Illegal Downloads 150x More Profitable Than Legal Sales - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/illegal-downloads-150x-more-profitable-than-legal-sales-091009/ <comment><USER2> So this company is suggesting that it's _better_ to allow your customers to break the law and then threaten to sue (making money from the settlement), rather than have them use legal channels?

It's a scary world we live in.

<comment><USER3> yes, it's _better_ for DigiRights since they sell the software that will help you track down the law-breakers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The premise that 25% of people pay up without questions seems highly questionable. The only source for this is the company itself, correct?

Edit: why the downvote? Take a look at the direct quote from the article:

 _However, not everyone who receives a letter will pay up, but DRS says that an impressive 25% of all recipients do without asking questions. This figure is much higher than most people assumed previously._

Why would one take such a surprising number on face value, especially from a company with such a shady business model?

<comment><USER5> I buy the 25%, only because it was based on responses in Germany. This is the country where I get yelled at for jaywalking at 3am and some subways work on the honor system. Germans are ridiculously honest.

In fact, now that I think about it, 25% seems low. What's happening in Germany?! Pretty soon, when I visit, I'll be forced to pay for my subway rides. Clean up your act Germany!

Kind regards, A dishonest American tourist

<comment><USER6> I jaywalk all the time (well, not all the time, but you get what I mean) in Germany and I have never ever been yelled at. But it is uncommon, at least in the smaller towns. In bigger cities nobody would bat an eye, but you'd better be careful because unlike say Amsterdam it is not the expected behaviour.

<comment><USER7> True, I've been yelled at in Amsterdam for not jaywalking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why bother with tracking the downloads or caring at all what the user does? Just get a list of all internet users everywhere, send a nastygram insinuating that they've done _something_ illegal, and send a bill. Some percentage of people will pay. Those interweb thingees are mostly just used for piracy anyway, right?

Random threats of lawsuits are _infinitely_ more profitable than no threats at all.

<comment><USER9> I never thought of it quite that way before, but that's a really good point. They're functionally the WoW Accoung Phishers of the music industry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This commenter nailed it: _"It's 'speculative invoicing'."_

Also, the title is a bit shady. It's 150 times more profitable per instance, but only 25% (according to the company) pay up, meaning that it's really only 37.5 times more profitable.

</comment><comment><USER11> I think you need to qualify the title. $0.60 is what you get for every legal download, 150 times that is what you might get if you happen to catch someone, find out her address and if she then also pays.

</comment><comment><USER12> " According to the company they get to keep 80% of the money, leaving 20% for the copyright holders."

Yup, they really have the bands best interest in mind.

I don't understand how all of these companies who blatantly rob the money that should be going to artists think they are any better than the pirates.

<comment><USER13> Artists have a choice in doing business with them, they don't have a choice in copyright infringement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> DigiRights "developed" the technology to automate those "requests for damages" letters, so they are marketing it as being very profitable - no big surprise.

DigiRights, the company making those claims is highly suspicious. my parents actually got a letter from them. well their ISP got the letter wrote to my parents something like "digirights says you downloaded XYZ (porno movie). we didn't tell DigiRiths who you are, but please: stop it."

i doubt DigiRights is acting legally in austria, where i live. this is currently being viewed at.

</comment><comment><USER14> According to wikipedia, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_you_live_in_interesting_tim...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_you_live_in_interesting_times) , "May you come to the attention of those in authority" is an escalation of the better known curse "May you live in interesting times". Today it's a depressingly common threat, too.

It looks like RIAA and the other mobsters are going about it wrong, maybe they should be hitting up more people for smaller amounts.

<comment><USER6> The trick of a good parasite is to let the host live and be a small enough nuisance that the host won't kill the parasite.

The RIAA is getting dangerously close to the 'squash' button.

A few more 100K+ verdicts and I'm sure they'll achieve their goals of irrelevance.

<comment><USER15> _The trick of a good parasite is to let the host live and be a small enough nuisance that the host won't kill the parasite._

That is indeed the pirate's dilemma: how do I steal all my music, movies, and videogames while making sure Content, Inc. doesn't move to a business model where all the value is on their servers and you can, at best, rent access to it. It has already happened in China, and looking at the PC game sales charts in America it is pretty much complete there, too.

Oh, those weren't the parasites you were talking about? My bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Nothing is new under the stars. I heard, VHS rental services in US made more from late fees than from the rental itself.

</comment><comment><USER3> i'm not saying they do that, but one could:

      * buy cheap copyright like 1940s movies
      * make divx files, name after non-existing pornos
      * anonymously seed to major torrent site
      * startup your auto-legal-threat-software
      * collect money

this might be legal?

</comment><comment><USER17> And just because people is sometimes stupid. This is embarrassing.</comment>


Show HN: D20.photos – A Public Domain, Community Driven D&D Image Repository - <AUTHOR> https://d20.photos/?ref=hn <comment><AUTHOR> Creator here!

I've been playing D&D for years and whenever I've run a campaign it's always been a struggle to find good images to use that evoke the feeling I'm going for. And for those who are trying to write and sell their campaigns and stories, finding free-to-use images can be incredibly challenging. That's where d20.photos comes in.

I built this site to help everyone who makes and plays D&D, Pathfinder, or other TTRPG games (or even those writing fantasy novels) find great, free images, characters, story hooks, and more. d20.photos is open for anyone to submit a photo, and the site is curated by me to ensure that it stays true to its goal.

The abstract images are generated using the amazing work of Michael Fogleman and his Primitive library. d20.photos has a full, read-only REST API complete with search for developers and more, there's RSS feeds so you can follow the newest featured or submitted items, and everything is free.

d20.photos is donation supported, so if you like what you see, please consider donating to keep the site running. Go forth and create great stories.</comment>


A world that's designed to make you sad and angry - <AUTHOR> https://paramsingh.github.io/2020/sad/ <comment><USER3> I deleted my Facebook account years ago. I stayed with Instagram and Twitter, thinking I could just follow people in tech or other interesting people that would expose me to interesting news, etc, but I always found myself getting sucked back in to political news and other negativity. There is so much negativity on Twitter. It feels like the one-liners cause more contention because we can just make a quip about the other tribe - take that! - <USER2> receive quick praise from our tribe. I can sincerely say that not visiting Twitter or Instagram anymore makes me happier. I never gained much of value from it, at least not anything I can't find elsewhere.

<comment><USER4> I never really got into Twitter or Instagram because I felt like they're both about advertising yourself to the world. Twitter with advertising your ideas and Instagram with your photos.

As for Facebook, I never deleted it since I use messenger all the time to plan things with friends and family. But I never visit Facebook the website. I just don't visit it.

<comment><USER5> You can deactivate your Facebook account and still use Messenger. Of course, if you're not logging into Facebook itself at all, I guess there's not much need to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I can easily guess that the author and most of the commenters here are from USA. The reason is, to my experience, in "governmentally undeveloped/developing countries"[1] like USA, Russia, Turkey and China, news mostly consist of bad things. However that's not necessarily true for some European countries, especially Northern Europe.

I live in Estonia and most of the news here bear positive news, since we have proper social government and a good social justice here. For an example you can go to [https://news.err.ee](https://news.err.ee) (English, although less news) and see for yourself. One other thing that are in these countries is that the top news are about politics, entertainment and sports and does not include much culture value.

In a distant past news could be good or bad, but now (in many countries) it feels like it's usually either bad or distraction.

[1]: I just made that up, sorry.

</comment><comment><USER7> > I'm gonna stop reading the news, it's too much stress for me.

While in college, I read the newspaper each and every day, cover to cover... from 100 years ago. (Microfiche... those were the days.)

Anyway, I found that all the same issues (drugs, abortion, corruption, race relations, etc) were discussed. With the same arguments on both sides.

It gave me a lot of perspective that my contemporaries didn't have.

Highly recommend it.

<comment><USER8> Whoa that's really interesting & something I might try. Where'd you find these newspapers?

<comment><USER7> At the library. Microfiche. I'd get a bagel and coffee, walk across courtyard to the library, and read through that days paper (100 years back.)

Very depressing comparing the news then to now... if there was a bill at issue, the text of the bill would be included in full. The grammar was perfect. Few typos. Vocabulary was rich. In short, it was well-written and edited. There is nothing like it ... anywhere ... any more.

<comment><USER8> Sorry I assumed Microfiche was some German word for nostalgia or something similar LOL. I'm not sure how accessible microforms would be to me today but I'm sure I can find general archives somewhere.

Thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> These companies have such breathtaking contempt for human beings. Mind you that's not that unusual for business.

</comment><comment><USER10> I completely agree with you on almost all points (I don't have a social media account either for the exact reasons you mentioned; dropped all of them like a hot potato when I read some of those social media experiment papers) except for this:

> I'm gonna stop reading the news, it's too much stress for me.

This I feel is actively dangerous. You _need_ to know what is going on out there. While I agree that most of the news counts as opinion (and is marked as such sometimes), you need to develop a skill which parses through the fluff and take just the facts into account. This might not be easy, but it is worth it.

<comment><USER4> Nah, me reading the news is part of a two way transaction. If I have a "duty" to be informed by reading the news, the news had a "duty" to be high quality and not be in the current state it is now. Most of the news anyways is of things happening on the other side of the world which I can't influence or change. I think if people focused more on their local issues and tried to fix their local communities, that would be much more productive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> IMO the saturation of ads in traditional media / means dwarfs the scale of the current majors of social media. Not that I wish this to be a minimalization of their role of despair in modern society.

But the current standards of beauty, happiness, and success are a product of decades of tailoring by the traditional ad media and the businesses that use them to sell their kewpie dolls.

