American tech giants are making life tough for startups - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/business/2018/06/02/american-tech-giants-are-making-life-tough-for-startups <comment><USER2> This article makes the case for government intervention [0]. The central thesis is that, had Microsoft not been sued for antitrust in the 90s and wary of yet another lawsuit, they would have killed Google in its infancy. Apparently anonymous sources in both companies confirmed this would have been a distinct possibility.

[0] [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/20/magazine/the-case- against...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/20/magazine/the-case-against- google.html)

<comment><USER3> Hypotheticals don't work in law. You don't punish someone who hasn't commited a crime.thats common law. Now if it were Europe style civil law, it would be different. Also if Google had died in its infancy, there's nothing that guarantees that another search engine would not not prop up. All great ideas come to fruition when the time is right. 'Search' was ready in 1999. Similarly many falsely believe that the internet wouldn't exist without DARPA. Note that packet switching etc had already found private profitability and without govt regulation would have expanded to become the foundation of the internet

<comment><USER4> Civil law is one thing, and has btw nothing to do with crime and punishment - that would be criminal law.

Protecting a market from becoming a monopoly is another thing entirely; punishment isn't a category here but the overwhelming interest to enable everybody to participate in a market within reason. Shielding individuals from the law of the strong (as in the jungle) and the natural tendency for monopolies is the entire point for a society to begin with.

<comment><USER5> There's two things called civil law:

1\. The legal system [1], based on Roman law, that is common in former French colonies across the world (e.g. Quebec, Louisiana, France).

2\. In common law legal systems, the branch of the law that deal with non- criminal matters [2].

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_law_(legal_system)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_law_\(legal_system\)) [2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_law_(common_law)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_law_\(common_law\))

<comment><USER4> IANAL, but this definition leaves a bit to be desired. I thought the term "civil law" is almost universally synonymous with the law other than the criminal, constitutional/non-law-of-nations law even in non Common Law countries. Specifically, it is used for law with roots in the Code civil (as opposed to Code pénal etc.) in those parts of Europe having Napoleonic law traditions, with connotations of Enlightenment and positive right theories.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Big tech firms have been known to intimidate startups into agreeing to a > sale, saying that they will launch a competing service and put the startup > out of business unless they agree to a deal...

> Big tech firms are able to shell out huge sums to keep top performers and > even average employees in their fold and make it uneconomical for their > workers to consider joining startups.

Reminds me so much of the show Silicon Valley. A great satire!

<comment><USER7> I'm not always convinced Google, Amazon, etc can start a product and compete in a new market and have it work 100% of the time. These companies have plenty of their own flops. Many things come to mind: google plus, amazons smart phones, MSs acquisition Skype...

Certainly they have scale advantages, but there's also diseconomies of scale that can work against them.

<comment><USER8> I think the issue here is not the advantages or disadvantages of their _scale_.

Rather the chilling effect - the firms themselves (may be) slow to perceive the next iteration of consumer needs.

Startups on the other hand figure them out - and build a product.

The big fish/spiders, with their larger webs, sense the new upstarts and THEN build those features - and then go back to whatever it was that they were doing. The cycle then repeats.

<comment><USER9> As can be readily observed with the MS v Netscape battle over web tech (while called a browser war, my impression is that the browser was a proxy for getting a foothold in the server market).

Never mind that MS had pulled something similar vs Novell some years prior, by bundling a client with Windows and then marketing their Exchange server as a drop in replacement for Novell's Netware. Just set up a NT box in the server room, configure the PCs, and phase out Netware.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Google: we're so righteous we won't take Pentagon contacts.

Also Google: let's make the click through EULA as uninteligible as possible when we record our user's locations.

<comment><USER11> > _we 're so righteous we won't take Pentagon contacts._

I think you mean "won't renew". They already took them.

<comment><USER12> Yea, joke is on us, because they'll still develop the thing they told the pentagon they would develop, all while appearing to be 'good guys' to people (which is apparently quite a few people) who don't understand how contracts work.

<comment> brian-armstrong New ReCAPTCHA: select the correct person for a drone strike to proceed.

<comment><USER13> I like to pretend that google is asking users to answer captcha questions to help waymo cars drive. "Which images contain a stop sign"...

<comment><USER14> Very probably they actually do.

<comment><USER15> .. but in real time.

<comment><USER16> [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1897:_Self_Driving](http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1897:_Self_Driving)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The tech giants have learned to think on longer time horizons than capital markets have. Which means that big companies and VC's (their vendors) ultimately end up dominating most startups, which in turn means that the original core essence of the company that made it successful in the first place gets weeded out for short term gain. The companies that can resist these powerful dynamics are very rare. They tend to be tiny, or extremely successful (eg. Airbnb, Uber, ...). It's the companies in the middle that have to worry the most.

<comment><USER7> Good point. We may be in this position because private investors on average are naive buzzword chasing sycophants while Google etc have scale, leverage and knowhow to direct and control the market over the long term.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Another reminder, alongside the apparent Microsoft GitHub acquision, that regulators need to step up and prevent large tech firms from acting anti competitively.

From another Economist article ("How to Tame the Tech Titans", [https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/01/18/how-to-tame- the...](https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/01/18/how-to-tame-the-tech- titans)):

> Two broad changes of thinking would go a long way towards sensibly taming > the titans. The first is to make better use of existing competition law. > Trustbusters should scrutinise mergers to gauge whether a deal is likely to > neutralise a potential long-term threat, even if the target is small at the > time. Such scrutiny might have prevented Facebook's acquisition of Instagram > and Google's of Waze, which makes navigation software. To ensure that the > platforms do not favour their own products, oversight groups could be set up > to deliberate on complaints from rivals—a bit like the independent > "technical committee" created by the antitrust case against Microsoft in > 2001. Immunity to content liability must go, too.

> Second, trustbusters need to think afresh about how tech markets work. A > central insight, one increasingly discussed among economists and regulators, > is that personal data are the currency in which customers actually buy > services. Through that prism, the tech titans receive valuable > information—on their users' behaviour, friends and purchasing habits—in > return for their products. Just as America drew up sophisticated rules about > intellectual property in the 19th century, so it needs a new set of laws to > govern the ownership and exchange of data, with the aim of giving solid > rights to individuals.

<comment><USER19> > Such scrutiny might have prevented Facebook's acquisition of Instagram and > Google's of Waze,

Then again one of the main reasons people _start_ companies like Instagram and Waze is so they can be bought by these giants.

<comment><USER20> I think people forget how inconsequential Instagram seemed at the time Facebook bought it. It was popular and growing fast, but the notion that this 12-person startup was worth a billion dollars was laughable. Read contemporaneous accounts and many reporters were incredulous. It was prima facie evidence of a bubble.

I don't know if a regulator would have had the foresight to see Instagram, which was still as much known for its filters as its social network as anything but a compliment? Look at how Instagram was seen as one of many similar products at the time:

[https://www.engadget.com/2012/05/25/instacrt-puts-all- other-...](https://www.engadget.com/2012/05/25/instacrt-puts-all-other-photo- filter-apps-to-shame-video/)

[https://lifehacker.com/5970648/five-best-photo-filter- apps](https://lifehacker.com/5970648/five-best-photo-filter-apps)

An early rival, Hipstamatic, was named the Apple App of the Year in 2010: [https://techcrunch.com/2010/12/09/apple-top- apps-2010/](https://techcrunch.com/2010/12/09/apple-top-apps-2010/)

Insta has taken on a life of its own over the last 2-3 years, but if they had chose to go their own way, whose to say Facebook wouldn't have clobbered them, in much the way they nuked Foursquare.

I'm not opposed to regulation, per se, but we should also be careful not to indulge in revisionist history.

<comment><USER21> Yeah this is definitely correct. I was on board believing FB would become bigger and bigger. But the Instagram acquisition seemed crazy. How many users did Instagram have when it was acquired? 30 million? How could anyone think Instagram would get to where it did (Instagram is supposed to do $6-7B in revenue this year).

Also, FB itself wasn't what it is now at the time either.

