Quora, DropBox, Others Made $30M in Job Offers To Engineers via DeveloperAuction - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/06/quora-airbnb-others-made-30m-in-job-offers-to-engineers-in-first-2-weeks-of-developerauction/

<comment><USER2> > "currently open only to employees of Facebook, Apple, Twitter, Zynga, and > Google as well as Stanford & MIT graduates"

So it's really a site for a small number (130+) of "start-ups" (all sharing some common investors?) to poach talent from an extremely small A List of the biggest tech companies around.

The $30 million for 88 engineers is an average of $341,000 per engineer. It sounds like they are adding up all the offers for every engineer rather than the top offer for each engineer. Perhaps some got no offers. Perhaps some got 20 offers of $50,000. The $30 million total offers for 88 engineers tells us almost nothing.

</comment><comment><USER3> "DeveloperAuction.com is currently open only to employees of Facebook, Apple, Twitter, Zynga, and Google as well as Stanford & MIT graduates"

Wow. I guess I'll take my lowly UC Berkeley degree and startup VPE experience somewhere else. What a crock of elitist bullshit.

</comment><comment><USER4> Isn't the point that the job offers amounts are supposed to go up for good developers because of the auction format? Don't necessarily blame developerauction.

It's probably just some intern or SEO monkey at AOL/Techcrunch completely blowing the headline. Not exactly the first time I've been underwhelmed by their reporting prowess.

</comment><comment><USER5> Because as a startup hacker, I always want to work where I will earn the most.

</comment><comment><USER6> Seems like a vanity metric to sum all the offers, which can't be simultaneously satisfied. instead of keeping separate the counts amd something like average or max per company or candidate.

<comment><USER7> I'd say it's an appropriate measure for demand.

<comment><USER8> I agree, yet I have never heard this technique to describe other auctions. For instance, any time a ridiculous item is for sale on Ebay, the news stories describe the top bid and the number of bidders.

Perhaps the actual sum of the max bids for all 88 developers would be less misleading.

<comment><USER2> The sum of max bids would indeed be far less misleading. I am almost positive that that sum divided by 88 to show the average real offer yields an extremely unimpressive figure, which is the sole reason why they went with this other method.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Engineers who started in web and branched out, what are you doing now? - <AUTHOR> I've been a full-stack/frontend engineer for about five years (and I love it!) but I have a growing curiosity in tangential topics like hardware, robotics, and ML.<p>Would love to hear some experiences from folks that have branched out from the web into other corners of engineering.<p>(Please provide education and work history as context if you're comfortable doing so!) <comment><USER2> I'm lucky to have transitioned from web development to working on scientific computing desktop software. I started my career in aerospace engineering, but left it to chase the glitter and unicorns of fast-moving tech companies where I did a handful of Rails development and data science. After a few years, I really missed working on the technical challenges related to modeling complex simulation systems and managed to loop back around to work for the first company I worked for out of school.</comment>


'Earthworm Dilemma' Has Climate Scientists Racing to Keep Up - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/20/science/earthworms-soil-climate.html <comment><USER5> What's perhaps more alarming in the original paper [0] is that earthworms were shown to increase nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions even __more __than they increased CO2 emissions from soil (42% and 33%, respectively).

In terms relevant to the greenhouse effect, N2O is 298 times more potent than CO2 in the atmosphere [1]. I wonder about how increasing the _entire boreal forest_ 's emissions of N2O by 42% would affect the current projections. Seems...bad.

There's perhaps a silver lining here though: earthworms "unlock" stored nutrients in soils, making them easier for plants to access. This might spur growth, thereby storing atmospheric carbon in the process.

[0]: [https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate1692](https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate1692) [1]: [https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/overview-greenhouse- gases](https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/overview-greenhouse-gases)

<comment><USER6> According to this paper, about 10,000 times as much CO2 is emitted by the forest floor than N2O. So, even though N2O is more potent, the CO2 is a bigger deal (and changes in it are therefore a bigger deal as well).

[https://academic.oup.com/forestry/article/90/4/541/3064404](https://academic.oup.com/forestry/article/90/4/541/3064404)

See table 4. Note that NO2 efflux is measured in mg and CO2 is measured in g.

<comment><USER5> Hey, thanks for that reference. You're right, but the 300x potency of N2O vs CO2 and the sheer unknowns lurking in our understanding of the "earthworm problem" still make this worth investigation, in my opinion.

Additionally, at the risk of being pedantic and because I'm a stuck-up academic, I want to point out that your reference is studying a temperate forest. This is relevant not only because species composition and climatic regimes present in temperate forests (decidious trees, high species diversity, high nutrient availabilty, moderate climates) differ markedly from those of boreal forests (coniferous trees, low species diversity, low nutrient availability, extreme climatic seasonality). There's good reason to believe that this difference has a corresponding shift in the GHG emission regimes of the respective forestlands, which you can see here [0]. Additionally, boreal forests are the earth's largest terrestrial ecosystem [1], which makes this potential difference quite relevant.

Your point is well taken, though -- it's important to triage effort in facing a complicated global challenge.

[0]: [https://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/10.1139/X08-209#.XOLSAF...](https://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/10.1139/X08-209#.XOLSAFNKjOY) [1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiga](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiga)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not sure I have too much to add to the discussion but I do have a question – what do the people who know the most about climate change think we (consumers) should do? There seem to be few coherent lobbying efforts; the people best known for accurate science (IPCC) have no information that I can find about what an average human should be doing to help fight the good fight; it all just feels so impossible.

Does anyone here have any links or suggestions? I've done a small amount of work on "raising awareness" ([https://twitter.com/ipccbot](https://twitter.com/ipccbot)) but it seems like everyone either knows and cares or knows and doesn't care. A lot of the climate news feels like climate news porn – so the earthworms are freaking scientists out, what does that mean for me? Can I help the scientists? Are there places I can donate? Or specific calls to action I can follow to help advocate for saner climate policy? What is that policy?

<comment><USER8> The most common refrain I've heard is to reduce meat consumption, and to shift from high-carbon-output meats to lower-output ones. I think the rough order, from highest to lowest, is:

      - Beef
      - <USER2>
      - <USER3>
      - <USER4>
      - Non-meat diet

<comment><USER9> What happens when you have 15 billion people eating a non-meat diet?

<comment><USER10> That's 35 or more years out. First fix the emissions then work on population growth to increase the doubling time. Unless we want to discover the point at which Malthus was right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> And in other parts of the world, earth worms are dying in large.. [https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/after-the- deluge-k...](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/after-the-deluge- keralas-next-crisis-dying-earthworms/articleshow/65826053.cms)

Earthworms more important than panda if you want to save the earth... [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/earthworms-are- mo...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/earthworms-are-more- important-than-pandas-if-you-want-to-save-the-planet-a7655326.html)

<comment><USER12> Earth will be fine, people will not. Climate change sounds innocuous as daylight savings and needs to be rebranded in order to resonate with more people.

<comment><USER13> The Guardian has decided to do just that [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/17/why- the-...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/17/why-the-guardian- is-changing-the-language-it-uses-about-the-environment). Now it's 'Global Heating' and 'Climate Crisis'

<comment><USER14> How about 'The Extinction'

<comment><USER15> Speaking as a converted climate skeptic, the person who finally convinced me that this is real and serious overdid it and convinced me that we'll be seeing massive famines, extinctions, and widespread death as biomes shift around worldwide in the next 30 years or so, within our lifetimes.

Since the only way to stop this would be to actually reverse damage already done, requiring worldwide effort never seen in history to perform actions that may be scientifically impossible, I think it's safe to say that we're royally fucked.

So why should I even care about this topic, or the planet, if we're all gonna starve to death within our lifetimes or our childrens'?

I'm going to just live my life for pleasure. Can't stop it now anyway. It's THE EXTINCTION. Time to party I guess.

<comment><USER10> Well now, you say that.

Do you _really_ think the most skeptical business owners and politicians in the US are going to keep ignoring it and emitting when it's _their_ business, family, state or home that's impacted?

I don't know what it is, I don't know when it will be, but there _will_ be a Pearl Harbor equivalent moment. After which inaction will be as impossible as action today. The moment the crash is apparent and inevitable.

By then it'll cost a fuck load more, and have _far_ harder impacts on everyone's economy and lifestyle, but unless it turns out to be a bad dream, it seems pretty damn certain. Pretty damn certainly in our lifetimes.

You don't prefer the easier option?

<comment><USER15> My understanding of the situation is that there is enough damage already done that a significant portion of the population, if not all of it, will be dead in the next half century, regardless of what's done. Didn't you see the new data from Mauna Loa last week? Plus there's the methane runaway theory, and the oceans are desalinating at an exponential rate due to the ever- accelerating glacial melt that is causing a feedback loop.

We go extinct no matter what. Where's the easier option? Good luck to the plankton or whatever that succeeds us.

<comment><USER16> Can't tell if you are trolling?

I'd love to hear a credible source that says something on the lines of, "My understanding of the situation is that there is enough damage already done that a significant portion of the population, if not all of it, will be dead in the next half century, regardless of what's done."

There are crackpots on each side of the argument (skeptics versus doom). I think the truth is somewhere in the middle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is where it gets hard to fight climate change. As awareness increases, so does funding for "climate change". Now everyone environmental scientist with an issue will link that issue with climate change, with the hopes of drawing press, awareness, and funding. It may or may not actually be an issue, but I think we need to focus on the top causes of climate change first.

