Ask HN: Are non-freemium games an obsolete business model? - <AUTHOR>

I'm trying to develop my first, small game for iOS. The sensible choice would be a freemium based model - ads and in-app payments. The thing is - I absolutely hate this model.
If I were to make a decision based on my personal feelings, I'd just choose to sell it for $0.99 for the complete game.
But does my game even stand a chance with this model - I don't have any kind of target earnings. Pretty much anything above $0 would be a success, but I would be disappointed if my game didn't get into the hands of any users.
Are non-freemium games possible? Am I shooting myself in the foot by choosing this path? <comment><USER2> I like the one-time-IAP model.

You can either make some of your game (a few levels, a fraction of the overall length) free then charge for the rest. This gives me a chance to play your game, and if I like it I'll pay.

You could also add a one-time-IAP which subtly improves gameplay. Most do this as a "buy to remove ads" but the Piggy Bank in Crossy Road is a good example of a clever use of this model.

When the Honest Android Games blog was going, it would cover games with fair one-time-IAP to unlock full games, so don't feel like you're selling out because you include one purchase. After all, this was the shareware model in the 90s and that was more than fair.

<comment><USER3> Interestingly, that model is essentially the "shareware" model that games like DOOM originally used, except that the way the game is distributed (previously retailers, now app stores & IAP) has changed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There are all sorts of business models that work for cell phone games. Here are the three most common:

* Freemium - Get users then try to charge them money later

* Up front - Get paid by people, then provide them with a game

* Ad-based - Get users and then sell their attention to companies

The reason why freemium is so popular is that it makes sales much easier. Users can try a game with zero risk of spending money on something they don't like. For this reason users are more likely to download your game instead of a paid app. Once they get hooked, they are more likely to spend money. I would argue this is a good thing for users and for publishers. Users have reduced risk and publishers can get in front of more potential customers.

Fremium doesn't have to be pay-to-win or scammy. Depending upon your game, you can sell access to more levels, better AI, multiplayer support, new graphic tiles or other items that provide real value without being scammy. The original Doom worked like this... The first levels were free, but if you wanted to play the entire game, you had to pay up. The fact that the first part was free allowed it to spread like a virus and boosted its sales immeasurably.

Freemium can be applied to almost anything. I wrote a book and give away one chapter. Want the rest? Time to break open that wallet. It doesn't feel scammy at all. Folks can read the free chapter and get a feel for the type of content and quality that the rest of the book contains. Less risk for them, more money for me.

</comment><comment><USER5> Freemium certainly seems to be a very successful model, but that doesn't have to mean other models are obsolete. Important to keep in mind, though, is that on mobile app stores, there's a ridiculous number of games available, and many of them are free. You need to have a plan on how to compete with free.

There different ways to handle free or freemium:

* a playable demo (limited in features or scope, like only a few levels) with a paid full version - this is the classic model, and it's a really good and honest one. The full version could be either a separate app, or unlockable in-game (through in-app purchase or entering a code).

* a full featured, ad-loaded free version and an ad-free paid version. Popular on mobile because ads are easy to do. People who don't mind the ads might never move to full, but ads can apparently bring in a lot of money. You could even do just the ad version, but some people hate them and don't mind paying for an ad-free version if they like the game.

* a limited, ad-loaded demo version. This one is a bit two-faced and feels a bit more sleazy to me; it's simultaneously a limited demo from which you hope people will upgrade to full, but you also want ad revenue from the demo, which itself is basically an ad for the full version.

* a free limited version with multiple, staged upgrades to more versions. Sleazy if you're dishonest about this up-front; it's a bait-and-switch if they expect to buy the full version and then don't get it. But if you're open about it, buying access to more levels or more worlds could be a totally reasonable way to do this.

* a free full version with in-app purchases that give in-game bonuses. This is the big one that seems to be incredibly effective (Clash of Clans, Candy Crush, Hay Day and all those other mobile games use this). Most people will just play for free, but a small group of addicts, or "whales" will be paying through to nose to fuel their addiction to your game. Ethically creepy if you really want to milk the addiction angle.

I'm sure there are other variations that I'm forgetting at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER6> Why iOS only? Pay to play model still works pretty well on PC. See the numbers for yourself:

* [http://steamspy.com/](http://steamspy.com/)

* [http://steamspy.com/genre/Indie](http://steamspy.com/genre/Indie)

</comment><comment><USER7> How about free one level, $1 to enable rest?

Not scummy but also gives people a free trial.

</comment><comment><USER8> There is another model, though I'm not sure it works for IOS. The Subscription model. You get access to the full game as long as you continue to pay for it.</comment>


Show HN: Scan machines and automatically generate Puppet recipes - <AUTHOR> http://www.madeiracloud.com/blog/introducing-pysa-reverse-your-servers-configurations

<comment><USER2> What I've found most useful about writing Puppet recipes is it forces me to think about _why_ something is configured the way it is. I'm not really certain Puppet would give me the same advantage if I were just using it clone existing machines (where I have no idea why things were setup the way they were).

Also, how does this differ from BluePrint? [http://devstructure.com/blueprint/](http://devstructure.com/blueprint/)

<comment><USER3> Hi devicenull,

I am Thibault, Pysa's lead developer.

I will follow this discussion and I'm happy to answer to your remarks/questions.

First point, we think that this kind of tools can makes you win a lot of time writing your own manifests. In a second hand, it could help for migrations of non-production services and even analyse towards your configuration (and provide an usable output). There will be other usages, still under development, that we will be happy to present you when it will be done ;)

Second point, this is true, Pysa and Blueprint are similar in the idea, as it is said in the documentation. However, it doesn't provide the same result (and doesn't have the same goals). A quick comparison has been written in the documentation ([https://pypi.python.org/pypi/Pysa#notes](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/Pysa#notes)).

Don't hesitate to post any other remark, question or requirement.

Regards, Thibault.</comment></comment>


The Last Aryans of Ladakh - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20190502-is-this-the-last-of-the-aryans <comment><USER2> > the last generation of pure-blooded people and holders of possibly the only > untampered gene pool left in the world.

I'm no geneticist but I wonder if such statements have any scientific value or even meaning.

What is an "untampered" gene pool? The article mentions that they are likely to have migrated there from somewhere. Their existence was a secret to no one in the region. That they may have had a high rate of intermarriage for centuries due to relative seclusion seems likely. But is that tantamount to being "pire blooded"...

<comment><USER3> > I'm no geneticist but I wonder if such statements have any scientific value > or even meaning.

There's no basis for that usage. The writer just used those terms to catch the attention of people who are intrigued by the largely fictional concept of "pure-blood". At most, they might have a high concentration of particular traits due to marrying only among themselves for a long time.

The ancestry that the article itself purports for the tribe - moving from Central to South Asia via the Indus Valley - would mean they intersected with several different populations along that route. That route is through the crossroads of Asia, so it's very unlikely that they are "pure-blooded" in the way that, for example, the Sentinelese Islanders are - separated from any other population for 10s of thousands of years.

Despite the Brokpa's current isolation, they probably share some of their genetics with nearby South and Central Asian populations, but the article provides no citations about their genetics, despite it's casual claims. This article [1] suggests that nothing is known today about their genetics at all. Curiously, it does say they are traditionally vegan.

I'm not sure that even the Sentinelese themselves are "pure-blooded" in any sense of the word, but rather they just had an earlier branching point from other human populations than most, with no contact since then.

[1] [https://sinchi-foundation.com/news/claims-of-aryan- ancestry-...](https://sinchi-foundation.com/news/claims-of-aryan-ancestry- challenging-the-lifestyle-of-vegan-and-matriarchal-brokpa/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > it comes from the Sanskrit 'arya', meaning 'nobleman', and originally > referred to a people who spoke an Indo-Iranian language and migrated from > Central Asia to India and Iran.

I thought it referred to a hypothetical group of ppl who spoke the root language of all indo-european group of languages. It didn't ever refer to a specific group of ppl that are known to exist to us, only hypothetical.

I think their name "aryans" is not related to Mueller's aryan invasion theory. Its merely a coincidence. Author seems to have conflated both of those. Sanskrit arya has nothing to do with origins of the tribe or migration from iran.

<comment><USER5> Thanks to David Reich and others like him we know for a fact the invasion theory is true due to genetic evidence.

Modern Europeans really are descended from asian warriors, the battle-axe culture[1] (or corded ware culture if you want it to sound boring), who exterminated the old indigenous Europeans about 4000 years ago.

[1][https://popular-archaeology.com/article/the-battle-axe- cultu...](https://popular-archaeology.com/article/the-battle-axe-culture/)

<comment><USER6> I read over that article, but where does it discuss extermination?

I see statements like this:

 _Professor Anthony suggests that the spread of Yamnaya culture may have been facilitated by a kind of protection racket, in which the Yamnaya warriors would offer settled communities protection from gang activity, in exchange for their vassalage._

and

 _Did this conquest take the form of a single, unstoppable wave? Certainly not. This was a process effected in a piecemeal fashion, over the course of millennia..._

The article mentions a _massive influx_ into the gene pool but I would think this does not rule out, say, subjugation of an existing population and interbreeding.

<comment><USER5> Yes, killing the men, or at least eliminating their mating opportunities, and raping the women. If there is an alternative hypothesis with greater explanatory power that fits the facts I'd love to hear it. How else could the indigenous y haplogroups dissappear altogether?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > . It was later used to refer to tribal groups who lived in the Indus River > valleys that are now part of Pakistan and India, and it is their descendants > who are said to make up this tiny minority found in the Ladakh region today.

curious, how was this link established?

