Ask HN: I want to start a new company, but I'm CEO at a funded startup - <AUTHOR> I'm in a pickle. I have a funded enterprise B2B startup that seems to be going well, but it's clear that the industry is highly competitive, but we are growing quickly. I recently stumbled upon an entirely unrelated business idea, simply because of long conversations with customers in a particular vertical and it's very clear that there's a huge opportunity there (possibly bigger than what we are doing now). How should I handle this? I feel a responsibility to run the current company to the current investors hence I wouldn't want to be distracted, but at the same time, this opportunity is bigger and requires more capital than the current company can finance. I have verbal validation "if you do x, we will partner with you" and I'd like to experiment. There are several concerns:
i) How to handle the current team and investors, it can't seem like I've given up on the current business; it still has a lot of potential ii) the reality is that if I run it under the current umbrella we will all be diluted significantly iii) I'm thinking of having a separate c-corp below the current one wholly owned, how do you present this to the board without seeming to be fully distracted?<p>Any ideas would be very welcome <comment><USER4> (1) the grass is always greener on the other side

(2) serial entrepreneurs are more common than parallel ones

(3) don't you have a performance requirement with your investors?

(4) does your shareholder agreement allow any of this?

(5) have you talked this over with your investors?

(6) it all depends on the cap table

(7) you could always sell your stake in the current company or engineer an MBO

(8) doing another company underneath the current one will still require buy-in of shareholders

(9) you already seem distracted

(10) a word of advice: finish what you start

Best of luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback, I'll answer this by providing some more context.

a) I've done well when you consider revenue/global brand reach/spread

b) I've spoken _informally_ to trusted board members nobody seems to have clarity on the best way forward

c) Option 7 seems to be the best way out

d) on point number 9, yes I'm distracted, but I've understated how much thought has gone into the second idea; it's something that's constantly come up when I'm with my customers with whom I have a remarkably intimate relationship with. I live for them and this one issue keeps coming up. I have toyed with the idea of getting someone else to build it, but it requires some industry good will, customers willing to pilot it etc and so far that rests with me. I meet with my customers on a fairly frequent basis to figure out where their general pain points are, what their industry vertical trends are and what other issues I can solve for them (typically this involves an introduction to one industry vendor/company or another). In the course of these conversations you can unearth a lot.

To use a theoretical example. I will use Square. If in the the process of meetings with customers in say retail figures out that nobody has built for purposes of this conversation a CRM that addresses their needs and it's a pain point that keeps coming up in every single conversation with retail customers what would you do? Over several conversations you have industry members nagging you for a solution because over time you have become their trusted advisor.

<comment><USER4> One thing you will have to recognize is that this will happen over and over again. So you are not going to find 'The Product' because there will always be other products that you could make and chase. And new development is so much more fun than maintenance, the same goes for new companies.

In your shoes I would analyze myself first before making a decision: are you just good as a starter or are you able to go the distance? And then to recognize that most of the value creation happens early on in the life cycle of a company but most of the value capture happens later on. So if you exit early you will financially hurt yourself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Seems, to my completely inexperienced point of view, like its time to hire your replacement. Establish a board with yourself on it (probably alongside investors), hire your replacement, and let them run your first company. Use your position on the board to keep in touch with and help direct the running of the company, while freeing up time to work on a second venture.

<comment><USER6> Agree with this. If you are great at starting things, stick with that. Do what you love. Hire a proven CEO with a track record of taking something from $X million to $XX million. Build a solid transition plan and go be happy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> IMO your only real options are to (a) quit to do the other thing or (b) not quit and forget about the other thing.

If you're funded, you can't do both. But there's some nuance in how one can quit, which depends largely on how far along your current business is.

If you have multiple cofounders and a solid team in place, you can just leave yourself. You talk to the investors first, and give them some sort of perk, such as a right of first refusal, or even spin it out of the current company (which means they get a small equity stake since your current company owns some of the new one). This is all fine, but only works if your current business is strong enough to run completely without you.

If the current business isn't to that point yet, then leaving it will kill it, and dividing your attention is as good as leaving it. Not fair to the investors, not fair to the employees. So you sort of just grin and bear it. That's the hidden cost of taking funding and asking people (both investors and employees) to believe in you. But such is life.

</comment><comment><USER8> > I have verbal validation "if you do x, we will partner with you"

As the CEO of a funded company, you should know that the "we will partner with you" line is handwavy BS 99.9% of the time.

This statement is not a measure of potential money coming in the door. Rather, it's usually code for "we would like you to pay us to build your website/social presence" (if said by an agency owner) or "we would like to do some sort of advertising joint venture" (if said by a content marketing-driven company.)

Have you gotten anyone to actually toss a credit card at you across the table for this idea? If not, you have no customers and no proof this idea will work.

P.S. I would be less blunt if talking to a new founder. Often they get really excited about these garbage "partnership opportunities." But you, as the CEO of a funded startup, should know better.

<comment><AUTHOR> I commented above that I greatly understated this. I've been explicitly asked to build it with fiscal commitment should I choose to say yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you chase two rabbits at once, both will escape \-- ancient chinese proverb

Ask everyone who is fighting every day in the companies they started 3/4/5 years ago - they all wish they were doing deep learning or blockchain!

Some days, it is normal to wake up and think that this other idea you have is far more promising and has far more potential than the one you are working on. Just stay focussed and finish what you embarked on. Startups are about execution. Ideas are only 1%. Soon the novelty of the idea wears off and it is what you do day to day that distinguishes your company from others.

</comment><comment><USER10> We know who you are, Elon.

Please finish what you started with SpaceX and Tesla before you take on The Boring Company. Yes, it is a great idea, but you really have to get through ramping up manufacturing first.

Also, focus on energy storage after you get through manufacturing.

</comment><comment><USER11> The 'unrelated' business idea being the result of the inroads made by you being at current company CEO role and having those customer conversations might be a potential fiduciary issue.

You need to pick someone on the board you can have a candidate initial discussion with and take it from there.

The last thing you want is to start a second co, having thought you figured out the first co, and possibly one day having a disgruntled investor from Co1 come after you claiming you should have invested resourcing from within Co1 towards the idea that you got wind of from Co1 customers... From the trust you built with those customers selling them Co1 solutions.

No I'm not a lawyer. So this is far from legal advice. Just a fellow founder who would be concerned if in this situation.

</comment><comment><USER12> Ideas always look best when they are new. After a while the new idea might not look so attractive and that's where execution and focus come in. It is true that there are examples of people who run multiple companies but I don't think we know a lot about the details on how they are pulling this off. These people are probably extremely passionate about both of these ideas. It doesn't sound like your situation.

This reminds me of a quote from Jesus in Matthew 6:24 "No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other."

</comment><comment><USER13> After 10 years being CEO for online marketplace, I found us in the position where our profits from the existing business (which support a team of 50) were not best allocated to the product we spent the last 10 years building. After reading Warren Buffetts "The Snowball," I became convinced that we were best off channeling our profit into the highest ROI opps, regardless of whether they were directly relevant to our marketplace.

Judging by the other responses here, I'm in a distinct minority to claim that you could consider building both businesses.

The jury is still out on whether this will prove to be a sound idea, we started building two separate projects last year and only one has been soft launched thus far (StaticObject.com).

That said, a couple relevant takeaways from our work to date:

1\. The only way a multi product company can possibly work is if you've accumulated an inner circle that can stand in for you. You're not going to do a great job building two things at the same time. You'll need to find others who can pick up your slack 2\. Our arrangement was pursued in part cuz we're almost entirely self-funded, which means less VCs to encourage/force us to follow the path more traveled 3\. A single, great developer can get as much done on a project as a team of 5 developers by virtue of reduced communication cost, and (hopefully) less tech debt. There is meaningful leverage available by splitting great devs onto separate projects.

<comment><USER14> Aside: StaticObject.com has the creepiest robot picture. I'm pretty sure that guys nipples are in danger.

<comment><USER15> And that analog meter between the hands makes the robot look like a very excited man!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Never half-ass two things. Whole-ass one thing."

</comment><comment><USER17> Find someone competent to execute your other business plan and provide them a seed investment and take a percentage. Join the board and get involved if your current venture fails/exits.

</comment><comment><USER18> I've been at 4 startups, ground floor at 2, executive level at 3.

You know the answer to this, talk to your most friendly board member/investor. If he's not receptive to trying an experiment, it's doubtful anyone else will, at that point you either decide to stick with the current business, or leave and start the other business. Just because he doesn't like the experiment idea doesn't mean he may not stake you in the new venture. Also if you were not hand picked as the CEO, you might find that leaving is met with happiness. Just like you the board/investor always think there is something better to be had, so they might be happy to get an upgrade at CEO, or think they can get an upgrade.

</comment><comment><USER19> Having being a CEO for around 10 years singly mindedly focussed on a single company, I am coming around to the view that maybe running multiple companies is better.

Though most people here would disgaree with me, and even me myself 5 years ago would have vehemently disagree with my current self, I am of the view that you should consider running both businesses.

