a bunch of very pointy haired people decide that our org needed some kind of REST API + authentication management combo, and went out there to purchase something, because building is bad. But it is exactly the kind of system that will does not work well: It's built for big enterprises, so it is seven figures, with recurring costs. It does not interact well with the specific quirks of how the internal authentication works, so hacks are needed. The UI is not really built for you, or anyone, so it makes the AWS dashboard look like a UX miracle. And then there's the bugs: There's still bugs (A lot of them), but now, instead of your own people fix your bugs, now you have another company dealing with them, and since you already paid them, adding new features is more important than fixing your bugs. So now we are out a bunch of money, everyone that isn't pointy haired hates interacting with the thing, and we've needed a bunch of custom code anyway.

The decision between buy and build is not necessarily easy, but there are a very valuable rule of thumb I love:

If you are going to custom build, and it's not key to your secret sauce, expect to spend a bunch, and build it as an open source project.

Having other companies use whatever you are writing makes quality improve faster, as there's more people to find problems in your specification and your implementation. Sometimes you get people to help you with free labor. Others they don't. But either way, you've lost almost nothing by making your code public.

If you are unwilling to commit to making it open source, because it sounds expensive, then you really were not going to commit to it as custom internal software anyway. It would have ended up as a piece of crap everyone hates. So then go and buy, as you weren't going to get any gains from building it custom anyway.

</comment><comment><USER18> They will always say something.</comment>


Roundcube Webmail 1.2.0 released with PGP support - <AUTHOR> https://roundcube.net/news/2016/05/22/roundcube-webmail-1.2.0-released <comment><USER2> Rainloop already has this. [http://www.rainloop.net/](http://www.rainloop.net/)

Been using it for a year or so now, it's fantastic and has never let me down.

<comment><USER3> I came here to comment about this. Rainloop is amazing.

It also has some extra security features for the end user. For instance, you can tell Rainloop to proxy images from the email and serve them to you instead of your browser getting them from a remote source. It's amazing because you get faster load times and don't leak your desktop IP, only whatever server your running Rainloop on.

The only thing it's lacking is PGP, which is very sad.

<comment><USER4> Wait, the parent said Rainloop has PGP. That's why they brought it up.

<comment><USER5> The features page states: " Client Side OpenPGP (JS) "

<comment><USER3> It's not fully implemented from what I understand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wish someone would do this for S/MIME. S/MIME has native support in many MUAs, even Mail.app on iOS. [http://smime.io/](http://smime.io/)

[https://github.com/roundcube/roundcubemail/issues/4977](https://github.com/roundcube/roundcubemail/issues/4977)

<comment><USER7> Is S/MIME really that widely used? It seems to be sort of widely deployed, but not necessarily understood or required by users in secure environments.

<comment><USER6> yes. And it's already supported in many clients without plugins, many companies just sign their mails. You probably don't even notice that if you don't know where to look. It's very unobtrusive compared to gpg.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For everyone who (like me) wondered what happened to "Roundcube Next", they released a statement 8 days ago[1] about it. Sounds like they had personal problems getting in the way. Glad to see the project is still alive.

[1] [https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/roundcube-next-- 2#/update...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/roundcube-next--2#/updates)

<comment><USER9> Thanx for the update, I tweeted them repeatedly, never getting any reply. It looks pretty bad that the last tweet is so old. In the meantime, I've been using Nylas N1 (local mail client) and ownCloud mail (webmail), both have become pretty good!

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the kind words! (I work at Nylas.)

We actually have PGP support coming soon as well. ;)

<comment><USER9> Oh, thanx for the product! One question, I just read here on HN that Nylas stores certain data on Nylas servers. I actually thought it was just a local mail client like Thunderbird (only better looking and more modern). It's not very clear from the website what exactly happens to my mail and login credentials, do you have some pointers?

<comment><USER7> Sure, here's a bit more info: [https://support.nylas.com/hc/en- us/articles/217518207-Why-do...](https://support.nylas.com/hc/en- us/articles/217518207-Why-does-Nylas-N1-sync-email-via-the-cloud-)

A bit more here: nylas.com/blog/nylas-pro

We've spent a lot of time on this and the setup screens pretty clearly say this syncs your data to the cloud for performance and speed.

You can also write me directly if you have specific questions. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's nice to hear about the server-side PGP support (searching!), although it's unfortunate that the client-side solution, Mailvelope (or more specifically, the OpenPGP.js library it uses), still doesn't support any ECC algorithms.

Fortunately Google's End-to-End extension does support ECC algorithms (no idea if it integrates with Roundcube though), but it seems like it still isn't ready for production distribution on the Chrome Web Store yet.

<comment><USER11> I may be wrong (and hope to be corrected!), but I think that End-to-End is never expected to be in the Chrome Web Store. I think they feel that this kind of encryption is too complicated for the average user. It's intended more for "power users" who already know that they want it.

<comment><USER12> They've discouraged people from compiling builds and then uploading it to the store, but I believe this is because they don't want a half- implemented/untested PGP library posted -- especially one with their name on it.

I haven't seen any concrete plans about how they plan to distribute it when it's done, but I didn't get the same sense about them not wanting to upload it themselves. In fact, I think Google would be thrilled to push proper end-to- end support in Gmail.

<comment><USER13> Sorry if this is a dumb question, but if Gmail is e2e, how can Google harvest user data from it?

<comment><USER12> They couldn't. They would have to show ads from other history and not the email's contents. This would also break features such as (server-side) search and reminders (eg. flight tomorrow) via Google Now.

End-to-end is a tradeoff. But presumably they wouldn't be working on the technology if they weren't prepared to offer it in some fashion. Probably as an opt-in? Hopefully a Googler can offer more insight as I can only speculate.

<comment><USER14> >They couldn't. They would have to show ads from other history and not the email's contents. This would also break features such as (server-side) search and reminders (eg. flight tomorrow) via Google Now.

Sure they could, all incoming emails aren't magically going to become e2e encrypted.

<comment><USER12> Well, no. But that's not really end-to-end, is it?

If the goal is to make E2E more accessible then eventually more emails will come in encrypted. Maybe Google will let users with the extension find each other, or Gmail might help coordinate that.

<comment><USER14> Sure, but I'd imagine that most email traffic is automated non-sensitive stuff (i.e. flight confirmations for example). That stuff is simply not going to be e2e encrypted any time soon, if ever.

Are people going to start filling in their pubkeys when they book a flight? What about when they're at the airport and need to pull up the record locator on a different device?

I'm sure more emails will start being encrypted, but that'll mostly be communications between people. Those probably aren't particularly interesting to google anyway.

<comment><USER12> I'd give it time. People won't enter their public keys when booking a flight, but it might be associated with their email address automatically. I could see Google running a service like Keybase. Or even integrating it further into whatever the next hip "online identity" service is. Built in privacy would be a huge boon.

The flight company (or email sender they use) could then request your public key and send off your message. And with some common protocols and APIs the complexity could be largely abstracted away.

I wouldn't underestimate the technology. When you look at more complex systems like internet routing tables, these problems feel a lot more solvable. We already have the technology for most of this. The problem right now is making it accessible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I recommend to try also Mailpile [1], which was built with security in mind.

[1] [https://www.mailpile.is/](https://www.mailpile.is/)

<comment><USER16> As far as I understood Mailpile is a mail user agent, so not comparable. Roundcube runs on a server, Mailpile runs on your own computer.

<comment><USER17> "You can [then] access it over the network using your web browser" [https://www.mailpile.is/faq/#wha-2](https://www.mailpile.is/faq/#wha-2) seems to challenge your knowledge. I don't know if using it so compromises privacy in unexpected ways, or indeed even works satisfactorily; I am not a user.

<comment><USER16> It now indeed seems to be the planned path to create a full webmail service out of Mailpile. Though right now the developers still say its "written as a personal application": [https://www.mailpile.is/faq/#tec-8](https://www.mailpile.is/faq/#tec-8)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> [https://github.com/roundcube/roundcubemail/issues/5266](https://github.com/roundcube/roundcubemail/issues/5266)

Legacy PHP code (as old as 5.3.7) strikes again.

