Twitter acquires TweetDeck - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2011/05/23/technology/twitter_acquires_tweetdeck/index.htm

<comment><USER2> "CNN reported that Twitter acquired the business for more than $40 million in a mix of cash and stock. If confirmed, the deal would end nearly 6 months of rumors about advanced talks between the two companies."

The headline is misleading. CNN didn't confirm, they just reported on it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm interested to see what Twitter actually does with the client. Do they EOL it and force a migration to their own official Twitter client? If so, what precedent does this set for other popular third-party client acquisition?

If not, where do they go? Tweetdeck, despite the name, does more than just Twitter—though I'm sure the number of users accessing other networks through it is low—but they're going to need to bring it in-line with their monetisation strategy.

<comment><USER4> Precedent is that if you get big enough to become a threat, they will buy you off.

<comment><USER5> What "threat" was TweetDeck? All Twitter has to do is pull their API key, come up with some story about third-party clients, and that is that. Twitter has always been in the power position.

<comment><USER4> Then why didn't they?

<comment><USER5> Multiple reasons:

1\. Goodwill with developers might be worth more than $40m in the long run. I think the argument about users is fallacious: users will find something else (because there aren't any rivals to Twitter itself) and quickly forget. Developers don't forget as quickly.

2\. Maybe they actually liked the software and wanted to distribute it

3\. Maybe it was a talent acquisition

Anyone who has a business built on an API to another service is completely at the whims of that service, and pretending that you form some form of "threat" to the host is a dangerous move. I would hazard that the only company that has ever grown large enough to strong arm the host was Zynga with Facebook (see Zynga/Facebook Credits).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here is a link to the original CNN article - [http://money.cnn.com/2011/05/23/technology/twitter_acquires_...](http://money.cnn.com/2011/05/23/technology/twitter_acquires_tweetdeck/index.htm)

</comment><comment><USER7> Motivations here are obvious (and were obvious 3 weeks ago when this was first reported): It's a defensive acquisition to prevent UberMedia from taking over the Twitter ecosystem. [http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/02/twitter-to-buy- tweetdeck-fo...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/02/twitter-to-buy-tweetdeck- for-40-million-50-million/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Whether CNN has "confirmed it" or just reported it, CNN Money is certainly an unusual source to break a startup story like this.

<comment><USER9> They are mainstream now. I was playing the Wheel of Fortune iOS game a couple of days ago. Both Twitter and Facebook were answers.

<comment><USER10> Yeah ... Cause the arbitrar of what's mainstream is most definitely a dated game-show turned mobile time-waster.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I guess they'll rip off the Facebook part and make it an "official" Twitter client for Windows.

After 1 hour of working, the win-version of Tweetdeck eats more memory than Visual Studio + SQL Server... Kinda bad for an "official" client that is supposed to have high penetration among "casual" users, and work on Netbooks

</comment><comment><USER12> What does this have to say about APIs and how much of your data you want to open up? Is twitter _because_ of the eco-system it created through its open API? The more pessimistic argument would be that the openness has come back to bite it. How many more ghosts lurk in the closet?

</comment><comment><USER13> Ad network next?

</comment><comment><USER14> Advantage of doing it right...</comment>


Ask HN: How can you get into QA? - <AUTHOR>

I've tried my hand at programming before (with the intent to develop apps) and haven't got very far. That said, I've always been fascinated by and actually enjoy the process of testing and finding bugs in software/html/css/etc. I think I'd really enjoy a job in QA, but most positions I've seen for QA positions all seem to require hefty knowledge of programming and prior experience. I was just wondering - is there a roadmap for learning QA and or getting a position in it? Is having a CS degree necessary? I'd be willing to do just about anything in order to get an entry level QA gig, but I don't know where to start. <comment><USER2> You have to ask yourself: Are you sure you want to do QA? Some people go into QA without really knowing what QA is. QA is really a support role and won't get you very far in your career. Most people in QA do have a heavy engineering background and have an extensive programming knowledge. However, most people who go into QA do it without realizing it's not a frontline role. Try to look for a role that are customer-facing while offering opportunities to test and find bugs. Customer-facing roles are frontline roles in any company.

If you would really like QA without the customer-facing aspect, the only industry where QA is a frontline role is really in healthcare. Medical devices have to go through extensive governmental regulations and this is where QA would actually be considered a frontline role.

</comment><comment><USER3> The book 'Testing computer software' by Cem Kaner is an excellent introduction to the field.

You will make less than a programmer while being expected to possess extensive programming skills. Where developers produce code, therefore product, therefore generating earnings and profits, QA is a cost center and does not put revenue on the books. Thus, QA gets laid off more often and you can expect to work more as a contractor with no benefits.

Be prepared to spend much time explaining how the job provides value to managers and engineers over and over and over again. You need to present good data often, and be a strong salesman for your work. Expect to hear things like 'You mean you just play with the software?'. Have a good answer ready at all times.

At many shops, if a customer finds a single bug and you missed it, even though it won't reproduce on your test configurations, everyone will consider you a failure, in spite the value of your overall contribution. For some reason this never affects the developer who created the bug.

Now, if a legal precedent is ever set that software companies are held liable for their products, QA will become front line in a damn hurry.

</comment><comment><USER4> I am a QA engineer and was hired straight out of college, before i had much of an idea about what QA was. What i will suggest is understand what are the different types of testing -functional, performance, reliability , security etc, play with testing tools(I haven't personally tried Selenium but i have heard its pretty popular).Continue to try your hand at programming, as automation will be a huge part of your job as a QA engineer and programming questions are asked in QA interviews. You can also go through Alan Page's blogs at <http://blogs.msdn.com/b/alanpa/> . I think you will find them interesting. That said as mentioned by other people in the comments, the job becomes monotonous after a while. The most exciting parts of the job will involve programming. Though you will find most of your bugs manually, continuously going through the same set of tests will exhaust you mentally after a while. Talk to some QA engineers near by and understand the job little better before you jump into it. Hoping this helps.

</comment><comment><USER5> Many open source projects have bug databases that anyone can submit to; you might try starting with that to get some actual experience testing, finding, and reporting problems.

Write about it on a blog or some-such, to demonstrate what you've learned and what you can do. Try to distill general testing advice into longer articles.

You also might try offering your services here on HN as a QA contractor. I can imagine someone being interested in paying for a few hours of another person's view on their product.

Just some ideas! I've done a lot of testing work, though I've kind of fallen into it accidentally. It's fun for a while, but I don't think I'd want to make it my full-time job.

</comment><comment><USER6> Try for a contract QA position. Also, tell us where you live. Maybe someone here knows of an open position looking for QA's... It's still who you know so make sure you know people in the tech field. Also try programming again because you are going to be expected to do a certain amount of automation if you are doing any kind of software QA.</comment>


Sonos Replacement? - <AUTHOR> We've had a Sonos system for about 2 years now - a Bridge component and 2 Play speakers.  When it works, it's great - but it frequently stops playing or doesn't start at all - in short it's very buggy and completely unreliable.
What does HN use for this type of wireless music playing?  We'd like to be able to play our music from a NAS and internet radio/Spotify/Pandora.
If anyone has advice on making Sonos work - here are the things I've tried: - 2 different routers (an old Netgear router, currently Apple Airport Extreme) - manually setting channels for the router and Sonos - trying multiple Airport 802.11 options (standard, only n, only b/g, etc etc) - forcing compression of the Sonos music stream - moving the various Sonos components around in an attempt to reduce interference - changed Sonos DNS to OpenDNS (recommended by Sonos support) - numerous complete Sonos resets - numerous Sonos component reboots - 15-20 calls to Sonos support with many diagnostics submitted and (obviously) no resolution <comment><USER2> Are you using a Mac? If you get an Airport Express, you can use Airplay[1][2] and just plug in some speakers.

[1] [http://help.pandora.com/customer/portal/articles/24294-using...](http://help.pandora.com/customer/portal/articles/24294-using- airplay-with-pandora)

[2] [http://support.spotify.com/us/learn- more/faq/#!/article/Stre...](http://support.spotify.com/us/learn- more/faq/#!/article/Stream-Spotify-using-Airplay)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion - and I've considered this - but from what I can tell you can't reliably sync more than one speaker using Airplay? I'd like to sync between more than one room if possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> For what it's worth, my Sonos bridge and Play:5 barely worked on the Airport Extreme. I switched over to a new Linksys router and it works pretty well now - and the Windows desktop app even works (it didn't before). I have my music library hooked up to the Windows app via a network share.

