Social distancing is bringing drive-in theaters back to life - <AUTHOR> https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/drive-in-theaters-adapt-to-coronavirus <comment><USER2> The drive-in theater near by me has not been allowed to be open. I don't think that is necessarily wrong, it's still too many people in one place.

There was an article two weeks ago that mentioned more drive-in's that would like to be open but were not being allowed to be than ones that were open. And that was a couple weeks ago.

I do think that after we have a handle on the pandemic (including observabiltiy from wide-scale quick-turn-around testing, although part of me thinks our country may be incapable of ever having that, which would be problematic, but anyway)-- anyway, when the curve has peaked, and we have observability we don't have now, which are the preconditions for gradually re- opening things -- at that point I do think it would make sense for drive-in's to be among the first things re-opened, they are _relatively_ low-risk when it comes to gatherings of that size.

But for now, when the interviewer asks "Do you think this surge in attendance at drive-ins around the country…" \-- I don't think the article actually has any evidence to support there IS a "surge in drive-ins around the country", they are just assuming it because they like the story? That's not good journalism. I think most drive-ins remain closed by public health order, possibly appropriately. I think the several stories about "the surge in attendance" are just based on the journalist's imagination extrapolating from one drive-in they found that is open, and are irresponsible.

<comment><USER3> I'm having a very difficult time imagining how a drive-in theater could regularly result in transmission of the virus. It's not inconceivable, but the goal of physical distancing is not to prevent every conceivable situation that could result in transmission, but the activities that would normally be responsible for the vast majority of transmission.

I suppose having the cars a little farther apart might be prudent.

<comment><USER4> It reminds me of that video of cops arresting a jogger in Spain where the person recording the video and the Reddit comments all gleefully celebrate such justice.

As if trail joggers are a hotbed of infection.

[https://en.as.com/en/2020/03/21/videos/1584804866_376286.htm...](https://en.as.com/en/2020/03/21/videos/1584804866_376286.html)

The video kinda disgusted me, like zero tolerance laws that exist so nobody has to actually use their discretion about what's reasonable vs unreasonable.

It also creates this creepy culture of sit-at-your-window-and-tattle that just can't be worth it.

<comment><USER5> Are we watching the same video? I have zero sympathy for the jogger. The police isn't doing anything wrong, she's clearly resisting so they have no choice but to use strength to put her in the car. I don't see any mistreatment from the police.

And where's the supposed "abuse" from the onlookers? All I saw was the person filming telling her to shut up and stop resisting the police. All very reasonable things to say, regardless of whether the law is wrong or not.

Speaking about the law, "zero tolerance laws" have a very negative meaning because of the stupid laws they have in the USA. If there's a moment where you should apply a zero tolerance law, it's when there's a freaking pandemic and people disobey the rules.

One jogger isn't bad, how about 10 or 100?

<comment><USER3> The policy of not allowing outdoor exercise is to blame. The risk of transmission from running is minuscule if people keep proper physical distance. Doesn't matter if it's 10 or 100 or 1,000 people jogging. All that matters is if effective precautions are being taken to prevent transmission of the virus.

Instead of harassing people who are keeping proper physical distance, police should focus on activities that are actually likely to lead to transmission of the virus. People running in a group? Make them stop. People running with ample distance between themselves and others? Wave and say hi.

<comment><USER6> Proper physical distance is quite far for joggers: [https://www.fox13news.com/news/simulation-research-shows- cov...](https://www.fox13news.com/news/simulation-research-shows-covid-19-can- spread-farther-by-those-exercising-outdoors)

<comment><USER3> The traditional WHO recommendation for avoiding droplet transmission is 3.5 feet (1 meter). In Australia, it's currently 5ft (1.5 meters). In many places, 6ft or 6.5ft (2 meters). The rate of transmission already drops dramatically if you maintain just a 1 meter distance from infected individuals. Two meters is even better, but we have always known that droplet transmission can go far beyond even 2 meters. One source I read claimed it's possible up to 20 meters.

But the difference between "possible" and "likely" is key. If we try to avoid every activity where there is a remote possibility of transmission, we will all have to sit in isolated cages. But avoiding "likely" transmission is easy. Keep a good distance, wash your hands, etc. It does not sound like this simulation has proven (or even suggested) that transmission at 65 feet is likely while running, only that it is possible.

<comment><USER7> The point is that the droplets persist in the air for a little bit, and the faster you're moving, the greater the likelihood that you're moving through a space that still has suspended droplets in the air. It's like how the faster you drive, the longer your stopping distance. Your safety distance increases the faster you're moving. Six feet is for when you (and everyone else) are stationary.

<comment><USER6> On top of that, a moving source causes a slipstream that makes the droplets spread further.

<comment><USER7> Yup, and when running you're breathing deeper and more forcefully, so you're expelling more viral particles farther.

Plus, I'm not seeing as many runners wearing masks (no doubt because of the high oxygen requirements of the running itself), so that too has an effect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I was just suggesting this idea to my wife the other day. She counter argued (and I think she's right) that this is still a risky proposition. If everyone arrives, stays in their car watching the movie and then leaves, great. But people see someone they know, or they want to let their kids out to run around, and those kids see other kids. And add others have mentioned: restrooms.

<comment><USER9> Camera + fines for people getting out.

The bigger problem for me will be that half of the car owners will keep their engines running so they can have AC and the idea of sitting for two hours breathing exhaust fumes..

<comment><USER10> Aren't you just describing driving? What is the difference between thousands of cars crammed together on an interstate vs some cars watching a movie in a field?

<comment><USER9> The ones on a field will be emitting less pollutants whilst there will be way less on the motorway per m2.

It's a bigger problem where I live in Europe because of the number of diesels. Petrol cars aren't that bad especially when only idling for the airco. Diesels are disgusting idling.

<comment><USER11> > Petrol cars aren't that bad especially when only idling for the airco. > Diesels are disgusting idling.

Petrol cars do not do complete combustion and emit carbon monoxide which is toxic. Diesels don't. Modern diesels, running on mandated low sulfur fuel, can have lower levels of troublesome emissions than petrol cars. Trucks are a different matter though as they generally are not subject to the same emission standards at present.

<comment><USER9> I drive what, at the time, was being sold as the cleanest diesel engine ever. A super efficient VW which could do 33km for 1 liter of fuel.

All lies it turns out.

You can smell it easily whilst idling on a warm day with low wind.. and it smells really bad.

<comment><USER11> Right I own that car and you are right its claimed emissions were a lie.

I now have the fix and it complies with emissions regulations, and gets the same mileage as before. It was stupid of management and engineers to try to defeat emissions tests because clearly they were capable of delivering the car they promised using the engineering skills they had. Being dumb cost them billions of dollars and has nearly destroyed the company, a fine company. Someone just didn't want to do things right at the time and maybe got off on scamming. Current status is that this car has unbelievably low emissions and gets astonishing mileage and also has high performance.

Only problem is service costs a lot and requires specialized technicians. I hear Teslas and Apple products have a similar issue.

> I can smell it

Mine has no smell before or after the fix. I can smell petrol exhaust.

<comment><USER12> I formerly leased one before the fix. I thought it was 5-10% mpg reduction?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> My friends have been doing a guerrilla drive-in by all driving up to the back of a closed down business off of the highway, projecting a movie onto the (white-painted) brick wall and using an FM transmitter for the audio.

The projector plugs into an inverter and projects through the windshield. We're still trying to figure out how to all talk to each other during the movie. So far, cell phones with earbuds and microphones seems to work alright but anything on speaker phone gets feedback.

The projector is something like 65W and is powered from the car on idle. It'd be nicer to run it off of batteries but that can get a bit expensive.

<comment><USER14> You could use something like presence.so for a private group voice chat.

<comment><USER13> The issue more is about feedback and getting a proper system in place that we can all (multiple people in one car) chat with everyone else in other cars while the movie plays over the transmitter. The simple solution of calling into a group hangout and setting speakerphone is that we quickly get feedback from the audio of the move from the other cars.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I love the drive in, but in a time of pandemic I don't understand how the common resources like restrooms and food could be considered safe. It seems like a place at high risk for transmission between the hundreds of patrons that use them each night.

<comment><USER16> Concessions closed. Single movies (on the short side) only. Go to bathroom at home.

<comment><USER7> A lot of people (me included) won't make it through a round-trip drive plus an entire movie. The bathrooms are non-negotiable.

Also, cinemas make almost all of their profit from concessions, so if you remove those they're going to have to charge more for the tickets themselves to make up for it. Will people be willing to spend this much?

<comment><USER17> Then don't go. This is trying to give some people some sense of normalcy. If it doesn't work for you, that's fine, don't partake. But that doesn't mean it's a bad idea because a small minority of people can't hold their bladder for 2 hours.

<comment><USER7> It's a lot more than a "small minority" of people that wouldn't want no access to a bathroom for 3 hours (we need to include the drive time, remember).

But yes, you could do it safely if you required people to stay in their cars the entire time and provided no services, not even bathrooms. I honestly don't see this being that attractive a proposition to most people though. And I've never been to a drive-in theater in my life, so I don't know about restoring normalcy. Restoring normalcy would be going to a regular theater. A drive-in theater would be a novelty that I'm only experiencing because of the pandemic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This could only happen in places out in the sticks, such as Ocala. Where I'm from, another south florida suburb, the drive ins were paved over and made into shopping malls decades ago. Our son has only seen them in a period movie/show, such as Stranger Things, so sometimes I would describe them in a bit of detail.

No one is going to these things for nostalgia. They are going to because they are bored at home, under quarantine, and looking for something to do. If the governor didn't excempt drive-ins no one would even bother.

<comment><USER19> I think it could happen in cities. We have huge, empty parking lots outside of sports stadiums that aren't being used right now.