<comment><USER22> The big platform companies see engagement and growth metrics for all startups, not just the numbers they are pitched. The public didn't expect Instagram to be a success - Facebook had more information.

This information asymmetry is a big issue. It means big platforms can detect competitors early and know when to offer generous acquisition deals to neutralise them. The people working in these competitors don't have this comparative basis to tell how well they're doing.

As a small player, it's very hard to see how successful your competitors are. For example, Google and Apple only provide vague statistics about number of downloads in their appstores, rounded very loosely. But they internally can track detailed metrics. Facebook and Twitter are used as distribution mechanisms, for login, and as sources of contact info. They can glean insights from that.

Facebook has even better insights through the Onavo VPN, which as it tunnels traffic from other apps, can even show which features are doing well [https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/12/facebook-starts-pushing- it...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/12/facebook-starts-pushing-its-data- tracking-onavo-vpn-within-its-main-mobile-app/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Another example is Partner programs. We're relatively new entrant in the social media scheduling industry and are unable to compete with Buffer and Hootsuite because they have API access to post to Instagram via the Facebook Partner program.

In order to even apply to be a Partner we have to have a "backer" within Facebook who will vouch for us.

Weve been trying to find such a person since February and we're still not any closer to being able to apply.

It's a hugely anti-competitive approach and makes it impossible for non Silicon Valley startups to get a foothold in the market.

</comment><comment><USER24> As a hardware engineer who admittedly has a bit of contempt for software types, I can't help but think that maybe software startups just aren't novel enough these days? As noted in the article, software has dramatically lowered the barriers to starting a company, so isn't it inevitable that major companies would exploit the same low barriers (powered by their ability to gather intelligence on the next big thing via their platforms)?

<comment><USER25> It's not discussed in this particular article, but economies of scale certainly favor incumbents in hardware as well. If you need confirmation, go ask Pebble guys how they fared after Apple Watch was launched.

<comment><USER26> I am not sure you can use one example of a hardware company failing as proof of anything. Just as you couldn't use the success of a software or hardware company proving the opposite, that there isn't a problem.

<comment><USER27> There are enough articles out there from hardware kickstarters that failed post-funding for me to believe that manufacturing new products on-price and on-time is insanely difficult. I'm sure Apple can design and manufacture 50+ iPhone prototypes for any yearly launch. But startups really only get one chance to get it right before their funding runs dry.

<comment><USER28> You don't even have to look at startups. Look at all the teething issues that Tesla has had ramping up production, versus an established car company. Look at production issues for things from established companies like the Nintendo Switch. Even the iPhone X had its production issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is also responsible for geographic inequality throughout the country.

The large tech companies are based out of Silicon Valley and Seattle. The majority of their employees and economic activity will be in those areas.

<comment><USER30> That has gradually changed a lot in the last ten years.

A decent house is $150,000 to $200,000 where I'm at. That's 2,000-2,500 sq feet, 0.75 to 2 acres of land. The murder rate here is almost zero, violent crime is very low, and I have access to high speed Internet and normal shopping / consumer goods. I can day trip to multiple major metros. Public housing here is actually nice, safe, clean. The homeless rate is nearly zero. And I spend zero time in traffic.

Put your $50,000 down on the home. Your mortgage payment is now $725 to $750 or so.

Make $6k, $8k, $10k, whatever per month doing Go, Python, JavaScript, etc. remote contracting. Or just take a decent remote job.

Your take home is ~$54k on $85k income contracting, before any deductions. Your bills are $2,500 per month. You can easily pay your house off in seven or eight years.

And that's not a crazy scenario or a high-end outcome in terms of contract work. That's doable for anyone in the top 50% skill wise.

You can pull off that scenario all over the US.

Or make $150,000 in Seattle, and that same house costs $1.2 to $1.5 million. Somehow figure out how to come up with your $325,000 down payment. Now your mortgage is $5,000 per month. Your property tax is over $10,000. Your take home pay is $9k to $9,500 per month. Your house, for just the mortgage and taxes, is going to cost you around ~66% of your take home pay, versus ~16% in my scenario. That house is going to cost $2 million total - minimum - over 30 years of mortgage payments, plus another $300,000+ in tax payments.

I feel pretty bad for engineers making ~$150,000 or less in Seattle or San Francisco. Telecommuting will set you free.

<comment><USER31> Engineers in sf make a lot more than 150k in their late 20s/early 30s even outside big 5

<comment><USER30> And housing is even more expensive in San Francisco than in Seattle, general cost of living is a bit higher, and CA has income taxes, adjust the figures accordingly.

The $1.3m house in Seattle will cost you $2m in SF.

Now you need $500,000 for a down payment. Your mortgage + taxes will cost you $110,000 per year, out of your $158,000 take home on a $250,000 income. You'll burn $3.8 million over 30 years on the equivalent of a typical middle-class house, before accounting for any repairs/improvements or tax increases.

You have $4,000 per month left to cover basics like: car, utilities, homeowners ins, food, home repairs, savings, life.

That's all assuming a $250,000 salary, which few people make in SF. The average is a lot closer to $200,000 total compensation, the median is even lower.

$250,000 salary is a helluva line to have to _perpetually_ stay above for 30 years just to barely afford a modest middle-class house, while saving almost nothing besides that.

<comment><USER32> That's not how the math works at all. 25-30 yr olds making 250k don't live in 2m homes. They usually share an apartment in SF and pay ~$2000-2500 on rent. Then when it is time to get married or move in with a gf, you get a starter home for 500-600K, putting 10% down. Now in a couple of years, your starter home has gained $200k in value. Sell that and use the proceeds for a larger single family home around 1-1.5mn. Meanwhile, since your partner is in the Bay Area, your household income is between 400-500K. Now you are 35 and you get a couple of promotions and are either a senior Engg manager or an architect/tech lead at L6 or L7. You then start pulling 200K just in RSUs. Meanwhile your house also appreciates in value. At this point, said engineer has 300-400k in liquid savings and another 300-400k in home equity. There is a reason why people move to Seattle and SF as the math largely works out

<comment><USER33> No, they move there because they hope that math works out that way, and they think they will be the one guy out of 10? 20? 100? where it actually does work out.

<comment><USER31> I don't understand what is the unlikely thing to happen in the scenario described. If you're talking about striking millions in startup exit/IPO money, I def agree with you it's unlikely.

<comment><USER34> Plenty of engineers hit their cap at L5 or thereabouts (I'm sure if you look at the distribution of levels at your local bigco you'll see there's a sharp decline in numbers at some point), and not everyone is going to be part of a DINK engineering power couple.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Not just startups. Indie/one-person shops too. Everybody's getting drowned out.

<comment><USER36> Euh, you mean Amazon

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I'll admit I'm sitting on the fence, and perhaps ignorant about anti- competitive behaviour in tech. These companies are winning over marketplaces by providing the highest quality, and lowest price services to consumers? Hypothetically, where they slip up in providing the best services, startups could thrive? Or are there elements I'm neglecting as to how large company domination negatively impacts innovation?

<comment><USER38> In-app payment policies are a major restriction. Apple and Google have unlimited access in offering digital goods and payment methods. Third-party apps are limited in scope and taxed 30%.

If two songs are sold on an iPhone for $1 each, one by Apple and another by [insert music sales app], the small app makes 0.70, while Apple makes 1.30. Lets say each has to pay 0.50 to the label for the sale. The small app profits 0.20 while Apple profits 0.80. That's a 4x advantage for essentially the same purchase.

<comment><USER39> A different look may be like this: I made an app and I gladly give away 30% (it can be less, btw) for not having to care about setting up and supporting payment, distribution and updates infrastructure, dealing with PCI and chargebacks, etc.

<comment><USER40> You didn't get to make that choices. It was forced on you.

<comment><USER39> Nobody forced me to program for iOS.

<comment><USER41> The fact that iOS and Android are the only smartphone OSes did force you to do that.

Unless you mean that you could have made a competitor, but that's inane -- that's a completely different market, with huge barrier to entry.

