Depixelizing Pixel Art (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://johanneskopf.de/publications/pixelart/index.html <comment><USER2> I was excited about this when it was all the rage. It speaks to me as a programmer. Some years later, I stumbled upon this excellent article by an artist considering the problem from the art perspective: [http://www.dinofarmgames.com/a-pixel-artist-renounces- pixel-...](http://www.dinofarmgames.com/a-pixel-artist-renounces-pixel-art/)

It points to the problem with these upscaled versions: They aren't any good. In the end, the artist demonstrates how to get good results, draw it again: [http://www.dinofarmgames.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/04/yosh...](http://www.dinofarmgames.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/04/yoshi-hand-drawn.png)

Of course, the algorithmic approach lets you upscale any number of preexisting games. However, I have concluded that I like the original art better.

<comment> yoz-y In their comparison [http://johanneskopf.de/publications/pixelart/supplementary/m...](http://johanneskopf.de/publications/pixelart/supplementary/multi_comparison.html) the Vector Magic results appeal the most to me precisely for this reason. For most images they look more like an artists rendition than an attempt to trace the image. Which is good.

<comment><USER3> when it works it's beautiful but worse cases like mario face are ruined. hq4x isn't as pretty but seems more consistent over the whole gallery of examples [http://johanneskopf.de/publications/pixelart/supplementary/m...](http://johanneskopf.de/publications/pixelart/supplementary/multi_comparison.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Meanwhile, over in r/gamedev, someone just released a tool that does a good job of pixel-arting regular images.

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

[https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/7ylvt9/pixelator_a...](https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/7ylvt9/pixelator_a_gamedev_tool_i_wrote_to_convert_any/)

<comment><USER5> I'd be interested to see the result of iterating on an image using these tools. Like go from high res to pixel art, back to high res etc.

<comment><USER6> I remember back in like 2010, someone uploaded and ripped a YouTube video 1000 times and then edited the natural degradation of the compression. Went from perfectly watchable video to horrible static-y mess.

Here it is! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icruGcSsPp0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icruGcSsPp0)

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the link!

This may sound crazy, but I wonder if there's a way to "automate" this deconstruction with ffmpeg...

<comment><USER7> Update: here's a one-liner that will do exactly that

 _ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -strict -2 -crf 51 output.mp4 && rm input.mp4 && mv output.mp4 input.mp4_

For better results, run the above command ten times:

 _for ((n=0;n <10;n++)); do ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -strict -2 -crf 51 output.mp4 && rm input.mp4 && mv output.mp4 input.mp4; done_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The longest discussion about this article on hacker news so far: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2578706](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2578706)

I wonder why Microsoft payed him to do develop this kind of algorithm.

<comment><USER9> Probably as a research project to see if it's worth using in HD conversions of old games, such as the Age of Empires remake that's dropping tomorrow. The algorithm seems to work well on standalone sprites, but kinda merges in a gooey way when two sprites are next to each other. The super mario example from the previous discussion shows this slightly: [http://files.jjcm.org/upscaling.mp4](http://files.jjcm.org/upscaling.mp4)

Very curious to see this as it progresses however.

<comment><USER10> I'm still impressed with the super mario example, I can't personally see anything negative about it and would enjoy playing the game with that "art style."

It's not perfect but seeing the alternatives it is a huge step in the right direction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> waifu2x ([http://waifu2x.udp.jp/](http://waifu2x.udp.jp/)) is another often- posted superresolution approach, focusing on upscaling low-res anime images instead of extremely tiny pixel art. It uses a totally different learning- based approach - however, their approach would not work with pixel art because it depends on having a set of high resolution ground truth images, and downsampling them to generate training data pairs. No such high-resolution examples exist for pixel art.

<comment><USER12> waifu2x seems to be based on Deep Convolutional Neural Networks, while the article looks like a pure handwritten algorithm and at least in this case the algorithm looks like a winner..

I am wondering whether in the future we may forget about writing algorithms altogether and instead rely on ANNs to do tasks that could have done better using hand written algorithms?

<comment><USER11> You mean tasks like computing the rank of a matrix? ([http://oneweirdkerneltrick.com/rank.pdf](http://oneweirdkerneltrick.com/rank.pdf)) ;)

Image super-resolution is an ill-posed inverse problem: many possible high- resolution images would be reduced to the same low-resolution image. However, some of the possibilities are more realistic than others. Consider a grey pixel in a photograph from real life. It's more likely that it was downsampled from a 2x2 block of grey pixels than from a 2x2 black-and-white checkerboard pattern. We apply such knowledge by adding regularization to the problem, or using a prior distribution in a Bayesian formulation.

Deep learning is very good at memorizing those priors by looking at real world data. I think, in problems where the prior is important and complicated, data- driven approaches have a big advantage over hand-engineered approaches. That does not mean they will take over every kind of problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Something incredibly similar is already built into the latest versions of Snes9x.

hq4x and the #xBRZ algorithms are amazing and fast and look nearly identical to these results.

<comment><USER14> They compare it to hq4x in their supplementary materials. Theirs is better.

[http://johanneskopf.de/publications/pixelart/supplementary/i...](http://johanneskopf.de/publications/pixelart/supplementary/index.html)

<comment><USER15> hq4x looks a lot better in the video comparison: [http://johanneskopf.de/publications/pixelart/supplementary/v...](http://johanneskopf.de/publications/pixelart/supplementary/video_multi_comparison_4x_h264.mp4)

This method still wins out though.. but interesting never the less.

<comment><USER16> I think hq4x has a slight edge because it doesn't go all the way trying to make everything smooth, still preserving some pixelation. There's actually an analog to this in denoising: if you denoise too heavily you end up losing detail. Smart denoising manages to preserve edges, giving a better result. In this case, pixels are the same as noise, undesirable, but containing useful information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Video is quite neat. [http://johanneskopf.de/publications/pixelart/supplementary/v...](http://johanneskopf.de/publications/pixelart/supplementary/video_ours_4x_h264.mp4)

Reminds me of some old newgrounds flash animations and games

</comment><comment><USER18> This page is where all the fun is. But it's also very slow.

[http://johanneskopf.de/publications/pixelart/supplementary/m...](http://johanneskopf.de/publications/pixelart/supplementary/multi_comparison.html)

<comment><USER19> Their method change too much on eyes and facial expressions in general. Also that broad sword is really blunt.

When comparing only the 4x results hq4x wins half the time. On the other half hq4x is a close second and generally looks alright. However in some cases the vectorized ones are pretty bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It looks...weird? Cartoony and almost Picasso-y.

Boo and Bowser look great. Mario and Yoshi look terrible. The detailed pixel art and gradients just don't carry over. The shapes of the outlines do, however.

Scanlines IMO look the best for video games, because it also tries to simulate the medium they were originally presented in, not just the graphics data behind the images

[https://imgur.com/wtxyA2d](https://imgur.com/wtxyA2d)

</comment><comment><USER21> A real-world example of this technique shows up in ColorDMD, an LCD to replace DMD displays used in pinball machines from the early 90's until just recently. Most of the displays were 128x32 with 4 (and later 16) brightness levels.

ColorDMD first had artists create color overlays for the images and animations, and then emulated the display with colored dots instead of the red/orange color from the original DMD.

A later firmware release included upscaling, with some impressive results. This thread on Pinside (a pinball discussion site) shows some examples from the game "The Simpsons Pinball Party". I've linked directly to a comment that shows an original rendered DMD frame along with colorized versions with and without upscaling.

[https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/colordmd-unveils- new...](https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/colordmd-unveils-new-hd-color- upscaling#post-2218723)

</comment><comment><USER22> I like the aesthetic of hq4x in a lot of them, it's a little less loopy.

</comment><comment><USER23> Every time I see this paper I'm always disappointed that there doesn't seem to exist a usable (open source or otherwise) implementation of it anywhere.

</comment><comment><USER24> My favourite all time game is Heroes of Might and Magic III. It was released in 1999, and the art is still good, but that maybe because I'm so used to it. Ubisoft did a great job, enhancing it for the HD release in 2015, there is video showing it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AX_h3RIbSKk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AX_h3RIbSKk)

Though, one lesson I've learned (as a game developer myself), was that enhancing may introduce more visual problems. On a port of a game I worked (Playstation1 -> PC) we hired an artist to enhance the eye textures, but once the team behind the original game saw this, they told us that since there was no EYE animation in the game, and having such high-fidelity texture (for it's time, back in 2000) made all the characters look like toys.. Now if we left (and we did) the eye textures blurry, then your own eyes can't focus, and accept this better (without eye animation). I'm not an artist (just a coder), but this taught me "less is more".

</comment><comment><USER25> Is there an implementation of this anywhere?

</comment><comment><USER26> The biggest advantage of pixel art is that it takes up less resources to create a solid retro type game. Animations suddenly become a lot easier as it relies on the abstract nature of putting the imaginative efforts to the users.

By removing these artifacts, you essentially defeat that purpose. Animating vectors would take a lot more time to create something that seems professional, mostly because you have to be far more detail - analogous to moving from 2d to 3d. I personally don't see the use cases for this in gaming.

</comment><comment><USER27> How does this compare to XBR? [https://github.com/Treeki/libxbr- standalone](https://github.com/Treeki/libxbr-standalone)

</comment><comment><USER28> This site has a great page that compares various algorithms: [http://johanneskopf.de/publications/pixelart/supplementary/m...](http://johanneskopf.de/publications/pixelart/supplementary/multi_comparison.html) While none of them really produce usable results, I love the artistic quality of the Vector Magic algorithm.

