We Need a Manhattan Project for Cybersecurity - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/backchannel/we-need-a-manhattan-project-for-cyber-security-76e6d8fc6447 <comment><USER2> The use of the term "Manhattan Project" is a bit unfortunate. If there was such a program, most would not know about it -- those that did would be forbidden to talk about it. In other words, if there were a "Manhattan Project for Cybersecurity" \-- it would look like NSAs Bluffdale facility, and would have as much publicity and official comment on what it was, who was working there and on what.

Security is different from offensive capability -- I don't think the best way to secure infrastructure is through threat of mutual assured destruction -- if anything, being the worlds prime nuclear power (and conventional weapons power) -- the USA already have "assured destruction" covered. Sure, a country wide blackout would be devastating, but so would dropping a few terra-tons worth of nukes on the offender.

I think what's needed in terms of "cybersecurity" is more openness, better education and perhaps most important: better and more correct incentives. There's a huge gap between what is available (secure coding, secure systems, best practices (or even half-decent practices)) -- and what we see companies, governments and organizations do. I also think it is absurd to promote the Sony hack as a threat to national security -- talk about hyperbole. Some personal data and a little intellectual property was leaked. It pales in comparison to the allegations of commercial secrets stolen by the NSA on behalf of US industry, for example.

<comment><USER3> Everyone wants a "Manhattan Project" for their own pet technology.

The real MP was building technology that they theoretically knew was possible. Most modern calls for an MP are "just throw a lot of money at this thing," which is how it works in games like "Civilization" but doesn't actually in the real world.

From TFA:

 _A real Manhattan Project for cyber would draw together some of the greatest minds of our time, from government, academia, the private sector, and civil society_

. . . who would proceed to bitch at each other endlessly. I firsthand saw what should have been a nice cordial introductory meeting turn into an hour-long shitstorm about which person at the table invented the term "firewall" (since more than one of them had claimed credit).

<comment><USER4> Exactly. The manhattan project was throwing money and brains at a specific idea, knowing it was theoretically possible and a game-changer if it worked. What's the Cyber Security equivalent?

<comment><USER5> I don't think there is one. Cybersecurity requires pefection. The old saying that to keep systems secure you have to win every battle with your attackers, but the attackers only need to win one.

I think we're fundamentally doing it wrong. We work to try to make things more secure, but perfection is not possible for humans. We need to accept that complex computer systems and networks cannot be secure. And find ways to make them useful dispite that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think the challenge here is that one definition of success here would be the prevention of unauthorized access to data by _all_ parties, and that would of necessity, include the government.

The reason you need to protect data from nation-states is that there are enemy nation-states trying to get it, and there is no physical barrier between the data and them, so the only answer is to protect it from _all_ nation-states, even the one where it is located.

The reason it has to be authorized is because data access is a 'rights' sort of thing (akin to property) and the processes that we put in place which insert a due process between data and a government agency need to be just as strong at the ones between property and a government agency.

For me, that is why the metaphor of a 'Manhattan' project doesn't work for me. If this effort were the Manhatten project we would be building a nuclear bomb that the people could use against any government but that the governments could not control. And well they would never sign up for that because they have nothing to gain from it.

I would much prefer to call the effort a 'Magna Carta' effort that forces the monarch in power to submit to the data privacy demands of the subjects.

</comment><comment><USER7> We already have one. Look at the NSA's budget. Look at the money being shoveled into Microsoft/Google/Apple. All the people in position to fix things are positively flush with cash.

And off in the corner, a few non-paid developers of F/OSS are creating better security products than all the above combined. Manhattan-style money throwing is not the answer.

And I take issue with the article's depiction of the Manhattan Project. "Those working on the Manhattan Project were dead serious about the threat before them." ... um ya well the vast majority of those working on it had absolutely no idea of what the project was all about. They all operated within a disconnected web of secrecy, not the best model for security imho.

The author "has served as a street police officer, senior adviser to Interpol and futurist-in-residence with the FBI. " He isn't a security professional. And his twitter feed doesn't give the impression of someone with any deep understanding beyond headlines and talking points.

</comment><comment><USER8> We have one: [http://www.darpa.mil/cybergrandchallenge/](http://www.darpa.mil/cybergrandchallenge/)

<comment><USER9> I'm happy to be a funded team in that challenge. There's another website with highlevel info for those casually interested in the challenge. If you want the hard details, there's a lot of code up on Github.

[http://www.cybergrandchallenge.com/](http://www.cybergrandchallenge.com/)

[https://github.com/CyberGrandChallenge](https://github.com/CyberGrandChallenge)

AMA?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This might be unrelated. But I'm curious if the new US Digital Service has any good projects related to cybersecurity? There was a posting a few days ago for this new initiative [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8988819](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8988819)

I don't know what you'd formally call this. It's not really an agency and I'm not sure how it's funded. I'm curious if something like this could spearhead this kind of project.

</comment><comment><USER11> On the one hand, yes, computer security is a disaster in urgent need of reform. On the other, "a true national cyber-defense capability, one that could detect and respond to threats against our national critical infrastructures in real time" sounds like a proposal to arrogate root access to all of the 'critical' computers at once, to some one central group. Am I imagining things?

</comment><comment><USER12> my healthcare provider (Anthem) was just hacked, so my SS number and other identifying details are probably being traded on some Russian web site right now.

Anthem did not encrypt the data which was stolen.

Sony did not show any signs of basic competence in its data security either.

a Manhattan Project is useful if you have a really tight deadline, a very specific and achievable goal, and the problem you face is one where the technology you want does not exist yet.

but everybody in technology knows that the technology exists, and the problem is widespread incompetence and indifference.

the solution for that is not a Manhattan Project. it is class-action lawsuits.

think how fucked up this situation is. everybody in infosec knows that Anthem and Sony were ridiculous and 100% at fault in their negligence. yet people who get their info on this from the mainstream media have probably never even heard that point of view.

so you get utterly uninformed commentators who think that Anthem and Sony must employ geniuses of the first caliber, and that we need to take the "new" and "unprecedented" step of classified crypto research.

<comment><USER5> I don't think the plain text data is the problem. Data has to be in the clear at some point to be usable. That's the point that will be attacked. And it will eventually be compromised.

<comment><USER13> The trick here is to have as _few_ places as possible where that data is operating in the clear as possible, and try to provide as much isolation across them where feasible or where concerns are naturally separated.

The problem is that few think like this, except in a few special industries where they live and die by not getting this wrong.

Ease of use and whatever gets things working fastest is generally the name of the game (and I don't blame businesses for this attitude, the market punishes anyone who is too careful or slow-moving in almost every industry)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Security is not one project. It is _every project_ that faces the world. A "Manhattan Project" isn't a useful analogy or approach to the security problem.

The problems we have are:

1\. High capability attackers (states, corporations) have a high motivation to compromise privacy and security and low motivation to improve privacy and security for users.

2\. The tools relied on by users for security and privacy are often built by people with very limited resources (GnuPG, OpenSSL, nearly every other Open Source thing in the world).

Fixing security online requires audits and maintenance across a huge spectrum of projects, and historically there has been very little funding for such things. It's almost dumb luck that we have tools that are as good as they are, and we shouldn't be surprised by bugs like Heartbleed and Ghost and others. They're what happens when there is very little profit in maintaining core infrastructure.

</comment><comment><USER15> We just need the government to contribute more to FOSS projects. They are clear public goods with huge economic impact but the funding sucks. That is what happens to private public goods - no one wants to pay for them but everyone uses them. That is why we have taxes.

