Ask HN: an ethical dilemma in recommending an Android DRM solution fix - <AUTHOR>

An alternative Android app store invited me to sell my apps in their marketplace, which requires integration of a complicated in-house DRM scheme to protect apps from piracy. Upon investigating the docs and sample code for the integration process, I was amazed to see heaps and heaps of unnecessary complexity, brittle design, and many opportunities for mistakes in integration.
Somehow the part of me that abhors terrible software design took over, and before I really thought about it, I had sent them a very detailed proposal for an alternative design that both fully integrated with their existing infrastructure and reduced integration complexity from a collection of scattered changes to Java source (which would break compatibility with other marketplaces) to a three-line XML change in an application's manifest (which could even be applied in an automated fashion upon upload to the marketplace), with no need to even recompile existing code.
The issue now, after a few rounds back and forth with their team, is that I've come to privately realize a major exploit in my design which would allow the creation of a general-purpose launcher app that would completely evade the DRM scheme I recommended.
Should I continue to help this company improve the developer friendliness of their egregious DRM solution? This would (1) make them much more attractive and lead to many more adopters of their marketplace (2) stop a precedent from being set for Android developers having to customize their code for a distinct marketplace and (3) rid the world of a piece of software design that, at best, discourages integration, and, at worst, inspires a new era of terrible DRM design.
Alternatively, should I tell them about the exploit, its mechanism, and its implications, and suggest they stop implementation?
Thirdinatively, should I just keep helping them fix their stuff (which has its share of existing exploits already), and keep quiet about the exploit, leaving it as an easter egg for the curious few with both a deep enough understanding of the Android framework and experience with this particular marketplace to discover on their own?
(Actually this is really two intertwingled choices: {continue helping vs. suggest stopping} and {reveal exploit vs. keep quiet}) <comment><USER2> It has to be down to your personal preference.

My company runs AndAppStore and, although we don't force anyone to integrate our purchase checking system into their paid apps, I know we'd still appreciate a heads up from anyone who thinks they've found an exploit for it (not necessarily giving a full fix, but a heads up to how the exploit would work so we can look at addressing it if it worked).

In your shoes I'd ask for the DRM requirement to be dropped. You know it's not secure, they've shown they're not paying full attention to the DRM solution, and so even if you spent your time coming up with a totally secure solution there's no guarantee that they wouldn't modify it at some point and inadvertently weaken the protection it offers.

One thing to remember though is that if your app is available through multiple channels you may end up with lower sales across the board if the problem isn't addressed. The reason for this is if pirates get a way to create a DRM free version of your app then it doesn't matter how secure all your other distribution channels are, the pirates have an easy route to create a cracked version of your app they can redistribute.

</comment><comment><USER3> Continue helping (try to get paid) and tell them about the exploit. Even if it's their project your name will still be on their lips when someone else figures it out. Also... being able to sleep at night is nice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Update: I gave them a high-level overview of the conceptual exploit and even sketched a high-level technical solution for the problem (one that I admitted probably only pushes the difficulty up a few more notches, expected with DRM). I guess I'll play the next move by ear.

<comment><USER3> I admire your honesty. I find it is, by default, the best policy ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Let them know about the vulnerability. Help Google make decent anti-piracy protection.

P.s.: Don't forget to charge for your consultation :-)

</comment><comment><USER5> Wow, this really isn't very black and white...

I suppose it's like having some treatment for cancer that is ugly and grueling. Then discovering an elegant cure.

The cure, however, has some mind-manipulating exploit that is only known to you.

What do you do?

Cure people from unnecessary suffering of cancer? Or avoid giving people a vulnerability, unknown to everyone else?

</comment><comment><USER6> I hope you're getting paid for your time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Heh, nope. I thought asking for money would only complicate their adoption of my idea for cleaning up the DRM integration process. I'm just trying to save the world from some terrible software here, remember (and trying not to create a bigger mess in the process).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is this the AppsLib people? I'd stay away, it's disgustingly amateur. Tell them the exploit and walk away.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope, and it's not Amazon either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you don't consider yourself responsible for the introduction of the exploit, I'd say do what academics do: publicly publish the exploit.

If you are responsible in any way, though, I'd recommend informing of them of the problem. You don't have to fix it, just tell them it's there.

<comment><USER9> In defense of academics, it's quite common to first notify the vendor so that they can prepare a countermeasure for when the exploit is published. In general, publishing without making a reasonable attempt to contact the vendor is irresponsible at best and often down right unethical.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> No, you should just point it out.</comment>


The Synthesizer Generator (1984) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.ics.uci.edu/~andre/ics228s2006/repsteitelbaum.pdf <comment><USER2> I'm sorry to be one of the people risking derailing the actual discussion. But there is a traditional plague in this world of using nearly meaningless filenames for academic papers. In this case, the filename is the concatenation of the authors' last names!

I very often have dozens of pdfs in my download directory whose names provide very little clue as to what they are. Authors of papers: it is perfectly OK to use meaningful filenames, I promise!

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I make it a regular chore to rename all the recent downloads to their titles. Anyone have a handy script to help?

<comment><USER4> I use Calibre to organize papers. About 3/4 the time it can successfully extract the title and authors - I manually correct the mistakes it makes, fill in the gaps and tag them. The software then organizes them in directories based on this information in a user-defined way.

It's not perfect. In particular it's missing tag hierarchies which would make it more intuitive to navigate to things without giving each paper dozens of tags and such.

<comment><USER3> Thanks. I don't like Calibre, but I'll look for a Python module or something to extract titles from pdfs.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Case for Platypodes - <AUTHOR> http://purplequark.com/the-case-for-platypodes.html <comment><USER2> As someone who identifies with this "platypode" label, I'm happy to see some dialogue about it. The label is certainly an improvement vs. "jack-of-all- trades", which often came with the implicit/negative "master-of-none".

I'm blessed that I've been able to settle at multiple companies where I could ultimately flourish platypus-style. My peers/supervisors were always quite satisfied, sometimes describing me in hindsight as a "secret weapon". Alas, it was not always easy getting to that point. I haven't found a way to successfully get into such a role other than to exploit close personal networks of people who have seen my skills play out as described in the article and can testify to peers and hiring managers that it's for real. Even then, it seems there's still a challenge when justifying to a Board of Directors or CEO, since they sign off on hiring plans: "In Q1, we have reqs for a QA person and a Product Marketeer". That fits nicely onto a PowerPoint slide and easy to check off when it's been done successfully. It's much tougher to imagine pitching "We're going to open a req for a platypus who will bootstrap our IT, handle Agile coaching, do some performance testing to select a back-end database, start some competitive research, and cut our first product videos", even though that's precisely what I did at my last job. Thankfully, since I was working with people who knew me, they got me in the door with a narrow title, then permitted me to start doing all the other stuff. I doubt I'd have been able to sell that approach to strangers, though I'd love to hear testimony of anyone else who may have pulled it off.

<comment><AUTHOR> I worked with Phil at Jut (and wrote the post), and remember him being referenced fairly frequently in my job interviews. ("You know, you remind me of Phil, though much less talented and without the ruggedly handsome bit.") To my count, he setup the wireless and wired infrastructure, ran the post-sprint meetings, setup some DevOps sandboxes for application testing, helped troubleshoot customer installs, coded, wrote tons of internal docs on the wiki, helped onboard confused new hires, and set up the MAME arcade machine. I'm certainly missing a ton. I'm not sure what his title was (Technical Director?), but he was basically the first person to go to when you didn't know who to go to.</comment></comment>


Android Library – Integrate Mulitple Services with Just One API - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/CloudRail/cloudrail-si-android-sdk/tree/master <comment><USER2> Pessimist in me says this approach is more trouble than it's worth.</comment>


Is the MOOC Bubble Bursting? - <AUTHOR> http://harry-lewis.blogspot.com/2014/07/is-mooc-bubble-bursting.html <comment><USER2> "...making the case for human intervention in teaching, at least for those students who are not 100% self-motivated and self-assured (that is, those students who actually need to be educated, rather than left to educate themselves). Two relevant notes of today."

This is really important. The discussion about education in this community (HN), and the a lot of the discussions I've seen related to the MOOC movement (or at least where it has seen success), tends to focus on self-motivated, usually high-aptitude students. But, almost by definition, those attributes do not describe most students.

<comment><USER3> I agree with the main point - that MOOCs work best for students who are self- motivated - but I think you're not giving the average college student enough credit.

From my experiences as a student in both environments, I think the motivation required to successfully complete a college course is about the same as completing a MOOC. I don't think that an increase in the amount of content delivered online at a college level would increase the failure rates, because the students who aren't self-motivated would fail out anyway.

<comment><USER4> The fact that you're here discussing this matter indicates that you're not 'average'. You probably don't associate with many 'average' college students.

<comment><USER3> That may be true, but that's not what I was trying to get at. My observation is that the external motivating pressures are the same, whether the material is delivered via traditional instruction or online. In both environments, there are lectures to attend, assignments or essays to hand in, and a final exam to write. I suspect that anyone who has enough motivation to complete that work in a traditional setting would also be able to complete it online.

