U.S. Attorney issues statement defending prosecution of Aaron Swartz - <AUTHOR> http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/blog/startups/2013/01/us-attorney-aaron-swartz-statement.html?page=all <comment><USER2> I guess it's pretty much what you would expect them to say. I still don't think threatening to prosecute him with a charge that could put him in jail for multiple years for an act that should have had a maximum penalty of no more than 30 days is anything they should have done or been able to do, and the fact that they "offered" to make him a felon for the rest of his life and send him to prison for "only" six months if he would waive his right to bankrupt himself proving that he didn't do it is not exactly endearing. But it's what they do every day, so naturally they think it's normal.

I've already lost count of how many times I've said this in the last few days, but we need to fix this. These laws have got to change so that this can't happen.

<comment><USER3> What do you think they should have charged him with, specifically?

<comment><USER4> Copyright infringment?

<comment><USER3> He did access MIT's network after they tried to kick him off. That's not nothing.

<comment><USER5> If it's not nothing, what is it, exactly? Lori Drew? Worse?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> They didn't threaten him with the maximum sentence allowed by the law. They also didn't duct tape him to a chair and electrocute him. The two statements are approximately as meaningful, since Swartz was charged with 13 felony counts and the maximum penalty for his case would have been longer than the base penalty in California for murdering a police officer during the commission of a felony.

What they did instead was threaten Swartz with a calamitous 6-7 year sentence if he exercised his right to a jury trial, demanding instead that he testify under oath that he was guilty of 13 felonies and accept 4-6 months in prison.

<comment><USER7> 6mo in federal prison and labelled as a felon for downloading journal articles. You think that was a fair deal, and he should have taken it?

<comment><USER3> He didn't say that.

Also, for the sake of accuracy--it wasn't just downloading journal articles. It was downloading copyrighted journal articles while using someone's network and evading their attempts to kick you off.

<comment><USER8> Any public visitor can download articles using the MIT network. Aaron dis just that, but he downloaded more than one articles. Perfectly legal.

He didn't evade anything. He just used MAC address spoofing. That's not illegal either. There was no attempt to kick him off.

<comment><USER3> MIT allows people to use their network, but that doesn't mean they give up the right to revoke permission. MIT took multiple measures to get block Aaron. There is nothing illegal about spoofing your MAC ID, but spoofing your MAC ID to get around a ban suggests that you know your permission to access a network has been revoked, yet you continue to do so. That's the illegal part.

<comment><USER9> You can interpret a mac address ban that way, but you could also interpret it as implying that you're using too much resources at once, so you can't do that, but throttling your download rate might be okay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Carmen Ortiz's defence is an attempt to shift the Overton window.

Her argument is that he was charged with so many charges that if he was given the maximum sentence on all of them he would have been put in prison for a very long time. That sets the upper limit of the Overton window. Instead of that upper limit, she is quick to point out that he was offered six months imprisonment if her admitted to the charges.

But taken without context, six months imprisonment for non-violent activities that, even if they had been successful, would have been very unlikely to have had a significant adverse impact on anyone is extremely disproportionate.

The other problem with her 'maximum sentence' argument is that it was the USAG office that decided to charge him with multiple charges all relating to the same events. If they had just charged him with "access[ing] a computer without authorization or exceeding authorized access" and no other charges, the maximum sentence allowed under 18 USC 1040 would have been 10 years (see <http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1030>), and under the sentencing guidelines he would have fallen under Offence Level 6 (see [http://www.ussc.gov/Guidelines/2012_guidelines/Manual_HTML/2...](http://www.ussc.gov/Guidelines/2012_guidelines/Manual_HTML/2b1_1.htm)). Assuming no criminal history, the sentencing guidelines would dictate 0-6 months imprisonment and/or a $500-5000 fine.

<comment><USER5> She (along with Heymann) is an inveterate authoritarian who deigned to offer him a break from her ridiculously overcharged case, calling it a favor.

She's mentally ill, that one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The statement contains no new news, it was already reported that there was an ultimatum from the prosecution for him to either plead guilty to all 13 counts, or go to trial where he faced a sentence of up to 50 years in prison.

Attorney Jennifer Granick, the Director of Civil Liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, pointed out that plea offers are not binding on the court and are presented as optional suggestions for the judge to consider during sentencing. Normally the judge goes with the "neutral" sentencing guidelines, regardless of any deals.

[http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2013/01/towards- learning-l...](http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2013/01/towards-learning- losing-aaron-swartz-part-2)

In this case, neutral guidelines are capped at 5 years per count, for a potential sentence of 65 years in prison, with the guilty plea deal.

As Granick states:

> [T]he court is not constrained to sentence as the government suggests. > Rather, the probation department drafts an advisory sentencing report > recommending a sentence based on the guidelines. The judge tends to rely > heavily on that "neutral" report in sentencing. If Aaron pleaded to a > misdemeanor, his potential sentence would be capped at one year, regardless > of his guidelines calculation. However, if he plead guilty to a felony, he > could have been sentenced to as many as 5 years, despite the government's > agreement not to argue for more. Each additional conviction would increase > the cap by 5 years, though the guidelines calculation would remain the same. > No wonder he didn't want to plead to 13 felonies. Also, Aaron would have had > to swear under oath that he committed a crime, something he did not actually > believe.

Those who argue that Swartz should have plead guilty to all 13 counts are either unaware of these facts, or choose to present their opinion in a way designed to mislead the public that the prosecutor's deal was reasonable.

<comment><USER12> >plea offers are not binding on the court and are presented as optional suggestions for the judge to consider during sentencing

That's not entirely true. There are two basic types of pleas. One is a sentence recommendation - the government recommends a sentence, but the court is free to do what it wants and the defendant cannot withdraw the plea if they are unhappy with the sentence. However, rule 11(c)(1)(C) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure allows for plea agreements under which the court may only either accept or reject the plea and the stipulated sentence; it cannot change the sentence. If the court rejects a plea made under this rule, the defendant is free to withdraw their plea and go back to square one (face a trial). The Rule that the plea is being made under is always specified in the plea agreement in writing. I don't know which type they were discussing, but he would have had to be insane to plead guilty to 13 felonies and not insist on an 11(c)(1)(C) plea.

He may have been stressed not over the initial sentence, but over the the consequences. For one thing, he would have been under federal Supervised Release for a period of either 3 or 5 years, during which a judge could have barred him from using a computer or the Internet. Any violation of these rules could have then yielded an instant sentence of up to the length of supervision - either 3 or 5 years - even if the violation occurred on the last day of his supervision. These types of restrictions are put in place all the time.

Finally, pleading guilty to 13 felonies may have been problematic from a criminal history point of view. If he were ever charged with anything in the future, the judge or prosecutor would be unlikely to show mercy on someone that has 13 felonies on their record. In some states, any prosecution for a felony subsequent to this deal would have qualified him for a three strikes/habitual offender status and an accompanying life sentence (Nevada being one, for example, that does not distinguish between violent and non- violent felonies for purposes of three strikes sentences - a felony DUI in Vegas after this plea would have earned Aaron a life sentence).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If they were only looking for a 6 month sentence, why did they charge him with 11 counts of fraud? The judge is free to disregard the proscecution's recommendations and sentence the defendant to the full legal maximum. This is not common in federal cases, but it does happen.

<comment><USER14> Plea bargaining is a form of negotiation.

<comment><USER15> Choosing between serving more time and serving less time isn't much of a deal when you think what you did was right and you are innocent.

<comment><USER14> Doing what you think is right when you know it is probably illegal is called civil disobedience, and it usually entails a willingness to go to prison when done right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The statement makes clear what I had suspected, as a lawyer, from the outset: Lessig, some criminal defense attorneys, and a few other parties have mounted a witchhunt that has little to do with the case in hand.

I should add that I'm not far from Lessig politically, and I don't have any strong disagreement with open-information advocates. But Lessig turned this case into something it shouldn't have been, and he benefits from that personally. Aaron's lawyer, a partner at a major firm, is using this case for his own personal publicity, and that is a shame too. "Follow the money" works for people who manipulate hackers too, not just those who oppose them.

I've noticed a lot of legal mistakes in this forum. To start with, the attempt here wasn't "victimless," and the law routinely punishes unsuccessful attempts even when nobody is hurt. "Computer hacker offered plea deal of six-months in minimum-security prison after seeking to make an expensive archive that generates significant revenue public" wouldn't arouse anger among anyone except extremists. It might arouse political disagreement, or even a small protest, but not a call to fire prosecutors. What it aroused before Aaron's suicide was a small effort to raise money for his legal defense, which didn't really go anywhere. If we're going to be rational, that shouldn't change when a defendant commits suicide while the case is pending.

