You can now create a Bitcoin clone by filling out a simple webform - <AUTHOR> http://coingen.io <comment><USER2> This whole alt-coin thing is just a passing fad. I recently cashed out all my BitCoins and put the money into Beanie Baby Collectables. They're these cool stuffed toys that everybody is collecting these days. I was able to get a bunch of them at a very reasonable price range. Their value is bound to skyrocket in the future as more and more people get into it.

<comment><USER3> You should also look into the US Dollar- I hear people are going crazy over that one too... and since it's lost 98% of its value in the last 100 years it is bound to rebound any day now.

<comment><USER4> I don't understand why losing 98% of value over a 100-year period is supposed to be a pejorative. That implies a very steady, <2% rate of inflation per year, which is what allows wages to keep up with inflation.

<comment><USER5> Wait, inflation allows wages to keep up with inflation? Care to rephrase that one?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> And you can print your own money by writing "This is 100 dollars bill" and sending it to printer multiple times.

The only remaining task is to convince others to use it :)

<comment><USER7> Interestingly enough, lots of consumer printing software will not print images of US currency. Photoshop will absolutely not allow you to even open images of it.

<comment><USER8> What is printing software? I can Google '100 Dollar US Bill', download and print it.

I think you think printers work different than they do.

<comment><USER9> [http://fstoppers.com/photoshop-wont-let-you-work-with- images...](http://fstoppers.com/photoshop-wont-let-you-work-with-images-of- currency)

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the link. I finally found a proper US note and the new ones are in fact blocked from being edited in Photoshop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Thanks for building this, and welcome to HN BlueMatt! If you can edit the headline, you might want to prefix with 'Show HN'.

I'm curious what does the altcoin use for peer discovery? Do you get code for a DNS seed too?

There was an interesting discussion on bitcoin-dev mailing list the last couple days about whether it makes sense to enable merge-mining on new altcoins. It's far from settled, but it's another idea for a feature you would want to toggle.... Also the scrypt difficulty parameters! OK, at some point this is just 'cheating', right? :-)

BTW, I think if you know Bitcoin enough to want to create an altcoin, you would trust Matt Corallo / BlueMatt enough to know your 0.01 BTC is safe.

EDIT: Wow, look at them go: [http://coingen.io/status.html](http://coingen.io/status.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> Who runs the nodes for bootstrap?

If the server that runs this is US based and they allow trademarks through, you'll get a C&D within a week. Lawyers make their money googling for this stuff.

All someone has to do is register "paypal" or "amazon" or "exxon" etc. and the fun will be over shortly.

Creator might want to take their name and home address off the domain registration.

<comment><USER12> Displaying the names of unconfirmed entries is also probably not the best idea: [http://coingen.io/status.html](http://coingen.io/status.html)

<comment><USER13> Looks like someone followed the "advice" of ck2, ebaycoin, paypal and amazoncoin are in this page.

<comment><USER14> As is zoidbergcoin, which is a coin I could get behind.

<comment><USER15> Once again, the conservative, sandwich-heavy portfolio pays off for the hungry investor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't want to get picky, but wouldn't cloning litecoin be objectively superior? Cloning bitcoin just leaves your currency to the ASICS from the get go, at least with scrypt, everybody has a decent shot at mining early.

\---

Having read the site, I noted scrypt was an option.

It should really be the default.

Otherwise Great work, this is really cool!

</comment><comment><USER8> If the Internet has taught me anything it's that the next form of currency will be cats. You can take pictures of them, add words in impact font, or take videos of them. You then generate tons of money somehow when you mother shares them in a forwarded email (I think).

I have therefore started mining cats. Turns out when you put 30 of them in a room they generate more 'interest' than the best Bitcoin mining outfits.

<comment><USER17> There's a coin for that! [http://catcoins.biz/](http://catcoins.biz/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why there is not a bcrypt option for Proof of Work Algorithm? (Technical question: There are a lot of AltCoins out there. Why no one proposed a AltCoin where the Proof of Work Algorithm is based in bcrypt?)

<comment><USER19> a lot of them use scrypt, so you can't use asic mining. in my opinion that is the single biggest flaw in bitcoin. I bet a whole bunch of people are laughing their asses off. something we will probably see in the next couple of years

<comment><USER20> can you explain the disadvantages of allowing asic mining?

<comment><USER21> Not everybody has ASICs, so it limits the number of people who can compete. In theory, this could create a centralisation effect. In practice, that seems to happen anyway due to mining pools.

<comment><USER22> You can always use P2Pool ([http://whatisp2pool.com](http://whatisp2pool.com)). Decentralised mining.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm not sure if this is a parody.

<comment><USER21> Regardless of intention, I see it as a kind of performance art project: it underlines the absurdity of the massproduction of innovationless altcoins. It speaks to how a successful cryptocurrency requires something more than just tweaking a few parameters and recompiling; it requires a skilled developer able to maintain the system and handle crises, it requires a network effect, it requires a meaningful purpose.

<comment><USER24> Yes, a "meaningful purpose" is clearly necessary:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogecoin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogecoin)

<comment><USER16> Amusement is a purpose unfulfilled by most altcoins

dogecoin is amusing

<comment><USER25> Very amusing, such cryptocurrency, much means of exchange!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Surely this is useful though, despite others claims it is a parody?

Can this be used to create a distributed transaction system for some arbitrary application? E.g. create a massively multilayer game with its own underlying transaction safe economy.

I thought the block chain was useful in itself, forgetting about the currency implications. Its a good data structure. Cloning it seems mega useful for putting it to work elsewhere..

<comment><USER27> Pretty much all of the benefits of Bitcoin stem from the concept of blockchain, not from particular instance of it.

One has to keep this in mind when investing in Bitcoin. One doesn't invest in general future of cryptocurrencies, one simply invests in the blockchain that just happened to be first.

It is indeed a highly useful data structure. One can implement things such as verifiable online gambling (one where casino cannot cheat without being detected) with it. Basically it simply solves a byzantine generals problem.

The proof of work doesn't even need to be a hash. Primecoin searches for chains of prime numbers. As long as the work is easy to verify and hard to calculate with some sort of scaling it can be used. It would be nice to see things like Salesmancoin where the proof of work is partial solutions to traveling salesman problem. Or perhaps protein folding?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Every person on this planet should have her own currency.

</comment><comment><USER29> Perhaps related to this? [http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/12/how...](http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/12/how- and-why-bitcoin-will-plummet-in-price.html)

</comment><comment><USER30> This is a great segue for the "pump and dump" scheme. Essentially you can create your own coin and mine it with your buddies. Then create a mini exchange for the coin and target the older, less tech savvy people - who won't be able to tell the difference between Bitcoins and a more obfuscated virtual currency. Basically you'll accumulate the virtual coins for free and sell them off for a profit. Maybe I'm missing something but it feels like all the ingredients are present.

</comment><comment><USER31> Ten confirmations in, my coin still isn't showing up. I guess the site's overwhelmed, but I wouldn't recommend others spend any money until the backlog's cleared.

<comment><USER32> The site (now) says: "Note that payment is currently processed semi-manually, and thus there may be significant lag between payment and build"

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I was thinking about this the other day, that people will start making their own crypto currencies, trying to cash in on a new currency and have it work out like it did for the early adopters of BTC. These currencies will be very volatile, but all of them will become part of a new Forex landscape. If you think there's a lot of speculators now working with bitcoin, wait until people start trying to play arbitrage with different crypto currencies. The new Wild West...

<comment><USER34> This has actually been going on for a while. Check out www.cryptsy.com -- I think there are already over 50 crypto currencies being traded there, with more being added regularly. People are making tons of money on the initial pumps and dumps of all of them.

<comment><USER35> There's a sucker born every minute, but how far can the pyramid go? Is it a snake eating its own tail? Make a bunch, try to leverage that up a level? The losers will eventually be zeroed out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I believe this emphatically proves the point that cryptocurrencies are not at all different from Chuck E. Cheese tokens.

</comment><comment><USER36> I was going to do this too[[https://twitter.com/xyzgra/status/408947104455745536](https://twitter.com/xyzgra/status/408947104455745536)]. Oh well. Congrats.

</comment><comment><USER37> I just created Hackernews Coin. They give you a website link that you need to refresh. Now, I need to wait...

It's awesome how the crypto-currency ecosystem becomes harder and harder to kill with hacks like this.

<comment><USER38> Actually, I'd say that developments like this help to kill the crypto-currency ecosystem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Funny idea, but why trust these binaries not to mine for the author?

