Ask HN: Help us decide our iOS Framework licensing model - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN,
We've been working on an iOS Framework called Redbeard and we're close to release. We'll be offering developers the ability to download and build apps for 'Simulator only', completely free. Publishing to the App Store will require the purchase of a license.
This is us: http://www.getredbeard.com (still under construction)
Option 1: A perpetual license based on a one off license fee. Build and publish as many apps as you like.
Pros: - Traditional model and something developers are used to.
Cons: - Piracy, serial keys all over the internet pretty soon. - Very little flexibility in pricing which could potentially result in us launching at a price that is prohibitive for a certain demographic.
Option 2:
Licenses are not tied to a particular developer but rather to an App (Via Bundle Identifier). A license is required to publish the app into the App Store. At the point when they're ready to publish their App they'd log into the Redbeard website and claim the key by entering the App Bundle identifier.
Our thoughts on a tiered pricing model are as follows:
Tier 1: One off App - Cheapest option and perfect for indie Devs. Gives a developer the ability to purchase a one off license.
Tier 2: Freelancer - Developer given a bulk allocation of 6 serial keys that they can claim as and when needed for each App project. Tier 3: Agency/Organisations - Larger bulk serial key allocation, 20 serial keys.
Pros: - Prevents Piracy - Allows us to offer a tiered pricing model, as one size never fits all, thus allowing us to target a range of the developer demographic. - Gives us the ability to later adjust tiers based on market demands.
Cons:
- Potentially unfamiliar licensing model and thus feels complex. - The need to login to the Redbeard website each time a Key is needed for a new project.
We'd really appreciate any thoughts on this or anything related to our website or framework.
Thanks <comment><USER2> Hello! I'm an iOS dev at Smule, and also develop my own apps on the side as an indie. Here's my thoughts:

First, I probably wouldn't use a framework like this unless it was really compelling. There are plenty of free versions of most of those components on cocoapods or github. I'm sure yours are better, but I can just pod install one of those and not have to worry about buying a license and get my task done. Would strongly suggest that you have some way to use parts of the framework incrementally, and maybe have some of them free and others of them "premium".

Also, cocoapods. If I can try out a component from a cocoapod, that means I can probably drop it into my app in 5-10 minutes, then if it's interesting spend a few hours seriously evaluating it. If I have to run some kind of installer, and then start a new app with a strange xcode template, I'm just not going to do it. Maybe that's just me, maybe other devs will.

I would suggest a non-invasive, per-app license, along with an expensive option for the perpetual license for enterprises or very prolific freelancers (or agencies).

Don't do any complicated nonsense with license keys and BS like that. It's a huge headache for you and for the developers, and pirates are going to get around it anyways. Just let anyone link your sdk, and have a way to identify apps that use your components (e.g. print [Trial Version] or something to the console). If someone uses your components on a popular app, check if they have a license and let the lawyers handle it. If small developers use your components just don't worry about it, it's more trouble than it's worth to go after. Offer a very generous discount for small devs to put your logo on their splash screen, that might convert some would-be pirates to organic marketing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the detailed feedback joeld42. Much appreciated. Of course we do feel our Framework is compelling but it's just about getting that across to other devs in a clear manner in our marketing. We've found that whenever we've started a new project and we've needed a particular a set of components, it's been a pain trying to find the correct one to use, ones that have been kept upto date and then also ensuring they all work seamlessly together. Developers will of course have their own coding styles etc and trying to make each one work nicely in our projects is never easy. That's why we've tried to make everything in our framework absolutely consistent. Everything has the same coding style, is fully themable etc

It's a good point on cocoapods. It's something we'll definitely look in to thanks. We'd created the template as a way for newbie devs to have less hassle when trying to get a project started with our framework. I think another point we need to try and get across better on our site is how existing apps can use our framework.

On licensing, yep it'll just be a downloadable file that developers will need to just drop into their project somewhere. That will allow them to build the app to a device rather than just the simulator.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> A thought on piracy- don't worry about it. A user is a user and some users can easily afford $1k/yr for their software and others couldn't scrape together $9.99 (think international). You get to count pirates and nonpirates both as users at this early stage in your company, and it's users that make your project worth something (so long as you can accurately count them), not license revenue.

Very few successful app developers will risk the rug being pulled out from under them, which I'm sure you'll retain the power to do. That can either come from breaking their pirated API key and bricking their installed apps or a clean, well-worded time-to-pay-plus-penalties letter from your attorney.

Highly pirated properties from Game of Thrones episodes to Metallica tracks all derive benefits from merchandising and live performances that owe some of their underpinning to popularity through piracy. Since you'll never prevent piracy, might as well anticipate and leverage it into more value for your shareholders.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd go with option 2. With tiered pricing, you can attract indie developers with more affordable pricing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the response munirusman. We are also thinking Option 2 but were a little concerned if developers would find the tiered model a little confusing. We didn't want this to become a barrier to them signing up. But I suppose it all depends on how well we explain the pricing to end users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What is the revenue model based on?</comment>


The Windows Shutdown crapfest - <AUTHOR> http://moishelettvin.blogspot.com/2006/11/windows-shutdown-crapfest.html

<comment><USER2> (2006)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, I forgot to mention the date in the title :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The repository structure seems a bit bad in that it takes months for changes to propagate, but how else should a project as big as windows be handled at the source-level?

<comment><USER4> For an alternative watch <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMql3Di4Kgc> to see how Google does it.

Basically most of the company develops on one branch, but no changelist can be checked in without going through peer review. (The talk is about the tool that Google uses for peer review.) It seems to work quite well.

Now you can ask how the project size compares. Well <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_lines_of_code#Example> claims that Windows Server 2003 had 50 million lines of code. <http://code.google.com/opensource/> claims that Google has released over 15 million lines of code across various projects. I guarantee that Google has not released most of its code. Based on those data points I wouldn't be surprised if the sizes were comparable, at least to within an order of magnitude.

(However Google's source code is probably significantly better. Google has not been around as long, and does not have the same kinds of accumulated legacy issues that Microsoft does.)

Random disclaimer, I work for Google and I like how Google does it.

<comment><USER5> Is it really fair to compare the amount of code in windows server to the total amount of code that google maintains? Google has many different software projects, what is the biggest? Search? Android? Gmail? Compare _one_ project to a server operating system and my guess is that the OS is going to be an order of magnitude larger. An OS is an enormously complicated piece of software with lots of co-dependent parts. That's what led the to this pretty horribly complicated source management system.

<comment><USER6> Google's stuff may be a lot more modular than Windows, but that's not to say that there aren't inter-dependencies. Google's web services all share just a few back-end technologies (MapReduce, GFS, BigTable) that are comparable to an OS kernel, with things like GMail and Docs hanging off like subsystems. But even things like Gmail, Docs, Calender, Search, etc. aren't even close to independent. The GMail people need to collaborate with the Docs people to handle attachments and the Calendar people to handle to-do lists and event invitations and the GTalk and Voice people to implement the voice and video chat and phone calling. The Picasa people need to collaborate with the the Google Earth and Maps people to handle geotagging, and the GWT (probably) people to deal with the web interface. The Android people need to collaborate with everybody who works on the front-ends of all the other products in order to develop mobile versions or integrate them more deeply in to the OS.

Even if the "collaboration" in many of these instances is mostly limited to using an API published by the other group, there's still the need to make sure that those APIs are sufficient to accomplish the task at hand, and obviously Google's UI consistency between products is more than an accident. I think that to the extent that Microsoft's code is more tightly coupled than Google's or that of a desktop Linux distribution, it's mostly their own fault.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love this article. It's practically a case study for Fred Brooks' "mythical man-month".

</comment><comment><USER8> Again?

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting. I couldn't google the previous entry, Hacker News didn't detect that this as a duplicate as well.

[http://www.google.com/search?&q=site%3Anews.ycombinator....](http://www.google.com/search?&q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+%22shutdown+crapfest%22)

<comment><USER9> This does look like the first submission, unless SearchYC is missing it: <http://searchyc.com/submissions/moishelettvin.blogspot.com>

<comment><USER10> I think it's Reddit and Slashdot where I saw the the first three times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I just used this in a metaphor today, to explain why Windows is inferior to Mac OS and Linux Gnome

</comment><comment><USER12> Ahh, this is why I love Linux and XFCE.... XFCE didn't take a year to write such a dialog box.

</comment><comment><USER13> Any time I hear someone say they spent a year working on a few hundred lines of code, I have to wonder how much of the problem was other people, and how much was that person.

I suspect there's a ton of exaggeration going on here, and that's probably not the only code they worked on. It's also probably not the highest priority, either.

<comment><USER14> I'm not even going to tell you how long it took and how complex it was to replace one single icon sometimes in Vista. I worked in the Windows UX team at the time and tried really hard during Windows 7 to improve that process, because there were so many people involved and so many hours spent for such simple things. So yes, I believe what this guys is saying about his feature is possible - to swap an icon we sometimes had to track a ridiculous number of people, wait several builds to see it, and get approval from a room full of people many times several management levels above me.

