uBlock vs. uBlock Origin (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/ublock/comments/32mos6/ublock_vs_ublock_origin/ <comment><USER2> This is quite old, the situation has become even more extreme since. You should use _uBlock Origin_ , the other one isn't being maintained any more. There is a pre-release Safari version as well now: [https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#safari- macos](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#safari-macos)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's unfortunate that the ublock.org website links to the unmaintained uBlock.

uBlock Origin by gorhill has active commits: [https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/commits/master](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/commits/master)

uBlock by chrisaljoudi seems to have stopped development: [https://github.com/chrisaljoudi/uBlock/commits/master](https://github.com/chrisaljoudi/uBlock/commits/master)

<comment><USER4> But site for uBlock (maintained by chrisaljoudi) is still up and so is link to the donations

site - [https://www.ublock.org/](https://www.ublock.org/)

donation link (redirects to Donorbox) - [https://www.ublock.org/donate](https://www.ublock.org/donate)

<comment><USER5> Please don't donate, it's a scam.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have been using uBlock Origin in conjunction with a hosts file = [http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/](http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/)

Whats great is Adaway on rooted Android. This app auto updates the hosts file. [https://adaway.org/](https://adaway.org/) I wish they had something like this for windows. I would chip in to get it developed.

However, youtube has recently changed something and I am now seeing ads in front of videos - and I have not found a fix yet.

Going to give this a shot today... [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/umatrix/ogfcmafjal...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/umatrix/ogfcmafjalglgifnmanfmnieipoejdcf)

Recommendation came from here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/698vn2/im_get...](https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/698vn2/im_getting_ads_on_youtube_all_of_a_sudden/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Not only is the topic out of date, so is the method of fighting ads and tracking.

I find DNS based network-wide "blockers" far more effective and resource friendly. They protect on all of the devices in your local network and they even stop the in-app adds on your mobile devices.

[https://pi-hole.net/](https://pi-hole.net/) (yes, you can run it on a VPS and share the love but about a million or two Chinese might decide to take a piece of that love pretty soon. Run it on-site.)

<comment><USER2> I disagree. While DNS-based blocking can block more advertisements on mobile devices, such as in-app advertisements or in browsers without extension/content blocker support, it's nowhere near as flexible and a major pain to work around in case of false positives. Furthermore, it only works on your local network (it will be abused for DNS amplification DDoS attacks if you open it to the world), and requires dedicated hardware. It's nowhere near as easy to set up or as flexible as a browser addon.

<comment><USER7> uBlock Origin is indeed incredibly easy to enable, that's why It's my backup when I'm away from home (and I use it on Firefox/Aurora for Android when mobile).

However you might be overstating the difficulty of deploying a DNS server a tiny bit, especially Pi-Hole. You don't need dedicated hardware per-se, but a small investment in the form of a Raspberry PI (even Zero is fine) makes the deployment almost trivial in most environments.

I'd also recommend looking into Orange PI, not only is it cheaper but I believe it's also POE powered, making it even more elegant on supported routers and switches.

Install, use it's IP as the DHCP DNS entry, done.

It comes with real time stats so false positives are relatively easy to identify, I've never had to do it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd like to see these compared to privoxy.

</comment><comment><USER9> From 2015</comment>


Australian Census Website is melting down whilst entire country visits it - <AUTHOR> http://census.abs.gov.au/ <comment><USER2> Based in Melbourne, Australian I can confirm that it is impossible to get on the census website. With a population of over 20 million and everyone supposed to fill in the online census on the same day, that some serious testing must have been done in advance. I mean, they must have tested it with a million simultaneous users? Didn't they? Or maybe their AWS account hit its credit limit?

<comment><AUTHOR> It will have been implemented by a giant outsourcing company, think of the common names.

Lots of UML diagrams done. Lots of business analysis done overseas.

They should have paid Amazon $30M to do it properly.

<comment><USER3> Anyone have inside knowledge of the infrastructure used?

It's hard to imagine a better use case for using AWS, Azure or Google Cloud and spinning up a huge fleet of servers for 24 hours.

I suppose some misguided ideas around data security would have been used to shoot down the first engineer to suggest the cloud.

EDIT: just read to wluu's post. Sounds like we (tax payers) paid for an IBM "private cloud" that couldn't scale.</comment></comment></comment>


Instant Company (1999) - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/1999/07/11/magazine/instant-company.html <comment><USER2> Fascinating to see where these folks ended up nearly two decades later.

Nirav Tolia: Co-Founder, NextDoor

Naval Ravikant: Founder, AngelList

Ramanathan Guha: VP, Google

<comment><USER3> Also interesting to see how the company ended up. Keep in mind it was started in '99

from the wiki[1]:

 _By January 2003...all of the founders other than Tolia had left_

and eventually

 _In January 2005 the four cofounders who had left and other Epinions employee-stockholders filed a lawsuit against Tolia and the two VC firms that provided seed funding._

Lots of context missing around these quotes (read the wiki), but there was a lot of conflict (as mentioned in the posted article) between these "bulldogs and execution machines"

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

<comment><USER4> Yes, "Partners at two prominent Silicon Valley venture capital firms deceived four of the five founders of a start-up company, withholding critical information and thereby cheating them out of tens of millions of dollars, according to a lawsuit.....The suit named J. William Gurley of Benchmark Capital and John R. Johnston of August Capital, both original investors in Epinions and directors of the company, and an Epinions co-founder, Nirav N. Tolia."

[http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/26/technology/founders-of- web...](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/26/technology/founders-of-web-site- accuse-backers-of-cheating-them.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Discussed in 2007: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48184](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48184).

<comment><AUTHOR> Interestingly, the previous discussion is closer in time to when this article takes place (1999) than today (2017).

<comment><USER6> Somehow I feel that's axiomatic...

OTOH, you could be making a joke that just whooshed over my head.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Despite this formidable team of engineering talent, in eight hours of off-and- on tinkering they couldn't correctly assemble any desks. Finally they called a carpenter who had done this before, and he started building two desks an hour.

<comment><USER7> To be fair, it was "build" more than "assemble." Article says they just bought solid wood doors, pieces of 4x4 for the legs, and metal brackets.

<comment><USER8> Point still stands. Had they bought sawhorses instaed of 4x4s, they would be done in minutes.

Execution, yeah.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting also how they had what ended up being the basoc idea behind the much more successful Yelp, also Quora arguably and others.

<comment><USER9> Sounds like they were targeting ecommerce though, and since Amazon added reviews and was a winner in that space they had no chance with that market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> You had me at "almost nobody leaves Yahoo"...</comment>


Conception, birth and developement of a Free math software (Sage)  - <AUTHOR> http://sagemath.blogspot.com/2009/12/mathematical-software-and-me-very.html

<comment><USER2> I've tried Sage twice but have found the documentation lacking both times. I ended up going back to the individual programs that make it up (Octave,R) and an easier computer algebraic system (mathomatic).

</comment><comment><USER3> I never thought that history of some math software can be that interesting. Good read.

</comment><comment><USER4> The "a" in the title is wrong; "software" is a mass noun, not a count noun.

<comment><USER5> ... and the article has random line breaks which makes it almost impossible to read. :)

<comment><USER3> read PDF version instead

<comment><USER6> Or disable/zap CSS.

EDIT: One relatively non-invasive means:

[https://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/zap.html#zap_style_s...](https://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/zap.html#zap_style_sheets)

I suggest that one not use bookmarklets without examining them first, confirming for oneself that the are safe. Fortunately, this one's very brief and apparent.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Gmail Adds User-Defined Custom Colors to Themes - <AUTHOR> http://lifehacker.com/5156512/gmail-adds-user+defined-custom-colors-to-themes <comment><USER2> Still waiting for the ability to select my own font for plaintext editing and viewing (I'm aware of the Labs fixed-width viewing feature).</comment>


Microsoft Leads Movement to Offset Emissions with Internal Carbon Tax - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/27/business/energy-environment/microsoft-leads-movement-to-offset-emissions-with-internal-carbon-tax.html <comment><USER2> Congrats to Microsoft for being ahead of the curve on this.

The way to reduce CO2 in a simple, straightforward, and fair manner is to tax it. The "cap and trade" is a complex, inefficient and ultimately silly poor sister to that.

The same goes for other pollutants. The idea is:

"If you want less of something, tax it. If you want more of something, subsidize it."

</comment><comment><USER3> First up: Microsoft is doing something progressive here, even if it is only a little step in the right direction, so they should be commended for it.

That said, the article (annoyingly) doesn't give any information to help the reader decide if this is a meaningful improvement or not. Neither does microsoft's "carbon fee impact" report [1].

