Ask HN: Managing Side Projects with Full Time Job? - <AUTHOR>

Anyone here manage a side project/startup and also have a full time job? how do you divvy up the time effectively? <comment><USER2> You'll need to make sure you set boundaries for your full time job otherwise they tend to claim all of your personal time, which is no easy task.

If you area really lucky and if your side project/startup involves open source code you might be able to work on the code (at least, part time) at your full time job. It's not always possible though because some companies might not even let you open source your code.

</comment><comment><USER3> First things first, talk to your significant other about this. You will end up spending weekday evenings and weekends dedicated to a side project. If you are able to get support at home, then make sure you make the best use of your time (as I am sure you will). The trick is to figure out what milestones you want to hit in the beginning of each week, estimate the amount of time it will take, and spread out the work to each day of the week. Use a calendar or scheduler of some sort because it will keep you on track!

</comment><comment><USER4> Relevant HN post: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6107815](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6107815)

</comment><comment><USER5> I tried and wound up with RSI.

I quit my office job after a year of saving, and I'm about to launch the project I've been working on full-time (and plenty more) since I quit. I did have a few small gigs to keep me afloat, during that time, though.

</comment><comment><USER6> I work on my side projects in the early morning - before work: [http://ariejan.net/2013/05/21/early- birds/](http://ariejan.net/2013/05/21/early-birds/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Try not to bring the job work home. I'd usually take a 1hr nap after work so I could work on my side project with a fresh brain. Hack until 3am then sleep to reset again before work.

</comment><comment><USER8> Side projects have no deadlines. If you deadline you will have troubles with your current job.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> came across this newsletter which sends out daily articles that are pretty long dealing with this issue

[http://www.bootstrappist.com](http://www.bootstrappist.com)</comment>


Linus Torvalds Remembers the Days Before 'Open Source' - <AUTHOR> https://thenewstack.io/linus-torvalds-remembers-the-days-before-open-source/ <comment><USER3> This seems to be an article about the origin of the term "open source" and not about what the world was like before open source. I also found it funny that Linus' original response to the question was "I honestly don't remember".

<comment><USER4> An amazing amount of people forget what this was like and think that we've always had "open source", whatever it was called. Many will vehemently argue against the OSI definition of open source, despite them coining the term, because they're very convinced that everyone knew what open source was in 1995 and everyone used it since at least 1970.

It's important to remember this history. In a way, free software (or open source) was the only way to originally do software. You bought a machine, and the manufacturer would just give you the source code, because how could you operate the machine otherwise? People didn't even think software was copyrightable at first.

Whenever you have old people like rms mourning about the current state of software, that's because they remember what it was like when all software was free. This happened, and remembering the origins of the term "open source" is a way to memorialise that.

[http://jordi.inversethought.com/blog/5-things-we-have- forgot...](http://jordi.inversethought.com/blog/5-things-we-have-forgotten- about-open-source/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have to admit that the switch from "free software" to "open source" worked on me. Early in my career I was intrigued by the idea, but couldn't get past how "free" software was a sustainable model. I started to get it at around the same time the terminology changed.

On a related note, I heard the word shareware last week. It made me happy when I realized how long it had been since I had thought about shareware.

<comment><USER4> And what about now, how do you think that open source is good for business in ways free software is not?

I think the majority opinion, judging by the likes of gitlab, is to use some or a lot of open source to entice people to pay you for plain ol' proprietary software. Closed shell, or open core.

It looks like there's only room for one RedHat in the world, only one company who truly sells free software. As I understand it, you can pay Red Hat for access to their repos, which provide free software with source code, and nothing else. They really do plainly sell free software, but I think they call it "self-supported" or similar.

edit: I'm of course aware that RH sells support. I just don't know any other company that plainly sells free software like RH also does. I wonder why no one else even tries.

<comment><USER5> My previous reply wasn't clear. It wasn't the difference between the meanings of open source and free software that changed my mind. It was the terminology change that helped rid me of the mental image of working for free. Now I realize there is a world of difference between free and open source software, but I didn't know that at the time.

As for now, I think free software is good for business. My company works on dozens of free libraries, and it's good for our business because we end up running better code than what we could write by ourselves. When you consider whether it is "good for business", you need to consider that most businesses don't sell software. Of course GitLab and others won't ever be able to sell free software, but that doesn't mean it isn't good for business.

I have mixed feelings about open source projects that are built by single companies who sell enterprise versions. It's often handy to have them around, but I wouldn't consider contributing anything significant to them after seeing instances where PRs remain unmerged because they compete with the enterprise- version.

<comment><USER4> > Now I realize there is a world of difference between free and open source > software

There isn't. It's essentially the same set of software. That's the whole point of OSI. To just rebrand it. It's like saying that there's a world of a difference between global warming and climate change, or freedom fighters and rebel insurgents.

<comment><USER5> Now that I know you have that perspective, I'm curious what you meant by your previous question, "And what about now, how do you think that open source is good for business in ways free software is not?"

<comment><USER4> I think you already answered, in a way. When they called the same software by a different name, you stopped thinking that money was disallowed. You repeated that you (only?) think about what is good for business. So, yeah, OSI's rebranding worked. Same software, but focus on the business side.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The title is misleading. It really isn't about Linus' memories of days before "Open Source" so much as trying to figure out who coined the term.

<comment><USER5> I think the quotes in the title make it clear that it's about the term. I'm not sure the quotes were there when you commented, for hn makes a habit of correcting titles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm old enough to remember the days when saying something was "Open Source" meant, simply, we had the sources for something and could use them for our needs.

Around .. '84 / '85, there used to be these great little systems from MIPS that ran Risc/OS. Any time we'd get an update to Risc/OS, we'd spend a few days rebuilding drivers and whatnot, for our production systems - <USER2> drivers were "open source", in that they required us to compile them ourselves. (I think they were from the PROGRESS RDBMS product...)

Back in the days of USENET, any code that was posted to groups like comp.lang.c was considered 'open source' \- it was just a description of the sources, whether they were available or not. There wasn't any attribution of value - whether it was free or not - just whether or not we had access to it .. or not.

Nowadays there is all sorts of stigma and hubris around the subject - but back when computers were something you had to visit in a special room designed for the purpose, all it really meant was whether we had permission to read the source - and do things with it - or not. There wasn't a commercial value assignment, really, until the mid-90's, when people realised there was immense value in open source business models (RedHat, et al.) ...

<comment><USER4> > Back in the days of USENET, any code that was posted to groups like > comp.lang.c was considered 'open source'

If this were true, you should be able to find many Usenet postings that use this term to describe the software. We have the archives. The article indeed attempts this search and doesn't find it.

There is an unrelated older meaning of "open source" from "open source intelligence", but the idea that the meaning of "open source" as "source visible" was widespread before 1998 seems false. Perhaps some people had heard of it, but it was not widely understood.

Indeed, in the article, two of the Usenet hits for "open source" are "open source material", which can be disregarded as the older meaning of "open source intelligence", which means to collect data from people from things like phone books. The other hit is of dubious meaning.

<comment><USER7> Re: Usenet, I believe that the point we're both orbiting around is that for as long as source code has been 'a thing', we've had to share it among ourselves to do anything decent with it.

There is certainly an event horizon wherein computing platforms became entirely too sophisticated to support 'open source' everything - at a very early period of computing history, perhaps - but I do believe that source code has always been open. Its the fact of code going closed, multiple times, and now persistently, that is confabulating everything. I maintain this is the inverse function.

<comment><USER4> Sure, there's plenty of evidence that the attitude to share code existed and that in the beginning nobody even thought you could copyright software. But calling it "open source" is a relatively recent thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What a strange article. Clearly disturbed by the values and _confusion_ with the term free, it doesn't delve into the significant body of work that existed prior to 1998, except for a passing quote, and how such software enabled many things, including the Linux Kernel. I can only presume the ad space associated with this article is valuable because it certainly isn't an historically interesting or accurate piece.</comment>


Microsoft Project Siena (Beta) - T-A http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/ProjectSiena <comment><AUTHOR> Just played around with it for an hour or so. I really like the UI, it's very basic yet quite powerful. I like how they used Win8 UX concepts for a complex app, it works much better than I would've expected. I find myself using my laptop's touch screen as a matter of course.

It's quite powerful even without the using the function reference, because common actions have dedicated UI, and all fields have great autocomplete. I also realized that a modern HyperCard is really just all I wanted, and it seems that this may be it.

That said, it _really_ lacks on the documentation side. The function reference is a start, but without understanding the concepts, getting something real to work feels a little impossible. (Example: `Remove` removes an "item", but how is an "item" identified? Does a screen have a "current item"? How does this work?)

Still, a very nice start. I hope this gets better fast and then I'll want to be a power user.

I also hope they won't start charging Access-style prices for it.

</comment><comment><USER2> I found this page most incomprehensible, so I looked around.

A reasonable summary of what they're trying to build here is "HyperCard for the internet", which is actually a pretty cool idea.

This article had the best short summary in my opinion: [http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/19/5227140/microsoft- project...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/19/5227140/microsoft-project- siena-windows-apps)

<comment><USER3> "HyperCard for Windows 8" rather: It's a Windows 8 application for making Windows 8 applications (which can use the network). Which makes this much less interesting to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This product is aimed at fledgling entrepreneurs with an interest in accruing the benefits of technology, but without the expertise or in-house resources to leverage the FOSS chain.

