Icelandic Pirate Party enters parliament - <AUTHOR> http://falkvinge.net/2013/04/28/icelandic-pirate-party-wins-enters-parliament/

<comment><USER2> Congratulations to the Icelandic Pirate Party on entering the national parliament with three MPs!

The name "Pirates" does not mean robbers but is meant to indicate an analogy between the freedom of the international seas and the freedom of the internet.

Pirate Parties are now established in many countries. The core ideas of their policies are: direct democracy, transparency, free internet.

<comment><USER3> > The name "Pirates" does not mean robbers but is meant to indicate an analogy > between the freedom of the international seas and the freedom of the > internet.

Uhm, well, no. It comes from The Pirate Bay, a website where you can download predominantly copyrighted media without the consent of the copyright holder. It got there (probably) ironically, as those engaged in such activities had been labeled 'pirates'. The original pirates were not about "the freedom of the international seas", they were simple criminals, and not of the ambiguous kind that modern-day copyright 'pirates' are.

It all good, and I wish the pirate parties of the world the best of luck, but let's not over-romanticize the origin of the term.

<comment><USER4> "Simple criminals" is a bit of a shoot-from-the-hip oversimplification, I'd say. I wouldn't romanticize "pirates" but I do think there is a lot more to them from a social/anthropological standing than you are letting on. A simple google search for more in depth information can lend you hours of fascinating reading about the culture and politics on board a typical pirate ship and I just thought the HN comment cloud should not allow you to write them off so cheaply. Yes, they were criminals, but they were far from simple! And as such I don't think the use of the term is quite so simple as you are trying to make out.

I'm currently spending a lazy Sunday afternoon reading through [http://wp.stockton.edu/hist4690/files/2012/06/Markus- Rediker...](http://wp.stockton.edu/hist4690/files/2012/06/Markus-Rediker- Under-the-Banner-of-King-Death.pdf)

fascinating stuff.

[disclaimer: IANA-Historian, sea shantie junkie and one time pirate king]

<comment><USER3> Simple _crimes_ , not simple _criminals_. Compare modern organised criminal organisations: they're nowhere near simple, but at the end of the day, the _crime_ itself is simple.

<comment><USER4> Again no, you are reducing things to an absurd degree. Organised crime is very complex. Mugging is simple. Theft is not [necessarily] simple. The latter subsumes the former precisely because of it's complexity. You may be talking about something that equates to mugging, however the majority of commenters are holding that the term you are using equates to theft in just about every example.

Look into the Yakuza. Each 'family' can consist of many _tens of thousands of individuals_, from the grunts to the cops and judges on the payroll to money launderers and each one is needed to take one of your 'simple crimes' and make it into a business for the family, so by definition they are not simple crimes.

I think you are nit picking to backtrack on what I still hold was a shoot- from-the-hip over-simplification. I think you are not willing to concede the definition of a word beyond your own example despite a rich history of it's use to the contrary.

<comment><USER3> Simple is probably not the best word, then, but what I meant to describe was the unambiguity of the immorality of the crime. At the end of the day, piracy was still roughly morally equivalent to mugging, although, of course, vastly more complex.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The booster is that (some) Icelanders demand change and are seeking out new politicians. However, a depressing majority seems to have voted to install the old politicians, that were part of setting up the crisis, into power again.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, the return of the right to the majority was weird. They were exactly those defeated on the last election after the Icelandic economy quite literally crash and burned. :-/

<comment><USER6> Money and self-deception work just as well in Iceland as in Britain or the US of A.

This is a human problem that must be solved by human means.

It is tempting when looking at the corrupted nature of our current institutions to think of technological solutions that would render our governments incorruptible by the people using them. But it is necessary to remember that an incorruptible institution is also an inflexible institution and that an inflexible institution cannot adapt to changing circumstances without breaking.

<comment><USER7> If most problems are "human" problems, how does applying "human" means solve them, when those "human" means are themselves subject to "human" problems? Wouldn't it be more effective to use something that isn't "human" or subject to "human" problems?

Also, how does it follow that incorruptible and inflexible are mutually inclusive?

<comment><USER6> I think you meant mutually exclusive?

As for, "human solutions to human problems" the agonistic form of most western legal systems, where professionals advocate for their clients and present opposing views to someone who is supposed to be an impartial arbiter, but whose decisions can be appealed; would be an example. It is imperfect, but able to deal with changing circumstances. And notably human judgment is involved at every step.

<comment><USER7> No, I meant inclusive :-). Why must "incorruptible" include "inflexible", and vice versa? Though in hindsight, you're not saying that inflexible implies incorruptible (A <-> B), only that incorruptible implies inflexible (A -> B). Why must that be the case?

I'll simply have to disagree that involving human judgment in every step of a process is a good thing, or that the adversarial legal system does anything other than favor the party with more resources (instead of the party that is more correct). Human beings are simply far too fallible, far too vulnerable to blind spots and biases to be trusted with important decisions. I read once on HN that removing human judgment from part of the judicial process, by implementing sentencing guidelines in criminal cases, actually _improved_ outcomes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is good news, but it reflects a hardening bifurcation (in that some people are strongly pro-copyright, and others are strongly for a roll-back or reform of imaginary monopoly law). I wish playing politics wasn't necessary, and that none of the rallying and competitive commentator insults were needed to keep everyone from feeling persecuted. At the moment, however, the "sharing is caring" thinkers are still under-represented in official roles IMHO (there are more than are given credit, or are able to speak up meaningfully), so this is at least a step towards a fairer dialog in Iceland, and around the world.