</comment><comment><USER7> The phrase pure-blooded when referring to humans is utter nonsense.

<comment><USER8> Maybe so, but can you please not post unsubstantive comments to HN?

<comment><USER9> Calling out racism is unsubstantive?

<comment><USER8> It can be. That comment was.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am Aryan.. blood of Parashurama.. we are definitely not the last ones.. believe me..

</comment><comment><USER11> Aryan Theory is bogus and a fake narrative, Its sad that same lies are peddled even today</comment>


Peer-to-Peer, personal web platform: Tonido  - <AUTHOR> http://www.tonido.com

<comment><USER2> You mention a business strategy, so presumably you intend Tonido to be a business. How do you plan to make money?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Tonido offers personal web applications that run from your desktop without relying on 3rd party servers.Our business strategy is to position Tonido as an alternative to online services(cloud) and emphasize privacy, control of data and online freedom etc. We believe in it too. Is it a right strategy to become a purple cow and get traction among subset of internet users? If you think we are wrong what are the alternative strategies that we can employ? Enlighten us.

<comment><USER3> I definitely like the idea, but without seeing the platform capabilities and design goals, I can't get excited. The idea of distributed p2p applications is simple - seeing the problems you've aimed to solve and how you've solved them is what would convince me to invest time using/evangelizing/developing your platform (and open source is a requirement for the latter two).

I'd say that your early adopters are going to be other technical people that _know_ these kinds of distributed services can be built (otherwise, one wouldn't see the problem with centralized services), and would share similar requirements, but I'm clearly biased.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for your input. It is early days and we are trying to make sense of the direction of how and where we want to take it.

One distributed P2P problem we solved is the synchronization of data. Imagine N peers operating on data, adding, modifying, deleting... offline or online and then they synchronize this with each other. This all works seamlessly in the Tonido Platform. We have API that can be used by any applications to use this in their apps.

Tonido Workspace uses this stuff to make it work. It is one giant workspace that people each have their own copy and work on when they want. And everything gets synced. Tasks, Calendars, Chat, Discussion Forums, Contacts, Files. You are finally free from servers to babysit interactions.

Similarly, Tonido Photos uses the sync API in a simpler way to synchronize photo comments, ratings, tags among Tonido Group members.

<comment><USER3> A distributed filesystem is certainly the way to do this and I like what I'm hearing, but I'm still curious what the underlying capabilities of that filesystem is.

Who is authoritative for a given file? Is it a crypographic least-authority filesystem like freenet or allmydata? Or does each identity basically own a top-level directory with the others caching what it publishes?

What do identities and the identity server look like? Does the server only handle pretty name -> crypto key mapping, or is it highly trusted?

<comment><USER4> Actually, we don't base the synchronization system on the fileystem. It is based on concept of records in a virtual store. A record is a 'syncable' entity. For example, a task in a Workspace is a record, a file can be a record and so on.

There is no single authority for a record. It depends upon what the sync settings are. Say you have a record that two people simultaneously modified, when the sync happens, the conflict gets resolved based on the setting, which for instance can the last change wins or the originator wins etc.

Think of Workspace more similar to how Groove works rather than a shared filesystem.

The Tonido Domain Server (TDS) basically implements a distributed login and authority system. As you said, it basically stores a pretty name->Crypto key that can validate a particular peer and help verify the identity in case another peer is interested.

The identity server's job is to provide Dynamic DNS function so URLs are resolved as well as to handshake connections between peers. The TDS is distributed in a sense that you can run your own TDS with your identity domain(say mindslight.com) if you want to. Your Tonido ID will be then email@example.com. There is no central system. As long as they all talk the same simple protocol everything can interoperate.

What we are really hoping to get to is to the point where more TDS exist and people simply choose which one they want to create an ID on, like email addresses.

We need to write some more on this in our blog, but these days 24 hours doesn't seem to be enough. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> We plan to make money by selling the applications as Apple app store. Further, We can private label our Tonido network and domain server for enterprises.</comment>


ClojureScript Synonyms - <AUTHOR> http://himera.herokuapp.com/synonym.html

<comment><USER2> Are there any Clojure web frameworks that really embrace ClojureScript and blur the line between the server and the client like Meteor recently demonstrated? Sorry to be off-topic.

<comment><USER3> Chris Granger, of Light Table fame, has a few handy libraries. None of these are quite on par Meteor, but they are the basis for Light Table.

<https://github.com/ibdknox/fetch> \- remoting

<https://github.com/ibdknox/crate> \- html generation

<https://github.com/ibdknox/jayq> \- jQuery wrapper

<https://github.com/ibdknox/waltz> \- state machine

Checkout <https://github.com/ibdknox/live-cljs> for a cool example of using these libraries together.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I took <http://synonym.dartlang.org/> as an inspiration ;) This is a work in progress. Suggested additions, modifications, corrections welcome!

</comment><comment><USER5> This is awesome. I especially love the contrast between first-class namespaces, immutable collections, and destructuring.

Also, towards the bottom: "Ocaml, Haskell style pattern matching is a library. Prolog style relational programming is a library." core.match/core.logic is like Michael Fassbender. It's everywhere! :D

<comment><USER6> I don't think ClojureScript supports "first-class namespaces" quite yet, does it? Maybe more "first-class" than JS, but at least not the way Clojure does, with functions like ns-publics etc?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Callable Collections -> (map address [:zip street])

Should that be :street instead?

Love the sheet. Got 4 days of vacation on front of me and I'm planning to play with Clojure and ClojureScript during that time. Perfect timing.

Edit: Another one:

Iterators Uniform Iteration For All Types

"JavaScript natives are safely ?______? to the same iteration protocol" - missing word, I guess.

Would create a pull request (is that even polite/acceptable for ridiculously small things and typos?), but maybe the author is following this thread?

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the feedback. :street is getting fixed, and I fixed the missing "extend". But if you see others please do send pull requests here: <https://github.com/fogus/himera>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Awesome, when I started ClojureScript, getting even the basics down was a little tricky, but this certainly helps! Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER9> I wish this existed few weeks ago. It would be awesome if there's something similar to this but with JavaScript/jQuery translations to ClojureScript/Google Closure. In my opinion, that's the hardest part after getting the basics.

<comment><USER6> Have you checked out jayq or domina? They give you nice wrappers around JQuery and the Google Closure libs and are relatively self explanatory to use if you've messed with any DOM libs before...

<https://github.com/ibdknox/jayq>

<https://github.com/levand/domina>

<comment><USER9> Yes, I did. In the end I stick with Domina for DOM manipulation and Google Closure library for the rest. I decided to skip jQuery (jayq) to experiment on doing things "the ClojureScript way," it's only a personal project after all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Really helpful, thanks.</comment>


YouTube is trying to prevent angry mobs from abusing "dislike" button - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/02/youtube-doesnt-like-dislike-mobs-will-try-to-prevent-dislike-button-abuse/ <comment><USER2> Lets do like Hackers News does. Only selected few can downvote. Which results in unique mechanism, where the secret society of downvoters selects its new members. Which results even more weirder downvoting practices.

Me thinks it is not always beneficial to suppress wrong opinions. There was very interesting discussion about German energy equation recently, but by the time I tried to quote it, half of the opinions were gone and whole discussion was now just personal insults towards the deleted party.

<comment><USER3> Honestly I hate the downvote cabal. I make a new account every time I get the option, because it hurts discussion even when I try to be reserved in is use. It often just amplfies the already echoey nature of this great forum. It also helps me make better comments, as HN ers are always intensely critical of newcomers and low vote score accounts. The opposite is true. I see some popular HNers get worthless character attacks upvoted due to their name alone, while the unpopular opinion, or rather the only expressed opinion, is buried. I would rather hear the occasional screams of the kooks than miss the changing color of the darkening sky in our industry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Original post: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19076856](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19076856)</comment>


How to Digitize a Graph - <AUTHOR> http://bendeaton.me/2010/11/15/how-to-digitize-a-graph/ <comment><USER2> The program is actually named GraphClick. I am a happy user. One nice feature is the ability to adjust the coordinate frame to work with graph images that are distorted.</comment>


Show HN: Kipplr – The most absurd application i ever made with javascript - <AUTHOR> http://www.kipplr.xyz <comment><USER2> Very crazy.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> What do you think about it?</comment>


"Android Tools Are Horrendous, OS Is Hideous," FB iPhone Dev Joe Hewitt Tweets - <AUTHOR> http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Android-Tools-Are-Horrendous-siliconalley-175763215.html?x=0&.v=1 <comment><USER2> In other news, other developers have different opinions. He has the problem of coming FROM iPhone. If you come from Web/Windows dev to Android, it's a blast. I have some trouble with the devices, screen sizes, background apps slowing things down, etc, etc. But overall, it's very manageable, and I've been loving developing for Android.

Eclipse however.... not a fan. On my old XP box, I'll be working along and it will just vanish. No error. No crash. No stall. Just vanish. Like it traveled back in time right before my eyes or something. I've never had a dev tool do that to me before :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Agreed. (I run a product development shop mostly working on mobile projects these days).

As a former embedded Linux developer, I really really want android to knock the socks off of the world. But its not.

Problems:

Its carrier based OS update model causes hideous OS Version fragmentation.

Eclipse is so painful to use many people just avoid it and use the command line tools.

You have to write Java.

There are a dozen deal breaking quirks between basic control behaviors on the different systems.

\--

All this with the fact there are HUGE economic issues with 85% of the world being unable to charge for apps in the Android store, flooding the market with free apps, makes the Android platform a bit of a question mark.

With Windows 7 Phone going with a Centralized OS Version release as Apple is doing, I think we're going to recommend it as a secondary platform over the free Android.