</comment><comment> vezzy-fnord It seems to me like the bulk of "security research" these days is vulnerability discovery. This is certainly important. However, more profound solutions like capability-based operating systems (e.g. CoyotOS), and in general forward-thinking projects that aim to provide comprehensive foundations for secure systems seem to be left behind and neglected in favor of continuing the present rat race of applying band-aids and bug hunting our existing cruft.

Unfortunately, a "Manhattan Project" for cybersecurity wouldn't really work because the problem is a highly multi-tiered one without a clear end goal, with a lot of individual bits and pieces that are visible and have potential to be refined or started anew.

</comment><comment><USER16> I think the analogy completely falls down. The Manhattan project was about a technical breakthrough, a big step forward that hadn't happened before.

Where is the analogue in crypto and security? There is no unsolved holy grail. Frankly, we have all the technical tools we need to make the web an extremely secure place.

What we are lacking instead is general investment in FOSS tools, regulations that hold a company responsible for leaking user data and encourage corporate prioritization of security, and national education about security risks and basic Internet dos and donts (phishing etc).

</comment><comment><USER17> All of this is doable. And none of this will happen. At least, none of this will happen until consumers and buyers start caring more about security than about the newest and shiniest feature.

<comment><USER18> There's also a supplier-angle: They'll care more if they must disclose/be- liable-for major leaks or flaws on their product.

<comment><USER17> Now _that_ would change everything.

And probably do a lot of damage to Silicon Valley. It would make startups much less risk-friendly.

<comment><USER18> Obviously it's possible to go overboard, but it's a bit like pollution or other externalities.

"Sure, the new EPA dumping regulations would harm "small petrochemical startups", but if the river really _is_ getting undrinkable..."

<comment><USER17> If history is any guide, we'll have to wait for the metaphorical river to catch fire before anything is done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The idea that there is a magical technological improvement that will solve all (or "most", or even just "more than two") is about as plausible as the heralded arrival of the singularity.

The solution is to harden a bunch of stuff. Clearly, the ideal solution is to just remake it with security in mind, but that still leaves a ton of ground to cover.

</comment><comment><USER20> > This Manhattan Project would help generate the associated tools we need to > protect ourselves, including more robust, secure, and privacy-enhanced > operating systems.

That's a nice thought, and I agree with it. Too bad the current and likely future administration as well as all the "cybersecurity" guys in the government right now support the _exact opposite of that_ \- because "terrorists". Just 2 weeks from now Obama is likely to announce policy to introduce backdoors in tech products. Yay "cybersecurity"!

</comment><comment><USER21> No, we don't, not only because "cyber" is bullshit anyhow, but in particular because security is not a product. Security is a property of systems that has to be built in, and security usually is lacking because people don't care, that cannot be fixed with a magic security device.

It's about as sensible as suggesting a Manhattan Project for Mindliteracy--but I would suggest that teaching people to read and calling it just that might be more effective than trying to build a mindliteracy bomb against mindilliteracy.

</comment><comment><USER22> Back when the U.S. Was accusing China of widespread corporate espionage, I wondered why the U.S. didn't have a major effort to harden common OSs.

Then Snowden came out, and we learned the U.S. government is doing the opposite, trying to keep all systems readily exploitable.

Surely the defense and intelligence departments already have hardened versions of OSs. As taxpayers, we actually own that software. We should all have access. Where's the EFF on this one?

<comment><USER23> The DoD has at least researched hardened OSes in the past: I attended a seminar in 1990 or 1991 where they talked about "hardened Solaris" or maybe hardened SunOS. One of the talks was about how Sun had to rewrite the windowing system to avoid information moving up or down a level inappropriately.

Also, if you read Fred Cohen's 1984 paper, "Computer Viruses - Theory and Experiments", in section 5 "Experiments with computer viruses" ([http://all.net/books/virus/part5.html](http://all.net/books/virus/part5.html)), Cohen mentions a "Bell-LaPadula based system implemented on a Univac 1108." No real details are given, but the sentence " The virus demonstrated the ability to cross user boundaries and move from a given security level to a higher security level" appears in the write up. I have to conclude Cohen is talking about some proprietary system.

There's also the famed Multics, known to have been used by the NSA on into the 1990s ([http://www.multicians.org/site- dockmaster.html](http://www.multicians.org/site-dockmaster.html)). The only certified multi-level-secure OS or some such. It did run on some odd hardware, though.

I conclude that the NSA at least has some weird, "hardened" or otherwise unusual operating systems. They're not widely used, it seems.

<comment><USER24> Secure system design history: [https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/11/friday_squid_...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/11/friday_squid_bl_451.html#c6683396)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The last government guy who said that was Amit Yoran, Homeland Security's first head of cybersecurity. He made statements some people didn't like, including stating that Microsoft Windows was the biggest problem around. His replacement was a lobbyist for Cisco who could be relied on not to rock the boat.

Technically, this is quite do-able. I think we'll see it on the server side in a few years.

</comment><comment><USER26> What credentials this guy has for anyone to listen to him on topics of cyber security? Did he build some impressive secure software or protected some large networks? Looking at his bio or his twitter feed, I don't get the impression that he is an expert in this topic.

</comment><comment><USER27> 1\. Relying on any form of secret is unsustainable. Credit Card, Social Security, Password, PIN, Secret Key. Information wants to be free, and it will. Secrets must be kept secret at ALL time. With the coming death of privacy, keeping a secret will be ridiculously complicated and expensive. Secrets make a system fragile.

2\. We need fewer systems. Having each bank, each hospital, each government, each shop, each school, each business build their own custom systems and application by default is a huge mistake. Custom shouldn't be the default, it should be last resort. The existence of these custom systems is the very cause of all the inefficiencies, fragmentation, bugs, increasing demand for programmers, etc. That's some Tower of Babel shit all over again.

3\. We need a common language. A language that makes sense to use in the 21st century. A language that help us think, a language that's computer assisted. Text? What a goddamn joke.

4\. We don't know yet what an identity is. Am I one person? Can I play the role of two people? Can two people act as one person? Can a robot or an API have their own identity? In a future that's going be a lot like a distributed semantic marketplace, what we need is not security. What we need is accountability. Identity and fraud is what must be solved.

5\. You tinfoil hat people should really take a step back and consider your paranoia. Privacy is not a good thing. At best, it's a necessary evil (temporarily). Browsing behind 7 proxies, encrypting the air your breath, praying Lord Snowden, demonizing the government you keep wanting to get bigger (you know, welfare and free stuff). Guess what, you're missing the entire point. If anything, your focus on these insignificant symptoms give the disease the opportunity to grow. You're the reason you might be right at the end. You're self-fulfilling prophets.

Sheeps be disagreeing.

<comment><USER21> "Relying on any form of secret is unsustainable. [...] Identity and fraud is what must be solved."

Would you mind explaining your concept of identity? I have a hard time grasping what an "identity" would look like when it can be used by everyone as they wish by virtue of not relying on any secrets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> > Last month President Obama acknowledged "no foreign nation, no hacker* , > should be able to shut down our networks, steal our trade secrets or invade > the privacy of American families."

* Present company excluded.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'd rather we had a clean energy Manhattan project...</comment>


New Manhattan Tower Is Now the Tallest - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/14/nyregion/432-park-avenue-tower-the-tallest-if-not-the-fairest-of-them-all.html

<comment><USER2> That's great. It's a rather depressing analogy for human progress that so many of the tallest buildings in Manhattan were built almost a century ago.

