Ask HN: Can I compete with Basecamp? - <AUTHOR>

I want to build an online project management web app.  Is that a good idea?  Is the market big enough to have yet another PM app?
My client's marketing team (15+ people) have tens of basecamp projects and every single one of them hates it...  Have we just been brainwashed to "think" that basecamp is awesome when non-techies actually don't like it but don't see a viable alternative?
If I go forward, do I focus on small teams and compete on price?  Or do I go for larger teams (which I think basecamp is too limiting for)?  How about a free site with a marketplace to buy add-ons?
Do you like/hate basecamp? Why? <comment><USER2> A question that often comes back: Can I enter <insert saturated market here>?

The answer is it depends :-) There are lots of successful project management apps. The advantage of an established market is that people already know they have a problem and are looking for solutions online. On the other hand you have to really differentiate your product in order to get customers who could just use Basecamp or any other PM tool. You can't just go and copy Basecamp and expect people to switch.

So the real question here is what can you make better than Basecamp? You don't need to make it better in every aspect (and you will burn yourself doing it). Just find a corner use case where Basecamp doesn't work well enough. There are probably lots of use cases for which Basecamp sucks. Don't try to solve them all though.

So it means doing your research. Interviewing people is a good way. Mining online forums with data is another good one. Find out one strong pain that is not addressed by Basecamp, and that you could solve yourself. Then build it.

<comment><USER3> Stress on strong pain. Not _a_ pain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I strongly believe that to compete against a particular characteristic or price it will not lead to a successful conclusion. What really wins in this situation is the philosophy and the flow of application usage. Features can be in or out anytime. Prices can be high or be lowered later but the core workflow, not.

Basecamp has changed considerably over the years and the features never competed against the rest of the competition, but it did in philosophy. Their software is easier to use than others and that, I think from the evidence shown, is what people pay.

If you want to compete against them, you have to be different from them in philosophy. Look Trello and then looks Basecamp. Both are different but they are made for a single purpose: to work and manage projects. If you compete on features, one would end up like the other.

<comment><AUTHOR> good feedback. thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's what I see: you have identified a problem, and the problem is so big that you are itching to build a solution.

This seems to be independent from your question. Everyone on HN can come up with a reasonable speculative answer to your question (and mine would be a "yes"), but focusing on the issues makes clear if it's even worth competing in the first place.

With the information you provided, you seem to have a solid target market identified. How many teams are there that, like yours, that could benefit from a Basecamp alternative? And which of your team's needs aren't met with Basecamp, and is it something that Basecamp could replicate quickly? Dig a little bit deeper and discover the specific needs - that should reveal more useful information than any of us could provide :)

</comment><comment><USER6> I did not like basecamp. It felt like a free product but charges pretty high prices. It felt limited and kind of shabby. Maybe it's because I've heard so many people raving about it that I expected too much. I'm not sure.

I use Asana now. It's an awesome product for what I need. Their iPhone app is pretty good. The whole package is free for teams up to 30. I feel like I'm stealing when I use it, which means that I'll probably have to start paying for it soon to ease my guilt. I've heard great things about their API although I've never used it myself.

Can you do it? Yes, but it's going to be difficult. There are innumerable competitors out there with established names.

</comment><comment><USER7> Hundreds of small businesses compete with Basecamp so of course you can too. But that's not the important question, this is: why exactly does your client's marketing team hate Basecamp? Are they too big for Basecamp? Is the usability too bad? Does it get in the way of their work proccesses?

<comment><AUTHOR> They feel like it is too limited and has no useful reporting and that they can't get good insight into the overall state of all their projects.

I will have to interview them more and will publish the info on my blog (emadibrahim.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> There are hundreds of CRMs out there, online and off-line, and a good number of them are successful. The key to competing is to find your niche (audience, feature, price, technology, etc.) and compete on that.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've tried probably a hundred Basecamp alternatives over the past few years (it's practically a sickness, an obsession) and I still think Basecamp rules. Why? Because I can organize what's in my brain there, and upload files, make notes, export, etc. It's also got silky smooth drag-and-drop action.

It's like Evernote meets a todo. A perfect marriage. I also hate it for that reason. There seems to be nothing else that scratches that itch like Basecamp does. Drives me nuts.

Also, I don't do collaboration though, so the monthly subscription is a bit much for me.

I'll answer any other questions you have. Just reply here. I'm practically an expert on Basecamp alternatives!

P.S. One comes close though, and that's Trello, but Trello doesn't have a good Windows Phone app (yet), and so I won't use it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback... I have used basecamp by myself but I am more interested in the team/collaboration aspect of it.

Other than Trello (which I love) what would be your top 3 alternatives that come close to basecamp?

What's missing from basecamp that you would love to see?

Are you paying for basecamp? I think they got rid of the free plan... are you ok with $20/month?

PS: I know exactly what you mean about the sickness of trying tools. I used to do that with GTD tools. I did RTM for 1 year, omnifocus for 1 year, then built my own (Taskorami) then finally settled on pen and paper :)

<comment><USER9> My top 3 basecamp alternatives (minus Trello and in order of preference) would be:

1) Nozbe - <http://nozbe.com> \- Yes, it's a GTD app but you can also upload files and keep stuff organized. Very powerful

2) PBworks - <http://pbworks.com> \- Their pricing is screwed up but there's a lot of flexibility there

3) IQTELL - <http://iqtell.com> \- Promising, I was a heavy user for awhile. No windows app though

There are many other services that are closer clones to Basecamp like Siasto: <http://siasto.com> but after using them for a few weeks I realize how far behind Basecamp they really are. Siasto didn't seem serious about improving the product either. It was more on autopilot.

Asana: <http://asana.com/> Meh. I'm not sure why, but I couldn't get comfortable with it.

What's missing from Basecamp? All my emails in one place, like IQTELL. I log into IQTELL and I get a snapshot of everything that's going on in my life (pretty much). Killer feature.

I bailed from Basecamp. Using Microsoft OneNote for my projects. Pretty good actually. There's a lot to love about OneNote.

Btw,I'm okay with paying a monthly fee, but I'd much rather pay a full year in advance, like with the Microsoft Office 2013 suite. Comes with OneNote and SkyDrive. Very handy.

Hope this helps. I'll keep an eye out for any other questions you might have.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Would anyone be interested in a mind map visual search engine? - <AUTHOR> I have been curating mind maps for a long time that show step by step resources that one can use to learn any topic on Earth.
I also mind map books, courses and more. Here is the GitHub project of all the mind maps : https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/knowledge-map
There is already a working Alfred workflow that allows to find the mind map you need in an instant. Here is a screencast of how it looks in action : http://quick.as/b1gwsneao
I am making a search engine for it now and hope I can release a working version of it very soon. I would love to hear though how I can improve these mind maps and what you guys think of this idea as a whole. Would you use this? <comment><USER2> I _love_ mindmaps, and I find them extremely useful. I think that a search engine for these would be extremely powerful. While not everyone will find mindmaps useful, some will, and I can see other people posting theirs on a variety of subjects too.

</comment><comment><USER3> Would the search engine use crawlers to auto-update and grow or would it simply search your curated maps (which you or your collaborators would have to maintain and grow for as long as the project runs)? There's a world of difference between the two.

<comment><AUTHOR> The latter. The mind maps are curated by hand and are 'human' approved similar to what various awesome lists on GitHub do.

<comment><USER3> So, TBH, having a small search engine for them is not so interesting. Drilling down to something specific should be ~ log(n) anyway, and exploring the nodes is part of the process. IMHO, search starts to be useful when nodes are one order of magnitude or two more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I find mind maps vastly inferior to more linear representations such as outlines. Imagine if your file explorer were a mind map. Have you tried driving in a neighborhood with more curves and less grid. Grids beat mess.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would disagree with you. For certain tasks, outlines are undeniably better such as presenting information in a file explorer.

However as far as links go, which is what these mind maps present (just a bunch of links connected with arrows), mind maps are perfect. At least for me, they have solved my 'bookmark managing' problem.

Before I saved a lot of links into safari bookmark manager only to then forget about them because it's just impossible to find it later or it takes too long. In this way, everything is sorted. I don't have to search for anything and I can just explore what I see. This is the fundamental difference between these mind maps and the search engine I am building to Google or DuckDuckGo.

