Bird has raised $100M for electric scooter sharing - <AUTHOR> https://beta.techcrunch.com/2018/03/09/bird-is-raising-100-million-to-become-the-uber-of-electric-scooters/ <comment><USER2> How is such a business even remotely profitable? Such scooter will cost a few hundred bucks. They're easy to store and drag into the house. Even in a small room in a densely populated city, there is not much nuisance in owning one. Furthermore, these things get cheaper by the year; further calving off any rental market.

Genuinely interested in how such business is able to make a dime.

<comment><USER3> "Our fund has too much cash. What can we invest it in? These software startups don't need much capital...."

"I know. Scooters. They cost money, right? And it'll need a ton of marketing!"

<comment><USER4> These scooters really market themselves, which anyone in a served region can attest to. They're _everywhere_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's been a crack down on enforcing tickets to people riding these scooters without helmets - which are not supplied with the scooters that sit on sidewalks.

[http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me- scooters-20180307-s...](http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me- scooters-20180307-story.html)

[http://smdp.com/bird-lovers-tweet-as-tickets-ruffle- feathers...](http://smdp.com/bird-lovers-tweet-as-tickets-ruffle- feathers/164289)

[https://dailybruin.com/2018/02/20/ucpd-begins-to-enforce- tra...](https://dailybruin.com/2018/02/20/ucpd-begins-to-enforce-traffic- rules-on-bird-scooter-riders/)

[https://patch.com/california/santamonica/santa-monica- cracks...](https://patch.com/california/santamonica/santa-monica-cracks-down- bird-scooter-riders)

      "Bird Rides Inc. has a business license to operate a
      brick-and-mortar administrative office," Santa Monica
      public information officer Constance Farrell told Los
      Angeles Times, "but they do not have the appropriate
      license to operate scooters in an ad hoc manner on the
      public right of way."

      In an attempt to increase safety, Bird has begun giving
      out free helmets to its users – so far, they've delivered
      2,500 free helmets which can be ordered from the "safety"
      tab in the app, according to Los Angeles Times.

<comment><USER6> Helmets should be fitted for each individual's head size and shape. Generic helmets supplied at the sidewalk won't fit everyone.

<comment><USER7> Bicyclists aren't required to wear helmets in CA. As long as these scooters don't go more than 25 MPH I don't see why they shouldn't be treated any differently from a legal perspective.

<comment><USER8> From a legal perspective, how would going more than 25 MPH be relevant?

<comment><USER7> Higher speeds are more dangerous, and thus require more safety equipment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A lot of skepticism here regarding profitability, safety, and regulation. I can't remember the last product I've seen gain traction so insanely fast as these scooters have in LA/SD. Between that and the bike companies (LimeBike, ofo, etc) it feels like when Uber/Lyft first came out, ie this is how urban transportation should be.

</comment><comment><USER10> They're all over West LA (Santa Monica, UCLA, Westwood, etc.). It's crazy to me that they are raising this much money for one simple reason: to ride the scooter, you are required _by law_ to wear a helmet. I have friends that have gotten fined because they're riding a Bird without a helmet. And no one in their right mind will carry a helmet around on the off-chance they might ride a scooter.

But it's a neat idea. And if they change the law, it'll be super profitable (especially around campuses).

<comment><USER11> Anecdotally, my sense as a Santa Monica local is that the helmet requirement is no longer being enforced in Santa Monica. I've ridden by cops several times in the last few days, no issues.

So I think it has somehow been negotiated with the authorities.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, my sense was that Santa Monica simply wanted to get the company's attention so they could cooperate. Now that their talking, it seems like they've backed off a bit.

Still want the cops to warn or ticket the folks who ride on the sidewalk though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The rides that they are using are the Xiaomi Mi Jia M365 scooter. You can get them for quite cheap at around $350 to $400. They usually last for more than two years, so they're really not that expensive. Maintenance is also quite cheap.

I own one myself. They have a max speed of 25Kmph, but usually you maximize distance, so you use the eco-mode which keeps you at 18Kmph.

</comment><comment><USER14> I don't understand the mindset of not wearing a helmet riding an electric vehicle at 15mph on a city street.

The chances of head & face trauma are substantially reduced, and the chance of a fatal injury reduced by almost 70% w/a helmet on.

I think that Bird's "we'll send you a free helmet" is a cute way to get around criticism & liability.

But given the clear market demand for bird and bike-sharing, I would love to see an entrepreneur really nail the "portable bike helmet" category or figure out a non-gross way to share helmets with strangers.

There are a few options on the market today that show people are thinking this problem through, but what else could be built besides a foldable / more portable solution?

[https://www.ecohelmet.com](https://www.ecohelmet.com)

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fendhelmet/fend-the- col...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fendhelmet/fend-the-collapsible- bicycle-helmet)

[https://www.morpherhelmet.com](https://www.morpherhelmet.com)

(1) [https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/sep/22/bicycle...](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/sep/22/bicycle- helmets-reduce-risk-of-serious-head-injury-by-nearly-70-study-finds)

<comment><USER15> There's also D3O material. [1] I wear a hat using this when I downhill ski. (Not really interested in a skiing helmet debate. I skied for years long before anyone besides racers wore helmets and I downhill ski very little these days and not very aggressively.)

I don't have a real opinion on when people "ought" to wear helmets. It's a tradeoff. People do have falls walking and accidents in cars where serious injury would have been prevented by wearing a helmet. And many of these sharing services are not practical if one is required to wear a "real" helmet.

[1] [https://www.d3o.com/](https://www.d3o.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The law requiring wearing a helmet makes no sense to me. I think Bird is great.

The helmet law seems to have something much closer to a Vespa in mind. And while a Bird can move along at a good pace, it's slower than a bicycle at speed. I believe they lowered the max speed after launching.

You aren't required to wear a helmet on a bicycle if you're over 18, and I think bikes are much harder to control in low-speed contexts.

The law should change.

However people should definitely not ride Birds on sidewalks (although a majority of people do).

<comment><USER17> Interesting position to take on those two things, since wearing a helmet makes an awful lot of sense since flying off a scooter onto a pavement at 20km will cause massive head injuries...

...and a scooter hitting a pedestrian is not as traumatic as a car hitting a scooter. ..given the relative speed differences of people/scooters/cars and humans ability to process objects at speed remaining the same.

<comment><USER18> A walking adult, if they trip, fall and hit their head will suffer massive head injuries. A ~2m fall for a human head is enough to kill you. Ergo, all pedestrians should wear helmets.

Furthermore, head injuries to car occupants would be reduced if they wore helmets (why else do race car drivers wear them?)

<comment><USER17> People generally know how to fall and not hit their head, and when they do their body softens the impact. Not such much with scooters and bikes, where you can literally go head first.

There are risk factors, then there is absurd. Racing drivers drive a lot faster than road vehicles, they also have minimal creature comfort protection like airbags because the car has to be light. They have roll cages however that you can thump your head on.

I suppose we could all walk around with goggles because y'know, someone might poke their eye put.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm a little baffled here. They don't appear to be street legal. These look like electric "Razer" type scooters.

 _" riders of motorized scooters must be at least 16 years old, licensed drivers, wearing a helmet and not riding the scooters on sidewalks"_

$100M ?

<comment><USER20> I don't find $100m that surprising, and honestly don't think it's enough. They need the cash to expand to new cities. Motorized scooters are not cheap at all and cost $200-$300 each.

<comment><USER19> I'm baffled because of the inherent risk. Helmets are required, but not supplied. And they seem equally not street legal nor sidewalk legal. Seems one city council vote away from being squashed.

<comment><USER21> Why do you say they aren't street legal?

<comment><USER19> _"On the roadway, it must be operated in the bicycle lane, if there is one. On roads without bicycle lanes, motorized scooters may operate where the speed limit is 25 mph or less"_

Seems pretty limiting to me. Street legal in a VERY constrained set of circumstances. Only roads with bicycle lanes or a speed limit of 25mph or less. And probably varies wildly based on jurisdiction.

[https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/?1dmy&urile=wcm:path:/dmv_...](https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/?1dmy&urile=wcm:path:/dmv_content_en/dmv/vr/scooters)

Edit: Downvoting? That's cool, but please explain where I'm off base. Do you not think that "has bike lanes or a speed limit of 25mph" is pretty limited?

<comment><USER21> I didn't downvote, however I would say that 25 mph speed limit is definitely compatible with street legal. Cyclist commuters hardly reach that speed. It's faster than traffic in a congested city. And based on the look of those scooters, I have a hard time believing they'd even be stable above 25 mph.

It sounds to me the regulations may be more intended to restrict the speed of things that look like bicycles or mopeds, and probably won't affect these scooters at all. Look at how small those wheels are.

<comment><USER19> It's that the roadway itself has a posted speed limit of 25mph or less, or has bicycle lanes. That's not common.

So, for example, a roadway with a posted 30mph limit, and no bike lanes...the scooters are not legal in that case.

<comment><USER21> I see, that does sound like they would be pretty much useless in the burbs, more useful in some downtown cores, but you'd have to keep track of the speed limit on the particular road you're on.

