Jack Dorsey giving up 30% of his stake in Square to help underserved communities - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2015/10/14/jack-dorsey-is-giving-up-30-of-his-stake-in-square-to-help-underserved-communities/ <comment><USER4> Since the article ends my mentioning Missouri, it is worth mentioning that his cofounder Jim McKelvey used his Square success to found Cultivation Capital, which is a VC focused on parts of the midwest often ignored by the coastal VCs (e.g. Missouri, Indiana, Southern Illinois, etc.)

</comment><comment><USER5> Can anyone who's been though an IPO comment on what happened to the early employees with their 0.1% stake (of the original 10 million shares)? Everyone understands that they'll get diluted with new rounds, but when I read that Dorsey's giving away 40,000,000 shares I wonder what happened to the poor sap who started with 10,000. Do companies typically issue more options or RSUs to existing employees? How many?

<comment><USER6> Dilution isn't the only possibility here. Stock splits also happen.

<comment><USER5> Thanks. I was wondering about that, but had never heard of a split in a private company.

<comment><USER7> It's more common than you think. I was an early engineer at ZenPayroll (now Gusto) and they split the stock 10-to-1 in their last round.

As the company grows and the value of the stock goes up, it becomes difficult to give granular stock options.

Rarely publicized because it doesn't mean anything. Owning 5/1000 shares or 50/10000 is the same.

<comment><USER8> The split definitely helps nudge a new hire to be happier with the offer, all things, being equal, because many hires are still unknowledgeable about the fact that the number of options is irrelevant (like you say), and there is also the subconscious satisfaction of seeing big numbers next to our names that is hard to fight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Updated title on original source: "Jack Dorsey is giving up at least 50% of his stake in Square to help underserved communities"

 _Update: This post has been updated to correct that Dorsey will commit 10 percent of the entire company, not just his equity as previously stated. In addition, our calculations were off and I regret the error._

This is commendable. Actually intending to making the world a better place (in the non HBO-Silicon-Valley-Show-way).

<comment><USER10> Jack owns ~24% of the company. It is just his equity.

<comment><USER11> Yes, but 10% of 100% is a lot more than 10% of 24%.

<comment><USER10> It was reported that he would be giving up 30-50%(now _at least_ 50% apparently) of his own stake. Which comes out around 10% of the entire company, depending on what number is actually correct.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Depending on how he does this and the basis of the equity, this move may be an amazing tax shield, worth WAY more than it seems.

{edit} - I actually think this is exactly the strategy being applied by him and his team of tax strategists - He's using this "donation" as a tax shield and keeping the money in a foundation, which he can use to help "the underprivileged" as he pleases, instead of just paying an amazing amount of tax like Zuck did.

<comment><USER13> It's not a tax shield if you don't get to keep the money.

Of course, if you were going to donate anyway, then sure, it's more tax efficient to give appreciated stocks. But calling it a tax shield makes it sound like you can stand to gain personally by doing this.

<comment><USER14> > But calling it a tax shield makes it sound like you can stand to gain > personally by doing this.

One (with that much wealth) absolutely stands to gain a ton from it.

A family member of mine works in financial trusts / estate planning for multi- millionaires (many times over) and this is one of the things I've heard from them used to limit tax exposure while maximizing the most typical goal - <USER2> personal wealth (these people have more money then they will ever be able to spend, that isn't the concern for them) - but rather maximizing family wealth.

And once you're extremely wealthy, it's amazing how large your family becomes.

Essentially - many charitable foundations are absolutely charitable in their fundamental mission, and best case are helping thousands of people with most of the money directly helping - however what happens in practice, is this foundation then has family members work for it earning somewhere between a reasonable to a completely insane salary depending on any number of factors.

<comment><USER13> Sure, but the salary they draw from the charity will be taxed. It may be taxed at a slightly lower rate than capital gains if they don't earn much, but not extremely so.

<comment><USER14> Not exactly - you've also got to consider the tax consequences on cashing out directly so with the charity, the money only gets taxed once instead of twice.

Scenario a:

Bob starts Hooli - his stock is now worth 100 million. He wants to give half to his family. He cashes it out and pays long term capital gains on it - <USER3> 15% he is left with 85 million. He pays out half to his relatives, but don't forget, there is 35% gift tax when you gift someone more than ~15k So of that 42 million, only about 27 million will actually make it to it's intended target.

Scenario b:

Instead of directly cashing out, he starts the foundation with the 100 million. (using that to offset his entire income that year with a charitable tax deduction most likely). He wants to pay out half to his family still - this time he is starting with 50 million which will similarly be taxed at let's say 35% (income tax) - leaving 32.5 million to pay out. Also consider the case where he exercised a large cash performance bonus upon cashing out, that 5 million he will potentially not have to pay any taxes on either because he was able to make a large tax deduction from his "charitable" gift to the foundation.

It is not a simple thing - depending on how exactly the money flows, there are ways to prevent a significant amount of double taxation. (Also a couple years ago gift tax was 55% so it would have been 19 million (scenario a) vs. 32.5 million (scenario b) in post tax money. What makes things an order of magnitude more complicated, is on top of all this one has to consider timing. Tax rates change significantly all the time (55 vs 35% on gift tax in 2010 vs 2015) - some of which are known far in advance, some changes may be a surprise - so in estate planning where the goal is to maintain wealth for many generations to come - strategies like this start to make a lot of sense

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I must be hugely cynical because my first thought was "what has this guy done to commit so much to public benefit." There _is_ an unnatural or questionable amount of money for people to give up isn't there?

<comment> eric-hu Jack Dorsey's net worth is approximately 2.4 billion [1]. Back when Bill Gates stepped down as CEO of Microsoft, he did so not to retire, but to take on the responsibility of spending his money in the best possible way for society. [2]

It's pretty easy to imagine a situation in which increasing your net worth can't really earn you more to experience or nice things. I'd wager Dorsey's already at that point, but maybe still wants to create things.

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

[2] [http://money.cnn.com/2006/06/15/technology/microsoft_news/](http://money.cnn.com/2006/06/15/technology/microsoft_news/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Does anyone else feel like it's the government's responsibility to help all the needy sections of the society, and billionaires intervening only abets and condones all the deliberate/unintentional mistakes of the former, and lets them escape it?

<comment><USER17> No. The assumption that government should fix everything is selfish and lazy. It absolves us of personal responsibility, and gives us someone to blame when things go wrong. I'd feel sorry for the politicians, except they do more than anyone to perpetuate this.

<comment><USER18> _> >The assumption that government should fix everything is selfish and lazy. It absolves us of personal responsibility._

It's also unreasonable to think everyone that's in a difficult situation got there by their own mistakes and have the ability to get out without help.

<comment><USER19> I'm not sure that's what treerock meant, but I think it absolves us of the personal responsibility _of helping others_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> My first reaction was that funding artists, musicians, and business is probably not the greatest charitable good that can be done with his money... but then I reconsidered -- It might not be the greatest good, but it is more good than leaving the money in the bank. So... OK, I'll give it a mild thumbs up.

<comment><USER21> Is there an honest belief that wealthy people keep their money sitting idle in bank accounts? That would explain a lot of the hyperbolic language around the politics of envy - it's a pretty easy (although nonsensical in reality) leap to assume the wealthy accumulate money just to keep it out of the hands of "the people."

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Part of helping underserved communities would be to move some of the business outside the Valley and major metro areas. Find the mid to small cities and spread the wealth.

<comment><USER18> ...well, the line between spreading the wealth and gentrification is a bit fuzzy.

I'm not convinced what's happening in SF, and starting to happen in Oakland, is actually desirable by the residence that were there before tech people showed up.

I think it's much better that Jack donates to help public schools, libraries, arts & crafts, other recreational activities in underserved communities.... without sending the gentrification catalyst into them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> he should use that to save Twitter but good on him for getting his priority straight and putting human lives over some glorified text publishing app that gives the world an insight into our most mundane daily mental noise that we otherwise would've never spewed if it wasn't for such social media platforms.

</comment><comment><USER24> I no longer dislike Jack Dorsey! :)

<comment><USER24> Why did this comment get downvoted? Is it because other people like Jack Dorsey, or because other people still don't like him? :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'd prefer these announcements wait until the stake has been distributed.

I think it's been over a year since reddit said the community would receive a 10% stake in the company (or maybe it was just a direct payout of 10% of the amount raised in a previous round). I haven't heard anything about it since.

</comment><comment><USER26> Are the "underserved communities" ex-Twitter employees ?

<comment><USER27> Yes, I'm sure the high tier engineers living in SF are very undeserved.

<comment><USER28> The @TwitterOSS got really hammered by the layoffs. They were real people, not just "high tier engineers". I take offense as some of my friends, real people, lost their jobs.

You shouldn't make light of other people's misfortune.

<comment><USER29> I had friends at Twitter OSS too and the ones I knew are pretty well poised to do whatever they want at this point. They definitely are high tier engineers.

It sucks, one of them got me my job, but they're going to be in pretty high demand.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Technical details of the MIT Tetris hack: Source code included - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mitrisdev/d54/

<comment><AUTHOR> An article showing photographs of some of the hardware and explaining how they did it: <http://tech.mit.edu/V132/N22/tetris.html></comment>


ICO publishes annual report covering an 'unprecedented' year - iam-TJ https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/news-and-events/news-and-blogs/2019/07/ico-publishes-annual-report/ <comment> iam-TJ I posted this primarily to draw attention to the massive increase in contacts and complaints by the UK public due to GDPR and their rapidly growing awareness of protection of personal data.</comment>


Is an ethical hacking certification worth earning? - <AUTHOR> http://news.dice.com/2014/09/25/ethical-hacking-certification-worth-earning/ <comment><USER2> I suspect might be important to be hired in corporate environments because, you know, management. That is my outsider's feeling not only to this article but to other articles I read on the matter.

