The Walmart Tax Every American Taxpayer Pays - <AUTHOR> https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/04/08/walmart-tax-every-american-taxpayer-pays/100188002/# <comment><USER2> I never bought this argument that somehow Walmart is abusing the system.

Abusing the system implies that only if Walmart stops doing the abuse, somehow abuse will stop, but this clearly is not the case.

Contrary to what writers of this article believe, prices are not formed in isolation of buyer and seller, in this case labor is being sold, and if Walmart does not lower the salaries and transfer the savings to the customers then some other company is going to beat the to it and manage to provide the cheapest good for the same quality.

Most people believe that when a company does something X, to achieve a reduction in costs, then it simply uses it to increase it's own profit margin, but they don't understand that instead of increasing their current profit margin, they can increase their future profit margin by selling their products for less by passing that lower cost to the customer.

Calling it a 'Walmart' tax is a spin on things which is aimed to invoke emotional imagery, it's like if NJ lawmakers called a tax as 'Tesla tax' because by bypassing the dealers they are putting more people out of job and on welfare, therefore the tax which will be used increase the benefits is 'Tesla Tax'.

There is a wide welfare structure in America, and the market will reflect that. If you give certain group of people free healthcare, then their employers will stop providing them with healthcare, if they give 3% 401K contribution to all working employees then yes, their employer's contribution will go down by 3%.

<comment><USER3> > if Walmart does not lower the salaries and transfer the savings to the > customers then some other company is going to beat the to it and manage to > provide the cheapest good for the same quality

This excuse can be used to justify virtually any deplorable behavior by a corporation. "If _we_ don't cut prices by dumping waste directly into the river, another company will!" Costco competes head-to-head with Walmart on prices, and doesn't treat their employees like cattle.

<comment><USER4> I think it's more about ensuring that the system is structured in such a way that these things are minimized. If you don't want waste dumped in the river, ban it or tax it rather than subsidizing it. The Costco comparison is a bit apples to oranges, too. They have a substantially different customer base. There are a lot of people who can't afford that $110 membership. Lower income Americans are the ones who benefit the most from WalMart's services. Aldi is more competitive in this area, but they do it by significantly different means, and they're still focused on maintaining a very low labor cost, they just do it differently than WalMart does.

And as someone who worked at WalMart for awhile, their lack of a union (Meijer and Kroger both required I have full weekend availability as a result of their union contract -- and I needed weekends free for my job at McDonald's) and the relative ease of being able to get a job there was a huge part in my own escape from poverty.

<comment><USER3> I totally agree. I don't think wanting to improve the system and being critical of corporations exploiting the current system are mutually exclusive. You can have both.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This seems like a pretty straight forward issue to me. If the minimum wage is too low for employees to live on in your state, then raise the minimum wage. Don't get angry with a corporation for complying with wage laws that your state set. It should be pretty unsurprising that a company is seeking to pay minimum wage for unskilled labor. Also if you don't want to offer tax incentives to a corporation then complain to your legislators. I'm pretty sure every company would jump at the opportunity to leverage tax incentives, not just Walmart.

<comment><USER6> You could look at a newspaper column as a way of trying to gain public support for your view, public support that would be useful in getting legislators to act.

<comment><USER5> Sure, but they are framing the problem incorrectly which will poorly bound the types of solutions legislators will shoot for. If the problem is framed as "Walmart is abusing the system" then the proposed solutions will probably all be some variant of "punish Walmart". However, the problem is actually that the system (wage laws, tax laws, etc) is poorly serving its constituents, not that Walmart is abusing it. The proposed solutions to this problem look very different and involve raising the minimum wage and changing the way tax incentives are provided.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It seems to me that whether Walmart gains or loses from a welfare benefit paid to workers depends on the structure of the benefit. IANAE. If the benefit is tied to working, like the EITC, it makes the worker willing to work for a lower wage. i.e. the result of the benefit is to shift the supply curve for labor down, so that the equilibrium wage is lower. On the other hand, if the benefit is not tied to working, it seems to me that it shifts the supply curve up. I'm less willing to take a low-paying job once I know I at least won't starve. This means that Walmart pays more.

That welfare benefits are means tested complicates things significantly.

</comment><comment><USER8> Here are some options:

\- Walmart fires half of their workers and doubles the remainder's pay

\- The government terminates the benefits low income Americans receive

\- Walmart accelerates the transition to automated stores and fires any workers who receive government benefits

\- Walmart doubles all workers pay and increases prices to match, and then closes any stores that fail to turn a profit

\- Walmart fires everyone, shuts down, and concedes to Amazon

</comment><comment><USER9> First of all, Walmart I'll note consistently pays one of the world's highest corporate income tax rates, at around 30%. Their income tax is about equal to what that article claims the subsidy is.

Ok, let's present the alternative then.

Walmart automates its massive retail operations substantially over the next 10-15 years, using robotics and AI.

Their goal is to match the dollar of sales to employee ratio of, say, beloved Costco. And or try to keep up with Amazon's ability to highly automate its operations (competitive pricing advantages etc).

There went one million jobs, consisting largely of employees with few skills and very limited alternative employment prospects.

Now what? Here's the reality when you remove the one-sided emotion-driven premise in the article: it's better to subsidize those employees to a modest extent, than to a 100% extent (which is the scenario coming for tax payers; the harder / more expensive you make it on Walmart to employ those people, the faster they're going to automate their jobs away).

Also, if you want to reduce the subsidy, raise the minimum wage (or the earned income tax credit, a vastly superior approach; which then begets a further debate on the subsidy), which Walmart has routinely supported. They support it because it harms their weaker competitors, whereas Walmart can deal with it. When you raise the minimum wage, Walmart will either optimize by firing workers / using automation further, or they'll push increased costs onto customers, which gets you right back to the same place in terms of tax payers paying for Walmart's employees (hint: every employed adult in America pays for their employees, they have $485 billion in sales).

<comment><USER10> > the minimum wage ... which Walmart has routinely supported.

Do you have any links for further reading on this? From what I've read, they've only raised their min wage from $9 to $10 _after_ protests by their work force. I certainly wouldn't call this support of raising the minimum wage (but perhaps they've since changed their tune?).

<comment><USER11> The federal minimum wage is only $7.25. By paying $10, they are paying 38% more than the minimum. Even at 9 they are 24% above the minimum. I expect that they would prefer a minimum wage exactly equal to what they pay as a minimum, because that would disadvantage less efficient competitors.

<comment><USER12> > I expect that they would prefer a minimum wage exactly equal to what they > pay as a minimum, because that would disadvantage less efficient > competitors.

No, it would disadvantage competitors that could get by with labor with lower market value per unit of labor, which are not necessarily less efficient (if they were delivering the same output per unit of labor using less expensive labor, they'd be _more_ efficient, for example, not less.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I was expecting a discussion of the minimum wage that Walmart lobbies for in order to hurt smaller competitors. Probably expecting too much subtlety.

<comment><USER14> What are you referring to? Walmart already pays employees well above the legal minimum wage, despite the rhetoric thrown about...

[1][http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/27/wal-mart-is-making-it- easier-...](http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/27/wal-mart-is-making-it-easier-for- workers-to-earn-those-pay-hikes-.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> To call benefits that people would have received working at the same wage for any other company a "tax" is kind of pushing the meaning of the word. For example, the student loan deduction only applies if you have an adjusted gross income of less than $80,000 ([https://www.irs.gov/publications/p970/ch04.html](https://www.irs.gov/publications/p970/ch04.html)). Does that mean there is a "tax" that we pay when a company hires a new grad for less than $80,000? In addition, does anyone really believe that if Walmart did not exist, the current Walmart workers would have high paying jobs?

However, many of us do pay a "union" tax. Many local governments have significantly higher taxes because of union negotiated pensions and higher benefits. In addition, Americans also paid a "union tax" when we had to bail out GM a company whose union contributed to it's financial failure.

</comment><comment><USER16> So the author invents the term "walmart tax" and describes it's the reality of Walmart workers having to use welfare programs to supplement their income. So there is no "tax", it's a (claimed) consequence of paying employees so little.

... and I see the author is the president of a union.

</comment><comment><USER17> Better writeup:

[https://americansfortaxfairness.org/files/Taxpayers-and- Walm...](https://americansfortaxfairness.org/files/Taxpayers-and-Walmart- ATF.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER18> The article says how much an average person pays in taxes, and how much Walmart costs the government (based on their analysis)... but it never said how much the average citizen pays every year in 'Walmart Tax'. That seems like an odd thing to leave out of the article.

$1.75? I probably don't care. $432? That's more of a problem.

But the article doesn't state it despite it being the headline.

<comment><USER19> Tough to determine. In my state, it is illegal (as in go to jail) to disclose the value of tax breaks, loopholes.

The quickest fix to all the parasitic behavior is to daylight how much its costing us.

<comment><USER20> Curious, which state is that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Walmart is doing what any market player in its position would be doing: paying the prevailing wage (in this case the federal minimum wage). This is not a tax, or a subsidy. If you want to blame anyone, blame the government for providing such generous benefits. Since the government is going broke, and Walmart is sustainable, I know where I would start.

<comment><USER19> Government functions independently of those it governs?

