Microsoft Co-Founder Paul Allen Hits Out at Gates  - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703806304576232051635476200.html?mod=WSJ_hp_MIDDLETopStories <comment><USER2> Difficult to see how publicizing this stuff could be beneficial for Mr. Allen. At that level, and sitting on top of a multi-billion dollar fortune, it almost never behooves you to say anything negative about anybody -- least of all one of your former partners. I also think complaining about not getting a bigger share of MS stock, when you've got 14 billion in the bank...not exactly the stuff of which Jedi are made.

<comment><USER3> He isn't doing it to benefit himself. He probably doesn't care whether you like him or not, and he definitely doesn't need your money or respect.

I guess Paul just wants the world to know that the image of Gates as our benevolent patron of philanthropy is itself revisionism, lest anyone forget that Bill Gates was one of the least loyal and trustworthy friends a person could ask for.

It doesn't surprise me that HN sides with the victor in cases like this, but I would argue that any serious business person should watch and learn carefully from the lessons of two close friends who changed the world and ended up disliking each other.

<comment><USER4> Bill Gates of 30 Years Ago != Bill Gates of Today

You of 10 Years Ago != You of Today

People change with time, and are not necessarily the same as they were in the past. Forming a collective of ones entire life and cherry-picking various moments simply gives you highlights, both good and bad. They don't speak to what the person is right now.

Probably your best bet to gage someone is to look at what they've been doing recently, going back maybe no more than ~5 years. Here you'll see someone whose learned from their past mistakes, likely acting differently due to life lessons, and are essentially the most authentic "version" of a person they currently are.

<comment><USER5> You are absolutely right, but just because he has changed and the world has forgiven him doesn't mean we should forget his past self. There are still lessons to be learned. And, his philanthropy doesn't justify his past bad behavior.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I feel like I've worked with people like Paul Allen (programmers). They tend to over value their own contributions and have "revisionist histories" when considering their relationship with their manager, but really it comes down to how much recognition they received.

The quote about Paul wanting significantly more shares for his contributions to SoftCard specifically ring true. SoftCard might have been a sales success, but comparing it's impact on Microsoft to Basic itself is a little _off_.

<comment><USER7> It's hardly fair to look back with 30 years of hindsight and say that BASIC was more important to a company than SoftCard. Obviously, we know that _now_ , but that doesn't speak to their specific situation.

<comment><USER8> IIRC, Paul Allen wrote most of Microsoft's original BASIC interpreter... And the emulator they used to develop it.

<comment><USER6> According to Wikipedia, you recall wrong. Gates wrote the interpreter and Allen wrote the emulator:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft#History>

<comment><USER9> The _Vanity Fair_ excerpts have Allen writing the emulator, all the other development tools, the loader, and then he wrote 25% of the interpreter itself: [http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2011/05/paul- all...](http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2011/05/paul- allen-201105?currentPage=3)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is it just me or was Bill's reaction so cordial and professional? I loved it; thought it was great.

 _"While my recollection of many of these events may differ from Paul's, I value his friendship and the important contributions he made to the world of technology and at Microsoft," Mr. Gates said in a written statement._

<comment><USER11> It is exactly the kind of response I would expect from someone in his position. He has nothing to gain by reacting overly negatively, and his legacy is not exactly at stake.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It seems to me the biggest allegation here is that Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer tried to dilute his shares when he was diagnosed with cancer the first time.

I hate to seem callous here, but, that might've completely made sense. God forbid if Allen had died, the company, still pre-IPO startup whose main product was MS-DOS (pre Office or any version of Windows) would want its shares controlled by people with business interests in the company. When you are a startup you want to align incentives properly and yes, people who are unfortunately unable to contribute, even if it's through no fault of their own probably shouldn't have huge amounts of stock.

Besides that allegation I don't really know what else here is that negative on Bill Gates.

edit: MS-DOS not MS-DOC. Mistyped

<comment><USER8> There would be nicer ways to shield the company from that. They could talk to Allen, make sure that, in the possible event of his death, they would take care of his family in case the company succeeded.

In all my commercial ventures, my partners were also my friends. I would never, ever even entertain doing something like this to a perfectly healthy partner, much less one with a serious health problem.

<comment><USER13> Targeted dilution of individual shareholders seems extremely shady. Almost seems like it should be illegal.

As noted by someone else, they should have simply retained first option to buy any portio of Allen's shares in the case where his shares would change hands. Actually that should probably apply to all major insiders.

Intentionally trying to dilute his shares, if this did indeed happen, is tantamount to stealing in my eyes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Cringley's account of Paul Allen's fight against Hodgkin's disease while at Microsoft may be relevant.

[http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2006/pulpit_20060330_0008...](http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2006/pulpit_20060330_000890.html)

<comment><USER15> Cringley's account is very critical of Gates and Balmer, particularly on the subject of getting control of Paul Allen's shares in Microsoft should the worst happen. While this seems very cold-blooded it was probably a reasonable course of action given the circumstances - look what happened to CraigsList when one of the founders sold out to eBay.

<comment><USER11> My interpretation of the article is that Allen felt betrayed because Gates and Ballmer were having these discussions _behind his back_.

<comment><USER16> Exactly, everything should be done above board -- when an unexpected event happens and the outcome is unknown it doesn't hurt to have a contingency plan if stuff doesn't work out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Cringely wrote a piece in 2006 about Allen progressively distancing himself from Gates, Ballmer and Microsoft. It certainly raises questions about Gates' character.

[http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2006/pulpit_20060330_0008...](http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2006/pulpit_20060330_000890.html)

Edit: Beaten to the punch by about 2 hours. Oops.

</comment><comment><USER17> All Ye founders take note and prepare thy operating agreements - for the waters of startups are red with the blood of ye fellow founders!

</comment><comment><USER18> Set agreements in stone as early possible. No matter how much trust there is, and no matter how awkward it may seem.

And I can't help but draw parallels with The Social Network, which incidentally is also an account by an 'ousted' co-founder.

</comment><comment><USER19> See <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2386411> for the Vanity Fair article by Allen.

</comment><comment><USER20> The article makes it out as if Paul Allen is some sort of unlucky, dabbling entrepreneur post-Microsoft:

 _Many of his business investments, like the cable company Charter Communications, software company Asymetrix Corp. and set-top box maker Digeo Inc., have either flopped or fared poorly for him._

I don't think so:

<http://www.vulcan.com/>

</comment><comment><USER21> Admit it, you're more likely to read the book now than you would have been...

He obviously wants his book to be successful (though not for monetary reasons) so it would make senese to write about something controversial - in this case putting Bill Gates in negative light is obviously the easist way to get attention.

</comment><comment><USER22> I always thought that Gates was the key business guy and Allen the key technology guy, Gates made the money and Allen made the product. Once the product was out Allen was no longer required, the ball was in Gates court and he sold the shit out of it. Am I wrong in this view?

<comment><USER11> Cringely's article, as well as Allen's accomplishments outside of Microsoft make that questionable. Gates may have had more business savvy, but it seems pretty evident that Allen was in no shortage of it either. To put it another way, I don't think Allen was to Gates what Wozniak was to Jobs.

<comment><USER22> So then what was Gates contribution? I thought he was a brilliant businessman but that he wasn't really a tech guy. Is that wrong?

<comment><USER23> Gates was/is very much a tech guy. Here is a quote from his Wikipedia article

 _At 13 he enrolled in the Lakeside School, an exclusive preparatory school. When he was in the eighth grade, the Mothers Club at the school used proceeds from Lakeside School's rummage sale to buy an ASR-33 teletype terminal and a block of computer time on a General Electric (GE) computer for the school's students. Gates took an interest in programming the GE system in BASIC, and was excused from math classes to pursue his interest. He wrote his first computer program on this machine: an implementation of tic-tac-toe that allowed users to play games against the computer. Gates was fascinated by the machine and how it would always execute software code perfectly. When he reflected back on that moment, he said, "There was just something neat about the machine." After the Mothers Club donation was exhausted, he and other students sought time on systems including DEC PDP minicomputers. One of these systems was a PDP-10 belonging to Computer Center Corporation (CCC), which banned four Lakeside students—Gates, Paul Allen, Ric Weiland, and Kent Evans—for the summer after it caught them exploiting bugs in the operating system to obtain free computer time._

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> okay, may be Paul could have made a couple of billions more. but lets keep in mind that all that fortune was made for him after Paul left the company. Now he writes the this book trashing his old friend and partner who actually made him rich? To me it looks like this is more of an ego issue for Paul rather than letting the world know truth about Bill.

</comment><comment><USER25> "I'm not sure Bill would ever have dropped out of Harvard if it wasn't for Paul," Mr. Yoffie said, referring to Mr. Allen's role in encouraging Mr. Gates to leave college to start Microsoft. "I don't know whether Steve Jobs, without Wozniak, would have ever gotten things together."

baloney.

<comment><USER26> Without Woz, Jobs would have never even had a product to begin with. Forget having a company, there would have been no reason to _form_ a company.

<comment><USER25> Many companies built personal computers. Only one built the Mac. Jobs would have found someone else. Being able to make things is not as common a skill as knowing how to make things great.