The biggest issue is still when a component powers down, you still need to search for it again.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - this is interesting. We switched to the Airport thinking that might improve things because our old Netgear router is really old - but maybe I'll try switching back or try a Linksys or something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Oh man, thank you for this thread, I had heard only good things about the new play bar, and was going to purchase one this week...I guess not now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Talk to other people - I think some people are really happy - but I can't personally recommend Sonos at all...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> +1 on Sonos being unreliable. Even when I turn mine off it has to go through the whole "searching for a component" process.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've had several Sonos components for years. They have worked flawlessly for me.</comment>


Is Google jumping the shark? Great vs greed - <AUTHOR> http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2013/10/is-google-jumping-the-shark.html

<comment><USER2> People do know they can turn off the new "shared endorsement" thing don't they?

[https://plus.google.com/settings/endorsements?hl=en](https://plus.google.com/settings/endorsements?hl=en)</comment>


The Nomadic Programmer - <AUTHOR> http://www.yosefk.com/blog/the-nomadic-programmer.html

<comment><USER2> Wow, I'm a nomad. This metaphor has described every professional problem I've ever had concisely and poignantly.</comment>


Show HN: News site solely based on what people share - <AUTHOR> http://newsscale.com

<comment> grey-area Nicely done - I like the simple styling for pulling in a multitude of news stories and presenting them in a format proven to work for news sites (The Daily Mail uses this for example to pull readers in to other stories). Unfortunately the content doesn't really live up to the website, because it is popular content, not quality content.

I'd love exactly the opposite of this - something celebrating slow news and thoughtful reactions to the world around us. Unfortunately it seems all the pressures in our society militate towards instant and ephemeral bite-sized nuggets of information, and we enjoy novelty and excitement above all. I wonder if there is a place somewhere for quality, even if it is not popular, it might be worthwhile.

</comment><comment><USER2> It looks like people share just the tabloid and sports news.

<comment><USER3> This was kind of depressing to see, but not all that surprising.

<comment><USER4> Not even remotely surprising - BuzzFeed/Mashable/etc content are the definition of viral.

Of course, not all of these viral schlockers are happy about the world they've wrought... [http://www.vox.com/2014/5/22/5742148/facebook-product- direct...](http://www.vox.com/2014/5/22/5742148/facebook-product-director- furious-at-facebook-s-effect-on-news)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting. I like the idea of currently/today's/yesterday's news.

The scores, though, are rather buggy. On the home page right now a Forbes article about Apple's headphone jack is listed twice in the top right with two different scores (8,046 and 7,908).

On the CNBC subpage, Marc Andreessen's interview in which he called Snowden a traitor is listed three times, with three different scores. All are probably very low -- the article was well-discussed online, has 300+ comments, and the discussion topped the HN home page yesterday for a while: [http://newsscale.com/site/cnbc.com](http://newsscale.com/site/cnbc.com)

I'd probably narrow categories considerably. Two of the top three articles in "entertainment" deal with random human interest stories (a sick 4-year old and a puppy video). That's what I'd call "cute" or something, but not what most people would think of in an entertainment category.

Similarly, in business the top articles include student debt (should be in personal finance), landlords and dogs (should be in real estate or pets), an Obama story (should be in politics), a musician obituary (should be in music or entertainment), and guns (politics or law enforcement).

The problem is that solving those problems and taking Newscale to the next level requires rather more work than merely crawling RSS feeds and making some calls to Facebook's graph API to get sharing counts. :) I've looked into similar problems while working on creating a recommendation engine and iOS/Android app for personalized news (I quit CBS to found [http://recent.io](http://recent.io) this year) and it gets a bit more difficult from here. Happy to chat offline if you like. I think my email address is in my profile.

</comment><comment><USER6> Worth mentioning [http://www.newswhip.com](http://www.newswhip.com) here also

</comment><comment><USER7> I found it difficult to scour the web to find the most shared links when building trendn.com. You will find that the top news sites get the most shares, and the little guys never get to the top (unless your scoring takes that into account).

</comment><comment><USER8> /r/all ?

</comment><comment><USER9> I like it.

I would change "Currently on the Web" to "Currently Trending" or something like that.

Currently on the Web sounds strange as all the articles are on the web.

</comment><comment><USER10> What I really want is the inverse of this...

...although I blame that on what people share rather than the creator of this. The layout and implementation are great.

</comment><comment><USER11> Wouldn't this produce the lowest-denominator "news" \- ie the noise you see ppl sharing on Facebook, Reddit et al?

</comment><comment><USER12> Isn't that what huffingtonpost.com is?

</comment><comment><USER13> At least it's not pretending to be something it's not.

</comment><comment><USER14> Would be nice to have that in another countries. Good job!

</comment><comment><USER15> Not a fan of the typography, it really needs an overhaul.</comment>


Which Common Lisp Implementation to Use - <AUTHOR> http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/184182/which-common-lisp-implementation-to-use

<comment><USER2> Not sure what the MIT implementation is, but thats the one I used in uni. [http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and- comput...](http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer- science/6-001-structure-and-interpretation-of-computer-programs- spring-2005/video-lectures/1a-overview-and-introduction-to-lisp/)</comment>


Show HN: Monstro; discover music from the Twitter firehose - <AUTHOR> http://themonstro.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Dev here; will answer questions if you have them.</comment>


Bellkor breaks 9% improvement in the Netflix Challenge (as of 4/1) - <AUTHOR> http://www.netflixprize.com//leaderboard

<comment><USER3> What has actually been accomplished? Details please.

(edited, brevity.)

<comment><USER4> The biggest accomplishment is the algorithm - when applied to other useful noisy datasets, it can make all the difference between winning and losing (e.g. financial markets)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Any chance to see it used here? Another menu at the top: recommended?

<comment><USER5> The Netflix prize algorithms rely heavily on large amounts of data (thousands of votes per movie). It might be useful for Reddit and Digg as each story gets votes in the 3-5 digits, but not so much for this site. Of course, it would definitely be something, but I don't think it would be as useful.

Not to mention, the Netflix data has a scale of 1-5. Digg-like sites have scales from 0-1 (no vote, or vote), so that might further dilute the quality.

<comment><USER4> Popular stuff is easy to predict, it is the users with little feedback and less popular movies that make all the difference. Digg doesn't need a recommender because it is all about popularity, and if you do not like it - <USER2> not go there. I also want to go back to see the best stories on news.YC before I joined and I do not see a way to do that.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I've often thought that the ability to see historical YC news stories would be very useful -- both for the period before a user joined the site, as well as when you miss a week or two because of vacation, illness, etc.

<comment><USER4> For that you can use <http://www.aiderss.com/best/news.ycombinator.com> , it is filtered based on popularity</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Web Programming Where to Start? - <AUTHOR> Let me begin begin by introducing myself I'm 17 and I love thinking about startups and the web. But it's hard to implement projects you come up with if you don't know a little bit of how to code.<p>I need advice on a way for a total noob to get started with web programming. I know people who can answer questions about most languages so that's not a factor. I just need solid advice and a jumping off point. <comment><USER2> I would get 5 books on the topic. Bring them home, try them all, and you're bound to find one that you like and can work your way through.

One I'd recommend is "Eloquent Javascript". It may be a tiny bit out of date now (I read it over 5 years ago maybe, and Javascript has improved a lot since then), but it's a solid book.

Other books you might like: Pragmatic Programmer, Pattern on the Stone, Clean Code, Mastering Regular Expressions.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Roadmap to becoming a web developer in 2019" ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18874028](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18874028))

with [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Learn](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn) as start point. The [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Learn#See_also](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Learn#See_also) section has links to others to other platforms. All free.

</comment><comment><USER4> The best introduction to programming online is Harvard's CS50x on edx. It'll give you a great foundation and there's a bunch of sequel courses that are more focused, including one on web development ([https://cs50.harvard.edu/web/2019/summer/](https://cs50.harvard.edu/web/2019/summer/)).</comment>


Fitness app gives anyone names+address for 1000s of soldiers and secret agents - m-ou-se https://decorrespondent.nl/8480/this-fitness-app-lets-anyone-find-names-and-addresses-for-thousands-of-soldiers-and-secret-agents <comment> m-ou-se Note: It's not a paywall. Simply click 'Eerst verder lezen' to read the full article.</comment>


Intel says customers stockpiling chips on U.S.-China tension, hikes forecast - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-intel-results/intel-says-customers-stockpiling-chips-on-u-s-china-tension-hikes-forecast-idUSKCN1UK2Z1 <comment><USER2> What an interesting way to goad people into quickly buying more of their products. Scarcity and impending expense are prime motivators - the very reason so many people fill their tanks every time gas prices spike, instead of simply keeping it topped up when gas is cheap.

</comment><comment><USER3> China's manufacturing firms add a ton of value in the tech supply chain. It's not like fashion where processes are lower-skill and can easily be transitioned between countries and regions based on shifting headwinds.

