Ask HN: No-names, tell your story on how you got PR coverage - <AUTHOR>

To all HN who aren't in YC: how did you go about getting PR coverage without the help of YCombinator's massive influence on PR firms?  Did you get massive exposure in a different way?  What tricks / advantages did you have?
And in the subject I mentioned no-names, people who have yet to have any coverage on anything they've ever built, how are you doing it?
For our site http://browseology.com, it's unclear if the idea is just not clear and understandable enough for PR to write about, or if they just don't care about our request emails because we're nobody yet.
Just wanted to see how the HN community is addressing this issue. <comment><USER2> > For our site <http://browseology.com>, it's unclear if the idea is just not > clear and understandable enough for PR to write about...

Before you solicit more PR for Browseology I would tighten the story focusing on the homepage. You have a pleasant, simple aesthetic but IMHO the homepage contains too many words and options. The result is an unnecessarily confusing first impression. My notes: <http://idea.s3.amazonaws.com/browseology.png>

You might want to gear Browseology more toward women. Women love shopping and they're more social about it than men. I can imagine your app serving their sensibilities better with a little wordsmithing. This might make PR easier for you because it would focus your messaging on benefits rather than features.

<comment><USER3> In that vein, show some product. What does "collaborative shopping" look like on a screen? Bonus points if you show non-clipart people using your product in a way that makes sense to your users. Would they also be on a phone call w/ each other, for instance?

I find that videos are becoming a popular way to tell that story - if you choose to go that route, keep it under ~ 3 mins.

<comment><USER4> kingsley's right. My impressions (these echo others'):

1) Get rid of all that text. Make the search box huge and pre-fill it with something useful. Don't put a bunch of words underneath explaining what the user should fill it with.

2) ~30sec video in _female_ voice of buying something together. Make sure the first ("preview") frame is a picture that shows why your product is awesome.

3) Colors(!) on the front page. Looks like it was designed by a tasteful developer, rather than a tasteful designer (if I'm wrong, then tell the designer to get a bit crazier).

4) No elephants. Seriously. Nobody wants to be an elephant. Even 'gear nerd' men don't want to be elephants. Unless .. you're selling elephants?

5) Integrate with FB/Twitter/Whatever. Put the logos on your _homepage_ so that everybody knows you're 140ch-compatible. This will increase the buzz factor.

6) If your site does badass technical stuff, write some technical blogs about them and get them out to the relevant humangregators. Opinion-makers troll technical posts to find the newest cool stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Y Combinator's massive influence on PR firms"

I assume this was sort of a typo, but YC doesn't have any particular influence on PR firms. I think you mean influence on the press.

To understand how to do without connections, it's probably helpful to understand what value connections have. The point of connections is authentication. If I recommend a startup to a reporter or an investor, they know I have to tell the truth, because if I start to be a source of bum leads they'll stop listening to me.

The value of authentication is that it makes judging you easier. If you come highly recommended, a reporter or investor will at least talk to you. (The joke is that the YC name can get you rejected by any VC in the valley.) If you don't, they have to judge you for themselves, and that's hard, because they get tons of inbound requests and don't usually have technical backgrounds.

There are two possible solutions: (1) get authentication by some other means than personal recommendations, and (2) get publicity through venues that don't require so much authentication.

The best strategy for (1) is to get lots of users. If your traffic graph (or better still, revenue graph) is going up sharply, reporters and investors will pay attention to you. In effect, users are recommending you.

You may say: how can we get lots of users without publicity? The same way Facebook did: make something so good that users tell one another about it. When you have exponential growth, you can start with a very small seed-- just your friends and friends' friends-- and you'll still win.

A good example of (2) is to talk about your startup on venues like HN, where many readers understand technology well and are capable of judging whether something is good or not without any external seal of approval. Being on HN is not the same kind of traffic boost as TechCrunch, obviously, but it's a start. Literally, sometimes: sometimes TC gets leads here.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry Paul, I definitely meant the press. I think I'm lumping PR in general with press incorrectly. Thanks for clarifying.

Your points on authentication is very interesting. It seems that the press definitely cares about names.

Our feedback from Hackernews is good, but in terms of getting people psyched about it, not so much, I think it's mainly because the target audience is not exactly the best one. The feedback we ARE getting is awesome, technical feedback, and experience driven feedback... but we haven't touched on the users who actually want to USE it. We will probably attack the other communities that are 1) people who love to shop, 2) people who do a ton of research on products. That probably also includes a ton of women in that as well.

Can't forget to build a good app either, so those improvements will come as well. It's hard to know what direction to go in and what to focus on without ample feedback. We have plenty of ideas of what could work, speculation, but validation of these ideas, or even new ideas is what we're fishing for now.

<comment><USER6> I launched Feedback Army on HN and it did really well. I did it during a slow news day which helped. And the whole idea came from an HN discussion which helped. But I did make the front page of delicious that week. So sometimes it can work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'll tell you two things that are wrong with your site for free. You allow people to shop together. In general, men compete to display their technical knowledge about things in which they are interested, but don't shop socially. I like sharing my knowledge with friends, but not with strangers or I'd pursue a career in retail. I tend to note things and hunt for them later. Mrs Browl likes to know what her favorite suppliers have on offer and forages about until she finds something that interests her. They're equally valid but quite different selection strategies.

Women love shopping together (frequently without any impulse to buy) because they learn about their friends by seeing what they are interested in. So I think your business model is _much_ more interesting to women shopping for clothes than men shopping for digital cameras. If you buy into this idea, then your target market is female friends separated by geography, not men who would be equally happy working at Best Buy.

Now, your 'big elephant leading little elephant' logo reinforces your site title 'browseology', which is presumably the study of how to successfully browse Amazon for shopping purposes. For men, you're putting them in an inferior position, implying they have less knowledge and bruising tender egos by suggesting they lack browseology skills. For women, you're suggesting that they are elephant friends. Women like elephants, but they don't want to identify with them.

The idea and the technology both have merit. But the social contract you present to potential customers is a double fail. So: rebrand. You could do worse than grab a few co-workers, load up on weed and beer, and lock yourselves in a room for the weekend with a TV that tunes only to Bravo and TLC, to immerse yourselves in gender stereotypes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Men do a lot of research before purchasing some expensive gadget, they goto discussions, review sites, and talk about it in forums. The way it's geared now is sort of the way teenagers goto the store to show each other the coolest things they can buy. So I see your point as being very valid here.

Haha @ "Women like elephants, but they don't want to identify with them."

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Submit to HN, reddit, digg, etc.

Contact relevant and/or popular blogs/news outlets with non-form emails as to how and why they should write about your site. Getting on Lifehacker was a huge boost for one of my side projects.

If you can afford it buy the keywords on google, yahoo, msn that are extremely relevant.

Post to various web application directories(this was probably the least effective use of time)

<comment><USER9> sounds about perfect..the only thing i'd add is actually try and contact individual bloggers wherever possible. In an ideal world, you have already established some form of relationship with a few of them.

<comment><AUTHOR> It also sounds like the first step is to make connections and get some relationships going. It's like highschool all over again ;)

<comment><USER10> what do you think the MBA is for?

<comment><AUTHOR> couldn't you argue that you can get as many connections without going for an MBA? Or is that one of your suggestions?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> We've actually had a lot of luck, but it's still really hard. We've been working on a site to help small startups to track/manage their interactions/promotions with the media (or at least help us do it, but we like to externalize our own tools).

For our successes, sometimes you luck out:

* We created bug.gd and the day we uploaded the logo to a random "Web 2.0" site, one of the moderators posted it on Digg, made the front page, and from there it scattered throughout the world.

* We mentioned bug.gd to TC a couple of weeks later (since the Digg storm imploded our site) and it was picked up by TC, Mashable, Lifehacker, etc.

* As people ran into us and heard about us, they spread the word around, and now it grows on its own, getting covered in PC World, and even local news coverage in random cities: [http://blog.bug.gd/2008/11/08/buggd-coverage-on-wivb-buffalo...](http://blog.bug.gd/2008/11/08/buggd-coverage-on-wivb-buffalo/)

* At Pycon last year, we did a lot of spreading the word by mouth and lightning talk. As an experiment, we released error_help() from the Python interpreter so that you could get help for your most recent exception from the rest of the world who may have run into it. Very few people used it, but we got a lot of interest from people who heard more than a few words about it all.

