Caring for your introvert - <AUTHOR> http://m.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/03/caring-for-your-introvert/2696/ <comment><USER2> The follow-up interviews and bits are worth reading, too, if you've never seen them:

[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/02/introver...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/02/introverts- of-the-world-unite/4646/) [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/02/jonathan...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/02/jonathan- rauch-comments-on-some-of-the-feedback-hes-received-for-caring-for-your- introvert/4647/) [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/04/the- intr...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/04/the-introversy- continues/4845/)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the links! It's nice to see shyness and intro/extroversion addressed as separate things. I've always had a really hard time identifying with descriptions of both introverts and extroverts. I'd really like to read about shy extroverts, if that's not an oxymoron, since I suspect that that description might fit me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Are introverts arrogant? Hardly. I suppose this common misconception has to do with our being more intelligent, more reflective, more independent, more level-headed, more refined, and more sensitive than extroverts."

... That's the very definition of arrogant.

I'm an introvert and happy with it. The people who are still my friends know this and don't try to change me. I don't try to frame my introversion in terms of being better than others, though. I simply am who I am.

<comment><USER5> "Do introverts have trouble picking up on irony?"

<comment><USER6> I teach English comp to freshmen at the University of Arizona and assign this piece every semester. About a quarter to a third of them don't realize that Rauch is joking. Usually I go through the Google section ("I performed exhaustive research on this question, in the form of a quick Google search. The answer: About 25 percent. Or: Just under half. Or—my favorite—"a minority in the regular population but a majority in the gifted population."") to make this obvious.

I've also noticed a weird gender breakdown: a fair number of guys say things like, "this describes me perfectly!" and a fair number of girls say things like, "this describes my boyfriend perfectly!" It's rare to get responses the other way around. Anything that increases understanding is, in my view, a net good thing.

A poorly written book called "The Introvert Advantage" elaborates on the idea that introverts aren't necessarily shy -- they just need time alone to recharge, while extroverts actually find themselves energized by others and bored alone. Despite the low quality of the writing, I sometimes recommend it to people who have that "ah ha!" moment.

<comment><USER7> My favorite part of "The Introvert Advantage" is the lovely blue ink used in printing it. As if introverts are so delicate, black ink would somehow damage our little psyche's.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I appreciate the post as I haven't read it before. I am confident I'm an introvert I definitely NEED my quiet time - plenty of it. I absolutely suck at small talk. In fact, it's one of the things that causes me the most anxiety about business meetings. I'm cool with the meeting/presentations/etc..., but if we have to go to lunch or dinner, I'm petrified!

Below are a couple of things that help me, and I'm curious if other introverts have adopted any tools to help them:

1\. Alcohol! Of course, this isn't always appropriate, but it does seem to work. Hah.

2\. Adopt a passion in a subject that is applicable to a large audience that falls outside your primary expertise. For example - Fitness. As the article states, introverts are perfectly capable of engaging in conversations that interest them without the exhaustion that comes with normal small talk. Most people are interested in fitness. Therefore, if the introvert is highly interested in fitness, it stands to reason that he can steer a conversation in that direction and engage with a wide array of personalities. Food/Nutrition, Travel, history are other examples that might work.

How about you?

<comment><USER9> As an introvert myself, I follow a short list of rules/steps before big events/social gatherings that starts a few days before the event itself. Although I'm usually physically exhausted the day after the event, I'm often complimented and mentioned as 'quite the social butterfly' by friends and acquantances during such events. These things don't take much time, but do take effort. The payoff is worth it though (firends, fun, and fame ;-) ). YMMV.

1\. Ditch the alcohol. Or, at least, know your limit (that gives you a buzz) and have 50% less. You want to be able to remember faces and names of the people you meet and some details about your conversation. So make sure your mental faculties are reasonably sharp.

2\. Spend most of your time listening. Pretend that you're interviewing the person and ask them open ended questions about their job and hobbies. You will almost certainly find out something interesting about them that you can discuss further. Who knows, maybe they're a programmer just like you!

3\. Get up to speed on current events. I personally try not to read much news, but for about 3 days heading up to an event, I'll skim headlines and first paragraphs news articles on a broad range of topics (takes less than an hour each day). The goal here is to create little hooks that you can hang conversations on, it is not to become an expert on a random topic. You'll most certainly run into someone who'll know more than you and will gladly tell you all about it.

4\. Keep it light. You and the other guests are there to have fun. Downers are for drug addicts. Politics and religion is for reddit.

5\. Work the room by having short conversations with lots of people and asking for introductions. Introductions are as simple as asking, "So who else do you know here tonight?".

6\. Prepare yourself mentally for being at the event. Clear out to do's and other distractions. I kind of psych myself up for chatting with lots of people in the same way others might psych themselves up for sports contests (metaphorically, of course).

All of the above can be summed up as:

1\. It's not about you. It's about everyone else who you'll meet, the friends you'll make, and making sure your significant other has a good time (especially if he/she is an extrovert).

2\. Prepare. "A hard drill makes an easy battle".

I've learned to turn down small talk heavy events that I can't adequately prepare for. I've also learned that you can have a 15 minute conversation with someone by just asking what they do for a living and how they got to doing it. I've learned that stock phrases (aka, pick up lines) really work. My favorites are:

"Hi, I'm Andrew."

"What do you do (for a living)?"

And, if I find out the person has an MBA: "So what the hell is future- discounted value?"

<comment><USER10> #5 is gold. You're not there to do business or woo people - it's all about establishing contact so that you can follow-up with a few and do business and go on a coffee date.

What you may find is the simple act of repeated short interactions is the most effective warmup for introversion. The thing is it may take more than one interaction to be warmed up. Five more likely. Any number is better than one.

A social experiment I highly recommend: Walk down a not too busy city street and just start smiling and saying hi to people. You'll find most people will ignore you, maybe even give you a negative look. Don't mind them. If you can get to a certain magic number for the environment, you'll find the balance shifting - you'll start to feel energized, fearless, alive and - it is usually at this point that some people respond back in kind. And when that happens, I can schmooze with the best. In a way only introverts can. This might be 50 HIs and smiles later though. Good luck! Even on a smaller scale (walking into a room and deliberately greeting everyone you first encounter), this really helps!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great article, but repost from over a year and a half ago (and article is from 2003):

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=561311>

<comment><USER12> I will play the role of the guy who has never got the chance to read the article, although it is very old, and I will thank the poster!