<comment><USER27> My impression was that Woz developed apple 1(which gave apple some funds) by himself(with jobs only encouraging/pushing) and developed a very large of the apple II(which made apple a multi million dollar company) and then not much else. which was one of the first personal computers and was transformational(helping introduce personal computers into the world including a wide variety of clones. Jobs was the team head who designed the first mac(which was transformational in its own way-one of the first gui ) personal computers). At least according to foklore.org a decent number of the brilliant people working for apple on the mac and other projects were there in a significant part because they fell in love with woz's work.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


OpenPhone – Phone system for entrepreneurs - <AUTHOR> https://openphone.co/ <comment><AUTHOR> Been using this for my side hustle, www.ablecells.com and love it.

Pros: \- Answer, text using your 1-800 number. \- Fast \- Frequent updates \- Beautiful UI \- Simple Pricing

Cons: \- Relies on Wifi/LTE so service can be choppy in condos or office building w/out windows.</comment>


Because the banks are insolvent, Obama's TARP will also fail - <AUTHOR> http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9ebea1b8-f794-11dd-81f7-000077b07658.html

<comment><USER2> That article makes some good points, but boy is it chuck full of over the top drama.

No it is not in any way reasonable that the Obama presidency has already failed.

The announced plan isn't much of a plan, it's more of plan for a plan.

The end result could succeed or fail, we don't know yet.

The plan that's being speculated on, will most likely not work, because as stated there's just not enough willing and available capital to save the banks.

But the administration's eventual plan might work.

It feels to me like they are stalling for time.

Who knows their plan A _might_ work, and if it doesn't there's still plan B, a.k.a. what Sweden did.

No one should be surprised that the president isn't whipping out the Swedish solution within weeks of taking office.

Surprise socialism, does not make for a good start of a presidency, not in America.

But bank nationalization might very well still happen.

<comment><USER3> I would like to point out that as long as the situation is stable over time time, it will heal. Banks have "bad debt" that they can't value or sell. It's not the value of their assets are zero they just don't know what that value is so they can't sell it our use it as collateral. However, in time they will either be paid back or they will not and the uncertainty is going to become known. As the risks drop off the financial system will start to recover on it's own. And it's not like we need to wait 30 years for the loans to be paid back or fail, in 5 years inflation will tend to increase home prices and reduce the value of that bad debt.

I think having home prices drop and credit dry up is probably really good for the economy and suspect stimulus money spent on useful infrastructure is a much better use of taxpayers money, but I don't know.

PS: The banking sector was over valued in 2005, assuming it needs to go back to those prices before it's healthy is a mistake.</comment></comment>


Chinese Offer to Eat Denmark's Oyster Problem - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/28/world/asia/china-oysters-denmark.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> Although it sounds like the "eat the oysters" solution here is a joke, the idea of using cuisine to tackle the problem of invasive species is not new. The Lionfish is native to Indo-Pacific waters but is now established as an invasive species in the Caribbean; the NOAA and partner agencies enlisted the help of chefs to publish recipes for cooking these fish, and even convinced the Catholic church to suggest that their Colombian parishioners eat lionfish on Fridays.

<comment><USER3> I mean it absolutely sounds like a great trade opportunity, if the numbers pan out.

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately the numbers are difficult to work out, because hunting lionfish is still predominantly a very labor-intensive activity. Some folks are working on remotely operated unmanned submersibles to factor out the labor. Also missing is a grid of underwater cameras feeding a stream to a back-end object recognition cluster to map out real-time lionfish locations to maximize kill utilization ratios (too much time is spent looking for them instead of killing them).

Bootstrap enough of the industry, then build enough of the submersibles to permanently station around the most sensitive coral reefs and eventually entire islands and coastlines to "fence them off" from future infestations, and push them further out into the ocean where large predators can feast upon them as they have less cover to hide within, if the native oceanic predators can even eat them. There is some suspicion that in the invasive areas lionfish have no natural predators other than humans; sharks, groupers and eels can be trained to expect dead lionfish handouts from divers, but no one has yet documented them start to hunt the lionfish on their own in significant numbers. I would settle for pushing them out into the relative desert of the benthic ocean, and hope they starve out there.

Fortunately, someone has already worked out a filleting robot for haddock, and modifying its pattern recognition for lionfish requires enough a training corpus to make it sufficiently reliable, so once killed they can be quickly prepared and frozen. The most recent research indicates lionfish aren't susceptible to Ciguatera. Unfortunately, lionfish toxins can also sometimes be found in their flesh, so they must be cooked (heat breaks down the toxins), and they can't be introduced into the lucrative sushi and sashimi markets (though I'm sure enterprising sushi chefs will find delicious ways to prepare the cooked lionfish flesh).

Accuracy rates on automated classification of lionfish in live streaming video is so far not revealed in any write ups I've read, and especially false positives (killing fish that the classifier thinks is lionfish but actually are not). That's a significant problem, and also the obstacle that I can't work out to gamifying the killing of lionfish.

The threat of the more capital-intensive automation of industrial-scale lionfish hunting/eradication also presents a challenge to locals who want to break into the market. Not much incentive for the locals to invest into opening the market when they know they could be out of a job within just a few years of establishing a lucrative market to well-capitalized (and often foreign) competitors who can tap more credit than the locals.

Currently, economically beneficial lionfish eradication for the locals is primarily focused upon leading hunts for diving tourists to favored dive spots, and not for systemic, industrial-scale, broad eradication across the entire coastline. Personally, I believe leaving it at this is a mistake, because lionfish represent a threat to our fisheries over the longer term.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > The post instantly electrified Chinese netizens, who always love to flaunt > their centuries-long passion for diversifying food resources. > The proposed > solution was as follows: "Denmark can invent an 'eater's visa' for Chinese > visitors, offering unlimited entries within 10 years for stays of up to a > month each visit. The oysters will be extinct within five years." > "Ha! > Five years? Five months is enough," one user commented.

It's heartening, in a way, to see how fluidly certain interpersonal relations can move across language/culture barriers in this day and age. We really are all alike in many ways after all; maybe it's not yet time to give up on a post-internet era as one that can reach greater heights of intercultural empathy.

Assuming legislation doesn't gut the net.

<comment><USER5> Very true, that's the thought I had when I saw this. Cross-culture dialogue and understanding is very important, and it would be nice to see more and more, especially when it may be threatened by growing nationalism in various countries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Am I the only person not keen to eat Danish shellfish? The Baltic is heavily polluted by all sorts of heavy metals and persistent organic contaminants, and filter feeders are known to accumulate these substances.

In fact, most of the Baltic fish catch already ended up getting exported to Asia as fish meal because it is illegal to use them as feed or fertiliser in EU if the final product is intended for human consumption.

<comment><USER7> They are not from the Baltic. It's the North Sea. More precisely Kattegat, Skagerak and along the western shore.

<comment><USER6> The western shore of Jutland may qualify as the North Sea but the other two regions definitely don't.

Morever, the top layer of the Kattegatt has a much lower salinity compared to the ocean due to significant outflow of warm brackish water from the Baltic, carrying all the pollutants to the North Sea through the Skagerrak.

To be fair, the situation has actually been improving since the late 90s with tighter regulation on effluents, however I'd rather wait another 10 year before this patch of sea clears up itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Seems related to Chinese people looking for imported sea food due to water pollution:

[http://www.bordbia.ie/industry/manufacturers/insight/alerts/...](http://www.bordbia.ie/industry/manufacturers/insight/alerts/Pages/ImportedoystersgrowinginpopularityinChina.aspx?year=2015&wk=13)

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't quite understand... Do the locals or larger Nordic/European populace not eat as many oysters? Why the Chinese versus any other nationality?

<comment><USER10> The problem is lack of demand for this particular oyster in Europe. Otherwise this would be considered a boon for local fisherman. The oysters the article is referring to are of the "giant" variety with many of them being about the size of a human hand (fingers and all).

Not having eaten them myself, I would guess the taste isn't quite the same as their smaller cousins served over ice on the half shell. Also, even if they did taste similar, the sheer size would likely make them unappetizing to even the most adventurous westerners.

The Chinese on the other hand are very familiar with the giant pacific variety and have many traditional recipes for them.

<comment><USER11> Consuming oysters in a larger than usual amounts would result in high amounts of unwanted metals from the polluted sea (mercury etc.) in the body. Oysters are wonderful sea cleaners.

It is better for a larger population to consume them all, instead of a smaller one consuming more per individual.

<comment><USER12> Mercury contamination isn't usually a problem with shellfish because they're so near the bottom of the food chain. It's more a problem with big predatory fish like tuna, because each level of the food chain concentrates the mercury.

However, shellfish are very good at collecting micro-plastics, which is an unknown risk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Fun fact, in Chinese recipe, most of the Oyster species can be cooked in similar ways. So it's easy to let Chinese accept this one. One the other hand, Oyster seems pretty healthy since it contains protein but has few fat and sugar, which amuse young people nowadays.

However, since Chinese people already have several oyster-like species locally, importing this one could probably hurt local fish-men's interests.

<comment><USER14> Fat and sugar are both good for you in moderation; i never got this obsession with chucking entire food groups out the window as if they're the reason you have nutritional issues. The issue is always, always you. Or genetics.

