Fundamental limits to virtual reality - <AUTHOR> http://www.rudyrucker.com/blog/2008/03/03/fundamental-limits-to-virtual-reality/

<comment><USER2> The premise behind the post is that virtual reality is an exact replication of real reality. The author argues that this will be impossible to create, since the computation required is equal to the computation required to actually make the real reality.

I think that the basic premise is flawed: If you want real reality it's already there. Virtual reality is recreating a subset of real reality, accurate to nature or of your own devising, with less accuracy.

If you want real reality, just go outside.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think the most interesting observation here is on the nature of simulation: nobody can simulate the entire universe without having a spare universe to play with. Something I came up with myself years ago.

The rest of the article is deadweight.</comment>


Hacking the PS Vita - <AUTHOR> https://yifan.lu/2015/06/21/hacking-the-ps-vita/ <comment><USER2> Hello, didn't expect to see this here. I'll be happy to answer any question as I refrained from giving deep technical details in the article. I'm surprised at how secure the Vita is given Sony's track record. I would say that the Vita is the most secure consumer embedded device that's out today.

<comment><USER3> > I would say that the Vita is the most secure consumer embedded device that's > out today

Moreso than the PS4 and XBONE?

<comment><USER4> Or the 3DS.

It's funny, when it's our personal data or credit card numbers, they can't seem to manage the most basic of security procedures. Yet when it's DRM and they want to prevent unauthorized third party code from running (because they can't take their 60% cut), suddenly they're masters at sandboxing.

<comment><USER5> > suddenly

Ignoring the Gameboy, Gameboy Pocket, Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advanced, Gameboy Advanced SP, Gameboy Micro, all the various combinations of those machines, and then the Nintendo DS and combinations.

They've never been friendly to homebrew, but after DS flash cards it's not surprising they tightened things up.

<comment><USER4> Suddenly as in compared to securing customer data, not their previous consoles. Suddenly was used to indicate the contrast between their efforts and abilities in securing various segments of their platform.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> TD-Linux I've noticed a dramatic rolloff in homebrew scene activity since the rise of smartphones and the like, at least in portables. Part of this is due to the (more) open nature and ubiquity of smartphones, but also due to proprietary consoles getting more and more boring.

The Nintendo DS homebrew community was very active, with a well-supported toolchain. The NDS was a neat piece of hardware - the graphics system was inherited from the GBA, which bears many similarities back to the original Gameboy and the NES. It's probably the last console produced with the concept of tilemaps and sprites. You also got a fast CPU, two screens, and a touchscreen, three years before the iPhone.

Now, today, portable game consoles are basically underpowered smartphones. Perhaps the 3DS is a bit unique due to its screen, but better consumer hardware exists even for that. It's even worse for desktop consoles, which are an AMD APU with no particular merits whatsoever.

<comment><USER6> > Now, today, portable game consoles are basically underpowered smartphones.

With the notable addition of good physical controls

<comment><USER7> Having good physical controls is not so hard to get on smartphones [1]. If smartphone manufactures wanted to make their device better for gaming, they'd just need clips for common controllers and make the wired and wireless connection work.

[http://buy.thegameklip.com/products/gameklip- casemount](http://buy.thegameklip.com/products/gameklip-casemount)

<comment><USER6> That does kill the portability aspect though.

<comment><USER7> Yes, you are right, that specific linked gadget kills portability to a large degree. However, there speaks nothing against making a gamepad more specific to this use-case so you have better portability. Of course this approach will not be as good as dedicated controllers on the device itself, but I think it would be enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Whelp.

[https://en-support.psm.playstation.net/app/answers/detail/a_...](https://en- support.psm.playstation.net/app/answers/detail/a_id/343)

</comment><comment><USER8> Site down, here is cache: [https://archive.is/TTR4f](https://archive.is/TTR4f)

</comment><comment><USER9> Great to see follow-ups like this.

I was involved in the old PSP homebrew scene; good to see people keeping it alive for more than just playing ripped games.</comment>


All UCSD courses will be delivered remotely for the Spring Quarter - <AUTHOR> https://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/covid-19 <comment><USER2> In terms of HN discussion, this is the same story as [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22539789](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22539789), so it'd be best to post this link in the comments there.</comment>


Ask HN: Autism? - <AUTHOR> I have recently been diagnosed with what people would call some sort of autism. I am 42 and I actually feel pretty relieved about it, since I have been struggling a lot with who I am and why I am somehow different.
It all just sort of clicked and I saw that I could never make a box shape fit through a circular hole. I tried to do this all my life and I realise this is not something I will ever be able to do.
I am wondering if there are other people in the same situation. How did you move on? Did you get better after changing your life direction maybe? I always had relationship problems and I never got married or had kids. I understand this now. It was indeed, as I started to suspect, my own problem. I am just sorry I left so many people sad and maybe broken in my wake. Did you manage this somehow? Managed to explain your situation?
I know there is a place for me somewhere work wise, since I have always been good at what I do, but I am afraid I will be lonely, if I am not able to communicate to my current partner what kind of problem I have. I really dont like to say I have been diagnosed with anything. I am just different from the majority and there certain things I am good at (like computers) and things I am not good at (like having personal relationships).
Even writing this small text about the subject felt good I just realised, so maybe this is something I should continue in some form (in my own language of course ;)). <comment><USER2> It is interesting, that unless person states explicitly about her autism, it is impossible to conclude this from the text (at least for me, so far). Although, I know that it is a spectrum and every individual within this spectrum is unique.

Another thing I find interesting is that you can think about the subject - e.g. you realize you can't fit a box into a circular hole - and you're thinking about this on a meta level.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes, in fact at some colleges they call high-functioning autism "Geek Syndrome".

[https://www.autismspeaks.org/family- services/adults](https://www.autismspeaks.org/family-services/adults) \- [https://www.autismspeaks.org/family-services/non-english- res...](https://www.autismspeaks.org/family-services/non-english-resources)

</comment><comment><USER4> Not that you need fixing, but I remember watching an interesting TV episode of this:

[http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2016/03/22/switched-on-after- aspe...](http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2016/03/22/switched-on-after-aspergers)

I remember at one point he was in a meeting with a bunch of people and the CEO had made a suggestion and he told the guy it was the stupidest idea he had ever heard.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link. That was really interesting. I can relate a lot to him.

It is a strange "condition".</comment></comment>


Install Arch Linux Cheat Sheet - <AUTHOR> http://i.cubeupload.com/On0hJE.jpg <comment><USER2> Also available on IPFS ⌘ [https://ipfs.pics/QmVhDKCdgHxSuzHjhFM9Hbpz2qxu2NHuLzcMYvKUoh...](https://ipfs.pics/QmVhDKCdgHxSuzHjhFM9Hbpz2qxu2NHuLzcMYvKUohuaHn)

</comment><comment><USER3> I love Arch and the AUR, but people often warn about using unofficial repositories like archlinuxfr. You might be better off installing an AUR- helper by cloning the git-repo and building the package yourself.

</comment><comment><USER4> Great post, this visualizes the Arch install in a way I find helpful - Arch is the most stable / fastest distro I have tried.</comment>


People who dwell over decisions and constantly weigh trade-offs (assessment ori - <AUTHOR> https://www.behaviorist.biz/oh-behave-a-blog/decision-making-style <comment><USER2> Interesting article. I thought I was an assessment-oriented decision maker since I often get paralyzed when I'm faced with life changing decisions. But the assessment placed me closer to the locomotion-oriented.

I guess it would be helpful to know how one can work on making better assessment-oriented decisions?</comment>


Kaspersky injects remote JavaScript into all pages, including secure ones - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/3frjqw/psa_kaspersky_injects_remote_javascript_into_all/ <comment><USER2> From the reddit comments:

        its not remote its local to your machine
        ff.kis.scr.kaspersky-labs.com
        resolves to
        127.245.107.154
        which is a private non-routable address

Still suspicious (since Kaspersky could intercept the data from the private address and then send it to their servers).