* For yumbunny.com (a dating site experiment) we mentioned it to TC the week before Valentine's day and they covered it. We issued press releases about it, though, and no one cared one bit.

* For tinyarro.ws, it spread through Twitter like wildfire because it was so odd (and shorteners are inherently viral) and it ended up with coverage on Mashable, Lifehacker, and zillions of blogs.

The only advice I can give is to make something either: (a) Useful enough that people want to talk about it, (b) Interesting/quirky enough that people want to talk about , or (c) be lucky sometimes (i.e. keep rolling the dice and trying until the die roll hits).

My best advice to you is:

* Try new APIs or new fads to get attention for yourself

* Seek partnerships that are mutually beneficial for popular sites

* Send not-too-uptight emails about your service to people you want to cover you. Try not to do form letters.

* Advertise on niche blogs or sites. While they may not give preferential treatment to advertisers, they will have heard of you so you don't end up in the spam folder automatically and you get their ear enough to say a few words.

<comment><AUTHOR> awesome stuff thorax! Seems like you guys have some good ideas that lend themselves to being talked about naturally.

Getting new APIs or new fads is good, but they have to be fitting. Getting buried in all of the trends going on might be harder than standing out in the crowd as something totally different. But then nobody will find you with searches and other trend word searches. I'll definitely keep looking into hooking into trends when/if it makes sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> So, we are in YC, but we'd gotten onto TechCrunch etc multiple times before we were, so I'll respond anyways. You don't have to be "somebody" to get PR coverage.

YC espouses building something people want. To get coverage, you need to build something people want to talk about. You can substitute connections, bulldog PR folks, or hurl money at the problem, but IMO you should never attempt PR until you're pretty sure you have something to talk about that makes a reporter say, "Holy crap-- that'll make a good story".

The common response is that it's really hard to be worth talking about with a boring product, right? Because no one wants to talk about shoe companies (except Zappos) or project management software (except 37Signals), right? If your product isn't inherently interesting, you need to craft a different story. About customer service mania or simplicity. Or how the idea came to you. Or how your founders are living cheap to avoid funding (TicketStumbler has done a killer job here).

Seriously, read "Made to Stick", or at very least read the summary. <http://www.madetostick.com/excerpts/>

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you, that is really good advice =) We need to figure out what is that "made to stick" story. Collaborative web surfing in real-time with zero-setup for shopping doesn't seem to cut it =) hehe

<comment><USER13> I think it would be easier for you to convey the idea of your site to potential customers if you had a more descriptive domain name. 'Browseology' is a good name, but not for what you're doing. In fact, 'Browseology' could be almost _anything_ shopping or internet-related.

How about 'ShopSync' or something like that (that particular domain is not available for new registration it appears, but it IS for sale.) There are many variations on that domain concept, using synonyms and such, and many of them seem to be for sale by the same domain owner...perhaps that person tried a similar site and failed [or, more likely, never got started.] He/She may be open to joint ventures or other creative arrangements if you don't have the cash to buy an existing domain. I'm sure there are also other good domains that you could find for just the registration fee. Browseology would be a good name for your parent/holding company, once you're raking in the dough from this and move on to your next project ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Here's an interview I did about how I got into the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, etc: <http://blog.mixergy.com/wsj-press/>

I also wrote more about getting press for blogs/companies here: [http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/getting-traffic- fo...](http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/getting-traffic-for-your- blog/)

Btw, I now write for Lifehacker occasionally, so if you ever have interesting startups, send me an email.

<comment><USER15> Ramit's stuff is cool. Also on mixergy is the interview with Tim Ferriss who got his book "Four Hour Work Week" written about by tons of bloggers.

<http://blog.mixergy.com/tim-ferriss/>

<comment><AUTHOR> that's a good article too. thanks for linking that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Blog often and comment on other blogs as well

Sponsor events or workshops relevant to your industry

Give something away for free (we created a free WordPress theme and are releasing some open source projects)

Give your product away for free to influential/VIP customers. This helps a lot if you get the right people. Developing a couple relationships like this can really help you early on.

Submit your app/site to magazines for review.

Check out HARO. I made some connections there ... to early to tell if its valuable though <http://www.helpareporter.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you for the suggestion of HARO. I will definitely check it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> First rule of PR: Know your audience. IMO you are marketing your site all wrong if you go after the HN/Digg/Reddit crowds, which generally tend to be more techy.

You should be hitting the websites which would want to use this service, deal sites, shopping forums, price comparing forums, etc. Attack the forums/discussion areas in those sites, which are very large. If the shoppers from those sites aren't interested in your service, then you may have a problem with execution/the idea behind your website.

Again, HN/tech crunch/digg/reddit is the wrong audience for your idea.

<comment><USER18> For sure, and we agree.

We're not looking to convert on this audience (HN/techcrunch/digg/reddit etc) - we just launched and we think feedback like this from really smart people is super useful. We're still gathering information before we feel like we can present an easy-to-use package for consumers.

It's harder on price comparison forums to ask our customers what they want and get a conversation started when they're looking to discuss the best deals on digital cameras. We tell them about the product, and hope they try it out. If they don't reach out to submit feedback, it doesn't help us as much in improving.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I have been on both sides: having a startup to pitch, but also being a journalist who needs new news to talk about.

Mass e-mailing journalists and issuing formal press releases is obsolete, that's for sure.

You need to build a relationship with a few key influencers. The problem is that they tend to behave like deaf people and typically won't answer your e-mails. And being obnoxious is not the way to go past that hurdle.

So it takes months of being smart, showing smart, getting to know other people like you, or slightly ahead of you, maybe piggy-backing from other events, etc. If you persevere, eventually you'll get the connections and the coverage.

</comment><comment><USER20> Find a flavour of the month or trend and surf it. Develop a Wave gadget, develop a Twitter app, use $BUZZWORD, whatever.

It's not obvious from an immediate glance at your site exactly what it is and why it's special. I have to read lots of text. Journos love pictures.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I feel you on the text. We need some nice mini screenshots of the different ways this works. It's hard to show with static images in a dynamic real time app. Maybe we need to talk to a designer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> With Feedback Army, I subscribed to "usability testing" blog keywords via Google alerts, and then occasionally taking some time to ping bloggers about my service. Ditto to giving away something to the bloggers. Make it as frictionless as possible for them to try your stuff.

By as frictionless as possible--make it so they can click a link and immediately without doing anything--see what your product does.

I also found having a media kit is useful and point them to it. In the media kit try to have a short/non-markety summary of your service, logos/graphics for their use, relevant links, the bios of your team, and direct contact information.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah a media kit is a good suggestion, but I feel like it might be yet another page that's full of text... maybe if the product is slightly hard to understand, that would be good.

<comment><USER6> Good copy editing can reduce this. An extra page doesn't hurt anything if you're only sending certain people to it. In a way a media kit is a targeted landing page for people you want coverage from.

To me, you fall in the slightly hard to understand category. I grok pair shopping but because you're innovating with a new thing, I'm confused and don't know what experience to expect. This leaves me confused.

If I was working with you, here is what I would do:

Take two laptops and $100. Go down to the local starbucks. Find pairs of people sitting at tables.

Ask them to try your site, in exchange you buy them each a drink. Or if you want to get really fancy... do a Microsoft--you find it, you keep it thing and let them spend like $20. (If you do this, I'd record them and get their permission to use it--could be good fodder for your site)

This experience will give you an idea of how people are responding to what you're doing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I started a blog called uncov.com. Talked a lot of shit on a lot of people, built a personal brand.

Product ended up failing, but I made enough connections along the way that I landed on my feet.

By the by. If you're counting on PR as your primary distribution strategy, you've already failed.

<comment><AUTHOR> good point about PR being the primary distribution. Ideally nobody wants that. If you can ever glance at the whiteboard at the YC office, it shows a dominating spike in traffic for techcrunch coverage, and then a sharp dropoff... after that it's all up to your product. So initially, good exposure, but you need a product that counts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Pick a fight.

<comment><USER18> We tried this recently with Browseology. It backfired.

