iOS app to analyze and take control of who is tracking you right inside Safari - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/donottrack-block-tracking/id1046837411?mt=8 <comment><AUTHOR> DoNotTrack is an app which helps blocks tracking scripts, web beacons and information collectors from website so they may not track or send any private data. As privacy is all about 'Be Informed and Take Control' and keeping that in mind, the main features that distinguish DoNotTrack from other apps are :

\- Power directly into the users hands to choose which trackers and web beacons to block.

\- A Safari extension named 'Analyze' with which a user can view which Analytics Trackers and Web beacons are tracking him on any website and take control of his privacy.

Here is a short video of our Safari 'Analyze' extension in action -[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxOtiT44Kbc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxOtiT44Kbc)

Couple of blogpost on the technicalities of DoNotTrack :

\- Why DoNotTrack ? : [https://medium.com/@NuovaLabs/why- donottrack-e6055a7a2c08#.w...](https://medium.com/@NuovaLabs/why- donottrack-e6055a7a2c08#.wyryxschj) ( 2 min read)

\- DoNotTrack 'Analyze' : Be Informed, Take Control : [https://medium.com/@NuovaLabs/donottrack-analyze-be- informed...](https://medium.com/@NuovaLabs/donottrack-analyze-be-informed- take-control-301bef4fa9e#.4t57b6byg) ( 1 min read)</comment>


OpenSolaris governing board threatens dissolution - <AUTHOR> http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/OpenSolaris-governing-board-threatens-dissolution-1037134.html <comment><USER3> (Open)Solaris died a few years ago. It has got some great features like Zones and ZFS, and it's still very stable. However, they lost the hearts and minds of almost everyone. I used OpenSolaris for a few months as my desktop. They don't have the package support of Linux, or the large community. Gotta remember to get GNU Make before Sun's Make in PATH, Gnu sed before Sun's, or was the other way around, Perl CPAN modules not compiling... What a waste of time.

As Scott McNealy said: you've gotta get all your wood behind one arrow. That arrow is now Linux.

<comment><USER4> I went to an OpenSolaris users group last year. They were talking about new network features like being able to assign sub-interfaces to different zones. Stuff that VMware ESX had available for years. I was thoroughly unimpressed. The concept of Zones or FreeBSD jails has some appealing aspects; not needing to load multiple kernels in memory, for example, but by this time, Hypervisors such as VMware that deduplicate memory blocks pretty much negate any advantage Zones/Jails once had.

ZFS definitely has some potential though. I hope it will be released under a more liberal license that will allow a direct Linux kernel module as opposed to fuse support.

<comment><USER5> What kind of ratios are you actually seeing with VMware's deduplicate memory features? I have not seen much on anything I am running, though I admit I don't have them overcommitted very much on RAM (total RAM allocated to all VMs is about the same as physical RAM in the system).

<comment><USER4> This really depends on what you are running. If you're running an eclectic mix of Windows, Linux, all running different applications and software, you might not get much benefit. Most of our VMs are all running Windows Server 2003 (ugh!) and the exact same terrible web application so we get pretty good savings; about 50%.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been following this for a while. OpenSolaris, VirtualBox and MySQL are all things I was worried about surviving in the wake of Oracle's takeover. I use all three quite a bit.

<comment><USER7> I was not aware VirtualBox was controlled by Oracle. I just switched to it because it was a free alternative to Parallels. Suddenly, I care about this issue!

<comment><USER6> I switched from Parallels when Parallels started sucking AND THEN wanted more money for me to upgrade to 3.x. VirtualBox, back then, was anemic but functional. Now, it's really going places with features that still trail behind the commercial brands you know and love, but when you consider it's free, it's hard to complain too much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I installed FreeBSD a couple weeks back just so I could play around with ports and ZFS. Getting ZFS to work with the bootloader is kind of a pain (should be fixed in FreeBSD-9, I'm hoping) but otherwise I was blown away by just how intuitive ZFS is to use and how ridiculously powerful. ZFS was introduced in 2005(!) and I'm _still_ amazed by how far ahead of the pack it is. It's really a damn shame that we can't get ZFS into the Linux kernel because of licensing.

<comment><USER9> if you feel like playing around with filesystems, try dragonflybsd (<http://www.dragonflybsd.org/>). it has some neat things like its unique hammer filesystem and virtual kernels.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here's a view from a prominent member of the (rather small) OpenSolaris community: <http://www.cuddletech.com/blog/pivot/entry.php?id=1134>

He's not exactly impressed.

<comment><USER11> Remember the OGC is headed by Schilly. Who's quite famous for actively campaigning to stop people patching his OSS cdrecord to use regular device files, and has a reputation of being very outspoken against anyone who disagrees with him.

<comment><USER12> If the OGC head is a problem, this, certainly, solves it.

Oracle can easily make a new OGC the following day and name whoever they are comfortable with (or whoever they think will help OpenSolaris get developed in the right direction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Out of curiosity, does anyone here use OpenSolaris for anything?

<comment><USER14> I do, our webservers run it. ZFS with automatic snapshots has saved my ass quite a few times already. Sending incremental snapshots (for backups) to offsite location (another OpenSolaris machine) is also easy and efficient.

But, if linux had ZFS i'd probably use that instead.

<comment><USER15> FreeBSD has ZFS too. We've been seeing a lot of people migrating from OpenSolaris over the past few months due to Oracle.

<comment><USER11> I wonder if the OpenSolaris people would consider a merge? Ie, work on zones, any useful Solaris management tools, etc...

<comment><USER15> FreeBSD already has jails, so there's no point bringing in Solaris zones; but we're generally quick to bring in features from OpenSolaris. DTrace, for example, is available for the FreeBSD kernel now, and work is underway to make it available for FreeBSD userland too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Maybe its for the best. I'm not a big fan of autotools, but proliferation of semi-compatible UNIXes was the reason behind this mess. I'd be absolutely happy with just Linux/BSD/Macs to worry about.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'd love to have a lively discussion here about OpenSolaris, could not upvote this enough (actually I don't think my upvote counts at all, is that because I don't have karma yet?)

<comment><USER18> Yes, otherwise people would be able to create dummy accounts and vote themselves up for nothing.

<comment><USER12> Some things I have been observing can be explained by that. I believe this gotcha is being actively circumvented.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Why do they need a blessing from Oracle though? "If you don't like it - <USER2> it" doesn't apply here? Licensing issues?

<comment><USER20> I'm not sure, but I'm guessing that 'Solaris' is a trademarked term, owned by Sun (now Oracle). If you fork it, you can't call it 'Solaris' anymore. You'd have a hard time selling/promoting this new unix os that no-one has heard of.

<comment><USER10> You're right, it would have to be a different name.

However, if there were a sufficient community around it, this would not be a problem. But because it's so driven by Sun, and they never really managed to build an active community, there is no one who would naturally start using the forked OS.

<comment><USER12> The community around it is not sufficient. The license prevents borrowing code from Linux. It can, however, borrow BSD code.

But not even that would be enough to keep it alive and evolving.

<comment><USER21> I'm sure I'll get knocked for this (again), but if you want to pick nits, it's the GPL that prevents the commingling, not the CDDL.

Why not just say that the licenses are incompatible?

That's the simple truth, and that's not a slight on either of them.

The real problem here is that there doesn't appear to be an OpenSolaris development community outside of Sun^WOracle. It's much like Mozilla in its early days, though with an even smaller chance of success. Mozilla's competitive landscape was devoid of credible open-source alternatives - that's not the case for OpenSolaris.

<comment><USER12> Fair enough. Linux also can't borrow code from OpenSolaris. I would love to have ZFS on Linux.

Anyway, it was Sun who raised the possibility of licensing OpenSolaris under GPLv3 (that would still prevent Sun from borrowing lots of Linux code and Linux from borrowing any Sun code, but it would, at least, be a start) not the Linux folks who considered re-licensing Linux under a CDDL-friendly license, hence the "unidirectional" slant of my post.

As for the community and Sun^WOracle's contributions, Oracle has made it clear that they would follow an open-core model for the OS.

That's really sad, IMHO, but predictable. Ellison is nicer than Gates and way cooler, but it doesn't make him a particularly nice guy who wants to share.

BTW, I think the copyright fragmentation you see in Linux is one of its strengths. When you contribute a patch to OpenSolaris, do you retain its copyright or you transfer it to whoever controls OpenSolaris?

<comment><USER21> That's fair - Sun at least had the option of relicensing (given that the required contributors to sign an IP agreement).

FWIW, it saddens me to watch Solaris stumbling towards its grave. Remaining available only on hardware sold by Oracle renders it worthless to me.

I can't make that shift now, which means that I need to build my own credible alternatives to using Solaris. And when I am in a position where I could afford Solaris on Oracle hardware, I won't be so inclined - because I'll have my homebrew alternatives, and a bitter taste in my mouth.