</comment><comment><USER19> I guess this means you have to upload your private key to the server. I always wonder what happens when the key is copied and used by someone else. Can you revoke the key? What happens to sent and received messages from the past? Do you still need the old key (private or public) to read those? Is there a private master key that can create a private sub key that can be used to upload to that server?

<comment><USER20> Encryption is also supported via a browser plugin, so it's not necessary to upload the private key to the server. Regarding your questions: 1) yes, you can revoke the key by generating a revocation certificate and publishing it on a public keyserver (of course, your correspondents would need to refresh the public key from the keyserver to know it was revoked, which is something they might not do); 2) sent and received messages from the past, unfortunately, are readable by the person who is in possession of the private key, if such key is not protected by a strong password; 3) yes, you still need the old private key to read the old messages; 4) you can generate a master key (to be kept strictly offline) and several, frequently rotating subkeys for encryption purposes. It's not a silver bullet solution (in the sense that a thief would still have access to all your subkeys, meaning he could read all your messages up to the point the keys are stolen, but it mitigates the damage somehow). See here: [https://alexcabal.com/creating-the-perfect-gpg- keypair](https://alexcabal.com/creating-the-perfect-gpg-keypair)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Here's an old XSS exploit for Roundcube from 2013:

[https://www.intelligentexploit.com/view- details.html?id=1696...](https://www.intelligentexploit.com/view- details.html?id=16961)

I still use RC despite the long history of XSS attacks against it. Luckily RC uses progressive enhancement, so it still works with JS turned off. I just assume emails can still execute JS in 2016? Perhaps it's wrong of me to use RC with JS turned off as a preventative measure, but you have to adore that user interface! It's the only reason I choose RC over other self-hosted email web apps (and there are few to choose from in this space). I like the simplicity of Squirrel-mail, but Roundcube looks and feels too good _not_ to use.

<comment><USER22> You're right. Before any integration of a server-side PGP key like this, they ought to have deployed some basic hygiene like a strict Content Security Policy (CSP) and a better sanitization library like HTMLpurifier. I don't trust webmail software, and definitely not PHP webmail software, to hold my keys for me otherwise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> ha i remember long time ago chasing for the perfect webmail system.. before gmail of course. Horde,Roundcube, squirrel god... I've never found the perfect one!

<comment><USER24> How about OWA? Despite requiring windows, it's a pretty solid product.

<comment><USER25> It doesn't require Windows. It's a web app . . . that is pretty rough.

<comment><USER24> I don't think you can run the web app on linux.

<comment><USER25> Based on what?

I run the web app on my Linux box for Calendaring and sometimes email.

Most of the time I use mutt with imap for email. But I run the web app 40+ hours per week.

<comment><USER24> I am talking about hosting the application, of course you can interface with the web app from whatever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> If PGP was managed by the browser we would be able to sign everything we post on the web, not just the emails.

<comment><USER27> There are extensions that do this. A standardized interface between site and browser-managed crypto is what's really needed though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I get the feeling we need a 'gogs of a webmail app'

</comment><comment><USER29> nice, I use Roundcube a lot for new clients looking to set up their email for the first time. Glad to support this project, and really stoked it has PGP.

</comment><comment><USER30> Nice.

But I prefer Afterlogic [http://www.afterlogic.com/](http://www.afterlogic.com/)

Wish I was open source/freeware

<comment><USER28> Hmmm... They give out an option of PHP or .NET, not sure I'd really like to run either of those?</comment></comment>


The Summly deal makes no sense - <AUTHOR> http://philosophically.com/the-summly-deal-makes-no-sense <comment><USER5> For some who need perspective:

Right now, somewhere in the world, a child is being born into an uberly rich family. That child will grow up to inherit millions for absolutely no work. He'll live the good life full of yachts and private jets.

Right now, somewhere in the world, there is a party happening full of gorgeous wealthy people who need not lift a finger to attain the luxuries that they have. Their success is only a matter of genetics and luck.

Right now, somewhere in the world, is an investment banker who is making literally millions after clicking a few buttons and making a few phone calls to a few friends. He knows the right people and is in the right place, and that's all that matters.

Right now, somewhere in the world, is a 20-some year old guy who is worth billions because of a website he started. He was born into a family that sent him to the right high school. He then went on to one of the best universities in the country, built his website, moved, met the right people, and raised $500+ million in funding. He and likely generations down the line are set for life.

Right now, somewhere in the world, is a 17yr old teenager who started a company with some money from his parents, built a product, with help from friends and family, and got acquired for $30 million.

There's always someone becoming richer than you for much less work, every second of the day. Look past that and just keep working. I get down about how unfair that is from time to time, but there's nothing you can really do about it, other than focus on your work.

Edit: Others are asking where in the article is jealousy mentioned. It isn't, but I took the entire post as one rooted in envy and bitterness. There certainly wouldn't be any of this type of reaction had the guy been a 40-year old who finally got acquired after years of failed attempts. If anything, I'm sure people would be applauding him and the whole affair.

<comment><USER6> Where did the article make any mention of jealousy or bitterness (other than the "hurt feelings" of Yahoo's engineers)? The article describes the stupidity of this acquisition from a business perspective.

The fact that your comment has received the most upvotes indicates that people generally agree with your sentiment that nobody should be bitter or jealous. Yet nobody is suggesting any bitterness or jealousy... So who exactly is this directed at? Hey HN... I think you're "projecting." :)

<comment><USER7> Simply because of the fact that in the first sentence that it mentions that he is 17 years old. Companies get acquired all of the time every day, but those don't warrant posts on HN mentioning how young the employees are. Hence the jealousy.

<comment><USER8> Because there is a fact mentioned that is out of the ordinary compared to other acquisitions, that makes it jealousy?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Right after college I started consulting at an eCommerce company that had bought a 17 year old's website for over 1M. Had had built a gaming community site that had become very popular and they wanted the traffic.

I thought the kid was just lucky until I was in a meeting with him. His thought process basically ran circles around everyone else in the room, some twice his age. I realized then, that there are kids, KIDS!, much smarter than I'll ever hope to be in my life.

Sometimes you have to meet these people to believe they exist.

<comment><USER10> As a counterpoint, there are real sharp people of all ages. At local meetups, I've met a couple of retirees not orignally in the programming field, (medical doctor, aerospace tech) that have picked up Linux and programming well enough, I'd hire them to build software/hardware for me if they weren't pursuing their own projects. Or the older opera singer that helped me debug code while on a flight and joked, "Programming is music for those that can't sing...". I believe she could succeed in any field, scary, scary, scary smart.

<comment><USER11> In one of my projects, two of my team mates were in their mid forties. One of them was a mother of two (pointing this out because she didn't have lots of free time to learn new stuff). She didn't know Java, but she was probably a million times smarter than the rest of the team (4 more people, all in their early to mid twenties) _combined_. She didn't go to college, while the rest of the team came from pretty good schools, with good grades etc. Yet, she picked up things faster than any of us.

So yeah, some people are just sharp by nature - just like some people are cute, strong etc (not saying others can't develop, but it does give the "naturals" an advantage)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's possible it's a big top line number (some press quotes even higher than $30mm), but in a way which actually makes sense.

Long earn-outs could be one factor. Giving engineers $1mm with 1/2/3/4 4-year earn-outs would even be on the low side. Doing the same with a founder would obviously be worth less (especially at Yahoo!, given how founders historically leave after acquisition)

SRI is presumably getting a big chunk for a new license. Maybe even a domain- exclusive license. That alone could be $0-100mm.

If it's equity, it is a lot better for Yahoo!

It's possible the founders and key employees have a weird incentive structure -- if they continue with the product and get 50mm users, they'd get a payout of an extra $10mm vs. otherwise, for instance. That kind of thing could add to the reported deal figure without adding much risk to Yahoo!. (I'm sure I could get a "if you turn Yahoo! into a $60b/yr business in the next 3 years, you can have an extra $100mm" on any deal.)

I'm not Marissa Mayer's biggest fan, but I don't think she's in the same vein as the previous leadership at Yahoo!, so presuming that they're throwing money away irrationally isn't the first thing I'd do.

