The Lure of Chilecon Valley - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/node/21564589

<comment><USER3> I am in Startup Chile as a technical cofounder. I found my team via a post on hackernews.

I can answer questions, but the one thing that I don't think any other incubator program has is the diversity and community. Some of us had dinner last night, and at the table were at least 9 nationalities represented, which is totally normal in startup chile. And they all have a common passion of technology, business, and innovation. The program self organizes into topical groups, and all in the name of information sharing. I truly believe the success of the program hinges on this network.

Santiago is safe, just like the rest of the country, and the economic development arm of the govt is very aggressive. I believe they are matching 50% of private funding for economic development, and it is common for startup chile graduates to get some of this funding if they decide to stay in Chile. (We were just awarded a grant to help internationalize and promote our business outside of Chiles borders, for instance)

We met with a large well respected law firm yesterday to look into incorporating here, and they are also modelling the SV/NYC pro bono/deeply discounted rates for startups, which is great sign and definitely needed.

Lots of opportunity down here for someone that wants to be part of an amazing community.

<comment><USER4> Would you recommend the program for someone with a family? Do you see this much in your group?

<comment><USER3> My partner is married, and I know of several teams with spouses and children. Some have come with their entire families, some have not.

It's certainly possible, a bit of an adventure for sure, and I feel like a lot of people with families live outside of Santiago (even though there are family friendly suburbs in city limits). You are free to live anywhere in Chile, including Easter Island. Though living in Santiago makes the monthly paperwork meetings easier.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> An interesting article about a project discussed from time to time here on Hacker News. It would be interesting to hear comments from HN participants in Chile about this paragraph from the article: "Another barrier to creating a vibrant start-up culture is Chile's harsh bankruptcy regime, which makes it hard for those who fail to start afresh. Also, the economy is dominated by a few vast business empires and an extremely conservative bureaucracy. Ironically, this is threatening to stifle a peer-to-peer lending business that Mr Shea, Start-Up Chile's founding father, recently launched."

<comment><USER6> I grew up in Chile and although bankruptcy laws are harsh, labor laws are even harsher and unlikely to change given the political power of unions:

Employers are mandated to give 30 days notice when laying off employees. They also have to pay 1 month per each year of employee service. (employee been there 9 years, you have to pay him monthly salary * 10 to let him go)

This law is good for employee stability and help keeps salaries low (employees with several years of service are unlikely to quit and lose the accrued severance). However you cannot show up one morning, close the curtain and tell everybody "sorry, company ran out of money".

<comment><USER7> Maybe you can answer this for me, since I've always wondered: what happens if your company runs out of money, and you get into an impossible situation where you can't keep paying your employees, but you also can't afford to pay the severance required by law to lay them off?

Does the government throw you in jail? Does it come out of your own pocket? (And what if you personally can't afford it?) Does the company just end up owing everyone a bunch of money it can't pay anyway?

<comment><USER8> I don't know about Chile, but in Mexico with similar laws the company will go to something similar to chapter 11. And this money owned to employees will the considered as part of the company debts (however it'll be the higher priority debt).

As a debt it can be negotiated (with unions) or if the company is liquidated it'll be pay (in full or part) out of any money that can be extracted from the company assets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I been checking StartupChile for a while but the one thing keeping me from applying is that many ex-alumni have complained about the lack of a proper investors network in Chile to provide growth capital once the program is over.

Some have moved overseas or back home with their new companies, which is sort of the opposite of what this program is all about: creating a startup ecosystem _in Chile_

Companies leaving the country after seed stage kinda defeats the purpose of it.

<comment><USER10> I don't know if the goals of StartupChile have changed, but the original goal of the program was to build a network in the global startup/venture community and connect Chile to the rest of the world, which I think they've done very well so far.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Do you have to incorporate in Chile to participate in Startup Chile? Or do you only have to consider employing local people/making it your hq?

<comment><USER12> neither - <http://startupchile.org/about/faqs/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> That name doesn't quite work. Sounds more like a valley of con men in Chile, than the Chilean Silicon Valley.

<comment><USER14> To me, it sounds like delicious culinary convention in a valley. Not a negative.

<comment><USER13> That was my second thought too. Either way, not exactly what was intended.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "There was the founder of Kwelia.com, which makes software that helps landlords mint more money from their properties"

Is that really the economist I'm reading? If even they're getting sick of the rentier class the revolution can't be far behind!

<comment><USER16> "makes software that helps $BUSINESS_OWNERS mint more money from their $BUSINESS_ASSETS"

Pretty much every B2B software can be described in the same sentence - <USER2> else would landlords do with their properties?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm in Chile as a cofounder on a team with multiple nationalities. This article, unlike most, focuses on the visa aspect and the fact that the USA is hostile to foreigners who want to start companies there.

This is a huge point. Chile has relatively straightforward residency permit, and after getting your a 1 year permit extended once (eg: being there 2 years) they have a straightforward permanent residency process.

For us, this is pretty appealing for after we leave the Startup Chile program.

After all, we can't go back to either of our home countries because if we do the other half of the founding team will be considered "aliens" and have a very difficult process of getting residency and work permits, that would be ongoing-- and that's even assuming we can get permission.

Chile is not perfect- there's a lot of bureaucracy, the business culture is often lackadaisical, and it is a first world country, so it is not like we're living in paradise on a discount (well, only a slight discount.)

But they are happy to have us live and work here, and have a variety of programs to support starting businesses.

In fact, I've heard that private investment is inhibited to some extent because here, when someone talks about getting financial support for a startup, everyone just assumes the government will pay for it.

<comment><USER18> Hey, how can I contact you besides replying to one of your most recent posts? Apparently HN doesn't have a private mail system, so this is the only way I can reply after the discussion has been locked. You wrote a ridiculous ad- hominem attack to my post calling you on your bullshit a while ago, that I didn't see until now, and I'd like to follow up. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4435852> You accused me of being stupid and not being able to support my claim, but of course I can: [http://www.beststuff.com/audiovideo/connectedtv-turns- palm-h...](http://www.beststuff.com/audiovideo/connectedtv-turns-palm- handheld-into-tv-guide-and-remote-control.html) <http://www.pencomputing.com/palm/Pen44/connectedTV.html> Do you really still believe Apple invented finger gestures? That's very naive -- you should do some research before calling people names.</comment></comment>


Walksource (YC S14) helps hotels solve relocations - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/14/bumped-from-your-hotel-walksource-aims-to-find-you-a-free-room-fast/

<comment><USER2> Oh no Walnut Creek, the humanity of it all! It's a whole half hour on the yellow line to downtown SF.

All jokes aside, this is probably pretty smart, although maybe give more involvement to the customer. The first thing anyone does when the hotel tells them its overbooked is take to their smartphone. If a customer can say, "can I stay here instead?" it might help nudge the process along.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hate to be negative nellie but this strikes me as a very small niche that should almost disappear on its own. Which is fine, just not something I'd expect from YC or venture in general.

<comment><USER2> While getting "walked" is the short story, you could flatten this out to other overbooked rentals like automobiles. If you can set up a system that is efficient enough to allow a company to overbook without worrying about hurting customer satisfaction I imagine there is a lot of money to be made.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So how does Walksource guarantee placement? How is this better than say using HotelTonight to place someone?</comment>


Ubuntu for Smartphones: What it Means for You - <AUTHOR> http://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/2013/01/04/ubuntu-for-smartphones-what-it-means-for/

<comment><USER2> The only success I can reasonably see for this Ubuntu for Smartphones is outside the US.</comment>


Sketch battling it out with Figma and Invision - <AUTHOR> https://blog.sketchapp.com/sketch-raises-20m-in-series-a-funding-from-benchmark-ea298764d7d1 <comment><USER2> Please don't editorialized in submission titles!

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> > Bringing Sketch to the Browser: Starting Late 2019 And just as we're > bringing more of Cloud to Sketch, we want to close the loop by taking more > of Sketch to the Cloud. We're going to render the entire document, add > developer handoff, and allow rich editing along with collaboration, all > without leaving the browser.

They have their work cut out for them, Sketch is currently desktop based and they're recognising they need to follow Figma into the cloud. Figma have a big lead here. Tough times ahead.</comment>


Google Shows Off its Tablet Concept - <AUTHOR> http://www.thechromesource.com/google-shows-off-its-tablet-concept/

<comment><USER2> Et tu, Google?

I had grown used to Microsoft reflexively competing with whatever led the tech headlines that month, whether it was Zune coming out to combat iPod, Surface and Zune Phone to combat iPhone, multiple attempts to combat Google, and so forth.

Part of this is simply having a shotgun approach, which is a cheap way to diversify your business. After reading _The Road Ahead_ , I got the distinct impression, based on Gates' appraisal of Wang, that his greatest fear for Microsoft was to stay stuck in one product line and be made obsolete by the next big thing, which partially explains the shotgun strategy and even the trend-jumping strategy. Still, it comes off as desperate for Microsoft to respond in kind to each new product category that makes news, like they are trying to prove their relevance. Secure companies which really do innovate don't need to imitate and they don't need to try so hard to prove their relevance.

Google, too, always had a shotgun approach by design, but seeing this makes me worry that Google is following Microsoft into the hole of mimicking whatever the big news is at the time. I don't think that road pays off. It's the exact opposite of what Google started off doing--improving a boring and forgotten part of the internet ecosystem--and it's the exact opposite of Apple's strategy. (If Microsoft and Google are shotguns, Apple is a sniper rifle carefully picking off market opportunities no one else really sees that well.)