<comment><USER2> I strongly disagree. I have three college degrees but my completion rate on MOOCs is hovering around 10% right now. Obviously I'm a sample of one, but I just wanted to give a personal account to match your own.

The classroom setting is important because it sets up social expectations and accountability. I tend to blow off MOOCs partly (there are obviously other reasons as well, including the fact that they are free) because there is no scheduled time. There is less pressure and it is up to me to make time, it isn't blocked out for me. I also get bored more easily in MOOCs because the communication only flows in one direction, from the teacher to the student. I can't ask questions or challenge assumptions during lectures. To me, that isn't as interesting, so I'm more likely to drop out.

<comment><USER3> Interesting! I don't have any college degree - I left in fourth year and joined a startup. I mostly hated college classes. I felt that many instructors either didn't want to be teaching, or weren't very good at it, and didn't work at getting better. Taking a class on a subject I was interested in was a guaranteed way to destroy all my enthusiasm for the topic (with the one exception of a great computer graphics course). I couldn't imagine completing three degrees.

My MOOC completion rate is also fairly low. In total I've signed up for 16 MOOCs, and successfully completed 6 of them (with 1 more in progress). I don't consider this a failing of the MOOC style - I actually consider the freedom to drop courses without punishment a great joy compared to my previous college engineering degree program. I've stopped "attending" MOOCs because I didn't like the instructor, or because I didn't enjoy the material, or just because I had too many other things going on to set aside 6 hours a week to work on a course.

But what if you had to complete the MOOC in a college environment, where you didn't have the freedom to just stop working on the material without punishment? I agree that having the lecture times blocked out is a motivating factor - I take "classes" at the gym to motivate myself to go every day. But when it comes to assignments, or studying for the final, that's still time you need to set up for yourself. Since you've been so successful at self- motivating yourself to do that already, do you think you'd be able to motivate yourself enough to watch the video lectures in a college setting?

Thanks for sharing your data point, even if it's just a small sample size. I'm really enjoying reading about other's experiences.

<comment><USER2> I actually took a for-credit online class last year and I did rather poorly in it, at least by my normal standards. There were several problems. First, I didn't find the material very interesting (it didn't cover what I thought it was going to cover).

But second, and maybe just as important, I just hated watching the video lectures. I had a lot of trouble motivating myself to spend several hours watching lectures, and when I did watch them I often found I got very little out of them because I couldn't ask questions in real time. So, for instance, if I wasn't completely clear on a point in minute 10, I might be lost for the next 40 minutes and my only recourse was to watch the part that confused me over and over again in the hope that it would become clear (which is boring).

I think I simply can't learn well from video lectures. When I was in school I was the type of student who would always engage the lecturer. I asked a lot of questions, sometimes when I was confused, sometimes when I wanted more information, and sometimes when I thought I had something to add or wanted to know about some special case. This just doesn't work with video lectures.

So I think the answer to your question is that I probably wouldn't do very well in a MOOC, even if there was some kind of consequence behind it.

Edit: I do think that MOOCs are a great thing and I hope they stay a part of the "scene", partly because it is nice to have the option (I enjoy participating in them even if I usually don't get very far), but mostly because they seem to "work" for a lot of people, like yourself. More options is good, just don't take away my in-person lectures! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This reads as a little conceited or else disconnected. I'm not saying I don't disagree, because I believe that MOOCs are probably better as a supplement to college, but another fact remains that some of us don't have the same opportunities to go to those same hand full of colleges. In other words, I think a huge part that is missing from this is the discussion of inequality.

MOOCs are not going away any time soon. There are professors and educators definitely taking the time to create quality lectures and make sure you get the help you need, and I don't think that's much different from attending an actual college. The only thing missing is probably the importance of human interaction.

Also, I'm not sure about that math because even he seems skeptical about it. Hope somebody can help enlighten me.

<comment><USER6> "The only thing missing is probably the importance of human interaction." That's it, right there. Because, for the majority of students, human interaction isn't merely important, it's critical. The problem with MOOCs is that, because of this, they can never (baring some serious breakthroughs in strong AI) provide that key component, but we pretend that they're an adequate ---some go so far as to claim superior---replacement for traditional education. In the end, MOOCs end up being a smokescreen that helps universities and governments avoid making substantive changes to address the affordability of education. The fact that it also helps them collect tuition from more students without spending any money on infrastructure or professor salaries on top of that is why so many University administrators become visibly aroused at the mention of MOOCs.

<comment><USER7> Isn't there a limit to how far 'teaching dependent learners' can go? Why spend so much time and effort accommodating people who are, by definition, self limiting?

<comment><USER6> False dichotomy. It's not a case of some minority who can't learn without teachers, but that pretty much all human beings benefit strongly from human interaction while learning (and, in particular, from an asymmetrical pair of roles, with an experienced/knowledgeable member and a novice). Admittedly, some more than others, and there are a rare few who can do nearly as well without it. You could as easily rephrase the argument as "why have MOOCs, when only a small fraction of people wouldn't do much better in traditional education"? My point is that pretending that MOOCs are just as good, or even nearly as good, as more traditional forms prevent us from real effort to actually improve upon those traditional forms, and from applying these very valuable communication tools in ways that are actually effective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> MOOC don't have to replace all colleges to be wildly successful. It is enough if they become known as the best place for self-motivated, bright people to get an education. When that happens, MOOC will be the new college. That is, completion of a course of study from a MOOC provider like Udacity will be a strong signal to employers that a student is quality.

At that point, the question employers will be asking traditional students is: why didn't you do your education online where it is faster, of better quality, and much cheaper? The fact that a person needs the hand-holding and extrinsic motivation of a traditional college is not a plus.

</comment><comment><USER9> Most of my development work in recent years has been on learning management systems (LMS). I've built lots of different types of LMS's for different types of schools and students.

When the MOOC "bubble" started, I was sort of stunned that so many schools thought that they could deliver a valid learning experience by just posting videos and syllabi online. Everyone's been doing that since 1995. MOOC was just a way to say "lots of people are watching our videos in the same sequence!" The model started breaking down quickly as soon as tracking objectives, assessing students, and interacting with instructors came into play. That's when you're into LMS territory.

LMS seems to be a bad word when you talk to MOOC advocates. Like so many buzzword people, they say that MOOC's are "disrupting" the traditional LMS.

But at the end of the day, if you're going to be successful with a MOOC, you're going to have what amounts to an LMS to deliver it. There's no magic bullet shortcut there that combines ("mashup"\- another favorite buzzword for people reinventing the wheel) all the things you need to deliver a successful learning experience.

MOOC people say they're disrupting learning systems by mashing up all these things. It's a great idea- but once you actually implement, you've built an LMS.

My current client's LMS could easily, today, deliver a class to 100K students with manageable interactivity and assignments (and delivery on mobile devices), and yet the client wants to throw the thing away because it's 10 years old. Most universities who have failed with MOOC's would spend a million bucks or more to have this LMS, and the client is just going to throw it away. Wasting money seems to be the true meaning of "disrupt" in the learning context.

<comment><USER10> Compare D2L and Blackboard on one hand and the edX platform and Coursera on the other. Are they all LMSs? Absolutely. Is there some buzzword-mongering out there. Undoubtedly. But if you can't see (or, as a user, feel) any significant differences between those two groups of products, I'd suspect your faculties of discernment have been stunted.

Also, universities have failure and money-wasting baked into their institutional DNA. That they've failed at delivering content electronically (and almost everything else that's socially valuable) doesn't mean MOOCs can't be successful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Well MOOCs may not appeal to everyone but they are extremely useful to anyone who wants to learn about certain advanced topics on their own. It will not disrupt college education, since its not the courses or content that matters but the credentials.

<comment><USER12> Half baked credentials, most of the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> MOOC's promise is not about disrupting the privileged collegiate experience for the few entitled attendees. MOOC's promise is for the rest of the world.

"And none of this is to suggest that institutions with very high prices ... aren't going to collapse. THEY WILL. And there may well be more people who get smart <who> go to a lower priced school rather than to the unaffordable "best" school they get into."

(Emphasis mine & I removed the aid discount, since that's all that it really is - a discount.)

Notice that "best" is not really the "best" it's only conditionally the "best".

And when this is applied world wide, MOOCs will transform education, and vast numbers of educational institutions will pivot towards research, private industry partnerships or disappear altogether.

In the end I believe that with MOOCs the world will be smarter, and the elite institutions more exclusive and elite. They will return to being class dating organizations that they once were before the idea of them being meritocratic academic institutions overtook them.

Harvard, Stanford will survive. MIT, CalTech will excel. Cornell, Brown, UPenn, Yale, Princeton, the UCs, etc will struggle. None of them will be able to support their capital loads when the educational opportunities are presented significantly cheaper elsewhere. Add to that the fact that the Student Loan bubble will have burst, and student credit will be severely curtailed, and we see a significantly changed educational future.

Kodak indeed.

<comment><USER14> It's a shame to see that your comment got voted down.

That said, it is a good example of why the "downvote if you disagree" policy that has been encouraged here is a rather idiotic idea.

Your comment is clearly not commercial spam or anything of that nature. And it does present an argument, with justification for why it may hold true.

