When's a pedestrian not a pedestrian? When it's a decal - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608321/this-image-is-why-self-driving-cars-come-loaded-with-many-types-of-sensor/ <comment><USER2> That decal is a bad idea, regardless of whether the driver is an AI or a human.

Apparently painting vehicles grey can cause people not to see them as well. Having photo realistic images of road scenes seems much worse.

Have they never watched roadrunner cartoons?

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately, cute ideas like that are popular. [https://m.imgur.com/K1w16U3](https://m.imgur.com/K1w16U3)

<comment><USER4> Also: [https://i.imgur.com/rQm66By.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/rQm66By.jpg)

<comment><USER5> This happened in Brazil, for some time there was a hoax that a car did crash on that painting.

The painting lasted less than 24 hours though.

[http://www.e-farsas.com/parede-desenhada-com-o-tunel-papa- le...](http://www.e-farsas.com/parede-desenhada-com-o-tunel-papa-leguas- causou-um-acidente.html)

<comment><USER6> Snoopes' version of the link: [http://www.snopes.com/road-runner-tunnel-crash- rumor/](http://www.snopes.com/road-runner-tunnel-crash-rumor/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This happens to humans as well. Case in point: radio shows/ads that have car horn noises

The decal is bad but the car doesn't risk doing anything that it shouldn't (like driving through it). If it was a decal of an empty road ahead it would have been more problematic

<comment><USER8> The decal might be deliberately constructed (using perspective tricks) to alter the behavior of an autonomous car following your van. The cyclists might appear either much closer or farther than the plane they're drawn on. If you install a video panel on the back of your van, there are even more possibilities. You might be able to play a video of an object rapidly moving towards the autonomous car, which will cause it to swerve to try to avoid it.

And yes, some of this stuff will probably work on humans as well, but autonomous driving is supposed to be better than humans.

<comment><USER9> Deliberately malicious behavior would land such person in jail as soon as serious accident happens. You can do a many things to trick human drivers as well to cause an accident, the only reason we don't see this happening very often is because most people in society are decent human beings.

<comment><USER10> > Deliberately malicious behavior would land such person in jail as soon as > serious accident happens

Edit: In the real world, this is more likely to happen by accident than intent.

No regulations exist yet.

The offender could claim whatever mod he made wasn't intended to cause harm to others. Then you have to prove intent, which can be difficult.

<comment><USER11> > The offender could claim whatever mod he made wasn't intended to cause harm > to others. Then you have to prove intent, which can be difficult.

Or you have to have laws which cover acts done with mental states short of intent to cause harm like (in ascending I order of seriousness in existing law—and all of these are already covered for acts that get people killed) criminal negligence, recklessness, and depraved indifference to human life.

Of course, it's a lot less difficult to convince even a criminal jury of intent than people in HN often seem to think; legal proof, even to meet the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard, is _far_ less than logical proof.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I really _hate_ to be that guy, but I think my biggest worry is how each of these car manufacturers will handle such edge cases.

Each car manufacturers autonomous driving is a black box, we don't know whether said edge case is handled or not, or what action the car will take. Maybe now's not the time but it would be nice to see a deterministic rule book that says, for this edge case, the system will react this way. We can't account for all edge cases but some default fall back would be nice.

<comment><USER13> Maybe we need an open source protocol that has all the standards and edge cases handled.

I think competitiveness is a good thing and will drive innovation. But in this specific field, with regards to safety and security, it needs to be out in the open.

<comment><USER14> The protocol is likely uninteresting rather it's the models, training data, and training configurations which are most interesting and the least likely to be open sourced. I don't work in the autonomous vehicle space but I would be surprised there's a set of deterministic rules that are easily reviewed instead collections of deep nn models.

<comment><USER15> Wouldn't you test the output rather than the input? Before an autonomous vehicle / update is allowed to go on public roads, it must pass a "driving test" that includes a bunch of known edge cases.

<comment><USER16> Sure. And maybe that's what will happen. But now you have pre-defined tricky situations. Everyone builds those very specific situations into their systems but may not really generalize them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I have been deaf in one ear for a bit (a few weeks) a while ago (aftereffects of a flu), I did not realize before then how much I rely on my hearing during driving. Do self driving cars use audio sensors?

<comment><USER18> I think we rely on our hearing because we can only see in one direction. With an autonomous car, you can have sensors pointing in every direction, so visual/radar/lidar clues might be all you need.

<comment><USER19> Sound travels around corners.

It not only reflects very well but the way some low frequencies spread out is enough to allow certain vehicles to be heard before they are visible (solid concrete could obscure the view).

<comment><USER20> Also, sound can give early warning of an approaching train, or of an emergency vehicle nearby, or of a truck in reverse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Apart from illusions, what about discriminating between genuine obstacles and things that can be safely driven over ? For example, a barrier vs some old snow. The car's software has never experienced the properties of materials by walking, jumping on, touching etc. It can't predict how materials will behave when driven over.

<comment><USER22> Your car might not have run over snow before, but millions of other cars equipped with self driving senors will have.

<comment><USER23> And this is why you don't want to be one of the first people riding self driving cars. Especially since there isn't even a way for you to manually inform the car about things like this.

<comment><USER22> I wouldn't worry about that, millions of miles have been driven by them by now. By the time you get into the first mass produced truly self driving car you will not be able to compete with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Well, is one of many reasons why. I assume there are lots of edge cases. Floating plastic bags, for example.

<comment><USER24> My Volvo slammed on the autonomous brake yesterday for no discernible reason. Best guess was a leaf blew across the sensor.

<comment><USER25> "Avoid highway braking" was drilled into us as 15 year olds in drivers ed. That still is one sacred rule i swear by.

Chain reaction braking, unnecessarily has caused many accidents (witnessed by me). Driving on I-95 in Florida you have (upgrades) where bridges are were built (limiting sight). Heavy congestion causes unnecessary braking. Several rear ends were witnessed on a trip north from the keys.

Never highway brake.

Im glad you posted this because it is good to know what cars may not respond the way a human was trained.

Try braking on the Merritt parkway and see what happens

<comment><USER26> But when an accident due to highway braking occurs, the person in the following vehicle will always be considered at fault -- the person in front of you may brake hard for any reason good or bad, and if you collide into the back of that vehicle, you were following too closely, driving too fast, and/or not paying attention.

The person in front may also be partially considered at fault if they didn't have a good reason, but the person following will always be considered at fault.

<comment><USER27> Who is at fault matters... but it still sucks to be involved in a collision. Not being responsible is cold comfort, especially if it results in injury to passengers in your car.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> At first, I interpreted the image as a mockup of a self-driving car broadcasting warnings about upcoming hazards, so that cars to its rear could know about them before directly observing them. I wonder whether that will ever be possible across differing car brands.

<comment><USER29> Both the Federal government and the EU are trying to force the industry to come up and accept standards: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to- vehicle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-vehicle)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> this almost throwaway line at the end caught my eye: "The safest bet, then, is for automakers to use an array of sensors, in order to build redundancy into their systems."

experienced engineers know that redundancy is a double-edged sword. what do you do when the data from redundant systems disagree? having more data sources means dealing with more edge cases. a single reliable data source (as in the limitations and biases are well known) is better than two less predictable ones.

i'm not saying that that's necessarily the case here, but it's not as obvious as this line suggests that the answer is just to add more kinds of sensors (and thereby add more diverse data sources).

<comment><USER31> I disagree. In an autonomous system, more sensors is almost always better, provided you have enough computing power to process the data. Having two sensors that disagree gives you much more information than if you had a single sensor with a malfunction. In the first case, you know there's some kind of fault and can take steps to fix it. In the second, you're running off bad data and who knows what could happen.

Three sensors are better than two—it's a common setup in flight control systems to have three identical computers running all calculations, and the majority opinion is taken as truth.

<comment><USER30> yes, in a resource-unconstrained world, we could put every sensor on the car and add as much computing power as we'd like.

in your 2-sensor scenario, how do you know which one is providing incorrect data?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> When image processing and pattern matching driven by the need to identify pornographic images by social media companies masquerading as AI meets the real world.

This just underlines what AI actually means and what is currently trying to pass for AI.

</comment><comment><USER10> Not sure why all the defense of "humans make this mistake too" in this thread.

Isn't the point of SDC that they are _better_ than humans? Shouldn't we support a diverse array of sensors to cover all the eventualities that we can? If some form of radar + camera solves this problem, what's the point of arguing humans would get confused by it too?

To be clear, the article alludes to the existence of three types of cars in the wild,

(1) Cars with many types of sensors (2) Cars with some types of sensors (3) Cars with no sensors

All other things being equal, why are people voting for (2) rather than (1)?

</comment><comment><USER33> I don't entirely understand why with this image though.

While just a camera, looking just at the picture of the cyclist experience some perception issues due to skewing, the camera still sees the distance between the front bumper and the bicycle, but also sees the breadth of the car.

