Minimal Viable Programs (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://joearms.github.io/2014/06/25/minimal-viable-program.html <comment><USER2> Products should be made of programs. Programs should be able to be simple enough to be "complete" while how they get built, replaced, planned, and orchestrated however, is free to be as fluid as the problem to be solved.

Many systems tried to be this, but people too frequently side-step these solutions for decomposition because they aren't complete enough. Unix wasn't enough, now we have Docker, etc.

OOP tries to achieve this from a different level on the inside of complex systems, but still falls short. (e.g. you have to do IPC or have a message- passing VM where objects~=processes to be able to do live code replacement and allow multiple independently-developed implementations of the same concept to run simultaneously and collect behavior on which does a better job, so this type of thing is not common.)

It'd be nice if the progress towards building smaller systems that avoid complexity begins to outpace the progress toward building larger systems which defend against complexity within my lifetime, but I can't say I'm hopeful.

<comment><USER3> _Unix wasn 't enough, now we have Docker, etc._

We have Docker et al. because people kept pursuing ever-more-complex and ever- more-intertwined dependencies and silliness.

The people failed Unix (and its successor, Plan 9), and not the other way around.

<comment><USER2> It's mutual. Unix didn't solve problems for developers of large systems that stand on the shoulders of open source software libraries by failing to provide dependency resolution or versioning + namespacing source/built files. (An obvious [non-]decision given the timeline of its inception and intended usage, but a failure nonetheless.)

So then we got some of the former with system package managers designed for system administrators and some of the latter with version control/build systems/dependency tools designed by and for software developers, but they don't meet in the middle.

Docker is mostly used to just bridge the gap and force the system package manager to be a per-app-namespaced dependency/build support tool.

<comment> loup-vaillant > _Unix didn 't solve problems for developers of large systems_

That's a big problem right there. Why are systems large in the first place? [http://vpri.org/](http://vpri.org/) already showed we can do smaller —likely by 2 to 4 orders of magnitude. Solving the problems of large systems will only mitigate the symptoms. The root cause is size. We should solve that instead.

Why solve problems you can bypass?

<comment><USER2> Sometimes problems really are just large. Sometimes you need results faster than a single microcomputer's CPU(s) can produce them and UNIX was invented too early to come with solutions for doing that in ways that prevent complexity. HPC is paying the price.

We're fixing it (efforts like Kubernetes, Hadoop, Mesos), but it's tough and we have a long way to go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In reading comments of software authors in mailing lists and forums over the years, I sometimes noticed a particular vitriol for writing what are called "trivial" programs. By the same token, I sometimes noticed a strange attraction to large programs that only the author(s) could ever hope to understand. Not sure if I am the only one to notice this. I recall one author proudly telling a forum of programmers that his creation was so complex it would hurt the eyes of anyone who attempted to read the code.

I place the highest value on small programs and the lowest value on large, complex programs. But I suspect this is not the norm, whether among end users, authors, or both.

I also recall some comment from Kernighan about how back in the early days of AWK he was amazed at the sizes of the scripts people were writing. He had never expected AWK to be used to write large, complex "programs".

Maybe small programs are boring? Maybe people cannot manage to simplify their problems by subdividing them into smaller tasks? Maybe they do not believe the problems can be simpflied? Maybe adding features is how authors attempt attract or retain users? Who knows?

</comment><comment><USER5> Amusing advice from this article:

> If you want a job done find the busiest person you know and give them an > extra job. This is because the reason they are busy is that lots of people > want them to do things because they are good at doing things and that's why > they are busy.

<comment><USER6> It's so amusing that is almost sad - I know such people around me, they get constantly abused by their peers, don't have the necessary means to deliver great results and get systematically bashed for that. So their situation is not so much for their skills as for their weakness (of character).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > A minimal viable program is the smallest program that solves a particular > problem. It is small and beautiful. It has no additional features.

A problem is rarely well-defined. Alternately, you can encapsulate small and beautiful programs into classes, and connect objects at runtime to solve more complex problems. OO reinvented.

In his case, he prefers to use the shell to do the plumbing instead of another language.

<comment><USER6> "you can encapsulate small and beautiful programs into classes, and connect objects at runtime to solve more complex problems"

Then in order to ease the integration between those classes you start reshaping them a little bit (adding things that "would not be essential") and thus they are gaining in this regard something very similar to the same features that we were talking about.</comment></comment>


Log Collection Server with Node.js - <AUTHOR> http://lethain.com/entry/2010/jan/31/log-collection-server-with-node-js/ <comment><USER2> A good project for learning nodejs but why http over a simple "tcp" server I wonder?

<comment><USER3> Sure. You'd probably want to use plain ol' syslog to forward stuff in, but you might also want to be able to stream the events back to your browser. There really wasn't a good and easy way to do this until node.js came along.

Oh, it's been done, such as using something like Twisted to stream the data back to the browser, but coding in Twisted is like taking mushrooms and running around _naked_ in rural Oklahoma. It doesn't end well.</comment></comment>


Learning to Drive by Imitating the Best and Synthesizing the Worst - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.03079 <comment><AUTHOR> This is basically saying using an end-to-end DNN for self driving does not work.</comment>


Password : a simple solution to a hard problem - <AUTHOR> http://loy22.blogspot.com/2011/05/passwords-simple-solution-to-hard.html

<comment><USER2> This could work if you are always forced to enter the full password to start a login session. The "PIN" password's hash could be generated at that point and held in protected memory (e.g. by a root process); it would go away on logout, as well as after some small number of failed attempts.

As to whether it's a good idea, that's debatable: if you want to solve the problem of being prompted for an admin password many times to perform tasks, a better answer might be to prompt once and get some sort of authorization ticket which allows the user to do a particular task without entering a password until the ticket expires.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. Security and user experience is always a matter of balance. I was seduced by the idea of having a strong password, but I think the current implementations discourage it for a regular use. From what I understand the only alternative under Ubuntu is to disable the prompts altogether, which is really not recommandable. Windows 7 has a nice way to handle it, I wonder if it is secure enough.</comment></comment>


Juicero's Story Set the Company Up for Humiliation - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/juicero-lessons/523896/ <comment><USER2> This was one of those stories where the underlying premise—that Juicero raised vast sums of money to produce a space-age hardware product that was utterly unnecessary—was so ludicrous that I initially assumed that I was missing something.

I still don't understand, at all, how they got to where they did without one single person outside the company asking them why the machine had to cost $400. The idea that it was just a grift to wow VCs looking for something sexy seems too simple.</comment>


Ask HN: Who would you say is the most popular tech blogger? - <AUTHOR>

I'm talking about individuals like Robert Scoble or Daring Fireball, not blogs like TC. <comment><USER2> A lot of sites are primarily driven by a single author but would seem to be disqualified by your criterion. There are very few popular full time single author tech blogs that I can think of offhand...

[http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=John%20Gruber%2CRob...](http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=John%20Gruber%2CRobert%20Scoble%2CPaul%20Thurrott%2CDave%20Winer&date=today%2012-m&cmpt=q)</comment>


Ask NH: What and to who can you outsource part of your system? - <AUTHOR>

As a generalization, outsourcing parts of your system which aren't core to your problem domain makes a lot of sense to me.
I'm always interested to learn about a new company thats focused on solving one of my needs. But I'm sure the list of companies (and the problems they solve) that I don't know is longer than the one that I do.
So who and what are you outsourcing?
I'll start with some basic examples:
-Google analytics for analytics
-Google ads for ads
-Disqus for comments
-Postmark for email delivery <comment><USER2> I'm outsourcing hosting, financial administration, design, programming, support (the latter only to a degree).</comment>


The Daily Mail used my photos despite my denying them permission - <AUTHOR> http://www.wonderlandblog.com/wonderland/2011/08/the-daily-mail-knowingly-and-commercially-used-my-photos-despite-my-denying-them-permission.html

<comment><USER2> I wonder if sending a DMCA takedown notice to their provider would change things.</comment>


The Introvert's Guide to Status Games - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@fortelabs/the-introvert-s-guide-to-status-games-f4632043397e <comment><USER2> This seems surprisingly insightful - particularly the "Some Practical Tips" section at the end. It's been my experience that people with introverted tendencies are often at a distinct disadvantage in social contexts because necessary interactions that feel so _natural_ to extroverts feel like _work_ to the introverts. It's impossible to keep up if playing by extroverted rules as an introvert. So... Don't! Work the angles you know, and play around with the rest - failing fast is the only way to learn.</comment>


The Sony Hack and Nortel's Demise: Piracy vs. Crown Jewel Theft - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/valleyvoices/2015/01/21/the-sony-hack-and-nortels-demise-piracy-vs-crown-jewel-theft/

<comment><USER3> Were the Chinese spying on Nortel? Perhaps. Was this a proximate cause of Nortel's collapse? Seems unlikely that it was even a distal cause and more likely that insiders - such as the person quoted in the CBC article - <USER2> attempting to either deflect blame and attention to outside factors or are attempting to maintain their wilfull ignorance of the management rot within the former corporate behemoth.