The rules on ebikes in California are very different - there is a 20 mph speed limit for throttle control, and 28 mph speed limit for pedal assist. But the limit applies to the bike, not the road. I got confused by the differences between the two laws.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is probably better than bikes. I don't sweat using them and they occupy much less space than a bike too. However they need to be charged after every use. How is that achieved?

<comment><USER23> AFAIK, people are paid to charge them in their homes.

<comment><USER22> A charge cannot last all day right? It must be charged periodically. I would be suprised if it does not require a charge after every use.

<comment><USER24> Be surprised, because they do not require a charge after every use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Happy to see them succeed with two caveats: I really wish people using the scooters would (1) not ride on the sidewalks and (2) be more considerate of where they leave the scooters. I've had them left in front of my apartment driveway, blocking the way. I've seen them left in the middle of the sidewalk and on random lawns. I really wish they had partnered with the city to create places where people should leave them.

</comment><comment><USER25> Bird will give you a free helmet. Go into the Bird app, look under Safety and in there are instructions on how to get a free helmet.

</comment><comment><USER26> I used to pick up a Bird scooter to and from work (2 mile trip) everyday for a couple weeks until they started requiring helmets which now make it completely inconvenient and cops are eager to give you tickets.

</comment><comment><USER27> I've had one of these scooters for 2 years now. Not "Bird" of course, but the Xiaomi M365 scooter that they've taken and rebranded with their own app.

You can buy your own on amazon by just searching for "Xiaomi scooter". They're currently $500.

</comment><comment><USER28> Bird has been leaving their scooters on the sidewalks where I'm at in Marina Del Ray, CA which is a little surprising since there are a lot of homeless folks living on these same streets.

<comment><USER24> What would homeless people do with the scooters? They can't ride them without paying, because the scooters need to be unlocked in the app, and there doesn't seem to be an incentive for them to vandalize the scooters.

<comment><USER7> People will chop them up. I've seen homeless people with multiple Ford Go Bikes hooked up to their shopping cart. I kind of doubted they were doing Ford a service by relocating these bikes to higher demand locations...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I just don't understand how people don't steal these and hack them. If it was my company that would be my biggest concern. And I know it has GPS, but they can be turned off.

<comment><USER30> You don't even need to turn it off. Just wrap the GPS device in aluminium foil and you're done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Perhaps this is the solution to the problem segways had, social acceptability. If it becomes mainstream among college students, it could easily spread to everyone else.

<comment><USER15> Social acceptability is part of it. But the bigger issue was likely part of what you see people arguing about here. Segways didn't belong on sidewalks and they didn't really work very well on roads. (And you can debate how great a fit they are/were even for bike lanes.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> My 2 cents on Bird as a newcomer to Santa Monica and why I think electric vehicles like Bird can reshape urban transit in the US: [https://medium.com/@danielzahler/bird-is-the-word-e- scooters...](https://medium.com/@danielzahler/bird-is-the-word-e-scooters- take-over-la-442e0e1d73d1)

</comment><comment><USER33> That's a lot of coin. What makes a company like this worth investing that amount of money in? What are they doing different than all the other bike share companies out there?

Don't tell me it's just electric scooters!

<comment><USER34> The usability difference between scooters and bikes is meaningful. They fit into a totally seamless user experience that would be very difficult to manage with bikes. They're more tamper-proof, smaller, easier to hop on and off of, easier to manage in crowds, etc. Anectdotally, Bird scooters have melded into the environment in Santa Monica, Westwood, and the UCLA campus in a way that I can't imagine happening with bikes. Bird scooters are all over the place these days without being nearly as cumbersome as I imagine bikes would be. As a few others have noted in this thread, Bird is exploding in LA right now, and I believe it's because of their approach to a seamless user experience. The 10% difference in usability between bike sharing and electric scooter sharing seems to make all the difference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'm concerned these motorized vehicles masquerading as bicycles are going to ruin existing cycling/walking infrastructure even more than they already have. In NYC where I live, the ubiquitous delivery man on a motorcycle, err, electric bike is felt on every street, in every other moment. They are hard to spot, and I've narrowly missed being run over on many occasions. They congest bike lanes, make crossing bridges even more treacherous. I'd be curious to see incident reports on these things city wide. As far as I'm concerned they should be treated as every other motorized vehicle, requiring a license and to be driven on streets.

<comment><USER36> Your concern is 100% valid but I think what we're headed for in urban areas is something like a free-for-all until the adoption of non-vehicular transportation gets so high that streets are bifurcated: cars over here, everything else, over here. It's going to be messy, but if Uber has proved anything it's that laws will change to accommodate revolutionary utility.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I don't understand how they keep these things from getting stolen and stripped down for parts or resale...

</comment><comment><USER38> Please Undo the throttling! I live in Santa Monica and I want to go 22 MPH!

</comment><comment><USER39> I saw lots of these in San Diego when I visited earlier this year. Seems like a decent idea.

</comment><comment><USER40> Uber could become the Uber of electric scooters by adding the option. Risky territory.</comment>


What happens when you're #1 on Hacker News for a day - <AUTHOR> http://levels.io/hacker-news-number-one/ <comment><USER2> Really interesting read on how much interaction HN brings. There is a lot to be said for quality over quantity when it comes to page views.

I believe you are wrong about dismissing that top comment in the other post as snarky, negative and useless. That comment has a lot of very useful information from someone who appears to have been doing the Thailand thing longer than you have.

1) Thai law was brought up a number of times and you do appear to be violating it. This is probably something that needs to be said.

2) You mention how cheap it is while he believes its more expensive, but you may have gotten a good deal or stayed in areas that others wouldn't want to. It's your experience vs his; I see no reason to dismiss him as 'snark'.

3) He shares a number of anecdotes (sex workers, etc) that differ from your anecdotes. Thailand is a big place, you can both be right, and the more information the better.

<comment><USER3> One of the annoying parts of this article was that the author dismissed the comment as "non-factual" without providing any evidence or explanation.

Apparently whenever someone writes something that the author disagrees with, it is automatically categorized as snark.

<comment><USER4> It's somewhat apt that a snarky, non-factual comment attacking the author like this has risen to the top once again.

> One of the annoying parts of this article was that the author dismissed the > comment as "non-factual" without providing any evidence or explanation.

He didn't dismiss the comment as non-factual without providing any evidence or explanation. If read carefully, he:

* stated the other commenters called it out as non-factual (it appears at least one commenter did do that[1])

* claimed half of the dispute could be attributed to not reading the post carefully

* provided an example of where the top comment was mistaken or misread (commenter focused on Bangkok when the original story explicitly stated Bangkok was a bad place to live)

* offered up an example of a comment that he believed to be factual (the second-to-the-top one[1])

> Apparently whenever someone writes something that the author disagrees with, > it is automatically categorized as snark.

No, it isn't. But this sentence here—where an author's attentions are sarcastically and baselessly mischaracterized off of a misreading (or lack of reading?) of his or her post would definitely qualify as snark.

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6541956](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6541956)

[2]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6540371](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6540371)

<comment><USER3> The original comment wasn't attacking the author, it was simply stating that while many people seemed excited at the prospect of flying off to Thailand (one person even emailed the author after booking tickets) that they should slow down and consider the expenses and lifestyle changes involved. His response was clearly intended to be humorous, but that doesn't mean that it was intended to reflect negatively on the author. His experience was that Thailand was an expensive place to live, I don't understand how you interpret that as an attack against the author. Like other people have mentioned, Thailand is a rather large place.

>He didn't merely dismiss the comment.

In his article, he only mentioned that he and many others felt that the comment was inaccurate. That doesn't constitute evidence or explanation. If you are stating something as a position in an article, it makes sense to present at least a modicum of support for that position within the article itself. Sure, you can cite sources, but in this case, his citation amounts to "some other people said that the statement I'm about to make is correct."

<comment><USER5> It didn't "simply state", it used snark to do so. The tone was awful and it wasn't necessary.

If it was simply stated, then it could have read something like this:

"Thailand has a number of issues, of which cost of loving is the main problem. Etc."

<comment><USER3> I agree that it wasn't written in a formal, etiquette-laden tone, but I didn't find it to be malicious or insulting. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

<comment><USER5> We can certainly agree to disagree. But as has been pointed out, the following wasn't really necessary:

> Before your pop your Macbook Air in a backpack, read my points.

> Yes, you can live in a concrete block with plastic furniture and eat noodles > on the street every day.

> Once you're sick of your local noodle vendor you'll find food prices quite > high as well.

> If you can stomach the local swill (think Budweiser without the quality > control) knock yourself out.

> When you're sick of taking taxis and the BTS/MRT, have fun buying a car at > 50% - 300% above US prices.

> If you really want to fake it here it means constantly traveling in and out > of the country.

> To not do it properly means breaking the law in a country where you most > likely don't speak the language. Have fun with that.

> If it's not someone you've known for a decade then, well, good luck with > that.

I think it's worthwhile quoting the HN guidelines, because they are simple to follow and increase the quality if discussions here:

 _Be civil. Don 't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation._

 _When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."_ [1]

1\. [http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Next week: What happens when your follow-up to being #1 on Hacker News ends up being #1 on Hacker News.

<comment><USER7> Also featuring a snarky comment, but now about how the top comment isn't snarky. This is so meta.

