Microsoft says: IE6 is like 9 year old milk - <AUTHOR> http://www.microsoft.com/australia/technet/ie8milk/Default.aspx

<comment><USER4> Their browser is too tied to the OS.

Why can't you have IE7+ on Windows 2000 or IE9 on Windows XP? the latest version of Firefox (3.6) works on both.

And, why can't you install multiple versions of IE on a computer?

I think these things are holding a number of the remaining people back from upgrading.

<comment><USER5> <http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE>

<comment><USER6> Or there's also, <http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage>

<comment><USER7> I _really_ like IE Tester, but it crashes every 10 minutes or so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Now _that_ is effective user education! Simple, amusing, to the point, and the text draws you right into understanding why upgrades are important. Somebody earned their money on that one.

</comment><comment><USER9> It is a very impressive analogy to convey the message and neatly done as well. However, the biggest bummer for me was when I finally clicked on the "Download IE8" link. The page contained a "Install SilverLight" link on the premier portion of the page (and I was thrown off thinking why I need SilverLight for IE8) and the link to download IE8 was way below after a scroll.

</comment><comment><USER10> IE8 is over a year old. You wouldn't drink year-old milk would you?

<comment><USER11> Are these dares or MPAA advertisements?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> it would help if microsoft allowed browser upgrading without checking for a valid installation of windows. i don't know if things changed, as i'm on a mac now, but when i had XP, i was stuck with an older version of IE cause i bought a computer with an invalid copy of the OS

<comment><USER13> I don't see why should any software company provide support and updates to illegal copies of their software.

<comment><USER14> considering its about impossible to buy a pc without paying for a windows license bundled, I would be surprised if the percentage of illegal copies was larger that 0.X%

<comment><USER15> You are incorrect and you shouldn't be surprised:

1) Computer repair shops very frequently format computers and re-install pirated copies of Windows. Considering the spyware problem of not too long ago, this is incredibly common.

2) Many parts of the world don't have stores like Best Buy and Dell might not ship there. Many computers are sold as brand new with a pirated copy of Windows.

3) In some nations, pirated Windows copies are sold by street vendors right next to pirated movies and video games. If you don't understand or respect intellectual property rights, you might as well upgrade from XP to Win 7 for next to nothing.

Microsoft estimates that 1 in 5 computers has an illegal copy of Windows: [http://www.computeractive.co.uk/computeractive/news/2173265/...](http://www.computeractive.co.uk/computeractive/news/2173265/five- pcs-uses-illegal-windows)

Even if you adjust for source-bias, that's a pretty bug number.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I for one am glad that Microsoft is marketing their browser a little more and I liked the little presentation. I hate IE as much as the next guy but IE8 is much better than IE6 and if it takes Microsoft to say that having a modern browser is important so that people believe it, then so be it.

</comment><comment><USER17> I hope we see more of a campaign by MS to retire IE6. It's very difficult to get most people (and I'm not talking about people who post here) to switch browsers, except when they change machines. Anything MS does that gets people off of IE6 before that event is a public service.

<comment><USER18> You may be interested in this: [http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/358276/microsoft- man-my-job-is-t...](http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/358276/microsoft-man-my-job- is-to-destroy-ie6)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Can someone describe this "socially engineered malware" test that IE8 performs so well on?

<comment><USER13> <http://nsslabs.com/browser-security>

Full report (PDF): [http://nsslabs.com/test- reports/NSSLabs_Q12010_GTRBrowserSEM...](http://nsslabs.com/test- reports/NSSLabs_Q12010_GTRBrowserSEM_FINAL.pdf)

<comment><USER19> Just read the whole thing and I'm not at all impressed. It turns out socially engineered malware is just regular malware. The report is very low on content. The methodology isn't described at anywhere near the level of detail required to actually reproduce this. The report just throws around a few percentages and repeatedly refers to increases in protection from 8% to 17% as 9% improvement, one of my pet peeves. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but for some reason I expected more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Somehow I just don't see the point in comparing an internet browser to consumer goods (which are bought to be consumed) such as milk - things which are fast one time purchases.

What was the marketing department thinking?

<comment><USER21> "What was the marketing department thinking?"

About marketing. It's a metaphor that's hard to forget. And it makes the point that browsers can "go bad" after a time period because the rest of the industry has moved on. I think the goal was not to find a perfect metaphor but to get IE6 users to upgrade their browsers.

<comment><USER20> I do understand that but please, analyze it more carefully.

You're marketing a version of your product which is compared against a carton of milk. I tend to think that when you're marketing a browser you should regard them as valuable cars, as you wan't to build up some goodwill among your customer base.

If your customers regard your browser as a carton of milk which basically is just a carton of milk - a product that's fastly consumed - then what makes them to connect to your product (in this case, an internet browser)? Will it build goodwill?

What if mercedes benz announced that their old products are just tin cans - and that you probably wouldn't want to keep old tin cans laying around - <USER2> kind of a message would the company be conveying to the customer in view of their product?

If microsoft itself views the explorer product family as cartons of milk and also conveys a clear message of it through its own marketing - then, in my opinion, as brutal as it sounds, it's time to rebrand the product. Even when you're publishing a new version of the product, essentially, you'll just be publishing a prettier carton of milk.

<comment><USER14> the products arent supposed to be compared in the slightest, they just want people to realise that when it comes to browsers old = bad, new = good.

that is most certainly true for milk, its not so clear with cars (vintage cars are popular, if cars are looked after they can last a long long time)

<comment><USER20> I do understand that the point they're trying to make and I am not arguing for that. Nor am I arguing that vintage cars might be popular - you're going into too much detail (the point was that in our modern world, in regard of products produced, "newer" usually translates to "better").

But what I do believe, is that they're asking the customer to think the analogy behind the idea of not drinking 9 year old milk and connecting that to the idea of not using a 9 yo browser (old = bad, new = good as you said). Wouldn't you agree that for that analogy to work with the message they're trying to convey, you need to make a connection of putting the IE Browser into the milk's place in that analogy?

I mean look at that page: half of your screen is filled with a carton of milk - the other half tells about why you wouldn't use a browser (IE 6) which also is 9 yo. So wouldn't you agree that somewhere in there lies the notion of IE 6 being as good as 9 yo milk?

Probably?

And remember that most people are bad at remembering numbers. Names, on the other hand, are something that most people do remember better.

Therefore, imho, I don't understand what the marketing department was thinking, as in my opinion, the advert connects your thoughts about 9yo milk to an internet browser (of which we already have created our own views) - <USER3> in the long run people will most probably only remember 9 yo milk & Internet Explorer (and bear in mind that this advert comes from microsoft).

Therefore, the question of what was the marketing department thinking rose into my mind. I believe that the point of viewing and "comparing" IE & a carton of milk screams for some serious rebranding for the product called "internet explorer" - because nerds can really relate to that message or what?

And in the end of the day, they are the people who power the revolutions of switching browsers.

tl;dr I don't believe that the advert works in advantage for Microsoft & IE

<comment><USER22> I'm going to wade in here: the point the parent was making is that the analogy is bad on purpose. It's not supposed to make sense. They don't want to say IE6 is like 9yo milk except in that old-age means things have deteriorated. They want it to appear that IE6 was an excellent browser but that it has somehow decayed.

Clearly they couldn't think of anything really good to say about IE8 except that it's not [that] old.

Perhaps they should have compared IE6 to MS Windows ME or something else from that time that was really really bad.

Maybe "you've ditched Billy Bass, you've moved on from The Sims, you're not wearing those capri pants anymore; no more monotonic ring-tones, ugg boots are out; you've served your time as Apprentice and made and lost your million on the 'net; you're not going to stand for no more snakes on no more planes; so, isn't it time you upgraded your broswer for what's left of this new millenium? - IE8 get it in FTW".

Bit formulaic, but that's my pitch - did I win?

<comment><USER20> Your post & pitch is almost exactly the thing I was after for!

I couldn't have come up with a pitch like yours, which imo would be so much better for Microsoft than the current "carton of milk" -analogy.

<comment><USER22> Thanks consider me for your next international advertising promo!

;0)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Using IE6 is more like drinking 9-year-old antifreeze. It was never wholesome in the first place.

<comment><USER24> If my memory serves me correctly, IE 6 was actually the fastest browser when it came out, and it correctly rendered more sites than Netscape since people often only tested their sites in IE. In 2001, running IE 6 was relatively pleasant.

<comment><USER23> Antifreeze tastes sweet. It's the long-term effects that are the problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> So they are saying that we should use nightly builds? I wouldn't use milk older than a week.

</comment><comment><USER26> _In a study by NSS Labs, Internet Explorer 8 caught socially engineered malware 85% of the time compared to Firefox 3's 29%, Safari 4's 29% and Chrome's 17%1._

Does anyone know if this is true, or is Microsoft twisting the facts as usual?

<comment><USER27> It looks like the source they show says that and IE8's other report on there is actually better than Firefox's results (for phishing). I'm not sure if there are other independent studies out there that suggest IE8 is less secure. (E.g. NSS Labs may only do two tests and those just so happen to make IE8 look good.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> So that makes IE8 14.5 month old milk.

yum.

</comment><comment><USER29> There was a time when MS used to say that IE6 is not the problem

<comment><USER30> Just let them change their mind already!

Signed, every web developer in the world

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> If they really believed that they would stop supporting IE6.

</comment><comment><USER32> As by a coincidence, I have the same opinion about IE7 and even IE8!

</comment><comment><USER33> So sad that MS can only sell IE8 through 'security features' instead of standards compliance.

<comment><USER34> Well, the target audience is people on IE6. Standards obviously mean nothing to these people, the majority probably wouldn't get it even if the whole thing was devoted to standards, hell, the average firefox user probably doesn't care about standards.

