Apply HN: (be) Nice.AI – A personal assistant for business powered by AI - <AUTHOR> Problem: We spend a lot of time doing some low value tasks like sending the same emails for prospection with the same presentation again and again and recontacting prospects each week hoping these people will answer. The same happens when you need to contact n times one of your customers for an unpaid invoice.
Solution: a nice AI called Joy who can help you to manage your business. It can alert you when a prospect doesn't answer one of your e-mails or it can even talk to him directly if you want. No tools, no sign-up, all you need is to CC email@example.com in your email.
Background: We are two tech guys in our thirties from France. We started a previous startup called Vadequa: company culture survey and culture fit assessment.
Idea: After six years in our startup, we learned one thing: for our next company we need to develop a product for a real need. Culture fit assessment was a "nice to have" in France not a "must to have". For the last two years we have been looking for an idea which we can build with our experience and strengths. Among all these ideas, we think the most promising is nice.ai. Why? Because at Vadequa, we realized that there was too much personalization in the sale process to be scalable. So now we want to focus on a more scalable startup. That is precisely where this idea comes from: automating what has been the weak point of our previous startup : the sales process.
https://nice.ai
Looking forward to your comments! <comment><USER2> What happens when "firstname.lastname@example.com" is CC'd on an email?

<comment><AUTHOR> The best way to know is to try ^^

Right now, if it's an email to a prospect, Joy will ask you if you want it handles this contact. If you say yes, Joy will contact this prospect until it receive a response. Each time with a different and a suitable message.

We are currently working to allow Joy to learn your workflow. For example, it will learn that after the first e-mail you send a particular deck then this kind of email then this link. When the workflow is learned, it can manage alone.

<comment><USER2> Thanks, easier just to ask. How might this be different in the end than existing marketing automation solutions?

<comment><AUTHOR> In the end, Joy will understand what your say and you can give it tasks to do. Like a real human assistant. So no need to create and configure a complex marketing automation solution. Anyone can have an assistant without particular knowledge.

<comment><USER2> Full disclosure: one of my startups is very similar, but our take on the topic is very different. Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm curious now :). How do you answer this need?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Next Decade of .NET Open Source - <AUTHOR> http://www.aaronstannard.com/next-decade-dotnet/ <comment><USER2> Why shouldn't you be able to dismiss complaints about breaking changes with "the project uses SemVer"? That's the point of using semantic versioning in the first place.

If there are breaking changes, the major version is increased. Consumers upgrading to a new major version and not expecting breaking changes strikes me as irresponsible.</comment>


Liya – Mac client for MySQL, SQLite and Postgres - <AUTHOR> http://www.cutedgesystems.com/software/Liya/ <comment><USER2> [0xDBE]([http://www.jetbrains.com/dbe/](http://www.jetbrains.com/dbe/)) runs on Mac, Linux, Windows and can connect to any database that has a jdbc driver out of the box (so out of box support for Postgres, DB2, MySQL, SQL server, Oracle, SQLite etc etc etc) and has awesome auto complete.

</comment><comment><USER3> Just what I needed !</comment>


Why do you need to install Kubernetes on your local machine? - <AUTHOR> At my company we use Mesos/Marathon and Kubernetes in production. We clearly need to install Docker on our desk to try out our images, but I fail to see why we would need a local K8s or marathon. Yet I see multiple posts a day on HN saying they need tons of Ram to run their local cluster. Why is that? What do I miss? <comment><USER2> I am assuming you upload your docker image to a container registry and use it in a deployment file to run on a k8s cluster.

Many people run k8s in local machine to test if things are running as expected. Creating a docker image, uploading to a CR and deploying again is time consuming.

You can run something like Kind (local k8s cluster) on your local machine to test things out. It would be more time efficient.

<comment><AUTHOR> I test my images locally with docker run, no need for a local K8s</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Would you pay $10/month for this service? - <AUTHOR>

I have an idea for a service to help app developers, and I would love to hear your input.
It's a service that let you manage all of your app's strings in a nice and friendly interface. It allows you to change text easily without deploying code, and lets non-coders enter and edit text. It will have an html wysiwyg editor to let people without html knowledge do some basic markup. Also, it let's you manage localization and easily assign translations to translators.
From 2-3 people I talked to about this idea, two concerns were spoken of:
1. it introduced another point of failure for an app. My answer: all the strings are shipped in a json file that you can put in your s3 account, and cache in CDNs as you like.
2. it's relatively easy to create your own string manager/decoupler for your app. My answer: Yeah, but it's also really cheap and easy to pay $10 for an existing solution, no? <comment><USER2> Until the last few sentences I had no idea what you are talking about and how this coud possibly work. Then I saw "CDN" and realized you mean _WEBSITE_ not _APPLICATION_. Should probably clarify that

</comment><comment><USER3> For us it wouldn't be worthwhile (6 languages), our text just doesn't change very often and being embedded in the apps guarantees instant delivery at any scale.

Since we don't have multiple people maintaining text it's trivial to do this ourselves if we needed to, and comparable to how we already manage cross promotions and stuff.

</comment><comment><USER4> First reaction, "No, visual studio does this for me."

Second reaction, I think this should be packaged with localization tooling or be a simple, low-cost app. I don't understand what the value you are providing to me every month when I look at localization most likely a few times a year.

</comment><comment><USER5> Thoughtbot had one and shut it down, was called copycopter.</comment>


Shadowserver, the web's bot containment unit, needs help - <AUTHOR> https://krebsonsecurity.com/2020/03/the-webs-bot-containment-unit-needs-your-help/ <comment><USER2> I read both the Kerbson & Wired articles and while I commend the work they've done, it sounds like an expensive operation and not really worth the investment by Cisco if they can't brand it or make any money from it. When I read statistics like "1.2 billion malware samples" or "11.6 petabytes of threat intelligence data" I have to wonder how much of that is really relevant today. Do we really need to be storing malware samples from archaic operating systems? Couldn't they lean down their operation to focus on the most widely used platforms? How effective are honeypots in 2020? I'm just not sure this really needs to be saved.

<comment><USER3> Corporations that built all the weak systems should take some responsibility and cough up the cash. Cisco devices are among those, as are most major manufacturers. This really doesn't need to be an America-typical "but if no one sees it why should we give anything" story. It's common sense and supporting this & similar ventures (Spamhouse?) should not need some complicated cost benefit calculation for a company making tens of billions in profit each year. If you really want one, a single headline along the lines of "Old Cisco devices vulnerable" should pay the bill sufficiently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Related: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22608668](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22608668)

</comment><comment><USER5> All those taxpayer-funded entities and government-granted monopolies benefiting from Shadowserver can't scrape up the funds to keep this thing going?

<comment><USER6> _cough_ legal reasons _cough_

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Shadowserver doesn't just focus on malware, they also host seizure pages for financial service providers like Liberty Reserve.

Not sure how exactly that fits in with their purported mission.</comment>


AppFollow 3.0: reply to reviews, manage ASO and monitor apps - <AUTHOR> https://www.producthunt.com/posts/appfollow-3-0 <comment><USER2> More information is on our blog: [https://blog.appfollow.io/appfollow-3-0-eb010a9c467](https://blog.appfollow.io/appfollow-3-0-eb010a9c467)</comment>


White House Drone Crash Is Tied to Drunken Spy Agency Employee - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/28/us/white-house-drone.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

<comment><USER2> It's pretty easy to lose one of those things "up" if you are over-eager with the throttle--like if it's the first time you've flown it or your motor functions are impaired. Looks like this guy had both those factors at work.

First time I flew a quadrotor, I had no idea it had such a climb rate, and the sucker went up fast, got caught in the wind, left radio range in no time, and ended up five houses down. Didn't land on a roof only by miracle, I think. No damage, but I was much more careful the next flight. But I was flying a $40 toy; I think I would have been a bit more careful with a $2000 Phantom.</comment>


Show HN: Jollyshot – ephemeral image hosting - <AUTHOR> http://jollyshot.com <comment><USER2> Be careful, as they don't really delete the files, only don't show them on the site.

Here is an example. I uploaded a picture that was shown here [http://jollyshot.com/Kzg7Xe](http://jollyshot.com/Kzg7Xe) where you can see that "This photo has expired!" but the image is still accessible here [http://jollyshot.s3.amazonaws.com/media/5e34cc07d5fc6b390c1d...](http://jollyshot.s3.amazonaws.com/media/5e34cc07d5fc6b390c1da16c533da679.jpg)

<comment><AUTHOR> We permanently delete all expired files from S3 every 30 minutes. Check your link -- the text will change from "expired" to "deleted".

<comment><USER2> Shouldn't you delete it at the moment when you stop showing it on the site?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I love the ease and simplicity: I've got 3 suggestions.

1) Next to the View Count ("3 Views") impliment a feature that keeps track of the number of different IPs that generate those views ("by 2 People"). This is important because it lets you know how many other people have seen the image, not just how many times the page has been reloaded.

2) Make it so users can drag and drop an image into whatever page they're on. Even if it's the user page, front page, photo page. Don't make me have to go back to the home page.

3) Instead of calling it JollyShot.com you should grab TempShot.com before anyone else does. I think the new name would fit better with the service.

</comment><comment><USER4> I really like the simplicity and the 'guaranteed to self destruct' feature.

But... converting PNGs to JPGs makes it unusable for many many use cases.

<comment><USER5> Please name some of those use cases.

<comment><USER6> Before imgur started keeping .png's, I just couldn't use it to show other people what I'm currently doing in my computer.

I share screenshots all the time and it really needs to be done with .png's for the clear image and text.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is always [http://imagebin.org/](http://imagebin.org/) it's basic but has been around since the 90's. I think they get some OG cred in this, yeah?