<comment><USER13> Me too. This so perfectly describes how I feel in social situations, and it's nice to hear somebody say "It's Ok! It's society that's screwed up, not you."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Some thoughts:

1) Am I the only one thinking, that some of the terms used to describe introverts: "guarded," "loner," "reserved," "taciturn," "self-contained," "private", have since long been stopped to be considered as negatives?

2) Think, Introverts easily command more respect, on an average, than extroverts (no data to back this up. Just my perception). Even extroverts, based on my anecdotal experiences, regard introverts with a lot of respect, as high achievers often tend to be introverted.

3) I like the definition though: "introverts are people who find other people tiring"

4) Think, >=70% ppl on HN are introverts. [ A poll could confirm this ... or break this :) ]

<comment><USER15> I think #1 and #2 are true, but mainly for introverts who are _also_ seen as being somehow "serious" and accomplished, which is what earns the respect, and then the introversion adds an air of mysteriousness to it. There's a pretty old and fairly positive stereotype of the reserved intellectual, and similarly for the quiet, private artist or novelist (the counterpart of the cafe- frequenting extraverted artist).

But I think among people who don't have a particularly serious/accomplished air going for them, extraverts get seen more positively by default. Even if both are seen as sort of time-wasting, somehow "wastes his time drinking and telling stories in bars" gets ranked higher than "wastes his time at home playing videogames".

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Related: _The Nerd Handbook_ by Rands In Repose.

[http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2007/11/11/the_nerd_ha...](http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2007/11/11/the_nerd_handbook.html)

I fit only about half of the things he describes, but that half is so spot-on it sounds like he's been stalking me.

</comment><comment><USER17> Please don't take this dodgy, pop-psychology to heart and act on it. Dividing people into black-and-white introverts versus extroverts is too simple.

</comment><comment><USER18> I can relate to much of what he said. I find that _most_ people are socially tiring, though I have a small network of friends I dont mind hanging out with long term. The metaphor of gasping for air in a fog of contentless conversation is a great way to put it. I was at dinner last night and remember counting the empty sentences of one of the people at my table.

I am also usually pretty quiet in meetings where people are hashing ideas out. I usually like to think things through before speaking from a place of authority on them, which for me means doing a proof of concept and assessing the problems at that point. I personally hate being wrong on a "guess".

</comment><comment><USER19> I can relate to this on a deep level, because apart from being an introvert, I also happen to have a stutter (though they're mutually exclusive. I would've been an introvert even if I didn't have a stutter). So, I try to avoid talking to anyone new, because that triggers the stuttering. Being a startup guy makes this much harder as I have to meet new people now and then. I love meeting new people, but the talking becomes unbearable, and I usually find a way out of the conversation to avoid awkwardness. A lot of my feelings can be summed up by the movie, _Rocket Science_.

<comment><USER14> Some of my good friends, have suffered, from the problem of stutter. To the best I know (we never discussed this), they overcame it, by simply stop getting embarrassed about it. Its hard to acquire that feeling in one go. It needs to be cultivated.

And BTW, Do you know, Hrithik Roshan (Indian Movie Star) has been struggling through an acute stuttering problem, since he was a child. In an interview of his I saw, he was saying he practices on his vocals for about an hour or two daily. Also he occasionally did stuff like: Once he had to do a stage show in Dubai, he shut himself in a cabinet, and screamed at top of his voice. The reason he did it was, so as to not alarm the other people in the hotel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm a big fan of Myers Briggs - the 4 letter assignation that is given to people for rating their personality. Most people lie on a spectrum between E and I (Extrovert and Introvert). We all have quiet time and noisy times and whilst you could consider yourself an Introvert since this is what you prefer, it could be very context sensitive. I expect if you profiled many tech entrepreneurs they would tend to be some sort of hybrid between E and I.

<comment><USER21> You might be interested in <http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4221>

_Today we're going to delve into the murky depths of Jungian psychology, and examine one of its most popular surviving manifestations. The Myers-Briggs test is used all over the world, and is the single most popular psychometric system, with the full formal version of the test given more than 2,000,000 times a year. But is it a valid psychological tool, is it just another pop gimmick like astrology, or is the truth somewhere in between? ..._

<comment><USER20> I think it useful for helping gauge what makes people tick, remember that people lie on a spectrum. Everyone [I know] who has been through has commented that it has provided some insight into how they work. It doesn't pigeon-hole people: after all its not a psychiatric label and simply attempts to crystallize a few key traits into a manageable form. Life is spectrum and MB gets some of these key axes right.

Wasn't it Jung that defined the extrovert and the introvert?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I would challenge the assertion that introversion/extraversion are some sort of immutable orientation. These traits can and do change over time. In high school, I tested as an INTJ on the Myers-Briggs. As an undergrad, I tested as ENFP. As an adult, I'm back to being an introvert. Ask me again in five, ten, twenty years from now and you'll likely get a variety of different answers.

</comment><comment><USER23> So where do I learn how to deal with extroverts....

</comment><comment><USER24> It is amazing how he performed "exhaustive, quick google search" to find the number of introverts??!!

</comment><comment><USER25> The problem with this article, as with Rands' "Nerd Handbook", is that it's impossible to get the extroverts in your life to read it. They're too busy socializing and Facebooking :)

</comment><comment><USER26> Now, the question is what to do if I just don't have any time that I can spend alone. There should be some substitute.

</comment><comment><USER27> I can't be the only one sitting here saying, "Holy shit, so that's my problem".</comment>


Lessons on Going Viral - Audio & Photos (Friend.ly) - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/05/08/technology/210110508-Facebook.html

<comment><USER2> All audio? Never experienced that with nytimes before. All the news that's fit to print...and speak.</comment>


AWS Web Console Down? - <AUTHOR> https://console.aws.amazon.com/console/home
It appears to be down, saying "Website temporarily unavailable".  But it's intermittent for other employees at my company so it might be failing app services behind a load balancer.
CLI access or EC2 services doesn't appear to be affected, at least from us-east-1.
And, of course, the status health dashboard shows Green across the board.  https://status.aws.amazon.com/
UPDATE
HatchedLake721 mentions that it appears to just be us-east-1 Web console that's down.  Use this instead for now: https://us-west-2.console.aws.amazon.com/console/home?region=us-west-2
Thanks @HatchedLake721! <comment><USER2> It seems that the issue may be specific to us-east-1...

