Instacart and DoorDash's Tip Policies Are Delivering Outrage - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/06/technology/instacart-doordash-tipping-deliveries.html <comment><USER2> I've never used Instacart, but I've used GrubHub and DoorDash and the like a couple of times -- I can never remember which one I have an account for, or which one has the restaurant I want, so it's always a hodgepodge.

But one thing is clear as day. When I use DoorDash, the tip box says "100% of tip goes to Dasher".

Look, I know all of these places either charge me a service fee, or if I'm not being charged a service fee, they're marking up the food over list price AND getting a discount from the restaurant for the extra volume generated by the company. FINE.

But when you tell me 100% of my tip goes to the tippee and then you take money out of their pay because I tipped them, that is fraud. Money is a fungible good. It doesn't matter that "my" money went to the Dasher, and you took "your" money from them. In fact, that's not even true, because it's all in one CC transaction anyway. 100% of my tip did NOT go to the Dasher.

<comment><USER3> I quit tipping on DD as soon as I found this out about a month ago because it'd almost always be less than $4.50, so wouldn't affect the dasher's bottom line anyway. If I start again it'll be cash, but I don't typically carry that in small bills.

But I'm _pissed_. I've been a heavy DD customer for years and I'm an excellent tipper. Apparently I've been offsetting DD's costs for quite awhile now thinking "100% goes to Dasher." Bad enough that I have to tip in advance of the service--Uber Eats does this right--but they've been stealing those tips the whole time on top of their "service charge" and "delivery fee". I'd love to see them _burn_.

It doesn't take a class action--last I saw comparative stats they were only doing well in the Bay Area, San Jose specifically, and were rock bottom of the market share elsewhere. We probably just need one educated market to trash this strategy.

<comment><USER4> You quit tipping, but you haven't stopped using the service?

<comment><USER5> They quit tipping through the service, and, if I'm reading correctly, instead zero the tip at checkout, and tip in cash on arrival.

<comment><USER6> I think he means he can't be that outraged if he's still using them.

<comment><USER7> He's outraged by this specific issue and found a workaround. You can be upset by a specific company policy yet still find it better than the alternatives

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why doesn't this problem exist when I order something from Amazon? Because there is no absurd idea that I should be tipping the UPS guy or anyone else involved in fulfilling my order.

It makes much more sense for InstaCart to simply collect star ratings and offer bonuses for the employees who are going above and beyond.

Considering how often the shopper has to call me about replacements, parking outside my building, etc., Instacart should be focusing on fixing the inventory issues and logistical issues, not trying to shame me into paying its employee an extra $5 at every turn.

Instacart charges for delivery and often marks up the prices of the items. I don't like being shaken down via a default tip when trying to check out. It's extremely irritating!

<comment><USER9> It's not uncommon to tip your UPS/FedEx delivery person, or your USPS carrier. At least around the holidays.

<comment><USER10> I would guess that the ratio of the number of tips to the number of deliveries for UPS/FedEx/USPS is orders of magnitude lower than for Instacart/DoorDash/etc.

<comment><USER11> And those delivery drivers are paid a wage, unlike the $0.80 per hour w/o tips from instacart.

<comment><USER12> Isn't there a minimum wage even for tipped workers at like 2$ something?

<comment><USER13> These types of "gig workers" aren't employees, they are independent contractors so minimum wage doesn't apply to them.

<comment><USER12> there is a term for that in German "Scheinselbstständigkeit" basically "pretend independence", seems more like a loophole than anything else

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have a simple answer: I will never use Instacart or Doordash again, ever. Even if they change their policy, they are dead to me as companies, and any company that acquires them is similarly dead to me.

If you're out there, upstart disruptors, know that pulling stuff like this will cost you at least one customer for life. I'm sure that there are more people like me.

<comment><USER15> _Instacart workers have urged customers not to boycott the company, which would cut even further into their earnings._

<comment><USER16> This is exactly why I don't boycott WalMart. Because as abhorrent and their policies are, the last thing I want to do is put some poor person barely scraping by out of a job.

The solution here is not to boycott these places, it's to use your power to lobby for better laws to protect the workers, which will apply evenly to all companies, including future companies that might try to take advantage of people.

<comment><USER17> Or you could support a competitor that treats their employees well, giving them more business so they can expand their business and hire the people that eventually leave Walmart...

This is why I avoid Walmart and Amazon, even if it hurts my bottom line.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > ...couriers have braved the elements, gotten by on meager wages and dealt > with annoying customers, growling dogs and fifth-floor walk-ups, all for the > chance of a big tip from a happy customer.

This is not how I experience it working, in my area, with sites like GrubHub and the others.

They ask for a tip UPFRONT, before delivery.

I usually like to tip cash (for obvious reasons). There is an option for this, and the problem starts when I select this option.

My food takes an extra 1+ hour to arrive. It's cold. Soggy. My family has been waiting for around 2 hours total.

Interestingly...

This NEVER happens when I tip upfront through the app.

Complaining to their support line never fixes the issue, so I started asking the delivery drivers about this.

What did they say?

Apparently, the app flashes the delivery drivers how much tip you've entered BEFORE they decide to take on your delivery.

So my order, when I pay a cash tip, simply doesn't get picked up by any delivery driver and it's at the restaurant getting cold and soggy.

When I tip upfront, it gets delivered in a normal timeframe.

I tested giving a BIG tip upfront, guess what?

My order came faster than it ever has in the past. I asked the driver and he flat out told me he saw the big tip and rushed to grab this delivery.

<comment><USER19> This sounds like fine model to me, pay more, get faster service. The key should be transparency and a minimum service level, ie. they should lay enough by default that every order will get picked up.

<comment><USER20> I'm not a customer of either services since I'm not in the US but tipping upfront before you even receive the service seems a little odd. Doesn't one tip for getting an outstanding over-the-top customer service and in order to do that, one should undergo the entire workflow till receiving the goods?

<comment><USER21> In the US tipping is standard, not for over-the-top service.

In general, higher pay for better quality goods and services is part of a negotiated sticker price. Tipping is the anamoly here. In the DoorDash context, if the user were given the option to tip after delivery, they'd most likely just forget about the app once they got their food and never tip. So there'd be little incentive for the drivers to work hard for a good tip.

<comment><USER22> What if you give a good tip first but then the delivery turns out late?

<comment><USER21> Complain though whatever feedback mechanism the app gives you. Same thing you'd do if the food didn't show up at all.

On the other hand, what does the driver do if they go above and beyond to give you great service, but then you don't tip?

<comment><USER22> With prepayment of tip, we have no idea how the service will be. It would make sense to just roll it into the base cost.

<comment><USER21> The server doesn't know whether you will follow through with a tip when they decide how well to serve you. The information asymmetry goes one way or the other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "Tipping Policies"

"deceptive tipping policies"

Huh...

Somehow I think if I set up a tipping jar for the government and kept the majority of the funds, it would be quickly called 'stealing'. Actually, I think in California since the amount is over $10k, it's grand theft.

Welcome to the era of legislative capture, when the criminal activities of a corporation are discovered, "journalists" frame the situation as "big company make mistake, people get upset, people should figure it out and want transparency" and then seem to want to compare this to our outrage culture.

lol

What transparency could you trust from someone who stole from you?

Outrage seems to carry a connotation of being a bit of an overreaction. And a strong reaction.

People aren't hurling insults because of this.

They are angry. And rightfully so. They were stolen from. The article makes no sense unless you believe it was a 'mistake of deceptive practices'.

There's not even a single mention of restitution or ANYTHING that wouldn't have been approved by a corporate PR team in an effort to appear 'unbiased'.

If crack dealers had this type of coverage, we'd be hearing about 'Possible loud sounds that could be confused with guns that happen when certain issues arise. Maybe we should ask for transparency to see what is going on?'

<comment><USER24> Baffler quality truth right here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Not to be pedantic, but why isn't "Instacart" being annotated as "Instacart (YC S12)" in this latest round of stories? Seems only fair.

<comment><USER26> You don't see this for the YC startups that have become very mainstream. Reddit is mentioned on a front page HN headline right now ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19087558](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19087558)) without mention of its batch.

<comment><USER27> This is the second time I heard of instacart and it took me a minute to remember what they do (and the first time I heard of doordash), but reddit is much more well-known. Not sure it's that they're so commonplace.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It's terrible, but really it fits what these businesses do fundamentally.

They provide a service, and and push as much risk off of the copany and onto their contractors as possible.

Slow sales? Contractor just doesn't get paid.

Injury? Contractor's problem, he's gone, who is next?

The idea that they'd dip into the pot further to ensure more money for the company isn't much different than the rest of the risk they put onto the contractors.

It's not right, but it is how these companies operate fundamentally.

<comment><USER29> When the pendulum swings very-left (as it will, American politics follow a tick-tock partisan pattern) I believe someone (AOC?) will crack down on "contractor" companies - they're not paying payroll taxes. Not a good thing.

<comment><USER30> What's to crack down on exactly? The government still gets all its taxes. It just gets all of it from the employee (sorry, "contractor") rather than getting half each from the employee and employer.