That said, some points the writer makes sound a little strange to me:

"But is ethical hacking an effective counter to unethical hacking, especially when those who practice the latter can do pretty much whatever they want with a wide variety of tools?" Why, do ethical hackers restrain from using those same tools for testing? Unless we are talking about breaking into the facility at gunpoint, mmh. The feeling I get is the classic "I don't know exactly what they do, so must be vodoo" vibe.

""Typically, these certifications are offered after a class," Williams said, while cautioning: "None of the skills that hacking requires is easily measurable in a class and exam format."" No shit. So why do you do it?

""Certifications are a calling card to say you're committed to the industry, the profession, and lifelong learning,"" Ah, that's why. Of course, bosses like their certificates.

It's not a technical article, though, so it's more about the "business" side of things.

</comment><comment><USER3> No.</comment>


Juveniles sentenced to Shakespeare - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2010/05/18/caught_in_the_act_juveniles_sentenced_to_shakespeare/

<comment><USER2> This is fucking brilliant. The word that comes to mind is "enlightened". I wish there were a thousand times more such experiments in our society.

I also like how realistic the founder of the program is. He says explicitly that the program does not fix these kids (and presumably isn't trying to do so) but that they change somewhat from undergoing the experience. This sounds like someone who knows what he is doing.</comment>


How Apple Set the Internet Back 15 Years - <AUTHOR> http://branch.io/blog/2014/10/21/How-Apple-Set-the-Internet-Back-15-Years?source=hn

<comment><USER2> I think this is a very cool product, but I think the messaging here misses the mark a bit. First we're told what a pain the install process is:

"Blame the Install"

Read: Installs suck.

"For some reason, when Apple launched the iPhone in 2007 they decided to take the world back 15 years and create a software application store."

Read: Application stores are backwards.

"Nowadays a user has to browse preview screenshots, read the description and reviews, and only begins an install process after careful consideration."

Read: Evaluating apps sucks.

"The password prompt comes up and you struggle to enter your 15 digit, multi case password. Gah! Password incorrect. Second time's the charm and the YouTube page begins to load."

Read: Passwords suck.

"This is the world that we've all come to accept because of the install process."

Read: The install process sucks.

Then we get an explanation of how branch.io is going to solve all these problems:

"The First Step to Fixing It"

Read: We're going to fix it.

"The first step in reducing the install barrier and make apps more accessible like the web is to make links work through the install."

Read: Huh? Reducing the install barrier involves web accessibility and links that work through the install? What does that have to do with sucky passwords, ease of evaluation and backward app stores?

"Imagine if LinkedIn had a 'View In App' button on every mobile web profile. When you click that link and don't have the app, wouldn't it be nice if you saw the same profile post-install?"

Read: We're going to deliver deep links that work in apps, and will still work even if you haven't installed the app yet.

This sounds like a very cool project, but I really don't see how this "reduces the barrier to install". Many of the pain points outlined in the statement of the problem aren't addressed by the product. In fact, only one is: accessing the content you came for once you've actually installed the app. That's a great problem to solve, but it needn't be framed in the context of "app installs suck and app stores are backwards." In fact, Branch wouldn't _have_ a product without app stores.

Don't try to make more of the problem than it is. It's enough of a pain in the ass that many app installs don't preserve the original user intent. That is a very simple, but very real problem. Stick to that.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't blame Apple for this. Remember it wasn't till 2008 that the App Store launched because developers were not satisfied by creating web apps.

Secondly, the concept of being able to link directly to parts of an app via a URL already exists in Android. Maybe Apple just needs to play catch up there?

<comment><USER4> I find it ironic that he rails on barriers to content, but you can't view a demo of his app without the barrier of giving him your email address.</comment></comment>


Space elevator trips could be agonisingly slow - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16223-space-elevator-trips-could-be-agonisingly-slow.html <comment><USER2> > The culprit is the Coriolis force

I remember reading about this (effect on space elevators) years ago, so I'm not sure it's a new idea.

</comment><comment><USER3> It would be awesome if we (we being, whatever country tries this first) had the money to basically build some basic system that works, although slowly, then improve on it over time. Of course, we're talking billions of dollars of raw material, not code here so I guess it won't happen until they have a for- sure method of doing this right :(

Still, a very cool concept.

</comment><comment><USER4> I prefer the Hacker method of just trying it, and see if it works.

Also, could they try it on the Moon first?

</comment><comment><USER5> Off-world sex could be messy, awkward

<comment><USER6> On-world as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> As long as it's still cheap, slow is fine for most types of cargo.</comment>


Someone is heavily buying Facebook Stock closes at 29.60, 5% up - <AUTHOR> http://jacquesmattheij.com/Someone+is+heavily+buying+Facebook+Stock+closes+5+percent+up <comment><USER2> Wonderful, bid it up so I can short it!</comment>


What do I do about a software vendor who has failed to deliver? - <AUTHOR> We area  manufacturing firm who have purchased expensive software.
Six months after final payment the vendor has said "won't fix" to a feature requirement clearly laid out in the contract of sale and made perfectly clear in person during initial delivery.
What do I do now? <comment><USER2> I've dealt with something similar in the past. You can take them to court but you'll spend 1000's just to get started and a few years from now, and you win, you might get something in terms of money. But can the company pay or will they even care to pay? You can scare them and contact a lawyer to send them a few scary letters and they might respond since they don't want to deal with courts either.

Your best bet is to bite the bullet and negotiate a modification to the contract and pay to get it done from them. Try to get the source code and get the project done at the least cost. Yes, it sux!

If you have the source code you can hire a programmer to finish the project. We get used to paying a few 1000 dollars for "expensive" software but custom software is very expensive 40-50k is cheap when you have to hire someone.

The extreme case is to just dump the project. I don't know for sure but I suspect that a great number of software projects are just abandoned due to failure to deliver features and the budget gets depleted.

Good Luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> It's an interesting case.

I'm personally responsible for selecting the vendor, the package cost around the AU$25,000 and the module to interface with this particular machine was a $3100 line item included in that total, to write the module from scratch using the manufacturers specification for the language the machine reads.

They already had a module they'd written for a very similar machine from the same manufacturer. They've made a few tweaks to it, but are now saying the algorithm from the core product isn't designed to do what I want to do and they doubt head office will approve the expenditure to change it.

It's an industry standard procedure, and we have collective experience with two other software packages that fulfil the requirement by default.

I personally cannot fathom how they would get to the point of saying "no", but it's definitely been an interesting view in to the realm of commercial / industrial software sales, development, etc.

I don't know how I am going to advocate to my employer that we continue to pay the $3000 per year maintenance fee for unlimited upgrades and support when they can't even deliver on what they agreed to.

That and the core software is _riddled_ with minor, but _annoying_ bugs.

If they could fix this issue with the module for our machine, and chip away at the smaller issues over time it would actually be _perfect_ for our needs.

<comment><USER2> What you experianced was a sales person needing to make a sale. They will promise and then they hope the programmers/techs will deliver. It's very common for software sales, in any field, to do this.

Here's another common got you. They will sell you the software very cheaply and get you to use it in your business. Once the software becomes an important part of your business they will sell you upgrades at many times the original price. At which time you'll have to choose between upgrading or dealing with old buggie software. Switching to another vendor won't be an option since it will be much more expensive than the upgrade. They have you.

There are just too many unknowns to say that just because it works in one model it will be a quick change for another model. It sounds like the mods are for very specialized software so most likely you have no choice but to work it out with them.

Look for alternatives but I dought there are any. They probably understand their competitors enough that they know that saying no to you is a safe bet. Your job now is to lay down some options for your boss and let him choose. It's very important that you don't hide anything from him. He needs to know and understand everything. It's just life. We can't always get 100% of what we want.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> You can get lawyers involved and sue for breach of contract.</comment>


System on Chip Toolkit - <AUTHOR> http://people.ece.cornell.edu/land/courses/ece5760/FinalProjects/f2007/ib54/SysToolkitwebsite/

<comment><USER2> _Note: This website is an eye-friendly technical website_

Not when you have all the text in Courier it isn't. It's horrible, sorry.</comment>


Simple RPC framework in 300 lines of Go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ankur-anand/simple-go-rpc <comment><USER2> The use of a custom transport is interesting... one of the reasons I love Go's RPC package is because it Just Works(tm) with TLS, TCP, etc etc out of the box. For anyone just showing up to this: you do not _have_ to create a custom transport.

Related: Scott Mansfield of Netflix gave a talk at Gophercon 2017 on their custom serialization format if these things are interesting to you... [https://github.com/gophercon/2017-talks/blob/master/ScottMan...](https://github.com/gophercon/2017-talks/blob/master/ScottMansfield- CreatingACustomSerializationFormat/creating-a-custom-serialization-format.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> For a good RPC abstraction, I think a key requirement is to easily and safely change the deployment separation between modules that use the abstraction – deployment separations being: in-proc, inter-process-communication and remote- procedure-call.

That is,

1\. deploy the modules within the same process then the method invocation is most efficient;

2\. deploy the module across separate OS processes on the same machine then the method invocation is via the best available OS IPC mechanism;

3\. deploy the module across separate machines then the method invocation is over network with most efficient remote procedure call implementation.

A long time ago I worked on a project that used Corba (with ACE TAO) that had facilities like this and it made development, testing environments vs various production environment permutations a lot easier to build for and manage over multiple product lifecycles. Now-a-days, these Microservices frameworks are missing these (basic) features and it overly complicates the deployment scenarios.