<comment><USER4> Android allows you to install apps from any source; people in other countries can sell apps through other channels. Can't do that on the iPhone.

<comment><USER3> The issue is not that they can sell

It's that they can't sell easily so are instead giving away their product, effectively flooding the market with free goods.

<comment><USER5> Offering economic incentives by making it easy to generate revenue from direct sales seems unlikely to stem the flood.

If you don't like the competition then you should be happy they're limited to ad revenue in the App store, which will only be the right solution for a subset of apps.

If you've got a moral issue with American companies being slow to enable other options for developers in certain nations then you need to think of a better way of expressing that than worrying about them "flooding the market" with their products and implying that they're substandard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> -The UI designer is no good, but the other tools are great. Eclipse works great and if you don't like it you're free to build your own environment (as they are all separate and documented)

\- "[Droid X is] not THAT good. Stick with your iPhone." Quoth The Dude: "That's just, like, your opinion, man"

\- Don't like java? Don't use it. Use Scala or whatever you like. No one's gonna sit over your shoulder and tell you which tools to use.

</comment><comment><USER7> Having now developed apps for both iPhone and Android, the one thing I feel Android really lacks is a good equivalent to Apple's Interface Builder.

Interface Builder makes it pretty easy to lay out a decent-looking app GUI on iOS and not have to think about it a lot, so you can focus on the code and functionality of your app. It takes more effort while writing that XML on Android to end up with an attractively designed interface, and short of running it in several different emulators it's tough to get an idea of what it'll look like on different devices in terms of display resolution and dimensions.

</comment><comment><USER8> _Basically, it looks like there's no pleasing this guy._

I think some people are just wired this way. As much as I love most technologies I use, I could rattle off a dozen flaws in any one I use extensively. Of course, it's a waste of time to simply complain, but twitter is a great way to immediately release that tension without wasting _too_ much time.

</comment><comment><USER9> To be fair to Joe, while in the middle of presumably working on an Android application, he has been posting tweets about his frustrations with that process.

This isn't quite the same thing as a blog post or article lambasting the Android platform. I wouldn't read too much into this.

<comment><USER10> Exactly. Every developer, working on any platform, might tweet stuff like that from time to time. Coming from someone of his experience it's definitely interesting as HN discussion, but completely insane as a Yahoo!Finance story (with AAPL/GOOG charts, as if the stocks turn based on a coder's tweets..)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> There are a lot of things about Android that are annoying. Sadly, Java is far from the most annoying thing for me. Besides, if you want to write in something besides Java, you have more hope on Android than iOS at this point [1].

The most annoying thing to me is the lack of a really good equivalent to Interface Builder. Building UI's in XML is tedious and error-prone.

Along those lines, there seems to be a problem with doing the XML layouts in Eclipse. There have been reports suggesting that the layout tool is creating a memory leak which eventually leads to the 20-seconds-to-switch-tabs problem.

There are things I definitely prefer about Android versus iOS, like the Activity/Intent framework. I feel that it encourages a much more modular design.

The code signing and deployment process is also much easier on Android.

I also like XmlPullParser slightly better than NSXMLParser (though the performance might be worse), but that's just a personal preference. And if you really want a SAX parser, you have that in Android too.

IMO, on both platforms you'll be pulling a bit of hair out

[1] Mark Murphy's commonsware site has a 0.4 version of a book called _Android Beyond Java_ with an incomplete chapter on writing apps in Scala. I've never tried writing an Android app in Scala, so caveat emptor. I am also aware of some efforts to get Clojure on Dalvik, but I understand that it is very slow out of the box due to reflection.

<comment><USER12> But you can write in plenty of other languages. ASE gives you TONS of options for other languages you can use to target the Dalvik VM. Not to mention that Mono on Android just launched (a beta?) a few days ago.

<comment><USER11> Yes, ASE is great, though some would complain that not all of the API's are wrapped and that some if not all of the supported languages suffer performance hits.

That's kind of my point, really. There are already some options in the wild, and they're bound to get better, so that's definitely a plus for Android.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I seem to read really mixed reports about the Android fragmentation problem. For every report like Joe's, I see others that say developing for Android is fine. I can't get a good read on where the actual truth is.

I work in a group that does research on mobile healthcare applications. We're not a software company, so we can't afford to have a whole pile of devices here for testing. With the iOS platform, at least I can be confident things work if I can test on my iPhone and our iPod touch test units. That said, Android is going to eventually be too big to ignore sometime soon. I'd be curious what other devs around here have experienced. Maybe we should be using PhoneGap to avoid those sorts of problems?

<comment><USER11> I haven't had any device-specific error reports for the few Android apps that I have worked on, but they are pretty vanilla.

There are occasionally comments in the android-developers group about issues specific to particular phones. Seems like the Droid is often mentioned, and the thread I recall was with the camera.

I imagine it would be frustrating to get a crash report, not be able to duplicate it, and have your app work fine on the dev phone in your possession.

edit: here's the thread: [http://groups.google.com/group/android- developers/browse_thr...](http://groups.google.com/group/android- developers/browse_thread/thread/a6de0a8d755915c/417af37a54d4f669?lnk=gst&q=droid#417af37a54d4f669)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've started developing a side project for Android. My experience is very positive so far. (I'll do a Show/Ask HN when the app is done.)

The tools and SDK are pretty good. I mainly use the command line tools and Emacs. That setup works great.

The API and UI framework are fairly well-thought out. I like the Activity/View/Intent constructs, encouraging modularity and failure recovery.

The graphic API are well-designed, with good separation and combination of concepts and functionality. There are a lot of built-in supports for graphics, like bitmap manipulation and transparency support. Support OpenGL.

The emulator is pretty good. The CPU and memory profilers (profiler!) are excellent.

The choice of using Java is excellent. Since Android is kind of an embedded device, I want the compiler to catch most of the silly mistakes before running the app on it.

Things that could be better:

\- The audio APIs are kind of weak and buggy.

\- The XML layout can be a trail-and-error process. Interface Builder would be nice.

\- The build-deploy-run cycle can be long. Should have a mode that doesn't require re-installing the whole package for every build.

\- Giving a free Android phone to every developer would definitely help.

<comment><USER15> > Since Android is kind of an embedded device, I want the compiler to catch > most of the silly mistakes before running the app on it.

Sorry, but what do the two clauses in this sentence have to do with each other? Do you mean as opposed to writing all the apps in Python?

<comment><USER14> Everyone is comfortable with different language. I prefer statically typed languages because I have been burnt by my silly mistakes before. Compilers that help me in catching my mistakes go a long way. Note that I do use scripting languages but those tend to be short and throw-away-able codes. If the Android SDK requires a dynamic type language, I would have to write a lot of boiler plate unit tests to catch my mistakes. That's just my programming style, might not applicable to others.

Android being a semi-embedded device implies that application deployment is more difficult compared to web apps, where the developer can upgrade anytime he wants. That puts pressure on getting things right with fewer release iterations.

I don't mean to start a language war. I just want to give a data point on what works for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> On a more positive note, does this mean he is working on Facebook's Android app?

If so, that's great, it's really _really_ terrible.

<comment><USER17> Have you used it recently? It's really improved over the last couple of updates.

It still randomly opens my browser instead of doing things in the app, but it's added a lot of features that brought it a lot closer to the iPhone one.

<comment><USER18> All I ask is that they fix this one simple issue for us devs..

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3077289/facebook- android-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3077289/facebook-android- intent)

<comment><USER17> Well, judging by the amount of progress on the application recently, I imagine they would be receptive to fixing it. Assuming someone has pointed the issue out to them.

I haven't tried to implement any intents targeting their application.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Any one from facebook has some balls to be throwing stones. They are the owners of one of the wackiest APIs known to man and a site design so bad there are browser plugins specifically to fix it.

</comment><comment><USER20> Having never developed for the mobile phone space, do any of the 3rd party developer tools hold any promise for abstracting out some of these complexities? Has anyone used Rhodes? <http://rhomobile.com/products/rhodes/>

</comment><comment><USER21> I don't know if this has been discussed before, but... since when are tweets news?

</comment><comment><USER22> I must be the only one who absolutely loves Android, its fragmentation, its stupid little quirks and the fact its written in Java. Then again I am not a traditional software engineer / CS grad.

Edit: and he is such a cry baby! :)

</comment><comment><USER23> Reading his comments, he sounds like many developers when faced with tools they aren't accustomed to using languages they aren't competent at: Instead of acknowledging confusion and ignorance (in the polite way of saying it), turn it into criticisms of the externals.

Look at virtually everyone new to JavaScript and web development as a great example of this. Even brilliant minds, when first introduced to the surprisingly powerful JavaScript, post diatribes of dislike for it.

For instance consider-

"A bit surprised how many hoops I have to jump through to do asynchronous HTTP on Android. NSURLConnection+delegate was so easy."

So how does one do asynchronous HTTP on Android?

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/828280/is-there-an- accept...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/828280/is-there-an-accepted- best-practice-on-making-asynchronous-http-requests-in-androi)

Is that hard? What hoops are there? It is extraordinarily straightforward, and is built such that you are essentially the commander and chief of a centralized asynchronous mechanism. But yes, if you look for it to be exactly like you've done it before, it might seem Byzantine.

Android has a tremendous number of quirks and imperfections, but I see no reason why Joe Hewitt's opinion is of any significance.

<comment><USER24> I never said it was "hard", just that I was surprised that the simple task of "get me this URL" required me to work with some abstract classes for "async tasks". Strikes me as overengineering. The networking classes could easily encapsulate the threading stuff and let me just stay on the UI thread, as every other networking library I've ever worked with has done.