<comment><USER3> The "this smells like MSFT" bell was ringing loudly in my head as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The size of their tablet in the video makes it look closer to something like MS Surface than a 'tablet' device.

</comment><comment><USER5> HN makes quite a few appearances :-).

</comment><comment><USER6> Real artists ship. I'll care when it's more than a concept.

<comment><USER7> Nice soundbite, but that's nonsense.

They're not trying to compete with Apple. It's just a demo they had lying around (probably from back when everyone was going crazy about chrome os), which they released because everyone's going crazy over tablets.

It's timely, and it's worth watching. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nq3EeZz-W3A> has some similar interactions.

<comment><USER6> Regardless of Google's intentions, it's going to be perceived as part of their feud with Apple. Anyone can make a demo, but Google has yet to demonstrate that they can execute well on hardware.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm not really sold - one of the strengths of the iPad is that it has a UI that's specifically geared towards finger interaction - a lot of this concept seems like it's just doing "desktop UI with touch enhancements". IMHO that's not enough.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, a lot of things seem to happen "by magic" and one wonders a) what seemingly-invisible element on the screen is the user touching to make that happen and b) how did the user learn that? I didn't get that feeling from the iPad videos I've seen.

<comment><USER10> I agree (I made the video). There is actually bunch of thinking behind it, but we're leaving it rough because we don't want to pretend we're developing high- detail specs just yet, as doing so tends to lock you in to a certain approach - we really do prefer to experiment in code.

The point of the Chromium site is not to sell, but to be pretty open about what we're doing and what we're thinking early in the process so that our external contributors, who we value highly, can get access to the same information that our internal teams can and so that they don't get surprised by sudden public changes in direction.

It's a tough balance - not over-specifying yet being open, especially when people are used to everything a company puts out being a high-definition advertisement. This open development style is still new to me, and hope we'll get better at it with practice.

(FWIW, this is all personal opinion, not Google's).

<comment><USER11> Are you targeting a specific physical size with the concepts? Like someone else said, that device looks fairly big. It seems reasonable that what is best for a big display might not be best for a small one.

Also, as a general suggestion, one of the -worst- things about the current desktop is manual window management - please, please come up with an automatic system that _works_! The iPhone sidesteps this by only allowing one app at a time, but with several apps it'll be one of the make-or-break aspects of these devices...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> In "Marketing Warfare," Reis and Trout explain that while you should take advantage of a competitor's weakness, you should never make it your primary point of attack. In stead, you should attack a competitor's _strength_.

The problem with a weakness is that a competitor can fix it, nullifying your attack. In fact, they may already be working on a fix, so you may get to market and discover your entire strategy is bunk. Whereas they can't 'fix' one of their strengths. In more modern terms, attacking their strength is leveraging The Innovator's Dilemma.

So about multi-tasking. Whoop-de-doo. This is a weakness Apple can fix with a minor point release of their OS. iPads have more battery and a faster processor, they are probably already toying with the idea. This is not a point of attack for Google.

OTOH, the Apple Store is a strength for Apple. The well-behaved apps are a benefit for users, so having an open ecosystem is attacking Apple's strength. If Apple opens its ecosystem up, junkware, malware, and other forms of app garbage will quickly follow, which will eat away at Apple's control of the user experience.

Thus, openness is a great strategy for Google to follow, while multi-tasking is simply something they should do but not hang their hat on.

</comment><comment><USER13> Wow. If you look closely, they open Hacker News at 0:14. :)

</comment><comment><USER14> Looks pretty dang annoying to use. Bringing the windows metaphor into small form factor touchscreen devices is not exactly something I'm looking forward to.

Maybe on a wall where space is cheap.

<comment><USER15> I've always thought a combination of a touchscreen interface that can reconfigure itself, and a touchscreen display, so you don't break your neck bending over to look at it, would be best...and the most flexible. On something the size of this, I'd bet that typing on it wouldn't even be that bad after a while.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Apple demos NY Times.

Google demos Hacker News.

</comment><comment><USER17> I have very high hopes for the upcoming Chrome OS netbooks. I'm probably the only one here planning on using one as my primary computer. After the disappointment that was the iPad, I suspect the media is going to be very kind to the launch of the Chrome netbooks. I just hope someone makes one with a 12 or 13'' screen.

<comment><USER17> Btw, these concepts are definitely somewhat distant and based on iMac sized tablets. I can guarantee that the first Chrome OS Tablet is going to look pretty much just like Chrome OS with an on screen keyboad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> What's the rationale for Google getting in on the hardware business anyway? Are they so concerned that Apple will dominate the metal that the web is viewed under that they have to take matters into their own hands? It seems a bit extreme.

<comment><USER19> > Are they so concerned that Apple will dominate the metal that the web is > viewed under that they have to take matters into their own hands? It seems a > bit extreme.

Why so? Google depends entirely on the web, it makes sense. Also depending on a third party/competitor for accessing your very business is a very bad thing, especially when this competitor is Apple. It's better to depend on as few parties as possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> One thing I have to say about this: This would be the time to really bring in Radial Menus.

Edit: Especially radial menus that sort the rings on usage (IE, high use programs closer to the center of the disk).

</comment><comment><USER21> Oh no! It's the end of tinkering!

</comment><comment><USER22> I'll stick with my netbook, thanks. Just make them more powerful and lighter, and give me a better pointing device (built in eye tracking perhaps?) and that's the type of innovation I'll be buying into. Then again, Google isn't competing for my money, they're competing for my mom's money.

</comment><comment><USER23> not really a tablet, its a surface like device

<comment><USER24> so what is a tablet, if not a surface small enough to be carried?

this looks like it can be carried. remember, there are people lugging around 17" laptops...

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Interface is very reminiscent of the iPad's. Maybe the creator got a little inspiration from it.

<comment><USER26> The video appears to have been uploaded on the 25th, so that seems unlikely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> First thing I noticed

</comment><comment><USER28> Ugh. The keyboard and popover menus in those pictures look like direct rips of Apple's tablet ([http://dev.chromium.org/chromium-os/user-experience/form- fac...](http://dev.chromium.org/chromium-os/user-experience/form- factors/tablet)). That Google would "show off" these concepts is a bit embarrassing, and telling.

An Apple designer wouldn't even show _their manager_ concept drawings this rudimentary, especially if they were nothing more than copies of a competing product released the week before.

I really hope this isn't Google's doing. But if they are working on a tablet version of Chrome OS, they should probably keep the lid on it until it's had more than 2 hours of mockup work.

<comment><USER29> The dates on the site say this was posted before Apple's announcement, though dates can obviously be munged.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why doesn't HN open submitted links in a new tab? - <AUTHOR>

A bit trivial, I know, but I've always found it slightly annoying to have to press the back button to return to HN or explicitly right click and open the link in a new tab myself.  Why doesn't HN automatically open external links in a new tab? <comment><USER2> Hold control when you click to open a link in a new tab. You can also middle- click if you have a mouse. Hold shift and click to open in a new window. Where a link opens is in your control, as it should be.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm aware of the ways to force open a new tab, I was just curious as to why this wasn't the default. IMO, it provides for a friendlier user experience.

<comment><USER2> If a website forces a new tab when you don't want to open a new tab (as I don't), that's not friendly at all. There's no easy way to override that behavior, while it's easy to get the behavior you want.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Because that's how it was done in Web 1.0. Also, I always thought sites created new tabs for "stickiness" which is not an issue on a non-pageview- whoring site.

</comment><comment><USER4> I agree, In general I prefer a new tab, its what has become "conventional" for better or worse, but its also nice to be able to navigate a few pages deep on the linked site, then just close the tab to get back to HN quickly.

<comment><AUTHOR> My thoughts exactly. Call it sheer laziness, but the fact that the linked site is not opened in a new tab prevents me from navigating too deep into the linked site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Configure it in your browser and move on with your life.</comment>


Ask HN: I think I need to use NoSQL? - <AUTHOR> I've been writing software for about 6 years and have always found the relational approach suitable for my needs.
However after spending a week inheriting a prototype which is all over the place. I am starting to think I will have to use something I never dreamed of using; NoSQL whether that be MongoDB, Redis or Cassandra.
To give you some background:
A large enterprise with ageing software infrastructure is looking to replace a system which consists of
A COBOL terminal app, 3 VB powered spreadsheets and a lot of emailing.
The solution the team has prototyped is effectively a spreadsheet with a business rules engine.
This spreadsheet at the moment has lots of tabular data and could change over time.
I've spent several sessions with my team looking at entities and mapping their relationships. However we keep hitting ruts.
There are other issues too:
* The business / stakeholders, can't agree on what data is needed and it is constantly changing
* The current schema has several tables but are just filled with CLOBs that store JSON
* A lot of the data the business wants presented would be hard to store in a normalised format
* The frontend is making multiple API calls from different services and assembling a document in redux / local storage. This is an antipattern!
* Business priorities are changing every sprint / product owner is getting arm twisted to add new "fields" , so that department X can get more  out of this app
* The relational model could cause added maintenance and refactoring when new changes come around
However I have concerns against suggesting this:
* I am in a junior heavy team, with noobies
* Seniors are scared of new practices.
* I don't know how easy it is to do things like business reporting etc.
* It would mean a heavy refactor of the internal models
* How do I transplant existing data on production into a new DB technology?
* I have very little experience in NoSQL
Looking for people's thoughts or suggestions. <comment><USER2> > The business / stakeholders, can't agree on what data is needed and it is > constantly changing

You are about to spread this chaos everywhere. If they can't decide on what to store and how, nobody will be able to make sense of that, create useful reports or maintain it. Things will fall apart constantly and everywhere.