<comment><USER8> Well no one was gonna make the top comment snarky after he complained about how the top stories in Hacker News always have snarky comments. That's just _letting_ him win.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Dear Pete's Mom,

You really have no idea how much of a time sink HN really is. If I said it took a fair portion of my day, it would be the biggest understatement of the year.

Love from everyone who reads Hacker News

<comment><USER10> I was going to post the same thing but since you've beaten me to it I'll simply say I couldn't agree more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Nobody has yet given feedback on your landing page for Tubelytics (1), where you said only one person signed up from the HN post.

From my perspective there is simply nothing there(2), and 5 seconds looking at a static page is just not enough information for me to make a decision. That decision is not just to give you my email address, but to "sign-up", which is a huge step too far.

At the very least I need a "find out more" option, and I'd need that without having to give you my email address or other details.

You clearly write very well, so why not tell the Tubelytics story underneath the landing page. Let me scroll down and read the story, see the screenshots, hear about the use cases and experience the success stories.

By the time people get to the end they should know what the product is, how awesome it will be for them to use it, how much it costs and whether or not they will buy.

(Advanced) Ideally I could play with the product and even set it up with my youtube videos(3) without logging in, and once I experience the product then I can save the data by creating an account and, more likely, pay you.

So rather than not getting an email, perhaps there is a better way to get a paid sign-up.

(1) [https://tubelytics.com](https://tubelytics.com) (2) I'm OSX Safari with flash block on (3) I'm not a target customer

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much for the feedback and I agree completely. I need to tell about the product. I will relaunch it in the next 7 days.

<comment><USER12> Good luck getting on top of HN again :P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> For those of you who think you need a "good server" to be on the front page of hacker news, you're wrong. My blog hit #2 on HN and landed on the front page a few times in the last six months.

I have a Rackspace 256mb ram slice hosting Wordpress. No caching at all, none.

I also run, on the same server, a teamspeak server for a friend that still plays games.

I peaked at 290 simultaneous people reading my post. Teamspeak server was still working fine.

</comment><comment><USER14>
        These numbers tell me I'll have to completely change
        the landing page as it's not converting well.

Don't optimize your site for HN unless you want to spend the next two years crawling towards your first thousand users - YouTube publishers in significant numbers just don't hang out here. Most startups should take heed of those numbers[1] too before they design a content strategy around HN hoping that will give them traction.

[1] 15,000 uniques led to just 78 trials, 1 paid customer

<comment><AUTHOR> For sure, although my landing page is not really telling my product's story very well yet.

<comment><USER12> I also thought the same, if your core-audiences visited your site and they could need it, they are probably gonna enter their mail.

But i don't think a lot of HN people have YouTube video's so important, they would pay for tracking it.

I could be wrong though :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> 1\. Your mom's comment was hilarious.

2\. I agree with your point about the standard top comment on most Hacker News posts being contrarian. It can be very annoying, but having a strong dissenting voice also helps keep BS posts in check. I have noticed a lot more jokes as the top comments within posts though. I'm not sure if that's good or BSD. The first example that comes mind is a post titled 'You have a 0.000007% chance of becoming a billionaire'. The top rated comment was the common Reddit joke 'So you're saying I have a chance'.

<comment><USER16> +1 on the number 1.

It's funny how all moms are the same. Hilarious!!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Hacker News is strange... Post that describe a product that was built in a weekend manage to reach #1 all the time, but when I submit my project that I've been working on for more than a month, everyone collectively ignores is, and it receives 0 upvotes.

<comment><AUTHOR> You might be suffering from the fact that HN seems predominantly OSX-based and your app is for Windows 8. From my stats, only 1/5 of HN is on Windows.

<comment><USER18> That's actually very interesting. Do your stats tell you what portion are on Linux?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. This is from the last two posts:

31.64% Macintosh 24.01% iOS 22.29% Windows 13.93% Android 6.95% Linux

That's ~55% on Apple browsers and at least 65% on Webkit (if you assume everyone on Mac, iOS and Android is on Chrome/Safari).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I had my last post on the home page for almost a day. That spike in the viewers count and twitter feeds are probably the most notable effect out of it. If you need to spread any sort of awareness about any topic, HN seems to be a great way to do that, also the fact that so many other platforms pick up their news from HN only helps.

</comment><comment><USER20> I wrote [http://gitignore.io](http://gitignore.io) and I saw a lot more traffic and traction by posting a link to my website in Reddit's /r/git than I did on Hacker News. Have you tried posting on different mediums and comparing the results?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not yet, I'm finishing the launch version this week and will start posting it around then. Thanks for the tip :)

<comment><USER20> Cool, can't wait to see the results.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> HN people rediscovering the /. effect? Learnt nothing new at all.

</comment><comment><USER22> I enjoyed reading the report back. The author laid it out clearly and informatively. However the dismissal of the top HN comment, appears unfounded. _[1]_

It reads like a case of minimizing dissonance. In other words, it seems the author is attempting to rationalize away another person's viewpoint, by simply characterizing it as snark.

Some more probable explanations why the comment made it to #1, could have been:

\- It felt authentic. _" I've lived and built two companies in Thailand over the last 14 years."_

\- The answer expressed a contrary viewpoint, giving HN readers a more balanced view of the topic.

_[1][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6541441](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6541441) _

<comment><USER23> Agreed. "I had a different experience" isn't snark, it's a counterpoint.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Clever f __*er! Looking forward to round two of the statistics and how they compare with the one in this article.

</comment><comment><USER25> I know I'm not the only one to find it hilarious that for every single top-HN post you make, you can double the traffic by simply posting the status of each one.

As much flak as HN gets, I have found that it's the best source of traffic. My post yesterday about building a desk stayed at #2 for half a day and I got about 20,000 views with an average time of 40 seconds. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6566643](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6566643)

</comment><comment><USER26> I think this post will receive the same amount of viewers than the last one, prepare your servers ! :) Joke apart, your content is quite good, well redacted but you also have a nice and content-centered blog. It's far more readable than other blogs or academic papers and I think it's also thanks to this that you were featured. Keep posting your posts on HN ! Thanks

</comment><comment><USER27> Front page for a day is not that hard, if you have something relevant and interesting. I think it is better to avoid direct description of your project, and choose unique scenario or good story. Also good idea is to run stress test on your site before.

I made it last year. I needed some feedback and early adopters, it was great to kick start small community. Also my project changed name and that post made it #1 result on Google in 3 weeks. There was handful of serious job offers as direct result of that post, last one 3 months latter.

It has been year since my last post on HN. My project is stable-enough, I have some pilot customers, and even made first profit this month. On other side I have only 50 twitter followers and no invitations to conferences. So I will probably hit HN again in a few weeks :-)

</comment><comment><USER12> As a user, i interacted a lot on you're blog (read many articles and etc).

It's very well designed, has interesting content and it's easy to just read the next article.

It's probably one of the best blogs i've ever met (excellent place for your links (at the end of your article for a follow-up story).

And, you have converted me to the panda show. Great music!

So congrats and nice job :)

PS. You didn't convert a lot of your users, because it had nothing to do with Tubelytics. It was an awesome read, but probably missed your core audience attention :-) (personal opinion though).

</comment><comment><USER28> Thus Narcissus fell into the lake

<comment><USER29> This is all rippingly hilarious. Especially the last point about the mom. Then I read the Narcissus comment. And I lost it laughing. Yet the really funny part is that I don't think he sees himself as a Narcissus at all. He's pointing out some stats--out loud.

<comment><USER28> Honestly, I would have done exactly the same thing as him if I were in the same position.

I think however we as founders can easily get focused on tracking metrics that in the end amount to fairly trivial things. They help us make changes around the margins, which can payoff big or just be small gains.

I think what he did was a good exercise, however the whole post, analyze, post thing though is a tad navel gazing for my tastes.

<comment><USER29> Hey. Then if you don't really thing he was Narcissus tumbling into the reflective pool, why did you make the remark? I thought you were criticizes him. He wrote the article as an innocent analysis, like your reply to me said. A lot of good people are so insulated that they have no idea how they are viewed by others. And, to be fully analytical, I got voted 0 for my comment. : ) Which honestly, I'd rather have than a 100. It gives me challenge fodder for improvement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is a meta test piece also on the power of sequels ! Once people are sold on a story, you can double-down quite readily by a small incremental expenditure of work on the n+1 piece of information that enlightens/informs the previous one that people have a previous investment in (learning the plot/characters/setting, etc).

Good work !

_________

150+ points on HN 170+ comments on HN

280+ points on HN 90+ comments on HN

The sequel has ~2x upvotes, plus a better karma/comment ratio as well...

</comment><comment><USER31> I wish people would stop using the word "snark". I want to believe B.F Skinner wasn't completely right.

</comment><comment><USER32> Result of one of my front page articles on HN: [https://fbcdn-sphotos- c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/41591...](https://fbcdn-sphotos- c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/415919_10152092562360434_1943483137_o.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER33> OMG who cares. I'm sorry, but this is just technology startup navel gazing nonsense.

<comment><USER34> Y Combinator is an incubator for startups. Do you also get frustrated when you see pictures of cats on icanhascheezburger?

