A Tour of the Ethereum Token Bubble - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@LyleCantor/a-tour-of-the-ethereum-token-bubble-493c489bd0ea <comment><USER2> Ethereum definitely looks like it is in bubble territory to me. There's been a 3000% runup in the past few months. Most of the applications as you mentioned are based off the promise of something amazing rather than delivering something useful today.

I think the biggest hurdle is size of the blockchain. I tried downloading the entire blockchain and it got stuck... like downloading one block every 10 seconds, when the blockchain is roughly growing by this size. Found out I had to run geth --fast which donwloads only the headers for the blocks.

I'm just wondering how the average user or investor who is not a programmer is going to get the blockchain and backup their coins properly. Likely most people will keep their ethers on an exchange which is not secure.

<comment> 52-6F-62 There are projects that make use of the public Ethereum blockchain that show promise. I'm pretty sure much of the same things you've said about this tech was said about the web in its time.

Anyway, it might still be upcoming, but just becomes something is on the roadmap doesn't necessarily make it vaporware.

ex:

* Brendan Eich's Brave Browser & Ad/Tracker blocking bypass token for publishers - [https://brave.com/publishers.html](https://brave.com/publishers.html)

* Toyota's blockchain project - [https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/22/toyota-pushes-into-blockch...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/22/toyota-pushes-into-blockchain-tech-to-enable-the-next-generation-of-cars/)

* Circle launched international money transfer via Ethereum - [http://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/15/circle-launches-an-internatio...](http://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/15/circle-launches-an-international-money-transfer-service.html)

* And all these guys working to leverage it - [https://entethalliance.org/members/](https://entethalliance.org/members/)

I would wager that in the shorter term most end users will not be interacting directly with the blockchain, and that said kind of interaction is not where the more immediate value lies. It will build out in time, and more reliable sources will emerge for people to interact with the network financially. It's the writing that I see on the wall, anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Fantastic article, even if I think it misses some of the potential the projects analyzed have.

My biggest disagreement is with the article's look at Melonport. While I wouldn't recommend buying any token right now, including Melonport's, this is one of the most impressive projects I've come across. In my opinion, it's years ahead of its time. I do not own any MLN and it's way too early to say if Melonport will be financially successful, but I think the analysis done on it is extremely shallow.

</comment><comment><USER4> Great article, I could never really get what these ICOs were about, now I know why. Well said.

<comment><USER5> There is still massive FOMO when you go over an ICO, decide its stupid, and then post ICO it goes up 1000%. Its a ponzi scheme, sure, but people are still making 1000% in 2 weeks. So what do you do? Stick to your guns and ignore it? Or have a cheeky swing at it?

Its like the r/investing reddit since 2011 - twice a week someone asks "should I invest in bitcoin/ethereum?" and the knowledgeable investors like clockwork say "no, its not an investment". Meanwhile, everyone who did is up 10,000%-100,000%, while the average r/investing poster is happy to make 2% above the S&P500 return. Many things are sort of a bubble or ponzi, the people who really make truckloads of money are either very lucky, very stupid, or mentally ill in some way.. This goes for property markets - where the spoils go to the people who con the banks for as much credit as possible and buy house after house in a manic way, or in business eg. uber, where someone with a god complex raises some ridiculous amount of money and just expands as fast as they possibly can.

<comment><USER6> So how does it work? Let's say there is an ICO that I want to make a quick buck from. I first buy Ether, then I participate in the ICO early enough to get enough token. And then? The only option is to wait until the token hits Poloniex and sell asap when price > invest.. is that the strategy?

<comment><USER5> Yes.. I think the ship has sailed now however because in the big league ICO's (eg. BAT) it is almost impossible to buy in time</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why a one-room West Virginia library runs a $20,000 Cisco router - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/02/why-a-one-room-west-virginia-library-runs-a-20000-cisco-router/ <comment><USER2> I have first hand experience with this, although in Australia. My first job was working for a IT development and solutions shop (this is over 17 years ago) where they won the bid to rollout the internet and network gateways across a large number of Australian government schools.

We were doing similar work for private school at the same time, and the process for the public and private school could not be more different.

For eg. in the tender process, which I was part of, for private school we would use cheaper Taiwanese routers. For the public schools it 'had to be Cisco'. The only time we ever used Cisco, outside of large enterprise clients with 1000+ seats, was with public school tenders. The private school would get a $500 white-label router, the public school s would get a $6-15k Cisco router with additional VPN module costs.

We would charge a higher consultant rate on the Cisco jobs, and would bill 3 days instead of 1. We won the contract because we were 50% cheaper than the other tenders who all wanted to install 3 and 5-series routers. How we got to the point of being able to even tender is another story that involves somebody in our organization sleeping with somebody at the government organization. The other tenderers were accustomed to dividing the work up amongst themselves at inflated prices, they didn't even know who we were and we received a lot of abuse for breaking up their little scheme.

(Edit: a further idea of how this worked, the 3 people in the gov office responsible for tenders all had very nice cars and holiday homes while the rest of the office was working away on below-average wages. You could see what was going on just by looking at the car park)

So a dozen of us roll out hundreds of these routers in public schools and after a month we find that we rolled out the wrong version of IOS, one that was vulnerable to a simple security attack. Instead of forcing us to upgrade all the routers remotely, or out of our own pocket, we instead won another few-million-dollars worth of work to send a person out and apply the upgrade to each router (which took 5 minutes, we charged a full day plus travel).

The routers weren't even being used properly - the topography was net connection -> cisco router -> internal server -> switches. The internal server would do all the DHCP and everything else. These expensive routers were being used as bridges, although they were pitched as having 'forward compatibility' incase the school wanted to implement features such as user accounts (they did, although again they used a custom server, not the router).

When these projects are audited there is nobody who is technically competent enough to make an argument against who would be on the side of ditching or shrinking the projects. Some of the smarter teachers knew what was going on but didn't mind since they got access to fancy equipment (we would create user accounts for them).

My first, and not my last, experience with government bureaucracy and budgets. I would estimate that the private schools got more out of us at a tenth of the cost. Since then I had an even worse experience with the government health department, where 6-figure invoices were written and paid for goods that didn't exist (that department has since been broken up and the subject of a large corruption enquire). No surprise that I became very anti-government size and spending.

Edit: to add, we were so 'disruptive' to the backdoor deals that we were uninvited from conferences, kicked off panels, not invited to the mixer events where gov buyers met providers, a couple of years later we lost our accreditation[0] temporarily until we appealed to the Government Minister. On site we would be locked out of network cabinets, not given IP information for the net connections, etc. Our jobs were made difficult by competitors and others because of our pricing and methods. They couldn't figure out how they didn't get rid of us, because they didn't know that one of our guys had a solid relationship with somebody at the government (that person wanted to clean things up). Usually we wouldn't have been allowed anywhere near these projects and if we did win one we wouldn't be allowed back in for not playing with the system.

[0] 'accreditation' for government tenders needs to die, it is a formal method used to keep honest operators out of what is essentially a cartel. The Australian government is getting better in this regard[1], they now have an open tender website but I believe it still requires some form of accreditation that has a person in a department standing between application and approval.

[1] although not too much better. NBN Co., a government owned company that is building a $40 billion nation-wide fibre network recently suspended tender process because every single bid came in over the expected price:

[http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/in-depth/high- price...](http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/in-depth/high-prices-force- nbn-to-suspend-cabling-tender-process-and-look- elsewhere/story-e6frgaif-1226031831542)

<comment><USER3> It sounds like your company ripped off the public schools, and that's why you are anti-government?

<comment><USER4> The fact that the government is not competent to spend taxpayers' money wisely seems like a good reason to be anti-government. After hearing enough anecdotal evidence on this topic (which very few people have both the capability and desire to thoroughly investigate in order to properly quantify it, thus the reliance on anecdotal evidence), it starts to appear as if such incompetence is an integral feature of all governments once they reach a certain size.

<comment><USER5> I think it's an integral feature of all organizations that reach a certain size without sufficient level of audits at lower levels. And given enough large organizations, there will be problems.

Given the number of large government entities, there's a lot of room for bad oversight.

But on top of that there is also often a lot more openness when the auditors does their jobs in government departments and these things are discovered, and even if not, the press often has a lot more access (e.g. freedom of information requirements).

In a lot of companies, a lot of borderline behaviour will instead just lead to people getting fired, especially when there is no evidence.

A new CTO at a company a friend does work for "decided to part ways" with his company a while back, for example, after migrating a substantial part of their service to a new, totally over-engineered and untested platform that failed spectacularly after they'd very publicly spent a massive amount of money on it. Incompetence or corruption? Probably impossible to prove.

And to the public there was no real sign anything was wrong: The launch was highly publicized by the company, and they never told anyone about the negative effects later. Only people with insight into internal sales numbers until they made emergency changes to revert some of his more harmful decisions would know.

And for him it likely doesn't even matter that he was effectively fired: He's either a useful fool, or a useful accomplice, for someone who will happily make use of their network to help him land somewhere else. And many potential hirers will only remember the positive press attention prior to the launch and will have no way of knowing about the problems.

There are a lot of stories like that in private business too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Visualizing this conversation..