Apple is using its huge market position in one area (smartphone OSes) to give itself a huge advantage in another (music apps). That's the sort of thing companies have got huge fines for in the past, or were broken in parts for.

<comment><USER42> You can have alternative app store on Android there's no technical limitations, right ?

And at some point you could jailbreak iPhone and iPod Touch and crack apps but no real alternative market rose up

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is not anti competitive behaviour. In fact, this IS competition. Competition means all sorts of actions that lead to me having more customers than you. The only problem is when the entrenched business use govt/lobbying/abusive patent law to get this done. Buying out competition and trying to enter a low barrier to entry business is the very definition of competition. Suck it up

<comment><USER43> Agreed, I'm having a hard time seeing how this is anti-competitive. It sounds like they're just saying that tech giants are competing very successfully by virtue of being really big and having lots of money. Paying people really well, buying out startups with good tech, competing with startups, etc.; none of that sounds illegal, or even unethical.

There's also an argument to be made that big tech giants have some benefits for startup ecosystems. The option of being bought out, for example, acts as a safety net, so that even if your company doesn't have explosive growth that lets it go public, well at least you'll get _something_ out of it. Similarly, having tech giants nearby means that even if your startup just implodes, you can probably still get a decent job in the area (going from big company to startup to back again is really common in the bay area, for example).

Disclaimer: I work at Google, my opinion is my own, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I once got a legal threat from facebook when I was setting up an app because I registered a domain to serve my app assets with a name like myappfacebookorigin.com and it said that the word facebook is famous and I need to cease and desist. I wish they had paid me back for the domain or forced the registrars to warn me I would get legal threats for using their trademarked name.

<comment><USER45> It's not obvious that using a trademark you down own might result in the trademark owner asking you not to?

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> The article is an accurate assessment of the landscape today, but is it going to be true next year or five years from now? You can never be too sure!

Using a bit of imagination to think of risks these giants face :

* Antitrust - could happen when it's politically advantageous to publicly bash tech giants

* Stock market - a recession could reduce tech giants' leverage by a lot

* China - competition from Chinese companies or the Communist party imposes an embargo

* Technology - another AI winter or maybe some other company gets the edge in quantum computing for instance

* Demand - their products today are better versions of what they were ten years ago, not completely new things. What if users turn away from these tech companies as they become the 'old way of doing things'?

* Startups - Google grew on Microsoft's watch, Amazon on Walmart's, Facebook on Google's, Apple on Nokia's, Snap on Facebook's. What's next?

* Crypto - ethereum, bitcoin, etc. could usher in a whole new internet experience where giants on the 'old' internet find it hard to gain a foothold

While working on a startup today might feel like picking pennies in front of a bulldozer, tech giants face a number of risks of their own. Startups would better focus on internal excellence than fret about tech giant monopoly.

</comment><comment><USER47> Please, for the sake of all that is holy, let's not let Coinbase get sold to Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER48> Reading this article makes me think Microsoft acted to acquire GitHub before the other company-hoarding giants could acquire them.

</comment><comment><USER49> Not the tech giants, but GDPR too.

<comment><USER50> No. The GDPR just says that you've got to care about user data. If your startup can only survive by selling out user privacy, then perhaps it doesn't deserve to exist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> tough!

</comment><comment><USER52> While I agree with more efforts to thwart tech industry anti-competitive behavior, and I hardly think the prominent tech giants are innocent in this, I also think it's disingenuous to act like modern start-ups are stereotypically "the small business owner" or that their own behavior isn't at least partly to blame.

My interactions with start-ups have rarely been pleasant. As an employee, I was underpaid (and wildly so on a risk-adjusted, expected value basis when comparing the lowered salary with what could be earned elsewhere), overworked, and felt the management was not informed either on the business side or the tech side, but instead came off as people with wealthy parents who viewed starting a company as the modern day status equivalent to what socialite children used to think about non-profit work or humanities graduate school.

If we're being honest, there's a lot of dysfunction with the way start-ups are operated, and plenty of misaligned incentives that lead to running a business more to drive hype than to actually find a product-market fit or empower employees to be productive.

Before I would start thinking, "won't somebody think of the start-ups!" — I'd expect them to be a lot better behaved, a lot more concerned with ergonomics & healthy work places, more sincerely interested in productivity, and more eager to pay competitively. If they're doing all this right, then I might have more sympathy when a bad actor displaces then for real anti-competitive reasons.

</comment><comment><USER53> I don't know, maybe I'm not enough for the startup but I don't feel very intimidated. If I've ceded control of my board, surely they can sell the company. If I make a product that Microsoft or Google or Apple can copy in the next 6 months. then surely that is my fault.

Added: I will say that I am not comfortable with some of the state powers that allow other businesses to mangle the legal system around you to sabotage you, but the solution to that is _less_ state control (thus less reason to lobby), not more.

<comment><USER54> Software folks are quick to write off companies which are not technically difficult to build (eg all of social media), but I think Slack is a very interesting case to think about.

The software is simple, the idea has existed forever, there were competitors in the space. But the thing that really drove the space forward was Slack raising hundreds of millions and marketing the shit out of their software. Only _after_ that have the big guys gone "oh, shit, we have to get in there".

I'm not really impressed by Slack as an engineering/innovation company, but it provides a very interesting perspective on business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> > Big tech firms are able to shell out huge sums to keep top performers and > even average employees in their fold and make it uneconomical for their > workers to consider joining startups.

Perhaps startups should look at changing that. Offering more actual money, better options, and stop with the fuckery that makes most people believe that their options would be totally worthless even when the company is acquired/goes public.

</comment><comment><USER55> How is this news? Yesterday's immigrants make life tough for future immigrants. Likewise, yeaterday's startups make it hard for new startups. It's a circle of life. Evolution at play. Capitalism at play.

<comment><USER56> Yesterday's young (and today's old) make it hard for future generations. Are you defending that?</comment></comment>


The Second Coming of Deep Linking - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/08/20/the-second-coming-of-deep-linking/

<comment><USER2> You know, an article about deep linking might be more meaningful if they took their own advice and deep linked to what "deep linking" is ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_deep_linking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_deep_linking)). This _IS_ a hypertext medium you know.

</comment><comment><USER3> I was expecting an explanation of what deep linking is, the way the article is written it lacks context: if you don't know what is "deep linking", it doesn't make much sense.

OK, _closes tab_.

</comment><comment><USER4> Do people really clutter their phone with every random website app? Most of them appear to be marginally better at rendering the website for the low, low price of scraping some subset of your personal data.

I use Android profiles for the simple reason that I don't agree some random app needs to know every email or phone number in my address book,much less mine my text history. The few apps I use go to a profile hooked to my ham email address. Still not perfect.

But deep linking via apps? What's the compelling use case again? I don't see one that doesn't work just as well on the mobile web site.

<comment><USER5> > What's the compelling use case again?

From the article:

"The mobile website banner links to content within the app. A user clicks the download button, installs the app and, after install, is deep linked to the same content in the app."

So the usecase is: when you want to see the exact same thing in an app as you can on a mobile website.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> My only reference to deep links are the deep web links. The modern concept of mobile deep links throws me of the ball every time.

<comment><USER7> Me too - Why are they redefining an already established term?!?

<comment><USER8> It isn't a redefinition. IRIs (or URIs if you prefer) have always encompassed the ability to be things other than http: and https:, and the application has the ability to assign arbitrary meanings to what follows the colon. You just don't see it very often on the web.

<comment><USER7> I meant the concept of deep linking, which used to mean that you refer to a specific link on a subpage of a site (Such as a particular article), rather than the domain. There's a connotation of legalese to it - The word is/was used as a negatively loaded term by those who think they have a right to control who links to their site/content and how they do so. See also: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_linking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_linking)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Holy keyword stuffing.

</comment><comment><USER10> Except that iOS deep linking isn't natively supported, you have to do it through DeviceFingerpting and even if it was setup correctly you'd have to go through a lot of effort to do it.

