We're all remote: how we deal with a 100% remote dev team - <AUTHOR> http://dt.deviantart.com/blog/39183993/ <comment><USER2> I would like you to think about the question "Why is talking on your cell phone when you drive 'bad', but talking to the person in the passenger seat 'ok'?"

I submit that because the person on your cell phone doesn't have the same physical context as you, they don't know they need to shut up for a moment while you try to avoid a three-way with an overly aggressive BMW trying to split lanes. There is a certain amount of 'shared context' that isn't part of the discussion.

Now programming isn't the same of course, and working at home when your single is different than working at home when your married which is much different than working at home when you have kids. Ever data driven, Google documented that people who had kids and worked from home had their productivity plummet between 2PM and 8PM. Is that bad? probably not, can you plan for it? sure.

If you're managing a team, you can get a sense for how overloaded someone is at work, when they are working at home it is hard to keep your employees from burning themselves out. (Some people literally don't know when to stop working)

By the same token a group meeting can be a great place to rapidly resolve a bunch of problems and to air a bunch of issues. On the phone you can't tell that someone is wincing when another team member is estimating 6 weeks for some effort, you can't know if they think that is aggressive or weak and why they think that, the conversation never comes up.

Finally, if the overall percentage of your conversations are in email, rather than speaking, you add to the distraction issues facing people rather than letting them work smoothly.

Bottom line, working from home has its place, but the value of being in the same space has its benefits too.

<comment><USER3> >Ever data driven, Google documented that people who had kids and worked from home had their productivity plummet between 2PM and 8PM.

Interesting. Do you have a link to any of this information that Google collected?

<comment><USER2> Sadly no. Sometimes they will publish a paper or make a blog entry about some learning they have developed but unless they do it stays buried inside their data collection containment vessel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I work at home at my current job about 95% of the time. I don't mind it, and it does have some serious advantages. But I still feel having your team in one building is the better way to go. It can also get a little lonely, and spending so much time in your own home does get old.

The trend of the "virtual company" where everyone works remotely will only increase, and I think it might even become the norm. So I'm getting used to it and looking to ways to make it truly ideal for me. Recently I've been contacted by companies about potentially working with them and when I tell them I really can't move, every one of them has said working remotely would be fine. Even just a year ago that wouldn't have been the case.

<comment><USER5> I do hope this becomes the trend. I'd love to work mostly from home, or at least from where ever I want. I don't like offices much.

<comment><USER6> If it did become the norm, imagine how much less downtown office space we would need.

<comment><USER5> Indeed, and how much fuel and pollution it would save from people not having to commute every day.

<comment><USER7> Also think how much person-to-person social interaction would be wiped out. Not very pleasant from my point of view

<comment><USER8> I live in a part of the country that has pretty mediocre tech options, which means that anyone doing any interesting dev work telecommutes. The result of this? There's a growing community telecommuters that all hang out with each other, meet monthly, do hacknights, drop by co-working spaces etc. It's actually pretty awesome because rather than just your coworkers you have this "other office" of people you get to learn from. As telecommuting/remote working grows I think we'll see much better social interaction start to form, communities that are more based on what your passionate about rather than that you happen to share an office space. Additionally with remote work comes a lot more flexibility, which means a lot more social flexibility, it's easier than ever to grab lunch with a friend an in entirely different industry. I think basing social interaction around a 9-6 schedule and being locked in a building is much more damaging than the alternative.

<comment><USER7> Thats really cool how all you you have found each other and are able to get together regularly. I'm in Columbia, SC (not exactly the hot-bed of tech) and we have a similar situation.

But from a long-term sustainability stand-point, we want to grow local tech companies that contribute to our own economy and give us control over our city's well-being. It would be interesting if a bunch of you who telecommute could band together to start a company. Seems like you already get along well outside of work

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've been working in a home office for the past five years for two companies: one large, one small. WFH can be and has been a great privilege. It doesn't work for every personality or organization type, but I've seen far more benefits than disadvantages.

Merits aside, there are a few things almost everyone faces at one point or another:

You are likely to gain weight.

You may be surprised by how often work overlaps your personal or family life.

You will probably end up developing a good amount of your own communication tools rather than license third party collaboration software.

You may be surprised how soon you miss working in an office environment.

<comment><USER10> This is a good post, but I would take issue with the following:

"You are likely to gain weight."

It is fairly trivial to stock your cabinets and refrigerator at home with healthy food options. Contrast this with an office environment. Between the morning donuts, the snack bins, the beer kegs, the pizza delivered for meetings, and the endless birthday cakes - sweet lord, the birthday cakes! - it's far more likely that you'll gain weight there than at home.

<comment><USER9> Mmm. Office Food. Thankfully I avoided that anyway.

In a WFH situation, it's actually the lack of exercise or commute that I'm talking about.

Walking or biking to work and walking with co-workers to and from lunch several times a week is healthy.

One has to make up for these lost opportunities by exercising more simply for the sake of exercising.

The social element of work has a lot of advantages.

WFH took me from riding/walking 20 miles per week to near zero.

It's taken a lot of discipline and time to duplicate that.

<comment><USER11> Why do you associate commuting to work with exercise? Not commuting means extra time for exercise.

<comment><USER12> At least for me, commuting by bike is just routine. Now that my current gig is within walking distance, these about 5 hours of biking per week just disappeared. I think that's because I find biking, running, swimming, actually anything stressing endurance an utter chore after a few weeks. Whereas while commuting a can use the time to spin up my brain and preload the working context. And in the evening it's a nice way to cool down and put everything aside.

I'm trying to compensate by going for a longer walk after-office, but because it's not a necessity I'll drop that far more often than not. I'm a lazy bastard, after all ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I sometimes I feel like a rare case when I say I really dislike working remotely. I find it a pain having to call people, and I feel it's tough to have meaningful discussions using text-based forms of chat.

I just feel like communication is much easier and more effective to communicate face to face with people as the norm. And being able to just talk over my cube to another member of the team is something I would have a hard time giving up.

<comment><USER14> I'm about two months into my first remote gig and I have to agree with you that communication is the worse. Sometimes I feel like I'm pulling teeth to get an answer out of anyone.

<comment><USER15> I think this depends on your requirements... if you are a liaison between departments, or the specs of what you are trying to do aren't well defined, there's too much to communicate.

Some remote jobs are great: they lay out what you need and you provide it without having to pester people for information.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> As far as the final question of better communication tools. At our company (even though we aren't all remote) we use OpenFire[1] as our communication platform. By tieing it in with LDAP we can automatically add new employees to everyones Roster quickly. It's worked out great over the course of the last 2 years. We do have gateways enabled to allow employees to use it as their all- in-one IM system, and we were going to experiment with the video-chat features but never got around to it. It's worth looking in to IMHO.