<comment><USER15> I fought similar battles (but at a much smaller scale) trying to change some of inane dialog box text/tooltips in InfoPath for a feature I owned as a PM. I was an intern, but the pushback was rarely along the lines of "Your version isn't better" but rather "We can't handle the globalization/internationalization/testing/etc burden of making the change."

<comment><USER14> Yup. Which is even more frustrating. Many times you got everybody to agree it would be better the way you are trying to do, but for whatever reasons that seem to be out of control of every person involved in the process, it can't be done. It's sad actually. A company full of people with the right ideas and skills that can't put those ideas in practice because the operation and processes are getting in their way.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Evolution of a Ruby Programmer - <AUTHOR> http://gist.github.com/295352

<comment><USER2> Honest feed back? How about this version:

      def fact(max=ARGV[0].to_i, i1=1, i2=1, i=1)
        i < max ? fact(max, i2, i1+i2, i+1) : (puts i1)
      end
      fact()

This was the 2nd program I wrote in Ruby (I know it's recursive and therefore inefficient but my goal was to see how short I could make it not how efficient)

</comment><comment><USER3> In my opinion, the "Newbie programmer" and the "Discovered ternary operators" are the clearest and simplest and can be understood by anybody who knows a C-like; the first one especially is the clearest to _anyone_.

I'm not a Ruby programmer, though--are there increasing performance gains as the function evolves?

</comment><comment><USER4> It looks more like a degradation towards perl :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> It seems to me that programmatic evolution is often like biological evolution -- namely, it moves from "simple but works," to "Wouldn't it be cool if..." :)</comment></comment>


Windows 8 Store: with 99 Metro Apps, is it Behind Schedule? - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmoorhead/2012/04/13/windows-8-store-with-99-metro-apps-is-it-behind-schedule/

<comment><USER2> The Windows 8 store isn't even open for developer submission yet, seems a little early to compare size or quality.

I imagine once we see a Release Candidate and the store open it will be a different story, but still far too early.

Here's a post about the process of getting into the store in the future.

[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jaimer/archive/2012/04/19/wanted- gre...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jaimer/archive/2012/04/19/wanted-great- windows-8-metro-style-apps.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, how many iPad apps were available on the iTunes store 6 months before the iPad was released?

It's not due to a lack of developers. Microsoft developer evangelists and MVPs are out on the road holding Windows 8 developer camps. We had 100 people at mine and it was "sold out" quickly. At our camp an evangelist said Microsoft was being /very/ picky about what they allowed in the store now. What's neat about Microsoft is that they said that if you think you have an app that is really ready for the store now, just get in touch with a developer evangelist and they'll help you out.

[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/edvangelist/archive/2012/03/28/windo...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/edvangelist/archive/2012/03/28/windows-8-developer- camps-schedule.aspx)

<comment><USER4> is there really not a developer camp in Silicon Valley? help us help you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The Win8 Store isn't even open to all submissions at this point. Microsoft has only issued a handful of keys to selected developers, which allows them to submit apps. Without this key, you can't even make a developer account.

If you don't have a key, you can still develop Metro apps with VS 2011 Beta and test them using the Windows app certification utility that's included to see if the app would hypothetically pass.

I suppose this limits the growth of the Win8 Store at first, but I'm still surprised that there are only 99 apps given how many keys were issued. Also, I believe Microsoft is funding the development of apps by some popular app developers for iOS and Android.

</comment><comment><USER6> This seems to be a very poor comparison, remarkably so in fact. You are comparing a new ecosystem to that of one which required absolutely no change (and in fact, is still dominated by applications built/designed for an iPhone, but stretch miserably to work on iPads).

There are lots of legitimate challenges that Windows faces with this push, and lots of interesting interactions between these issues, but you fail to outline any of them.

To the many posters who have not yet written application for Windows 8, let me assure you that for the vast majority of applications which are currently available on Windows, building the application using the new SDK will not only be quicker, but also have much better products. You can also import almost all of your old codebase, the main changes are with respect to asynchronous IO, which creates a hugely different user experience, and of course poses difficulties to developers who are less accustomed.

@Patrick Moorhead, is there any logic behind your choice of 5K as the number of applications? It seems to have come out of the blue, and not from any analysis.

Excuse me if I seem critical, I guess coming from HackerNews I was expecting comments and insight.

</comment><comment><USER7> 100s of thousands of App Store items comprise largely of crap than appears to be there only to push the app counter where it needs to be for Apple's marketing purposes. If Microsoft is to release a two-click FartApp build wizard, I'm sure they'll manage to catch up quite quickly.

In other words, I have this faint sliver of hope that Microsoft will get their App Store right, in which case I'd gladly take a set of 99 decent apps over Apple's wide selection of abysmality.

<comment><USER8> This is a pretty cynical and ridiculous view IMO. Why does it have to be some nefarious move on the part of Apple? Isn't a much more logical reason that iOS is attracting a lot of attention, and the vast majority of apps for any platform are bad or amateur?

Also, if the WP7 store is any indication it will be sparse and most apps will be of low quality. It's not a choice between vast and terrible and small and focused. iOS has plenty of great apps too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> These type of doom and gloom speculation articles are completely unnecessary. We're 5 months out and given that MS has stated that all WP8 apps will run on Win8, they're looking at ~100K apps in some form out of the gate.

<comment><USER10> They haven't even announced WP8 at all - at this point the only piece of official info on WP8 (or rather "the next major version of WP") is that it will run WP7.x apps. There have been no announcements of WP <-> W8 app compatibility.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> There's definitely a tipping point here. As a mobile developer with my own successful iPad apps I am watching this situation very closely. If it looks like WM8 will get traction then I will scramble to be one of the first 1000 or so developers to join Microsoft's ecosystem. However, if WM8 flops on tablets as badly as Android did (or: has so far) then I'll be glad I saved my energy.

<comment><USER12> It's a chicken-or-the-egg problem. Microsoft should be contacting developers like you and offering cold hard cash for writing apps for their ecosystem.

Sony did that for certain Vita developers. Vita is still a disappointment in sales, but at least the devs don't feel burnt.

<comment><USER13> They contacted me, tried very hard to convince me. Then when a higher up person started talking and just as I was about to do it he tells me my app is probably not a good fit because they want people to specifically build Metro- style UIs that showcase it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Android has 32,000 apps for tablets? That's very nice if true (plus all the phone apps). I don't have a tablet, but I haven't heard of many updates on this, and I thought the situation for tablet apps was a lot worse.

So then Windows 8 for tablets will come way behind both Android and the iPad when it launches, just like it happened with WP7. Things don't look so good for Microsoft right now.

</comment><comment><USER15> While bad news for Microsoft, it's hard not to think about how much exposure you as an app-developer would get in a store with only a hundred (or even a thousand) apps.

This may be incentive enough to have a lot of developers creating apps during the coming months (and ironically removing this incentive in the process).

</comment><comment><USER16> Just release the compiler for native code, and you would see a change.

<comment><USER17> this is windows 8 not windows phone 8 they're actually pushing native code rather heavily.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you manage your news reading time? - <AUTHOR>

I used to subscribe only to /. for tech news. Read an article and the always lengthy and worth-reading comments would already take a good amount of time. Then I discovered HN, and more.
I'm sure I'm not the only one that (try to) read tech news from all over the web. As of late I discovered more and more interesting tech news sites and now I have problem catching up with newspaper sites and can't focus on my projects as I keep checking and read more and more tech news!
Care to share how you manage to find balance on work, tech news and local news? <comment><USER2> One good way to stave off a news site addiction is to enthusiastically participate in comment threads. After being drawn into 2 or 3 good flameouts you'll curse the whole medium.

<comment><USER3> It's an important lesson not to feed the trolls. Some people have way too much free time on their hands. Anyone wanting to remain productive cannot fall into the flame war trap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I subscribe to 55 different feeds including Hacker News. I use Google Reader as it is the fastest, most portable option and it isn't blocked at my office. To be honest, I don't find balance. I just let it roll. I find that no matter how much time I spend on either work or "sharpening the saw" (to borrow a CH term), I will likely get the same amount of work done. Why? I really don't know, I just do.

Google Reader is nice because I can let it go and come back later and still see all the old items and skim through the headlines. If there's something I like but it is far too long, I'll star, share and email it to myself.

<comment><USER5> Google Reader has also helped me manage the amount of time spent reading news. I click on "All Items" and then start scrolling through. If there are longer items that seem interesting I star them so I can come back. Shorter items I skim and then move on.