<comment><USER7> Depends on the city. Wouldn't work for me or almost anyone I know because almost none of us own cars. Because of social distancing this is only workable if most people own cars. And you wouldn't be able to easily hang out with your friends anyway; you'd only be in the same car as whoever you already live with, at which point just watching from the couch, with the comforts of your own bathroom and refrigerator, sounds more appealing.

There's also contagion potential with the shared bathrooms and concessions at an outdoor theater type setup.

<comment><USER20> > _Because of social distancing this is only workable if most people own cars_

"Most people" don't need to go. You only need enough people to fill up the place.

If 1% of people in a big city starts going to drive in theaters, that would support several venues.

<comment><USER7> We'll see. I'm curious to see if any of these open up here in NYC. I'm guessing it's just not worth trying to do, though; the uncertainty is so high, and the payoff window is likely quite narrow.

The economy is pretty messed up right now though, and it's not a great time for new risky business ventures. And while you may be able to maintain social distancing while the venue is actually operating, how about while putting it together?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm from a country that doesn't live in cars, can someone explain the drive-in to me? Does everybody have a cabriolet, or how do you see the screen at all? Is it visible through the windshield? How about the audio?

<comment><USER20> > _Is it visible through the windshield?_

Do you not have transparent windshields in your country?

<comment><USER22> Sure, the engine has one for the conductor, but most cars don't.

<comment><USER23> I'm sure your country has at least a few personal cars. There are a a few islands that don't, but otherwise you have seen cars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> There's a half dozen drive-ins or so around the Hudson Valley.

They're great if you have small children and want to leave the house to see a movie -- your kids can bounce around the back seat without bothering anyone else.

</comment><comment><USER25> It's sort of an odd turn about. My grandfather owned and operated several drive in theaters in Texas. The businesses were handed down to him by his mother, who ran the theaters herself with her husband. Technology like home tv and the vcr changed peoples theater habits. They socially distanced at home and we saw a near extinction of the drive in theater. It's sort of ironic that now were moving in the opposite direction. So much time with Netflix and various streaming services that we're seeking out the safety of a drive in theater today.

What a resurgence. We closed our last theater in the 2000's but I've got fond memories of working the box office with my grandfather weekend evenings.

</comment><comment><USER26> Here's one in NC which id currently closed per the NC stay-at-home order.

[http://www.raleighroaddrivein.com/](http://www.raleighroaddrivein.com/)

It was briefly donating its location for Sunday prayers:

[https://www.newsobserver.com/news/coronavirus/article2416043...](https://www.newsobserver.com/news/coronavirus/article241604316.html)

</comment><comment><USER27> Apparently we have one drive-in theater in San Jose and one in Concord in the bay. I totally would have expected them to be extinct by now.

Appatently the SJ theater is hosting an Easter service today [https://www.mercurynews.com/san-jose-church-hosting- easter-s...](https://www.mercurynews.com/san-jose-church-hosting-easter- services-at-drive-in-movie-theater)

</comment><comment><USER28> That's brilliant and certainly perfect for today's climate of health concerns. Makes you wonder how much of past practices in society we shall reinvent. Certainly know a few people who learned to make their own bread and others growing some of their own food, not enough to live on but enough to augment their needs.

</comment><comment><USER29> I am really hoping for new releases to to be streamed digitally now. I'd pay for it.

<comment><USER30> How much do you want it?

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

<comment><USER31> From their FAQ: _" Movies will be variably priced with the most current films in the low thousands - no movie will be priced below $500. This will permit two viewings within a 36 hour period."_

I was thinking $20, heh.

<comment><USER32> I mean, I know there are people for whom $500 is loose change in the seat cushions. But are there seriously enough of them who absolutely _must_ see a new release right now (and who don't know someone who can knock loose a screener for them) to support this as a business?

<comment><USER33> On their website, there is a "Fact Sheet" PDF with a 1-page business description linked at the bottom. It says:

"Target consumer: wealthy individuals with home media rooms"

Duh.

It also says the two founders were CEO of ticketmaster, and home distribution president at Warner Bros. I suppose these two would know how to price this, and who to talk to for licensing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I went to a drive in theater a few months ago with some friends. It was a pretty terrible experience. We tried sitting outside since it was be better than sitting in the cramped back seat of a sedan. That made it impossible to hear most of the movie since other cars would turn on their engines, or a low flying airplane would pass overhead, or a train would go by. Other problems: light pollution from cars driving by with their headlights on would fade the screen, other screens playing different movies was very distracting, and going to the bathroom would take 15-20 minutes since it was so far away.

A car seat is never going to be more comfortable than a movie theater recliner, or your own couch. And listening to a film over the radio isn't going to produce as good a sound as your home theater system.

<comment><USER35> It sounds like you were simply looking for a different sort of product. The point of a drive-in theater is not to produce a high-fidelity experience. You may as well go skiing and complain about the cold.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> These sort of leisure would be the perfect opportunity to give some air to people and have some activity too. Employ people to check few people per car and same family and you're good to go.

</comment><comment><USER37> I wonder how they handle having a hundred people needing access to a restroom. My memories of drive in included a line up 20 deep of women waiting to use the restroom.

</comment><comment><USER38> Once a summer or so, my family goes to the Kenda Drive In in Marshall, Arkansas.

People usually play frisbee and socialize while we wait for darkness to arrive. Food and snacks are delicious and moderately priced. The ticket to get in is something like $20 a carload.

I don't know how the owners make money. I figure it must be some kind of community service project, promoting a wholesome community. It is awesome.

</comment><comment><USER39> They closed ours down here in MO just as we were about to go this weekend, oh well.

</comment><comment><USER40> Why risk your life and the lives of others to go watch a movie? Not essential and therefore very questionable.

<comment><USER41> With a blanket rule like that you shouldn't do anything ever. What risk do you think isn't addressed properly here?

<comment><USER40> Hmmm let's see — restrooms, people sitting outside (like the kids in the photo) or passing close to each other, even cars parked closer than 2m together with the window open. I'm sure there are more. (Edit: I'm not saying that any of these are highly likely, but I do think it's impossible to rule them out).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I'd love to go to a drive in. It'd be a blast and good way to get out.

But when local/state governments can shut you down as "non-essential" even if you're following all the guidelines, no business can come back to life. They're just on a "stay of execution" until someone changes their mind the other way.

</comment><comment><USER43> It won't last. At the heart of great cinema is great audio, and you won't find that in a vehicle.

<comment><USER44> Perhaps movies could be made with real dialog and stories and not just loud explosions and sound effects that necessitate "great audio" (a highly subjective definition to be sure.)

<comment><USER45> Strange that you think great audio is something only action films need. As soon as 5.1 mixing and encoding tools became cheap and widely available, even independent filmmakers writing "real dialog and stories" rushed to adopt them. And film schools emphasize how careful audio editing (and appropriate playback equipment) can bring a rich new dimension to one's filmmaking, and some of the textbook examples that are used are 1960s auteur cinema like Ingmar Bergman's _Persona_.</comment></comment></comment>


Parse is down due to SSL certificate expiry - <AUTHOR> https://parse.com/?v <comment><USER2> Do yourself a favor and run this nightly: <http://prefetch.net/code/ssl-cert- check>

A simple loop over your certs will solve so many problems:

      cd ssl/certs; for pem in *.pem; do ssl-cert-check -a -x 15 -e email@example.com -q -c $pem; done

[imagine a grumpy "silly companies with millions of dollars in funding, no actual processes, and too little systems knowledge" rant here. it's like a racecar driver who's team lets him run out of petrol every two laps. this is basic stuff, kiddies.]

<comment><USER3> Also, the nagios monitoring "check_http" will check the time to expiry of HTTPS certificates, and warn you when you have 30 days left. <http://nagiosplugins.org/man/check_http>

<comment><USER4> I would recommend checking all certificates on every host locally too, as you then can catch other than HTTP certificates too, like IPSec and OpenVPN. I found a good plugin on GitHub that does just this. If you then just put your certificates in the proper directory you can have them all checked and monitored by Nagios. I use nagios check_http to verify that a page is actually serving content via SSL.

[https://github.com/kumina/nagios-plugins- kumina/blob/master/...](https://github.com/kumina/nagios-plugins- kumina/blob/master/check_sslcert.c)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's an important reminder that most startups are run by a handful of people who are normal, fallible human beings. They generally don't have access to the infrastructure and manpower required to be on the ball and maintain near 100% uptime of their services. I think the important information to be gleaned about a company is how they deal with problems like this (not necessarily the fact that they encountered the problem in the first place - if that is of concern, pick a more established organisation).

Also another issue, which probably doesn't apply to Parse is limited funding. One of my own venture's certificates has now expired and as a 'bootstrapped' web app, I simply can't justify spending more to renew the certificate. However I keep the service live as a demo to potential customers, if one takes a very keen interest I will happily renew it, or seek further funding.

<comment><USER6> This sounds true, but there is always something called calendar for important things which will expire.

I have a own calendar just for expire dates of software and certificats. My reminder is set to 2 months before the event.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is why I think its always good to build your apps in the 'Good old way', instead of relying on a third party like Parse. It becomes a bottle-neck in situations like these, where in you are kind of stuck - Either, you will have to re-write your code from scratch, or wait for them to fix it, with a lot of uncertainty.

<comment><USER8> Is there any value in companies like Parse selling their software as installable on your own servers (i.e., GitHub Enterprise).

I ask, rhetorically, because I built a somewhat competing service that isn't doing too well and I'm looking to make it so you can install it on your own servers.

<comment><USER9> Yes. I think that is a useful business. If you could make a system that was scalable and provided an API like parse that sounds like something interesting. Have virtual machine images you can host. The hard part would be figuring out how to simplify scaling it out. That is one really nice thing about hosted solutions. I can forget the IT. I'd be happy to work in a middle ground where i traded the IT effort for additional control/changes/features.