I've found other places in the Android SDK when, rather than simply using callbacks to encapsulate asynchronous work, I'm required to deal with the threads myself (see GLSurfaceView). You can accuse me of being "confused and ignorant" but I feel I am making a valid critique of the API design.

<comment><USER23> >You can accuse me of being "confused and ignorant"

It isn't an accusation or an insult: Every developer on the planet has recurring periods where they are confused and ignorant. I can't make any such a claim in this case, but can only point out that such public displays often grow from such temporary roots.

However yes I cede a thousandfold that Android has an endless array of quirks and nuances that seem...non-optimal. Parts of the API show their Google lineage, while other parts draw from the Java norm. And on the "quirksmode" thing, couldn't agree more.

It was the "Android Tools Are Horrendous, OS Is Hideous" bit that caught my eye: I can't imagine someone seriously developing for something they consider hideous, with horrendous tools, especially when they have shown themselves to be principled.

<comment><USER24> I am obviously expecting that in a few years time Android will suck much less, or I wouldn't bother investing time in it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> He doesn't like Eclipse and he'd prefer to write Objective-C instead of Java? Uh...

<comment><USER15> "Uh…" what? You didn't actually remember to make a statement, I think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Android SDK is horrendously overengineered.

</comment><comment><USER26> Just ordered my phone yesterday so I guess I'll find out for myself soon!

</comment><comment><USER27> _"He's not crazy about writing in the programming language Apple prefers, either. Basically, it looks like there's no pleasing this guy."_

Well, medical doctors are not crazy about McDonalds _or_ Burger King, guess there is no pleasing them divas, eh?

</comment><comment><USER28> I agree with the guy but he has seriously lost the right to talk because of piece of crap that is the FB iPhone app.</comment>


Copyrighting DNA Is a Bad Idea - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/copyrighting-dna-is-a-bad-idea <comment><USER2> Interesting that this is coming up again. Over a decade ago, we designed and built a synthetic, refactored phage [1]. At the time, we (Drew Endy, Leon Chan, and I) had discussions with lawyers about copyrighting and open-sourcing it. The lawyers we spoke with (Jamie Boyle & Arti Rai amongst others) seemed to think it might be possible, but in the end we all agreed we didn't really want to be the ones that opened up that can of worms [2-3]. Later, we (George Church and I) encoded digital information in DNA, and made billions of copies of the work [4]. One of the reasons we chose George's book, is that it was clear that he owned the copyright, he cleared it with his publishers, and so we didn't have to worry about being sued by someone.

Anyways, I think the larger point is that patents can be bad, especially for synthetic biology if they cover very enabling technologies (they can be good as well in many cases). The same argument could be made for copyright - however, having both forms of IP protection would probably make things much worse. I'm still of the opinion that it's probably better leaving things be the way they are now.

[1] [http://msb.embopress.org/content/1/1/2005.0018](http://msb.embopress.org/content/1/1/2005.0018)

[2] [http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jour...](http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.0050058)

[3] [http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=...](http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2327&context=faculty_scholarship)

[4] [http://arep.med.harvard.edu/pdf/Church_Science_12.pdf](http://arep.med.harvard.edu/pdf/Church_Science_12.pdf)

<comment><USER3> > I'm still of the opinion that it's probably better leaving things be the way > they are now.

First off, I really appreciate your contribution to the topic!

In response though, I'm curious why you think things should be left as they are. Laws around patents and copyrights allow these sorts of things, and those laws are different or non-existent, depending on where you are in the world. It would seem to be anything but something that needs to be unchanged. While I think that status quo can help avoid further problems in many cases with law, patent and copyright reform needs to be happen and is inevitable, and this is purely a case of people working within existing laws, whether or not we agree with their course of action.

<comment><USER2> IMO & IANAL: IP of one form or another is probably necessary and beneficial for bio. If you make an invention, and it's trivially copied, then you need some protection to commercialize.

There are a few options:

1\. patents -> they are expensive to get, and are medium term, but can be bad if they are trivial patents -> the biggest issue here is the non-obviousness part seems broken (as it often is in tech).

2\. copyright -> easy to get, last forever , but don't cover ideas, which is very good. That said, copyrights could have much worse consequences if they are taken advantage of (b/c of ease of obtainment, and length), and of course they will.

3\. MTA -> material transfer agreements probably are not viable for much longer... DNA and cells are too easy to write and edit now.

4\. Secrecy -> This seems like a bad idea.

5\. Something brand new -> I could think of individual policies that seem like good ideas, but I worry that I haven't thought about the ways that those policies could be captured and exploited... it seems like we are more likely to be at a better place with less risk if we can work on making the existing system better.

<comment><USER4> 6\. open-source and crowd-funding research

Requires a change of mind in the masses, though, to make this work for big, longterm projects ...

But I am positive, that we will see more of it, in the future ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Okay, this article is pretty off target.

To begin, it's a patent dispute, not copyright. It's a dispute over the process of using mRNA targeting with Cas9 proteins, not the Cas9 genetic sequence itself (which is what copyright would be).

Secondly, their assumption "Copyrights [or Patents] are intended for artistic works." is only partly true - their main purpose is to promote the progress of science and useful arts, e.g. knowledge.

Whenever you have a technique that provides value like this, there is typically an amount of work that is invested into ensuring that the process works. Expensive work. Lots of highly trained people with expensive tools and expensive supplies that you don't see unless you're in the industry.

The groups are disputing over who came up with the process first because they've invested a ton of resources into it already, and they want to distribute that cost to people who are using this new, novel process today. A better article would have been about the new first-to-patent rule, which is what the court case is really about.

<comment><USER6> Yes, the CRISPR dispute is about patents. But, as the article says in the third paragraph, "But in the midst of this debate, perhaps a more fundamental one is taking place", which clearly indicates it's talking about a different debate than just the CRISPR patent.

The issue here is that CRISPR is like a printing press when scribes were state of the art. Yes, the patent on the printing press is important, but arguably more important is what's the status of all the stuff you can write with it. Previously, synthesizing long stretches or precisely editing DNA was hard enough that there weren't many people doing it (and synthesizing long pieces of DNA de novo is still pretty niche, though there are some pushing for a massive investment in making this tech a lot easier). But as it becomes easier and people get more experienced, it's worthwhile to have already thought through and discussed these issues.

<comment><USER5> >"But in the midst of this debate, perhaps a more fundamental one is taking place - whether some of CRISPR's future products, like customized DNA, qualify as copyrightable entities."

That's the full sentence in context, and no, the CRISPER-cas9 patent dispute isn't over copyrighting the products of the technique. This author is trying to generate outrage over copyrighting DNA which this issue isn't about. The issue is over first-to-file.

Again, this article is pretty far off target.

<comment><USER7> I haven't read it, but maybe the author is using one familiar subject to spark discussion about another less familiar subject?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The copyright-like protection for IC masks became obsolete once IC mask artwork was drawn by EDA systems, not humans. If you want to copy an IC, you work from the logic, not the masks, regenerate the layout and masks, and usually have a different physical layout. That's why no one worries about mask protection any more.

There's one other category that has its own special kind of intellectual property - vessel hulls. There's the Vessel Hull Protection Act, which prohibits making exact copies of registered vessel hull designs. (There's a cheap way to make copies of fiberglas hulls.) This only lasts for 10 years.

The fashion industry and the auto parts industry have lobbied for similar protection in the US, without success.

</comment><comment><USER9> I want to say "duh"...

Copyrighting/patenting Life is for me the penultimate example of corporate greed. Luckily we won the first round here in the US [0] but we all know a loss is merely a setback in the constant march of unchecked Capitalism.

Locking life behind lock and key serves only to slow innovations and relief from suffering.

[0] [http://venturebeat.com/2013/06/13/supreme-court-no-you- may-n...](http://venturebeat.com/2013/06/13/supreme-court-no-you-may-not- copyright-human-genes/)

<comment><USER10> > .. the penultimate example of corporate greed.

Did you mean 'ultimate', or is there a worse example of corporate greed?

<comment><USER11> Seconding this. What do we find if we go to the top?

<comment><USER9> Corporate ownership of people (or The People), not just a copyright on their DNA. You might argue it's already happening in a Corporatocracy, and I'd have a hard time arguing with you.

When corporations not only own production and the right to prevent others from producing, but the governing of those rights (see every copyright extension in the last hundred years) there isn't a whole lot left.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > You don't write code to be beautiful, you write it to be functional.

Speak for yourself.

> You really write code so it uses the least amount of memory, and is > efficient.

No I don't.

</comment><comment><USER13> Patenting dna is also a bad idea, especially for obvious transgenics, "express gene X from organism Y in organism Z". It's the equivalent of a software patent that says, "program a computer to sell X... over the internet".

</comment><comment><USER14> Am I the only one instantly thinking of Orphan Black [1] here?

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

</comment><comment><USER15> > The strongest case that could be made for it, which a couple of people > resurrected recently, is that Congress made a decision around 1978 that we > should put software in the copyright system. But that was a complete > disaster.

Why was it a complete disaster? I've heard lots of criticism of software patents or even closed source software but copyright isn't to blame for either as far as I can tell.

</comment><comment><USER16> Cool to see my city, Valencia (Spain), on the header image. Specifically the City of Arts and Science.

</comment><comment><USER17> Imaginary property is a bad idea.

</comment><comment><USER18> DNA is software so all the rules that apply to software should apply to DNA.

<comment><USER19> But DNA is also hardware (its structure encodes data, it can catalyze reactions)! So the rules that apply to hardware... no, let's not trivialize this by making weak analogies.