IT Director to Sales Guy: "We just got $20M in grant money for getting broadband across the state. Can you get me some numbers?"

Sales guy to engineering team (partner or internal): "Hey I need lots of boxes. They've got 1300 sites."

Engineering team: "Ok.. what do they need?"

IT Director: "Pretty sure my network guy says everything has to have redundant power supplies and at least 1 ethernet connection. To do a survey for each site would take over a year due to bureaucracy, and I've got 3 months on this grant"

Engineer to Sales guy: "Ok I built out those routers. Do they really need redundant power supplies everywhere? 3900's seem big."

Sales guy: "Ya, that's what they said. Anyways this came out below budget. Thanks!"

IT Director: "Looks to be under budget, meets our needs, thanks!"

.. meanwhile IT management/engineers aren't involved. Somewhere, someone didn't slow this project down to do due diligence. That or somewhere buried in some document is a requirement for redundant power supplies, but that sounds less likely the case.

<comment><USER7> > Somewhere, someone didn't slow this project down to do due diligence

In it a nutshell.

If anything, there should have been multiple flags raised.

1) A ball park figure should have been estimated on what this should cost, broken down by equipment type.

2) That should have made it clear that switches would be fine for multiple use cases, and the overall estimate should have dropped. *

3) Back and forth with provider as haggling over components proceeds. Massive attention to detail would be shown here.

4) First quote received from Cisco. Due diligence proceeds, issues raised. Customers says NO, just to buy negotiation room. (fine they have a grant, maybe not so aggressive)

5) Updated quote, go back to 4 if issues.

6) Quote acceptance. Now monitoriing of execution.

There should have been many opportunities for flags to have been raised, even before the quote was received. And most definitely after it would have crossed the ball park figure.

* It looks like the clause for redundant power was what tripped it up. Someone said we need X, and then somehow it became the TRUTH for all routers/switches.

So its entirely possible (if not likely) that Cisco said "based on your constraints, these are the only components which match your requirements", and the Government bought it.

Which is face-palm/head-desk territory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What's worse than overpaying millions for a few routers? Overpaying billions.

At the federal level, specifically to prevent such things from occurring, there's this huge byzantine procurement process. A process that is literally worth tens of billions of dollars to game.

So if you have product foo and want to see a zillion copies of it to the feds instead of some freeware or cheaper solution? 1) Convince somebody on the inside of the procurement system that yours is the best product, 2) they write up the specification so that no other products will qualify (many times just copying directly from your brochure) even though it's technically an "open" bid, and 3) have somebody with lots of procurement knowledge help guide the paperwork through the system. At the end of the day, it's all just paperwork, no matter how much money is involved.

And that's just what I've observed in IT. I'm guessing IT is the worst, since all the products somewhat look alike. But I'm not sure. Quite frankly, its way too depressing to think about much.

BTW, the best way to do #1 is simply hire people retiring out of the procurement system. Yep, there are laws against direct hires, so you hire somebody from DoD to help shepherd a Commerce Department contract, or a DHS procurement expert to help with a DoD job, and so forth. If you do this correctly, the poor schmucks left handling the paperwork will be so happy that you can offer extensive support in making sure everything is done correctly that this is another huge plus in favor of your getting the bid.

<comment><USER9> The trouble is that you actually do need some of this flexibility in the procurement process. If your department needs Photoshop, you don't want some goofy non-technical auditor telling you that he googled around and thinks GIMP will do just fine. Or you want one particular contractor because just last year they did an amazing job on something that was pretty much exactly what you need.

<comment><USER10> gimp generally would do just fine, wouldn't it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'd like to know how much of that $5 million savings would have been burned up in the capacity studies. My guess is a lot.

Given the choice between a fixed cost and an unbounded cost (being the capacity study referenced throughout the article) I'm not surprised they went with the fixed cost.

I'm not saying WV didn't get swindled, but I can sure see how this might have happened:

WV Rep: Do we really need these $20k routers for all our locations?

Cisco: We really couldn't say what your exact needs are without a proper study.

WV Rep: What will that cost?

Cisco: It's really hard to say. We'll have to visit all of your locations and speak with the IT Manager there. We'll have to measure average and peak load. Of course, we'll want to plan for future growth so we're not at this same point in two years...

The real crime is that they didn't open the RFP to multiple bidders. A little bit of competition can go a long way.

<comment><USER5> Here's a capacity study for you:

E-mail all the IT managers, and ask them:

\- How many users do you have? \- What is the total size of the community you serve? \- Do you need new equipment?

That would have quickly revealed that many of them had so few users that these routers were total overkill, and had so few _potential_ users that even 100% simultaneous usage in some cases would not max out the capacity, and that some of them did not have a need for new equipment.

I agree with you that multiple bidders would be essential. But a tiny little bit of due diligence and investigation on the behalf of WV would have gone a long way.

That said, sometimes this is what backfires too: I've seen a government contract recently where a lot of extra work was carried out to meet the requirements of a "security consultant" that refused to sign off on a system because of "issues" that were clearly generated only to ensure that he could pad his list of "problems" he identified to help justify his fees.

<comment><USER12> Wouldn't the central procurement already know the max capacity of the lines (DSL, fibre, whatever) that had been installed, already know what routers/switches were in use and already know the populations being served? That's pretty basic audit information that I'd expect could be pulled up from a central database lickity-split.

Eyeballing those figures should be all you'd need - but yes if there was no central record of past procurements an email survey (or better yet online using a survey system) would apparently be pretty quick.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Oh, the FCC E-Rate program. So much corruption, so much waste. There were people who would purchase something for a school with the most % of kids on free or reduced price lunch, since that was used to set the "FCC match" percentage. So, if 90% of the kids were on that plan, we'd only pay 10% of the actual cost.

So, they'd order something for the school with the highest percentage and would then park that equipment there for a year (to fulfill the requirement that it must be used there). A year later, they'd move it somewhere else.

I wrote about this particular router instance last year and linked it with my own FCC story from the year before that. <http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2012/05/08/router/>

</comment><comment><USER14> Probably going against the grain here, but what about the operations staff who are charged with supporting these 1,164 routers? What about warranties and parts replacements? There is a price for standardizing on a piece of hardware at such a large scale. When you standardize, sure there is going to be hardware overkill in some places, but in the big picture this is just a price of doing business at this scale. What is the price of service calls out to this location when the hardware is down? You have a tool-chain that supports this hardware, you have experts supporting the network (security, patching, etc), and you have contracts in place to make sure it is operational.

<comment><USER15> There's a point in standardizing, but they probably should have standardized on 2-3 different branch router products, vs. one.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, I agree. I'm just saying I can kind of see where they are coming from.

<comment><USER16> Who, Cisco? I wouldn't be excusing their actions in a hurry.

Everyone in this deal should be advising as though they are spending their own money. You can spend a lot of money, but would you if it were you own and you had other things to consider in a budget?

<comment><USER17> Do they get a bonus or other benefit if they act as if they are spending their own money, or alternatively, punished if they do not act as such?

In other words: if there's no incentive, what difference does it make?

<comment><USER16> I'm saying they should. Not that they will.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This almost happened at the California State University (CSU) level. An RFP went out, Alcatel bid $22MM, Cisco $123MM.

[http://www.networkworld.com/news/2012/102512-cisco- csu-26371...](http://www.networkworld.com/news/2012/102512-cisco- csu-263711.html)

""Everybody had to comply with this spreadsheet," he said. "Every campus had two border routers, two cores, and two server farm switches. All the vendors had to propose exactly the same solution" based on the average number of servers deployed at each CSU campus. "All of this is based on exactly the same data to all of the vendors. It's exactly the same formula for all of the vendors.""

</comment><comment><USER19> This doesn't suprise me.

I am related to an ex-sales exec at Cisco UK. They are a bunch of shysters who will desperately oversell anything to anyone. The person in question was responsible for selling such kit to managers who didn't even know what it was but they apparently needed it. You know the sort who populate senior positions in the public sector. They are rife in the healthcare and council sectors in the UK. Incompetent morons waiting to be milked for our cash.

The asshat is now selling VoIP and video conferencing solutions to medium sized businesses (via their executives) which is the next cash cow he can milk.

</comment><comment><USER20> Corruption is awesome when you're on the nipple end of the government tit. Nice work if you can get it, Cisco.

<comment><USER21> Cisco may not have anything to do with it. It may be down to a salesman in the middle who is on commission. I once saw CCTV cameras deployed with Jena lenses, I guess for similar reasons. The auditors (if there were any) weren't knowledgeable enough to know better.

edit: After further reading, Cisco did in fact shamelessly participate in this gigantic boondoggle.

<comment><USER22> In my country government officials are usually paid to be this stupid. I can't imagine USA government officials are this stupid for free.

I know ... never attribute to malice what can be sufficiently explained by stupidity, but come on! Someone sure got at least a nice car out of it.

<comment><USER23> I chuckled. It is, in fact, quite easy to imagine that American bureaucrats (as a collective) are that stupid. I'm not discounting the other possibility, though.

<comment><USER7> Whats somewhat sad though, is that for the majority of my time, America was described as the place where things "just worked".

To be fair, a lot of things do "Just work". This may just be the time Americans look to their government and decide to clean house and rehire competent people into it.

