Car alarms and smoke alarms: the tradeoff between sensitivity and specificity - <AUTHOR> https://blog.danslimmon.com/2012/11/02/car-alarms-and-smoke-alarms-the-tradeoff-between-sensitivity-and-specificity/ <comment><USER2> The cost of a false alarm for a smoke alarm is borne by owner of the smoke alarm. The cost of a false alarm for a car alarm is borne by everybody in earshot (typically not the owner).

The car alarm owner is forcing an externality cost onto society; there is no incentive for an individual car alarm owner to reduce false positives so it is no surprise the products are so bad.

(Even in the true-positive case, the car alarm is extracting its value from the attention of third parties to the thievery, at no cost to the owner.)

Conclusion: every sounding of a car alarm should attract a substantial tax penalty.

<comment><USER3> > every sounding of a car alarm should attract a substantial tax penalty.

I live in a poorer west side chicago neighborhood and car alarms go off all the time. I am jolted out sleep frequently by multiple alarms going off at the same time. I never experienced this in somewhat affluent neighborhoods, I think poor ppl are more sensitive(no pun intended) to theft so they turn alarm sensitivity all the way up.

So fining would affect poorer ppl more than rich ppl and might be politically sensitive much like the chicago soda tax that was rolled back for this precise reason.

<comment><USER4> > So fining would affect poorer ppl more than rich ppl

Yeah but if you're getting woken up multiple times at night in a poor neighborhood, then it's poor people who _don 't_ own car alarms who are negatively affected the most.

<comment><USER3> If you are poor you have much higher tolerance to things like these.

<comment> ctrl-j If you are poor, you do not have a higher tolerance.

If you are poor, you have significantly less agency to effect change to remedy your situation - so you have no choice but to tolerate things like these.

A rich person can move, install soundproofing, afford air conditioning to sleep with the windows shut, etc...

A poor person can have interrupted sleep.

<comment><USER5> Yup, you have "higher tolerance" to things that have been continually forced on you—doesn't mean your tolerance is actually higher, just that you're more experienced at sucking it up.

I distinctly remember the day when I, as a young teenage boy, observed "Huh, the girls in my class are a lot better than the boys at doing work they don't want to do. The boys complain and try to get out of it, the girls generally just do it whether they like it or not."

Then I realised—oh, the girls feel like they're _expected_ to just do it. They don't feel as entitled to a say in the matter as the boys do, because that's how they've each been socialised.

And then I began seeing parallels everywhere…so that was the moment that set me on the path of social activism, really.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "When a smoke alarm goes off in a school or an office building, everybody stops what they're doing and walks outside in an orderly fashion. Why? Because when smoke alarms go off (and there's no drill scheduled), it frequently means there's actual smoke somewhere."

Actually, I think it's because the potential consequences of ignoring a smoke alarm (vs a car alarm) are much more grave.

</comment><comment><USER7> This phenomenon is a serious safety issue in hospital intensive care facilities; with so many machines producing so many audible alerts, genuine emergencies often go un-noticed.

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

</comment><comment><USER8> I have _never_ heard a car alarm that wasn't a false alarm. And living in a large city, I hear one almost every night.

<comment><USER9> Worsened by the fact that you get an insurance discount if you have a car alarm. So everyone has one, despite that we all know they are only effective at annoying neighbors and bystanders. The only writing I've read that touts the positives of a car alarm fall in the "wishful thinking" category, a.k.a, "well, it can't hurt!" Everything else I've read that tried to be at least a little scientific indicates they're more trouble than they're worth.

<comment><USER10> On the other hand, it's possible that the reason car alarms are mostly false alarms these days is due to the huge decline in auto theft rates over the last 30 years [1], which is due at least in part to the prevalence of car alarms.

[1] [https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/east/2014/12/17/350442...](https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/east/2014/12/17/350442.htm)

<comment><USER9> 30 years ago I could open a locked car, and get it started and driveable in sixty seconds (the steering wheel lock will be collateral damage). Not a car thief, but I _was_ a mechanic. But now there are better door locks, a lot of cars don't even _have_ a key-locked wheel lock, and you don't just short two wires under the dash to start it like the movies. Granted, a career thief probably has quick workarounds for all of this, but the bar for quick car theft went up from "low-life with a slim jim", I think.

Point is, yeah, car alarms likely had some effect, but was it more or less than the fact that cars are just generally harder to steal now? And I have no idea what the answer is.

<comment><USER11> > you don't just short two wires under the dash to start it like the movies.

Just plug in your ODB-II tool and press start :-).

<comment><USER12> After pressing the FPGA-based keyfob. When not used for cracking keyfobs, it can also do other misc work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I had to struggle with this concept as a physician trying to understand the medical literature. Eventually I came up with my own way of thinking dynamically about it. I called this the "two by two diagram". You can find the full text of my articles here: [https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kevin_Johnson40](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kevin_Johnson40) As a matter of fact, I would very much like to get this programmed into a Javascript version I can make freely available to people, but am not clear on how to go about getting that done. I have a version in MATLAB but that is not practical for most people.

<comment><USER14> Visual Presentation of Statistical Concepts in Diagnostic Testing: The 2 × 2 Diagram, Kevin M. Johnson and Benjamin K. Johnson.

[https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kevin_Johnson40/publica...](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kevin_Johnson40/publication/263322395_Visual_Presentation_of_Statistical_Concepts_in_Diagnostic_Testing_The_2_2_Diagram/links/54c108500cf21674cea1e249.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> > People trust smoke alarms. When a smoke alarm goes off in a school or an > office building, everybody stops what they're doing and walks outside in an > orderly fashion.

No, it means someone was making popcorn. The reason we leave is because they set the volume to a level that it causes people to feel pain, presumably to force us to leave.

The fire alarm at my apartment is effectively a bacon detector. Multiple residents have covered theirs because of how sensitive they are. Normal cooking will set them off. I'm suspicious they may actually up the risk of a fire, as someone may abandon their cooking to avoid the noise.

<comment><USER16> If you have a smoke alarm installed in your kitchen (or wash room if that's separate) that is a problem. Kitchens need heat alarms instead for this exact reason; smoke alarms are too sensitive and are likely to be set off by other things (dust from linen, steam from a kettle, toaster, tumble-dryer, etc).

In the UK, new residential construction puts heat alarms in kitchens and smoke alarms everywhere else.

EDIT: If you have a dedicated central heating boiler room, that also gets a carbon monoxide alarm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wow... I haven't heard a car alarm go off in so long I haven't even thought about them at all in a few decades now.

No one uses them in the rural area I live but the title to this and a few of the comments here reminded me of how annoying car alarms could be when I lived in LA.

I learned to drive a beater there so I didn't have to worry about someone banging into or stealing my car. I saw too many people get way too stressed about that and it just wasn't worth it to me. It was really nice to not worry about it.</comment>


Tech World in 52 Cards – Poker Deck about the Tech/Startup World - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thedentmakers/the-dentmakers-deck <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone!

We're some broke guys from a corner of South East Asia, working on a startup. And as every founder who struggles to survive, we gotta find ways to make it through.

So here we are, a deck with simple designs, concise quotes but we've poured all of our hearts into this. We hope it could serve as a daily dose of inspiration and determination for anyone out there who are working hard and dreaming big dreams.

Learn more about the deck and help us bootstrapping our scrappy startup dream at [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thedentmakers/the- dentm...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thedentmakers/the-dentmakers- deck?ref=1u58xx)

Thanks for checking us out and have a great day! Minh Phan</comment>


LinkedIn is becoming China's go-to platform for recruiting foreign spies - <AUTHOR> https://www.cyberscoop.com/linkedin-china-spies-kevin-mallory-ron-hansen/ <comment><USER2> LinkedIn is ... Go to for recruiting.... (Anything and anyone)?</comment>


Browser extension creators selling users' browsing history [German source] - <AUTHOR> https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/netzwelt/Nackt-im-Netz-Millionen-Nutzer-ausgespaeht,nacktimnetz100.html<p>A German TV team acted as a big data company, tried to buy user data from browser extension creators and got access to billions of records. Facebook and other personalized URLs make it easy to find out who the records belong to. The one extension that's specifically named is WOT (Web of Trust). <comment><USER2> From their forum: [https://www.mywot.com/en/forum/70396--virus-spyware-do- not-i...](https://www.mywot.com/en/forum/70396--virus-spyware-do-not-install- uninstall-as-soon-as-possible)

</comment><comment><USER3> I can appreciate the irony calling it "web of trust"</comment>


Netmap – Fast packet I/O framework - <AUTHOR> http://info.iet.unipi.it/~luigi/netmap/ <comment><USER2> I am warming up to netmap but I want to deploy on Linux without distributing a kernel module.

Snabb Switch still uses its own built-in device drivers but if that was not an option I reckon we would be more likely to adopt netmap than DPDK because it is so much simpler.

<comment><USER3> From: [https://patchwork.ozlabs.org/patch/396713/](https://patchwork.ozlabs.org/patch/396713/)

      From: Daniel Borkmann
      ...
      With 1 core netmap does 10G line-rate on 64b; I don't
      know their numbers on 40G when run on decent hardware though.

So looks like netmap has not only nice API, driver-specific code is trivial, but also the performance might be good. If only netmap could do the "bifurcated driver" use case!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Also check out Vale high performance network stack by the same group.

[http://info.iet.unipi.it/~luigi/netmap/](http://info.iet.unipi.it/~luigi/netmap/)

</comment><comment><USER5> I've seen netmap referenced occasionally over the years, but I've never actually seen anyone using it in the real world. Anyone have any links to projects/companies which use it?

