AdGrok (YC S10) Simplifies Keyword Bidding And More On Google AdWords - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/09/adgrok-simplifies-keyword-bidding-and-more-on-google-adwords/

<comment><USER2> So this is basically their business plan:

1\. Write an angry blog post insulting New York, New Yorkers, and ibanks.

2\. Ride the popularity wave as a heated discussion rages about whether New York is the greatest place on earth or an over-priced, roach infested pit of assholes and prima donnas.

3\. Get on Techchrunch.

4\. Profit.

As an ex New Yorker, the only thing I can say is "Why didn't I think of this myself!".

<comment><USER3> The business plan is more along the lines of:

1\. Recognize an under-served market segment with huge potential.

2\. Build a product which fills that segment's need

3\. Profit.

Our views on the East Coast tech scene are completely orthogonal to those goals.

<comment><USER4> In that case it's a bit odd you posted that on the adgrok blog.

<comment><USER5> what's the matter with you?

I ask that seriously. Obviously their goal is to build a great product, and to get people to use it.

They posted that article on the AdGrok blog because it drove a shit-ton of traffic and it received a ton of inbound links. Why wouldn't they capitalize on that?

As far as the product is concerned, it's fantastic. I've been using it in private beta for a few weeks. I would bet on these guys in a heartbeat.

Startups drive traffic and signups any way that they can, and their company name was hitting mainstream media before they even launched.

<comment><USER4> Flamebait isn't a great marketing plan. When someone says adgrok now I think, "hm that's the guy who wrote the rant that New York's tech scene sucks", not "that's the company who built a great product that will be super useful to me and maybe even help me make money". Sure, my perception can be changed - Antonio seems like a decent guy, but why start with a negative perception of the company based on a largely personal rant?

Maybe antonio can give us some signup stats to go with the wave of traffic? I'd certainly be curious about the effect it had, even if it was very general (up 4000%, etc.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was going to comment that their name may not be great for non-techies to "grok" what the URL means to type it correctly. Hence it might hurt their adoption rates with mom-and-pop web stores (since I was about to recommend it to one).

But then I noticed they also purchased adgrock.com, too. Good planning there.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for noticing.

We also got adgork.com.

Ha!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _One of the key features of AdGrok that makes it contextual is the GrokBar, a plugin that sits on a website, and pops up anytime the user is on a page that is being advertised on Google. Users will see a full breakdown of impressions, clicks, costs, and conversion. If a keyword isn't performing well for a given page, the software will suggest alternate buys._

That's confusing to me. Who is the user? I'll assume they mean AdGrok users. What websites does it give info for? I'll assume just the ones the user owns, not their competitors who also use AdGrok, right? If so, why does it "sit on a webpage", and "pops up anytime the user is on a page that is being advertised?" Doesn't make any sense to me. [Edit] Isn't this just the functionality you'd expect in the AdGrok interface? [/Edit]

<comment><USER3> It's a firefox plugin that's inside your browser and pops up when you browse to the website you're advertising on AdWords.

You can see a video demo here:

<http://adgrok.com/features#grokbar>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great idea - I'm running a decent sized campaign for UniversityTutor.com and have found the Adwords tools a bit lacking in terms of generating targeted keywords for the thousands of pages and keywords I have. I ended up having to write some massive scripts by hand and using the Adwords desktop tool to import all the data (maybe 20,000 pages with several ad variations each, and targeting different keywords). The whole process took days and was complicated to the point where it wasn't easy for me to test variations.

The devil is in the details on a tool like this, but it could certainly be useful (and a quick flip to Google) if executed correctly. Wish you guys the best and would love to be an early beta user.

<comment><USER3> Your experience is pretty typical, except you had the hacker skills to hack around AdWords' crappy UI. Most AdWords users do not, hence AdGrok.

The devil is most certainly in the details in a product like this, which is why we welcome any and all feedback from beta users. You've got first dibs on our product pipeline, so any feature you need we can push out very quickly.

Sign up here: <https://adgrok.wufoo.com/forms/adgrok-beta/>

Cheers, Antonio.

<comment><USER9> Hey Antonio, What will the pricing structure be like?

I would hate to sign up for something, get used to it and really like it, and get hit with some absurdly high price.

Perhaps putting the cost upfront might prove to be useful.

Besides, your biggest competitor - clickable.com - buries their price two or three menus deep, which smacks of sleaze.

Please don't follow their lead. Looks like there is a lot of promise here.

<comment><USER10> I'm following the call for a clear pricing structure - I manage a lot of Adword accounts as part of my day job, and I'd be keen to look at anything that makes it simpler and easier. But only if it's also cost-effective...

<comment><USER3> Totally fair questions.

We're taking a somewhat Radiohead position on it.

What would you be wiling to pay for it?

I'll tell you our thoughts on it so far:

A tiered pricing structure, with a fixed monthly subscription fee. Probably starting somewhere around $20 for the smallest budgets, and going up from there. We'll set the tier price points wherever there seems to be obvious market segmentation.

Really big power users, or agencies who are white-labeling our product, might get a more industry-standard percent-of-spend deal.

Our view is that Mom-and-Pops might be wary of a percent-of-spend pricing model. That said, the small SEM shops of dubious quality, who are our real competition, commonly use a percent-of-spend pricing model. So we might have to go with that just to make it comparable. Even if that were true, we'd charge nowhere near the 15-20% of spend many SEM shops charge.

So, worry not. You're not going to get used to our product, and then get screwed by us on price. We'll leave the first-dose-is-free business model to the enterprising young gentlemen around the 16th Street BART station in the Mission.

Regards, Antonio.

Btw, feel free to hit me directly with any customer/pricing ideas at firstname.lastname@example.com.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Lesson learned - have an opinion and be controversial

Ive often wondered how I would feel if I wrote a post that p __*d the hell out of a lot of people. Looking at the marketing result I'd say I'd be smug happy as hell.

</comment><comment><USER12> Hmm. Signed up for the private beta. Let's see...

Memo: if i'll ever be in this situation give HN users a pass to skip my web app private beta queue since they're likely to be more useful than random people

<comment><USER3> Paolo,

We're putting you at the head of the line.

Granted, HN users probably are the best beta users.

You should expect a beta invite today, or tomorrow at the latest.

Regards, Antonio.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Concentrating the long-tail keyword ads will increase competition => increase bids => increase Google's and decrease advertisers' margins.

In the medium run this will only benefit Google.

</comment><comment><USER14> How is this different from the self managed approach taken by eg clickable, or the more full service places like Yodle / ReachLocal / Efficient Frontier / CityVoice / et al?

Edit -- after watching their video, their in-browser funnel visualization is cool as hell. Probably not scalable to larger merchants, but amazing for small sites. Props -- that's a great idea.

<comment><USER3> Thanks, Earl, for checking out the video. Check back soon...the current tool is really the MVP we wanted to get out the door. The GUI has all sorts of UI prettiness on the way, including arbitrary page aggregation, time-series plots for all that data, and even more visibility into how keywords/ads are doing.

To answer your question: from a business POV, it's no different than Clickable (EfficientFrontier and Co. are way out of most SMBs' price range). We think our approach is a lot better: by putting the tool in the browser, we make campaign management painless. We also have more automation that Clickable, so, through time, the GrokBar becomes a sort of marketing autopilot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why only product pages?

<comment><USER3> Good question.

You can use the tool to drive traffic to any page, doesn't have to be a product page. In keeping with our bottoms-up approach (as opposed to the top- down, Google-centric approach of every other SEM tool on the market), we thought looking at individual product pages would be most useful for e-commerce sites, which is why we focus our demo on that.

But again, there's no reason to limit use to there. In fact, in v2.0 (which should ship in the coming days) you can tag arbitrary pages, and look at aggregate stats for that tagged group (e.g., a category of products like 'women's shoes' or the like).</comment></comment>


Ask HN: My first startup offer - <AUTHOR>

Hello Hackers,
I'm on the edge of taking the plunge into the startup scene. I've received the deets of the offer, now I have to decide. I'm hoping someone can help me run the numbers and figure out if it's a fair offer...
There's 3 co-founders. They're a smashing team of folks but none of which will be technical. One has a technical background (and some successful iPhone apps and such), but they're staying on the business end. Those are the only employees right now. There's no product. This is definitely the 'ground floor'.
They're raising 750k on a 7M valuation doing capped convertible notes (at a 7M cap). To that end, they've been running small events and have people that have been attending them. Nothing huge but it's a slight glimmer of some market validation.
They're recruiting 3 technical engineers to develop v1 of the product. Myself as a backend developer, a PM + UX developer, and another backend developer to work with me.
They're planning a 12 month runway with an officially solicited 18 month burn rate. Their tentative plan is to raise a series A round right at 1 year and growing out of the Bay Area after 1 year.
The plan is to keep 3 engineers for 18 months before hiring.
That said, they want to bring me on as one of the backend engineers to build v1 of the product. I'm 23, a year out of college with an impressive resume (Apple, Google, Microsoft). I'm currently making $85-90k at one of those three.
They're keeping 20% of the company for an employee options pool (with a decreasing amount of options being offered, as they bring more people on). My offer has been:
$80k salary -> 1.25% of 20% options pool
$70k salary -> 2.5% of 20% options pool
$60k salary -> 4% of 20% options pool
Keep in mind, those percentages are of 20%. Therefore, 4% of 20% is equivalent to 0.8% of the overall company. ($80k->.25%, $70k->.5%,$60k->.8% overall company equity)
And they want to work out of San Francisco, where I'd have to live.
With that whole picture... what are your feelings on their offer? Fair? Unfair? Things I should argue or watch out for? <comment><USER2> Smells bad. The neatness of their future plans is in itself suspicious, and the percentage of the company you're being offered is low.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is all looking forward. Of course, things look neater when it's all on paper...

