When Will Coronavirus Social Distancing Be Over? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/03/coronavirus-social-distancing-over-back-to-normal/608752/ <comment><USER3> Long before things are completely back to normal, we'll have a "new normal" that allows businesses to reopen under strict anti-virus protocols.

We can't do it in North America yet because we don't have enough masks, gloves and other PPE.

Example from China: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddx_z1Qtn9w&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddx_z1Qtn9w&feature=youtu.be)

<comment><USER4> This. There are many possible scenarios how to end the shutdown, not one is back to normal on Monday.

<comment><USER5> > not one is back to normal on Monday

No one in the US seriously believe this right? You're all behind schedule and the worst have yet to come. As far I understand, there are many places in the US where a lockdown/quarantine hasn't even taken place yet, so count on a couple of months before things get back to normal.

<comment><USER6> Unfortunately, the belief that everything will be back to normal by Easter is coming from the President.

<comment><USER5> Heh, I guess you get what you vote for

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The words "contact" and "tracing" didn't even appear once in the article. Are people outside of Asia not even considering test'n'trace as a possibility? Privacy concerns aside, it seems like an effective way to save lives without forcing everyone to stay home indefinitely.

<comment><USER8> Contact tracing is, as far as I've read, the very first strategy initiated by most Western governments and health organisations. In the early stages of reported cases.

As it stands, my country is still in relatively early stages compared to many others, and contact tracing became unviable as a first defence well over a week ago. Over 60% of our cases are community transmission.

We're still doing contact tracing, it's probably worthwhile, but it's not going to be a major factor in mitigation.

<comment><USER7> What about contact tracing apps? Tracing won't work unless you know who was nearby each infected person. It's difficult to find that info unless a big portion of people are using a tracker app. Is that sort of thing happening where you are?

<comment><USER8> It's been announced here (Ireland), though the official government contact- tracing app is as yet unreleased. It's believed to be a based on Singapore's BTLE one.

It's largely irrelevant though. As much as it may help a little, this just isn't manageable through contact tracing. While Singapore are being lauded for their CT approach, they've still largely been successful in their efforts due to social distancing (and a culture of widespread adherance), along with things like widespread testing, and effective govt. communication of data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If I understand it right, in a "perfect universe" if every person was able to stay home for 14 days and also perfectly avoided infecting anyone then the virus would effectively have died off. The 14 day's might not be the exact time required but it illustrates a concept. We of course can't uphold that perfect universe. So we're stuck using that technique to slow it's roll enough that it won't overwhelm and kill like 3% of 7 billion people in addition to the usual attrition rate.

<comment><USER10> It's interesting to think about how many other viruses would perish if there were no new hosts for them to live in. Maybe we should start doing this every year as a sort of cleansing of viruses? 3 weeks in February - <USER2> weeks. Every year.

<comment><USER11> It's not going to work. This should be done worldwide and you need some interaction for people to be able to live.

<comment><USER9> It's doable with a year of planning and social initiative. But we'd also need a sea change in our laws to make it not a yearly recession.

<comment><USER12> I wonder if you could do it as a kind of near universal social and economic time-out? Let's say it starts on a Sunday night and is to last for two weeks.

What happens is that everything starting Monday is pushed back two weeks. Stock markets close. Non-essential workers stay home. Non-essentially businesses close.

During the two weeks, government pays for everyone's utilities, food, rent, and so on, both for people and companies.

The idea is to as much as possible pause the normal economy for a couple of weeks, and then resume it hopefully pretty much right where it left off, with the government seeing to everyone's needs during the economic pause.

Do this once a year as a readiness exercise, probably trying to time it around when that year's flu season is getting serious so that it may also help reduce the intensity of flu season.

Over the years, the government should over fund this to build up a cushion, so that whenever the next pandemic comes around they have enough to do longer than a two week pause if necessary.

<comment><USER13> I am not a microbiologist, but I'm not confident that this "three week annual quarantine" even works in an ideal world, much less the imperfect world that we actually live in.

Is it a guarantee that 100.0000000000% of the population will eliminate the virus with their own immune system in three weeks? If one or two people with poor immune systems carry around the virus for one day past the quarantine then we we would very quickly have gotten back to where we started.

It's also implausible to quarantine everyone for the same three week period. Are we just supposed to let anyone with a major health crisis die at home if it happens mid-quarantine? What would we do about the millions of people who require round the clock care in nursing facilities, etc.?

Additionally, I'm willing to bet that if we dedicated 5.8% of worldwide GDP (21 days out of 365) to fighting viruses, the results would be much more successful and less invasive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My wife is already talking about moving out of the city to get a bit of space and it's only been two weeks indoors for us. Anecdotal, of course, I think the desire to be away from others is going to persist a while.

<comment><USER9> Interesting. I wonder how prevalent and deep such reflections will be upon people after this.

It's possibly the best thing we could have done for the people who claim to be ok with the standard of pollution and climate change baked into an oil based civilization. Like pulling your hand out of a warm bath of water it's been soaking in for a few seconds and plunging it back in the same water feels much warmer.

<comment><USER15> Density of human development also has benefits, though. The US lifestyle is especially bad at some of this. People think that their car-centric suburban or exurban life is away from chaos and closer to nature, but actually, they are driving their cars everywhere, increasing costs of getting goods to them, destroying the planet in the process.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The crux of the article: "The answer is simple, if not exactly satisfying: when enough of the population—possibly 60 or 80 percent of people—is resistant to COVID-19"

But then in the next paragraph nonchalantly says "though we don't yet know if recovering from the disease confers any immunity at all"

I'm not sure sure how articles like these get published.

<comment><USER17> I mean, that makes perfect sense. Itll stop when people are resistant. Are people becoming resistant? We dont know. Its presenting the state of things, and that includes uncertainty

<comment><USER18> It's a very misleading sense of uncertainty. There's every reason to believe people gain long-lasting immunity, and no way to concretely prove it right now. No public health authority is seriously considering the possibility that survivors aren't immune.

<comment><USER5> In general, in science, if you're uncertain, you're considering everything, even that survivors might not be immune. There is every reason to assume anything can be possible right now, as we don't have enough data. Once we have data, you can start to reason and consider things, but we're not there yet.

<comment><USER18> I just don't think that's true. Every infectious disease expert I've seen has been very confident that survivors gain long-lasting immunity, based on their knowledge of how other coronaviruses and diseases in general work. We don't have a ton of specific data about this specific virus, but it's not accurate to say we know nothing at all.

Even if it were true, there are decisions about strategy and response that must be made now and can't wait for data to come in, and those decisions are being made under the presumption that survivors become immune.

<comment><USER5> > it's not accurate to say we know nothing at all

No one is saying this. We do know things about viruses in general, but again, don't have enough data about this particular one to say anything for sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> When people break not when policy dictates. People get complacent once numbers go down and there seems like containment which looks to be happening in Korean and Hong Kong.

Young adults living in cramped share houses in a city aren't going to stay in for the summer or go celibate for the months decision makers are thinking. At least in dense urban areas, there's too much quality of life disparities for long term behavior change like this to be feasible.

IMO Social distancing is to buy a few precious months max for logistics and medical system to prepare. Pretty soon economic stress exceeds fear of the disease. The financial aid package in most of the countries that can afford it leaves a lot of people behind.

</comment><comment><USER20> If it lasts too long then it'll be over when people grow tired of it. People will weigh the risk/rewards and decide for themselves. If the authorities are not able to control the initial trickle then the dam will burst and people will decide what to do themselves. There's a very thin line of control of this whole issue.

</comment><comment><USER11> From CNN FAQ [1]

"How long will we have to keep social distancing? Probably for several months. But you might have to do it "over and over again," since the outbreak could come in waves.

Research by the Imperial College in Great Britain "would suggest you have to institute these kinds of measures for five months, very vigorously," said Dr. Celine Gounder, an infectious disease specialist at Bellevue Hospital Center.

"And then you may be able to relax for a period. And then you would re- institute as the cases go up again. But we're basically looking at doing this over and over and over again, even after a five-month period of strict social distancing, in order to curb cases until we have a vaccine."

Health officials say we're at least a year away from the first publicly available coronavirus vaccine. In the meantime, they say everyone should avoid large crowds and stay at least 6 feet away from others."

I hope we can relax the lockdown and still get satisfying results (following some Pareto's principle). For instance, avoiding indoor events maybe a good measure. But avoiding people to go exercise outside isn't really needed? Also, hopefully we'll get masks and tests in a near future and that we'll make it easier to contain the virus too.

[1] [https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2020/health/coronavirus-...](https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2020/health/coronavirus- questions-answers/)

<comment><USER18> I think they're taking the Imperial model with more credulity than is warranted here. Social distancing for 5 months was the suppression scenario the paper considered, but I don't think anyone believes the current set of severe restrictions could be sustained for that long. 5 months of a ban on large events, maybe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think a worst case scenario is one in which:

\- The virus becomes seasonal, like the flu

\- Like the flu, every year there are new strains (so surviving it doesn't grant immunity)

\- And we're unable to develop a vaccine for it

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong but this scenario implies that the situation we're in now becomes the new normal. Every year, we'll lose an additional percentage of our elderly and those with pre-existing conditions. Medical systems will either be ground down by repeated surges, economies will be ground down by enforced social distancing, or both.

What else would be in the cards?