<comment><USER18> I am not sure more science can be an issue, it is still a ridiculous small amount of money compared to defence, debt servicing, etc.

Who knows, someone might find a negative feedback loop for climate change that we could leverage, even in something as improbable as mycology ?

(Likely increasing defence budget is also another way to mitigate climate change if we don't do it in a more civilized way...)

<comment><USER19> the best negative feedback loop is a depression. Kill the global economy for 20 years and CO2 production will crash.

Ironically trumps tariffs are likely to do more to slow climate change than any other policies.

<comment><USER20> I wonder if this is true or if we will just use cheaper, dirtier technology to get by?

<comment><USER21> That depends to an extent on how deep the depression is.

As transportation gets more expensive, after a certain point, solar panels and wind turbines are cheaper to ship around than huge amounts of coal and oil.

However, at a certain point after _that_ , efficient solar panels and wind turbines (not to mention batteries and motors) may become too hard to manufacture due to unavailability of critical materials and components.

If anyone is looking for a big meaty research problem that may influence just how far our technological society might fall, either work on non-rare replacements for rare-earth elements (semiconductor dopants, magnets, etc.) or on ways to shorten the supply lines (eg. economically/sustainably extract them from ordinary dirt or seawater, perhaps with synbio).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I wonder how this interplays with anaerobic decomposition which would produce CH4 (which is many times more potent as a greenhouse gas). I'd expect that the worm activity encourages oxygen consuming bacteria which produce CO2.

</comment><comment><USER23> Do the benefits earthworms provide for the soil/plants outweight the negatives?

</comment><comment><USER24> The world is a dynamic system. You can't wind back the clock on anything. People need to let go of their static worldview and accept that change happens. We are continually poking Pandora's Box. What has been let out cannot be put back in.

<comment><USER25> I think you're right, the question now is do we learn from how it's changed and how we're changing it?

Do we continue to make the planet an ever more unlivable hell-hole because "the world is a dynamic system."

Or do we look at what's happening, learn from it, and try to prevent things from getting worse.

<comment><USER24> Absolutely we should be trying to do better. But we do that by steering towards a future that is acceptable, not by trying to turn back time to somewhere we used to be.

<comment><USER25> I apologize for my hostile tone before, I think you and I are on the same page. There does seem to be a lot of hand wringing about the ways thing are changing and little direction on what to do about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Can we please start investing in nuclear power again. Pretty please? We've already lost 50 years due to anti-nuclear policies that effectively killed nuclear power in every developed nation not named 'France'.

Wind/Solar necessarily implies doubling-down on natural gas as this is the standard (and only) way to get around the intermittency issue of those renewables. It's no surprise that natural gas companies now lobby for Wind and Solar deployments, and Germany signs multi-decade deals to import Russian gas as they increase their Solar and Wind footprint.

So nuclear, apart from being capable of cutting our CO2 emissions to 0 for power generation, also requires two orders of magnitude less land-use than Solar and Wind deployments. This does nothing for CO2 emissions, but I'm sure wild-life will appreciate less encroachment.

What will it take for environmentalists, and progressives (who push the anti- nuclear Green New Deal) to support nuclear power?

<comment><USER27> I've been worried about climate change, CO2 emissions and related material for quite a number of years now, and I've believed that we should have been pushing hard into nuclear power for a long time.

However:

> Wind/Solar necessarily implies doubling-down on natural gas as this is the > standard (and only) way to get around the intermittency issue of those > renewables.

Can we so lightly dismiss battery storage? It has a ways to go, but its price continues to improve exponentially.

<comment><USER26> >Can we so lightly dismiss battery storage?

We can because there is no battery storage technology today, nor is one upcoming, that would work on city scale (i.e. store enough energy to power a city and industry outside of ideal wind/solar times). For example, the Tesla- style deployments are only there to even out supply on the order of milliseconds and maybe seconds. That's still something, and does replace natural gas in those specific use-cases, but that's not what we need.

Worse, we don't even know of a battery technology that would be able to store power across seasons or years, as Wind and Solar are very seasonally dependent and may vary in output by an order of magnitude between, say, Summer and Winter. Furthermore, for wind deployments, you usually need to sample multiple years to figure out if the site is good enough because wind output can vary across multiple-years.

That's why wind/solar/natural gas is a package deal today and for the foreseeable future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > _No mechanism exists to eradicate earthworms from the boreal forest_

Surely there must be an worm-eater somewhere.

<comment><USER29> The UK has been alarmed by the "New Zealand flatworm" threatening its earthworm population - some places have lost all of their worms, though it seems to be under control. On the other hand at a push, it may be possible to deliberately seed forests with them.

I think this article is quite hyperbolic though. It talks about a researchers "horror" at theoretical possibilities, but the latest literature review cited is 6 years old and it did not resolve any definite effect.

>Our results _suggest_ that although earthworms are largely beneficial to soil fertility, they increase net soil greenhouse-gas emissions.

[https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate1692](https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate1692)</comment></comment>


How to Migrate from Mandrill to SendGrid - <AUTHOR> https://sendgrid.com/blog/how-to-migrate-from-mandrill-to-sendgrid/ <comment><AUTHOR> Only two days left now until Mandrill will shut down their stand alone service</comment>


ProtonMail pushes back against claims it is partnering with Huawei - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/protonmail-pushes-back-against-claims-it-is-partnering-with-huawei/ <comment> Pete-Codes Is that link working for other people?

<comment><USER2> Yes</comment></comment>


CTF365 Real Time Cyber Attacks Map - <AUTHOR>

Hi everybody
CTF365 it's a "Security Training Platform for IT industry with a focus on Security Professionals, System Administrators and Web Developers". The Platform implements CTF (Capture The Flag) concepts and leverages gamification mechanics to improve retention rate and speed up the learning/training curve.
Because of its Security Gamification Engine, CTF365 makes InfoSec trainings become, entertaining, challenging, community driven with continuous improvement and hands on
We've manage to implement CTF365 Real Time Cyber Attacks that shows everything is happening on the platform.
It shows all the attacks and connected users on the platform http://ctf365.com/pages/map.
Blinking dots = CTF365 VPN connected users Blue Balloons = Fortresses (servers) build by our users Blue Doted Lines = The attacks
It's an work in progress and works on Chrome and IE. There are some bugs in Firefox. Also we'll add some gamification things in the future like most active users, perform levels and so on. Things that can help companies to see their employees improvements.
Any feedback would be more than welcomed. <comment><USER2> so these attacks are not real?

<comment><AUTHOR> Those attacks are real on our platform. There are teams around the world, that have build servers on our platform and attack each other while defend their servers. It shows you who attacks whom.

<comment><USER2> Can those servers act as honeypots and attract real attacks too?

<comment><AUTHOR> No! Not that it can't but because not this is its primary scope. It act like a private network where you can connect via VPN and start practice your hacking skills against real users and servers and not "vulnerable by design" ones as you find in any traditional penetration testing lab.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


WebPipes - Small utilities available over HTTP  - <AUTHOR> http://www.webpipes.org

<comment><USER2> Gives me a (very tall) blank page - another example of bleeding edge web design not rendering gracefully on all browsers?

What am I supposed to see?</comment>


Ask HN: Domain Hosting that 1) is cheap and 2) offers a full-featured API - <AUTHOR>

I have been working on lots of little side projects lately, and I've written some pretty elaborate scripts to get up-and-running as quickly as possible.
The one, obnoxious part I still have to do manually, though, is when I'm ready to launch on a unique domain I need to go a domain host, buy a domain, then manually change each of the A Records, CNames, MX Records, etc. to point to my servers, etc.
I was wondering if anyone knows of a domain host out there that lets you buy a domain and configure it entirely through an API?
Thanks so much in advance! <comment><USER2> Enom, one of the best API's in the industry .. you would just need someone to set you up as a reseller, or setup your own account directly through them which requires an initial 1000 domain purchase. Rates vary for resellers, direct account holders pay 8.50 per domain at the moment, up from 6.99 several years back. Or just work out a deal with a hosting company and let them do all the setup and config for you. We routinely setup low domain rates for people using one of our hosting plans.

-Mike, AFMU.com

</comment><comment><USER3> Zerigo seems promising. Looking to use it on a project for myself.

<http://www.zerigo.com/managed-dns>

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm pretty happy with Hostmonster - my affiliate link - <http://www.hostmonster.com/track/digitalmethodscorp> \- allows you to buy and set up via their site.

Also has cpanel hosting and SSH access for more advanced stuff.

I buy my domains elsewhere but you get a free domain when you set up an account with them so...</comment>


De-Anonymizing Web Communities with Gravatar - <AUTHOR> http://rgov.org/2010/11/27/gravatar/ <comment><USER2> Release a new API that uses symmetric encryption instead of a one way hash. Use however many rounds are necessary to prevent brute force attacks. Gravatar keeps a list of generated keys, but not who generated them. The API accepts a key ID and encrypted email. That makes the keys convenient to generate and change. Deprecate the old API and turn it off some day.

I _think_ that works, but I try not to think about crypto at three in the morning, or at all really.

EDIT: Also, a consumer site could implement this themselves with a simple proxy server. They could even open up the service to other sites.

<comment><USER3> One of the best aspects of gravatar is that fact that it takes one line of code to implement:

        "http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/#{MD5::md5(email.downcase)}"

If it wasn't that easy, I'd probably consider just doing something else. Maybe just have it use a stronger hashing algo?

