"I've got an idea for an app" - <AUTHOR> http://chriseidhof.tumblr.com/post/9873846899/ive-got-an-idea-for-an-app <comment><USER2> 10 years or so ago, when I was a game programmer, I used to have the same "I've got an idea for a game" problems.

Most ideas were useless, some were poorly thought out "Like X but Y", for example "Like Command and Conquer but set in space"; others were far too difficult to construct.

Then, I was told an idea for a great puzzle game. I decided the idea was so great I made the originator of the idea my wife ;)

<comment><USER3> Is she comfortable with the fact that it was primarily an IP acquisition?

<comment><USER4> I don't normally up-vote amusing comments but I really could not resist for this one. The most amusing comment I have read on hacker news so far and the only to really make me smile today. Thank you!

<comment><USER3> Thanks... I don't submit many longer posts since I've limited myself to checking news sites from my phone (for productivity reasons). So this one- liner generated about six months of Karma for me :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So let's say I take the author's advice, 'always listen to ideas', and unlike the author, get told an awesome idea by a friend-of-a-friend with zero ability to execute.

Great, now what?

Do I really set up a working relationship with this person, who's likely dead weight and valueless now that the idea's been revealed? Do I give him the ownership he thinks he deserves, which is a 50-50 split if I'm lucky? Do I just build it myself?

I prefer to avoid such ethical quandaries, which is why I stick to my own ideas.

<comment><USER6> Exactly. The other day I was hanging out with some relatives from out of town and my uncle dropped that famous line, "I have an idea for an app." I had been functioning under the same notion that I should always listen to people's ideas, so I listened.

He then says, "I'll tell you, but if you build it I want 50%." I said, "Fine." In my mind I'm thinking, "No way I'm building this." Then he says, "OK, my idea is a contact management application for the iPhone. They have them for the PC, but they don't have them for the iPhone." That's it. That's his whole idea.

That's when I realized I should stop listening to people's ideas about apps because he just basically told me that I can't build any contact management apps without giving him half the profits. If I listen to too many people's ideas, I won't be able to build something without being sued because someone else "gave me the idea".

<comment><USER7> Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think you should worry about one-time, private, un-recorded verbal agreements.

<comment><USER8> That might be true in the legal sense, but presumably he wants to maintain a good relationship with his uncle. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've found that the fastest way to get people to stop telling you their ideas (that they want you to build), is start telling them exactly how THEY could accomplish it.

Them: "I've got this awesome idea for software that tracks traffic jams!"

Me: "Sure, you just need to link up existing maps and satellite imagery from Google to traffic cameras...."

Them: "Uh..."

Me: "Of course, you have to be able to monetize the massive amount of data you'll be moving around, so you need to consider how people will be accessing this? Would it be through a GPS device, or is it a smartphone app, or is this just for commercial (TV stations, police, DOT) applications?"

Them: "Uh...I also had an idea for this other thing..."

<comment><USER10> This could work :) I usually say, let's search the app store for your idea ... Just to see what comes up.

12 pages of the same idea later...

Moving on to other conversations.

<comment><USER11> Thats a great suggestion, I usually listens for some time and ask a few from my point of view meaningful questions. I usually finish off by asking them to send me an email and summarize their thoughts and to explain it in more detail.

Most of the times, the email never lands in my inbox, but when it finally does, theres usually something to it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I know this is not directly related but being a web developer I generally get something similar. I get the old "Oh we should meet up sometime, my brother is looking for a website". And they think they are doing me a favour when they offer me £100 to do them a site.

To quote one, "I'll bung you £100 to do it".

Thanks, I get paid that a day.

<comment><USER13> And as a bonus, you get to be on the hook for maintaining that site until the owner gets bored with it, making whatever changes they want (for free).

<comment><USER14> Yup, this has happened to me several times back in high school, when all the shitty bands used to approach me asking to make a website. At first I was like "yeah, cool!" and then they automatically expected me to update it consistently and do things like handle merchandise sales. LOL. Yeah right. Then they get mad at me for not maintaining it. I'm like "I made the thing, you update it".

That was my lesson. I don't make websites anymore for people without charging thousands of dollars and an hourly fee for any future work.

<comment><USER12> I think every programmer in some respects goes through that, that's how we make mistakes and learn from them.

I wouldn't be surprised if most developers actually did their first project for nothing at all, I think we all under value our skills to start with and it takes time to realise how much our skills are worth.

That's what I find funny when you put a "real" bill into do a site and you see the owners face, if their initial reaction is, "how much??!", I know it's time to go quoting for a different project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've been developing for a while, apps specifically for about 2 years and this is my take on things: Yes, I get many many people saying hey, I have this great idea... or hey, my friend wants to make an app... But here is where I think I may differ from others, I am these people too, everyday I wake up with ideas, I write them down and tell them to myself later, I test my own ideas on myself because I can, I know the industry and I know how to research ideas and more often than not, they are not worth my time. But that does not mean I stop thinking... So why shut out all the other ideas that people, sometimes strangers even, are just throwing at you all the time for free? These could be sources for great inspiration (probably not) but it only takes 1 good idea to make you realize that hey, these are people out in the world with different views, different problems, and different solutions. Its like having 100 brains waking up in the morning going hey write this down I think it could be a good idea.

All that aside, here is what I do every time someone pitches an idea (no matter who they are and what the idea might be):

1) Listen

2) Think about it (is this unique, good, stupid, wait... don't I already have this app?)