Remember: From our perspective, MS is a bunch of evil-empire joykills: lock- in, licensing, lucifier. But for most businesspeople, especially the non- startup bootstrappers, they are promethean, stealing fire from the mandarins of software engineering and bestowing it on worthy dreamers. FOSS is hard; cross-platform is hard; Siena is easy.

Personal context: I flinch instinctively when I see or hear MS' products. However, I'm responsible for ops at my job and I know damned well that there are several generations of small businesses for whom 'business management' is spelled 'A-C-C-E-S-S'. You can criticize this, you can complain about this, you can pay a bunch of bright young things to rewrite it Node or whatever, but you are never going to convince the businessowner that Access is a bad idea.

That same businessowner started one day in his garage with an empty Access database and remembers both it and those days with justified fondness. He's still just getting over not being able to 'improve' your schema on his laptop on lunch break so it 'makes more sense'.

I predict in ten years there will be a huge market for consultants getting businessses OFF this thing. But there will also be a huge pool of new businesses it helped create, so on balance, let me be the first to say: Hello World, Siena, and welcome.

<comment><USER5> And the Mac equivalent to Access here is FileMaker. Entire kingdoms have been built by using one of these applications as a foundation.

<comment><USER4> Right. Which is why my first advice to a non-tech person starting a business is _still_ 'go out and get Access'. Because I can pitch as hard as I like for Node and Angular, I'm never going to make callback-passing and dependency injection as intuitive as 'New Access Database Wizard'.

Come to think of it, 'use Access' is pretty good advice for businessy techies, too. It's a lot harder to rabbit-hole when the earth is actually molded plastic. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looks nice. The problem with M$ is that over the years they've always offered simple tools for creating software, and then abandoning it somewhere along the way. Access is a great example.

<comment><USER7> I don't know why you were voted down. Had I invested heavily in learning Silverlight a couple of years ago, I would find myself with my thumb squarely secured up my own ass.

I can't imagine spending so much time and effort learning how to use a framework only to have it discontinued in it's infancy. Silverlight dying was a good thing and ultimately it's a win for everybody as HTML is more open, but still - I feel for the devs out there who waste their time.

Edit: On the plus it does use HTML and JS, instead of something much more closed. :)

<comment><USER8> >I don't know why you were voted down. Had I invested heavily in learning Silverlight a couple of years ago, I would find myself with my thumb squarely secured up my own ass.

Not really, as someone who specialised in WPF since it's latter beta stages, I still am finding plenty of work at a very good rate. Same thing goes with silverlight, even in a discontinued state, it still is going to have years and years of bug fixes. Just no new functionality.

The fact is, even today with all the frustrations I have with WPF been 'unfinished' it is still a lot more pleasurable than HTML/Knockout or something that tries to make HTML palatable.

A quick search in London on your favourite job site shows that learning WPF hasn't been a waste of time, my skills are not in a vacuum, I also have strong OOP skills, whilst knowing how to run software projects. Plus learning something is never bad. Obviously I wouldn't recommend someone learning it now. But compare it with whichever flavour of the month framework people are loving right now, people who've learn say Ruby on Rails aren't as fashionable as say Node.js is right now. But just do a quick jobs search in London and you'll see that you'd be better off on average doing WPF/Silverlight than RoR.

<comment><USER9> It's better than that - WPF and Silverlight skills are directly transferrable to Windows Phone and Windows RT. Yes, there are differences, limitations and in some cases more complete features, but the jump is negligible, with a herd of good resources on MSDN, StackOverflow and so on.

<comment><USER10> It's better than that. I find WPF to be the most flexible/powerful UI toolkit I've ever worked with (disclaimer: I work for Microsoft). If you ignore anything more complex than Canvas, Label, Rectangle, Image, you can cook up anything you want fairly easily (e.g. a tablet-based programming environment, a live programming editor), and actually have it look nice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What's the relation between this and LightSwitch? Both are from DevDiv and it seems like there's a good deal of overlap in goals.

Is LightSwitch being de-emphasized (put on life support) because it doesn't fully encourage WinRT?

<comment><USER12> LightSwitch is going web-only, as far as I can tell, so this may simply be splitting off and rebranding the Win 8 side of things.

<comment><USER13> Because if there's one thing the MS ecosystem needs, it's more dev fragmentation....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Cool! We're catching up to Enterprise Object Framework from NeXT in 1994.[1]

Skip to 23:00 for the demo of Steve Jobs building a database app in a few minutes. Yes, this is stuff we should have.

[1][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gveTy4EmNyk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gveTy4EmNyk)

<comment><USER15> I think VB3 had all that too.

I liked at the 21:00 minute mark how he was telling us how awesome faxes were. Surely iOS could do more with faxes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't have a critique of this on technical merits, and obviously, an initiative that helps all users better manage information is step forward. And this isn't a critique of Microsoft specifically, but the descriptive copy for it follows a trend that bugs me:

> _View and download sample apps, learn best practices, and see how other app > builders are using Project Siena to build visually stunning interactive apps > today._

Why does everything have to be "visually stunning" these days? No, I don't mean in actuality, but _described_ as such? A service that can build useful apps that improve our lives should be associated with adjectives like "powerful", "flexible", "intuitive"...And no, I don't endorse the use of adjectives in general, I'm just saying I wish copywriters, their managers, their product designers, etc. would not worry so much about "beauty" especially when "beautiful" is something that can be seen and should speak for itself.

I guess it's not the copywriters' fault as so much as just writing what the public likes to see...I wish the public would expand their concept of what good software is, how "beauty" is great, but not at all the primary requirement for the domain of something like the OP.

And of course Microsoft is not alone at fault. If anything, Apple probably inspired it, and who can blame Apple considering their success? Look at how their copy for a _spreadsheet application_ :

[http://www.apple.com/creativity-apps/mac/](http://www.apple.com/creativity- apps/mac/)

> _Numbers helps you make spreadsheets more insightful — and more beautiful. > Drop your data into a stunning, Apple-designed template. Or start with a > blank canvas. Add in some quick calculations. Then visualize the numbers > with a dramatic interactive chart. Suddenly, you see what it all means. How > beautiful is that?_

(I'll be the first to admit, I do like having nice typography in my Terminal, though)

<comment><USER11> The copy is cringe-worthy in general-

"a new technology for business experts, business analysts, consultants, and other app imagineers. Now, without any programming, you can create powerful apps for the device-first and cloud-connected world, with the potential to transform today's business processes."

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This has the potential to be awesome. Looks like a Windows RT-ready stripped- down MS Access. Something that allows e.g. sales people to create fancy presentations slash catalogues.

I'm not on the Windows platform and have no need to move there, but it's good to see some innovation coming from them.

</comment><comment><USER18> Is it just me or does it fail to explain just what it is, exactly?

</comment><comment><USER19> This thing lets non programmers, like marketing folk, write an app. This is very good. Not apps don't require a real programmer, we can do real work.

</comment><comment><USER20> Are they hoping to create Visual Basic for the new generation? Microsoft can only hope to make this as popular as VB was some 15-20 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER21> Now everyone can have their very own custom recipe app.

</comment><comment><USER22> If this was recently released, they sure have poor timing. If this has been around a while, seems like poor marketing.

</comment><comment><USER23> Another HTML5 crap... I was hoping for a new technology.

<comment><USER24> What kind of "new technology" did you want to see?

<comment> vezzy-fnord HTML9 Responsive Boilerstrap JS, obviously.

[http://html9responsiveboilerstrapjs.com/](http://html9responsiveboilerstrapjs.com/)

<comment><USER25> Exactly what I was looking for, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Great, I was worried the entire ecosystem of Geocities-UXed VB apps on Windows might disappear with the change to flat UI. ;)</comment>


Amazon: Staff told to work overtime as virus spikes demand - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/business-51921916 <comment><USER2> I doubt Amazon warehouses represent a significant transmission vector and what little threat there may be is largely outweighed by the good these warehouses are doing to help with the situation.

I also doubt Amazon employs many elderly or high-risk individuals as warehouse workers. I also doubt they would refuse to make exceptions for those workers.

Right about now, I'd just be happy for the job security because the coming recession is going to be rough.

<comment> crooked-v > I doubt Amazon warehouses represent a significant transmission vector

Well, we know that COVID-19 can survive up to 24 hours on cardboard. That actually gives a simple way to avoid outgoing spread: make sure items don't begin shipping, or don't leave the truck, for at least 30 hours from packaging.

It means no 2-day shipping, but I think even "fast" shipping times are at something like a week for most people right now, so that's not much of a problem.

<comment><USER3> > Well, we know that COVID-19 can survive up to 24 hours on cardboard

Do you have a source for that? Nicholas Christakis (John Hopkins MD, infectious disease specialist) said on most surfaces, SARS-cov2 (the virus, COVID-19 is the disease) can survive an hour. He did mention it depends on the environment (it would only survive a few minutes on copper surfaces for example), so is cardboard able to hold the virus along longer? Is there data on this?

<comment><USER4> I think we just don't know yet. The WHO has this to say:

"It is not certain how long the virus that causes COVID-19 survives on surfaces, but it seems to behave like other coronaviruses. Studies suggest that coronaviruses (including preliminary information on the COVID-19 virus) may persist on surfaces for a few hours or up to several days. This may vary under different conditions (e.g. type of surface, temperature or humidity of the environment).

If you think a surface may be infected, clean it with simple disinfectant to kill the virus and protect yourself and others. Clean your hands with an alcohol-based hand rub or wash them with soap and water. Avoid touching your eyes, mouth, or nose."