It might "offend" thin-skinned people associated with some of the well- established academic institutions you'd listed. That's not a problem with the comment, however, but rather with the people who can't stand to read an argument that they may disagree with badly enough to want to censor.

I don't know if I agree or disagree with what you said, but I do know that it wasn't a waste of my time to read it, and it did get me thinking somewhat. The most bothersome part was dealing with the unnecessarily gray text.

<comment><USER13> Pacabel thank you for your note. My comment was meant in all seriousness. With so many institutions depending heavily on their students financing by student loans, I was making a call on which institutions I thought would survive and why and which institutions would likely fail.

So why the downvote? And why not add something substantial to the conversation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> While the article may be correct that MOOCs will not achieve the oft-stated outcome of displacing the current higher educational system, I think the argument that the author is making regarding the affordability of college is off base. Harry Lewis in the article states: "At Harvard and a handful of other schools, nobody graduates with any debt (unless they have intentionally borrowed so they could avoid making money in the summer, etc., and even then the amounts are likely < $10K)."

While according to Harvard itself: "The total 2013-2014 cost of attending Harvard College without financial aid is $38,891 for tuition and $59,950 for tuition, room, board and fees combined."

Unless summer+part time work is a lot more lucrative than I am aware of, the only way this would be true is if the students (or their parents) were financially well-endowed. A student that doesn't have rich parents is going to be incurring a fair amount of debt or spending way too much time working instead of studying.

Edit: Harvard is generous with its financial aid, so the author's message is more accurate than I understood (at least for Harvard). Learned something.

<comment><USER16> > Unless summer+part time work is a lot more lucrative than I am aware of, the > only way this would be true is if the students (or their parents) were > financially well-endowed.

Or if, as is often the case at wealthy private colleges, Harvard has extensive school-provied need-based financial aid in grant, rather than loan, form (as well as any academic scholarships) which assure that the full cost is only paid by (some of) those who are financially well-endowed, while those who aren't financially well-endowed (as well as some who are, due to academic scholarships) are paying much less out of pocket (including loans as "out of pocket" for this purpose.)

<comment><USER15> Good point (and same to @ambler0). I have little first-hand experience here so I may be way off base, but on average are families paying far less than the retail price of 60K/yr? I mean, if your family had a 100K income, would you still get a break? How much loss is Harvard absorbing?

<comment><USER17> Try the net price calculator here: [https://college.harvard.edu/financial- aid/net-price-calculat...](https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/net- price-calculator) .

I was Harvard class of 2013, and I received some financial aid from Harvard even when my family had an income well above 100k (my father is a professor and my mom works for the federal government; both have PhDs).

Edit: I think it's more around the 180k-200k range where the aid falls off rapidly, especially if you don't have extenuating circumstances like a sibling also in college.

<comment><USER18> It's insane how massive the financial aid discrepency is between a family with kids aged 18+20 (expected contribution = 50% each) vs a family with kids aged 18+22 (expected contribution = 100% each)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Done properly, the flipped classroom + MOOC format would allow for _more_ personal interaction than the traditional university setting currently does for all but the best students at the most elite schools.

That they haven't succeeded says less about MOOCs than about the distribution of institutional power in traditional universities, where your typical administrator will see MOOCs merely as an opportunity to cut costs that wouldn't have to be cut if administrative bloat weren't crowding out everything else.

</comment><comment><USER19> What if we had online courses where the best educators in the world created interactive training material. Schools still exist and students are required to come to classes where they go through the training material. The staff simply enforces discipline. Students can mail in questions to elite people in the field and use college simply as a networking arena.</comment>


Reasons China and Japan may go to war over disputed islands - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/reasons-china-and-japan-may-go-to-war-over-disputed-east-china-sea-islands-2013-1

<comment><AUTHOR> Chinese comments are more on the offensive and even pro-war so I wanted to also share a Chinese version discussing the same topic:

<http://mini.miercn.com/article/16871.html>

<http://n7.chinaiiss.com/html/20131/22/w210c6_2.html></comment>


Did a Computer Bug Help Deep Blue Beat Kasparov? (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/2012/09/deep-blue-computer-bug/ <comment><USER2> Actually, selecting at random from already sifted list of good moves is probably not such a bad strategy. Especially in series of games against the same opponent. It brings in a factor of unpredictability, which may well appear as "superior intelligence".

<comment><USER3> Doesn't really sound like a bug.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am so curious about reading the logs, if there was any, during this game. It seems so weird that the default move is "purely random" in case of undecision... I can't trust these declarations...</comment>


"I want freedom of speech" hashtag started trending on Weibo in China - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.twitter.com/muyixiao/status/1225526482497343489 <comment><AUTHOR> I think current generation of young Chinese people are not too different from the millennial generation anywhere else. They demand more than material wealth: access to information, freedom of expression, and ideas.</comment>


Gravity – The Best Movie in "A While" - <AUTHOR> http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2013/10/gravity-the-best-movie-in-a-while.html <comment><USER2> The hype on this movie is unbelievable. If it was a true science fiction movie, perhaps suspending belief would be possible. Instead it's about current technology, and basic orbital mechanics and simple physics. The number of errors this movie had are horrific. The storyline is dull, the characters are flat, the science (for all the claims that experts and astronauts were employed) is atrocious. I wish I would have suspended by cash and not wasted my money. Yeah for impressive CGI, now can I have my $9 bucks back?

My tinfoil hat guess - NASA's funding is so far in the dumps that anyone and everyone associated with real space science is hyping this dish rag in an effort to woo over the general public who are clueless about simple math and physics in an effort to pump up NASA's visibility for better funding. Hope it's worth selling out science to do so.

<comment><USER3> I don't think the movie had many scientific "errors" _per se_. Error implies that they mad a mistake or didn't understand the science and got it wrong as a result. But in this movie, most of the inaccuracies were intentional breaks from reality, not unintentional mistakes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For a better rundown of the science in the movie (compared to the linked to Ars piece that was just about the trailer), I recommend Phil Plait's review: [http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/10/04/ba_movie...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/10/04/ba_movie_review_gravity.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> see it on the biggest and loudest screen in a 50 mile radius. 3d preferrable.

Don't watch any trailers, just see the movie. Trailers ruin movies.

<comment><USER6> Cool special effects and painfully bad physics hardly make a good movie IMO. The cold equations is vary low budget but demonstrate you can make drama without sacrificing much accuracy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I saw this Friday night. It is only the 2nd movie after Avatar to do 3D right. While it does not have the most complex plot, it's supremely solid and doesn't deviate. The acting is _superb_ and the score is well done too.

Overall, the visuals in Gravity are stunning. Do see it in 3D if you can.

Moreover, the movie has gotten positive nods from astronauts that worked on Hubble in regards to getting the details right.

</comment><comment><USER8> This movie made me think that in the future they should try to make movies as optimized for VR as possible, and let you "be" in the main character's place throughout the whole experience. That's also what will probably kill cinemas, since you'll finally be able to get a better experience at home.

</comment><comment><USER9> So some dude liked "Gravity"? Good news.

</comment><comment><USER10> Wow. Big spoiler in the first few comments of the article linked. Should I still see the movie?

</comment><comment><USER11> Awesome is an appropriate word to describe this film.</comment>


List of 284 Things - <AUTHOR> http://www.joe-bowers.com/static/big_taxonomy/words.txt <comment><USER2> Make it recursive and then it's 285 things!!!</comment>


UK ISPs will soon send written warnings to suspected pirates - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2017/01/10/uk-isps-piracy-emails/ <comment><USER2> Oh, what a coincidence - just a few days after passing the Investigatory Powers Act, which stores the sites everyone visits on ISP's servers.</comment>


Taking Privacy Seriously - <AUTHOR> https://everyme.com/blog/taking_privacy_seriously <comment><USER2> > So I give Mark Zuckerberg credit where credit is due: he was right to make > public the default in 2009. Whether you intend to keep things private or not > on Facebook, you are just delaying the inevitable.

Indeed. Society seems to be undergoing a shift toward not really caring about privacy. This has profound implications, even for those who do care about their privacy and wish to guard at.

There was an excellent essay last week in the Stanford Law Review by Judge Kozinski of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on this topic: [http://www.stanfordlawreview.org/online/privacy- paradox/dead...](http://www.stanfordlawreview.org/online/privacy-paradox/dead- past)

Anyone who cares about privacy should read that. One of the excellent points Kozinski makes is that the 4th Amendment limits on government are determined by what is a reasonable expectation of privacy, and so even if you scrupulously try to protect your privacy, if everyone else doesn't care that shifts the line for a reasonable expectation and that can screw you.

</comment><comment><USER3> The author fails to abord the issue of how will the service treat user data in regard to third parties.

Isn't that worth mentioning when you claim that you are taking privacy seriously?

<comment><USER4> I can answer that for you here. This article is more about privacy as our product although it is also our policy. Our Privacy Policy and TOS outline things in legalese, but in human language, we take it seriously on the backend as well. We even put our legal documents on GitHub so you can track changes to them. We abide by all TOS provided by other APIs. We don't store your address book or your friends data; we don't want that liability. All connections are made through SSL. We will never share your data with anyone else (outside of legal obligations, I suppose - but please read our Privacy Policy and TOS for the final word as I am not our lawyer).