If, in this image, we see 3 bicyclists and a car in front of us, what's the worst decision we can make? To only pass the bicyclists at that car's width? To wait until we can safely pass? To treat it like a bicycle race with a support vehicle and wait to pass until we can pass the entire group?

<comment><USER34> I think the image is just meant to showcase that one sensor can be confused by edge cases. It's a good image that shows unintended interpretation of data. There are likely many other edges cases that are not as clear why a car will misinterpret them, which is why they went with this image.

<comment><USER35> Yeah. Once seen, engineers could correct for this kind of situation.

The point is there are many such unseen sitauations that current systems don't handle, and that diversifying the sensor array can help handle those.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Does anyone have any good research or review articles into the current state of sensor fusion?

To me as a layman, Car AI really seems like one of the most "intelligence" type of AI. Yes Alpha Go and Deep Blue are really good at something that was once thought "easy" for humans and hard for computers, but AI cars seems like trying to construct part of an animal's nervous system and sticking it into a vehicular body.

<comment><USER10> Personally I think medical diagnostics are the most interesting and useful AI.

Radiology, and healthcare overall, is set to be improved rapidly if we can get some more labeled data. The hardware and software is already ready to start learning how to diagnose cancer and other health issues based on human-scan data.

Not sure whether an "intelligence" rating is possible, given that AI systems are still designed to be domain-specific, i.e., self driving cars aren't detecting cancer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I understand the argument, since car sensors are currently less robust than human eyes, so you need to use many different kinds of them to get near-human results.

However, humans get by driving reasonable safely using just vision. I'm totally a computer vision layman, but couldn't you correctly interpret this situation with binocular vision?

<comment><USER38> Humans are kind of shitty at driving though.

<comment><USER16> You have to define "shitty" in this context. I agree that there are a lot of bad drivers out there. But even with those bad drivers, people driving while texting/intoxicated, and with older vehicles that don't have all the latest safety and assistive driving features, the fatality rate in the US is still something like 1 per 100 million miles. There are a lot of auto-related deaths in the US but there are a lot of miles driven.

<comment><USER38> Given modern safety standards in vehicles, I don't think fatalities are a good measure of how good humans are at driving.

It's news when a self-driving car runs a red light, but pretty normal for humans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> How about when photons flood the camera/sensor ( the sun shines it's rays directly at you ) -- or - when photons cover the subject that the camera/sensor is supposed to be reading -- last this happened the rider died ( [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jul/01/tesla- dri...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jul/01/tesla-driver- killed-autopilot-self-driving-car-harry-potter) ) -- they're too many natural occurring factors at play to predetermine what a moving vehicle should or shouldn't do every second - for this reason - vehicles we travel in should be put in an environment first that blocks distractions - like Musk with his Boring machine - this controlled environment makes more sense - otherwise I need an alarm to wake me up when the sensors know they can't tell what's going on - I need to regain control of my vessel and guide it correctly through the photons - yes?

<comment><USER40> >How about when photons flood the camera/sensor

First you try countermeasures, if that fails you remove yourself from traffic. At least that's what humans do in that situation.

>or - when photons cover the subject that the camera/sensor is supposed to be reading -- last this happened the rider died

A frequent problem for human drivers too.

We just need good heuristics how to come to a safe stop, and be generally better than the average driver.

<comment><USER41> Similar to fog or heavy rain which can also readily obscure the road, and hazards.

Not sure how well these things are currently managed by self-driving cars??

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> "When's a pedestrian not a pedestrian? When it's a decal"

This sub-title is without context. Would be nice if the title here matched the article title, "This Image Is Why Self-Driving Cars Come Loaded with Many Types of Sensors"</comment>


Semantic Mining of  Social Networks [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://keg.cs.tsinghua.edu.cn/jietang/publications/book15-tang-Semantic-Mining-Social-Networks.pdf <comment><USER2> I'm the editor of the series that this book is published in. You can actually buy the ebook for $30 at [http://www.morganclaypool.com/doi/abs/10.2200/S00629ED1V01Y2...](http://www.morganclaypool.com/doi/abs/10.2200/S00629ED1V01Y201502WBE011?journalCode=wbe.1)

It's a pretty fair price for a 200 page book that's (well in my opinion) interesting.</comment>


New Oculus prototype features positional tracking, reduced motion blur - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/01/new-oculus-prototype-features-positional-tracking-reduced-motion-blur/#p3

<comment><AUTHOR> _> Instead of leaving a frame on for the entire 16 milliseconds or so that's usual for a 60 frame-per-second game, the new display switches it on for only 1 or 2 milliseconds, then switches it back off quickly until the next frame is ready. The result is much less blurring when moving quickly through the VR space since the display is no longer showing frames that are a few milliseconds out of date._

It's interesting that just turning off the frame after showing it briefly eliminates the blurring. It's basically adjusting the interface between the system output and our visual input, moving the persistence illusion "calculation" to our brain instead of doing it in the device and having it be misinterpreted by the brain. They're now pushing frames at a fixed rate into the brain instead of letting the brain pull frames at will.</comment>


How I'm going to wake up at 5 AM every day in 2016 and how you can do the same - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/better-humans/how-i-m-going-to-wake-up-at-5-am-every-single-day-in-2016-how-you-can-do-it-too-11b48a0bef51#.4zvm8axlt <comment><USER2> So, is this person not going to go to a concert this year, or to a party... unless they're willing to go with <5 hours of sleep that night?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's the deal. I'm not much of a party person anyways. I do get to take a nap in the afternoon though, if I do that ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nik, though I do that already and going to do that in the future also,this, however, is an awesome read. I am not any kind of person - morning or night. I work well in both cases. But I like to get up early every morning. It gives me 14 more hours every week than people who wake up at 7 and 28 more hours than people who wake up at 9. So in the whole year, I will have 2*365/24=30.4 more days to work on me or the things that I love than a person who wake up at 7 and 60.8 more days than the one who wakes up at 9.

That's is crazy. Isn't it?

<comment><USER4> Well if they go to bed 2 to 4 hours later than you do, then you have 0 more hours a week, and 0 more days a year than they do.

<comment><AUTHOR> While mathematically correct, this only holds true if they are exactly as productive from say 12 pm to 2 am after a long day as they are from 5 am to 7 am after just waking up.

Possible? Yes.

Likely? No.</comment></comment></comment>


Can This Wee British Lad Cure Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook Coal Problem? - <AUTHOR> http://www.good.is/post/can-this-wee-british-lad-cure-mark-zuckerberg-s-facebook-coal-problem/ <comment><USER2> :( Two things about this film are unhelpfully wrong, and putting those words into a cute kid's mouth doesn't change that.

One, the Oregon datacenter will use some measure of hydro power as opposed to most every other data center in the entire goddamned world. But they attack Facebook for doing it. Great, that's helpful.

Two, Oregon is _cold_ , which means that datacenter will use a _lot_ less power to cool down the building than if it was in, say, Texas and powered by happy windmills.

Greenpeace knows, or should know, that you can't flip a magic switch and get happy-windmill power. Not even Google can do that. This video is mostly easy point-scoring and marketing for GP. Have they spoken directly to Facebook about their power plans?</comment>


Project Malmö – A platform for AI experimentation and research in Minecraft - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Microsoft/malmo <comment><USER2> I wonder how this compares to BurlapCraft[1], which is a mod of Minecraft integrated with BURLAP- a reinforcement learning and planning library.

[1] [http://h2r.cs.brown.edu/announcing- burlapcraft/](http://h2r.cs.brown.edu/announcing-burlapcraft/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Pretty cool, they seem to have made an XML interface for parsing minecraft commands, allowing various programming languages to be used to compose "missions" which can then be outputted as XML and read by the mod to be run in the game. I think this is crucial because (IMO) Java is not a good language for beginners because it is such a "large" language.

<comment><USER4> Pretty much. The XML is mainly used to specify the 'mission' that you want your agent to perform. You write your agent in Python (or a few other languages), and it can be as simple as this: [https://github.com/Microsoft/malmo/blob/master/Malmo/samples...](https://github.com/Microsoft/malmo/blob/master/Malmo/samples/Python_examples/run_mission.py)

We talk to the Minecraft Mod over TCP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I used to live in the city of Malmö, Sweden. Now I live in Lund, 20 minutes away from bus.

It is amazing that Malmö was chosen as a name, I wonder how the reasoning went?

<comment><USER6> Malmö is one of my favorite cities in the world. I try to visit there every year from Australia, ever since 2013 when it hosted the Eurovision Song Contest. Loved the train stations there, especially Triangeln:

[http://pfnphoto.com/new/malmo-triangeln/](http://pfnphoto.com/new/malmo- triangeln/)

Emporia is an amazingly beautiful shopping mall too:

[http://architecturelinked.com/profiles/blogs/emporia](http://architecturelinked.com/profiles/blogs/emporia)

I didn't know Lund was so close by bus. I have friends who live there; next time I'll have to try visiting them.

<comment><USER7> Stunning pictures!

<comment><USER5> Here is one of the busier regions of Malmö Centrum[1].

