Donald MacKenzie on high-frequency trading - <AUTHOR> http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n17/donald-mackenzie/be-grateful-for-drizzle <comment> ord-lhr-nyc-nrt I worked on these systems and I can categorically say this is the best summary of HFT I've ever come across.

Many of the systems, fiber networks, data centers, and software that I touched are mentioned here. I've never heard the term "bit fucking" before, but the explanation of having to understand what happens under the metal is very true. You have to have a good understanding of software, compilers, assembler, CPU micro architecture, network protocols, and operating systems to be able to operate in this space.

I don't really know what else to add, except that I and many others I worked with in this business think that batch auctions are the solution. Although the work is technically challenging and interesting, I certainly don't like the arms race aspect of it, and I wish the resources (natural and human) used by this sector could be better allocated. One of my big concerns was the added CO2 emissions of constantly spinning programs doing no useful work - all in the name of minimizing latency. I did some research into reducing the carbon footprint of our code by reducing idle spin cycles. Alas, I never really had the time to get it working well before I decided to pack up and move on.

Happy to answer any questions anyone may have.

<comment><USER2> Why would the batch auction need to be FIFO? What about something like this:

1) When opening a "new tick", release data about trades in last tick, and start accepting new orders. Information about orders submitted to this tick is kept secret. Allow setting order price to practically arbitrary accuracy. 2) After tick closes, match orders in _random order_. That is, it should not matter at all on at which point in time inside this tick order arrived 3) repeat

Allowing arbitrary accuracy would help turn the competition from speed or stuffing the order book with huge number of orders to "spoof" the random matching, towards competition of just providing lower spread. I understand that it would still advantageous to hold submitting trades until very end of the tick, to take into account as much outside information (other markets, etc.) as possible. To counter this, maybe the exact length of the tick could be randomized also. What do you think?

<comment><USER3> So the biggest argument against random matching (whether in batch auction or open market book orders) is that the easiest way to game it is to figure out your expected fill rate. Then you just raise your order volume such that your expected fill rate matches your risk profile.

For the advantage of removing the speed advantage, you get the downside of providing advantage to people that have the loosest risk profiles and you further complicate the audit burden such that it is impossible to follow.

Think of it from the perspective of a value investor that set a market order 6 months ago. Under the current system once their price becomes top of the book they have a virtual certainty of getting filled. Under a (fair) random match they have the exact same chance of getting filled as someone who literaly just put in their order.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't understand why HFT is still around, if it's considered a problem.

Naively, couldn't all the craziness about HFT be resolved by enforcing a 1-second tick on the markets?

Like, right now it appears that trades occur instantly. Instead, queue requests and have the trades occur only once a second. Or 5 seconds.

Would this work? I'm assuming that either there's no motivation to solve the problem, or there are difficulties that I'm unaware of.

\---

I've been wondering this about HFT for a while and this seemed like a good place to ask. Then I went back and finished reading the article, and this solution is proposed at the end. Curious about whether it would work on not.

<comment><USER5> >I don't understand why HFT is still around, if it's considered a problem.

Primarily because regulatory capture has, until now, overruled all attempts to reign it in. The banks and hedge funds engaged in this activity wield vast amounts of political power.

>Naively, couldn't all the craziness about HFT be resolved by enforcing a 1-second tick on the markets?

Not really. That just changes the game from "who can trade a picosecond before you?" to "who can trade a picosecond before the tick?".

An almost microscopic tax on transactions would prevent it, though while having a minimal impact on all other trading activity.

<comment><USER6> This is silly. HFT is a $10-50B/year industry, depending on who's numbers you go with. (You can ballpark the numbers by multiplying trade volume by the spread.)

For comparison, Morgan Stanley alone made $8B in profit in the last _quarter_ [1]. HFT is tiny, a drop in the bucket compared to the rest of the financial industry. Further, many big players in the industry are against HFT since HFT reduces their information advantage over smaller players [2].

The danger in a 1-second tick is that a) a massive change like this is hard to do [3] and b) it would likely increase volatility. A stylized fact of dynamical systems is that continuous feedback reduces volatility, whereas discrete step sizes increase it - witness how many numerical ODE solvers can blow up even while the underlying ODE is stable.

[1] [https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3AMS&fstype=ii&ei=bVYI...](https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3AMS&fstype=ii&ei=bVYIVNiUNcqfrAHHp4GoCA)

[2] [http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2014/fervent_defense_of_fr...](http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2014/fervent_defense_of_frontrunning_hfts.html)

[3] Bloomberg, Excel and other calculators contain mathematical errors (e.g., "weekends are sometimes treated as a business day for the purpose of interest accrual") which _cannot be fixed_ because the change would be too disruptive.

<comment><USER5> >This is silly. HFT is a $10-50B/year industry, depending on who's numbers you go with. For comparison, Morgan Stanley alone made $8B in profit in the last quarter [1].

I'm not sure what your point is here? There's more to finance than HFT? There are other, bigger rip offs out there?

<comment><USER3> His point is that small industries (especially ones with very low margins like HFT) cannot wield the political muscle required to invoke "regulatory capture". For instance BlackRock, a large hedge fund that has been very vocal in it's anti HFT stance made more profits in 1 quarter last year than the entire HFT industry. If regulatory capture was going to happen, don't you think they would be in a better position to accomplish this?

Bill Ackman is another giant player who is highly vocal against HFT and is known to spend donation money to attempt to make trades go his way.

HFT is the little guy in this story, the little guy doesn't get to create regulatory environments.

<comment><USER5> The few larger players who came out against it have done so only relatively recently, and in Goldman's case, only subsequent to being under investigation by the AG for its own HFT practices.

<comment><USER3> This is simply untrue.

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/12/02/us- highfrequency-i...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/12/02/us- highfrequency-idUSN173583920091202)

A Senator quoted against high frequency trading at least 5 years ago. Principal Financial is also quoted.

<comment><USER5> One Senator, huh?

<comment><USER3> Found in a 2 minute google search. Your position is false, that no one was against HFT until recently. Large participants have been actively against it for a very long time, further pointing out how incorrect your position is on regulatory capture.

You have an ax to grind and an incomplete understanding of how the market and HFT work. It makes you look foolish.

<comment><USER5> >Found in a 2 minute google search. Your position is false, that no one was against HFT until recently.

My position was that no large banks or hedge funds or other concentrations of political power were against it until relatively recently. Which is completely true.

An individual senator is not capable of making vast changes to the law by themselves. Your belief that this IS possible is completely absurd.

>You have an ax to grind and an incomplete understanding of how the market and HFT work. It makes you look foolish.

Frankly I don't know how you're still defending barclays for selling an service promising freedom from HFT predators and then introducing HFT traders to it so they can collect additional fees.

Your belief that these traders were dumb and did not know what they were buying and therefore deserved to be lied to by Barclays is beyond retarded. They knew exactly what they were doing. You do not.

<comment><USER3> "My position was that no large banks or hedge funds or other concentrations of political power were against it until relatively recently. Which is completely true."

I mentioned several giant hedge funds (orders of magnitude bigger than the entire HFT industry) that have been arguing against HFT for a very long time. Further, the first article I found on a 2 minute google search, mentions a large fund that was speaking out against HFT in 2009. This is as simple of proof as I can provide that your position that HFT is not opposed by large finance groups as untrue.

"Frankly I don't know how you're still defending barclays for selling an service promising freedom from HFT "

Not once in this whole thread have I defended Barclay's and trying to paint me with that brush is either a sign of extreme obtuseness or terrible rhetoric. What I argue is that the reason Barclay's needed to defraud their customers is that their claim (and all other dark pool's) claim that they could provide a better trading environment by excluding HFTs has been historically proven as false. Traders are not dumb, they move to the venues that provide them with the best trading environment and that has continued to be venues that allow market makers EVEN IN THE FACE OF FRAUD.

No matter how many times you paint HFT as "predators" or "sharks" or as "spearing whales" you've yet to describe a single behavior attributed to HFTs that is in any way unethical or illegal.

[edit: having to work around HN reply rules, I apologize] To the reply below about BlackRock. Do you really think it is a realistic comparison to compare BlackRocks recent profit (2013) to one of HFTs best year (2009)? At the very least you should have mentioned that it was different years.

"Were this true, dark pools would not exist in the first place"

Except that there are all manner of product offerings that don't make sense for their clients. The easiest analogy in this case is extended warranties. "If extended warranties were so bad why do so many people buy them?" Of course this is a ridiculous argument. People buy extended warranties to hedge risk that is over rated due to warranty salespersons. The exact same way dark pools are.

" There is a link I posted below in response to you that describes such a strategy"

It does no such thing. It hand waves a lot of semi-technical non specific jargon around an idea that is easy for people to get upset about. I could just as easily write an article about how multicast networks were dangerous. It wouldn't make it so.

<comment><USER5> >I mentioned several giant hedge funds (orders of magnitude bigger than the entire HFT industry)

You mentioned Blackrock, whose net income last year was $3 billion.

[http://www.wallstreetandtech.com/trading-technology/the- real...](http://www.wallstreetandtech.com/trading-technology/the-real-story- of-trading-software-espionage/a/d-id/1262125)?

"TABB Group estimates that annual aggregate profits of low-latency arbitrage strategies exceed $21 billion, spread out among the few hundred firms that deploy them."

>What I argue is that the reason Barclay's needed to defraud their customers is that their claim (and all other dark pool's) claim that they could provide a better trading environment by excluding HFTs has been historically proven as false.

Were this true, dark pools would not exist in the first place. Traders would have stuck to the public exchanges and paid their (lower) fees.

>No matter how many times you paint HFT as "predators" or "sharks" or as "spearing whales" you've yet to describe a single behavior attributed to HFTs that is in any way unethical or illegal.

False. There is a link I posted below in response to you that describes such a strategy (spearing the whale) in precise detail.