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> You deserve it and your luck was with you. Finally will say Lucky(2%),Work(49%)and Content(49%)makes your post #1. But i can understand this awesome feeling when you receive traffic more than your month in a single day. Keep going

</comment><comment><USER36> Am I the only person who actually enjoys Thai beer?!

<comment><USER34> I'm with you, most beers sold in Thailand are pretty good. Singha, Tsingtao, Tiger, Chang. The comparison to Budweiser is way off imo!

<comment><USER36> Love them all!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Nice metrics, I especially liked the device breakdown: 66% desktop 25% mobile and 9% tablet. Welcome to the post-PC era (!)

</comment><comment><USER38> What you need to post now is... what happens when you're #1 on Hacker News for 2 times out of 2 days.

</comment><comment><USER39> How do you measure the facebook shares?

</comment><comment><USER40> OMG, those are great stats, I created a new account just after reading this article.

</comment><comment><USER41> Pieter,

Would you be interested in doing a talk on all this at the next Beercamp at Punspace?

</comment><comment><USER42> I love how you are #1 talking about what happen when you're are #1

</comment><comment><USER43> ...Your website crashes and you discover what memcache is for.

<comment><USER44> Memcache is used for storing binary data usually from web queries. This site was all static content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> It's ironic how this post is also number 1

<comment><USER46> I wish it was ironic, but I find it typically narcissistic. HN can resist a good navel gaze with a side of a lint-picking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I imagine the next post is gonna be titled: "What happens when you're #2 on Hacker News for a day"

</comment><comment><USER48> You're again. Sorry for that</comment>


Mcrouter: A memcached protocol router for scaling memcached deployments - <AUTHOR> https://code.facebook.com/posts/296442737213493/introducing-mcrouter-a-memcached-protocol-router-for-scaling-memcached-deployments/ <comment><USER2> At first I thought "how does this improve over consistent hashing?"

Then I read it & saw the pretty pictures and realized they address many more concerns that just consistent hashing would ... and, even in that case, moving the server list to a single centralized spot (mcrouter) and letting your clients just point at that spot is a definite win. Otherwise, when you update your server list, you have to update every single client.

nice work, FB! And well described in the blog post.

</comment><comment><USER3> How is this different from twemproxy[1]?

EDIT: Looks like instead of using distinct ports to delineate separate clusters like twemproxy, it uses key prefix routing. It also supports "replicated pools", and a few other fancy/neat things. Interesting!

[1]: [https://github.com/twitter/twemproxy](https://github.com/twitter/twemproxy)

<comment><USER4> One of the primary reasons we switched to it at Instagram (we were using twemproxy) is that it has much more robust failure handling than twemproxy did, at least at the time. That may have changed. Our experience was that if we lost a single memcache server, it caused multi-gets that included the lost server to fail completely or hang / timeout, instead of just not including results from the down host.

<comment><USER3> At ($dayjob) we currently use twemproxy (30 nodes with ~4k get/s each), so this is very interesting to me. Thanks for the info/feedback.

<comment><USER4> To elaborate: twemproxy supports auto_eject_hosts, but the host is removed from the ring until a timeout and it's portion of the keyspace is re-allocated to other machines during this time. There are numerous problems with this, but the biggest problem is that it causes inconsistent views of the ring if one or more client hosts is unable to reach some of the machines in the ring for transient periods of time, which is a pretty normal kind of thing if you've got clients and ring nodes distributed over multiple loosely coupled failure domains. mcrouter is much more capable in terms of handling node failure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looks like a great improvement over a simpler scaling solution, Netflix's EVCache: [https://github.com/Netflix/EVCache/wiki](https://github.com/Netflix/EVCache/wiki)

</comment><comment><USER6> from the github readme "It's a core component of cache infrastructure at Facebook and Instagram where mcrouter handles almost 5 billion requests per second at peak." 5 billion per sec?! i think that include frontend and backend like ads, analytics etc.</comment>


Golang and why it matters - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@jamesotoole/golang-and-why-it-matters-1710b3af96f7 <comment><USER2> I recently posted on the community group with the title golang, they were pissed. The subject was diverted to "Language is called Go not Golang". So if you don't want to be facing their wrath, it'd be cool to call the language Go :D

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10899576](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10899576)</comment>


Google's Bazel build system integrates with XCode - <AUTHOR> http://tulsi.bazel.io/ <comment><USER2> Past discussion of Bazel in general: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9256844](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9256844)</comment>


Mass Surveillance Is an Important Part of Yahoo's Business Model - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-10-10/mass-surveillance-is-part-of-yahoo-s-business-model <comment><USER2> 99% of the accounts on Yahoo Mail are for accounts which have little consequence for the reputation of its users. Yahoo is the wastebasket of the Internet, a kibble drawer for frivolous social media signups and forum registrations, and the goto service when one doesn't want to hand over his/her _actual_ email address.</comment>


Show HN : Parents start collecting your kids stories from everywhere - <AUTHOR> http://justprecious.net

<comment><USER2> "Uncaught TypeError: Object [object Object] has no method 'tagsInput' "

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, looking into it right now :) I think we are getting this when we embedded youtube / tumblr videos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Sorry if my comment is misplaced, but isn't collect the term also used for Prism-like programs ? I am not sure I would like to 'collect' most of my kids private life before there are able to give their consent, and understand what it means (and how it can backfire).

<comment><USER4> There's nothing inherently wrong with collecting or collections.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is there an option for a one time payment rather than a subscription?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hosting images and data will be expensive, at the moment difficult to predict all the future costs. Our objective is store it for generation by paying little.

We are starting with monthly and yearly plan but definitely think over one time. Cheers

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Neat and useful. Like the bold move with we charge from day 1.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, we learned a lot when we launched JustMigrate. Free services cannot guarantee data forever :)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Rather a HN for science in general or medical matters? - <AUTHOR>

In the last two weeks I installed a HN clone for medical issues but now I am not sure if a HN clone for science matters in general would be better? What do you think?<p>(PS: For those who dont know: HN is opensource by PG) <comment><USER2> There has been one for over a year, <http://www.hackermed.com/> , unfortunately no one is using it. I posted an article a couple of months ago, and that is just about its last use.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Speaks a lot for the switch to science matters...if at all, but wouldnt that be a decent site? The latest high quality news on science issues? I would love that!</comment></comment>


Peter Thiel Is Reportedly Exploring Launching Conservative News Outlet - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-04/peter-thiel-said-to-be-exploring-launching-conservative-news-outlet <comment><USER2> Good, and I hope it takes off. While there are numerous respected conservative magazines, the right has no legitimate news networks. I think we'd all be better off if conservatives had, say, a TV channel that actually reported real news.

<comment><USER3> >the right has no legitimate news networks.

Unless you specifically mean TV channels, the right has it's fair share of legitimate news outlets, like the WSJ.

I'm not sure that anyone would be better off with any more 24h cable news channels. The problem with all of these, regardless of political orientation, is that there's only so much useful content that can be produced on an ongoing basis that will appeal to the common denominator. As a result, we end up with the same kinds of talk shows and propaganda pieces that plague all cable news channels, and ultimately serve to delegitimate them.

<comment><USER4> I actually think you could pretty easily fill 24 hours with talk about policy if you had the funding and willpower to do so. The question is whether a market exists for that, or whether you can create one. I'd love to see any television station present meaningful policy discussions, regardless of political alignment. To me that's a much more important indicator of quality than "conservative/liberal/whatever."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How does this fit into his Monopoly first strategy? News outlets are not monopolies and have no significant competitive advantage (unlike PayPal and FB which have network effects).

I've listened somewhere that he also opened a restaurant some time ago and it failed, which is why he's so negative on restaurants.

</comment><comment><USER6> Diversity of thought is a good thing. I hope Thiel succeeds.

</comment><comment><USER7> Comments here are hilarious. Replace "Peter Thiel" with "Elon Musk" and "conservative" with "liberal" and the circle jerk will fly.

</comment><comment><USER8> This again? Either I'm entering my dotage, or this was on the front page recently. Either way, if Thiel wants to burn his money for ideological purposes, I'm sure that the line to sell him matches is around the block.

Edit: naeem, I'd encourage you to move past assumptions and actually look at comment histories; in my case at least you're dead wrong.</comment>


Show HN: Literary Map – Post moments and follow your books around de world - <AUTHOR> https://literarymap.app <comment><USER2> The map style looks great.

I am not sure I get the idea right. Is it to anchor the book fictive universe into the real world (If so a way to snip the relevant text/pages would be great because I'm not reading a whole book just for 10 lines about the location I'm interested about)? Or is it to share the location you were at while reading a particular book ?

The world tour doesn't seem to be complete yet.

Once created I couldn't reposition the marker for Atlantis City so you will have to relocate it more accurately.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can do both, you can set the fictive universe or the location were your are reading it. At the end is your literary map of the world (you can see only your literary moments if you choose 'Mine' in the layer control).

Good suggestion about the relevant pages.

For the moment is not possible relocate literary moments already saved. You would have to deleted and create a new one. Thanks for the feedback.</comment></comment>


Amazon's Bezos, Other Corporate Executives Sold Shares Just in Time - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/bezos-other-corporate-executives-sold-shares-just-in-time-11585042204 <comment><USER2> De-paywalled: [http://archive.md/mZeA0](http://archive.md/mZeA0)</comment>


Reasons to Use a Clipboard Manager - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/designpuddle/3-reasons-you-should-use-a-clipboard-manager-49dk <comment><AUTHOR> You copied some data to the clipboard and then accidentally overwrote it. That's no longer a problem, it's still there!