I worked for several years at BNR, Nortel's old R&D division, then joined a group that spun out of Nortel. A lot of folks pursued that path when they could or simply left for other more entrepreneurial places, because of Nortel's culture and poor management. It was a sluggish dinosaur of a company with barely an entrepreneurial bone and a huge sense of entitlement, entitlement both to government assistance and to the old ways (the 40 year copper renewal cycle, etc.).

Why the diatribe? Because citing Nortel as evidence in favour of one's arguments in this case diminishes the value of those arguments, makes the whole thesis suspect.

Nortel collapsed due to bad management. End of story.

</comment><comment><USER4> Given how much I dislike DRM etc. from Big Copyright, I was surprised how often I found myself nodding agreeably to this editorial.

I wonder how much this ties into conceptions (dare I say, prejudices?) some non-technical leaders have, where their technology-side is seen more as a cost-center rather than an ongoing investment.</comment>


Amazon Media Event Set for September 28th, Tablet Announcement Expected - <AUTHOR> http://www.macrumors.com/2011/09/23/amazon-media-event-set-for-september-28th-tablet-announcement-expected/

<comment><USER2> Not a surprise. To recap a hand-on preview [1]:

* $250 * 7", backlit; 10" coming Q1 2012 * Android fork; Kindle app integrated * Tabbed browsing * 6 GB * No camera * May come w/ free Prime subscription

1: <http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/02/amazon-kindle-tablet/></comment>


Codes that Changed the World - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/r4codes

<comment><USER2> Come on, are you freaking kidding me? They should do one about C way before even mentioning COBOL. 43 years old and still rocking!</comment>


Siri, Why Are You So Underwhelming? - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/02/siri-why-are-you-so-underwhelming/ <comment><USER2> Two things:

1) The anthromorphization of Siri as "she" really bugs me. It's software. It's not your assistant, your chat buddy, or your pet. It's an amped-up ALICE. This anthromorphization ascribes attributes that _don't exist in the software_ like sentience and actual intelligence. It contributes to point 2, wherein:

2) If you're underwhelmed that Siri isn't perfect, it's because you were sold perfect - Apple has some of the best marketers on the planet, and they sold you a science fiction dream and then you were disappointed when you didn't get it. The long and short of it is that Siri isn't a learning, adaptive AI - it's a voice control system with a short-term history and some clever responses baked in. It's a very good voice control system, and the developers have done a great job of giving the appearance of a personality, but it's basically an evolved Speak-N-Say.

If you stop expecting Siri to be a Star Trek shipboard AI that can understand the intent in your every query and return information to you instantly in perfectly-inflected English, you'll be a lot happier (though probably a bit less impressed) with it.

<comment><USER3> While that's all true, the majority of the article has nothing to do with any of that.

It's mostly about basic functionality that's very reasonable to expect, but that for whatever reason doesn't work.

<comment><USER2> It's reasonable to expect if you expect Siri to be intuitive or adaptive. The problem is that it isn't, because it's a preprogrammed list of contextual responses, and the user is _always_ going to have a longer list of things they want to do than the programmer anticipated. There's always going to be some degree of disappointment there as long as Siri is marketed as a thinking, intelligent assistant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A pretty fundamental example that underwhelmed was "what time is it?" (I'm in Australia). Siri responded with "Sorry, I don't know the time in 123 StreetImOn Street". This is doubly "amusing", as if I ask "where I am" Siri will tell me maps aren't supported outside the US. Long story short, to find out where I am I need to ask for the time.</comment>


It's about time to embrace Node.js streams [slides] - <AUTHOR> https://loige.link/streams-rome <comment><USER2> Is there any video link from the conference? This presentation seems promising with lots of examples.</comment>


Version Control with Subversion - <AUTHOR> http://svnbook.red-bean.com/

<comment><USER2> I didn't know this book was made available for free; that's pretty cool. Can anyone recommend a similar book for Git?</comment>


Ask HN: Code checker for Javascript - <AUTHOR>

I need a program that I can enter my Javascript code and it will tell me what it is doing line by line to understand some Javascript code is there such program out there? <comment><USER2> It's called a debugger. There's a nice one in your browser probably.</comment>


The Science of Bubbles (2013) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-Ub_r_GFZY <comment><USER2> Is that a tesseract shaped bubble?</comment>


'I follow a different person every day': using strangers to explore the city - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/sep/21/i-follow-a-different-person-every-day-using-strangers-to-explore-the-city <comment><USER2> I think someone was doing this to us earlier. What happens when someone can tell you are following them? Would it just be easier to ask someone to tour you around?</comment>


Apple Helps FBI Track Down Floyd Protester Accused of Firebombing Cop Cars - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2020/09/16/apple-helps-fbi-track-down-george-floyd-protester-accused-of-firebombing-cop-cars/#358a264e5901 <comment><USER2> > The case shows how Apple is willing to help even where the context of the > crime is controversial, namely the Black Lives Matter protests.

Yeah we should give this guy a free pass because these protests are very legitimate.

Really what's happened to journalism these days? Is everything an opinion piece?

<comment><USER3> I agree, if I firebomb my neighbor's house it doesn't matter if I did it in the name of racism, climate change, etc. It's still a firebomb.

<comment><USER4> It's pretty unlikely that Joe Random FBI agent had lunch with Tim Cook, told him the entire backstory, and then said "will you send me his data?", to which Tim Cook said "sure thing."

It's far more likely that there was no context involved here at all. Someone at Apple Legal gets an email/fax/in-person visit with a properly-signed warrant or subpoena. They review it and say "yep, we have to comply" and then produce the data. There's no "asking" involved here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wonder what Apple's rationale is for acquiescing to requests for iCloud data while staunchly refusing to unlock physical devices.

Could it simply be the idea that data stored on iCloud is Apple's property and not yours, while a physical device is treated the other way around?

<comment><USER6> Refusing to unlock physical devices is good publicity, since it helps with Apple's image as a privacy company. Cooperating with law enforcement to hand over iCloud backups means they don't pay much of a price for that publicity.

I'm sure Apple justifies this around their iCloud user agreements and the fact that third-party stored data doesn't deserve as much protection, but: Android has deployed end-to-end encrypted backup based on a user-controlled PIN [1] and Apple has explicitly refused to do this despite having the tech in place [3], allegedly at the behest of the FBI [2]. Hard to look at this as anything but a deliberate business decision.

[1] [https://security.googleblog.com/2018/10/google-and- android-h...](https://security.googleblog.com/2018/10/google-and-android-have- your-back-by.html) [2] [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud- exclusiv...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud- exclusive/exclusive-apple-dropped-plan-for-encrypting-backups-after-fbi- complained-sources-idUSKBN1ZK1CT?il=0) [3] [https://www.blackhat.com/docs/us-16/materials/us-16-Krstic.p...](https://www.blackhat.com/docs/us-16/materials/us-16-Krstic.pdf)

<comment><USER7> Apple has already paid a far higher price than Google ever has for protecting their customers security.

<comment><USER6> My (small) dog once had a fight with a squirrel. She paid a high price at the time, and so she learned not to do that anymore. I'm certainly ok with her decision, but I would suggest that -- unlike my dog -- Apple has end-users who really need them to keep fighting. They can't sit back and revel in past glories.

<comment><USER7> Not disagreeing, just offering a reason but not a justification for their reluctance to fully encrypt iCloud backups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I read 538 daily. The violence that "protester" engaged in is directly contributing to Trump's re-election prospects, to the detriment of us all.

Violence is not the answer.

<comment><USER9> Unfortunately the genie is out of the bottle - when people are convinced of the overwhelming importance of a higher cause, they find little problem with resorting to violence and evil. Watch The Baader Meinhof Complex if you want a historical example.

<comment><USER10> Your conclusion doesn't make sense. There are many people who do good things because they are convinced of a higher cause. People go into medicine, or help at a charity, or go into law for a higher cause all the time.

<comment><USER9> The morally reprehensible stuff is justified by their perceived higher moral cause.

It's powerful, dangerous stuff that works as motivation for good _and_ bad.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Running stuff when needed - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@devlucky/running-stuff-when-needed-fb13d48dc137 <comment><USER2> Run some command when some prerequisite files change.

Isn't that _literally_ what make does?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not sure if I understand the question. Can you please elaborate? Thanks!

<comment><USER2> Make is an existing, well documented tool that exists _specifically_ to build targets (run commands) only when the prerequisites for that target have changed.