<comment><USER3> "You mentioned Blackrock, whose net income last year was $3 billion. [http://www.wallstreetandtech.com/trading-technology/the- real...](http://www.wallstreetandtech.com/trading-technology/the-real...)? "TABB Group estimates that annual aggregate profits of low-latency arbitrage strategies exceed $21 billion, spread out among the few hundred firms that deploy them.""

Thanks for using 1 number from now and another number from 5 years ago. Are you willing to concede the rest of your rhetorical high ground?

Even if we discount the market impact numbers that you have to juke, I found a senator in 2009 speaking out against HFT. Can you find one defending it?

"Were this true, dark pools would not exist in the first place. Traders would have stuck to the public exchanges and paid their (lower) fees."

Maybe if the buy side firms didn't engage in fraud to keep their clients out of public exchanges that would be true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> IMO this is one of the best articles I have read on HFT. It gives a good, balanced overview of the technology and the fundamental principles behind how automated trading works, without any particular viewpoint or opinion directing the text.

The section near the end on FPGAs and programming styles was an eye-opener to me. I wonder how many other firms have taken risk checks out of their code to save some nanoseconds...

<comment><USER7> > without any particular viewpoint or opinion directing the text

You say that like that's a good thing.

I know that a lot of rubbish has been written about HFT and algorithmic trading, but it's sad that no one seems to be able to write about its merits without starting a flame war.

<comment><USER8> It's an outgrowth of poorly designed matchmaking software at exchanges. The could completly distroy HFT without costing society anything or adding transaction fees.

<comment><USER7> Do you have any specific issues in mind when you say that?

A lot of the rules that markets operate by come from standards and regulations, not software design. The software design reflects the kind of markets exchanges want to set up, so it's not a software problem. The people who wrote the standards had specific markets and specific outcomes in mind when they wrote them.

<comment><USER9> I work in this industry. I've come to the conclusion that I will be leaving very soon. There are a number of reasons, but the primary one is because it's become clear to me that I spend the vast majority of my time on trying to figure out how to take advantage of flaws in exchange hardware/software. Sorry, I can't go into specifics.

That being said, I don't know if it is possible to create an ungame-able matching engine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I can't help but think of that article yesterday about how we're avoiding the Big Problems ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8261098](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8261098)). It's crazy how much money and brain power people have invested in HFT which is essentially just turning time into money with no benefit to society. What could the human race have achieved if the same amount of effort was focused in other areas?

<comment><USER11> It could be that our current economic system implements a pretty terrible resource allocation algorithm, where many workers' jobs consist in undoing the efforts of employees from concurrent companies.

In trading, a quant's job is to outsmart or outspeed the other bank's team. They invest considerable brain power, effort and money into producing incremental improvements that are quickly rendered meaningless by the work of the team in the building across the street.

Another prime example is advertising, a zero-sum game where competing brands fight to undo other brands' brainwashing efforts and replace it with their own brainwashing. A waste of the time and energy of million of humans.

Some more ideas on the subject: [http://www.sphere- engineering.com/blog/15-hour-work-week.htm...](http://www.sphere- engineering.com/blog/15-hour-work-week.html)

<comment><USER8> Advertizing and HFT are only zero sum for competing products in an established market. For new products it can be a net benifit ex: "talk to your doctor about ED."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Can someone help me understand the following statement (specifically the don't branch part) ?

"Don't touch the kernel. Don't touch main memory … Don't branch.' (That third commandment means don't fill your program with 'if' statements – ones with the generic form 'if A then do B else do C' – because they get in the way of a modern microprocessor's capacity to do several things in parallel.)"

<comment><USER13> Obligatory link: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11227809/why-is- processin...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11227809/why-is-processing-a- sorted-array-faster-than-an-unsorted-array) see most upvoted answer for short lecture about cost of branching in modern CPU's.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> HFT is a two sided coin. For every person who complains that it's screwed them out, they're forgetting all the times they've saved money on narrower spreads due to extra liquidity. Possible?

</comment><comment><USER15> Goldman Sachs' Blankfein on Banking: 'Doing God's Work'. This kind of self- deception seems to quite prevalent with those banksters.

<comment><USER16> They're totally doing god's work, it's just that the god in question is Mammon.</comment></comment>


Slashdot – Fair Processing Notice – Data Protection Act 1998 - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/anonymous/1b329dfa65bac00bc85e <comment><AUTHOR> Link to Privacy Statement:

[https://www.slashdotmedia.com/privacy- statement/](https://www.slashdotmedia.com/privacy-statement/)</comment>


5 downsides of working at home - <AUTHOR> http://creativebriefing.com/5-downsides-of-working-at-home/ <comment><USER2> I really get the impression he didn't think this working from home thing through _at all_ before he dived in. Surely his points are utterly predictable?

<comment><USER3> I agree. I even read his follow-on post giving solutions, and those also seemed predictable.</comment></comment>


Told vultr.com thier IP is blacklisted. Says my sources are "not reliable" - <AUTHOR>

Today I launched a VPS with vultr.com. Tested the assigned VPS IP in mxtoolbox.com (listed 3 times) and multirbl.valli.org (listed 6 times).
I informed them that the IP history has it blacklisted and their response:
"those are not reliable data sources"
I asked twice for the reliable source and they sent a link to www.senderbase.org/lookup/ (run by Cisco) which checks 4 blacklist databases in which indeed it is NOT listed.
Is it safe to ignore the blacklist reports in mxtoolbox.com and multirbl.valli.org? :)
By practice all my other IPs a clear in mxtoolbox.com, so just want to double check that this is safe to ignore.
Thanks <comment><USER2> It takes basically nothing to run a blacklist. You're pretty much free to do whatever the hell you want with one.

You'd be hard-pressed to find an IP that isn't listed in at least one blacklist... for example, my latest favorite is the blacklist that lists anyone sending commercial IPs. For example, send your customers an invoice? They'll list you. Send them an order confirmation? Listed again.

The real test, is are you seeing email being rejected? If not, then you're probably just listed on some very low quality blacklists.

<comment><AUTHOR> awesome thanks! I was under the false impression that mxtoolbox.com was trust worthy.</comment></comment>


Using the bisect command to quickly find a bad commit - <AUTHOR> https://www.didia.me/using-bisect-to-find-bad-commit <comment><AUTHOR> If you ever find yourself in a situation where you want to find a commit that first introduced a bug, git bisect or hg bisect will save you a lot of time. It uses a binary search algorithm to efficiently find the bad commit.</comment>


Justin trends down as Ustream begins its ascent - <AUTHOR> http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?site0=justin.tv&site1=ustream.tv&site2=&site3=&site4=&y=r&z=1&h=300&w=610&range=6m&size=Medium&url=justin.tv <comment><USER2> I don't see the cool thing about UStream. I hate seeing people sit in front of their computer with a web cam. Justin actually goes _outside_ and does things.

I think Justin.tv's problem is the scaling. The cutting out isn't too bad, but once they hit 400 viewers it starts to becoming a pain to watch.

<comment><USER3> Good points, however I think once the novelty of justin.tv wears of, viewers will stray. That already seems to be happening.

But that's OK for justin - because their business model is to sell this solution to others, and they've already proved it works.

On the other hand, Upstream is more of a social network type site that takes facebook stalking to a new level. I envision people using it to keep tabs on what their friends are up to. Who knows if it'll work, though.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> There's no doubt in my mind that Justin.tv has benefitted Ustream tremendously.</comment>


Instagram feed update draws backlash - <AUTHOR> https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/instagram-update-swipe-feed-leads-backlash-then-another-change-n952361 <comment><USER2> A few weeks ago the Facebook app momentarily switched for me to a mode where posts that had multiple photos felt more like Instagram: instead of showing the photos in a grid layout they were shown in a left/right swiping carousel. I really really hated it and was glad when they stopped that experiment.</comment>


Wil Shipley says grim outcome if protest ratings continue - <AUTHOR> https://getsatisfaction.com/deliciousmonster/topics/sync_delicious_library_3_library_with_multiple_computers_cloud_features#reply_14981674

<comment><AUTHOR> Wil also comments in the thread about Amazon strong-arming him, "Amazon will disable Delicious Library if I re-release my iOS viewer app right now. They have told me this explicitly. I don't think it'd help you any if I release an iOS viewer and then immediately am forced to pull it and Delicious Library from the stores."

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Wil Shipley explains why Delicious Library 3 doesn't have sync and ends with, "The simple truth is that at 3 1⁄2 stars we will run out of money in a year. At 4 1⁄2 stars we stay in business. That's the ominous reality that tiny shops like ours work under."</comment>


NodeSocket is shutting down - <AUTHOR> http://blog.nodesocket.com/shutting-down

<comment><USER2> I'm curious to figure out how your strategy is relevant when put next to the existing solutions, especially the Open Source ones; Rundeck [1] & ControlTier [2] or SaltStack [3] are all directly targeting this space (and can be really powerful). Less specific, and at the same time more powerful, are tools like Chef or Puppet.

What would Commando.io would do better than existing alternatives? I would assume that you'd have to provide a compelling argument for any client to hand over SSH access to his infrastructure, no?

I'm genuinely interested in your thoughts on that.

[1] <http://rundeck.org/> [2] <http://doc36.controltier.org/wiki/Main_Page> [3] <http://saltstack.org/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Howdy, so I will try and answer your questions, but at the same time, we haven't officially launched, so can't give away too much strategy. :)

We are attacking developers, and smaller startup companies that don't have any existing automation or orchestration solutions in place to start. You'd be surprised at the number of companies that are still SSH'in manually, and cowboy coding. RunDeck is nice, good piece of open source software, but since its not a service, there is still that barrier to entry, and lack of a "wow" factor.

I argue that Chef and Puppet are for companies that are further along, however I personally know many people who use them with two or three servers, but again these are certainly more technical people, and not the market focus for us to start with.