<comment><USER23> When you go to every comment thread discussing Google Wave and say that your service is the same idea, when clearly the only thing they have in common is sending real-time data back and forth, people tend to get annoyed.

Honestly, have some respect for your own product. Don't try to piggy-back on others' popularity. And try to look at things objectively. I understand that you may be excited of your app's real-time features, but just because something else does real-time updating doesn't mean they're the same thing.

Honestly, you're not Google, so don't try to make it look like what your project is as big as theirs'. You don't need to do that for people to be interested in your site. Just advertise it as what it is, a real-time way to shop with someone else online.

<comment><USER18> Point taken.

It's actually more similar than might appear at first glance. Google Wave is real time, and when someone types/edits the wave you're looking at, you see that. On Browseology, when someone types in a search or any other text, you see that. When you change pages, so does everyone else. It's this real time updating that lets everyone browsing together see the same thing.

We're really excited about Browseology, it's true. Of course I have a lot of respect for what we've built from scratch. We tried to let people know about it while Google Wave was getting a lot of attention. This wasn't the right place to do that.

And you're right - we're not Google. Does that mean we can't build something that would be useful for you? We wanted to let everyone know that they could try this out now (instead of waiting months for the public release of Wave) to see what this aspect of real time collaboration looks like.

<comment><USER23> _Does that mean we can't build something that would be useful for you?_

You can always do something profound and useful. Just make sure you don't get carried away with your own excitement. Browseology and Wave share real-time features, but that doesn't really mean they're the same "idea".

Remember that the wave idea and online shopping are completely separate things. I think your mistake was in not realizing this. Real-time editing, which is the similarity you mentioned, has already been implemented in apps like Google Docs and Etherpad.

And you're right, it's not a good idea to try to get attention by taking the spotlight from someone else (although it could be said that Google's partial Wave release was a response to Microsoft's Bing announcement).

One thing you could do right now is write an analysis of the technical aspects of what you did, comparing yourself to Wave _and_ other real-time apps. Make sure you talk about both the similarities and the differences, especially what makes your app different.

<comment><USER24> Not to mention, real-time "social shopping" and "leading other people around the web" apps/services already exist and have for ages.

I don't see a differentiator, just a bad attitude.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> For great ideas about how to do PR, look at what Pingdom does. They are extremely good at getting their name thrown around by releasing reports about interesting stuff noone else cares to measure.

</comment><comment><USER26> Hard work, email bloggers & reports, but sometimes you get lucky.

A CNet reporter quoted me for a front page Google Wave story and linked our site. Instant traffic spike.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I see a lot of suggestions and ideas, also looking for real stories of how you did it, and what came out of it. Just out of curiosity ;)

</comment><comment><USER27> "Build something people want."

<comment><AUTHOR> and "Build something people want to talk about"

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Make something awesome.

<comment><USER29> You mean people can just detect awesomeness out of the blue and flock to it?</comment></comment>


Is Bitcoin a Waste of Resources? - <AUTHOR> https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/review/2018/02/13/is-bitcoin-a-waste-of-resources/ <comment><USER2> yes</comment>


KillBill – Open-Source Subscription Billing and Payment Platform - <AUTHOR> https://killbill.io/ <comment><USER2> NICE. I've been looking for something like this for a while. The problem with subscription startups like chargebee, recurly, etc. is vendor lockin. Why lock the most fundamental part of your business into an unproven startup? That's a hard bargain to drive, even if the charts are really pretty.

There's no reason that Chargebee, Recurly could not be emulated in open source software. The solution to the saas problem is simply a nice API + dashboard, with pluggable billing backends. You should be able to swap merchant accounts seamlessly, since that's the biggest point of failure.

What would be nice is a "launch KillBill on digitalocean" button (I think someone posted a Show HN like this recently?) so that you could launch your own service and start using it immediately.

More generally, I think a lot of SaaS startups are ripe for disruption from open source projects. However, many projects miss the mark of usability. What people need is a self-hosted, open source API that's as usable as chargebee or recurly, for instance. This means that OSS should be targeting microservice architectures more often, instead of self contained solutions with a bunch of wiring required. I want to see more OSS projects that are structured as a standalone app server with an API and dashboard, so that you can self-host but still get the benefits of a composable API.

A good example of an open-source project leveraging "microservice architecture" for self hosted solutions is Seatgeek's AB testing project, sixpack. [0]

[0] [https://github.com/seatgeek/sixpack](https://github.com/seatgeek/sixpack)

<comment><USER3> @pierre from Kill Bill here.

I saw the DO button post this morning, pretty cool indeed. We've recently been playing with Docker to standardize our deployments. Pushing an image to DO should be easy.

[http://killbill.io/blog/having-fun-with-docker-stripe- kill-b...](http://killbill.io/blog/having-fun-with-docker-stripe-kill-bill/)

<comment><USER4> Hope you don't mind if I hijack the thread a bit. I'm curious what your business model is, how does Kill Bill make money?

Do you offer paid support and hosting?

I'm asking because I'm a big fan and proponent of OSS, but I often struggle to see or understand the business models for OSS companies.

<comment><USER2> I'm wondering the same and obviously can't answer for them, but it looks like killbill is a two person side project. If they intend to monetize it, I'm sure they could do so by offering a hosted version of the library.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you're looking for a solution that's integrated more tightly into your app I recently put together Payola[1], which is specifically for Stripe and Rails. The PCI requirements are the same as with Stripe generally (don't store things the API doesn't return, use HTTPS, use stripe.js, fill out any forms they ask you to fill out, etc).

[1]: [https://www.payola.io](https://www.payola.io)

<comment><USER6> I really dig this, I think I might use your project as a reference to create a Django equivalent.

<comment><USER5> Awesome!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think this is a fascinating experiment and will be interested to see how this goes. Many people look at Open Source and say "Why would I pay ChargeBee or Recurly $300 or $3000 per month when this is free?" Seems like a no brainer. But when it's running your billing and it's driving $100,000 or $1 million a month in revenue then it's looked at from an entirely different view. Saving $1000 a month is great but if it means you are missing out on $5000 or $10,000 because you can't support a business model then it isn't such a great proposition. Now I'm not saying Kill Bill is better or worse than the alternatives. Just that open source solutions where the effects on productivity and revenue are so clear are judged by a different type of measurement than other areas.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER8> Very interesting, and I would definitely see a use. Just a few comments:

\- How does this fit into the PCI picture, only thing I have seen on the site is a 2 line faq entry. Not enough to help on scoping or identifying requirements that would apply.

\- How secure is it, and how are security notifications done? Keeping the software secure and up to date should be considered as critical. I would add a section on the site pertaining to security and addressing vulnerabilities. I did not see on the site information about security updates/patches. They might be on GitHub but it is way to deep to be useful to most people.

This kind of software is a perfect example of a high-value target for intrusion, I am a bit worried for the security of the information it contains, especially for smaller startups with limited resources, as well as zombie installations that can be forgotten in a corner with personal information or cards information inside.

Not saying it's a bad idea BTW, just a few concerns as a security analyst.

<comment><USER3> Good point, we'll update the docs.

Regarding PCI, it's up to you. You can run it inside your PCI environment or delegate it to your payment provider (via CC tokenization).

<comment><USER8> If your company has a PCI environment, i'm not that worried (you probably have a pretty good idea of what you are doing, at least in theory), but most startups do not have this, as far as I know. Most just want to get a product/service out of the door. This is where I get worried :-)

It is very easy to setup a system in a corner (here, we'll install this piece of software, that will save us the 99$/month recurly subscription...) then forget about it until it is too late...

Some guidance would be very important, as well as mentioning ways to make it more secure, including tokenization, logging of CC numbers in server logs, knowing if the data transits through your server or not depending on provider, maybe even keep the software behind a a firewall without internet access, these can make a big difference in managing the risk.

As an open source project, you cannot be held responsible on what the people using the software is doing, but I think making sure that they understand that even if the software is free and easy to install and use, that additional work is required to make sure that the data is safe.

<comment><USER9> _mentioning ways to make it more secure, including tokenization, logging of CC numbers in server logs, knowing if the data transits through your server or not depending on provider_

"logging of CC numbers in server logs" is an almost guaranteed way to make your setup not PCI compliant.