<comment><USER5> >We will never share your data with anyone else.

If that 'someone else' carries a court-ordered subpoena you will have a hard time adhering to that promise.

<comment><USER4> Updated my comment to be a little more clear on that, thanks :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm kinda confused what this post is saying. "Everything is going public," it says, "it's inevitable, and privacy controls are just delaying the inevitable." And then between paragraphs, there's a sudden non-sequitur: "So we're making it so that you can keep private things private in an intuitive way."

I... where did that come from? I laud the effort to take privacy seriously. That's good and something people care about. But how does that follow at all from everything else they said?

(By the way, I have several people who I can't find any data about by casual googling. They're mostly people I went to college with who I failed to keep in contact with. I'm sure if I started digging into govt data, I could get somewhere, but that's a depth I don't feel comfortable plumbing.)

<comment><USER4> Sorry that wasn't more clear. I think privacy controls on a product like Facebook, designed and redesigned ad infinitum to make you share things in public, fail at doing so in the long run. Everyme was designed from the ground-up for private sharing.</comment></comment>


Got a Minute? Let's Work Out - <AUTHOR> http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/12/10/one-minute-workout/

<comment><USER2> I would advise another 25 seconds of combined balance exercise/core strengthener on a fitness ball or balance disk, s.t. like this: [http://www.fitter1.com/Classic-Balance- Board_p_22.html](http://www.fitter1.com/Classic-Balance-Board_p_22.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is amazing. Going to try and integrate this before every shower.</comment>


Ask HN: Why are LinkedIn's job recommendations terrible? - <AUTHOR> My expectations for the largest professional network are much higher than the quality of job recommendations I see. Am I the only one? Are my expectations too high? <comment><USER2> LinkedIn is the least interesting (and relevant) of all the social media sites. Most of their job openings have already been filled. They are copies of original job postings somewhere else.

</comment><comment><USER3> Their main problem is they recommend jobs that people already have. Why would someone quit for an equal job?

<comment><AUTHOR> If I even saw that it would be explainable. I see stuff that's not even close. I've held fairly senior roles and I'll get recommendations to be a junior business analyst in an industry not remotely connected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> ...and there are so many lazy recruiters spamming about inappropriate job openings as well.

Now that LinkedIn is part of the Microsoft empire, I perceive that it has become of even lesser value. Still Ok to track down former co-workers, etc. But it constantly nags me to signup for paid plans.

</comment><comment><USER5> How are they wrong? What kind of recommendations do you want to see?

<comment><AUTHOR> Stuff's not even remotely related to my current or past experience or industry</comment></comment>


Free SVG and PNG Icons Easily Customizable For Games - <AUTHOR> http://game-icons.net/ <comment><USER2> Some other icon sets (probably appeared on HN before, don't know where I got them from):

flags: <https://www.gosquared.com/resources/flag-icons>

user interface: <https://www.gosquared.com/resources/165-vector-icons> and <http://adamwhitcroft.com/batch/>

<comment><USER3> The icons the OP linked to are for games though which are VERY hard to find large good quality sets. The icons you are linking are great for general apps but probably not very useful for games.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> These are always fun, but don't address the need that many game developers (ok, at least "I") have - the need for detailed backgrounds - preferably ones that can mesh well with each other. That can really help set the "world" for the player, and while a developer can often do their own sprite artwork, backgrounds tend to be an art to themselves.

I usually end up going to either one of my 3D tools or my photographs, and then playing with filters in Photoshop to get an artistic look that isn't too jarring.

</comment><comment><USER5> see also: <http://thenounproject.com/>

<comment><USER6> Is there any way to download the noun project icons as a single zip file?

<comment><USER7> I'm not seeing any on the website as a guest but

        wget http://thenounproject.com/download/zipped/svg_{1..10000}.zip && unzip '*.zip' && zip nouns *.svg

should do the trick

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Very nice set and great organization; reminds me a lot of The Noun Project. It would be great to see some more examples of other games/projects using these icons.

</comment><comment><USER3> This icon set is really awesome. I'm planning on using them at some point for my game Tribal Hero ( <http://tribalhero.com> ). I wish they were colored but I'm probably going to use them as decals in flags instead.

</comment><comment><USER8> I downloaded a few random icons in SVG format and noticed that Inkscape opens them exactly as they appear on the website, but Illustrator CS 6 does not maintain the proper stroke width.

<comment><USER9> Open the SVG file in Illustrator. Works great

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nice work. Would be better if they didn't have a background embedded, I can add that at display time.

Is there a cdn for these icon sets?

</comment><comment><USER11> Would it be difficult to offer an additional PNG download zip that has the icons in white with a transparent background?

</comment><comment><USER12> I personally use icones.pro, they have over 200 000 icones, and the quality is good.

(I don't own/operate this website)

</comment><comment><USER13> I've been using this site for a while now. Good to see it getting a bit more attention.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [Check out <http://www.functionn.in> for more web resources to keep you functionn.in']

Game Icons is a massive icon pack containing a mighty 950+ icons which can be used for games or applications. The icons are categorized in various categories such as Animal, Weapon, Fire , Food, Action, Liquid, Symbol, Skull, Plant, Body, Heart, Tool, Arrow, Sea, Stone, Eye, Machine, Sword, Face, Chemical and more.

Dozens of new icons are added weekly and if you need a specific icon, you can even send a request by email. The icons are available in SVG and PNG formats, which can all be downloaded at once from the website.

License: CC 3.0 License

<comment><USER13> I get the feeling you're posting game-icons.net here just as an excuse to also link to your news site. I think the submitted link is fine, but also posting a link to your site seems borderline spam.

<comment><AUTHOR> c'mon, it's not that bad, it's kind of a win-win situation, you get to know about things, I get some shameless promotion.

At <http://www.functionn.in>, we do not post things which have been posted all over the web. We post things which are AWESOME and FRESH. We do this daily. Check it out once, I'm sure you'll find it super useful :)

But if people are not fine with it, I'll stop. Just drop comment here people. I'll take it as a no-go :)

<comment><USER14> What a coincidence. At <http://www.example.com/>, we like doing the exact same things. Everything we post is AWESOME and FRESH as well as being done daily. Check it out, it's super useful!

Everyone please reply and post your own website as well because obviously if everyone promoted themselves inside every discussion, it would add a ton of value and would totally not be spam.

Scratch that. Here's another thought: if you want to promote your own site, put some value-added content within your site and link to that. For example: how to resize, color, and use game-icons.net in cocos2d for iOS. That would make for a decent blog entry that does three things: (1) lets people know about game-icons.net; (2) demonstrates how to make practical use of the icons; and (3) links to your own site where you can do your self-promotion and gain subscribers (or whatever your goal is).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for those wise words! Will keep that in mind and try to improve the quality of the posts :)

Edit: Actually it's a brilliant suggestion. Thank you for this biot!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Drive.ai will offer a self-driving car service for public use in Frisco, Texas - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@andrewng/self-driving-cars-are-here-aea1752b1ad0 <comment><USER2> It's more like a parking lot shuttle. About a half dozen stops spread across six blocks.

There are a number of companies in that business. There are minibus-sized vehicles that creep around, like Local Motors' Olli and Navya's shuttle. A reasonable way to get started, but few if any seem to be good enough to have a paying installation with no human driver on board. There are some trials. Paris has some in use on a dedicated route. Shenzhen has a small fleet, but they have a "safety driver".

The Navya unit running in Vegas not only has a backup operator on board, there's another human-driven car following behind.

</comment><comment><USER3> I like how this car has exterior communication to pedestrians. I think this is actually pretty important. The way I tell if I can cross a crosswalk is by making eye contact with the approaching driver, and other self driving cars can't indicate if they see me.

<comment><USER4> Thanks Ryan! How are things going? :)

<comment><USER3> Hey! Things are going well! I'm actually on ML now, so quite a bit different than the past few years but I'm enjoying it. Glad to see you guys are making progress; it seems like a pretty exciting field right now

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Self-driving cars are here" \- Not criticizing, but I thought they were already "here"?

This is just a new industry competitor, correct? or am I missing something?

</comment><comment><USER6> I'd have thought that the recent accidents would prevent these companies from rushing to market...</comment>


Ash HN: Why Unit Test? - <AUTHOR>

Why should I write unit tests? They take more time and are HARD! <comment><USER2> They will save you time in the long run, because they automate your testing. If you spend some time writing a unit test to cover some code, you _never_ have to worry about testing that piece of code again: it will be automatically tested every time you run your test suite.

I also agree that they can be hard to write, however this will make you a better programmer as it forces you to really think about the code you're testing (for example if it can't be tested in an isolated fashion by a unit test, then it may not be modular enough).</comment>


Introducing Unified Update Platform - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2016/11/03/introducing-unified-update-platform-uup/ <comment><USER2> This is what I want to read:

"Microsoft finally realized that the point of a computer is to run the user's applications without interruption or long boot times. Therefore, we are rolling out an update system that is transparent to the user and has no forced reboots and long wait times."