In my case, the entire database that is being searched on is transparent and anyone can make a change to it. There is no black box and there is no problem of not knowing what to search or look for. You can just explore the mind map and see what you find interesting and what you don't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is great! I like doing the same. I collect them in trello boards. But mind maps is definitely something that gives you more insight. :)</comment>


Bypassing the HTC One lockscreen during restart - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sefsar.com/critical-android-lockscreen-bypass <comment><USER2> I can't reproduce this on stock Android. I'd also like to see what happens shortly afterwards. The video cuts off a bit abruptly and I'm curious to see if you can maintain access or whether it kicks you back out to the the lock screen after initialization is complete.

The text was also changed just a minute ago to remove a plug for HyperCube. The original text included something along the lines of "Clearly there are big problems with Android, which is why we started HyperCube..."

</comment><comment><USER3> Could a mod amend the title so it mentions the vulnerability is in HTC's android distro and not AOSP?

</comment><comment><USER4> This is more of an HTC problem than an Android one, right? Calling it Android is a little misleading.

As an aside, I'm so glad to have stock Android - I really don't miss the days of all the vendor and network 'extras'.

</comment><comment><USER5> There are many errors in Android security, this is one that I have found: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkdbMv0lNMc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkdbMv0lNMc)

(TLDR: just remove your SIM card when screen is off to unlock, works on Anrdoid 4.0.3 with Acer Iconia Tab A511)

Edit: I wonder if someone with tablet could try to reproduce that?

<comment><USER6> Odd bug, must be a SIM related PIN on the device...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is not critical Android Lockscreen Bypass, this is HTC One Lockscreen Bypass

</comment><comment> sjm-lbm I was unable to reproduce this using a Sprint HTC One running the newest software release (Android 4.3, HTC SW Version 3.04.651.2) - admittedly, timing does seem tight, but I tired it several times before giving up.

It'd be interesting to know if this is just something that HTC has already fixed, or if it is somehow related to a carrier-specific modification.

</comment><comment><USER8> I never saw the lock screen as a serious protection mechanism, but more like a screensaver, mainly to protect me from pocket-dialing. For me, its more like the key lock on old dumbphones than like the pin code lock.

And since even the pin lock was trivial to bypass by law enforcement or professional criminals (you could buy special devices to unlock the phones), I don't expect that my phone has any really serious protection. I know iOS devices are harder, but I'd expect the police or serious criminals to be able to crack my Android phone in seconds. Which is ok, as long as I'm aware of it. Of course, if my phones lock does turn out to be safe, thats great.

</comment><comment><USER9> HTC may have fixed it with the latest update:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/1og2h8/critical_and...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/1og2h8/critical_androidhtc_one_lockscreen_bypass/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Does not work on my SGS3, not sure if it is because I am using Cyanogen mod or because I have a sim pincode activated, that needs to be entered before the pattern unlock screen.

</comment><comment><USER11> If you're using the swipe-to-unlock, you've already lost. Use a strong password, which serves as entropy for encrypting the disk (and check that option).

</comment><comment><USER12> Did you contact HTC to help them?

</comment><comment><USER13> Can't recreate it on my Australian HTC One with 4.2.2

</comment><comment><USER14> Doesn't work on HTC One running Android 4.2.2</comment>


Domain names – .io or .com with get in front? - <AUTHOR> Hello I am working on my companies name, unfortunately the .com has been taken. So I was wondering do you think its better to get the .io version or a modified version of the .com such as "getXXXXX.com or "downloadXXXXX.com" Thanks I appreciate your thoughts! <comment><USER2> .io if you're doing tech, especially if you are targeting tech firms. Otherwise "getXXXXX.com" will be good enough.

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah I'm a tech company (an app) that targets property managers. I'll go with the get version thanks!</comment></comment>


Rasberry Pi case more than the Pi? - <AUTHOR> http://www.ipadandiphonestuff.com/raspberry-pi-stuff-c-70.html?zenid=p77k6lhkgsfi8jho1tplnufj04

<comment><AUTHOR> This was interesting, folks are already jumping on the bandwagon to make cases and accessories for the Pi but in this particular example the 'extras' kit is more than the board.

I expect there to be dozens of folks who have 'case' solutions for it, I keep watching for them.</comment>


Spinning wheels [Storing energy using flywheels, not batteries] - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/node/21008109 Take home paragraph: Back on the road, flywheel hybrids that cut both fuel consumption and greenhouse-gas emissions by 30% or more appear to be only three or four years away. When they arrive, today's coal-fired electric cars will look decidedly dirty by comparison. Roll on the day. <comment><USER2> "the electricity delivered during off-peak periods comes from dirty coal-fired power stations--rather negating the point of having a zero-emission vehicle in the first place."

Except these so-called dirty coal plants are still far cleaner than car exhausts, and more efficient especially if you consider the extraction and refinement processes required for gasoline. Finally, it's much easier to upgrade or replace a power plant on the grid to make it cleaner in the future than it is to get thousands of people to replace their vehicles with ones that are more efficient, cleaner, etc. Nevermind the logistics involved if we wanted to do carbon sequestration.

<comment><USER3> Off-peak power production depends on where you live. In my region we only have hydro and nuclear, my energy is (relatively) clean 24/7.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yeah, the main problem with them is that if anything happens the "stored energy" is already kinetic energy and the flywheel can do some pretty serious damage.

The other problem is that they act like gyroscopes. Which means that depending on how you mount them, will either constantly exert a precessional force on your vehical, or really protest you making sharp turns at high speeds.

<comment><USER5> The second one can be mitigated for the most part by using two flywheels that rotate in opposite directions.

<comment><USER6> And the first is a problem with anything that stores energy. Gas can explode. Batteries can explode. Etc.

<comment><USER7> I think an accident causes gasoline to burn more often than explode. Even when the tank explodes I don't think it would be as dangerous as a fly wheel shattering with shrapnel flying everywhere.

<comment><USER5> Flywheels running at high speed are not made of cast iron or other things that turn in to 'shrapnel', they're made of wound filaments of carbon fibre bound with resin, usually they are designed with failure in mind. The bigger problem is dealing with the conversion of the energy in the wheel in to heat.

<comment><USER8> If we have a flywheel falling on a movable object on the floor I imagine this movable object can attain quite high speeds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Such an interesting concept but some key data is missing.

How much energy is lost by using a wheel vs battery? Meaning, how much energy can be extracted from the amount of energy put in? How does that compare to a battery?

How long would a charge on a wheel last (eventually it would spin down on its own) compared with a charge on a battery?

<comment><USER9> For lead acid batteries, figure 70% of the energy you put in will come back out. Wikipedia tells me that lithium ion batteries are 99.8% efficient, but has no citation and the temperature of my phone charging heavily make me suspicious of that number. Perhaps that is a theoretical maximum.

Motor efficiency is proving elusive on the web. But let's say 90%-95% for brushless DC motors. (square that for in and out)

The trick about batteries is that if you only want to use them for intense bursts you will need a huge energy capacity. You don't normally want to charge at a rate faster than say, 1 hour to get full. If you need to store a 3 second brake stomp and give it back 5 seconds later then you are going to have about 1200 times more batteries than you needed just to store the energy (to support the current).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here's another post with a picture of what it looks like: [http://www.gizmag.com/torotrak-mechanical-kers-system-for- bu...](http://www.gizmag.com/torotrak-mechanical-kers-system-for-buses/13023/)

I can't find any links now, but after Williams created the flywheel kers system, they started talking to the London train system, who was interested in adding it to a trains in the city. Not sure who that ended up.

It's worthy noting, however, that none of the two companies ended up running the flywheel kers in real races last year or this year. KERS was only one of the rule changes for those years, and those teams decided it was best to focus on the other changes instead.

Not related to the post itself, but I think most people here would really love F1. F1 is much more about technology than anything else. I love it.

</comment><comment><USER11> Flywheels come up every once in a while (I remember seeing them for the first time about 20 years ago).... but I wager they'll never become mainstream. The problem is the more energy they store, the more explosive they become.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel_energy_storage#Advanta...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel_energy_storage#Advantages_and_disadvantages)

Same kind of thing with the Dymaxion car (1930) - a 3 wheeled car that could transport 11 passengers @ 30mpg, reach speeds of 120mph and do a U-turn in it's own length. Sounds brilliant.. except what happens when something happens to one of the tires.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_car>

<comment><USER5> Why do you state that when the article linked clearly says: "The cause of the accident was not determined, although Buckminster Fuller reported that the accident was due to the actions of another vehicle that had been following the Dymaxion closely.".