The PCI industry as a whole is missing a lot of this kind of guidance, in general. There's no "here's the minimum you need to do to be PCI Level X compliant". The reason is that the industry considers every situation to be different (I doubt most are all that different or if they are, 90% of them can fit into a handful of buckets), and you're supposed to hire PCI auditors to come in and certify you. Another reason there are no minimum guidelines is that PCI seems to be more about awareness than actual specific architecture. You can sidestep certain things as long as you document them and what your mitigating implementation is. This leads to...

Last time I went through a PCI setup, it was a unspoken spoken rule that if we hired an auditor that didn't certify us even though we thought we should be, we could hire a different auditor, and keep doing so until we got one we liked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Billing is such a complicated beast for most startups. I've been working on one for about a year and we were waiting until we got some traction to finally tackle it. We have multiple products as well as multiple plans per product.

We had a difficult time trying to find a solution and recently just built our own package that would drop right into our startup. Another feature we wanted was portability of our business critical data like invoices and transactions so we went with a multi gateway approach so we can switch if we need to down the road.

For those who use Laravel the package is at [http://github.com/mmanos/laravel- billing](http://github.com/mmanos/laravel-billing). We also worked a while back on an open source project for a time called Volcano [http://github.com/volcano/volcano](http://github.com/volcano/volcano).

</comment><comment><USER11> I met the guys from KillBill at the Money 20/20 Hackathon and I think they're doing a great job with their platform, which is already serving big players like GroupOn. They clearly know the payment ecosystem and this is a good way to set up billing in a way that does not lock you in and gives you flexibility for the future as you scale your business, including Fraud Prevention plugins. Disclaimer: I'm product lead at Feedzai, one of their supported Fraud Prevention solutions.

</comment><comment><USER12> Oh god, I hate online billing. I try to download my statements every month from a cron job, and some are fairly easy to script with WWW::Mechanize, others are monstrous. My retirement account statement actually kicks you out if it can figure out that it's a robot doing the access... as if this is an inherently evil status.

Please, please, please, whoever writes for this... make automated statement downloads a thing. Make it a fucking default option.

</comment><comment><USER13> If you are big I think it makes sense to control every part of your business but otherwise it's massive headache because of security and taxes, especially now that the EU wants to collect VAT for european customers even from companies that are outside EU, there are payment services that do all the tax things and even if the fees are higher if you are small it will cost you less and keep you focused on growing.

<comment><USER3> There are third-party solutions which can take care of tax calculations for you - these can be plugged into Kill Bill.

One of the main core values of Kill Bill is that you own your data: this is especially important if you focus on growth, so you can run real-time reports on MRR, churn rates, upsells, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This looks like a good solution for larger companies, but (someone correct me if I'm wrong) it likely won't be a good fit for a fast moving startup. The last thing you want to worry about when developing a product is PCI compliance and other security measures. Platforms like Braintree and Stripe allow you to bypass most of this as CC and Bank info never really touch or pass through your own servers.

<comment><USER3> You can still delegate PCI to your payment provider (via tokenization). SafeKiddo[0] just launched using Kill Bill + Braintree.

[0] [https://www.safekiddo.com/](https://www.safekiddo.com/)

<comment><USER7> What did SafeKiddo see in the Kill Bill API's that was lacking in Braintree's own recurring/subscription API's?

<comment><USER15> There are small things - e.g. you can't do weekly / fortnightly billing.

Once I discovered that I stopped investigating BT for our primary subscription engine. We just hold the card tokens and use BT to charge the card.

It's not ideal, but it does give us more flexibility.

<comment><USER7> Got it. Thanks very much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > You and every other Kill Bill user can check it for accuracy and security > flaws.

I mean, sure, but... there's got to be a better way to phrase that.

</comment><comment><USER17> I've been following this for a while, any companies besides Ning have any good experience with this system?

<comment><USER18> @stephane from Kill Bill.

Groupon is also using the platform ([https://engineering.groupon.com/2014/misc/groupon-adopts- kil...](https://engineering.groupon.com/2014/misc/groupon-adopts-kill-bill- the-open-source-payments-platform/))

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm interested in any almost drop-in solutions that can do saas billing and payments, especially recurring ones. Ideally for rails. I see some a couple listed in the comments, but they seem to be more invoice oriented.

Anyone else have suggestions?

</comment><comment><USER20> Neat! Naive question: is this just API glue for third party payment platforms (Paypal, Square, etc), or would it be theoretically possible to, say, hook up a payment system directly to my bank account (or to a corporate bank account)?

<comment><USER18> @stephane from Kill Bill.

Kill Bill can 'talk' to payment gateways but can also go straight to payment processors, providing the plugin has been written (and we are working on that).

<comment><USER21> dope, good luck guys : )

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is awesome.

This is also the kind of enterprise/b2b open source project which you can reliably* turn into a $300-500m exit in ~5y or so. Covers a clear pain point, has clear revenue model, can sell packaged version and support.

[*] Not easily. But possible.

</comment><comment><USER23> Example would be really nice, some pictures of the product, instead of a giant download button.

<comment><USER24> There are no pictures of the product. It is essentially back-end only.

<comment><USER3> Yes, it's mostly back-end. We do provide a front-end (a mountable Rails engine), but it's mostly for administrative tasks only (for your support team to handle refunds, chargebacks, upgrades and downgrades, etc.).

<comment><USER2> Those are pretty important use-cases. If I'm evaluating this vs. Braintree at an early stage, I want to avoid writing my own dashboard software. The only dashboard functionality I care about in the immediate term is refunds, credits, cancellations, and adjustments. If you have this functionality, you should _definitely_ be showing it off. I agree with the grandfather comment that it's unclear you have it. I looked for it and didn't see.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> poor name choice given the well-known Tarantino movie. its a bit like naming your new, say, stellar formation simulation SaaS (to give a contrived example)... StarWars.

<comment><USER26> I'm glad they never made a sixth movie in that series. Although I would hope I'd get a cameo. -Bill Six

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Eeek, written in Java. Bloatware alert!

I also just checked out [https://github.com/hillelcoren/invoice- ninja](https://github.com/hillelcoren/invoice-ninja) and it also seems heavyweight @ ~300k

I think sane businesses will just move out of Europe, where they don't have to charge VAT and script invoicing themselves with something like BrainTree. [https://www.braintreepayments.com/landing/international](https://www.braintreepayments.com/landing/international)</comment>


Is it better to be a private or public company? - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/08/is-it-better-to-be-a-private-or-public-company-right-now/ <comment><USER2> Other than a big pot of money are there any advantages to being a public company? Off the top of my head I cannot think of any.</comment>


Introducing Daala part 3: Time/Frequency Resolution Switching - <AUTHOR> http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/daala/demo3.shtml I've just posted part 3 in my demo series introducing the Daala video codec. This one is kind of a long one, mainly because I think it's one of the only really detailed presentations of 'TF' aka Time/Frequency resolution switching.<p>Not to mention, there's hot glue and saltines. <comment><USER2> Another impressive piece by Monty. I really enjoy his articles. Just the right mix of text, graphics and formulas.

He also made a few videos:

[https://www.xiph.org/video/](https://www.xiph.org/video/)

And the audiphile's "favorite" topic: "24/192 Music Downloads ...and why they make no sense"

[http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil- young.html](http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting bit of context from his blog post that introduces this document:

 _" Even better... while I was documenting TF for posterity, I spotted a possible improvement. So, I've tossed in documentation of a brand new technique as well!"_

and

 _" I literally discovered the second stage while writing the demo page about the 'regular' TF we used in Opus. Working two-stage TF is about six days old."_

[http://xiphmont.livejournal.com/60856.html](http://xiphmont.livejournal.com/60856.html)</comment>


Agents in the Ethereum cryptocurrency - <AUTHOR> http://gist.io/10163113

<comment><USER2> 2 concerns. couldn't you program an infinite loop in the first 16 lines of code? second, how do you know that the client ran the program correctly?</comment>


The Future of NPM - <AUTHOR> http://sudomakethought.com/04-the-future-of-npm

<comment><USER2> The nice thing is that there is a setting to specify where the location is if you prefer a certain implementation or host. Which I think is another example of how well designed npm is. My question is, is there a way to evolve the protocol a bit to be more practical for ensuring that multiple "central" registries are able to stay in sync? Or is the current system which is tied to Couchdb replication specifics (I think) the best way?