It will be very difficult, expensive, and painful for chipmakers to untangle China from their supply chains. It's not all bad though, having a shorter supply chain closer to consumer markets can do wonders for lead times and for the configure to order model that's increasingly expected by shoppers.</comment>


Ask HN: Has all interesting desktop software already been written? - <AUTHOR> My question sounds overly generalized, but indulge me:
Can you think of any worthwhile/interesting software that is desktop-specific (Windows/Linux/Mac) and that does not already have in-production offerings by at least two competing teams?
It's actually shocking how difficult I'm finding it to answer this question. Ten years ago you could have said anything from money management software, to code editors, vector image editors, remote storage, news readers etc. etc. but now all of those markets seem to be addressed and with saturated competition.
This makes me wonder whether the "organic software" model of companies like Bohemian Software (Sketch) and Panic (Coda, Transmit) is no longer viable. If you were to create such a company today, what kind of software would you write? Is there still even a single opening in the desktop space for any kind of new software? And how could you assure your ability to compete on the chance that a megacorp (Google, Apple) suddenly implements all of your software functionality and builds it into their services for free?
Is there any path forward for independent studios making desktop software anymore? <comment><USER2> I don't think all the interesting stuff has been written. But more importantly, I think a lot of the existing software is just terrible. Big old monsters that can be time consuming to learn, and which kinda lock you in for numerous reasons. Horribly inefficient cluttered user interfaces, with old paradigms that aren't necessarily a great way to interact with the computer... I think there's a lot of innovation to be made.

Money? That's harder, unfortunately. It's hard to innovate when people want to cling on to what they already know. Make an image processing & digital painting utility, and people would only complain that it's not photoshop. Make a word processor, people complain that it's not MS Office.

<comment><USER3> _" Money? That's harder, unfortunately. It's hard to innovate when people want to cling on to what they already know."_

It's also hard to make money when there's so much free software available, some of which is quite good. For example, it would take a huge amount of effort to improve on the functionality of Libre Office, Paint.net, Audacity, Wireshark, etc. (just to name a few of the free programs I use) but since people can get these for free, a competing product would have to be a whole lot better to convince people to pay for it.

<comment><USER4> All of those have piles of competition that make a bunch of money, except maybe Wireshark. In fact, I'm a paid user of the alternatives (MS Office, Photoshop, Reaper). I have used the free alternatives that you've mentioned, but relative to the commercial offerings, they are functional but clunky.

I think there's still piles of room for innovation on the desktop, both for open source and commercial software. We've reached a lot of local optima, but things can still be a whole lot better.

For an example of a Photoshop _and_ Paint.net competitor, check out [http://www.pixelmator.com/mac/](http://www.pixelmator.com/mac/). They've been around for a few years and seem to be doing quite well. BitWig is a new competitor in the DAW space: [http://www.bitwig.com/en/bitwig- studio.html](http://www.bitwig.com/en/bitwig-studio.html).

<comment><USER5> sketch ([http://www.sketchapp.com](http://www.sketchapp.com)) is a good illustrator competitor, as well

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> NO. All the interesting desktop software has NOT already been written.

Short example: there aren't many - if any - desktop word processing software with word or phrase completion, so that's one thing you could still do and sell if you wanted to.

Another example: you could port the majority of desktop software from Windows to Linux and sell that to companies who want to lower their costs with Linux. Even if windows was essentially a free upgrade for a time, it won't be forever.

Some would argue that there are libre or free as in free beer software clones of Windows desktop software available, often they will cite GIMP as a suitable replacement for Photoshop, or LibreOffice as a replacement for Microsoft Office etc., but you can always find a situation that makes you wish you were running the original on Windows instead of fighting against tersely-documented software with their fair share of quirks.

Finally the desktop software term may be becoming more vague with time, the reason for that is because Android is being modifies to run software in a windowing interface by at least two companies right now, one of them being RemixOS. Also, single board computers equivalent to the Raspberry Pi are often able to run the Debian distribution for ARM. so that's another reason to program more Linux desktop software.

<comment><USER7> I like the idea of a word processor with many of the features we expect in text editors. I've figured out how to make Vim (+pandoc) do what I want, mostly, but I don't expect non-programmers to do that. Word completion, version control, better image integration than Word or Latex...

<comment><USER8> Yup, I occasionally use text files plus pandoc. This allows me to keep plain- text files (actually markdown) in version control, sync'd across multiple devices, and to generate Word docs, PDFs, etc for those who want them.

I've yet to hit the snag-point when I start getting feedback in the form of "track changes" in a Word doc -- shudder -- but I'll clear that hurdle when I come to it. Perhaps I'm fighting a losing battle there.

Top tip for anyone else thinking of doing this: I generate Word docs using pandoc, then generate PDFs by "save as" from Word. This keeps the formatting the same, and my pandoc batch-script remains simple.

So... OP... A cross-platform Word-like editor with a non-tech-friendly interface to version control repositories. Or that last bit as a plug-in for Word.

Aaand googling "git plugin for ms word" reveals plenty of interesting reading material.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Desktop is for sure at the end of the hype cycle [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle) but that does not mean that you cannot make money or not be successful when you write a very good software or you hit a particular niche. And I would not fear Google or Apple, I cannot remember when Google did the last time a rich and good desktop app for end consumers (was it Picasa, the last one?) and the only big professional desktop app I use from Apple (beside the OS) is Final Cut Pro. They (Apple & Google) do not compete a lot on the desktop applications software market.

IMHO it may be even easier in desktop market than in the high competing mobile market where people want everything for free or at very low price. TL;DR Desktop will not die and there will never be a time were you can say "Everything is done".

<comment><USER10> Funnily, Google [itself] has discountinued its "desktop search engine", which is a great pity, as there have been no decent alternatives and then, what do you do when you need to search, say, a document database, consisting of some .xlsx and .docx files (which are essentially compressed XML files, as I get it)?

<comment><USER11> For finding files within Windows, there's Everything[0], which is pretty fast and small (just one .EXE file).

[0]: [http://voidtools.com/](http://voidtools.com/)

<comment><USER12> I've used this, it is pretty fast comparing windows search. Any idea on how it differs from windows search?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> At the mortgage company I worked at after college, the entire company was using "command line style" "ms-dos" looking software that ran the entire company. This software completely dominates the entire mortgage market! Makes some boring ass mortgage software with a GUI and some bug fixes and you might make yourself a millionaire. And the software was not "rock solid". It had all kinds of bugs that screwed up customers accounts and cost them $$$. The only reason companies use shit like that is because it beats running the company manually without a computer. So anyway, go out there and write yourself some boring business process software!

<comment><USER14> what software would that be :) :)

<comment><USER15> Was it a servicing company? If so probably LPS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> VR, AR, AI. Three two letter buzzwords. All of them have massive unexplored potential on the desktop.

> It's actually shocking how difficult I'm finding it to answer this question.

You are asking the wrong question, because you are looking at the existing market. You need to analyze trends, news and cutting edge science, have imagination, vision and forward thinking. That's obviously also hard, but it's not like looking for an empty field in the forest where you want to plant your trees.

You might find "Blue ocean strategy" a good book.

<comment><USER17> _Augmented_ reality has potential on the desktop? It kind of depends on being able to move around and look at arbitrary things in arbitrary directions and places.

<comment><USER16> I don't know, but I can imagine a wireless headset that talks to a powerful machine. Remember also that by desktop we don't really mean a huge crate anymore. Laptops are still hard to miss out of daily work. I spend most of my day sitting next to one so I wouldn't say AR is not a desktop category.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is a bit like asking "Have all good books already been written?"

Maybe all the trivial/obvious/easy ones have but certainly not all the interesting ones.

<comment><USER19> Now I'm pondering what a trivial/obvious/easy book is... ;)

<comment><USER20> Goodnight Moon combines very short length, repetitive format, relatively straight-forward subject matter choice, and a cross-cultural emotional goal. Maybe the book that would have been written wouldn't be word-for-word the same, but if there wasn't Goodnight Moon someone would have written something nearly indistinguishable.

<comment><USER21> Meanwhile, in a parallel universe...

"If there wasn't Goodnight Night, someone would have written something nearly indistinguishable."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Sketch actually arrived in a period when the vector / pixel drawing tool space was pretty filled up by giants like illustrator and photoshop. They still hold the "best software in da place" title. But, Sketch found its niche by offering a mixed, self-contained solution. The point is, first, distinction: while Adobe brought real innovation, Sketch somewhat aggregated functionality. Today, there are new fields opening (AI suffices to keep the thread open for ages). So it's actually safe to say that there will be a) space for primary innovation applications and b) space for aggregators, re-configurators of selected functionality looking for niche functionality (very much like Coda, today totally disrupted, did with web development tools ~ 5 years ago). Just look at Sublime and Atom. Even Coda.. wasn't it Vim with some fancy ftp plugin and ____tree plugin?