[1] OpenFire - GPL Real Time Collaboration Server: <http://www.igniterealtime.org/projects/openfire/>

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't think most business owners or bosses are mature enough for this yet... they just assume the remote worker is sloughing off.

No use trying to convince them otherwise... they think their staff is slackers. Period. (Not all business owners or bosses, just those that lack the maturity to direct a remote workforce.)

But for the seasoned manager, it's no problem at all.

<comment><USER17> This drives me nuts; either I'm checking (timestamped no less!) code into the repo, and delivering what I say I'll deliver by the appointed deadlines, or I'm not.

It's not like you can fake productivity as a coder.

<comment><USER18> You can (or at least they'll assume you can) if you have input into your own deadlines: they'll say you're padding your estimates.

<comment><USER19> I _love_ when non-coders tell me how long a coding task should take. This is one reason why I decided to work for myself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > Pair programming or a scrum, for instance, just aren't the same without > colocation.

This actually works great for us, but only because everyone uses Emacs. Running over SSH and tmux is a huge win.

<comment><USER21> What do you guys do with tmux? (as opposed to screen)

<comment><USER20> tmux's permissions model is a lot better, but the other huge win is that it resizes to the smallest screen. With screen we would always have to shuffle around so the person with the smallest screen was the first to join each window; it was a huge drag. The better key bindings and config files are just gravy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I have been working from home for the past 12 years. Some was for a company with about 1000 employees, with about 5% working from home. The second was with a company of about 100 employees again with about 5% WFH. Now I am working for a start-up where the founder has decided that for now everyone will work from home. Although - I traveled frequently including back to HQ in the previous jobs I always felt a bit out of the flow of the office relationships. It is nice to be in a situation where the WFH is the norm. If we succeed in some substantial way I expect that the founder will establish a physical office in the greater Boston area - but I know from talking with my co-workers who are in that area they will not be very willing to put a significant commute back into their daily schedule. I suspect it will end up being an office for the founder, a big conference room for group work and some flexible open office workspace that people share on a rotating or as needed basis.

</comment><comment><USER23> Payroll is the big thing stopping me from growing my team with work-from- homers. What if a member of the team is from another country? Do members submit their time each week, or are they all salaried? Trust is key in these situations too. Do you monitor code commits? Numbers of lines submitted each week? I worked from home when I was with IBM, and I always put in more hours than they paid me for. I would like to see more articles on how to make this work.

<comment><USER24> Trust is key no matter where they work. With a small company if you can't trust someone to be as productive as you need them to be (regardless of if you're looking over their shoulder or not) you probably shouldn't hire them. The exception to that I guess is people who just don't work well remotely. But the whole comment about monitoring code commits just seems nutty to me. My company is remote, and it works because I trust everyone to do a good job. I wouldn't hire someone I didn't trust.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Regarding group chat, I strongly recommend HipChat - (<http://www.hipchat.com>). We're in there all day at Mixpanel.

It's like IRC but easier, with persistent chat storage, file sharing, etc.

</comment><comment><USER26> On Skype: I've found that running our own IRC server and setting up ZNC* with accounts for all employees/developers has made a huge difference. The bonus for us is that since we do alot of open source work, it encourages developers to connect with other open source developers over IRC which is a great way to grow knowledge or get quick feedback for whatever framework/language/library we're working with at the time.

* <http://en.znc.in/wiki/ZNC> is a IRC bouncer that allows each user to keep their choice of clients, but still have catchup if they're offline.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd actually love to use IRC... but we're just not confident that it'd work well for the non-technical people, and we need them to be able to get into the project chats and demo chats.

Possibly we're selling them short here.

<comment><USER27> There's a plethora of IRC clients available, many of them very easy to use. No, you do not need to be a genius to be on IRC. Administrating channels (/mode and such) is a bit harder, but not everybody needs to do that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Well, it looks like I'm applying for a position at DeviantArt, then.

</comment><comment><USER29> Our company is distributed in a pretty similar way: 11 people in five different countries and in eight different cities.

For us IRC is our life line, and we regularly use skype. We meet twice per year with the whole team, each time at another location.

There are hardly any serious communication problems, nothing worst than I experienced in a previous job where all were in the same building. You learn to read between the lines when you are all day hanging out on IRC together, potential problems are probably easier to spot this way than IRL. At least for us it works :)

</comment><comment><USER30> At some of the big companies I've worked for in industry, there is such a segregation between cubicles and closed office doors that I find my remote side projects much more productive and efficient.

</comment><comment><USER31> I am not sure of the costs/hardware involved in running this software, but I am in a distance ed. computer science program, and we have had great success (team software engineering projects) utilizing Adobe's Breeze meeting software, hosted through my university: <http://www.adobe.com/resources/breeze/>

<comment><USER31> My apologies.. it's now called Adobe Connect: <http://www.adobe.com/products/adobeconnect.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> tap tap tap also made a blog post on working as a distributed team, focusing on the tools used to keep everyone in sync [http://taptaptap.com/blog/tools- for-effective-iphone-app-dev...](http://taptaptap.com/blog/tools-for- effective-iphone-app-development/)

(shameless plug disclaimer: I work for them. That said, it's on-topic and a good overview)

</comment><comment><USER33> The Oatmeal's take on working from Home: <http://theoatmeal.com/comics/working_home>

</comment><comment><USER34> Minor nitpick: Scrum pre-dates Agile.

If you want to go backwards in time and start adding in other methodologies under the Agile umbrella, you need to add RAD and JAD, which VB programmers (and others) were doing back in the mid 90s.

I secretly roll my eyes whenever I'm working with an organization that claims to have developed their own custom Agile process, because 9 times out of 10 it turns out to be just RAD, aka Agile without the silly/braindead/religious bits.

</comment><comment><USER35> This description of process made me think this would be a nice place to work. Really sensible!

</comment><comment><USER36> I'm also working remotely, and it's absolutely fantastic. When people don't have to commute, and live where they want, happiness level is through the roof.

We also use Skype mostly for communication (although it's pretty shitty when it comes to searching chat logs).

<comment><USER20> Skype chat is definitely the weakest link the chain for our remote team as well; it's basically unusable beyond a handful of groups. We've been migrating over to IRC for as much as we can. We also briefly toyed with using Mumble (<http://mumble.sourceforge.net/>) for voip, and while it was pretty compelling in terms of cross-platform stability it never really took off in our organization.

The article mentions only moving off Skype if it's sufficiently advanced beyond Skype. IRC by itself is not, but we've got our own IRC server that adds some important features like indexing and catchup: <http://writequit.org/blog/?p=444>

<comment><USER37> Convore is pretty new, but have you tried it for private chats? When it was announced, I immediately started to think how much easier it would be to set up for my non-technical co-workers.

Link that explains basic functionality: [http://gigaom.com/collaboration/set- up-real-time-conversatio...](http://gigaom.com/collaboration/set-up-real-time- conversations-fast-with-convore/)

<comment><USER20> Tying you to the browser is only slightly better than tying you to a single client; textareas are not the kind of place you want to spend much time. I'd be game if there were an Emacs client.