<comment><USER11> There are companies that do the legwork for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't understand why this is still an issue. Didn't Android fix this problem? Can't iOS adopt a similar system?</comment>


Ask HN: How much equity should I take? - <AUTHOR>

I am being invited to join an early stage startup. Actually, it's in pre-startup mode right now. They have an idea, they have a well connected angel/seed investor, they have the content and a designer. What they don't have is an engineer or a tech lead. That's where I would come in. How much equity should I ask for? <comment><USER2> It all depends on how much salary you draw.

W = opportunity cost value of other people's labor (i.e. if their time is worth $20/hour and they will have to put in 1,000 hours to earn their share(s), W = $20,000)

X = value of the idea with nobody to implement it (converges to 0).

Y = value of the investor's cash investment

Z = opportunity cost value of your labor (i.e. if your time is worth $50/hour and you will have to put in 1,000 hours to earn your share at future time t, Z = $50,000)

Your fair equity is ( Z - salary ) / ( W + X + Y + Z ).

Many nontech people get pretty upset when you come up with this formula and turn the crank- they think their time is worth more, their idea is worth more, and your time is worth less. (Or they didn't think, they guessed or willed it to be different).

Please try the formula approach and let us know how coming at it with a formula (where you fill in the numbers together) did for your negotiations.

<comment><AUTHOR> This seems like a good logical way of approaching it. In my case I would be the tech lead. There are 3 other people involved. One is bringing the talent for creating content. One is going to manage the team and also UX and design. One is coming in as an adviser and seed investor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'd love to hear some comments in response to this as well.

Based on what you described, it sounds like you're coming in at founder level, so you should be a co-founder and have equity on par with the other founders.

</comment><comment><USER4> <http://foundrs.com> \- equity calculator - post back what it gives you

<comment><USER5> Very interesting and easy to use tool

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm in the same situation. Would love to hear some feedback on this as well.</comment>


Programming Language Theory in Agda - <AUTHOR> https://wenkokke.github.io/sf/ <comment><USER2> This looks like it's (going to be) about a theory of programming languages as based on some form of the lambda calculus. I think it doesn't get pointed out enough that this is not a descriptive science but more of a normative theory with mathematical elements. It doesn't try to analyze and compare existing programming languages. It asserts how they _ought_ to be and derives consequences from this. In this sense, it's less like the theory of evolution and more like a political or aesthetical movement.

Wadler himself seems to dislike calling this "computer science": _" You don't put science in your name if you're a real science."_ I'm quite sure he meant it differently, but it fits my argument to quote him out of context :)

The book itself is still unfinished obviously. Most of it seems to be a formalization of the absolute basics of constructive logic currently. I'm also not sure how far they are really going to go here; feasibly formalizing the meta theory of agda (Martin-Löf type theory) in agda itself seems to be an open problem. Yes, seriously.

I found agda much less opaque than coq and especially isabel. It seems much more cumbersome to work with in practice though. I doubt agda will ever be used for serious proofs beyond hello world or very specialized areas as long as there is not more automation... at which point you're back at a variant of coq.

<comment><USER3> It doesn't assert how they ought to be (theorists, like everyone else, may express their opinion but this is not what the theory studies). It is a study of formal systems; basically, it's formal logic under a different name: A formal system is defined, and its properties studied; another system is defined and _its_ properties are studied, and so on.

Unfortunately, most texts on PL theory, and this one does not seem to be an exception, do not explain what a formal system is -- namely what syntax is, what semantics is, and what the relationship between them is. This leads to confusion later on.

<comment><USER2> _> It doesn't assert how they ought to be (theorists, like everyone else, may express their opinion but this is not what the theory studies). It is a study of formal systems; basically, it's formal logic under a different name: A formal system is defined, and its properties studied; another system is defined and its properties are studied, and so on._

This document is called "programming language theory". I would expect from this the study of programming languages in general. Yet only a tiny fraction of programming languages are studied, namely exactly one: The simply typed lambda calculus. So I think it's fair to say that the authors seem to think that the the simply typed lambda calculus is absolutely central. Yet among existing programming languages with real world adoption, the pure simply typed lambda calculus is completely irrelevant. Nobody programs in it. So I can't take this as a description of the status quo of "programming languages". Then how am I to interpret the mere existence of this, if not as an endorsement?

 _> Unfortunately, most texts on PL theory, and this one does not seem to be an exception, do not explain what a formal system is -- namely what syntax is, what semantics is, and what the relationship between them is. This leads to confusion later on._

I doubt you'll find a general definition of what _a_ type system is. You'll find many examples, sure, but no general definition. (BTW, thanks for assuming I'm confused about this. I think I've talked with enough type theory researchers to conclude that they are the confused ones.) Case in point: The plethora of papers whose first sections have to introduce the type system in question. This also relates to your first point, where you argue that PL theory is not normative. If the type theory in question has to be introduced, it automatically means that the reader has to be convinced that what he's reading is not just random noise encoded as formulae and proofs. Most of the type systems studied are not used in the wild, so they can't be interesting because they describe something people are already interested in. The only other possible explanation for the relevance of these papers is that the authors hope to improve upon what already exists.

Finally, take some of Wadler's papers. If "Theorems for free" (spoiler: the theormes there are not freer than other theorems) or "Linear types can [!] change the world" are not endorsements, I don't know what is.

<comment><USER4> > Most of the type systems studied are not used in the wild, so they can't be > interesting because they describe something people are already interested > in. The only other possible explanation for the relevance of these papers is > that the authors hope to improve upon what already exists.

Your argument here amounts to: if it's not descriptive, it must be prescriptive. By this argument, the entirety of pure mathematics is prescriptive. Is the idea of a semiring a description of a particular natural object? But it makes little sense to claim the idea of semirings is normative. After all, math studies many structures that _don 't_ satisfy the semiring laws, as well!

Likewise, computer science studies many forms of "computation" which aren't physically realistic. Is computational complexity theory "normative" in studying Turing machines, or PRAM machines? No, they are merely convenient abstractions which get at the essence of a particular problem.

The lambda calculus is similar: it is a convenient abstraction which gets at the essence of a particular way of computing. It's a useful starting point for a certain kind of PL theory because its semantics are relatively simple. But it's certainly not the case that all PL theory studies the lambda calculus. PL theory includes work on verification of imperative programs; on macro expanders; on compilation techniques; and on pure logic.

What is certainly true is that many people who study PL theory _do_ have normative (usually aesthetic) ideas about PL design, and these seep into the kinds of systems they tend to study. I agree that computer science isn't a natural science. But it isn't as simple as "anything not descriptive is normative", or that (quoting a sibling comment) PL theory is just "a theory of some variant of the lambda calculus".

<comment><USER2> _> Your argument here amounts to: if it's not descriptive, it must be prescriptive. By this argument, the entirety of pure mathematics is prescriptive. Is the idea of a semiring a description of a particular natural object? But it makes little sense to claim the idea of semirings is normative. After all, math studies many structures that don't satisfy the semiring laws, as well!_

Yes, to some extent, mathematics is prescriptive. Publishing a paper on semirings or computable functions means that you think these objects are interesting and should be studied. But pure mathematicians usually stop here, they don't pretend their research has value because it related to the real world somehow. It's just supposed to be interesting on its own. On the other hand, type theorists push their theory with the expectation that it is useful for creating computer programs despite decades of contrary, if any, evidence. I wouldn't mind types studied the same way that, say, first order predicate logic is studied. The fact that most of the type theory researchers seem to hail from CS departments seems to suggest that types would simply fade into irrelevance however.

I also see a difference in the extent that mainstream mathematics is prescriptive vs descriptive. Certainly you would agree that most mainstream maths, say number theory or differential topology, is much less definition- heavy than type theory is. And most definitions in pure maths have auxiliary character, they are only interesting in that they help clarify proofs. Sometimes it happens that definitions turn from auxiliary to interesting in their own right; this happens mostly when the same construction makes sense in multiple context.