</comment><comment><USER23> I am doing just that. A hugely ambitious project, with a very wide potential user base, but I have lost all hope in finding funding at a reasonable rate. I am consulting during the day to pay for what I need, and working on the product at night.

<comment><USER24> tell me more about your project

<comment><USER23> Sent you an email.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Any space that lacks competitors is probably lacking competitors because there's no money in it, or because it takes a huge amount of work. The bar is high, but we're certainly not "done" with desktop software. For example, if you can create a text editor that's as snappy as Sublime and as extensible as Atom, you have my money.

<comment><USER26> Try Visual Studio Code. It's an Electron app, just like Atom, but it's a LOT faster. It's open open source too ([https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I don't think that having existing software is a bad thing. There were loads of DVD ripping packages, but at some point Handbrake came out and was better than the rest. There were loads of screenshoting tools, but at some point Monosnap came out and set the bar high.

Inventing and implementing soothing that is both compelling and has never been done before is really tough. How about instead improving on an existing idea that has not been implemented well?

</comment><comment><USER14> Great topic!

Short answer: 'No'

The idea of software development for the desktop is one of the reasons why I got into learning to code in the first place.

FWIW I think a developer should look outside the tech community (and I define tech loosely to include artists,illustrators and such.) There are, as has been pointed out, many industries that are neglected,pharma,finance(!),education,religion,home-users. In addition I think it is useful to turn ones attention from the West to huge swathes of territory and consumers that remain unconquered in Africa, Asia, Latin America. Even within North America many niches exist. Last year an I almost struck up a partnership with a North American pharmacist who had an idea for a desktop application that would aid in reviewing patients. Turns out that the pharmacy review process for patients is ripe for 'digitization'. Our back-of-the- envelope calculations showed a potential income in the millions of dollars if we captured just 10% of the market (sadly the partnership did not work out.) I am currently working on a CRM(!of all things) desktop/mobile app for use in an under served market. I strongly feel that many such niches still exist. But you have to look deeply beyond current customers and traditional markets.

<comment><USER28> I like how you considered religion an industry.

<comment><USER29> I have a friend who sells software that enables churchgoers to donate via a mobile app and someone in the town I grew up in wrote software for youth group management. You would be surprised at the niche needs that are out there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> There are no good fieldguides to plants/trees/fungi for either desktop or mobile. (I think I've purchased every single one for iOS.)

<comment><USER31> I was just thinking about this the other day. I'd like to develop something...

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I don't really understand why people are writing off the desktop in general. For engineering and design and lab software nobody wants tablets. I guess this is all niche but it's a big niche.

Do I really want my next finite element analysis package or pattern design software or whatever running on a tablet? Maybe if the tablet is the size of my table or at least as big as all my monitors put together. This category of software is in general a bit crappy since professionals in these fields tend to just accept the flaws of the software and work around them and they just become part of the practice of the field if the software is sufficiently popular.

<comment><USER33> I work in a large enterprise. Total workforce of 150,000 computer users. 7% smartphone/tablet penetration rate.

Some PCs are going to be displaced by server based solutions like VDI, but there has literally been almost no substantial displacement of PC apps. It's a decade away at least IMO.

The "death" of the PC is exaggerated. I think it's become a boring, stable market. If anything, the browser computer (i.e. Chrome book)will replace more PCs than the "mobile" OS platforms. And Chrome is closer to a desktop than an iPad.

<comment><USER34> I agree with that. The Pc is not the default choice when you want technology, but you need one to produce content quickly/with good productivity.

The problem with PCs is replacement times have increased and margins went down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I would say not all the desktop apps have been 'rewritten' lately. The evolution of the desktop many, many great apps for years and decades past have been obsoleted sometimes the software was way ahead of the hardware.

If you aren't finding anything interesting that is unwritten, you might take a trip down history and see what things had been abandoned on the wayside fro one reason or other, that might be time for a refresh.

As far as new platforms - I think augmented reality (such as google glass, hololens) is going to be a new desktop metaphor and see a lot of "wheel reinvention" in the coming years as the platforms become stable.

</comment><comment><USER36> "Can you think of any worthwhile/interesting software that is desktop-specific (Windows/Linux/Mac) and that does not already have in-production offerings by at least two competing teams?"

I would say Microsoft Visio on Windows, and Omnigraffle on Mac OS X would be good examples. Both software packages that command a premium price, have virtually no competition on their respective platforms and are very specific to the Desktop.

While writing a clone of either might not be a license to print money, perhaps focussing on a diagramming tool specific to a niche market might be interesting?

<comment><USER37> Visio has plenty of web-based competitors.

I think this is a reflection of the fact that the web is actually a pretty good platform for developers.

<comment><USER38> > Visio has plenty of web-based competitors.

If there's a market for desktop users that would buy that over a subscription to a web-based system, then it could still be a valid space to try to develop in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I am curious why you are asking the question this way. I would ask what are the most interesting new markets for software. Then you can see if desktop software seems a relevant part of the solution.

</comment><comment><USER40> There is a need for something that makes it easy to build and display pivot tables on the web. Tableau attempts to fill this, but it is not as easy and does not have as much functionality as Excel.

<comment><USER41> Have you tried PowerBI?

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> > _Ten years ago you could have said anything from money management software, > to code editors, vector image editors, remote storage, news readers_

Then years ago there almost certainly where more than two options for most of these categories, at least for windows and Mac. But that doesn't mean that there isn't a market for competitors if they can offer something new.

Sketch seems like a perfect example: there already were tons of design packages before, but they found a niche that wasn't covered well and made a product fitting it perfectly. Despite Photoshop being the "king" of image editing software for over a decade there still are commercial competitors around. Despite google maps & co there still are desktop mapping packages targeting private users, not to mention commercial users. They probably are not the most profitable software products, but they are around for years and get updated, so their makers think it is worthwhile.

A common thread seems to be that these are professional or enthusiast tools, where user stickiness is higher, and that they either have unique features that are unlikely to be replicated elsewhere or that they offer a cheaper alternative to established professional tools. Also harder to be replaced by mobile or web options.

Regional markets can be another thing, where global companies often only offer sub-par or way to expensive options.

The biggest issue I see for "studios" is having to find good niches repeatedly to maintain headcount, because maintenance on a product often needs less developers than getting it off the ground, and in many markets you can't sell a new version every year.

</comment><comment> open-source-ux I can't think of any serious competitor to Adobe After Effects. There are many apps that partially overlap e.g. Fusion, or 3D apps like Cinema 4D. Apple's Motion 5 (the latest version) was released in 2011 and is not considered a serious competitor.

Another example is InDesign. There are other DTP apps available, but for professional publication design, InDesign is the leading DTP program.

What Adobe has is "mindshare" amongst designers (and a wealth of tutorials, brushes, scripts, plugins, presets etc).

But there are encouraging signs that some users are considering alternatives. Sketch (Mac only) is a suitable alternative to Illustrator for many (if not all) tasks. So is Affinity Designer (Mac only too, but a Windows version is in the works). Affinity Photo (Mac only again) is an alternative to Photoshop.

Plus, there are actually a wide number of digital painting apps for both Windows and Mac (e.g. Painter, Clip Studio, ArtRage, SketchBook Pro etc).

Like other posters have said, there is plenty of scope for new desktop apps to rival old established apps. So much existing software has poor UX. If you can develop a better UI and a better or easier method of accomplishing tasks, people will take an interest. Both Sketch and Affinity Designer/Photo have enjoyed a swell of enthusiastic users who champion those programs. Much of their success is precisely because they offer a different/quicker/easier/more comfortable way of performing tasks than the clunky, cumbersome UIs of their Adobe rivals.

I'd hate to think that someone would give up on a desktop app because they think the desktop space is too established or settled. You might not topple your rivals, but you can certainly carve out a profitable niche.

</comment><comment><USER43> Has all the interesting art already been created?

There is likely enough art to keep any one person entertained for a lifetime, sure.

In the case of software, there is likely enough desktop software to keep users content for their lifetime use of computing too - but that doesn't mean that all useful/interesting art or desktop software has been created, or written.

The question is rather of necessity rather than interesting I think.

</comment><comment><USER44> > money management software, to code editors, vector image editors, remote > storage, news readers

Is that really true? e.g. for code editors: vim, emacs and several IDEs.

There's usually only a very brief period between when an idea gets maket validation, and competitors appear.

In effect, your question asks us to predict the next successful idea, before it's successful.