Rather than hand-rolling 300 line custom RPC mechanisms like this one, I would rather prefer a more complete one that did solve the above problems.

<comment><USER4> Even though I think Go's GRPC implementation is pretty good, this is something that really annoys me about the way it's designed. The interface of a GRPC client is not the same as the interface of a GRPC server. This means that:

\- You cannot instantiate a piece of code built on top of a GRPC client directly on top of another piece of code that implements a GRPC service. You will need to create a full GRPC client and server. Don't want to let them communicate over an OS-level socket? You'll have to use something like [https://godoc.org/google.golang.org/grpc/test/bufconn](https://godoc.org/google.golang.org/grpc/test/bufconn) to create an in-memory socket.

\- You cannot let a GRPC server process forward requests to a GRPC client directly. Quite annoying in case you want to multiplex requests, add an authenticating proxy, etc. etc.

\- Unit testing a GRPC service is annoying, as the service implementation has to take some concrete GRPC types that can only be instantiated by a GRPC server. This means that you also have to create a full GRPC client/server/bufconn to be able to test it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I haven't studied this extensively but it looks like a great bit of sample code for someone who wants to see how to do some networking in Go. I echo the other comments that find the use of a custom transport interesting, since writing a transport is one of those things that I've always been glad I haven't had to learn how to do, especially since I'm usually just using HTTP for which Go is very much batteries-included.

This whole thing raises the question though, is this hard to do in other languages?

</comment><comment><USER6> This is great, I'm very new to Go and new to RPCs. I went through the code and had a question someone might be able to answer as I'm still learning Go.

The Server package contains the Register function. Main package implements the QueryUser function that does the work of querying the DB. When Main calls Server.Register to register the function with Server, it sends the function name (QueryUser) and..something else? Is that the memory address of QueryUser on my computer? And when Server actually runs the function, it's just pointing to QueryUser at the memory address given to it by Main?

If that's the case, am I correct in thinking that this wouldn't work as written if the Server package were running on a different physical server, because it obviously wouldn't be able to access the memory location of QueryUser on a different machine. So in this case, the Server would need to implement QueryUser itself on its hardware, but otherwise would work.

Or maybe the use case of RPCs isn't for two servers communicating, but rather for two different programs on the same machine only? Or maybe what Server.Register receives is the actual function, not just the memory location (though I see no evidence of this).

Can someone help enlighten me?

<comment><USER7> >The Server package contains the Register function. Main package implements the QueryUser function that does the work of querying the DB. When Main calls Server.Register to register the function with Server, it sends the function name (QueryUser) and..something else? Is that the memory address of QueryUser on my computer? And when Server actually runs the function, it's just pointing to QueryUser at the memory address given to it by Main?

This is correct, let me unpack this a little more.

The 'Register' function tells the server object that when a client tries to call the function "QueryUser" call the function passed as the second parameter and send back the result.

the client object's "CallRPC" functions tells the client object that i know that there is a function called "QueryUser" that the server know about and it has the same structure as the second parameter, when i call the second parameter, call the server with the arguments passed. The client object then creates a stub implementation which when called, creates a connection to the server, tell the server to call the function "QueryUser" with the given parameters, reads the results and returns the result.

The "Remote" part of RPC is done over the transport package which the main function is mostly unaware of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nice example of using "gob" to create RPC services. But why call it a "framework"?

<comment><USER9> I'd argue you don't learn much about RPC from this example code with gob handling the less straightforward parts. Going over what gob is doing would be a good addition.

<comment><USER10> For those curious as I am:

[https://golang.org/pkg/encoding/gob/](https://golang.org/pkg/encoding/gob/)

Gob is apparently out of the box with Go.

I'm still learning through Go, there's so much available OOTB that I love about Go. I wish other languages would take Go's Standard Library as a good example of things to include with a language. I can do web applications entirely with Go's standard libraries. Course then you gotta worry about storing data in some database, but those libraries are usually done by Database vendors or the language community.

<comment><USER11> I don't think binary serialisation counts as a good thing to include in the standard library. Unless Golang found a way to do it securely unlike other languages, which typically see binary serialisation as one of their larger mistakes.

<comment><USER12> If you are speaking about Java, the only mistake they usually talk about is how the serialization algorithm and the API implementation, there are no regrets about the binary support.

And as for .NET, Python I never saw any reference about such regrets, while ISO C++ is still discussing papers for some kind of future support via static reflection.

<comment><USER11> I was thinking Java and .NET yes.

Here's a discussion for .NET core not adding support for security reasons (eventually overruled for backwards compatibility reasons unfortunately). [https://github.com/dotnet/corefx/issues/6564#issuecomment-21...](https://github.com/dotnet/corefx/issues/6564#issuecomment-219579151)

Java: [https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/oracle- plans-...](https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/oracle-plans-to- drop-java-serialization-support-the-source-of-most-security-bugs/)

<comment><USER12> On the context of .NET, not only backwards compatibility, performance is also a big reason, text serialization sucks in that regard.

Also the official path forward for WCF is gRPC, which also supports binary serialization.

As per Java, Brian Goetz has spoken multiple times about it, but the issue was mainly due to how the whole thing is designed, not necessarily due to using binary formats.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Worth it to learn gRPC first or start with std lib RPC?</comment>


Microsoft Academic Knowledge Graph - <AUTHOR> http://ma-graph.org/ <comment><USER2> An example page is [http://ma-graph.org:8080/mag- pubby/page/1528654387](http://ma-graph.org:8080/mag-pubby/page/1528654387)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Knowledge graphs are enjoying a renaissance in AI research. Perhaps due to their success in Game AI and Goal Oriented Action Planning. And this academic paper graph looked like one of the more "pure" datasets.

The quality of the agent depends on the input clearly. And machine understanding of academic research is certainly a problem rich in potential rewards. Linked below are the results of a challenge to "solve" a Sherlock Holmes mystery based only on the text! One of the entries involved constructing a knowledge graph of all potential suspects in the entire Conan Doyle corpus ;)

Report on the First Knowledge Graph Reasoning Challenge 2018 -- Toward the eXplainable AI System

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.08184](https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.08184)

Microsoft Research: Explainable AI for Science and Medicine

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-c8tIgchu0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-c8tIgchu0)

SHAP (SHapley Additive exPlanations) is a unified approach to explain the output of any machine learning model

[https://github.com/slundberg/shap](https://github.com/slundberg/shap)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is just the meta details about the papers, right? Not facts and findings contained within the papers themselves?

<comment><USER4> Yes, just metadata. It does seem to include abstracts. This would be very useful for metascience - the study of how research is done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Probably should strip down your Tomcat instance a bit; change the landing page and remove docs and examples for instance.

And there are CVEs for this version but you're probably not affected.

[https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability- list/vendor_id-45/p...](https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability- list/vendor_id-45/product_id-887/version_id-282038/Apache-Tomcat-8.5.35.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> On this page[0] you mention putty but you probably mean pubby[1]

[0] [http://ma-graph.org/knowledge-graph-exploration/](http://ma- graph.org/knowledge-graph-exploration/) [1] [http://wifo5-03.informatik.uni- mannheim.de/pubby/](http://wifo5-03.informatik.uni-mannheim.de/pubby/)

</comment><comment><USER6> It's unfortunate that acknowledgements such as funding sources are not included.

<comment><USER7> It looks like this is a possibly independent project to expose an RDF set over the Microsoft Academic Graph. More information about that here: [https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/research/project/microsoft-a...](https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/research/project/microsoft-academic-graph/)

The above link also references the Open Academic Graph: [https://www.openacademic.ai/oag/](https://www.openacademic.ai/oag/)

Disclaimer: Microsoft employee, in a totally different part of the company and with no actual clue other than Googling the above. Also, Nazgûl.

<comment><USER6> thanks for your reply

> Also, Nazgûl.

I .. don't what you mean

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Lovely to finally see Microsoft adopting RDF and taking on projects like this. There is hope yet for those of us who believe in the promise of semantic data.

</comment><comment><USER9> From Google:

The Resource Description Framework (RDF) is a family of World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) specifications originally designed as a metadata data model.

</comment><comment><USER10> I wonder, if Sci-Hub might integrate this data in their search engine.</comment>


The 32-hour, four-day workweek 'killed work ethic' at this startup - sahin-boydas https://amp.businessinsider.com/productivity-tips-four-day-workweek-2018-8 <comment><AUTHOR> There is almost zero content in this article beyond what the headline says. I'm very interested to learn more, but this isn't a good source of nuanced or detailed info.

</comment><comment><USER2> Please use a non-amp link.</comment>


Ask HN: Does anyone have any inside info on Visa and MasterCard engineering? - <AUTHOR> We hear a lot about Google, Apple, Microsoft & Facebook, since most people use one or more products from these companies. Yet we never hear about Visa & MasterCard, even though their use is equally widespread. After reading Wikipedia I got curious, so I am wondering if anyone on HN has ever worked at any of these two companies. <comment> throwaway-1337 I don't work for any of them, but I have worked with VISA as I work for a large payment gateway.

I'll say this - they can do some impressive transactions per second (they hover around 2000/sec) and can burst to 40,000/sec, but they can't sustain that amount.

That being said, all the VISA engineers I've worked with are woefully incompetent, to the point they've spent 3+ months trying to integrate to our payment API, and we have to conference with them to help them out.

I'm talking one POST to our servers, and one browser redirect, most developers get it done in a few days.