<comment><USER18> > its structure encodes data, it can catalyze reactions

Nope, it can't. It first needs to be transcribed by actual hardware (RNA polymerase).

You can view the DNA as a harddrive platter, and the data it encodes as the software.

<comment><USER19> Sure, it can: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deoxyribozyme](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deoxyribozyme)

(I have a PhD in nucleic acid structure and function)

<comment><USER18> Okay, didn't know that :)

But still you can view a reaction of substance X with DNAzyme Y to be the hardware X taking apart the storage of software Y in order to read it. A destructive read operation, so to speak (or non-destructive in some cases).

<comment><USER19> I find these sorts of analogies naive, and missing the point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This article is pretty far below Nautilus's usual standards. Though I don't think it quite makes the basic mistake of failing to distinguish between copyright and patent law, it does fail to (correctly) explain what copyright law is all about, and why a person might think that genes are a natural fit for copyright law. (And I do want to get this out of the way up front: Dan Burk is just wrong if he thinks that, to be copyrightable, something needs to have "artistic" or "aesthetic" value. It may be that this was the original purpose of copyright long ago, but it has thoroughly been left behind by actual copyright law, under which one clearly can copyright most collections of data, instruction manuals, etc.)

Copyright law is used to prevent literal copying. If I embody certain ideas in a particular way, copyright law just says that you can't come along and copy that expression. (Note the distinction here between copying the ideas, which is OK, and copying the expression, which is not.)

Patents, in some ways, are very different: to simplify things a bit, they allow an inventor to protect the _idea_ of accomplishing a certain task in a certain way.

Software is interesting because it exists in both realms. Code embodies a set of ideas in a particular way, and _also_ embodies patentable methods for achieving a certain task. The article frames this legal development as though it was somehow unnatural--something that Congress "decided" to do back in the seventies. But they decided to do it because both types of legal protections really do seem to apply. Yes, working through the details of how to apply copyright protection to software presented some interesting legal challenges (and I know there are many here who think this was a bad idea for other reasons), but the mere fact that this was a difficult process does not strike me as a good argument for declining to extend copyright protection to other novel forms of expression.

In principle, it seems to me that the burden really ought to be on those who want to argue against copyrighting genes. Like source code, and like the written word, they are a means for embodying ideas and information. In this way, the newfound ability to 'easily' edit genomes is akin to the invention of a new storage medium. If we were talking about a new type of optical storage, there would be no debate about whether data encoded in that medium and format was copyrightable. That should also make genes copyright-able by default. (Similarly, like software, genes can also serve as embodiment of patentable ideas.)

Of course, I don't mean to discount the fact that genes are special by virtue with their connection to the development of life, and their origins in nature. Both of these should give us a lot of interesting things to talk about in deciding whether, despite everything above, we really should have different intellectual property rules for genes. But this article doesn't discuss any of those interesting things. Instead, it sets up a legally inaccurate conception of the "purpose" of copyright law and uses that, along with the "difficulties" of applying copyright law to software, to make it seem as though copyright is just not conceptually the right fit for modified genomes.

EDIT: Previously, I had listed phone books as an example of a copyrightable collection of data. White-pages are actually not copyrightable, though yellow pages may be. The problem with white pages is that so little original thought goes into compiling, sorting, etc. that it is not thought to actually embody any original idea. But the white-pages exception is very narrow. If the database is curated in some way, or sorted, tagged, etc., then there is a good chance it is copyrightable. See [http://www.copyright.gov/reports/db4.pdf](http://www.copyright.gov/reports/db4.pdf)

<comment><USER21> > It may be that this was the original purpose of copyright long ago, but it > has thoroughly been left behind by actual copyright law, under which one > clearly can copyright phone books

Are you sure about that one? I have a vague memory that phone books are a standard example of something that _can 't_ be copyrighted. Specifically, a listing of names and associated phone numbers. This is (in my memory) because (1) a listing of names and their phone numbers is a collection of facts, and facts can't be copyrighted; and (2) there is _no creative expression at all_ in the listing -- it is in alphabetical order. Anyone else using alphabetical order will necessarily produce exactly the same text.

<comment><USER20> You're exactly right (though strictly speaking, white pages are probably not copyrightable, but yellow pages may be). A phone book is maybe the worst example I could have picked. You _can_ copyright collections of facts--the white-pages exception is very small--but courts will look at whether you have put "creative" thought into how you selected entries, organized them, etc.

See [http://www.copyright.gov/reports/db4.pdf](http://www.copyright.gov/reports/db4.pdf)

I've edited accordingly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I also think it is a bad way of recouping research costs.

</comment><comment><USER23> DNA is an API and therefore can be copyrighted.

<comment><USER24> DNA isn't an API. DNA is the source code. The API is more similar to the translation apparatus, but even that's a stretch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Saying human created DNA sequences shouldn't be copyrighted is like saying novels shouldn't be copyrighted because they use the words.

In the US at least, case law states that we can't patent natural genes, which is great. However, scientists are entitled to protections for their novel work.

CRISPR is no different from any other biologic in terms of patents, and in the long run, 20 years of protection is a drop in the bucket. Hell, by the time they figure out this CRISPR fiasco, it'll be close to out of patent.

<comment><USER26> A better analogy would be human-created software codes.

And yeah, that's turned out _really well_ for all of us, right?

<comment><USER27> Not to derail this conversation further but as far as software patents go I've been wondering for a while why somebody doesn't try this defense:

In order to have a valid patent you need to share a sufficiently detailed design in the patent application. What constitutes a sufficiently detailed design? One that a current professional in the field could produce with no further input from the patent holder and secondly one that if given to two different implementers results in the practically the same widget. If either of these aren't true, the patent holder has essentially not held up the spirit of the law in so far as patents are meant to contribute back to the public.

I'm on mobile now, so I'll stop there but I think you get the idea. For software the practical implication is that you need to submit your source code or pseudo code as part of a valid application,because much like a mechanical blueprint that is the design for software. Not: Input--->block diagram--->output. With that level of spec I could patent strong AI. I know some software patents are more sophisticated than that but I think most fail the test above.

I honestly don't know if this has been tried before and shot down or what. Can anyone comment on that?

Also as far as that goes, if the patent holder were to share their code in this fashion, and it passed all the other requirements then I wouldn't really have a problem with it.

<comment><USER27> Replying to myself: I actually think most software patents would fail the first or second half of the above test. Never mind all of it. Edit:spelling</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is hiring a PR company a good investment for a startup? - <AUTHOR>

Startup based in NYC. Is hiring a PR firm to get the word out a good investment? Any ideas about what/how they charge? <comment><USER2> No, I wouldn't recommend this. It'll cost you anywhere from a few thousand to 10k+ per month. There are much better ways for you to "get the word out".

</comment><comment><USER3> PR agencies are what corporate managers hire to justify their marketing budgets. You're a startup. Be scrappy. Be creative. Think outside the box. You'll come up with ideas and ways to market far far more effective for your market than most PR agencies.

</comment><comment><USER4> Noticed that Mint hired a PR person very, very early and it worked out pretty well for them.

It also depends on the type of business that you're building.

</comment><comment><USER5> No. You can do a much better job yourself

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the input...very much.

</comment><comment><USER6> Maybe if you've already burned bridges and ruined your brand.</comment>


What is a good file manager for Linux? - <AUTHOR> http://xmodulo.com/2013/10/good-file-manager-linux.html

<comment><USER2> I wouldn't call PCManFM a "good" file manager. It's one of the consistently buggiest pieces of software I've used. Not major show stopping bugs, just a constant stream of minor problems every day with the occasional crash every few weeks.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not even sure why people are using file manager anymore. I stop using one few months ago and I waste a lot less time clicking around. I don't feel a gui really help on the file management side of the computer world really.

<comment><USER4> The way I see is if you already know what you need to do to a certain set of files, then CLI would win any days, but there's still purpose for GUI, especially when you have to manipulate on an ambiguous set of files that are not necessary logically organized...

<comment><USER3> you're right on that, when the naming and placement of files are ambigous and not structured, gui file manager helps to find and organize. Actually not using a gui file manager forces you to get organized and finally choose a good naming convention and folder structure. I am still amaze how file/folder gui structre haven't evolved much since it's inception ~ still dreaming about a 3d tree of my file system ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Krusader is the best, at least according to some articles I read in the last years. I am using it for about a year and am very happy with it.</comment>


Come and Get 'Em – Storage Pods That Is - <AUTHOR> https://www.backblaze.com/blog/come-and-get-em-storage-pods-that-is/ <comment><USER2> This is so cool, and it's awesome that they're doing this. Backblaze is essentially getting "free" waste disposal but is giving back to the community in doing so. This fosters a lot of goodwill.

Unfortunately I'm nowhere near California, so I'm a bit jealous. Does anyone know of any companies that do this on the east coast? I'd love "free" abandoned hardware.

<comment><USER3> Isn't cheap abandoned hardware readily available at most flee markets, garage sales, etc?

<comment><USER4> It seems like Europeans recycle their electronics much more thoroughly than Americans.

That makes me a very sad retro geek.

<comment><USER5> There is lots of recycling and second hand in the united states. I can find a lot of toasters, very few computer parts. If I were to offer my old tech parts, I would get very few people who even knew what they were. In a bigger area like Boston, you can have a healthy exchange, but not in 50,000-people- ville, USA.

I think what you are lamenting is population density in the US vs EU.