Here's a crude estimate by looking at the financials from microsoft's 2014 annual report [2]:

        revenue:		87b
        income tax:		6b
        salaries:		30b	(my crude guess)
        other expenses:	30b	(my crude guess)
        profit:		22b

To sort-of-emulate the GDP calculation, let's combine profit and salaries into one USD$52b bucket. Let's round it to USD$50b / year.

The carbon intensity of the US economy is somewhere between 0.4 and 0.3 kg CO2 / USD$. Let's say it is 0.35 kg CO2 / USD$ [3].

Based upon these figures, assuming that microsoft is a "typical" subset of the entire US economy (almost certainly not true, but we have no data otherwise), we might expect it to be responsible for an emissions footprint of USD$50b / year * 0.35 kg CO2 / USD$ = 17.5 * 10^6 tons CO2 / yr.

Back to the article. The article mentions the figure of a reduction of "7.5 million metric tons of CO2". Note that this isn't a reduction per year, I believe it is a estimate of lifetime net reduction in CO2 emissions due to the long-term projects they've funded both internally and externally.

So, now we're in a position to claim (very crudely) something like: assuming microsoft has a typical carbon intensity for subset of the US economy, the profit and salaries claimed by microsoft in 2014 indicate that microsoft is responsible for something like 17.5 million metric tons of CO2 / yr. So, in a single year, we expect them to produce more than twice as much CO2 pollution as the total projected lifetime impact of their environmental projects to date.

That said, it is great that they are doing this! They should merely do more of it! So should other companies and countries!

[1] [http://www.microsoft.com/about/corporatecitizenship/en- us/wo...](http://www.microsoft.com/about/corporatecitizenship/en-us/working- responsibly/principled-business-practices/environmental-sustainability/)

[2] [http://www.microsoft.com/investor/reports/ar14/index.html](http://www.microsoft.com/investor/reports/ar14/index.html)

[3] [http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/global/pdf/Friedlingstein...](http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/global/pdf/Friedlingstein_2014_Persistent%20growth%20of%20CO2%20emissions%20and%20implications%20for%20reaching%20climate%20targets.NatureG.pdf)

<comment><USER4> >assuming that microsoft is a "typical" subset of the entire US economy

As you note yourself, this is where the argument likely falls apart. Given that you average wirh energy-intensive industries like aluminum production (well: any kind of production most likely) the figured might be not even in the right order of magnitude. Energy consumption is probably to a large part data centers (usually built close to energy sources like dams, though I'm not sure in the MS case), production and shipping of SKUs (less and less) and offices for 100k+ employees. Perhaps a large impact is also due to commutes. Are there any more tangible calculations around this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Rumor has it they've hired VW engineers to help.

<comment><USER6> LoL, that's assuming they don't bug out.</comment></comment>


Ask YC: Multiple UI screen configurations in Java? - <AUTHOR>

Are there any good design patters/frameworks which will allow me to reconfigure a Java/Swings UI screen by reading the component state from a config file?
For example, under different conditions, different components might be enabled/disabled.
The problem is that with increase in the configurations, the config file might get unwieldy.
The other option is to create multiple screens with the components themselves hardcoded disabled  and display the appropriate screen based on the qualifying condition.
There are about 10 screens in the set each changeable based on the condition <comment><USER2> Hardcoded multiple screens with bits enabled/disabled is a very bad idea for many reasons and is worth avoiding simply to be able to manage complexity and coupling/cohesion issues in your system.

<comment><USER2> There is a good example I used a while back to build-up a java GUI with appropriate-state java actions and views which I shall retrieve when I get home. It is pure java without any third-party libraries needed.

It basically load/saves configuration data to/from an XML file and is particularly useful for (re)building GUIs/Views on the fly without having to recompile classes etc. (so you can change icons/layouts/components).

I think I even have it setup in a simplified worked example that can used immediately.

Otherwise, a bit of Google always seems to help :)

<comment><AUTHOR> That was the first thing I tried. But Google was of not much help. Maybe I was searching wrong..

Can you explain how you achieved the mutable views in the UI?</comment></comment></comment>


EA Received a Guinness World Record for Most Downvoted Comment in Reddit History - <AUTHOR> https://kotaku.com/ea-received-a-guinness-world-record-for-most-downvoted-1837955807 <comment><USER2> I guess they now have that "sense of pride and accomplishment" that they were trying to give to players.

Sorry, couldn't resist.</comment>


Why Most Founders Don't Take Good Advice - <AUTHOR> https://hardfork.substack.com/p/why-most-founders-dont-take-good <comment><USER2> Argh this bullshit is extremely frustrating. Apologies for the intemperate rant.

OF COURSE nobody can use advice like "hire slow, fire fast". They ignore this advice because it's _fucking useless_. I just...how could someone think this was magical wisdom? Where to even start with this?

How about this: consider a linear model, Y = W @ X + b. You're multiplying some weights by some input features, adding a bias vector. Advice like "hire slow, fire fast" is a bias vector at best. It's just telling you to correct in some direction. But it's the weights that matter!

Of course you'll never be able to make decisions if you ignore the particulars of each situation. And notice what's not in advice like "hire slow, fire fast"? Anything about the _actual situation_. So of course this is useless!

How do these people even _function_ if this isn't obvious to them? Do they do this in their actual lives? Just charge around discarding all the features and making their decisions by simple rules? How do they even open their laptops to type up this crap?

<comment><USER3> If you look at society as a system it should be clear that spreading ideas is critical and difficult. Consider basic and topical advice like "wash your hands". Even for that simple advice the number of people who can talk to _why_ we wash our hands is small compared to the number of people who need to be washing their hands (consider eg, how soap interacts with bacteria - very few people understand that, or how bacteria on hands enter the body via various means which another large group of people don't understand). For more complicated ideas, the numbers get terrible very quickly.

It is important to have mechanisms where good ideas are spread - and indeed encouraged socially - that do not require people who understand why the idea is good.

What you are seeing is the people who have (probably not on purpose) fallen into the role of pushing ideas they don't understand around in the hope that they are helping. Since it makes evolutionary sense, there are probably some % of people who just get a real kick out of finding out what someone smart thinks then repeating it ad-nauseam. If you are unusual enough to be an independent thinker it can be a bit baffling - but such people are useful and indeed vital. It would be nice to have a less noisy channel though.

<comment><USER4> This is also one of the problems with people believing in the inherent superiority of free speech.

People take free speech as always benefiting society, where good ideas are destined to win out in the end, when the reality is that it depends on if the system encourages good ideas to spread while inhibiting the bad ones. A system that rewards people disseminating bad ideas would result in a weak society.

<comment><USER5> > "inherent superiority of free speech"

I'm not going to attempt to unpack "inherent superiority", but on the surface this seems like a terrible false belief or conclusion. Free speech has social difficulties. It sucks when we hear ideas we disagree with distributed widely through media. Amazingly, the dissemination of bad ideas is not one of it's problems.

> "good ideas are destined to win out in the end"

Free speech permits individuals to make _informed decisions_. Good information. Bad information. Evaluation must be separate from dissemination.

This is the Millennial parent's crisis. How to teach children growing up in the age of the internet (free speech), to make good decisions (evaluation) when they can find literally anything online (good, bad, lies, etc.).

I apologize if I'm being too strong in my reaction to what might just be an off the cuff _idea_. Any other time I would ignore the comment, but its being conflated here with a very real problem of our time--the dissemination of deliberate misinformation and lies, and the difficulty and _high cost_ of navigating this ecosystem.

The latter is an issue of _pollution_.

(BTW, do you know the itemized costs of your water service to your home is typically 3:1 or 4:1 sewage:fresh?)

<comment><USER6> They say that markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. The same goes for the marketplace of ideas. There may be some long- term punishment for people who accept bad ideas and reason badly with them, but many people get along just fine for a very long time.

The canonical case for me is creationists, who apply some of the most trivially bad reasoning I can conceive, yet it doesn't actually mess up their daily lives. It even benefits them, since it reinforces membership in their tribe. Sure, it cuts them off from certain careers -- more than they realize -- but most people don't directly apply evolution all that often. (Indeed, many who do, like armchair evolutionary psychologists, usually do it wrong.)

People can often compartmentalize their bad reasoning in ways that the negative effects are distant enough that they get along just fine. It may bite them long term, but in the long term we're all dead anyway. The time frame in which "good ideas win in the end" may be several human lifetimes.

<comment><USER7> Except some fields of biology what fields are creationists actually not welcome in in practice? I mean some religions cuts you out of cow meat and pig farms. Creationists surely are far less limited in practice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Good advice is only actionable when it's also timely. "Hire slow and fire fast", for example, is not helpful advice for a founder who's still trying to get seed funding -- hiring is a problem they _want_ to have. So the advice is good but they're not likely to remember it.