</comment><comment><USER3> this article is 2 years old.</comment>


Apple may eliminate boxed software from their stores.  - <AUTHOR> http://www.macrumors.com/2011/02/07/apple-to-eliminate-retail-box-software-inventory/

<comment><USER2> Hah... I knew it: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1818857></comment>


What we've learned listening to 6,000+ people complaining about email - <AUTHOR> http://blog.frontapp.com/what-6000-tweets-taught-us-about-broken-email/ <comment><USER2> Their survay conflates "email is broken (email has systemic problems)" with "my email is broken (my email doesn't work)." That's the kind of shitty results you get when you analyze any tweet with the words "email" and "broken" in them.

</comment><comment><USER3> These reasons have nothing to do with email itself, but just the people that use it. In this order of ideas, we could perfectly say that oral communication is broken, people just don't talk to me enough, or they talk to me all the time! Anyway, I feel like I'm rambling. However, email can be a pain in the buttcrack when it doesn't go down well, which happens strangely often sometimes, so it is kinda broken.

<comment><USER4> > These reasons have nothing to do with email itself, but just the people that > use it.

You don't think the technology can be changed to make it more likely for a humans to use it in a way that doesn't frustrate themselves and others?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Email is broken because my startup doesn't own it."

</comment><comment><USER6> I love email. It works well between people who know how to write email. The main problem is it takes a lot of experience to be good at it. Many people also don't recognize it as something you have to learn.

That being said good filtering, threading, and end-to-end encryption in one reader is still illusive for most of us.

<comment><USER7> We're in a two story office and we often have colleagues coming down and the first thing they says is: "I just sent you an email".... Okay, so why did you come down?

Email doesn't fit the way a large number of people think, but I don't think it's broken. Neither Excel nor Windows is inherently broken just because I have issues using it, I just need the proper training.

Some people have 10GB of email in their inbox, because then: "they know where it is". Some mix work and private emails, because then they don't need two email account, which is just awesome when they chance jobs. Then there's the people who just have plain bad communication skills and can't formulate a clear and readable email. Neither of these things point to email being broken and I have yet to see a half decent alternative.

I love email too, but way to many people aren't correctly educated in using it.

<comment><USER8> > We're in a two story office and we often have colleagues coming down and the > first thing they says is: "I just sent you an email".... Okay, so why did > you come down?

I don't really see what is the problem with that sort of pattern?

<comment><USER7> It can certainly be justified, but in most cases it can be solved via email at a time convenient for the recipient.

I think it extremely disrespectful to send a email and two minutes later be standing at my desk ask: "Did you see my email?" No, of cause I didn't see your email, I'm working.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As anyone who's done any level of enterprise support knows is that people hate email, but absolutely freak out when there is the smallest problem with it. For awhile I had my staff attempt to work in a lesson on email during tech orientation for new employees, the problem is that everyone thinks they know how email works, so they'd just tune out. Try explaining the concept that successfully "sending" an email only means that the local server has agreed to accept it, it doesn't mean that the recipient received it and see how far you get. Trying to fix email is a lot more complicated than some fancy pants Framework-Of-The-Moment application purporting to declutter your inbox, it actually is going to involve somehow getting people to understand, at a basic level, how their email gets delivered.

I think the lowest hanging fruit is simply making it easier for the hoi polloi to connect to their accounts easily. NO ONE does a good job with this, not Apple, not Google, not Thunderbird, not Outlook, NO ONE. I've done more freelance work (at absurd rates) simply fixing email client setups than anything else and just making sure that all my client's devices are setup the same. This should be trivial, but it's not.

And don't get me started on all the fantastically crappy email providers out there. I'm looking at you Godaddy, your craptastic email service has wasted more of my time in the past month than I care to think about.

Go Fastmail!

</comment><comment><USER10> Email's best attribute is that its universal. But that's also a problem: spam, semi-spam, corporate mail to the entire company etc.

I find the existing UIs still manage quoting and threads very poorly. I'd like see improvements in this area. I think a thread markup language might be the answer. Take the exact display of threads away from the client and only mail intent.

</comment><comment><USER11> Ideally I would only use my email for outbound, and different apps with different purposes for interacting with inbound.

A phone call should go to my email first, then get routed to my current voice app.

A short message should go to my email, then routed to my Viber/SMS/Whatsapp.

An email from my team with an action item, should get routed to my to-do app.

A picture message should get routed to my gallery.

etc...

Clicking on notifications should open the right app, or at least give me options.

</comment><comment><USER12> The tweet they quote is priceless:

>"Reminder: today is an even-numbered day, so my work email is broken."

@kevincarey1

Link to the actual tweet: [https://twitter.com/kevincarey1/status/520654339703336962](https://twitter.com/kevincarey1/status/520654339703336962)

</comment><comment><USER13> 14% complains because they are not receiving enough email ... They probably don't live on the same planet ...

<comment><USER14> That's not really what the article says. The point they're making is that if you expect to receive a lot and then you don't then you think your email account isn't working correctly.

"I haven't gotten an email in seven minutes, making me immediately suspicious my email is broken."

That's actually a complaint that the user is getting too much email (or possibly the right amount); it's just phrased in a way that makes it look like it's the opposite.

<comment> mike-cardwell More likely they're happy about the amount of email they're getting and are "showing off" that they get a lot.</comment></comment></comment>


NPM packages with most dependencies - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/anvaka/8e8fa57c7ee1350e3491#file-02-with-most-dependencies-md <comment><USER2> No idea why this list is on the first page of HN, but it looks like ( at least the 10 that I clicked around ) are very spammy, not at all popular, packages that I doubt have any use.

Probably the attention to this article is the good old debate about npm and the huge dependencies that a package can have. Which is not always a bad thing. Actually I wrote an article [1] about it.

1 : [http://www.drinchev.com/blog/increase-your- dependencies/](http://www.drinchev.com/blog/increase-your-dependencies/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't think there's much meaningful information to glean from this list. The package at the top is literally just a package.json that installs all the packages published by one particularly prolific npm author, it doesn't have any serious purpose. Many of the other high-ranking packages simply have put their devDependencies in their dependencies, resulting in a bunch of babel plugins and the like (a mistake to be sure, but not indicative of anything in particular about the state of npm package usage).

<comment><USER4> _he package at the top is literally just a package.json that installs all the packages published by one particularly prolific npm author_

In case you don't know, lots of those packages are one liners.

ex: [https://github.com/sindresorhus/array- uniq/blob/master/index...](https://github.com/sindresorhus/array- uniq/blob/master/index.js)

<comment><USER5> There's history behind those one-liners: [https://github.com/sindresorhus/array- uniq/commit/fb96562015...](https://github.com/sindresorhus/array- uniq/commit/fb965620157dd4dae2b5d0a3ba6dd19bbd2caf52#diff-168726dbe96b3ce427e7fedce31bb0bc)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Are we going to go around dependency-shaming packages now?

<comment><USER7> If you, at first thought, believed this to be about shame, it says something about the JavaScript ecosystem.

<comment><USER8> For what other reason would it be posted?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Having smaller packages each with many dependencies is a common node design pattern. I think this started because it doesn't have a lot of framework code to relay on, so simpler functions became packages.

It has advantages and disadvantages. People concerned about production uptime/deployment should keep copies of all dependencies on their network, and run npm against their network repo.

</comment><comment><USER10> What I've learned from this is that npm itself has a lot of dependencies, and that is bad. It means any of those 500+ packages can take over npm itself for malicious purposes.

Other than that, there's not much to see. I would like this list being filtered by usage (e.g: installs/downloads). Some packages seem to be there for personal use.

</comment><comment><USER11> There are immediate dependencies? Seems "depended on" should include sub-deps, as well.

</comment><comment><USER12> The top 50 all had less than 100 downloads this month. Not very interesting.