[1] [https://goo.gl/maps/eTfDuMRVDP52](https://goo.gl/maps/eTfDuMRVDP52)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Anyone got some background information on the choice of project name? Malmö is the name of Sweden's third largest city (where I grew up).

<comment><USER9> It was originally called "Project AIX" but IBM didn't find it agreeable.

<comment><USER10> I talked to someone who had worked at Microsoft Research, who mentioned that it is actually policy to name projects after cities. Apparently it's not possible to trademark a name of a city, so this protects against being sued for trademark infringement. Since Microsoft has lots of money, they are a tempting target for lawsuits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I read through the tutorial and one thing that stood out was the sections that required changing an xml file by hand. I don't thing that you should have to manually modify xml for common use cases when it would be simple enough to build a tool to do that.

<comment><USER12> They do accept PRs, it would seem. Or you can file an issue and see if someone else would be interested in submitting such a tool. :)</comment></comment>


Elon Musk Has Been Quietly Running a School and It Sounds Like Absolute Insanity - <AUTHOR> http://smokeroom.com/2018/06/26/elon-musk-private-school/ <comment><USER2> Wonder how this would scale

</comment><comment><USER3> nwfw ads even with adblock going</comment>


The Death of the Artist and the Birth of the Creative Entrepreneur - <AUTHOR> http://m.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/01/the-death-of-the-artist-and-the-birth-of-the-creative-entrepreneur/383497/?single_page=true

<comment><USER2> [https://hn.algolia.com/?q=death+of+the+artist#!/story/foreve...](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=death+of+the+artist#!/story/forever/0/death%20of%20the%20artist)</comment>


Dollar Shave Club Is Valued at $615M - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/06/21/dollar-shave-club-valued-at-615-million/ <comment><USER4> I liked their branding. It had that hip internet company feel. The little leaflets and stuff that they sent with each razor pack were just fun. After time, their razors began to hurt and feel like they were pulling hair more than I remember at the beginning. One Saturday I did an A/B test with a store- bought Gillette 5 blade against the DSC ultimate 6 blade. I lathered up and shaved with a brand new DSC blade and it was just a little painful. Brand new Gillette, smooth as silk. I decided that even though the Dollar Shave Club was cheaper (Gillette from a drugstore is 15-20 bucks for refills) I couldn't have a painful shave experience. I had my phone in hand to take pics of the experience and thought... hey, I'll just cancel right now. I could not find a way to do it. I could only pause my delivery. Finally a couple of months later, I hunted around their website a bit and didn't immediately see anything related to "quitting the club". After a google search, I finally met with success.... only to start receiving plenty of email from them. I unsubscribed and so far I haven't heard from them again. I doubt I'll try Gillette's shave club as I've heard they just send out their "not as sharp" razors for the reduced price. Maybe I should just grow a beard....

<comment><USER5> Funny how their strategy seems to be based on annoying ads and locking people to their service

About shaving: after I got an electrical one I never looked back

<comment><USER6> Relevant: [http://imgur.com/gallery/fkkn3](http://imgur.com/gallery/fkkn3)

<comment><USER7> While interesting, is it really relevant? As in does the observed visual difference amount to significant practical difference

<comment><USER8> Actually it does make a practical difference but I would argue in favor of the electric razor.

Ever wonder why it itches in those first couple of weeks if you decide to grow your beard out?

Look at that picture.

Shaving with a straight-blade razor basically leaves a bunch of tiny little hypodermic needles behind. When those suckers start growing out, they curl back into your face and start jabbing you, resulting in that annoying itching sensation.

If you want to grow your beard out, take my advice and make your last shave with an electric razor, it's a lot more comfortable.

<comment><USER9> > If you want to grow your beard out, take my advice and make your last shave > with an electric razor, it's a lot more comfortable.

Shouldn't make too much of a difference after a few days, should it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've never understood the appeal of the dollar shave club. Razors are very cheap when bought in bulk, and they take up very little space to store, even an entire year's supply. Wouldn't it make more sense and save money to ship a year's supply at a time?

For example, here are 64 razors for $16: [http://amazon.com/dp/B00XKVH4O6](http://amazon.com/dp/B00XKVH4O6). The comparable dollar shave two-blade option would cost you $48, since it's $1/mo for blades and $2/mo for shipping.

On the high end six-blade model, here's 24-cartridges for $30.49: [http://www.dorcousa.com/pace-6-cartridges-6-pack- sxa1040/](http://www.dorcousa.com/pace-6-cartridges-6-pack-sxa1040/) The same thing from dollar shave would cost $54.

<comment><USER11> Do you know if the quality is the same?

The dollar shave club not only sells cheap shaving gear (compared to gillette at the supermarket) but also sells reassurance that the gear isn't crap, which I think many consumers fear about no-name alternatives.

<comment><USER12> Razors are practically, not quite, but practically caveman technology. I'd imagine that any products making it it to the modern market are roughly the same grade.

One thing I'm sure of: A good sign of a superior product is that it doesn't need monthly replacement.

<comment><USER13> This is untrue. First off, facial hair has different consistency (tougher, finer, curly, straight, etc.) and what may work for one person doesn't always work for someone else. Second, (as someone who has to shave every day) there's a vast and noticeable difference between safety cartridges; there are _really_ bad ones out there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Honestly, I like their branding.

It is unique enough to stand apart, but not so far out there that its unapproachable or unnecessarily too hipster, and manly enough without scaring off the metro-sexual or gay crowd (and please, don't take this as offense, it's just that they gravitate to certain brands that are more "gentlemenly" than flat out "manly").

Their website portrays their brand extremely well, their famous video ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUG9qYTJMsI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUG9qYTJMsI)) is absolutely amazing for how low budget it is, and, well, how fail it is and they just keep rolling with it. Its genius.

I just wish they'd veer into the double edged safety razor market, which in my opinion, needs a bit of disruption too.

<comment><USER15> As a gay subscriber, I completely agree with "manly enough without scaring off the metro-sexual or gay crowd." Masculine without being defensive about it.

<comment><USER16> How on Earth did this get downvoted?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I remember when Dollar Shave Club popped up on my radar. I thought to myself, "You know what? They are right. It's ridiculous that I spend so much money on Gillette razor blades. I only get 2-3 good shaves out of them."

I ended up buying an $80 Philips electric razor and haven't looked back. Takes way less time, I don't have to use shaving cream, and I don't have to be careful either.

<comment><USER18> I did the same until I got a safety razor and found some good blades.

Smoothest shave of my life, refills come out to about $.50/week. The first shave wasn't pretty, but after that it was smooth sailing and I'll never look back.

Makes things like DSC seem quaint; people think safety razors are either:

\- archaic \- dangerous

But the truth is they are a fantastic, cheap way to get a high quality shave and I don't mind being an evangelist about them if it gets people away from fully disposable razors.

<comment><USER19> I did the same, until I saw a tip that somebody posted here :) Since then I've been using the same Gillette cartridge (it's been over a year) and it's still as sharp as it was when I bought it.

The trick is to rub it against your bicep or forearm (effectively stropping it) before use. I also do that after use, which helps to dry it up (keeping it even sharper).

I've already saved a small fortune on cartridge refills. Best shaving tip I ever got!

<comment><USER20> Interesting: [http://lifehacker.com/5502841/extend-the-life-of-your- razor-...](http://lifehacker.com/5502841/extend-the-life-of-your-razor-blades- with-your-forearm)

I'm going to give it a try, cheers for passing the tip along!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Private equity bubbles occur when there's not much money to be made in publicly traded companies. This is because there's a capital surplus because of quantitative easing, and a lower cost to access capital. Everything in economics is cause and effect.

<comment><USER22> All true. Also been true for ~7 years, so maybe it doesn't matter much.

<comment><USER23> At some point, the balloon will get squeezed and all that money is going to rush elsewhere. I don't envy either part of the balloon.

<comment><USER24> But will it? The big lesson of 2009 was that ratings agencies aren't trustworthy and investment banks have no problem selling you junk investments.

The Dollar Shave Club looks like a prudent investment in comparison. Perhaps it's overvalued, but it's safe from outright fraud.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> $20 Merkur Double Edge Safety Razor $20 Large sample pack of razors from amazon $10 bristle brush and lather bar soap

That was three years ago, haven't bought anything since. I'm confused why if people want an affordable solution this route isn't more popular? Is it simply because most stores have stopped selling plain razors for much more expensive handled disposables?

<comment><USER26> Those brushes are amazing even using 'regular' 2/3/4/6 blade razors. Same goes for shave soap.

I've got a double-edged Merkur and a straight Classic Samurai razor: both are great. Blade-wise, I've only tried Derby Extras & Sharks, but both are great.

There is a market to find and distribute varieties of double/single-edge razor blades, not that anyone's tapping it. Wouldn't it be nice to get a couple blades sent in advance to every hotel you fly to? Or just to get a few different blades for $1 or $2/mo? (what _are_ Feathers like?) You don't always need or want the 100-pack (though it usually is just $6 or $7).