It's a pity investors bailed on the project, it seems like it was well ahead of its time, prototype failures are usually experienced behind the scenes, not in front of an audience that large and I think that they investors probably were on the money pulling out because of public perception, even if they blamed the tech, it was not the wheels that had anything to do with this, but more likely a lack of reinforcement of the main structure of the car.

As for flywheels: <http://afstrinity.com/> that company (a merger of American Flywheels and Trinity Power) is probably right at the cutting edge.

Anything storing a significant amount of energy is prone to accidents, from batteries to rocks on the tops of mountains.

Flywheels are one of the few technologies that can store signficant amounts of energy and can be engineered to fail with relative grace, as opposed to say a fuel tank blowing up. Another strategy is to use many relatively small flywheels in parallel, each in their own containment vessel.

This also helps with some other engineering difficulties involving flywheels. Flywheels are ancient tech, at least 50 years old but probably much older, and if you count them as storage devices in a purely mechanical context as well then you can go back in to history quite a bit, about a thousand years.

<comment><USER11> > Why do you state that when the article linked clearly says: > "The cause of > the accident was not determined, although > Buckminster Fuller reported that > the accident was due to > the actions of another vehicle that had been > following the > Dymaxion closely.".

For the obvious reason why 3 wheel vehicles have never become mainstream.... If you work with computers you should know about Single Point of Failure. If you are cruising on the highway and get a flat with 1 of your 4 tires it's no Big Deal. How do you think that would figure with only 3.

Or another example. Why so many wheels on an 18-wheeler. Wouldn't it be awesome if a truck could do a u-turn in it's own length? Those things blow out tires all the time. But it doesn't matter because they have 18. SPOF. 3 wheel vehicles will never catch on in the mainstream. They'll only ever be the equivalent of glorified motorcycles - the ultralights on the road.

<comment><USER5> You could get all the advantages of a tadpole configuration and mitigate the risk of blow-out considerably by using two wheels at each spot side-by-side, that's fairly simple engineering and this is used on plenty of lightweight fly-over trailers.

The tadpole configuration has stability issues though, rolling it over is fairly easy if the vehicle has a high center of gravity.

The Reliant Robin solved that for the most part by reversing the arrangement putting the single wheel in front, but they still tend to overturn quit easily.

The accident mentioned above during the demonstration probably really was caused by that other car, but the ease with which a three wheeled configuration turns over most likely contributed to the severity, and in the long run would have had to be solved using tricky engineering such as a single wheel for low speed maneuvering and two wheels for higher speeds.

Here is a Reliant Robin doing what it does best:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr8SvdSzs7c>

I think there is a topgear episode where they try to improve the Reliant Robin by putting training wheels on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _Moreover, supplies of the metal are far from abundant, and are located in countries not necessarily friendly to America: the biggest reserves are in Bolivia, China and Russia._

Yeah, it's a good thing countries with all the oil for our gas-powered cars are so friendly.

<comment><USER13> Canada, Saudi Arabia and Mexico are unfriendly?

The only unfriendly countries which supply a significant amount of oil to the US are Venezuela and Russia.

[http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publicatio...](http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I read about this about 13 years ago in Discover:

<http://www.mega.nu/ampp/bitterly.html>

Seemed like a fantastic idea at the time, but the problem then was that the wheel would explode at high speeds. Apparently these are very challenging to manufacture.

</comment><comment><USER15> This has been done before, there was a bus i read about on boingboing that used only kinetic energy to power it, if i remember the wheel was some 20tons.

</comment><comment><USER16> I see your spinning wheel in a vacuum and raise you a battery drive and the dirt road behind my house.</comment>


Ask HN: What databases are cool kids using today for microservices architecture? - <AUTHOR> - Scenario involves building a platform where relational queries, aggregation, large paginatd lists are unavoidable. - Data can be stored as json objects. - Same database software (not db instance), will be the choice for multiple microservices involving users, orders, catalog etc., - Most of the micro services are written on nodejs. - Small memory footprint, less db administration preferred. <comment><USER2> Don't choose databases based on coolness. Choose a database that will keep you from being woken up at 3AM.

PostgreSQL managed by your cloud vendor would do everything you want, probably.

</comment><comment><USER3> GraphDB is your only choice. But if you really really want to be part of the cool kid's club: BlazingDB.</comment>


Ask HN: Feedback on startup, Fol.io - <AUTHOR>

After months of development and testing we released Folio last week and would love your honest feedback on our concept and platform. Any feedback in relation to: - what you think of the concept in general? - would you be more interesting in buying or selling? - what strikes you as positive/negative about the platform? - would you use it? If yes/no, why/why not? - what type of content would you be most interesting in selling?<p>All thoughts, feedback and opinions greatly appreciated! <comment><USER2> Much like I noted in my comment yesterday about Creative Market, I think that services like these need to be quality-controlled if you want repeat visits from buyers and worthy sellers alike. At first-glance, the content looks pretty tacky - what differentiates this site from its equally-cheap competitors?

Another question I asked Creative Market: how do you plan on moderating resources (ensuring people aren't selling tutorial pieces or files they got/bought elsewhere) and as someone that would sell content, how do I ensure that someone doesn't just tweak my pieces and resell them (or are you equipped to handle disputes)? This sort of site seems ripe for ripping people/styles off that they see on Dribbble/elsewhere for a quick buck. Is there any incentive to bring higher-caliber designers on board while being able to keep the prices competitive?

Also from a UX standpoint, clicking a filetype should highlight it and darken the rest of the choices whereas it does just the opposite right now.

Interested to see where this goes.

<comment><AUTHOR> @mnicole, I've been thinking a lot about your feedback and if you have time would really appreciate if you elaborate on your views on attracting worth sellers. Do you think the one thing that would compel you as a designer to post is quality control? If not, what are the one or two things that would most influence your decision to upload content, in the same way that you do to Dribbble for instance?

<comment><USER2> Of course.

Knowing there's someone there curating quality stuff is a huge plus, but having a curator that is truly knowledgeable in the industry is preferred. I actually wrote an email to the fine folks at Behance letting them know that their Web Design Served gallery was pretty lackluster considering the talent they have on their site, expecting that there was some sort of algorithm in place that would shuffle content tagged as Web Design over to Served once it hit a certain amount of Likes or if the user has a lot of Followers. To my surprise, they got back to me and told me that their posts are hand-picked by staff members. After that, I lost a bit of faith in the platform and stopped utilizing it as a place I went to (daily) to find inspiration. Clicking through page after page of thumbnails got old and was really time-consuming, and I was hoping a site like The Served would eliminate that work for me, but it had the same problem.

Another thing for me, personally, is I thrive off of competition; it has consistently kept me moving forward and it seems to be the driving force behind a lot of Dribbble trends and rebounds alike. At the same time, as a day-to-day designer, I'm not going to be in the market for assets for most projects so the question becomes "How do you get designers to stick around and contribute to a site they wouldn't necessarily use themselves?" I think an answer to that would be that competitive factor; give them the opportunity to upload and explain changes they made from the original(s) and get real feedback not only from other designers but people that are actually in the market as well. One of my biggest issues with Dribbble is that it can tend to be more of a wankfest than it is a place to get real constructive criticism, and sometimes those criticisms are weak or flat-out misinformed.

I don't know how you monetize off of the concept of designers one-upping other designers to ultimately create a quality pool of assets for people to choose from, but I like the sound of it and will keep thinking about it. :)

Does that help?

<comment><USER3> Really helpful mnicole, thank you! Sorry to ask more questions but you're offering a truly valuable and different perspective to other feedback. I'm curious to hear more on your view that you wouldn't use it for assets and you don't think most designers would.

Interestingly some other designers have said that they're looking for 'building blocks' or components to save time in the design process. Do you feel that's an exception rather than the rule and therefore you design absolutely everything from scratch without borrowing inspiration or gathering assets to speed things up? This is really what I'm interested in knowing more about as it's really this insight that to speed up design downloaded assets that are still in layered art format (i.e. a PSD) can help to speed things up? Would love to hear more and incidentally if you could drop me a mail would love to ask you some more questions?

cillian (at) fol (dot) io Cheers.

<comment><USER2> I might be in a different boat than many of my peers (and for this reason I wish HN had more designers), as I've started designing almost exclusively in the browser outside of some initial wireframing on paper, so my assets are CSS and not PSD. In that sense, I wouldn't mind using others' work because the ability to see the code and the output are valuable in determining if I'm going to (or can, browser-dependency pending) use it. I'm also able to change values on-the-fly to see if it looks good in different colors, dimensions, etc. With PSDs, I'm left waiting until I open the file to see how it was created, hope it was done right, and then try to tweak the Layer FX to suit my needs. I've also then got to go through and slice it up and sprite it out.

