I hate computers. But I love what you can do with them. - <AUTHOR> http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2011/i-hate-computers-but-i-love-what-you-can-do-with-them/

<comment><USER2> I personally tend to dislike people who proudly claim their ignorance about computers, usually with the underlying purpose of distinguish themselves from me, the supposedly technical rat.

I mean, I don't know jack about ancient literature or medicine, but it's not something I'm proud of, and I don't go around bragging on my ignorance for sure.

Not sure if this is the case, but it's something I noticed more than once in my daily life.

<comment><USER3> Right, I've also seen this and wonder where it comes from.

I think it's part of them acknowledging that knowing about computers in this age is very important, and feel that they should learn more about them, but are reluctant due to time constraints / feeling then can't understand the maths / etc.. so they find excuses why it is uncool.

Technologists aren't free from this "fallacy" either. For example, when they hate on marketing ("I don't want to learn about marketing as it's all bullshit"), or when people from one technical field hate on another ("back end? man, that's just engineering, it's all about UI these days...").

In the case of hate on computers, it's usually combined with some component of nostalgia; What do we need computers (and computer people) for? Weren't we better off in slower times, without all the flashy stuff?

<comment><USER4> this article had a completely opposite point, there was no disregard for computing, he specifically says he loves what can be done with modern computing.

the ignorance stated was trying to bring up a point that I fully agree with, a lot of us dont actually care about the computer, I dont program because I like typing out arbitrarily defined syntax, I dont learn algorithms because they are "fun" I build applications that work on the computer because I want people to use them, I want to build tools that help peoples lives or help them do their jobs

<comment><USER3> I was not specifically talking about the case of the article.

And I did mention your case in my post; you might not care about the back end (algorithms, bit/byte pushing, compilers, etc) but it is important anyway. Your pretty UIs for helping people in their lives (I don't mean to discount that -- it's really important) won't go anywhere without the infrastructure.

Everyone has their preferred area, and the fields together are important. We could just as well stop boasting how our work was somehow better so we can be proud we don't care about someone elses work...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Bruce compares using CLI tools ( _git rm –cached readme.txt_ ) to camping in harsh weather and then goes on to say:

 _> I spend a considerable portion of my income on a house with a heating system and three flushing toilets, so there's no bloody way I'm going camping._

Let me kindly remind you that every comfy house is built on ground first pioneered by people enduring hardships of camping. Not because they wanted to punish themselves, but because they were working on the frontier and pushing bounds forward. It's thanks to them -- both the well known explorers and the John Does of the frontier -- that all lands, once devoid of civilization, became user-friendly.

You may want to live in the suburbs of GUI, that's cool; I'd rather git-commit myself to the frontier and git-push forward, for much is still to be discovered and conquered. And there's great sense of adventure and camaraderie around there :-)

 _\-- wanders off to work on that pesky little website_

<comment><USER6> > _Let me kindly remind you that every comfy house is built on ground first > pioneered by people enduring hardships of camping._

I think Bruce is on about the people who _have_ a comfy house, but still choose to endure the hardships of camping. That, he feels (and I couldn't agree more), is more like masochism than like pioneering.

For example, I really don't see why ' _git commit -a -m "turd"_ ' is pioneering while _right-click, Commit, check boxes, enter "turd", click "Ok"_ is not.

<comment><USER5> Indeed, _git commit_ is not pioneering. But _git ls-tree ... | xargs git show ... | sed ... | xargs git add_ may be.

To innovate, to push the envelope you need to put pieces together. Until somebody invents and popularizes a way to compose [1] GUI widgets as easily as CLI programs via something like a pipe operator, CLI remains the only composable toolkit. We have, as of yet, no interconnectable GUI replacement for find, grep, xargs, sed etc.

Today's GUI widgets are individual nodes. Connected with sneakernet at best -- that's Copy+Paste for ya. No matter how great each node is, there is very little cooperation, little synergy effect. What we need is like the Internet -- live, vibrant network with rich interconnects, and ease to create new ones with few clicks. Only CLI is there today.

Rest assured the day of GUI will come, people are working on it all the time. But we arent' there yet, at least not when it comes to pushing the envelope.

\----

[1] from user's perspective, not just programmer's

<comment><USER7> In my ideal world, there would be a method for "exposing" command-line arguments that a window manager could use to automatically generate an initial window, preferences pane, buttons, etc.

As a programmer, I'd love to simply create a nested array of options that the OS would automatically turn into a tabbed preferences panel, depending on data types and their groups.

I suppose it's too much to ask for...

<comment><USER8> build it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Most computer scientists I know don't like computers either. What we all like is that within them lies a whole new universe with the infinite possibilities of math, yet a strong connection to the physical world. At least, until it breaks.