<comment><USER22> > Like the flu, every year there are new strains (so surviving it doesn't > grant immunity)

Even if it mutates, the immune systems of people who recovered from it this year will still be able to fight it much better next year, because they've learned how to fight that kind of virus. This is why even though the flu mutates every year, it isn't particularly lethal: our bodies have learned how to fight that kind of virus.

If however one were to take the flu to e.g. an uncontacted tribe who'd never encountered influenza before, it'd completely devastate them, much as how viruses from European settlers were estimated to have killed a double-digit percentage of the native American peoples.

<comment><USER23> We don't develop immunity to other coronaviruses such as the common cold, so I don't think we can assume we will for this one.

<comment><USER24> We do develop immunity to other coronaviruses such as the ones causing common cold - thing is, there are so many different viruses (some of them are coronaviruses, some not - there's a huge variety) causing similar symptoms, so we don't even attempt to diagnose _which_ of the many common-cold-group viruses you have because we don't care; but you do develop immunity against that particular single virus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Worthless article. Basically says 1-month to years. Well thanks Sherlock.

<comment><USER17> The article is giving you the answer to the question. The real world has this thing called uncertainty. There are a lot of different ways things could go, amd if the article said itll be uber in 4 months exactly, that would be total bull. If the only thing people consider "worthy" reporting is reporting that oversimplifies hard questions and pretends there no uncertainty to give simple, pleasing and wrong answers, and the reporting people consider "worthless" are articles that grapple with the complexity of a situation ultimately leading to unsatisfying answers but with a sense of why its unsatisfying, well, that would make sense with what news reporting looks like today.

<comment><USER26> I didn't need an article to tell me _" dunno lol"_. I knew I didn't know already.

<comment><USER27> > I didn't need an article to tell me " _dunno lol_ ". I knew I didn't know > already.

But I think a lot of people _don 't_ know that they don't know. There are lots of problems where the scientific consensus is in, but the will isn't there to implement it—whether due to denial of the science or to fear of the costs. This is a situation where the scientific consensus _isn 't_ in; no-one knows for sure—and that's not a state in which the modern person is used to living, or realising they're living.

<comment><USER26> > _But I think a lot of people don 't know they don't know_

I think that's generally true, but probably not in this particular case. In any case, the answer of _" We don't know"_ is only three words long and could have been put in the headline, but then it wouldn't have been exploitative clickbait...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> No one really needs to be near other people. I think just keep it going. A lot of industries really aren't essential to life. Maybe we should question why we need them. Theme parks, sports, gyms.

<comment><USER29> Physiologically, no, we don't. Psychologically? I think there will be issues. For your sports example, there is definitely a primal need being fulfilled, otherwise athletic competitions would not have existed in ancient times. It's true that many industries aren't essential to life. That doesn't mean they're not essential to wellbeing.

<comment><USER27> > Physiologically, no, we don't.

The grandparent mentions gyms as one of these non-essential institutions, and they or their equivalent _are_ something we need even physiologically. The impacts on health of not being able to get out and move regularly, much less to have serious exercise, are going to worsen the already serious problem of obesity.

<comment><USER29> To be fair, you don't need a gym to get out and move regularly or have serious exercise. Lot of people just got in the park every day, and plenty of exercises exist that use only body weight for strength training. You're not going to become Arnie in his prime, but you'll be fit.

<comment><USER27> I agree that there are things one _can_ do (and I do get out in the park as often as convenient, but social distancing there is hard), but are there things one _will_ do? I'm in reasonably good shape from indoor climbing, but that only works because I like doing it so much that I don't notice I'm exercising. So far, the inertia of having to set up a body-weight routine (rather than continue with my existing climbing-gym routine) has kept me constantly attending to other things first, so barely active. And that's someone with a habit of physical activity who really dislikes having to skip the routines—so what about those people without such a habit?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Technical Specification for the Delivery of Television Programs to the BBC [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://dpp-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/specs/bbc/TechnicalDeliveryStandardsBBCFile.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> The actual document title is "TECHNICAL SPECIFICATION FOR THE DELIVERY OF TELEVISION PROGRAMMES AS AS-11 FILES TO THE BBC". I shortened it and used the American spelling of "programmes" in order to fit the title length limit.

</comment><comment><USER2> See also: Netflix | Partner Help Center SPECIFICATIONS & GUIDES [https://partnerhelp.netflixstudios.com/hc/en- us/categories/2...](https://partnerhelp.netflixstudios.com/hc/en- us/categories/202282037-SPECIFICATIONS-GUIDES)

Previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14612537](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14612537)

<comment><USER3> I found the subtitle ("Timed Text") style guides interesting, with instructions ranging from e.g. "When Americans "love" or "hate" something, it is enough to "like" or "dislike" in Finnish" to more obvious "Use a comma for decimals: 1,5 not 1.5".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This covers pre-made programs, like Doctor Who or whatever.

For live, or near-live, programs, the standard is [http://dpp- assets.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/specs/...](http://dpp- assets.s3.amazonaws.com/wp- content/uploads/specs/bbc/TechnicalDeliveryStandardsClosetoTXBBC.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER5> I like how TG4 has agreed to this standard, but RTE has not.

It's probably something really minor they disagree about, or they just haven't gotten around to it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Interesting, and feels like every editor of the BBC needs to have more than a basic knowledge / usage of these technical matters. So for example be able to inspect what every piece of software is doing with the content.</comment>


World's Fastest Supercomputer Is In China - <AUTHOR> http://blog.arpitnext.com/2010/11/tianhe-world-fastest-super-computer.html <comment><USER2> Good to know it hasn't moved...

[http://articles.cnn.com/2010-10-28/tech/china.supercomputer....](http://articles.cnn.com/2010-10-28/tech/china.supercomputer.mashable_1_fastest- supercomputer-supercomputing-power-fastest-computer?_s=PM:TECH)

[http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/10/made-i...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/10/made- in-china-the-fastest-computer-in-the-world/65326/)</comment>


Only way to have an open and free Internet is to keep government's hands off - <AUTHOR> http://www.objectobot.com/?p=891

<comment><USER2> Thanks for bringing this hilarious parody website to our attention :)</comment>


When your startup fails - <AUTHOR> http://tech.co/when-your-startup-fails-2013-06

<comment><USER2> This is a really interesting article!</comment>


Python logging 101 - <AUTHOR> http://plumberjack.blogspot.com/2009/09/python-logging-101.html

<comment><AUTHOR> More in-depth information is available at: <http://docs.python.org/library/logging.html></comment>


Ask HN: What are your thoughts on Berkeley's DL Bootcamp? - <AUTHOR> If selected do you think it is worth going to?  Also, do you guys have experience with previous bootcamps - if so - how were they in content and networking opportunities? <comment><USER2> Do you mean their Deep RL Bootcamp?

I haven't been, but it would probably be interesting, and you'd probably meet some interesting people, but Reinforcement Learning in general hasn't really shown a lot of success in industry applications yet, so I wouldn't expect to get a tonne of professional use out of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I they have a new one this summer. Is a full stack deep learning boot camp. 3 days for 2400.</comment></comment>


Concepts: The Next Major Change Coming to C++ - <AUTHOR> https://www.inversepalindrome.com/blog/2018/9/26/concepts <comment><USER2> I feel like the way C++ is going, it's getting around to doing what Java did better ten years ago. This article seems to be describing a (still verbose) C++ version of a Java Interface. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯</comment>


Shots fired at Rosario City Council: "Don't mess with the mafia" - <AUTHOR> https://argentinareports.com/shots-fired-at-rosario-city-council-dont-mess-with-the-mafia/ <comment><USER2> Argentina no doubt has its problems, but don't let this inform your entire impression of the country. I lived in Buenos Aires in 2013 and routinely felt safer walking around the streets at night than I have in large US metros like Chicago and Philadelphia. (Granted, part of this was due to the fact that I speak Spanish and could pass as a local until people heard my accent.)

In my opinion, Argentina is one of the most underrated travel destinations in the world. Diverse landscapes, from Patagonia and glaciers in the south to the desert near Salta in the north. Buenos Aires is a world-class city with great culture, art, restaurants, cafes, bars, etc.

Plus side for visitors from the States or Europe - the weak currency & inflation there, while terrible for locals, makes the cost of living very cheap. You can enjoy an amazing steakhouse meal with bottles of wine for ~$20-25 per person, get a great Airbnb in the best part of town for $40/night, etc.

If I ever were to transition to fully remote work I'd live in BA ~2-3 months out of the year in a heartbeat.

<comment><USER3> Completely agree. Im a software engineer and live in Argentina and host hundreds of guests through 3 airbnbs. Everybody who comes says the same thing as you

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It actually says don't f*ck with the mafia... for those who care.

<comment><USER5> That's odd. Why did they write "f*ck" instead of "fuck"?

<comment><USER6> They were trying to be l33t......

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ah, the people are getting tired of the Colombian cartel screwing even more with Rosario. Too bad most key people in the govt are in one way or another in cahoots with them. No wonder why Rosario is the death capital of the country.

To anyone thinking about visiting Argentina I humbly encourage to visit r/argentina and look for threads on the subject or just ask right away.</comment>


An Open Letter To Those Not Employed At Instagram  - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/15/an-open-letter-to-those-not-employed-at-instagram/ <comment><USER3> "Instagram's competitive advantage comes from being first."