When I was using Photoshop exclusively I created everything from scratch, mostly just because I am a perfectionist and because it was another way to learn. As is the case today, the only assets I'm willing to download and pay for are icon sets and typefaces. If I see something someone else did and want to use something similar, I'll simply copy/paste the flat image into Photoshop and recreate on top of it to cater to my needs.

Emailing you now!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I find the landing page overcrowded and thus confusing. The two slides on the blue background change too rapidly and the download button is ill-placed and looks somewhat ugly. Viewed on a 1366x760 notebook display which may be responsible for most of the bad feeling, but it's still probably something you may need to look into.

I have never used a service like this before, but that can change in the future. Still as a Windows user, this service does not stand out from the others for me.

Hope you find this useful.

<comment><USER5> When I scroll the page, it lags slightly. I'm using a reasonably fast computer on Linux and this kind of thing doesn't happen all that much. I can only assume it's because of all the elaborate javascript, CSS, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> @bobwebb, thanks for this - can you advise what browser (preferably with version number) you're using? You're right, it's likely the large amount of Javascript but also at present the infinite scroll rapidly loads a lot of quite high quality PNG preview images which we've found has a direct affect on some browsers. We're working on both refactoring and image optimization to correct this.

Cheers!

<comment><USER6> I haven't looked at your code but I encountered a similar problem on a site I was building, the scrolling was fast in every browser except firefox. Turned out that firefox doesn't dispatch scroll events as quickly as the others, but I found a function which fixed the problem:

[http://blog.keithclark.co.uk/faster-scrolling-parallax- websi...](http://blog.keithclark.co.uk/faster-scrolling-parallax-websites-in- firefox/)

Might be irrelevant but I thought I'd drop this in, in case it was useful.

<comment><USER3> Thanks James - will certainly take a look. I'm not sure if this is related or if it's simply the number of assets being loading are struggling on different browsers.

Cheers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> @mnicole thanks for the really solid feedback. All the points you've raised are quite reasonable. If I'm hearing you correctly your biggest concerns are around the 'cheap' factor and the risk of rip off while also maintain quality content and viable pricing?

I don't want to appear to have an answer for everything but we have a pretty complex community based curation solution that will very much be powered by it's users in the future and we have some ideas on how to work with top designers but at this stage it's very much about proving that there's a need for a tool like this.

Bear in mind, our focus isn't on ripping off - it's actually on allowing creatives to sell the building blocks of their design work between one another. It's really about the 'foundations' and not complete design work. This is for content creators/professionals to rapidly share assets between each other - think about how you use font libraries rapidly rather than perhaps cheap assets. We're not there but we're working on it! :)

On the UX point - can't fault you for spotting that - very eagle eyes, we're still working out some UI kinks and already looking at more drafts of this.

Any more feedback would be appreciated.

<comment><USER2> Right. For me, I'm not really into selling my resources to other professionals; for that I'd rather hand them out for free and see what they turn into in the hands of other creatives like is done on Dribbble already (also because I imagine that it is faster for a real designer to be inspired and create new assets than it is for them to download mine and waste time going through the layers, making tweaks, etc). If I'm going to be profiting off of it, I'd be selling the work as-is to devs and/or people that can hardly manage their way around Photoshop or sliced up into sprites and/or straight-up CSS. That being said, while code is more out-of-the-box useful, I can't really justify selling it either since all it takes is a View > Source to steal it.

I'm much more likely to search and find what I need on a service as vast (and generally free) as deviantArt than I am to look on ThemeForest, iStockPhoto or the like. Something about people and money makes the quality of the content go down in order to just churn it out and on the opposite end, the buyer's remorse is greater when you open the file and it isn't what you'd hoped.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for this mnicole - probably some of the best feedback we've had! I'm eager to see how many others share this point of view so will keep gathering feedback for now.

Cheers!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> @mmayernick - that's exactly what we're trying to achieve as I believe that the need for assets is specifically part of the production workflow (whether it's design/development, etc) so it's very action driven (i.e. I need something I search, I'm selling something I post). So we believe tight integration with IDE's is vital.

Right now it's about 30% of our overall traffic which is probably higher than we expected but certainly not what our vision is yet.

</comment><comment><USER7> I like the name and the logo. But landing page is a little bit over crowded. And for me "App" and "Audio" in the Filter just didn't fit to the page. This 2 points are more confusing for me. It remembers me a little bit on 99designs and istockphoto.

<comment><USER3> @reiz, Thanks for the feedback. Yes this is what we're hearing from a number of people. We're currently reducing the category options and also looking at the design to better reflect the marketplace nature of the system and get away from this 'gallery' concept.

Would love more feedback in the future if that's possible.

Cheers!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The OS integration is really interesting and compelling - sort of a Dropbox + eCommerce. I wonder if more services will start to look like this (at least those that involve files).

Do you have data on desktop vs web engagement of the product?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> @bmelton - thanks, for some reason when I tried to submit it with a URL the post wouldn't submit!

@davidandgoliath - thanks for the support. We're working hard on version 2 already, hence hunting for more feedback :)

Cheers.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> @Mondras - thanks for the quick response!

You're right the desktop app is definitely a little memory intensive, something we're working on but really appreciate your feedback. Anything else is really appreciated.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've been an early user and I think it's a genius idea, I love the fact that it is integrated with my OS, the memory footprint is a little high in my opinion but that's it! Loved it!

</comment><comment><USER10> Genius idea re: os integration, I can see this gaining traction quickly if executed properly :)

Enjoy!

</comment><comment><USER11> Clickable: <http://fol.io/></comment>


Ask HN: Son spent £2,500 on FIFA 14 last month - <AUTHOR>

A friend of ours has just discovered that her 12 year old son used her debit card details to run up a bill of around £2,500 over the last month.
It appears that this type of thing is not entirely unusual [0] [1].
It seems that this is a complicated legal situation, but from a PR and customer relations perspective I wonder if the companies involved refund this kind of expenditure in order to avoid bad publicity.
Does anyone know if EA Sports, Microsoft or Playstation ever issue refunds in these circumstances. Thanks in advance to anyone who responds.
[0] http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/mum-blasts-ea-sports-after-3185676
[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/3pG9xRMkVTgKn0jT19KNKdV/huge-fifa14-bills <comment><USER2> Several thoughts on this topic:

\- Cards (debit, credit, etc) are inherently insecure. When all the information you need to make a purchase is stamped right on it and or completely public (e.g. address).

\- "Verified by Visa" and "Mastercard securecode" help a little but they're badly done, poorly supported, and are trivial to bypass (they also rarely work on mobile devices).

\- This is largely a parental issue. You aren't bringing up a "good kid" if they either A) don't understand the value of a pound, or B) do but don't care.

\- Parents often blame the companies for "allowing" this to occur after the parents themselves knowingly added their card onto a system their kid has unlimited spending potential on (e.g. app stores, other digital goods, even Amazon).

\- I think it would be a nice gesture for EA to refund SOME of the money but, frankly, the parents deserve to take some level of hit on this one.

\- Most banks suck at informing their customers about unusual activity, like 2500 pounds on digital goods over a short period(!).

</comment><comment><USER3> I expect they will refund . . . or you can do a charge back by contacting your credit card company and explaining you didn't authorize the charges . . . in the future they should think about using a pre-paid card for in game/app store purchases . . . and explain to their son the value of money . . . maybe relate what he spent to the mortgage or family's monthly income.

</comment><comment><USER4> If they were on Xbox, Microsoft is the first contact for this. I was able to get a refund pretty easily after my little cousin bought a bunch of stuff on my account.

In the future, I'd recommend a pre-paid card, like others have mentioned. It will teach him how quickly 25 pounds can disappear even when it's only a few quid here and there.

</comment><comment><USER5> Yes, they will refund it in cases like this.</comment>


Docker for AWS Public Beta - <AUTHOR> https://beta.docker.com/ <comment><USER2> AWS already has two other ways of hosting Docker containers: EC2 Container Service [1] and Elastic Beanstalk [2].

Container service apparently "provides more fine-grained control and access to a wider set of use cases" compared to Beanstalk.

What's the difference of this third option? If you are new to AWS and/or Docker, how do you know which to choose?