<comment><USER6> Probably because it's in use on BSD-based network appliances you don't have access to look inside. It would be great for anti-DDoS and IPS/IDS devices.</comment></comment>


Powerful House committee demands Jeff Bezos testify after 'misleading' - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/01/powerful-house-committee-demands-jeff-bezos-testify-after-misleading-statements-on-how-amazon-develops-its-own-products/ <comment><USER2> As they say 'push the limits' seems to be the Amazon standard business practice. In effect this describes a process where Amazon can survey all products that are sold, identify high volume/margin products, then do an in- house item-by-item assessment and then decide which items to produce and sell themselves. Amazon denies these same abilities to their clients. This would indeed to seem to be a classic case of unfair business practices. Taken to their conclusion, the USA/world would have a single supplier of all to all = extreme monopoly. There seem to be hundreds of discrete cases of this form of abuse. This process will take a few years to evolve and could lead to dramatic changes at Amazon as well as 1000's of lawsuits and class actions, that will enrich generations of lawyers (many as yet unborn!!)

</comment><comment><USER3> Nothing will happen.

This is USA where corporations have bought all parts of system including Supreme Court.

It's all about giving a hope of justice but never delivering on it.

This is very much true at Federal Level, lot less at state and city level.

<comment><USER4> Martha Stewart would disagree.</comment></comment>


BFG Repo-Cleaner: an alternative to git-filter-branch - <AUTHOR> https://rtyley.github.io/bfg-repo-cleaner/ <comment><USER2> I used this yesterday to move 400 MB of binary files from a repo on github to git-lfs. Works great.

The workflow was roughly:

       - cp *.mov (and a few other large blob types) ~/tmp
       - git rm *.mov
       - git commit
       - git lfs track *.mov
       - git add .gitattributes
       - git commit; git push

In a fresh directory:

      - git clone --mirror $remote; cd repo
      - bfg --delete-files '*.mov'
      - git reflog expire --expire=now --all && git gc --prune=now --aggressive
      - git push

Back to my src directory:

      - mv repo repo.bloated
      - git clone $remote; cd repo
      - cp ~/tmp/*.mov .
      - git add *.mov  (it now puts them in lfs)
      - git commit; git push

Kind of a chore to figure out, but now my repo is small and zippy.

Tip: do this on a cloud machine instead of your laptop, since most of the time is pulling/pushing data to github.

</comment><comment><USER3> I used BFG to migrate several moderately large repos (~10K commits in the largest) from GitHub Enterprise (which didn't have a file size limit) to a private GitHub.com account. GitHub.com quite reasonably won't allow any commit containing a file larger than 100MB, and warns about any file larger than 50MB. Someone had foolishly committed things like demo videos and very large PDF documents early in the projects' histories. I couldn't get git-filter- branch to run without errors; BFG worked perfectly (and quickly) with no errors and lots of reporting about what exactly it had done.

The only difficulty was that we were a Perl shop, running on fairly old CentOS, and as a Scala app, BFG required installing a fairly new JDK, which wasn't a muscle-memory level task for us.

</comment><comment><USER4> BFG is amazing for helping you switch a repo from private to public, especially when you might have been lazy early on and kept credentials in your repo, even if you shouldn't have. You can replace your known credentials with __REDACTED __throughout history without compromising the rich history your git commits (should) record about the evolution of a piece of code over time.

IMO, your commits are just as important as the code its self for understanding how and why something came into being.

</comment><comment><USER5> Please tell me that BFG is a direct reference to Doom and the ultimate weapon the in/famous BFG

<comment><USER3> It's also a permutation of the initials of the similar built-in command, "git filter-branch".

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does anyone know if it's possible to change email addresses on past commits with BFG? I have a lot of commits pushed by user "Mike Gioia <none@none>" that I would love to correct the email address for.

<comment><USER7> That's actually a pretty straightforward operation with `git filter branch` [http://stackoverflow.com/a/4494037/317937](http://stackoverflow.com/a/4494037/317937)

In my experience, BFG is mostly useful for removing large files, where the bash command you need to translate data per commit can very complex.

<comment><USER6> Thanks, Taylor. I'll try this on a cloned repo. However, I remember trying something vaguely similar and it copied every single commit. When I checked it on github, I had duplicates of everything :(

Hopefully this doesn't do that.</comment></comment></comment>


Pirate Bay: The RIAA Is Delusional and Must Be Stopped - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-the-riaa-is-delusional-and-must-be-stopped-120217/

<comment><USER2> "In a rebuttal, The Pirate Bay argues that the RIAA is delusional, behaving like a spoiled kid that has lost touch with reality."

I hate the RIAA as much as the next guy, but come on. The pirate bay disrespects all content holders by allowing their content to be searched and downloaded (yes, I know it's only torrent/magnet files) without their permission.

I would actually respect them if they did something actually innovative like create their own music label and get big names by offering better contracts.

It will never happen because it was never about the content holders in the first place. It's all about this selfish entitlement that they somehow deserve your content for free.

I also have to laugh when the guy from the pirate bay comes out with his own donation site (flattr I think)...and charges a 10% surcharge. Even Paypal is less than that! It's one greedy and self-entitled group against another.

I, personally, despise both of them.</comment>


Human fossils found in Morocco challenge our understanding of evolution - <AUTHOR> https://www.thevintagenews.com/2017/12/13/300000-year-old-human-fossils/ <comment><USER2> [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/07/science/human-fossils- mor...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/07/science/human-fossils-morocco.html)

June 2017 news by NY Times.

They did not even change the photo I think.

</comment><comment><USER3> So many breakthrough findings changing everything we know about human evolution.

It's like JavaScript frameworks, I just can't keep up. Am waiting for the dust to settle then will read the "final" article. (Or the one after that).

</comment><comment><USER4> Meanwhile, reptiles lived for 180 million years.

</comment><comment><USER5> "Challenge Evolution" seems to be a misleading title.

The actual title from TFA is "300,000-year-old human fossils found in Morocco challenge our understanding of evolution".

Could one of the mods alter the title please?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that, I couldn't include the full title in the submission. I figured it was the best I could do, because if we challenge our understanding of evolution, haven't we also challenged what evolution is? I'm happy with any better suggestions though!

<comment><USER6> "New human fossils reframe our evolutionary history"</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Codepoints for Mac, the easiest way to find Unicode characters - <AUTHOR> http://infincia.com/apps/codepoints

<comment><AUTHOR> I mentioned this app in a comment thread on hacker news a few weeks ago and saw a huge influx of traffic so I thought it might interest a wider audience.

It's extremely simple, type to search for what you want, double click or hit enter and the character is in your clipboard.

:)</comment>


Hackers plant fake news to discredit security researchers - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/13/hack_punts_bogus_cybercrime_story/

<comment><USER2> When real news is not enough... Not surprising that the criminals stoop to such low tactics. Digg up real dirt on people deserving it instead! HBGary is a great example, they deserved it, Hypponen does not.</comment>


Virool (YC S12) Provides An Easy Way For Video Producers To Boost Their Views - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/17/virool/

<comment><AUTHOR> Startups and projects without a video face a substantial obstacle to overcome before being able to use your service. Perhaps that places them outside of your target market. However, it might be worth a blog post to show prospects how to create a compelling video without a Hollywood budget. A collection of tools such as the one used to make the video on your advertiser page,

<https://www.virool.com/advertiser>

which presumably can be wielded by developers without video production expertise, could help create interest in your platform with prospects who lack an existing promotion video. And for those ready to go beyond the DIY stage, you might also provide a list of entry-level video production partners.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you guys have any feedback, we would love it!! So any suggestions you might have in regards to design or anything else, please let us know.

We are growing like crazy and hiring for all kinds of positions. E-mail us on support at virool.com. Thank you.

</comment><comment><USER4> btw, we have a special deal for YC companies(search for virool on deals site).

And we love all startups, not just YC so if you want to give us a try - <USER2> support at virool.com and we will give you a special deal

</comment><comment><USER5> seems like a no-brainer, interested in seeing where this goes in the next 6mo-1yr</comment>


Generating Captions: Describing Videos with Neural Networks - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@samim/generating-captions-c31f00e8396e#.hisuo8xbx <comment><USER2> I've very mixed feelings with all the craze around deep neural network and learning. On one side, some results brings so much magic it's astounding and really looks promising. On the other side, anything that is not a use case of convergence from general to specific, like hand writing recognition, but general to general, like qualifying pictures with vocabulary, fails miserably (in a very entertaining way).

And the slip from neural networks to artificial neural networks to artificial intelligence we see on the broad news, really make it look like expert systems all over again. At first, it's said that it can solve any kind of problems, and then, we end up with a very narrow set of problems it solves reliably.

<comment><USER3> It´s clearly not magic. My experiments point this out playfully. Blackboxes don´t help innovation and education. In terms of research, lots of exiting work happening across the board, worth tracking and learning.

<comment><USER4> are you aware of a central place that tracks this subject matter? something like a very specific hacker news, perhaps? :)

<comment><USER5> [http://www.reddit.com/r/machinelearning](http://www.reddit.com/r/machinelearning)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Reminder: 1/7/10 is SparkFun Free Day (get a free Arduino) - <AUTHOR> http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/categories.php

<comment><USER3> It's over now... I could never get the actual page to load, but the error message was in the URL, saying Free Day has ended.

I made it to the final page of the order confirmation process with $72k left to give away and could never get past it.

<comment><USER4> Wasted my entire morning. Still contemplating on getting at least an Arduino Starter Kit...

<comment><USER3> I'm going to get the starter kit, but since I have to pay for it, it's cheaper from Hacktronics. They call it something else, but it looks to be the same kit, or maybe better, for my purposes.

[http://www.hacktronics.com/Arduino/Arduino-Educational- Learn...](http://www.hacktronics.com/Arduino/Arduino-Educational-Learning- Kit/flypage.tpl.html)

I wanted "Programming Interactivity" as well, which is cheaper on Amazon.