Needing things is central to producing consumer demand, and therefore drives GDP and the economy.

</comment><comment><USER12> I only use Twitter and only follow a handful of researchers, not many of them are friends or coworkers. I also occasionally mute or unfollow people who share venomous content, no matter whether it's right, left, or center-leaning. I also don't consume too much news. Just a quick glance at the headlines and stay away from comments which are mostly hate-filled and idiotic.

</comment><comment><USER13> Anybody remembers the tv series Columbo? Maybe this explains why he was always snooping around in beautiful mansions.

</comment><comment><USER14> I had high hopes for WT Social (Wikimedia's news & social networking website), but from my experience it doesn't work really well (yet). The concept looked good, though. They claim to have solved the issues (by design) mentioned in the article.

<comment><USER3> It seems that the WT Social app hasn't been working for almost a year (according to Google Play Store reviews). I'm curious and will look further on their website. Thanks for making me aware.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Very short, but I can appreciate a succinct and no-nonsense blog post.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> i frankly cant live without social media, so i just try to balance my feed so i can see both side's bullshit</comment>


Ask HN: What would you do? Unpaid invoice - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys
My first software development client invoice has went unpaid for a month now. The client does not respond to e-mails or phone calls. I sent a reminder yesterday that it's due.
I've had subsequent work from other clients since and those invoices were promptly paid.
How long should I keep trying to contact the client before taking him to court? <comment><USER2> A month is not a long time. Even if you had Net-15 terms, clients can be expected to take longer than a month to pay them.

Large companies, in particular, routinely manage to get invoices held up in accounting. Invoices can get silently dropped for, for instance, not using the right P.O. number, or having the P.O. miskeyed into their backend.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would just advise to make sure something internal isn't holding up payment at the customer. If this is a larger company, any number of things could be causing it. If it is a small company or an individual, then disorganization could be a cause...or a lack of funds. My companies have faced this issue in the past with companies from the Fortune 50 to small companies. Very few times did something actually go unpaid for longer than 90 days. Just be friendly and persistent.

</comment><comment><USER4> What is the due date on the invoice?

Typically you would send an initial invoice with a +30 day (ish) due date. The client would pay as close to the 30 days as they could because it is better for their cash-flow.

If they failed to pay after 30 days you would send them an "invoice overdue" letter. When you're comfortable that had arrived you could then call/e-mail them essentially asking them about payment on the initial invoice.

If this "invoice overdue" notice isn't paid within short order (20~30 days) then you should send them a "final notice" and this should specifically indicate that the next step is court/collections.

Everything should have the date of issue, the date it is due (e.g. +30 days, immediately, etc), and you should not do too much "extra work" beyond sending out letters and the occasional phone call (as this implicitely costs you money).

If they still haven't paid after the final notice then you can either hire a collections agency (who will take a % cut) or attempt to sue them (and hope they don't declare bankruptcy).

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll take your advice by following up with an invoice overdue e-mail next week, then a final reminder 4 weeks later.

I'm in Scotland. If the invoice remains unpaid after that period I will take the client to the Small Claims Court. It's very typical that if a case is submitted to that court, the accused ends up paying the invoice before the hearing date.

<comment><USER5> Since you are in Scotland and the invoice is overdue, you can legally add £40/£70/£100 penalty to your invoice (which one depends on the invoice amount) + charge 8.5% annual interest. These do not have to have been specified in your contract with the client as they come under provisions of the Late Payment of Commercial Debts Act.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just a little update:

I finally heard from the client, he gave me a story about how his phone broke, his mother-in-law has been sick, how people who owe him money haven't paid it and how none of the potential clients for the software have come back to him yet.

He offered to pay part of the invoice now and part later. I said fine but I will apply interest to the invoice and he only has a further 30 days until the issue goes further.

I wait with baited breath for the rest of the payment.

</comment><comment><USER6> [Disclaimer: I'm not in software development.]

I require a retainer to be applied against final invoice for all but the best clients (and I still worry about those).

I don't turn over work until there's a check if I'm upside down, and I try not to be upside down.

Finally, I don't start a project until I have a signed agreement and a retainer.

In the past, I have not hesitated to use small claims court when I knew a client was intending not to pay.

</comment><comment><USER7> There's been a lot of good discussion here about this topic over the years. Here's what I had to say about it last time it came through:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2132299>

That thread is actually pretty good in its entirety:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2131978>

</comment><comment><USER8> How big is your client? I think, in general, the larger the client, the more time they take in paying up. If your client is large (hint: any contact you have in their finance department is at least two levels removed from CFO) you should probably have to wait for more time before worrying (and also, in the future, raise your prices to factor this in).

</comment><comment><USER9> 1\. If you did not have a lawyer write up your service contract, contact one now. It will not cost you much to get a boilerplate contract specific to your state.

2\. Wait at least three months but no longer than six months. I've seen people wait less than 60 days but in my mind that can send the wrong message.

</comment><comment><USER10> Not responding at all is VERY bad, it is a very strong sign they aren't paying you soon per my experence. First, read your contract slowly from end to end. Second, you need to hunt them down and make sure they are alive; note this doesn't mean you talk with them. Also get ready to talk with a lawyer.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for all the reply guys. The client is a very small media company in England - I believe at most 2 people work in this company.

My contact is still not answering messages or returning calls.

The next step after an overdue letter will be the Small Claims Court with penalties added.

</comment><comment><USER11> Contact the client multiple times via different routes. Email, Phone, In person. I would give it 60 days at most. The amount of time that you let it slide should really be determined by your contracts, your business, and cashflow.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'd consider overdue letters with a gentle reminder of the terms of payment.

</comment><comment><USER13> Have you provided them with the project? Next time put a backdoor in your code and remove it after payment. Most people don't check.

<comment><USER14> A backdoor would very likely get the coder sued, and legitimately so.

<comment><USER13> You guys do have a point.

I usually pay freelancers to do my stuff and I feel bad if someone is going to run away after getting their work.

I guess it depends on the scope of work. I think in Canada we have a law where if you do something criminal then you can't charge the person for stealing.

i.e. If you are selling drugs and I steal your drugs then you can't take me to court. In this situation if I were to steal your code/work then stealing it back or making it stop working would suffice.

If it's a .php script maybe make it refer to your web-server for certain parts of the script so that the full functionality isn't there if the user runs away with your code. Something like passing back a token for verification as with serial numbers. A phone-home mechanism of some sort.</comment></comment></comment>


AT&T Launches Fake 5G Network in Desperate Attempt to Seem Innovative - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/at-t-launches-fake-5g-network-in-desperate-attempt-to-s-1794645881 <comment><USER2> It has always been the case with these G's.

The consortium behind them has typically written up a laundry list of requirements that have usually been missed as each G has come online.

For instance, 4G was supposed to support a gigabit per second but the first versions of LTE did not. Later on we got LTE-advanced that built on LTE by channel bonding and increased levels of MIMO, just as 802.11ac built on 802.11n.

5G was talked up heavily by chip vendors for a few years before carriers started talking it up. 5G has such a huge list of requirements that it is hard to believe it can really be covered by one standard (extreme low-power IoT, extreme high-performance IoT, mm-wave powered fixed wireless, long range, small cells, something better for handsets, ...)

Carriers didn't talk about 5G because 4G was so great from a business standpoint because it was a great opportunity to raise the price for cellphone plans, but 4G is getting competitive now, so the telecoms have to convince investors they have something else underway. Like (ahem) getting the government to mandate safety systems for cars that need a cell phone plan or something...</comment>


Curated hypocrisy: How Google camouflages its attacks on Apple - <AUTHOR> http://counternotions.com/2010/05/17/curation/

<comment><USER2> If I wanted cutesy/sickening nicknames, vitriol, and fluff, I'd read Maureen Dowd.

tl;dr: go to [http://blogs.forrester.com/sarah_rotman_epps/10-05-14-curate...](http://blogs.forrester.com/sarah_rotman_epps/10-05-14-curated_computing_designing_post_ipad_era) and judge for yourself.

</comment><comment><USER3> The comparisons of what Apple is doing to their iOS platform and to Adobe against Google's search algorithms isn't a stretch, it's just like reading a textual representation of a trainwreck.</comment>


Gravity is unlikely to be the cause of quantum collapse, experiment suggests - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/09/one-quantum-physics-greatest-paradoxes-may-have-lost-its-leading-explanation <comment><USER2> Gravity was never a leading explanation for collapse; it was always a fringe idea.

Gravity is local and apparent collapse is non-local; it doesn't even pass the smell test.

<comment><USER3> Collapse is only mysterious to people who never learned thermofield theory, or non-equilibrium quantum dynamics. Unfortunately this is also a sizable fraction of all physicists. Thus we have articles like this :/

Basically all the work in getting large scale quantum computers to work lies in these fields. They will continue to grow.

<comment> GuB-42 I am not a physicist but isn't it an instance of "if you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics"?

The measurement problem, which deals with collapse is still unsolved. It is also the reason why there are so many weird interpretations of quantum mechanics and that even top physicists can't agree on one. In fact the same physicists tend to sweep the problem under the rug and instead focus on the equations that, to be fair, did a lot more to science and technology than trying to solve the measurement problem.

<comment><USER3> There is no measurement problem. It so happens that most measurement apparatus are macroscopic and at a temperature much higher than the quantum gap of the system being probed. Measurements in qm imply a rotation between systems, and mixture with an incoherent thermal state implies a quantum superposition will lose coherence. Full stop. This is all understood in full, grab any text on non equilibrium quantum dynamics. One can even simulate the collapse process in full detail, and obtain superior agreement with experiments.