We have many great ideas for many new things but lack the political will to carry them out: [http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/0...](http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/09/neal_stephenson_innovation_starvation_we_have_great_ideas_for_the_future.html) .

<comment><USER3> Meh, I disagree that "the tallest" somehow represents human progress. Heck, the whole point of this article is how the tower is completely incongruent with the rest of its surroundings, and there was a good comment about how much of this super-luxury real estate is essentially an export product that NY sells to foreign oligarchs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's kind of amazing to me that a ninety-six-story skyscraper only has 104 units.

</comment><comment><USER5> No, it is the tallest residential building in Manhattan, unless you want to redefine how buildings are measured.

<comment><USER5> Not sure why I was downvoted for pointing out that it isn't the tallest building in NYC. The tallest building in NYC is 1 WTC, which is almost 400' taller than this building, and is also the tallest building in the Western hemisphere.

<comment><USER6> It's reasonable to believe that "the building where you can ascend the furthest" is taller than "the building which would first puncture a descending dirigible".

The formal definition of "Height to Architectural Top" from the CTBUH requires 5 footnotes and a committee to decide whether the top features of a building are "architectural" or not.

And who put them in charge, anyway?</comment></comment></comment>


Amazon still sells USB charging hub, despite known electrocution risk - cat-dev-null Horrific USB power supply fault. (Electrocution risk.) [youtube] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Hdn0MuCK_0<p>http://www.amazon.com/Multi-port-Portable-Charger-Technology-Motorola/dp/B00PPXYWJW <comment><AUTHOR> This is a non-story. A number of firms make the same kind of product. The one thats linked isnt even the same brand as the one in the video.

</comment><comment> cat-dev-null Links here:

\- [https://youtu.be/3Hdn0MuCK_0](https://youtu.be/3Hdn0MuCK_0)

\- [http://www.amazon.com/Multi-port-Portable-Charger- Technology...](http://www.amazon.com/Multi-port-Portable-Charger-Technology- Motorola/dp/B00PPXYWJW)

Donation link for the original discoverer

[https://www.patreon.com/bigclive](https://www.patreon.com/bigclive)</comment>


Which stock broker do you use? - <AUTHOR> I am curious if tech people here use some stock broker tips or tricks which has saved them good amount of money.<p>And yes, which stock broker do you use? <comment><USER2> Robinhood because I noticed no benefits compared to Fidelity. I only use the brokerage for placing the order, all of the tools I use are free tools from 3rd party sites like Stock Charts.

I imagine if you have real money riding in the market though, you probably want an established name.

</comment><comment><USER3> I use Schwab because they're not averse to American account holders living outside the U.S., and Intrinio for market information. I'd recommend against Ameritrade because they're idiots.

</comment><comment><USER4> IB</comment>


Ask HN: My Startup didn't go viral- what now? - <AUTHOR> So I launched my startup (moodstir.com) after working on it since November or so and have made a few attempts over the past couple of weeks to try and get a following. It's actually one of the main reasons I decided to take a leave of absence from the University of San Francisco.
I understand that virality is not going to happen overnight, but I approached the project under the assumption that it's either going to be adopted and spread throughout some niche quickly, or never catch on.
So I'm asking for advice from some of the more experienced founders on HN- am I being impatient? Should I pivot the concept in some way? Perhaps allowing other login options aside from Facebook is the first step to reduce barrier to entry.
If you have any suggestions about either where I should go from here, or specifically regarding the concept, I would be happy to hear them. <comment><USER2> I'm assuming you've been working on this project full time or near full time since November, which is approx 10 weeks. Honest question: is this all you can deliver with 10 weeks of full time work?

Unless there's something hugely complex under the surface that I'm not seeing, here's my criticism:

\- This is not a startup, and you're hurting yourself if you think of it as one. It's a simple MVP web project.

\- You could have - and should have - pulled this off in a weekend.

\- The 'why' input is too small.

\- 'Trending now' looks like it's broken.

\- Everything I click yields a search result. Why are there no profiles?

\- What am I supposed to search for in the search box? It should give me tips.

\- Why can't I click photos?

<comment><USER3> Actually I wanted to say the same, but then I hesitated and thought that it may be a little harsh on him.

By the way all your points are valid.

Also, If you want to quick tasks outside your work. What you are looking for is consulting/freelancing not a start up. Start up will chew up both effort and time in large magnitudes with a river of failures heading your way. Simple Android/iPhone apps. Small utility website, are Ok if your want to make some money with Google Ads. But they are not start ups.

By the way these there is a huge tendency among people to call even 100 line scripts as projects and weekend apps as start ups. The sooner you face the reality and set you expectations right, the better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The best thing you could of done but didn't do would have been to validate the idea before even building it. And by validating, I meant finding a core group of users who absolutely had a need or want for what you were looking to build, not friends or people who thought the idea was cool. This core group would then go on to be your beta (or alpha) users.

I assume you didn't do the above. Virality, press, etc... are often not reliable sources of traffic to build a sustainable group of users in the early stages. At this point, you should go back and find that core group to improve the MVP with and worry about growth once you've worked out all the initial bugs and features users actually want.

Obviously take my advice with a grain of salt as I have no idea what your idea is and just how far you got and this is very general advice (on iPhone and didn't go to your link). You need to make sure people even wants your product

<comment><AUTHOR> It was mostly "friends or people who thought the idea was cool". The handful people who were most adamant about the idea were somewhat savvy Twitter users, so I envisioned others having the same passion for the idea.

<comment><USER5> As it turns out, users lie. They will often say whatever they think will please you, especially if they are your friends. They also have a hard time imagining how they will use products that don't exist, and a hard straightening out the reasons for their feelings. They will say "Yes, I totally want a site that will help me find cool things to do my city!" when what they really mean is "Yes, I wish I had more free time to go out with my friends!"

Ways to deal with this sad fact:

* Ask users "how much would you pay for this?" Follow up with "seriously, if I build it, you'll commit to paying that much?" Tends to bring them back to reality, but doesn't make sense for all products.

* Look for external evidence for user pain. If there is no tool on the market for doing X, but users manage to sorta-kinda cobble together four other products to sort of do X poorly, you can believe that they want X.

* Build quick little prototypes, as cheap as possible, and see what users actually do with them. (You've just done that -- good job :))

<comment><USER6> _As it turns out, users lie_

This can be overcome by explaining to them up front, that you are about to invest your soul in the effort and that they will be doing you a disservice if they are not honest and that failure later will be harder on you. When they realize that they are actually saving you a larger amount of future grief then they tend to be more honest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Like others have said, there is no apparent need for it when I can just Tweet/Facebook "Yaay! I am happy because....."

My suggestions:

1\. Make it more fun and social by changing the call to action from "submit" to "Tell the world", "let your friends" know etc. I am sure you get the drift.

2\. Use Icons to depict the mood. This smiley --> :) is a LOT more fun than the word ---> HAPPY. icons are infinitely much more fun. If you cannot design, go to dribble and contract one of these guys <http://dribbble.com/search?q=smiley>

3\. Your site should have a mobile version and should be fucking FAST!

4\. Have twitter login too

5.You can seek advice directly from Mark Bao <http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=markbao> he launched Threewords.me that went 'ridiculously viral' (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2051288>) so he should have better feedback and suggestions.

Remember, you should be thinking of building a sustainable product that is useful not just something that should go viral.