<comment><USER15> You need fat in rather largeish amounts, but I've yet to hear a benefit of eating sugar compared to carbohydrates that are digested more slowly.

<comment><USER14> Well, the main benefit to sugar is that it metabolizes quickly.

<comment><USER16> How is that a benefit to someone living in the modern industrialized world, though?

<comment><USER17> I think it would be best considered as having limited utility, but folks who need a quick sugar boost like diabetics and endurance athletes can take advantage of sugar's characteristics.

<comment><USER18> They can take advantage of glucose. Fructose still needs to processed by the liver, similarly to alcohol.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm not sure the environmental impact of fishing an invasive species to extinction is positive compared to the problems the species itself causes. Especially if you want that venture to be profitable.

<comment><USER3> Could always stop at the point you no longer consider them to be a problem...?

<comment><USER20> It's hard to hit the brakes on a moving train. Still potentially possible.

<comment><USER21> And yet we still use trains and train stations.

<comment><USER20> Point taken. Perhaps I should have referenced Pandora's box.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Having dealt with Chinese tourists in Western US national parks, I'd recommend you just live with the oysters.

</comment><comment><USER23> > "...but for many Chinese, they would not want to eat the oysters without > grilling them with mashed garlic and chili sauce."

At first that sounded gross (I, I guess like the danish, prefer them raw with a little lemon), but now I kind of want to try it. I think I'm going to try to find a place in NYC that serves oysters this way.

<comment><USER24> I live in Japan and I stopped eating raw oysters. The oysters that are consumed in Asia are quite different from the ones that grow in the Atlantic or the Mediterranean. They are just bland when row. They don't have this amazing sea taste that you would find in a "plateau de fruits de mer".

<comment><USER25> There are a great variety of oysters in any sea. Warmer climate facilitate faster growing, colder slower.

If you're eating bland ones are you in warm seas or eating from such? That bland taste happens when anything grows faster. Go up north, same in Western hemisphere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> If someone would do the same for India's stray dog problem, our life would be so much better.

<comment><USER26> Since I got downvoted: More than 20000 people die every year, millions get attacked. They eat old people and children alive.

Just Google "stray dogs India".

<comment><USER27> Ok I did that, and learned:

" A study of dog bite cases conducted at a hospital in Kerala last year showed 75% of the patients had been bitten by pet dogs, and only a quarter had been caused by strays. A 2013 study in 13 Tamil Nadu schools found that pet dogs accounted for more than half of the dog bites suffered by students"

<comment><USER26> Posting again in case my other post gets removed:

Please check out this link: (replace [website] with reddit). [https://[website]/r/india/comments/4yoadk/kerala_senior_citi...](https://\[website\]/r/india/comments/4yoadk/kerala_senior_citizen_attacked_partly_eaten_by_50/d6puufd/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> If oysters are so abundant, why are they so expensive where I live, near the Chesapeake Bay?

<comment><USER29> Different species.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> The Chinese created famine in their country by eliminating sparrows as part of their so-called "Great Leap Forward". It turned out that the sparrows were eating pest insects. Now the Chinese offer to gobble these oysters. Can they be trusted?

<comment><USER31> The same happened in the US west, when ranchers killed all the wolves. In particular, Teddy Roosevelt gave federal protection to the Roosevelt elk, and hunters shot literally all the wolves in their habitat. No wolves meant no check on moose/deer populations, which resulted in overgrazing of certain important flora.

Everybody makes mistakes, and it's hard to tell when the lesser evil is the lesser evil.

<comment><USER32> The difference is that this problem was created by humans in the first place - the oysters supposidely escaped from farms.

<comment><USER33> Whether a problem is "created by humans" has no bearing on what would or wouldn't be a good solution. If the same problem arises without the intervention of humans, why would you treat it differently?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Corporate sponsor for school library app experiment? - <AUTHOR> Note: I'm not necessarily looking for financial sponsorship.
I've created an app to help inject curiosity back into the education system, which I personally think is one of the most urgent problems with the system today.
The app lets kids flip through a wide assortment of literature, poetry, art, science, math, film, music, and more from around the world and across time.
It's meant to live on a tablet placed in a central location in the library/media center, so kids can walk up to it and casually explore whenever they have free time.
For students, it's a refreshing change from typical school curricula, because they get to call the shots and explore what interests them.
For school libraries (average annual budget ~$8k!), a world of quality content is delivered to students in a fun way without costing anything or taking up shelf space.
We need a tablet, stand, and a couple of art supplies. I'm not necessarily looking for financial sponsorship (although that would be nice), but a loose partnership for branding purposes. Right now I'm just a random dude with an app.
You can see a demo here: http://canonofman.com. <comment><USER2> Looks nice. A few things you may want to consider:

1\. Going to the demo site, it really doesn't tell me much about what the app is, does, or what makes it special. Maybe I am missing something, but it's not clear what it is all about.

2\. If I click on the "App" link in the top right, the page has three images of phone screens that all they say is "Preview Coming Soon".

3\. Why only use this in a library? To me the app seems more appropriate to be installed on an individual's tablet/mobile device and let them explore on their own. Some schools are issuing tablets to students now, why not come up with a partnership with the school to have the app pre-installed on the tablet? That to me would seem the more logical approach. Maybe I am wrong, but I just can't imagine a student standing there in the library spending more than 30 seconds on the app.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback! Your considerations are all very appropriate.

1\. The demo site is very bare-bones right now. I had something more informative when I was targeting consumers, but right now, I'm having 1-1 conversations to introduce folks to the idea so the extra context isn't necessary.

3\. I agree. And people really liked the app itself in early tests. But they were clear they wouldn't pay (and that they wanted a native app). So I'm testing institutional appetite now, and libraries are best-aligned with its mission.

Your idea about school-issued tablets is awesome! That didn't even occur to me...I'll have to check that out.

<comment><USER2> No problem, hopefully it helps.

I think from an individual perspective, sales will be tough unless you can address the issue with website not being informative enough. Is it a game or is it just a graphical interface to Wikipedia? The way it is positioned on the site I have no idea, so buying would not be an option for me.

Selling to libraries, again is going to be tough, especially with budget constraints. I am much older than today's generation, but I can tell you this much, unless that tablet played a game that I could play with my friends, the chances of me running to the library just to browse around on it would have been slim. I also think you may run into some of the same issues as with the individual consumer in that it is not clear to me what it does.

Don't discount the power of a website to any market. Even if you are having 1-1 conversations, you still want them to leave the meeting and have a chance to go look at something just as informative, or even more informative. It is human nature to not always be paying 100% attention in meetings, so if they get sidetracked for even a second you want a place they can go and see the app. Maybe even have a demo of the app itself on the site.

My advice, instead of searching around for a sponsor for a tablet, stand, art supplies, I would find a couple history teachers at schools that utilize tablets. Give the teachers the app and get them to install it with their students. Sell them on this being a pilot program and you are looking for feedback. Teachers are going to be your best advocate. If the app is great, they are going to tell other teachers, which is hopefully going to turn into $$$ for you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great points. I'll add back some of my copy and content from the old site.

If libraries buy at all, it'd be sold as an antidote to shrinking budgets: the app would be a way to virtually expand shelves without the expense of paper books, ebooks or shelf space (every book has previews and full text links).

There's a lot of talk right now about libraries and their future in a digital world. I really think libraries will need some kind of a digital interface to browse collections in the future, as search boxes simply aren't enough--we don't always know exactly what we're looking for. I'm not alone in thinking this way. This particular app may not be the final solution to that problem, of course, but it's an attempt.

I understand kids won't flock to libraries just to use this app, but I can see it being a draw while they're already there, kind of like haphazardly browsing bookshelves was for the last generation.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


There's a new way to track startups that are in serious trouble - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/cb-insights-adds-downround-tracker-2016-2 <comment><AUTHOR> Recruiters could use this to find engineers...</comment>


The Great Gist Heist - <AUTHOR> http://russell.ballestrini.net/the-great-gist-heist/

<comment><AUTHOR> I have crawled, downloaded, and archived all of gist.github.com. Please hear my story before jumping to conclusions.</comment>


Seedcamp announces its six winners for 2009 - <AUTHOR> http://uk.techcrunch.com/2009/09/25/seedcamp-announces-its-six-winners-for-2009/

<comment><USER2> I'm so glad someone made a product like ServerDensity. I hope this means I don't have to ever configure Nagios or Munin or Monit again.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I was quite surprised there was no consumer web apps per se, happy to see david mytton on there, server density looks like a great product.

<comment><USER3> I think I was equally as surprised to see Talasim which, as far as I can tell, doesn't really have IP per se -- just content.

I didn't know that simple content providers would even be considered for funding, honestly.

<comment><USER4> it had reasonable traction.

quite a few content providers have taken funding - venturebeat for example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> the age of the founders seem real important in this article. how come ?</comment>


$25,000 Fairlight CMI Synthesizer Coming To iOS - <AUTHOR> http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2011/01/18/25000-fairlight-cmi-synthesizer-coming-to-ipad-iphone/ <comment><USER2> This looks like a good idea. The midi limitation is actually a good thing if you think about it, you can explore different sounds by playing phrases not drawing notes.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is incredible. I remember salivating over the Fairlight many moons ago.</comment>


Microtonal Synthesizer - <AUTHOR> http://offtonic.com/synth/ <comment><USER2> Thx for this. Doesn't work in IE 11, but i'll look at later. On my ticklist is working thru the text by Partch[0] and Don Ellis' quarter tone book, which has sax and (I think) 3-valve trumpet fingerings. The amazon blurb on Partch is interesting, I always assumed he had a traditional Western European theory education.