<comment><USER9> There's no hardening bifurcation in Iceland around this issue. No one is speaking the pro-copyright voice since it is hard for local politicians geting worked up about teenagers downloading American tv shows. We have a local pro- copyright lobby group (industry association) that has had some success; mostly getting CD's and DVD's taxed, pressuring police authorities doing some token raids every three years and having local torrent sites closed down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting. The newly established Norwegian Pirate Party ( <http://piratpartiet.no/> ) will also be running in the parliamentary election this September.

<comment><USER11> There's the German federal election in September, too.

<comment><USER12> And the chances of the German Pirate Party of surpassing the 5% threshold are, at this time, zero. They'll probably fall below the 2% they got in the 2009 elections before they even became newsworthy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A note from the article

        During the night, the support for the Icelandic Pirate Party
        briefly fell below the five-percent barrier to entry, making the
        outcome uncertain and the polls wrong. As of 1000 UTC, with all
        the votes counted, the Pirate Party's support is at 5.1% with
        three seats. Article text has been updated to reflect this.

</comment><comment><USER14> The much hyped German Pirate Party already dissolved. They had their 3 months of fame. You cannot sustain a party without substance.

<comment><USER12> It hasn't dissolved at all; it has merely suffered a spectacular continuous PR clusterfuck that has demolished its chances for years to come, but public memory is short and the issues their platform centers on are only going to become more important. A resurgence is questionable but possible, and hopefully by then they'll have learned a thing or two about realpolitik and organization.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Soon we will be able to get any movie for free...oh wait, we already can.

<comment> qu4z-2 I feel like you are perhaps missing the point of and ideology behind the Pirate Party(s).

Their focus is much more on personal privacy, government transparency, and sensible copyright reform than it is about "Free movies".

<comment><USER15> That was kind of the point, this article is vapid and no details are given except they are pirates. I guess I should have posted my other comment saying how falkvinge is the Rosa Parks of this generation but I got too depressed.

<comment> qu4z-2 Ah, sarcasm is hard to read over the internet. Sorry 'bout that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Hence forth Iceland will honor this day with a National Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Unfortunately since the Pirate Party members are primarily computer geeks, talking like them doesn't involve nearly as many Argh, Matey, and Ahoy's as the general population would like.</comment>


Skype Banned in China in State-Run Carrier Crackdown - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/1713155/skype-illegal-in-china?partner=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+fastcompany/headlines+(Fast+Company+Headlines) <comment><USER2> It will be interesting to see where they draw the lines on what is VoIP.

What's also astounding having visited China is how little the people I talked to seem to care about the censorship. The working professionals I talked to were fully aware it was going on, and didn't seem that upset.

Ultimately, these kinds of activities will be a huge economic barrier for China. There's very little predictability around running a foreign business that serves China. I'd much rather look at growing my customer base in places like South Korea and Singapore.</comment>


Show HN: Tab – A Better Dining Experience - <AUTHOR> http://tabpayments.co

<comment><USER2> It looks like a great app and site, but if a restaurant can't even manage to get you the bill when you want it then you probably shouldn't eat there.

</comment><comment><USER3> App looks nice, but how do you differentiate from companies like tabbedout, mycheck, dash, etc..

One thing that is really hard about this sort if startup is POS integration without breaking the flow of service.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> We launched yesterday in Toronto with 13 restaurants and will be growing that list shortly. If you're in Toronto, use the promo code TABLAUNCH for a $10 credit on your first meal.

</comment><comment><USER4> Love the use of white space in the design.</comment>


Ask HN: Maximum length within a control structure - <AUTHOR>

Pip pip good hackers,
I'm just starting a new project and I think there's a good chance that someone else will end up maintaining the code. I'm looking at setting myself some readability rules regarding the way that the code is put together.
One of the worst bits of untangling my own old spaghetti code is my dreadful habit of enclosing many many lines of code within my control structure. Sometimes an IF can start, and the ELSE not follow for two or three hundred lines.
Where would you draw the line? My thinking is that if I can't see the whole IF...ELSE, SWITCH, FOR or WHILE in a single screen height (75 lines in Coda for me), that it needs refactoring.
Really interested to hear what standards you work with yourselves,
Cheers,
Dan http://beset.me <comment><USER2> According to Robert C. Martins book "Clean Code", and the SLAP principle, the maximum length of a method (yes, an entire method) is around 20 - 50 lines of code. If it gets longer than that, odds are that it is doing more than one thing and is operating on different levels of abstraction, and should be broken up into smaller methods. I would also say that I have rarely seen (if ever) well-written, easy to comprehend and maintain code where the control structures and methods contain hundreds of lines of code.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would say that if you can't fit a function onto your screen, it's too long and should be broken up.</comment>


Ask HN: What startups are hiring in Seattle? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Here's one good source, pulls posts straight from AngelList: [http://startupseattle.com/jobs/](http://startupseattle.com/jobs/)</comment>


World Bank launches API serving data for 200 countries over 50+ years  - <AUTHOR> http://psdblog.worldbank.org/psdblog/2009/04/world-bankoecd-beat-us-government-10.html <comment><USER2> All public data should be APIed. I mean seriously get with the times

</comment><comment><USER3> That is awesome and about time this kind of data gets opened up. Now I'd like the IMF to do the same thing!</comment>


When Dissent Became Treason - <AUTHOR> http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/09/28/world-war-i-when-dissent-became-treason/ <comment><USER2> Everyone in favor of banning certain speech based on its content should consider this article. When you open the door to banning speech based on content, the government will happily define something speech it does not like as "treason" or "hate speech" or whatever the favored term is.