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> We are in what will be called "the private equity bubble".

<comment><USER28> At first I thought the same thing. But if you'll bear with me for some back of the envelope math, with 2 million members paying an average of $5/month, that means they're bringing in $120,000,000 a year. That's a multiple less than 6x of revenue, hardly that outrageous.

<comment><USER29> What is the gross profit margin on the back of your envelope?

<comment><USER30> Gillette's _brand_ is valued by forbes at $20B (~2.5x Revenue)

[http://www.forbes.com/companies/gillette/](http://www.forbes.com/companies/gillette/)

<comment><USER31> About about the gross margin?

<comment><USER32> Still great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Neat concept, but they didn't get my money. I assumed they would be cheap (per their name), but quickly realised that my local Aldi is cheaper. Furthermore, I shave daily and use disposable razors but simply don't need them at the frequency DSC ship them to you. So DSCs ad got me thinking, and all I ended up doing was swapping from Gilette to Aldi.

Furthermore, it isn't more convenient for me - I still need to go and buy other things from the store, so as long as I remember once every 2-3 months to pick up blades DSC certainly isn't making my life simpler or easier.

This is just another pets.com to me, neat idea but really just not that compelling.

</comment><comment><USER34> I just want to be that person who brings up the oppression inherent in the clean-shaven-male culture.

The skin on my face hates shaving. I disagree with the resources spent on shaving, and the pollution. I've shaved my face fully once in the past 10 years, but I do shave around the cheeks and neck, so I have to deal with the shaving thing a bit anyway.

Also, I'm from Adelaide, home of 'The Beards', here they are with their track 'If Your Dad Doesn't Have a Beard, You've Got Two Mums' [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmFnarFSj_U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmFnarFSj_U)

</comment><comment><USER35> Flattered to be on featured on hackernews.

We're hiring Devops, Platform Engineers, Mobile developers and QA automation engineers.

For more info email: email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER36> We're hiring software engineers at DSC: SDEI (software development engineer in infrastructure), SDET, iOS/Android engineers and platform engineers. Email email@example.com

<comment><USER37> For what application?

<comment><USER36> To shave the world, of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I don't see DSC as overvalued at all. They're selling real products that everyone needs (not wants), in an arrangement that makes total sense (razor blades are the sort of consumable that needs restocking at predictable intervals). They face high competition in the sense that I wouldn't bet on any retailer that isn't Amazon, but I'm sure that's priced into the valuation.

<comment><USER39> > They're selling real products that everyone needs (not wants)

Sikhs?

<comment><USER40> alright wise guy

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> It is around one full year that I am growing a beard, but when I use to shave I used a straight razor.

The one like the old far-west movie, but more secure and safe.

It is a niece white piece of plastic, (2€) and I bought a little packet of 10 blades (1.2€) if you shave every morning I guess a blade will last at least a week.

But you need to learn how to shave with a straight razor, the first time is just little piece of your face floating in blood, the more you practise the less you will cut yourself, I used to don't have the little scratch on my face... It is definitely a different and more enjoyable experience...

</comment><comment><USER42> Their premium model has six blades[0]. Made me chuckle remembering this article[1].

[0] [https://www.dollarshaveclub.com/blades](https://www.dollarshaveclub.com/blades)

[1] [http://www.theonion.com/blogpost/fuck-everything-were- doing-...](http://www.theonion.com/blogpost/fuck-everything-were-doing-five- blades-11056)

<comment><USER43> Gag from the early '90s, being the "Gillette 3000, with 16 blades..."

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YleuLyCUx28](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YleuLyCUx28)

Worth watching for the description of what the blades do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> It will be interesting to see if Harry's will "catch up" with a similar valuation in the near future. Estimates at the end of 2014 put them in the $200-300 million range, although they seemed to be neck-and-neck otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER45> Personally I have been following the forearm method [1] of keeping my disposable five-blade cartridges sharp. Maybe it won't work for everyone, but it certainly seemed to make a difference to me. Then again, I also grew out a beard so now I only shave a part of my face, and generally do so twice a week, not every day. Having said that, my most recent cartridge lasted me just about a year.

[1] [http://lifehacker.com/5502841/extend-the-life-of-your- razor-...](http://lifehacker.com/5502841/extend-the-life-of-your-razor-blades- with-your-forearm)

</comment><comment><USER46> I have a nice 1/2 inch beard, and my razor is scissors. $8/10-15 years.

<comment><USER47> Not working for goatees though.

<comment><USER48> If you have a goatee or a soul patch, your shaving method is not your biggest problem.

<comment><USER49> First time laughing at a HN comment this week. Wish one of my coworkers would see this...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I don't have to shave very often (once or twice a week), so the price and convenience of not having to remember to buy something I already don't think about very much is great. They deliver the 6 pack of blades once every other month or so and I'll often pause it if I get a backlog of blades.

I can't really speak to the quality of said blades or the shave, since I'm pretty sure 14 year old boys shave more than I do. But I've never experienced a painful shave as others have.

</comment><comment><USER51> "Dollar Shave Club is burning through 'low single digit millions' of dollars each month, according to a person familiar with the figures."

<comment><USER52> Missed opportunity: "Shaving away 'low single digit millions' ..."

<comment><USER53> Missed opportunity to you, "dodged temptation" to others perhaps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I think they get their blades from Dorco. I can buy that much cheaper in bulk on Amazon.

</comment><comment><USER54> Bring on the armchair private market economists.

</comment><comment><USER55> Tried DSC (even with the quad blades) for several months, had terrible shaves and switched to a Fusion and never looked back. I wanted to like them since they're cheap and the marketing was cool, but the product just didn't live up to expectations.

</comment><comment><USER56> I had an epiphany when I switched from Mach 3 razors to a safety razor - <USER2> markets are dominated by marketing, meanwhile there is equivalent, sometimes better, solutions that exist but don't have the means to market their product due to having such low operating margins.

Dollar Shave Club comes around as is able to mimic that concept, but hits a middle ground between a low-margin and mainstream marketed solutions.

The irony in all of this is that the Dollar Shave Club is still too expensive when compared to my safety razor that costs me about 10 cents per shave. So it is actually more like the mainstream solutions they're trying to undermine than not.

</comment><comment><USER57> The valuation seems high to me. I've been told that valuations should be around 3.5x revenue; at $615m, that should mean that DSC has sold $175m of razors last year. I would be astounded if that were the case.

<comment><USER58> where did you hear that 3.5x number? I thought 10x revenue was common for internet companies. Although this isn't an internet company, but they did get their start on the internet (I think?)

<comment><USER59> The short cut is to compacte with other players in the same industry. Somewhere else in the thread it's said that Gilette is valued 2,5x. So 3,5x is not too far off.

The real way investment managers calculate potential worth is much more complex, calculating expenditures per dollar earned, looking at the market saturation, risks from competitors etc. Because these calculations are usually the same for businesses in the same industry the shortcut is usually close.

In this case their multiplier might be higher than that of Gilette because they spend less on marketing and they're smaller but with a steeper growth curve.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Everyone says it's a bubble and yet seven years later, since 2008, I can only think of three major VC implosions off the top of my head: fab.com, zynga, and groupon. Fab was a train-wreck that anyone with a pulse could have seen coming. Zynga... way too dependent on Facebook and a fad. Groupon is the better of the three, only seeing its valuation fall from $30 billion to just $4 billion - but still well over $1 billion. These valuations, as lofty as they seem, ain't goin' lower.

</comment><comment><USER61> I found a Schick injector razor probably five years ago, and bought a supply of blades for it off of Amazon for about $15. I really only use it for cleaning up my neckbeard, but I'm not even halfway through the blades I bought.

It does take a little care until you know what you are doing, since you can really carve yourself up with the single blade if you go too hard. But it's certainly sharper and does a better job than any of the multi-blade disposable razors I used to use.

</comment><comment><USER62> If you clean and dry your razors - whatever kind - you'll get many more good shaves out of them. I clean mine and then blast with a can of pressurized air.

</comment><comment><USER63> What amazes me is that their business strategy is so easy to replicate- 1 - buy another manufacturer's blades in bulk 2 - <USER3>

yet they pull in that kind of valuation.

<comment><USER64> I think the subscription model is a big part of the valuation. Investors love seeing steady (and predictable) income.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> I really like what they're doing, I keep seeing their ads in facebook and I wonder if that's because I look at razor stuff on google, reddit or amazon... But yeah they're marketing well, they're doing something nice!

Having say that, I wouldn't buy any, and I advise clever people here of not doing so as well. Safety razors are super cheap and are amazing.

<comment><USER66> I don't really look up razors or related products online and I also see their ads all over Facebook. I'm pretty certain they're just aggressively targeting the 18-35 demographic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> You can buy a box of their top-of-the-line razors from South Korea for like ten dollars. This is 100% marketing. I don't mean there's anything wrong with that, just that this valuation is for something that is pure marketing. They don't really have an edge in their products...... badum-psh!