<comment><USER8> Well I think as this issue with Parse shows, you can forget about the IT until you can't. If your app is down due to a mistake like this, it's even more frustrating because you have so little control on the situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hint: the web is one thing, but if you're deploying a library that talks to your own server, consider embedding your own root certificate. In addition to verifying the traffic isn't being proxied[1], you can also issue 10 or 20 year certs and be done.

[1] Users can add their own root certs and watch your traffic (typically with the intent of breaking your app), or worse, companies can deploy roots to all their devices and sniff their employees' traffic. Why be complicit?

<comment><USER11> If you have your own cert, wouldn't it be best to ignore expiration (and decide based on risk whether or not to implement revocation)? Unless you are saying to add the cert to the device/computer's list of trusted certs, which doesn't seem necessary to me.

All of Google's pinned certs are certainly evidence that this is a reasonable approach (I haven't looked at their expirations), though now it's kind of weird since it can't be MitM'd even to debug -- no one knows what is being shipped off to Google by Chrome anymore without reverse engineering binaries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> For a big org, SSL certs can sometimes be a bitch to manage. I recently started a project to track all the SSL-enabled devices on our medium-sized network, and it came out to something in the low four-digits. As you might assume, not all of them are CA-signed, and many of them expire without anyone ever realizing it.

I wrote a couple scripts to manage bulk-checking SSL certs on a network. One of them uses Curl's Mozilla root CA .pem file and follows the chain to verify a cert is really signed and not expired. [https://github.com/psypete/public- bin/tree/public-bin/src/ne...](https://github.com/psypete/public- bin/tree/public-bin/src/networking/check-ssl)

</comment><comment><USER13> It costs $100 for a 5 year SSL certificate. Why do seemingly smart internet companies let this happen?

<comment><USER14> Where the hell are you buying your certs? I'd honestly love to know.

<comment><USER13> Namecheap or SoftLayer (where I host my servers) unless I need something fancy like EV or Wildcard (in which case, you're gonna have to pay).

<comment><USER15> I've only had a couple situations where I needed enough subdomains to warrant the wildcard cert. $10/yr for RapidSSL through namecheap, most wildcard certs are at least 100-ish; I usually only need 5-6 subdomains and it's cheaper to just buy all the single certs at $10 each.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I started using Parse for my app and as I code I am starting to realize how painful it will be to move away from it in future. It would mean a complete rewrite of the app. Now, if they have problems like these (down due to certificate expiry), I am not sure what value I will get out from this service. Also, it is taking more time for me to learn their SDK than I thought, as I am beginning to write complex queries and relations. I encourage people to write data services on their own.

</comment><comment><USER17> No mention of the issue on their Twitter account or self-proclaimed "Status" page:

<http://status.parse.com/>

<comment><USER18> It's on there now as of 7:39am PST

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> We're working on it.

<comment><USER20> Been there. It sucks. FWIW, I recommend Zerigo monitoring for certs, and other various bits of web monitoring you might need.

Take a few minutes to update your Twitter feed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> They just fixed it. FYI, in case you did not look at the certificate details, the old certificate expired 5AM today.

<comment><AUTHOR> Working now for me! 3h42m downtime :(

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Put this up with hope that someone here can contact them. They aren't responsive to twitter or emails.

<comment><USER7> Now, imagine the plight of all their customers who had built their apps based on their APIs. Hopefully, this is a very good lesson for all.

<comment><USER22> Indeed... we just finished our app building on Parse, but this and last week make me think hard about whether or not it was a good decision to be dependent on their infrastructure.

<comment><AUTHOR> I used it to speed up the iOS dev on <http://www.backspac.es> as I had no experience with iOS but lots of backend experience.

Honestly, they have a lot of downtime, and now that I am very handy with iOS/obj-c I plan to migrate off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> For a company based around being convenient, they sure have been inconvenient as of late.

</comment><comment><USER24> In my line of work, I see this a lot (both expired and using a cert on a subdomain the cert isn't valid for). It gets really difficult trying to balance security with the needs of the business when employees are begging me to whitelist the site so it isn't blocked by the corporate proxy but I really don't want to whitelist invalid certificates. That sets a bad precedent.

There really should be another way that doesn't involve SSL certificates.

</comment><comment><USER25> This is a testament to the dangers of relying on third-party APIs to provide core functionality for your app.

</comment><comment><USER26> Yeah we are also seing issues. Fortunately we arent using them on that many places so should be fine anyway but my god this is a silly mistake to do.

</comment><comment><USER16> On average, how much time does it take to renew the certificate and bring it back online?

</comment><comment><USER27> This combined with their downtime episodes last week... Think twice before using.</comment>


Future Pricing for Atlassian Cloud - <AUTHOR> https://www.atlassian.com/licensing/cloud/future-pricing <comment><USER2> The slack model of only paying for active users is so much better than paying for users that may not actually be using the product:

How users are counted towards billing?

"Once users are created they are automatically counted towards billing even if they don't accept the invite or ever login. A user must be explicitly deactivated, deleted, or removed from a synced user directory (if you have Google sync) to not count towards billing. Learn how to add or remove users."

With slack, they are strongly incentivized to keep the product engaging enough to hold onto users.

<comment><USER3> The Slack model works for applications that are constantly being used and is the center of a persons job. Like chat apps, code editors, creative tools aka Creative Cloud, Audio Tools, etc. It doesn't work for tools you only use sparingly. Like backup/recovery tools, database tools, profiling tools, etc. If you applied the Slack model to the previous set, it would not be sustainable. Your paying for value not use.

<comment><USER4> If I'm not using JIRA over the course of a given month, I don't really see why it makes sense to charge for my seat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > "Monthly pricing is progressive

Our monthly pricing is progressive, meaning that we offer volume discounts as you add more users"

Just to nitpick: It's actually regressive pricing. The larger your corporation, the less you'll pay per user.

<comment><USER6> It's just a matter of PoV, isn't it?

Maybe the per-user cost of 5,000-user contract is lower than a 25-user contract.

<comment><USER7> No. Regressive means it reduces as the quantity increases. Regressive pricing is a good thing for products. Progressive pricing like progressive taxation would suck!

<comment><USER6> I see your point. Thanks for the clarification.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Its not huge price jump for everyone. Its just different pricing model. Companies pay per user instead of ranges like; 1-100 user, 100-500 user, 500-1000 user.

So with the old model if you had 101 user, you would pay the same price as someone with 499 users. Thats unfair.

<comment><USER9> Massive problem in Fortune 500s. If they have to Atlassian, Git, and Microsoft ecosystems then bean counters cut off access to large sections of the company. Programmers are then siloed away from the rest of the organization.

There needs to be a casual read access tier.

<comment><USER5> It's $1 a month per user after 250 users. If that's not "casual read access tier" pricing, I'm not sure what is.

<comment><USER10> If you've got 250 users, you've probably got someone to manage these costs too. If you've got 12-40 users and much tighter operating budgets, read-only users get kind of costly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wow, the marginal cost of that 11th user is ridiculous ($67/mo).

</comment><comment><USER12> I really wish they would extend per user licensing to their on premise version as well.

It's completely stupid that if you are one user over the limit, you have to pay for the next block of licenses. It's a huge cost increase for one more user.

<comment><USER13> The attitude is pretty simple: if the company is stupid enough to insist on self-hosting, they can afford stupid prices. Support on-premise is expensive.

<comment><USER14> Some industries (financial for example) have to meet regulatory/audit requirements that don't allow for cloud hosting.

<comment><USER15> Aerospace and defence too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Headline edited to "huge price jump" which seems inaccurate.

<comment><USER17> Going from $10/mo to $77/mo for going from 10 to 11 users might be a big deal for a small company.

<comment><USER18> I think it's quite a nice introductory deal to get JIRA and Confluence for $10/month total for 10 users, since they let you keep that price regardless the time you've been using it.

I don't think making a comparison to the price for 11 users at $7/user is really fair.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It actually looks like the way that they should have done the pricing originally. Not that i'm a fan of Atlassian as i'd rather use open-source alternatives, but this seems fairer.

Am I wrong?

</comment><comment><USER20> The new pricing model does not actually seem like a "huge pricing jump", but this makes me think for how long Trello will remain free...

<comment><USER7> Trello said they're staying free forever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Not for small teams:

> However, if you have 10 users or fewer, pricing will continue to be $10 for > up to 10 users.

</comment><comment><USER22> Comparing, Microsoft Team Services pricing is based on team size, but the brackets are more granular. [https://www.visualstudio.com/team- services/](https://www.visualstudio.com/team-services/)

</comment><comment><USER23> too expensive at any price.

</comment><comment><USER24> I</comment>


The Largest Commercial Cylindrical Slide Rule Has a Scale Length of 24m - <AUTHOR> https://cacm.acm.org/blogs/blog-cacm/244935-the-worlds-largest-commercial-cylindrical-slide-rule-has-a-scale-length-of-24m/fulltext <comment><USER2> And you can buy it for just £455 [https://historictech.com/product/large- daemon-schmid-loga-24...](https://historictech.com/product/large-daemon- schmid-loga-24m-cylindrical-calculator-c-1915/)

<comment><USER3> I wonder how much it would cost to make one of those, may not be far of what that price and that is ignoring the historical value - seems kinda cheap and if I had the disposable I'd of snapped that up.

<comment><USER4> That depends on what you mean by "how much it would cost to make." As far as materials go, if you wanted a period correct replica, while you probably can't get actual Bakelite (I'd go with brass, if making it look exactly like the model isn't a big requirement), the rest of the materials are probably easy and cheap to get. As a one off, your main cost would be time, and the necessity of being able to access a decent shop. Using more modern and durable materials would probably cost more than using basic materials from 100 years ago, I would guess.