If the measurement apparatus is coherent, measurements can be performed without collapse. This was well thought out even within wigner and einstein's lifetimes. c.f. the vaidman bomb detector.

<comment><USER4> It depends on what one calls the measurement problem.

This solves the "consistency/small problem", i.e. treating the macroscopic apparatus as boolean is justified.

It doesn't resolve the "outcome problem", i.e. which outcome is selected. Of course if you accept the world is not deterministic this isn't really a problem.

<comment><USER3> One could argue even classical mechanics isn't deterministic as we think of it because of chaos, which has fascinating connections with QM. W Hoover (of the Nose-Hoover thermostat fame) did some great work with reversible thermostats exploring the instability of Newtons equations of motion.

<comment><USER4> I think that's different. Chaos still uses classical probability and the randomness is just ignorance of underlying initial conditions. This is very different from QM.

<comment><USER3> You'd be surprised. You should read about many-body localization and the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis.

<comment><USER4> I have. They still don't make Quantum Theory and Chaos similar. Rather for some systems QM can motivate ergodicity as well as classical chaos can. However that doesn't mean Quantum Probability and Classical Probability are alike simply because they give similar behaviour for certain systems for one specific limit. Their representation theory is completely different.

Chaotic systems don't have a Kochen-Specker or PBR theorem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What percentage of practicing physicists actually think there is something "missing" in the quantum formalism as it relates to "wavefunction collapse"?

I'm not a physicist, but from the few years of QM I took in college my take is that there is nothing special about "measurement", it's just a label we apply to certain states becoming entnagled. As long as you don't believe there is anything magical about humans or other "conscious" observers, then there doesn't seem to be anything to figure out about collapse.

<comment><USER6> > then there doesn't seem to be anything to figure out about collapse.

Then why is quantum state evolution seemingly continuous and unitary some of the time, and sharply discontinuous at other times?

<comment><USER7> It seems continuous and unitary when the experimenter takes a lot of care to create a simple and very isolated system. When it's brought into contact with the mess that is the rest of the world it changes character very quickly, and interactions with the rest of the world completely swamp the internal dynamics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The [paper]([https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-020-1008-4](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-020-1008-4))

</comment><comment><USER8> Nice. It's an actual experimental result.

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't understand why we would think wave-function collapse would release radiation.

</comment><comment><USER10> Lazy evaluation.

<comment><USER11> It does seem like some aspects of QM point to reality being simulation that tries to avoid the expense of unnecessary calculations.

<comment><USER12> There's no work QM is saving: it doesn't delay work or get to do less until when you physically look at something and then get to skip work for things you don't look at. * Things that are in superposition would require more computation for all their many alternate versions (most of which aren't meaningfully interacted with), not less, and the extra work for managing superpositions continues forever if MWI is right. All particles are constantly entering new superpositions, not just individual particles in fancy lab experiments. Only the very simplest of particle interactions (like two individual hydrogen atoms interacting) are feasible to simulate with full quantum mechanics on classical computers. * "Observation" happens through any physical interaction at all, including particle collisions. Outside of some individual particles inside carefully controlled experiments, most particles end up transitively interacting with most other particles near them.

If the universe was at all optimized for simulation costs for human experience, we probably wouldn't expect there to be be trillions of galaxies with hundreds of millions of stars each, for the smallest particles to be on the scale of billion-billionths compared to humans, or for QM to work anything like it does.

<comment><USER13> That time-steps for atomic interactions need to be picoseconds or smaller, but interesting biological reactions take minutes+ [eg,protein folding] is also a PITA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Every measurement (gravitational, electronic, magnetic etc. ) causes a collapse of the probabilities. This has nothing to do with quantum mechanics. This is simply statistics/math and has nothing to do with physics.

A simple example: As long as one doesn't look at a coin, the probability that it shows head or tail is 50%. After the measurement it "collapses" to 100% for one of the options.

But the "collapse" is only a mathematical "collapse", not a physical one.

Physics only limits how precise and fast your measurement apparatus can be.

</comment><comment><USER15> "Now, one of the most plausible mechanisms for quantum collapse—gravity—has suffered a setback." no it hasn't: stop trying to inject drama where there is none.

</comment><comment><USER16> I read it "Gravity is unlucky"

<comment><USER16> Why in the hell I get downvoted for this comment?

The world is full of freaks.</comment></comment>


Spotify's Numbers Show Growth, and Maybe a Path to Profits - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/spotifys-numbers-show-growth-and-maybe-a-path-to-profits-1522058400 <comment><USER2> My opinion for years now is that Spotify will be the Music Provider that will take out most of the competition including Itunes, YouTube Red, or hard copies of CDs. They offer reasonable rates and access to the largest music library. I have no doubt they will continue to be the leading provider of digital music and profitable as well. It surprises me that they are not already profitable. Anyone know why?</comment>


Show HN: JobHero – Organize and optimize your job search - <AUTHOR> https://gojobhero.com

<comment><USER2> Congratulations on making a beautiful website that clearly shows what it does, makes me want to sign up and use a simple, clean interface. Seriously, this is a breath of fresh air and credit to you. Great idea too, will certainly give it a try.

<comment><USER2> Side note: Who made the "superheroes" on your homepage? I need something similar and would like to get in touch with them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much for the kind words! Email me (in my profile) and I'll shoot you their contact info.</comment></comment></comment>


How to host multiple websites from home - <AUTHOR> https://www.techcoil.com/blog/how-to-host-multiple-websites-from-home/ <comment><USER2> Browsing from mobile: webpage requests access to mircrophone.

Why?</comment>


Choosing a Name for Your Computer  - <AUTHOR> http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/fyi/fyi5.html <comment><USER2> From the article: "Don't overload other terms already in common use."

I heard that Nokia named a set of meeting rooms after cities. This was changed after it cost a small fortune in cancelled flights.

From the article: "Avoid alternate spellings."

An ex-colleague named servers after his favourite punk and metal bands, many of which have unusual spellings. Furthermore, it doesn't give the right impression if you name your mail server megadeth

<comment><USER3> Many of the offices I've worked in have named meeting rooms after cities. But there was never any confusion -- I guess when you say "the meeting's in Milan in 5 minutes" there isn't any ambiguity.

(I did try to get out of a few meetings in that room by claiming I was too sexy for it. Never worked.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The nerdiest scheme I encountered was naming machines after elements, and matching the last part their IPs with the atomic number of the element in question.

</comment><comment><USER4> For some years now I name my computers after famous scientists/inventors (in the broad sense of these words)

I.e.: galileo, newton, leibnitz, curie, marconi...

</comment><comment><USER5> Be careful not to choose sets of names which are _too_ common though. Trying to integrate two separate systems, each of which was named after the Greek pantheon, can be very painful.

</comment><comment><USER6> Home network:

Airports - Tonto, Robin, and Pokey.

Computers - Lone Ranger, Batman, and Gumbi.

<comment><USER7> When I worked at Cornell, we had a habit of naming pairs or groups of machines that were related (eg. as failovers, or multimasters, or whatever) so that the grouping was obvious enough to stick. Hack/slash, itchy/scratchy, homer/bart/marge, etc. My officemate and I had Indigo2's named squish and squash, for example.

I've done the same thing ever since, and if you look at truly huge deployments, you end up developing a lexicon that exists solely to indicate where and what a machine is. eg. "what's wrong with pyj121-200? the whole rack is flapping!" "oh it looks like a bad blade in pyextbr2" "well open a ticket to swap the blade tonight then! it's hanging index transfers!" Datacenter, rack, machine. Simple.

Meanwhile, at some of the smaller deployments I've done, there are machines named after porn stars (lovelace/holmes were a couple of onsite/offsite RAID monstrosities; bildo/remsen were hot and cold firewall nodes), musicians (mingus/parker/coltrane/monk), and so on. Functional or physical relationships as indicated by lexical relationships are a relatively convenient shorthand, and if one machine turns into a farm, you have lovelace1, lovelace2, lovelace3...

Just some musings. Thank god I don't work ops anymore.</comment></comment>


A fairy tale about ICCIDs, IMSIs and iPads  - <AUTHOR> http://laforge.gnumonks.org/weblog/2010/06/15/#20100615-iccid_imsi_ipad

<comment><AUTHOR> _UPDATE: As some people have discovered, the three US operators themselves have decided that they use the same number to generate both the ICCID and the IMSI. So if you have one, you can compute the other. No need for HLR access, no need for the MAP protocol. So the information leak is in fact unrelated to the GSM protocol but simply a matter of how unfortunate those particular three operators assign their unique identifiers._

The kicker is in this update at the bottom. That's a pretty big oops.</comment>


Hacking the iBeacon - <AUTHOR> http://skylarrudolph.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-ibeacon-protocol-and-how-to-hack-it.html

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a close look at the iBeacon protocol and how to bend the parameters to grow your network.</comment>


Casualties of the Iraq War - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War <comment><USER2> Thank goodness we finally have President really committed to ending these debacles.</comment>


DIY Multi-touch Displays using the Wiimote - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/projects/wii/

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the direct CMU link.</comment>


Submit k3s for inclusion to CNCF as a sandbox project - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cncf/toc/pull/447 <comment><USER2> Is there a decent summary of the various k8s derivatives/distributions/etc. anywhere? I'm aware of k3s and micro-k8s and I know there are others I've forgotten and a "here's which one to consider using for what" that none of the maintainers hate would be helpful but I've completely failed to find it if it already exists.

<comment><USER3> Not a summary, but the CNFC landscape has the relevant links:

Platform - Certified Kubernetes - Installer (19)[0]

Platform - Certified Kubernetes - Hosted (45) [1]

Platform - Certified Kubernetes - Distribution (61)[2]

Even if you ignore the hosted offerings, that's still 80 different ways to install or setup a certified kubernetes cluster.