<comment><USER2> When do you think you guys will launch? Anything you've already started sharing with alpha testers?

PS: who is "we"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is too bad, but I'm glad to see Justin's efforts continue with Commando.io - he is a smart and ambitious guy.

</comment><comment><USER4> less than a month of notice for a platform company does not encourage people to rely on your infrastructure in the next company

</comment><comment><USER5> Great pivot. Looking forward to...going Commando!

</comment><comment><USER6> Good luck with Commando.io J!

</comment><comment><USER7> sad..</comment>


Why Wikipedia Is as Important as the Pyramids - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/11/st_essay_wikipediawonders/

<comment><USER2> Perhaps the title is an understatement. Wikipedia may have its faults, but as a compendium of facts and ideas, it has no equal. Everyone I know who lives on the web uses it daily. The Pyramids, impressive though they are, don't have much direct impact on my life. Wikipedia does.</comment>


Using Haskell to make a Mac App Store App - <AUTHOR> http://thechangelog.com/post/2639981126/using-haskell-to-make-a-mac-app-store-app

<comment><USER2> Interesting that this app was apparently accepted. I wonder if any other non- Objective C based apps are in there? Does anyone know (as the article hints) whether any MacRuby apps are in the app store yet?

<comment><USER3> I know someone who is submitting one literally right next to me right now. We'll see how it goes.</comment></comment>


The Year of Linux on the (Windows) Desktop – WSL Tips and Tricks - <AUTHOR> https://www.hanselman.com/blog/TheYearOfLinuxOnTheWindowsDesktopWSLTipsAndTricks.aspx <comment><USER2> Even-though I'm not huge Windows fan, I like to watch Scott Hanselman's videos. He's smart and funny, but hope he's wrong with "The year of Linux on the (Windows)". Not sure what is the Microsoft's initiative with WSL, but if I were them, I would be very careful. WSL can be two sided sword for them. I think for most Linux users, WSL is not enough to switch to Windows (there will be some, but talking about majority here). So IMO WSL will attract Windows user to Linux and not the other way round. Those same users may later discover that, they're actually more productive in Linux and eventually migrate away from Windows. Microsoft is also giving good reasons to do so (telemetry, forced updates,...). Almost hear Satya Nadella singing Ariana Grande's – No Tears Left To Cry :D

<comment><USER3> I view this from an entire different perspective. WSL has nothing to do with Linux it's 99% about MacOS.

A lot of developers wouldn't consider a move to Windows in the past because they're we're far too used to the gorgeous, hassle free version of Linux that is MacOS.

Now give Windows a way for people to keep using most if not all of their dev stack, earn street cred by creating a very nice skinny IDE (VSC) and capitalise on Apple putting out disappointing Macs... a lot of Mac devs made the jump.

<comment><USER2> People bitch about the mac all the time. And yes, regular Joes disappointed of mac might migrate to Windows (but not because of WSL). But I doubt there will be significantly large group of macOS developers, that rely on *NIX command line tools willing to migrate to WIN because of WSL. Yes, they may "threaten" on forums, they will, but in reality only few do. :D I would rather install Linux on mac and recycle the hw than buy new PC with Windows. Of course for non heavy terminal users, WSL and Windows might be good option.

But IMO we might both be correct. It's not mutual exclusive. Time will tell.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Its ironic that Linux (i.e. the kernel) is the one part of the operating system explicitly _not_ being used in WSL. GNU userspace may have won a victory but its sad its not under its own name.

<comment><USER5> Technically it is GNU/Windows, but Linux was won the market share among common people, and yeah I don't think FSF will find it amusing.

However, I bet if Microsoft had improved the original POSIX personality on NT instead of the way it dealt with it, Linux would probably never won't the hearts of the other UNIX vendors.

Many of us only jumped into GNU/Linux, because it provided a path to use the work of the university computers at home, Windows 95 wouldn't do it and getting NT 3.51 with the respective hardware was too expensive.

<comment><USER4> At that time they thought they could destroy Unix. Its interesting to think of what could have been, but it was never a real possibility as far as microsoft was concerned.

<comment><USER5> They could have destroyed UNIX, traditional commercial UNIXes that is, like SGI and such.

Many UNIX customers were in the process of evaluating their workstation story related to hardware and license costs, eyeing a possible switch to NT Workstations.

That did not happen, because GNU/Linux came into the scene and many saw there an opportunity to improve it and get a pass porting their UNIX software into it instead, while using commodity PC hardware, specially as BSD future was still being decided.

Without BSD and GNU/Linux, the future would have looked much different.

Instead BSD and GNU/Linux were the ones killing commercial UNIXes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I installed all of this with Ubuntu so i could mimic my development environment I have on my Mac with zsh.

Running apt-get to install some packages was orders of magnitude slower than it should be.

Doing a Google search at the time showed some Github discussions with no resolution. I wad far from the only one.

Unless they've fixed it, I have no use for this.</comment>


Texter - <AUTHOR> http://tholman.com/texter/ <comment><USER2> I thought I recognised the URL! This is by the same genius as Elevator.js: [http://tholman.com/elevator.js/](http://tholman.com/elevator.js/) (Turn your sound on.)

<comment><USER3> All projects of the author are incredible [1]. "The Useless Web" [2] is something I enjoy every time too.

1: [http://tholman.com/](http://tholman.com/) 2: [http://www.theuselessweb.com/](http://www.theuselessweb.com/)

<comment><USER4> 'The Useless Web' lead me to [http://heeeeeeeey.com/](http://heeeeeeeey.com/), which lead me to [http://hooooooooo.com/](http://hooooooooo.com/) \-- a delightful pair of domains. I really enjoy the idea and simple execution.

<comment><USER5> [http://www.fallingfalling.com/](http://www.fallingfalling.com/)

When a beginner asks you a question easily solved with Google and then complains when you point that out, tell them you've decided not to help them anymore until they've stared at this for 15 minutes with the volume up.

After two sessions, they'll be reading man pages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Made some abstract art with it.

[http://knowingart.com/texter.jpg](http://knowingart.com/texter.jpg)

Frame that, it'll be worth something ;-)

<comment><USER7> I tried too:

[http://imgur.com/wF232UC](http://imgur.com/wF232UC)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> As impressive as that is, it's even more impressive that the last commit in the project was in 2012.

This 'little' web project is more than three years old and still amazing considering how much web browsers and web technologies have moved forward in this time.

<comment><USER9> Not trying to downplay your point, but I think the fundamental technologies have more or less stayed the same during this time frame. I think what has changed has been the tools that help you better organize and work with those technologies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Look ma, I made an Alanis Morissette cover: [http://imgur.com/zVZNJnm](http://imgur.com/zVZNJnm)

</comment><comment><USER11> GitHub repo: [https://github.com/tholman/texter](https://github.com/tholman/texter)

</comment><comment><USER12> Doesn't work with Android Chrome for me

<comment><USER13> Same here, anyone could share a screenshot of what we should see?

<comment><USER14> You draw by clicking and dragging with your left mouse button. Instead of a line you get text. Text size (aka line thickness) depends on cursor speed, so faster dragging means larger text size.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've been running out of ways to find weird new yet not absurd stuff on the web. All linkblogs are constantly dying. Even these from the beginning of this century. Thanks to author's homepage[1] (can I call it that?) now I have one fresh - [http://inspiring.online/](http://inspiring.online/).

1: [http://tholman.com](http://tholman.com)

</comment><comment><USER16> This is like the "text" brush, also introduced in 2012, in DeviantArt muro: [http://muro.deviantart.com/](http://muro.deviantart.com/)

</comment><comment> kris-s I made a little video with this (part of an ongoing series).

[https://youtu.be/w1RvNk6BA2c](https://youtu.be/w1RvNk6BA2c)

</comment><comment><USER17> It would be cool if you could remove the background : so when you import into Inkscape you could , trace bitmap , and further your design ambitions.

</comment><comment><USER18> Very cool; I can imagine this could be used to create a nice website background, just set a corpus you like and have it cross itself a few times...

</comment><comment><USER19> I wish the size gradient be smoothed more, to avoid accidental spikes.

Add (semi-)transparent png generation and you get a useful tool for designers.

Very cool otherwise.

<comment><USER20> _Add (semi-)transparent png generation and you get a useful tool for designers._

Right click / View Image (in Firefox at least)

<comment><USER19> It's not semi-transparent, which means antialiasing isn't preserved when pasted over some colored background.

<comment><USER21> Set blend mode to multiply and it's fine (or invert it and use it as a layer mask). Although I'm not sure how useful it is for designers without the ability to tweak what you've drawn.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Dead page on Mobile Safari. What is it?

<comment><USER23> It lets you specify a string and draw freehand with that string repeating itself as the substance of the line. The size of the characters in the string varies with cursor velocity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Add support for touch events, please.

</comment><comment><USER25> Awesome, some of his other projects are also good :)

</comment><comment><USER26> Damn that was impressive.

</comment><comment><USER27> Delightful!</comment>


My latest flash game, Robokill 2 - <AUTHOR> http://www.rocksolidarcade.com/games/robokill2/

<comment><AUTHOR> The last version of this, Robokill, got a great response here so I thought I'd post the sequel as well. We've redone pretty much everything, resulting in what I think is a much stronger product. Love to know what everyone thinks!

Last thread was here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=218322>

Shot 1: <http://www.rocksolidarcade.com/static/robokill2/shot1.jpg> Shot 2: <http://www.rocksolidarcade.com/static/robokill2/shot2.jpg> Shot 3: <http://www.rocksolidarcade.com/static/robokill2/shot3.jpg>

<comment><USER2> The first version was awesome. I'm looking forward to playing this one. How many people work with you, do you make these yourself?