Ellis book PDF available w/registration and maybe payment [1], maybe archived somewhere on web:

[0] [http://www.amazon.com/Genesis-Music-Creative-Fulfillments- Pa...](http://www.amazon.com/Genesis-Music-Creative-Fulfillments- Paperback/dp/030680106X/)

[1] [http://www.scribd.com/doc/151154827/Don-Ellis-Quarter- Tones#...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/151154827/Don-Ellis-Quarter- Tones#force_seo)

</comment><comment><USER3> For fun with microtonal synthesis, (or just "fretless", depending on your zoom factor), I recommend playing with DIN Is Noise ( [http://dinisnoise.org/](http://dinisnoise.org/) )

Other features include a script api (in Tcl!), support for thousands of simultanious oscillators, a microtonal mouse+kbd interface, and a Bézier editor for the waveform, envelope, etc.

DIN may be next to impossible[1] to use as an actual _instrument_ , but it's still really fun to play with. I would love to see some of DIN's unique ideas (like Bézier envelopes) used in other synths.

[1] The C.C.C.C., MSBR, and TG albums on my shelf suggest "impossible" is merely personal opinion.

</comment><comment><USER4> If anyone is interested in atonal / micro-tonal / quarter-tonal music, check out Wyschnegradsky - he's one of the more prominent composers in this "genre". His compositions are probably one of the gentler introductions into this stuff.

For stuff that sounds (somewhat) micro-tonal but isn't, there is Pictures at an Exhibition - The Hut on Fowl's Legs.

<comment><USER5> I disagree with clumping atonal together with microtonal, they are two completely different things.

Regarding Wyschnegradsky, maybe his music is a gentle introduction into atonal music, I don't know. Compared to other microtonal music though, I find it quite dissonant. Some alternatives I would suggest:

Wendy Carlos' album "Beaty in the Beast", Easley Blackwood's etudes, such as this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odTIoRzbDhA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odTIoRzbDhA) , Sevish's music: [https://soundcloud.com/sevish](https://soundcloud.com/sevish) ,Cryptic Ruse's music: [https://soundcloud.com/crypticruse](https://soundcloud.com/crypticruse), X.J. Scott's music: [http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=141776](http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=141776) ,Prent Rodgers' music: [https://soundcloud.com/prent- rodgers](https://soundcloud.com/prent-rodgers) ,Dante Rosati's music: [https://soundcloud.com/dante-rosati](https://soundcloud.com/dante-rosati) ,Syzygy's music: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3FZkQTn51o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3FZkQTn51o)

And I could go on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Also, many cultures have microtonality as the basis of melody. Makam in Turkish/Ottoman classical music, Qawwali in Pakistani Sufi music, both Carnatic and Hindustani music from Inda, Tuvan from Mongolia, etc. A great recent example is Aphex Twin's most recent album - Syro - which is pretty much end-to-end quarter-tone and microtonally based.

</comment><comment><USER7> [http://offtonic.com/synth/](http://offtonic.com/synth/)</comment>


The Freelance Surge Is the Industrial Revolution of Our Time - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/08/the-freelance-surge-is-the-industrial-revolution-of-our-time/244229/ <comment><USER2> Freelancing is great! It's flexible! It's win-win! But what freelancers really, really need is more oversight, regulation, and goodies from Washington.

Permit me to doubt it.

</comment><comment><USER3> One of the big aspects that often gets overlooked in any discussion about freelancing is the notion of having a cash cushion. One of the comments on the article stressed that we may be moving towards a new culture of frugality/austerity as a byproduct of more people needing to keep cash reserves to deal with the up/down cycle of freelance income. It's a transition that took me a bit of time to make personally, but I'm glad I did it.

off-topic a bit: What's a little odd to me is how much small/medium businesses rely on credit for payroll. I've got a friend at a small business, and they have a credit line they use for payroll every 2 weeks, and they've been worried that their credit line would be reduced, meaning they'd have to lay people off. I've asked around and some other companies do this as well. Is this practice really widespread, or just the few I spoke with?

gentle plug: the indieconf conference for web freelancers can help you adjust to this new industrial revolution :) <http://indieconf.com>

<comment><USER4> It is a worrying sign if they pay wages on credit. Payment to small businesses is erratic generally, and it gives no scope to grow. When I was in this type of business we kept 3 months costs in the bank at all times.

<comment><USER5> I thought most businesses financed payroll with periodic short-term loans? If you can be 100% sure you'll get the credit it's better to put that money to work than have it lying around.

(Then one day the credit dries up and you're hosed, I'm not commenting on the wisdom of the strategy but my understanding was it is standard practice.)

<comment><USER4> If you have regular income and outgoings, and large efficiencies to scale that could make sense, mostly done through factoring, ie credit against invoices, so secured lending. It is less sensible in businesses with more variable cash flows and nothing much to secure borrowing against.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hum. This remind me of the case of a big delivery company a few years ago in France. Basically, all delivery guys were supposedly "freelance contractors" with the big company. Of course all wasn't so rosy in real life because it was just an astute scheme to circumvent employment laws such as maximum hours of work per day or week, minimum wages, unions, etc.

The delivery guys sued en masse and got their contract re-qualified as salaried employees proper.

I'd be wary that actually the "freelance revolution" may be another big jump backwards to the 19th century for workers marketed as a "freedom gain".

<comment><USER7> This happens a lot in the media business, which relies quite substantially on actual freelancers, who tend to be high-priced writers, directors, designers, composers, editors, and so on - many with their own agents.

That large pool of legitimate freelance labor has provided media companies with the cover needed to pass of their regular staff jobs as something other than permanent employment. The cynical (read: accurate) term used by people stuck in these spots is 'permalancing'.

<comment><USER8> I remember a friend from high school who worked as a Production Assistant (PA) in LA. Among other tidbits I heard, like driving across the city for Christina Aguilera's lunch, was the fact that every fourteen days (or maybe it was ten?) most of the entire production staff was fired en masse and then rehired the next day. Otherwise, according to union rules, they had to become part of the union.

<comment><USER5> How could that possibly even work? Was it really just 'you're fired... okay you're hired', or was there a day in between, or what? If the union and the employees had any sense at all they would have called bullshit on that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The article looking good, if a bit fluffy, until it turned into an obvious advertisement for the author's upcoming political manifesto/book/whatchamacallit.

<comment><USER3> One might have thought that, except she posted a couple things around the same time last year, then nothing for almost a year. I got to thinking that perhaps she/they just put out stuff in September :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Although not mentioned in the article, I wonder what will be the role of companies in this freelance world...

If companies are only ever changing groups of freelancers properly gathered to accomplished certain tasks, what will differentiate them? The ability to recruit and pay the most talented freelancers? I'm not sure that will work out on the long run.

As someone already mentioned, many companies are already facing erosion of employee loyalty but not the most successful ones. I 'd argue that those companies that are market leaders don't suffer so much from that problem (mostly) because they are able to instill a set of values and principles across their workforce and this is very hard (maybe impossible) to achieve with freelancers, who easily come and go and are probably much more emotionally detached from their current employer.

I actually believe in this freelancer world, but I also believe there has to be a reinvention of the way companies work in which setting the right balance between culture/brand identity and decentralization/individualism will be critical.

</comment><comment><USER11> Funny, i've been meaning to finish a blog post on this exact same topic. I actually think the freelance revolution will be a reversing of the industrial revolution.

The industrial and neolithic revolutions brought the masses together to form towns and then large cities, where as I believe with the increase of freelancing and e-jobs, along with better remote working environments, people will start to question the high cost of living within a large city.

<comment><USER12> I am not so sure about that, since there is significant social advantages to living in a city.

Though it will properly cut down on the amount of commuting people will have to do.

<comment><USER11> Not that I am disagreeing but would you mind mentioning the social advantages that you are talking about?

<comment><USER12> Face to face conversations [[http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/0...](http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/04/why_facetoface_.html)], bars, theaters, museums, entertainment parks, turist attractions, easy shopping posibilities, etc.

There are many advantages to clustering together that electronics and increased communication simply cannot replace yet (and I doubt it ever will, even video calling feels "phony" somehow).

<comment><USER11> I'm sorry but I lived an extremely rural town for 10 years with <20k people and all of these thing were available. I'm not convinced these are exclusive to cities.

<comment><USER12> Where my grandparents live there is nothing, no school, no shops no bus stop, only a comunity center and a part time church.

20k is a town. 100 people is nothing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I was explaining exactly this phenomenon to a friend, couple of days back. I see this trend inherently tied in with the increasing availability of self- learning resources by virtue of internet and initiatives like OCW, p2pu and others. This makes it possible to break out of the academic mold in which the undergrad/grad degrees put you. This also makes it possible/easier to keep the skills up to date in your chosen field.

I don't know how industrial revolution felt like to those who lived through it, but I am seeing more and more people around me jumping the ship everyday.