I also try to assess the value of an item (not everything in your reader is worth reading - really!) as I'm going. I find that things generally fall into the following categories:

1) Interesting, short, and worth reading right now. 2) Interesting, long, and worth reading later. 3) Mildly interesting but doesn't help me improve as a programmer/engineer and thus not worth reading. 4) Not interesting and not worth reading. 5) Webcomic (dilbert/penny-arcade/xkcd)

The last category is self-regulating since they are only released periodically. They also take 30 seconds to parse, which seems like it's worth the enjoyment they bring.

It's also worth remembering that when you're bored at work, EVERYTHING in your reader is going to seem extremely interesting (but they're not paying you to read it).

<comment><USER6> I've found feeds become much more manageable on Google Reader if you get used to the keyboard shortcuts of j/k'ing forward and back through items. Assess each item based on its headline, and build up a rhythm of j-j-j, moving quickly past less interesting items. I've noticed myself reading far less inane articles since picking up the habit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I created a site that pulls news from my favorites (HN, TechMeme, /. etc.), uses some smart(ish) processing to figure out what might interest me the most, combines duplicate stories and puts it all in one place. It's sort of a meta aggregator, hence the name--Meta.li. It looks for things like how many times a story was voted for, commented on, viewed etc. on the source site and ranks links accordingly. The layout is a great example of cognitive overload, but it works for me.

<http://meta.li>

</comment><comment><USER8> I find it's best to enforce a time limit. I use LeechBlock (a Firefox add-on), in particular.

<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4476>

<comment><USER9> HN is leechblocked on my Firefox right now. So I'm using Safari.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I often skim the comments here before I read the post itself. It's a decent filter.

<comment><USER11> Thats part of his problem, and mine. Reading the comments sometimes takes longer than reading the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The abridged version:

I use Google Reader and delicious. I make liberal use of starring articles (rather than reading them inline) and then as a secondary filter I also will tag them as "Read tonight", "Read this week" and "Read someday" in delicious on the second pass.

I have had to let go of a lot of temporal "breaking" news since it's just so hard to keep up with it, but this process lets me still see the headlines and see what's going on, without getting sucked in

And discussion in the comments definitely take more time than reading the original article ;)

I have a full discussion of my process here:

[http://sidsavara.com/personal-productivity/how-to- effectivel...](http://sidsavara.com/personal-productivity/how-to-effectively- read-12853-articles-forum-topics-and-blog-posts-a-week)

</comment><comment><USER13> If you have certain areas that you're particularly interested in, make a customized feed. For example, I've used Yahoo Pipes to create a feed to filter out Delicious Popular items that contain words (topics) that do not interest me (e.g. Twitter, Illustrator, etc.). I simply load the customized feeds on Google Reader for efficient browsing.

If you come to Hacker News mainly to read through discussions, I've found subscribing to AskYC RSS feed helps (or to visit AskYC archives on searchyc.com), since they seem to contain the most interesting opinions & discussions to me. Other than that, make a commitment to check HN only twice a day (e.g. once in the morning and night) or something, since you won't miss out on top items that will be on the front page all day long.

</comment><comment><USER14> It's a big problem. My solution (which amazingly worked, after I unsuccessfully tried several) was to block reddit in the router. Why reddit? Because on HN I saturate reasonably easy. Not so many new posts, and it's harder to absorb the information. Why in the router? Because re-activating it would require a router restart, and some 5 minutes without net. It's not a "one-click" procedure.

Now don't get me wrong. I have nothing against reddit. I've had both interesting conversations there and enjoyed the time I spent on it. But it's way to easy to waste hours per day... so I'm ultimately better without.

</comment><comment><USER15> Since I'm about to start a non-tech job, I'm looking hard for ways to compress my ~30 min daily update (including politics, science, tech, blogs) into <10 min.

I'm thinking of setting up a system that gives me certain amount of "online cash" every week, and whenever I'm "over-budget" it donates the balance to Sean Hannity:

<http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/41/snuznluz.shtml>

</comment><comment><USER16> I used to refer the first page as the "to-read" links, but found more than few times that first-page-links can be misleading.

Now I skim thru the links, then check out the comments and decide if it is my- click-worthy.

But I usually find few 'unworthy' link-comments where many of us here pour our hearts out and thus making the link-baited article itself useful. I can't decide if that's good or bad :)

</comment><comment><USER17> I became very sensitive to my I/O rate. I feel I'm spending too much reading News and too little producing (code, writings, etc.)

As a trade off I've created a lifestream blog using Google Reader as backend for aggregation.

So when getting input I'm immediately producing output.

</comment><comment><USER18> I actually read HN way too much while at work (case in point). I just cant help it.

</comment><comment><USER19> I use HNs no procrastination feature, but still find myself refreshing the page too often as the 3hour self imposed limit draws closer. I am thinking of upping minaway: to 240, but raising maxvisit to 30...

</comment><comment><USER20> I usually skim the titles to see if there is anything interesting. If I find something interesting I read the first paragraph to see if its actually interesting or link bait

</comment><comment><USER21> I notice a lot of repetition across the sites I frequent. I'm asking myself, who are the best aggregators, of both story and comments. If they are a bit behind some of the other sites in timing (e.g. Slashdot), perhaps that is a good thing, as it lets the "truthiness" gel and the counterpoints to accumulate.

I'm not saying I've succeeded, but that's my current thinking.

Also, I'm using news browsing way too much as avoidance. Inasmuch, it's an emotional activity. Acknowledging this allows me to tackle it more directly. (Some recent... news stories, argh! -- discussed an apparent strong correlation between emotional intelligence and procrastination. They got me thinking...)

EDIT: I should say "negative correlation", as in, the higher the EI (however that's measured), the lower the incidence of procrastination. It may not be rigorous, but I've found it useful to consider.

<comment><USER22> I've banned slashdot, reddit and digg from my /etc/hosts file since I was spending too much time on those sites - and objectively they weren't offering me anything in return except a lot of intertube-noise (the readership of the latter two is particularly asinine).

Now I only read HN, and my productivity has gone up considerably since :)</comment></comment>


Prefix sums and their applications [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~guyb/papers/Ble93.pdf <comment><USER2> "For example, if ⊕ is addition, then the all-prefix-sums operation on the ordered set [3 1 7 0 4 1 6 3], would return [3 4 11 11 14 16 22 25]." ...and I am totally lost to the rest of the article, because some part of my brain is trying to figure out, "why 14?! shouldn't it be 15?!"</comment>


What Not To Build - <AUTHOR> http://halfanhour.blogspot.com/2009/01/what-not-to-build.html <comment><USER3> This is, literally, incoherent. The iPhone is a "fad", because:

 _most of the attention being paid to it has to do with applications and games, not telephony._

A few paragraphs later, under the list of "dead technologies", we have... "telephony".

Meanwhile, on his list of hot technologies is: alternative interfaces (where the guy actually cites the iPhone as an example!), portability, location- specific apps, intelligent recommenders, and sensor networks. All of which are being explored on the iPhone platform.

<comment><USER4> Maybe he means the general glut of wholly worthless iPhone apps that merely translate some web app or some gimmick onto the device. As an iPhone developer, I agree that _most_ of what is going on falls into the fad category. If that's what he is talking about, then he's right. Don't sink time into building such-and-such _for the iPhone_ when you could be exploring any of the other worthwhile areas he outlines in the list.

<comment><USER3> If that is what he means, he could have said so. It would have been a much more coherent argument. Which is to say: +1. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Roll the clock back 9 years and "Don't build a search engine" would have been on the list. Surprised it is not there now.

To me it seems it is the exceptions to the common knowledge that so often seem to exceed the rest. Off the cuff: Japanese cars are cheap (answer: Lexus), markets are efficient (answer: Buffett), VC's need home runs (answer: Y Combinator?).

I wonder how is each item on the OP's list might be mistaken and why?

<comment><USER6> It's not there because at this point, it's self-evident. There may be a path to profitability for niche engines, or engines which do something quite different from the big players, but it seems ever more unlikely that a new direct rival to Google/Microsoft/Yahoo will arise.

I mean, I get your point. But there's a difference between the pre-Google world and now: before Google, search sucked, and everyone knew it. Now, search is awesome. It's not really a pain point.

<comment><USER5> People were not aware of the potential for search before Google. They thought the market for search was over-supplied with options. Evidence is in some 10-year-old Red Herrings that mention: Alta Vista, Lycos, Web Crawler, DogPile, mySimon, etc., etc..

I was hard-pressed to make Google find anything 10-years-old+ from the web. And advanced search was no apparent help. Perhaps fodder for a rival?

Clayton Christiansen might say that out of the niche of a rival which undermines Google's business model rises the Google-killer, or at least -queller.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Many of these are good, but a couple are wrong. We've funded both a social network (<http://dailybooth.com>) and a travel site (still only soft launched) and they're both doing well so far.

<comment><USER8> He's not really saying it's _impossible_ to succeed at these things. Only that there are other ideas out there with far better conditions and chances.