Probably the main constraint is the ability to make precise markings on the cylinder. I bet you could do that with a fairly simple CNC setup, but it would probably require some custom programming. All in all, it seems like a well- equipped personal shop or maker space should have all the tools necessary to do it. For a single piece, it seems like it's just a matter of time and ingenuity in developing the manufacturing process. Scaling up production is an entirely different matter, and who knows what the costs would be at any significant scale?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have never seen a cylindrical slide rule, but I have seen a gigantic linear slide rule. The whole instrument itself was probably between 10 and 15 feet long and about 1.5-2 feet wide. I don't know what the total scale length was, because I never got to see it up close. It was hanging above the blackboard in one of my high school math teachers' rooms. I think the effective scale length might have been rather small, because, IIRC, it was actually a demo instrument used to show people in math classes how to use a slide rule.

</comment><comment><USER5> Looks impressive, I love how serious tools back in the day still had visual embellishments and interesting interfaces that gave a glimpse of the inventor's personality.

<comment><USER4> Me too. This article, plus the link to a different antique slide rule that's available for sale in the comments, make me want to own one of these with a steampunk aesthetic.</comment></comment>


Are ICOs Dying? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/futuresin/are-icos-dying-bd75b19ef4a7 <comment><USER2> I should hope so.</comment>


Ditching iPhone? What's next? - <AUTHOR>

Hi there,
Recently I've came across a lot of disappointment in iPhone. Separate from this (but sometimes they are coming together) goes disappointment in AT&T, but they are going hand by hand because as how Apple does business with AT&T now.
Even @dhh recently complained: http://twitter.com/dhh/status/4380606237 http://twitter.com/dhh/status/4380007726 And 37signals is well known Mac shop. :-)
Is this is the end of "good iPhone"? There is a huge amount of disappointment of still no changes to the hardware, still not physical keyboard/etc. -- and still bad email management (even impossible to change ringtone for incoming email!)
Blackberry actually is seeing growth recently. Many people (consumers, not businesses) started to adopt Blackberries just because they do email better. And there is Opera for the web at least.
@Jason Calacanis http://twitter.com/Jason and Michael Arrington @arrington all ditched iPhones, together with gdgt's Peter Rojas.
What do YOU think about? <comment><USER2> We're discussing random people's tweets now?! Flagged.

<comment><AUTHOR> There is a trend in what people think and how they accept iPhone. Which is in its turn a platform, and in my opinion it's an interestuing discussion to see if it' viable to target efforts into development on this platform. If you read like two lines from the whole post - well, you go, boy!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> They like the iPhone, they don't like AT&T -- they were just complaining to try and pressure Apple to broaden its carrier selection.</comment>


Show HN: Metabase Cloud - <AUTHOR> https://metabase.com/start/hosted <comment><USER2> I'm a huge fan of Metabase and I've used it extensively but the pricing model is really tough.

Taking myself as an example: At the growth stage we're at, we'll start to need more data access logging/auditing, per row permissions to guard PII, etc. but I can't justify going from free to 10k/yr to our board quite yet.

It would be great if the cloud option could introduce some of those features (not all) at a price point that makes it easier for more startups to sign on like mine as we keep growing. Right now it feels like I need to leave Metabase as our needs expand and hope that at some point down the line, we can justify the cost and come back to it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Happy to come across. Love metabase.

In business plan, does 'Isolated Application Server' and 'No Noisy Neighbors' mean the same ?

<comment><AUTHOR> effectively, yes. For that tier, we give you a dedicated instance that runs the Metabase application and a dedicated instance for the application database

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> We've been working on a hosted version of Metabase for a while , and we're happy to formally pull back the covers.

Over the years we've tried to make self-hosting as easy as possible, but lots of companies have let us know they'd prefer a fully managed version of Metabase. So... here it is!

[https://www.metabase.com/blog/Announcing-Metabase- Cloud/inde...](https://www.metabase.com/blog/Announcing-Metabase- Cloud/index.html) has the official announcement, but if you have any questions, fire away =)

</comment><comment><USER4> Can we switch our self-hosted site to Metabase cloud?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup! There's a command-line tool that snapshots your current site and lets you upload it to our hosted platform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This looks awesome! Exciting next step.

</comment><comment><USER6> Congrats, great to see this available!</comment>


Defending Privacy at the U.S. Border: A Guide for Travelers Digital Devices - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/document/defending-privacy-us-border-guide-travelers-carrying-digital-devices

<comment><USER2> An odd thing about these searches is that they really have no chance of catching anything nefarious carried by anyone halfway intelligent. An acquaintance of mine smuggled digital documentary video out of Iran just by opening up a laptop and loosening one of the two hard drives' connectors so it no longer registered as attached; the brief border search at the airport of course saw one hard drive with nothing particularly nefarious on it, and didn't go to the trouble of determining that this model of laptop should've had two drives. That's not foolproof, but it's going to foil 99%+ of these kinds of casual searches.

Of course if someone really suspects you personally and wants to scrutinize your machine in detail, that's another story, but just random dragnet-type searches of machines at borders are laughably easy to foil, with dozens of different methods, so the stopping-terrorism justification doesn't seem plausible.

<comment><USER3> That is why we call it "security theater" - because every informed person will realize it's a heap of bullshit that serves no purpose but to get people used to methods of a authoritarian police state. Terrorism is a retarded excuse, period, and anyone who uses it as their primary argument should be laughed out of the building.

<comment><USER4> I commend you for saying this out loud in a public forum. How things have changed in just a few years! Just after 9/11 _you_ would have been laughed out of the building for pulling out the "security theater" card. It warms my heart to see so many people vocally & publicly calling out the bullshit governments are trying to pull on us, no matter if it's SOPA, PIPA, ACTA or whatever they will come up with next.

I've been thinking about this internet freedom movement quite a bit lately & I am convinced the single most powerful thing we can do is to come out of our anonymous hiding places & publicly declare our intentions. That's why I created my freedom.txt & hope others will do same: <http://fr.anc.is/freedom.txt>

<comment><USER5> I think people in a HN/Reddit/Slashdot type form have been saying this since it was implemented, and everyone was nodding their heads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Important takeaways:

        - Use full-disk encryption.
        - Secure it with a very long hard to guess password.
        - Turn your computer off at least 10 minutes before going through customs.
        - You don't legally have to tell anyone the password with out a court order.
        - You don't have to give them any information to aid in their search.
        - Secure delete everything before you travel.

Super important:

        - DO NOT LIE.
        - You can simply not answer a question. But never lie.
        - Say, "I'm sorry, but I cannot answer that question."

Super super important:

        - Plan!!!
        - Decide what you will do *before* you get to customs.
        - Don't stress out, just relax and don't answer questions you don't want to.

<comment><USER7> If you are asked if you have "pirated" material on your laptop or various external media devices, and you do, how to respond?

"Not to my knowledge." or "I'm sorry, but I cannot answer that question."? Which would then likely raise the alarm in the interrogator.

<comment><USER6> Say, "I'm sorry, I don't feel comfortable answering that question."

And when they ask why say, "Because I believe that it is my right not to."

But nothing more. Just be short, to the point, and courteous. You're not guilty of anything for saying that, and they will understand that you understand your rights.

They may make your life a tiny bit harder because of it, but if your courteous and patient you can maintain your dignity and your privacy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is ridiculous. Not what EFF is trying do do, but the extent to which people are going to have go to feel secure. Look at the doctor example. Akina the Japanese doctor is going to a wedding out of country. They recommend mailing a laptop to a relative at the wedding, then wiping it there and bringing it back across the border, all to protect the confidentiality of some emails. That is a completely and utterly ridiculous idea. But yet, there it is, seriously stated.

10 years of pacificity towards the erosion of rights and privacy, and here we are.

<comment><USER9> "That is a completely and utterly ridiculous idea. But yet, there it is, seriously stated"

Maybe to you, but not for me. I'm a doctor and a geek. I work on confidential patient data which I manipulate with custom software I write (some C, some perl... even some php at times :-).

But every devices this data goes into is encrypted.

To avoid any problem, when I travel I take my special "travel laptop" which has a brand new OS install from the night before. I take absolutely no data at all, unless I absolutely need to work on it during the trip - and in this case, this piece of data travels on an external media, in an encrypted form.

The macbook and the external media are disposable - should any agent want it, they can have it and keep it. I won't even complain.

What I care the most about is preserving the data confidentiality.

Why exactly wouldn't you want this kind of protection on your data from your doctor?

<comment><USER8> Hmm...either I wasn't clear enough, or you misunderstood. Maybe replace "idea" with "concept" or "requirement". What the doctor is doing/should do isn't ridiculous. It's the fact that the EFF had to write a 30 page document that instructs people on how to protect themselves from some neanderthal on a power trip who decides to comb through personal emails at the border. All in the name of fighting piracy. _That's_ ridiculous.

<comment><USER9> I see you point know. I'd rather say it's a sad situation, but you play the cards you're dealt.

<comment><USER10> The smart person steps away from the table. Alas, that's not an option.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> mike-cardwell If I had to fly to America these days, I would not take my laptop unless absolutely necessary. I would also do a fresh install of Cyanogenmod on my phone and configure it up only after crossing the border.

There was a time that I wanted to live and work in America. These days, I don't even want to visit for a holiday.

</comment><comment><USER11> I only travel with encrypted data - both my laptop (linux with luks) and my phone (galaxy nexus) use full disk encryption.

Currently it seems that the worst that typically happens is that they take your hardware away from you. I don't care too much about that as all my data is securely backed up in the cloud (tarsnap). The value of the hardware is maybe something like 1000 euros alltogether. Given how unlikely it (currently) is that this happens this is an acceptable monetary loss for me.