<comment><USER31> "Crack down" doesn't necessarily mean "they're doing something illegal _today_." They could certainly go after the contractor laws and change them. It's not all taxes; many protections employees get are skirted via these gig job companies due to everyone being a contractor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Just in: the policy is now being ended: [https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolineodonovan/after-...](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolineodonovan/after- scrutiny-instacart-will-end-its-controversial-tipping)

> "Based on your feedback, today we're launching new measures to more fairly > and competitively compensate all our shoppers," Mehta wrote. "Tips should > always be separate from Instacart's contribution to shopper compensation."

> Instacart also said it will compensate workers affected by the previously > policy. "For example, if a shopper was paid $6 by Instacart, to compensate > for our mistake, he or she will receive an additional $4 from Instacart," > Mehta wrote.

<comment><USER25> _But_ they're cutting shopper compensation at the same time!

> In addition, Instacart also said it would adjust the minimum pay per > delivery to between $7 and $10 for deliveries for which the driver buys and > delivers the groceries, and $5 for delivery-only jobs. Previously, Instacart > guaranteed $10 per delivery, but sometimes included customer tips in that > amount.

What shady behaviour! I'm guessing Instacart did the math on average tips and figured out that with a $5 delivery guarantee + tips shoppers would be back up to around $10 on average.

Edit: Yup, that's exactly what happened.

> "With an average tip of $5, our customers regularly recognize shoppers with > tips for the services they provide."

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I think the fact that a gig economy company with fair (for lack of a better term) labor practices hasn't shown up yet (to my knowledge) is an indictment on the lack of vision from VCs and entrepreneurs.

As a recent NYT article showed, we are moving towards a bifurcated economy split between service workers and high skilled work based on technology. The gig economy has the correct foresight in merging the two but due to the shortsighted nature of VCs these companies have built a business model based on worker exploitation.

It's hard to believe that a balance does not exist that would allow for a "gig" company to utilize full-time workers and still be profitable.

<comment><USER11> > I think the fact that a gig economy company with fair (for lack of a better > term) labor practices hasn't shown up yet (to my knowledge) is an indictment > on the lack of vision from VCs and entrepreneurs.

Their vision is likely well aligned. The gig economy metes out little bits of work to a new underclass, while shifting nearly all risk onto them. This improves profit flow. The gig economy bypasses the American Labor Movement. The mandatory binding arbitration bypasses the Rule of Law.

The VC's vision is excellent. They extract work out people who don't have much recourse, except they've figured out slavery isn't needed. You just need them hopeless enough to work for nothing, because they can't get anything else. Since they don't need to be paid minimum wage, they don't get benefits, and you can nickle and dime them because you've bypassed the rule of law, you get a lot of advantages over a normal company that has to play by the classic rules of treating humans with any kind of dignity and the laws they got passed to do so.

The app concept makes things faceless so the company can make profit by making someone else do the hard work and take the risks.

<comment><USER24> It sounds like the mirror of a pay-day-loan. Maybe Uber could have all contractor banking done via pay-day-loans? I can only think that there needs to be a business need to take money _out_ of a contractors bank account in real time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> a-wu DoorDash is extremely helpful for me because I'm disabled and can't cook so it's really convenient for me to be able to order food for delivery when I don't have a caregiver around to cook food for me. I'm extremely disappointed by DoorDash's policies but because of my circumstances I can't just boycott. I live in a college town too, so most DoorDash drivers are students who are just barely getting by, so I'll be tipping my drivers in cash from now.

<comment><USER34> There are plenty of other delivery services. Grubhub, UberEats, and Caviar are a few off the top of my head.

<comment> a-wu UberEats/Grubhub don't have the same selection of restaurants in my area and I'm really not sure how much I trust them to not pull this same thing either. I will definitely try to order from those services if available but I'll probably still tip in cash.

<comment><USER35> if ubereats works the same as uber then 100% of the tip actually does go to the worker

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I've always found this practice outrageous but don't understand why everyone else is only getting outraged now that Instacart and DoorDash do it...

This is pretty normal in the restaurant and food delivery industry, and should have been made illegal ages ago.

<comment><USER37> That is actually not normal in the restaurant industry.

In restaurants, tipped workers get a base wage and earn tips on top of that. If they don't hit minimum wage from that base wage+tips, the restaurant has to pay them so they at least make minimum wage. If you have an issue with the low base wage, take it up with your local legislature.

InstaCart and DoorDash are doing something different: they're promising a minimum payment to drivers but that minimum payment is _in lieu of_ a tip. A or B, not A+B=C.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Worked as a PM in one of these Gig companies. Almost all companies do this (Not saying that it's right or wrong). They way they frame it to 'contractors' is "We will make sure you get enough orders to earn $10 in 1 hour. Where that $10 comes from is not something that we care about. If the customers tip you, well there's your $10 dollars, if they don't we will cough up the requisite amount to match the guarantee". There is no such thing as Base Pay as we understand it in this business model.

</comment><comment><USER39> Or, avoid the whole problem by eliminating tipping altogether (please!). Charge a fair and honest price where you can compensate contract workers enough to incentivize them to work for you in the first place (no surprises), and customers will appreciate not feeling the pressure to figure out what an appropriate tip might be. Use feedback/ratings to reward exceptional service.

As an added bonus, you eliminate the discriminatory problems of certain classes of people earning more tips than others for reasons unrelated to service.

</comment><comment><USER40> What I hate about company behavior is the lack of leadership compass in knowing what is right and wrong, and instead treating every resource (person) as an experiment to see what they'll accept or not. And if they don't hear enough complaints, must've been ok to do.

You can read it in their apologies and the positive spin: "We heard loud and clear the frustration when your compensation didn't match the effort you put forth."

Heard you loud and clear? What is this, like the American Idol voting contest? Daytime Emmy awards, or public opinion poll, where we have to be asked what we like to be paid?

A proper apology would be: "We know what we were doing was wrong, and we were wrong to do it, and we will not do things like that in the future." Not, "it seems you didn't like what we did, so we'll do something different."

Makes you think they won't apologize for doing fundamentally wrong things until they get called out by public opinion. What types of issues should a company know are not ok / illegal, and what issues are subject to public approval or measuring reception? Shouldn't a CEO know these and apologize accordingly?

Or maybe that is the role of regulation and government to keep the amoral corporate compass calibrated.

<comment><USER41> It seems to me like the CEO should be fired. Not even from a moral perspective but just from a PR perspective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Instacart has apparently just reversed its policy. Sometimes outrage does work.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/06/business/instacart- tippin...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/06/business/instacart-tipping.html)

</comment><comment><USER43> Too late: I now know how the company thinks about its employees and, frankly how truthful they are with their customers too.

So more Instacart and no more DoorDash for me. Simply uninstalling the app won't cause change, so I contacted both Instacart and DoorDash and asked them to delete my account and all PII and when asked, explained why.

There are plenty of alternatives to both and I suspect we'll pretty quickly figure out which ones are the creepy assholes and which differentiate themselves by being decent human beings. For that matter, it's worth looking at which investors have supported this kind of attitude, as I'm sure this was discussed in board meetings.

</comment><comment><USER44> The thing that's actually terrible is that there's tipping on Instacart in the first place.

Uber didn't used to have tipping, it was added later. I'm not really sure why, it makes the experience as a user worse, I'm not interested in thinking about that, just pay the drivers Uber.

</comment><comment><USER45> Just tip $0 in the app and tip in cash, just like Uber / Lyft

<comment><USER46> What is this cash you speak of? I jest, but seriously, it has been more than a decade since I last had cash on me. I assume there is someway that I could get cash, but it has been so long I'm probably (okay, definitely) not going to go to the trouble. Saying I should tip them in cash is saying that I shouldn't tip them.

<comment><USER47> Seriously? Your going to claim to not know of the existence of ATMs or cash back at most grocery stores/7-Elevens?

If this is actually your world, I hate to think of the places you'll be constrained to, especially in the US. Seattle is an oddity on the West Coast being card friendly, and from what I gather New York is a cash based economy like most of SoCal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Is this legal? Taking tips or paying less to offset tips is theft. I smell a class-action lawsuit.

</comment><comment><USER49> Yet another article about tip outrage that skirts the issue of how culturally propping up universal service industry tipping is propagating and prolonging predatory wage labor by service providers and restaurants. It's in restaurant management and DoorDash's best interests to keep the tipping culture alive and well because they can continue to pay effectively sub-minimum wage by preserving the tip-based wage flexibility the US legally provides them.

Oh well.

</comment><comment><USER50> The kick of the plot here is to not tip on Instacart as you're just handing money to VCs. Or maybe give the driver cash?

<comment><USER51> Why would you tip on any service where you are already literally paying for the service of delivery?

It's like tipping has become completely divorced from any purpose.

<comment><USER52> It's basically just a way for businesses to advertise a lower price than the actual price which in turn leads to more profit. Tipping doesn't benefit workers or customers. It only benefits businesses.

It needs to be abolished.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> > while others are encouraging customers to leave 22-cent tips — a nominal > amount meant to show solidarity with workers — through the app and then > adjust the tips higher after a delivery has been made

This seems like a strangely optimistic assumption to make. I'd imagine it'd be really easy for instacart to batch shopper's payments and retroactively credit or debit the shopper's account to always pay a minimum total depending on the tip.