<comment><USER3> What I was _really_ hoping to read with a title like "Introducing Unified Update Platform" is that Microsoft had provided some sort of API for _any_ program to use the same unified update system to check for and install updates, instead of having a million random updaters checking things in Task Scheduler.

They already do it for graphics drivers and so on. Linux does it of course.

But then I guess the problem is Microsoft would need to check everything in case users started blaming Microsoft for "sending them a virus through Windows Update" when RandomDodgyApp got a bad update.

<comment><USER4> They already did, it's the Windows Store

<comment><USER5> And what about all the real apps and not the toy phone apps?

<comment><USER4> You can distribute bog-standard desktop software through the store: [https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/windows/uwp/porting/desktop...](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/windows/uwp/porting/desktop-to-uwp-run-desktop-app-converter)

<comment><USER5> Last time I looked into it you had to to some porting too, it didn't really work with "bog-standard" as claimed.

<comment><USER4> No, they work as-is most of the time. You just have to make sure you're not writing to your install folder or try to install services or something like that. The use of UWP APIs instead of/along classic desktop APIs is completely optional (and most of them are supported out of the box even without the bridge, the exception being the APIs that require app identity, like Tiles or supporting a Share Target contract, at least not in a easy way)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I recommend using a traffic analysis tool for Windows 10 (GlassWire is a nice and easy to use one). I think I must've blocked like 15 different connections to Microsoft.

Beyond all the new "expected" (yet still annoying) Windows 10 telemetry, feedback, etc server connections, you get to see stuff that will piss you off - like Windows Explorer connecting to Microsoft's servers, or Web Search and Cortana connecting to its servers, even though I disabled both of them (first thing I do when installing Windows 10).

Oh, and all of that with all the options in the Privacy settings being disabled. I like Windows 10 as an OS, but it's ridiculous how much tracking and data sharing Microsoft does behind the scenes. It also makes using your phone as mobile data hotspot useless, because it's going to use a ton of your data quickly.

If I couldn't block most of this stuff I wouldn't touch Windows 10.

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

<comment><USER7> I use Glasswire as well but it's not enough because of Svchost. Whenever I block it, I'm unable to browse the internet. So, I use Netlimiter to throttle the process to 2KB/s.

<comment><USER8> You may want to use Process Explorer to check what's actually running under svchost - that's a catxh all for services, I think

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Literally the only thing I want from Windows Updates is the option "do not reboot without asking me first" back. That's it.

<comment><USER10> I also would like that back, but I'd also pose to you this question:

Windows historically has been heavily used in botnets, in part because people do not apply updates to known (and fixed) vulnerabilities. Microsoft removing the "fuck off" button was a response to that, and I'd assert it's made the Internet in general safer. Yet it's also unquestionably had the side-effect of making Windows dramatically less pleasant to use.

What's the best solution here? iOS just reboots in the middle of the night, which would likely work well for Windows tablets, but might have issues with traditional desktops, since Windows doesn't have the freedom iOS does to just shut down apps. Linux leaves you to fend for yourself, which I think has mostly worked okay thus far because Linux users tend to be more technically sophisticated. macOS is a bit in-between, attempting to do the midnight reboot dance, but aborting if docs are open.

<comment><USER11> iOS doesn't install updates without you giving it permission. It pops up a dialog and lets you choose to install it now, overnight while plugged in, or to cancel, but it doesn't do it without your permission. macOS has an automatically install updates option which you can uncheck if you don't want them.

<comment><USER12> iOS: everything's sandobxed

macOS: not the most popular consumer operating system

<comment><USER13> your post: no point

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The bullshit corporate speak is astounding: "In the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, we added active hours and improved the control capabilities for our customers"

So you relinquished partial control of our computers. GOOD JOB. Maybe you shouldn't have assigned that right to yourself in the first place. Maybe just fuck off and let us decide when and if we're going to install these things. Like, how it used to work.

I would be running linux right now if I could get it to boot.

<comment><USER15> Ah the good old days when you were complaining about not patched security issues and machines who haven't been update since... ever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Can you make it so that updates run fast? On every other device that I own, an update is a download and then a very fast reboot.

On Windows, an update is a long download, then lots of reboots where the computer is busy doing who knows what.

What's even worse is that "update and shut down" can lead to a 10-20 minute wait the next time I turn on my computer.

<comment><USER16> My wife was working from home last month for the first time in forever and that's when Windows 10 Home decided to upgrade to the Anniversary update. Try and I might, I could not seem to find a way to stop this. It took well over an hour, in the middle of the day, to install Windows and kept her from working.

That's one of the most user hostile things I've ever seen in a software product.

Ironically, after the Anniversary update we could at least set the working hours but it's still limited to a 12 hour block. Is it really too much to ask to only allow updates/reboots from 1:00am to 6:00am?!?

I'd like to think if any of this happened to the CEO of Microsoft, this crap would get fixed right away.

<comment><USER17> Here's some irony for you: I'm a Microsoft Employee and the update was force- installed midday during a WFH day, just before a critical demo, necessitating that I work over the weekend because my wife had taken the car + busses I needed didn't run midday. (there had been popup warnings for ~week but they... lied? Kept saying it would happen, it didn't, kept moving back, then all of a sudden happened with no warnings at the most inopportune time)

Another peer of mine lost his networking stack functionality when his update pushed through.

The update/telemetry/user friendliness situation has not been fantastic, even for some of us internal engs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Did they just advertise features that were present in update.microsoft.com 16 years ago as new?

(Pardon me if I got the hostname or start of service date wrong! It's been a while...)

</comment><comment><USER19> From the perspective of a long-time Windows user who at one point managed the services my former employer used to keep hosts up to date, this is an excellent development.

Execution will be important here and IMHO, and it has been done pretty poorly with the past versions of Windows Update/WSUS -- there's a lot of room for improvement. A lot of the benefit will center around how Differential Update is performed. Is this purely at the file level or are they actually delivering the differences in the files (similar to how I read Chrome updates were delivered). The latter would likely involve a lot more processing on the MS/WSUS side, but could dramatically lower bandwidth requirements.

The next piece centers around the WSUS component itself. I found it interesting that they've specifically used the word "Unified". Could there be a future where I, as an ISV, can publish an update/update repository for my application and have patches to my software delivered via update services? It always puzzled me that while I can create an MSI/MSP file for deployment, I could not similarly produce an MSU file for updating. Third-party software has eclipsed the core OS software as far as vulnerability threats and patching it in an enterprise is a _nightmare_. Most large Windows enterprises use System Center Configuration Manager which is best described as a swiss-army knife for software delivery and at its worst, described as a bunch of unrelated tools that are used to deploy software with different rules depending on what the software is. Standardizing patch delivery, or even simply _allowing_ a third- party to install a patch via WSUS would have made patching browser plug-ins, Adobe Reader and other common software (some of which provide more attack vectors than features) a lot less painful. We maintained a 99.5% patch target with varying range requirements and while we nearly always hit those targets with OS patches, we almost never hit them with these third-party applications. They didn't mention this as a specific feature, and the naming could simply be the marketing department picking a new buzz-word, but I'm hoping this is a future path they're planning on taking.

Personally, I'd like to see updating that's as easy on Windows as it is on my openSuse or Ubunto hosts. Repositories are used to manage the various vendors, updates are packaged the same, standardized and "It Just Works" for the most part.

<comment><USER20> I completely agree. I just want to point out that Windows Update _can_ deliver application updates and has done so for Office, Silverlight, Defender, Bing something and possibly others. So the capability is there, they "just" need to enable it for 3rd parties. Oops, I used a 4-letter word. I'm sure it's more complicated than that.

They sorta did it for Store/UWP apps, but Win32 applications aren't going anywhere anytime soon (I hope!).

<comment><USER19> I forgot about the Store apps and I remember when that came out, I thought "They got that mostly right". "Mostly Right" from the perspective that there is a standardized software install/repository for applications that also updates them. "Wrong" in that it's following the iOS App Store model rather than the Linux model, has no (real) ability to add third-party, software that hasn't undergone the "Microsoft Stamp of Approval"[0]. And I'll admit that my first thought was that it was the end of any dream that MSUs would be opened up to third-parties.

And the Office/Silverlight mix always drove me crazy - it's something you have to separately turn on (and depending on the OS version/kind, you have to click through an additional EULA to activate), so they _already had the plumbing in place to accept non-OS update_ complete with an EULA page and "activation" of that feature. I know there are a _lot_ of issues that have to be addressed to successfully implement this. There are those legal ones -- like the ones they encountered that caused them to differentiate "Windows Update" and "Microsoft Update", as well as adding another attack vector (now the drive-by installs only need to install a new repository and they can _deploy malware through updates_ )[1], as well as probably tens or so that I am not clever enough to think of.

[0] Though a quick search for just about anything in the WinStore indicates that Microsoft's standards are _really_ low -- the spam disguised as software in the is a _big_ problem.