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> You either support a higher minimum wage and healthcare for everyone, or you support the Walmart tax. It's really that simple and Walmart is not the only corporation the "Walmart" tax goes to. We already know what our "representatives" support.

</comment><comment><USER23> So these people would be better off if they didn't have a job at Walmart?

</comment><comment><USER24> Doesn't this apply to anyone who pays minimum wage? Is there a Walmart specific aspect I'm missing other than that they're the country's largest employer?</comment>


Moj.io: Connect your car to the world around you - mck- http://moj.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> I don't understand why it was designed to fit nicely in your hand, and why it was made with bright colors.

#1. This thing will be under your steering wheel 100% of the time, so being able to hold it ergonomically doesn't make a lick of sense.

#2. If one of your advertised functionalities is for recovery after theft, the last thing you want is for the thief to be able to spot the dongle and remove it. If I bought one, the first thing I would do is obscure it with hockey tape, but I would be concerned that the wireless capabilities would be hindered.

<comment><USER2> Those OBD II connectors in cars can be kind of a pain to plug and unplug, so it does need to fit the hand well, but your point about the bright colors is very good. I hope they consider something more discrete.

<comment><USER3> We are indeed. We intend to offer multiple colors and will allow users to choose a color if we exceed 5000 units.

<comment> mck- This may be a long shot, but were you at Launch@Grow?

<comment><USER4> Actually, yes we were! Did you go on any of the startup crawls?

<comment> mck- Ooh, I think I might have had a conversation with Narayan! I was showcasing Routific at that conference when he came to our booth and we talked for a bit. Now I realize that he was showing me a prototype of the Mojio! :)

<comment><USER3> At the Roundhouse Community Center? Yes that was me :)

<comment> mck- Small world indeed -- impressive work; Keep it up!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Worth noting since we're all supposed to be hackers, the connector hasn't changed over the years since '96 OBD II in the US, but there are several protocols and many vendor-specific subsets of interaction. Early "code readers" may not work on later cars despite having the same plug because the underlying protocol is different. It's easy enough to find out what the protocols are on wikipedia if you're interested. What's available greatly depends on the specific vehicle manufacturer but there is a minimum set of data including DTC's (diagnostic trouble codes) for all.

With manufacturer-specific details, there's an unbelievable amount of data and even commands and firmware download capability through that port. A decent PC- based system with specifics for your vehicle added-on is a worthy tool if you tend to do your own car repairs. Or at least you can go into the shop and tell them what part you need and know whether you're being quoted a reasonable price.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Considering the possibilities, I'm very much surprised that Google hasn't entered this space to supplement their traffic intelligence. Just look at the possibilities of the Torque Android app and this Mojio dongle to see how powerful it is.

If Google came out with a bluetooth OBD-II dongle, they could integrate it into Google Maps/Nav and Google Now, both on Android and iOS. And you don't need an expensive cellular connection for a lot of the functionality, driving down the cost.

In the long term, this would have positive effects for them. They would have realtime analytics from the roads to vastly improve traffic analytics in Google Maps. Google Navigation would also be improved for the user by providing realtime information about speed and fuel, which would greatly improve the user experience (more accurate directions, heads up display of speed, and "nearest gas station" when you're running low).

Best of all? It would be $20, and provide them with all the data they need to make their upcoming driverless cars navigate better as well as improving navigation for existing android users in normal cars. It would also tell them how inefficient people are using their vehicles, and use this real crowdsourced data to market the efficiency of their driverless vehicles.

<comment><USER6> I'm confused, how does getting the speed directly from the car improve directions and heads-up display of speed over getting the speed from the GPS unit?

<comment><USER7> The big advantage over built-in car navigation systems vs hand-held GPS units is that they measure speed and distance far more accurately via the wheel sensors. If you live in a city with a lot of tunnels or GPS dead spots, this can make a real difference.

I would imagine the same information applies. If you can blend the GPS and the wheel sensors, you would get the most accurate reading, because wheel sensors can become inaccurate through fitment of different size wheels and/or tyres.

<comment><AUTHOR> And going over sweet jumps

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've recently done some work for a startup that is developing a highly comparable product.

I strongly doubt their "works on any car since 1995" claim. While OBD-II has been an official standard for very long, not all cars support it equally well at all. We've had serious trouble getting it to work with A-brand cars made in e.g. 1999.

Therefore, I believe that them making this claim can mean one of two things:

       - They're lying
       - Their "prototype" has seen little field testing at this point.

That said, honesty be told, we've been testing in Europe, where the OBD standard has been adopted later. My impression is that moj.io is a North- American only product. Maybe this makes all the difference.

Additionally, however, "Virtual Mechanic" based on OBD-II alone is going to be a half-assed feature (to my understanding). OBD-II contains little more error reporting than that related to emission (i.e. your engine). If your airbag or your breaks malfunction, then this may only be reported through manufacturer- specific protocols. Most importantly, this would mean that a light in your dashboard may be lit, while the Moj.io app says "Running Great!" I highly doubt that they have implemented all manufacturer-specific protocols to a sufficient extent for this feature to work well. It is technically possible, but it needs either a lot of reverse engineering, or a lot of purchased IP.

I really like the other features (FamilyConnect, etc), though, and how they're presented. Well done!

Still, while I like this approach, and while I want this badly myself (and a lot of moj.io seems better planned, marketed and designed than what I've been involved in), based on the above I have strong doubts.

Now, I understand that this may be hard criticism, and maybe I'm completely wrong about some aspects - I'm no real expert here. So if one of the founders reads this, feel free to correct me!

<comment><USER4> Hi skrebbel, great insights here. moj.io is a spin out of another company called REV Technologies, that has been doing energy telematics for the US Army with its partners at SAIC and Honeywell Aerospace since 2008. REV has extensive experience with CANbus networks and OBD communication. Our prototype moj.io device has the benefit of all that experience, whereby REV has been controlling power converters, inverters, motor controllers, large lithium battery packs and many other high voltage electronics and communicating over both the low, med and high speed CAN networks of both modern and not so modern cars.

In regards to the Virtual Mechanic app, you're absolutely right. We know that presently it won't be as extensive on european cars as it will be for North America, which is part of the reason for focusing on the North American market for now. But that is just one app, and probably the least interesting one to the general market of drivers out there. We think the majority of the other apps that we and the dev community will build will only need basic info like odo reading, speed, on/off ignition states and what gear the car is in. So much can be done with that when blended with data from the device's accelerometer, GPS, etc. Jay

Thanks for the very informed thinking on this! Great dialog.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow! A HUGE market that escaped everybody's attention! There are a few comments that come to mind:

First, this Modj.io company provides free testing ground for car companies to see if there is really a wide demand for such feedback mechanisms in public. At the first sight, I would say that there is, as they outlined in their sample use cases in the video.

Second, the only chance that Modj.io has for survival is a quick ramp-up of user base, because this technology is a perfect example of what car companies will try to use for customer lock-in. Kind of like iTunes for your car, storing driving and tracking data in the cloud. I foresee that every car company will try to develop their own platform, SDK, and an app, with unique synergies coming from having access to their cars' deep engineering knowledge. Additionally, this will give car companies real-time feedback about the performance of their cars down to the last part that failed. This will allow them to know things like that the left windshield wiper motor batch that fails more often that average was assembled on a Friday night by John Doe. That's scary level of detail and feedback.

Third, with such level of granularity, insurance companies will have a whole new set of market segmentation metrics, and I wouldn't be surprised to see attempts in horizontal integration of car companies with such feedback information with insurance providers.

Forth, when each car company starts promoting their own SDK, we will see an aggregator-type company that will produce an abstraction SDK that allows you to write an app once to work on all cars.

Just my $0.02. I'd love to hear your projections as well, or comments on something I missed.

<comment><USER10> I don't think it escaped everybody's attention.. there are several companies/people working on this.

<comment><USER11> Citation needed.

<comment><USER12> Some of them do work in the shadows. Since they're not a social media startup they don't need the big media attention ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There is a community of OBD2 hackers out there working on this same problem w/ Arduino / Raspberry Pie. In my opinion, this is a feature that will be replaced by manufacturers embracing open APIs for the benefit of a more connected environment. So, while timely now, it will eventually be displaced.

If you want to build your own, start with OpenGuage: <http://code.google.com/p/opengauge/>

</comment><comment><USER13> Awesome. We are to 4 in just a few months [1]: Lit Motors C-1, Appcelerator+Denso, Ford's Open API, and now Moj.io. This space is exploding quickly and as a hacker and car enthusiast I can't wait to see what is next. Best of luck on your launch!

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4746532>

</comment><comment><USER14> Will we be able to modify the software running on the device? I sure as hell don't want information about my car's problems or GPS whereabouts, not to mention a detailed record of when I'm speeding, to be uploaded to "the cloud".

And of course -- the increasingly likely case that "the cloud" gets owned, the hardware devices get some kind of pushed software update, which then proceeds to use manufacturer specific commands to upload new firmware into my car and drive me off the road.

Blah blah. There're good reasons to be reluctant about hooking your car up to the internet and sending your data over yonder.

It looks like potentially nice hardware. Now let me do the software myself.

While you're at it, it'd be nice to just make the software open-source, so that tinkerers can tinker.