There's other manipulative PR worth identifying. Aaron's lawyer said that he told the prosecutor his client was a potential suicide risk. How does anyone who reflects for a minute think that a prosecutor's office should respond to that. They did what they usually do, which is to tell the lawyer that they could revoke bail and monitor the client if that was what the client wanted. What else should they have done? Do we think all charges against suicidal people should be dropped?

<comment><USER11> Welcome to Hacker News, SocioTech. I see you joined when the Swartz case news broke and all of your posts so far have been to defend the actions of the prosecution while demonizing Swartz and his advocates.

That's fine, but why not take a look at the front page of Hacker News? As a tech guy and hacker, I'm sure there are lots of other topics that you as a new member would enjoy discussing and not just this single topic.

<comment><USER17> Yes - it has me wondering who SocioTech is, who he or she works for and what their role is there. Arguably the behavior reflects someone who is PR, political party or DA office, which in itself would be fairly big news.

<comment><USER16> Reading about this case, I've seen lots of people called "shills" for the US Atty's office or the DOJ. You probably won't (and maybe shouldn't) take my word for it, but that's just not how these organizations work. It isn't even close.

People in small communities often overimagine their own importance. That's not an insult, just a psychological truth. The DOJ doesn't care what people here write, and if you talked to people there, from political appointees down to staffers, most of them would fall somewhere between (a) pleasure that the democratic process is proceeding through random or organized discussion online and (b) snide dismissal of hackers they don't understand. They don't hire PR people to infiltrate discussion boards on general issues. (Of course, the FBI does hire people to infiltrate criminal communities.) Think of any cases of astroturfing that have come to light. It happens by hotels that want to post undeserved reviews on TripAdvisor, startups (and even charities, as Aaron once pointed out) that want to get attention, etc., etc. The DOJ and US Attys aren't in the astroturfing business.

Another thing that should give people some perspective: It's laughable for people to have suggested, as I think a dozen did, that the new limit for White House petitions (100,000 instead of 25,000) had anything remotely to do this this case. Most people in the administration haven't heard of it and never will. There's a lot going on in the world. ;)

<comment><USER18> > _I've seen lots of people called "shills" for the US Atty's office or the > DOJ._

I don't think you were just called a shill for either of those organizations, but rather a shill for one or more of the _individuals_ involved.

<comment><USER16> Well, it's not true either way. But that too is very rare. There's just too much risk with it, and it's not how most nontechies think. Look what actually happened in this case: Ortiz's husband issued an ill-thought-out, insensitive statement in frustration on Twitter, and then eventually there was a calm, rational press release from the office.

Then they'll move on. They've got thousands of other cases, many of which have made other communities similarly angry. That we get 35,000 signatures for an online petition mostly speaks to the fact that we're online.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "As federal prosecutors, our mission includes protecting the use of computers and the Internet by enforcing the law as fairly and responsibly as possible."

Then why did you prosecute a terms of service violation? Or do you mean "protecting" the use of computers by restricting it to only those purposes you happen to like?

<comment><USER16> This "TOS" stuff is another red herring. Even the EFF said the new proposed change in that law wouldn't have stopped the charges in this case.

This case was about more than doing something that JSTOR told users not to do. Yes, it involved that too, but it also involved taking materials that others had copyright to and threatening to make them publicly available, which could have disrupted many organizations' functioning.

Would you be surprised if someone pulled four million videos off of YouTube (or books off of Google Books) and torrented them, and then was prosecuted and asked to serve six months?

<comment><USER2> >Would you be surprised if someone pulled four million videos off of YouTube (or books off of Google Books) and torrented them, and then was prosecuted and asked to serve six months?

You're using the six months as though it wasn't the "coercive" part of a coercive plea bargain. When six months in prison and a felony record is supposed to be the _carrot_ in a case of noncommercial copyright infringement, something malevolent is going on with the stick.

<comment><USER16> Maybe. It's the administrative system we've got, though, and we should be talking about how to reform the whole thing.

Note how much Orin Kerr recently agreed with the points I made days ago here on this subject.

<comment><USER2> >It's the administrative system we've got, though, and we should be talking about how to reform the whole thing.

I completely agree. The whole thing with the prosecutors is kind of a "they represent the part of what's broken that we can currently see" thing. Fixing the laws and the system is more important than fixing a few individuals.

>Note how much Orin Kerr recently agreed with the points I made days ago here on this subject.

I think most reasonable people end up coming to largely the same conclusions about all of this at the end of the day... which is actually kind of eerie. People who are normally at loggerheads continuously, now getting along and working together.

It makes my brain hurt that it took for someone to die for this to happen and now I don't want to be happy about it even though it's seeming more likely that we may actually get something good to come out of this. I guess I don't know what to feel. So I just keep trying to figure out how to fix it and hope actually accomplishing something will make it feel different somehow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > I know that there is little I can say to abate the anger felt by those who > believe that this office's prosecution of Mr. Swartz was unwarranted and > somehow led to the tragic result of him taking his own life

If MIT asked to drop the charges, then you not only wasted taxpayers money but whats more importantly, as a result, you've helped young man to take his life.

> The career prosecutors handling this matter took on the difficult task of > enforcing a law they had taken an oath to uphold, and did so reasonably.

Yes of course Ms. Ortiz; so were those military and political leaders in Germany circa 1939 and see how they ended: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Trials>

Nobody will live forever Ms. Ortiz. I hope Aaron will wait for you at Heaven's gates and handle you a key... to hell.

</comment><comment><USER21> Prosecutors routinely over-charge in an effort to intimidate defendants into plea deals. It's very effective on the vulnerable, often with tragic consequences.

When justice is measured in the number of convictions and sentences handed out and not low crime-rates, this is what happens.

</comment><comment><USER7> _> I must, however, make clear that this office's conduct was appropriate in bringing and handling this case. The career prosecutors handling this matter took on the difficult task of enforcing a law they had taken an oath to uphold, and did so reasonably._

No, it wasn't appropriate. Both MIT and JSTOR had declined to continue prosecution. Her office over charged to force a plea bargain with 6mo of prison time and would have turned Aaron into a felon.

This is so much CYA bullshit from the government. It's time to stand up to these bullies.

<comment><USER3> According to Aaron's lawyer, MIT demanded jail time, even if they dropped the trespass charge.

<comment> hippee-lee Why? How does jail time protect and improve our society when there are more appropriate forms of punishment like community service. They could have had him clean up trash on campus or use find use his computer skill to pay his debt to society. Does some one who did what he did really need to go to jail on the first offense with circumstances and evidence like these?

<comment><USER3> I think it's ridiculous that MIT demanded jail time, if what Aaron's lawyer says is true. But the idea that both JSTOR and MIT were like "oh, it's harmless, don't prosecute" seems to be inaccurate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm impressed that a US Attorney is responding to criticism. I will remain cynical, however, because there are hundreds who are suffering from these types of tactics. I doubt we'll see this type of outpouring for all those who have been subjected to this type of prosecution.

<comment><USER3> Largely because the targets of such over prosecution are either unsympathetic (drug dealers, gang members) or because people are quite happy to join the "string him up!" Mentality when it's a bad guy they can't identify with (bankers).

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm surprised by the level of "human-ness" the statement shows. It would have been very easily for the office to take a more empty position a la "we have nothing to say - we were doing our jobs."

That being said, other than the unexpected personal touch, this is basically what we all assumed they'd say. "We're sorry. He broke the law - we were doing our job."

So in the end, this doesn't change anything.

</comment><comment><USER24> "Had not sought the maximum penalty" and "offered a plea bargain" are two very different things.

<comment><USER25> " _That is why in the discussions with his counsel about a resolution of the case this office sought an appropriate sentence that matched the alleged conduct - a sentence that we would recommend to the judge of six months in a low security setting._ "

It sounds like a plea bargain to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wasn't the assistant of the US attorney involved in this case, too, and people asked him to be fired as well? I could see why he's defending the case.

[https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/fire-assistant- us-...](https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/fire-assistant-us-attorney- steve-heymann/RJKSY2nb)

<comment><USER16> The "assistant" US Attorneys are lawyers, not what you'd think of as "assistants." The "US Attorney" is a politically appointed senior executive, while the "Assistant US Attorneys" are career staff lawyers. The "US Attorney" signs most filings, but the career staff does the significant legal groundwork on almost everything.