[https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/q-a- coronaviruses](https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/q-a-coronaviruses)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The same people shaming Amazon and Fedex are probably the same people buying a ton of goods online for delivery and getting upset about the delays.

</comment><comment><USER6> Knowing how many people rely on Amazon for their purchases, it seems like they're doing the right thing to keep everyone moving during this craziness.

</comment><comment><USER7> Hopefully they are also putting in strong guards to ensure that these extra shipments truly are life-saving supplies.

My worry is that (if local store shelves are any indication) they're just shipping paranoid people 800 rolls of toilet paper. And it's terrible that warehouse employees will be basically strained to the breaking point to make up for selfishness and uneducated masses.

</comment><comment><USER8> > Amazon said it would increase hourly wages by $2 in the US, £2 in the UK, > and €2 in Europe. The company said it expects the pay rises expected to cost > it more than $350m (£285m).

Seems like they could afford to pay them more.

<comment><USER9> They're also likely making more now than before as more people switch to online shopping.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> No, Amazon is providing an absolutely critical service in this time.

<comment><USER11> Wal-Mart, Sears, Costco, target, dollar general, Sam's Club, etc could do the same thing. FedEx, ups, and USPS aren't beholden to Amazon. Likewise, how hard would it be for grub hub and the like to detail their drivers to make last mile deliveries from local stores? I'm serious. Is it 1000 work hours or 10,000,000? Hell if I get laid off I'll need work and slinging boxes out of my suv is as easy as it gets while providing a valuable service in a crisis.

<comment><USER12> "FedEx, ups, and USPS aren't beholden to Amazon"

You might have missed the memo there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22604866](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22604866)

</comment><comment><USER14> As per this article: [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/coronaviru...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/coronavirus- amazon-suspends-delivery-shipments-stock-price-a9406951.html)

Amazon is suspending shipment of all products except daily staples and medicines.

</comment><comment><USER15> Most people during the depression wouldn't have complained about getting paid to work too many hours.

<comment><USER3> It's backbreaking work. Most people still complain, but work because they have to. It's not a choice for many.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> okay but they're only raising wages by $2. It's disgusting. Jeff Bezos makes millions of dollars an hour.

no bootlicking responses please

<comment><USER6> Why is it disgusting? They gave everyone a wage increase, and they already pay above minimums.

Also, Jeff doesn't _make_ millions an hour, he gets paid in stock. Stock is not cash, and is not a form of liquidity. In addition, $AMZN has dropped 20% in the past month, so by your math he's been "losing" money.

Get off your high horse and get real - there's about to be a recession, and they're hiring people who are out of a job AND paying them extra while they ensure people have a way to get vital goods while staying indoors and minimizing spread.

This whole "they're evil" bs is tiring and lazy.

<comment><USER16> no, what's tiring and lazy (and yes, evil) is the idea that the peons at the bottom should be grateful for what the people at the top, who hoard 99% of the world's wealth, can get away with paying them. $15/hour is hardly living large, and a $2 bump is insulting

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So you're saying Amazon has a toxic work culture? What a surprise

<comment><USER18> (Disclaimer: I work at Amazon).

We have a world class supply-chain. This is a moment when the US, and the world, 100% must have a functioning supply chain. I'm proud of the work we're doing to keep things running under unusual stress.

<comment><USER19> I don't work at Amazon, but I'm incredibly grateful for its existence right now and the work it is doing. I can't help but think that almost everyone in the American populace feels likewise, except some politically motivated grousing from certain groups.

<comment><USER20> Yeah I'd be the first guy to take a crap on Amazon, but you're right about this. We need a functioning supply chain or we'll have civil unrest soon and having a company taking care of that at a time when nearly everything else is closing is good. I also really appreciate the few stories of them cracking down on profiteers since resource scarcity is a big part of why people feel stressed out right now.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Who Cares about the Apple Watch Edition? - <AUTHOR> http://beta-blog.archagon.net/2015/03/08/who-cares-about-the-apple-watch-edition/

<comment><USER2> >But I was under the impression that we were Apple fans in the first place because they made best-in-breed products for everyone, not just the elite.

Which is exactly why there is an expensive tier for the Apple Watch: to sell watches to _everyone_.

Apple is taking this product category so seriously that they're going after the high-end heirloom watches while not leaving the teenage iPhone user market behind. Hate the game not the player. This doesn't look like existing tech markets because as of now it's not a tech market. If you want your apps to be prevalent on wrists, you should be _thanking_ Apple for legitimizing smart watches to the gold-watch crowd. Crowd-funded wrist watches could never do that.

I would rather everyone just had $350 watches and the rest of the capital went to... vaccination research or something, but Apple Watch Edition is how a 55 year old lawyer in the midwest gives up his Rolex.

<comment><USER3> > Apple Watch Edition is how a 55 year old lawyer in the midwest gives up his > Rolex.

I have a really hard time buying this argument, because a Rolex will appreciate in value, and that 55 year old lawyer in the midwest isn't stupid, s/he knows this. Nobody in their right mind expects a consumer electronic device to appreciate in value.

<comment><USER4> A Rolex one buys in a store today does not appreciate in value at all. They have a similar depreciation curve to cars.

<comment><USER5> I'd point out that some cars retain value, just like some watches retain value, but I think that's lost on you.

<comment><USER6> > but I think that's lost on you

No personal jabs, please. This comment makes a fine point without that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I still think Pebble is demonstrating more Apple qualities than Apple is atm.

1\. Sleek design (Pebble Time Steel looks better) 2\. Innovating new markets/ideas (the new bands are doing to open the flood gates for hardware devs) 3\. Keeping it simple (Apple watch wants to put a smartphone on your wrist, Pebble focuses on what watches do best)

<comment><USER8> I hate the way the Apple Watch looks, but it definitely looks far better than the Pebble Steel. I'll give you the other two, however.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I care because I own AAPL and would like for them to double in value again.

</comment><comment><USER10> The brilliant thing about the Apple Watch is that no matter which casing/strap you buy, _you 're getting the same gear_. So if you don't care what the watch is made of or how it looks, you can just buy the Sport model. If you want the best durability, you get the steel/sapphire standard model. If you want the blingiest thing, you get the Edition. But no matter how much you spend, you get the same functionality. This isn't a matter of Apple selling an elites- only product. This is Apple bringing a mainstream product to the elite market.

</comment><comment><USER11> > "We loved our iPods and iPhones for their sleek design and smooth UI, even > when people dismissed them as "expensive toys". We knew our $2000 laptops > were incredible for the price, even while people mocked us for not buying > cheap, creaky Windows machines." > "An Apple that sells "bling" to > billionaires is not a company that many of us could muster passion about. "

I think the author already has the answer to his question.

</comment><comment> white-flame In my opinion, Apple has been a fashion company ever since the iPod. Remember the white earbud commercials?

They've positioned themselves as a luxury brand, where it is considered fashionable among the general population to visibly own their devices.

Sure, Mac-owning techies have additional reasons, but I don't think they drive the brunt of Apple sales.

<comment><USER12> True, but at that time it was a combination of fashion and design(especially true for the iPhone's early years). But today the design arena is much tougher, with Google becoming very capable in design, and a lot of good ux/ui designers around(due to the difficulty of designing good apps and the importance of that).

So now Apple is differentiating with what they can, which is fashion, and their unique positioning in the market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> While yes, the Apple Watch does kind of throw out the notion that the worlds most elite and powerful are using the same (i)Phone as teenagers in school - the author of this article seemingly forgot that there are two other Apple Watches which will presumable be much cheaper - starting at $350.

</comment><comment><USER14> The Apple Watch starts from $349. You'll be able to buy one if you want one.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is the company which made having white wires hanging out of ears a fashion statement.

</comment><comment><USER16> Right on, great piece.

</comment><comment><USER17> Shark, meet Apple. Apple, jump shark.

</comment><comment><USER18> I don't even think it really makes sense to talk about Gruber as a "techie" blogger. He is interested in the way Apple designs and markets things, and the movements of those markets generally. He almost never covers actual technical topics.

If you don't have any interest in the manner in which technological goods are sold to the public, that's certainly your prerogative. But some people do.</comment>


Customer Reviews and Ratings for Apple 85W MagSafe Power Adapter - <AUTHOR> http://store.apple.com/us/reviews/MC556LL/B/apple-85w-magsafe-power-adapter-for-15-and-17-inch-macbook-pro <comment><USER3> The problems most people experience with these are probably caused by Apple not placing adequate stress relief on the cable where it meets the block or magnetic connector. Apple does this with all their cables because Jobs didn't like the look of stress relieved cables. This is the price you pay for a pretty power adapter!

This is a design decision that Apple should probably revisit.

Edit: Some people have said that proper stress relief would increase Apple's costs. Below is a link to some off-the-shelf cable stress-relief parts. I guarantee that Apple would _save_ money during manufacturing if they used parts like these instead of the custom stuff they use now. The only downside is that their cables would look like everybody else's properly stress relieved cables instead of something uniquely Apple.

[http://www.cable-strain-relief.com/](http://www.cable-strain-relief.com/)

<comment><USER4> short-lived accessories like this and iphone charging cables are very profitable. stress relief might cut the number they sell in half.

<comment><USER5> I still think it's a problem of user error. In this house we've got first gen iPod touch cables in daily use , a vintage iPad 2 cable which is fine and 4 lightning cabled devices that are fine. I think a lot of people just yank on the cable rather than the connector.

