NSA's top policy advisor: It's time to start putting teeth in cyber deterrence - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/03/nsas-top-policy-advisor-its-time-to-start-putting-teeth-in-cyber-deterrence/ <comment><USER2> How about the NSA and similar institutions in other countries don't hoard zerodays and instead actively work to improve security? Defending against hackers is a lot easier than defending against nuclear missiles. We don't need an active deterrence if the defenses are good.

<comment><USER3> While I agree and I hate the NSA's practice of hoarding zero days, they do this to keep software vulnerable on purpose. They've invested millions in uncovering zero days SPECIFICALLY so they could then spend millions more to be the only ones exploiting these vulnerabilities. If they share the zero day, the vendor will write a patch and it's game-over for their multi-million dollar exploit.

Don't get me wrong, it's entirely inappropriate for an American government agency to be subverting the security of American products made by American companies and used by the American public. We have a unique opportunity that no other country has to coordinate our secret intelligence work with the private sector to completely own the security industry, but we allow our government to take an adversarial approach to defense. It's insane and criminal, but that's how it is.

Imagine how effective an intelligence campaign would be against, say, Iran, if the NSA went to Microsoft, disclosed a vuln, and then told them to patch the vuln ONLY in specific markets. Roll out the patch to American companies first, but leave select targets still vulnerable. No other country could get Microsoft to do that except the United States... And we waste that opportunity by trying to lone-wolf everything.

<comment><USER4> I'm sorry, but this seems a little naive. 1) It assumes that the NSA would only want to exploit a vulnerability exactly once, 2) this behavior would be fairly obvious since hackers examine patch payloads, and 3) this behavior on the part of American tech would undermine their credibility globally. Wouldn't you reasonably be very skeptical of Microsoft if you were a foreign government if you knew they were actively working with the American government to pwn you?

The status quo of a semi-adversarial relationship between the NSA and tech companies for offensive cyber capabilities seems better to me for both parties. Of course it would be good if they were collaborating on defensive cyber security.

<comment><USER5> > I'm sorry, but this seems a little naive.

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

I thought everybody already knew that US corporations serve as an extension to the surveillance apparatus. Remember all the corporations fighting against the government's mandate at an artificially crippled maximum keysize of 40 bits, in order to allow continued surveillance in the 90s? Yeah, neither do I.

<comment><USER6> The claim is not "naive" as in "of course the NSA wouldn't want to exploit things, they're innocent angels", the claim is "naive" as in "they have better ways to exploit things."

Interpreting _NSAKEY as an NSA backdoor is similarly naive. First, it's named _NSAKEY. Surely they could name it something else. Second, its purpose was reverse-engineered, and it's capable of signing cryptography modules, same as the existing Microsoft key named _KEY. Anything that could be done through _NSAKEY could also be done through _KEY, so it would be easy for the NSA to just ask for a copy of _KEY such that nobody would notice. The conspiracy theory makes no sense - it's like saying "$politician is trying to take away our freedoms by pouring mind-control agents into the water" when $politician is just straight-up signing bills to take away your freedoms.

<comment><USER5> It was a debugging symbol that a Microsoft developer either negligently or heroically included in a public release... so that explains away the "nobody would be so stupid" argument. You are aware of how the Intel ME killswitch was located right? A commented xml file included with the flashing software helpfully informed anybody willing to look that a field was related to the NSA's High Assurance Platform program. This was after ten years of security researchers pointing at the fact that this was a backdoor. For whatever reason both Intel and the NSA were happy to let the public remain needlessly vulnerable all that time... But yeah, I'm just like one of those water fluoridation loons. The NSA wasn't at all hamfisted in the intentional weakening of elliptic curves and blatant RSA bribery, this isn't an obvious pattern emerging.

<comment><USER7> NSAKEY people have had over two decades to produce any evidence in support of their weird conspiracy theory, but strangely enough they've utterly failed to do so.

<comment><USER5> The demand for evidence in the wake of all the NSA leaks is laughable.[0] What does evidence of the NSAKEY being a backdoor look like to you, a provably malicious CSA shim, signed by the key, hand delivered by James Clapper?

I'll tell you what it looks like to me:

After the debug symbol is found, Microsoft gives a seemingly very stupid explanation for it[1]: "It is a backup key. Yeah, uhhhh... during the export control review - the NSA said that we had to have a backup key, so we named it after them..." After being challenged on the plausibility of their backup scheme they refuse to provide any further explanation.

Here is the funny part: Microsoft might be technically telling the truth about it being a "backup". Consider what else was going on around this period: ridiculous export controls on key-length, the clipper chip... and finally: government managed private-key escrow[2]. At that time the export regulations did not specify a backup requirement, and yet Microsoft claims otherwise. You know who else was talking a lot about backups? The Whitehouse, in its proposal for allowing the export of key-lengths above 56-bits - so long as applicants implement "key-recovery".[3] Somehow I don't think that we share the same definition of the word "backup".

Also, ECI Sentry Raven[4], have fun with that.

[0] [https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/784280/sigint- ena...](https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/784280/sigint-enabling- project.pdf)

[1] [https://cryptome.org/nsakey-ms-dc.htm](https://cryptome.org/nsakey-ms- dc.htm)

[2] [https://web.archive.org/web/20000818204903/https://csrc.nist...](https://web.archive.org/web/20000818204903/https://csrc.nist.gov/keyrecovery/admin.txt)

[3] [https://epic.org/crypto/key_escrow/key_recovery.html](https://epic.org/crypto/key_escrow/key_recovery.html)

[4] [https://archive.org/details/nsa-sentry-eagle-the- intercept-1...](https://archive.org/details/nsa-sentry-eagle-the- intercept-14-1010/page/n8)

<comment><USER6> Evidence of the NSAKEY being a backdoor includes some description of how the backdoor might work, backed up by a reference to the relevant Windows source code or its disassembly, both of which are easily available to researchers. What sort of backdoor is it? Does it provide remote access to Windows? Does it enable certain cryptographic modes that are disabled? Does it disable certain cryptograph modes that are enabled? Does it trigger key recovery, and if so, how?

Evidence of X does not include "X would have been done by Y, and Y did Z, and X and Z are both bad, so why _wouldn 't_ Y do X too." That is basically the definition of an ad hominem argument. Whatever else the NSA may have done, and however much it's reason to believe the NSA might have wanted to do this specific thing, it's not _evidence_ of them doing this specific thing (and again I'm not sure what this specific thing is even supposed to be). And if anything, the lack of mention of NSAKEY in the leaks is a reason to believe that there wasn't anything there.

Evidence of X also does not include "Y refused to talk about X." That might be evidence that Y is suspicious and untrustworthy (or evidence that the person asking was a conspiracy theorist who wouldn't be satisfied by any explanation), but it's not evidence that Y actually did X.

So, that's my definition of evidence. I'll turn this around: what would evidence that NSAKEY _was not_ a backdoor look like to you? Would anything convince you, or is your claim unfalsifiable?

<comment><USER5> > Evidence of the NSAKEY being a backdoor includes some description of how the > backdoor might work...

It would only work one way with an API relying on a PKI with a single CA, zero transparency, and trusted keys named after spy agencies suddenly appearing out of nowhere. I'm gonna bail here, because I'm now not sure if you honestly don't know what the CAPI was in relation to the NSAKEY - or if you're trying to waste my time by getting me to explain the most basic principles of public key infrastructure.

<comment><USER6> Here is a basic principle of public key infrastructure: anything signed by one CA can be signed equally well by another, unless the code is designed to give one CA special permissions (like EV certs, in the HTTPS PKI).

You are wrong on the facts that there is a "single CA" \- there is _KEY in addition to _NSAKEY.

So, this brings me back to the point I mentioned at the top of the thread: why didn't the NSA just demand a copy of the private key for _KEY instead of a separate key? A separate key always carried a risk, and also required a rebuild - handing over _KEY could have happened immediately. If _NSAKEY has special permissions, can you point me to where in disassembled CAPI code / leaked source these special permissions are implemented, and what they are?

Your conspiracy theory is "The NSA is evil and also stupid." This is a more complex and less likely, _and less worrisome_ conspiracy theory than "The NSA is evil." If the only thing we have to worry about from the NSA is things bungled as badly as this alleged _NSAKEY backdoor and the actual Dual_EC_DRBG backdoor (which was noticed by cryptographers basically instantly), we have nothing to worry about. That doesn't seem like the rhetorical position you want to take.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Citing the WannaCry and NotPetya malware attacks

Wait, did he just use Wannacry as a reason for more NSA involvement in cyber defense? Wannacry exists _because_ of the NSA. Its exploitation tools leaked (as it always happens, even to the NSA or the Chinese spy agencies) and then others used them to create the highly-effective Wannacry.

So...thanks, but no thanks NSA! You're done enough already. Not to mention the fact that the NSA is _actively_ trying to this day to sabotage security efforts both in standards bodies and in private organizations (see recent Simon and Speck controversy, or how they asked Yahoo to put a backdoor in their email servers, Dual_EC scandal, etc).

</comment><comment><USER9> From the beginning, the NSA should have held itself to having a primary purpose of cyber defense and deterrence. Even if it has some more aggressive programs running sub rosa, those defensive programs should be its central focus, and it'd be easier to sell as a patriotic career choice if cyber defense was what the NSA was known for.

Now we're left playing catch-up, and the NSA is mostly known for cyber espionage against global adversaries and domestic surveillance.

<comment><USER10> Cyber-espionage is a valid role, IMHO, but it should be separated from their defensive one. (Or the defensive role spun off into a different org altogether. I think there's just no other way way to manage the opposing incentives at work here.