Lest I have to JTAG the shit out of the flash chip. Which reminds me to ask -- can you at the very least keep some JTAG or serial headers on there? Please?

<comment><USER3> Because of licensing and other issues, we aren't certain yet if we can make the firmware of the mojio open source. You can totally write your own apps against our cloud api. This is to abstract away vehicle idiosyncrasies from app developers. That said, we do want more savvy OBD experts to contribute to mojio.

As for your data, you can wipe your data from the mojio servers at any time. Only you can see the data and choose which apps get to see it.

<comment><USER14> > we aren't certain yet if we can make the firmware of the mojio open source

Please do let me know when you find out. This is a very important factor for me and many others.

> You can totally write your own apps against our cloud api.

I think you might have overlooked the primary point of the post. Many folks don't want and don't trust the cloud. My coordinates, travel history, and vehicle information are my business and are not to be stored in the cloud.

> As for your data, you can wipe your data from the mojio servers at any time.

Except law enforcement.

> Only you can see the data

Except law enforcement. Except hackers. Except the other guy's insurance company's subpoena after an accident. And also, the point about remotely reprogramming the device to reflash my car firmware...

The point is -- many folks don't want to plug their car into cloud services.

> we do want more savvy OBD experts to contribute to mojio.

This is a difficult request when the platform is possibly going to be closed- source. Make it an open project, feel better when you receive funding for an open source project, and fuel good community innovation. Keeping it a closed "cloud api" platform stifles this. By the way, having an API doesn't mean things are "open", for whatever that word is worth now a days.

Anyway, I'd be interested to hear your plans for JTAG/serial headers, if you're going to be keeping the firmware closed-source.

<comment><USER15> I agree with zx2c4 whole-heartedly!

The main issue you are going to have is security. I can't see any evidence on your website or video that you have thought about this aspect.

The combination of a closed-source solution, cloud-connectivity and connecting to the car through OBD-II seems the wrong approach to me.

Closed-source has been the pitfall of many companies in the past because fewer people get to examine the proposed solution and thus much more prone to security implementation errors.

Cloud-connectivity is the heart of what zx2c4 was talking about.

As for the OBD-II port, what you tout as an advantage in your video is actually a disadvantage. First because since 1995, the internet connectivity landscape has changed dramatically, and security strategies have had to adapt. In fact, often struggling to keep up. This means that the OBDII port was never designed with internet connectivity in mind. This is not a commercial advantage but a security concern! Examples like CarShark ([http://www.popsci.com/cars/article/2010-05/researchers- hack-...](http://www.popsci.com/cars/article/2010-05/researchers-hack-car- computers-shutting-down-brakes-engine-and-more)) or the recent string of thefts made easier through the use of the OBD2 ([http://jalopnik.com/5923802/watch-hackers-steal-a-bmw-in- thr...](http://jalopnik.com/5923802/watch-hackers-steal-a-bmw-in-three- minutes)) port are proof that the port is not a good candidate for wider connectivity.

In environments where security matters tremendously like nuclear power plants, a core strategy seems to be limiting capabilities in hardware. The OBDII port does not follow that spec as far as I am aware. The communication scheme allows you to do bidirectional communication. This means that if a 0-day vulnerability was found in your system (closed-source only makes this more difficult to patch), attackers could use your infrastructure to write data to the car such as programming in new keys (like the BWM attack). So it seems to me that you would need a hardware-enforced read only port which doesn't exist. Incidentally that is fundamentally the reason behind some car manufacturers ensuring that their entertainment systems (with BT connectivity etc) are fully separate from the car main computer (whose traditional access port is the OBDII).

As we have discussed, even just collecting said data and storing it in the cloud is undesirable outcome for the driver (your customer in theory...).

This is only my 2 cents, I hope it helps you understand why I think this implementation is not a desirable solution and ultimately why I won't be backing this project despite. Don't get me wrong, just like many folks here, I would love to have a JTAG to poke around and make some cool toy applications but I will never use this as you intended it and plug it into a car.

<comment><USER3> Hi charlesfracchia, Nobody wants their driving information openly available to the world - neither do we so yes, we have thought about security.

The OBD protocols do not address security and have been hacked but the moj.io does not expose the OBD protocols to the Internet. moj.io communicates to the moj.io cloud over an encrypted VPN.

When you receive a moj.io, you have to pair it to your moj.io account. To do this, you require the serial number of the device and a secret PIN (which you can change and never share). No one has access to your data unless you explicitly grant access (e.g. service garage, insurance company, family member etc.). You also see who is checking you out (once you grant them access)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16>
        moj.io works in all major urban centers with coverage for
        95% of the Canadian and US population

I think this should be near the top. Kickstarter-like projects always forget to account for international backers, which is getting seriously annoying.

</comment><comment><USER17> Most of the neat things that this device can accomplish could also be done with an OBD-II to Bluetooth interface, which can be had for ~$20 off EBay.

You don't get remote access to the bus, but it's much cheaper. Not sure how they plan to implement some of the non-OBD-II features (remote unlock is a major one) for all vehicles, since there's no standard. But it'll be interesting to see where this goes.

</comment><comment><USER18> I wonder what the power draw is? a tad worried my car wont start after longterm parking.

<comment><USER3> mojio monitors your vehicle battery level and ignition state. It will go into a deep sleep state with only critical functions on (e.g. theft monitoring) if the vehicle is not doing much. If the car battery hits some critical level, it will send you an alert and shut itself off.

<comment><USER18> Superb! Thanks so much for clarifying that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I see the advantage of having a sim (the real remote monitoring part) but also the disadvantage of needing a dataplan for the sim and security concerns ... why not just make a bluetooth dongle for a fraction of the price ...

<comment><USER20> What is the Bluetooth going to connect to when the car owner isn't the one driving?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Great comments everyone. We agonized about bluetooth. If we can get bluetooth into the mojio without affecting the delivery dates, we intend to include it in the current version - no promises right now though. That way, people have the option to go without a data plan as needed. Also, there's no data plan lock in to mojio so we are looking for ways where people can either add a device to their existing cellular plan or just pay for months where they need it. We are also exploring ways to offset data plan costs. If we can get a sufficient user base, we all get to enjoy the economies of scale.

</comment><comment><USER21> So such a port exists in all cars since 95, and no one did something like that?

<comment><AUTHOR> Progressive Insurance did :|

I nearly threw my remote at the television when I first saw that they were trying to get people to plug their insurance company into the computer of their car.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This looks very promising. Good potential for affordable fleet-tracking.

I'm also excited to see a local (Vancouver) company with such a polished offer. I'll be following this one closely.

<comment> mck- Same here -- I'll be interested to see if they go head-on against Webtech Wireless

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I had a roommate with one of these ODB connector dongles. He paired it with his phone, and was able to get _tons_ of information about the car.

He could even shut off various warnings/status lights, which was handy (my car at the time had a faulty sensor).

<comment><USER24> He may have been using the Torque app, for Android. I have it and it is excellent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Nice... though you don't talk about what the data plan will cost. I assume it's basically like having an iPad with various carriers. But I could see that as a possible issue.

Maybe if it could connect to the wifi of my house and send some data then?

<comment><USER13> _From their indiegogo page:_

Indiegogo backers pay only $7.99/mth or $79/year (US subscribers) for wireless service.

moj.io uses machine-to-machine (M2M) cellular data exchange to send and receive data to and from your car. Unlike email, web browsing, etc, M2M data exchange is very small and requires only a very small data account.

Presently, moj.io will work with any car built after 1995 and has cellular coverage in Canada and US cities. moj.io is supported by different wireless carriers in the US and Canada. When travelling from network to network, because it is on an M2M connection, there are no roaming fees. Your moj.io's default international roaming setting is set to Off. Contact us for details on international roaming rates between Canada and the US to enable this setting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Interesting, lots of products being made by much larger companies already in the market... Audiovox just launched their Car Connection at retail. Not sure if you considered the competition. Calamp, danlaw, xirgo, anydata, etc. etc

</comment><comment><USER27> i am surprised nobody talked about security...i am guessing the OBD interface in cars can be used to send commands to various components....could somebody hack into your car??

<comment><USER28> ODB means On Board Diagnostics. A majority of vehicles only report information - its not generally a control interface.

<comment><AUTHOR> That doesn't mean that the security issue doesn't exist. Via wikipedia:

"Researchers at the University of Washington and University of California examined the security around OBD, and found that they were able to gain control over many vehicle components via the interface. Furthermore, they were able to upload new firmware into the engine control units. Their conclusion is that vehicle embedded systems are not designed with security in mind."

<comment><USER28> Hence the use of "majority".

Thank you for finding that link, I was trying to find this[1] presentation for my comment, but couldn't.

[1] - [http://users.cis.fiu.edu/~carbunar/teaching/cis5374/slides/a...](http://users.cis.fiu.edu/~carbunar/teaching/cis5374/slides/autosec.g.mastakar.pptx)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'm really glad this wasn't around when I was a teenage driver.

</comment><comment><USER30> I went to <http://www.moj.io/obd> as instructed by the FAQ to learn more about the OnBoard Diagnostic port, but got a 404.

Edit: clarity

</comment><comment><USER31> the security benefits are questionable, as thieves will learn very quickly to locate the OBD II port and remove anything plugged in.