<comment><USER4>
      ...have it use a stronger hashing algo?

The strength of the hashing algorithm is ancillary to this vulnerability. The OP was able to resolve the emails because they had a predictable format.

<comment><USER3> When I said 'stronger' what I really meant was 'one with a larger number of possible hashes', so it'd be harder to resolve them. Not that it'd stop it totally, because he still knows enough about the keyspace...

Then again, crypto is not my strong point, so I should probably stop talking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There was a post here a while back by someone who did the same thing with the Stackoverflow data dump. I think he was able to recover about 10% of users' emails from a vastly larger search space.

Moral of the story: simply hashing emails is not enough if you're going to display them publicly. It's trivial to use a salt and prevent such an attack.

<comment><USER6> I believe the mechanics of Gravatar make salting impossible, though. The whole system works _because_ there's a single hash for any given author email address.

<comment><USER7> Yep. The salt would have to public, which would defeat the purpose.

However, a user can protect herself by "salting" her own email with an address tag. For example, provide firstname.lastname@example.com as your address instead of email@example.com.

<comment><USER8> A few years ago, I tried using email tags with many online services so that I could use the tags for email filters. Most form validations rejected my email tags because they considered "+" to be an invalid character in email addresses.

<comment><USER9> Using your own domain with different local names lets you get around that. But requires a domain.

<comment><USER10> I've been using this technique for 10+ years. Sadly it doesn't work with Gravatar because

       md5("email@example.com") != md5("email@example.com")

However, it is really interesting to see the amount of spam I get sent to certain 'snowflake' email addresses I have only ever used to submit a comment to top well known blogs. Shows how much database hacking for email harvest goes on.

<comment><USER11> I ended up using that very same technique and ran into the exact same problem. My solution to this has been to sign up for one gravatar, but after that I simply stopped caring about the service.

If whatever service I am using can't work without gravatar, they will have to see a generic picture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A commenting system that still shows user specific avatars next to anonymous comments? That sounds like a terrible implementation.

</comment><comment><USER13> thats funny... i still have an email from probably 2006 telling gravatar that a single md5 for each user (email address) is just idiotic for many reasons. possible collisions, anonymity, and so on. they replied back within an hour that im wrong, that there is no risk of collision because every email is unique because its the primary key (dah?) and they will continue using it.

made me laugh. since then i ignored the service as they are obvious just a bunch of script kiddies.

to be honest - the only obsticle for such a service is server redundancy. nothing special about it. besides that its now a obsolete service since every major site offers oauth.

<comment><USER14> Given your statement on MD5 collisions, it's not entirely clear to me who's the script kiddie here.

<comment><USER13> how many users do they want to store in their db with a unique md5 string? its just a really bad bet. thats a script kiddie for me, assuming that a hash never collides within a database and than chosing md5. there are better, even very simple, ways to store hashes without forcing collisions.

<comment><USER15> There are an awful lot of md5 digests - so, even with an insane number of users it is highly unlikely they would have a collision. Hell; at work we generate insane numbers of hashes and it took us quite a while, and a large dataset to find a collision :-)

<comment><USER13> but why md5 when there are better alternatives? not to speak about the issues with OP

<comment><USER16> because it's very simple for anyone to build an app that uses Gravatar since md5 is probably the most well-known hashing function.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Swift on Android? - <AUTHOR> http://www.macrumors.com/2016/04/07/google-possibly-adopting-swift-for-android/ <comment><USER2> Some people seem to think that getting swift on android would solve the portability problem of apps. Don't be mistaken, if you are going for the native experience, you will still have to write your ui and io layers twice, since there won't be a UIKit or CoreFoundation on android. (And even if someone made a uikit-esque translation layer, android's activities+intents+services model is not a 1:1 mapping to uiviewcontrollers...)

<comment><USER3> Using the same language (Swift) is a great advantage. Java has reached the retirement age, it's time for a better language.

<comment><USER4> "for a better language" that interoperate seamlessly with existing java apis and codebases, and had android restrictions in mind during the design phase.

Fortunately, this language already exists

[https://kotlinlang.org/](https://kotlinlang.org/) [http://try.kotlinlang.org/](http://try.kotlinlang.org/)

<comment><USER5> Kotlin doesn't solve any problems for Google from a legal perspective (for example, moving away from the Java ecosystem because of the protracted litigation from Oracle).

<comment><USER4> "Moving away from the jvm" means getting rid of the Android ecosystem. That would be the smartest project management decision since the codebase of Netscape 4 was thrown away

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This article is more like a comment and summary on the original article, which was in NextWeb:

[http://thenextweb.com/dd/2016/04/07/google-facebook-uber- swi...](http://thenextweb.com/dd/2016/04/07/google-facebook-uber-swift/)

To be fair, macrumors did give credit to NextWeb. But I still recommend the original because it has more information and because I prefer giving credit to the people who actually create the original content rather than the me-too articles.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is bullshit based on anonymous "Sources" of which we are not told their credibility or how they are connected to Android or Google. Anyone that thinks Google is going to rewrite the millions of lines of Android Java framework in a non-JVM language just doesn't know what they're talking about. I suppose it could be used for unmanaged native code, meaning games, but that's mostly already cross platform via things like Unity.

<comment><USER8> The automated translation of Java source to Swift would be trivial. Google already has a Java->Objective C translator. Once the source was automatically translated the developers can start optimizing. The days of Java being the only first class language on Android are numbered.

<comment><USER7> If somebody figures out how to compile Swift to JVM or Dalvik byte code then I'll believe it's happening.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I find this very hard to believe. One would expect Google to adopt Go, or perhaps Dart, since they were developed by Google.

<comment><USER10> Despite Android's market share, some developers still write for iOS first and port to Android later (if at all). By moving to Swift, Google could reduce this friction and help prevent Android from being a second-class citizen among developers.

Also, Go is a great language for writing networked systems software in. But it's not necessarily great for GUI-based application development. And there really hasn't been much effort to change that, from the Go team or externally.

<comment><USER11> Go was originally written to replace the things C++ is usually used for. There are many other languages which work well for higher level uses. I think the motivation behind creating Go was there weren't many new languages made to make writing systems level software easier.

<comment><USER10> > _Go was originally written to replace the things C++ is usually used for._

Go was originally written to replace the things C++ is usually used for _within Google_. C++ is used for many other things (embedded programming, games and graphics engines, etc.) that it doesn't seem like the Go authors were targeting. In fact, Pike said "we were pleased and a little surprised to find [Go] suitable for general-purpose programming" [1]. This suggests they weren't intending to create an across-the-board replacement of C++, since C++ is certainly a general-purpose programming language. Perhaps to a fault.

> _I think the motivation behind creating Go was there weren 't many new > languages made to make writing systems level software easier._

The authors ran into issues describing it as a "systems language," since it's not really a systems language in the conventional sense (i.e., low-level language with fine-grained control over hardware and memory) [1]. Because C++ _is_ used for conventional systems programming, and the Go team described Go as a C++ replacement, this probably ended up doing Go's reputation more harm than good.

Pike and the Go team have essentially redefined "systems language" for their purpose, as a language targeting servers and interconnected systems. And it excels there.

[1] [http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1623555](http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1623555)

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Hello, world" on Android: [https://github.com/apple/swift/blob/master/docs/Android.md](https://github.com/apple/swift/blob/master/docs/Android.md)

</comment><comment><USER13> I wonder if, given the giant set of existing Android libraries written in Java, they'd need to create a swift <-> java FFI.

<comment><USER14> Maybe we'll get JSwift running on the jvm so we can just import anything that compiles to bytecode.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This story is 3 weeks old, was there a new update to this?

<comment><USER16> nope

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> more likely a move to kotlin or C# than swift imo.

</comment><comment><USER18> This article (which contains nothing but speculation) has been posted here already at least once.</comment>


Microsoft Replaces Journalists with AI Software - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/may/30/microsoft-sacks-journalists-to-replace-them-with-robots <comment><USER2> I don't believe it - they'll simply hire a bunch of Indian & Pakistani graduate students fresh out of school and run a "Mechanical Turk" operation. Make a mistake & _flush_ \- "next student!"

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm starting to rethink my career as a content writer...</comment>


US budget deficit soars to $3tn record - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/business-54126226 <comment><USER2> What's one trillion more</comment>


Too Long; Didn't Read — Faster news, for the rest of us. - <AUTHOR> http://toolong-didntread.com

<comment><USER2> Submission here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4814086></comment>


Texting Means Never Having to Say Goodbye - <AUTHOR> https://slate.com/technology/2019/03/texting-slack-internet-conversation-goodbye.html <comment><USER2> It really depends on whether you are having an actual _realtime conversation_ with a person; that comes with expectations of full attention, immediate responses and usually has good-byes too.

On the other hand, email or forum threads don't have good-byes either, and neither did many IRC chatrooms.

IM used to be akin to a telephone conversation, now it's more like email chain. This is necessary, because we don't have short windows that we dedicate to being online anymore (during which the expectations are higher). If we treated all incoming messages as telephone calls, that'd take all our time. The result is that IM has a priority just above an email, but below everything else (phones calls, offline things happening, etc).

<comment><USER3> But how can you not have a realtime conversation if every online medium is realtime and the only thing making it not realtime is maybe your self-control, or that your battery died? In this sense, I'm not aware of any non-realtime media (which is why I created one).