People "shouting fire in theater" is not protected speech as a way to say that free speech protections are limited with respect to certain content. This phrase comes from Schenck vs United States [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States) that ruled that it was Constitutional to arrest someone for distributing anti- draft fliers. So be very careful what you wish for with regard to limits on free speech, you just might get it.

<comment><USER3> What are you talking about? There are obvious and practical limits on 'free speech'. In fact, the Supreme Court has unanimously upheld a "fighting words" doctrine ensuring that speech which is by its nature injurious or likely to cause breach of the peace is not protected.

An excerpt from the 9-0 decision makes a pretty concise case, especially the latter part:

"Allowing the broadest scope to the language and purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment, it is well understood that the right of free speech is not absolute at all times and under all circumstances. There are certain well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which has never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem. These include the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous, and the insulting or 'fighting' words- those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace. It has been well observed that such utterances are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality. 'Resort to epithets or personal abuse is not in any proper sense communication of information or opinion safeguarded by the Constitution, and its punishment as a criminal act would raise no question under that instrument.' [Cantwell v. Connecticut]"

[https://web.archive.org/web/20080906001323/http://laws.findl...](https://web.archive.org/web/20080906001323/http://laws.findlaw.com/US/315/568.html)

We can argue about definitions of 'obscene', 'likely to cause a breach of the peace', etc. But to treat freedom of speech like an unassailable, all-or- nothing fundamental assumption is not helpful.

<comment><USER4> _Chaplinsky_ is quite outdated. It's not clear that the Fighting Words doctrine even still exists at all, but to the extent it does, it requires a physical presence inviting to an altercation by being directed at someone. Prohibitions based purely on content of speech are not constitutional. (IANAL and this is not legal advice, of course)

<comment><USER3> Yeah, the Wikipedia page on 'fighting words' goes on to describe how the doctrine has since been limited. Shouting 'you are a fascist' at a cop probably wouldn't pass muster as unprotected speech these days (if you managed to make it to court alive and weren't preaching gibberish to a large crowd that was blocking traffic at the time.)

Still, speech isn't somehow inherently harmless or different from other actions that we take. It's bad to take someone's things with a knife, but I'd say that it's even worse to take someone's humanity with a word.

<comment><USER5> But you can't _actually_ take someone's humanity with a word. That's hyperbole. Knife-point robbery is not.

"You cannot, sir, take from me anything that will not more willingly part withal – except my life, except my life, except my life." \-- William Shakespeare

<comment><USER3> Well no, _I_ can't.

But a demagogue sure can. I guess it would be more accurate to say that they take humanity from a lot of people who belong to certain classes with a lot of words, but that's a messier metaphor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is what Scott Adams (the Dilbert guy) refers to when he says that our society is split down the middle, watching two different movies on the same screen.

Some see:

"As our newspapers and TV screens overflow with choleric attacks by President Trump on the media..."

While others see:

"As our corporate, left-aligned media powerhouses overflow our news feeds with biased/false statements about President Trump..."

Ultimately, this just goes to show that the media has become a protected class, which -- just in case it isn't evident -- is a bad thing.

The news outlets that Trump attacks are not independent little offices run by scrappy street journalists, but enormous corporate behemoths with clear cut political alignments and agendas, with goals so identical that you literally see the exact same wording in politicized headlines across several major networks. This goes for both the left and the right (though the proportion is lopsided to the left).

The real journalists are the ones being demonized by the media and government alike (that's how you know they're reporting something actually being hidden away from the people), some of whom are living out their lives locked up in embassies.

<comment><USER7> > The real journalists are the ones being demonized by the media and > government alike (that's how you know they're reporting something actually > being hidden away from the people), some of whom are living out their lives > locked up in embassies.

There's a subtle implication here that the likes of Julian Assange are "real journalists" and are somehow noble, which is laughable. Assange (and WikiLeaks) have just as much political alignments and motives that all other media organizations have. Just because he's stuck in an embassy and doesn't have hordes of cash behind him doesn't mean he isn't just as biased.

Quite frankly, WikiLeaks as a whole is no more trustworthy than CNN or Fox, and may be even less so. One of the most powerful (and hard to detect) ways to be biased in reporting isn't by printing attack articles against your enemy, but rather by _not_ printing attack articles against your "friends". WikiLeaks does this every time they choose not to publish evidence damning people they support, which I'd be willing to bet happens more often than we all know.

While we're on the topic, WikiLeaks also commits some pretty atrociously biased editorializing whenever they post new material. They used to just be a site that posted raw information ("here are the emails that were leaked"), but now they also add their own silly commentary to it ("here are the emails and this is what you should think about them"), often with hilariously bad analysis.

<comment><USER8> Fortunately, I can read wiki Leak's actual source documents and decide for myself what to believe.

Their commentary on what they release is inconsequential. What matters is the actual, real, documents that they release.

<comment><USER9> Leak chooses which source documents to show you, therefore shifting the narrative you interpret.

<comment><USER8> Facts are facts and the truth is the truth. Nothing you said changes the reality that the documents are real.

If other people have a different opinion on what the narrative should be then they should release documents of their own.

But that still doesn't change the truth of the previous documents.

<comment><USER7> Just because something is "real" doesn't mean you should blindly put your trust in it.

Document 1 says: "President ABC bombed a school in Syria today, killing 50 people."

Document 2 says: "This action was carried out after President ABC learned that the school was being used as a base for terrorists, and only terrorist combatants were killed during the bombing."