<comment><USER6> When you are designing consumer electronics, there is literally no such thing as user error. Except for people who are in love with their gadgets and take care of them as if they were their children, no one is going to pay attention to how they handle something as trivial as a cable.

If users yank on the cable rather than the connector, the correct solution is to make the cable more durable, not to educate users on the intricate details of cable handling.

<comment><USER7> I wouldn't call it user error to abuse your cables to the point of failure (they should totally be tougher), but I'm also realistic: many companies cheap out on the cables, and it's difficult to tell from looking at them whether they're cheap or not, so if you want them to last, you have to assume they're fragile and be careful with them. This attitude has gotten me far with my MBP power adapters, which have both been working flawlessly since 2010 despite a lot of other people apparently having theirs fall apart.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> UVB-76 Bear in mind the selection bias in effect.

People are generally more likely to review a product, especially one as mundane as a replacement power adapter, if they have had a negative experience with it.

One of, if not the most common, reasons for purchasing a replacement power adapter will be due to a failure of an original adapter, leading to negative experiences.

<comment><USER8> Mine burnt through last year (after three years) and i didn't review it. A friend of mine has got her third in two years and didn't review either. This is exactly what happens:

"I've had two adapters break on me, the wire somehow shorts out and melts near the "square". Really poor design, love the computers but the adapters are terrible." (one of the reviews)

The wire is super thin, i'm not saying it's planned obsolescence, but it's close.

edit: english

<comment><USER9> You can buy a replacement cord for less than 10 bucks.

[http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search- alias%3D...](http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search- alias%3Daps&field- keywords=magsafe+replacement+cord&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Amagsafe+replacement+cord)

Having said that, I wouldn't feel comfortable opening the power adapter and rewiring a new cord... I'm sure it's easy and safe, but still...

<comment><USER8> Yeah I'm not that much of an electronics guy.. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Another issue I have with the magsafe is that in any country with more than 110V outlets (~70% of the world), there's significant charge leakage into the macbook body if you don't connect with a 3-prong adapter.

I use a US macbook power adapter (Type-B) and a travel adapter. My Type-D (India) is only 2-prong, but my Type-G (Singapore) one is 3 prong. Anywhere I wind up using the Type-D, I get continuous minor shocks through my palms as I use my computer =/

This seems to be the case for every magsafe adapter and every macbook air (sample size = 3, different revs bought from different outlets 2012-2014).

Is this normal? I don't recall experiencing this on any other device I've used which is rated "110V - 240V" paired with a Type-B-to-D adapter

<comment><USER11> I get the same thing in the US, but much less noticeable. I get a tingling feeling in my hands / palm using the 2 prong adapter. Since it was unexpected, I searched a little bit and it seems to happen to everyone. (13-in MBA 2012)

<comment><USER12> >> I get a tingling feeling in my hands / palm

Is this when touching the chassis of the laptop?

I occasionally get that on both my Macbook Pro and my Surface Pro.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I would estimate I own about 10 magsafe chargers. Some are nearly 6 years old. None have frayed and all are in regular use, including moving them about with the laptops. I'm not particularly careful with my electronics, either.

Also - who goes to leave a positive review of a charger? There's clearly some selection bias happening with the reviews.

<comment><USER14> Our office has probably on the order of 40 magsafe chargers, and my home has at least 10 (not all of which are functional). The chargers fray and short out. They always have, and they continue to do so even in the most recent RMBP iteration.

This has been a continuous weakness with Apple chargers across every product line I've used back to the TiBook. They are pretty, and they are very functional, but they are not resilient.

<comment><USER15> I believe there were more bad ones in 2008-2011 than today; I haven't yet had a MagSafe2 adapter fail, and I saw child mortality on the T-shaped and L-shaped magsafe1 connectors after 3-6 months. The "yellowing and then die" seemed particular to one batch of insulation; regular fraying, sure.

<comment><USER14> I have one RMBP MS2 adapter that only works if the cable is positioned just right (ie, I can charge from it overnight on a table, but it's ineffective on my lap).

The new ones definitely do seem to be better.

<comment><USER15> Oh yeah, I have that problem too :( It's even worse when you have a speck hardshell case on it.

Most of my personal (~10) 85W collection is T and L shaped magsafe1 with the $10 adapter and magcozy ([http://www.amazon.com/Cozy-Industries-MagCozy- Clear/dp/B00ER...](http://www.amazon.com/Cozy-Industries-MagCozy- Clear/dp/B00ERVP4DG)) shock cords to attach them, because sometimes someone visits and needs a magsafe1. Those are even more sensitive to positioning.

(Great "life hack" is leaving chargers wherever you're likely to sit. I keep one in each bag, two on each desk, two at the couch, two in bed, one in the car.)

Twin adapters at desks in an office also works great, and of course conference rooms full of them. I was so annoyed when Lenovo went from 14V to 20V on the thinkpads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've had problems with so many Apple products over the years that I've stopped buying them. The last thing I bought was a 2011 MBP (hefty top line i7). Total waste of money. It was an insurance replacement for the 2010 one that literally caught fire when a drink was spilled under the edge of it. No product should fail in that manor. Current MBP periodically white screens and hangs and you have to turn it off for an hour (nvidia GPU problem).

On my third magsafe adapter. The first one just stopped working. The second one burned out about five inches from the magsafe connector. The second one resulted in a fairly large argument at the genius (idiot) bar because it was out of the limited warranty. After explaining how dangerous this is (I'm a qualified EE) loudly in front of other customers they replaced it.

Oh and the amount of shit I've had to deal with when incompetent Apple store staff decide the only option is to nuke the machine for even the simplest software problem. Fortunately within my circle of contacts they've learned to come to me first rather than start again every time.

Back to the original point though: one exploding MBP, two dead magsafe adapters, a dead logic board in a 2006 iMac, several frayed 30 pin cables, mac mini external power supply blew up and a dead cinema display panel, file system corruption in 2 OSX releases, £200/pop repair bill for iPhones if you drop them, the joke that was the iPhone 4, iOS constant upselling, iWork being a total piece of stink, iCloud periodic data loss. Ugh.

No more. Paying a premium for this is illogical.

Buying refurb Lenovo kit and bottom end windows phones. With the leftover cash I'm throwing it at my mortgage instead. Better investment.

Edi: to add insult to injury, the alloy they use for MBP and Air machines contains nickel so any unfortunate people with a nickel sensitivity come up in blisters using these machines.

Design over engineering. That is all.

<comment><USER17> Your mileage may vary. I've had mostly no problems with any of the Apple products I've owned over the last few decades, and for those occasions where I did, they were quick and happy to replace them - from overnight shipping of a box and next day return in the time before the Apple Store to store-based fixes with loaners.

<comment><USER18> The defect rate in cameras on iphones and ipads is just through the roof. We have like 4 ipads in this office and at least 2 of them have one camera that puts out garbage quality pictures. Ditto on one of our iphones. Our old iphone 4 had serious reception issues, the 4s doesn't connect to wifi since iOS 7. Our Mac has a line of dead pixels and of course the monitor is also the desktop because that makes sense. Oh and I've gone through 1 power adapter that cost like $80 for some reason. I have lost track of how many mini display(whatever the macs use?) to hdmi cables have failed. Of course all of this stuff costs way above what it should....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've had five or six of these replaced by Apple, for free.

You have to see someone at the Genius Bar, for which it's best to get an appointment.. very easy especially if you have the Apple Store app.

A few times I've been rejected, and they've said: "we recommend you buy a replacement, the cost is $79, they're over on that shelf." But each of those times, I tried again with a different Genius (on a different day) and got the replacement.

Usually it's either the magsafe head itself which doesn't seem to want to connect well, or the cord right next to the magsafe, which frays or splits open.

Generally I baby my cords but a couple of them have been abused by other people.

Overall I'd say this is the single most problematic Apple hardware I've ever encountered, but then I'm still happy because generally Apple has handled the situation well, other than a few "bad apple," so to speak, Geniuses who were not willing to help.

<comment><USER20> My experience was over and over again "oh, your notebook is out of warranty, not going to replace it, go spend $80".

So now at the end of one year, I'll damage it intentionally so they can replace it. I'm done with paying $80 for a cable that lasts little better than a year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Mine frayed and shorted after less than a year. Like any Apple product owner, this wasn't the first time an Apple cord fell to pieces, and at one point in the past (before October 2011), I even brought it back to the Apple Store and they replaced my cables no questions asked, great service.

This time, however, when I brought my adapter and cables into the store for them to look at (kind of an inconvenience, don't live near one), I was told by a Genius that no one has problems with their laptop adapters and phone cables, no one in the store has ever had a problem with them, no one ever brings them to the store frayed, and that I must abuse my hardware and there was nothing they could do to help. I actually had to resort to pulling up a link to the class action suit to prove him wrong, absolutely terrible experience. With manager assistance, they reluctantly agreed to replace it since they saw my computer was one week off AppleCare, but added notes to my account to ensure that they would never do it again...and stressed that power adapter frays aren't in the scope of AppleCare.

I was really surprised and disappointed by the whole experience - and can only assume that there's massive pressure from above to avoid replacing them as they're so expensive and that results in Genius staffers acting incredulous and telling stories when you show them your long, thin fire hazards (frustrated during the exchange, I made a comment about how the knockoff iPhone cords are so much more reliable and less fire-hazardy, and he then made a point to closely inspect my frayed-Apple cords to ensure that they weren't knockoffs like I was some kind of fraudster, oof).