[https://console.aws.amazon.com/console/home?region=us- east-1](https://console.aws.amazon.com/console/home?region=us-east-1)

...doesn't work, but:

[https://us-west-2.console.aws.amazon.com/console/home?region...](https://us- west-2.console.aws.amazon.com/console/home?region=us-west-2)

...works.

<comment><USER3> Both of those are working for me. Much appreciated!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's annoying how often status pages for various services (when they even exist at all) show that things are working when they really aren't

<comment><USER5> If you can write a perfect automated status page - can't you basically write perfect integration tests and make sure no bad code gets deployed?

Bit of a chicken and an egg problem :)

<comment><USER6> Do you write every single test for your codebase? Do you have control over every line of code that gets deployed? The purpose of monitoring is to detect issues, because preventing them entirely is next to impossible.

By your logic if you can write perfect integration tests, can't you write perfect application code that doesn't need to be tested?

<comment><USER7> I think you've missed the point.

OP is arguing that a perfect codebase is not possible, therefore it's a bit unfair to complain that the status pages do not work perfectly. Hence the chicken and egg problem of "if I could write a perfect status page, I would have skills such that the status page would not be necessary".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> FWIW, if you're already logged in to the console, it seems to be working just fine. In fact, if I try to go to a specific service page, e.g. [https://s3.console.aws.amazon.com/s3/home?region=us- east-1#](https://s3.console.aws.amazon.com/s3/home?region=us-east-1#) instead of just browsing to the console home page, that also appears to work.

<comment><USER9> This way worked for me too. I was able to go straight to the Lambda console.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> At least AWS doesn't start spamming you weeks after servers go down!

I canceled a dedicated server with IBM SoftLayer (nee ThePlanet), and a few weeks later I started receiving hourly IPAlerts about it being offline!

The server was canceled so there was nowhere in the interface for me to turn them off!

I opened a ticket, and they said other users were experiencing it too, and they though they had it fixed, and asked it I was still getting them. I was.

Their only suggestion was for me to make an email filter to ignore the IPAlerts, but what about the IPAlerts for servers I hadn't canceled that I actually want to see?

We went several rounds of this, each time they thought they had it fixed, and asked if I was still receiving them, and of course I was, like clockwork.

It's been more than a week and a half, and I'm STILL getting them!

I kept posting the raw email bodies so they could tell by the headers where it was coming from.

I even begged them to deploy one of their most powerful firewalls around the offending legacy nagios server to protect me from it, but they wouldn't do that.

I'm afraid if I cancel my other two servers and move to AWS, they's start spamming me with TWO MORE never-ending sets of IPAlerts about canceled servers!

What a passive-aggressive way of punishing long time customers for canceling their servers!

Has anybody experienced anything like this with AWS?

        Received:  from ipalert05.dllstx6.inside.theplanet.com
            by mx.softlayer.com with esmtps (TLSv1:DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA:256)
            (Exim)
            (envelope-from <firstname.lastname@example.com>)
            for email@example.com
            id 1hJhFu-0003RG-Tm; Thu, 25 Apr 2019 11:29:50 -0500
        Received: (from nagios@localhost)
            by ipalert.theplanet.com (8.13.6/8.13.6/Submit) id x3PGSB17029986
            for firstname.lastname@example.com; Thu, 25 Apr 2019 11:28:11 -0500 (CDT)
            (envelope-from nagios)
        Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2019 11:28:11 -0500 (CDT)
        Message-Id: <firstname.lastname@example.com>
        To: email@example.com
        From: <firstname.lastname@example.com>
        Subject: PROBLEM: xxx.xxx.com

</comment><comment><USER11> I think the thing I miss most about AWS was sipping coffee while watching the #wtf peanut gallery on wednesday mornings and during events like this

<comment><USER12> !fq cockroaches

<comment><USER13> In the post-nuclear-holocaust wasteland where only cockroaches survive, the cockroaches will use IRC to rebuild.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Looks like it is not reported having a look at the status dashboard [https://status.aws.amazon.com/](https://status.aws.amazon.com/)

<comment><USER15> They follow the industry standard of hard coding their status dashboards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Individual service pages seem to still be up. So, you can go to the EC2 page for example, click on the services dropdown on the top to select the service you want. [https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/v2/home?region=us- east-1](https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/v2/home?region=us-east-1)

</comment><comment><USER17> Can confirm that I am having this issue.

API requests/CLI work fine though.

</comment><comment><USER18> You should be able to login through [https://us- west-2.console.aws.amazon.com/console/home?region...](https://us- west-2.console.aws.amazon.com/console/home?region=us-west-2)

<comment><USER19> And then switch to us-east-1 services?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> [https://status.aws.amazon.com/](https://status.aws.amazon.com/)

Shows AWS Web Console:

9:50 AM PDT We are investigating increased error rates when loading the AWS Management Console.

<comment><USER20> AWS keeps their status page up2date these days. It's probably easier to check that page than combing through posts on HN, but to each their own.

This makes me wonder... do people keep posting and looking here because they want an element of control, they don't trust or know about status.aws.amazon.com ... or why?

<comment><USER21> The status page was stating all green for about 20 or so minutes after this post was made.

Not really "up2date", so this post was valuable for everyone that was seeing errors and unsure how widespread it was.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'll just report that we had an issue with an Elastic Beanstalk deployment that seems to have resolved itself now. Not sure if its related, but simply retrying the deployment resolved it without making any changes, so it sure seems related.

</comment><comment><USER20> According to the AWS Status Page

Alternate link is available at: [https://us- west-2.console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/v2/home](https://us- west-2.console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/v2/home)

</comment><comment><USER23> Is this the apocalypse?

</comment><comment><USER24> DynamoDB access via api in us-east-1 is down for me as well. Also, access to any region or resource through SSO is failing too.

<comment><USER25> I am having issues with SAML authentication as well

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Strange, I'm experiencing this issue as well. Wonder if it's an attack or just normal failure

</comment><comment><USER27> Also having issues, the AWS status page is oblivious...