</comment><comment><USER13> I feel this would be an appropriate subject for a Dilbert comic. Storyline is that someone accidentally left the dot out of $300000.00 to make it $30000000 and then everyone else went along with it for fear of looking stupid.

<comment><USER14> A decimal point? I always mess up some mundane detail!

<comment><USER15> That movie should be required viewing for all ninth grade students. It's a more realistic depiction of the life for which they are being prepared than most of what they are fed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> From the article,

 _Let's ignore the hurt feelings that our employees will have about making a 17 year-old a millionaire._

The price tag for this company aside, am I the only one that detects a hint of jealousy in some of the comments that seem to imply "but he's too young to be a millionaire!"?

<comment><USER17> As someone who isn't remotely jealous for the kid (I'm happy for him actually), let's not pretend that he is an innovator. It's a link aggregator app, no different than pulse or others. In fact, the difference from Pulse is that its inferior, because it displays far less at a time. But that is my opinion, and I'm sure a lot of older folks like it better BECAUSE it displays less.

Kid: Go for it dude, and good luck.

Yahoo: WTF?? Why not just build your own version of this?

<comment><USER18> _let's not pretend that he is an innovator_

C'mon, this can't be the first time you've noticed that "innovation" has been overused to the point of meaninglessness in tech. "Disruption" doubly so. Don't harp on this kid, he is no less innovative than 95+% of "innovation" I've heard about in the last year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Last year's press release had quotes from Daniel Ek (Spotify) and Mary Meeker, and said:

"Summly is backed by several investors, including Horizons Ventures, Ashton Kutcher, Betaworks, Brian Chesky, Hosain Rahman, Joanna Shields, Josh Kushner, Mark Pincus, Matt Mullenweg, Stephen Fry, Troy Carter, Yoko Ono and many more."

Not exactly a teen-programmer-in-mother's-basement story...

<comment><USER20> Yahoo just paid $30mm for an unknown technology and a fresh face to parade around, they would appreciate it if you didn't start poking holes in the narrative.

Thank you

<comment><USER21> Actually it now looks more and more like some sort of elaborate kick-back scheme for the investors. "Your YHOO stock has sunk below the waterline, so here's something to sweeten the pot."

<comment><USER22> I actually think this kinda makes sense. That or relationship building with the investors. Plus, Yahoo! hasn't been making any new waves for quite a while. They needed to make something happen somehow to get people excited.

The founder might be brilliant and I could be wrong about this whole relationship building with investors to try and get attraction nonsense.

<comment><USER23> _Plus, Yahoo! hasn't been making any new waves for quite a while._

They've been making tonnes of Marissa Mayer waves. They're the New York Jets of technology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> In 2005 Yahoo buys Delicious, a bookmarking site, for between $15MM - $30MM. Summly was acquired for a reported $30MM. Delicious had 5MM users, and let's face it how much "CS beef" goes into a bookmark sharing site. Summly claims to have 1MM downloads. The difference between Delicious' 5MM users and Summly's 1MM is a factor of five but the order of magnitude is roughly the same. Joshua Schachter is highly respected as an entrepreneur and engineer within the HN community, but Nick D'Aloisio is considered just some lucky teenager.

The jealousy on display in the post and subsequent comments is, I think, glaringly obvious to anyone who would take a second to compare it to almost any other startup acquisition where the founder isn't a 17 year old.

<comment><USER25> I think the assumption is, rightly or wrongly, that the 17 year old kid is unlikely to have done anything the rest of us couldn't have done. Whereas if he were an older more experienced developer, he would get the benefit of the doubt that maybe he had special something on offer that was worth Yahoo buying.

At least, that's what's going through my head.

EDIT:

If the assumption that the Summly codebase doesn't actually contain anything worth $30 million is true, then this purchase is all about branding. It's about fooling Wall Street into thinking Yahoo is revitalized and focused on new technology and talent.

When IMHO, in reality, any sane investor should see this purchase as evidence that Yahoo is acting irrationally and I'd pull every dollar I had out of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Unless I missed a particular story, I haven't seen Summly or Yahoo! announce the number _is_ $30m. A reasonable point here was that relicensing from SRI for the core functionality of this app could be a large part of the purchase price. Also, not being totally familiar with taking VC money, it sounds reasonable to me that a significant portion of the monies is going back to the investor(s?).

While I think $15m would have been fine and generous, it doesn't shock me that someone important in Yahoo! got it stuck into their head that Summly was hitting on something that would "change the way people use news", a particularly neat fit if their intention is still to be the new homepage of the internet.

</comment><comment><USER27> I kind of agree with the author. Have I been engineer in Yahoo, I would ask myself question "Why is he paid so much, where we could do it in house better and spend this money on bonuses for employees?". Especially given that fact, that Summly doesn't even own this technology just licences it from SRI.

The only explanation I see, is that what Yahoo actually really bought is the great licensing deal (flat fee? exclusivity?).

<comment><USER28> Yahoo! engineers probably could do this. Yahoo! middle management not so much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Can someone comment on whether this is a reasonable amount of money to pay for talented engineers and some patents? As a service, the deal doesn't make much sense...it doesn't seem that the world is hungry for ways to simplify web content, even if the technology actually worked. The most popular articles on most news sites are popular because of their in depth content or because they are slideshows of arousing photos. Summly would appear to not really affect either of those trends

<comment><USER30> Perhaps it is a signal to the marketplace, either to other startups or to investors that Yahoo! is rejuvenating itself (or at least is trying to), moreso since it is an acquisition outside of Silicon Valley.

<comment><USER31> What sort of signal though? Other than the mainstream media, pretty much anyone else with at least a clue seems to be confused by this acquisition.

<comment><USER32> well how much does it cost to get your company name on the front page of every tech site without allowing a massive data breach

<comment><USER33> I'd guess less than $30 mill?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> There's a possibility that this publicity changes younger people's perception of Yahoo's. They'll see the BBC headline and a) will now know what Yahoo! is and b) might get motivated to write/learn code and even want to go work for a tech company (even Yahoo itself). Combined with everything else Marissa Mayer is doing, (b) might actually happen, as altruistic-seeming as it might sound.

<comment><USER35> I'm 21, probably out of the definition of 'younger person' by a while, but even I don't get it.

$30m is a lot for what I assume is an application of SRI's technology. Still seems to me like Yahoo! is a place where engineers are handed the purse strings, a la 2005 era.

<comment><USER36> I'd say so, Marissa Mayer was an engineer before becoming an executive.

<comment><USER23> _Marissa Mayer was an engineer before becoming an executive._

Was she? Her career essentially started at Google, her rise arguably being one of right place/right time.

For all of the talk about Mayer, I have literally never heard about anything actually interesting that she has done. Instead it's her 90 hour work weeks, _n_ -shades of blue, and abrasive attitudes with others. She sounds like management through and through.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> This article assumes that the primary goal of the acquisition is the technology. Without having looked at the technology or commenting on its merits, I can think of a boatload of other things Yahoo is buying with its money:

1) Free positive publicity--publicity that doesn't constantly remind people how Yahoo! is circling the train; 2) The recruiting hook of "yeah, we're not stodgy anymore, we paid some kid $30 million!" which will fly with some people; 3) A new engineer who obviously has both technical and business skills; 4) A subliminal "don't forget, there's more of you turning 18 every day" to the rest of the organization.

<comment><USER38> #2 - "we paid some kid $30m!" Why on earth would that be used for 'recruiting'? Getting me to come be your full time employee by telling me how much you pay outsiders (sometimes for lame tech)?

If Yahoo wants to increase their recruiting power, start rewarding - <USER2> - internal teams that innovate. Start a $50m innovation fund, and reward internal teams for demonstrating initiative, problem solving, innovative solutions, bold new idea, etc.

<comment><USER39> I really like this. Why don't more companies do this? Is it better in theory than in practice? Maybe it creates too competitive of an atmosphere? Curious...

<comment><USER40> Most companies think they have already bought your ideas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> "The craziest thing is that there are a lot of really qualified, CS-beefy teams doing really amazing things in the mobile news/discovery space these days"

That's true of most of these acquisitions. There are a lot of qualified people doing crazy things, but the smartest people aren't always the ones who win. That fact is immaterial here until we find out what other things they got (maybe the kid brings along investors who may buy more yahoo stock ?)