<comment><USER7> BlueMatt runs some of the build testing for the real daemon, so they're trustworthy as hell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> My guess is, in long term bitcoin price will fall. Eventually multiple services will add other currencies next to bitcoin.

</comment><comment><USER41> This is one of the stupidest things I've ever seen. I can't even begin to explain...

</comment><comment><USER42> Where's the API ?

<comment><USER43> You might be able to use dev tools to generate the curl request.

<comment><USER44> Its a post request to coingen.io/create.json with the arguments: coinname, abrev, customload, source, hidden, pow, blockrate, initvalue, halfrate, port and icon (the 256x256 icon file).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> hackernewscoin?

</comment><comment><USER46> I knew it was just a matter of time before someone made this. Nice!

Maybe a good feature would be to generate an html homepage for the coin, as well as a forum post for the alt coins section in Bitcointalk. Also a coin icon generator.

Lastly, perhaps charge the fee after the person can see it's all there.

<comment><USER47> Also automatically setup the github or bitbucket repo, create a subreddit and you could also throw in an exchange with the new homepage.</comment></comment>


IE 6 mobile standards compliance tests - <AUTHOR> http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2008/ie-6-mobile-standards-compliance-tests/ <comment><USER2> The really unfortunate part of this is that it's going to probably come with Windows Mobile 6.5. I'd never use it, but most people use whatever default browser they're given. After Firefox's success the last few years you'd think MS would want to put out a competitive browser on the mobile front, especially considering Opera's share!

</comment><comment><USER3> Why would anyone subject themselves to using this?

<comment><USER4> Because it comes with the phone, and up until recently there were no other options.

<comment><AUTHOR> Windows Mobile is one of the more 'open' platforms when it comes to third party apps. On win mobile you can choose to install Fennec (mobile firefox), skyfire, opera, etc.

Apple on the other hand bans anyone from making a replacement browser

<comment><USER3> Once someone makes something better than safari for the iPhone, I'd complain. But that's a big ask.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: HN Recap - Daily, ranked list of articles that hit the front page - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys,
I just flicked the switch on http://hnrecap.com and thought I would make a tiny announcement!
The site was created for a simple reason: There is a big rotation of articles on the front page of Hacker News every day, and unless you are on here 24/7, you are bound to miss some great content and discussions. I was tired of this and the rss feed doesn't cut it for me since it doesn't preserve ranking information over time.
On HN Recap, rankings are somewhat preserved: Every 2 minutes, I request the HN front page, update articles and attribute points in the following simple fashion: #1 gets 30 points, #2, 29 and so on...
I did notice a small bug with the display of article titles with HTML entities in them but other than that, it works as expected. Once I have about a week's worth of data, I will also add a way to view archives from previous days so it is possible to catch up if you missed a few days.
I honestly just made it to fulfil my needs, but I thought it might end up being useful for others with similar requirements, hence this post.
Enjoy! <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link: <http://hnrecap.com>

</comment><comment><USER2> Awesome. I like your ranking system too.

There was an analogue to this that had a list of the top articles on HN from the previous week... is that still around?

</comment><comment><USER3> Well done.</comment>


Algorithms Are Now Commodities - <AUTHOR> http://shape-of-code.coding-guidelines.com/2020/07/05/algorithms-are-now-commodities/ <comment><USER2> This old dev has been around to witness the transition from in-depth algorithm development to algorithms as commodities. I've pounded out my share of B-tree search, polygon intersection, and numeric stuff. Try doing numeric stuff reliably and quickly on a tiny computer without a Floating Point Unit and you'll know why you might need to learn, and then program, Jack Bresenham's line-drawing and circle-drawing algorithms.

And there's Newton and Raphson's sqrt(). Hint: if you understand your data and your precision requirement, you can avoid iterating it all the way out to the end of your integer precision, and get a lot more work done.

Try transposing a 4-megabyte matrix before the week is out on a machine with 32KiB of RAM and two 5-megabyte hard drives. Yes, it can be done.

When I started doing this work it took deep understanding to get anything done. Now it takes the skills of a good reference librarian. We have to be able to find stuff (via npm, nuget, maven) quickly, assess its quality, and figure out how to use it. So the type of thinking we need has changed from "deep" to "broad".

<comment><USER3> > Try transposing a 4-megabyte matrix before the week is out on a machine with > 32KiB of RAM and two 5-megabyte hard drives.

Transposing is just copying bytes from one place to another, isn't it? There's no maths involved, is there?

To have that run in a week with the most naive approach possible you'd only need a machine that can copy seven words a second. Are there real relevant machines that can't do that? What algorithms could help you anyway? Something to do with cache and the order in which you read and write? And you've got plenty of space as you can trivially do it in-place.

<comment><USER4> The RAM here is essentially a cache. You'll want to transpose a block at a time, something like 150 x 150 blocks, so it all fits.

Each block is not contiguous on disk, so you'll want to load blocks in the right order to avoid extra seeks.

<comment><USER3> I suspect, since the poster mentioned having _two_ hard drives, that really they're confusing transposition with inversion. These aren't the same things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > why waste time implementing the 'low' level stuff when there were plenty of > other problems waiting to be implemented.

Because:

\- The package is licensed through GPL

\- The lib allocates memory in such way that it messed up my program

\- The last update to the lib is 3 years ago, and it takes at least another 3 years for the author of the package get out of jail which is the min punishment of some NSL

\- I don't like how it's interface is designed

\- Because I got paid even I write everything by myself

The list goes on.

Another way to look at this is, "Do I really want just to implement a Linked- list? Or an sizable & queueable list that allow me to sort items via LRU?". Sometime, you just have to to write some "low level stuff" by yourself to make it exactly as you wanted.

</comment><comment><USER6> > There are companies where algorithms are not commodities

And there is an entire industry! Embedded (but not the Raspberry-pi kind of embedded that is similar to desktop).

Try to do a dead reckoning system, or anything related to real-time gesture/motion analysis. Try reading, processing, mixing and outputting audio in real time. Or any DSP related stuff. What about FPGA, ASICs, etc.?

Why oh why is the embedded industry so easily forgotten? It's not all cloud, food apps, SaaS and Electron, ya know?

Edit to add: all the above with the limited resources of embedded, that forces you to improve your algorithms.

<comment><USER7> > _Why oh why is the embedded industry so easily forgotten? It 's not all > cloud, food apps, SaaS and Electron, ya know?_

Because the _other_ industry is inherently linked to the internet. It's like the media telling you that the media is very important, or your brain telling you that it's the most interesting organ in your body (I forget which comedian I stole that from).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > I date the age of the Algorithm from roughly the 1960s to the late 1980s. > During the age of the Algorithms, developers spent a lot of time figuring > out the best algorithm to use and writing code to implement algorithms.

Today there's orders of magnitude _more_ developers spending time figuring out algorithms and writing core to implement them than in the 80s. The difference, maybe, is that even more developers today do not write any algorithm at all. But if there's an age of the algorithm, it is today. At no point in human history have as many algorithms been written as today. And next week, many more will be written!

<comment><USER9> You're missing the point. There is a larger absolute number of people working on complex algorithms, but as a percentage it is much smaller. In the 60's deep algorithmic knowledge was required for 90%+ of programming tasks, now it is probably closer to 1%. It is perfectly possible to make a living as a programmer nowadays without being able to inverse a binary tree

<comment><USER10> What's the obsession with inverting a binary tree? I have never found an use case that particular algorithm, but on the other hand I would be very happy if more programmers were aware that having a where clause in sql statement (and maybe and index) is more efficient than selecting entire database and looping over the results, even if the end result is the same.

I understand that in order to come up with the inversion on the fly you need to know about trees and recursion, but is it really that scary?

<comment><USER11> Possibly due to the tweet by Max Howell:

 _" Google: 90% of our engineers use the software you wrote (Homebrew), but you can't invert a binary tree on a whiteboard so fuck off."_

<comment><USER10> Probably unrelated, but every time I update Homebrew, I get the feeling that there's something that should be O(log N) or O(n) but the implementation takes O(N), O(N^2) or worse. There's no way checking a small list of installed package versions against a large list of available versions should take that long.

<comment><USER11> I noted in an another discussion on HN that dependency checking is apparently NP-hard:

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/28099683/algorithm- for-d...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/28099683/algorithm-for- dependency-resolution)

<comment><USER10> I doubt it's just this, since on my laptop just brew list from warm cache with 102 packages takes about a second, and twice as long if files must be read from SSD. That's a lot of reading and computation for list of 102 packages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I remember reading an article a while back about how professional photography has become a commodity. You can find and license any imaginable photograph, for pennies, in minutes. From the best photographers in the world. So from a business perspective, photography as a pure art has been devalued to almost nothing. Nobody pays you to take the very best possible photo.