My "question" was rhetorical. The implied actual question is "why this, when make exists".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Pardon my ignorance but can't the same thing be achieved with git hooks?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah! You can enforce that using git hooks, but you will still need to place some logic to check which files has been changed right and what to do in those scenarios

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> repository, [https://github.com/zzarcon/run- when](https://github.com/zzarcon/run-when)</comment>


Is there data on the quality of management decisions? - <AUTHOR> https://danluu.com/bad-decisions/ <comment><USER2> The usual proxy is the stock market.</comment>


The fifth hyperfactorial: 5⁵ × 4⁴ × 3³ × 2² × 1¹ milliseconds is exactly 1 day - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/fermatslibrary/status/939499914794594304 <comment><USER2> (5 * 5 * 5 * 5 * 5) * (4 * 4 * 4 * 4) * (3 * 3 * 3) * (2 * 2) = (4 * 3 * 2) * (5 * 4 * 3) * (5 * 4 * 3) * ((5 * 5 * 4) * (5 * 2)) = 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000

</comment><comment><USER3> Units of time are specifically chosen to have 5, 2, and 3 as factors. It doesn't look so pretty when you compare with universal fundamentals:

> 1.000692286 milliseconds – time taken for light to travel 300 km in a vacuum

<comment><USER4> Slightly off topic, but my favorite units for c are feet per nanosecond. In those units c = 1 (plus or minus a couple of percent).

<comment><USER5> It's even closer if you use a 'metric foot' of exactly 30 cm. Then you're only off by 0.1%.

<comment><USER4> > metric foot

Why is that a thing?

<comment><USER5> Not sure, but most of those 'metricised' units are leftovers from Napoleon's push to make everything metric.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> g in SI units is very close to pi^2.

And the weird thing is that it almost is _not_ a coincidence! The meter was almost defined as a second pendulum (implying pi^2 is exactly g) but then the variability in g was considered to impractical.

So then they choose the first meter definition (1/4 circ. if the earth)... which is suspiciously close to what they wanted to define the meter with in the first place

<comment><USER7> 1/40,000

<comment><USER8> Still off by a factor 1000. That's the kilometer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> [5, 4, 3, 2, 1].map(n => Math.pow(n, n)).reduce((a, b) => a * b) === 1000 * 60 * 60 * 24

true

<comment><USER10> A better title: The fifth hyperfactorial: 5⁵ × 4⁴ × 3³ × 2² × 1¹ milliseconds is exactly 24 hours.

A sidereal day is not exactly 24 hours, it is closer to 23 hours 56 minutes and 4.1 seconds.

<comment><USER11> The word day is ambiguous, but calling it 24 hours is not perfect either. A 24 hour period can include leap seconds, meaning it can be one second longer or shorter than 24 * 60 * 60 seconds.

(At least that's how ISO8601 defines time periods: 11pm-12am is a one hour period even if leap seconds cause the last minute to have 59 or 61 seconds)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Also, 10 factorial seconds is exactly 6 weeks.

</comment><comment><USER13> It is one day according to our clocks; it has no real significance in when compared to an actual day which is 23 hours 56 minutes 4 seconds- the time it takes the earth to make one full rotation.

<comment><USER14> Come again? If that were true, then the clock would advance past the actual time of day 2 hour for every month (30.5 days to be precise). And that would mean that in 6 months, midnight would be at high noon. So...

<comment><USER15> Indeed. But the earth is simultaneously orbiting about the Sun, which changes the apparent length of a day by approximately 3.95 minutes. (I.e., approximately 24 * 60 / 365 minutes).

<comment><USER14> Right. A sidereal day. Sorry. His point flew right over my head. I see it now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> So what? Coincidences occur all the time. Unless they expose a deeper hidden scientific/mathematical truth (which is not the case here), they aren't worth mentioning. Since the number of things that can be compared is astronomically huge (and increases every day), the chances of having coincidences is huge (and increases every day). The birthday paradox is an example of how common coincidences really are.

Numerologists of centuries past wasted lots of intellectual potential by obsessing over simple coincidences.

<comment><USER17> Says the guy who submitted a link to "Duck Penises Grow Bigger Among Rivals"

<comment><USER16> That was a scientific article, which was quite insightful to how evolution works...in summary:

Flightless birds can carry around the extra weight, so grow big penises to impress mates, while flying birds can't afford the weight and so must result to colorful feathers to impress mates.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> OK, so far we have a Javascript and possibly C based "proof".

Could someone manage a Brain Fuck proof or perhaps ASM?

<comment><USER19> ++++++++++[>+>+++>+++++++>++++++++++<<<<-]>>>\--.>+++++++++++.<<++.>>++++++++++.</comment></comment><comment>----.++++++.<<.>>\---.</comment><comment></comment><comment>-.----.+++++++++++..+++++++++++++.<<.>>\-----.</comment><comment></comment><comment>.+.+++++.---.<<.>>+++++++++.</comment><comment></comment><comment>.+.++++++++++.<<.>>\</comment><comment></comment><comment>----.++++++++++++.--..</comment><comment>--.+++++++++.++++++.<<.>>\-----.</comment><comment>---..-.+++++++++++++.</comment><comment></comment><comment>-.-.<<.>>\---.+++++++++++++.+++++++++++.<<.>>\---.</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>---.+++++++++++.+++++++++.</comment><comment></comment><comment>----.<\-----.

<comment><USER18> Are you referring to my comment or yours?

<comment><USER19> Both

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Another neat trick: the number of seconds in a day is 864e2 (easier to remember than 86400 for me)

</comment><comment><USER21> const hyperFactorial = (n) => [...Array(n+1).keys()].map(Math.pow).reduce((a,b) => a * b)

</comment><comment><USER22> Also 10! seconds is exactly six weeks.

</comment><comment><USER23> 42 = 10! In one of the tweet there is another surprise.

</comment><comment><USER24> Obligatory xkcd: [https://xkcd.com/1047/](https://xkcd.com/1047/)

</comment><comment><USER25> Off by one

[https://www.timeanddate.com/time/earth- rotation.html](https://www.timeanddate.com/time/earth-rotation.html)

</comment><comment><USER26> This is only true if you have no idea of how many milliseconds are in a day.

On the other hand, it IS very _close_ to a day, which is neat.

But it's not exactly a day. Within a few miliseconds, days drift quite a bit because of shifts in the center of gravity and the moment of inertia.

The Three Gorges Dam and the Boxing Day quake both measurably changed the rate of the Earth's spin.

<comment><USER11> It is _exactly_ the length of a civil day in TAI (International Atomic Time). It also happens to match almost all civil days in UTC-derived timezones (with the exception of leap seconds, daylight savings, and timezones switching to a different UTC offset)

It doesn't match solar days, but most people don't actually use solar days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is the final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.

"The argument goes something like this: 'I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, 'for proof denies faith, and without faith, I am nothing.' 'But, says Man, this is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not be chance. It proves you exist, and, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.' 'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and vanishes in a puff of logic. 'Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing

<comment><USER28> > and without faith, I am nothing.

Care to elaborate? I think virtually all religions believe that God existed before humans and therefore existed when no one had faith in God.

<comment><USER29> It's from Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

From this and other similar works such as Terry Pratchett's Small Gods or Neil Gaiman's Ameeican Gods, deities pop into existence from the pure belief of people. It's a great literary conceit.

<comment><USER28> But that's what I don't understand. Either God 'A' who is believed by Religion 'X' exists or doesn't exist. If 'A' exists, then even if 'X' didn't believe in 'A', 'A' would still exist. (At least assuming that 'X' is a subset of all religions that I know) If 'A' doesn't exist then 'X' believing in it doesn't make 'A' exist anymore.

I can't think of any religion where pure belief of people cause deities pop into existence. Unless of course you are calling the fact that people talk about the deity as popping them into existence. In that case, you can say that JK Rowling caused Voldemort to pop into existence (how evil of her).

<comment><USER29> Well yes, if you assume that gods are real and reveal themselves to the world they created. Then you go down he dreary path of prime motivators etc. That's no fun.

If on the other hand you start with the premise that there is a magical world created somehow then lesser gods can exist and cease to exist for all manner of reasons. We can apply it to the real world in the context of cultural memes. J.K. Rowling didn't cause Voldemort to pop into existence, the fans of the books and those who got hysterical over depictions of witchcraft did.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: minestore - <AUTHOR> http://www.minestore.com.br

<comment><AUTHOR> This is our new product that we working at ateliware and matilha. What do you think guys? Sorry about the portuguese.</comment>


Eagles Destroy Corporate Drones, Cost Mining Company More Than $100,000 - <AUTHOR> http://thenativepeople.net/2017/07/31/eagles-destroy-corporate-drones-cost-mining-company-100000/ <comment><USER2> "This isn't the first case of animals fighting back against the degradation of the environment"

Anthropomorphize much?