Then when we integrated to them directly over individual banks (at their request, they paid a lot of money for this), their API was terrible, REST, RCP, XML, JSON, SOAP? Nope - a very strict space delimited text file, mean't to be read by a mainframe from the 60's.

We can't even send them ASCII text they use a different character set that competed with ASCII at the time of punch cards (sorry can't recall what it's called).

I'm sure they're mainframes are virtualized these days, but there system still acts like it's 50 years old.

In summary I'm sure they do some cool stuff somewhere in the company, but I haven't seen any of it. You'd be surprised just how much tape holds the banks and VI/MC together, they lose money all the time, have no clue where it goes, but as long as it's less then 10 million they don't really care, they just pay it out of their own pockets.

<comment><USER2> Probably this character set: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBCDIC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBCDIC)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've met with a few folks. Both companies are becoming more open with their platform.</comment>


Groupon's Andrew Mason at GROW commenting on the Gap Groupon (video) - <AUTHOR> http://www.techvibes.com/blog/techvibes-tv-groupon-ceo-andrew-mason-at-the-grow-2010-conference

<comment><USER2> Cool chat with Andrew Mason:scalable grouponing</comment>


Happy Nerds: A collection of learn-to-program resources for kids - <AUTHOR> http://www.happynerds.net/

<comment><USER2> Nice, but there's still quite a stigma attached to 'nerd'. Many kids will avoid the site just because of that.

<comment><USER3> Yes, but I already owned that domain and since it's a just for fun side project, I didn't really feel like spending money on a new one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You might want to add rur-ple (<http://code.google.com/p/rur-ple>); it is similar to Guido van Robot (and was inspired by it). However, 1) it uses Python (instead of a more limited, Python-like inspired language); 2) it has more lessons and exercises than Guido van Robot; 3) it provides an embedded programming environment to go beyond the robot's world.

A second addition to consider is GvR online (<http://gvr- online.appspot.com/ui/index.html>), an online version of Guido van Robot.

<comment><USER3> Thanks, added both of them :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I appreciate you putting this together and was about to send the link around when I ran into Application errors throughout. Looks like your server kicked it.

<comment><USER3> Yes, I see lots of 503s in my Heroku logs :-( This is a pet project, so I don't wanna pay for it, which means you all probably have to live with this until the initial wave of traffic dies down again, sorry!

<comment><USER3> And it's back. Turns out the problem wasn't really the traffic but a problem with the MongoDB setup...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great site, but the image of the kid on the left should have a negative z-index so it doesn't get in the way of the sidebar navigation.

<comment><USER3> Yes, I had noticed that before and fixed it before I read this thread. Thanks for pointing it out though!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm the guy who runs HappyNerds.net, thanks for all the attention, but it looks like my free little Heroku account can't handle it :-/

<comment><AUTHOR> Oops sorry. I saw you had promo'ed your site in the comments of an earlier article about kids and programming that HN linked to. So, I just wanted to spread the word :)

<comment><USER3> Nothing to be sorry about, thanks for spreading it! Site's back up now :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nice idea and nice website... thanks... actually i didn't know staff like that exists for kids ... thanks !

</comment><comment><USER8> So -- has anyone here actually used any of these languages? Or better yet, given them to an actual child? Any feedback?

</comment><comment><USER9> is it just me or are the links on the left deactivated?

<comment><USER6> See my comment above - the image is using fixed-positioning and has a default z-index above that of the links. They can fix it by setting the image's z-index to -1.

Edit: looks like they fixed it.</comment></comment>


DuckDuckGo Challenges Google on Privacy (With a Billboard in San Francisco) - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/01/duckduckgo-google-privacy/

<comment><USER2> Is the whole privacy on search thing really a big issue?

I, for one, want Google to be all Orwellian on me because it will mean better search results. I had a scenario like this a few days ago when I googled for "fabric" -- Being a Python developer I was looking for <http://fabfile.org> and it shows up as the second result while logged in. If I'm not, it won't show up.

This may be the outlier state of mind on HN, but I think in general, as-in billboard advertising, it's not an issue. Am I wrong?

<comment><USER3> There is also a slightly different case - google passing on your search terms to the website that you click through to.

You may trust google with knowing that you searched for "naked bieber pics", but you may not want other websites also knowing your search habits.

<comment><USER4> Are they passing on search terms for previous searches or just the current search?

In your (frankly terrifying) example, would the site have had to have ranked for "naked bieber pics", showing up in the results and then you click it to pull the search terms? Because that would seem to be pretty innocuous.

<comment><USER5> Just the current search, but the problem is millions of pages run third-party ads, and most are run by very few networks. These ad networks can aggregate the terms and then they have previous searches as well.

<comment><USER6> Doesn't Incognito browsing, like present in Chrome, remedy all these worries?

<comment><USER7> People find ways around it, for example for a while Flash didn't respect incognito so ad networks just used their cookies instead (I think at one point html5 storage was being used too, but could be wrong).

There's been various HN posts about how people circumvent browser privacy settings to track you across websites and even tricks such as generating an almost unique key by hashing together browser, fonts installed, IP address, etc.. I'm not sure of the current state of play in that war though.

I guess if you really don't want people to track private searches with your accounts, use a whole other browser where you're not logged into Google in incognito mode.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> More FUD from DuckDuckGo about Google and privacy issues. Didn't we come to the conclusion that the things they are railing against Google for are applicable to any and every Website?

Matt Cutts stole the comment show on this one: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2063619>

The worst thing about this is how blindly news about DDG gets upvoted around here.

Edit: To my down-voters: It doesn't make what I said not true anymore.

<comment><USER9> That's disingenuous. DDG has legitimate claim to "Google tracks you" beyond just referrer URLs.

When you search for "athlete's foot" on DDG you won't see an add for foot cream the next time you're watching a video on YouTube. That's the sort of tracking Google undeniably _does_ do that users may find troubling (I know I do).

Most users _don't_ know about this level of tracking. Moreover, while referral URLs containing search terms has been the norm for a long time (and IMHO, is not an evil move, just legacy from a privacy perspective), there is no real reason why things must stay this way.

<comment><USER8> Then that is their ONLY claim against Google (yet not Google alone). Everything else on that donttrack.us page is applicable to any and every search engine or Website. I believe DDG is being disingenuous by making it sound like this a Google-only thing. Even if Google is the big guy they want to go after, they should be up front that this is not something that makes Google evil or is specific to Google.

<comment><USER9> donttrack.us also rips on third-party ad networks that are non-Google for extending the tracking even further. This also seems to be the core reason why DDG rails against search terms in referral URLs, since it's a major enabler for third-party network tracking.

So yes, DDG is targeting the 800# gorilla in its marketing, but it's not unjustified, nor has DDG claimed on the donttrack.us page that Google is the sole culprit in the destruction of user privacy.

There's a certain amount of opportunism in this billboard/privacy ad campaign here, that much is obvious. But, as a search engine it does not seem unreasonable to call out the failings of your main competitor.

<comment><USER8> >donttrack.us also rips on third-party ad networks that are non-Google for extending the tracking even further

On the site it says "Those sites usually have third-party ads. and those third-parties build profiles about you,"

How are they able to do this? _Because Google lets them._ That's the message they are sending across to people. The entire campaign is anti-Google only in nature. It's not this fair and balanced reporting on privacy that you're making it out to be.

>nor has DDG claimed on the donttrack.us page that Google is the sole culprit in the destruction of user privacy

Their campaign only talks about Google. That's the only name and logo they ever show or speak of.

<comment><USER9> > _"That's the message they are sending across to people."_

Which is true.

> _"The entire campaign is anti-Google only in nature."_

Well, yes. DDG is a search engine. They are targeting their chief competitor, _a search engine_ , in their marketing.

> _"It's not this fair and balanced reporting on privacy that you're making it > out to be."_

Correction: it's not a _comprehensive_ guide to everything online that violates your privacy. But donttrack.us never claimed to be. You seem to be under the impression that the intent for donttrack.us is an entirely selfless, complete, and comprehensive guide. Now, I'm not affiliated with DDG, but it seems absurd to derive that from the site.

The way I see it is: yes, they're targeting Google, but that's not exactly unfair given that Google is DDG's chief competitor. If you were Subway, running attack ads on McDonald's on the obesity angle, why would you waste your breath also ripping apart I Can't Believe It's Not Butter?

Nothing DDG has said is false, nor (IMHO) have they deceived their users by omission. Everything in this campaign is accurate. I simply don't see the outrage.

Now, whether or not the privacy issue is even worth fretting about, or whether using DDG will reverse the tide of privacy destruction that you're exposed to everywhere else, that's another issue entirely. DDG hasn't claimed that switching from Google will fix all of your privacy woes, but what they _do_ claim is that it will fix the privacy violation that Google directly allows. That seems fair enough.

<comment><USER8> >it seems absurd to derive that from the site

I'm not deriving that aspect of my argument from the site. I'm deriving it from your argument that it is balanced and makes mention of things outside of Google ("third parties").

>If you were Subway, running attack ads on McDonald's on the obesity angle, why would you waste your breath also ripping apart I Can't Believe It's Not Butter?

If Subway ran an anti-obesity campaign and only mentioned McDonald's I would feel the same way about it because you're making your largest competitor seem worse than they really are by failing to tell the whole story. If you're not going to disclose the entire truth about an industry you shouldn't bother delivering the half-truth simply because it's not worth your time to attack smaller fish.

>Nothing DDG has said is false, nor (IMHO) have they deceived their users by omission

But it is disingenuous to make it appear that Google is the sole search engine or Website that does this or affects users in this way, which is what you said I was being when I made the claim that this is just anti-Google FUD, which it is.