<comment><USER11> > Cyber-espionage is a valid role

Agreed, but the NSA doesn't seem to act like they care about defense, but wielding it only as a weapon.

If they care about defense, I'd be interested to see any meaningful examples.

<comment><USER12> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security- Enhanced_Linux](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security-Enhanced_Linux)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_Suite_B_Cryptography](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_Suite_B_Cryptography)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The greatest trick the SIGINT Enterprise ever pulled was convincing the world that its capabilities were in danger of being outclassed by the Chinese, Russians, Iranians, Israelis, etc. Nice to see they're still at it.

</comment><comment><USER14> > Joyce expressed the pride the NSA's workforce took in "delivering a midterm > election that was free of malfeasance and interference" [...]

Oh, that's good. I was just imagining all the news out of Georgia, then.

<comment><USER15> I know this is tongue in cheek, but the NSA's mission has to do with foreign interference. They are far less authorized to do anything involving US citizens.

<comment><USER16> There's a bunch of relevant information but here's the one showing nation- state interest in Georgia. [https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt-- politics/russ...](https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt-- politics/russian-agent-visited-election-websites-georgia- counties-2016/slgj3hy2KIzidtSFrvNG6M/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm not a security expert, but even a layperson has to wonder if the NSA can actually be successful.

Apparently, he thinks the "defend forward to disrupt or halt malicious cyber activity" strategy was effective for mid-terms. Was it actually? Or, did "... the responses come, if ever, after the costs [of those attacks] are already realized."

If it was effective, how long will it take for the adversaries to work around it (which apparently he acknowledges in the last paragraph)?

Even if they somehow walled all traffic off from Russia and North Korea, wouldn't they just exploiting unwitting computers as 'hop points' to get around the limitations?

Maybe I'm missing something? Maybe there's some "teeth" that can provide cyber deterrence I don't know about?

</comment><comment><USER18> As if the NSA wasn't part of the problem to begin with.

</comment><comment><USER19> Since WW2 the difference between war and peace have been more and more blurred. Proxy wars, drones and "cyber warfare" have made open conflicts directly between superpowers almost non-existent.

Classic warfare, atomic, biological and chemical weapons all have rules and a loads of regulations. The "cyber" sector have a long process ahead to catch up. Unfortunately no one seems interested in being really serious about it it, but I certainly wish they will start work on it.

Hopefully we will never experience an all-out "cyber war". Probably a new kind scenario with massive damages to infra structure, lots of civilian casualties and almost no losses among military personal.

</comment><comment><USER20> The best offense is a good defense, so the sooner they start patching software, the better. The sooner they get developers to use safer languages, the better. But that's not gonna happen, it's apparently too costly to develop safe and secure software, but the damage caused by poor cybersecurity is somehow an externalized cost which means it costs nothing in the current equation.

</comment><comment><USER21> Foreign actors hacking some servers and systems and placing malware is one thing -- that's been going on for a long time, and it's not unexpected -- but having the insight and expertise to run a campaign that exerts more influence than the entire media and PR industry put together, well that's something else. That would require something above and beyond -- we're not that fragile.

Consider this...

NB: These are the same questions I posed in a thread a few days ago ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19282809](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19282809)).

Do you know the size of the Russian economy? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Russia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Russia)

How many individual US states have an economy larger than Russia? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_between_U.S._states...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_between_U.S._states_and_sovereign_states_by_GDP_\(nominal\))

And the size of the PR industry? [https://www.statista.com/topics/3521/public- relations/](https://www.statista.com/topics/3521/public-relations/)

We invented the modern PR industry, AI, and social media. And the PR industry has been perfecting the design of campaigns for 100 years. That's our bailiwick.

You think Russia outclassed us at our own game, at home on our own platforms, on the biggest stage, in the highest stakes game of all?

And then to pull that off with no one noticing or countering it in the most measured world of all time?

That would be like the Russian basketball team [0] beating the US Dream Team [1] in all of our major sports combined, at the same time. Not gonna happen.

And to what extent would a feat like that even be possible for someone from the US? And if some super-genius person or group of US citizens with the combination of intimate understanding, sophistication and skill did exist, then why wouldn't they just work for the campaign? And if one in the US could pull that off, why think Russia could?

[0] Russian Basketball [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_national_basketball_tea...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_national_basketball_team)

[1] US Dream Team [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_United_States_men%27s_Oly...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_United_States_men%27s_Olympic_basketball_team)

<comment><USER22> To win a U.S. election you don't need millions of votes. You need tens of thousands of votes in strategic locations. It was something like 50,000 votes in three states in 2016 that determined the outcome of the election. Clinton had roughly 3 million more votes but they weren't in the right places. An influence campaign doesn't have to "exerts more influence than the entire media and PR industry put together". It has to move a few tens of thousands of votes in the right places. Also, it's easier to win any game by cheating. U.S. actors are less free to cheat since they will be subject to U.S. law if they are caught. If scales are balanced with 200 metric tons in each pan, you can through off the balance by chucking a hammer in one pan of the scale.

Besides, it seems like the U.S. intelligence agencies are better positioned than random people on Hacker News to assess the extent and influence of the Russian influence campaign. What do they say?

<comment><USER21> Who's the random person in this scenario you or me?

And regarding my assessment and their response, that's why I asked the questions. I have a pretty good history of being on the mark [1], and every time I've talked to them, they've appreciated my perspective. Consider all things, that's the job -- that's what you want -- just like anyone else in strategic positions, they like hard questions.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5897654](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5897654)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> And here I was expecting a way to record keystroke noise via a tooth recorder.

<comment><USER24> Wake up, Kent.. it's me, Jesus

<comment><USER25> Could you please not post unsubstantively like this?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)</comment></comment></comment>


How to delete your Gowalla account (if you don't want Facebook to have it) - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2011/12/03/heres-how-to-delete-your-gowalla-account-if-you-dont-want-facebook-to-have-it/

<comment><USER2> I thought this was just a talent grab. I don't think the actual Gowalla service is going to be merged into Facebook.</comment>


You should not follow me on Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/you-should-not-follow-me-on-twitter/

<comment><USER2> I've really come to hate the phrase "you should follow me on Twitter". It might have been effective when Dustin started using it in 2009, but I see it everywhere now. I wrote about my feelings on it yesterday for my personal blog:

[http://kylecronin.me/blog/2012/5/26/i-hate-you-should- follow...](http://kylecronin.me/blog/2012/5/26/i-hate-you-should-follow-me-on- twitter.html)

My post is a bit less diplomatic and a bit more of a rant than the post from visualwebsiteoptimizer.com, but I attribute that to how much the increased proliferation of the phrase grated on me since that article was published in 2010.

<comment><USER3> I wrote about it on my blog a couple years ago too. I'm just glad some voice of reason finally surfaced on here.

Besides the cargo-cult idiocy of it, the other thing I don't like is the idea that Twitter's goal is maximizing follower count in the first place. I often block followers from communicating with me because what they have to say is inane or negative. If you're going to count any number, I think it should be the number of worthwhile conversations.

Product people should keep in mind that any time you show your users a number, you're turning your site into a video game. There's a lot of accidental gamification out there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "You should follow me on Twitter" has bugged me for months now, I didn't realize it started with Dustin Curtis as an "effective" phrase.

It mainly bugged me for sounding incredibly presumptuous - as it usually does when you tell someone they should do something that increases your own ego.

</comment><comment><USER5> I find it incredibly annoying how every talk and article on the web these days seems to be mostly an ad for the author's twitter page.

<comment><USER6> It's basically equivalent to "you should sign up for my email newsletter" but without the classical email problems of being unable to unsubscribe from the list, or your address potentially being sold to third-parties. (Also without a permanent "inbox", so people will miss what you say if they don't check right at the time--but that also means that you'll never end up buried under all the _other_ stuff people haven't checked, so I imagine that evens out.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7>
         how he increased his twitter followers by 173%

He increased the clickthrough rate by 173%, not his number of followers.

</comment><comment><USER8> I didn't know that Dustin Curtis was the first one that started it but every time I come across it, it slightly invalidates the authenticity of the post itself. It's like saying, "If you liked this post you should buy our product". It makes people feel that the post was solely written to convert you.

</comment><comment><USER9> You really need a large existing online presence to make Twitter work effectively. We have found Twitter extremely difficult to create any real traffic or interest [1].

We have tried all the usual tips: follower those with similar interests, interact with others, ask people to follow etc etc It just doesn't work. Even when you gain followers (many are spam) they don't click through on links.

Add in all the noise on Twitter we struggle to know the true purpose of twitter.

[http://sparknlaunch.wordpress.com/2012/03/09/project- trout-s...](http://sparknlaunch.wordpress.com/2012/03/09/project-trout-social- media-experiment-update-2/)

</comment><comment><USER10> I've never heard of Dustin Curtis, and I've said "you should follow me on Twitter" before. It's a pretty basic phrase, and I'd bet 99% of the people who use it haven't heard of him either.

<comment><USER11> I think you are right - 99% of people who use it haven't heard of him. However, they probably copied the idea after seeing it on someone else's blog. Apparently Curtis is the one we have to blame/thank for initially popularising this particular phrasing. I seem to recall he blogged about it being effective for him, and it quickly became the de facto postscript for bloggers wanting more Twitter followers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> "You should follow me on twitter" send the same message about the author's tech-savvy as "Email me at firstname.lastname@example.com"

</comment><comment><USER13> I think you're saying that you shouldn't just blindly copy "best practices" or the results of someone else's split testing.

With that I agree. Yes, you should test yourself.