The only thing that bothers with my setup is that encryption in Android 4 is absolutely braindead, as it forces you to use the same password for the encryption as for the screenlock, although the security requirements are completely different: You want to use a really strong password for the encryption, but for the screenlock a short password is sufficient. Hopefully that will be possible in either one of the next versions, or one of the inofficial forks.

</comment><comment><USER12> Supposedly, if your hard drive is encrypted, customs agents can hold your computer indefinitely if you refuse to provide the password. The irony is that gigabytes of encrypted data cross national borders every second -- over the internet. So dump your important data in an encrypted file and put it on a file sharing web site, or a VPS, or whatever, and download it again when you get across the border. Nobody with "interesting" data (and half a brain) will be physically bringing it across a border. The searches are useless.

<comment><USER6> _Nobody with "interesting" data (and half a brain) will be physically bringing it across a border._

What's super ironic about this legislation is that it makes local law enforcement's job of actually catching criminals harder. No one's going to get caught at the border with anything but parakeets shoved down their pants. And now criminals are forced to use full-disk encryption and secure delete for everything if they want to travel which will likely lead to more security at home and more obstacles for local law enforcement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Every now and then you have to step back and look at your world.

When I was young, people having to take precautions like this were clicheed signs in a movie of someone oppressed by a totalitarian regime. Invariably the "good guys" were working to free people from it.

Can we reverse this trend?

</comment><comment><USER14> This happens in Canada, too. There was a thread on a popular storm chasing forum in 2007 in which a chaser driving from Florida to Canada was stopped by the Canadian border patrol and had his car randomly searched. The post is also here on the chaser's personal blog: <http://sky- chaser.com/america.htm#WINDSOR> . They grabbed his laptop that he was using for GPS mapping, brought it inside, then came back out and told him he was being detained in order to investigate the photos he had on his drive. Apparently they were concerned that some of his Asian nudie pics were of underage models. He was then arrested until some specialist could come in and interview him and review the photos to determine if they were underage. After waiting several hours in a cell, the investigator showed up, asked him a few questions, then released him. "You are good to go. We have insufficient evidence and cannot find anything related to the charges suspected, we are sorry for the inconvenience and I hope this does not prevent you from visiting Canada in the future."

</comment><comment><USER15> This website is horrible to read, occupies about 12% of my screen and does not even support turning pages using keys! EFF, you can do better than that.

<comment><USER16> There is a full screen button you can click.

Here is a direct link to the full screen version, and arrow keys work for turning pages: <https://www.eff.org/file/33930#page/1/mode/2up>

Direct link to pdf: [https://www.eff.org/sites/default/files/filenode/EFF- border-...](https://www.eff.org/sites/default/files/filenode/EFF-border- search_0.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> My concern with this US border search is the idea of confidentiality. One, we've all seen movies. Lots of them. And though we may laugh at how easily the antagonist acquired the needed information from the protagonist, it can't be said that it can not happen in real life. And this US border search is making that highly possible. Also, for doctors and lawyers, this confidentiality thing I'd like to believe, is sacred. So when another person sees that on their laptops or gadgets, would it be the same as doing a breach of contract or doing something against their oath?

<comment><USER18> I wonder if it would be possible to get the American Medical Association (and whatever the lawyers' equivalent is) to fight against this ridiculous policy. Or would they just shrug and say that doctors shouldn't put confidential data on portable computers?</comment></comment>


The BlastBeat server - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/unbit/blastbeat/

<comment><USER2> How does this compare to mongrel2?

<comment><USER3> There are 2 main (tech) differences:

\- Mongrel2 uses SUB/PUB (2 channel), BlastBeat uses ROUTER/DEALER, you only need one channel for request and response.

\- Mongrel2 put the whole request in a single message, this is easier but forces you to pass uploaded file as filenames (so backend must be on the same machine or need access to the mongrel2 machine) or to buffer into memory (for adding datas to the zeromq message). BlastBeat requires you to manage request content data assembling 'body' messages.

So, 2 different approaches. In addition to this mongrel2 is a full featured webserver, an area in which BlastBeat does not want to compete :)

Source: [http://www.mail- firstname.lastname@example.com/msg03917.ht...](http://www.mail- email@example.com/msg03917.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So this is like Mongrel 2?</comment>


Why Siri will end SEO as we know it - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/siri-and-the-end-of-seo-as-we-know-it.html

<comment><USER2> It's not "ending SEO". It's just making specific search engines (like Yelp) relevant again. So now optimization means optimizing for more than just Google.

In some ways, it's a _return_ to search engine optimization, as opposed to exclusively Google optimization.

</comment><comment><USER3> No, it won't.</comment>


Google Public DNS SERVFAIL - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/public-dns-discuss <comment><AUTHOR> Looks like several people are now reporting SERVFAIL across many domains.</comment>


Show HN: I got tired of using whatsapp and Facebook Messenger, so I wrote my own - <AUTHOR> http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/flip-messenger/id521037450?mt=8

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I'm the author here. Just thought I'd give some background on the app, and also to listen to suggestions and feedback anyone may have

I mainly wrote Flip out of my frustrations of using whatsapp (which somehow became the default mobile messaging app of choice) both in its poor usability and (at the time) questionable security measures.

I was also getting worried about Facebook's prevalence in every aspect of our online lives, and really didn't like seeing it creep into what I think is our most intimate form of online communications.

So I wrote Flip, as an alternative to both of those, and also (hopefully) provide more value than them too.

Please let me know what you think. I'd be more than happy to receive any feedback :)

Thanks Jerrold

<comment><USER2> Are you planning to do encryption ala BBM? Also not seeing anything here: <https://play.google.com/store/search?q=flip+messenger> so I don't think messenger that allows you to only communicate with people on a specific device is particularly useful.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi,

I'm not 100% on the encryption scheme BBM uses, but currently all communications for Flip, between the client and the server, are done over https (which was a pain in the arse to get approval for in the App Store).

Also, every request from the client is authenticated with a key generated on the client side, and both key, phone numbers, are encrypted and salted on the server side.

From what I understood, for a long time whatsapp was plain text communications, and I remember there being a debacle where whatsapp passwords were just device UUIDs, which weren't encrypted or salted (so I made sure both these weren't the case with Flip).

As for Flip not being on Android, yes unfortunately I haven't had time to implement an Android version. I work full time, so it's taken me close to 9 months just to get the iPhone version released, so I'm hesitant to spend more time unless the iPhone version does well (and besides, Instagram was iPhone only for a long time :) )

Thanks Jerrold

<comment><USER3> The difference with Instagram is that it's only to share photos, you don't need to communicate using it.

If you don't launch it multi-platform, I see near dead to it. Sorry, I'm an iPhone user, but I see a lot of messenger apps in the AppStore and the only ones that survives are the ones you can use with ALL your friends, not only the ones that uses specific brand.

It's like invite to your party only people driving BMWs.

Focus on feature more platforms.

<comment><USER4> Indeed.. the usefulness of Whatsapp is the fact that one can talk to friends on most devices ios/Android/BB/Windows/Nokia/Symbian. Anything else ,security, annoyances etc.. are easily ignored by non-techies.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very good points re: multi-platform. I'm an ex Java developer, so I'll have a look at the Android codebase and see how difficult it is to write an Android version.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> it looks really slick but damn did you pick a difficult market. anyway, godspeed - i hope at least you got your friends to use it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh and yep, most my friends and family use it. They were my early beta testers, and quite good at leading me in the right direction on what was important and what wasn't.

The hard part is getting it out beyond my social circle, and I think the other commenters are right re: missing Android support.</comment></comment>


College Says It Exaggerated SAT Figures for Ratings - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/31/education/claremont-mckenna-college-says-it-exaggerated-sat-figures.html?ref=education

<comment><USER2> Would like to have seen a larger piece about cheating general, but this is a good article. The SAT committee is looking very bad lately with test-taking scandals and now false reporting</comment>


Making a Keen.IO Dashboard Real-Time by Integrating It with Firebase and D3.js - <AUTHOR> https://www.airpair.com/firebase/posts/making-a-keenio-dashboard-realtime-by-integrating-it-with-firebase--d3js

<comment><AUTHOR> Just wrote a blog post about making Keen.io analytics real-time by integrating it with Firebase as a sort of proxy. Keen.io is awesome, but lacks the instant feedback that I was looking for -- this seemed to be a pretty good result.

Hope this helps out some others looking for something similar! Mark</comment>


Ask HN: How do you sell reality to existing business? - <AUTHOR>

Quite frankly, I'd say more than 70% of the stuff customers want end in a product up being worthless and useless to their core business yet they DEMAND IT to the point it's eating up their business.
So, what's someone to do when they know more about their customer's business then their customers do?
Example: Selling your awesome open-ended music and video distribution platform to records and movie companies vs the stuff the they have been buying? <comment><USER2> The features you add should be up to you, not the customer. Because as you said, you know better than them what they need.

This article sums it up. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5570679>

Either find better clients or put your foot down and say this is how it's done.</comment>


Facebook Groups may soon charge monthly subscription fees for access - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/20/17484876/facebook-groups-monthly-subscription-service-fees-access <comment><AUTHOR> What got me to really become active on Facebook was groups. This would take my visits from daily to monthly in a heartbeat. Can't blame them for trying but this is a bad idea.</comment>


Ask HN: Your worst RFP horror story? - <AUTHOR>

Let's compare RFP scars. What's your worst story involving an RFP from a public agency or large enterprise?
Having to print out 10 hardcopies and drive overnight to hand-deliver them?
Being disqualified for a $1M+ project because of some minor, stupid reason (i.e. your formatting was off)?
Being forced to use a weird web portal from the 90's that requires IE6 to use?
Share your worst RFP experience here and at
www.bonfire9.com/horror (we're compiling a report of the best stories and aggregated feedback)
I think those of us on HN suffer the daily humiliations of the RFP process more keenly than others. <comment><AUTHOR> I'll start. In a former life, we were bidding on an RFP that had to be hand- delivered to the purchasing office by 12:00pm. For various reasons, we ended up getting there a bit late at 11:50am - so 10 minutes to get to the office. The elevators were down. The office was on the 11th floor. We didn't make it, and even though we were just minutes late 'the rules are the rules'.