3) Ask them some key questions, (how will it make money? How much time do you have every day to work on this? How much money can you spend on this project? Have you done any research on the idea? What other apps are there like this one?)

4) Pull out the iPhone and do a quick search for obvious app titles matching their idea and show them the results then ask, what about all these? Have you tested all of these?

5) Give them a 30 second lesson on using the internet and the app store to research their ideas. (nicely)

6) Give them my contact info if they don't already have it - even if the idea sucked (remember 90% of your ideas suck too) and why miss an opportunity to network.

7) If the idea sparks an interest, Say hey, Id like to see a layout of that sometime. Or if its really great set up a time for a call.

8) If it blows, don't worry, they will probably have forgotten about it a week later.

9) Congratulate yourself on not being an ass and realize that you helped someone, yourself, and the rest of the developers out there. They will be better prepared the next time they begin the "I have a great idea..." speech.

This only takes 5 mins and you really never know what you might hear. Ideas are great because they make us think, they test us, they inspire us, and sometimes they can make us rich if can figure out how to use them well.

<comment><USER16> _This only takes 5 mins and you really never know what you might hear. Ideas are great because they make us think, they test us, they inspire us, and sometimes they can make us rich if can figure out how to use them well._

I have to say I love your attitude towards ideas. I often have ideas for projects outside my wheelhouse (mostly personal projects) and talk to EEs and MEs about building stuff. It would suck if all my friends were archetypal hn- programmer-that-hates-idea-guys, I'd probably even drop them as friends. I'm so out of my depth on some things that I share it just to find out if its a completely stupid idea.

Then again, I like building things for the sake of building them, and know people that do too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I always get this tiring feeling when someone comes up to me to talk about an idea. Especially if it's one of these "fast talking" kind of people. Most of them involve some kind of "social X". Even more saddening is how the people that have these "ideas", have no clue how to market it, where profit comes from, and so forth.

I believe that the only time I've heard of a decent or good idea was from fellow programmers or designers, rather than "business men" or founders of small companies and claim they know it all. Then after they explain their idea, they expect you to invest 90% of your time on the product, promise you a certain ownership percentage (usually ~10%?), rather than paying a good salary up-front; so if it flops they didn't lose any of their time or had to invest any amount of cash. I believe something similar to this happened to some dude who then open-sourced the project. I forgot what project that was, it happened recently.

You can of course listen to anyone's idea, but as the article stated, the chance that it's not another dumb or over-done idea is usually very slim.

<comment><USER18>
         Especially if it's one of these "fast talking"
         kind of people. Most of them involve some
         kind of "social X".

Remember when it used to be "eCommerce X"?

<comment><USER17> Ha, and what'll be next..? Well, I guess I'm also quite thankful in a way that noobs like that don't actually get good idea's in the first place, although it can be quite annoying.

<comment><USER19> "Local X"

<comment><USER20> "Casual (se)X"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The rule that "ideas are nothing, execution is everything" fails to properly acknowledge the class of ideas that come from genuine domain experts. In this situation (and presuming the idea does not require an absurd level of technical specialism _and_ they can bring distribution to the party) then it can even end up being reversed.

</comment><comment><USER22> I get the same kind of thing, but not aimed at iPhone apps-- rather, start-up ideas.

My approach is to first ask people who their customers will be, and how they plan on selling to them-- and then, if they get past that, I'll hear what the idea is.

</comment><comment><USER23> The best answer I give is an honest one. "I'm too busy with contracts, and I have a number of my own ideas that I'd love to be working on.[1]"

This answer brings up the commonly echoed sentiment among my mobile developer cohort of the tradeoff between client contracts and your own product work. One is easier, one pays off long term.

[1] This does not necessarily mean for profit. See [http://rawsyntax.com/post/5982784556/importance-of-side- proj...](http://rawsyntax.com/post/5982784556/importance-of-side-projects)

</comment><comment><USER24> This is the same philosophy I take with regards to meetings. I'd gladly take a coffee, lunch, or other meeting with anyone who is interested because you never know what may come out of it. Sure, sometimes I'm busy, but there's always time for lunch and coffee. Take meetings, have conversations, let 1,000 flowers bloom or whatever the relevant expression is. But I also state in advance that our conversation is not subject to any non-disclosure agreement, and I explain that we are both free to do with the information whatever we like. If they're not comfortable with that, I explain that the purpose of the meetings is to see what mutual value we can bring each other. That's enough to screen the random meetings.

</comment><comment><USER25> I got an email the other day, from a young kid wanting me to sign a NDA, so I could quote him on his idea. I suggested he look at programming himself, and he did not take it well. I did explain to him that signing an NDA would be a disservice to me, if I was working on a similar idea, but he did not see the problem with that.

</comment><comment><USER26> "I've got an idea for an app" is the new "Will you read my screenplay?"

</comment><comment><USER27> That was a hilarious twist in the end. I'm just like you except for the last paragraph... maybe i'll start listening to people's ideas again :)

</comment><comment><USER28> In the circle that I move around, everyone wants an ecommerce store for their business that can generate sales even when they are sleeping.

I tell them I am busy with my own stuff but I take time to meet and listen to them. After the meeting, I do research, put together a plan with the breakdown of costs for outsourcing development, marketing and the estimated revenue.