So it goes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> That's a threat?!

Larry Ellison: "Uh, sure, we'll get right back to you on that."

[Larry alt-tabs back to his word processor with a draft of his Solaris Developer Trial licensing plan: foree for 30 days followed by a $9000-per-seat licensing fee]

<comment><USER12> Larry may not be the nicest guy around, but he's no idiot. He just spent a ton of money on Sun and something like this would put that much more momentum behind commodities he cannot control (like Linux)

<comment><USER22> Indeed, Ellison is no idiot, and that's precisely what he's been doing: putting Sun's formerly free properties behind strict paywalls in order to get the company cash-flow-positive again after Sun bled money giving away the geese that laid the golden eggs.

<comment><USER12> They only laid golden eggs because they were relevant. If his clients decide to migrate away from Solaris, they may also decide to migrate away from Oracle. Being legacy-only is not good for long-term revenue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The Imperial Senate will no longer be of any concern to us.

</comment><comment><USER24> It is now as dead as say Digital Unix or OpenVMS.</comment>


Linear Regression 3 Ways in Julia - <AUTHOR> http://boss-level.com/?p=247 <comment><USER2> every time i see a Julia post i want to convert my Matlab code and start anew - then i remember seeing a blog some time ago where the vectorizations i performed to speed up my Matlab code would be faster as for-loops in Julia. Is this still the case? If not, i'll probably consider the task much more seriously

<comment><USER3> That is still the case.

The following blog post goes into the reasons, and the remedies. In particular, there are ways to automatically devectorise your code.

[http://julialang.org/blog/2013/09/fast- numeric/](http://julialang.org/blog/2013/09/fast-numeric/)

<comment><USER4> devectorizing is a terrible step back in expressiveness. It shouldn't be hard to make a compiler that can compute the example without a bunch of temporary arrays. I would be shocked if heavy duty packages like Matlab make all those temporary arrays.

On the other hand, I've seen (and written) plenty of code that went through contortions to use vector operations in IDL ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDL_(programming_language)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDL_\(programming_language\))). It would be great to have a language where for loops _and_ vector expressions are fast.

<comment><USER5> Matlab does in fact make all those temporary arrays. So does R. See my comment above [1] – the idea is not that you _should_ devectorize everything, but that you can if you need to. Automatic devectorization of general purpose code is not something anyone knows how to do – even in Haskell, which is the best candidate language for such things – see moomin's comment below [2].

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6341406](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6341406)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6341187](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6341187)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The julia-users mailing list discussion of this blog post:

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/julia- users/T5YYKQzl...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/julia- users/T5YYKQzl-Cc)

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm impressed that these characters can be used in code:

Σ₁,Σ₀, σ²

<comment><USER7> Many moder programming languages allow arbitrary unicode symbols as variable names. I am now thinking about doing this in Python.

<comment><USER6> Fair enough. I use Sublime and write in python on Ubuntu. How might I go about incorporating Unicode?

<comment><USER7> Hmm, here's a thought: Instead of naming a function "sum", call it Σ, and similarly use √ instead of "sqrt". This would enable you to write things like

rms = √(1/len(x)*Σ(x))

Which is really quite cool from a mathematical view point.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Please don't use pie charts - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jgc.org/2009/08/please-dont-use-pie-charts.html <comment><USER2> Edward Tufte gives the pie chart a more succinct and decisive treatment in "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information":

      A table is nearly always better than a dumb pie chart; the
      only worse design than a pie chart is several of them, for
      then the viewer is asked to compare quantities located in
      spatial disarray both within and between charts [...] Given
      their low density and failure to order numbers along a
      visual dimension, pie charts should never be used.

With some additional discussion on his website: [http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch- msg?msg_id=0...](http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch- msg?msg_id=00018S)

<comment><USER3> Tufte is simply wrong here. A pie chart implicitly conveys an additional piece of information which a series-style chart like a table or bar chart does not: that the information presented represents some meaningful total. A table listing percentages can achieve the same result, as can a single bar, but both require closer inspection. For a small number of variables, and particularly where there is a large disparity between the values, a pie chart is better. Unfortunately, many people break this contract with the viewer and present a pie chart solely to show the ratios, in which case I would agree that it is poor presentation.

<comment><USER4> I think you may have missed his point, I had an opportunity to go to Tufte's talk and his issue is their mixing of of area and lack of numbers. He points out that you can take any pie chart, convert it to a stacked bar chart of one 'bar' and put the numbers along the stack axis on one side and qty labels along the stack axis on the other side and convey more information, more accurately, and in less space. Pie charts are big wide open wedges of color and no additional information so they were inferior.

<comment><USER3> What Tufte is missing is that a pie chart _does_ immediately convey one additional piece of information that a bar chart can't without closer inspection: that the individual wedges add up to some meaningful whole. With a bar chart, you need some kind of explicit labeling to indicate that the bar represents a total, whereas with a pie chart it's implicit. It's inherent from the topology: as a circle, the pie chart is closed, implying that there is no additional data and that only the ratios are important. A series such as a bar chart or table is not closed, carrying the implication that it might simply have been truncated for reasons of space or clarity. A series-style chart also may or may not be presenting absolute values rather than ratios, and further inspection is needed by the viewer to distinguish which is the case.

<comment><USER4> I get what you are saying, basically that the 'pie' itself is a sum of units. However, I expect that Tufte would tell you to include that information more succinctly (or densely). I actually re-did the graphic in Corel Draw to show this but darned if there is a way to upload here, so I've put it in a google 'drawing' : [https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/11hLh7DarPLrRHwVOQAC6Semn...](https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/11hLh7DarPLrRHwVOQAC6SemnARNkWEw4Bd0MPpzpj2c/edit?hl=en_US) which may or may not come through.

The top bar, which bounds the bars with the axis label 100% conveys the same 'from a whole' concept that the pie does in less space. Its also commutive across all three bars :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Funny to see this here. There's a follow up on what to use: [http://blog.jgc.org/2010/09/what-to-use-instead-of-pie- chart...](http://blog.jgc.org/2010/09/what-to-use-instead-of-pie-chart.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> Another aspect - pie charts beyond about three wedges are utterly useless to the colorblind. The OP's Microsoft example is particularly egregious in that aspect as well - I can't distinguish most of those colors, especially given the minuscule legend. So the entire pie chart is quite literally wasted on me. A blank rectangle would convey nearly as much information.

<comment><USER7> As a colorblind myself I couldn't agree more. But this is not limited to pie charts, any kind of graphics that uses more than 3 colors to identify labels in a list is completely illegible for me.

<comment><USER8> The smaller the coloured areas, the harder it gets for me.

So a stacked bar is mostly fine, but a scatter plot where the points are only distinguished by colour is impossible to read.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think pie charts are a nice way to convey the ratio of 2 or 3 elements, particularly when the actual numbers are unimportant.

But I agree they are sometimes used when a bar graph would be much more appropriate.

<comment><USER10> >particularly when the actual numbers are unimportant.

That's more or less my philosophy on pie charts. I find them helpful to use at the outset of a presentation to help provide some context for what's to follow (for example, the relative sales of Divisions A, B & C).

That said, I have no sympathy for anyone who uses side-by-side pie charts in order to make comparisons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The (almost) only valid use of pie charts: <http://www.27bslash6.com/p2p2.html>

<comment><USER12> what about: [http://28.media.tumblr.com/FJtUhxZXBj8kb8wlM4Qly4Ubo1_500.jp...](http://28.media.tumblr.com/FJtUhxZXBj8kb8wlM4Qly4Ubo1_500.jpg)

?

<comment><USER13> pac-man pie-chart: <http://www.hemmy.net/images/games/pacmanchart.jpg>

<comment><USER14> "This is a pie chart describing my favourite bars. And this is a bar graph describing my favourite pies!"

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_J8QU1m0Ng>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> And if you do use a pie chart:

* Start at 12 O'Clock

* Put the segments in sequence of size (smallest first or biggest first going clockwise)

* Add a legend or labels

* Make sure any colours you use can still be differentiated when printed greyscale

Honestly, I'd tolerate them more if I could just understand which segment was bigger than another segment and had some meaningful way in which to vaguely guess the value behind a segment.

<comment><USER16> What pie charts are good at is providing a visual comparison of a series of values that compose a whole. Pie charts work when you're trying to represent a _percentage_ of a total value. The example in the link about "features" is crap because unless you're given a value of "100 features were implemented across these versions" the comparison that Word 2000 and 2003 provided similar values is meaningless.