</comment><comment><USER13> Hall of fame and hall of shame.

Don't force it. Use larger hammer.

Don't panic just throw more dependencies

<comment><USER13> [http://turnoff.us/geek/my-adorable-useless-code/](http://turnoff.us/geek/my- adorable-useless-code/)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Hacker News reader on Steam - <AUTHOR> https://store.steampowered.com/app/834410/Hacker_News_Reader/ <comment><USER2> I thought that this might be for me until I saw it was only for Windows.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Made with JavaFX and build as native application using Java 9 jlink

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this free or Paid?</comment>


Do Kids Care If Their Robot Friend Gets Stuffed Into a Closet? - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/artificial-intelligence/do-kids-care-if-their-robot-friend-gets-stuffed-into-a-closet#.T56lSyNVoKY.hackernews <comment><USER2> 80% of the children surveyed said it was OK to buy and sell the robot, while 50% said it was not OK to put him in the closet. The authors of the study speculated that "we are creating a new ontological being with its own unique properties", but this could just be an extension of a very old ontological being. Back in the ancient world, it was considered perfectly OK to buy and sell slaves, but there were moral and legal limits on what masters were allowed to do with their slaves.

<comment><USER3> Slaves come readily to mind, but also pets. We buy and sell dogs all the time (under the guise of "adoption") and expect them to be obedient and helpful—but also do our best to treat them well. For a being of lesser intelligence than a human, I think that's fine; still, we should treat our equals equally, and robots _will_ someday equal us.

<comment><USER4> Dogs are animals like us, so they have, or might have, consciousness. Robots most likely won't, regardless of how intelligent they may be, unless we discover what causes consciousness to occur and use that knowledge as the basis for implementing robot AI.

<comment><USER5> It's a specious argument - we have no testable definition of "consciousness" or even any evidence that such a phenomenon exists. Slavery was often justified with the argument that black people didn't have souls. It's just as baseless as arguing that computers are unlikely to have "consciousness".

Without evidence that there is some fundamental difference between a biological and artificial mind, we must assume that a self-aware AI is entitled to the same rights as any other self-aware being.

<comment><USER4> >or even any evidence that such a phenomenon exists.

You have evidence of your own consciousness, just as I have evidence of my own.

>we must assume that a self-aware AI is entitled to the same rights as any other self-aware being.

What's your testable definition of self-awareness? Is the 'top' command self- aware because it can see its own process?

<comment><USER6> I do not have evidence of your consciousness. As far as I'm concerned you're a biological robot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Here's the really interesting thing: thanks to this kind of empathy, if an AI is indistinguishable from human intelligence—that is, it passes the Turing test—then we'll be obligated to endow it with equal rights. _Even if_ we fully understand how it works. I predict strong opposition to robot rights on that basis alone, because I really don't think most people grasp that the mind is physical.

<comment><USER7> I really hope I live to see the day that "robot rights" is a legitimate political issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Reminds me of that video where the child refuses to hit his party pinata that looks like spiderman, instead puts down the stick and goes over to hug it.

<comment><USER9> Can you find this video? I'm very interested.

<comment><USER10> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxNvkmTWCLc>

<comment><USER9> Thank you so much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Since corporations are people, can robots be people as well?

<comment><USER12> > Since corporations are people, can robots be people as well?

Corporations are aggregations of people. Are robots?

<comment><USER13> That's not true. _Conspiracies_ and _cohorts_ and _partnerships_ are aggregations of people.

Corporations are legal entities _owned_ and _managed_ by people.

(LLPs are a weird in-between thing.)

<comment><USER11> So corporations are slaves?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This reminds me of a Radiolab episode where they asked kids to hold furbys upside down (vs. a barbie or other doll) to see if they had feelings for the robot vs. the doll.

<http://www.radiolab.org/2011/may/31/furbidden-knowledge/>

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm interested in seeing how the dualist/monist debates. If one thinks that the consciousness is separate from the body, how does that position stay defensible if we are able to create something which is, for all intensive purposes (that is to say, it acts indistinguishably from a conscious being), conscious? I imagine that someone would argue that you create a soul somewhere along the process of creating such an object/being, I think it would be interesting to see where people draw that line.

</comment><comment><USER16> For more research in this topic, I highly recommend Latitude's "Robots @ School" report, which investigates how children perceive robots on a number of points:

<http://latd.tv/Latitude-Robots-at-School-Findings.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER17> Children will emotionally relate to stuffed animals as well, such that they will get upset if you mistreat their favorite teddy bear. As a child, I remember getting extremely pissed off at my brother when he intentionally threw my teddy bear into a bathtub full of water, nearly ruining the bear.

There's nothing particularly unique about the robot scenario. Even if a stuffed animal doesn't interact like a robot might, a child will often fill that void of personality with their own imagination, bringing the stuffed animal to life in their own mind. Children are obviously capable of intense creative projection.

</comment><comment><USER18> Teleoperated robots? All this proves is how easy kids are to influence by a staged illusion. Pull the veil back to let them see the wizard (the person with the remote control/microphone) and we'd see far different results.

What a waste of time/money. Any parent (or someone who has been around kids for any length of time) could have given you this same information.</comment>


Show HN: Streamer Insights – Big Data for the little guys (and girls) on Twitch - <AUTHOR> https://streamerinsights.com/landing.html <comment><USER2> Nice work. I was a bit confused by the background video of someone apparently playing a video game. I didn't even realize this was for people who film their own live videos at first.

Perhaps you could focus on what the hobbyist broadcaster imagines being a professional broadcaster might look like (camera crew, nice lighting… I'm not the target here so not exactly sure what that would be).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Would absolutely love any feedback from you guys! Thanks!</comment>


Show HN: CreatorPool, a tool to connect content creators and brands - <AUTHOR> https://creatorpool.net <comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys,

Wanted to show a side project i've been working on and get some feedback. I built this tool after realizing it is hard to find sponsorship as a small time content creator.

CreatorPool aims to help sponsors find content creators relevant to them. A couple of features I have in the pipeline are:

CreatorScore - ranking content creator quality Traffic Verification - <USER2> verify site impressions and traffic to content creator domains

I'd really really appreciate any feedback you can offer. How is the usability of the website? What features do you wish existed? Does the pricing model make sense?

Thanks a ton.</comment>


Startup Quote: Omar Hamoui, founder, AdMob - <AUTHOR> http://startupquote.com/post/7530331986

<comment><AUTHOR> Big companies are almost always far too slow to actually kill a small competitor.

\- Omar Hamoui (@omarh)

<http://startupquote.com/post/7530331986></comment>


Two-Minute Guide to Git - <AUTHOR> http://www.garyrobinson.net/2014/10/git-in-two-minutes-for-a-solo-developer.html <comment><AUTHOR> My son is creating a software project for a independent study project in high school. I've been nagging him for a while to use version control, and he hasn't done it. I think it's a bit intimidating to be handed a 400-page book on git when he has plenty of other work to do. And also, he doesn't really know, from personal experience, why version control can save him a lot of pain. So he just hasn't taken the time.

One problem is that even if he googles "git" to find a simple guide, it talks about the server interactions which, frankly, aren't necessary for him for a project like this, and make things a lot more complicated. He's not sharing code with anyone. And he backs up his hard drive regularly, so he's not worried about losing all his code due to a hardware failure.

As opposed to Subversion, git can be used usefully without a server (including the possibility of a local server process), which actually makes git easier to get started with than Subversion.

So I wrote him a very brief guide for that kind of very simple, one-person use. Another benefit: when he needs to share code, and starts to feel the need to do things like branching, he'll already know some basics of git and so it won't be a big jump to start harnessing more of git's power.

I thought I'd post my guide it to HN in case anyone else finds it useful for that type of situation.

<comment><USER2> Your useful guide aside: why not have him use mercurial?

git has a very steep learning curve and an interface only a mother could love. Mercurial on the other hand has a clean interface very similar to svn, and has all the advantages of git that you list above. And can be straightforwardly run over apache to boot. Also the command is one letter shorter than git.