>DDG hasn't claimed that switching from Google will fix all of your privacy woes

That's the impression that I get from donttrack.us and I'm sure that was intentional.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is surprisingly inexpensive advertising and will likely generate the value of its price in press coverage alone.

<comment><USER11> See that billboard directly behind it with "San Francisco Chronicle" along the top? That's for the auto show in November... 2010.

It couldn't have been very expensive if they're still advertising an event that ended _two months_ ago...

<comment><USER12> I doubt the _Chronicle_ is still paying for that, it just means no paying replacement has been found so it hasn't been covered / removed. That could mean it's REALLY expensive to advertise there, though it's more likely it's just not a prime advertising site.

Still, what's a full page ad in Wired set you back? Solid PR play by DDG.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I know this comes up every now and again...but I find the length of the domain name a barrier to entry. I think building a brand around "DuckDuckGo" is an upward battle.

<comment><USER14> This is one of the biggest reasons I don't use DuckDuckGo yet. Seems trivial, but for me it's certainly a barrier to entry. I'd say the second biggest reason is the annoying user interface (gaudy effects like large lime green backgrounds when you roll over search results, etc.)

<comment><USER15> > I'd say the second biggest reason is the annoying user interface DuckDuckGo > is the first website that made me want to install a browser plugin to change > the way the page looks. (As for other websites that had a look I didn't > like, I simply stopped visiting them.) The problem with installing plugins, > though, is that I use several browsers on several computers, and to get a > consistent look, I'd have to customize all of them (if possible).

<comment><USER16> You can customize a fair amount DuckDuckGo's UI using the settings page[1], most notably hover highlighting, color scheme, and header placement (fixed vs scrolling).

[1]: <http://duckduckgo.com/settings.html>

<comment><USER17> Not good if you operate on several different computers & browsers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm surprised he's only paying $7000 to put up a massive billboard next to a major consumer route for a month. I'm sure billboard advertising doesn't have great conversion rates, but I still imagined that would cost more.

Anyone care to comment on their experiences with billboard ads?

<comment><USER19> Consumer Watchdog paid to put their message up on a Jumbotron in Times Square: [http://blogs.forbes.com/oliverchiang/2010/09/02/consumer- wat...](http://blogs.forbes.com/oliverchiang/2010/09/02/consumer-watchdog- times-square-animation-on-googles-privacy-abuses-may-get-a-sequel/)

That article says they paid $25000 for their cartoon that tried to make Eric Schmidt look creepy: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ouof1OzhL8k>

<comment><USER20> And as you know, I made it clear that I thought Consumer Watchdog went way over the line and made unfair claims. I don't see this with DDG and its campaign. <http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/09/in-defense-of-google/>

<comment><USER21> Yea, I remember reading that it was likely paid by Microsoft.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm all for a good story, and the one-man DDG going up against Google is certainly a great one. However, considering the number of armchair business analysts on HN I'm shocked that nobody seems to call out Gabriel for appearing to fall into a cliched trap: "we don't track you" isn't a product, it's a feature.

I genuinely wonder what DDG would do if Google simply addressed all of their referrer privacy issues. Then what, exactly? Would DDG simply pack up and go home?

It's a fair question.

<comment><USER5> Privacy is just but one aspect of DuckDuckGo: <http://duckduckgo.com/about.html> <http://duckduckgo.com/goodies.html>

I spend the vast majority of my time improving the search experience. I would welcome you trying it for a week and giving me your feedback!

I would _love_ it if Google reacted to this by stopping this search leakage.

<comment><USER23> I changed to Duck Duck Go in Chrome a couple weeks ago to do just this and didn't make it past three days. I was looking forward to getting rid of content mills (which was the reason I wanted to try DDG for a week), but the lack of things like local results and search completion drove me absolutely batty.

<comment><USER5> Thx -- both of those things we're actively working on and should have something for this year (probably earlier than later).

<comment><USER23> Great to hear. I like what you're doing and will definitely continue to check it out when you add new features. I don't agree with your stance on referrers (which isn't a Google problem any more than it's a HN problem), but I like rooting for the little guy.

<comment><USER5> Thank you, and I can appreciate that position. However, I think it is a search engine problem because search terms often contain sensitive personal information and they're embedded in the referrer, whereas HN links don't contain such info.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I am inspired that one man is pulling off DuckDuckGo

<comment><USER25> This is really big deal. Every time I fail to find a great co-founder, I just look up to Gabriel and decide to not give up even if I've to run my company as a solo founder. Running a company as a solo-founder is not new. We've many successful solo founders on HN. But running a Search engine is a really big deal, where many big companies have failed. So respect to Gabriel is even more...

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Some questions...

\- is DDG profitable right now?

\- is it going to be profitable if their user base grows by 10x? 1000x?

\- do they ever expect a need to be profitable?

\- if required to be profitable, do they have or foresee a solid business plan that doesn't involve de facto "tracking"?

<comment><USER5> No, yes (10x), yes, grow the user base.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Turning off HTTP_REFERER doesn't sound like a very good idea. How would you be able to tell how people found you? Knowing what link someone came in from is a great way to see where your site fits into this world wide web of ours.

It sounds to me as if the only issue is 3rd party ad networks. The antidote to this seems to me to be more reasonably the web browser's jurisdiction, ie. making the cookie policy more restrictive by default.

<comment><USER28> *referrer

<comment><USER26> Heh, no. The header really is "HTTP_REFERER", and is somewhat notorious for the misspelling.

<comment><USER28> Open an English dictionary (the Oxford one if you're serious), and come back. Note my fault if tbl didn't know how to speak English corectly backed then.

<comment><USER26> Surely whether or not the RFC's authors know how to spell a word has no bearing on how sensible it is to correct the spelling of "HTTP_REFERER"? I mean, if dools had said "HTTP referer" then you might have had a point, but "HTTP_REFERER" unambiguously refers to the name of the header field.

<comment><USER29> No need to be pedant dude.

<comment><USER26> At the risk of taking the joke too far, "pedant" is a noun and requires an article preceding it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I think Wired picked entirely the wrong privacy issue to highlight in this article. Yes, my browser spews the refer(r)er all over. So what?

The referer isn't giving away any private information that the _URL of the site_ isn't giving away already, and as a web publisher, I understand the value of knowing the exact set of terms the user used.

However, I love DuckDuckGo, and try to use it wherever possible, because of other privacy concerns that matter much more to me. The biggest thing I like about DDG is that it doesn't collect or store search history.

</comment><comment><USER31> That's awesome! Does anyone (Gabriel...) know if there has been a noticeable bump in traffic as a result?

<comment><USER32> Check here in the coming days: <http://duckduckgo.com/traffic.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I have nothing against GW and I wish him well, but what kind of guarantee do I have of his claim that he doesn't log my search queries? (I realize that the "Referer" thing is indeed verifiable.)

<comment><USER34> Why would he? He has no advertising to use it for. He doesn't want the government to be able to subpoena him. (They can't ask for information he doesn't have.) And it would pretty much kill the business he's been building for 3 years if it came out that he was logging information that he's been loudly claiming that he doesn't.

He also wrote a blog post on how to change nginx's defaults to not log IP and user agent: [http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/11/how-to-not- log-p...](http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/11/how-to-not-log- personally-identifiable-information.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Not knowing which keywords referred visitors would be terribly annoying to webmasters. Unless you're using dodgy 3rd party advertisers, I don't see what's so bad about aggregating referrer data.

I have a feeling Google might be keen to hold onto their duck.com domain a little longer :)

<comment><USER36> _"Not knowing which keywords referred visitors would be terribly annoying to webmasters"_

Why should I, as a user, care about that?

<comment><USER37> You don't directly. But if the internet landscape becomes unusable to content providers, you'll care when there is nothing worth finding anymore.

<comment><USER38> If I don't buy the "Feel sorry for me! Prop up my business!" argument when the newspapers make it, and I don't buy it when the record companies make it, why should I buy it when people running websites make it?

<comment><USER37> I'm nor sure where I argued that propping up business was a good thing.

I just think it's silly to pretend that the only concern when making a business or technology decision is the short-sighted impact on consumers/users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> It strikes me as kind of odd that the billboard says "We", implying that DuckDuckGo is a company of multiple people.

Then again, saying "I don't track you" would sound extremely strange.

I guess we (as a society) have become so accustomed to companies requiring large groups of people to be successful. I guess Gabe's ability to take on Google, the biggest tech company this decade, by himself, is a testament to computer programming being so empowering.

<comment><USER40> Many people do this. If you see a website for a product developed by a single person, more often than not they will use "we".

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I've never seen so many typos in a mainstream web media article. Wired should be ashamed.

</comment><comment><USER42> I understand the privacy concerns, but not the FUD about the referrer. Just turn it off and you're done! There's even a Firefox addon that allows site- specific settings.

RefControl <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/refcontrol/>

I've been using it for years.

</comment><comment><USER43> I am certain, that the point of DuckDuckGo is not to beat Google. It is for google or another search company to buy it.

</comment><comment><USER44> It's not just the privacy angle, DDG also returns much more relevant results for my searches. YMMV.

</comment><comment><USER45> A quick (and perhaps slightly offtopic) question, what's DDG's revenue model? Is it just an experiment right now, and if so how is Gabriel funding this?

<comment><USER46> He has an about me page somewhere, but he sold a business a while back for a relatively large amount and I assume he could live off that forever, so money certainly isn't a concern for him.

Edit: found the info, $10m - <http://investor.untd.com/releasedetail.cfm?releaseid=328835>

<comment><USER47> It's rather telling that he gets to work on DDG on his own terms from Pennsylvania.