You can't expect someone to squirrel away every bit of good advice, just waiting for a time when it's useful.

I mean, there are plenty of times when I've slapped my head and said, "Oh, _that 's_ what they were talking about"... but mostly they told me when I didn't have the problem, and then I remembered too late :-\

Also, this pissed me off:

> But due to the depth of knowledge and experience here in Silicon Valley, > there are many high quality people who do give great advice

I may live in Lower Fartville, but... really?

<comment><USER9> I worked in a company that fired fast and it created a lot of insecurity. People were really wary of disagreeing with anyone remotely in more authority. They covered mistakes instead of fixing them and did everything to not look like they made a mistake.

Dont hold off firing that needs to be done, but fire has did not seemed to be too good strategy.

<comment><USER8> Yeah - to be clear I was referencing another post with that quip. Like most advice, it's got some merit, but reality is much more complicated. Kinda the point of these posts really!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> And don't forget that founders are bombarded with what is proclaimed to be "good advice", including "Don't try, get a stable job instead" and a ton of directly conflicting advice.

It quickly becomes incredibly hard to discern what is actually good advice for your situation to what is bad advice with good intentions, especially without the lived experience.

<comment><USER11> One of the most important lessons I learned early on as an entrepreneur is the concept of well-qualified advice.

When you're green, it's natural to seek advice from people you trust, people you think are smart, people with a lot of life and or business experience, family members, and so on. In most cases their advice is either going to be too general to be useful or they're going to have no knowledge and experience at what you're specifically working on, your domain, so their advice is far more likely to be dangerous.

Those people will want to help, people like to be asked for advice, it feels nice; I think most people like to hear themselves talk, it's a normal thing. Their intentions will be good. I also think it's common for people to not have a good grasp of where their expertise ends and where their weakly-supported opinions begin (something everyone is guilty of at times). If you ask for an opinion, input, advice, you're likely to get it, even if the person isn't very qualified to offer it. So it's important to be very selective about who you seek advice from, making sure that they're in a position to offer valuable insight to what exactly you are dealing with.

<comment><USER12> This, so much. I love being asked for advice, and love handing it out. It's so much easier to see the problems in someone else's business than it is in my own. Whether that's good advice or not is debatable.

And as an aside, about the "right people" to get advice from: I love that concept of finding a mentor who is only just ahead of you, and therefore is solving the mistakes that you're just about to make.

<comment><USER13> > finding a mentor who is only just ahead of you, and therefore is solving the > mistakes that you're just about to make.

This is gold! I used to buy into the idea that small colleges were a better learning environment for students due to the increased interaction with professors (class sizes ~30 vs 300). However, with younger TA's leading discussion sections, I changed my mind. I've seen professors who totally didn't understand the conceptual problem a student was having because the professor had crossed that bridge 30 years ago and forgot about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think the whole article can be summed up with this:

> This is no different than when growing up and you used to ignore your > parents advice because you think you know better

To learn some things you have to experience them, often multiple times. That's why making mistakes is the most valuable part of any experience.

I have made a tonne of mistakes so far, a lot of them because I was disillusioned at the time -- but disillusionment is a double-edged sword -- it can be the catalyst a lot of people need when starting a company.

</comment><comment><USER15> It seems to me that the value of advice is not to get people to change their behavior right now, but rather to plant a seed in their mind that will make it easier for them to grow in the future.

For example, before founding my startup, I read countless articles about the value of iterating fast. Yet I made the mistake! It seemed almost unavoidable.

However, because I had read that advice so many times and actually agreed with it, it made it way easier to correct course. As soon as I realized that I was making the mistake, I integrated all this previous advice very quickly.

Good advice does help, but it can only be integrated when one is ready for it.

</comment><comment><USER16> Title should be "Why Founders Don't Listen to Me."

Answer is deflection: founders just aren't as smart as the author.

</comment><comment><USER17> "Hire slow, fire fast" is a great example of valleyspeak that may seem horrible to someone who doesn't already know it is.

<comment><USER18> And is super easy to say, but doing it well is an entirely different thing.

And probably has nothing to do with your startup failing or succeeding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> If they took good advice, they wouldn't be founders :/

</comment><comment><USER20> People who give a great advice can back it up by data, logical explanation, operational experience and are aware of their limitations.

People who give bad advice are people who repeat the people above, but without relevant background.

It is not about the audience, it is about the messenger.

</comment><comment><USER21> I guess they don't take good advice because the advice isn't good? The author doesn't give any reasons to think otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER22> It could be "Why Most People Don't Take Good Advice" The 3 reasons listed apply to a lot of people.

</comment><comment><USER23> Why is "Hire Slow, Fire Fast" considered good advice? You can't fire faster than you hire, obviously, and firing has a tremendous cost on team morale.

</comment><comment><USER24> From a founder's perspective, being able to take good advice first requires separating "good advice" from the "bad".

I put together an ongoing collection to juxtapose the often contradictory advice here: [https://knowledgeartist.org/articles/747efd5b-ab1d-492f-8dfb...](https://knowledgeartist.org/articles/747efd5b-ab1d-492f-8dfb-d56aba761617)

</comment><comment><USER25> His third answer is the right one, but he's way too dismissive of it. Founders don't listen to people because everyone said quitting your job to start a startup was dumb. Of course when those people come back and try to offer suggestions on how to run that startup that's now succeeding, they don't listen.

And by the way, founders often do take good advice - they take it from other founders, VCs (the good ones, at least) and other experts who are the ones that understand entrepreneurship and/or the domian of their startup. They hire experienced VPs and take their advice, because that's why they hired them.

Looking at this guy's LinkedIn, he spent ten years at Yahoo and has founded exactly nothing. Perhaps he ought to retitle the piece of "I'm upset that founders don't take my advice."

</comment><comment><USER18> Does any of this matter?

Maybe I'm crazy but I assume that most startups fail because their product or idea wasn't great enough to take off...

There's this whole world of advice surrounding the minutia of startups and I'm pretty sure generally we've found that even a half built great idea will likely take off ... and the best managed bad idea won't.

Now good management advice is still good advice, although the advice here is pretty close to truisms as it gets. Yeah fire fire fast, that doesn't tell who who and why and etc. That feels very much like the "Be Radiohead" type advice.

<comment><USER26> Theres a whole host of companies with ideas that others have had / have / will have, where the difference in success comes mostly from execution rather than any specific innovation.

Actualy gamechanging ideas pushing a company into success by itself is quite rare.

<comment><USER18> I see a lot of "yeah I was making that" and such stories out there, but I'm not convinced that those mean that it was 'hire slow, fire fast' that stopped them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > Most advice is not good. I admit that.

Would have been best to stop the article there.

> 3) They think they are Exception to the Rule.

They are. Or rather, they need to be if they expect to succeed (by VC definition of succeed, which is the context of this article). Successful VC funded companies are by definition, exceptional. There is no playbook to follow, except T2D3 at all costs.

</comment><comment><USER28> Have you ever tried giving parenting advice to a new mother? Giving advice to founders is the same thing. You are probably right, but this is their baby and figuring it out for themselves is part of the startup experience.

</comment><comment><USER29> Building a successful startup is %90 luck and %10 hard work.

People seek advice from people that are successful. That is why receiving startup advice is so stupid. Being successful in the startup world is mainly luck with a sprinkle of grit. The analogy would be interviewing a lottery winner on how "they did it". The advice is worse than nothing at all. Here is the irony: Advice from people that fail at startups _IS_ useful and actionable - but people don't like to listen to those people.

EG. Munchery. If they had started in 2020 during covid they would be a billion dollar company. They started in 2011 and failed terribly. Luck. IF they had been successful, and did launch in 2020, the advice from this CEO would be horrible. "Hire top talent, etc" Because* the only reason they did succeed was due to timing - and that advice wouldn't be seen or given.

<comment><USER30> We have some real scientific insight here.

I'm also sure you are a super successful entrepreneur and so definitely know it's 90% luck.

<comment><USER12> We do have some scientific insight because we have several control groups, aka accelerators.

If it wasn't mostly luck, accelerators would have an improved success rate, because they are selected by experienced people based on judgement calls about their likelihood of succeeding [0].

Accelerators actually have, at best, a very minor improvement on the base success rate.

Therefore we can safely conclude that startup success is mostly luck.