Anyway, reinforced those things immediately (still frustrated on a daily - <USER2> brick gets boil-an-egg hot and sneezing will cause the adapter to pop out) and I'll be doing what I can to avoid visiting ye olde Apple Store in the future.

</comment><comment><USER22> I nearly had to purchase my Adapter as well, but I fixed it with Sugru (The wires frayed where it connects to MPB) and it seems pretty solid now . $10 for $80 adapter not bad.

EDIT: [http://drwsxce6xtjnu.cloudfront.net/stories/image1s/1296/lar...](http://drwsxce6xtjnu.cloudfront.net/stories/image1s/1296/large/35.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER23> I assume most of the people who go to that review page are the ones with bad experiences? Otherwise, who would review a power adapter?

Listen in on the phone conversations a plumber has and you'd get the impressions that no one's pipes work.

</comment><comment><USER24> Apple settled a class-action lawsuit over their power adapters, which makes it much easier to receive a free replacement these days, but they seem to refuse to fix the design of the cords.

<comment><USER25> I don't know what I find more amazing -- that Apple's power cords don't start fires and kill people on a regular basis, or that Apple isn't sufficiently worried that this will happen to hire competent engineers to design better ones. It's one of life's great mysteries. The same story appears on the front page of one news site or another at least once a year, and Apple does nothing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've had 3 adaptors break over the past few years due to fraying near the computer-side plug. For some reason, they seem to be much more susceptible to damage by twisting than all my other cables. Perhaps it has something to do with the plastic material and frequent coiling. Really a shame, since I love everything else about my Macbook.

<comment><USER20> Same here.

The most annoying part is that I'm very gentle with the cable--I coil all of my cables[0] so as not to cause undue stress on the conductors inside of the wire

[0] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEd7ru24Vx0](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEd7ru24Vx0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's amazing how much Apple sweat the details on the magsafe plug on the computer side but so little to part that goes into the wall.

It's near impossible to use the two prong plug in many situations (i.e. crowded power bars, outlets that are too far for the short thin wire to reach), so I have to carry the unwieldy 3 prong extension with me all the time, and it doesn't wrap so nicely around the brick in the same way the thin wire to the laptop does.

In all fairness, the Surface Pro's power brick can be just as stupid. Too short on both ends.

<comment><USER27> "so I have to carry the unwieldy 3 prong extension with me all the time"

You can get one of those short 1 foot lightweight cord extenders (search amazon for "cord extender")

<comment><USER12> The thing is, the length of the 3 prong extension cord is a good length (4 feet?).

The power cord problems occur most when I visit a client who puts me at a desk where the power outlet is not in a convenient place and is full of other junk that I can't just unplug. One foot is not going to cut it, and and a four foot cord is just going to be as unwieldy as Apple's 3-prong, which came with my computer.

The only two laptop manufacturers that I've ever had issues for cord length are Apple and Microsoft (Surface Pro).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I would guess that if Apple removed those stupid fold-out cable wrap points they would see a significant drop in failure rates.

</comment><comment><USER29> This has been a problem since 2007. I went through 3 chargers on my Macbook Pro back then.

Bizarre for a company that usually adhere's to high manufacturing standards.

<comment><USER30> Heck, it's been a problem since 2002. My G3 800 iBook's power adapter literally went up in smoke.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I've made all of mine last by wrapping them correctly. Haven't destroyed one yet since.

This video seems to recommend the way I do it [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5x5szE3XHb8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5x5szE3XHb8)

<comment><USER32> Same. I have 4 adapters floating around right now (my laptop, wife's laptop, work-provided laptop and the spare 85 adapter I have kicking around) and none of them have had a single issue in the 1-3 years I've had them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> What the fuck are people doing with those power adapters?

I am using the 45W magsafe 2 on a MBA - traveling, unplugging and packing up on a daily basis. frequently changing the outlet adapters from US to various EU and Asia.

Have been doing this since 2012 on this MBA - works like a charm. magnet is strong and stays in place. no cable issues at all.

same reviews though. baffling.

</comment><comment><USER34> I think most people don't give a rat's ass about how they treat their adapters

Maybe the Apple ones are slightly less forgiving about being mistreated, still, most of them will fail eventually

I've never had a charger failure like the ones described, either Apple or other PC charger (however, I had the power connector fail on a previous notebook)

</comment><comment><USER35> Same happened to mine, fraying near the MagSafe head. I tried taping it up with electrical tape, but it would only work for a couple weeks at a time. I finally covered it with white Sugru, and it's been going strong for more than a year now. It's pretty silly you have to do this, but at least it's a cheap fix.

</comment><comment><USER36> I've gone through two or three power adapters in the last three years. They fray pretty quickly, and I've learned that you should always handle them by the thicker cord, being very careful not to put any pressure on the thinner cord.

But that's not the biggest problem with these things. I foolishly bought a unibody rMBP, which means it'll become a desktop-only laptop in just a year or two, once its battery runs fully out. Plus I can't upgrade most of the components, I'll just have to buy a new computer.

But that's fine. I think I'll go the "nerdy" way and buy an older Thinkpad and just run Debian on it and just stay in emacs throughout my workday. Then I'll be able to upgrade parts when needed, swap out the battery when it dies, and be able to run linux on decently supported hardware.

<comment><USER19> Don't underestimate the lengths the Genius Bar will go to keep your computer happy. Especially if you have AppleCare, which you can still buy if you got the machine less than a year ago. But even without AppleCare, their repair prices have been getting ridiculously low, so I wouldn't assume a battery replacement will be off the table.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have replaced ~3 Mac power adapters for free at Apple stores by taking a computer which has valid warranty coverage in, giving them the serial number and a failed adapter, and saying "purchased at the same time" (when it was an 85W which failed, and an MBA13 which comes with the 45W was my only laptop under applecare, or more recently, t-shaped vs. l-shaped vs. magsafe2 isses with my rMBP15.

They never really complain; I honestly don't keep track of which adapters go with which laptops in general, but they're all obviously made by Apple, and failed due to manufacturer defect (yellowing and cracking of the plastic on the DC feed), so it's in Apple's interest replacing them for ~$25 cost, rather than annoying a $mm lifetime value customer.

</comment><comment><USER37> +1 for this article of bad reviews. I would have difficulty counting the number of replacement power adapters I have bought for my, my wife's, my grand children's, etc. Mac laptops.

There is a reason Apple is such a profitable company: they exploit their little walled garden.

Of topic, but I really fell out of love with Apple when I discovered that my iTunes music library was unusable on my android phone. Converting all my music from my $25/year iTunes Match account to Amazon Music Cloud was a nuisance, but now I can play my music on all my devices.

</comment><comment><USER27> Seems to be a rash of 1 star ratings in the past few months. Something doesn't seem right.

While you could say that this is because of some manufacturing redesign or batch problem, something about the reviews and the way they are written (almost to similar) makes me wonder how accurate this info is. Nothing also that there is no way to see if the reviewer has left reviews on anything else in the Apple store. After all anyone with an Apple ID can leave a review.

</comment><comment><USER38> I've never had much luck with laptop power adapters over the years (had to replace every dell adapter I've ever had and a couple of aftermarket ones). Had to replace the magsafe for my late 2008 macbook once, but I bought the macbook and power adapter used, so I can't quite vouch for how well it was treated prior to me owning it. Bought a cheap aftermarket magsafe adapter and it's been running well for over a year now.

</comment><comment><USER39> I have had the cords fail where the thin cord attaches to the adapter. The weird thing about the design to me isn't that the thin part of the cable can fail at the bends--I understand trying to cut out weight and arguably going a bit far--but that the big thick extension cable which you can swap out the built-in plug for seems to have been designed for a server, not a laptop. I never carry it with me for that reason.

</comment><comment><USER40> Most reviewers are clearly affected by the price. They're right, the price for these adaptors seems exorbitant.

<comment><USER12> In fairness to Apple, first party adapters for most laptops are about the same price.

The catch is that Apple's patented MagSafe prevents you from buying a universal adapter from a reputable brand.

You can buy a knockoff (I have) from China (i.e., dealextreme), but you have to be very trusting. I stopped using my knockoffs after they started getting really hot. I only use them in a pinch for short periods of time now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I've had the same problem with the last 3-4 Apple power adaptors.

I usually walk into an Apple store and start complaining noisily, in close proximity to store staff who are demonstrating laptops to new customers. Then I leave with my new, free charger.

</comment><comment><USER42> What's wrong with the suggestion to put magnetic connector onto the brick and have connectors on both sides of the cable?

Apple (and all the other manufacturers) did that with USB chargers, why not to do the same with laptop chargers?

</comment><comment><USER43> I never, ever use the fold-out thingies for coiling the cord, becauseI haven't figured out a way to get the cord on there without severely stressing the connection to the brick.

</comment><comment><USER44> Had this been about Microsoft all the comments on this HN thread would have been in a different tone.</comment>


Mozilla Turns to Volunteers for Firefox Bug Hunting After Layoffs - <AUTHOR> https://news.softpedia.com/news/mozilla-turns-to-firefox-volunteers-for-bug-hunting-after-layoffs-529009.shtml <comment><USER2> Of course they would. There are plenty of developers who view recognition in lieu of compensation as a valuable trade for this labor.</comment>


15 Years of Booking Travel Online: What's Next? - <AUTHOR> http://teddy.is/travel-booking/

<comment><USER2> Expedia really has 8,900 employees? I guess I have no idea what they really do, so that might be reasonable, but I would've guessed an order of magnitude lower. I had assumed it was a mostly automated business, with all the big infrastructure run by third parties (ITA, Amadeus, etc.).