The critical insight that fosters this view is that after a certain amount of time being a CEO you realize that the growth of the company is not entirely in your hands. Market forces play an indeterminate but critical role in the growth of a company. Consequently, it maybe the case that your current business might actually benefit from you stepping away and letting it mature by itself.

After having run a particular genre of company for a bit, you start getting a feel of what will move the needle and what will not. If there is incremental growth to be had and little scope of exponential rampup, you might be better off baking something else. There is a chance that this business will turn around by itself over time or maybe by focussing on something else, you get a better perspective on your existing business to take it to the next level.

I am currently ramping up on a business that I started on the side 5 years ago. It wasnt really a business, it was an experiment. But it took a life of its own. A couple of months back, I realized it had the potential to be a big business and I was well placed to capitalize on it. Now I am ramping up that 'experiment' so that it employs a handful of people. The 'experiment' will pay for these people and I will again let this idea bake for another year and focus on something else.

I am coming around to the view that this is best way to work for 'serial' entrepreneurs. Most people who arent serial entrepreneurs, that includes almost everyone who have been a founder for less than 10 years wont see the wisdom in this. Unfortunately, this will include your investors and other employees. The only way to get them to fall in line is if you can get them to fall in line without requiring them to see the wisdom of your action. It might be impossible in your current setup, in which case you need to restructure so that you can operate optimally.

<comment><USER20> What you have described is the serial entrepreneur model i.e. someone who founds companies, runs it past seed stage and leaves it to a professional CEO at the growth stage. I wouldn't call it "parallel".

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Don't ask us - ask your board. Clearly they already have confidence in you, this opportunity came from your current work, and you would need capital anyway. So see if they will fund/find investors for it, whether they agree it should be separate, and see which effort they want you to lead. Maybe they will surprise you and let you run with the new thing, and bring someone new up to your current CEO role.

</comment><comment><USER15> In my experience: I worked for a business unit where the "CEO" became distracted with pursuing other opportunities unrelated to our core business. It didn't pan out very well for him. He got canned, all of the people he brought in to chase these ideas lost their jobs, ect.

One thing you didn't really describe is how long you've been in your company, and what you accomplished. Are you a founder? Were you hired as a CEO? How long were you in your position, ect?

If you're a founder, at some point it's expected that you'll leave to start another company. If you replaced the founder, it's expected that you'll drive growth in a defined marketplace.

I think you need to find out what the board expects you to do with the current company, and see if it's a good time to transition your interests.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm the founder, the company has done well. We are serving customers in four continents now. W

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> A lot depends on what stage you are at - Series A/B/C? Do you have VCs or angels?

But the worst thing you can do is to come across as unreliable or a cheat, so if you are having doubts - talk them over with your investors. After all they are your partners, and are equally interested in seeing your company succeed. If you screw them over chances are you will be banned from the VC community for good, which ruins any chances a new startup would have. Talk the idea through with them, they will have insights that will prove useful. If they get equally excited you will find a way out together that makes all parties happy. If they don't - perhaps the opportunity isn't as great as you think, otherwise they'd want to be a part of it too. Treat them like you would want to be treated yourself.

</comment><comment><USER23> I don't see why your investors wouldn't be interested in pivoting the current company to a bigger opportunity with less competition. What are the objections going to be? They are not going to get mad at you for finding a bigger opportunity when you were out talking to customers.

</comment><comment><USER24> Find someone who can chase the idea and you'd trust and fund them.

</comment><comment><USER25> Most b2bs take 7-10 years to see through, with derisking inflection points at say 100k, 1m-3m, and 10m arr. So much matters in terms of valuation, kiss of death, etc, around those that generic advice seems unlikely.

It does sound like your heart isn't in it either way + it's early, so I worry for your team both if you stay OR leave. They are your bigger responsibility, so a transition discussion w cofounders seems like the real thing. But again... Vague. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER26> If the new idea is sound and you've got others that believe in it, then go for it! Don't waste any time following a path, when you rather want to go another. Talk with the board and say you want to pivot, if they don't like it, then consider starting a new company, take the loyal people with you and offer them some equity.

</comment><comment><USER27> Do both. Life is short. This is YOUR life not others. And there are examples. Jack Dorsey Twitter and Square Carlos Ghosn, Renault and Nissan Elon Musk, Tesla and SpaceX Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway and Salomon Brothers Steve Jobs, Apple and Pixar Deion Sanders, National Football League and Major League Baseball Bo Jackson - <USER3>

<comment><USER28> I can't find evidence online that Salomon Brothers was founded by Buffet, our that Nissan was founded by Ghosn. Were they?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Do NOT mix the companies up. Corporations were invented specifically to separate unrelated concerns.

You are not enslaved. You can move on. It will just look irresponsible.

Just be responsible.

Also startups and marriage are the same in so many ways. If one is having a seven year itch the reason is not the spouse but a fear of commitment.

Dance with the one that brung ya.

</comment><comment><USER30> Have you considered getting someone you trust (co founder) to try out or validate the new concept.

You would hold board position to start with.

Meanwhile look for your replacement Or Merge entities at a later date.

</comment><comment><USER31> Even as CEO, accepting outside capital makes you an employee of the investors. If your new idea requires even more capital than your current, couldn't you end up in a similar situation, with even more strings attached?

</comment><comment><USER32> Do you mind putting your contact info in your profile. I know someone who is your exact situation, I'd like to forward the outcomes of your decision to that person.

</comment><comment><USER33> check your contract and see if there is any legal issues with leaving the company, usually there is and it's significant

after that you will be able to think more rationally but honestly, if you have drive to do something else then leave transition period for leaving the company and in no way tell investors your idea is to start a new company, they will claim this came in the time of working there thus IP for new product should stay in the company

</comment><comment><USER34> One idea, I haven't seen mentioned, have you thought about selling the company? This will give you a win and freedom to start you new project.

</comment><comment><USER35> People like Branson and Bezos have done well allowing managers under them to act as CEOs of new ventures under the umbrella.

</comment><comment><USER36> How different is the business opportunity? You could create a new division and devote a few engineers to it.

</comment><comment><USER37> I imagine that Elon Musk might have been in a similar position in the past, maybe more than once.

<comment><USER4> If a plan has 'but it worked for Elon Musk' as one of the important underpinnings that will almost certainly work against you. (Unless, of course, if you're Elon Musk.)

<comment><USER38> How so ?

<comment><USER39> For one, he invested tens of millions of his personal assets into his companies, so having tens of millions to put into a startup is one prerequisite

<comment><USER40> So, step 0 would be having real-world experience building a viable business, which Musk gained from Zip2 and PayPal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Why not just incubate the new product idea your under current well funded company?

</comment><comment><USER42> Post your idea here, with an honor-based ask for a seat at the table/retainer in exchange for contacts to get it off the ground once you've vetted that you are not dealing with clowns. You could be nicely surprised. True innovators are in this together. Cheers.

</comment><comment><USER43> Sounds like a pencil problem.

</comment><comment><USER27> Ask no one but you. My 2 cents, do it. This is you, not other people. And there are examples. Every CEO of GE or other is running 20 firms. Plus...

Jack Dorsey Twitter and Square Carlos Ghosn, Renault and Nissan Elon Musk, Tesla and SpaceX Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway and Salomon Brothers Steve Jobs, Apple and Pixar Deion Sanders, National Football League and Major League Baseball Bo Jackson - <USER3>

<comment><USER44> This is terrible advice. Those examples are all very established.</comment></comment>


Code Quarterly -- The Hackademic Journal - <AUTHOR> http://www.codequarterly.com/

<comment><USER2> Tried to use your "want to know more?" form but the submit button is disabled...

...oh snap!

<comment><USER3> Did you enter an email address?

<comment><USER2> Yes, although after a few reloads I was able to get it straightened out.

<comment><USER4> It wouldn't enable for me after double clicking the Email box and selecting my email from the dropdown box in Chrome, a further keypress enabled it though</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Burning B-52 Nearly Caused A Nuclear Catastrophe - <AUTHOR> https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29945/the-time-when-a-burning-b-52-nearly-caused-a-nuclear-catastrophe-worse-than-chernobyl <comment> W-Stool If this topic is an area of interest to you I can't recommend Eric Schlosser's book enough: "Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety". It is a whole history of known accidents in the missle and aircraft domains that involved nuclear weapons.

<comment><USER3> Agreed, this was a really good book.

"American Experince" also turned the book into a film, which was pretty true to the book and worth a watch.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_and_Control_(film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_and_Control_\(film\))

<comment><USER4> Ah, I didn't know it was based on a book. Now I need to find the book. I suspect they will be very different experiences. Seeing the deep emotion of the interviewed really did well to convey the human elements.

<comment><USER3> [https://www.amazon.ca/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident- Illu...](https://www.amazon.ca/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident- Illusion/dp/0143125788/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=command+and+control&qid=1569188814&sr=8-1)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Worse still – and unmentioned by Batzel – a design flaw in the B28 bomb > meant that if exposed to prolonged heat, two wires too close to the casing > could short circuit, arm the bomb, trigger an accidental detonation of the > HE [high explosives] surrounding the core, and set off a nuclear explosion"

P0 - <USER2>

<comment><USER6> It's a feature really. A bomb that is too safe has lower detterance value. And because we really don't want to have a nuclear war it would be _irresponsible_ to have bombs that are too safe.