</comment><comment><USER14> I fundamentally agree with this article. I think there are two factors at play here 1) Modularization of everything we purchase. Freelancers/contractors give business flexibility to scale up or down as they need to. 2) A continuation of the erosion of loyalty to a corporation.

Our parents generation spent 10-20 years at a job. Our generation spends 2-5 max.

In my view this is great especially for the US because it means that more people get paid for the value they create as opposed to wasting a company's time/money by clocking in from 9-5 and just waiting for Friday to roll around.

<comment><USER3> "Our parents generation spent 10-20 years at a job. Our generation spends 2-5 max."

I wonder if in some ways we're getting just as much done in those 5 years vs the 20 earlier generations spent. Perhaps there's a set amount of work at which people tend to move on (or get laid off) and we're just reaching it faster?

Far-fetched, I know, but still crossed my mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I would say one thing that they miss is the equalization of opportunities between countries. Right now if you are born in the US you have 10 times higher income than if you are born in the Philippines (for equal abilities). In the future, it will get closer to 1 to 1.

Income of highly skilled people in low wage countries will go up and income of low skilled people in the US who are working in areas where low wage countries can compete will go down.

Great that my new business idea is completely built around this trend.

</comment><comment><USER12> Actually it is properly closer to the industrial derevolution because it (and this going to sound marxists but really isn't what they envisioned) it put the tools of production back in to the hands of the workers.

A programmer working on a webapp has all the tools he needs (or may easily get them, often for free) to do the development on his computer. He has to ask nobody for permission and need not (even if he chooses to do so) work for somebody else.

Yes you still need hosting and coffee but those things are commodities (heck coffee is traded on the Chicago mercantile exchange) and the skilled tradesmen of the old needed copper, wood and tools too.

Interestingly enough this also means that the equalization between skilled and unskilled labor which the industrial revolution brought (the unskilled labors never had it better, compared to their contemporaries, than during and after the industrial revolution) has ended -- a person can no longer come out of school, work at the assembly line and expect a good solid middle-class job. At the same time those who take the time (and have the opportunity) to educate themselves can expect to make a pretty good life.

Some part of me feel a little sad that those big machines don't matter as much as they used to, but the rest of me is very happy they don't. I much prefer working with computers to standing in a factory.

<comment><USER11> Let's not forget that the industrial revolution was all about mass production. Read about adam smith and his essay on mass production of the pin for more details. I don't see this freelance revolution as anything close to mass production. Quite the opposite actually.

<comment><USER12> Take any well read blog. It is properly read by more people than have newspaper subscriptions.

The computer is one of the best mass production devices since the steam engine was invented.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There definitely seems to be two things going on:

\- Every year it gets easier to start a new business.

\- Every year big companies provide less job security.

Combine this, and there is a move to free agency.

This is great for people who can find a way to get paid for differentiated skills. It is awful for commodity skills.

<comment><USER12> Honestly this is nothing new. Selling commodities of any kind has alwas sucked unless you can do it at scale (which is basically impossible when the limiting input is ones time).

For a short time industrialization meant that the least skilled could produce as much as the most skilled, but as pg argued that was as special case of a special situation. I know of no case where it has happened before or after, anywere.

If you only have commodity skills, the best thing you can do is to go down to the nearest community college.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> No benefits or job security is an industrial revolution? For the companies, maybe...

</comment><comment><USER18> The downside is that this comes with a growingly prevalent risk. An individual is more likely to be a successful actor in sabotage and espionage, and harder to put trust on, than an established company. As this "gig economy" grows, I anticipate that freelancing individuals will to a greater and greater extent be approached with offers as well as deployed on purpose for this kind of work, as a form of incidental spy. That said, being a freelancer myself, I definitely see more than just the negative aspects of the freelancing revolution.

</comment><comment><USER5> It remains to be seen whether this evens the playing field between employer and employee or not. I suspect not. It is certainly a great way to get out of health care costs, etc., although to be fair a lot of regular jobs don't pay that sort of thing anymore either.

This doesn't seem to be leading toward a more organized workforce with regard to compensation. That's probably not a good thing. There seems to be some opportunity here though for an enabling technology to work that out, but I don't know what it would be yet.</comment>


Ask HN: Are certain languages/skills better for remote work? - <AUTHOR>

So I'm looking to get a part-time, remote job in web development.  I've spent the last year on .NET after graduating, and while I'm not thrilled about it, my skills are strong.  Unfortunately for me, I have two interests in my life: theater and coding.  While the combination worked really well in college, it's been very hard to balance them both after graduation.  I'd like to be able to audition for shows, performances, and commercials, which take place during the typical 9 to 5 work period, as well as havethe freedom to follow the work.I'm looking for some advice on what to work on in the next few months that would allow me to pursue both of my interests professionally.<p>In particular, I've gotten the impression that the Ruby on Rails community is big on remote work. Obviously you can do remote work in any language, but in your experience, is it true that it's easier to find remote work with some languages and skills? If so, which ones? <comment><USER2> I've been working remotely for the past 3 years, so I feel qualified to give you some advice here.

Don't go for remote work simply because you think it will give you the flexibility to sneak out during core business hours to pursue hobbies or personal interests.

Remote workers have to work extra hard to fight the stigma that we are slacking off at home in our PJs and not doing any real work. Our output is measurable and often scrutinized by in-office management teams that are always looking to stack and rank employees to dole out raises/bonuses. Personal biases come into a play a lot and human nature is hard to fight for many people in our industry, especially those that are naturally distrustful. Disappearing in the middle of the day can actively harm your employment as a remote worker in such organizations.

That being said, you should be able to work out something with your manager regardless of your location so that you can go to auditions, as long as you make up the time later. Focus on organizations that support this, not whether they have remote workers or not.

Another option is to focus on consulting roles where you make it clear with your clients that your availability during the day will shift. You may not make as much money or have as much stability, but you're more likely to have the flexibility that you need to pursue acting.

I can put you in touch with one of my coworkers, who's an Android developer in LA and has done a few TV shows in the past as an actor. He can probably give you some good advice on finding a balance to pursue both. My email is in my profile.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER3> Ruby, Python, JavaScript, & PHP seem to be the languages where there is an abundance of opportunity for remote work, at least in my little webdev bubble.</comment>


Pixel Security - <AUTHOR> https://security.googleblog.com/2016/11/pixel-security-better-faster-stronger.html <comment><USER2> Just FYI in case anyone is considering buying a Pixel: I strongly urge you not to. [http://kasrarahjerdi.com/2016/11/dont-buy-anything-made- by-g...](http://kasrarahjerdi.com/2016/11/dont-buy-anything-made-by-google/)

They have no Google provided support, if you drop the phone and break it your only option (if you didn't buy the third-party warranty upsell) is to take it to a repair shop. I called the ones near me, none had seen or touched the device before.

Don't spend $800 on a phone that you can't send back to the manufacturer to repair.

Edit: I originally said "they have no warranty" and people seem to have understood that as "they don't provide free repairs" \-- what I'm trying to say is that this phone is supposedly a competitor to Apple, but if you break it you can't walk to the Apple Store and ask them how much it'd be for a repair. You can't send it in the mail to them either. You have to go to an authorized third-party repair shop. That does not sound like first-class flagship $800 product support to me.

<comment><USER3> Have you ever tried to get something Apple branded repaired when it is out of warranty?

The repairs tend to basically cost as much as it would to buy the same item refurbished regardless of the issue.

SSD died on your MacBook air selling for $500 on eBay? That will be a $450 repair sir.

Sure, they may have manuals and everything else at the Apple store, but there is very clearly a reason why companies like iCracked and iFixIt exist, and it isn't because Apple offers such a wonderful and affordable repair shop.

It would be great if Google offered a way to get the phone repaired through them, but using Apple as an example of how it should be is a bit insane to me.

<comment><USER4> So this happened to me. My 2012 retina MacBook Pro battery was dying. Which makes sense, I used it every day for over four years.

I figured I could take it to Apple for a battery replacement. They said they would do it — for $900. They told me it involved replacing the entire bottom half of the computer as the battery was glued in.

So I called their support line and complained that the laptop was perfectly fine and it shouldn't cost that much to replace a battery. They ended up replacing it for free, as well as the screen (because they identified that the anti-reflective coating was starting to wear). So while the policy was ridiculous, the actual outcome was very positive.

<comment><USER5> > $900. They told me it involved replacing the entire bottom half of the > computer as the battery was glued in.

WTF? This is nonsense.

Apple prices for battery repairs are clearly outlined on their web site[0]. This has always been what I (or relatives/friends/coworkers) paid for France[1] when I had to change a battery.

[0]: [https://support.apple.com/mac- notebooks/repair/service/prici...](https://support.apple.com/mac- notebooks/repair/service/pricing)

[1]: [https://support.apple.com/fr-fr/mac- notebooks/repair/service...](https://support.apple.com/fr-fr/mac- notebooks/repair/service/pricing)

<comment><USER4> That is the _exact_ page I used to argue my case with Apple on the phone. I said it was misleading that the price given to me at the Apple store was so much higher than what was listed on their website.

They told me that those prices are the _service_ pricing, but do not include parts. And because the entire lower-half of the laptop needed to be changed in the rMBP model, the total cost would come to about $900 AUD.