However, most people are not split testing their "follow me" button -- and since most people aren't going to/dont care to, it's absolutely sensible to follow best practices or copy Dustin.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'd have preferred to read a post that discussed why it's silly to measure your own self-worth by the number of Twitter followers you have and how quickly you can amass them.

If you liked this comment, you should follow me on... oh never mind.

</comment><comment><USER15> Here's what I think when I read it:

Maybe I should follow you on Twitter, maybe I will, but I don't think I wanna ever meet you in real life. You sound like you're a lot smarter than everybody else, and I'm not smart enough for you.

</comment><comment><USER16> So, is this the issue with the way the request is phrased? Or with the principle of trying to increase your Twitter followers?

<comment><USER17> The issue is that people are not measuring the effect of changes. The issue is assuming that what works for one person will work for all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Your design just looks like <http://puppetlabs.com> !!!

</comment><comment><USER19> done.

</comment><comment><USER20> I find that phrase so terribly impolite that I tend to blacklist all blogs that use it.

</comment><comment><USER21> no worries, i'd never follow you on twitter</comment>


Ask HN: Random startup generator templates - <AUTHOR>

Hi
Is there a git of sorts for these random generators like Ykombinator, livethesheendream etc?
If not, is it possible to make one of these in 3 to 5 hours? Can't imagine the stack is too big. <comment><USER2> If you just want to throw something up quickly you can use <http://thiss.is> example: <http://thiss.is/whycharliesheeniswinning>

Disclaimer: I created thiss.is

</comment><comment><USER3> When we did YKombinator it took around 2-3 hours to "code" and around a day to design and polish.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thought as much. Thanks.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Programming language design – does the size of the language matter? - open-source-ux I have always liked the philosophy of Niklaus Wirth, known best for creating Pascal, Modula-2 and Oberon, that programming languages should be small but powerful. However, it seems to me that few language designers consider the size of the language an important quality when they create a language. It seems many programmers don't see it as a problem either.
Generally, the trend seems to be for programming languages to grow in size. I don't mean the size of the standard library, but the actual features and syntax of the language. A lot of languages may have started out as relatively small but with every iteration of the language, the syntax and features grow. Of course, small languages can also include complexity too.
So does the size of the language matter? Does it follow (in general) that the larger the language, the greater the risk of complexity of the language?
And in case you are interested, here are some thoughts from Wirth on the subject [1]:
> "In order to do a good experience [learning a language], you have to have a clean language with a good structure concentrating on the essential concepts and not being snowed in. That is my primary objection to the commercial languages – they're simply too huge, and they're so huge that nobody can understand them in their entirety...I think the industry thinks it's a big asset to have a complex thing that increases their reputation of being sophisticated"
[1] https://amturing.acm.org/pdf/WirthTuringTranscript.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> IMHO, the language size DOES matter and IS related to the language complexity and especially the syntax complexity. However, I believe many designers ARE aware of complexity issues and many languages turn into a mess only with time. BTW, I have designed a PL with a syntax, which is specifically designed to be not-prone to this syntax complexity problem as the language evolves.

There's also general philosophical advice that one should use the LEAST powerful tool for a task among all viable options. Many, especially newbie, developers just don't get it.

So, in general Wirth is right. But he is also known for oversimplifying his "50-page" language reports, and according to my experience, 50 pages is not sufficient to specify precisely even a small (but useful) PL. One such well- known lack of precision is nominal vs structural type equivalence in Pascal.</comment>


Spolsky - Where there's muck there's brass - <AUTHOR> http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/12/06.html

<comment><USER2> There are two types of muck though: Muck that cannot be avoided and becomes a hard problem that must be solved => brass. Muck for which there is a known way to avoid it, and solving it is just a short term fix with shrinking demand => legacy.

Data cleansing/integration is an example for the first kind of muck. I believe on-premises server-side software belongs in the second muck category. As a startup, think hard before you do it!

<comment><USER3> Some pains need to be solved and some need to be managed. Startups tackle the first type better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> PG already claimed the yorkshire-muck-brass analogy for startups: <http://www.paulgraham.com/bronze.html#f4>

But damn does it bare repeating. A recent experience for me has been creating some plugins for blog software. It's insanely painful making them work reliably with thousands of subtly different sets of platforms/versions/themes/plugin combinations. I've learned first hand from users how much they value it, and I'm not going to give up, but wow is it ever agonizing. I almost pity my competitors for following.

There's tons of money to be made in creating Wasabi-like abstraction layers for all sorts of similarly hairy systems. I know I'd gladly pay for ones that would spare me.

<comment><USER5> I think the old Yorkshire men already claimed the muck-brass analogy long before Paul Graham or Joel Spolsky ;-)

<comment><USER4> Hence the additional "for startups" qualifier...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yeah, but creating a web app that gets 1 million+ users isn't an easy feat, either, Joel. You say it can be done with 3 guys and an iguana. Well, that's only if the 3 guys +/- iguana have spent the better part of the last few years learning Python + Django/RoR, MySQL or PostGres setup installation and administration, Unix administration, SSH, Apache/Lighttpd/Nginx configuration and administration, Memcached, Perlbal or Pound, Mongrel, and perhaps Amazon web services like EC2 and S3.

Really, if you're not proficient or able to quickly learn these technologies, good luck with your iguana.

And, after spending the majority of the semester dealing with nightmares associated with the "Enterprise" web stack--ASP.NET, J2EE and Oracle--creating a web application is muck. Why else is Big Co. willing to shell out millions of dollars for a startup that has created these web apps and succeeded in attracting customers? Because Big Co's aren't doing it well at all. They're mired in muck.

Hackers willing to learn and use a non-Enterprisey web stack will find that they can walk on top of that muck and find brass. Selling shrink-wrapped software isn't the only way to make money.

<comment><USER7> The key is that if you're going to stick with server-side apps you need to solve other hard problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> he must be desperate to hire new people--he's been posting essays at a blistering rate.

i can't blame him though--joelonsoftware is a great recruiting tool.

</comment><comment><USER9> I bet diversity of PHP installations is the source of his support issues, not the diversity of Unix installations. There's plenty of software that runs fine on diverse POSIX-compliant operating systems.

<comment><USER10> Except when you're missing package X or dependency y.

UNIX is designed to be a configurable, custom system. There's nothing wrong with that, but I believe him when he blames UNIX/Linux and the multitude of varying installs cause him the most grief. You can't pin it all on PHP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder if they could reduce the support costs for the installable version by selling complete servers with the software pre-installed?

<comment><USER6> They could sell a virtual appliance that comes pre-configured. Something that they could run on top of VMware or Xen.

Or, perhaps a they could sell a pre-configured server. But, then they're supporting the OS that they're selling, and they might not have the flavor of *nix that the company wants.

<comment><USER11> An awesome idea, haven't encountered any businesses that use this approach but it would definitely have quite a few advantages. Most projects should probably avoid VMware as otherwise the cost of at least the most basic VMware license gets piled on top of each sale and at ~200USD that can be a significant increase.

But in any case it can be a great compromise between the clients issues of data privacy and response time versus the supplier tech support expenditures.

Would have upmodded twice if I could :)

<comment><USER6> Thanks, I'd love to take credit for it, but there are at least a dozen companies that are already doing this:

<http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/directory/cat/131>

Tell you what, if you go with the idea and make a buhzillion, you can buy me a beer sometime. ;)

As to the cost issue, adding $200 onto the purchase price of an enterprise appliance is peanuts. Most enterprise software sells in the $1000 - $100,000 range depending on what you're selling. In fact, you can charge even more for bundling it with VMware. "It's a feature!"

Another plus for doing it this way, the very fact that you're using a virtual appliance makes your product buzzword compliant. "Virutualization" makes your product tre' cutting edge--very sexy for CIO types to talk about how they just spent $50,000 on the latest tech.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> insubstantial and fluffy? three kids and an iguana?

Is this a thinly veiled diss at YC?</comment>


Do YC companies use Arc? - <AUTHOR>

Can someone answer how many YC companies use Arc when they are building their first prototypes?<p>Can someone also answer how many YC companies use Arc in their product? <comment><USER2> None have that I know of. Several have used Clojure.

Frankly, I would not recommend a startup use it. Although we continue to tweak our version, we haven't bothered to release a new version for a long time. And I doubt there is much in the way of libraries or integration with other stuff.

<comment><USER3> I noticed awhile back that user rougefeta used Arc or something strongly resembling it for their webapp they were applying to YC with, have any others also used Arc-based webapps to apply to YC?

rougefeta seems to have taken the site down though.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=rougefeta>

<comment><USER2> Maybe some. There are so many applications now that I couldn't say for sure.</comment></comment></comment>


How to Be an Expert in a Changing World (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://www.paulgraham.com/ecw.html <comment><USER2> The problem is, in order to operate as human beings, we have to assume the vast majority of our assumptions about the world are solid. For example, gravity will continue to push objects down in a fairly predictable way, the air we breathe will have a certain amount of oxygen, etc.

It's extremely difficult to operate, survive even, without making a vast number of assumptions.

So there's another, meta-level of thought that's required where we have to assign a confidence to each assumption. For example, I assume my car is going to start each morning, my laptop is going to power up each day, etc. But I also realize there's a nonzero probability that my car will break down or my laptop won't power on.

It's incredibly mentally taxing to constantly re-evaluate one's assumptions, so it's incredibly important to triage which assumptions I should question at any given juncture.

Most people give up and rely on their assumptions, which leads to a lot of social problems. Old age also severely impacts a person's ability to question assumptions. I don't want to get political here, but some people and organizations profit mightily from this phenomenon, much to the detriment of society as whole.

</comment><comment><USER3> In short, look for changes in the world and see how they change once well held beliefs about said world.