<comment><USER29> > none of them really produce usable results

I don't know about that.

In my opinion the images that _aren 't_ game characters look best with their vectoriser/upscaler. Cursor 1 and Setup, for instance.

<comment><USER30> The chest blew my mind with how it seemed to accurately capture the shading and reflectivity of everything

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Many type designers deal with this as part of their workflow if they work with traditional drawing tools like pen and ink. My understanding is that for classically designed fonts its often easier to redraw vector objects over the scan than to clean up what the automatic tools produce. However, for certain types of "distressed" fonts its a kind of necessity.

</comment><comment><USER32> Does anyone have an open source implementation of this algoritm? Or a just a demo? I would love to play around with it!

<comment><USER33> [https://github.com/vvanirudh/Pixel-Art](https://github.com/vvanirudh/Pixel- Art)

can't vouch for it yet, but will be giving it a try later.

<comment><USER34> A quick play around and I find myself suffering from this same issue: [https://github.com/vvanirudh/Pixel- Art/issues/4](https://github.com/vvanirudh/Pixel-Art/issues/4)

A shame, I'm really keen to spruce up some old 50x50px forum icons from where I used to hang around back in the early naughties.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> As long as using the pixel art as-is remains an option.

So many classic games have been destroyed in this process.

</comment><comment><USER36> Is there something that gets a really good result going the opposite direction?

<comment><USER37> It seems pretty trivial but I could be way wrong as this is in no way my area of expertise...but- pixelization filters in photoshop and other image editing softwares have been around for a very long time.

Even logically it is an easy leap as they're(the software/filters) most likely choosing the most common color in a given area and then converting that area to a square of that color..

<comment><USER38> Just pixelating an image doesn't really give high quality pixel art. No examples handy but I'm confident you'd see this if you tried to reverse the images in the post with the approach you outlined.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Could you take this a step further? For example, a human knows this thing isn't supposed to be lumpy. What would it take to make this look more like it was interpreted by a human?

<comment><USER40> It would take an understanding of what the image actually represents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> For the like pixel art, click here and scroll way down: [http://noirlac.tumblr.com/archive](http://noirlac.tumblr.com/archive)

</comment><comment><USER42> Is it included into DosBox already?

hq4x is included I guess, but unfortunately when you get your games from e.g. GOG, you have to tune DosBox manually every time.

</comment><comment><USER43> I love this paper ! Has anyone come up with an interactive pixel art tool using this algorithm ?

</comment><comment><USER44> Take an image, Resize 500% so you see the pixels. Save. Run it through the algorithm. Repeat.

</comment><comment><USER45> Is this work been already used in emulators filters?

<comment><USER46> Filters have achcieved similar results, but not quite with the same technique!

Or, this algorithm wasn't intended for real-time processing and creates an adjacency graph of similar pixels. Once it's done that, it will try to fit/optimize splines over the regions. Emulator filters like hqx determine each pixel's "upscaled shape" by the colours of its neighbours, usually indexed with a table.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I want to go through the research paper but am unable to load or download it. If anyone has managed to do the impossible please share a drive link. BTW which journal is this published in?

</comment><comment><USER48> A fantastic classic paper (but ancient history)

</comment><comment><USER49> Isnt that called "anti Aliasing" :-)

(just kidding)

</comment><comment><USER50> (2011)

</comment><comment><USER51> Gotta say, I really like those PhotoZoom 4 results, aside from some of the fringing artifacts. They seem to preserve a lot more of the detail, whereas the presented approach focuses more on eliminating noise.

</comment><comment><USER52> (2011)</comment>


The 9 Characteristics that Make Bitcoin Money - <AUTHOR> http://www.thegenesisblock.com/refuting-the-ecb-the-9-characteristics-that-make-bitcoin-money/

<comment><USER2> Some small disagreements. The writer seems to assume that fiat money necessarily refers to paper, and thus gives it a "neutral" rating for durable, portable, and storage. But if we think of fiat momey as credit extended by a national bank (in the U.S., the Federal Reserve), then I think it gets higher ratings in these categories.

Also, I wonder about the "yes" given to bitcoin under "durable". If I drop a piece of gold, then someone can pick it up and use it. Now, I don't know much about the technical details of bitcoin, but I wonder whether it is possible to lose a bitcoin in such a way that no one could "find" it again -- at least not without solving some hard mathematical problem.

Does anyone know?</comment>


Crowd Funded Bitcoin Mining - <AUTHOR> http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/bitcoin-prospecting/x/4081716#share They are honest about the risks, and the numbers look right.  Pretty cool idea <comment><USER2> This is either really neat, or the latest Ponzi scheme.

Has this been done before?</comment>


Why Zynga Failed - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/05/more-competitors-smarter-gamers-expensive-ads-less-virality-mobile/

<comment><USER2> I guess this is a pretty good example of the difference between a business built based on "innovation" vs "extraction". With innovation, you consistently make new and exciting products and your customers are really happy. With an extraction-based model, you corner out the market, and then you impose access fees, taxes, etc on the users.

Instead of going with innovation, Zynga decided to go with extraction, and they are now paying a heavy price. Farmville, Cityville, etc, are all essentially just the same game. They add clicks and beeps to get middle-aged housewives to pay $5/month for virtual items and I guess it's simply not sustainable.

As a side note, I've been to Zynga's headquarters in SF. The offices are beautiful, and spacious. My friend pointed out a human-sized statue of the Zynga's dog that was repainted for something like $10-20k because apparently the CEO didn't like the color. You can walk around and see a lot of dot-com waste everywhere. We went to one of the snack areas, and there were opened bags of organic chips just laying around. Apparently, they have an office- supply vending machine filled with $100 wireless keyboards, mice, etc, that people just take whenever they want.

As an (unhappy) investor, it certainly looks like there is a lot of room to cut the fat at that company, so maybe they can slash their costs relative to their revenues and turn it back into a viable business.

<comment><USER3> The story about the office reminds me of one of the smartest people I have ever worked with, an investment banker.

His job was to research, audit and credit check companies in developing economies. He told me how within a few minutes of walking to the lobby of a company headquarters he could with some accuracy judge how the business was operated.

Lavish spending on insignificant things was a sign that there were inefficiencies or problems elsewhere. for eg. in one case a Russian investment fund had a large 3-level high marble lobby with a large bronze statue of the founder. Turned out that they were hundreds of millions in debt rather than wildly profitable as they had mis-priced assets.

The other anecdote he shared was that there seemed to be a high correlation between businesses that hired young, attractive secretaries in short skits and accounting fraud.

<comment><USER4> You need good skits if you run a smoke and mirrors operation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think it's simpler than that.

Fundamentally, Zynga's business model and products did not line up with the interests of either its host platform (Facebook) or its end users. Its revenue model was also, at its core, coercive and failed to provide real value to its customers.

All of the points listed in the article, while accurate, are IMO only symptoms/manifestations of this very core failing. This is also the general case that we can learn from - short of having a government-granted monopoly, if you fail to provide real value to your customers, you will fail.

<comment><USER6> There is an interesting parallel to the Zynga model and before you think I'm being too extreme, consider my opinion nihilistic in the sense that I don't believe Zynga is or has ever been Evil.

Zynga was a casino. The games offered no real value to their consumers but neither do casinos. The only reason why you continue to play and pay for in game purchases is to get back the high of doing something well; you want to feel the rush of winning.

Their main fault wasn't that they did this, it was that they couldn't do it well enough. Addiction's downside is that gains are subjected to the law of diminishing returns. Basically, that your happiness is logarithmic. In a casino, they've overcome this logarithmic challenge naturally, by allowing you to put in an infinite amount of money. The gains are still logarithmic, hence why people can go from gambling $20 to losing their house in short order but Zynga could never figure out how to replicate this in their casino.

I think this wont be the last time we see this model in gaming, but the next business will first need to solve this problem: if you make money through addiction simulated behavior, how do you overcome the log returns associated with it?

<comment><USER7> I spent a number of years of my youth in Las Vegas and I think that between this 'Casino' comment and potalicious' comment you've captured a lot what looks like the core issue to me.

Slot machines (especially electronic ones) are fascinating in their ability to have their payout 'tuned'. And slots typically pay out 98 - 99% of the money they take in. But what is also true is that there is a sharp 'knee' in the curve between where people sit and play slot machines for hours, and where they leave immediately after they lose their money.

The weird not immediately obvious thing, is that slots that let you 'win' a lot encourage play. When someone is sitting there and 'winning' and up 50% on their night, and then lose back to being 50% down will keep playing to 'get back' to that winning state. But people who just win enough to slow their exhaustion of cash stop when they run out. They never had a time when they felt like they were 'ahead' they just watched their cash get smaller and smaller.

New Casino owners who would get scared about big slot payouts would worry, "What if everyone takes their winnings and just leaves?" which is a legitimate worry, but you have to believe the statistics are legit and the payout is 98%, not 100+%. As it turns out those winners brag which brings in more people. And as Steve Wynn once said, "Slots make money on the quantity of the players not the quality." Meaning that the more money that goes through them the more his cut of the output.

Zynga appears focused early on revenue generation per player but not as function of all players it seemed, rather as a function of single players. By tuning the production of individuals through gameplay tweaks the over all experience is compromised such that they recognize they are being exploited and that takes away the 'fun' part of playing. At some level everyone knows they are funding Zynga (or a Casino) but they do it willingly because its 'fun'. A very fine line be 'fun' and 'not fun' when the value goes down.