That's when I stop hearing from them. They get either too busy or they realize that it's not as easy as they think. I am yet to find someone who followed up on the plan.

Isn't life always like that? Many with plans but very few who act on them.

</comment><comment><USER29> I don't have a problem hearing from people with ideas, what I have a problem with is 9 out of 10 people fail to execute and as a result, waste my time. It seems that to many, having a business, or an app idea, is as far as it gets. As an entrepreneur, that bugs the hell out of me.

<comment><USER30> Well since 9 out of 10 companies fail then what's the big deal?

You think it's a bigger problem for you than it is for those who fail?

I don't understand your point.

<comment><USER31> He's not referring to the fact that they try and fail, it's that they fail to TRY. I have the same problem as well. People are always excited and impatient to set up a meeting to talk about an "app/website idea" they're really serious about. I'll take the time to put them in my schedule, go meet them somewhere and listen to them talk for an hour or two, and thats as far as it ever gets. Everybody wants to talk about their idea, and most seem to think I should be willing to work for some equity.

My last experience with this is fairly typical. A restaurant manager I worked with a couple years ago had "a brilliant idea". He was emailing and calling me constantly, refused to talk over the phone and was doing anything he could to get me into a meeting A.S.A.P. since he 'really wanted to get rolling on this'. I heard him out and quoted him $4,000. Never heard from him again. I tried calling once, left a voice mail, and attempted to follow up on two occasions via e-mail and nothing.

And _that's_ what he's talking about. People that waste our time in meetings and don't ever follow through.

<comment><USER29> This is exactly it. In fact, I was just talking with my partner last week about the fact that almost every time we get a potential client or lead that wants to meet or talk on the phone first, it almost always never turns into real work. On the contrary, our best clients rarely, if ever, request meetings or phone/face time.

His idea was that to these "idea people," the meeting is a replacement for work. I'm not sure what I think, aside from the fact that I'm tired of wasting my time.

<comment><USER32> Maybe more than a replacement for work, it's a feeling that they've "done something" about the idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> A lot of this comes down to a) non-technical types pursuing their ideas with an unconstrained mental framework and b) non-linearity of good ideas.

a) Unconstrained mental frameworks: "I want a location-based photo-sharing app that comes with angry birds integration" It can't be that hard. There has to be some plugin on github that solves that problem for you already, since it's a great idea."

Since this idea is guaranteed to produce a billion dollars, any developer would have to be irrational to turn down even a 10% equity offer.

b) Non-linearity of good ideas - I'm finding that it's often fewer features and fewer things that make compelling business ideas / user experiences. See Dan Ariley's TED talk [1]. It's intriguing how a negative feature delta (less is more!) often results in something more compelling.

Understanding if something is a good idea is a problem more akin to finding the optimal way of loading an aircraft, where the problem has to be tested, exposed, and simulated; not a simple forecast model where the answer is binary. People will never know whether they're sitting on a great idea until they test their strategy and see how it turns out.

On a side-note, a friend and I have a small service that attempts to solve this problem. It's called Casual Contracting [2] and tries to frame this problem in a positive light for both devs and idea people.

[1] [http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_asks_are_we_in_control_o...](http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_asks_are_we_in_control_of_our_own_decisions.html)

[2] <http://casualcontracting.com>

</comment><comment><USER34> Great point, and if I may say ideas are almost worthless. They're floating all over, they're everywhere. Bad ones, good ones, done ones... I believe what makes it worth is the execution, the effort of making an app running and selling.

I believe `Angry Birds` is a good example of it. It's success did not come from the idea at all. A simple game with a good execution and good marketing made it so popular.

Agreeing with the article; I just want to add that hearing people's ideas also put you into an awkward position. They give you responsibility of either not doing that application without that person's consent or sharing a revenue.

You usually don't need neither, because as a developer you're already putting more mental work on how to come up with better apps than some friend's mother of yours.

And hearing people like they invented the wheel all the time really is boring.

</comment><comment><USER35> _a social network for sharing pictures of coffee_

Isn't that Instagram? So yeah, always listen to ideas :-)

<comment><USER36> No, that'd be <http://artinmycoffee.com/>

There are few niches still unexplored. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Acting condescending towards people who don't understand my field for not understanding my field could be counter productive? Yeah, this is a no- brainier.

The anti-"idea guy" attitude was all ego, no logic. I can't say I'm surprised that it took off as well as it did, it felt good and matched the reality that most ideas suck so it was easy to adopt. I'm not surprised, but a disappointed that more people didn't recognize it for what it was. Oh well, being the only guy hearing the good ideas was fun while it lasted.

</comment><comment><USER37> The way I've learned to deal with this is that I listen enthusiastically, and then I ask the person with the idea to come back with sketches or something more concrete. That has, so far, eliminated 100% of the ideas outright. When someone really serious comes to me with a concrete idea, I'll know it, and then we'll talk for real. Asking the person with the idea to do a little work to make it real is a great way to determine how serious they really are.

</comment><comment><USER38> This is actually quite old already. It used to be "I have an idea for a website."