<comment><USER7> Dr Strangelove? Is that you?

<comment><USER6> yee haw!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Took nearly 10 years after this for a decision to first modify, then later, decommision the W69, based on how unsafe it was in a fire. [https://www.dailypress.com/news/dp- xpm-19900524-1990-05-24-9...](https://www.dailypress.com/news/dp- xpm-19900524-1990-05-24-9005240182-story.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> here's another close call which almost ended very badly:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961_Goldsboro_B-52_crash](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961_Goldsboro_B-52_crash)

"He also said the size of each bomb was more than 250 times the destructive power of the Hiroshima bomb, large enough to create a 100% kill zone within a radius of 8.5 miles (13.7 km)."

<comment><USER8> _" Lieutenant, we found the arm/safe switch." And I said, "Great." He said, "Not great. It's on arm."_

Oof.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> iirc this incident is one of several captured in the book "Command and Control", awesome read.

</comment><comment><USER11> B-52 collides with KC-135 during in-flight refuelling.

Four H-bombs rain down on sleepy Spanish fishing village ...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_Palomares_B-52_crash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_Palomares_B-52_crash)

</comment><comment><USER12> Aren't nuclear warheads supposed to only detonate when triggered the right way?

<comment><USER13> The W69 in particular was an older warhead that lacked the Enhanced Nuclear Detonation Safety system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Clearly I am wrong, but my understanding was a fire would not be enough to initiate the nuclear reaction. Don't two unstable masses have to slam into each other at super high velocity to release enough nuetrons to start the chain reaction?

<comment><USER15> If the conventional explosives around a warhead go off in an uncontrolled manner then they are almost certainly not going to kick off a nuclear chain reaction. Things have to happen at a very specific time.

But what you're going to get is a massive plume of weapons grade plutonium flying in all directions. Depending on where this happens and the wind this could be the end of a few million people.

<comment><USER16> If you read the literature it turns out that's in some cases wishful thinking. You'd never get full yield, but no chain reaction turns out to not be guaranteed in the older designs.

<comment><USER15> Can you point me towards what you read on this outside of the article? Not doubting you it's just been like 500 years since I studied nuclear chem and I'm not sure what literature you're talking about.

<comment><USER17> A good introduction is Eric Schlosser's Command and Control. For the points here the concept of one-point safe is the idea of if a nuclear device is likely to detonate in an uncontrolled situation. A good definition I found was[0]:

> What is one-point safe?

> Apart from preventing unauthorized use, it is equally important to ensure > that the weapons do not explode accidentally. For example, if it is > accidentally dropped during transportation (such incidents have occurred), > it should not explode. A nuclear weapon is one-point safe if, when the High > Explosive inside the weapon is initiated and detonated at any single point, > the probability of producing a nuclear yield exceeding 4 pounds TNT > equivalent is less than 1 in one million.

A surprising number of early nuclear devices were not one-point safe.

[0] [http://www.nucleardarkness.org/nuclear/nuclearandconventiona...](http://www.nucleardarkness.org/nuclear/nuclearandconventionalweapons/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Thule_Air_Base_B-52_crash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Thule_Air_Base_B-52_crash)

</comment><comment><USER19> Worse than Chernobyl, not even close.</comment>


Just JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://justjavascript.com/ <comment><USER2> I've read so many articles about the brokenness of JavaScript and now this, a highly paid professional and well known JavaScript developer says he didn't have a solid grasp after years. From a psychological standpoint, why do people defend the language and keep beating their head against the wall? Why all the hate for Dart when Google tried to offer an alternative? Why wasn't some other alternative built to replace a language that was hacked together in 10 days by Brendan Eich, who designed it for small utility scripts? Why doesn't everybody use TypeScript? I don't get the love for JavaScript.

<comment><USER3> Yes, I feel your pain. Unfortunately, I think it's a lost battle. But, to be fair, it will take you years to master most programming languages.

<comment><USER2> I was a pretty good assembly language programmer. I felt good about the code I wrote. It was correct. I never feel that way about JavaScript I write.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cool idea, but I really dislike the way that these types of things are presented. It reads like an infomercial or something. Spare me the sales pitch I guess.

<comment><USER5> It's mostly meant to filter out people who would think it's a finished product. Because it's... not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I felt like this after my first job where I wrote Java and Perl for three years before moving to a full-stack position that was heavy on JS.

What helped the most was building numerous hobby apps in node and thousands of leetcode questions. A book or a course was somewhat helpful, only in reference and second to the api docs. I would answer them with es6 trying to make full use of the spec. I did this for 5 months answering 3-4 a day until the medium and hard questions became easy.

There is a thick line between competent and fluent when it comes to programming and a lot of devs don't want to put in the work.

</comment><comment><USER7> > I will send you drafts of Just JavaScript directly to your inbox for free.

> There's no editing.

> No polish.

> It's more like a conversation we would have together over a cup of coffee.

> By subscribing to updates I will add you to my email list and send a > sequence of emails describing my JavaScript mental models. This will > eventually be a paid course, but you can unsubscribe at any time.

In the spirit of the holidays, this is a wonderful gift! Looking forward to checking this out. Cheers :)

</comment><comment><USER8> What a fun idea — I just signed up.

Thanks for thinking about how to better explain things, Dan. The more complicated JS gets the more important good explanations are.</comment>


I'm terrible with loop pedals, so I built one I don't have to operate - <AUTHOR> https://zenaud.io <comment><USER2> Is there any facility for altering the song structure during playback, so for example the performer can decide to keep on repeating section 1 for as long as they want, before somehow triggering the move into into section 2?

(I heard of a band years back, who after their drummer quit, got a drum machine and programmed it to play the drum parts of their songs. Trouble was, during a gig they might decide they wanted to jam for longer than normal. Their solution to this was that a member of the band would walk over and _stop_ the drum machine right in the middle of the song, and they'd just carry on playing without it, until they were ready to return to the pre-defined song structure.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question. The answer is a qualified yes. zenAud.io supports on/off triggering via __command tracks __, which can learn midi CCs or the like. You can then route the trigger to transport position (you just type in the bar you want to jump to), allowing to jump anywhere you like in the song. zenAud.io handles these jumps fine. So basically you could set up a an intro to a song, and once you 've got all your "base" loops, you can use automation to trigger a jump to the "scenes" of your song.

You can use the same facility to automate jumping to another song if you're performing a full set. In this case, you don't want to trigger it manually so you use __scripted automation __(basically automation that is drawn rather than captured via some MIDI device).

I say a qualified yes because there are a couple of features that would make this better. I intend on implementing them within the next month. First among which is ability to overdub rather than simply record. Second, I want you to be able to specify a quantisation value for the trigger. So instead of triggering immediately (requiring good timing), it would jump at the end of the current bar or at the end of the region in question.

Hope that answers your question. By the way, there's more detail in this comment thread on YouTube where I discuss this exact topic with another (potential) user.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7cxTCf0FbU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7cxTCf0FbU)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wow interesting idea. So the idea is that you can setup your song ready to go then perform it live and the program will play it all back as you go ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly! Just like any other DAW you can draw loops with pencils. But with zenAud.io, rather than having one pencil, you have two: one for drawing loops you intend to _perform_ live -- so-called __record loops __\--, and the other type allows you to _refer_ to the record loops.

The upshot is, quite simply, you don't have to operate the looper manually, meaning you can simply focus on playing your part.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Founder here -- I'd be happy to answer any questions, comments, or suggestions you have about zenAud.io :)</comment>


AWS Global Start-Up Challenge 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://aws.amazon.com/startupchallenge/?stupidlink=2012 <comment><USER2> Finally a contest with more substantial prizes. I can't help feeling that lately virtually all companies have been launching contents to solve (very) difficult problems, but instead offer only rewards that coincidentally, just the persons with the most experience/most qualified, would consider undignified. (like the recent NASA ISS contest or most of the competitions on Kaggle).

</comment><comment><USER3> they call the url param as supidlink :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually I added that parameter. That page should use a permalink, but unfortunately it doesn't. I tried to submit the post but that url was used by the same event a year ago.</comment></comment>


Guide to Mobile Publishing Formats: AMP, Facebook Instant Articles, and Apple News - <AUTHOR> https://www.viget.com/articles/your-guide-to-mobile-publishing-formats-amp-facebook-instant-articles-and-apple-news <comment><USER2> Cool, at minimum this means more stuff to QA. Keep in mind when doing estimates and making project plans. Adding a few more "screens" to the list... I like fast pages, but I don't love the fact that Apple and Facebook want to build a proprietary view that only their users can see.</comment>


IOS 6: Higher Hanging Fruit - <AUTHOR> http://www.imore.com/2012/05/31/higher-hanging-fruit-ios-6/

<comment><USER2> My wish is that Apple adds paid upgrades for apps in the app store.

I'm now close to releasing a major upgrade for an iPhone app, but these upgrades aren't going to be sustainable for me without paid upgrades (I don't want the new features to be IAP features)

In the long run, this will also benefit customers because paid-upgrades will help developers add more features to the app. Users who want the new features can pay for the upgrade. Users who don't want to pay more can stick with the older version of the app (and hopefully the app store will make it possible for users to re-install older versions of the app).