Focusing on how someone could come to financial loss by using a certain browser is a great angle. Money means something to everyone no matter how much they know about the internet.</comment></comment>


The commando scientist billionaire who died fighting terrorists - <AUTHOR> https://www.philipithomas.com/life-of-danny-lewin/ <comment><USER2> "There, he participated in classified anti-terrorism missions such as assassinations and kidnappings."

And that's a hero?

Edit: I didn't mean to attack that person, he achieved a lot, and I read about him before. (though I didn't read anything about assassinations)

It was just a snap reaction because the article seems to glorify assassinations and kidnappings, which I am opposed to. I directed this question to the community to see if there are really people here who believe that assassinations are great and worthy of putting on your CV.

At least the guy who wrote the article seems to believe it.

<comment><USER3> Would you say that the Navy Seals who risked their lives and captured Bin Laden are not also heroes?

<comment><USER2> Yes of course, as long as their mission was not to outright assassinate him no matter what.

Assassinations and Kidnappings are just crimes to me, I can't believe we are even having this discussion.

<comment><USER4> They would have loved to take Bin Laden alive, it would be the ultimate humiliation for him.

<comment><USER2> I'm not disputing that they tried to capture him alive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Evidence suggests..."

[http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch1.htm](http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch1.htm) See the section on flight 11. Not conclusive but indicative.

<comment><USER6> "Reports from two flight attendants in the coach cabin, Betty Ong and Madeline "Amy" Sweeney, tell us most of what we know about how the hijacking happened."

"As this was happening, passenger Daniel Lewin, who was seated in the row just behind Atta and Omari, was stabbed by one of the hijackers-probably Satam al Suqami, who was seated directly behind Lewin. Lewin had served four years as an officer in the Israeli military. He may have made an attempt to stop the hijackers in front of him, not realizing that another was sitting behind him.27"

so where is footnote 27?

<comment><USER3> "27\. AAL transcript, telephone call from Nydia Gonzalez to Craig Marquis, Sept. 11, 2001; Obituary, "Daniel Lewin," Washington Post, Sept. 22, 2001, p. B7"

Therefore an eyewitness, primary source from the time of the event.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That's an awful lot of detail from a event with no surviving witnesses.

<comment><USER8> Some of the passengers were in contact with the ground:

"According to flight attendants Amy Sweeney and Betty Ong, who contacted American Airlines during the hijacking, the hijackers had stabbed flight attendants Karen Martin and Barbara Arestegui and slashed the throat of passenger Daniel Lewin.Lewin, an American-Israeli Internet entrepreneur, had served as an officer in the elite Sayeret Matkal special operations unit of the Israel Defense Forces. Lewin was seated in 9B, and Suqami was directly behind him in 10B. The 9/11 Commission suggested that Suqami may have stabbed and killed Lewin after he attempted to stop the hijacking. Lewin was believed to be the first fatality in the 9/11 attacks."

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I can always count on HN to reduce a fairly interesting story down to pedantic bickering.

</comment><comment><USER3> I know a number of people who provided primary material to Molly Raskin. In general, they feel the reporting was balanced and accurate.

To harp on whether he was precisely the first victim or not is trivializing the event, the man and the impact both had.

</comment><comment><USER10> "Evidence suggests.." \-- yes, please, cite some.

</comment><comment><USER11> [https://hn.algolia.com/?q=danny+lewin#!/story/forever/0/dann...](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=danny+lewin#!/story/forever/0/danny%20lewin)

</comment><comment><USER12> This is the submitter's second attempt at submitting this. Can he be penalized for resubmitting a story that was killed?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6867864](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6867864)

</comment><comment><USER13> Daniel Lewin seems like a badass.

</comment><comment><USER14> Sounds like a good book. Anyone have a link to an epub?</comment>


Show HN: HTMLhouse – write and share some HTML - <AUTHOR> https://html.house <comment><USER2> Nice. Two questions: 1\. How long do you retain the code snippets for 2\. How is this different from the many many options out there 3\. Why not have an 'Email This' button?

Good going on the simplicity of the page and also on the no-registration- needed system

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

1\. They're retained indefinitely, but adding the option to delete them automatically after some time would be pretty simple (it still needs a regular delete button).

2\. HTMLhouse is meant to be more of a dead simple paste-and-go thing, which is why CSS, JS, etc. is all in one editor. And while it's fit for developers, I have a few features planned that'll make it more useful for bare-bones web hosting.

3\. I've tried to keep the interface as clutter-free as possible, but where would that button be most useful, on the published page? Or on the editor itself?

<comment><USER2> definitely on the editor

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool, thanks. I'll see how I can work it in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Cool project! You're live on Product Hunt now! [https://www.producthunt.com/tech/htmlhouse](https://www.producthunt.com/tech/htmlhouse)

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome!! Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting.. but why would one use this over jsfiddle, codeply, etc..? Is it simply just for HTML?

<comment><AUTHOR> HTMLhouse is more useful if you want to create a small or single-page static site, e.g. [1] -- I'd equate it more to an HTML-enabled pastebin, as far as form and functionality go.

I'd also like to add an option for self-destructing pages and some kind of discovery mechanism; tailor it towards more creative uses of web technologies.

[1] [https://html.house/tah2t9kp.html](https://html.house/tah2t9kp.html)</comment></comment>


Show HN: I built a 2FA token from a Gameboy clone - <AUTHOR> https://developer.okta.com/blog/2018/08/30/build-one-time-password-token-for-mfa <comment><USER2> I could imagine doing it with a real Gameboy with persistent clock in the cartridge too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Love that idea. Although, the original Gameboy is a little bulky to carry around ;)</comment></comment>


Facebook? Twitter? Instagram? We Did That 40 Years Ago  - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/12/social-media-history/

<comment><USER2> So what's improved since then?

1\. Bandwidth 2\. Hardware 3\. Language ease of use

With respect to the implementations of these "services", things were actually better back in the day. That's because users were generally more responsible (because you had to take an interest in how the network worked in order to use it) and there was no NAT. Peer to peer connections were the norm.

By comparison, todays "web" (which people confuse with the internet), is crippled, functionally.

So all of these "services" use ugly hacks. Like trying to stay in touch with people you know through some sociopathic stranger's website. As if that was "connectivity". Or trying to run programs through a "web browser".

NAT forced people to use the web, and forget about the internet.

The future lies in moving beyond NAT, and beyond a port 80, web browser- centric model of what people call "the internet" (which is actually just the crippled web).

We will never get the full functionality of the internet through only "the web".

<comment><USER3> NAT vs P2P is small fry. What really bothers me is the death of ATM at the hands of IP. A protocol which had a much better design, addressing present future and futuristic use cases dies at the hand of a protocol that had the marketing musclepower of cisco.

<comment><USER4> I just wanted to mention a couple of things:

* 48-byte cells.

* ATM had the marketing muscle of the entire Telco industry.

As the Wikipedia page (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asynchronous_Transfer_Mode>) (which sounds somewhat like it was written by the ATM Forum) says,

"ATM became popular with telephone companies and many computer makers in the 1990s. However, even by the end of the decade, the better price/performance of Internet Protocol-based products was competing with ATM technology for integrating real-time and bursty network traffic."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I worked on the PLATO system beginning in high school as a 15-year old through college. (The building where PLATO was located was diagonal south-west of my high school). David Woolley who is created Notes mentioned in the article was an undergraduate when he wrote Notes.

PLATO not only had social networking but was the genesis for other technologies. The orange screen in the article was invented at PLATO and was the genesis for the color plasma TV screen. In fact, Larry Webber, the or a key inventor of the color plasma TV screen was a post-doc in the lab. Ray Ozzie who took over from Bill Gates as Chief Software Architect at Microsoft was also there. The PLATO terminals had touch screens. For software development, when there were compilation errors, you could press a single key and you were given an explanation of the error.

Also, the PLATO system has been resurrected. You can run a terminal emulator from your computer and log into the PLATO system and experience and use it much as it was used 40 years ago using a terminal emulator on this website:

<http://cyber1.org/>

Here is a list of the notes starting from 1972. An image was made from the line printer at the time: [http://archives.library.illinois.edu/e-records/index.php?dir...](http://archives.library.illinois.edu/e-records/index.php?dir=University%20Archives/0713010/pdfs/)

Use of the notes program mentioned in the article starts in 1974.

As undergraduates some of us would get EE degrees while working our way through college programming computers. We were in this very fertile environment of both software and hardware and we got an enormous amount of autonomy.

PLATO leader Don Bitzer had enormous trust in the abilities of even high school students to make contributions. <http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/1997/03/2614>

<comment><USER6> One thing that Notes did better than modern threaded comment systems or web forums was that it had a sequencer that would allow you to quickly jump to and read whatever new responses and/or notes that were created since the last time you read Notes.

I never used Notes on Plato, but it was faithfully recreated on The Evergreen State College's timeshared BASIC system running on an HP3000, and then again to an AOS/VS based DG Eclipse MV10000 system. My best friends today are all people I met on Notes in the 80s. In high school my pal and I spent a summer vacation coding a Notes-like system (including sequencer) for a NewDos/80 GREENEMACHINE BBS. Good times.

I feel lucky to have spent time in the 80s learning about Plato (ok, mostly EMPIRE) on aging dusty terminals in the back of TESC's terminal room. Glad to see that you can still interact with it via cyber1.org. Can't wait for my account to get created.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you would like to view the entire article in one pageview, please use this link: [http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/12/social-media- hi...](http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/12/social-media- history/?pid=419&viewall=true)

</comment><comment><USER8> I dislike "this new thing is just that old thing" analogies. Someone on HN once tried to argue with me that the old unix talk utility was no different from Twitter.