I do agree, in general, that as a public company Yahoo has to explain to shareholders why they made the acquisition.

</comment><comment><USER42> Summly has no real history to speak of, but Yahoo clearly has a long, sad, sorry history of overpaying for little nascent startups, failing to capitalize on them and then eventually letting them fall apart while missing out on larger trends.

At first it seems that whether or not this deal makes sense to you depends on whether or not you're a shareholder of Yahoo or a shareholder of Summly. But keep in mind that if Yahoo didn't make a similar deal with ViaWeb a decade ago there may not be a YC or any of the companies they helped start.

</comment><comment><USER43> They might have picked this company up because its news,

"Yahoo" buys "17 wiz kid" "mobile app and company", is good advertising around the world, yahoo is now a company who buys the "latest" technology, they hired a wiz kid - they have him on board he will do crazy technology experiments - "you have no idea what he could come up with next!", and they have his technology that a company as big as yahoo would play $30m for.

It tells potential users and more importantly investors and current shareholders it is now company who buys stuff because its investing and changing for the better and maybe people should change their views about yahoo etc etc.

note: I have not used the app, still don't care about yahoo.

</comment><comment><USER44> Good point about "ignore the hurt feelings that our employees will have". Now a bunch of Yahoo(er?)s have this kid sitting in their Soho office with a £17m price tag on his sleeve - that's got to be a little awkward for everyone involved.

<comment><USER36> It's only awkward if you are carrying around a big ego. I've joined places just after acquisition and had co-workers who were worth millions as well. It's really not a big deal.

<comment><USER45> He's not got a good reputation for communication: [http://gizmodo.com/5830076/how-i-made-a-15+year+old-app- deve...](http://gizmodo.com/5830076/how-i-made-a-15+year+old-app-developer- cry)

<comment><USER46> Two and a half years could mean a large of increase in maturity at that age.

<comment><USER47> With 17? Hardly.

<comment><USER48> Wait til you are 60. Then you will start saying "With 25/30/35 hardly".

He just sold a company at the age of 17 to a huge corporation for a truck load of money. Unless he's got loans up to his ears I reckon he must be a lot smarter at business than I am.

<comment><USER47> > Wait til you are 60. Then you will start saying "With 25/30/35 hardly".

Most certainly I will laugh at my naive 30year old self. But that doesn't mean I'm not allowed to reflect about maturity levels of teenagers.

> He just sold a company at the age of 17 to a huge corporation for a truck > load of money. Unless he's got loans up to his ears I reckon he must be a > lot smarter at business than I am.

Well, I don't want to come off as a too negative but word is that his parents' money helped at least a little with generating Buzz. Now nothing against that - he used every possibility he had. But don't call yourself bad at business when you don't have that kind of resource available to you. With the right connections you can sell a bunch of photo filters for $1 billion nowadays. And without you have to work off your ass to become ramen profitable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I once heard Joshua Schachter describe this kind of acquisition by a public company as "somebody in corp-dev falls in love with your product and has to have it."

In other words, it's not repeatable. This is nothing new. It happens all the time.

<comment><USER50> Quite so. In the real world, things don't always have to make sense for them to happen. That counts for both good as well as bad luck.

Counting on luck, of course, is not a reliable business plan. Whether these folks deserved all the money they got or not is really a moot point - <USER3> best shot at success remains to put yourself in a position where you deserve it. You may still not achieve it, or you may grossly overachieve it, but still the best way to go overall.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> The Summly deal makes sense as much as any Yahoo! acquisition over the years has made sense. Yahoo! is a frankenstein of almost 2 decades of acquisitions. If the CEO of this particular acquisition wasn't a teenager, nobody would bat an eye at $30M for this company.

</comment><comment><USER52> You haven't considered the simpler possibility that what has been reported is significantly incomplete and/or BS.

</comment><comment><USER53> I read in forbes that this kid was supposed to write a machine learning search algorithm that would slay the titan google beast and bring balance back to the ad force.

The moral of this story? Invest in the opposite of what Forbes says will go do.

</comment><comment><USER54> It makes perfect sense, they've got some technology out of it, some people who understand mobile, and a nice big headline.

Worth $30m of _my_ money? Probably not. Worth $30m of _Yahoo's_ money? Maybe, they're not likely to have decided to spend that much on an acquihire without board approval really are they. Unless they Zuckerberg'd it and thought it was better to seek forgiveness.

<comment><USER55> The summarization tech isn't owned by Summly. It's owned by SRI International and was licensed to Summly. Maybe a large chunk of the reported $30 million was actually used to acquire that technology from SRI?

<comment><USER56> I actually didn't know about this before. I think one of the first article I read about the product was the story when the product was called TrimIt, and the company just received some investment from Li Ka Shing. For some reason, the articles[1][2][3] gave me the impression that the technology was developed by the founder (or did they switched the algorithms?)

[1]: [http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2011/12/13/teenage- pr...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2011/12/13/teenage-programmer- backed-by-hong-kong-billionaire-li-ka-shing/) [2]: [http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/15/trimit-summarizes-emails- bl...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/15/trimit-summarizes-emails-blog-posts- and-more-with-a-shake-of-your-iphone/) [3]: [http://gigaom.com/2011/12/13/meet-the-internets-newest- boy-g...](http://gigaom.com/2011/12/13/meet-the-internets-newest-boy-genius/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Oh. come on. I would kill to make an app as nice as this, even if it did not sell at all.

Kudos to the kids for actually making a product people wanted to use, and at least one person wanted to buy.

</comment><comment><USER53> $30,000,000 to make yahoo relevant enough to be discussed on hacker news? Ehhh I think they got their money's worth.

</comment><comment><USER58> ...except that Yahoo just got $30 million worth of controversial press.

</comment><comment><USER59> People are on the threshold of really good text analysis algorithms. I know of teams all over the place who have bits of the puzzle solved amazingly well.

SRI is a world leader at this technology, it already spun off Siri to Apple, and they've got patents on key technologies in this system, so a $50 M valuation is about right.

I know another guy from New York who sold a company of the same size for $30 M or so and when I wargame scenarios around companies developing this kind of stuff I'd expect an exit between 20 M and 80 M.

<comment><USER60> I don't think anything was acquired from SRI except a license.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> I'm confused why they decided to immediately remove Summly from the App Store rather than use it to drive traffic to other Yahoo apps - anybody know why they did this?

</comment><comment><USER62> Normally whenever an acquisition happens, I avoid these types of posts on HN because there are often people in the comments (and even in the posts themselves) calling out the acquired company saying "I could have done this" or "Acquirer could have built Acquired Company in a day" but, this one deserves a reply.

The reason why this deserves a reply is that the OP's post does not really contain any facts rather, it contains assumptions (either the OP's assumptions or others).

For instance:

       "Yahoo screens the employees, and tells the founder that 2 of them passed"

AND

      "Summly says dang, only 2 out of 5 passed?"

The article the OP links to, to cite this actually states[1]

      "In addition, only two of Summly's employees will go to Yahoo with D'Aloisio"

There is no mention of anyone failing a 'test', all it states that only that 2 of Summly's employees will be joining Yahoo alongside the founder. Now when OMGPOP were acquired by Zynga, one of their employees didn't join Zynga[2] and that employee chose not to join Zynga – the same may have happened to Summly's other employees as well (something that we do not know).

Moreover, the OP calls out Yahoo for acquiring Summly for $30M and citing that,

      "Summly says no, $50m is our minimum. We need to pay back our generous investors"

However, there has been _no_ confirmation of an acquisition price – there are _rumours_ which place the amount in that ballpark and _rumours_ which say the price was 90% cash. Now, when startups get acquired, they do not get acquired for one price (as Media outlets etc will report) rather, amongst other things there's an earn out for employees/founder(s) and money to cap table. These things are often complicated and can be very complicated which is why, I am not criticizing media outlets for reporting a single price – in particular these Media outlets love the "millionaire" stories because it gives them a ton of page views - although, when someone is calling out a company for selling for an _unconfirmed_ price by, saying that it is ridiculous – these things need highlighting.