[1] There's ways around this, though, with existing features already built into Windows. Using a model similar to Intellicode with an internet connection required to verify trust and CRL (you need it to download the update, any way, after all), backed up by a bit more hands-on verification on Microsoft's side (along with a higher fee to pay for that) would cover third-party repositories and for "Internal Enterprise" MSUs -- built by IT staff and deployed via SCCM -- the requirements could be "accept only if it originates from the enterprise CA that the domain trusts" (not other, external, CAs).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Maybe one day we will get a truly unified update platform thru which we can update all our software, not just Windows. It's crazy that every single app has its own update mechanism in 2016.

<comment><USER22> That world exists in free software OSes like *BSD, GNU/Linux, illumos, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I don't have great internet at home and a couple of times a week it crawls to a stop. It's kind of funny there is some app on my home network that is auto updating.. windows10, steam, Apple TV, iPhone, iPad it could literally be anything, and I don't know which one it is.

</comment><comment><USER24> Honestly, I don't need a faster update, I don't need a lower bandwidth update. I don't even care that much that it's automatic. All I want is the updates to be more stable/reliable going forward than the last couple months have been.</comment>


Cassandra 1.0: 400% read performance improvement - <AUTHOR> http://www.datastax.com/dev/blog/whats-new-in-cassandra-1-0-performance

<comment><USER2> Two points that are specified but somewhat hidden in the article: 1) the 400% number is between Cassandra 0.6 and Cassandra 1.0, 2) the test is CPU bound because the dataset fits very easily in memory.

A lot of awesome work has gone into Cassandra 1.0: many thanks to the Datastax team.

<comment><USER3> I'd just like to add Fuck Datastax to that otherwise great comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Cassandra is way underrated. It is a great advance in DBRMS, just not relational. I've put it to great use and it's an amazing database system. Searching is badly needed, regular expression searching by column values would make it kick Oracle`s ass anytime.

<comment><USER4> <https://github.com/tjake/Solandra>

<comment><USER5> Unfortunately it benchmarks 20-40x slower than stock Solr. If that wasn't the case, I'd use it in a heartbeat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm sure the Reddit admins appreciate this. :D

<comment><USER4> So does Digg. I wonder how they are going to pivot after all that drama.

<comment><USER3> They won't pivot. Digg sucks.</comment></comment></comment>


Windows 8 Settings UI Animation in jQuery - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/rmdort/windows-8-settings-ui

<comment><USER2> I would love to tweak and apply this to my blog.</comment>


The Newest Lean Startup Tool: Kickstarter - <AUTHOR> https://segment.io/academy/the-newest-lean-startup-tool-is-kickstarter/ <comment><USER3> Agreed with shawnc, the article should state Crowdfunding and not Kickstarter. But that aside, I definitely agree with others that using crowdfunding as a "startup tool" doesn't make everything and everyone on there a "startup." If anything, it allows people to get very important market validation which can lead to a startup environment and lead to more outside capital.

I personally don't think software has big potential with crowdfunding platforms since crowdfunding success has been inherently hardware-driven. I also think developers run the risk of pitching a software "idea" to a huge audience where one dev browsing the site can steal the idea and make it while you wait to raise your $50k for "coding." I also don't think it's in the nature of any dev to do that; perhaps kids who have "ideas" for apps, can't code and don't want to spend the money on a 3rd party dev.

There's also an inherent risk with crowdfunding. Sure, we look at success stories like Ouya and Pebble who have both raised a ton of equity-free capital - but those are rare. I never saw the value or appeal of Pebble, to me it's just another useless watch with a display. Similar to a useless Nike Fuelband, but people like gimmicks and "new stuff" so more power to Pebble. Pebble has been plagued with a few issues as well as Ouya and I think a lot of these Cinderella stories are glorified on TechCrunch while forgetting to mention the fact that creating hardware is a very tricky business.

The consumer, of course, doesn't care about your supply chain, tooling, manufacturing, QA, warranty, logistics and 20 other things associated with launching a successful hardware product. They paid for a good, they want it shipped. If it doesn't work, they want a return. And they'll most likely bitch and moan just so you can suffer a little more.

So while we may see certain success stories in the Crowdfunding space, they're primarily hardware, tangible goods driven and rarely reach the $1M range. It is very difficult for any hardware product, even with a high margin and low COG, to make a profit with a sub-$300k crowd raise. So when you see someone raise $125k for some hardware which looks great (renders), has a great video, and a 2 month ship date - that's not reality. They're most likely losing money on that deal. I've personally been involved (as an advisor) with a company that raised over $220k for a high-margin / low COG consumer electronic and they are bleeding money.

On the surface it's like everything else - glistening. But inside, these things are tough. With that said, market validation is the biggest gain you can get from crowdfunding, unless you're pushing the $750k raise range. And I'm sure the Pebble guys made some nice money since that campaign raised so much cash, the HTML on Kickstarter couldn't even handle the number.

I also wonder what kind of products we'll see on crowdfunding platforms. I foresee a lot of informercial-like products coming up, imagine the Shamwow guy selling that crap in front of millions of online users - it could be a big market or rather, a shift from traditional dead media (TV) to the Internet. This includes the funding of independent films, Zach Braff's latest project was somewhat disruptive when it comes to how movies are traditionally made. Be in no doubt, Hollywood and all the other traditional media old farts are all over these sites, forming strategies on how to crowdfund their projects by making it seems like the actors themselves are seeking funds.

<comment><USER4> > I personally don't think software has big potential with crowdfunding > platforms since crowdfunding success has been inherently hardware-driven.

I'm not sure this is true. I've backed a few game development projects on Kickstarter that ended up far exceeding their campaign goals. Maybe you're making a distinction between games and other types of software (which, indeed, haven't been too successful).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great points by Michael here. Kickstarter has opened the doors as a tool to gain initial funding to meet producing an exact product or service.

What I loved most about Michael's post is he talked about the importance of outreach - tweets from other relevant organizations, guest blog posts and contributing to online forums. Though Kickstarter is a "marketplace" - <USER2> likely won't get you all the backers you need without doing your own outreach to potential customers and backers. It's essential to understand their pain points and meet it with your product, just as Real Python did.

<comment><USER6> It's really key to do your own inbound marketing. Like I said, I spend about half my day doing it. I know other people who went at it full time. There's a direct correlation between the amount of outreach/content marketing you do with pledges.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This article should say 'Crowdfunding' instead of 'Kickstarter' - that's truly the part of the 'newest lean startup tool'. It's not about Kickstarter being that tool, but what Kickstarter enables when using them. There's plenty of options, including doing it on your own site.

Crowdfunding is indeed a good qualifier for knowing if you're on the right track or not. We actually crowdfunded our product, from the start, on our own website, and it went well enough that we're still at it.

It's actually a product to crowdfund on your own website, so we essentially ate our own dogfood by using it to garner our first 100 customers.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think Kickstarter is one tool to validate that your idea has people who are interested (assuming you market it well). Since you're putting up one "project", even with stretch goals it's not really the most data-driven way to get to product market fit. You don't really have people using the product in real-time and iterating on it as you would a live web app, for example. But it's still better than putting in thousands of dollars on a hardware investment without even knowing there's interest!

The other problem is if you find you're not building the right thing, you can't scrap it and build something entirely different because if you're funded you've made an obligation to your backers. And that can be a long arduous process to fulfill orders/incentives/perks. Not really the lean startup philosophy, but I still like that Kickstarter is a great way to find demand for an idea.

<comment><USER6> Good points. Depending on how far along you are in the development process, you can have potential users testing a barbones mockup in real time. This could even help the performance of the Kickstarter.

As far as pivoting: you are absolutely right. If later on, you find out that you are not building the right product, you still need to fulfill your promises to your Kickstarter backers. That said, if your KS is a success, it's probably a good indication that your business model, at the very least, is viable.

It comes downs to planning and determining what your end goals are, and then tailoring the KS campaign as best you can to meet those goals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If I recall, Kickstarter doesn't allow you to run a campaign for something that will be a subscription service after launch. That sort of conflicts with the "best practice" advice[1] for the modern startup, doesn't it? Or does it complement this advice, giving an channel to early revenue for B2C startups that previously had to rely on "runway"?

[1] i.e. do B2[SM]B, do SaaS, do locked-in monthly recurring then try to get yearly up-front for cashflow.

</comment><comment><USER10> We'd love to help any startups/projects in need of swag.

<https://teelaunch.com>

</comment><comment><USER11> By this definition, everything on Kickstarter is a lean startup. How does one draw the line? I'm having a hard time grasping how this is different than, say, Neal Stephenson raising money for a new scifi novel. Would that be a lean startup as well?

<comment><USER3> People, and particularly this article, love to throw around "industry terms" to get clicks and create buzz. You can't fathom how many times "entrepreneurs" making the latest Instagram throw out the "change the world" line. It's fashionable. And I also hope it goes away real fast.

<comment><USER6> You're right that sometimes it's just about using some buzz words to grab attention, but I would hope that beneath the surface there's more there. Yes, you could consider every KS project taking on the lean approach - but to explicitly state that and approach a KS like that is quite a bit different altogether.</comment></comment></comment>


Multiparty Encryption in Public IRC Channels with IRCSRP - <AUTHOR> http://npjh.com/multiparty-encryption-in-public-irc-channels-with-ircsrp.html

<comment><USER2> I would think that XMPP would be better fitted for this kind of work for its extensibility. And there is already some work done on end to end encryption for XMPP which maybe could be of use.