</comment><comment><USER8> I think one of the understated and potentially most interesting use cases for this app, is its ability to easily transform another service into an ephemeral photo sharing application. With Jollyshot, my Facebook post, becomes more like a Snapchat.</comment>


Ten Years of Flask: Conversation with Creator Armin Ronacher - <AUTHOR> https://realpython.com/podcasts/rpp/18/ <comment><USER2> Enjoyed that, thank you! And thank you Armin for Flask</comment>


Ask HN: What do you dislike most about Golang? - <AUTHOR> Please also indicate how long you have been coding in Go. <comment><USER2> Very limited ability to factor code especially related to error handling. Go2 will have some broken form of generics so that will help. Why do I say broken? Because they are starting from scratch to come up with something different rather than taking something good and making it better.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you elaborate on "factor code"? Lack of error handling blocks?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> all the information that gets hidden in plain sight: like the capital first letter indicating if a func / member is public or not

time coding go: to short because this seriously keeps me away from learning it

<comment><AUTHOR> It's well worth learning and using despite "features" like that.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The bulky error handling in a language that prides itself on readability.

Go experience: full time for 2y.</comment>


Professor Placed on Leave After Using Chinese Word That Sounds Like Racial Slur - <AUTHOR> https://news.yahoo.com/usc-communications-professor-placed-leave-172039179.html <comment><USER2> This a meaningless post. Nobody can argue here in favor of professor without getting istaflagged and banned. So what is the point? Just mutual admiration in conformity?

<comment><USER3> Fine I'll argue it. He used a common Chinese phrase. It sounds bad in English.

There's no mention of any history of problems on this professor. The opposite in fact. Now it's a drag em though the mans reputation through the mud and make a sacrifice to the politically correct gods.

People are looking to be offended, they will find anything they can.

These people are sick. The ones that give in and throw their own under The bus are just as bad.

<comment><USER4> I noticed it said this was from the National Review in small print.

I'm not saying this proves it's fake, but it raises doubt in my mind about how much it might be distorted or decontextualized since it's clearly right wing propaganda.

I followed a link to campusreform.org where I read:

"The radical left will stop at nothing to intimidate conservative students on college campuses"

The link to "further reporting" also goes to the National Review.

I think a reasonable person would need to read something that is not from a right wing extremist source to have an idea of what happened. If there is a link that I haven't noticed yet, maybe you or someone could post it.

As an aside, I almost think in the past week or two, I've noticed in general a lot of crap showing up in Yahoo news, as though they are a channel that's being exploited for not being as toxic a brand as many things.

<comment><USER3> Not agreeing with politically correctness is enough to get you labeled an extremist.

<comment><USER4> The sources that are "politically correct" usually leave clues when they are distorting things, because they have more of an allegiance to truth and facts even when they are misleading people.

It also allows one to metaphorically triangulate, even assuming everyone is dishonest.

It doesn't matter whose propaganda you like, you need more than one vantage point if you have any interest in the truth behind the bullshit.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Mkt. And Sales Guide for SaaS Entrepreneurs - <AUTHOR> http://production.saas.divshot.io/

<comment><AUTHOR> Our idea is to offer SaaS entrepreneurs with their first bearings in terms of Sales and Marketing, two things tech founders usually have trouble with. The idea is to evolve the .md document into a simple diagnosis tool. I would love some feedback.</comment>


OpenSSL is considering a more aggressive EOL policy - <AUTHOR> http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-security/2014-June/007784.html

<comment> vertex-four A couple of replies in, they say "In other words, the idea that you can pre- declare a lifetime is fantasy." The thing is, it's really not. You say "we'll support version <foo>", and that means that you release security fixes for <foo> that don't change anything else. It's then easy for maintainers to decide whether the need for the security fix affects them or not.

The alternative is discrete versions where any number of things can change between versions, but you have to accept everything in order to receive security fixes. In some instances, those are inevitably going to break backwards-compatibility for at least someone despite all best efforts, and this may even kick off regulatory compliance procedures.

Either way, distros are going to continue to do the "we'll support version <foo>" thing, so this is basically offloading the need to carve out security patches to them. In some cases, they might even have to write the security patches themselves. And this is supposed to make our systems more secure?

I can't wait for LibreSSL to be usable, if this is how the OpenSSL developers think.

<comment><USER2> The pre-declared lifetime worry seems unsubstantiated in my opinion. There's no reason why OpenSSL can't have an expected life cycle based around the expected release of the next new version number. eg 1.0.2 might have an ETA of Jan 2015 and 1.0.3 of Jul 2016; so then you know that 1.0.0 will EOL at Jan 2015 and 1.0.1 18 months later.

I do agree that there needs to be some predictability but I also think managing 4 (including betas) code bases add a lot of unnecessary maintenance. If they can remove one branch, enabling them to better focus their time, then I can't see that as a bad thing nor mutually exclusive from having pre-defined EOL dates.

<comment> vertex-four FreeBSD has four releases of their entire operating system in support right now, across three major versions, supported almost entirely by volunteer work. If OpenSSL can't support four minor versions of their security-critical codebase, I don't think it's possible to trust them.

<comment><USER2> Yeah true, however I don't think that's a fair comparison. Maintaining older FreeBSD repos wouldn't require large amounts of original code in the same way as maintaining multiple branches of OpenSSL.

Plus the "security-critical" part of your post needs to be emphasised.

<comment> vertex-four > Maintaining older FreeBSD repos wouldn't require large amounts of original > code in the same way as maintaining multiple branches of OpenSSL.

Really? FreeBSD repos contain large amounts of both original and external (sometimes modified) code. If there's a security issue, it's entirely possible that _all_ of them need patches.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> _> "We (the OpenSSL team) are considering a more aggressive EOL strategy.

> In particular, we may EOL 0.9.8 right now, and 1.0.0 when 1.0.2 comes out > (currently in beta).

> Going forward we would only maintain two versions, so when 1.0.3 comes out, > 1.0.1 would be EOL.

> What do people think about this?"_

Makes a lot of sense in my opinion

</comment><comment><USER3> The headline, while matching the article, is misleading. This is about OpenSSL's EOL policy, not an EOL for OpenSSL itself.

<comment><USER4> We changed "strategy" to "policy" in the title in an attempt to address this. Happy to change it again if anyone suggests a more accurate one.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is there a changelog of headline changes?

My original headline didn't have the word "strategy" in it, so, someone must have changed it prior to your change, too!

<comment><USER4> Oops; I think another moderator and I changed it at approximately the same time. The submitted title was "Ben Laurie (OpenSSL core team): OpenSSL end of life".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Doing X number of release back doesn't seem work to me, at least for something like OpenSSL that's often embedded in devices and other software. That is unless the release is on a fixed schedule like Ubuntu or OpenBSD.

Maybe do like Ubuntu. You can have a long term support version, or you can use the latest and greatest, but it will be supported for a much shorter period of time.

In any case I think they should focus on predictability, that is do a major release at fixed times. If something isn't ready at that point: Tough, it has to wait until the next release. OpenSSL isn't a company of cause, so they don't need to please their user, but it would be an easier sell if I knew the the time frame in which I can expect support and updates for a given version.

</comment><comment> X-Istence I wonder how this is going to impact those distributions that do long term support releases like Ubuntu/Debian.

<comment><USER5> Given that so many have not wanted to look into the OpenSSL source code, that could actually get really ugly. Some operating systems and distributions would need to back-port bug fixes. That would be a rather large undertaking given the quality of much of the OpenSSL code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> In case anyone else was confused as I was, it looks like OpenSSL uses letters at the end of the full version number to indicate the release. So, '0.9.8' actually has multiple releases, it's currently on '0.9.8za'.

<comment><USER2> The version numbers are different code bases and the letters are different patch versions.

Not really sure why they didn't go for the major.minor.patch convention like a lot of other software does, but it's all just arbitrary at the end of the day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reading their lists and applying patches would be more "aggressive".

Even the ability to write proper code would be a more aggressive policy.

</comment><comment><USER8> they would do better to start asking who uses what feature, and removing unused ones.</comment>