<comment><USER3> Flights are the easy part - hotels are hard. Many vendor relationships need to be maintained, deals negotiated, etc etc, all of which is fundamentally hard to automate.

8,900 employees doesn't mean all engineers, or even technical folk. I've noticed that every travel company I've ever seen is incredibly sales/vendor management-heavy, and these folk outnumber technical folk by a vast, vast margin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think curated experiences are the way to go for profitable travel niches. A site like AirBnB can connect people to places that are somewhat alternative, yet desirable locations: think Williamsburg, Wicker Park, etc..but adding experiences such as adding Free Parking, tickets to a play, or a prix fixe dinner in to a package you can purchase with one click seems to be a good value add on top of the accommodations.

Sites like Orbitz will recommend things, but usually AFTER you have already expressed interest in your hotel and destination. And Jetsetter has some very interesting deals but I don't think the average couple/family can just go on a 7 night expedition milking their own goat milk and doing yoga on the mountain tops of Nepal or whatever experience they're pushing. Give me a nice pad in a cool 'hood with free parking and maybe a dinner at the latest Michelin recommended restaurant. That would be a site I would check frequently.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. Room 77 is actually doing free WiFi in all of their properties this summer, which is a pretty savvy move. As far as curated experiences go, I think some mashup of Gilt City and Jetsetter would be a wise move for Gilt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > _"collect roughly ~13% in commission from hotel and airline bookings"_

Hotels probably, but I seriously doubt this for airlines. After all, a 13% commission would likely put the airline _in the red_ for that booking.

Flying is one of _the_ lowest-margin businesses in existence, and makes discount retail feel like a walk in the park.

> _"HipMunk also launched their hotel location-based mobile app this year. It > is very well-designed but I'm really not feeling it."_

I really agree, and it's really too bad, because I love their flight-booking product and I'm really rooting for the team, but both their hotel booking site and mobile apps are IMO worse than the incumbents, which falls well short of their "kicking everyone's ass" bar that they set for flights.

Confusing button placement, unclear comparison tools, incomprehensible color- coding, and a location-centric search... I just can't get behind it.

<comment><USER5> +1

I used to run a site that averaged ~29% after credit card fees on hotel rooms, but we never managed to swing a deal that wouldn't have seen the credit card companies making more money than we did on flights.

(Maybe their "13%" figure is averaged over high-margin hotel rooms and low-to- zero margin flights?)

<comment><AUTHOR> I understand that in a lot of cases, the rate is higher than the 13% that I cited. That is definitely an average that I've pulled from a few different sources. Would be interesting to hear other averages...

<comment><USER5> FWIW, my information is quite out-of-date, I left that industry in '08 (I started in it in '96! [http://web.archive.org/web/19961019065611/http://www.oztrave...](http://web.archive.org/web/19961019065611/http://www.oztravel.com.au/) )

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think there's significant potential for the creation of profitable niches (and product innovation in those niches) in the travel industry: families, last-minute, experiences, luxury.

There is very little money in flights, so if that's your business you need to have a long VC-backed runway (pun sort-of intended).

On the hotels side there is huge opportunity.

(Disclosure: I'm the CTO at <http://impulseflyer.com> so I have a vested interest in the industry)

<comment><AUTHOR> One site that I did not mention is Gilt's Jetsetter.com. They have great curation and a number of awesome deals.

<comment><USER6> We're in the same ballpark.

JetSetter started as very 'Gilt' (members-only, flash sales) but they seem to be making a huge push toward the OTA (online travel agency) model.

And they've had some internal problems recently - [http://www.tnooz.com/2012/05/15/news/jetsetter-ceo-out- after...](http://www.tnooz.com/2012/05/15/news/jetsetter-ceo-out-after-board- request-and-reports-of-internal-squabbles/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Airfare commissions (especially domestic) are much lower and in many cases are on a flat fee basis like $3/ticket. Travel agencies try and push more packages because you get to wrap in a high margin product like hotels/cars (15-20%+) or by creating a package, they can access wholesale rates for airfare which gives them a larger margin.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, airfare search is a really bad starting point if you want to start a profitable business without massive startup costs. Hard to get access to data from airlines and a stack of other services competing for the thin margins.

<comment><USER5> Yep - it's really hard to compete with the airline's own website prices for "simple" ticket purchases, and it's really complicated to automate "complex" ticket purchases; and the travel industry has "corporate travel agents" who've got enough experience to be really good at getting a "close enough to optimum" solution to complex ticketing requirements, and they've got much of the high- margin flight bookings market tied up.

(At least, that was the state of play back when I was last involved back in '08…)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Excellent write up Teddy! Sorry about the e-mail validation strictness, I've logged the bug and will it fixed soon so .is and any other valid domain doesn't get marked as invalid.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome! Thanks. You're quick :)

<comment><USER9> Will mention you may have a font problem in Chrome, hard on the eyes.

<comment><AUTHOR> On teddy.is or room 77?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Flow Browser – A parallel, multithreaded HTML browser - <AUTHOR> https://www.ekioh.com/flow-browser/ <comment><USER2> This is almost certainly going to be proprietary, so it's nothing to hold your breath over.

Ekioh makes enterprise software for set-top boxes. They do know their browser rendering, though: they stripped Webkit down to have a 24mb memory footprint.

<comment><USER3> So this is a closed-source webkit fork? Nothing to see here, moving on then :)

Webkit a comparably easy target to strip down and embed elsewhere. See Apple watch.

<comment><USER4> > developed a clean room browser architecture

Implies that this _isn 't_ a webkit fork, they started from scratch.

See also: [https://twitter.com/FlowBrowser/status/1200098712816631809](https://twitter.com/FlowBrowser/status/1200098712816631809)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> [https://twitter.com/_Piers_/status/991328398910816256](https://twitter.com/_Piers_/status/991328398910816256) says it's actually more than a year old. There is no download link on the OP, so I guess it's safe to assume it's only available to people who pay for their enterprise needs.

So, sounds interesting, but not for the public masses.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> New rendering engine, new layout engine, and Spidermonkey for JS: [https://twitter.com/FlowBrowser/status/1200098712816631809](https://twitter.com/FlowBrowser/status/1200098712816631809)

<comment><USER6> I was indeed wondering the same: a new render engine seems like a huge and risky investment (even Microsoft gave up on the existing one they have, that says something). If it really is from scratch, it probably just supports only the most popular features, which would cut complexity and give a large performance boost by itself.

Alternatively: Chrome 1.0 was also super fast compared to the competition. And I remember switching from a full browser on Android to my custom browser that was like 10 lines of code around a webview element, which was really an order of magnitude faster. If they modified an existing render engine and wrote their own browser UI, that could also deliver this speed boost.

So this seems relatively doable to me, but you get fewer features.

Let's see if they make this available for a broad audience and if, in five years when they accumulated all the features, it's still faster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder how this compares to Servo[0] - on admittedly not very close inspection it seems like they have a lot of the same ideas.

[0]: [https://servo.org/](https://servo.org/)

<comment><USER8> Servo team started doing VR stuff maybe a year ago and since then haven't heard anything new about Servo .. I'm hoping that something comes of it

<comment><USER9> The Mozilla Gfx blog regularly posts updates. They have been porting subsystems from servo to firefox, and making substantial progress on a regular basis.

[https://mozillagfx.wordpress.com](https://mozillagfx.wordpress.com)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Well it doesn't appear to be publicly available yet, so we'll have to wait to find out if this is real or just smoke and mirrors.

</comment><comment><USER11> Pretty interesting. Conventional wisdom is that the web standards have become so complicated that it's prohibitively difficult to introduce a _totally_ new browser that fully supports modern CSS and JS. Sounds like this one does.

</comment><comment><USER12> Naming could be better or more differentiated -- "Flow" is already used in the closely related space of front-end development and javascript (flow typing).

<comment><USER13> It doesn't matter. There's thousands of basic words occupied by some more or less relevant Javascript tool or framework. Don't let that get in the way of naming your products.

<comment><USER14> Agreed. Also flow has been utterly demolished by typescript and is on the way out, so it will be even less of a problem in the future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Interesting claims, any 3rd party testing?

</comment><comment><USER16> Will it have its lunch eaten by tools and techniques for lightweight web apps on Webkit/Quantum? Svelte made a headstart making 200k laggy Webkit devices snappy again while these guys will be selling proprietary licenses.

<comment><USER17> Frameworks like Svelte focus on reducing the time spent running JavaScript. This project focuses on reducing the time spent on layout and rendering.

Theoretically they'd complement each other, but in practice I imagine UIs for super-resource-constrained set-top boxes are already written in pretty efficient JavaScript.

<comment><USER18> These things are actually pretty related: JS isn't particularly slow as a language; it only gets slow on the web because every time JS code touches the DOM/CSS a part of layout and style needs to be recomputed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> No video comparisons, nothing? Also why dont they release this for mobile?

</comment><comment><USER20> I don't think there's that much to improve with current browsers anymore. 8 years ago maybe. Now you have web workers with shared memory, typed arrays, GPU acceleration for canvas and CSS, web assembly with SIMD. It's already possible to utilise all the cores and GPU in 2D. Not even mentioning 3D WebGL and incoming WebGPU. Websites are fast enough already(with ad blocker).