What would you throw out as a reasonable amount of equity expect, given the situation?

<comment><USER2> Hard to say without knowing more details, but on the whole I don't think I'd take the job at all.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe you could suggest beyond 'neatness' what seems so fishy about it? I'm a wide open mind.

<comment><USER2> 3 founders, none who can code, and who propose to give the people who are going to build the product so little of the company. These situations do not turn out well unless the founders are Bezos.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Paul.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Ping me: firstname.lastname@example.com.

I have a hunch I may know a bit more of the story around this through Hackers & Founders. If it's the group that I'm thinking about I might be able to help.

</comment><comment><USER4> In general the offer seems low compared to offers I have seen though perhaps they are expecting you to counter. Good engineers are incredibly scarce in the valley and if you are good, you will almost certainly get a strictly better deal from other startups.

One publicly accessible data point is RethinkDB: [http://web.archive.org/web/20100410043940/http://rethinkdb.c...](http://web.archive.org/web/20100410043940/http://rethinkdb.com/jobs/#systemsEngineer). They are working on a very sexy systems problem (my concentration in CS is Systems and have no affiliation with RethinkDB) and they have a great team of investors (YCombinator, Andreessen-Horowitz).

Make sure the one founder is actually technical and didn't just build a bunch of simple iPhone apps. Ask yourself would you consider this guy/girl an equal on technical ability? 3 non-technical founders is a huge red flag unless they are in a very unique market. Also presenting the equity as a percentage of the options pool versus the entire company is fishy. What you care about is the latter and this makes it seem like they are trying to sell you rather than help you figure out what's best for you.

If you want to plunge into startups, absolutely apply to others. At the very least you'll have some negotiating leverage but I think you might find there are much better offers out there.

</comment><comment><USER5> _Things I should argue or watch out for?_

Nowhere in anything you just said did you mention anything about talking to customers. I _presume_ that's what the 3 co-founders will be doing, while the 3 engineers are building this "v1," but that a point I'd want clarified if I were in your shoes. If they aren't committed to getting out and getting in front of the customers (of if they haven't already done so, which seems to be the case) I'd be very worried.

<comment><AUTHOR> They are highly committed to getting out and getting in front of customers. They love doing so. And yes, that's their job (they're hustling about town as we speak raising money). Like I said, they've already put on many unofficial events with future customers to rave reviews and demands for a full fledged product developed around it.

As the engineers, we'll be primarily engaged on the backend but all of us will be part of the experience (so I'll be at events, them too). :)

Any thoughts on the compensation portion of the deal?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> At the $80k level the money seems ok, not great, not bad. A 1y runway means your job is secure.

Ask are they worth investing in? (You are investing 10k per yr per step above as you come down that ladder to get more equity). This depends if they will succeed or not. A good way to judge their capability of succeeding is to look at who the investors are (750k). If they have a history of investing in similar companies that have been successful then know what they are doing, therefore it is likely these guys will succeed and you should go for a higher share in the company.

Also, for about $10k/yr you are buying $17.5k worth of the company at the current valuation going from $80k/y to $70k/y.

I say, if you believe in the idea and the team, plus the investors are solid, and you're not dying for cash, it might be worth going for a higher stake. Another thing, if I were you, I'd negotiate the equity too (pay me $70k but give me stake like $60k).

If you don't believe in them or are suspicious, then just take the $80k and go for a 1 yr startup ride.

</comment><comment><USER7> Salary is relatively high for a start-up and you get very little equity. More of a regular job with extra options as a bonus if you ask me.

Just think about what makes you want it? Are you in for the potential payout? Then I would aggressively bargain. Well you if you're important to the success and value yourself highly you should do that anyways, they won't get angry, in fact should appreciate somebody like that more (if not I'd doubt if it's worth working for those people). Most likely they have no idea how "fair" their offer is as much as you don't.

Also if other people will be getting a similar deal I would be slightly worried about motivational issues. I can easily imagine them hiring somebody for 80k that didn't make that much before or had a very similar salary. Add to that the rather longish runway of 12 months. Will there still be that atmosphere of pushing yourselves to the limit? I have no idea, we know too little about the company, but please ask yourself those questions.

</comment><comment><USER8> Let's say things go well, you stay for 4 years, loosing about 20*4=80K in salary. The company is then sold for $30m, of which you get 75K-ish (check my math though). Your risk-taking, lock-in and not taking other opportunities has not won you anything.

If you want the job, counter with $80K salary and 5% of the company (not of the options pool, of the company). INSIST to talk about your percentage in terms of percentage of the company. Let them make really offended faces, and let them get back to you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Made this exact counteroffer last night. Thanks for validating my thoughts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Maybe if you could get $90-100k per year...

As others have said, those options you're being offered have a really low expected value, so I would only recommend working for this company if you can make it up on salary and really want some startup experience.

Also, this might be a good time to remember that if you're staying at where you are working now, you can use offers from other companies as an excuse to ask for a raise.

</comment><comment><USER10> Based on the 7M valuation you are only taking about 56K, I guess you have to ask yourself, is it going to be a 7M company or a 70M company when it is all said and done, because you could most likely get at least 116K (every year) in the corporate world without the worry of failure.</comment>


Is this wireless Oculus Rift rival the next big thing? - <AUTHOR> http://www.redbull.com/us/en/games/stories/1331634322724/gameface-making-a-virtual-reality-android-headset

<comment><USER2> A lot of the hard problems that Oculus is devoted to solving involve latency. If this was really a wireless Oculus, that'd be a massive problem for this. What this really is is apparently a VR headset with the guts of an Android device in it. Which is probably a better idea, but I don't know if you'll find the games support and rendering quality to make this a success.

</comment><comment><USER3> The true rival to Oculus Rift is not another Oculus Rift but something completely different.

I have been following this technology and hoping for close to 30 years now and still haven't been convinced about the quality of VR googles.

We need something that goes a level deeper before we are going to be there. Something that blures the line between reality and fiction not just visually but emotionally. Maybe a drug you need to take with it.

Who knows.

All I know is that we are not there yet and to really talk about competitors with only granually better specs seems a tad premature.

</comment><comment><USER4> Considering that oculus rift isn't the next big thing anyway?

<comment><USER5> What are you comparing them to?

<comment><USER4> I guess gaming with a monitor or tv. Sure they raised some money but how many have they sold? I think it's still a niche. Then again, what do I know? Facebook will probably buy them for $20 billion tomorrow.

<comment><USER6> The actual product isn't out yet. All they have right now is a devkit, it's great but it's nothing more than that.

They don't compete with monitor or tv. VR is all about immersion. When I wear the Oculus Rift, I'm inside the game, I'm afraid of hitting wall or if I'm too close to a ridge. My field of view is filled by the game, I'm INSIDE the game. If you talk to me when I'm inside, it's weird, the voice is coming from nowhere. You can't reach that with a monitor.

I agree that it's still a niche and it will still be a niche as long as we doesn't have better hardware. That's why Oculus VR haven't released a real product and others are working on other system, like the Omni.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: 8bitworkshop IDE for Atari 2600 - <AUTHOR> http://8bitworkshop.com/?platform=vcs <comment><AUTHOR> Enjoying the attention this is getting! It's been fun making it and learning the VCS tricks of the trade.

I'd like to credit a couple of projects that it depends on, Javatari by Paulo Augusto Peccin ([http://javatari.org/](http://javatari.org/)) and DASM by Peter King and others ([http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/~pjbk/scholar/dasm.html](http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/~pjbk/scholar/dasm.html)). Oh yeah and Codemirror ([https://codemirror.net/](https://codemirror.net/)).

<comment><USER3> This is the kind of project that makes visiting HN worthy. Im going to spend some good time with it during the nexr few days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For those curious to play with a commercially published 2600 game, the source for Imagic's Dragonfire was released by the author. It pastes nicely into the IDE, fully working without modification. See [http://www.atariage.com/2600/archives/source/Dragonfire_sour...](http://www.atariage.com/2600/archives/source/Dragonfire_source/) for info and the .tar.gz release.

For ease of copying and pasting it into the IDE, see [http://pastebin.com/4nrYTt2X](http://pastebin.com/4nrYTt2X).

</comment><comment><USER5> This is perfect! I was thinking about creating a simple game for a classic system for a long time. Now I have no excuse not to do it - a browser IDE with the live preview and a bunch of examples is everything I need. Also, it's much more than developers had these 39 (!) years ago.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've been tinkering over the last few years on something very similar for the CHIP-8: [http://johnearnest.github.io/Octo/](http://johnearnest.github.io/Octo/)

</comment><comment><USER7> I bought their (EDIT: @sehugg's) book "Making Games for the Atari 2600" too:

[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1541021304](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1541021304)

</comment><comment><USER8> Now do the same for the Z80 and the Spectrum :D

          ORG 40000
          LD HL, 50000
          LD DE, 16384
          LD BC, 2016
          LDIR
          RET
          END 40000

<comment><USER9> Copying the 2016-byte chunk of memory at 50000 over the screen-area, which starts at 16384?

I can almost remember well enough to be sure, but not entirely!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Great timing! I just picked up a 37 year old copy of 6502 Assembly Language Programming by Lance Leventhal. This IDE greatly reduces the stress of finding the right emulator and assembler and whatnot. Thank you!

</comment><comment><USER11> This is great! I've read up on "chasing the beam" and how programming for the 2600 is unlike any other console. Always wanted to try my hand at it but didn't want to go through all the steps. This essentially eliminates the barrier to entry. Definitely will check it out. Thanks!