<comment><USER9> I simply don't see the reasoning behind high competition = low chances. The whole idea of web startups is to be able to move fast around big, slow competition.

<comment><USER8> Then by all means, out-facebook Facebook. I'll be cheering for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think the article has good general advice but stuff you should really take with a grain of salt. As another commenter said, lots of counter-examples. When I was reading the "don't build edutainment" bit, I couldn't help but think of Brain Age.

<comment><USER3> The list is funny. I kept expecting it to keep going and turn into a parody.

Don't build edutainment.

Don't build an iPhone application.

Don't build a website.

Don't build an application that runs on any platform that is already popular.

Don't build anything that your customers can already understand.

Don't build anything that's like anything that people currently find useful.

Don't build anything that you expect to actually work.

Don't build anything that might turn on you and force you to stake it through the heart before it devours your spunky sidekick.

Don't build anything with a computer.

Don't build anything.

<comment><USER11> :D :D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> On the surface this list makes a lot of sense. Each category of things not to build comes with a couple of examples of giant competitors: Wikipedia, Wordpress, Expedia...

If I were to build a startup in one of these categories, these would be the examples I would think of in the bar-napkin stage. They are obvious. I don't think 280 North will see this post and think "jQuery! We forgot about jQuery!"

There is always room for something giant and disruptive. More commonly there is always room for something small and sustainable.

</comment><comment><USER13> I think that the big take-away from this shouldn't be: "don't build an application in X market" it should be "build a _niche_ application in X market".

There's no way that you can compete easily with Facebook. But maybe there is an opportunity to build a social network for people that specifically don't want to share their real identities. Maybe you can't compete with Word, but how about a word processor specifically designed for vision impaired users?

The internet is a _huge_ marketplace. If you choose a good niche and cater to it then you'll more than likely find a enthusiastic audience.

</comment><comment><USER14> Great suggestions and observations.

But I'll remind everyone, especially those considering a startup, that they're not rules. Most likely, this article will be horribly wrong on at least one point in five years. It could be wrong because of your idea.

</comment><comment><USER15> Just an FYI, the article is 11 months old

(which I think makes the article more interesting, as we can see the results of his predictions)

And while I'm here, he isn't saying the iphone wasn't/isn't important, just that it probably isn't the the most fertile field to spend time building a business on.

</comment><comment><USER16> I think these are generally somewhat true, but with a lot of glaring counter- examples. As the companies that control these spaces get larger, there will always be room for smaller, disruptive competition, especially in more domain- specific areas.

I'm reminded of an article from HN earlier this year wherein a Harvard Professor admitted telling Mark Zuckerberg he was chasing his tail trying to create a social network. (Anyone have this link?)

In 2004, a plain old social network probably wouldn't have worked, but a Social Network of Ivy League colleges might.

</comment><comment><USER17> Some good points, but I disagree with the what not to build section. If you have a great idea for one of these that is truly innovative, build it. Just because you'll have large competitors shouldn't stop you. Now if your idea isn't that ground breaking, that's a different story

<comment><USER18> Think of it more as playing the odds. Yes Facebook will be surpassed one day, but we don't know when.

Odds of succeeding to make the next facebook 1/5000 Odds of succeeding in building recommendation system for something that currently has no recommendation system 1/2.

Thinking about both of these problems for a few days you can come up with tons of interesting angles and technical problems. Every once in a while a major player will be replaced one someone else, but every day someone else will have a sustainable business in a less competitive area.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Don't start a photo site- Flickr

Don't start a search engine- Google

Don't start a "social network"- Twitter

Don't start a dating site- OkCupid

Don't start a word processor- Zoho

Don't start a blogging site- Posterous

Don't start a storage site- Dropbox

Don't start a project manager- Basecamp

<comment><USER20> For each company in this list there are another 50 failed attempts at cracking the same market. Several of which probably had the same or superior technical merits but the wrong business approach, had personality issues, or had plain bad luck.

There are likely other less sexy product ideas where the expected return on investment is much larger because the ideas aren't as obvious or the fields addressed aren't your in your typical hacker domain and haven't gotten the loving care of good software development.

<comment><USER21> "For each company in this list there are another 50 failed attempts at cracking the same market" .

I'm pretty sure you can say the same thing about almost all successful products in any market. Whenever I look at such a product, I'm sure that if I search hard enough I'll find the (at lease) 50 failed ones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've found that in technology, it's a bad idea to use negations. If you say things that should "not be done" or "will never happen" or "is not possible", at some point in the future, someone will quote you and laugh at you.

</comment><comment><USER23> So, basically ... everything is good enough and established enough. Don't try to improve or compete.

Yuck.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'll employ a well known Internet meme to describe this article: EPIC FAIL.

Are the current technologies really the answer to our computing problems? Are Linux, Windows and OSX the "final" operating systems, Microsoft Word the "final" Word Processor, Facebook the "final" social network?

No, seriously. I believe we can do better than this. In fact, I believe that the current crop of technologies are just a teaser of something better to come.

</comment><comment><USER25> To quote Paul Buchheit, all such 'advice' is just someone's limited life experience expressed as a set of over-generalizations. If it was really this simple, VCs would have success rates upwards of 90%.

All said, I can understand how someone who reads proposals for a living could come off sounding jaded. It's pretty easy to pass judgment, especially from the sidelines.

</comment><comment><USER26> Don't listen to lists telling you what you should or should not build.

Any one of the points he lists could have been acceptable if explained, but so many are dismissive and not fully reasoned.

For instance, it blows me away that people think cloud computing is a fad, when I know for a fact that computing power-on-tap has changed the way we and most of my startup friends do business.

</comment><comment><USER27> He will no doubt be proven right on some things and wrong on others.

In general though, if I had a big pot of money and had to decide on where to invest it, my decisions would likely fall along the same lines. Key here, as another commenter said, is not that success would be "impossible" but rather "improbable".

</comment><comment><USER28> He really went off the deep-end in the last paragraph. Transportation has been getting much cheaper adjusted for inflation, regardless of whether one looks at bicycles, cars, subway tickets, train tickets, plane flights or cargo shipping. Any blind assertion that all these things will get more expensive is difficult to take seriously. Ditto for his comments about living in "closer communities" and individuals growing their own grapefruit.

I suppose if the advance of technology ground to a halt, it could happen. What's far more likely, though, is that manufacturing and transportation will both continue to get cheaper, communities will be even less bound by geography and people who grow their own grapefruit won't be doing so for economic reasons.

</comment><comment><USER29> I must admit a lot of the points made me feel the exact opposite: if the general feeling is that "application X is done, finished", it seems to be a tremendous opportunity.

It means that people are already blinded to the true possibilities in that area. They can only see the status quo and not see beyond it. Anybody entering the field with some revolutionary way of doing things might be able to grab a huge market share. They would not have any competition, because it never occurred to anybody to even consider innovating in that area anymore.

</comment><comment><USER30> (note the Jan 4th post date)

2 things not to build seem contradictory: Don't build a platform-specific app Don't build a new standard While I can see limited usefulness of yet another markup standard xqrhtml43, generic apps, as opposed to platform-specific, have to look to standards to work upon. What should be read, however, is when building a new standard, extend existing standards to meet your needs, if at all possible, and make sure there is some sort of 'reference implementation' (ie, yours).

</comment><comment><USER31> I understand this analysis as a heuristic and not rules to follow by the letter.

Disruptive innovation can invalidate the analysis.

For instance, I suspect such type of analysis would have classified web search as a no go domain when Sergey Brin and Larry Page started working on the google web search algorithm. There were plenty search engines provided by the big players at the time.

The added value (or problem solving) criteria is a much better heuristic to determine where to go or not.

</comment><comment><USER32> The comment I left on his site:

I think this is a pretty one dimensional view on the world of innovation. You say "dont build an operating system", but you also say "do build cloud computing technologies" - but what if the operation system was designed specifically for cloud computing, or for decision support systems?

Why not build a better auction website? In your world would businesses still be doing manual payrole because 'we shouldn't innovate'?

</comment><comment><USER33> Seems rather silly to say not to build a java application. Surely what matters is what the application does. If your idea will fail purely because of being implemented in Java then I think it must have some other rather serious issues with it. I can only think here he means some specific unstated context, but it sounds rather naive and ignorant as written.

</comment><comment><USER34> I found this point quite interesting and thought provoking:

'From the point of view of the internet, 'you' are a concept - the one thing in the whole system that isn't actually a part of the system. How to leverage that will be the stuff of genius and innovation'.

I will welcome any ideas as to how it can be leveraged.

</comment><comment><USER35> Know your competition.

I think that's the shortest summary of a mixed-bag of an article. And knowing your competition is mostly a marketing challenge, especially where the competition is virtual, like the NULL competition of non-consumption/non-use (of your product/service).

</comment><comment><USER36> Don't build something you can't buy qualified traffic for and have a positive ROI.