<comment><USER4> Nice! So you've built "non-realtime email" which gets delivered once a day. Maybe it would make sense to bundle it with its opposite: "realtime texting". Basically it would work like phone calls, but for text. One person initiates with a wordless ping, the other responds, then they can exchange texts, there can be at most one conversation per person at a time, and if you close or unfocus the app for any reason, the conversation stops.

I think these two things together could cover most of my personal communication needs, though it for work communications I'd still need faster- than-daily email.

<comment><USER3> Hi cousin_it. Thank you! Not sure about the realtime text bundling. I like the idea, but I'm afraid it would encroach upon the non-instant space the app provides.

> though it for work communications I'd still need faster-than-daily email.

This is the most requested feature. Will definitely head in this direction.

<comment><USER2> Hi Dmitry!

First, thanks for making the platform. I find it interesting, because it mirrors how I use email with an email client, especially when traveling: retrieve messages - write responses later - send them whenever.

To that end, I have two considerations:

1)The defining features of your service (daily collection / sending) are easily client-side. I can already configure my desktop email client to behave like pony.gg with a couple of clicks.

So it would make a lot of sense, I think, for you to release an _email app_. Yes, there are many email apps, but for people who can't resist setting email retrieval interval to <5minutes, less is more.

Then the users will be able to keep their @bigcorp.com / @work.org address, while having the full benefit of your service.

2)On the other hand, you can also enforce these features server-side, allowing people to use their favorite IMAP clients. Just allow, say, one 1hr window in a 24hr time span for retrieval, and the same for sending (so people in different timezones can all get their email at 7am, but won't be able to get new messages after getting their email for the first time that day; same with sending).

Are there any plans to have 3rd part email client support?

<comment><USER3> Hi Roman,

Thank you so much.

1) This is on the way. For a first version, this webapp actually wraps nicely in Cordova, and I intend to publish it in the App/Play stores. Alternatively, you will be able to install it as a PWA. Either way, you will be able to compose offline. I think it would also work well in Electron.

2) This is a bit tricky because Pony is more "email compatible" than it is email. Concretely, (i) Each message can only have one recipient. (ii) There is no subject line (iii) You send things by putting them in the Outbox and letting time pass. I've given it some thought and I think there are ways to smooth all this over and adapt it to IMAP, but I think the result might be clumsy.

And there are "philosophical" considerations as well. Pony provides you with a non-instant space to communicate that is separate from the instant everything else. I think combining these two spaces would possibly take something away from the Pony experience?

> The defining features of your service (daily collection / sending)

By the way, while that is a feature, I don't think it's the defining feature. I think the defining feature is providing a space where people can correspond reflectively instead of reactively. When you've got an email client configured some way, you can always unconfigure it. With Pony, there is no way to make it non-instant. So unless you are rushing to make a pickup, there is reason you'd be rushing to hit send when you compose a message, or worried more messages might come and distract you. There are other apps that batch your email, but there are no apps that give you space and freedom to think like Pony.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There was a time when everyone I knew was on Yahoo or MSN messenger. Then suddenly everyone stopped using messengers. The biggest problem with messengers was _synchronous_ communication. Once someone started talking to you, you pretty much had to stay glued to the computer until the conversation ended. It was great for some conversations but a big inconvenience for the most part. Most people started hiding behind the _invisible mode_ until there came a time when everyone was invisible and you didn't have anyone to talk to.

Next gen. communication tools like fb messenger, WhatsApp etc. solved this problem by making the default expectation _asynchronous_. It was a huge step in evolution of messaging.

<comment><USER6> It feels like a regression. I don't really enjoy conversations with these tools. It's not as fun to converse with someone over the course of days when each message is some hours after the last. It is also not clear when people might want to talk. Synchronous IM was better because it was clear when people were available to talk, and when they were they would be attentive enough to have a real-time, fulfilling conversation. I haven't experienced that since MSN died.

Now everyone is always available on their phone, but also not truly available at any time. Presence indicators don't mean much any more because people may be online just to view Facebook, or on their phone only momentarily.

I think another contributing factor to the decline in quality of IM conversations is the use of phone keyboards. They are so much worse to type on than a real keyboard that I believe it changes the nature and quality of conversations people have considerably, for the worse.

<comment><USER7> > It is also not clear when people might want to talk. Synchronous IM was > better because it was clear when people were available to talk

That's why async is great, because people can answer whenever they like.

> when they were they would be attentive enough to have a real-time, > fulfilling conversation

For this kind of conversation IM is not a good medium. In case of a real time, attentive convesation a phone call is much better, isn't it?

<comment><USER6> They can answer whenever they like, but when I choose to read their reply I will have lost some of my train of thought or maybe lost interest in the topic. It doesn't allow for the same quality, or at least type, of discourse in my experience.

>IM is not a good medium

It certainly was a good medium - I had lots of great conversations on old IM services and so did countless others. See this related thread from the other day [1]

You could talk to many people at the same time, unlike a phone call. You could more easily do it at the same time as your homework, watching a film, or doing something else on the internet.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19370281](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19370281)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have many long distance friends that I keep in touch with and have for years. Some I haven't seen IRL in nearly a decade. Looking now, almost none of our text conversations have any sign of "goodbye," sometimes picking up even months later on the same topic as the last thing we were discussing. Very interesting.

Side note though, my favorite part of this article, ironically, is the part in the first paragraph which she illustrates as something young people will dismiss: That Salt Lake City has the longest city blocks in the nation. I have lived here my whole life and have always known we have mega huge blocks, but wasn't aware they were the biggest in the nation, and it appears they could be the biggest in the world. This has interesting implications[0] and as someone very interested in urban planning I was taken aback by this and thought it funny that she used it as an example of something people find dismissable.

[0] [https://www.governing.com/columns/urban-notebook/gov-salt- la...](https://www.governing.com/columns/urban-notebook/gov-salt-lake-city- extra-wide-streets.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> This was a problem as soon as ICQ and other instant messengers appeared in the '90s.

Now, the issue seems to have resolved itself thanks to the emoji. Whether it's a Slack or a text, the appearance of a thumbs up emoji is a friendly, succinct way to say "we're done now."

<comment><USER10> I believe it's a particularity but french speaking people use `++` to end the conversation.

It comes from `À plus` which roughly translate to `See you later` but uses plus sign because of the sound.

It's even funnier because you used to write a single `+` then the other party replied with `++` but that usage has fallen and I only see the double plus sign these days.

<comment><USER11> +++

Was the same command to take an AT compatible modem from data mode to command mode and cause it to disconnect. Are you sure that's not where it originated?

<comment><USER10> Yeah, it was used on IRC and then on messenger/AIM/ICQ by kids who couldn't have known about such commands. There are some slight variations around like "pluche" for comical effects. That and the fact I never saw it outside french speaking chats.

There could be a tiny chance that it comes from something else but that's highly unlikely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> An ex-friend and I never signed off. We had an ongoing conversation that died down to only me writing messages, and then I stopped. It's still there in WhatsApp. Frozen in time. (The person is fine and posts public updates on FB and elsewhere.)

<comment><USER8> Was it the lack of response that made them an ex-friend?

<comment><USER13> The lack of multiple responses over an extended period of time seems like as big a hint as you can get.

If you're standing next to someone and they ignore your attempts at getting their attention, how long should you continue before finding something better to do?

<comment><USER8> I think the point of this article is the difference between standing next to someone and online conversations. While I agree that is a major hint, especially in certain cases (especially in the sense of the stalker-esque men hounding women through DMs on social media), I've had very long periods of non-communication with long-distance friends I still consider "close" that pick up much later, sometimes with multiple messages on either side with varying degrees of response.

<comment><USER13> It just depends on the nature of the message. If one side is just amassing a list of things or a complete idea to digest on the recepient's own time, with the mutual understanding that people lead busy lives, it's a bit different than say, someone repeatedly ignoring a particular request or general attempts to start a live conversation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The one I hate is the "are you around?" / "are you there now?" type message.

I hate synchronous online communication. Just ask the question, and I'll respond some hours later when I have time. If you want synchronous, schedule me in person.

<comment><USER15> Nah.

Some questions are time relevant. I need an answer before x, unless y, if z. I don't want to write all the caveats every unnecessary time. Then how long do I sit around in case you certainly, maybe, probably, possibly got it?

Since texts and earliest days of ICQ just about everyone I know opens with ping, answer with ack or nack / silence. Super easy to decide whether to even ask... :)

<comment><USER14> Well in general it's always a nack when I get that kind of message. I don't want to be pressured into starting a synchronous conversation if I don't know what the conversation is going to be about.

"Hey got a minute?" => no

"Hey got a minute for A?" => yes

"Hey got a minute for B?" => no

<comment><USER16> Agree, and a key point here being that the colloquial "minute" can be a very different actual amount of time for A and B.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This was one of the challenges my company faced when building a product that enabled SMS as a support channel. SMS conversations never "end" in the way that webchats do and also have a different ebb-and-flow. Completing a "call" involves spurts of near real-time messaging along with large time gaps (hours or days). Our early customers also spent a lot of time convincing their own customers that they were talking to real humans and not bots.

Traditional call-center metrics were tough to apply though CSAT improvements were dramatic and almost instantaneous. Despite the lack of features compared to web chat, people really responded to SMS. I'm sure that was due to convenience (people are in their SMS/messaging client anyway) and that our customers staffed the lines with real people, rather than bots.