<comment><USER20> They can hire all the competent people they want, the system itself has become broken. There's too little representation and too much gerrymandering. There needs to be profound systemic reforms to even begin to address what's wrong with the US government.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I was surprised how much blame this article lays at the feet of Cisco. What did they do except sell the customer what they wanted? Sure, they might have been more noble if they put on the breaks in the name of the taxpayers, but that could hardly be expected.

It takes a lot of nerve for someone who just wasted my money (federal dollars) to try to blame it on the other party for fulfilling the order.

<comment><USER25> Did we read different articles? The one I read says "The report finds plenty of blame to go around. The ultimate cause of the fiasco, it says, was the fact the grant implementers did not conduct a capacity or use study before spending $24 million." This does not place the ultimate blame on Cisco.

You say "what [West Virginia] wanted", but the article shows how Cisco was unable to show that they knew what WV wanted. For example, Cisco claims that WV specified internal dual power supplies but there is no record that WV ever had that requirement. Instead, "what WV wanted" is defined only as being whatever WV signed off on at the end.

As to if Cisco's behavior is expected or not, the Ars article says: "[Cisco] had a moral responsibility to propose a plan which reasonably complied with Cisco's own engineering standards" but that instead "Cisco representatives showed a wanton indifference to the interests of the public in recommending using $24 million of public funds to purchase 1,164 Cisco model 3945 branch routers."

Ars even links to section 5A-3-33d of the West Virginia Code. The likely relevant clause is "(B) Performance in violation of standards established by law or generally accepted standards of the trade or profession amounting to intentionally deficient or grossly negligent performance on one or more public contracts;", and the auditor's report shows examples of how Cisco's actions were likely in violation of their own published standards.

This is not a crime. As the article says, the strongest remedy regarding Cisco is that Cisco might be "barred from bidding on future projects."

<comment><USER24> "Cisco was unable to show that they knew what WV wanted"

Yes, they have a contract. That is the best indication possible that the customer wants what you are selling.

If I trust someone else with my money, and they transfer that trust over to a salesperson, then they have violated my trust.

I don't want to hear about "blame to go around" and "the salesman should have sold us less stuff". Maybe apply some shame or sanctions to the salesperson, I suppose, but I really don't care unless there was some kind of kickback involved.

Allowing the stewards of your money to redirect blame onto Cisco for selling too much stuff seems so overwhelmingly naive that I don't know where to begin.

<comment><USER25> This is a modified version of the Prisoner's Dilemma. If there is trust then overall costs go down and the number of sales goes up. This is a net win for both sides.

If one side does not follow standard business practices, which the auditor argues happened here, then that one side may get better benefits. But this is actually an iterated prisoner's dilemma, and the standard tit-for-tat strategy of the Prisoner's Dilemma makes good sense. That is, shut out Cisco from future contracts for a period of time.

This encourages future vendors, who want repeat business, to stay in a regime of trust and relieves WV of having to pay for staff with full domain expertise on all contract-related matters. A role of the auditors is to identify these problems after the fact and use debarment as a way to disincentivize this vendors from this behavior.

This isn't naive. It's basic game theory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Cisco: "the criticism of the State is misplaced and fails to recognize the forward-looking nature of their vision"

My sarcastic retort would be: "no, _you_ fail to recognize the forward-looking nature of their vision because you did not recommend this other even more expensive and more powerful router!"

</comment><comment><USER27> Gosh, it seems like state bureaucrats can't figure out how best to spend money, and don't care to hire anyone who can. How might one's political preferences change in response to this shocking revelation?

<comment><USER28> Well, think about it economically. What's the incentive for those who are skilled and capable to go into the public sector instead of private enterprise. Elections suck, the press sucks, your fellow public servants suck, having to deal with the general public, etc. etc.

Some days I wonder how we don't seem to encounter tons more corruption and incompetence at all levels of the U.S. government.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Caveat Emptor. Cisco is out to make as much money as they can, they have no duty to save the government money. West Virginia's procurement process was irresponsible and wasteful and now they want to shift the blame to Cisco in order to cover their own incompetence. If you overpay for something, it's your fault.

</comment><comment><USER30> Previous discussion on the issue with a lot of the same arguments that have been rehashed here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3962029>

</comment><comment><USER31> I grew up in West Virginia. I also was pretty involved in the computer operation at my high school. The "head" of IT was a math teacher they suckered into doing all the work.

Anyhow. I remember when they decided they needed a domain server. What they eventually came back with was a two year old model HP tower server that ran over $4k. It was insane. They could have gotten something new for much much less, but all the explanation I could get was that they had a contract and had to buy the items listed in that contract.

There is a culture of corruption and it is prevalent in not only the public, but also the private sector.

Another story is when I was in a diner years later and heard my old social studies teacher asking for a bribe from someone to get a job in the coal mines. I felt pretty bad because I believe he got his money and thus his power from years before when I told him to buy Google and others stock.

</comment><comment><USER32> > _Getting any of the money back seems unlikely at this point, but the > legislative auditor does have one solid recommendation to make. The State > Purchasing division should determine whether Cisco's actions in this matter > fall afoul of section 5A-3-33d of the West Virginia Code, and whether the > company should be barred from bidding on future projects._

Cisco is a public company with a fiduciary duty to make money. You should _assume_ that companies are going to try to fleece you whenever possible. Unless they committed some kind of contractual breach or fraud, they're not the problem.

The fault here is clearly with one or multiple people in the government. This is the kind of gross misconduct for which it feels like firing isn't even close to enough -- this kind of managerial incompetence really deserves at least a short stint in a white-collar prison somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER33> This makes me sick to my stomach. The worst part is that there's nothing we (the taxpayers whose hard earned money went to to pay for these things) can do about it, nor is there much we can do to prevent it from happening in the future. I really really hate to admit it, but that's the truth.

<comment><USER34> Did you consider any of the tools of democracy? Although it can take time, that should work just fine if most people actually agree on what to do.

If you are in a minority of the population which wants to unilaterally impose its will on everyone else because they are more important, however - then I guess that democracy is no good and only an armed coup will do. Let's hope that people don't start thinking that way, because then we are all in trouble.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> 'The auditor's office sent off a fairly testy e-mail to Cisco noting that the 3945 routers were not appropriate for most West Virginia deployments—even according to Cisco's own literature. "I would appreciate an explanation as to why you believe the 3945 routers are not oversized and misconfigured for hundreds of locations," the auditor concluded, "and, thus, a significant over expenditure of millions of dollars for Cisco equipment."'

Did I miss some part where they contracted Cisco to visit every location and assess it's needs and build an order according to that?

If you order a bunch of 3945 routers then why is it Cisco's fault for selling you a bunch of 3945 routers?

</comment><comment><USER36> Remember the wasteful spending back in the UNIX workstation days - a Sun 10 in every administrator's office for e-mail, and nobody ever had the training to use the things?

<comment><USER37> My high-school admin bought a Mac Pro with dual CPU. It was powerful enough to run all the school servers at once, yet he only used it to remote desktop into the real servers.

<comment><USER38> Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. Those who can't teach administrate.

<comment><USER34> And I suppose none of this applies to private industry...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Having worked on a government contract before, this doesn't surprise me at all.

They were going to spend all the money the feds gave them. Whether they spent it on over powered routers or "consulting" or something else, it was all going to be spent by the end of the project.

There are enough projects overbudget that being on budget looks really good. And there's always a concern with being under budget that next time the feds won't hand out so much money, and you might really need it then.

</comment><comment><USER40> From the article:

> the legislative auditor concluded that the company "had a moral > responsibility"...

Since when do corporations have any kind of responsibility, other than to make as much profit as possible? Expecting anything else is futile. If something needs to be fixed, it is in mechanisms to restrain this kind of behaviour where it is in the public interest. Demanding that corporations have morals is not the solution.

<comment><USER41> If corporations have the concept of 'personhood' attributable, they can probably have the concept of 'moral responsibility' attributed as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I saw the exact same thing with Cisco in the NY public school system. They gave my high school something like $50,000 of equipment in a rack to support two machines that submitted grades. We stripped it for parts and put it to better use, it had some really nice switches in it. But it was clearly misspent public money. At least we did put it to use in classrooms, though not as they intended.

</comment><comment><USER43> This could have been executed by the process "Wired RFP". just look for the this term and you will see references where government RFPs are wired to specific vendor. In other sense, no other vendor may qualify to bid based on the RFP requirement.

For e.g RFP bidding/winning criteria is based on point system.

1\. Price accounts for 25% 2\. Referrals from similar orgs 40% and so on

you see, when the price in the RFP accounts less then it is an indication that the RFP is wired to a specific vendor.

A small business who is just starting may or may not have 3 or more referrals from a public school or university.

In one of the RFP process I sat, the RFP had a typo where they had literally spelled out the name of a competitor company. I pointed out this in the pre- bidding call and the personnel acknowledged that it was a mistake.

Government RFP are a waste of time because it is the last step the government does in their purchasing process. They have already chosen the vendor and most of the time the vendor helps them write the RFP.

Fixing the RFP process may eliminate some of the overspending.