</comment><comment><USER54> 200 dollars a day delivering packages? Yeah, that's not going to last, sorry.

<comment><USER55> Do you think they should be getting more or less?

<comment><USER31> Less, obviously.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> >Instacart and DoorDash...have figured out a clever way to use customer tips to lower their labor expenses.

Isn't this how restaurants work..?

<comment><USER57> Similar, but not exactly the same. In the case of wait staff, the pay system is well known and regulated (see below). In the case of the gig workers, it appears to be up to the employer, unregulated, and not well documented.

In the restaurant industry, a waiter must be paid the standard minimum wage (for the state/city/etc). However, because tips are expected, the employer is allowed to pay less IF AND ONLY IF the tips make up the difference.

Made up example: State min. wage: $10/hour State adjusted min. for wait staff: $5/hour

Tips per hour: $6/hour Actual pay: $11/hour ($5 adjusted + $6 tips)

Tips per hour: $3/hour Actual pay: $10/hour ($3 tips + $7 pay)

<comment><USER57> In the gig economy, that $5/hour adjust minimum might not exit (because it's not regulated), so the scenarios becomes...

Made up example: Employer-stated hourly rate: $10/hour Tips per hour: $9/hour Actual pay: $10/hour ($9 tips + $1 pay) Tips per hour: $3/hour Actual pay: $10/hour ($3 tips + $7 pay) And in the very extreme case... Tips per hour: $11/hour Actual pay: $11/hour ($11 tips + $0 pay)

By avoiding the minimum wage, and backfilling wages with tips, the employer can theoretically avoid paying ANY wages to employees (and I'm specifically calling them employees here because I believe most of these gig economy jobs should be employees, even if not legally required to do so).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I see a class action from customers. They gave a person money and it was stolen by a corporation. It is nothing less then thief. The drivers are not working for them so why should they be providing their base pay. Besides if that is the case, each customer should be providing a 1099 to the drivers based on IRS rules.

</comment><comment><USER59> Unions and minimum wages and an end to tipping culture. Anything else is amelioration not really fixing it.

</comment><comment><USER60> Does anyone know if these delivery companies can survive in a higher interest rate environment? They were tried during the dotcom boom too and all of them went bust.

I've assumed the goal in trying them again was 1) cheap money again, 2) better logistics tech so maybe they can make better margins this time, and 3) sell to another established company that can use them as a loss leader, or IPO and expand into other businesses, before rates inevitably rise again.

Or do they think they have a viable business model even in a higher rate environment? They seem to be operating on slim margins, hence moves like this tip stealing stuff, or Instantcart's attempts to get customers to sign up for a subscription.

</comment><comment><USER9> These services need a Robin Hood hacker to take pennies or dollars from the transactions going to the Instacart bank accounts, and the executives back accounts, and disburse them equally to the workers.

</comment><comment><USER61> This is wage theft, but the fact is even with this negative publicity these companies will continue to steal tips from now on. This isn't the first news report about it, but DoorDash and Instacart obviously don't care.

They're not so dumb as to not realize how this might be a public relations 'challenge'. They realized it would be seen negatively, did the math, and decided that the general public would be apathetic and the supply of people desperate for work would continue to provide them with enough deliverers regardless of how badly they treat them.

The only solution to this is legislative. The whole 'gig' economy is capitalism gone mad, where large corporations take advantage of the most vulnerable people in society for cheap labor without benefits or stability. Governments need to crack down on this before it gets bigger than it already is.

</comment><comment><USER62> I switched from Instacart to Goodeggs in large part because they say they pay their employees a fair wage and there is no option to tip.

</comment><comment><USER63> Always tip cash to service people.

[http://tipthepizzaguy.com/](http://tipthepizzaguy.com/)

<comment><USER64> > Always tip cash to service people.

It's more nuanced than that. Do you tip pest control, plumbers, locksmiths, that guy that fixes the spring in your garage opener? As a consumer, I'd rather pay a fixed price and not worry about carrying enough cash to supplement their income.

<comment><USER63> I would say pest control, plumbers and locksmiths are skilled professional craftsmen who command a high market rate for their labour. I don't consider those "service" jobs.

At any rate, yes, the tipping system is stupid, but you're not taking a bold stand against it by stiffing some poor chumps making less than minimum wage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> If you are wondering why these companies think they can get away this this......

Look at the number of comments here from people who are going to continue using these service, and work _around_ the problem by tipping the driver cash.

If you believe the leadership is amoral at a company, you have to be willing to walk away entirely or they will keep doing what they are doing.

</comment><comment><USER66> Honestly makes me wonder if either of these services are long term sustainable without basically not paying the delivery workers. It's less a case of two companies making huge profits being evil and greedy and more the case of two overfunded unicorns optimized for growth at all cost with bad unit economics and bleeding cash

</comment><comment><USER67> This is wage theft. These guys will get nailed in one or many of the jurisdictions they pulled this in.

</comment><comment><USER68> Why don't users just tip with cash? If you're a regular user, it's not such a big deal to have some small bills around. Traditionally, I always tipped in cash, in case people wanted to keep their tips private.

</comment><comment><USER69> I remember Uber used to not encourage tipping. GrubHub and DoorDash should do the same thing, at least not encouraging, because tipping would cause more confusions for services like those.

</comment><comment><USER70> Onoe way you can tell this was no "mistake" is because both companies did it (and probably others). This was industry-wide wage theft in the pursuit of profit.

</comment><comment><USER71> If you paid with your credit card, can you do a chargeback?

If you tipped, this seems like deceit. And according to me, a good reason for a chargeback

</comment><comment><USER72> Simple way to beat their system: Always enter $0 as tip in their app and the tip the driver with cash or your favorite money app

</comment><comment><USER73> The minute I figured out you can adjust the Instacart fee to zero I did, and leave a fiver for the delivery person.

</comment><comment><USER74> Excerpt: "Some are asking for cash tips outside the app, while others are encouraging customers to leave 22-cent tips — a nominal amount meant to show solidarity with workers — through the app and then adjust the tips higher after a delivery has been made."

I think I might do that from now on.

</comment><comment><USER75> Are Wag and Rover doing this also?

</comment><comment><USER29> This is a great example in my opinion of the apathy we need to combat as technologists.

Why did NO ONE in any meetings when designing this "feature" or process say anything?

"This is wrong/greedy/will have blowback."

No one voiced concerns? Or, more specifically, if they did, no one listened? They didn't think this would leak out, with all the hatred regarding wage stagnation, income inequality, corporate greed?

A marketing pro, PR specialist, or frankly anyone in touch with culture and human beings would have throw up a flare that this is a terrible idea.

What is going on with culture at these companies?

<comment><USER50> > Why did NO ONE in any meetings when designing this "feature" or process say > anything?

Who's to say someone didn't? All we know is they decided to steal tips, not that everyone thought it was a great idea.

<comment><USER29> I address that later in my comment...

Is this a function of schooling? MBA programs? Corporatism?

<comment><USER76> As an MBA, I really take issue with this cynicism of MBA programs. It's not like we're cold greedy bastards. Stop generalizing. People can make great and terrible decisions, regardless of grad school degree choice.

<comment><USER77> Someone signed off on that feature that stole $4 from a $5 tip given to a person making minimum wage.

Was that person an MBA graduate or not?

<comment><USER76> Let's blame all males if that was their gender too!

<comment><USER77> I don't care about all that gender stuff.

The point is someone signed off on that. And in a business, it's usually someone with an MBA.

I can't imagine a business of that popularity having someone making business decisions without an MBA under their belt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> Once upon a time, folks would have organized a union and fought for their rights. But I realize that's not very innovative or disruptive, or libertarian or capitalist or whatever the hell the overriding ethos seems to be in Silicon Valley.</comment>


A looking glass to peak into China's Great Firewall random memory block - <AUTHOR> http://twitter.com/gfwrev/status/25220534979 <comment><AUTHOR> replace $SOME_IP with a Chinese IP if you are outside G.F.W.

here is a screenshot of what's like

<http://i.imgur.com/KBCrx.png></comment>


Growth Rates Don't Matter: How Userbases Don't Always Confer Profit - <AUTHOR> http://techgeist.net/2009/04/growth-rates-dont-matter/

<comment><USER2> Talking about Twitter in the same breath as YouTube just doesn't make sense - YouTube's troubles stem from the fact that its costs are through the roof, being a streaming video site and all. In order to come out of the red, they have to make a pretty large amount off of each viewer, and that's tough to do when advertising rates are depressed.

Twitter, on the other hand, sends 140 character messages back and forth. Yes, they've had scaling issues, but that's because they blew up from a tiny operation into a major success overnight without the manpower to handle the growth, not an indication that their costs are too high. If they flip pretty much any monetization switch, they'll become profitable quickly.

<comment><USER3> given the current txt message rates, the cost of sending a txt message might be on par with streaming a video

<comment><USER4> Who still uses Twitter via SMS? Out of those people, who receive tweets via SMS (the ones Twitter would have to pay for)?

<comment><USER5> They cut that for a lot of countries, yet they say they can operate for years. Why not spend that money they are sitting on with innovating their service, creating features that can actually make money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Good for Twitter, but this will not translate into any money for Biz Stone, one of the site's founders, until the microblogging platform is monetized."