<comment><USER12> I can personally recommend Montfort & Bogost's book: _Racing the Beam_ for this exact topic :)

<comment><USER13> One of the most illuminating technical books I have ever read. I now grok 2600 and can die happy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Honestly, I'd rather have an editor and assembler running on my system (probably WLA-DX and Emacs). But I can't deny this is impressive, and it's a nice primer for a system that I would love to learn to program.

<comment><USER15> I've been experimenting with application-specific IDEs too, where the compute power needed is >> my laptop. When I'm using it I edit locally and rsync to the cloud machine where it runs and shows me the results in a browser.

I've had on my TODO list to integrate codemirror so other people can do everything remotely, but I don't think I'd use it myself. In principle it can be a bit faster to update, but a function key in Atom to rsync is pretty quick.

Do other people have positive/negative experiences with local/remote editing?

<comment><USER14> I run Emacs remotely from my school-issued chromebook. The major issue is that any sort of fluctuation in network speed/connectivity can freeze or upset it.

<comment><USER16> Tmux is great for this. When the connection goes down just kill ssh, reconnect, and run tmux a.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> From what I've read, a lot of the guys who worked on the Atari consoles and 8-bit home computers went on to do the Amiga once the ownership changed.

Both systems were outstanding, and I have to wonder how far personal computing has been set-back by having IBM's attempt to poison the well as its basis instead of fine systems like the Atari 8-bit series.

<comment><USER18> As much as I adore all the Jay Miner-led designs, in the grand scheme of things most of the advantages they posed come from being brilliant - <USER2> highly customized - relative to their time frame. The Sharp and NEC computers marketed in Japan offer an "alternate history" look at things but even they eventually succumbed to Wintel in the 90's.

<comment><USER19> "Wintel" is not really a thing. Apple fans misunderstood that every other platform was the same as their vertically integrated walled-garden platform. The PC clone market was different from the Mac market in an important way which made it fundamentally inaccurate to think about Apple's competition as if it were coming from one monolithic entity. I was really hoping to stop hearing this silly, inaccurate term "Wintel" when Apple started using Intel processors (ages ago now).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is very nice. I hope to see an update in a few months with support for other consoles - might I suggest Oric-1/Atmos at some point? :)

<comment><USER21> I'd never heard of the Oric before. The Wikipedia article seems incredibly biased. What software would you run on it?

<comment><USER22> [http://hirudov.com/oric/](http://hirudov.com/oric/) or [http://www.oric.org/software/](http://www.oric.org/software/)

or type all kind of old basic games: [https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2009/05/25/your- computer-80s-comp...](https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2009/05/25/your- computer-80s-computer-magazine-scans/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> cool.

[https://github.com/sehugg/8bitworkshop](https://github.com/sehugg/8bitworkshop)

</comment><comment><USER24> Are there any "new" Atari 2600 games?

i.e. stuff developed in recent times?

</comment><comment><USER25> Nicely done! I'll have to to play with this.

</comment><comment><USER26> awesome fun.

</comment><comment><USER27> thumbs up!!

</comment><comment><USER28> Nice work!

</comment><comment><USER29> Nice</comment>


Criticue Widget: Find out what visitors hate about your website - <AUTHOR> http://www.criticuewidget.com <comment><USER2> > _Request Invite_

A sign-up page can't be a Show HN. You have to have something people can try out now. Please read the rules:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, I wasn't aware of that. Thanks for pointing that out and fixing the problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Looks interesting, but I find it odd that the site itself doesn't have the widget available.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a fantastic point -- thank you. It's just it's not ready yet. I'm working on making it compatible with IE. Once it's usable, I'll definitely use it on the website.

<comment><USER4> This is a good idea. Try to launch as soon as possible, even without IE support. Especially, if the product works fine with other browsers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's good that they have the 'Give feedback' button at the bottom of the page in a rather unobtrusive manner. Often times, I go to a website for a large company and before I can even do anything on the site, they ask for feedback in an obtrusive popup.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I also hate flashy popups and stuff like that when I'm browsing a website. I hope that giving users a way to quickly send feedback while they're on a page will not only help owners improve the website but also create a sense of participation for visitors. Maybe not on the level of Wikipedia but in a small way you can also contribute.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> As someone who is constantly baffled at many UX choices made by the makers of nearly every piece of software I use, I like the idea a lot. I'm looking forward to using the service.

And I do have a small couple critique of an aspect of your website. ;)

If you could get rid of the two input boxes after I've submitted my invitation request, that would make it more clear that the submission was successful. After I hit Submit, I did not immediately see the message below. If the two boxes were gone, I would have immediately seen that message.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! Good point about the form -- I'm on it right away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I really like that you specifically spell out how many emails the user will receive next to the registration form. That's a nice and explicit upfront "user promise" that I think will make people trust you more.

You may wish to allow for some kind of opt-in for future emails in the second and final email you promise to send. That way you can continue to email those people who do wish to learn more going forwards.

Great service and idea - good luck with it!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nice landing page. One copyedit: "Why my visitors go away?" sounds like sad Hulk. "Why do my visitors go away?" is better, or maybe adopt the funnel-speak of the growth hackers you're trying to attract and go with "Why do visitors abandon my site?"

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, thanks! I went too far when trying to shorten everything as much as possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> How does this compare with similar products on the market, like Usabilla and Qualaroo?

<comment><USER8> Its name is not based on the name of a music festival, so that at least helps it stand out in the market. Or maybe it should have gone with the flow and called itself critipalooza?

<comment><AUTHOR> lol ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Heads up! When clicking the logo, a "Not Found" page is shown.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, pushing the change right away.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do you need help with your (small) open source project? - <AUTHOR> Over the the last 4 days I got over 2000 sign ups from programmers (mostly beginner to intermediate) looking for a friendly open source project to contribute to.<p>If you want me to include your project, please add it here: https://devchat.devolio.net/hellocode/suggest/ <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link: [https://devchat.devolio.net/hellocode/suggest/](https://devchat.devolio.net/hellocode/suggest/)</comment>


Ask HN: Who Regrets Choosing Clojure? - <AUTHOR> The opinion about Clojure seems to be very polarizing. Some devs. refuse to write any other language, and some avoid it like plague.
The community also has a cult like appeal.
I've been writing Clojure for a long time, and don't consider changing sides. But I know a few people who moved on (to Haskell, OCaml etc).
Did you ever regret using Clojure?
[Ask HN inspired by : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23283675] <comment><USER2> I'm absolutely in love with Clojure.

That being said, it does suffer the Lisp curse, in that I now feel unable to function in previous languages that I was proficient in because I'm now allergic to boilerplate and the inability to create my own syntax when needed. Lots of Python jobs out there that I feel like I should be pursuing, yet I just can't seem to get excited anymore by non-lisp languages.

Wish there were more Clojure job opportunities out there.

<comment><USER3> Don't be surprised, though, if you discover you're not able to function in an actual Lisp, either.

<comment><USER2> Ha! I was going to write more about how I no longer enjoy Common Lisp also, but I didn't want to step on more toes than I already had.

Don't get me wrong, Clojure has it's difficulties. Simple things are sometimes difficult to figure out how to do the correct way...and being hosted means you end up having to know far more than I would like about Java or Javascript.

<comment><AUTHOR> Are there any objective reasons behind not "enjoy"ing CL any more?

<comment><USER4> educated guess: lack of persistent data structures.

<comment><AUTHOR> But there are libraries that fill this gap, like [https://common- lisp.net/project/fset/](https://common-lisp.net/project/fset/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I see a lot of engineers voicing their (insightful) opinions here. What about CTOs and engineering directors, HR, and headhunters who need to recruit? Do you find it difficult to recruit for Clojure?

</comment><comment><USER6> The only two companies that I know that offered on site Clojure jobs no longer accept new projects being written in it.

I stopped using Clojure after v1.2. I really love the language semantics: idiomatic Clojure is such a joy to read, but ultimately got tired of the lacklustre performance and the dogmatic, cult-like community.

I also no longer care about functional programming at this point in my career. Looking back, I think FP was not a way to write better code but an excuse for me to feel smug or superior to other programmers. I'm glad I grew over this.

<comment><USER7> > I also no longer care about functional programming at this point in my > career. Looking back, I think FP was not a way to write better code but an > excuse for me to feel smug or superior to other programmers.

Every major paradigm (procedural, functional, OO, logic, relational) applied properly, is a way to write better code. If you approach it as a way to feel smug and superior, that's about you, not the paradigm.

<comment><USER6> That's... exactly what I said?

<comment><USER7> > That's... exactly what I said?

It's compatible with what you said, but then so is "FP doesn't help write better software and is just an excuse for programmers to feel smug and superior to others in th field ."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Clojure backend with ClojureScript frontend for the last 4 years. No regrets so far!

</comment><comment><USER9> Good Clojure is pretty awesome. Bad Clojure sucks like any other bad code. The Clojure maximalism can get kind of goofy.

</comment><comment><USER10> In 4 years I haven't felt the need to look elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER11> I started to learn it years ago. It is interesting.

The bad part is the lack of jobs. Without jobs, I decided to focus my attention on learning languages that are more common. I can't really say this was a better choice since my career is on a downward trend...

<comment><USER12> you learnt what everyone else was learning, so now you're competing with everyone else on their level.

learning something more niche can be a signal that helps you stand out, even if it's not what you use at your next job.

having said that, networking with people is the number one contributor to finding a great job.

</comment></comment><comment> a-saleh I used it ~7 years ago, and loved it.

Our manager loved it much less, because the ramp-up to productivity was around a month for people not familiar with the language, so after our tech-lead left for another project, we spent six months rewriting the thing in python :-/

<comment><USER6> I know that feeling. I have been asked to rewrite existing, perfectly functioning, high quality Perl, Clojure and Common Lisp projects to Java and Python far too many times. It's soul breaking, specially when you know it's being done in the name of wage control.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> no regrets here (lead Dev at small company, 50ish employees) using for roughly 50% of the projects.