Its not that you _shouldn't_ use a pie chart, it is just about knowing _when_ to use the pie chart to represent your data

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This reminds me of the PGF manual: [http://mirror.ctan.org/graphics/pgf/base/doc/generic/pgf/pgf...](http://mirror.ctan.org/graphics/pgf/base/doc/generic/pgf/pgfmanual.pdf)

In section _7.6 Plots and Charts_ the author explains very clearly the typical issues with bar diagrams and pie charts. Moreover, the whole chapter _7 Guidelines on Graphics_ is worth reading even for those who are not interested in the PGF package.

The PGF manual is one of the best introductions into that topic I'm aware of.

</comment><comment><USER18> Re: the claim that groups of pie charts are especially awful, I have a counterexample. How would you express this more clearly without a series of pie charts?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Support_For_Direct_Popular...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Support_For_Direct_Popular_Vote.png)

<comment><USER5> Like this: <http://imgur.com/rGvFW>

The example you give falls into the 'multiple pie chart' nightmare where it's hard to compare the percentages across charts. At the same time I can easily see how far from a majority each group is and also the pattern in abstaining from the question.

<comment><USER19> But that is still not an accurate view, since the number of independents, democrats, and republicans aren't the same.

<comment><USER20> That doesn't mean it's inaccurate, that means it's emphasizing the comparison between relative numbers rather than absolute numbers. If it was the way you wanted, then the percentages would be difficult to compare.

<comment><USER21> Not really. The chart type that incorporates that information is called a mosaic chart, and is one of my favorites.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> People would use bar charts if they had a name as delicious as a pie chart. Perhaps we should rename them popsicle charts?

<comment><USER8> How about renaming them pub charts?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> More pie chart hatred from a guy I used to work with.

<http://www.stevefenton.co.uk/Content/Pie-Charts-Are-Bad/>

[http://www.stevefenton.co.uk/Content/Blog/Date/201109/Blog/T...](http://www.stevefenton.co.uk/Content/Blog/Date/201109/Blog/The- Pie-Chart-So-Bad-I-Had-To-Censor-It/)

[http://www.stevefenton.co.uk/Content/Blog/Date/201012/Blog/C...](http://www.stevefenton.co.uk/Content/Blog/Date/201012/Blog/Continued- Pie-Chart-Hatred/)

</comment><comment><USER24> There is a really good exception to this rule. When you're only conveying two options in a pie chart it's much easier to discern a winner then in a table or in a bar graph.

<comment><USER25> Agreed, a bar chart with two items that have a very similar score are very hard to read.

<comment><USER8> How about just giving the two numbers?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Stephen Few has pretty good books on the topic: <http://www.perceptualedge.com/>

He is very good at explaining Tufte's work. The best part of his books and website are comparisons between a typical charts or dashboards and his re- designs.

Following is more relevant, his article on pie charts (PDF): <http://www.perceptualedge.com/articles/08-21-07.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER27> People like pie charts.

How do I know? Because they ask for them.

You're analysis for why pie charts are inferior at conveying information compared to other forms of data presentation are thus moot.

<comment><USER28> This fellow has been heavily downvoted (at 1:32 EST, anyway), but he has a point. For conveying information, pie charts are definitely not the best. To make an audience happy with your presentation, sometimes it is just best to give them the pies they want. Most laymen are used to them and find them friendlier than more complex charts.

<comment><USER27> For what it is worth, couple of things I regret about that post. I was terse, and the tone comes off arrogant. Mainly, my use of "You're" instead of "Your" which I'm usually careful not to mistake.

I'd like to think those are the source of the down votes--as I'd hate to believe we've forgotten the golden rule "customer is king". If their client comes to them and says "I want a pie chart" they should not give them 48 reasons why pie charts are terrible. They should just give them a pie chart.

I'm not suggesting that when ever they have data to convey their first thought should be to use a pie chart. I'm simply reminding them pie charts are a commonality of customer data visualization requests--hate them all they want they still will be using them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> We joke at Ginza that there is a direct correlation between the usage of pie charts and software revenue.

</comment><comment><USER30> So he took a single case where pie chart has been used wrongly and from that extrapolated we shouldn't be using pie charts?

Seriously... either explain your logic with supports or don't bother writing such misleading pieces of text.

<comment><USER31> ftfa:

\- they fail to convey information because people have a really hard time judging relative areas instead of lengths.

\- there _are_ times when a pie chart is appropriate

\- once you get data that isn't widely different or you have lots of categories your pie chart would be better as either a bar chart, or as simply a data table

\- pic of horrid "word features" chart

\- why is it bad?

\- releases occur chronologically, but the data is displayed in a clockwise fashion with no obvious starting point

\- the pie chart has no values on it at all, so we are left staring at the chart trying to guess the relative sizes of the slices

\- the chart is 3D

\- which makes it extra bad for estimating relative sizes

\- 3D pie charts are simply an abomination

\- making them 3D just makes them even harder to interpret

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I was going to leave a smartass comment about the deliciousness of pie when I scrolled down and realized that I left a similar smartass comment on the post last time I saw it years ago.

</comment><comment><USER33> I don't know what your talking about, pie charts provide plenty of useful information. source: <http://graphjam.memebase.com/>

</comment><comment><USER34> Pie charts are fine if you use them carefully. Funnel charts are a sin though:

<http://peltiertech.com/WordPress/bad-graphics-funnel-chart/>

<comment><USER35> Pie charts are never fine. They're always useless chartjunk which serve little to no purpose. They're used all the time by people who should know better.

Even a case of comparing A vs B is better represented by bars than pie slices.

<comment><USER34> Bars are horrid for working out "what portion of a whole" is represented. I don't care what iTunes does - it looks like shit.

<comment><USER36> Pies give you an at-a-glance indication of whether something is more or less than a half (obtuse/reflex angle) or a quarter (right angle). This seems to be the sum total of their utility.

Stacked bars may be ugly but at least you can use the segments to make more precise measurements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> In other news, people blog about other meaningless pet peeves...

Seriously, for any chart type, there are cases of misuse, even if the over- glorified Edward Tufte says no.</comment>


Ask HN: Pros / cons of salty language in tech titles - <AUTHOR> In recent years I've noticed salty language starting to appear in the titles of technology-related job postings and blog/article titles.<p>What do writers see as the pros / cons of choosing to use such language in those settings? And what responses does such language actually evoke in readers? <comment><USER2> I have not seen that before but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this kind of language is from startups. My guess would be that they want to seem hip and differentiate themselves from "uptight" enterprise.

I'm not sure there are pros or cons. If the job is interesting I don't think I'd mind the salty language and I would give them the benefit of the doubt. If the job doesn't seem interesting I would just pass just like any other job. I think there is a difference when using salty language on a job posting and when using it in an interview. If it was in an interview I would feel much more strongly about it.</comment>


Juicero Is Shutting Down - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2017/09/01/juicero-is-shutting-down/ <comment><USER2> I think they went about getting to market wrong. They should not have targeted end consumers with their equipment.

They should have went after the convenience store market using the soda dispenser/automated latte/vending machine/icee making business model. Basically convince the store owner to have some refrigerated space dedicated to the pouches and then put the machine nearby for the customer to make their own juice in real time.

I see a Juice company in the SF Ferry Building selling fresh squeezed juice for over $8. If they could have positioned themselves somewhere between that and $2 pasteurized/packaged juice from the grocery store, they could have done very well.

[https://www.yelp.com/biz/sow-juice-san- francisco](https://www.yelp.com/biz/sow-juice-san-francisco)

<comment><USER3> The trouble is, I've always thought Juicero was a bank shot for digitized food in general. If that's the case, they needed to be serving consumers not businesses.

The concept of food that's uniquely tagged and tracked from origin to consumption is pretty attractive - makes contamination a breeze to trace back, keeps you from cooking with rotten food since the machine knows to reject it, and it could automatically track what you've got in your kitchen to suggest recipes / restock for you.

That's all been thought of before, the trouble is how on earth do you build that network? I suspect the reason Juicero got _so much_ money is they were trying to build it first with high end luxury foods, and then expand down- market to eventually own the 'groceries of the future.'

Personally, I think good ol Jeff Bezos is going to win this one too by first owning grocery delivery straight up, and then going 'oh by the way they're all trackable if you want, you should buy Amazon brand appliances to make use of the feature :)" because as others pointed out here, counter space is at a premium and nobody really wants appliances that don't work with all their ingredients.

Anyway, that's what I tell myself to make this whole ludicrous story less sad.

<comment><USER4> > The concept of food that's uniquely tagged and tracked from origin to > consumption is pretty attractive - makes contamination a breeze to trace > back, keeps you from cooking with rotten food since the machine knows to > reject it, and it could automatically track what you've got in your kitchen > to suggest recipes / restock for you.

What makes you think people want those things? I certainly don't, and I've never heard anyone mention wanting any of those things. I have heard people mention that they hate appliances like the coffee makers that only work with the expensive patented coffee pods from their manufacturer. (And printers, etc.)