Also, I would love to know how many people buy the game, though I understand if you wouldn't want to disclose. Not that I would be able to duplicate this level of polish anyways.

<comment><AUTHOR> We had a team of four working on Robokill. Can't disclose sales stats, sorry! But it is better selling the game versus using ads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The game is a lot of fun! I spent a bunch of money playing Smash TV back in about 1992 and this is a lot of the same fun gameplay and a couple of similar graphics. A couple of suggestions:

* Make the weapon recharge happen automatically when the level clears or you die, so the player doesn't have to stand there and wait for the recharge.

* Disable the traps after all regular enemies are dead. There is no additional challenge or fun from killing a few slugs while you run around and collect your big prizes.

* Automatically do something sensible with charge ups and get rid of the store and equipment screen altogether. The fun factor of shopping is not high.

* Make a big cursor indicator so it's easier to see the player and the target at the same time using peripheral vision.

* I would get rid of falling off the edge.

* I kept hitting the map button on E by accident and I want to move it.

<comment><USER4> Awesome game, just spent like an hour playing haha.

+1 on disabling traps. It just makes the game slower. +1 on auto weapon recharge when dead. There's no reason that I should have to wait.

The edges are fine imo, they add a bit of challenge. Otherwise it would just be possible to randomly press awsd without looking much.

Also, I enjoy the shopping. It's fun to think about different play styles and shotgun vs blasters.

One thing is that I just ended up using mostly just blasters. Without being able to switch between 4 shotguns and 4 blasters quickly, it made more sense just to stick with blasters.

Fun game!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Assuming you don't mind some negative feedback:

      * It took almost 5 minutes to load

      * It gets noticeably slow and the FPS drops to a single digit on
        the first screen with an Ambush.

      * The openings in the floor are way harder to recognize as such
        compared to version 1. When I fell through one, I honestly
        thought it was just a pattern on a floor.

      * The Inventory screen needs to some tweaking. It took me a bit
        to understand where the Sonic Pulse weapon should go on the
        left hand side.

Overall, purely from the "user's perspective" it does not look like a super improvement over v1. It is more of an opposite given the lag and the loading times. That's not to say it is not beautifully done, it certainly is.

<comment><AUTHOR> All good points, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Man.. I pressed _Menu_ and then _Main menu_ and it took me out of the game. It didn't even ask me if I wanted to live. I was about to finish level 4, now I have to restart level 4. Great game but that _really_ killed the mood.

<comment><USER7> I accidentally hit the back thumb button on my mouse and lost the whole level. =(

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Very nice. Great effort!

If you don't mind me asking I'm curious about the business side of this. I don't expect you to put any real numbers out here but can you make a living of this or is it something you do in your spare time? I would be great if you could elaborate on this a bit. Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> You can make a living at it. It's not easy though, at all, since so many people are willing to do it for free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm really impressed with it overall. Great sound in particular - love the the level up sound. After a few falls, I sure wished those edges had railings.

I'm a sucker for statistics and I'd like to see some more on my gameplay: total damage dealt, item usage, favorite weapon, and -- of course -- my very own (in)effectiveness ratio: total rooms lost to death / total rooms captured.

How about a confirmation when clicking main menu? I didn't realize that would forfeit all my progress on that mission.

</comment><comment><USER10> Nice! Reminds me of Alien Breed on the Amiga. Ah those were the days...

Could you tell us perhaps a bit more about the creation process of this game? After all this is hackers news and not an indie games forum ;)

</comment><comment><USER11> Rooms should not disappear from the map. It is OK to hide unknown rooms, but once it has appeared on the map it should be visible forever (perhaps grayed).

Mark rooms where you have died with a little sign in the map. So you can avoid them for some time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Both are good ideas, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why can I fall off the floor in the first place? What purpose does it serve besides annoying the player?

<comment><USER13> Agreed. I was happily playing through until, in the course of a particularly involved battle, I paid too much attention to my enemies and stepped a little too far up and had to go back two rooms. This was frustrating enough that I decided to move on and stop playing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, I might have a look at disabling it.

<comment><USER14> I didn't mind it. At first it caught me by surprise, but then it's just another thing in the room to beware of. I'd leave them there, but perhaps make the danger markings around them a bit clearer (less dirty yellow?)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Nice, I like the "bio" direction here! I bought the first Robokill, and was a fan, and may buy this one too.

1\. Are uncommon and rare items gone? I didn't see any through the first base. If so, why? That was one of the most fun features.

Edit: Nevermind! I see they do appear.

2\. Please please please don't listen to people who want all the frustration gone, e.g. you can't fall to death. Perhaps recognize that not all gamers are equal, and give difficulty settings, e.g. on normal you can't fall to death but on hard you can. Heck, I was a fan of hardcore (restart on death) no-shop runs in the first game, maybe you could even unlock this kind of thing as an actual mode on beating the game (for the extreme masochists.)

</comment><comment><USER16> This. Is. Awesome. Great job! Are you going to sell better weapons or something for real money? Future content?

<comment><AUTHOR> Probably not - even though it may be more lucrative in terms of CPM, it's kind of cheap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think a little bit of parallax could help with the falling off the edges (making the edges more obvious), and give a nice added feeling of depth.

<comment><USER18> Agreed - there were some comments about putting in railings; don't do that. The falling is good and adds to the challenge _if_ the player can clearly see the edges. Find some way to make them stand out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Hi, great game! Just a few thoughts:

* In Act 2, things get more expensive, but I don't seem to pick up much more money. I think many people would stop playing at this point, as it's harder to tech up. (In particular, it makes it harder to casually experiment with weapons. Which of course may fit the theme...)

* It might be nicer for weapons in the store to be more sorted, so I can more easily look at what I want and compare similar weapons.

* In pitched firefights after a while, when I'm keeping the mouse down, the frame rates go down. Which is usually great for me, since it's a lot easier to do ninja things like strafe while grabbing money and dancing with bullets. Dunno if that's a bug or feature. ;)

</comment><comment><USER20> I really like this. I paid the $10, and I don't buy software often.

On Ubuntu Karmic, the game runs slowly, but that's mainly a result of poor flash performance. I have a Core 2 Duo at 2Ghz and an Intel GMA 950 running it. On Windows the game runs very smoothly.

When I booted into Windows to play the game, I couldn't access my character I was playing with on Linux. Why don't you have the option to save files on a server? I was really bummed out by this!

</comment><comment><USER21> I enjoyed playing/beating the first one. But to be critical for a moment, I do feel like 10 bucks is a little steep for a flash game. Even though the fact that it's flash vs directx vs anything else shouldn't matter.. it does.

On top of that, Torchlight launched at just 20 and quickly fell to 10 and even 5 dollars overs the holiday Steam sale.

<comment><AUTHOR> It might be a bit high compared to some of the Steam sales, but I think we're well into the territory that, for US customers at least, it's an impulse buy. I'm sure volume would go up at 4.95, but not sure about by 2x (plus there is overhead like support etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I enjoyed it, good fun, one small bug report. Though it might be a working as intended:

If a trap is triggered and cleared after clearing the room a second shield recharge is triggered. It's a fairly easy way to get full shield again after some of the tougher rooms as it's fairly obvious which are trap tiles.

Lots of lovely little touches in it.

</comment><comment><USER23> If I am in a room on a balcony and there is a key on a bridge (i.e. I cannot get the key without using matter magnet), then I am stuck. I cannot teleport and cannot get the key (to "clean the room") without matter magnets.

</comment><comment><USER24> Most impressive! reminds me of "<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smash_TV>. Wish there was an in game cursor (sights) to help track where I'm shooting.

</comment><comment><USER25> The last robokill was the best flash game I ever played.. Very impressive work.

</comment><comment><USER26> I bought the original, and loved it. Nice work!

Sometimes I'd let the splash screen just sit and loop, so I could listen to the pounding theme song, and watch the gun particle effect. So simple, so good!

</comment><comment><USER27> Small bug on 3rd "mission" (after collecting/using 2 red keys): the map shows that 3rd room below starting point as connected to the room on the left, when it is in fact not.

</comment><comment><USER28> Why do American dollars, of all things, drop when some enemies die? I understand the game mechanic, but seeing cash appear on Mars when I shoot an alien is a little jarring.

<comment><AUTHOR> Coming up with a recognizable, small icon for cash is actually kind of hard.

<comment><USER29> "Coming up with a recognizable, small icon for cash is actually kind of hard."

Gold Coins (Mario style)? Diamonds?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> btw there is a knockoff floating around:

<http://www.kongregate.com/games/Badim/red-storm>

btw if you want a really addicting game to "clone", do something like this: <http://www.addictinggames.com/skystorm.html>

i don't think there are any otherquality plane games, that are played from that perspective...it's always side or top view always moving...which gets boring.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, we saw that. The author considers it not a complete clone, or something along those lines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> It would be nice if excess XP was preserved. I had maybe 3 pixels of empty space in the meter, then fought a huge battle, but the meter was empty after leveling up.

</comment><comment><USER31> I love it. Also whenever I see the word 'leviathan' it makes me wanna go install and play ufo: enemy unknown all over for some reason.

</comment><comment><USER32> robokill is the game that reduced workplace productivity to 0% last year! glad to see you made a sequel.

</comment><comment><USER33> Bloody brilliant. Reminds me of Alien Breed personally, but has a nice balance of good stuff all round.

</comment><comment><USER34> Is the cash pickup sound effect the microsoft freelancer transaction sound effect?

<comment><AUTHOR> Game sounds all come from more or less the same big professional libraries, so frequently you do end up using the same sound as another game (or movie, tv show etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> it's really fun. i got tired of falling of the edge though.

</comment><comment><USER36> hrm, obvious ED209 influence on the robots there.

</comment><comment><USER37> I hate to be the only one who is ragging on the thread. It's really slick & clearly the product of hard work. But...