<comment><USER38> It's true that there aren't a lot of clients out there for Convore yet. There are quite a few Convore projects started on GitHub ([https://github.com/search?q=convore&type=Repositories](https://github.com/search?q=convore&type=Repositories)) and more clients are welcome!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> The advantages of working at home are great until something goes at work like.... How long you were working? The company I worked for never realized how much time it took me to do this design work and I'd get calls the next day asking why out of 10 designs I only turned in 9 and why I was still working on the last one? In reality each design should of taken a day for about 2 of them.

Also, when it came time for layoffs it was easier for them to let the people at home go. No face to look at of explain anything too. They told me a few times I was about to be let go, but the never did and let others go. I ended up quitting and still trying for my own big win. :)

<comment><USER40> >Also, when it came time for layoffs it was easier for them to let the people at home go.

I think this is the biggest drawback. If you start at the company as a wfh person, or you transition to it and do it long enough, nobody in the office can put a face to your name. Outside of your immediate group, they don't know what you do. You're just a name on a chart. "Hey, look, without that box the chart is a little more balanced!"

In every company I've worked where wfh was tried (starting about 15 years ago), the wfh people were _always_ the first to go when there was layoffs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Only problem working from is the damn cat.</comment>


Adobe launches Shadow, a new toolkit for mobile developers - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2012/03/06/adobe-launches-shadow-a-new-toolkit-for-mobile-developers/ <comment><USER2> Gave it a spin, and unfortunately it won't replace a pure weinre for me.

The way to connect all devices is pretty polished, although the install is not terribly clear. You need to install a local app on your dev machine (presumably hosting weinre), as well as a chrome extension. Then you install the Shadow apps on all your devices. Once that's done, connecting devices works pretty well.

On the other hand it's for pure web browsing (the chrome extension is to follow you around in chrome). So you obviously can't use it to debug a hybrid app (e.g. PhoneGap). You can do that with a pure weinre.

Second, my devices sometimes lose track of where I am. This may or may not be because of the next point.

Third, the devices following you around is entirely url-based. In other words, it doesn't reproduce browser events (e.g. clicks, form submits, etc.), it simply reloads the page completely when the url changes. I'm not saying it should: desktop and mobile support different sets of events. However this reduces its usefulness with single page load apps.

I almost mentioned ajax form submits as a case where its usefulness is reduced. But it occurred to me that you'd probably rather enter your stuff manually on every device anyway. This, paired with the fact that Shadow doesn't try to keep all device in sync when you click around _on the devices_ (it only follows your chrome browser), actually makes it possible for one to test these kinds of interactions.

With that said, I'll still keep an eye on this tool. I think it's pretty promising.

<comment><USER3> What is a "pure weinre"?

<comment><USER2> By that I mean installing the "weinre" tool locally (or using debug.phonegap.com) and connecting your hybrid app or website yourself by including the script tag in your html.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice to see Adobe adapting to the slow passing of Flash with interesting tools for the new generation of mobile developers and their problems (device/os fragmentation).

<comment><USER5> Although I agree with your statement, this project has very little to do with Flash. If anything at all. I would imagine Adobe would have considered such a project regardless of the future of Flash.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I gave it a quick spin[1] but was a little disappointed that it needed to manually be reconnected to the remote inspector on every page change. It's also completely missing the Network stuff. That said, debugging CSS with this works great.

Interesting side note: it's apparently using weinre[2] as the remote inspector.

[1] Download from here: <http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/shadow.html>

[2] <http://phonegap.github.com/weinre/>

Edit: as I understand, the limitations come from weinre because it's JavaScript based on the client side.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've given it a quick go & am very impressed, relatively smooth experience for a just-launched product, remote inspection, manipulation & js console is great

... tied up with selenium or similar to drive more complex interactions on my desktop browser & have them mirrored by pushing javascript to my phone, could make this a very powerful change.

edit: misread istvanp

<comment><USER8> I'm not near a computer I can test this on, does it allow you to remotely debug javascript? Does it allow you to do so in multiple browsers (For example on Android you have Android Browser, Chrome, Firefox, and Opera as different rendering engines)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Gave it a go. Everything connected fine, but in my test it can't resolve to a local hostname. So the stuff I'm developing locally doesn't display, which kind of defeats the purpose.

<comment><USER2> Try using localtunnel.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What always amazes me is that companies like Adobe launch a new product, but don't bother registering the domain - adobeshadow.com (DOH!!) - guess because it's a free product?

<comment><USER11> Maybe because in this way they have something to occupy the time of their legal department (suing you, of course :D)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> So basically weinre + auto reloading, but for some reason not supporting Linux.

</comment><comment><USER13> Y no linux? :/</comment>


Y Combinator's Newest Start-Ups Riding High On Demo Day - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2011/03/23/y-combinators-newest-start-ups-riding-high-on-demo-day/?mod=WSJBlog

<comment><USER3> "One investor who has spoken to companies in this Y Combinator group and who didn't want to be identified said he estimates that the pre-money valuations on this batch will average $10 million."

I don't care how good a crop of candidates YC attracts - that type of pre- money valuation can't be for any _particular_ startup, rationally supported in just 90 days of work with a small team.

The following possibilities come to mind:

      A) The investor who was not named was pulling numbers
         out of their ass and couldn't back them up.

      B) The current crop has been working on their ideas for
         a lot longer than 90 days

      C) We've reached a bubble in valuations.

      D) There is an expectation of at least one multi-billion
         dollar hit that will make up for the losses on the
         other 40 or so misses.

      E) I'm wrong, and the current batch of YC start-ups
         truly do deserve $10 Million pre-money valuations.

<comment><USER4> Valuation is based on expected value. How much time they spent on the startup is irrelevant. For example, if a startup has a 1% chance of being worth $1B, then it's worth about $10M (very rough math since actual outcomes aren't quite that binary).

Also, many companies are raising at lower valuations.

<comment><USER3> No arguments whatsoever. I think you are reformulating my "Option D" - <USER2> is a small expectation of a few big hits that will make up for the many losses, and the investors go in realizing that not every startup with a $10 Million valuation, has a high chance of being $10 Million or more.

Another way of saying this, is that these types of investments are clearly _not_ for the conservative investor who can only afford to invest in one company.

<comment><USER4> Has anyone _ever_ said that startup investing is appropriate for conservative investors who can only make one investment?

In fact, the only bold text on my blog post about startup investing says exactly the opposite of that: [http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2011/01/angel- investing-my-...](http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2011/01/angel-investing-my- first-three-years.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Two things, one, a $10 Million valuation for an angel round is really high. I'm suspecting that the real statement was something more like "one of the YC companies even got a $10 Million pre-money valuation" rather than the average.