[0] Of course, this is using a definition of success that is more than just getting investment. I would define it as "becoming a sustainable business". But that would exclude things like Uber and Twitter that are not sustainable (yet), but are undeniably successful.</comment></comment></comment>


Big Mac Prices Just Went Up 26% in Argentina - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/06/13/big_mac_prices_soar_26_in_argentina.html

<comment><USER2> Argentina is the very definition of economic schizophrenia. People are put in jail for reporting the actual inflation rate (instead of the "official" inflation rate). The Economist magazine recently published a story that they are no longer going to lie to their readers and report the official rate and instead will report unofficial, private estimates. Argentina's real inflation rate has been running at about 25% per year.

<comment><USER3> Argentina keeps the official rate down because pays interest to USA according to it. If the official rate is low, Argentina pay less, which is great.

<comment><USER4> Exactly! This is why a lot of people, like say my father, who hate the government policies otherwise kind of agrees with them on this: "hey, we got fucked by the IMF 20 times already, let them get fucked for once!"

<comment><USER5> I'm sorry but Argentina got f'ed by the IMF because the country keeps voting in incompetent yet flamboyant idiots who buy votes with money they don't have.

<comment><USER4> Not really, most of the governments were led by competent people. Unfortunately, they also happened to be either extremely corrupt (Carlos Menem) or blinded by their own ideologies (Carlos De La Rua). The current government sits somewhere there in the middle.

Things have gotten better for most people in Argentina, but at the cost of another of those 'boom for 10 years, then bust' cycles we are so used to. You can't argue inflation is rampant, I still recall the first time I came back from Brazil a pizza was about AR$10. Today the same pizza (maybe with a fancier name) starts at AR$40.

But then, 'eating out' doesn't reflect the real inflation. In that period, pizzas increased 400% in value, alfajores (a local sweet) had a similar increase from (AR$1 to AR$5), while a coffee at any bar in Buenos Aires increased around 1000% (from anywhere around AR$2 to a starting value of AR$17, most commonly AR$20+). Nice wines on the supermarket only increased about 200% in that period. Buy the same wine in a bar and you'd think you are at some fancy spot in San Francisco, they are so expensive. So it's all over the freaking shop (no pun intended).

<comment><USER5> Intelligence and competence are two very different things. You have to go back probably 100 years to find a relatively competent government.

The current government is at least as incompetent from an economic point of view as the policies of both Peron and the generals that came after him. Cristina is only in power because her husband died. It is very rarely I have seen anyone even in Latin America as incompetent as her.

While I'm not Argentinian, I truly love the country and it's people. It saddens me no end to see it and to see very intelligent people talk conspiracy theories and spew idiotic economic theories that the rest of the world got rid of decades ago.

<comment><USER6> "It saddens me no end to see it and to see very intelligent people talk conspiracy theories and spew idiotic economic theories that the rest of the world got rid of decades ago."

How's that working for the rest of the world?

If you have the time, some food for thought. This is a Greek documentary on the Argentinian crisis and recovery:

1/7: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gys83fazwOo>

2/7: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JP1Sm4KijY0>

3/7: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCBQM2EuEKg>

4/7: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6mwXQG1MBg>

5/7: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDgARm2owLs>

6/7: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgqblekF3Qg>

7/7: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-__Msw4kUSc>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love that the Argentinian government was worrying about their (mostly) tongue-in-cheek ranking in the Economist's big-mac index. It makes me feel like they're run by the Bluths from Arrested Development or something.

</comment><comment><USER8> I guess this will make the "big mac index" go up an insane amount this year instead of "slowly" over several years.

<comment><USER9> It's a burger bubble. You don't want to be around when it pops.

<comment><USER10> The biggest burger bubbles I've ever seen are in Mc Donnald's ads. But then... you see their thin burger patty's (at least here) and that bubble plops. Lol!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wow. Did anyone else read this and think:

'I wonder why the 27" iMacs are more expensive in Argentina?"

Nope? No one? I guess if you can't spot the sucker....

</comment><comment><USER12> This is just because the index (big mac) was artificially low and McDonalds needed a real upgrade

<comment><USER13> I was just in Hong Kong and the Big Mac there is noticeably cheaper than every other meal at McDonald's. I was wondering if it might be to manipulate the index?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The Big Mac index as of January:

[http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2012/01/daily-c...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2012/01/daily- chart-3)

Argentina was already close to the top, with a Big Mac going for $US4.94, not entirely crazy by any means. (On the other hand, given that you can get a full three-course steak dinner with wine in a nice restaurant for $US20 in Argentina I wonder who is eating these Big Macs). A 25% increase will take it up to something like $6.25, a little above Sweden.

The fact that the official exchange rate is 4.2 pesos to the dollar but Argentinians are willing to give you at least five pesos to the dollar in informal exchanges seems like a pretty bad sign.

The other interesting thing about that Big Mac index is that Argentina is one of the world's largest beef producers. So are Uruguay, Brazil and Australia, all clustered up there in overpriced burger land.

<comment><USER10> > I wonder who is eating these Big Macs

Something you may not realize from there. Surprisingly, in Argentina, Mc Donnalds is not targeted to the lower classes, - a cheap lunch in a fast food. It's targeted to the middle and higher classes (mainly teenagers and young office workers).

I've been in Spain, England, France, and a few other countries, and I noted that their target there was certainly different. My explanation for this (I belive), is that here, teenagers just LOVE Brands (to the point that I think is crass).

Maybe an aftertaste of the nineties and the neoliberal movement.

<comment><USER15> Anecdotally, in Taiwan the quality of McDonald's is significantly higher than in the US. The quality of the meat and materials in particular.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Who in their right mind eats a Big Mac anyway? They're disgusting.

<comment><USER17> I can't figure out how this story made it to HN.</comment></comment>


How I managed to attend a $1K ticket conference for FREE - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@rodaq/how-i-managed-to-attend-a-1k-ticket-conference-for-free-95015c2f4aea <comment><USER2> The author obtains a legit free ticket from the organizers, which is pretty cool. I worked with conferences for a decade and as far as I can recall we never did this.

Back in the days, there was another way to access expensive conferences without a ticket. It probably still works in some locations. Basically, almost all hotels were equipped with camera/microphone in the lecture hall. This was broadcast on the hotel's TV system, so important people could do business from their room and keep up with the event.

These old systems had security in the TV itself; it was simply restricted from tuning in to certain channels (such as pay-tv), but the signals were broadcast everywhere. It's well known that you could get free pay-TV by bringing your own TV tuner. The same trick let you tune in to feeds from conference(s) hosted at the hotel - I know some famous talks from closed corporate events were recorded this way and distributed on the Internet underground... All you really needed was a room at the hotel.</comment>


Ask HN: Pros and cons of becoming a US citizen? - <AUTHOR> I have been living in the US for a few years now, and am eligible to obtain US citizenship (I'm originally from Italy). I am pondering this option, and I would love some perspective from other people that have been in the same situation.
The main reason why I am hesitant is that we might decide to go back to Europe eventually, and US citizenship brings a number of obligations with it, including in relation to taxes.
Any help or suggestion is appreciated. Thanks HN! <comment><USER2> I became a US citizen when I realized how easily I could be deported as a green card holder. All it would take would be getting into a fight where the blame was ambiguous or something equally unlikely yet possible.

If you have children in the US it seems especially important to ensure you cannot be deported.

I'm from the UK and can have dual nationality - some countries cannot and if this is the case I would think about the option more carefully.

You say "we" - if your spouse is a US citizen then you likely want to file taxes jointly anyway, even if you are not one, so this may also be a factor.

Other benefits: easier entry to the us through customs (they HAVE to let you in), access to foreign embassies, potential security clearance, access to certain jobs that are nationals only, voting rights, reduced friction when applying for some jobs, no need to be at the constant mercy of the INS - important if you feel like being involved in political activism, gun rights - some states only allow citizens to access firearms.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your reply! "we": my Italian wife :)

INS [0]: in what sense you are at the constant mercy of it?

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Naturalization...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Naturalization_Service)</comment></comment>


Speed up your Fabric deployments with Parex - <AUTHOR> http://paulbohm.com/parex-parallel-execution-for-python-and-fabric/

<comment><USER2> Why isn't Fabric doing this? This would be basic feature of deployment software I would think. I vaguely remember the old, old Fabric (before they rewrote everything) did this.

<comment><AUTHOR> i think they've been planning to for a while: <http://code.fabfile.org/issues/show/19>

i haven't really followed their progress too closely, but they seem to be close to releasing something for 1.0.

I think they do client-side threading while i prefer to to do fork() on the server to avoid multiple ssh connections and retain maximum control.

i'll reevaluate when they ship. till then parex works for me.

<comment><USER3> The branch actually does client side forks, one for each server in a task. Then each call inside a task is run sequentially, as expected in normal fabric usage. I've also included the ability to set a pool size, so that one can manage the number of ssh connections open simultaneously.