<comment><USER4> You have a point. There are a couple million people in Ireland and one working Tektronix 4014 terminal. I would expect to be a hundred of them in the US, which doesn't seem that far off ;-)

We should have more DEC terminals though. We had a factory in Galway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Oh boy. Gonna have a huge RSVP line. I can't believe they thought these would last eight hours considering they only have about 200 or so from what employees are saying. There will be a line around the block for 24 hours if they don't do a form / queue / lottery. The components (without drives) cost about $1500-2000 each.

<comment><USER7> For those interested, this information (~200 units, 2 per person) was shared on Reddit and wasn't on the original article. As for the time-frame, if they manage one transaction (giving one person 2 units) per five minutes on average, they roughly fit into eight hours.

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/bz2yj6/backblaze_g...](https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/bz2yj6/backblaze_giving_away_free_storage_pods/eqqo2tb/)

[2] [https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/bz2yj6/backblaze_g...](https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/bz2yj6/backblaze_giving_away_free_storage_pods/eqq2941/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd love to grab one. Problem is, in the absence of any disclaimer such as "Max 2 per person", I'm expecting some asshole opportunist to camp out and take a pallet full to re-sell on eBay.

<comment><USER6> Yev has said there will be max 2 per person.

</comment></comment><comment> a-wu Hoooooooo boy I live 6 miles away from the pickup. I think I'll swing by and try to grab one. No idea what I'll do with it but I'm sure I'll find something.

<comment><USER9> I have a closet full of random old gadgets that I had no idea what I would do with before acquiring them. My advice is: if you don't have a plan, leave it be. Let it collect dust in someone else's closet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wow this is really tempting for me to make the trek down from Portland. I run a storniator which is pretty similar to their 3.0 pods and the thing is a beast.

<comment><USER11> Would you mind elaborating on your Storinator setup?

<comment><USER10> Sure, it's quite a few years old at this point but basic specs:

\- Supermicro X10DRL-i

\- Dual XeonE5-2620 v3 @ 2.40GHz

\- 32 gigs ram

\- 32 gig boot stick

\- 512 cache ssd (being upgraded soon to 1tb)

\- 27 8TB drives, one for parity, one currently dead that's waiting a replacement

Running Unraid which has served me well.

Thing is sitting in a lack table from ikea which this particular model they stopped making. It has a bottom shelf and came on casters.

One thing I did do right away was replace the stock cpu fans for noctuas since the server would be right next to me and noise was a big deal. Temps are a little higher than they would be with the stock fans but still within safe ranges even under load.

Im almost out of space and I don't really want to upgrade to 10tb drives yet...

Using it primarily for dev and backup.

<comment><USER11> That's very interesting, thank you for replying. Do you work in media/video or such? 200 TB is a lot! Also unraid is interesting, for 30 storage devices it costs a one time fee of 120 dollars, is that correct?

<comment><USER10> Yeah, used to do a bunch of video for a side project, 4k video takes up a ton of space as it turns out.

And I do believe that's the cost for unraid, can't remember if that's what I paid.

If I had to build it again I'd probably go freenas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is the kind of thing that makes me think i'd Like to work at Backblaze even though I am not looking for a job.

</comment><comment><USER13> They should have you log in to your Backblaze account and show you are a customer. :)

</comment><comment><USER14> I just want to see a few blog posts next week and see what people do with them.

</comment><comment><USER15> Hey @yev, can you ship me one?</comment>


The Case for 'Dumb' Cities - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/16/opinion/smart-cities.html <comment><USER2> The proliferation of 'smart-' things is the equivalent of deferring everything to runtime, and throwing out design and planning and replacing it with a reactive (or perhaps more accurately reactionary) approach.

Interpreted languages are nice, but compiled languages have enormous advantages, especially when problems are well understood. City planning, the design of public spaces, thoughtful zoning, etc. is like the compiler. If you want an efficient city, you probably don't want it to only run as an interpreter.

Somehow this evokes the depths of American anti-intellectualism for me. "We don't need to understand anything, we can just measure it and then understand it!" without so much as a pause to wonder whether an understanding of the problem might already exist in such a way that it can be incorporated into the design, and further, that if you don't already understand 'it' then there is a good chance that you will end up building a device that measures the wrong things and that you can't change easily.

<comment><USER3> Cities are chaotic, complex creatures. Anyone who claims to understand them is more or less just working from the gut; and anyone who claims to "solve" them via technology, planning, or otherwise is fooling themselves.

The history of city planning is littered with failed examples. In America, freeing everyone from the vapors by separating them in the free, open countryside mostly led to people being trapped in their cars in traffic because they had to drive to get anywhere. Demolishing slums and shoving everyone into spacious housing projects mostly led to isolation and ghettoisation. And even the mere act of requiring parking has separated everything with inhospitable parking lots, making it a requirement to drive to do anything.

Arguably the most successful large cities did very well with low amounts of planning; Manhattan's famous grid was literally imaginary roads plotted onto a map, without a care for what would fill in the gaps. Planned cities are like the manicured lawn; they look pretty but they don't really support any actual life. The wilderness is chaotic and messy but it supports incredible biodiversity.

<comment><USER2> I agree completely. Planned communities (top down?) have failed repeatedly (for a variety of reasons). The kind of planning and design I am talking about is the design of local rules (bottom up?), such as the order in which you put cars, parked cars, bycicles (and friends), and peds. Another example would be about the zoning around university campuses and how they interact, or don't with public transportation. The difference between US vs EU for these two cases and the results of the differences is quite revealing.

<comment> em-bee in other words, designing a smart city is actually just as much top-down as any planned community. and what we really need is for each community to decide for themselves which technology they pick to improve their lives

<comment><USER4> desire paths, but for urban planning. Plus, the whole development model since post-ww2 has basically been a veiled ponzi scheme

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The author makes a rather arbitrary distinction between "dumb" and "smart" technologies - trains are now considered "dumb" technology? I live in Tokyo and that was never my impression, they're as smart as it gets and the infrastructure is constantly being updated with new tech as we speak. (My brother works for Japan Railways btw.)

It's as if the author (with a background in civil engineering not CS) deems everything that she has a good understanding of as "dumb", and everything she's relatively unfamiliar with as "smart", i.e., useless. While I'm no fan of projects like Google Quayside and wary of increasing corporate influence on urban policy, you can't point fingers at fringe ideas like smart garbage cans and use that to outright dismiss the role of IT in urbanism; we don't browse through weputachipinit [1] and conclude that all IoT is worthless do we. If she can look into things like Japan's earthquake notification system [2] and still claim that "smart" solutions don't add value to cities, then we can talk.

[1] [https://weputachipinit.tumblr.com](https://weputachipinit.tumblr.com)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_Early_Warning_(Japa...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_Early_Warning_\(Japan\))

Perhaps I'm biased by my own experience here in Tokyo, but I feel that a lot of criticism against smart cities - while not at all without merit - smack of civil engineers, urban planners, architects and the like claiming territorial rights, attempting to keep "outsiders" like IT people stepping onto what has traditionally been their turf. We need less of such feudal mentality, and more interdisciplinary collaboration; more urbanists need to start speaking the language of IT and vice versa.

</comment><comment><USER6> I completely get that it's entirely normal for people to get anxious about changing science, technology, and societal norms. And I also appreciate that, as the rate of change increases, we should expect to see greater anxiety from a larger segment of the population.

But, I have to say that I'm somewhat surprised to see even folks in the tech industry arguing against the current pace of advancement.

Obligatory SMBC: [https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/future](https://www.smbc- comics.com/comic/future)

</comment><comment><USER7> See also Rethinking the Smart City by (Silicon Valley's infamous detractor) Evgeny Morozov and Francesca Bria.

[https://onlineopen.org/media/article/583/open_essay_2018_mor...](https://onlineopen.org/media/article/583/open_essay_2018_morozov_rethinking.pdf)</comment>


Code like a girl - <AUTHOR> http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/03/code_like_a_gir.html

<comment><USER2> I'll be the first to admit I need to 'code like a girl' more.

</comment><comment><USER3> I miss Kathy's blogging.</comment>


Ask HN: noticed that recruiters are fronted by pretty young women these days? - <AUTHOR> I occasionally get approached by recruiters / headhunters.  But the people doing the approaching are more and more young, early in their career and female and "attractive" (to judge by their LinkedIn photos and voices)
Now one expects a young person to put up their best photos, and want to make a good impression, but I get the feeling that their "supervisor", whom they always have to "check with" has hired them solely for fishing in the mostly male IT contractor pond.
It all feels just a little off.
Anyone else?
Edit: I am a middle aged man so the chances are high I am blundering into yet another online Gender in IT debate with my size 11's.  However there has always been young and desperate sales people in recruitment, but they were always hunting for their own commission, and always been "researchers" trawling for the actual recruiter.  But somehow this is now muddled and the end result is as above.  Just struck me as odd <comment><USER2> In some industries (e.g. SEO firms doing linkbuilding) if they don't happen to have a young lady in the office they'll create the persona for one anyhow, because they get measurably better results from emails signed Jessica than emails signed Jeb. I've seen ones matching LinkedIn and Facebook accounts which would pass cursory inspection, if I hadn't recognized the stock photography model.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's actually not a terrible idea (I think you may have even mentioned the idea of having "Jessica in accounts" chase invoices so that a solo freelancer can hands free on the keep the first few "pay us now" discussions.

But it's notable that the purchaser in both cases (the AB tested SEO purchaser and the developer looking to move) are both assumed to be straight males, or that both sexes respond better to a young woman.

Just ... notable I guess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> No, it's just you getting middle aged. When they're young they are beautiful, and if you see a beautiful woman, it means she's too young for you..

<comment><AUTHOR> darn I can only upvote that once :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> These days? It's been like that forever. It's like that in real estate too. And client account management. Any client facing business has a higher ratio of attractive, younger women compared with the general population imho.