In type theory, on the other hand, definitions, and not of the auxiliary kind, make up most of the work. The proofs are usually mere bureaucracy, with definitions set up so that the facts the researcher wants to hold do so essentially by definition. Thus the definitions, i.e. the prescriptive part, is really the main contribution of type research.

 _> But it's certainly not the case that all PL theory studies the lambda calculus. PL theory includes work on verification of imperative programs; on macro expanders; on compilation techniques; and on pure logic._

Well, the linked document is called "PL theory", so I simply assumed that it would cover all of it to some depth and not just a particular subfield. May impression is that the "type" paradigm is the dominant one in PL research and I simply assumed the authors of the linked paper have the same impression given their selection of material. I certainly didn't mean to discredit the other fields you mentioned, I simply can't have an informed opinion about them.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Los Angeles, CA - Startup in 3 days - <AUTHOR> http://startup.eventbrite.com Join a group to launch a startup from concept to prototype launch in 3 days in Los Angeles. See http://startup.eventbrite.com for more details. <comment><USER2> Why decide on PHP/MySQL up front? Sure, they're popular, but that doesn't mean they're good.

<comment><USER3> That reminds me of the Boulder startup weekend where they chose Java and didn't get anywhere.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep - learning from there. Not just that, I want to set expectations right from the beginning. I'm not against Java, but generally with such a short timeframe i dont want to have .NET, Java, PHP, Ruby etc. developers all together and have them figure out which to pick. This will not work best for the startup as every developer will have their preferences and rightly so. This is something that needs to be right now and the right expectations need to be set and also so we have the right talent from the outset, no time to learn language intricacies here and no matter how good of a developer you are, you cannot be at full potential with a language you are using for the first time within 3 days.

<comment><USER3> At a guess I would say most good developers will no longer willingly program in PHP, so you're likely selecting for the shallow end of the talent pool, more or less. Compound that with PHP essentially making it a sack-race next to other languages' ability to get out and run, and it's happy hour at Les Mediocres.

<comment><AUTHOR> >> "At a guess I would say most good developers will no longer willingly program in PHP"

\-- Please explain? Personally, I don't have a big problem with it. Every language has its pluses and minuses. However, what language do you think most developers are interested in ? Also remember that this is not silicon valley.

Also, if you have better ideas, I'm open to it. We need to pick a platform for sure and not to it like Boulder and get everyone there and disappoint some people and ask them to code in something they have never used before.

<comment><USER3> Ruby has Rails and Python has multiple mature web frameworks (Django is one of them) and both are much nicer to program in than PHP.

> However, what language do you think most developers are interested in ?

Java or C#, which is why that consideration is orthogonal to your problem.

> Also remember that this is not silicon valley.

Apropos of --?

As for the Boulder situation, my reading wasn't that nobody had used Java before, as you claim; but that "the Java platform" was the wrong choice for web development.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Join a group of startup fanatics in Los Angeles to launch a startup from concept to prototype in 3 days. See <http://startup.eventbrite.com> for more details.

</comment><comment><USER3> > b) Do not copy something that has been done before.

Can't wait! Do you think 9 roles is a bit top-heavy to start with?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not sure what you meant by something that has been done before - do you mean this has been done before in Los Angeles? Could you point me to who organized it and where? Thanks.

PS: I know about the startup weekend in Boulder if that's what you were referring to.

<comment><USER3> I'm quoting your page. Can't wait to see the idea(s) you come up with that haven't been done before.

<comment><AUTHOR> :) Great if we do. I just don't want people to limit their thinking to adaptations of popular services that already exist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is this startupweekend or another thing?

<comment><AUTHOR> The concept is very similar even though we're not affiliated (yet!).</comment></comment>


A Theory of Beautiful Code - <AUTHOR> http://dev.hubspot.com/bid/8027/A-Theory-of-Beautiful-Code

<comment><USER2> More of an assertion than a theory, and with a few handy-wavy examples rather than any specific explanations.

<comment><AUTHOR> It made me think a bit, especially about the types of code I find beautiful. Also in the comments there was some back and forth about regex interpreters which exposed two ways of looking at this. Is beautiful code beautiful because of it's internals or is it beautiful because of it's externals and what it allows?</comment></comment>


Show HN: Data wrangling – importing 300 datasets a quarter - <AUTHOR> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HQw8IBLUnL4 <comment><AUTHOR> OP here. If anyone wants to see a more detailed user guide to our system, this is it: [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OY_IoV81zmdNLXJteLIn4MeU...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OY_IoV81zmdNLXJteLIn4MeUILpptIcS13AILk_gsa0/edit)</comment>


Opera GX – Gaming Browser - <AUTHOR> https://www.opera.com/gx <comment><USER2> I like how it's in "early access"…

Warning: scrolling through this page will pollute your browser's navigation stack.

<comment><USER3> Wow you weren't kidding, it completely exhausted mobile safari's history stack on the very first scroll with dozens of entries to the same headers. Super broken web experience, and it's advertising a browser!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> tl;dr: There's the software equivalent of RGB lighting and some trivial/redundant integration with Twitch and the like, but the most useful feature for gamers is the ability to throttle the browser's CPU, network, and RAM usage while you're gaming.

Sadly, we're at a point where that would probably be a useful feature for other browsers as well.

<comment><USER5> I honestly find it quite humorous when companies add "gaming" to a product name:

>Gaming Browser >Gaming OS >Gaming Optimizer >Gaming Antivirus

It's usually just a cheap gimmick.

<comment><USER6> And just like Gaming PC, Gaming Laptop, and Gaming Keyboard and Mouse, they double the cost.

<comment><USER7> I don't know that gaming laptops necessary cost more than comparable high-end laptops. I had found it a way to get high-performance hardware somewhat cheaper if anything. The gaming segment is probably more price-conscious than the whales who splurge on the typical high RAM/SSD/i7 versions of laptops.

Calling it a "gaming laptop" does make it a bit harder to get the purchase approved at work though.

<comment><USER8> I just wish "gaming" laptops didn't look like left over props from Blade Runner, though. The only "normal" looking ones I've manage to find are the Razer Blade series, and they're much more expensive for it.

Why does nobody make a powerful laptop with a discrete GPU, without rainbow LEDs, bizarre chunky chassis, and shiny red/blue/green plastic stripes or pictures of skeletons all over it?

<comment><USER9> Same goes for gaming mice.

They're high quality, but generally with a silly appearance, so you can't use one in an office environment.

<comment><USER10> Most high quality gaming mice actually look very innocuous. Check out Zowie mice or the G Pro Wireless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Linus Sebastian from Linus Tech Tips reviewed it here - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCWmQbbIFjc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCWmQbbIFjc)

<comment><USER12> Very informative. Thanks!

\- It's not as useful.

\- CPU/Memory/Bandwidth limiter kind of works. But who needs that?

\- You can move video overlays anywhere and they stay always on top.

\- Opera, the company, was sold to a chinese company, doing shady stuff.

\- You can't trust the free VPN, which reduces network performance considerably.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> After Opera was bought out by some Chinese company I wont ever install it on my machine unless they fully open source and I can install from said source.

<comment><USER14> why? i don't know where you live but i bet a whole lot of things you use and trust daily are made by "some chinese company"

<comment><USER15> I think there's a considerable difference between having a shoddy coffee machine and having an untrusted third party have access to virtually everything you do online. I don't really see the benefit in arguing otherwise, regardless of where the company is based.

<comment><USER16> Is your router or modem made in China? It most likely is. What about most of your ISPs equipment. Most likely. Some form of everything you own is from China.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I really wish the site didn't hijack my back button:(

</comment><comment><USER18> It's for gamers, so of course it looks ridiculous.

</comment><comment><USER19> Opera always experimented with browsers and different formats, forgot the name, but they had really cool product few years ago.

I think it is good that they are experimenting.

I don't get it but maybe I am not their target market.

<comment><USER20> Opera was pretty innovative. I'm still smarting that their browser-with-server concept (Opera Unite) didn't become the web.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Does it support Flash ?