Both documents are real, but only releasing document #1 and keeping document #2 secret is a very easy way to shift the narrative against President ABC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think this is a good article to remind us of how fast hate can spread, but I don't think it applied to Trump and the alt-right. By far they are a fringe movement, whose impact is grossly exaggerated. When I look around for the "popular" uprising looking to censor speech I don't see Trump and alt-right racists. I see the antifa and massive amounts of liberal activists that are justifying censorship, violence, hate, racism, and bigotry. I think this is a warning, but its a warning of whoever comes next. We need to be vigilant to make sure when trump is ousted he isn't replaced by a group who is even worse and has the backing of a frothed mob.

<comment><USER11> The sitting President of the United States is a fringe movement? How does that make any sense?

<comment><USER10> Its only the most sound proof of echo chambers that someone thinks everyone who voted for Trump is a member of the alt-right, and a fascist.

<comment><USER11> Sure, but you included Trump himself in that, and with ~63 million votes, he's definitely not a fringe movement.

<comment><USER10> I see what you mean now, you are correct there are parts of the Trump movement that are more mainstream, but this article and others try to lump all 63 million voters, and anyone who supports any of his policies into the extreme fringe of hate groups that also support him ( which he hasn't distanced himself from enough )

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > In a strikingly Trumpian fashion, President Wilson himself helped sow > suspicion of anything German.

Trump is tame and politically correct compared to Woodrow Wilson. Wilson was an unabashed racist, who screened "Birth of a Nation" in the White House, a pro-KKK film that portrayed the Klan as a heroic force to control hordes of savage black males that wanted to rape white women.

<comment><USER13> Birth of a Nation is a restrained work of art compared to the ceaselessly flowing vitriol of Breitbart and Infowars — and those people have the highest levels of endorsement from Trump.

Steve Bannon's film career was directly inspired by Leni Riefenstahl, according to his former colleagues. Watching Birth of a Nation in the White House is tame compared to making the propaganda director the chief strategist.

<comment><USER14> I can't speak on Breitbart, but as far as Infowars goes -- he makes a killing on those supplements he schleps out, and apparently there are a _lot_ of people who buy them[0]. Sure he acts like a wackjob conspiracy theory nut -- but my guess is, judging by 'former employees' cited in articles and especially by the episode of the Joe Rogan Podcast with author Jon Ronson (both know him personally), he doesn't believe most of the nonsense coming out of his mouth, but that's his character/persona niche; catering to those that would be entertained by it.

0: [https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/08/alex-jones- infowars-...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/08/alex-jones-infowars- supplements-are-overpriced-mundane-vitamins-watered-down/)

<comment><USER13> I'm not sure how commercial intent makes him any more palatable? Trump chooses to listen to him regardless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> tj-teej I think there's a hubris to the idea that one can "ban speech" \- you only ban the speech in the forum you can ban it in.

Banning speech in public only drives it underground and reduces the possibility of argument.

</comment><comment><USER15> > German measles "Liberty measles."

odd thing to rename.

reminds me of freedom fries.</comment>


Snapchat Threatens Employees with Jail as Facebook Lets It Starve - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/snapchat-threatens-employees-with-jail-as-facebook-lets-1822239074 <comment><USER2> Quoting a large section of the email verbatim was not a smart move. I'm giving this at least 50% odds of being a leak-tracing exercise. It's common practice to send an oh-so-leakable message like this with per-recipient variations of wording/spaces/non-printable characters, and wait for it to leak so you can identify the leaker. And this email is (a) suspiciously juicy, (b) in reaction to a prominent recent leak, and (c) doesn't actually reveal anything private...

(Example from a few years ago: [http://gawker.com/5164035/tesla-ceo-in- digital-witch-hunt](http://gawker.com/5164035/tesla-ceo-in-digital-witch- hunt))

</comment><comment><USER3> This title is referring to insider trading and since snap is a publicly traded company inside the United States, those laws apply to them and are enforced for SEC.

The statement was simply trying to inform that their are consequences for their actions.

If you want to see something interesting how about how they crack down, check out how the SEC investigated/cracked down Seeking Alpha. ([https://www.barrons.com/articles/touts-used-seekingalpha- oth...](https://www.barrons.com/articles/touts-used-seekingalpha-other-sites- to-pump-and-dump-stocks-sec-1491933629))

This is what snap said to employees.

>If you leak Snap Inc. information, you will lose your job and we will pursue any and all legal remedies against you. And that's just the start. You can face personal financial liability even if you yourself did not benefit from the leaked information. The government, our investors, and other third parties can also seek their own remedies against you for what you disclosed. The government can even put you in jail.

</comment><comment><USER4> Snap's investors must be pretty pissed as well that employee leaks flush money down the toilet for them.

</comment><comment><USER5> Lol that's worse.</comment>


Innovation Nation: WePay is the anti-PayPal - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2010/10/12/technology/wepay/index.htm

<comment><USER2> Someone I know recently told me about her nightmare when she was collecting money for a class reunion via PayPal last month: she had to register as a non- profit, and PayPal wanted her water bill to prove that they were indeed a non- profit despite being recognized by the government as one. So much hassle; I wish I had known she was going to do that so I could have told her about WePay, especially with this kind of customer service:

      A call to WePay's customer service department quickly
      sorted out the problem. Plus, the company gave him $20
      for the inconvenience.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is not an 'anti-PayPal' in any way, shape or form.

They offer a service that PayPal doesn't yet. It is not opposed to PayPal and it doesn't replace PayPal's services at all.

<comment><AUTHOR> Presumably the author means anti- in the sense it's used in anti-matter, not the sense it's used in anti-globalization.

<comment><USER4> When WePay & PayPal touch they'll annihilate eachother with a huge burst of energy? :)

Too bad headlines need to be clickable rather than accurate.