</comment><comment><USER18> A.K.A. "ghosting" in online dating parlance

</comment><comment><USER19> I appreciate the asynchronous mode of comunication that text messages afford. Conversations there do come to an end sometimes -- but usually that means a big change or end of the real-world connection between the two people messaging.</comment>


James Dolan, co-creator of SecureDrop, has died - <AUTHOR> https://freedom.press/news/tribute-james-dolan-co-creator-securedrop-who-has-tragically-passed-away-age-36/ <comment><USER2> Does anyone know if James had taken a short hiatus between jobs to travel by motorcycle for a while in Southern California? I ran it someone one day at The Rock Store that had worked with Aaron Swartz and a friend and I had a great conversation with him and I'm now wondering whether it was James.

<comment><USER3> Yes, indeed he did! After leaving FPF, he unplugged for a while, taking a road trip on his bike. He spent a lot of time working on that bike.

The road trip was a great excuse to unwind after a lot of stressful security work. He ended up rejoining the industry—good luck stopping that guy from anything—and continued for many years helping other projects.

So, yes, it does sound like you were fortunate enough to cross paths with a terribly interesting individual. Cheers, in his honor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just when I clicked [https://securedrop.org/](https://securedrop.org/), my company's corporate firewall blocked it. I can't start to imagine how much adversity the world has imposed onto these brave warriors.

</comment><comment><USER5> Very nice tribute.

There was another piece* posted to HN today about how psychologically traumatic and life altering it can be to kill someone _accidentally_ under circumstances where you couldn't have predicted it nor prevented it. Veterans are often deeply scarred by their wartime experiences and may not share them in order to protect other people from the horrors of war.

My father fought in both WW2 and Vietnam. He died in his late 80s. Only after his death did it occur to me that he told humorous stories about Vietnam, but never spoke of WW2. I infer that if Vietnam was joke worthy in his eyes, WW2 was _unspeakable._

I wish we had a better track record for helping veterans with the mental health issues that so often grow out of serving their country.

* [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16105745](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16105745)

</comment><comment><USER6> Is there any more information about this? I can't even find an article which says where he lived.

</comment><comment><USER7> Good lord this is chilling. It makes me terribly sad to think about the mental torture some people go through that leads them to such an act.

</comment><comment><USER8> Now we have two suicides of people working in this facet of human right activism. At what number should we start thinking about foul play? There are ways to push people to such extreme acts.

<comment><USER9> > _foul play_

I'm sure you didn't mean it that way, but this is bottom of the barrel stuff: off topic, disrespectful, and way below the quality line. Please don't bring it in here.

<comment><USER10> dang, nobody understands what you are talking about.

<comment><USER11> I understood perfectly what he's talking about, and I agree with him.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm really not familiar with SecureDrop or James Dolan's activism. Does anyone familiar with him want to summarize for me/us?

<comment><USER13> The article itself is a good summary of his work on SecureDrop.

<comment><USER12> Okay, I thought there was something more that I didn't know about! Thank you

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> In Memorian: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Programmers_who_commi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Programmers_who_committed_suicide)

</comment><comment><USER15> really horrible, sorry to hear. awful loss for us all.

</comment><comment><USER16> It's terrible that he served our country and was thrown away. He is a true American and patriot.

</comment><comment><USER17> Can any of the HN Admins set the title bar to black? IIRC, thats the custom for a "death in the family".

</comment><comment><USER18> First Aaron Swartz, now James Dolan. Sad to see good people like them leave us. Hope they inspire some other wonderful people to follow their steps.

EDIT: Well, obviously not _all_ their steps.

<comment><USER19> Well... maybe not _all_ the steps.

<comment><USER20> Anything can be funny given the right person saying it at the appropriate time in the right context

Seeing a suicide joke from a person I don't know in the Hacker News thread about the death an individual I respect an hour after it's been released is not my idea of funny.

<comment><USER21> I see it as a word of caution for the bright eyed. Fighting for your ideals wears on you, and some are more resilient to its demands than others.

<comment><USER22> I wonder if the personal trait to see problems and act is because the problems seem bigger or because the "activation threshold" of that person is lower. If the former, I could see that the same trait also makes it more likely that the problems feel overwhelming.

Ignorance is bliss.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Heroes die young.

</comment><comment><USER24> Why is the date of the post "Tomorrow"?

<comment><USER25> Probably a buggy publishing system that rounds date/time, or something similar. It says "Today" for me.

Or a major conspiracy. My money's with Occam's razor, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I had to research a bit as I recall an identical story about JStor and a computer programmer from a few years ago.

[http://business.time.com/2013/01/14/mit-orders-review-of- aar...](http://business.time.com/2013/01/14/mit-orders-review-of-aaron-swartz- suicide-as-soul-searching-begins/)

Seems incredibly similar to this situation and on both accounts this is terribly sad to see.

<comment><USER27> Yes, Aaron Swartz is mentioned 6 times in the article above.

<comment><USER26> Yeah I guess I just couldn't believe what I was reading that two people so closely related to each other could have the same outcome. It's just staggering news and quite hard to comprehend.</comment></comment></comment>


Groupon's Success Disaster - <AUTHOR> http://blog.redfin.com/blog/2010/09/groupons_success_disaster.html <comment><USER4> I see three immediate problems:

1\. The merchant didn't think through the consequences of their promotion. They made a deal that was too appealing to an unnecessarily broad swath of potential customers. A commenter on the blog points out that the better approach is to figure out how to bait the hook for a specific type of desirable customer instead of having a fire sale.

2\. Groupon didn't look out for their partner merchant. Groupon's job is to be really _smart_ about the business they're in and to share those smarts with their partners. Sure, they're relatively new at this too, but a part of their sales process should be qualifying the deals they're going to be running for people and saying "hey, you know, this might be giving away the farm."

3\. People are dicks; doubly so in a down economy.

<comment><USER5> Plain and simple: She should have driven a harder bargain or not gone for it.

Also #3, #3, #3, and #3. People don't read the little bit on Groupon where it says "tip like you're not getting a discount," or just ignore it, and also #3.

<comment><USER6> Groupons terms are not really negotiable.

They offered me the same terms when I called them about my retail stores. (want min 50% off for consumer, they take 50% of revenue). I told them it was too rich. They wouldn't budge. I walked away.

They have a 6 month waiting list in some areas, why would they negotiate.

I am amazed that so many businesses accept these terms. There is just no way it makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Making a poor business decision and then somehow blaming Groupon for it is no better than building a house in a flood plain and not having flood insurance.

Groupon works wonderfully for businesses with predictable fixed costs and decreasing marginal costs - bowling alleys, stadiums, art museums etc... It does not work well at all for businesses who need to source product, prepare goods, or provide service - restaurants especially

<comment><USER8> > _"It's because we cannot afford to lose any more money on this terrible > decision I made"_

Quote from the end of blog post. Having read through the whole thing I do not believe at any point she blamed Groupon for her predicament - she walked into it eyes wide open and appears to acknowledge this.

It does, however, raise interesting questions about Groupon's relevance to the small businesses they purport to help. Groupon is supposed to be a win-win for consumers and small businesses alike, but it would appear this may not be the case. Seeing as how this is core to their business model, if this is a regular case I would expect this to sink Groupon sooner or later.

<comment><USER9> Sounds quite similar to the problems people have reported with Yelp in some ways. Stories like poison the well for anyone trying to sell net services to small businesses later on, too, even if the deal is much better value. I gather a lot of cafe owners are done with the free wifi too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The numbers do not add up. Assuming 1,000 customers;

$8,000 in losses is an $8 loss per customer. With $3 of revenue. So they're claiming $11 in variable costs to service each customer, for $13 worth of product. No way that is correct - if it is, Groupon is merely the straw that broke the camel's back. Their markup on product should be way higher.

Also, that's assuming no increase in follow on transactions, and that all coupons were cashed.

I don't buy it. Although it definitely could have been a net loss, it wasn't of that magnitude.

<comment><USER11> Are you familar with the restaurant/food industry? For most places, profit margins are pretty awful. I'll admit ~14% is low for the type of venue this is, but believe me this is common

<comment><USER10> I think you're confusing gross margins on individual items with the overall profit margins. My understanding - and I'm not especially familiar with the industry - is that markup on individual items sold is high (after all, how much does a cup of coffee cost to make?), but the fixed costs - rent and employees - are also high.

I'm saying the number didn't make sense because you have to look at the marginal cost of servicing those customers. The rent didn't go up because more people were coming in. Extra employees were only necessary if the place was already busy, etc.

<comment><USER12> You've got it exactly right. I found data showing that the restaurant/cafe industry (publicly traded ones, anyway) earn gross margins between 25-70%, depending on the company and how they account for COGS versus operating expenses (the real number, measuring only the raw inputs of goods per sale, is toward the higher end of that range).

Retail is all about generating enough volume to cover fixed expenses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you try to get new customers with price-cutting deals, you will get customers who want & expect price-cutting deals.

If you try to get new customers with quality goods at a fair price, you will get customers who will pay a fair price for quality goods.

</comment><comment><USER14> im a chicago entrepreneur and had a crowd funding startup. i sat on a panel with andrew last year before groupon got massive and know as much as anyone about the inner workings of groupon (pun intended).

i write this to give some context to the comment below.

groupon (i dont think maliciously) uses the fact that they are sophisticated and the small business owner isn't to their advantage.

you might think "so what? all is fair"

well, the small business community doesn't live in a vaccum. they talk to each other and talk about groupon (especially here in chicago).yes, they don't know how to create promotions (one of the real values groupon sales people provide) BUT what they do talk about are these horror stories.

so whats the moral here? people aren't idiots and if groupon wants to make sure their two sided platform survives, it can't abuse one side for the benefit of the other.