Just because it's a computerized container for human communication doesn't mean it's the same idea. I mean, when you get down to it, it's all strings.

<comment><USER9> Even more so it's just electrons pulsing through copper or light through glass.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is fascinating. The question that immediately springs to my mind is this: can I look at the crappy failed projects of today, pinpoint the missing technology, and send a note to myself in the future to re-attempt building it when that technology exists? If so, I'd be competitive with the iPad, iPhone, etc.

<comment><USER11> Yes, you can do that, sending notes into the future is trivial.

Of course, you have to get the timing just right, which is the real trick. Being early, as they say, is virtually the same thing as being wrong.

Also, you have to hope the patent situation is improved prior to your product introduction, because it is already neigh impossible to create a new product that isn't _unknowingly_ violating dozens to hundreds of patents, which (given the purpose patents are supposed to serve) is ridiculous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Pretty unrelated to the article but does it annoy anyone else when you click a link on HN then can't hit the back button without being redirected back to the page you were linked to?

</comment><comment><USER13> _Social media is nothing new. It just has better packaging -- and better marketing._

This is dumb. There is a time factor in the evolution and acceptance of an idea that must always be taken into account.

And comparing today's tech to yesterday's? Metaphorically, that's ok but if you really do believe a car is just an improved bicycle (or an ipad is a useless laptop), you're doing yourself a huge disservice.

</comment><comment><USER14> The OP links to this 1975 academic paper which makes a statement pretty relevant to today: [http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=958788&dl=GUIDE&co...](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=958788&dl=GUIDE&coll=GUIDE)

> _Both papers illustrate a paradox which may be seen in many "people's > computing" groups. While attempting to bring the computer into useful daily > interaction with a variety of citizens for a variety of applications, such > groups often unwittingly reinforce myths about computers which, as Berk > notes, are a primary obstacle to social acceptance of the technology as a > tool for society_

</comment><comment><USER15> Note that imode stuff, while still alive, is a blast from the past, but Japanese phone makers are still ahead of the curve in terms of hardware features and hardware integrated services (specially NFC, which exists in a really daily usable form)

</comment><comment><USER16> I love how that last picture shows two people, one glass. Reminds me of something a bit more contemporary.

</comment><comment><USER17> My first experiences in serious computing were on multiuser VMS, AIX and Red Hat systems. I really miss the camaraderie and interactive features of those setups.

Strikes me that Web 2.0 is really about cloning that kind of functionality - more prettily, but as yet more clumsily - for a wider audience.

(Mark Zuckerberg was at Harvard just about the time they were migrating from AIX-over-ssh to web for email, losing all that status and messaging functionality in the process. Essentially he cloned parts of it again in a new interface.)

<comment><USER18> "AIX-over-ssh to web for email, losing all that status and messaging functionality in the process."

what does that even mean? You mean using bash over ssh and checking email using elm et al? And what's all the status and messaging functionality that was lost?

web based email was available when Zuck was learning his ABCs...

<comment><USER17> Yeah, that's exactly what I mean. That's what my college used in the late 90's/early 2000's, even though web mail had been available for a while, and I know Harvard did too. The lost functionality was mostly finger. Some people still used talk as well, although AIM/ICQ had mostly taken over that space.

Kids used to spend hours updating their .plan and .project files, finger'ing other people, etc. the same way they now spend hours messing around with Facebook and Twitter. That was lost with the move to web mail, and then social networks stepped in to fill the void.

The differences are mainly that a) the newer tools allow for richer media, not just text b) status updates are viewable in a timeline rather than being destructive overwrites, but c) they still aren't as well integrated imho as unix email/finger/talk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Yeah, you'd think people would have learned from history so they are not doomed to ... oh fuck it, that's a pipe dream.</comment>


Ideal age of a founder is irrelevant, why all the talk about it? - <AUTHOR>

The lurker awakes!  Young or a bit older?  How does it matter?  Age as a primary attribute of a founder (either younger or older) cannot make up for the lack of other necessary attributes - a complete list of which I cannot include here because I frankly don't know.  But, like porn, I know it when I see it – and I think we all do.
Each age range has its merits.  So therefore wouldn't it be wise, if one is youthful, to seek an older co-founder - or if one is older, to seek a youthful co-founder if only to mitigate any negative attributes of either age "bracket" through a diversification of possible viewpoints?  Wouldn't this make a startup stronger?
How can any other opinion on this matter avoid age driven over-generalization and bias?
If the youth prefer the youth, the aged prefer the aged – don't both lose out? <comment><USER2> When I was a kid, I had friends of all ages: other kids, young adults, older adults. As an adult, I have friends who are much younger than me, about the same age, and older: currently teenage to mid-60s. Age is just not an issue.

Geeks are a different sort of person. We don't care about your ethnic group, your age, how popular you are, or even (much) about your gender. Whatever, all we care about is beautiful design and deep ideas. We instantly recognize others who think this way, and we stay this way our whole lives. Maybe it's neoteny.

</comment><comment><USER3> Age is useful as a cheap early heuristic because it correlates with lots of other useful information.

I don't think the typical differences between young and old are actually complementary. Older people have some potential advantages in experience, younger have advantages in risk tolerance.

</comment><comment><USER4> You talk about age being irrelevant, and then suggest that people of different ages will necessarily have different viewpoints - isn't this a little contradictory?</comment>


Nurse Outduels IRS Over M.B.A. Tuition - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703535104574646582965101664.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read

<comment><USER2> The IRS can be a real pain.

I was audited a few years ago after being flagged for a large business expense, like this woman. Despite only that single expense being in question, the auditor asked for complete sales and expense records, which took literally reams of paper to print out, then organize and bind into folders for me to ship (I was out of state at the time of the audit and they wouldn't move it to a local auditor). It took days to click through pages and pages of history at PayPal to provide a separate printed receipt for over 1,000 separate sales, just for starters. I simply used the QuickBooks export to do my accounting, no need to keep each individual receipt on paper.

In the end all those reams of paper added up to exactly what I reported on my taxes, to the penny, and the "investigation" was closed with no changes to my taxes.

I hope every year that the audit means they'll be less likely to audit me again since I always have the same big single deductions each year (suppliers mostly).</comment>


Ask HN: How to Transfer Shares of an LLC Corporate Register in Delaware? - <AUTHOR> Have you done it before?
What was the process?
I don't seems to find a clear answer online. <comment><USER2> Are you looking to transfer shares between individuals or, change the entity structures and have the shares move over to the new entity

<comment><AUTHOR> Transfer individual's 100% holding to another company (outside of the US)

<comment><USER2> Is the entity in question being acquired by an foreign company/shareholder?

Or, are you just transferring a portion of the company to a foreign investor?

<comment><AUTHOR> The entity in the US was founded by me at the same time the other entity, outside of the US was.

I want the entity in the US to be a subsidiary of the entity outside of the US rather than under my own private holdings.

<comment><USER2> Without knowing all the details (i.e what state your company is in, if it has multiple locations, etc.), I would reach out to the state the LLC is registered in and submit a "Certificate of Merger" where the surviving entity is a Foreign (i.e not in the same state/country). NOTE: You'll also have to file a Certificate of Amendment stating that the LLC is accepting a Merger. You most likely will have to file similar paperwork in the acquiring company's HQ location.

ALTERNATIVELY, If you'd just like to transfer the LLC to a foreign entity, you can file a "Certificate of Transfer" (Section 18-213) - but I believe this isn't your specific use case.

NOTE: I used Delaware as an example, your own state's regulations may vary. For more questions, consult a lawyer or your Registered Agent Service.

References:

[Delaware, Section 18-204 - Foreign Entity Definition]([http://delcode.delaware.gov/title6/c018/sc02/](http://delcode.delaware.gov/title6/c018/sc02/))

[Delaware, Section 18-209 - More on Mergers]([http://delcode.delaware.gov/title6/c018/sc02/](http://delcode.delaware.gov/title6/c018/sc02/))

[Delaware, Certificate of Amendment]([http://corp.delaware.gov/llcamend09.pdf](http://corp.delaware.gov/llcamend09.pdf))

[Certificate of Merger]([https://corp.delaware.gov/Cert%20-%20DE%20LLC%20+%20For%20Co...](https://corp.delaware.gov/Cert%20-%20DE%20LLC%20+%20For%20Corp\(Surv\)09.pdf))</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Social Network Where Inquiring Minds Run Wild - <AUTHOR> http://solution.allthingsd.com/20110118/quora-question-and-answer-social-network-review/

<comment><USER2> "For now, Quora feels like a website designed for techie insiders without instructions for mainstream users."</comment>


Surfer's 'everything theory' wipes out - <AUTHOR> http://futurity.org/science-technology/surfers-everything-theory-wipes-out/ <comment><USER2> Well I am glad they listed a helpful analogy with a room and a bunch of chairs that cleared everything up for me.

<comment><USER3> As opposed to giving you a graduate education in math & physics and many years of research besides?

<comment><USER2> The problem with putting jokes on HN is that you always have to explain the damn joke afterwards.

So yes I think good analogies can be helpful, but this particular analogy made no sense whatsoever. I mean what does it mean that one has to put two chairs on top of each other? And why does that make the theory invalid. Theories do not have to look nice or symmetrical to be valid. In any event the analogy is completely baffling.

If you cannot come up with an analogy that actually makes sense you may as well resort to authority and just say this was published in a peer reviewed journal so until someone refutes it, it is probably right.

<comment><USER4> It made sense to me (although correct me if im wrong because i dont know anything about real math or e8): the room is a collection of furniture, the e8 is a collection of theories. if you rearrange all the furniture, it's still a room full of furniture, but now all the smaller pieces' intended purpose (sitting on them, putting books in them etc) no longer work. he still keeps e8 intact holistically, but he manages to do so only by invalidating the sub theories which make up the e8.

close?