<comment><AUTHOR> Today, the eagles. Tomorrow, us.</comment></comment>


The Internet Ad Spending Not-So-Recession - <AUTHOR> http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2007/09/12/the_internet_ad.html

<comment><USER2> I suspect that an economic downturn if it does come will be good news for online advertising. Why? Only because there is nothing quite like a downturn to accelerate efficiency. Last time round, the recession was great news for Indian IT companies -- simply because it became efficient for American companies to outsource certain things that they do. Though I dont have figures to back it up, there are quite a few articles out there that point out that the following 2 ratios are not the same (which by implication points to an inefficiency in the allocation of advertising dollars):

Time spent by people online:Time spent by people on old school media Dollars spent on online advertising:Dollars spent on advertising in old school media

The 1st ratio is of course larger than the second.</comment>


We Spent $1,138 on Facebook in 6 Days: Numbers and Lessons Learned - <AUTHOR> https://signnow.com/blog/2011/06/23/we-spent-1138-on-facebook-in-6-days-numbers-and-lessons-learned/ We just completed our first Facebook advertising campaign, corresponding with our trip to TechCrunch's Disrupt conference. Startups test theories, so we treated this first attempt as an experiment. Here is what we did and our results. <comment><USER2> Am I missing something here?

The author seems pleased with the results, but as an outsider who isn't familiar with his company I see an ad campaign that cost over $1,000, achieved clickthroughs well under 0.1% despite targeting, and does not appear to have resulted in any measurable benefit at all. There are some comments at the end of the article about how Facebook is great for brand awareness, but there doesn't seem to be much evidence of that in the numbers.

If I were looking at ways to spend advertising budget for a new company (oh, wait, I _am_ looking for...) then this seems like a pretty compelling argument for not wasting money on Facebook ads.

<comment><USER3> I can really see it going either way. I interpret this to show Facebook Ads are not a good way to get instant ROI. But there is a lot of value in having a large number of Likes because you can market to them each time you release a new product... in SignNow's case, they have 700 interested ears to begin each new adoption cycle now.

Hard to quantify the value of that. My opinion is that it's worth a lot for the early ears, but not if you are thinking short term only.

<comment><USER4> Facebook calculates an "edge rank" for each piece of content based on metrics such as likes, comments, post time, content type, and so on. Edge rank is used, among other things, to determine the likelihood of a given piece of content appearing in your feed.

Only a fraction of a page's fans will see each update from that page. By some estimates, that number is only 5-10% of a page's fans. So they've earned 700 new fans, but that doesn't mean 700 impressions each time they post.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't exactly want to hijack the thread, but let me present an idea of how one could burn $1,000 if one wanted to do it for promotion.

Step 1: Install Wordpress. Good, already done.

Step 2: Create a big ol' list of keywords which you think are relevant to your business. For example, [sign contract online], [sign document online], [sign contract with iPhone], [sign contract with Blackberry], etc etc. This doesn't cost anything more than your time.

Step 3: Design a template which, given a particular keyword, includes a few hundred words of content about the keyword and also acts as a landing page for your service. I'm assuming this is effectively free for most of us on HN. The last time I did it it required copy/pasting one file in Wordpress and then five minutes of hacking the PHP to do what I wanted it to do.

Step 4: Write between 50 and 100 of these, depending on how you get them done. This is what costs the $1,000, since you're probably going to zone out after doing this five times, write up the process, and then hire the rest out to freelancers.

Predicted results: on average, depending on query volumes, you're going to pick up a handful of hits for each page every month for life. So instead of having 1,400 clicks once, you'll get somewhere on the order of 400 clicks a month _for forever_. And instead of them being someone who was just gawking at a pretty girl in Chemistry class or poking their sheep while farming virtual cabbage, it will be someone who is _right now_ trying to solve a problem which is costing their business money.

And if you have $2,000 to spend? It scales right on up.

And if you're savvy about how you do this? Suffice it to say that the MVP of this project gets you a wee little asset to build a business on, and implementing this strategy in a really effective way can basically carry a business on it's back. This is not limited to bingo card publishing empires, trust me.

<comment><USER6> I know you've answered this before, but where is your go-to place for quality writing? So many of the places that I've looked at seem Very low content.

The last thing I'd want to do is create a bunch of content that would make me look bad in the process. If I'm putting it online behind my company's name, it should be (hopefully) better writing than I could have done myself.

<comment><USER5> You don't have to be Nicholas Kristoff to write about signing contracts online, assuming you have a product which signs contacts online. Everyone on HN knows someone whose job description is Write Stuff About Business. Many of them, particularly young'uns, are underemployed in this economy. Find them, fix their problem.

I mean, you could walk straight into the English Department at any university and offer them jobs for students. I guarantee you will get takers. Potential problem: the takers will be English students.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So essentially $1100 for ~600 likes, I certainly wouldn't be happy with that return. It's an informative piece but I think your summary is a bit off regarding the campaign a success generally.

I think by simply joining Facebook groups in this sector and engaging with the group you could've achieved 600 likes in the same timescale and saved yourself the money.

<comment><USER8> That's about the market rate for buying likes on Facebook (the company I work for used to offer this as a service).

<comment><USER9> Targeted likes or just likes in general? There are folks on Fiverr who can deliver untargeted likes at 10 cents a pop (which might be useful for the initial social proof). No idea how they do it but I tried as an experiment and they don't all look like zombies.

<comment><USER8> That seems really low for me. The only way we could have done that would be to use low value inventory like from developing countries, but usually the advertisers had a certain demo that they wanted to reach and that raised the price.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, the demo is probably not good at all. But in terms of building up a few hundreds likes in order to get social proof for later folks, it's an option at least.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> And now the post on HN about the ads will generate far more impressions for SignNow than the ads did.

<comment><USER11> Thats the follow up article, expect it in the days to come.

<comment><USER12> But then... THAT will be on HN. Then what?

<comment><USER13> An indefinite loop of follow-up articles, and every single one will be posted on HN. :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I took a look at their ads and still do not have a clue as to what SignNow is about. Still scratching my head as to what they were advertising..

<comment><USER15> Same here. I think the results are very bad. They say it's not about the results but about branding. Well to be honest I can't remember there logo already though I read the article..

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Great experiment! Glad to see you got some engagement.

As someone who has run FB ads since the beginning though, I would disagree with one thing: in my experience over the years, people are ok with leaving Facebook, so long as you have a very nice, clean, easy to understand page with a clear value proposition.

My suggestion going forward is this: 1\. Take each winning ad and make 3 more variants. 2\. Take each interest you were targeting, make a separate campaign for each. 3\. Place all variants of your winning ads in each campaign.

The purpose of this is to find which actual interest is responding to your product. Once you find that out, refine it again by breaking up location, age, gender, education, etc.

Get really granular over time. The end result is very good ROI and a solid way of making money on FB :)

<comment><USER16> Replying to myself here to give some info on my experiences with FB:

Here are my stats on the last week for one campaign where I make about $35-$50 on average per lead:

\- Spend: $3,345.30 \- Impressions: 6,305,765 \- Clicks: 2,570 \- CTR: 0.0408% (average, some ads are near 0.1% and they make the most money) \- Average CPC: $1.30 \- Leads: 237 \- Average CPL: $14.11 \- Revenue: $8,703.70

That's a pretty damn good ROI. Not every campaign does as well as this, but taking the time to find your audience, craft your message and optimize will yield good results.

<comment><USER17> I agree. Those numbers are pretty good even for an AdWords advertiser. And the fact that you've been able to scale it really well is even more praise-worthy.

Do you have a blog/website that I can follow?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It stories like this that make me think I should just build an app that does automated Facebook ad optimization, these guys could have done a lot better than they did. I've run ads targeting US tech audience at 0.5cents a click.

A few tips:

1) Buy ads on a CPM basis, if you're getting a good conversion rate then CPM is a lot cheaper than CPC on Facebook.

2) Don't target a bunch of keywords together, chances are some of those keywords have great CTR and some of them have terrible CTR, running one ad targeting them all means you can't filter out the poorly performing keywords.

3) Geographic focus, concentrating on the major tech areas rather than the whole US would probably give them a much more targeted audience.

4) Their budget was too high to begin with, you can experiment on a much smaller budget to get statistically meaningful results. Once you've figured out what works then you can start throwing money at it.

<comment><USER19> According to my stats [1], the implied click through rate is .04%, so you're very right this ad group would've saved money on average [.057%] (And almost half if they had stuck with the .077% converting ad).