<comment><AUTHOR> Obviously I mean in the sense of a complement. And it is an accurate use of the word in that sense. WePay is the other half of online payments: PayPal is for businesses, and WePay is for people who need to collect money but aren't businesses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Question:

So my adult (beer league) hockey team is trying to start a slush fund so that we can pay for things like new jerseys, water bottles, shared resources type stuff. We are looking at trying to get a group account for this, and WePay looks like its exactly what we need.

But the accounts we talk to say that we would have to pay taxes on this account, if its in a bank account. Would WePay be a way to get around paying these taxes? Does anyone else have any insight to how we could set this up?

Is this question way to off topic for Hacker News?

</comment><comment><USER6> I have long wondered why Facebook doesn't do this. Group birthday gifts, wedding registries, basically any social scenario where money needs to change hands, it seems like FB would be so well positioned to take an honest buck from.

<comment><USER7> No.

Do you know why? Facebook acts as if it were completely incapable of knowing when far is too far. Whenever something new rolls out, it always comes off like outsourced peer-pressure. 'HEY LOOK AT WHAT EVERYONE ELSE IS DOING BUT YOU!!'

No thank you, sir.

<comment><USER6> The question of whether FB as it exists now would abuse such a system (yes, of course they would, they're awful) is separate from the question of whether or not said system would make business sense for a gigantic social network.

If FB were the kind of company that could figure out how to make money without ads or taxing 3rd party devs, maybe they'd also be the kind of company that would treat its users as customers rather than products. Hypotheticals all around.

<comment><USER7> You've actually got an excellent point to this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sounds like a play from the book REWORK: Mobilize against an enemy (or something like that).

It's just words; WePay is not another competing product, it's basically a bunch of features that PayPal can implement and with >80M accounts, they can easily kill it.

Say what you want about PayPal, but each one of you should read PayPal Wars to learn the inside story of how PayPal worked and competed. They basically pioneered the person-to-person payment service and faced a myriad of issues before eventually selling to eBay.

</comment><comment><USER8> Homepage is too busy. Simplify it a bit.

</comment><comment><USER9> I really hope WePay destroys PayPal. They have screwed myself and my friends too many times.

The homepage layout is all wrong though. Poor element placement, messy typography, and the color scheme is off. It looks amateur and unpolished. All those SEO'd subpages are worthless if they don't convert.

Also:

\- Upgrade to Nginx 0.7.67, there was a lot of bug fixes in 0.7.65 and 0.7.66.

\- Limit the number of login attempts to prevent brute forcing.

\- Don't show "That email address was not found" when someone tries to recover a password. You are giving out too much info, which can be used maliciously.

\- Block scraper/vuln scanner/curl scripts by user-agent to keep away the script kiddies and botnets.

\- Don't host your Javascript on Google. This gives hackers another possible point of entry. It's probably safe, but you're better off limiting points of entry.

\- Use mod_rewrite as an additional layer of security. You'll need to slightly modify it to make it work with Nginx.

\- Remove "access info anytime" and "post to my wall anytime" when signing up with Facebook.

\- Limit SSH access by IP address.

Feel free to contact me if you need help.

<comment><USER10> Wow, "ssh wepay.com" works. Turn that off.

Once again, "cloud" doesn't mean "lol, we don't need to know about servers!"

<comment><USER11> I must admit I didn't know the big domains disabled ssh. Naive/beginner's question: how do programmers work remotely at these companies (if it's allowed at all)? Do they ssh into other (safe) servers, from which a safe transfer is eventually made into the production servers?

<comment><USER12> It's a matter of setting up VPNs and IP-restricting where you can SSH in from. You can also set up port knocking and other SSH-related security measures. It depends how much convenience you're willing to trade for security.

<comment><USER13> Practicality trumps everything, after 10+ years of using ssh and trying port knocking and everything else none of it works when you're 4000km away in another country with only a handheld to access the servers.

<comment><USER14> I think it should probably company policy at a financial institution not to allow someone in a different control on a handheld device to access the servers.

<comment><USER13> I use layered security (in the sense of servers) with a password lifetime of 10 days. I deal with servers daily and the issue of compromise has been twice in on firewall containers/servers which was fine as the systems in place found it, found the issue with the net facing software and I fixed it. Practicality doesn't mean no security.

<comment><USER15> If you're using SSH, you should be using keys, and not passwords.

<comment><USER13> Those aren't mutally exclusive

<comment><USER15> Can you require keys AND passwords? I haven't been able to figure out how to get that to function - if passwords are allowed, it lets you in with or without a key, from what I can tell. I'd be happy to be wrong though!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The CEO was a speaker at this years startup bootcamp, it was an interesting talk. [http://blog.wepay.com/2010/10/wepay-ceo-bill-clerico-at- star...](http://blog.wepay.com/2010/10/wepay-ceo-bill-clerico-at-startup- bootcamp/)

<comment><USER17> I second watching the WePay talk.

One of the best pieces of advice I heard at Startup bootcamp came from Bill Clerico (WePay CEO) when he described building software as a community process. It seemed like an elegant way to say users are what really matter and it applies equally well to commercial, open source and personal projects.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How expensive is SF? - <AUTHOR>

Background: I lived in Toronto. I've considered moving to the Valley for a software engineering job. I used to consider a 120k salary the stuff dreams are made of. Then I've had people tell me that the cost of living in San Francisco is so high that you won't save more than 15k of that yearly, and even that requires some frugality.<p>For a single young person, how true is that? <comment><USER2> much...very

<comment><AUTHOR> But how is it possible that a person's mere living expenses be 100k per year? How can anyone who doesn't have a 6 figure salary live?</comment></comment>


What pisses you off on the web? (Video) - <AUTHOR> http://vimeo.com/2232803 <comment><USER2> Videos piss me off on the web, especially when a nice article would suffice;-)

</comment><comment><USER3> Pointless, meaningless videos like this one. Piss me off.