I can tell stories about how my former company won and kept the Guinness account for many years, but won't. It's everywhere in many sales industries.

<comment><USER5> Also see: pharmaceutical sales reps.

Disproportionately young, attractive, and female. _Very_ disproportionately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> As a not-old person applying for internships for the first time this year, every recruiter at every company was female.

At campus days, there were guys there, too, but those invariably were the programmers / interviewers. The actual recruiter, though, the one sending all of the emails and arranging all of the travel and such, was always a woman or multiple women.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've been working with recruiters for the last two weeks and most of them are younger women, but there are several men also. I'm not sure which I prefer to talk to. The women (anecdotally) talk more about the jobs when they call. The men, on the hand, keep things short.

</comment><comment><USER8> I've seen this in person. I got asked to lunch by a local branch of what I term a "body-shop" type consulting firm (just get you in the door so they get their fee). The two people from this company that attended lunch were a 20-something woman, dressed very attractively, and a "bro" type 30something man.

Totally missed the mark on influencing me :)

</comment><comment><USER9> I do notice that some people have profile pictures that are... inappropriate (probably the best word). It could well be with men as well as women but I think a lot of the women seem to be aiming for "attractive" rather than "professional".

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Well it seems I am simply getting old. Thanks folks :-)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Self tracking the thread</comment>


ask YC: youtube clone; python or ruby framework? - <AUTHOR>

I've been using rails for the past 2 years, and have had mixed feelings about it. I ported two rails applications to MERB, because I'm no longer using ActiveRecord, so most of the other stuff in Rails also seemed unnecessary. Prior to ruby/rails I used python (straight up mod_python) for a couple years.<p>I am starting on a new project where I need to make a video site. Think youtube with limited users and functionality. My initial plan was to do the front-end in MERB and the back end with ruby hooks around our custom video server (c++). However I vaguely remember that writing wrappers around c++ was easier in Python. Thus I thought maybe I could just do the whole thing in Python. I don't really want to use Django. Is there anything similar to MERB in the Python world? Or should I just use MERB for the front end and then use whatever fits best for the video processing. THANKS. <comment><USER2> There are a number of frameworks written in Python. Pylons, Turbo gears, web.py, as well as Django. And from what I've been reading about WSGI, Python web development is going to be where it's at in the next few years.

Have you looked at Pylons? From what you're describing, something like Pylons would probably fit your needs fairly well. From what I've read, it seems very light weight and modular. You can use any type of ORM or none. You can use any template language you wish or none. It might be what you're looking for. The documentation isn't anywhere near as good as Django, but you're probably familiar enough with web deb on Python that you probably wouldn't need it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why not use any of the cloned scripts @ <http://www.scriptcopy.com/youtube- clone-script/> and modify them. Most are in PHP I guess.

</comment><comment><USER4> as somebody starting a project in Django right now, can I ask why you really don't want to use Django?

<comment><AUTHOR> I wouldn't be using the ORM or auto-admin stuff. It has a lot of things I don't really need.</comment></comment>


Intuit To Acquire Mint For $170 Million - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/13/intuit-to-acquire-former-techcrunch50-winner-mint-for-170-million/

<comment><USER2> wow. what really impresses me is mint isn't an engineering company - they're a marketing company that put some ajax on top of yodlee. yodlee's been around for over 10 years and they never built a brand or a community like mint.

mint is now #1 on my 'notes to self' when i get so focused on engineering my way to a solution i forget sometimes its' better to partner with a competitor and move on.

they outsourced the hard stuff (scraping/banking relationships) and then focused on building a product. nice work, brilliant execution.

<comment><USER3> I had no idea that Mint was a layer on top of another product. Can you explain this in greater detail? What is Yodlee? (I realize I'm proving your point by asking!) And what is the nature of Mint/Yodlee's relationship?

<comment><USER4> Yodlee is the service that took on the painful and expensive problem of actually building an engine that can securely store bank and brokerage passwords and use them to scrape hundreds of different financial sites.

They have a consumer front end. It's quite decent, actually, and it's free. Go to Yodlee.com and sign up. But they apparently make most of their money by (a) licensing their back end to services like Mint, and (b) serving as a kind of OEM for banks, who put up Yodlee's software rebranded as a part of the bank's website.

<comment><USER5> That to me sounds like a better model than Mint. Sure Yodlee doesn't have the media buzz or "explosive" growth (Mint's growth didn't really impress me either.), but the infrastructure is extremely useful and will be around for a long time.

If Mint is doing well, Yodlee is too. If Mint fails, Yodless will still have a diverse client base to support its business.

<comment><USER6> _That to me sounds like a better model than Mint._

Mint just received $170 million. Yodlee did not.

<comment><USER7> But we don't know that Yodlee isn't doing 170M revenues a year either. Getting aquired and making money don't necessarily equate to each other in the most obvious ways.

Youtube was a huge money sink, and got a huge acquisition. Mint is, I believe at least, somewhat profitable, and only got $170M. The timing had a lot more to do with it than anything, but as a consumer, I'm a LOT more likely to give money to Mint than Youtube, and the YouTube founders are arguably a lot richer than the Mint founders.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> personally I'm disappointed with this, I just don't see Intuit as the right company to run Mint

<comment><USER9> " just don't see Intuit as the right company to run Mint"

It isn't. But (due disclosure: I worked at Intuit once and while I have no special knowledge about this deal, I know how Intuit works)

Intuit had no choice really. Mint was _high_ on management's radar and they were always scared of it. Intuit doesn't "get" the web, the whole company is structured around its success on the desktop and there are too many layers of management to make any kind of innovation successful (One on team I saw, there were 22 managers and 3 developers! I kid you not!).

Intuit _talks_ a lot about "innovation", but the fact is that Mint (and FreshBooks) have been chipping away marketshare every quarter and they couldn't build a mint clone/mint killer (they tried a few times).

Intuit has no _choice_ but to acquire mint if they wanted to have a _solid_ web offering. Will they run it into the ground? certainly, over time, as soon as the mint devs vest and leave and the regular Intuit folks take over. Of course this leaves the space open for _another_ competitor!

Congratulations to the mint team! The one thing Intuit has in plenty (for now ;-)) is money! Enjoy!

EDIT: If I were Intuit and I wanted to make this work, I'd keep the Mint.com team around and let them work in their own fashion, _outside_ the regular Intuit corporate structure. Knowing Intuit this will _never_ happen.

<comment><USER10> The part I don't get is why Mint would take the quick exit rather than fight the fight. It looked to me like they were well positioned for a long term victory.

<comment><USER11> The reason is that Mint was created for an exit like this. They had no clear business model other than getting as many users as possible in order to scare Intuit. They have a great product, but I see no plan to make money with it.

Of course they have the thing of suggesting credit cards to users, but it doesn't seem that they were making any money on that...

In summary, if Mint was profitable, they wouldn't sell the company in the first opportunity.

<comment><USER12> Mint made referral fees on every offer they made "You can make 3% more a year by switching to ING Direct, etc". They made plenty of money, and all they needed was scale (which they proved they could do). The brilliance was that the offers were aligned with the user's wants/desires/needs and were super well qualified so Mint could charge more per referral.

They weren't created to flip - it was a solid business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Lest we forget: [http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/22/google-in-final- negotia...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/22/google-in-final-negotiations- to-acquire-digg-for-around-200-million/)

Just because Mike Arrington says something is true doesn't mean it is. I'll believe it when there's an official announcement.

<comment><USER14> Official press release from Intuit: [http://about.intuit.com/about_intuit/press_room/press_releas...](http://about.intuit.com/about_intuit/press_room/press_release/articles/2009/IntuitToAcquireMint.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This could be an excellent opportunity to start a competing outfit. I bet Inuit will have choked on Mint by the time a new competitor is launched.

<comment><USER16> There is a good competitor, Wesabe. Disclosure: I helped get that product launched and still have some stock.

They have many of the same features, are catching up in the polish area, and have a strong data privacy angle.

<comment><USER17> There's also <http://www.buxfer.com>, a YC company.

<comment><USER18> Talk about not giving up- the Buxfer guy just keeps going.

Anybody know how Buxfer is doing?

<comment><USER19> Not well if you trust compete.com: <http://siteanalytics.compete.com/buxfer.com+mint.com/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _This is a terrific exit for Mint_

Seriously? Maybe I don't get it but if Yahoo had bought Google or Facebook had bought Twitter would those have been terrific exits? Why are they selling out so quickly?

I don't trust Intuit and will probably stop using Mint (I was just getting started in the past few months).

<comment><USER20> The days of billion-dollar exits for zero-revenue companies are gone, and will probably continue to be gone for a long while to come.

<comment><USER21> Mint was making a rather significant amount of money as a credit card affiliate. (They also hawked other financial products, but that is almost certainly the most lucrative one. They have a lucrative CPA, a wider reach than home loans, and more repeat business in the demographics inclined to hand all their financial info to a Web 2.0 site.)

Many, many affiliates who look at a million dollars as "Meh, not a lot of money to me anymore" physically drooled when they heard of Mint's model, principally because almost _nobody realizes_ they're an affiliate marketer. As an affiliate, you (potentially) make a lot of money but defensibility of your revenue is a constant driving concern since Google, the merchant, or other affiliates can always disintermediate you. But who can disintermediate the guy you've already given full read access to your financial life to?

<comment><USER22> Do you have a source? Where do affiliates hang out and talk about business models?

<comment><USER23> the trouble is cutting thru the sleaze in the industry. But if you're willing to tolerate it, you can find gems in their communities. Wickedfire.com. Shoemoney. DMConfidential. On and On, really.