I don't want any appliance that the manufacturer can shut down or refuse to run remotely. (See the recent story about the guy who paid off his car, but it was disabled remotely because he didn't pay the "remove the disabler" fee.)

In ~35 years of cooking, I don't recall ever using ingredients that went bad. I'm sure I probably did once or twice, but it didn't leave a bad enough impression on me to even remember, let alone want this sort of device that's tethered to the network and manufacturer, with all the problems that brings.

<comment><USER5> Let's call it what it is: the Internet of Rent-Seeking. As far as I'm concerned, I want my appliances to NOT be networked.

<comment><USER6> We should probably split hairs here. I would love for all of my appliances to be _networked_ \-- just not on the public internet.

\- Preheat the oven as I'm driving home

\- Alert me when my laundry/dishes are done

\- Alert me if my air filter needs replaced.

\- Manage my AC/Heating for maximum energy efficiency.

\- Real time energy usage monitoring.

\- Turn on/off lights when I arrive/leave.

<comment><USER7> Assuming you have a dynamic ip this won't be possible without a cloud service.

<comment><USER8> There's absolutely no reason why everyone who wants one shouldn't have a static block of IP(v6) addresses. If they're hard to get, that's an ISP problem rather than anything else.

<comment><USER9> Most mobile providers don't offer IPv6

<comment><USER10> I think it's the opposite. Mobile operators have higher IPv6 adoption.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> AvE tore one of their machines down awhile back[0]. It's so over engineered, I was wondering how they'd ever make money back with their business model.

[0] [https://youtu.be/_Cp-BGQfpHQ](https://youtu.be/_Cp-BGQfpHQ)

<comment><USER12> this is another teardown with a similar conclusion

[https://blog.bolt.io/heres-why-juicero-s-press-is-so- expensi...](https://blog.bolt.io/heres-why-juicero-s-press-is-so- expensive-6add74594e50)

<comment><USER13> I love how Bolt.io tore down a pair of Beats headphones and came to the opposite conclusion -- that they were a ripoff and that the components inside in no way justified the pricetag.

But, take a look at the quality of the internals of Juicero vs. Beats headphones and realize that one of the companies is worth $1.5B while the other is shutting down.

<comment><USER14> That "Beats" teardown was with a counterfeit pair of headphones.

Even so, I don't think a large difference between the BOM and the price the consumer pays is necessarily a ripoff. There's more to a product than simply how much it costs to manufacture.

<comment><USER15> > Even so, I don't think a large difference between the BOM and the price the > consumer pays is necessarily a ripoff.

Actually, in some jurisdictions, if that difference goes over 12.5% of the paid price, and the customer is not specifically informed about this (and about potential cheaper competitors), the contract is not valid.

<comment><USER14> I've not heard of that before. Where is this?

<comment><USER15> Germany used to have laws similar to this for centuries (also in terms of a limit of how high interest could be, and a general profit limit, see "Wucher"), but many parts of these rules have been removed over the decades and centuries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> After watching their promo video at the top of the page, I'm left wondering two things:

\- If the machine takes away all my liberty (I cannot use it on my fruit and vegetables) and even their packs need to be refrigerated and stay good only for 8 days, can't I just buy the resulting juice and put it in my fridge? (If I left the bottle closed, that would last equally long). So what do I gain?

\- They're using QR codes to check that I'm not using their packs beyond the "best by" date or try to trick the machine into squeezing a competitor's cheaper packs. And for that, they need a camera on the inside. And WiFi. Didn't somebody at some point notice that the way they're treating their customers is really disrespectful? This is the whole printer-cartridge-thing all over again.

EDIT: layout/typos

<comment><USER17> You gain the prestige of saying "you want a fresh-squeezed juice?" to your guests. Keurig grew HUGE in large part thanks to the appearance of higher class it brought to ordinary homes and offices. Instead of fooling with tools, you click a button on a sleek looking SV futuremachine, and presto.

Humans are weird, and this is a very good marketing strategy.

<comment><USER18> I'm not familiar with Keurig, but I assume it is similar to Nespresso?

Nespresso became extremely popular because:

1) The machines are very cheap (compared to other espresso makers)

2) They take a fraction of the time to prepare coffee (compared to other methods)

3) They are extremely easy to clean

4) Capsules have a long shelf life, you can get them in small quantities, so it doesn't matter if you drink 3 cups of coffee per day or 3 cups of coffee per month.

5) They have really fancy stores in top locations where they sell their capsules

Everything about Nespresso is convenient and feels great. There is no DRM, because that would not be convenient.

The only thing that's convenient about the Juicero machine is that it is easy to clean. Everything else about it, from the short shelf live to the subscription pricing, to the long time it takes to make juice, is just inconvenient. The DRM and Wifi requirement is just stupid.

<comment><USER19> I thought nespresso had DRM to stop other coffee pods.

<comment><USER20> No DRM as far as I can tell. You can make your own pods with simple kits which are basically just an empty capsule and some foil you stick on the top.

<comment><USER21> Indeed. Lots of supermarkets and coffee brands in the UK sell their own Nespresso-compatible pods, often much cheaper than the "real" ones.

In Germany, Nestle tried and failed to ban sales of unlicensed pods:

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandcon...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/9479999/Court- rejects-Nestles-call-to-ban-third-party-Nespresso-coffee-capsules.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Even if the machine was $50, I don't think many people would want to spend that much for the privilege of being locked in to Juicero proprietary juice packs, letalone spend kitchen counter space to a dedicated juice squeezer machine. And everyone who did now has an exquisitely engineered $700 paperweight.

<comment><USER23> Ultra expensive juicers aren't new[1]. Even "normal" juicers are quite expensive[2]. Juicero was just trying to jump on a fairly well-established gravy train catering to the juice woo crowd.

[1]: [https://www.acemart.com/equipment/beverage/juicers/zumex- ess...](https://www.acemart.com/equipment/beverage/juicers/zumex-essential- pro-essential-pro-juicer/ZUXESSENTIALPRO)

[2]: [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01EXF4PLC/](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01EXF4PLC/)

<comment><USER10> Has there ever been a juicer before this that has forced you to buy all your fruits from one company? I think that's the key. People are ready to pay big bucks for premium appliances, but lock-in is another matter.

<comment><USER23> People love being locked in. Applying the keurig model to the juicing trend was a very solid business idea- it rocketed keurig to the top of all coffee makers, and juice fanatics make coffee fanatics look positively sane. I'm pretty cynical about it, but it _is_ still a real and good thing. A half second of convenience makes you feel good and selecting, storing, washing and prepping produce is not trivial. A few extra clicks in one area of UI makes it a _terrible_ design. The same thing translates into the real world, although at extreme cost (to the environment, primarily).

Negative press, overengineering, the smaller market group, and underdelivering convenience (the bags are just way too big compared to coffee) killed juicero. It was such a high-profile and brutal lambasting that it will be a scarlet letter for quite a while, but the core idea is solid enough that I wouldn't be surprised to see the idea re-emerge in 2-3 years.

I still can't get over how much people viscerally hate the idea. You'd think apple, google and microsoft had partnered to make a juice press because of how much juicero represented silicon valley-ness.

<comment><USER10> > People love being locked in.

Are you serious? I think Keurig succeeded because it was able to offset the lock-in with genuine convenience and better coffee than most people were drinking.

If the idea will re-emerge, I'm sure it will be more focused on customer convenience rather than lock-in. Literally every single "feature" of juicero was there to enforce the lock-in. The camera, qr codes, always-on wifi, proprietary bags. It's a miracle the company lasted this long.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Founder seems to be having a good time at Burning Man the day his company shuts down.[1]

[1] [https://www.instagram.com/p/BYaIlV4jFb5/?taken- by=dougevans](https://www.instagram.com/p/BYaIlV4jFb5/?taken-by=dougevans)

<comment><USER25> Even founders of failed startups deserve a chance to relax.

<comment><USER24> Never claimed otherwise, just unfortunate or perhaps obtuse timing. People around here sure wouldn't dare miss the Burn, even as their company burned out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> _The Bloomberg article described Juicero as "one of the most lavishly funded gadget startups in Silicon Valley" and founder Doug Evans once said he planned to do for juicing what Steve Jobs did for computers._

With vision like that, it's hard to believe there were any issues.

</comment><comment><USER27> Meanwhile, the Chinese clone with what is likely a very similar mechanism, but no DRM or other IoT crap, seems to be still alive:

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1793272089/juisir- juici...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1793272089/juisir-juicing- without-the-cleaning)

...and Juicero even tried to sue them a few months ago:

[https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/04/juice-wars- juice...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/04/juice-wars-juicero-has- sued-another-juicer-maker-for-patent-infringement/)

<comment><USER10> At least some people have common sense. This is so much better!