</comment><comment><USER37> Do: build a better mousetrap.

It's the "better" and "mousetrap" that are the hard parts.

<comment><USER38> Actually the "build" isn't all that straight-forward either. A common observation is that ideas are easy, what really matters is execution.

(Running through my head is that mousetraps execute mice - not sure that's helpful or useful.)

<comment><USER39> The "a" part is also hard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I like the "sensor data processing" one. Measuring, grouping and manipulating traffic whether on the web or on the street will give search much more dynamics.

</comment><comment><USER11> imho not so great article, its still best to build all the things you use yourself. Third party scripts are a pain and take about the same time to check for errors, bugs and faults then writing some from scratch. I dont mean that you need to re-invent the wheel, but you can make a wheel that drives even better on your road..... instead of using a drupal to make your website....

</comment><comment><USER41> > There is a range of applications we might call Kantian applications - <USER2> > depend on time and place.

I quite enjoyed this.

</comment><comment><USER42> Hell of a lot of words to pretty much just recover, "Build something people need."

</comment><comment><USER43> Very insightful article about ideas that sound good but are actually a dead end.

</comment><comment><USER44> gist: Build around a problem that exists.

</comment><comment><USER45> He mentions E-Government... I have thought about this subject for great length. My ultimate conclusion, is while it may certainly be possible to make it happen today. The idea itself is most likely not what is best (at least in todays world) My first idea on the topic was to make an open source platform for a virtual currency. I imagine the currency could be distributed via interest free loans. Transparency would be important. The key would seem to be convincing people to accept the currency, as it would have no value of its own... The system could on its own evolve into an E-Government as regular government experiences troubles. For instance the US seems to be heading towards an inevitable fate due to our growing national debt. As an ideal, this seems like a good idea (though i believe an economy based on debt is a bad idea, but couldn't think of an alternate method) but most people are not informed, and easily tricked. My solution to this was a competency test before you are allowed a vote. Of course, the test can be manipulated to a groups interests (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_test>)

</comment><comment><USER46> half an hour a post really shows....

does hn count as a destination site? cus i come here an awful lot.... also to webcomics websites.... i don't use a rss reader, i just rely on firefox's url bar autocompleting when i type a letter.</comment>


33 dead after arson attack at Kyoto Animation studio, dozens injured - <AUTHOR> https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20190718/p2a/00m/0na/002000c <comment><USER2> My favourite Anime of All time, Full Metal Panic were produced by Kyoto Animation. If you are are into Robot / Tech Anime it is well worth a watch, I simply felt in love with Chidori Kaname, female protagonist of the series, partly because the male protagonist is a ( Real ) nerd, and it is what some of the nerds first girl friend would act in real world. Its Companion Series Full Metal Panic Fumoffu is also hilarious.

Kyoto is one of the best Animation Studio not only in Japan but in the world, I remember they have a "Making of" section in the DVDs and show how much details they put into each drawing, taking thousands of Photos in Hong Kong and redraw them in the Story. So those places aren't made up and for anyone living in Hong Kong it would have been instantly recognisable, even accurate to the sign of a poster and banner of shops. And it isn't just the quality of those drawing, there are Studio which could do decent Animation but completely lack the skill in Story telling, Character Build up and Tempo etc. Kyoto not only has it all, but they have also been doing it consistently for the past 20 years if not more.

Those 20+ must have been some of the best in the industry.

I pray and hope there will be no more casualties from this incident. And those that passed away, RIP.

I read the Japanese Animation are still very much labour intensive, and not a lot of computer graphics involved, I am not sure if that is still true. ( And if it is, why are there little to no innovation to improve its efficiency ) And Animation, Manga industry tends to have long working hours even by Japanese Standards.

<comment><USER3> It's still true. Japanese animators are paid by the pennies and work ridiculous hours. Since they're often paid on a per-frame basis rather than hourly pay, sometimes it adds up to less than minimum hourly wage. KyoAni was actually one of the few who were known to pay reasonably well, and they also had sort of dormitories slash training facilities for their animators. As for computers, generally speaking the frames are still drawn on paper and scanned, and then colored digitally.

<comment><USER4> Why though?!

It frustrates me that the industry have to rely on fans / foreign distributors / bootleg to get an audience out of Japan. Leaves so much money on the table.

I would be more than happy to pay Eiichiro Oda and his team for an english .pdf of the latest One Piece delivered to my inbox the second it comes out.

<comment><USER5> > Why though?!

There's not a ton of money in the Anime industry. Especially over-seas, since translation is a very labor intensive and largely manual process.

There's also not a guaranteed audience for an anime. They have to rely on fans of the existing works (typically light novels) to view the (often drastically different) animes. I've seen a few of my favorite series get dropped due to being too niche.

<comment><USER6> > Especially over-seas, since translation is a very labor intensive and > largely manual process.

Subbed translations at least previously were not usually very labor intensive if you didn't try to do heavy localization or typesetting everything (I remember someone translating every single book name in some bookcase). Fansubs managed to do pretty good job with just about 1MD worth of effort per episode (~20x length of the episode, extremely small amount compared to work required to actually produce the original episode). Old fansubs did need quite a bit more, but improved processes, tools & computers (just encoding & uploading used to pretty slow step) also improved the overall speed. No clue what how much CR & co need these days.

Of course, dubbing is very different case, but that's usually only done for DVD/Blu-ray releases. No clue if it's really worth to do it though, but my viewpoint is probably too biased.

<comment><USER5> That's a fair point on the subtitling. I do know that translations for Japanese dialog can differ in difficulty - there are some more esoteric writing/speaking dialects which can take a significant amount of effort to turn into English dialog (for example, "The Irregular in Magic High School" novels have very poor official translations, largely due to how it was written in Japanese).

As for dubbing, there are instances where animes are "simultaneous dubbed" for international release. A recent example is Shield Hero.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Apparently the motivation for the attack was that "KyoAni has stolen something from the attacker", unconfirmed reports that the something in question was a Light Novel the attacker wrote but got rejected by KyoAni, which apparently then got turned into an original work by the studio (possibly stealing here and there from the LN or anyhow drawing inspiration from it) without crediting the attacker or compensating him. I can see this happening in all honesty, I am sure that editors get to read a lot of stuff from applicants which can then be polished to produce something in-house, kind of like when bigger companies fish for start-ups tech to reimplement it in-house.

Anyhow, the article doesn't mention it but I just though I would write this down in case anyone was curious about the potential motivation.

<comment><USER8> Intellectual property issues once again. People think they own ideas and glorify themselves as originators. In reality once an idea is communicated it is free. All people can really do is add value to an idea by promoting it, framing it, demonstrating it, aiding in its application, and so on. Yet here intellectual property has scaled beyond mere value into critical relevance and even a person's identity itself. An individual went way out of bounds here, but some unworkable ideas about intellectual property helped to define the path. Modern cultures really need to come to terms with the nature of intellectual property in the Internet era. It's not just about protecting a mouse anymore.

<comment><USER9> Hollywood deals with this by giving the originators of ideas story credit. There are fairly detailed rules about how much of the final product needs to derive from their contributions to the final product for the credit to apply.

<comment><USER10> Disney stole the entirety of The Lion King scene for scene from a Japanese anime while claiming it to be a 100% completely original Disney made story.

<comment><USER9> Both the Lion King and Kimba are based on Hamlet...

And the story of the Lion King has almost nothing in common with Kimba. Have you actually read the manga or watched the anime? The anime is about the cub growing up, which the movie entirely skips over. Kimbas life before the anime is completely different.

While minor scene elements and secondary characters were inspired by the anime they don't rise to the level of requiring credit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is really sad. KyoAni (Kyoto Animation) is, as said in other thread, one of the current best animation studios in the world. I grow up watching their animes and thinking how they're amazing compared to the majority of japanese studios.

Some animes bought by them:

\- Full Metal Panic (many laughs, amazing characters and great animation)

\- Air (this is the first time that I did cry in a series of any kind)

\- Kanon (really good adaptation of this great Visual Novel)

\- Clannad (a really emotional series for me, even if the Visual Novel is better the anime still does a great service for this series)

\- Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu (this is the anime that made me fan of them, a unique approach of slice of life and overpowered beings that was great in its time)

\- Lucky Star (funny otakus done right)

\- K-On! (a good anime showing cute girls doing cute things)

\- Hyouka ("Sherlock Holmes goes to a japanese high school")

\- Nichijou (funny nonsense done right)

\- Sound Euphonium (I still remember that amazing scene at episode 11)

\- Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid (a great surprise, this seems like a goof series on its premise however it is so heartwarming)

\- Violet Evergarden (this is available in Netflix and I recommend simply because the animation is amazing and the story is really emotional)

I don't really care about the reasons of the suspect, there are better ways to claim copyright infringement, and even if it didn't, there is no reason to take human lives.