<comment><USER5> I was going for that too, but wanted the "Making Things Talk" book (which is also cheaper on Amazon). Getting the individual pieces for the kit on sparkfun was also cheaper than getting the kit, and you could get a full size breadboard too. Thanks for the find.

<comment><USER3> Hmm, I never thought to price them individually. I'd just assumed that the kit would be cheaper. I wonder how many kits they sell based on that assumption? Oh well. Even with shipping from hacktronics it was still $5 cheaper than sparkfun's base price before shipping. I built radios and stuff as a kid, but I've never done any micro-controller programming... should be fun. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Well, this campaign certainly worked for me. I have filled my cart with over $150 worth of electronics, and I'm already excited enough about it that I will buy it whether I get the discount or not.

Added to that, this is the first time I've actually bought anything from sparkfun, and browsing around the store, I realize that it's a lot better than my previously preferred seller (although being on the 'wrong' side of the Atlantic is a drawback).

</comment><comment><USER7> This is my Arduino shopping list, for anyone already with an Arduino: almost exactly $100

Arduino Ethernet Shield $45.95

Arduino ProtoShield Kit $16.95

GPS Shield $16.95

Joystick Shield $4.95

microSD Shield $14.95

total: $99.75

(I realise I dont have a GPS unit for that shield or the joystick parts - <USER2> they will be in a bin somewhere at work :))

</comment><comment><USER6> Seems they are going to have a hard time giving away $100,000. They have given away $2,952 in 26 minutes. At that rate they will have given away $13k by the end of their 2 hour limit.

Interesting from a game theory perspective: If everyone had cooperated to select 1000 people to get it, the total winnings would be higher.

Edit: And if it wasn't obvious, the "slow" rate is caused by extremely slow servers.

<comment><USER8> The time limit was until 11pm.. so 14 hours not 2

<comment><USER6> Ah, thanks! I completely missed that; being a Norwegian AM/PM illiterate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I guess the $100,000 they're going to save by being down for the sale duration will pay for some nice infrastructure upgrades.

</comment><comment><USER10> Their servers are really taking a beating... They must be in panic mode at the moment.

Methinks they probably should have invested in _way_ more caching in preparation for this day...

</comment><comment><USER9> Well, I was hoping to get some free parts for my RepRap project. Oh well, I guess I'll just order them tomorrow.

</comment><comment><USER11> A bit frustrating to get all the way to the final order page and then have the site crap out...

<comment><USER12> You made it all the way to the final order page? After two hours I was able to get a few items in my cart and have -almost- managed to create an account.

<comment><USER13> Wow, you actually need to create an account to order? I suppose there's no way I'm getting through _that_ gauntlet before the $100k runs out.

edit: In case you want to create an account in parallel while you're waiting, see <https://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/create_account.php>

<comment><USER14> Not necessarily. Based on the running total ($1400 or so) it looks like only 14 people have managed to place an order so far.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Looks like SFE is going to have a fun customer experience situation on their hands - how they deal with the collapse of their website will go a long way towards burnishing (or burning) their "friendly neighbourhood electronics supplier" brand.

</comment><comment><USER16> Quick, someone write a Chrome extension that alerts me with a really loud sound if the page loads and refreshes until it successfully does so.

I'm tired, and I want to go back to sleep. Must. Get. Free. Stuff.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm like a kid in a candystore on their site. So far the only thing I really want is the Arduino starter kit [http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_i...](http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=9284) Everything else are parts, supplies, and replacement tools. I haven't done hardware development since college, so I'm hoping my surgeon-like skills at wielding a solder pencil hasn't been diminished by banging on keyboards.

</comment><comment><USER18> Rats. Filled my cart with goodies and now the site's hosed. Still 2 hours to go.

Hang in there sparkfun guys. Its going to be a wild, wild day!

</comment><comment><USER19> It looks like I'm one of the fortunate few who managed to place an order. I had an account set up beforehand but didn't have my cart full until 10:45am or so. SparkFun was, indeed, exceedingly slow but my tactic of pressing "refresh" every minute or so seems to have paid off. I'd say it was an hour's worth of effort in total. Best of luck and keep trying!

<comment><USER20> What was the page you saw after clicking sth like "Yes, i want to get this stuff by Sprakfun Free Day"? I was able to get only to that moment and the next site (after a milion of "refresh") is just blank... Do you know anything about it?

<comment><USER19> The page went blank for me too after pressing "yes, I want free stuff..." but refreshing that blank page 10-20 times got me to a "congratulations" page with a SparkFun guy wearing a crown and an order email in my inbox (though my order total, which was well over $100, didn't reflect the $100 off I'm assuming it came through...but I saved the congrats page just to be sure).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Any suggestions on a kit / parts for a novice?

<comment><USER22> pmorici has good recs (XBee is especially fun), but the Arduino starter kit alone can be found here: [http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_i...](http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=9284)

<comment><USER23> Just as a heads up for anyone considering buying the kit regardless of the $100 off, it's actually cheaper to buy the parts in that kit individually, and it's really easy to do that because they link all the individual product pages. Not to mention if there's any parts you want to buy more of, you can get volume discounts on that. I don't remember exactly how much less, but I believe it was ~$10 or so in total.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Way fustrating for regular customers, and still having issues trying to just log in so I can check out!

</comment><comment><USER10> Wow. As of 1:00pm EST my browser is not even sitting and trying to load... The connection immediately times out.

Perhaps they realized that the site had become unusable and have pulled the plug to try to reduce the load while implementing a fix?

I've never had to do it but I should imagine that a local reverse proxy cache should be able to be setup pretty quickly... That would definitely help them with their main pages (products etc..) and leave their servers free to deal with requests pertaining to making and placing orders.

This is all assuming that their server-side code already outputs the correct cache control headers of course...

<comment><USER10> It would appear that I was partly correct. The site is back up now and performing much, much better from what I have seen. Free Day is officially over though (apparently they gave away the whole $100k!) so perhaps the load they're seeing is now just drastically reduced...

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Didn't make it. I even did all my shipping details before it started. But then again, refreshing the ckeckout started to get old and my attention went somewhere else. At least I know what's in their catalogue now!

</comment><comment><USER26> It looks more like a self-inflicted DDOS..

<comment><USER26> ...and now their IRC channel is full of pissed people:

[snip] < pissedagain> NEVER ORDER FROM SPARKFU*K !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! [/snip]

PS. Edited a bit..

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It would be cool to know how many of us tried this and what the result was. Timing out for me at the moment. Will post again once I have a final outcome.

</comment><comment><USER27> They had the javascript countdown timer set to refresh the pages at exactly when the sale started. Instant server death.

</comment><comment><USER14> Hmm, I'm seeing:

 _SparkFun Electronics is Temporarily Closed!

SparkFun Electronics has been temporarily closed while necessary upgrades are installed and configured. Please be patient and check back soon. We're working tirelessly to make this down time as brief as possible._

Mid-rush server upgrades?

<comment><USER28> They had to restart apache, according to IRC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I am attempting to create an account... wish I'd known beforehand that I needed one, but HN this morning was the first I'd heard of this. It's slow going, but the good news is, it looks like if you can manage to actually get in during the 2hr period, there will still be discounts available.

</comment><comment><USER29> It will be interesting to see whether the site is able to deal with all the extra traffic tomorrow morning

</comment><comment><USER30> This reminds me of trying to buy playoff tickets online - an exercise in frustration that probably just ends up pissing off most of your customers. Although the PR might end up being worth it.

</comment><comment><USER31> OMG... i had a few tabs of their site open. right this instant, they all reloaded! they're hammering their own servers, which is kinda funny.

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm going to try modesty, but I doubt I'll be able to get through. Also, CloudFront is ideal for events like this.

<comment><USER7> > Also, CloudFront is ideal for events like this.

Interesting point. I wonder what CF's total peak load/capability is? There were almost certainly upwards of 3000 people (and I think that is a conservative guess) clicking "checkout" within moments of each other.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I want some S3 instances for free day...

</comment><comment><USER25> Did anyone reading this actually make it through?

</comment><comment><USER33> Can you order over the phone for this event?

<comment><USER14> No, they said that only Credit Card and Paypal Express orders are eligible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> They closed temporarily to make upgrades

<comment><USER7> 1200 users in the IRC channel and counting..... I suspect it is going to be absolute luck whether you get the $100 or not...

<comment><USER34> I noticed they pulled the irc info on the "Closed" page.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Down already?

<comment><USER36> The site's been going up and down all day, despite a server upgrade. I'm not confident it will be up when the sale starts...

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> _1/7/10_

Why in the world would one choose this as the date format, if not 'forced' to do so by faithful reproduction of an external title? It seems that even on SparkFun's site they would use 2010.01.07.

<comment><USER38> I actually agree, it's very confusing. I'm European and I would write 07.01.2010.

On topic: I, too, am Arduino shopping. First I though about getting a Spartan FPGA development board, but I honestly don't think I'll have the time to learn enough to make useful things with it.

It's a really cool action by SparkFun and I hope it will be a success for them.

<comment><USER10> I'm Australian, but I work in Canada. I have _never_ been able to get the date formatting here right all the time...

Now, whenever I have to write a date by hand I make it impossible to misread. Like so:

01/Jan/2010</comment></comment></comment>


Auto Makers Losing Battle for Dashboard Apps - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/auto-makers-losing-battle-for-dashboard-apps-1449713771?mod=e2fb <comment><USER2> I'm looking forward to having all my settings, preferences, and layouts as a separate app that I can use in any car without having to relearn the controls and UI.

My Toyota has a terrible set of climate and information controls, divided between a clunky joystick and a multi screen touch interface, both of which require the driver to take your eyes off the road for the most trivial tasks such as turning up the fan.