[1] <http://euri.ca/2011/04/facebook-advertising-prices-part-2/>

<comment><USER18> Nice model, unfortunately it doesn't work because of a couple of factors:

If you run CPC ads Facebook will show your ads more often to users who are "click happy" (they've said so publicly), there's also an impression among a lot of advertisers that Facebook charge a premium for CPC (which they haven't been willing to confirm or deny)

Also if you're buying CPM Facebook give you a "quality" discount, so if you have a good CTR you actually end up paying a much lower price than the initial suggested bid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Looks like they didn't really get enough traffic to do this (and idk how easy it is to do with FB and google analytics) but it would have been interesting and probably smarter to also measure each ad's effectiveness by how many conversions it led to on their site rather than just click-throughs to the facebook page. With their "most successful" ad they spent ~$500 to have a bunch of 21-year-olds click on a picture of beer that says nothing about what they do - I doubt these people will respond to a future marketing campaign any better than a random set of the population.

In any case, the analysis was interesting enough to make the front page of HN, which I'm betting will bring them a lot more than 139 visits. So well done with that.

</comment><comment><USER21> Most would agreed that campaign did not performed, instead aim to achieve CTR > 1% and Bid < $1.

Facebook ads is used widely by affiliate marketers, you could spend some time on blogs like MrGreen ( <http://stackthatmoney.com> ), or affiliate marketing news aggregator ( <http://affbuzz.com> )

I would change the following if my objective is to get more likes & users.

\- Target person, i.e vc, developers, etc instead.

\- Limit and test the age groups.

\- Target Tech events.

Bids will be cheaper & CTR will be more targeted. If it is not CTR, KILL it. Personally I like what you are doing at signnow, much easier to use than those I used when opening up my trading account.

Maybe you want;

\- Add the Facebook icon or something to link to your Facebook page in your website.

\- I am kinda of surprised that there's no YouTube explaining signnow, considering doing a hipmunk-like video explaining what signnow does.

\- If you have existing customers, do a video case study what it does your customers and how signnow could come in handy in other industries or applications, etc.

<comment><USER22> re: the hipmunk video, Are you talking about a GrumoMedia video? <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6teBPUgz4Y8>

<comment><USER21> ya.. that's the one!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This looks ridiculously expensive for such low traffic numbers for a free app

</comment><comment><USER24> Regarding the ad the worked best, I couldn't tell what the heck the image was, and I'm curious - the image was interesting. Looks like a spiral of some sort. (I didn't see it as a stack of beer until I looked back after reading what it was.)

I suspect the higher click-through rate was more about curiosity about the image.

<comment><USER25> I have to admit, I've personally clicked through a couple ads for precisely this reason, only to immediately hit the back button upon realizing it was just an ad.

And the next time I see the ad, I do it again.

It may be effective at getting click throughs, but the retention rate likely leaves something to be desired.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> a point for improvement: facebook's auction system is quite aggressive in picking its favorites. Having that many ads in one campaign, especially one with such a low daily budget, will cause one to get nearly all the impressions and take over.

You also can't stop ads after only a thousand or so impressions. Let them run for 50k+ before cutting, as an ad that performs well will take a decent amount of clicks for the bid to fully come down.

<comment><USER27> Facebook's own guide on A/B testing your ads suggests creating a separate campaign for every single variation, in order to avoid this issue. I've still found that just 1-2 clicks causes one variation's impressions to go through the roof.

[http://ads.ak.facebook.com/ads/FacebookAds/FB_Ads_A_B_Testin...](http://ads.ak.facebook.com/ads/FacebookAds/FB_Ads_A_B_Testing.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Site is down. Does anyone have a mirror?

<comment><USER11> too many images, just brought it up on the CDN to deliver the content better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> servers upgraded, sorry about any slowness.</comment>


Ask HN: Flagging comments – Has it been removed globally or just for me? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> From [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

      > Please don't post on HN to ask or
      > tell us something. Instead, please
      > send it to firstname.lastname@example.com.

For reference, I can still flag comments, and one can never flag comments that are replying to your submissions or comments.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Please don't post on HN to ask or tell us something. Instead, please send it > to firstname.lastname@example.com.

Oops. Sorry.

> For reference, I can still flag comments, and one can never flag comments > that are replying to your submissions or comments.

I see, it's just me then, thanks.</comment></comment>


Doing the Board: A simple daily planning exercise is our most important process - <AUTHOR> http://bigbangtechnology.com/post/doing_the_board1

<comment><USER2> To me this seems less like planning and more like task tracking. Everybody alread knows / has decided what the task they had to perform on each day so it was a simple matter of executing and recording the results. The hard part of planning - breaking the problems into small tasks and deciding the order of execution based on dependencies, deciding whether something is even worth doing, etc. was only summarily covered.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, it's planning, just on a daily scale. This process does not compete with pivotal tracker or basecamp, which is for planning and tracking our progress on a larger scale.

If we're bottlenecked or dependent on another person or deliverable, it doesn't make it on to the board.

But I agree, this process does not aim to decide what is worth doing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Part of the "secret sauce" of Agile software development is that Agile teams micro-manage themselves. I love Agile. I hate micro-management. Hey Alistair, isn't that a logical absurdity?

Not really. Let me explain.

I love to work with Agile teams that are responsible and accountable for what they do. The best way I know to do this is to check-in with the team everyday and talk about we're going to get done today. Of course, this has to be done in the context of some vision or plan that has a horizon greater than a single day.

I hate it when someone who doesn't really understand the tasks tells me what I'm going to do today and wonders why I didn't do something yesterday. I hate that kind of micro-management.

So, everyday I take responsibility for my tasks and hold myself accountable to my team. I don't let someone else be responsible and then hold me accountable.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's an interesting workflow, but I think the granularity they are suggesting feels a little too micro-management like.

If you need to track whether your (presumably non-tech) employees have written 3 emails, your team have a motivation/time-management problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey there, yeah that's why I wrote that we try very hard to avoid micro- management in this activity, and I specifically included emails in the "bad tasks" example. It's definitely not a top-down initiative, or anything to do with tracking our employees.

<comment><USER5> Max - I think you'd avoid this a bit if you changed your initial anecdote (your interaction with Jason) to be more engineering and product focused, I think thats where the micro-management concerns are stemming from.

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally. Is it ok to go in and edit my blog post? Are there any rules to follow when changing something you've released? Or can I just treat it like a bug in the software we deployed?

Any chance you'd try this system out for a few days? I'd love your feedback.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Isn't this basically how Scrum works in agile development?

We're doing this at work and include our direct client contacts as well (daily 15 minute conference call). It helps immensely in avoiding communication issues arising from different time zones, locations and people never having worked with each other.

<comment><USER5> Agile covers product tasks and is generally tasked at the iteration level (week/2 weeks/ month whatever your iteration length). Though there is the standard "what are you working on today?" "What will you work on tomorrow?" and "What's blocking you" that comes up in Scrums.

That being said this stuff seems to cover all the daily tasks (meetings, emails, etc) that is not covered in Agile. This is my main issue with this process. If you're already an agile shop then now every thing you do is being tracked. I'm not sure all teams would respond well to this. Personally I wouldn't like it much - I, personally, would feel micromanaged at this point.

<comment><AUTHOR> This approach certainly does borrow from the scrum daily standup meeting. Again, our goal is not to track anything that takes less than an hour to do.

And I would like to stress that this isn't a "management technique," that we force our employees to do. This process is for teams and people who see value in looking ahead at their day and providing themselves some context before diving straight in.

If I'm taking a car ride, even a short one across town, I still like to pick my route.

<comment><USER5> _Again, our goal is not to track anything that takes less than an hour to do._

This point is not clear in your anecdote which has "I have some emails to do and a form to send to the accountant" turning into line items on a board.

Also to be clear - I'm not anti-planning. I also would never tell you to change a process that is working for you. But these are some reasons why I wouldn't implement this planning technique for a team that I run. I'd prefer to keep my planning product focused and I'm okay with resetting on tasks with my team on a bi-weekly basis and a quick standup daily.

This is a GTD style technique that I think works great for certain individuals and not so great for others (I've always sucked at handling to-do lists), which is why I'm not sold on it as a team technique. I think _you_ respond well to it, but _I_ would not. So if it works for you by all means - keep it going.

<comment><AUTHOR> Mike,

You're totally right. I should have been more explicit in my example. Once in a while, if I have enough admin work to do, I might write a task that says, "administrative tasks," so when I do hit inbox zero and complete all of those little tasks (that do add up to more than an hour), I can keep track of accomplishing it.

I don't think there's any conflict between our two approaches at all. I believe our system is:

\- Product based: all tasks that go on the board directly relate to our product \- We're ok with resetting on tasks as well. It's just that if it takes more than two days, we obviously got the task wrong, and it is either too big or there's a bottleneck. There's no punishment for not completing a task.

I used to dislike the idea of to-do lists because I wasn't good at following up with them. This idea adds a social element, which has helped me a lot in getting better at organizing my day.