<comment><USER20> I have an idea for an ARPANET mailing list about cats! (1980)

I have an idea for a USENET newgroup about cats! (1985)

I have an idea for an IRC channel about cats! (1989)

I have an idea for an FTP site about cats pictures! (1990)

I have an idea for a Gopher site about cat pictures! (1992)

I have an idea for web page about cat pictures and stories! (1995)

I have an idea for Java applet about cat animations! (1995)

I have an idea for a Yahoo category about cat fans! (1996)

I have an idea for a blog designed especially for publishing personal opinions about cats! (1998)

I have an idea for an e-Commerce cat food distribution network! (1999)

I have an idea for a virtual online currency for cats! (2000)

I have an idea for a web scripting language for building feline sites! (2001)

I have an idea for a Flash game about cats! (2002)

I have an idea for a Content Management System for managing cats! (2002)

I have an idea for a Object Relational Manager for storing information about cats! (2003)

I have an idea for a social network for cats! (2004)

I have an idea about a movie sharing site for cat videos! (2005)

I have an idea for an iPhone app for taking pictures of cats! (2007)

I have an idea for a iPad app for cats to use! (2010)

...How far we've come in 30 years...

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Ah, this is amusingly true.

I suppose the ubiquitous nature of smart phones gives the common person more exposure to software than ever before, therefore compelling some to pitch half baked app ideas ('how about an app like Facebook, but in 3D!').

You never know though, there might be some buried gold in some suggestions. You just need your stupid-crap filter set on high :)

<comment><USER40> Even dumb ideas can have a germ of greatness, or send you down a path to greatness.

<comment><USER41> There's a technique for getting out of the state when you're out of ideas (writer's block & the like.) Generate a few purposefully silly or outlandish ideas and work from that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I was talking to a guy on the train once who was telling me he'd love to build an iPhone app (context: iPad early adopter, someone else was cooing over it or whatever). He was under the illusion that it was about as simple as creating a spreadsheet.

I broke the bad news to him that creating an iPhone app was rather more complicated than that and required you to understand quite a difficult programming language (Objective-C) and a non-trivial framework (Cocoa, UIKit) and make a financial investment in a Mac and an Apple developer account. I kind of feel bad about it afterwards because it might be a good idea.

I just don't think it's healthy when people think that writing software is easy or doesn't require skill and expertise... because they might get scammed in the same way as if they go around believing that investing in the stock market is guaranteed PROFIT!1!

</comment><comment><USER43> The problem is you have an idea for a drink picture sharing app. Some guy tells you he's got an idea. you listen. He says "I want to make a coffee picture sharing app". You say, "lame idea". 2 months later you ship your "drink picture sharing app". You get sued. (hmm, sounds kind of like FB)

That's why companies don't listen to ideas.

This is especially true in games. Some guy comes and says "I've got an idea for game. It's going to have dragons in it". After that if you have any game that has dragons in it odds or not so low that the guy will consider suing you.

Of course you can sign NDAs and other agreements but that's not so "nice" and not a guarantee you still won't get sued.

Of course I hope for the best in your experiences. I'm just pointing out it's not just that devs think other ideas aren't worth listening to. There are other valid reason not to listen.

</comment><comment><USER44> Im so surprised that this is getting so much attention. The only time you should listen if its something along these lines, obviously squeezed into one sentence so you dont get the opportunity to cut him off "I have this great idea (microsecond pause), im so confident that it work, (microsecond pause), that ive ['released US$50k equity loan from home','borrow $35k from brother','prepared to invest my liquid savings of 42k into it']."

If it takes the turn of you do the development/impl and ill do the "sales, marketing, requirements, design, gathering investors, watering the plants" get him/her to quantify the success they had in each area and why they no capital to make a financial investment themselves (hint: most do via house equity but wouldnt dream of touching it - too risk (i.e. make your own mind up.)

</comment><comment><USER45> Nice cliffhanger.

</comment><comment><USER46> I tend to listen to people's app ideas when their ideas revolve around their life or area of expertise.

For the rest of us, it's easier to start as a competitor in a big market than to envision a latent need and build a product around it. If the app idea has not been implemented before, there's a high chance the founder is having the "invented here" hallucination. I'd try to find a place where the need is obvious and try to build the best product in that category instead of coming up with an ingenious new idea. I believe ideas are overrated (but vision matters).

Steve Jobs take: "I want [Apple] to be much better, I don't care of being different." (Youtube: <http://goo.gl/YPQJt>)

</comment><comment><USER47> I like being tell "I've got an idea"... I feel flattered; Thing is, these people tell that to everyone of their friends, but only you! The computer nerd, is able to give them real criticism.

Last time a girl saw me coding, and she told me: Are you programming? (I just nod) I find that amazing, I mean, you could do my job (marketing) and you understand it, I can't understand what you do, it's like magic.

She apparently wants to build a fashion website, I asked two questions and she had no answer, I told her to get back to me when she gets a better idea of what she wants to build.

Currently my cofounders are not technical, but they have the best ideas! And do the things I don't want to do :-).

</comment><comment><USER48> I have an experience just like this. I was telling my (now) cofounder in glorious detail why his list of ideas sucked or required way too much work, and then one of them ... well actually, that one was pretty cool. Now we've built it!

</comment><comment><USER49> Chris, is your friend contributing anything else besides the idea? ie capital, programming, design, business contacts? If not then I hope you aren't considering a 50/50 split because that would be quite unfair to you.

<comment><AUTHOR> He's doing pretty much everything (design, hardware, investments, marketing, packaging, and running the company). The app is brilliant and very simple.

<comment><USER49> hardware? this isn't looking like it's just an app =)

<comment><AUTHOR> Wish I could tell more!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> There is no value in ideas. It is always about hardworking with intelligent sense. Ideas are like seeds. You can grow a Giant Sequoia out of it. But if you don't know how you can not even grow a bean bud.