</comment><comment><USER28> Same, came here to check if there was any info on it.

</comment><comment><USER29> confirmed, us-west works for logging into the console.

</comment><comment><USER30> us-east-1 is down for me

</comment><comment><USER29> well this is embarrassing.

</comment><comment><USER31> So you can get to AWS resources going direct to the respective URLs, such as [https://s3.console.aws.amazon.com/s3/](https://s3.console.aws.amazon.com/s3/) or [https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/v2/](https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/v2/) or even changing regions works. It seems to just affect [https://console.aws.amazon.com/console/](https://console.aws.amazon.com/console/)

</comment><comment><USER32> Everyone take the day off.</comment>


Stop Trying to Raise Successful Kids, and Start Raising Kind Ones - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/12/stop-trying-to-raise-successful-kids/600751/ <comment><USER2> Growing economic inequality, if left unchecked, is going to make this an increasingly tough proposition. Wonder why the author of the article did not focus instead on encouraging older folks to be "a little more kind" by, for example, rescinding all of the exclusionary zoning laws that are making it so difficult for younger people to buy their first home? After all, what would be a better way to set an example for their children than practicing what the author is asking them to preach.

<comment><USER3> Don't think you need to be this sanctimonious, as those two things aren't mutually exclusive. A child raised with a sociological imagination will eventually come to understand a housing shortage is unjust.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This reminds me of some points in Stephen Covey's Seven Habits. If you foster attributes of primary greatness, such as kindness, and honesty... Then, your actions will reflect who you are, and you will more likely achieve the success you are looking for.

Doing actions for the sake of social and economic success is far less effective than doing things that can result in social and econmic success because that's who you are. Therefore, we need to foster these attributes into ourselves AND our children, and not teach them that success is all that matters, what matters is building proper, and great character.

</comment><comment><USER5> > Psychologists find that kids born after 1995 are just as likely as their > predecessors to believe that other people experiencing difficulty should be > helped—but they feel less personal responsibility to take action themselves.

Awful lot of assumptions derived from this vague line by the author. You say they're unlikely to donate to charity. Try asking why. I have a theory: they want to donate, but literally can't because they have no money! I'd change my mind if I see an opposing study with money as a control between generations.

</comment><comment><USER6> Prents can teach kids to be kind to their siblings or atleast to their parents if no siblings. Also they can set a better example and be kind to the kids and not make their lives unnaturally painful with arbitrary limits such as screen time.

</comment><comment><USER7> Too bad we can't seem to find an ethical way to make being an asshole a detriment to evolutionary survival.

</comment><comment><USER8> Yes, kind kids will be much easier for my successful ones to take advantage of.

</comment><comment><USER9> I appreciate the sentiment, but it's too late. Pete Buttigieg's already here.</comment>


Show HN: Final Touch - <AUTHOR> http://www.finaltouchapp.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello HN peeps.

I would like to invite you to a little experiment.

I have created probably the smallest niche app on the mac app store and I would like you to help me sell and optimize the marketing around it.

Now you might think, "who does this guy think he is? – doesn't he know I have my own business to run?" and you are right it would be unfair to just ask you to help me market my product.

So instead I would like to offer you something in return:

Each month I am going to post all the numbers and the learnings. But more importantly each month you can post suggestions to improvements and strategies and each month those with the highest number of votes will get implemented (within reason of course)

It is my hope that this will be a case study for people to learn from before they venture out into spending money and time on something similar themselves or for people who find this stuff interesting.

The product is done in the spirit of the small butique network weekendhacker.net I started in May So far have +6100 members and have had 150 projects through and is still going strong. And the things I learned from members of the HN community have been invaluable.

Now this is of course just an experiment. Maybe I will break even, maybe I won't. Maybe I will have to cancel it within a couple of months. But none the less I am certain it will both be informative and fun.

Oh and yes you can move the slider on the webpage :)

So what do you think the first round of improvements should be?

<comment><USER2> Do you really have a registered trademark already? If not, you should remove the registered trademark symbol.

<comment><USER3> There is no live registered trademark in the US for "Final Touch" or "FinalTouch" in a relevant class. There was one in the computer software field from 1992 that has since been abandoned.

The proper way to indicate a claim to mark by usage is to use the "TM" (trademark) or "SM" (service mark) designation which indicates a common-law or state law mark. This is also the proper designation if you have filed an application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) but the mark has not yet been granted registration.

You can only legally use the federal registration symbol "®" after the USPTO actually registers a mark, and not while an application is pending or based on common law rights.

<comment><USER4> Nathan, good eye. It seemed unlikely that such a new and niche app had taken the step of federal registration, much less done so long enough ago to be registered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As for all these people bitching about the price of this app: If you think it is worth _less_ than the value that it represents to you then you should go and re-create this app and sell it at a lower price point rather than telling the original developer to lower his price. Be sure to publish your figures.

If you find that $16 is less than the value you'd extract from the app then you should probably buy it.

Of course he can lower the price later, just not all at once, but I'd be more interested in the same story at a different pricepoint with another useful app.

A couple of those and the data would become very valuable.

The fact that people are buying the app just by browsing the app store means that he's at least in the ballpark, the 'ideal' price is something that you can only determine experimentally, not by responding to whining about the price.

<comment><USER6> That's some kind of logical fallacy... sort of like saying... "if you think that aircraft carrier is overpriced, you should build one and sell it yourself."

One can determine objectively whether something is overpriced based on comparisons with competing products.

<comment><USER5> If an aircraft carrier is overpriced then there is a market for cheaper ones and you can make a bundle by putting your money where your mouth is (assuming you are right, of course).

If making aircraft carriers is not your thing then you shouldn't be telling other people how much to charge for theirs.

The only reason multiple competing products would come in to existence is because of people going the first route.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you need to A/B test any of the ideas proposed here (or in future), we'd love to offer you a free subscription to Visual Website Optimizer <http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com> Just contact me paras {at} wingify {dot} com

As for ideas, here are mine:

* If you want to generate traffic, there are some long tail terms that can get you traffic. Try writing some articles on keywords "best mouse for photoshop", "best photoshop mouse", "magic mouse photoshop" or "mouse for photoshop" (Have these terms in title, headline and link them from homepage with this anchor text). Promote your app on these specific articles.