</comment><comment><USER32> Is anybody else using the OnBoard Diagnostic port? Is there some connector for an Arduino? I love this approach.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have been using a cheap (<$20) OBD-II dongle in my car for over a year now. The Torque app[1] has an impressive feature list and constant updates. I use it with my tablet inverted on the dashboard during night-driving for giving me a heads up display[2]. It's also great for things like acceleration graphs, tracking stats over the internet, and keeping check on the engine's performance/mpg.

[1] [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.prowl.torq...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.prowl.torque) [2] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OPH7ZJJHV8>

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is brilliant. Very well laid-out with a nice polished design. Might just have to check this out.

</comment><comment><USER34> There's no security in place against the diagnostic port? I mean other than lock and key.

<comment><USER7> Hah, sadly no. And some enterprising thieves in the UK worked out that in certain model BMWs, you can cut a hole in the side glass and fit a sensor sender unit into the sender, while the alarm is activated. This is because the area beside the drivers mirror is an ultrasonic deadspot. Once the thieves have access to the diagnostic port, then can use the information to program a blank key to a valid key, and then steal the car.

The affected models were 1 series, I believe, and it started getting to the point where the chances of a high-spec 1 series getting stolen were very high. Google '1 series theft problem' for more info. There is a home-security cam of some theives stealing a 1 series in a couple of minutes using this technique.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Why "Works with any car built after 1995", what's special about 1995?

<comment><AUTHOR> >All cars and light trucks built and sold in the United States after January 1, 1996 were required to be OBD II equipped. In general, this means all 1996 model year cars and light trucks are compliant, even if built in late 1995.

<http://www.obdii.com/connector.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> The world around you minus syria!

</comment><comment><USER37> I hope they didn't pick the name moj.io because they couldn't find a better .io name :) <http://and.io></comment>


The Top Nine "Top 10" Lists on How Startups Should Handle the Downturn - <AUTHOR> http://www.xconomy.com/national/2008/11/17/how-to-handle-the-downturn-xconomys-top-9-list-of-top-10-lists/

<comment><USER2> Can I flag articles that are not strictly spam but are just reeeeeeeeeeeeeealy crap?

</comment><comment><USER3> A top list of top lists?

 _Chock and disbelief_

</comment><comment><USER4> Maybe we should ban articles with "top [0-9]+"i in their title.

</comment><comment><USER5> Good lord... stop .... with the lists!

</comment><comment><USER6> Well, that's going straight into my top eight top nine top ten lists lists list.

</comment><comment><USER7> Wow, that's umm...really low brow.

</comment><comment><USER8> Well at leas there are only 90!</comment>


Scientists say they have created a new platform for antibiotic discovery - <AUTHOR> http://www.genengnews.com/gen-news-highlights/harvard-team-takes-major-step-toward-overcoming-antibiotic-resistance/81252750/ <comment><USER2> The problem is not finding new antibiotics, it is getting them to market. Given the way the current drug development system has been designed it is very hard to bring a new antibiotic to market and make a profit. Because of this most pharma companies have long ago shut down their antibiotics divisions.

We really need a new approach for funding the development of new antibiotics. My personal favourite is a straight cash reward with a sliding scale for novelty and utility. Just pay the pharma companies a billion dollars in cash for each new antibiotic they bring to market and we will be awash in new antibiotics.

<comment><USER3> By that do you mean the trials, safety testing and licensing side of it, or the way drug companies approach new drug development?

I've never quite understood why we can't approach new antibiotics like we have with many enzymes - lab forced evolution. That manages to produce dozens of new ones for food, washing powder and the like, so antibiotic discovery seems like an excellent place to use it.

<comment><USER4> That doesn't really work unless your antibiotic is going to be a short chain peptide, which might find something but would be extremely unlikely.

Besides, fungi/bacteria have been waging this evolutionary war for a billion years, and we haven't tapped much of anything past beta-lactam (ala penicillin) from that arms race.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The platform isn't the problem, it's the economic system for drug research. Science and free (copyleft) software are a gift economy, and they have outpaced proprietary software. We recognize that patents are bad in software, open source does better than the profit motive. What's more, it can serve the long tail way better!! While Windows runs on some devices, there are _toasters_ that run Linux. Someone in the world could be Working to add knowledge that can lead to cures for Malaria and the Zika virus, unencumbered by patents. But we'd need prizes.

What would it take for this to become a drug? Well, studies and FDA approval, for one. That takes a lot of money. So how can we raise this money without patents? One way would be government funding, but there is plenty of public funding as well through foundations, etc. What is lacking is a well-developed infrastructure for a growing body of patentleft drugs, the same as software.

We need patentleft in drugs: [http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=93](http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=93)

</comment><comment><USER6> "Synthetic route" would be a better description than "platform."

Nevertheless, this is a long, complicated synthetic procedure. It may be simpler than others, but it's much more elaborate than the approaches to many other drugs.

At the end of the day, you end up with a molecule whose pharmacological properties may be very far removed from what you're looking for. These are big, highly functionalized molecules - in other words far from ideal drug candidates.

As others have noted, the biggest hurdles in drug development come late in the process. That's when, after spending hundreds of millions of dollars on Phase 1 and Phase 2 studies, a company finally figures out if they have a drug or not.

Drug development is most decidedly a "waterfall" process. There is no such thing as Agile Drug Discovery, and this paper doesn't really move the goalposts on that front.</comment>


Write it Down - <AUTHOR> http://robertgreiner.com/2012/11/write-it-down/

<comment><USER2> "Sending a quick follow-up email after each meaningful conversation shows that you care and can help keep everyone on the same page."

In my personal experience this (hard to keep) habit really makes a difference. Every time I'd sent my notes and comments to other people to whom I met with, their answer was super positive, and in most cases they would complement with further details that were more than welcome to my work (project management).

<comment><USER3> When I worked with the Politico, the Editor-in-Chief who had helped head up the WashingtonPost always would send these follow-up e-mails after our meetings and it was really effective. It would sit in my e-mail and I would get stuff done. More importantly for these folks who live in a world where there network is their bread and butter, the masters of their own CRM always won.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think this is an awesome idea. I've been thinking about doing this myself for a while now... I'm heavily leaning towards picking up the Samsung Note II phone so I can take notes quickly and always have them available

<comment><USER5> If you have paper notes, just take a picture(s) of them. Works great for whiteboards, too. (Don't forget to turn off the flash.)

If you're going to share, you may want to type up the content as opposed to sharing the picture(s), depending on context. Nonetheless, you immediately have the notes on your device as opposed to pieces of paper to keep track of or a board possibly at the mercy of other conference room users.

P.S. I'll add that I do find it useful to flesh out e.g. meeting notes after the meeting. There will be things I didn't write down, and thoughts that germinate afterward.

For paper notes, I'll often use a different pen color, so that I know what was written in which context. Even with on-screen notes, I'll use a different text color to identify this difference. The distinction helps when referring back to the notes.</comment></comment>


Why airplane doors can't be opened mid-flight - <AUTHOR> http://everything2.com/node/1783223

<comment><USER2> I notice this is the second submission by mattyb from everything2.com tonight.

As cool as everything2.com is, if anyone reading this has remotely any work to do within the next two days, don't start traversing the tree of links from interesting everything2 nodes. I say this because I learned, from experience, that if you have tabbed browsing and open on average >1 new tab per page while traversing a site like everything2, your backload of reading material will grow exponentially and your procrastination problem, if you have one, will similarly grow to epic proportions.

I fear mattyb has been sucked into this trap.

Apologies if this comment is not productive enough.

<comment><USER3> About five years ago, I managed to read _all_ of Everything2 (or at least managed to circumnavigate an entire subgraph until I no longer found any of the remaining outbound links interesting.) It took two weeks. It would probably take even longer now.

I did the same thing with the TV Tropes[1] wiki, even further back; it actually caused me to "queue" so many open tabs at a time that the browser would crash on restore (I think it was about 800, spread out across several windows, that did the trick.) I finally started queueing using bookmarks instead of opened tabs; it was much more annoying to do, but I managed to conquer that site as well.

[1] <http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage> — only click if you're a competitor to a YC venture. ;)

<comment><USER4> My hat is off to you, sir. After spending a greater part of my past week's evenings playing Diablo II, I can't help but appreciate level grinding of a decidedly more cerebral nature.

<comment><USER3> I have to say, though: I don't remember any of it off-hand. At some point in a "mind grind," your brain stops absorbing information from short-term into long-term memory, although you still retain the ability to _make_ new short- term memories, so you still feel like you're "learning," even though it will all disappear sooner rather than later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I thought it was also because of <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._B._Cooper> and the <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooper_vane>.

</comment><comment><USER6> Actually, newer 737's have emergency exits that swing open outwards. They are probably locked into position, but not by the pressure, so, I guess, it would not be that difficult to pop them open.

Most A320's I ride have the plug-type emergency exit that would be rather difficult to open mid-flight.

<comment><USER7> Also: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-10#Cargo_d...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-10#Cargo_doors)

<comment><USER6> Sure. That's a remarkably lethal engineering mistake.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It is an interesting story, but now I wonder what the phrase "disarm doors" means that you often hear from the captain to the flight attendants after they've stopped at the airport.

<comment><USER9> When doors are "armed", opening them automatically deploys emergency exit slides.