<comment><USER22> Don't forget Silverlight!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Every Gaming product/service requirement list be like:

* RGB

* Black Background ...

<comment><USER24> * Apple tax applied to pc hardware

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> no linux :(

<comment><USER25> With linux you can put your normal browser in a cgroup and limit cpu and ram usage that way.</comment></comment>


Digg.git - <AUTHOR> http://blog.digg.com/?p=900

<comment><USER3> Summary of article: Git is awesome. It "reduce[d] the time our integration process took from days to minutes." And it scales better than SVN.

</comment><comment><USER4> There's not too much in here that's going to be news to people. About the only interesting part is the reduction in merge times and how well it's scaled for them. But two sentences makes for a short article.

Still, it's nice to hear concrete figures about 1-2 days dropping down to ~30 minutes. Glad they shared.

</comment><comment><USER5> Oh and I thought it was going to be about the new .git tld ...

<comment><USER6> Native, version-controlled websites!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> In the past 3 weeks I have had a very similar experience. I switched my personal projects to git just before starting a new job where the dev team used git extensively. Coming from SVN, it quite honestly amazed me how quickly I was able to just create a new branch, make a small fix, and push it live without affecting any other changes that other devs or I had made.

If you haven't checked git out, I highly suggest you do so. All the hype is annoying at times, but it really does live up to at least most of it.

</comment><comment><USER8> Yet another feature Digg has copied from reddit: <http://code.reddit.com> :)

<comment><USER9> That's frankly idiotic and unconstructive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does Eclipse support GIT yet?

<comment><USER11> Have you tried this yet? <http://git.or.cz/gitwiki/EclipsePlugin>

<comment><USER10> Fantastic! Will definitely check it out. I', currently using Assembla.com for my version control hosting - good to see that they already support GIT.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm conflicted about flagging digg and upvoting git.

<comment><USER13> I think you shouldn't worry about digg and upvote the article if you think the content is worth the upvote. I have never used git, but articles like this are pushing me towards it.

<comment><USER14> I started using git not too long ago and it feels really intuitive - <USER2> sensible on the command line than most GUIs I've used.</comment></comment></comment>


Zynga Files for $1B IPO - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/marketnewsvideo/2011/12/02/zynga-files-for-1b-ipo/ <comment><USER2> A question to the SV hotshots on here: is there a social stigma in the valley around developing for companies like zynga? Or does nobody really care? When a load of devs meet each other in a bar, does one "admit" that one works for zynga, or simply say so?

<comment><USER3> There's a strong bully/prison experiment vibe to these companies. You get used to abusing people because all your friends are hi-fiving you about being good at abusing people.

The High Holy developers sit around thinking up ways of manipulating people into addiction. The developers and management get positive social reinforcement from co-workers and the board when they find another hook into people's brains ("Your character will DIE unless you come back RIGHT NOW!" "You haven't visited in 18 hours, VISIT NOW FOR FREE GIFT!").

Reinforcing shady practices of individuals ("It's not unethical, it's funethical!") over time makes developers and management banish any thought of wrongdoing. Users are just an abstract ID anyway -- an abstract ID with access to a credit card. If someone wants to spend $10,000 per day buying purple carrot pixels, why shouldn't we milk them dry?

<comment><USER4> Your entire comment is bullshit and it pisses me off.

You've never worked at Zynga, so to purport that you know exactly what it's like to work there is bullshit.

Your comment reflects exactly what Silicon Valley nerds think of Zynga externally. They think that Zynga is nothing but people refining skinner boxes for people to play in. You've probably seen one or two talks of Mark Pincus talking about "doing every dirty trick in the book" or something like that. Have you ever met him? Do you even know the last time he worked directly on a game? You're allowed to have whatever opinion you like, but this opinion is bullshit.

Your entire comment is ridiculously biased and unreflective of Zynga internally or externally.

\</comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>

So yes, JonnieCache, there is a stigma for working at these companies. reflected by the parent comment. Is that stigma justified? Absolutely not. There are plenty of other reasons not to like developing at Zynga most people don't talk about:

* Zynga is not a technology company first. This means that product & revenue decisions are always prioritized over innovating tech. Most developers aren't comfortable with companies like that.

* Zynga isn't accepted as a legit member of "games companies" circles. You can't tell your buddy who works building a PC MMO or console FPS that you're in games because you work at Zynga. You'll get laughed out of the room.

* Developers are not decision makers at Zynga. Product managers and game designers call all the shots. So if you're writing code, you're not really "making games" in the traditional sense, you're just implementing someone else's spec.

So is Zynga the best place for a dev to work in the valley? It isn't the worst. You'll make more money and get more perks than you would working at a startup, but it won't be personally fulfilling. Do you spend all day scheming ways to exploit people? Fuck no, get over it already.

<comment><USER3> Another thing Zynga is great at (and a business practice others follow) is the outright copying of other product's game mechanics and concepts. Hopeful coat tail riding doesn't always pay out. _cough_ MinoMonsterGalaxy _cough_

<comment><USER4> Was FarmVille a direct ripoff of FarmTown? Absolutely. Was CityVille a direct ripoff of the city games before it? Not even close.

The personal attack is hilarious. Mike Sego is a good friend and to think that I would outright copy his game is deplorable. When our product releases in the next few weeks, you'll see how different MinoMonsters is.

<comment><USER5> I'm confused by this comment, Zynga is moral because it only copies games made by people who aren't personal friends?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> At least I can understand how Zynga actually does make money. On the other hand with a bunch of social media sites deemphasizing games or eliminating social network spam how will Zynga keep up?

<comment><USER7> By starting their own network[1], of course

[1] <http://ztag.zynga.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> That sounds like a pretty modest valuation compared to all the recent craziness.

<comment><USER9> The valuation is 7 billion. 1 Billion is the money they expect to raise from the IPO.

7 Billion does not seem modest to me. Groupon's IPO was valued at a bit more (about 12.5 billion) and that seemed like a much more substantial business to me. And of course Groupon is not doing too hot right now.

<comment><USER10> Groupon had to cheat their numbers to appear like they were making money. Zynga, for all their fault, don't need that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> From an IPO standpoint, I see a strong similarity between Groupon and Zynga... both were high-flyers that ran into profit problems and are now desperate to get access to the public market funding before their business model peters out.

I wish the best for the rank-and-file at Zynga, but I feel like the IPO is rushed, and that usually isn't a sign of success.

<comment><USER12> Zynga does not have the same profit problems as Groupon. The only reason they dip low is from over marketing whereas Groupon's operational costs really are pricey.

<comment><USER13> what significant operational costs does Groupon have that aren't in actuality marketing related?

<comment><USER12> sales. their sales team is massive and expensive. Zynga pours money into acquisitions and marketing. They have more than enough talent to produce formulaic games and generate profit but instead choose to keep spending.

<comment><USER13> I guess I lump sales and marketing together

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's 1999 all over again.

<comment><USER15> No it's not. Zynga has 200MM+ monthly active users and a revenue run rate of $900MM. It's nothing like 1999.

You may think Zynga is overvalued, but if so, I'd be curious to see you put that in the form of a quantitative argument.

<comment><USER14> All of Zynga's established properties are trending down. The attention (DAU/MAU) new Zynga titles get does not last as long as it used to:

<http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/27/towerdefense/>

They're spending more to market new titles:

[http://articles.sfgate.com/2011-11-26/business/30446059_1_zy...](http://articles.sfgate.com/2011-11-26/business/30446059_1_zynga- game-mafia-wars-social-gaming)

As a result of the above two factors alone, their net profit is shrinking fairly dramatically. This is very similar to Groupon (also "profitable" at the time of IPO), and you can see how they're doing for yourself, here: <http://www.google.com/finance?q=GRPN> (-25% since launch, in case you don't feel like clicking)

Using the 'it's profitable' logic would mean that investing in Beanie Babies Corp while they were making money hand-over-fist would've been the height of financial prudence.

Sure the VCs who have funded the company up to this point are going to make tons of money. But that's their model: stoke interest in a business, take profit, and get out.