I agree with the general idea of separating out the concern of the metadata index from the actual hosting of the packages. I also agree that its important though to keep changes transparent and practical for people to implement on their own.

I can't help but mention one more time how interesting these issues are in relation to what I see as an inevitable move from a fundamentally server oriented network architecture for the internet to a fundamentally distributed data oriented architecture. And that change presents many challenges including how it intersects with business interests.</comment>


Striking Paydirt: Entrepreneurs Find Innovative Uses for Old Mines - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/2015/10/22/striking-paydirt-innovative-new-uses-for-old-mines.html <comment><USER2> Next up, growing pot plants in one of the many abandoned Gold Mines in the Sierra Nevada mountains :-)

Seriously though, I am surprised you could get an old mine certified to OSHA safety rules.</comment>


Via introduces APC Paper: A $99 Android PC - <AUTHOR> http://apc.io/products/paper/

<comment><USER2> Ubuntu/Unity (and Gnome shell) are doing all the wrong things and this shows it.

Ubuntu especially are now focusing on blingy desktops that somehow require really new cards and hardware only, and yet are also trying to throw away the traditional desktop to cram themselves onto a phone. And yet with high end requirements they are now not the desktop OS of the light weight / poor hardware people, they are for the high end only paradoxically.

Android is coming the other way: a good core set of features now slowly building out into a potential desktop replacement. Because the desktop is still important, especially for anyone looking to do any productivity work.

And after watching a fast demo on the site, I see another thing Android is doing right. Somehow even though it's incredibly low resource it has animated desktops. I was first exposed to the idea in the mid 2000s with a video demoing Enlightenment 17 showing animated desktops. I even made a bug with Gnome asking for the feature. No dice. Even with all their modern "bling" and high and hardware requirements, they can't do live wallpapers/desktops. So with a lame static desktop, try running them on this hardware? EXPLDOE. Won't work.

Meanwhile light little android also has this cute feature.

And this really just underscores to me that in all ways Ubuntu/Unity/Gnome shell are just going in all the wrong directions while Android seems to be increasingly going in many of the right ones.

<comment><USER3> While Android is light (it ought to be, its a Mobile OS). It is NOT a desktop replacement. Google themselves promote ChromeOS over Android.

Retro-fitting Android onto desktop devices isn't the solution, there are many lightweight linux distributions if you want an actual desktop OS.

Animated desktops atleast to me are a gimmick, and the reason other linux distros haven't been able to optimize their graphics is because of the desktop parts and unreliable drivers (Nvidia & AMD), now most of these micro-PCs use mobile parts (ARM Cortex processors, PowerVR graphics cores.) which have readily available open-source drivers or OS-optimized proprietary blobs.

<comment><USER4> I think you're both right.

Obviously a desktop linux ("lightweight" or otherwise) makes more sense on a desktop than a retrofitted android, since android will always be, first and foremost, a mobile OS.

That said, android's app stores have produced, in a fairly short timespan, an entire ecosystem of polished, useful apps that users love. Without android, many of these applications wouldn't exist at all.

As a developer, a regular old linux distribution on my desktop makes more sense[1]. As a normal everyday user who just wants the additional amenities offered by a big monitor and a real keyboard, "android on the desktop" makes more sense.

[1] - I'm actually partial to FreeBSD.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I recently purchased an APC 8750, and I found that it is very good quality hardware. It worked out of the box, and the community forum answered most of my questions. Overall, the web browsing performance and UI has too many problems to be usable as a PC. I bought it to explore using Android as a platform for IOT and other such projects and unfortunately, it fell down here as well because it has no GPIO interface to drive other hardware including LEDs, LCD displays, sensors, IR devices, motors, etc. Further, Google did a great job of addressing this requirement with Android by releasing the ADK of 2011 which provides built in integration with Arduino via a USB ADB interface, but the ADK requires Android 3.1 or higher.

Looking at the Paper's new faster performance, the addition of GPIOs, and Android 4.0, and an optional case, it is clear that VIA has been listening to user feedback. They certainly delivered on my wishlist. In the end the 8750 was a $65 lesson on how far Android has come in such a short period of time.

Android applications are excellent, so while I see plenty of complaints about what it doesn't have, it is certainly getting the developer attention necessary for applications that can / will replace productivity applications on Windows machines. For the 80%, the desktop is nearly dead.

Further, Android is a great platform for embedded applications, and it looks like APC has delivered an inexpensive platform for the maker / hacker community.

Though a direct comparison to RPi is unfair, an APC comes with a power supply and 4GB of flash, so I consider a Raspberry Pi to actually cost $75: $45 (Actual street price of a Pi) $15 Memory Card $15 for a decent USB power supply (a low quality PS causes many of the RPi stability and Ext4 corruption issues I have seen on forums). (Also, Android is preloaded, so it is a much lower effort to get running.)

And the comment about fire made me laugh. The CPU of the 8750 might have reached 40 degrees under very heavy load and the power supply is external, so cardboard certainly won't be an issue. I thought it was funny because I actually use the cardboard box the 8750 comes in because it is virtually impossible to find a Neo-ITX case for the board.

Hope that provides some insight. I am glad to see VIA remains committed to this project.

<comment><USER6> Note that the Raspbian OS runs on the APC as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Cortex-A9 @800Mhz, 512MB Memory, 4GB NAND Flash, not yet available.

For $50-$60 you can already buy an Android mini-PC with double capacity in each of these specs.

For instance:

[http://www.aliexpress.com/item/MK809-II-Android-4-1-Mini- PC-...](http://www.aliexpress.com/item/MK809-II-Android-4-1-Mini-PC-HDMI- Stick-Rockchip-RK3066-1-6GHz-Cortex-A9-Dual/722503926.html)

<comment><USER8> They sell the innards without the book-case as "rock", which is $80 dollars, available now, and also add VGA out.

<comment><USER9> What is next, "scissors" - a solder-it-yourself kit?

<comment><USER10> According to <http://apc.io/specifications/>, the third product is called "8750", which somewhat damages the pun.

But seeing that the Paper has an accessible JTAG port, they could really sell a JTAG adapter under the "Scissors" name.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I find it odd that there are so many desktop-ish things based on Android instead of Ubuntu. One would get a lot more software and a much more familiar experience with Ubuntu.

<comment><USER12> > I find it odd that there are so many desktop-ish things based on Android > instead of Ubuntu.

That may be a reasonable thing to ponder until you try to run Ubuntu on a device which formerly ran Android. I thought the same as you and installed Ubuntu on my Asus Transformer TF101.

While the original Transformer sports reasonably dated specifications, it's provides a very neat, fast and responsive Android-experience.

I expected Ubuntu to offer the same, but with a wider-selection of (non touch- optimized) software. I was thoroughly disappointed. Just opening the Terminal Emulator took 5-10 seconds. Trying to open Firefox or any web-browser was a joke.

What most people fails to realize (I guess because Android has adopted the Java-is-slow-meme, either it wants to or not) is that Android is heavily optimized because it _has_ to be responsive on ultra-light hardware. Given its feature-set, it's a very fast OS compared to most other out there.

Ubuntu on the other hand, is heavy enough to sometimes make my Core i7 wish it had more CPU-cycles. Putting Ubuntu on underpowered machines is something I wouldn't recommend to anyone.

<comment><USER13> As a contrast, i'm running ubuntu 12.04 with unity on an old atom netbook, and it runs perfectly fine. It does need about a gig of ram to run comfortably with a few apps open, so i suspect people having a bad experience are running into issues with the amount of ram in their system.

Android obviously handles low memory situations better. Ubuntu can't match its ability to free up the ram used by inactive apps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I hope that this is the restart of the under $200 PC era. I also hope that young boys and girls are provided real tools to program these things out of the box. Thinking about it, a new version of BASIC might not be such a bad thing, but that might just be nostalgia for my Atari 400 8-bit BASIC cartridge.

<comment><USER4> I was actually pretty disappointed with the "beginner" workflow for the Raspberry Pi, which is essentially "run this linux distribution, which has some educational applications pre-installed once you fire up X". Not to knock linux, but based on the stated mission of the RPi, I would have thought something more similar to the traditional 80's experience of "boot & start programming" would have been the out-of-the-box default.