<comment><USER15> so, then, would you think that there is a place for a business similar to groupon but focuses more on trying to cut deals that encourages the growth of repeat business and/or good customers?

<comment><USER14> absolutely. the whole digital promotion space is still ripe.

i used to work for the the 3rd largest broadline retailer in the US(SHLD) and we were constantly struggling with this.

Think about it, right now if you're Target, how do you push promotions to those who dont already shop at Target? TV is primarily branding, search is primarily for...well specific product search. Nothing out there for true, replacing the old sunday circular, promotions.

<comment><USER14> hint hint: there's a startup in there somewhere :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Like I keep saying, groupon's longterm value is very, very questionable.

The #1 value they are bringing at the moment is convincing shop owners to give a _really_ kickass coupon. That's it!

That mailing list of theirs? Sure it's valuable. But send that same mailing list a 15% off coupon typically found in the newspaper and they won't give a crap.

And give the same groupon offer in the newspapers and...a lot MORE people would use it!

<comment><USER17> I disagree. I could create a steep discount coupon. 50% off, bam! The trouble is selling several thousand of them in a day, and my website has a lot more visitors than the typical mom and pop shop.

Distribution is worth paying for. Perhaps not paying a multiple of LTV for. But worth paying for.

<comment><USER16> _The trouble is selling several thousand of them in a day_

(1) How does it matter whether I get 4K people to buy in in one day or over one year? That part is over-hyped and makes for great PR. I am in the same space(sort-of, blinkcoupons.com). Many retailers would prefer a steady flow of new customers over the year versus a one-time rush.

So let's say you paid Groupon $40,000 to get 4,000 coupon sells by offering a 60% discount, I really believe you can spend $20,000 giving ads in the local paper with a _kickass_ offer and get the same number of people to _use_ your coupon(not just buy it). Remember, just because people buy the groupon does not mean they use it--good for groupon, not so much for the retailer which is completely banking on repeat biz.

As a child in India, I saw newspapers sell out occasionally because they had a _coupon_. Back then, coupon by definition meant a _crazy_ offer. Since, the idea of a coupon has been diluted to mean trash. And kudos to Groupon for being able to convince store owners to give select kickass coupons like they should have been doing all along. But I don't know why store owners will be paying Groupon 60% revenue when they can run an ad in the local paper for a grand and attract similar number of customers but at a lower customer acquisition cost than Groupon.

(2) What's your product? If it's a virtual product(such as yours), I don't think the same ideas apply. People have been desensitized with online tools offering steep discounts. The same is not true with your local coffee shop.

 _Distribution is worth paying for._

Absolutely! Though this discussion is a more nuanced one.

We're basically debating if all other things being the same, whether other distribution channels can provide a similar service to Groupon at a cheaper cost. I believe they can!

But I'm biased. That's what my start-up is about :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I spoke with a business owner recently that had used Groupon and he shared a similar experience with me.

He said that with Groupon you must discount your offering by at least 50%, and that you must share 50% the sales with Groupon. That means the most you can sell your goods is 25% of there normal price. Where they made the mistake, he said, was in not thinking it would be very successful. You are able to put a max on the number of sells, but they only thought they would sell ~40 so they left it open. They ended up selling over 800.

He said you have to think of Groupon as a marketing cost. Multiply the max you are going to sell times the discount and make sure you are okay spending that much on a marketing campaign.

<comment><USER19> If someone offers you a bad deal, you reject it. Simple as that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> One thing the article does not mention is "breakage": "Breakage is a term used in accounting to indicate gift cards that have been sold but never redeemed. Revenue from breakage is almost entirely profit, since companies need not provide any goods or services for unredeemed gift cards." <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakage>

This article ([http://www.journalofaccountancy.com/issues/2007/nov/accounti...](http://www.journalofaccountancy.com/issues/2007/nov/accountingforgiftcards.htm)) says that the average breakage is 10-19%. Let's say it's 10% to be conservative. Posie's Cafe said that over 1,000 customers bought the promotion. A 10% breakage implies that at least 100 customers bought but never used their Groupon coupon. Posie's Cafe only gets half of this, but it does give them a free $300. I guess that's not that much, but if breakage is 19%, 190 customers would have given them a free $570.

EDIT: using kareemm's datapoint of 30-40% below, the breakage would be $900-$1,200.

<comment><USER21> i've heard from a few friends in the valley that groupon's avg breakage is in the 30-40% range.

<comment><USER22> What category of business do they run? How long ago did they run their groupons?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Groupon CEO re: their cut: "If we were economically rational, we would take even more."

[http://venturebeat.com/2010/09/15/demo-the-secret-of- groupon...](http://venturebeat.com/2010/09/15/demo-the-secret-of-groupons- success-is-good-writing/)

<comment><USER24> I immediately thought of this quote too. I see this as sort of a honeymoon for Groupon while people figure out how it really benefits (or doesn't benefit) their business. Over time their margins will probably drop considerably, so why shouldn't they take what they can get now? I can see how this sucks for small businesses who get flattened by the runaway train, but is it Groupon's responsibility to sabotage their own business model by performing due dilligence for their customers? From what little I know everything seems clearly above board.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I work for a Skydiving company that has, to GREAT success, ran two GroupOn promotions. We sell three different types of jumps, 10k 15k and 18k. The 10k goes for $169 and is out of a 5 seat Cessna, available only on some weekends. The 15k and 18k are available weekends and most weekdays and cost $199 and $259. Our 15k and 18k jumps are out of a large, 15 seat aircraft.

We sold 10k jumps for $99. The COGS for this product is about $130. We cannot disclose our cut with GroupOn, but assuming the average 50/50 cut, we're selling these things for less than half of what it costs to produce. Why did we do this?

1.We know that 50% of our gift certificates are never redeemed.

2\. We know that 60% of our customers purchase video and/or T-Shirts.

3\. We know that about 90% of our customers will jump from 15k or 18k. We just ask that the GroupOns pay the difference in price. $30 to 15k, $90 to 18k.

4\. We know that many of our customers bring friends, sign up for our solo training, come back for a second jump, post their video on YouTube, and tell the world how much fun they had.

Our first run sold 800, our second sold 1000. GroupOn customers aren't awful, but they seem to carry a higher percentage of snooty, complainy people. The vast majority of our poor reviews on Yelp come from GroupOn people whose experience really wasn't horrible, they are just particularly nitpicky.

GroupOn is a very dangerous game. I can TOTALLY understand how someone can get their ass handed to them. However, that's part of the numbers game you play. I agree with other comments, if you find a way to get 1000 people to walk in your door and spend money, and you can't figure out how to turn that into a positive for your business, then, well... Maybe you should do something else with your money.

GroupOn is crazy awesome. We love them! We have so far sold 1800 skydives through GroupOn! To put that in perspective, our busiest month this year we put 400 tandems up in the air. In two GroupOn promotions we've sold almost one year's worth of business. Staggering numbers.

<comment><USER26> Good job on crunching the numbers and making it profitable. Groupon is definitely a win-win in some cases.

Did the Groupon people help you with all this, or did you have to figure it out yourself? My main complaint is that Groupon doesn't seem to be looking out for the small biz owners and steering them toward successful deals. It sucks to feel like you can't rely on a partner to look out for your interests.

<comment><USER25> GroupOn helped us a lot. They didn't really do much due diligence to see if we could handle the promotion. They did however tell us what to expect, showed us similar deals that had gone on across the country, told us to buy more phones and hire more people to work them the day of our deal. They basically told us to get ready for war.

Let me tell you. You have not known fear until you are on the receiving end of a GroupOn. Those people are animals. It was like the Mongol Hordes were coming to rape and pillage our business.

GroupOn is amazing. Like Andrew said, they breathed life into our business. We'd still be here, but they changed everything.

We get the money up front, breakage is insane. The promotion we ran in March, about 30% of people have redeemed their Groupons. And we have already had the benefit of sitting on alllll of that cash this entire time. They aren't the best customers, but they are pretty damn good. They buy things, they bring friends, they purchase 12 GroupOns and use 3 of them. GroupOn is great. These businesses complaining about being pillaged, they really have no one to blame but themselves. I am by no means a savvy businessperson, but to me this was a no-brainer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Having a hard time seeing how this is Groupon's fault. Maybe a better job reminding business owners not to offer more coupons than they can actually support?

<comment><USER28> Well, the basic economics of giving away too many coupons is definitely the core of the problem, but it looks like Groupon aggravated it somewhat.

By taking a high cut and targeting discount-minded (rather than repeat-custom- minded) clientele, the $8000 basically went down the drain, and the business experienced more headaches dealing with testy Grouponers than they would normal clients.

Part of this is a learning experience about what you offer as a discount, how you offer it, and who you target. Instead of offering half-price cookies, offer half-price vegan cookies or similar. Do a smaller test first (though maybe Groupon doesn't allow that?) so you can get an idea of repeat rates and discount-hungry one-off customers.

The word of mouth gained from this one campaign may well echo forward for months to come, but it's still sad to see a business struggling when a site like Groupon is supposed to be fantastic for both parties involved in the transaction.