<comment><USER21> I believe that document.write prevent a lot of parallelism. Also as always, SIMD are underutilized. There is also transactional memory, heterogeneous computing, SYCL, etc...

<comment><USER20> what do you mean document.write prevents parallelism? Who's using document.write for anything these days?

<comment><USER21> "Who's using document.write for anything these days?" It doesn't matter if anybody use it, someone could use it, as such browser must adapt to this possibility and be performance constrained.

"what do you mean document.write prevents parallelism?" I don't remember the details but it force some critical browser operations to be sequential.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Is this released? Where does this thing download??

</comment><comment><USER23> what do they mean by "full page animation" and why is that suddenly the benchmark for fast rendering?

</comment><comment><USER24> How does it compare to servo?

</comment><comment> sahin-boydas Link to download?

<comment><USER25> I think it is not a freeware. They are probably planning to sell it to other distributors.</comment></comment>


MasterCard vs. BitCoin - <AUTHOR> http://samuelrpatterson.com/line-by-line-response-to-mastercards-matthew-driver/ <comment><USER2> sam, what a great put down. in fact, the detail in your line-by-line critique approaches overkill.

even more amusing, depending on your point of view, is how matthew driver makes the anonymity afforded by cash seem like a dirty word (3:29). however. what really me got rolling on the floor with laughter is the fact that driver neglects to mention interest rates, late fees, and remittance costs associated with using mastercard products and services.

in comparison, check out this video link i posted a couple of days ago:

The Future Will Be Decentralized < [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8705326](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8705326) >

and which, unfortunately, didn't garner a lot of interest on hn. pity.</comment>


Show HN: NearBeach an open sourced project management system - <AUTHOR> Hello HN, after several years of working on NearBeach I am ready to show the world for some constructive criticism.
https://demo.nearbeach.org <- will contain login information and a short survey at the end to help me improve NearBeach.
If you are curious about the code, you are more than welcome to view it on https://github.com/robotichead/NearBeach
Thank you for your feedback <comment><USER2> Thank you for sharing your project.

I had an issue with using the demo: Because of the "springy" layout where all the fields expand to the frame size, everything just looked like a grid which blended together. It was hard to isolate individual fields and to see where one field ended and another began. I think the low-contrast borders contributed to the issue.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for viewing - do you have a screenshot of the issue? I can easily log a bug report and get it fixed</comment></comment>


Is Apple Developer Program Enrollment Broken? - <AUTHOR> http://pantuso.com/2011/09/broken-adp/

<comment><USER2> Call the "Apple Developer Support team". They've solved a couple of issues for me quickly, and with little hassle. I'll email you the phone number. Not sure if it's publicly available or not... I only found it via emails with itunes connect support.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for that. Possibly the most disturbing thing is that they go to the trouble of sending an email asking how your experience was but then clearly don't review or follow up on the response.</comment></comment>


Chapter 5 of the Ruby on Rails Tutorial book is out - <AUTHOR> http://news.railstutorial.org/chapter-5-of-the-ruby-on-rails-tutorial-book

<comment><USER2> Direct link to Chapter 5: [http://www.railstutorial.org/chapters/modeling-and- viewing-u...](http://www.railstutorial.org/chapters/modeling-and-viewing- users-one#top)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I wasn't sure whether to submit the news announcement or the chapter itself. I opted for the announcement mainly to provide context for new readers, and also because I released a couple other minor updates (the rewritten intro and the MVC section) as well. But having a direct link to Chapter 5 is definitely useful.</comment></comment>


Https:/https://phys.org/news/2018-04-neutrino-fermilab-unprecedented.html - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Wrong fields in the submission form. Try resubmitting.</comment>


Howto connect a PIC Microcontroller to a Telit GM862 - <AUTHOR> http://dev.emcelettronica.com/howto-connect-pic-microcontroller-to-telit-gm862 <comment><AUTHOR> Fancy to know how to: connect a PIC microcontroller (PIC micro) to a TELIT module, set up the GSM Module to handle SMS. And much more.... Looks juicy, so what are you waiting for?</comment>


The Unemployed Now Have Their Own Union - daniel-cussen http://www.alternet.org/economy/145797/the_unemployed_now_have_their_own_union%2C_and_it%27s_catching_on_quickly <comment><AUTHOR> Yes, form a union to demand more benefits from the world's most indebted entity! Get yours while the gettin's good. That's the way forward... more people on the dole!

Are you really coming out ahead begging Congress for jobs when they've shown no ability to create them? The average cost of a single "created job" lately would be enough to run a small business in the private sector. What you really need to ask them to do is stop draining the private sector of a quarter of a million dollars (plus interest, since it's borrowed) to provide you with a low-end temporary job for a year.

<comment><USER2> There are plenty of countries with larger debt problems than the US. I don't think this union is so much about getting a check from Congress than it is tipping the legislative balance a little bit less in favor of giant corporations than it currently is. US law has little in the way of worker protection, and is quite hostile to small business as well. Reminder that Congress is basically owned by the richest 99.99th percentile (who have seen their wealth increase of late, I might add).

It's too bad that it takes a collapse of the economy before we can see agitation for this sort of stuff, rather than during fatter times when it should be easier, but I guess it's hard to think about the future for a vast majority of the population.

<comment><AUTHOR> I cheated and used absolute debt. Relative debts aren't 100% applicable, because the US' absolute debt is large enough that they may face a problem few if any others will face, which is the world running out of money to lend, but it's anybody's guess how that will affect anything, if it has any effect at all.

Increasing union-style protection is not going to _help_ small businesses. Everything the current Congress is capable of thinking involves raising the price of employees. They don't even always understand that's what they are doing, i.e., "making an employee harder to fire", regardless of how sweet it sounds in a politician's speech, means making them that much riskier and therefore that much more expensive to hire.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I shudder to think about what happens if the unemployed all simultaneously stop ... what? Surfing the web?

<comment><USER2> Well if you can't think of any negative consequences that might result from having a large organized group of people with little to do and less to lose, I'd say you have a poor imagination.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Good idea, but this is more like a lobbying organization than a union. Are they going to walk out of their job if they are not paid well? Probably not.

<comment> daniel-cussen Sure, yeah. But they can vote in an organized fashion.

</comment></comment><comment> daniel-cussen Not the greatest article, but I submitted it because of the idea; it very novel, and illustrates the "elusive obvious."

</comment><comment><USER5> What leverage does a union of unemployed people have? What will they do, go on strike? Or just clog the sidewalks around state capitol buildings?

<comment><USER6> They can vote. Even small groups of people can do interesting things in local elections with low turnouts, for example teacher's unions and school board elections.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> A more powerful idea would be a union of freelancers/contractors. Imagine all freelancers stopped working for a company that lobbied against health insurance reform, or a company that engaged in patent abuse. They would have a lot of power but the problem would be scabs and foreign outsourcing.

<comment><USER8> There is a freelancer's union: <http://www.freelancersunion.org/>

Not sure how much the focus is on organizing around pressuring potential client companies, but there is some issue advocacy, along with group insurance and retirement plans, etc...

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm wondering if they have to pay dues.

</comment><comment><USER10> What would be a lot more compelling is to see the unemployed form their own angel investment networks in a similar "local node" format.

Unemployed don't have lots of bucks to invest, but take $1000 each from 10 - 20 people, invest in best local biz plan, and you're going to be creating jobs, stimulating the local community, and can at least give the unemployed people something to market (and earn an ROI on eventually).</comment>


Space tourism to accelerate climate change - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101022/full/news.2010.558.html

<comment><USER2> As this article points out, Virgin Galactic is already planning on using greener propulsion. I think it is great that someone is trying to eliminate the cause of excessive greenhouse emissions, but I think it is lame to point out an industry that is already on the cusp of alternative propulsion. The best way to ensure they don't continue R&D on alternative propulsion is by keeping those companies busy trying to deflect criticism and help mold related legislation.</comment>


Understanding Common Table Expressions with FizzBuzz - <AUTHOR> http://hashrocket.com/blog/posts/understanding-common-table-expressions-with-fizzbuzz <comment><AUTHOR> Author here, what are some of your favorite uses of common table expressions?</comment>


Bootstrap 4: A Visual Guide to What's New - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/wdstack/bootstrap-4-whats-new-visual-guide-c84dd81d8387#.d46l2myj4 <comment><USER2> For me, the biggest change is using rem instead of px. With rem, all font sizes are relative to the root element. It is easier to scale up or down for devices.</comment>


Drug Enforcement Administration has only 40TB of electronic storage worldwide - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/08/drug-enforcement-administration-only-has-40-tb-of-electronic-storage-world-wide/

<comment><USER2> Are there regulations pertaining to how the data must be stored? i.e. do these 40TB have to be fully encrypted and quadruple redundant? i mean it would still be a laughably small amount (since a usb flash drive now can have 1TB ) and disc costs are pennies per GB.

I feel like there has to be another reason.

<comment><USER3> _since a usb flash drive now can have 1TB_

Link?

<comment><USER4> This was news not too long ago: <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/09/swiss_penknife_ssd/>

<comment><USER3> $2000. Not quite ready for the mainstream, or even the DEA, considering a 3TB conventional hard drive is $160. ($2000 would buy all their current storage and more!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Maybe they need some of the TSA budget, or hopefully all of it.

I think however they are not referring to electronic storage but probably reams of physical documentation.