If Zynga could recruit Pichette away from Google it would probably help their bottom line tremendously.

<comment><USER8> Great discussion. It's really hard to get an objective discussion about Zynga around these parts.

Looking from personal experience with casinos, my gut instinct tells me they are definitely dangerous, but the one thing that tempts me to play is the cool factor around them. You think Zynga would do well to try and create an aura of coolness and sophistication around their upcoming games?

<comment><USER4> Vegas decorates casinos and creates movies and books with beautiful wealthy patrons. Zynga can't do that until virtual reality consumes us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I feel so bad for my friends who work at Zynga. They all talk about how the company isn't as bad as everyone makes it seem, and stock clawbacks are reasonable, and Pincus gets a bad rap. And then on Facebook, they all gleefully announce the release of Farmville 2.

Is that really the conversation you want to have whenever you talk about your livelihood? And do you want to be the only one spamming me about Farmville, because your company makes you, and because I have everyone else who ever did that turned off?

</comment><comment><USER10> Simple, they make dreadful, shitty shovelware. Failure is hardly surprising in that case.

</comment><comment><USER11> I may get downmodded here since I'm drawing upon vague memory only, I had the impression that Zynga from an employment perspective was run more or less like a slave ship. Surely developers working under a terrible management environment has some impact on a company's ability to recognize and quickly adapt to market changes ?

</comment><comment><USER12> I think a fundamental assumption in this article is flawed: "The most popular games are still pretty simple, but mid-core games like strategy simulator War Commander are gaining steam. Some people who used to be content clicking FarmVille crops have moved on to more complicated games."

So called "mid core" games on Facebook are generally male focused war/strategy titles. Most Farmville/Cityville, etc. players are women. They haven't "moved on" to more complicated games. They've just grown tired of the same formula.

</comment><comment><USER13> Well, Zynga and co. did this to themselves. They spammed the walls to no end, so Facebook just had to axe them. If they didn't overabuse the game posts so much, people wouldn't be so pissed and they wouldn't shut the channell down completely.

More "philosophically" speaking - I am just thinking if this is not a case of preffering short term profits - "Send as much spam as possible!" - which, however, hurts in the long term (now the game posts are essentially useless).

</comment><comment><USER14> The best part is, they can't even oust Pincus to try something new, can they? He has a controlling share.

Be cool if Fred Wilson, or another one of the early investors, would make an appearance to explain why the hell they thought dumping this on the public was a smart and/or credible thing to do:

 _"Look at the list of the Zynga insiders who cashed out this quarter to the tune of $516 million, it's chock full of A-list investors like Fred Wilson, Reid Hoffman and Silver Lake Partners. So the narrative right now is "The insiders dumped that stock at the exact right time." I want to flip that and say "The VC's have sent you a term sheet for an investment." Consider the rationale for fiduciaries like Fred Wilson, who turned a $5 million investment in Zynga into almost $400 million."_

[http://blogs.marketwatch.com/cody/2012/07/26/the-venture- cap...](http://blogs.marketwatch.com/cody/2012/07/26/the-venture-capitalist- angle-on-zynga/)

Next time someone brings up Wall Street, they need to take a step back and realize this behaviour is happening in their own back yard.

</comment><comment><USER15> All they have to do is decide to become a real game company and they have a shot at a turnaround. They've got the money, people, and resources to do it. What they (probably) lack is the conviction it would take to focus on the long-term. It'd involve firing most of their staff and massively scaling back the entire company for the foreseeable future.

</comment><comment><USER16> I think there is some karmic balancing going on here.

Zynga was great at marketing but I doubt that anyone that matters at Zynga has ever had an original thought about game play. If they can't buy the company that has the game idea they simply rip them off by copying game play almost down to the last detail.

</comment><comment><USER17> I really despise their spammy apps, but Zynga has a billion dollars in the bank by making facebook games. The fact they did so well in the first place is nothing short of amazing.

Failure is such a strong word. I'm curious how many successful startups even came close to this.

<comment><USER18> If success is measured by money in the bank, let us celebrate the wonders of our criminal class! El Chapo - now there's a CEO success if I've seen one ;-)

Money != Value

<comment><USER17> There are many ways of quantifying success. But regardless if you're a gangster or a shrewd business man, if your business made you (and your shareholders) filthy rich, it's not that far fetched for it to be considered it successful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think it is shift in focus that is the root cause of this issue. There are plenty of avenues for online gambling as well as real ones, where they extract money out of the wallet.

However, the question is in exchange for what? As long as the focus is on the entertainment quotient I think these businesses do just fine. The moment the focus of business shifts to just extract every possible dollar out of its users, people get smarter & just leave. This is probably what is happening with Zynga.

</comment><comment><USER20> Why Mark Pincus failed?

Or did he? How much did he make from the Zynga "failure"?

</comment><comment><USER4> Someone please make a web app that shows men how much Pincus and Wilson and co stole from me via selling this junk IPO to my mutual fund / 401k / pension against my will.</comment>


Anyone can lock you out of Instagram forever by logging in as you incorrectly - <AUTHOR> Discovered this by accident, and proceeded to get locked out of my Instagram account forever. There's zero recourse for support.
I got my password wrong a few times. Forgot I had changed it. It locked me out and asked for a verification/security code which they would email to me.. except they didn't.
The support FAQ said to try resetting my password, it let me, but then still wouldn't let me log in without the security code. I hit resend dozens of times over a week, never got one (but I DID get the password reset and other emails, so it's not my email end).
Some quick googling shows this has been the case for YEARS. Quora, google support, Instagram "support" (a Facebook page that ignores all messages) all have threads of people asking/begging Instagram to fix this going back for multiple years.
So basically.. anyone can go and purposely login wrong to another account a few times, and lock them out forever!
Instagram used to have a process for hacked accounts and a process for contacting them.. all of that has been replaced with a FAQ on Facebook.com that basically says "Having login issues? Reset your password!" and that's it. It doesn't even mention "security code" anywhere if you search.
More and more companies are going the Google route for support. If it's not in their FAQ, then post to a public support forum where fanboys will echo the exact same FAQ answers back at you (with a free dose of attitude added) and if your issue falls outside the FAQ, too bad, make a new account and lose all your (potentially YEARS of) contribution to that platform.
What's the point of using/contributing to ANY Google/Facebook platform when there's zero support, and you can lose EVERYTHING when you trigger some automated system with zero human oversight?
Is Facebook abandoning Instagram? Or are they really this arrogant? <comment><USER2> Is there a way to link multiple email addresses to one single instagram account? Either through facebook or instagram directly? Looks like the security code service might be consuming a different email address. Maybe double check ALL your email accounts? Maybe you created an email account one day just to signup to FB/insta then forgot about it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Catchall email on a dedicated domain for this particular account. It's why I was so annoyed to lose this account. I have <InstagramUsername>.com with a site on it relevant to the account, so now I have to find a new username with available .com, migrate the site, the content, and start a whole new Instagram feed.

All because I got the password wrong.

Plenty of people and businesses depend on Insta. In my searches for a solution I've seen support threads of major businesses with 10s of thousands of followers who lost it all due to a bad login.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Do they have a bug bounty? This is a potential DOS attack.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll look into it, thanks. I'm sure someone else has already submitted it by now if so. According to Quora and Reddit threads this has been going for at least a few years.</comment></comment>


UX Lessons from Weebly - steve-benjamins http://www.sitebuilderreport.com/blog/ux-lessons-from-weebly <comment><AUTHOR> Steve - general comment about your website. Good site and great reviews. I refer people to website builders all of the time (I know the HN crowd will probably frown on that comment). Good to see someone has taken the time to do a thorough review of all of them.

One thing you might want to add to your reviews is "ease of sharing". For the non-technically inclined (your audience) being able to share content is pretty big and is one of the major reasons I tell people to stay far far away from Wix. Example: [http://imgur.com/TS1Z2Vq](http://imgur.com/TS1Z2Vq) No images, no content, etc. Not to mention, from a technical perspective Wix is a nightmare.

<comment> steve-benjamins Thanks, I appreciate the comment :)

Interesting point- ease of sharing is not something I had investigated too closely before. Thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> It actually looks quite nice. Does it allow for further html edition? If so, is the html output _semantic_? While most editors' html is gibberish, so is the interface, so maybe Weebly also got this right

<comment> steve-benjamins Yup, Weebly allows you edit HTML. Some (outdated) documentation showing the HTML editor is available here: [http://themedocs.weebly.com/index.html](http://themedocs.weebly.com/index.html).

Weebly's markup is good- especially compared to most website builders markup with poor markup (as you pointed out). Wix probably has some of the worst markup among website builders.

For reference, here's an example Wix website: [http://s99433.wix.com/stevebenjamins](http://s99433.wix.com/stevebenjamins) and here's an example Weebly website: [http://weeblyreviewed.weebly.com/](http://weeblyreviewed.weebly.com/). You can check out the markup using your console.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Do you do okay with click throughs via share-a-sale?

[http://www.shareasale.com/](http://www.shareasale.com/)

</comment><comment><USER4> If you don't know how web pages work, what pixels and padding and color values mean, all of these solutions suck. Small business owners, students, and even "computer savy" people have a hard time with this.

> Look how easy Weebly is to use compared to these other implementations!

Weebly isn't a joy to use. It's just easier to use than most of it's competitors, which is what this article focuses on.

There is room for improvement here...

<comment> steve-benjamins I don't understand your comment?