</comment><comment><USER12> Very depressing to see news like this from a place like Japan that's generally well regarded for its safety and peacefulness, especially against a target like an animation studio, that has only ever provided joy to people.

They did not even produce anything controversial as far as I can tell.

The glaring issue here seems to be the death threats they received prior to this attack. That should have been taken more seriously by the authorities, anywhere.

<comment><USER13> > well regarded for its safety and peacefulness

Here, dig deeper:

[http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201904170050.html](http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201904170050.html)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/29/world/asia/japan- rape.htm...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/29/world/asia/japan-rape.html)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20190421032136/http://japaneseru...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190421032136/http://japaneseruleof7.com/poverty- in-japan/)

<comment><USER12> • Saying something is generally better != claiming that it's perfect, with zero flaws.

• Something can have problems and still generally be better than others.

• Pointing a flaw in something does not make it "as bad" as everything else.

A single tree in a desert does not make it a rainforest, nor a few dead trees in a forest make it a desert.

See cities in the US with varying rates of crime or corruption and people's desires to move to them.

<comment><USER13> > generally better

Compared to: \- Switzerland? \- Detroit, US? \- Spain?

You feel attacked and I don't understand, why.

<comment><USER12> > _Compared to: - Switzerland?_

[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/switzerland-...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/switzerland- rape-sexual-violence-consent-amnesty-women-a8923496.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The number of casualties is horrific and hard to understand.

I'm not a huge fan of anime but I understand that this is a major studio with a long history. So I'm sure that this will have a major impact on the entire industry.

<comment><USER15> The BBC article mentions many died on the stairs to the roof. Sounds like a locked door could have been involved

<comment><USER16> Japanese buildings also are massively lacking in emergency exits. Almost no building would pass US safety codes or even come close to it.

<comment><USER17> Where did you come up with this? Japan has incredibly strict safety regulations and building codes.

<comment><USER16> The place I work at is about the same size as this office and only has one exit (and that's the main door). Many of the facilities I visit for work are similarly lacking.

Maybe the US really goes over the top, but there are plenty of places where I'd feel pretty screwed if some sort of disaster occurred.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Some producers and designers are under the people reported missing, notably the producers of Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid , Free! and Violet Evergarden (afaict from people translating in a discord chat)

<comment><USER19> It's a tragedy one way or another, but somehow that makes me feel even worse. Kobayashi-san chi no meidoragon is one of the most heartwarming series I have ever had the pleasure of watching.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> KyoAni is responsible for my favorite anime; K-On, as well as Hibike! Euphonium, another anime that moved me. I hope for the best for the families of the dead people, and I hope that the wounded people recover as soon as possible. An attack on KyoAni is an attack on passionate artists following their dreams.

</comment><comment><USER21> A Pony bottle could fit under any worktable or coin and would provide pure air for five minutes or so, probably enough to avoid the toxic fumes in the stairs trap, or to alleviate the poisoning at least, and maybe to save two or three lifes if shared. Most people can stop breathing for another minute if avoid the need to cough (the dive mask regulator atached to the bottle will help)

Price around $170, oxygen portable cans are smaller and cheaper, around $50.

With people so disciplined and educated as japanese, a shared standard scuba dive bottle could had saved most of this people until reaching a safe vented place. The dismayed people could had been dragged outside also by the other.

The problem is that a scuba bottle could explode after catching fire unatended, but in a vicious fire the building will be damaged in any case and people goes first.

</comment><comment><USER22> Arson, not an accidental explosion,

> A plastic container and a knife were found left at the scene. The 41-year- > old suspect told prefectural police that he set fire to the building. Police > are treating the case as arson.

<comment><USER23> Details from other outlets are much more lurid:

 _A man shouted "Die!" as he sprayed a flammable liquid all over an animation studio in Japan on Thursday and set the building on fire, killing up to 26 people, authorities said._

 _"We have received protests against our company, not a few of them if not on a daily basis. There were murder emails including those which said 'die,'" he told broadcaster NHK._

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/suspected-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/suspected- arson-attack-on-japanese-animation-studio-leaves-at-least-dozen- dead/2019/07/18/4f3112b6-a91d-11e9-8733-48c87235f396_story.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Three people in here immediately blamed this on mental illness/mental health. That feels like such a strange reaction and oversimplification to this.

If what I read is true: The work of the person who did this did get his work stolen and maybe as a consequence missed out on a lot of money. Then doing something like this might be quite an overreaction, but is at least in the realm of understandable, no? Revenge is in human nature.

<comment><USER25> >might be quite an overreaction, but is at least in the realm of understandable, no?

You think it is "understandable" to burn down a building because someone stole your work? If someone did that I would call them "crazy". I definitely see "mental stability" or "mental health" being a root cause here. Rational, healthy people do not respond in that way. Call it "temporary insanity" if you want.

<comment><USER24> Understanding the reasons for a crime does not excuse said crime, or say that you're ok with it.

If someone robs a bank, I can understand the motivation: He wants money. If someone punches another, he might want to feel powerful. If someone rapes a woman he wants sex.

And if someones believes that this company stole his money, I can understand his motivations to seek revenge. That does not mean it is right, just or something to look up to. But saying this is completely crazy is a bit naive IMO.

<comment><USER26> Some of your reasonings seem a bit simplified. If someone robs a bank, they might want money. Is it because they are trying to feed a starving family? Is their life being threatened due to gambling debts? Or do they just value the safety of others less than they would the money?

And that is the only arguably victimless crime in your list of 3. A crime can be committed by a rational person (if I don't do this, my child dies), and it can be committed by someone who is not mentally well. I would argue that these, especially the last crime, are all crimes likely to be committed by someone who is not in a stable or healthy state of mind.

<comment><USER24> My reasoning was _grossly_ oversimplified - I talked about three major crimes in one sentence.

Would you say that every crime is either a "rational" crime (if I don't do this, my child dies) or done by someone crazy? If so, I understand the heavy resistance of you and others here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The article says "At least 36 people were injured, 10 of them seriously." but doesn't mention deaths anywhere. I really hope the title is wrong and this is just some kind of horrible mistake. That's so many good people to have died for one selfish asshole. Can anyone confirm/deny ?

</comment><comment><USER28> Maybe it's denial stage but something doesn't add up about 25/"33" dead[1]. Is it possible that there's something being lost in translation? EFL People often mistake casualty to mean a death/mortality when it's also used as (deaths+injuries). I could see that easily being mistranslated by an ESL person as deaths.

[1]Seems to be corroborated by: [https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/07/18/national/dozens...](https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/07/18/national/dozens- injured-fire-kyoto-anime-studio-man-questioned-police/)

GoFundMe page for charity: [https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-kyoani- heal](https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-kyoani-heal)

<comment> yoru-sulfur From what I've read, at least the "25" figure came directly from a police statement

[https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20190718/k10011997921000.ht...](https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20190718/k10011997921000.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> At all the places I've worked at, a stranger would not have made it far past the front entrance without being stopped by security, or even been able to enter the building at all (access cards, etc.) Maybe it's a cultural difference, or does the tech industry just have a much higher concern for securing offices?

<comment><USER30> I'm curious where you live? I live in Minneapolis and basically all the places I've worked, as well as visiting friends working a stranger could walk directly into the building. Especially multi-business centers. At one of the places they might have been asked if they needed help, but they wouldn't be stopped, the receptionist would have just assumed they knew where they were going.

I mean certainly __major __business like BestBuy Corporate and Target Corporate have security, but most small to medium don't.

<comment><USER31> Really? I've worked and seen a few places in Minneapolis and they all had pretty decent security.

Granted, only the 'office' areas were secured--every building, which was shared by multiple offices--had a common area which was not secured at all.

<comment><USER32> Minneapolis has a fair amount of those group office buildings that provide security as part of rent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> how can 33 people out of 70 for in 3fl building? why not jump out of window, even top floor must be survivable. hard to understand unless they were attacked directly with knife or he made some kind of flamethrower

</comment><comment><USER34> For those who are able to and want to help, there's a GoFundMe campaign right now to help the studio recover [0]. There isn't much of an explanation of what the money will go towards, but it's better than doing nothing IMO.

I'm not a huge consumer of anime/manga, but some of my favorites (namely, Nichijou and Full Metal Panic) have come from this studio. I'm also aware that the industry as a whole is considered to be in a bad state right now, with this event certainly not helping things.

My condolences to those effected by this. I do hope, though, that this serves as a springboard for better things to come for the industry.

[0] - [https://www.gofundme.com/help-kyoani- heal](https://www.gofundme.com/help-kyoani-heal)

<comment><USER35> Do we know if the (apparently Texan) organizer of that fundraiser is affiliated with the victims in any way, or is credible, or might that be a scam?