Second, Paul Buchheit is investing in some of the YC companies in addition to his participation as a partner? Will that create signaling issues? I know he knows the YC companies better than other startups, but if he doesn't invest, it means he passed? Same thing happened with VC's doing angel rounds then if they don't follow up, they're leaving the startup in the lurch?</comment>


ImmersiveMath v1.1 Released - <AUTHOR> http://immersivemath.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> There isn't any changelog

But, since last time I checked I see addition of chapter 9 and 10.</comment>


The New Atlanta Billionaires Behind the Unlikely Tech Unicorn MailChimp - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2018/10/08/the-new-atlanta-billionaires-behind-an-unlikely-tech-unicorn <comment><USER2> Thank goodness, not another overnight success story:

 _Mailchimp, named after their most popular e-card character, launched in 2001 and remained a side project for several years, earning a few thousand dollars a month. Then in 2007, when it hit 10,000 users, the two decided to commit full-time._

</comment><comment><USER3> 'unlikely tech unicorn' ....why is it unlikely? Someone was going to dominate the smb tier of email marketing and mailchimp have executed really well. The whole valley 'unicorn' schtik is what's unlikely, it's just glib VC speak for fast bucks and easy money

<comment><USER4> Also, aren't unicorns kinda unlikely by definition?

<comment><USER5> The tech industry has terrible, ironic names.

A unicorn isn't _unlikely_. It's imaginary. It doesn't exist.

<comment><USER6> The name may apply well. The billion dollar valuations are as imaginary as the profits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> MailChimp is perhaps the most "on brand" B2B startup I can think of. It's also perhaps the best case example of what a brand mascot can do for your business.

I can't make out the difference between all its competitors - Aweber, ConstantContact, iContact. But I can figure out MailChimp from a mile away.

</comment><comment><USER8> > Chestnut and Kurzius have worked to keep that lifeline affordable: > Mailchimp's customers pay nothing for the first 2,000 subscribers or 12,000 > emails sent, and then $10 a month after that. The low cost translates > potentially into a big upside.

Hardly. Only the first part of that statement is true. It's $10 a month AND UP... and it goes up pretty fast: [https://mailchimp.com/pricing/](https://mailchimp.com/pricing/)

We switched to phplist + Amazon SES several years back after calculating what our MailChimp bill would be for our list size, and are glad we did.

<comment><USER9> Longer-term, you may need to consider things like, "how easy is our email setup for Marketing to own" because it makes a lot more sense for an experienced email marketer to own things than an engineer at a certain level of scale, both from an experience and head count cost standpoint.

There's also the consideration of "should all emails live in one platform?" It may very well be that high-volume, low-impact transactional mail should absolutely go through something like SES, whereas higher value emails go through an actual marketing ESP like Mailchimp or something more robust.

It isn't a black and white situation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Good on them, but they've completely flubbed their absorption of Mandrill, and these days Mandrill suffers frequent production outages unbecoming of a serious email provider, and their support is abysmal. I guess part of building a big business is squeezing your customers to boost your margin.

Has anyone migrated off of Mandrill in the past few years? Where'd you go, and how was the transition?

<comment><USER11> We choose SendGrid long time ago to unify all our mail infrastructure under one provider and it was a significant mistake. Now, we're heavily relying on SendGrid but some systems still depend on Mandrill and we're slowly migrating those as we make changes to them.

<comment><USER12> Please elaborate on why SendGrid was a significant mistake for you. We are looking at moving to them from Mandrill, since their stability has been terrible for us.

<comment><USER11> Oops, sorry. Brain fart. I meant Mandrill, Mandrill was a significant mistake. SendGrid is working great for us. So sorry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Who could forget the Mandrill screwjob? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11203056](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11203056)

</comment><comment><USER14> > $600 million in revenue

Napkin math time. Assuming 30% profit (very achievable for a tech biz that size), thats $90M a founder per year (if they want). I would take that over the risk of trying to get to a $1B sale any day of the week. There aren't very many industries that can achieve something like this. What a time to be alive.

Note - I understand their are so many assumptions here, but I think my point still remains.

<comment><USER15> 30% profit. You might consider a career as fantasy author.

<comment><USER16> They only have 500-1000 employees.

<comment><USER15> My toilet paper at home has four layers. (Same amount of relevance)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> bra-ket ? not a single Forbes 400 tech fortune hails from New York

how about Bloomberg

<comment><USER17> Agree, Bloomberg was a tech company long before it was a media company. And Bloomberg himself would probably be in the top five of the richest list if he ever took it public (he owns 88% of the company).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Always been a fan of MailChimp, kudos to them for bootstrapping all the way to this point. Few can say the same. They started out building a product for their website customers and brought some wit and life to an unsexy market.

<comment><USER19> I tried Mailchimp a few years ago and left in frustration. I found their tools and admin to be terrible, and know a few others who feel the same way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've used it and i find it expensive.

Aren't their services which use our AWS SES account (with automatic setup) and offer same features as MailChimp but much cheaper?

<comment><USER21> Yes, I use one called Sendy ([https://sendy.co/](https://sendy.co/)). Subscription-free, one time payment of $59 and emails sent through Amazon SES. As a small business owner, I have no idea why someone would use MailChimp over this.

<comment><USER8> You can get even cheaper than that by using phplist instead, which is free, and setting that up with your AWS account.

Hard to beat $0.10 per 1,000 emails...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Good on them. Now, as someone who deals with end users and e-mails with links on a regular basis, could they--and all of the other mail sending services out there-- _PLEASE_ invest some of that money in making click-tracking links less terrible?

It is so, so, so very difficult to get my users to stop clicking on phishing links when they, correctly, point out that legitimate links in real e-mails look virtually identical. Why does

www.ecommercesite.example/products/brown-boots/buytoday

have to turn into

ecommercesite19.ie.randomdomain.otherstuff.xd/lists/email/4910/598gjweo5g8er7485hwog8u3eo8whfo8wc2o38fh38f/totallynotphishing/9384gjh34fgoiu34hgffh/noreallywepromise/?utm_stuff=2928&utm_things=morewords&utm_whyareyoustillreadingthis=lolmoney

At the _absolute minimum_ , these e-mail campaigns should only contain click- tracking links that originate under the recognizable domain of the sender.

emails.ecommercesite.example/products/brown-boots/buytoday/4918ac7

would be so much easier to understand and use as examples when showing my users.

<comment><USER23> What you are suggesting is actually quite complex. Mailchimp would have to install a bunch of stuff on customers servers (which are probably run by a third party) and/or control some of their customers subdomains.

Maybe you just need to invest some money in better spam filters, and user education.

<comment><USER24> I'm sorry but there is no level of user education that will protect a large organisation from phishing links. The attack surface is way too large and safety depends on how the user is feeling on any given day when a random email turns up. There are no high reliability systems that require manual user interaction on a frequent basis especially on low-effort low-concentration tasks.