The actual item listed on the repair invoice is "Top Case Assembly with Battery" @ $562.73 and the "Hardware Repair Labor" charge is listed at $289 AUD.

Did you ever have friends or relatives change the battery in a retina MacBook Pro? Apple cannot remove the battery because it is glued into the lower case assembly. And so when I got my machine back from Apple the trackpad, keyboard, and lower aluminium chassis was brand new (however the bottom plate, logic board, and internals were the same).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Google security is so strong, they'll even lock you out of your own account when changing cities, with no chance to get it reinstated :

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/5dif8j/psa_google_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/5dif8j/psa_google_can_lock_your_account_forcing_you_to/)

<comment><USER7> [http://www.slashgear.com/pixel-phone-flipping-scheme- googles...](http://www.slashgear.com/pixel-phone-flipping-scheme-googles- statement-on-a-ban-hammer-17464528/)

Looks like Google is reinstating accounts.

<comment><USER8> Good, now whenever I need tech support, all I need to do is get my gripes published in a global news site and trend on Hacker News so I can get Google to respond to me...

<comment><USER9> And this is exactly why I am currently migrating to fastmail...

<comment><USER10> Should be enough to use Gmail with your own domain (and regular backups)? In that case you can still use all Google services but have an easy migration in the (still unlikely) case they lock you out

<comment><USER9> Yeah, I just migrated all my mail over night and connected my gmail account with my fastmail account. Works great!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I would really love to see Google tackle fixing the security problems presented by the radio chip. A closed source esoteric firmware full of vulnerabilities that has DMA on your primary CPU and is remotely exploitable by state and private actors? Not to mention that it's an entry point into a device that's always on your person, has all of your contacts, emails, text messages, and phone calls, and has a GPS module in it. The radio is a _huge_ problem and dramatically outweighs any other security concerns on a phone imo.

<comment><USER12> I have been told that the baseband stack is so large and complicated (and of course buggy) that has to run in a virtual environment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "We then modified the inline encryption block driver to pass this to the hardware. As with ext4 encryption, keys are managed by the Linux keyring. To see our implementation, take a look at the source code for the Pixel kernel."

It doesn't sound like they got these changes into mainline. They link here to their source: [https://android.googlesource.com/kernel/msm/+/android-msm- ma...](https://android.googlesource.com/kernel/msm/+/android-msm- marlin-3.18-nougat-dr1/fs/ext4/crypto_key.c)

From that file:

        /* TODO(mhalcrow): Just for proof-of-concept */

WHOOPS!

</comment><comment><USER14> Isn't the pixel the phone that was just pwned inside 60 seconds by security researchers?

And doesn't google have a terrible track record of releasing data to federal agencies?

So, aside from purchasing a phone that is built by data-mining, internet advertising giant, google can't even begin to make the claim that they value user security.

<comment><USER15> "pwned in 60 seconds" is a hugely misleading statement. Every time there's a hacking competition you see "Chrome, Firefox, IE fall in seconds" \- ignoring the weeks or months that it takes to find the vulnerabilities and develop exploits for them.

<comment><USER16> It's not misleading, the issue is that your actual phone could be actually compromised in 60 seconds time, not some giant period of guessing and trying or cracking a complicated crypto scheme. The research time isn't material to the severity of the threat at the time of attack.

<comment><USER15> The vast majority of exploits of that nature take less than 60 seconds. It is nothing at all interesting or special or rare that it took < 60 seconds. Just clickbait, like every year when pwn2own rolls around.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Kinda neat they link directly to some source code in a blog post.

</comment><comment><USER18> I trust this as far as I can throw it. Trustzone is at best as secure as the Trustzone secure world kernel, Qualcomm supplies that code (even in the Pixel AFAIK), and the Qualcomm secure world kernel is notoriously poorly written.

<comment><USER19> It would be great if someone built some non-qualcomm phones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Countries with stronger consumer protection laws should have much less of an issue with warranties. My father dropped his Nexus 5 about 11 months after he bought it and Google provided a replacement really promptly.

</comment><comment><USER21> While all devices have security issues, not too comforted by this:

[http://thehackernews.com/2016/11/google-pixel-phone- hacked.h...](http://thehackernews.com/2016/11/google-pixel-phone-hacked.html)

<comment><USER12> Wait, so you mean security issues were found in a security conference where google pays top dollar to researchers who find security issues so Google can fix them ASAP?

Why is that a bad thing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I have not seen so many gotos in many many years. I guess it's the programming model in this case. I am sure this bit of code is going to be audited quite closely.

<comment><USER23> The use of goto in C for error and exception handling is good practice. It keeps the code easy to read, and also provides common code for error and/or exit handling. You'll see this paradigm used a lot in large open source C projects, such as the Linux kernel and QEMU.

In my experience, a lot of closed source C projects ban goto outright, in (IMO) an overly dogmatic adherence to the idea that all goto use is spaghetti code and therefore bad.

<comment><USER22> I have used them myself for error handling many times many years ago. When you don't have exceptions and longjmp scares the shit out of you, gotos for error handling are fine by me too. I agree, dogmatic banning of them precludes the useful case of error handling but it is a slippery slope that they seem to be already sliding with got_key:.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Is this meant to be a sort of _generic_ response to this issue? (which they still don't seem to be addressing here)

[https://plus.google.com/u/0/+DeesTroy/posts/R7V3knn3f1s](https://plus.google.com/u/0/+DeesTroy/posts/R7V3knn3f1s)

Or perhaps to this?

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/11/11/google_pixel_pwned_i...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/11/11/google_pixel_pwned_in_60_seconds/)

Still waiting on Google to at least match, if not surpass, Apple's long-term support in regards to updates (which is about twice as much what Google offers right now, even though the Pixel has identical prices to the iPhones, at every level).

</comment><comment><USER25> Pixel/Google does not motivate a threat model under which to evaluate or understand their design and marketing promises, but we can take a hint from "protects your data if your phone falls into someone else's hands." \- Namely thefts of opportunity.

Unlike other phone manufacturers, Google does not promise potential customers that your data will be protected from Google, it's partners and from law enforcement and mass surveillance programmes.

Therein this product doesn't provide a stronger security posture that competitors - and furthermore it's threat model and security properties do not meet what are in my opinion minimal reasonable requirements.

<comment><USER26> >Unlike other phone manufacturers, Google does not promise potential customers that your data will be protected from Google, it's partners and from law enforcement and mass surveillance programmes.

Are you referring to Apple? Because they don't promise that either.

<comment><USER25> I used the term 'motivate' specifically because of the PR language intending for customers to evaluate the Apple product as something that could be used by those who need to use their phone for private and/or sensitive reasons.

Apple of course backdoors their phones for government surveillance access. But they do motivate a threat model that includes government surveillance.

I know parsing my comment in this way may seem difficult, but I used the terminology I did on purpose.

There are no illusions that Apple achieved the security properties that it has motivated.

Google Pixel does not even pretend to address the security concerns of journalists, politically active citizens, IT professionals, or individuals contacting attorneys.

<comment><USER27> > Apple of course backdoors their phones for government surveillance access.

Nice job slipping a completely unfounded lie into your response.

Starting with iOS 10, you can actually just mount the root filesystem disk image from iOS restore images. You are able to reverse engineer and audit any application or daemon that the OS runs. You can use open source tools (Such as idevicerestore) to perform an OS restore on your device, and point it directly at the filesystem disk image that you just audited the binaries of. That way you can be sure of what is being flashed onto your device if you have any doubts that the OS you just audited is the one going onto your device. No "blackbox" at all in this process.

I am looking forward to hearing any form of evidence regarding your claim.

<comment><USER28> How can you say you're able to audit any application or daemon without viewing the actual source code? Case in point - if the sslKeyExchange.c code had not been published the "goto fail" bug would likely still be in the wild.

<comment><USER29> Reverse engineering tools like IDA can be used to audit closed source code. However, this takes significantly longer than reading source code, and it's not exactly feasible to audit the entire operating system for something (hypothetically) intentionally hidden.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> meanwhile we still have to deal with a SIM and the baseband is a whole other clusterfuck entirely...

Can the users actually get the keys to their own stuff?

</comment><comment><USER31> And as a bonus, if you onsell it, we'll wipe your Google account without warning.

<comment><USER10> No, we'll block your account if you never wanted to own the phone, but ordered it directly to a reseller to make money. We block the account because it's a violation of the ToS you agreed to.

However, we reinstate the account after a few days. [1]

[1] [http://www.slashgear.com/pixel-phone-flipping-scheme- googles...](http://www.slashgear.com/pixel-phone-flipping-scheme-googles- statement-on-a-ban-hammer-17464528/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Sorry - not post related:

#2 spot on HN, 2 comments, submitted 28 minutes ago.

Is this normal? Never seen that happen on HN before. Just curious

<comment> et-al ^ commenter shouldn't be downvoted for this.

<comment><USER33> For making an irrelevant, overly paranoid comment?

<comment> et-al You don't find it strange at all that a post with only 2 points in the past 28 minutes shot up to the front page on a weekday afternoon?

My only answer is that what's displayed doesn't necessarily match what's used for the ranking--that there may be some sort of lag. But yes, it could be possible too that somehow one can bump up their posts through other means.