<comment><USER5> Based on my reading of the first few pages of the paper (available here <http://arxiv.org/abs/0905.2658> ), your description appears roughly correct.

E8 is a lie group, which is a set of matrices which is closed under inversion and multiplication. In fact, E8 is a very large group.

Particle physics is based on a set of smaller groups, but these groups are distinct. A "theory of everything" would embed these smaller groups into a single large group. Lisi showed that you can embed these smaller groups into E8, although he didn't show that all the important properties hold.

Garibaldi showed that there are only 6 ways of doing this embedding which don't create higher spin particles. He then showed that none of these 6 ways preserve chirality (the right-handedness of the universe).

So basically, while the relevant groups can be embedded into E8, they don't preserve the physics necessary for a theory of everything.

<comment><USER2> Good job figuring out the paper, but if you had to read the paper, that just proves my initial point that the analogy failed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That's nothing, I understand that a paragliding philosopher has proven that both the original theory and the refutation are immaterial contributions to knowledge under his own theory of scientific progress, to be published soon.

<comment><USER7> Which would have all come to naught if a particle physicist stunt driver crack shot brain surgeon rockstar hadn't saved the world from alien annihilation in the early 80's.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gNJ1z-ulB4>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Garrett Lisi: "Dear Skip, you're now the guy who "proved E8 Theory can't work." Good luck. In physics, the universe gets the last laugh."

</comment><comment><USER9> I think I felt an optical illusion in the E8-inspired graph.

</comment><comment><USER10> Wasn't this from about a year ago?

<comment><AUTHOR> The original E8 theory of everything paper by Garret Lisi was written around 2 years ago. The paper mentioned in this article, published about a month ago, claims to prove that a theory of everything cannot be based on E8 [http://www.springerlink.com/content/h3h4wh813606ggq8/?p=6d2b...](http://www.springerlink.com/content/h3h4wh813606ggq8/?p=6d2b3d700fc647d886e66eb40c3ade4e&pi=3)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Bummer, dude. Totally.</comment>


30+ Most Useful Web Development Frameworks - <AUTHOR> http://designmodo.com/web-development-frameworks/ Web development framework is especially created to help you boost the performance and efficiency of your web applications, web services and website development task. A large number of frameworks are equipped with fascinating features such as templates and session management and database access libraries. In fact, when you take resort to web development frameworks, you also get to reuse the codes sometimes. <comment><USER2> A completely useless list that jumbles up unrelated items and is almostly completely devoid of any helpful context. The worst kind of blog dreck.</comment>


Devs: blow the whistle - <AUTHOR> http://maxhorstmann.net/blog/2015/09/21/whisteblowing/ <comment><USER2> Sadly, there are also those lined up to take your job, after you 'blow the whistle'. And not even that far away - your old coworker, your intern, pretty much anybody that wants the job and rationalizes the evil into "the company is responsible, not me".

I refused, as a contractor, to create radio software that broadcast on a restricted band (ambulance). It was desirable in some markets where that band was repurposed as industrial use. Broadcasting allowed faster connections than monitoring the channel(s) until the base station was discovered.

I argued it was contrary to regulation. But "everybody else does it". I argued it was wrong to create interference on critical service channels. It fell on deaf ears.

Then I argued as a Contractor I'd be personally liable. They tried to cajole me into doing it anyway. I flatly refused. Begrudgingly they accepted my legal/financial argument. I was reassigned.

Another Engineer (employee) stepped up instantly and volunteered to make the change. In the same meeting. Without a moment's hesitation.

So, I'm not confident an appeal to our better natures will be effective here.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting, and depressing. Thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hiring people who've proven they have the guts and conviction to blow the whistle elsewhere should be one of the stronger signals that you're not doing (what they might view as) wrong. I wonder if there's a good way we could surface that information.

</comment><comment><USER4> What terrible advice.

Exactly what upside is there to an individual to do so? I'm sure management was quite clear about their intent, so it's not like anybody in the company is going to back you up. And, if they're doing this, what _else_ are they doing?

Much better to just start looking for a better job and leave ASAP.

<comment><AUTHOR> | Exactly what upside is there to an individual to do so?

It's the ethical thing to do.

| Much better to just start looking for a better job

Not mutually exclusive.</comment></comment>


Apple blocking Mac OS X 10.8 installation on working Mac hardware - <AUTHOR> http://krugazor.eu/wordpress/2012/one-for-the-money-two-for-the-show/

<comment><USER2> Apple haven't announced which machines will be compatible with the released version of Mountain Lion, so it's premature to say that Apple are "blocking" it. "Blocking" is also different to "Not Supporting"

Minimum specs have changed between beta and released version in the past. Apple has also released firmware updates to make machines boot in 64-bit mode as well. It is well within the realms of possibility that your machine could become "compatible" before 10.8 is released.

Secondly, as a point of reference the current MacBook Pro's do have upgradable hard drives and RAM. However the battery is not easily replaceable.

</comment><comment><USER3> Another reason why I'm not using OS X anymore. It just took time to be a master with Linux, but it's worth it. The best support, works in almost every machine.

<comment><USER4> Are you using Ubuntu now? If you are, how easy/hard was it to transition from Mac OS, UI wise?

I've never used a Mac, but I get the feeling Canonical is mostly trying to be "inspired" by the Mac OS, rather than Windows. Because of that, as a Windows user, I found the transition to Ubuntu a bit frustrating, and I found Linux Mint much more natural to use - like I didn't really have to learn anything new. Surprisingly, I even find it a bit more intuitive than Windows 7. After years of using Windows 7 since beta, I still don't know where some stuff is located compared to XP.

<comment><USER3> Yes, Ubuntu.

I'm a kind of old Linux user. I've been using it here and there for the last 17 years. Nine years ago I bought my first Mac and finally found Linux again when I started to be good in programming.

My setup is very minimal. Using tiling window manager (xmonad) and set of my own widgets. Everything is Solarized and with my laptop all programs full screen.

At work I've been using this kind of setup (but without Apple hardware) for years.

For me, Apple (or Microsoft) doesn't provide as good UI as Linux does with my own setup. My config files are even in SVC, so when installing a new machine, all my stuff is there right away.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This guy's hardware is from 2008. I don't think refusing to support four-year- old hardware counts as forced obsoletion.

<comment><USER6> On a laptop and desktop it does. I would expect it to be relevant for a least 5 years and non-official support but still runs the latest, just maybe not that great, for a few more. We are talking about 4K laptops and desktops here not phones that get recycled every one to two years.

<comment><USER7> I think one has to consider the reasoning for not supporting it any more. The shift from 32 bits to 64 bits is a pretty big one. Prior to this being a requirement it was totally normal for Apple's older hardware to run the latest operating system version, and for people that have 64-bit capable machines, I assume that the same longevity will be seen. The change to 64-bit also affects the amount of RAM which may come into play here as well.

<comment><USER6> Sure I understand that, and if it is the case I hope it goes well for Apple. I know when we where bitten by a similar issue by Apple (the 68k to PPC transition) they lost a lot of customers for abruptly discontinuing support for systems that where not long dead. I know with that transition I had a 6k dollar brick after only 6 months of life. It took me a decade to come back to Apple and only after they switched to a process that was supported by other OS's, so that I would have a bail out plan. I understand they did what they had to do to survive back then, but when you eat 6K you don't have much appetite to do it again. I would hate to see a repeat of that, now that they seem to have gotten their act together, especially since they can't fall back on the we had to do it to survive excuse, which gained them a lot of forgiveness back then.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you manage complexity in your codebase? - <AUTHOR> I think managing complexity is at the core of what software engineers do. Anyone can implement complex systems but it takes lot of careful thinking and experience to build systems that are simple.<p>What are some of the ways have you successfully managed complexity in your codebase or system. I am interested in knowing real examples of your technical decisions that really paid off in terms of scaling your system without increasing complexity. <comment><USER3> You need to develop from a general philosophy that less is more.

I use thin frameworks, no database orms, less class-based programming and more stateless functions. It's very easy to follow the code chain all the way down to the database just using grep and an editor -- no magic (or very little), what is happening is more or less explicit in the code. And the code is written very simply - I do spend some time just removing and simplifying things as much as possible before I call them done. Pays dividends later when you have to revisit stuff you haven't looked at in six months.

From the systems side, no docker, no k8s, I run Ubuntu LTS vms and manage them using Saltstack. It's simple, lets me run my stuff on pretty much any cloud that can run Ubuntu (any of them), and it's all automated. The rest of the stack is filled out using best-in-class tools that I run myself - nginx, postgres, redis, etc so I'm not tied to any proprietary versions of these services. DNS load balancing directly to nginx - no ELB or hidden request or ssl termination costs.