<comment><USER36> Sentai Filmworks is a reseller of KyoAni works (amongst others) in the west. They linked to this campaign from their official Twitter account: [https://mobile.twitter.com/SentaiFilmworks/status/1151726531...](https://mobile.twitter.com/SentaiFilmworks/status/1151726531896643584)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> This wasn't arson, it was an attack. Some news reports the fuel was used on people. Sounds so far like mental illness, so perhaps 'attack'

Seems probably 30 dead.

<comment><USER12> Is "arson" generally not considered a targeted attack?

<comment><USER38> I can imagine not, that is, if you set fire to a car it's arson, if you set fire to a car with someone in it it's attempted murder.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I wish Japan and most of East Asia did more to recognize and tackle mental health. And overwork. And a lot of things.

<comment><USER40> Major US cities are overrun by drug addicts suffering from severe mental illnesses, with literally thousands dying from overdoses every year.

<comment><USER41> This is pure whataboutism. The parent comment said nothing about the US to even imply there isn't also a problem there.

<comment><USER42> On the contrary, the GP is a (light) instance of the chinese robber fallacy. [https://rationalconspiracy.com/2015/03/08/the-chinese- robber...](https://rationalconspiracy.com/2015/03/08/the-chinese-robber- fallacy/) They're using "a generic problem to attack a specific person or group, even though other groups have the problem just as much (or even more so)" and should be called out on it.

<comment><USER43> Super light

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> This is why businesses need strict security. You never know what kind of nutjob is going to just try and waltz right in. I assume Japan's culture around workplace security is a little different, since they're statistically safer than most countries, but I wouldnt leave anything to chance.

<comment><USER45> I presume that you avoid all cars and locations in the vicinity of cars due to their much higher risk of causing you injury than a crazy at your office in Japan. After all, you don't want to leave anything to chance do you?

<comment><USER44> What's the point of responding with idiotic rhetoric that only presents two extremes of virtually no security or hermit lifestyle. This guy reportedly had enough time to lock up their fire exits and then toss gasoline around. AND was waiting to toss gasoline on people trying to flee out the main exit where he was waiting for them. A couple of security guards on duty and a camera system could have prevented the murder of over 30 people. I can buy a set of 5 cameras and a pc to operate a camera network for under $1000, surely an reputable business can afford a few guards and a security system a little more sophisticated than consumer cameras so some psycho doesnt go around blocking all of the safe exits to your building and still have time to prepare his attack, and then stick around with gas to attack fleeing victims. So spare me the braindead, false dichotomy because you felt like being a smartass. When someone tells you to always check your stove twice before you go out do you respond "HURR JUST STAY HOME AND WATCH YER STOVE ALL DAY"? Moron.</comment></comment></comment>


Things I learned creating my own Messenger chatbot - <AUTHOR> https://kilianvalkhof.com/2017/chatbots/6-things-i-learned-creating-my-own-messenger-chatbot/ <comment><USER2> In general, people interested in bots should not put too much emphasis on the chat part of chatbots. Most of the value will come from the frictionless, social experience. Nothing to download, no app switching, and your friend are already there.

Media is hyping the AI part because it is catchy, but using mostly/only quick replies and buttons gives a much better UX IMHO. So, fully agree with #4.

There are only a handful of cases where text actually reduces friction instead of increasing it. Entering a date, for example : "in 1h", "tomorrow morning" or "next friday" is really faster than other input types.

For most other cases, Messenger bots just got access to webviews. Really under-utilized so far, I think.

<comment><USER3> I agree, the chat aspect is probably the less valuable of a chatbot. It's much more efficient using quick replies and buttons

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A hint for #1: don't assume a "like" is a like.

The default emoji in a conversation can be changed by either side, on demand. So don't be surprised if suddenly you start getting a scared cat, or a tomato, instead of a 369239263222822. Why would people change the default emoji when talking to a bot? _Why not?_

Hint #2: default emojis can be sent in several sizes, depending on how long the user holds the "send emoji" button. From what I can tell, 369239263222822 is a _small_ like. There are at least two other sizes. This is not some obscure feature, people use it all the time, so be prepared.

\--

In general, it's worth to pay attention to details of the platform one's developing for ;).

<comment><USER5> How many discrete sizes can the thumb be, exactly? I tried doing a bit of research to no avail.

<comment><USER6> Three.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I particularly liked this point: "Add a natural delay between messages to keep your chatbot from feeling mechanical" . While I know in the back of my mind that I am not chatting to a real human being, I would feel surprised and less engaged if I received instantaneous answers from the bot.

Having a delay therefore sounds like the right thing to do: you can also trigger the (...) in Messenger as your bot is preparing the answer.

I see chatbots being used from gaming to financial advising, not I am pessimistic on the AI side of it or the bot being able to chat to you as if it were a real human being. My gut feeling is that chatbots will become extremely specialised and may excel in a given domain.

<comment><USER8> I liked that point too, but when I went to use the text adventure bot, I found the delay immediately frustrating. It feels like I spend more time waiting for messages than reading or making decisions.

This is a cool concept though!

<comment><USER9> I too worked on a Messenger-based text game, and found that when you're sending sequential messages, the trick (though unnatural) is to add delays not based on the current message being "typed" by the code, but based on the previous message.

For example, if your previous message contains 100 words, and the current message to be sent contains only 10 words, you still want a long delay -- you're catering it to the user reading the long message. Similarly, if your previous message was short and the next one is long, the delay doesn't have to be long because otherwise you're just making the user wait for no reason.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's super smart! Making the delay dependant on the _reading speed_ instead of on the _writing speed_ makes much more sense. Definitely adding this into my own bot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Oh wow, this is interesting timing. I'm actually writing a fantasy game for Slack using their bot interface, and a lot of the lessons described here are things I picked up as well while showing to friends.

Slack offered buttons shortly after I started work, so I switched from trying to interpret text to offering clear buttons instead, and yeah it makes a huge difference. I know I was into MUDs a whole lot in my youth, but folks today expect a more intuitive interface.

It's nice to see I'm not the only one interested in bringing a little levity to the world of chat bots!

</comment><comment><USER11> I don't get the draw. None of the chat bots I've used seem that much more useful than an AIM or IRC bot of yesteryear. I'd rather click a button for an action than have to type something out. Seems like a gimmick to me.

<comment><USER8> You can just press buttons! [https://rt- ss.s3.amazonaws.com/e43ae185f39b3e.png](https://rt- ss.s3.amazonaws.com/e43ae185f39b3e.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is awesome!

One improvement: it's standard practice in text adventures to have a uniform set of commands and shortcuts. For example, 'i' is a common shortcut for 'inventory' but your bot doesn't know what I mean. Similarly, 'x' is short for 'eXamine', and 'n', 'w', 's', 'e' are the compass directions.

</comment><comment><USER13> A lot of the same points apply with Telegram bots, though I suspect the Telegram user ecosystem is a lot less ... refined ... than the average FB Messenger ecosystem.

<comment><USER2> You'd be surprised. Telegram and Kik are pioneers in the Bot API ecosystem, and some of their features are quite advanced. True, the Messenger features set is catching up, and it seems that they go deliberately slow to see what works and exchange a lot with developers, which is good

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> >1\. People send a like/sticker as a conversation starter

I do that! When you open a conversation with a bot sometimes you don't know what the bot expects you to do to start a conversation, so instead of writing gibberish and expect a help text, I tap "like" because it's only one tap.</comment>


Ask HN: If you had the time, what software would you build? - <AUTHOR> Just curious to know what most HNers have on their minds. <comment><USER3> A 'realistic' simulation of an ecosystem. Three years ago researchers managed to simulate an entire bacterium with every known gene and molecule, I'd like to scale that up. (Though one could not keep same level of molecular resolution when dealing with an ecosystem - too resource intensive.) Something to keep in mind for when I write my PhD thesis...

</comment><comment><USER4> Where do I even start...

\- graphical interface for neovim that looks exactly like sublimetext; ssh channel for working with remote neovim in local ui

\- full range scanner / automatic database signal matcher for sdr

\- browser+server framework for board games that can abstract the display and rules to the point where you can implement things from chess to warhammer

\- sane backend for the chef server

\- nicer interface / simplification for kvmtool so I could use it like unshare

\- python static type analyser

\- rc plane autopilot

\- python modules security checker like sensiolab security:check for php

\- some way of automatically namespacing apps started from home folder - <USER2> example any steam games

\- everything that hurd needs to be as useable as linux at the moment

\- a modern version of bullfrog's syndicate

\- localised short-term weather forecast server using community supplied weather data (mini-wunderground-at-home)

<comment><USER5> > browser+server framework for board games that can abstract the display and > rules to the point where you can implement things from chess to warhammer

I've been wanting to do something like this for tabletop card games.

* Provide an open standard to define the design and optionally, logic related data for cards. I'll come back to this

* Provide an API for people to manage decks, draws, discards etc.