You need to copy a few bits of info from one app to another. Rather than hopping between them, copy them all first then paste them in the order required. Easy.

<comment><USER2> That's a good text summary. The article added 4 animated gifs to stretch the content (or tried to be funny).</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Would you pay for this app? - <AUTHOR>

I have an idea for an app and would like feedback as to whether you would want it and how much you would pay. I basically want to make something like Dropbox where you can store your files online and they are automatically synced, but instead of storing your files on a third party's servers, store them on your own computers. You would set up the app on all the computers you want to save your files to and then you'd have a RAID-like setup where if one computer (or maybe more) is destroyed, the rest would have backups of the file. It'd work a lot like Bit Torrent.<p>Would you pay for something like this? How much? <comment><USER2> Good idea -- see AeroFS for a few clever people doing it already (<http://www.aerofs.com>). In answer to your question, I wouldn't pay for it, but don't let that discourage you as I'm almost certainly not your target user (and I would suspect many others on HN aren't either).

</comment><comment><USER3> Dropbox is free, and they're actually providing something that costs money (bandwidth and disk space in some data center holding copies of my data). Your service would use my own computers, my own bandwidth and my own disks. I wouldn't personally buy it, as I already have my own little scripts that make mirrored backups each night. If I were to find some feature of yours so compelling though, it'd be an "app store" type purchase -- $6.99 or less one- time fee.

</comment><comment><USER4> <http://sparkleshare.org> go help them out ;) I'm quite content with dropbox, but looking at the landscape there is a lot of potential for competitors. So go for it!

</comment><comment><USER5> If there is a lucrative untapped market for that sort of thing it might possibly be in the enterprise market, where corporations/governments are worried about both data loss and the security implications of storing stuff on others' servers (I'm assuming it syncs files and devices in ways that go above and beyond simply offering the standard option to save everything on the company's network server)

Then again, it's a much harder product to build and market to enter...

</comment><comment><USER6> I use Windows Live Mesh for this. By default it replicates across your PCs and Macs, but you can configure it to sync to cloud storage as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> That sounds like what I want, maybe I can use that for myself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> well, I don't pay for Dropbox and I am quite happy with how they have solved this problem

so I guess to answer your question... i would not be one of your paying customers and my interest in having to setup a service on all of my machines that is anymore complicated that Dropbox would also be near 0

</comment><comment><USER8> Good idea, i'm actually going to do this, quite useful.

I don't know how you could profit from something like this though, i don't see a good reason why i should pay someone when i can do this with my own resources.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've seen something that is exactly what you describe. I can't remember the name though. Not that that should discourage you from creating this.

</comment><comment><USER10> Dropbox is one of the only services I pay for (last.fm is the other). I don't see why I would use this app, but that's just me.</comment>


Everything you need to know about HTML5 video and audio - <AUTHOR> http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/everything-you-need-to-know-about-html5-video-and-audio/ <comment><USER2> Anyone know if you can do anything like Silverlight's Smooth Streaming with HTML5 video?

Everyone I have showed it to has been really impressed with the experience you get with Silverlight watching the NFL on NBC online.</comment>


Netflix Founder Acquires Online Education Start-Up - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/20/netflix-founder-acquires-online-education-start-up/#more-38799

<comment><USER2> Did I understand this correctly... it's Reed Hastings himself buying the startup and NOT Netflix?

<comment><USER3> Yes, as both the title of the article and it's text clearly tell.

"He donated the the money to buy the company to Charter School Growth Fund. The acquisition price was not disclosed. He also invested $10 million in DreamBox to expand to more schools and subjects beyond math. He will become chairman of the DreamBox board, while continuing his role at Netflix, and DreamBox's co-founder and chief executive, Lou Gray, will leave the company."

He = Reed Hastings</comment></comment>


The Laws you can't see - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/07/09/opinion/the-laws-you-cant-see.html <comment><USER3> Reading this article it suddenly became clear: FISA _is_ an Executive Branch agency that defends executive actions, much like the DoJ. In other words, it _is_ the DoJ. When it (at least) comes to the 4th Amendment, the executive branch has manipulated Section 215 of the Patriot managed to totally unchain itself from the Constitution and do whatever it wants, in secret, from both the public and the other branches of government.

The magnitude of this is stunning. Historically, the executive has unchained itself for brief periods for specific issues. I do not know of any attempt to unchain itself in perpetuity, and in secret.

The fact that anyone finds it the least defensible is even more stunning. I mean, even if you are for mass surveillance (and there are many who legitimately feel that way) surely you must be concerned that it was done without your knowledge or consent.

There are two paths to solving this problem, both of which result in striking down Section 215 of the Patriot Act: a court challenge (which the EFF is spear-heading) and an act of Congress (which is very unlikely given the lack of public awareness and uproar).

Personally, I would like to see an additional censure on Obama and all other executive, legislative, and judicia officials who abrogated their duty to protect the Constitution of the United States of America. It needs to be our harshest censure, to send a message to future administrations that secret coups will not be tolerated.

<comment><USER4> Still the best article I've seen on this whole affair was the one at foreigpolicy.com back on June 11:

[http://www.foreignpolicy.com/2012/06/11/to_protect_and_defen...](http://www.foreignpolicy.com/2012/06/11/to_protect_and_defend_obama_constitution)

The US actually tried to impeach a president for lying about a sexual encounter with a White House intern yet does not seem to care much about a president who despite teaching Constitutional Law (G.W. Bush was not even a lawyer) does not appear to know his primary responsibility as president - <USER2> protect and defend the Constitution - and proceeds to violate the sworn oath of allegiance he took (twice) after being elected and reelected.

Do we really care more about presidents who lie about sex scandals than presidents who violate their oath? Maybe we should change the oath to state "I do solemnly swear that I will not have sexual encounters with any White House staff." Under that oath, JFK would have been in clear violation.

The Constitution is far more important than any single president, administration or election.

I guess there are still some folks who might still believe that there's really been no obvious violations of the Constitution in the course of these surveillance programs. But then why did so many senior lawyers at DOJ, even the Attorney General himself, oppose and threaten to resign (or resign) over these programs when they learned about them years ago? How many more lawyers need to look at the facts and say, "Something is not right here," before we all agree to get to work and fix it?

Bush Jr. too was at fault for what has taken place, but it's Obama who has been fully caught out (thanks to Snowden). Why should Obama be excused for this? The issue is not personal nor political (as it may have been with Clinton... as if he was the first president ever to cheat and to lie); it is a matter of protecting the Constitution. What higher calling is there for any public servant? And while it's unfortunate the issue has come to the public light during his term, this is much more important than Mr. Obama, his presidency, his administration, or his legacy.

"Yes we scan." Time to stand down, my brother.

EDIT: added "www." to link

<comment><USER3> > The Constitution is far more important than any single president, > administration or election.

Yes.

Which makes me wonder about the motives of those who pushed for a broad interpretation of section 215. As tempting as it is to think of them as power- hungry, evildoers, I actually don't think that's the case.

There is a cultural movement away from self-restraint, that was nowhere exhibited more freely and forcefully than by George W Bush. His example has been copied in public and private, showing how powerless "the public" really is when it comes to checking unethical, or even illegal behavior of the powerful.

I think we all thought Obama represented a movement back toward self-restraint as a virtue. And yet, time and again he shows himself to be even less restrained than his predecessor - a failing that is all the more terrible for being so very unexpected. The Obama administration should have actively resisted a broad interpretation of 215, and indeed lobbied Congress to amend the bill to avoid any possible loophole. That would have been restraint. Instead, the Obama administration stretched the law to it's breaking point, then did complex legal dances to give their power grab an air of legitimacy.

My heart is broken.

<comment><USER5> "By the people, of the people, and for the people" is a description, not a prescription.

Take a look around -- that movement away from self-restraint is evident everywhere, in public and in private, in business and in government. You can even see it in people's bodies, from eating too much to working out too much.

By the people: a description. If as a society we don't restrain ourselves, it is not a great leap in logic to predict that government will do the same. We are a society obsessed with loopholes & me-first attitudes and we glorify rampant consumerism and pretty people that consume rampantly. Our companies publicly claim to "do no evil" and privately do what they want.

The surprising truth should be that the government is a mirror on ourselves. If we don't like the government, we have a much more sinister problem.

We have met the enemy, and he is us.

<comment><USER6> It is a human condition to have endless wants. The genius of the American experiment was that the Founders understood this, and created institutional checks on the size and power of government-- after all, governments are made up of people. The problem is that these institutional checks are crumbling under the twin weight of the military industrial complex and the entitlement state.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has for years been developing > what is effectively a secret and unchallenged body of law on core Fourth > Amendment issues, producing lengthy classified rulings based on the > arguments of the federal government — the only party allowed in the > courtroom

It is sad indeed, but perhaps every political system sooner or later becomes a tyranny and dictatorship. It may be just a matter of time. If that's true then we live in the most amazing timeline of humans' evolution, and we should all appreciate it enormously.