</comment><comment><USER4> "SEO is dead" articles, "anything is dead" articles for that matter. Oh and linkbaiting.

</comment><comment><USER5> advertisements, pop-ups (in various forms), and then malware

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Maybe you will find nice ideas for new startups...</comment>


Scott Rafer on Dalton's letter: "Learning the wrong lesson" - <AUTHOR> http://rafer.net/post/28638883246/mark-i-know-for-a-fact-that-my-experience-was-not <comment><USER2> "The lesson instead is: build something whose very nature makes it a cannibalistic cash flow hit for a BigCo so that their shareholders resist competing, but which their users love."

Can anyone explain more what he means by that? How can something that is a cash flow hit for a BigCo not be a cash flow hit for anyone else?

<comment><USER3> Quantcast's free audience reports couldn't be copied by the incumbents (Comscore and Nielsen), because selling similar reports was their core business. They hated us, but we never spent a moment worrying about them. In fact we were always open to working with them, but they were bound up in a knot over our model.

Southwest undercut united and American by avoiding business and first class, flying only one model of plane (737), which lowered maintenance costs and allowed easier substitution of planes among flights. They skipped the hub and spoke model and flew out of peripheral airports that were cheaper, and boarded like buses with no reserved seats to shorten the idle time a the gate, etc. no long flights meant no meal service. There was no possible way for United and American to match them on price. They were afraid to adopt any of these changes because it might tarnish their brand. They were too focused on competing with each other.

Dell offered lower costs than their competitors by charging up front for the computer before buying the parts (which were steadily falling in price). The competition were stuck with a channel model where they shipped finished computers to channel partners for stocking in inventory, so they not only had to buy parts far in advance but had to give a cut to channel partners and retailers, making their prices higher and profit lower.

Netscape had a dozen competitors to their browser. Netscspe offered free downloads to anyone, and with a wink asked for a licensing fee. No individuals paid it, but corporations did because they wanted to be in legal compliance. Best of both worlds (free for individuals and paid by corporations, but only after achieving critical mass within the corporation). They crushed their competitors with this model, who were charging license fees to all customers from the beginning, as competitors didnt get the benefit of rogue employee groundswell to achieve critical mass in corporations.

Hilariously, Microsoft in turn crushed Netscspe by goong a step further, making Internet Exploror completely free, no wink needed. Netscspe browser revenue dried up as corporations stopped paying for Netscape because they already had a free license to ie.

This was funny to me, as it led to all sorts of crybaby behavior by Netscape screaming "antitrust!", when all Microsoft did was tweak the strategy used by Netscape themselves to crush the others.

All of these cases are "strategy", which is defined by Michael Porter as the way that you are different from your competitors. Ideally, in a way they cannot copy. Notice how a strategy allows you to avoid competing, because you're playing a different game altogether.

<comment><USER2> Great examples. How do you think this would apply in Dalton's case though, where the very mechanism of building on Facebook/Twitter's platform can be shut down by Facebook/Twitter?

<comment><USER3> I don't know. But unless you have a strategy, don't start a company. Without a strategy you're just picking up nickles in front of a steamroller.

I'm sure that strategies exist on any platform. Zynga doesn't seem worried that Facebook will copy its games (even if they do hate paying the platform tax). Many products are pretty safe from Facebook. For example, build an app for dentists, or personal trainers, or pregnant women.

<comment><USER4> There only is one sure strategy for avoiding the potential steamroller of the platform company. Don't build on the platform.

<comment><USER5> Like any other resource or dependency that you build into your business, using a platform requires an ROI calculation of some sort. The distribution advantage needs to be worth the risk.

<comment><USER4> True. The point however is to understand how to quantify the risk. The complicating factor in this case is surely the fact that he had received explicit assurances that his development was welcome and would be supported. The thing I don't understand is how you would go about assessing the 'distribution advantage' given the fact that the risk is evidently so hard to evaluate. DC has evidently now come to the conclusion that it is too risky for him no matter what the advantage. I am curious to better understand your thinking on how to weigh advantage against risk.

<comment><USER5> Treat the 'explicit assurances' like politicians' campaign promises. If they lose, the promises are irrelevant. If they win, those promises had better align with the new incumbent's larger aims or they were just marketing.

The risk is not very hard to assess. It's pretty binary per startup opportunity. Do the relevant incumbents' revenue models, distribution models, or inherent cultural limitations prevent them from competing with you. @paulsutter covered the first two well early in this discussion. For the last, Apple has great difficulty with social, Facebook hasn't figured out Touch, Google is excessively focused on those two competitors, etc.

Please also see these two comments: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4336783> [http://rafer.net/post/28638883246/mark-i-know-for-a-fact- tha...](http://rafer.net/post/28638883246/mark-i-know-for-a-fact-that-my- experience-was-not#comment-609227651),

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think to understand @daltonc's strategy with join.app.net, one should be familiar with Thomas Schelling's concept of 'precommitment':

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

Note that the 'textbook' examples of precommitment involve the burning-of- bridges or burning-of-ships-at-the-shore.

If there's any hope of an alternative to Facebook/Twitter at this point, given the incumbents' long head-starts, it's going to be a 'zag' to the incumbents' advertising-supported 'zig'. Caldwell might not have gone _into_ his Facebook meeting fully intending that sort of confrontation... but by the time he left, the choices were stark.