[0]: [https://landscape.cncf.io/category=certified-kubernetes- inst...](https://landscape.cncf.io/category=certified-kubernetes- installer&format=card-mode&grouping=category)

[1]: [https://landscape.cncf.io/category=certified-kubernetes- host...](https://landscape.cncf.io/category=certified-kubernetes- hosted&format=card-mode&grouping=category)

[2]: [https://landscape.cncf.io/category=certified-kubernetes- dist...](https://landscape.cncf.io/category=certified-kubernetes- distribution&format=card-mode&grouping=category)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > We wanted an installation of Kubernetes that was half the size in terms of > memory footprint. Kubernetes is a 10 letter word stylized as k8s. So > something half as big as Kubernetes would be a 5 letter word stylized as > k3s. There is no long form of k3s and no official pronunciation.

Am I the only one who is tired of all these shorthand names?

<comment><USER5> Am I the only one who is tired of all these red bicycle sheds?</comment></comment>


If China loses faith the dollar will collapse - <AUTHOR> http://business.rediff.com/report/2009/may/06/if-china-loses-faith-the-dollar-will-collapse.htm

<comment><USER2> If the dollar collapses, then people will no longer be able to afford goods produced in China (or good produced anywhere else for that matter). In that case, wouldn't such a collapse put China's economy into a tailspin?</comment>


Syuzhet: Extraction of sentiment-based plot arcs from text - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mjockers/syuzhet

<comment><USER2> Lots of discussion about whether the '7 common plots' are an artifact of the low pass filter he used. [https://annieswafford.wordpress.com/2015/03/07/continuingsyu...](https://annieswafford.wordpress.com/2015/03/07/continuingsyuzhet/)

Both sides also seem to acknowledge that the sentiment analyzers chosen don't work well for literature. Junk data + lowpass filter = Beautiful curves generated from noise.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Full title (too long to fit the 80 character limit): An R package for the extraction of sentiment and sentiment-based plot arcs from text

Article: [http://motherboard.vice.com/read/computers-find-that- there-a...](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/computers-find-that-there-are- six-plots)

Author's blog: [http://www.matthewjockers.net/](http://www.matthewjockers.net/)</comment>


Ask HN: Perfect existing skills or build new ones? - <AUTHOR> I am college student in Junior year. I am comfortable with building ruby on rails applications. I have not been able to decide whether I should keep building on my existing skills or I should explore new fields? For example, if I have some time at hand, should I spend that on reading source code of rails, learn things like Meter, Node.Js, NoSQL etc or should I explore completely new fields like software development with C++/Python or may be android/ios app  development? Big data and AI are quite interesting as well. You guys must have made this decision at some point. <comment><USER2> Both / all of the above.

At this point in your career, I would be concerned with two things:

1\. Differentiating yourself from other entry-level candidates when you graduate a year from now. The best way to do this is simply to built-out your portfolio. Launch as many real sites and apps as you can...in whatever language/stack makes sense for the app in question.

2\. Finding something you really enjoy. If you love building RoR sites, great! But if you think pursuing A.I. and such might make you happier in the long run, then you should pursue that path. At the end of the day, finding a sub- field that really interests you will make your career go a lot smoother.

Time is on your side. You've got plenty of options, and I would recommend you pursue any and all of the ones that you find interesting.

</comment><comment><USER3> There are different philosophies, but given you are still in school and have a year to go.

I'd focus on learning data structures, algorithms and different architectures, when to use what and the trade offs. I say this because honestly, a smart person will pickup just about any language you put in front of them, but if they don't understand the choices behind architectures, data structures and algorithms then their value is far less.

Also, while IMO you should do the above I also agree with MalcolmDiggs suggestions too, you should use this time to experiment with different technologies and different parts of the stack to see what interests you. You may find you hate being a front end web guy, or that you love it. I'd pick an open source project and contribute/learn from it or write some self serving applications that do little things you or your friends would like.

</comment><comment><USER4> There are lots of great Rails jobs out there.

I would keep developing your expertise in rails.

Maybe learn some react or angular2 to complement your rails knowledge.

I second M-diggs, build some real world applications that are live online, and fill up your github profile with great work.

Oh and enjoy the rest of university. Those are some of the best times in life, there will be plenty of time for work later.</comment>


Selling to the Fortune 500, Government, and Other Lovecraftian Horrors - <AUTHOR> https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/enterprise_sales <comment><USER2> Government is totally different than enterprise. Government is extremely price conscious, and may even have regulatory requirements that dictate a purchasing process. There may be formal request processes, approvals, public hearings and comment processes, etc. There can be formalized criteria that dictate who wins an RFP. If you try to lump enterprise sales and government sales in the same boat, you will be in for failure.

And the whole limit that this article is talking about exploiting, of sticking under a specific amount... That is called frequently called "DOA" \- Delegation of Authority. And the trick stated, to keep your price under a specific DOA level, is questionable. People who aren't trusted to spend more than $500 also likely do not have a large budget, so your $500 a month would kill their yearly budget, and you would lose the sale anyway, or at best become a target for cost reductions in the future.

Sure, using tricks like that might quicken a sales cycle and avoid annoying bureaucracy. But in the long run, you will still lose. You are a pain point in the budget of a 1st line manager, instead of a prized vendor in the large budget of a higher manager. When the day comes that the corporation challenges all its managers to shave 15% of their yearly budget, guess what list you end up on? Trust me, you do NOT want your monthly bill to be falling in the budget of a low-level manager.

Instead, Deal with the pain. Put up with the bureaucracy. Do the PO process. Get in as a line item on a budget higher in the hierarchy. You then are really considered a cost-effective solution, and higher-level leaders don't like admitting mistakes, so they will put their political clout behind keeping you in that organization.

<comment><USER3> "Government is extremely price conscious, and may even have regulatory requirements that dictate a purchasing process."

My nightmare scenario is when of the K Street wonders (or I street) gets their software required for a grant program. It is always awful which leads to a nice side business in training classes. I've had to deal with too many of these wonders.

To give a nice example, one piece of software needed an "update". This update came in the form of a PL/SQL file that needs to be applied. This file was 762 megabytes. No install program just a list of steps to run the sql file that took over 4 hours to complete.

<comment><USER4> Actually, that seems like it was generated by some half-ass SQL generator written by a summer intern. Wait, are you running my code from 12 years ago?

The problem I've had with the RFPs I've responded to in this regard is that training may or may not be accounted for in the original RFP and if you try to increase your bid to accommodate the knowledge transfer sessions and especially the three to four that you have to schedule eventually because the people you need to train are all on PTO for three weeks at a time all for critical stakeholders.

<comment><USER3>
      Actually, that seems like it was generated by some
      half-ass SQL generator written by a summer intern.
      Wait, are you running my code from 12 years ago?

If it is a SQL generator, they sure do a good job of randomly formatting and adding interesting comments.

I would prefer the software to require little to no training. Given what is gathered then typed in, it seems like they took the forms that are required and ran them through a blender then an input wizard. This is par for the course. They are already getting training on data gathering so having the program match the damn forms might be a bonus.

I am in awe of what can be shipped these days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Stop thinking like a human. Think like a corporation. Corporations are like > humans whose smallest increment of currency is the largest paycheck you've > ever received.

This is a pretty important point. The financial scale that a company operates at can be hard to reason about if you aren't involved in that part of its operations. Buying $500 licenses for an IDE in my department seems prohibitively expensive from my perspective, but for the company it probably costs less than the furniture in the office.

<comment><USER6> There's little "probably" about it.

I assure that most office furniture is absurdly over-priced and indeed would dwarf a $500 license. Just a desk chair with modest comfort and ergonomic features will be priced in that ballpark, with anything that you'd consider "nice" being higher than that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I did a few enterprise sales, e.g. to Deutsche Post AG or Siemens, and I have to disagree to point 7 here. At first German companies do not sent a check in an envelope, but use Germans much better banking network for wire transfer. Unlike US direct debit and direct credit are free of charge and execute within a day between two banks, and nearly instant at same bank. The other thing about point 7 is a "trick" I learned more then 30 years ago: Offer 2% discount, if customer pays within 7 days. Everybody who can count will do, even enterprise.

</comment><comment><USER8> I have ZERO CLUE and or social skills to seal the deal with Fortune 500 companies.

I am basically a solo founder (have a tech partner, but he's 25% in vs. me 500% in) whose work grabs the attention of the biggest companies in the world. I publish my work on the iNet and or demo it and in doing so VP and higher ups of Fortune 50 to 500 companies reach out wanting to do business and or it could be just flirt and or figure out how my partner and I achieved what we have accomplished.

Examples... 1\. Two months after announcing our work we were invited out to the valley to demo our tech to an entity out there. They were total jerks to us and baited us to tell them how we accomplished X. That was a low day .. felt like we flew out to the valley to get kick in the stomach by a giant.

2\. Fast forward 16 months later and just about every massive tech company has reached out to us showing some level of interest. Not sure how they find out about us (a east coast start-up), but they do and we get excited but then demoralized as nothing happens.

3\. Most recently I demoed our tech at a hackathon. After my demo a VP of Fortune 500 company was super excited and said i want to use this at my end of the year board meeting. Ok, awesome let's make this happen I thought. Though first big wig you will need to sign a document and half licensing agreement. Oops that small document that protected us killed the deal and well NOW I AM CRAZY TIRED OF DEALING WITH THESE UPS AND DOWNS.

We can and have a history of making cool things, but totally lack the social skills and business acumen. It time to hang things up and possibly open source our work. Many companies bottom lines will hurt once we and if we open source it. Though of course we will remain living our meager lives.