The irony is that I know FOR SURE that we were cheaper and better than the company that ended up winning the project.

</comment><comment><USER2> In the worst one, I got the job.</comment>


Clock Edge Detection in Excel - <AUTHOR> http://www.drdobbs.com/embedded-systems/clock-edge-detectionin-excel/240169084 <comment><USER2> _I 've always said that anyone working on an electronic system really needs an oscilloscope. Without it, you are effectively blind and just guessing at what the signals on a PC board or on a wire look like. When I first started (a long time ago), those images were mostly transient._

Really? All the scopes I've ever used have had capture modes (although I have never used truly antique scopes). While I forget what the function is called, the scope would trigger on an edge, capture the waveform and freeze it on the screen. Now, this only ever fits a handful of bits (maybe 3-5 ASCII letters) onscreen, but it was really helpful for me. If you wanted to capture data in the middle of a long stream, you could use a second probe for the trigger, and in your code fire a single edge on a secondary pin right as you send the data you want to capture... lot of cool things you could do. Even the old analog scopes are amazingly powerful. I highly encourage anyone doing much scoping to do their best to _master_ it.

But anyway, back to the subject at hand, I just thought I ought to point out to those who are getting into this sort of thing that Logic Analyzers exist for exactly this purpose.

<comment><USER3> Capture functionality was very expensive, and thus uncommon, until about 15 years ago. It was around that time that Tektronix came out with their low-end TDS200 model scopes starting at around $1,200. That was an amazingly low price at the time.

My analog Tek 442 is probably about 25 years old and still going strong. I hardly consider it antique.

<comment><USER2> Ah, excellent context. Most of the old scopes I used were at my University, which probably gave me warped perspective, as they were always able to afford the good equipment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> One wonders why the author bothered to make cell formulas in Excel for 500k rows when he used awk afterwards to process all the rows anyway. Spreadsheets are convenient tools, but his formulas seem to be fully awkable? He used two values from the previous row but that is only two variables more.

</comment><comment><USER5> OK, well, clever, but these days it's easier to buy the right tool for the job or use some thing like a simple FPGA demo board. Even the simplest Xilinx Spartan on a cheap eval board can be programmed quickly to decode just about anything and provide you with real time live data for debugging something like a serial interface. The approach he presents is laborious and far from real time.

</comment><comment><USER6> Analog scopes could not freeze anything on the screen, unless you had one of the expensive Tektronix scopes with a storage CRT. Most modern scopes that look like analog scopes are really computers front-ended by A/D converters.</comment>


Why Code Snobs Are Invaluable - <AUTHOR> http://mjswensen.com/blog/2015/01/30/why-code-snobs-are-invaluable/ <comment><USER2> Consider a colleague who constantly objects to non-idiomatic variable name casing (snake_case_in_ruby, camelCaseInJavaScript, dashes-in-lisp, scheme- predicates?, &c.)

When you first get a comment like this, it may feel like friction. After all, the code works. The cost of holding up a deploy and changing your code feels all out of proportion to the benefit. And it's easy to extrapolate this: "If I get this objection to every pull request, I'll never get anything done!"

But you don't need to get this objection to every pull request. If the objection has some merit, no matter how trivial, you can change your naming, and never hear this objection again.

And the entire code base will be a little bit better. Your change is for now, a little bit better is forever, and everyone changing the way they name variables to be a little bit better adds up to a lot better.

And so it is with other forms of code snobs. Although it may feel like it's not worthwhile to change the code today, if it's a meritorious objection, then the right thing to do is change it and learn to write it that way the first time around, to develop a habit of writing it that way.

And then everyone will end up being a little bit better. And with every new commit, the code will get better. And that adds up like compound interest into making the code a lot better.

<comment><USER3> What about the colleague's who have successfully enshrined non-idiomatic variable naming and space rules in a project?

They seem to have just as much of this argument on their side, as far as consistency and such. Yet I actually loathe the decisions, as it causes a ton of friction with standard tools.

<comment><USER4> The norm seems to be: Conform to what's currently in the code.

Whether it's variable names, your brace style or indenting lengths, it doesn't matter if you think your way is the best, what matters is fitting in with the existing (shared) codebase so it's readable to everyone who has been working on it for the last 5 years.

Same is true for non-style things. If your project is 100K lines of 1998-era "C-with-classes" C++ code, your modern, templated, header-only, lambda-using work of art is going to cause more friction than it helps.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. Just when you are talking sub 30kloc projects, I feel it would honestly be easier to just do a quick pass reformat in idiomatic style (tool supported being the main point) and then drop the conversation. Having to get every new member to realize that they can not just rely on the tool defaults is... sad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm fine for code snobs. I just despise swimming against the tide in tooling and formatting. If you care enough that the code look a certain way, make sure this way is a few keystrokes away for any developer using standard tools.

Then there are those that insist on highly flexible and overly engineered solutions. Yes, they got it to work. No, they aren't doing any favors to anyone that was wanting to pick up the code and make changes. (Been there, done that. On both ends.)

Basically, if you encounter a large amount of friction for every new contributor to your codebase. Consider that the source of that friction is not necessarily the "low quality" of the contributors.

<comment><USER2> > Then there are those that insist on highly flexible and overly engineered > solutions. Yes, they got it to work. No, they aren't doing any favors to > anyone that was wanting to pick up the code and make changes.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner- platform_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner-platform_effect)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The last sentence is key: 'Perhaps a "code snob" is simply the term lazy programmers use to describe their more disciplined peers.'

If your colleagues really are your peers -- in that you trust each other, don't get pissed off when someone else makes a stupid comment, or when someone points out (hopefully politely) that _you_ made a stupid comment -- then "code snob" is a joke term.

If you aren't lucky enough to have fallen into one of those high performance teams, then both types exist: the helpful code snob and the condescending one. The latter isn't help at all.

<comment><USER6> > the helpful code snob and the condescending one. The latter isn't help at > all.

HA! You're straight up wrong. You're never going to find someone more motivated to BE right. They don't care about appearing to be right for _lesser_ people. If you have skin thick enough to tolerate them they'll be immensely valuable. Also, their attitude is a huge disadvantage in the workplace causing them to be far more exploitable (cheaper) than their peers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Singletons were perhaps the worst possible example of code snobbery: code snobs ( _real_ code snobs, as in "no true code snob") typically detest the singleton pattern as less maintainable, less testable, and less flexible than dependency injection.

<comment><USER8> Over reliance on singletons can indeed be less maintainable, less testable, and less flexible than dependency injection.

However sometimes a singleton is in fact more maintainable and improves the code massively. Nor do they have to be less testable when implemented well.

None of which detracts from the article which is about consistency in the code base. A knew jerk reaction to the singleton completely misses the point.

<comment><USER9> I totally agree that the singleton detail is beside the article's point, but what is the modern case for singletons? It seems like singletons are now considered a synonym for global variables. What other purpose do they serve?

<comment><USER10> I wrote a singleton the other day. Using Java, I had a static utility class that had a function that I wanted to memoize. So I put a static HashMap in the class to do the lookups. There's no reason to have multiple copies, and it's easy to instantiate it only if it is needed.

<comment><USER9> That's reasonable, but it seems to be equivalent to creating a top-level function and associated global variable in other languages. Java's prohibition of those constructs necessitated the class wrapper, but doesn't appear to provide any benefits over another more generalizable method, namespacing.

<comment><USER10> That's true. If I weren't using java, I wouldn't have had to use a singleton. That's as much of a problem with singletons as it is an over-reliance on the object-oriented style.

I suspect dependency injection has the same problem: you could achieve the same results in a non-object-oriented language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Code review is really useful. People should listen to reviews of their code, even if they're arguable, for the sake of team harmony and having a system of checks and balances.

But a "code snob" is not necessarily correct just because he is a snob and sounds confident. There is sometimes a calibration problem where someone is trying hard to enforce practices which are actually wrong, or argues vehemently against things which are normal and okay. This is actively counterproductive and it would be better just to have less enforcement.

One way to check for this calibration would be to ask whether the snob is advocating something that will obviously benefit people beyond the snob objectively, e.g. fewer broken builds or adhering to a widely used standard style. A useful reviewer isn't just pushing his own agenda.

</comment><comment><USER12> It depends a lot on your mentality toward writing code. I find matching the long/short-termness of engineering practice to the overall mentality of the organization results in the least friction.

Concrete example: if you're building a system to last 5-10 years, act like it. Spend time getting the architecture, the variable names, and the module structure correct. But realize not everything must be built to last. I read somewhere else on HN that some groups inside of Google plan a piece of code to handle 10x growth in traffic/storage/resource use before it's thrown out outright and rewritten -- so don't overdesign.

Maybe the real lesson is to invest in sufficiently good modularity that it's easy to throw things out without too much pain. Nothing lasts forever.

<comment><USER13> I can't find the reference but my rule of thumb is actually to build for 10x and design for 100x. That is to say if my service is now processing 1k requests/s I'd like the capacity for 10k requests/s and I'd like the existing architecture to be scalable by adding more nodes up to 100k requests/s.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It depends what you mean by code snob... I've had a dev replace large section of my code with "cleaner" code that didn't work in all cases, comment out the failing tests, then push that.

Some people are convinced that making components isolated and aesthetically clean is more important than making them functional.