I try to run the simplest thing that gets the job done, and then run the exact same thing in my development environments to have parity with production - <USER2> works well.</comment>


Startup challenge: The right audience and finding ambassadors - <AUTHOR> How do you find, define and create space for the right audience that wants your product or service? What initiatives would you recommend to turn followers into fans who absolute adore what you do (ambassadors).
The intention of this topic is to learn and teach on making that happen.
The startup I'm currently co-creating offers alternative education and travel programs for remote workers (digital nomads), students, business owners, entrepreneurs, people in sabbaticals and travelers who want to see a country through the eyes of locals and learn from locals.
About six months ago we had a great brainstorming session with people of the Starting Bloc community in New Orleans. They advised us to find ambassadors who would be(come) enthusiastic fans of what our startup is offering. The idea is right now launched as an Ambassador Program.
We incentivize joining the program through a referral program (if you refer 1 participant, you gain 100 USD) and a work-exchange (5 hours a week) to reduce the program costs up to 10%.
As a startup in the travel industry we also offer that ambassadors could help us creating per-country itineraries (places to go, sleep, eat, activities) for upcoming countries or connecting with locals in the upcoming countries.
Since we are currently two people being the core team, we also offer the ambassador to help us in our respective working fields (design in my area, networking in the field of my partner).
So an ambassador can also write posts for our blog, help us with social media and other fields of marketing, help us scouting and interviewing applicants.
Education (learning, teaching) is in the core of our business, therefore an ambassador can also help us creating more online-learning videos (of countries we visit and/or specific aspect of a country).
For more context of what we're doing, please read about the Ambassador Program in our blog: http://beonboard.org/blog/2016/ambassador-program/ <comment><USER2> Stop wasting your time on gimmicks and focus your time on making the core experience life changing or at least the best time they've ever had. You'll find plenty of Ambassador then.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your advice. Good important reminder. Appreciated.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How does this work http://pointerpointer.com - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER3> I don't know how the coordinates were defined for the 900 images. They might have just copy-pasted pixel readings from some image program like ImageJ for half an hour. At first I thought they used html area tags to define bounding coordinates for a number of circles or rects around every image coordinate, but in functions.js there's VoronoiGrid.js. I had never heard of that - <USER2> separates all of the coordinate points so that every image they used gets displayed (every image gets its own "puzzle piece" of pixels it will be retrieved for: no two images are in the same bounded area).

<comment><AUTHOR> "I don't know how the coordinates were defined for the 900 images" this is what got me curious is it some manual work or some highly sophisticated image processing and machine learning setup ? (highly unlikely)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Setup:

1\. Define the dimensions for the view port (640 x 480, for example). This means, there are 640 times 480 (= 307,200) pixel locations in the viewport

2\. Procure 640 times 480 (= 307,200) images of people pointing to each of the pixel locations

3\. Save each image with the corresponding X,Y pixel location it points to in, say, a database

Run:

1\. Get the (x,y) location of the mouse pointer on the view port

2\. Query the database with the (x,y) co-ordinates and retrieve the corresponding image

3\. Display image</comment>


Remote Work Plays a Role in Rebalancing Power in Society - <AUTHOR> https://www.prospercircle.org/interview/melissa-kargiannakis <comment><USER2> Equity is an interesting goal because it's ephemeral. The pattern of history is: ...insane inequity, a brief moment of equity gained through violence, a long march back to insane inequity, insane inequity, a brief moment equity gained through violence...</comment>


Launch HN: Py (YC S17) – Learn to Code on the Go - <AUTHOR> Hey HN! I'm Derek of Py (https://www.downloadpy.com). Py is an education app for iOS and Android that teaches topics like app development, building websites and data science. We're in the current YC batch.
My co-founder Will and I have been friends since high school. We've been frustrated for a long time with the way existing learning platforms teach coding. They tend to be one-size-fits-all solutions that don't make learning to code a fun experience. Also, most platforms don't personalize content based on a user's prior skill level or behavior within the product.
We think personalizing content is key. We customize the content that users see and make it game-like to encourage people to spend more time on concepts they're struggling with.
We also believe that interactivity is super important. Rather than passively watching a video, we want users to engage with the content. I've found from personal experience that I'll watch an EdX video thinking I understand what they're saying, only to discover later that I'm struggling on a quiz about the exact same concepts I thought I had learned.
When we first launched Py on the App Store about one year ago, it was named Pythonic because it only taught Python. Over the summer, we expanded to teach more programming languages and shortened the name to Py. While finishing up our last year of college we iterated on the product, developing more interaction types to make learning more engaging, and building more courses.
Excited to discuss mobile edtech and teaching people how to code! Also, we're quite curious to hear about your preferred way of learning... <comment><USER2> Congrats! Great ratings at App Store, seems promising. Although, you are not exactly on Android already, are you?

 _We also believe that interactivity is super important_

I agree with this premisse and I can't learn through videos. But I am glad with codecademy/freeCodeCamp style (lesson on the left, browse coding on the right). And after the initial steps, following tutorials online to build my own things on a real dev environment.

But I am willing to try another approach that favors interactivity.

 _We think personalizing content is key_

I also agree in theory, but never saw it in practice. I couldn't understand from your landing page how Py solves this either. Would you care to further explain how the content is personalized and what exactly is this game-like?

If you think it's relevant, some context: I am 37 years old, on a career change from marketing to software development. I am learning web development from scratch, studying fulltime since last November. Basically 2 months to complete the first certificate of freeCodeCamp, then, building my own projects following tutorials and documentation. I start next Monday at my first dev job as front end developer. I mostly interested in learning Javascript, maybe dig deeper in CSS and general CS concepts.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment! So we just launched our Android version today: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.py](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.py) (it's still in alpha and there are a number of issues we've noticed that working around the clock to resolve ASAP)

RE personalization: At the end of each chapter, users answer quizzes. We motivate people to review wrong answers through a star system: a user will earn 3 stars if they answer 100% of the assessments correct, otherwise, they have can review to earn more. This allows us to customize the content that users see while also gamifying the experience to incentive people to spend more time on concepts they're struggling with.

<comment><USER2> You're right about keeping Android version out of landing page. Downloaded it now and a few things dont work:

\- in screens with "run" I can't edit the code or see the output after hitting "run". I believe I was supposed to do both.

\- one screen in the middle of the JS intro course is blank

\- at the courses I went through, the last screen's "continue" is faded out, unclickable and I can't conclude the course.

In a week or so I will try again, I still believe I will enjoy it. Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for this - we're literally typing Java code right now to solve these. Very much appreciate the feedback and thanks for offering to try us again in a week :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Have you considered employing a cognitive dissonance learning model similar to the techniques that Derek Muller wrote about in his thesis 'Designing Effective Multimedia for Physics Education'? [0]

Lorena Barba of George Washington University also discusses techniques related to effectively teaching complex topics through exercise rather than passive learning that you may find interesting. [1]

[0] [http://sydney.edu.au/science/physics/pdfs/research/super/PhD...](http://sydney.edu.au/science/physics/pdfs/research/super/PhD\(Muller\).pdf)

[1] [https://www.class-central.com/report/why-my-mooc-is-not- buil...](https://www.class-central.com/report/why-my-mooc-is-not-built-on- video/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Congrats and love what you're doing.

Do you mind if we start sharing this with the customer side at [http://turtle.ai/](http://turtle.ai/)? We have many non-tech customers and we teach them best practices for product management and working with developers -- a lot of your course content would be really useful for them as well.

> We think personalizing content is key. We customize the content that users > see and make it game-like to encourage people to spend more time on concepts > they're struggling with.

Would it ever be possible for organizations to pre-define some content / content suggestions for their users? For example, we would want non-tech customers to get certain content and more technical customers to get different content. For freelancers, we'd want the content to be more product management / project management / communications focused.

Let me know if you have any plans to partner with companies who want to outsource some of the education of their customers. We think education is critical to our success or the success of any companies in our space (freelancer marketplace). If we can outsource the education component to a trusted partner, we would love to (and would pay for custom content or to supply our own content).

<comment><USER5> Anyone is always allowed to use our app! We've found it very effective in leveling up engineering skills as well as taking people from 0 to coder.

hmu at firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just finished the swift course and it leaves me wanting more. I mostly like that I can do a few excercises while waiting for the train to arrive and then just pick it up the next day for a few minutes. Feels a bit like duolingo for learning. Unnoticed some humanities subjects in the store screenshots? Would be cool to do the same treatment for history or more high level concepts in programming like algorithms. Kudos so far!

<comment><USER5> Great you love it! We're building more Swift content right now! Commutes are a perfect use case.

Right now we're focusing on our best programming courses. We're about to release courses like Data Science and Machine Learning. Apologies about the screenshot: it's out of date and Apple won't let us update it without submitting a new version.

<comment><USER6> Ugh typos, but you got my point :) Are you planning to move beyond programming too (duolingo for learning -anything-) or is that just wishful thinking on my part?

<comment><USER5> Right now we're planning on doing one thing really well before we do more. But there's no reason this model doesn't work for other subjects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hey! I got a chance to play around with the app a bit and thought I'd leave my first impressions here (for whatever it's worth.)

\- I love the fact that I'm not forced to make an account but given the option; though not sure what benefits that offers. Picking up in the same spot across devices I guess.

\- didn't realize i could skip modules at first, once I did I liked it a lot more.

\- I've only played with the JS stuff so far. It's pretty basic for me right now but I'd imagine (and hope) you'll be adding some heavier stuff.

\- Beautiful UI.

\- The correct/wrong notifications are very similar to other apps like this (not a criticism), is there a common library for that? I never really thought about it.

\- I personally would like and make use of a "give us feedback" item.

\- I'd like to be able to take some short tests or flash cards. Maybe for built in methods, design patterns, "what would this evaluate to", etc..

\- No weird permissions!!

I'll keep my eye on this. Good luck with it!

<comment><USER5> We're glad you like us!

\- Definitely wanted to keep this option; no reason to force it on everyone.

\- We let you learn at the right level.

\- Believe it or not, we cover the core language. So once you finish JavaScript, you'll know enough to build a project or pass an interview at a top tech company.

\- Completely custom; the design idiom is a common one.

\- We're about to add this!

\- If you want this, check out our coding interviews course.

\- You're welcome :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just signed up. I really love this idea. Keep up the great work! UX is very good. Feels like Duolingo for programming languages.

</comment><comment><USER9> Reminded me of SoloLearn, a similar app.

Can't really comment in the Android app as it crashes a couple of minutes into the app.

I'm doing a course at Udacity and they recommend SoloLearn to brush up on basics, including python and HTML etc etc. Partnering with institutions seems to be a good idea.