Here is the very last thing you should do. In fact the thing you should never do: Pity yourself. You are a warrior for taking the leap. You now go and crush it! You can, and you will.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the response! Submit is a pretty emotionless word- true. Twitter login is a good idea; icons to depict moods is something we have talked about but aren't sure if users will know exactly what emotion is related to a certain face. I remember threewords.me and loved the idea- I appreciate the links.

<comment><USER7> As for the icons, you can put a word to the face. That is the designers problem. :). I doubt any real designer will have a problem of making smileys 'recognizable'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My feedback:

1\. It wasn't obvious to me why I would use this when I went to the site. This is just for telling people my mood? I can do that on Twitter. You need to make clear what the difference is. Perhaps even some sort of demo.

2\. When I did try to enter a mood I was asked to sign in using Facebook. That's a dead-end for me; I won't give a random company access to my Facebook account.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the advice- we should probably have this on the home page. The idea is that there's something specific that caused that emotion. When a number of people start posting an emotion about a certain thing, "Tim Tebow" for example, others could search that term and find the collective emotional consensus everyone has towards him.

<comment><USER9> And why would I want to know what "the collective emotional consensus" is? What's the pain? How will it get me laid?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm envisioning it to be used for this purpose as a sort of review site. Having the "collective emotional consensus" of a restaurant down the street might give you a better idea of whether it's worth trying out than seeing 3.5/5 stars on Yelp will. Showing legislators a "collective emotional consensus" of peoples' moods towards the "SOPA" keyword would be interesting as well.

<comment><USER4> This is just personal opinion but I wouldn't care to see emotional consensus. That does nothing for me. Rather, I would like to see more in-depth reviews and ways to flag reviews.

Taking your example of Yelp. I want to be able to filter out (personalize) _my_ overall reviews by being able to flag reviews I think are ridiculous (such as 1 star ratings base on other loud customers that may not have anything to do with the restaurant or food they are reviewing). I would also like to dive in deeper on reviews such as reviewing specific dishes, viewing full menus online, etc...

Emotions don't tell me how a particular dish tastes. It doesn't tell me why someone reacted the way they rated the restaurant (or whatever). Personally, the collective emotions idea doesn't solve anything for me.

<comment><USER6> To me, it could be useful for nightlife but for a restaurant it only applies to a certain segment of the market. If I am going to a 5 star dining establishment, on a date, I really don't care about the emotion, because I am not interesting in socializing. Now for nightlife, I would want to be around happy people, but I don't know if that can accurately be discerned. Most people are going to say I am happy at the bar, so all bars are going to be happy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Either this is a bad idea, or it's a bad execution of a good idea. I don't really believe in bad ideas to be honest.

There's no real experience here, as well as no real novelty. I have my own ideas of how this might be made to be useful, but I think you should give a real hard think as to the following questions

        - what is, step by step, the user experience like?
        - how are they getting to your page in the first place
        - what is their response when they see your page
        - what is their response when they use the page (what do they click, read etc)
        - what brings them back the second time, time after that?
        - why would they refer others to your page?
        - what problem are you solving for them and how can they not get this anywhere else?

I'll give you one point that I noticed. W(hy)TF are the emotions in text format? No one likes to write "happy" when they can ::ninja:: something, also it's much easier to click in a sea of emoticons than to find an arbitrary emotion in a list.

</comment><comment><USER11> The other feedback mentioned is almost invariably excellent. They're great things to try.

In short, expecting a waterfall of activity after three months is very impatient.

If you're an actor trying to make it in Hollywood, it's ridiculous to expect to be an A-lister after three months.

Similarly, if you're a band that was in a garage in November, it'd silly to expect to be headlining Madison Square Garden in three months. It even took Rebecca Black longer.

These things can take an absurd amount of time. You could be around for five years before "going viral," but will feel absolutely fresh to those seeing it for the first time.

If this whole "patience" thing is a hard pill to swallow, take an honest look at what you're doing and how your expectations align with the harsh realities of being an entrepreneur.

Good actors love the craft and would be perfectly content to perform in their local theatre for peanuts for the rest of their lives. While capitalism means the same can't be said for an entrepreneur, the principle is the same.

</comment><comment><USER12> _"I approached the project under the assumption that it's either going to be adopted and spread throughout some niche quickly, or never catch on."_

This is a silly and immature approach, in my opinion. Such an approach is only suitable if you either have loads of time and money to throw at projects just for fun or you have a pet project that requires extremely minimal resources and effort to get off the ground.

The de facto approach to just about any web business should be to imagine it like a mom and pop store or restaurant. You'll spend a lot of hard work on it, it'll take years to get into the swing of things properly, and if you're really lucky you'll just barely do a bit better than keeping yourself employed at a reasonable level of pay.

<comment><AUTHOR> I appreciate the candid response. The age-old "ideas vs execution" argument is something that interests me, and I've always wanted to start projects that have a neat core concept, where they can potentially get off the ground quickly from word of mouth. However, it's inspiring to see sites like Reddit struggle for long periods before eventually having explosive growth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've read all the feedback, and agree with much of it. But I think I see something here that a lot of people don't see. At my school one of our simple routines is to go around the class a couple mornings each week, and have everyone say their name, a number from 1-10 representing how they're feeling that day, and maybe respond to some prompt. It's a silly, cheesy, touchy-feely routine on the surface, but when done right it does a lot of good. If someone is low, it's good for others to know that. We give that person some space, and make sure someone checks in with them, without suffocating them. If someone is having a good day, we use that person's energy to push projects forward and help other people out.

Sure, people could do this using facebook or twitter. But they'd have to use those general tools for this specific purpose. There could be some strength in simplicity here.

That said, this will not be an overnight success. If you want to make this into something meaningful, you've got a bunch of iterating to do. You've got a lot to learn about what the specific strengths of this concept is, and cut anything that doesn't build on those strengths. You've got to make it work with fb and twitter, because it probably won't stand on its own.

Good luck, it's an interesting concept.

</comment><comment><USER14> If you want it to go more viral you can always go the usual route: integrate aggressively with facebook, twitter, and other social networks. Use "rewards" in terms of points or medals or achievements to encourage users to spend time on your site.

Also think really carefully about what your target audience is, what value you want to give to people, and how you plan to (eventually?) make money. I agree that a startup product like yours has to grow big fast. So the important thing is the viral part, the rest is pretty much irrelevant (once you have a bazillion users it's easy to build something they want).

Where should you go from here? Figure out a clever way to make something viral, then go do that.

Feedback regarding the product? I don't see how it can ever generate passionate users. I can't imagine anybody saying "Moodstir is the GREATEST PRODUCT EVER, because...". Twitter was the first social network to do one-to- many broadcasting right. Facebook gets people laid. Linkedin is a social network for business purposes. People _really love_ those products, and it's very clear in what way they bring value to the user. This too is something that you should probably think about.

</comment><comment><USER15> Same thing here, I launched <http://whodidiforget.com> a few days ago, and after getting a little traffic from HN it fell flat.

Sorry for hijacking your post but my question is similar to yours: what to do when you're not on a first name basis with big blogs editor (and those blogs do not respond to email tips) and you don't yet have a large network ?

<comment><USER8> My feedback:

1\. It's not obvious what you do that's special. There's probably some secret sauce in figuring out who I might have forgotten, but you don't tell me what it is.

2\. It would be useful to have a walk through or screencast or something showing how it works. For example, does this thing just make lists, does it manage invites, send emails? No idea from the site.

3\. I won't use sites that insist on a Facebook login.

<comment><USER15> Thanks for your feedback !

1\. I didn't want to add too much complexity to the app by going into details of advanced Social Network Analysis, but I'll think about adding details.