So why do people still hire photographers? To put _themselves or their product_ into a photo. Most photographers are no longer paid to take the very best photos, but to make their photos specific to what the particular client cares about. That's something that can't be commoditized.

I think that's where software is now as an industry. Very few of us these days get to innovate at a "pure art" level. Instead, we get paid to pull together a bespoke solution that's sensitive to a given business and its needs. It isn't novel at the macro-level, only at the micro-level.

This can be kind of depressing, but it's also a little comforting that those micro-level solutions are so hard to fully commoditize. As long as the real world is messy and varied, the leaves in the software tree will have to be too, and there will be work that needs doing.

<comment><USER13> I don't see how that's depressing at all. Another way to phrase what you're saying is "Developers get paid to write software that solves problems people actually need solved.

<comment><USER12> For many of us, writing something pure and generic and beautiful is much more gratifying. And it's depressing to think that we'll probably never write something like that that's good enough to be picked over the version that was developed at Google and then open-sourced.

<comment><USER14> That's not unique to software, or the modern world at all, though.

Most people have never created the best-in-the-world implementation of anything. The math just doesn't work that way. Only one can be the best. We need to stop turning such unobtainable things into goals.

<comment><USER12> That's not what I'm saying at all. Of course very few people make "the best" of anything. What I'm saying is that the internet, and in our case open-source software, have caused "the best" to be _all that matters_ , because it's accessible to everyone. There's no longer a practical reason for most people to engineer most (generic) things themselves because the better solution isn't hidden behind a license, or proprietary to an organization, or inaccessible due to physical media. People used to _buy_ things like linkers. Today, the state-of-the-art is nearly always at your fingertips, for free, in seconds.

I'm not saying this is a bad thing. Progress always makes certain endeavors obsolete over time. You don't see job postings for telegraph operators any more because it's no longer useful. But if a person _enjoys_ one of those endeavors for its own sake, it's bittersweet to see it relegated to a hobby.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Well that's just not true.

I concur: Nowadays, the basic building blocks are done. Good sorting, database indexing, O(1) set-membership, many variants of lists, hash tables, and other higher level data structures are well covered by modern libraries. The foundations of modern system design are algorithms and data structures, and they are largely commoditized, _for general use_. Certainly, working on general purpose, clever-but-foundational algorithms is becomming increasingly niche.

I disagree with the final conclusion that somehow algorithms have faded into obscurity.

Anyone writing any program has to consistently track their expected program performance as it shuffles data between commodotized library calls or between network end points. This is algorithm design. Many "foundational" algorithms like max-flow actually make use of "foundational(er)" algorithms and shuffle data between them.

This is what the modern programmer does when he decomposes a data-intensive problem into sub-problems and uses commoditized libraries and re-composes those solutions.

The push to catalog and archive a wide array of well-implemented algorithms and data structures tracked the emergence of the personal and commodity hardware. The emergence of new hardware will require new solutions. Mobile, webassembly (perhaps), ASIC-based data centers, CUDA, are all exciting new areas where our "foundational" algorithms and canonical solutions need to be revisited, redesigned, and re-tuned. Or at least re-composed.

</comment><comment><USER16> I spent a lot of time reading Knuth's books, especially Seminumerical Algorithms when I was implementing multi precision arithmetic for various architectures. What amazing pieces of work they are. That was back in the time when you could look at assembler (or even C code) and get a good idea of how many cycles it would take.

I love the Art of the Algorithm, but I have to say I'm very happy to use off the shelf libraries now. I've implemented binary search dozens of times and each time spent ages fixing all the corner cases. Instructive, but a waste of time when you can import a library which is battle tested and faster than anything you'll ever write.

Algorithms are dead - long live the (commoditized) Algorithm!

<comment><USER17> Incidentally, I think there is at least one important area where Knuth is actually still ahead of off-the-shelf libraries as of 2020: "broadword computing". When skimming volume 4A for semi-recreational purposes a few years ago, I was surprised to find multiple "bit-hacks" which were better than anything I had found in other sources, and proceeded to use them in my own open-sourced work. Every time I've encountered a situation where bitvectors are useful, I have benefited from rolling my own implementation.

<comment><USER18> Came here to say this. It's rare that you want to consume these things through an abstraction layer: the layer is often heavier than the work underneath. Sucks for readability, though, so I usually spend as much time documenting as implementing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> _> This was the age of the algorithm. [...] When it comes to algorithm implementation, developers are now spoilt for choice; why waste time implementing the 'low' level stuff when there were plenty of other problems waiting to be implemented. Algorithms are now like the bolts in a bridge: very important, but nobody talks about them. Today developers talk about story points, features, business logic, etc. [...] Today, we are in the age of the ecosystem._

The blog author doesn't make it explicit but his usage of _" algorithm"_ is actually about "low-level algorithms" which is how it seems to support his claim that _" algorithms are now commodities"_.

But "algorithms" in the general sense are not commodities. It's just that we're now free to concentrate on higher-level problems with new algorithms.

E.g., in the 1980s & 1990s, the Barnes & Noble section for computers would have books with algorithms showing how to write disk-based B-trees from scratch. But now with SQLite library in wide usage, you can just use their B-trees instead of reinventing your own. Some more examples of low-level algorithms I used to write by hand:

\- manually uppercase chars by adding "32" to the ASCII code because there was no Upper() function in a standard library.

\- manually titlecase/propercase/lowercase a person's name from "JOHN DOE" to "John Doe" by looping the the string char-by-char and subtracting "32" from the ASCII code if it doesn't follows a space char because there was no TitleCase() function

\- adding a drop shadow beneath a window because the operating system GUI didn't render shadows for you

\- manually writing link lists to create dynamic size memory buffers because there was no C++ STL library yet or built-in associative arrays in Python/C#

I don't do have to do any of that low-level tedious work anymore _but I still write new algorithms_ because there is always some _[missing functionality]_ where a standard library doesn't exist or a consensus implementation hasn't yet "won" in the marketplace of ideas. It could be distributed cloud/desk/mobile data sync algorithm, or collaborative recommendation algorithm, etc. Algorithms (general sense) will not be commoditized for decades -- if ever.

<comment><USER20> I have a feeling you might enjoy this code: [https://github.com/zbraniecki/tinystr/blob/master/src/tinyst...](https://github.com/zbraniecki/tinystr/blob/master/src/tinystr8.rs#L221)

I wrote this because I wanted (normalizing) locale comparisons to be super fast, as they can be part of the key for cache lookups of text layout. In a language identifier such as "en-Latn-US" the script is in title case.

So this kind of thing still does happen, just at the lowest levels of libraries that provide nice clean abstractions for other people to use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> One of my favorite mini games at my job is rewriting classic algorithms to run in batched mode on gpu/tpu. The speed improvements often improve model training time by days, and it's always a lovely intellectual challenge. (The basic challenge is to rewrite the algorithms in terms of matrix operations which operate on many examples of the problem at once, while eliminating all branching.)

</comment><comment><USER22> I am somewhat confused about the definition of Algorithms under the article's context.

What is this Algorithm we are talking about? Is it about basic data structures? If that is what we talk about, I feel at least from like 15 years ago, people already giving up writing those things from scratch for new projects.

I agree encapsulation is growing. As developers we are in a reality that we lose more and more predictability over the behavior of our code.

But that seems to create more demand for nuanced solution to reign the complexity, since commoditized algorithm created this problem, not solving it.

</comment><comment> Const-me I don't remember last time I implemented sorting, search or trees, these are available in all languages and runtimes.

Skill, I implement a lot of my own algorithms. Following reasons.

1\. Performance. Custom algorithms and data structures is often a requirement to write performant code, because SIMD, memory hierarchy, and other modern hardware-related shenanigans largely ignored by authors of standard libraries.

2\. GPGPU. Due to their massively parallel nature they need completely different algorithms, a naïve implementation is often by an order of magnitude slower than purposely built one, due to things like memory access coalescing and group shared memory.

3\. Licensing. In my area of work (CAD/CAM/CAE) some good quality libraries are only available as GPL or even AGPL. Apparently, the commercial licenses are targeted towards companies like GM or Airbus, way too expensive.

</comment><comment><USER23> Commodities are fully fungible goods and services.

Different implementations of a single algorithm should have the same basic formal properties, by definition.

That is, they should be roughly fungible. Else you aren't dealing with correct implementations of the same algorithm.

If anything, the thesis "algorithms are now commodities" is less true now than ever before.

As the complexity of software deliverables increases, the use of complex, proprietary algorithms in software should likely increase in turn.