AskHN: Is there a way to defeat snail mail? - <AUTHOR>

Background info: ---
I have been wanting to move away from snail mail correspondence. I do e-bills whenever I can, opt for electronic W2s etc. I detest snail mail, its a waste of paper, it makes things messy, and it takes up tons of actual space/time etc sorting thru and keeping records.
I also travel a lot, so often, I will return home to find a bunch of mail in my mailbox, which will likely take up precious time I could be spending on more pleasurable tasks such as hitting my head on the wall.  As "every problem is an opportunity", I figured out a solution.
At first, I wanted to have a wifi enabled mailbox with a built-in scanner, so the mailman would have to insert standard size envelopes into a slot which would then open that piece of mail and scan the letter, upload the document to the web and shred the paper version.  My lil way of fighting the "mail" establishment.  After some searching, I come to the conclusion that, I have neither the time, money or mechanical engineering expertise to build such a device.  (although. if you're a gifted mech-e and can build such a system, I'm all ears).  I did a little Google search of "smart" mailboxes, and the "smartest" solution I found was a How-To article on Life Hacker, which alerted you on your iphone when you mailbox at home was opened.  I still needed a better solution.   I keep getting dinged by insurance companies and all those evil snail mail sending entities because I don't go thru my paper mail every day (or week, or month for that fact), so I desperately need a solution.
Back on Earth, I seem to find a solution that's bound to work.  I asked someone to bring my mail in periodically, open them and scan them on a scanner which is in the kitchen in my absence.  I figured it shouldn't be too hard to find a relatively "smart", wi-fi enabled,  all-in-one printer which can directly upload to the web (e.x. to Google Docs or Shoeboxed).  I spend hours looking for the right device, and I finally get an HP 7510, which is supposed to support HP's new "PrintApps" concept and per their website, scanning directly to google docs from this printer should be a breeze.  Alas, upon getting the printer, I realize that the google docs application isn't really there in their "App Market".  All the available apps generated more useless paper artifacts which would only add to my mail clutter.
I just spent over an hour on the phone with HP, to see if they could tell me whether apps are for specific printer types or not.  Only problem is that their Customer Service/Tech Support is worse than the half assed device I ended up buying.
It all seems so stupid to me.  I mean, heck it's not rocket science. WiFi enabled devices such as this should at least be able to send scanned data to the web.  It's absolutely something HP can support, but I get the feeling that they're choosing not to.  If people are all about digital documents, they may be afraid that they'll loose printer customers.  So, they include these "shitty"  print apps, whose main purpose seems to be to generate more useless paper.  I'm so frustrated that something like this doesn't always exist.  It's 2012 for cryin out loud, we should've been able to do this since the advent of wifi.  It seemed doxie go WiFi would be capable of handling the task.  But by now, I've had it up to my eyeballs.
Question(s): <comment>--
Does anyone know how to hack the new HPs, so that I can put my own, more useful software on it, which lets it communicate with and upload directly to the cloud?  At this point I'm really frustrated, I could buy other scanners which also boast this technology, but I don't want to go thru hell to set it up.  Anyone work one of these HP Apps?  I would also deeply appreciate any advise you can give on how to tackle this situation.  Shouldn't something like this be already exist? </comment><comment><AUTHOR> I have also looked into Earth Class mail as a possible solution. While the service is great, it's not quite what I'm looking for. I don't want to have to forward all my mail somewhere else and then have packages etc "re-forwarded" back to me.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> FYI, the printer I currently have is a HP Photosmart 7510. It's one of their touch screen interfaces, so I know the onboard system isn't absolutely dumb. There's gotta be a way to make this work!</comment>


Speedify Channel Bonding – Easily Combine Internet Connections - <AUTHOR> https://speedify.com/features/channel-bonding/ <comment><USER2> Has anyone here actually used Speedify? I mean, other than me?

I have tried them repeatedly, and I don't get highly speeds. At least, not for downloads. Uploads are usually faster with speedify than without it, but downloads are usually slower.

So, if you do use speedify, what is your real reason for using it?

<comment><AUTHOR> I haven't used it, but I've considered it for reliability when traveling. I could setup two cellular devices and have my laptop swap between them when each has signal.</comment></comment>


Gosu 0.8.5 Released (WSDL, XSD, Properties Support) - <AUTHOR> http://groups.google.com/group/gosu-lang/t/797b0d5e91782c49

<comment><USER2> The linked Gosu JVM programming language (<http://gosu-lang.org/>) is not to be confused with Gosu (<http://code.google.com/p/gosu/>), a cross-platform 2D game development library for Ruby and C.

</comment><comment><USER3> Congratulations on your release. However, my life could do with a little less XSD & WSDL in it.

<comment><USER4> As could all of ours . . . however, many of us in the enterprise space don't have much choice as to the form of data we have to consume from outside services, so the point of making good low-friction tools part of the language (with no code generation) is to let you interact with those things without going completely insane.</comment></comment>


How Two Shoe Enthusiasts With No Programming Experience Built An iPhone App - <AUTHOR> http://www.beyondthepedway.com/sole-search-iphone-interview

<comment><USER3> Not to take anything away from these guys—they obviously have a great amount of drive, intelligence, vision, and focus—but I'm a little perturbed by the utter amazement of the host. 'Who actually makes their own iPhone app?' I wouldn't trust anybody who apparently travels in the tech/startup community who finds actual technical know-how so completely unnecessary (if not alien) to the effective tech entrepreneur.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey there, I'm the crazy host. :)

The reason I was so "amazed" is that I'm a programmer/developer myself, so I know the mindset and skill it takes to like to hack and solve programmatic problems.

Many people who aren't developers/programmers (like the founders of Sole Search) don't learn how to program - they usually just find somebody who does and have them handle the actual building of the app.

To me, it's pretty cool that these guys chose to learn themselves rather than just outsource.

<comment><USER4> Most people that got in to programming outside of going through university got in to it to 'build something', I think I know more of those than I know of the ones that pursued 'programming' as a career.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly. It's a mindset. Programmers think much differently than non- programmers.

<comment><USER4> > Programmers think much differently than non-programmers.

What, you mean like mathematicians and lawyers and engineers and many others besides?

Really, programmers aren't the only people capable of logical thinking or 'stepwise refinement'.

<comment><USER5> That's true, the best C programmer I personally know is an electrical engineer by profession.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Their company name is "Perseverer" which is persevere in French.

I don't think it's a mere coincidence that the pair of zero programming experience programmers managed to push out a iphone app downloaded 20,000 times, with a company name like that. :)

<comment><USER7> In a similar vein- I thought the interview really showed how much they like each other and worked well together. They have been friends for years, been struggling together throughout, and even finish each others sentences. Helps show how they had the energy to get it done, and also the logic of funding teams with great relationships.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I actually used version 1.0 of the SoleSearch app because I love Puma shoes. From what I recall, the app was average, the usability was a little below average. It wasn't a stellar app but the fact that it actually worked and did not crash that much was nice. The important thing to note is that the reviews on the 1.0 app were extremely positive - which highlights the power of making an app for a niche market, to find the right fit for an app. After downloading the app, I was disappointed because my expectations were high - but apparently if you are a traveling sneakerhead - and have heard of Bodega in Boston - <USER2> app is it.

Now to learn that these two developers were not coders but shoe enthusiasts. Pretty amazing.

</comment><comment><USER9> That is really cool. I only read the transcript so maybe I missed it but I wish they talked more about the technical aspect of developing the app. Learning Objective C isn't the easiest thing in the world especially with no programming experience.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good point. Personally, I usually think people aren't interested in the real nitty gritty technical details but I bet some folks are.

Thanks for the feedback and for watching!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Fantastic interview, but I see an uncanny resemblance to <http://www.mixergy.com>. What's up with that?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the kind words about the interview. I'm a huge fan of Mixery and the style of interviews Andrew Warner conducts.

I'm definitely not trying to compete with him or draw folks away from the outstanding work he's doing. Rather, I'm trying to add on to the idea by chatting with folks who haven't necessarily hit it big yet, sold their company, and/or made a large sum of money - I want to chat with the creative entrepreneurs who are still climbing their mountain.

Short answer: I love Andrew and Mixergy and hope to one day be as amazing of an interviewer as he is.

Thanks for watching!

<comment><USER11> Tim, for what it's worth, I've gotten links to your site from a few people who said your site seems "overly inspired" by Mixergy.

When I started out, I found myself unconsciously imitating Gary Vaynerchuk. That's why you'll hear my older videos start with an over the top "HEY EVERYONE IT'S ANDREW WARNER..." Listening back, I can understand why it was so unnerving to my audience. They noticed that I was trying to imitate, instead of working to find my own voice.

<comment><USER12> Before you can master something you have to get the basic skills down. One way to look at this is you've developed a very effective style which others can use as the starting point, initially through imitation, to help them get to a place where they can start adding their own style to the mix.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I happen to own the domains solesearch.com and solesearch.net and used to use the .com as a footwear auction marketplace (bigger niche than most think). Still toying with rejuvenating the idea. I've never received any contact from them about acquiring domain. They can't be happy with sole-search.net right?

<comment><USER14> I just googled for 'solesearch'. The top result was sole-search.net.

How happy are you with that?

I imagine most of their customers search for it in the app store/marketplace. Not having the .com probably isn't a huge deal for them.

<comment><USER13> I have absolutely no feeling, as they should be the top search in google. I do not use the .com or the .net at the moment, like I pointed out. I was just asking if they are a business called SoleSearch, why settle for the domain sole-search.net? It's fairly easy to come into contact with the owner of domains if they are not available.

I'm sure all of their customers find it in the app store and that's why they've never worried about it. But take a successful app like angry birds for example. If I go to angrybirds.com, it takes you to their shop where they earn additional streams of revenue. If these guys want to create something special and "be bought out by yahoo for a billion", in my opinion they need to offer something more to a customer than just the name, address and phone number of a sneaker store. It's all stuff I can do myself by using a free app like google maps.

<comment><USER15> As I do understand the point your are trying to make. I don't think these guys are necessarily making the website their top priority. They are clearly tapping into new technology (iPhone & Androids) when was the last time you saw someone walking around with their laptop opened up and searching the web. I'm guessing a while. Nowadays everyone is using apps on their phones and/or iPods to keep up, be it facebook, online banking, almost anything can be done through an app nowadays. Another thing you mentioned you said you can do all of these things on google maps, but to be honest you can't they are targeting true "sneakerheads" who enjoy the art of collecting one-of-a-kind footwear not your average sketchers. There are a lot of people all around the world who enjoy the art of collecting unique footwear, which for the most part can be done at a boutique. It's not like going on google maps and searching for the nearest Footlooker, but independent boutique owners who might not necessarily get the coverage on google maps. These guys have built relationships with these boutiques worldwide, and they know these boutiques. Try going on google maps and search for a unique sneaker boutique in Johannesburg, South Africa and let's see how many results you'll get. This is an app for the true sneaker collector who can say "I picked these up when I was in London, and they're one of kind" not for the person looking to replace their running shoes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> They mentioned that at some point, they hired professional developers to upgrade / update the app. I think this point was glossed over. When did they hire that additional developer? Why did they hire that developer if they didn't need him/her to begin with? And what were the quality / functional differences before and after the update? Could have used more discussion there.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is one area I could have expanded upon.