<comment><USER8> > It is sad indeed, but perhaps every political system sooner or later becomes > a tyranny and dictatorship.

Uh, are we observing the same history here? The trend has distinctly been in the other direction. I'm less afraid of the NSA circa 2013, than Hoover's FBI from the middle of the 20th century, or McCarthy's Senate in the 1950's. The British's Parliament has governed Britain with tremendous continuity for about 325 years now, and it has on the whole only become more democratic over that time. The Soviet Union fell, East Germany fell. Brazil is ripe for democratic reform. Even China probably won't be able to stave off democracy forever at its current pace of development.

<comment><USER9> While I agree with you that there has been lots of historical movement away from tyranny, you'd be a fool to fear McCarthy's Senate of the 50's more than the intelligence apparatus of today.

According to wikipedia:

"Between 1949 and 1954, a total of 109 investigations were carried out by these and other committees of Congress."

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

The Hollywood blacklist at its height listed 300 people. Despite how high- profile it was, these institutions touched microscopic handfuls of people, and they were considerably more public and easy to oppose than the modern NSA.

Compare:

Modern NSA is pretty clearly keeping files on pretty much everyone. Hundreds of millions of people, conservatively.

Number of people on terrorist watch lists: Unclear, anywhere from thousands to millions.

Number of FISA warrants granted: In recent years, from a low of 1,300 (2009) to a high of 1,700 (2012). Call it 6,000 in the period 2009-2012.

Number of people killed via drone strikes: 2,000 to 3,000.

You are VASTLY more likely to impacted by the modern surveillance state than you ever were by the McCarthy investigations, and the government at least holds out the possibility that they will assassinate you without due process, which to my knowledge the McCarthy investigations never did.

I suspect that a similar scale argument holds with Hoover's FBI, though I don't know how I would prove it.

<comment><USER10> The 1950's intelligence community was no joke either. In fact, the CIA probably played a very large role in bringing an end to McCarthyism.

See the following for an interesting tour through that slice of history:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird#Director...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird#Directorate_for_Plans)

[http://carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php](http://carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php)

A couple of representative articles from that time period:

[http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=5MleAAAAIBAJ&sjid=djIMA...](http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=5MleAAAAIBAJ&sjid=djIMAAAAIBAJ&dq=alsop%20mccarthy&pg=3493%2C1113850)

[http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=I8pNAAAAIBAJ&sjid=MYoDA...](http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=I8pNAAAAIBAJ&sjid=MYoDAAAAIBAJ&dq=drew%20pearson%20mccarthy&pg=1628%2C6235663)

Things only got worse for McCarthy through the rest of '53 and into '54.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I like reading the mobile site on the desktop! The column is thin enough to be easily readable and there's no clutter!

<comment><USER12> It would be even nicer with parallel columns IMO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Better title: The article you can't see.

(Had to jigger the site to beat the paywall. What's the way to link through google again?)

Edit: I had reached 10 articles. Easier solution is to just open a private browsing window.

</comment><comment><USER14> "We don't know what we'll find. The surveillance court may be strictly adhering to the limits of the Fourth Amendment as interpreted by the Supreme Court. Or not. And that's the problem: This court has morphed into an odd hybrid that seems to exist outside the justice system, even as its power grows in ways that we can't see."

Don't forget the argument from the other day, though. The Fourth Amendment specifically outlines the use of a "reasonableness" test. If it seems reasonable to the average man, it's probably okay.

Without anybody knowing what's going on, however, there is no common man to check with to see if the government is acting in a reasonable way. Therefore for all intents and purposes there are no limits, aside from precedent, which is wonderfully flexible given the right semantic nudging.

</comment><comment><USER15> "You've reached your limit of 10 complimentary articles this month"

Oh, the irony

<comment><USER16> How exactly is it ironic?

<comment><USER15> The title of the article was "The laws you can't see".

This is an article I couldn't see.

At least until I switched over to a different browser, that is.

<comment><USER17> You mean intentionally exceeding your authorized access with intent to defraud?

[http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1030](http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1030)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Laws we can't see need to be repealed.

</comment><comment><USER19> Does anyone else know if other countries have secret laws? It seems a bit like government by hypocrisy

<comment><USER20> The country alluded to in Kafka's Trial had secret laws and secret one-sided courts and secret charges.

Doesn't sound so far from reality now.

<comment><USER21> I think we need a new word. Kafkaean, because Kafkaesque to me implies "IS LIKE Kafka's nightmares" when I really want to describe it as "IS Kafka's nightmares".

It's funny because when you were in high school and you thought the books you read wouldn't ever apply to life, but now that they do, the thoughts scare the crap outta me.</comment></comment></comment>


Decrypting Crypto, from Bitcoin and Blockchain to ICOs (2017) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://a16z.com/2017/12/08/summit-crypto-alex-rampell/ <comment><USER2> What are the most adopted blockchain apps for consumers? The only one I can think of is BAT/Brave with 5 million MAU.

<comment><USER3> Sort of depends on what you consider a consumer app. CryptoKitties and Loom Networks' ZombieBattleground and DelegateCall have some decent numbers. Then of course there is wallet software that interfaces with blockchain (e.g. Metamask), which could ask if consider a blockchain app or not.

<comment><USER4> Your examples don't inspire a ton of confidence. It's publicly known that Cryptokitties' usage numbers fell off a cliff.[0] I've never heard of Zombie Battleground or DelegateCall before but after doing a bit of research it looks like one is a CCG and the other is a Q&A site. Neither of those products need the blockchain to function and both are going into exceptionally competitive markets against deep pocketed, competent competitors. (Artifact, Hearthstone, MTG Arena, Gwent, Quora, Stack Overflow, Yahoo Answers - ok maybe not Yahoo)

I don't think there's any evidence to support the claim that such an application exists currently. I know Brave uses BAT, but that's not really their selling point if you are to believe their own marketing.[1]

I think you'd have to be a fanatic to think that there are rosier times ahead.

[0]: [https://dappradar.com/app/3/cryptokitties](https://dappradar.com/app/3/cryptokitties) [1]: [https://brave.com/](https://brave.com/)

<comment><USER2> The whole point of BAT in Brave is that it is seemless. The donations will happen automatically. What's your point?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hey everyone! I'm going to print a whole bunch of money. It's going to be so awesome. Here you can have some! It's going to be so awesome! You just need to help me convince other people that it's valuable...

</comment><comment><USER6> [Plug alert] Gifting is one of the few practical use cases for transacting in crypto today. We just launched [https://Biterica.com](https://Biterica.com): Gift Bitcoin forward and we're getting some positive feedback on /r/Bitcoin. Would love to hear feedback (good and bad) from HN as well.</comment>


Ask HN: Ways to Improve Cognition? - <AUTHOR> I was reading the [television and cognitive decline](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-39354-4) thread and it got me thinking: what are the best (i.e. most efficient and proven effective) ways to improve cognition?<p>It seems there are a lot of services out there that purport to provide some benefit, but I'm hoping some folks in this community can point to something true, even if it isn't necessarily fashionable. <comment><USER3> Exercise is vital... [https://www.ausmed.com/cpd/articles/exercise-induced- neuropl...](https://www.ausmed.com/cpd/articles/exercise-induced- neuroplasticity) [https://www.wbur.org/foodtalk/2019/12/27/food-podcast- resist...](https://www.wbur.org/foodtalk/2019/12/27/food-podcast-resistance- strength-training)

Remember that a good diet is also important... [https://www.organicfacts.net/most-unhealthy- foods.html](https://www.organicfacts.net/most-unhealthy-foods.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> Exercise, particularly cardio. Somewhere around 45 min of cardio, the production of endorphins really kicks in. It can make street drugs look like candy.

For general health, weight training is more important than cardio, but for mental health, stress resilience, and cognition, cardio is our more powerful tool.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think changing the way you think has more value than anything else - <USER2> to get better at thinking by optimizing your biology is like trying to become a better programmer by buying a faster computer.

Read about mental models, read about meaningness, and learn to view the world as a fractal system of systems. I find that reading about ecology, psychology, and sociology to be particularly helpful in building/debugging my mental models, especially my models of other people's models.

That said, getting enough sleep and exercise wouldn't hurt.

</comment><comment><USER6> Yeah, I came here to say: Exercise.

I was just reading a book called "The Secret Life of the Grown-up Brain: The Surprising Talents of the Middle-Aged Mind." One chapter discusses the 21st- century discovery of the brain's ability to create new brain cells in a crucial area....after exercise. It ran counter to 100 years of biological theory, but it was confirmed and confirmed again.

Exercise.

The only thing I'd add is: lowering stress. (Because stress damages your brain.) Meditation, sleeping well, having a healthy social life can all help. Basically, if you start taking basic steps to improve your general health...you will in fact improve.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've subjectively noticed improvement using Lions Mane Mushroom supplements as well as self-administered ultrasound treatments and TENS

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm not a doctor but I've noticed some celebrities who are aging well participate in high-risk physical activities. This is true for some of my friends too.

Motorcycling (Keanu Reaves), martial arts (Joe Rogan), surfing (Anthony Keidis).

If you put your body at risk, your mind has no choice but to stay quick. Be careful though!