I thus view Caldwell's anecdote _not_ as a complaint, "boo-hoo I was wronged", but as him sharing a difficult lesson: that Facebook's model makes it impossible for Facebook to be a magnanimous platform steward. Perhaps Caldwell should have seen the writing on the wall earlier, but many exterior-platform shops are missing the same point, as evidenced by the surprise and indignation after each new consolidating move by the platform proprietors.

Perhaps Caldwell could have intuited the reality beforehand, and written about it in abstract terms. The anecdote _illustrates_ the problem, in a way that far more independent developers will understand.

<comment><USER5> I fully understand breaking the rice pots and burning the boats, and I hope that you are right. However, his implementation doesn't create the developer education that you suggest. As they well should, young founders look up to guys like Dalton and may well take him at this word that Facebook's negotiating tactics are surprising. FB's stance on these issues are so ruthlessly consistent and well known that it's hard to even consider the specific tactics described as unethical.

I feel a responsibility to make it clear that such things are the norm and need to be accommodated in business planning and risk assessment from the beginning. Please note that I failed to do so the first time I dealt with Facebook, but that doesn't make it their fault -- rafer.net/post/168541483/lookeryupdate

Please also note, that I'd be damn excited for app.net's current iteration to take off and will go out of my way to use it if I can. I'd love a dev program that had ongoing stewardship built in, but no for-profit platform provider has _ever_ made such a thing work over time.

<comment><USER4> I don't think that the key message is that FB's negotiating tactics are surprising. Whilst he was certainly surprised the point is surely that he was shocked because their behavior at the meeting was so at variance with what he had previously been led to believe. You say that FB's tactics are 'ruthlessly consistent' and 'well known' but this is surely a simplification. For example, the FB platform supports games but I am not aware of any instances in which FB has muscled in on a games dev.

I agree that it is helpful to point out that there are major risks when you develop for an alleged platform. But isn't that the point of his post?

I think the point of the app.net initiative is to create a platform that because of its different business model (subscription for infrastructure/service) will not suffer the conflicts that are inevitable when the business model is ads. And whilst this is indeed unusual lately, it is not long ago that such for-profit platforms were the norm. Older examples include, DOS, Windows, UNIX, Linux, X-Windows... More recently there is a profusion of companies providing commercial support for open source software or providing such software as a service.

<comment><USER5> Facebook has muscled in on literally everything but games, other than their _ex poste facto_ 30% revenue share, and during their earnings report they intimated that they may get into games directly.

And, I'm shocked at your statement about the older platforms. I don't know if your entire background is on your LinkedIn page, but what you say is simply not true of Windows, DOS, the Mac, and is very tough to credit to Sun or SGI in their heydays. Those vendors cherry picked their ISVs all the time and with no more rhetorical consistency, stewardship, or charity than Dalton describes. They did so because they had market share in their segments and could.

That's why I specifically included this in my post: Playing naive to that reality went out the window in the mid-1980s with PC software and has been reproven by the platforms at least every 24 months since.

Everyone from RedHat to BeOS to Sega who behaved (somewhat) better did so because they needed their ecologies to grow. If they'd succeeded in building market share, I'm pretty sure I could predict their changes in policy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> pmarca has been a personal friend and mentor to me for over 2 years. I have learned a _lot_ from him.

I know where he stands about all of this. I don't want to drag him into this fight any more than he already is, but I don't think you understand pmarca very well.

<comment><USER5> I don't claim to understand @pmarca at all. I've never even shaken the man's hand.

I've got some great supporters and advisors who help me tremendously. It just pains me to watch someone great like that drift further from a startup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Scott - you say "It's incumbent on you (and certainly also me) to make sure that we're starting businesses in segments that actually require a new entrant and can not be filled by aproduct line extension from an incumbent. Whether or not they fill holes as early as Twitter, large companies with developer programs all consolidate their segments — and do so a economically as possible. That means every third-party developer grows up, sells cheap, or dies."

But what does 'require a new entrant' mean here? Who requires it? There is surely only one meaningful answer - the consumer. Moving on... What sort of new entrant offering 'can not be filled by a product line extension from an incumbent?' I suggest in the context we should parse this to mean '... platform company cannot build a competitive offering.' But of course, there is little that such well financed companies who control the platform can't build. More to the point there is still less that can't build if all they have to do is copy an existing product. So this is a very strong condition. Perhaps you mean - software the platform company doesn't want to build? One answer along these lines is to build software for a small segment the platform company cannot be bothered to address. But for an ambitious developer who wants to add significant value to millions of users I am not sure it is possible to develop such an offering - insulated from potential competition by the platform company - unless the platform company has a clear policy vis a vis developers and provides very clear signals with a very clear record to trustworthy behavior that gives a high degree of confidence it is safe to proceed. But of course developer is taking a risk that the platform company can bait and switch. I am unsure what 'large companies with developer programs all consolidate their segments' means. But if it means that such platform companies have an inbuilt drive to purchase their devs I can't agree. The big platforms have so much software on them that even the wealthiest company couldn't buy it all even if they wanted to. I don't know what a cannabilistic cash flow is. This may be a term of art I am just unfamiliar with. But if it means a cash flow built on the back of the host platform, this surely refers to the cash flow of all apps built on a platform. So I am unclear this idea moves the ball forward. If on the other hand the idea is that it will cost the host money for no clear ROI then this is indeed always possible, but just as obviously if there is no clear monetization strategy the dev is taking a huge risk. It can work out but of course most times, not surprisingly, it doesn't. (Clay Christen makes much of this dynamic and the challenges of marginal rather than absolute costing when he discusses such cases as Blockbuster competing with Netflix. But the undiscussed part of his argument is the hindsight effect. Blockbuster were right to ignore most of the market entrants. Most never got any traction. With a thousand flowers trying to bloom, which one will see the sunlight?) So building software that doesn't seem to make financial sense will doubtless reduce the risk of the platform company competing, but you'd better have something up your sleeve. The Instagram example is indeed important. But it is important precisely because of the very different behavior of Apple and Facebook vis a vis their devs. Apple has had long experience of working with devs and a deeply wired understanding of how to foster and manage relations with their developers. iOS is a platform. Apple provides some core apps but other than that it is a free range and the overwhelming majority of devs can be confident Apple isn't going to compete with them. It seems to me that the whole point of DCs argument is that Facebook declared itself a platform, provided APIs, provided assurances that his product was seen as valuable and would be welcomed and then, having given him the confidence to build it, turned on him threatened to cut off his access to the platform on which his app relied and then offered to buy him out. This is very different behavior.