* Contact Smashing Magazine and other design magazines and offer them 3 free licenses to award to their readers.

* Tweet prominent designers to try out your app

* Landing page tip: show a small video demonstrating how to use your app and what results can be gotten.

Good luck with your initiative. Very excited to see this experiment.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fab! This is the kind of feedback I am looking for. Will get in contact with you regarding a/b testing. Too bad I can't AB test pricing on the app store :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> A great idea, both the app and this post!

Unless the unobstrusiveness is the main selling point, I would drop "A small unobtrusive app that allows you to" from the description and just go with "Achieve unrivaled precision with your mouse". You could list the fact that it is unobstrusive further below.

<comment><USER9> Maybe something more succinct, like "Unrivaled Mouse Precision".

<comment><USER10> I understand your idea of making the title as less wordy as possible but in terms of SEO it's not always the best strategy (never actually?). Assuming you want to use SEO as a marketing tool, your title shouldn't come from an idea you had but from actual data. You need to go through keywords on <https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal> and see what people are looking for. For the best result, try to use the words with better results on the title and every now and then on the text of the page (the copy if you prefer).

<comment><USER9> What SEO value do "small unobtrusive app" and "achieve" and "with your" really add to this page? I suppose you'd have to view what kind of conversions you get from those types of keywords, but I wouldn't imagine those keywords coming in with any sort of frequency, or delivering conversions.

I understand your argument, but it would make more sense if the heading had better keywords. I don't see this heading adding much SEO value.

You can always A/B titles and see if a shorter title adds value, and if so, weigh it against SEO value. SEO value isn't the only determining factor; it's optimizing the entire page, which may mean giving up SEO value in favor of optimizing something that delivers higher profits.

<comment><USER10> I wasn't defending the original title, just saying simplifying a title is not always the way to go. Sorry if I misunderstood your suggestion, I agree with all your points.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't have a mac, but nice idea :-)

Feedback: Key mode 1 or 2? Whatever happened to nice labels that don't require looking up in a manual, like "hold" and "toggle"?

<comment><USER12> this was the first thing I noticed as well. I think the extra space required for words is worth the lack of confusion.

<comment><USER11> Agreed. If space is really an issue at least use "T" and "H".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> 15.99 is too expensive, IMO, but I guess you can make that decision based on sales data. I would experiment with 4.99.

Something else a lot of people don't realize is that mouse acceleration is turned on in OSX and it's 'impossible' to disable without an app like USB Overdrive. Mouse accel is terrible for gaming -- especially FPS. I would add this feature to your product and call it out.

<comment><USER14> As a software developer, I find it depressing that people would find 16$ (about 15 minutes of billable work?) too much for an application that, presumably, would be used _all the time_ by people who need high precision pointing.

<comment><USER13> Perhaps, if you were expecting to sell one copy @ $16. But your argument is invalid at internet scale. $.99 games sell millions of volume.

I'm not going to spend $14.99 on it because there are alternative products for cheaper or free. Demand will dictate the price, I simply suggested that 4.99 might be a better price point but that he should look at the data first.

<comment><USER15> It's not a game, though. It's a professional utility for gainfully employed designers, who can either expense it to their MegaCorp, or if they're independent, consider it an investment in their career.

Think about how much the Adobe Suite costs. $16 is not too much for this audience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Great app, but you need to drop the price to below $8 - I think this will help you maximise revenue. (based on my experience of having several top 50 apps on the mac app store over the past few months).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thnx for the feedback. You think I should do it instantly or wait until tomorrow?

<comment><AUTHOR> I will keep it where it is I guess. No need to rock the boat :)

<comment><USER16> Change it today, in time for the weekend.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Breathtaking design. Minor suggestions...

Tighten the headline: "Instantly change your mouse precision."

On the Support page: 1) respell "Suppport" 2) add a space to "FinalTouchsupport" 3) shorten "Adobe CS1 [...]" to "Adobe CS3+" and 4) drop the ".php"

<comment><AUTHOR> graci!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Good luck. A small comment: "precision speed" is a slightly misleading term, especially when combined with a percentage measurement."Mouse speed" or "Movement speed" or just "Precision" are best? If the latter, then you can just invert the bar (i.e. 100% precision is super slow movement). As it is now, without reading the description on the website there is no intuitive selection for the user (much as with your "key mode" drop down).

<comment><USER19> Agreed, especially since your slider uses a percentage value (what's 100% of speed?). If instead you used a label of 'Precision' like anateus suggested, or a similar word like Accuracy and your end values were 'High' and 'Low' that should make more sense.

2 CSS booboos:

\- .main-description has 2 font-sizes, the second should be font-weight.

\- in styles.css the images/line.png image returns a 404 on line 26.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> There was a time a few years back where I put in a tremendous amount of time to locate a developer that could make a Mac OS X mouse drive.

Apparently, from talking to a few people, it is a hard thing to do.

I tried to buy USBoverdrive, as it is rather poorly supported, there are long standing repeatable bugs that support often times will not even reply to. It used to be bundled with MacAlly Mice.

I find the driver software for high end mouses to be terrible for your system, and often don't work well. For me, it is not about all the features, the buttons that you can define and macros.

I needed two features, one not as important, the other a must have.

Chording - it would be nice, not many think it can be done well. I tend to think it could be done well and someone should give it a try.

Where all mouse driver software stands still, and I wonder how you are working this out, is in the acceleration/ballistic curve.

I always wanted a way in USBoverdrive to hit a hot key and have a second definition of settings kick in so I could accomplish exactly what your app is doing.

However, without trying your app, I can't be sure it won't do anything more than just slow it down. Slowing it down is not all that there is to making this truly awesome.

Personally, I like to be able to move the mouse about an inch, maybe two, and have it travel the spam of ~24" display. But only if I do so rather fast. If I slow my movement down, I want to span a much lesser distance, with more precision. Current software on the market can't do this. You may get one aspect right, but end up with a mouse that is jittery and the smallest movement it can make is around 10px.

Or, you get it so that it will make a smooth 1px movement, but you have to pick up, place, drag, repeat... the actual mouse to ever get across the screen.

Is there any way to define this in your software? What curve are you using to change this? How in the heck were you able to access and over-ride Apple's built in mouse curve?