<comment><USER3> Let's suppose you app uses an API, or whatever other thing that you do not have control over it. You make your app and release it. Then you make a paid upgrade. After some time, that thing your app rely on gets deprecated or changes. If you push an update to only people with the a paid upgrade you screw those who have not paid, leaving them with an non working app that they might have paid for. which sucks. But if you push a free update for everyone you will screw those who paid for the upgrade. which sucks.

So, what would you do?

<comment><USER4> Alternate strawman: you do not use paid upgrades and at some point stop making enough money to continue developing and supporting the app and the API. All of your users are screwed , too.

It's easy to envision hypothetical situations and they're all already possible, leaving customers stuck having to gauge how serious a company is and how sustainable their business model will be. Paid upgrades don't change this situation but do offer a currently blocked way for developers to make apps with a long-term plan

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think the major mobile operating systems are rapidly approaching maturity. I don't expect any radical changes in Android, iOS or WP at this point. iOS in particular hardly looks different than what Steve demoed in 2007.

This is also why I think Android's upgrade problem may not turn out to be so important in practice. Even if the carriers utterly fail to roll out OS upgrades, the 2-3 year device churn cycle will eventually get new versions in play and ICS has fixed most of the glaring problems with the OS and is "good enough". Once Google makes major components like the browser upgradable as apps it won't be that important to rev the base OS.

<comment><USER6> Isnt Windows Phone 8 a completely different codebase (namely WinRT) from WP 7.5?

<comment><USER7> It is. It will be using the NT kernel instead of Win CE 6/7. It will be sharing the same networking stacks, security subsystems as Windows 8.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am amazed at how every single one idea in there is either stupid from the onset or the concept given is executed in an absolutely braindead way.

Just one: direct file access. The best thing Apple did for the learning curve of computing is destroy the concept of files for the casual user. The restrictions are put on the designer who has to figure out a creative way to enable task fulfillment within those restrictions. That is not a file picker (with Folders no less).

The most important enhancement is not even on the list: an iPad with several hundred apps is totally unwieldable. That should be fixed.

<comment> k-mcgrady >> "The most important enhancement is not even on the list: an iPad with several hundred apps is totally unwieldable. That should be fixed."

This isn't a problem very many people face. The average iPhone user only has 65 apps installed (Source:Flurry) (I don't know about the iPad but I guess it would be around the same). Apple typically doesn't cater to the needs of a minority.

With folders you should be able to get a very large number of apps on your iPad's first home screen. I think it's around 400 (20 folders x 20 apps per folder).

<comment><USER8> That would force me to spend time to manually drag everything into folders with the same cataloguing problem you face in every other domain after which I would not really be able to locate anything else.

True, the fact that I have this many apps is a professional deformation, but still the app life cycle from installing/updating, to managing/organizing, to finding and launching one is severely broken from its mental model on.

<comment> k-mcgrady I agree that managing a large number of apps can be tricky. What kind of solution would you like to see? Generally I just use spotlight. One swipe, type a few letters, and the app is found.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There is no way that Apple is going to add any sort of direct file access into iOS 6. This would completely undermine the work that they have done to get rid of the metaphor.

That said, there is certainly a problem with how files interact with iOS, mainly when it comes to email. Bridging the gap between the non-mobile file world and the pseudo-fileless iOS is going to be tricky.

<comment><USER10> Could you explain what is the matter with the filesystem metaphor?

<comment><USER11> It is too complicated and abstract for ordinary people to understand, and it is spiced with a sense of inherent danger since critical system files cannot be modified without doing significant damage to the system- system files that are right there along your ordinary user files which are impossible to find unless you can remember what you named it.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Humane_Interface>

<comment><USER10> > It is too complicated and abstract for ordinary people to understand

Evidence?

> spiced with a sense of inherent danger since critical system files cannot be > modified without doing significant damage to the system- system files that > are right there along your ordinary user files

Not on any operating system released in nearly 10 years.

> impossible to find unless you can remember what you named it.

UX is a problem, but eliminating files just creates other, in my opinion much worse problems, namely that all "files" or "documents" are tied to one specific application.

<comment><USER11> The evidence for the file system problem can be found in pretty much any book about user interfaces, but I have already linked to one in the post you are replying to. But aside from any arbitrary book on the subject, the evidence is not hard to find. All you really have to do is watch a computer novice try to use a computer for any length of time.

I don't know what operating systems you are using, but My mac with the latest operating system still has a multiple "library" folders and a "system" folder. I presume windows 7 still has a windows folder, a program files folder, and documents and settings folders. Any unix type system has /usr /bin /var /etc . These things are so apparently ingrained it appears you are incapable of perceiving them.

as for your third point, this is what is called the fallacy of the false dichotomy or false dilemma. The solution for this is that there's more than just the 2 options you are imagining.

<comment><USER10> > I don't know what operating systems you are using, but My mac with the > latest operating system still has a multiple "library" folders and a > "system" folder. I presume windows 7 still has a windows folder, a program > files folder, and documents and settings folders. Any unix type system has > /usr /bin /var /etc . These things are so apparently ingrained it appears > you are incapable of perceiving them.

Those operating systems do separate user and system files with different permissions. Some even default to putting user files on a separate partition.

> as for your third point, this is what is called the fallacy of the false > dichotomy or false dilemma. The solution for this is that there's more than > just the 2 options you are imagining.

Please enlighten me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This seems to be quite a comprehensive collection of features yet to be found in iOS while still remaining well thought out. Adding some of these features surely would be silly, but as iOS reaches a higher level of maturity, it'll certainly be interesting to see what Apple comes up with.

Windows 8 Contracts-like inter-app communication would seem to be the greatest feature users would love without even realizing its existence. It's a shame Apple (with OS X as well) loves to keep sandboxed apps _so_ isolated. Launching Safari to open a URL for a specific app the user may not own is quite unfortunate.

</comment><comment><USER13> Almost all of these will never happen, since they are against Apple's philosophy. They've tried to simplify things (which makes sense for a small device), and get rid of old metaphors (files). All most of these things do is clutter things up for the average user.

<comment><USER14> I agree, I think this will also be the reason why iOS popularity will fade over time. Either they adapt and make their OS more powerful, or people will move to alternatives that let them do more quicker. Simplification was a good selling point but features will become important again as smartphones become the central window to computing .

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> An Exposé-style task switcher would be excellent, particularly on the iPad.

<comment> k-mcgrady That would be nice. They could combine it with the iPad advanced gestures. Pinching your hand currently closes and app and does nothing on the home screen. How about making that zoom out to an exposé view?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Better inter-app communication a la intents on android would be great.

<comment><USER17> Yes - this is probably the one major thing that keeps me on Android. Easy sharing between apps.

<comment><USER10> It's poorly implemented on Android. I have 5 browsers installed and when in any particular app I might click a link and it will ask me which browser I want to use to open it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> While we're playing the speculation game...

The ability to arrange home screens in shapes other than grids

The Windows 8 Consumer Preview has shown me that the merits of arranging app icons in shapes are numerous. It's easier to find things.

Likelihood: Low

Sync galleries between devices via iCloud

I love the Photo Stream. Photos I take on my phone show up on my iPad and I can select the good ones to make galleries from... fantastic! Only downside is those galleries don't sync back to my phone, so when I want to show a friend on my phone the sweet gallery of photos from Friday night's party I can't.

Likelihood: Medium

Sync notifications between devices via iCloud

If I look at twitter on my phone, when I look at my tablet four hours later the same @mention notifications shouldn't be waiting for me. Ditto to every other app I use on both devices.

Likelihood: Medium-low

Gratis turn-by-turn navigation

Android does it, Nokia Windows Phones do it. iPhone should do it. Perhaps I'm just a cheapskate or perhaps navigation has been devalued so much by Google Maps' ubiquity but I don't want to pay for an app in the app store to do this. Apple bought a mapping company a while back - let's see something happen with it!

Likelihood: ????

<comment><USER19> Apple actually bought three mapping companies :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's pretty amazing that the things WebOS got right from the beginning - cards, synergy, and notifications - are still _way_ better than what other phones are providing.

</comment><comment><USER20> For iOS6 multi-tasking on the 5th generation iPhone, if the rumors of a ~170 pixel taller display are true, I would like to see a persistent dock mode when you activate the multi-tasking switcher. So basically you double-home-tap and the app resizes down ~170 pixels and the dock appears. The dock stays on the bottom of the screen as you switch between applications and use them. When you're done with your little flurry of heavy multi-tasking you double-home-tap to hide the dock again. This should also work nicely on an iPad sized display. For the ways I multi-task on iOS this would be almost a perfect system. Most of the time I'm jumping into another app for a very brief stay -- just long enough to copy something, reference something, or act on an event, then I'm returning to whatever I was doing. On the iPhone this presently requires a ridiculous number of home button taps. On the iPad using the multi-touch gestures require a lot of swiping. The Mission Control style switching this article suggests would be OK but I feel like it would still require a lot of extra taps and swipes.