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Come on. Juicero was pure Silicon Valley craziness.

It's strange they didn't fail from the very beginning.

Tried it in a bar in San Francisco: slow as fuck, avg juice.

</comment><comment><USER29> Can we agree that if any founder makes a statement comparing themselves or their vision for their product with Steve Jobs and Apple, that they are automatically disqualified from being funded? Steve Jobs was one of a kind. If you are like Steve you don't have to say it, people will figure it out.

</comment><comment><USER30> The thing i'm curious about: why did this raise $120M? And how much has already been spent, on what ???

<comment><USER31> Founding team were serial successes in an adjacent/directly-related industry. "Because they could" is probably the best explanation of why they did.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> This video is one of my favorites

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Cp- BGQfpHQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Cp-BGQfpHQ)

Edit: Most like contains strong language...

<comment><USER33> Amazing video, the money they threw to design and build this device is mind blowing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> This will serve as a good example for future startups where taking one concept from one market does not always work in another market. Keurig managed to make a great product at an affordable price range, both the machines ($80-$250) and the K-Cups (~$0.85 per pod). However, a $400 machine, that just squeezes the pack for juice, and each juice pack running several dollars is enough to kill anyone's wallet. I liked how they made an attempt to promote a sustainable healthy lifestyle, but ultimately there are cheaper alternatives.

<comment><USER4> But how is it sustainable to grow fruit, pick it, wash and peel it, then cut it up and put it into some sort of disposable bag, then ship it to each individual who wants it, then require them to own an appliance that likely runs on fossil fuels to get the product out? They could have just shipped bottle of juice to the local supermarket and cut out the machine entirely. The waste would have been less because the bottles would have been recyclable, and they'd own the machines and use them in place in bulk. The shipping would be more sustainable because of the scale of doing all shipping to fewer grocery stores than all their customers (or at least all they hoped to reach eventually). The whole thing is wildly wasteful.

<comment><USER34> To clarify, I meant sustainable in the context of maintaining a healthy lifestyle, not in their overall manufacturing process and waste output.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> It was a product solving a problem few people had, at a price point few people could justify for a one-purpose device.

That the founders and the dialogue around it were all aspirational BS just exasperated the problem. It felt like it was constantly pitching a lifestyle very few people have, want or care about.

</comment><comment><USER36> The fundamental problem with Juicero (at least as an ambitious startup) is that juice isn't a product with broad appeal, especially after the recent trend against sugary drinks. You could overcome price barriers and other issues if there were some real demand, but I just don't see it.

<comment><USER37> Did you just call pressed veggies and fruits sugary drinks? As in more or less the same as Pepsi? The problem with Juicero is that it was a scam, pure and simple. Overpriced bullshit and awesome profits, at least that was the plan. Thank god it's over. Now we're just waiting for Uber to fold and then maybe we can start actually making a difference, as opposed to spewing bullshit until no one can tell the difference.

<comment><USER38> > Did you just call pressed veggies and fruits sugary drinks?

Pressed fruits at least, are sugary drinks. Anyone who's calorie conscious is probably wary (as a calorie counter I know I am).

<comment><USER39> yup pressing/blending fruits destroys any nutritional value. You're left with basically sugar water. Yes it's "natural sugar", but it's still not the healthy food people make it out to be.

<comment><USER40> > yup pressing/blending fruits destroys any nutritional value.

Pressing (but not blending) leaves some of the good bits (including bits that mitigate some of the adverse effects of sugars) behind, but it does not destroy the nutritional value, as many of the important micronutrients of the fruit are retained in the juice.

Hyperbole isn't helpful here.

<comment><USER39> You're correct, I mixed up pressing and blending. My bad.

Either way - an all fruit diet is not healthy or balanced. And as far as I can tell, whole fruits are still better for your health then pressed/blended/squeezed.

Relevant : [https://www.wired.com/2015/04/nobody-can-prove-cold- pressed-...](https://www.wired.com/2015/04/nobody-can-prove-cold-pressed- juice-better/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Their failure was in trying to "squeeze" a hardware-as-a-service/recurring revenue model into a device that was better suited as a single purchase appliance.

If you could have just shoved fresh fruit into it, they would have been ok.

But whoever talked investors out of $118M probably also sold everyone on the H-A-A-S model, which didn't quite fit for this product.

</comment><comment><USER42> One of the VC-funded businesses we all knew would fail has finally failed, is this an early indicator of a market correction?

<comment><USER43> I don't think so, because an idea this obviously silly should fail under almost any market conditions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Cp- BGQfpHQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Cp-BGQfpHQ) breakdown of juicer. So fantastically overengineered. Beautiful.

</comment><comment><USER45> I am a big fan of kitchen gadgets - and there are a few really useful ones around, this product is just odd. Besides the price for the machine and the pods, I fail to see how it adds any value to the process.

If you want really fresh and nutritious drinks, get a high-power blender. Not only do they operate on any fresh fruit and vegetable, they keep all the fiber in the produced drink. So less sugar percentage (especially if you have lots of vegetables in the mix) and vs. eating the fruit directly, the high power mixing helps digesting all nutritients much better than just chewing can.

As a bonus, you can use it for many other cooking tasks (soups, sauces) but also you can do things like blending a good amount of ice with the fruit to get a cold and icy drink and my favorite is just to mis a scoop of natural yoghurt with frozen berries (add sugar, cream, a shot of bourbon to your taste) to instantly get a nice ice-cream like dessert.

(Disclaimer: there are a very few vegetables which should be eaten cooked only, so don't use those for a smoothie, others only in reasonable dosis, so some very basic reading is recommended)

</comment><comment><USER46> I simply do not understand the mindset of silicon valley investors. I used to think that perhaps they had some edge that helped them to get behind successful companies, but looking at this -- how much money they raised and from whom -- I think that there are just a bunch of people who have so much money that they can afford to risk throwing it away on something that will not likely succeed.

Can someone watch the video in the article and explain what sort of mindset you have to be in and think that this is a good idea? Perhaps the initial vision was different somehow and the final product does not align with what you thought you were putting your money behind? Is it possible that you see the issues, but have so little faith in consumers not to buy crap that it seems like you'll make a reasonable profit? Maybe there's something you see or know that I don't -- perhaps some sort of shake up in the fruit industry was set to make this a hit only to not meet expectations?

I am now more deeply concerned than ever about the effect that an exploding tech bubble is going to have on our economy.

<comment><USER47> The answer to this is fairly straightforward: VCs don't actually expect (or need) every investment to be successful, they just need it to have the potential to be huge if everything works out.

Laypeople always seem shocked when a VC-funded company implodes. We should actually be surprised if we didn't see routine flame-outs, as that would mean VCs aren't taking on appropriate quantities of risk for the asset class.

As a final aside: I've lost count of the number of times I've pulled an about- face on businesses I initially thought were stupid -- once I had a chance to talk to the founders and better understand the vision. Many of these seemingly 'dumb' ideas have surprising depth.

Some, granted, are in fact dumber than a box of rocks.

<comment><USER48> It's not that a VC company failed, it's that the entire idea looks completely ridiculous from the start.

<comment><USER49> You could say that same about Soylent as it's simply a Pediasure/Ensure marketed towards hipster 20-somethings. People love drawing the conclusion that superior marketing/design equates to better products.

Often times, if you can make a consumer happy with the experience, they don't care if they're overpaying for a terrible product.

The problem with Juicero is that their user experience laid bare how futile and ridiculous their product was by having consumers manufacture the product themselves.

If the Juicero simply made those juices in a bottle (EVEN IF the nutritional value was lost during bottling) I can see them succeeding based purely on their marketing and people suspending disbelief to support their idea they were being healthy while looking cool.

<comment><USER50> >The problem with Juicero is that their user experience laid bare how futile and ridiculous their product was by having consumers manufacture the product themselves.

Blue Apron and every other meal kit delivery business sits on the other end of the same road, yet they seem to be doing okay and without the same level of ridicule.

I wonder whether Juicero could have avoided this outcome had they mailed their customers whole fruits and asked them to peel and fill their own juice bags, that way people will not be able to put two and two together to realise that it is just another beverage maker with DRM.

P.S. I remember Juicero being rather well received by the resturant industry as it is fully automated and requires minimal cleanup, so perhaps they marketed to the wrong crowd after all.

<comment><USER49> I agree Blue Apron is equally ridiculous and I totally agree that Juicero marketed to the wrong crowd.