To be clear: not all website builders suck. Weebly and Squarespace are two examples of very good website builders.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You left out Squarespace - whose site editor is amazing. Was this on purpose or just an accidental ommission?

<comment> steve-benjamins Not sure I understand?

The article is an in-depth look at Weebly. The bad examples are meant to show how easily a website builder's interface can get ugly. Squarespace wasn't included as a bad example because it has an excellent interface. In fact Squarespace and Weebly are the only website builders I've given a perfect score to in my website builders guide.

<comment><USER6> How do you feel about Webflow? I haven't used it personally but from what I've seen (watching over shoulders) it is more technical than most builders but very solid. The interface actually reminds me of Weebly, like expert-mode Weebly.

<comment> steve-benjamins Unfortunately I haven't spent enough time in Webflow yet to say. But it seems thoughtfully designed. I'll have to do a review of it soon!

<comment><USER6> That's very fair. I look forward to it! I enjoy your reviews so far, the trend of legitimately useful sitebuilders is interesting. I yearn for a return of the geocities days, when everyone was pumping out lame websites instead of social network profiles.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hearing music with Lisp at Stanford in the 1980s - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=6D6uBIFv1J4#t=140s

<comment><USER2> [https://ccrma.stanford.edu/papers/techniques-note- identifica...](https://ccrma.stanford.edu/papers/techniques-note- identification-in-polyphonic-music)

For the details.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The segment is short on details, but it's incredible given how long ago this was. Writing something like this today would be challenging. People here often talk about how powerful LISP is, and I thought this was an interesting example of that.</comment>


Effing the Ineffable - <AUTHOR> http://www.bigquestionsonline.com/columns/roger-scruton/effing-the-ineffable <comment><USER2> "There is nothing wrong with referring at this point to the ineffable. The mistake is to describe it."

I don't see why it's a mistake to try to describe the ineffable, nor do I see any reason why describing something makes it no longer ineffable.

I hear people saying the latter a lot, but I've never heard any justification for it.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you consume noisy financial news? - <AUTHOR> TLDR: Short of putting together an aggregator...how do you attempt to grapple too much noise from financial news sources?  Is turning them off the best bet?
From a national (USA) perspective I see people obsess over the markets (as they should given it's their life savings at play).  My observations is that the older crowds watch cnbc, fox business news, or NBR (rip [1]).  In bad times watching this news brings a sense of panic to the boomer.  In good times it still just raises their blood pressure.
~15 years ago I would read the financial times and watch Nightly Business Report on pbs after school.  These days I stick to headlines and conspiracy theories... doubling down on surfacing sources through duckduckgo and twitter.  I use the !bang feature so as not to limit my results to bing.  Certainly not ideal.  This results in much of the financial news I stumble upon seeming like a WWE act[2].
Are there any Paul Kangas like sources that I'm missing other than r/wallstreetbets?
[1] NBR is no more: http://nbr.com/2019/12/27/message-from-bill-griffeth-and-sue-herera/ https://variety.com/2019/tv/news/pbs-nightly-business-report-cease-production-1203401018/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_wrestling#Dramatic_elements <comment><USER2> > _Is turning them off the best bet?_

Yes.

> _From a national (USA) perspective I see people obsess over the markets (as > they should given it 's their life savings at play)._

Warren Buffett, John Bogle, and various other investing "gurus" would disagree with you here[1][2].

There's a great deal of evidence that day-trading, (individual) stock-picking, and generally trying to make predictions based on subjective market data is ineffective.

Many of the investors who succeed in this arena are using HFT, better predictive algorithms than we have access to, and a short-term mindset[3][4][5].

If you want to protect your retirement assets, check out Bogle's books, Boglehead communities, and other passive-investing strategies. These don't forbid anyone from active investing, but they say to minimize your active bets, never listen to brokers/money managers, and stick with industries you know well.

1\. [https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/08/warren-buffett-says-he- never...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/08/warren-buffett-says-he-never-tries- to-time-stocks-i-never-have-an-opinion-about-the-market.html)

2\. [https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/13/what-warren-buffett-and- kevi...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/13/what-warren-buffett-and-kevin-oleary- say-to-do-when-the-market-tanks.html)

3\. [https://www.fool.com/knowledge-center/what-is-the-random- wal...](https://www.fool.com/knowledge-center/what-is-the-random-walk- hypothesis.aspx)

4\. [https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0113/has-high- fr...](https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0113/has-high-frequency- trading-ruined-the-stock-market-for-the-rest-of-us.aspx)

5\. [https://seekingalpha.com/article/2125833-how-to-beat-high- fr...](https://seekingalpha.com/article/2125833-how-to-beat-high-frequency- traders)

<comment><AUTHOR> JL Collins [1] has a great talk at Google I discovered while perusing youtube[2]. He taps into Warren's advice of not watching the markets too closely (mentioned in your second link).

[1] [https://jlcollinsnh.com/manifesto/](https://jlcollinsnh.com/manifesto/) [2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T71ibcZAX3I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T71ibcZAX3I)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Keep in mind that most news is picked by editors for its entertainment value not to inform. People seem to be attracted by negative news so that's what's mostly on all news programs. Yes it's important to know bad news but when we are flooded with it it's impossible to know what's important. It's best to stop consuming the constant news cycle. It's best to teach your self thru books and be selective on what you watch.

</comment><comment><USER4> Don't.. it's mostly noise to be honest. There are good financial commentators (e.g., Matt Levine) but most financial news is just noise

</comment><comment><USER5> Learning to read financial reports, or at least summaries is a great tool. You can't get more unbiased than reading a 10-K from sec.gov.

</comment><comment><USER6> Like any other "news" (aka native advertising) just ignore and continue as usual.

</comment><comment><USER7> Look into Technical Analysis. Anyone that tells you it doesn't work doesn't know what they are doing.</comment>


Where Are All The Internet Sales Guys? (CarWoo YC S09) - <AUTHOR> http://carwoo.com/blog/where-are-all-the-internet-sales-guys/ <comment><USER3> Many reasons you got only luke warm response:

(1) Comments were disabled in the original post (for reference, see original post here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1945582.>) Disabling comments for job posts is not ideal in an open community. My hypothesis is that it hurts more than benefits YC companies. Pile on the fact that you're trying to hire for a non-traditional role.

(2) You're trying to hire for your core value-add. This is what founders should be owning. If your founding team can't do this, look to add a co- founder, not an employee. If your founder's aren't looking to get your customer base to a critical mass, and thus make the marketplace more favorable to both customers and dealers, what are they doing?

(3) A dangerous attitude. Your voice in both these posts lacks empathy. Your original post is highly presumptuous. Your follow-on blog post doesn't clarify things much further, and fails to provide concrete motivation/reasonings to apply.

I hope these criticisms help.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for all the great feedback. Let me comment on why I posted this.

First, we've (the founders) have been doing all of the customer acquisition work since day one... but the realities of the demands that are splitting up our focus are that none of us have the time that this role requires to focus on this properly. We know and understand where our customers are, how to reach them, etc... but customer acquisition isn't a set it and forget it problem. It requires constant attention, tweaking, optimizing and experimenting. We certainly won't be just handing this off to someone, but we're at a point where someone has to dedicate their full time and attention to the job.

100% agree that comments being disabled on job posts is limiting. That's why I decided to do the blog post... to get some feedback from the HN community on this type of role. Hopefully this is something we can talk pg into changing :)

The original job post I put up was actually intended to be presumptuous, I wanted to see if anyone would self select into responding with the vague details I put up there. Honestly I didn't know how to build this job post because it's not a traditional role, although from the community of founders I spend time with, it's an increasingly in-demand type of position. It's not 100% marketing and not 100% technical... The Airbnb job post focuses a lot more on the technical side of things and knowing that HN is a more technical crowd I wasn't sure how to position the marketing side of things.

I'm going to re-do the job post after hearing all the great feedback both on our blog and on HN. The typical stuff about why someone should apply will be included...

Thanks everyone.

<comment><USER3> I am glad you found the comments helpful.

I think your response here helps develop the position more clearly. Nevertheless, I think you bring out a good point yourself, "HN is a more technical crowd", and as such, another reason for a poor response to the opening maybe a poor fit for this community. You may need to locate a better channel to acquire your acquirer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's called affiliate marketing, and thousands of people do exactly this for a living full time. All of the affiliate marketers who are any good work for themselves driving traffic to others for commission on every lead or sale, or creating their own products.

The people who are good at driving traffic are driven, entrepreneurial, and have the hacker mindset. Of course they would prefer working for themselves without an upper bound on their earning potential.

The fact is that, if you're good at driving traffic, there are still tremendous opportunities for you out there, and you can earn much, much more than any salary could pay.

I actually emailed you with some advice about hiring someone like this based on my experience in the industry, I'll repost it here:

 _Ranking experience by preference, I would most prefer a candidate with affiliate marketing experience, next someone who managed SEM/media buys for a large performance advertiser, and finally someone with agency experience. Stay away from people who have only done branding, they will eat your money. Also, I know you're looking for a hacker, but I think the most important factor in running internet marketing campaigns is knowing how to sell. Identifying your target market and what their pain points, wants, and desires are is paramount. Optimizing, split testing, etc is important but secondary compared to marketing fundamentals. Finally, watch out for "social media experts". Value applicants based on how many conversions they can bring, and how much they can spend effectively, not on how much they can engage in conversations. Until you can pay your vendors in Twitter followers, all that matters is getting quality traffic and sales._

I think the fundamental issue is that you're framing this as a job for hackers. For whatever reason, most hackers have a distaste for marketing, and would probably be loath to apply for a marketing-type job. They would rather be building things and not worrying about things like positioning or segmentation.