</comment><comment><USER44> "The auditor began digging, speaking to many people in West Virginia state government who had been involved with the project. The Department of Education told him that it "did not request or require that the routers for the state's schools have internal dual power supplies. Education would not have made this requirement because unless a school has two power sources the feature of dual power supplies would have no use." A network engineer for the Department of Education confirmed that he had not requested such a feature."

Education would not have made this requirement because unless a school has two power sources the feature of dual power supplies would have no use.

Oh is that how redundant power supplies work? You need two power sources, eh?

<comment><USER45> For full redundancy, yes.

You get redundant power supplies by plugging both into the same power feed.

However, you can gain some extra redundancy by plugging each power supply into a different circuit, and reducing the common point of failure (shared power source).

<comment><USER46> Two UPSes.

Although I've got a good war story on that one too, I had a machine with redundant PSUs emit a stream of smoke from one of the PSUs. It was happily up and serving while smoking out the machine room until the operator (rather sensibly) grabbed both power leads and pulled, at which point both fire and ssh went out ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Well, just another me-too story. When I was somewhat younger I had to "deploy" one Cisco product which was definitely a result of an "incentivized" sale. That sweet sweet setup involved login-password authorization (assisted by a Cisco router) where the user had to type in "public" and "1" as a password because... the enterprise actually had no end-user accounts and absolutely no possibility to introduce them...

As far as I understand, such an incentivized sale was a common practice. Once the management somehow achieved consensus (i.e. the right balance of risks, benefits and favors), engineers were left with making things appear OK.

I am inclined to think that Cisco made a strong bet on this kind of a business model at some point.

</comment><comment><USER48> Startup Mountain camp anyone? This sounds like a great place to host a hacker convention now?

</comment><comment><USER49> Just nit picking but there are several places in the article that are incorrect such as

"The West Virginia legislature at peak times can have over 600 internal users and numerous guests accessing "multiple Web servers, up to eight simultaneous live audio webcasts, multiple SQL servers, and multiple Google search appliances located in the Legislature's server farms." Despite all this, the legislature doesn't even use a router but instead runs a cheaper Cisco switch... and it has never exceeded capacity."

It's pretty clear that not only does the author not know networking basics, his sources don't either.

<comment><USER50> Why is that clear? Cisco sells plenty of "layer 3 switches", they are switch hardware with basic routing functionality available in the IOS. It is entirely likely that the quote is referring to a catalyst 29xx or something which is like 1/10 the cost of the routers the article was talking about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> this kind of nonsense is what people want to prevent the federal government from doing...bring on the sequester!

<comment><USER52> If this is the kind of nonsense you want to stop, that approach is ineffective to the point of idiocy.

<comment><USER53> Since the sequester is really just a reduction of an increase and not really a cut, how is it ineffective? Seems like it's the only thing that even kind of looks like a cut that might go into effect in our lifetimes.

Funny how the Feds were fine with a 2% increase in payroll taxes for consumers but a 2% cut in the increase of their budget is going to bring on Armageddon.

<comment><USER34> I don't understand why people speak so fondly of things like education cuts. Reducing the absolute size of the budget and increasing revenue are both important for continuing to reduce the deficit. But almost every real problem with government is caused by the relative allocations of funds and how departments are managed, not the mere existence of funding for things like education or public health.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Reminds me of new EU members. Joining the EU was advertised as source of funds for development and catching-up with the West and now a benchmark of politicians' "performance" is how much funds are they able obtain for their electorate - the more is spent, the better.

In extreme cases one didn't even have to bribe officials to get bogus contracts because if the city didn't find a way to spend all the money it was offered, it would simply get less.

</comment><comment><USER55> There is positive corruption and nevative corruption

Positive corruption does the right thing (build roads, install broadband into poor communities) but adds cost

Negative corruption distorts right thing so much it simply does not happen (communities never get proper triads or sewage because they are the wrong tribe)

The broadband is the thing - good. If you don't want government to overpay I suggest Cisco routers is the last thin to look at - start with military contracts

</comment><comment><USER56> Meh, I'm much more upset by the mountain top removal going on in WV, clearly visible in the satellite picture of Clay, WV included in TFA.

<comment><USER57> You can blame Cisco for that, too. See, one of their interview questions is "How many teaspoons would it take to move Mt. Fuji," and they needed to do a small initial study.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> It seems absurd but I'm going to have to side with the state/library on this one. It can literally cost more to make a choice to use the cheaper unit than to just buy the big one.

"Some libraries need smaller routers. Ok. Which ones?" could easily run in the millions before any routers were purchased. Unfortunately, that's just the nature of government purchasing.

<comment><USER27> This is bullshit. They could have put the network engineer from the Department (the guy who confirmed he had not requested dual power supplies) on this for a week, and he would have had a solid estimate for far less. Put him on it a month and he could have had an itemized order with the exact models to order from Cisco or from any of its competitors. If he were busy with other duties, any other network engineer in the state's employ could have done the same. If they were all too busy, a consultant could have been hired on for a month's engagement at two to three times the FTE cost.

<comment><USER59> Agreed - it sounded like the Cisco guy just spec'd up the absolute maximum needed for one or two locations, then just decided to roll out the same spec across all 1000+ locations, obviously trying to maximise sales. Cisco was probably shocked when the government approved it all.

<comment><USER16> "Cisco was probably shocked when the government approved it all."

Wouldn't that imply they hadn't succeeded with the same ploy before? I think that's unlikely!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> "did not request or require that the routers for the state's schools have internal dual power supplies. Education would not have made this requirement because unless a school has two power sources the feature of dual power supplies would have no use."

What if one power supply fails? I expect better from ars.

</comment><comment><USER61> a company like cisco or microsoft trying to rip off state/local governments? color me not shocked.

<comment><USER62> What does Microsoft have to do with this?

<comment><USER63> > What does Microsoft have to do with this?

I don't have a source handy, but around 2004-2005 Steve Ballmmer came in a short visit to my country (somewhere in Eastern Europe), he had a even shorter meeting with the Prime Minister of that time and sure enough not 6 months later a Government programme was launched and all the schools and public libraries in my country had to be equipped with Windows machines. This was around the time when people thought that tools like Open Office actually had a chance of toppling the MS Office suite.

<comment><USER64> Hey fellow countryman! What good would it do for kids in our country to learn Open Office, an office suit nobody uses in a workplace?

<comment><USER41> 30 years ago, why would anyone have bothered to use MS Word when nobody used it in the workplace? Everyone used WordPerfect or WordStar.

If you had a generation of kids who have experience with openoffice, it'll be much more likely that openoffice would be something that would be adopted over time - newly formed companies using it, gradual shift away from MS Office, etc.

MS knows their history, and will continue to seed generations of users with low-cost/free stuff to keep their dominance going. If they quit doling out free copies, something like openoffice would gain a larger foothold in schools and eventually businesses in < 10 years. Would MS Office be entirely replaced? Of course not, but it would not be the default/automatic choice for everyone without question.

<comment><USER64> I don't think that's public education's role.

<comment><USER41> What isn't? Indoctrinating students in MS Office? Or OpenOffice? Or Apple products?

<comment><USER64> Exactly. It should just teach the industry standard, which in this case is MS Office. It's not the education systems' role to push for open source solutions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> "For those keeping score at home, this means that 75 $20,000 routers are depreciating in a state police warehouse somewhere in West Virginia." So we should be seeing 74 Cisco 3945 routers on eBay very soon. (My commission for this idea is 1 Cisco 3945 router.)

</comment><comment><USER66> Maybe I should get myself checked, but is anyone else thinking about the big opportunity here?

You wouldn't need more than your average crow bar to get into this thing. I bet they don't have a decent alarm system (if any).

Seems like a relatively low-risk, high-reward situation to me.

</comment><comment><USER67> Before I read the article, I was hoping for a feel-good piece about how someone hacked together a massive WiFi system using such a router to supply Internet to some isolated community in rural West Virginia. It didn't turn out to be exactly that.

</comment><comment><USER41> Didn't read the entire post - is there some reason the state or local municipalities can't sell this stuff on ebay, get lower-powered hardware to match their needs, and pocket the diff for the locality's coffers?

</comment><comment><USER68> I haven't something quite this egregious happen firsthand, but it fits the pattern for the interactions I've had when working for a "partner company" reselling big-name networking gear.

</comment><comment><USER69> This is so old that it was on the frontpage of Digg before Reddit was popular.

</comment><comment><USER70> Nothing is as expensive as free money.

</comment><comment><USER50> This should surprise no one. This sort of nonsense is the entire reason cisco exists as a company. Their products are underpowered, overpriced, and their software is incredibly unreliable. Scamming big entities with closed bid processes into buying millions of dollars worth of equipment is cisco's bread and butter.

</comment><comment><USER71> Nice commission for that sales rep.

This is the dark side of enterprise sales. Microsoft and many others have surely done many such deals over the years - and paid out handsome bonuses to the reps/execs who made them happen.

</comment><comment><USER72> Burn in hell, CISCO, bunch of pricks.