(I'm a coder that pines for mudding and visible stars, so the fact that my career choices are NYC/SF is disheartening at times.)

<comment><USER48> Actually there seem to be a good number of jobs in Pittsburgh, but I know nothing about the natural environs that way.

In California, if you work in Silicon Valley you can always live down in the Santa Cruz mountains. If you work in SF you can live in Marin. It is often faster to go from Marin to SOMA than it is to go from the Sunset or Richmond to SOMA. I can't say it's a quick commute from the SC mountains to anywhere, but the option is there. I know Apple has a shuttle bus from Santa Cruz to Cupertino, maybe other firms do, too.

NYC metro is not great for stargazing but I was surprised that there are nice places for hiking upstate, and in NJ and CT. Even Vermont and the Berkshires are accessible for weekend trips.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I think Wired is mocking the HN community subtly.

</comment><comment><USER50> This site is linked from DuckDuckGo.com: <http://donttrack.us/>

</comment><comment><USER51> 1\. Concentrate on making your product great, instead of attacking the competition/market leader.

2\. Don't assume everyone cares about things you do. No one gives a hoot if a website they click on knows what page they came from.

</comment><comment><USER52> If DDG is highlighting its search privacy, why doesn't the website default to HTTPS? (I know there is more the search privacy than HTTPS, but it would reinforce the "secure" search messaging.)

</comment><comment><USER53> Go, Gabriel, Go! :)

I wonder if you can change the text in a couple of week to ".. still tracking. We still don't". This should give those curious another push to go and just try DDG.

</comment><comment><USER54> I love it when _WIRED_ quotes someone on Hacker News :-)

</comment><comment><USER55> > * and it's privacy message seemed to resonate with users*

> _While... but..._

Is there a copy editor at Wired?

</comment><comment><USER56> well googlesharing.net (by moxie marlinspike) prevent google from tracking your searches... its a ff addon if im not mistaken

</comment><comment><USER57> It gave me better results than google on 3 different searches. Bookmarked.

<comment><USER29> Which kind?

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> I would have put that billboard somewhere on the east coast instead.

</comment><comment><USER59> Was that article even edited? So many spelling errors!

</comment><comment><USER60> Anyone else think there should be a DuckDuckGo of browsers that is similarly proactive about privacy? There way more ways than just cookies to track people nowadays and it's about time we implemented default behavior in the browser to block them. There's no reason to wait for Google or Mozilla to do it for us either.

<comment><USER61> The EFF has a plugin that uses SSL when available on a number of common websites (Google included): <https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere>.

AdBlock will get rid of a lot of stuff (you will be depriving some sites of revenue, use the whitelist if you respect the site.)

There are a few other privacy-related add-ons that I don't have experience with too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Btw epi0Bauqu I love your new ddg logo!

</comment><comment><USER63> For anyone that just wants to see what the billboard looks like and isn't interested in the article:

[http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/epicenter/2011/01/ddg_bill...](http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/epicenter/2011/01/ddg_billboard2-660x441.jpg)

<comment><USER64> Couldn't those people just click on the link, look at the picture of the billboard and then close the window?

Not being sarcastic... that's what I did.

<comment><USER63> I'm sure I'm not alone in that I read HN comments before I hit an article, often because so many articles are linkbait, misleading, lacking content, overly saturated in ads, etc. I very, very rarely click through to TechCrunch articles, for example, as they're rarely satisfying.

If the comments suggest the article is especially worth reading, then I'll click on. If they don't say much about the article itself or suggest that it's not worth the click, I feel as though I haven't rewarded average behaviour with that page view.

In this case, I checked the HN comments for a direct link to the image because that's honestly all I wanted to see - the design and wording of the billboard. I didn't want the article, comments, masthead, everything else that comes with a news site pageload these days. I use AdBlock so the ads weren't going to reward the site owner and I'd just be chewing up extra bandwidth. When I didn't see a link to the image, I wondered if anyone else might've been looking for one too and thought I'd put one up. Easy to click for those who wanted it, easy to ignore for everyone else.

I assume the couple of downvotes are people thinking along your lines, or being against deep-linking?</comment></comment></comment>


Dogs' Eyes Have Changed Since Humans Befriended Them - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/06/domestication-gave-dogs-two-new-eye-muscles/591868/ <comment><USER2> Isn't this better described as selective breeding, rather than evolution? Maybe we haven't consciously bred the trait into dogs, but we might have selected such dogs for breeding, over litter mates that never made eye contact.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's on the front page [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20209569](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20209569)

<comment><AUTHOR> I noticed that. I only note that I posted it on HN first but that post got traction instead of mine. Oh well... :-)</comment></comment>


Heroku for Java - <AUTHOR> http://blog.heroku.com/archives/2011/8/25/java/ <comment><USER2> If they supported git pushing a war file, then I wonder what the performance improvements would be with Warble-ing a RoR app and running it on a JVM?

 _Edit_ Oh wait, they already did. But not using a WAR file it seems.

 _For example, JRuby is one of the most frequently-requested languages on Heroku. Matthew Rodley has already put a Rails app onto JRuby on Heroku by adding JRuby to pom.xml. Scala, another common request, could be done the same way. We do look forward to being able to offer the same kind of first-class support for JRuby and Scala that we offer for Clojure; but in the meantime, bootstrapping via Java is a reasonable strategy._

Now if we could just get some performance comparisons between the Ruby and Java platforms on Heroku... pretty please?

<comment><USER3> I'll hook something together this weekend in terms of a benchmark. The nice thing with JRuby is you get the concurrency features of the runtime.

<comment><USER4> a lot of ruby code isn't threadsafe. I'm pretty sure rails isn't.

<comment><USER5> Rails is threadsafe if you turn it on by uncommenting config.threadsafe! in your environment initializer.

<comment><USER4> That's not what I mean. That will make it run with concurrent threads per request. However, I'm fairly certain it isn't threadsafe.

Somewhere around 3.0.6 I made a simple jruby rails app and a sinatra app. They were both a thin REST layer over data in mongodb (No AR). I did load testing and the sinatra app ran fine, the rails app would fail on about 7% of requests with seemingly random stack traces. When I reran the tests with config.threadsafe! turned OFF it never failed.

Also, on Bob Lee's OSCON talk he mentioned some unthreadsafe code in AR that he found.

<http://www.oscon.com/oscon2011/public/schedule/detail/21092>

<comment><USER5> I've had good experiences with several jruby on rails apps under tomcat using warbler and they all seem to perform fine with config.threadsafe! enabled. You should probably investigate those stacktraces, maybe they were caused by unthreadsafe gems or application code?

<comment><USER4> It would fail without using any gems other than trinidad. I'll try to reproduce it tomorrow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wonderful news. Heroku keeps going from strength to strength. I know a lot of people who'll be interested in this... I'm very pleased that Scala is deployable.

Awesome.

</comment><comment><USER7> You do have to wonder what the moves of the last few weeks mean for DotCloud. With Heroku launching support for many non-RoR languages and CloudFoundry being adopted by other PaaS players, you have to wonder whether small players like DotCloud are going to get squeezed out.

<comment><USER8> As far as I understood it, it's apples and oranges. DotCloud provides specific services, for example, running a Solr cluster, which is a higher level of abstraction really than providing support for a specific programming language.

<comment><USER9> I don't. Besides Heroku is supported by salesforce.com, so there's at least some longevity and synergy between the two.

Also, not all PaaS players will commoditize over the same feature-set. Example in point, Heroku's Java support doesn't allow you to put a .war file up like you can do in Amazon's Elastic Beanstalk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here's hoping that the next language will be Python.

<comment><USER11> Python seems to be working on Heroku already, not sure if its officially supported. <https://gist.github.com/1004844>

until then there's a good list for django [http://www.quora.com/What-is-the- Heroku-equivalent-for-Djang...](http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-Heroku- equivalent-for-Django-applications)

<comment><USER12> Last time I tried one of those gists, it plain didn't work. Not sure if the gist I tried was outdated by then or if things are working now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Google App Engine for Java is another PaaS option for running Java in the cloud. I wonder how these two compare?

<comment><USER14> Google App Engine has a fairly restrictive Java implementation. It means that most libraries that you are familiar with would likely not work there. So you can't really just take a war file that works somewhere else and stick it on App Engine. They do provide a few nice built-in service like image manipulation.

The problem with services like Cloudbees and Amazon's Elastic Beanstalk is that you end up updating an entire war file that you build locally. This can take a long time.

Cloudfoundry only serves up deltas, but you still end up having to build the entire war file on your local machine ( at least for Grails ).

Heroku's approach seems much nicer, you get some initial setup pain, but then you can just use a standard git workflow.

<comment><USER15> Tomas, this is not true, at least with CloudBees you have a delta deployer that makes it a breeze to update your applications as it just sends the delta from the last upload!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is fantastic news. Heroku is squarely positioning itself as the de facto cloud app platform.

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't understand this part:

> In the classic software delivery process (development → packaging → > distribution → install → deployment), code passes through many hands before > it finally reaches the end user. Developers build, QA verifies, ops deploys, > and finally end users can access. In this environment, the feedback loop for > information about how code behaves in production is slow and inefficient — > it may take weeks or months for this to make it back to developers, and > often in a highly-filtered format.

> Heroku is built for the new era of software-as-a-service. An app is built by > a small, cross-functional, relatively independent team which builds and > deploys everything itself, with few or no hand-offs to other teams.

What's the difference here? Developers still build and QA still has to verify. If your code is split up into several repositories, you still want to track versions (packaging & distribution, even if a package is just a branch + revision number).