> product owner is getting arm twisted to add new "fields" , so that > department X can get more out of this app

Why is that a problem? Using relational db does not mean that adding new field should be some big effort or require any ceremony. If they want it and it makes sense they should get it on the same day.

> The frontend is making multiple API calls from different services and > assembling a document in redux / local storage. This is an antipattern!

It is, but it has nothing to do with data storage. Looks like nobody is owning backend and data, so frontend does what they can to get the job done. It is not their fault.

> The relational model could cause added maintenance and refactoring when new > changes come around

Non-relational model adds a lot more maintenance and refactoring if you want quality.It is only easier if nobody cares about tomorrow.

> The current schema has several tables but are just filled with CLOBs that > store JSON

Nothing you said indicates that you need a non-relational database, only that you have non-relational data. You can keep them in db as it was before, with option of moving to separate fields as definition will mature and ability to use transactions.

>* I am in a junior heavy team, with noobies >* Seniors are scared of new practices.

Its a mess, but looks like you are not in position to do much about it. You can't fix organizational problems with technology. Main decision to make is if you want to stay there or leave and go to better place.

<comment><AUTHOR> I just joined the company and I am broke after taking a long break, so leaving the company anytime soon is not an option.

The juniors on my team are from a coding camp, so I can't really expect them to be of much help at the moment.

I will take ownership of this and be pushing back, because I am not afraid to say no after many years of working in development.

After doing some research and the feedback from this post I will be refactoring the mysql schema and the hibernate models in the java service.

I will also make use of the JSON data type instead of CLOB so I can actually query some dynamic data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've built large systems with RethinkDB, and proprietary NoSQL DBs. My experience is this: if you need to query any significant volume of data, you must have indexes. And once you start figuring out the indexes, you're designing a schema. So it's best not to shy away from schema design up front, and evolution during dev. Otherwise you risk very poor performance. On the requirements front: dialog with management and users often degenerates into handwaving. A concrete prototype can help clarify IMHO. Suggest you break out one small piece of the legacy system and prototype a new solution. Disarm the scared seniors by emphasizing that it's throwaway. When the users see something new, shiny and better you'll have the political backing to face down opposing noobs and seniors. That's a double edged sword, as you'll also have the pressure to deliver. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER4> This sounds like a management problem more than a technical problem. Requirements need to settle down a bit so that you can get some work done. A schemaless approach does make schema changes easier, but woe is you if you have data in your database from several different versions of the schema. I don't see how you can make any guarantees about query correctness in such a situation. I.e., your business reports will be buggy. Not to mention, hard to write without SQL.

I don't buy your statement that "a lot of the data the business wants presented would be hard to store in a normalised format", at least not without some justification. Also, data to be presented may be structured differently from data as stored. Forget the presentation, is there any reason why the data model itself isn't normalizable? (Not talking about tweaks to the model due to changing requirements. Pick some version -- is that normalizable?)

<comment><AUTHOR> It is a management problem. I have been pushing back since I joined the team but the problem is that there's so many execs and people screaming for this app to be released.

As senior developer on the team I am having to fight bad software practices and "just ship it " mentality.

In a way I am panicked because I don't know what the product owners want and they in turn dont know what the business want.

Therefore I am trying to engineer against management's incompetence and I don't see that being fixed anytime soon.

<comment><USER4> The top-level manager on the engineering side needs to be pushing back, saying "Guys, this isn't going to ship if the requirements keep changing." If he isn't doing that, you are in a tough spot. It sucks to work on such a project, and it sucks to go over his head, especially if you are junior. Maybe talk to the senior engineers about the problem?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd think the correct solution is better project/product management, but as I know that isn't always an option...

Overall, given the information I am not sure NoSQL is the right path, but there are some inherit flexibilities it gives you with a constantly evolving data model. But that doesn't come for free, and your coding has to evolve to support a dynamic data model which can be challenging on its own.

Simply based on your limited description, I'd avoid Cassandra, not because it isn't awesome, but your use case doesn't seem to fit. Plus with mostly newbies and skeptics it would most likely fail in implementation. Cassandra requires a lot of design planning up front in general to get it right, it is not the most flexible of the NoSQL alternatives in terms of dynamic data model and querying, but it provides other trade offs that make it a great tool.

You can stick with SQL and just use a data migration toolset to help you manage field updates etc. Set a policy for allowing additions but restrict column removals etc. It has been done for years as this isn't a new problem, just means you have lots more to manage and data migrations become a key aspect, so data access code also needs to be isolated and flexible.

Alternatively you could still use something like Postgres or MySQL and properly use JSON storage and index it which would let you have some benefits of NoSQL without moving the entire app. For those tables you can define well, do so in proper sql, those you can't do so in JSON storage.

And of course you could move more to a full NoSQL solution using something like Mongo. Mongo is solid if used properly, but again comes with some trade offs, so you'd have to evaluate those.

Personally, depending on how much data exists already and how complex the app is at this stage, I'd opt for pushing back on project management some and/or moving to a more toolset driven SQL solution with planned data migrations as part of your sprints. That plus make sure you add a flexible data access layer to isolate the changes to the application as best as possible. If you or someone on the team had more NoSQL experience or even a different team makeup my recommendations might differ.</comment>


300 million users strong, Opera moves to WebKit - <AUTHOR> http://my.opera.com/haavard/blog/2013/02/13/webkit

<comment><USER2> As someone who's been a longtime Opera user before switching to Chrome (buggy release around 10.x, weakening site compatibility) I'm so glad to read this. This decision shows the quality of engineers who work at Opera - not afraid to throw a huge chunk of code away if it doesn't serve the company anymore the way it was intended. Thinking about it I can't make up a single example of a large software house doing such a thing.

Looking forward to get my neat features again, such as fast forward, hotkey bindings, Opera turbo..

<comment><USER3> Back in the day, Netscape did a full rewrite between major versions. There's a Spolsky blog post about it: <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html>

Very interesting read.

<comment><USER4> This is totally different. They're not re-writing their application from scratch, but replacing a core component with a popular, well tested and widely support one.

<comment><USER3> Indeed it is -- GP only mentioned he didn't know any example of a large amount of code being thrown out, so I provided one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _The web may not be fully open, but it is far more open than the closed world of "apps"._

(Of topic, perhaps...)

I hear this a lot, and I think, for the most part, web applications aren't remotely open (in general). While I can use any computer to connect to a web site, very few sites actually allow me to get my data out of them. In short, in my opinion, open access to data trumps open access by various clients.

On the one hand, we have systems that I can connect to with any OS I want but where my data is completely out of my control. On the other hand, we have walled gardens where the data sits, literally, in the palm of my hand. Both situations are ugly, but in the former, if I want my data, I have to pray the developers left me a method to do so. In the latter, it may not be trivial, but it is almost always possible[1].

I wish we had truly open systems across the board. Until we do, I vote we stop calling web systems open, because they are only open in terms of access, and that's not good enough.

1\. For example, jailbreak, log in, and scp a SQLite db. Certainly not trivial but at least doable. In no way would I actually call this "open". I just think it is less closed than most web applications.

<comment><USER6> You still have "to pray the developers left" you a method to get the data in either case as native apps are simply the client-side of an application (just like a web apps).

The "openness" of the web is mostly referring to the technology stack (open source rendering engines), the standards, and the freedom of distribution. All of those points are not fully "open" and that's what I think they're referring to when they say that "the web may not be fully open".

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Terrible news.

This means basically giving up on standards-based compatibility.

Not bad news for Opera - maybe good news for the browser - but an ominous sign on what the web is becoming.

<comment><USER8> Whatever Opera do doesnt cause us to give up anything.

<comment><USER9> No, but it encourages other developers to do so, which will encourage other browser makers to do what Opera did. This is a massive step back for real standards as protocols, toward the bad old days of fake "standards" as implementations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting. Opera makes most of their revenue through licensing their rendering engine. That's how they've turned their ~2% marketshare into $180MM in revenue (compared to, say, Mozilla's ~26% and $300MM).

I wonder how this will affect that.

[EDIT: I mixed up currencies; fixed it.]

<comment><USER11> I find those numbers hard to believe. Are you sure your currency conversions are correct?

<comment><USER12> Likely, Opera Software had a revenue of NOK 900M in 2011, and USD 1 ~ NOK 5 yielding a ~USD 180M revenue. So his comment is only correct if you compare without conversion (Opera Software is indeed a billion a year in revenue, but that's a billion NOK)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm not sure if this will change much for end users. I'm a long time Opera user and some sites will just lock you out unless you use Chrome or FF even if Opera likely has an implementation that is more standards compliant than both browsers.

Even sites like Udacity's course viewer did this (maybe they changed it, I haven't been there in a week).

So while Opera might be using the same rendering engine as Chrome, you'll still get locked out because web apps are setup to investigate user agents to determine who gets in.

I'm not sure if I like or dislike this change. I feel like testing sites between Opera, Chrome, FF and IE I had a better chance of eliminating all rendering bugs.

Opera I feel was/is the best candidate for ensuring your code was correct.

</comment><comment><USER14> Yes, website compatibility is one of the major issues of Opera. The second thing is lack of support in terms of add-ons and such, but I don't see how they can help that. This might just get more people to use Opera as their desktop browser though. Every time I test a website on Opera, I'm like "I should really give this browser a chance". But every time that I try it for an evening, I notice the shortcomings in support (by websites, add-ons, etc.).

Back then I was used to having fifteen add-ons in Firefox, but after Mozilla made one bad choice after another, I moved to Chrome and live by Adblock Plus and some own userscripts and bookmarklets now. Perhaps Opera isn't as much of a culture shock anymore to use, especially with the Webkit engine.