<comment><USER72> OK, the "Burn in hell" comment added little value, and so the downvotes from Mods understandable, but take into account I'm a West Virginian, and this is genuinely upsetting to us.</comment></comment>


Rumored 16-Inch MacBook Pro Keeps the 17-Inch Dream Alive - <AUTHOR> https://9to5mac.com/2019/02/18/16-inch-macbook-pro/ <comment><AUTHOR> This would be great. I have a 2009-era 17" MacBook Pro that keeps humming along (on its 2nd screen, 3rd battery and an SSD replacement of the original hard drive). I have a 15" modern one for work, but still prefer the larger screen. Also, this fan on this one never seems to kick on like it does on the latest version.</comment>


Ask HN: What is the best (online or offline) resource to learn to code? - <AUTHOR>

Hi Hacker News, thank you for reading.
I've been in to techie/hacker related things for a while but I have never had the opportunity to learn to code beyond some fairly rudimentary stuff (html, css and Visual Basic) I learnt in my early teens. I use a lot of opensource software and feel quite guilty that I use it without being able to contribute to it (even in a minor way).
In an ideal world I would be access to coding courses as easily as accessing courses in second natural languages but the world is less than ideal.
So, back to my question. Where would you guys recommend I start? <comment><USER2> If your concern is about contributing to open soource software, you don't need to know how to code to contribute. Bug reports are actually hugely important and some projects take financial donations.

As to learning to code, there are actually a lot of good resources. <http://learnpythonthehardway.org/> Is a good book which will show you the basics and get you started with a lot of practice. The Khan Academy also has some introductory videos: <http://www.khanacademy.org/cs/tutorials/programming-basics>. In addition, you can find tutorials for just about any language and they'll also show you some of the basics.

Oh, and Visual Basic, while arguably being shitty, _is_ a real programmng language, so if you understand it, you already know how to program. You just need to learn a more useful language.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for those links. I think I will make more of an effort to contribute to projects in non-coding ways while I learn to code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Since you say you know html,css, then I think the easiest thing to do would be to learn javascript and jquery and get a github account. This will probably let you see results and start contributing to open source the fastest. Once you get good enough in js you can do some bug fixes for any of the tons of js projects on github and work your way in on that route. I'd say with any non web-centric language (i.e. c, c++, ruby, go, haskell)- especially since you don't know coding yet - your looking at a minimum of two years before you could start actively contributing to a project.

Here's some links to learn js/dom: MDN: <https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/> Opera Developer Site: <http://dev.opera.com/> Javascript Repos on github: <https://github.com/languages/JavaScript> (read the source!)

Also "javascript the good parts" by Crockford is a good javasceript book.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank for you those resources. I've added the book to my Amazon Wishlist. It seems that coding for the web is probably the 'easiest' entry into the world of coding and I have an idea that I wish to pursue so having that goal will give me extra motivation.

Apart from the actual languages and frameworks, what would be the best way to go about learning? Gradually or intensive?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Learning to code is a bit too general for concrete advice. what would you like to code for? websites? mobile apps? games? algorithm? or automating systems?

do you have a language / framework in mind?

<comment><AUTHOR> I kind of deliberately left the question fairly wide just to see how people would reply. I think I would edge towards websites and similar but I would like to understand the processes involved in developing software for Linux. What would you recommend for a beginner (apart from JS and Python)?

<comment><USER4> The Ruby programming language and the Ruby on Rails framework would be your best bet. The ecosystem is quite polished on building web apps.

<comment><USER4> If you are a beginner, I wrote a post about how to start with Ruby / Rails as a beginner that you may find interesting:

[http://www.railstutors.com/blog/the-best-way-to-learn- ruby-o...](http://www.railstutors.com/blog/the-best-way-to-learn-ruby-on- rails-as-a-beginner)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've found Lynda.com is an awesome resource for getting a quick overview or refresher on the basics of a language with more in-depth classes if I find something interesting enough.

If you're looking at learning a single language in depth they're probably not the best for anything, but a lot of breadth on there, they cover a lot of apps too. Not free, basic plan is 25 a month but they do have a free trial.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've been pretty happy with RubyMonk.com and CodeSchool thus far. Also, Coursera and EdX have open programming courses taught by professors from Cal, MIT, Stanford, etc.

Also, Why's Guide to Ruby has been good to me so far if you want to get into Ruby.

</comment><comment><USER7> For html/javascript/python, go with CodeAcademy.com!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, I remember using that a few months ago but other things got in the way. I have done a few exercises since you replied and it is proving very helpful.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Which smart home automations and hacks are actually helpful? - <AUTHOR> And aren't just gimmicks? <comment><USER2> i have not implemented this, but i would love a good way for smart electricity management.

for example i want to power down my router when i go to sleep, and power down all tv related electronics. right now i've been pulling the plug out of the wall..

i did try getting a random remote controlled power adapter from amazon but that worked for about a week.

it would be neat to make it at least voice controlled</comment>


Forgive Me, Scientists, for I Have Sinned - <AUTHOR> http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2014_05_20/caredit.a1400126

<comment><USER2> I don't like my job, but I still like to program just not other people's crap. so much for turning things you like or hobbies into a job.

</comment><comment><USER3> I assume he has tenure?</comment>


Groupon sales rep threatens restaurant with negative Yelp reviews - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/SauceSF/posts/10151880503224575 <comment><USER2> Mirrors for when the original content inexplicably disappears.

Facebook post (OP's link): [http://archive.is/lIFF5](http://archive.is/lIFF5)

Negative reviews left: [http://archive.is/js6nY](http://archive.is/js6nY) and [http://archive.is/hnMmA](http://archive.is/hnMmA)

The attackers reviews on Yelp: [http://archive.is/Itdbw](http://archive.is/Itdbw)

<comment><USER3> Dang, they actually ARE carrying with that threat and giving them bad reviews? That's so messed up. I didn't think that'd actually happen. Hope this gets quelled quickly,but I'm bringing the popcorn and the lawnchair just in case.

<comment><USER4> To be fair, it doesn't look like _they_ are doing much. Rather this Andy Johnston guy is going on a rampage to exact revenge for a perceived personal slight.

I'd imagine Andy's actions expose his employer to many liabilities, but there's no indication that Groupon condones these actions thus far.

<comment><USER3> I totally agree with ya'll. I'm not blaming Groupon, I should have been more specific when I said 'they'. I mean the kid and his (real?) buddies. I don't even think Groupon know what's going on right now since this is getting worse by the minute.

I'm just saying they gotta hurry up because their customers are not blaming this dude, they're blaming them directly, and it seems to be spreading really fast. Some of those facebook comments have some real vitriol.

<comment><USER5> Cold callers seems to have similar (aggressive)attitude no matter where in the world you are, not just Groupon. But some industries are more affected than others...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [http://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=hnH6RaPkJ2Tfw9ZkKMfL...](http://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=hnH6RaPkJ2Tfw9ZkKMfLmg) see how many bad reviews he already wrote for Sause! I think his profile should be flagged, you can't trust a person who does this kind of things.

Edit: He just changed his name to West C. what a guy :)

Another Edit: Just look at his reviews date - they all are written on July 29-30 - why would anybody write so many reviews unless you receive a commission to do so?

<comment><USER7> Does anyone really take unscreened "review" sites like Yelp seriously? I never even bother looking at them.

<comment><USER8> If I am in an unfamiliar town, sometimes I use "sites like Yelp". I definitely take reviews with a grain of salt. Sometimes it [might be] better than nothing.

<comment><USER9> "I don't normally like [style of restaurant] but this one was fantastic!" is usually informative but not as intended.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> And this is why there is a high turn over rate in sales, seriously.

The salesguy is clearly over the top aggressive and likely new to the business. He will get let go, if he hasn't been already, and some other person will replace him. If you deal with sales folks you will find the ones who have had the most success in their career seem to push right up to the line and _don 't_ cross it. This guy will no doubt re-calibrate and head back in selling windows or something.

I expect it is the nature of sales, you measure someone on their completed sales, period. You don't measure anything else and they will experiment with different ways of maximizing that number, some of them illegal (see the behavior of the Google sales guys in Africa [1] as an example) Businesses fire the ones that generate ill will and keep the ones that don't.

[1] [http://memeburn.com/2012/01/mocality-scandal-mortified- googl...](http://memeburn.com/2012/01/mocality-scandal-mortified-google- confesses-apologises/)

</comment><comment><USER11> This would be better titled "idiot gets himself fired (from Groupon)", since it's unlikely that Groupon has a policy of threatening their customers in writing, or much tolerance of employees who make it appear that they do.

Incidentally, "As a resident of San Francisco for over 25 years" is code for "this is my first job out of college". Hopefully he'll be a little smarter by the time he finds his second.

<comment><USER12> It is not good to have this story come up for the rest of your life whenever someone googles your name...

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> On his LinkedIn account: "Specialties Technology, Local commerce, Social media, SEO, Online marketing, Consumer and retail marketing, Sales, Salesforce, CRM"

How come every other scumbag tend to be everything above? Does it naturally attract these sorts of people?

[http://www.linkedin.com/pub/andy- johnston/41/81/119](http://www.linkedin.com/pub/andy-johnston/41/81/119)

<comment><USER14> I'm not American but I thought Berkeley was prestigious and yet this graduate's job is to cold call restaurants touting coupons. No wonder Andy's mad!

<comment><USER15> Even many Americans do not realize that Berkeley is a large state/public school, and has far less resources for undergrad education than "private" schools like MIT, Stanford, the "Ivy League," etc.