2\. Good idea, I'll work on a screencast/walkthrough

3\. I understand that, but I have no other solution: having access to the user's facebook friends is an absolute requirement for the app to run.

Nevertheless, thanks for your feedback.

<comment><USER16> If you tell me upfront, maybe near the signup button, that you need access to my facebook account in order to run "advanced Social Network Analysis" AND I'm sold on how your app is going to help me, I would have no problem signing up.

<comment><USER15> I've added an explanation on the how/why on the front page. Thanks !

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've never made a startup, so I'm talking as a consumer, but here's my honest opinion.

I don't want to use your service, I have no need for it. I have four other services I can use to vent, and I only use 2 of them.

Are you addressing a need that isn't provided elsewhere? What research did you do?

If I was you, I think I'd be researching until I identified something people actually need or want, and I'd re-use some of the code from this project for connectivity.

Also, I'd allow people to use more than just Facebook. Maybe I'd rather have a unique account on your service that's associated with my email, but not discoverable by absolutely everybody.

</comment><comment><USER18> I think you should pivot.

What your site allows users to do is one of the many things people can already do on Twitter and Facebook much simpler, without the use of dropdowns, just by typing whatever they feel like into the share box. You're adding very little value (if any), but want to create a separate walled garden against one thousand pound gorillas mentioned above. In fact you're subtracting value because users aren't on Twitter or Facebook where their friends actually see their shares.

<comment><USER6> Right, if you want to continue with this idea, I would suggest building out a structured front end for twitter that formats posts and collects the data from twitter to make the reports. You could do this very easy with a hashtag. It would have saved you the trouble of building out a back end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> One of the key ingriedients to virality for sites, is Anonymity. If you can incorporate that element into the site ,your chances of going viral will increase drastically. If things stay the way they are than you going to have to do things the old fashion way ie beat the chicken egg problem ,gain users over a long period of time and let the network effect kick in.

</comment><comment><USER20> I guess you need to provide some reasons for your users to use your site? And maybe you should try some more marketing strategies? Your UI looks fine, but rather simple - maybe too simple. Looks more like an experimental side project to me. It simply doesn't have the "official" look to it. That's just my humble opinion. I'm not an expert or any sort, I'm a user.

</comment><comment><USER21> Just had an idea: what if you changed the "happy" "because" to "x made me happy by". Then people could thank each other that way, instant virality. Although they could still just do the same on Twitter or Facebook.

But I think there might be some way to redeem your site, by giving a crazy reason for doing mood checkins.

</comment><comment><USER22> Don't want to be too harsh, but why would people use this over Twitter or FB status updates? I think the biggest weakness here is that the other users are people I have no connection to whatsoever. What was your reasoning that this would take off, and was there any niche you had in mind?

</comment><comment><USER23> I just ran across this, wanted to say that it looks like an interesting project - not sure however what advice to give you. I can however say, that I m a student studying NLP and I like the way users self annotate their moods based on their statements. Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER24> Like others have said, I don't understand what value this adds. Second, I don't have Facebook and won't give my twitter login to an random site..... at the same time, those 'social' networks seem to be what gives this product value.

<comment><USER19> 7 years ago,who would have though that tell your friends ''Whats on your mind''So who know maybe dude is on to something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Where is the schlep? I'd highly recommend this before developing anything further: <http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html>

</comment><comment><USER26> You want viral? Ask yourself: Would this appeal to a 13-15 year old? In the web, these are your mavens for viral.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: <http://moodstir.com>

</comment><comment><USER27> What's the value-add you're offering users?

<comment><AUTHOR> The philosophy was that people use twitter to convey their rational conceptions of things (140 character explanation of their thoughts) while there was no medium for telling the world what you're feeling and why. Since people love posting their thoughts on twitter, we imagined there would be a market for those who want to let everyone know what's causing their emotions.

From the about page:

Moodstir is where you give the world a snapshot of your emotions. Tell the world you're [frustrated] because of [traffic], or search [Jersey Shore] to see the variety of moods the popular TV show causes people to share.

<comment><USER28> >The philosophy was that people use twitter to convey their rational conceptions of things (140 character explanation of their thoughts) while there was no medium for telling the world what you're feeling and why.

Why, exactly, can't we just use Twitter, or G+ or FB to post our mood? There's no value-add here; your service is just trying to further divide your target users' attention and splinter their social network.

Quite aside from the value-add problem is the value proposition itself: what on earth do I provide by sharing my mood with friends and what do I gain by moodstalking them?

<comment><AUTHOR> Say you had a great experience at a coffee shop- you post [satisfied] towards [Velo Rouge Cafe]. If enough people do this, anyone who wants a quick snapshot of what people have experienced in Velo Rouge might just search for them on Moodstir. If there are a lot of [satisfied] emotions posted, or a lot of [frustrated] ones, it imply certain things about the cafe. Different than a Yelp review site, in that it takes the aggregate feelings of all users, rather than a simple X/5 star system, which is a more limited glimpse into peoples' experiences.

<comment><USER29> I get it, and dig it.

Aggregating moods would be useful on a site such as Amazon, where, depending on the technical level of the product, reviews range from sharp and intelligent to blunt and kneejerk. Having access to sentiment analysis would help consumers to quickly see whether or not the product/service being 'mood reviewed' solves their problem or not.

Written reviews are full of conjecture and anecdotes, 5-star gradings may as well not exist for 2-4 stars, so mood is another great metric to add to these tools.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Although the website looks good but you cannot call it a startup right now. It is just another website or app that lets me do something. You should understand the difference between a startup and a simple web app.

Just building a web app will not make your idea into a business / company. You need to chalk out marketing strategies, revenue streams etc. Most importantly you need to get users to use your site without much force!

My 2 cents :-)</comment>


Mystery Bidder Bids $3.2M for 6000 Detroit Homes - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-10-24/buying-derelict-detroit-mystery-bidder-wants-6-000-foreclosed-homes#r=hp-ls <comment><USER2> There is a huge market for international property speculation especially with American property.

The owner will likely sell each house for a tidy profit (to another investor), the new owner of only 1-5 houses will turn around and try to sell those back to Americans, realize s/he got had.

TL;DR international property scam

References

[http://www.nuwireinvestor.com/articles/waterfront- properties...](http://www.nuwireinvestor.com/articles/waterfront-properties- in-detroit-an-investment-opportunity-61484.aspx)

[http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/2013102/NEWS/310209983/](http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/2013102/NEWS/310209983/)

[http://michiganradio.org/post/no-chinese-investors-arent- buy...](http://michiganradio.org/post/no-chinese-investors-arent-buying- detroit-they-do-have-eye-motor-city)

P.S.: If the parcels are located semi-close to the new arena complex it maybe a serious investment, but I doubt it.

<comment><USER3> Can you explain the "scam" part?

<comment><USER4> Evidently, speculation == scam now.

Also, I'm one of those people who buy 1-5 properties from bigger investment firms. My return (with rentals) varies between 17-20%. So, no, I don't feel had.

<comment><USER5> Where in the country are you that you're realizing those kinds of profits?

<comment><USER6> I think this is plausible, since return is based on your investment. EG: You buy a $300k property, maybe have $40k in rent, $6k in maintenance costs, but only put down $30k on the property, your total investment is $36k. On rent alone you're returning $4k (spread between mortgage+maintenance and rent income.) $4k on a $36k investment is %11. But on top of that you have added ~%50 of your mortgage payments (which are covered by rent, "free" money) to your assets.