1) on a laptop the controls are cumbersome (hard to aim with mousepad) 2) the game takes forever to load and then does not fit inside my screen resolution..it's just a tad bit too big 3) the store graphics are hard to decipher (blue on black) and it's not clear how much starting capital i'm allocated

love, zack</comment>


Aweber Affiliate Program Is a SCAM Don't Send Them Traffic - <AUTHOR> http://www.abstract-living.com/aweber-affiliate-program-is-a-scam-dont-send-them-traffic/

<comment><USER2> Well, there's no evidence of a scam here. I can see why they don't honour recutting cheques that are more than a year old. Just because they don't use PayPal for payouts doesn't mean they are a scam.</comment>


Dutch police deploys low tech anti-drone measure: birds of prey - <AUTHOR> http://nos.nl/artikel/2084071-hoe-voorkom-je-aanslagen-met-drones-met-een-roofvogel.html <comment><USER2> Interesting approach, but I also wonder about damage to the birds. I'm guessing they are using eagles due to the size, but I would have thought falcons would be easier to train.

Best comment I've seen is "I hope they leave my Amazon orders alone."</comment>


Optimize your content for emotion and persuasion with CopyAwesome.com - <AUTHOR> http://copyawesome.com <comment><AUTHOR> Curated copy inspiration with the best examples of influential writing from across the web to help you take your text to the next level.</comment>


The Many Failures and Few Successes of Zany Iceberg Towing Schemes - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/08/the-many-failures-and-few-successes-of-zany-iceberg-towing-schemes/243364/ <comment><USER2> Interesting that while this was a crazy idea at first, it's not commonplace in artic oil wells.</comment>


Open Letter to Skype from Internet Activists, Journalists and Academics - <AUTHOR> http://skypeopenletter.com <comment><USER3> Open comment to Internet Activists, Journalists and Academics: You're not going to get what you want by piggy-backing on Microsoft's proprietary platform. Specifically if you're an Internet Activists you shouldn't be relying on some company's proprietary tool for disguising your communications.

There's plenty of open and secure VoIP clients which coupled with open encryption standards, VPN's etc. will suit your purposes. Use those things, not Skype.

<comment><USER4> I only know about Tor (<https://www.torproject.org>) which could help. I hope someone else can recommend any others.

<comment><USER5> <https://silentcircle.com/> aims to do just that, secure communications.

Disclosure: I work there.

<comment><AUTHOR> As the person behind the Open Letter to Skype, I have also written copiously about how dangerous Silent Circle is to cryptography software development.

Silent Circle has repeatedly told untruths in the media regarding the open source nature of their software. Their software remains largely closed and not open for public review (except for Silent Text, which has only released incomplete source code.)

All the same, Silent Circle has been consciously targeting activists in life- or-death situations. They have repeatedly told activist and the media that their tools are open source and transparently and publicly reviewed. Silent Circle has been lying to those in life and death situations for four months. Their software, except for portions of Silent Text, is not publicly reviewed and closed source software. Furthermore, they claim to have servers based in Canada whereas most of their network is in the U.S., subject to U.S. surveillance laws.

I have written about this here:

<http://log.nadim.cc/?p=89> <http://log.nadim.cc/?p=102>

<comment><USER5> I couldn't comment on that, as I hadn't heard about these concerns before. My personal opinion is the opposite from yours, I think you're reading too much of a bad intention into a startup having its hands full with development. I guess the issue will be put to rest when the code is released, so there's no point in arguing about it too much.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would appreciate it if Silent Circle did not repeatedly claim to the media that the code has already been openly released and reviewed when it hasn't been.

<comment><USER5> I'm not aware of that. The Silent Text repo is here:

<https://github.com/SilentCircle/silent-text>

Do you have any references of anyone saying the code of the other clients has been released? I'm curious.

<comment><AUTHOR> Silent Text is only one (and the smallest) component of the Silent Circle suite; this source code release is an incomplete excuse.

Here's one article out of many where Silent Circle makes claims of complete open source. [http://www.lemonde.fr/sciences/article/2012/12/13/le- cryptag...](http://www.lemonde.fr/sciences/article/2012/12/13/le-cryptage-a- la-portee-de-tous_1806219_1650684.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Has there been any confirmation of the very juicy rumor about Skype and the NSA? Brieftly it is this:

The NSA put out a $1 billion RFP to crack the encryption of skype - <USER2> inability to listen in on this huge communication channel was really a bummer for the NSA. Microsoft says "Hmm" and buys Skype for $8 billion, re-engineers the archtecture of Skype so that it is centralized rather than P2P and easily decrypted by Law Enforcement.

Or is this only another juicy rumor? Is there any citation for this RFP from the NSA, for example?

<comment><USER7> Skype has always relied on a central authentication server, which means that anyone with control of that server would be able to MITM any conversation. The recent changes of ownership and centralization of the service have nothing to do with this. Presumably the US government has been able to tap into any Skype conversation they want for a long time.

<comment><USER8> > _would be able to MITM any conversation_

Sure, in theory. In practice, eavsdropping on two Skype users required presence on a network route between the callers, which might have been entirely in some random country's Internet segment.

<comment><USER7> Not really -- the directory server can just direct a user to connect to a MITM server. There's no need to control the entire network, you only need access to Skype's servers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have searched and searched for an alternative to Skype, but so far have mostly failed.

My situation:

\- I use Linux on all my desktops/laptops.

\- I have an Android phone.

\- My mobile phone bill is usually in excess of £100 per month.

\- I am usually located in the UK, sometimes elsewhere but almost never in the US.

My use cases:

\- I want to make cheap calls to mobile phone numbers in Ireland, Austria and Australia

\- I want to make landline calls to the same countries.

\- I want to send SMS messages to the same countries.

\- I want to make free person to person VOIP calls.

\- I want to make video calls.

\- Security and privacy is a factor.

Currently, I have Skype working reasonably well on my 64-bit Debian based Linux machines. However, call quality can be very patchy when calling mobile phone numbers. Video quality is often poor and the call drops out when communicating with others in Australia.

I have tried Ekiga, Jitsi, SflPhone and a few others. I have a Diamondcard.us account for making chargeable calls. Almost always the call-out quality of these services is poor. I've been told it sounds like "I'm talking through a pillow."

I have been using Google Voice recently. It does work from my UK registered Google Account for making calls to mobile phones and landlines. The call quality is very good. The mobile phone pricing is generally a little more expensive than Skype. Unfortunately, landline calls are significantly more expensive that Skype and the full Google Voice experience (SMS messages, registering a number and thus using on my Android device) isn't available outside the US.

Is there any other single unified service worth considering, which does meet at least the majority of my use cases?

<comment><USER10> The first 3 of your requirements would possibly be better served with just a good International calling package on your mobile.

Lebara charge £39 a month for "unlimited" calls to 39 countries, including Ireland, and Australia, and cheap(ish) calls to Austria (and other places). Their call charges are pretty comparable to most VOIP services.

It's certainly worth considering if you're spending >£100 a month on calls.

<comment><USER9> Worth considering for sure and a good idea to investigate similar services more thoroughly.

Unfortunately for Austria mobiles (all rates include VAT):

Lebara: 19p/min

Skype: 11.2p/min (in the £38.99/month for 400 minutes package)

Google Voice: 8.4p/min

Out of the three countries I listed, Austria is the only one I call daily, usually for a minimum of 10 minutes, up to about 20 minutes. Ireland I call infrequently, but SMS up to 10 times per day. Australia I usually call once or twice per week, up to about 45 minutes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What is the best linux-compatibile open source with encryption alternative at the moment? The wiki page shows that many haven't been updated in quite some time (Twinkle). Does anybody have experience with Blink?

<comment><USER12> I personally like SFLPhone [1]. It's developed by the fine folks from Savoir- faire Linux [2] and supports encryption. Here is a guide how to configure it to encrypt traffic between the client and an Asterisk server [3].

[1] <http://sflphone.org/> [2] <http://www.savoirfairelinux.com/en/> [3] [https://projects.savoirfairelinux.com/projects/sflphone/wiki...](https://projects.savoirfairelinux.com/projects/sflphone/wiki/Security)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The governments in many countries are monitoring everything that you are doing. It is no longer a fictitious idea about what could be done. They collect and correlate sets of data and they use it for monitoring for abnormal behaviour and find potential threats.

There is nothing that you can do about it. Your only safety is that you are completely irrelevant for them and they keep their mouth shut unless they have a very good reason not to do so.

<comment><USER14> >There is nothing that you can do about it.

Such irrational defeatism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Folks please try Discretio for Android ([https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.discretio....](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.discretio.android)) Open source (GPLv3) secure VOIP solution. For the moment only Android version is available but iOS and desktop vresions are in the queue...

<comment><USER5> That doesn't sound very convincing. You can't just have some icons tell you that you're secure, how do they know if someone's MITMing you?

You can use the already-available ZRTP, that requires each user to speak a phrase to the other, so you can verify by hearing the other person's voice. Discretio doesn't do any of that, so how does it know you're not talking to some random attacker?

<comment><USER15> The client side source code is available: <https://bitbucket.org/repo/all?name=discretio>

<comment><USER5> I saw that, but I didn't see any explanation on how it works, and I'm pretty sure it's impossible to have security without verification. I can't read the code to verify that, sadly.

<comment><USER16> Curious to hear from someone working in a company who says things but not show it's true. In fact, if i say i am rich, tall, blond with a famous sense of humour, you are ready to believe me, but if i don't say anything but i prove it, you refuse to believe me... strange. Discretio doesn't say anything of this kind but show the entire client software source code. Do the same please.

<comment><USER5> So how do you protect against MITMs?