I've actually been mulling over starting a project like this for machines like the RPi and APC -- an OS where you basically boot into something like a REPL, and start coding away.

<comment><USER15> You could just remove X/desktop from any Linux distro and be right where you want to be-a shell which can all command line programs and you can program it via one liners or scripts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> People seem to be a lot more interested in putting android in small computers than Chrome(ium)OS. I hope Google notices.

<comment><USER17> You sure about that? I'm willing to bet the Samsung Chromebox outsells this several times over.

<comment><USER16> Sure. Rightly so. The Samsung Chromebox uses an OS designed for it. I'm just remarking that people seem to be interested in making, buying and selling cheap, small android "PCs" (and media boxes & such).

It worth remarking on specifically because it is not where Android was designed to go and it fits rather awkwardly.

Imagine you sell taco kits. Then you discover some people are buying your taco kits, throwing away the shells, downloading instructions from the internet and using the other ingredients in different proportions to make bean soup. You also sell canned soup and it also sells decently. You might decide to bring out a bean soup range based on the taco kit. Maybe they think it tastes better then your intentional bean soup. Maybe they like making it themselves. Either way, it's worth noticing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Another fail from VIA after their earlier Android PC, which was derided on their forums for being too slow. There are tons of mini pcs now available with double the specs of the VIA pc and up to 2x lower price. Some even have 2GB RAM and can run Ubuntu with hardware acceleration.

<comment><USER19> Can you provide some links to these vendors please? Genuinely curious

<comment><USER18> Most of vendors are on aliexpress.

For hardware acceleration only GK802 has it currently. You can purchase it from this thread - <http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2044045>

If you don't need hardware acceleration there is an Ubuntu version for UG802 and MK808 - code.google.com/p/rk3066-linux/wiki/PicUntu.

<comment><USER20> Is there an Ubuntu stick that will support 2560x1440 resolution?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Heat generation + cardboard = fire hazard?

EDIT: Would that ever get a UL seal? I wonder!

<comment><USER22> I've got an i.MX6Q bare board running next to me. It's beefier than this book PC (quad A9s instead of one). It has no heatsink and gets only slightly warm to the touch after running it hard for a while.

If any excess heat _is_ generated by this thing, that aluminum backplate can probably sink it.

As for UL certification, this thing is low-voltage DC only. The power brick should be certified but that's probably all that's needed. And FCC class-B like usual.

<comment><USER23> What is the performance of that like? Wondering about getting one. I have the imx5.

<comment><USER22> It's a modest step up from the imx5, and OMG MORE COREZ. We're looking at it more for a cost-reduction move from the imx53 than a performance gain.

Freescale got the hint and put a lot of the voltage regulation on-board so there's no need for the external PMIC anymore. That was always the dirty little secret of these SoC chips, you needed the companion chip to make it complete...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Why would you pay 99$ for this? You can have the ODROID-U2 for just 89$, which is better (performance wise) and supports Ubuntu 12.10 and Android 4. [http://www.hardkernel.com/renewal_2011/products/prdt_info.ph...](http://www.hardkernel.com/renewal_2011/products/prdt_info.php)

<comment><USER25> Yeah, the thing that would prevent me from buying that "book" is the limited RAM. It is easy to expand storage, but only having .5GB on-board RAM is not ideal, especially for something that is going to be a desktop replacement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> There are quite a lot of Android based desktop computers available, some with better specs and cheaper than the VIA offering. Just google for "Android USB Mini PC".

This could be a potential problem for Microsoft.

</comment><comment><USER27> I absolutely love the book case. Wish you could buy those.

Would be neat for a Raspberry Pi and ironic for a DVR device.

I guess overheating is not a problem? I don't see any vents.

</comment><comment><USER28> Seems a little short-sighted to only feature 2 USB ports. If you have one of these set up with a keyboard and mouse and you wish to use a flash or external drive, you'll have to temporarily sacrifice an input device or use a hub. Surely they could have squeezed in one or two more without too much of a cost increase.

</comment><comment><USER29> You can already order what looks to be the baseboard without the case:

<http://apc.io/products/rock/>

$20 cheaper, and a VGA port :D

<comment><USER30> So disappointed when I went to <http://apc.io/products/scissors/> and got a 404 :(

</comment></comment><comment> mark-r Interesting aesthetic, but there's no way it won't look out of place with all the wires sticking out of it. And I think I'd want something more durable than cardboard for the case.

</comment><comment><USER31> It looks good, but knowing VIA, it's not a question of _if_ they screwed something up, but _where_.

</comment><comment><USER32> Looks like it'll make a nice XBMC box!

</comment><comment><USER33> What do they mean by Android 4.0 (PC System)? How is it a PC and not just Android?

<comment> adam-a Taking PC literally as personal computer I suppose, as in desktop computer, rather than specifically IBM compatible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> What if you spill on it? Does the case stain?

</comment><comment><USER35> power consumption is what got me into this kind of thing. I donot expect a good browsing experience nor gaming on this kind of stuff. please quit ranting about the spec.

</comment><comment><USER36> Wow, that'd be really nice for hiding in a campus network closet, to surreptitiously download things using a University IP address.

</comment><comment><USER37> This is a non-starter. You can get much more powerful machines for cheaper.

<comment><USER38> I don't think they're targeting people who want or need powerful CPUs

<comment><USER37> I'm talking about full ARM systems -- the exact same product category for the exact same target demographic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Can we stop calling something a PC until it comes with a proper input and output device? Let's just call it a CPU, if that is a more accurate term here.

Also wondering if we connect a screen, a USB keyboard and power supply, will it still "blend into the office environment"?

<comment><USER40> Well, I wouldn't call it a PC or a CPU or a Mac... System Unit seems appropriate.

<comment><USER41> What about "computer"?</comment></comment></comment>


New to Machine Learning? Avoid these three mistakes - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/teaching-learning/73258b3848a4

<comment><USER2> I would also add: Machine Learning is a nice new hammer. Not everything is a nail.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great point sfrechtling! Sadly I was at an interdisciplinary conference just a few weeks ago and this person openly said "Well I have this method I am looking where I can apply it" after one a domain expert told them that what they were doing wasn't very useful. iSad</comment></comment>


Alphabet's legal chief David Drummond is leaving the company - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/10/alphabets-legal-chief-is-leaving-the-company.html <comment><USER2> Earlier / dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22013436](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22013436)

Though the CNBC article (that is, this one) does seem to have the most comprehensive treatment.</comment>


Counterfeit animals - <AUTHOR> http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2013/08/15/China-zoo-under-fire-for-disguising-dog-as-lion

<comment><USER2> ok, this is funny.</comment>


Ask YC: Europeans, how do you protect against falling dollar in Adsense? - <AUTHOR> I'm stressed about this topic since I use google adsense. My clics prices are going up in dollars (because french keywords are bid by Europeans I suppose), but the time between the clic and the conversion keep lowering my income.<p>Do you have any advice to limit this negative effect ? I think the obvious thing to do is quitting adsense for a 100% European ad system ? <comment><USER2> Currency hedging is what you're looking for - it is a way to minimize risk when doing business with fluctuating currencies.

Say you have a contract for $10000 USD due 6 months from now and the EUR/USD rate is $1.40 when you signed the contract. If the USD falls to 1.5 in those 6 months, you've lost ~7% on that contract, but if it stregthens to 1.3, then you've made a free ~7.5%.

Since you just want to make the contract and not play on the forex market, what you do is you open up a currency trading account and take the exact opposite position to the one in your contract. In your contract you lose money if the USD falls, so in your hedge, you open up a short position on the USD, such that you make the exact same money that you lost on the contract.

So once you've signed the contract, take a $10000 short position on the EUR/USD pair. If the USD weakens, you lose from the hedge, but gain from the contract, if the USD strengthens, you lose from the contract but profit from the hedge, so there is no risk to you no matter where the currencies go.