There was a lecture I watched years ago that specified the different areas that change that can allow startups to do well.

I remember Technology and Law. Possibly Social as well. Does anyone know what I'm referring to and what those areas are? I believe there were 5 of them.

<comment><USER4> Political, economic, social, technological, legal, environmental? PESTLE?

<comment><USER3> Yeah I think that's the one! Where did you find this? Is it business 101 stuff?

<comment><USER4> Yeah, business strategy MBA kinda stuff. Although honestly not sure how useful it really is. I guess it helps you have a broad checklist of things you should look at.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> i really like the people's part. even if something ain't earth shattering. you can predict if something will work by measuring those important factors (earnest, energetic, independent minded).

<comment><USER6> I was hoping for an example of a startup he has chosen to not fund because the people didn't meet that criteria but maybe the idea was seemingly bad in a good way</comment></comment>


Russian-Style Kleptocracy Is Infiltrating America - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/03/how-kleptocracy-came-to-america/580471/ <comment><USER2> Hidden in this article is perhaps an explanation for the monstrous hyperinflation of house prices that has occurred since the early 2000s. (The housing bubble corrected in 2008 but has since at least partly re-inflated, so it never really ended.)

What is that you might ask?

The PATRIOT act's KYC/AML regulations didn't apply to real estate!

As a result loads of dodgy money flooded into real estate. Most of the direct money laundering activity was at the high end but I'm sure it affected the whole market. It also probably helped inspire the creation of those collateralized bundles of real estate debt that banks marketed so aggressively in the 'oughts and that had the follow-on effect of causing a market-wide housing bubble. It was a way for banks to indirectly use real estate to receive dodgy money and skirt AML requirements.

This is important because real estate hyperinflation is one of the things destroying the middle class. Perhaps closing the KYC/AML loophole around real estate would go a long way toward fixing the problem. I wonder if this might be an even easier (and federal level) thing to accomplish than local and regional YIMBY activism, though the latter is obviously also important in some metro areas.

I also think this kind of dodgy money largely explains the cryptocurrency bubble and why cryptocurrency continues to float at absurd valuations in spite of declining interest and increasing skepticism from the greater tech and user community. A lot of people think it's fraud on the part of things like Bitfinex/Tether, but I wonder if the money isn't largely real. It's just dodgy and dirty money.</comment>


Apple Watch Series 6 - <AUTHOR> https://www.apple.com/apple-watch-series-6/ <comment><USER2> Feels like the gap between Apple Watch and competition is only only growing.

Apple's watch CPU is just so far ahead of the competition they have free reign here. That they can continue to ship their 3 year old Series 3 is just brutal for anyone trying to compete here.

By extension, this makes the whole iPhone/ Apple eco-system much stronger.

I like Apple, I like Apple devices... but the argument that they are becoming a monopoly in the US is growing. The integration between their devices simultaneously makes them collectively better, but locks people into the eco- system deeper and deeper. The watch is right in the middle of this.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm personally not impressed much by Series 6. I was expecting a lot more on the hardware front, like longer battery life (beyond a day) and some more health related features (beyond blood oxygen measurement). I do expect the Apple Watch SE to sell very well for kids, since Family Setup lowers the barriers to having an Apple Watch.

Family Setup is limited to the cellular models and isn't available for the GPS (non-cellular) models. I wonder how this works in terms of setup complexity. The current Apple Watch cellular has an E-SIM but shares the phone number of the iPhone its paired with. The Family Setup model would provide the ability to have one main watch sharing the iPhone's number and the remaining watches having their own individual phone numbers.

<comment><USER4> What health-related features _other_ than blood oxygen monitoring were you hoping for?

<comment><USER5> Personally I'd love a glucose monitor. I have no idea if that's even possible but I can hope.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Right now (1:26 EST) this is a 404. I'm assuming it won't be for long.

<comment><USER7> 1:29 EST still 404

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Flagging this, it's ridiculous to submit pages that are 404'ing.

<comment><USER9> Fully agree, OP trying to hoard the early Karma?

<comment><USER10> Is this a good example of the fundamental attribution error? Given the equally-plausible explanations that the link worked-when-submitted, or that OP submitted a 404 page which was up-voted on title alone, why would we assume OP submitted a 404 page for Karma?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Livestream of the event: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b13xnFp_LJs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b13xnFp_LJs)

<comment><USER12> The Apple stream is considerably ahead for me: [https://www.apple.com/apple- events/event-stream/](https://www.apple.com/apple-events/event-stream/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't know why would someone buy this when they're selling Apple Watch SE for $279 with most of the features. Unlike flagship iPhone it's probably not going to look a lot different from the most expensive piece.

SE Features: [https://livecenterimagesnorth.azureedge.net/livecenter- image...](https://livecenterimagesnorth.azureedge.net/livecenter- images/lcimg-3c3e52af-7c97-4a9f-9a17-a7a4e8bc72c7.jpg)

<comment><USER14> I know I was willing to pay more when the ECG watch came out, and this one has a blood oxygen meter. That alone will sell a bunch of these.

It's also important to offer people different pricing tiers, because some people are value shoppers and some people want to buy a Veblen good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is Apple Watch available on any prepaid plans yet? I'd love to use the cellular model for its intended purpose of reducing phone use but there seems to be no affordable options, at least in the US. E.g. the prepaid T-Mobile Connect plan costs $25/mo, whereas the cheapest postpaid plan with T-Mobile that includes the watch surcharge comes out to $60-70/mo and is on worse terms.

</comment><comment><USER16> What I want is a health monitor watch that's built from open hardware and gives me complete control over and ownership of my data. I don't trust any profit-driven company, even Apple, with such private information.

<comment><USER17> It is still a while off, but here is one of the most promising developments in that space: [https://www.pine64.org/pinetime/](https://www.pine64.org/pinetime/)

<comment><USER16> Wow that looks great - thanks for the link!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> press release: [https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/09/apple-watch- series-6-...](https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/09/apple-watch- series-6-delivers-breakthrough-wellness-and-fitness-capabilities/)

</comment><comment><USER18> Apple needs to partner with Rolex to create a watch with some real value retention</comment>


The Fourth Facebook Goldrush Just Started - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@jeremyliew/on-your-marks-get-set-go-the-fourth-facebook-goldrush-just-started-100093c16ec8#.g8v1ktkq6 <comment><USER3> I think he is more on the mark about streaming video than conversational commerce / bots. If you are a regular Facebook user, you can get an idea of where they are headed with the notifications that get greater priority and what is more likely to appear in your feed.

I have noticed greater visibility of Events and Live Video streaming. When a friend starts a live stream, I get a notification that shows up on my lock screen.

I'd put my money on Facebook going into video in a big way. Maybe they will be the one streaming sports games around the world.

<comment><USER4> I don't know, just by the articles that have been bubbling up on HN lately, the dam seems about to burst on chatbots.

I'm seeing more an more articles about them. Amazon (via Echo/Alexa), Microsoft (via bot framework), and Facebook all seem to think it's about to become big, and I saw an article about China's mobile experience that suggested it's already pretty big over there.

Developers seem to be less interested in it, but businesses seem to be pretty hot on it.

<comment><USER5> Just the current in vogue snake oil to sell to khaki wearers. Devs aren't interested because they know they don't work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yes, you too can be the next startup to place your complete destiny in the hands of an organization that owns the walled garden you are sharecropping, that can watch your every monetizing success, copy it without penalty at any time of their choosing and then cut you out going forward.

You better have completed your "liquidity event" before that happens.

<comment><USER7> Pretty much every startup is forced to work under those conditions. Microsoft and Apple grew up in the shadow of the IBM monopoly, and Apple was almost killed by it. PayPal was a feature of EBay's, with 90+% of their users being EBay sellers. Google and Facebook grew up under the IE monopoly - <USER2> had total control over the channel to their users. Twitter's product was copied by Facebook a couple months after it came out.

Big companies aren't in the habit of leaving virgin territory where new startups can take root, and every startup needs users.

The startups that succeed are the ones who make their userbase passionate enough to resist the initial competition from the big company who they're sharecropping on, long enough to build footholds on _other_ competing platforms that'll give them leverage.

<comment><USER6> The difference is that in this case Facebook controls the complete platform including access to the customers that your startup requires to survive and prosper.

Paypal had independent access to markets. It just grew fastest via eBay because it solved a problem that eBay initially could not.

Clone PC makers had independent BIOS and MS-DOS so IBM could not snuff them. It finally lost when it tried to move PC users to the PS/2 platform and customers would not follow.

Microsoft negotiated and blocked exclusive licensing and control by IBM of MS- DOS before the first IBM PC shipped.

So yes, you can succeed _if_ you have a way out of the inherent trap of being just another sharecropper. And to do that you better have negotiated a much better deal where you have options that cannot be easily blocked that are not being offered to everyone else. But you cannot expect to win much _if_ you accept the publicly offered terms.

Facebook's terms of use for their platform allow them to cut you off from "your passionate users" at Facebook's whim.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Unless I misunderstand, conversational commerce bots seem to want to solve the problem of the interface between users' natural language and software's logic (i.e., it's an application of NLP).

But I doubt AI will be good enough to do that, and I expect that I'll still have to think about fitting my words to the software's understanding. Why would these bots work better than Siri?

<comment><USER9> In my mind it's not really solving any 'problem' at all... We have a browser, and we have Google... It's generally pretty easy to buy stuff online, so what's the problem??

<comment><USER8> I know several people who lack the skills to buy things online. For others it's a chore. Finally, what if by lowering the barriers for customers, you could increase sales 5%? 10%?