<comment><USER15> Basically the client connects to SIP server using ssl connection authenticated on both sides. When placing calls the clients A and B are negotiating SRTP session key using DH key exchange. It is done over SIP (and not over RTP channel as in ZRTP). Each client upon registration generates public/private key pair and submits a CSR to the registration service which signs it and stores the public key (which is later used to authenticate the above mentionned ssl connections) in the SIP server's DB... The server has no access to the client's private key nor to the SRTP session key

<comment><USER5> Hmm, it sounds resistant to random MITM but the server can still listen in on the calls if it wants, by MITMing the clients itself...

<comment><USER15> Yes, with the cooperation from CA the MITM is still possible. We however will provide server code to especially paranoid clients so they can build and run the software on their own machines... This way they can have garanties against certificate tampering. And we're working on an alternative solution when even cooperating CA will not allow MITM...

<comment><USER5> That sounds very good, good luck! Why not use ZRTP, though?

<comment><USER15> Well, this tech is derived from the project which was designed to meet specs of one of our clients. We did propose ZRTP during design phase, to the client but they security analysts decided against it. They affirm that given the state the current state of art in speech recognition and synthesis ZRTP can be vulnerable on impersonation during short code validation phase for the attacker with sufficient resources. I'm personally doubtful, but one thing i'm sure about, is that this client security experts have access to info and resources which are not available to me.

<comment><USER5> That sounds reasonable, thanks for the explanation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The problem with complain to microsoft about this is they are locked into some of these things with deal skype setup before they were bought out. Microsoft is contractually obligated to only supply skype TOM in china, this is the reason why they wont shutdown MSN in china because they are unable to control the skype network within china. You cant expect microsoft to reveal all these things while they are trying to clean house and get skype in order. Dont hold your breath on microsoft revealing anything

</comment><comment><USER18> Whats the deal with Google voice and Google talk on this issue?

<comment><USER19> Not available in most countries in the world, perhaps?

<comment><USER18> i read somewhere that their video chat can run on 380kbs connections, i would assume its in the works. they did buy drones for Africa

personally i stopped using skype because i had issues on linux recently. google talk worked out of the box for me, and much much better

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> there alternatives to skype that are open sourced and you can look up what security features they got. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_VoIP_software>

<comment><USER21> Skype is popular because it just worked, even through funky firewalls. The replacement would need to be better than Skype to gain traction with non- technical users.

<comment><USER20> skype just uses an http tunnel cause mostly the 80 port is open so no magic here(it does some more tricks but this is on).

I dont think skype is easy just look at the UI... i dont like skype for linux it never works on my laptop...

<comment><USER22> It's a bit smarter than just using an http tunnel.

Skype is capable of direct client-to-client connections, despite intervening NAT. It's pretty clever -- with the server's help as coordinator, the clients _both_ initiate the connection, causing their own NAT routers to accept the inbound packets from the other side.

<comment><USER23> That's also called STUN, I believe <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STUN> (or probably a variant)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Apparently they weren't briefed on the business model: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8c_m6U1f9o>

</comment><comment><USER25> You just need to assume that everything you do on skype can be intercepted. If you want secure communications, choose something else.

</comment><comment><USER26> Would love to see something similar as what google does for transparency. Even better an common standard for transparency

<comment><USER27> Pretty sure Google will remain the oddball in the bunch. Nobody wants to reveal all that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Open reply from Ballmer to *ists: "My way or highway"

</comment><comment><USER29> Human creativity sees no walls. Tor this, tor that, onions on the rise!

For small chat yes, Skype works, but when selling weapons and weed, no no.

</comment><comment><USER30> Recurring transparency report? Have you ever asked Google for such things when it reads your emails to sell you ads? Have you ever asked Target or Walmart for this when they track your credit card purchases and sell the ACTUAL data to other parties?

Stories like this are driven mostly by unverified rumors and sensationalist journalism that is JUST as rampant in the tech industry as it is in politics, economics, or any other topic covered in mass media today.</comment>


Sign of the Times: Startup Raps for Angel Funding - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/16/startup-rap-angel-funding-undrip/

<comment><USER2> This rap is purely about wanting money, with absolutely no mention of the product or what it does. Are they entrepreneurs, or panhandlers?</comment>


Startup School 2017 First Lecture - <AUTHOR> https://www.startupschool.org/ <comment><USER2> I was wondering what the acceptance rates were for this MOOC. I understand it's difficult to deal with large numbers of applicants and that it's just not feasible to give every single applicant personalized feedback.

From the other side, I've been working on my goal for much of the past year and a half if I include collaboration attempts with offline businesses in my market that ended with job offers but no collab. I understand the long time span looks bad. I understand that it's minus that I'm a solo founder. It's just that I've gone a long time without a real salary or even insurance, I deeply believe in the value of what I'm working on and am beginning to have an idea of how much longer and harder the path is without mentorship from people who have done it before.

I see a tremendous value in YC and have already benefited from its free content. That said, estimating the EV of applying, has to include an assessment of likelihood and the costs of time and distraction as well as the tremendous upside.

Knowing the acceptance rate would be helpful in calibrating how to approach future applications, both for me and others who weren't selected.

<comment><USER3> We've applied along with 50k applicants ([http://blog.ycombinator.com/startup- school-online-registrati...](http://blog.ycombinator.com/startup-school- online-registration-and-deals/)) and we are in this batch along with 3000 other startups coming from all corners of the world (startup founder track).

In our case, we've built MyAppConverter about three years ago, starting from native iOS to native Android code conversion and now building an online mobile application porting platform. We've applied and we feel so privileged to have been selected because it costs us nothing except our time we have to put in (watching lectures, online group sessions, tutor/advisor sessions and assignments). We do not have to move to SV (as yet) and yet benefit from shared valuable experiences amongst YC fellows as well as from other entrepreneurs.

<comment><USER4> Hey man, we're in the same group (62), can't wait to learn more about your business!

At first I thought everybody got in, but now I see I was pretty damn lucky with my product Median (www.median.tech), since I'm solo.

This MOOC is just the best, I didn't expect there would be so much community around it. As a solo founder, I'm very grateful be in a group with other founders from all around the world.

<comment><USER3> That's really cool. We've built the first online mobile application porting platform.

We currently offer two options: Self-Service Option (99$ USD) (recommended if you have in-house Android experts): You use our UI porting platform to port your entire iOS UI elements (storyboard and xib) to native Android UI (xml). Before you purchase this, you get to view it online (we use appetize.io to let our customer to view online the Android UI output before purchasing the Android source code). We offer this at 99$ USD per porting session. The output you pay for is a full Android UI source which you can start from (to edit in Android Studio) to complete manually the app and get the final Android application. That means you can hire any expert Android developer to do this manual work, yet still saving you some time, effort and money. If you are looking at this option, it is a self-service. Just login to myappconverter.com and upload your iOS storyboard project and follow the instructions. We do offer 15 days free support on our UI output products. Fully Managed Porting Service Option (Starting from 3000$ USD) (recommended if you don't have any Android experts): You really want to use our accredited experts engineering team at MyAppConverter to take the UI Android and complete the work to deliver you a full working Android application. In this case, once your upload your entire iOS project, you ask us for a free/no-obligation quote. For that quoted price, you will get a full working native Android app and its Android source code. The way we work is that you will be receiving a series of apks for you to test and you report all issues/bugs through our bug tracking portal; you will typically get the first UI based apk, then the next one will be including some logics and more functionalities, until the final apk represents the fully working & tested app on Android. On average, the porting timeline is around 3 to 5 weeks. We tend not to take porting projects in excess of 5 weeks work to minimise customer delivery risks. This is the full turnkey option and yet fast, efficient & price competitive. We have both our in house resources also a handful carefully selected and accredited freelancers. Let me know if you need further information.

The UI porting is around storyboard and xib . We port this instantly with our porting tool to native android.

We are three co-founders based out of London and Casablanca.

Median looks really cool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting how Moskovitz just glosses over a "lifestyle" business. I started a business 2 years ago, am the sole employee, and it'll make $400-500k in revenue in 2017 with 20-40% net profits.

I don't think I recreated the wheel here. I'm making a software product that businesses want to buy.

<comment><USER6> I am a big fan of "lifestyle" businesses. Why are your margins so low, if you are the only employee?

<comment><USER5> I've had a consultancy do all the development so far. They are good, but not cheap.

Hoping to bring that in-house later this year.

<comment><USER7> Want to build an outsource agency?

<comment><USER8> That's what I am working on this very minute!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Something else that's just out is the list of future speakers: [https://blog.ycombinator.com/startup-school-online-first- lec...](https://blog.ycombinator.com/startup-school-online-first-lecture-and- speaker-list/)

(via [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14045559](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14045559))

<comment><USER10> The startup school's About page says there are office hours every week

> Class Office Hours will also be held each week to give live advice and > feedback to the class.

but that schedule only has office hours planned for weeks 2, 5 and 9. Is one an update of the other? Are there any office hours the first week?

<comment><USER11> Sorry about that. Initially we were going to have on-stage office hours every week, but we have since changed the format for the course. Those office hours in the most recent blog post are current; we'll update the site now.

Apologies for the confusion!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is an interesting talk, but it is substantially similar to the previous one that was already out there.

Which makes me think: it would be interesting to have a diff tool for videos, but it diffs a representation of the content not specific video frames.

Customers might include all the students of Udacity, Coursera, EdX and Startupschool.

<comment><USER13> _" it would be interesting to have a diff tool for videos"_

        videoA -> transcriptionA
                    |
                    V
        videoB -> transcriptionB
                    |
                    V
                   diff

<comment><USER14> That seems too granular, as an additional 'uh' or 'and' would cause a sentence to be seen as different.

It might work well if you can first pair up the similar sentences from A and B, using word-level edit distance, or mapping to a lower-dimensional space using sentence embedding?

<comment><USER13> _" seems too granular,"_

Probably right. I used the term diff as a concept not implementation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A couple of the slides are titled: _Getting your first 100 users._ I think that's probably a strong attraction/benefit for YC. Its alumni seem almost to be a keiretsu from the outside, offering connections and first sales to their newly hatched brethren.