</comment><comment><USER24> Yes commodities, but I still need an intuitive understanding of how the algorithms work to pick the right one. I might even need to read the code when I get deeper into solving my problem. Or implement a dummy version simply for learning.

Algorithms are commodities, but algorithm skill is still deeply needed

</comment><comment><USER24> I wonder if the number of people working on algorithms is about the same proportion of the workforce, it's just that there's way way more developers now, and they need commoditized algorithms that solve 90% of the problem (but that 10% is still out there...).

For example, if you summed up all the 'core committers' of open source projects, people working on operating systems, embedded software, systems programming, and other specialized software developers that might think about unique algorithms, you wonder if that's about the same as the number of total software developers in the 80s

</comment><comment><USER25> Personally I found it a bit disappointing moving from academia to industry and finding out that there is not much of a market for algorithm implementation or development/research. Sure, there are specialized products where they are important (DB, OS, languages/libraries, trading systems) and even places for algorithms in business apps, but it doesn't seem you can really "specialize" in it as a career (like distributed systems, system programming, frontend) unless you're very picky about which jobs you take.

</comment><comment><USER26> All that's old is new again. The level of abstraction just keeps getting higher.

Someday, ecosystems like AWS and Azure will be as standardized as programming languages. You'll still be writing algorithms, but instead of telling one PC what to do, you'll be telling a distributed system what to do. The old design patterns will still be relevant; the implementation will just look different.

We're already there to some extent. It's just messy and fragmented right now.

</comment><comment><USER27> There are probably more algorithms being "figured out" today than ever before.

However, the vast majority are used during interviews, and don't see the dark of silicon.

</comment><comment><USER28> And that's why HackerRank, Codility and all the other coding sites have zero relevance today in regards of the actual capability of the candidate. The fact that hiring committees, HR departments and software engineering managers rely on them goes to show how detached all those people are/have been from reality for a long time now.

Good software engineering skills on the other hand are pretty much more needed than ever.

<comment><USER29> The thing is, in large tech companies like Google, you might be tasked with designing (or modyfing a design) of something that works on Internet scale. For such cases, thinking in terms of algorithms is essential. That's why I think FAANGs still require algorithmic literacy. Unfortunately, other companies, which don't have FAANG-like problems, ape its recruitment process...

<comment><USER28> Yes, algorithms are essential for information technology. But the question is not that. And the discussion is also not about that.

The question is: are algorithms essential for one's career and for the majority of business too? I don't think so.

<comment><USER30> By definition, any code written to solve a problem is an algorithm (not just the standard stuff found in textbooks), since a lot of people in IT write code to solve problems, then yes they absolutely need to understand some what performance characteristics and the correctness of what they wrote. Even if you don't need to performance characteristics, you certainly need the correctness part!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have the feeling that the article is really about optimization, but the author does not know the difference.</comment>


Launch HN: Avo (YC W19) – Minimize Human Errors When Implementing Analytics - <AUTHOR> Hi HN! We're Árni, Sölvi, Thora, and Stef – from Iceland. We make Avo (https://www.avo.app),  a tool built to minimize human errors and overhead when implementing analytics. We're going for "simple made easy" for maintaining tracking for cross platform consumer products, where a 1% change in conversion funnels makes a difference. It's a code-generated, type-safe tracking library to accurately implement analytics events that are defined and maintained in a single-source-of-truth web app.
We're solving a personal pain point of broken analytics and how much effort it was to have an overview of what was being tracked across product teams and platforms. We all worked together on a game called QuizUp (100M+ users) where we used metrics to make decisions.  The problem was we repeatedly "broke" conversion funnels and retention charts we relied on when we shipped product updates, by mistakenly removing or changing analytics implementation.
It was driving everyone involved mad – so we built internal dev tools and processes that made implementation easier and our data more reliable. What we built was never perfect, and it was clunky in many ways:
1) There was no one that really wanted to maintain this – but developers ended up agreeing to maintain it because it was better than the alternative of frustrated data scientists requesting a fix for analytics implementation that the developers worked on weeks or months ago.
2) JSON files (or the crappy web apps we invested time in building on top of the JSON schemas) didn't give us a "human-accessible" overview of what was being tracked and when. So people who weren't working on analytics every day had no idea what data they should look at to dig into user behavior.
We also discovered that a lot of companies build similar stuff – i.e. some version of internal tools for data validation, either through code gen or through server-side validation, often based on JSON schemas. The same seems to apply for those companies; it's clunky to update, doesn't give a proper overview, and no one wants to maintain it – yet it beats the alternative of not having it.
So now, six years after we started maintaining tools like these internally, we've built Avo, to solve these issues for more people.
Here's how it works:
1) The web app is built to optimize the experience of maintaining and version controlling complicated event schemas. That means a few things, for example:
- we built a "differ" that feels similar to git, but instead of line-based diff, it's object-based
- when you make updates, Avo gives you suggestions to maintain casing and reuse properties across events.
- you can view the historical change of each object similar to Asana tasks
2) The code gen is optimized for bringing type safety and rigour to analytics implementation:
- You install a CLI to easily update (`avo pull`) your tracking library according to the latest version of the event schema. The generated code contains a type-safe function per each event.
- For example: A "Cart Updated" event with an "Item Count" property, would generate `cartUpdated(itemCount: Int)` for Swift. For dynamic languages, as well as for limitations which cannot be expressed through type systems, such as min / max, the runtime validation logs warnings or errors for data structure errors.
Things to note:
- Avo does not store, process or access your data – so no GDPR approval required.
- The Avo code generated libraries wrap whatever analytics SDK you already use. You can use the Avo library alongside the tracking you already have, or do a full migration to make sure all your events are according to the specs in Avo.
- Avo is not another analytics or data pipeline vendor. We love the ones that exist already. We've just built Avo to make sure we can use the data we send into them.
Thanks for reading, HN. We would love to hear your feedback, as well as stories of when you built this internally or when you wish you had this. <comment><USER2> I feel like Amplitude's schema management tools are best-in-class right now but still missing a lot. I've been frustrated at the absence of any integration with my eng teams build/CI systems or really any automated way to catch problems at the PR or code review stage. Is this something on your radar?

> no one that really wanted to maintain this

I feel strongly that the data organization needs to own this outright, and the only thing holding them back was the right tooling. This seems like the perfect tool to enable it. Very excited to give it a spin.

<comment><AUTHOR> > I've been frustrated at the absence of any integration with my eng teams > build/CI systems or really any automated way to catch problems at the PR or > code review stage. Is this something on your radar?

CI / GitHub integrations are definitely on our radar. We have already integrated `avo status` in our own CI pipeline (see [https://www.avo.app/docs/reference/regression](https://www.avo.app/docs/reference/regression)) and we are excited to do more. I would love to understand your desired use case. If you want to share feel free to continue here or email us at firstname.lastname@example.com.

> I feel strongly that the data organization needs to own this outright, and > the only thing holding them back was the right tooling. This seems like the > perfect tool to enable it. Very excited to give it a spin.

Glad to hear. We can't wait to hear what you think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Cool idea, seems like the next logical (or rather the first) step in the current analytics pipeline.

This being said, your doc could do with some fixing / editing :

> [https://www.avo.app/docs/help/faq](https://www.avo.app/docs/help/faq) Bad > copy pasting of "Does Avo send my events to its servers?" instead of "Why > does Avo want me to input my analytics tool API keys?"

> > [https://www.avo.app/docs/reference/languages](https://www.avo.app/docs/reference/languages) > Those are documented in detail in TBD.

Best of luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's great that you think so.

Thank you for the Docs pointers! Good spots. We will make sure to fix these.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm having difficulty understanding how to use this. Is there a demo / example to view? I'm currently managing a team using Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel and Hotjar. How can I benefit from Avo?

From what I understand, I can use Avo to setup flows that I want to watch (like a sales conversion funnel) and make sure that the analytics tags are properly implemented across all pages of the funnel. Is that correct?

In the case that the sales funnel changes and a new page is added, do I need to remember to update Avo with the change?

<comment><USER5> Something like ObservePoint[1] would be more appropriate for that use case.

Avo seems like it's designed to deal with consistency issues, rather than coverage issues. For example, say you have three different multistep sales funnels. You send a custom event "TrackFunnelStep" to both GA and Facebook at each step of the funnel. Where Avo would come in would be with defining precisely what that custom event should be (data structure, naming scheme, etc) and ensuring that everywhere "TrackFunnelStep" event ends up, it's used consistently. But Avo wouldn't stop you from forgetting to add the event to a step in the first place.