Would you be open to trying this with your team for one day? It's a very low- overhead technique, and you never know - you might just end up enjoying it. And even if you don't get much out of it, maybe someone on your team will.

Can you see some value in that?

<comment><USER5> So unfortunately I left my engineering team on their own about a year ago to start my own tech services company. My team these days are mostly virtual so the system would break down a bit.

I'd be willing to experiment though I've always been pretty open to trying new techniques.

<comment><AUTHOR> Our goal is to help teams exactly like yours participate in this technique. We'll be keeping you posted, we should stay in touch. What's your twitter?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A web app like <http://teuxdeux.com> with a color coded feature and team accounts would compliment this approach.

<comment><AUTHOR> Teuxdeux is definitely inspirational, and does a great job at what it sets out to accomplish. I still see it as a personal task management app (like things, omnifocus, rememberthemilk, even basecamp's to-dos, etc).

These apps are great for tracking big, permanent projects in your life, but they're not suited for planning what you'd like to do in a day and then accomplishing it.

I just see this approach as falling into a different category altogether, something that I haven't found the right words for yet.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'll post some pictures tomorrow for sure.

</comment><comment><USER8> An actual picture of this would be nice.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's up now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder how good this would be as web application... maybe I should give it a try.

<comment><USER4> I have used Pivotal Tracker in the past for this, blending non-technical tasks in with tech tasks so that all team members have tasks assigned and velocity can be tracked.

Not sure whether a whole new piece of software is necessarily needed.

<comment><AUTHOR> We hesitate to put non-technical tasks into pivotal and assign them point values. We've found that changes our development velocity, which is not desirable.

The other big issue is that our process is about setting out two or three things we want to do in a day, and seeing if we can meet our goals.

It would not make sense to click the "start" button on three features/chores/bugs at the beginning of the day, because again it would skew the pivotal data.

<comment><USER4> Arhh yes. For the sake of brevity I didn't get into more detail on how I've done this in the past.

I've experimented with both using a separate project for non-engineering (to avoid the skew) but also simply including non-dev work into the velocity with the same rigor that items that offer true value get points and 'cost of doing business' (pay server bill, write documentation) are non-point-accruing chores.

Both work for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> I see where you're coming from. If you're tracking tasks at all, you're doing something right. However, if you use pivotal for task management, you can't estimate how much you'll get done in a day. It's not like a developer can press the start button on three features, even if they want to complete three features in a day.

Our technique is about setting out a good amount of work for the day, and trying to meet those goals. We pull few chores/bugs/features from pivotal and throw them on the board all the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> A photo has been posted on the article to show you our tasks for today.</comment>


Ask HN: Can you tell me your experiences in testing microservices? - <AUTHOR> Hello, I am writing a paper on microservices testing strategies for a class on software engineering. I am hoping to survey developers who have worked on a microservice architecture. Your responses are deeply appreciated!<p>Link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfft48xb-H0r3aP75rZmnG-vpiwGMAgRW-FxzPAbUwwryOsAQ/viewform?usp=sf_link <comment><USER2> Just to be not rude but most people hate these surveys (correct me If I am wrong at least I do).

A better way to go about collecting same information.

1\. First, do your own little research. StackOverflow and other tech forums might be a good place to start.

2\. Then have a discussion about specific points.

<comment><AUTHOR> I fully understand people's dislike of surveys. I have done a bunch of research on testing microservices (read a few papers and the blog posts of devs and netflix/spotify/uber), but the only reason I included a survey is that it is a specific deliverable for the paper :( was hoping to get a few responses

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Unisys has some pretty good models. I know virtustream has done a decent job. Sorry I don't have any real data for you but I can say that microservices are a much better (or should I say, more "direct and fair") way to consume cloud apps. Many customers are now paying astronomical prices for SLAs that simply aren't sustainable. Until consumers catch on I don't believe providers will push them due to revenue.</comment>


Tim Cook Claims Apple makes secret Acquisitions, how is this possible? - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/20130528/liveblog-apple-ceo-tim-cook-kicks-off-d11/

<comment><USER2> It's common for Apple to acquire stealth-mode startups; people only find out about these when the employees change their LinkedIn profiles.

Sometimes a startup will continue to appear independent (they don't update their Web site or LinkedIn) until after the keynote where Apple reveals the new product they were working on. I'm not sure how that works exactly; it seems odd to hire people under the condition that they aren't even allowed to say that they work for Apple.

<comment><AUTHOR> great answer, thank you.</comment></comment>


New Electric Car Company Emerges: Faraday Future - <AUTHOR> http://wot.motortrend.com/1507_new_california_based_electric_car_company_emerges_faraday_future.html <comment><USER2> I sincerely doubt a "super-futuristic" aesthetic is going to catch on in the mainstream. One of the reasons the Model S has done so well is because it resembles other large luxury sedans that it competes against.

One very thing in particular about futuristic designs, to include many recent domestic cars (like the new dodge sedans and sports cars) is little vertical space given for windows. In contrast, one of the great things about the Porsche 911 design is that you have incredibly clear 360 views with big windows. That's a major design feature that separates cars that are in continuous production for over 50 years and those that need design refreshes every few years.

Best of luck, FF.

<comment><USER3> Remember the Honda Civic hybrid? No? It predated the Prius and looked exactly like a Civic. The first generation Prius looked pretty normal, too. It wasn't until the second generation Prius, with its radical styling that announced it was a hybrid, until it took off.

<comment><USER4> Prius came first (introduced in 1997), then came the Honda Insight (1999) - the Civic hybrid rolled off around 2001.

2nd gen. Prius was introduced 2003, but sales only picked up around 2005 < [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Prius](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Prius) >. The design wasn't the only factor - I would say Toyota's marketing and rising gas prices contributed too < [http://zfacts.com/gas-price-history- graph](http://zfacts.com/gas-price-history-graph) >.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > It will have 15 percent higher specific energy than a Tesla Model S 85 kW-hr > pack. That works out to 98 kW-hr.

Except that their ship date is 2 years out (best case, since it's really aggressive!). That gives Tesla a pretty good window to improve their own battery packs. This isn't a market you can win by getting a 10% improvement on battery life / range -- there's a lot more nuance than that. I hope they have other value propositions in mind...?

<comment><USER6> I think those numbers, on their own, are as good as meaningless. Volume, weight, and price of the battery pack and either of these relative to the size/power efficiency of the car will be way more important than that relatively tiny difference in capacity.

<comment><USER7> I think the author of the article might be confused. "Specific energy" normally refers to energy _per unit mass_ , which is a useful thing to compare between batteries. The author is acting as though it refers to total capacity, which is less meaningful.

<comment><USER8> I came here to comment on that; almost as bad as "X Watts of Power, which is enough to run an average household for Y hours"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting, of course talk is cheap as they say. I don't think anyone has spun up a factory to make something as sophisticated as a car in less than 14months though. That is going to be a real challenge, and supply chain? Fugiddaboutit! Not to mention the entire world's supply of Lithium battery production for the next 4 years is already allocated, going to be really tough to hit the 2017 date I think. But those things aside, the world could use more voices in the space, if only to keep the folks in the space looking in their rear view mirror and improving.

</comment><comment><USER10> It is interesting to see that a new company is employing 200 persons and hiring at a rate of 10 per week.

In my opinion, this has been carefully planned long ago.

</comment><comment><USER11> Well, with a name like that, I would naturally assume they are using super capacitors instead of lithium chemistry batteries. This would make sense if there was a challenge (or high cost) to getting sufficient current out of the cells-- but Tesla's acceleration capabilities are about the max you could want to safely put into a passenger car I think.

Or maybe they just took the name cause it's associated with electricity.

In that case, I think "Faraday" would be a much better name. Adding "Future" to it makes it sound like it's a fictional high tech company from the 1950s. Feels retro.

<comment><USER12> They should have called themselves 'Edison'. Bring back a bit of the old rivalry.

<comment><USER13> Would it end up acquiring Tesla and bankrupting it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So Tesla started with luxury cars only. Well that's all you can buy still. I feel this companies real opportunity with a 2017 launch date would be a mass produced, under 40k EV. That will be right around the time Tesla might release the model 3. This company clearly has some massive funding and talent behind them, sounds like they can afford to start on the mass produced midrange EV right from the get go and be really successful. The market is begging for a 40k EV that is not the Chevy volt... We want a 40k tesla (or FF).

<comment><USER15> Unlikely, the perils of trying to make a vehicle for the cheapest price possible can easily kill your company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is great news. As exited I am about Tesla, the more companies producing electrical cars, the better for all. When I read "a new electrical car startup" I was sceptical, but looking at who works there, there should be some business plan behind the company. Perhaps we really now live in a day and age where car startups become possible. That would mean some exciting times ahead for quick progress in the mobility sector.