<comment><AUTHOR> ah - so what you are doing speeds up deploys to multiple servers, while what i'm doing is meant to speed up an individual deploy.

i mostly just got tired of waiting for an individual deploy to my staging server.

btw thanks for emailing me! - i'll definitely look at your branch and see if i can help! (wasn't aware of it until today)

<comment><USER3> Yeah, thats the goal anyways. I tend to reach out to 50+ servers at a time, and iterating though that on any tasks that take over a min is mind numbing.

Well through this post perhaps the branch will be better known, but I haven't really posted much about it in that I though it'd be done sooner. Then any mention of a branch would be negated by it's inclusion in master.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Just to note/ask though, this requires that you have a python script on the server that uses this as a lib? and requires tornado?

<comment><AUTHOR> i just use the same fabfile on the server. and doesn't require tornado on linux (if epoll is available)</comment></comment>


The News 2 – Hacker News and Product Hunt and Designer News - <AUTHOR> http://hpd.thenews.im

<comment><USER2> This is prettier but I made [http://www.serializer.io](http://www.serializer.io) for the similar purpose of keeping track of these 3 sites (and some others).</comment>


Generating Crime Safe CSRF Tokens - <AUTHOR> https://blog.hboeck.de/archives/900-Generating-CRIME-safe-CSRF-tokens.html <comment><USER2> Suggestion: edit the title to capitalize "Crime".

At first I thought this was about _crime_ , as in police, as in burglary, as in murder, when it's about CRIME, as in "Compression Ratio Info-leak Made Easy". And the attack in question is called CRIME, not "Crime".

</comment><comment><USER3> Looking at your PHP example, I was under the impression that random_bytes() was cryptographically secure nowadays, and already generated its pseudorandom sequence non-deterministically?

Can you help me understand why we need to surround the output of random_bytes() if it is already deemed cryptographically secure?

EDIT: Sorry, I have mulled your solution over now and understand that the surrounding detail in the hash is to prevent one form's token being used in a different form. This makes sense, and doesn't imply that random_bytes is deterministic.

</comment><comment><USER4> .

<comment><USER5> CSRF itself is nothing new. What's different here is a discussion of CSRF- generation techniques that are immune to CRIME and BEAST attacks (which are two related, somewhat unpatchable cryptographic attacks that exploits compression to leak information using a chosen-plaintext attack), which is not something people often talk about.

<comment><USER6> Another solution is to set the csrf token as two cookies: one that can be read by js via document.cookie, and another that is httponly. Js is then responsible for including the csrf token in any requests (including forms). This avoids crime/breach issues because cookies are part of http headers, which are "compressed" with hpack in http2. Hpack is basically "send it once and reference the last value many times".

Of course there are a few more details to getting this right (such as tying csrf & auth cookies) and it doesn't hurt to also add samesite to the mix.</comment></comment></comment>


Uber finally breaks away from email, launches in-app support - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/30/uber-switches-the-help-desk-to-in-app-support-for-parts-of-the-world-that-dont-believe-in-email/#comments <comment><AUTHOR> Believe it or not, I've been pitching this to them since 2013 :D. Finally. It was a broken experience to submit an issue in the app and then converse painfully over email. In fact, my first slide for customer presentations I've been making for Konotor earlier, and Hotline.io now has always been about showing them Uber's support experience and then showing them how it should be done right.</comment>


Redwood City establishes waterfront district, approves its first development - <AUTHOR> https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/05/09/council-establishes-waterfront-district-approves-its-first-development/ <comment><AUTHOR> "The project contains a number of public benefits, some of which are required to _offset some loosened regulations_."

Yet those "loosened regulations" aren't identified.</comment>


With 10 pirated copies for every 1 sale, iOS dev pulls game after just one week - <AUTHOR> http://pockettactics.com/2012/12/04/hunted-cows-andrew-mulholland-on-battle-dungeons-untimely-demise/

<comment><USER3> Was there no registration or anything to join the servers? If they have a browser game business, there must have been some sort of account management in place already? Are they going to re-release with a different user scheme, or are they reimbursing customers now? In any case, it's pretty shitty for them. Tbh I wasn't even aware that piracy was such a big issue in iOS. Good to know.

<comment><USER4> Precisely. Surely you can give each purchaser a unique code (hash of transaction number?) to connect to the server with, and only allow one connection per code at a time. (I don't do iOS dev, but I assume this is trivial.)

If they can tell who's pirated vs who hasn't (I assume they can), it seems like something is missing. Is it too cynical to suspect a marketing ploy to grab headlines?

<comment><USER5> Well it would be a server side check. But even a rudimentary IP address check would be fine to ensure one connection at a time.

It is all a bit odd I have to admit.

<comment><USER6> Aside from barring users who are legitimately sharing a connection (and not even pirating your app)...

How does this actually solve the problem? Pirates are really unlikely to be colocated with the person who let them have an illegal copy of your app.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Apple Game Center is heavily integrated into iOS and provides all sorts of validation features. Surely the devs could just re-release and force users to authenticate through Game Center?

Also - any idea if the honest paying game payers are going to be compensated? In future they'll see paying for a game as i) paying for a weeks worth of play ii) pirating it for a weeks worth of play. You mustn't punish genuine users because of others behaviour...

</comment><comment><USER8> Why can't they distribute the game app as a free client for an online service with paid accounts? That would seem to be the simplest and most obvious way to curtail the piracy. Especially given that they _do_ have an online component of the game anyway.

<comment><USER9> It complicates the process,and when you make paying for something more difficult, people are less likely to do it.

I'm surprised that the company can't simply do a 'phone home' procedure when online services are tried though, verifying through App Store API's (if they exist) or by making their own things. Does anyone know how feasible that is ?

<comment><USER10> It's totally feasible, the problem is whether the people who are distributing the pirated version are also capable of cracking the client the same way e.g. Photoshop cracks work to nullify phone home checks.

Fighting piracy always comes with an effort/reward calculation like that.

<comment><USER8> You got it wrong.

If it's an online game, the license check is performed on the server side and no amount of clever client cracking won't get around that. When you buy a license, the licensing server associates some sort of ID with your installation, the same ID that must be presented to the server for an online play. No valid license -> no valid ID -> no online play. That's how all massive online games with free clients work. Easy-peasy. The question here is what can be used as an ID in case of iOS games, but, again, this is a solvable problem.

Moreover, the same scheme applies to the standalone software, except there's an extra step involved with strengthening the executable against any modifications. What Photoshop did is the lamest thing possible (and I think it's a valid theory that they did it on purpose to facilitate the piracy rather than to curtail it). A simple option is to sprinkle 100s of conditionals around the code (with a simple pre-processing script if need be), do not issue any sort of messages, but instead just make the code corrupt heap, stack and do other things that would cause the program to go down after a while. Then simply sign the executable. This is _very_ effective. For every complain in the support forums that the program crashed (and a crash dump that shows the absence of a valid file signature), there's a automatic reply that it's a cracked copy, you get what you paid for.

<comment><USER10> It sounds like you have a lot of experience in this area. I admit I've only really touched on it before on projects I've worked on. Do you know if there's any good books or online guides on this subject, as I find it quite hard to devise these systems myself?

<comment><USER8> You may want to go through fravia.org archives. It's old, but basic protection principles don't change that quickly (or, looking at it from the other end, rudimentary cracking techniques are the same as well).

<comment><USER10> Looks like the domain expired? Oh well, thanks anyway :)

<comment><USER8> _archives_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It is funny, I without hesitation felt sorry for the devs. But then I recalled sighing at the attitudes of News Corp with The Daily.

It's the same principle, taking a business model that might have worked in the past and forcing that square peg in to the round hole.

They have a good game, that engaged people, even at a price point of zero that seldom happens. Hopefully they will be able to think of a way of making money to sustain it.

Hopefully not the whole freemium thing, as a gamer I hate that.

<comment><USER12> What was wrong with the business model of The Daily? What business model should they have chosen? They were using (then brand new) subscription IAPs in the App Store, which were designed as _the_ square hole for their purpose.

I agree that the business model of the game devs is "wrong" because they were trying to charge one-time fees for lifetime server support. What if there had been no pirates, but paying players had played for 10 months instead? Would that have caused the same server issues? But that is a calculation that seems to work okay-ish with better DRM (or at least it worked great for Diablo 3 in the first weeks - I stopped tracking it after that).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't get why he pulled it. Surely N / 10 (where N is some positive integer) will always be better than 0?

What is more interesting here though is that (AFAIK) the only way to run pirated iOS games is to jailbreak your phone/tablet. I'm going to assume that waaay less than 90% of iOS users jailbreak their phone.