<comment><USER16> True. But when I was reading the Techcrunch reports on these last Demo Days, every time I read one of the batch had some dozen or two customers I couldn't stop thinking "How many of those are just other YC companies?"

In other words, there's a bit of a discounting in effect now too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Great resource - looking forward to future videos. It does feel like there's an assumption that everyone who wants to build a startup is trying to build the same kind of startup. Lifestyle businesses and social entrepreneurship ventures are kind of glossed over, but are legitimate - they require passion and hardwork without the hope or promise of big payoffs. I'm wondering if this series will be appropriate for people who are interested in those types of startups - I guess we will see.

<comment><USER18> This lecture series is definitely aimed at the "startup = growth" type of startup, so much more relevant to companies that want to get huge.

<comment><USER19> As a former founder I do think there's truth to Altman's advice to tackle big/hard problems rather than small/easy.

Rationale:

\- you develop unique expertise and skills that are more valuable (ie more acquihire rationale) if things go south

\- easier to fundraise and recruit

\- optionality: downshifting to solving a smaller problem is easier than leveling up to solving a bigger one

<comment><USER17> But not all huge problems have to = huge financial gain

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Teams actively pursuing a startup and who have been chosen for founders track get split into groups, with a group advisor and a Mattermost room.

It will be of great help for the folks who applied and did not get selected to have access to an official 'Mattermost' room to build a community of like minded individuals keen on entrepreneurship to share information and motivate ourselves.

</comment><comment><USER2> I see there's now an update form in the MOOC now. It has four fields—metric, value, growth and notes. Are there any pages on the site offering guidance on how to get the most out of the MOOC?

In what cases should the primary metric be "other"?

<comment><USER21> (Advisor for #group87 here!)

You should talk to your advisor (possibly one-on-one) about selecting the right metrics. Many groups are not focused on the right things at the moment, and that's OK but something we should talk about and fix!

If you have revenue>0, you probably want it to be revenue. Similarly, if you have revenue==0 && users>0, you probably want it to be active users. (Not cumulative registered users, but daily or weekly actives, for example.) You should probably only be using "other" if those two don't apply.

Think of it this way: at the end of the 10 weeks, what metric will you really care about showing 10 weeks of growth in? For example, having 10X-ed your revenue is much more impressive than 10X daily active users, which itself is much more impressive than 10X people manually seeing a demo of your prototype!

<comment><USER2> Unfortunately I wasn't selected, which is why I've asked here. I know I had some poor focuses in the past (e.g. trying to do a collaboration with an offline business in my industry to bootstrap an online one) and I'm trying to get some advice here on HN.

I have a free product launched (and then pulled because my API provider dramatically increased prices). I'm about 3/4 of the way to building a paid content-based product to ideally fund development of the free one.

So basically my most promising avenues I see are to

        1) focus 100% on the paid product
        2) eliminate the API provider as a dependency and go all out on the primary free product (risking running out of cash in a couple of months)
        3) try to raise 12k in funding so the runway extends to the end of the year.

My current choice is to focus 100% on the paid product. It's not clear how to put that into a growth goal though.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14048063](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14048063)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Does anyone know if they will be doing this again? We found out about it too late to do try and apply. I looked through the FAQ on the website, but did not see anything about whether this was a one-off or if they would do it again.

<comment><USER23> Try searching HN history. They did some Q/A type sessions about it. I believe they wanted to see how this went and were hoping to make this a regular thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Thanks for the rejection. I realized I didn't need this after all.</comment>


New silicon structure opens the gate to quantum computers - <AUTHOR> https://www.princeton.edu/news/2017/12/11/new-silicon-structure-opens-gate-quantum-computers <comment><USER2> I know nothing about this stuff but this caught my eye:

"The challenge is that it's very difficult to build artificial structures small enough to trap and control single electrons without destroying their long storage times," said David Zajac, a graduate student in physics at Princeton and first-author on the study. "This is the first demonstration of entanglement between two electron spins in silicon, a material known for providing one of the cleanest environments for electron spin states."

Electrides like Calcium Aluminate Electride can readily trap individual electrons. And it is stable at room temperatures.

</comment><comment><USER3> I haven't touched this stuff in a while so take this with a grain of salt.

This is good progress since it's about an order of magnitude faster for operations than previously constructed CNOT gates, however it still has many caveats for a semiconducter-like leap towards real quantum computers:

a) Low temperature bound for the level of fidelity they want

b) Doesn't allow us to engineer quantum chips of more qubits efficiently since the decoherence between quantum dots is still a major issue.

c) The science journalism title is a bit misleading. While this happens in a silicon structure there is nothing new about it, what's new is that they managed to use the driving resonance to control the dephasing during the gate operation.

</comment><comment><USER4> FYI: This is for a very different substrate (quantum dots, which are basically individual electrons trapped in special silicon defects) compared to the substrates that have seen more attention for quantum computing (superconducting circuits and trapped ions). They are behind in terms of raw qubit counts -- which are not that meaningful -- and in terms of their overall abilities, but they hope to catch up by building higher quality components that cross the fault-tolerant threshold first.

If, like me, you don't already know a lot about quantum computing experiments, this article shouldn't interest you. At best, this is a small step of many thousands that will be taken on the way building a working computer.

</comment><comment><USER5> the paper: [https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1708/1708.03530.pdf](https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1708/1708.03530.pdf)

<comment><USER6> Thank you so much, I wasn't aware that the pre-print was on Arxiv.

PS the web abstract link (as opposed to the pdf link above) is [https://arxiv.org/abs/1708.03530](https://arxiv.org/abs/1708.03530)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Anybody who can read the actual PDF -- is this at room temp and no large magnetic field? Those two things seem to be the big stumbling blocks for these types of quantum computers..

<comment><USER8> Yep, still a major issue. This was run at 0.15 kelvin (-273c/-459.4f) and they'd like to get it colder:

 _In these experiments, the electron temperature accounts for 10% of the reduction in our visibility, and spin relaxation accounts for the remaining 5-10%. In our experiment we readout the qubits sequentially, reading the left qubit first. Relaxation of the right qubit during the readout of the left qubit is what leads to the asymmetry of the expected visibilities. Relaxation contributions to the readout fidelity can be mitigated by using a faster readout technique such as RF reflectometry or by incorporating a cold amplifier into the readout circuit (9, 10). Further improvements can be made by reducing the electron temperature or using cavity-based measurement approaches (11)._

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I did graduate research in an area of experimental physics that was quite close to state of the art quantum computing research. It was very exciting, but all the research was pretty much in extreme conditions that aren't really usable for a realistic computing device (ultra-high vacuum, nanokelvin temperatures, high magnetic fields or laser trap confinement, etc.). From the looks of it this paper is in the same vein. Good progress, but the gate isn't quite "open" yet.

<comment><USER10> That's true but once Science conquers something, engineering isn't very far behind. The apparatus to build Bose-Einstein Condensates was a fucking monster of vacuums and quantum optics but now we can fit a Bose-Einstein Condensate on a microchip. [https://arxiv.org/abs/0912.0553](https://arxiv.org/abs/0912.0553)

<comment><USER11> I Just read that paper and while It's hardly just a microchip it's damn impressive considering the technology involved and the requirements it's fulfilling. It's amazing that we can now build devices that can produce ultra high vacuums smaller than a hotel minibar, and design systems that are capable of active cooling down to <1K without the use of any cryogenic refrigeration at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> tim-- My biggest pet peeve about quantum computing is that no one can answer me the question of "what can quantum computing do for me?".

The answer I hear is that it helps solve the traveling salesman in record time, and that's all great and everything, but how will quantum computing be able to do things such as decrease the time it takes to train a RNN, or look up data in a database?

<comment><USER12> The traveling salesman problem is NP-complete and therefore not known to be solvable in less time on a quantum computer.

[https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/31084/travellin...](https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/31084/travelling- sales-man-with-quantum-computers)

<comment><USER13> > The traveling salesman problem is NP-complete and therefore not known to be > solvable in less time on a quantum computer.

That's only a problem if you need the exact solution. If you're OK with 99.9% quality, approximate solutions are much cheaper. So the question is, is it necessary to invest into that 1%?

<comment><USER12> That has nothing to do with quantum vs. classical.

<comment><USER13> Approximate solutions have to do with solving problems with limited resources and scaling up. Quantum computers will be fast at solving certain types of problems, while approximate solutions are fast at solving practical problems.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Chrome Distortion: how Chrome negatively alters our expectations - <AUTHOR> https://blog.runspired.com/2016/03/25/the-chrome-distortion-chrome-alters-our-expectations-in-highly-negative-ways/ <comment><USER2> That's great, lots of big talk and little evidence.

Since I've used JS apps in mobile Chrome on a mediocre Android device and it didn't prove unusable, I have to wonder whether this article includes some hyperbole.

IE8 and Opera are better than desktop Chrome according to this article. The former still clings to attachEvent and cannot handle SVG without a hefty polyfill, and the latter is a fork of Chrome, so its higher rating seems nonsensical.

Of course, these statements wouldn't be quite so nonsensical if they were quantified.

Chrome has problems that need to be worked out. You would have to be a bit of a crazed Apple supporter to get the browsers on the table and rate them in this playground way, all but glossing over Apple's problems.</comment>


Node.js 0.4.5 Released w/ many bug fixes - <AUTHOR> http://blog.nodejs.org/2011/04/02/node-v0-4-5/

<comment><USER2> I love node, but can we please stop submitting every minor release? Anyone interested in a minor release is already following node.