</comment><comment><USER13> I wish them good luck. The car market could use more players that attract attention to high-quality electric cars. However, I'm not so sure about this sort of "all-star" unnaturally born companies. I think they usually fail. But at least these guys aren't making a hybrid, so they probably won't screw it up with old-think.

</comment><comment><USER17> They have a cool logo and I'm all for further progress in this field and hope the best, but I have a feeling this is yet another ooh-shiny company lacking the ability to really build something on the scale of what Tesla has done. The fact that the lead designer built the i3 doesn't bode well either.

<comment><USER18> why doesn't that bode well?

<comment><USER19> Because the i3 was an abortive product in every way. It's hideous, the range is terrible (80 mi), the charge time is impractical (3h on a 220V and 10h on a 110V), and they wanted $45k for it.

<comment><USER20> It's a premium Leaf. It's hard for people to understand premium electric car, when electric = economy in many people's minds.

The first time I drove an i3, I immediately got it -- "oh, it's a BMW. It's actually a nice place to be". The driving dynamics were great, and the design astoundingly useful and space-efficient. You really have to play with it in person to appreciate how much space there is and yet how compact the body is.

People will pay extra for luxury cars that don't DO anything functionally different from a run-of-the-mill sedan. Why not pay more for electrics that don't do anything different from run-of-the-mill electrics?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think the big white space left by Tesla (aside from cheap cars, which is problematic) is reconfigurable or cargo/commercial.

<comment><USER22> I think the LEAF has a 7 seated taxi variant, as well as a cargo van version. I believe this is a growing segment as the lower fuel and maintenance costs have more impact as you drive more miles.

<comment><USER23> There is at least one taxi driver in Oslo, Norway, who uses a Tesla S. You don't necesarily need a special variant to use as a taxi.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm sorry, why am I looking at renderings of the corporate headquarters instead of at least additional rendering of the vehicle exterior and interior?

</comment><comment><USER25> I hope they just leap the driven electric car and focus on an autonomous electric car.

</comment><comment><USER26> In case anyone was looking for the not-mobile version (removing the "m." doesn't work!), it's here: [http://wot.motortrend.com/1507_new_california_based_electric...](http://wot.motortrend.com/1507_new_california_based_electric_car_company_emerges_faraday_future.html)

<comment><USER27> Thanks. Can a mod please change the link?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Is this their website?: [http://faradaymotorworks.com/home](http://faradaymotorworks.com/home)

It looks pretty...nondescript (and ugly but that's subjective I guess). +yahoo small business webhosting

<comment><USER29> Nope. [http://faradayfuture.com](http://faradayfuture.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Another car for the 1%. Is this really necessary?

"Connected" may not be the future of cars. The Google self-driving car isn't very "connected". It doesn't talk to other cars, nor does it need to. It watches what's happening in the real world. Urmson, who heads Google's self- driving effort, threw cold water on the "connected car" people at a conference recently. All the effort on car-to-car communications is a complete waste of time for automatic driving.</comment>


Ask HN: Discuss China, global debt and what if it fails - <AUTHOR> Since i'm starting to get worried about China's expanding power. Here are my 2 cents, i'd like to hear yours.
My opinion is that China has been artificially inflating their annual growth to 8% annually.
First, there were easy loans to do this. People can borrow money for building buildings. The mortgage is the building itselve.
What happened, the buildings are never completed ( 50% ) and the rest of the money goes to the owner. The bank takes the unfinished building and it just stays unfinished.
They do other things of course, but since the annual growth of 8% is always met. There is no collapse.
Now, China is expanding globally to do the same. They give loans to countries ( expecting them not to be able to pay back) for creating infrastructure there. In return, they receive monopolies when the loans can't be paid back ( much bigger debt for China).
BUT: the annual growth is met, while expanding their power.
Now i'm starting to get worried. China already has a lot of influence, but they can't go further than what they are doing now.
What happens when the entire structure collapses? Have they gotten too big to fail? Or too big to save?
How do i protect my ( European) money if this happens? <comment> T-A Your annual growth figure is old (the official number is now around 6.5%; apply generous amounts of salt as usual), but your concern is even older. Read this, and note the date:

[http://www.economist.com/node/125768](http://www.economist.com/node/125768)

China has had a non-performing loan problem almost as long as it's had a (pretense of a) market economy. Confused Westerners look at those numbers and interpret them as they would in a Western economy, apparently forgetting that in China, even being a billionaire won't protect you from being disappeared at the rulers' convenience. Getting bailed in, i.e. having your claims on some bank or SOE "legally" declared null and void (remember, there is no independent judiciary in China), is far from the worst thing that could happen to a Chinese lender.

Can such a system "collapse"? Unlike Venezuela, China is not ruled by a former bus driver; it's a technocracy run by reasonably intelligent people playing a long game. It's oppressive and inefficient, but it has the ability to forcibly redistribute even severe pain. Collapse, in the usual sense of abrupt change, would require something like a new political revolution. Hence the steady ratcheting up of central control. They are definitely not going to repeat Gorbachev's "mistake".

What you do? If you are really worried about this, you don't lend to or invest in entities which are significantly exposed to China. If you are _really_ worried about it, you look for ways to short them (oh look, a Tesla factory in Shanghai?).

</comment><comment> random-username What happens when the entire structure collapses?

please just retrospect the history of other countries</comment>


A Collection of brain games - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/aviaryan/BrainGames <comment><USER2> After installing on Windows (7 pro), I only get an error dialog box:

"The procedure entry point ucrtbase.terminate could not be located in the dynamic link library api-ms-win-crt-runtime-l1-1-0.dll."

<comment><AUTHOR> Please open an issue on github [https://github.com/aviaryan/BrainGames/issues](https://github.com/aviaryan/BrainGames/issues)</comment></comment>


Microsoft: Hey, Apple Maps haters, Use Bing for iPhone instead - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2012/09/26/apple-maps-haters-use-bing-instead/ <comment><USER2> Strangely, Microsoft hasn't put the Bing app in the Canadian app store. The app's been out for ages now, and is still US only (as far as I know?). I can't for the life of me figure out a good reason for this. Bing.com has local search results for Canada, so it's not that.

Not that it's putting me out. I can search bing from Safari. Just a strange move on their part. It's like the intern who's job it was to ready the international version got fired and nobody checked his pending workload.

<comment><USER3> As an European Windows Phone user i'm doubting that they are aware that there's a world outside USA.

A lot of features are disabled for no good reason, and the rest of them has no data for Denmark.

For example when you play music on your phone you can set it to show pictures of the artist on the lock screen. On my phone the background just turns red. Also Local scout is disabled, though there aren't any data for it in Denmark anyway...

<comment><USER4> I gave up on Windows Phone because there was still no Skype app 6 months after I bought the phone, even though Microsoft acquired them. iPhone 4S Just Works...

<comment><USER5> I think skype was released a month or so after they acquired skype. Besides the skype integration that they show in the next version is way better than on any other phones/OS

<comment><USER6> _in the next version_

<comment><USER7> Set to be released this fall, if I remember correctly. So it's not that far off.

Skype (when not yet acquired by MS) shelved any plans of producing a Windows Phone version, so Microsoft (after the deal went through) probably had to start at near-zero with its version. At the same time they were likely working at the more native integration for WP8.

Just how many people would you expect them to throw at a problem that likely won't generate that many new customers? It all comes down to that in the end.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder if this tendency to characterise people as 'haters' was brought about by the increasing divisiveness of American politics. It is a little disturbing that any kind of opposition or criticism toward a product can be summed up as 'hating on it'. Rather than be a hater, why not be an adversary, an opponent, a critic, a skeptic, a detractor, a gadfly, an enemy, or an antagonist? Instead of 'hating' why not dislike, distrust, oppose, criticise, be skeptical of, or consider flawed? Or if you want to be extreme why not slander, defame, denigrate, or calumniate?

So if I take a balanced view and consider that there are good things about the new Apple Maps but on the whole think there was a laughable lack of quality control -- that makes me a 'hater'.

Words are the functions of speech -- the API of natural language. Differentiation of meaning matters. Using crudely simplified language is like using a crudely simplified API in your programme; it restricts the scope of your expression and what you can create.

If we insist on 'beautiful' APIs with our software, why not go further and reach for the right word when it comes to criticising software?

<comment><USER9> Americans seem to be overly enthusiast for anything, so maybe when everything is supposed to be "fantastic" and "amazing", any criticism can be dismissed as hating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The title of the article is just silly, sounds like a 13 year old came up with it. However, having used Bing maps, it seems like a great alternative to Google Maps. Both have Streetview, Transit maps and can also detect nearby businesses. The Bing map's layout and typography looks much cleaner and fresher than Google, but that's just my personal opinion.