Done starting up after 10 years, broke, in debt, 4o years old and family-less (she is tired of waiting for it to happen too.. back to the corporate world so i can have that family ive always wanted).

<comment><USER9> Sorry to hear that the experience was tough. One thing I'd recommend for anyone new to it- get help from someone who's been an enterprise sales person before. This can speed up the learning curve dramatically. Even then it's not automatic- it took me 6 months of hard full-time work and lots of no's and wasted time like the above to really get a feel for the enterprise sales process. It's more work than learning a new programming language and framework but less work than learning to program.

<comment><USER10> Another thing to do is try to determine whether you're talking to someone who actually has the authority to make a decision. Givaways are things like "Sounds great, let me run it by my [manager|committee|VP]" etc. You may be thinking you're on the path to a sure sale only to find out that the person holding the purse strings doesn't even know what's going on, or has already made another decision, or there's no budget, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _A typical phrase you will hear from customers at this point is "We don't want to be your biggest client."_

This is not something you can get around easily. Some companies have strict rules such as "we can't be more than 30% of your revenue".

The reason behind that is that if a customer represents a very large amount of your revenue, you can be considered as a _de facto_ subsidiary.

The real way around it is to work with a larger intermediary company.

Patrick's story is interesting but it won't work against hard formal processes.

<comment><USER12> where would the client get this information? (can't you say whatever you want?)

Also this seems easy to massage, you can just resell a commodity under cost to generate all the 'revenue' you want (at negative margin.)

<comment><USER11> Obviously I don't know the laws of every country in the world but I would be surprised that lying about the revenues of your company isn't at least a felony.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So where should you draw the "Call for a quote" line? I'm a few months from launching a B2B tool with a great value (improve telco tech support efficiency by a good factor - I've had a prototype install running at one company for a few years and they simply cannot operate without it).

I'm thinking of SaaS at launch. My lowest monthly plan is probably $250 to 490. (In addition to a free "personal" edition for people playing with projects.) My average price point I think will be in the 2k to 5k a month. I have a verbal commit from a medium sized customer at $10k.

How much do I publish online? Do I run the risk of alienating one segment by simply being available to another?

<comment><USER14> The thing you really have to watch out for here if you have lower prices published is the big guys seeing that and thinking they can get your services for that much too. You have to have your story really nailed of why the 2k-5k services are worth that much more. Usually this is in the form of service level agreements, support levels, response times, security, etc.

As an anecdote, we had "small business pricing" published on our site and organizations like The World Bank, Koch, and a few others were paying $279/month which was insane. We made a few thousand a year on those plans, and a few hundred thousand on "enterprise" clients.

We don't have small business plans anymore.

<comment><USER13> Thanks for the reply!

Bigger customers will need more user logins and more processing capacity. So they segment alright that way, although I'm not sure how many axes to include (users, TB/month, peak messages/sec, feature set, etc.). But a <$500 plan won't include more than a TB a month, and even medium users will need that much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'd say there are many different levels of "enterprisey" sales, depending on the deal size and whether you're selling to a small, medium, or large entity, and whether it's public or private. A competitive bidding process is nothing like a discretionary purchase.

Pros: * Sometimes they're not spending their own money. Especially if they're spending grant money, simply price your package for the amount of the grant. They may have no incentive to save money if it's use-it-or-lose-it. * Enterprises or gov't sometimes have plenty of money to throw around, especially in the above scenario. Come up with as many frivolous "add-on" features as you can, put ridiculous price tags on it, and watch clients inexplicably check all the boxes. SMS notifications for only $5000/year? Deal! * Big government contracts may be for 5 years of service paid upfront. Think about what that does to your cashflow.

Cons: * Your soul withers away.

</comment><comment><USER16> I like the bit about reacting to sign-ups from boeing.com emails, I wonder if anyone out there is curating a "whale list" that gives the domains you should care about.

<comment><USER17> Great idea - I just looked this up - NASDAQ has a nice list in CSV format along with market cap: [http://www.nasdaq.com/screening/company- list.aspx](http://www.nasdaq.com/screening/company-list.aspx)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Nice piece, but selling to enterprise customers and selling to the government only tangentially overlap. While most of the advice is transportable, the number one rule of selling to any government -- federal, state, or local -- is _get on the approved vendor list_. Getting on GSA is fundamental; getting on as many state-level purchasing schedules as possible is the next step. Unfortunately, this almost certainly means you'll end up giving a chunk of revenue to companies whose sole business model is "we're a GSA-certified vendor" and who will handle the regulatory runarounds for you. But the rewards are significant -- schedule vendors are often exempt from RFP requirements, so you can skip the usual pain point of writing RFQ responses and bidding for business, and get right to the selling.

</comment><comment><USER19> "common engineer misapprehension that BFE sales requires playing golf, inviting clients to steak dinners, and having budgets beyond to reach of small businesses."

Can engineers not play golf? I'd like to read a post on how to get in on _this_ sales process -- ultimately, that's always where the money is!

<comment><USER20> The ability to play golf, unless one grew up in a golfing family, appears to be included as part of the package in certain promotions. A direct download to the brain. "Now I know golf" Mr Anderson may say in later life having capitulated to Mr Smith.

It is inexplicable.

<comment><USER21> Playing golf is irrelevant. Hanging around on the lawn with a stick and a ball and the right company is the important part.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The UK government is trying hard to remedy a lot of the issues raised here for software development. GCloud (catalog of SaaS services - once you are an approved supplier theoretically your "ally" patio11 suggests merely has to click and purchase is real. A similar setup for software development is underway right now.

What I am saying is, the essential problem of sales to enterprise is still making something someone wants, and finding that someone and persuading them to sign.

Edit: not disagreeing with anything patio11 says - in fact I think I am supporting the main point - government and enterprise sales ain't so different and they are gettin more similar each day.

<comment><USER17> I'd be wary to think they are converging. The enterprise sales cycle is getting shorter and more user driven (more folks can charge a per-user individual fee as opposed to site licenses). This makes the process more accessible than ever. Government on the other side is increasingly consolidating vendors under systems integrators creating an ever higher barrier to competition ([http://iq.govwin.com/corp/downloads/Deltek- WashTechTopSI.pdf](http://iq.govwin.com/corp/downloads/Deltek- WashTechTopSI.pdf)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Thanks Patrick, you always write great and actionable content.

</comment><comment><USER24> A single best piece about software sales I have read during the last 5 years. Very inspiring. Thank you.

</comment><comment><USER25> These are practical tips I have used to success.

Highly recommended reading.

</comment><comment><USER26> I didn't see where he says "don't sell to them, sell to the organizations that sell to them". There's an entire ecosystem of resellers/VARs/distributors/etc that, for a cut, will shield you from many of the issues you'll face in the Gov or Enterprise world.

For example, I've been "sold" as a consultant via a government subcontractor(1) that took care of bidding, billing, contracts and renewals, etc and simply paid me the rate I asked for. Similarly, I've had products that a distributor took on and did all the legwork to get on the GSA lists so all we had to do was fulfillment and support. They would even structure the financials such that it met whatever DOA requirement the end customer needed, but paid us up front.

(1) FWIW, the entity that subcontracted me was another small biz that was taking advantage of the "8A" category of small business set asides. If you fit in one of the categories, it might be an option as well. This is obviously a US-centric option.

[https://www.sba.gov/category/navigation- structure/8a-busines...](https://www.sba.gov/category/navigation- structure/8a-business-development-program)

<comment><USER4> Ironically, this is a part of how some actually decent, large software companies that you'd think could afford the BS overhead and broaden out their revenue streams by using the partners. Google, for example, has a number of enterprise integrators that deal with the terrible BS of anything related to organizations that spend more time trying to figure out what to do than actually doing anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> How about not selling to these guys, period. I just have this feeling that once you take money from a Fortune company, you are their employee. Same goes for the government.

<comment><USER27> Thanks all for the feedback, but I still prefer to not sell to the government. You may be right that it is less scary than it looks, hence a lost opportunity, but I prefer to never deal with them as a customer.

<comment><USER28> And that might even be the right thing for you. Not everyone has to sell to anyone.

<comment><USER17> Noone should sell to everyone :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Wow, running a business in a third-world country without ~zero-cost over-night electronic money transfer between banks must suck... sending paper checks, by snail mail, in 2014?

"they will ... send a check to an address picked randomly from the set of them printed on the invoice. (Make sure you give them one easy, obvious option for where to send the checks, and that that mailbox is monitored for discrete envelopes containing paper worth potentially tens of thousands of dollars. You can get a check reissued but it will be extra pain and take another several weeks.)"

<comment><USER30> I'm sure he cried all the way to the bank.</comment></comment>


Top Ten Hosted Services to Get Your Startup Off the Launchpad FAST - <AUTHOR> http://www.assistly.com/blog/top-ten-startup-hosted-services/ <comment><USER2> They might be less than thrilling, but these tried-and-true hosted services have their charms.</comment>


Psychology of 'no': Vancouver transit vote shows why good decisions are hard - <AUTHOR> http://news.nationalpost.com/2015/03/13/the-psychology-of-no-vancouver-residents-poised-to-make-a-decision-that-will-corrode-their-happiness/ <comment><USER2> This is a terrible attempt to disguise a position piece as some sort of insight into the psychology of voters. It presupposes that the tax increase in question would be a strict positive for the populace, and argues based on that premise.

Maybe the "no" voters see it differently? They're probably dubious that "the mayor's plan will shorten commute times on Vancouver's most congested roads by 20-30 minutes per day, while transit riders will save up to half an hour."