The developers they hired were working on the Android version of the app and I believe at that point, they had a little more money they could actually put toward hiring a developer.

<comment><USER16> That's not how it's comes across in the interview (and transcript). From the transcript at: [http://www.beyondthepedway.com/sole-search-iphone- interview#...](http://www.beyondthepedway.com/sole-search-iphone- interview#ixzz1B2Sc6Ho6)

"...We made some mistakes. And it wasn't perfect. We got done what were able to get done and did the jest of what we wanted to do. And then from there once we got some downloads, we got some money, we had an update done, which was done by some professionals. So yeah."

That seems to imply that they had replaced the original iPhone app that they built with one that a professional built. You might be right, but since it wasn't explored, it could most likely be what was implied above.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, miscommunication here. I was referring to a different part of the interview with my comment above. Sorry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The video doesn't say much about what the app does exactly, but it sounds like they targeted a really good niche. Who knew an app for finding shoe boutiques would have so much demand?

<comment><AUTHOR> My thoughts exactly!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Yes; this is awesome.

<comment><USER19> I don't want to discredit anybody, but we (well, I) have no clue what was the app like. From the sound of it, it could have been a text box filled with names and addresses on a white background, and this can be achieved by dragging and dropping in the Interface Builder.

Even if that is the case, there still is a point. Developing for iOS (or OS X for that sake) has been made easy. Just fire up Xcode and start typing. Contrary to Android platform a year or a two ago (last time when I checked it out), many more clicks and bits were needed before actual code could be written.</comment></comment>


Startup Quote: Kyle Bragger, co-founder, Forrst - <AUTHOR> http://startupquote.com/post/5133656656

<comment><AUTHOR> Get your idea out in the wild, iterate your ass off, and hopefully build something spectacular.

\- Kyle Bragger (@kylebragger)

<http://startupquote.com/post/5133656656></comment>


An Unity LAN server-client model example - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ifndefdeadmau5/unity5-networking-HLAPI-getting-started <comment><USER2> Apparently Unity is a multiplayer game engine.

[http://unity3d.com/unity](http://unity3d.com/unity) \- [https://www.reddit.com/r/Unity2D](https://www.reddit.com/r/Unity2D)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. I am using this unity multiplayer feature as a kind of test tool for children. About 2~30 mobile devices connect to server(also mobile device), and then test result are displayed on server in realtime. In my case, It works very well.

<comment><USER3> If it meets the guidelines, this might make a good "Show HN". Guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

The constraints suggest there might be an interesting story behind its development. I'm curious if you would share it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. I didn't know that already exsist section for share project only.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


KickassTorrents resurfaces online - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/7/22/12255426/kickasstorrents-alternate-sites-spring-up <comment><USER2> The old kat, that had nothing to do with USA, complied with dcma requests.

Now that this obviously doesn't work, what prevents new kat to ignore them?

Also, why USA can force random people from random countries that doesn't do business in USA to follow their laws? If they keep doing that, they will end with random dictators pulling a Turkey and demanding arrest of political opponents that live in USA

<comment><USER3> This is pretty much like the drug war. El Chapo's interview was extremely insightful in this regard. He basically asked if he going to jail had any impact on the drug trade in first place. The answer is resoundingly NO. There is a huge market for drugs and if not El Chapo, Chloe Epa would take it over. Same goes for torrents. They will always exist, American law thugs just want to justify their own existence jailing some.

<comment><USER4> I loved Kat and have used it countless times to get things I can't afford or just can't buy even if I could because of where I live. I wish the founder hadn't got caught.

That being said, the point of punishing criminals is to punish crime, not to end it. El Chapo is a violent criminal. It is extremely optimistic to think that putting him in jail ends drug trade. The point is to punish the crimes that he had committed.

Finally, I agree that torrents will exist for a long time to come. And thank God for that.

<comment><USER3> > the point of punishing criminals is to punish crime

True when the definition of crime and the procedures around punishing crime borders on even serious crime I would question if the crime should be crime in first place or not.

If USA had unleashed its capitalistic hounds and allowed Target and Wallmart to deal in drugs El Chapo and many people like him would either be selling tacos on a food truck (euphemism for honest hard working job) or be shot dead in some alley as result of their non-lucrative crime.

Drug industry has been super innovative and invested their mental energies in drugs. If the drugs are channelised they will get invested into something else which might actually lead to good result.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > "hosted on multiple cloud servers to prevent blockade, and the hosting > information is well hidden behind Cloudflare."

Isn't Cloudflare an American company? I wouldn't trust them to hide that information from the American government.

<comment><USER6> And for some strange reason ThePirateBay uses it.

<comment><USER7> I'd guess they use it as a DDoS protection layer, and have more proxies behind them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This feels very similar to the war on drugs. Take down one site, two more appear the next day. Take down a domain name, it moves to another hours later. This will never stop.

Eventually, I predict there will be a decentralized torrent site. Using magnet links and just file names. Nothing hosted anywhere. More and more questionable VPNs will appear for people to use and hide with.

I'm not advocating for piracy, I'm just saying there will be no stopping it.

<comment><USER9> A decentralized torrent search network already exists, and it's actually funded by European public grants :)

[https://www.tribler.org/](https://www.tribler.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Previous discussion on the arrest/takedown:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12132849](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12132849)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12142532](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12142532)

</comment><comment><USER11> > hosting information is well hidden behind Cloudflare

Anyone facing issues with Cloudflare's captcha. Not just for this site, I have faced this issue with other sites too. Only around 50% of the time I am able to get past their captcha, most other times I just get frustrated and close the page.

<comment><USER12> As a legally blind person it is impossible to prove me not being a robot by demonstrating the use of human-like visual capabilities. Other CAPTCHAs offer audio alternatives, but not reCAPTCHA. When I contacted Cloudflare's support about this, they first required me to associate a business account with my private request and then deflected from the accessibility of reCAPTCHA:

> The issue you are experiencing is related to the security settings that the > administrator of the website you are visiting has set.

Maybe I should have been more persistent for Cloudflare's sake, but when you're frustrated it's not really easy to be politely persistent. So, now I'm just voting with my clients' wallets.

<comment><USER9> reCAPTCHA does have an audio option, and it seems to be accessible to screen readers, as detailed in this blog post: [http://terrillthompson.com/blog/682](http://terrillthompson.com/blog/682)

When the checkbox is clicked, a visual puzzle appears; right below, there's a button that can be clicked to switch to the audio captcha. Here's a demo: [https://www.google.com/recaptcha/api2/demo](https://www.google.com/recaptcha/api2/demo)

<comment><USER12> Thanks! That should have been Cloudflare support's answer. I did not detect the three pictograms as they were contrast-"enhanced" away. The non-visual reCAPTCHAs I now get are even passable without sound.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Beware when this happened to The Pirate Bay some clone sites were fake and served malware.

But some are legit as well and scraped the database and torrents in case it went down.

<comment><USER14> And an FBI honeypot mixed in there as well.

<comment><USER15> Source?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is there a possibility of someone actually making a stable, long-term KAT mirror / follow-up without getting busted like the original one?

<comment><USER17> The future is an IPFS mirror where the entire magnet list and web frontend are peer to peer. When everyone can host the site individually on their own computer there won't be a way for authorities to seize servers or domains.

<comment><USER18> But there will be problems with those serving the web pages being served a notice as they do today whenever someone torrents without a VPN. It isn't inherently anonymity focussed like tor.

<comment><USER17> IPFS works over tor! The implementation is pretty rudimentary at this point, though.

I guess the main issue is actually distributing the tracker.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Same story at TorrentFreak: [https://torrentfreak.com/kickasstorrents-mirrors- and-imposte...](https://torrentfreak.com/kickasstorrents-mirrors-and- imposters-spring-into-action-160722/)

</comment><comment><USER19> In a similar vein, I've seen a lot of push in some communities to move to a zeronet-based torrent site.

<comment><USER8> That's really the only solution. A decentralized torrent site, that only hosts names and magnet links.

However, there needs to be some kind of control built in. That way there isn't spam and abuse. Not sure how you would accomplish this.

Then there would be another weak link that authorities would likely target - trackers and servers running trackers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> kat.am looks very dodgy, it goes out of its way to appear to be a full working site while in reality search is broken, and browsing past ~3rd page usually puts you back on the main. Then there is a distinct lack of advertising/popup spam = why would anyone run this out of goodness of his heart other than as a honeypot?

no profit motive

<comment><USER21> >Then there is a distinct lack of advertising/popup spam = why would anyone run this out of goodness of his heart other than as a honeypot?

Because it was built in 24 hours and they haven't had time to set those up yet, maybe? Just a guess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm not a fan of US copyright law to say the least, but it's hard to feel any sympathy for these sites or their creators. Mostly they have derived multi- million dollar incomes from selling very shaddy adware or otherwise space for virus infested adds which they show to the users, 95% of who are there to download pirated content. This is probably an unpopular opinion here.

<comment><USER23> I recall seeing figures for other sites and they _weren 't_ making millions. Infact they were barely scraping by.

These sites seem to be run by idealistic individuals, rather than as a profit making enterprise.

<comment><USER22> > These sites seem to be run by idealistic individuals, rather than as a > profit making enterprise.

You really think people advertising adaware 'Improve PC performance now' and 'watch XXX live with donkeys' are idealistic individuals fighting draconian copyright laws?

Also I don't know about kickass - but for example the /scrape endpoint is blocked on the piratebay tracker (and most other 'commercial' trackers) -- meaning that you can't get basic statistics (like leechers/seeders) about a torrent which is tracked by them without going through their advertisements.