<comment><USER21> I really don't think Apple is going to change the screen size of the iPhone. They have their designs down to a science.

<http://dcurt.is/2011/10/03/3-point-5-inches/>

<comment><USER20> I'm not a fan of _huge_ displays but 4" is actually pretty tame by today's standards. Apple may have come up with the perfect screen size for a SmartPhone circa 2007 but today the vast majority of SmartPhones sold in the world have larger displays so clearly 3.5" cannot be the only perfect size. I do think they have stood by 3.5" in part to see if this trend was just a temporary divergence. Now that is has endured for a couple years it's hard to ignore.

The other factor here is I think as Apple has scaled iOS to include more features they have begun to hit the wall of physical UI space. Let's use Safari as an example. If Apple wanted to add 2 new major features to Safari that had to be quickly accessible where would they even put them? The UI is just about full. They would have to increasingly rely on pop-out controls and other less-than-obvious UI tricks which adds extra taps. The situation is even worse when the keyboard is active taking up half the screen. With the status bar and maybe a visible app toolbar you have about a quarter of the screen available. Reading text messages on an iPhone has actually become painful. You can rarely see the entire message without scrolling or hiding the keyboard. A taller screen fixes that. They may just really need an extra ~170 pixels of height to keep scaling these apps with new features that require UI space.

<comment><USER22> > _4" tame by today's standards... perfect for 2007 but today..._

How the average human thumb grew 0.5" between 2007 and 2012, making today's 4" screens better than 3.5" screens of 2007, is one of nature's mysteries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I see why someone with 250+ unread mails would also care about information density. I cringed all the way through the article, it screams information addiction throughout.

Not everything that a device _can_ possibly display (or scream in the form of a notification) should be crammed into the OS just because it's possible and thus still "missing". I'm considering a Jailbreak to turn off Notification Center and Spotlight and other stuff I don't use, but can't be disabled.

 _Simplifying_ iOS is a high-hanging fruit. Or outdoing Google at maps. Or outdoing Dropbox at cloud services. Or outdoing amazon at books. Or taking some of the painful burden off iTunes.app.

</comment><comment><USER24> I feel like some of these suggestions would defeat Apple's minimality. Amalgamating Windows and Android's complex features with Apple would completely damage the benefits of iOS. Stripping things like personalization, information display and unnecessary configuration options is what makes Apple what it is. If you want/require Windows and Android's tech customizability, you wouldn't own an Apple device. If Apple implemented those features, it would be like Facebook reverting to MySpace's overabundance of ugly profiles and teenboppy usernames.

</comment><comment><USER25> Apple is or at least under Jobs, was very clear about not adding function that would consequently disrupt form or usability. Many of the features listed as suggestions for the iOS are present in other OSs. It's these 'features' that motivated me to move back to the iPhone.

Here is an example: The current rumor is Apple will introduce a larger (~170 px taller) screen. With larger screens (or taller) when you are using one hand (which most seem to want to do), as you reach your thumb to the far side of the screen your thumb muscle makes contact with the touch surface, causing inadvertent input. One-handed operation with newer devices such as the GS2 are very difficult. Also the sheer size of some of these newer "handhelds" is a bit too big for my hand (which is average to large size) requiring me to use two hands. It's little details like this that the OP and iPhone competitors seem to miss. Does the screen need to be bigger, and at what cost? If the cost is usability or adding clutter to the UI, then it will likely not make it in to the iPhone 5.

Mobile devices are good for somethings but are not meant to replace full computers.

</comment><comment><USER26> My biggest beef is a low hanging fruit issue.

I can't get any reliable voice dialing recognition (I'm using Voice Control but I haven't had any better luck with Siri on my wife's phone) - it would be nice if you could limit voice dialing to your favorite contacts as opposed to your entire address book.

<comment> X-Istence You can add nicknames for your contacts which will be used by Siri.

I've never had Siri dial the wrong number when I have asked the device to call someone...

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> A computer. What you want is a more general computer. There's nothing wrong with that, just saying.

</comment><comment><USER28> I would love to see a Swype-like keyboard. I'm surprised that Apple didn't acquire Swype. The user experience is fluid and iOS-like. Apple could use Swype's patents to keep the keyboard as a unique selling point for iOS.

<comment><USER29> I believe Apple didn't acquire anything from Swype because Nuance got there first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> What I want, and what would convince me to not jailbreak, is quick reply. The iPhone is powerful enough to handle the extra processing and it makes life a whole lot easier.

<comment><USER30> What is that?

<comment><USER31> Reply to texts, etc without switching away from the current app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> but the features pointed out in this article have not attained widespread use, and who knows - maybe there's a reason for that. Windows phone has a negligibly small market share. WebOS died. Blackberry 10 is not even out yet. And apparently the newest Android OS is also on very few phones.[http://mobile.theverge.com/2012/6/2/3058522/android-4-0-now-...](http://mobile.theverge.com/2012/6/2/3058522/android-4-0-now- on-7-1-percent-of-devices-still-woefully-behind)

The features that iOS has allowed are in widespread use once they are implemented. This is just an observation but perhaps there's a reason Apple prefers a controlled roll out of new features.

</comment><comment><USER33> Major flaw on all platforms: switching apps is cumbersome and slow

We need ALT TAB on phones

<comment><USER34> Works fairly well on Android in Ice Cream Sandwich I feel. You click the dedicated button and just tap your app's thumbnail from the list. Two taps with maybe some sliding if you have a lot of apps open and want to go to one you weren't using recently seems nearly as simple as you could make it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It is good to see an unbiased article admitting that iOS can learn from other platforms.

</comment><comment><USER35> +1000 for direct file access. Apart from this, I personally find iOS to be an almost perfect platform. But this single omission IMHO cripples it immensely - especially for content creation tasks.

<comment><USER36> You will _never_ get that from Apple. What's more, you will lose that in OSes from others. Why? Because file system is not a solution, it's a problem. "Normal people" don't think in terms of file system, they think about their documents, spreadsheets, photos and movies. Cooper and others wrote about that years ago.

</comment></comment><comment> dorian-graph Can anyone think of cases where some blog post has been listened to by Google/Microsoft/Apple about what they, apparently, should do?</comment>


Partitioning Your Hard Drive During A Linux Install - <AUTHOR> http://www.skorks.com/2009/08/partitioning-your-hard-drive-during-a-linux-install/ <comment><USER2> This is how I would partition my disk:

1\. /boot - having a nice, working grub is always a plus

2\. /home - keep your data safe

3\. /data - name can be anything, but I would keep large media files (movies, mp3's, .iso's etc separate from anything else). If you have dedicated disk for such storage (like I do), it would be mounted here. FS could NTFS for Windows compatibility.

4\. swap - This is optional, as modern Linuxes can use swap files too afaik.

5\. / - I don't see the point of having /var or /usr or anything system- related on separate partitions in desktop machines.

Maybe /etc could be stored on a separate partition, as many files residing there are useful to have when reinstalling, or to be shared between installations.

btw /tmp is usually mounted as tmpfs which is practically ramdisk, so you don't really need a partition for that.

<comment><USER3> Well I just have this feeling that the article is artificially voted up.

And no offense, but askorkin seems to be self promoting. 18 of his 21 submissions are from his own blog.

Note: It's completely OK to post your own content on HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you have a large hard drive and are not sure how you need it partitioned, you can set up the entire disk as a Volume Group in LVM and give your partition structure your best guess with relatively small volumes. Then when you outgrow a volume, extend the volume ( <http://tldp.org/HOWTO/LVM- HOWTO/extendlv.html> or use distribution GUI tools).

This is relatively uncommon in the Linux world, but it works very well. I believe this is best practice on commercial UNIXes that have logical volume support out of the box (such as AIX). It works particularly well for desktops or servers where you may pre-configure the entire hard drive by default and then add additional drives to the volume group at a later time.

<comment><USER5> You will find that the filesystem barrier operations don't work on LVM except in the very latest kernels. If you want integrity and performance you may not wish to use LVM.

Background: The general case is hard. The LVM folk were holding out for the general case but eventually yielded to practicality and coded the easy case (single physical device). Extra work for them, but smiles for users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I usually don't partition my linux drives, but on windows it's a different story.

I recommend you to at least have it partitioned in three.

One for windows C:, one for your data D:, one for linux E:

As soon as you install windows, reassign "MyDocuments" to D:

Whenever you have a windows crash, you just reinstall and keep your data safe. You could also boot from linux and try some repairs or backups.

I've done that for every family member and friend, and couldn't be happier everytime I get "that" call.

No matter how many times I wear that "I won't fix your computer" t-shirt, I always get the call.</comment>


Practical attack against TLS/SSL and RC4 - <AUTHOR> http://www.rc4nomore.com/?hn <comment><USER2> It's fairly likely that rumors of the NSA's ability to 'decrypt SSL' refers to RC4 vulnerabilities.

<comment><USER3> Are you sure about that? This attack requires a js exec in browser to generate lots of traffic containing the cookie. It's a little impractical to use in a SIGINT capacity. My bet is still on precalculated DH like logjam attack.

Still the quote from @ioerror is: "RC4 is broken in real time" so that's either hyperbole or there is an attack better than 75 hours still out there.