> A report by HDR Consulting found that, even after the sales tax, the average > family can expect to save about $360/year.

I'm going to bet that HDR Consulting was smart enough to provide the answer their client was looking for.

I know I sound cynical here, but this article takes campaign-style promises at face value, then cries, "Why can't they just see what's better for them??"

<comment><USER3> "It presupposes that the tax increase in question would be a strict positive for the populace, and argues based on that premise."

That's because it is a good plan. Every single mayor and a vast majority of councillors are voting YES. [http://transit-vote.thetyee.ca/](http://transit- vote.thetyee.ca/)

Almost every single organization, left and right of centre, has endorsed the plan: [http://i.imgur.com/guVFQDa.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/guVFQDa.jpg)

It's a good plan. That's why the piece pre-supposes that point.

<comment><USER4> Why are they putting this on a vote, if it's such a good plan? Policymakers should be making policy, not offloading blame for policy outcomes to the residents. It's their only job.

The fact that local micro politics have a real chance of influencing the outcome of the referendum more than the quality of the plan is exactly why such a referendum is not a good idea.

Besides, what if the No vote wins? They will probably still do most of the things in the plan, but somewhat slower and with less fanfare.

If I had voting rights in Vancouver I would just vote No in protest against the referendum itself.

<comment><USER5> IIRC because the premier promised not to increase sales tax without putting it to a vote first; it was one of her election promises. Around the time she was elected, there was a lot of controversy because the previous government tried to enforce a major tax change (GST/PST to HST) that also caused the total sales tax on some items to increase. People were pretty angry about it, and in the end we had to pay the costs of switching from GST/PST to HST, and then again the costs to switch back to GST/PST.

Apparently if people vote "no" on the sales tax increase, they will be increasing property taxes instead:

[http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british- columbia/clark-w...](http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british- columbia/clark-warns-mayors-will-have-to-raise-property-taxes-if-no-vote- prevails/article22851649/)

Voting no to "punish" the people putting it to a vote sounds like an incredibly ineffective way of protesting. Nobody would know it was a protest except you. If you live here, why don't you actually protest instead? You don't even need voting rights for that.

I'm still unsure whether to vote yes or no. I think we need the transit improvements and the money has to come from somewhere. OTOH property tax seems like it would be less regressive than sales tax, and I'm not in favor of regressive taxes in general. So if we're really voting on sales tax vs property tax, a "no" vote would make sense, except I feel like the property tax route would be more fraught with further political drama and other difficulties and we might not actually get the needed funding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I live in Vancouver and will be voting Yes; but I am pretty confident that the No-side will win this battle.

The group(s) that have been promoting the No vote seem to be using big numbers and mostly baseless arguments. Statements like "Translink spent $30,000 on a statue of a poodle", "The last CEO made $500,000 a year", "Voting Yes tells Translink you are happy with their service" are among their key points.

It's unfortunate that the general public struggles to think in relative terms, or to be forward thinking. $500k/year is a pretty low CEO salary for that size of organization; $30,000 on public art for an organization with an annual budget of almost $1.5 billion is all of a sudden not so outrageous.

"Voting Yes tells Translink you are happy with their service" is the ultimate irony in it all. The reason this plebiscite exists is because the population is _unhappy_ with the service and they want to make it better.

Of all of the large Canadian transit systems I've used - Calgary, Vancouver, Montréal, Toronto - Vancouver's is without a doubt the best and most efficient of them all, and Translink has developed a very good plan for what they would do if the Yes side prevailed.

Oh well.

(the proposed transit plan given a successful Yes vote: [http://mayorscouncil.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Mayors- Co...](http://mayorscouncil.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Mayors-Council- Vision-Document-Mar-2015.pdf))

<comment><USER7> Also from Vancouver, but will not be voting because I'm not a citizen. I'd be on the fence about this decision. Not because of the statue or the CEO salary; you're right, in the grand scheme of things they aren't very important and are absolutely used by the "no" campaign to cause a knee jerk reaction in voters.

The more troubling thing about Translink is their apparent inability to execute even the simplest of projects. Remember the Compass cards? Still not in effect. Similarly, turnstiles in the skytrain still don't work, so many people don't pay.

Building new rail service and adding more bus routes seems orders of magnitude more complex than implementing a check in/check out card system or enabling turnstiles in the skytrain stations. If they fail to execute simple tasks at the cost of hundreds of millions, why would they be able to execute complex tasks at the cost of billions?

This in addition to the fact that sales taxes are the most regressive taxes you can have. Why not property tax? Only extremely wealthy people can afford property in Vancouver. Seems like a better place to start...

Like I said, I have no skin in this game. Just trying to shed some light on some of the more salient points from the No side.

<comment><USER6> I agree with you that the Compass card project has been a failure, but I don't think it is fair to fault their ability to execute a transportation project based on their inability to execute a software project. Translink has a proven successful track record in building roads and bridges and SkyTrains and bus routes.

The Compass card project is undoubtably a failure, and Translink chose the wrong contractor (the same company is responsible for another failed project in Chicago). Software is hard, and I would say to a certain extent this is a transportation company diving a little too deeply in a field for which they have no expertise.

To the property tax argument - in general, the people that own property in Vancouver probably also own cars. The largest users of public transit are obviously those who do not have cars, so then raising property taxes would largely affect people who do not directly benefit from a successful vote, no?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm no longer a Vancouver resident, but I know people who are voting no not because they think transit doesn't need the money (it definitely does), but because:

1) Sales tax is a regressive way to tax people.

2) Translink, the company in charge of transit in Vancouver, is widely seen as somewhere between incompetent and corrupt. (Corrupt by Canadian standards, which is a pretty low bar).

If this was done as an increase in property and gas taxes, I suspect it'd be a different story.

<comment><USER9> _Sales tax is a regressive way to tax people._

Aren't there numerous sales tax exemptions that make it less regressive? No sales tax on groceries, school supplies, etc?

<comment><USER10> The PST in British Columbia (which would be raised half a percent) exempts children's clothes, books, bicycles, medications, and most food.

Source: [http://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/topic.page?id=78521DE3BD5D46C9A3B1...](http://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/topic.page?id=78521DE3BD5D46C9A3B17631207A0AD7)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> No-voting Vancouverite here.

Firstly, giving more money to Translink is like giving a credit card to a reckless teenager. Or the keys to a powerful sports car to Justin Bieber. Secondly, transit should support itself from the fares it collects: how about that! I already pay a "regional transit levy" ... in my electricity bill, WTF? Where is the connection between me running a fridge, computer and lights, and someone else taking the bus?

I don't give a rat's ass about transit. I bike to work!

Okay, so there are bike lanes in this deal for me? Nope; I don't care about those, and they won't build them where I commute. I will fend for myself, thanks.

I also don't care about expanding the road infrastructure for motorists. Roads should get slower and more congested, as an incentive for people to get out of their cars.

My commute is already short and consistently so. I can beat transit by 100% and even the average car trip time. I've made the 12 km trip to work in as few as 22 minutes; whereas my best car time was around 15, and plenty of times when traffic made that 45 minutes or more.

I don't care about a new bridge over the Fraser; just more ways for the violent criminals from there to attack Vancouver homes, businesses and individuals, and then make a faster getaway back over the Fraser, out of law's reach. It's bad enough that a stray bullet can reach across the Fraser.

Hey, that last paragraph is a joke, no offense intended! :)

<comment><USER3> "I already pay..." "I don't give a rat's ass..." "I don't care about those..." "I will fend for myself..." "I also don't care about..." "My commute is already..." "I can beat transit..." "I don't care about a new bridge..."

You've done a great job of making the article's point. You've fallen for the cognitive trap that the article is describing.

You have not considered more complex effects. How does this affect your family, friends, and co-workers? How does this affect the school and parks in your neighbourhood? How does this increase population density? How does this affect property prices? How does this affect pollution levels?

<comment><USER11> I believe that the plan will affect most of those things negatively. More traffic, more density, more pollution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The steady flow of condescending articles attacking anyone who doesn't want to let the politicians raise taxes now in exchange for something none of them will be in office to deliver doesn't seem to be winning the "Yes" campaign any friends. Maybe their crack team of psychologists could conduct a study and enlighten us...

<comment><USER13> We'd love to conduct such a study, but we need a small sales tax increase to finance it....

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think it's important to note that the transit plan won't change regardless of whether we vote yes or not. The same light rail and bridges will be built if we vote no, which will lead to the same results in happiness.

If we vote no it's just a matter of whether or not Translink can learn to manage the money that they have now. They have historically been horrible at this.

<comment><USER10> Source? I'm probably going to vote yes, since much of what I buy is PST-exempt anyway (e.g. food, books) and I really believe that our city needs world-class transit.

It would be great if we get the transit improvements either way. If that belief is false, though, it's a very dangerous idea to be spreading.

<comment><USER14> The plan has been touted in the metro and other papers since I moved to Vancouver 5 years ago. I suppose it depends on how you want to define plan -- as talk from officials with no drafts or as a concrete plan with specs and budgets. If we are using the latter definition it has been since around 2012.

I recall when the Canada line was being built for the Olympics there was an outcry because it would push the plans for the rail to Langley(UBC? My memory is not 100%) back by years as they were putting it on hold to make way for rail to Richmond.