<comment><AUTHOR> First, I know git, and not mercurial.

Second, I don't think there is a steep learning curve for the subset included in my post.

Third, I think git has enough momentum that it makes sense for beginning programmers to focus on it. I suspect Mercurial will get a lower and lower percentage of the market place over time, because programmers will generally need to learn git at some point, and once they've done so, there is less reason for them to go against the tide on their next project by learning Mercurial. (An "increasing returns" situation.) Maybe I'm wrong about this -- it's just the sense I have. But, see this chart, which I think tends to validate it: [http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=git%2C%20svn%2C%20hg&...](http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=git%2C%20svn%2C%20hg&cmpt=q)

<comment><USER3> Both are great, but for a beginner, I too feel that Mercurial is much easier to get started. You don't have to spend any time 'understanding' how it works, just 3-4 commands is all that it takes to use it.

> Mercurial will get a lower and lower percentage of the market place over > time

Lots of big projects continue to use Hg, some even switching to it from Git (e.g. FB)

[https://hg.python.org/](https://hg.python.org/)

[https://hg.mozilla.org/](https://hg.mozilla.org/)

[https://code.facebook.com/posts/218678814984400/scaling- merc...](https://code.facebook.com/posts/218678814984400/scaling-mercurial-at- facebook/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a great little guide. Nicely done!

But my suggestion would be to use a nice Git GUI instead of the command line. SmartGit is free for non-commercial use and is quite wonderful. It's both easier to use than the command line (by a long shot) and it's actually more powerful too. Many operations that take multiple command line steps are a single command in SmartGit.

There is also SourceTree or the more limited Git GUIs for Mac and Windows from GitHub, but SmartGit is my favorite.

Maybe I'll take your writeup and convert it to a similar guide for SmartGit! :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> My philosophy is that when you use the command line, a) You learn the tool better, and b) wherever you are where there's git, you can use it. No need to install anything else.

I had that philosophy back when I used Subversion, and I think it served me well. It really isn't that hard to use the command line. Especially if you use the subset in my post. I also suspect that GUI tools will generally have the power to deal with staging, branching, etc, and may thus be harder for a total newbie to understand, and more intimidating, than the few commands I outlined in the post.

That's my take on it anyway. YMMV, of course!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I find Fossil[1] to be best DVCS for individuals and small teams. It's like a complete github on your computer. Some salient features -

a. It has a Wiki

b. It has bug tracking

c. It has it's own server

d. It's got a nice and simple web interface. Especially when it visualizes the different branches[2]

e. It's a single file executable across all different operating systems.

f. The Autosync feature[3], which is on by default is, in my opinion, makes version management dead simple. (no pushing and pulling!). This feature by itself makes starting with DVCS really easy.

[1][http://fossil-scm.org/index.html/doc/tip/www/index.wiki](http://fossil- scm.org/index.html/doc/tip/www/index.wiki)

[2][http://fossil-scm.org/index.html/timeline?y=ci](http://fossil- scm.org/index.html/timeline?y=ci)

[3][http://fossil- scm.org/index.html/doc/tip/www/concepts.wiki#w...](http://fossil- scm.org/index.html/doc/tip/www/concepts.wiki#workflow)

</comment><comment><USER6> I had to learn git not too long ago, and found "Git from the bottom up" [1] to be immensely helpful. Until about halfway through reading it I was totally lost, but then everything started to click into place. I had a lot of trouble using git without that decent understanding of the whole system.

This seems like a great guide for people who only need a quick crash course in the specifics of actually _using_ git, but for anyone who still feels lost without that deeper grasp, I definitely recommend "Git from the bottom up".

[1] [http://ftp.newartisans.com/pub/git.from.bottom.up.pdf](http://ftp.newartisans.com/pub/git.from.bottom.up.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER7> I like the idea but the title's a bit misleading. For comparison, this article is over twice as long as the Git in 5 Minutes guide that you reference. I'm not trying to be snarky, I was just very surprised when I saw the article's length.

People searching for Git in X minutes might prefer a shorter preamble and a more expository form, like this: [http://rogerdudler.github.io/git- guide/](http://rogerdudler.github.io/git-guide/)

/2¢

</comment><comment><USER8> I appreciate this guide, so thank you, Gary.

My own special snowflake story: I am an experienced solo developer interested in getting up to speed with modern version control. I like that Git is popular and I prefer to learn well-supported tools. But every time I approach learning Git for my own needs, I get stymied and confused.

\- I don't work in teams with other developers. I have no need to share code with anybody.

\- I am not concerned about data loss, per se, because the systems I build include their own custom automated backup solutions.

\- I don't develop in a VM on my local machine; I develop on a remote dev machine which is an exact system replica of the remote live machine (minus the software under development).

So what do I want from Git -- or something like it?

I want a good way to manage pushing features from dev to live with granular control. I may be working on 3 features plus a batch of bugfixes on the dev machine. When 1 feature and some of the bugfixes are ready to go I want to be able to push them live without pushing incomplete features live; and of course, I want this all to be as frictionless as possible because I don't want to waste time monkeying around with my dev tools when I should be working on dev itself.

Gary's guide doesn't completely get me here, but it is a nice, accessible start. So many Git resources I have read immediately launch into how Git works under the hood. Guess what? I don't care! Would you teach someone how to drive a car by first explaining how combustion engines work?

Maybe Git isn't the best tool for me after all, but with Gary's guide at least I know what commands to run without filling my head with an engineer's treatise of its internal engineering.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'd add the .gitignore file to the guide, with a link to a site like [http://gitignore.io](http://gitignore.io).

I think it's both easy and important to learn early that you don't want to commit binaries and push them around with git.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with you -- and it's actually already mentioned, in the little section at the end, "One more thing – optional – may add another minute"

<comment><USER9> Well shoot, I could have at least done a search of the page before commenting. Serves me right for skipping the optional section. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I really like the Hacker's Guide to Git:

[https://wildlyinaccurate.com/a-hackers-guide-to- git](https://wildlyinaccurate.com/a-hackers-guide-to-git)

</comment><comment><USER11> Nice summary. My only observation is that, in practice gitk --all and gitk -- <filename> have completely replaced their git log equivalents for me (and are more universally available than $RANDOM_GIT_GUI).

</comment><comment><USER12> Two seconds guide from Git: [https://subversion.apache.org/](https://subversion.apache.org/)</comment>


Show HN: Pokerhome.io No Sign In, Just Share Link and Play - <AUTHOR> http://www.pokerhome.io <comment><AUTHOR> The app is still in its beta stages with many more features to come in the coming weeks. Feedback is welcome!

</comment><comment><USER2> Sure it's up and running?</comment>


Goatse as industrial sabotage (2011) - <AUTHOR> https://deterritorialsupportgroup.wordpress.com/2011/09/27/goatse-as-industrial-sabotage/

<comment><USER2> Either I didn't get it or Bruce in the comment section is spot on:

> _This is the most wordy, pretentious way to say "they do it for the lulz."_

<comment><USER3> This is definitely wordy, but the right way to summarize it is not "they do it for the lulz". They do it to stick it to The Man.</comment></comment>


IPad found through craigslist   - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnewmark.com/2010/06/ipad-found-through-craigslist.html

<comment><USER2> A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...

I moved to the Bay Area from Lake Tahoe. It was the second or third day of my new job, and I had to bring in my paperwork for human resources. Took BART downtown from the East Bay, then rode my bike to the office. I must have missed a zipper in my backpack, and my wallet (along with my social security card, credit cards, and some cash) decided to bail out somewhere downtown.

I didn't realize it right away, but rather that night when I actually needed to get everything to HR. I immediately called to get my cards turned off, but was pretty worried having my social security card and drivers license out in the wild. I was able to plead my case with an AC Transit bus driver, get a free ride back to the East Bay, and planned on drinking one of the few beers I had in my fridge.