</comment><comment><USER10> "I think of non-GUI programs in the same way as I do about going camping. Some people love sleeping in a tent and getting up in the night to walk in the rain to poo in a hole they've dug behind a tree. I spend a considerable portion of my income on a house with a heating system and three flushing toilets, so there's no bloody way I'm going camping."

This became true over time for me. My attitude to camping has changed as I've aged. I used to enjoy roughing it but now I prefer not spending time putting my tent up when I arrive somewhere and taking it down in the morning. I used to enjoy coding with text editors and the shell but now I like the comfort of my IDE.

It's good to know how to put up a tent though, 'cause you never know where you'll end up.

<comment><USER11> You missed the best part of that paragraph:

You may think it a badge of honour that you can do "$ git rm -cached readme.txt" from memory. I think you're burying your turds with a trowel in a thunderstorm.

Made me laugh...!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I really hate this damned machine

I wish they would sell it.

It never does quite what I want

But what I tell it.

</comment><comment><USER13> I really don't understand his problem. There's times when it makes sense to use a GUI-frontend, e.g. for `git diff`.

On the other hand, there's so many times, where a GUI hinders productivity severely.

E.g. a `find -name "*.foo" -exec mv {} . \;` in a heavily nested directory structure can be huge timesaver. Moving the desired files with a file manager would be so much more cumbersome.

<comment><USER7> There are certainly things you can only accomplish with the command line, but that's not one of them -- on Windows or Mac, just search for "*.foo", the files show up in a new window, and you drag them. If they're images, you can even produce a slideshow out of them directly.

<comment><USER14> He did not want a slide show. He wanted the files moved. And why do it by hand when it can be automated? As he said, different tasks, different tools.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> _"You may think it a badge of honour that you can do "$ git rm –cached readme.txt" from memory."_

Well unless you are mentally disabled, remembering that command (and a couple of thousand others) is trivial.

The title is complete nonsense. He never actually backs up the statement that he hates computers, he just rants about his love for his wheelchair (GUI).

<comment><USER7> _"remembering that command (and a couple of thousand others) is trivial"_

I couldn't disagree more -- one of the reasons I'm a programmer, I think, is because I'm good with concepts and bad at memory (History was my worst class). And programming, for me, is all about organizing structures.

For function calls, autocomplete and tooltips that remind me of the argument order are lifesavers for me. On the command line, I simply can't consistently remember which commands take which flags, and which parameters, in which order...

Command-line is fantastic for connecting together different processes, creating macros and scripts, etc. But not for day-to-day use. There, I agree with the article's author, command-line use is pure masochism.

A checkbox (well-labelled) takes a second to interact with. Hunting in the man pages for a command-line option? Usually around a minute. I want to spend my brain power and time on programming, not on my tools.

<comment><USER15> I'm not perfect either, I like my autocomplete and history controls as well. Hackers save time and take shortcuts, and for me that means using the command- line. I want to access the options of a program that are not found in your menus ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I agree with this sentiment.

1\. I'm a libertarian interested in changing the world towards a stateless society. 2\. The best way to change the world is to change incentives 3\. The best way to change incentives is to use technology

My interest in tech is thus opportunistic. I don't get excited by beautiful code as such.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is a false dichotomy.

If you like what you can do with a computer, then you like computers, even if there are _aspects_ of computing you do not like. No one expects a person to like absolutely everything about computing, or to never get frustrated with it. (In fact, I would argue a certain amount of frustration can result in a rewarding experience.)

Conversely, no one likes computers in some sort of abstract sense apart from what you can do with computers. If computers didn't produce any output no one would be interested in them in the slightest.

What this man is basically saying is he prefers GUI as an interface but he's willing to use command line interfaces if that's the only option. Which is not very interesting.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is all quite silly. A CLI can be at least as effective as a GUI when designed properly. Do you think you don't have to remember anything to use a GUI? Anyone that has used a graphical program understands there is still memorization involved -- you're just memorizing where that icon sits, which series of clicks you must perform and in what order, etc., instead of a list of switches. And a list of switches is often preferable once you get over the stigma of the CLI; it's much more explicit and a simple --help outputs all of your choices, (usually) in a relatively concise list. I for one find this much nicer than clicking on everything in a GUI until something works and then not being able to remember what I did; on a CLI, I can just check my command history.

The bottom line to all of this, though, is that people need to accept that if they wish to use a computer without harming themselves or others they'll need to sit down and learn a few things. It'd be good to teach people that both CLI and GUI are acceptable user interface mechanisms and that they both can work well depending on the task and implementation at hand, among other basics.

Do we get constant outrage that it requires some basic training to get a driver's license? We recognize the value of driving a car and we're willing to put in the requisite training time to get a basic understanding of how to use a car safely and properly. We are going to need to cultivate the same attitude in computers if we are going to progress in a very meaningful way.