[1] [https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonECS/latest/developerguide/...](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonECS/latest/developerguide/Welcome.html) [2] [https://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk/latest/dg/creat...](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk/latest/dg/create_deploy_docker.html)

<comment><USER3> I don't have that much experience with ECS, but it's a lot different than just having a remote docker host or docker swarm. You can't use docker-compose to just automagically spin up a project. I think they have their own yaml format that's similar to docker-compose V1 files, but it's cumbersome to not know what is and isn't supported and what amazon specific features you need to use, etc.

If you're new to AWS but know Docker (like me) then Docker for AWS seems like a winner.

<comment><USER4> > If you're new to AWS but know Docker (like me) then Docker for AWS seems > like a winner.

I'd disagree. It seems you still need to know AWS well enough to setup the various prerequisites. If you're new to AWS but know Docker, you're far better off with something like Convox (which does support docker-compose files)

<comment><USER3> I meant that only as a comparison between ECS and Docker for AWS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > ... and can provision Docker in a few clicks

One cool thing about docker is I can write a build file for generating reproducible-ish builds that I can run or rebuild anywhere. My Dockerfile can be version-controlled, copied, edited as code, etc.

But now to run it the official docker way in aws I have to click around a gui? That means no version-controlling my configuration, copying the same configuration to a new staging environment, it's harder to test a config change in staging and then be sure I roll out the exact same change to production, etc.

It seems like more and more of these infrastructure SAAS products are focusing on this kind of pointy clicky experience, and I don't understand why. Sure, a gui is potentially easier for deploying a quick sample app to try it out. But how is the "hello world" market lucrative enough that all these companies seem to focus on it to the exclusion of the "professional developer wanting to use modern best practices" market?

EDIT: and this obviously isn't exclusive to this product. AWS itself does the exact same thing. You have to go out of your way to find something like Terraform that lets you treat your infrastructure as code, and nowhere that I've seen does AWS itself encourage any kind of reproducibility of infrastructure or other kinds of workflow best practices.

<comment><USER6> They will eventually. Keep in mind, AWS itself was launched about a decade ago and they've been filling out the offering ever since. If or when the growth from new product lines slows, they will focus on the user experience, at which point they will pick off the most symbiotic third party product and replace it with their own version.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The Docker blog has a post with more information:

[https://blog.docker.com/2016/11/docker-aws-public- beta/](https://blog.docker.com/2016/11/docker-aws-public-beta/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Docker should not do such things, they should stick to their core things and not try to create 10000 things. I know they need to make money, but that is actually the wrong way.

<comment><USER8> Or at least get the core things rock solid. The impression I'm nearly always left with is that Docker's business decisions are very focused on the 80% functionality and they don't want to be bothered with the diminishing returns that are so critical to get right before you try to run down another rabbit trail.

Deep roots are critical for growing wide branches if you don't want to get blown over in a light breeze.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Safety Tip: Use the ECS optimized AMI by Amazon if you want to run docker on AWS.

It's based on Ubuntu + an Amazon in house docker edition with custom patches.

It seems that Amazon, Google and RedHat are all desperately trying to get a stable system out of docker. Better rely on them that figure this out on your own.

Insider Info: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12364522](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12364522)

<comment><USER10> I'm pretty sure that AMI is based on CentOS not Ubuntu.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Does this tie in with the cloud.docker.com (formerly tutum)? Will this be a separate offering? Very cool nonetheless

<comment><USER12> In the basic mode, this Docker for AWS enables installing some Docker engines integrated into a Swarm with integration into AWS.

It also provides an _option_ for an alternate full stack which solves a similar problem to Docker Cloud called the Docker Datacentre.

Docker Cloud is a public platform for managing containers.

Docker Datacentre is the behind the firewall version, but here they are standing it up in AWS.

I would expect them to converge over time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Docker Swarm is a great idea. But I think that with Swarm, I don't have to deal(and see) with nodes (server instances). I would be able to just run and scale services(containers). Scaling with nodes should be supported and done with AWS and Azure behind the scenes.

</comment><comment><USER14> What about docker for Azure ? I also thought there were too much issues with Swarm to be used in production.

<comment><USER13> Currently, Azure better supports Docker & Swarm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Skytap also has a good (fast and quick) solution, with all the docker bells and whistles.</comment>


Ask YC: Where to find practical guide on gamifying? - <AUTHOR>

Do you have insights on where i can find tutorials, step by step, formulas, applicable concepts?
I want to gamify my startup, but i can't find good resources. Most of the How to" are vague and at concept-level, rather than specific steps. I googled this question I have been on the wikipedia for gamification I have most of the famous books on gamification
Nowhere in those i can find how many levels to have, on what does it depend. How many points between each level couple, formulas for knowing which task brings how much points etc <comment><USER3> You can't find those answers because there aren't any.

There aren't any answers because it doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter how many levels you have, nor how many points things are assigned. There aren't any formulas for how they add up, either, because either they add up, or they don't.

Gamification isn't something you install, add some hooks in at appropriate points, and magically have user engagement. It's not logging.

It's applied psychology.

There aren't answers to how many levels you have because levels are shorthand for recognition of accomplishment. Points are proxies for the player's sense of self-worth. How do you define accomplishment in your system? What are reasonable, logical, or emotionally meaningful ways to break that up? How do you break that down into learnable tasks and efforts within those systems?

Those aren't rhetorical questions. I'm asking you those questions. The first two establish your levels, the third establishes things that are worth points. Maybe you earn points and those let you progress through levels. Maybe they're independent. It's whatever makes sense for incentivizing your system.

I ran some design workshops a while back, and one of them was on applied gamification. Out of five or six groups of 2-3 designer/developers, only one really "got" it, and applied game mechanics in a way that might actually be meaningful to users.

The rest applied it superficially and if they had been real products, they would have failed.

<http://vi.to/workshop/20100426/> has my write-up of the workshop and the exercise they did, and <http://vi.to/gmnotes> has my notes, including the handouts and my references. I'd start with those.

Oh, and if one of the "famous books on gamification" is the O'Reilly one, I'd forget everything you read there. That book is atrocious. [http://gamification-research.org/2011/09/a-quick-buck-by- cop...](http://gamification-research.org/2011/09/a-quick-buck-by-copy-and- paste/) is a good example of some of the negative coverage it received, and I never recommend it. Read books by psychologists, by people who have designed and launched video games, and by academics who do actual research and testing of their theories.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice answer. I have things to say: \- there are situations that number of levels matter - dependecies is one reason. There must be others, why is 51 the highest in WOW? I am looking for a source that can point all the reasons. \- how many points do you award each task? Surely this matters, but what do i benchmark those to? Time it takes to complete? Mix of time, complexitity, scarcity, x y z? What are possible x y z, and in what proportions do i mix them? \- books are "Gamification by Design" by Gabe Zichermann (biggest proponent), "Reality is Broken" by Jane McGonigal, Also "Flow", "Drive" and a couple more. All of those seem too theoretical, and when i sit to create something, i cant put numbers to the theories.

<comment><USER3> The number of levels doesn't matter, because players don't generally play (or decide to not play) games because one has more or fewer levels than another. Levels are shorthand for accomplishment. Level 51 is the highest in WoW because that's how much content and accomplishment they could determine. It's entirely arbitrary based on your application.

 _All_ of the reasons are entirely arbitrary based on your application. It doesn't matter because _they are manifestations of psychological principles._ You could have levels, or you could have ducks. You could have points, or you could have dogs. Every time you hit Submit in your app you get a dog, and every six dogs you get a parrot, and every three parrots you get a duck, and you need to email that duck to support@yourapp to unlock a new feature, or you can paint that duck a particular color and save it in your right sidebar, but you can't do both.

It doesn't matter, because it's not a recipe or a formula. They are representations of attributes to poke a person's psychology to tell them they are making progress (dogs to parrots), to reassure them (ducks being emailed), to give them investment (ducks being painted), etc.

You need to understand the psychological principles involved before any of it will make sense. The questions you're asking have no answers because they're ultimately nonsensical questions.

Gabe Zichermann's book is crap, and maybe that's why this doesn't make sense to you. None of those books you listed are by psychologists, mainstream video game designers, or research academics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cousera in August from Penn:

<https://www.coursera.org/#course/gamification>

<comment><USER5> This is about halfway through right now and I'm actually getting much more enjoyment out of this course than I originally expected. Really makes you think about how elements from gamification can improve design and customer engagement.

<comment><AUTHOR> God idea for courses! Thanks

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My opinion is that gamification is like cooking - you don't just to cook - <USER2> learn to cook specific things.