That said, creative people tend to be attracted to newer platforms - web, mobile - which generally have more user convenience and features than desktop apps, and are "powerful enough" these days.

Something that requires even more power - simulation, VR, games - and/or requires keyboard and mouse could win on desktop.

</comment><comment><USER45> All the interesting cutlery has also already been made, but people still design new forks and knives. It would be pretty unpleasant if there were only two fork manufacturers in existence.

<comment><USER46> Surely there's a market somewhere for a mix between chopsticks and a spoon.

<comment><USER47> Slurpee Straws?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> You might have better luck looking into a small business niche. If you can find the right launch customer, software for small businesses can be lucrative. Orthodontists, pawn shops, dry cleaners, pack-and-mail, etc. A good launch customer would have enough info to let you know if there's a price or feature gap you could exploit. Then, a follow-on appearance at a trade show (even with a faked up mock-up app) would let you gauge interest level.

</comment><comment><USER49> You can delevop new softwares like cloud management (aws or/and google compute engine) or really working docker management ui, or something similar.

Or flash to html5 converter (convert all games example)

So you have keep eye on technical changes around the world.

Also softwares reaaly depending local env. Yes maybe photoshop or ms office is big products bu these is lot of local area to develop new apps. (When i said local think as countrys) for doing that you must travel the world.

</comment><comment><USER19> Someone might very well have said exactly this five years ago. One of your examples, Sketch, has only existed since 2010. In five years time there will probably be some widely known app that didn't exist today.

What are the design and creation tools for augmented reality? Or chatbots or whatever. There will be new niches created, and new ways of doing old tasks discovered.

</comment><comment><USER50> I'm still always wishing that there would be some really good way to manage my information/media consumption in a simple, centralized way. I find Pocket unsatisfactory. I'm talking particularly about books, videos (movies, youtube vids, netflix series, etc) and news articles online. My current system is ridiculously scattered.

<comment><USER51> Apple really, really wants you to use iTunes for this. (Well, eventually, they decided that iTunes manages everything _but_ books, so now we have iBooks, which doesn't even let you manage your own library.) In case you haven't used it, take my word for it that it's a disaster and you probably don't really want that.

<comment><USER50> Hahahaha yeah. I've tried a lot of different systems and tools and combinations, but I've never even gone near iTunes. I'm not sure why, I think I just have a subconscious intuition that it would be terrible.

Goodreads is surprisingly frustrating to use, I wonder why nobody's made a better version yet.

<comment><USER52> All of the book sites seem to have really bad notifications that an author you like has released a new book.

They heavily spam you with 'recommendations' to read books that you explicitly dont want to read, but never even a peep about authors you told them you like.

<comment><USER53> Really? Goodreads reliably emails me every month about new releases of authors I've read. I actually love them for this, because amazon does a terrible job of notifying me when authors from whom I've bought multiple books release new books.

ps: authors -- get a goddamn email list. You can write short fiction set in the same universe as your longer works and I'll buy it for $3 for 30 pages. Way more profitable than a whole book. Have a gap between releases? Spend 2 weeks and earn $10k or more. It's nearly free goddamn money. See, eg, Mira Grant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> One thing I would love to find as commercially friendly open source or want to buy or for up to $2 pr license is basically a single-site-browser creation kit (like mozilla prism) only with a few more added bells and whistles like quake- like slide-in, configurable window borders etc.

<comment><USER55> On the Mac, Fluid.app might fit some of those requirements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Remember, build a better mousetrap. Don't avoid mousetraps because somebody already made one.

</comment><comment><USER57> There is a systematic, though still hard in practice, approach to answering this question. You can enumerate what software could possibly be needed, as automation tools for what tasks can possibly be required to complete and methods which are available for them.

</comment><comment><USER58> No, everything is up for replacement. How/when are we going to replace web browsers (and tech) we're currently using?

</comment><comment><USER59> Have all the interesting paintings been painted?

</comment><comment><USER60> make an app that works exactly like Stickies.app, except shows up exactly the same on all of your devices. I'd pay about 20 bucks for that.

<comment><USER61> you need the cluttery look? syncing text-files or evernote or something would be that otherwise.

<comment><USER60> yes, i like the cluttery look because i can arrange the windows in a way that makes sense to me.

<comment><USER61> that will give trouble on smaller screens, you'd have it scrolling or need to zoom a lot

<comment><USER60> i think the fact that you're trying to tell my own opinion to me is pretty hilarious.

<comment><USER61> My word choice ("cluttery") was a subjective bias, expressing, tongue-in- cheek, that I prefer folder hierarchies.

With my later comment I simply referred to the problem of translating the desktop widescreen to the small smartphone screen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> No, the Monero GUI has been in development for two years and its almost done!

I'm being partially sarcastic

</comment><comment><USER63> The answer to this is a resounding NO.

Browser graphics is in the stone age compared to Desktop graphics. And that's just to name one thing.

</comment><comment><USER64> Have all the great songs been written? I get the feeling the answer is the same probably for similar reasons.

I honestly think it was easier for me (located in ND / MN) to find good pop bands in the UK in the 90's than finding good software now. There is so much noise and I cannot easily keep track of what people I follow on various networks are using. We have a huge amount of information, but search just doesn't work anymore and the filters on various networks are horrible. I get the feeling the ad model is to blame.</comment>


AWS Data Exchange - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/aws-data-exchange-find-subscribe-to-and-use-data-products/ <comment><USER3> Wow we were just talking about selling shovels in a (ML) gold rush.

Incidentally, what is the open source alternative of this? Data is so cheap that it should be actually free, unlike counterfeit nike shoes.

(Does a bittorrent tracker specifically for research data exist? Edit: there's [http://academictorrents.com/](http://academictorrents.com/))

<comment><USER4> > What is the open source alternative of this?

There are many public-domain datasets:

* [https://aws.amazon.com/opendata/public-datasets/](https://aws.amazon.com/opendata/public-datasets/)

* [https://cloud.google.com/public-datasets/](https://cloud.google.com/public-datasets/)

* [https://github.com/awesomedata/awesome-public-datasets](https://github.com/awesomedata/awesome-public-datasets)

> Data is so cheap that it should be actually free

I feel like you haven't had the opportunity to work with data that has value.

<comment><USER3> if a dataset is really valuable, it wont be available for public consumption/copying, and, like nike, won't be selling itself on amazon

<comment><USER4> > if a dataset is really valuable, it wont be available for public consumption

Data vendors sell valuable data all the time to essentially anyone who is willing to pay their asking price. I don't see how this is any different? Just because aws is trying to run a marketplace doesn't suddenly make the data "public" in an open/free sense, there's still a price tag attached to it.

> and, like nike, won't be selling itself on amazon

Not every data vendor (or retailer since you keep bringing up Nike) has the necessary brand recognition, marketing budget, or technical proficiency to only sell direct to customers: that's why centralized marketplaces and alternate distribution channels exist.

<comment><USER3> > valuable data all the time to essentially anyone

if it s truly valuabe it isn't sold to 'essentially anyone'. like high value financial info or security.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is nice, but I don't see the pricing after the free trials. The Pitney Bowes data [1] they used as an example in linked article only shows $0 for the free trial, not what it's going to cost you afterwards. It'd be nice to know the long term cost before tying this data into your business.

[1] [https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/prodview- bwf7mapyyjzom...](https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/prodview- bwf7mapyyjzom?qid=1573682854054&sr=0-1&ref_=srh_res_product_title)

<comment><USER6> Their screenshot shows an "autorenew" enabled on a $0 free trial with zero information on how much it will cost after the free trial is up.

You shouldn't allow people to sign up to "autorenew" at the end of their free trial period without clearly displaying the price that will apply when the trial ends.

<comment><USER7> It looks like the trial dataset in this case is simply a truncated subset of the full dataset (only San Francisco zip code boundaries). It would likely remain free forever under this model of "trial".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It looks like this is targeted at ML/AI but I have a tangentially related question: does anyone know of open source or other publicly available lists of US businesses? Just business name and address?

I'm building out an app and we receive documents from all kinds of vendors from all over the country. The app is for our business to manage our client data. I was hoping to find a list of business I could throw in the db rather then piecemeal add the addresses in one by one as the documents come in.

I looked at some of the data service providers (infoUsa I think was one and d&b being another), but one dataset for just business names and addresses they were asking $50,000 for. I think my use-case is unique in that these companies typically sell this data as sales lead data which it definitely is not in my case (we don't even sell b2b).

Anyone know of anything like this? I suppose I could just scrape phone books but I think if I can't find the data we will just resort to one by one entry.

<comment><USER9> It's been a minute since I looked at the docs, but could you use the Google Maps API for this (or perhaps OpenStreetMap)? You could query all of the POI categories for a city/state/country and save the addresses and names. Might be something, unless you need the legal name of the business rather than whatever they make public.