<comment><USER10> And when they say "cross-check" it means that the attendant at one door should look across and see that the other door has been done correctly. It's a part of the check-list culture that pervades the aviation industry and is partly responsible for the continuing safety record.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> [http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/04/17/Man-jumps-from- plane-...](http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/04/17/Man-jumps-from-plane- at-23000-feet/UPI-41681239968606/) "The Adlair Aviation's two pilots said the man became agitated aboard the King Air 200 turboprop plane Wednesday night, and both tried to calm him down. However, about 110 miles before landing, the man managed to pry open a door and jump out, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reported."

</comment><comment><USER12> How do skydivers do it?

<comment><USER13> The plane isn't pressurized, and often, the cabin has no door at all -- you are free to step right out of the aircraft. The maximum altitude is kept below 12-15k ft -- above that, a jump would require special breathing equipment for the dive.

Some planes do have closing doors -- for instance, rear-loading cargo planes. Those are the most fun to jump out of, since you can take a running James Bond-style leap out the back of the airplane.

<comment><USER14> Free to step out of the aircraft, but typically you can clip yourself into the inside of the plane with a carabiner. My first time jumping out of a perfectly good plane was at 15,000 feet out of a plane with no "normal" door on the side: as we climbed to altitude, we were sitting on the floor of the plane looking towards the tail - and straight out the gaping door on the side of the plane. It's a weird thing to look (almost) directly ahead and see the ground at that angle.

Someday I'll jump out of a rear-loading plane -- as long as it's not a static line jump... since I'm not military, that probably won't be a problem though ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So what if you 'unlocked' the door at high altitude, when the plane goes downwards, as soon as pressure is low enough, it will open.

<comment><USER8> What do you mean 'unlock' ?

The story plainly tells you that the whole door is designed in such a way that the door wont go anywhere unless the pressure on both sides is equalized.

<comment><USER15> You can unlock the door by turning the handle. You won't be able to get it open, but it's unlocked. So when the pressure stabilizes, the door can easily be opened.</comment></comment></comment>


All You Need to Know About UML Diagrams - <AUTHOR> https://tallyfy.com/uml-diagram/ <comment><USER2> I have started using PlantUML[1] quite a bit recently in my blogging (one example[2]). I have PlantUML code in Org mode source blocks, and Org Babel then generates the svg/png of the diagram each time I update the code block.

[1]: [http://plantuml.com/](http://plantuml.com/) [2]: [https://scripter.co/org-contribution-flowchart/#flow- chart](https://scripter.co/org-contribution-flowchart/#flow-chart)

</comment><comment><USER3> UML Diagrams are actually quite useful, sometimes you just need a structured way to reason about software.

<comment><USER4> There are two types of useful UML:

The first is what I call whiteboard UML - it looks like any UML course except you draw it on a whiteboard, snap a picture on your phone and start implementing it. A couple weeks latter you realize that the design has diverged from the whiteboard so you delete the pictures. The whiteboard was useful for those two weeks to get the discussion started.

The second is maintained, preferably automated. If you use viseo that means an entire team who's only job is to police the code to ensure everybody updates as change happens. Lesson: don't use viseo, use a tool that either generates your code (in C like languages this would be the header files), or a tool that imports the actually code to create diagrams. In either case the reason you do this is because every week you print the diagram out on poster paper and hang it on the wall of your cube/office. (if you are in an open floor plan UML is useless because you don't have a wall to hang it on).

<comment><USER5> When UML was more popular at the height of the OO(AD) frenzy, there was a tool from Peter Coad's company called TogetherJ. IIRC it could do round-tripping between UML and Java code. I think I tried the tool out but not that feature. TogetherSoft was later acquired by Borland, as I remember.

<comment><USER6> In IntelliJ you can refactor from UML views.

<comment><USER5> Interesting, will check that out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My favorite flavor, plantuml, available with a cheesy (but very convenient) cli wrapper via npm- [https://www.npmjs.com/package/node- plantuml](https://www.npmjs.com/package/node-plantuml) The --unicode mode is particularly delightful

<comment><USER8> +1 for plantuml. You can make very useful sequence diagrams with it, in ascii no less.

<comment><USER9> It would be remiss at this point not to recommend websequencediagrams[0].. been using it for years (and convinced multiple workplaces to shell out for the self hosted version..). It's great :)

0: [https://www.websequencediagrams.com/](https://www.websequencediagrams.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Some thoughts I've had on "graphical based programming" (if UML can be deemed as such):

\- Don't draw the product. Draw the organization that produces it. As per Conway's law, you'll be drawing the same thing in the end, but contrary to UML you won't face the problem of the representation of the product evolving faster than the ability of the organization to update it. The representation (the diagram) will just evolve as fast as the organization can represent itself. This require that:

\- The diagram is the organization and the fundamental aspect of code is UI. There is no distinction between the primitives of the UI/UX system (clicking on that, moving this item from here to there, etc ...) and its computational primitives. This is the tipping-point that:

      - a) makes this system homoiconic

      - b) makes this system homoschematic.

Homoschematicity (same-representation/same-gesture in ancient Greek) is reached when the datastructure that is set in immediate relation to itself (typically lists in Lisp) is also what is directly presented to the end user and can be displayed as such, ie. _immediately_ (lisp code is too ugly and limited for that).

</comment><comment><USER11> > All You Need to Know About UML Diagrams

Honestly thought it was just going to be a blank page.

</comment><comment><USER12> aha, you almost got me there. keep your distance, uml. we shall not intermingle ever again...

<comment><USER13> I once took a couple of informatics courses at uni. They talked about uml as if the software would just magically fly out of the diagrams onto peoples computers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "The relation between different classes (represented by a connecting line), makes up a class diagram."

Taken from class diagrams. Not everything you need to know it seems. It misses multiplicity at least. (Didn't read/scan more)

Also, did you really intend to have one-to-many for both client and account? Since you labeled owns. One client multiple accounts is ok for the sample. One account can have multiple owners (clients) in theory but for the introduction (audience is I guess the inexperienced) I would go with 1.

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't think this article covers "all you need to know" particularly well.

</comment><comment><USER16> Creating a bunch of UML diagrams up front is usually the sign of a broken software development process. However, there's a lot of great work that went into the various diagramming grammars that turn out to be really useful in different cases. I've found that spinning up UML-like diagrams for certain subsystems on a whiteboard, or quickly in yEd or similar tool helps immensely with:

a) creating a "thing" to facilitate communication and understanding

b) capturing a design after it's done as part of a deployment/hand-over package

c) a useful toolkit for reverse engineering a system that you had dumped on you

etc.

basically, any sort of ad-hoc communication need or information capture process.

Software Engineering coursework will warp your brain into thinking that you need to spend a few years in a spaceship in orbit around Saturn dreaming up millions of UML diagrams that when done, will magically barf out all of the code that makes up some enormous over-engineered enterprise fizzbuzz system.

It takes a long time to overcome that nonsense without throwing away the goodness that exists here -- there's some excellent diagramming techniques that really help with coming up with a common understanding of how a system should work for a team and product owners and used well can bridge huge communication gaps. Many of the diagrams more or less show the same information, but with a slightly different angle that can help communication.

The diagram grammars themselves can get really fussy and particular, but I think when they're used best only certain components of the grammars are used to fill very specific communication needs, the rest is more or less sketched in, and the remaining grammar can be pretty comfortably be left out.

Many times, you can just invent a diagramming grammar that you can the other parties agree to and just "be inspired" by ideas from UML and get most of what you need done. There's also grammars that are not part of UML that would make sense for people to get familiar with. ArchiMate comes to mind as a particularly great example. I don't use it explicitly (the software tooling support for it is garbage, but you can fake it with yED pretty well), but I've used systems inspired by it numerous times to succinctly capture incredibly complex enterprise systems and data flow and tie those things to business processes and needs.

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

<comment><USER17> > Creating a bunch of UML diagrams up front is usually the sign of a broken > software development process.

Wait, what? Why?

Assuming I'm doing them because they help me flesh out an idea, it should be fine, right? You're talking more about being forced to express a concept in UML when it's already adequately described in a non-UML format, right?

<comment><USER16> Because you're creating a waterfall that you can only slide down and the development process becomes an exercise in alignment to "the plan".

<comment><USER18> One doesn't need to be wedded to diagrams one works out up front. Doing a bit of design upfront can be useful in fleshing out ideas. Whether that's in UML, sequence diagrams, stories, or just some sketches on a whiteboard, or some notes on paper, what one does with them is up to the team. It need not determine everything that follows. You point out all of this yourself upthread.

<comment><USER16> Yes exactly. Pointing a development effort towards a goal or in some direction is a very different thing from an Enterprise Architect dropping a bible of UML on a team.

<comment><USER17> It sounds like the problem is the rigid adherence to the original design, not UML itself.

Good, okay. I was worried that, because I liked drawing UML diagrams, I was somehow a bad engineer! Just keep being flexible, and I'll be in good shape.

Just last week I deleted a whole bunch of boxes on a UML diagram I had drawn because someone suggested a simpler approach.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> [http://www.nomnoml.com/](http://www.nomnoml.com/) is another good one.