</comment><comment><USER21> My two year old, $19, Microsoft mouse has already this with the software it come with. I don't mean to discourage you, but I think you spent more time on the design and execution than developing the software itself.

$19 is a lot of money for a simple thing like that. It's the price of a mouse + a software that customize many things for it (buttons, speed...). However, the niche is interesting. I'll be glad to pay $30 for a software that improves my mouse precision.

<comment><USER22> Mice come in classes as well. E.g., I use a 69 Euro Apple Magic Trackpad (and disliked plain-old mice ever since). Compared to the cost of a good trackpad it is not that expensive.

I personally don't need the added precision, but if I did, 20 dollars is not a lot for added productivity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Have you at all checked if graphic designers need this sort of functionality? I tinker with pixel perfect designs quite extensively and zooming in is _the_ way to get more precision out of mouse. Few designers on Dribbble posted videos showing how they work and this use pattern - zoom-in, tweak, zoom-out - is so engraved into their work style that I am having hard time imagining why they would switch. Also, consider the fact that even if the mouse is moving slower, the pixels are not getting bigger. In other words, increasing mouse precision does not remove the need for zooming in. Especially on larger screens.

So there you have it :) Great app, very well done website, but I think ultimately the niche is not just small, it is also very oddly shaped.

(edit) Perhaps repackaging the app and re-aiming it at gamers (as others suggested) would be a thing to try. Though on the other hand many gaming mice come with a hardware button toggling the deceleration.

</comment><comment><USER24> Nice. How did you arrive at that price point?

<comment><AUTHOR> I just though what I would be willing to pay my self as a designer. If I am wrong I will have to change it of course.

<comment><USER24> I'd be inclined to go $19 or even $29 - remember the target market isn't us, and doesn't typically use open source.

Professional CAD software costs thousands per seat, as does an Adobe live license.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Sounds like a neat app!

The tooltip on "Support" says "Got problems. We got solutions". You might want to turn that dot into a question mark. Also, the support page has 3 P in Support at the top

<comment><USER26> Also, the Updates link on the bottom of the home page is broken, points to /update.php, not /updates.php like it should. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Handy, especially as I've moved to using touchpads most of the time. Seems like this should be a part of the OS itself. Site design is very clean.

Nitpicks:

\- Web demo slider doesn't work in Safari 5.0.4, neither do any of the toggles, though cursor:pointer indicates that they should. Twitter dialog has a lower z-index than the precision slider handle.

\- Why keep the strikethrough higher price? Seems to cheapen percieved value.

</comment><comment><USER28> I would buy this if the price was lower.

Perhaps around $7.99, to make it £5 in the UK, more or less.

Fantastic idea, fantastic site. Well done.

<comment><USER29> I'm curious on the poster's behalf; what about $9.99? Would you still buy it right now? Would an extra pound put you off that much?

<comment><USER28> Probably not actually. It is a really good idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Nice website design and nice experiment. I hate to rain on the parade but most OS have implemented Precision Booster to exponentially slow down the mouse to allow precise control of the mouse pointer, and also they have implemented Mouse Keys to allow moving the pointer one pixel at a time by pressing keys.

Hopefully your app can create differentiation. Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER31> How did you decide upon your price point?

</comment><comment><USER32> +1 for the design and what everyone else have said. I would lower the price to something like £3 - £4 and don't create the illusion that the app has been discounted. It tells me you've tried to sell it and it didn't work. Now you're lowering the price creating an "Is the app any good?" mentality.

</comment><comment><USER29> Is one possible angle to sell this to people not using their regular equipment and going mad using a crappy mouse or so on?

I know that I'm not the target audience, but when forced to use someone else's computer for a few days, things like this have briefly driven me mad :)

</comment><comment><USER33> Cool looking app. Passed it on to some designer friends.

I think the price point is probably right - a lot of Apple products are expensive and I believe the Apple owner mindset makes these folks more willing to part with their cash for good things.

</comment><comment><USER34> To make it more appealing I would turn the widget on the website into a real demo in the browser which would slow the mouse pointer down using JavaScript. The user could experience the awesomeness of your app before purchasing.

</comment><comment><USER35> The price seems incredibly high, sales would probably be better at a lower price point. I would think that you would benefit more from an "impulse purchase" price vis-a-vis a professional utility price.

<comment><USER36> sales would almost certainly be higher, but revenue may not. it's a less convoluted version of the laffer](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve>laffer) curve—the argument for lowering taxes to raise revenue. i think holding off on price changes for at least a week would be, as GHWB might say, 'prudent'. without that data, how can you know where you are on the curve? and how can you know if changes in price are the reason for more sales? i am not sure that 'impulse purchase' is where this app needs to go.

<comment><USER35> By lowering the price, you increase the number of people who find it within their expected value calculation.

By increasing the number of customers, you increase the number of data points.

Increasing number of data points, if the product is good, will increase both confidence _and_ expected value. (The latter because more people are likely to contact the data.)

The spread of information will be geometric.

The customer base will, at best, build quickly from a low base.

However, the longer the low base period lasts, the greater the risk that some other application steals priority, ending the process.

Lower prices. Market bomb. Raise prices once saturation assures that you build quickly from a medium base. Do this transparently so people don't bad mouth you, biasing future information.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Tweeted about it for ya - have a small amount of designy followers who might be interested.

Design is well done - polished and shiny, kinda how I sum up a mac (I say this as a non-mac user). Kudos.

</comment><comment><USER38> I really like the menubar popover UI. What did you use to create that?

</comment><comment><USER39> Perhaps create a short video or animation that shows the problem, and how FinalTouch solves it. Put a short one on your landing page, and a longer one (with audio) on youtube.

</comment><comment><USER40> Nice idea. I seen it initially on Forrst. I'm interested by the fact that you plan on being transparent about the numbers. Where do you plan on posting these figures?

</comment><comment><USER41> A video or a menu item where I can click and actually see how this improves what I have right now would be all I need to try it out - didn't see that?

</comment><comment><USER42> Why is your mode switch a slider between 1 and 2?

</comment><comment><USER43> Can't you just buy a mouse which has a dedicated dpi switcher button for basically the same amount of cash?

<comment><USER44> Does that work with a touchpad? Does that mean switching to a new, unfamiliar mouse?