</comment><comment><USER68> If for some reason you love DSC's razors, you can buy direct from the manufacturer, Dorco USA, for even cheaper.

dorcousa.com

</comment><comment><USER69> Another way to save money on razor blades

[http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-extend-the-life-of- yo...](http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-extend-the-life-of-your-Razor- Blade-keeping/)

</comment><comment><USER70> I remember reading about the development of Gillette's Mach 3 blade in the book "Good to Great". From what I remember, the spent considerable money in developing the tooling required to manufacture those blades. I think that razor has been around for quite some time now and maybe some of that tooling is easier duplicated now, but it seems like a market that would be very hard to enter because manufacturing a razor that could compete on quality and convenience would be very expensive to do.

From reading some of the comments here, it sounds like DSC's razors are not nearly as good as Gillette's and they are able to sell razors mostly because of their marketing, which confirms what I had thought about new players coming in. I was less skeptical of Harry's because they specifically including messages in their marketing about how they took over an existing manufacture.

<comment><USER71> I'm pretty sure DSC doesn't make the blades. They're just a middleman.

<comment><USER72> IRRC they use Dorco blades, which can be purchased significantly cheaper elsewhere (e.g. Amazon)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> Even if they were selling perfect blades, is this company really worth $615M?

</comment><comment><USER74> At Beluga Shave Co. we make single edge shaving like a Professional Barber easy for the first time with our Beluga Razor, and it looks like for many of you we have the perfect solution. Why pay a few bucks when you can pay a few cents right? Happy to answer any questions regarding shaving, especially for those who might be having some issues.

Quick highlights on our Beluga Razor: 1\. We don't even sell blades, but they cost as little as 10 cents each and available in over 75+ different varieties. 2\. A single edge cuts easier and closer than multiple blades, while eliminating irritation because a single edge generates far less friction than multiple blades. 3\. No clogging issues because our Beluga Razor is designed to eliminate this issue.

</comment><comment><USER75> I shave with a razor about once a week and I think I've been using the same blade for 2 or 3 years now.

<comment><USER58> so? do you think you represent the average Western adult male?

<comment><USER75> I could. If they'd use a Wahl trimmer on their face a few times a week and be fine with stubble. What's with society's obsession with clean shaven men? Still? In 2015?

People can mutilate their ears with gauges and tattoo their faces and it would now be considered discriminatory to allow that to hamper a man's career goals. But some stubble? Whoah hold up.

It's good for the environment to shave less, right? Isn't that all you have to say to justify something now?

<comment><USER76> I use a Wahl also. Haven't shaved clean in 10 years - just don't like the feeling so I avoid it.

I wonder as to the reasons people shave clean?

      - tradition, expectations
      - partner's preference
      - prefer it personally (feel or way it looks)

<comment><USER77> \- it makes you look younger

<comment><USER7> My biggest reasons for avoiding being clean shaven most of the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> If you really like their blades, you can buy them direct or on Amazon for less. [http://zorbadgreek.blogspot.com/2012/09/how-dollar-shave- clu...](http://zorbadgreek.blogspot.com/2012/09/how-dollar-shave-club-is- ripping-you-off.html)

</comment><comment><USER79> Expensive Gillette razors can be resharpened with just a leather belt. Look it up!

</comment><comment><USER80> One of the few subsciption services that made it big, congrats to them.

</comment><comment><USER81> Subscribed for a while.

There's not a single word of the name that's accurate.

</comment><comment><USER82> Who uses this? neo hipsters use safety razors. real hipsters use straight razors. Neckbeards ... I think that speaks for itself.

<comment><USER83> How about normal people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I think they get their blades from Dorco. I can buy that much cheaper in bulk on Amazon.</comment>


Give us your service as-is - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ailon.org/rest-of-world-as-a-region-404087860c4c <comment><USER3> My personal frustration is that when things do get localized, the localization is sometimes outright _wrong_. Like, the person who's doing the localization didn't even do basic fact checking on what language a country speaks.

I'd rather have access to the US English pages (which are useful) than a language I don't speak (which makes it clear your products are made by doofuses).

Also why on earth does no-one respect Accept-Language and uses GeoIP instead? Do people in SV just never travel?

<comment><USER4> Is Accept-Language widely and correctly sent by browsers?

I've seen some pretty weird Accept-Language strings getting sent by UAs, but I don't really know how accurate they are compared to GeoIP + Account Settings.

<comment><USER5> I don't know about accuracy, but please, put Accept-Language in front of location/GeoIP.

It is frustrating when Google redirects to the country I'm in.

I still speak the same languages even if I'm traveling!

<comment><USER4> But that's the thing, browsers regularly send Accept-Language, if it's overall less accurate than ip geolocation, then it's hard to prefer it.

<comment><USER5> Well, it generally mimics your OS settings, so why is it inaccurate?

The worst case is pages displaying in the same language as the rest of my computer.

<comment><USER4> There's a long tail of mobile browsers out there. I also don't know how many people have OS settings that differ from their real language preference due to poor OS support for their language (e.g. what this article talks about - <USER2> many users run en-US to get features that Win10/Android/etc doesn't do well in their language)

I mean, there are reasonable arguments either way here IMO and without actual data, e.g. how often users change their language from one or the other, it's hard to know what is better in the long tail.

And obviously users should be able to change their preference if we get it wrong.

<comment><USER3> _I also don 't know how many people have OS settings that differ from their real language preference due to poor OS support for their language_

Why would these people be badly served by being sent pages corresponding to their OS language? It's clearly preferable for them over poor localization.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The reason it's not supported is not because "Fuck you", but because supporting a feature is not as easy as just rolling it out.

What's important is what happens AFTER the rollout. Most people (like the author) have no idea what's going on behind the scenes and just think it would be a simple thing, and criticize the company based on this assumption.

But I am sure these same people will be the ones who complain the most when the company _does_ end up rolling out the half-baked features.

<comment><USER7> Well, yeah, on one hand, getting criticized for not serving some group of consumers is much easier to handle than off-the-wall support requests and complaints about poor support.

But on the other hand, this is how most of the internet works, after all. No one is translating HN comments to Finnish real-time, right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The primary reason for not providing services in "rest of the world" is apparently "fuck you".

The same applies to not respecting your language of choice.

But the absolute worst is American companies (it's always American services, and not just because of US dominance) manipulating content based on GeoIP and giving me a shitty localized version of their service for no legal or commercial reason.

It's infuriatingly patronizing.

</comment><comment><USER9> Does anyone have great examples of localization done right? I'm trying to build an internationalized web application right now and I am interested in best practices.

Edited: I mean web applications that work well for international users (e.g., ltr and rtl direction, taking countries and languages into account, etc.).

<comment><USER10> Personal names around the world [https://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-personal- names](https://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-personal-names)

<comment><USER11> Or the classic _Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names_ :

[http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods- programmers-b...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers- believe-about-names/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Separate issue, but I'm quite frustrated with countries being lumped together by geographic proximity regardless of culture and language. It's possible to drive from Helsinki to Saint Petersburg or Riga on a single tank, but as Dota matchmaking will thoroughly demonstrate, it might as well be a different planet.

<comment><USER13> I don't think the Russians will let you cross the border on a tank

<comment><USER14> It's true. Driving tanks across borders is _their_ job!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Yep, it's incredibly frustrating that even though I speak fluent English, and a product is available in English, I can't purchase/use the product, because I'm in the wrong region.

<comment><USER3> Purchasing can be understandable. The laws for that do vary from country to country, and evolve over time (see VAT regulations in Europe). This will be tricky for smaller operators. But free services? Not so much.

Yet, you'd think that companies like Microsoft and Google can deal with the sales as well, but they don't, at least not universally. Either through organizational incompetence or just plain indifference.

Google will literally _SPAM_ you with services they _REFUSE_ to sell to you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wait until GDPR kicks in on May 25, 2018. ANY company that collects data on EU citizens (Name, phone number, email adress, geo location) will be required to comply or be subject to 20 million euro fines. So your Apple Store app that you offer for free because you use it to collect data? You must hire a Data Protection Officer (DPO)and be able to erase a user's data on request. I predict that will lead to blocking EU citizens from many services outright to avoid having to comply with an onerous regulation.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, and giving up on the biggest and richest market in the world ? The companies that do will soon see competitors grab for the cake, while the others will clean up their act and maybe even improve how they treat their customers in the US and rest of the world (though I am not holding my breath for that one)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The page doesn't display without JavaScript, and it even breaks Firefox's Reader mode. Anyone have a link to the plain text? I'd kinda like to read the article as-is.</comment>


Ask HN: What to do when the company behind a database goes out of business? - <AUTHOR> In my company, we are looking for a distributed relational database. There are a few options, but I was wondering about how safe is to use something which is mostly developed by a company which relies upon revenue from support packages and other sources? I don't have much experience regarding different databases, but a few names came up like Cockroach DB, YugaByte, Volt DB etc. As far as I am aware, these don't many contributions from the open-source community like Postgres or MySQL. is there any open-source alternative for distributed RDBMS which has good community support? What to do when a company like Cockroach Lab shuts down but you have a product depending on their product, as we can't keep using a DB which is dead? I don't suppose, the data can be moved to some other DB. RethinkDB went out of business and there is almost no commit to the project in Github last year. Does anyone know what did those people do who were using it in a big application? Right now, people in my company have decided to go with Google cloud spanner, which is obviously backed by Google, but expensive.<p>PS: I am not a DBA or someone who has much knowledge about Databases, just a web developer wondering about things. My apologies if I asked too many questions. <comment><USER2> Know how to get your data out. Say you truly believe something like Cockroach will give you an advantage go for it. But then figure out how to move your data, write abstractions that can make it say easy to switch from Cockroach to Cassandra.