Actually, Facebook was first. They've been calling themselves the biggest & best photo sharing app for quite some time now; long before Instagram existed. By this Author's logic, Instagram shouldn't have bothered.

Being first is good, but being great is better. That was the motivation behind the Mac OS, the iPhone, the iPad, etc, right? None of those things were the first in their categories.

<comment><USER4> I started mobile photo sharing site Mobog.com in 2003. Instagram was executed about 10,000% better.

<http://mobog.com>

<comment> mkr-hn Your site was ahead of its time. Instagram had 7 years of improvements in the state of mobile hardware and software to build on top of.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Enterprise sales has its own set of issues which lead to generally a long sales cycle.

Corporate inertia, difficulties finding key decision makers, the start-up stigma (no big company wants to be reliant on a start-up that might not be around in a year's time.)

These roadblocks make it difficult for enterprise-focused start-ups to diagnose lack of traction. Is it product? Distribution? Market?

These issues aren't as pronounced in consumer internet start-ups. The end-user is your target (not some manager who will never use/understand the product), and fortunately around here, users are willing to try most anything. Think of how many apps you have downloaded that you don't use anymore.

Start-ups are inherently hard, and each market has its own set of challenges.

</comment><comment><USER6> I honestly can't remember the last time someone cited "first-mover advantage" when talking about startups.

I'm genuinely surprised to see it writ here about a _photo-sharing_ app.

<comment><USER7> And not even a mention of Hipstamatic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Google wasn't first. Facebook wasn't first. They both make their money from consumers, and guess what? They're doing a pretty good job at it.

And from the author's viewpoint (Instagram is just "a few filters [...] a few sharing options") Instagram wasn't first either; Hipstamatic was doing the same thing way before them, with a different business model.

</comment><comment><USER9> It is nonsense. The Internet is slowly, but firmly diminishing the mysterious enterprise market, not the other way around. It is the same analogy why middleman (brokers) slowly eroded by the same force.

I will start from the middleman market. Middlemen are all about information asymmetry. i.e. someone knows something that others don't. The knowledge freedom that the Internet provides largely destroyed the asymmetry (knowledge gap). It is no secret that now you don't need a middleman to "brand" your music/film/video game. Instead, the leverage of social network (Twitter, Facebook, reddit etc.) enable one to market himself directly or at lower cost. That's why currently music/movie industry is under attack from two sides, both the production and the consumption. They can control neither. And this is the death of middleman market.

The same analogy can apply to enterprise market. Traditionally, it requires a long cycle to negotiating and shipping product to selected few big corps. At that case, the leverage is "information asymmetry" as well. That's why you cannot find a price quote on IBM's supercomputers, or any enterprise software/hardware. But, it is transforming too. The ubiquitous openness and flatness provided by the Internet making such man-made "information asymmetry" useless. And traditionally "consumer-facing hardware/software can penetrate enterprise market as well. That's why RIM is losing in enterprise market to Apple, and that's why Intuit is taking over accounting software market.

P.S. I am considering product for small businesses as consumer-facing product as well since it serves sufficient many customers comparing to traditionally- defined "enterprise market".

<comment><USER10> 'The main reason middlemen exist is information asymmetry'

I don't think so. The main reason middlemen exist is because there are many , many things people just couldn't be bothered to do themselves.

<comment><USER9> That's why you have computer now. If no one want to do it, then it can be automated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This "op-ed" completely ignores the negative aspects of working on enterprise software. Much of the work isn't very interesting to tech/design aficionados since a lot of the problems being solved are more about capturing and making business processes more efficient rather than technology or design challenges. You mostly work with more mature technologies since Fortune 500 CIO types typically have an aversion to the latest cutting edge technology and would rather go with something tried and true. And the marketing and sales (and often times the deployment) of enterprise software is still slow, inefficient, and bloated -- think sales VPs and CIOs on exotic golf outings.

</comment><comment><USER12> I've come to realize that the distinction between enterprise and consumer is trivial. There is one basic rule for all businsses: solve a problem that is important to someone. Wanting your phone's pictures to look better turns out to be a valuable problem for many people. One nice thing about the enterprise space is that there is a tradition of paying for things of value. But instagram's lack of paying users does not imply a lack of value being added. And there's almost always a way to monetize a product that is important to someone.

Perhaps a more direct message from this article could have been: "Just because you target consumers doesn't mean you can avoid solving an important problem". Consumer products fail for the same reason enterprise ones do: their products are not important to anyone.

<comment><USER13> > But instagram's lack of paying users does not imply a lack of value being > added. And there's almost always a way to monetize a product that is > important to someone.

Whoa, hang on a sec there. Do you really believe that is true? If it is, then why couldn't Instagram make money from the app itself? If they could, why didn't they?

I'm pretty sure that if I bake cookies and go hand them out, people will take them. Knowing that people will consume my cookies in large quantities if I give them away is a long way from creating a successful, sustainable business out of the popularity of my free cookies. I'm sure my cookies are important to the people to whom I am giving them, but does that mean that I can monetize my free cookies in ways other than charging for the cookies? I doubt it. But let's be honest, that's exactly what we're talking about here- giving away a useful service with the assumption that I can make money by doing something else related to the service in the future. I still don't understand why these economics apply to internet companies and not more traditional companies, but I guess I am just old-fashioned.

<comment><USER14> Instagram is a media company. They're only just now reaching a size where their audience is big enough for advertisers to care.

It's not just Internet companies that do this - practically all media start out in the red and don't make money for at least a couple of years. CNN, as an old media example, basically gave away advertising for its first several years of existence.

<comment><USER13> But that's not what happened here. Instagram, to my knowledge, has never made a penny off of advertising. There is no clear business model. Maybe it's advertising. Maybe it's charging for additional filters. Nobody really knows, not the Instagram founders and not Facebook executives.

How does anybody know whether a business would pay for advertising on a photo sharing app? People are always talking about "just turning on the profit spigot" whenever you want. I don't see any evidence that it is that easy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So wait, you're saying a business is supposed to make money by selling something? You just blew my mind. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that what you are professing here applies to other businesses that have nothing to do with enterprise software. Or any software for that matter. In fact, I am going to go so far as to suggest that there are only three businesses set up to not make money- social media-related startups, government programs, and charities. If you are not starting a social network/gaming/photo- sharing/location-like thing, this Instagram acquisition story should pass you by like a ship in the night.

<comment><USER14> You forgot media companies. They don't make money out of the gate either, and often not for several years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Articles like this annoy me. I just don't see many developers or startups being dumb enough to think they will actually be bought out by the companies listed (even with a large user base).

It's _kind_ of like American Idol or X Factor; yeah there is a small chance of making it big, but most realise that the competition is tough and monetising startups can be very hard. Not like that is anything to worry about when being bought out, so it seems...

<comment><USER16> I think American Idol is a really good analogy. Companies like Instagram and OMGPOP are not technical wonders nor do they have great business plans. Hell, even the ideas of their _winning_ apps are not new. But they won the popularity contest and thus cashed out. They CEOs instantly becoming the tech worlds equivalent of pop stars.

There is a more interesting question for investors and observers: Is this trend permanent or is it signalling that we are in another bubble that will one day collapse? If these companies lose their popularity is their value zero? Popularity is a volatile thing to ride billions of dollars on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> If Instagram is an anecdote , then what are Reddit, OMGPOP, NewToys etc etc? How about 37 signals etc? A billion dollar exit is not the only reason to start a company or work for a startup

<comment><USER18> _A billion dollar exit is not the only reason to start a company or work for a startup_

That's actually what I got from the editorial. A billion dollars shouldn't be your motivation to bootstrap a startup or look to VCs to turn a hobby project into a fledgling company, because 99.5% of the time you'll be disappointed in your constant stream of failure. There are reasons people start companies. If your reason is to get bought out for a billion, you might want to rethink your goals.

A billion dollars can happen, and you might want to look forward to it, but in the mean time you'll need to figure out how to get your first 10 customers to fork over some money so you can pay your webhost or landlord in order to fight another month.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Something mildly condescending and irritatingly simplistic about this article... I understand his loose attempt at the general point about enterprise customer base and enterprise valuation.

But great companies exist _despite_ "intellectual property" (another loose term), not because of it, especially in the realm of software - i.e. it simply is not the driving concern for _creating_ either a great enterprise or startup! Think about it...

The author also seems to have completely ignored disruptive technologies and applications of them, i.e. it is not about being first for the sake of it - look at Xerox etc.

</comment><comment><USER20> As others said, instagram wasn't the first to do this, and that is certainly not why they were bought out for 1 billion or why so many users adopted the service. Instagram didn't fill a huge gap, they made something people wanted to use. The article misses a couple beats, but I don't think the focus of it is completely misguided. A valuation and a buy out like this does not happen very often, and when it does happen, it draws the wrong kind of attention. All of a sudden a lot of people think they can do the exact same thing, that they can spend some time on the weekend and release a better version of instagram, then BAM money--fame. It's just now how things work.

I don't think instagram is completely invulnerable to the market. As a user of it, I'd happily adopt a different service that did the exact same thing better, and I don't think I'm alone. So in that sense, this article misses the mark. But I'd rather read this article than one that tells people they can do it too. It's a once-and-a-lifetime valuation. The service itself may be reproduceable but the results far from it, and in that vein the article speaks the truth. Your time is better spent elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER21> The first mover advantage is the way we describe winning products (value propositions) in hindsight. They are almost never, ever temporally first in any regard except the first to bundle together the right set of experiences.