</comment><comment> ebb-tide I was skeptical.. but I really like it! The UI looks very pleasant, and there's an addictive rhythm that keeps you going. As a programmer the beginner courses get tedious for me, I dont need the concept of conditionals explained to me again, but if you had an expert level intro to a language I didnt know- I would definitely want to learn the syntax and idiosyncracies of a new language this way. It feels really painless to learn things in this style.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm from Colombia and I'm interested in the app. I tried to download py on my android and it seems the app is not avaliable. Why?

</comment><comment><USER11> Hey, are you worried about being regulated as a school at all in the state you're operating in?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope, we aren't regulated as a school so we're not worried about this!

<comment><USER11> But you do provide courses to people for money, right?

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently, all of our courses are actually free! We will be releasing a new version of Py on iOS within the next day or two that will contain a premium subscription that unlocks access to new premium content we're rolling out.

<comment><USER11> Sooo....sounds like you're about to become a school that takes money? Are you worried about regulation now?

<comment><USER12> @thebiglebrewski -- do you have a link or reference to the regulations of concern? I did a quick web search and did not find anything relevant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What are your competitors, and how do you differ? I find small screens like iOS and Android (assuming most users use a mobile phone-like device) are hard to do any significant work on - how does this influence your instruction flow & corresponding UX?

<comment><USER5> Few of our competitors are mobile focused. Most people don't have hours to sit in front of a computer, but waste a lot of time commuting, standing in line, etc. Py is designed to utilize this time.

Great question about UX. It's hard to type on a phone, so we use a customized keyboard and group things into reusable elements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I am very curious how you teach coding on a mobile platform. I mean there is so much typing in coding, and then you need to track a bunch of variables, see the output, and see the code, so that is a lot of screen real estate you need.

<comment><USER5> Great question! The code is kept short, the output appears below the code, and we deal with typing by using a customized keyboard and letting you type in whole function names with a single tap. It's hard to explain without showing you the app :) Check it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've done a few of your lessons and I feel they only scratch the surface.

The format works well for learning high-level concepts, but anyone planning to "go from 0 to coder" with this app is fooling themselves.

<comment><USER5> You'd be surprised! The coding interview questions are real-world questions used at real tech companies. Once you can answer them right, you can get a job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> hello Derek and Will, Currently I am on an experiment to learn programming only via a smartphone and I have started with 6.00.1x of EdX. I am using Termux and GNUROOTDEBIAN app on my phone. If you would be interested, along side I could work with Py and may be give you a comparison of some sort on my experience of different module and topic on both. Prior I worked for 7 months as an EIR with an edtech Startup and also have been a founder for 52 months.

Please do let me know, my email is in my profile.

</comment><comment><USER17> Fantastic app. Really nicely designed. Question on the personalized learning: what factors go into determining when and what content to show me to optimize my learning?

</comment><comment><USER18> You should really mention that your android version doesnt exist yet. There is not even an ETA available, just an email signup for 'updates'.

<comment><USER5> We actually do have an android version in alpha: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.py](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.py)

<comment><USER19> Where did it go? I'm getting "Item not found."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Great. I wish you all the best. Will go through the app.and will share my experience.

</comment><comment><USER21> Installed on Android 7. Sorta kinda worked once. Crashed. Cannot restart after force stop.

<comment><USER5> I'm literally typing fixes right now. We'll get this out ASAP.

<comment><USER21> I applaud you for working around the clock on it, but honestly, the android app isn't even alpha. It just doesn't work. I think you jumped the gun on listing it in the Play store.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Cool on Android. Look forward to using this.

</comment><comment><USER23> "See all courses" is blank (iOS)

</comment><comment><USER24> Great app! I like where it is going!

</comment><comment><USER25> I really don't like the name. Since you expanded on your languages that you are going to teach it doesn't really make sense to use Py since nearly every Python project uses the phrase to say its in Python. Also, you are going to have people that are looking for PyPy and finding your App and getting confused.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, we've found the name Py doesn't confuse users. Most associate it with the number Pi, giving it an academic feel.

<comment><USER26> For what it's worth, I assumed this would be an app focused on teaching Python.

<comment><USER5> Keep in mind many of our users don't even know python. We answer about 200+ questions every day in our in-app chat, and we've yet to hear someone get confused.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple India's response on Facebook [Levity] - <AUTHOR> http://twitpic.com/5i1o5j

<comment><USER2> I think Apple makes products so good/popular that people feel it is their right to own one, not a privilege. Also, I have had non-technical people use "hanging" to describe a computer which had gone into an unresponsive state. So, what's the big deal.</comment>


Ask HN: Understanding C# Events - <AUTHOR>

Hello - I have been trying to understand the purpose/reason behind C# events.  I understand that a delegate is basically a function pointer.  But all of the examples I have seen so far explaining events seem complicated and assume a certain level of understanding (Observer pattern).
I do realize Visual Studio creates Events for you, but I prefer to really understand something before using it.  So I have been trying to comprehend the practical application of events.
As I mentioned, there are several websites that I had read which provided "simplified" examples, but even those lead me to think, "I see what this person is doing, but I still don't understand why this is being done using events."
Any easy to understand examples using an event in a practical manner that you can recommend?
Thanks for your help! <comment><USER2> Can't think of a good article, but here's my take:

Delegate == singlecast. Meaning it can only point to one function at one time. Calling the delegate calls the assigned function.

Event == multicast. Meaning an event is essentially as list of delegates. When the event is fired, each delegate is called synchronously in the order they were added.

That is the functional difference. Hope that helps.

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/803242/understanding- even...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/803242/understanding-events-and- event-handlers-in-c-sharp)</comment>


Ask HN: What are some suggestions to improve 30startups.com? - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys,
I started 30startups.com a little over 5 five weeks ago so that I could stay up to date and involved with startups. I want to be able to help people gain some publicity for their services they build and hopefully bring together founders and investors so that both parties can benefit. My question is: what you guys think about it and what I can do better?
Suggestions on what to write about would be great.
Do you want to read about startups and what kind of impact they are making?
Do you want interviews with startups to hear their stories? Do you want entrepreneur resources and advice?
Do you want to learn more about VCs and angel investors and how to position your startup for funding?
Any help would be awesome.
http://30startups.com <comment><USER2> Personally I like the Startup School posts much better than the startup company stories. The companies look like a lot of me-too concepts and you don't explain why you picked them or why their strategy or feature set is better. Blogs work when people present new ideas or ideas that were not easy to discover. Ideas not companies. I'll be using the "lifecycle of an idea" in my entrepreneurship class on Monday. Maybe it will generate some readers for you.

</comment><comment><USER3> Personally, when I see yet another blog about startups, I won't subscribe to it unless it is very different from what I'm already getting. So how is it different from the popular blogs in this space?

<comment><AUTHOR> The reason I started the blog was because I started to get sick of the larger more popular startup blogs. They focused too much on the big deals with companies raising millions of dollars in later rounds of financing. They also focused on larger sites like Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, etc and the new features they are adding.

I couldn't find any blogs that focused on the small guys raising seed funding, so I started my own. I want to offer interviews and insights from smaller startups (less than 10 people) and stories of how they went from an idea to building a company.

<comment><USER3> Cool. If you're focusing on the smaller stuff, then make that clear up-front. That might keep me interested.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> also, anyone know how to make a clickable link?

<comment><USER4> Clickable: <http://30startups.com>

(just paste it in a comment)

<comment><AUTHOR> good to know. thanks!</comment></comment></comment>


Sublime Git is a clean code editor for merge conflicts - <AUTHOR> https://thenextweb.com/dd/2018/09/21/sublime-git-is-a-clean-code-editor-for-merge-conflicts/ <comment><USER2> The product is called Sublime Merge.</comment>


The Gaming Police - <AUTHOR> http://www.entertainingcode.com/archives/the-gaming-police/ <comment><USER2> The Blizzard Terms of Service note that this will happen following a request from law enforcement.

17.C Blizzard may, with or without notice to you, disclose your Internet Protocol (IP) address(es), personal information, Chat logs, and other information about you and your activities: (a) in response to a request by law enforcement, a court order or other legal process; or (b) if Blizzard believes that doing so may protect your safety or the safety of others.

If one chooses to play the game, after having agreed to have their records turned over in such a case, it seems like less of a moral issue. Another reason why people should consider actually reading their terms of service before agreeing.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm very glad the author is talking about his concern in a calm and reasoned manner, and focuses on his specific issue with reasonable clarity, rather than being sensationalist and conflating several issues together.

The specifics of the case aside, it is sort of troubling that a private company can make a decision on how to enforce a law entirely unrelated to its operations. I would have no problem with Blizzard being compelled to release private information (given due process of law). I would have no problem with them being bound not to release the information, by a privacy policy or something. The fact that they can elect to comply or not, based on their own whims, is somewhat troubling. At the least, I would like them to have a explicit and specific policy of when they will comply.

Fortunately, this is a rather strange edge case based on jurisdictions, and it's unlikely to come up in the future as awareness about this case makes people use proxies (or stop playing). But the principle should still be resolved.

</comment><comment><USER4> _Maryland police has no legal juridistiction to subpoena things from Blizzard (situated elsewhere). The subpoena is more to be seen as a kind request for information._

If the Maryland police had wanted to make more of an effort, couldn't they have asked a court in Blizzard's jurisdiction to issue a subpoena? (Also note that fleeing the country to avoid prosecution is a Federal crime, so the FBI could have gotten involved.)