Imagine you're building a software to sell to companies, you wouldn't just support one database, would you? You would build an adapter that will let the customer use Postgresql, MariaDB or MSQL server. You do the same. If you're profitable enough, you support the company, pay them so they can stay in business. Maybe have your devs contribute to the OSS part if they have that. This is something your CTO should be handling. This is also why many mature companies are not gung-ho on using new tech and like to play it safe.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have had a few database projects obsoleted when the DB maker has closed down or was bought and the app shot down, shied me away from depending on commercial/activation limited options.

So last time, I went for open source for the DB selected MySQL and haven't look back (now its MariaDB, easy transition) It was open source, easy to use, I could have an installation backup ready if needed, and very popular, might not be shiny new but was dependable for what we use it for.

You may need to find some distributed solution for an OSS DB (or roll your own, depends on the complexity/size), but where there's a will, and good community resources, there is certainly a way. Likely means data conversion, no matter the DB, unless your distributed data, IDs, and tables are basically generic fields, there will need to be some conversion done for any alternative.

Also, if you want long-term, don't go for cutting edge, boring and reliable is better.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is probably more common than you'd think. It's not unlike using open source DBs whose maintainers stop working on it, or even open source code libraries in general whose maintainers stop work. Most likely you will weigh the cost of migrating your data (and/or code) to a different DB/library vs the risk of it not getting security patches, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with you. But DBs are way more complex than most of the open source libraries. I know there are some pretty complex libraries but in most of the cases, most of the libraries that the project depends upon can be easily replaced by some other alternative or organisation can dedicate some resources to fork and maintain it themselves. But migrating data from one DB to another DB can be a real pain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > I don't suppose, the data can be moved to some other DB.

In most cases you can, depending on what you are switching to/from it might be a pain in the ass, but it is entirely feasible.

</comment><comment><USER6> real question is, why do you need a distributed relational database? when it comes to scale (both in size, QPS, latency) existing RDBMS would just do fine for 95% use-cases. For very small use-cases where you would absolutely need distributed RDBMSs keep some good hygiene of not using DRDBMS specific features, data types etc that can lock you in for future portability/mobility...</comment>


Show HN: More Letters – An incremental game about solving cryptogram puzzles - <AUTHOR> https://morelettersinc.com <comment><USER2> This is cool. Two things

\- You should lock the viewport on iOS so it doesn't zoom when tapping the buttons.

\- Set the text so it isn't selectable. A few times it selected a bunch of text rather than just tapping what I wanted.

Cool game

</comment><comment><USER3> Very nice, good looking game. It has the same mechanics of Antimatter Dimensions, would you kindly explain the idea of this mechanics? Such simple mechanic but super addictive...

</comment><comment><USER4> I was able to get my first letter (and solve the riddle) but after the second play through, I got the same letter, not a new one... not sure where to go from there.

Really fun, by the way.

<comment><USER5> Yeah this happened to me as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm so hooked into this game! Splendid work!</comment>


Ask HN: Is it common for founders to doubt their ideas early on? - <AUTHOR>

... and still go with it? Is it a bad sign if you think "this is a stupid idea, no one will buy it" before you even begin? I don't mean thinking it constantly, but from time to time. <comment><USER3> I think there are phases of doubts:

Phase 1. Idea Strikes. Absolutely no doubts. The idea will kick ass and change the world.

Phase 2. Idea development, customer discovery. Doubt creeps in and starts to spread its tentacles. Now the numbers and figures start to play a role in the strength of the doubt. More optimistic figures weaken the doubt and fewer "likable" numbers strengthen the doubt.

Phase 3. The fight goes on. As orangethirty says: "Everyday".

</comment><comment><USER4> I found this article very useful for evaluating startup ideas, the author lays out a 12 question strategy. [http://www.businessinsider.com/essential-startup- questions-2...](http://www.businessinsider.com/essential-startup- questions-2013-1)

His key point is identifying potential customers and a way to attract them to your product. If you can't identify those 2 things from the start your idea/invention may not be worth pursuing further.

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't believe it's bad, it actually makes you test your assumptions all the time and eventually make them better. Even successful entrepreneurs has doubts every day. I think as soon as you stop to have doubts you cannot improve anymore.

Recommended read on this topic: <http://pandodaily.com/2013/02/05/living-with- doubt/>

<comment><USER6> Great read @churpi! I totally agree with you. Having doubts are wonderful. Although its not the best feeling in the world, it really pushes the innovator to analyze their product and find all of its potential weak points/flaws as well as its strengths. The test of a great innovator is to be able to view their product objectively and improve their work. Embrace your doubts - <USER2> will make you a better innovator!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's important to challenge your ideas. How many times have you shared what you thought was a great idea only to find out it had major flaws? A second opinion is a must IMHO. Murphy's law is also a healthy self-check method.

</comment><comment><USER8> All people have doubts from time to time. What you think is irrelevant in the end, the only useful question is will people buy it? you can't find that out by thinking only by asking people.

<comment><AUTHOR> I assume you mean when you have a product. People usually don't know what they want until they get their hands on it. I'm trying to figure out how much doubt about an idea should raise an alarm that one should stop pursuing it.

<comment><USER9> Would you use your service? The doubt of others using your service will always be there, but the only question you can answer for now is if you would use it. Your git commits should answer that question. Plus, at least you'll have software useful to you even if no one else wants it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Its a roller coaster, every few hours ...:)

</comment><comment><USER11> Every day.</comment>


ShowHN: How not to be a UI/UX expert - <AUTHOR> http://brassflowers.com/

<comment><USER2> It's pretty bad, but I will say in their defense that sometimes the shoemaker's kids go shoeless.

My business's website (<http://robotmodehq.com/>) is pretty terrible and horribly out of date. I've had a redesign in the works for several months, but since I'm swamped with client work already there hasn't been a ton of pressure to finish it. I just point future clients at my past client sites instead.

Edit: Well now that I put it out there, I guess I should probably finish up the redesign, haha.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hey, I am regularly hired as a UX expert and my website is <http://petervandijck.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> Through simplicity I see you have avoided implementing necessary UI improvements.

Though I think your website would be 3x more enjoyable if you at least just indented the content a little bit.

<comment><USER3> 3x more enjoyable? Really? Maybe 4x? By "necessary UI improvements" you mean they are necessary because....?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well if you chose to use color or non default elements then you would have to make sure your customizations were also updated to still maintain usability.

That aside, I am curious to know if you disagree that putting padding on the browser would make viewing your site more enjoyable?

<comment><USER3> Slightly more "enjoyable", yes. 3x no. As long as <http://www.useit.com> is worse I'm ok ;)

Changing color isn't a "necessary UI improvement".

I was just calling out your language. Saying "3x" and "necessary" when that's not what you mean.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> For what it's worth, you can "change the mood" of the website. <http://brassflowers.com/?themedemo=sunrise>

<comment><USER3> Oh my god that's even worse!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Found this link from a talk on Skyara

[http://www.skyara.com/s/run-your-project-or-idea-by-a- uxui-e...](http://www.skyara.com/s/run-your-project-or-idea-by-a-uxui-expert- san-francisco)

Couldn't help myself once I seen the stripy colored in background making the text unbearable to read.

</comment><comment><USER5> In case someone is actually looking for a UI guy, here's some shameless self- promotion: <http://nylira.com></comment>


The Fax Is Not Yet Obsolete - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/11/why-people-still-use-fax-machines/576070/# <comment><USER2> These requirements for faxing are becoming almost silly. Not only is the PSTN infrastructure in some areas so bad (40 year old corroded copper lines and such) that there are potential problems every time it rains, but incumbent carriers are trying to do everything they can to rip down what is left of the copper infrastructure. I don't blame them as this makes practical and financial sense (remove copper phone lines, replace with fiber, offer data and voice through the fiber).

The dream is that the PSTN will be done away with entirely, with all traffic going through the internet.

A big problem is with fax machine manufacturers simply claiming that their machines "are not voip compatible" which is ridiculous, but the extra effort involved with getting faxes to work smoothly over voip can be a nightmare, and not something any vendor wants to be involved in supporting.