<comment><USER8> Legal names aren't critical but would be nice. I think that if the business posts the name that would be close enough.

Very interesting idea - many thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As someone who deals with HIPAA every day, it really bothers me that Change Healthcare is there even if the data is "anonymized".

<comment><USER11> I'm not sure why it would bother you. I can generate random data in the same format and you can't figure out which is real or who's data it is. Thinking about data as if it has intrinsic value by being recorded is foolish, as many find out during acquisitions.

<comment><USER12> With another dataset that is non-anonymous, you can cross-verify with the anonymous data to increase your confidence of who they are. This happened when Netflix released anonymized user ratings. Researchers were able to deanonymize some users by using IMDB ratings.

[https://www.wired.com/2007/12/why-anonymous-data- sometimes-i...](https://www.wired.com/2007/12/why-anonymous-data-sometimes- isnt/)

<comment><USER13> Similar thing happened a while back when AOL released 'anonymized' search data - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_search_data_leak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_search_data_leak)

I dug through it just out of morbid curiosity and unfortunately stumbled upon a few searches indicating that a friend privately suffered a miscarriage. This was only possible because I recognized her as the only person that I knew at the intersection of a few other search terms that were correlated to the same 'anonymized' id.

GP is assuming a naive starting point when that is rarely the case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There are many free public datasets available on the web.

I have an open source project on crawling public datasets and make them searchable in one place: [https://github.com/findopendata/findopendata](https://github.com/findopendata/findopendata).

</comment><comment><USER15> They're crowd-sourcing valuable information services from third parties to become a market data provider.

What could go wrong for information providers where Amazon controls their market and infrastructure? They become commoditized "data providers". They are coerced into profit sharing with Amazon. They are eventually replaced by Amazon-provided data.

I won't buy from this market because I see where this is heading. I use the same reason that I apply for not buying many other services and products from Amazon. It offers no additional value other than minor convenience to a customer at a much greater cost to the economy and providers.

Buying local isn't just for produce.

<comment><USER16> I've been thinking about your comment for nearly an hour now, wondering about all of the potential paths this could take.

If your company goal is to sell commodity data and make money in volume rather than high margin less frequent sales then maybe this is not so bad.

To your point about Amazon eventually taking this over, I do believe that to be the case when there is near ubiquitous demand for the data type. And just looking over what is in there now, these are some pretty specific datasets.

I'm not saying you're wrong, I will be considering your comments for quite a while.

I have said this on here before and I think it still holds true. Amazon is like Jay Leno.

Conan O'Brien once said:

"Hosting The Tonight Show has been the fulfillment of a lifelong dream to me. And I want to say to the kids out there watching, you can do anything you want in life unless Jay Leno wants to do it, too." Apr 17, 2014

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> As a consumer of a paid dataset, how would I trust that the vendor is publishing accurate and complete data?

<comment><USER18> You can't, and they aren't.

[https://adexchanger.com/the-sell-sider/third-party-data- is-a...](https://adexchanger.com/the-sell-sider/third-party-data-is-a-bad- habit-we-need-to-kick/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> How does a data provider prevent someone from copying the data from their S3 bucket into a new one, then cancelling the subscription and owning the data forever?

<comment><USER20> At least in the case of subscriptions I looked at:

1) It's a continually updated file, so if you didn't subscribe you wouldn't get new data weekly/monthly. Likely the subscription aligns with the data refreshes for most products.

2) It's a one-time fee with a hefty cost attached (I saw some healthcare data sets that were $100K+). You are paying for that in its entirely and just have data rights to it.

<comment><USER21> On one of the example, the update is « quarterly »...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Probably money to be made grabbing hard to get hold of open datasets and listing them here until someone complains?

<comment><USER23> Like stolen or leaked data?

<comment><USER24> Easy to find datasets but hard to use data collected by the government - <USER2> example, tons of gov data is released in PDF format (and other obscure XML formats). Even when the data is available in machine readable formats, you still need to read through 50 page read me/data dictionary files to understand the meaning of the data.

There is tremendous value in cleaning and repackaging this data in easy formats (offering an API would be awesome too). Even better if the provider can offer human support.

Obviously it would be ideal if the government releases all this data in easy formats in the first place, which a lot of governments do, but not all. The second best thing is for some private companies to help, even if they charge for it.

Not your parent commenter, but speaking from experience.

Here is a trivial example : I was looking for a list of all government websites (and their social media accounts), starting with federal all the way to small towns. There are lists, but none complete - at least I couldn't find, and definitely not with their social media handles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Will this affect Bloomberg's business?

</comment><comment><USER26> Did anyone else find Jeff's first sentence terribly unoriginal and somewhat wimpy?

"We live in a data-intensive, data-driven world!"

I know these blog posts are turned out fast, but especially for such a sensitive issue as a world awash in data that no one understands and no one - yet - controls...it seemed like it was "whistling past the graveyard".

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry to let you down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This used to be called AWS Juntos lol

<comment><USER27> Seriously! That's what it was called last year.</comment></comment>


Firebird Butler - <AUTHOR> https://www.firebirdnews.org/introducing-firebird-butler/ <comment><USER2> I occasionally hear about Firebird on the intertubes, but the last time I've actually seen it used was alongside some Delphi app. Anyone got some experience with it? Seems like somewhere in-between SQLite and the big FOSS dbs.</comment>


Is Your Bank Open Today? (GUI & API for checking if banks are open) - <AUTHOR> http://ismybankopentoday.com/

<comment><USER2> Why POST for the api? This should be a simple GET.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's sort of a joke for April Fools day. I have a very strange sense of humor...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Not accurate for Poland :P

<comment><USER4> Or Canada.

<comment><USER5> Or Cyprus.

<comment><USER6> Or England.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oops :) Sorry guys. Should've mentioned its US only...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Blocked by McAfee Web Gateway as a malicious site.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ahahahahahaha... Wtf?! I've never had that happen before...</comment></comment>


Deleting genes could boost lifespan by 60% - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11925154/Deleting-genes-could-boost-lifespan-by-60-per-cent-say-scientists.html <comment><USER2> Power wants more excuses to collect DNA, at some point I bet the angle will be "to prevent illegal mods".

</comment><comment><USER3> This looks interesting. And the 5 day diet they link to makes some strong claims about slowing aging.</comment>


Why a "Double Standard" in Digital Privacy Rules Makes Sense - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/3068834/why-a-double-standard-in-digital-privacy-rules-makes-sense <comment><USER2> Another pro-corporate article from a "business" magazine. Great, let's take consumer protections away, and let famously dickish companies like Verizon and Comcast be even less responsible, and bigger dicks.

This article does not mention any downsides, like super-intrusive advertising from companies that have already done things like inject extra HTTP headers to track people (Verizon!), or less responsibility for the company with the worst customer service (Comcast). Consumers are just sheep to be fleeced in whatever way makes the most money this quarter for Comcast and Verizon. Penny wise and pound foolish as my mother used to say. Consumers will wise up and there will be an "arms race" between ISPs and their customers. We'll all lose.

</comment><comment><USER3> This all comes from the belief that, with few exceptions, the only way citizens/consumers should affect companies operating in their countries is through purchasing decisions. United we stand, divided we fall, and all that.

Even for less hilariously monopolistic situations than ISP choice, this is tricky, due to the massive information asymmetry. Not to mention it rewards the less than idealistic - corporations have no qualms against buying politicians to advance laws favourable to themselves.

</comment><comment><USER4> I say we impose the same "tough standard" on everyone.</comment>


Social flatland - <AUTHOR> http://interuserface.net/2010/02/buzz-facebook-and-social-flatland/

<comment><USER2> "We form discrete groups from discrete sets of people, generally with little overlap."

This is true for some people. Anyone who grew up in a small town, a tightly- knit religious culture, or most of Latin America, for that matter, might have a different experience.</comment>


Sidechain Elements: Open source code and developer sidechains for Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> https://www.blockstream.com/2015/06/08/714/

<comment><USER3> _" 2-way peg"_

Moving coins from the side chain back to the main chain is the hard part. The white paper says you _" use the proof to unlock a number of previously-locked outputs with equal denomination on the parent chain."_ You have to lock up N bitcoins to create N side chain coins, but those form part of a locked pool which can later be used to redeem sidechain coins. It's conceptually elegant, but the process is complex and delicate. Lots of things can go wrong, and it needs "challenge periods" of about a day during which things get sorted out.

 _" Security for the blockchain is provided by a set of predefined functionaries"_

Uh oh. Remember Paycoin, with its "Prime Controllers" and "guaranteed minimum value". That didn't end well. The whole point of all this cryptographic machinery is supposed to be to eliminate the need to trust some central party or parties. This sidechain scheme doesn't do that.