So this either means that people who are interested in iOS games are _far_ more likely to jailbreak that people who aren't gamers (not an unreasonable hypothesis but 90% still seems high).

Or there's something about this particular game that makes it especially appealing to jailbreakers?

<comment> robert-boehnke It's a multiplayer game and they could not afford paying the servers they needed

<comment><USER13> I wonder if a solution to that might be to take what I will call the "counterstrike model" where the game developer doesn't necessarily have to run all of the game servers themselves.

In other words , when you run the game you get a selection of servers to play on. If you want to play on the official servers you need an account from the developer (which you get when you buy it) but if you are a pirate user you get to run on any of the unofficial servers only. Of course paying customers will be able to use either official or unofficial servers.

<comment><USER14> But how do you give accounts to paying customers?

The only way I know is through in app purchases.

<comment><USER13> Simplest way would be to automatically email the customer a link with a long randomly generated number (only valid once) when they purchase, when you hit that URL it prompts you to set a username and password.

<comment><USER14> Does the email address come on the purchase report to the seller from Apple?

<comment><USER13> I have no idea, not an iOS developer. I assume there must be some API or email proxy that you can use to contact customers if they don't reveal the actual address.

<comment><USER14> I don't think there is a way to get any details at all about a specific purchase on the app store except when using in app purchases.

When using in app purchases you will get a receipt from apple that is signed with their certificate that you can process and send to your own servers to limit pirates from accessing the servers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I seem to remember an article before saying this is about the normal ratio.

If you think back to the era of amigas and floppy disks it was probably about the same.

<comment><USER16> I doubt that was even the case, unless you wrote disk copying software. X-Copy Pro was the only bit of software I ever purchased :)

Everyone had bags stuffed with 3.5" floppies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm not an iOS dev, however I remember that games on the playstation sometimes requires updates to be allowed to play on the servers.

So one way of combating piracy would be to release updates weekly and disable access for the old version after another week. Yes, the pirates would be able to keep up, but updating apps is a much bigger hassle for pirates than for those who purchased the app.

</comment><comment><USER17> Well, if you know the pirated copies from the licensed ones you can try to block in the server.

I assume they were naive in thinking that piracy wouldn't happen.

Changing the business model may be a possibility, charging for 'in game' goods.

<comment><USER18> There's starting to be a pushback against developers releasing games for free and monetising through IAP if appears 'excessive', and required for the game. I've seen more than a few comments levied about it, essentially there's a reasonably vocal group who don't want to pay more than 79p for games, and don't want IAP to be necessary for their enjoyment.

I don't think they were naive, but they probably didn't expect the piracy level to be quite as high as it would be. Doing server-side blocking for pirated stuff is reasonably difficult, as successfully detecting who's pirated and who's not can occasionally go wrong and burn the paying customers.

<comment><USER8> > _There's starting to be a pushback against developers releasing games for > free and monetising through IAP_

If a free app is a demo and IAP is a one-time upgrade to the full version, then it's reasonable and perfectly acceptable. This is, arguably, what the IAP were actually designed for - a nextgen support for try-then-buy software.

The pushback is typically aimed at tacky milking practices - "a satchel of coins for $5.99, a pot of gold for $15.99, etc". You either release a limited, but self-contained playable demo, or a fully functional game. Anything that falls into a stretch between these two feels like a sleazy bait-n-switch kind of deal, hence the pushback.

<comment><USER18> That seems to be one aspect, but I've seen games getting railroaded for having a limited aspect with a pay to access additional functionality, and people saying "I'd prefer to have paid X amount for this app not IAP", even in cases where devs have made it free to get more traction.

I personally think companies releasing apps now should be bold enough to stake it and go "it's $10". Square Enix are, it seems to be working for them, sometimes.

<comment><USER8> For what it's worth I personally don't even look at free games anymore, because there's always a catch. So, yeah, I guess it's a form of a pushback due to the massive abuse of IAP that doesn't align well with user's genuine interests.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I can't believe their solution is to not run an online multiplayer game. That's the ONLY kind of game you can assure 100% payment for. They just fail at development. This is a known and solved problem. Look at WoW. You have to log in with a valid account to the game server to play online with people. Yes, it's a slight barrier to entry. Oh well, deal with it, it gets you 100% paying customers. This is not hard.

</comment><comment><USER20> I thought that piracy in multiplayer games was a solved problem these days. Even the first Half-Life (1998!) had an online authenticity check.

<comment><USER13> No, if the authenticity check is client side you can hack the asm to neuter it.

If it runs server side you can redirect those packets (often as simple as changing HOSTS file) to a server that you control which can be set to always say "yes, you are legit!"

This is why a lot of games are now removing LAN play, because if you can run the pirated game on a LAN you can use a VPN to turn it into an internet game etc.

<comment><USER21> _No, if the authenticity check is client side you can hack the asm to neuter it._

This is security 101 people. Don't trust what the client says.

<comment><USER13> The issue with games however is that often all the actual content and game that you want to get access to actually lives on the client. For example Call of Duty singleplayer campaign. If you have most of your interesting stuff on the server (e.g WoW) then of course it makes sense to do checks server side.

This is why DRM is fundamentally broken for singleplayer games (or music , or movies) in that you _have to trust the client_.

<comment><USER21> Yes for single player games.

For mulitplayer games that require a server, you only allow them to connect and do the multiplayer bit if they have paid. Simples.

<comment><USER13> Not quite so simples.

Your choice is either to do as these guys did and run all the servers themselves in which case you need to factor the lifetime cost of running the servers into the purchase price or charge subscriptions.

If you ever take the game servers offline the game then becomes unplayable and will preclude modded servers (which were fun in games like CS) and LAN play. There's till a risk that if your game is popular enough someone will reimplement the server.

So the other way to do it is to allow third party servers or build the game to work on a type P2P system (I think a lot of xbox games still work this way). At that point you are basically back to the original problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Probably the best solution would be to switch to recurring in-app subscription to the online service. This is I think easier to verify and harder to pirate and should align the revenues with the costs (avoiding getting nice sales up front and not being able to sustain the servers in 18 months time).

Some hacks might work if they don't want to go down this route like issuing an update that contacts the server for a unique ID on first run and treating those that don't update quickly as suspicious - request them to email the iTunes receipt or something.

How quickly is regarded as suspicious could be worked out by looking for when there is a divergence between installs (and unique ID requests) and the daily update totals the app store provides. Duplicated IDs should be easy to detect it they access the service later.

</comment><comment><USER23> I've seen the other side of too many of these stories not to be skeptical, if not outright cynical. Let me explain.

1\. There are no absolute sales figures here. It may be that the game sold dismally and a story about piracy might have gotten them developer a ton more PR than the game ever would've;

2\. The issue in this particular case is not number of copies (pirated vs non- pirated) but the amount of hours spent from pirated vs non-pirated. Even that doesn't tell the whole story. Perhaps this game required a critical mass of users (some do)? If so, pirated users might ultimately be beneficial.

Also, when it comes to piracy there are a lot of people who download a lot of pirated content and then never look at it or they might try it once. Just getting the pirated content itself becomes a game;

3\. How expensive is it to maintain a server on a per user or per user hour basis anyway? It seems quite likely a single machine can serve thousands if not tens of thousands of users as a conservative estimate; and

4\. Are they shuttering the game or just overhauling the authentication model? If they plan on rereleasing it then the publicity of (1) becomes even more likely.

Like I said, I've seen a number of one-sided stories now where I've known something about the other side and as sympathetic as someone can make their case, believe me--generally speaking--there is a lot they don't tell you.

Also, don't discount the possibility of internal politics. It's a lot easier for a product lead to say "we had to pull this because of piracy" to his or her boss or board than it is to say "we made a game that no one bought".

I'm just saying.

<comment><USER24> The other huge thing to note here is how few current users are jailbroken. The current jailbreak is a version behind the current OS, so the number of people running it is waaaay lower than it could be. If this was posted while a jailbreak was easily available for the current os, then I could totally believe that the number of pirated copies was an actual issue (as its happened in the past.) but right now? I highly doubt it, especially since those who pirate apps are a smaller subsection of jailbreakers, and with fewer jailbreakers it's just too unlikely.

<comment><USER25> I'm not an iOS developer, but your comment leads me to believe that I can solve their problem:

if( iOS.version < 6 ) quit;

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The game could have an in-app payment, whose receipt is checked server-side. Then access to your game is as secure as your server (and its interaction with your app). Still hackable, but not trivially.

</comment><comment><USER27> > and if this story serves to scare off would-be iOS devs, then we're all > poorer for the actions of a few.