Apple and Android aren't perfect themselves, but they at least have a process for updating iteratively until it works.

</comment><comment><USER3> On the front page this is right next to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10715888](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10715888) "Hundreds of thousands of engine immobilisers hackable over the net (theregister.co.uk)". Not unrelated.

If the car is to become a peripheral of the smartphone, it _really_ needs to be done in a modular, open, futureproof way. Having a car tied to a particular model of phone is ridiculous.

</comment><comment><USER4> And this is somehow surprising? My 2013 Honda crv has the most horrendous ux for ours navigation system. The rest of the software feels like it was built in 2003.

Car makers never invested in good in dash software and now they are paying the price as new choices emerge and users want them

</comment><comment><USER5> I am struggling to think why any mobile phone app would be useful or relevant in a car. If you're driving a car, why is your mobile phone even turned on? And if you're not driving, what's wrong with the controls integrated into the dash, which are probably much larger and more flexible than any phone screen?

<comment><USER2> I'd like to see physical, programmable knobs and sliders that resemble the traditional car dashboard of yore.

If your preference is top-left knob turns on radio and controls volume, for example, why should you have to relearn it? Just jack your phone into the charging cradle and "poof!" all your preferences are synchronized and the knobs do the right thing.

Seat adjustments, rear view mirrors, and steering wheel height could also be automatically synched, along with your preferred radio and music presets. You and your spouse or whoever else drives the car won't have to keep readjusting these things, as my wife and I have to do twice a day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think the biggest problem is users losing the battle. Do users really want more crapware? More distractions?</comment>


Ask HN: What's wrong or missing in your favorite OS? - <AUTHOR>

Whether you're a Windows, Linux, or Mac person, most hackers are very opinionated about their preferred OS.<p>My question is what "feature" (or lack thereof) do you secretly hate about it?  You know, that thing you won't admit in _____ vs. _____ arguments? <comment><USER2> I really think neither OS X nor Windows has the upper hand on the other, so I'll offer my top gripe for each.

OSX: Window/File Management. I've been told it's the "mac way" to open a program to create a file. I'm reliant on the OS/Finder to do this. Also, just basic window management is confusing to me. Perhaps Lion is addressing this.

Windows: No terminal.

</comment><comment><USER3> Mac OS X: lack of a remote-desktop solution.

(Able to connect TO a Mac, from any other computer via RDP).

I can go from Windows to Linux, Linux to Windows, and Mac to Windows/Linux... but no way to connect TO my OSX box except from another Mac. Why?

<comment><USER4> OSX comes with remote desktop, it's in System preferences, sharing .., remote desktop (I think). I don't have osx available to get the exact words.

It's just VNC. It also has an SSH server in the same section so you can tunnel through securely.

<comment><USER3> Wow, thanks. I can't believe I didn't know that. I've only had a Mac for a few months.... Thanks!!!

<comment><USER3> FWIW, after trying VNC on OSX (via Linux and Win7) I have to give Microsoft credit for their RDP implementation. It kick's VNC's ass for speed and usability -- no contest.

Still, it's nice to know how to do this on Macs.

<comment><USER4> The VNC implementation on OSX is particularly poor. It crashes and I have to manually restart it.

On Linux the VNC is an X client so one can have multiple instances running each exposing with their own graphical shell.

Does Windows RDP do that ? (I don't know).

TightVNC works the best with low speed networks, it uses JPEG encoding too.

BTW. is is also against the Windows EULA to use VNC server on it !

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Mac OS X: lack of a tiling window manager. at least 50% of my complaints would be solved by that one addition. 40% of my other issues would have to gut the Finder.

<comment><AUTHOR> You and me both brother. Some things I just don't get in OS X. Like the "zoom" button's inconsistent functionality. Hilarious that OS X Lion is going to change this button to go literally fullscreen now (without toolbars, desktop, etc) which might be pretty annoying too but I guess we'll see.

<comment><USER5> i like the zoom to max size for content much more than zoom to whole screen but i'm someone who never uses it anyway. i have divvy which makes my life a little more manageable.

<comment><AUTHOR> +1 for Divvy

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> OSX: Only one global menubar really sucks for multi-monitor setups.

</comment><comment><USER4> Plan9 - no modern web browser or media player.</comment>


The Aphex Face : Images in sound spectrographs - <AUTHOR> http://www.bastwood.com/?page_id=10 <comment><USER2> Wow - I remember reading about this at university about 10 years ago. Still, interesting for those who've not seen it yet.</comment>


Gamifying the bug-tracking process: How an Atlassian team does it - <AUTHOR> https://www.atlassian.com/blog/statuspage/how-to-gamify-bug-tracking <comment><USER2> So when a developer can't pay the tax because they are too busy to help with overhead, they are forced to work on overhead even if they are still busy?

Why doesn't this degenerate into the situation it's trying to avoid?

Can the chips be cashed in every quarter?</comment>


Buying internships - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123310699999022549.html?mod=article-outset-box

<comment><USER2> I have a startup idea, we take interns on for a small fee and then bid for the scummiest jobs on elance. Then we get the slaves^H^H^H^H^H^Hinterns to deliver the goods and pocket the extra cash.

Do you think I could get some funding for this? Who's with me?

<comment><USER3> haha I think that would work and the best thing is you don't need funding, just put up some flyers at your local university cs department.

I remember back when I had the dreaded 0 years of professional experience I would have done anything to have a programming job on my resume.

Getting that first programming job is the most frustrating thing.

<comment><USER4> I'm not so sure about internships. There are a lot of technical companies, and a lot of internships. If you go looking, you can find one (especially if you wait until sophomore year or so).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Paying to work? Oh, this is not good.

<comment><USER6> No, it's paying to learn. Interns are not necessarily net producers. There is a cost to the "employers" to have an intern, even if you pay them nothing. They take time from existing employees, and use resources.

This is not to say that interns are a bad idea. They're not. They're an excellent idea, but internships are a part of education. They are one of the most valuable, useful and effective parts of education.

Paying for them is not stupid. Assuming employers will continue to pay for them in the current climate is questionable.

<comment><USER7> Wouldn't it be easier to simply learn by doing some project over the summer?

I am thinking "paying for internship" == "loser for life", to put it bluntly :-( With that attitude, people are always going to be sucking up to the big guys, waiting for their turn that will never arrive.

<comment><USER6> In short - no. That only works if you're doing something that can be learned by yourself. Not everything can, and some things are much, much slower. The insights you get from other people's ways of working and code can be incredibly valuable.

It's for this reason that graduates are advised to change institution to do post-grad work. You need the breadth that comes from working with other people.

This all assumes it's a _good_ internship. In practice, that's not a given.

<comment><USER7> I agree it might be possible to learn a lot from experienced people, but getting such an internship might be _really_ hard? What do you think are major things one can't learn by oneself, by jumping into the cold water?

In any case, it seems to me if one pays to get an internship, it is unlikely that the internship will be any good. The company probably doesn't really need anybody and doesn't care, otherwise they would look for the best person available, not for the highest bidder.

<comment><USER8> Indeed. So paying for the consultant to help you style your CV might be better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I study at an engineering uni and finding an internship is the easiest thing ever... nearly every professor doing research is looking to hire more students for his projects. This includes computer/software engineering. It's paid work (if you have decent grades anyway), and you get a chance to publish articles.

Don't forget to look inside the school itself!

</comment><comment><USER10> Great way to bootstrap your startup :)

</comment><comment><USER11> This might be worthwhile if it was something like that capitol hill program, which guarantees an internship on capitol hill. But otherwise, it's probably a waste of money. Every single internship I have gotten was through people I knew. I'd really question the value of an unpaid internship in something like engineering and computer science. While I would be willing to volunteer at the internships I have gotten, everyone of them either paid me or said that it would be paid in the interview.</comment>


Ask HN: Technology/tool for tracking Congressional bills? - <AUTHOR>

I've been thinking about this for a while, but I'm not sure if it already exists in some form or another. Is there a tool that Congress (and state and local governments) use for tracking line by line changes publicly of proposed bills at their various revisions? Technology-wise it seems to simply be a group wiki and a very simple problem to solve.
In a 1,000 page bill then you could see exactly what senator inserted which lines (or give group responsibility/credit to a section), and who pushed for what changes. No longer would it simply be about blaming people for who voted for what, but we could have transparency into the process of the actual writing/revision of the bills. Then we would know for sure who was responsible for various lines and items (earmarks) and those could be easily tracked.
Does this exist? Is it in use by the US Congress or any state senates? I can't imagine what citizen would be against this type of transparency of government. <comment><USER2> I've wanted to see a Wikipedia- or Github-style version control system for bills for a while, but I haven't seen anything that detailed.

There are a few groups that help track funding to Congressmen, like <http://sunlightfoundation.com/>, but I don't know of any that track the actual bills themselves. I would _love_ to see that put in place.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I've seen the funding tracking. A Wikipedia/Github style version control system is exactly what I'm thinking. Nothing complex, but damn powerful.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why is Youtube not https strict? - <AUTHOR>

You can access http and https on Youtube. Youtube can handles millions of users, so the argument "encryption" takes time doesn't seem legitimate. Or is it? Maybe not... since youtube serves videos, not text.
I don't think engineers would make that kind of mistake leaving http on. There must be a good reason, right?
Any thoughts on this? <comment> mike-cardwell Extra hardware + extra complexity + extra work + extra costs.

Personally I'm in the camp that thinks the Internet would be a lot more secure and free if all traffic was always encrypted. But the business reasons for not using encryption when it's not explicitly required, are fairly obvious.

</comment><comment><USER2> Because they have no reason to do so.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm that's not a very good argument. Why should search page on Google be encrypted then? Youtube has search function too.