<comment><USER4> The federated model is a temporary solution, as a workaround due to the lack of native support in Bitcoin Testnet. Once the Bitcoin network itself can validate the SPV proofs from the sidechain, this model will be replaced with a completely decentralized one.

<comment><USER5> What's the incentive for people to merge mine this? Namecoin issues its own currency, and it only has a third of the hashrate of Bitcoin. If this sidechain follows that example, it seems like it will be much easier to mount 51% attacks and forge proofs.

<comment><USER3> The sidechain doesn't have mining. It has "trusted functionaries". Or so the white paper seems to say.

<comment><USER6> This is a temporary solution, the whitepaper addresses moving to merged mining (it's not being used in the beginning since sidechains that don't have a lot of hashpower are easily attackable).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Peter Todd commented on Twitter that Greg Maxwell's job is impressive.

[https://people.xiph.org/~greg/confidential_values.txt](https://people.xiph.org/~greg/confidential_values.txt)

</comment><comment><USER8> As I understand sidechains there's a complicated proof mechanism that gets set up for transfer of bitcoin 'value tokens' between the bitcoin blockchain and alternative blockchains _without creating any additional currency units_ , and a fall back to a much simpler exchange mechanism for actual practical day to day exchange.

But the whole thing about not creating additional currency units actually seems fairly arbitrary to me, given that this adds a whole bunch of otherwise unnecessary complexity.

The fallback exchange mechanism for sidechains is based on an atomic exchange algorithm that is well known for many years now.

This is something that could easily be standardised in the form of a relatively simple 'pay on reveal secret' transaction type to permit decentralised exchange between arbitrary pairs of blockchains, as I discussed in the following blog post: [http://upcoder.com/11/atomic-cross-chain- exchange/](http://upcoder.com/11/atomic-cross-chain-exchange/)

<comment><USER9> Neat proposal. It's worth mentioning that it can't be implemented in the current bitcoin implementation, yet the alpha sidechain introduced here happens to add exactly the bits it requires to work, namely time locked transactions and a more plausible malleability fix.

Which means if you find/build another altcoin with similar capabilities, you can start exchanging testnet coins with those altcoins using the very approach you describe today.

I don't believe that's a happy accident, but rather one of those core reasons for getting sidechains off the ground, as it provides a clear path toward finally building all the insane stuff people have been dreaming about for years.

<comment><USER8> Ok, yes that sounds pretty cool.

It feels like there are much simpler ways to support pay on reveal secret directly on the bitcoin blockchain, _if this is accepted as an important goal_ (e.g. with explicit conditional redemption conditions based on spending transaction blockcount).

But I guess a more general solution for time locking and malleability can give you other stuff as well (e.g. off chain payment microchannels).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> GitHub Repo featuring Elements so far (Bitcoin fork): [https://github.com/ElementsProject/elements](https://github.com/ElementsProject/elements)

GitHub Page with a write-up of the actual Sidechain Elements: [http://elementsproject.org/](http://elementsproject.org/)

</comment><comment><USER11> I understand the people in the Bitcoin community are trying to prepare for the future, but is there any evidence at all that Bitcoin transactions will grow to a point where the blockchain can't handle them and sidechains will actually be necessary?

<comment><USER12> Sidechains are about more than simply allowing extra capacity on the bitcoin network. They fundamentally enable the pace of innovation to increase in the cryptocurrency space.

In the past, if someone wanted to improve bitcoin technically (for a trivial example, let's say improving block confirmation times), they had to fork bitcoin, and release an "altcoin" (thus creating an entirely separate currency at the same time). This inevitably led to many bystanders speculating on the altcoins - getting distracted from the technical improvements, and focusing on whether it was a good investment or not. In the past, it was not possible to separate the bitcoin network from the currency.

Sidechains allow us to create entire new blockchain networks, which use the bitcoin currency natively. This means that I can now test changes to the bitcoin protocol, and allow people to move their existing bitcoin (currency) on and off my new network. For a popular sidechain, hosted wallets could even transparently support sending and receiving coins on both networks. This is a major step forward for cryptocurrency, because it means we no longer need every innovation to have 100% consensus on the main bitcoin blockchain - <USER2> can simply try out new ideas on sidechains.

Longer term, I can see sidechains allowing us to even migrate to a Bitcoin 2.0 protocol (think IPv6) - once a new standard is formalized, people can begin using the new network in parallel, and eventually everyone will migrate to the new "main" network.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> _> As a side-effect of its design, CT also enables the additional exchange of private "memo" data (such as invoice numbers or refund addresses)_

This is a very interesting detail.

So it's finally possible to use bitcoin as a public ledger, by adding the hash value of any large dataset to the "memo". Up to now, we needed workarounds involving non-existing account, such as provided by Bitcoinproof: [https://vog.github.io/bitcoinproof/](https://vog.github.io/bitcoinproof/)

</comment><comment><USER14> transcript: [http://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/gmaxwell-sidechains- elemen...](http://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/gmaxwell-sidechains-elements/)

</comment><comment><USER15> The link to the whitepaper is wrong. It links to:

[https://www.blockstream.com/2014/10/23/why-we-are-co- founder...](https://www.blockstream.com/2014/10/23/why-we-are-co-founders-of- blockstream/)

but should link to:

[https://www.blockstream.com/sidechains.pdf](https://www.blockstream.com/sidechains.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER16> The blue border around the page is rather jarring

This is great, though.

</comment><comment><USER17> Solutions do not need to be complicated or elegant - they simply just need to solve the problem.</comment>


Second LiveStock: Virtual Free Range (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://www.secondlivestock.com/public/vfr.php <comment><AUTHOR> > Second Livestock is a conceptual art project that sees battery hens strapped > over exercise balls and fitted with virtual reality goggles intended to > convince these captive animals that they're out in the barnyard having the > time of their lives. > ... > This "Cockulus Rift" idea is the work of Austin > Stewart, an artist, microcontroller programmer and circuit designer. Stewart > is also responsible for the "Grass Mask" as shown below – a WW1-style gas > mask with wheatgrass growing out the bottom so you can breathe in freshly > produced oxygen. We'll pop him on our "inventors to watch" list.

[https://newatlas.com/second-livestock-virtual-reality-for- ch...](https://newatlas.com/second-livestock-virtual-reality-for- chickens/32280/)</comment>


Ask HN: Does Groovy/Grails have a future? - <AUTHOR>

Will Groovy survive outside of Gradle?  Would it be unwise to start a new long-term project in Grails today? <comment><USER2> Groovy's problem is that it is the "anything goes" language. There is the eternal September problem of new people entering the industry, and for the first ten years of a person's career they think that more complex, more verbose, and harder is somehow better. Groovy provides syntactic sugar for much of java, but that is going to be seen as a negative for people who compulsively have to type out long form code or use the most complex language feature they can. In ten years people would have forgotten about Groovy, because Python has already won over so many communities. No one complains that Python is slower than Java or not as complex as Scala.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have been looking at web frameworks on JVM's a little bit lately for work (yeah doing coding again). My most recent experience has been doing some hobby projects with Ruby and Rails framework. I like how that works for simple CRUD apps, a lot less mundane coding is needed compared to my programming in Java web apps 5-8 years ago.

There has been some decent research by Raible Designs on this topic: [http://raibledesigns.com/rd/entry/grails_angular_vs_jhipster](http://raibledesigns.com/rd/entry/grails_angular_vs_jhipster) or [http://www.slideshare.net/mraible/comparing-jvm-web- framewor...](http://www.slideshare.net/mraible/comparing-jvm-web-frameworks- february-2014)

I don't know the author but those articles have led me towards looking into JHipster. Grails didn't sit well with me since I have done Ruby/Rails prior to that and some things just appeared backwards with Grails.

My personal results recently were that JHipster was a bit cumbersome to get going since there are so many dependencies to install. Some of which I could not get to compile/setup with Node.js. Since my target app is an enterprise corporate environment, that is a non-starter. I'm leaning towards Ruby/Rails but with JRuby and the warbler gem to basically WAR up the Rails app so I can deploy to something simple like Tomcat.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is really two questions. Or maybe three. Can you edit it to be a single one? Personally, I'm most interested in the Grails part and I'd probably weigh in on that, but I'll see which way you take it.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can't edit the text of an Ask HN submission, only change the title.

I tried asking exclusively about the future of Grails a few days ago but it didn't work out: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9986602](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9986602). This time I thought I'd cast a broader net; the questions I'm asking are not exactly unrelated anyway.

<comment><USER4> Yeah it's a good question, I think. It's a shame no one else pitched in.