The downside is that you need the same amount of money to hedge as the amount you're expecting. One way to get around this is to use a leveraged trading account, however this restricts the amount of fluctuation your hedge can handle before getting a margin call - for example if you use a 5:1 leveraged account (that is, use $2000 to trade a $10000 position), your hedge will protect you against swings of close to 20 cents. So depending on how much money you have available to hedge and the amount of fluctuation you want to be protected against, you can choose how much leverage you want. (here's a tool to estimate it: [http://www.fxtrade.com/tools/fxcalculators/margin_call_calcu...](http://www.fxtrade.com/tools/fxcalculators/margin_call_calculator.shtml))

The good news is that with today's forex platforms, this is perfectly accessible/doable for any sized business/personal transactions.

Note: I do work for OANDA, but I'm just a developer there. I posted since I really do think currency hedging is neat. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you I will evaluate this thing, I'm curious. But I'm not really in favor of adding complexity to the stuff (complexity-> loss of money). I think the best thing I can do is finding an euro-based ad network.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Depends what you want to do with the money. Personally, I set up a Dollars currency account just to host my AdSense cheques. Kindly, Google does not do electronic funds transfer to a currency account so I have to stick with long waits and delays.

With the Dollars not being exchanged, I'm building up a travel fund and not losing value (apart from US inflation). I go to the USA once in a while, and the earnings pay for pretty much everything I do there. World-wide, there are a few currencies pegged to the US$, so the money can be used for traveling to those countries too.

In short, you'll only have a problem if you want to use the earnings in Europe. Otherwise, you can be very creative with it.

A related note: I sometimes wish Paypal would let me link my US$ account to my Paypal account. That would make life so much easier.

Pierre

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, actually I'd like to pay my rent and live (in €) with this money ...

Will see if I earn enough to travel after breakeven (and I don't think I'm going to the US soon).

<comment><USER3> I was afraid you were going to say that :)

One thing I forgot to mention in my original reply: if you keep the US$ as is, maybe you can use them to pay for online services like hosting and stuff. It would be neat if you could like a currency credit card to help that along.

Pierre

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think that is a general economics problem one cannot solve easily until consequences of sub-prime crisis pass by and US dollar gets stable. Here in russia we are suffering from low dollar too, since all the contracts we have with north american companies are executed in US dollars, and they don't want to switch to Euro or any other currency. The losses we had for last six months hit $80k which is I think too high for a small startup like ours :-(.

<comment><AUTHOR> whoah ! It's time to limit your exposition on the US market ! But I understand, that's it's not easy, if you stop being on a market, you might never be able to come back.

Good luck, I feel your pain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Diversify. There are about 10 great UK/europe based ad networks. Sure you have to do a bit of work yourself picking good adverts, and you might get paid per lead/sale more often than per click, but the average revenue is comparable or even more than adsense.

</comment><comment><USER6> Question is, are there any European ad systems that would provide enough relevant ads for your site? I'm not saying there aren't, and I would like to see some better competition against google in this area, but I know one of the benefits of Adsense is that they have such a large base of advertisers, they have relevant ads for nearly every topic:

[http://basketweavingtips.blogspot.com/2007/09/underwater- bas...](http://basketweavingtips.blogspot.com/2007/09/underwater-basket- weaving-ever-wanted.html)

Not to mention more advertisers creates competition.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, the logic is quite simple: the more advertisers get into business the higher bids become, the harder it gets to advertise anything on Google and the more revenue to Google money-making machine :-(.

We quit advertising on Google a couple of months ago due to this same issue: it became virtually impossible to bid on any word that has a corelation to "voip".

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder if and how much Europeans are bidding up prices in some categories.

</comment><comment><USER8> Loan the equivilent amount in dollars and convert it into the currency of your choice. When the money is withdrawn, you can pay the debt with inflated dollars. This is the standard strategy, but it only works with collapsing currency.

</comment><comment><USER9> put as many of your costs into $ as possible (hosting, etc) so you're hedged there.

</comment><comment><USER10> Get a forex account and buy USD put options. This is what the option markets are for.</comment>


The FBI is tracking whom? - <AUTHOR> http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/10/the_fbi_is_trac.html

<comment><USER2> I hate to play the devils advocate but actually this kid more or less fits the profile of a "person of interest". Let's run through the facts as reported in the wired piece, [http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/10/fbi-tracking- device...](http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/10/fbi-tracking-device/).

\- young Muslim male

\- travels extensively to / lived in a Muslim country

\- linked to another "person of interes"

\- has immediate family that currently lives in a Muslim country

\- sends money to family members in a Muslim country

\- he returned alone to the US while the rest of his family stayed in Egypt.

Now, although traking does seem like an over reaction in this case you gotta ask yourself what job it is the FBI is tasked with. I have yet to see a comment mentioning the end of the article where the FBI agent says to the kid "don't worry you're boring", meaning they figured out he is not a threat. Also, we do not know why the FBI specifically wanted to track this kid. Perhaps the kid knows people even more interesting and they want to use him to get to them. Who knows.

I also do not agree with warrantless tracking and if they did need to get a warrant perhaps they would have thought more and decided not to track this kid. That said, the FBI watches _potential_ threats all the time and this kid has all the flags, for better or worse.

<comment><USER3> Replace muslim by whatever (asian, nigerian, haitian, mexican, brazillian) and you have a generic immigrant profile. The only slightly unusual thing about this is being linked to another person of interest, but then with this loose definition almost everybody qualifies.

<comment><USER4> > Replace muslim by whatever (asian, nigerian, haitian, mexican, brazillian) > and you have a generic immigrant profile,

Yup. The Haitians are especially dangerous, second only to the home-grown Lutheran terrorists.

If you're going to complain afterwards that the govt didn't "connect the dots" ....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The original Wired article was posted five days ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1770444>

<comment><USER6> Schneier = infosec blogspammer. And very slow at that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I find this extremely amusing and sad both at the same time.

How far will they go to 'prevent' terrorism?

<comment><USER8> As far as necessary until told different by their bosses. I often don't agree with what they do, but law enforcement gets a lot of crap in all seasons.

When a terrorist slips through (eg, the underwear bomber) people howl, asking how they could be so stupid and blind not to follow leads that are obvious in retrospect. When they get caught following up a terrible lead (eg a Reddit post), people howl, asking how they could be so stupid and blind, and so on.

<comment><USER9> > As far as necessary until told different by their bosses.

So if they start slaughtering people tomorrow and bosses don't tell them to stop in time, then they are just "doing their job" right?

> ... but law enforcement gets a lot of crap in all seasons.

I wonder why that is? Why don't barbers, engineers, firefighters get as much crap?

And besides, who are bosses anyway? Aren't people the bosses. If people pay taxes for this "protection" they have all the justification to howl. How is that different than paying for a service, not getting it, and then complaining.

> When they get caught following up a terrible lead (eg a Reddit post), people > howl, asking how they could be so stupid and blind, and so on.

If people didn't "howl" in that case, then we would have clearly reached some kind of total surveilance stage, where citizens are monitored by law enforcement agencies for any reason, any time, and nobody thinks twice about it.

Notice how the traditional media didn't "howl" too much at it. That's a telling lesson of the kind of biases we are dealing with.

<comment><USER8> I didn't intend to pick a fight, only point out that they take crap on either end of the spectrum. Some people expect everything and anything to be done to prevent terrorism. Others expect a firm line on individual rights. Different people howl for different reasons. That's politics in essence.

The priorities law enforcement deals with have fundamental conflicts which are often fueled by outrage and political expediency. It's not a fun situation for anyone. No one wants to be "soft on crime", but neither do they want their malls blown up.

I imagine that barbers don't get the same level of crap because their job is not a political football. I am certainly not excusing stupidity or malice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "...vaguely bothersome post on an obscure blog..."

Hardly obscure: [http://blog.reddit.com/2010/07/experts-misunderestimate- our-...](http://blog.reddit.com/2010/07/experts-misunderestimate-our- traffic.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> So he was the friend of someone that the FBI was concerned about? That's how terrorist cells work. Friends.

Yeah, they should have obeyed the law, but I don't have a problem with them watching him, so long as they don't actually disrupt his life. (They failed at that, too, though.)

<comment><USER12> When can we stop giving up our rights in exchange for protection from a non- existent boogie man?

Which terrorist cells work this way exactly? Al Quieda? Except that's a made up name for an organization that doesn't exist. So where does your insight about how terrorist "cells" work come from exactly?

<comment><USER13> > Al Quieda? Except that's a made up name for an organization that doesn't > exist.