<comment><USER15> Well it would likely be better to have a discussion about it then? Instead of a brewing conflict among members of the team? It's also where leadership comes in. Someone needs to make a decision and guide the team in a particular direction. The most important thing is not that he/she chooses the "best" way (implying one engineer was "wrong") but rather simply that a way is chosen and everyone follows it.

<comment><USER16> I have to disagree, no bugs is better than some bugs. Pushing a change that introduces bugs is wrong (without the scare quotes).

This (sw design) is a multidimensional optimization problem with a somewhat vague cost function. But argmin on the # of bugs and argmax on feature completion is far more important than everyone following some random standard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What about type theory weenies? The title is also a little link-baity. The person commenting on his pull request was not being a snob. He was making sure there was architectural coherence across the board. When codebases grow large having an idea of the overall architecture becomes an invaluable resource and the more consistent the codebase the easier it is to make sense of the architecture.

<comment><USER18> Type theory can help you build the proper abstractions to help the codebase grow and scale in a clean and manageable manner. It doesn't matter if you're working in Haskell or JavaScript either; types are still present and affect how well the different parts of the system can be composed together.

</comment></comment><comment> andhof-mt But your thinking like a programmer. Some times it is also valuable to think like a business.

What is the goal of this software? Ship now? MVP?

Are we trying to polish the software? Or just get it to work? Is it a prototype?

Some thoughts to take into consideration.

<comment><USER18> It could also be a double-edged sword. I've seen it happen more times than I can remember.

Management sets a clear deadline, we rush the code to get it done by its due date. Then the product sits there for months doing nothing while we're in between projects wasting time away. Half a year down the road we get asked for support because some things broke which would've been working fine had we taken the proper time to built them.

From personal experience, most businesses don't think in terms of maintenance and debugging. These are costs which can very quickly add up to way more than the saved development costs.

<comment><USER19> > Half a year down the road we get asked for support because some things broke > which would've been working fine had we taken the proper time to built them.

This seems to be so common. Almost every project seems to break or have issues at some point and the excuse is always the same: oh we didn't have time to do it properly. It makes me wonder if that is indeed always the case. This leads to a question... are there projects that are done in enough time so that they won't break?

<comment><USER18> I've made quite a few products that were ship-and-forget over the years. Every single time I had sufficient time to think about the architecture and focus on the simplicity of things.

But I agree this isn't the norm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I work very hard to have _tools_ reject pull requests as much as possible. For python I am making good use of [https://github.com/landscapeio/prospector](https://github.com/landscapeio/prospector) to enforce pep257 and pep8 compliance. It also catches a lot of things (through pylint and frosted/flake8) that humans often do not, such as unused variables.

The advantage is that tools reject the pull request, and not a person. It doesn't harm ego to be rejected by a tool.

</comment><comment><USER21> It is nice to be able to point to a static code analysis tool and/or project guidelines to shift the discussion away from anyone's interpretation of best practices.

</comment><comment><USER19> Well, I guess there is a need for a single definition of what a "code snob" is.

In OP's example, the singleton is a design pattern, not a coding standard. It should be used if it is applicable to the scenario, as it seem like it was.

Other people here in the comments are talking about "code snobs" as people that like to follow certain coding standards. IMHO, coding standards should be defined by the entire team and everyone has to follow. There is no way to have a consistent code without that, so it is not about being snob, it is about having a consistent codebase.

Now, if there are coding standards or an architecture defined but someone wants to use a different one because they want to be snob about it, then you have a problem. If there is a standard, let's say a naming convention as a simple example, and someone wants to change it at some point, you either have to change everything else to follow the same new standard, or don't start a new standard at all. Otherwise you are not resolving the original issue, you are simply making it worts by having more than one standard in your code base.

</comment><comment><USER22> Suppose that in the example given, changing the existing classes to _not_ be singletons was just as valid as changing the new ones to be singletons. Or there was a good reason for the new classes not being singletons that the code reviewer did not understand. In these cases I'd call the reviewer a code snob. I don't think the reviewer in the example given is a code snob. A code snob to me is one who asks for or makes changes that have no benefit except to himself and might even be detrimental to the project. Since all changes do take time, the benefit of the changes absolutely need to outweigh the time spent making them for them to be valid.

</comment><comment><USER23> I certainly support any drive for code that is cleaner or more consistent, I just feel like for every good "code snob" there are a lot of "code snobs" that are basically just bikeshedding.

By that I mean that they don't know how to fix poorly structured code, suggest a better algorithm, or improve the interface... but they still want to feel and look useful, so they instead burn a lot of time finding relatively trivial things to change.

</comment><comment><USER24> Where I work we keep on each other about nitpicky things, but when we do it, we declare it. You will frequently see "Nitpick: don't like the variable name. Maybe try <somethingLessCrappyThanWhatTheyWrote>"

And you know what? No one complains. If you don't want nitpicks, conform to the coding standard of the place of which you work. It is _their_ code after all.

</comment><comment><USER25> My experience tends to agree. A lot of things done in the name of not being a snob are really just laziness, the bad kind. And I know my own act shaped up almost instantly when I switched jobs and found myself surrounded by such folks.

</comment><comment><USER26> OT but when do you need singletons in JavaScript?

<comment><USER27> Pretty much the same as in any other language. When you want to guarantee that there will only _ever_ be one instance of an object.

It is a useful pattern for managing data synchronization (ie, if I only ever have one instance of a User, I know another instance won't mess up its state accidentally.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Depends on whether they have personality disorders.</comment>


OS X Mountain Lion most likely set to debut on July 25th for only $19.99 - <AUTHOR> http://techupdates.com/go/130081

<comment><USER2> The article is just a paraphrase from the "referenced" article on 9to5Mac: [http://9to5mac.com/2012/07/15/apple-store-overnights- happeni...](http://9to5mac.com/2012/07/15/apple-store-overnights-happening- july-24-mountain-lion-launch-the-next-day/). Better give them the credit by reading and linking their article instead.

<comment><USER3> Worse, it's a frame of a BGR article referencing a 9to5Mac article. This is quite bad.

<comment><USER2> Jeez. They didn't only get HuffPo'd; they got inception'd, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why not just make it free like iOS updates? Is Apple really hurting for the extra cash? Seems like the benefit of having everyone up-to-date outweighs the financial hit.

</comment><comment><USER5> What is the point of pointing out the upgrade is only $19.99?

I thought all of the OS X updates cost $19.99. Or am I wrong here?

<comment><USER6> Yes, you're wrong.

Lion was $30 (unlimited Macs)

Snow Leopard was $30 (1 Mac), $50 (family pack)

Leopard was $130 (1 Mac), $200 (family pack)

OS X 10.2, 10.3 and 10.4 were similarly priced.

OS X 10.0 and 10.1 were didn't have a family pack.

OS X Public beta was $30.

Source: <http://mactracker.ca/>

<comment><USER5> Yep, I was dead wrong:) Thanks for the response!</comment></comment></comment>


A Joke iPhone Sticker Turns Into a Business - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/21/a-joke-iphone-sticker-turns-into-a-business/ <comment><USER3> Freakin brilliant.

If there's one thing people love, whether they want to admit it or not, it's to show off that they have an iPhone.

Now there's a colorful band-aid that goes on the base of the iPhone 4. It might as well just say "Look, I have an iPhone" right on it.

Some iPhone owners would love a way for it to stand out even more that they have an iPhone - well, here you go.

With this product, the FLAW in the iPhone has become a way for people to decorate their phone so that EVERYONE will notice they have an iPhone, and not just any iPhone, the latest and greatest iPhone!

Little success stories like this are fantastic.

<comment><USER4> Are people still showing off their iPhones in 2010? To me, all an iPhone says nowadays is " _I may be out on the town right now, but if my boss emails me I'll be able to reply within seconds._ "

If you ask me, the next trend will be obnoxiously low-utility phones: no apps, no email, nothing that would appeal to your average fourteen-year-old girl. See this graph from my favourite fashion site, which ranks the awesomeness of phones as a combination of "exclusivity" and "senseless lack of utility":

[http://www.magnificentbastard.com/posts/ask-the-mb- portable-...](http://www.magnificentbastard.com/posts/ask-the-mb-portable- communication-conundrum)

Personally, I _really_ want a DynaTAC. Of course a DynaTAC won't work with modern cellphone networks, so I really want to get an old DynaTAC shell and insert the components from a new twenty-dollar phone. Maybe I could sell _that_ on Etsy.

<comment><USER5> > Are people still showing off their iPhones in 2010? To me, all an iPhone > says nowadays is "I may be out on the town right now, but if my boss emails > me I'll be able to reply within seconds."

I disagree for a number of reasons, but the main four are:

* I am directionally challenged and informationally hungry. A smartphone is both a lightweight GPS (which saves my life) and a direct pathway into wikipedia in my pocket (which feeds my brain). Can't get that with a low-end phone.

* I use my phone to keep up with various mailing lists (not my boss, professional mail account isn't even on the phone)

* I use my phone for offline articles reading via InstaPaper, it's often far more confortable (and simpler) than doing it on a laptop, and I can get 10mn of reading any time I have no current activity

* Because I have an iPhone (though it's a lowly 3G) I have quite a number of _pretty nice_ video games, so the phone doubles up as a lightweight portable console and avoids having to carry around a DS or a PSP (though it does severely dent the battery life of the machine)

And other, more social people, will no doubt be using their phones for their twittering, facebooking and all other multicast communication channels which are entirely unavailable on a Nokia 3310.

Not saying this couldn't breed a backlash due to information overload, but seriously userland "smart" phones have been going strong for nearly a decade in basically every first-world country but the US. Only in the US was it confined to the business side until 2007 and the iPhone broke free from the idea that smartphone = business.