Likewise, the OP concludes with:

      "The craziest thing is that there are a lot of really qualified, CS-beefy teams doing really amazing things in the mobile news/discovery space these days - and that would definitely take a $30m acquisition offer or less. I don't really understand why they picked this one"

First of all, as I already highlighted no one knows that Yahoo gave the people at Summly a test – and if they did, if the employees who are not joining either rejected the role or failed the test. Likewise nor do we know an official price for the company of which flaws I already mentioned in regards to a single price.

However, what we do know is that Yahoo acquired Summly (which is shutting down although, some of it will be incorporated into Yahoo)[3] and regardless if you agree with it or not, they acquired them for a price which is suitable to Yahoo and Summly's investors/team.

Either way, I wish Nick D'Aloisio and the rest of the Summly team all the best and congratulations on your exit to Yahoo.

[1] [http://allthingsd.com/20130325/yahoo-paid-30-million-in- cash...](http://allthingsd.com/20130325/yahoo-paid-30-million-in-cash- for-18-months-of-young-summly-entrepreneurs-time/)

[2] [http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/167244/Turning_down_Zynga...](http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/167244/Turning_down_Zynga_Why_I_opted_out_of_the_210M_Omgpop_buy.php)

[3] <http://ycorpblog.com/2013/03/25/yahoo-to-acquire-summly/>

<comment><USER63> Most of your comment is reasonable, except for the part about a reasonable price for Yahoo. There is no evidence that Yahoo isn't suffering a costly mistake (or worse) from a small group of decision makers on this deal.

<comment><USER62> I said that the price is suitable for Yahoo because, if they did not believe that the price was acceptable to Yahoo and its shareholders then, they would not have sanctioned an acquisition for the company. Likewise, I think your comment about there being no evidence to support the acquisition etc is a valid one although, it could be applied to any M&A deal such as it could have been applied (at the time) to Google's acquisition of YouTube (with regards to the lawsuits etc) - and whilst the Summly deal may or may not end up being successful for Yahoo, if the Summly Team provides Yahoo with value beyond their acquisition price then, it certain cannot be debated that it was anything but a successful one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> I suppose Yahoo will have to answer to their shareholders, just not yet. It seems to me that they have invested in the talent and the current customer base. If Yahoo really do make an impact on the mobile news market I'm sure $30m will seem like buttons.

I do agree that many other development teams would have jumped at an acquisition offer of a lot less money but they were either unknown to Yahoo or deemed not suitable for Yahoo.

</comment><comment><USER65> Summly and Autonomy aren't the bet poster boys for Britian's software developers.

</comment><comment><USER66> When the number sounds way too high and it's from a single anonymous source and no one else is talking - it's often a lie. People have big egos.

<comment><USER67> What's the point? Doesn't the truth come out eventually? Yahoo is a public company, their financials aren't exactly secrets.

<comment><USER66> Public companies have great leeway in how they present transactions. You aren't required to divulge M&A details, and they often won't be below a certain level.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> My first reaction was that this was a play by yahoo to get in on the newsreader market. There's been a lot of fanfare about google abandoning its RSS reader so obviously this is a big market, one to which Google doesn't think RSS is the answer. So what is the answer? I don't think anyone knows but it seems to me like yahoo is taking a bet on summly. Plus it's a great opportunity to capitalise on the press and general sentiment of the whole Google RSS story. And finally Marissa is new, and a lot of people are probably pointing their eyes at her to see if she can turn around yahoo; and what better way to do that than to win a game of chess against Google?

Edit: and if Marissa does get a lot of faith from investors, which she will if one of her first moves is a victory against google, then her reputation will undoubtedly rise. And how much is the reputation of a CEO worth at a multi billion dollar company? I think a lot more than $30M. Just look at Apple's recent stock movement.

</comment><comment><USER69> Truth be told, the deal is bullshit.

</comment><comment><USER70> Pulse is getting purchased for over $50 million by LinkedIn. ([http://gigaom.com/2013/03/11/linkedin-reportedly-buying- news...](http://gigaom.com/2013/03/11/linkedin-reportedly-buying-news-reading- app-pulse-for-over-50m/))

Summly is much better than that as far as technology is concerned.

Yahoo got a better deal.

</comment><comment> brown9-2 These things are a lot easier to understand once you realize that to the acquirer, the publicity is a part of the deal as well.

Plus, it's not all that common for senior management to face any sort of punishment for acquisitions that go bad.

</comment><comment><USER71> > I don't really understand why they picked this one.

Yahoo Executive: "Don't Make Me think"

Summly: Ok. 30 mil

Yahoo Executive: OK.

</comment><comment><USER72> Good on him. Doesn't matter if it makes sense to us (it doesn't to me but hey, its not my money!). The kid got minted, his employees probably got a good deal out of it, his mum must be proud as punch. All in all, congratulations kiddo, don't spend it all at once.

What baffles me most though, is that Yahoo would conduct a CS type interview to the employees, failing some of them in the process (if that bit is true). I have over 16 years of real hard world experience and I would never dream of passing a CS type exam. Is that really a gauge of excellence?

<comment><USER73> Of course Yahoo will do at least similar level interviews for expensive acquihires as to their normal hires. It's a standard practice, Google does this too. They are looking to acquire people that fit to their culture and standard interviews are their procedure to try to ensure that.

I'm personally of the opinion that a little bit of diversity (more designer- type front end devs without academic background) would do good for Google's (or Yahoo's) internal culture, but if they have decided that they only want CS people, it totally makes sense to interview acquihires too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> Who actually confirmed the $30M number though?

No-one that I've seen quoted?

Maybe it was $30M in stock?

<comment> k-mcgrady It's not and probably won't be confirmed but 'sources' are saying $30m with 90% in cash and 10% in stock. I can't remember which site had the sources (it might have been WSJ).

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> To put your question more into perspective, I would ask if paying $50 for something that only costs $10 to manufacture, makes sense? Anyone who runs a profitable business will say 'yes'.

Summly is a product, and as such, has been purchased for more than it cost to "manufacture", as you laid out.

$30M is bargain shopping; lest we forget "Draw Something" was bought for $180 million, or "Instagram" was purchased for a whopping $1 billion.

</comment><comment><USER76> So what happens to the three employees who didn't clear Yahoo's interviews? Do they get nothing? Just curious.

</comment><comment><USER77> Ignoring this specific deal, mull on this hypothetical.

Imagine you are a young superstar who with some justification believes you have the world at your feet.

A bloated, cadaverous company that your dad tells you was cool when you were in preschool wants to buy you and tether your career to them.

How much would it take to convince you to do that?

</comment><comment><USER78> Where is this information coming from? Is this back and forth a fictional tale or actually what happened?

<comment><USER79> Same question -- how does this individual know that their team only passed 2/5 interviews, and what the back and forth negotiations were. It seems to me they're either making this up, or they are sharing info that I'd guess is going to make Yahoo fairly annoyed.

<comment><USER80> He's surmising it from the AllThingsD story, which states only two of the five employees will be moving to Yahoo.

That doesn't _necessarily_ mean the other three failed the interviews - <USER4> they don't want to work for Yahoo.

<comment><USER81> If indeed 3/5 developers rejected yahoo offer, that's a PR nightmare

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> "I've got 30 billion, I guess 30 million is not too much to ask for. Do it." - Li Ka-shing

</comment><comment><USER83> Seems to me that the kid has connections if you look at investors and business partners.

Maybe those partners wouldn't have wanted to collaborate with Yahoo, but now they'd consider it for 30M.

</comment><comment><USER84> At the risk of stating the obvious, big companies overpay for deals all the time especially when there is some perceived intangible benefit to be accrued. Alas.

</comment><comment><USER85> Summly has had a ton of buzz since it was first announced and that's saying more than, oh, every single product Yahoo has come out with in the last 5 years. I think Yahoo wants to inject some of that young and naive but optimistic joojoo that the Summly founder embodies into the company. Maybe this will light a fire under some of the old guard's asses and get them to work on Yahoo side projects in their spare time.

</comment><comment><USER48> Everyone now knows about this app. For $30000000 they pulled off the best marketing campaign ever.