<comment><USER25> I agree about the insufficiency of user-education.

I think we need go further: what we need to do is kill the idea that email is an good vector for notifications inside of big organizations (or maybe even outside of them). I should have a dedicated app with a whitelist based system that official notifications go through. This could be not only a security improvement, but also a stab at better UX, better productivity, and avoiding notification fatigue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Perhaps I'm alone in this, but when a tech company is solely owned by a small group of execs, that's a huge red flag as a potential employee. In my mind, it says they truly only care about themselves in a very tangible way.

<comment><USER27> Their employees get a share of the profits (like many regular businesses). They are also quite firm in their goal to stay private, so why would equity be relevant to an employee any way?

<comment><USER28> What share of profits though? The most recent article I can find ([https://mailchimp.com/culture/investing-in-people-through- pr...](https://mailchimp.com/culture/investing-in-people-through-profit- sharing/)) boasts of contributing "up to 19%" of annual salary to employees' 401k. While obviously not a bad deal, it's a far cry from options/RSUs and other standard annual bonuses offered at other tech companies.

<comment><USER29> > What share of profits though?

The share that goes into your yearly salary, bonuses, raises, and benefits (like the 401k match you disregard).

They owe you nothing else, and each employee is free to ask for more or leave for greener pastures if they are unhappy.

<comment><USER30> Shares are often a much more tax efficient way of rewarding employees and having an actual share has numerous advantage's in term of morale retention and so on.

Also shares keep on producing income after you have left a company.

<comment><USER31> "Also shares keep on producing income after you have left a company."

If I was making $120k per year working at MailChimp the last thing I would want is 30% or more of my net worth tied up in private shares. What employee wants that much exposure? It's a private tech company with no plans for liquidity potentially ever.

<comment><USER30> Private company shares can pay dividends though.

<comment><USER31> It is severely limiting. You can't sell private shares on the open market to buy a condo, pay off college debt, invest in your own company, quit and travel the world, etc. It could be decades before you receive the full share value. If hypothetical employee is working full time it's probably because they don't have enough assets 2M+ to live off passive income and need to work. Let's say they are frugal and save $40k per year. If you have comp like a public co and receive $40k+ per year in shares does it really make sense to have 50%+ of your net worth in a single private tech company? It would probably work out great but 10 years is a long time to wait. I'm pretty sure there is issues with tax too but I don't know the math.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I wish they made it easier to manage the lists I'm subscribed to because I didn't ask to be on most of them. In their defense, unsubscribing works, but I wish I had a view where I could see all the lists I'm on and be able to unsubscribe from there.

Cory Doctorow asked about this once:

[https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/641642822286753792](https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/641642822286753792)

And they basically said no. I wonder if now that GDPR is a thing if they have to provide this information?

</comment><comment><USER33> More power to them! MailChimp is more deserving of unicorn status than vast majority of unicorns. It solves real world problems and helps real world businesses communicate with real world market. A happy MailChimp user here!

</comment><comment><USER34> I just got started using the mailchiml api for a custom sign up form. It took about 5 minutes.

</comment><comment><USER35> My understanding of unicorn is that it's worth 1 billion+ without generating profit?

</comment><comment><USER36> I'll never hate on another company's success but I remember one of their engineers speaking at an event back in like 2013 and it was really politically incorrect. Made me uncomfortable and I'm not exactly squeamish. Doesn't seem like the type of company I'd like to work for.

</comment><comment><USER37> Mautic is pretty good opensource replacement of MailChimp.</comment>


Google found guilty of misleading advertising with Adwords - <AUTHOR> http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-04-03/accc-wins-case-against-google/3930456

<comment><AUTHOR> IANAL but it appears to me that Google lost because the court has taken the position that Google does more than publish the advertisements because Google uses algorithms to match advertisements with searches. In the original ruling Google won with the position that they were like a newspaper, simply taking someone else's copy and publishing it on their site.

It is a very interesting case and I am not sure where I personally stand on it.

Either way I'm sure we will hear more from Google on the matter, they still have an avenue for appeal. They can apply to the High Court which may or may not accept to hear their appeal, I am not sure on what grounds this is decided however.

<comment><USER2> The article says, "Google's conduct involved the use by an advertiser of a competitor's name as a keyword triggering an advertisement for the advertiser with a matching headline,"

I interpret that as, the advertiser defined the competitor as the keyword and that is Google's fault for not preventing it.

Isn't that the end goal of most advertisements (overtly or not)? Tempt a captive audience away from the alternative? Clearly I'm not familiar with nuances of advertising laws (particularly abroad). Interesting article nonetheless.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not discussed in the article but I have read elsewhere that advertisers also used the competitors name as the title of the advertisement. This is I believe the "misleading" part of of the breach of the laws.

<comment><USER3> It would be misleading if the ad attempted to fool users that they were about to click through to the site they were looking for using the trademarked name of the intended site. Searching for "Honda" and clicking on a link to Honda.com that redirected to another site is very shady. However, all ad units in Google search results are marked as such and I would say at this point 99% of the population knows the difference between an ad and a genuine result. Buying a competitor's name as a keyword gets you exposure to people looking for options and i dont see anything wrong with it assuming you are not impersonating someone else's brand. I can think of a certain billboard right here in LA that advertises an organic market and is placed directly above the Whole Foods on Santa Monica and Fairfax. Whole Foods might not be happy about it, but it is clever ad placement.

<comment><USER4> I think you are far over-estimating the size of the set of people who know the difference between ads and organic results on Google. I would also bet the percentage of people who can differentiate sites by URL is is very small. If the link text says "Honda", many (most?) will believe they are going to a Honda sanctioned site.

I would _love_ to see real user research on this topic. Google showed pretty well there are a lot of people who are confused, to say the least[1].

1\. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4MwTvtyrUQ&sns=em](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4MwTvtyrUQ&sns=em)

<comment><USER3> Sure, 99% is probably a bit of an exaggeration, but I do think most people are pretty savvy to the difference. It seems like in this case the advertisers were going after the people who were searching for the URL rather than just typing it in, which in my opinion, is the less savvy percentage of the population. It brings to mind the blog post that took the number 1 spot in search for "facebook login" and caused outrage by people clicking through thinking they were going to log into Facebook, landed on the blog post, then complained that Facebook had changed designs - off the top of my head I don't have a citation for that case. But I do think its safe to say the majority of people know the difference between ads and results.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> ([http://www.news.com.au/technology/accc-wins-appeal- against-g...](http://www.news.com.au/technology/accc-wins-appeal-against- google-over-false-and-misleading-advertising/story-e6frfro0-1226317505295))

([http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/04/03/oukin-uk-google- aus...](http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/04/03/oukin-uk-google-australia- court-idUKBRE83206020120403))

> _"It is Google's technology which creates that which is displayed," said the > judges, who examined four cases of misleading search results._

([http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/ACCC- wins...](http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/ACCC-wins-court- ruling-against-Google-pd20120403-SZMSV?opendocument&src=rss))

> _"Google's conduct cannot fairly be described as merely passing on the > statements of the advertiser for what they are worth," Chief Justice Patrick > Keane and Justices Peter Jacobson and Bruce Lander said, according to the > AFR. "That it happens to headline a keyword chosen by the advertiser does > not make it any the less Google's response."_

([http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-04-03/accc-wins-case- against...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-04-03/accc-wins-case-against- google/3930456/?site=newcastle))

> _"Although the key words are selected by the advertiser, perhaps with input > by Google, what is critical to the process is the triggering of the link by > Google using its algorithms."_

</comment><comment><USER6> Australia is already one of the only places in the world where Google allow companies with trademarks to block keywords matching their trademark. This result just sounds like it pushes Google further down this path which doesn't apply to any of the other major markets.