[https://github.com/skanaar/nomnoml](https://github.com/skanaar/nomnoml)

</comment><comment><USER20> neat, the pictures could be better doh

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right, pictures should be better focused and more unified in style. Can you recommend any software?

<comment><USER20> I personally use [https://draw.io](https://draw.io)

<comment><USER21> Draw.io is also great for working in groups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> You lost me at "Visio"!</comment>


A Windows feature which can result in bypassing User Group Policy - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/tenable-techblog/bypass-windows-10-user-group-policy-and-more-with-this-one-weird-trick-552d4bc5cc1b <comment><USER2> _yawn_ yet another case of an "exploit" that involves being other side of an airtight hatchway[1]. most/all of the important group policy settings are machine, rather than user. the user group policy settings are mainly with appearance/styling.

Let's go through each of the "implications".

>Single File Code Execution

If you were able to drop that file, you're either that user, or an administrator on the computer. If you're that user, you could also achieve "single file code execution" by dropping a file to the startup folder, or creating an autorun registry key. If you are an administrator, you already own the machine.

>Antivirus/EDR Bypass

possibly, although your payload would still have to get pass behavioral analysis when it's executing.

>Denial of Service

yeah, but you can achieve the same thing by adding "logoff" as an autorun entry.

[1] [https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/?p=100665](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/?p=100665), or search for that term on the blog, there are multiple entries.

<comment><USER3> > If you were able to drop that file, you're either that user, or an > administrator on the computer. If you're that user, you could also achieve > "single file code execution" by dropping a file to the startup folder, or > creating an autorun registry key. If you are an administrator, you already > own the machine.

As I see it the biggest practical issue with this is that it provides a method for persistence that no user will ever find and even most Windows administrators will have no idea to look for.

<comment><USER2> >As I see it the biggest practical issue with this is that it provides a method for persistence that no user will ever find

This isn't relevant because if you're logged in as the affected user, nothing you see can be trusted because you're already pwned. For instance, the attacker could have replaced the regedit icon with a patched regedit, or attached a debugger to every process and patched any system calls. The only safe course of action would be to create a new profile.

> and even most Windows administrators will have no idea to look for.

AFAIK user hives aren't loaded until they're logged in, in which case they're subject to the caveats of the previous paragraph. Also, are administrators really going around and loading each user's registry hive to check for infections? The only real threat I can think of is antivirus vendors not knowing about this feature and not scanning the file as a registry hive.

<comment><USER4> As the article mentions, the threat model here is primarily an insider one, with a "rogue" user leveraging this method to obtain capabilities the domain administrator intends to deny. There are certainly more effective exploits for an outside attacker to use, but that's beside the point.

<comment><USER5> User Group Policy isn't exactly a security mechanism, it exists to prevent users from unintentionally breaking their profile. There is multitude of ways how the user in question can inject arbitrary code into processes that are affected by user group policy as these processes are owned by that user.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is this a real concern?

I always treat User Settings overridable, because they happen either in security context of user or within user registry which lives in %userprofile% - the user has full access to ntuser.dat file.

IMHO for real security stuff, Computer Settings are way to go.

> Some exploits may be able to drop a file somewhere on the Windows filesystem > as non-admin. If the exploit dropped a "%USERPROFILE\ntuser.man", with an > autostart registry key to execute a file off of a remote SMB share, then the > exploit now gained reliable code execution simply by dropping one non- > executable file.

Well, if malicious guy can write your %USERPROFILE% folder, it's already no- go. You could potentially plant powershell profile scripts etc.

> By dropping an empty ntuser.man file in %userprofile%, ProfSvc will fail to > load registry and thus prevent the user from logging in

You've already got bigger problems if someone can write %userprofile%

<comment><USER7> I wonder how many sysadmins truly think about User Settings that way. They should, but I imagine when people are trying to apply a setting to a group of people, and they feel those permissions should follow them regardless of what PC they are on, they would just think to make it a user setting.

<comment><USER8> I work for a mega corp, and many security-related policies are indeed set at the user, rather than machine, level. Even ones that apply to everyone, no idea why.

They also enabled the "disable registry editing" policy, but for obvious reasons this only prevent the official regedit app from running, so anyone with local admin can edit the registry using a different app.

I feel like I'm pushed in the direction of wasting my time figuring out ways to bypass what I see as silly restrictions - why would you disable registry editing for a developer? Why would you force credentials to be entered _every_ time the UAC prompt is shown? The list goes on...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _Microsoft deemed this to be expected behavior and not a security issue._

For once, thank you for not caving into corporate pressure to make the work experience even more dystopian... those who have worked in such environments will known what I'm referring to. (I wonder if their developers themselves make use of this.)

<comment><USER10> I rely on several of these "exploits" in order to be able to do my job on my work machines. I think even IT knows about these tricks but luckily they look the other way.

<comment><USER11> Besides the one referenced in the article, any tips (or references) about those tricks?

<comment><USER8> I got one I mentioned elsewhere here - if registry editing is disabled, just use a different registry app (there are some on Github that are better than the standard one anyway).

Then you can undo group policy settings at will, as long as you know which registry keys to flip. A good site for this is:

[https://gpsearch.azurewebsites.net](https://gpsearch.azurewebsites.net)

Some settings are set in the local security policy file, rather than in the registry. From memory, if you have local admin rights you have to specifically grant your user account full control to the adm files, then you can use the local security policy MMC snap in to change settings.

Once you change things, they will periodically be set back, which is annoying, but the tip near the end of the article might work to stop that.

Another tip is to install a dual boot version of Windows on an encrypted partition, and use that instead of the "official" install. Of course, this only works if you don't need frequent access to resources on the domain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is actually one of those features that GNOME gets right with dconf lockdown. You can, on a per setting basis, decide whether users are allowed to override each setting.

</comment><comment><USER13> Agree with others, yawn. Unplug your computer during login to interrupt the profile load and be assigned a temporary profile (unless disabled) and you'll see no user policies applied.</comment>


Deconstruction of a Failure - <AUTHOR> https://mrcote.info/blog/2019/04/30/deconstruction-of-a-failure/ <comment><USER2> "If you've decided to buy a product but the particular capabilities it provides aren't that special to you, it might make more sense to change how your organization works rather than embark on complex customization."

Having spent 9 years or so babysitting and customizing a COTS system my employer purchased, this quote rings so true. Often, I sat in meetings with the leaders of the user areas, who owned the software, and thought that their rationale for customizing came simply from the desire to say, "Hey, we're different from every other competing organization."

</comment><comment><USER3> > I first want to say that I don't think MozReview was a total failure.

Okay. Great way to start an introspection. And we are already 3 paragraphs in and we have no idea what MozReview was.

<comment><USER4> You missed the second paragraph. It's "Mozilla's experiment with a new approach to code review that lasted from about 2014 to 2018". This post isn't about the technical details.</comment></comment>


Colonels of Truth - <AUTHOR> http://www.damninteresting.com/colonels-of-truth/ <comment><USER2> Hey! I own my farm in Corbin, KY and my grandfather worked for the Colonel when he peddled chicken at the service/bus station. The "historic" Sanders' Cafe that exists there today is actually across the road from where the original once was.

If you're ever around Simpsonville, KY it's worth stopping by Claudia Sanders' Diner. It still cooks his original recipe, unlike KFC.

<comment><USER3> > It still cooks his original recipe, unlike KFC.

How does it compare?

<comment><USER2> I think it's much better. However, I also don't enjoy KFC chicken. I find it slimy and too saturated with grease.

<comment><USER4> > I find it slimy and too saturated with grease.

McDonald's used to fry their foods in a blend of coconut oil, tallow & lard. Then the charlatans pressured them into switching their fryers to biodiesel (aka Soybean oil). Now McDonald's french fries are soggy.

I expect KFC ruined their product in a similar manner.

<comment><USER5> IMHO the decline of western civilization began when KFC added cayenne pepper to the extra crispy. :-(

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have been reading Damn Interesting for over a decade now. It is one of the few unblemished places on the internet when it comes to well-written, fascinating articles (possibly the only one now that isn't either riddled with clickbait or beholden to some larger business/media entity).

Granted, updates are generally infrequent, but the consistent (high) quality of the writing for over 10 years is a pretty amazing feat. Much respect for all the DI authors/contributors.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Harland Sanders next found work managing a Standard Oil service station in > nearby Nicholasville. He made two cents profit per gallon of gasoline

That would be a pretty good deal in the present. Inflation seems to have increased the value of $0.02 in 1925 to $0.27 in 2016. For a busy station, during a busy period, if each pump is in actual use 50% of the time, and each pump is doing 5 gallons per minute (EPA restricts it to a maximum of 10 GPM[1]), that's 150 gallons an hour, and at $0.27 that's $40.50 an hour _per pump_. Not bad.

Although I'm sure there was much less gas being pumped back then, there were likely fewer pumps at a station, the pumps were probably slower, and it was much easier to offer a chunk of the profits because of less competition.

1: [https://www3.epa.gov/otaq/regs/ld- hwy/evap/spitback.txt](https://www3.epa.gov/otaq/regs/ld- hwy/evap/spitback.txt)

<comment><USER7> Have you ever seen a pump in actual use 50% of the time? Even if there is a queue of traffic waiting to fill up, by the time people have parked, got out of the car, paid, pumped, got back in, negotiated their way past other cars (potentially blocking them in) so that someone else can get to the pump, etc I find it hard to see much more than 25% utilization even today. This would be even worse in the 20s, where payment presumably involves handing cash over to a person who probably isn't stood right by the pump.