Do you believe this is rare? I don't know the real estate market well, but it seems pretty plausible to me.

First thing I'd do is look for a city where the influx of population exceeds the new home starts. If you find something like that early on, after a few years, your return will be pretty dramatic as rental prices go up, but your mortgage is based on the price at the time you bought (which may be well below the current value of the property.)

Between appreciation and the rent paying down your mortgage balance, plus possibly a return on the rent itself, a return on equity (which really is just the downpayment plus maintenance costs) could be pretty high.

<comment><USER7> 40k rent coming in on a 300k property?! You're off your rocker...

<comment><USER8> I'm using Canadian interest rates because it helps me do gut-checks related to the current property values around me. A $300k house here is a decent house. A 5-year closed fixed mortgage at today's rates (3.24% on promo) works out to $1456/mo. From what I've heard from friends, they're renting relatively most homes around here for about that price. Looking at MLS, there are significantly nicer homes in the $300k price range, and it probably wouldn't be a huge problem to rent one of those out for $1750/mo ($300 profit/mo = $4k/yr)

While the $40k/yr rent number above does seem suspicious, the percentages otherwise work out reasonably well on the back of my envelope. Another important thing to consider is that at the end of it, even if you made $0/mo on the property, you still end up with a (hopefully) valuable piece of property to sell that had the mortgage paid off by the renters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The value of one single house is basically negative because of the bad neighborhood, bad surrounding homes, high crime, etc. By buying a larger number of contiguous homes, you can greatly reduce those problems. Sounds like a fantastic idea.

<comment><USER10> There is some contiguousness but they are mostly spread all over the city. Take a look at the red properties on this map (zoomable):

[https://whydontweownthis.com/2014/mi/wayne/detroit#15/42.347...](https://whydontweownthis.com/2014/mi/wayne/detroit#15/42.3472/-83.1043)

<comment><USER11> "but they are mostly spread all over the city"

6000 homes spread out also means you can also create a mini company town by essentially luring people (for a new company) to the city and giving them a choice of different properties, renovated and ready to go with efficiencies gained by having so many to deal with. (Similar to when, say, Levittown was built (all in one area of course but same concept with construction).

<comment><USER12> Many if not most of the houses are beyond renovtion. A fair amount probably have fire damage (arson in Detroit is legendary). Sitting for years with broken windows, holes in the roof, etc. leaves them rotted shells

<comment><USER11> The idea would be to bulldoze them and then just sit on the land until you need it for some reason. Carrying costs are obviously much lower that way you can't vandalize a lot (although you can dump on it of course..)

<comment><USER9> From what I remember, this is exactly what Detroit is trying to avoid. They have these auctions with the expectation that they will be lived in either by the owner or a lessee.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Detroit gets a bad rap.

I've traveled quite a bit from 18-24- going coast to coast by car at least a dozen times. I always avoided Detroit because of the bad press it gets. This year Apigee hosted #apicraft in Detroit and it was AWESOME. I fell in love with the city. The outskirts are still rough, but Midtown to downtown was really, really good. The "opportunity Detroit" slogan everywhere paired with the local's can-do attitude makes me want to invest more time and energy into the city.

I can't wait to go back!

<comment><USER14> Different parts of it are in different shape. There's also the utter bankruptcy that means _someone 's_ gonna get squeezed really hard sometime soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Sounds like a possible Dan Gilbert project.

Context: [http://www.forbes.com/sites/joannmuller/2014/09/29/gilbertvi...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/joannmuller/2014/09/29/gilbertville- a-billionaires-drive-to-rebuild-the-motor-city/)

<comment><USER16> Very doubtful. Gilbert has only bought skyscrapers in the downtown area. He bought the buildings for what it would cost to rent that much space for a year in Manhattan. Lately Gilbert has been outbid at auction by Chinese investors so he's exhibited financial discipline.

This mystery bidder is paying $500 per house and it would cost ten times that much on the low side to tear down the house. Somebody needs a large chunk of land and for some reason wants it in that specific area. Maybe Piston's owner, Tom Gores, is planning a downtown stadium?

<comment><USER15> Tom Gores is a good guess, but I think the homes are too distributed to assemble a sizable plot of land. Besides, if you want to buy acreage in Detroit, it's easier to buy an couple old industrial lots than to pay $30m to tear thousands of homes down. Besides, it's hard to imagine a stadium in the middle of a residentially zoned neighborhood.

Here's why my money is on Gilbert: [http://nextcity.org/daily/entry/hey-dan- gilbert-you-cant-bul...](http://nextcity.org/daily/entry/hey-dan-gilbert-you- cant-bulldoze-every-abandoned-building-in-detroit)

> "Business owner Dan Gilbert has bought more than 30 buildings with 7.5 > million square feet of office space in Detroit's central business district."

> "Now, Gilbert wants to get involved in Detroit's neighborhoods."

> "Part of that deal is a new task force faced with the indomitable challenge > of figuring out what to do with Detroit's tens of thousands — no one really > knows the exact number, some say 78,000 — abandoned buildings. "

> "Gilbert is on that task force"

> "'To get the neighborhoods going, we've got to take down the 78,000 or so — > we don't even know the exact number of structures that need to be taken > down, mostly houses,' Gilbert said..."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The one thing they're not making any more of in this world is land. $3.2M isn't much money for a very large number of people in this world.

<comment><USER18>
        The one thing they're not making any more of in this world is land.

Huge portions of the US remain undeveloped or under-developed. Land isn't really in as short of supply as some would have you believe.

        $3.2M isn't much money for a very large number of people in this world.

$3.2 is just the purchase price. The article says the buyer would be looking at another $25-million to demolish the structures that can't be salvaged. Then you have upkeep and taxes. I'm sure the actual total monetary commitment is still within reach for many, but it's not nearly as low as $3.2.

<comment><USER19> Land can potentially be in short supply in areas people want to be located, especially land locked cities.

<comment><USER20> Right, but once you start talking specific locations, you get back to the fact that land isn't really in short supply in Detroit these days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Half the homes need to be torn down, and 2000 lots are already empty.

So it's just 1000 actual homes that may be re-inhabited, and 5000 empty or soon empty lots.

That could be pretty tough to deal with, whatever your plan. Probably not dense enough without re-building to avoid the blight returning again. All those empty lots would hurt. So some huge money will have to be poured into it to accomplish much.

</comment><comment><USER22> So, things like this always interest me, maybe it's long term living in a similar city or just idealism. Anyways, I've always wondered when these places will get so cheap, and so readily available that a single, long term interest, entity will buy a large portion of a major city. At some point, even with the tenants, tear downs, clean up, and taxes, land with that amount of infrastructure around it has to bottom out right? Back of the napkin stuff and some assumptions:

6000 parcels (so assuming separate pieces of land)

average of .25 acres a piece (sourced from no where except where the dots lie on the maps in relation to sizes I'm used to seeing and accounting for some larger properties)

Gives you 1500 acres, or ~2.3 sq miles. That's in a city that's total 138 sq miles.

Again, assuming the article figures are accurate it will cost ~27M total to buy and deal with those 6,000 properties. So for 27M dollars you can own about 1.7% of the entirety of a major metropolitan city. That's 1500 acres. It's not the most desirable, it's surely a pain, you may be able to recoup some cost on some properties or by selling scraps, it may cost $50M in total, who knows. I just think it's interesting you can by one very large house on the coast, or 1500 acres in a still major, and formerly powerhouse, city.

<comment><USER23> Clear development land in Wayne county is selling for $25,000 an acre (and more, I looked a bit for large lots, which should at least somewhat mitigate location).