I'd suggest you follow the Lean path in applying gamification:

1\. Determine what behavior you want to enforce (Measure)

2\. Determine how you will enforce this behavior (Plan)

3\. Build the functionality required for the above (Build)

You should also decide where to draw the line; i.e. are you building a game or are you gamifying features to enforce certain behaviors.

You should definitely read Jeff Atwood's post on gamification here: [http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/10/the- gamification.ht...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/10/the- gamification.html)

Here are some good examples of gamification:

<http://www.stackoverflow.com/>

<http://www.codeschool.com/>

<http://tryruby.org/levels/1/challenges/0>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, i still can not answer the very first practical question: How many player-levels should there be?

<comment><USER7> How on _earth_ is that the very first practical question?

You should be asking yourself questions like 'What do I want to influence the user to do more of', and 'What's in it for them', and 'Is it worth the added complexity' and 'What ways are the most fun for them to start thinking of the things we want them to do as accomplishments'.

Talk of levels is like asking how many seats there should be on an airplane in 1900. Yeah, it might be a trivial consideration at some point in the distant future that will color people's impressions, but the practical questions are how the hell you push something through the air in a controlled, sustained fashion. Seats are irrelevant to the big questions, and they don't even have to be relevant in an actual implementation of cargo planes - the 'levels' abstraction isn't always a useful one in making things more fun.

Based on what I've seen, 'gamification' as business topic appears to be rife with cargo-cultism. Even the best implementations don't add a _ton_ to the experience, because there's no big incentives to work towards, no story to unlock or benefit to be had.

On StackExchange I have an indication of how prominent I am that I can show off to other people and potential employers, in addition to the small-scale competition to help people solve their problems. On Steam, badges from most games are little more than a funny phrase shoved in my face for five seconds unexpectedly. As Foursquare Mayor of my local chinese Restaurant, I get nothing.

To discuss this more, we would need more specifics of your startup.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Found this that you might be interested in: [http://blog.mojotech.com/post/49179410311/eight-ways-to- gami...](http://blog.mojotech.com/post/49179410311/eight-ways-to-gamify-your- app)</comment>


NYC Plans to Force Uber to Add a Tipping Feature - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-17/new-york-city-plans-to-force-uber-to-add-tipping-option?cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business&utm_content=business&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social <comment><USER2> The state should not be regulating for mandatory tipping, they should be regulating for minimum wages that people can actually live off without requiring tips. I sympathize with drivers but I will not be adding a tip to Uber or Lyft. These drivers should be using their union powers fighting for adequate wages if that's what they need.</comment>


Screenful: a readable program that does something interesting and fits in one screen - <AUTHOR> http://www.accesscom.com/~darius/hacks/screenfuls/screen1.html <comment><USER2> I really don't see what's the big deal. Lots of programs do lots of things without using lots of space..

</comment><comment><USER3> Huh? What? More explanation please?</comment>


The Future of Mobile App Dev – Q&A with Heyzap, Firebase, Apportable, Optimizely - <AUTHOR> http://blog.heyzap.com/post/110844026853/the-future-of-mobile-app-development

<comment><USER2> Is there any hope of being able to develop Android & iOS apps with close-to- native characteristics using web-like development technologies (mainly, JavaScript)? Seemed like Appcelerator was going in that direction but not sure what happened. Is React Native the possible answer?

<comment><USER3> Appcelerator has been very successful. However, the learning curve for complex apps can be a bit steep.

Once you've the hang of it, it's so much faster and easier, and removes so many of the platform specific quirks and limitations.

Especially for business focused apps, Titanium is an easy choice. The shops who are best at it have been doing it for years, and don't really want to give away their advantage -- most are too busy cranking out apps to write blog posts about it.

React is trendy, but Appcelerator has proven itself time and again in the market. It's really hard to have comprehensive cross-platform API coverage, React is going to be behind for quite a while.

<comment><USER2> Appcelerator lost me when it switched to the whole Alloy thing that I don't really understand. And their most helpful evangelist bailed.

<comment><USER3> I can understand that -- I stayed off Alloy, I'd already created Tiger [1]. Tiger is very similar to React in that Views are just JS Objects. Conversely, React's JSX is very similar to Alloy. I think XML is a backwards approach these days, but naturally many devs are comfortable with it so it continues.

The tiDev.io lead just joined Appcelerator as their new evangelist [2], I think he could be a good shot in the arm for the community.

[1] [https://github.com/doublerebel/tiger](https://github.com/doublerebel/tiger)

[2] [http://www.tidev.io/2015/02/02/goodbye/](http://www.tidev.io/2015/02/02/goodbye/)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Aphex twin speaks to Tatsuya Takahashi - <AUTHOR> http://item.warp.net/interview/aphex-twin-speaks-to-tatsuya-takahashi/ <comment><USER2> I can't wait to get a monologue, if you play microtonal Indian ragas or Turkish music Aphex took the normal autotuning modern analog synth use to keep in tune to enable microtonal scales outside the standard 12 tones, but you can edit on device, some Moog synths can do microtuning but only with a janky pc editor. The result of their collaboration is extremely exciting and for less than the cost of a decent guitar.</comment>


Show HN: rkQuery — jQuery for Riak Search, in Python - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/zacharyvoase/rkquery#readme

<comment><USER2> Ok, I'll bite - how is this related to jQuery?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, that might have been a little disingenuous. I guess I just wanted to associate it with that functional fluid interface. But I've been up for about 36 hours now so I'm not thinking so well :)

<comment><USER3> It looks more like a bastardization of Django QuerySets and Q object API.

But with the Q.foo() style syntax maybe its more like underscoreJS for the Riak?

Jquery is more object oriented.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, it's a mish-mash of inspirations. But I was fed up of seeing string interpolation used in search queries. Just because they don't have the ability to modify or destroy data, doesn't mean they don't present an attack vector.

<comment><USER4> Django-Haystack uses a derivative of Django's Q object as well to construct queries as well[1]. It's very, very effective.

1 [http://django- haystack.readthedocs.org/en/latest/searchquery...](http://django- haystack.readthedocs.org/en/latest/searchquery_api.html?highlight=SQ%20object#sq- objects)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


My YC clone I'm working on - cYClone screenshots - <AUTHOR>

Many souls squeak for an YC clone. I personally love YC's model. This site "model" can serve as a solid base for many purposes from dating to classifieds, from hacker news to microbloging so I work on something I call cYClone for now :) You can see screenshots here:
http://ivansuchy.com/labs/cyclone/
Your feedback is very appreciated guys. <comment><USER3> YC is a sort of incubator. YC news is what you've cloned. There are a bunch of open source things like that already. I wouldn't work on it myself - <USER2> important thing in these things is the community, not so much the technology.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm doing it just for fun. There is also bunch of programming frameworks and new frameworks are still appearing, so there is no reason not to do something just because there are some "things" which exist already :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice, I wasn't aware someone in Slovakia actually knows about YC!

My 2 cents on cyclone:

Don't display the avatar/photo on the Recent post page - it is distracting. Also, display more than just 3 recent posts (on one page without scrolling) - in other words, get rid of the photo.

The "comments" and "edit" links are way to much on the right - I'm lazy, I don't want to move my mouse so far away :)

If you think of it, a user can submit an post with a URL and also additional links in the message body. This post would look confusing. Maybe you could scan the message body for URLs after submitting if the Link field is empty (to create anchors) or don't even bother at all. Oh, and you're missing the "edit" link in slovak translation...

Do you plan to deploy it oneday? Or is it just an exercise?

<comment><AUTHOR> Tu sa clovece najdu ludia ... :) BTW: congrats to new Skoda Superb.

First valuable feedback. Thank you very much mcxx. There will be some personalization, if you consider avatar photos distracting you will have an option to turn it off (and many other on/off options). There are 3 post just because I needed to create smaller screenshots :)

I still don't know where these links come finally. As you can see there is little gap at the bottom of the message for meta informations and maybe for comments/edit links, tags and so on ... its detail.

Link parsing feature has been created later, when link box in post form already existed ... I still don't know exactly how this will work at the end :)

I plan to run it on several sites with different topic/purpose ... I'm open to any suggestions. It's pitty some people can't understand it :)

pre-alpha or whatever you call it :) will run on the same URL.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You are cloning Hacker News, not Y Combinator. Unless you are planning to fund startups.

Hacker news is a social news aggregator like many other, what makes it special is the community (us!).

In spain there is a digg-clone called Meneame, which is free software. You can get the source from <http://svn.meneame.net/index.cgi/branches/version2/> so maybe you can skip some steps ;) (The bad news are that it is a piece of PHP...).