It makes like had as an affiliate or merchant where a supplier can block trademarks and make it much harder to effectively advertise your business based off their products.

<comment><USER7> I wonder how fast laws would change if Google decided that Australia just wasn't worth it anymore, shuttered all Aussie operations, and blocked Australian ISPs from accessing any Google domain.

edit: Didn't see DiabloD3's comment before posting this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm still confused - why is having ads linking to a competitors site illegal?

</comment><comment><USER9> The 'above natural' results are an amazing fountain of profit for Google driven by searchers who don't realize those are paid ads, or think that those are especially Google-endorsed. A company that is already the top natural result for its own name may still find it profitable or necessary to be the top paid result as well, to catch that traffic.

In some e-commerce contexts, even if the top natural result is the _direct source_ of a certain product, selling at the _best price_ , a significant amount of traffic will go to a _reseller_ who has _higher-prices_ , but appears in the first paid position.

For those categories, Google and the reseller are a tag-team distribution- power middleman siphoning value from both the searcher and the target site, compared to the 'platonic ideal' of just giving the searcher what they want. It's not quite 'evil', given that it subsidizes other Google benefits on less economically-valuable categories, but it's not Google being a White Knight for the searcher's best interest, either.

</comment><comment><USER10> What stops Google from just pulling out of Australia stating Australian laws are anti-free speech and unworkable for American countries, and then blacklisting all .au TLDed sites from the index?

<comment><USER11> American countries?

<comment><USER12> DiabloD3 probably meant American companies.

That correction doesn't make the comment less inane though. I'm pretty sure that getting into a pissing match with a sovereign Western nation would be a no-win situation for Google - lose and, well, you lost; win and you've got every other government (including the U.S.) painting a target on your back.

<comment><AUTHOR> Especially when they admit it is a problem and that it is against their TOU.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Vertigo - Climbing really tall antennas - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txdv_oNq81I&feature=player_embedded#

<comment><USER2> I felt uneasy by just watching that. Damn you first person point of view.</comment>


This app says 'yo' and has raised $1 million - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/id/101769986#_gus <comment><USER2> If you follow the references, the story seems a little bit saner than CNBC makes it sound: Or Arbel didn't raise 1MM from institutional VCs, but rather (FT reports, without any details on the terms or confirmatory details) from his former boss at a company called Mobli, who apparently has an "angel fund". That boss, Moshe Hogeg, had in the same time frame commissioned an app from Arbel.

So, contra the impression you'd get from second- and third- hand reports of this story, some unknown guy did not spend 8 hours coding an app that just says "Yo", tour it to venture capitalists, and pick up 1MM.

<comment><USER3> And here I was about to whip up an app that just nods knowingly at you and wait for the money train.

<comment><USER4> I would buy it

<comment><USER3> The sad thing is right after I posted that I realized it could actually work...

<comment><USER5> You'll have to build it now, to see if it does :-)

<comment><USER3> It's such a stupid idea that I'll hate myself if I don't at least try it...

<comment><USER6> I'll do your cloud configuration

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can see the value in this, it's the same value that agencies get from metadata.

I might be sending a "yo" cos I'm home, I might be sending a "yo" because I'm out of weed, I might be receiving a "yo" because my pizza is about to arrive.

In all these cases it's the metadata that matters, I can infer the rest from that.

<comment><USER8> You can't derive _context_ from just a "yo." (to clarify: you can't derive context from this app alone, since all you can do is send "yo"s. There isn't enough information to formulate a _why_. Facebook/Twitter, of course, could make more use out of the "yo"s, but they already have that data.)

<comment><USER9> You can if there is a pre-arrangement, or at least the sender and the recipient. Its essentially a contextual "ping" that only the sender and receiver understand, usually from a different channel.

It being easier allows people to drive, spend less time texting when meeting up, etc. Silly use case? Sure. But look at the install base.

I can't believe I hated on Slingshot, but am actually giving this credit.

<comment><USER10> > You can if there is a pre-arrangement, or at least the sender and the > recipient.

That's the point. My dealer and I have that context. The police don't. (Hypothetically speaking, of course.)

<comment><USER9> Yeah, even collecting the "intent and time of contact" with those involved can be used when paired with other metadata about both people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> From the App Store :

"Not just a means of simple but effective communication, Yo is a way of life. Since downloading Yo, all my relationships have improved and I've regrown most of my hair. My girlfriend no longer complains that I don't text her enough, I just Yo that b. Mom no longer asks why I don't call when I just sent that b a Yo."

</comment><comment><USER8> It should be noted that Yo has the Snapchat-esque we-cater-to-teens UI and UX that other apps like Tinder and Slingshot have adopted. (bright pastel colors, whimsical fonts, app incredibly unintuitive to navigate due to excessive minimalism, etc.)

I'm beginning to think you could make literally any kind of app with that kind of paradigm and get funding.

<comment><USER12> Reviews on Play seem to be full of "I only installed this app because <friend> told me about it."

It's actually kind of interesting; you don't really need much of an onboarding flow because either you play with it to figure out how to use it (and apologize for the accidental notifications later) or you are told by a friend and they tell you how to use it.

<comment><USER13> So basically, it's down to UX insights for the youth audience, implemented well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Reading this made me feel a wide range of emotions. But mainly, seriously, wtf...?

Who is funding those apps? This just doesn't propose any value to the user other than momentary coolness (like most other apps for teenagers). Once it fades away, it will be just one of 'cool' apps, like there are thousands of them already.

Or is that $1M with crap-loads of various clauses for releasing money and after all it's actually just a few grands and just some nice PR stuff because media loves $1M?

Are the investors just some rich people who are like 'startups! yeah! I watched Social Network! this will print the money yo!'? Or is there something I don't see?

If not, I just find it a bit insulting to founders who work their butts off with decent projects.