Some point during that beer, there was a knock on the door. The person on the other side was from the south bay, had a meeting in the city, and had my wallet in hand. He took the time to go well out of his way to return my identity. Only thing he asked for?

Pass it on.

So happy to hear another story like this.

<comment><USER3> Pay it forward, is what they say.

I've seen one too many instances of these happening despite the cynicism all around us. I still believe in human compassion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A few days ago, my wife's boss found a backpack with a cell phone, camera, and iPod in it. The pack was covered in leaves and sitting near a small stream. My wife called the "Mom" entry on the cell phone. The mother lives out-of-state, and hadn't heard anything, but said her son is diabetic.

She put my wife in touch with the owner's cousin, who went up to look near where the backpack was-- and found the owner in the stream, looking pretty beat-up. We haven't heard the denouement yet, so we don't know whether the owner was robbed and left in the stream, or fell in as the result of a diabetic attack.

</comment><comment><USER5> "Do good deeds lavishly without limit". It affects people. :) Even the small things. We don't need to make apps that change the world do make it a better place.

<comment><USER6> Not just other people, it also comes back to you. So even for the purely self- interested remember karma!

<comment><USER7> Just do good things for nothing. Karma doesn't exist; what goes around doesn't necessarily come around.

<comment><USER6> I don't think you understand what I mean by karma. It's not a magic force. It's the simple concept of cause and effect. Simply believing in doing good things for no reason is illogical, and not much different than the reasoning in having blind faith in religion. And even if you have no problems simply doing good for no reason at all, there will be others who cannot latch on to that reasoning, and thus _karma_ is a _practical_ reason for doing good that _everyone_ can latch on to.

Think butterfly effect. That's what karma is. You do something nice it WILL have an effect, even if really small. However these small things will add up. If you're an asshole, I don't care how smart you are, given time = infinity you won't be able to keep it up forever, and the longer you persist the harder it will be to maintain your ass-holeness without retribution. You do something nice to someone else they will be nicer. And if you reason it out, then if you do nice things to everyone, and everyone you do nice things to does the same thing, then it will exponentially spread. It will counteract the people who spread bad things in the same way. But eventually it comes back to you right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I never had the passcode + data wipe feature turned on on my iPhone (I've never lost a phone in my life and it is such a schlepp to enter a passcode when all you want to do is skip to the next track).

However, when I got my iPad, I immediately realized the chances of it going missing are probably higher (no slip-into-pocket convenience) so I activated passcode + data wipe on it (and also on my iPhone).

A _great_ feature would be that the devices _know_ when I'm in my apartment and in that case _not_ require the passcode.

</comment><comment><USER9> Maybe they were bloggers just afraid the police would have knock down their door...

<comment><USER10> This lost-and-found marketing ploy is certainly working out well for BP. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The general topic reminds me of the book "The selfish gene" by Richard Dawkins (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene>).

</comment><comment><USER12> Oh. I thought someone was able to find an iPad to _buy_ on Craigslist (that wasn't a scam).

I was skeptical until reading this scenario. It is much more believable.</comment>


Hbro: Haskell based browser - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/k0ral/hbro

<comment><USER2> I wouldn't call that a "Haskell based browser". 1500 lines of Haskell against maybe 300 KLOC (guessed) of webkit alone. That's not "Haskell based", that's only using Haskell as a glue.

The same goes for uzbl, too, of course. Things like the Grail Browser [1] (a Python webbrowser, including the possibility to run client-side python-code - but sadly obsolete and not maintained anymore, as far as I can tell) are so much cooler than just tying webkit to GTK using $LANGUAGE.

I mean, it's not like HTML layout engines or JS-interpreters are somehow impossible to write from scratch.

[1] <http://grail.sourceforge.net/>

<comment><USER3> > I mean, it's not like HTML layout engines or JS-interpreters are somehow > impossible to write from scratch.

Today's web standards are large & complex enough that it _is_ practically impossible without a full-time team.

<comment><USER2> You could have said the same thing about unix-like operating systems in 1991 - yet, _somebody_ wrote one from scratch without a full-time team.

I'm not trying to put this little project here down, far from it. I think it's pretty neat. I can imagine even neater (if that's a word) things, though... :-)

<comment><USER3> IMO modern web browser internals are more complex and less fun to work on than 1991-era Unix clones.

I'm not being defensive of this project, I'm being critical of the direction web architecture is going.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The comments criticizing this for using WebKit are ridiculous. Most Safari users would never guess that Chrome runs on the same layout engine, but with a different JavaScript core, networking code, a sandbox, an extension architecture, and UI.

Using Haskell for any of the above components (especially the last three) could help make a browser that's more configurable and safer than anything Firefox Chrome or Safari could ever offer.

<comment><USER5> Certainly, a browser larger written in Haskell might be interesting.

People are critising this because so far they have done nothing interesting, just written a simple 'hello world'-type wrapper around a mountain of C++ code.

<comment><USER6> Yes, I was searching for an HTML renderer written in Haskell. It makes me remember HsExcel <http://neilmitchell.blogspot.com.ar/2007/03/hsexcel.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I thought this would be about rewriting the core HTML renderer or JS engine in Haskell. As it stands now, is this not just the "chrome" around WebKit?

</comment><comment><USER8> I can't install it now, but I will as soon as possible.

Now I'm using Conkeror [1]. Essenstial features for me, are:

      Buffer selecting with fuzzy matching
      Hinting links with letters, home row would be superb
      Some developer interface for creating interactive javascript extensions

[1] <http://www.conkeror.org/>

<comment><USER9> And the ability to block ads, which is possible in Conkeror.

I'd also prefer an Emacs-style keybinding set (or at least the ability to map one), so I don't have to switch muscle-memory mode when jumping from my editor to graphical browser. But, I'd be willing to give that up if the memory footprint of a thin Webkit-based browser is more minimal. I occasionally have to restart Conkeror after sustained heavy use due to it hogging system resources (it'll eventually bring my Atom n270 to a grinding halt). This is probably xulrunner's fault though, I suspect.

<comment><USER10> _This is probably xulrunner's fault though, I suspect._

Do you have any actual data to support that claim (or suspicion, as you want)?

<comment><USER9> It's just a suspicion, as stated. The reason for this though is that Firefox has (or had) the exact same behavior in older versions I've used prior to switching to Conkeror.

<comment><USER10> I was thinking this was going to be your argument, which is why I pressed the issue. If you have a reproducible testcase where Firefox without plugins ends up "hogging system resources", then by all means report it.

See also: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4123656>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I honestly love projects like this one, but is the implementation language really worth fragmenting this niche? Uzbl is in Python and I can't think of any objective reason why Haskell would be better for a browser.

<comment><USER12> It's only ~1500 lines, with comments.

      find Hbro -iname '*.hs' | xargs cat | wc -l

<comment><USER13> A little off-topic, why didn't you just do "xargs wc -l"?

<comment><USER14> Because of this:

         Any arguments specified on the command line are given
         to utility upon each invocation, followed by some
         number of the arguments read from the standard input
         of xargs.  The utility is repeatedly executed
         until standard input is exhausted.

In other words, if the argument list is too long, xargs will chunk the input and call the program repeatedly. This means that on very large projects, 'wc -l' will be called several times on subsets of the files, and you will get an incorrect total listed at the bottom.

putting a 'cat' in between fixes that. 'cat a b; cat c d' is equivalent to 'cat a b c d', so the chunking doesn't matter. And wc -l can just read from stdin without worrying about how many files there are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> We are the knights who say NIH!

<comment><USER16> I don't think NIH applies to projects like this. It's not like they're writing an HTTP server.</comment></comment>


Carlypso (YC S14) could change everything about how we buy and sell used cars - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/18/carlypso-could-change-everything-about-how-we-buy-and-sell-used-cars/ <comment><USER2> It's a _really_ great idea - congrats on the publicity and launch guys.