The original commenter even mentioned this as an aside. If another reader didn't like it, they could've collapsed it.

<comment><USER33> I don't find it _relevant_. Given that the front page of HN doesn't 'directly' cater to what I want to read, it may as well just be random for all the difference it makes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Does android still backup WiFi passwords in plaintext?

</comment><comment><USER35> Encryption is all well and good but I feel like Google's handling of root causes a lot of issues.

There are a lot of pretty basic things (like ad blocking or monitoring battery usage) that require root, which severely impacts the security of the device.

EDIT: Okay, I stand corrected on ad blocking. Access to detailed battery stats however is locked behind the BATTERY_STATS permission which isn't accessible to anything except for system apps. That aside, there are other basic things like backup that also require root.

<comment><USER36> Not true for either of them.

Apps can use the VPN API to do ad blocking without root, and there are tons of ways to do more battery monitoring without root, like the built in battery monitoring...

<comment><USER35> > there are tons of ways to do more battery monitoring without root

Sorry, I mean more than the built in monitor, which is largely useless.

There is no API through which I can enumerate wakelocks, CPU usage, GPS usage, mobile radio traffic and activity, wifi radio traffic and activity or screen on/off time without system level permissions (i.e. built into the ROM). Therefore, there's no way for these things to be exposed to me as a user.

There used to be a permission called BATTERY_STATS but it was removed years ago and Google has been utterly unreceptive to reinstating it: [https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=61975](https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=61975)

And of course there's a bunch of apps on my device (Pixel) that have that permission such as Qualcomm's CNE app, Play Services (com.android.vending), another Qualcomm package (com.qualcomm.qti.auth.secureextauthservice) and a bunch of other Qualcomm packages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Given recent news about mass surveillance, it's important to note that Pixel's security model does not and can not seek to protect your data for use for private messaging, conversation with attorneys, for journalists, or to organize for political reasons.

If you are interested in a communications device that can be used for any of these things, Pixel's security model will not cover you and you will need to look for an alternative product.

<comment><USER36> Why are you posting a very similar comment multiple times?

<comment><USER25> The two comments have significantly different content.

For those curious here is the other comment in question: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12982502](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12982502)</comment></comment></comment>


Fake Chicken Worth Eating - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/opinion/sunday/finally-fake-chicken-worth-eating.html?_r=1&ref=opinion <comment><USER2> Not a single mention here of the health implications of eating manufactured vs real food?

<comment><USER3> This is your opportunity to educate us all then, bub. What are the health implications of eating manufactured vs real food?

Start with: What constitutes 'manufactured' vs 'real'. Draw a line in the sand here. Is pasta 'manufactured'? What about cornflakes? Quorn? What is the Quorn is labelled as 'Organic'? How about a hamburger made with steak mince? What about if it's steak and tendon mix? What about if bone meal is added? Where's the line?

Having established this, move on to well established science - peer-reviewed papers in reputable journals. We want to hear from your research on those health implications. Is a steak-meat burger more dangerous for you than one from bone meal due to red-meat carcinogen factors? Or is there something else at work there? What in the 'manufacture' of food is problematic? Mislabeling? Mechanical treatment? Additives (which?)?

Thanks in advance!

<comment><USER2> My point is that if the article is asserting that "fake chicken" is worth eating, some coverage of the heath implications of doing so would be warranted in my view.

I am merely commenting on the article and as such I don't feel the need to "educate us all". I most certainly have my opinions about these things, but I wouldn't start boring the world with them on HN. Besides, I have work to do for the rest of the week :-). If however I was writing an article for the NY times, I think I might have mentioned the health angle.

<comment><USER3> You are implying that there is a health angle to be covered in eating 'meat' made from tofu and friends, which is far from clear.

<comment><USER2> I have just finished <http://perfecthealthdiet.com/> which is probably the most comprehensively research backed book (that's also easy to read) on nutrition I've read. (I include the excellent Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes in that comparison). The PHD book lists soy as a toxin..

Based on everything that I've read, I have formed the opinion (which has changed somewhat over time) that it's better to eat naturally occurring foods, that saturated fat isn't harmful and that manufactured foods should be avoided.

Now I could well be subject to confirmation bias: most things I read on nutrition nowadays tend to lean towards the paleo point of view. However, I'm confident enough in the balance of evidence that I'm now switching over the the type of diet outlined in PHD (not that I was that far away before).

And yes I am implying that there's a health angle in contrasting eating meat with eating not meat. By definition they're different things so there must be implications in that... I certainly come down on the meat side, but I'd be interested to learn of evidence to the contrary too.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Red Programming Language 0.3.2: REPL release - <AUTHOR> http://www.red-lang.org/2013/03/032-repl-release.html

<comment><USER2> If somebody like me is wondering what Red is about, here is a link to PDF slides that explains it:

<http://static.red-lang.org/Red-SFD2011-45mn.pdf></comment>


Why I Don't Work In Information Security - <AUTHOR> http://al3x.net/2008/12/31/why-not-infosec.html

<comment><USER2> Security starts at home. Twitter avoids the security pissing match all together by not providing remote keys for users to give to third-party sites, encouraging the distribution of passwords, which should be private.</comment>


How 'Critical User Journeys' can help a product take off - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/initialized-capital/what-to-do-if-your-product-isnt-growing-7eb9d158fc <comment><USER2> This is sound advice, but not new advice. A couple of things that jumped out at me -

Yes, yes, 1,000x when it comes to the importance of simplicity. It's far too easy to unknowingly distract yourself and your users from what is important in your product.

My criticism is that this pays very little attention to how important it is to get to know who the people are you are attracting at the top of your funnel. It's tempting to reduce your acquisition funnel down to the level of "here's how many people we dumped in the top, and here is the % rate at which they activated." The truth is a lot more complicated. Too many people overlook this and optimize for what is working, which puts you at risk of unknowingly niching down into a small portion of your addressable market.

<comment><USER3> Great point. Responding to feedback from the 'wrong' customers kills so many products/startups.

This is the point of methodologies and techniques like Customer Development, Ideal Customer Profiles, and good ol' fashioned business modeling.

<comment><USER4> >Responding to feedback from the 'wrong' customers kills so many products/startups.

That's something I wonder about with Show HN. Aren't many of us on HN inherently the 'wrong' customer for any product or service that aspires to be mainstream?

Famously, for example, 10 years back, some of the comments when @dhouston submitted "My YC app: Dropbox - Throw away your USB drive" [1] pretty strongly indicated 'wrong' customer.

I won't pull out the comments, because: 1. I don't want to make it personal & 2\. It's with the benefit of hindsight.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863)

<comment><USER5> Exactly, powerusers are in many ways actually terrible customers because

1) They are ok with using worse/harder solutions because they know how to use them.

2) They don't like to pay for things.

3) They are much more technically adept than the general population.

4) There aren't that many of them compared to the general population.

5) They skew towards 20-35 years old, white/asian men with good income.

For example, this startup: [https://unlockd.com/](https://unlockd.com/) pays you (via phone bill discounts) to watch ads on your phone after you unlock it. It had raised $17m as of May. I first thought it was the dumbest idea ever, but then I realized that this was because _I_ would never use it. In fact, I couldn't even see my friends using it. That doesn't mean others might not.

<comment><USER6> Power-users are not good proxy's for broad markets. But then aren't there markets where power users are the bulk of users and are actually willing to pay?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This article seems very similar to "Jobs to Be Done": [https://hbr.org/2016/09/know-your-customers-jobs-to-be- done](https://hbr.org/2016/09/know-your-customers-jobs-to-be-done)

<comment><USER8> Nice to see this here. I have spent a lot of time over the last year or so studying this. myself and the rest of our UX team did a three day JBTD seminar last year. Very valuable in shifting your perception of how to create stuff that adds value in people's lives. I highly recommend it for any person building software, as well as Outcomes-Driven Innovation which offers a great framework for making new things and figuring out empirically what users (or "the market", whatever) are asking for.

<comment><USER9> I'm curious to see what improvements to your workflow and to the experience you have seen. I'm open to anecdotes but I'd love some metrics if you have any.

<comment><USER8> I can't give specifics since I'm no longer with that company and even a cursory search of my profile here could put 2+2 together, but using an outcomes-driven framework survey (~150 respondents, we were a niche industry so this was a huge sample size) we were able to add critical new features to our roadmap that were opportunities we never saw before. By using the formula in that book you are able to objectively determine underserved portions of the market "I really need the ability to do X, and currently am very dissatisfied with my ability to do so with my existing setup". And by using numbers, which is cool.

More on the research methodology here: [https://medium.com/envato/a-step-by- step-guide-to-using-outc...](https://medium.com/envato/a-step-by-step-guide- to-using-outcome-driven-innovation-odi-for-a-new-product-ded320f49acb). I realize this seems a bit OT from the original comment, but Jobs to be Done and ODI are the same authors and they are intimately tied together philosophically

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> To me, it's sad that this isn't just called "software design". If you aren't building software to solve your users' problems, why are you building anything at all?

<comment><USER11> Because often a software application is many things, with alot of features and power.

The people who design and build it understand the entire picture and can see the value (hopefully).