[1] [https://www.observepoint.com/](https://www.observepoint.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's correct. Avo today is particularly designed for consistency issues. Coverage issues are top of our mind though, and we have some internal tools for that that we're excited to share soon. Thanks for taking the time to clarify.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> /pricing is a 404. There are lots of ways this can be interpreted:

>14 day free trial. Pricing scales with your team, not your data.

What are your future monetization plans?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for pointing that out. We will make this clearer with a pricing section. Here is the pricing model:

Avo is $15 per seat per month for schema documentation and codegen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Congrats on the launch, sounds like you're solving a real issue.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Are you personally familiar with it as well?</comment></comment>


Rails 3.2.5 has been released - <AUTHOR> http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2012/5/31/ann-rails-3-2-5-has-been-released/

<comment><USER2> I've just updated my "Installing Rails 3.2" guide to cover Rails 3.2.5: <http://railsapps.github.com/installing-rails.html>.

If you're upgrading to Rails 3.2.5 you probably should update rake, bundler, etc., while you're at it. The article offers a detailed walk through.</comment>


AT&T verifies data throttling for top 5% of users - <AUTHOR> http://9to5mac.com/2011/07/29/att-verifies-our-throttling-information-officially-for-october-1st/ <comment><USER2> This doesn't really make sense to me because it seems that over time it will reduce the threshold for the entire network. Here is what I'm thinking: suppose that for the first month the top 5% uses 50gb of data per month. Well once the throttling kicks in they will not be able to reach the 50gb per month that they usually hit, and instead they only hit 40gb.

Next month the top 5% of usage rates is 40gb per month, and so the threshold kicks in sooner. If this repeated over the course of months then the threshold would get lower and lower, until it began to infringe on normal usage. I'm willing to assume that AT&T is doing this intelligently, and that the top 5% is a static measurement, but the way it is described makes it sound like a sliding scale that will lower the threshold more and more over time.

And that doesn't even touch the issue of always throttling connections for 5% of their customers...

<comment><USER3> They're not capping the top 5% each month. They're throttling it. That means that the top 5% could always be a certain range. So if the top 5% is over 50GB/month, then once you hit 50GB you'll be slowed down, but not stopped. You can keep going, and this is why the top 5% can stay the same from month to month.

It's possible that they can hit 50GB next month just as before, unless their behavior changes.

You're right that this plan could bring the top 5% down to 40GB over time, but that's only if the users behavior on aggregate changes. Once you're in the 95th percentile of users, I'm not sure how much extra usage is needed to get to the 99th, or even how much changing your behavior will significantly lower the averages.

<comment><USER2> When your bandwidth is limited it becomes difficult to get many more gigabytes as that is the whole point of a throttle. So when that throttle is applied to the power users then they physically can't download as many gigabytes as they used to. So my theory is that over time the difference between the 99th percentile and the 95th is going to decrease as the power users who used to raise the bar higher are throttled down to a more normal gigabyte per month usage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My problem with this is that they've advertised "UNLIMITED" data and convinced a lot of people to join their network because of it, and now they are saying that's not actually true.

I know they have footnotes in the contract, but isn't it some kind of false advertising? It's not "unlimited", it's more like "a lot", and they get to decide what a lot means.

If you're not going to really give people unlimited data, and you're going to get upset about it when people actually try using it as if it was unlimited, then how about you stop advertising it as such?

<comment><USER5> To play devil's advocate: does cutting back on the transfer rate constitute a data limit? Users that hit that 5% threshold aren't blocked from sending and receiving data, they just don't get the same transfer speeds.

Granted, it sucks to see this happen, but if transfer rates aren't _also_ specified in the plan/advertising it's hard to argue that this represents going back on an "unlimited data" promise.

<comment><USER6> > To play devil's advocate: does cutting back on the transfer rate constitute > a data limit?

I would say yes: if you have, say, a 1MB/s line, which you keep constantly saturated, you can transfer (1 month * 1MB/s) = ~2.5TB in that month. Whether you have a data cap or throttling, it translates to such a line getting being able to transfer less than 2.5TB of data per month.

<comment><USER7> So you're saying absolutely no plan at all can be considered unlimited because with current technology there is some maximum download speed? I guess that's right (and probably not just about current technology: I would think there are theoretical limits to download speeds as well).

<comment><USER8> No. "Unlimited", to me, means you get the advertised speed every second of the month, no matter the data volume you transfer. As soon as they start slowing you down, it is no longer unlimited.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> On the surface it seems like a fair and balanced approach to the problem. I wish there was an actual number set, rather than the top 5% of each month's users which means that they're promising to always throttle speeds of 5% of their customers. Perhaps they're hoping this will cause a race among the customers who use the most data to reduce their data usage every month?

I also find great humor in the throw-away line concerning the necessity of the acquisition of T-Mobile at the end.

<comment><USER10> _I also find great humor in the throw-away line concerning the necessity of the acquisition of T-Mobile at the end._

Apparently AT&T has hired Cato the Elder to do their PR. This is bad news for Carthage.

<comment><USER11> We shall lay low their towers and sell their engineers to the Shanzhai.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A couple of changes would make this into an actually reasonable policy that I wouldn't mind other ISPs adopting: 1. Define a usage threshold instead of always throttling 1/20th of your customers, and 2. Allow customers to pay a reasonable fee to boost their speeds back up after they hit the throttling.

<comment><USER13> Isn't #2 pretty close to their tiered data plans?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> _One new measure is a step that may reduce the data throughput speed experienced by a very small minority of smartphone customers who are on unlimited plans – those whose extraordinary level of data usage puts them in the top 5 percent of our heaviest data users in a billing period._

If 1 out of 20 people qualifies, then it's by no means "extraordinary". "Extraordinary" should be something like 1 in 10,000 or 1 in 100,000. If 3 people on your block fit the bill, then that's just called "ordinary".

</comment><comment><USER15> Stop pretending that you're not a dumb pipe and bill by usage. The sooner information is treated like the basic utility it is, like fuel, water or electricity, the better off we'll all be. It's painful to watch every last data provider dance around the subject like this. You're not fooling anybody. All right, you're fooling a lot of people, but not me, and not anybody else for very long.

<comment><USER16> People don't want to pay by usage, though. They want unlimited bandwidth and transfer for $30/month, and they aren't going to be happy with settling for $15/GB.

<comment><USER17> Customers always want better products for free. The problem is that ISPs are responding to the desire for unlimited bandwidth by providing "unlimited" with tons of caveats. Everybody would be better off if they would just cut to the chase and charge by usage. Advertising "unlimited" should qualify as false advertising if it's not truly unlimited, which would push everybody towards more sane behavior.

<comment><USER16> I agree that they should not (and should not be able to) call a limited plan "unlimited". However, I don't think that going to a true pay-for-usage plan is realistic. Most people don't use much bandwidth. Those people are effectively subsidizing the high-usage clients.

Let's assume that the average data usage is 1GB (the actual amount doesn't matter). Right now, everyone pays $30 whether they use 1kB or 1TB. Imagine if instead we go to a pay per MB plan. A MB currently costs $0.03 (on average, and assuming 1000MB to the GB). We know that the top 5% are using 12x as much data as the average user, so the top users are around 12GB, while the average user is around 420MB. So if we keep the usage price the same, the average non- top-5% user will be paying only $12.60. The top users are paying $360.00. Of course, the top users aren't going to continue this kind of payment. They'll leave for another provider or else drastically cut their usage. So now AT&T is serving less data (yay), but they're also bringing in about 42% as much revenue.

And bear in mind that this same calculation could be done for the next 5% and the next. The person using 1MB today paying for the 999MB they don't use so that someone else can use it. After the new plan, their fee goes down to $0.03, and someone else's goes up by $29.97. A lot of people would simply stop using any significant bandwidth and force AT&T to raise the price per MB drastically.

I think tiered plans make more sense, where instead of a true pay-for-usage, you basically have pay-for-max-usage. I think this might be where we end up. And the reality is that what we'll probably see will be $30 for "average" or slightly-above-average usage (1GB in my example), and other tiers for "exceptional" usage. Maybe $45 for 2GB and $60 for 4GB. AT&T isn't going to take a big pay cut on average users, because exceptional users by and large will not make up the difference. They'll just stop being exceptional users.

<comment><USER18> I think you numbers are way off. The average user is using less than 100MB a month. If your assumption is correct that the top users are using 12x as much data (don't know where you got this info) - it seems like they'll be throttling anyone that uses more than 1.2GB of data a month...

<comment><USER16> It doesn't matter if the number for average usage is way off. The math stays the same. Light users are bearing the cost for heavy users. In fact light users are by and large carrying the cost for even average users.