<comment><USER9> Sure, it *might increase conversions - I'd hope that FB have tested this assumption... Will be interesting to see how this turns out

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Conversational commerce" No thank you.

<comment><USER11> Why? I am looking forward to it. For example now, if I order a hotel, I might book it via phone or email, and then I get a notification email about the order. And... let's say one year later I want to book again - I think it is more convenient if I can do it via chat application, where I would just chat with the hotel, and whats most important, the previous communication is still there in history and I can refer to it - while with email, there is no continuity of my relationship with that hotel.

<comment><USER9> It's called a browser... Why stay in FB to do this?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think more than conversational commerce the true power of BOTs will be conversational planning assistance within chat. Imagine a personal assistant always available in your chats with friends that can help you plan dinners by finding restaurants everyone would like, making reservations, booking movie tickets, putting the event on everyone's calendars, sending reminders, giving directions to locations when you leave for the event, etc. now that's powerful and useful.

<comment><USER13> I have always wanted this, so badly.

<comment><USER12> Here's how I envision that use case with a bot called JEEVES.

ME: Hey have you guys watched Zootopia yet?

FRIEND 1: Nah I want to but didn't have the time. I'm free tonight if you want to go.

FRIEND 2: Yeah count me in too

ME: JEEVES find us a movie theater close to us that's playing Zootopia tonight.

JEEVES: There are 3 theaters close to all of you that's playing Zootopia tonight. Theater 1 at (map)Location 1 is playing it at 9PM, Theater 2 at (map)Location 2 is playing it at 8:30PM, Theater 3 at (map)Location 3 is playing it at 10:PM

ME: you guys wanna get dinner before the movie?

FRIEND 1: Sure

FRIEND 2: Nah having dinner with GF's parents today.

ME: JEEVES find us some chinese restaurants near Theater 3.

so on and so on.

JEEVES can then book tickets, make a reservation, put the event on calendars, send restaurant location to just the 2 people who agreed to have dinner, send reminder in the group chat, etc.

<comment><USER14> How does the company behind Jeeves make money?

<comment><USER15> How do OpenTable and Fandango make money?

<comment><USER12> Exactly! Monetization through partnerships with service providers or affliate programs or service promotion (e.g. a new chinese restaurant opened if you would like to try it)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> if u have an hour, watch [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tABT6GdygnI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tABT6GdygnI) and listen for the distribution strategy part. This is a wide open one.

<comment><USER17> Can someone provide a narrower indication of where that part occurs?

<comment><USER16> it's the "Scalable Distribution Model" part of the talk [https://scontent- sjc2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpa1/t31.0-8/12...](https://scontent- sjc2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos- xpa1/t31.0-8/12967969_10153301467347723_2157682125892638625_o.jpg) 15:56 but then there's more at end

<comment><USER17> Thank you

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> But if you want to cash in on this you need to create compelling content more than be a hacker. The top Snapchat Stories are not there because of hacking.

</comment><comment><USER18> I remember back in the old days when bots were enabled by open protocols …

<comment><USER19> We've had IRC and eggdrop (among many other bots) for decades but we've dropped the ball - it's just never been a priority to build nice interfaces on top of these things.

Heck, when I was working with a distributed startup we were using Skype group chat which was actually surprisingly good. Almost Slack good at times. The Skype API was powerful enough to build a bot, but clunky and nowhere as good as the APIs available today. I wrote eggdrop code decades ago and it was fragile and picky.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> There's a lot of cool bots I can come up with but I none that I think you'd be able to monetize. For example, if I'm in a group chatting away, it'd be cool to have a bot collect certain posts that I can reference later instead of having to scroll/search. Or, I can ask the bot to live blog a certain event (or if there's video show a certain event) and we can live discuss.

</comment><comment><USER21> "Conversational commerce" has a critical problem: in whose interests is the bot operating?

Is it an unbiased-as-possible purchase agent working on your behalf, or it is a salesman on commission? Will it route you to the best option or the one that makes the most money for its owners? How do you know?

Currently the nearest thing I do to conversational commerce is Skyscanner and Digikey-style selective refinement.

<comment><USER22> I'm pretty sure that Facebooks in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm not a Facebook user. I like to think I'm still well-informed as a professional in the industry - i.e., I understand this major platform - because I know what social networking is about and how Facebook works on a technical level. Am I wrong? What don't I understsand by not being a user?

<comment><USER23> I say all of this who has been out of the Facebook scene for about 4 years, so things might have changed:

At any given point in time Facebook favors certain integrations more than others. By not being a user you are more likely to waste time on integrations that are less useful than other ones. Before you design Facebook integrations you should become a user and observe these things.

Beyond being a user, unless you're also an active developer in the ecosystem I doubt you actually understand Facebook. There's lots of behind the scenes changes that you won't notice as a user but as someone who relies heavily on Facebook traffic, you will notice. So beyond becoming a user, you should also look at other successful companies and see how they handle integrations to get an idea of where the playing field currently stands.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Doubtful, because NLP is not yet at the point where it can help users faster than a normal website. If that was the case, google would be there already.

</comment><comment><USER22> It was posted couple days ago, that people are sharing less and less private things from their lives on Facebook.

So now they'll start live streaming it instead ?

<comment><USER25> Yes, ever heard about LifeLogger?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> All that shines is not gold

</comment><comment><USER26> Nah</comment>


Ask HN: .net vs .co, Which TLD would you choose? - <AUTHOR>

Assuming .com is taken, which is usually the case. Which would you choose for your company/project/app/startup? .net or .co? <comment><USER2> Other than looking around for others (country TLDs like .io) which might fit your market or product I would personally go with the .net. Depending upon your market I would imagine you'd see a lot of traffic intended for your site to go to the .com simply due to confusion.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think .io appeals only to techie/developer market

<comment><USER2> Very much so. That was only for referencing that group of domains--not specifically .io but the other country TLDs.

Worth a look.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> .net

</comment><comment><USER4> .co

</comment><comment><USER5> .io</comment>


Why You Should Never Pay For Online Dating - <AUTHOR> http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/2010/04/07/why-you-should-never-pay-for-online-dating/ <comment><USER2> "Match.com made $342,600,000 last year. That's $137,000 in user fees per marriage." - There's your key takeaway.

</comment><comment><USER3> There are many reasons to pay for a dating service beyond the number of users, such as a preference in any of these categories: 1) communication process / privacy controls 2) interface features (filtering options, etc.) 3) advertised or implied goal of the service (marriage, hook-ups, etc.) 4) strong concentration of users in your demographic

Also, some of the things that the article discussed, like the "desperation feedback loop", apply equally to paid and free dating services.

I normally love to read OK Cupid's blog posts, but this one struck me as a little vicious and disingenuous.

<comment><USER4> One of the major differences is that OkCupid lets you search for people who've been online recently, and allows you to contact people without paying for the service.

The big tricks used by the pay dating sites are that they make it difficult to identify active users, and people can't read mails they receive without having an active subscription.

Many pay dating sites have "employees" or scripts whose job is to send vague messages to people with no subscription, or whose subscriptions have recently lapsed.

This means that there's both a huge pool of "dud" accounts that you don't know are invalid, and that you don't know which mails you receive are from real potential matches.

The end result explains their listed "full userbase turnover"; people sign up for their sites because they haven't been burned yet, pay until they realize they're being scammed, and then quit and move to a free site.

OkCupid isn't tooting their own horn in this post; they're just pointing out the numbers that quantify how much of a scam most major dating sites are. They've already picked up the people who've gotten burned, and most future daters who get burned will stick to free dating sites afterwards... so this won't get them many more users than they would have received anyway.

It just might stop some suckers from being parted from their money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> A great way to destroy your competition.

</comment><comment><USER6> I _really_ like how Subscribe & Share are visible on the side as the user scrolls down.

</comment><comment><USER7> Interesting article, it does a lot of analysis then boldy states that you should sign up to okcupid.com instead without a shred of reasoning to back that up?

Marketing fail.

<comment><AUTHOR> In case you didn't know, okcupid is free. After reading that article it makes a lot of sense to sign up with okcupid if you're looking for a dating website instead of going to a paysite.</comment></comment>


Steve Jobs Memorial Statue Has Been Unveiled - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/27/twitter_critics_slam_hideous_statue_of_steve_jobs/

<comment><USER2> I'd love to be contrarian on this, but yeah that's pretty creepy.

Also the "love" message not so subtly hidden in the little...arm-thingies (easier to 'see' in the shadow than on the actual statue) is kind of an odd one. There are a lot of words I associate with Steve Jobs and many of them are even positive (though I am often critical of many aspects of his management style), but "love" isn't one of them.</comment>


The US Intelligence Community has a Third Leaker - <AUTHOR> https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/08/the_us_intellig.html <comment><USER2> A third whistleblower / hero.

How come none in the government is charged for the multitude of illegal things that has been revealed? But there is still the insistency of labeling these people as 'leakers' instead of something more appropriate like 'hero' or 'whistleblower'.

<comment><USER3> "Hero" is incredibly biased language. No journalist should use that term for Snowden outside of the opinion page. (For what it's worth, I personally view Snowden a hero.)

"Leaker" is a factual statement that is focused on a person's activities, not his or her motivations. And it doesn't pass judgement.

<comment><USER4> "leaker" has mild negative connotations.

"Whistle blower" has more positive connotations.

<comment><USER5> I don't think leaker has mild negative connotations, and if it once did, it doesn't anymore because of the popularity of organizations like WikiLeaks. Leaking is in the name, after all.

<comment><USER6> You really don't think WikiLeaks has a negative connotation in the media and the public in and of itself? The media spent a very long time running WikiLeaks through the mud.