<comment><USER51> There are still a tiny fraction of vary good ideas that are worth something. Pagerank is a classic example where the idea was clearly worth something the problem is even great ideas tend to be worth less than 5% of the company after a year or so.

The hard part is sticking to your guns and actually telling your 'friend' that sounds like a good idea. You can pay me X/hour to build and market it or I can build it and hand over 5% of the profits it's up to you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> > _... print some small cards with "No, I won't listen to your app idea"_

> _Dear Sir, Thank you for your proof of Fermat's Last Theorem. The first > error is on page _____._

This is said to be Hilbert or Landau. He had this printed on the cards and he would have an undergraduate to fill in the blank and mail it back to an author whenever a new proof of Fermat's Theorem was received :)

</comment><comment><USER53> I think this Cornell study fits in quite nicely with how you felt when people approached you with their idea for an app: [http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Aug11/ILRCreativityBias....](http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Aug11/ILRCreativityBias.html)

</comment><comment><USER19> Just out of curiosity, what would you advise these people who have ideas, but aren't technically proficient, to do? Is there a correct way to approach someone? Should they prepare something before talking to you to show they are serious (maybe a short write up, or a sketch)?

<comment><USER54> Yes. The number one, guaranteed way to get a developer's attention is to go and sell your idea. Literally. Sell the would-be product to someone and get a contract. Sure, that contract will be full of outs for the buyer, but it's still a contract.

Getting to this point is a lot of work. It means you will have thought things through. It means you will have talked to your customers. It means you _probably_ have mocked something up. You have probably invested a small amount of cash.

But mostly it means _someone will pay for it_ which elevates your idea from "nope - waste of time unless you give me $20k" to "ok, we may have something here".

If you want to pay market rates (cash), I'd say show up with a mockup. If you want to convince a developer to join you for equity, show up with a sale.

<comment><USER55> Quite.

Some years back, a guy named Bill and his buddy contacted a company making kit computers and said "we have a BASIC interpreter we'd like to sell you". The company said "a dozen others have said the same thing; we'll pay whoever delivers one." A few weeks later, Bill & pal delivered.

And thus Microsoft shipped its first product.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I like saying a variant of what the author says: "I probably won't have time to build it, but I can help you learn how to implement it yourself."

Sadly so far no one has taken up my offer. I can't help but feel that it's never I can't do it, but it's more like I can't be bothered with it.

</comment><comment><USER57> I'm not really bothered by the "I've got an idea for an app" lines so much as I'm bothered by the fact that web apps are seen as websites. So when someone says "I've got an idea for a website" to me they think I'm just going to write some html and call it a day.

</comment><comment><USER58> There are few people that can give you an idea to make you fall off your chair, and it's worth listening to 10,000 bad ideas to find someone with one good idea that can be executed, without actually causing you to execute yourself in the process.

</comment><comment><USER59> I was cringing until I got to the end to find that his advice was bang on.

The fable of the Lion and the Mouse is something I need to constantly remind myself (and others) of.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's exactly what I hoped to achieve, thanks for the kind words.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Good advice indeed. The process of analyzing ideas itself is implicitly difficult so, at the very least, it's nice to have an opportunity to hone that skill.

</comment><comment><USER61> "I've got an idea for an app", almost inevitably followed by..."I don't have any funding but I can offer a great equity deal".

<comment><USER62> Or, "It's sure to make millions of dollars, but the idea is so revolutionary and so top secret that I can't tell you anything about it until you agree to do all the work." Oy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> I've been on the flip side of the fence. I've had some ideas I was quite keen on, but then got them destroyed by experts in the field. When an expert like Chris tells you that you have a good idea, then you know you're onto something.

P.S. Chris, if you still want to make those business cards, here's a link to 50 free business cards - <http://efbuys.com/publishers/efactor/daily_deals/30088>

</comment><comment><USER64> I always listen to new ideas - even if I think the idea sucks initially, it's great to get my own creative juices flowing.

</comment><comment><USER44> Im inclined to believe that the original opinion of this article that ideas are worthwhile and execution is important (agreed!) has NEVER been an opinion of yours, rather someone has tried to talk sense into you before you embark on slave labor executing this idea from an idea man, perhaps in exchange for 50% of nothing. Too fishy.. But hey it solves that little conflict that's going on in your head now..

</comment><comment><USER65> What is the best alternative to those who think they have a good idea for an app?

</comment><comment><USER66> Most often peoples ideas pretty much require a server and a much more complicated pricing scheme than they think. When that's the case I explain that much, but you probably always loose when you do.

One of the most awkward moments was when I actually met with a friend and his friend about making an app. I only realized halfway through that they didn't have an idea, just a wish to make an app. A few hours of awkwardly groping for some tenuous b2b projects and we parted company.

</comment><comment><USER67> yet another useless post

</comment><comment><USER68> Chris: Y U no tell the idea?

<comment><AUTHOR> I would, but the guy asked me not to, and I respect that. I'm very open about my own ideas though ;).

<comment><USER69> So you're going to develop it? Or him?

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, I forgot to mention that. Yes, we're working on the roadmap now. It's going to be awesome!

<comment><USER44> Let guess 50% share of the company for executing this brain dead idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> At a risk of sounding horrible (I'm not), did you finish writing the article? I mean, if you don't listen to all ideas that people have to offer you, then you're bound to dismiss a good idea at some point.