</comment><comment><USER22> DailyBooth was first to this 'just photos' social network scene. I just don't know what happened to them.

Before, I'll say first to execute well wins. But I thought DailyBooth did well.

Maybe they did not take mobile as very important?

</comment><comment><USER23> Good God, another Instagram article?

</comment><comment> excuse-me So did instagram really get $1Bn?

Or did the VCs who own Instagram also own Facebook and so just moved some numbers from one cell in a spreadsheet to another - netting themselves huge amounts of publicity before the Facebook IPO (and probably a tax break somewhere)

<comment><USER24> Interesting claim, anything to back it up?

<comment> excuse-me Facebook had an income of about $500M last year and $200M the year before - <USER2> I doubt they had $1Bn in cash sitting around to pay in used dollar bills.

I imagine some sort of IPO/options/notes financial complexity so no actual folding money changed hands

<comment><USER25> I'm fairly sure some was paid in facebook stock.

<comment><USER26> "cash and stock".

I'm sure the VCs are all giddy to own a bunch of pre-IPO Facebook shares.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > Instagram's competitive advantage comes from being first.

first in what? first in photo sharing or first in image processing?

first in what?

</comment><comment><USER28> The author sounds sad.

Also: Articles like this is why TC stinks.

</comment><comment><USER29> Can we dig up some information on the author? Instagram clearly disowned him somehow.

<comment><USER30> In the amount of time it took you to write this comment you could have typed "Alexander Haislip" into Google and spared all of us having to read it.

<comment><USER31> > In the amount of time it took you to write this comment you could have typed > "Alexander Haislip" into Google

True

> and spared all of us having to read it.

Unnecessary.</comment></comment></comment>


Firefox 4 Beta 1 Released - <AUTHOR> http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/beta/ <comment><USER2> The big deal with Firefox 4 is support for Jetpack:

<https://jetpack.mozillalabs.com/>

Like with Chrome, and more recently Safari, we can now write Firefox extensions using HTML/CSS/Javascript.

<comment><USER3> My obligatory <http://xkcd.com/386/>

Jetpack has been around since May 20, 2009 [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/12025/version...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/12025/versions)

What's new in Firefox 4 is that it is integrated instead of being an extension.

<comment><USER2> That's what I meant by "support" for Jetpack. We as developers can comfortably build extensions for it, knowing that it'll have a broad user base.

I didn't say "introduction" of Jetpack.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really dislike the orange thing at the top with the menu being gone - if at least you could somehow access the said menu by the orange tab, it would make sense. Right now, I predict a lot of confused users.

Oh you want to change X? Click show menu bar on the orange thing! Notice the menu? Notice that your orange bar disappeared? Wonder how to get it back? It's in view, uncheck menu bar!

So NOT intuitive.

Also, their feedback thing was down when I tried to report this :(

</comment><comment><USER5> The single feature that forever ties me to Chrome is _tabs on top_.

On top of the address bar isn't the point. It's a nice touch that emphasizes the metaphor for "real" tabs, like on a paper folder, but it doesn't have the huge usability bonus of Chrome's implementation.

The important thing is that in Chrome, the tabs are on the _very top pixel_ of the screen (in Windows or a Linux UI with no top bar). Since I browse with a hand on the mouse, this means that I can switch between tabs by chucking the pointer at the top of the screen and scrubbing left and right, instead of having to pay attention to vertical alignment.

<http://www.asktog.com/columns/022DesignedToGiveFitts.html>

<comment><USER6> OTOH, now with larger and larger monitors, how many people really browse full- screen? If you aren't full-screen, Fitts law doesn't help.

<comment><USER7> I never browsed full-screen because it's too "wide" but with Windows 7's new "snap" feature ([http://windows.microsoft.com/en- US/windows7/products/feature...](http://windows.microsoft.com/en- US/windows7/products/features/snap)), I can now have 2 browsers comfortably side by side. Helpful tip - it won't "snap" to the inside edge of a multi- monitor setup using the mouse, but Win+<arrow key> works (that's the keyboard shortcut for "snap").

I realize that this feature has been in tiling window managers for quite some time, it's just nice to have it in Windows now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Either my eyes are playing tricks on me, or this thing is now faster at rendering HTML than chrome.

<comment><USER9> Any chance you can provide some measurements or link relevant data in an article, perhaps?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> One thing I noticed: it now starts a separate app for running flash: <http://grab.by/5iXg>

I guess they are going to hide it before FF4 comes out of beta. You can force quit the bottom firefox and the misbehaving flash object will die: <http://grab.by/5iXj>

</comment><comment><USER11> View > Toolbars to enable Tabs on Top on the Mac. Unfortunately, the current implementation looks terrible, as they're the same "underside" tabs as before, only now they're between the window controls and the toolbar. (They note that you should wait in Known Issues, so this should get better.)

They also need to adopt something like Safari's URL-field-as-progress- indicator, or at least an animating graphic to indicate loading. Simply switching the refresh button to an 'X' is way too subtle, and at first I didn't think it was actually loading anything.

Edit: Oh, that's weird. I fired it up again and saw the stopwatch graphic and other loading indicators. Now I'm wondering if these didn't work the first time around, or if I just wasn't paying attention to them given that I'm habituated to Safari's indicators.

<comment><USER12> I'm sure they will fix the tab style issues in OS X before release:

"OSX and Linux Themes: The new interface described above will soon be available for Mac and Linux users."

from <http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/beta/features/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Noticeably faster that 3.6.6, except none of my extensions work.

FF4b1 disabled: 1 Password, Delicious Bookmarks, Firebug, Greasemonkey, Google Toolbar, Stylish, YSlow and others...

<comment><USER14> Maybe it's just faster because none of your extensions are running? The ones you listed sound like they probably use lots of CPU time and memory, and if they are disabled I'm sure FF runs much faster / lighter.

<comment><USER3> I can't comment on how much the extensions might have affected things, but startup time was significantly improved: [https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Sprints/Startup_Time_Improv...](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Sprints/Startup_Time_Improvements)

<comment><USER15> Same reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Looks more "Windows 7"-like on here, in that there's more of that smudgy glass effect. Looks prettier when active I think, although when not the glass becomes more transparent and since there's so much of it, toolbars from applications underneath it seem to show through a lot, which creates a lot of visual noise. That's not entirely Firefox's fault, and it looks okay when it has focus, so it could be worse.

Seems faster to start, although it's disabled every addon I had before, so hardly a fair test.

In general it seems to be more like Chrome. Which I think is probably a good thing - if Chrome has demonstrated a better way to do things, I don't have a problem with Firefox following their lead.

</comment><comment><USER17> Still annoyed that I can't drag an image from Firefox to Photoshop via the OSX dock, despite the fact that it's been a known bug for ages.

Otherwise, it does feel faster, though I find it funny that Firebug currently doesn't work even though it's prominently listed as one of their main developer tools.

They worked really hard on making the add-on interface more intuitive and cleaner, but really the thing everyone wants is better memory management.

</comment><comment><USER18> Beta is incredibly faster for me. Roughly takes around 1 sec to fire up, Chrome still "feels" faster & much more nimble.

It really feels like Mozilla is playing catch up now, trying to take things back to basics & fix some core issues (like startup times, plugins slowing things down, JS performance & so on).

Kudos to Google for giving the browser that once we all used something to aspire to.

</comment><comment><USER19> hum...

Sometimes the min/max/close buttons do not appear. Making me have to go to the "firefox" button and hit exit.

Why does the "firefox" button take up all that space? If they are going to copy Opera and add the "firefox" button, then copy Opera and make it look good. (talking about maximized window)

Moving the tabs is still really bad. Chrome and Opera both have really smooth transitions and opera even adds nice preview windows.

On the flip side

It feels much more responsive. I don't care about the actual numbers just the feel.

The new addon manager that they copied from chrome looks much better, then the previous and even chromes.

The loading circle on the tabs is really nice touch. Its nice being able to see how far along a tab is in its loading phase. This is a feature I see all browsers copying very soon.

</comment><comment><USER3> Lots of cool stuff to come in the next beta as well:

Electrolysis (even more process seperation) merged with trunk recently: <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=571166>

Hardware accelerated graphics should be turned on by default soon as well.

And of course, the continued iteration of the new theme, many platform featured to be added...

<comment><USER20> I want to know if Taskfox makes the final cut: [http://geektechnica.com/2010/06/5-exciting-changes-coming- to...](http://geektechnica.com/2010/06/5-exciting-changes-coming-to- firefox-4/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Two years ago I really would have love this firefox and I'd have talk to everyone about it. However, now that I'm used to chrome, it kind of look "big" and "sad". Maybe it's the brown/gray color at the top and the fact that when I type g it doesn't automatically complete for gmail.com or n for news.ycomb... and that tab aren't as movable as chrome.

<comment><USER22> The autocomplete learns based on your past browsing habits. Give it some time and it'll get there.

<comment><USER21> I know but this isn't exactly the same. On firefox, it suggests idea with a dropdown.. on chrome, it autocompletes them. Also, if it's not found, it automatically search on google.. and by pressing [tab], you can search directly from a known site. That's 3 features I _really_ use.