<comment><USER5> You could not have said it any better. I've spent the last year learning this skill and it is a lot harder than one would generally think. It isn't something that you can just do as an afterthought after you are done hacking for the day. There is no reason why someone who is really good at it would work for anyone else.

There are plenty of so called "internet marketing gurus" (the Frank Kern's and Mike Filsaime's) who teach it but most of them are no good. They have only ever sold internet marketing informational products to other aspiring internet marketers. If a potential hire has only sold internet marketing products this is an immediate 'no hire'.

Good luck finding this person!

<comment><USER6> "There is no reason why someone who is really good at it would work for anyone else."

That's really just a false statement, in my opinion. That's like stating why would any good programmer ever work for anyone else?

Honestly, there are a ton of reasons.

For example, a programmer may wish to work at Facebook so their code is put in front of 500 million users. If they hack something on their own, that's likely not going to be the case.

If a marketer wants to test his/her conversion theories against a large volume of traffic, they either need to spend LARGE amounts of their own money for paid traffic, or build up a large audience of their own. Again, an unlikely scenario.

Whether you're a marketer, or a programmer, or whatever else, working at a company/startup can provide you with opportunities that do not exist on your own.

Those are some of the prime reasons people work for others, no matter their trade...

<comment><USER4> And there is the distinction. Spending large amounts of their own money to get massive traffic is EXACTLY what good marketers do. They can get the exposure a company like Facebook gives developers. A great marketer can build something in a week that can make him hundreds of thousands of dollars. The best hacker, unless he has marketing support can not. This is not to say hackers are less valuable than marketers, nothing is further from the truth. But, in some cases, top marketers can create a lot more value for themselves more quickly than top hackers.

<comment><USER7> I would say that hackers are a lot less valuable than marketers. Of course at the top levels you're measuring apples and oranges but if you need someone to create a product and you're willing to pay $150/hr you can probably hire a good hacker. If you need someone to create a marketing strategy you may have to pay $500/hr.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As an internet sales guy, I would preface this by saying most startups should put more of their marketing budget into improving the product experience. I don't think you're communicating your benefits to me the right way in your tagline, your CG video feels like a commercial and shouldn't dominate your splash page (splash tutorial videos are a cop-out and turn off users), I wasn't nearly invested in your site to go through the email signup barrier, and your car selection process isn't fun and provides very little feedback (almost useless if I don't know exactly what I want). Your pricing model turns me off- the only real difference I can see from the descriptors is that you contact 1-3 more dealers. Maybe have one option be fixed pris and the other a % of the savings on MSRP?

Second, I take Bart to work every day. I was pissed I got a yellow envelope on my car on labor day (free parking day), pissed when I complained to Bart employees about getting a parking ticket and they had no idea what I was talking about, and pissed when I finally opened the envelope and saw "This is a PR stunt by CarWoo, let us find your next car and we'll pay your next parking ticket." Now, because I'm in the industry and know who you are I had a laugh about it, and because I'm in PR I get it, but you caused me too much inconvenience for me to "like" the brand, and you failed to communicate your benefits so I didn't even bother going to your site even though I am currently in the market for a car. Okay, I "get" the internet, hopefully you got some buzz, but is this what you mean by hack-centric marketing? Was it so successful you want to hire someone to do this ad infinitum?

I don't really think PR is something you can usefully hack as an outsider, especially if your market positioning and messaging is weak. The reason why you can't find an Internet Sales Guy like you can a Technical Product Building Guy is because you're really talking about successfully coordinating your channel strategy, marketing strategy, PR strategy, SEM/SEO, everything that goes into customer acquisition. You need to be doing these things better, but you're not going to find someone to magically do it for you unless your paying for experts.

<comment><AUTHOR> Apologize about the parking ticket thing. We actually did NOT do that PR stunt in a large scale. A couple people tested it at the train station and we had several complaints so we decided not to go through with it. Sorry for the inconvenience and that you were parked at that train station that day. My takeaway from the test is exactly what you said, it wasn't good for our brand and I told the team not to move forward with it in a large scale. Crazy because we only handed out a handful of those... small world. Send me an email and if you're really looking for a car, I'll comp your CarWoo! fee if you're willing to give us a second look. email@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Rand at SEOMoz wants to hire this guy. Every startup in the Valley wants to hire this guy. Many traditional software companies _desperately_ want to hire this guy. I get an email at least once a week asking for an introduction to this guy.

I know this guy.

He's self-taught, freakishly intelligent, and has long-since learned that he can either come in at nine, put up with rules which stifle his effectiveness, and make pennies of the value he drives, or he can run his own business, answer for his results only, and earn appreciable percentages of the value he drives. And he drives a lot of value indeed. ($200k is too low.)

If you want to work with this guy, you want him as a cofounder. Fair warning: so does everybody else, and he's kind of "meh" on the idea.

Of interest to everybody else: _you want to be this guy_. It is a body of skill which can be learned, and it will only take a few years and a lot of experimentation. And after you do that, the world is your oyster.

<comment><USER10> Hmm, really? This position basically describes me, and I've been debating lately how I can best pitch myself to a company as I continue to move through my career. Although like you mentioned, I'd most like to be a co-founder with a company when I make my next move.

I can get around in Rails but I'm strongest with just pure Ruby at the moment (and a bit of C, Java, PHP, etc). I understand social networks and I've done quite a bit of published research on that front. I understand customer needs and how to reach them. Analytics, datamining and split testing are fun. I like beautiful code, user accessibility, and feel that good SEO is a natural result from good coding practices and practical sense. I know how to structure advertising campaigns and what works and what doesn't. I understand how to shape a product and make decisions for building a strong infrastructure. The key is having a good product with a clear message. User data privacy is important to me. I look good in a suit, and VCs seem to like me. I can learn anything needed, and I'll love doing it. I don't mind working long hard hours and enjoy being challenged to the degree that I get bored easily if not challenged. I'm good with people and can lead a team effectively. I've got experience from working with a handful of companies now. I'm young and have few prior commitments, enabling frequent traveling when needed. I thrive off networking and knowing everyone in the room. I like taking risk. I have solid references.

About the only thing holding me back a little bit is that I've recently moved to Columbus, Ohio and I'm committed to being here for the next few years while my girlfriend finishes her PhD. At the same time, I've worked remotely for several companies and it rarely poses an issue.

Yet, I see many startups looking for a CTO or lead programmer who is the kung fu master of the code. I can understand any code you show me, but I'm more of a hybrid of marketing, business and development than just a pure developer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> No one with the actual skills you're interested in would be interested in the job you've described. We business hackers want to be involved in customer development, product-market fit, and shaping strategy for going to market.

Anyone interested in a job specifically defined as "driving a lot of traffic right now" is going to be an affiliate marketing / black hat seo / marketing douche who will not add value to your business.

This is like a "business guy" founder posting a job to HN asking a programmer to implement his tech spec. I think when you post a job to HN for business folks, you need to demonstrate a little more respect for what a talented candidate could bring to your company.

OR... you're looking in the wrong place; go post in an affiliate marketing forum.

<comment><USER4> _Anyone interested in a job specifically defined as "driving a lot of traffic right now" is going to be an affiliate marketing / black hat seo / marketing douche who will not add value to your business._

Now that's just mean.

It's very possible to drive lots of traffic without being a "strategist" or vague business guy. Strategy should be the founders' job, they may very well be looking for someone to take care of the nuts and bolts of optimizing campaigns.

<comment><USER11> I'm not saying anyone who is able to drive a lot of traffic is one of those [negative things]. I'm saying anyone interested in a job post to do that task for a startup with an unmentioned level - implied to be very low - <USER2> influence on strategy (not to mention compensation or equity) probably is.

I would be skeptical of anyone, "user acquisition hacker" or otherwise, who is confident in their ability to drive traffic of "folks who want cars" in a profitable way. That's too broad for anyone without a fortune 500 budget to remotely consider; the first task of this marketing hire should be to redefine and narrow the audience this product targets, and consider whether or not that user actually wants the thing CarWoo is delivering.

Smart marketers don't want traffic, they want profits. In hiring a marketer to deliver traffic, they're missing the forrest for the trees.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> To use a baseball analogy, you're looking for a catcher that hits .300 and 30 HR. Catcher is one of the most defensively demanding positions in baseball. Finding a player with all those defensive tools AND that can hit at an All- Star level is incredibly rare, which is why players like Joe Mauer easily get $100MM contracts.

But as other people indicated, you don't need Joe Mauer on your team. You really just need to him to show up for a few weeks, teach you some basics and give you some tips, and you can do the actual heavy lifting yourself. 20% of this stuff is figuring out concepts like how you would build an effective SEM bidding system and determine whether it's working, the 80% is actually executing (ie. figuring out the bidding algorithm).

TLDR; Find a contractor, pay him enough per hour to make it worth his while, profit.

</comment><comment><USER13> _I have a theory that most people that fit the requirements of a "Customer Acquisition Hacker" are likely trying to use this skill to their own advantage and not selling it to a company as an employee._

I totally agree. The talents mentioned in the article are right down my alley, but I've been busy using those skills to get more subscribers and traffic to my _own_ gigs. This is true for others I know who have similar skillsets (Amy Hoy stands out as a prolific example here, to me).