<comment><USER6> I read the whole docket today, and most everything was signed by Stephen Heymann and, less frequently, Scott Garland.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> So these were the choices they offered him: \- Plead guilty and become a felon (even if he believed otherwise, and clearly against his conscience.) \- Or face 13 felony counts, potentially leading to a very lengthy prison sentence.

The prosecutors were trying to make sure the case never goes to court. This is disgusting!

<comment><USER27> _even if he believed otherwise, and clearly against his conscience_

So you're saying that a man who steals a car shouldn't face felony charges as long as he claims that _his_ conscience is clear? The law must be objective, not based on whim.

<comment><USER26> The problem is that the alternative to not accepting guilt is a ridiculously lengthy prison sentence. What do you do then?

<comment><USER27> You say it's "ridiculously lengthy," and I say it's not.

This is what we have procedures, judges and juries for.

<comment><USER26> 7 years (which is what I read) is a "ridiculously lengthy" prison term for downloading papers from the internet for no financial gain. How can one see it any other way?

This isn't about the judge and jury. 7 years is what the prosecutors would have asked, and we are discussing the fairness in their approach.

<comment><USER27> It's not about who gains. His actions violated the rights of all of the people at JSTOR and MIT.

In a murder trial, you can't properly argue that the killer ought to face lighter charges because his crime was not motivated by personal financial gain. This is relevant here because we're talking about criminal court. I'm not saying that what Swartz did is the same as murder. However, the same concept applies in both cases.

<comment><USER28> So Aaron downloading JSTOR files is very similar to a murder?

<comment><USER27> In the respect we're concerned with, which is that Swartz's particular crimes and the crime of murder are _both criminal matters prosecuted in criminal courts_ , yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This... is not going to end well. I wouldn't look forward to going in tomorrow if I worked in _that_ office.

<comment><USER19> Rule number 1 of surviving an internet storm: do NOT give extra ammunition to the enemy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The indictment doesn't say anything about the penalties sought. Anybody have handy the primary sources indicating what penalties the prosecutors were pushing for?

<comment><USER30> They weren't pushing for any penalties... yet. Sentencing comes after a finding of guilt.

They did announce that the maximum sentence was 30 years, but that's just the statutory maximum; it says nothing about the plans of the prosecution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> It would be interesting to see what she, or some AUSAs, have told the courts in their pleadings.

I'm not sure if PACER (<http://www.pacer.gov/>) has all the criminal pleadings, but it might have those. Its another thing in the long list of items that should be completely free to access.

<comment><USER16> Archive.org has the whole docket. It used to be a reference on his Wikipedia page, but it looks like it's not there anymore. You can find it in the history.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> It sounds like the response is trying to say without saying that there was no great big fateful choice of "plead guilty to something you think wasn't wrong and do 6 months or probably get 30 years."

I suspect everything they said to Aaron without saying in their dealings with him attempted to convince him that was his choice exactly.

</comment><comment><USER33> "personal financial gain"

No. You don't get it. Try again.

<comment><USER25> Try quoting the whole thing:

 _"The prosecutors recognized that there was no evidence against Mr. Swartz indicating that he committed his acts for personal financial gain, and they recognized that his conduct - while a violation of the law - did not warrant the severe punishments authorized by Congress and called for by the Sentencing Guidelines in appropriate cases."_

<comment><USER33> I misread it at first. Thanks for pointing that out.</comment></comment></comment>


Yahoo team calculates two-quadrillionth digit of Pi on Hadoop cluster - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11313194

<comment><USER2> Any word on the actual formula?</comment>


Antarctica is hotter than it's ever been - <AUTHOR> https://public.wmo.int/en/media/news/new-record-antarctic-continent-reported <comment><USER2> In 2004:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20041014223623/http://pubs.giss....](https://web.archive.org/web/20041014223623/http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abstracts/2004/ShindellSchmidt1.html)

> While most of the Earth warmed rapidly during recent decades, surface > temperatures decreased significantly over most of Antarctica.

In 2005, their map shows the cooling and heating trends:

[https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a003100/a003188/](https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a003100/a003188/)

However in 2007:

[https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/WilkinsIceSheet](https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/WilkinsIceSheet)

> Between 1981 and 2007, most of Antarctica warmed. Portions of West > Antarctica experienced an especially rapid rise in temperature.

By 2009:

[https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/warming_antarctic...](https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/warming_antarctica.html)

> Red represents areas where temperatures have increased the most during the > last 50 years, particularly in West Antarctica, while dark blue represents > areas with a lesser degree of warming.

Within 3 years, they started saying completely opposite things. If in 2004, the "scientists" at NASA said that "temperatures decreased significantly over most of Antarctica in last few decades" but in 2007, they started saying "1981 and 2007, most of Antarctica warmed" \- both can't be true at the same time. Both are from NASA.

</comment><comment><USER3> In the past 100 years.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm sure the ozone hole is related. I haven't seen it discussed in a while. It is significantly less now, but it's still a thing.</comment>


The Right (and Wrong) Way to Die When You Fall Into Lava - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/12/the-right-and-wrong-way-to-die-when-you-fall-into-lava/

<comment><USER2> I see a Mythbusters episode in the future!

</comment><comment><USER3> So, how DO you die when falling into lava?

<comment><USER4> My guess: severe burns, pulmonary edema and cardiovascular collapse. I'm basing this on the temperatures of lava vs. what would be expected inside of a fully involved house fire (I used to be a volunteer fire fighter).</comment></comment>


If you hate telemarketers, you'll love this robot designed to waste their time - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2016/02/16/if-you-hate-telemarketers-youll-love-this-robot-designed-to-waste-their-time/ <comment><USER2> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11043960](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11043960)

<comment><USER3> I just got a call from a political party. This same person has called me before, and, I find her detestable so I always pretended to be someone else rather than taking the call. This time I said, "hold on I'll get him on the phone for you." Well, they are still talking, its been about 10 minutes. I kept the phone on speaker for a while -- then I put on 34dB attenuating construction hearing protection and put the phone in another room. I recorded the whole thing in case anyone is curious. Normally when I'm the guy talking I am self-questioning whether I'm being too harsh, or that I'm not being direct enough, or etc... Listening to someone else talk, as if it were me, lets you observe. I heard the telemarketer laughing at the terrible jokes, and, I felt sorry for her. Like she has to laugh at everyone's jokes. I can see now how appeasing the customer (i.e. laughing at terrible jokes) is not the path to a sale. There is something to this "neg" (as popularized by the pickup artists in "the game") both in pursuit of conquests and in pursuit of a sale. The customer needs to want your approval and then you've got the sale. I read the comments on this thread and yeah I can see both sides. It's rather difficult and time consuming to get rid of the telemarketer once he/she has you on the phone, so I will be using this again for sure.

<comment><USER4> I am interesting in hearing this call.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11043960](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11043960)

</comment><comment><USER6> I'd prefer not to waste the time of human employees on the phone because they're just minimum wage workers trying to earn a paycheck. My irritation is with the _owners_ of the telemarketing company.

If the following fake recording[1] with the special 3 beeps intro actually works to fool robo-dialers, I'd rather the service do something like that. I also remember seeing a dedicated electronic box[2] that had that recording built-in. You either held it to the mouthpiece of the phone or it was wired in-line between the handset and the base. I'm not sure of the success rate of that device. I wouldn't be surprised if a developer attempted to replicate that device by making an app on iPhone/Android. Again, I'm not sure if pressing a smartphone speaker to the mouthpiece of a handset is good enough audio fidelity to fool robo dialers.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DE4zZwDE7bc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DE4zZwDE7bc)

[2] not sure if it was this one: [http://www.amazon.com/Privacy-Technologies- TZ-900-TeleZapper...](http://www.amazon.com/Privacy-Technologies- TZ-900-TeleZapper-900/dp/B00006881R)

<comment><USER7> >I'd prefer not to waste the time of human employees on the phone because they're just minimum wage workers trying to earn a paycheck.

I'm still perfectly fine wasting their time.

Honestly, I don't get this reasoning that if they are doing it for a small financial gain, they are resolved of any blame for any harm they cause (even if the harm is just annoying me and wasting my time). Yet I see the reasoning being used in multiple instances where they are causing hassle or worse (say when they lie to you about whats in phone contracts, which is my pet peeve).

<comment><USER6> _> I don't get this reasoning that ... they are resolved of any blame ... annoying me ... causing hassle _

Yes, I agree that annoyance is being made and hassle is being caused but I assign the _" they"_ part more to _the owners_ of the businesses rather than the low-level employees working the phones. Those workers are just cogs in a wheel. Therefore, I don't derive any satisfaction of justice by making employees suffer the games of an AI Turing Test. On the other hand, I _am_ happy when business owners pay $100,000 fines for ignoring the Do-Not-Call list.