Umm, tell that to the YouTube guys (ironic given that that is the example he uses to make his point). There's no law that says your company has to turn a profit before anyone can buy it.

<comment><USER7> In the microeconomic sense you're right, in the macroeconomic sense you're wrong.

Selling off a company based on users that aren't monetizable is basically a ponzi scheme that just passes the buck to the next idiot in line until it all collapses.

<comment><AUTHOR> This might be the truest statement I've read all day

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Good point re: Youtube, but the fact that eBay thinks they can spin Skype off into an independent company implies that it's profitable or near to it.

edit: A little digging confirms it -- [http://www.pehub.com/37158/is-skype- profitable-now-we-know-y...](http://www.pehub.com/37158/is-skype-profitable- now-we-know-yes)

</comment><comment><USER9> Quality > Quantity.

Big Quantity of Quality > Small Quantity of Quality

<comment><USER10> Big Quantity of Quality >> Small Quanity of Quality (much much greater)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Uninformed choice of examples: Skype is very profitable. (See the link aston provided.)</comment>


Ask HN: What makes a programming language good/bad for large projects/teams? - <AUTHOR> (in your experience) <comment><USER2> Depends by what you mean a 'large' team. I'd say the larger the team, the more I'd prefer a strong, powerful static type system that allows for rapid iteration without fear of breaking the existing codebase. At a certain scale though (probably thousands of developers), the fact that you need to hire some ratio of experts in the language for every so many green to the language means something like Haskell or Scala might not be worth the trouble.

I certainly think the more static typing the better though.

</comment><comment><USER3> As always, it depends. Team makeup, churn rate, domain, etc. all make a difference. If you have a team of Scala experts, then lean towards Scala. If you have high churn, then stick with an "easy" language with a small learning curve. If you're working on embedded devices--well you don't have many choices. If you have extreme correctness requirements, then you should lean towards languages with extreme type systems and formal verification tools. If you work closely with research scientists, perhaps use a language that fosters collaboration. If your company politics value conservatism and risk aversion, then pick politically-safe languages for the sake of your career and sanity.

</comment><comment><USER4> The larger the code base, the more important IDE integration is for on- boarding.

The more experienced the team, the less important IDE integration is.

When in doubt, choose prolog.

</comment><comment><USER5> Depends on what the project is. Use the best language for the job and make sure you're aware of the languages strengths and weaknesses. Utilize the strengths and develop tools/procedures to mitigate the weaknesses.

</comment><comment><USER6> If everyone can agree on a language, that's a good start.

</comment><comment><USER7> Wide adoption and strong tooling would be high on my list for a large team.</comment>


What MDMA Therapy Did for Me - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@tuckermax/what-mdma-therapy-did-for-me-41ffe5f15971 <comment><USER2> I've done something similar, although not with a therapist, but with a friend. It didn't fix my life instantaneously but it's given me a brand new perspective on things, something I'm still trying to process a year later. But it's done something incredible for me: I was stuck and I didn't see a way out, mentally, I had no idea how to fix my life, it's helped me get out of that hole and start heading in a new direction.

</comment><comment><USER3> Would love to hear the wife's perspective on this, it would have a lot of weight.

Note: I just recognized this author "Tucker Max" as a guy who made his fame writing semi-autobiographical books about how he's an unapologetic badass who women love [1]

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

</comment><comment><USER4> "how to change your mind" is about psilocybin (magic mushrooms) and it's a pretty good read on the subject of psychedelics. Couldn't put it down, highly recommended.</comment>


Militarizing Your Backyard with Python: Computer Vision and the Squirrel Hordes - <AUTHOR> https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/kgrandis/pycon-2012-militarizing-your-backyard-computer-vision-and-the-squirrel-hordes <comment><USER2> It would be neat to implement a history system, that recognizes and records visits from certain squirrels, if it is that they repeat visits.</comment>


The Technics 1200 Turntable Is Back - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/the-technics-1200-turntable-is-back-1751157898 <comment><USER2> OK Thats awesome! Their design was light years ahead of everyone else.</comment>


German council ditching OpenOffice to go back to Microsoft - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/open-source/3411718/openoffice-shortcomings-forcing-german-council-go-back-microsoft/

<comment><USER3> Do any of you technical types still use a word processor on a regular basis (apart from to read documents others have sent)?

I just can't remember the last time I created a document in one.

If I want to communicate, a plain text email is fine.

Want to collaborate on a document? Wiki or git versioned text file is better.

Want to publish something for others? Wordpress or straight HTML is better.

Want to make a posh looking document? LaTeX generated PDF is better.

<comment><USER4> _Want to collaborate on a document?_

 _Want to make a posh looking document?_

I'd like to live in this world of yours, where everybody is comfortable with Wiki, git, and even LaTeX.

Seriously, even most technical types cry out in dismay when they try LaTeX.

<comment><USER5> LaTeX is one of those things somebody helps you with. Check any professor's book and there will be a dedication to the guy who helped them put it all into proper LaTeX.

<comment><USER6> This is only true of very senior faculty these days, at least in Econ, Statistics, Math, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> MS Office, (especially Excel and Word) is some of the best software ever developed. Excel is a fantastically powerful and flexible system and honestly, beyond basic spreadsheet/word processor use, nothing comes close to MS Office.

I was kind of hoping that OpenOffice use in Germany would be a success but really can not see how it can compete with MS Office, except on sticker price.

<comment><USER8> No, it's the most genius software product ever because it is like a drug -- it attracts newcomers with a seemingful ease, then sucks all their life juices into managing larger documents, finally lefts them with a load of experience, skills and already made docs that only work in Office and cannot be possibly replicated (Office formats and algorithms are build purely of quirks and leaking heuristics).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Strange that if you create a Word Processing format so byzantine that even the combined might of IBM, Sun, Google and the open source community can't reverse engineer it, (and that you yourself struggle with when porting to Mac OS X or Win 8 RT) that the result is people considering you the safe option for their government data.

<comment><USER10> Sorry if I am wrong, but as far as I know, Office Open XML specification is public since 2007, precisely the version referred in the article.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML>

<comment><USER11> Microsoft Office do not produce or read Office Open XML files as defined in the OOXML ISO standard. They produce something that looks similar but not quite right. The same thing happens with the older formats, they are not produced or read in the way it is written in the published specifications.

[1] <http://techrights.org/2010/05/31/formats-red-herring/>

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML#Application_su...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML#Application_support)

<comment><USER12> The same thing also happens with OpenOffice/LibreOffice and the ISO ODF spec. In practice, this is not a big problem with either OpenOffice/LibreOffice and ODF, or Microsoft Office and OOXML, because the deviations from the spec are minor. For instance, almost all the deviations in Office from OOXML transitional are due to last minute changes in the values of some attributes.

BTW, don't cite techrights.org. They are one of the most unreliable sources of information on the net.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I use LibreOffice on my own computers. If I ever had to exchange documents with anyone else, I don't think I would.

A friend and I were trying to pick a format to use for some files we're jointly working on via Dropbox, and .docx was not sharing well between multiple pieces of software. I don't know whether Pages on his iPad was more of a problem than LibreOffice, but either way, we settled on Markdown. It's simple, has 100% compatible editors on all platforms, and works just fine for simple documents.

<comment><USER14> If you are working with people using Markdown editors built on top of different libraries, they might not really be 100% compatible. John Gruber's spec leaves quite a few ambiguities.

[http://johnmacfarlane.net/babelmark2/faq.html#what-are- some-...](http://johnmacfarlane.net/babelmark2/faq.html#what-are-some- examples-of-interesting-divergences-between-implementations) [http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/10/the-future-of- markd...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/10/the-future-of- markdown.html)

<comment><USER13> I'd been editing the markdown directly in MarkdownPad, which seemed to behave as I would expect it with nested lists. Not sure what's available in the way of iPad clients (since I don't have one), but that's disappointing to hear that they might be inconsistent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have to say, I sympathize with them. I tried libreoffice, but I just could not keep it up. MS Word is annoying enough for me, LibreOffice adds that extra annoyance. I just wish we could move to a markup system like markdown or restructured text with split editors that generate the document on the fly on a different pane. Plain text! Plain text!

<comment><USER16> If you use a Mac I cannot recommend OmmWriter enough. <http://www.ommwriter.com/>

<comment><USER17> OmmWriter is on Windows too, and is especially great there since there's a dearth of plain writing apps on PCs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The obvious problem I think, notwithstanding the fork of OpenOffice, is that MS Office is the de-facto standard and it's not in the interest of MS to have the compatibility gap closed. The critical issue with OpenOffice is rooted in Cat String Theory. Compatibility with MS Office is the driving force for development and it's not producing the best UI/UX experience.

I think LibreOffice needs to step out of the shadow of MS Office.

</comment><comment><USER19> Strange they didn't even consider Google Docs or web for the purpose. It is quite understandable that experience with OpenOffice is not as smooth as it is with Microsoft's word or Apple's iWork, but why not give web a chance and then decide this?

As it is Governments are supposed to explore all options and then choose the 'technically acceptable most economical' option? I think Google docs will be sweet and better in some ways for the council, considering that these entities are in dire need of more collaboration.