I do wonder if they considered Mozilla's Gecko engine. It has a smaller userbase I think, but does that automatically mean it wouldn't be the right choice? They don't say a word about this.

All in all, I do applaud the change. It's a hard step to take after you've been working on your own engine for years, but they've done it, and it will probably add a lot in terms of website support.

<comment><USER15> > I do wonder if they considered Mozilla's Gecko engine.

Gecko has a lot of legacy, and to be fair, even Mozilla has tentative plans to transition off of gecko, to be replaced by servo: <https://github.com/mozilla/servo>

<comment><USER16> I don't think it has to do with servo, which is really just a research project.

Gecko is a lot harder to embed (so yes, legacy is and issue here), and webkit is compatible with more sites (as sites are now often "designed for webkit" and use specific webkit-only extensions)

Makes the choice very easy and logical IMO. Not really good for the web, but maybe not a bad idea for Opera. Time will tell.

<comment><USER12> > Gecko is a lot harder to embed (so yes, legacy is and issue here)

Gecko embedding is also unsupported since May 2011: [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.embeddin...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.embedding/c_NMcO-N8wo/discussion)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> We can hope that someday IE will make the move too.

<comment><USER18> Given the way MS is embracing OpenSource ( git, TypeScript ) that day may not be too far.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I guess this makes sense if you look at it from a phone/tablet manufacturers perspective: A manufacturer wouldn't necessarily have the desire to implement their own browser on top of webkit so they want a company (rules out Mozilla) that will support a web browser on their phone without also being a competitor.

The problem I think is that the non-aligned phone manufacturers are going the way of the dodo. You have Nokia committing to WM8, Apple on iOS with Safari and most others committing to Android. In theory a manufacturer could go Android + Opera but why license Opera when you can get Chrome for free?

That being said: Opera has always done a great job fighting against massive odds. I hope this move gives them the breathing room they need to keep going.

</comment><comment><USER20> More good discussion at this submission: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5211953>

</comment><comment><USER21> A wise move for Opera. Now they can hire webkit-engineers from anywere without heavy training on their model.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is a good thing for everyone that uses Webkit browsers.

</comment><comment><USER23> what exactly defines a "monthly user" for Opera and how is that measured? Is it based on usage statistics, or is it just number of installed/downloaded clients?

<comment><USER24> Usage. Installed/downloaded is very high.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The number says 300 million, but my actual website stats, of over 1 million uniques per month, show it less than .75%

<comment><USER26> That is why it is dangerous to draw conclusions from small sample sizes, and why useful samples need to be random. Your website does not attract random people, so it is not an accurate sample. Opera usage varies massively by country for example, is your website available in Czech? If not, your sample will self select to have fewer opera users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Hmm, any bets on how long before the folks at Mozilla make the move as well? It seems inevitable at this point.

<comment><USER16> I don't think Mozilla will ever switch. The reason why they've their own engine and try to keep a decent marketshare (which they do indeed have), is to be able to have a say on web standards, and the web in general.

Having a say ensure there isn't a single voice taking decisions that led us to things like IE6. And we're actually starting to see IE6-ish stuff happening with webkit, as it's nearly the only rendering engine for mobile.

One vendor != good for standards.

Oh also, their engine happens to be pretty close to webkit performance wise.

<comment><USER5> I would think one vendor would be great for standards: it _is_ the standard. It sucks for any kind of innovation, though, as IE6 shows incredibly well.

Out if curiosity, what IE6-ish things do you see WebKit doing?

<comment><USER28> > I would think one vendor would be great for standards: it is the standard.

Well, IE6 was the standard. See how many sites were "optimized" for IE6 and getting them to render in a browser that supported these pesky underdog W3C standards was bound to fail.

> Out if curiosity, what IE6-ish things do you see WebKit doing?

Not quite the same, but the -webkit CSS prefix that people use without a fallback for other browsers: webkit browsers display the stuff and on e.g. Firefox or Opera it looks broken, because nobody cares to add a -moz or -o prefixed version, or even the non-prefixed version.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> What will be the first release with Webkit as the rendering engine?

<comment><USER30> My guess would be the next major release, that is 13.00 for Desktop and Mobile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I feel compelled to jump in and give a warning about Opera. I also know that the herd mind will probably pound my comment into oblivion, which is why I made a new account.

Opera is scammy, unreliable software. DO NOT DO MISSION CRITICAL WORK WITH THIS BROWSER. It will flake out on you in so many uncanny ways its not funny.

Also, Opera had the weird habit of becoming my default browser on my Win 7 machine repeatedly, despite me never doing so and only referencing it for testing purposes.

That, along with Opera having the top 3 spots on HN's front page further indicates to me that Opera is not for real. Like I mean, come on. How many of these submissions and upvotes are fake.

Opera, you're not on the up and up and you know it.

TL;DR: Don't trust Opera.

<comment><USER14> The reason why you made a new account seems to be because you're not giving any arguments for your warning. Opinions with reasons are usually upvoted by HN.

I personally never had Opera become the default browser, nor did I have any other problems than compatibility with it (which is normal, given their market share). I also don't think the upvotes are fake.

So, why exactly "SHOULD WE NOT DO MISSION CRITICAL WORK WITH THIS BROWSER"?

<comment><USER32> Perhaps because it's all caps? I can see no other justification :)</comment></comment></comment>


The C10K Problem - <AUTHOR> http://www.kegel.com/c10k.html <comment><USER2> My first job was technical support for an internet service provider in Seattle (seanet.com). Dan Kegel's ISDN page was in my OmniWeb bookmarks (we were a NEXT shop), and got me through many rough calls.

Later in life I had the pleasure of working with Dan at Oblong Industries.

I'm such a fan of his work, and him as a human.

</comment><comment><USER3> Still a classic but 20 years later the frontier is at more like ten million connections.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you document your REST APIs? - <AUTHOR>

Do you use tools and services like Swagger and Apiary or you write them manually? <comment><USER2> We write ours manually in markdown. I have yet to find a description format worth investing in that saves us enough time and is more expressive than that.

</comment><comment><USER3> Using Swagger, which is fine. But it brings in a lot of baggage (Scala libs) which is unfortunate.

</comment><comment><USER4> [http://www.mashape.com/](http://www.mashape.com/)</comment>


Rails Security Cheatsheet - <AUTHOR> https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Ruby_on_Rails_Cheatsheet

<comment><USER2> It's good to see all of this security related information in once place, it can act as a nice checklist before going live, or even thinking about it :) (but many times I prefer the risky way)</comment>


An interesting trigonometric iterated map - <AUTHOR> https://observablehq.com/@mattdiamond/another-trigonometric-iterated-map <comment><USER2> It has a strange behavior for a few values of a: 0.7, 2.0, 3.0--3.2, 3.7, 4, 4.2 5.9, 6, 6.2, and perhaps a few more. They look quite different so it's worth trying.</comment>


Watch This Charger Fully Juice A Smartphone In 30 Seconds - <AUTHOR> http://www.popsci.com/article/gadgets/watch-charger-fully-juice-smartphone-30-seconds

<comment><USER2> Interesting. The Popular Science article is a bit inaccurate, though; they didn't mention that it's a battery, not just a fancy new charger.

This is a linked article that's more complete: [http://www.gizmag.com/nanodot- smartphone-battery-30-second-r...](http://www.gizmag.com/nanodot-smartphone- battery-30-second-recharge/31467/)

A bit about the company and its technology from WSJ.com: [http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2013/11/13/biological- semic...](http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2013/11/13/biological- semiconductors-could-transform-tech-industry/)

A 30-second puff piece about StoreDot and its tech from Time.com: [http://time.com/52651/storedot-another-promising-far-off- ans...](http://time.com/52651/storedot-another-promising-far-off-answer-to- smartphone-battery-problems/)

The company talks of beginning production in 2016. Based on the various limitations, that sounds optimistic. Current cell phones can't handle the high current required, the battery's too large, and the battery doesn't hold a charge as long as conventional batteries.

Once these problems are solved, we're going to see possibly a revolution in portable power. I'd love an electric car that recharges in 5 minutes!</comment>


Couple.me Releases Alice – An Artificial Intelligence - <AUTHOR> http://blog.couple.me/2014/03/31/couple-releases-alicealex-ai-artificial-intelligence-couple/

<comment><USER2> On the [https://couple.me/alice](https://couple.me/alice) page, to make text appear a little at a time they setup a long series of timeouts set to trigger at different times (as you can see here: [https://couple.me/javascripts/alice.js](https://couple.me/javascripts/alice.js)). They are not dependent on each other.

This leads to unusual behavior if you do something as simple as tab away while one of them is playing for about 10 seconds. On both Chrome and Firefox, that will result in, when you tab back, complete gibberish as multiple timeouts that triggered while you were away both begin "typing" their text. I think the correct solution here is to have all callbacks drawing text depend on the previous one completing (since there's no overlaps, this should work well enough).

That entire sequence also felt very trite to me, but I can see how it could be appealing.

<comment><USER3> I opened it on mobile and it was all extremely laggy and out of sync. It makes me wonder how good their AI would be if web pages are this much trouble.

Snark aside though, I do hope this is not an april fools joke, and that it's a real attempt at AI. I know it would really just be a complex traditional program, but I'm still curious what a modern try at AI would look like. I know it's coming back into development as of late, and I do very much look forward to the development of real AI.