Doing these things full-time for other people would negate most of the reasons I do them already - like extremely flexible hours, the ability to work on exactly what I want, etc. Not only that, but it's taken >10 years of hard slog to feel confident about my abilities. It would take a significant increase in other forms of compensation (money, prestige, etc.) for me to do this full- time for someone else. (All that said, if a reputable company has $150k base plus options to invest, I'm listening ;-))

</comment><comment><USER14> I just got off a gig working for someone who is like the king of customer acquisition. _Very_ successful at it. Very difficult to work with. And this guy is only in his job because he was acquired in a buyout of his startup.

From what I've gathered, if you want someone in this role they need to get paid a _LOT_ of money. If they are good they could end up making more in commission than all your engineers' salaries combined so you need to be prepared for that...

</comment><comment><USER15> They are busy making money! My conclusion was that it was easier to become such a person, rather than try to find and hire one. Or, better yet, change the product to better fit with the market, making the entire process easier.

<comment><USER16> I'm working to become one such person at the moment. It would be awesome to be able to do so while working somewhere like AirBnB or CarWoo.

By the time I'm an expert at this, I might be making enough money that working for others isn't really what I want to do.

Anyway, I wish them success finding the right person.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> your problem was picking the wrong title for the position...noone knows what you mean by a user acquisition hacker. Should have called it VP of Business Development or VP of Marketing.

It really sounds like a position for a business guy, not a hacker guy. The fact that you require hacking skills probably turned away anyone who could do what you actually needed.

<comment><USER18> Absolutely true. I know this becuase my girlfriend just went through a long search for a marketing position relatively similar to this one. Never once did we think of putting the word "hacker" in her title even though she will end up doing a lot of web development work.

The ad might mean something to them, but it really means nothing to the people looking for jobs outside of those that read HN a lot and/or read pg's essays on redefining the term hacker. That is narrowing your search to a section of the echo chamber, which is even worse than the echo chamber.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Great post, and so true.

Unfortunately, "user acquisition hackers" are basically priceless. A hacker that builds great product is hard enough to find, a hacker that BUILDS TRACTION?! Holy God would that be amazing.

<comment><USER4> _Unfortunately, "user acquisition hackers" are basically priceless._

That's good to know, and the hundreds of startup people emailing me asking for advice on getting traffic seem to confirm the incredible demand.

I'm still wondering why more hackers don't go into the traffic generation space. There are tremendous opportunities for someone who knows how to code to use automation to scale campaigns and completely dominate a niche.

I can barely throw together a few lines of PHP, and I'm still leaps and bounds ahead of most of the marketers I'm competing against.

<comment><USER20> Can you please extrapolate on this? Perhaps this is part of the problem (I'm a programmer) -- someone comes to you and says "I need a website that provides information about my business" or "I need people to be able to chat with each other" or "make it so people can buy stuff from the site" -- and it's very clear what needs to happen (usually a database schema starts forming in my head as the client is talking). However, the "problem space" of traffic generation is not very concrete in my mind. I understand individual aspects of it, but not really able to grasp it as a whole. Perhaps this lack of "overall understanding the system" is what keeps hackers away from these kinds of jobs?

<comment><USER4> Driving traffic is so very different from building software, because you can do everything right, follow all best practices and rules, build an awesome campaign, and still fail because your competitors are doing it 10% better.

In some ways, different traffic sources are like programming languages. They each have different methods, rules, and tricks, and being a good marketer means being familiar enough with them to figure out the right tools for the job.A lot of that knowledge comes from testing and experience.

You know that you wouldn't build a chat website in BASIC and I know that I wouldn't send international RON traffic to a dating site.

It all boils down to arbitraging traffic and finding and exploiting inefficiencies in the market- you have to answer the fundamental question of "where is the amount and quality of traffic I want priced lower than it would be in a perfect market?"

Obviously, if you can build technology to answer this question in a scalable way, as I and others are trying to do, you can do very well in the space.

There's a reason enterprise-class PPC bid management tools sell for thousands of dollars a month(and 5% of spend).

<comment><USER20> Thank you for your reply. I have to say I still understand nothing more about the problem space than I did before, though :) Any stories or examples you can share to illustrate exactly what's involved?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Put a salary figure. Right now, you sound like you want an amazing performer, but are not willing to pay much (despite the claim of being well funded)

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm in general agreement with everyone else, internet marketing is incredibly in demand because unlike all other hires, it directly drives revenues. So not only do you have to compete against other companies, but lucrative affiliate marketing pulls in the best.

</comment><comment><USER23> I think another name for what you're looking for is Growth Hacker [http://startup-marketing.com/where-are-all-the-growth- hacker...](http://startup-marketing.com/where-are-all-the-growth-hackers/)

I spend a fair amount of my time doing this - but really another side of this is analytics and testing / experimentation systems. It isn't all about the campaigns.

I should also mention that my current role wasn't the result of a post but just something everyone agreed I should do.

</comment><comment><USER24> So this sounds like one of those newer types of positions that will start becoming more common. However I doubt that a tone of people have actual experience at this.

However I bet there are a ton of brilliant young hackers who could learn to do this and would see it as a sharp career move. Perhaps going after someone like this would make more sense?

</comment><comment><USER25> So basically you want a guy who knows how to make money to work for you? Am I missing something?

</comment><comment><USER26> I work at a big ad agency (400+ people) in BOS doing digital marketing and our team is asked to do exactly what your asking and I can tell you it's really really tough to find these people to do this sort of work. I mean anyone who has a site is looking for someone who can conjure up traffic & eyeballs for cheap, it's the holy grail of all advertising and customer acquisition based businesses.

As you probably know, there is a massive talent shortage at the cutting edge of digital marketing and driving traffic. There are tons of people in digital marketing but the vast majority of them are thinking about old ideas and the way things have been done in the past; all approaches that are contrary to any cutting edge startup.

So it kind of turns out that there are a ton of old ideas to growing traffic and rarely an original approach. This makes finding people a nightmare since with large or med budgets, millions of people have experience spending millions of dollars but only a handful have had any success designing high traffic customer acquisition programs at low to no cost.

I would guess a large part of this is due to the fact that everything is so new and experimental. Minting social media traffic into conversions & sales can be quite expensive and profitable on a case by case basis. Buying search keywords can work (it worked for Mint) but take an aggressive customer acquisition model at cost. Even targeted ad exchanges & DSPs bring guaranteed visibility but a certain gamble in overhead costs & trades. Affiliate programs have been around for years but it doesn't work across all verticals (tough to sell physical things, easy to get new sign ups). SEOs are barely worth mentioning since so much of it is now obvious.

In the big ad agency world, there are a lot of these older ideas being thrown around constantly but it's very seldom we or anyone sees a new or original theory to drive traffic to a particular project or new site. We're faced with the same problem startups are faced and it seems evident that the problem will continue. Ideas that generate incredible amounts of traffic (the Old Spice campaign) seem improbable before campaigns begin and blatantly obvious in retrospect. Additionally, past ideas to drive traffic applied to current projects have no guarantee that they will wildly inspire traffic in the future. It's quite rare to find an individual that has mastered the understanding of a few Internet ecosystems (like how travel websites churn traffic or eyeballs for moons at online retail) and simultaneously understand emerging marketing tactics to grow reach.

Hackers are in a weirdly challenging position because designing business systems often seems foreign to cutting brilliant code. Startups like Gilt & Groupon have no special approach to code but brilliant business systems and incredible customer growth curves since they inspire customers to share experiences for the sake of their own benefit. There is probably a lot more that could be said about these biz guys who can design brilliant customer acquisition systems but I would bet you probably find them in three categories: 1. they've already built something brilliant that they have a few VCs on speed dial for their next big idea, 2. they're brewing something already as an entrepreneur and lack desire for a job or 3. they're ignorant of their own brilliance and need a Steve Jobs to John Sculley speech to hop on board.

Last prediction: as the number of startup engineers & Y-comb type teams proliferate this talent shortage will get crazy. Perhaps PG will start asking for Google News links for "system to your advantage" examples.

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm right here!</comment>


Ask HN: Coding School Scholarships for African American Women? - <AUTHOR>

My co-founder and I mentor an incredibly brilliant and driven female programmer who has just been accepted into the G school.  She has taught herself how to code and with this 6 month program plus our ruby mentorship she'll be a highly skilled software engineer by April.  If we weren't throwing every cent we had into our startup that's about to launch beta we'd help pay for her.  Tuition is over 20k and the g school doesn't offer any full scholarships.  She is an african american woman and extremely passionate about coding because she cares about changing the ratio and because she's sees it as a way to solve huge problems.  I'm on a mission to help her find a scholarship or crowdfund her tuition- Does anyone on Hacker News know of any scholarships for her (ie not a dev boot camp scholarship, she wants to go to g school, so a scholarship independent of the coding program) or a crowd funding platform for promising developers? <comment><USER2> According to their own website, they offer a $5,000 scholarship if you happen to be born with female genitalia.

Also, semi off-topic:

> with this 6 month program plus our ruby mentorship she'll be a highly > skilled software engineer by April.

Please stop this nonsense.

<comment><AUTHOR> you are so encouraging thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You mentioned that she is _incredibly_ brilliant and _extremely_ passionate, but if she is also awesome _and_ amazing (ideally amazingly awesome or awesomely amazing) then you will have a stronger case.</comment>


Presidential Advisory Committee's Recommendations for N.S.A. - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/12/19/us/politics/19nsa-review.html

<comment><USER2> Does anyone have this document as something better than a printout on a series of postage stamps that have been scanned at a 15 degree angle?