</comment><comment><USER9> A sufficient amount of sleep. What constitutes 'sufficient' is likely quite individual.

<comment><USER10> The quality has to be good, too. I was getting "enough" sleep, but it didn't matter until I got some pills (trazadone) that really knocked me out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Like many comments here...exercise is the key. currently I am reading 'Spark' book by John Ratey, you might want to check this book. He explains really well how brain improves with aerobic exercise.</comment>


While Intel is messing around with TV, the PC business is dying - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2012/03/13/businessinsiderreminder-while-intel.DTL

<comment><USER2> lol the funny thing about the title when I read it was "yeah, and they freaken' get it. They are not waiting till the company is tanking to think 'omg how do I salvage'? They are being pro-active shooting in every direction hoping for a hit."

"Intel has almost no presence in smartphones or tablets." which is an important quote. Because if the majority of the business will be smartphones/tablets then ARM wins by a leap. And if ARM wins, then why not move ARM into the PC market?

Problem with Intel: Architecture + Manufacturing. Their Architecture is not the best, their manufacturing is, gives em an edge. However as ARM architecture gets up there, their partners are helping with the manufacturing innovation. Its like 1 giant fighting an army of slightly smaller giants.

<comment><USER3> It seems to me that the manufacturing strength would be an very strong option for Intel in the future. Even in the event that ARM completely dominates the CPU market, Intel could still profitably function as a fab producing ARM processors.</comment></comment>


CNet.com Gets a Facelift... - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13953_3-9974373-80.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Cnet.com was one of the first tech sites I visited on a regular basis for news. Eventually I fluttered over to Slashdot, then Digg, then Y!Hack and use Techmeme to find out what's going on.

I wish 'em luck, but they may need more than a facelift to get me back to their site in a regular way.</comment>


Ballmer Speaks, Yahoo's Market Cap Jumps More Than $3 Billion - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/16/ballmer-speaks-yahoos-market-cap-jumps-more-than-1-billion/

<comment><USER2> Am I the only who thinks Yahoo is going to be in excellent shape after they trim down and start focusing on what they're good at?

<comment><USER3> My Mother uses Yahoo for mail and news, I use Geocities for a few small webpages. I think they're a great company with the best PhD-to-riches story ever from the 2 founders Jerry and David. I think their founding story is even better than Google, even if their market cap is a fraction of that.

<comment><USER4> What's so interesting about Jerry and David's story? I remember to have found what I read about it quite uninteresting, so maybe I lost something.

<comment><USER3> I think it's because they turned a website list into a 60 billion dollar company in about 5 years. And one investor in the early days was Masayoshi Son, and he was once the second richest person in the world in 1999.

And that advert in the film Inspector Gadget.

It's not worth a corporate biography book, I admit.

[Edit] And after the dotcom crash, their market cap (in 2006/2007) was just half of its peak, quite impressive. And they never chickened out and bought, say, Disney. They stuck to their guns.

<comment><USER5> What's the PhD part? What I like about Google's story is the PhD-technology- research that went into it (tho Woz wasn't a PhD student, I'd put the Apple story in a similar category).

Creating a $60B co from nothing is an astonishing achievement - but this one sounds like a business victory, not a technology victory. Although cool++, it's not a PhD-to-riches story - they just happened to be PhD students.

<http://docs.yahoo.com/info/misc/history.html> "Before long they were spending more time on their home-brewed lists of favorite links than on their doctoral dissertations."

<comment><USER4> May I also ask a language-related question. Why are you saying "story" in all these posts, when you are talking about a true story? I thought the word "history" was to be used in those cases, but I think there is a subtler difference between story/history than I previously thought (I thought: story=fiction, history=non-fiction). Could anybody please give me a pointer on this?

<comment><USER3> Sorry, story is used in British English (from my experience) to mean a description of an event or a sequence of events, fictional or not.

<comment><USER4> Thank you very much! I'm glad to know this now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Every time MS nods at Yahoo the stock rises X%, and when the deal is obviously not going to happen it drops > X%. This is a really interesting way of battering your competition.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'd look in my own backyard if I were Balllmer. dump everything that is average (msn, vista, live, etc.) and come up with brand new products, from scratch

<comment><USER8> This is why you're not in charge of MS. They make tons of money on their existing, if problematic, products.

<comment><USER9> Not for long they won't.

Just in the consumer space right now they're fighting Google and Yahoo in web, Sony and Nintendo in gaming, Apple in mp3, Android/IPhone in smartphones.

Plus most of their money comes from lucrative deals with computer manufacturers. Sooner or later Dell, etc will realize that Apple is eating at their market share and Vista isn't helping and they'll start reconsidering their agreements with MS (and perhaps consider investing in customized versions of Linux)

All while Google Apps is starting to compete with their Office/Exchange offering on the low end and IBM and Sun are getting ready to step in at the high end with cross platform solutions. I'm curious at how MS is going to turn the situation around.</comment></comment></comment>


Obama and the dawn of the fourth republic - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/11/07/fourth_republic/index.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm posting this, even though it's a political article, because of their reasoning why political eras change: changes in technology. Supposedly Obama's administration will start a more participatory democracy, which is probably of interest to hackers.</comment>


Sell your expertise and you have a limited repertoire. - <AUTHOR> http://midcenturymodernist.com/2013/furniture-objects/designers-makers/the-eames-translated-the-process-of-discovery-into-creative-work/ <comment><USER2> The full quote:

"Sell your expertise and you have a limited repertoire. Sell your ignorance and you have an unlimited repertoire.

He was selling his ignorance and his desire to learn about a subject. The journey of not knowing to knowing was his work."

— Richard Saul Wurman on Charles Eames</comment>


Ask HN: Starting work at a early-stage startup, what should I expect? - <AUTHOR> Starting tomorrow I'll be working at a very early-stage startup with $400K funding and three other people. I'll be working as a software dev, any tips? Things I should expect?<p>Thanks all! <comment><USER2> Sounds like they got seed funding. Depending on the startup that money may go a decent way or be gone in 6 months. Understand the runway and the expectations as well as set reasonable deadlines for them. It is better to say 1 week and be done in 1 week, than say 2 days and be done in a week.

Other general advice:

\- Expect some chaos, it doesn't mean the founders are bad, it is normal when things are this early.

\- Expect things to be a bit disorganized and that they won't have processes setup and even on-boarding will not be smooth, just go with the flow and help them find places it can get better.

\- Don't try to implement crazy processes and procedures when the company is so early on. Product fit/delivery is more critical than having a good CI/CD process or having deployments perfect.

\- Be willing to jump in and help do whatever is needed, be a true team player and don't complain.

\- Find ways you can contribute to solving the problem beyond just writing some code. Find quick ways to test ideas and to show the team results.

\- Enjoy yourself, and don't forget to take time to relax and unwind away from work. Startups are fun, and hanging out with the people you work with is good bonding and has lots of positives, but make time for things away from work and separate from just work people. Otherwise you will lose your identity outside of work and that is hard to recover from mentally.

\- If you have specific questions let me know, happy to share my personal experiences and what I tell new hires myself.

</comment><comment><USER3> Congratulations on your next chapter. Some things I really wish I was told before I went on a one-year stint at a tech startup:

\- Workplace policies have only ever been communicated to you, you're now going to see them in action. Expect contradictions immediately, and set the tone early for your expectations based on your hiring contract (i.e. If they told you it's 9-5 but you observe this not so and you're de facto expected to be there much longer, do not ignore this. Address immediately.)

\- Do everything you can to make your boss / the founders look good. This includes your own job, of course, but show initiative in all manners of the organization. Know a potential lead for new business? Make it known. Have a suggestion that will speed up your teams output? Prepare a succinct explanation of it.

\- Do whatever you can to be positive, it will be welcomed and deeply appreciated. Founders are constantly smelling burning money and putting out fires when possible. If you can smile occasionally it'll distract everyone from the multitude of Horrible Looming Realities that follow every startup. If you're known as a "nice colleague" it'll do you wonders.

\- Learn more about your own output. If you work in a better environment than the one work has created, attempt to foster one that calls for better work. Not everybody loves working in an open concept office/shared workspace.

\- Back up all requests / suggestions / comments with data. Nobody likes a 'talking head.' If you can speak your bosses language (increasing value exchange) you'll have their ear no matter if they follow your requests or not. It is extremely important you tie every comment you make about building a better product/company clearly ties back to what you are all there to do.

\- Keep a work journal. This helped me immensely to process all the lessons learnt in startup land. And I cannot recommend how important it is to reflect on your work. Even 5 minutes of writing in a doc every evening will do you wonders at making better decisions, especially as your team starts to inevitably grow.

Best of luck!

</comment><comment><USER4> Lots of great answers here. I'll just add, as a founder myself, that things will probably not be very structured at that stage.

That means you may find yourself working on very different things every day, maybe even things outside the traditional software developer role. (For example, you might be asked to help on customer support). Be open to wearing multiple hats and being a team player.

Also don't expect to get too much direction. You'll need to be a self-starter and autonomous. In fact, I encourage you to take the initiative and even lead projects. There's no better way to hone your leaderships skills than at an early-stage startup.

Finally, don't think of it as a regular job where you clock in at 9 and out at 5. You may not be told explicitly to put in extra hours but if others are doing it you probably should too. You are a part-owner after all (if you're getting equity).