As far as I can tell, Berkeley's prestige is largely historical, and largely based on the graduate programs, especially in science and engineering. Undergrad engineering programs are also well-respected. Andy should have majored in something other than "American Studies," whatever that is.

Source: I went there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> On a related note, yelp's been criticized for similar practices:

[http://eater.com/archives/2013/01/23/ftc-complaints-about- ye...](http://eater.com/archives/2013/01/23/ftc-complaints-about-yelp-allege- extortion-libel-more.php)

</comment><comment><USER17> If Groupon sales management gets wind of this Andy will be terminated immediately. I dealt with issues similar to this at LivingSocial (one rep offered a positive Yelp review in exchange for a deal) and both legal and sales know this is a very big no-no. Andy will have to re-learn business ethics at another company.

</comment><comment><USER18> I don't like that this thread is fast turning into a reddit style witch-hunt.

<comment><USER19> Absolutely. Random people have found his Yelp, Linkedin, Twitter, and Instagram. He also made the mistake of spelling out his name and detailed contact information on the letter. I know that his threat is stupid at best and harmful to Sauce's business at worst, but clearly he's young and inexperienced. Having hundreds (thousands?) of people discussing, criticizing, and examining your details online is terrible. I'm not too worried about posterity, because he has a very generic name, but it could have been much worse.

<comment><USER20> I guess this is the online equivalent of a reality show...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Groupon is one good class-action lawsuit away from nonexistence. Here's hoping it comes sooner rather than later if this is the kind of tactic their salesmen need to resort to now.

</comment><comment><USER22> [http://www.yelp.com/biz/sauce-san- francisco-2?sort_by=date_d...](http://www.yelp.com/biz/sauce-san- francisco-2?sort_by=date_desc) (see Andy J's review)

<comment><USER23> Yelp needs a "Useless" flag. All kidding aside, the fact that a reviewer has complete control to destroy a business reputation without any sort of accountability or credibility is wrong. There's nothing saying that Andy has ever physically visited this establishment. Of course a "Useless" flag would be useless itself because every active business owner would flag every negative review as "Useless".The unfortunate reality is that Yelp attracts only the worst in human emotions. In this case, it wasn't even related to the product or service.

<comment><USER24> Maybe pointed out elsewhere, but it looks like Andy J's Yelp Friend Stephan S was compelled to write a 1 star review on the same day. So it looks like he followed through with that.

[http://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=BfVinuuuFVCAr77TnI9k...](http://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=BfVinuuuFVCAr77TnI9kyw)

<comment><USER8> Huh. Stephan only has 1 friend.

edit: Just noticed. I also have only one Yelp friend.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I always thought HN was full of professional people so it ashames me to see a full blown witch hunt going on in this thread. Posting the guy his address, Twitter and so forth? Mirroring his Instagram profile? Really? Has it come to this?

</comment><comment><USER26> Doesn't USA have any DoNotCall rules with some teeth, if, as the owner is saying, he "... asked you twice to remove me from you call list, as I have EVERY time I have been called by a representative from Groupon"?

In my place, this would mean that their customer acquisition costs would skyrocket from fines for such incidents.

<comment><USER27> Haven't checked, but it may not apply to businesses - I'd be surprised if a company could opt all of its phone numbers out of all potential vendor calls.

<comment><USER28> That is correct. Do Not Call (the USA law) does not apply to businesses.

We found a great remedy: answer their calls with a soundboard. We like the Mr. Rogers soundboard [1]. Its fun, harmless, and they'll stop calling very quickly.

[1] [http://www.ebaumsworld.com/soundboards/play/1866/](http://www.ebaumsworld.com/soundboards/play/1866/) (warning, autoplays some sounds)

<comment><USER29> The do not call law doesn't apply to nonprofits (including those seeking political contributions). It most certainly does apply to businesses. For each offense after asking to be placed on the do not call list you're entitled to 500-1500 dollars. You just need to take a lot of notes and take the offending party to small claims court.

<comment><USER30> Does not apply to businesses for _incoming_ calls, which is the relevant interpretation of "applies to businesses" in this situation: a restaurant business receiving unwanted calls from another business.

Of course it applies to _outgoing_ calls from businesses, as that's the entire point of the law.

<comment><USER29> Ah. I see what you're saying. Thanks for the correction!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> > "I have a huge network of friends (ages 25-40) that all are extremely active > on Yelp"

Apparently, 10 people is a HUGE network.

<comment><USER32> If he treats his friends like he treats his potential customers, 10 IS huge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> He's not saying "Use Groupon or I'll trash your business" he's saying "You treated me poorly and now I'll get my revenge" This guy's a goofball for putting it in writing but social media has definitely changed how businesses have to treat whacky, unreasonable prospect's and customers. (The Groupon angle is a red herring)

<comment><USER3> I don't think the prospect was unreasonable at all. Hanging up happens all the time. It's whatever. The problem for Groupon is that this guy reps them. They need to explain to their customers fast what happened because this looks viral to me.

<comment><USER33> Oh right. Not defending the sales guy. Saying that all businesses are now vulnerable to social media attacks by folks by folks who in the past you could ignore. Should have been clearer.

<comment><USER34> The delicious irony is that HE was not only threatening but actually carrying out a social media attack himself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> There should be a yelp-like service for rating people like this "salesman" so that he doesn't accidentally get hired again.

<comment><USER36> Well here's a site… www.pictobar.com

But I'm not sure if this is what you mean. I'm curious to how you think one can be quantified/qualified on a site to be useful to others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I wonder what this guys week will be like starting monday morning?

Is this HN story going to do anything negative to his career?

<comment><USER38> It's not only on HN, obviously. The FB commenters don't seem to happy.

<comment><USER37> good point. his cell number seeems like a personal number as well. i wonder if he's getting messages on it already.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Isn't this a protection-money racket (extortion) from a legal perspective?

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

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

> "Extortion is a criminal offense of unlawfully obtaining money, property, or > services from a person, entity, or institution, through coercion."

> "In the United States, extortion may also be committed as a federal crime > across a computer system, phone, by mail or in using any instrument of > interstate commerce."

[http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/business- career/legal/what-...](http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/business- career/legal/what-difference-between-extortion-and-blackmail?page=all)

> "What is Extortion? The use of threats to extract money from people is a > crime in the United States..."

> "Which Kinds of Threats are Illegal? One common characteristic of extortion > is the use of threats, that is, an express intention to inflict injury, > loss, or some other bad consequence on another person. The threat has to be > sufficiently plausible and imminent that it could convince a reasonable > person to give in to the blackmailer's demands. In addition, there has to be > some evidence that the threat was actually made for the purpose of obtaining > money or property."

[http://www.orbankruptcy.com/newsletters/criminal- law/federal...](http://www.orbankruptcy.com/newsletters/criminal-law/federal- laws-regarding-extortion/)

> "A person commits the federal offense of extortion if he or she transmits in > interstate or foreign commerce any demand or request for ransom or for a > reward for the release of a kidnapped person, any threat to kidnap or injure > another person, or any threat to injure the property or reputation of > another person or to accuse another person of a crime with the intent to > extort."

Now that one specifically mentions that threats to injure persons, property or _reputation_ qualify as extortion when done to get money from someone.

Here is the actual federal law:

[http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/875](http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/875)

> "Whoever, with intent to extort from any person, firm, association, or > corporation, any money or other thing of value, transmits in interstate or > foreign commerce any communication containing any threat to injure the > property _or reputation_ of the addressee or of another or the reputation of > a deceased person or any threat to accuse the addressee or any other person > of a crime, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two > years, or both."

It seems very clear that that is what has happened here.

But if this form of threat by a Groupon employee to extract money from people is _not_ extortion, what is the subtle difference that would enable such threats to be considered non-criminal?

<comment><USER40> This isn't a story about Groupon except insofar as they hire unprofessional, immature sales reps.

The sales punk didn't like how he was treated, so he gets revenge by (threatening) to leverage his own personal network.

It's pretty unlikely this is some organized practice at Groupon.

<comment><USER41> It is a story about Groupon. How can they let their staff get into this situation where they are so desperate as to make threats? How did they not know about and fix the poor experience with Groupon previously? How are the staff paid - is the commission component so high that they have to make sales no matter what? Is the training and are the SOPs so poor that the staff are free to operate on the edges of legality?

Is the culture such that anything goes?

Are the systems that review performance of sales reps not catching up with this sort of behaviour?

Groupon allowed this to happen, and it's for Groupon to fix.

Firing the guy would be a knee jerk reaction that would not to me be the right one. Not firing him and doing nothing would be worse. The best answer is a blame-free full review of how this occurred, and how they can design their organisation and process to make it never occur again.

<comment><USER42> I don't correct it's correct to blame practices like these on the employer's business model. That's like blaming road rage killings on the government for having congested roads.

Sounds to me like it's a kid barely out of college who can't control his emotions and is having a pouty hissy fit. His emotional age obviously is not advanced enough to prepare him for sales.

If you want to blame anything, blame the culture (Web 2.0? SF? VC funded world?) that believes that younger is always better.

<comment><USER43> I fail to see how this has anything to do with his age. There are assholes at all stages of life.