<comment><USER71> Maybe you did not finish reading it?

".. That's when I decided: always listen to ideas .."</comment></comment>


Introducing the Blend font vulnerability - <AUTHOR> http://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2015/07/one-font-vulnerability-to-rule-them-all.html

<comment><USER2> Hmm, I wonder if a PDF file is actually needed for a font exploit. What about the trend of every fucking website now to ship their own fonts?

Also, lots of people simply pirate their fonts from googling around "fontname ttf free download", I wonder how much malware hides in these - given that I somewhere have around 16 or so copies of some exotic Adobe font in various formats, one buggier than the other.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like how you're thinking. Also, what about other things derived from the same codebase?

Like the article says... that code got _around_ back in the day.

<comment><USER2> Hiding malware in cracks or pirated content was usual on the warez forums 'round here.

US warez forums always seemed civil, cyberlocker links stayed up for years, malware was not common - German boards like boerse.bz (R.I.P.) and others had to invent "link crypters", websites hiding links to Rapidshare, Mega and other cyberlockers because the users from the boards would abuse-report each others' links. Or they'd invade other boards and post malware-loaded cracks.

<comment><USER3> Boerse moved to boerse.to and afaik there very much alive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "the attackers can choose from any of the existing file formats, most of which are extremely complex both structurally and semantically, making it very difficult to get them 100% right in implementation. If we also consider that a majority of the parsers were in a large part developed in C/C++ several decades ago, that they are easily reachable via numerous channels (websites, documents, USB sticks etc.), and that they support extensive, turing-complete virtual machine environments for running untrusted TTF/PostScript Charstring programs, it becomes clear that fonts are one of the best imaginable attack vectors..."

Would it be technically feasible to just throw out the old font formats and make a new, more limited format that's just a list of Bezier curves without all the Turing-complete stuff and rarely used features, then convert all the most widely used fonts, and finally schedule TTF for deprecation?

<comment><USER5> Those features are there because people need them. Also, any new standard runs into the xkcd 927 problem of "the one standard to rule them all actually becomes just one more standard trying to compete".

The fix is to de-turingify the font parsers. Put hard limits on how much resources any font script can use. There's probably a paper out there on how to virtualise just one part of your program - in this case the font rendering functions. Replace all function calls with RPC calls to a service running on a micro VM. If the VM crashes, pop up a message box "this font is bad" or something.

<comment><USER6> The feature causing the bug in this text is actually an experimental feature that was removed later on from the standard again and weren't really ever used.

The stack actually has a hard limit of 48 entries, but the code ensuring that the limits will be adhered to had bugs.

I see two problems with a VM approach: Font handling is performance critical code. You will have to do lots of input validation for the data that is produced, which actually is the reason for the bugs in the original code. Preventing a VM being exploited through executing it in another VM also seems kind of ironic.

What I think might be a good idea is to convert old formats/format versions into newer smaller formats/format versions inside a VM. This way you will still have speed, backward compatibility and you don't need to write additional input validation.

<comment><USER7> > What I think might be a good idea is to convert old formats/format versions > into newer smaller formats/format versions inside a VM.

Yeah, I like this. Like LLVM for fonts. Generate an intermediate representation inside a sandbox. Validate the IR. Output and cache a high- speed font for your platform. It might have all sorts of LLVM-like benefits in terms of compatibility and optimization, on top of the security win.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Fuck you, blogspot. Fuck you.

There's a table in the middle of the page. It's larger than my screen. Attempting to scroll it instead triggers navigation to another post entirely because assholes have taken over the web.

<comment> TD-Linux I have hit the back/forth swipes by accident countless times on blogspot. It makes pretty much any article there unreadable on mobile. Switching to Reader mode in Firefox is a fix, but shouldn't be necessary in 2015.

<comment><USER9> It is _because_ it's 2015 and people have taken a liking in using JavaScript to do awful things with design for no good reason.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> ok, i'm convinced. Adobe is a front for the NSA.

there is no other explanation. 9 out of 10 exploits exists because of adobe code.

<comment><USER11> some other scenarios:

1\. It is just staffed with mediocre engineers.

2\. Have bad QA practices.

3\. Low morale?

4\. Poor regard for their end customers?

5\. Bad management?

6\. Heavy focus on profits/revenue vs. quality?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Off topic, but does anyone know what's up with the "?hn_email_told_me_to_repost=true" in the url?

<comment><USER13> HN will treat a resubmission within a short enough time frame as an upvote of the original submission. Changing the URL parameters causes HN to treat the second submission as a new, unique submission. AIUI this is usually discouraged, but sometimes allowed if a good article disappears from /newest or the front page too quickly to get a fair chance at being upvoted and discussed.

<comment><USER14> > AIUI this is usually discouraged

It's only discouraged if the story has already had significant attention [1]. Otherwise, assuming the story is high-quality, it's a good thing to do, because it reduces the randomness in what gets traction on HN.

1\. See [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html).</comment></comment></comment>


Google Plots Course to Overtake Cloud Rivals - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-plots-course-to-overtake-cloud-rivals-11582383601 <comment><USER2> Not the Google Cloud but Firebase is by far the nicest experience I ever had with a "hosting" provider. It is a bit expensive but I think this proves that there are many low hanging fruits to gather out there.