There are some answers on SO, but they're usually closed down as it's not the appropriate forum for this kind of debate. Nevertheless, it's worth searching for a few of the more recent ones and seeing what people say.

Personally, I chose to use Grails fairly recently, but it was a tough decision. I started with the requirement that it needed to run on the JVM as a webapp.

So, I tried using clojure and it's ecosystem for building a webapp, but it's quite new. There were few libararies and plugins and SO answers to help me. While I think that the whole React/Clojurescript/Clojure approach to building webapps is good, I just didn't want to participate in the bleeding edge / reinventing the wheel thing.

Grails by comparison had a much more mature ecosystem, and although it's not without its faults, it's much easier to get started in coming from a Java background. I still don't feel like I know groovy, but I was still productive and got everything I wanted done.

So a few further points that I can't really answer to:

\- I felt it could still be better. I've not really used Django or Rails much, but it would be nice to know how they compare.

\- I built a very old-style app, in that there was a CRUD model, and pages for entities. It would have been nice to build a single-page webapp with lots of AJAX. There are lots of frameworks out there for this, but I am not aware of anything really established in Java.

\- I still don't really understand what the deal is with Groovy, or really why they needed to have this in there.</comment></comment></comment>


Woke up this morning, and realized I just lost my future company to Facebook - <AUTHOR> So I woke up this morning, turned on my phone, and found my friend sending me a link reading "Facebook launches Marketplace...". I felt lost in an instant.
I had this idea in 2014 for people to be able to buy and sell things and services whenever and wherever they are using their mobile devices. Shortening the time needed to be able to make a successful deal since buyer and seller are already in the same place.
Two years have passed and I haven't come up with the product since I'm full time at work here in Manila, live a normal life, and I procrastinated. Life is hard here, and this was supposed to be my only way out. And my inspiration, my idol, Mark Zuckerberg and his people took it all away.
https://christianztamayo.com/app/uploads/SpotShop-draft-orig.jpg <comment><USER2> You lost nothing, you launched nothing, ideas are a dime a dozen.

And you're wring if you think it's the same product. Just the fact that Facebook launches it means it's not the same product. You would never have had the audience and market clout that they have.

It actually sounds like you think the idea that you had that you didn't act on was in some way valuable. That's a bit weird.

</comment><comment><USER3> They have likely been working on it for two years as well. The idea was worth nothing, and they are likely only able to execute it because they have a ready-made audience.

So, what are you going to start building today? Because someone else is starting work on the same thing right now and it is a race.

<comment><AUTHOR> Here in Manila, this is a huge thing and not just a _nothing_.

This is like a breakup. I need to move on and work on something else, moving fast and not procrastinating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This idea has been around for ages. Heck, Facebook even had this in the form of groups.

</comment><comment><USER5> Never idolize Mark Zuckerberg.</comment>


Ask HN: If you were the CEO of Yahoo, what would be your priorities? - <AUTHOR>

Mayer has been acquiring a lot of companies which haven't really generated a monumental revenue. And their Alibaba IPO money is worth a ton. What would you be doing to make moves on Google and their other competitors? <comment><USER2> 1\. Stop all projects that are not contributing to revenue, don't have a path to revenue or aren't contributing to the community. 2\. Culture. Focus on the teams building products, reward those doing well, and get rid of those not. Restore work at home for those who do the work, get rid of those who don't. I don't agree with punishing everyone because of a few assholes. 3\. Clean up yahoo home page, it is cluttered and too busy. Add a feature like the old iGoogle for those who want the extra stuff on their landing page. 4\. Pick a product/service and make it the best thing out there, too much diversity causes fragmentation and a lack of focus and doesn't attract or help you retain talent. This doesn't mean only do 1 thing, just focus to make 1 thing best in class first, then keep moving through each product.

I am sure we have no clue of all the issues on-going within yahoo, but from a product/project and culture standpoint those would be my initial goals.

</comment><comment><USER3> 1\. Focus on 3 Products: Homepage, Mail, and Photos. Make a commitment to turn these into THE most useful services on the internet. Easy to use = Yahoo's strength

2\. Move everything else to a division called Yahoo Labs, maybe spin it off into its own company that can experiment more.

3\. Invest heavily in the developer culture and developer ecosystem, and optimize for attracting new talent to the company.

</comment><comment><USER4> 1\. Video and live streaming. 2\. Photo sharing made simple across devices. 3\. Continue mobile appification. 4\. Siri competitor for your life (email, contacts, calendar). This is what aviate needs to do.

</comment><comment><USER5> Yahoo needs to get into phones and for this it needs to develop a system that lets people replace google with yahoo. so emails, account sycing, photo syncing things like that.

<comment><USER6> Seriously, the mobile spread of Yahoo is laughable for such a large tech company. They seem to have completely missed/ignored the mobile train.

<comment><AUTHOR> I fully agree. No idea why they are willingly disregarding such a lucrative market

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Create a autonomic new Flickr team to build a new consistent API and a UI that is actually nice and usable.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think they should rebrand and start moving on instagram territory

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Get the yahoo bar out of flickr (yeah I know, it won't save Yahoo).</comment>


The World's Most Beautiful Mathematical Equation - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/15/opinion/sunday/the-worlds-most-beautiful-mathematical-equation.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> Vague title.

Scientists studied "math beauty" and found that brain activity matched "art beauty".

Out of 60 equations, the fifteen mathematicians agreed that Euler's identity was the most beautiful, and Ramanujan's infinite series for 1/pi was the ugliest.</comment>


How I Hacked My Startup - <AUTHOR>

How ProductHunt helped me go from "No-idea" to "Profitable" in 15 hours (including 6 hours of sleep).
https://medium.com/@jibly/how-producthunt-helped-me-go-from-no-idea-to-profitable-in-15-hours-including-6-hours-of-sleep-9398ff0bc55d
---
How A 4-Step-Amazon-Hack Helped Me Convert Visitors Into Paying Customers Insanely Fast.
https://medium.com/@jibly/how-a-4-step-amazon-hack-helped-me-convert-visitors-into-paying-customers-faster-698eb5b95a3d
---
These 5 user comments boosted my conversion rate from 0,8% to 6%
https://medium.com/@jibly/these-5-user-comments-boosted-my-conversion-rate-from-0-8-to-6-65d4fd2198d9
--- <comment><USER2> It is amazing that you managed to pull this great venture off by spending 15 hours (including 6 hours of sleep). And congrats that you already got customers signing in for your services, but I just wanted to understand (out of curiosity) how will you manage to provide the 'million-dollar' information to your customers every week as you promised?

May be you are an expert in this, but eventually you will drain out rite? If this piece of information is the secret recipe than you need not answer ;-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Very good question. A couple of ways to answer this:

\- Luckily you will never run out of tactics. Reason for this is because their are constantly new things being launched that you can use for your business. Twitter, FB, Pinterest, Didn't exist 10 years ago, yet now are extremely useful in helping your business grow. So one of the things we do is constantly stay up to date on new emerging technologies that you can use to your advantage.

\- Second is I'm currently working on a 'growth dashboard'. This will be rolled out to all TractionVC users. It's a place where you can organise tactics and in a better way collect the ones that seem to work for you. This way you will get a better understanding of what's working and what not.

\- Some (most) tactics are repeatable. Meaning: Guestblogging, increasing your traffic in different ways, it will keep staying important. With the dashboard, it'll be easier to build your marketing strategy, without having to hire someone else to do it for you.

Eventually, when you go big, you don't need TractionVC. It's really to help you get you going. Pro products are also in the pipeline to keep users even when they grow, part of the community.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> clickable links:

How ProductHunt helped me go from "No-idea" to "Profitable" in 15 hours (including 6 hours of sleep). [https://medium.com/@jibly/how-producthunt- helped-me-go-from-...](https://medium.com/@jibly/how-producthunt-helped-me-go- from-no-idea-to-profitable-in-15-hours-including-6-hours-of- sleep-9398ff0bc55d)

\---

How A 4-Step-Amazon-Hack Helped Me Convert Visitors Into Paying Customers Insanely Fast.

[https://medium.com/@jibly/how-a-4-step-amazon-hack-helped- me...](https://medium.com/@jibly/how-a-4-step-amazon-hack-helped-me-convert- visitors-into-paying-customers-faster-698eb5b95a3d)

\---

These 5 user comments boosted my conversion rate from 0,8% to 6%

[https://medium.com/@jibly/these-5-user-comments-boosted- my-c...](https://medium.com/@jibly/these-5-user-comments-boosted-my- conversion-rate-from-0-8-to-6-65d4fd2198d9)

\---

</comment><comment><USER3> Thats amazing! Job well done.

<comment><AUTHOR> tnx</comment></comment>