Juicero was too visible in high-standard markets and thus became an easy target. Whereas Blue Apron flew under the critic radar (mostly in Facebook mom feeds) before gaining enough market share for consumers to shrug off ridicule

<comment><USER51> As a former blue apron customer I don't think it was ridiculous. I churned when my wife was out of the country. There are still recipes that they sent that I still cook. Now as a business I don't think they will be able to compete with a hybrid solution that amazon/Whole Foods will be able to devise. But I see Juicero as completely different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> It is a shame that Juicero could not develop a product with a lower price point that could reach a much broader marketplace. With the initial price point they should have clearly seen that their customer pool was going to be smaller than that of a lower cost product.

It seems that they did not have enough time and money to right their ship. It is sad to see a dream die even if you don't agree with the product or business plan.

<comment><USER53> I don't think the price point per se is an issue, people happily pay over 400 for a quality juicer. But the kind of person who does that probably wants the full experience, chopping the vegetables etc. This experience just seems too similar to just buying high quality juice in the shop.

I know this model works for coffee, but there the prefab alternative is not an option.

<comment><USER54> I think the "full experience" you speak of is getting fresh juice rather than some pre-oxidized slurry in a bag.

And shame on the VCs for not using their heads. You can't get a half pint of juice out of a pint bag of fruits and veggies.

Which reminds me of my brilliant idea of making fresh squeezed lemonade for our wedding guests. I had to cut a whole 25lb box of lemons in half and then press them into the Kitchen Aid to get about two quarts of juice. It took me hours and a lot of elbow grease to do that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Juicero has been quoted as saying that they sold "over a million Produce Packs." [1] Does anyone know who bought so many of them? Or how many they would've had to sell to stay in business?

[1] [https://www.juicero.com/company-news/](https://www.juicero.com/company- news/)

</comment><comment><USER56> I think this will be a wake-up call for companies like uBeam. For uBeam's case, you can send mechanical energy via ultrasound: true, with very little efficiency. But very few will be interested to buy the device.

</comment><comment><USER57> Rumor has it that their engineers couldn't concentrate...

</comment><comment><USER58> Magnificent engineering to solve a stupid non-problem. Sigh.

<comment><USER59> Given how overenginered it was, was it really magnificent? I don't think it's hard to make a quality Mechanism if you're willing to spend 400% of what's necessary for 108% of the benefit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> I hope the writers of "Silicon Valley" were paying attention to this saga. There's some juice left to be squeezed from it.

</comment><comment><USER61> If anything, I'm surprised they're only laying off 25% of their staff. I have a feeling more lay offs are around the corner.

</comment><comment><USER62> I'll pick one up in the liquidation sale.

<comment><USER63> Like for what?

<comment><USER64> I think it was a joke, maybe.

<comment><USER65> Yeah, it's a pun on the word 'liquidation'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> I just secured the purchase of two of these... for $200 to tinker with...

Anyone have any ideas on the DIY project to make from them?

</comment><comment><USER67> Juice is bad for you anyhow, no matter the price. TOO MUCH SUGAR!

</comment><comment><USER68> This will be one for the (forgotten) history books!

</comment><comment><USER69> Oh noooo!! Think of the Juice(ro). What will happen to existing machines once the servers are shut down!? Are we destined return to the days of squeezing juice by hand?

</comment><comment><USER70> So they got squeezed.

</comment><comment><USER71> Color me not shocked? The whole premise of this was ridiculous from the start

</comment><comment><USER72> I guess the juice just wasn't worth the squeeze.

</comment><comment><USER66> These remind me of the CUE::CAT

</comment><comment><USER73> Are they shutting down using a super-complicated completely over engineered method of shutting down, or the regular way?

<comment><USER74> There was Shutdownify, but now there isn't a trace of it left, aside from news articles about how fake it was.

<comment><USER75> [http://web.archive.org/web/20170610003354/http://www.shutdow...](http://web.archive.org/web/20170610003354/http://www.shutdownify.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> Seems like they felt the squeeze after that expose

<comment><USER77> And now it's time for a liquidation

<comment><USER78> The early investors are left holding the bag!

<comment><USER79> They should have scanned the QR code on it first, it would have told them something's rotten in there.

<comment><USER80> WTF? HN is allowing humor now?

<comment> et-al There's a Hacker News subreddit. We should keep all the puns there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> Noooo!!! :)

</comment><comment><USER82> Juicero is shutdownero.

</comment><comment><USER83> Those who funded this will only squeeze their portfolio companies still remaining for a juicier return.

</comment><comment><USER84> 120 million USD in funding and such a spectacular failure because of one article. This whole episode goes on to show the power journalists have. I know the sales number were bad but with so much money the founder could have bought the market or pivoted but with no coming back from the PR disaster the investors most likely just wanted their money back.

<comment><USER46> Unless their was a serious problem with their product or their team, with 120 million USD, they should have been able to avoid a PR disaster set off by a single article. Obviously, there are numerous issues with the product itself: no one wants to subscribe to packets of fruit, especially if those packets are perishable, especially if they have to buy a six-hundred dollar machine to properly use the packets and to know if they are fresh, even if you later find out you can just squeeze them with your hands. I suspect if you dig, and probably not too deep, you'd find issues with the team that tried to make money with this product as well.

There are problems that even $120 million can't fix.</comment></comment>


Installing Xen On CentOS 5.2 (i386) - <AUTHOR> http://www.howtoforge.com/installing-xen-on-centos-5.2-i386 <comment><USER2> Oh Xen, how I love thee! If you're ever lucky enough to find yourself as a customer of Softlayer, check out the Virtualization forum; I have a nice tutorial there on getting Xen setup and running pretty quickly on their dual networks.</comment>


How Much Does It Cost to Develop a Mobile App? - <AUTHOR>

How Much Does it Cost to Develop A Mobile App? <comment><USER2> Assuming you have nothing (except food and shelter):

\- A PC or Mac ($300 Vs. $700)

\- Internet access (???)

\- A developer account ($35 one off, or $99/year)

\- A business address (PO Box for one year, approx $62/year)

\- Electricity

\- Minimum wage at whatever number of hours your app takes to make

\- Business licence (if required? see local laws)

\- Cost of an accountant (if required?)

\- Marketing/SEO costs

\- Hosting, domain renew, SSL certificate renew, email, et al.

\- Other external resources (e.g. graphics, sounds, et al).

I'd say if you had nothing but a roof over your head and food in your belly you could do it for $600-1K a year including getting a new low end developer machine annual (or other equipment, like second monitors in subsequent years).

$600-1K might sound like a lot, but all the little things add up quickly. This also only covers the cost for a VERY simple basic app. For "AAA" style apps we're talking millions or more.

</comment><comment><USER3> How long is a piece of string?...

<comment><USER4> well played.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It depends on the features needed. We can all agree that Cordova ([http://cordova.apache.org](http://cordova.apache.org)) has placed the power of app building into the hands of every common web designer.

If you have to ask how much without a laundry list to go from, chances are you can use Cordova to get your app going. In Houston, basic apps using it can go from $1K - $5K.

</comment><comment><USER5> See this submission from yesterday for your answer.

[https://raddevelopment.io/blog/want-to-ask-a-developer- how-m...](https://raddevelopment.io/blog/want-to-ask-a-developer-how-much-a- web-application-costs-to-build/)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8435046](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8435046)

</comment><comment><USER6> About the cost of A PC and an Android phone or a Mac, an Android Phone, an IOS Phone and $100 per year. And some time.

<comment><USER7> And once you get started, the marginal cost is almost nothing but time if you can do the full thing.

I am a hobby iOS developer, and it is the appearance that suffers the most on my low-end products. If you can do your own artwork then you can get by for about $0+your time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> You can have a look at this nicely done calculator: [http://howmuchtomakeanapp.com/](http://howmuchtomakeanapp.com/)

</comment><comment><USER9> How much does it cost to build a house?

</comment><comment><USER10> A lot</comment>


SQLite and Android N (2016) - <AUTHOR> http://ericsink.com/entries/sqlite_android_n.html <comment><USER2> Ugh, if you were linking against system sqlite you had problems RIGHT NOW before Android N.

sqlite.so isn't part of public Android API surface, which means the OEMs will regularly replace it, break it, compile it with strange options and deal a lot of pain to you and your users.

So if you weren't shipping your own native SQLite in NDK/Xamarin you already had problems, you just maybe didn't notice them.

Android N is now actually actively preventing linking against system libraries which aren't part of public API surface, which is good - it'll result in less developers doing dumb things which break on minor updates.

<comment><USER3> > it'll result in less developers doing dumb things which break on minor > updates.

You can never stop the Facebook developers doing dumb things on Android.

Google have tried for years, but Facebook always manages to find new ways to fuck up.

<comment><USER4> They're not dumb, they're challenges! Preferably challenges solved by creating new VMs, compilers and other interesting development projects ;)

<comment><USER3> Yeah, challenges Facebook themselves created by writing the most bloat app ever written

[https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/under- th...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/under-the-hood- dalvik-patch-for-facebook-for-android/10151345597798920)

<comment><USER5> I've noticed they are now doing a similar thing now for push notifications.