<comment><USER23> To get autocomplete in Firefox, go to about:config, search for "autofill" and set browser.urlbar.autofill to "true".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Really nice summary of the features in the beta, and coming soon to Firefox 4: <http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/beta/technology/>

</comment><comment><USER24> When I look through the new features spotlighted (<http://www.mozilla.com/en- US/firefox/beta/features/>), it seems to me that the vast majority are already in Chrome, some copied directly from it (tabs on top).

I'm genuinely curious why that is. Options I can think of are a) they are spotlighting features that take away a perceived edge that Chrome has, b) they really are playing feature-catch-up and letting other browsers determine the roadmap, or c) some features (the web console?) are far more ambitious than I've given them credit for.

Can anyone shed some light on what is really going on here?

<comment><USER3> Are you trolling?

The three highlighted features are 'new addons manager,' webm support, and fixing the :visited privacy issue. NONE of these are in any released Chrome, although the early early preview of Chrome 6 has WebM support.

Of the three UI elements highlighted, tabs on top is the only one in Chrome (or did I miss the Chrome button in some developer preview?).

<comment><USER24> From my view, the highest highlighted feature was the tabs, followed by the 3 you mention. I counted WebM as Chrome, given that it is Google's codec, but I'm not sure its in Chrome 5 either :(.

Looking further down, I was thinking that WebSockets, Indexed DB, Crash Protection, and the key feature of JetPack (Add-Ons not requiring restart) were all pioneered by Chrome. That leaves The Web Console, which I have not yet tried so can't really comment on either way, and the two givens (HTML5 and CSS3). To my eyes this seemed odd. But I take it you disagree?

<comment><USER3> Ok, if you want to know all the features, I think the best way is to read this: <http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/beta/technology>, and then try it out to get a feel for all the UI changes.

According to wikipedia, Chrome 5 does not support WebM: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrome_%28browser%29>

WebSockets: Yay, you're finally right, Chrome did pioneer WebSockets. Sadly, it did not update its implementation to reflect the changes to the standard based on feedback from the numerous other browser vendors that actually implemented it but chose not to release it because of it volatility.

IndexedDB: Google was actually pushing for Web SQL Database, which got rejected. Learn more here: [http://hacks.mozilla.org/2010/06/beyond- html5-database-apis-...](http://hacks.mozilla.org/2010/06/beyond- html5-database-apis-and-the-road-to-indexeddb/comment-page-1/)

Crash Protection: IE8 was the first browser with this feature.

Jetpack: Ok, this one is important right? So for bonus points, let's look at the first jetpack release: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/12025/version...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/12025/versions/) (scroll the to bottom: May 20, 2009)

Now for Google's launch of their great extensions platform: <http://techcrunch.com/2009/12/08/chrome-extensions-live/> (December 08, 2009). Darn, guess Google stole that one from Mozilla's playbook (and yet, still no powerful extensions :().

WebConsole: Everyone and their mom has been using Firebug since the dawn of time. Chrome wasn't even an inkling in Google's eye then.

HTML5: Firefox 4 is STILL the only browser to support HTML 5 parsing. Previous versions of course supported other features such as video and audio, but since you didn't go into details here, I'll leave it at that.

CSS3: No details again? Ok, well rounded corners has been in Firefox so long I can't even remember (1.5 or 2?). Lots of these features were around before Chrome existed. But no more for this since you only mentioned it in passing.

Call me a fool for taking the bait (<http://xkcd.com/386/>), but with all due respect please stop trolling, and learn about what you're talking about before you speak.

<comment><USER25> You are comparing the first mass-market release of Chrome extensions with the first alpha release of Jetpack, which isn't fair. A better comparison would be the first dev channel release of Chrome with support for extensions. That was May 14 2009:

[http://news.cnet.com/chrome-extensions-draw-near-but- advance...](http://news.cnet.com/chrome-extensions-draw-near-but-advanced- html-5-features-recede/)

... which is slightly before the first Jetpack alpha which was May 20 2009.

In any case, the issues that both extension systems try to address have been well-known for some time. It isn't surprising that multiple people came up with similar ideas on how to fix them.

 _ninja edit: Got timelines mixed up first time 'round_

<comment><USER3> Interesting catch. Reminds me of Mercurial and Git births (in that they both were independently created around the same time to solve the same problem).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The power of serverless: Visual regression tests from 20 minutes to 10 seconds - <AUTHOR> https://blog.usejournal.com/the-power-of-serverless-visual-regression-tests-from-20-minutes-to-10-seconds-bc47b2ce9d20 <comment><USER2> > That means taking 1000 images, in 5 seconds each, would cost us ~$0.08 for > each run. It's literally pennies.

You have to multiply theoretical AWS invoices with the correction factor 341235 (subject to change) to have the correct price.

You could of course check the amount of data and computing power yourself but you could also count grains of sand at the beach.

I think the name is badly chosen because it obviously only works with stateless calculations, but the service seems to be quite decent.

Don't go to Amazon and read the product description, it only lets you want to shoot yourself. Probably written for marketing instead of developers. Anyway, the service still looks interesting.</comment>


Yes, but what does your startup do? - <AUTHOR> https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2017/11/yes-but-what-does-your-startup-do/ <comment><USER4> This applies to websites of open source projects, too. I remember when I visited docker.com for the first time because someone told me it's the latest shit and I just wanted to know what it is about. I browsed their website for 10 minutes, and summarized the experience to a coworker like this: "As far as I can see, it's the best thing ever and I'd be stupid not to use it, but I still does not know what it actually does."

Since then, whenever I make a website (or a README.md) for my open-source projects, I always make sure that it starts with

1\. a short description of what the project is/does in one or two sentences, and

2\. a longer explanation of the how and why in one or two paragraphs.

Representative example: [https://github.com/sapcc/limes/tree/master/README.md](https://github.com/sapcc/limes/tree/master/README.md)

<comment><USER5> Even more informative could be mentioning what problem it is intended to solve.

<comment><USER6> Thank you. No one ever describes why anything was written in the first place. And they almost never go out of their way to list the pros/cons of their system. Although I've never even used it, I loved that the BoltDB project mentions other key/value DBs and why you'd pick one over the other, right there in the readme.

<comment><USER7> Any mention of alternatives is anathema to open source READMEs. This is why the "awesome list of " directories wind up being so useful.

Edit: Useful as in "knowing is half the battle". Being able to make an informed choice is worth something, even if it takes extra effort to filter back down.

<comment><USER8> Maybe I'm just unlucky but the vast majority of all 'awesome lists' that I've seen are just massive dumps of links, of extremely varying quality (I mean the links themselves), which isn't that helpful.

<comment><USER9> You're not unlucky, but there are some gems out there. For someone like you who is experienced in the area and can tell garbage from good stuff, it's worth digging around to find the gems.

This doesn't help someone who is completely new to the list topic though. Even worse they're probably going to get bad information.

<comment> xkcd-sucks Maybe an Awesome list of Awesome lists could help

<comment><USER10> I'm pretty sure there is one already.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Reminds me of [http://n.io](http://n.io) – their homepage is almost an homage to HBO's Silicon Valley.

Notable catch phrases: human ingenuity, interoperable connectivity, universal intelligence, distributed intelligence, Chip-to-cloud, unconditional interoperability, ...

"nio provides the technology to unleash your imagination"

<comment><USER12> Come on, that web site _has_ to be a parody, even down to the dogs on the "Team" page.

If it's actually a real company, my best guess is they are a custom engineering software consultancy. Although on the other hand, they seem to have some sort of product you can download, but I can't tell what it does. It's all so confusing. Perfect example, whalesalad.

<comment><USER13> I think... its real, go to their blog page and they describe how to put nio into a rpi.

[https://niolabs.com/blog/baking-nio-into-a-raspberry- pi/](https://niolabs.com/blog/baking-nio-into-a-raspberry-pi/)

<comment><USER14> Perhaps it started as a joke and mistakenly became a business, like the fellow who got elected in Australia?

<comment><USER15> Also known from dhmo who's been mistaken for a legitimate source of information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Please take this advice to heart all you startups. I can't tell you how many times I have signed up for a new startup waitlist and then 6 months later I get an email from some ambigious startup name - "Your wait is up, time to join Uprocket" with no additional information. Wait, who is this, I don't really care anymore. I know its obvious to you but its not always obvious to others. Just add it to your signature for crying out loud. "Uprocket - We help startups solve the problem of people not knowing what they do by adding an email signature which tells people what they do"

<comment><USER17> > _Uprocket - We help startups solve the problem of people not knowing what > they do by adding an email signature which tells people what they do_

You could probably get a cool half million in seed money for this.

<comment><USER18>
       To: firstname.lastname@example.com
       From: email@example.com
       Subject: email signatures required.

Starting immediately, please use an email signature of the following format on all email messages, inside and outside.

       --
       Name McNamerson - Official Title
       Official Group Name - City, State, Country
       https://www.company.com/

Don't put anything else in. If you have trouble getting this set up, IT has put together a page for all our supported mail clients at [https://www.company.com/internal/signatures](https://www.company.com/internal/signatures)

Thanks!

       --
       Edgar L. Presidente - <USER2>
       Human Resources - San Francisco, CA USA
       https://www.company.com/

<comment><USER19> Edgar forgot the comma that was mandated to appear between his state and country.