<comment><USER4> NSA has been ahead of the state of art in cryptography, as the past has shown. So perhaps they already have an even more practical attack on RC4 for a long time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> While I agree that RC4 should die in a fire, this attack seems impractical to me.

> To successfully decrypt a 16-character cookie with a success probability of > 94%, roughly 9x2^27 encryptions of the cookie need to be captured. Since we > can make the client transmit 4450 requests per seconds, this amount can be > collected in merely 75 hours.

How likely would that amount of network traffic and energy consumption cue the potential victim that something malicious is going on?

<comment><AUTHOR> Colleague of the author here.

I guess that 4450 requests/s to one IP, or even spread across multiple IPs, could trigger some alarms if the victim is alert. Unfortunately, I'm not that familiar with IDS/IPS's to answer that with much confidence.

In any case, an attacker has a lot of options. The requests do not need to be made sequentially, so an attacker could basically start and resume his attack whenever he wants, e.g. when the victim is away from keyboard (which he can estimate based on the network traffic someone usually generates). An attacker could also simply slow down the number of requests/s, although this results in a larger number of hours required for a successful attack.

As for energy/CPU consumption, I don't think that'd be a big concern. When the practical attack was performed, the CPU usage went up to around 75%, still allowing one to visit other websites without noticing anything. So unless one would closely monitor the CPU/network usage, I don't think the average victim would notice it.

<comment><USER5> > As for energy/CPU consumption, I don't think that'd be a big concern.

What if this attack targeted a phone or laptop? Battery would die faster, device would get warmer, and fans spin up.

<comment><USER6> If your last line of defense in encryption/network security is noticing that the fan spins up more often then you already lost the game.

Why even bring it up?

<comment><USER5> It's not a line of defense. I'm thinking about less computer literate people. Do you know a friend or family member that would call you and say "My laptop's really hot, loud, and slow, but it's not doing anything!" and ask for advice?

<comment><USER6> Do you really think they're the kind of people who'll be targeted by this attack instead of some refined version in the future?

Do you really think this scenario is realistic and worthy of consideration at all?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As Roy T. Fieldings once said in his research paper, "Cookie-based applications on the Web will never be reliable!" [https://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/evaluati...](https://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/evaluation.htm) Section 188.8.131.52

</comment><comment><USER8> Does anyone else find it ironic that not only is this link HTTP, but HTTPS is broken for this domain?

[https://www.rc4nomore.com/](https://www.rc4nomore.com/)

Hopefully the NSA MITMs it with an "RC4 is fffiiinnneee" message.

<comment><USER9> It's not really their fault - they're hosting on Github, whose infrastructure presents a Github.com cert to HTTPS requests.

<comment><USER10> [https://vanhoefm.github.io/rc4nomore/](https://vanhoefm.github.io/rc4nomore/) is a valid HTTPS address for the site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I feel "practical" is too strong of a word here. It's probably a __more __practical attack than previous attacks, but that doesn 't make it practical by a long stretch.

"Only" 75 hours, where you have to force the victim to do make a very large number of encrypted messages. IMO, this wouldn't work when trying to break someone's SSL connection at the local Starbucks.

<comment><USER12> > ...but that doesn't make it practical...

If I had a dime for every penny of damage caused when people downplay the practicality of attacks against deployed crypto...

75 hours is enough time to attack a laptop left plugged in at the office over a 3-day weekend, and there's no reason why you'd have to attack only one laptop at a time.

The paper also says, "capturing traffic for 52 hours already proved to be sufficient", so it's not like 75 hours is some hard minimum.

Also:

"Our attack is not limited to decrypting cookies. Any data or information that is repeatedly encrypted can be recovered."

"We can break a WPA-TKIP network within an hour."

RC4 is dead, dead, dead. As with MD5, the writing's been on the wall for a while now, and attacks are only going to get better.

<comment><USER13> The attack numbers are under artificially generated network traffic.

<comment><USER14> Yes, but we present several techniques on how to generate these amounts of data. For TLS and HTTPS you can use JavaScript. For WPA-TKIP you need control of one TCP connection, and that is enough to generate the data. We're not saying it's a point and click attack, but it's a very good reason to start worrying :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The keys they used were only 128 bits, whereas RC4 actually supports up to 2048 bits. I wonder how much that affects their results. (AFAIK the 128 bits is an export restriction thing, upgraded from the previous trivially-breakable 40 bits.)

Also, 16 characters seems awfully short for a cookie, especially one meant for authentication purposes.

<comment><USER16> I don't think SSL/TLS allow key lengths > 128 bits with RC4. Export is 40 or 56 bits. You can see most supported ciphers here: [https://www.openssl.org/docs/apps/ciphers.html](https://www.openssl.org/docs/apps/ciphers.html)

e.g:

        TLS_RSA_WITH_RC4_128_MD5                RC4-MD5
        TLS_RSA_WITH_RC4_128_SHA                RC4-SHA
        TLS_ECDH_RSA_WITH_RC4_128_SHA           ECDH-RSA-RC4-SHA
        TLS_ECDH_ECDSA_WITH_RC4_128_SHA         ECDH-ECDSA-RC4-SHA</comment></comment>


No, I am not interested in joining your proprietary social network - <AUTHOR> http://meta.ath0.com/2014/09/25/interested-joining-proprietary-social-network/

<comment><USER2> Interesting! You make a good point and Diaspora certainly has potential if not the "push" it needs to mass adoption (which may be a factor of grass roots / timing / zeitgeist). What saddened me was the line about the suicide...I just read an article posted by the Kauffman Fellows Academy in which one of my former instructors and VC, Brad Feld talks about the importance of dealing with emotional challenges of being an entrepreneur.

[http://plus.url.google.com/url?sa=z&n=1411757693253&url=http...](http://plus.url.google.com/url?sa=z&n=1411757693253&url=http%3A%2F%2Fow.ly%2FBVsfG&usg=6OA6FqFLFKrCtNlNPqR5mPfkolk).

This speaks to the EQ necessary in leadership. One must be able to discern how to deal with lows without losing employee or investor confidence and how to build personal, human, relationships that inspire those parties to believe in and support founders through those lows.

Sometimes it's a matter of who a founder discloses what to. A mentor or coach can be a confidante who a founder turns to in order to ease the emotional burden without compromising team confidence.

A good support system and being resilient / tenacious (through nature or nurture) certainly helps.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Remember, Facebook used to be ad-free, somewhat closed, had no data mining, and didn't force you to sign up with your real name."

good point.</comment>


Tutorial on the Wavelet Transform - <AUTHOR> http://users.rowan.edu/~polikar/WAVELETS/WTtutorial.html <comment><USER2> Yipes. This is the worst page/site design I have ever seen. If there was worldwide contest right now, this site would be in the top ten worst designs.

I would love to read these articles, but blocky white text on a blue-black background? Visited links go from yellow to dark blue, in other words, they disappear against the blue background.

Bad font choice, bad rendering, bad background, bad overall design. And absolutely atrocious math rendering:

x(t)=cos(2 * pi * 10 * t)+cos(2 * pi * 25 * t)+cos(2 * pi * 50 * t)+cos(2 * pi * 100 * t)

Instead of either a graphic image of an equation, or something like MathJax to render the math properly.

This represents a missed opportunity to attract readers to what is probably a worthwhile exposition on wavelets.</comment>


I'm a YouTube software engineer working on the video player - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/bcb14/im_a_youtube_software_engineer_working_on_the/

<comment><AUTHOR> There's an interesting exchange:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/bcb14/im_a_youtube_sof...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/bcb14/im_a_youtube_software_engineer_working_on_the/c0m1hn6)

An unsubtle hint?

</comment><comment><USER2> This is the guy who wrote swfobject.js - I recognize the handle.

<comment><USER3> Indeed. His name is Geoff Stearns, blog: <http://blog.deconcept.com/>

<comment><USER4> Hi!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm surprised video rendering takes ANY cpu cycles - with all the video card horsepower available. What is it doing if not codec tasks? Hm.

<comment><USER6> Nothing actually. Flash 10.1 beta will offload some h264 processing to compatible video cards, but only on Windows and that's not the released version. Currently it uses the CPU for all decoding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> i wish more engineers from big companies would do public interviews like that (either on hn or reddit). i'm sure there is a lot of quality feedback to be had from a collective of somewhat-more-technically-inclined users than what gets filed as bug reports. especially for companies like google who don't have public bug filing systems for many of their services.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think higher level discussions are more suited to that format than globs of unstructured bug reports :-)</comment>


If your site's emails are not downloading on ipad/iphone - <AUTHOR> http://www.emailonacid.com/blog/details/C13/ensure_that_your_entire_email_is_rendered_by_default_in_the_iphone_ipad

<comment><AUTHOR> One of my companies sends a lot of email. When we updated some templates, ipads and iphones seriously messed up the email (all recipients saw was a gray screen... IF they scrolled down they saw a "partially downloaded' message.)

This IOS bug persists even in current model ipads and iphones. The website article explains the fix -- basically, add dummy stuff your your <head> tag until it contains at least 1019 characters.</comment>


Not such a bright idea: why your phone's 'night mode' may be keeping you awake - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/shortcuts/2019/dec/17/not-such-a-bright-idea-why-your-phones-night-mode-may-be-keeping-you-awake <comment><USER2> Where's our friendly neighborhood f.lux dev, herf?