</comment><comment><USER15> In case you were wondering how this new app is better than Facebook Poke, apparently [0] Yo allows group yo's as well as double yo's. So you effectively have morse code broadcast to a select group.

[0] [http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/06/18/3450334/yo- app-t...](http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/06/18/3450334/yo-app-tech- bubble/)

<comment><USER16> Also, it's called a "yo", and not a "poke". Important.

</comment></comment><comment> FLUX-YOU >Thus far, it has attracted over 50,000 users, who have sent about 4 million "yos."

You can buy likes and followers. Can you buy app downloads and usage? How much of your user specifics and metrics do you have to disclose to your funding sources?

<comment><USER17> Of course you can! Its called cost-per-install ads.

How else do you think Facebook has been growing their revenue so fast quarter over quarter?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This app is extremely easy to dismiss. As someone else mentioned, if you send a yo to "WORLDCUP" you get a yo everytime someone scores. I could see this getting wired into IFTT and actually becoming useful "automatically send a yo to my friend every time I visit his city", "Have my plants send me a yo when they need some water", "Send a yo to me when kid gets home from school". These things maybe extremely annoying to some, but useful to others. It seems so dumb, as did snapchat, but when you start to use it you see it is actually kind of novel.

<comment><USER19> Why bother sending these messages via yo? All that does is make it harder to understand them. You could have your plants text you when they need water, and the message would contain information itself (the zero bits of information you get from "yo" mean whenever you get the message you have to remember what you originally defined it to mean) and be your choice of more accommodating to the user's choice of platform or more robust in the face of yo service failure. You don't get anything out of the yo layer of the stack.

<comment><USER18> I must admit you are absolutely correct. I guess I was thinking it would be more like a ping or a blip, something to trigger more investigation via another app or channel. Nothing text messages couldn't solve, but just a bucket for blips I guess.

I also kind of like the lack of extra information, because it may seem like there is no context but really it would be encoded between the yodlers. If I get a "yo" from my buddy maybe I secretly know that he doesn't want to talk but really wants to smoke some weed downstairs. Again, texts could solve this same problem so I am not sure why I am fascinated by the simplicity, stupidity and possibilities of this app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's already almost impossible to get any reasonable username on the service.

I'm going to have to change my name to get ahead of the young kids who are now in front of me.

</comment><comment><USER21> I count 6-7 taps to text somebody 'yo' from my iPhone, depending if they're above the fold in the messages app or not...Wonder how he got to 11

</comment><comment><USER22> If you add the user WORLDCUP and send it a 'yo' then you will get a 'yo' every time someone scores a goal during the world cup.

<comment><USER23> I can't think of anything less useful and more annoying. If I'm watching a game, I don't need to be told when there's a goal. If I'm not, I don't want to be bothered by random 'yo's all the time - especially if I'm not told _who_ scored.

<comment><USER19> It is my understanding that goals aren't all that common in soccer; that particular example actually made a certain amount of sense to me. Then again, I don't watch sports. But the fear of getting "random yos all the time" from the world cup seems a little overblown?

Wikipedia lists the following scores for the past few world cups:

        2010: 1-0
        2006: 1-1
        2002: 2-0
        1998: 3-0 (!)
        1994: 0-0
        1990: 1-0

They actually pick up noticeably before 1990, but the most goals ever scored was seven in 1958. Are you sure you were thinking about the world cup?

<comment><USER24> Are you sure you aren't looking at the finale scores only? So far the world cup has seen 53 goals in 18 matches, and we're only about a quarter through.

Edit: numbers updated, I wasn't looking right.

<comment><USER19> No, I'm pretty sure you're correct. See my above disclaimer.

Three goals a match, though, still seems more like something rare enough that you might prefer to focus your attention elsewhere and be alerted when they happen than like something that will slowly drive you insane. Do the matches happen at predictable times?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I just wish he had named it "ping" instead. "Ping me when you... do X" sounds much better than "Yo me..."

<comment><USER25> Ping sounds so..corporate, or adult.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> From their twitter stream "My mom should get @YoAppStatus just so I can yo her and let her know I'm still alive."

That's a great use case. My family would love to know I'm still alive when I go mountain climbing and calling is too much of a hassle.

</comment><comment><USER27> VC's are just mining for user signups using User Psychology based UX patterns to sell to established social-media buyers.

There is a commodity and a buyer and the VC's and social app developers are trying to arbitrage it.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm gonna make an app that says 'WTF' and get rich now

<comment><USER29> 'Sup

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This app does not appear to respect the mute setting on my phone.

<comment><USER31> To be fair, he only spent 8 hours developing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Was sniffing around for access to their api in the app binary, found some hidden features instead: guess they are going to monetise with custom sounds/yos.

<comment><USER33> Out of interest, would you mind sharing what backend they are using?

Is it something like Parse or a custom development?

<comment><USER33> Ok, answered my own question, it contains the Parse library.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Well, We're living in a time where money is cheap and there's a new SnapChat every couple of weeks.

Nobody who has money to invest wants to miss the train.

</comment><comment><USER35> Amazing! How do they keep it from autocorrecting to "To"?

</comment><comment><USER36> It's the pet rock of the app world

</comment><comment><USER37> I think this sorta proves that we've reached the bubble peak.

After this startup bubble pops, we are going to see investors who are very wary of companies that thinks we are in a new economy now and that non-paying users is the way to billions.

</comment><comment><USER38> Sending smoke signals is worthy of a million.

<comment><USER39> Good idea for an app. Think about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> A company to raise a million US dollars (2,2 Million Reais) here in Brazil has to be profitable and have at least 1 Million U$ in profit!

The VC Firms abroad should come to Brazil, we have several good companies who can't raise half a million dollars. Way better than yo's.

<comment><USER41> > 1 Million U$ in profit!

What is the point of raising a million if you make one? Did you mean revenue?

<comment><USER40> Yes, pardon my english. I mean revenue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Investors fund growth. This app has demonstrated growth.

Isn't $1M pretty much pocket change for big investment funds? What if this app becomes the next Snapchat?

Users give leverage. If the team is dedicated, and they can pivot their adoption into long-term growth, then it was a good investment.

Startup investing is counter-intuitive by nature. It's counter-intuitive for most people to think of $1M as a small amount of money, but to a fund it might be. And if it's a small amount of money, then there's no downside to invest in them. Whereas if they miss their chance to invest in the next big company, then those same investors will ultimately lose, because the entire model of VC depends on (a) investing in a big winner, (b) early.

EDIT: Well, that's what I get for not researching before speaking. 1MM in this case was a large amount of money for any angel investor. But the premise of investing early in a big winner is the central idea.</comment>


New York Times agrees: Windows is toast - <AUTHOR> http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/9/new-york-times-agrees-microsoft-windows-toast

<comment><USER2> "Does this mean Microsoft going to keel over tomorrow? Of course not. But as the rise of the Internet, Apple (second coming), mobile computing, Google, et al, are demonstrating, PC operating systems are a lot less important than they used to be."