<comment><USER5> And yet WikiLeaks remains a fairly well-funded organization with a huge following that continues to get leaks - and a major source of stories for that very same news media you say dragged it through the mud.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> President Obama today:

 _" If you blow the whistle on an unethical practice or bring a problem to the attention of higher-ups, you should be thanked. You should be protected for doing the right thing"_

<comment><USER8> If President Obama really believes that, where is Snowden's pardon?

<comment><USER9> Obama is a stasist. You have to be to be President. He believes in central authority and respect for the chain of command. What he is saying is you should blow the whistle inside the designated structure. When the structure says everything is fine then everything is fine. If the structure says you're right good job, only then do you get a pat on the back.

You don't get to be POTUS by being an anarchist or thinking everyone has equally valid opinions as you. Anyone can be President, but only a few people actually think they should be President.

<comment><USER10> > Obama is a stasist.

Did you mean to say "statist"?

<comment><USER9> Sure did. Can't edit anymore though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Quite frankly, this is karma. When you are treating your own civilians and allies as criminals and storing that information in a database for your own perusal and you employ thousands of direct and indirect (contractors) staff, you're bound to end up with leaks.

I think the whole PRISM thing Snowden exposed is only one thing, I don't doubt there are other programs just as secretive shocking and sickening lurking around at the NSA waiting to be leaked. Time for some more leakers to step up and raise the curtain hiding the machine.

</comment><comment><USER12> When an organization gets too big, it is statistically likely there will be leaks.

I think the US has forgotten or willfully ignored the lessons learned from the past 100 years of espionage.

<comment><USER13> When more than 95 percent of the "classified" information doesn't deserve to be classified in the first place, leaks will happen, too.

<comment><USER14> But in that case, a leak only has a 5% chance of being something that anyone actually cares about. ("Anyone" here does not mean the overly paranoid bureaucrat that classified it, it means pretty much anyone else.)

<comment><USER15> Not necessarily. The other 95% (as evidenced by Manning's leaks) often contain information of importance to commercial enterprise -- information that should likely be of public record anyway if it's being communicated through publicly funded channels.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> One of these days one of these "leakers" will actually be US or foreign spy agency achieving a strategic advantage by "leaking" information.

<comment><USER17> This happens daily, it is what the NYT calls a "government official speaking on the condition of anonymity". Try Google, you get multiple matching articles every single day.

It is gotten so ridiculous that the "public editor" of the NYT felt the need to whitewash the practice in one of her columns:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/opinion/sunday/the- public-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/opinion/sunday/the-public- editor-the-disconnect-on-anonymous-sources.html)

Of course, it highlights the virtues of the "investigative journalist", having to disguise the identity of his vital sources.

That, by and large, remains a fantasy. The most important tool for a journalist is his phone, and he uses it daily to call all the same "sources". These sources then relay some juicy factoids (fully adherent to the party line), which is repeated without being questioned and with anonymity granted, to a government official speaking on a government telephone line. The whole setup is so bizarre; of course no one gives out _actual leaks_ on a freaking telephone line. It is no longer 1950.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hopefully more will be inspired by Daniel Ellsberg recent talk at HOPE X and and his call for action for more "real patriots" to do their duty and blow the whistle on abuses and law breaking.

<comment><USER18> His talk was deliciously rant-y.

<comment><USER19> [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSZP26T-jSY](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSZP26T-jSY)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If the government were to figure out who this is, perhaps through the process of elimination and internal spying, my bet is that we would never hear about it and that the person would disappear silently to a CIA operated Polish prison.

</comment><comment><USER21> I think Schneier is seriously discounting the magic document theory as it pertains to the 2nd and possibly 3rd leakers.

</comment><comment><USER22> Good. Step up number 4. You number has been called.

I realise this is flippant, but in all honesty I believe we are at an impasse, something between 1000 times worse than George Orwell ever imagined and a balance between security and the freedom to think without prejudice.

Our problem is that there comes a point where so much resources have been committed to invading the privacy of the public that there is no turning back.

So, number 4. Step forward and take your place in history.

<comment><USER16> Actually no. The US and most of Europe is NOT in a situation 1000 times worse than George Orwell ever imagined. Freedom of speech is at an unprecedented high. The government still doesn't care what you think or say individually, with very minor exceptions.

Invasion of privacy has to be fought. But let's not kid ourselves into believing we're not incredibly privileged with the free society we live in.

<comment><USER22> The problem is that when you log everyone's darkest secrets the potential for abuse is infinite. It may not happen today, or next week, but if you think today's politicians are bad then wait till you see what is coming round the corner.

FYI you don't know who or what is coming next. That's why I can say 1000 times worse. It could also be a million times worse.

The data is sitting there, waiting for the biggest bunch of assholes to cone along and abuse it.

P.s. I can't reply to rev_bird below, but Amen to that. Spot on analysis.

<comment><USER23> You can both be right. It is true that this apparatus presents an unparalleled opportunity for the suppression of free speech. It is also true that, compared to Stalinist Russia, Nazi Germany, Crusades-era Europe, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, etc. we are nowhere near the historical maximum of such suppression...

...which makes it all the more important that we quash said opportunity now.

<comment><USER24> I think that this is the correct response.

It's also worth noting, though, that the current situation has the potential to be more global and pervasive than all of those more localized historical examples.

I seem to recall an intelligence agency official or general saying something to the effect of "America will be remembered for it's networks the way that Rome is remembered for its roads." I can't seem to find the quote right now, but I think it's illustrative of the bounds and limits of our present apparatus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Did we all read the same article...Where is the evidence of a third leaker?</comment>


Culture is not about esthetics (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://www.gwern.net/Culture%20is%20not%20about%20Esthetics <comment><USER2> Argh. Wrong on dozens of levels, and arguably nothing more than a ridiculous and repetitive summation of Modernist industrial / capital ideology.

In short, the author shouldn't be so quick to dismiss Postmodern artwork because it eloquently dismisses his reduction of culture to commodity.

Culture _is_ aesthetics. If you need a tell, glimpse at late Modernist aesthetics that sought to separate symbology from it. Form vs. Function is precisely such an ignorant axis model.

Culture communicates via its symbology, and some of that ethic / ideology is inexpressible via commodification; hence the need for late Modernists to attempt to exorcise such an emergent phenomenon.

If anything, the aesthetics of a culture (and important symbology) needs to be emancipated from the late Modernist industrial complex.

<comment><USER3> Maybe we'd benefit from having a discussion in simpler terms? The main points of the article, as I understand it, are that society shouldn't encourage the creation of new art, because we already have more than enough good art to last anyone a lifetime, and because artists are mostly motivated by social status anyway. It seems to me that your comment didn't offer any arguments against these points. Maybe I'm missing something?

<comment><USER2> Way back when, in fine arts school, a wise university professor taught us a unique trick to reframe statements regarding art.

The trick was to replace all instances of "art" with "language".

Let's try it...

"The main points of the article, as I understand it, are that society shouldn't encourage the creation of new [language], because we already have more than enough good [language] to last anyone a lifetime, and because [language manipulators] are mostly motivated by social status anyway."

Interesting I would say.

Not to pick on your statement, but rather to illustrate how ideological underpinnings frame our concepts. Art exists as nothing more (or less) than language, yet our ideological pressures force framing.

It strikes me that if that is the premise of the article (I read a little more under the hood) then even then, the framing is questionable.

<comment><USER3> OK, I see. Do you have an argument that doesn't rely on conflating "art" with "language"?

<comment><USER4> Agree with the other poster - it isn't conflation. Art _is_ a form of communication, like languages are. Language and art are concepts that overlap more often than not.

This permeates all aspects of our lives - there is no objective reason why "red octagon" means "stop" except that we have created a design language in which this is standard. Likewise we've constructed massive visual symbologies that have real meaning - the floppy disk icon, an upward pointing arrow, the male/female symbols on restrooms that are so universal, etc. These are non- linguistic things that are nonetheless communication all the same.

There are even more complex manifestations of these symbols, techniques, and themes in fine arts - but in principle they are the same.

So to address your previous point:

> _" The main points of the article, as I understand it, are that society > shouldn't encourage the creation of new art, because we already have more > than enough good art to last anyone a lifetime"_

This becomes a nonsensical statement, because art is communication - and like all communication it wears culture and politics all over it. Art is unique to the time and place where it is created - the same way a novel wears the signatures of the era in which it is written.

This would be like suggesting that we should shut down all newspapers, because we already have archives full of old newspapers, more than anyone can read in a lifetime.

Art is intrinsically, inseparably tied to the culture and time surrounding its creation. It is not substitutable in perpetuity like a daily vitamin pill. Art created in the 18th century is not the same as art created in the 19th century - and is not the same as art that will be created in years to come.

> _" and because artists are mostly motivated by social status anyway"_

I've known a lot of artists. I don't think this statement is justified. You can say a lot of things - artists create for their ego, artists create for the approval of others, but "social status" brings in a lot of connotations that frankly aren't warranted.

Art is insular frequently - many artists have no interest in appealing to the layman, and their works are often inscrutable to anyone who hasn't spent a _lot_ of time studying the art. Their primary interest in creation is communicating with others who are as studied as them in a particular topic. One can spin this as "being driven by social status" but in reality is no different than listening to the same music as your friends, or watching the same movies.

To try and bring this back to our world - think about an expert programmer who blogs about the finer points of compiler design. His blog is complete gibberish to the layman, and in fact is not understandable to most beginner programmers either. You _have_ to have a certain background in order to understand what he's writing - this is what a lot of art is like. The mistake here is that certain people have put this art in a museum and told everyone they should like it - in doing so creating a false impression that understanding what's hanging on this wall is simple. It's really not.