From 2014: [http://www.bcbusiness.ca/manufacturing-transport/an-expo- lin...](http://www.bcbusiness.ca/manufacturing-transport/an-expo-line- to%E2%80%A6-langley) From 2013: [http://www.surreyleader.com/news/195701621.html](http://www.surreyleader.com/news/195701621.html) From 2012: [http://metronews.ca/news/vancouver/7340/surrey-mayor- derails...](http://metronews.ca/news/vancouver/7340/surrey-mayor-derails- skytrain-expansion-talk/) From 2008: (When it was just talk) [http://www.canada.com/story.html?id=ea3c45d3-d3b6-48fc-8b18-...](http://www.canada.com/story.html?id=ea3c45d3-d3b6-48fc-8b18-7fa4dbce4f63)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think a lot of Vancouverites would be more willing to pay more money for transit if they actually believed the promises would be delivered. Translink is notoriously incompetent and wasteful.

For instance, their "Compass" system, despite being pegged for deployment by 2008, STILL hasn't been fully implemented. It's been plagued by technical issues and is now running over $200 MILLION dollars, far higher than the original cost. All to stop non-paying passengers (they'll be losing more money on the compass system than missed ticket payments).

Not to mention many of the "transit police" they increasingly employ have 6 figure salaries. They're basically security guards who call the cops if anything serious happens. I've seen them maybe checking tickets 3x a year max in all my years riding Translink.

So yeah, if Translink wasn't already blowing millions of dollars when it shouldn't have, I think Vancouver would vote yes. As it stands, they're justified in saying no, in my humble opinion.

Sources: [http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/compass- card-...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/compass-card-program- delayed-again-by-translink-1.2701045)

[http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/translink- sal...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/translink-salaries-too- high-taxpayer-group-says-1.1316199)

<comment><USER11> > _I think a lot of Vancouverites would be more willing to pay more money for > transit ..._

By the way, the money-losing Golden Ears Bridge shows that Vancouverites (or "Lower-Mainland-ites", rather) are willing to drive an extra 40 minutes to avoid paying a small toll. The project didn't see that one coming, haha!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The main reason I would say no is because I don't trust the government to spend the money properly. Politicians have squandered any ability for people to trust them, as far as I'm concerned. There's all these promises of a better tomorrow, but there will be so much waste, so much corruption, that people would rather not tax themselves.

What this is a vague promise of better transit, but no real plan, no budget with accountability, etc. Also, unless I missed something the tax is forever. How often have we seen taxes meant for one thing to be diverted to another thing?

<comment><USER6> It's fair that you don't trust the government to spend money properly, but if the government has no money to spend then this problem is left unsolved.

Here is a document outlining the plan and budget: [http://mayorscouncil.ca/wp- content/uploads/2015/03/Mayors-Co...](http://mayorscouncil.ca/wp- content/uploads/2015/03/Mayors-Council-Vision-Document-Mar-2015.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Government spending is too wasteful, by orders of magnitude. I don't blame voters for saying no. Fix that problem first, before spending billions of dollars.

In Oregon we recently had a transit proposal to build a new bridge over the Columbia River between Oregon and Washington. About 30 years ago we spent $170 million for a very fine bridge.[1] Now we were being asked to spend $2800 million[2] for a replacement for a parallel bridge (revised down from $3500 million but surely overruns were guaranteed). I know we had some inflation in the intervening years. But nowhere near that much!

According to the govt CPI calculator, $170 in 1982 dollars is $412 in 2015 dollars. But our Oregon "leaders" wanted to spend $2800. Fortunately the Washington legislature killed it.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_L._Jackson_Memorial_Brid...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_L._Jackson_Memorial_Bridge)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_River_Crossing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_River_Crossing)

<comment><USER18> Except that the government is more than happy to spend billions on bridges, in a time when vehicle miles driven is declining rapidly, it's only mass transit that gets put to a vote. After blowing a billion dollars on a north Fraser crossing ( which is nearly empty all the time ) the government proceeded to blow $4 billion on the main highway crossing ( Port Mann ) to bring it to 8 lanes, it's totally empty all the time. And now they're going to blow another $3-6 billion replacing the south Fraser crossing (Massey Tunnel -> bridge)

<comment><USER17> Ouch. That's much worse than in the USA.

The Oregon <\--> Washington bridge that they wanted to replace is heavily used. It is for I-5, which is the primary North <\--> South highway for the west coast.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _The cost: half a penny added to the provincial sales tax._

I don't understand this quote. The BC sales tax is a percent, right? 7%? How do you add "half a penny"? Is that an extra 0.005%?

<comment><USER19> Half a penny per dollar. 7.5%

<comment><USER9> Why don't they call it that then? Because saying you're increasing the sales tax by 0.5% (almost 10% increase) sounds worse than "it's only half a penny"?

<comment><USER19> I feel the opposite way, odd. If you say "percent" I'm unsure if that's based on the existing tax or not. If you say "penny" I know instantly you mean per dollar.

<comment><USER9> Sure. They couldn't say the sales tax is going up by 0.5%, that would be confusing. But they could say "the sales tax rate is increasing by 0.5% from 12% to 12.5%"

<comment><USER19> That's pretty redundant, though, when everyone knows the current rate. Especially if you actually say the word "percent" three times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is a great example of effective marketing. The No side has worked for a number of years to portray Translink, the transit operating company in Vancouver, as incompetent and wasteful. They've turned this referendum on funding a group of capital projects into a referendum on the operating company.

By most metrics (trips per capita, on time performance, farebox recovery) Vancouver has one of the top transit systems in North America.

</comment><comment><USER21> TLDR; vote does not go the way a journalist wants it to, so he writes a long piece on how stupid the voters are.

<comment><USER22> A gross mischaracterization of the article.

<comment><USER23> A spot-on accurate summary of the article.

<comment><USER22> Hardly. The author of the article enumerated the benefits that could reasonably be expected to accrue to the public on the basis of empirical research. Most of the nay-saying comments in this thread are total BS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Yep, because there's never a downside to tax hikes.

Really, it's a fixed tax on every transaction. That alone is enough to destroy some markets, and it grows exponentially with goods transformations at the "service" sector, where companies pay those taxes.

<comment><USER3> The increase is 35¢ per day for the average person. Literally pennies. Literally.

Every single Metro Vancouver mayor, every newspaper (right and left of centre), every organization that matters has endorsed the plan. [http://i.imgur.com/guVFQDa.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/guVFQDa.jpg)

It's a good plan. It's so obviously a good plan. However, voters are polling that they will vote No. Against their own best interests.

<comment><USER25> An awful lot of Canadians increasingly sound like Republicans.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I live in greater Vancouver and I take public transport almost every day. I am almost certainly going to vote NO.

Translink just threw $200M down the drain on the Compass program ( [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compass_Card_%28TransLink%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compass_Card_%28TransLink%29) ). If/when this ever comes into effect it will increase my transit costs (vs. the 10 book tickets I can buy now). It will almost certainly increase my travel time due to lineups. My kids who home school will not be able to get a student's fare any more. Causal riders will avoid public transport because they need to give Translink $12 just for the privilege of a single bus ride (card + minimum "fill"). It will almost certainly increase Translink's expenses in maintaining this system. I'm not happy with their choices.

Public transport in greater Vancouver sucks big time (perhaps except within the city proper.) I used to have a commute of 25 minutes to work by car/motorcycle. Taking public transport would have made that over 2 hours. Most transport lines go from somewhere to downtown. If you need to go "across" and are outside the center good luck. If I miss my "express" bus in the morning (because it came 10 minutes early, which happens) then I have to walk 1km and wait 20 minutes for the slow bus that takes 20 minutes longer. If I come early, well, the bus can also be 10 minutes late... I understand they have a larger/less densely populated area to cover but they do not seem to be creative enough in doing that. The SkyTrain is just about the most expensive way of doing transport per km. I'm not sure other options were considered (e.g. there are de-comissioned train tracks running through Vancouver). Public transport is also quite expensive compared to anywhere else I've taken public transport. Dropping prices would help increase ridership which might help fix some of the other issues.

Fares that were raised when energy prices came up didn't come down once energy prices declined. This plan itself was made at a time when energy prices were higher and it seems they're not going back to the same levels any time soon. At the same time, Vancouver is pretty much the most expensive place in North America to get gas. Supposedly that tax money should have gone towards improving public transport.

Once taxes are increased that money can go anywhere. There's no "contract". There's no accountability. There are also a lot of improvements that could be made without getting into big ticket items. Optimizing the existing system towards public transport. I view the tax increase as throwing good money after bad money something I try not do to in my personal finance and I don't want the province to engage in this in their finance.

<comment><USER5> Why on earth are you buying the ticket books if you take public transport nearly every day? If that's really the case, a monthly pass is cheaper, and the monthly pass will still be available after Compass is introduced.

<comment><USER26> I work from home some days and I travel to work at 3-Zone times and back from work after 6:30pm which is 1-Zone times. Would a monthly pass be cheaper for me?

EDIT: I knew the answer but just to be sure I double checked. The cost of the 3 zone monthly pass would be equal to 21 days of travel a week on the 1/3 zone book combo. Since I work a few days from home it's not worth my while. Compass will not change this. I see it as another example of inflexibility since in theory Compass could automatically give me a better rate for this much travel.

<comment><USER5> IOW, you don't take transit nearly every day, but 66% of days. Yeah, there is not a lot of room in the transit fees to get a good deal if you fall somewhere on the spectrum between "daily commuter" and "infrequent rider".</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A tool for conference attendees - <AUTHOR> http://confer.csail.mit.edu/

<comment><AUTHOR> Confer helps you build a personalized schedule for conference you are attending. It helps you decide where to spend your time by providing social recommendations based on your interests.</comment>


Getting Started with Just - <AUTHOR> http://docs.justhttp.net/JustStarting.html

<comment><USER2> What about [http://docs.python-requests.org/en/latest/](http://docs.python- requests.org/en/latest/) ?