The result of this is clients with $15k fax machines reporting a myriad of problems, which the fax machine vendor claims that the only solution is a PSTN phone line for the machine, which in many areas is no longer possible due to the incumbent carrier phasing out the infrastructure or making it incredibly difficult to obtain.

There are a lot of "Efax" services whose purpose is to get around this problem by making the "fax" step just a transparent formality to appease regulatory constraints. Users can send an email with a specially formatted subject, then the "efax" company will actually "fax" the document specified in the email to a phone number owned by the efax company, which is then emailed to the intended receiver.

<comment><USER3> _The dream is that the PSTN will be done away with entirely, with all traffic going through the internet_

How far off the mark am I in thinking that part of this dream you have, that was left unstated is that 'all traffic going through the internet' assumes we've fixed the last mile problem of broadband connectivity to rural areas? Because otherwise that dream effectively cuts a lot of people off from the rest of the world.

<comment><USER4> It's already happening. My parents regularly deal with days long outages with PSTN service. Hell, in the middle of Albany, NY Verizon landlines were broken for 1-6 weeks due to some legacy hardware failure.

The companies want to replace the copper with wireless service because the regulatory environment is more profitable, even though they sell fully depreciated copper at $40/mo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> IT Manager of a large medical centre in Australia here. I've been spending quite a lot of time trying to minimise the number of faxes we send and receive but there's only so far I can go.

Email and fax-to-email services are generally frowned upon by the relevant medical accreditation boards, as they consider these to be insecure unless PGP is used. Email addresses have the ease of use and interoperability that fax numbers have, but PGP throws that right out the window.

Beyond the technical discussion, I remember reading that fax is considered "secure" from a regulatory/legal standpoint because fax lines are subject to wiretapping laws just as a regular phone line is. An email however, sent in plain text, can be legally read by anyone along the line who has the authority to do so. No surprises there, we know what GMail does.

What we've ended up with in Australia is a trio of internet-based secure messaging systems which have only just recently been in discussions about interoperability between themselves. I believe two of them are just end-client software which automates the PGP encryption/decryption of a given email address that you register, sending and receiving directly from your practice's clinical management system. Uptake has been kinda miserable. Until the systems are interoperable and have a large centralised directory of all health practitioners in the country, uptake will remain low. It's also only for medical practices and hospitals. It doesn't cover all the crap we get from legal and insurance firms.

Other legal issues are also stymieing progress. I have been told specifically by the CEO of a large specialist group that they won't be using any of the above systems, because having the software available means they might get electronic referrals directly from GPs.This would be instead of paper referral letters that simply go with the patient. This changes the legal onus of who is responsible for following up with patients who don't make that specialist appointment when referred. It matters when a patient decides not go do anything with a given referral, and then finds out they're terminal months later.

And so, we fax and get faxed. And it sucks.

<comment><USER6> I wonder how this squares with the NBN, given that, once activated, the traditional phone line ceases to exist, and you use VoIP instead. And that the POTS will be entirely deactivated (in theory) once rollout is complete.

<comment><USER5> All our fax machines are already using Cisco ATAs to connect to our VoIP system anyway. Only problem I've ever had with that aspect was a dud ATA.

I know many practices use eFax though, even though it uses email and hence is against accreditation standards. Small one- or two-practitioner clinics don't have the means to trudge through the RACGP's information security standards like we do.

I did trial a local Australian eFax competitor who offered a fax-to-my-server- via-SFTP method, and was accredited with several government health agencies. The PDF image quality sucked so badly though, I couldn't run with it. Illegible. Even if it worked well though, it's still just faxes as image files, which is painful. OCR doesn't look like it'd help much, even before you think about doctors handwriting.

I've got 30 practitioners and I need incoming messages to be directed to their respective inboxes in the practice management system so we don't all go crazy.

<comment><USER7> Would a physical fax machine that saved the incoming faxes as a searchable PDF on a network drive make sense? It could literally just have a folder you put things in and then you could select the recipient on some webmanager.

<comment><USER5> At the moment we have non-searchable PDFs coming in to a network drive. These are manually reviewed and sent to the relevant GP's inbox (or to nursing or to management) as necessary, with the relevant patient selected so all the doctor has to do is read it and hit "accept" or "seen". They're not willing to do more than that, of course.

Adding in OCR to make the documents searchable doesn't help a lot on its own. Just because one of our GP's names is listed on a fax doesn't mean it's actually for them, nor does another name mean it is the patient in question. A lot of names get put on these documents. Every fax we get is laid out differently, there's no consistency of any kind. Faxes being unreliable means we are sent plenty of duplicates, half-sent documents, and upside down ones too.

Nothing can beat an electronic message that contains the recipient doctor's ID, the patient's name and birth date (we have plenty with same names), and all the other relevant info. It's the only way forward.

<comment><USER8> If this is important to you (extraction of information like ID/name/date from non-searchable PDFs), you could send me an email and we could discuss it further.

I might be able to help you with this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> To me, a person that doesn't (and never did) live in the US, faxes there seem to be even more ubiquitous than this article paints. Imagine my amusement when I registered an Amazon account only to get it suspended with the request to verify it by... faxing bank statements and whatnot. Internationally on a +1 number. [0] And yes, support was not been able to offer any alternative to that.

[0] [https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId=201742120)

<comment><USER10> Fax has a carve out in PCI & HIPPA compliance, and there is a huge existing momentum behind continuing to use fax.

Alternatives for actually secure document transmission boil down to difficult to use private messaging/"secure" email systems (that only work in their walled garden).

Many in the general public get frustrated with these walled gardens, as it is another login & interface to remember, and their credit union/bank, healthcare provider, company, etc will each have its own totally unique system

<comment><USER11> > _Alternatives for actually secure document transmission boil down to > difficult to use private messaging /"secure" email systems (that only work > in their walled garden)._

Oh bloody hell. Begin rant.

We've had PGP for 27 years. Twenty seven years. Since 1991. Why the hell haven't we, the tech community, gotten the rest of the world to use it? I think the only person I've had a PGP-encrypted email exchange with is my mother. It's not a walled garden, and it solves the problem described here perfectly.

We could have vote-by-email (using the key registered when registering to vote). We could have universal passwordless login. We could have virtually all communications secure from eavesdropping all the time. But no, nobody uses it outside of a few computer geeks, spies, and journalists.

<comment><USER10> I use PGP, but it is a pain in the ass to use, severely stunting its usr. Normal people can't effectively use PGP without significant training, hence no one outside some DMCA notice bots using PGP in production for the common person to see.

Even Riot with its fucked up key mismanagement is easier to use as a normie than PGP, though its looking like Riot will fix most of those trusted key management issues soon with the PRs that are about to land.

Signal is the gold standard for secure, easy to use crypto at this point IMO. Hopefully Briar continues to improve tho, normie friendly metadata free communication is highly alluring, and the key management is a middle ground between Riot and Signal.

<comment><USER11> PGP isn't _that_ hard to learn, and 20 years ago when the main form of online messaging was email, using a desktop email client, it was easier. It would be considerably harder _now_ with everyone communicating in walled-garden platforms.

I think we really missed an opportunity, and I don't see a way forward to a world where PGP keys are a widely-used basis for security communication and verifying identity online.

<comment><USER12> Key strokes required. Everyone taps today. Tapping input on a device is horribly inefficient.

<comment><USER11> This is one of several reasons about 1998 would have been the right time to popularize it, not 2018.

<comment><USER13> Though a plus of 2018 is people are being forced to sort out public and private keys if they want to muck about with cryptocurrency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's that "Faxes" are //exempt//, they are, by far:

        * Obsolete
        * Insecure (no encryption in transit)
        * Insecure (no recipient validation)
        * Insecure (no validation of sender or data integrity)
        * Horrid quality (200, maybe 300, DPI, monochrome)
        * Like PTSN interlinked phones, fairly ubiquitous.

Sadly, that last line item there is why they still exist.

The exempt status also precludes any real attempt at security which makes 'fax the thing' quick and easy for untrained end users. Fire, and forget until someone pokes you about a failed fax, or even claim you tried and just assume gremlins ate all record of the first (never happened) actions.

There's also not a /ubiquitous/ replacement. The mere cost of telephone calls and duration makes blindly trying to fax out spam that way not-cost-effective (plus the negotiation of fax technology inhibits just recording a dumb audio file to play against VoIP lines). Email is practically free, but HORRENDOUS for file transfers, and at any corporation where data retention is required for legal discovery holding on to EVERY file transferred forever is hell.

While some better standards do exist, they aren't ubiquitous and often require 'non standard' software (mostly because Microsoft is highly allergic to any protocols/formats not invented by them).

Also, it needs to be part of the /default/ OS install. It would be really great if Windows Explorer (the desktop shell) understood SFTP (SSH file transfer).

</comment><comment><USER15> If someone was to build a device that could clamp on to the phone line and listen for incoming faxes and copy the signal and sent it of to a remote server, would that force us to rethink the use of faxes? Sadly I think the answer is no.