<comment><USER20> Not a good culture fit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> A lot of companies can't explain what they do either due to a lack of focus or poor writing, but this particular company's offense can be explained in one line from the post:

> It's important to remember that no one cares about your startup!

That original email was written with a tone of someone who expected the recipients to know who the company is, what they do, and expected the reader to care or be excited.

No one cares about your start up. Your customers might not even care - <USER3> just want a problem to go away.

</comment><comment><USER7> Recent example 2 days ago:

I'm Joining Report URI | [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15599906](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15599906) (2017Nov:160points,64comments)

>skrebbel: _I don 't get it. What does Report URI do?_ (top comment)

<comment><USER22> Troy Hunt's post details what Report URI does in the first paragraph but it didn't explain to Skrebbel how they accomplished those things.

<comment><USER23> True! It even starts with the classic "what if I told you.." and then goes on describing something that seems _fantastically magical_.

I learned something that day though. It's very cool that browsers can report CSP violations. HN is good for stuff like this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Same thing goes for open source projects. I can't count the number of times I've seen an announcement along the lines of "Flurboska 2.0 is released!" and then when you follow the URL there's no info about what it does, and if there's an About link it often just has a list of release notes for various versions. Each entry says vague things like "stability improved" which doesn't reveal much.

<comment><USER25> My comment from a recent thread about Sway: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15508993](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15508993)

 _/ s/_Flurboska _/ GenericPhrase

"New version of Pandora Nexus released."

Great - is this any relation to the 2 Pandoras or the several Nexuses? Does this play music on my phone or move assets into a VM? Neither, it syncs bookmarks between browsers._

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Meanwhile, in marketing school, there's a teacher writing on a whiteboard: "Never ever tell anyone what your company does."

<comment><USER27> That's a bit reductionist. What the marketing person would say is you need to lead with the benefit or value that you provide and then explain how you do that.

So say you're making software for car washes. Don't lead with the fact that you make software. Instead, show the benefit by saying something like "Book 73% more car washes" and then say "Car wash booking software to increase revenue."

Marketers are often consumed by showing the company's "Why" \- but the challenge in that is it often gets too abstract and generalized and may make you sound like everyone else. A great example of this is that many companies make software that, in the end, is designed to improve end-user experience. You might be, say, a testing company. The end goal is definitely improving end-user experience, but if that is all you say, then it won't be clear how you do that, or how you're different from, say, a UI optimization tool which also improves end-user experience.

<comment><USER28> >So say you're making software for car washes. Don't lead with the fact that you make software. Instead, show the benefit by saying something like "Book 73% more car washes" and then say "Car wash booking software to increase revenue."

That still actually tells me what the product is, which is way more than we keep seeing for all these start-ups, open source software etc, which seem to revolve around hippie meaningless B.S. that doesn't provide any value proposition up front.

<comment><USER27> Agreed - my point was in reference to the OP who wrote: "Meanwhile, in marketing school, there's a teacher writing on a whiteboard: "Never ever tell anyone what your company does."

Any decent marketer, imho, would argue against not telling people what your company does (it's usually the CEO making that case) - the good marketer just moves the "what you do" to behind a value/benefit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Strange, these things seemed absolutely self-evident.

If you want people to do something, make it as simple as possible to do so as the slightest obstacle can turn them away. That includes informing them what the whole thing is about (googling is an extra step that you can remove from the process by including the necessary information from the start). (same applies to oneself as well, e.g.: if you want to go cycling regularly, make sure that you do not have to carry the bike from the cellar upstairs to do so)

</comment><comment><USER30> Very classic one is x.ai or Amy or whatever they call it now. They overhyped their capability of building a smart assistant for reading and replying to emails and ended up being an average service that sort of works.

Earlier, they kept telling me that I have jumped their queue and will soon get access. Now they ask me to upgrade the plan to keep using it. Complete BS!

<comment><USER31> Average? I've used it at least a dozen times in the last month, and it's worked perfectly every time. It may not be the _fastest_ , but it's certainly the best... YMMV, of course.

<comment><USER30> It's good but considering auto-reply feature of Gmail and integration with other apps like Calendar and Hangouts, I wouldn't pay for any such solution. Of course, assuming the organization use Gsuite else, maybe x.ai fits the bill.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> In a similar vein, startups are somehow obsessed with reporting on their "startup-dom": \- That they were in pitch event X \- That they were featured in startup mag Y \- That they're attending startup fair Z

All inwards focussing, completely useless info to that/those which are most important: customers.

<comment><USER33> Depends on whom you're communicating to. The signals those startups are putting out are very important ones indicating legitimacy to potential investors.

Maybe some founders are confusing what's important to signal to investors with what's important to signal to customers?

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> If you think that's bad, I've seen presentations to angel investors where the CEO repeats things like "we do big data analysis to help our customers synergise and analyze..."

Q: OK, that's nice, what do you _do_? What value do you offer the customer

A: Big data analysis! Synergise!

<sigh>

Bad emails are one thing. Bad presentations to investors just reeks of incompetence.

</comment><comment><USER35> Even when you think the other person is a techie, I've seen it generally helps to assume that he is not, to avoid this Curse of knowledge.

Also at least in my domain, I've found analogies are a great way to explain super complicated things very easily.

Old world physical analogies work great (like a bank, wallmart, etc) but analogies using other startups, i.e. we're the Uber of X, or we're the blablacar for Y not so much. Because sometimes the other person may not know what blablacar is (or for that matter Uber).

<comment><USER36> wait is blablacar a thing or did you just make it up? I'm out of the loop and legit can't tell.

<comment><USER37> It is a thing, and here where I live (Italy) is pretty popular - I would say more than Uber, for what it's worth.

It is a service to arrange long trips from one city to another with other people, so that the driver can share the ride and get compensated from passengers (and also have company) in return

<comment><USER38> It's also pretty popular in Romania. I have two close- and non-techie friends who have used its services.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Off topic: I'm very glad the open banking API's are coming to the EU. Every app can request access to your account and build services and software around it. Think it's called PSD2 for those interested.

</comment><comment><USER40> Was amazed when I read

"Sign-up is simple and should only take about three minutes"

If a simple signup only takes three minutes, I can't imagine how long a complex one takes!

<comment><AUTHOR> (OP here) To be fair to them, they mandate 2FA set up. If you've not done it before, it can be a complex and time consuming process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> The first comment on the page is interesting. I believe if you have that kind of problem, you haven't set up proper teamwork between techs and marketers to create such texts together. The one makes sure it's great dor selling, the other that it doesn't annoy developers and give them the information they want.

</comment><comment><USER42> Writing copy for a tech startup is very difficult because most people who write good marketing copy aren't necessarily very technically capable.

The way I always solved this was to get someone with technical insight write the first version and then have the copywriter re-write it into a human.

It's remarkable how well it works.

<comment><USER43> Exhibit A: In your first sentence you use "isn't" when you should use "aren't".

:D

(You could also drop both uses of "very" in that sentence and it's a stronger statement.)

<comment><USER42> Heh yeah well I am not native English speaker and it did go a little fast.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> This especially applies to Trello tickets that you're writing to your own colleagues/developers.

Prior to going to DevBootcamp I worked as an engineering consultant, my product was informational reports that had to describe specifically what the problem was, how we determined that, and what we recommended to resolve it.

Sometimes my reports would be returned to me in a blood bath of red ink on changes but eventually you understand what it means to get the point across objectively and concisely.

My point is, get your copy proof read, limit the jargon, and get to the point in the first sentence.

</comment><comment><USER45> I think a lot of tech people honestly don't know how to do this.

GIS is a database with mapping software attached. I began explaining it to people as "kind of like SimCity for the real world." People who do GIS get lost in the details. They can't see the forest for the trees. Laypeople need a quick and dirty sketch of the forest in the simplest, most pertinent terms possible.

This is just not easy to pull off when your day to day work is all about cataloguing individual leaves in this vast forest.

</comment><comment><USER46> I have been reading Dale Carnegie's seminal book. One of the advice therein - Arouse an Eager Want.

So, while the 2nd example is an improvement, many people might read the first para - So you are attending the conference and are some kind of bank with APIs...umm..so what? Why should I be interested in it?

The better structure will be to start thinking in terms of why/what an intended recipient might want to use the API, followed by the process and conference.

<comment><USER7> _The Hidden Persuaders_ (Vance Packard, 1959) [https://amzn.com/dp/B006NV977W](https://amzn.com/dp/B006NV977W) was recommended elsewhere today. This nearly-as-ancient classic is at least an order of magnitude less mentioned but provides more depth applicable online.

>Xunxi: _some of the examples are dated [...] how to "stoke the hivemind"_

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=the%20hidden%20persuaders&sort...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=the%20hidden%20persuaders&sort=byDate&type=comment)

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Our unique technology allows you to not only increment the counter, but also to branch based on whether that counter is equal to zero.

<comment><USER48> It also allows for interconnected fizzing and synergistic buzzing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Landing pages make this very same mistake all the time.

It is one of the biggest goals for such a page, to show the what & why of the product, and still too many people do it in a way that lets no clue about what the thing is about.

It is good to see other people noticing this and writing about it. Hopefully this will be included in good/bad practices lists in the future.