Couple things I noticed: The key exchange/renewal seems somewhat centralized to some Dave guy, which I don't like too much. Also the protocol seems to require an additional, new, username for each user which seems kinda odd design for me. And lastly there is the UI problem when mixing encrypted and plain text communication in the same system.

<comment><AUTHOR> There were no other solutions for this functionality when I searched in beginning of 2011. XMPP is great, but IRC is ubiquitous. IRC is also very easy to implement plugins against.

The central authority of Dave is by design.

You are correct, mixing the should be deprecated in favor of : join unencrypted room && auth with dave && invite to secure room. But that feature is yet to be implemented.

Thank you for the feedback.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Keep your js bundle size in check - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/siddharthkp/bundlesize <comment><USER2> This is so genius, have you thought of releasing the server side code for bundle size? or giving options for enterprise? :)</comment>


Ask HN: I can't do YC. What are alternatives? - <AUTHOR>

I've just listened to a great interview with Paul Graham [0] and realized that I don't fit into YC: I am over 30. I've worked as a developer / consultant so my cost of living is high. And I've two kids so I am not as mobile when I was 19. So I want to startup and an idea, a co-founder and a working prototype are there. We do this currently at night and want to pursue this at daytime. I would love to do something like YC but I just can't. So what are the alternatives? Just look for some angels? But where?<p>[0]: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2009/08/graham_on_start.html <comment><USER2> For one, you should probably tell where you're located, conditions vary quite a bit depending on location.

The reason why I think YC concentrates on younger people is twofold, for one they are not under enormous pressure to make money because they don't have a lot of responsibilities, thus reducing the burnrate (imho this is actually an asset for an older person!), second, you are not 'free' to move to wherever YC is because of your prior commitments.

Again, depending on your location I'd try to find out if there is a local 'club' of angel investors, possibly a local VC (you already have a working demo, you could consider pitching it).

One more option would be to mortgage your house and pool your savings but with the failure rate of startups being what it is I would be very careful before doing something dramatic like that.

Another big question is the quantity of money that you will need in order to get off the ground, and how long you expect to take before hitting break even.

</comment><comment><USER3> Bootstrapping is a great idea. Check out sites such as <http://www.elance.com>, <http://www.guru.com>, and <http://www.odesk.com> to find a reliable programmer. Word of advice. You will find your biggest savings with programmers located in Asia and India, as opposed to the U.S. and Europe based companies. I saved 90% on my programming this way. Just make sure you explain exactly what you want done, what you expect, and check credentials and previous work.

When searching for Angels, you can checkout <http://www.crunchbase.com> to view what Angels and VCs are investing in your competitors, as well as to do research on the competition and companies and founders that you like and admire.

You can find some local Angels, VC and helpful entrepreneurs though <http://www.meetup.com>, and <http://www.partnerup.com>.

Lastly, share your ideas and get valuable feedback from people that can help you improve it, at sites such as <http://www.ideaoffer.com>, <http://www.ideablob.com>, and <http://www.blubstorm.com>. Just make sure to keep your ideas guarded and protect your intellectual investment in yourself and your startup. You can even get paid for lending your creative opinions to others on IdeaOffer. That extra cash can help you bootstrap your idea.

Hope I could be of some help to you. Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER4> 1) keep working on it at night until it becomes profitable enough that you can work on it in the daytime. bootstrapping is usually the best idea for people who have heavy responsibilities.

2) if you truly believe in your idea, you could take out a loan and use that to fund your project. depending on how much $ you need and what your savings and responsibilities look like, this isn't necessarily the best idea.

3) a more middle ground would be to transition to a freelance or part-time position that allows you to spend more time during the day working on your project while still providing you with an exterior source of income. could combine that with #2, as well.

4) look for a more local alternative to YC. they might not be as good, but they could provide you an alternative that doesn't require you to disrupt your responsibilities. there are quite a few (you would, naturally, need to figure out whats near you): seedcamp, techstars, launchbox, boostphase, founders co- op, capital factory, dreamit, hitforge.

5) search for a local VC or angel investor firm/group/etc. that might be willing to hear a pitch from you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the YC alternativs:

<http://www.capitalfactory.com> \- Austin

<http://www.dreamitventures.com> \- Philadelphia

<http://www.founderscoop.com/> \- Seattle

<http://www.launchboxdigital.com/> \- Washington, D.C

<http://www.techstars.org/> \- Boulder, Boston

<http://www.seedcamp.com/> \- London

<http://www.hitforge.com/> \- ???

<http://www.boostphase.com/> \- ???

I'm from Germany.

<comment><USER2> > I'm from Germany

That changes matters considerably.

have a look here:

[http://de.dir.yahoo.com/Firmen/Finanzdienste/Business_to_Bus...](http://de.dir.yahoo.com/Firmen/Finanzdienste/Business_to_Business/Unternehmensfinanzierung/Risikokapital/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the list. But most of them are classic VCs. Which we are not ready for yet. We are more looking for incubator / early stage help.

<comment><USER2> If you want I can call a contact on monday and ask them if they can recommend a party in Germany that matches your requirements better, drop me an email if you want me to do that (mail on my profile page).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There is a huge opportunity here for middle-aged founded startups who would benefit from a YC experience. There is a similar predicament in the arts (at least in Canada). There are lots of programs for new or emerging artists as long as your're not over 24. All of the other YC-esque "camps" are similar to YC in this regard. New ones seem to appear quite often, so perhaps there will be one tailored to "us" in the near future.</comment>


Ask HN: The less than legal startup, a boot-strapper's advantage - <AUTHOR>

The thought came to be when discussing a new business model. The realization that a boot-strapper can be non-compliment with things like employment regulation, business licenses, etc, in order to demonstrate a business concept. Then fix the problems only if the business model is viable. One caveat is this will only work if one can limit  personal liability.
For clarification, I am not talking about fraud or ripping people off, however the avoidance of some red tape until a model is actually proven ($$ and people). If the model fails, the business gets slapped with a few fines and fees and dies. A existing business or one with large financial investment does not have this ability, therefore it is a boot-strapper's advantage.
I would like to open a discussion on this idea. <comment><USER2> You're being fairly vague so let me put some hypothetical context in here.

Let's say you made a video game...

If all you are talking about is paying taxes under your own name until you find out whether or not a significant number of people are going to buy your game, fine.

Anything more than that however would be less than wise.

EDIT: Let me amend that...

I should say that I was assuming the content of the game was non controversial. If your content is controversial, ALWAYS start the LLC, it is not that hard usually.

<comment><AUTHOR> The idea was meant to fairly generic. Your example would be closer to what I mean if your business model had some sort of regulation involved i.e. time or money you had to spend getting the greenlight from government.

An example idea was a one-click online employment agency. Employment in general is steeped with redtape.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Number March – tower defense game with numbers - <AUTHOR> http://numbermarch.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I made Number March while learning Swift. In Number March, you defend against waves of marching numbers. Numbers are divided by towers. You create towers and increase their value in strategic places in order to divide passing numbers until they disappear. The game is a combination of action, tower defense and math. Hope you enjoy it!</comment>


ShowHN: Mobile Website Directory - nibzy.com - <AUTHOR>

Its just a list of direct links to sites with nice mobile websites. I've created it because I find it easier to click on the links open a new window and then go back to the next site, rather than switching apps. The mobile sites are nicer to use on a tablet as well. Please let me know if theres any other useful mobile sites I can add. Thanks In your mobile browser go to http://nibzy.com or if you want just the fast plain text version go to http://home.nibzy.com/plain <comment><USER2> I like the idea. Would prefer something customizable though so I can display my own links.

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah .. i would eventually if the site got any usage. Just something i hacked together in a weekend to make it easier for my links.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> clickable links - if you're browsing on your mobile/tablet otherwise you'll have to type it in.

<http://nibzy.com>

plain text version

<http://home.nibzy.com/plain></comment>


BlackBerry hands over user data to help police 'kick ass,' insider says - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/blackberry-taps-user-messages-1.3620186 <comment><USER2> Searched Linkedin for people with titles containing "Public Safety Operations" and who work, or have worked, at Blackberry.

One of them is now the "Manager of Law Enforcement Operations" at Kik. She describes her job as involving creating and fostering "positive working relationships with law enforcement and government agencies worldwide," and prides herself on "successfully manag[ing] large-scale projects from start to finish while hitting targets". _Shudders._

It's amusing that the state has coerced private companies into running its apparatus. Has anybody studied the implicit "tax rate" across economies including such costs of regulation, compliance and state security?

<comment><USER3> If it's like the rest of the military industrial complex, odds are those companies are getting paid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really don't understand how RIM manages to consistently misunderstand their target market so badly.

Not that they have many (or any) fans left, but back when they were the bees knees, they were used by and often mandatory company phones for government departments and fortune 500 companies exactly because they were considered the apex of mobile security.

I know it's been a while since they were the apex of anything but jesus guys, at least pretend to try or something.