</comment><comment><USER3> "the Agency is indispensable"

Stopped reading right there. Someone else can come along and tell everyone the rest of the story, but that's the only indication that this is a failed attempt to save face by a failed administration.

There is no "deadly terror threat."

There is no "cyberwarfare" that requires "advanced intelligence and overseas surveillance."

There are no "new threats found every day."

Tell me, brilliant White House, where are these threats? During a judicial court summary, why was there no evidence presented of any deadly threat that required this sort of intrusion? Why did a federal judge condemn the surveillance as baseless?

There might be sweeping changes in this document. I don't care. The problem isn't _with_ the NSA – it _IS_ the NSA. The oppressive establishment must be dismantled board by board. That's the only way we can guarantee our rights, because if there are any sort of changes to the NSA, they'll just be reversed in 10 years when nobody's looking.

Besides, these are just blanket "recommendations." The NSA doesn't have to listen to these.</comment>


Introducing CLydE: HackTech Grand Prize Winner [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.clydepowered.com/

<comment><USER2> I'm a little confused, is the product just the software or the 'things'/system + software?

<comment><USER3> I think that it's both!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So is there actually any product, or were the 24 hours spent making this cool video?

<comment><AUTHOR> At the hackathon we made the room. Since then we made the video and built it into my room :)

<comment><USER4> cool!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm really digging the British accent, this looks great</comment>


Commodore C64 Wi-Fi Modem - <AUTHOR> https://jammingsignal.wordpress.com/commodore-wi-fi-modem/ <comment><USER2> The trick, of course, is actually finding places with content the 64 can actually "consume" beyond just the novelty factor.

If, for example, folks started to build BBS-style communities like back in the day where they could communicate and even share files - but now with no long distance charges - that would be really cool.

<comment><USER3> I've been considering starting a Color 64 BBS on the web, in my copious free time. I ran one when I was a kid, and still have (one of) the floppy disk(s) it ran off of. I doubt it is still readable, and most of the stuff I did with it back then (piracy, phreaking, and PETSCII art) doesn't hold any interest for me now. I did write some games for it that I'd probably be interested to look at again, just for the amusement.

I have a real C64, but I wouldn't want to run it off of that, since I don't have always-on Internet or power (I travel full-time)...I'd go with an emulator running on a server somewhere. I have my doubts it would actually garner a community, however, which is the primary thing preventing me from putting the effort into it. It'd be fun to tinker, regardless, and I believe Greg Pfountz made Color 64 free software a few years back, so I wouldn't even need to pirate it to obtain it (since I don't have a 1541 or 1571 drive to read the disk, even if it is still readable).

Edit: Color 64 info here [http://www.zimmers.net/bbs/c6bbs.html](http://www.zimmers.net/bbs/c6bbs.html) Downloads here: [http://software.bbsdocumentary.com/COMMODORE/C64/COLOR64/](http://software.bbsdocumentary.com/COMMODORE/C64/COLOR64/)

<comment><USER2> Well, if you do, let me know. I'd hit it especially if you get a MUD or two up and running, although that might be more than a 64 or 128 could handle. ;) I have a "museum quality" C64 with an Ultimate II cart for storage, but also a 1541, 1571 and 1581 so I can read disks for you if you want to go snail-mail. A lot of disks can be transferred. I also have a "never used, never sold" Amiga 1200 (which I do indeed use) that I've been beefing up, since I can... CF HDD, extra RAM.

I haven't put either online yet even though there are ways out there. But if you got a BBS going, I'd partake in that. There just isn't anything out there. Everyone has moved to forum software these days (and places like HN!).

See my profile here on HN if you ever want to get in touch.

<comment><USER3> _" I'd hit it especially if you get a MUD or two up and running, although that might be more than a 64 or 128 could handle."_

I think most MUDs came about on bigger systems (UNIX systems on campuses, predominantly, but they made their way to PCs) but I seem to recall there were a couple for C64, or at least I know I had friends with C64s that logged into systems that offered MUDs. I never caught the MUD bug, though I did play a number of the games offered on various BBSes.

Anyway, with VICE, one can readily emulate a C64 or C128 with _tremendous_ resources (hard disks, huge RAM disks and expansion, etc.), so I'm certain running a MUD would be possible and reasonably usable, if any exist. In my digging, I found there's a more recent fork of Color 64 called Centipede 128, which is a native 128 application, and can make use of a lot of advanced resources, like hard disks and extended RAM.

While we're shooting the shit about this stuff, I wish more of this development was happening for C128 native. The more I tinker with it, the more annoying it is having such a low res display. Having 80 columns makes it entirely comfortable to use for almost anything, even with my modern 1080p+ habit (hell, I even expect my next phone to have 1080p or better). I use my C64 primarily with MSSIAH for music stuff, and the display is awful. They cram so much on the screen that it's hard to read (but, removing stuff from the screen would make it less useful). A C128 80 column mode would be perfect. Finding programming resources for C128 is also much more difficult. Nonetheless, I'm still looking for a reasonable deal on one. I had a C128D, which I loved, and was a real beast for an 8 bit machine.

<comment><USER4> Back in the day, I wrote a vt100/220 emulator in assembler for the C64. It ran in graphics mode using my own bitmapped font to give an 80 column display. Sadly, I don't think I have the code any more.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I had an 80 column terminal for my C64 or dialing into PC BBSes, but it was really difficult to read. It also used a custom font on a bitmap display such to cram 80 characters on the screen. I don't remember what it was called, but probably was downloaded from a random BBS. I pretty much never used it, because of the ugliness of it.

But, the 128 80 column mode was entirely usable (it was at 640x200 or 640x400 interlaced, so it was quite legible, and comparable to PC displays of the time). So, I was able to use PC BBSes comfortably from the 128, but not from the 64. I'd be happier, if more software took advantage of the 128. There aren't even any music trackers for the 128, that I can find.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I imagine it would be relatively easy to hook an ESP8266 board to the '64, and write a control interface for the ESP's AT command language - and those boards cost only a few pounds/dollars each.

</comment><comment><USER5> Having a Hayes(-like) command set/interface should be the goal of more hardware. Get rid of the in-band command switching (that Hayes has with the +++) by having a separate interface/serial-line for commands. I know some 3G wireless USB controllers do this, show up as multiple serial devices with one designated as a control channel, but it would be great if it was more common and wasn't just for modems.

<comment><USER6> Yea, I know many 3G modems also uses the Hayes command set.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It is great that they are making Wifi devices for the Commodore 64. It is Hayes command set compatible so it should be able to work with any terminal program.

<comment><USER8> Now we just need Quantum Link ;)

<comment><USER7> I would like to see someone write a web browser for the Commodore 64 using the Wifi modem or something. It would be limited in colors but it would be good to see what some websites look like on the Commodore 64.

<comment><USER9> The C64 has at least one web browser as part of Contiki OS.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contiki#Features](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contiki#Features)

I couldn't find any screenshots of the C64 version of Contiki, but here is the Apple ][ version browsing the web.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMzgp7xTp1k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMzgp7xTp1k)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to get some practical experience with ML? - <AUTHOR> I recently did my finished a ML course at my university and I've been also reading up a lot on the subject. However, I need to materialize what I've learned into some practical work, i.e., projects. My ultimate goal would be to become a ML engineer, but I feel like even to get an internship in the area I'd already need to have some projects to show.
What do you recommend? Project-oriented books/tutorials?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> One of our guys started a tutorial series on writing an AI to play the game, DOOM. It assumes very little knowledge and is a fun exercise to do when taking a break from some of the great courses posted here. It's no replacement for the excellent course work, but it is fun.: [https://www.codelitt.com/blog/doom-ai/](https://www.codelitt.com/blog/doom- ai/)

My favourite course for grasping the foundations of the concepts was Andrew NG's course (although it seems like you're beyond this now): [https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine- learning](https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine-learning)

I think the best way to learn, is to build things though. Have you checked out the Kaggle challenges? [https://www.kaggle.com/](https://www.kaggle.com/) Those will give you great practical skills.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the insight!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Have a look at: [http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~10701/projects.html](http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~10701/projects.html) for project ideas. Project A1, A2, B etc listed on the page. You can then apply the toolkit you used in the ML course and solve these and make a portfolio of your ML projects.

Kaggle could be another option.

Else a well defined problem that you may want to solve in a domain: example graphics: See some papers here: [http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~van/research/machlearn.html](http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~van/research/machlearn.html) which you could again solve in software.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks a lot for the tip!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> *I recently finished.

Sorry for the typo.</comment>


Optiver Report on High Frequency Trading - <AUTHOR> http://www.optiver.com/hft.pdf#zoom=100

<comment><USER2> I love it how people stay silent after flaming several topics on this subject in the past year.</comment>


Ask HN: Guides to Financial Forecasting? - <AUTHOR> I am putting together a financial forecast for my start up, as we are beginning to talk to investors.<p>Are there any good guides to building a financial forecast out there? <comment><USER2> In my experience what the most helpful thing to investors and you will be bottoms up understanding of how the business looks with a somewhat reasonable set of assumptions. So make a tab full of your assumptions, number of customers, cost per customer, number of engineers, churn rate.

When do you collect cash from customers? When do you pay bills? How fast can you cycle cash? (Meaning if you pay back marketing over 2 years vs 2 months) a LTV/CAC ratio of 1.5 is not great, but if you have a 1 month payback you basically don't consume cash so that's cool (these can be signs of dads though). But I would just look online for comps for the specific inputs into your model.