The criticism in the article is off-base precisely because of this. This is like an amateur programmer looking at this compiler design blog and saying "all of this is gibberish I don't understand, therefore bullshit". The reality is that these are expert works designed for experts in a field - and to understand it (not that you're obligated to understand it at all) you have to work your way up to it, by understanding who has done what, where they came from, where they learned and copied from, etc etc.

<comment><USER3> The article was mostly talking about popular art, not art made specifically for experts. Most people are just looking for some simple thrills, which they can get from old stuff just as well as from new stuff. IMO the analogy between art and language only distracts from that point, I'd prefer if you engaged it head on.

<comment><USER5> I love old fiction, however I cannot read old fiction that references or is inspired by modern events. The novel is as much an instrument of contemporary social commentary as much as it is anything and to ignore this is to confuse the entire subject.

Books like Dead Air by Ian Banks, or Pattern Recognition by William Gibson, are simply not available in earlier eras as their narrative reference points did not yet exist.

It is like looking for something in the golden age of Hollywood that closely resembles Scott Pilgrim vs The World. Without the culture of computer games to draw on, that film could not get made.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Culture is about many things, one of which is aesthetics. The idea that creative arts are valued by some absolute aesthetic quality is to ignore not only the changing nature of quality itself, but also all the other purposes that art has. Art is also about commentary on the current culture, and that is just as good a reason to produce it as any. Not everything has to reach for the sublime, some people are just trying to illuminate something rather small and innocuous in a fairly humble manner and if their audience is small, no matter. As to the question of if we need more books, given we have more of a high quality than one person could read in a lifetime, like I said, quality isn't everything. I want books that comment on the current world, not just books that are the best written.

Also, the idea that there is too much fiction available is a very anglo- centric position. There are many languages around the world where the novel is still relatively novel.

</comment><comment><USER6> This article has a completely backwards approach. People prefer new art. This is a clearly observable fact. The article's approach to this fact seems to be to declare everybody as making the wrong choice, essentially by fiat. It would be much more interesting to examine _why_ people prefer new art and ask the question of _whether_ the classics are underappreciated and if there would be a net benefit to encouraging them, rather than basically assuming the author's tastes are some sort of objective fact and deriving a bunch of nonsense from it.

Personally, I think there's a ton to be said for context. People want characters and situations they can relate to. At the end of the day, I'd generally prefer to read something where the protagonist uses an iPhone and cooks with a microwave than one where the protagonist writes letters and has his food cooked by slaves.

And of course it doesn't have to be as dramatic as smartphones and slavery. Even a book from just a couple of decades ago is going to feel remarkably different due to changing attitudes towards everything from homosexuality to nuclear war.

But he completely refuses to consider such contextual advantages. He states flat out, "People _are_ better off reading the best books, and the best ones _are_ predominately the ones that already exist, there _is_ more than can be read, and new books have no compelling advantage over the classics." (Emphasis from the author.)

The concluding sentence is an excellent summary of the article, although not the way it's meant to be: "I have started with common-sense grounds and wound up somewhere strange." In my experience, when people justify things with "common sense" they often mean unsubstantiated claims that they don't want to have to justify explicitly. If you start with "common-sense grounds" and end up somewhere strange, consider that maybe your starting assumptions are faulty!

<comment><USER7> I think you may be misinterpreting "the best ones are predominately the ones that already exist" a bit.

Most cultural production in any medium is forgettable. How many composers do you think were alive at the same time as Beethoven? Hundreds? Thousands? How many of them do we still listen to today? Tens, maybe less.

Even more recently, let's take The Beatles and their contemporaries. Of course, The Beatles were not the only seminal artists of their time. They were active at the same time as David Bowie and The Rolling Stones. But again, how many of their contemporaries produced albums that are now forgotten by everyone who listened to them? How much of what's left even now will be gone in another 75 years, when basically everyone who was alive in the 60s is dead?

The only difference between the 60s (or early 1800s) and now is that we haven't yet forgotten all the crap that is being put out today. Will future historians of pop music assign more than a footnote to Katie Perry or Taylor Swift 50 years from now? Will they even get a footnote?

So the reason old art is the best art is simply that we've had time to weed out all the crap. The remaining art that we still remember is the best of what was released at the time. It's not the best because all old was better, it's the best because it's been better curated.

In fact, for all we know, the overall proportion of art that is good might be even better today, but that doesn't change his proposition that we don't really _need_ new art in order to experience great art for the rest of our lives.

<comment><USER8> While I'm not entirely sure who they are or what they sing, I'm pretty sure at least some people _actually like_ Katie Perry and Taylor Swift, and it would be a disfavor to those fans to deprive them of the artists they like.

<comment><USER9> Would those same people suffer an absolute difference in musical enjoyment if those two artists did not exist? Is there a reason to believe that another set of artists wouldn't have filled that gap and users would be just as happy? That is, if there was no copyright and instead we were listening to stuff artists made just because they're artists, and they find a way to create, is the public at net loss?

In photography, amateurs are all over, with top equipment (it's an old joke that non-pros have the better equipment as they can better afford it). If I go to look at pictures of some place, it may very well be that professional photographers are providing zero additional value to my viewing enjoyment. Why should this be different than any other area?

<comment><USER8> >Would those same people suffer an absolute difference in musical enjoyment if those two artists did not exist?

Statistically speaking, yes, some of them would.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If the author had just summarized his points in a thesis paragraph I wouldn't have had to wade through so many words just to try and figure out what he was ultimately trying to say. Ironically, he spent much of the post complaining about how much there is to read.

<comment><USER11> Not to try to sound like I'm appealing to authority or his greatness or anything, but I think gwern's essays are fantastic. I think their length is fine because of how rich they tend to be.

<comment><USER10> Long articles are fine and there is good content in this one. Just help me navigate it better by using a familiar hierarchy more common to informational essays.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a long, but brilliant essay.

I especially enjoyed the section on Music Instruments about 1/4 down the page.

The theme argues the idea that civilization/society/humans create for the sake of social status, not for the effect of the creation.

For example: We choose to learn to play guitar to "be cool," or piano to indicate we want to be thought of as high-class rather than because we value the sounds of either of these instruments.

This can be incredibly earth-shattering to realize. I hope it's not 100% true, but there is plenty of evidence to show it is.

This type of thinking may also inform the famous "Mac vs. PC vs. Linux" debates. Do we choose our OS based on it's social significance or its technical, productive and visual benefits?

<comment><USER13> It's not a novel idea - consumption for identity purposes is a very, very old and well explored meme:

[https://www.google.co.uk/?q=consumption%20and%20identity#q=c...](https://www.google.co.uk/?q=consumption%20and%20identity#q=consumption+and+identity)

A lot of basic sales books/courses discuss it. I've met a few people in the traditional publishing and they seem to well understand that the majority of books sold are never read.

I am actually having great trouble getting motivated to read the whole essay. Gwern's writing suffers a lot from poor sequencing, excessive footnotes/hyperlinks/digressions and a general reluctance/inability to summarise. Wish he could find a way to make his writing "skim-able", so that I can at least tell what the rough subject is before investing an hour to understand it.

<comment><USER14> Yeah. When I write like this, it's because I'm really writing for me. It's my way of processing a topic.

But if I'm going to publish something, I'd rather write for the reader. I just threw out half a book manuscript because I realized that while my intended audience was novice entrepreneurs, my actual audience would be grizzled, grumpy old veterans like myself. Eventually I hope I'll start fresh and really write for my readers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I nicked the title for this essay:

[http://rocknerd.co.uk/2013/09/13/culture-is-not-about- aesthe...](http://rocknerd.co.uk/2013/09/13/culture-is-not-about-aesthetics- punk-rock-is-now-enforced-by-law/)

Culture is not primarily about aesthetics: it's about monkeys' mutual grooming. It's about aesthetics after the piece of culture has fulfilled subcultural needs. Is your typical metalhead going to choose an exquisite harp symphony over a pretty-good slab of loud metally rock'n'roll? Probably not.

<comment><USER14> You're normally so sharp about deflating dodgy ideas that I'm surprised to see you say this. As I read it, you and Gwern seem to assume that a) there is an objective "best" measure for art, and b) the purpose of experiencing art is is to consume "best" art.

I don't think either of those are true. I agree there's a status component to things, but we're monkeys; there's a status component to everything. (If I avoided everything where status behavior was an important driver, I'd have to stop typing right now; open-source software is filled with it.) Culture, being the summation of everything we talk about, is "about" a lot of things. Really, it's about everything.

Sure, everything social that we do is socially mediated, and therefore has status components. But to say that's what it's primarily about is to me like saying that all of marine biology is really about water. Sure, it's there, and sure, anything you point at is related to seawater. But saying it's all about seawater strikes me as a rhetorical technique used to dismiss something, not a serious analysis.

<comment><USER15> Oh, it's totally all mixed up. It's intersubjective, which means you can sorta rank stuff but not really.

However, I do think culture is primarily about culture, i.e. mutual grooming and good feelings with our fellow monkeys. I speak here as a superannuated rock journalist with a ridiculously large record collection.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to get word of mouth when customers heavily compete with each other? - <AUTHOR> To clarify: I often heard about building a great product and how that would lead to word-of-mouth advertising from your early customers. But in many cases, I feel customers are competing with each other and don't have any incentives in doing it. Say you are selling something to small restaurant owners and that actually drives sales up. I doubt they will go and tell other restaurant owners about that. And I feel this is actually a very common situation I never hear discussed. <comment><USER2> If your customers are all in the same market, then it's not in their best interests for you to take on their competitors. This isn't simply, logistically, "how can I get the other market participants to know about me". This is an actual conflict of interest.