The workers vs owners distinction is the same for fast-food cashiers asking "do you want to Super Size that?", or Radio Shack employee requesting my phone number for their database, or a retail employee trying to sell me an "extended warranty". For each of those situations, I'm annoyed but it's not necessary for me to socially shame the low-level workers with rants about obesity and high-fat consumption, the dangers of privacy invasion and identity theft, and the financial foolishness of 3rd-party warranties. All those employees are just cogs in a wheel and they are _required_ to follow a script and upsell those things. Otherwise, they are fired. I see most telemarketing employees in equivalent situations++. Waging war with those low-level employees seems like fighting the wrong layer. Instead, just don't spend money with the business or utilize technical tricks (e.g. phone TeleZapper).

++To level set, I'm not talking about criminal activities such as scammers making calls to trick senior citizens into wiring their life savings. I'm talking about the single mother or starving college student who sees a job ad for "$8/hour tele-sales" and hopes to get money for diapers or ramen noodles. The telemarketing I was thinking of was newspaper subscriptions, church donations, burglar alarms monitoring, etc.

<comment><USER7> >For each of those situations, I'm annoyed but it's not necessary for me to socially shame the low-level workers with rants about obesity and high-fat consumption, the dangers of privacy invasion and identity theft, and the financial foolishness of 3rd-party warranties.

And yet, if we did that to such an extent that most people couldn't work those jobs with those policies, would not society be better off as a whole?

>Waging war with those low-level employees seems like fighting the wrong layer.

Speaking of war, the general way it goes is that you shoot the soldiers even though they are just following orders and there are a dozen more to take their place. Ideally taking out the general would be best, but when not given the opportunity to do so you target the highest ranking person in front of you, even if that is the lowly private who is on the same level as you.

<comment><USER8> > And yet, if we did that to such an extent that most people couldn't work > those jobs with those policies, would not society be better off as a whole?

Your attitude isn't just out of touch with reality, it's somewhere between 'callous and unsympathetic' and 'sociopathic.'

Roughly 95% of the people who work in crappy low-wage jobs like fast food or call centers _already_ hate their jobs. They _already_ hate what their employers tell them they have to do. They aren't there because they love cold calling strangers or asking you to upgrade your meal by 1000 calories, they're there because they need a paycheck and have little other alternative.

I can only speak from personal experience regarding call centers, but I imagine fast food isn't very different. Most people absolutely do get out of those jobs as fast as they can. In the call center I worked at, average tenure was 6 months if not less (that's exactly how long I lasted, FWIW). And you know what? Every time a person walks out the door, someone else walks in to take their place, because the world has no shortage of desperate people.

Taking the stance of 'we should torture these people as much as possible because we don't have access to their employers' is bad enough, but to smugly claim that it's really for their own good and the good of society is frankly disturbing.

<comment><USER7> >Your attitude isn't just out of touch with reality, it's somewhere between 'callous and unsympathetic' and 'sociopathic.'

As is needed of any soldier killing a guy who doesn't want to be there just as much as they don't. Probably the most sociopathic thing I did today was I just ate a Butterfingers candy bar, made by Nestle, and thus likely involved child slavery, which I funded by buying the candy bar. But I do think my informed apathy is a step up from ignorant bliss.

>Roughly 95% of the people who work in crappy low-wage jobs like fast food or call centers already hate their jobs. They already hate what their employers tell them they have to do. They aren't there because they love cold calling strangers or asking you to upgrade your meal by 1000 calories, they're there because they need a paycheck and have little other alternative.

And if their work isn't a net harm for me, I'll try try to make their day more pleasant. But when I'm at the local cell store again because another family member was lied to about their contract, or when you just interrupted my concentration while solving some problem to try to get me to sign up for some service that will be near impossible to cancel and which comes with more fine print than my employment contract, then I am not going to excuse you just because you did such for money.

>Taking the stance of 'we should torture these people as much as possible because we don't have access to their employers' is bad enough, but to smugly claim that it's really for their own good and the good of society is frankly disturbing.

>torture

I found the bug.

<comment><USER9> What do you do for a living, and how is it making the world a better place?

<comment><USER7> Software to aid the following:

Environmental protection. Benefit should be obvious.

Reducing drunk driving. Ditto.

Insurance (not the kind that would be better off replaced by single payer). Probably the least obvious as it is closest of the three to rent seeking, but the benefit is spreading risk of the incidents insured. Perhaps not as ideal as a fully socialized government system, but this isn't one of the insurance fields that is in direct competition with single payer.

Do you want a list of my non-work related contributions to society as well?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There's another one based on Asterisk called Lenny - it's an old man who plays the whole "can't hear you" card and it works so well. There's a whole channel of Lenny recordings: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcinQuDXYn8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcinQuDXYn8)

<comment><USER11> I love Lenny. He's really great and elicits the most hilarious responses from people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> When I was in highschool my family had 3 home phone numbers that were consecutive (8451, 8452, 8453) and once in a while they would all light up from the same telemarketing company. I would conference them all together and listen in as hilarity ensued.

</comment><comment><USER13> Intellectually, I recognize that the people making telemarketing calls by and large are in a precarious financial position, with all of the risks to health and happiness that come with that. I think we need to treat them better (even if that's just tersely hanging up, rather than stringing them on).

But viscerally, I can understand why we do this; my impulse, when on the receiving end of an unsolicited inbound call, would be to do the same.

<comment><USER7> >Intellectually, I recognize that the people making telemarketing calls by and large are in a precarious financial position, with all of the risks to health and happiness that come with that. I think we need to treat them better (even if that's just tersely hanging up, rather than stringing them on).

Those who steal are often not in the best of financial straights. Yet we still punish them. Those who commit even worse crimes are often meeting some unmet need or desire, one which may only exist because they are mentally ill, and yet this means we see them as a danger to society. We may pity them, but we will still punish them.

So, shouldn't the same logic apply even when the wrong being committed is much milder? The punishment will be milder (get yelled at, have time wasted) since the wrong is milder, but they still deserve the social repercussion of their actions.

<comment><USER14> Telemarketing is annoying but generally not illegal.

<comment><USER7> Laws are not the only rules, they just have the strongest punishments if broken. Their are social mores and folkways which have weaker punishments if broken; punishments which are dealt out by many other members of society other than the legal system.

To put it another way, being extreme mean, rude, and condescending to and wasting the time of telemarketers isn't illegal either. Yet some are trying to say doing such is wrong, to which I say that the telemarketers have already committed a greater wrong of the same nature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Low-tech solution: just tell them to stay on the line while you are getting your credit card. Then leave the phone off the hook.

<comment><USER16> I just put them on hold, but people in the office are always 'who is on line three?'. If you don't cost them real money they will keep calling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm living with my parents for now and got them to cut out their cable television package after introducing them to the Wonderful World of Netflix. But I've found it much, much harder to get them off the home telephone (which here in Canada costs them $40/month!!) and it's 90% telemarketers, usually calling right around dinnertime. I'm planning to note everytime they call and the frequency with which it's a legitimate call on a spreadsheet planned over 30 days but I still haven't gotten around to it. Despite being fairly 'with- it' people (they both have their own smartphones, have a Sonos speaker system and ipads for crying out loud) they refuse to get rid of the home phone. Guess old habits...

<comment><USER18> I got rid of my land-line. Now I just get spammed on my cell. Can't win.

I'm in the US. We have a do-not-call registry. Spammers don't seem to care and hide their numbers, so I can't report them.

<comment><USER19> I know this is a bit in the weeds, but I recently got an LG V10 on T-Mobile, and there is an option in the Calls menu that allows me to "Reject calls from all private numbers". I can also add numbers to a call reject list, as well. My previous HTC One M8 had the reject by number (but not for private numbers), as well.

My dad has a V10 on Verizon and they don't have the reject private calls option--so it would appear that some carriers are removing functionality that is otherwise available on at least some phones. Figured I'd share because I had before assumed it was a technical problem to block the private numbers, and have been happily surprised now that I don't get calls from "Unknown" anymore.

<comment><USER18> Interesting. I'll have to look into that feature. Of course, I'm on Verizon, so I'm not hopeful.

Frankly, I wish "private" numbers were banned outright. I can't think of a good reason for allowing them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's time someone from a major publishing house wrote a similar article titled "If you hate online ads, tracking and malware, you'll love this new tool designed to waste the publisher's money", and then mention that the tool is called an "ad blocker" and provide links to the good ones. :)

</comment><comment><USER21> I called the number in the article and experimented with it. It doesn't appear to do anything like the article says, it just says "hello... yes?" over and over again. Maybe I am not using it right.