The 12x number came from the article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> As this is in effect a change of the Terms of Service, I wonder if they will let you get out of your 2 year contract if you were on the unlimited plan WITHOUT a early termination fee.

I know that any change to the ToS that involves pricing/coverage is eligible for a termination of contract with no fees, but would this be covered too?

Thoughts?

<comment><USER20> It seems like they're trying to get rid of the unlimited plans altogether, so I'd bet they'd let you out of your contract if you were one of the people who would be throttled. The people who use that much data aren't nearly as profitable, and they'd probably love to see most of that group switch networks or accept data limits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The problem for a potential competitor to AT&T that could offer a 'REALLY unlimited' contract is that the people who would switch would be all the really high bandwidth consumers. All the 'juicy' decently paying, (in reality) low bandwidth people don't feel oppressed by AT&T. So the competitor would just be setting themselves up for providing a better service, for the worst ($/Mb) customers.

</comment><comment><USER22> Let's hope that everyone or at least a majority start using up more and more bandwidth so that the threshold for the top 5% is a very high amount ~30gb. At that point, we can bring the future of high usage to the present so that AT&T and these other telco's can create policies that are future-proof rather than vague, temporary measures. We should make it clear that these high-bandwidth activities are here and the telco's are the bottleneck blocking these new services from going mainstream.

</comment><comment><USER23> I had every intention of getting an iPhone 5 when it launched and renewing my contract with AT&T at the same time. Now I'm going to run the contract out and then go elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER24> IF you want to look at it this way, if they average users speed was 3mb/s , then over the course of 1 month they could download 7593.75GB, which isnt truely unlimited. And if they decide to leave AT&T, who would they go to? T-mobile throttles, Verizon does not offer unlimited, and Sprint has some deffinatley has some issues with users being able to connect at all.

</comment><comment><USER25> they do not tell us how many GB is too many

<comment><USER26> Why is this comment not at the top. They need to define what "unlimited" really means.</comment></comment>


Federal Law Enforcement Use Unmarked Vehicles to Grab Protesters in Portland - <AUTHOR> https://www.opb.org/news/article/federal-law-enforcement-unmarked-vehicles-portland-protesters/#.XxD9y_CwH4w.twitter <comment><USER2> Some additional context on the federal law enforcement situation unfolding in Portland. [https://www.wweek.com/news/2020/07/16/oregon-gov-kate- brown-...](https://www.wweek.com/news/2020/07/16/oregon-gov-kate-brown-says- president-trump-is-invading-portland-as-an-election-stunt/)

</comment><comment><USER3> This will inevitably lead to police and/or civilians getting shot when an armed civilian responds appropriately to what appears to be an attempted kidnapping.

<comment><USER4> And because they're law enforcement, they'll respond with 10 times the firepower, killing the armed/confused civilian(s) instantly and effortlessly. They'll get away with it too, because, again... they're law enforcement, and prosecutors are too scared to touch them.

Another risk is crazed right-wing vigilantes deciding to drive around in similar vans+camo+guns to kidnap people for real. Law enforcement _knows that people are worried about this_ , and are using this tactic deliberately in order to instill fear. "Do I fight back, because these are racist gun-nuts who are going to lynch me, or do I comply because they're police, and they'll just let me go after they're done unconstitutionally hassling me?" Guess wrong and you die.

This is terrorism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Video shot by O'Shea and provided to OPB shows a dark screen as O'Shea > narrates the scene. Metadata from the video confirms the time and place of > the protesters' account.

It would have been nice if they linked the video.

[https://twitter.com/matcha_chai/status/1283328232033411072](https://twitter.com/matcha_chai/status/1283328232033411072) was floating around reddit, but it might be a different video.

</comment><comment><USER6> There was a previously discussed posting of this article with a good few points that was mysteriously flagged.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23866310](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23866310)

<comment><USER7> When you see [flagged] on a story it means users flagged it, so that part is no mystery.

Sometimes it's a mystery why they flagged it, but I'm not sure it's hard to understand in this case. The topic is inflammatory, the comments are poor ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23867523](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23867523)), and there's not much information to discuss.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is terrifying.

First they came for the rioters destroying federal property, and I did not speak out because I was not a rioter destroying federal property.

</comment><comment><USER9> Basically Gestapo.

<comment><USER10> Maybe. They have much better PR. Since the concentration camps thing has already been done, instead there is that prison-industrial complex, which sounds a lot more palatable because gang violence and the war on drugs. It's as if we're being held hostage in the sense that if we want law enforcement accountability, then they'll pull back the stops on the gangs — which, arguably, is a problem perpetuated by the system, rather than being fixed by it. And then on the other side of things you have boogaloo. I'd argue our situation is at least as bad as the Gestapo because there's all these strands you have to pull apart.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Unmarked cars are a small problem in this story but I still think that ghost vehicles should be illegal. They are getting very popular where I live.

</comment><comment><USER12> Sometimes it's obvious why something is flagged. I have No Idea on this one.

<comment><USER11> Maybe the police union is responsible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Genius move if this is a one- night thing to scare protesters into not coming out anymore...but it doesn't sound like that's their strategy.

Any more than one night and you risk deadly complications when citizens prepare for abduction.</comment>


Taco Bell drops website, goes app-only - <AUTHOR> http://www.tacobell.com/home <comment><USER2> [http://www.tacobell.com/Company/newsreleases/Taco-Bell- Mobil...](http://www.tacobell.com/Company/newsreleases/Taco-Bell-Mobile-app)

Found the press release on their website (which isn't actually dropped I think). The press release makes it seem like its a temporary blackout on all Taco Bell social media. It doesn't specifically mention dropping the website permanently.

Appears to be a big publicity stunt that means very little except Taco Bell has a new mobile ordering app.

Excerpt:

"Today, Taco Bell's highly followed social media platforms – including Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and Instagram – have gone dark, revealing the new way to Taco Bell is #onlyintheapp. While silent, each social media platform, as well as tacobell.com, will provide only a disruptive message and link to download the new app -- with all previous content removed. Consumers with the previous Taco Bell mobile app will receive an update for the new mobile ordering app."

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks like somebody forgot to tell the rest of the site.

[http://www.tacobell.com/food/tacos](http://www.tacobell.com/food/tacos)

<comment><USER4> It's weird that they use the exact same color scheme as the JackInTheBox weed food specials.

[http://jacksmunchiemeal.com](http://jacksmunchiemeal.com)

<comment><USER5> Product-market-fit

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What do they aim to gain from this? All I see is that Windows Phone and BlackBerry users now have no way of accessing Taco Bell's online presence.

<comment><USER7> There are dozens of them! DOZENS!!1!

<comment><USER8> One of the dozen checking in. The taco bell drive-thru person that gave me the whole spiel this morning was confused when I asked if they had an app for windows phone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > The new way to Taco Bell isn't on the Internet

> It's #onlyintheapp

Well, that's a relief. I'm glad to hear their app doesn't use the Internet.

</comment><comment><USER10> I don't eat at Taco Bell. But even if I did I wouldn't want their stupid app on my phone. Also, the app likely gives them additional access to _you_ which they didn't have using the website alone. This is really bad for consumers.

<comment><USER11> Just thought I'd take a look at the app on Google Play. At the time of writing this post, the Android version appears to needs access to:

\- Contacts/Calendar

\- Location

\- Phone

\- Photos/Media/Files

\- Wi-Fi Connection Information

\- Device ID & Call Information

<comment><USER12> Horrible! Install...View permissions...Whoa! no way...Cancel. One less pesky customer to bother about.

I've seen it happen too often - apps that don't really require access to contacts or call information, still ask for them. The Android permission system is of course broken, but there's a lot of developer laziness too.

<comment><USER11> A lot of times, with games, the permissions are added because the ad network tells you to include them. Lots of ad networks will work just fine with just the Internet requirement though, which are the ones I prefer when I go the ad- route.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So anyone that isn't on iOS or Android can't view any information about Taco Bell?

<comment><USER8> you can, but you have to navigate directly to a page like tacobell.com/food/tacos to get around it

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Am I the only one who's seeing that bad JPEG compression on these app download buttons?

<comment><USER15> First thing I noticed...

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> While I believe this is a short-lived marketing ploy, the only reason I go to a fast food website is to look-up nutritional information.

Thankfully, every calorie-counter website/app out there has it built in for every restaurant.

edit: Looks like it's currently just their home page anyway: [http://www.tacobell.com/nutrition/](http://www.tacobell.com/nutrition/) works fine.

</comment><comment><USER17> It seems they decided to skimp on hiring a web design firm and their marketing department thought they could spin it to seem 'hip'.