Just my 0.02 cents.

<comment><USER20> I doubt that many European government organisations would be allowed to use a SaaS app provided by a US company, purely for data protection reasons. There are rules surrounding where personal information may be stored - due to, among other things, the USA PATRIOT act, the US is not usually an option for organisations that deal with personal info.

<comment><USER21> Can't you run a private installation of Google Docs?

<comment><USER22> No, there's no Google Docs "appliance". It's their cloud or nothing.

<comment><USER23> In fact, I think Microsoft is trying to push into that niche with their Office 365 which complies with European Privacy law. An opportunity Google might just have missed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Not surprising. Been through many MS -> OO and back again with various organisations throughout the years. OO is good if -everyone- uses OO.

In most organisations you get some genius who develops a fancy-smancy spreadsheet, visio diagram or word document with linked data which will be dependent on the MS access runtime, this gets distributed to all the OO users and it just doesn't work.

</comment><comment><USER25> _"Numerous statements concerning LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice are incorrect or outdated," they said in the letter, adding that the support of LibreOffice and OpenOffice is at a professional level these days. "The assessment of the evaluation that compatibility to Microsoft Office cannot be reached in the next few years, is also wrong," they said._

This is not the best way to respond to losing a customer. Though a lack of customer relations is in favor of participation in an ideology is one of FOSS's great weaknesses.

The Council changed vendors. They had no choice because Open Office was killed off.

</comment><comment><USER26> I wonder why SoftMaker doesn't push itself in its home market hard enough. They are at least not worse than Open/LibreOffice.

On a different note, it surprises me there doesn't seem to be any effort on a LyX-like editor, probably less tied to LaTeX (LyX already has to do a lot itself, it even got at least one renderer (LyXHTML) that doesn't involve LaTeX at all).

That would be a word processor I'd use (otherwise it is as jiggy2011 says).

</comment><comment><USER27> I see a lot of comments here, decrying the decision based on a mere word processor. Do also note the problems with the spreadsheet part which, as quoted, is much worse.

I can completely sympathize with being forced to abandon Linux itself because of its inability to compete with Excel. There simply is no _compatible_ alternative to excel

I'm willing to bet that it was a bigger factor than word processing.

</comment><comment><USER28> _Since then, the city noticed that it has been far from ideal to use only OpenOffice for digital correspondence. Microsoft Office for instance is the standard for external communication, the council said._

Well, ur doin it wrong. There are vastly superior alternatives to the workflow I think this implies (e-mailing attached documents around).

<comment><USER29> Such as?

<comment><USER30> For sending out "letterhead" documents, embrace the medium instead and have some nice HTML email templates made. If you must, send PDFs.

For collaboration workflows, use wiki-style platforms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Considering public institution are using taxpayers' money, I think all of them should be using open source software, for both budget reasons and in principle (to help grow the _public_ open source community, and then benefit from it in the long term).

The problem here also sounds like somebody was trying to use Microsoft Office docs in an older version of Open Office. So they were the ones locking themselves in before, and now their solution for having hassle-free work is to reward Microsoft for it, and lock themselves back in? It's like a drug addict who thinks withdrawing is too painful, so might as well continue taking the drugs.

<comment><USER32> I've used both OpenOffice and MS Office for extended periods and I can honestly say that MS Office is significantly better.

Yes you can do pretty much anything you need to do in OpenOffice but if you spend a significant amount of time using them then the little bits of polish in MS Office really add up and for a tool you use a lot that's a big deal.

And that goes directly to the budget reasons you mention. As a developer I wanted the best tools for the job, I didn't want the cheapest tool, I wanted the ones that allowed me to be most productive because that saved money. I don't see any reason why my standard as a tax payer should be different - <USER2> want people working on my behalf to have the best tools for the job, so they can do the best job for me.

I'd love it if Open Office was as good as MS Office but it isn't and until that changes, it's a bit more complex than you're making out.

<comment><USER33> And your anecdotal account of OpenOffice vs MS Office is supposed to mean something to the rest of us?

It is one persons opinion, are you a recognized authority in usability of desktop applications? Can you provide non-biased large scale research studies with clear and concise points of why MS's solution is better?

Here is my counter point. I have been using office suites since 'Display Write 4' for MS-DOS in the 80s. I have taught classes on advanced document production using open source software. I have converted hundreds of users to Linux and the only complaints I get about office suites are why are MS formats so incompatible with everything else.

<comment><USER34> I want to live in whatever world these people are in where they can just throw up their hands and say, "gee-wiz, why can't EVERYONE just use open source software?" Usually that "incompatible" industry standard document contains _real_ information that needs to be presented accurately. OpenOffice just brings headaches and unnecessary phone calls/e-mails.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The frustrating thing is that people think that they have to use a word processor where a simple text editor would suffice.

<comment><USER36> Do you mean that formatting itself is superfluous or that everyone should learn something like Markdown?

I'm a geek and I don't particularly enjoy using Markdown. I know wysiwyg editors can be frustrating but solve that problem rather than reverting to the modern equivalent of Wordstar formatting codes in some fit of neo-ludditism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> LibreOffice is fantastic, give it a try

</comment><comment><USER38> Why aren't we using HTML for documents yet?</comment>


Experts find key to saving fuel: say gallons per mile - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jun/20/travelandtransport.carbonemissions <comment><USER2> If you cross the pond often, it's useful to remember the following: x mpg * y l/100km = 240 (or more exactly 235 and change, but 240 has more divisors and is easier to manipulate).

Illustrated:

10 mpg = 24 l/100km

20 mpg = 12 l/100km

24 mpg = 10 l/100km

30 mpg = 8 l/100km

40 mpg = 6 l/100km

60 mph = 4 l/100km

Small cars in EU are i the 4-6 l/100km range, or between 40-60 mpg. Sedans are typically between 8-12 l/100km, or 20-30 mpg.

HTH

<comment><USER3> My brain's frazzled. Are you using US gallons or Imperial gallons in those calculations?

I'd suggest they go a step further though. The first thing I do when looking for a new car is convert the mpg figures into pence per mile.

<comment><USER4> If they did that then the figures would change daily and be different for each market in which the car were sold.

<comment><USER5> if it could be done in a way you could see something updated a week, would be interesting - maybe would make people think twice before a longer trip (would work with me).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is the kind of rephrasing of concepts that's just so ingenious and makes you wonder why no one thought of it before. Props to the people behind the (so obvious, so effective) idea!

<comment><USER7> Uhmm, it's been used in the rest of the world (I can vouch for Europe) since forever? In the form of liters/100km.

<comment><USER6> OK, then props to whoever is bringing this idea to the USA :)

That's like pointing out the Arabs invented algebra before the Europeans started using it, so the European mathematicians don't deserve any credit at all.

Props to these guys and the entire denizens of Europe, if that makes you feel more politically correct :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Canada requires fuel economy figures in liters per 100km.

<comment><USER9> So does China

<comment><USER10> And the rest of the civilized world.

(Sorry, I just like the SI system of units.)

<comment><USER11> Actually I think the Imperial system is better in this case. I find it easier to remember a number which is an integer in the 20-40 range than a real between 5 and 10.

I find that in my mind, most of the relevant numbers tend to get rounded up to "a bit less than ten" anyway.

<comment><USER10> Only for you - and only for the current state of efficencies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I still can't wrap my head around celsius. Is 20 celsius hot? Is 25 hot? I'm not sure. I'd have to convert it to fahrenheit in order to get a feel.

Same thing. I know that 20 mpg is somewhat bad, 30 mpg is somewhat good. How about... 0.05 gallons per mile? I'd have to divide it first. This is the reason why grocery stores sometimes advertise prices at 4 dollars per 9 units, and similar. They know people can't work out that math instantly...

<comment><USER13> But like everything, if you use it for a little while you get an intuitive sense for the numbers.

I used to struggle with celsius as well, but then I lived in Spain for a while. Once I stopped converting to Fahrenheit all the time and just tried to associate the numbers with days that I remember, I got where I know that 20 is fresh, 25 is warm, 30 is getting toasty, and 42 is a smokin' hot summer day in Sevilla.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is a solution looking for a problem. This just solves the 'I save exactly x gallons' while most people just want to drive to work slightly cheaper.

<comment><USER15> The problem is that "miles per gallon" gives you a false impression of your costs and the fuel savings you get by switching to a more or less fuel- efficient car.

This is likely not a problem that many U.S. citizens are _aware_ that they have, though.

<comment><USER16> They're a lot more aware of it than they were a year ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I couldn't find one listing of a gallons per mile in the article.

<http://www.google.com/search?q=20+mpg+in+gallons+per+mile>

Is that correct for what they are looking for? My car gets .05 gallons per mile! Wait the structure on that sentence is wrong isn't it?

<comment><USER18> They corrected for this in the tests:

> the tests were repeated using gallons __per 100 miles __

You could also say "aught-5 gallons per mile," where the decimal is placed by convention. Though then you run into trouble with the .009 gpm cars...

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> My car shows me this on its onboard computer. It gives me instantaneous and averaged litres per 100 kilometres.

</comment><comment><USER20> Yes, but will the car manufacturers actually do this? Sounds to me that it could cost them some sales...