<comment><USER6> Plus, look at computers. They have almost never regressed, because they are a tool like phones. While select few (myself occasionally included) will always seek old-fashioned simplicity, not only is that rarely the overall trend but it almost never applies to information-age hardware. I like having stupid- simple hand and power tools, for example, but you will rarely catch me asking to have features removed from my computer. I suspect this is tied to the fact that actual physical tools have _one job_ and one job only, whereas a computer/phone/etc is a multi-tool.

There _is_ the netbook trend, and that whole minimalist trend might hit cell phones some time. But notice netbooks are rarely any 'stupider' than a full blown computer- they are just smaller, a bit slower, and cheaper. Yet, a modern netbook will still blow a 8-10 year old computer out of the water.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This one is much better. Adding function to form: <http://twitpic.com/262n5r/full>

<comment><USER8> It's also _thirty dollars_. Holy crap!

<comment><USER9> That's how Apple would have priced it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Not mentioned in the article, but this band aid style sticker is a reference to Job's joke at the press conference (from memory):

      We will be giving bumber cases until September 30th.
      By then there might be some other solution, maybe Eminem
      will release a band aid for the iPhone which everyone will
      want to use.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm reminded of Jason L Baptiste's comment/post about becoming a millionaire in 3 years:

 _"Look for the accessory ecosystem ... "_

(<http://bit.ly/cjXq8f>)

Good example

<comment><USER12> Just out of curiosity, why did you go through the trouble of hiding the link behind bit.ly?

<comment><USER11> To me, it looks cleaner–i.e. that link was a footnote, more or less, and I'd rather my comment be the focus (not a long URL)

I have a bookmarklet, so I really didn't go through any "trouble"

<comment><USER13> Fair enough but url shorteners break the web[1][2]. That is quite clearly not a good trade-off. I avoid url shorteners unless they be absolutely necessary.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL_shortening#Criticism_and_pr...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL_shortening#Criticism_and_problems)

[2] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1416090>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Just curious, how do they produce them? Or is it just repackaged generic band aids? It's one thing to come up with a joke, another to come up with a production channel...

<comment><USER15> Unless I'm mistaken, it's only a decal and not a real band-aid.

<comment><USER14> I see - I suppose there are lots of printing services that offer printing of custom stickers.

<comment><USER15> Yeah :) I'm soon to be a co-owner in a digital printing company. Thinking about make some of those myself ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Well deserved, if nothing for their funny advertising copy:

For those who haven't seen it: <http://antenn-aid.com/>

_"Technical Specifications: Uhm... it's a sticker"_

<comment><USER17> My favorite is _"Colors you can see with the human retina"_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wonder if a thin coat of clear nail polish would accomplish the same thing in a less ugly way.

</comment><comment><USER19> The interesting point is the infrastructure behind this. Have an idea and instead of needing to build factories, employ salesmen, visit customers - <USER2> can build an online store in minutes (all the billing and payment handled by a dozen sites), get the stickers printed by another online store and advertise on HN, Reddit etc.

Build a business empire (ok a small principality) in an evening!

</comment><comment><USER20> How did the handle supplies/manufacturing? Is it already available bandaid with narrow dimensions?

<comment><USER21> They are vinyl stickers, so there are already many places that will make custom ones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I was thinking the other day that iphone users need a little handle that folds out (like a stand on a picture frame) so they can hold the phone from the back instead of the phone itself.

You'd just slip your hand through the handle and never touch the phone.

<comment><USER23> Something like this? [http://www.amazon.com/Heavy-Double-Locking-Suction- Hooks/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Heavy-Double-Locking-Suction- Hooks/dp/B000VKMMP0)

That's actually not a bad idea!

<comment><USER22> Yeah but instead of a hook, more like a suitcase handle that you can slip your entire hand through.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It looks a lot better than the official bumpers.

</comment><comment><USER24> Absolutely brilliant. Such a simple (and a very trendy+elegant!) solution to a well-publicized problem.

<comment><USER25> Simple maybe. But elegant? It looks ridiculous. Who wouldn't just put a bit of gaffa tape or sticky tape on. This is the sort of shit that Apple should dread - being perceived as a pretentious brand in mobile devices, as they became in personal computing.

<comment><USER26> Also, there's not a chance in hell Apple would sell those things for $4.99 a six-pack. It would be more like $40 for a single sticker.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Hmm, I wouldn't touch it unless I know it will come off w/o much residue, which the site doesn't say.

</comment><comment><USER28> It looks like there might be a few more people unhappy with their antenna than Steve Jobs wants us to believe.</comment>


How early American inventors funded their ventures - <AUTHOR> https://rootsofprogress.org/how-early-american-inventors-funded-their-ventures <comment><USER2> Skip to the summary at the end for the juicy bits (although the rest was interesting reading too).

In the summary is this:

"What there doesn't seem to have been, at least in what I've seen so far, is any kind of structure around early-stage financing. I haven't seen any formal networks of angel investors, and nothing comparable to venture capital. Funding seems very ad hoc, dependent on the circumstance and connections. If so, then the rise of institutional early-stage funding in the mid-20th century was a real revolution."

And I think that is the crux of it. Most people back in the day had to find wealthy people they knew, but there was no "industry" around early stage financing.

Now there is, which has probably been great for funding ideas that would not have otherwise been funded, but is also a double edged sword for entrepreneurs, as the institutions get better and better at extracting as much value as possible.

<comment><USER3> The recent book VC: An American History by Tom Nicholas argues that the whaling industry in the early 19th century shared many characteristics with modern VC markets. The profits of whaling vessels had distributions similar to startups (most were not profitable, a few profitable, a very few delivered excess returns). Whaling captains were incentivized similar to startup founders (returns heavily tied to how much whale oil they harvested rather than a fixed salary). Many of the families that invested in whaling ventures branched out into other industries like textiles.

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42449471-vc](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42449471-vc)

<comment><USER4> Hah, you remind me of the scene at the beginning of _The Perfect Storm_ where the owner of the boat explains to Mark Wahlberg's character why he gets paid so little while George Clooney's character gets paid so much. Compare sailors working the ship to the grunts working the startup.

<comment><USER3> Everyone on board the ship was actually paid a share of the profits. But yes, there were disproportionate rewards to those at the top, just like in a modern startup.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Researched in a book by L Sprague de Camp! That explains some things in his fiction.

Though strangely the origin of modern project finance seems to have evaded the author: seems to have evolved in New England where groups would band together to fund whaling and slaving missions (yes, abolitionist Massachusetts made a huge part of its wealth on slave missions and slave mortgages).

These bands were themselves evolved from a European model, in particular England (later Great Britain), Portugal, and Spain.

</comment><comment><USER6> I read the article, which is kind of clueless. Nice pics, though.

Any history book of Silicon Valley details the origin of organized VC. After reading that, you can understand the overall context of informality before that.

Also, saying Tesla was funded by Westinghouse is a strange way to look at it - his patents were used to create the company in the first place.

If you're interested in seeing those "heavy metal" early inventions in person, I highly recommend the Henry Ford and Greenfield Village in Michigan:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Henry_Ford](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Henry_Ford)

For a more modern example, Frank Robinson founded Robinson Helicopter in SoCal, which is the world's largest producer of helicopters by shipments. I think he self-funded his first R22 prototype, then a local businessman who was intrigued invested after that:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson_Helicopter_Company](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson_Helicopter_Company)

Similar to SpaceX, Robinson had to in-source a lot of components to get the repeatable, aerospace-level reliability needed.

The R22 and R44 are the dominant helicopters used in flight training, LEO and newsgathering in the USA and are about 25% of the cost of a Bell helicopter, so a real game-changer.

</comment><comment><USER7> I wish the article noted that $30k was in which year roughly, and value in today's currency. Interesting research!

<comment><USER8> That plow was patented in 1797. If the $30k was $30k then, it would be about $450k now.

I doubt, though, that it was $30k then. Blacksmiths in 1800 on average made under $1/day [1]. It would be very rare for a blacksmith then to be able to put $30k toward an invention. (For comparison, $25k/year was the salary of the President of the United States then).

If the $30k is $30k now, it would have been about $2000 back then. That seems feasible for a blacksmith to save up in around a decade or so.

[1] [https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=wu.89071501472&view=1...](https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=wu.89071501472&view=1up&seq=65)

<comment><USER3> Comparing values in the past to values today is tricky and comes down to judgement.

"It helps if one understands how the comparators are constructed. They have two components. The first is prices of a range of goods which the ordinary person might buy, such as bread, meat, beer or clothing and possibly rent or the cost of fuel; these are gathered from a range of archives or surveys. These prices have to be added together in a way which reflects the proportions which these items formed in the spending of an average person. If – as was the case in the past – bread accounted for 25 per cent of what the average person spent, then the price of bread has to have an influence of 25 per cent on the overall set of prices. This is known, in the jargon, as its 'weight' and the weights add up to 100 per cent. A calculation is then done for each year, multiplying the price of each good by its weight, adding the results together and finally dividing by the number of items to get an average price of goods for that year. Then, if the result is a figure of, say, £10 in 1800 but of £767 in 2017, we say that prices rose between those two dates by about 77 times. Another way of putting it is that £10 in 1800 equates to – or has the same 'purchasing power' as – £767 today."

[https://www.historytoday.com/archive/feature/changing- value-...](https://www.historytoday.com/archive/feature/changing-value-money)</comment></comment></comment>


ProType – The next generation Object Oriented JavaScript framework - <AUTHOR> https://protype.js.org/ <comment><USER2> That framework really makes my browser choppy and slow.

</comment><comment><USER3> If the first thing your product page does is lag on a fairly new high-end machine, I'm not gonna keep scrolling. Before visiting your page, I had forgotten lagging pages where a thing altogether.</comment>