<comment><USER29> > By taking a high cut

This is what confuses me. Shouldn't the split have been determined before the contract was signed? I don't understand how they could have made a deal with Groupon, but not worked out who would keep what percentage.

<comment><USER8> Based on the author's blog post, the split was determined beforehand, but Groupon did not allow them to set an upper bound on coupons sold. This seems to be a recurring story - business owners willing to take a loss for marketing via Groupon, but with no effective ways of controlling an upper cap for this loss.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> at this point groupon has more or less a monopoly so they can easily rape the businesses..

but this article seems to blame groupon instead of the business owner.

1\. why would you price your promotion at a loss? 2\. losing "$8,000" may sound like a lot...but in reality it should be looked at as $8,000 worth of advertising. And getting your message out to 200,000 or so local customers for that little isn't that bad.

<comment><USER31> 1\. That's groupons business model. The average profit margin in the service industry is less than 10%. If you give people a 50% discount, you are definitely going to be losing money. The idea is that you let them try your place, then they keep coming back. In practice, most of the places I've talked to haven't seen it this way.

2\. It's really expensive for what it is, and could easily tank a small businesses cash flow. I know of two different places that did $30 gift certificates for $15. Of the $15, $7.50 went to Groupon, so the businesses got $7.50 per transaction. Both sold over 1000 coupons. If half of those coupons are redeemed in the first month, and it costs $27 to service each $30 transaction, you would see a negative cash flow impact of $9,750, and a total cash flow impact of $19,500. The average restaurant spends about $850/month on advertising, so a single groupon would soak up their entire budget for two full years.

Everybody that I've talked to that has used groupon (~10 restaurants) has said that they would never use it again. It's too expensive, and the people that buy it aren't the people they want to attract.

Ultimately, I'd be surprised if somebody else didn't come in and offer the exact same service for free. It doesn't take a genius to sell stuff to people for less than it costs. Incidentally, I did a survey of some of my customers (<http://barsannapolis.com>) about offering the service for free, and they largely weren't interested because it doesn't produce the results they want.

<comment><USER12> Both of your statements are based on equivalency between marginal cost and average cost.

The marginal profit in the service industry is not less than 10%. It would be nearly impossible to pay for all the fixed costs of running a service company (rent, labor, depreciation of PP&E) if that were true. Yes, the _net_ profit margin is less than 10% (typically 5-7% for restaurants). The two are not the same.

Many gross margins in the service industry are 30-50%, or often higher. Think of the actual cost of a cup of coffee, or of the ingredients in a sandwich. It's not high relative to the price charged. But quite a few must be sold in order to cover the fixed costs of keeping the store open.

This is why location matters so much in retail. It is not because it allows you to charge significantly higher prices, usually. It is because it gets you much higher volume, which is principally what determines the net profit of a retail outlet.

That's why Groupon actually works quite well for many such service businesses. It drives volume, which is what matters for net profit. But it would be loss generating for a low gross margin business to use it, such as a high volume mass retailer.

<comment><USER31> If you are losing money on each transaction, you can't make it up in volume, you can only lose money faster. Your gross margin would have to be 75% to make money with a groupon promotion, without accounting for any of your fixed costs. The only thing that might be able to touch that is some alcohol sales, assuming you could control employee theft and shrinkage, which you can't.

Let us also not forget that a restaurant isn't infinitely scalable. If your tables are full of people using coupons, you can't just keep packing them in, eventually people are going to go somewhere else, and the guy that is going to leave isn't the one that already paid.

<comment><USER32>
       The only thing that might be able to touch that
       is some alcohol sales

Or coffee. Drip coffee margins can be greater than 70%. Espresso drinks can be greater than 80%.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> "John told me that when the consumer pays less than $10, Groupon usually takes 100% of the money."

How sweet this is for Groupon, they take it all with almost no costs at all...

</comment><comment><USER34> A Groupon salesperson called us awhile back to see if we were interested. We crunched the numbers, wondered how anyone made money using Groupon, and told them "no thanks".

In retrospect, I can see it working in a few cases:

1\. You are not well known and will attract new customers (marketing expense).

2\. The Groupon is worth much less than your typical sale.

3\. Your overhead is fixed and you are not at capacity.

</comment><comment><USER35> Great quote from the article: "When you buy something cheap and bad, the best you're going to feel about it is when you buy it. When you buy something expensive and good, the worst you're going to feel about it is when you buy it." Of couse, this assumes that you can afford it at all. But largely accurate if so, IMO.

<comment><USER36> This also assumes that expensive == good. In my experience, that's not always true, or even often true. Then you feel really bad.

<comment><USER35> "expensive AND good" is part of the quote. Both are necessary for the full effect of the quote. But yeah, if it's not true, then you feel really bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> It seemed like the business owner jumped in with a no-holds barred approach as far as discounts were concerned in order to get more feet into the shop. Improper planning, failing to study the market and unrestricted incentives were the points of failure and not Groupon. If anything, they just got a big boost as far as the # of customers was concerned.

Maybe they should have restricted the $ amount or number of coupons given out in the promotion or introduced some conditions instead of just going all out.

</comment><comment><USER38> _"Groupon's $3 was almost pure profit"_

Completely wrong. Just because Groupon doesn't have any variable cost doesn't mean all of their revenue is profit. Credit card processing, bank fees, and chargebacks will eat up 2-5% of the (gross) revenue, and Groupon spends much more than that buying clicks to drive traffic to the merchant's deal.

</comment><comment><USER39> I want to work with partners who want to help me succeed. Groupon seems to have failed that test in this instance.

</comment><comment><USER40> _"When you buy something cheap and bad, the best you're going to feel about it is when you buy it. When you buy something expensive and good, the worst you're going to feel about it is when you buy it."_

I think this is the best takeaway from the article generally (not focusing on the Groupon aspect).

</comment><comment><USER41> And the hits keep coming for Groupon today: <http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/16/groupon-photography/>

_A photography deal offered on Groupon in Atlanta yesterday turned messy when it was revealed that the photographer had promoted her work with stolen images and was far from equipped to carry out the terms of the Groupon._

</comment><comment><USER42> The merchant should NOT have run the promotion at a LOSS. The promotion should have been at least break even, if not slightly profitable.

<comment><USER43> This is a nice statement to make, but how do you propose they could have done that?

Groupon seems to demand at least a 50% discount on normal prices, and then seems to want to take between 50 and 100% of the actual groupon coupon cost. That leaves the merchant able to collect somewhere between 0 and 25% of their standard pricing. Other than software businesses, there are few few shops that have enough of a markup to be able to sell something at 25% of face value and still make money on the product itself, much less cover all the additional overhead.

<comment><USER44> Well then, I guess they shouldn't have used groupon, if groupon is only good for drawing in customers by extreme loss-making activities.

Bashing your head against a brick wall hurts, but the solution isn't to find the least painful brick, it's to stop bashing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I've always had a hint of doubt in the back of my mind about Groupon. They're obviously printing money for themselves, but with the terms they're offering local businesses, at what cost? Conversely, eventually local businesses will wise up and demand better terms, so the market will balance itself, but the casualties during the interim are a real shame.

</comment><comment><USER46> Sounds to me like an ill attempt by the merchant to cover her ass for treating a loyal customer like an unwanted frugal-monger.

Doesn't change that her loyal customer (Lucinda) is out $6, and Lucinda is very likely to find a new place that knows how to serve up, "Thanks for your patronage, we'll do our best to keep you coming..."

</comment><comment><USER47> The problem isn't Groupon or the shop in question. People were creating multiple Groupon accounts in order to get multiple copies of the offer from this shop. Dishonest consumers are the problem here, though this is a problem that Groupon could do more to curtail.

<comment><USER48> But this is exactly what a small business is buying from Groupon. If the quality of their lot is worse than other advertising, then more the reason not to partner with them.

<comment><USER49>
      > But this is exactly what a small business is buying from Groupon.

But this is not what Groupon is billing themselves as providing though...

<comment><USER48> What's that saying? - If it's free, then you're the one being sold. They make their money by selling to small business.

From the website:

      Groupon for Businesses
      With an unparalleled ability to drive hundreds - even thousands - <USER2>
      customers through your door ...

<comment><USER49>
      > Dishonest consumers are the problem here, though
      > this is a problem that Groupon could do more to curtail.

This is what I was talking about. Groupon is not billing their subscriber list as a group of cheap-o's that will only use the discount and never return to the business and try to use the discount multiple times -- which they obtained by registering for Groupon multiple times under different names/aliases -- while they are there for their single visit.

If Groupon were to describe their subscriber list as such, then I could see their business start to decline, no?

It would be interesting to see what the average conversion-rate from one-time to repeat customer is based on Groupon coupons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Lot of you guys are blaming the merchant for agreeing to such a deal. While I agree that the cafe owner should have worked out the economics of the deal, but you seem to be ignoring the merchant perspective across all these Groupon deals.

The biggest goal of merchants signing up with these group buying sites is to get customers and hope that a big chunk of these turn into repeat customers. Unless the merchant is selling distressed inventory (eg: slow business hours etc.) the merchant is not making money on these deals.

And thats the number one thing we strive to accomplish at BloomSpot (shameless plug here). After all, if there's no value for the merchant in such deals, eventually, they'll just stop participating. We want to make this a win-win for both the merchant as well as the end user.

</comment><comment><USER51> So... the cafe was _stupid_ , and nearly destroyed themselves because of it.