<comment><USER5> You should talk back for some time. Robot responds only when you pause, it tries to detect the right moment to say something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> > The robot does this by cleverly exploiting a flaw in the telemarketer > playbook: staying on the line if the person is agreeable. So the system > leans on "yeah," "sure," "okay" and "yes."

While this might be a clever single experiment, this is a really bad idea to run a bot like this running on your phone line. Oral contracts over the phone exist so you should avoid any kind of agreement when a telemarketer calls you. (IANAL, I'm not a lawyer, etc...)

<comment><USER23> An oral contract with who though?

Does the phone-owner have a responsibility for any contract made over that phone?...

<comment><USER22> Well, supposedly don't. But I doubt anybody would want it to bring it to court though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I usually just say (when at home): "Hold on a sec." and put my phone somewhere. Usually takes some minutes for them to hang up.

</comment><comment><USER25> Adblock for the phone - and for the same reason, to make it usable against spam.

</comment><comment><USER26> How hard is to say "Look, sorry to interrupt you but I'm not interest in your service. Good luck with your next call, have a nice day."?

I fail to see how "fighting" telemarketers will improve anything.

<comment><USER27> It will lower average day-to-day sales, increase turnover, decrease morale, force the company to eat the costs of on-boarding new employees, and gradually diminish the value of telemarketing as a valid approach to sales. The employees will be better off working somewhere else--fast food, big box store, etc.--and society will derive more value from their career change.

Plus, these recordings like Jolly Roger, Lenny, etc. are a tremendous source of entertainment!

<comment><USER26> If everybody that just don't like telemarketing (count me in) just politely stop the caller and don't buy the service everything you just said would happen, without burning the poor minimum wage employee that's in the middle of the hate.

It's not a matter of effectiveness, it's a matter of ethics. You don't spam the spammer. You don't fight an evil with evil.

<comment><USER28> >If everybody that just don't like telemarketing (count me in) just politely stop the caller and don't buy the service everything you just said would happen, without burning the poor minimum wage employee that's in the middle of the hate.

Except apparently enough people buy their junk/scams/whatever that it makes it viable to continue to run a telemarketing business. But just because a small percentage of people are into it doesn't mean it's right for them to harass everyone.

So from my perspective, as someone who's not into being telemarketed and who doesn't have the power to make their behavior punishable by law, I may disincentivize their behavior while entertaining myself.

<comment><USER26> You have a point, but why not disincentive their behavior by just blocking their number? That's way easier than setting up an automated prank answer system.

But I guess that's not as exciting, no "entertainment" there.

<comment><USER28> I only have a cell phone so I get maybe two telemarketing calls per year since it is illegal in the US to telemarket to cell phones.

Whenever I get one I report it to the FCC, although the numbers are likely spoofed.

I've never been telemarketed by the same organization twice though, so I can idealistically hope that each organization has been shut down.

Edit: But back on topic, why shouldn't people live their lives in a way that entertains them more? The telemarketers are the ones initiating unwanted contact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Is it just me, or did they pick pretty much the only telemarketer you wouldn't want to do this to (donations)?

<comment><USER30> Donation solicitation isn't inherently "better" in my view.

I give to several causes important to me and my family. I also tell them NOT to solicit me more than once during the year. Violators get one additional warning and then I skip a year of donation with a note as to why.

If you want my money, respect my time; it's part of the deal.

<comment><USER29> I guess living in Canada gives me a different perspective. Generally speaking most telemarketers calling for charity are fairly respectful and are usually contacting you due to a transactional event that's happened fairly recently.</comment></comment></comment>


After Recent Scandal Trump Family Turns Towards Encryption - <AUTHOR> https://tutanota.com/blog/posts/trump-family-encryption <comment><USER2> 'Several encrypted Tutanota mailboxes were registered yesterday alone with distinct names of Trump family members' \- That sends up all kinds of red flags! In the comments the author of the piece even says it's 'fake' but still that's one provider I would never consider now and would actively warn other people against even trying.

<comment><USER3> For context, it was denied by Tutanota on Reddit: [https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/5xmmx3/httpsprxbxc...](https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/5xmmx3/httpsprxbxcomemail_tutanota_has_been_removed_from/dejsckw/)

"Agreed, the following sentence is misleading and we should not have written it. Several encrypted Tutanota mailboxes were registered yesterday alone with distinct names of Trump family members. Yet, we can confirm that it is completely made up. We do not even look at email addresses registered so we wouldn't notice if they signed up at all."</comment></comment>


Three months at Y Combinator: what it's like and how to get in - <AUTHOR> http://blog.frontapp.com/three-months-at-y-combinator-what-its-like-and-how-to-get-in/ <comment><USER2> > It helps you answer the only question that matters: is your product > something people want?

I've probably read that sentence at least 1000 times in a number of different books and articles. Having gone through a lean startup accelerator a few years ago when they were en vogue we focused on this aspect more than anything else.

The thing I never hear is how people actually figured that out. Cold calling, cold emailing, going to meetups, getting intros, pitching ideas and gathering feedback is never discussed. I want to hear _how_ you found a product market fit. It's obvious that you need to do this.

As an example. A startup that I co-founded my sophomore year in college was accepted into a school run summer business accelerator. They emphasized talking with customers/users more than anything else. The problem was we didn't really know any of our potential customers or users (grade school teachers/public schools). So we had to essentially cold call schools, find teachers/admins emails online, and fish around our personal network for intros. To say it didn't go well is an understatement. Our success rate, of even a phone call, was nearly 1% (roughly one answer per 100 or so emails/calls). We eventually locked down a core group of users simply by contacting so many people. Aside from other bureaucratic factors in the public schooling system we failed simply because we couldn't establish a growing user base.

So, if anyone wants to tell their story with nitty gitty details of not only how they found and retained their users but how they found what they wanted would be greatly appreciated.

<comment><USER3> The following was our road to P/M fit. Sorry for the long post...

0.) Identify market The short version is that one of our co-founders had very deep domain expertise in education and I had been developing a series of education apps for my daughter. We used this domain expertise to formulate our general understanding of the market. Then we spoke with customer after customer about our ideas, their current initiatives, budgets, problems, what excited them, and so on.

1.) Before trying to get P/M fit we created a way to measure P/M fit for our business. As we're a B2B company, we used the following as our top-line P/M fit metrics (a,b are quant, while c is a qual measure):

a. Length of sales cycle (shorter = closer to P/M fit)

b. Number of objections (fewer = closer to P/M fit)

c. Intensity of objections (weaker = closer to P/M fit)

2.) Building on #0, we eventually found an idea that resonated with the majority of customers. So, we built a first MVP. Bluntly, it was a complete piece of shit...and I'm the one who developed it.

However, there were customers who paid for this pile. So we started to try to sell more, but our P/M fit metrics were not good. Cycles were too long, objections were intense and numerous.

3.) Based on #2, we discussed what we thought would be the solution to finding P/M fit. There were two core directions, but we did not know which one would work.

So, we built a 2nd MVP that addressed the problems in our 1st MVP by adding the two groups of features we thought customers would want. We developed both ideas in the same MVP b/c it was a hell of a lot faster than doing two MVPs back to back.

One of the two ideas yielded substantial improvement in our revenue and P/M fit metrics. So, we pushed on this idea by emphasizing and selling only the features that looked promising.

However, we hit a point where our P/M fit metrics were better, but were not improving and were not good enough.

4.) We did not build a new MVP at this point. What we did was modify our sales collateral, our pitch, our emphasis to highlight the features and value prop that most resonated with our customers, while eliminating the areas that caused the most friction in the sales cycle. We kept tweaking the sales pitch until we found one that improved our metrics. Literally, we knew we were ready for our 3rd iteration of the product when customers were pushing us to deliver the product that we had sold them on, but that was not yet developed.

5.) Develop first release of product that a segment of the market clearly wants and is willing to pay for without wasting time or objecting too much.

6.) We continue to do all of the above, but in tighter/faster iterations. We are also using usage metrics to increasingly guide some decision making, but ultimately our P/M fit metrics are still working for us, so we continue to hone/improve them.

<comment><USER4> >>> Literally, we knew we were ready for our 3rd iteration of the product when customers were pushing us to deliver the product that we had sold them on, but that was not yet developed.