Now I really want to go and time this process :).

<comment><USER3> I think 50% is a fairly good guess for pump usage for people that aren't buying other stuff. At 5 gallons a minute, that's 2-4 minutes of actual pumping for most cars/trucks, possibly larger for vehicles with larger gas tanks (note that a faster pump rate actually increases the overall revenue, even if it reduces the percentage of time spent pumping per person compared to other actions). At a busy station, I think 2-4 minutes of time to pull up to pump, pay with a credit card, and leave isn't out of the question.

It is all highly variable, of course. Let me know if you ever actually test this. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sublimely written. Eloquent and fascinating, profound and hilarious.

<comment><USER9> > The eggs sailed, egg-like, across the expanse...

> ...spent his entire life rallying against liquor (finger lickers > notwithstanding)

Amazing.

<comment><USER10> My favourite:

> like a wizard casting a poultry hex

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm reminded of the description of KFC in China in Neal Stephenson's _The Diamond Age,_ where the restaurant was referred to as "The House of the Venerable and Inscrutable Colonel." "Venerable" because of the age of the face on the bucket, and "inscrutable" because he apparently went to his grave without ever divulging the Secret of the Eleven Herbs and Spices.

</comment><comment> cat-dev-null DI is awesome. It has sporadic content updates, but has good writing and generally sticks to obscure but important stories.

</comment><comment> mark-r Was anybody ever able to reverse engineer the original original recipe? (not the KFC "original" recipe)

</comment><comment><USER12> Great article, but could have used a little editing:

> It was around this time that Sanders met his beloved Josephine King.

> It was around this time that Sanders met his beloved Claudia Price, a young > divorced woman who lived in Corbin.

> It was around this time that Sanders met his beloved Bertha. Bertha was his > nickname for his first pressure cooker, a new contraption that rapidly > cooked vegetables using high temperatures and pressures.

<comment><USER13> By the time I came to the third repetition of this, I was pretty sure it was a running joke. :)

<comment><USER14> Precisely. The whole article uses similar callbacks. I think it's a great piece.</comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft's New Killer App - <AUTHOR> http://jungleg.com/2009/11/17/microsoft-azure-is-the-new-outlook/ <comment><USER2> I work for Windows Azure. I'm going to try hard to not make this into a marketing thing. I want to clarify a couple of things from the blog post

\- The web platform installer is really quite distinct from Windows Azure. The WebPI is a nice installer which gets all the right SDK+ tools installed to get you up and running with MSFT's web dev stack Windows Azure can run any code that runs on Windows Server (with caveats) and it just so happens that the webpi is a nice way to get something running.

\- Windows Azure isnt really MSFT-stack specific (.NET/IIS) though that works real well. There was a bunch of content at PDC this year on how to run MySQL/memcached/php/python/RoR/whatever. Matt Mullenweg did a keynote demo running Wordpress on Azure for example.

\- The blog post 'Microsoft is taking applications but in reality, you can just go and sign up and get a token in a very, very short time. After January, the platform billing kicks in so anyone can sign up anytime.

<comment><USER3> Interesting -- assuming that it's a true cloud compute environment (mostly application and language agnostic), is there a reason why the "installer" is Windows only? Is there a way to install and configure a compute node without using Windows?

<comment><USER4> My impression is that WebPI is for developers ... it installs on your computer the stuff you need for developing / running your application, with the bonus that you can also quickly install a prepackaged web app like Drupal.

I'm sure it wouldn't make any sense to make it available for Linux / Mac OS X since it's a Windows complement.

The problem here is that the TFA is wrong ... Microsoft hasn't released an "iTunes Store for Web Apps". It's just a convenient way to get your Windows Server up and running, or am I missing something?

<comment><USER3> Agreed -- I didn't think it was an "app store" it that sense, but it totally makes sense to make it cross platform. Django will run fine on ISS and I'm not sure a simple web interface and sftp is too much to ask for (so I could do updates from my macbook).

Btw, as a VMM developer I would be very interested to know if Azure is built off the type-1 Microsoft Hyper-V.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So my graduate databases class recently took a look at several of these cloud computing environments, and Microsoft offering is clearly compelling both from an tool integration stand point and from the technical side.

For instance Microsoft's incremental innovation in their S3 like utility, called Simple Data Storage (SDS), is that SDS provides guarantees for Durability and Consistency, while Amazon really only guarantees Durability. There has been some work on implementing idempotent logs on top of S3, and SQS to provide similar guarantees but this is third party academic work see <http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1376616.1376645> for an introduction.

While at first glance Microsofts innovation is an improvement however, there is the question of how SDS performs at scale. Providing consistency for such a system will incur some amount of overhead. Has anyone here used SDS to serve larges amount of data with frequent updates? I would be interested to know how it compares with S3.

<comment><USER2> I work for Windows Azure. I think the right equivalent to S3 is Windows Azure blob storage. I'm really not sure what you're refering to by SDS. SDS used to refer to an older version of what is now called SQL Azure but the technology there has been changed dramatically.

<comment><USER5> You are probably right. We reviewed this paper about a month ago so i probably mixed up the names.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> After seeing <http://www.microsoft.com/web/gallery/developer.aspx>, I feel sad that Google App Engine (GAE) still does not have a "click to install"

Currently, there are two options for application developers in GAE

1\. The code needs to handle segmentation of customer data based on login and also arrive at billing strategy for the resource usage.

2\. Ask customers to sign up for GAE, create an application and invite the developer; after which, the developer can manually deploy the application. Code need not have segmentation logic and resources can be purchased directly from Google.

Though my application <http://crm.ifreetools.com> supports both options, it could be better if there was a marketplace allowing a "click to install", rather than the current marketplace which focuses on services.. <http://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/>

..and a GAE application gallery acting as just a directory... <http://appgallery.appspot.com/results?q=crm>

<comment><USER7> A GAE application marketplace would be a great idea.

Is anyone from Google googling this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have an interesting perspective on this since my startup, flooha.com is extremely similar, but actually better in some ways IMHO.

First of all, AFAIK, the web platform installer just sets up your PC to be a web server (IIS, mysql, etc...), then installs a default setup for the application you chose to install. So, you can play with it on your local PC, but it is not a public website unless your PC is your web server. So, if you don't have at least a VPS, you cannot use this to create your website. The blogger has it wrong when he says you can install on azure.

Flooha does exactly the same thing, except on a real, public facing web server. You can use it immediately on a free subdomain like username.flooha.com (on an EC2 instance) or you can sign up for hosting and use it to install software on your web hosting account (a dedicated server). There are already other apps that do exactly the same thing like Fantastico, Simple Scripts, Installatron, etc... Nothing new or revolutionary there. We will soon implement the ability to auto-install on any cPanel or Plesk server and the ability for developers to upload their PHP and Rails apps.

It's not clear from the MS web site whether you can install these web apps "in the cloud" (on azure?) or not. Even if you can, do you still get all of the other features of a traditional web host like a control panel, ssh, email, backups, cron jobs, forwarders, statistics, file manager, etc...? If you can install to the cloud, obviously the auto-scaling aspect is great even though most website will never need it.

Flooha's unique service is the ability to auto-install addons. Apps like WordPress now have their own addon (plugin) installer, but many apps, especially new ones, do not. Also, addons that are not in the WP repository are not available for auto-install. This is the gap that Flooha fills, in addition to auto-install of apps, 1-click backups to S3, 1-click restores, private addons and more. If you've ever worked with an app like osCommerce or MediaWiki, you'll know that installing addons is a real pain.

I'll admit to being jealous of MS's army of people working on this as well as their visually pleasing website, but I'm not particularly impressed by the service. I'm curious if sriramk or someone else more familiar with the web platform installer can give more insight on the service and rebutt some of my comments.

If people are really that impressed, I think I need to increase my marketing budget.

<comment><USER9> Flooha is cool & useful stuf people, go check it out!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've been following WPI for awhile, but I'm missing the actual connection to Azure here. From my perspective as someone who has been working in the Windows cloud ecosystem, Azure is more of a platform as a service than an infrastructure as a service play -- I'd love to hear how arbitrary apps a la WPI fit into that.

<comment><USER11> Agreed. I can't tell how Azure fits in here... It looks like this just installs the tools on your local machine (or I guess server). So, perhaps they are taking the next (perhaps logical) step and assuming that you can use this to install stuff on an Azure instance?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I dunno about killer app - but the Web Platform installer is pretty sweet. Glad to see it's finally coming out of beta.

Scott Hanselman blogged about web platform / web application installers about a year ago: [http://www.hanselman.com/blog/MicrosoftWebApplicationInstall...](http://www.hanselman.com/blog/MicrosoftWebApplicationInstallerOpenSourceWebAppsDeliveredAndInstalled.aspx)

I haven't looked it at lately, it will be interesting to see how many of those apps they can integrate with Azure..

</comment><comment><USER13> The App Store model extends to just about everything and everywhere. Is this what web 3.0 will be all about? An internet of many walled gardens? If so, is it really that bad?