* Provide another API to manage distribution of cards amongst players via achievements or payments (collecting card decks basically)

The idea behind this would be to allow people to build card games that are either played online or offline (by allowing people to download card decks). Grand scheme of things would include a "github for card games" kind of system. Big dreams, shit execution on my part :D

<comment><USER4> Actually I read in the news before that gwent (card game from witcher 3) has been implemented as a mod in tabletop simulator. I wanted to respond to you with the link ([http://store.steampowered.com/app/286160](http://store.steampowered.com/app/286160)) - and I discovered it actually supports any board game!

<comment><USER5> That's really amazing. I never cease to stumble upon or be shown something awesome each day. This is far more elaborate than anything I would have ever imagined but wow. What a brilliant playground for makers and players. Should introduce this to our local geek club. Pretty sure they'd enjoy this thoroughly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A system that would tie software comments to 'blocks' of code. This way you would be able to automatically detect the problem where comments/in-software documentation becomes out of sync with the code it describes and correct it.

<comment><USER7> Even better a system that would not let you check in code if the comments were not updated. Something simple like a section in the comment with a common tag, a checksum on the code, a check sum on the comment, and a human readable number that said how many lines the comment applied to. Something like:

//[common tag]-[code checksum]-[comment checksum]-25

This could be updated automatically and be backward compatible with current system. You would just need some sort of hook in git/etc to calculate and update the check sums and issue warning/errors if code checksum changed, but the comment checksum didn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Distributed artificial general intelligence app, probably something like using deep learning with a virtually embodied agent.

A digital circuit IP or maybe separate USB dongle that does path tracing in hardware, maybe based on procedural generation from a built-in Forth.

Various business and government ideas built on Ethereum, promoted with the intention of displacing existing more centralized institutions with decentralized ones.

A backyard exchange website where people can rent out or share their backyards for tiny house 'parking' and/or high-tech gardening like aeroponics or aquaponics, or whatever they want besides being a big waste of space collecting dog crap.

A unification of computer science, programming, and math. Or, a metalanguage and representation tying together classical programming and mathematical notation with interactive and/or visual programming, with the common part reused in all types of informations systems.

A new operating system for virtual reality.

</comment><comment><USER9> If I had the time and money I would build a running cat-like robot. I've always loved mechatronics, have a background in mechanical engineering, and just recently started programming so I'm dying to give it a shot. I know it's probably harder than it seems on the surface, but I have hope.

<comment><USER5> Heh. I always wanted to build a little robot that would sweep the house by itself :D.

<comment><USER9> If you can find a Roomba that someone is getting rid of, that should make it into a doable 3hr project or so by cannibalizing the brains and just modifying the body. But depending on if you enjoy building the brains or the body more then that may be a kill-joy and defeat the purpose.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've been thinking about this for a while [http://thenewstack.io/why-art- could-become-currency-in-a-cry...](http://thenewstack.io/why-art-could-become- currency-in-a-cryptocurrency-world/)

</comment><comment><USER11> A digital controller for my smoker that would control the temperature and smoke output so that I could start cooking before bed and be done by the time I woke up. Ideally it would keep a log of internal meat temperature and internal smoker temp through time. I know you can buy commercial products that do most/all of this, but I think it'd be a fun side project.

An isomorphic CMS built in react. This one I'll probably get to and leave as a proof of concept. I'm personally fine with over-engineering things for my amusement, but wouldn't want to subject clients to my woes. But, who knows — could end up working better than expected.

</comment><comment><USER12> If I had the time (and let's be honest know how) I would patch Django to be able to do server push notifications out of the box.

</comment><comment><USER5> A stylistic detector for writing. Basically software that can answer the question of "was person X entirely responsible for a particular piece of writing". To be applied in forensics, plagiarism detection, and as an intelligent assistant to writers to ensure they maintain a consistent tone in their writings.

<comment><USER6> See I wanted to make the opposite of this, software that would obfuscate your writing style so that forensic analysis like that wouldn't work. It would be able to analyze a corpus and give you suggestions on how to sound more like say Leibniz or Hemmingway.

<comment><USER5> that's actually a really impressive idea (irony on username intended). Would be interesting to run an idea like that on the entire Harry Potter text and see what it would be like to change the tone to George R R Martin's writing style.

Interestingly enough, you'd have to first build something that can identify style right? So it would at least have to sit on top of a stylistic identifier? Or is there a better way around this?

Side note. I built a prototype of the stylistic identifier as a final year project. Never had time to pursue it afterwards.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A good open mail client with imap offline capabilities (right now mutt-kz (mutt with integrated notmuch) + mbsync).

Other than that a bunch more features for postgres.

</comment><comment><USER14> A really nice and powerful command line shell in Java with all the Linux goodies specially for Windows.

<comment><USER15> It would be really nice. The closest we have, so far I know, is Cygwin (I don't what it's like now, I used it a long time ago)

<comment><USER16> Cygwin is pretty good. I am not sure how you can do much better it has a big range of command line programs you can run, vim, git etc. The next step beyond cygwin is to install a linux vm, then to dual boot, then to single boot and chuck out Windows :-). Can't bring myself to do that though as a C#-ie.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> A natural-language search engine that turns sentences into facts, and can then answer questions.

</comment><comment><USER18> A reference client for the Bitcoin Protocol written in a functional language or a LISP.</comment>


Obesity And The Toxic-Sugar Wars : 13.7: Cosmos And Culture - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2013/08/23/214440426/obesity-and-the-toxic-sugar-wars?utm_source=NPR&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=20130823 <comment><USER2> Recently read an article suggesting sugar should be regulated and treated as a drug- as it also has addictive properties. I feel sugar is almost more dangerous in that it can take several names and identities (i.e. fructose, splenda). The food industry then tactfully targets cheap, convenient, and often children's food products. The carton's of milk handed out in school cafeteria's are said to have the same amount of sugar as a can of soda- and that's just breakfast.</comment>


Show HN: The first incremental game on the blockchain - <AUTHOR> http://blinc.click <comment><USER2> Not really a game I think. There are no game like features. It seems it is nothing bug a sink for ether at this point. As an avid fan of incremental games I was interested but there is nothing there.</comment>


Ask HN: Will HTTP/2 omit the 's' completely? - <AUTHOR>

Shouldn't all browsers today insist on always trying to establish a TLS 1.2 connection regardless of what the user typed?
This imposes a performance penalty of some kind on the browser. But you can use a bloom filter to know if you should try / not try. Is that too much to ask before communicating in clear-text?
Where is the open #issue - 'communicates in plain text'? <comment><USER2> I doubt it. For some websites it probably does not make sense to bear the overhead of TLS.</comment>


Ask HN: What Is The Best Free IDE? - <AUTHOR>

What is the best free IDE out there? Preferably ones that have multi-platform (especially Ubuntu) support, as well as multi-language support. <comment><USER2> Check out Eclipse, its a great cross-platform IDE, some people don't like its speed as it is in Java, but it gets the job done.

Though YMMV depending on what you code in. Some IDEs are better suited for certain languages than others.

Best to start with a comparison page (link below) then google/ask questions once you get a list of what looks good.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_integrated_develo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_integrated_development_environments)

</comment><comment><USER3> We'd do better if you told us which languages you plan to work on. For instance, IntelliJ Idea, community edition, is a pretty strong contender, but it's at its best in JVM languages.

</comment><comment><USER4> Personally I'd only bother with an IDE for Java, Objective-C or C# - then I'd choose IntelliJ, Xcode and Visual Studio respectively.

I'd stick to a text editor otherwise.

<comment><USER5> Same here. And for the editor, I stick to Sublime Text.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The combo of emacs, slime, ac-slime, paredit, redshank.

<comment><USER7> While I agree that emacs is great, the OP hasn't specified that he or she wanted to code in Lisp.

Thank you for mentioning redshank otherwise, it looks quite powerful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> my current favorite free IDE is lighttable.

</comment><comment><USER9> Emacs

<comment><USER10> Vim

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> v I m</comment>


FCC begins opening up cellular spectrum - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/09/fcc-to-make-spectrum-sharing-reality-whether-carriers-want-it-or-not/

<comment><USER2> A good step in the right direction, but I'd love to see the FCC be more aggressive about spectrum sharing. More cellular spectrum is great, but we need more for WiFi/Bluetooth, etc, as well. The technology isn't perfect yet, but it's quite amazing what it can do already. A lot of the remaining roadblocks are low-value existing users that have usage patterns that made it hard for cognitive radios to share spectrum with them. E.g. the wireless mike fiasco that mucked up Microsoft's whitespace trials.</comment>


First controlled study shows benefits of hydroxychloroquine vs. coronavirus - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/03/31/comparing-chloroquine-trials <comment><USER2> _You could argue that overall we're seeing either no benefit or some benefit here, which is good_

As expected, no blockbuster. There are concerns about patient recruitment and endpoints as well. We'll have to wait for antivirals.

<comment><USER3> They didn't try it along with Azithromycin. With this included, the most promising results were observed in the prior studies.</comment></comment>