It's essentially an API to access a streamlined database, file hosting, access provider and so on. Everything integrated and can talk to each other.

Not long ago I got fed up with endless tools and configuration in the LAMP/MEAN/MERN or whatever the latest trend is to put data somewhere and read it, so I got into native iOS development and I am loving it.

On the client-side, I have only two UI frameworks to deal with(UIKit and SwiftUI). On the backend side, I only deal with Firebase. You can do everything with those.

Honestly, I don't know why not all providers are essentially like Firebase. Surely for some scenarios, a custom solution would be needed but it strikes me as Firebase being the place that provides the structure and you plug your custom software to it.

That's why I am under the impression that at the end the gold rush for the cloud, the result would be something like Firebase.

What I would love though, if an open source self hostable Firebase alternative.

<comment><USER3> I love the idea of Firebase but the thing keeping me off it is the pricing. It's like regular cloud pricing on steroids. Comparing Firebase pricing to say a $5 droplet from DigitalOcean:

\- Bandwidth egress uses Google's standard pricing, which is hilariously uncompetitive (~0.12$/GB vs. ~0.01$/GB) and totally inappropriate for anything bandwidth-intensive like image hosting.

\- $5/month will get you 2.7M writes, 8.3M reads or 25M deletes on Firebase while Postgres running on a DigitalOcean droplet should be able to handle at least ~500 transactions a second, or ~1.3B per month.

\- A GB-month of RAM costs $6.48 on Firebase and is included as part of the $5 droplet from DO.

\- A month of CPU time costs $25.92 on Firebase and is included as part of the $5 droplet from DO.

So a $5 DO droplet will give you 1GB-month, 1 CPU-month, 1.3B write transactions and 1TB of bandwidth.

For those same resources you'd pay $6.48 for RAM, $25.92 for CPU time, $2332 for 1.3B writes, and $120 for bandwidth, for a total of $2484.40, or 497x more. Even if you just look at the CPU and RAM, it's 6x more expensive.

I can imagine this being great for a pet project where you might only use a few minutes of CPU time each month but for any kind of scale, the resource costs just seem crazy.

<comment><USER4> Are you equating one droplet with no redundancy or scalability to Firebase's services? Also, will postgres sustain 500 transactions/sec for a month to reach 1.3B. Sounds like serious stretch to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Microsoft is pushing Azure _hard_. Not to disclose specifics but there are cases where deals with Microsoft for unrelated things are reliant on the company adopting/moving parts of their work to Azure, with _huge_ amounts of free credits for the first year as a sweetener. It's not in writing on contracts but it's very much a requirement.

I'm not sure how they can hope to become the number 2 cloud provider when pitted against that. Say what you want about Microsoft but they are in a really good position to take large chunks of the enterprise cloud market, and that's where the money is.

<comment><USER6> A lot of the Microsoft Azure stuff is simply because companies do large volume deals with Microsoft for Windows/Office/Sharepoint and Azure becomes a piggyback. "Well we are paying Microsoft millions of dollars anyway, why not use their cloud too?".

Google could solve this by fixing Linux on the desktop, or essentially making as many parts of ChromeOS open as possible. With Windows 10's bloatware, Microsoft has made many missteps – a Google Linux that looks and works like a Mac, and has native G Suite as well as meaningful GCP integrations would be an Azure-killing app. Unfortunately chances seem very slim that Google will ever have the imagination to do something like this.

<comment><USER7> > A lot of the Microsoft Azure stuff is simply because companies do large > volume deals with Microsoft for Windows/Office/Sharepoint and Azure becomes > a piggyback. "Well we are paying Microsoft millions of dollars anyway, why > not use their cloud too?

It's not just about licensing fees - it's also practicality. That, and Azure is actually really good (relative to the other major players, GCP and AWS).

If you're a Microsoft-shop, you use Active Directory. Naturally, Azure Active Directory (AAD) works well with your existing on-prem AD deployment, so with very little effort, your employees get SSO for your shiny new cloud services.

<comment><USER8> _> That, and Azure is actually really good_

This doesn't match my experience at all, from the inconsistent and weird horizontally-expanding OG-Xbox blades user interface to thrown-over-the-wall API libraries[0] to Azure AD being a complete waste of time and effort if you don't want them owning your entire directory (I'm sorry, I have to pay for _Office or separate API access_ to manage users through Okta?) to real fun stuff like servers not recording restart or shutdown events in their audit logs if they were under load.

In fairness, I will say one nice thing about Azure: their CLI tools, under Powershell, are pretty good. I was impressed. Powershell Core is _not_ , however, a good experience on a Linux machine, and while WSL2 is a lot better it's still not replacing my normal day-job workflow.

But it's been over a year since I had to use the comprehensively bad clusterfuck that is Azure, and honestly I'm still pretty mad about the experience. Azure is the one cloud provider that a company can't pay me enough money to work with. Well, one of two; there's also IBM Cloud, which, whoa- nope.

[0] - [https://github.com/AzureAD/azure-activedirectory-library- for...](https://github.com/AzureAD/azure-activedirectory-library-for- ruby/issues/61)

<comment><USER9> > weird horizontally-expanding OG-Xbox blades user interface

God do I hate this. I've given up hope that I'll get used to it at this point. I have yet to even figure out how it's _supposed_ to help me, let alone find a way that it actually does. It's so very weird to seemingly no purpose. And someone had to put in a ton of effort to make it that way!