Good for you. I have found similar experiences , you know you have a hit product when people are complaining that you arent taking their money fast enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Two pop-ups on that page (one at the start, one at the end) is way too aggressive. Cut me some slack, will ya? I especially hate the "Subscribe to our mailing list before you've even read content on our page!" load-time pop- up that everyone's featuring nowadays. If there was a browser plugin to wipe them all, I would pay money for it.

<comment><USER6> Its an ugly trend and an invasive one. The fact that you need to reassure me that your content is good makes me question if your all you just want is my email and become unnecessary email notifications. Its needy, demanding and somewhat attention seeking.

Usually websites that insist with these subscription popups have mediocre to poor content.

If your work is good enough, people will subscribe because they like it. Don't force it.

<comment><USER7> For anyone running a business: Do not listen to these complaints. These commentors are not your target market.

I use an email popup. It's greatly increased email list signups. No one's comaplained, time on page did not decline. Nothing bad happened.

You should always test a chance like this, but net-savvy hackers are a poor representation of most demographics.

<comment><USER8> +1.

I've been experimenting _aggressively_ with different techniques for email capture (e.g. [1]) and, looking at my analytics, the exit-intent popup accounts for 47.27% of all emails.

[1]: [http://rs.io/behavior-modification-techniques-if-then- rules/](http://rs.io/behavior-modification-techniques-if-then-rules/)

<comment><USER5> When you say exit-intent, do you mean the pop-up at the beginning of the page, or the bottom of the page one? I'm much less bothered by the latter because it's less counter-intuitive to me, and it doesn't get in the way of me reading the content. If that's what you meant, what's your take on the former?

That said, I know that pop-ups work. That does not make them less irritating to all of those people who like to know what they sign up for before actually writing their email address there (the pop-upon-loading one). 42% more of 2% still annoys a large chunk of the 97% left.

<comment><USER7> I'm not OP, but neither.

      1. Open the page in incognito
      2. Read for a moment.
      3. Move your mouse outside the tab. Something should pop-up.

It means the system is designed to notice you are leaving, and prompt you.

<comment><USER6> Don't you find that obstructive? Halfway through the article I am reading (still deciding if its good or not) and I scroll down to read more then a faded dark background popup comes up asking me for my email when I'm not even finished reading. Putting a subscription box at the bottom of the page after the article is fine, but distracting a user when reading an article halfway is rude and counter productive.

<comment><USER7> This one?

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/ls79ipe0997zfs6/Screenshot%202014-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/ls79ipe0997zfs6/Screenshot%202014-10-02%2021.41.07.png?dl=0)

That's STILL not the exit intent popup. That only happens when you stop reading and go to leave.

I personally don't like the forced left column reading of this site. I'd rather read on the right. I don't like that the email subscribe box follows me down, it makes me dizzy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > If relationships are easy to maintain when everything is going well, it's a > whole different story when the pressure is on.

This isn't YC-specific, but I want to highlight this piece of advice because it's extremely important.

This is one of the most important things I've learned through my years of starting/running small businesses. I'm particularly susceptible to falling in this trap because I suffer from typical founder syndrome of "perpetual optimism". (Good for certain things, bad for others.)

It's also an easy trap to fall into as a new founder, because you just don't yet have the history to see both the ups and downs. But I can't emphasize it enough: People who are wonderful when things are wonderful can become bitterly awful when things turn around. Finding partners (both teammates and investors) who you can sail both the rough and calm waters with is absolutely essential to the survival of your business.

How to figure this out? There's no secret, but it's a mix of intuition and asking the right questions. Speak to references and ask specifically: "How was he/she when things were good? How about when things got tough?"

<comment><USER10> "Finding partners (both teammates and investors) who you can sail both the rough and calm waters with is absolutely essential to the survival of your business."

Can't agree with this statement enough (the teammates part, at least). From personal experience, I can say that the work environment becomes toxic when early team members start losing passion for the product, especially co- founders. People start questioning each other's commitment, work slows down, and bickering ensues.

As another piece of advice, it's really important to look for individuals who are great communicators. People who say it how it is, and share their feelings w/o hesitation. The last thing you want is a co-worker sharing some important piece of information (ex. they haven't been motivated for weeks) out of the blue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > _As a startup of the batch, you get high visibility thanks to Demo Day and > to your own TechCrunch launch. Thanks to that, we were able to get more than > 300 signups in our first couple weeks (see exactly how we did it here)._

This seems contradictory. 300 signups over a couple of weeks does not imply "high visibility." Your TechCrunch article ([http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/18/front-is-a-shared-inbox- app...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/18/front-is-a-shared-inbox-app-that- makes-email-suck-lessfront-is-a-shared-inbox-app-to-make-email-suck-less/)) only received about 229 shares and 154 Tweets (with most of the comments being from existing users and not prospective users), which makes Front seem more of a counterexample of TechCrunch visibility instead.

<comment><AUTHOR> We blogged about our launch: [http://blog.frontapp.com/hacker-news-techcrunch- and-product-...](http://blog.frontapp.com/hacker-news-techcrunch-and-product- hunt-which-is-most-effective-to-launch-your-product-2/)

Following our TC launch, we were featured in other channels, which gave us more signups. 300 might not seem like a lot, but these figures are very conservative and we only counted users that really tried the app.

<comment><USER12> "we only counted users that really tried the app"

...which are the only ones that matter, no? So if only 300 "really" tried the app and 2,201,302 signed up, you obviously only care about the 300 if that's the number you're mentioning.

Why try to sound mightier saying "these figures are very conservative" and "we only counted users that really tried the app"?

<comment><USER13> Probably because they expect to get compared against other startups who are trumpeting "millions downloaded our app!" like it means something. Saying "these figures are very conservative" and specifying exactly what they're counting is a preemptive answer to people asking "how come you only got 300 when Startup X got 3,000,000 after the same amount of time?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Adguard has blocked access to this page

This web page at blog.frontapp.com, has been reported as a phishing page and has been blocked based on your security preferences.

Adguard has found that this page may be a forgery or imitation of another website, designed to trick users into sharing personal or financial information. Entering any personal information on this page may result in identity theft or other abuse.

</comment><comment><USER15> I love these articles, but what I'd really like to see is a much more detailed account of the founders' entire lives up until they got in to YC. How did they meet. When did they hear about YC for the first time. When did they become interested in technology. What did they eat for breakfast the day of their interview. The real nitty gritty. And ideally this would be a special on Vice of course. :)

</comment><comment><USER16> > _If you don't get accepted after the interview, you will get the reason why > and you'll then be able to improve your product._

This part is a bit ambiguous. Do the YC partners actually tell applicants who have made it to the interview stage why they were rejected?

<comment><USER17> Yes. At the end of the day one of the partners you met will write a few sentences about why you weren't accepted via email.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> What is the value of being part of YC's network? Perhaps it matters if your product/startup is struggling.

You can cold email any YC founder, I think they would be just as likely to help you (work with you) than a fellow YC founder.

<comment><USER19> I'm curious about this as well. Currently bootstrapping in my bedroom. Seems like you do the same thing in YC as well but with more people and networking in process but can a network save and solve all of your problems? I think not...what it boils down to is just grinding and hustling like with any small business (and not end up like Washington Redskins from South Park)...maybe the network is important when you need to find the right people for your team or build partnerships or get an interview with Peter Thiel.

<comment><USER20> >can a network save and solve all your problems?

Of course not. Nobody here is suggesting that this would solve _all_ of your problems, just that it would be helpful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice article. IMO, two of the key points are:

1\. But you still need to figure out things by yourself: YC will never tell you what people want

2\. If there is one thing that is true about YC partners, it's that you can't expect them to do the work for you.

<comment><USER10> These two should be true for an incubator/accelerator or group of advisors/mentors/investors.

At the end of the day, the founders build the company, not anyone else. "Outsiders" (those who don't actually work in the company) should offer guidance and frameworks, but never a definitive solution to the problem you're having, that's for the founders to figure out and decide for themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm not sure who are the users for their product. Small companies? Or are they trying to compete with Salesforce and Google?

<comment><USER7> I'm a potential use. I run a solo bootstrapped company. I outsource many things. Have been wanting to outsource email for a while.

It's been hard to find a solution that allows me to manage my personal and work email, and the different types of both.

Seeing the demo made me think "I need this!". I had been looking around at helpdesk solutions, but all seemed to cumbersome for my use case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> That actually felt like linkbait content marketing.</comment>


Computational complexity lectures by Fields medalist Tim Gowers. - <AUTHOR> http://sms.cam.ac.uk/collection/545358

<comment><AUTHOR> Also see Scott Aaronson's lectures:

<http://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus>

</comment><comment><USER2> Sorry for bugging, but how did you come around this gem? I thought I had a half of mathematical blogosphere on my radar already, yet no one seem to mention this, including Gowers himself. Or maybe you just happened to check Cambridge course table?