Instead of using the platform-provided, battery efficient GCM (now FCM), they insist on using their own MQTT push solution.

Not only does this require a constantly running background service and a TCP socket which has to be reopened on every connectivity change (e.g. a switch from wi-fi to mobile data): They do it for every single one of their apps.

My phone has at least three of them (Instagram, Facebook, Messsenger), and I'm pretty sure that this is a major reason for battery life problems on Android.

<comment><USER6> You can at least uninstall Facebook.app: use m.facebook.com in chrome, you can even get push notification via Chrome.

<comment><USER7> Also: [https://mbasic.facebook.com](https://mbasic.facebook.com)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The article finishes by asking: _Would it really be so bad to include libsqlite in the NDK?_ Good question!

Why is the NDK so underpowered? Why are they so reluctant (or unable) to publish some useful, stable native APIs? It's missing things like curl, sqlite, icu, OpenSSL. Most of these are built into the OS but not accessible via the NDK. (OpenSSL isn't a great library, I know, but it's patchable. And they could start now with something better.)

The _only_ useful native third-party libraries you get are: zlib, OpenGL ES, OpenSL ES.

Apart from that, there are a bunch of wrappers for a small subset of Java APIs (AssetManager, Bitmap and so on). These are tedious to use, and seem to have been written by hand so in some cases they're buggy -- for example, incorrect string handling in AStorageManager: [https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=41983](https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=41983)

<comment><USER2> Most likely Google (and OEMs) want to keep the flexibility of changing implementations without having to code and patch those libraries you listed forever.

NDK team doesn't look like it's expansive or prioritized at all, so I doubt they have resources or will to do that. TBH I'd rather they focus at improving the tooling and debugging, we can ship our own libraries with our own options compiled in. Heck even on iOS we have to ship a custom SQLite to get all the needed capability.

<comment><USER9> Can anybody speak to the current size of the NDK team? I met with one of them many years ago when the team had only two (2) full-time engineers.

Google has one of the largest software engineering populations of any company in the world. It supports one of the largest developer ecosystems in the world. Games are the largest catagory in their ecosystem. 2 engineers supporting the NDK...

<comment><USER8> Yeah, that's exactly what I was getting at. They don't seem to take the NDK seriously. It's very weird.

<comment><USER10> It is not weird if you think they would rather not have it at all.

It wasn't there until 2.2, only got added due to community pressure and they always did the minimum amount of work.

When the migration to Android Studio was announced, we got left with no migration plan.

Only after JET Brains announced CLion, almost 2 years later, did they announce the migration to Studio.

Likewise they moved into Gradle without plan for C NDK support and it took three generations of build tools until they decided to settle on CMake.

<comment><USER8> Yes! But why?

As an earlier commenter mentioned, games are one of the biggest app categories and many games rely on the NDK. Pro audio _could_ be another big category, but I think Apple has the market sewn up there because Android is still way behind.

<comment><USER10> I guess, because a few key figures come from Sun's Java team and WebOS, with politics having a big role.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Kind of related: There is an outstanding request [0] on the Android issue tracker to offer an official support/compat library for Android's sqlite bindings, that would bridge Android's API (in a different java package) to a sqlite binary that you provide.

There are already implementations [1][2] of this, but because it is not provided by the Android team it is hardly supported by ORMs, libraries, etc.

[0] [https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=202658](https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=202658)

[1] [https://www.sqlite.org/android/doc/trunk/www/index.wiki](https://www.sqlite.org/android/doc/trunk/www/index.wiki)

[2] [https://github.com/requery/sqlite- android](https://github.com/requery/sqlite-android)

<comment><USER12> Does this not just hit the "The Multiple SQLite Problem" described in the article?

<comment><USER11> I don't think so but I might also interpret the article wrong.

The problem - from what I understand - is that you used to be able to use the systems sqlite.so to access databases owned by your app from the native environment. With Android N you are no longer able to do this, you need to ship your own sqlite binary.

This can lead to problems when you want to access the same sqlite files from both the Android platform APIs _and_ native (e.g. use it from native for business logic, debug it with a tool like Stetho [0] that uses android.database.sqlite) because of a version mismatch.

Would Google offer (a copy of) the Android API with the ability to plug in a different sqlite-compatible binaries, it would very likely find broad adoption. Then the problem stated by the article could be solved by shipping the app with a sqlite build that is used by both the native code and plugged into the compat library.

[0] [https://facebook.github.io/stetho/](https://facebook.github.io/stetho/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Android and SQLite have had some adventures: pre-Honeycomb (v3/API 11/2011), corrupted databases were automagically deleted by the OS API used to open them!

SQLite was also shaking out a (very) few bugs out during this time period; pretty sure this auto-delete implementation wiped any chance of semi-easily recovering my first phone's SMS db.

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7764943/what-can-be- done...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7764943/what-can-be-done-about- the-fact-that-android-automatically-deletes-corrupt-sqlit)

"8\. Bugs in SQLite" (2013)

[https://www.sqlite.org/howtocorrupt.html](https://www.sqlite.org/howtocorrupt.html)

</comment><comment><USER13> One big danger seems to be that POSIX locks don't like having two fds for the same file in the same process. But Linux has a newish kind of lock that is backwards-compatible and works better. I would love for SQLite to use it.

Does SQLite accept patches?

<comment><USER12> Patches are accepted, though.. SQLite is, by all accounts I've read, a very well written and tested piece of software, and I'd be surprised if there was an easy and safe win like this which hasn't already been proposed / considered.

Though, my guess shouldn't stop you looking for previous suggestions to implement this, and if there are none, submitting it yourself :)

<comment><USER14> It's amazing how many quick wins are to be had in open source if you have the time to patch yourself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wouldn't symbol versioning[1] allow more than one SQLite in a Java process, even if it is just to munge the system shipped symbols into an Android specific subspace? (I do this, but with a large C++ application so I might be missing some finer details).

1\. [https://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/LSB_4.0.0/LSB-Core- gene...](https://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/LSB_4.0.0/LSB-Core-generic/LSB- Core-generic/symversion.html)

</comment><comment><USER16> Here's the Android bug logged, which includes a repro app.

[https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=213433](https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=213433)

Although I mentioned using dlopen and dlsym to find the SQLite functions in the current process, our actual production solution was to use JNI to call the android.database.sqlite classes.

</comment><comment><USER17> Having had Nougat for a while now I have not seen any issues as an app consumer.

<comment><USER18> Because using the NDK only solves a very specific set of problems (and brings it's own can of worms in the wild), not that many apps will directly be affected by this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I would suggest another approach: 1) Import the source android.database.sqlite package while renaming it to my.database.sqlite 2) modify it trivially to load your own instance of sqlite....

</comment><comment><USER20> How many of these accesses of sqlite.so are the result of using cross platform tools? All of them? Is there any reason to do this otherwise?

<comment><USER21> If you have native code that wants to access a database, not round trip though Java, and not incur the size hit of shipping a separate copy OR (and this is key) want your Java code to be able to read the same database without writing your own Java->JNI SQLite wrapper.

<comment><USER20> Unless you are hammering on a jni in an inner loop, you won't notice.

<comment><USER8> Another problem is explained in the feature request that another commenter linked to: [https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=202658](https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=202658)

You have no idea what version of sqlite the OS might be using, so you can't rely on consistent behavior. In many cases the vendor will have tinkered with it and messed it up. Comprehensively testing on all Android devices is basically impossible because there are so many models out there.

<comment><USER20> That sounds like an argument against direct access to sqlite.so.

<comment><USER8> Hmm, yeah, but only partly--

The reason they can tinker with it is that it's not public; if it _were_ public it would (hopefully) be better-defined, locked down and stable, part of the Android compatibility test suite.

That feature request would let people supply their own sqlite.so, and also redirect the Java API to use it. Seems like a very promising approach.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there an easy way to work with web services for iPhone dev? - <AUTHOR>

We want to take XML data and convert it to an NSDictionary object, but we don't want to manually iterate over the XML. Is there an easy way to do this?  How are you doing web services for your iPhone app? <comment><USER2> Do you control the web service? If so, throw XML out the window. The open source JSON Framework on Google Code kicks ass. My iPhone app, Graffitio (<http://graffit.io>), uses Rails on the server side spitting out JSON to the iPhone app. Its awesome.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's cool, similar to something we're building. How many people are you working with? Do you have an e-mail I could reach you at?

<comment><USER2> i just sent an email to your .edu address.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm not quite sure I understand the question...

If this is a coding question, look for the XML parser in the Core Foundation framework (I believe there are also examples for it): [http://developer.apple.com/documentation/CoreFoundation/Conc...](http://developer.apple.com/documentation/CoreFoundation/Conceptual/CFXML/Concepts/CFXMLParser.html)

If you are asking specifically about Xcode (the IDE), I know it parses XML because it syntax-colors XML files that I open, and its code-folding brackets support hierarchies of open/close tags.