Al-Qaeda does exist, but in the same way Athiesm exists as an organization. One doesn't have to attend regular meetings to be considered a "member". Note: I am not comparing the views of either ideas/groups, but the structural nature.

I do agree with your point however. Instead of putting a short leash on this kid, DHS or FBI could have easily interviewed him, probably with his permission, and found out that he is no threat to national security. He's here to attend school, and will occasionally send money to only his family, not some large, decentralized terrorist group. This kid wants everything you and I want, with freedom being high on his priorities.

<comment><USER12> >Al-Qaeda does exist

[http://polidics.com/cia/top-ranking-cia-operatives-admit- al-...](http://polidics.com/cia/top-ranking-cia-operatives-admit-al-qaeda-is- a-complete-fabrication.html)

The name was made up to use the RICO law to charge people who weren't present in the first WTC bombing. The name never existed before that. Bin Laden probably calls himself this now because he thinks it's a fancy western name for Muslim extremists.

> Instead of putting a short leash on this kid, DHS or FBI could have easily > interviewed him, probably with his permission, and found out that he is no > threat to national security.

The question is: why was he considered at all? Because he is half Egyptian? Or could it have to do with him pointing out how stupid and fictional the "War on Terror" is?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Remote and home-based workers report higher satisfaction - <AUTHOR> http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/remote-home-based-workers-report-higher/story.aspx?guid=%7BD9D2ACAE%2DA892%2D4364%2DB2F4%2DB93171B6F91B%7D

<comment><USER2> There's a correlation/causation issue here.

I do think telecommuting causes some increase in satisfaction, but I bet most of the higher satisfaction measured is the result of generally good management. Good management also causes telecommuting, resulting in a telecommuting/satisfaction correlation.</comment>


Potential Impact of Spectre on Processors in the Power family - <AUTHOR> https://www.ibm.com/blogs/psirt/potential-impact-processors-power-family/ <comment><USER2> Does anyone know if the IBM AS/400 architecture is affected?

Edit: I'm referring to the System/38 architecture that used capability-based addressing.

<comment><USER3> The AS/400 nowadays is called "IBM i". The note says IBM i is affected: "AIX and i operating system patches will start to become available February 12".

Since the mid-1990s it has run on POWER so if POWER is affected it obviously would be too.

<comment><USER4> Another question is whether it is actually exploitable from OS/i userspace.

<comment><USER3> Well, if you consider PASE lets you run AIX binaries, if it is exploitable on AIX the same exploit would probably work on IBM i. (PASE only supports a subset of AIX system calls though.)

Also, if it is exploitable from Java, nowadays the IBM i JVM is J9, almost the same as AIX. (This used to be different – the "Classic JVM" was integrated into the TIMI infrastructure, so quite different from JVMs on other platforms.)

<comment><USER5> I'm more interested in the non-PASE (more accurately, non-Teraspace) situation. The single level store maps _every_ program into the same address space. Will POWER speculatively access another user's data before it discovers that the pointer is invalid or the array index is out of range?

<comment><USER6> Yes, it is an interesting case, I hope we get more detail than this paper soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > If this vulnerability poses a risk to your environment, the first line of > defense is the firewalls and security tools that most organizations already > have in place.

How would firewalls mitigate these attacks?

<comment><USER8> The only way to exploit these vulnerabilities is to run code on target machines. If that's not possible then the vulnerability is irrelevant. Using firewalls to keep attackers away from your vulnerable machines is a viable strategy in this case.

<comment><USER9> Conventional thinking is that if a malicious user can run code on your system, you've lost. In that sense, this is just another local exploit, of which there are many.

<comment><USER8> This includes fully sandboxed code, however, which is an important distinction. The fact that a driveby javascript exploit could potentially result in leaking every important secret from your system (logins, encryption keys, what-have-you) is why people are taking this so seriously.

<comment><USER10> Algorithmically is it possible to pass only 'safe' interpreted code to the CPU? The majority of Javacript engines (Chakra, V8, Spidemonkey and JavasciptCore) are under a security-auditable FOSS license. Browsers claiming Spectre/Meltdown immunity would be in the next release notes, surely.

I'm not discounting that CPUs should operate correctly into the future but the current sandboxes would seem to rely on whims of a CPU's microcode. And the question for browser makers is whether to trust them.

<comment><USER11> >Algorithmically is it possible to pass only 'safe' interpreted code to the CPU?

in other words, the halting problem?

<comment><USER12> It's not the halting problem because you can have false positives. If the code can't be proven safe it is rejected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> No word about mainframes yet. Are s390 and s390x still in-order? Given their high clock speeds I'd hazard they don't do much speculation.

</comment><comment><USER14> That must be only Spectre, where did you read Meltdown...? This title is wildly inaccurate!

<comment><USER15> +1. Meltdown and Spectre are distinct vulnerabilities, and Meltdown only affects Intel processors as far as we know.

<comment><USER16> > and Meltdown only affects Intel processors as far as we know.

I made a post stating the same, but this is not true [1]:

ARM has reported that the majority of their processors are not vulnerable, and published a list of the specific processors that are affected. However, the ARM Cortex-A75 core is affected directly by the Meltdown vulnerability, and cores Cortex-A15, Cortex-A57, and Cortex-A72 are affected by variations of the Meltdown vulnerability. This contradicts some early statements made about the Meltdown vulnerability as being Intel only.

A large portion of the current mid-range Android handsets use the Cortex-A53 or Cortex-A55 in an octa-core arrangement and are not affected by either the Meltdown or Specter vulnerability as they don't do out-of-order execution. This includes devices with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 630, Snapdragon 626, Snapdragon 625, and all Snapdragon 4xx processors based on A53 or A55 cores.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meltdown_(security_vulnerabili...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meltdown_\(security_vulnerability\)) (contains further references)</comment></comment></comment>


Eight New SDKs Join Twitter's Fabric - <AUTHOR> https://fabric.io/blog/introducing-eight-new-sdks-on-fabric <comment><USER2> It's always a disaster when I have to work with an app that uses Fabric because it requires weird IDE plugins and sign ins and other nutso stuff and the build can fail if you don't have them. If they just made it a Gradle dependency like any other library it would be easy to use. Sometimes I'm lucky enough I'm paid to work on other parts of the app and can just comment out their init stuff so it doesn't crash and put it back in when I'm done.

That said, their IDE plugin bullshit is likely due to trying to automatically capture and upload the mapping of pre-obfuscated code to obfuscated code for when crash reports come in. Still, I would prefer just a app compile time dependency and then a gradle build tool dependency if they really have to do that, no breaking the build just because a certain plugin/desktop app isn't running.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'll never develop for twitter again. Fuck them.

</comment><comment><USER4> By "developers" did Jack mean other software companies when talking about bringing devs back into the fold?</comment>


Another Bitcoin crash is happening right now - <AUTHOR>

Perhaps a large sell order, but price just dropped from $1150 to $850. <comment><USER2> Follow the rate here: [http://bitcoin.clarkmoody.com/](http://bitcoin.clarkmoody.com/)

<comment><USER3> ... or here. [http://bitcoinity.org/markets/mtgox/USD](http://bitcoinity.org/markets/mtgox/USD) [http://bitcoinity.org/markets/mtgox/EUR](http://bitcoinity.org/markets/mtgox/EUR)</comment></comment>


Everything there is to know about startup competition. - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/best-thing-i-found-online-today/25afc92c6531 <comment><USER2> Very easy to lose sight of this, great reminder! "...most startups are run by complete amateurs (remember the first company you started?), tackling a space they don't understand..."

I always remind folks that if you're really doing something awesome then competition is inevitable, and in fact serves as validation that you are onto something.

</comment><comment> grey-area It's a shame stories like this fall off the front page so quickly. I particularly liked this part:

 _Two of the beat down stories involve competitors looking less strong over time. This "put yourself out of business" impulse is strong. I can't stress this enough. If you insist on competing then use the "don't go out of business" tactic. This tactic has a 99% effectiveness rating._</comment>


Facebook Dating: This Site Rounds Up Single Friends of Friends - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2012/07/05/thedatable-facebook-dating/

<comment><USER2> Isn't this was friendster and orkut were for? I remember one of those two, at first, was all about dating your friends friends.</comment>