</comment><comment><USER50> "Do" may be irrelevant if you are advising someone who is an expert in a particular vertical, in which you yourself have little experience or domain knowledge.

But if they state their model is Enterprise SaaS or Subscription-based Media Content. Then its easier to suggest a quick hack for training sales teams or where to find freelance editors online, etc.

</comment><comment><USER51> Usually burns the investors' money :)

</comment><comment><USER52> > Starling Bank be attending $conference 2017

Arrrr!?

</comment><comment><USER53> To be fair, oftentimes startups themselves can't answer this simple question _to themselves_. "What is it that we do" is a loaded question, and once you answer it you're at least temporarily committed to that cause. A lot of founders have severe commitment issues.

</comment><comment><USER54> We leverage synergies in B2C relationships to provide growth opportunities! _Duh_!

<comment><USER55> But can you help us with the transformation to digital?

<comment><USER56> What is the transformation to digital meme?

<comment><USER57> It's a great new meme opportunity, and you're on the ground floor. Get in while you can.

<comment><USER58> Naaah, we are already onto _seamless and AI-driven_ transformation to digital ... ;-)

<comment><USER59> Our AI-driven IoT real-time predictive ML platform provides the ultimate corporate syngergy-gasm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> I'd also like to add that not everyone (cough cough) uses or wants to use Twitter. Please, please, please also include a plain email address or a contact form so that everyone can get in touch with you if necessary.

</comment><comment><USER61> Guess this is why my college is forcing me to take technical communication.

</comment><comment><USER62> Checkbook.io is like this. Took me 45 min just to understand their value offering. All they need to mention is "we use Check21 instead of ACH" but it's no where to be found.

</comment><comment><USER27> The example given here is pretty extreme. The lack of any explanation of who the startup is and what they do is so basic that I hesitate to even call it a marketing issue.

</comment><comment><USER63> It seems to me that their marketing is really working.. they just got to HN front page and I'm sure almost everyone reading couldn't resist googling them ;)

<comment><USER64> A bunch of people talking about "what do they actually do?" that doesn't convert to sales would suggest their marketing isn't actually working.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Well, that is taught here since 2007 or so. Most start-up guys are just young and simply don't know. I guess you need to experience that first.

</comment><comment><USER66> Ahh yes, but then you take away the _mystery_. Can't grift investors or customers if you let them look behind the curtain, can you?

</comment><comment><USER67> Maybe they do this because it creates better engagement?

If they told you their signup process was quick, they would lessen their ability to convince you that you need to sign-up _right now_.

If they told you what they did, then you wouldn't have to click through to their home page or twitter account to find out what it is.

And finally if you weren't annoyed, you wouldn't have given them all of this free marketing on Hacker News.

</comment><comment><USER68> It's a basic but good point. Always mention what your start up does AND include a sign up page.

For instance, I'll often start off with something like(notice that I start off with the value proposition too): "Never break your code: We build Regression tests, so you don't have to" Check us out here: [https://swif.club/?s=hn](https://swif.club/?s=hn)

And I include that in my signature as well.</comment>


Marijuana smoking and markers of testicular function among men - <AUTHOR> https://academic.oup.com/humrep/advance-article/doi/10.1093/humrep/dez002/5307080 <comment><AUTHOR> see also current headlines from MSM:

[https://news.sky.com/story/smoking-cannabis-linked-to- higher...](https://news.sky.com/story/smoking-cannabis-linked-to-higher-sperm- counts-in-surprising-study-11629576)

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-06/cannabis-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-06/cannabis- smoking-associated-with-higher-sperm-count-study-finds)</comment>


Clang now builds Postgres without additional warnings - <AUTHOR> http://pgeoghegan.blogspot.com/2011/08/clang-now-builds-postgres-without.html <comment><USER2> I write all my C and C++ code at warning level 4 (the maximum, which is probably equivalent to -Wall). IMO, it was a mistake for Visual Studio to default to warning level 3. Ignoring the compiler in production code is a sign of laziness, or that you don't take what you're doing seriously.

Warnings should be disabled on a per-source-file basis. And since you _actively choose to ignore_ specific warnings, you still benefit from the compiler's other sanity checks.

In Visual Studio, this is accomplished by

      #pragma warning( disable: 4100 )

at the top of a .c or .cpp file. This will ignore "unreferenced parameter" warnings. (Personally, I don't ignore those either. It's saved me on more than one occasion, and once is enough for me. So instead, I use a macro UNREF_PARAM(param) to suppress the warning in specific cases.)

A header file sometimes generates a warning that you want to choose to ignore. But if we disabled it in the header file, then that disable would propagate to all other code which included the header file -- a big mistake!

Visual Studio solves this by:

      #pragma warning( push )
      #pragma warning( disable: 4100 )
      //</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----
      // foo.h
      //   The Foo module serves as an example of how to
      // properly suppress the "unreferenced parameter"
      // warning within a header file, via Visual Studio's
      // #pragma warning( push ) and pop mechanism.
      //</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----
      /*
        .... code which generates the warning ....
      */
      #pragma warning( pop )

This allows you to "scope" the disable to a single header file.

(Lastly, it's worth noting that SQLite outputs hundreds of warnings --- but they are neither lazy nor irresponsible, because they have hundreds of unit tests to verify that SQLite works correctly at runtime, as defined by the tests, across all platforms.)

<comment><USER3> Surely there is such a thing as a piece of code that generates very legitimate warnings, but happens to compile to something that appears to work under at least most circumstances.

Ignoring compiler warnings _does_ seem pretty irresponsible to me, no matter how superb your unit test coverage is. At the very least it will cause a degregation of the codebase over time.

<comment><USER4> And how exactly could SQLite benefit from warning-free compilation? It not only appears to work but it does its job pretty well.

Unit tests prove a different level of semantics that these warnings cannot substitute (although possibly complement).

<comment><USER2> Tests and warnings compliment each other nicely.

"My, you're looking testy today!" ...

burgerbrain points out something very important: Code bases with warnings tend to be degenerate.

 _Tend_ to. SQLite is not one of them. But I've seen several large codebases. The two which were beautiful also had zero warnings, and the ~dozen others ranged from "meh" all the way down to "lol, grab a snickers".

This is obviously not enough data to draw any meaningful statistical conclusions from --- but it would be silly to ignore it completely. Good C/C++ programmers tend to respect compiler warnings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've switched my FreeBSD machine over to clang and have been successfully building most ports with it. It really is ready for prime-time :-).

<comment><USER6> If I remember correctly from this and last years WWDC, large parts (if not all by now) of iOS and OS X Lion are built with Clang/LLVM and have been for some time. I'd say Clang's been ready for a while!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Great. But what does that mean to Postgres users?

Does it affect the performance? Would it be easier to uncover more bugs moving on?

<comment><USER8> Right now it's more useful for uncovering bugs, I don't think anyone would recommend running Postgres compiled with clang on a production system.

For more info about performance, see [http://pgeoghegan.blogspot.com/2011/07/could-clang- displace-...](http://pgeoghegan.blogspot.com/2011/07/could-clang-displace-gcc- generally-part.html)</comment></comment>


Arcade game innovation with the 4:1 display in a Darius cabinet - <AUTHOR> https://threader.app/thread/1054907948852342784 <comment><USER2> Neat. Is looks like the same cabinet used for Ninja Warriors ([https://www.arcade- museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=8892](https://www.arcade- museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=8892)).</comment>


Building a Computer Out of Dominoes [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/04/09/numberphile_builds_circuits_out_of_dominoes_to_show_how_computers_do_basic.html

<comment><USER2> What is the minimum number of dominoes/space you need to build these gates?</comment>


Show HN: WebRTC signalling data using QR codes - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/AquiGorka/webrtc-qr <comment><USER2> Similar project of mine that connects a phone to a PC browser using a WebRTC QR code so you can use a pen / touch on the phone to create drawings on the desktop:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gvsm84xL9Sk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gvsm84xL9Sk) ([https://github.com/phiresky/webrtc-remote-touch-pen- input](https://github.com/phiresky/webrtc-remote-touch-pen-input))

Sadly it needs a (tiny) server component to exchange the initial connection information - using a QR code in both directions is smart, but also pretty annoying for the user.

<comment><AUTHOR> I hear you. It is not the best user experience I agree, but it does take away the (tiny) server component. I will try to improve the experience.

And by the way, cool idea to use the pen on the smartphone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is great, thanks for posting it. I've had the same idea myself and started and abandoned this exact same project a few times. Same down to cutting the SDP up into multiple QR codes. I am glad to see this brought to life.

I am also surprised to see @nilknarf has done that in 2014! (As per their comment.) Don't know how I didn't come across his post during my research into this, but checking it now, someone in the comments posted a link to a patent which captures this idea.

[http://www.freepatentsonline.com/20160021148.pdf](http://www.freepatentsonline.com/20160021148.pdf)

The patent must be invalid, because it's from 2016 and there is clearly prior art, but it kind of sucks, because it basically means polishing something like e.g. @phiresky has done with the remote pen just means if you succeed in bringing down the time to connect and make it something usable enough for users, you're opening yourself up to a claim if you decide to package it up into an app.

<comment><AUTHOR> > opening yourself up to a claim if you decide to package it up into an app

Even though there is public domain tech from 2014 using it? (@nilknarf's).

I was under the impression when something is part of the public domain there can't be a patent claim on it.