At those rates, you could maybe expect a nice return with a simple tear down and wait strategy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It's only possible to have a "mystery bidder" because real estate is exempt from money laundering regulations.

I'd bet 2:1 it's shadily acquired money from overseas looking to be stashed out of the reach of local anti-corruption agencies.

<comment><USER25> You also need to sink another ~$24 million into the property to demolish the houses, and if you don't make sufficient progress it will be repossessed. That's gonna be a bunch of jobs, so I'm not sure Detroit would care.

I also would think that you would probably want to have more liquid property, or at least something that might possibly generate some marginal income.

<comment><USER26> It can't be "repossessed" if you own it. (And it wouldn't be repossessed anyway since the bank probably doesn't want it back :p)

<comment><USER24> It can be seized (or a lien placed) by the city or state for not paying property taxes, or fines from lack of upkeep.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I was recently buying some reclaimed lumber, it was quite expensive. It occurs to me that 6000 homes depending on how old they are might be worth that much in materials alone.

<comment><USER28> I was under the impression that most US houses in that price range will be cheapish wood and drywall? Not sure you'd get much reclaimed lumber worth anything out of there.

Still - innovative idea.

<comment><USER21> These are older houses, most of them likely made from much better materials.

Still, with the kind of weathering an empty house would get in Michigan, a lot of it could be totally ruined.

<comment><USER22> > most of them likely made from much better materials.

Unfortunately lots of lead paint as well. It is still a very real issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> "Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful." \- Warren Buffet

</comment><comment><USER30> >Everything is sold as is: The homes may lack furnaces or wiring and they may come with mold, tenants, or both.

mold or tenants, they don't make distinction between them...

Interesting that Detroit government still burdens these properties with extremely high taxes (thanks God and voters for prop 13 in CA :) even though the only service the Detroit government provides there is "foreclosure service".

What are the chances that a buyer of huge amount of parcels can separate that area from the city?

<comment><USER31> Thank god for Prop 13?

Oh jeez. You mean the fact that businesses can sit on commercial properties for more than either of our life times and not pay much more in taxes?

Or the part where a family with a bunch of kids pays less in local property taxes, yet uses public resources more than a single individual who bought their house 5-10 years later?

The idea of Prop 13 has merit, but the disparity it has raised and the hole this state has been dug into, not so much.

<comment><USER30> >Oh jeez. You mean the fact that businesses can sit on commercial properties for more than either of our life times and not pay much more in taxes?

one can see how a minor adjustment made be made here :) Though as things work as it is, why risk breaking a working machine...

>Or the part where a family with a bunch of kids pays less in local property taxes, yet uses public resources more than a single individual who bought their house 5-10 years later?

if they bought at the same time, the family would still be using more public resources, wouldn't it?

there are some minor flaws, yet anytime i see property taxes in other states i always grateful for that relict of direct democracy, ie. Prop system of CA, which allows voters to control at least the most important things, like real estate taxes.

>the hole this state has been dug into, not so much.

what hole? We're booming. Again.

<comment><USER31> Whole vs hole, but nice typo on my part.

Not all municipalities are booming, I think some form of revised prop 13 coupled with a consideration for impact of household count would be a bit better.

<comment><USER30> >a consideration for impact of household count

yep. I'm already paying a tax for having a dog (and some municipalities are now taxing cats too), so i definitely wouldn't mind if others had to pay for their family members too as, obviously, a child is a bigger drain of public resources than a dog or a cat.

<comment><USER31> Where are you that taxing pets is happening? Don't mess with my furballs.

<comment><USER30> pretty much any city in Bay Area and i think in all CA have that yearly registration/license fee

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> It seems obvious to me that too high taxes are the real problem here.

If the tax rate makes owning a piece of property unsustainable, then no matter what your political-economic beliefs you have to agree, right?

I say this as a supported of property taxes (as a stand-in for ground rent owed to the true owners of the land, the commons. Read up on Georgism or Geolibertarianism to understand what I'm talking about).

</comment><comment><USER33> I hope whomever bought it was not planning on reselling the properties piece by piece on ebay and other places. A lot of these types of homes are sold that way to someone that is like wow I can buy a house for $1500! Then they realize there is nothing they can do with it, and it actually costs them a lot of money in taxes and upkeep, and abandon it.

Hey they could have had a sports stadium for just $500k more: [http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap2000000360831/article/ponti...](http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap2000000360831/article/pontiac- silverdome-auction-nets-500000-in-sales)

</comment><comment><USER34> I wonder what the property taxes, per year, will be on the 6000 parcels.

And, since many cities allow you to challenge the stated value, it could be very expensive, in time, to challenge 6000 parcel values.

<comment><USER35> Me too. I'm actually in Europe, only lived in Canada, but I was inspired by this guy: [http://www.buzzfeed.com/drewphilp/why-i-bought-a-house-in- de...](http://www.buzzfeed.com/drewphilp/why-i-bought-a-house-in-detroit- for-500)

So I looked around a bit... the problem is you can often get a cheap house, but only if you take over taxes on the property, which are often multiples of the value of the house as they accumulated over the years. And then there's annual property tax which are really high.

I don't exactly know why... But I've seen houses which get taxed on a value that's 5-10x the value of the house. And beyond that, the tax rate is often 3x higher than other cities.

So you might have a house that's worth just $20k, but then it's valued-for-tax at $100k, and you pay 4% on that. So you're paying $4k in taxes or 20% of the house's value every year. It's insane.

And it's keeping people out. I for one am not interested in paying $10k in old taxes for a cheap home I have to completely newbuild, and then pay taxes on it as if I was paying rent on top of a mortgage.

But it's probably a goldmine for any company with a 50-year vision who can get economies of scale on things like construction, and can negotiate huge tax- relief deals, e.g. waive old taxes and waive taxes the first 5 years etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Land grab? Maybe. But at least _someone_ is buying the property. The prices are very low for a reason, very little demand. I believe a renovation plan needs to be in place within 6 months of purchase. I very much doubt it'll happen for all 6000 homes, but will probably happen for at least some portion of them. I really hope the city doesn't twiddle its thumbs following up on these.

<comment><USER35> True, sort of. But the contrary point is that they want to discourage e.g. people from New York buying some home for $10k out of pocket, not doing anything with it and hoping to flip it in 20 years, as in any big city a plot like that alone is worth $50-60k. Demand is great, but you really want to get people to actually live there, too.

Haven't heard of any requirements for a plan, can you elaborate? Afaik, you own the plot and can leave it shitty if you want as long as it's not a safety hazard.

> Often buyers are legally required to rehab these homes to bring them up to > code. In Detroit, buyers are required to sign Affidavits of Compliance > Responsibility, which obligates them to make repairs outlined in an > inspection report. Only after that can a certificate of occupancy will be > issued, which makes the house legal to live in.

Found this, seems to only apply for a certificate of occupancy (meaning you could let it sit as a long-term investment hoping the rest of the city improves to the extent your property value rises enough to make renovation an easy profit) not sure if it's what you're referring to.

<comment><USER36> I'll have to find it a bit later, but i remember reading when Duggan announced the auctions that a plan for remodeling/renovation/etc needs to be set within 6 months. The idea being that you can waive back taxes if you plan on actually doing something with the property other than letting it sit, however I can't remember if it only applied to planned occupancy or across the board...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Does anyone know why the properties being auctioned off appear to be so randomly situated around the blighted areas? As others have commented, it seems like a developer could do a lot more with a contiguous (as much as possible) group of properties than with the same number spread across the city.