<comment><USER14> Interoperability will suffer! Interoperability and open standards are two of the lynchpins of the Internet.

Ultimately, if a large group of users keeps to the interoperable philosophy, the large walled gardens will fall. (Witness AOL.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> We sell some ASP.NET (dont get me started) software and this was a god send when it appeared a little while ago. Before our setup procedure (we usually let clients do it themselves due to them being paranoid about letting people on their networks) was just complicated enough to require a phone walkthrough. This makes it a breeze. Click XYZ, then install. Install our app. Slight cfg tweaks. Win.

</comment><comment> brown9-2 What in the world does this have to do with Outlook?

<comment><USER16> Nothing.

It is just an analogy. According to the article, what Outlook is for Microsoft's application suite, Microsoft's Azure (or web platform installer per another comment) will be for cloud computing.

<comment><USER17> Outlook is to most people the most irritating broken non-functional idiotic piece of rubbish ever to grace their computer. So I think I'll give Azure/whatever a miss.

<comment><USER18> Correction: Outlook is to most people on Hacker News the most irritating ... To most people who don't read this site, its a tool that reliably does everything they need it to do.

<comment><USER17> Apart from searching. Or anything else useful.

<comment><USER18> I use it daily and love it. I switched from Gmail to Thunderbird to Outlook 2007 with Exchange and have never been happier.

It has reasonable search, which I don't need much anyway since it has hierarchical folders and great filtering. It has a preview pane, the lack of which makes Gmail unusable to me. Unlike Gmail the layout is intuitive and it doesn't take me forever to remember where the spam folder is. Between Barracuda and Outlook's spam filtering I get very little in my Inbox. And if I look in my Junk folder guess where 99% of the emails came from? They were sent to my Gmail account which auto-forwards to Exchange. Gmail's spam filtering might be good in comparison to Hotmail but Barracuda (and probably many other third party boxes) blows it out of the water.

It works with Exchange 2007 so that my emails, contacts, tasks, and calendar events are constantly and instantly synced across the 3 PCs I use frequently and my phone. I can enter an address in a calendar event on Outlook, then seconds later on my phone tap it and have the location pop up in Google Maps. I can save a phone number from an email on my desktop and call it almost immediately after from my mobile. Any smart phone user can do these things.

I'd probably have a much different outlook on Outlook if I had to run the Exchange server, but I just pay some company $6/mo per mailbox to do that for me. There are dozens of such companies for small businesses. (We use Sherweb, and they rock.)

Oh and Outlook doesn't make me disable Firebug :)

If you know people who email a lot, they'll pretty much all tell you that you really can't beat the Microsoft email stack. I'm small potatoes compared to the volume some of my friends do in a day, and they've all tried every email option available since its what they spend most of their time doing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Amazon AWS really should have a 'app store' of pre configured EC2s with wordpress, drupal, etc.

Online interface boots the EC2, makes sure it loaded, and links you to the admin interface, links to backedup s3 dumps, etc

<comment><USER20> [http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/kbcategory.js...](http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/kbcategory.jspa?categoryID=171)

<http://www.jumpbox.com/go/virtualization>

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> MS has some interesting technologies, like F# & .NET, but I wonder if people trust MS to do the right thing on the server? (One braindead misfeature can screw up everything)

<comment><USER22> Given that Microsoft has anywhere between 25-45% market share (depending on where you get your numbers) on servers obviously someone is trusting them. And it's not like the Unix world hasn't had its share of "braindead misfeatures" over the years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Interesting. Sort of like Heroku with "instant install", no admin. I don't touch .Net with a 10 foot pole (yeah, letting my M$crosoft biases show), but this does look cool.

<comment><USER24> That's kinda what I thought. The "OMG MSFT THIS IS CRAZY!!!1" was a bit much.

It's good to see people compete with Heroku and Engine Yard (and for more things than Ruby, as much as I love it.)

<comment><USER25> When Engine Yard and Heroku offer this kind of service, all you hear about from corporate IT is vulnerabilities in the VM layer and lack of security in the "cloud". But when Microsoft offers it, it's the next big thing. So sad.

<comment><USER24> Yeah.

This is slightly off-topic, but I find it moderatly disconcerting that I'm a Rackspace customer and I didn't even think to mention the Rakspace Cloud Sites. They're also totally technology agnostic...

And they have good marketing! I wonder why my brain doesn't think of them first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> An idiotproof, point and click cloud solution is definitely what's needed for cloud to go mainstream (i.e. Joe User thinks nothing of putting his wordpress blog on the cloud). I hadn't really seen this coming from Microsoft, but kudos to them if they get it right. AWS, GAE etc are still all too hard just to push stuff out - I've tried explaining them to tech-savvy laypeople and had zero luck so far.

<comment><USER27> "I hadn't really seen this coming from Microsoft"

Not even when they first announced it at PDC2008 a year ago?

<comment><USER28> They had about eight and a half layers of marketing bullshit during the presentation and on the website- if you squinted real hard while hopping up and down on one foot with a tin foil hat in correct alignment, it looked like something resembling a good solution to a real problem.

Now more information is coming out in an accessible way about what Azure actually is, no hat alignment necessary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Sounds promising. I'll be sure to give it a try once I get the chance.

</comment><comment><USER30> "Basically Windows has introduced point-and-click cloud computing for the masses and it's doing it in a way that resembles the iPhone application directory but for web applications."

Wow, buzzword overload!

</comment><comment><USER31> This smells like an MSFT PR hit. I bet this goes the way of ".NET" or "HailStorm" or some other all-encompassing, vague-enough-to-impress-corporate- types acronym-laden "vision".

</comment><comment><USER32> This sounds perfect for custom MediaWikis.

<comment><USER8> <shamelessplug>...until you have to install a lot of extensions, which you normally have to do manually. This is the problem Flooha solves. </shamelessplug>

<comment><USER32> This looks very cool. Can your system deploy to Azure or other clouds?

I'm a heavy user of the DynamicPageList, SyntaxHighlight GeSHi, TeX Editor and Lua extensions and had never heard of Flooha before so I took a quick look. While it looks promising, I didn't see any of those extensions available :-(

Also if I select one of MediaWiki v1.14.0 or MediaWiki v1.15.1, choose "Browse Addons" and then follow the hint at the top of the page and click "By app version" and then finally press "filter and sort", I get an empty list. Do you have to actually do a build first?

CORRECTION: based on <http://flooha.com/build/addon_details/3559> it does appear you support DynamicPageList. I must have overlooked that earlier.

<comment><USER8> _This looks very cool. Can your system deploy to Azure or other clouds?_

Currently, the system deploys only to Flooha servers. The "free" accounts are deployed to an Amazon EC2 instance. The paid accounts are deployed to a dedicated server. In the near future, Flooha users will have the ability to install on any cPanel or Plesk server (99% of the web hosts out there use these) or any LAMP server.

 _I didn't see any of those extensions available :-(_

You can upload any extension you want!

The process is very simple. Here are instructions from our wiki: [http://wiki.flooha.com/index.php?title=How_to_upload_an_addo...](http://wiki.flooha.com/index.php?title=How_to_upload_an_addon)

 _Also if I select one of MediaWiki v1.14.0 or MediaWiki v1.15.1, choose "Browse Addons" and then follow the hint at the top of the page and click "By app version" and then finally press "filter and sort", I get an empty list. Do you have to actually do a build first?_

No, you do not have to build it first. The best option is the default, which shows you addons for all versions (1.14.0 & 1.15.1). Most extensions are compatible with all versions the app. When a user uploads an extension, they might choose to associate it with version 1.15.1, but that doesn't mean it isn't compatible with 1.14.0. So, filtering by app version ensures you only see the version of that extension that is compatible with the app version you are building. I hope that clears it up for you. If not, you can contact me on Google talk as user "flooha" or shoot me an email: matt [at] flooha.com

If more users start to use the system and upload addons, more addons will be available to everyone. It's easy for 700 people to each upload one addon, but quite time consuming for one person to upload 700 addons. If you need help uploading the addons (extensions) you want, let me know which ones and I can help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I have tried Azure and I have to say it is super cool

</comment><comment><USER34> I am sorry i don't get it , how can a new "Killer App" be Windows only ? The installer only works on Windows , what happens to the rest of us.

<comment><USER35> Lets see, their previous killer apps also either required Windows, or WAS Windows. I don't really see how being platform specific affects ability to be a killer app.

Obviously depending on how a "killer app" is defined.

<comment><USER34> Platform specific does effect the ability to be a "killer app".

Ms Windows being a killer app was in a completely different time period. Any app that has to have game changing ability has to be cross-platform or perhaps run on the web. Anything else and its not a "killer app". It might get the bills paid and be profitable but "killer app" it ain't.

<comment><USER36> The definition of a killer app is one where somebody will buy the platform just to use your app. By its nature it makes you choose a platform. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_application>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> So, what's the catch, other than having to have annoying Microsoft naming conventions like ASP.NET show up in my field of vision?</comment>


Search Engine where content opens on the page. Javascript? - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFR2MRonucI

<comment><USER2> If somagrand is asking a question of if this is using javascript, I'd say yes.

Looks like an iframe with some animation.

It seems quite usable for images and video, not so sure about text though as you're squeezing content into a frame which is potentially smaller than anticipated.</comment>