If anyone wants to comment to inform me that real AI will never happen, I assure you I am already aware of that view. I see no basis for the argument that human intelligence is somehow special in this world. For medical science alone we will never stop researching the human mind, and I hope soon we find a way to recreate intelligence in software. It would be a level of intelligence above ours, I would think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I agree with carlosdp, this is most likely April fools.

Side Note: Happy to see a Waterloo startup up on front page!

</comment><comment><USER5> April fools I assume =P

</comment><comment><USER6> Not real, confirmed: [http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn- april-fo...](http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-april-fools- day-tech-20140331,0,47108.story#axzz2xfI8hv3Q)

</comment><comment><USER7> > Love, jealousy, and affection are all emotions that Alice feels. Your > responses to her affect her mood, and she will react as a real person would.

> and she will react as a real person would.

I have my doubts.

</comment><comment><USER8> Given what Couple.me does, I expect the AI will just be other users of the appropriate orientation. Maybe slightly more poignant than the average April fool's joke.

</comment><comment><USER9> First thought of April fools. Now I think this might actually be useful as a data mining application.

</comment><comment><USER10> her</comment>


Anti-Inflammatories Help Major Depression - <AUTHOR> https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/expressive-trauma-integration/201911/anti-inflammatories-help-major-depression <comment><USER2> I winced when I read "when we are exposed to any of these triggers, the body produces small protein cells called cytokines. These small cells facilitate the response of the body to the threat".

Cytokines are certainly not cells, they are proteins[1]. Not that inflammation isn't an interesting topic, but it made me wonder about this article (and if PT has editors...)

1: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2785020/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2785020/)

</comment><comment><USER3> They can also cause hearing loss.

Which is pretty depressing.</comment>


Don't Sign An NDA Before A Programming Job Interview - <AUTHOR> http://www.realfreemarket.org/blog/2013/05/21/dont-sign-confidentiality-agreements-before-a-programming-job-interview/

<comment><USER2> More to the point, what kind of company starts blabbing its secrets to people it hasn't even hired yet?</comment>


With IPO Hopes Fading, Square and Box Face Reality Of Commodity Products - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/02/with-ipo-hopes-fading-square-and-box-face-reality-of-commodity-products/ <comment><USER2> > A second iron law of startups might be

Iron law "might be"?

I don't think I'd ever invest in Box, but I see Square much differently. I think the author arbitrarily pooled them into the same category, and then stumbled over his own argument throughout the article.

Square is in a market where once you have a customer, you have the customer. There's not really a reason to switch your payment processor unless your experience with them is particularly terrible, or processing fees dramatically change in the market (not likely at all). They're building a solid revenue stream, and their numbers back it up. Unlike Box, they're hovering around profitability, not hemorrhaging money. They certainly have some stiff competition, mainly Paypal, entering the market, but Square is offering a more comprehensive experience for business owners, not to mention a much smoother product. I can't tell you how many times I've seen a whole line of customers stumble over how to complete a transaction on Paypal's offering.

<comment><USER3> If you want to see the success of Square, go look at any new food truck or coffee shop or streetside vendor. It seems to be the new solution for that sort of thing.

<comment><USER4> I wonder how much would cost to have the actual card reader that's seen in shops around

Oh by the way, Square's market is limited. The USA still uses primarily the unsafe magnetic stripe for payments, and even Canada is phasing out its use (in Interac at least)

<comment><USER5> chip is becoming more popular in the us now too

<comment><USER6> Mandatory as of October 2015 next year actually.

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomgroenfeldt/2014/01/28/america...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomgroenfeldt/2014/01/28/american- credit-cards-improving-security-with-emv-at-last/)

<comment><USER7> Not mandatory, just (barely) incentivized starting in 2015. You'll see non-EMV cards and terminals around for probably another decade.

<comment><USER8> This is highly doubtful. The fact that merchants take on all fraud risk from a fake card present transaction is very high incentive. I have friends in Canada that own retail stores and they said that fraud has dropped to almost zero because of EMV. There are ways to scam it, by pretending that the chip doesn't work and have the cashier swipe it, but if the cashier swipes it instead of using the pin, they get in trouble because the merchant loses money.

So I bet you'll see very quick adoption, within a couple of years max.

<comment><USER9> Big box stores are already moving towards it, with Target (surprise! surprise!) leading the way. Mom-and-Pop shops will probably not be happy about replacement costs, but they're apparently a diminishing market force anyways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> That was an uncommonly good techcrunch article - good insight, domain knowledge, mostly a balanced look at some of the challenges startups in the "commoditized technology" space might be facing. I was entertained, I learned something, it was a pleasant reading experience (techcrunch has really improved their layout).

All in all it makes me more likely to read the next techcrunch article (and some of Danny Crichton back material.)

<comment><USER11> I thought the opposite. First, the headline is just plain wrong and not even really in a click-baity way. Square hasn't even hinted at an IPO and Box is likely to have a successful one I the next 30-90 days. Dismissing either as a "commodity" is wrong. Both provide services that are fairly sticky and both have demonstrated the rare ability to acquire customers at scale.

<comment><USER12> I dont know how Box can get succsfull IPO. Then company is burningb cash without clear strategy to change that. Box ipo will be churn and burn unless they either change ceo or get idea how they can compete with dropbox and other big guys...

<comment><USER13> Now i may be wrong, in which case, do enlighten me. But hasn't Box been playing the corporate game for quite some time? And Dropbox was just beginning to step into that market, no? So wouldn't that make Box the big guy, and Dropbox the much adored underdog? I mean sure Dropbox has a MASSIVE userbase, but an enormous percentage of them are free users. Box on the other hand has a corporate userbase, and corporate pays.

<comment><USER14> My experience with Box has been as follows:

1\. Employees share files via email. 2\. Employees start sharing files via Dropbox. 3\. Management pitched Box by salesperson. Signs contract. 4\. Employees told to use Box instead of Dropbox. Dropbox blocked. 5\. Employees share files via email.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm wondering how Square's business will change once EMV readers become active on Oct 2015. First off, the EMV readers are expensive. Second, Square has no idea if the business model will work with EMV. It could be that the flow of having to type in a PIN number disrupts things to the point where merchants would rather use a more expensive but bigger EMV reader. Since they are more expensive, will Square be forced to charge merchants for the readers?

There are so many questions for me about how their business will work under EMV and it could be that their growth gets curtailed dramatically, meaning that people who bought in before Oct 2015 would be left holding the bag.

</comment><comment><USER15> One of the interesting problems for SaS companies is that the "easy signup" usually competes with the "vendor lock-in effect". A startup can use "easy signup" to take away customers from an established company but almost immediately it needs to find a way to lock-in the customer to avoid him/her switching to another vendor with even simpler signup, cheaper price, whatever. In a commodity market (like payments), price is usually the most important factor for many users. Thus "vendor lock-in" becomes a must for success.

The Square's new products are actually designed to increase customers engagement with the company products and increase the price of switching to a competitor. The payments itself is not sticky but the more advanced products (e.g. online stores) are. The broad range of the products Square is trying right now just shows that the company is searching for the new up-scale market with vendor lock-in where Square can capitalize on the existing customers without risking losing their business. From my point of view, it might be hard for them (they already have a big customers base) and a little too late. Square might have become the victim of its own success where hyper-growth in the last few years didn't allow the management to start this process earlier.

</comment><comment><USER16> > Both Square and Box have expanded their product lines dramatically, often > without a comprehensive strategy involved.

Could the same be said about dropbox and its recent moves?

<comment><USER17> Yes, it is strange the aricle does not mention Dropbox. Perhaps they are not planning an IPO?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> My previous employer delayed its IPO twice. The first was because its revenue stream was undiversified (2008), and the second was because the markets were in turmoil (2011 summer -- US debt ceiling crisis when the markets slid 15%).

We ended up IPOing later in 2011 when the markets stabilized somewhat, and the company is now valued at $2BB.

This will come to pass.

<comment><USER19> Lately, the ratio of companies that currently are losing money that IPO to IPOs has been extremely high which is generally a sign of a market the is overheated and investors that are too optimistic which is not a good sign going forward. On the other hand, a lot of the high-flying (and arguably overpriced) tech stocks have sold off by a big margin since the beginning of the year. Quite a few are down 20% or more. The overall market vulnerable while the period from May to November is seasonally weak too and the Federal Reserve continues tapering its bond purchases that have propped up the market for the last couple of years. However, a lot of those money losing stocks that are going to need to raise more cash in the foreseeable future. If we see a bigger flush during the summer as we saw in 2011 and 2010, it would give them the opportunity to do secondary offerings at attractive valuations that should attract enough interest to meet their financial needs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is it just me, or does there exist a set of startups with annoyingly generic names? Square, Stripe, Box, Color... how about Line, Circle, Triangle and Cube, too? Any idea WTF any of those does? Granted, "Google" doesn't give you a clue either, but at least it sticks out from the crowd.

</comment><comment><USER21> Microsoft: $327 billion market cap; Google: $356 billion market cap; Facebook: $153 billion market cap.

Did I miss where someone was arguing that Square or Box would become the next $200 billion company? I don't recall ever once seeing that argument made.

So what was the point of this article holding up those straw examples, and then referring to the business dynamics that MSFT / GOOG / FB enjoy?

For every Google, there are hundreds of small to mid size, successful technology companies.

Square doesn't need a monopoly to build a great $10 or $20 billion business in payments, and there's nothing wrong with achieving that scale vs. becoming a juggernaut like the before mentioned.

</comment><comment><USER22> Box does have "network effects," even if they're not as strong as Facebook's or AirBnB's, because once you get thousands of employees at a company using your product, it's hard to tear that out and replace it with a competitor's product.