OTOH, if what you enjoy is programming and are doing it to learn/practice/whatever keep us informed :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm already running plig at linkuj.sk so this is nothing new for me :) but thanks for explanation.

Exactly... programming is just my hobby as you can see on my homepage.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Contractor rates and Full-time salaries in UK outside London? - <AUTHOR>

Hello,
So any ideas about the given topic? For instance, is it realistic to expect GBP 100K+ full-time worker salary outside London (and maybe outside finance sector)? Same goes for 600-800 GBP daily rates for contractors.
The thing I hate with London is that, there are some good options (e.g. above mentioned finance sector high salaries  + bonuses equal to annual salary), but you have to live in the rented flat whole your life... Given nowadays real estate prices, it is unrealistic to buy a good house or even a good enough flat in London... <comment><USER2> I've been contracting in London half the year and remotely from Estonia the other half of the year for about three years now. It's hard to get UK clients to agree to remote work. It usually takes 1 - 3 months for me to find a remote contract but the lower cost of living and high quality of life here is worth it. I've had to knock £70 off my day rate to keep my clients from considering other candidates.

I don't see a lot of contracts from outside London appear where the day rates are anywhere near what clients inside the M25 offer.</comment>


A Mystery Solved: "Fake Steve" Blogger Comes Clean - New York Times - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/06/technology/06steve.html?ex=1344052800&en=8ab7e0cf79cf8e96&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

<comment><USER2> This was so much more fun when it could still possibly be the man himself....

<comment><USER3> indeed. The blog was really a good read sometimes.

That fake steve got up in rankings on most important tech people is proof of that :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Go go New York Times

"The book, in part, led to Mr. Lyons's unmasking. Last year, his agent showed the manuscript to several book publishers and told them the anonymous author was a published novelist and writer for a major business magazine. The New York Times found Mr. Lyons by looking for writers who fit those two criteria, and then by comparing the writing of "Fake Steve" to a blog Mr. Lyons writes in his own name, called Floating Point (floatingpoint.wordpress.com)."

The NYT also gets to IM the man himself.

"[Steve Jobs] said in an instant message conversation that he had no interest in reading Mr. Lyons's novel. "

</comment><comment><USER5> Here's the crazy thing for me: I know Dan Lyons. Or, I knew him a few years ago. Here I am, a huge FSJ fan. I have the t-shirts. The RSS feed is on my google home. And not for a moment did I suspect it was Dan.</comment>


Would you have survived in the middle ages? - <AUTHOR> http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1247 <comment><USER3> I am from Somalia: In 1991 - 1992 I witnessed exactly that, a lapse into a dark, and long forgotten period of pure human savagery.

</comment><comment><USER4> There is an assuption here that the only infulential factor on health is genes. Environment could play an even stronger role. A person in the middle ages wouldn't be surrounded by a toxic environment and be consuming the chemical-laden nutrient deprived food that is standard fare today.

<comment><USER5> Speak for yourself, the nutrient rich food and especially the variety I eat each day was not available in the middle ages. Remember that people in the those times where much shorter (as proved by the shorter beds), this is the result of malnutrion.

Toxicity is likely to be higher then, open or no sewage systems, very low hygiene (people didn't bathe, lots of animals) and remember they used woodstoves in side the house!

<comment><USER4> sewage systems are necessary for sanitation in cities. Most people were living in the country side. "hygiene" is largely a social aspect that doesn't effect health much. Some researchers claim people did not lose height in the Middle Ages at all. Variety of food is not that important- we just need to get all the required nutrients in the foods we eat. Great to hear you are able to go against the modern trends and eat nutrient rich food.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This was my favorite kottke.org post from last year,

"I wanted to ask for survival tips in case I am unexpectedly transported to a random location in Europe (say for instance current France/Benelux/Germany) in the year 1000 AD (plus or minus 200 years). I assume that such transportation would leave me with what I am wearing, what I know, and nothing else. Any advice would help."

<http://kottke.org/08/06/survival-tips-for-the-middle-ages>

Jason even opened it up for comments.

<comment><USER7> In reading the Kottke thread for about 30 mins (it rules), I just had this thought: What if Michaelangelo (or some other prolific inventors) weren't that special. What if they were simply average Joe's like you and me that were transported back in time. They used their basic knowledge of stuff around them to "invent" things.

<comment><USER6> Honestly, besides the natural teleological questions this prompts, if I were transported back to the middle ages there's not all that much I'm sure I could invent. For example, I have no idea how a computer is actually built, from the ground-up. Maybe I could have a few acute scientific observations ("try penicillin!"; "use tungsten for your light bulb!", "b-b-boil that milk!") and I could probably derive Calculus. But... that's about it. The vast majority of human knowledge is culturally transmitted; few humans have cumulative "clones" of the current "repository" of human knowledge stored in their memory.

<comment><USER8> Yes. Though knowing that certain directions are promising, would help. You know where to search.

For example, I could not build a steam engine, but I know enough to describe how one could build a basic atmospheric steam engine, and that to improve upon it, you'd need to separate the condensation of the steam from the rest of the engine.

But I guess I would have a lot of problems, convincing any sane medieval person to take my ideas seriously.

<comment><USER9> You could leave one helluva Leonardo-style sketch notebook, at the very least, if you could be spared the parchment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Brings up the point of our continued evolution towards weaker bodies - <USER2> more cures we have for asthma, children's diabetes, etc., the more the people that have those ailments reproduce, and the more people there are with those ailments.

<comment><USER11> Actually humanity is not really part anymore of the "survival of the fittest" or evolutionary cycle. We are actively changing ourselves and starting, in laboratories at least, to modify genetics. Won't take long before parents can "modify" their children to be smarter, healthier, etc.

<comment><USER12> I disagree. We are no more not part of the evolutionary cycle than we are not part of planetary climate change. (Pardon the double negative).

Evolution is no more than genetic drift within a population through reproduction and variation shaped by selective pressure. What you describe as gene therapy could be seen as a selective pressure. But there are many selective pressures on large populations of humans and these selective pressure vary from one set to another. I do agree that the dynamics of selective pressures has changed for humans thanks to modern medicine. But I contest it still applies.</comment></comment></comment>


Kent Beck's TCR: A pulverizer for coding tasks - <AUTHOR> https://flexport.engineering/tcr-a-pulverizer-for-coding-tasks-f059786451d6 <comment><USER2> I've never been much in to trends like TDD, and just now heard of TCR but it reminds me of a bug that once happened in the GHC Haskell compiler: if your code failed to type-check the source file was deleted. There was some discussion on whether this was a bad thing.

I'm all for things that make you reflect deeply on possible bugs (habits from the days of cards and batch turnaround) before saving/committing, but TCR seems pretty far out there for me.</comment>


Hacker Barnaby Jack has died - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/26/us-hacker-death-idUSBRE96P0K120130726 <comment><USER2> Barnaby Jack was part of the soul of the software security community. He had so many friends. Please today remember that he was a real human being, and that he had friends who might read HN.

<comment><USER3> Exactly. I mentioned on another submission, that got killed, that it would be a great tribute to the man if one of his friends/associates that new his work well could fill in and give his presentation at the conference. With so little time, I now think that might be unreasonable. Maybe use the time slot to hand out the slides, raise a toast and share some stories. The subject of his talk is incredibly important and should be distributed.

After minor digging, here is his blog about medical device hacking vs. the hollywood version:

[http://blog.ioactive.com/2013/02/broken-hearts-how- plausible...](http://blog.ioactive.com/2013/02/broken-hearts-how-plausible- was.html)

Interesting tidbit from the blog-The CEO's father has a pacemaker.

<comment><USER3> Blackhat will leave his slot open to commemorate.

[https://www.blackhat.com/latestintel/07262013-remembering- ba...](https://www.blackhat.com/latestintel/07262013-remembering-barnaby- jack.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Barnaby Jack "jackpotting" an ATM at BlackHat USA 2010: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-dS4UFomv0&t=5m47s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-dS4UFomv0&t=5m47s)

<comment><USER2> In the last couple years he'd become (justifiably) famous for stunt hacks like this, but I think it's important to remember that the guy was the genuine article, genuinely talented, old school in the truest sense. Here's I think a better starting point for his work. Read it on the mailing list, like we all did:

[http://marc.info/?l=vuln-dev&m=106331197530352&w=2](http://marc.info/?l=vuln- dev&m=106331197530352&w=2)

<comment><USER5> [http://www.phrack.org/issues.html?issue=55&id=15](http://www.phrack.org/issues.html?issue=55&id=15)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Please do not make comments about conspiracy theories. This event is not suspicious.