<comment><USER9> The common ad networks usually have TOSs banning torrent sites and such, so unless you can bankroll the site yourself, you'll have to resort to shadier networks.

By the way, TPB hasn't had a tracker for seven years now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Why do people assume these sites are honeypots? Would there be a point to the FBI operating a torrent site? I thought copyright violations were handled at the ISP level.

<comment><USER25> > Would there be a point to the FBI operating a torrent site?

Possibly for the same reason they end up operating other sites such as illegal pornography sites.

But why do they do that? Because these sites have users who sign in and upload things. In this case, they could have access to the releasers account details. usernames, emails, passwords. It's generally the releasers that are the same people or groups that do the ripping, who may have relationships with studios, networks, cinemas etc. Nothing major but it's a bit better than not having them.

Also, if a third party controls a server, they can, as Snowden has repeatedly shown, target specific users with malicious payloads. Even if they are using HTTPS.

<comment><USER9> I really doubt the scene members are releasing anything on public sites like KAT. The users uploading torrent files to KAT are probably just users of private sites where the original releases happen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Any reason to believe this isn't a passive attack; aka: honeypot, watering- hole, etc.

<comment><USER27> Why would they need to do this for a honeypot? Visiting a torrent website is not illegal. You /can/ download Linux ISOs from them.

The government could just upload a torrent and watch the connected IP list. Actually, they don't even need to upload a torrent. Just get a torrent and see who you connect to. Anyone you connect to is uploading that content.

<comment><USER25> Operating a site gives more than just IPs. 1) To add a torrent to a torrent site, a user has to set up an account - they get access to account information and 2) even if the site is serving things via https, they control it, and can send a malicious ad or inject some JS in the page to a targeted user.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> As corporate copyright laws converge to more global uniformity, we're only going to see more resilient and ephemeral networks and data stores, esp as the technical means to do such expands to more and more people.

</comment><comment><USER29> Does anyone know where to find a copy of the torrent DB? I think kat had copies on their app page, but the new mirrors omit this.

</comment><comment><USER30> So, if you go on kat.am and search for something that isn't there, you get a bunch of porn links.

Is that the intended behaviour?

</comment><comment><USER31> Kat.host

</comment><comment><USER32> AWESOME!

</comment><comment><USER33> All of these are honeypots.

<comment><USER34> What's the point of a torrent honeypot? It's incredibly trivial to track which IPs are downloading a torrent; operating the site which offers magnet links gives you no additional information whatsoever.

<comment><USER25> The website that users can log into, get JS to run on their computers and get targets ads. Thats the benefit of a honeypot, not torrents.

<comment><USER34> Well that's just a scam. A honeypot, at least in common parlance on this site, refers to getting a specific group of people to run/interact with something in the interests of compromising their identity and/or blackmailing them. What you're describing is pretty much just the MO of shady torrent sites.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Platform-as-Code: Full-stack microservices deployments to public clouds - <AUTHOR> https://cloudark.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> I have written this blog post to explain rationale behind building CloudARK (Platform-as-Code system) - [https://medium.com/@cloudark/introducing- platform-as-code-b6...](https://medium.com/@cloudark/introducing-platform-as- code-b6677c699b4). Looking forward to your feedback on CloudARK.</comment>


Show HN: Write webapps in Go without framework [updated] - <AUTHOR> Over three months ago, I posted my book on HN and got tremendous +ve reponse. I am happy to inform that I have published the book to leanpub as per the comments I got on HN itself! It is pay as you go model, and the minimum is $0 because I wanted to contribute back to the FOSS Community <comment><AUTHOR> Author here, since links aren't clickable in the description:

Leanpub link: [https://leanpub.com/antitextbookGo/](https://leanpub.com/antitextbookGo/) Github link: [https://github.com/thewhitetulip/web-dev-golang-anti- textboo...](https://github.com/thewhitetulip/web-dev-golang-anti-textbook/)</comment>


A New Kind of Type System - <AUTHOR> http://mcdirmid.github.io/2013/06/14/a-new-kind-of-type-system/

<comment><AUTHOR> Discussed here on Lambda the Ultimate ([http://lambda-the- ultimate.org/node/4764](http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/4764))</comment>


Masayoshi Son Makes $58 Billion on Alibaba with $20 Million Original Investment - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-07/son-makes-58-billion-on-alibaba-with-buffett-type-return.html

<comment><USER2> The company is 90 Billion in debt so this means very little.

</comment><comment><USER3> Easy way to make more money is to start with money.</comment>


The U.S. Air Force learned to code and saved the Pentagon millions - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/40588729/the-air-force-learned-to-code-and-saved-the-pentagon-millions <comment><USER2> I've heard that the salaries of government employees are capped. I'm very curious how this will play out.

The Air Force can easily afford to pay Silicon Valley salaries (sure the officers who are being taught to code can be paid less), but if the Air Force is artificially limited by red-tape to offer competitive salaries, wouldn't these software developers choose to leave as soon as they've learned?

The other issue is paying these officers competitive salaries, would have quite the ripple effect. Higher ranking officers would all need to get paid more, or software developers would need inflated ranks, but with some designation where rank did not determine command.

I have zero insight and am just speculating. If anyone has more insight I'd love to hear it.

<comment><USER3> This is a bizarre thing that keeps popping up here. This assumption that as soon as somebody learns how to code, they pack up and move to the Bay Area. Since when was Silicon Valley the only place with competent software developers? We exist all over the planet, often getting paid very different amounts, and usually, yes, very much less than Bay Area developers.

In reality, the USAF here is competing against the cost of defence contractors. Which it turns out, is pretty easy because they've been charging megabucks for everything for two decades because _their_ only competition has been other defence contractors. Thanks to politics, right or wrong, they've had no capacity to ramp-up on in-house development and submit their own bids to really compete on price.

I really hope we're entering into an age of reality where public organisations (military, government, healthcare in the civilised world, etc) —and more, the people funding them— realise that in-housing development work is so much cheaper than farming it out.

<comment><USER4> To be fair on them, one of the reasons it got so expensive was probably also because it all followed waterfall and the USAF would pile on every conceivable, often contradictory requirement, rather than start with an MVP and iterate.

Plus it would take huge amounts of salesman/consultant hours to get through the bidding process, plus each successful bid has to effectively pay for all the costs of other bids that failed for the consultants to be profitable.

<comment><USER5> For the Air Force, the MVP is often something that can do a lot of damage. Some things require expensive upfront design. One cannot just iterate through two week sprints until the crew survives.

<comment><USER6> however, that MVP - used in a test environment - can lead to much more useful feedback from real people on the ground in days or weeks, vs years to build then deploy then getting ignored because it doesn't do what the users need.

There's a balance to be found, and it sounds like some of these skunkworks approaches are starting to get more formalized.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What a wonderful story. It all comes down to risk and reward. Would Northrup go all 'agiley' and get this done quickly? Sure if you paid them Time and Material for the work and let them off the hook for any operational failures. No-one wants to do the work for 5% profit. No-one wants to hear the USAF want compensation when your program gives them a wrong answer and you lose a plane. So, we write a spec, and all agree. The we do a design, and all agree, Then we deliver and requirements have changed. The nature of the world we live in.

<comment><USER8> When theory meets reality, requirements change. We thought this approach would work, and our research suggested it would. Then the real world came along.

<comment><USER9> No plan survives first contact with the enemy?

<comment><USER10> The more general version: "No plan survives first contact with reality."

Somebody once also said that planning is still very useful even if the plan changes later because it helps those involved prepare for and understand the changes better when they do come.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What is most interesting about this article is the comments here considering what we've recently seen RE Google. Where are the calls from HN commenters suggesting that the engineers refuse to work on this? Where are the commenters questioning the morals and ethics of the engineers working on this? Where are the comments on here calling for the engineers working on this to _quit_ in protest, or be deemed a _collaborator_?

Or does that line of thought only apply when it is everyone's favourite bogeyman Google that is contracted to replace manual work with automated systems? If its not Google, then is it A-Okay to work on military systems?

Both this and the Google project are IT systems that save manual, error-prone, and time-consuming work to enable the US military to more efficiently kill people.

I know I'll get down-voted to hell on this, but please if you're going to try and take the moral high ground at least do so consistently.

<comment><USER12> You should qualify which engineers you are refering to. From the article it's clear that the majority of the coding is "by a fast-moving cadre of Air Force engineers". They are Forces personnel, not civilians. Yes, Pivotal are involved, equally it seems if they are practicing XP, perhaps now only as Agile Coaches.

I also believe the applications this team are creating are substantively different in intent to those the Google employees were complaining about.

<comment><USER13> Hey, I work for Pivotal and I'm on an Kessel Run Air Force engagement. We teach things by doing them. That's why we're effective. So we are involved heavily in the making of software, we've always been. Our main schtick is that we try to make sure that we aren't necessary to the software development process when we roll off.

There are actually a couple of things that are the reason why a lot of people don't think it's too much of a problem (some people do and I work out of an office that does a lot of government work so we hear more of this than others do). The main reason is that there isn't pressure for a pivot to work on a project. If the project makes you feel uncomfortable request to be on something else. Leadership has been very thoughtful in addressing how people feel about working on military and government projects (especially with the new administration).

The other reason is that the applications are pretty different in intent, from what I understand, to what was complained by Google employees. It honestly feels like very standard enterprise issues. We're helping them cut through a lot of the same issues anyone would find at large enterprises.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This story brings back a lot of memories. Right before I separated from the USAF in 1997, I was working with a tanker squadron deployed in support of operations in Bosnia. Crews would spend hours parsing the Air Tasking Orders to figure out when to take off, and with how much fuel. I had just gotten in to programming and wrote a simple VB6 app to parse the huge file and produce a simple report with the details they were after. It saved the crews hours, and I was still getting feature requests on the app for a year after I separated. It's simply amazing it took another 20 years for them to solve the problem.