<comment><USER13> Only if gas guzzlers are more profitable than efficient cars, which, granted, has been the case up until now. However, with so many companies trying to differentiate based on green credentials now, it seems likely that their high margin business will be in efficiency in the future.

So short answer: maybe.</comment></comment>


The Woes of an American Drone Operator - <AUTHOR> http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/pain-continues-after-war-for-american-drone-pilot-a-872726.html

<comment><USER2> This is a really intense article in my opinion. The military may have successfully used unmanned aircraft to cause less pilot deaths but the emotional trauma and PTSD that comes from war and murder is still present... probably more so as they must more intimately know their target before killing them. That and the disparity of killing targets in Afghanistan and Iraq and then stepping out of your trailer back into the heart of America where everyone is just "going about their day." That back and forth routine on a daily basis is even more traumatic then spending 9 months deployed and then coming back to the US.</comment>


IBM builds 120 petabyte cluster out of 200,000 hard drives - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/computing/94082-ibm-builds-120-petabyte-cluster-made-out-of-200000-hard-drives

<comment><USER2> I'm curious: Does anyone here expect that a 1 petabyte device will be a commodity consumer device in 30 years?

<comment><USER3> I think the future is in the cloud. I just recently got a new laptop with a 750GB HD and I thought to myself "How am I ever going to fill this thing?" Other than my music collection pretty much everything else that I do is or can be web-based.

Maybe Larry Ellison was right about thin clients/NCs, just way too early.

<comment><USER4> I thought the same when I got my very first HD... 20M.

<comment><USER2> I remember when a 5MB hard drive peripheral card was an exotic and expensive high-end device.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> With the current failure rate of harddisks, how many failing harddisks can one expect to swap out/in that array every day? I guess it must be a 24/7 job for a team of operators to keep that thing up. Or maybe they swap in spare harddisks by the cabinet...

<comment><USER6> At this kind of scale, you would probably just let disks fail which eventually would kill off entire logical modules, and simultaneously keep adding new modules to supplement them. So replacing the drives has no real urgency.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _The drive collective...is expected to store one trillion files — or to put it in Apple terms, two billion hours of MP3 music._

Why does it need to be put in Apple terms? How about we put it in Liquid Audio terms?</comment>


Show HN: EuroKeks, a stock exchange parody for memes (35.000 orders processed) - <AUTHOR> https://eurokeks.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> We also managed to hold 400 concurrent connections of realtime trade and complex queries. The site is free and without ads. We also got a working democracy to decide economic decisions.

</comment><comment><USER2> I thought of KEK40 as soon as I saw the title.

On a side not, I'm interested in the potential of meme magic although It's completely esoteric and goes against hyper-rational HN spirit ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Here is the KEK40 with other composite indices: [https://eurokeks.com/indices/kek40](https://eurokeks.com/indices/kek40) I guess meme are viral cultural references so they have some sort of social cohesion power!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just finished implementing the national meme markets: [https://eurokeks.com/memes/national?country=FR](https://eurokeks.com/memes/national?country=FR) (alpha2 country code)

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks good and really well done. How much time did you invest into making this?

<comment><AUTHOR> About 10 days.

<comment><USER4> Were those full-time? Ten days isn't a long time, in any case. Looks pretty nice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, you can get things up and running pretty fast with RoR if you're used to it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is fantastic.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot! We're having lots of fun!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hah, you beat me to it. I was in the conceptual stage of something very similar to this.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just added Github Oauth for those who requested it.

</comment><comment><USER7> How will this affect the price of rare pepes?

<comment><AUTHOR> You can get the PEPE composite index here: [https://eurokeks.com/indices/pepe](https://eurokeks.com/indices/pepe) Still a pretty high demand for rare pepes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is this related to r/MemeEconomy ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Started as a coding challenge/joke for /r/MemeEconomy and then took off with european subs.</comment></comment>


First Sale Victory in Vernor - <AUTHOR> http://williampatry.blogspot.com/2008/05/first-sale-victory-in-vernor.html <comment><USER2> As a long-time Autodesk customer, I can see the problem from Autodesk's perspective. Standard procedure with Autodesk products is to upgrade to a higher version at a lower cost than buying a brand new copy every couple years. After the upgrade, the customer still has the old software sitting around, so if the customer were to sell the old version, and the new owner then upgrades, Autodesk is out the difference in cost between new and upgrade. Autodesk can control for this by tracking serial numbers of course, but the unknowledgeable new owner would be unable to upgrade the product through no fault of theirs and effectively have wasted some good money if they need to upgrade.</comment>


Ask HN: Any good tips for writing/sending surveys? - <AUTHOR>

I'm writing a survey that I plan to send out to ~10,000 people in the next few days. They are all members of www.lenguajero.com and many of them are quite active on the site. While we get a lot of feedback via email we have never sent a survey to our members, and I'm a little unsure how to proceed.
The goal of the survey is to find out three things: 1. How useful is our website/how active are you on the site?  2. What features would you like to see added/improved.  3. Are there any features (existent or non-existent) that you would pay to use?
Does anyone have any suggestions for how to write a survey like this (i.e. how should the above questions be asked, and what other questions should be included in the survey), or can anyone recommend some good reading material about sending surveys?
Also, I'm not sure how relevant this is, but half our members are native English speakers and the other half are native Spanish speakers.  Each member will receive the survey in his/her native language.
Thanks HN! <comment><USER3> I work in epidemiology, specifically sending surveys to huge cohorts. This is what we've found through a lit review (sorry, don't have original sources but they're out there on PubMed).

\- incentives are huge. But know if you're asking someone to complete it for a social benefit (e.g. our health surveys) or for your profit. If you're doing a "feel good about helping others" thing, don't offer things that can offend.

\- make sure people know ahead of time what kind of questions and length of time to expect (properly set expectations)

\- try to "group" similar questions. This helps people's brains load different topics, so their responses are easier (fewer context shifts)

\- be aware that everything you do (colors, question wording, etc.) can significantly influence peoples' responses. You must be consistent with everyone who takes the survey (as much as you can -- you can't control the lighting in their rooms, as much as you'd like to).

\- Make sure to be neutral in your language. Don't introduce bias by writing leading questions.

\- try to use "standard instruments", i.e. other people's surveys that were validated and tested. Not only does this make your work easier, but you now have (the possibility of) a reference group to compare your results

\- don't expect very many responses (this is from my experience on all projects). People are busy. Your survey is a small part of their day

\- send the survey invite at least twice, spread by a couple of weeks (time permitting). Most people only complete their surveys if it's a convenient time to do so. Don't make them look back in their email -- send them a second invite (be careful beyond that, as you may annoy people).

\- thank them very much

\- have a detailed analysis plan before you create the survey. What are you trying to find out? Much like test driven development, knowing what you want to answer before you collect data is HUGE.

</comment><comment><USER4> 1\. Make it possible for them to take the survey in less than 60 seconds.

2\. Only ask questions you actually care about (and have the power to do something about). If someone isn't active on the website or doesn't find it useful, they probably won't reply to the survey. Also, even if they did does knowing this allow you to make any meaningful changes at all?

3\. With the features question, this is what I would do. Think of 3 - <USER2> features you think they want. Then put an other box. Have them vote on what the most important feature they want implemented is. If someone writes something in other give it a multiplier 3x or something like that. At the end of the day you'll have 1 or 2 ideas that lead the way. It'll be obvious what wins out, but don't make them think of what features they want.

4\. I think you should ask, "Would you ever pay for features on our website" and just get a feel for if your typical website user expects to pay for stuff online or not. If the culture to pay for stuff isn't there, then it will be a hard go.

</comment><comment><USER5> Make sure you offer an incentive for those who fill in the survey. Don't make the survey too long, but put a lot of thought into the questions and execution (sending it somewhere in the next few days to your entire user base might not be the best idea). Ask yourself questions first: what is is exactly you want to know, and to what extent are you willing to take action on the outcome.

<comment><USER3> This is so important I wanted to highlight it.

>Ask yourself questions first: what is is exactly you want to know, and to what extent are you willing to take action on the outcome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> ask questions that give you answers to specific questions! dont ask how useful it is - ask what the most useful feature is. etc</comment>


Public market newcomers getting crushed in sell-off - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2011/08/08/tech-ipo-sell-off/

<comment><USER2> This doesn't seem particularly connected to the S&P downgrade, despite the kind of vague implication in the article's intro. The downgrade didn't have the effect (contrary to some predictions over the weekend) of causing any sort of Treasury selloff or interest-rate spike, through automatic selloffs or default fears or any other mechanism--- Treasuries are actually _up_ on the day. And it didn't provide the stock market any new information that it didn't already have heavily telegraphed during trading last week. It seems more likely that this is just increasing pessimism about prospects for economic growth, rather than worries about debt serviceability. If it were the latter, you would not expect people to be rushing to _buy_ Treasuries that they thought were going to default.

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately this implied "downgrade = stock plunge" association seems to be everywhere this morning with no mention that long term interest rates for US debt have actually dropped.

Depending on the source it's probably down to ignorance, lazy re-reporting or blind economic ideology, but if you believe that cutting government spending and services during a recession/recovery is a bad idea then it's a scary thing to see.