Idiots.

</comment><comment><USER18> That is really annoying.

<comment><USER19> Why?

Most likely followup question: Exactly how many hours have you spent on the Taco Bell website in the past year, anyhow? Why would you spend any time there?

(If it weren't for the XBox One giveaway I'd expect the average answer to the first question to be indistinguishable from zero for everyone reading this.)

Argh, I forgot my "HN is a big website and I'm sure there's a dozen people who will pop up and say they do" disclaimer. Yes, hello down there... but you are the _exceptions_ , and frankly I still don't believe most of you popping up to post something aren't just being contrary anyhow. (Nutritional data I'll believe, but a mobile app will be better at that anyhow! I too have tried to use websites to get nutrition info... I've only only found one that was any good at their mobile experience.) To a first approximation, nobody uses the Taco Bell website for any significant amount of time.

<comment><USER20> Type 1 diabetic here; Anytime I eat out I check to see if there is a website with carbohydrate counts so I can use the proper amount of insulin. Usually it's something like this...

Google Search -> How many carbohydrates in Taco Bell 7 layer burrito -> I'm feeling lucky -> Taco Bell's website with nutritional information.

Many restaurants if you ask at the establishment do not have this information, but it is typically available through their corporate websites.

<comment><USER21> Why do you use a website instead of a calorie counting app with the data built in?

<comment><USER22> As someone who has tried to use such apps to actually count calories, unless you've got a barcode, finding the right thing, especially for fast food, is a massive PITA, and they're not always up-to-date. Websites are way faster and more reliable.

<comment><USER20> Exactly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I would guess that more people probably visited tacobell.com today than on any other day in its history... and all that traffic is funneled to install Taco Bell's Android or iOS app. Seems to me like a very clever and successful campaign to boost app awareness and installs. As a temporary campaign it's totally brilliant; but the message "#onlyintheapp" is pretty risky as a lot of people might not "get it" and negatively associate Taco Bell with technological regression. It's ironic and a little post-modern that the site hosts a message about it's own non-existence and by doing so becomes the primary source of downloads for the app.

</comment><comment><USER24> So, they'd like me to download a 31MB app with "Precise location", "Read contact data", "Modify or delete USB storage", and "Full network access" (among others!) so I can order tacos? I'll pass, thanks.

<comment><USER25> Yeah, I watched the demo video and it actually looked like a pretty cool app, but I'll keep my contacts to myself thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> "Does The Browser Have A Future" by Tim Bray [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pHx_1tlGN0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pHx_1tlGN0)

<comment><USER7> Yes. Yes it does, as desktop and laptop computers will also have a future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> From the meta description tag: the original website was used for 'nutrition guide, locations, franchise information, and career opportunities'.

While I've never seen anyone actually browse the Taco Bell website, it seems like they will still need a web presence for hiring and making nutrition guides available (if not legally, practically). Taco Bell probably doesn't drive many sales from their website, but I have heard of people applying for jobs or checking out nutrition info online.

[edit for clarity]

</comment><comment><USER28> I don't often eat at Taco Bell, but when I do, I'm just driving by and have no other choices.

Seriously, what's with wanting to app-ify everything? I can't remember the last time I visited the websites of any of the fast food joints, much less used them for ordering or install their app on my phone.

The only websites I have used are from pizza joints because it actually is easier to order a pizza online than calling someone on the phone.

Do people really use these apps?

As a publicity stunt it could be brilliant.

</comment><comment><USER18> Is Google going to kill their SERP over this? They would for most sites, but they make exceptions for major brands being morons.

<comment><USER29> Well, you know there's a taco bell in your area because you see it when you drive by it. I'm not sure they really need a lot of visibility in search engine result pages. It's not like you're buying tacos over the internet.

And really if taco bell loses search ranking for "taco bell" then the problem is with Google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Wonder whether there are any cases where it actually DOES make sense to drop an existing site and move to app only? Guess lots of examples of companies launching mobile-first or mobile-only solutions (e.g. Sprig) but any examples of companies making a clear switch away from web?

<comment><USER31> In my opinion, there wouldn't be a good reason. Maybe I can find your app directly in the app store, but what the 'Web provides is a human readable (and rememberable) address. Without it, you would need to search the app store or web search for [specific product/app name] (this assumes I learn about your product elsewhere and know that the app exists and how to get it).

I myself want to know as much as I can about an app before I download it, so would always check a website. I dislike ending up on a splash page with nothing but a screenshot of the app and a link to the app store. So I don't feel that any app for any device (or any product that you are trying to sell for that matter) would not benefit from an informative, accessible web presence. After all, I need to be sold on the idea of downloading the app. I confess I do prefer web over native app in most cases as a personal preference.

It is an interesting question, and the one my mind immediately went to upon seeing this. Because, yeah, I'm not seeing how this is a good idea for Taco Bell or anyone really. I will keep thinking about it and would be interested if anyone thinks otherwise.

<comment><USER30> I guess the web could still provide information without functionality -- not too dissimilar to what the taco bell page is doing..?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> They also closed their twitter account and reopened it. Seems to have lost all their followers.

App is not available on android yet (for me), though it does show up in the Play store autocomplete.

</comment><comment><USER33> And the people who are not on iOS and Android should go where for the storied company history and nutritional information?

All I see here are free ads for Apple and Google. Good job, Taco Bell :-)

</comment><comment><USER7> Serious question: why would anyone download a Taco Bell app or visit tacobell.com (either before or after the "app only" transition)?

<comment><USER34> So anecdotal and probably niche but since you asked: I don't go to Taco Bell frequently, but every now and then I have a craving. I don't know their menu well enough to just swing by and order. I use the website to check out that their deals are, and what's the crazy special of the season (e.g, that taco with a Doritos shell, or the burrito wrapped in a quesadilla).

A more mainstream use someone else mentioned: nutrition information.

<comment><USER7> Fair enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> they seemed to have removed their tweets as well: [https://twitter.com/tacobell](https://twitter.com/tacobell)

i remember seeing them tweet at customers about their experiences so it's a bold move - i'd be willing to bet it's temporary to promote this app.

</comment><comment><USER36> That's what the world needs - yet another proprietary app hogging storage space on phones.

<comment><USER17> ...and with access to your contacts, precise (GPS) location, nearby WiFi access points, camera, phone number, the ability to silently install packages (!) and prevent sleep, and with full network access[1].

Yup, just what the world needs.

[1]: [http://www.appbrain.com/app/taco-bell-mobile- app/com.medlmob...](http://www.appbrain.com/app/taco-bell-mobile- app/com.medlmobile.tacobell).

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Looks like this publicity stunt worked.

</comment><comment><USER38> That's a very bold statement, must have required a lot of 'balls' to make such decision.

</comment><comment><USER39> Taco Bell had a website?

</comment><comment><USER40> I don't see how this helps them. Was this an attempt at a viral campaign? Sort of like, hey look at us, we got rid of clothes because like, they were annoying.

<comment><USER41> Yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Stupid, stupid, stupid.

One more reason, other than their food tasting like crap, why I won't be eating there anytime soon.

<comment><USER42> I'm not a taco bell fan either, but presumably we aren't their target market, so they don't care what we think-- nor should they. It's only stupid if their target market thinks so, right?

(Edit: I don't want to imply that you're not allowed to criticize their decision. I just don't think it should be judged based on how well it works for people that have no interest in being a customer.)

<comment><USER20> See my other post in here about the reason WHY this impacts me and how they have just lost a customer. I'm not a big fan of Taco Bell; but would eat there occasionally since they are open later than most places in my area.

<comment><USER42> That's a fair point. Just a shot in the dark, but maybe their calculus is-- they will lose some customers, but for the customers they get to download the app, they'll get a lot more engagement / repeat visits through push notifications or other spam, or just an easier ordering system.

It sounds stupid to me also, but I'm trying to assume that whoever's in charge there knows what they're doing. I guess that might not be the case though.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Macintosh Startup Sound History [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7LW_NvSuIk <comment><USER2> When I got a new TouchBar MacBook I was wondering why the sound was muted from-factory, so I cleared the PRAM ... three or four times ... just to find myself very saddened by the fact that the chime was removed.

It was always incredibly mesmerising to unwrap a new Mac, boot it and hear that sound. Like buying a car and listening to the engine powering on the first time.

<comment><USER3> Can sounds be played from EFI? It might be possible to create a stub EFI bootloader that does nothing but play the chime and kick off the normal macOS boot process.

EDIT: In fact I think Apple may have done something like this in their own EFI for the startup chime on Intel Macs – compared to PPC Macs, the sound was always a little delayed and clearly played further into the boot process.