6 years ago we were fully Java, clojure allows us to mix the two without a business killing rewrite.

I've never had any problems training people on it.

</comment><comment><USER13> There are no jobs in clojure

<comment><USER14> I've written 100% clojure(script) full time professionally for the past 3 years and have turned down several offers for more clojure work.

There are certainly less jobs in Clojure but they're out there.</comment></comment>


Office Drama on macOS - <AUTHOR> https://objective-see.com/blog/blog_0x4B.html <comment><USER2> What I find funny, is the quote: "Specifically we'll show how we were easily able to [...]". And then the article consists of 3647 words :)

I'm actually quite amazed, and happy, how far security has come.

<comment><USER3> I write a lot of tutorials and guides and I strongly agree and disagree with this comment at the same time.

a) Yes, the words "simply", "obviously" etc are waay overused in this kind of writing and when editing it's often simply a case of doing a find and replace to remove them all (obviously after checking each one to make sure it still makes sense)

b) 3500 words is not a lot of text. Somehow marketing people managed to convince the world that a "long form" blog post is 500 words. In reality, 2000 words is often a ballpark minimum to say something useful and interesting, and 10000 word articles are often super useful (and still not that long given how easy it is to skim over bits of text, how fast text can be produced and how lightweight text is in terms of bandwidth and storage space.)

<comment><USER4> > obviously after checking each one to make sure it still makes sense

Did you?

> 3500 words is not a lot of text.

The comment was regarding whether it's "easy".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From Wikipedia article on the sylk format which the exploit uses.

> The format was introduced in the 1980s and has not evolved since 1986[2].

So over 34 years old.

<comment><USER6> Likewise, the macro format XLM — which the article notes is a predecessor to VBA (at which point I'm going, "VBA had a predecessor? but VBA is ancient — its _still supported?!_ ") — XML was introduced in 1987, 33 years ago. VBA wouldn't happen until 1993.

Absolutely incredible.

<comment><USER7> If with "VBA" you mean _Visual Basic for Applications_ , it had (AFAIK) several ancestors from the BASIC family including Visual Basic and Quick Basic. Probably GW BASIC and its ancestors count as well.

<comment><USER8> deathanatos seems to be referring to predecessors as a document macro system, not ancestors as a programming language

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ugg..

I have macOS 10.12, and office from work. I get prompts to update word, which then tell me to update the OS...

Good times.

I probably should shift to libre office exclusively...

<comment><USER10> Ha! You are me, 24 hours ago, you poor unfortunate soul. Let me save you an hour of your life.

* Be me, 24 hours ago.

* Have the desire to find alternate word processor

* Find out that macOS support in LibreOffice, and another alternative OpenOffice, is an elaborate hoax similar to this function:

        func libreOpenOfficeForMacUsers(time:3600s, bandwidth:500MB) { while (time) { time -= 1; sleep } return poop }

Basically, running the apps on macs using retina displays (intr. 2012) results in 100% CPU usage when scrolling even on a blank page, presumably due to a bug or an extremely inefficient update/drawing method. This has been an issue for 8 years.

Bug link for LibreOffice [https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=113104](https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=113104)

I downloaded and tried out both LibreOffice, OpenOffice. The result was 4fps while scrolling or resizing windows, and of course there was the expected extreme heat generation and 100.0 energy usage in activity monitor due to max CPU usage. [My mac is MBP2020 w 5600m, and yes I love it A LOT!]

* Back to the drawing board. Markdown, perhaps?

<comment><USER11> Have you tried iWork?

<comment><USER12> I use _Pages_ as my go-to word-processor and _Numbers_ (on account of its table-in-sheet paradigm) is my favourite spreadsheet by far. I wish they'd beef the latter up a bit with ODBC access and support for iterated solution (very useful for balancing projected cashflow where interest-on-short-term- debt & amount-of-short-term-debt depend on each other) and something more akin to pivot tables.

Pity, it could really be a thermonuclear option, instead they just add useless stuff like collaboration features and smart annotations....

I've never really used _Keynote_ because that simply isn't in my line of work.

I really think Apple has a winner on their hands and are handicapping it deliberately either out of neglect or because they didn't want to scare Microsoft off back in the day and have some kind of gentleman's agreement going...

<comment><USER13> Pretty much any time there's a viable alternative to a Microsoft product, I find the alternative to be a breath of fresh air. There's something about Windows software in general that makes me feel like I'm in a prison camp relative to good macOS applications.

OmniGraffle vs Visio. Keynote vs PowerPoint. Numbers vs Excel.

<comment><USER12> I know precisely what you're referring to. I used to call it the "Cocoa Smell" when I'd come across an application designed for OS X's native APIs and not some port of something more or less haphazard.

I suppose now they're more varied (SwiftUI or whatever the technology of the day may be), but there's a distinct "this is native" vibe from certain alternative applications that doesn't emanate from others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Does Office.com supports Macro? Seems like it does, but wouldnt it be immune to these attack?

<comment><USER15> The web version doesn't support macros.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Thanks for the heads up. Would using LibreOffice be safer?

<comment><USER17> Yes, in the same sense that browsing the web with lynx is safer because there's no javascript to exploit. Some people even consider the lack of javascript to be a feature. If you're just opening documents for viewing/basic editing, you probably won't mind macros being missing. The bigger problem might be the inconsistent layout (and other compatibility issues) that you get.

<comment><USER18> LibreOffice fully supports a lot of macro features, so I'm not sure what you're refering to about "macros being missing".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Opens website

Gets instant popup covering the content asking me to sign up

Closes website

<comment><USER20> If you are using uBlock Origin or similar you can enable 'Annoyances' filter lists (off by default) that take care of many overlays, cookie popups, etc.

<comment><USER21> Even better, you can just leave websites that do this. I have no interest in helping anyone beef up their numbers by hanging around longer if they're going to be outright hostile to their readers/users like this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm a little bit nervously skeptical of a security website that gives me a browser prompt about accessing Virtual Reality devices</comment>


Ask HN: How can I learn to code in a practical environment? - <AUTHOR>

University has so far taught me how to write algorithms, how to document code, and plenty of valuable abstract concepts. When I graduate, I'm estimated to be worth 80k.
But I don't know how to code. Sure, I can go into C++ and write a graph algorithm to do x or y, but as soon as I start trying to write a program that might be useful to someone, I find myself switching between Google and a blank screen for several hours, maybe writing a few lines here or there but eventually giving up entirely.
I want to learn, but I have no idea where to start. All of my experience is formal and all of my theoretical knowledge feels wasted because the only way I can implement it is to have someone else do it for me. I've tried internet tutorials but so far I've just felt stuck.
What are some steps I can take to reverse the situation? <comment><USER2> When you are sitting and looking at a blank screen, why are you stuck? Is it a problem with comprehending the problem, or a problem with breaking it down?

This is what works for me: 1) get general understanding of problem to solve 2) break it into steps or pieces 3) code pieces

Now, 2) might (hell, might? probably will!) reveal step 1) wasn't complete, so go back and improve your understanding, then move back to 2)

Over time you develop the ability to do a 'top down' approach like this, while also having a parallel 'brain space' that considers application architecture, customer requirements, good programming practices and so on.

Besides this 'concept of programming' (which is very personal, I'm just sharing how it works for me after ~20 years), don't give up and don't feel overwhelmed. In my experience, except for very rare 'super-programmers', good software is developed slowly, steadily, and built up one solid piece at a time. Break your 'useful program' down into pieces, and celebrate the achievement of developing (and testing!) each piece.

It gets easier (and then harder, but it gets easier first). :^)

</comment><comment><USER3> As others mentioned, you need to start with small projects and work your way up. Remember that Google is your teacher, there is no other way to learn how to code practically. If you're not Googling, you're not learning.

There are many, many areas of programming and no course will cover them all, or even one wholly. You just work on new stuff and you will retain what you use frequently. This knowledge gets more vast the more you code.

<comment><USER4> "If you're not Googling, you're not learning."

Exactly.

<comment><USER5> That's funny, when I do that (too often in my taste), I feel like I am just hacking without really understanding anything. Also, I sometimes wonder how people did without google and SO.

<comment><USER6> Manuals

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "I find myself switching between Google and a blank screen for several hours"

This is normal for anyone who codes, even the pros and experts. So do not sweat over this thing.

Now, on the question of how to code/learn, I suggest you start with a small target/end goal. For example, "Build User management system" or anything like that. Then, pick a language of your choice and start coding. While you do that, you will google 100s of things, read stackoverflow plenty of times and bang your head on the screen as well. But at the end, you will be happy when that code finally compiles and run successfully or you don't get a 500 error in the web app. Stick to that project, finish it off no matter how small it seems like. You will learn a lot in the process. I am doing exactly that right now with web programming/dev. using Python/Flask framework. Last night, I learnt the best way to generate user activation links and how to use them. Simple stuff but I learnt like 10 things doing this alone.

</comment><comment><USER7> Start right now. Don't waste time deciding. Write a short list of applications that you would like to build. Then pick the one you like best. You might not finish it entirely, but you will find something that will look more attractive. Keep moving. Start a new application every week. Do differents things. Focus on learning the flow of code and dont worry about optimizing too much. Also, forget what you were taught in school about speed. In the real world, people focus on how stable the program is, how safe it is, how easy it is to use, and how fast it is. I also reccomend that you find a local startups/tech group and join them. Start talking. Tell them that you are studying and want to get your feet wet. I'm sure someone will give you a chance to learn.

</comment><comment><USER8> You say you can write a graph algorithm. All you need to do is follow through and stick to a project long enough to research the necessary stuff and finish.