<comment><USER3> Well I for one am not interested in 90% of submissions here but like you I have to live with the voting system here to take care of this... and I simply don't read what I'm not interested in. Since GitHub does not notify me satisfactorily about new releases -- "watching" projects gives me a huge noisy stream about _all_ their various activities so a new release gets lost in that stream -- and since twitter.com/nodejs is unfortunately not maintained, YC HN is an outstanding way to get notified about new NodeJS, jQuery etc. releases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't follow V8 version to version, I'm a little bit curious: I notice each node release has a newer V8 version, is this just grabbing a newer version of V8 as a general practice, or is there specific changes in V8 applicable to node?

(The may be a question better asked on the google group)

</comment><comment><USER5> awesome, but could somebody explain a unix noob on whats the easiest way to update an existing node.js (ubuntu) installation?

<comment><USER6> I use ppa:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jerome-etienne/neoip

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install nodejs

I got 0.4.5 this morning from the usual upgrade, before I even saw the news.

<comment><USER7> On 64-bit Ubuntu you will only get 0.2.6

Reading package lists... Done

Building dependency tree

Reading state information... Done

The following NEW packages will be installed:

      nodejs

0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 4 not upgraded.

Need to get 0B/1,834kB of archives.

After this operation, 5,349kB of additional disk space will be used.

Selecting previously deselected package nodejs. (Reading database ... 57171 files and directories currently installed.)

Unpacking nodejs (from .../nodejs_0.2.6~lucid1~ppa201101061407_amd64.deb) ...

Setting up nodejs (0.2.6~lucid1~ppa201101061407) ...</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Choosing colors without a color wheel - <AUTHOR> https://sidesketch.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Traditional color choice tools tend to show the full RGB / HSL etc color space. This, to me, doesn't help when trying to find interesting combinations. Other approaches, such as on Adobe's Kuler where you have the ability to apply a triad while exploring a color space, also don't really seem to produce pleasing results for me. Simple linear gradients between two colors also don't seem to have enough movement in there - but that could be a choice of the kind of color blending used, I suppose.

Anyway, taking visual inspiration from Goethe's color triangle, I made this tool to explore some other ways of displaying color choices, and to see what the results might be.</comment>


Should You Invest in the Long Tail? - <AUTHOR> http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/hbsp/hbr/articles/article.jsp?ml_action=get-article&articleID=R0807H&ml_issueid=BR0807&ml_subscriber=true&pageNumber=1&_requestid=203007 <comment><USER2> Couldn't tell you... I can't get to the article.</comment>


Start Marketing the Day You Start Coding - <AUTHOR> https://www.tomasmartty.com/start-marketing-the-day-you-start-coding-by-rob-walling/ <comment><USER3> It's important to distinguish what most people reading this are likely to consider 'marketing' with what actually made these businesses successful.

All of the businesses cited succeeded because they established a differentiated position in the market - GMail because it gave you 10x more storage than was available at the time, and a conversational interface; WhatsApp because it meant that international SMS was now free; Tesla because it sit at the intersection of eco-friendliness and premium design.

Saying that GMail is just about messages, Tesla just about electric cars does a disservice to what actually makes these businesses exceptional. And you do genuinely need that differentiation, otherwise all you have to compete on is price.

I'd be worried that someone reading this would take the idea that all you need is an average business idea and some growth-hackery business tactics like a landing page and Facebook ads, and presto you have a business.

Most businesses do fail because of poor marketing, but not marketing as the HN crowd generally sees it.

<comment><USER4> Completely agree.

> _WhatsApp because it meant that international SMS was now free_

Not sure the exact meaning of _" international"_ here. In Brazil SMS was not free at all, so Whatsapp became a free SMS for all, with bonus of a nice chat UI that made easy to be in conversations (contrary to any phone's SMS UI at the time), groups, images (becoming a MMS for free too).

So, a 100x better SMS for free. No wonder it exploded.

But the use case was mostly for local messages, not _international_ messages.

<comment><USER3> Agree - I put international SMS as in some countries (such as the UK) providers were beginning to bundle 'free' SMS before WhatsApp came along - <USER2> these markets international SMS / Voice / MMS for expats, students etc was a big deal. You're right to point out though that in many countries, WhatsApp was the first cross platform free SMS of any kind.

<comment><USER5> This conversation has not been very productive. Basically it's a pedantic discussion about the meaning of marketing.

I recommend this [updated] 10-year-old article about finding your first 1000 customers:

[https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true- fans/](https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/)

Much has been written about the idea:

[https://seths.blog/2009/12/first- organize-1000/](https://seths.blog/2009/12/first-organize-1000/)

[https://nowspeed.com/seth-godins-latest-book- tribes/](https://nowspeed.com/seth-godins-latest-book-tribes/)

[http://jumpcut.com/blog/kevin-kelly-1000-true- fans/](http://jumpcut.com/blog/kevin-kelly-1000-true-fans/)

<comment><USER6> FYI: Patreon is the realization of 1000 True Fans, at least for musicians. Except only 50 - 250 patrons are needed to subsist full-time, much less than 1,000.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Big fan of Rob and his work, for those unfamiliar with him he's one of the founders of MicroConf, half of the "Startups for the Rest of Us" podcast and built and then sold Drip (an Email Service).

Whether or not you're seeking to build your own microsaas or you're going full VC funding I feel pretty strongly that you'll see the time spent reading his book as worthwhile.

Here's a direct link to it (it's not gated on his site, so this seems fine to share)

[https://robwalling.com/assets/ebook.pdf](https://robwalling.com/assets/ebook.pdf)

<comment><USER8> >>Here's a direct link to it (it's not gated on his site, so this seems fine to share)

Yes, it does indeed say that on the second page. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Some good advice I heard here a few years ago is start marketing well before you start coding. Eg create a website, start your advertising, look for customers while providing a white label product or even just a promise to deliver later. Its a great way to find out if anyone is interested. If you can attract actual customers then you can start coding. If you have trouble getting any attention maybe you have the wrong product.

<comment><USER3> This may have been good advice a few years ago, but things do move on. People are wary giving their email address to the promise of a service and will normally now be hesitant to engage without some kind of product in return.

What's more, having people actually use and pay for your product is much better validation than people saying they will (not always the same thing)

<comment><USER10> I feel the opposite. The early days of the internets (2000-2010) spam was crazy and annoying. I hated giving out my email because I would just get even more unwanted email and I knew I would forget my password to any new account I made.

Today, we have much better spam filters, companies realizing sending unwanted spam only hurts them (so they offer unsub), and password managers.

I would signup for a product just to see more info if I was curious about their offering.

<comment><USER11> Is anyone else comforted when they see an email signup is through list- manage.com?

I trust that at absolute worst I can email MailChimp and they will actually act on my desire to unsubscribe, and I know that almost certainly that won't be needed because of their enforcement of reasonable unsubscribe.

I find it ironic because it seems they wanted as anodyne a domain as possible so they wouldn't clash with their customers' brands.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This!!! I have started many "side projects" with the notion that once I build it I will then find customers etc. This is terrible thinking and most of the times lead me to think my idea is horrible, when in reality I have done nothing in terms of marketing. So yes I fully agree with start marketing the day you start coding.

When I started [https://mattebot.co/](https://mattebot.co/) I made sure to make marketing a top priority for products I release in the future.

<comment><USER11> FYI on Android Firefox Preview social icons are behind heading. No idea if that's true for other mobile browsers.

</comment></comment><comment> awinter-py fascinated by the 'ideas aren't worth that much, tell everyone' argument

have been trying this and every time my splash page gets a click I get nervous (cloudprogress.io).

certainly lights a fire under me on the prelaunch work though

</comment><comment><USER13> Somehow I read title of book like this. As developer I should market the day I started coding. Like I started coding 17 years ago, I may know some stuff, hire me please.

It's funny how different perspectives we have.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't understand.. noone's trying to get hired here, Rob is a well known guy in the ecosystem and I'm just a developer with my own agency.

What's your perspective?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> A lot of what is referred to as marketing at the end of the article sounds like ux

<comment><AUTHOR> You mean the 'Validate your idea, build a prototype, show it to people, gather feedback, improve it and keep going' part? That's far from UX, and also far from marketing.. those are steps I'd take if starting a new project. BUT all those steps should be intersected with marketing from day one.

<comment><USER14> Hmm, that's what I think ux should do, what the marketing department was doing at my last job and why they were at war

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Marketing usually costs money.

If you're trying to bootstrap, you probably should wait until your product is finished? There are very few free avenues for self promotion on the Internet for "code", other than a blog.

<comment><USER15> Don't wait!

From the moment you decide to pursue the idea, you have to do marketing, advertising, and public relations.

Yes, there is a cost. That's the reality.

<comment> o-__-o I would not advertise until you have 1000 cold calls under your belt and a product. You will waste money advertising an alpha product. Your 20/80 customers won't come from an ad. Press releases are your friend, Ive lost track of how many companies I've found with potential by simply watching the news wire the comes through my investment account website/app</comment></comment></comment>


Tesla Autopilot tried to kill me - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrwxEX8qOxA <comment><USER2> Flagged. This is a video that was posted shortly after the first version came out. From the tesla announcement: "Tesla requires drivers to remain engaged and aware when Autosteer is enabled. Drivers must keep their hands on the steering wheel."

It's not news, and it's stupid behaviour - risking both his and others' lifes</comment>


Why a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) will be launched soon - <AUTHOR> https://ethereumworldnews.com/why-a-central-bank-digital-currency-cbdc-will-be-launched-soon/ <comment><USER2> All just proposals, showing interest, hope, guesses.</comment>


Show HN: Treets, Carbon Offsetting Clothing - <AUTHOR> https://treets.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> A weekend project I've launched to make a positive impact on the environment. Treets donates the majority of profits made directly back to conservation groups like OneTreePlanted.

Many companies are adopting a "one product for one tree" incentive. Treets flip that model to donate the majority of profit back to the environment.

Each and every shirt sold donates $5 to plant 5 trees.</comment>