Especially if a company such as yours can help "saturate" a market (with no details, I can only speculate), you want to think carefully about whether you really should go after the entire market, and if your value would be less to each customer were you to have higher penetration.

To make up an example: there are companies selling templates for eBay sellers. The theory is the templates convert better than bland listings, and that therefore people using the templates have an advantage over those that don't. But if everybody uses them, the advantage to each may be greatly diminished.

It is also possible your solution doesn't make it any easier for companies to compete - in which case, why are they using it at all?

</comment><comment><USER3> We have exactly this problem. We have found no solution other than to expect no word-of-mouth sales. We actually have a problem where our customers will tell their competitors that our product is terrible and not to use it so they can keep it for themselves.

<comment><USER4> The Iceland Principle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm interpreting the question to mean: if you are selling an enterprise product into a competitive industry, how do you do word-of-mouth advertising?

The answer is, to a first approximation: you don't. "Viral marketing" is a buzzword of the B2C sector. It exists in the BB sector, sure but it's never a dominant channel.

</comment><comment><USER6> Offer a cant-say-no discount to one customer in exchange for a press release. Then get some industry specific blog/magazine to publish it, or interview you about it, etc.

</comment><comment><USER7> Does them heavily competing actually mean that they don't talk to each other? Are there special situations where they do anyways? (e.g. industry events). How large are they - over a certain size, employees are unlikely to take it that seriously to not talk to employees of competitors.

Do people regularly move between companies in the field?

Are there external companies/contractors hired by multiple companies in the field?

</comment><comment><USER8> What are you asking?</comment>


Drawing you a horrible logo for only $5 - <AUTHOR> http://imjustcreative.com/drawing-you-a-horrible-logo-for-only-5/2010/09/09/ <comment><USER2> I think $5 for a fresh perspective on a potential logo is good value for the money, so long as you retain rights to the final design (not something mentioned in the FAQ).

I've got a web site/service in the back of my mind, and while I have a conceptual idea of the basic logo, my drawing skills suck worse than my web design skills (which suck considerably, let me tell you), so $5, which I might otherwise spend on energy drinks today, could yield a decent logo concept.

I think the dude deserves the $5 for the simple entertainment value of the site and logos. Some are downright clever!

My big question is, for the uninitiated like myself, what does good professional logo design cost these days? Knowing that would give a good perspective on the value of this $5 service.

<comment><USER3> I used to be a designer and charged $100/hr and depending on the number of choices/revisions I gave the client it would take from 10-40hrs for a logo, so $1,000-4,000.

However you could probably find a talented freelancer to do one for $500.

Of course the sky's the limit and agencies routinely take huge companies like UPS or Coke for thousands and thousands.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "My logo was rejected, what the hell?

It probably contains porn or was considered inappropriate for even a Horrible Logo."

LOL. The FAQ is hilarious. Go read it now: <http://www.horriblelogos.com/faqs/>.

<comment><USER5> Not to mention <http://www.horriblelogos.com/testimonials/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Most of these logo's aren't horrible, they're just at stage 1 for logo creation. Good thing it's (somewhat?) working out for him, it's a funny business idea.

<comment><USER7> Agreed, not horrible just amateurish.

I should launch www.logodesignedbya5yearold.com and see if I could compete!

<comment><USER8> [http://www.bobparsons.me/9/how-godaddy-got-name-logo- mean.ht...](http://www.bobparsons.me/9/how-godaddy-got-name-logo-mean.html)

 _And our logo "The Go Daddy Guy" was born one night when a mom and her little girl were playing around doodling on their computer._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I actually like these logos. Lapland cracks me up.

<comment><USER10> On the other hand, why pay $5 when you can get 20 microturks do the same for 5x less (and give you 20 choices)?

<comment><USER11> You're paying a premium because this guy has talent... well, $5 worth of talent, at least.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> On a related note, a few years back I conceived of and actually launched a website called (roughly) $5 Business Ideas.com

The idea was to spend a few minutes on each and write 100-150 words the would constitute a half-baked business idea.

Never had the time to devote to it, and I left the company where it was spawned but I still think it has a legitimate place in the market.

As we always say here at HN, it's not the idea that's worth so much, it's the execution.

Another related side note, Fiverr appears to still be around: <http://www.fiverr.com/>

<comment><USER13> Ah, that sounds familiar, have you seen: <http://www.halfbakery.com/>

Lovely website.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> So who's going to spot the $5 for an HN logo? I'd be willing to do it haha

<comment><USER14> The order is in... and let the wait begin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Ha, that's funny. I work with web advertising for micro businesses and some people just will NOT pay even $10-20 for a web ad to be designed.

<comment><USER16> It's not a real business if they can't find $10 in their budget for design work.

<comment><USER15> I totally agree. But still, these people are serious in a way. It's generally the hobby or very-very entry level range. The thing is, they'll spend plenty of money on supplies and marketplace fees, but have this aversion to purchasing something relatively virtual, especially as they think they can do themselves or get it for free. The same goes for their websites.

It's bad decision making, no doubt. They're sacrificing their professional image, and being penny-wise and pound foolish.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Ha...

Lap Land Pet Sitting "Thanks for the Beer Lap Land Pet Sitting! I hope you hate your new horrible logo as much as I hated making it."

<http://www.horriblelogos.com/lap-land-pet-sitting-service/>

</comment><comment><USER18> Reminds me of the bums who are up-front about using your spare change to get beer.

I don't mean that he's a bum! He's just honest about the whole thing: "give me $5 for beer and I'll draw you a shitty logo." Love his candor.

</comment><comment><USER19> Some are not to bad for $5. But this one is something else, he managed to incorporate the Nazi SS insignia ...

<http://www.horriblelogos.com/jess3/>

</comment><comment><USER20> Ha, did you see the one for The Schiffer Firm?

I noticed this in the FAQ:

"No. What you get is the final logo. I will not redo any logos."

Why not charge more for real designs? Or farm it out?

<comment><USER21> I e-mailed him and he said that I could order 10 logos for the same company for $50.

At $5 a pop, just keep ordering until you get one you like. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> You're missing half of the value here: For $5 bucks, you basically get an advertisement front and center on his blog.

This strikes me as not a bad deal.

</comment><comment><USER22> The guy's wrist must be getting some seriously bad RSI very soon.</comment>


Popcorn Time - <AUTHOR> http://popcorn-time.se/ <comment><USER2> Don't use this one, popcorn-time.se it's closed source and potentially full of spyware/malware...

Use the Community Edition based on popcorntime.io instead, its source is open on github!

[https://popcorntimece.tk/](https://popcorntimece.tk/)</comment>


Tesla Story Becoming Increasingly Fantastic as Business Model Falls Apart - <AUTHOR> https://seekingalpha.com/article/4085784-tesla-story-becoming-increasingly-fantastic-business-model-falls-apart <comment><USER2> I wonder if a bunch of Tesla shorters write these articles at SeekingAlpha. If the headline alone didn't give it away for you, this might:

> Underutilization of manufacturing facilities and ongoing opex and capex > continue to push the company toward bankruptcy.

Really, bankruptcy? Who actually believes Tesla is going bankrupt with the shipping of 400,000 Model 3's approaching, battery business booming, and with the solar roof product ready to go? If there financials are not great for the next year or so, that still wouldn't mean bankruptcy for Tesla...</comment>


Rethinking Databases and Noria with Jon Gjengset [audio] - <AUTHOR> https://corecursive.com/030-rethinking-databases-with-jon-gjengset/ <comment><AUTHOR> Jon is doing an AMA on Reddit now for any who want to ask questions: [https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/c71f03/im_a_phd_stude...](https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/c71f03/im_a_phd_student_building_a_fast_research/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app)</comment>


Show HN: Hip.ly playlists bands near you playing tonight (Includes San Jose) - <AUTHOR> http://hip.ly/ I wrote Hip.ly last Thursday because it's something I've wanted for a long time and I needed a break from my startup. I wrote a blog post about why I did it here:
http://zachster.com/2010/11/08/hip-ly/
I included San Jose to make it relevant for my distant friends out there. I was surprised how many cool shows are coming up... in the surrounding area...
http://hip.ly/1288 <comment><AUTHOR> I wrote Hip.ly last Thursday because it's something I've wanted for a long time and I needed a break from my startup. I wrote a blog post about why I did it here:

<http://zachster.com/2010/11/08/hip-ly/>

I included San Jose to make it relevant for my distant friends out there. I was surprised how many cool shows are coming up... in the surrounding area...

<http://hip.ly/1288>

</comment><comment><USER2> I just used Hip.ly to find a great venue for a show and drinks tonight. I didn't realize you could actually preview bands by venue/date but I that feature is fabulous. This is exactly what avid concert goers need to keep track of shows in the city. Nice work!

</comment><comment><USER3> Zachster... did we actually meet last Friday at the Founder Institute event at Microsoft Silicon Valley?

During the "speed dating" exercise, somebody pitched me this same concept. I remember it sounding like a good idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha... no... this is the first "missed connections" I've gotten on HN.

It's kind of an obvious idea, I guess. But I haven't seen anything that let's you listen to the bands playing nearby.

I'm not sure how much potential there is here for a business. I go into some of that on my blog.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Real cool idea. Can't wait until there are more venues added.

<comment><AUTHOR> Any requests?

<comment><USER5> For NYC: Rockwood Music Hall and Union Hall

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm pulling the shows from Oh My Rockness. If they recommend a show at those venues, they'll show up in the listings.

When I get some more time, I'll add all the venues in NY and personalize based on Facebook likes.</comment></comment></comment></comment>