It can be very hard from the position of totally understanding a system, to put yourself in the shoes of someone encountering it for the first time, and it can be hard to see what they see when they first use it, and it can be hard to empathise with their journey through learning the software application that you have built.

This is an incredibly valuable article because it helps people who have built systems to put themselves in the shoes of their users - that is not an intuitive skill.

<comment><USER12> Another problem that we faced at my little startup is the public perception of our product is different that what the product really can do.

As an example, we are somewhat known as an "online therapy" company, while we do offer that capability, that's just a tiny part of the value we provide customers (behavioral health private practice professionals.)

And as a previous commenter said, you have to be careful listening to feedback that might inadvertently "over-niche" your product thus losing out on a larger market. As a result we've been careful to onboard users in such a way that "online therapy" isn't the headliner feature being presented while still being responsive to those that find us because of online therapy-related organic traffic.

Marketing and "framing the solution in a meaningful way" is the toughest challenge there is. For us, the tech is the easy part, it's the damned psychology of the users that keep me up at night – which is funny to me because our customers are psychologists/therapists/behavioral health pros.

<comment><USER13> We face the same problem in an even more niche market. It seems to be very hard for customers to understand that a product can have more than one use and that the first use they think of is not the only use.

We haven't solved this problem, but our current thinking is focused towards splitting up the application into separate offerings solving one thing at a time - ultimately a worse solution for the customer, but one with a lower cognitive load.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> As we've been discussing the user/customer life cycle quite a bit now, to take a closer look and know more about a specific customer/company, we need a tool that does more than just showing where users clicked, focused and similar.

Zarget's Session Replay is one such feature that captures and plays the user path without any flaw in the user usage patterns. Importantly, having the hold of real-time user interaction data will help us conceive when and why the losses are happening. And with such strong insights it gets easier to fix any conversion funnel (regardless the type business you're in).

Perhaps, employing a session replay tool to map out the critical customer journeys is the only possible step we could take to fix this issue.

Whether we dogfooded? Yes, we ran recordings within our product. It busted many myths on users' behavior and needs, as we were able to track our own journey as a customer. And we were able to make changes to customer's onboarding process and do tweaks based on the findings. Now our product managers know how users interact inside our app and don't make any guesswork on how users will adopt a feature. Also, our product folks can't live without Session Replay anymore.

[https://zarget.com/features/session- replay.html](https://zarget.com/features/session-replay.html)

<comment><USER15> Can this session replay deal with secured fields like credit cards? e.g. during the replay don't record the credit card field

I'm just wondering how any technology like this would work in a PCI compliant environment.

<comment><USER14> We take security and privacy seriously. We don't track any sensitive data including Credit card numbers, CVV, passwords etc., Zarget cleverly tracks these fields and masks those details while it is recorded in a session. Hence, the user can be assured that their payment details are secured and safe.

[https://docs.zarget.com/v1.0/docs/handling-sensitive- data](https://docs.zarget.com/v1.0/docs/handling-sensitive-data)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Monitor websites for changes and send scraped data to a webhook - <AUTHOR> https://monitoro.xyz/?ref=hn <comment><AUTHOR> Hello HN, Monitoro is a service I built to watch websites for changes, scrape data, and whenever the data changes, send it to a webhook of your choice. 2 months ago, I shared this project on Hacker news and got a very warm reception.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21398524](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21398524)

Since then, I have learned a lot in this space and from usage patterns from our several hundred users, as well as extended research and insights from veterans in the industry.

I refined the concept (including much requested premium plans), added Chrome rendering and included a programmable layer in Javascript, and would love to hear your feedback on it!

For an overview of the changes, take a look here: [https://monitoro.xyz/whatsnew](https://monitoro.xyz/whatsnew)

</comment><comment><USER2> There seems to be a lot of competition of other people doing this. What is special about yours?

<comment><AUTHOR> Could you please refer which competition you have in mind exactly?

We're laser focused on extracting data, transforming it and sending it to webhooks.

No other service to our knowledge achieves a similar result with the same (low) effort required by Monitoro.

Beyond that, our focus really is to be a trigger to your automations, and in that regard expect more specific functionality targeted at this space, beyond what we are providing already.

<comment><USER3> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21781869](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21781869) recently posted...

<comment><AUTHOR> We're barely out of the MVP stage, but I already see at least two major differences:

\- Javascript based custom transformations

\- Specific focus on Webhooks (we're compatible out of the box with Slack, Google Chat, Discord and really whatever else has a webhook API)

Not everything that says "Change tracking" is the same product.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


DeepFlight – High Performance Personal Submarines - <AUTHOR> https://www.deepflight.com/ <comment><USER2> In contrast to renault articles, it looks like someone is disrupting the narcosub market..

</comment><comment><USER3> "The DeepFlight Dragon starts at $1.5 million and will make its public debut at the Monaco Yacht Show on September 23. " This is from 2015.

<comment><USER4> What's scarier? The price or the belief that there's a large enough market for this at that price?

<comment><USER5> $1.5MM isn't that much on the scale of boats. That much will get you a 16-20 m (50-65 ft) yacht.

<comment><USER4> Yeah... Nope... Wake me when I can buy a zeppelin (no, not a blimp, a zeppelin, and throw in a monocle too) for that price because zeppelins.

<comment><USER6> I'll build you a Zeppelin for 1.4m. Do you want plain glass, a prescription or a smart lens for the monocle?

<comment><USER7> Its gotta be an AR monocle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Submarines actually move through the water more efficiently than surface ships, according to my Naval Engineering class: they don't lose energy supporting a huge wave field on the surface due to a wake and hence experience less drag. [1]

If they are so efficient, why not use them for transporting freight? Buoyancy limitations make them impractical compared to container or tanker ships.

[1] [https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20121128040136A...](https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20121128040136AAexMJE)

<comment><USER9> Can you elaborate on the nature of the buoyancy issue? It seems to me that as a container is considerably less dense than water (container ships being mostly above water), you could just add ballast. Is the problem simply that too much ballast would be required to be practical?

I've sometimes wondered why sea gliders are not used for cargo. Sure they're slow but the power requirements are so minimal they can actually run off thermal gradients in the ocean, which must make the operating costs absurdly low.

<comment><USER8> I'm not an expert in this field, but I did take a class in Naval Engineering while I was an undergraduate (Math/EE/CS). When the class learned of the efficiency of submarines this very question was posed to the professor and he explained that buoyancy issues were the problem. (He was a full professor of Naval Engineering at MIT so I believed him.)

A few back of the envelope calculations are revealing. A very large container ship can carry an enormous amount of freight, around 200,000 Metric Tons. A modern, nuclear submarine, say of the Ohio class, has about 18,750 Metric Tons of total displacement so it would have to find a way to carry ten times as much weight as the weight of the entire submarine. Then on a return trip, when empty, it would have to have enough ballast equal to this weight that would then need to be discarded where it picked up freight. There probably is a way to do this, but I can easily imagine that the design issues result in a submarine less practical than a container ship.

Interestingly, I recently got to visit the aircraft carrier the USS Nimitz while it was underway out in the Pacific. That was an exciting day; subsequently, I looked up more information about that ship. These nuclear aircraft carriers are believed to be the fastest ships in the US Navy. Submarines (although not actually a part of the carrier group of ships that surrounds, travels with, and protects the aircraft carriers) travel hidden and independently along with the group. They scout ahead and hunt other submarines. To be able to travel with the carriers they must be very fast, faster than the official, unclassified numbers (about 25 knots). One source on the Internet says that they can travel at over 40 knots (74 km/h or 46 mph).

I think sea gliders are fascinating. I am curious about where that technology will go.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I like the idea behind the Super Falcon model: fixed positive buoyancy with an inverted wing design.

Like a plane, but with gravity replaced by buoyancy and the Y axis inverted so the wings "lift" you down.

<comment><USER11> Why not zero buoyancy, and using some kind of expanding airbag for emergency floatation?

<comment><USER12> Typically people would use drop weights for emergency floatation, as that's more reliable.

<comment><USER9> The CSS Hunley used this design, to no avail. It's not clear what went wrong but I think the larger point to draw is that such a system requires positive action, with more things to go wrong; it is "fail-deadly". Positive buoyancy and dive planes are "fail-safe" \- you stop, you float.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> They should make the first banner video they show "steady", using some kind of video editing software. It's not super-shaky, but it made me very very slightly queasy for a second, and I can't be the only one. What if one of the sufferers happens has $1.5mil to spend?!

Reminds me of SeaQuest DSV. The "Gazelle" (aka "Stinger"), a personal high- speed submarine craft.

</comment><comment><USER14> What do these things cost?

<comment><USER15> According to some other comments, around the $1.5 million mark.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Light gray text on slightly darker gray background is pretty hard to read, at least for me on this iPhone.

<comment><USER17> Looks fine to me on a Macbook.

That foreground colours for the main text is not even that light. Only lighter text is used for the lesser important sponsors sections.

Maybe you need to get your vision checked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Dragon, Falcon. Can't they be original in their naming?

<comment><USER19> You would think 'Shark' and 'Dolphin' and 'Orca' would be more appropriate.

<comment><USER4> Kraken, Leviathan, Cthulhu, no?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Can you rent this anywhere? Don't really have $1.5 million to toss around fun.</comment>