</comment><comment><USER4> If its a restful web service you could try <http://github.com/yfactorial/objectiveresource/tree/master> . It's basically a port of Active Resource to Obj C. You can use it if its not a restful service you just have to override some functions.

</comment><comment><USER5> I stole your karma on stackoverflow :P [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/400299/is-there-an- easy-w...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/400299/is-there-an-easy-way-to- work-with-web-services-for-iphone-dev)</comment>


Show HN: Romulist - Monthly Reminders for Forgetful People - <AUTHOR>

Made this little reminder app for my girlfriend after she forgot a car payment. You give it a list of events, the days-of-the-month they're due, and the number of days you'd like to be notified in advance. Every day, it goes through the list, checks each to see if you haven't done it yet for the month and if the current day is w/in the window you specified. If true to both, you get an email. If you don't mark the event as done, it rolls over to the next day, so it won't forget even when you do.
I realize this is "just another calendar app," but I think that pestering/nagging feature is pretty cool. When paired with SMS interactivity instead of just email, I'm hoping it could be something pay-worthy... but I want to see what people think of it before I build that functionality.
Anyway, I'd LOVE to hear what HN thinks. Cool? Not cool? Already done 1000x before?
Currently in private beta, but here's a super-secret invite URL for HN: http://romulist.com/invite?code=hn <comment><AUTHOR> What I responded with to a guy asking what sets it apart from iCal, something like this will go on the front page after launch:

What Makes Romulist More Than Just Another Calendar App?

        * Variable reminder windows
          Outlook and iCal can tell you rent's due on the 1st, but they can't remind you about it 5 days in advance (or a week, or two weeks, etc).
        * Perseverance (aka, pestering)
          Once Google Calendar tells you about an event, it's up to you to do it and cross it off your mental checklist. Romulist will tell you about the event and then keep telling you until you tell it to stop. Subtle, no; effective, yes.
        * No need to log in
          Once you've got your events set up and email reminders turned on, you won't have to log in every day to make sure you're on top of things. You'll get an email from Romulist on days when there's something you need to worry about. On days that you don't, you're all clear.
        * No software to download
          It's all on the web. If you've got a device with an internet connection and a browser, you're solid.
        * SMS / TXT support (future feature...)
          Not by a computer every day? No worries. In the next version of Romulist, you'll be able to get and interact with reminders by TXT message on your phone. Receive "Car payment due in 5 days. -Romulist", respond with "done", and you're all set until the next time it's due. No internet connection required.

</comment><comment><USER2> I won't be trying your service because you don't have regular registration

<comment><AUTHOR> Valid point. I voted it back to one.</comment></comment>


Road test: Does WiMax work in the real world? - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/09/29/40TC-wimax-road-test_1.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Note that the tested system isn't state-of-the-art as mentioned in the comments sections of the article.</comment>


Ask HN: Have you deleted your Facebook account? - <AUTHOR>

I went ahead and pulled the plug. How about you? Are you planning to? <comment><USER2> Would love to trash it (got it way back, when it was Harvard-only), but it's how I keep track of my kids' online activities. (Though I admittedly only check once every month or so...)

</comment><comment><USER3> Just a few days ago. I wasn't very active, and never really got into it. I would have left it inactive, but the privacy-related discussions convinced me to shut it down.

</comment><comment><USER4> I deleted my account three weeks ago, just before the media went nuts over it.

</comment><comment><USER5> I just did, with Twitter, FoRK, Buzz, and I think I'll deactivate YC too.

</comment><comment><USER6> Inactive since 1.5 years, deleted it last week.</comment>


Evolution Can Occur in Less Than Ten Years - <AUTHOR> http://newsroom.ucr.edu/news_item.html?action=page&id=2119 <comment><USER2> That's nothing new, many infectious diseases evolve every year, which is why we need a new flu shot, the common cold can't be cured, and staph becomes MRSA sending pharmaceuticals on an arms race just to keep hospitals sterile.

The real lower bound is the number of generations, and that number (<30) is only given in the subtitle after you click through.

</comment><comment><USER3> My father was a North-Sea fisherman and reported on dramatic increases of Roe when fish populations were declining. Since the type of flat fish they were catching had usually lived for many years, our conclusion was that it would have to be a bio-chemical progress already built-in to the genes.

</comment><comment><USER4> "How fast can evolution occur?" doesn't seem like a meaningful question. If evolution is defined as a significant change in a population's gene distribution, it can occur in an arbitrarily short period of time.

<comment><USER5> Apparently they define it as noticeable changes in phenotype. I would have guessed speciation.

<comment><USER6> It's hard to define speciation though. If two groups refuse to mate with each other, but they could in a lab, are they speciated? What if artificial semination works but naturally doesn't? Etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Am I the only one wondering if this graduate student has been a graduate student for all 10 years of the study? That is pretty brutal.

</comment><comment><USER8> News at 10: Species adapt within their genetic limitations.

I'm still waiting on that experiment that empirically demonstrates guppies sprouting legs and kicking off an entirely new species of legged creatures.

<comment><USER9> How can species even _have_ genetic limitations? We all have the same code format - DNA - and we all make proteins based on it. Given that any mutation might occur, one genome might evolve to a horrifyingly huge number of children genomes over many, many generations. Deletions and copying allow for potentially any change to be made to the organism, and it will be added to the species' pool if the creature survives. A mutation has to be either useful, neutral, or just present in an otherwise fit organism in order to persist.

And nobody claims that lobe-finned fishes (drastically different fish from guppies) _sprouted_ legs - their fins gradually evolved to allow terrestrial locomotion. If you look at the fin of a coelecanth ([http://www.elasmo- research.org/education/classification/clas...](http://www.elasmo- research.org/education/classification/class_images/coelacanth.gif) \- similar to the ancestors of the first walking animal), you'll submit that it has fins much more similar to webbed feet - which is what the first amphibians had. Evolution is much more gradual than you seem to think we're claiming.

Also, I think it's pathetic that this comment was hidden from the public. Doing that cuts off communication even more than it already has been.

<comment><USER8> _Given that any mutation might occur, one genome might evolve to a horrifyingly huge number of children genomes over many, many generations. Deletions and copying allow for potentially any change to be made to the organism, and it will be added to the species' pool if the creature survives._

Yet again, more conjecture where people are telling me stuff happens without actually ever demonstrating it. This is more pseudo-scientific BSing that produces garbage that sounds reasonable yet can never be tested or validated.

Show me the money. Show me the actual process happening where one genome evolves into a horrifyingly huge number of child genomes. Show me the live mutations where a school of guppies eventually produces guppies with legs. Is it really that hard to ask of science to show me the process that supposedly produces all these results??? Results don't logically indicate a process until a process is shown to produce those results.

Isn't that how we validate scientific theories? We claim a Higgs boson exists, and then we build the LHC to empirically validate that assumption, right?

 _Evolution is much more gradual than you seem to think we're claiming._

I knew people were going to be picky over the word "sprouted", regardless I am well aware that the conjectural claims of Macro-Evolution include an extremely long period of time.

 _Also, I think it's pathetic that this comment was hidden from the public._

That's what happens around here. A bit of legitimate skepticism, people get their beliefs challenged and they drive-by down vote without responding.

<comment><USER10> You clearly have no idea what timescales we are talking about. Think of it like compound interest. Say we start with a 1 dollar and the first year you get a penny back aka 1% compounded annually. Now how much money do you have in 1 million years? ~2 with 4,321 zeros.

Mankind has used evolution to turn wolves into decorative toy's in a few thousand years by selecting who lived and who died. Plenty of "Dog" DNA is new, but we have only recently started to understand the basic building blocks. The theory of evolution existed long before we could look and DNA, and yet DNA completely validated the theory at every level. It just works.

Yet you want more? WHY? What other idea works on every level? Saying "The invisible panda made the world last week" could be true but it gives us no new incite. Yet they theory of evolution is useful when talking about building software, biochemistry, fishing, farming, and buying stock in ways that seem completely unrelated.

PS: The math on evolution is complex and I suspect you are far to stupid to understand it. Yet, the fact you don't understand in no way relates to reality.

<comment><USER9> I wish I could downmod this. Though I agree with you on the topic at hand, your attitude is horrific. Abysmal.

It's sad to see such insulting discourse come from those who claim to seek to educate others.

<comment><USER11> Educating others is only possible if the others want to be educated. Anyone denying "macro-"evolution in this manner is beyond help. Shutting up the ignorant a __holes is the best anyone can do.

<comment><USER9> So much hate. No wonder you don't think you can convince anyone - you hate them too much.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>