<comment><USER3> Last I checked, google search can also be accessed through http. The reason why youtube's search can be http without issue is that all results are on youtube so you won't be leaking the search to another site.

<comment><USER4> Actually, Google enforces HTTPS nowadays when possible. YouTube however is entirely different, YouTube consumes too much bandwidth as-is, they would not want to enforce HTTPS and increase their overall bandwidth consumption like that.

Additionally, on Google you could be searching for confidential things you do not want intercepted, YouTube is more social and public, therefore it is not as high priority.

If you want to enforce HTTPS on sites, use an HTTPS everywhere plugin, [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/https- everywhere/g...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/https- everywhere/gcbommkclmclpchllfjekcdonpmejbdp) [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/https-finder/...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/https-finder/?src=search)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The End is Not for a While - <AUTHOR> http://xkcd.com/470/

<comment><USER2> ... not for at least a few weeks or months. (I'm actually serious. I think we're heading into a nasty storm economically and politically in the next six months.) Not exactly HN material, but interesting.</comment>


Wunderlist founder wants to buy his app back from Microsoft - <AUTHOR> https://venturebeat.com/2019/09/06/wunderlist-founder-wants-to-buy-his-app-back-from-microsoft/ <comment><USER2> If you are looking for an alternative todo app that is in it for the long haul, check out Todoist. We have been at it longer than Wunderlist (12+ years), and we will never sell out. As I like to put it, death is my exit strategy. For more thoughts about this, check out [https://doist.com/blog/no- exit-strategy/](https://doist.com/blog/no-exit-strategy/)

<comment><USER3> Can somebody please explain the advantages of a todo app, like Todoist, over say a calendar app like Google Calendar? Everyone seems to love them, but cannot give me a good reason _why_, other than "I use it to jot down little tasks which I don't think a Calendar app is suitable for." I'm a current subscriber to Todoist, but just don't see why I should pay when Google Calendar seems to do everything I need (and more)? As an ADHD sufferer, the reminder system in most todo apps only remind you once about 30 minutes prior to the task due and that's it, instead of being able to delay a reminder and remind me again 5 minutes before a task is due, 1 minute, or even 5 minutes after a task is due.

<comment><USER4> One thing a calendar app wouldn't handle as well is tasks that don't have due dates, per se.

<comment><USER5> The other reason I use a task list is for tasks that have subtasks. E.g. I have to renew my driver's license but to do that I need to file a foobar form and print out a proof of address etc..

<comment><USER6> You may be interested in my app that has subtasks as calendar events: [https://getartemis.app](https://getartemis.app)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Microsoft has a directly competing product, so I don't see why they would ever want to sell Wunderlust. They would essentially be creating their own competitor, in return for a fraction of the money they had paid to acquire Wunderlist earlier.

<comment><USER8> then again I doubt that the microsoft empire stands or falls with a to-do list app and it might just be good PR to sell it back instead of letting a well- liked product rot given that they're on an alleged "we love the community" campaign now.

<comment><USER9> Good PR--sure. $100M worth of PR? I don't think so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Please make this a reality.

To-Do is a joke compared to Wunderlist. It suffers from the same fate as all MS-built iOS apps: random logouts. I can't convince anyone to use MS apps because the first time they get logged out after an update they just stop using the app.

<comment><USER11> And God help them if they somehow have a work/school and personal Microsoft account and don't remember which one they used.

<comment><USER12> Is this somehow worse with MS accounts than with Google or Apple accounts?

<comment><USER13> Yeah, I can't even log into my MS account to do MSDN stuff. Microsoft support: "Use any non-microsoft browser". I ended up creating a "personal" and "work/school" account as part of the process, and I think I have to pretend it's the personal account when I log in. I get the feeling I was creating two accounts - a live account and one related to the MSDN side of things, and they are linked in some way. Why...just why? Why can't I just create one account, and don't come up with this specious personal/private distinction. I wonder if they're making decisions on products etc based on what sort of users they think they're dealing with. Personal MSDN customers?

<comment><USER14> Microsoft accounts are definitely a mess.

I had a Microsoft account from a long time back: firstname.lastname@example.com

Years later the company decides to adopt the whole office365 thing and so company.com is now 'managed' by MSFT for email, etc .... so I have a firstname.lastname@example.com 'company' account as well as the 'personal' one.

I'm sure there are a lot of complicated edge cases around all of this which make moving forward really tough for MSFT without breaking things, but the current status quo is confusing and very user hostile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I loved Wunderlist, and after the announcement of the acquisition I went looking for alternatives. It turns out, I didn't _really_ need "sub-tasks" or collaborative comments on my TODOs. All I really needed was shared lists, dependable reminder push notifications, and perhaps some location- based/geofencing features.

This is all covered by the stock iOS Reminders app. I use Fantastical as the 'GUI' instead of Reminders, but basically use my e-mails CalDAV server (Fastmail) to manage my lists now, and have retained the reliability and subset of features that I needed. It's been great so far, and it's virtually free as part of your standard email/calendar service (Gmail/Calendar, Fastmail, etc.).

</comment><comment><USER16> If you are looking for something more sustainable (free software), with the same client for desktop and mobile, please check out organice: [https://github.com/200ok-ch/organice](https://github.com/200ok-ch/organice)

It's using Org syntax, but has a mobile friendly interface. Synchronization is done using Dropbox or Google Drive, so you can also have shared projects and todos. The app is written in React and Redux, has a AGPL license and has a free public instance at [https://organice.200ok.ch](https://organice.200ok.ch)

</comment><comment><USER17> I tried to use To Do this summer and gave up after a few weeks. Across Windows and iOS: notifications mostly don't fire, apps kept reloading content every time I opened them (aka no cloud = no functionality). In the end, I gave up and just resumed using a combo of Reminders and Notes.

<comment><USER18> I had a similar experience, but without the Windows element.

I paid for Wunderlist, but dropped it because it evolved into something more convoluted than I wanted. I went back to the stock iOS apps.

I didn't even know what Microsoft ate Wunderlist. I guess that's why I got an e-mail about Wunderlist out of the blue after I hadn't used it in what seemed like years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Given how unrealistic reviving Wunderlist is (almost everyone of the original employees is working on other things inside Microsoft or has left), this ought to be a PR stunt, right? He might as well start from scratch at this point.

<comment><USER20> This might provoke strong responses from hacker / programmer crowd, but...

Relatively speaking, building a small team of capable engineers is much easier than getting a business, especially in a competitive space like TODO lists, to 13+ million users (their numbers in 2015 at the time of Microsoft acquisition).

<comment> o-__-o I find the complete 180 to be true. Very easy to get a business into a competitive space, but it's hard to build a capable team of engineers. If you have both money and a solid idea to generating revenue (business plan) then you have solved both problems easily, relatively speaking. Engineers come together with the universal language.. money. Something startups don't have.

<comment><USER21> They said getting a business to 13million+ users, not getting a business into a competitive space alone. The point is the users are where the money is and getting to that many users is the most difficult part, neither gathering a group of engineers nor entering a competitive space.

<comment> o-__-o Like Lyft? Throw money at customers and they come flocking. Same with engineers. It's making that model profitable that's the hard spot

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I don't understand, why Microsoft is porting features from Wunderlist to their To-Do instead of just shutting down To-Do and add small shiny MS logo to Wunderlist? As far as I can see, WL is more feature rich and has better user base, no?

<comment><USER23> Wunderlist still runs on AWS. To-Do runs on a Microsoft back-end, including all security features needed for their enterprise (O365) customers..

<comment><USER10> This would make a great case study for migrating a full stack AWS app to Azure. They're constantly trying to convince their customers to migrate to full stack Azure, here's their chance to prove it's doable. Dog food and all, I'm sure they'll find some pain points they could fix.

<comment><USER24> Not doable. Most azure services are not "compliant" for o365. Especially not in gov clouds. Exchange has its own totally separate backed which existed before azure. The port of wonderlist is to exchange.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is an odd form of public shaming. Satya ought to respond to him on Twitter that it's a deal if he'd be willing to pay 50% of the price they paid him for it. A shame back if you will.

</comment><comment><USER26> I am still awe at how bad MS is at making Windows apps. To Do is a poster child. I think Visio uses less RAM, is extremely laggy, slow to load, crashes many times a week and has awful layout for pen input.

<comment><USER27> >I am still awe at how bad MS is at making Windows apps.

They've gotten better at being bad. Before, apps crashed but at least they were full featured, had two or three ways of doing the same thing - so you could get shit done.

Now, stuff from MS is generally slower, still crash prone, looks fancy but is bare-boned, updates remove the few useful stuff and replace em with half baked alternatives or nothing.

<comment><USER28> Yesterday HN had a front-page article about how making your app do less was the key to making it more useful.

This is a meme I've never understood.... how is it more "useful" if it is less "full of stuff to use". When people equate streamlining experience with feature removal you get this kind of frustration.

<comment><USER29> I'd understand the reasoning if the removed features could possibly make more sense in a separate app or some kind of optional add-on module, or if perhaps the point is really about the user interface not being overwhelming — and yet Microsoft manages to take apps with perfectly straight-forward user interfaces and twist them until the one or two features that an app has are uselessly hidden behind one or two hamburger menus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Anybody using Remember the Milk for their todos ? I used it and loved it.

<comment><USER31> I'm using one called "Out of Milk". It's great. Is that the one you mean or something else?

<comment><USER30> I think the one you are referring to is a grocery shopping app. RTM is much more general.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> God, I wish Skype would buy their app back.

</comment><comment><USER33> The tweet from Wunderlist's Christian ([https://twitter.com/christianreber/status/117061566332663808...](https://twitter.com/christianreber/status/1170615663326638081)) reminds me a lot of Taskade YC S19 ([https://www.taskade.com](https://www.taskade.com)) and what they are trying to do in the productivity and collaboration space.