I cannot count how many times friends have called me to ask "So, how do I sell my used car?" I never have a good answer (The trade-in-to-dealer process is the easiest but by far the worst financially) .

On the question (from the video) of 'What if it gets stolen?'

"At worst, you get paid for the car."

Heh. This brings up a number of thoughts -- I mean, in the end, your goal as a seller is to sell the car. If it gets stolen, your insurance company pays you for the car, so...mission accomplished?

If that becomes a regular occurrence, it creates a weird market condition -- thieves win because they get an easily-stolen car. The seller wins because he's sold his car quickly. So the insurance company loses -- and who gets left holding the bag?

(Not saying this is a real risk - I think these guys are going to do wonderfully - but a thought experiment...)

<comment><USER3> Insurance companies would start charging more for letting potential buyers drive your car.

<comment><USER4> Presumably, Carlypso will provide their own insurance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> [http://www.instamotor.com](http://www.instamotor.com) is in the same space. Looking at both of their sites, Instamotors seems more inviting and explains things better.

There's no question that the space is ripe for disruption, but the problem with both of these services are:

1) How does the consumer know you'll actually get a better price for them? The only way to know for sure is to list it yourself and see how you would do. There is a conflict of interest here, because these sites would rather have a quick sale than take a long time negotiating an extra few hundred dollars.

2) I don't necessarily feel comfortable giving strangers access to my car so they can give other strangers test drives.

<comment><USER6> Instamotor's CEO bought a car using Carlypso and decided to copy the model. That's the Instamotor story.

<comment><USER7> Sam Walton visited Montgomery Ward and decided to copy the model. That's the Walmart story.

<comment><USER8> Actually he sprang up from the Ben Franklin franchise store he first bought and learned a lesson the hard way, a short term lease is a great way to lose a location based business to an unscrupulous competitor or want to be competitor. Wal Mart was modeled on Meijer's idea of one stop shopping.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I used Carlypso to sell my Honda Civic a few months ago. Everyone involved was helpful and professional. I ended up getting a lot more than I would if I traded it in to CarMax, and the steps involved were minimal. I'd definitely recommend them.

<comment><USER10> Which method did you use? (there are 3 options after enter your car info).

I am thinking of selling my Honda Element and the prices offered seem pretty low.

<comment><USER9> At the time the only option available was "Carlypso Concierge".

Carlypso listed my car slightly under what kbb.com said it was worth, which was fine with me. I assume this was to speed up sales.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> One of their biggest competitors is going to be AutoTrader.com and maybe even similar sites that already have a massive audience on the buying side. AutoTrader offers a VIP service for selling cars where they talk to people and take care of some of the stuff you don't want to mess with. I have not used it myself. But it is about $150-$300.

[https://sell.autotrader.com/syc/vip/package_selection.jsf?zi...](https://sell.autotrader.com/syc/vip/package_selection.jsf?zip=64114)

I don't think very many people even know you can do this with AutoTrader

</comment><comment><USER12> On the "How It Works" page, there's mention of installing a "Carlypso device" on the vehicle:

[http://www.carlypso.com/how-it-works/](http://www.carlypso.com/how-it-works/)

> _" 2.We'll send an inspection mechanic, who also attaches our Carlypso > device"_

I also quickly searched the FAQ for "device": [http://www.carlypso.com/faqs/](http://www.carlypso.com/faqs/)

I must have overlooked it but are there any details on what a "Carlypso device" actually is?

<comment><USER13> According to the TechCrunch article here:

[http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/18/carlypso-could-change- every...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/18/carlypso-could-change-everything- about-how-we-buy-and-sell-used-cars/)

the device is used to track potential buyers while they're on test drives. So it's at least got a GPS and some kind of data functionality. It would be smart if it included OBD-II functionality to see if the test-drive customers are beating on the car, but I don't see any reference to that kind of feature.

If you watch the video, there's also a license-plate lockbox for the key so that you never have to deal with a buyer personally.

<comment><USER14> "It would be smart if it included OBD-II functionality to see if the test- drive customers are beating on the car, but I don't see any reference to that kind of feature."

The only metric you'd want from the OBD port is the tach; you can get speed from GPS, acceleration from your own accelerometer sensor ("flooring it", stopping hard), etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Who's liable for when your car is test driven and gets in an accident? Or worst, used in a negligent way. IANAL but I think that car owners can be held responsible for lending a car that is used by a driver that is found to have been negligent (google: negligent entrustment).

edit: Just to be clear, I'm talking more about when cars are test drive without the owner present, as seems to be possible here.

</comment><comment><USER16> "The seller never needs to meet the person who buys the car."

Honestly, this sounds like a HUGE risk to me.

<comment><USER17> Compare against the risks of meeting in person with respondents to your used car ad: [http://www.moneyfile.net/finance-news/dangers-of-selling- you...](http://www.moneyfile.net/finance-news/dangers-of-selling-your-car-on- craigslist/)

<comment><USER18> That sounds like exactly the same risk as meeting a person you met online in any conceivable way. Online dating, all of Craigslist, even job interviews have the same risk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Enormous potential.

I would use this in a heartbeat if it were available here.

They could probably get away with twice the rake - the experience of personally buying/selling a used car is that bad and dealers/Carmax lowball that low.

Personally, I'd like a service which caters the intersecting possibility of evaluating and buying cars which need work packaged with bids to complete said work. Then perhaps I could get my hands on the e39 wagon I've always wanted.

</comment><comment><USER20> I wonder how they will protect against scumbag sellers. It seems that there is already a lot of value to just filtering the potential buyers. How can they protect themselves from a seller being there when the potential buyer shows-up and then working out a sale on the side? Anyway I've taken advantage of some of the crazy but cool trades that happen from selling used cars so I'm not really a customer.

</comment><comment><USER21> I have been researching the used car market for the last year in an academic lab. I would love to share stories about data collection and management if Carlypso folks are interested. Not looking to be a consultant or being consulted or any kind of a "gig". As I'm sure they know, used car data is a crazy world of imperfect data points, especially as the car becomes older (>6 years old I'd say data quality begins to break down fast). What proportions of your data are scraped, purchased, or maybe even obtained from a free API like Edmunds.com? I doubt you're using Edmunds as I didn't catch any affiliation info on the site.

I laughed at the "oh yeah that makes sense" story of the big truck being priced higher in TX. My goto story is always the price of convertibles in the winter in MN vs. TX, or the price of an AWD sedan in the winter in MN vs. TX.

Speaking of AWD sedans, I know it's a rare car so this is nitpicky but your 2008 Saab 9-3 data classifies a Turbo X as an Aero. Also the Turbo X trim isn't listed for the wagon. At any rate, your estimate for the Sedan Turbo X is about 20% too low. Granted they only made 600 for the US market, I was still bummed that a car which is so dear to me had this issue. Haha, I'm not trying to be that guy whatsoever! In fact I was happy when I saw Saab was even listed as a Make as many don't even acknowledge them anymore! :(

Anyways let me know if you guys are up for a friendly talk.

<comment><USER22> @ Zissou - I'm Chris a Carlypso Co-Founder. I'm always up for a friendly talk!

Getting the pricing to be reliably accurate was one of the biggest challenges. We tried many of the third party tools only to realize that most were not accurate for our needs.