<comment><USER5> Oh they're still the apex of something, now they're the apex of Ontario-Quebec region Canadian technology corporation failures, having taken the place of the previous reigning champion, Nortel.

<comment><USER6> I thought Nortel renamed itself A Louer.

<comment><USER7> literally means "for rent".

<comment><USER6> Yessir. As observed driving around Montreal circa 2003.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Man, this pisses me off so much I'm...I'm...I'm never going to buy a Blackberry! After Chen's comments on the San Bernadino case, I'm not surprised much. I should be outraged or something, but what am I going to do? Petition my government? BB is Canadian, I'm U. S. Not buy a phone I never stood a chance of even considering? Recommend to my boss that she not buy BBs for the team, like she was never going to do? Not write software for BB, just like I've been doing for, like, ever?

<comment><USER9> Start by whipping out clever FOIA requests to find information on it. Dig, dig, then dig more. Find a pro bono lawyer who can do a FOIA suit on your behalf. You'd be surprised by how much information you can get so long as you're patient and can cleverly avoid "unduly burdensome" rejections.

For example, you can now get the Chicago's mayor's phone records by requesting it through their IT department, who asks the phone company to parse their billing logs, which includes the phone records.

Two tabs, and still a work in progress (waiting for their dns resolution logs now for the next step): [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hgG79eIr8MbkjYrCvcTR...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hgG79eIr8MbkjYrCvcTRN8n876KL8aXYYu5it8Lg0g8)

<comment><USER2> > _Find a pro bono lawyer who can do a FOIA suit on your behalf_

How do you do this?

<comment><USER9> Wish I could help out here.. I found my lawyer through a friend. Though, in Illinois, FOIA pays out a decent amount if you win a FOIA suit. Finding a lawyer to help out might not be that hard if similar laws exist where you live.

If you can't find a lawyer, find someone locally who knows FOIA very well. Lots of activism and open data crowds have loads of experience with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So Blackberry supposedly sells "secure devices" and "secure messaging" and other services, only to brag behind customers' backs about how they "kicked ass" in betraying their customers' trust and handing their data over to the police? Guilty or not, that's ultimately for a judge to decide, not the police, or Blackberry. The point is, it shouldn't be Blackberry's job to betray its customers like this, certainly not while selling them "high security".

From my point of view, good riddance Blackberry. You will not be missed.

</comment><comment> java-man This, unfortunately, is inevitable. Any communication provider that controls the keys (i.e. no client-side key management) will eventually be compelled, coerced, or bullied into sharing some details of the users' communications.

<comment><USER11> > compelled, coerced, or bullied

A warrant?

<comment> java-man Is there anything to prevent a court of law to issue a warrant requesting unlocking of a particular device by its user?

<comment><USER11> I actually think this very situation is happening in the states right now where someone is "required" to unlock their encrypted hard drive and the defendant is claiming to have forgot the password. Not sure what has happened with the case though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _Collaborators_ undermining the rule of law and due process.

I doubt history will look kindly on these practices, and the story makes me even more eager to see RIM and its products in the dust bin.

<comment><USER13> Even if you were ever so slightly indirect, you just literally described Blackberry as equivalent to assisting the Nazis. The apparently intended parallel is that the US government or Canadian government is the same as the Nazis.

<comment><USER14> > you just literally described Blackberry as equivalent to assisting the Nazis

He literally did not do that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> To some extent this is a reflection on the company's Canadian culture. Canadians tend, to the extent that can ever be generalized about a nation of people, to be pro-government and assume that the government may not be perfect but has the best interests of its citizens at heart. For example, Americans refer to their government decisions as 'they decided', but Canadians say 'we decided'.

Given this, I'm not surprised BB thinks they're doing the right thing by helping governments spy on their people.

Source: I'm a Canadian who has lived in the US for 8 years. I was quite patriotic in my youth, so I've spent some time reflecting on the differences between Canada and the US.

<comment><USER16> I don't think you can generalize at all. Your comment is essentially self stereotyping. I'm good at math so I must be asian. Oops, that doesn't work for me.

Blackberry was a great company once, with wonderfully generous founders that donated tens of millions of dollars to fundamental physics research. No longer.

Now the Blackberry PRIV is PRIV until they say it's UNPRIV. That sounds like false advertising to me. I feel downright sorry for their customers in repressive countries.

There have been quite a few stories lately about their sales doing terribly. I wouldn't be surprised if this leak was some kind of purposeful act of desperation to drive sales by ingratiating themselves with their government and corporate accounts that see this as a feature. For shame.

<comment><USER17> Agreed. Have worked with dozens of human rights defenders and journalists in repressive countries who thought that just because they had Blackberrys they were safe. :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment> vic-traill The real issue that jumps out at me is that BB is assisting companies in side- stepping the MLAT (Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty) which gives the Canadian government the legal authority to obtain court orders on behalf of countries that are parties to mutual legal assistance agreements.

As the article notes "U.S. law prohibits the likes of Apple, Facebook, and Google from intercepting communications on behalf of foreign agencies', in Canada it is not prohibited but should include MLAT [0] in the workflow, which would slow the process down and ensure some eyes on the request that don't have a commercial interest at stake.

BB is receiving these request from foreign operators directly.

For BB to seemingly satisfy these requests with such, well, _gusto_ is disturbing to me, both as a Canadian as as someone who does still carry a work-issued BB (a Z30, it's a great mobile device!).

[0] [http://justice.gc.ca/eng/cj-jp/emla-eej/mlatocan- ejaucan.htm...](http://justice.gc.ca/eng/cj-jp/emla-eej/mlatocan-ejaucan.html)

</comment><comment> brian-armstrong This article makes me wonder about the interview[1] where Lazaridis walked out after being asked about BlackBerry security. Perhaps he was feeling defensive about these practices?

[1]: [http://youtube.com/watch?v=Q6iGe7vuGeQ](http://youtube.com/watch?v=Q6iGe7vuGeQ)

</comment><comment><USER18> I received a couple free BB Playbooks. Still a good cardio gym tablet, because I don't care if it gets smashed or stolen. Battery life is great, I only need to charge it every 3 days or so. Alas, QNX...

Used to be annoyed that it needed to phone home every single time I connected by Wi-Fi. There is also a security vulnerability on port 4455, can't remember what it is called though.

The guy who created Ghost Commander ( [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ghostsq.co...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ghostsq.commander) ) ported it over to the Playbook. It is the only thing keeping that tablet usable.

</comment><comment><USER19> Maybe, in the face of losing customers to Apple and Samsung (et al), they are trying to cut their own little niche in the mobile market among people who has nothing to hide and likes it when they help the police 'kick ass'.

</comment><comment><USER20> Well, that's the nail in the coffin... Bye bye Blackberry.

</comment><comment><USER21> I don't understand how blackberry has access to intercept anything. Are all phones constantly phoning home checking if i_belong_to_a_bad_guy == True maybe at the time of a software update they base it on one of the unique identifiers. Ultimately though, who cares this day and age the only people I know using blackberries are people with big hands who like to type fast.

<comment><USER22> They're talking about data that is dispatched through Blackberry's network: BBM messages and their consumer internet service (BIS) that handles email and web traffic on older devices.

BlackBerry will turn over BBM messages in the same way that the phone company will turn over SMS messages, and Microsoft and Yahoo and Google will turn over email messages.

All of those companies have to operate within US law. The controversy here is related to how BlackBerry is cooperating with less-friendly foreign governments.

<comment><USER21> ahh, so not BES data or any arbitrary data on a consumer phone. That makes sense then. Maybe there should be an open standard for data requests, and transparency, and if you get caught breaking it you get removed from DNS and BGP.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Man... I literally bought my PRIV just last week due to verified boot, hardware encryption and now i get this?

Selling my almost brand new PRIV. 450$. PM

<comment><USER24> Good luck getting someone _here_ to pay $450 for it though…

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> And I've just realised what PRIV is supposed to refer to. Oh well, the device seemed so appealing....

</comment><comment><USER26> Google and Apple are part of PRISM, and Blackberry too now.. what options do we have left? Cyanogenmod?

<comment><USER27> Chinese smartphones. They may or may not have backdoors in them, but then China state surveillance doesn't care about you, unless you work on a missile research or something similar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> That's one way to differentiate yourself from the competition.

</comment><comment><USER29> Their best hope is to get their assets acquired by a big defense contractor like MOT, BAE, etc, to supply the niche of north american public sector mobile devices.

Like a Canadian hockey team Blackberry insists they invented the game, but every time they get to the playoffs they choke because they're just so overwhelmed at being invited.

Any interesting engineering they might have done in the past is dwarfed by their farcical inability to turn it into something people actually wanted.

It's just all so....canadian.

<comment><USER30> Great analogy. Hits home as a Leafs fan from Kitchener.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> BlackBerry is a ship that can't sink fast enough. I only feel for the people who will lose their jobs (those not in upper management at least).

<comment><USER32> > ... those not in upper management ...

Well, you did say people not monsters.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How long have you been active in the IT business? - <AUTHOR> <comment><AUTHOR> Maybe someone quit his carreer earlier. What reason made you decide so?

\- salary \- lack of success \- no freetime \- stress</comment>