</comment><comment><USER34> What's the point of buying it back, if he can just start another similar company and siphon off many active, disgruntled users? Yeah, you don't get to keep the already registered userbase, or the brand, but I think former users would flock to it if they knew the original people were in charge of this product.

Is there something in the contract that they can't start a competing product within X years, but could do a buyback?

<comment><USER35> No, they never signed a non-compete ([https://twitter.com/christianreber/status/117066071599844966...](https://twitter.com/christianreber/status/1170660715998449665))

Also building a brand is not too easy ([https://twitter.com/christianreber/status/117063845983445811...](https://twitter.com/christianreber/status/1170638459834458113))

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Did he sign a non-compete?

Rebuild something new/better.

<comment><USER37> This is what the guy from meh.com did. Sold his woot com to some large corporation saw they turned it into junk and he launched meh.com

<comment><USER38> The large corporation was Amazon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Same feeling with the founder. It's pity to see Wunderlist go. Transferring all the details from one todo app to another can be very annoying, not to mention the extra efforts to get used with a new app. Glad to find TickTick! The data transfer is super easy. It's kind of an all-in-one toolkit, while still remains clear and simple to use. Not sure if I would switch back to Wunderlist even if they purchase it back ;) [https://ticktick.com/](https://ticktick.com/)

</comment><comment><USER40> I would start using WL again if this happens. 100%.

EDIT: I can't believe how much positive press MS To-Do has gotten. It's a featureless rip-off of WL that could have been built in a month.

</comment><comment><USER41> Always been a huge fan of Wunderlist, used it for my iPhone development project, 1st time using a to-do list app and really loved it!

Here is one guy hoping/praying it comes back!!!!

</comment><comment><USER42> This behaviour will hurt microsoft in the long term in negotiating future deals. Founders often have very emotional connections to their company

</comment><comment><USER43> There maybe a window opportunity in the todo space at the moment for a GTD oriented app. Look at thing that is only available for iOs. There's only NirvanaHQ coming close and it's not moving much at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER44> I think that it's a good sign that we see more and more founders who publicly admit that their creation is not between good hands after acquisition. Let's hope Microsoft makes this thing happen.

<comment><USER45> Call me cynical but if they wanted it to be in good hands ... maybe don't take the money and run?

Dude in one way or another cashed out and now wants to have his cake and eat it too.

We get so many "founder sad about how things turned out after it is sold". If the founder hands over the keys IMO to some extent they're "responsible" for what happens next.

<comment><USER44> Every founder has personal reasons to accept to be acquired, example here: [https://twitter.com/christianreber/status/117064572184398233...](https://twitter.com/christianreber/status/1170645721843982336)

Also I don't think you are cynical. Don't take the money and continue to push the product seems to be a better solution, especially for users. I just appreciate that founders are more transparent about the fact their service is failing after being acquired. And yes, they have a big part of the responsability, but according to me it's a better signal than just heard the typical story of celebrating an acquisition, join a tech giant and remain silent. I like to see that people keep the bounds with their product even after this. Also it's more honest for other entrepreneurs in the same situation that becoming rich will be at the expense of your creation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> What if he just builds a new app from scratch? Would probably be cheaper, but he'd have to be careful to show no design or copyright has been infringed.

</comment><comment><USER47> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20750140](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20750140)

</comment><comment><USER48> Could it be that todo apps are kind of hard? What else explains the lethargic pace of improvements for Microsoft's own todo app?

<comment><USER27> I don't know much about todos. But I know Microsoft. They're passionate about fucking up every good thing they own. My uncle once told me, Too many spoons in a pot makes the soup sour.

Microsoft upgrades things to death.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> It sucks seeing MS kills Wunderlist. I'm always a huge fan of it. Simple, intuitive.

</comment><comment><USER50> It blows my mind that todo list app can be worth $200 million... Then again a chat app is now worth several billion... I don't have any idea of how this works.

<comment><USER51> It isn't the chat app, it's the perpetual access to the contacts list on the phones of all its users that is worth billions.

<comment><USER52> To do what though?

<comment><USER53> to drive down advertising costs.

<comment><USER54> Is it not also true that Whatsapp is (was) a competitor to FB? I mean, if I wanted to get rid of FB, the only other place I know I can reach the majority of my contacts is WhatsApp. Now since they own both I have no non-FB alternative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> How much do y'all think they would let him buy it back for? $10mm?

</comment><comment><USER56> I never understood why wunderlist was so successful. Any hints?

<comment><USER19> \- Shared to do lists (e.g. with your partner/spouse)

\- Very good platform coverage of clients

\- Good UX

I don't think the set of features is too impressive by todays standards, but at the time it was pretty appealing compared to the competition.

<comment><USER57> Surprisingly (I thought anyway) WL was one of very few which support shared lists effectively.

I bought Things for mac for myself and my partner at the time and was blown away when I discovered a $60 CAD To Do list app couldn't share a list. WL ended up being the best option by a long shot.

These days I use Todoist which can also share lists nicely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Did he sign a return policy? :-)

</comment><comment><USER59> You don't usually have to tell this to an adult, but: no backsies.

Your can't have your cake and eat it too. You can't sell your company and keep it too. Basic.

<comment><USER60> Yeah, that's why he wants to buy it back. They will get their money back.

<comment><USER61> Microsoft would get a fraction of their money back.

The former owners wouldn't pay more than 10-25% of what they previously sold Wunderlist for, at this point.

<comment><USER62> That's why this feels like a publicity stunt to shame Microsoft.

If you've made millions of dollars from selling something - I don't feel like you have the right to shame the buyer especially if you're only offering 25% back. He should have kept the offer he made private.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Performance Comparison of JavaScript Frameworks - <AUTHOR> http://www.stefankrause.net/js-frameworks-benchmark2/webdriver-java/table.html <comment><USER2> Every time I see JS performance data like this, I'm always mystified to see lots of error ranges of a couple percent. Working on a JS game has made me dive pretty deeply into JS performance (on Chrome at least), and I constantly find that the hardest part of performance tuning is getting any kind of consistent results to tune.

For a random example, I tried reproducing the "Swap rows" test for Vanilla.js. The author found this took 7.83 +/\- 0.18 ms, with five warmup iterations. On my machine, running the same command six times consistently gives results like these:

        swapRows took 10.944999999999709
        swapRows took 1.3250000000007276
        swapRows took 1.3200000000006185
        swapRows took 1.269999999999527
        swapRows took 11.875
        swapRows took 1.2750000000005457

Also, and orthogonal to the above, I've always found that even when performance is consistent across repeated trials, it varies widely between page reloads. (This isn't at all surprising, since v8's optimizing compiler isn't necessarily going to make the same choices every time - but it still makes things very hard to tune).

As an example of this, I tried repeating the "append to large table" test. The author's results were 225.3 +/\- 1.89ms. On my (similar) machine, trying this five times (reloading the page between) varied between 225 and 329ms.

Am I missing something here? I've looked pretty hard into v8 perf tuning and various benchmarking libraries, and I've just never seen the kind of consistent results one always finds in comparisons like these.

<comment><USER3> You're basically right. Thus we've decided to perform 10 runs for each benchmark and drop the worst 4. This eliminates cases where the gc or a background system process causes a slow run. In consequence this also strongly reduces variance, but is blind on the gc eye. It would be interesting to include gc, but I have no idea how to do it in a real good way.

The results are comparable (but nowhere equal) between runs and the difference between the frameworks is in most cases large enough that the ranking stays consistent (but you wouldn't prefer preact to cycle.js v7 for having a 0.01 better result in the average slow down, would you? For ember, mithril and cycle.js v6 performance might be something to consider depending on your use case.).

If you look at the console output this is just an approximation, the real measurement is performed on data from chrome's timeline using selenium. The console measurement uses a timer to guess when rendering was performed. Of course this is more inaccurate than using the timeline.

<comment><USER4> Do the benchmarks take a long time? Why not as many runs as necessary to give you a tight confidence interval?

<comment><USER3> Running all the benchmarks takes a few hours.

I'll keep that in mind for the next round. Let's see if that works nicely. Would you still drop outliers?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Link to the blog post explaining the table: [http://www.stefankrause.net/wp/?p=301](http://www.stefankrause.net/wp/?p=301)

I've worked on a few apps that feature large tables like this benchmark does. With Angular for example, it's a really bad idea for performance to create DOM elements for each table row when most aren't even visible which I think is done in the benchmark: [https://github.com/krausest/js-framework- benchmark/blob/mast...](https://github.com/krausest/js-framework- benchmark/blob/master/angular-v1.5.7/index.html)

There's lots of grid/table libraries available that use what's called virtualisation to stop lots of rows slowing the app down; rows that aren't on the screen aren't computed or rendered.

My feeling is if you avoid rendering data excessively in this way the performance differences between most frameworks aren't that important. If you're required to display 1000s of dynamic values at a time your UI probably needs work.

</comment><comment><USER6> I found this chart unusable without being able to hide columns, so I created this quick script to enable toggling by clicking the headers:

[https://gist.github.com/rattrayalex/8450e2378465e85ed846837a...](https://gist.github.com/rattrayalex/8450e2378465e85ed846837a5d0114a6)

copy/paste into chrome console

</comment><comment><USER7> Just for reference, the fastest framework can be found here: [Vannilajs]([http://vanilla-js.com/](http://vanilla-js.com/)) .

<comment><USER8> VanillaJs is notable for how long it has been maintained, like 20+ years now!

I wish the implementers would go ahead and do a full rewrite, but there are probably too many entrenched users who would have a fit if they did...