<comment><USER86> To be fair, $30M could have kicked off a hell of a marketing campaign. Imagine watching 10 Super Bowl ads in a row... Talk about "everyone" knowing about something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER87> Any open source equivalents to Summly's "pure rocket science" summarization technology?

<comment><USER88> Good discussion on this subject here:

[https://www.linkedin.com/groupItem?view=&gid=131222&...](https://www.linkedin.com/groupItem?view=&gid=131222&item=ANET%3AS%3A214661120)

And here

[http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-good-open-source-text- sum...](http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-good-open-source-text-summarizers)

The best candidate is MEAD

<http://www.summarization.com/mead/>

<comment><USER87> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> Buying the Justin Bieber of Software Development for $30,000,000?

Seems like a good deal to me

</comment><comment><USER90> You know if the kid really wanted some press for his app...he should have turned down Yahoo's and state that he values his company too much to allow them to be used as a PR stunt.

...and then the dump truck full of money pulled into his drive way.

</comment><comment><USER91> Maybe they got some real nice licensing terms from SRI.

</comment><comment><USER92> What I read in this piece of news (though not really any article in particular) was: "Yahoo spent 30 million to attract the attention of high school kids"...

<comment><USER93> Is there anything inherently wrong with that? After High School I had my pick of tech companies and projects to join. And frankly, a good position in yahoo working with someone like Nick and Marisa Mayer seems pretty fun to me.

<comment><USER92> I don't know and truthfully, I don't care. I'm not in high school, after all. Nor am I a shareholder of Yahoo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> The problem in a nutshell: Yahoo just indirectly but clearly told all their talented employees to quit and try to get acquired back. (The untalented employees know they have better expected returns if they just chairwarm for a few years.)

Bad for Yahoo.

</comment><comment><USER94> Never really understood why Summly got so much press to begin with.

Isn't it just Flipboard with a slightly different UI

<comment><USER95> Agreed. I played with it once. Lack of decent content. Summaries sometimes not great. UI too simple. Flipboard is far better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER96> I say good for him. It is a PR deal.Wether it is a good deal or not I dont know,i'm not a yahoo's shareholder,but good for the guy.Congrats to him.

</comment><comment><USER97> Let's say you're Yahoo:

You're making a huge effort towards mobile, with no apparent success.

You see a small team that built a great product, that fits mobile nicely and that has a huge user base. BTW, You have a lot of money.

A 17yr old boy did something that lots of highly skilled engineers, managers, designer couldn't do, and that you pay a lot of money.

If you have the chance to acquire a great product with a huge user base, wouldn't you do it (being a company like Yahoo)?

\</comment><comment>--

That's the same as the Instagram deal. Huge companies are not succeeding in mobile, but they need to do this right and create a mobile presence. If it costs "only" 30m, it's a great deal if you ask me.

<comment><USER98> >>>A 17yr old boy did something that lots of highly skilled engineers, managers, designer couldn't do

Well, that might be stretching. As Comments elsewhere have pointed out, in a large corporation the very same idea might have been done and shot down internally. There might be a few people at Yahoo going, "Wait. WTF! That's what we showed them last year! And it was better!"</comment></comment>


'Matter waves' move through one another but never share space - <AUTHOR> http://scienceblog.com/75116/matter-waves-move-one-another-never-share-space/#MwuO7PJjxwgxItFA.97

<comment><USER2> 'However, they found that in certain collisions, the solitons approached one another, maintained a minimum gap between themselves, and then appeared to bounce away from the collision.'

'The team found a way to "tag" one soliton by making it larger than the other.'

"In the out-of-phase case, the one with the gap, where it appeared that they had been bouncing off of each other, we still saw the gap but we also saw the larger soliton emerge unfazed on the other side of the gap. In other words, it jumped through the gap!"

Had the strangest feeling that they might have broken something...</comment>


Facebook end on 15 March 2012? WTF? - <AUTHOR> http://weeklyworldnews.com/headlines/27321/facebook-will-end-on-march-15th/ is this some kind of joke or what ? <comment><USER2> This is old news, dated on 13th March 2011. There are over 20K comments on that article, and most seem to believe it. Amazing that people are so easily fooled.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sounds like bullshit.</comment>


The arm's-length flats of Tokyo [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20190718-the-arms-length-flats-of-tokyo <comment><USER2> For those that prefer to reading versus video. [https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2019/04/20/lifestyle/tokyo...](https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2019/04/20/lifestyle/tokyos- tiny-living-spaces/)

From the video, I laughed at the comments of hearing the other tenants.

With my windows open in Sapporo Japan during the summer I can here conversations clearly. I think from the floor below, guessing it bounces off the next building which is but a couple meters away. I know every time the baby wakes wet. During the winter with double windows I don't hear as much but I do hear my neighbor belting out the songs in the shower. Like the commentator in the video, it does create a sense of connectivity. If he's happily singing in the shower then I'm happy for him and it makes me smile every time.

However it makes me a little self conscious and I try to be quiet as possible.

Also very surprised to see a guitar in the video. Most agencies will ask if you have instruments and likely deny or limit your apartment choices.

<comment><USER3> The thing that really jumps at me is: don't get injured, disabled or just old. If you're going to have problems with ladders you're going to have problems living like this.

On the other hand, some things that take a lot of space are easier to replace these days. Books? I _have_ a lot but I'm not _buying_ a lot of physical books these days. Video collections? How many DVDs have _you_ bought in the past year? TVs are thin, headphones are common, no need for that big multimedia cabinet that used to hold a TV, stereo and media storage.

This is also going to tend to push some people towards "third spaces" for socializing with friends. There's a very active Starbucks near me that's open until midnight, always packed, and which in addition to a bunch of tables full of laptops has several divided off areas with armchairs that regularly have small groups chatting.

<comment><USER4> Things don't take up much space in themselves, activities do. What you lose when living smaller aren't the things themselves, but a kitchen were it is easy to cook healthy food, a kitchen table to discuss politics at or a workbench were you can leave your tools out. There isn't really much of a replacement for those spaces. While I do think some American concepts are outdated the idea of having capabilities in things like a larger home and a car wasn't unfounded. One of the best ways to not be part of something is simply to miss it. Having a lower standard of living is one easy way to do that. It tends to be hard to explain way things happen, but fairly easy to explain why they don't. People not having the time or space for them tends to be a common one. (Of course it is still always hard for people to accept). The 'next big thing' is unlikely to be created at starbucks. They will be created at kitchen tables and in garages and bedrooms like they always have been. Because that is where you don't have to ask anyone for permission.

<comment><USER5> > Because that is where you don't have to ask anyone for permission

Some cities have hscker or maker spaces, but the result is similar (at least what I've seen) : you can't leave you stuff out (it'll get stolen), make too much noise etc. Nothing like a garage where no one will get on you for cutting bricks with a chainsaw.

More simply we miss paying some bills by living in a small apartment where there's not room enough for a desk to out to do that so they end up on the kitchen table covered with kids' spaghetti etc

<comment><USER4> There is of course also the opposite problem of having a lot of space but ending up in essentially a house size cubicle without connection to other people.

But it seems like the larger problem today is that it is hard for people to wrap their heads around that when something becomes available, or even common, whatever enables or let's you explore it becomes more important.

It used to be that to be a musician you had to end up in a studio or a stage (or at least in lessons or rehearsals). People would fly across the world for auditions and recordings. Today everyone can have their studio or even stage at home. But that makes your home so much more important. If you don't have the space, the time, if it is too costly, not connected to a community or unstable then it is a lot harder to become a musician.

And that isn't just true for something like being a musician but everyday things like cooking, reading or exercise were we now have more possibilities than ever. Virtual cycling is for example a thing now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is prioritising having a very short commute in Tokyo over anything else. It's a good thing that such an option exists.

A few years back in London, I had friends living in small house/flat shares in Zone 1 who would be paying the same amount as I did for an entire 1 bedroom further out.

I didn't want to have flatmates, they saw it as an acceptable compromise.

The majority of people I speak to outside of the big city bubble see living in flats/apartments at all as subpar/odd. It's a compromise for city living.

<comment><USER7> >It's a good thing that such an option exists.