<comment><USER18> They are talking about 'cross functional' teams. So Devs/QAs/Ops can be in the same team, even the same people. Because they (Heroku) are handling all the edge-knowledge of server setup/maintenance etc.

You only need to track revision number, in a single repo (maybe with branches, sure). I'm not sure what you mean by "code split into several repositories" ?

The difference is deployments become cheap thus "delivering software" becomes cheaper.

<comment><USER17> By several repositories, I mean libraries. Maybe built by your team, maybe by another team.

And I still don't see how Heroku hosting your software affects whether you have dedicated QA staff and whether they're in your team or not.

<comment><USER19> It has to do with how quickly you can iterate on your production software and what the distance is (in terms of time) between a developer committing a change and that change making it out in front of an end-user.

In traditional enterprise software (e.g. insurance) the deployment cycles are long because the organization are large, heavily layered, and extremely resistant to change. There are many reasons for this, some sensible and some not. (And then some that are legislated - they fall into both categories).

For a startup that is trying to build a service, or a mid-sized corporation, particularly in the ecommerce space, the faster you can change a deployed solution, the better off you are.

Say you're running a large ecommerce website and a bug is discovered on the user account page. It's a "P1 issue" that needs immediate attention, i.e. as long as the bug exists, revenue is impacted.

In a situation like this, you want to be able to identify a fix, commit it, and ship it to production ASAP. This becomes an issue in traditional organizations where the "developers" are different from "the network people" who themselves are subdivided into database/network/sysadmin/etc. These groups are change-averse and tend to gate releases into maintenance windows. Which makes sense, but can hinder rapid deployment.

If you don't have a traditional Ops team, there's no stakeholder who feels you're impinging on their fiefdom when you wantonly hit the deploy button. (Though I don't mean to imply that you shouldn't have discipline around releases).

The question you're asking is very relevant for teams making the transition to processes like Agile and infrastructures like Cloud. Because these things are disruptive, they lead to change and break-down of traditional org structures. A dedicated QA department always seems to be one of the first things targeted. (Though I don't necessarily think that's a good idea).

<comment><USER17> I think you will find that even in large organizations with dedicated teams owning server ops, if a problem is impacting customers in the middle of the day, there will be a way to get the deployment window open quickly.

Doing away with maintenance windows altogether sounds great from our point of view as developers, but it shouldn't come at the expense of customers suffering horrible latency during peak hours because the servers are at reduced capacity while a significant percentage of them are busy with deployments.

I understand the benefits of rapid iteration through continuous deployment (and intensive automated testing), but cloud platforms like Heroku and Beanstalk don't really help here. Cloud deployment and the ability for developers to push a button and have their changes show up in production quickly also doesn't mean you don't need QA anymore. That's a separate decision.

I understand that making deployment a simpler process through hosted server farms is great in that it takes off a lot of pressure from your ops team, but that doesn't change the development process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Hey Heroku, please get yourself PCI-DSS Level 1 certified! BTW does anyone know if any of the ruby cloud providers offer that?

<comment><USER19> That has more to do with the underlying provider (Amazon) than the language hosting provider. It's a hard problem for cloud providers to solve but I'll bet you Amazon will get there sooner rather than later.

<comment><USER21> Amazon AWS is PCI DSS Level 1 compliant.

<comment><USER20> Is it? I thought so then looked at the FAQ and it appears that much of the infrastructure is level 2 compliant.

<comment><USER22> It is: <http://aws.amazon.com/security/>

<comment><USER20> Ahh ok excellent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I wish they supported - here is a war file, run it...

<comment><USER17> If you want "here is a war file" then aren't you looking for beanstalk and appengine?

<comment><USER24> Cloudfoundry as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Also, I'd be curious if PHP support is coming at any time. That seems like it would open the floodgates.

<comment> ryan-allen Someone's already got PHP working on Heroku [1], the author is swell bloke too I hear.

[1] <https://github.com/lstoll/heroku-php>

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I don't have much experience with Java, but is that a minimal pom.xml? It seems rather involved.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, it's not a big one, certainly. In practice, you'll almost never do it from scratch, but use an archetype [1] that you tweak.

Tools like Ivy, Gradle and Buildr will play nicely with Maven repositories to get dependencies, and I would hazard were all largely born out of a frustration with the pom syntax. That said, like it or, more likely, not, Maven is the defacto Java standard, so it tends to cling on.

[1]: [http://maven.apache.org/guides/introduction/introduction- to-...](http://maven.apache.org/guides/introduction/introduction-to- archetypes.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've been hoping for this since I first used Heroku for Rails/Sinatra apps. I feel that with this change, Heroku is really getting serious about their offering (not that they weren't already).

But as someone who's worked on enterprisey stuff, the thought of push-button Spring deployment makes me giddy with glee.

Heroku folks - if you're reading this - you just achieved maximum awesome! :)

</comment><comment><USER26> I want my Java EE6 there darn it.

:)

PS: FYI, so far none of the cloud solution support Java EE6

<comment><USER19> Are there times when you prefer Java EE over Spring and the like? Java EE does some things well, but it seems like lots of comparable libraries/etc are offered in the open source side of things.

Not knocking, really just curious about your opinion.

<comment><USER26> Maybe it's preference/bias but I found the latest Java EE6 offers a lot simpler programming model than its predecessor or Spring.

I also prefer to stick with 1 container as opposed to mix-n-match Spring modules + Hibernate + Apache CXF/Axis2 or whatnot. Most libraries out there boasted that they implement the JSR standard but they don't stop there as they also added their own extensions + configurations.

There are a few missing parts in Java EE: MVC and dealing with NoSQL which both will be addressed in Java EE7 from what I know. Spring has SpringMVC and SpringData so they're ahead right now.

What I don't like from Spring is the complexity of the setup (dependency, albeit Maven helps) and knowing various Spring modules and how they works with your preferred app-server. With Spring, at some point, you need to know a few key integration points between Spring and your app-server. For example: deploying an EAR solution that contains multiple WARs and JARs would require to understand Spring lifecycle, setup/configuration if you'd like to behave according to your requirement.

A plus point using Java EE6 is to trim down your EAR/WAR. Spring pulls many JARs.

<comment><USER19> That's a fair point, I guess I've been spoiled. I guess I just don't mind knowing those integration points and working with them, but I can definitely see how it would put a bad taste in your mouth after a while.

The NoSQL integration I think will be big. I know some folks using SpringData to talk to MongoDB and they've had positive experiences so far.

Maybe in the future things will get simpler - so far I've found that I'm pretty happy with either embedded Jetty or Tomcat. And then Spring/Jersey + Hibernate/JPA.

Have you found that EAR/WAR size has hampered you? I tend not to worry about how many JARs I'm pulling.

<comment><USER26> I use GF3.1 as they are the only one that implement JEE6 in full. There's an issue with deploy/undeploy app (memory leak due to pushing ClassLoader to the edge) which is kind of annoying to me personally because we do frequent build/deploy. I wish we can use Jetty (I used Jetty, Servlet, GWT in my previous company) since it is way leaner and faster to reboot; especially via Maven.

Although I've never measured the deployment performance, I'm quite sure the smaller your EAR/WAR size the faster it deploys because the ClassLoader is required to scan + load those libraries (again, it depends on the behavior of your library: up-front or lazy loading).

<comment><USER27> You definitely want to try jrebel to solve your problems with redeploys and wasting time. It'll reload your classes and resource as you compile/provide them. Check it out, <http://zeroturnaround.com> . disclaimer: I work there, but jrebel is awesome anyway.

<comment><USER26> I have heard of JRebel for a while but have not had the case to need this until now. Is it free for development?

PS: I saw someone from JRebel did a presentation about ClassLoader before, you guys really know what you are doing. Respect man! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> beauty and the beast

</comment><comment><USER29> Ah, yes, the SUV of programming languages.

<comment><USER30> Their Hello World example looks awful... And the majority of the article is spent apologising for Java.

<comment><USER19> It's not pretty, but it is the lowest level of abstraction. If they used a prettier example, they'd have to pick a framework and then people would complain "hey, why'd you pick X and not Y?"</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to get first Dev Job with no shipped code - <AUTHOR>

I've got a ton of starts, startups I had ideas for... even working on some projects on Assembly.com as lead dev, but my problem is I make 30k per year now(Tech support), and I get depressed and lose focus.. If I could just up to 60k I'd be much happier, and if I could just get my foot in the door.
An apprenticeship, or something. I know rails, django, laravel, php, ruby, angularjs, meteorjs, I do lack a lot of testing experience, but think a team could help me build those skills as I watch other's workflows...
An entry level rails or django job, and I'd take 40k (call it apprentice pay) w/ a promise of 70+ when I prove myself an asset.
Github: http://github.com/pixelgremlins Linkedin: http://linkedin.com/in/patrickcurl <comment><USER2> 1\. Stop undervaluing yourself. You should be aiming for at least 75-80k as a full stack / front end developer in Utah. (I'd also strongly suggest looking for work outside the state because you can both earn a significant multiplier of what you will earn in Utah, and more importantly, you'll be able to work with and make more connections in the industry. That way when you go to look for your second dev job, you can just reach out to your circle of friends in the industry and say, hey, I'm looking for a new gig, I'd love to come work with you at __, do you mind you referring me?).

2\. On your linkedin profile, you state "I've spent 10 years coding freelance jobs". You need to add an entry into your professional work history that represents this. Call it 'Patrick Web Development Consulting' and list it as 2005-present. Even if you're under NDA, you can still describe what you did in general. If you set up a server with technologies x,y,z, implemented a design (or designed and implemented yourself), etc. list it.