If you want a template you can just look at PnLs online.

All forecasts for startups are wildly wrong. But I think of forecasting as a way of valididating a strategy. Lots of people dislike the "if we get 1% of the market we will.be huge" approach, but I like at least validating if that is the case (it is not always the case).

Forecasting can also help you understand pricing. If your market size is about 10,000 buyers what do you need to charge to have a business.

<comment><USER3> > When do you collect cash from customers? When do you pay bills? How fast can > you cycle cash? (Meaning if you pay back marketing over 2 years vs 2 months) > a LTV/CAC ratio of 1.5 is not great,

i recall seeing a talk from some saas company that was really driving home the importance of how quickly the business can generate cash to pay for customer acquisition costs. i think they talked about offering plans to sign up for 12 months in advance (with a fair discount) versus monthly, with the idea that if enough customers sign up to the 12 month plan at a 20% - 30% discount then if you still get enough cash in the short run to pay for the customer acquisition costs, and enough cash in the long run to operate at a profit, you can start to pour excess cash into customer acquisition

(apologies, dont remember the exact talk)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Are you seeking help in constructing the mechanics of a model or in taking an existing model and projecting it into the future? Or both?

<comment><AUTHOR> Both tbh.

I probably should have mentioned we are B2B in an industry with very long sales cycles.

<comment><USER5> If B2B, one way to do it is estimate how many accounts, and what size, you may get on a yearly basis.

After you create your model, you can cross check it against similar company s-1 filing (initial ipo filing). They will usually include their P&L few years prior to the ipo.

You can reference their spent against yours to see if the model is realistic.

Feel free to reach out if you have more question.</comment></comment></comment>


DefCon 15 Session and Panel Videos - Batch IV - Final Batch - <AUTHOR> http://www.roysac.com/blog/2007/09/defcon-15-session-and-panel-videos.html Done! The last 25 videos of the DefCon 15 sessions and panels are now up on Google Video as well. All 125 videos are now available for watching, absolutely free. You just saved $499.00. Enjoy! <comment><USER2> I was at Defcon this year. I must say that technical content in all but a handful of talks was non-existent. From what I hear, it wasnt always like this. It has degenerated into a sad reflection of the conference that it once was.</comment>


Oracle cooks up free and premium JVMs - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/11/06/oracle_dueling_jvms/

<comment><USER2> To programmers, Sun seemed earnest about its intentions. Thats why we adopted its Platform. Could anyone name one guy like James Gosling in Oracle ? Didn't thinks so.

With Oracle, everything they do with Java seems to be slimy. Suing Google, JCP elections ( Hologic ?? ). premium for JVM . I fear this trend is to continue.

There are those who think that Oracle would continue to invest in Open JDK and continue to evolve it. I am sure they also believe that MySQl has an even brighter future ahead of it.

The unfortunate sideffect is that cool new languages like Scala and Clojure could end up as collateral damage as JVM is no longer seen as a viable and open platform.

I just might have to bite the bullet and learn me some Haskell after all !! Or GO programming language.

<comment><USER3> I think the best option for the community is to stick to JDK 1.6 and never upgrade. If people get sick of the Java language going nowhere they can just use Scala on JDK 1.6, or some sort of fork of the Java language that compiles to bytecode that runs on 1.6, etc. I really can't see any of the open source projects embracing the commercial feature set.

1.6 is a really great platform. I don't see it being obsoleted, at least on the server side, for at least 5 more years and no doubt code will live on in production that runs on 1.6 practically forever.

<comment><USER4> This is really bad idea. Java and the JVM can still be greatly improved. Closures, fixing generics, tail call optimization, module system, faster startup, etc.

JavaFX will be a nice improvement once it's integrated with Java.

<comment><USER5> Hitting a couple of your points: What about Generics is broken? For the extent of power they seem to intend to provide (forcing methods to only take a particular type, and providing syntactic sugar so you don't have to cast everywhere.

Tail-call optimization is just that, an optimization. A 1.6 compliant, open- source JVM could provide that. Same with the faster startup time.

As I don't generally use closures, and would replicate their abilities through interfaces and anonymous classes, I don't have a comment on them; and you'd need to expound upon "module system" for me to say anything.

<comment><USER6> What's wrong with java generics: erasure. "Cast everywhere" is still happening. And useful info is hidden: eg there is no access to generic type info via reflection. Another wrong thing: generics are incompatible with subtyping. (No co/contra-variance, to use the pointy headed terms)

Tail call optimization is not a mere optimization. A jvm cannot provide it and still provide conforming exception stack traces, for example.

As far as closures: you're missing out :)

<comment><USER7> Also tail call optimization changes the semantics of the language - it allows you to write code that would normally be incorrect

<comment><USER6> True, although you have to be careful about "incorrect": the code will still compile (unless there's some corner case I'm missing?), so for that particular definition of correctness it is just fine without TCO.

It just won't run (for very long). :)

<comment><USER7> I agree, but compilation is a low barrier for correctness :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have no problem with them releasing a commercial JVM with extra bells and whistles and middleware - most people don't need that anyway, and the few who do are more than willing to pay.

But they had _better_ not nerf OpenJDK relative to what it can do now.

<comment><USER9> Fortunately they can't do that. It's GPL'd, no take-backs. They could conceivably remove things from future releases, but I'd expect to see a community fork in that case.

<comment><USER10> There is no patent license in the GPLv2.

Their decision to keep it on GPL v2 is very very explicit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I really wonder 5 years from now what will be the impact of all this. It seems that Oracle's strategy is to squeeze out every bit of penny from the assets acquired from Sun, which is fine I guess, but I think they are taking it too far.

I am starting not to trust Java,MySQL and all other products, they really give me the impression that these will all be commercial-only.

</comment><comment><USER12> I wonder if Apple's decision to deprecate Java on Mac was based on these plans.

<comment><USER13> How would Apple have known about them?

<comment><USER14> Hint: The company that aquired Sun is Oracle. They have a proven track record for monetizing stuff.

<comment><USER13> I don't think Apple would have made this decision based upon a simple assumption.

In any case, there's still a free JVM available.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Just after announcing that IBM will be working with them on OpenJDK

</comment><comment><USER16> I think people are reading too much into this. Redhat has RHEL and Fedora, there is Jboss Community Edition, and JBoss Professional edition.

Nothing is nerfed, in fact the 'premium' offerings are usually behind the free versions in terms of features, but they do offer better management, upgrade options, etc.

<comment><USER17> JBoss has a long tradition of not leaving anything out of its free versions. To the contrary, as you noted, one usually does not get support for the more bleeding edge features under a support agreement (although one JBoss project group I know personally of has tended to provide that support in practice to paying customers).

I think the fear is that the "good stuff" for the JVM will only be available in paid form.

SpringSource now employs a pretty high percentage of the Tomcat committers and offers it's "TC server," a non-free version of Tomcat with a bunch of managability features on top. No one seems too upset about this. Perhaps because there are so many other servlet container choices out there?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> As much as I believe that Oracle squandered a unique opportunity to generate a lot of good will without much cost, this is not all bad news.

If I read this correctly the jRocket VM will be part of the OpenJDK and hence be open source.

</comment><comment><USER19> JRockit was already a premium JVM.

OpenJDK was already free.

This isn't really an announcement, per se, but what I like about it is that it means they're going to continue working on JRockit (that they got from BEA's acquisition).

I've seen gains of over 100% using JRockit with Weblogic, which I also worried might fall by the wayside with Oracle's acquisition.

I'm still not 100% sure on which way Webcenter is headed, and what exactly it's based on (as I'm not in that particular business anymore) -- but hopefully it scrapped all the aging AquaLogic code that BEA was still peddling as 'cutting edge'.

</comment><comment><USER20> Oracle doesn't do fremium.

All their evil aside, you gotta respect their "FU, pay me" attitude.

<comment><USER21> How is it any different from other massive enterprise focussed company (IBM, MS, et al) and why does it merit respect?

<comment><USER20> You mean, the MS and IBM that are releasing free software and generally _trying_ to create and foster communities?

Instead of MS and IBM, we should compare Oracle to Sun, and see how Sun's policies are being reversed in all public-facing fronts.

<comment><USER22> > see how Sun's policies are being reversed in all public-facing fronts.

Like "making money"?

Kidding aside, I think you can mix free with proprietary in a way that's beneficial to the community without giving away too much. Google seems to do a lot of open source these days even though there is tons of stuff they keep to themselves. They seem to have a decent image for the work they do perform.

Sun had sort of a weird image, IMO - they were kind of heel-draggers in some ways, ahead of the curve in others. More than anything they just seemed confused. I don't think that, overall, they ever really figured out open source and what they should do with it.

Oracle's ideas about open source seem to be along the lines of "take what we can, give as little as possible back". We'll see though...

<comment><USER23> Sun's revenue came from workstations, which got disrupted by PCs. Everything else drove that.

<comment><USER24> 1) enterprise servers 2) Java which drives enterprise computing which runs on any platform. Didn't these two things work against each other for Sun ?

<comment><USER2> Not really. Remember Sun's stock during the dotcom boom.

Sun failed because of poor execution. They blew the cloud computing opportunity. Their sales people did not chase orders like the HP guys did (this is for a personal experience ). Their Java application server sucked when compared to Websphere and Weblogic. They could not deliver a good story with MySQL acquisition. They let Linux get ahead of Solaris , at least in mind share.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>