</comment><comment><USER5> It's disturbing that Blizzard will hand over a thick folder of personal information like candy on Halloween, even to (out of jurisdiction) law officers. But there's nothing very Azeroth-specific going on there -- your cellular provider could have done the same thing, basically.</comment>


Taking over Azure DevOps accounts with one click - <AUTHOR> https://blog.assetnote.io/2020/06/28/subdomain-takeover-to-account-takeover/ <comment><USER2> Does the $3000 (USD?) bounty seem low to anyone else? Prior to reading the timeline section at the bottom of the post I would have guessed a range of 25k to 50k as a bounty for such a severe vulnerability.

<comment><USER3> Yeah. It seems low to me. The team writing the auth code is probably paid a fortune comparatively. It's also surprising to see MS has mistakes like that in the auth flow. I know it's a combo, but still, damn!

I don't know enough about dev.azure.com, but if they could do more than read info, like spin up VMs, then $3k is an insulting joke. Doubly so if there are credit cards attached to those accounts. The idea of someone spinning up resources on my Azure account gives me nightmares.

It's also worth noting the combo here is really nasty because DNS takeover means you could send phishing emails from a legit sub domain.

What's the damage to MS if someone nefarious had found that and launched a huge phishing campaign?

<comment><USER4> It's highly recommended to not allow wildcards in the redirect_to values within OAuth2 for that reason: It's just too easy to create flaws like this one. Additionally on [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active- directory/deve...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active- directory/develop/reply-url), Microsoft itself recommends to avoid them: "Wildcard URIs, such as [https://*.contoso.com](https://*.contoso.com), are convenient but should be avoided. Using wildcards in the redirect URI has security implications."

<comment><USER3> That's why I said I was surprised. I just can't understand how anyone, let alone what I assume is a team, could write auth code without reading the spec to see what every parameter does. Even if you weren't paying attention I feel like you shouldn't miss that one, right?

Is that full stack overflow development where some one is copying and pasting things they don't understand?

<comment><USER5> The recommendation is ignoring the reality of the world. How can developers handle authentication when authentication is not allowed on their company domains?

Measures like filtering/whitelisting are always pushed back in my experience because it's legitimately preventing developers to support authentication.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> FWIW, we've had a lot of fun doing web inventory mapping via OWASP OMASS ([https://github.com/OWASP/Amass](https://github.com/OWASP/Amass)): enumerate via amass -> dump into neo4j or just csv/json -> explore with jupyter/graphistry.

A _lot_ of bug bounties have been getting paid out this way. I can't share the details, but we did it as a graph analytics demo with a financial partner bigger than many countries, and 30min later, tickets filed. IMO every sec team > 5 people should have something like this setup.

</comment><comment><USER7> That bounty is an order of magnitude smaller than it should've been. It's an account takeover defect that most anyone could fall for because of the structure of the payload URL.

<comment><USER3> And it's shocking they're able to add a DNS zone for a domain they don't own. That alone is a massive issue for the email phishing potential. The combination is stunning.

From: email@example.com

SPF: pass

DKIM: pass

DMARC: none

"Hi it's Bob from Project Cascade. We're giving away Azure credits to anyone who used our trial in 2019 or earlier. Visit project- cascade.visualstudio.com/credits to check if you're eligible."

Click.

"Sorry, you're not eligible."

I'd fall for that :-(

<comment><USER8> In all the cloud provider DNS services I've used you can add a zone for anything with no verification of ownership. The root cause flaw is the domain owner allowing their registrar data to go stale and let NS point at a shared service where they did not own/host the records.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Being awarded a bug bounty suggests that there was a bug that was fixed. But this was actually a misconfiguration, wasn't it? Any Azure account with a dangling subdomain and unrestricted reply-to is still vulnerable to this attack, correct?

<comment><USER10> This critique seems to rely on an undefined definition of the terms "misconfiguration" and "bug."

Reply-to is a bug. But it might be a configuration fix, as opposed to code fix. But without knowing how it is implemented we cannot say.

And maybe more importantly the boundary between misconfiguration bugs and code bugs is irrelevant from an outsider's perspective.

How reply-to is implemented is irreverent, the result is identical.

<comment><USER9> The distinction is relevant from the perspective of any other customer on Azure. A code fix would have fixed the problem for them, too, A fixed config fixes the problem for visualstudio.com only. That's what I was getting at.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It is kind funny (or click-baitish) articles with "one click" seems. From a developer point of view, pretty much anything can be done with just one click.

<comment><USER12> The point is that it requires just one click (on a link) from the target user to steal their credentials, which is relatively easy to convince people to do, as opposed to a more complicated sequence of steps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> stupid user action is needed, so it's not a critical bug.</comment>


Stack Overflow TOS – prohibited for users to scrape dev profiles to spam them - <AUTHOR> https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/277369/a-terms-of-service-update-restricting-companies-that-scrape-your-profile-informa <comment><USER2> This is really good news, assuming the TOS are enforced strongly. I also appreciate the fact that they were open about concerns with these spammers competing directly with their Jobs service. That was the first thing I thought about.</comment>


AI Index – 2018 Report [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://cdn.aiindex.org/2018/AI%20Index%202018%20Annual%20Report.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> AI Index's 2018 report is just great collection of data on state of things in AI. My favorite highlights:

\- AI papers count from Europe > China > USA

\- Citation impact from USA > Europe > China

\- Migratory authors have highest citation impact

\- CVPR, NeurIPS, ICML attendance is each doubled in past 3 years

\- WiML attendance actually dropped in 2018

\- Interest in robotics in terms of ROS downloads is seeing growth of roughly 50% yoy starting 2015, China contributing half of it

\- Active AI startups have increased by 2X in past 3 years

\- 71% of job applicants in AI are male

\- Number of robot installations are increasing by 50% in China since 2016, other countries have negligible growth

\- 5X more media articles have positive sentiment for AI than negative (of course, measured by AI :))

\- Mention of AI have been at least doubling in US Congress since 2016

\- Training time (but not total compute) for ImageNet has been decreased by 16X in past 18 months through 5 record breaking milestones

\- Metric improvements in vision related tasks are stagnating while many NLP tasks saw massive bump

\- AI is better than humans at 3 more tasks in 2018: Chinese-English translation, playing Quake III, Prostate cancer grading</comment>


Ask HN: Why has no one disrupted the DMV? - <AUTHOR> After spending three and a half hours waiting to fill out a paper form and paying 20 bucks for the honor, one must reflect: I would surely pay more to not do this.
I know AAA insurance offers some DMV-avoidance benefits, but are there any startups vying to destroy this shameful institution once and for all? <comment><USER2> Our DMV provides a lot of routine services online now. I had to go last year for a vision test. That was the first visit I'd had to make in person in six or seven years. It's just not that onerous anymore.

<comment><USER3> I haven't been to mine in over 10 years. I did go to AAA for registration renewal when I forgot to go through mail. It only took 10 min there. That alone is reason to join AAA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Around here, every inspection place will let you pay $10 to have them re- register the car with DMV for you, so that you don't have to go there yourself. (New registrations the dealer will do for you, I think, but if you bought it privately, I don't know of any service that will do it for you. I'm not sure that you want there to be, either - you're dealing with a transfer of title, not just a registration; you might not want to trust a third party for that.)

</comment><comment><USER5> it's a huge pain to call California dmv. In my opinion, email is the easiest way to do support, but they somehow only want you to call them. And the waiting time for a phone call is usually 2 hours!</comment>


Show HN: UpSwell – Join the crowd and tell the world what you want to exist - <AUTHOR> https://www.theupswell.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I'm David, one of the co-founders of UpSwell.

We're trying to build a social-platform where individuals can coalesce into groups to indicate what they want to exist in the world. In doing so, we're hoping to create ways for the crowd to speak with a single voice to companies, organization, governments -- even individual people -- about what it is the group would like to see exist.

I'd love any feedback, good or bad, that might help us improve the site and the idea.

</comment><comment><USER2> Really like the Upswell idea! Awesome agent for change on so many levels. Big potential. Any plans to organize the ideas into categories? Would make them easier to navigate and allow users to focus on topics/areas of personal interest. Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your kind words! We're hoping the site can be a place where the voice of many individuals can be aggregated into a single voice (in many instances) to improve anything and everything around us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Great site! Really cool way to crowd source. How do companies find posts on UpSwell?

<comment><AUTHOR> We're working on improving that functionality, but currently the easiest way is to search for them. For example, this search will show you ideas related to Apple: [https://www.theupswell.com/search?q=apple](https://www.theupswell.com/search?q=apple)

In the future, we're going to make this more overt so that both consumers and organizations can better organize and digest ideas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great to see UpSwell on hacker news. David, what features are you looking to add next?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your comments - we've got a pretty good foundation when it comes to "social" functionality, but we have more work to do there. Specifically, it needs to be easier to find people you know on the site, and our commenting system needs to be enhanced. On top of that, we're working to improve ways to discover good ideas on the site. For example, one highly requested feature is to be able to rank ideas by the number of MeToo's (as opposed to creation date). Last but not least, we're actively working on features to allow people to connect their UpSwells to the organizations/people who will be able to implement them. This is perhaps one of the more exciting features of UpSwell: to provide a platform to discover the best ideas, and then connect those with people who could bring them to life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I really liked this site!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback. Let me know if you sign-up and I'll give you a follow on the site.</comment></comment>


Verb Mill (podcast network) 2nd live show. - <AUTHOR> http://listen.verbmill.net/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, we're working to build the network and looking for any feedback. Technical or other.

What's going on now is an auctioneer competition and commentary from the host's of Fast Talking (a podcast about auctions)</comment>


Facebook admits, for the 4th time, that it messed up its measurement metrics - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-admits-miscalculating-instant-articles-metrics-2016-12 <comment><USER2> How much of the revenue from these mistakes is facebook going to return to the advertisers?