According to these numbers, the few seem to outnumber the many 9-to-1. As a software developer and someone who doesn't mind paying for good games, the state of affairs saddens me a great deal, but it would be hypocritical to blame this on the fringe "one-per-centers".

</comment><comment><USER28> The great fallacy here is the notion that you would sell more without piracy.

Piracy at least brings you publicity. Even if you would somehow be able to ban all piracy, in the best case you still would only have that one sale out of 10.

Pulling the game from the store was a pretty stupid move. If I really wanted to play that game now I have no other choice but to - you guessed it - <USER2> it.

<comment><USER29> It is not the problem of lower sales, but of higher costs caused by those 9 additional pirated copies.

<comment><USER30> Even if those additional copies weren't pirated, would the revenue from those users have been enough to sustain them?</comment></comment></comment>


Drop-In Coworking Spaces in Tokyo - <AUTHOR> http://tokyocheapo.com/business/drop-in-coworking-spaces-tokyo/ <comment><USER5> There are also a few cafes which are laptop friendly. (That's notable in Tokyo, as most are not -- a combination of high traffic, poor power/wifi situations, and the staff not being pleased with someone holding a table for extended periods.)

The one which I know off the top of my head is Nakameguro Lounge, about one minute from Nakameguro Station. The effective price per hour is 600 to 1,000 yen. Also their lunch menu is really fantastic for only about 1,200 yen.

Also, as it is about two minutes from my apartment, if you're ever passing through Tokyo drop me a line and your coffee/lunch is on me.

<comment><USER6> Just left after 3 months there, and struggled to find places to work from that aren't Starbucks, few and far between. I frequented a couple Jingumae spots like the Roastery and Suzu Cafe, Mellow Brown in Jiyugauka, Fuglen in Yoyogi, and a lot of cool or charming spots that had no outlets or wifi but were OK to work from, like Brooklyn Parlor in Shinjuku or some spots around Kichijoji I liked (and of course, Blue Bottle too). Nakameguro had nice little cafes but I never worked from there.

Overall Tokyo is not a digital nomad, coffee-shop working friendly city (or at least not like other major international cities), which was both surprising and disappointing, for me.

EDIT - I'll add the co working spaces I dropped by were all simply terrible. I only went to a few, Open Source Cafe, and Jelly Jelly, and then gave up. I wish I had Tokyocheapo's list at the time. One of them was playing pop music over a speaker system to everyone who was working... I mean, seriously?

<comment><USER7> Wow, it sounds like you had bad luck finding places.

I find Tokyo 10x better than SF or LA for places to hang. In SF or LA they are either all full, or you have to by stuff every 2 hours which makes me fat, plus I can't leave anything out so after a coffee or two I need to use the restroom and I lose my space because you can't leave a notebook unattended in the USA. The only exception is maybe the Workspace Cafe in SF.

In Tokyo there's co-working spaces everywhere, they are cheap (especially when you take into account free drinks). Have worked from plenty of starbucks as well, except on weekends when they're full. The one behind roppongi hills that's open till 4am has been great. The one at the corner of Meiji-dori and Omotesando on the 6th floor is huge and been great too. Just don't go on a weekend / holiday.

I'd be curious to know which cities you think are good. I traveled to a bunch of cities in Europe last year and my luck was like yours in Tokyo. I looked up places, checked them out, all were horrible. But I was only in each city for a week or less so maybe I just failed to find anything like you did in Tokyo.

<comment><USER8> Vietnam is in general an amazing place to work from cafes. Free WiFi is standard, most cafes serve a decent breakfast for less than $2, and many of them are quite elegant and beautifully appointed. The biggest downside is that _everybody_ smokes here so if you're sensitive to cigarette smoke you might have a hard time finding a seat that isn't close to a smoker.

<comment><USER6> Any city in particular you'd recommend in Vietnam for cafe workers? I might be heading that way soon.

<comment><USER8> Saigon (or Ho Chi Minh City) is the best place if you want to meet other tech people, but I find it a little too hectic to stay here too long. I prefer the smaller towns like Nha Trang or Hoi An if I really want to knuckle down and get things done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Drop In should probably be Drop-In. After reading the title, I though there was a fall in the number of coworking spaces in Tokyo, which is the exact opposite of the article.

<comment><USER10> I also thought this, and was very confused once I started reading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Four more

The Terminal - Harajuku (where I'm posting this from ;) [http://theterminal.jp/about.html](http://theterminal.jp/about.html)

ii Office - <USER2> [https://iioffice.liginc.co.jp/](https://iioffice.liginc.co.jp/)

Jelly Jelly Cafe - <USER3> [http://jellyjellycafe.com/](http://jellyjellycafe.com/)

Open Source Cafe - <USER4> [http://www.osscafe.net/en/](http://www.osscafe.net/en/)

The Terminal is around ~$13 a day if you pay ~$20 for a year membership. Includes free soft drinks. Yea, just $20. Or you can get a monthly pass for ~$160

II Office is around ~$10 a day also including free soft drinks

Jelly Jelly is really tiny and the one time I went it was 100% full so I haven't actually used it.

Open Source Cafe is also pretty tiny. It's 2 small rooms, both hold maybe 7 people though I've seen them cram in 15+ for a meeting.

I've been to a few on the list

co-ba I signed up for a year ago. Plus, if you become a member they give you a security card and it's open 24 hours. Minus, it's pretty minimal, especially the 2nd floor. Feels like I sitting in an elementary school class.

kokemasaz feels like someone decorated their garage. Nice DIY vibe. The guy making Voxatron ([http://voxatron.com](http://voxatron.com)) who goes by Zeb online says he sometimes hangs out there.

I guess I should mention he runs the picopico cafe ([http://picopicocafe.com](http://picopicocafe.com)) in Kichijoji. It's only open 3pm to 10pm Saturday and Sunday and even then only if they haven't rented the place out (check their calendar) but, possibly because he's an indie game dev a lot of other mostly non Japanese indie game devs hang out there.

What kind of shocks me is how much more expensive co-working spaces are in SF and LA. They claim you'll get _networking_ but they're usually > $500 a month for just an unassigned seat at an open table.

<comment><USER11> Do you know if it's pretty competitive to get the monthly membership at The Terminal? Only the first 10 people who sign up can get it right? ("毎月先着10名様となります。")

<comment><USER7> I haven't checked. Given it's 1295 yen a day after the 2000yen yearly membership I'd rather pay by the day. The month price is better after 12 days a month but I'd prefer to move around so I come at most probably 9 days a month and visit other places on other days.

<comment><USER11> I see, that makes sense. By the way, there's a burrito place 2-3 mins from there that I frequent:

[https://ja-jp.facebook.com/burritastesgood](https://ja- jp.facebook.com/burritastesgood)

Staff and owner are very nice people, burritos are good, and they have a variety of hot sauces.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This list is missing Open Source Cafe, where I'm sitting right now! I'll be here for another few weeks if anybody is interested in dropping by. [http://www.osscafe.net/en/](http://www.osscafe.net/en/)

It's in Shimokitazawa, really cool neighbourhood not far from Shibuya.

<comment><USER13> +1 to this. OSC is great. Really adore the place and their activities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm an ex-Melbournite doing a PhD in bioinformatics algorithms (and succinct data structures) in Tokyo.

I'm mainly interested in co-working spaces for cross-pollination of ideas, and friendly challenges.

So, if anyone in Tokyo wants to meet up to work on some stuff (together or separately, but in proximity), let me know.

</comment><comment><USER15> There is also a pretty comprehensive list of co-working spaces (all in Japanese though) here: [https://www.makeleaps.jp/%E9%83%BD%E5%86%85%E3%81%99%E3%81%B...](https://www.makeleaps.jp/%E9%83%BD%E5%86%85%E3%81%99%E3%81%B9%E3%81%A6%E3%81%AE%E3%82%B3%E3%83%AF%E3%83%BC%E3%82%AD%E3%83%B3%E3%82%B0%E3%82%B9%E3%83%9A%E3%83%BC%E3%82%B9%E4%B8%80%E8%A6%A7/)

Also if you're in Tokyo, don't forget to check out the Hacker News Tokyo community meetup events.

The next one is on the 13th of May. Hope to see you there !

[https://hntokyo.doorkeeper.jp/events/24116](https://hntokyo.doorkeeper.jp/events/24116)

<comment><USER16> Thanks, just signed up!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Places I haven't tried! All your base are belong to us!

Coworking spaces are pretty hit or miss. There's also Academy Hills ([http://www.academyhills.com](http://www.academyhills.com)) on the 49th floor of Mori Tower in Roppongi that runs you 10,000yen/mo.