<comment><USER15> And they've dropped their valuation target from $20B to $7B.

OK, so you think it's worth less than $7B, but I suspect you also think it's worth more than $0. What do you think it's worth?

<comment><USER16> I think a lot of these companies are like TV shows, they have a limited "run". Hollywood does not seem to form companies and IPO individual TV shows, so the question is whether Zynga can change games as fast and cost-efficient as a Hollywood studio would change a TV show

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I want to know why this is getting so much attention in the news? All they do is sell some sort of weird game on Facebook[1].

How do you IPO a business that doesn't... well... do anything? I've googled around and asked people I know who are into this kind of stuff, but I still don't get it.

I probably will get downvoted, but my question is legitimate.

[1]: Still don't have a Facebook account

<comment><USER18> At any given time, my wife has at least 5 "Words with Friends" or "Hanging with Friends" games going. They get serious engagement and that's worth a lot of money.

Zynga has moved aggressively into mobile gaming and, from what I can tell, they're going to be successful there. If they stay strong there, their reliance on the FB platform will be less of an issue.

EA has a market cap of $7.68B so I see little issue with this market (granted, I no nothing of their specific financials so I can't comment on their valuation).

<http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AERTS>

<comment><USER19> 5? Lightweight. My wife has 20 going and that's only because 20 is the max.

But she purchased the $1.99 mobile app and hasn't bought anything from Zynga since. She abhors Farmville and all Facebook games in general. She doesn't see the ads from the paid app. So where is the revenue in users like my wife?

<comment><USER20> According to articles on the subject, there is no revenue in users like your wife. But the truly desperate woman blowing 10k on FarmVille credits covers her and 10,000 other 99c purchasers.

Freemium games don't have some secret way of monetizing all users effectively, quite the contrary. They give the product away for free to increase exposure and a small subset of users with piles of disposable income or a high credit limit pay for everyone else, and that frequently results in making more than what they would make if they charged everyone some small fee.

<comment><USER5> My friend who works at a Zynga competitor claims that they make most of their money from what they call "Whales", a tiny subset of the playing (and paying) population that goes way overboard and spends $10k+. The entire point of getting other people to play is just to get the whales in the door.

<comment><USER20> Good to know. I'm just assuming the articles I've read are correct, it's nice to have a little corroboration.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Offer HN: Free lunch for your office this week in SF - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN - I'm the founder of People Food (pplfood.com). We cater delicious, healthy lunches to startups in SF for only $7 meal.
We're planning on scaling to >300 heads per day in the next few weeks, so we'd like to do a free test run with 5-7 additional companies for the rest of this week. We can deliver to zipcodes 94102, 94103, 94104, 94105, 94107, 94108, 94109, 94110, 94111, 94124, 94133 and have a meat & vegan meal available everyday.
If you're interested in getting free lunch this week, just leave a comment w/ your company name & info or send me an email at support [at] pplfood.com. Really appreciate your help! <comment><USER2> Awesome, were we located in SF we would definitely be down.

Just a side note. I'm not sure how much work you've put into the website, but that white text against a light blue background is very hard to read. The form could stand some optimization too, unless this is just a MVP for you guys while you work on the back end/fulfillment side.

</comment><comment><USER3> I live halfway around the world, but this is the company I buy company food from:

www.saludable.com.uy

and I wanted to give you some feedback on why I chose them :) . some things they do really well:

\- well planned menus

\- excellent packaging

\- individualized tags on packaging

Prices are about U$ 12 per individual meal to U$ 17 per 2 meals (what I pay) but that's not comparable to the US of course.

you can email me in my profile if you want me to send you some pictures :)

I mention this because on your webpage I can't see how you package the food. I also think the menu is too spaced, it would be better in a compact table form (ymmv of course).

</comment><comment><USER4> What do you think of your competition, which I imagine are ZeroCater and Cater2Me?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd say we're targeting a fairly different demographic, as our meals our $7, and we serve to as few as 2 people. We really love to feed startups who might not be able to afford a $12-15 meal, or who don't have enough people to hit the minimum for these other services.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Always down for free food. Email sent.

</comment><comment> mauricio-OH Hey People Food, some feedback on your post:

\- 300 heads? the word "people" is in your startup name and you just called people "heads". Not nice.

\- "Catering" probably kills this for most readers. Catering is used with "events". I'm sure you would deliver as long as a company orders what 2 or more? 3 or more? Just phrase it like that so that anyone in a startup feels empowered to submit their company.

\- Your ask is weak. I'd filter for the ideal customer of yours: startups with 5+ (whatever) people and also what the limit is - will you give meals for free to every single company that emails you? or just 5-7? and that's how many free lunches? and per company? I'd be specific. First come first serve? etc.

\- Send you (the founder) an email at support @ ?? not personal

Please don't misunderstand me, this sounds awesome. It's just that how it's written right now it seems a bit rushed and prone for disappointed HN readers :)

<comment><USER6> Is that first point real? Do you actually find that offensive?

<comment><USER7> Yeah, seriously, that post seems overly nitpicky, and the sort of "feedback" that I hope startup founders can filter out. "Head" is a commonly used term in the catering business.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hey we are totally interested! Love your idea!

Name: The Pact, INC Address: 2111 Mission St (at 17th and mission) # People: 14 or 15 Lunch days/times: Mondays and Fridays around 1230

We would love to use you guys! Please write back to firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER9> Hey! We were just looking at you guys for our office lunch last week. We'd love to give you guys a try.

We're: Woopra, inc. 650 5th St Ste 402 San Francisco, CA 94107

And we've got 7 hungry people who'd love to use you guys.

Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER10> Amelia Shuja Ops Manager at Skycatch I can be reached at 415-994-5850 or email@example.com we have 9 people to serve on Thursday lunch. Our address is 1355 Market St 94103, please contact me to discuss further. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER11> Hey, seems like a cool idea. I'm Ben from URX (ben at urx dot com). We're in South Park and we'll happily grub down.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yay! Send me an email with your info!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for all the support - just digging in to all of your lovely emails :)

</comment><comment><USER12> I hope you'll scale up to other big cities with very expensive lunches.

<comment><AUTHOR> We hope so too!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Amazing how fast this space heated up.

</comment><comment><USER14> Free food! Thank you, emailed

</comment><comment><USER15> Email sent!</comment>


There is a pure HTML Gmail, and it still works - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/u/0/+LouisGray/posts/epGfV7kqhDv <comment><USER2> Since they switched the the non-Android mobile view to this unusable joke (especially if you rely on tags/folders):

[https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=mobile](https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=mobile)

I'm glad I can force my mobile Browser to use the HTML version instead, which lists all tags at once.

[https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=html](https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=html)

Also you can force[1] your browser to display the normal version no matter what:

[http://mail.google.com/mail?nocheckbrowser](http://mail.google.com/mail?nocheckbrowser)

Force non-feature complete touch-enabled iPhone view[2]:

[http://mail.google.com/mail/x/gdlakb-/gp/](http://mail.google.com/mail/x/gdlakb-/gp/)

[Edit] current iPhone view

[https://mail.google.com/mail/mu/mp/](https://mail.google.com/mail/mu/mp/)

[1] [https://support.google.com/mail/answer/15049?hl=en](https://support.google.com/mail/answer/15049?hl=en)

[2] [http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/10/gmail- modes.html](http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/10/gmail-modes.html)

<comment><USER3> The iPhone view doesn't work well. The Compose button doesn't work, the Menu doesn't work either...

<comment><USER2> added the current URL I found via chrome's emulator features:

[https://mail.google.com/mail/mu/](https://mail.google.com/mail/mu/) OR [https://mail.google.com/mail/mu/mp/798/](https://mail.google.com/mail/mu/mp/798/)

Here's another one for tablets[1]:

[https://mail.google.com/mail/mu/mp/467/?mui=ca](https://mail.google.com/mail/mu/mp/467/?mui=ca)

[1] [http://forums.webosnation.com/webos-apps-games/294057-how- fo...](http://forums.webosnation.com/webos-apps-games/294057-how-force-gmail- website-us-ipad-view.html#post3129899)

<comment><USER3> 403 from my Lumia phone. Interesting.