<comment><AUTHOR> In a sense, that's the goal :) Any Swift dev who's used python-requests should feel right at home with Just.</comment></comment>


Nebula is shutting down - <AUTHOR> https://www.nebula.com/

<comment><USER2> I met Chris Kemp two years ago along with my ACIO at a midwest compute conference. We explained that between Piston and Nebula we chose Piston. When Chris asked why, I explained that it was due to price.

He replied "You mean to tell me the only reason you didn't buy my product, is because of the price?!?!"

To which I replied "That's the only reason I don't drive a Lambo."

Even with a heavy discount, Nebula was too expensive. With that being said, I am equally worried about Piston's future. With the two OpenStack creators moving on from their first OpenStack entrepreneurial efforts, it definitely indicates a new phase of this OpenStack thing.

</comment><comment><USER3> The details on the shutdown are pretty spare. While the cloud market is perhaps still a bit immature, there are obviously many companies, both venture-backed and not, who are making plenty of money today. With a client list like they advertise, it makes me wonder how they couldn't trim down a bit to become revenue neutral at the very least, or trim their run rate down and raise another round to stick it out another few years. Something smells fishy.

<comment><USER4> Yep.

[https://www.nebula.com/customers/](https://www.nebula.com/customers/)

Look at that huge list of big name clients. Either those clients were using Nebula for a very, very small operation or Nebula wasn't pricing their products accordingly. I mean, Lockheed alone should have been enough to have basically unlimited money.

There's something else here that we haven't been told.

<comment><USER5> It used to amuse me that training companies used one person taking one class once as enough excuse to advertise "Microsoft approved training!"

Someone spending training budget on something does require approval, but there was (at the time) almost no oversight. I wonder if this is what's going on here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm really disappointed they decided to shutdown everything so suddenly with no plans to keep support going for at least another 3 months. What kind of management team gets a company to a point they have to shut it down in a single day and tell everybody to pack and go home?

For posterity (and to avoid entering similar risky situation in the future), here is their management team:

\- Gordon Stitt (@gordonstitt)

\- Chris C. Kemp (@kemp)

\- Devin Carlen (@devcamcar)

\- Vish Ishaya (@vish)

\- Herb Schneider

\- Huy Nguyen

And additional board members (mostly VC supervisors):

\- Peter Bell

\- Mark Leslie

\- Ted Schlein

\- Louis Toth

</comment><comment><USER7> April fools? It seems like an awfully poor way to do business for such a company to just go under without any advance notice. But then what are the company's customers going to do? Go somewhere else?

<comment><USER4> Well if it's just OpenStack, or if it's software built on top of OpenStack, it's fully possible to migrate to another OpenStack vendor. Then again, that supposes the product is open source.

<comment><USER8> [https://twitter.com/bcantrill/status/552551004114534403](https://twitter.com/bcantrill/status/552551004114534403)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I know this is a vapid comment but the video on their website showcasing the Nebula Cloud Controller is slick.

<comment><USER10> They did make great videos!

The voice of Patrick Stewart at the start of the Nebula One launch video still gives me shivers: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4rsEjsomFI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4rsEjsomFI)

And don't forget back in 2011 with the launch of the company at OSCON with the who's who intro video before the presentation including hardware pr0n [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oydzMfFYWM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oydzMfFYWM)

I also couldn't help, but think that [http://opennebula.org/](http://opennebula.org/) will be happy for the end of the namespace collision.

Hubris videos aside, Nebula.com carried more than their share of the weight in the first 3 years of OpenStack, and made me believe that OpenCompute wasn't just Facebook. Thank you and best wishes to all who brought NASA Nebula to open source and made OpenStack a reality!

<comment><USER11> I have no idea what paying for Patrick Stewart to do a voiceover costs, but I can't help but feel it may have been a contributory factor in their demise. (Not, perhaps, directly, but it may be indicative of the sort of mentality that suggests frugality isn't a high priority...)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Can I have the domain name?

<comment><USER13> I reckon the domain name will be one of the many assets sold off to recover any losses as a result of the shut down. But having said that, if you don't ask you don't get!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> April Fool? Please don't do this sort of public announcement on Apr,1.

I worked on Openstack for about a year and moved on something else, it was not quite ready then, maybe still not there yet?

</comment><comment><USER15> My last employer wanted to look at OpenStack as a drop-in cheaper replacement for VMWare vSphere - and unfortunately, it wasn't that simple.

</comment><comment><USER16> April 1st

</comment><comment><USER17> This is a pretty poor April Fools.

</comment><comment><USER18> Sounds like an April Fools joke...

</comment><comment><USER19> I agree with Simon Wardley here [0] - OpenStack is a joke (from a business perspective) and all companies trying to build businesses on it will perish as Amazon builds a dominant monopoly.

EDIT: Not companies that _use_ OpenStack, companies that attempt to sell "enterprise clouds" based on OpenStack (like Nebula).

[0] - [https://twitter.com/swardley/status/499952875813224448](https://twitter.com/swardley/status/499952875813224448)

<comment><USER20> I don't know how to parse your comment. If you mean that companies using openstack as their core intellectual property, and providing add-ons and ancillary systems for it will perish, I think that may be so. If instead you suggest that any company using openstack in their business will perish, I think that's false. At the highest level, AWS lacks a private cloud on-site solution, for all but the CIA, AFAIK. Many companies can/will/are us[e|ing] openstack as part of their business to provide a private cloud. Arguably they'd be better off w/ native xen, lxc, docker, etc, but they seem to be making it work.

<comment><USER21> The future AWS is driving towards is where they are the power generation company that nobody has onsite either (except for very rare circumstances).

You might keep some temporary capacity / backups locally, but you'll depend on the utility to be there for the vast majority of things.

The market will see if that's the future or not...

<comment><USER22> > The future AWS is driving towards is where they are the power generation > company that nobody has onsite eithe

Don't you mean "a power generation company." I take it you live some place that does not give you choice.

<comment><USER21> You don't chose who provides the electrons coming over your poles in the VAST Majority of locations (some folks run substations to multiple grids, but even then, are talking to the whole other grid, not a single power company).

Deregulated power is about where you send your bill, not who's producing the electrons.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mark Twain's Memory Builder Game (1891) - <AUTHOR> http://www.twainquotes.com/MemoryGame.html <comment><USER2> Love the review he got: "The game looked like a cross between an income tax form and a table of logarithms."

Ha!

</comment><comment><USER3> It seems like this is less about improving your memory than it is about showing off your awesome memory of history. While it might be that you'd learn some new things from your adversary as mentioned, the game would only be fun with people who know enough history to participate fully. "The accidental mention of Waterloo will turn loose an inundation of French history" might have been true in Twain's world but today, I'm not so sure.

</comment><comment><USER4> It feels good to know that great people like Mark Twain also happened to create unpopular games, no matter how well thought out it was.

</comment><comment><USER5> Interesting game, but I think, practically it's not as useful for memory training as, for example, chess. Because in case of chess, you're not only storing fixed combinations (debuts especially), but training your brain using and improving it.

<comment><USER6> Does playing chess improving memory unrelated to chess gameplay?

<comment><USER7> According to moonwalking with Einstein, no, it doesn't. And the author makes a pretty good argument about how chess players can easily remember the placement of multiple chess pieces on a board - as long as they are all in legal positions.

Show a chess player a board full of randomly placed pieces and they'll have great trouble remembering the placements. So if their memory doesn't even transfer to chess pieces, how can we expect it to transfer to other domains?

<comment><USER5> I think there're no "yes" or "no". It depends on many factors. You're talking about "Moonwalking with Einstein", but from other point of view there's a book "How life imitates chess" by Garry Kasparov, which I recommended a couple of comments below. For me, this source is reliable.

"Show a chess player a board full of randomly placed pieces and they'll have great trouble remembering the placements" \- how about "Chess960"? It uses almost random positions in the beginning, which of course doesn't allow you to use already known debuts. But if we check the list of world champions, there're the same Top grossmeisters: Aronyan, Svidler, Nakamura.

I think we will have a very good practical answer in a few years. Because in 2011 the Ministry of Education of Armenia started an educational program about teaching chess in schools. This sounds very interesting and soon we will know if it helps to improve something or not.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Another Month, Another Startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.neverreadpassively.com/2008/09/another-month-another-startup.html

<comment><USER2> they should take an extra day and make it look better

<comment><USER3> It's definitely on the list of things to do :)</comment></comment>


MusicBrainz Password Leak - <AUTHOR> http://pastebin.com/xsvWuPmq

<comment><AUTHOR> OP links to a copy of the email I received this morning.

Yet another company with a far too relaxed approach to security. What bothers me though is that they discovered this 2 weeks ago and I'm only hearing about it now.

The blog post they link to is dated April 5th: <http://blog.musicbrainz.org/?p=1844>

<comment><USER3> LOL... mandatory=1 in the url? What happens if you set it to 0?

<comment><AUTHOR> haha who knows..

Their site in general is pretty dumb. I logged in and deleted my account but it didn't log me out, it just changed my name to 'Deleted Editor #XXXXXX' - <USER2> can still edit all the account details.

<comment><USER4> Hi, we do have a public bug tracker and you could have reported this. I've filed a ticket at <http://tickets.musicbrainz.org/browse/MBS-6166>.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is there a service where I could indicate which websites I'm using, and that would warn immediately me if one of them is compromised?

I'd rather have a single, reliable source of information for this. Also I'd like to see the history of each service before I sign up.

</comment><comment><USER6> I used to use MusicBrainz to sort out mp3 tags, it was pretty awesome back in the day. I don't really have that problem anymore.

</comment><comment><USER7> Mine has a date! <http://pastebin.com/dzRqSgGj></comment>