</comment><comment><USER3> It makes sense that after catching the first mistake they'd find more due to more diligently examining their metrics.</comment>


DigitalOcean Introduces Floating IPs - <AUTHOR> https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-create-a-high-availability-setup-with-heartbeat-and-floating-ips-on-ubuntu-14-04?utm_source=Customerio&utm_medium=Email_Internal&utm_campaign=FloatingIPLaunch <comment><USER2> Link to announcement article:

[https://www.digitalocean.com/company/blog/floating-ips- start...](https://www.digitalocean.com/company/blog/floating-ips-start- architecting-your-applications-for-high-availability/)

</comment><comment><USER3> About time! I've needed this for a while.</comment>


Apple Fan on iOS 7   - <AUTHOR> http://msavin.tumblr.com/post/52661695745/apple-fan-on-ios-7

<comment><USER2> Some other things: There is no consistency in the gradients. Some look like they are curved in and others are curved out. The photos icon looks like a logo. The game center icon reminds me of ugly "Web 2.0" buttons.

There is some excellent new design in IOS 7 but the home screen is terrible.

</comment><comment><USER3> _Apple was only 1 cat away from OS 11. Why did they stop?_

That _is_ why they stopped. OSX is the name of the operating system now. They don't want to ditch the 'X' which is so ingrained now. I thought that was obvious.

On a second note, I wonder what 'About this Mac' says about the version number. 10.9 was the last one. 10.99? Then 10.999? I kid.

<comment><USER4> There's nothing stopping Apple from using pretty standard point release nomenclature and calling the next version 10.10 and then 10.11 after that.

<comment><USER3> Ah, it seems you are correct. They have already been using that notation for awhile. For example, the latest version is 10.8.4 (not 10.84 like I thought).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just a note:

 _If they're going to reinvent the whole thing, I'd just go for three dots. One dot for low service, two dots for ok, three dots for none, and no dots for none._

I think you meant "...three dots for excellent" or something along those lines.

Great idea though!

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point - fixed</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Isn't it time for graphics in terminals? - <AUTHOR>

Wouldn't it be great to have full-featured interactive graphics in terminals, maybe with similar UI mechanics to those of notebooks in Mathematica?<p>Are there already projects persuring this idea? <comment><USER2> probably englithenment will get you the closest</comment>


PS: I Love You. Get Your Free Email at Hotmail - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/18/ps-i-love-you-get-your-free-email-at-hotmail/ <comment><USER3> This story gets it backward. Jack Smith came up with that idea. Sabeer Bhatia makes this explicitly clear in _Founders At Work_.

I'm surprised nobody here has mentioned it yet.

 _Livingston: You had a tagline in the body of the email encouraging email recipients to set up their own free Hotmail accounts. How did you come up with this?

Bhatia: It was actually Jack's idea to do that. We ran it by our VCs just to make sure it was OK. When you alter somebody's email, you've got to be very careful. You're sending an email to a friend of yours, and we are kind of violating the sanctity of that email by putting in a tagline at the end of it that says "This message has been sent from Hotmail. Get your free email at hotmail.com." So we asked Tim if it was OK that we did this. We said, "We don't want to be perceived as the evil company by altering their email." And he said, "Absolutely, you should do it." And the next thing we know, he claims that this idea was his. He's given a number of interviews literally claiming that he was the father of web-based email — without him it would not have happened. I can't believe he's just taken credit for everything — including the tagline (which later became known as the classic example of viral marketing). He blatantly claims this at conferences, which I don't think is right.

Livingston: He claimed that web-based email was his idea?

Bhatia: That it was our idea, but without them, it would not have happened and that we would have done JavaSoft. Their version is that "we told them to do web-based email at that [first] meeting." Why would they tell us to do web- based email?_

<comment><USER4> That was apparently false:

[http://www.foundersatwork.com/1/post/2009/02/a-note-about- sa...](http://www.foundersatwork.com/1/post/2009/02/a-note-about-sabeer- bhatias-interview.html)

<comment><USER3> Without any more information, there's no reason to believe that the unspecified evidence was more reliable than Sabeer.

A) Who was the source of the evidence? How many people were even there in the room? What does Jack Smith say?

B) As for the disparaging, unless the evidence was all the other VCs that Sabeer talked to, it sounds like the source of both these claims was DFJ saying "nuh-uh!" What else would you expect Tim Draper to say, "yeah, I badmouthed them and stole credit"? Based on their other behavior, which scenario seems more plausible?

"An anonymous source denies Bhatia's claims" is not very solid evidence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> They still do this, too. I got an email from someone using Hotmail a few days ago and this was appended to the bottom:

        Hotmail: Free, trusted and rich email service. Get it now.
        Hotmail: Trusted email with powerful SPAM protection. Sign up now.
        Hotmail: Trusted email with powerful SPAM protection. Sign up now.
        Your E-mail and More On-the-Go. Get Windows Live Hotmail Free. Sign up now.
        Hotmail: Trusted email with Microsoft's powerful SPAM protection. Sign up now.

I kid you not, 5 lines. Something tells me that they're getting desperate.

<comment><USER6> I just got an email from a Hotmail user too. The tagline was:

      Hotmail: P.S. I love you. Get free email at hotmail.com.
      Hotmail: I tell you I love you and your response is to move me to your spam folder?
      That really hurts.
      Hotmail: I saw you with someone else last night. Who was that?
      Hotmail: I just want to make you happy. Please respond.
      Hotmail: Can't we go back to the way we were? Weren't we happy then?
      Hotmail: I've infected your computer with a remotely-controlled bot and will be
      deleting your hard drive if you don't respond in the next 5 minutes.
      Hotmail: You won't be able to read this for a while, as your current computer has
      been permanently disabled, but when do you get back online, I just want you to know...
      Windows Live Hotmail has powerful SPAM protection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ok, so "the power of viral loops" basically amounts to:

1) Spend time and effort build your product 2) Give it away for free 3) Embed a tagline into the product so that users are "involuntary salespeople" 4) ??? 5) Profit!

There isn't really anything new here. Applying viral marketing is trivially easy for email, or other social-media apps (which is not to say it will work, just that's it's a natural fit). What I would like to see is an analysis on how to adapt viral loops to non-social settings. How would someone like LifeLock.com apply this message, for example?

<comment><USER8> If you think it's easier, switch your idea. Everything is easy and obvious after the fact; e.g. The Pythogarean Theorem. For anything that can be easily explained in a few minutes of class or blog post, it took years for the brightest of scientists, mathematicians, or inventors to come up with.

<comment><USER7> I think it's easier to do _viral marketing_ for products that you give away. But it's a lot easier to make money off of things that you charge for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > The following is an excerpt from Adam L. Penenberg's new book

N.B. The journalist who exposed Steven Glass -- <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Penenberg>

</comment><comment><USER10> For the business in this crowd:

Does this approach yield similar results for you? I could imagine iPhone applications spreading this way (much like those damn Facebook quizzes), but what about for more specialized markets?

<comment><USER11> It only works if the product is great. There are a few rocket ships that are great products that have grown with word of mouth that don't have the structural virality (as with Facebook quizzes or the Hotmail footer) - <USER2> and Dropbox immediately come to mind. Google, as well, if you go back a few years.

<comment><USER12> Not necessaryily true. Mike Speiser wrote a great article about people who "hack traction" by designing aggressive/spammy viral loops: [http://gigaom.com/2009/06/07/hacking-traction-the-dark- side-...](http://gigaom.com/2009/06/07/hacking-traction-the-dark-side-of- marketing-optimization/)

It depends on your definition of "works," I suppose. The above "works" for Tagged, but I imagine most people on HN would say that that isn't "working" -- it's spamming.

The best kind, obviously, is the sort people like Seth Godin write about, where people are so passionate that they are actively seeking to spread your product.

Unfortunately it's often easier to fall to the dark side ("easier, more seductive") and spend time optimizing your viral loop than building a product your customers are excited about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As smart as it was, I have yet to find some software that adds tags to the messages that I don't hate. Mostly because the kind of software that does stuff like that isn't the kind of software I would want to use - but it is pushed on me anyway.

Even the mail stuff in my Ipod Touch does that by default (I turned it off, but but that isn't going to do much for the stuff I receive).</comment>


Ask HN: Best resources for hackers to learn marketing? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I would start first and foremost with mastering analytics. All other strategies will fall into place when you have accurate data to measure your impact.

If there is only one website you ever visit to learn marketing it should be Occams Razor by Avinash Kaushik. [http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/](http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/)

If you want the fundamentals, read some of Dan Kennedy's books like The Ultimate Marketing Plan.

Good Luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://www.amazon.com/Predictable-Revenue-Business- Practices...](http://www.amazon.com/Predictable-Revenue-Business-Practices- Salesforce-com- ebook/dp/B005ERYEGU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1399672637&sr=8-1&keywords=predictable+revenue)

</comment><comment><USER4> Look through craigslist or other forums, find someone who is willing o take you as a tehnical co-founder. Learn it from someone who is doing it now...will be really valuable. If you are in bay area, you can catch such people in hacker dojo.

</comment><comment><USER5> The Jobs to Be Done framework is paramount imo.

[http://jobstobedone.org](http://jobstobedone.org)</comment>


Whatever happened to the Release Notes - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@arenzana/whatever-happened-to-release-notes-84e4429ff5d5#.q31opzbwn <comment><USER2> > Privacy and transparency are hot topics right now, and knowing what goes > into your phone is critical

At this point, it is basically assumed that pretty much anything coming from the App Store is safe.

Maybe your app updates in a way you don't like (e.g. Instagram's latest redesign), what are you going to do? Not update ever again? There is no safety concern here, and if TOS or privacy policies change within the app, you have to agree to them again so they'll let you know.</comment>