You might start with small projects. You may be able to find some online course which walks you through making small projects (rather than the typical algorithm stuff).

</comment><comment><USER9> Make small projects that you want/need, e.g. a utility that changes volume based on current time. That way, there's some drive to complete projects. You could also freelance, as money is a good incentive for getting things done.

</comment><comment><USER10> Find a job coding - even if it is part time or as a intern. Nothing will get you up to speed faster than having to push code live on a functioning app.</comment>


Kevin Rose patented the "Like" button - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/kevinrose/status/316326077775609856 <comment><USER2> Applied for patent != patented</comment>


What does it mean to die? - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/05/what-does-it-mean-to-die <comment><USER2> recently, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16262046](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16262046)</comment>


Ask HN: Why do people hate on the AWS developer console? - <AUTHOR> People talk about it as if it's disgusting and unusable, but to me it feels very simple and intuitive. What gives? <comment><USER2> Funny, I was wondering the same thing. I use the AWS console all the time and have to scratch my head when people say how horrific it is.

I presume it's because some people just enjoy criticizing stuff. :)

</comment><comment><USER3> If you really hate it and just need to turn things on/off and get a view across your environment then take a look at www.parkmycloud.com

Much more pleasing UI and can save you literally thousands....

<comment><AUTHOR> Well that was a little shameless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> They hate on it because real DevOps people use Ansible/Chef/Puppet/OpenStack to avoid repetitive operations of provisioning servers and just use it for ad- hoc monitoring.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, makes sense.</comment></comment>


What I Learned Trading Daily - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/araghougassian/status/1216909595790069760 <comment><USER2> I tried daily trading and found that emotions will get you every time. You might have a great system but when the market goes against you it's hard to sell or buy. It's hard to make a decision knowing that you have no way of knowing the outcome. The stock market has an upside bias so it's easier and more fruitful to ride it.

Daily buying and selling will get you nowhere.</comment>


Goldman Sachs Resolves U.S. Mortgage Probe for $5.1B - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-11/goldman-to-pay-5-1-billion-to-settle-u-s-mortgage-bond-probe <comment><USER2> "839 people convicted in the savings-and-loan scandals of the 1980s."

"1 Wall Street executive convicted for actions during the recent financial crisis."

[http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/04/magazine/only-one-top- bank...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/04/magazine/only-one-top-banker-jail- financial-crisis.html)

<comment><USER3> From this it seems that what financial executives learned from their buddies going to jail was that they need to lobby the correct people so that when the shit hits the fan (and it's their fault) no one will prosecute them. Every prosecutor who had the ability to investigate and eventually bring charges and did not should be ashamed of themselves.

<comment><USER4> Contrary to popular belief, there are no lucrative private practice jobs/political appointments waiting for _unsuccessful_ prosecutors. Successfully prosecuting a major bank executive would have been a career- making win for an ambitious attorney in the DOJ. Indeed, shortly after Bear Stearns collapsed, the government brought criminal cases against two Bear Stearns executives: [http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9189904...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91899047). Both men were acquitted at trial: [http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB125788421912541971](http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB125788421912541971). That was a humiliating result, given the DOJ's white collar division boasts a 90%+ conviction rate.

People ignore the relevant differences between the S&L crisis and the mortgage crisis. The former took place during a time of heavy regulation, and involved thousands of smaller banks and relatively unsophisticated individuals. The latter took place at the tail of a long period of deregulation, and involved large, legally-sophisticated banks.

At a big bank like Goldman, a routine part of a banker's or trader's job is running things by the in-house lawyers. By and large that wasn't true for the savings and loans that failed decades ago. And while legal oversight doesn't prevent excessive risk-taking, or buying loans with bad underwriting, it does tend to prevent activities that can be easily prosecuted as criminally fraudulent.

It's notable that there were virtually no prosecutions in the aftermath of the Great Depression either. It's worth considering what similarities and differences there are between the Great Depression, the Savings and Loan crisis, and the 2008 real estate collapse.

<comment><USER5> > At a big bank like Goldman, a routine part of a banker's or trader's job is > running things by the in-house lawyers. By and large that wasn't true for > the savings and loans that failed decades ago. And while legal oversight > doesn't prevent excessive risk-taking, or buying loans with bad > underwriting, it does tend to prevent activities that can be easily > prosecuted as criminally fraudulent.

I think this is one of the basic things going on here: this wasn't crime, by and large. This wasn't _illegal_. People have not understood that. And so they are angry...

<comment><USER6> It seems to me that a lot of people is angry precisely because it wasn't illegal.

<comment><USER5> > It seems to me that a lot of people is angry precisely because it wasn't > illegal.

Sure. And that's totally reasonable(I would personally not support that, but I can understand that).

But, that isn't generally how things are framed, though - "throw the banking crisis bankers in jail" is one of the popular memes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Question: did Goldman have a fiduciary responsibility to it's clients to _not_ sell them securities that they wanted to buy?

It's easy to blame the banks but don't forget that the people who were buying this crap were being paid millions of dollars a year for their "expertise." This is not a boiler-room stealing pensions from little old ladies. This happened in the board-room. The buyers were the one's who failed their fiduciary responsibility to their clients (i.e. the little old ladies who rely on their pension).

The reason pension funds, etc... would buy this crap is because they are underfunded and they need to generate impossible returns to meet their future payouts. We shouldn't give them a free pass on underfunding their liabilities and then blindly taking on extreme risk to make up the shortfall.

<comment><USER8> The big question is: Why are the rating agencies still in business? They labelled rotting poisoned rat meat as prime organic steak.

Part of cleaning up the mess should have been to create new rating agencies under regulatory probation, and to review all the rating agencies' ratings. I suspect that would hae found too many slimy things on banks' balance sheets, so instead the Fed sucked the poison out of the banks with QE.

I wonder what the quid pro quo was. I suspect if you look for anomalies between sovereign debt ratings and debt-to-gdp ratios you might find answers.

<comment><USER9> Ratings on sovereign debt seem kind of irrelevant to me. I don't see why the agencies would have any sort of edge.

But I agree one of the most dumfounding facts of the present situation are that these rating agencies are still in business. I think the argument is that they were transparent about what methodologies they used to produce these ratings. But regardless of that, the blatant conflict of interest means this whole business model should be dead. I think Jim Simons of Renaissance Technologies made the point that it's the buyers who should pay for stuff to be rated, not the issuers. Possibly it may have worked like that in the past until the government stepped in and changed it... can't quite remember.

<comment><USER10> Ratings are besides the point. Implied "ratings" should be recoverable from the market-clearing yield on any given bond. Bond buyers should perform their own due diligence, either in-house or by paying a third party.

What good does it do to have an intermediate institution (one that has no skin in the game) suppress the perceived riskiness of certain assets and inflate the perceived riskiness of others?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This lies solely on Obama's shoulders. Don't get me wrong: I campaigned for the guy in 2008, so I'm no right-wing-nut. But I have been very disappointed in how he's let them off with a slap on the wrist. Between this (lack of prosecution) and the drone campaign, he's been a big disappointment for me.

<comment><USER12> Is a 5B settlement a slap on the wrist? Goldman's yearly revenue is 40B a year, while profit is ~8B last year and may be closer to 4-5B this year. Would it be better if they were sued out of existence? Is this enough penalty for them to never to it again in the future? Could the gov't legally be able to get more?

<comment><USER13> Yes. When the fine is less than the overall profit, and they can write it off via taxes, then it is not even a tickle on the wrist.

CEO, every member of the board, every manager in that division that made and sold the products, fine 100% of their pay, fine 4x revenue - not profits for the products affected, and do not let them write the costs off.

<comment><USER14> Is this fine tax deductible? What, then, is even the point?

<comment><USER15> Getting to write articles like this to make prosecutors look good, and for people feel like big bad Goldman Sachs is getting hurt.

Here's another thing to grind your gears: much of the fine will be paid in "consumer relief," which so far has meant a tax writeoff upfront, then negligible consumer relief.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Serious question: Which department specifically gets this $2.39 billion civil penalty & $875 cash payment?

What does that money go towards? I know with the recent UBS case, it ended up going to the NYDFS, and seemed to just pay down New York's deficit.

Not really helping the people who were actually damaged by this behaviour.

<comment><USER17> That's what disturbs me about these settlements. Shouldn't the settlements be used exclusively toward helping those that were negatively impacted by the bad behavior?

<comment><USER18> Well, if you take the view that everyone suffered (except a very tiny minority of shareholders and employees), then that money going into the general taxation pool is helping the victims. It pays off debt or buys bridges or whatever.

<comment><USER19> Or the money could be used for any of the vile activities the State is up to thus ironically contributing to more suffering. Let's not forget that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> When VW lies about its emissions it's a big deal, the stock drops, the public is appalled, the media can't stop talking about it. When GS gets fined $5B it's just business as usual.

<comment><USER21> Maybe because VW had somewhat of a reputation for being a good quality car manufacturer that would have no need to cheat and lie about their vehicles. Whereas cheating and lying is a common perception of Wall St firms in general.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> And like every other corporate settlement, they will write off $5 billion in expenses on their taxes (likely another billion more with attorney fees)... effectively shorting the US billions in tax revenue...

<comment><USER23> I don't think that is correct.

"penalties or fines paid to any government agency or instrumentality because of a violation of any law are not deductible"

[https://www.irs.gov/publications/p535/ch11.html](https://www.irs.gov/publications/p535/ch11.html)

<comment><USER22> These aren't criminal violations... And actually they probably aren't penalties or fines either. I'm not a lawyer of any sort but I don't believe restitution == fines/penalties. All depends on verbiage in criminal court, IRS loopholes, and the details of the case.