<comment><USER6> Until there is a cause of death from a thorough autopsy, I think it's too early to say whether this is suspicious or not. I can't believe you are being upvoted for saying this.

<comment><USER7> Russia Today certainly knows how to state it for maximum effect:

"Hacker dies days before he was to reveal how to remotely kill pacemaker patients"

[http://rt.com/usa/hacker-pacemaker-barnaby- jack-639/](http://rt.com/usa/hacker-pacemaker-barnaby-jack-639/)

Edit: It seems very relevant to keep in mind that this is not the first time someone (or even Jack in particular) had demoed remote kill switch functionality for human beings. [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-29/mcafee-hacker- says-...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-29/mcafee-hacker-says- medtronic-insulin-pumps-vulnerable-to-attack.html)

<comment><USER8> The kind of thing they're referring to is commonplace in Russia, unfortunately, so you can't exactly blame them for thinking that: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_R...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_Russia)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As someone who has a defibrillator with remote-access capabilities, I'm thankful that Jack was trying to bring this vulnerability to light.

</comment><comment><USER10> But why ? Didnt know anything about him but he looks like 35 years old. An Accident ? Something else ?

All these young tech people dieing lately is a bit unsettling.

<comment><USER8> Life is fragile.

I had a friend of mine drop dead of a heart attack at the ripe old age of 27.

<comment><USER11> A friend of mine died from pneumonia at 30. He went to bed not feeling well and never woke up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The original link isn't working for me but this appears to be the same: [http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/26/net-us-hacker- deat...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/26/net-us-hacker-death- idUSBRE96P0K120130726)

<comment><USER13> Try this one: [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-26/barnaby-jack- comput...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-26/barnaby-jack-computer- hacker-dead-at-36.html)

<comment><USER12> I thought the comments on the link I gave were bad but those are just as bad.

I mean the 'omg hacker means evil and he deserved it!' stuff...at least the tinfoil hats make a bit of sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Isn't it sad that since the NSA revelations anything is really "on the table" for our imaginations? Nothing seems too far-fetched these days...

<comment><USER15> The U.S. mortality rate is 0.008 per year. That means that in any gathering of 100 people (roughly the number of speakers at Black Hat), there is a 55% chance that at least one will die in the year before the event and a 6.5% chance they would die one month before the event. Over ten years of conferences, the odds that someone would die within one month of speaking is 49%. The under-40 crowd doesn't really appreciate this since death predominantly affects older people.

<comment><USER16> That doesn't consider that the age and economic status of conference speakers isn't representative of the U.S. as a whole. Not that it's impossible for it to be an accident, but the odds are certainly less than 49%, given that the crowd is mostly urban professionals.

<comment><USER15> Sorry, I should be clearer: I was calculating based on the general mortality rate. The accident rate is much lower (0.000391). I agree that either measure is skewed, though; this is just a rough calculation. The annual death rate for 35-44 from all causes (see [http://www.data360.org/dsg.aspx?Data_Set_Group_Id=587](http://www.data360.org/dsg.aspx?Data_Set_Group_Id=587)) is 0.002, which puts the odds of a speaker death within one month of the conference at 15% over ten years. Poorer, but then again, this is for only one specific security conference. If you assume five security conferences a year of all sorts, it's back to 50% over ten years. I think it's a bit higher as these speakers live sedentary lifestyles, even for the U.S.

<comment><USER16> Makes sense.

Another thought: Barnaby Jack was one of the top speakers and was to speak on a very controversial subject. I would guess that out of the 5000 speeches that were presented in your scenario only a few of them, maybe 2%, would contain information controversial enough that foul play would appear as a reasonable scenario to an outside observer (and this is being generous).

      Let F = foul play occurred in order to disrupt a conference,
        D = death of speaker one month before conference

      Let P(D) = (.02 deaths per year for 25-35 y.o) / (12 months in a year) = 0.0017
      Let P(F|D) = .001 (assuming 1 in 1000 chance foul play was involved given a death of a speaker at a conference)
        P(F) = P(F|^D) * P(^D) + P(F|D) * P(D)
             = 0 * 0.98 + 0.001 * .02
             = 0.00002
      Let P(D|F) = 1 (chance of death if foul play is involved, assumed 100%)

      So Bayes theorem gives us:

      P(F|D) = P(D|F)*P(F)/P(D)
           = 1 * 0.00002 / 0.0017
           = 0.018 (chance of foul play for a single speech given the speaker died 1 month before)

      Let P(C) = 0.02 (probability of a controversial speech)
      P(D) = .0017 (from above)

      Let P(C&D|F) = .5 (assuming there is a 50% chance the speech was controversial given foul play did occur, and death always occurs from foul play)
      P(C&D) = .02 * 0.0017 = 0.000034
      P(F) = 0.00002 (from above)

      P(F|C&D) = P(C&D|F) * P(F) / P(C&D)
             = 0.5 * 0.00002 / .000034
             = around a 30% foul play was involved in Barnaby Jack's death

There are a lot of assumptions here that could adjust the final figure up or down, but if I did my math right, foul play does seem a reasonable scenario, (but not a foregone conclusion).

edit: removed line "P(F|D) = 0.00058 (from above)" as pointed out by user 0003. End result didn't change, though.

<comment><USER17>
      P(F|D) = 0.00058 (from above)

Can you explain this line?

<comment><USER16> Sorry, that line was erroneous, but didn't affect the rest of the calculation as far as I can tell. I have removed it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The correct link to the Reuters article is [http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/26/net-us-hacker- deat...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/26/net-us-hacker-death- idUSBRE96P0K120130726)

</comment><comment><USER19> I find the title of this article to be unsettling. The title almost makes it sound like he died to avoid going to the conference.

While I guess that feeds into the much beloved past time of conspiracy theory, I can't help but think it could have been worded significantly better.

<comment><AUTHOR> When I originally saw this I posted it with the title as it was on the article. The article itself has been updated with a lot more information than was originally on there and also the title has changed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Corrected Link [http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/27/hacker-death- idUSL...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/27/hacker-death- idUSL1N0FW0HW20130727)

</comment><comment><USER21> BBC article here: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23467411](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23467411)

</comment><comment><USER22> To many researchers are turning up dead lately.

<comment><USER23> Too many? How many have turned up dead?

<comment><USER24> One is too many?

<comment><USER25> One is not "researchers."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I had only met him in person once, but he was clearly a great human being. I'll remember the drinks we shared.

</comment><comment><USER27> The article is 404?

<comment><USER8> Not anymore it's not.

Reuters just does that from time to time.

I think it's similar to reddit's "uh oh you broke reddit" response, just a bit less user friendly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Silkwood](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Silkwood)

<comment><USER28> This is indeed an interesting story. Thanks for sharing.</comment></comment>


XTouch - <AUTHOR> http://xtouch.io/ <comment><USER2> This is pretty cool but will definitely rely on heavy adaptation. One thing I found annoying is having to remember the exact spot to tap.

</comment><comment><USER3> cool tech but i have to remember where i made my buttons? what if there's music playing in the background?</comment>


Dutch startup's 2nd investment for new collaborative photobook technology - <AUTHOR> http://collab.pastbook.com/

<comment><USER2> Awesome! I just read about that on Tech Crunch and The Next Web. Keep up the nice work guys! Love your books :)</comment>


Crowdsourcing craigslist bank robber nabbed on DNA evidence - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081107-crowdsourcing-craigslist-bank-robber-nabbed-on-dna-evidence.html

<comment><USER2> Quite a funny tale! Rather ingenious on this part, too.

While the "accomplices" were innocent in this case, it makes me wonder whether "crowd-crime" will become common in future. Rather like flashmobs, 30 criminals could easily co-ordinate a mass shoplifting operation and the sheer numbers would overwhelm (and even intimidate) any security that was present. I read a story a year or two ago about gangs of hundreds of poor children robbing tourists on beaches somewhat along these lines.

<comment><USER3> Mobbing is a common gang activity. But the whole point of a gang is absolute trust, violently enforced. You can't do that with a collection of random strangers.

However... mybe you could start a riot this way, or mass disobedience of traffic laws, or a hate crime against an unpopular minority. That's a scary thought.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I thought he pulled off the perfect crime but alas the moral to the story is buy your wig and other needed materials from ebay or at least space your purchases out over time locally.

<comment><USER5> Or don't be a bank robber, but yeah, yours works too.</comment></comment>