... but then I kinda hate all of the big 3 cloud web UIs.

<comment><USER8> I don't like Amazon's, though the incremental spread of their redesigns is helping. GCP's is okay. But Azure's is straight-up bad. And you're right--I can't for the life of me figure out _why_ they did that.

I have been told, too, that the team that made it is very pleased with it. "Why" comes to mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I hope part of their plan is fixing their documentation. Their documentation is crap and they can't win if they don't fix it. Apparently GCP technical writers have not been tasked with creating task/goal oriented documents. For grins, look up how to create a load balancer. You'll find 5 different articles. There won't be one containing the specific instructions you're looking for. The whole thing needs to be torn out by the roots and recreated around achieving specific results. They are unlikely to do this, so they are unlikely to catch up let alone win.

<comment><USER11> It's so abundantly clear that most documentation writers at google have NEVER used their own products in production (nor do they ever intend to).

This is how I imagine their meetings to discuss this goes:

"Users leave our documentation pages in under 15 seconds! Our documentation is so clear and efficient! For some reason their hardware analytics show that the device falls 20 meters and shuts down afterwards, but that is surely an unrelated event!"

<comment><USER12> Honestly most techdoc writers have never really used their products in production. You are lucky if they have built their own test and sample apps.

So the solution is having the engineers building the service write the documentation right? Wrong. They also don't know what assumptions a real customer makes and how they would use it. Quite likely they too don't understand real external production use.

Writing technical documentation is hard.

<comment><USER13> "Writing technical documentation is hard."

So true. Good documentation can make or break a platform. I think a big part of the success of C++ is that Stroustrup is an excellent writer. A lot of the posts I have seen from Linus were also very well written. In the 90s Apple had documentation that seemed written by people who actually knew how to develop software. Nowadays it feels less so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I still don't understand why companies like Microsoft and Google hire folks from Oracle to run a cloud business. Oracle is the only player that can't do anything on the cloud; even IBM has a better game.

<comment><USER15> Because good people sometimes end up working for bad companies and want a way out?

<comment><USER16> Yup. Many of them didn't even choose to work for "bad" companies: eg. Oracle made tons of acquisitions, including Sun.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> [https://archive.md/mGtdw](https://archive.md/mGtdw)

</comment><comment><USER18> I think a good start would be building a reputation for decent support and longevity, but surprisingly they seem to be going in exactly the opposite direction.

<comment><USER19> Building a reputation takes a long time.

They have already built a reputation for being capricious with support and sloppy with documentation.

Re-doing a reputation is even harder than building one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is something Google cannot abandon or be complacent about. Cloud is their turf and they ceded it to AWS and then Microsoft.

</comment><comment><USER21> Easy. Cut bandwidth costs. Even just putting everyone at the lowest price and removing all tiers would change the market completely.

<comment><USER22> The bulk of the customers generating the $40 billion per year for AWS do not care enough about bandwidth (transfer) costs for it to change the market completely. While it may be in the top ten as a consideration on cost, it's nowhere near the top.

All Google would do by slashing transfer pricing is lure a lot of low value customers - and worse - to their shores and harm their service in the process.

It's a benefit to the cloud majors to keep transfer costs artificially high, which is why none of them have pulled the trigger on that competitive angle. It helps keep various types of low value + high abuse risk customers out and of course the transfer pricing is a profit center. Google isn't eager / desperate to saturate its services with terrible customers any more than the other large providers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Documentation just needs some serious work. Though been a while since I last went digging, so maybe it's improved.

</comment><comment><USER24> if a cloud provider out of the big 3 adds hard limit budget (taking down the service) so I don't have to worry about getting a 100k bill if I fuck up and not turn off some service before I go to a 2 month vacation, they can take all my money.

<comment><USER25> You can do this on GCP programmatically. [https://cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how- to/notify#cap_disa...](https://cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how- to/notify#cap_disable_billing_to_stop_usage)

<comment><USER24> How hard is it to turn this into a checkbox in their billing page?

<comment><USER25> This is clearly not a recommended process. GCP probably does not want a user to check the box and not understand the consequences given how severe they could be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> How do they plan on doing that if they've downsized the group recently?

<comment><USER27> Engineers are why things take so long to build. Without engineers things will build faster.

<comment><USER13> To some degree that's true. Less engineers definitely can speed things up if they get autonomy.

At my company there are a lot of people talking about work, doing planning, scheduling and whatever. They don't contribute much but also hold the engineers up with constant information requests.

<comment><USER28> The days of autonomy for engineers at Google is over.

At this point product managers fight for their ideas to be implemented so that they can get promoted, even if it's an inferiour solution.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: SameTime – Video chat while sharing video, photos and browsing together - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/sametime-video-chat-on-steroids/id1146689962 <comment><USER2> The name may be a trademark violation:

[http://www-03.ibm.com/software/products/en/ibmsame](http://www-03.ibm.com/software/products/en/ibmsame)

</comment><comment><USER3> cool idea, think you could come up with a better name though.</comment>


Twin Cities Doctor Creates $50 EpiPen Alternative - <AUTHOR> http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2016/09/13/epipen-alternative/ <comment><USER2> Impossible! Many here on HN have proclaimed the only way to deal with Mylan's price hike is regulation. If this low-cost alternative does not make it to market in a speedy fashion there is only the government and it's regulations to blame.</comment>