So to be honest, I don't find the argument very clear. I'm not sure we agree on what the responsibilities of a company that declares itself to be offering a platform are. I can't extract a convincing strategy here for how you feel devs can best to develop on a platform. And whilst you seem to feel you have some sort of lesson for DC about how to work on a platform even if the company baits and switches, I can't fathom what that lesson is.

<comment><USER3> Read my response to salman89 below.

If you don't have a clear strategy that protects you from competitors big ans small, don't start a company.

<comment><USER8> I think you're indulging in extremism. "The perfect is the enemy of the good," and all that.

<comment><USER3> Dude you can do whatever you want. If you want to start something that's readily copied, go ahead.

But if Godzilla steps on you, dont act surprised and dont expect a lot of sympathy.

<comment><USER8> No really, I get the "cold-hearted businessman," thing. However, you're describing preparations for an unknowable situation: "you should have predicted the future better."

<comment><USER5> I don't see it as crystal ball reading. The question that needs to be asked is, "If my new new thing takes off, what prevents the platform from cloning me, turning me off, and/or buying me cheap?"

In Zynga's case for instance, FB was pretty darn dependent on the advertising $$ Zynga paid them (among other factors). In Instagram's case, I believe that Facebook wished to avoid pumping up mobile app traffic that quickly. Etc.

Obviously, YMMV. The strength of the answers varies wildly, and startups often lose the bet -- even when the bet was calculated well. C'est la vie, et c'est la guerre.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


UK Student Fined By College For Flirting Site — The Zuckerberg Story This Is Not - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/31/uk-student-fined-by-college-for-flirting-site-%E2%80%94-the-zuckerberg-story-this-is-not/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+Techcrunch+(TechCrunch)

<comment><USER2> Do universities in the UK have some sort of quazi-legal powers over the average citizen?

I fail to see why he's actually listening to them at all. He has a successful product and a possible revenue stream, what the uni gonna do, kick him out?

<comment><USER3> Incidentally, that is exactly what they are threatening him with... :-/

<comment><USER2> But that's what I mean... really, who cares?

It's not like he can't attend another institution, and his product seems to have enough legs that cash won't be an issue...</comment></comment></comment>


Fred Wilson's Survival Matrix - <AUTHOR> http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2008/10/the-survival-ma.html

<comment><USER2> Wow. The lowest burn rate means spending more in two months than we've spent on Stormpulse in 2 years.

Either I'm way out of my league and everyone else has amazingly-capitally- expensive ideas, or we're the cockroach on the cockroach's back.

<comment><USER3> Are you working on your startup full time? The cost of a single person working on a startup is at least $30k/year, even if you cut salary to the bone.

<comment><USER2> We've put about 5 man-years into the project, spread out over 4 years time. That time includes 3 years of full-time effort (myself for 1 year, co-founder for 2).

To be completely thorough, we ended up spending a lot of our personal savings to pay our personal bills, which was not included in the official seed investment. Still, that only amounts to perhaps an extra $25k (so all told, we're in the $70-80k range).

With a family of four I've gone back to working full-time at a corporate employer; my co-founder has not and continues to work on it full-time, as he is single and lives a pretty spartan life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Anyone else find it weird that a VC lacks basic Excel skills?

<comment><USER5> Not to mention the inability to edit the resulting image if Excel isn't playing ball.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Captain Obvious, is that you?

That entire article and its charts can be summarised in 10 words:

Hoard cash and decrease burn rate to improve survival chances.

<comment><USER7> Metrics to slice real data are the basis of informed decisions.

<comment><USER6> Certainly, but some insights are "duh" insights and not particularly worth sharing with the rest of the world.

"Spending less money and having more money in your bank account improve your chances of survival" should be, from a VC's point of view, roundabout on the same level as "water makes you wet".

<comment><USER7> Well, lots of people fail to understand "make something people want", right? And I'm getting doubly annoyed with the "less is more" UI advice so often repeated, and then not followed!

well known and obvious to everyone != not worth sharing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Was happy to see that NewsCred is in the comfort quadrant!

<comment><USER9> I am too...oh wait, I don't have a startup at the moment. Maybe that means I should start another one...

<comment><USER8> Just read your post on your last startup - great post and seems like you learned a lot. I would really encourage you to jump in again. You sound like you're made of the right stuff! Good luck with whatever you do.</comment></comment></comment>


A calculus for causality? - <AUTHOR> http://bayes.cs.ucla.edu/LECTURE/lecture_sec1.htm

<comment><AUTHOR> Mind blowing ideas on probability theory (perhaps new only to me). A quote on the ideas applied:

Should we, in salary discrimination cases, compare salaries of equally qualified men and women, or, instead, compare qualifications of equally paid men and women? Remarkably, the two choices led to opposite conclusions. It turned out that men earned a higher salary than equally qualified women, and SIMULTANEOUSLY, men were more qualified than equally paid women.</comment>