<http://binged.it/TDK322> <http://goo.gl/maps/N06xc>

<comment><USER11> I don't know about that. Google has done a fantastic job at a lot of details such as colors and readability of street names that really improve usability. In the Bing version, the color palette is much closer together and less visually distinguishable. And Google Maps is the only map service I've ever encountered that does zooming in and out in a non-jarring way.

<comment><USER12> > Google has done a fantastic job at a lot of details such as colors and > readability of street names that really improve usability.

This made me recall this great comparison between Google and Bing Maps from 2011: <http://www.hostileuser.com/2011/01/06/google-map-legibility/>

Added: It appears the source is no longer available.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Like most others with iOS6 maps I've had my share of troubles and was excited to try this out when I saw the post. My wife gave birth a few days ago and so the first thing that came to my mind was the name of the hospital - a major hospital in LA. Unfortunately, bing failed utterly. "No results found. Pan to a different area and try again". At this point I'm zoomed to all of LA. I tried again, no dice. Apple maps not only found it without a problem, but I only needed to type the first word of hospital name and the rest was suggested as I typed.

Yeah, I only tested one search but it was hardly some tiny dive restaurant or other obscure landmark. App deleted.

<comment><USER14> Last line really got me. Totally lost it. And yes I agree, that sounds crazy.

I love the app more. I loaded it up the first time and saw how it highlights parks with very vivid colors instead of a light gray outline. My first thought was "I live next to a park???" Low and behold... I live next to a park that I never knew about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Bing Maps was the one of the first alternative maps I downloaded after the install of iOS 6. Unfortunately, the application is not ready for prime time -- the tiles are not retina, the UI is a mashup of formerly-known-as-Metro elements, and swoosh/zoom animations are overused, like a bad PowerPoint deck.

If Bing released it with retina tiles and a native iOS UI, I think they could win significant market share. It could create a halo product that might make me more inclined to use and think positively of other Bing services.

<comment><USER16> Bing is also available on Android. I don't know how they implemented the UI but it also has a "glitchy" feel to it with lots of animation. I tried the routing and often to had to click on things twice for them to have an effect.

But it did fundamentally work.

<comment><USER17> > But it did fundamentally work.

That is about all I can say on iOS too. It is... definitely a Microsoft product. That said it has way more POIs/businesses than Maps, and a few that Google doesn't include. Though to be honest knowing where comcast has an academy in my city is less than useful its rather complete and doesn't have bars listed that have been out of business for years.

A for effort and data contained. C+ for execution. Would like to see what Google comes up with on iOS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Sadly the bing app won't when I click 'Directions' in the Yelp App. I wish apple were not such control freaks and we could have the intent system in iOS... even if it was an advanced feature hidden in some obscure menu.

</comment><comment><USER19> Maybe it depends on your area, but I really think the bad press on the new iOS Maps App is overblown. I took a 700 mile road trip last weekend and Maps worked flawlessly. The turn-by-turn directions were neat, and the ETA and remaining miles were useful.

<comment><USER20> Yes, cos it uses TomTom data. But try walking somewhere or using public transport, especially outside of the USA. Then you'll see the problems with Apple Maps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Maybe I'm being stupid but I cannot find any maps on the Bing app. I open the app up and I get presented with a search bar and a picture of some mountains, touching the screen anywhere doesn't bring up any options for different types of searches (i.e. I wanted a map-specific one). Searching for my town "Brno" just brings up regular search results with no option to view a map. Searching for "London" brings up more, so there's a new header giving me the options of narrowing my results by "all", "images", "video" or "news" but still no maps.

This is not a suitable replacement for Google maps, I'll be deleting it.

<comment><USER20> Same with me, except I get pretty flowers instead if mountains! I'm in Thailand do I guess Bing maps only works for the USA. Which makes Apple's recommendation if it as an alternative to Apple maps even more breathtaking. They've forgotten the rest if the world exists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Hmmm. Let's see.

"Transit directions aren't available for these locations" (Nottingham, UK).

Nearest pub not on the map (admittedly it's not there on either Google Maps or Apple Maps, but I guess it's only been open for about three years), and the nearest one that is listed has actually been demolished for about 3 years (it's gone on both Google and Apple maps).

No traffic shown on the driving view, at least around here.

Also no street view, but at least it's got aerial views of the town that aren't just clouds.

So unless I'm after an aerial shot of an area and maps.google.com isn't working, it's a "no thanks" from me.

</comment><comment><USER23> I really love the satellite view in Bing maps. Clearly shows details, and the color is just right. But it seems outside US it lacks road information. If you look at China, even for a provincial capital city with over 10 M population, there doesn't seem to be many roads on the map:

[http://www.bing.com/maps/#JnE9Lld1aGFuJTI1MmMlMmJDaGluYSU3ZX...](http://www.bing.com/maps/#JnE9Lld1aGFuJTI1MmMlMmJDaGluYSU3ZXNzdC4wJTdlcGcuMSZiYj00MC41NTUzMTI1MTg0NTQzJTdlMTE3LjgxNDgwNDA3NzE0OCU3ZTM5LjE3NDU0Nzc0NTA3NSU3ZTExNS4yMjIwMzA2Mzk2NDg=)

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm using Bing for the Palm Pre and it is garbage (can't figure out to search at my location at all). Maybe it's better for the iPhone.

<comment><USER25> I had to use Bing Maps on the Palm Pre for a few months this year after they updated the app (and partially blocked the Google Maps mobile site). Bing couldn't find anything without an exact address.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I arrived in Melbourne, Australia not to long ago and at the time was carrying around a Nokia Lumia 800. Being new to the city, I was heavily dependent on Bing Maps and it let me down in so so many ways.

In particular, the complete lack of public transit data (which I used heavily) and poor turn-by-turn where big factors in driving me to get an Android device with Google Maps.

</comment><comment><USER27> Dunno, I installed it, popped in an address and it just sits and spins forever. iOS 5.1 maps comes back immediately.

<comment><USER28> I had the same problem. On a cursory run through, the app seemed pre-alpha in quality. Most things didn't seem to work, and what did work was couched in awkward and annoying animations and poor image quality (especially maps).

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Has any one used Bing Maps in San Francisco? If so, can you comment on how good it is with public transport?

<comment><USER30> It took me about 5 tries for it to actually find the address I kept searching for and tapping on, but once it 'took' the directions were accurate and easy to follow (walking to the stop, which bus, how long, etc).

<comment><USER29> Thanks, maybe I will play with it for a while before I decide whether or not to do the upgrade.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Good timing. I was in the car as the navigator two days ago, the driver handing me his iphone with iOS6. The maps app took a 15 minute trip across town and made it into an almost two-hour long journey.

I tried using Google Maps through Safari but it was so slow it was unusable.

As a joke I said "I know, let's use Bing maps!"

</comment><comment><USER32> If I search for 'bing' in the iOS 6 App Store app, result #1 is 'Bing Get Me There' – a travel app for London … sidewards scrolling in the new App Store app is horrible but I made it to result #20 without any sign of a real Bing map app …

</comment><comment><USER33> Bing app not available in Singapore store.

</comment><comment><USER34> Always find maps.nokia.com better on my iPhone. Best part is it works even in places others fail. e.g. UAE.

<comment><USER35> Just looked at Nokia maps around my work in Central London. The business listings are all wrong and the icons are placed on top of the road names making it very hard to use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I can't find the app on the app store.

</comment><comment><USER37> Bing Maps have been rapidly improving over the past year and no one seems to have picked-up on it. via their deal with Nokia, Microsoft is slowly updating the backend data, incorporating Navteq's over 20+ years of mapping tech. its not quite up to parity with Nokia Maps (or Google) internationally yet, but it's come a long way and (i'm guessing) easily beats-out Apple's quickly-built homegrown implementation.

for those who don't know, Nokia owns Navteq (purchased a few years ago) which powers over 85%+ of automotive navigation systems (as well as Garmin, Mapquest, and many other popular mapping services)..

<comment><USER38> My major problem with Bing is that it defaults the interface language based on your location. This is stupid. If I'm travelling in China, then having the entire interface in Chinese is completely useless.

Bing like many other major sites, make the poor assumption that the user's location == preferred language.

From a usability perspective, the interface language should primarily be based on the browser user agent Accept Language, and THEN an ip-to-geo database lookup can OFFER the user the location based user interface language.

Finally there should always be a way to change language.

Bing, as in the entirety of Bing, does not have a way to change language. I am currently in Germany, and there isn't a way for me to use the maps in English.

It is a schoolboy mistake from a major player. Idiotic if you ask me.

<comment><USER39> Use the "gear" on the top right, go to Worldwide ( last option) and use the US or UK. The experience will be as if in the respective countries.

<comment><USER38> Awesome. I've spent months being annoyed by that!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I would rather be lost via Apple Maps than have to use the Bing iPhone app. awful</comment>