"Big banks such as Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase will receive deductions against the corporate tax that will amount to between half and nearly three- quarters of their multibillion-dollar settlements, at least. Meanwhile, midsized banks and nonbank lenders generally get to deduct the whole shebang."

[http://www.newsweek.com/2014/11/07/giant-penalties-are- giant...](http://www.newsweek.com/2014/11/07/giant-penalties-are-giant-tax- write-offs-wall-street-279993.html)

and even expenses related to criminal violations can be deducted if they stemmed from your job

<comment><USER23> Did some digging. The amount that relates to the fine (criminal or civil) is not deductible. Settlement amounts that relate to relief may be deductible. It depends on how the various sums are described in the settlement. According to the Bloomberg article $2.39b of the $5.1b is a fine. So that piece is almost certainly, not deductible. The rest might be, but it depends on how the settlement is worded. Assuming the $2.39b is the only amount that is not deductible, that means Goldman Sachs will be able to offset about $1b in future tax liability.

Below is an article about BP. They had to pay about $20b in total, with about $5.5b being considered a fine. That $5.5b was not deductible.

[http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2016/04/05/bp-can-take-tax- de...](http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2016/04/05/bp-can-take-tax-deduction-on- big-chunk-of-its-oil-spill-settlement/)

<comment><USER22> Good point, I didn't read into the ratio of fines/restitution. Appears that half is deductible + any other expense they associate with the case/trial

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Paying this fine won't impact GS at all. In fact, their stock has risen today, albeit financials as an industry are up. Investors will chalk this up as a one-time charge and earnings estimates will be revised down appropriately without any downside.

If the government actually wanted to punish them, the fine would have to be astronomically high. Or, you know, they could actually fix banking regulations.

<comment><USER25> In the article it says GS had previously provisioned about enough money to pay these damages.

<comment><USER24> Even better for them

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Something I often wonder. It's quite common on HN to get insiders comments but less on this type of articles. How is it so? what do GS employees or people working in that field think about this?

<comment><USER27> Probably along the lines of, 'Hopefully we can make an extra $5.1 billion in the next 8 months so this doesn't impact our commission cheques'

<comment><USER28> You would have to check their financials to be sure but typically banks set aside money to cover settlements in pending litigation. This has been common at banks of the last few years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Lots of comments here regarding 'blame'. On that subject, I found this interview with Michael Burry (featured in the book and movie "The Big Short") to be worth reading:

[http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/12/big-short- geniu...](http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/12/big-short-genius-says- another-crisis-is-coming.html)

</comment><comment><USER30> Two bankers from Goldman Sachs profited around as much as the fine is in the Summer of 2007.

Slap on the wrist is an understatement.

<comment><USER31> Source please.

<comment><USER30> "The pair, members of Goldman's structured products group in New York, made a profit of $4 billion by "betting" on a collapse in the sub-prime market, and shorting mortgage-related securities. By summer 2007, they persuaded colleagues to see their point of view and convinced skeptical risk management executives."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldman_Sachs#Actions_in_the_2...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldman_Sachs#Actions_in_the_2007.E2.80.932008_mortgage_crisis) [http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2007/dec/21/goldmansachs....](http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2007/dec/21/goldmansachs.useconomy) [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfina...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/2788346/Subprime- star-Josh-Birnbaum-leaves-Goldman.html)

<comment><USER31> Profited makes it sound like their bonuses were $4bn. It's a borderline useless number when framed vs a group. Regardless of what the article says, there is no way those two made that much solely on their own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> We would not accept shitty ingredients in our food, being told it was a grade beef, when it turned out it was actually alley cat, sewer rat and suchlike mixed in.

How on earth did they get away with a grade securitised mortgage products that actually contained a stink load of ready to default loans?

Forget blaming a specific person, or whether it may have been technically legal, what can be done to stop them doing this again?

<comment><USER32> Yes we would. We would say "just don't buy from that particular meat seller, it's a free market, buyer beware, the market will take care of it and adjust, competition, I'm very smart I would never get tricked and buy bad stuff like that it's just dumb people who are not as smart as me that would get hurt" \-- there is this exact discussion happening higher up in this very comment section.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Why no criminal probe? Her are three reasons: GS has friends in high places. GS would have brought a legal force more formidable than the governments and stretched the case out for a decade or more. Many government people involved in the case may not want to alienate the company they want to work for after government service.

Too big to fail should also be too big to charge criminally.

</comment><comment><USER34> I wonder what would be the actual figure without settlement, since settlement in corp vs. gov cases means that a corp has calculated that it is cheaper to settle than to argue in the court of law. What where they avoiding? Brand damage? Management responsibility? More unopened cans of worms? I guess we'll never know...

<comment><USER18> Executives using shareholder money to bribe their way out of jail is what is going on. If I were a shareholder I'd prefer my execs to go to jail - it's _far_ cheaper.

<comment><USER31> You could very well be a shareholder of a bankrupt company if execs start going to jail.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I hear a lot about how this is just a slap on the wrist but can you explain to me why it is? 5B is a lot of money afaik. Why is this so insignificant?

<comment><USER36> According to Wikipedia, GS made $39.20 billion in revenue in 2015, with $6.08 billion in net income. I'd say a penalty of about half a quarter's worth of revenue and less than one year's worth of profit for being a major player in the greatest financial meltdown in almost 100 years is about as insignificant as it comes.

Imagine if bank robbers were penalized by taking 4/5ths of the profit from only one bank robbery, then released to continue robbing banks.

<comment><USER37> Obviously revenue is a red herring, but almost a whole year of profit paid in fines seems pretty substantial to me. 35,000 people worked for 9.5 months to earn the money to pay this.

In 2014 they paid an additional $3B. Worth noting that GS played a much smaller role in underwriting the bad loans than the likes of BoA and JPM ($16.6B and $13B settlements), mostly they were vilified for seeing the train wreck coming and helping some investors profit off the implosion.

I think the reality is that the fines are absolutely significant and do change behavior at the banks. It is a typical human response to want to crush them under your boot into oblivion, but I think counter-productive.

<comment><USER36> > Obviously revenue is a red herring

I disagree. What if it were a company like Amazon that operates with over 100 billion in revenue but less than a billion in income (many years actually ending up red)? Would 500 million an appropriate fine for, say, willingly misleading consumers about billions of dollars in fraudulent items? If anything, I'd argue income should be the irrelevant number in a scenario like this, though the only numbers that really should matter are ones based on the magnitude of the damage the wrongdoing causes.

> the fines are absolutely significant and do change behavior at the banks Is > there any evidence of this?

> It is a typical human response to want to crush them under your boot into > oblivion, but I think counter-productive. Maybe, but I'd argue penalizing > one of the major creators of a global financial crisis with a fine that > doesn't even cause them to go into red for _one_ year is even worse. Fines > all accounted for, GS profited off of the crisis, no executive lost their > job, and the behavior that caused millions to lose homes and pensions > continues on almost totally unchanged. The human response is to want justice > served, and this isn't it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Still nobody gets a criminal record. But the kids getting caught smoking pot will get to face a lifetime of stigma and get a criminal record.

US employers have to realize that since so many US citizens get thrown in prison, being a former convict and having paid your dues to society by having been in prison should not prevent anyone from getting a decent job. If someone has been punished once, the debt to society is already paid.

<comment><USER39> In alignment with what you've put forward, I'd also consider that a lot of studies point to the US prison system as not helpful for skills or emotional state when returning to society. Holding the repaid debt of punishment over the person when seeking employment is a stigma unfortunately. This difficulty re-entering can lead to frustrations and poor choices, increasing the potential for another offense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> So Goldman gets to sell these mortgages, short the mortgages they sold, and then are fined only 5.1B for the privilege of doing so? Pure insanity.

<comment><USER41> > _So Goldman gets to sell these mortgages, short the mortgages they sold_

Yes, they do. And as a market maker, there's nothing at all wrong with this and isn't the origin of the probe.

They're in trouble for "improperly vetting" mortgages that they sold, which in my opinion is pretty subjective. But the politicians want to exact a price.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Bargain.

<comment><USER42> What would be a fair price in your view?

<comment><USER43> Well they were bailed out with $10B plus lots of other props[1]. Some significant portion [some might say all + interest] of that would seem fair.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldman_Sachs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldman_Sachs)

<comment><USER44> When will people stop talking about the "bailout." It was a relief fund. Goldman paid the 10B back in ONE year. TARP turned a profit. When will you stop living in 2008?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> NYSE: GS up 2.5% at time of this comment, which is unintuitive to me.

Is this because a significant fine was expected so "baked" into the price? Presumably if the fine was smaller than expected by the market then it could cause an upward evaluation?

<comment><USER31> Baked into the price long ago because the fine announced months ago:

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-14/goldman- sa...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-14/goldman-says-it-will- settle-u-s-mortgage-probe-for-5-1-billion)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Goldman Sachs received a $10 billion bailout.

[https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/list](https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/list)

<comment><USER47> They paid back $11.4 billion though.

<comment><USER48> That's an excellent loan isn't it. A home loan usually ends up in twice the price being paid back over the length of the loan.

<comment><USER49> A home loan would've generated 3-4% in interest a year. The US government made over 14% in less than a year on this loan. That would make it terrible, not excellent, for the borrower -- more akin to a high interest credit card than a mortgage. Mortgages involve paying so much back because you have interest compounding on a large balance for 15-30 years.

<comment><USER50> Actually this wasn't a terrible rate for GS, it was a great rate. And it can't simply be compared to a mortgage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> For everyone asking why or cynically pointing out that no one went to jail over this, you need to have people agree on what caused all of this before any of that happens.

</comment><comment><USER51> awfully cheap.