Look, it's a niche app. It won't make a billion dollars. It solves a small problem that some people have.

If you do some geeky "I can solve that problem for less", fine. But not everyone has brilliant problem solving skills, and the time to look at _every_ alternative. They find something that works OK, and use it.

Some people use dropbox, not rsync. _Programmers_ pay for Github, not a commodity host with git. Slightly suboptimal (from my perspective) products still sell, every day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> When rolling over precision speed and the tooltip comes up, 'become' needs to be changed to 'becomes'.

</comment><comment><USER46> you should create an affiliate link (if you can) and let us try to sell it for you, get a cut.

<comment><AUTHOR> sure what cut do you think is reasonable?

<comment><USER46> At least when I've done affiliate sales for information products, the cut is generally 51% or higher (since each sale costs you nothing, and the affiliate is driving you traffic you wouldn't have otherwise). For recurring income, it's usually 35% or so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Wouldn't most of your target group be using a graphics tablet for precision ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Some do yes. I am experimenting with making it for for that too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> May be a nit-pick, but please consider having a favicon on the website.

</comment><comment><USER49> Give Macheist a call. It's a pretty sweet way to get attention.

</comment><comment><USER50> SteerMouse does this as well, and much, much more, from the mouse itself, it's $20 <http://plentycom.jp/en/steermouse/index.html>

</comment><comment><USER51> Is the ® necessary?

</comment><comment><USER52> Very nice!</comment>


Select Code_execution from * Using SQLite; (2019) - <AUTHOR> https://media.ccc.de/v/36c3-10701-select_code_execution_from_using_sqlite <comment><USER2> Combined with the correctness fuzzing results by SQLancer [1] where SQLite had 179 issues revealed (vs. 11 in PostgreSQL), I think the 100% coverage is a lot less meaningful than I had thought.

Robustness is not necessarily correctness and if the unit tests are just mirror images of the code, their results may help against regressions but little for correctness.

[1]: [https://www.manuelrigger.at/dbms- bugs/](https://www.manuelrigger.at/dbms-bugs/)

<comment><USER3> > Combined with the correctness fuzzing results by SQLancer [1] where SQLite > had 179 issues revealed (vs. 11 in PostgreSQL), I think the 100% coverage is > a lot less meaningful than I had thought.

That's really not a honest view of it, the SQLancer page specifically notes:

> The SQLite3 developers were most responsive and very appreciative of our bug > reports. They fixed the bugs we reported at an impressive speed, which is > why we concentrated on testing this DBMS.

They don't provide run times, but they're empathetically stating most of their runtime is on SQLite. For instance they only have 5 issues for MariaDB because… they stopped testing it as the devs were not responsive.

<comment><USER2> I am aware.

The thought I had could maybe better expressed as:

"If even SQLite, with its almost unsurpassed testing, has so many 'issues', then that approach of testing cannot be seen as a strong indicator of correctness."

Which is sort of a truism, but seeing the trend of more and more unit tests instead of also investing in other strategies made me blurt that out.

That said, I will continue to use sqlite without hesitation, the robustness is just soothing in a world of terrible libraries.

We can argue about the weak typing though :P

<comment><USER4> I love sqlite but I wish they invested in a strict mode. Although thinking about it that's not really "a strict mode of the existing sqlite3" and it's more likely to be "an entirely different library altogether, with some shared code"...

I am basically after an embedded Potgres I suppose. I really wish sqlite went into that space. Or anyone else, really.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I feel like I just watched the original first presentation of SQL injection - this is that big a deal. (I can't find the link, but the guy who gave that presentation thought it bombed because people started getting up and walking out five minutes into his talk - it turned out they were trying to get to the pay phones first so they could call back to their offices and alert them that the world had just been lit on fire).

<comment><USER6> IIRC it was Jeff Forristal who gave that talk, but I too am unable to find the video.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is surprising. SQLite is known for having 100% code coverage, fuzzy testing, and a 644:1 tests to code ratio. If even that cannot stop this kind of attack then we really need to rethink computers from the ground up...

[https://sqlite.org/testing.html](https://sqlite.org/testing.html)

<comment><USER8> I'm not convinced.

If lockpicking and other ancient hobbies are anything to go on, it doesn't matter how many redesigns you go through; people will just create new specialized/innovative tools to break/attack the most popular ones.

<comment><USER9> Locks are physical devices and so are susceptible to all manner of wonderful and surprising physical attacks.

Programming languages can artificially limit the attack surface. (Up to hardware exploits which can subvert the processor itself.)

<comment><USER10> I don't understand this reasoning at all. Locks attempt to artificially limit the (physical) attack surface as well. This could, in fact, be a reasonable _definition_ of a lock. So people come up with wonderful and surprising configurations of matter that cause these artificial limitations to fail providing direct access to the lock's root mechanism (via unanticipated route).

This is analogous to virtual attacks on information systems which are hardened against familiar routes of ingress and vulnerable to those which are wonderful and surprising.

<comment><USER11> I don't know about the GP's wording, but there _is_ a difference. It is possible for a piece of software to be perfectly secure against software-based attacks, i.e. there's no possible data you can send it that will cause it to misbehave. It is not possible for a lock to be perfectly secure against physical attacks; if nothing else, you can always break it with brute force.

Of course, even perfect software is susceptible to physical attacks on the hardware it's running on, but that's different.

<comment><USER12> > It is possible for a piece of software to be perfectly secure against > software-based attacks, i.e. there's no possible data you can send it that > will cause it to misbehave.

I don't think this is obvious, even for theoretical software, much less for practical software. Even formal methods have limitations.

A very public recent example was of the formally proven logic in Intel and other processors around speculative execution (Spectre, Meltdown etc.). That logic was formally proven not to leak information, but the formal model wasn't actually sophisticated enough. Note that these weren't hardware bugs (they weren't bugs in the electrical components of the processor or in the analog logic), they were logic bugs in the processor's code (whether that was microcode or burned into the processor is less relevant).

In general, you can prove that a piece of software adheres to some specification, but you can't prove that the specification itself is complete enough.

Of course, realistic software has many more layers of uncertainty, and realistic formal verification is far to costly to apply to anything but very short programs.

<comment><USER13> Thanks, this is for once in this thread, a real caveat in the application formal verification (or rigorous type systems). It's hard, it's not unlimited, and one may have fail to state crucial properties that matter in the first place.