<comment><USER4> Wouldn't a downgrade be expected to result in an interest rate _increase_, due to higher risk?

<comment><USER5> You'd think so, wouldn't you?

On the other hand, where _else_ are you gonna put your money?

<comment><USER2> In this case I'm not too surprised at the lack of change, mostly because unlike with a little-known corporate bond or an inscrutable country nobody has info on, the S&P ratings don't _really_ add new information that any economic analyst didn't already know about U.S. Treasury bonds. So, assuming anything remotely approaching an efficient market, any information S&P based its ratings decision on should've already been priced into the bond prices, because it was information everyone else has also had for a while now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Groupon is a consumer-facing company, with a large percentage of its offerings in the discretionary category. As it so happens, the American consumer is getting clobbered and has less time/money for discretionary spending.

LinkedIn is in an interesting spot, because the job market sucks so badly, and unemployment remains high (which, when you think about it, could go either way for LinkedIn).

Sure, there may be some macro factors about the set of "newly IPOed companies" that are going into their sell-off. But by and large, there are plenty of rational reasons why the market for both of these companies' shares is in a tough spot.

<comment><USER7> Doesn't the majority of LinkedIn's revenue come from recruiters? It makes sense that LinkedIn, Zillow, and Pandora are off more than the market as recruiting, ads, and real estate tend to get hit harder than the broader economy. Groupon was born during the recession, so may fare better than others. Deep discounting and coupons are counter-cyclical.

<comment><USER6> _"Deep discounting and coupons are counter-cyclical"_

Not if they're mostly (or even significantly) in discretionary categories and experiences, though. You could offer me 90% off a tennis lesson, or 99% off a trial run of Invisalign braces, but if I'm struggling to make ends meet on the basics, such offers are of little use to me.

In fairness, I have no idea what percentage of Groupon's offers are discretionary. (Though, anecdotally, it sure seems like a big number). But my point is that I wouldn't put it past many analysts to assume that it's a significant percentage. And that's all you need to move the price of the stock.

<comment><USER7> I don't think the term "discretionary", captures what happens during a recession in the first world. I mean, when unemployment goes from 6% to 9%, 3% of the population stops going out for dinner, and 70% of the population cuts back on spending based on fear. That 70% of the population starts cutting coupons and buying generic products, and shops at Walmart instead of Whole Foods. Fashion industries get hit hard, but entertainment generally doesn't. I really think the "deals" or "coupon" space is counter-cyclical no matter whether the coupons are for skydiving or pickles. I personally don't have a gut instinct for this space, as I am not a customer of Groupon, but I am interested in the question "If you neighbor lost his job, would you buy more or less Groupons?".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If by "crushed in sell-off" you mean "declined roughly as much as the market as a whole", then that's true.

<comment><USER9> This is untrue on a percentage basis.

lnkd: -14% djia: -3.75%

<comment><USER10> The dow jones doesn't work like that. The Dow % doesn't reflect the average % downwards of its parts, nor does it necessarily represent the market as a whole.

        Citigroup -15%
        Bank of america -17%
        B&N: -11%
        GE and Cisco -5%

etc

<comment><AUTHOR> % up/down does not provide valuable data. If you have access to a Bloomberg terminal take a look at the free-float turnover. Shocking

<comment><USER11> LNKD has had ~22% of its float trading on average every day for the past month. What do you find special about today?

<comment><AUTHOR> LNKD has a free float of c. 8,250,000 shares or c. 8% of FDS. Average daily trading volume up to August 3rd, and adjusted for underwriting: 1.62m. Since last Thursday (earnings call), when LNKD dipped c. 5%, trading volumes have been 102%, 90% and 67% above the average daily volume. So then, 40%, 37% and 33% of its free-float, for August 4, 5 and 8 respectively. In just under three trading sessions over 100% of the free float has changed hands. What don't you find special?

<comment><USER11> Yes, but based on the 1.62m avg volume, that is ~20% changing per day on average. So on average 100% of the free float changes hands every 5 sessions. And now it did that in 3 sessions.. But that doesn't indicate to me everyone suddenly dumped it today. It's been churning over 20% every day. If you look at P or Z there is nothing much going on there. LNKD is just crazy active to begin with, only amplified by recent events.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed, 5 to 3 days might seem close/similar, but 5 days is 66% slower turnover than 3 days. IMHO, this data is representative

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I suspect that it's a risk thing, new internet IPOs probably have the highest risk considering what they do and how new they are.

<comment><USER13> My uninformed opinion is that many of these new internet IPO stocks are "greater fool" investments: They were bought for the purpose of selling to others without a lot of regard for their underlying fundamentals.

A general decline in the stock market hits the demand for "fashionable" and "greater fool" stocks hardest, so I expect professional managers to dump them quickly.

<comment><USER14> In that context, GroupOn's first-day IPO performance (assuming the IPO still happens) is going to be interesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Makes me wonder if the "bubble" is over with all this talk of a double-dip recession and Groupon/SEC ordeal.

<comment><USER16> The bubble has burst.

\- Greece has defaulted. After that, Italy/Ireland/Portugal/Spain/Austria/Belgium will soon follow, and France will be downgraded, and Germany will leave the EU.

\- Japan is suffering -5% GDP per year. 70% of the nuclear reactors are offline. Rice/Beef/Vegetable/Water radiations have been reported.

\- China's stock market just dropped 30%. The hidden banking crisis will finally surface and blow up alot of banks. The ugly inflation that follows will induce further unrest in a country of a billion people.

\- US is about to have a series of downgrades. States and local munis will seek bankruptcies after downgrades. Hyperinflation will start. Social security, medicare will be wiped out.

All signs point to the second dip in the global economic depression.

<comment><USER17> Germany is a net exporter and they gain by freer trade throughout the euro zone, so I doubt the will leave the EU. Will the leave the euro is another question.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, _nobody_ is predicting the breakup of the EU, but a lot of people are questioning the value of a single currency with a multiplicity of national banks.

Rest assured, the Union itself is here to stay.

<comment><USER19> Right, and those national government banks do not have credible deposit insurance for national banks. So a bank run is possible. During the US crisis in 08/09 we had the Fed/Treasury complex insuring deposits and supplying liquidity which they can do in infinite amounts. Euro-zone nations are not sovereign and are at the mercy of the ECB. You underestimate the risk of a breakup, the Euro is broken.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> _Could this halt the ongoing initial public offering wave that has been building in the tech industry for several months? What does this mean for Internet companies such as Zynga and CafePress that are currently in the IPO pipeline?_

I doubt it means much. At worst, it means a few months of delay while the current crisis blows over. In 1998, people were wondering whether the Asian currency crisis would halt the (then roaring) dot-com boom. Yes, there was a damper on the IPO market for a few months, but the market came roaring back in the latter half of 1998 and kept going strong right through 2000.

</comment><comment><USER21> The numbers after the close are less dramatic, except for LinkedIn.

NASDAQ -6.9% Pandora -7.6% Zillow -7.4% LinkedIn -17.4%

The article makes too much of this. Smaller companies are more volatile. When the market goes down, smaller companies will be down more, and when the market goes up smaller companies will be up more.</comment>


Show HN: Django/gevent view to download PostgreSQL table as CSV in single query - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/michalc/80ebd31dcb75cf805bb5d956c2cad6ea <comment><USER2> That is really neat! One thing I would point out is to make sure to sanitize the inputs table and schema, because they are passed directly into the SQL query they would be easy targets for a SQL injection if exposed to end users. I personally would add the validation within this view itself.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, author here.

I believe the inputs are already appropriately escaped by passing them through `sql.Identifier`. I have added a comment in the gist about this as well.

<comment><USER2> Thank you, my mistake!</comment></comment></comment>


The Life of a Data Byte - <AUTHOR> https://blog.jessfraz.com/post/the-life-of-a-data-byte/ <comment><USER2> > UTF-8 is the standard for representing characters as eight bits, allowing > every code-point between 0-127 to be stored in a single byte...

Hmm... this makes it sound like UTF-8 uses one byte per codepoint and can't encode codepoints beyond 127, when it actually is a variable-length encoding where one codepoint is encoded into 8 to 48 bits (1 to 6 bytes, although in practice 1 to 4 bytes are sufficient to encode all currently defined UNICODE codepoints).

The same is true for UTF-16, it's not "16 bits per codepoint", but variable length with either 16- or 32-bits per codepoint. Only UTF-32 is a fixed-width encoding.

Basically: all UTF encodings are able to encode all UNICODE codepoints.

<comment><USER3> > In ASCII every character is a byte, and in Unicode, that's often not true, a > character can be 1, 2, 3, or more bytes.

In a similar note, Unicode isn't really about bytes. Unicode is essentially just a huge map of numbers to characters descriptions. UTF encodings convert those numbers into a sequence of bytes, and vice versa.

<comment><USER4> if only unicode were actually that simple.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Cool article. Another future method is the use of DNA (e.g. [1], [2]). Not good for speed, but with more development it could become a great solution for large-volume, low-access archival data.

[1] [https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/dna- storage...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/dna-storage/) [2] [https://www.catalogdna.com](https://www.catalogdna.com)

</comment><comment><USER6> > Optane claims performance 1,000 faster than NAND SSDs with 1,000 times the > performance, while being four to five times the price of flash memory. > Optane is proof that storage class memory is not just experimental.