Literally could not agree more...

<comment><USER3> This article talks to Windows, I think one of the biggest exposures for Microsoft is Office.

It's a significant part of their revenue (a real cash cow) and is the gateway into the corporate environment.

Now they have two problems: 1\. Competitors (often free) are producing products that are competing - and even more importantly, are compatible (enough) with the Microsoft formats.

and

2\. They are running out of ways to innovate in the Office format. The ribbon in the latest versions is interesting, some of the integration is better... PowerPoint was significantly better... But really... How much more can they innovate in the Office Suite format?

Word XP might offer more, but in my experience it's a very moderate increment over something like Word 2000 (and arguably Word 2.0 for many users). And it shows - I see many organisations who have no intent to upgrade.

They need to innovate their key planks (Windows, Office) considerably or eventually they'll either obsolete or commoditised out of the market. How their current strategy reflects that, I don't know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated...

Consumers are one thing, businesses are another. Businesses spend a "crapload" on computers and many of them are stuck in the Windows world. While home users with simple email needs can switch, MSFT still has the cash cow business buyers which are less price sensitive than consumers.

While I like Ubuntu, even our Linux admin just switched his (work) desktop to Vista b/c it was too much of a pain to interop with our Windows network. Sometimes it's just not worth the pain.

</comment><comment><USER5> if MS can come up with a licensing model that makes it feasible to deploy the CLR as a grid/cloud-computing platform running F# code, then things will get a bit more interesting.</comment>


Bug in iOS 8's 'Reset All Settings' Option Also Erases iCloud Drive Documents - <AUTHOR> http://www.macrumors.com/2014/09/29/reset-all-settings-icloud-drive-bug/

<comment><USER2> What's going on with Apple lately?</comment>


Zuck Confirms That Facebook Now Has 750 Million Active Users - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/06/zuck-confirms-that-facebook-now-has-750-million-users/

<comment><USER2> I'd like to know how many of these accounts are actively used. Zuck didn't comment on this number, which Facebook must have data on.

Also, I know there are a lot of people with duplicate accounts: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2670283></comment>


Biopic About Computer Scientist Grace Hopper in the Works - <AUTHOR> https://blog.womenandhollywood.com/biopic-about-computer-scientist-grace-hopper-in-the-works-2612f5a882ab <comment><USER2> It's cool that Google is financially sponsoring this project. Grace Hopper is a computer programmer we can all admire, male or female. I imagine I'll enjoy this film for much the same reasons I enjoyed The Imitation Game (despite flaws in historical accuracy).

They better include the 'nanoseconds' scene. [0]

[0][http://highscalability.com/blog/2012/3/1/grace-hopper-to- pro...](http://highscalability.com/blog/2012/3/1/grace-hopper-to-programmers- mind-your-nanoseconds.html)

<comment><USER3> Don't forget her title as _US Navy Rear Admiral_ Grace Hopper.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Please don't post unsubstantive announcements about things that don't exist yet. On HN, there's no harm in waiting until a thing exists.

<comment><USER2> I don't understand this criticism. The thing of substance which exists is this announcement. The announcement has funding and script information regarding the film, which makes it sound like the film has a decent likelihood of making it into theatres.

HN often has threads on new product announcements, or discussions on future features on major products which don't yet exist. I don't see why movies should be any different.

<comment><USER4> Announcements of new products that exist are welcome. Announcements of new products that don't exist? Not so much, and I don't think you'll find many threads like that. If you do, we're not doing our job.

Features that don't exist yet should be the same. An article that went into detail about the development process would be different, but in that case the development process itself is the topic. That would be fine for a film or anything else, if the details are interesting. The OP is just a press release. In fact, it's taken from [https://deadline.com/2018/02/middleton-media-google- grace-ho...](https://deadline.com/2018/02/middleton-media-google-grace-hopper- biopic-1202305817/), which I missed earlier.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Science for the very young? - <AUTHOR>

My son is just about to turn 5 and I am looking for "science experiments" or projects we can do together to help get him interested (and give me an excuse to do some of them).<p>Any suggestions, especially on a budget? <comment><USER2> I think anything that "looks cool" will be good for getting a kid interested in science. Once you've got him/her hooked, then you can start on the actual scientific method. To that end, science things that look cool:

Cymatics: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iXY2BE1S8Q>

Ferrofluid: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpBxCnHU8Ao> <http://www.gaussboys.com/ndfeb-magnets/FerroFluid25>

Non Newtonian Liquids: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5SGiwS5L6I> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2XQ97XHjVw>

Microcontrollers: [http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=211799...](http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2117994) (maybe not the best for a 5 year old, but in a couple years)

Make a Speaker for cheap (haven't done this one myself): <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8m8fbnShPcw>

Electromagnets: <http://education.jlab.org/qa/electromagnet.html>

Finally, one project I did with my little brother that I thought was cool. I got a frequency analyzer for my computer ( <http://www.relisoft.com/Freeware/freq.html>) and then filled glass cups with varying amounts of liquid. Then we ran our fingers around the lip of the glass to get it to "sing" and measured the frequency. We were able to come up with a function for X amount of liquid gives you X frequency. I thought this was great because: it was really appealing to my brother (he was 10 or so at the time) because all kids like making cups make noise, we got to do scientific method (hypothesis being more water in the glass) will make a lower frequency, I got to teach him about graphing, how to get a forumla for a line on a graph, and finally we could use that line to predict things to see if we were right.

</comment><comment><USER3> You could have a lot of fun with an inexpensive microscope (look at a number of different materials, bugs, etc..) or even a set of magnifying glasses. Get your hands on some polarizers, play with the affect of one and your ability to look into bodies of water (pool, lake, etc) show him that if you cross the polarizers you can't see through. Couple the polarizers to the microscope and do some polarization microscopy. You could also play with prisms and look at the dispersion of light. Lots of good optics stuff out there. I would highly recommend staying away from lasers until he's older.

You might also consider doing some crystallization experiments (google "crystal projects for kids").

</comment><comment><USER4> Throw some pepper on a bowl of water, and touch it with a soaped finger.

</comment><comment><USER5> Also Baking Soda + Vinegar, add some red food coloring for lava effect

<comment><AUTHOR> Great suggestion. First one we did. He loves it. If you add a drop of dish soap it gets more bubbly and looks more like lava.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Show him videos on youtube of various science experiments or lectures. When he seems interested in an idea, work with him to create an experiment, find the items, and perform it.

</comment><comment><USER7> That photosensitive paper that lets you make 'photographs' of objects (like leaves and rocks) was pretty fun.

</comment><comment><USER7> Get him one of those one-volume kids' science encyclopedias to carry around.

</comment><comment><USER7> You'd have to build it, but how about model rockets?

</comment><comment><USER5> Diet Coke + Mentos</comment>