<comment><USER15> There is an, unfortunate, lack of continuity in many offices like that in the military. This is due (as you're aware, this statement is more for others) to the way that personnel get moved within the military. Officers, in particular, as the ones who are typically the "decision makers" for selecting what projects to work on will be in their job for 2-3 years at a time. If they don't have a chief or a civilian staffer who acts as a continuity officer, projects like what you did get forgotten.

"Why are we still using this VB6 thing after 15 years? We should put out a contract and have it done properly." says some colonel or major who doesn't know better. And so it happens, a contract is awarded and it's a mess. I saw it more from the civilian side. Without strong continuity officers, when the military leadership changed over the direction and intent of things is forgotten.

Additionally, as this article points out, the military is set on Waterfall- styled contracts and projects, given to the lowest bidders. Which is why it becomes a mess once a contract is awarded. Waterfall only works under a few circumstances, and I guarantee your lowest bidder won't satisfy them all (expertise with the implementation technology, expertise in the problem domain, expertise with how the system is actually used, ideally a project that's been done 100x before by the same team).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Stories like this one should be understood not in isolation, but as one point in a pendulum system:

Endpoint A: These rules are all "red tape" stopping us from getting things done. Let's just get the job done and save lots of money, time, and overhead.

Endpoint B: Our systems are crap; they don't meet specifications - we don't even have specifications so we don't know what's needed; they are unreliable; they don't interoperate; there's no competition for the work, it just goes to incompetent people who have friends in the right places and rip off taxpayers; and military officers know nothing about procurement, bidding, or complex system development. This is ridiculous and unprofessional: We need specifications, competitive bidding, quality requirements, QA, and professional procurement for our $600 billion budget.

....

The problem isn't the endpoints, it's the pendulum. If this is your organization, you need to get off the pendulum and make expert, intelligent decisions about trade-offs.

EDIT: Some clarifying edits

<comment><USER10> Competent internal teams can produce relatively simple solutions within a reasonable budget. However, it's hard to formalize and replicate such teams and/or team habits. That's why the more formal specification & contract approach is often used instead: It's a BIT more predictable.

The first approach may get a grade from A to F, while the second ranges mostly from B- to D-. Predictable semi-crap is often easier to accept than something that might easily be an A, F, and all between. The first's probability curve is mostly flat from A to F, while the second peaks around C-, and thus it's somewhat more predictable, and that's why managers and bureaucrats often prefer it.

<comment><USER16> > Competent internal teams can produce relatively simple solutions within a > reasonable budget. However, it's hard to formalize and replicate such teams > and/or team habits.

Tangentially, that is exactly the military's central management challenge (per my limited understanding): Combat depends on replicating competence in internal teams, under extreme stress and extremely unpredictable situations, and with unpredictable turnover of key personnel, including management (they die). The U.S. military, for example, has to accomplish this across hundreds of thousands of personnel.

Imagine you get a new manager the week before a major project is due, with lots of critical decisions to be made. Now imagine you get a new manager the day that person is supposed to lead you on an assault up an enemy hill, where a less-than-optimal decision might kill you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I enjoyed that, there mere mention of Shaw AFB brought back memories of serving there in the late 80s leaving just before the first Gulf "war" broke out.

anecdotal part goes here.

Being in IT back then was fascinating, the secure comm side systems were Burroughs of the generation just after tube computers went out of style. Complete with paper tape booting or switches and lights. The main system which I was on was a Sperry 1100/70 using cards as the main input from on base customers. Those transitioned into images on a 360k diskette when I was leaving. The system data was mostly stored on tape (autoloading reel) and there were three disk packs including one we joked was kick start (seriously, if you swapped packs and it didn't spin you faced away with your butt on the edge and swift flat to the side hit it with your boot).

It was that diskette that got me into programming. I started with Turbo C and Turbo Pascal settling on the second. The tool we were provided by Sperry would upload the card images one line at a time. On our Sperry branded PCs (same as IBM/XT) it could take longer to upload a deck than to run one through a card reader and the personelle group had the equivalent to three boxes. I ended up digging into the emulator software, the arcane manuals we had, and whooped up something in TP that did it in a tenth of the time. From that point on it was off to the races for my desire to program.

<comment><USER10> I once interned at a military base that used punched card readers. Some jobs (processes) would refuse to run if any card in the deck was detected as being bad (using counts and check-sums), such as misaligned holes. Being analog, different cards often were "bad" on repeat reads. It drove everybody crazy. Experienced card people knew all kinds of tricks to reduce such a problems. I learned to respect experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> > To do so, a person called "the Gonker" entered data into an Excel > spreadsheet known as "the Gonkulator," while "the Planner" arranged magnetic > pucks and plastic laminated cards on the whiteboard to indicate how long > planes could stay in the air.

I love the names and vocab that comes out of unofficial military slang.

<comment><USER19> It came from Hogans Heroes and was generally adopted by the military as a "black box" that nobody understands. In my experience, it's predominantly used in the Air Force.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> > _"Just because you followed the software requirements spec doesn't mean you > met the capability need," Kroger said._

Sage words.

I do wonder, though: becoming more agile (or agile AF as the case may be) is one thing, but is it healthy for an actual _military_ branch to be moving in the direction of an industry whose unofficial motto is "move fast and break things"? That's one thing when the bad outcome might be that someone gets delivered the wrong thing or gets charged twice and you have to refund them. But broken things have much graver consequences when they involve guns and bombs and airplanes.

<comment><USER21> > "move fast and break things"

Doesn't mean that you deliver broken code, it means that you should not be lazy to rewrite old code.

<comment><USER22> That's not what that quote means. It literally means it's okay to not get it right, to make mistakes, as long as you can deliver quickly [1]. Not that weird for an industry where time to market is everything.

[1] [https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Mark-Zuckerberg- Moving-F...](https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Mark-Zuckerberg-Moving-Fast- And-Breaking-Things-2461393.php)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Speaking of stories of people coding in the military and in other U.S. bureaucracies, these came to mind:

How I got a medal from the Army for writing code (2014): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7950190](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7950190)

How learning to code kept me sane when I was a diplomat (2014): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8810589](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8810589)

</comment><comment><USER24> A few months ago some Kessel Run folks gave (really fantastic) presentations[0][1] at CF Summit which are worth watching for deeper dives on the experience.

Disclosure: I work for Pivotal, though in R&D.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8w4jf5clJk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8w4jf5clJk)

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

</comment><comment><USER25> From the article: 'In addition to the name, the team chose a hashtag for its project that is a nod to both agile software development, and the fact that Kessel Run's culture is more startup than strictly military: #agileAF

"The AF stands for Air Force," Furtado assured me.'

I wonder where the reporter's scepticism comes from...

<comment><USER26> It could otherwise be read as "agile as f __* "

<comment><USER13> Yeah. I think they know that. They always chuckle when we bring up the hashtag. I'm on a Kessel Run project now and they are great clients.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> There's a few people like Will Roper (former MIT prof) and Raj Shah in the military that are introducing agile thinking into the military, which it desperately needs. Other countries are catching up and it's fast becoming the case that software is the only thing that really matters in warfare. [http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2018/06/07/f-35-to-2070-air- forc...](http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2018/06/07/f-35-to-2070-air-force-says- software-will-decide-who-wins-future-wars.html)

<comment><USER28> I call BS on this [0]

[0] [https://blog.codinghorror.com/boyds-law-of- iteration/](https://blog.codinghorror.com/boyds-law-of-iteration/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> It's a very interesting look behind the curtain at what's wrong with the procurement and development process but also reads like a Pivotal Labs puff piece.

</comment><comment><USER30> ""It hasn't been peacetime in a long time," I was told."

If we don't have peace right now, how can we ever have peace? Is eternal war finally there?

<comment><USER31> This is the current war: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Inherent_Resolve](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Inherent_Resolve)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Seems like NASA's europa-pso code is right up the alley for what the tanker scheduling needs and is already out there collecting bit-rot: [https://github.com/nasa/europa](https://github.com/nasa/europa)

Think there was a follow-on project but can't remember the name of it.

</comment><comment><USER33> Interesting there is no discussion about Pivotal and the ethics of optimizing war machines, given that only a couple of weeks ago there was a big discussion about Google employees successfully stopping the company from working on drones.

<comment><USER12> Possibly because the applications are qualitatively different; possibly because the software is being produced by military personnel (aided by civilian advisors).

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Soon: "This should be contracted out, we'd save a lot of taxpayer money".

Later: Contractors take over costing much more.

</comment><comment><USER35> No one commented yet on the title "... saved the Pentagon millions". Compared to 700B a year (budgeted, more is spent), millions is sort of less inspirational.

</comment><comment><USER36> The Army has Jyn Erso. The Air Force has the Kessel Run Experimentation Lab. Is Disney sponsoring the DoD now?

</comment><comment><USER37> I had a literal Laugh out Loud at the #AgileAF (Agile Air Force) hashtag.