Amusing the article says "it makes sense, sun is yellow, twilight is blue, so blue makes you sleep", when the current craze says "it makes sense, daylight is cool white, firelight is warm, warm lets you sleep".

Most prevailing theories make sense or they wouldn't be prevailing!</comment>


Ask HN: How to start a startup where team members required salaries to survive? - <AUTHOR>

We are having solution (with partial implementation with some big new concepts in our mind) for small (10-50 employees) knowledge organizations (law companies, media agencies, Ad agencies etc) for "office intranet (HR process, Document Management, celebrative tools etc)". I want to sale this to the customers as SAAS as well as boxed backed with customization (for bigger organization and chargeable).
To make this happened we need money ;) (We can't survive without monthly salaries).
What should be my approach to pursue from here?
=>Should I make partial product (with include most potential features) during my weekends and then approach the VCs (Pros: Easy to approach VCs and customers. Cons: it will take longer time to start and also motivational factor)
OR
=>Should I create ppts with problem, solution and plan HTML for demos and approach to VCs once I get fund then start building it (Pros: I will be able to devote my full time into the product. Cons: Hard to approach VCs)

       OR
 =>Any suggestion is welcome (including about concept/solution)

        OR
 =>We can't do it because we require salaries (If any body did that please comment about you experience)
--Our Team--
Me: Pure Technical Guy My Friend: Pure technology business development guy
We both are working with some decent organization earning decent salaries. <comment><USER2> First thing - congrats for even getting this far; most people don't.

Second - we can't tell you what to do; we can offer opinions though. Just keep in mind that our opinions, while well-intentioned, come from our own experiences and as such will be what we would do in that situation. We aren't you and so take what we say with a grain of salt.

Third - The demo approach is best in this situation IMO.

Fourth - Why are you asking us? Your partner/friend should really be handling this side of it IMO. If you trust him/her to be your partner then you should trust that person's experience and suggestions. I guess my question should be re-phrased as, "Why are you the one asking us and not your partner?" This is a biz dev question for sure.

<comment><AUTHOR> >"Why are you the one asking us and not your partner?"

This question is from both of us as we both are in same shoe.

<comment><USER2> Good - that makes sense then.

Other thoughts:

#1 - things almost always take longer than you expect _despite_ what others tell you. It takes 3-6 months to close a round of small financing. It will probably take 1-3 months to find the right people to pitch to. It probably takes a month to find good attorneys+auditors+etc.

#2 - Leave time between pitches so that you can tweak. You will learn something from each pitch and you want time to add features/slides to your pitch deck/presentation.

I'm not trying to dampen the experience; I'm just making sure you understand that building a business takes time. Good luck to you both!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Are VCs your only funding option?

I bootstrapped my company (with some help from the local bank, and a government small-business program)-- we hacked together some prototypes that were enough to show to potential customers, and with sufficient customer interest, there was money available (including enough for salaries). We broke even our first year, brought in outside investors after 6 years, and cashed out after 8.

</comment><comment><USER4> if you're both earning decent salaries start saving.

You should absolutely be gusting a gut in evenings/weekends building your project.

Build a deck [venturehacks.com] and go to a local open coffee and target seed investors and blow them away.

It'll take you 6 months to raise money, so by then you'll have a product developed and hopefully a small buffer of cash.

The other alternate approach which works well for SAAS is to sell it before you make it. Find a company that'll buy and use your product [who do you work for? will they appreciate your product? sell it to them] and bootstrap off that.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there such a thing as a supercomputer vps? - <AUTHOR> The nice thing about services like Digital Ocean is that you can start with a small VPS and end up with a bigger one if you need it. But what if you want something much bigger? A long time ago I remember the SGI onyx with 64 processors. I have a multi processor computer for my workstation at this time and I realize that there can be a big drop in performance if a process crosses the cpu interconnect zone when it has too many threads. Digital Ocean's largest VPS could handle perhaps upto 40,000 live video streams on a good day but if you needed double that, now you are in the territory of real engineering.<p>Maybe supercomputer isn't exactly what I am interested in, maybe more like a giant SMP service. Do you have any experience with this sort of thing? I think SGI still vended monster parallel computers at some point recently.. <comment><USER2> GCP, like AWS has instances with 4 E7-8880v4 CPUs (up to 160 vCPUs) and 4TB of memory.

That's a pretty significant single point of failure though, and not at all elastic. What type of application/workload prevents you from scaling horizontally?

</comment><comment><USER3> Why can your workload not be horizontally scaled across multiple VPS instances?

<comment><AUTHOR> Certainly could! I was just lazy and wanted an alternative to managing swarms of containers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Amazon AWS? They have some pretty beefy instances.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting I have some studying to do. Thank you!</comment></comment>


Ensuring that the web is for everyone - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cloudflare.com/ensuring-that-the-web-is-for-everyone/

<comment><USER2> As I've found with Cloudflare-backed sites: Tor and non-JavaScript tools equals no access.

This includes both console-mode browsers and shell-based tools such as curl or wget.

</comment><comment><USER3> I find this surprising seeing as cloudflare blocked me on shared wifi while traveling internationally from accessing many sites, claiming it was to prevent email spam. They were blocking more sites than over zealous hotel and government internets. When I started a thread about how they were blocking from a significant percentage of hotel and coffeeshop wifi's in various countries their response was find other wifi. Really seems like you need to turn down the filtering.

</comment><comment><USER4> Good. Please stop serving captchas to every tor user then.

<comment><AUTHOR> We are working to fix that. It's not trivial because there are many bad Tor users and we don't want to just 'whitelist' Tor otherwise it'll make Tor more attractive for bad folks.

<comment><USER5> Then it's not "for everyone", is it?

<comment><USER6> Bad actors should have their rights taken away. That's just normal society and has been for thousands of years.

Now, pre-crime is what's going on here, and that's not going to end well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not what I was expecting based on the title. But it is an important principle that should be more widely followed. Good on them.

</comment><comment> X-Istence Would it be possible to make options available to customers to select what type of compatibility they would like to strive for?

What if I am okay with not supporting Android 2.x which doesn't ciphersuite Y?

</comment><comment><USER8> Is this in response to something?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not to anything public. This is just an internal email I sent out to the team to make sure they think about this. You read an older email I sent out here: [https://blog.cloudflare.com/courage-to-change- things/](https://blog.cloudflare.com/courage-to-change-things/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice, but what does this mean for CloudFlare specifically? It's usually not CF but their customers who make websites that are heavy to download or render.

Is it things like continue to support HTTP 1.0/1.1 and older ciphers when required?

</comment><comment><USER10> couldn't help but look at that pic of the Berners-Lee Mosaic and think...this is for everyone, unless you're in places like...India...Eastern China...Australia..actually all of Asia-Pac...haha. ;-) ;-)

<comment> chestnut-tree Here is that moment from the Olympic ceremony

[https://youtu.be/4As0e4de-rI?t=1h17m25s](https://youtu.be/4As0e4de- rI?t=1h17m25s)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> >..on a new Mac

really?

<comment><USER12> I was surprised when I realized this too, but it's true. e.g. PyCon Taiwan [http://yyc.solvcon.net/writing/2013/after_pycontw_2013/](http://yyc.solvcon.net/writing/2013/after_pycontw_2013/) jQuery Conference [http://blogs.splunk.com/2013/09/25/splunking-jquery- conferen...](http://blogs.splunk.com/2013/09/25/splunking-jquery-conference- drive-user-experience-online-and-on-site/)</comment></comment>


Julian Assange news conference [Live Stream] - k-mcgrady http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35501900 <comment><AUTHOR> I get "This content is no longer available". However, this appears to work: [http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/live-julian-assange- pre...](http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/live-julian-assange-press- conference-7312997)</comment>


Ask HN: Finance industry devs, where do you put the business logic, DB or Code - <AUTHOR> If your answer is "majority in db" then how do you combat arguments like:<p>* You can't test/debug BL in DB (or it's very hard)<p>* You can't do continuous integration<p>* The code a mess and hard to maintain/make sense of<p>If your answer is "majority in app":<p>* Do you have an API on top of DB that enforces the rules?<p>* Is the security/data validation also done in the API/app layer? <comment><USER2> I've worked in finance technology for eight years now, in various domains.

As a broad generalization, if you are latency bound (milliseconds or less) then everything is done in code and the DB is never in the main loop.

At the other end, if you are throughput bound - think end of day/month activities - then stored procedures all the way.

For everything in between, prefer to have the logic in code due to the maintenance benefits that come with it.

> Do you have an API on top of DB that enforces the rules?

In general, a database is owned by the app it is associated with and the app mediates all access to that data. The usual enterprise integration patterns (esb, messaging, web services, file dumps) are used to share data with other systems.

> Is the security/data validation also done in the API/app layer?

Largely yes. There's some level of security (like app access control and encryption at rest) that's handled in the DB tier but authorization is largely an app level concern.