Still, there are a lot of properties that are easy to state, and a lot of properties that are feasible to prove, and the intersection of these two can be very valuable in eradicating common issues in critical software, be it out- of-bounds pointers or your garden variety type confusion. (Again, not always possible, thanks to the halting problem, but often.)

The cost may indeed be prohibitive, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If I understand this correctly, you need a malicious sqlite database file, which I don't think you could create with sqlite itself. Which means, in order to exploit this, you first have to get this malicious database onto their computer. So while this seems serious enough, it may not be time to panic quite yet.

<comment><USER15> I'm guessing this submission is a reaction to another post on the frontpage: "SQLite as an Application File Format" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23508923](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23508923)

In this case it's relevant, as untrusted SQLite files would be downloaded and loaded in this context.

<comment><USER14> I see. I had thought of that more as a format for applications to store their persistent data than for data interchange. When used for the latter, the danger seems clear enough. (I also just noticed that the original post is half a year old.)

<comment><USER16> If you're using it for persistent storage, its probably inevitable that a user sends in their copy as part of a bug report and a developer cracks it open.

<comment><USER14> Good point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Seems like the fts3_tokenizer was disabled in a 2016 release: [https://www.sqlite.org/releaselog/3_11_0.html](https://www.sqlite.org/releaselog/3_11_0.html) (due to security concerns)

Did PHP7 still use an older version at the time of this talk (late 2019)?

I agree with the speaker that the interface of fts3_tokenizer is mind blowing.

<comment><USER18> But then the intrusion vector got enabled for backwards compatibility in some distros. [https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=207924](https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=207924)

<comment><USER17> Thanks, that was unfortunate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't see the practical attack vector. For every use case I have for SQLite, none of them involve allowing someone to execute arbitrary SQL against one of my databases. We also don't do any loading of databases from untrusted parties. Seems like a hypothetical scenario was invented here that could just as well be applied to any database engine with similar outcomes.

<comment><USER2> The exploit works with any query performed on the sqlite db file.

The expected tables are replaced by views that execute the arbitrary sql.

<comment><USER20> The attack is clever and original. AFAIK, nothing like it has ever been seen before.

Since this attack came to light, SQLite has added features so that an application can ensure that views and triggers do not have side-effects (outside of the database file itself). And if there are no side-effects then the attack is basically harmless. Sure, the attacker can still exfiltrate or corrupt data, but the attacker had to have write access to the database file in order to carry out the attack in the first place, so exfiltrating or corrupting data is not an issue - they could already do that. See a quick summary at [https://sqlite.org/forum/forumpost/8beceed68e](https://sqlite.org/forum/forumpost/8beceed68e)

<comment><USER21> Was the write a shell php file portion of the video/exploit patched?

Sites like [https://sqliteonline.com/](https://sqliteonline.com/) and [https://inloop.github.io/sqlite-viewer/](https://inloop.github.io/sqlite- viewer/) could be perpetually vulnerable if not?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Not sure why there are comments on this about SQLite's "correctness" or "testing": these are "works as intended" oversights where you run a query and SQLite does as you asked, except if you give an attacker too much control over the query it gives an unpredicted amount of control over what it lets you do. It's similar to command injection: bash could be 100% fuzzed and covered, but if you pass a string into it unescaped it's still going to let an attacker run code…

<comment><USER23> Yeah this appears to apply more to things like websql. But not in situations where sqlite is used behind a web service that uses prepared statements and best practices and such. If I'm wrong I'd like to know though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> A lot of comments on this thread ponder the difference between logical and physical, between software and hardware bugs. There is absolutely no difference. As a kind reminder, computation is a physical process, period. Any proofs of correctness apply only within the confines of the model in which they are proven. To the folks fond of formal verification, methinks Kripke agrees. To the folks presenting hardware bugs as a counterexample, it is not. If you include hardware bugs in your security analysis, and you should, you are merely taking a wider view of the system.

</comment><comment><USER25> In the context of the recent discussion[1] about using an SQLite database as an application file format, is there a way to mitigate these problems?

For example, a way to verify that the SQLite database has the exact schema that you expect and doesn't have weird views configured to hijack your normal queries?

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23508923](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23508923)

</comment><comment><USER26> >> We created a rogue SQLite database that exploits the software used to open it.

So, here, they are replacing the whole database and then stealing the passwords? I would guess that if a malicious actor has that kind of access to the system, all is lost.

<comment><USER27> SQLite notably is often used as a file format. For example, for browser cookie storage.

As you can see in the next sentence after your quote,

> Exploring only a few of the possibilities this presents we'll pwn password > stealer backends while they parse credentials files and achieve iOS > persistency by replacing its Contacts database…

(The major browsers store passwords in SQLite databases, so password stealers upload those to a backend. iOS makes it hard to run code persistently (if you have a shell once, can you keep it after a reboot), so the Contacts database is a target for persistence.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> (2019)

</comment><comment><USER29> >have to install a pre-corrupted database.

So basically a nothingburger.

These guys seem like they're just trying to get attention and make a name. I'd say if someone has access to install a pre-corrupted file, code execution is already a given.

<comment><USER30> SQLite as an Application File Format (2014) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23508923](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23508923)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Does anyone wear special glasses for programming? - <AUTHOR> I'm scoping out new glasses via the regular online vendors (I have the prescription in hand).  One of the vendors offers to create a pair of glasses optimized for reading and "heavy computer use".
Has anyone ever tried glasses optimzed for "heavy computer use" and if so, did it make any sort of difference?
PS - I'm nearsighted, not farsighted. <comment><USER2> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL_HAmWQTgA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL_HAmWQTgA)

<comment><AUTHOR> That is pretty cool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Unless things have drastically changed in the 2 years since I got my glasses, it's just going to be a special UV coating.

I used to get a lot of headaches from eye strain (I assumed). Since I started wearing these glasses while programming, they have happened much more infrequently.

<comment><AUTHOR> They actually adjust the prescription to optimize for near vision.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have a pair that's adjusted for focus under about 1 meter. It's similar to bifocals but with separate glasses for each focal distance.

I used to have the continuous transition lenses, but my neck got tired from keeping the same angle all the time.</comment>