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This might be a better link, which includes a brief write-up of the work: [http://www.stefankrause.net/wp/?p=301](http://www.stefankrause.net/wp/?p=301)

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. Hopefully one of the mods can change it

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I usually come away from things like this with the distinct impression that they're pretty much all "fast enough" for my needs. Admittedly, I'm not asking a lot of JavaScript, and my skill level with JavaScript tends to lead me to take the path of least resistance, or at least the path of best documentation and most examples.

That said, this kind of third-party benchmarking is probably useful, because so many frameworks have benchmark charts on their own site which indicate they're all faster than everything else. (Which may not even be inaccurate...for the things they benchmark, they may be the fastest. Which again maybe indicates they're all "fast enough" and unless your use case exactly matches that of the specific benchmarks in question, the benchmarks might be misleading you about which one will be fastest for your app.)

Also, I had no idea there were so many JavaScript frameworks that I hadn't heard of (and there's at least a few that I have heard of that aren't on the chart). Every time I turn around, there's two or three more JavaScript frameworks. Surely, this will calm down at some point, and a couple of leaders will emerge and folks will kinda settle into moving those leaders forward rather than reinventing everything?

<comment><USER11> It's already starting to calm down. On that list, you have a few broad categories, with some overlap.

Angular and Angular-ish (I use the term loosely) frameworks like Aurelia.

Observable based frameworks (Cyclejs, Angular 2?)

React and React near-dropin replacements (Preact, React, Inferno, etc)

A bunch of MVC/MVVM frameworks that are not Angular-like (Mithril, Vue, Ember...). This is where there's the most variety, namely because many of these are a bit older (even though many kept up with time).

So there's not really nearly as many as you'd think, and in some cases migrating from one to the other as need be isn't crazy.

<comment><USER12> I find Vue being very angular-like.

<comment><USER13> Same here

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _DOM manipulation_ should be added to the title and before calling one faster than other one should understand that a JS framework is (should be) a lot more than painting views super fast.

</comment><comment><USER15> Any chance/interest at adding [http://riotjs.com](http://riotjs.com) to this benchmark?

<comment><USER3> I added riot 2.5, but I need help. Can you assist? [https://github.com/krausest/js-framework- benchmark/issues/13](https://github.com/krausest/js-framework- benchmark/issues/13)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I am not trying to be snarky with this question, but does it really matter with JS? Its always going to be run in a browser by one user, not having multiple people connecting to it like the server side does. As long as it seems snappy to the user it shouldn't make a great deal of difference. Counter opinions welcome.

</comment><comment><USER17> I feel like these comparisons are interesting but a bit one dimensional. A broad generalisation you could make is that frameworks with more features tend to be slower, but mean developers have to write less code.

A LOC or character count for each benchmark would help add a bit of context.

<comment><USER18> I agree with some of that, but I'd be more interested not in how much code is written for the test, but how far into the private API the code must go before the actual action is done. Kind of like using Test Coverage techniques. I imagine theirs only like 2 or 3 ways developers are, say, appending lots of rows, and the difference maker is how efficiently those techniques are being implemented.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is benchmark porn. You can create a fast-performing web app with _any_ of these frameworks, as long as you focus on the right metrics, like "time to interact".

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm really surprised that d3.js isn't on the list. It should be. I _suspect_ it would completely own most of the tests, but be bad on memory allocation.

</comment><comment><USER21> Ember looks really bad.

<comment><USER11> I'm not a fan of Ember, but it's focus on tooling, developer experience, and sticking to it's core principles in the name of consistency is something to be admired. It's not as shiny as Cycle or React, but if you started working with Ember years ago, you've had reasonably robust tooling all along (as opposed to the bleeding edge constantly breaking crap of the other frameworks), and have been able to reuse your knowledge for years, so you're potentially quite productive.

At least it's the impression I get.

<comment><USER22> There was a lot of breaking the world changes until 2.1. I am using Ember from 2014. It stabilized lately so no breaking changes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've heard good things about the performance of Knockout.js - isn't this popular anymore?

<comment><USER24> Knockout not considered "framework", just a lowly "library". Like jquery.

Frameworks are those that force their own opinion/style on your code structure and architecture.

<comment><USER25> But isn't React also a library rather than a framework by this measure? I think knockout is no longer in development so like Backbone it doesn't really merit inclusion.

<comment><USER26> That's news to me. The last release was just couple months ago.

Knockout is pretty much feature stable with most stuff in place, so it won't have as frequent releases as younger frameworks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'd have liked to see modern things like nunjucks and marko in this comparison list.

<comment><USER28> > modern things

Heh, so a bunch of unreleased beta-frameworks don't count as modern any more?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> These frameworks are all so different it renders these results pretty moot. Vanillaja is fastest but it doesn't offer half of what React or Angular do.

<comment><USER30> Actually everything you do in Angular or React you can do in vanilla JS, so your point is moot.

<comment><USER29> Everything you can do in Python you can do in assembly language.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> How is Knockout.js compared to these?

<comment><USER31> I welcome you to add a pr for knockout.

Take a look at the sample implementations here:

[https://github.com/krausest/js-framework- benchmark/blob/mast...](https://github.com/krausest/js-framework- benchmark/blob/master/vanillajs/src/Main.js)

[https://github.com/krausest/js-framework- benchmark/blob/mast...](https://github.com/krausest/js-framework- benchmark/blob/master/angular-v1.5.7/src/HomeController.es6.js)

<comment><USER32> I've just finished my first project in KnockoutJS, I'm up for contributing to a Knockout version.

I'd like to collaborate with others, so we don't end up with 3 different Knockout implementations ;-)

<comment><USER31> Ok, let me regex your email out and I'll ping you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Why is React performance slowing?

<comment><USER34> I suspect there's a perf bug in React 15 that causes the 'clear rows' test to be an order of magnitude slower than react 0.14. Otherwise, React is getting faster.

edit: My hunch was correct, see here [https://github.com/facebook/react/issues/7227](https://github.com/facebook/react/issues/7227)</comment></comment>


A weekly 5 minute screencast for Gophers - <AUTHOR> I love Go and have been writing it for a while. The community is amazing so I want to give back. I started a 5 minute weekly screencast that presents a short pattern, library or best practice for Go. <comment><USER2> And, where is it located?? Link please!</comment>


Ask HN: Charge at launch, or wait a few months to learn about our users? - <AUTHOR>

At the launch of our project in a couple of months, should we charge from the get go, probably limiting the size of the community, or launch totally free to learn about our users and how much they use the site? <comment><USER2> Even after launch the struggle remains to balance between exposure and financial gain -- should you offer a free trial or a free tier?

From the question I'd presume the product will be paid in the end and not supported by ads and external revenue stream. Given this I don't think one can test the market-product fit without actually charging money.

There are exceptions, think big social launches that turn into businesses (like Ghost blogging). For me this always seems rather hard to pull off. Like expecting that at launch day there will be 10k signups.

See this for one take: [http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing- blog/ab-test...](http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/ab- testing-free-trial-versus-freemium/)

To answer your question, it highly depends on the nature of your product, business model, competition and financial backing. So I do not have an answer, more like a ramble to help clean up your head.

One thing to warn, at least in my experience it is very hard to turn free users into paying one (conversion-wise) (free tier case). Free tier user and paying user have very different characteristics. Yet a lot of successful SaaS companies do have free tier. At the same time there are successful known companies who have removed a free tier (and/or doubled-tripled pricing without any public post to notify new users). I'd guess existing users at least kept the pricing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Was considering having a free tier that is supported by user-generated content and possibly advertising. There will definitely be a paid tier though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It depends on what your goals are, but if the most important thing for you to know is whether your product is valuable to people, asking for money is the only real way to determine that.

</comment><comment><USER4> How much do you already know about your users? Because this is a pretty fundamental thing to know, _before_ you start writing code. Check out "The Four Steps to the Epiphany" by Steve Blank (who sometimes visits here)

[http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steve-Blank- ebook/...](http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steve-Blank- ebook/dp/B00FLZKNUQ)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for this: I found this free link with the book though: [http://www.stanford.edu/group/e145/cgi- bin/winter/drupal/upl...](http://www.stanford.edu/group/e145/cgi- bin/winter/drupal/upload/handouts/Four_Steps.pdf). Hopefully it's the same or as good version.

I'm actually building this for myself initially. I currently work in the industry and realized that there are a lot of tools and ways to consume information about the industry faster and easier that don't exist, so I actually know quite a bit about my users. I'm doing some additional user research as we work on development to make sure my working habits aren't totally out of the ordinary and to estimate the number of items the freemium version will have available, assuming we have a freemium option.

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually asked the question Sunday night here if I should build for myself only, and assume other users want exactly what I want or do more user research to make sure what I want is what others want as well. I'm trying to build it where no one should have any huge gripes with it.

<comment><USER4> Build it for the people who need it _and_ have money to spend. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Charge before launch. Our first check was before the product was built. I don't think there is better validation that that. :)

<comment><USER6> I've always been interested in this. Are you using the term "check" literally? Did you actually get someone else's money in your bank account before writing any code? It seems like a very Kickstarter-esque way to build a product (I mean that in the best way possible).

<comment><USER5> Before writing _any_ code, technically not. Before product was alpha? Yes.

PS: I wanted to followup to this, because I should mention that _I was just as much a skeptic as you_ about this. I thought it would be impossible to get a check up front, despite people recommending it as a way to bootstrap the business. Well, it totally works. Just make the customer happy, grab a check upfront and have a contract.

<comment><USER6> I too have read a lot about people doing this, but nothing specifying how exactly they executed it. Does your contract specify production features, a timeline, or both (or neither)?

I'd love to read a blog post about your experience with this and how you executed it, how the pre-alpha revenue compares to beta or production, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> You could launch it as "beta" to see what the initial users like/dislike. Ask what features they like or want or are willing to pay for. Improve your project based off user feedback. Charge when beta closes but provide some sort of timeboxed trial.