</comment><comment><USER38> If I am allowed to make a wild guess(wishfull). It is the mennonites.

They have a farming culture. They are very good at building their own communities and Detroit is located next to some of the largest fresh water lakes in the world. In farming fresh water is everything.

</comment><comment><USER39> I sure hope the buyer is doing so for altruistic reasons. [1]

[1]: [http://www.businessinsider.com/detroit-foreclosures-may- evic...](http://www.businessinsider.com/detroit-foreclosures-may- evict-150000-people-2014-10?IR=T)

</comment><comment><USER40> Each home = $500. There is more than $500 of materials in each home. Aveerage home has 200-300lbs worth of copper. Each home gets destroyed. I am calling it right now.

<comment><USER41> This assumes that each home has not already been stripped of copper, which is not the case. Most of these homes are bricks and wood.

<comment><USER42> I grew up in Michigan, and I can say with a good amount of certainty: any house in Detroit that is unoccupied does not have a single thing of value left in it, especially copper. Even some places that _are_ occupied have had their copper stripped from them, sometimes live wires that results in the death of the thief.

EDIT: Some links. Copper theft is a big deal in Detroit.

City of Detroit borrowing a page from scrappers and thieves by selling old copper wire to boost Detroit's finances.

[http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/wayne- county/201...](http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/wayne- county/2014/10/21/detroit-bankruptcy-trial/17650679/)

Thieves stole copper from functioning pumping stations, leading to massive flooding in Detroit recently

[http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2014/08/13/copper-theft-a- possib...](http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2014/08/13/copper-theft-a-possible- factor-in-metro-detroit-freeway-flooding/)

Copper thieves caught in a sting on camera

[http://www.wxyz.com/news/local-news/investigations/copper- th...](http://www.wxyz.com/news/local-news/investigations/copper-thieves- caught-on-camera)

<comment><USER40> Crazy. Nevermind me then. I got no idea what anon 3mil guy is doin. _edit_ thanks for the links! nutty stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> OCP gathering property for "New Detroit"

<comment><USER44> You mean "Delta City".

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Hacker houses! Turn Detroit into a tech meca

</comment><comment><USER46> He may just want to play simcity IRL ...

</comment><comment><USER28> Smells like an investment banking scheme to me. "Buy When There's Blood In The Streets"

</comment><comment><USER47> Pretty easy to see how this'll turn out: Some moderatley rich person with access to a 10% down payment of 3.2M is taking a gamble and is in way over their head...

Just wait, within a year they will lose ownership of all these properties in bankruptcy and they'll be back in the hands of the city.

<comment><USER48> Loans dont work that way in 2014. There is no bank in their right mind who would grant a loan to buy this, even at 90% down. The 2007/8 crash changed how banks and loans operate.

If anyone lent any money, it would be private investment- But those guys generally dont fuck around for sub 10mm deal size.

This is one dude using his own/biz's money/

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> It is not unlikely Airbnb goes wild and tries to get feet on the ground in Detroit and expanding its legal reach by being able to verify as institutonal home exploitation company.</comment>


Ask HN: Recommended way to develop Android apps in 2018? - <AUTHOR> Has there been any changes since Android Studio? Is this the go to IDE?
I used Eclipse back in 2012 but haven't touched Android development since. I have vague memories of Android Activity Lifecycle so I just finished watching a video on that.
edit: Just discovered Kotlin....wow I can't go back to Java after this! <comment><USER2> Flutter is worth looking into, and is currently being pushed quite a lot by Google as well. Key benefit over Android development with Kotlin or Java is the possibility using the same codebase for both iOS and android apps.

I've tried Flutter a little and personally still favour React native over it, mostly because of my web design and development background. However a lot of my colleagues and friends are leaning heavily towards Flutter in their projects because of its better developer experience.

[https://flutter.io](https://flutter.io)

<comment><AUTHOR> WOW! I'm gonna give Flutter a try.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> React Native. It's great to go for simple to medium complexity apps. Flutter could be another closer choice because it appears to be more Dev friendly and android's ownership of Google. React will help you share large amount of code and concepts within web, iOS and android.

</comment><comment><USER4> Also, flutter</comment>


Ask HN: Why does HN have no ARIA labels nor titles? - <AUTHOR> These things are quite useful for accessibility, which the HNers talk about a lot as important. Wondering why their favorite news forum doesn't have any?<p>I once lived next door to a gardener / landscape architect who had an awfully messy garden. He said that's the way it always is. <comment><USER2> HN follows the "First Rule of ARIA Use"[1] making ARIA attributes unnecessary.

[1] [https://www.w3.org/TR/using-aria/#firstrule](https://www.w3.org/TR/using- aria/#firstrule)</comment>


A simple Golang program that demonstates websocket usage - <AUTHOR> http://snipt.org/uOw7 <comment><USER2> Here's another good example of websockets: <http://gary.beagledreams.com/page/go-websocket-chat.html></comment>


YouTube's Top Secret 'News Experiment'  - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2010/06/hard_to_explain.php

<comment><USER2> This is all part of Google's strategy of getting the major news organizations to sign up with Google TV by prodding them onto the path by using "citizen videographers".</comment>


How-to: Craigslist phone verification type system - <AUTHOR>

How would I go about building a craigslist-type phone verification system, which, when given a phone number, either texts or calls the number with a code that the user can use to verify that it's their phone? <comment><USER2> Check out <http://twilio.com> for making voice calls programmatically.

e.g. <http://www.twilio.com/docs/demos/appointmentreminder>

<comment><USER2> Note this thread:

[http://getsatisfaction.com/twilio/topics/are_there_any_futur...](http://getsatisfaction.com/twilio/topics/are_there_any_future_plans_to_send_and_recieve_sms_texts_as_well)

... says they are only evaluating SMS at this time but an SMS gateway would be much easier to find out there (someone in the thread even pitches an option, <http://www.textmarks.com> )

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Using an SMS aggregator such as CellTrust, you could send the user a code through a shared short code. Or, if you're willing to put up with short ads at the bottom of messages, you could try TextMarks.

<comment><USER2> Looks like textmarks requires the person to subscribe before you can send messages to them: "To keep everybody happy and prevent abuse, you can only send texts to subscribers of your TextMark."

<http://www.textmarks.com/dev/docs/send/?ref=devsb>

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> sms option to consider: <http://zeepmobile.com></comment>


Ruby 3x3 Performance (It's all about developer happiness) - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/ruby/comments/e6udgw/ruby_3x3_performance/ <comment><AUTHOR> I love programming languages, and I regularly spend time to explore new ones. I'm mostly a Ruby dev. Every time I look at a new language, it's a bit painful. Maybe because I'm used to Ruby, or maybe, Ruby is really that much more beautiful than the rest.

The only alternatives that I've found to enjoy recently are Elixir and Crystal. But hey, they are so much Ruby influenced. (TypeScript isn't bad as well)</comment>


Microsoft Professional Degree in Data Science - <AUTHOR> https://academy.microsoft.com/en-US/professional-degree/data-science/ <comment><USER2> Pretty interesting that I can enroll for free on a Microsoft-sponsored introduction to R for data science, on edX.

[https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-r-data-science- micro...](https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-r-data-science-microsoft- dat204x-0)

<comment><USER3> I am enrolled in their(edX) probability course, but can't seem to enroll in anything else. Every time I choose to audit another course, I keep ending up on the page referring to the probability course. Is it a simple bug or are you not allowed to audit more than one course at a time?</comment></comment>