<comment><USER42> I chose the term "emotional age" carefully for that reason.

That said, if we were talking about hiring a node.js dev, and comparing a 22 year old vs. a 57 year old, would "I fail to see how this has anything to do with his age. There are great developers at all stages of life." be applicable as well? Or would it reasonable to make some generalizations while appreciating exceptions?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I don't think Andy has a bright future in sales

<comment><USER45> haha, definitely not

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Sounds like one of those game theory side effects. If you pay and measure people by targets then expect them to use dubious techniques to win the game.

</comment><comment><USER47> Anyone who goes to Berkeley and majors in American Studies obviously has never heard 'No' before. Talk about a wasted opportunity. This guy has douche stink all over his various profiles.

</comment><comment><USER48> It appears he lives in Chicago yet he happened to visit TWO Sauce locations in SF on the same day.... this guy is unbelieveable

</comment><comment><USER49> The more interesting thing is, has any restaurant had a good experience with Groupon?

<comment><USER50> More like- has any business had any?

I would love to see how many times a business that tried groupon after the first time.

<comment><USER51> We've had quite a few people defend them on previous threads about groupon with really positive experiences.

They have tended to be places like paintballing or sky diving, things where the cost doesn't go up that much more with the more people who come. And who can upsell (paintballs, photographs). There's a technical business term for those businesses that I can't remember.

But apparently they do do well out of groupon.

<comment><USER52> Service-oriented businesses tend to have positive experiences. Pretty much anything where you may have somebody sitting around 1/2 their time doing nothing, just to make sure you've got coverage during all of business hours. Any money you recoup from that 1/2 of the time is money in your pocket.

Anything with inventory costs (e.g. restaurants) have a much harder time. Food costs are a significant portion of the cost of serving a table. It wouldn't be bad to have a loss-leader for one or two meals, but grouponers don't become "the next repeat customer", so you just lose money on the meals with not much to show.

<comment><USER50> So would you say a carwash type business also make money off it? Cause they have inventory costs but also they are more service oriented?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> On a tangent, how is this situation something that hasnt yet been hammered into Groupon's sales reps as something _not_ to do? Say what you will about their business practices, but it's a savvy enough company with a young enough workforce that'd you would think they would have common sense in this kind of thing. In the day of Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook, even a nobody can generate a vicious defense against any company.

Also common sense thing about the Internet: assume that whatever you send in email has the potential to be seen by everyone, for perpetuity. Hope this sales person was listing a Google Voice number

</comment><comment><USER54> This story has had some interesting developments.. check the bottom of the comments. He has now changed his Yelp name and removed his profile pic. It was unprofessional from the start, but now it's getting really ridiculous.

</comment><comment><USER55> Shouldn't this be Yelp's job?

</comment><comment><USER56> Silly Groupon sales rep, everyone knows only Yelp sales reps are allowed to threaten restaurants with bad reviews!

</comment><comment><USER57> All I can say is Wow!

To say something like this on the phone is crazy, and something to get fired over. To put it in writing is a career ender. Any company that does background checks will not hire someone like this. Absolutely amazing.

</comment><comment><USER58> While I agree the guy is a scum and deserve a good kick in the ball, I feel that people here (even me including to some degree) condone what we are criticizing the NSA for. I also agree that this behavior is also destroying not only whatever remains of groupon reputation, but is also hurting Yelp as well (which should detect this kind of abuse but wont , because an inflated number of reviews is more trusted than a few verified ones).

</comment><comment><USER59> Psst...

Yelp salespeople have threatened restaurant owners that negative reviews would be more prominent (or could disappear if they "ran a deal" w/ them)

Who knows if company policy, but cowboy/cowgirl sales reps are doing a fantastic job of burning goodwill

</comment><comment><USER60> Andy Johnston II: All your base are belong to the internet.

</comment><comment><USER61> To put this internet witch-hunt in perspective I know about 0 persons who care about either groupon or yelp.

An offer from groupon would be spam to me and an opinion on yelp wouldn't be seen because nobody I know uses it.

<comment><USER34> You should get out more, and make some friends.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34>
        Andy Johnston II GROUPON GETAWAYS
        Area Sales Manager
        email@example.com
        Desk: 312-462-9495
        Cell: 5107033591
        Groupon Getaways

Apparently "Groupon Getaways" means that Groupon thinks they can get away with anything they want.

<comment><USER62> Not a good idea to publish the guy's cell number, regardless of what he's done.

<comment><USER34> That bell has already been rung, honey. That bell has already been rung.

He's the one who published his personal cell phone number and office desk number in his written extortion letter, while acting as an official representative of Groupon, from his authentic Groupon email account. Not my problem.

If you really want to get to the root of the problem, you might try cold calling his number, and advising HIM he shouldn't put his cell phone number in email when he sends threats to people. Maybe he'll hang up on you, and you might "sincerely appreciate him hanging up on you", just like he "sincerely appreciated" the owner of the restaurant doing that to him.

<comment><USER63> My cell number is all over online. It took me all of about 5 min to find yours. Posting personal info here doesn't add to the conversation or help improve the situation. You are just inviting people to harass him.

<comment><USER34> He's inviting people to harass himself by being an extortionist, not by having his cell phone number online. Feel free to call me and I'll explain!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> I honestly don't know why this is even on the front page... It shouldn't surprise anyone that companies with thousands of low-paid roles are bound to sometimes end up with people which act unethically - we should be judging these companies based on how they deal with these employees, rather than the mere fact that these employees exist.

<comment><USER13> Low paid? The sales collected six figure salaries, they are paid more than Engineers.

<comment><USER65> Engineers average less than 6 figures in a major city like Chicago?</comment></comment></comment>


Ultracapacitor Bus Recharges at Each Stop - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/23754/ <comment><USER2> A capacitor can _discharge_ at least as fast as it can charge. Let's see what remains after the first wreck.

The ultracapacitors store 5.9 KWH. (From the manufacturer's specs: <http://www.sinautecus.com/products.html>)

5.9 kilowatt-hour = (5.9 kW)(1 hour) = (5900 J/s)(3600 s) = 21.24 MJ.

A stick of dynamite contains roughly 2.1 MJ.

Welcome aboard!

<comment><USER3> Maybe you could create something similar to an airbag sensor, but instead of having it deploy an airbag it could dump all the charge in the caps into a resistive load (or maybe a one-time discharge load of some kind). It's certainly an easier problem to contain then say a tank of hydrogen.

<comment><USER4> Which would cause all of the energy to be dissipated as heat in an instant... perhaps you could put it into some non-volatile heat sink, but unless it's a really big heatsink, you wouldn't want to be anywhere near that thing when it went into resistor mode, especially if the energy density/storage of these caps increases. Maybe put it into a heatsink that's within a big vacuum thermos... :-)

Regardless, it's definitely easier to deal with than a tank of hydrogen, but I'd say that tech is a non-starter anyway. If we can make electricity alone work via advances in charging time over batteries and energy density over existing caps, there's really no reason to transport energy around in an intermediary, let alone an extremely inefficient and volatile one like hydrogen. Power mains are a much better solution, relatively lossless by comparison to an intermediary transform.

On the other hand, for action movies of the future, hydrogen tanker trucks would provide great explosion fodder :-)

<comment><USER5> > perhaps you could put it into some non-volatile heat sink, but unless it's a > really big heatsink, you wouldn't want to be anywhere near that thing when > it went into resistor mode

Specific heat capacity of water ~= 4(KJ per Kg per Kelvin)

so, assuming we can safely take water from 20 degC to 90decC, we'd need 21MJ / 4KJ/K/degC / 70degC == 75Kg of water as a heatsink.

Or about the weight of one passenger.

Double or triple up for safety factors (avoid steam) and you're still OK. Have some insulation and drive some A/C to chill the water further and you're also OK.

So yes, dump it into a resistive load immersed in a tank of water?

(Edit, that said I do think that The Right Way to do transport+energy etc is for us to find our correct "limitless" source of energy (fusion or orbital solar, I guess) and turn that into synthetic hydrocarbons as a convenient, relatively safe, energy dense fuel. i.e. we don't build massive supergrids for pushing that power to people over wires. We pump the power into a CO2+H2O=>petrol converter which we then ship around the world using the existing infrastructure. We also don't need to retool the whole world's transport infrastructure. Obviously all carbon-neutral too. (Carbon -ve if you've got the spare power.))

<comment><USER6> How would systems running on petrol be carbon-neutral? Granted, you reduce one form of carbon emissions by presuming a clean form of energy and petrol generation. Use of the petrol, however, should still result in carbon emissions. Have I missed something?

<comment><USER5> If you're making the hydrocarbons from CO2 and H2O, you're taking as much CO2 from the air as burning the hydrocarbons will liberate.

Obviously, you need to put in the energy too. But I think synthetic hydrocarbons are a great way to carry around useful energy. They're very energy-dense, should be cleaner than oil from the ground and the whole world is tooled up to use them.

However, they're not useful until we also have:

\- loads of power

\- an efficient way of turning that power + CO2 + H2O into hydrocarbons

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It is an elegant idea, but I am not sure it could reach wide adoption. Basically, the pitch is that over its lifetime, it will be cost efficient when compared to _current_ alternatives. However, everyone thinks that near-term alternatives -- including those that include advanced ultra-capacitors -- will be even better so they wait.