<comment><USER3> Obviously, I can't speak for amichail, but I heard about the lectures via Peter Smith's blog: <http://logicmatters.blogspot.com/> Smith is a philosopher at Cambridge who is sitting in on the lectures; he also runs a nice blog.

<comment><USER2> Thank you Michael!

How you and capable people manage to keep an eye on so many fields is a mystery for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This would be the editor of the incredibly awesome Princeton Guide to Mathematics. If you don't have a copy I would strongly recommend getting one.

</comment><comment><USER5> like any of you actually read this. omg what a bunch of phony bull

<comment><USER6> Well, considering these are _videos_ ; you're right probably not that many people "read" them. But to your general nature, look at the title bar up there ^^^^ some of us actually like computer science. Just a thought.</comment></comment>


How Fritzing is killing itself - <AUTHOR> https://bowero.nl/blog/2019/11/13/how-fritzing-is-killing-itself/ <comment><USER3> I've never understood software engineers and organisations who contribute their code to the open source and free software worlds and then think they're owed compensation for it. We're writing this code because we need this code and think others might also need it and we have empathy for them and we benefit from their empathy for us - that's why we share. That's why we're here. Why do you share? Why are you here?

It might be an unpopular opinion but - to all you disgruntled open source/free software developers threatening to take their code closed via licencing shitfuckery ala "Commons Clause" nonsense and/or engaged in shady shit like this:

If you feel you're owed compensation for your time beyond other people using and building on your code - this is not the place for you and your toxicity makes the open source and free software world a worse place. Please leave quietly and quickly. Stop saying "uncompensated time" \- nobody owes you anything. You don't owe anyone else anything either - leave and let other, more reasonable, people maintain and carry on with the code you once freely gave - just as they should, if they find it useful. That's how it's supposed to work - that's how it should work. Thank you very much for your time and code. It is deeply appreciated; now go away and stop being an asshole.

<comment><USER4> I think I agree with you?

Way back when (not that far back, from my point of view, but longer than many denizens of this site have been alive), we used to have usenet and ftp sites and tarballs that compiled (usually) on some subset of Unixen.

I liked that. You could throw up period tarballs, with Readmes (they were _.txt, not_.md, but close enough), and usually had instructions like ./configure; make; make install.

People could yell at you on comp.graphics. Usually they didn't - and often discussions would ensue. Maybe I was young (if I ever was?), but it felt pretty zen to me at the time.

More recently, I had a package - I forget what it was - I think it might have been a python package that would take PlantUML-like-syntax things and turn them into SVGs or something. I put it up on github thinking that this would be the equivalent of throwing a tarball over the wall.

OMG! I was wrong. The tickets/issues/demands/complaints - not questions - <USER2> beyond belief!

I've never asked for compensation for an open-sourced package - high or low quality - but I could see that the shrill demands might drive one to want to demand compensation!

These days I've more-or-less retired back to throwing tar-balls to people who know me and ask me for them. I still ask for no money. I still respond to emails with questions. But I refuse to be held hostage to "the community".

Serious question to Parent: Does that make me a selfish asshole?

<comment><USER3> No, not at all. You don't owe anyone anything - but please consider their demands an indicator of unmet need. Github and other platforms make it easy for users and colleagues to contact project engineers and maintainers with new demands and PRs. You also get so much more exposure and help - but it's not without downside, as you say.

Of course, you're free to step up and solve their problems or ignore them. Offer consulting services if you'd like. Thank you for your code and your generosity either way you choose.

But, and this is key, if you choose to ignore the issues/requests and/or only accept consulting contracts to fix them: be up front about it in your README. Turn off issues on github and put the fact that you don't accept PRs in your repo notice/description.

Now, if you do that, don't be surprised if someone forks your code and picks up the maintainership. Don't try to take back your open source code. Don't complain about the other party's stewardship - a role you explicitly chose to abdicate. Don't sabotage the community.

Those are pretty much the very few things that would make you a selfish asshole in my book, friend. Thank you for your code and I'm sorry other people can be real assholes sometimes - especially to people who give their hard work away to prevent others from maybe having to do the same.

Fortunately, there are usually others who will step up and help maintain the project and deal with these demanding ungrateful bastards - seek them out openly, they're invaluable friends. If we're upfront and honest with each other about needing help - we're stronger together.

<comment><USER4> Hell, I welcome the fork!

It's why I toss it over the wall: "This was useful to me for a moment. Maybe it might be for you too. Good luck!"

<comment><USER3> Perfection.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A button labelled "Download" that is in actuality a "Donate" button that takes you to PayPal, that's pretty scummy, probably even illegal some places. Glad I don't use Fritzing.

<comment><USER6> Where exactly do you think a button labeled "Download" that detours you through a Donation flow is illegal?

<comment><USER7> Would you feel the same way if the site implemented a feature where if you clicked any link it would first detour you through a donation flow? Say the link said Tutorial or Documentation but when clicked it would go to Donate instead...

The point the OP makes is that when you ask for donation the button should say Donate and not Download.

<comment><USER6> I didn't ask how the parent comment felt. I asked where exactly this flow might be illegal. If you want the subtext laid bare, I think it's pretty clear that I doubt it's illegal anywhere.

<comment><USER7> Incidentally, I was asking you specifically how you felt about it, not the parent or the OP. Also, in addition, the "how you feel about it" does not really mean emotionally, it means what is your opinion on systematically mislabeling links.

In my opinion, trying to hide the freely available version of open-source code is not a "crime" but it is unethical and very likely breaks the spirit as well as the requirements of the open-source license.

Thus I think what the OP means is that it is "illegal" in the sense of breaking the license and it is unethical in how it misleads you.

<comment><USER6> "Probably even illegal some places" clearly means that it's actually illegal somewhere. I'd like to know where they think that is. That's my entire engagement with this thread.

<comment><USER8> It could be in New Zealand. The Consumer Guarantee act may trip it up, as could our advertising laws.

Ah, it is the fair trading act.

here it is.... [https://www.consumerprotection.govt.nz/general- help/common-c...](https://www.consumerprotection.govt.nz/general-help/common- consumer-issues/misleading-prices-or-advertising/)

NZ has a LOT more protection than the US does.

This may fall under bait advertising.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is it a bug maybe? When you go to the page and select an amount of money it will change the button text to "Pay&Download" instead of just "Download". So maybe the default was just meant to send you to the file.

<comment><USER10> The option to download without paying was deliberately removed: [https://github.com/fritzing/fritzing- app/issues/3548#issueco...](https://github.com/fritzing/fritzing- app/issues/3548#issuecomment-545421808)

<comment><USER9> Thanks!

For sure a list of real problems but I am wondering if one time donations vs a solid income stream can solve this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Eh-- this is completely allowed by open-source licenses. If you don't need the library, don't use it. If you do need the library, download it another way (it's legal) or pay for it.

</comment><comment><USER12> Not sure how others are viewing this page -- I get NET::ERR_CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID and a big warning page.

<comment><USER13> Your certificate trust store doesn't have Lets Encrypt yet.

<comment><USER12> That's not it, I can access my personal site that uses Let's Encrypt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Fritzing and I never got along very well, but if we did, this sort of nonsense would change that.</comment>


Could you go without your computer for a day? - <AUTHOR> http://webworkerdaily.com/2008/04/23/could-you-go-without-your-computer-for-a-day/

<comment><AUTHOR> I think this would be very difficult/painful - my computer is where I keep all my work, where I watch TV, follow news, read books, listen to music - too many different things to just turn off. Though my fingers might thank me - <USER2> keyboards can't be good for them.

</comment><comment><USER3> Um, don't any of you ever go on vacation? (Please don't say you bring your work with you)

</comment><comment><USER4> Not unless I had a good book or two to read...</comment>


Preventing Burnout When Working 7 Days a Week - <AUTHOR> http://www.blog.joelx.com/preventing-burn-out/11822/ <comment><USER2> I have a good idea for that take a day off and get out and hang out with humans. allow serendipity to happen.</comment>


Announcing Amazon ElastiCache - Managed Memcached - <AUTHOR> http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2011/08/22/announcing-amazon-elasticache/ <comment><USER2> It would be great, really great, if this were priced per-gigabyte of RAM and per-gig transferred. To my mind, memcache should be billed and used more like a CDN.

Until then, this makes sense only for mid-large scale memcache deployments, similar to Amazon's RDS.