We do a few things that distinguish our pricing from other sources after realizing no third-party tool worked particularly well. Granted, there are anomalies but here's a few brief guiding principles:

(1) As you pointed out the region matters - a truck in TX is not the same as one in central San Francisco. (2) A listing is not the same as a sale. Dealers often attempt to hold gross margin when a car comes in, then gradually reduce to market rates to sell the car in a period of 30-45 days (e.g. price it high to start and then lower it). We measure how long a given car has been listed on a dealer's site, and often cars listed for a higher price only sell after they are reduced to a lower price. We can do some validation of the final negotiation with DMV records and comparing those values to final listing prices. Fewer and fewer cars have large negotiating margin. (3) You can measure the relative demand and supply of the vehicle market by looking at the flow rate of the vehicle relative to the total local market supply (E.g. measure how many civics sell in a given month relative to how many are available that month). (4) Everyone claims their vehicle is perfect but every vehicle we inspect needs some level of refurbishment so we factored that into our pricing to give "average levels". If a car truly is perfect, we're more than happy to help sell it for more than we predicted, we just prefer to be direct and honest upfront rather than reduce prices after the inspection occurs. (5) The price floor is always set by what someone else would pay in very short notice. This is most easily observable by looking at auction values.

As a side-note, pricing a rare car is virtually impossible --- we can only price cars where there's a significant market and low levels of heterogeneity. The variance on a 1967 Porsche 912 can't be estimated by traditional models since a numbers match car with Fuch's wheels and three gauges is worth more than a restored car with non-numbers match engine, 5 gauges and re-welded floor pans.

\- Chris

<comment><USER20> I just checked your site out and wanted to give a little feedback since I like the idea after some mulling.

To buy a car it's somewhat annoying. There is no good way to filter based on things such as transmission for example or search based on anything at all such as location or price even. I have to go through the whole list and as you grow that will be no longer viable, it was already a pita.

Also when I go to an individual car there are very few details. The photos are good and what a lot of terrible CL ads lack, but it would be nice to have the specific engine in the car for example since in many cars there are many options there. I also expected a list of options and standard items like carmax gives.

Finally you should include the VIN, I always have a friend run it for me before I even see a car, that has saved me so much time.

Good luck!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I clicked on the article expecting to see "a website that sells used cars" but claims to change EVERYTHING about the way used cars are sold (no shortage of these types of start ups)...

I was pleasantly surprised to be wrong. From sending out a certified mechanic to attaching a device... this really does seem like a good idea and very cool...

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm buying a car and checked out the service. So much better than randomly driving around to various lots. It's an improvement on buying from an individual. Cars have been inspected. No way I'd buy a car without the inspection. But at a dealer that means the car costs about the same as a new car.

</comment><comment><USER25> Maybe most people on here aren't car guys, but I'm cruising the current cars they have up for sale on the site and every single one seems overpriced to me.

The G series MB seems interesting, but I trust a used MB about as far as I can throw it.

It'll probably be a hit for the masses, but I'll stick to haggling and craigslist.

<comment><USER26> It's just anecdotal, but I bought a '98 Mercedes with ~120,000 miles for a few thousand bucks. It's been rock solid for the ~20,000 miles I've put on it since.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I sold my car through them early on and recommended a couple of friends to do the same (they did end up selling through Carlypso, too). What a great service. I also did a video testimonial because of how much I liked their service. I can't imagine this startup not taking off.

</comment><comment><USER28> Please come to Ontario. Please!

</comment><comment><USER29> This is great!

Now if they could just expand it to real estate...

<comment><USER30> Here's a startup that's planning to do just that: [http://recode.net/2014/05/23/khoslas-keith-rabois-aiming- to-...](http://recode.net/2014/05/23/khoslas-keith-rabois-aiming-to-launch- his-magic-home-selling-site-in-june/)</comment></comment>


Opening up Science Journal, an Android science tool app - <AUTHOR> http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2016/08/opening-up-science-journal.html <comment><USER2> AAAS vs. Google. Fight! [http://science.sciencemag.org/](http://science.sciencemag.org/)

But seriously to my academic mind: Journal = published, Notebook = notes from experiments.

Besides the name issue, it looks Science Journal is part of a wide host of open source tools aimed at enabling data collection and experimental control. The big player in this area is National Instruments/Labview.

I wonder if there's room in the market for a mid-level player (or if one already exists). Utilize the open source developments and create a "certified and supported" toolset for experimental control. Cheaper than NI, but more reliable than "this firmware I found on github".

<comment><USER3> I know you're kidding, but science journal is targeting younger and emerging scientists to improve on the collection of data during experiments. We are in no way a competitor to publication like science , plos one, etc...

But we hope you like our release :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Man, for a second I thought Google was really going back to their roots and opening up a journal of science. Now that would have been fascinating.

<comment><USER5> Google taking on the academic publishing racket? That is such a good idea that it _must_ happen.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Hosted Graphite service (with statsd integration) - <AUTHOR> http://www.hostedgraphite.com/

<comment><USER2> Is the order of the pricing options intentional? I'm seeing Medium, Large, Small, Tiny. It's sort of disorienting - seems like Large should be first.

<comment><USER3> That was my bad - It's something of an experiment to try and get people to read all of the options instead of gravitating directly to 'cheap'.

<comment><USER4> Maybe do small, medium, large, developer. That way it's: $$, $$$, $$$$, $

<comment><USER3> Good suggestion, I'll try that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Feedback: this service looks oriented toward teams managing complex applications in production. $5 is never an appropriate monthly price for those folks. Even if it's just one developer (consider pinboard.in, for example). If that one developer needs hosted Graphite to monitor his/her app it's worth considerably more than $5 to that developer.

Also: I understand this is likely your MVP website, but you should at least link to a page about Graphite, even if it's not on your website. And screenshots are going to really sell this thing.

<comment><USER3> Good feedback, work in progress!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting. Do you do any correlation or alerts like Librato Metrics or is this just a graphing service? The $5/mo price point is similar for both services...

<comment><AUTHOR> Both automatic correlation and alerting are absolutely on the roadmap. We're just getting started. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Just one thing, you have a checkbox to accept the terms of service, but I dind't find a link to the document.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's right, sorry! Fixing that broken link shortly...

<comment><USER8> Other minor defects:

About-page is caught by a wildcard which shows a slightly modified landing page with different prices.

Flexible layout could use some more testing. Choose plan buttons escape their parent boxes on the right at minimum width. Free trial button could use some vertical breathing room at min. width. Login and sign up links change colour (gray to blue) and go vertical.

<comment><USER9> also, on the support page, I'd make it a regular clickable email address rather than "support at hostedgraphite.com". You want to make it easy for your customers to reach you. At this point you shouldn't be too worried about spam. We've had our email address on our site for about 6 months now, and have received a total of 3 spam messages that weren't caught by google's filters. Not sure how good huggl.es is wrt spam filtering, but, you won't get much spam until you're popular enough to be crawled by spammers, and once you're popular enough, you'll be able to afford spam filtering software.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point! That has been fixed. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Any limits on the number of metrics or metrics/s?

<comment><AUTHOR> The metric limit isn't on the front page yet, but you can see it per-plan on the plan choosing page: <http://www.hostedgraphite.com/pick_plan/>

There is a limit on metrics/sec, currently 50/sec, but we're trying to keep that limit high enough that people don't need to worry about it. We expect that most people won't hit the API directly and will use statsd instead.

<comment><USER11> Are you providing statsd hosting as well?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a little trickier to do that because of authentication concerns, but we're looking into it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Pricing Model That Increased Our Free Trial Signups by 358% - <AUTHOR> http://groovehq.com/blog/pricing-that-worked <comment><USER2> This doesn't sound like the complete set of metrics that should be measured. Surely, the key thing is how much money each model made? What is the average revenue per user in either case for those users converted?

Later on the average lifetime value of a user in each model is needed (plus the cost to get and convert them).

Yes, conversion is part of the equation, but this feels like a vanity metric on its own.

Just so I'm not sounding pedantic, our SaaS tool has a conversion rate of over 40% because it's completely free, permanently. That's the boundary case of moving the pricing.

<comment><USER3> Just looking at this for one of the first times (new to this part of the game), it seems like this is a step-by-step progression from 'we have users!' to 'users are paying!' If I were working my way forward yours would absolutely be my next question, along with figuring how to target the 20% of customers that drive 80% of my revenue.