One argument that could be made for the fax is the lack of availability. Some government office in Denmark have been known to email sensitive information to wrong email addresses, because of poor spelling. Some guy owns anders.dk and have a catch-all email address, and employees of the city of Randers sometimes do check that they actually typed randers.dk and not anders.dk. That guy receives have received a boat load of sensitive data. The solution is to block his domain in the citys Exchange server.... Yeeeah.

Neither fax, phone or email is particularly well suited for transmitting sensitive information, but the fax is seen as more secure, because when was the last time someone received a fax by mistake.

<comment><USER16> You can man in the middle a fax by walking into a phone closet a mile away from either party. Same thing with a voice call.

Don't send anything you don't want to post publicly via fax people.

<comment><USER13> I realise it's technically possible but are there any documented instances of someone doing that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Back when I first started working in tech, in the early 90s, up to when I left enterprise IT in 2011, email-to-fax gateways were a thing. You just emailed a specific address format, something like: firstname.lastname@example.com, and the email server would send an image of the email and attached documents to that number, via a connected fax machine. Likewise, incoming faxes to your number were received as images in an email.

Do those things no longer exist? You would think, if anything, that would be easier today than it was 25 years ago.

<comment><USER4> Inane bureaucracy and primadonna users make change difficult.

Doctors can't be bothered doing anything differently, and they often don't work for the place they are providing service at, and don't have reliable access to email.

As doctors get swallowed up by medical networks/cartels, fax will shift to EMRs and patient portals that will leave you wishing for a fax machine.

<comment><USER11> > _Doctors often don't have reliable access to email._

Why? It would be very unusual for a doctor in a wealthy country not to have a smartphone with service, or the ability to get one.

<comment><USER18> HIPAA requires any email with patient data be encrypted. That kills any attempt to receive email on a smart phone.

<comment><USER11> [Repeat rant about people not adopting PGP when we've had it for 27 years]

Nothing about a smartphone prevents email from being encrypted. The fact that nobody's sending encrypted email does, but that's a user adoption problem rather than a technical problem. The technical problem is solved, solved well, and has been solved for decades.

<comment><USER4> Encryption is easy. Key management is not. PGP is a lousy solution. Too difficult to use and sacrifices too much functionality.

The world needs something like iMessage but more open.

<comment><USER11> Key management is moderately difficult, and more of a UX problem than a technical one. A UX very much like that of iMessage could be built on top of PGP and keyservers.

We've had the ability to do this for a long time, but only a few major players are in a position to ensure sufficient user adoption, and they're not interested in creating anything that doesn't drive users to their walled gardens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Only if your telco still supports it.

In Australia, perhaps not.

Our home phone service was moved from copper to VOIP as part of the NBN rollout. The technician who did the installation confirmed our multifunction laser printer would no longer fax, as the network didn't enable it.

<comment><USER20> Yeah our building (Melbourne) doesn't even have copper going to it, we just have FTTB then CAT5 to each apartment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> > Law and Medicine Still Rely on the Device

And a vast number of businesses in Japan, unfortunately

<comment><USER22> It looks like the movie Back to the Future part 2 got something right regarding faxes: [https://youtu.be/UlEFqR4SaVA?t=60](https://youtu.be/UlEFqR4SaVA?t=60)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> My desk phone at work has automatic inbound fax detection and reception. And one of the local medical firms has a phone number with a prefix that is one digit off from my desk phone direct line. You can guess what happens.

It's kind of amazing what kinds of things they will put in a fax. Stuff I would find very personal, for sure, and wouldn't want to have faxed around carelessly.

<comment><USER10> Inbound fax detection is pretty easy to script, I've gotten lots of sensitive faxes from insurers despite emailing them to cease and desist faxing me. Very annoying!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I just dealt with American Public Life. I had to mail or fax (I went mail, fax is harder for me) all my forms and documents to get a claim started. Several days later, I was able to see that my claim required more information online by manually checking the site several times a day, no email notice about a claim update, I also got a notice in the mail 3 days later. I was able to ask them, via a contact web form, "is there a way to send docs electronically?" to which I got a "secured" reply to my email via "proofpoint" stating I must mail or fax all documents. Noticing there was an option to attach a file in proofpoint system, I ignored the requirements and sent the PDFs anyway. They accepted them but with a stern warning that I should mail or fax all documents if I want to ensure they will be associated with my claim. All this printing, signing, mailing, waiting, waiting, waiting, rinse, repeat, is a huge waste of resources and human life.

</comment><comment><USER25> It makes me wonder what other legacy telecom systems are still in use somewhere.

Are there any public X25 networks still in use? What about telex? Telex over HF? Inmarsat C? Any X400 gateways still running? Can you still send a UUCP mail?

This kind of digital archaeology has a strange fascination to it.

<comment><USER7> Technically all that is required for UUCP is a phone connection between two computers and the willingness to run it.

There are a bunch of nostalgia computer geeks on youtube, but I haven't seen any of them focus on unix yet. Could be fun though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> During the hiring process for my previous internship a problem with my credit score was discovered (equifax had someone else under my SIN). This ended up delaying my start date.

The only way to fix it in any "reasonable" (weeks) amount of time was to fax them a bunch of documents.

<comment><USER27> Possibly a naive question, but why would you need a credit score for being hired, especially as an intern? I can (somewhat) see the need for privileged positions (i.e. CFO or similar).

<comment><USER26> It was a bank, that was just standard procedure for everyone. Technically I was a contractor not a intern (and it "just happened" to be for a summer between two semesters of university), but I doubt being an official intern would have changed anything.

<comment><USER28> Were they advancing you any money? If not, it's a stupid procedure that should be regarded as harassment.

<comment><USER26> They were not.

I don't particularly think it counts as harassment. They can add any non- discriminatory stupid terms to the contract that they want.

And there are certainly lots of jobs in a bank where it makes sense to minimize insider risk (say, if you're the one approving peoples loans...).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Fax is not more secure than email.

<comment><USER30> It _is_ more secure in some senses. You can't get a PDF-borne virus from an old-school fax reception. My tax preparer only accepts mailed documents and faxed documents. It's sometimes a pain, but I have to admit that I'm a little bit happy that he's more paranoid than I am about my financial information.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, you can! There was a presentation at DEFCON this year (DEFCON 26) showing exactly this:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLCE8spVX9Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLCE8spVX9Q)

> "See for yourself first-hand as we give a live demonstration of the first > ever full fax exploitation, leading to complete control over the entire > device as well as the network, using nothing but a standard telephone line. > "

Maybe it's time for you to find another tax preparer. Mine accepts encrypted documents with her public key.

<comment><USER30> I need my tax guy to be an expert on tax law way more than I need them to be on the cutting edge of computer communications and security.

If he wants to stick to his old-school fax machine and keeps me on the right side of the tax agencies, I can accommodate his preferences on tech.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Japan still loves its faxes. Gotta maintain a sense of tradition, I guess. Take pride in doing things the same way their forefathers did.

<comment><USER32> It's also a thing there to write stuff with a pen, which translates better to fax culture than email?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Don't forget that in the US _utility bills_ are still often used as proof of living address. _signatures_ are compared in some cases of identity verification (e.g. voting). _Paper checks_ are still used as means of payment, even in retail.

It's hardly surprising that fax machines are still used.

<comment><USER34> On the plus side I have noticed an upward trend to not allowing checks at retail locations.

<comment><USER35> Seems silly not to when they just end up being slightly more cumbersome to use debit cards. Like it's not that bad in the grand scheme of things.

<comment><USER34> It is substantially better per transaction. Insert card, wait a few seconds, type pin. Vs fumble for check book, find a pen, write all the details and sign it, then because most business have fraud issues with checks. run it through a third party processing to verify the check is valid. I'm guessing debit vs check is probably at least 3 times longer for check. Also the merchant has to pay the additional fees that are higher vs debit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> My company deals with medical professionals and we absolutely need to maintain a fax line. The IRS loves faxes, too.

</comment><comment><USER37> I noticed real estate also heavily relies on it. Everything still seems to be done with paper and fax.

<comment><USER38> Why not scan the paper to email?

<comment><USER39> Hopefully the upload was to a _secure_ web site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I keep an account at Anveo for incoming and outgoing faxes. It's very cheap. $2/month, I think, if you just need a phone number that can send/receive faxes. There's a simple web interface to send a pdf as a fax.

</comment><comment><USER41> My insurance company mailed me a pdf to make a claim but they made me snail mail my printed copy with signature on it to them, they said they would have accepted a fax but would never accept an email with a photo of the same documents.

</comment><comment><USER42> Purchasing departments still use fax also. Where I work, most purchase orders with established vendors are sent by fax.

</comment><comment><USER43> It is still omnipresent in Germany.Even startups have to use (usually just a cloud service).

</comment><comment><USER39> FAXes have legal standing in California. As much as I hate supporting them :-)

</comment><comment><USER44> And I've had two employers furnish me with pagers.

</comment><comment><USER45> And I bet they use Microsoft Windows.</comment>