</comment><comment><USER38> overall, did the Air Force spend more or less?</comment>


Home theater system for about $350 - <AUTHOR> these 3 things + an iphone make a great home theater system for about $350:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MJEYM5O (speakers)
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009WHV3BM (hdmi for iphone)
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00QXS8L6I (hdmi projector) <comment><AUTHOR> then from your iphone just open hbonow or netflix etc and u have 70 inch hdtv on your wall</comment>


Warrantless airport seizure of laptop "cannot be justified," judge rules - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/05/warrantless-airport-search-of-laptop-cannot-be-justified-judge-rules/ <comment><USER2> This bit from the opinion is interesting:

        [The hard drive was searched, and...] After incriminating emails were uncovered
        through that process, the agent sought and obtained a warrant based upon the
        content of the emails to conduct the search of the hard drive that had already
        been completed and to seize the emails that had already been reviewed. Those
        mails now form a part of the basis of this prosecution, and Kim moves to
        suppress that evidence, arguing that his rights under the Fourth Amendment of
        the Constitution have been violated.

Isn't that post-facto application for a warrant precisely an admission that the initial search was illegal?

<comment> irq-1 Like parallel construction but hyper-threaded.

<comment><USER3> This is my guess as well.

Look for the SIGINT connection. How did they know to seize the laptop, and why did they immediately whisk it away "before" they knew the contents?

<comment><USER2> Whether you believe it or not, there is a reasonable explanation for this in the opinion which doesn't require SIGINT magic, just fairly boring detective work.

<comment><USER3> It's possible, but I wouldn't say it's probable given that the agents seemed to know to search certain emails in order to gather material for a warrant after the fact.

If they had detective work in hand at the time of seizure which demonstrated the content of these emails, they'd have been able to get a warrant for the search on that basis.

<comment><USER2> > It's possible, but I wouldn't say it's probable given that the agents seemed > to know to search certain emails in order to gather material for a warrant > after the fact.

They didn't search "certain emails", they searched _all of the emails on the laptop_. It's not improbable that there would be interesting evidence in someone's email after a trip when you expect they will have been up to no good, and it's not improbable that a broad keyword search over those .pst's would find something.

> If they had detective work in hand at the time of seizure which demonstrated > the content of these emails, they'd have been able to get a warrant for the > search on that basis.

Yes, but they evidently didn't think they needed one: the dominant culture the agents were working in seems to say that this constituted a reasonable search, and that applying for a warrant after the fact was proper - _that_ is the real problem here, and the one the judge is picking up on. The opinion describes this: they had enough warning of the guy's trip that they could decide whether to seize the laptop on the way into the country or on the way out, but decided on the latter _to give the guy a chance to generate incriminating evidence_ , because they didn't think they'd catch him in the act otherwise.

Seriously, this looks more like an everyday process that's evolved in a bad direction than parallel construction. They weren't expecting to have to defend this search procedure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really like that some of the over-reaction after 9-11 is starting to be reeled back in defense of personal privacy. The fact that the paternalistic "If you haven't done anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about!" was (and often is) accepted as "how it is" really was making me worry about our future generations. It is nice to see that cooler heads are finally prevailing in these areas.

<comment><USER5> I agree with your sentiment. I also find it funny that this sort of illegal government activity actually caught someone selling weapon parts to Iran. Does the NSA system actually work? Random success? Statistically speaking you will eventually catch something, right?

<comment><USER6> Yes, invading everyone's privacy and illegally searching them will catch more bad guys. I don't think anyone's arguing it won't. The point is, it's not worth the loss of freedom and privacy.

The purpose of America is not to make cops' jobs as easy as possible.

<comment><USER7> > The purpose of America is not to make cops' jobs as easy as possible

Why not make cops jobs as easy as possible?

<comment><USER8> Its a trade off. For the last few decades (at least) government policy/lawmaking has been leaning towards more invasive surveillance of the general public. This certainly makes police work easier, as they already have monitoring systems in place that allow them to collect information much more easily. They may already have a file on a suspect.

The down side is that public opinion and policy making are constantly changing. A person who is constantly monitored needs to worry that any activity they take part in today, regardless of how legal/acceptable, may become unacceptable tomorrow. Take, for example, boycotting by Canadian citizens of goods made in Israeli settlements. A year ago one may have disagreed with the sentiment, but it certainly wouldn't have seemed illegal. Today the Canadian government is threatening to bring these citizens up on hate crime charges. (As an aside I am not deeply familiar with this particular issue and am using it only as and example and as described at face value. Its entirely possible that some people have committed hate crimes.)

The Canadian government certainly already has files on some, if not all, of the biggest actors in this movement.

In a truly democratic society we need to tolerate and even bolster the voice of dissent. We claim to value our (nearly) unlimited freedom of speech. But a person who needs to worry that all of their words are recorded and can be used out of context later to condemn them will be less likely to voice their dissent. That loss of freedom is the cost of making police job's as easy as possible.

<comment><USER9> > The down side is that public opinion and policy making are constantly > changing

Don't forget the issue of abuse of surveillance data- see for example NSA and CIA analysts using our databases to stalk their exes, or cops using their legally-acquired surveillance powers in illegal ways to suppress dissent.

And there's another facet that I don't hear discussed enough- Take, for example, the crime of speeding. What if speeding resulted in immediate traffic fines, 100% of the time, with perfect enforcement. Is that how we want it to work? Speeding is always possibile, and always punishable? Or is it actually better to live in a world where speeding carries the _risk_ of traffic fines?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder if this will have an affect on the 100 mile border zone (constitution free zone) One can hope:

[https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights- governments-100-mile-b...](https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights- governments-100-mile-border-zone-map)

<comment><USER11> There is no 100-mile border zone. That's a marketing creation of the ACLU. This question was put to the Supreme Court in the 1970s, and the Supreme Court unequivocally held otherwise.

The nexus with reality of that "100 mile" figure is that it represents the limit of the distance at which the USG can establish a permanent checkpoint --- at which CBP is allowed only to stop people who have actually crossed the border. Some DHS person misspoke when describing that process, and ACLU picked it up as "the USG believes it has border search rights for anyone living within 100 miles of the border". Which is a farcical position.

<comment><USER12> > The nexus with reality of that "100 mile" figure is that it represents the > limit of the distance at which the USG can establish a permanent checkpoint > --- at which CBP is allowed only to stop people who have actually crossed > the border.

That's not been true in my experience. I've done some traveling in the southwest and have been regularly stopped at these checkpoints. They are on U.S. highways far from the border and they stop everybody, not people actually crossing the border or who have recently crossed the border.

Now, it is true that their search powers are more limited at these checkpoints than at the border, but they do have the power to stop everyone who passes through. (Whether or not they have the power to question you doesn't seem to be settled, but to try to exercise your right to remain silent is a risky endeavor. Some civil libertarians who have tried to exercise this right have ended up in the hospital.) Which court case are you referring to?

<comment><USER13> They have the power to stop everyone in order to find out whether they have recently crossed the border. That's what a checkpoint is: everyone stops and answers a question or two.

What they do not have the power to do is conduct a warrantless search in the absence of any evidence that the person has actually crossed the border on that particular trip.

<comment><USER14> Sure they do - if they have probable cause otherwise. The last few times I went through these checkpoints (in Texas) they ran dogs around my truck looking for probable cause.

Whether or not you've crossed the border recently seems like fairly ineffective criteria. Are you sure that's the case? Where did you see that?

<comment><USER11> Stopping cars and then walking drug dogs to generate cause for a search is no longer constitutional.

<comment><USER15> My experience: They had a drug dog sniffing at the vehicle _without_ making it stop for the dog. They actually asked me to keep going, a little bit short of the stop sign, when I stopped for fear of running the dog over while it was very energetically sniffing in front of and at the sides of the vehicle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Does that only hold for US citizens and are we as foreigners still treated like cattle from some kind of Patriot/equivalent act?

<comment><USER17> It has nothing to do with any kind of Patriot/equivalent act. The border search exception was authorized by the First Congress in 1789. It is extremely well established that at international borders the government can conduct warrantless searches and seizures, as long as they are reasonable.

In this case, the court did not feel that the search was reasonable, citing such factors as the actual search not taking place until after the person had left, and the search taking place far away from the border.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wonder if this will actually stop unjustified/unwarranted search and seizure at US borders.

<comment><USER11> It will not; the border search exception is as old as the Constitution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> What exactly does seizing a laptop even do anymore with the ubiquity of cloud storage?

Simply make an encrypted backup and wipe everything before traveling through airports and borders.

<comment><USER20> That has to be some kind of fallacy:

The implication that just because a best-prepared "opponent" can thwart someone, there's no point in engaging the <unknown>-prepared.

<comment><USER21> There's got to be some threshold though - it's not best prepared. A few years ago we wouldn't use much cloud storage because there weren't many options to do so. Right now, if you are a terrorist and carry your data with you, unencrypted, you're a complete idiot and will likely fail in some other way.

<comment><USER22> I've had the same thoughts myself and always come up with the same conclusion: educated engineers would make great terrorists!

Turns out after a quick Google search there are a plethora of articles titled "Why are so many terrorists engineers?"

I wonder if there are many more good terrorists engineers who just haven't been caught yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> A technical question: If he had been using whole-disk encryption (for example a macbook pro with FileVault) would that have effectively prevented them from doing the forensic searches that they did?

Specifically would that have inoculated him in this instance, where they did a bit-for-bit copy of the HD and then returned the laptop to him?

<comment><USER24> FileVault is closed source, so there is no guarantee that Apple doesn't have a backdoor built into it.

<comment><USER25> If there were a backdoor that Apple had built into FileVault, and they gave it to authorities to access your hard drive, wouldn't it make it into the news pretty quickly? (e.g. "Gee, I had my FileVault turned on but somehow the authorities were able to decrypt the whole damn thing!")

And wouldn't Apple be destroying the product's reputation and severely harming their own reputation by providing that backdoor access and having it hit the news?

I'm not saying it's impossible, it just seems so unlikely as to not even register on the list of concerns for a typical security-minded individual unless that person is storing nuke codes or something.