This was a very bold claim from Intel. That was in 2015. It's 2020 and I haven't seen any benchmarks that meet this. And it's not clear the roadmap is going to scale to that figure. Right now it's still not quite good enough to be a main memory (but as a caching tier between main memory and disk).

</comment><comment><USER7> So sad that the mack daddy of removable storage in the late 90's isn't covered. Jaz disks were freaking boss for all of the 5 years they existed.

</comment><comment><USER8> Small nit, I'm pretty sure 1980 5¼'' floppies where 360 Kbytes and not the later 1.2 MBytes.

<comment><USER9> 1980 floppies were single sided with a smaller number of sectors: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_floppy_disk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_floppy_disk)

"With version 1.0 of PC DOS (1981), only single-sided 160 KB floppies were supported. "

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The "rope memory" used on Apollo seems like such a crazy and cool idea. The article has one dead link, and the reference only has a snippet more information. I'm about to go down a google-hole on it, but can anyone point me to their favorite rope-memory resource?

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7656282](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7656282)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Veropost – Charge people to send you email - <AUTHOR> http://www.veropost.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hi people, project developer here

I built this to solve a specific problem. Ordinary people cannot cold email someone that is "out of their league". My vision is to have someone like Angelina Jolie responding to emails for a $200 donation to Unicef for example. How to actually make it happen is another subject but the implementation is here :) Bitcoin currently solves complexity, I hope to expand it to fiat soon.

P.S I get questions about 21.co, my site was up on September 2016...

<comment><USER2> It's really great because "vero post" in Latin means "after you". Like a courtesy, or good will, which is sort of what this site is facilitating.

<comment><AUTHOR> to be honest I thought vero means true from verus so the meaning is true mail :) I like your interpretation too though

<comment><USER2> haha glad you like it but yours is maybe more appropriate. mine was just from Googling for "vero post" noticing latin results then doing a Google translate on it. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I guess it's time to dig out the good old spam solution checklist ([https://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt](https://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt)) again.

I've already filled it in for this case: [https://gist.githubusercontent.com/joepie91/d06939ead53bba9f...](https://gist.githubusercontent.com/joepie91/d06939ead53bba9f8dab6791df68faf2/raw/ed8b09589fdaad9f8aa10e301089e64768b1b966/gistfile1.txt)

</comment><comment><USER4> This is interesting, but I'm a bit confused as who the target audience is, general public or famous celebs.

In terms of general public use, usually we cannot afford to discourage people from sending us emails. Automated emails are also caught by spam detectors.

In terms of VCs, if they charge money, it would feel like an admission process and I'd prefer it to be a more formal process rather than an email which they might or might not read/reply to. Same applies to lawyers. Also usually cold emails would be read by assistants/receptionists, so not sure if this model would fit them.

In case of famous celebs, it could be a great way to raise money for great causes while managing your fans.

Personally I'd rather it somehow address my issue of handling emails coming into my inbox. But that's in a different nature, usually emails I get aren't spams and they are real emails which I need to actually respond to, but the priority is not clear.

</comment><comment><USER5> To be fair, this might be an actual use case for proof of work. Do some CPU work that is trivial to check but expensive to compute. Set the difficulty of your inbox and just have your SMTP server bouncy any email without an attached bit of "work". I can wait a few minutes for an email to send.

<comment><USER6> Something like this was already done with hashcash.

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

<comment><USER5> Oh look. A good idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ahhh, yet another "Final Ultimate Solution to the Spam Problem" [0].

[0]: [https://www.rhyolite.com/anti-spam/you-might- be.html](https://www.rhyolite.com/anti-spam/you-might-be.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> I think maybe the word spam is not what I should be using for this project as if I write a message to Elon Musk asking him something I am not spamming but my email will not get through as if I donate let's say 1K first to his org of choice he will read it. Any ideas of how to rephrase it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think what "spam" means to most of us is automated mail that we don't want to see. I remember in the days before gmail I saw people set up auto- responders with captcha-like replies. Even that tiny extra validation step was too much friction. So I guess the people who will find this useful are those that are getting too much mail that an actual human is spending to time to write? Definitely not for me, I could see a business mail, HR/recruiting or something similar but you will probably lose them all unfortunately as soon as they see "bitcoin".

</comment><comment><USER9> With the explanation about high profile people it makes sense. For the rest of us there is the chicken-egg problem. I can't afford to deny all emails not send through that system. I whished I could charge a micro-payment for it, like 3 cents, just to keep spam away.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why not charge a very small amount like $1? Do you see any problems with that?

<comment><USER9> Depending on your financial background $1 could already be quite a bit. I'd prefer to charge just "not nothing" which should be below 50c for me. Preferably below the costs of a text (costs ~9c here).

The bigger problem however is what ever the procedure for signig up is. Even if it's just paypal and a webform for the mail.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I signed up but the email verification link ([https://api.veropost.com/fn/emailVerify?token=58e6...](https://api.veropost.com/fn/emailVerify?token=58e6...)) gives a "Server not found" error.

<comment><AUTHOR> wow thank you will solve it immediately

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is the video cut off? It ends quite abruptly and sounds like there should be more to the question

</comment><comment><USER12> So for a company, you redirect all the incoming emails under an alias for cold emails to your service and then get them back filtered?

<comment><AUTHOR> yes exactly. you set the price you want. I guess big Venture Capital firms would set it pretty high and a kind of famous lawyer would set it also high.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is it possible to view emails that haven't been paid for so you can check whether there's something important?

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently no, that would be an idea though I can implement it if there is interest.But then why would you give out this account and not your gmail if you want to manual go through them? Kind of defeats purpose?

<comment><USER13> I don't give out my email at all really, but still some stuff arrives so it would be good to be able to see whether I want to read it anyway, even if the only preview is the from address.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have it shown as email@example.com currently so you can see that you have unpaid emails, I can do it like you propose sure good idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is THE BIGGEST MONEY MAKING IDEA IN TECHNOLOGY full stop. The money that will be made around this will make Adwords look like a cute hobby. Messaging on all channels needs to be assigned a variable cost. ...and this implementation is thoughtful/interesting, as is 21.co... Google, Facebook and Microsoft have understood this is coming for a long time. That's why Microsoft bought Linkedin, and FB bought Whatsapp. Companies are spending billions to prepare for this future, but I have yet to hear anyone elucidate how this paid communication future will actually work. Further, since the patent system has been eviscerated there isn't any incentive for an entrepreneur to solve the whole problem... and Google and many other tech companies only know how to copy good ideas... not generate their own. So your reward for starting a company that solves this will likely be lawsuits, poverty and personal and professional devastation. Who is gonna step up ;)</comment>


Chrome 35 Beta adds DirectWrite font rendering on Windows - <AUTHOR> http://www.istartedsomething.com/20140412/google-chrome-35-beta-adds-much-needed-directwrite-font-rendering-on-windows/

<comment><AUTHOR> In case it's not clear from the article, this is _the_ thing that will fix awful webfont rendering in Chrome for Windows. It's something I've been waiting for a long time, and it's finally becoming reality. I very much look forward to the day this will be enabled by default.

<comment><USER2> FINALLY!

What else can we say?</comment></comment>


The Solitaire Encryption Algorithm (1999) - <AUTHOR> https://www.schneier.com/academic/solitaire/ <comment><USER2> Another "paper and pen" cipher that was published a few years ago is ElsieFour (a modified version of RC4)[1].

One of the nice things is that it even offers a form of authenticated encryption, though it is a very string-and-staples approach. The idea is that you would append every message with some secret text that the recipient would know to look for (if the ciphertext is modified with ElsieFour/RC4 all subsequent characters become garbage). In theory you would include the hash of the plaintext but humans aren't great at computing hash algorithms in their head.

Obviously these kinds of ciphers have lots of serious problems (awful timing attacks for instance :P) but I think they are a key example we can point to when arguing that banning (or restricting) encryption software is a fruitless measure to stop "the bad guys" from using encryption.

[1]: [https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/339.pdf](https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/339.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> Related from 2015: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10473491](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10473491)

2012: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4904260](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4904260)

<comment><USER4> See also: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.06300](https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.06300)</comment></comment>


Google Now Selling Upgrades to Gmail Storage - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/accounts/PurchaseStorage Looks like the plans are:
  	 6 GB ($20.00 USD per year) 25 GB ($75.00 USD per year) 100 GB ($250.00 USD per year) 50 GB ($500.00 USD per year)
<comment><USER2> Hasn't this been available for months?

<comment><USER3> yes</comment></comment>


Show HN: Heartnotes – offline, encrypted diary app using Electron.js - <AUTHOR> http://heartnot.es/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone, author here.

This is just a mini project I decided to do in order to learn how to use Electron.js to build desktop apps, plus the fact that I wanted a diary that did encryption properly.

Right now there's just an OS X build (because that's what my machine runs) but it shouldn't be too hard to get Linux and Windows builds going too in the near future. Also, the diary features are a bit limited (e.g. not date changer yet).

Source: [https://github.com/hiddentao/heartnotes](https://github.com/hiddentao/heartnotes)</comment>