<comment><USER22> Yes, that was the point--cutting through the sleaze. Thanks for the pointers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This has "buy'em to squash'em" written all over it.

<comment><USER25> I'm going to have to disagree with that. Wish I could tell you why.

<comment><USER26> _Wish I could tell you why._

Is this because you have some secret knowledge about the deal, or just because you have a gut feeling about it? Your last sentence seemed a little suspicious, which is why I ask.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So, it seems that the market for a mint clone will be open pretty soon.

I'd imagine there will be a lot of disaffected users here eventually.

</comment><comment><USER27> They also acquired PayCycle (among the leading online payroll companies, and one I used for a couple of years) a little while back. I switched all of our books and payroll over to Intuit products recently, mainly so the part-time bookkeeper will be happy, but haven't been able to figure out how PayCycle fits into the lineup, or whether they will be merging Intuit online payroll (which costs a measly $9.95/month) with PayCycle (which is about fifty bucks per month).

</comment><comment><USER28> Hopefully this means that Mint will be finally be available outside the US.

<comment><USER29> The banks where I live use one time pads for authentication, which makes it impossible for Mint to work.

<comment> brown9-2 Which country?

<comment><USER30> In Germany it seems common to mail lists of transaction authentication numbers to customers, and in the Netherlands smart card readers that read your card and generate a TAN seem standard. There are companies built around circumventing this and allowing third parties access to your account (sofortueberweisung.de, for example), but it usually is against the bank EULA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The question isn't so much why Intuit would buy Mint, but why would Mint allow themselves to be acquired so soon?

If Mint was doing so well, they'd continue on their path to completely outplace Quicken. Something about this just doesn't add up.

<comment><USER32> It's important to remember that companies are run for the benefit of investors. These folks just took a C round, so I'd guess the majority of the shares are held by venture capitalists.

VCs don't fund startups to achieve competitive victory per se. Their job is to make money for the people who invested in their funds, and they do that by selling the shares they bought for more than they paid for them. The main routes for that are acquisition and IPO.

Right now, the IPO market is not looking healthy, and won't be for a while. Given that Mint's revenue comes from getting consumers to sign up for credit cards and other financial offers, their market will be anemic for a while. So they're an especially poor IPO candidate for the next few years.

That leaves getting bought. If that's what your after, and Intuit comes along and offers you a great price, why wouldn't you take it? Intuit needs Mint a lot right now, but maybe later Mint's bargaining position will be worse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm not sure I'd call $170m a great exit considering they were last valued at $140m. Generally VCs are looking for much more than a 20% ROI. I'd love to know if there were some special terms that make the VCs get more than their share here. Otherwise you'd think that either Mint was in trouble and needed this, or there was something else going on.

<comment><USER34> But the 20% ROI was only for the last round of investors who hadn't participated before not all the investors.

<comment><USER33> Right, but even then that's small right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> what's up with the acquisition price ..Intuit's recent acquisitions - paycycle, homestead, and now mint.com all acquired for 170 millions!

<comment><USER36> Probably an initial asking price. If anything it strongly suggests that there wasn't much haggling on the price. It would be a _huge_ coincidence if they all haggled on the price and just happened to end up with the same number.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> couldn't have benefited better people, congrats to Aaron and the whole team

</comment><comment><USER38> This is terrible news for consumers of the software. Quicken is a horrible product if you like good user interfaces and software that just does the job. You have to constantly handhold Quicken and on top of that, many times your bank will charge you to let Quicken have access to your data. The big two (Quicken and Money) personal finance software suites had no way of competing with Mint. I would rather have had Mint start charging a fee for the service instead of selling out their users. Intuit will probably do both.

Obviously, if your reason for starting a business is to get a huge lottery ticket payout, keeping it free and hoping some megacorp buys you is a great idea. I'm disappointed that this was the plan from Mint. I had hopes they would find a business plan that made them money AND that was good for users.

Of course, if Intuit doesn't fundamentally change Mint, maybe all my handwringing will be for naught. I hope I'm wrong.

</comment><comment><USER39> I think it's interesting to see people's reactions here -- a good dose of "oh no Intuit" paranoia. But honestly, did anyone not see this acquisition coming? I was expecting them to have to pay more, honestly, but I think it was fairly apparent that Intuit was the obvious buyer and would do what it takes.

The other odd angle to this paranoia: How big do people really think the market of "people who don't trust Intuit with their financial information" is? For millions of people, it's already in Quicken... the step to doing that online, especially for a non-technical user, is not that big.

<comment><USER40> I don't think it's about not trusting Intuit with financial information. It's about believing Intuit will make a mess of mint.com ruining good and useful about that site.

<comment><USER41> I just see them not getting Mint and I am reminded when they first added product activation to Turbo Tax.

The DRM would fail and support would tell you to buy the software again. That was enough to drive me from Intuit for good as it just seemed they were far too interested in profit over customer service.

That was enough to drive me from Intuit for good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm a little surprised by the fact that they sold now for what seems like a low price compared to what Mint would surely have grown into, given all the momentum they'd built up. It seems like they'd solved the hard problem of getting millions of people to let them into their bank accounts and were fast on their way to becoming a household word. I don't see why they couldn't have become a billion dollar company; the competitive landscape was favorable to them. This seems like a home run that turned into a double. I'd be interested to know the back story behind it.

</comment><comment><USER42> I also think there is a good opportunity to take on the UK equivalent; Kublax. It's a seedcamp company that I tried to use a few times but it was too 'rigid' so I ended up going back to a google spreadsheet.

<comment><USER43> Yodlee will work with UK accounts, for whatever reason (perhaps legal?) Mint still haven't added UK support.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Wait - this is techcrunch. Didn't they just the other day also boldly claim that Facebook allows faxing of photos? Did they allow both Intuit and Mint a chance to respond? I'll be waiting a few days before cancelling my Mint account before I found out whether or not this is just another bad rumor.

<comment><USER45> To be fair, Facebook _did_ allow Techcrunch to fax photos. Their article was accurate, if not complete.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> It just got confirmed at Techcrunch50. They will running Quicken Desktop as well.

[http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/13/intuit-to-acquire- forme...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/13/intuit-to-acquire-former- techcrunch50-winner-mint-for-170-million/)

</comment><comment><USER41> As a Mint user I must say this: Noooooooooooooooooooooooo!

</comment><comment><USER47> Goodbye, Mint.

</comment><comment><USER48> Perhaps now we'll finally get support for Canadian Banks?

</comment><comment><USER49> Wow! Nice exit, guys.

</comment><comment><USER50> congratulations!

</comment><comment><USER26> I have just one word: Damn.</comment>


The Enderby Shield - <AUTHOR> https://www2.le.ac.uk/services/ulas/discoveries/projects/iron-age/enderby-shield <comment><USER2> > _Our initial thoughts that a bark shield would be too fragile for use in > battle were turned on their head by our experimental work which showed that > the shield could stand up to heavy impacts, including protecting from > arrows. A bark shield, although not as strong as a solid wood or metal > shield, is much lighter, allowing for speed and movement._

I'd like to know more about this. I find it hard to believe that a bark shield could provide significant protection against iron weapons, which is not to say that I don't believe it, but I would certainly like to understand _how_.</comment>


Apple's iPad 2 to have front, rear cameras in early 2011 - rumor - <AUTHOR> http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/12/10/apple_suppliers_say_ipad_2_to_have_front_and_rear_cameras.html

<comment><USER2> That's pretty obvious. Is there any doubt about this in anyone's mind?</comment>


China will win the trade war and wean off American technology in 7 years - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/10/china-will-win-trade-war-reduce-reliance-on-us-tech-strategist.html <comment><USER2> > The moral issue arose only with the phenomenon of "coordination," that is, > not with fear-inspired hypocrisy, but with this very early eagerness not to > miss the train of History, with this, as it were, honest overnight change of > opinion that befell a great majority of public figures in all walks of life > and all ramifications of culture, accompanied, as it was, by an incredible > ease with which life long friendships were broken and discarded. In brief, > what disturbed us was the behavior not of our enemies but of our friends, > who had done nothing to bring this situation about. They were not > responsible for the Nazis, they were only impressed by the Nazi success and > unable to pit their own judgment against the verdict of History, as they > read it. Without taking into account the almost universal breakdown, not of > personal responsibility, but of personal judgment in the early stages of the > Nazi regime, it is impossible to understand what actually happened.

\-- Hannah Arendt, "Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship"

[https://grattoncourses.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/arendt- pe...](https://grattoncourses.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/arendt-personal- responsibility-under-a-dictatorship.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Exactly if China wins good, but democracy shouldn't help dictatorships oppress their people and other democracy. That's way more important than technological supremacy. So China has better facial recognition because everyone is in their database. Is that a race worth winning?</comment></comment>


I Am Very Tired by Gen. Robert Neller, Commandant of the Marine Corps - <AUTHOR> https://www.duffelblog.com/2018/09/opinion-gen-neller-tired/ <comment><USER2> I think only someone in the Marines, would truly "Laugh out Loud", which I did.

<comment><USER3> I decided not to join the Marines a long time ago, but definitely had a hearty RL laugh at this anyway. I'm sure a _lot_ of generals and CEOs and other kinds of leaders would really like to say something like this. To see it laid out so plainly is refreshing, to say the least.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks to be a U.S. military-oriented The Onion-style parody news site.

<comment><USER5> Right. "West Point cadet hoping to sort into Slytherin" was amusing, too.

Also: "Army promotion boards for Majors to consider 'face punchability'"

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Poor guy.. He deserves some sleep.</comment>