<comment><USER3> Agreed, the value add isn't very high, especially since the pricing is higher than EC2. Surely there are some economies that could be found on servers with no disks and reduced CPU requirements? I wonder if ECC could even be done away with if they checksummed all the stored values?

It would be a real killer if they had incremental pricing (per-GB-hour) with an adjustable high watermark / replica count, and a name/port-based endpoint that always worked and routed requests to the proper cache server.

<comment><USER2> I agree, that would be great. Let's start a company that does that.

<comment><USER4> The problem is that you need to provide the other services as well. Having your database and application server in one datacenter, but your memcached instance in another would reduce the use-cases because of latency and bandwidth restrictions.

<comment><USER5> We recently got a step closer to integrating multiple clouds now that EC2 allows peering. <http://aws.amazon.com/directconnect/> To really make it easy you'd probably want federated auth and billing, but I'm not sure that's in Amazon's interest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Related post on All Things Distributed by Amazon's CTO:

[http://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2011/08/amazon- elasticac...](http://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2011/08/amazon- elasticache.html)

and on the AWS Engineering blog:

[http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2011/08/amazon-elasticache- distri...](http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2011/08/amazon-elasticache-distributed- in-memory-caching.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> I was excited at first until I realized this is merely just an AWS-managed memcache cluster.

I was really hoping for another layer of abstraction away from the server level and more just an interface.

More like SimpleDB than RDS to use the AWS analogy.

<comment><USER8> Interesting. For a key-value store what could be another abstraction though?

<comment><USER7> rbranon did a better job explaining what I was after than I did

<http://news.ycombinator.net/item?id=2915491>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> ELB is cheaper than running your own EC2 load balancer, but ElastiCache is more expensive than the same raw EC2 servers. It makes sense, but I was hoping it'd be as much of a no-brainer as ELB was.

<comment><USER10> You would think they should be able to offer it cheaper, as they will be able organise it to get a lot more users/ CPU usage per server than the usage they would typically get from an average EC2 server.

<comment><USER11> I'm almost certain they could offer it cheaper and have chosen not to. If you look at AWS' history they tend to price higher than they need to and then aggressively lower the prices after the service is established. I've always assumed this is part of a very conservative business plan where they establish the actual cost of running the service (as opposed to projections) over time. Once they've established they can actually run the service as cheaply as projected they lower the price accordingly.

Remember Amazon isn't a startup. It is an established company with shareholders to keep happy. Given that I think the above strategy is a sensible one (and is probably why AWS has been profitable from the very beginning)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I would have liked it a lot more if they launched a Redis like version with persistence storage than memcache. I wonder why they considered Memcache over Redis.

<comment><USER13> It seems to be a memcache compatible interface. So its really hard to tell what they used underneath the covers. Perhaps a modified memcache for there needs...

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is the failover mechanism just a hardware replacement where you need to repopulate the cache or are they doing some kind of "slave" hotswap that the replaced hardware already has the cache?

</comment><comment><USER15> $0.095 * 24 * 30 = $68.40 for 24/7 coverage on a typical month

Sort of pricey for 1.3 GB memory

</comment><comment><USER16> Is there a part of the typical web stack that they don't offer a solution for or does this pretty much cover it. I know you can always run whatever they don't yourself just on another ec2 instance, but I think you can offload everything (but your app) now to their services.

</comment><comment><USER17> This would have been more awesome if the clusters had an address and handled the sharding for you.

As it stands, getting a memcached server up and running is so trivial that this probably isn't worth the extra cost for anyone on a small scale and already using things like chef or puppet.

</comment><comment><USER18> So this is just a simple way to get some memcached instances running. I guess it makes sense for amazon to target memcached since it's still the most popular caching system in use, and probably the easiest for newbies to get into, but it is very old technology at this point. There is no built in support for clustering, replication, or durability. There are solutions out there that provide a much better feature set. Heh, where did the original dynamo paper come from? All in all, underwhelming.

EDIT: I guess i forgot to mention the most obvious reason of all to go with memcached - what they have rolled out is by far the easiest caching system to implement. Not trolling, just stating the facts..

<comment><USER19> It may or may not be memcached -- it merely speaks the same protocol. I would not be totally amazed if something else is running underneath now or in future.

<comment><USER14> In the FAQ it states "Each Cache Node runs an instance of the Memcached software and has its own DNS name and port". So it looks like it is running memcached and not just talking it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Weeee, this infinite signup loop is a blast!

10 You already have access to Amazon ElastiCache 20 You must sign up for Amazon ElastiCache before you can use the Amazon ElastiCache Console. GOTO 10

<comment><USER21> Whoops, that's not good. Email your AWS account number to me and I'll pass it along to the team.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This would be nice if the cheapest option didn't end up costing 3 times as much as my entire AWS server itself.

</comment><comment><USER23> Doesn't latency kill the usefulness of any cloud based cache?

<comment><USER24> Most of the AWS services are designed to be used together, so you'd have an EC2 instance in the same data center as the memcache service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It sounds great but it's kind of expensive.

</comment><comment><USER26> Amazon Y U NO Redis?</comment>


Interactive Storytelling Online and the History of Philadelphia's Yellow Fever - <AUTHOR> http://theappendix.net/issues/2014/4/fever-to-tell-interactive-storytelling-online-and-philadelphias-yellow-fever-outbreak

<comment><USER2> Here's a direct link to the Choose Your Own Adventure component: [http://theappendix.net/special/the-fever](http://theappendix.net/special/the- fever)</comment>


Preserving The Internet... and Everything Else - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/04/preserving-the-internet-and-everything-else.html

<comment><USER2> A couple of years ago I proposed a decentralized dead-tree archival network using time capsules and a shared location map. I've made a few capsules already.

<http://carlos.bueno.org/2010/09/paper-internet.html>

[http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2010/10/dead-media- be...](http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2010/10/dead-media-beat-paper- time-capsules-of-the-internet/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm curious to see how we are going to navigate this data.

I'd love to see an etherpad type slider where you can see a page evolve.

Or could we have a search of the entire history of the internet? Or search and browse the internet "as it was in 2007"? It's fascinating to think that Google "only" allows you to search a snapshot of the internet as it is now.

On the other hand the death of the ephemeral scares me a bit. It's like watching Captain Flam again as an adult. If you loved it as a kid, heed this warning - don't do it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Is it really _that_ paramount to keep most of the web around? The obvious knee-jerk answer is that it's a great resource about our history, but honestly, I would not care if most of the web simply perished the natural way. It's only seldom that I use the Wayback Machine and if the content I'm looking for would not be there, it would be no big deal for me. Where is the point of storing too much information?

<comment><USER5> > It's only seldom that I use the Wayback Machine and if the content I'm > looking for would not be there, it would be no big deal for me.

Depends on what sorts of thing you and me look for on the web, I suppose then.

I use the Wayback Machine regularly, and what I need from it is usually quite valuable (to me), if I could not have found it anywhere else.

Only yesterday I was wandering along information about symmetry groups and tilings of the plane, so you come across the Geometry Junkyard[1] ... dead links all over the place as soon as you take more than a few steps! A lot of those are old university home pages, the ones with ~s in them. If the person doesn't work there anymore, they often rot, and the information doesn't always get transferred to the next site or blog. I know I'm guilty of the same, quite a few ancient old sites floating about that I never bothered collecting under one domain. I know the IA has got them though :)

[1] <http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/junkyard/topic.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can I just not find it on the Internet Archive site, or is it really the case that they only have one location? In an earthquake zone?

<comment><USER7> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Archive>

"To ensure the stability and endurance of the Internet Archive, its collection is mirrored at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt."

<comment><USER6> Although [http://www.bibalex.org/isis/frontend/archive/archive_web.asp...](http://www.bibalex.org/isis/frontend/archive/archive_web.aspx) says:

"The Internet Archive at the BA includes the web collection of 1996 through 2007. It represents about 1.5 petabytes of data stored on 880 computers."

So it seems to be a partial snapshot not a dynamic mirror.</comment></comment></comment>


What are the best startups to work for in 2016? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Great insight on the following thread :)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10967206](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10967206)

</comment><comment><USER3> PiedPiper</comment>


How-To Run Linux on Cheap Quad-Core Cortex-A53 Android TV Box - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@tomac/how-to-install-libreelec-linux-on-cheap-android-tv-box-51f82cdf10c1/ <comment><USER2> I have a similar device the KM9P with S912. Linux runs successfully but no wifi. I tried the recent ones but no wifi devices are being detected. So stick to devices with know compatibly like the one from the article.</comment>