<comment><USER6> The DEA is way worse than the TSA. The TSA only harasses you, whereas the DEA kills, imprisons, seizes, and tramples the constitution any chance they can. The TSA can be avoided, but the DEA can raid the wrong house, and possibly kill you. DEA wrong house raid: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHP4jBXnSfA>

<comment><USER7> As a foreigner I'm surprised that this is shown on fox news. GOP minus Ron Paul's tea party branch are pro war on drugs aren't they? So fox news is actually more diverse than I thought. If their viewership is as diverse, there might still be hope..

<comment><USER8> Don't hold your breath. While a large number of conservatives oppose the drug war, Fox News by and large does not at all.

Also, FYI, Ron Paul isn't really associated with the tea party; in fact, Googling 'Ron Paul tea party' yields primarily articles analyzing why he's unpopular with them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Isn't it possible that all the data have to be printed out and stored in multiple copies? :)</comment>


Launched today: PWA for running foosball leagues – free for everyone - <AUTHOR> https://officeleague.rocks/ <comment><AUTHOR> The app is built on Enonic XP with GraphQL for the backend and Angular for the front-end. Open source for everyone to enjoy: [https://github.com/enonic/app- office-league](https://github.com/enonic/app-office-league)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Works best on Android since Apple is stalling the web experience.</comment>


Universe for iPhone 1.0 released – A native iPhone app for Sakai eLearning - <AUTHOR> https://universe.tigerbytes.co.za/

<comment><AUTHOR> Universe seamlessly connects you, the student, with your Sakai education portal at the University of Cape Town and the University of the Witwatersrand (with more education platforms coming soon!) - If your school or University uses Sakai, let me know and we'll add them to the app.</comment>


Introducing Trip Tips: A new way to plan travel - <AUTHOR> http://blog.foursquare.com/post/138041419908/introducing-trip-tips-a-new-way-to-plan-travel <comment><USER2> With all the data that Foursquare has on places worldwide, I was actually expecting this to do more than ask my friends to build a list for me.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been looking for some kind of trip planner for a 3 week road trip going from Memphis to the Florida keys. Thought this might help but apparently all it does is outsource everything to strangers. Not helpful at all.

</comment><comment><USER4> Isn't working for me on mobile.</comment>


Measurement of Interrupt Latency - <AUTHOR> http://scitechconnect.elsevier.com/measurement-of-interrupt-latency/ <comment><USER2> Yes, time between physical input and first instruction of the ISR is the correct metric. Easy to measure on an embedded system but hard inside something like a PC or phone.</comment>


Amazon A2I is now generally available - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/machine-learning/amazon-a2i-is-now-generally-available/ <comment><USER2> Is anyone using it? I'm working on a human review / human in the loop platform that has some resemblance to it, while allowing for much greater customisation and flexibility.</comment>


The Secret Powers of Time  - <AUTHOR> http://codesketch.com/2010/06/the-secret-powers-of-time/

<comment><AUTHOR> I should add that this is a video from the RSA.

Great talk, and great animation.</comment>


Rollout.io - <AUTHOR> https://www.rollout.io/ <comment><USER2> Looks great!, wonder if they support Swift as well..</comment>


FISHazam: Shazam for Fish Using Infrared Spectroscopy - <AUTHOR> http://devpost.com/software/fishazam-ensrpw <comment><AUTHOR> Here are some other related links:

1\. [http://fishazam.com/](http://fishazam.com/) (The product)

2\. [http://www.fishackathon.co/](http://www.fishackathon.co/) (The competition driving innovation)</comment>


CSS animations just landed for Firefox - <AUTHOR> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=435442

<comment><USER2> It's a shame they didn't land in time for 4.0 :-(

</comment><comment><USER3> So is the syntax going to be @-moz-keyframes?

<comment><USER4> They remove the moz (and possibly change something else) from the name when a vendor-neutral syntax has been reached. I think we have to wait a while for the final syntax.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm looking forward to lighter CSS.

</comment><comment><USER6> Good news.</comment>


.Tel Them Where to Find You  - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/02/tel-them-where-to-find-you/ <comment><USER2> There is something very smart going on here, but it's not the idea of using DNS to store contact information. What's smart is the ability of Telnic and its affiliated registrars to convince everyone (ICANN, NYT, probably most HN readers) that they're trying to do something vaguely cool but naive, when in fact they're just going to cash in a huge gift from the internet.

Here's the secret: new top-level domains are virtually guaranteed to make tons of money for registrars. Every medium-sized to large company is going to buy a domain in a new TLD; it's worth the cost just to avoid having to deal with a squatter later, even if it is (gasp) $400. If you can convince ICANN that you have good intentions, or that you need a country code even though you're part of the United States _cough_.pr _cough_ you are going to get a lot of easy money over many years.

And yet, we'll still look back at this in a few years and say "yeah, those .tel guys must be really pissed that nobody adopted their cute little standard."

How naive indeed.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is incredibly stupid. I can add any record I like to my DNS. If things start querying DNS for those records, fine. But... what is _.tel_ bringing to the party? My DNS server which happens to be at a .org can serve any records it likes!

As CompanyX, why would I want to buy companyx.tel, instead of just sticking those records on my existing companyx.com?

</comment><comment><USER4> "It will just need to get some traction."

Oh, that's all.

<comment><USER5> Always wondered what the '???????' between 'Create service' and 'Profit' was. Now I know!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm no expert on DNS, but this struck me:

 _Individuals can also choose to display their location, allowing their contacts to see where they are at any given time and opening the door for location-based services._

As far as I know DNS takes up to 24 hours to update all nameservers, rendering this service completely useless.

Am I wrong on this?

<comment><USER7> Now I could be wrong on this, but I _believe_ that's at the EXTREME end of things, I would say with the way DNS is updated now it usually takes under an hour at most. At least that's my personal experience.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for clarifying :-)

But under an hour still kills the concept of location based services.

<comment><USER8> Under an hour still works for 'who is in London for dinner tonight'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wasn't that what the .info was for?

It's not a bad idea. It seems just as likely to end up as another haven for domain name proprietors.

</comment><comment><USER10> Trying to think of domain hacks: hos.tel is the only one that comes to mind. Maybe dontaskdont.tel?

<comment><USER6> in.tel ?

<comment><USER6> on a slightly related note: If you really want a free iphone steve.jobs is not registered :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> From the vids I saw, the main benefits of getting a .Tel domain is so people can easily retrieve your contact by going to your .Tel site either on their PC or mobile device. This information, in turn, can easily be updated by some kind of admin panel by the user, which in turn is updated by anyone else retrieving the info.

Couldn't this same thing be achieved with a simple script and a database? I fail to see the utility of going to a .Tel domain rather than company.com/info or something else. Is it just to bypass the need for hosting?

</comment><comment><USER7> I think this is a good idea if it takes off. Being able to add billgates.tel to your various e-mail accounts and having your e-mail programs update your contacts daily and before you send an e-mail to that person would be incredibly helpful.

I just got my first smart phone yesterday and am having trouble trying to think of the best place to keep a 'master' copy of my contact records. This could easily solve that problem.

<comment><USER12> So could a decent LinkedIn API.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> good luck charging the generation-FREE

</comment><comment><USER14> competition to chi.mp ?

</comment><comment><USER15> Great idea but DNS is not exactly the most secure of protocols. Also, the current domains can already do this through arbitrary records (as has been mentioned already).</comment>


How to write cold emails that are not spam - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@greentea/cold-email-serving-it-warm-fb046edfc34a <comment><USER2> Unsolicited commercial email ("cold emails") are spam; specifically, legal rules -- both state and federal (e.g., CAN-SPAM and its implementing regulations) -- designed to fight spam target unsolicited commercial email generally.

The definition you post reflects the original, Usenet-era, definition of "spam" when the term was being applied to newsgroup posts (not always commercial) that depressed the signal-to-noise ratio on newsgroups. However, once email harvesting, often combined with superficial personalization, began being used to send cold commercial emails, the term was applied to unsolicited commercial email generally -- and this was a bigger concern for the internet community (and the public at large) than the old kind of "spam" ever was, resulting in various legal efforts to control it.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is called Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE), which by definition is spam. If you are sending someone email with hopes to sell them something, it doesn't matter how nice you are, it is still spam. Cold emails are spam.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_spam](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_spam)

<comment><USER4> right from the page you linked: "Definitions of spam usually include the aspects that email is unsolicited and sent in bulk"

If you carefully select the people you are going to email and the message is tailored to that person, it's no longer considered spam (or in bulk).

<comment><USER3> "usually include", but not always.</comment></comment></comment>


Meet the man who retired at 30 - <AUTHOR> http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-04-26/business/38832749_1_mustache-desire-golden-coin

<comment><USER2> The Man has a lot of points about how to Optimize your income and Saving. Which are good values to be honest.

As a child, we (me and my brother) were taught by our parents to Save Pocket Money, when we don't really need them, and later we can buy something more meaningful with it.

Having said that, I do not think I want to retire so early :) ... May not be for the money, but for the fact that I learn everyday when I venture out and take on the challenges of life!</comment>


Ask HN: Good hobby OS recommendations for learning - <AUTHOR>

I've heard of Minix as a tool for learning about operating system design.<p>Which OS is a recommended for study purposes?  As in operating system design and architecture. <comment><USER2> Minix is good, though something like xv6 is smaller these days. MIT uses it as their toy OS for undergrads.</comment>