<comment><USER26> You would get a gag order to prevent disclosing such a vulnerability.

<comment><USER25> Even with the possibility of obtaining gag orders, the risk and potential to exposure to Apple would be huge.

They'd be in much safer territory to just not include encryption software with their products at all, unless the whole NSA surveillance thing is so complex and intrusive that they force large OS makers to specifically develop backdoored encryption technology for the specific purpose of encouraging people to store sensitive information on FileVault encrypted drives so that the government to access it at it's will.

But, that doesn't really stand to reason in my mind.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Technique to do a Fair Coin Toss by Counting Cars - <AUTHOR> http://bayesianthink.blogspot.com/2013/03/conducting-fair-toss-by-counting-cars.html

<comment><USER2> Nice one. I like how it does not depend on the rate parameter</comment>


Ask HN: Charting your blood panel stats - <AUTHOR>

Hi Everyone,
Is there a website that lets you chart your blood test results over the year such as cholesterol, sodium, etc, etc? It would be nice if it could track other stats, such as your weight and BMI.
Thanks,
Drew <comment><USER2> I'm not sure, but if they hold medical records, perhaps they should be HIPAA compliant. I'm not sure if this is a restriction to the website or to the medical care providers.

Wikipedia: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_Insurance_Portability_an...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_Insurance_Portability_and_Accountability_Act#HITECH_Act:_Privacy_Requirements)

Discussion about HIPAA compliant: (With more discussion in the parent thread.) <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1347693>

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm guessing that people who need this sort of (rather specialized) tracking simply stick to the spreadsheets.</comment>


The Crunch Mode Paradox: Turning Superstars Average - <AUTHOR> http://jamesgolick.com/2008/2/18/the-crunch-mode-paradox-turning-superstars-average <comment><USER2> I found myself in a self-imposed crunch mode this weekend. I had a preconceived notion in my mind how much I was going to be able to accomplish this weekend, and when my estimates were far off (what was estimated to be 6 hours of work were actually 18), I got impatient, thinking that I SHOULD have finished hours ago.

I ended up not doing things the right way, and merely plowed ahead, until I got it to work. However, after the relief of finally getting it done, I have to go back and spend some time refactoring and cleaning up the mess that I made. I often have to remind myself that good engineering simply takes time, and will save in the long run.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's interesting. When I'm in crunch mode, I'm not thinking about features at all. I'm just doing the same thing as I did before, only without so much goofing off (reading email, drinking, eating, etc) I separate that from "hacking" which I picture as taking a machete and flailing away at the code until it submits, no matter what state it is in. I have been known to hack with the best of 'em, but only for short periods, usually the last few hours around a drop.

But usually I'm always thinking of the structure of the code as I code, continuing the work I did with modeling (if I did any) as I think through what is important, what goes where, what are the important nouns and verbs of my intermediate language. I drop back out of design mode to pick up various pieces of functionality, then continue the work. I'm usually looking for the biggest headache first -- might as well suffer now rather than later. Usually the biggest headaches are the ones that have greatest impact on whether your strategies are correct or not -- whether caching that huge list is going to work real-time or whether a distributed linked-list is going to work. But then I always end up spending the same amount of time on such vexing stuff as "How did I get that box blue, anyway?" or "why is that off by one pixel?" or something like that. Gee, I love programming.</comment>


Testing of Tesla Model S - <AUTHOR> http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/alpha-hits-road

<comment><USER3> Good to see something on the road. I'm looking forward to seeing if this is disruptive technology.

I inhabit some car blogs from time to time. I can't believe the amount of vitriol directed at Tesla. The first all new American manufacturer in years, working on new tech, constructing within the country, and they get blasted for it. It genuinely baffles me.

<comment><USER4> I don't understand it either, people seem to have an irrational hatred towards them. The company has been doing really cool things and the roadster is an awesome car (I know somebody who has one). It's quite possible that Tesla influenced the Nissan Leaf or Chevy volt, but even if they didn't they're doing the right thing. Pushing technology forward in an area where it's been stagnant for a while, getting attention and attempting to change things. I would've thought this type of thing would be embraced rather than discarded.

<comment><USER5> Maybe car enthusiasts are more concerned with the testosterone of cars than the tech (all the techy sounding talk comparing component performance is really just a red herring). If the tech can make the engine louder and the car faster, that's hot. Tesla is not offering that exactly.

<comment><USER3> I understand your argument, and it might be true for a certain type who saw the pipes off their Camaro just to make it noisier, but in general, most car people are genuinely interested in new tech. Besides, the only non- testosterone thing about the Tesla is the lack of engine noise.

From this, I would argue that the noise is a pavlovian response - the noise accompanies the acceleration and so eventually the noise excites us, even if we're not in the car. Given time, the right sound of electric car noise will tingle the bones of the enthusiast.

My basis for this is the response initially given to Rotary engines - <USER2> thought they were too buzzy. However, after anyone has lived with a powerful Rotary engine for a while, the sound of a tuned Rotary immediately pricks the ears. Noise is going to be one of the by-products of a powerful electric engine - witness electric trains like the TGV for that - so I can see the high-powered whine becoming the mark of a high-powered electric, and young enthusiasts will come up with kits to increase the sound, just as they have with V8's, Rotaries, Turbos and every other type of engine tech.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's so quiet. Too quiet. If I had one, I'd only drive it with the stereo blasting engine noises from BMW's old "The Hire" series of short films.

<comment><USER7> My prediction: An entire industry of downloadable, DRM'd car sounds spurred on by regulation requiring cars to emit a constant sound above a certain volume.

Luckily, I plan to be the one to license the Jetson's sound and sell it for millions!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Someone please get the license plate PWNZOIL. Calacanis, I'm looking at you.

<comment><USER9> Close enough? <http://i.imgur.com/e1zNY.jpg>

<comment><USER8> That's great!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The whole concept is actually really impressive. It really shows shows how much more is possible if we just think outside the box.

Regardless, I'm incredibly excited after seeing this. We actually have one of these on reserve. :D

</comment><comment><USER11> Seeing this reminds me of the Steve Jobs quote (well, associated with him anyway):

"Real artists ship."

I love to see real products working like that. Reduces company risk, quiets naysayers, etc.

</comment><comment><USER12> Wonder if there will be solutions to us appartmenters. Like an easy to access/pop out battery that can be charged and carried back into the car (oh yea the battery is gigantic) maybe some local fuel stations with the tech some dudes developed to charge the battery in 10 minutes? I mean 100 miles range can probably run me a week using the car but I gotta charge.</comment>


Web can ruin reputation with stroke of a key - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/05/06/MNGBEPM57J1.DTL <comment><USER2> Hmm, an article "placed" by ReputationDefender's pr firm.

<comment><USER3> Hey, Paul, where do you think Viaweb would have been in 1998 had you not used a PR firm? Would you have kept your PR firm in 2007, switched to Google Adsense, or both? Also, did you do any advertising at the time, or have affiliates or resellers of your service, other than PR? I seem to remember VIAWEB banner ads. Thanks.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Vehicle/car value dataset/API? - <AUTHOR> Anyone know if something like this exists, i am looking to determine the value of cars in a large dataset, given input params such as make/model/year/etc.<p>I know edmunds API used to exist.  Can't find any other alternatives. <comment><USER2> Something like this: [https://www.blackbook.com/solutions/data-as-a- service/data/](https://www.blackbook.com/solutions/data-as-a-service/data/) ?</comment>


The App That Does Nothing - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/06/the-app-that-does-nothing/529764/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> tl;dr Ian Bogost (of CowClicker) reviews Dan Kurtz's free ios app. Binky operates as a fidget toy with the social app interactions. One can scroll through random pictures, like them, and swipe them. Typing a 'comment' just reveals the pre-generated comment, word by word. Users are hence able to satisfy a need for endless novelty, without spending mental energy on social calculations attached to liking/commenting on the posts of other people.

I've encountered this at, perhaps, the best time. I just read volume one of the DC comic _Prez_, written by Mark Russell. It's another satire about American social dysfunction, centered on a _Mr Smith Goes To Washington_ narrative. This app would fit right in as a vacuous gimmick mentioned in passing.

Kurtz has not made it a transaction: the app is free and has no ads. And yet, I feel ambivalent. At least typical skinner boxes are limited by my bank account or my sleep needs. I know it's a far cry from plugging a current into my dopamine glands. But I'm of a kind that tries to stay away from unregulated stimulation.</comment>


No IE in Windows 7 E(urope) - <AUTHOR> http://microsoftontheissues.com/cs/blogs/mscorp/archive/2009/06/11/working-to-fulfill-our-legal-obligations-in-europe-for-windows-7.aspx

<comment><USER2> Actually, I'm not sure this is a good idea. I welcome being able to make IE a removable program and Microsoft _should_ be pushing out updates as quickly as possible to users, but every other OS ships with a default browser. I guess it comes down to how good their install mechanism is.

Oh yeah, and it's worth noting this quote:

 _Computer manufacturers will be able to add any browser they want to their Windows 7 machines, including Internet Explorer, so European consumers who purchase new PCs will be able to access the Internet without any problem._

Chances of manufacturers shipping a computer without a browser? 0.

<comment><USER3> It's not supposed to be a good idea. It's Microsoft trying to make the EU regulators look stupid. They will take the blame for this despite them preferring to have competing browsers available from a first run menu.

Microsoft clearly believes that a simple choice would be bad for them so they're making it so that a) the consumer who buys an OS has to go out and get a browser, and they're hoping Internet Explorer will get greater share than otherwise, and more importantly b) the OEMs will, in the main, install IE and only IE which has much more effect as that is how 95% of people get their OS, with a new machine purchase.</comment></comment>