I totally agree. It makes me irrationally mad that some cities like London and Los Angeles enact policies meant to prevent small apartments on a pretense of lofty words, completely ignorant to the fact that commute distance is one of the largest factors in one's happiness and well-being.

This is one of the best examples of "no skin in the game" decision making, as the vast majority of decision makers live in relative comfort and it costs them almost nothing to pass this type of policies which signal value, don't have immediate obviously bad effect and are not strongly opposed by anyone. However, the cost is paid by the countless people who spend hours in traffic and, consequently, the environment.

<comment><USER8> >I totally agree. It makes me irrationally mad that some cities like London and Los Angeles enact policies meant to prevent small apartments on a pretense of lofty words, completely ignorant to the fact that commute distance is one of the largest factors in one's happiness and well-being.

Meanwhile all of northern England suffers from underemployment. The obvious solution is to not concentrate jobs in one place. It makes me irrationally angry that people can't see the obvious solution when it's staring them in the face.

<comment><USER6> If most of your jobs revolve around serving those with money, in person, then they're going to be centered around wealthy areas.

That's as far as I see it how the UK has evolved. Basically everyone with money lives in London or the Home Counties, so service employment is heavily biased towards there.

I don't see how you can fix that without forcibly moving people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> At first I thought that looked pretty bad, then I saw the price. ~740USD per month, and it's enabling young single people who only earn $1800-2400/mo to live in the city near their jobs.

Beyond just enabling lower income people a place to live, if you had dorms like that available in SF for $740/mo I think you'd have a long, long line of young tech workers signing up to move in.

In the US, trading a very long commute for lower housing costs is widely understood and socially acceptable, I wonder why trading a tiny space for low rent and a short commute isn't.

<comment><USER8> >In the US, trading a very long commute for lower housing costs is widely understood and socially acceptable, I wonder why trading a tiny space for low rent and a short commute isn't.

Because it's a race to the bottom. In EU society minimum standards of accommodation are socially acceptable. Allowing people to exploit the desperate to all possible extents is anathema to any humane values.

Japan is already a caricature of extremist employee exploitation. It's not something to emulate. I wonder why such a basic observation of the situation isn't obvious to people "in the US".

<comment><USER10> I'd gladly trade the shared 900sq ft I pay ~$400 to rent for something smaller but as far as I can tell I can't really rent anything cheaper in the entire united states.

My roommate and I don't even know what to do with our living room. Spend money filling up a space we don't actually care about? Nah, we've just been collecting free shit to throw in there because we really don't care.

Thanks for keeping me from being 'exploited' though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think it's important to realize that, and it's mentioned in the video linked, individuals staying in these apartments are making a deliberate choice so that they can have a better commute.

I've lived in central Tokyo in a rather large 1BR running ~$2,300 per month and now reside a bit further out paying ~$1,600 for a smaller 1BR.

Many people in Tokyo live ~45 minutes commute to work (via admittedly crowded trains) and pay significantly less for reasonably sized studio apartments.

<comment><USER12> I mean of course its a deliberate choice, that's a truism, that doesn't mean the conditions that lead them to make that choice are sensible.

<comment><USER13> > I mean of course its a deliberate choice, that's a truism, that doesn't mean > the conditions that lead them to make that choice are sensible.

From what I understand, it is NOT a choice for the people of Hong Kong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I live in Tokyo. These apartments (9m^2) are definitely not the norm, a typical tiny apartment is 20m^2 and a typical university dorm room for 1 person is 15m^2. They are just a bit more choice on the new/close/small, old/far/larger list of housing options; they are not a widespread trend. Also, the old/far/larger options are in livable neighborhoods with good public transit. Transit is usually paid by your employer, so it makes sense that the people in the video have non-traditional jobs without that perk. Roommates are not a popular option, but other than that I find Tokyo to be quite good for low end apartment options compared to say Vancouver (do you want a close moldy basement suite with a roommate or a far moldy basement suite and car dependency?).

<comment><USER15> I work remotely as a game developer been saving a bit of money living outside a big city in the US. Tokyo/Japan has always been a dream destination for me figure if I don't visit in the next few years while I'm flexible I may never.

Any suggestions for someone visiting that does not speak Japanese?

<comment><USER16> If you're literally talking about "visiting" as in a vacation or short trip, you'll find that English works just fine and you'll be able to do/see pretty much anything, perhaps with the occasional hand gesture or momentary confusion.

<comment><USER17> > English woks just fine

Umm, no. People do not speak English unless it's hotel or airport but you have plenty of signs written in English to support moving around. People will try if you ask simple questions though.

<comment><USER18> Umm, yes. Or more properly, English plus hand gestures. We're not talking about defending a doctoral thesis here. We're talking about getting around, shopping, and eating. Every subway station has signage in English. You can point to things on a menu. Proof: millions of tourists go to Tokyo every year and very few speak Japanese.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Lived 2 years in Tokyo. Could not stand it. The noise, the low ceilings (I am 1m90). Insulation seems unheard of.

Now we moved to the countryside, baby is much happier here. Can run, can jump. The teenager can finally play guitar and piano, something she had zero place to do in Tokyo. I now have a room where I can do some little electronics. Impossible in Tokyo.

Tokyo is a city that grinds lives, it is chilling to witness.

<comment><USER20> There are a lot of music practice spaces if you want to make a lot of noise

<comment><USER21> Yes like Yoyogi park, though hard to move a piano there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Why not. In most citys over the world, you can't really have your own apartment if you are single and in a low paid job. This way people can. And Tokyo has a great train and subway, so as long you can walk easy to a station, I think that's cool. Not forever, but why not.

<comment><USER23> Bicycling is pretty popular too (and drivers are more respectful there). So you don't even need to be dependent on rail so long as you live within some single digit kilometers of work.

To give you a concrete figure, I live in Manhattan and have a cross-town commute (i.e. takes longer than an up/downtown commute of similar length) of 3 km that takes 10 minutes. I could easily do a longer commute no problem, and it might even be good for me since I'd get more daily exercise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've lived in spaces this small, and smaller, but there were large common areas and the small space was only meant for sleeping and storage. It was unclear from the video what common spaces were available to these individuals. I got the impression the apartments were "fully functional" (bathroom, kitchen, living space). The extremely narrow hallway added to the impression that the units were not part of a larger shared space.

The fact the option exists is better than nothing. These people did not seem under duress and it was a choice they made over alternatives.

That said, it's a symptom of a wider problem when full-time workers are in spaces that small, it tells us not enough units are being built to accommodate demand. Just like SF's insane rents are symptomatic of a wider problem and not merely the fault of wealthy people. More units would help as well as more jobs in local communities instead of concentrating all the good jobs inside a small city core (i.e., they said they did this to avoid commuting, wouldn't it be nice if they didn't have to commute at all?).

And to the person who mentioned Hong Kong's "coffin beds", I agree, those were straight out of a horror film and very sad to see.

<comment><USER25> The issue in HK is poverty, not space. HK's blue collar workers are still quite poor today, and so live in nasty conditions. Poor people everywhere live in nasty conditions, it just so happens that the problems are different… e.g. Bangkok or Manila or India.

<comment><USER26> I assume though if there was less poverty in Hong Kong, more space wouldn't suddenly appear... the existing small spaces would just become nicer but more expensive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm a bit claustrophobic and the video made me uncomfortable. I understand the financial and time saving reasons, but between an isolated place like this, and a shared place with roommates, I would pick roommates any day of the week.

In Japan, with it's work culture of long work hours and most people working at the same office for very long time, these apartments certainly makes sense.

<comment><USER8> It makes just as much sense for them to live in coffin size spaces with food funnelled in tubes. Where does this absurdity end? "Making sense" and accepting that you need to cater to real humans in a society are two things that are rationally far apart. It doesn't "make sense" to pretend that human needs of space have no consideration.

>In Japan, with it's work culture of long work hours and most people working at the same office for very long time

This is not something that should be venerated above all else. It should be condemned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> That would be ok for literally just a bedroom. If they pooled all other living and storage spaces and lived collectively, like in a military officers' mess perhaps, it could work.

<comment><USER29> This is actually a thing in Japan. A number of real estate companies manage "share houses" where 10-20 people each get a ~9sqm room, with shared living space, kitchen, bathroom, etc.