I would separate into three sections: Business Strategy, Front End / Design, Backend / Server. This allow you to show that you have experience and skills in these areas. Right now, your profile just lists a bunch of skills, but your only experience says 'tech support'.

</comment><comment><USER3> I run a small agency and I'm in charge of hiring our developers. I took a look at your GitHub and had a few thoughts:

1) Add a real readme to your projects. If you don't have any shipped work, that's ok, but you do have side projects I can take a look at. Help me out though, I want some information on what this app should do and I don't want to go diving into your code without that background.

The first repo I visited was cupcakes, because, well who doesn't love cupcakes? But I was disappointed when I didn't see any real information about what this app was aiming to do.

2) You should be able to get a Jr. level position for at least 70k, so don't sell yourself short. Now if you have a lot to learn, be willing to take less and get your foot in the door.

3) Focus on one language that interests you. I don't hire generalists. I look for developers who have spent the time to learn a language, not six. You can always learn more later, but you'll have an easier time if you can pitch on the language or area you know really well.

Other than that, keep applying to jobs, keep growing, you'll land something. Good luck!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Actually.. I've shipped some minor projects.. Some are nda, so can't disclose, and one hasn't really taken off: [http://glitterandpoop.com](http://glitterandpoop.com) (Laravel). I can migrate wordpress sites, fix wsod's, and fine-tune server performance/script performance pretty fast. (I can do a full migration in 10 mins flat, install from scratch in 2 mins.. ) I work in hosting support now, so that's 70% of what I do everyday..

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm in the same boat but I think you're selling yourself way short. There are new grads who get 100k jobs, you might not have a portfolio but you do have work experience.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's hard...I've been to > 50 interviews since April 2014. So far all I've gotten is hosting support for a big hosting firm @ $15/hour. Still dropping resumes though weekly.

<comment><USER4> How do you prepare for interviews and what would you say are your weak points ?</comment></comment></comment>


Ford Exec: 'We Know Everyone Who Breaks The Law' Thanks To Our GPS In Your Car - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/ford-exec-gps-2014-1 <comment><USER2> Does anyone know why there is a GPS in the car? Is there a way to disable it?

<comment><USER3> Why? Because they can and because they can sell the data. The only way to disable it would probably be physically removing the said device. Or winning a class action suit forcing Ford to provide disabling option as a recall fix.</comment></comment>


HN Meetup Tel Aviv - <AUTHOR> http://hackernewsil.eventbrite.com/

<comment><USER2> If any expert iPhone/Android developers are planning to come and are willing to give some tips and help to other members. Please contact us via the FB group (<http://bit.ly/73vhyS>)

Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm stuck in Gaza, can you get me through?

<comment><USER4> It's a privilege, not a right, I suspect. The onus is on you, not the organizer.

<comment><USER3> What would you do if you were born in Gaza?

<comment><USER4> Setup your own hackers club.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> How can you be sure that the people going are HN readers?

<comment><USER2> We posted this mainly here.

But, if someone likes technology and is interested in startups, he is welcome. (And will surely become a HN reader afterward !)

<comment><USER4> Cool. It is interesting to see over 75 members in the FB group. I was aware of only about 10 HN users in Israel from almost 3 years using the board.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just registered. See you guys there.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm curious.... Do you typically converse in Hebrew at these meetups?

<comment><USER2> The two short lectures we have, are going to be in Hebrew.

But during the StartupWeekend event a few weeks ago, most of the pitches and demos were done in English.</comment></comment>


Resources for Learning AI - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/open-intelligence/recommended-resources-for-learning-ai-3ab4023cfa85#.ukysl4dt3 <comment><USER2> Isn't the AI supposed to do the learning?

<comment><AUTHOR> Learning? Do you mean Machine Learning?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Selling to educators - <AUTHOR>

I'm working on a product that I'd like to sell to teachers. But, having never sold to educators before, I can only assume that it'd wildly different than dealing with businesses. From what searching I've done, it seems going after school districts isn't very effective. But, that seems to be the extent of what I can find on HN.<p>I know there a lot of education focused entrepreneurs around here. Any stories and experiences, no matter the length, will be met with eager ears. I'm especially interested in hearing some 'lessons learned' about pricing, as I've been contemplating a SAS model (but have doubt about teachers doing this). <comment><USER2> It really depends on what the product is. If it's a product that the teachers would use in administration, then more than likely they wouldn't pay for it, since they have to use the school's admin software.

If the product is for them to use in the classroom, they'd be more likely to pay for it, but you'd have to be very price sensitive.

Honestly, I'd really need to know more about your product to give you better feedback.

<comment><AUTHOR> The product is an ebook and software bundle aimed at technology / computer teachers. The goal of it is to assist in teaching students programming and computer science concepts, whilst subtly mixing in a lot of math and physics (making games). So it is indeed something to be used in the classroom. I meant to write this in my text, sorry I didn't include it that.

<comment><USER2> A few things: 1) There's an old game called Rocky's Boots, it subtly teaches engineering basics and is fun as hell. If you haven't checked it out yet, most definitely do. 2) Regarding computer teachers, krschmidt is definitely right. Teachers mostly do want to teach to the district guidelines because technology advances too rapidly for them and they want colleagues to be able to benchmark and bounce ideas with. The English literature canon doesn't change much, so those teachers feel they have a little more leeway. 3) Your market may be parents who want their kids to know how to program, especially homeschoolers. I don't know how large that market is, but it's definitely worth exploring.

<comment><AUTHOR> > 3) Your market may be parents who want their kids to know how to program, > especially homeschoolers. I don't know how large that market is, but it's > definitely worth exploring.

I hadn't even considered that. Kinda puts a new spin on how I can market this.

Thank you all for the feedback, it's very much appreciated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> What's the price point? And what level teachers are you targetting?

patio11 is good at selling $30 software to school teachers, entirely through Google - <http://bingocardcreator.com>. Even if your product is wildly different, it's probably a good idea to talk to him.

</comment><comment><USER4> Check out Imagine K12[1]. It was recently on HN[2].

[1] <http://www.imaginek12.com/index.html>

[2] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2337362>

</comment><comment><USER5> Have you talked to any teachers? Teachers are facing budget cuts and being laid off left and right, so even if you're price sensitive your're going to be trying to reach a small group within the larger teaching community. Have you thought about how you'd achieve that?

</comment><comment><USER6> Get a lot of teachers to use it at a free / price sensitive basis. Then offer a district package that really beefs up the offering.

Make the teachers want those features. They can push the district a bit, and you can sell from the other end.</comment>


Adobe CEO desperately tries to avoid answering a simple question (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaR2jR-RpYo <comment><USER3> Back when this video was made (and the Australian dollar was at parity with the American one) it was cheaper to buy a plane ticket to America and purchase Creative Suite than to buy it in store locally.

[http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2013/02/dont-believe-the-adobe- pri...](http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2013/02/dont-believe-the-adobe-price-cut- hype-its-still-gauging-you-silly/)

</comment><comment><USER4> It's for reasons like this and the ongoing quality and security issues Adobe has faced around flash player that I'm now actively avoiding all of their products. I've 'replaced' Photoshop with Pixelmator which is lacking in some areas, but for most of what I do is sufficient - it certainly is a lot faster than Photoshop.

<comment><USER5> I never thought pixelmator was a good replacement. BUT the two new projects from Serif, Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo DO look like good replacements.

<comment><USER4> I actually have both! I almost never use affinity photo because I find myself spending more time trying to work the Ui than I do on the work itself - <USER2> personas are clunky and the app is bloody expensive

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This Q&A is hilarious. The CEO is just giving the same PR-approved answer to a politically sensitive question. The real and politically-incorrect reason for the higher prices is that the cost of doing business is higher in Australia. For example, the minimum wage is very high and consumer protection laws require the company to provide a 2-year warranty at no additional cost. It sounds like some people want to have their cake and eat it too. They want Australia's high minimum wage and strong consumer protection laws, but they don't want to pay for it. There's no free lunch in this world.

As for the demand side of things, Australians must be sufficiently willing to pay the higher price.

The Australian dollar has gotten weaker since this video was taken, so now Adobe's prices are almost at parity with the US. I'm sure the risk of foreign exchange fluctuations is part of Adobe's pricing strategy.

<comment><USER7> > The real and politically-incorrect reason for the higher prices is that the > cost of doing business is higher in Australia. For example, the minimum wage > is very high and consumer protection laws require the company to provide a > 2-year warranty at no additional cost.

I wonder what the price differential between Australia and Europe is, at similar points in time, then as these 2 example reasons also apply within Europe. Such a comparison might go some way to explaining if there are structural reasons, as suggested by these specific examples, or if it is simply price gouging.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Somebody save me a click. What question?

<comment><USER9> He is asked why Creative Suite costs $1,400 more in Australia compared with other countries when the software is delivered over the internet.

<comment><USER10> "Because we can"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Yeah... Creative Cloud... every time I see some of my company's assets being put into a proprietary Adobe format, I wince.

I guess they'll just have to learn the hard way when one day Adobe won't let them open their own files. It's another one of these things that boggles my mind over what people will accept these days. Having to pay a subscription just to keep being able to use your own (really important) files. And doing all this relying on a company that will very unambiguously pursue goals that put its own interests over those of their customers.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm Australian and have no problem with Adobe's pricing strategy. Clearly they have decided that the demand curve for their software in Australia is significantly different to the US and are pricing their software accordingly.

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't think the answer of "Creative Suite is the only thing we have left, we have to make profit where we can" would fly.

</comment><comment><USER14> And my friends wonder why I'm still using CS3 and in some cases Photoshop 6.

</comment><comment><USER15> Can we add a 2013 tag to this?</comment>