</comment><comment><USER52> Settled, no one goes to jail.

Why am I not surprised?

</comment><comment><USER53> Fraud pays ... REALLY WELL. Good Job, Obama.

</comment><comment><USER54> Never forget... the vampire squid. [http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-great- american...](http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-great-american- bubble-machine-20100405)

</comment><comment><USER55> How is this not criminal fraud? The public wants blood. Why is the DOJ not similarly bloodthirsty? You'd think they would be. That'd be a career making case. Prosecutors would be famous for 40 years.

I don't get it.

Edit: I don't mind downvotes if someone can explain how the fraud wasn't criminal.</comment>


Show HN: Post and view GIFs quicker - <AUTHOR> http://loltrove.io

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here - I made this to get some good experience with AngularJS inside chrome extensions, and figured it might be useful to someone!

We don't really post GIFs here (and I'm not suggesting that we start) -- but thought this might help for those of you who regularly browse reddit/4chan/etc.</comment>


Save the internet. Tell TRAI we need network neutrality - <AUTHOR> http://www.savetheinternet.in/

<comment> meta-coder This article[1] highlights the ridiculously regressive arguments given by the Indian ISPs against net neutrality, as reflected from the TRAI's consultation paper:

      1. OTTs negatively affect our revenue
      2. OTT apps use very less data
      3. OTTs earn too much
      4. Net neutrality is already dead
      5. Compression algorithms further reduce our profits
      6. Too much freedom of expression is bad

Here's how the telecom regulatory authority of India defines OTT:

"The term over-the-top (OTT) refers to applications and services which are accessible over the internet and ride on operators' networks offering internet access services e.g. social networks, search engines, amateur video aggregation sites etc. The best known examples of OTT are Skype, Viber, WhatsApp, Chat On, Snapchat, Instagram, Kik, Google Talk, Hike, Line, WeChat, Tango, e-commerce sites (Amazon, Flipkart etc.),Ola, Facebook messenger, Black Berry Messenger, iMessage, online video games and movies (Netflix, Pandora)."

[1] [http://new-digital-india.blogspot.in/2015/04/how-indian- isps...](http://new-digital-india.blogspot.in/2015/04/how-indian-isps-are- trai-ing-to-kill.html)

edit: added definition of OTT

</comment><comment><USER2> To add a bit more perspective to this, here's an article explaining what's going on with India's mobile Internet landscape [http://yourstory.com/2015/04/airtel-zero-india-net- neutralit...](http://yourstory.com/2015/04/airtel-zero-india-net-neutrality/)

</comment><comment><USER3> tl,dr: its a campaign where you enter name and email and hit a button that pops up your email program filling in an email to the chairman of TRAI to support net neutrality in India. India needs net neutrality. An 1885 act surely can't be used as an argument to make faster lanes on the open internet.</comment>


Marketo loses control of their domain names due to expiration - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/TravisPrebble/status/889842766758502402 <comment><USER2> A thousand marketing departments are now checking with IT if their own domain is secured to prevent domain expiration from happening...</comment>


Step aside, biomarkers. Look to the bank account for early signs of dementia - <AUTHOR> https://www.statnews.com/2019/12/05/dementia-early-warning-check-bank-accounts-not-biomarkers/ <comment><USER2> "But impaired financial decision-making goes beyond vulnerability to financial exploitation and poor decisions about savings or investment, and can be seen in everyday financial decisions like managing credit cards, calculating tips, and unnecessary spending."

My God, I've had Alzheimer's from birth.

[Go ahead, downvote me...I don't regret it :) ]

[I wonder if impaired HN commenting decisions is another early sign of dementia)</comment>


On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://journal.sjdm.org/15/15923a/jdm15923a.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> "Funding for this study was provided by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada."

</comment><comment><USER2> "Conclusion: Bullshit is a consequential aspect of the human condition."

Darnit, I was afraid that might be the case.</comment>


Reading and Writing Redis Protocol in Go - <AUTHOR> http://www.redisgreen.net/blog/2014/05/16/reading-and-writing_redis_protocol/

<comment><USER2> If any gophers need a solid redis library I would recommend: [https://github.com/garyburd/redigo](https://github.com/garyburd/redigo)

This is a mature library that I have been using for years.

<comment><AUTHOR> (Author, here.) I also recommend garyburd/redigo. I especially like the API. Instead of adding methods for every Redis command, redigo uses a single Do() method and then has several "type helper" methods that allow you to convert the response to various types simply by wrapping Do():

        value, err := redis.String(client.Do("GET", "mykey"))

Of course, this means you need to know about every command's response type and adds an extra (if small) level of verbosity, but in practice it fits very well with Go's philosophy of handling errors often and early. So, for instance, you're encouraged to handle the possibility that your key doesn't exist rather than barreling ahead with an empty string.

<comment><USER3> That looks really verbose. Also, am I correct in thinking that redis.Integer(client.Do("GET", "mykey")) would be an error, even if you've previously stored a int value in the key? If so, that seems like a trap.

How is this better for error handling? Why couldn't client.Get("mykey") signal an error in the same way, rather than returning an empty string?

<comment><USER4> The statement

        value, err := redis.Integer(client.Do("GET", "mykey"))

sets the int variable "value" to the decimal integer stored in "mykey". The variable err is set to a non-nil value if the value cannot be parsed as a decimal integer, the key is missing, the key is not a redis string, the connection is broken or any other error.

This method of error handling is convenient because the application only needs to check for one error. The alternative is to do something like:

        v, err := client.Do("GET", "mykey")
        if err != nil {
           // handle command error
        }
        p, ok := v.(string)
        if !ok {
            // handle error where p is not a redis string
        }
        i, err := strconv.ParseInt(string(p))
        if err != nil {
           // handle parse error
        }

There is no trap. If the connection to the server is healthy and the value stored for "mykey" is a decimal encoded integer, then redis.Integer(client.Do("GET", "mykey")) returns that integer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder why "\r\n" and not just "\n" is the string separator in RESP. I get that it needs to be human readable but \n should be enough to make it readable in any text viewer. Or is there something more to it?

<comment><USER6> I wonder why errors and simple strings aren't just length-delimited as well. What do you gain by having both methods in one protocol?

<comment><USER7> I think human readability was something antirez really wanted, and having explicit line delimeters would make it easy to visually parse in a telnet session or building/debugging a client.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Until not long ago there was a nice, growing attempt in Radix (redigo is basically _the_ Redis library for Go now). It was barebones but did some of this.

Either way, I'm glad there's some work on another, although this looks like it's essentially a RESP parser rather than aiming to ever be a Redis interface.

<comment><USER7> This article seems to be more focused on teaching the reader about the Redis protocol and Go than an attempt to make a truly production-ready client interface. Certainly someone could take what they learn from this article and go on to do such a thing, but I think the author is more concerned with teaching than building.

<comment><AUTHOR> (Author here) Correct -- this post is more about exploring RESP and why it's a neat protocol by implementing a very basic RESP reader. I wouldn't write a new Redis client unless I wanted to do something significantly different than the existing, battle-tested Redis clients like Redigo. This is the reason the code exists only in the blog post rather than in a GitHub repo that can be imported.

Besides, reading RESP objects is only the very first step in implementing a true Redis client. You need to handle response types (null bulk strings, null arrays, etc), opening TCP connections and handling errors therein, and offer up a sane API for end-users. And that's definitely outside the scope of the blog post. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm suprised at the number of companies using hosted Redis as reported on [http://www.redisgreen.net/](http://www.redisgreen.net/) . I would have thought that ping times would affect performance of such a low level service? I have the same feeling about database hosting.

<comment><USER10> If the database provider hosts databases within the same data center that your app is in, ping times are no different than they would be if you ran your own DB in that data center.

Products like RedisGreen host their servers within Amazon and Google's data centers, and are meant for customers hosting their apps within those data centers. In the case of RedisGreen, you choose your hosting provider, region, etc, when provisioning resources.

If you sent database queries across the open Internet, ping latency is just one of several problems you'd encounter.

(disclosure: I work for RedisGreen)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> There is also a cool library for writing servers that follow RESP [https://github.com/bsm/redeo](https://github.com/bsm/redeo)

</comment><comment><USER12> Oh great, an unflattering scrollbar you can't actually drag. This isn't as bad as native scroll hijacking, but why? There are lots of libraries which will handle making custom scrollbars for you if you don't feel like at least meeting the standard behaviour of scrollbars.</comment>


Glyphosate Herbicide Will Cause Half of All Children to Have Autism by 2025 - <AUTHOR> http://healthimpactnews.com/2014/mit-researcher-glyphosate-herbicide-will-cause-half-of-all-children-to-have-autism-by-2025/

<comment><USER2> Does anyone with some advanced biological science background have any thoughts on this ? I'm a little lost</comment>


Amazon admits it exposed customer email addresses, but refuses to give details - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/21/amazon-admits-it-exposed-customer-email-addresses-doubles-down-on-secrecy/ <comment><USER2> When I started selling the first gadget I ever made on Amazon I was so excited and was only getting a couple sales a month. If you were one of my customers I looked at your house, judged your grass, found you on LinkedIn and Facebook, Instagram, mortgages, mugshots, everything lol. The sellers also get your full name and address even on fulfilled by Amazon.

If you have been on the net long enough this will creep you out: [https://haveibeenpwned.com/](https://haveibeenpwned.com/)

<comment><USER3> For anyone who is curious why a seller gets this much information, you have to be able to confirm the shipping address is correct. Google Maps can quicken this process.

Yes, this process is automated and usually works, however, the systems don't know everything, and you have to manually override the error to ship the product.

With that said, I think it's grossly irresponsible to look people up on all their social media. This is part of considering customer trust.