The platform strategy makes a lot of sense, because that's how you can turn weak product inertia like they have now into strong product inertia: once you have a big ecosystem spring up around your product, you have Microsoft-level staying power. I don't know how realistic that outcome actually is for Box in particular, though.

<comment><USER10> Is it a network effect if it's only within a company? For example, because there isn't any (good) data model that allows for resource reservations, calendar systems within a company are always on the same platform so there aren't conflicts in booking meeting rooms (which, even when calendar programs were on the same platform, was a big problem from around 1995-2000). But that doesn't mean people outside the company can't use a different calendar program and send .ics invitations.

<comment><USER23> Right, I think the GP described a way that they might have "staying power" and be entrenched within their customer organizations, similar to how a poster described that Square might have that same quality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Yay! Here's hoping commodity pricing follows for commodity products.

<comment><USER17> It is already happening. Google Drive now costs one-fifith that of DropBox.

Box is probably similar. It is hard to compete against the big guys.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> To me, in business it always comes down to profits, and if I'm an investor I'd rather invest in profitable companies. A lot of investors think that way and I'm sure the market at some point says "gosh, they are going to burn through a lot more cash before they turn a profit." At some point, you're better off waiting a year or two, paying a little bit more, but investing in the same business once it starts making money.

</comment><comment><USER26> "Square is even more variable, launching a blistering array of products in the last few months including Square Market, Square Wallet, and Square Cash in addition to its core point of sales products. A lack of focus is not a good signal."

Square Wallet has been around for years. Aside from the nitpick, is it a bad idea for a company to diversify its revenue streams?

Would this article have faulted Square for having 99% of its revenue in its POS offerings?

</comment><comment><USER27> There is zero evidence that Box's IPO "hopes" (or even their plans) are fading. This was a decent article with a flame bait title.

<comment><USER28> Except for their IPO postponement?

<comment><USER27> Wouldn't you want to time the market? That's not hopes fading, that's just smart business sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Box is kind of a nightmare, but I would really like to see square succeed. It's kind of interesting since I see it being used everywhere (Minneapolis), but the margins are so thin I just feel like they have a hard time making money. They should potentially think about raising fees, but I don't know what the potential backlash might be.

</comment><comment><USER30> These consumer web startups _are_ a commodity.

I don't mean that they're building commodity products, although that's also true. I mean that the VCs, with this Disney-fied entrepreneurship culture they've created, have managed to commoditize business formation itself. It's built out of commodity ideas, commodity people, commodity founders. It provides disappointing but reliably mediocre returns to investors, and it's great for the VC's career.

For people who got into the game because they actually wanted to build _technology_ , however, it really sucks.</comment>


Show HN: First US-based Bitcoin broker - <AUTHOR> http://www.sf-ox.com

<comment><USER2> I've typed and deleted this comment about 4 times now as I can't write it in a way that doesn't seem insulting.

I'm sure these guys are very solid citizens but money is money and it makes people do funny things. If there isn't a disclaimer on their site that they don't sell your flow or jump in front of your trades or make money off of you in any way other than a very simple flat fee per trade then you should assume they do.

There is a reason no self respecting hedge fund would use a sell side's algos. If you can't see the source code you don't know that they do the right thing.

These guys might be perfectly honest but then have an error in one of their algos that is only exposed when bitcoin has a very volatile day. What happens then when their algos execute an order on your behalf that you think it shouldn't?

When its your money why take a chance, even if it seems remote.

Again I'm sorry, I fee like a bit of an ass for bringing this up, but until they com out and verify they don't front run you, or sell your flow or make any money off of your trading other than a flat per order fee then you should be skeptical.

And even when they do that, don't use their algos. Most people won't have flow large enough to need to disguise it. Small limit orders can go a long way for most individuals traders.

One other thing that would be good to veriyf is do they guarantee execution at the NBBO (National Best Bid Offer), meaning if 2 different exchanges offer to sell at different prices will they ensure you buy from the cheapest seller?

 __EDIT __They should also fix their private policy.[https://s3-us- west-1.amazonaws.com/sf-ox.com/PrivacyPolicyOX...](https://s3-us- west-1.amazonaws.com/sf-ox.com/PrivacyPolicyOXLabs.pdf)

It is so blurry that I can't read it:(

<comment><AUTHOR> We do not front run any order.

We will make this clear on our site. We tried to do so by showing the complete order book and not just a single price.

You also have complete control of when you execute the algos.

Fixing the privacy policy - not sure what happened to the pdf upload. Thanks for catching.

<comment><USER3> > Fixing the privacy policy - not sure what happened to the pdf upload. Thanks > for catching.

I've never seen a privacy policy as a PDF. Any reason for this?

<comment><AUTHOR> No reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't think this is the "first" unless there is something I'm missing here that makes this different than the 4+ exchanges that already exist in the US.

Coinsetter, CampBX, Coinbase, Coinmkt, Kraken, SecondMarket / Bitcoin Trust

fyi discussion on reddit...

[http://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/2c1oo5/first...](http://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/2c1oo5/first_us_based_bitcoin_brokerdealer/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question. All very different.

You can't see order book on coinbase and quickly trade in and out.

None of the other sites allow you to buy / sell with ACH.

Second Market is open to members only; not everyone. You have to be a member that is well funded to trade with them.

CampBX and Coinmkt are exchanges. We are not. Think NYSE and E-Trade. We are the E-Trade.

<comment><USER5> Aren't Coinbase trades ACH?

On a related note, I hear horror stories on /r/bitcoin all the time about bank accounts being shut down over supposed BTC activity. Does your service have a solution or guidance for this?

<comment><USER6> This isn't just related to user accounts; business accounts are frequently shut down (and not approved) because of Bitcoin activity. Coinapult closed operations in the US entirely because of this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Our banks have reviewed our model. Banks can always change their mind which is why we work with multiple banks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why do these startups think that they can put up a website that has so little information about what they exactly do? There's nothing solid there about how they operate, what they charge, what promises or guarantees they make, etc etc.

Instead, they still find time to put a big 'meet the team' section in there, as if end users deeply care about the bios of the founders and don't care about how the product actually works or costs.

</comment><comment><USER8> How does your accumulate and distribute algo's work? Is it a VWAP, TWAP order? Basically slice-and-dice a hidden iceberg when there's volume on one side of the book that you're trying to trade for?

Also curious how you guys market make on BTC, are the prices you are showing as the other exchanges the asking price, and you guys are essentially tightening the spread? Or are you guys selling parts of bulk orders of the large sell orders directly? How do you hedge your inventory risk?

<comment><AUTHOR> Great questions.

We offer both options, VWAP and TWAP.

The price on other exchange is based on Google's price of BTC.

We do not market make ourselves. We make it easy for market makers to market make.

Our price advantage you see on the site is based on routing. Different exchanges have price advantage at different times and so we route to the exchange that has the best rate; including splitting your order if needed.

We currently don't show the price advantage of algorithms (very difficult to show without knowing trade parameters).

We do not take any inventory risk.

noname123, is there a way for us to connect. You clearly have experience in the space. We would like to speak with you in more details.

<comment><USER8> Hi akbar123, thank you for being transparent. Unfortunately, I don't think I can contribute that much to your project as my experience is in options trading not at all familiar with the BTC market.

There was one time when I did look into arbitrage across different BTC exchanges, the issue I saw then (which I'm not sure still stands) is that different BTC exchanges had different processing fees that made it prohibitively expensive to arbitrage in practice. For instance, Mt.Gox or something similar had like a 0.15% cash out fee. Not to mention foreign exchange risk if you move money in and out of European exchanges vs. US exchanges.

BitInstant was created I believe to solve this problem, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitInstant](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitInstant) ; by parking money at all of the available exchanges and charging an interest for people to access their funds for arbitrage. They were shut down due to being deemed as a money transmitter operating without license by the New York state financial regulators.

I do think there might be an opportunity for people who trade the US and European BTC market and arbitraging the USD/Euro exchange rate.

Fr example, bitcoin.de has a best bid of 443 euro (or equivalent of 594.13 USD) of almost 3 lots; bitstamp has a best ask of 8 lots at 582.43. If you parked sufficient funds at both exchanges, you can buy at market price at bitstamp 3 lots and sell at market the 3 lots to bitcoin.de, and immediately buy a hedge of USD to Euro by shorting a equivalent dollar amount of the Euro ETF, FXE. Of course, in practice this is difficult to carry out as you have to factor in slippage, commission cost and how exact your hedge is.

Anyways, that's my $0.02; gl.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks.

We considered adding arb option but after running simulations and accounting for fees and slippage, the opportunity was very small. We also didn't find a suitable hedge to minimize our risk.

We have considered adding option trading; however, given the drop in volume in btc trading, we wonder if there is enough demand for option trading. If others request it, we are happy to build it.

Happy to brainstorm with you if you are up for it. Email added to my profile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> We are working on adding many more features, and wanted to see features you would like to see built out. We can add more exchanges, offer additional algorithms and offer additional coins and currencies.

Trading is by invitation only. If you want trading access, just pm me or comment below (or send us a tweet).

<comment><USER9> :raises hand for invite:

Also your 'HN Profile' lacks contact info...

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm. My profile has the email. Are you not able to see it? I can add it to about if you can't see it.

<comment><USER10> Your email address is private if you put it in the email field. You will need to put all your public information in the 'about' field, so people can see it, I think.

<comment><AUTHOR> Got it. Added an email

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> How do you differentiate yourself vs something like CampBX, and do you have plans to tackle the regulatory hurdles that they have faced?