<comment><USER2> can confirm this, it works if your change your WP/Lumia browser setting's website preference to desktop version. Though it's still apparently fetching/rendering the wrong sprite size.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am glad this still exists, it's helped me out a lot while living and working in Africa for the past month. Sometimes I don't have access to a fast connection. That being said, a lot of other Google products are _awful_ across slow links, for no particularly good reason. Google+ doesn't work at all. Even clicking the little bell in the top right of another Google page never loads. I get the feeling Google needs to do more testing of their products over low speed and high latency links.

<comment><USER5> Very true. I can't understand how bad some of their stuff is over non-super fast links (probably super low latency is my guess). It isn't just very slow links, I have problems with their stuff frequently when no other sites I use have issues (and if the connection is bad enough to cause others problems, Googles site will almost surely not even load - other than search which does load).

I get the feeling they don't bother testing on anything but super low latency, of if they do they don't care about a horrible user experience.

For me the super bad user experiences in this area have been greatly less, for me. Maybe they actually did something to address the problems (they are still far worse than any other sites I used, but still much better than they were for the last couple years).

<comment><USER6> My experience is rather different.

I travel to rural areas in the South Indian state of Andhra Pradesh every month. The connection quality is as poor as its availability is flaky. I find that GMail, Google Drive and the Google search page always load. Business correspondence and collaborative editing have not been problems at all. I have not tried Google+, though. I shall try it the next time.

On the other hand, my biggest problems have been with GitHub. Not once in the last 18 months have the GitHub Web pages loaded. That makes reviewing and merging pull requests very painful. I reported this to GitHub long ago, but have not seen any improvement yet.

<comment><USER4> Weird. I am in Malawi right and have basically the opposite experience. Google is dog slow, but I can get GitHub just about anywhere. Probably has something to do with where the packets are routed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Having redundancy in a web app like Gmail is just good practice in my opinion. Any Javascript reliant application should still work without Javascript, I haven't tested it, but I seriously doubt something like Asana would work with Javascript disabled nor really any other JS heavy application.

Some people often forget that not everybody has access to a fast Internet connection, as pointed out Africa is one of those nations, but even here in Australia there are people out in regional areas still on dial-up because satellite is too expensive and DSL is not an option because of the distances. Then you have countries like Libya, Iran and even parts of India too.

I do wonder if Gmail didn't build a HTML version out of necessity, if Gmail were built in 2014 or even back in 2009, would it have had a fully functional HTML version to boot or would it have been only partially functional?

<comment><USER8> > Africa is one of those nations

Presumably you meant "regions", but even then, it's only some parts of Africa

<comment><USER9> > it's only some parts of Africa

I think it would be safe to say that the vast majority of Africa is connectivity/bandwidth starved.

Even in a (very) affluent South African neighbourhood, I struggled to get one of our remote workers a connection faster than 512kbps. And even that cost significantly more than our local (UK) connections which are comparatively overpriced.

(This was about 18 months ago, the landscape could have obviously changed).

Many of my African contacts rely on low-bandwidth comms such as GPRS or SMS. I guess that's why mobile banking (often via SIM Application Toolkit) is so popular. Same goes for WhatsApp.

<comment><USER10> Don't forget about North Africa, i.e. all non-sub-saharan Africa. That probably has much better connectivity across the board.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I agree with Paul. A website that does not function without JS is a poor design choice. I have JS disabled by default and only whitelist specific domains.

If your website content doesn't load up, there's a good chance I'm not sticking around unless it's imperative.

<comment><USER12> Curious, why do you disable JS? Security? Preference?

<comment><USER13> Lots of pages, news-sites in particular, use JS to load more bloat, animated slide-decks and lots of things causing slower loads, including "beacons", and lots of fancy/noisy UI-elements distracting from what you actually came for: the nice, static HTML content that was the news.

You will be shocked to see most pages on the internet load almost instantly the second you disable JS instead of spending several seconds loading all sorts of non-content.

The performance gain of disabling JS is immense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Oh yes, I'm well aware of this version of Gmail. I left the military in October of last year and this is the version of Gmail I was forced to use on our piece of shit government computers running IE6 or whatever they had.

</comment><comment><USER15> IIRC Gmail even give you the option to use it when your connection is slow and loading of the regular UI does not complete.

<comment><USER16> I does, in the loading screen (every time), down right, it offers a link to the html version.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> ...and one day google will just switch it off b/c "focus", "little user base", whatever..

<comment><USER18> yeah, how about all those fancy startups that never even think about building a html only version ? At least give google some credit for actually providing this alternative for a decade.

<comment><USER19> Not just HTML only, how about "not an app" version? It is really annoying that things which could be accomplished perfectly well in a browser are now apps because apparently the web is terribly unfashionable these days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I found POP3 access much better for poor connectivity.

<comment><USER21> Maybe I should have tried that when I was working at a company that used gmail, as their IMAP is so slow it can only be described as glacial.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Users can actually find the "Contacts" button in this version.

<comment><USER23> Not to mention it still has pagination. In the new Gmail, I bet half the users wouldn't even be able to find one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is awesome. Not only really professional of them for doing this but it works so well.

It's quite disturbing how many labels I have, though.

</comment><comment><USER12> Actually, the link for the HTML only version is at the bottom of the page while it's loading.

</comment><comment><USER25> If only this allowed sending email from an alias, I would switch in a heartbeat.

</comment><comment><USER26> I like it better that the standard gmail site.

</comment><comment><USER27> This Chrome extension toggles between standard view and basic html — [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/basic-html- email-t...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/basic-html-email- toggle/oocjbicmfkpndkahldljaebmjaimehkk)

</comment><comment><USER28> I prefer this so much.

</comment><comment><USER29> How the web was supposed to be.

</comment><comment><USER30> When Gmail first came out, I remember having to use Firefox or IE6, both of which were much slower on my 100MHz desktop than Opera was. The basic HTML version was super nice.

</comment><comment><USER31> Enabled it for my father-in-law just the other day since he has both a slow laptop and likes to scroll the entire window with the arrow keys.

</comment><comment><USER32> When in Africa, on a very slow connection, GMail actively suggested using this version, when the initial load took too long.

<comment><USER33> On a kindle you have to quickly click the HTML version link, because if it loads up the full version it freezes.

<comment><USER34> Quality! Does it just run out of RAM and the system not clean up?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This would be amazing if I hadn't ditched gmail completely for privacy reasons.

</comment><comment><USER34> What an awkward URL. What does /u/0/h/ mean?

Pretty useful nonetheless.

<comment><USER35> The 0 refers to which Google Apps/Gmail user session you want to open. For example, 0 gives me my personal Google account, 1 gives me my work account.

I guess h stands for html.

I find this interface to be slower/all-round worse than the JavaScript one. Maybe it's because I don't live in the US and notice the 500-700ms+ page render times more when the whole page reloads.

<comment><USER34> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I wish Yahoo would have the same option for Yahoo Mail...

</comment><comment><USER37> You tell me I could have had the old gmail back again all this time?

</comment><comment><USER38> Well, of course it does. What else are you using?

</comment><comment><USER39> I wonder if Gmail was being written from scratch today whether they'd have the same aversion to the reliance on JS ?

<comment><USER40> What aversion? Gmail had used JS since launch. This is the basic HTML version.</comment></comment>


The Web We Broke - <AUTHOR> https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/the-web-we-broke/ <comment><USER2> >Pages containing popular JavaScript frameworks were more likely to have accessibility errors than those that didn't use those frameworks.

I find this result ironic after one of the top complaints in that javascript- free front end post we had yesterday[1] was that it hindered accessibility.

Edit: I highly suggest reading the WebAim article this blog links to; it has a lot of interesting information over how the different technologies correlate to accessibility

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19367149](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19367149) [2] [https://webaim.org/projects/million](https://webaim.org/projects/million)</comment>