Capitalism / evolution says they had it coming. Yes, Groupon certainly took the assholish route, but taking advantage of stupidity _is_ within their rights, and even within expected behavior in a marketplace.

FYI for future sales through _any_ intermediary: _know your terms_. If they charge $X, and you want to sell something for $X, _don't do it_ because you'll be left with $0 (unless that's what you want). If you might not be able to handle above a certain volume of takers, _restrict the number of sales_.

</comment><comment><USER52> Anyone wonder why Redfin is getting so much coverage on HN recently? They don't seem to be a YC company.

I just took a look at their Wikipedia entry and noticed that they received investment from Vulcan, founded by Paul Allen. No wonder they called Bill Gates a hero in their previous blog post.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1694538>

<comment><USER53> Because they write interesting articles.

<comment><USER52> I really didn't think this article had any new insight.

It simply boiled down to: let's capitalize on this Groupon buzz and say we won't make the same mistakes.

Their article on Bill Gates was simple link bait.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Who is GlennKelman and why is he/shey only submitting redfin articles and who are redfin and why are the articles deliberately contrarian and who is upvoting them?

<comment><USER55> That's not hard to find out.

Glenn Kelman is the CEO of redfin, which has a very cool Google Maps-like real estate search. I haven't done business with them, but have used them as another tool during my house-buying searches.

I wager that Glenn (or someone on the redfin team) is using HackerNews as yet another place to market.

Personally, I don't mind. It's interesting reading.

<comment><USER54> You know I'm getting sick of the downvoting to the depths of hell any post that crosses the group-think party line of this place. I don't think that it is okay that a CEO of a commercial site is cross-posting here to boost traffic to his website. So what if you've used their services in your personal life and found them useful? How does change anything? My expectation of a site like HackeNews and SlashDot or anywhere like this is that the posts are posted by ordinary users because they find them interesting. If you get upvoted for liking posts that are a) crud and b) probably only used to drive traffic to a commerical website and I get downvoted because of the same then this is a place I don't want to be. Personally I do mind.

<comment><USER55> I guess I misunderstood your original post. It sounded like you didn't know who the poster was, and I looked it up for you and shared some context of my experiences with them.

Personally, I do think it's ok that a CEO is posting here, even if it is for financial gain. I feel like this site is like a tech-news link aggregator with a business spin. Having a CEO of any company is (I think) of value to the community since they can share their experiences in starting a company (it looks like Glenn Kelman was a co-founder of Plumtree as well).

In any case, if you disagree with the article (i.e., you think it's crud), then say why. Let's have the discussion. Complaining about it isn't going to get you upvotes, if that's your thing.

Take it easy. No harm, no foul.

<comment><USER54> I didn't. I looked at their user info and it says nothing - says it was created 9 days ago and the user only submitted 2 redfin articles and nothing else. Normally entrepreneurs and CEOs round here write a short note that they are the founder or CEO or whatever. I didn't put 2 and 2 together. Mae Culpa. But do I now have to double check every submission? Wouldn't it be "normal" to say that you're affiliated if you're affiliated. My hunch says yes.

Personally, I don't think it's ok that a CEO posts here for financial gain - <USER3> don't like that motive and I don't like in what direction it would take this site. I feel like this site is like a tech-news link aggregator with a entrepeneurial spin. I don't think it should be used by established businesses to boost traffic. Yes haveing a CEO of any company is of value to the community but only if they are here on merit, and not if they try to manipulate the community.

Like I have said again and again, it is neither here nor there if I agree or disagree with the article - the discussion I want to have is that I think this one: this guy when he submits 2 posts (written by himself on a corporate blog!) one day after another on topics that are guaranteed to cause a stir is cynically trying to boost traffic plain and simple. I don't want up-votes, I just think it speaks of the mob mentality and group-think on HN that you can't dissent or point something out like this without being down-modded.

I am taking it is. Thanks for taking so much time to respond. I hope you see my point of view. I don't see why I keep getting down-modded for it. You seem reasonable and if you say you feel this kind of thing is fine then I'll certainly take you opinion into account and I feel like you're the type of person who would extend me the same courtesy.

Phew!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to "properly" leak info to competitors of potential acquirer - <AUTHOR>

Situation: offer to acquire is coming. We're really small company at a very early stage.
NDA is in place. We though that competitors of the potential buyer will be very interested. What's is the best way to leak information and potentially create bidding competition? <comment><USER2> My suggestion: Abide by the NDA. Think this through. You're a small, early stage company. If a leak comes out, do you really think the buyer is going to believe that it came from anywhere but you? How does that make you look to them? What's more likely to happen: they're going to offer a much higher price as a result of a bidding war, or they're simply going to walk away? If you show yourself to be a person or business that doesn't negotiate in good faith, no one is going to be willing to work with you. The last thing you want is a large angry corporation with better, more expensive lawyers than you can afford coming after you for a breach of contract.

Long story short: Abide by the agreements you sign.

</comment><comment><USER3> Seconded. The concept of "leaking" information outside of your NDA pretty much defines that there's no "proper" way to do it.

<comment><AUTHOR> OK then. I tend to agree. Let me rephrase: what can we do (within legal boundaries) to initiate a bidding war :)</comment></comment>


An attempt to backdoor the kernel (2003) - <AUTHOR> http://lwn.net/Articles/57135/

<comment><USER2> There's a bit more detail on the actual exploit here: [http://lwn.net/Articles/57552/](http://lwn.net/Articles/57552/)

</comment><comment><USER3> History repeats itself. Interesting how this has been happening since back then and we are still surprised by it. I don't have the numbers, but without Android and Ubuntu it would seem much less appealing then nowadays. I wonder if any of these actually are in place and working, and what is keeping anyone from trying again. On a side note, is open source peer-reviewed software really more secure than closed source? It is a choice between trusting a single entity to make safe programs and not purposefully put backdoors on the code and trusting lots of entities to make safe code, not purposefully backdoor it and trusting the reviewer's abilities.

<comment><USER4> > It is a choice between trusting a single entity to make safe programs and > not purposefully put backdoors on the code and trusting lots of entities to > make safe code, not purposefully backdoor it and trusting the reviewer's > abilities.

It is a choice between trusting the reviewer and having the code open to scrutiny, or trusting the entity and not having the code open to scrutiny.

Same trust surface, much less opportunity for review.

<comment><USER3> What I meant is that there is a trade-off and the choice is highly subjective. Opensource is not always better.

Having lots of entities involved lessens the trustworthiness of the program. Being open source enhances it because of community scrutiny.

The trustworthiness of a software is function of the trustworthiness of every entity involved in the making of said software or at least in the making of the most vulnerable ones.

Surely the reviewers pull the trustworthiness up, but having many entities, some unknown to you, involved can dissolve their effects. Being fruit of bad reviewers or bad programmers, some mistake or malicious code may pass by unnoticed.

Which one would you trust more: 1\. Open Source software writen by a single trustworthy person and reviewed by many 2\. Open Source software writen by many people and reviewed by many

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That story takes me back. With today's increased paranoia, one wonders if the Bitkeeper fiasco was just a smokescreen to obscure malicious additions to the kernel.

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure what you are trying to say here (I'm lm, the BK guy).

It's not clear if you are suggesting that BK was helping add backdoors or if all the fuss over the BK license was so they could move to something less paranoid so it would be easier to add backdoors or $something_else.

<comment><USER5> It recently became known that the forces that would do evil encourage and exploit situations like the one that occurred with Bitkeeper. I don't suggest that Bitkeeper was complicit with any such scheme though.

<comment><USER6> Not sure what to say to this. First of all, BK had nothing to do with this exploit other than to find it. The article was vague on the details if I remember correctly. We found the problem because the code we wrote to export the BK tree to the CVS tree validated the results. The code managed by BK was fine, the code in the CVS tree had been hacked. It was the validation step that caught it.

The statement "forces that would do evil encourage and exploit situations like the one that occurred with Bitkeeper" just makes no sense (to me at least, if someone else can parse it please share).

<comment><USER7> Seems clear enough to me.

The forces that would do evil [if they had the chance] = NSA etc.

Thus, "The NSA encourage and exploit situations like the one that occurred with Bitkeeper".

<comment><USER6> I am dismayed and disgusted with the NSA as much as the next guy, maybe more than the next guy, but suggesting they had anything to do with stick a root backdoor in the kernel is a stretch. I guess it is possible but seems pretty unlikely.

Saying it had anything to do with BK just means you didn't read the original article. BitKeeper _found_ the problem that was in the CVS tree. BitKeeper itself was never compromised.

<comment><USER7> I was not defending the GP, merely clarifying its syntax.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Maybe use _(2003)_ in the title. I just started reading the text, and went all like erm, wait, what? CVS? BitKeeper? :]

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right. Done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> the comments on that page are not related to this attempt specifically.

who made the attempt?

<comment><USER6> It was a breakin on kernel.bkbits.net - I don't think we ever figured out who did it.

[http://lwn.net/Articles/57137/](http://lwn.net/Articles/57137/)</comment></comment>


Will Windows 10 be ready this summer? No way. Will it ship? Count on it - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/article/2916221/operating-systems/will-windows-10-be-ready-this-summer-no-way-will-it-ship-count-on-it.html#twitter

<comment><USER2> With such credentials as hating "Vista since day one" and disliking "Windows 8 even more", how can I not trust his speculation?</comment>