Do you think that it would be better to have the revenue model fully thought out (through to revenue/user and lifetime value) before a/b testing the pricing models?

<comment><USER4> There really is no such thing as "fully thought out" here w.r.t what the customers will actually do with it. If you look again at the article, they went through this kind of progression:

\- Best guess at a starting price model

\- Revisited price model after poor test performance. Did research, revamped model based on research

\- Revisited price model after poor test performance. Simplified plan to match the philosophy of business. Performance greatly improved

It's about testing the ideas, not keeping them in your head. What you _think_ works and what _actually_ works are often counterintuitively different.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Tangential comments:

1\. The pirate theme, and the fact that each blog post has it's own well-done image are freaking amazing. I also love the sand effect (on the homepage laptop too). Made me instantly feel good about your brand, and I went to the home page thinking, "Hey we already use Help Scout but maybe we should try this out", even though we are completely happy with Help Scout and I had no real good reason to even think of switching... you still got me.

2\. All of that was completely undone by the two screen-invading modal windows with sleazy tricks like not having an obvious "get the fuck out of my way you annoying piece of shit" button. One on the blog itself (which pops up before I even start reading your post) and one on the homepage. I'm even surprised that ESC worked, but thank god it did. Thing is I actually really wanted to read your article, and send it out to the team, but now I feel like I don't really want to help a company that uses slimy tactics. I still will though because the title fits so perfectly with what we're working on.

3\. Oh fuck me, while writing this comment another one popped up on a really delayed timer. Never mind, no longer reading.

</comment><comment><USER6> If anyone from Groove is reading these comments, your log in page looks like this on latest Chrome OS X: [https://www.dropbox.com/s/u7s0mqhu8172bpf/Screenshot%202013-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/u7s0mqhu8172bpf/Screenshot%202013-10-24%2012.03.02.png)

<comment><USER7> ouch, that's no good :( Fixing that asap....Thanks for the heads up!

<comment><USER3> in chrome inspector, deleting the fake-placeholder nodes makes it look okay. maybe just change their styling to display:none?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd be a little careful here. I've personally dealt with the situation of creating a "customer-pleasing" revenue model, only to have to change it a year later because it was leaving way too much money on the table. It was a horrible process that resulted in losing a lot of customers. While we did eventually successfully make the transition, I think all of us wished we hadn't just said "oh if this takes off that will be a great problem to have". You don't want to A/B test your core business model unless you are very confident it is going to work long term.

Obviously, it is important to pick a business model that people will pay for, but it is also important to make sure that business model is going to support your business properly long-term.

<comment><USER9> Did you not grandfather your existing customers' plans?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I urge you to purchase and read The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing [0]. You are making a number of mistakes, not the least of which is to use low pricing as a differentiator. Bad idea. You've landed yourself on a potential slippery slope that can be devastating. I doubt your current competitors will follow you down. They are likely not suicidal. However, your position is easily attacked by anyone willing and able to take a dive for the weeds (in terms of pricing). Product being reasonably equal, the lower price wins. Customers nearly always want to pay as close to zero as possible.

I see a lot of "we had this revelation" type posts on HN. Perhaps this is a side effect of a younger, less experienced membership. A lot of these things are nowhere close to revelations. People --many people-- have trenched these paths before you. Anyone with a reasonable amount of business "street" experience could have told you that giving away EVERYTHING for a low price would convert better. What you need to do is optimize profit per unit and segment the market in order to maximize that function. The other thing you are doing is colloquially referred to as "leaving money on the table".

The pricing field is deep, wide and complex. The suggested book is one of many I studied over the years. For a number of years one of the most frustrating aspects of entrepreneurship for me was having to read piles of business books to understand what the hell I was supposed to do. Engineering school does not prepare you for this.

[0] [http://www.amazon.com/The-Strategy-Tactics-Pricing- Profitabl...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Strategy-Tactics-Pricing- Profitably/dp/0136106811)

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm confused. Your customers wanted to pay per ticket, but you wound up going back to the industry-standard of paying per agent. What gives?

<comment><USER12> I've been through this same exact price confusion with customers. They told us they wanted to pay a la carte, but when we tested it they very much did not.

I think the psychology makes sense. When they told us they wanted to pay on a pay per use basis they based that completely on the past. They did the basic math. Last month I did 16 tickets. At $.25 a piece I would have paid $4! _That 's_ what I want to pay!

When faced with a future purchase decision, however, the mindset immediately changed. Now the decision was unbound. What if in three months I get to the point I have 1,000 tickets?!??! My god, now it's $250/month. That's crazy expensive! That fear caused a lot of issues.

So we tried the logical next step. $.25 per use, capped at a certain dollar amount ($25/month). That was too complicated to understand.

So we just started charging a flat $25/month (sales-leads fwiw). That worked really well.

<comment><USER9> I think this is an example of the Simulation Heuristic, but I may be misunderstanding it.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_heuristic](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_heuristic)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I would really like to see a comparison between this flat fee per "unit" (in this case users) model vs tiered pricing based on the number of these same "units", where the "unit" is one that will be predefined and remain mostly static.

So in this case, something like "$15 per user" vs "$39 for <= 3 users, $99 for <= 10 users, $249 for <= 30 users".

Can anybody share such a study?

</comment><comment><USER14> Cool writeup. I don't know much about this market, but the Competitor Pricing Comparison Chart shows them undercutting the others on price so much that I'm wondering how much money they're leaving on the table. Hopefully as time goes on they'll have enough differentiation that they don't feel the need to compete on price any more.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm sorry if I am not seeing this clearly, but did you change the pricing model? All I am seeing between Test #2 and Test #3 (the succesful one) is that you drop from $150 to $15. The $150 was the Unlimited Plan, and now you have all that for $15.

All I see is price lowering instead a diff price model. I apologize if I am wrong.

<comment><USER16> $150 was for unlimited everything including agents. New pricing is $15/agent.

<comment><USER15> Oops, sorry. Makes sense now. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Have you considered freemium (or close to freemium, like Zendesk)? That would be interesting. My sense is there are three audiences: those who want to pay nothing or close to nothing, those who will pay a little and those who will pay a lot.

And this is based primarily on their financial situation, not needs or aspirations.

</comment><comment><USER18> Good lessons:

* Make pricing easy to understand

* Don't make customers guess how many widgets they'll need

* Don't make customers afraid they'll run out of widgets or need to pay a different amount later

* Convince customers that tier X has everything they'll need and is cheap and easy

In other words, make the checkout funnel as smooth and frictionless as possible.

</comment><comment><USER19> Looks like they jumped from too complex - 6 options - to throwing segmentation ([http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckie...](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckies.html)) out with the bathwater

</comment><comment><USER20> I've been following these posts and they've been really helpful, so thanks for writing them up. But when A/B testing your pricing model, what are you supposed to do for the customers that signed up for the now-defunct service prices?

<comment><USER21> Indeed. Do you offer them a (possibly rebated) way to change to the per-agent model, or do you keep supporting the legacy per-ticket mode?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I just want to say thank you to Alex Turnbull for writing about all the things they've learned at Groove. It's incredibly helpful and insightful to read.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the kind words :) Glad you're digging the series!

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> What is the difference in:

free trial -> paid subscription?

It says 25% increase in revenue but presumably you have lowered your margins?

</comment><comment><USER24> This is content marketing done right.

</comment><comment><USER25>
      easy to use
      easy to buy

</comment><comment><USER26> I think the better conversion rate has more to do with a better pricing page (simpler design & larger CTA) for the last one.</comment>


Security of a country: Portugal - <AUTHOR> https://blog.binaryedge.io/2016/03/31/security-of-a-country-portugal/ <comment><USER2> "Regarding Samba/SMB (...) 79% (1424) has weak or no authentication, which means that anyone could access the files in these servers without any username or password, e.g., critical business information or private financial records."

Companies still miss the basic security configurations, and then they are surprised they were "hacked".</comment>