<comment><AUTHOR> We focus on trade execution and providing algorithms previously only available to high frequency traders.

We comply with all regulations. This is not an anonymous site. When you are invited to trade, you will be subjected to full KYC.

Having built 4 payments platforms before, I can tell you that regulation is never easy but very necessary.

<comment><USER12> I can tell you right off the bat, that based on the lack of information on your website or the lack of key identifying/jurisdictional information in your ToS that you do not comply with any US-based regulations regarding money transmission services, nor with any of the European regulations with which I am familiar.

Importantly, despite claiming to be an automated platform for trading on other exchanges, your service will hold funds. This is the very definition of a money transmitter, and also makes you a financial institution under many countries' financial institution laws. As you appear to be SF-based, you're in violation of at least 2 major financial regulatory schemes--not including any state regulations.

Your website is tripping way too many red flags. You need to get these problems addressed ASAP. Bitcoin is not an excuse for amateur hour.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If I were starting a Bitcoin broker, I don't know that I would start it in the US...

<comment><AUTHOR> Touche

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Hi @akbar123 would love to have an invite please :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Have you registered on the site. I am trying to figure out how to identify people's email. Should have thought about this first :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm sorry, did you just say "proprietary algorithms" and bitcoin in the same page?

The bitcoin community has really changed in the last 3 years.</comment>


Show HN: Hacker News clone for books - <AUTHOR> I love books! I had once come across a great list of book recommendations on the LessWrong website ("The Best Textbooks on Every Subject"). But when I had stumbled upon the list a couple of years ago the last comments and recommendations on it were from 2011. And similarly I found that most recommendations on the web suffer from this form of time decay. What I wanted was a site that had high quality recommendations similar to the LessWrong list that would feel fresh and current. Amazon was overwhelming for me since it has a gazillion books on each subject and the "Thanks! Arrived in good condition!" type of reviews drive the signal-to-noise ratio down. So I decided to scratch my own itch with this project. It's a bare bones MVP, shamelessly copying HN's look-and-feel (even on mobile!) but Im hoping it will get used for quality comments and recommendations on books. Would love to get some feedback. Thanks! firstname.lastname@example.com or http://twitter.com/vivalabooks1<p>http://www.vivalabooks.com <comment><USER2> Cool! I run a site called "HelloBox", which lets you create HN-like communities! Would love for you to check it out - although you've created your own clone! :) [http://hellobox.co](http://hellobox.co)

<comment><AUTHOR> That looks very neat! I will definitely take it out for a spin to get some ideas! Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It looks nice, although the contrast on the top links makes them almost unreadable for me.

What did you build it with, and is there source code available?

I'm always interested in how people put these together.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! I've adjusted the colors so hopefully the contrast is a little better. I was trying to differentiate book categories that have not yet had any discussions in them. The idea being that if people are interested in a specialized category say "Computers > Programming > Elixir" they could easily identify categories where there is no content.

Believe it or not one of my aims in doing this project was to put my knowledge of Haskell to use on a practical pet project. However my Haskell-fu is not strong enough yet so this is built on the language of the (lesser) Gods :-) [http://xkcd.com/224/](http://xkcd.com/224/)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link: [http://www.vivalabooks.com](http://www.vivalabooks.com)

</comment><comment><USER4> this could be worth a look if you want something a bit more 'modern' looking

[http://www.telescopeapp.org/](http://www.telescopeapp.org/)

good idea though :-)</comment>


Ask HN: Review my project (1000memories for pets) - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys,
I submitted a show hn 5 days ago that only managed to garner 1 upvote so I thought I would ask you guys for some feedback instead.
Basic idea here is 1000memories for pets. There are actually a number of other sites (go ahead and search online pet memorials) but none of them are really up to date. This is most certainly a MVP but feedback on price, design, content, etc is all very welcome!
The sites url is www.thepetmemoir.com <comment><USER2> I think the price point is decent, maybe a bit much from a customer stand point. It's hard for me to say really, I've never had a pet pass away as an adult, just when I was a young child so the value isn't quite there for me in a first person sense.

It was hard for me to find the demo's. You should add a 'tour' link at the top, where it's clearly defined for people to see. Might get some conversions from people that don't even reach the pricing page.

Good luck with your project.

</comment><comment><USER3> You could do with a demo/example I think. It's tough to even bother to signup without knowing what I'm going to be getting.

<comment><AUTHOR> There are demos on the pricing page... although I should probably put them on the home page also now that you mention it.

<comment><USER4> I would do the "Sign Up Now!" with a small "...or see a demo first!" link below it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Clickable: <http://www.thepetmemoir.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Any thoughts or feedback about the site?

<comment><USER5> I always get annoyed at the call-to-action button being placed above the descriptions of what I get. I want to see what I get before I sign-up, and you're making me scroll down below to fold to try to see what I need to know, then I need to come back up to the button.

I wouldn't have the "Sign Up" button on the front page like that. I'd have a careful and considerate but above all short description of the aspects of the features - I've chosen my wording carefully there - that leads me on to ask natural questions, that then get answered.

There's a reason why these shopping channel pitches always say "But wait! There's more!" until they finally have you screaming "YES - BUT WHAT'S THE BLOODY PRICE!!!" They get you engaged and committed before asking for actual action.

And those were my immediate thoughts.

Also, what's the point is using valuable landing page real-estate to put the name of the site with a link to the same page? I refer to the lovingly designed logo/name at the top left.

I'd say you need to lose half the words, tighten the layout, remove half the graphics, and lead me through some pages showing the benefits, each with a subtle call-to-action button that gradually gets more prominent.

But I'm not a designer. I would be interested to see other people's responses to this critique.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Quitting a job with a YC company after less than a year, mistake? - <AUTHOR> (Keeping details to a minimum for obvious reasons)
The idea is great, there is some traction, but it is built on an incredibly shaky foundation.  I don't have faith in the leadership team- they don't know how to allocate or focus resources, don't know what a good metric is, hire senior people then don't let them do their jobs.  Micromanagement, morale and a complete lack of company culture are also major issues.  I'm tired of fighting the founders, I used to be motivated, now I don't want to get out of bed in the morning.
I want to leave (I'm not the only one), but I'm concerned that this may burn bridges with other YC companies.  Am I correct to have this fear?  I'm not going to do anything unprofessional to leave on bad terms, going to give plenty of notice, wrap up my projects and get out. <comment><USER2> You should quit. Life is short. It's not worth wasting time at a place that makes you unhappy. And from the company's perspective, it's better to hire and onboard someone who would be a better match sooner rather than later. You're not doing anyone any favors by staying.

> I don't have faith in the leadership team- they don't know how to allocate > or focus resources, don't know what a good metric is, hire senior people > then don't let them do their jobs.

I don't know you or the company or the founders so I have no idea if your assessment is reasonable or not, but either way I think it's a sign that you should look for a different job.

One thing I've found is that everything flows down from the top at a startup - bad leadership begets bad management which begets bad execution. Based on what you've said I'm not very optimistic about the company, no matter how great the idea is.

There are companies that survive bad leadership by being in phenomenally lucky. But if that were the case you wouldn't have said you have "some traction". You'd have said tthing are growing like crazy and most people would think you're crazy to want to leave.

To look at things from a different angle suppose your perception of the founders is way off - imagine they're totally reasonable and smart and great, but for whatever reason you're crazy and you don't see it. In that case you should still probably look for another job. Put yourself in their shoes: would you want a critical early stage employee who sees you as an incompetent klutz?

If you think you might want to stay and you think the leadership would be open to it then it would be great if you mentioned some of your concerns to them. Of course doing so might make it more awkward if you then quit a few weeks later.

Overall, I think your best bet would be to find something else and leave on good terms.

A year isn't a crazy short amount of time to be at a startup these days (it's not like you're quitting after a few weeks). Jobs - especially early stage jobs - are like relationships. Sometimes it doesn't work out, not through any particular fault of either party, it's just not a good fit. People will understand.

</comment><comment><USER3> In a community of related businesses, the bad workplaces are often better known than the good ones because there's less reason to leave a good job and it's harder to explain.

My random advice from the internet:

      1. Don't burn bridges.
      2. Don't stay in a place where there's
         a bridge that ought to be burned.
      3. Most companies are chaotic.
      4. Most managers are not very good.

Good luck.</comment>


Retweet.com sold for $250k on Flippa - <AUTHOR> http://flippa.com/auctions/85167/bids

<comment><USER3> Lets think logically.

Retweet.com is a site that is famous for stealing code from its competitors [1]

They claim to have millions of visitors. They clearly don't. At best they could claim this traffic on compete.com if their retweet widget had _massive_ distribution, like the successful original Tweetmeme - except Retweet.com doesn't. Have you _ever_ seen their button in use?

So we know that Retweet has a "shady" code base, we can be pretty certain their traffic is false. Their popular url shortner? <http://search.twitter.com/search?q=RT.nu> compare that to any of the popular services. Not so much.

They had a contest for visitors when the site launched. They never hit the 1M or whatever unique users, not even close.

Guys, this company can't even spell "All Rights Reserved" correctly - "All Rights _Reservered_ " A simple google search would come up with the amount of ridiciulous-ness this company has created.

But it has a bid! So it must be true. Except all you need is a verified phone number to bid. Yeah.

$250K. Honestly.

[1] <http://www.techmeme.com/090727/p56#a090727p56>

<comment><USER4> Your very insightful comment highlights the broader problems with trying to buy or sell a website via public bid.

A website (or at least one normally worth buying at all) is a going business and not a mere item of tangible property.