Other options:

Jiyugaoka — Robek's Juice — no WIFI, but spacious and has lots of power.

Near Jiyugaoka — Radio Plant Cafe — free wifi, but quite small.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'll be back in Tokyo May 1-3ish -- psyched to check out Nakame lounge; that's new to me.

Fuglen and Maruyama are my two go-to places though neither are great for "working"

Streamer/Lattest I would say are not really appropriate for 'working' either. Sure, I've sat in them for an hour or two on occasion, but it doesn't feel exactly appropriate.

I'm in and out of TKO a lot. (Live in Shanghai) Will happily trades beers and coffees for tips on good cafes. ^^

Interesting that people mention Shanghai as having a good cafe scene; I like a few of the places here okay but I'd never choose them over a bunch of the better options in tko or the US...

</comment><comment><USER19> This is great! I go to Japan about once a year and for 2016 I'm thinking about spending a month or two working remote from Tokyo. I recently got back from doing the same at a coworking space in Thailand.

</comment><comment><USER20> Nice tips. In Osaka there's Knowledge Salon in Umeda, but you need to know somebody there that can invite you as a guest, so it's not really drop-in…

Oh, and you should also post this over at [http://www.startjapan.org/](http://www.startjapan.org/) :)

</comment><comment><USER21> Interesting to see how Tokyo work culture impacts the co-working scene: A lot of them only open at 10 but stay open late in the evening. This is because, due to its size and property prices, many people commute up to 2 hours one way.

<comment><USER22> I don't follow. I know many salarypeople who have 1.5h+ commutes, because as you say central Tokyo is expensive. But if you're self-employed or doing a startup, why would you travel that far to a co-working space instead of just working from home?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Cool, been looking for one. thanks! I've also considered working from internet cafes, but if a coworking space is cheaper, it would make sense to go to one.

</comment><comment><USER24> It's good to see all the Japan-based HNers goofing off at work today. HN usually starts dying this time of day (1445 JST) as the West Coast heads to bed...

</comment><comment><USER25> Anybody found any good spots to work from in Machida? I'm out that way and have a hard time making the 1 hour trip to go into Toyko to work.

</comment><comment><USER26> No mention of Jelly Jelly Cafe? [http://jellyjellycafe.com](http://jellyjellycafe.com)

<comment><USER27> They didn't reply (or their contact form is broken!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Nice ! I'm going to be in Tokyo this weekend, I may drop by one of those places.

</comment><comment><USER29> Nice job Mr Kirkland. When can we expect Cheapo guides for other cities?

</comment><comment><USER30> Anyone knows one with standing desk?

<comment><USER27> I know a few cafes with wifi and standing/able desks

Streamer Coffee Shibuya -> [http://streamercoffee.com/shibuya](http://streamercoffee.com/shibuya) Lattest Omotesando -> [http://tokyocheapo.com/place/lattest- omotesando/](http://tokyocheapo.com/place/lattest-omotesando/)

<comment><USER30> Thanks. They look great.

What I need to find though is a proper co-working space / shared office. While I love hanging out in coffee shops I need a place where I can reserve a desk ;-)

There's a lot of variety in Tokyo so I should be able to find something.</comment></comment></comment>


What Can Small Tech Companies Do About Patent Trolls? - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.findlaw.com/technologist/2018/08/what-can-small-tech-companies-do-about-patent-trolls.html <comment><USER2> I am a patent lawyer, and the sentiment from the article is on point. Recent case decisions have flipped the script for small companies targeted by patent trolls. The term "Troll" captures many different kinds of patent lawsuits, but most often now the only trolls willing to sue small companies are looking for a quick small payday and will not tolerate any suggestion that they have to put up a real defense of their case on the merits. It can vary, but I have convinced several trolls to drop their case for small clients for just an hour's worth of work. They know when I make an appearance for a client that they have to put up a fight and will walk away, and if they don't I have been successful in several cases getting them to pay the lawyer fees incurred by my clients. Happy to answer any questions about the range of responses that may be necessary to defend against this scourge. But I'm happy to report that the trend is favoring the defendant in these scenarios.

<comment><USER3> Would you mind providing a way to contact you in your profile? I'm not sure my questions regarding average cost per case, duration, etc. are appropriate for this thread. Thanks.

<comment><USER4> For what it's worth, I suspect that many of us would be interested in information about average cost per case and average duration for cases where the defendant is a small company (or small tech company).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> New idea for a service: I patent troll your startup with an obvious bad patent. You pay me a very small fee and I lose the case on purpose. On paper you look like you fight back hard, so no other trolls bother you. Company name: troll armor.

<comment><USER6> Go right ahead, give it a try. I patented this in '98.

<comment><USER7> patent expires this year, yay!

<comment><USER6> Good one haha

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A fun read about what Cloudflare did to a patent troll: [https://www.google.com/amp/amp.timeinc.net/fortune/2017/09/2...](https://www.google.com/amp/amp.timeinc.net/fortune/2017/09/21/cloudflare- pays-first-15000-in-quest-to-kill-blackbird-patent-troll)

<comment><USER9> The above article describes the case, but not the resolution, which was that the judge invalidated the patent [1]. Blackbird said it would appeal, but Google doesn't bring up anything after the initial decision.

Personally I thought the best was Newegg sueing the patent troll that dropped their case. "They started the litigation, it would be irresponsible not to finish it." Unfortunately, the case seems to have been terminated several months later, so I'm guessing it didn't work. [2]

[1] [https://blog.cloudflare.com/bye-bye- blackbird/](https://blog.cloudflare.com/bye-bye-blackbird/)

[2] [https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/case/10583332/Rosewill_I...](https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/case/10583332/Rosewill_Inc_v_Minero_Digital,_LLC) (see upper right)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is there any protection to be had by a corporate shell game? Suppose I put my technology assets in one corporation, my revenue and monetary assets in a 2nd corporation, and my customer facing presence in a 3rd corporation. The patent trolls descend on the customer facing presence, which has no substantial technology or monetary assets. If it goes into bankruptcy, I lose brand, but can restart elsewhere and preserve my tech and monetary assets ?

<comment><USER11> That is genius and exactly what real estate developers do in Philadelphia. They have one shell company for their brand and a separate shell company for each development. If they have 100 separate houses to develop, they may have 100 separate shell companies. This way they close the shell company as soon as they finish a project so that any lingering issues in the community have no recourse.

Say they build a house next to yours and tear up your roof in the process causing it to leak. You need to sue them ASAP or their company will no longer exist in a month or two so you have nothing to sue.

I'd love to hear why LLC's are a good idea; for the most part they seem like a scheme to avoid responsibility and evade taxes for rich people.

<comment><USER12> I can't comment on the balance of LLC use, but the good idea is that someone who cannot afford large personal losses can start a business that won't ruin them if it fails. Additionally, the personal tax and business paperwork is simpler than with a corporation.

A bunch of the small businesses that sell at local city markets are LLCs, for example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> For the love of God someone sell patent troll insurance yo startups - trust me there is a lot of money to be made here by diversifying the risk.

<comment><USER14> I read that these insurance companies are sometimes patent trolls themselves, basically collecting 'protection' money

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It can also be the other way around: Startup files a patent to potentially take down competing companies (big or small) or open-source projects:

Ref: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15090927](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15090927)

</comment><comment><USER16> In my experience, settle early, settle often keeps your small business on track. While settling seemed wrong to me on principle (the patent was absurd), the cost of fighting far exceeded what my company could afford. I got on the phone with our corporate outside council and the plaintiff to explore our options. Their first question was "Are you a $100 or $200 million dollar per year company?" Uh, yeah, we think you have the wrong idea... In the end we settled for $50K, the equivalent of about two months legal fees to fight the suit. In the end it was the right decision as we bought certainty. Even ten years later this settlement bugs me, but it was the right thing to do.

</comment><comment><USER17> What about defending itself against patent issues in general ? Patent trolls are only a degeneration of an already-bad system

</comment><comment><USER18> The article links to an entrepreneur.com article that talks about anti-troll alliances. I had my business join one of the mentioned organizations UnifiedPatents a while ago. It was free for me (smaller companies and startups) and the on-boarding process was pretty straightforward.

</comment><comment><USER19> 4\. Not be based in the US.

<comment><USER4> Unless you also do not sell in the US this won't help.

<comment><USER20> Well it could _help_ but not make you immune.

1\. You have diversified your risk, so even if you cannot sell into the US market anymore, you may still have a company that can sell into different parts of the world.

2\. Even if you lose and a face a large fee, you may be able to just retreat from the US, leaving the US statutory entities to insolvency, whilst protecting your IP.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> >What Can Small Tech Companies Do About Patent Trolls?

Move to China</comment>