I did really like the article saying _The buses can also capture energy from braking, and the company says that recharging stations can be equipped with solar panels (although this is mainly to further the perception that the vehicles have a lower carbon footprint)._ It always bothers me that green concepts try to create an amalgamation of 50 different green sources. Carry over the Unix philosophy, please.

<comment><USER8> Um, doesn't having 50 different devices to convert X into electricity, then piping all of them to a storage device actually match the Unix philosophy perfectly?

<comment><USER7> I should have been more precise. I was referring to the solar panels at bus stops, not the regenerative breaking technologies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> That's a really clever idea. Ultra-capacitors are by themselves a very neat technology, this kind of ingenuity in the transportation industry is a small step in the direction of letting go of the oil addiction, sooner is better in my opinion.

The way the system is described it has clearly been engineered to maximize cost savings, but I don't think the passenger will be too happy with a bus that stops for several minutes every couple of stops. Better to do that charging in smaller gulps at every stop, it will cost more (because you need more charging stations) but the public will be much more accepting of a technology that does not right away contain a very visible drawback.

</comment><comment><USER10> So what you're saying is that if my bus is stuck in stop-and-go traffic for too long I will have to get out and push?

</comment><comment><USER11> Hmm so I'll be going on a bus and it will every couple of miles stop for _a few minutes_ to charge? I guess I will stick with trams and trolleybuses.

<comment><USER12> What they're trying to do is have it recharge a little bit at every bus stop, and from braking.

Basically the exact same ride experience as you have now.</comment></comment>


Coal-Fired Power Plant in India Is Turning Carbon Dioxide into Baking Soda - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603302/a-coal-fired-power-plant-in-india-is-turning-carbon-dioxide-into-baking-soda/ <comment><USER2> What fraction of the plant's CO2 emissions are being captured?

<comment><USER3> According to [http://bit.ly/2j0ii29](http://bit.ly/2j0ii29) the plant now has virtually zero emissions to air or water.

<comment><USER2> Thanks!

The article also says, though, that "capturing usable CO2 can deal with perhaps 5-10% of the world's emissions from coal".

If this plant was 100% captured, what is the difficulty in capturing emissions from the rest of the world's plants?</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Issa challenge - Challenges you can incorporate into your day in 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://www.issachallenge.fun <comment><USER2> I made it as far as the "continue with Google" button before closing the tab. For one, I have no desire to add more Google-connected things to my life, I'm trying to get rid of Google. Second: You need to show me what your app does/looks like before you ask me to connect an account to it, because that's a significant burden to ask someone to do, and nobody's going to do it before they see how your app works.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the feedback will be adding login with email option and an overview of the application to the homepage soon. Working on it!</comment></comment>


Regent: A high-productivity programming language for HPC with logical regions [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://theory.stanford.edu/~aiken/publications/theses/slaughter.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> link to regent programming language:

[http://regent-lang.org/](http://regent-lang.org/)</comment>


Using direct time-of-flight for Fog imaging - <AUTHOR> http://www.computationalimaging.org/publications/confocal-diffuse-tomography/ <comment><AUTHOR> Recent research publications from Stanford on using SPAD (direct time-of- flight pixel) measurements, along with spatial laser illumination to measure distance in bulk diffuser scatters, such as fog or smoke.</comment>


Detailed notes from StartupLessonsLearned conference 2010 - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/View?id=atp5cgp89zw_396dqk483hd <comment><USER2> For a roundup of SLLCONF 2110 videos, blog posts, and articles see [http://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2010/04/25/startup-lessons- lear...](http://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2010/04/25/startup-lessons-learned- conference-coverage-roundup/)

</comment><comment><USER3> There has been a surge of links to public Google docs lately, and they have all been A+; it's like for some reason, if we write things down in a document instead of a blog, it becomes instantly more valuable. Keep it coming!</comment>


Map: 21 of the 22 Countries that have never been invaded by England (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/9653497/British-have-invaded-nine-out-of-ten-countries-so-look-out-Luxembourg.html <comment><USER2> Why didn't they put São Tomé and Príncipe on the map? Okay, it's crowded there, but not too hard with one or two longer lines.

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A3o_Tom%C3%A9_and_Pr%C3%A...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A3o_Tom%C3%A9_and_Pr%C3%ADncipe)</comment></comment>


The Story of Captain Midnight (2000) - r-w http://web.archive.org/web/20070128101239/http://www.signaltonoise.net/library/captmidn.htm <comment> r-w Found this while Wikipedia-ing the history of HBO. Ended up learning some interesting stuff about satellite broadcasts and the history of TV service payment models—arbitrary, I know, but enlightening nonetheless. Enjoy!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> here's the video. the fun starts at 1:50 [https://youtu.be/lbruOe6Yii0](https://youtu.be/lbruOe6Yii0) here is the max headroom incident on wttw in 1987 [https://youtu.be/tWdgAMYjYSs](https://youtu.be/tWdgAMYjYSs)</comment>


Biologist argues human intelligence was highest 3000+ years ago - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168952512001588

<comment><USER2> I'm not buying that:

Genetics are only part of the story. Environmental factors contribute to intelligence too. If you had to be working an a factory 12hrs a day as a child in the 1800's, you could've been genetically "intelligent", the environment would never have nourished that.

It is through abolisment of child labour, institutionalised education and dedicated parental support that the average joe got the ability to develop himself and become more intelligent than his parents.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's a link to a free version of said paper: <http://bmi205.stanford.edu/_media/crabtree-2.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER3> I could buy that, but try and prove it.

There's a strong correlation between our intelligence and all of the other crap we have going on. We've got too much crap going on right now.</comment>


Eggs Don't Cause Heart Attacks – Sugar Does - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/sugar-heart-attack_b_4746440.html? <comment><USER2> I don't understand the need to create this false dichotomy. Eggs _do_ increase cholesterol, which leads to heart attacks. So does sugar.

<comment><USER3> I thought that cholesterol -> heart attacks was found to all be bupkis a while ago.

<comment><USER2> Found to be bupkis by who? Elevated LDL increases heart disease risk in women from 44% (for large LDL) to 63% (small LDL).

Source: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19204302](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19204302)

<comment><USER3> Dietary cholesterol and not blood levels.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article offers nothing new and is written to sell this guy's "blood sugar detox" book.

<comment><USER5> Yes, I agree. But I also agree his hypothesis is sound, and the more voices that speak is the better off we all are as more ears will hear it.

<comment><USER4> I can't take the hypothesis seriously when it is at least partially framed by this dude's desire to sell books. The "new study" he references in the beginning of the article isn't even new; it's 3 years old. Perhaps my back is up because the book has the baity word "detox" in the title.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [https://m.reddit.com/r/keto/comments/y76i3/bad_news_for_keto...](https://m.reddit.com/r/keto/comments/y76i3/bad_news_for_keto_breakfast_study_finds_egg_yolks/)

</comment><comment><USER6> [https://m.reddit.com/r/keto/comments/3oyilq/analysisevidence...](https://m.reddit.com/r/keto/comments/3oyilq/analysisevidence_against_excess_dietary/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Tangental but relevant: Vitamin K2 appears to be worth supplementing in this regard:

[http://vitamink2.org/effect-vitamin-k2-progression- atheroscl...](http://vitamink2.org/effect-vitamin-k2-progression- atherosclerosis-vascular-calcification-non-dialyzed-patients-chronic-kidney- disease-stage-35-kurnatowska-et-al/)</comment>


Fancy Support: Customer messaging, event tracking and dashboards - <AUTHOR> https://fancysupport.com/

<comment><USER2> Would be helpful to know which products you see this replacing (as you mention in your copy that you see it replacing several products costing over $200 combined).

<comment><AUTHOR> When I started this product one of the main driving forces was that using Intercom in my side projects that weren't generating much money became too costly. I was using Mixpanel at the time also to see what events a customer performed to get some idea of what they were doing before asking for help. Also I had dashboards on Ducksboard. These are the products I wanted to replace for my own services, taking only the base features that I needed and integrating them together.

I figured it would probably make a useful service for others around the world who wanted to add some support to their apps but don't have the money in the first months while they grow.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> We get a lot of value from the submissions and comments here so we are looking for feedback and any general thoughts HN might have on our product.</comment>


How many megapixels do you need? Smartphone sensors compared - <AUTHOR> http://connect.dpreview.com/post/1313669123/how-many-megapixels-do-you-need

<comment><USER2> As everything, it depends on the app. :)

ARGUS-IS [0]: 368 [5Mpx sensors] * 5 [Mpx] / 38 [MPx] =

49 [38Mpx sensors]

That's almost an order of magnitude reduction in the number of sensors needed, at about the same order of magnitude increase in bus bandwidth per.

Personally, I would like the option of selecting lower resolution default images (say: 2 MP, 8 MP, full).

[0] [http://petapixel.com/2013/01/28/argus-is-a-1-8-gigapixel- dro...](http://petapixel.com/2013/01/28/argus-is-a-1-8-gigapixel-drone-camera- that-sees-everything-and-then-some/)</comment>