When you buy an item of tangible property (say, a car), you have expectations that the item will be delivered to you as described. You will be concerned that it will be in the condition represented and that it will be the make, model, and year advertised. For the most part, that is it.

The issues are far more complex when it comes to selling a going business, including one that takes the form of a website.

Here are just a few of the issues that might arise:

1\. All sorts of people might have rights to the IP underlying the website and its development, and to the business concepts underlying it. In a bona fide sale of such an asset, the buyer will want to conduct due diligence to ensure that all such rights belong to the selling company and are properly transferred to the buyer in the sale. An auction sale of this type affords no opportunity to do such due diligence.

2\. The IP rights connected with a website also can create liabilities. For example, suppose a company doing a SAAS business has been accused of violating some IP rights of another company, whether patent, trademark, copyright, or trade secrets (for example, if someone claims that a renegade ex-employee stole code and used it to start an illegitimate site - this, for example, is what a former doctor and clinician at the Mayo Clinic is accused of trying to do with respect to software that helps with insurance billing and disease tracking, see [http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202445949066&Mayo...](http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202445949066&Mayo_Clinic_and_Doctor_Disagree_Over_Who_Stole_Software_Secrets)). This type of issue is handled in a bona fide sale by having the selling entity (and the seller's principals) give warranties and representations attesting that no such claims exist and that they have no reason to believe that any problems of this type exist, and this is coupled again with due diligence to examine the records of the selling entity to ensure that this is so. Again, with an auction of this type, a buyer has no chance to protect itself on such points.

3\. If a selling entity is swamped with liabilities that far exceed its assets, and fails to pay its payroll taxes, sales taxes, etc., a buyer who acquires the assets of such an entity as a going concern will often have what the law calls "successor liability" - meaning that, you might think you are buying a mere website but you might wake up to find that you also "bought" potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars of unpaid tax liabilities formerly owed by the seller alone but now owed by both seller and buyer.

4\. One of the critical factors in any bona fide sale is for a buyer to examine and approve the financial statements of the seller. A website business will have associated financials reflecting a track record of some kind. In less conventional situations, such as retweet.com, the seller may admit not to have monetized its website but, even then, there will always be something of value that needs to be verified to ensure that what the buyer is buying is what the buyer thinks it is buying. Is it the volume of daily traffic? Is it some other metric of value in the social networking world? In such cases, in a bona fide deal, the buyer goes through the records to verify what is or is not the case and, further, requires the seller (and its principals) to warrant that their claims in writing.

5\. Even if there are no hidden liabilities, the parties to a bona fide sale will always negotiate such things as whether a buyer is expressly assuming certain liabilities or not, and these are spelled out in advance prior to a closing. Not all liabilities are bad in this sense. Maybe there is a long-term arrangement for data storage with a third-party vendor. This would naturally be assumed to be transferred to the buyer in connection with a purchase. But what if a website has many such items and the parties are not clear on what liability is or is not to be assumed by the buyer. If the deal is silent on the point, as it would be in the case of an online auction, then the liabilities likely would remain with the seller if a buyer refused to assume them.

6\. In a bona fide sale, if a seller sells a business based on fraudulent misrepresentations, the seller is potentially liable for the damages stemming from the fraud or may be forced to give back the buyer's money if a judgment of rescission is entered against that seller owing to the fraud. In the real world, however, this remedy is meaningless if the seller is itself a mere shell with no assets. That is why, in a bona fide sale, a buyer will want in all such cases to make sure that the principals behind that shell are individually on the hook for any fraudulent misrepresentations, and every asset sale worth its salt will therefore have significant deal terms connected with who makes what warranties and how much this exposes them to potential liability. With an online auction, on the other hand, the "seller" might be some worthless entity that will be judgment-proof when it comes time for a defrauded buyer to attempt to gets its money back.

7\. Almost all bona fide sales will have "conditions to closing," meaning that the deal will be set to close, and will close, once everything has been properly positioned and not otherwise. For example, if the seller has key contracts that are not transferable without a third party's consent, the sales agreement will typically specify that the deal will close if and only if the needed consent is obtained. If it can't be obtained, and if it is critical, then the parties can walk away from the deal. With the online auction, the format does not even take such basic items into account.

8\. This is not even to mention the major strategic factors that go into an acquisition, i.e., whether it is best structured as a stock sale, an asset sale, or a merger and whether it should be done tax-free or otherwise. None of these factors are even remotely considered in an online auction.

I could go on and on, but I'm sure this is already much too long as it is.

The essential point is this: to me, the flippa.com approach to buying websites appears to be trying to simplify a sales process that is inherently too complex to be simplified in this manner. Maybe I am missing something, but the terms of use at the Flippa site seemed to provide, in highly simplistic terms, e.g., that a seller commits to sell and a buyer commits to buy but without specifying more about the structure and terms of any given deal. I think this misses the mark for the sale of any even remotely sophisticated website unless a buyer is willing to fly blind in making the purchase.

All of which raises a broader question - what does this type of online auction site aim to achieve? Is it a place for desperate sellers to sell to naive buyers? Is it aimed to facilitate honest deals but only very simple ones? Is it aimed to provide a "finder" function by which companies can let it be known that they are available for sale even though the true sale would only occur by a more conventional means following the auction itself?

Looking at flippa.com, it is hard for me to see what makes sense as a business model for this type of auction format given the legal issues involved.

<comment><USER5> I sold a site at sitepoint (before they moved to flippa domain last year) for 25k. I set up the auction at night, went to sleep, woke up next morning with several bids and many PMs. Several of them offered me more than my BIN price. The site was sold is less than 24 hours. My investment: ~$25 to setup the auction.

Just a wordpress blog.

I think they changed some of the terms since moving to flippa and it is still ridiculously easy to sell a site through flippa.

Looking at this auction, I have my doubts. Something is not right. It is also possible that the buyer is an idiot with extra cash lying around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The sale of Retweet was heavily publicized in all the major tech blogs.

Why are people skeptical about the final bid price? They played the press right and skewed the value, resulting in a bidding war. When there's an artificially perceived value who's to say someone's going to make a rational purchase decision?

For all you know the new owner could be the teenage son of a Russian oil magnate, who's dad bought it for his kid's birthday after he read about it on Mashable. Cheaper than a Ferrari

</comment><comment><USER7> I wouldn't be surprised if its fake because Kevin and crew likely didn't want to admit failure, so put in a fake bid looking like they had a "win". Lets watch and see if the domain details change (hosting/ip/etc.)

Mesiab labs ( the company that owned/owns retweet ) also runs hummingbird, the #1 twitter spam tool so dont congratulate them too quickly.

More information about how shady these guys are here : <http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/17/retweet-com-for-sale/>

One final note: Even if the purchase is real- The buyer is going to be very disappointed when he finds out that 95% of the claimed traffic is from the iframed retweet buttons and not run-on-site traffic. For a semi accurate analysis of the traffic, just look at alexa (which doesnt count iframes) - <USER2> barely registers

<comment><USER8> This would be really, really stupid, since they had bids over $200k and they would have had to pay $500 to win their own listing. Seems unlikely.

<comment><USER3> dude, seriously. I just registered and bided on a random site. You don't have to pay $500 to bid, and there is no proof that the $250K was paid.

<comment><USER9> $500 is not for bidding, but for the listing fee and the "Success Fee" (commission). The creator of the auction pays this amount; if that happens to be the same as the winner of the auction, then they lose this amount.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If this is real, I dont think retweet, the website, has anything to do with the purchase price. It's all about retweet.com, the domain.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm a little confused here. The title indicates the site _sold_ for $250k however the bidding still has ~2 hours left?

Is the headline incorrect, was the auction extended, or am I missing something?

<comment><USER12> There is a "Buy It Now Option" which won it. The headline is incorrect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I highly doubt the purchase price is real.

<comment><USER8> I highly doubt this is fake. Did you read through the listing and the comments from the seller?

<http://flippa.com/auctions/85167/Retweet-com>

Also, Flippa verified that the seller had access to the site. Now, you might argue that the bidder will fail to pay up, but I don't think this is "fake".

<comment><USER3> obviously the buyer is fake. You really think someone would pay $250K for retweet.com? Why? Dear lord man.

<comment><USER8> Actually, I doubt the buyer is fake, and I _really_ doubt that all the bids leading up to $200k were fake. $250k is not a tremendous sum of money for a site with this kind of traffic, traction, and with so many blogs and sites all over the web using it. I wouldn't buy it, but I have no trouble believing that someone who knew what they were doing could easily make a good return on that $250k.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've perused the listings of flippa a few times. Its usually 90% affiliate marketing (really badly done) if this is real its a huge win for Flippa.

On an unrelated note, I was once amused when a lady posted her health related blog (It made about $100 a month or something) for $65k. When people corrected her saying oh you mean $650 she was a little more then offended.

<comment><USER11> with this in mind clistctrl, I'm curious as to what other (or more "trustworthy") online marketplaces exist for listing a Web site for sale. And, when are they the best route to take, and if not, what other routes should folks take?

I own a couple domains, well, online businesses, that generate some fairly significant revenue - not affiliate marketing, not buy-my-ebook stuff, but real freemium subscription businesses that are content oriented and have highly specific demographics. No, no porn either :)</comment></comment>


After Coronavirus HantaVirus Spreading in China - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@nehaguptag/new-virus-spreading-in-china-hantavirus-7aa12a35bc62 <comment><USER2> This spreads from rat to human as opposed to human to human like coronavirus. It is still alarming because rats are literally everywhere, but nowhere near a pandemic level.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed!</comment></comment>