I've yet to hear about sellers stalking customers in the real world, but IMO, there isn't any difference between doing this stuff online and the real world. Please don't do this if you are planning to be a seller.

<comment><USER4> > I think it's grossly irresponsible to look people up on all their social > media.

While I agree with you in one sense, this wouldn't even be an issue if people didn't willingly post their entire lives to social media. I don't understand how one can be too upset about someone looking at data that they themselves decided to make public.

<comment><USER5> "Their window curtains were open, Officer! I just stood outside, on the grass, with my camera and a news crew."

<comment><USER6> Curious how time has changed people's perceptions, even though the service itself didn't.

Back when I started using Facebook, it was obvious that you're building a profile to be _publicly accessible_ , i.e. viewable by random strangers, and everything you posted publicly you did with the intent of it being a part of that public profile. It was kind of like blog, but with guaranteed active audience.

<comment><USER7> Funny, because when I started using Facebook it was obvious I was building a profile to be only accessible to direct friends at my school. I could safely post party pictures without worrying who saw them.

The intent has changed vastly over time.

By the time I was a senior, one of my parties got busted before it started because I forgot to lock down the invite.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is how it looked for me: I few days ago I was shopping on Amazon and they showed me a message, you already purchased this product. See order details. I was surprised since I did not buy it before. After clicking the link, I was shown details of not my order, including name, address and email where a product was shipped to.

<comment><USER9> Maybe someone released a pretty aggressive page cache to help handle "Black Friday" shopping.

<comment><USER10> Sounds like the steam cache issue three years ago: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkSslseq9Y8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkSslseq9Y8)

<comment><USER9> Ahh, yeah. Steam's explanation: [https://store.steampowered.com/news/19852/](https://store.steampowered.com/news/19852/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is one of the less appreciated clauses of the GDPR: That companies are _required_ to disclose data breaches within a reasonable time-frame, and users _have the right_ to know about any exposure of their data.

<comment><USER12> It sounds like they did that but TC wants more. I'm not really sure why HN allows techcrunch stories on the front page. TC is tabloid journalism at its finest.

<comment><USER13> They did not disclose any of the following as specified by the data breach notification requirements of the GDPR:

 _The name and contact details of the data protection officer or other contact point where more information can be obtained_

 _The likely consequences of the personal data breach_

 _The measures taken or proposed to be taken by the controller to address the personal data breach, including, where appropriate, measures to mitigate its possible adverse effects_

The are also required to submit the following information to EU authorities, but have given no indication that they have done so or are planning to:

 _The categories and approximate number of data subjects concerned_

 _The categories and approximate number of personal data records concerned_

The mail that Amazon sent to affected customers was barebones and contained almost no information.

<comment><USER14> I think only Amazon Europe account was leaked. We have account in couple of countries and I got the email only on my UK account.

<comment><USER15> I live in USA, have only ever used Amazon in USA, and I got the email.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Besides the brevity, what's giving people pause is they sign the email [http://Amazon.com](http://Amazon.com) Why cap the "a" and why no [https://](https://)? Strange"

This one is easy to answer: the customer support people aren't particularly technical. In many ways, Amazon is a weird mashup of a traditional retailer and a tech company.

<comment><USER17> To add insult to injury, [http://amazon.com](http://amazon.com) redirects (301) to [https://amazon.com](https://amazon.com), but does not publish HSTS headers nor is it in the hstspreload list (but www.amazon.com is).

[https://hstspreload.org/?domain=amazon.com](https://hstspreload.org/?domain=amazon.com) [https://hstspreload.org/?domain=www.amazon.com](https://hstspreload.org/?domain=www.amazon.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> based on spam email i have received, that i clearly should not have, i believe this was an exposure to marketplace sellers from whom you have bought a product.

I am _very_ careful with my email. i'm not just guessing here. i actually reported it to amazon security. (no answer from them of course.)

<comment><USER19> eBay are particularly careless in that regard.

There's no reason that a seller should ever see the customer's actual e-mail address on such a site but I'm up to ebay5@ on my mail server due to direct spam from sellers from whom I bought one item in the past.

No, sellers, I did not 'opt in' to your spam just because I bought something. But why does eBay ever give them the address?

Oddly I've never had a problem with random Chinese sellers, it's always Euro or US ones.

<comment><USER20> Chinese sellers have been very pleasant to deal with IME, including obviously hand-written niceties, handwritten thank you notes (maybe not in the best English but the sentiment is there) for a bunch of stuff. Occasionally small 'gift' items, have gotten Chinese fun-size snacks too.

There are US sellers that have resulted in 27+ emails _within one day of purchase_, one seller has managed to sign my ebay_a10f9@ alias up for five separate companies reselling third party warranties / affiliate spam for the above. What the fuck?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Amazon is being so strangely cagey about this - I followed up on the email asking who saw my email, and they sent back the exact same response.

</comment><comment><USER22> Aren't all programming mistakes and bugs "technical errors?"

</comment><comment><USER23> One comment further down stated that it might have affected marketplace sellers. Amazon doesn't really put the same amount of thought and resources on marketplace than Amazon retail even if they should IMHO.

Regardless, that's AFAIK the first time that ever happened to Amazon. Bad enough if it was third party sellers. A catastrophe if it was Amazon customers. With all the controversy regarding counterfeits in some countries an incident that bears the risk of impacting customer trust is the last thing Amazon needs. Maybe I should have sold my stock 4 months ago... But maybe Q4 will be stellar and stock goes up again in January. I should think about a stop order, just in case Q4 disappoints that year.

</comment><comment><USER24> An email address isn't secret, is it? It's sent back and forth in clear text through any number of relay servers. I consider my name and email address to be basically public information. Along with (unfortunately) my Social Security number.

If Amazon exposed any data fields _more_ sensitive than email address, I would call that stonewalling/covering up as TC seems to be implying. But otherwise it kind of just sounds like TC being all petulant that Amazon wouldn't tell it everything it wanted to know. And the motivation there is likely to be the generation of clicks, not the protection of customers.

Take the "number of users affected" for example. Knowing that info doesn't help any individual customer. But it does help journalists drum up pageviews, or at least I feel like _they believe_ it does. Having a big number in there is like this (dubious) Holy Grail of page-irresistability. I'm just judging from how, for example, the reporters on the TV news always bug their eyes out and raise their voice and talk really slowly and emphatically any time they come to a number. "The pool was reported to be FOURTEEN FEET DEEP..." "The petition has THIRTY THOUSAND signatures..." Wow! A number! I'm supposed to be all impressed I guess! _ZOMG let me throw all my money at you right now!!!!_

<comment><USER25> Amazon employee here, but the statement I'm making is of my own.

Internally we treat customer names and email addresses as the second highest data classification. The highest one is credit card/financial/password data.

What does it mean? It means that there are a bunch of requirements that a software team must fulfill and pass (reviewed by an SDE trained in the process outside the team). This makes accessing this sort of data a PITA for a lot of people, and I can see why they why they would send out notifications when a breach like this happen. Amazon takes security very seriously, and it in fact creates quite a bit of friction to many engineers. However, I'd rather than than the break things and ask for forgiveness model like some other companies (not going to name names here)

<comment><USER16> I can confirm that names and email addresses are classified as saltysugar states, and the security reviews. So they do have to pass all those requirements for secure storage and transmission, but then names and emails are made visible by default through mechanisms like reviews, profile, wishlists, and that passes the review because it is the user's choice.

I don't even think this is anything nefarious by Amazon. It's more that teams dedicated to security issues consider it out of their lane to deal with conflicts between the designed UX and actual user expectations; especially for privacy issues where even asking the person isn't a reliable way to understand what they want.

<comment><USER26> > saltysugar

Can you elaborate? I've never heard this phrase before and google results aren't very helpful.

<comment><USER27> It's not a policy, it's the username of the parent's poster.

<comment><USER16> LOL, now I realize the wisdom of not referring to people by usernames... "saltysugar states" sounds completely plausible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Every major tech company has had this problem, yet people still keep sharing their personal info (even home address, phone numbers, social security numbers) online. Don't share anything you wouldn't yell out on a crowded street to strangers.

</comment><comment><USER29> The video advertisement on the linked webpage crashed Safari on my iPhone.

</comment><comment><USER30> Hmm... it seems this drip of bad news in big tech is setting up for some heated debates on regulation. It will be interesting how proactive the Europeans are with GDPR.

<comment><USER31> "Goal accomplished"

\- traditional media and anti-big-web-tech

<comment><USER32> Change the record.

Old media might have an axe to grind with big tech making them obsolete, but the cavalier attitudes of big tech companies are pissing off a LOT of people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I don't understand this. In the American startup I'm working we're extremely careful with respectful data practices due to ethics and GDPR (we have a lot European customers). Why doesn't Amazon give a shit about GDPR? Do they have a leverage?

<comment><USER34> amazon doesn't have european headquarters

<comment><USER35> They do, so they can avoid taxes all over the world. Not only do they have an EU incorporated company, if you believe their tax filings their primary business is based in Luxembourg. This is obviously bullshit, and is done to avoid taxes, but they have structured their company in a way that makes them _very much_ an EU company.

If they weren't an EU company they couldn't take advantage of Luxembourg's tax laws. So it follows that they have to follow all EU laws. Because they're incorporated in the EU.

<comment><USER34> you re right. The idea here is that luxembourg (or any country) would have to weigh any violations against their interests to keep amazon in their territory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Would explain the billions of new spam emails I've been receiving.

</comment><comment><USER37> Amazon and my spam filter have a long and intimate relationship.

</comment><comment><USER38> Wasn't there another post on HN of this?

<comment><USER39> I think it got black holed by the mods.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Watch this space [https://amazon.com/profile](https://amazon.com/profile)</comment>