<comment><USER3> I think this patent has been mistakenly granted this year:

[https://patents.google.com/patent/US20160021148A1](https://patents.google.com/patent/US20160021148A1) (see the "grant" status line)

I think it should not have been granted there being prior art, but for it to be turned over, I think it would have to be challenged in court. That's my limited understanding as a non-US person without any experience with patents whatsoever.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh wow, I am shocked to see the patent was granted and I'm very interested in understanding the repercussions. These might be big.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice!

I also now of this Android App that uses WebRTC Audio/Video without server (no Internet or DHCP needed): [https://github.com/dakhnod/Meshenger](https://github.com/dakhnod/Meshenger)

I made a submission, in case somebody likes to discuss the need for serverless WebRTC: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18203495](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18203495)

(Disclaimer: I am not the author of the App, but I helped out a bit)

<comment><AUTHOR> > Contacts are found by taking the devices own IPv6 addresses and replacing > the devices own MAC address by the contacts MAC address.

You require the devices to be on the same network for this to work right?

<comment><USER4> Yes, that is (mostly) true.

The App uses ipv6 link local addresses (fe80::.. + mac address). But it also tries to make use the received IPv6 network prefixes. Also, the last contact address is stored. These approaches improves the probability a bit to find the contacts in other networks.

As a side note, many mesh networks are emulating a layer 2 network. With this, everybody can build up their own decentralized telephone network.

<comment><AUTHOR> > everybody can build up their own decentralized telephone network

Nice. I'm very interested in being able to connect devices in areas where there is no Internet and using a mobile router, like in the mountains or in a bus trip through deserted areas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've wondered about other signalling mechanisms. I figure you could use a DHT (js-ipfs/js-libp2p or webtorrent BT mainline) and put the offer directly on the DHT (AES'd?) or if it's too big to be a key, seed it as the stored value for its hash using those systems.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've worked with `js-ipfs` and their `js-libp2p`, they use a signalling server (actually two types of them):

\- [https://github.com/libp2p/js-libp2p-webrtc- star](https://github.com/libp2p/js-libp2p-webrtc-star)

\- [https://github.com/libp2p/js-libp2p-websocket- star](https://github.com/libp2p/js-libp2p-websocket-star)

That would be going back to using a server for the handshake.

In regards to using a DHT, that's something I have not researched. I am not sure how long an offer is valid, were you thinking of being able to update them as needed whenever you want to establish a connection?

<comment><USER5> > In regards to using a DHT, that's something I have not researched. I am not > sure how long an offer is valid, were you thinking of being able to update > them as needed whenever you want to establish a connection?

Yes. I have toyed with js-libp2p to obtain "providers" based on a key, but I believe the part of js-libp2p that allows you to participate in the DHT isn't quite done [0]. I imagine you'd make a CID that would be a simple hash of some shared string. Then you'd tell the network you are a "provider" with that CID, and when requested, you give the offer (AES'd w/ shared string or other shared secret?). The client can just connect to the same DHT and give the hash and get the (encrypted?) offer. Not sure if IPFS has a way for me to prevent other people from serving/replicating the CID I am serving instead of forcing it to be a hash of the content. A similar approach can happen on BT mainline w/ an infohash maybe.

0 - [https://github.com/ipfs/js-ipfs/pull/856](https://github.com/ipfs/js- ipfs/pull/856)

<comment><USER6> I created swarm-peer-server [1] as a way to connect to specific peers over a DHT using a public key known ahead of time. I use this in a networked app I've built to perform WebRTC signaling between peers [2]. The networking and crypto works using modules popular in the Dat Project community.

The challenge is that multiple peers could announce under the same hash on the DHT. Thus I have code to perform a handshake to verify peers upon connecting.

Another project worth mentioning is hyperswarm [3], also created by the Dat Project folks. It's planned to be their new method of connecting peers on a DHT in Beaker Browser.

[1] [https://www.npmjs.com/package/swarm-peer- server](https://www.npmjs.com/package/swarm-peer-server)

[2] [https://github.com/samuelmaddock/metastream/blob/master/app/...](https://github.com/samuelmaddock/metastream/blob/master/app/browser/platform/swarm/index.ts#L62)

[3] [https://pfrazee.hashbase.io/blog/hyperswarm](https://pfrazee.hashbase.io/blog/hyperswarm)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for sharing. Metastream is very nice! I thought I was following Paul Frazee's blog but I wasn't (updated my feeds now) so, thanks for the link to the `hyperswarm` post too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Cool. In case you are interested in a similar approach using signaling through audio (you might say an "audio QR code"): [https://github.com/ggerganov/wave- share](https://github.com/ggerganov/wave-share)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah! I was familiar with it, very cool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Did you happen to see my post on this? [https://franklinta.com/2014/10/19/serverless-webrtc-using- qr...](https://franklinta.com/2014/10/19/serverless-webrtc-using-qr-codes/) (The demo unfortunately doesn't work anymore since it's from 2014)

The flow is very similar to yours, down to the flashing QR codes! [https://youtu.be/rw4f9LfqqpI?t=8](https://youtu.be/rw4f9LfqqpI?t=8)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey there, I wasn't aware you had worked on the same thing (and 4 years ago!). Amazing, my hat is off for you.

Did you continue to experiment with it? Improve the experience? Try out different approaches?

<comment><USER8> There were a few interesting ideas by others in the original comment thread. Mostly on how to compress the sdp so you can get away with just one large QR code without flashing (for example by presharing a dictionary or stripping the sdp down to the bare minimum: [https://webrtchacks.com/the-minimum-viable- sdp/](https://webrtchacks.com/the-minimum-viable-sdp/)).

I lost interest in this approach because it was way more practical to give up on serverless in exchange for only scanning in one direction instead of both ways (e.g., scan a QR code once on mobile to both open the webpage and join a websocket channel, then use it to upgrade to a webrtc connection). It's a neat trick for use cases like AR.js where this is natural to do: [https://github.com/jeromeetienne/AR.js](https://github.com/jeromeetienne/AR.js)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Doesn't work in Edge because createDataChannel isn't supported: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/RTCPeerConn...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/RTCPeerConnection/createDataChannel#Browser_compatibility)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for pointing that out I wasn't aware Edge has no support for sending data over WebRTC.

</comment></comment><comment> n-gauge Cool idea, however I could not get it to work with Chrome on a laptop as a host (with the moving qr codes) and a S5 phone (join) also running Chrome pointing at the laptop (it could see the qr codes on the transparent video). It didn't connect.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sorry to hear you could not get it to work, this means I have to improve the flow. I tested this using Chrome and both Android and iOS devices (chrome and safari). The catch is that you gotta point the series of qr codes towards the center of the camera.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am the author of the Android, iOS and web based Webrtc application and developed our own media and signaling servers (C++) and customized XMPP for chat. Currently it is in private beta but I'll let you know soon.

<comment><USER10> APIs are in Go, Node.js and Java!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Seems like you can only host, not join, from Mobile Safari?

<comment><AUTHOR> Both options work in Mobile Safari.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think industries are ready to adopt real-time voice, texts, and video communication solutions to improve customer experience.

</comment><comment><USER12> Actual "serverless" webrtc. It's very unfortunate that faas products use that misnomer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes! And I plan on experimenting more with this, like sharing image files and maybe even html.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Nice idea :D

When I played around with WebRTC for the first time I used copy-and-paste signaling.

<comment><AUTHOR> I know! I wanted to use sound but that has been done, so tried with a different part of the spectrum..

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Can I get a better description/instructions in the README?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, I'll update it with a better description of the flow, check back later on today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why does the QR code constantly change?

<comment><AUTHOR> I wasn't able to get all the info into one QR code, so I used a series of them (looping) to send all the data. I figure I can use this approach to send files too.

<comment><USER7> What is the capacity of those QR codes?

When I played with WebRTC, I was able to pack the relevant SDP data to just 80 bytes:

\- 1 Type of the SDP - Offer or Answer

\- 1 Packet size in bytes (not including ECC bytes)

\- 4 IP address of the transmitting peer

\- 2 Network port that will be used for the communication

\- 32 SHA-256 fingerprint of the session data

\- 40 ICE Credentials - 16 bytes username + 24 bytes password

<comment><AUTHOR> I found a similar limit (although I still want to try with different options for the qr codes). I send the data as is by splitting it into smaller segments and looping through them with more than one qr code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Will this work across NATs?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is still WebRTC, so the same limitations apply. The QR codes are used to share the `signalling data` for the WebRTC connection.

<comment><USER17> More detail: Yes, WebRTC contains several methods for routing through NATs -- ICE, STUN by default (using your browser's default STUN server), optionally TURN.

<comment><USER18> My browser manufacturer has a STUN server? Where can I find that? (e.g., for Chrome or Firefox)

Edit: AFAICT, this isn't correct. Your browser has no notion of a "default" (or any other) STUN/TURN server. The JavaScript doing WebRTC has to specify one.

That said _Google_ runs one, at stun.l.google.com:19302; but it isn't clear if that's something third-parties could or should make use of (or if Google even permits such activity), though it seems like plenty of examples (and perhaps even real-world uses) make use of it.

<comment><USER17> In the past, I've seen this Google STUN server used on Chrome when none is supplied by the user JS. This may have changed in recent years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is amazing! Good job!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks</comment></comment>