While I've never lived in one, the few times I've seen inside, they've been in incredibly clean. People I know who've lived in these places generally have nothing but good things to say about them. They're often not cheap, though. From what I've seen, they're usually in central locations, and priced more than a similarly sized room with your own kitchen/bathroom out in the suburbs.

<comment><USER30> I really like this idea. You have your personal space (I saw a video in which you even have a small kitchen and bathroom in your room) and then the rest are shared areas. I don't believe it could work in many other countries but in Japan, where people are more concious of colaborating to keep everything clean AFAIK, it could be a great way to fight the feeling of loneliness that is spreading around the world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Shared housing is becoming popular in Tokyo now, specially in Setagaya. Thanks to Netflix and Terrace House for the hype and people are starting to realize they can live better in a sharing accommodation that they wouldn't be able to afford alone.

<comment><USER32> Things like that might also have the unintentional benefit of providing a sense of community and staving off the epidemic of loneliness that modern society is sinking into.

<comment><USER30> I totally agree and I would love to see this idea implemented in many other places but sadly not all the countries share the same mentality that Japan has about social duties.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> In North America, the tiny home movement is fledgling... more of a novelty than a way of life for most people it seems.

Tiny homes are illegal in almost every single municipality due to zoning restrictions.

Are the arm's-length flats regarded similarly in Tokyo? More of an experiment than anything else? You can live here for a few months, but if someone gets upset, you might have to move?

Do these tiny flats exist legally, and is their existence expanding I guess is my question?

The second lady's apartment in the video for example... the pile of electrical cords amongst all of her clothes looks like kind of a fire hazard that some landlords would give you flak over in North America if they saw that.

<comment> design-of-homes _" In North America, the tiny home movement is fledgling"_

The US is lucky to have so much open space which lets people build their own tiny homes. The tiny homes don't feel cramped because they're surrounded by nature, with beautiful long uninterrupted views out of the windows. No noisy neighbours or traffic nearby either.

But take away the countryside location of these homes and could the tiny house work in an urban environment? I doubt it. The future for housing for most people on the planet (including the US) is in cities and urban environments. Can you live in a tiny home where you don't have long, uninterrupted views out of your windows? Or where you only have windows along one side of your dwelling (e.g. single-aspect apartments). Do you feel you have enough privacy when your apartment or house is joined with your neighbour's home?

Millions of people already live in homes like this and have to contend with these issues. Can we have small or modest-sized homes that give us light, space, privacy, quiet and comfort in a noisy urban setting? It's one of the most pressing and important issues in housing design - and one that architects and home builders have failed to address.

<comment><USER34> I lived in a space that size in an urban area for years. Saved money, had a whole city to go out in. They call such arrangements a "crash pad". We had a half decent kitchen, but enjoyed all the local restaurants, and the local hackerspace for projects that took space, a store across the street for all the things you didn't have the house. I'd much prefer living in a tiny urban apartment to a rural space where you can't walk anywhere, have to store everything you need at home, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> $740!?!? In the Boston area, something like that would be at least $1200, probably $1500.

<comment><USER23> Seriously. I can see why people rent them; they're cheap! And you get to live on your own! I was spending double that just for a bedroom in a 4-bedroom apartment in Manhattan a year ago. The bedroom itself was not double the size of the one pictured, though admittedly you have to account for the rest of the apartment too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> First we create problems then we create addiction to solve them and then we come up with creative solutions like this. Does anyone else sees irony here ?

</comment><comment><USER37> There definitely are places in Tokyo (on/inside the Yamanote line) for way under 80000 with more space.

Yup, they will be older but often you can find ones that have been fully renovated.

Sure, there's the earthquake issue but something tells me those cardboard boxes aren't much better at safety.

This is only anecdotal but my impression is that everybody wants to live in a newly built house and then after a few years move again into another flat in a newly built house. So, there's at any point a whole lot of empty and just fine places in Tokyo. I just wish their rents would drop further.

</comment><comment><USER38> This may be dangerous to perceive this as the norm. Thinking back, a lot of things considered horrible today were the norm not that long ago.

We should think really hard about whether to accept this and make an argument: "no one forced those ppl in it". It's not the point. I'm sure we can do better. Is it beyond our abilities to figure out a good living condiditions? in year 2020? Really?

I'm horrified by the idea that in order to have a decent job, I'd have to live in such conditions. Can you imagine if it's not few ppl, but hundreds of thousands? All of New York?

No, thanks.

<comment><USER39> Don't impose your preferences on other people. Personally I think having to commute an hour to and from work sounds horrible, as does the idea of living in a suburb with barely any restaurants or people around compared to the city centre. I can't be the only one who would happily trade reduced living space for reduced commute and a more urban location. Different people care about different things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> i feel claustrophobic watching that. islands are great for commerce but space is inherently rare. Japan, hong kong, manhattan, san francisco (peninsula), singapore. all business centers with shocking rents

<comment><USER25> There's plenty of space in rural Japan, it's just people choose to live in Tokyo, the cultural and economic hub of the country. Rural towns are literally paying people to move back.

Being an Island has nothing to do with the crowdedness.

Hong Kong is just as crowded in Kowloon, which isn't an Island. London is pretty crazy packed too and isn't an Island.

<comment><USER41> Britain is an island, though!

<comment><USER25> So is Australia… but that's not really relevant to the population density in London or Sydney. Both Islands are country-sized and have plenty of empty land.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I don't know, 9 square meters is anything but cupboard size to me. Plus this likely doesn't count the space for the kitchen and shower/toilet area.

4.5J (6 sqm) and 6J (9 sqm) is fairly normal for an urban apartment.

<comment><USER43> > _I don't know, 9 square meters is anything but cupboard size to me._

For a whole apartment (even excluding kitchen/shower)? Let's be generous and say it's double. Where in the west is 18 sq m. not closer to a cupboard than a house?

<comment><USER29> These places are _actually_ 9 square meters, including kitchen and bathroom. Typically, the "kitchen" is a hole in the wall which is barely big enough to use to prepare instant ramen, and the bathroom/toilet/shower are combined into a small plastic cube-like room called a "unit bath".

The catch is that there is a loft which doesn't count towards the square meterage.

In contrast, an 18sqm place can have a kitchen with two burners where you can actually prepare food, a door between the kitchen and your bedroom so you don't stink the place up while cooking, and can even have separate rooms for the toilet and sink. A lot of people I've met consider this pretty luxurious, at least in central Tokyo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> > _In spite of its speedily greying population, urban density remains high, > and affordable housing is a challenge for young professionals._

Let's see what happens in 15 years...

</comment><comment><USER21> I've stayed at a friend's house about 30-40 minutes from inner Tokyo on a single train ride (which is about the second last stop on one of the subway lines). It was a relatively normal sized 1-bedroom apartment for about $800 USD a month. You definitely have options in Tokyo, and the infrastructure makes housing choices like this possible (live closer in the city or live further out).

<comment><USER44> The video goes over this. Some people don't like to commute.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> The "coffin" beds in Hongkong are worse.

</comment><comment><USER46> I see the same articles year after year. It's like the internet is on loop sometimes.

<comment><USER47>
      What has been will be again,
      what has been done will be done again;
      there is nothing new under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 1:9

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> "Watch the video to find out how it could be a creative (if claustrophobic) housing solution for many young workers."

This isn't really a "solution." It is more like enabling the system to continue the way it is.

</comment><comment><USER49> Some are even less than "arms length": [https://youtu.be/TYVJbupG3Xg](https://youtu.be/TYVJbupG3Xg)

</comment><comment><USER50> While I dislike that this is even a thing, from a pragmatic standpoint I wouldn't mind living there if it was cheap.

</comment><comment><USER51> I'd be concerned about evacuation of these in case of fire. Do these meet zoning requirements?

</comment><comment><USER52> ITT: Shitty abysmal living conditions are good because _mumbles about commute_

</comment><comment><USER53> Disgraceful that these were allowed be built in the first place.

People defacto forced in to these out of necessity, not choice.

<comment><USER53> Oh dear. Seems I've upset the Ayn Rand crowd.

<comment><USER54> Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.</comment></comment></comment>