That being said, don't forget to take breaks and recharge!

</comment><comment><USER5> Hi there!

I'm two years in as a cofounder. We have one full time employee beyond me and my business partner. We raised under a million in a pre seed round.

Prepare for what will feel like whiplash when it comes to the product. At this stage, you're trying to find product market fit within the market you've chosen. The idea the founders pitched to you and their investors is likely not where you'll end up, and that's ok! Just don't misinterpret agility for stupidity or lack of vision. Running a business is really hard, and getting other people to buy what you are selling will be wavy and confusing.

As an engineer, invest in things that speed up your process. If you deploy often, make sure your deployment process is optimized. If you need hyper reliable software, spend time investing in testability, test documentation, etc.

Spend a lot of time mentally preparing that what you build will get thrown away, but that's not a bad thing.

Realize that productivity is cyclical, and you when you're most productive, block off your time. When you're less productive, try to tackle low hanging fruit or bang out small tasks that are nagging you or your customers.

Get a therapist if you find yourself stressed or anxious. Talk therapy can help you stay on track.

You'll likely work a lot of nights and weekends, but carve out time for yourself when you can.

Thank any significant others for giving you the space you need to be productive.

Add a hobby that will force you not to work for an hour each day (we added an 8 week old lab puppy I've been training for the last year).

Get sufficient sleep every night.

Realize you'll disagree with decisions that are made, but learn how to trust those around you when they've been empowered to make a decision. It's ok if they're wrong, and it's ok if you would have been right. You'll make mistakes to, and that's just part of life.

I could honestly keep going for an hour :) starting a startup is really hard!

</comment><comment><USER6> [Just to avoid a sad thread next year:]

How are you going to split the equity? Do you have that number in written? Vesting?

</comment><comment><USER7> Burnout is really, make sure you manage your mental and physical health.</comment>


A Response to Michael Kinsley - <AUTHOR> https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/05/23/response-michael-kinsley/

<comment><USER2> "The Government gets to decide what Journalists can & cannot publish". Anyone who publishes against the express wishes of the Govt. is a perpetrator possibly even a criminal.

This is pretty much the central theme of this mans argument. Shockingly there is a small thing called the First Amendment (Freedom of press clause) which would seem to disagree with this opinion strongly.

Why he still continues to be taken seriously - given his very serious misunderstandings of basic US laws is beyond me.

<comment><USER3> That clause doesn't say what a "free" press means. No prior restraints, presumably, but does it mean the media can't be punished for anything and everything short of outright libel or inciting readers to commit crimes? I'm starting to dig through the FP (Federalist Papers) and AFP to try to figure out if the founders had any opinions on the subject of the press publishing classified information, but the entire idea of classification as it exists today may have been foreign and unforeseeable to them.

<comment><USER4> Classified or secret information certainly existed in those times—though it was probably much more limited to direct military concerns.

Examples of classified info: Strategic information would be troop movements (not into battle), supply build ups, orders for materials. Tactical information would be 'order of battle' related —troops and arms being brought directly to conflict, troop movements, etc.

I would be very surprised if free press didn't include the ability to write things that the government didn't approve, short of actual, no kidding treason.

<comment><USER3> But treason is very likely what would be claimed.

Suppose the U.S. army were running a secret, covert war against Native Americans. Someone gets wind of operational details and publishes them in a newspaper. What then? Do we side with the government because operational details are legitimately protected by a doctrine of military secrets or classified information, or do we side with the newspaper because the war against Native Americans was a human rights travesty?

Or suppose the colonies had spies or a method of procuring information about Redcoat army operations, and some redcoat sympathizer published that. In those times, the publisher might have had his house torched and been driven out of town.

Of course information about the NSA's surveillance is at least one step removed from actual operational information that would be classified historically. You didn't classify knowledge of tradecraft, although such knowledge always has and will mark one as an unusual sort of person; what was classified was the information obtained through tradecraft.

The Intelligence Community's argument is that it's so difficult to get the information we need through actual targeted tradecraft that we have to rely on mass surveillance, and that works best if the details of how that mass surveillance works are kept classified. Isolation from public oversight leads to intelligence capabilities that keep escalating until privacy of the country's own citizens or allies is in jeopardy. And the rather simplistic notions from the founding era of secrecy, for military operations or diplomatic negotiations, pitted against freedom of the press, don't shine a lot of light on this ideological divide.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Glenn Greenwald's response seems to be focused on the ad-hominem.

 _But here, it wasn't just Kinsley who mounted an argument for the criminalization of journalism when done against the government's wishes. Almost instantly, other prominent journalists–NBC's David Gregory, The Washington Post's Charles Lane, New York's Jonathan Chait–publicly touted and even praised Kinsley's review._

This is really a question of US law, and of the US constitution. It's not for greenwald to declare what and what not any legal system may deem illegal. If he want's to makew a debate as a matter of constitutional law...OK, but its not a suitable topic for blanket statements. Nor is is appropriate to resort to ad-hominem against anyone who believes that the law should either be enforced or legally invalidated.

The biggest argument against journalists is the hypocrisy to wedgeing their business model into a space as the "fourth branch" of government in the US.

Note that none of this pre-judges the outcome of greenwalds work. The stuff on the NSA is very damaging and very important to have out in the public for debate. A nation cannot exist in a system where privacy is fundamentally undermined and systemically made impossible through pervasive technological means.

<comment><USER6> For some reason I'm reading that as "Prominent journalists claim profession illegal"

<comment><USER5> The reader needs to be careful--"wishes" are at once irrelevant "unkowable"\-- as such they don't make anything "illegal". The language greenwald uses is intentionally mis-leading and manipulative, in this regards.</comment></comment></comment>


Rudy on Rails - <AUTHOR>

I just got the following email from a recruiter:
"Viewed a resume on Dice.  We are working with a client in Columbia, SC needing Rudy on Rails to assist them with an upgrade.  This is a short term contract and the client is offering a telecommute option.
Would like to discuss the details.  What would be a good time to call you?
Thank you, in advance, for your time and consideration.  Looking forward to speaking with you." <comment><USER2> Maybe he wanted to say that he needed Rudy on Meds to assist them with an upgrade. That makes more sense.

</comment><comment><USER3> I know we all love to trash recruiters and think they are an inferior life form, but maybe it was just a typo.

I learned about the Cobra programming language on HN <http://cobra- language.com/docs/quality/> and at first glance I thought it was some kind of joke on Python. But no, it's real enough.

Now ask a recruiter to find a Cobra programmer. He's going to run into Python developers who think he is an idiot. The recruiter doesn't know, maybe somebody created a new language called Rudy ( a ruby + d mix ?) and ported Rails.

Disclaimer: I'm working an an app where these guys would be my customers so I'm trying to see them in a positive light.</comment>


Crowds gather for China iPad launch, China Unicom starts iPhone 4 preorders - <AUTHOR> http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/09/17/crowds_line_up_for_china_ipad_launch_china_unicom_starts_iphone_4_pre_orders_report.html <comment><USER2> That Apple store has the highest percent of "come in to play with / look at Apple products" customers that I have seen in any Apple store. They do make a lot of sales still, of course...</comment>


CoBattery enables battery swapping for iPhone - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cobattery/cobattery-never-plug-in-your-iphone-again

<comment><USER2> Very much like this. I carry 2 batteries for my Samsung S5 now because i cannot swap the iPhone ones and external USB ones are too big/heavy. This would solve it and I can use my iPhone again.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very useful for camping, traveling, music festivals, etc. You just keep a few cheap batteries in your bag and don't have to worry about finding the nearest wall outlet.

</comment><comment><USER4> One of the makers here. Let us know if you have any questions or comments. :)</comment>


The 2013 Mac Pro summed up in one picture - <AUTHOR> http://www.giga.de/desktops/mac-pro-2013/news/mac-pro-2013-klotz-versus-messie-mac-pic-of-the-day/

<comment><AUTHOR> We all know that the "base config" just isn't going to have "enough" \- everyone needs more hard drive space, almost everyone needs an external drive (burn music CDs, burn DVDs for video), half the people need firewire or HDMI converters, etc.

Mac Pro: $2999

Keyboard $49

Mouse $49

Superdrive $79

4K display (one 32" monitor) $500

Promise Pegasus 4TB $1099 [0]

</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>==

$4775

+$400ish in sales tax

</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>==

$5,175.00

Jeez. Yikes. Wow.

[0] (you are buying a Thunderbolt-based system so going with a Thunderbolt- based storage system makes sense)

</comment><comment><USER2> One the one hand, a plug 'n' play architecture is great for expanding the system with new components over time. However, the Mac Pro (and any ATX tower computer) is usually easy to expand with expansion cards. The 2013 Mac Pro is telling me that Apple is playing to the audience that doesn't want (nor need) to know about hardware components, and the only technical expertise is to line up _connector A_ with _slot B_.</comment>


How would you convince a domain owner to sell his domain to you? - <AUTHOR> http://answers.onstartups.com/questions/36106/how-would-you-convince-a-domain-owner-to-sell-his-domain-to-you <comment><USER2> Make him an offer he couldn't refuse... (obligatory)</comment>