Similarly, some constraints are imposed in the DB schema but those are quite basic. Most validation is done in the app tier.

</comment><comment><USER3> > * You can't test/debug BL in DB (or it's very hard)

You test/debug in a separate, isolated full-stack environment that has a copy of the data.

> * You can't do continuous integration

Correct.

> * The code a mess and hard to maintain/make sense of

This is conjecture, and it's entirely dependent on the quality of the code.

<comment><AUTHOR> About the code maintainability, can you elaborate a bit and share your experience? How many functions in the db? How do you namespace/separate them in modules? For the sake of the argument, if those functions would be moved to the app, would there be more or less of them, will they be more complex or less complex.

I am particularly interested in this part since it seems to be a common theme/argument against BL in DB

<comment><USER3> Not fintech, but I dev and maintain some systems with business-logic-in-DB. We use Oracle, the language is PL/SQL.

You get one level of namespacing, and function names have to be less than 32 characters, so abbreviated names are common. This can be unwieldy, but alleviated by good comments and docs.

You want to code each function to do one thing: have a well-defined input, and a well-defined output. Living inside the database gives us transaction support for free -- atomic operations that either succeed or rollback. The application running inside the DB defines the external interface with its functions (the same way a web service or a library would), and keeps the raw tables as an implementation detail.

If we moved more functions out of the app into a higher layer (ie. Java/Python/etc), we'd actually have more functions overall, as you'd either have to have a bridge method that calls the equivalent function inside the DB, or rely on an ORM and invent some instrumentation to deal with concurrency requirements [1]

At the end of the day, a modern RDBMS allows you to implement applications that present a well-defined interface to the outside world, with the internal implementation remaining a private 'black box'.

[1] [https://docs.jboss.org/hibernate/orm/3.3/reference/en- US/htm...](https://docs.jboss.org/hibernate/orm/3.3/reference/en- US/html/transactions.html#transactions-optimistic)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've worked at finance places where a lot of BL is in the DB.

Testing is a trade-off. You can test the end points of stored procedures that the app has access to for example. Although where I worked admittedly there was no automated testing.

You can do CI if you have a way to deploy changes to scripts automatically.

The code doesn't need to be a mess but admittedly PLSQL doesn't have the same nice abstraction patterns as OO so it does get a bit W.E.T. sometimes.

</comment><comment><USER5> My experience is with insurance, funds management and telco billing systems.

Although every project is different, as a general rule I prefer to use stored procedures to make changes to the data. The SPs are written to ensure data integrity. Of course, there are some very basic business rules evident at this level but the primary concern is the correctness of data as updated/inserted. I would characterise these as the "data integrity rules".

Each SP encompasses a document, a test suite and the implementation. It goes through the DEV-TEST-UAT-PROD QA - promotion stepwise deployment. I see that as a reasonable substitute for continuous integration.

The OO layer implements business rules. (The SPs are transactional/procedural). I consider the BRs as a lower level business logic. Then the application provides the high level business logic, e.g. validation, workflow, etc.

In reference to your question, I generally end up with three layers, DB, BR (API), BL (app). Technically the DB also has an API, but that is only visible to the BR layer.

</comment><comment><USER6> Most hardcore finance shops (quants, hedge funds, algo traders) I know don't use a DB in the traditional SQL RDBMS sense. Proprietary time-series databases rule here - because microseconds count, it's very important to think about the access patterns of your data and optimize for the algorithms you're actually running.

<comment><USER4> Finance is broad. Outside of hft, RDBMS is a workhorse for back office data, metadata, powering websites etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> When doing consulting for an agency, I was managing the integration of a new iPhone app with a legacy government database. We were given access to their code and their database.

One of my wise old developers frowned and when I asked why he told me there were literally hundreds of stored procedures in this database and no documentation.

It was at this time he told me to when possible keep business logic in code so it can be managed by a version control, and easily replicated for CI.

He advised the exception to this rule was when the stored procedure gave a large performance boost.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe the number of functions would not increase much (if you ignore the ORM/framework) but their size i think would suffer because of all the additional code for turning rows to objects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> All in app for this particular API, using CI, good test coverage.

DB handles data integrity. App/API handles data validation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you give a general description of that system, what's it's core functionality? Can you give an example of a "business rule" that you implemented in the app and a "data integrity rule" that you implemented in the db? Thank you

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am not in "Fintech", but I may be able to help with some background in solution architecture.

A pattern that applies to most industries is Service-oriented Architecture (SOA) -- Where each layer (presentation, logic, data) is independent of each other.

This allow for fantastic scalability and granular debugging.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you but this is more of a "theoretical" answer and you don't really define what you mean by "logic" layer and how you implement it. Can you maybe give an example of a business rule (in finance) and where exactly will you implement it?

<comment><USER9> Sure thing.

First, weirdly enough I prefer to call the Business logic layer just the Logic layer. This is just personal, for all intensive purposes its the Business logic.

Goes without saying this example is basic and open for improvements. Let's suppose an application exists where a user can donate $10 a month and the app would randomly distribute it to charities of the users choice.

\-- Presentation layer, usually a public facing web application or mobile app will handle user interaction with said app. Here the pretty UI will make sure the user provides proper card information, charities etc.

\-- Logic layer, will be some API that will process the users information and distribute the money programmatically.

\-- Data layer, is some kind of relational database where data will can be persist if necessary. e.g User credentials.

Standard security protocols such as form validation and sanitization should always be performed both at Presentation level and at Logic level. For compliance, Things like encryption at data rest and while its in transit are important. Method of communication between each layer would be critical as well. There is a whole LOT more things to consider so when thinking security. These are just an example.

<comment><AUTHOR> From high level i agree with your statement (about separating stuff) but when you say "logic layer", what prevents me from looking at it as a specific schema (in the sens of PostgreSQL) in the db (call it api) that has only stored procedures and views and the presentation layer has access only to that schema and not the underlying data? I don't have to move data across between layers (data<->logic) over the network.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't like a lot of logic in the the database, but you can do continuous integration with tools like flyway:

[https://flywaydb.org/](https://flywaydb.org/)

In fact, it's pretty hard to do CI without tools like this, even with zero stored procs.</comment>


Tesla starts selling China-made Model 3 with autopilot function - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-china/tesla-starts-selling-china-made-model-3-with-autopilot-function-idUSKBN1X40H2 <comment><USER2> How long before the Communist Party hijacks these cars to transport their owners to re-education camps? Or perhaps a list of places the car refuses to go to or stop at?

<comment><USER3> Huh?</comment></comment>


Core protocol-level flaw in WPA2 - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/kennwhite/status/919522184384729089 <comment><USER2> Ars writeup with what we know right now. Note this is all rumor/leak at the moment and can't be verified.

[https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2017/10/sever...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2017/10/severe-flaw-in-wpa2-protocol-leaves-wi-fi-traffic-open-to- eavesdropping/)

</comment><comment><USER3> tl;dr for folks is that WPA2, as implemented by most vendors, is toast. The RNG is broken.</comment>


How will Google Glasses & Smartwatches revolutionize the video game industry? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Off the top of my head: Laser tag on larger, more complicated battleground. Players have map displayed on their glasses & statuses on their watches. Commanders can give orders through glasses, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> I already see myself playing it :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Suggestion for title: Prefix "Ask HN:"

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks will do! It was my first contribution

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Will they?

You're talking about what's essentially a HUD on your glasses, which is neat and all don't get me wrong. But not something I can imagine playing many games on. At least... not games that didn't involve a cross between virtual and real space.

I'd honestly have much more faith in something like the Oculus Rift revolutionising the video game industry.

What I could see would be things like open invitation gaming groups putting up tags you can see in a city. So when you're walking around a city you can see if there's a group meeting up to discuss or play whatever in the area.

<comment><AUTHOR> I really like the tag idea concept!

As you say, Treasure Hunt and/or Ingress like Games will definitely be played on Google Glasses and Smartwatches.

The Oculus Rift is indeed another revolution but I difficulty see myself walking in the street and wearing them... unless I'm skiing.</comment></comment>


Windows vs iPad comparison chart - <AUTHOR> http://esusatyo.net/post/51134694418/windows-vs-ipad-compare-tablets

<comment><USER2> Nothing about the comparison is untrue, and I wouldn't really even call it manipulative. It's just Microsoft doing marketing.</comment>


The US' hidden methane problem - <AUTHOR> http://www.climatechangenews.com/2018/08/13/us-methane-problem <comment><AUTHOR> Across the US, a major, uncontrolled leak of a potent greenhouse gas is going unregulated and largely unnoticed.

Climate Home News analysis of government data has identified roughly 300 active and 200 abandoned coal mines, which are the source of almost one-tenth of US methane pollution.

Methane has 34 times the long-term warming effect of carbon dioxide and accounts for 10% of US greenhouse gas emissions. Its emissions from the oil and gas industry and the efforts of the Trump administration to roll back regulations on them have been widely publicised.

Meanwhile, US coal mines released 60.5 MMTCO2e of methane in 2016, with roughly the same warming impact as 13 million cars. Efforts to control the problem are being hampered despite those with the technical expertise claiming a whole industry could be built on capturing these emissions and turning them into electricity.</comment>