<comment><USER4> Honestly, as much as the Mac startup sound makes me nostalgic, if I was going to go to that much effort, I might as well have it play the SGI Indy's glorious startup sound [0].

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CH9saUP2460](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CH9saUP2460)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was reminded of how pleasant the startup beep was on Apple II. The beep was pleasant, soft, and inviting. On the PC side, most motherboard would emit harsh shrilling beep, which sounds more like something had gone really bad.

While some would argue that such post-bios/boot beep is not necessary in modern computers, I disagree, especially on machines that do not have built-in monitors or on headless system. Sometimes, I am left to wonder if the computer booted ok. I sometimes have check the monitor/cable/etc... just to see if it actually turned on.

<comment><USER6> Especially machines without a fan. I've dealt with this often in the robotics field. Trying to figure out if my darn onboard computer is even running or not. The LED hidden away in the electronics bay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's amazing how annoying it is to _not_ have a sound, especially when trying to restart, etc. You just have to "know" that you hit the button correctly and wait one or two awkward seconds of black screen for _any_ sign of life. I'm sure I've accidentally power-cycled because I wasn't sure the thing was booting. Just a stupid thing to remove, really.

</comment><comment><USER8> Just in case you miss the original Mac128 beep and, just for kicks, wanted to rewrite it in Javascript? Here you go:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20130302075708/http://blog.parse...](https://web.archive.org/web/20130302075708/http://blog.parse.com:80/2013/02/27/reproducing- the-macintosh-boot-beep-from-javascript-cloud-code/)

</comment><comment><USER9> There's a great Welcome to Macintosh podcast episode[1] that interviews Jim Reekes about this history, highly recommend it. Fun fact, in addition to the iconic startup sound Jim is also responsible for the camera shutter sound on iPhones.

[1] [https://www.macintosh.fm/episodes/13](https://www.macintosh.fm/episodes/13)

</comment><comment><USER10> There's also another sound that macs would make, in case the initial diagnostic tests came back negative, to go with the "Sad Mac" screen. My favorite is still the NuBus Power Mac one (car crash sound).

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

<comment><USER11> Much more appropriate than the Mac II crash sound -- that was a happy arpeggio that completely failed to convey the message that something had gone wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I remember finding a Filemaker database file online which contained the specs of every model Mac, including the startup sound the model made, I found it neat that Filemaker could embed sound files.

That must've been during the pre-historic Internet times...

<comment><USER13> Mactracker is still being updated.

[http://mactracker.ca](http://mactracker.ca)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Not a mac user, but to disable all system sounds is the very first thing I do after installing windows. I would do the same on a mac. I simple just don't want to listen to that noise every time I turn on my computer.

<comment> yoz-y The startup sound was removed in the previous macOS version. Having a setting would be better because with buttons rather than switches and the removal of the state led it is now really not possible to know if the machine is booting or not.

<comment><USER14> Is looking at the monitor an option?

<comment> yoz-y If it works yes, but the startup chime was akin to a PC passing post so it sounds before the screen turns on. Without the sound , if the mac does not display anything you can not really know if there is no power, or something fried or your drive is dead...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As a Mac user since the 1980s I enjoyed the startup sound and miss it. It was removed for no obvious reason, presumably for some perceived minimalism or desire for austerity, which you can put in the same basket as removing all useful ports and the escape key from their "pro" laptops, or the headphone jack from their cellphone, offering no benefit but apparently done for the sake of doing.

<comment><USER16> I agree, new macs are moving toward all polish and no humanity, just a clean sterile machine.

<comment><USER17> _I agree, new macs are moving toward all polish and no humanity, just a clean sterile machine._

There's a reason for that. Tim Cook is a bean counter, not a technologist, and not an artist.

Steve Jobs was a technologist, and a wannabe artist.

"The goal was never to beat the competition, or to make a lot of money; it was to do the greatest thing possible, or even a little greater. Steve often reinforced the artistic theme; for example, he took the entire team on a field trip in the spring of 1982 to the Louis Comfort Tiffany museum, because Tiffany was an artist who learned how to mass produce his work."

Source: [https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor...](https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Signing_Party.txt)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I didn't know this, as the various Macs I use are all 2015.

That startup sound is a great idea example of the importance of the utility of affordances in interface design.

After you've done something that might have hosed your whole system, the sound alone can bring a sense of relief that at least some life is left in the machine.

Because the stakes are actually kind of high for those making a living with their computer.

</comment><comment><USER19> Tangential question:

[http://reddit.com/r/loadingicon](http://reddit.com/r/loadingicon) and similar places list interesting (if not especially useful/practical) concept art ostensibly useful as loading graphics.

Is there somewhere I can similarly find good small sound effects useful as startup chimes? I'm only aware of the Mac and Indy boot sounds, which obviously surface due to their reputation as being used at boot time. Surely there are other cool sound effects, I'm just not sure where to look for them.

</comment><comment><USER20> I liked the startup sound, however if i've hosed my OS and I'm rebooting frequently during the troubleshoot it could get quite irksome to people nearby.

</comment><comment><USER21> First thing I switch off when I get a new one.

<comment><USER17> Unlikely, since new Macs haven't had the startup sound for years.

<comment><USER21> 2016 apparently, I haven't had a new one since then?</comment></comment></comment>


Visa Backs Jack Dorsey's Square - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/04/27/visa-backs-jack-dorseys-square/

<comment><USER2> Whoever Jack Dorsey hired to do his PR should win some sort of award. In under a year this guy went from almost zero media presence to:

* having a glowing profile written about him in Vanity Fair

* appearing on Charlie Rose

* being anointed as the second coming of Steve Jobs by TechCrunch

* having the media at large make Evan Williams look like a jerk and return to Twitter as Executive Chairman

* getting The Wall Street Fucking Journal to title an article "Visa Backs _Jack Dorsey's_ Square"

<comment><USER3> The Vanity Fair profile was brilliantly written.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it was. It discusses Jack's habits, Jack's preference in suits (Prada, practically an advertisment for them), Jack's preference in wristwatches (Rolex), Jack's ideas, Jack's relationships, Jack's friends, et. al.

<comment><USER4> It discusses Jack's Nouveau riche tendencies - Oh look i'm rich, let me show it off and pretend to be sophisticated. Does he really admire the quality of a Prada suit or a rolex watch? Very very doubtful, those even slightly in the know despise cheap fashion like Prada.

I want his PR rep's number though, they are masters. If Jack is his own PR, kudos to him.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Square is awesome but I wish someone would do what it takes to kick the shit out of the broken mess that is the credit card system instead of attempting to fix some of the problems at the edge. Admittedly this is in the Seriously Hard category of problems.

</comment><comment><USER6> This just makes financial sense.

1) Assume that square being successful will increase the number of credit card transactions.

2) Assume that Visa will make some money off of a fraction of those transactions

3) This means that an investment by Visa at market value will payoff at above market value since they make more money than just the market-value returns from their investment.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is very big for Square.

The main issue with their flagship product is security. When every other country in the world is moving fast to accept chip card transactions a United States company comes out with a so called "innovative" product which reads the magstripe only.

Visa have been heavily pushing chip card technology so for them to push this product shows they are willing to allow Square some slack in the security requirements.

<comment><USER8> The reason Visa (and the other card networks) have been heavily pushing smartcards/RFID/etc. is that it is an excuse for them to move liability for fraud from the banks/merchants to consumers. So as a consumer who has some doubts about the security of the chip technology, I'd have to say that I welcome any slowing of the transition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> See also: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2489937></comment>


Freelance Bidding Sites: Another Lemons Market - <AUTHOR> http://www.workfromhomemomma.com/2007/05/my_thoughts_about_bidding_site.html <comment><USER2> "I think my biggest problem with bidding sites is that they drive down the rates. I see writers offering themselves for fifty cents an article and Virtual Assistants charging $25 for a day's worth of work. Are we so desperate to earn money we're willing to settle for less than slave wages? I don't know of anyone who would flip burgers for such a paltry sum, but yet many will happily accept next to nothing to get a proverbial foot in the door."

Slaves don't get paid any wages. That's why they are slaves.

Why not use it to your advantage and hire the cheap people instead of be one?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Wikipedia page on the Market for Lemons: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemons_market></comment>


Design Thinking Is Kind of Like Syphilis – It's Contagious and Rots Your Brains - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@sts_news/design-thinking-is-kind-of-like-syphilis-its-contagious-and-rots-your-brains-842ed078af29 <comment><USER2> Everything else is already contagious and rots my brain too. If anything rots our brains, then overused clickbait headlines.</comment>