</comment><comment><USER8> Use trycelery.com and you can start taking pre-orders immediately, and see how much they are willing to pay. [http://customerdevlabs.com/makemoney](http://customerdevlabs.com/makemoney)

</comment><comment><USER9> Make it free, but don't have release 1 powerful feature. Have users email you for more info for access to that feature, and start having conversations on how much they'd pay for it.

</comment><comment><USER10> Charge. Otherwise you're optimizing your product to satisfy free users, which isn't always what free users would want.

<comment><AUTHOR> We'll be launching with one of the many features that I eventually want to build, so I'm reluctant to charge from the start.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> it depends precisely what your goals are, but assuming you want to get some traction and data, i strongly encourage you to launch free. we would have if we could have afforded to (as we have hard costs associated with our product). once we were able to convert to a free model, our usage went up on the order of 20X.

<comment><AUTHOR> We can afford to launch free, so I think we will. The launch feature will be one of many to come later that will be much more valuable, so yeah, I think we'll launch free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The Minecraft way: charge right from the start, even from early beta. That sounds more profitable (and safer).

<comment><AUTHOR> Part of me wants to charge right away, so I won't be funding everything myself from the start, but I don't want to limit the long-term size of the company because of short-term thinking...</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Pivot Advice - <AUTHOR> Hey, we launched and I was able to successfully on-board the supply side, however the demand side doesn't seem to be biting yet.
I have a bunch of meetings with event planners tomorrow to learn more, but we may be headed towards a pivot.
Here's the startup: www.venuevortex.com (connecting event planners to venues).
With this same technology what can we pivot into? We're open to make changes to the code if needed but the technology is robust for the most part we're looking for something we can transform it into if need be.
Open to all ideas from the community. <comment><USER2> Why pivot so soon? Didn't you just launch? It's not a sprint, it's a marathon, so success is not going to happen overnight. I think you have a great idea. Several things I would work on:

1\. Expand your market. If I remember correctly, you are only in Toronto. Start on-boarding venues in other areas.

2\. Work on establishing partnerships with the venues that you can offer discounts if the customer books through your site, even if you don't handle the actual booking.

3\. Partner with every possible event planner, wedding planner, convention planner, trade show host, etc... that you can possibly find.

4\. I wouldn't put all my eggs in one basket though with #3. In a way you are actually competing against these folks. They already have vast amounts of data on every venue, and most likely have existing relationships established with them. You really want to target the individual, self planner market. One angle may be to go to churches and advertise in bulletins. Go to flower shops and talk to the people there. Hit other vendors and work with them.

5\. I would work on building in additional planning features. So not only list the venues, but list other services that are nearby or have worked with that venue in the past. For example, if someone is looking at a hotel for a wedding, include options for florists and caterers. Try to create packages for the consumer, that way you are a one-stop shop and allows you to compete against the event planner more effectively.

6\. Find an event writer at local papers and try to get them to run a story about the site/service.

On another note, I am not clear on your revenue model. Are you charging the venue to be listed, do you get a referral fee, do you charge the individual for something, is there an ad model? The revenue model you envision for the site may or may not impact some of the choices you make for marketing the site.

Anyway, I like the idea and think your site looks great.

</comment><comment><USER3> Develop more venue niches to target appropriate locations: Weddings, Team Building, Reunions, Anniversary Parties, Brain Storming, Kids Birthdays, Work Shops, Professional Meet-ups, etc... Consider the problem a visitor to your site is trying to solve; 'I need a cool, inexpensive site for X event'.

<comment><USER4> Thanks, we have already added the ability for users to filter by "Event Type", check it out www.venuevortex.com/venues</comment></comment>


Show HN: random() color palette loading animation in SCSS - <AUTHOR> http://codepen.io/TimPietrusky/pen/AvIsg

<comment><USER2> ayfkm. keep this on your twitter or the like if you have something to share, don't try to get 'popular' or to get more views by posting to HN</comment>


The Internet startup model is broken and how to fix it - <AUTHOR> http://blog.julieng.me/post/30379283972/the-internet-startup-model-is-broken-and-how-to-fix-it <comment><USER3> I really liked the post (and the sentiment about 6wunderkinder as a Bostonian in Germany). However, I also really liked the reasoning of Nate Weiner on why he chose to make Pocket free:

[http://blog.ideashower.com/post/21276590202/why-pocket- went-...](http://blog.ideashower.com/post/21276590202/why-pocket-went-free)

As you pointed out, it's up to us customers what kind of vision we want to support, the "low-risk", immediate revenue model or the long-tail, high-risk, winner-takes-it-all model. I totally agree that too few people are aware of the inherent differences and then cry if the latter fails or gets shutdown after an acquihire.

That being said, I prefer Pocket over Instapaper

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing that post explaining why free. I hadn't seen it.

Yes, it's up to the customers. But we'll see what happens. I'm curious what Pocket's new business model is. And whether it'll be around or acquihired within a few years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I agree it often seems crazy companies with no clear revenue model raising millions in funding but I'm not sure the approach of looking at each one individually and saying "it doesn't look like they could generate sufficient revenues to justify that investment" takes into account why they're getting the investment.

At such an early stage most startups are at best guessing what their main revenue source will be, the only thing they've demonstrated is that they're able to build something people want. My understanding is that the bet VC's are taking isn't that all or even most of them will work out a way to monetize this sufficiently to make a return on investment, it's that one or two of them will work it out in a big way and be successful to the point that they more than compensate for the majority of others which just about broke even or never cracked it at all.

If anything these investments are just an acceptance than no-one really knows what's going to work and one solution to this is to put money into teams which seem to be able to make something people want and hope that by allowing them what look like unrealistic costs to begin with, they'll come up with something game changing. Not suggesting that's the best approach to building companies but I don't think it's a completely unreasonable one.

The point's made a lot better than I can in this lecture ([http://blakemasters.tumblr.com/post/21869934240/peter- thiels...](http://blakemasters.tumblr.com/post/21869934240/peter-thiels- cs183-startup-class-7-notes-essay)) from Peter Thiel's startup class (with Roelof Botha and pg).

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with you and that lecture is great. But let's face it. Most startups fail and are not revolutionary. Many are copies of existing services.

I celebrate the few that really inspire me, like Twitter, Instapaper or Square and others. But I am disgusted by the Colors and Pockets out there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Strange argument, that we fix the internet somehow, by boycotting products that don't match our expectations of what an internet business should be.

I thought the free market determined what survived? Adding this pressure - <USER2> to conform to a blog writers vision - just adds another hurdle to success. Was something about the free market broken? Will a half-dozen annoyed blog-readers make any difference? What's the goal here.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well I personally think a bubble is coming because we're busy creating products and services that don't produce revenue and value. Free markets generally work but can fail miserably when gone unchecked. That happened only a few years ago. And I personally believe it's irresponsible on the web.

My point and goal is for us, the workers of the web to recognize that and steer away from that irresponsibility, if possible. We don't need millions for another photo app, reading app or social network. Let's build something useful.

<comment><USER5> The investment in web trash is not significant. If its a bubble, it won't be of the magnitude of a S&L or mortgage meltdown - it'll be some privileged Valley execs and coders getting disappointed.

Photo apps and social networks are possibly the single most useful invention of the last decade. Variations may bore you or seem silly, but there is probably room in the market for some tweaks on these themes. If they make money, then it was worth it.

If you have some future-radar that can predict which will fail, perhaps you can convince some VC or Angel firm to employ you. Otherwise they'll have to make their best guess and plonk their money down where they think best.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> When Cheddar was posted here a while back, I scoffed at it and said "Great, another Todo app that they are trying to charge like a service."

This article provides a little more context around it. I think we'll see more single-man shops proliferate as venture funding tones down over the next few years. All in all, when that happens I think everyone will win:

1) Consumers will have more choices as developers set off on their own.

2) Consumers won't get bait-switched when a start-up sells out to turn a profit for investors.

3) Investors won't have to play the numbers game as much. These dudes are already rich so personally I don't care what happens to them.

4) Developers/business owners won't be at the mercy of investor pressure or a board and are finally a master of their own domain. Quitting your job to take funding for a venture simply changes who your boss is.

</comment><comment><USER7> Ain't broke don't fix!

Both bootstrapping and VC/funding model work fine they just each embrace different business models. Bootstrappers mostly focus on revenue from day 1 while the others are more focused on rapid growth and exit potential.

There is nothing wrong with any of them and the world is a better place by having different models as each offers unique innovation opportunities.

<comment><USER8> What is "wrong" (or at least suboptimal) is when good bootstrapped products get killed by money-heavy venture capital backed ones that fizzle out when they finish their money. That is pretty frustrating.

<comment><USER9> what is wrong is bootstrapped companies don't get exposed in media (techcrunch etc) and every VC funded company is guaranteed the exposure. Exposure creates mindshare and mindshare leads to pocketshare. The bootstrapper eventually suffers because whether the VC funded company makes money or not, the opportunity for exposure is very limited. On the other hand bootstrappers need to be more creative and keep pushing the limits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think the argument here can be summed up as:

Don't shop at Home Depot, Amazon or Whole Foods. Shop at the neighborhood Hardware store, the corner Bookstore and the local Farmer's market (for tech.)</comment>


What Do AI Researchers Think of the Risks of AI? - <AUTHOR> http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/05/what-do-ai-researchers-think-of-the-risks-of-ai.html

<comment><USER2> AI researchers always disappoint me because I haven't ever seen a discussion of outright tampering. The danger of AI isn't free will, but some suicidal maniac capable of embedding viruses in the AI. We've got enough of black-hat hackers around—my employer got hit by cryptolocker last year—who could come up with a way to profit by hacking AIs.</comment>