As a driver does not necessarily have to understand the inner workings of their transmission, engine, etc., a computer operator should not have to understand the inner workings of the operating system, CPU, etc., but people need to accept that they will need some basic literacy in order to have a smooth computing experience. These are complex machines, after all, and it's almost silly that people expect to magically be able to use them with very little cognition, at least initially. There is no reason not to have basic courses that teach people fundamentals in UI design, so that they can not only use the current version of program X but also figure out how to use X+1 when the vendor decides to totally renovate the interface.

And, if we have that basic literacy, people won't be so frightened to experiment with new interfaces and learn how new things work, which is a fundamental issue for most of the persons > 40 yrs that I know who use computers regularly. People would know how to make sure their files don't get lost, how to press Ctrl+Z or find the undo option, how to read corresponding man/help pages and how to look something up on Google when extra help is needed. These are the basics to successful computer operation, and everyone would be a lot happier if they just recognized the need for this training instead of constantly demanding that their computer work as simply as their toaster.

<comment><USER19> > Do you think you don't have to remember anything to use a GUI?

This. You can't imagine how many times I stared at a screenful of buttons that looked like an airplane cockpit or something, trying to figure out where in bloody hell was the function I needed. More than once, I would find out what the button is supposed to look like through reading help docs, but then fail to find the same button on the overly complex toolbar, since the toolbar, apparently having a mind of its own, would randomly decide to hide some of its buttons so that it would not appear as daunting (looking at you, Microsoft!) Give me bloody syntax and CLI that I can look up or Google over this clusterfuck any day.

<comment><USER7> While I definitely take the side of the GUI in principle, when I think about the abominations that have been coming out of Microsoft... Not to mention the newest version of Skype...

Whatever happened to a simple text menu, organized logically and hierarchically, where you pretty much know where anything will be? And simple dialog boxes, instead of ribbon-bar-palettes that show and hide different things depending on the width of your screen?

A man page requires me to read the whole thing before I'm confident of what option I'm looking for, because it's presented as an unstructured list of parameters. A menu bar is hierarchical, and I should (theoretically) be able to find what I'm looking for quicker -- and I know if an option is disabled before trying it, and a dialog box asks me whatever else the program needs to know.

Unfortunately, Microsoft and others are abandoning the tried-and-true principles of interface design. I refuse to use anything after Word 2003, but Google Docs is generally even easier.

<comment><USER19> > A man page requires me to read the whole thing before I'm confident of what > option I'm looking for, because it's presented as an unstructured list of > parameters

Not necessarily. I can usually easily grep a man page for the keywords I'm looking for. Most users (even beginners) know how to search for words on a single long page of text. In fact, one of the users of my app (a content management system for biologists) has mentioned to me that he prefers to click on plain-text output instead of using default HTML paginated output because he can instantly jump to what he's looking for by using browser text search feature (I plan on providing a Javascript-based word lookup feature in the future to emulate this).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> So by many of the comments I am reading here, I get the feeling that you would all think me not a programmer's asshole because I use Notepad++ to colour my code. Guess what? Same shit, different bucket. Horses for courses, and without GUIs, computing would not be used by the masses. We'd be playing COD on our Xboxes only after typing LOAD "*",8,1. Ask Bill Gates about it some time.

</comment><comment><USER21> The author did not think carefully about the easy-first-use vs. more- productive-in-the-long-run dichotomy. Usually, you can't have both.

<comment><USER7> I dunno... I find GUI + well-planned keyboard shortcuts to be productive-in- the-long-run.

You get the best of both worlds -- the options are there when you're learning, and your muscle memory takes over for your highly repetitive tasks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> there's nothing wrong with this approach. everybody has different hobbies and interests.

look at it this way: my friend just bought a brand new hyundai. he likes the car. it gets him places. thats all he cares about. I drive ancient cars (my current pet project is an 89 jeep, which is carbureted. what a mess). I spend the same amount of money he does on payments maintaining it, it's a lot of extra stress and time, but I love the process of it. I wait for things to break sometimes just so I can fiddle with it (basically all of the stuff jeremy clarkson has to say about MGB drivers applies to me).

to some people I am insane.

TLDR: I poop in a hole behind a tree during a thunderstorm, and that's okay with me. you think I'm crazy for apparently denying progress, I think you're crazy for hiding in your house from the world. contrast is what makes us human. etc etc.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm the opposite. I think computers are wonderful and I love the theory behind them. I hate some of the awful abuses people have inflicted upon them (e.g. shitty software).

Also, I don't think command-line interfaces are comparable to camping in a thunderstorm. They're actually quite intuitive and fun. It just takes a couple weeks of getting used to; then you realize how powerful the command line actually is. Ask a Windows sysadmin how he spends his day; I dare you.

<comment><USER7> I don't know, but for me, "intuitive" and "a couple weeks of getting used to" are not the same thing...

"More efficient after a couple weeks of getting used to", that could convince me...

<comment><USER24> There is no such thing as "intuitive" when it comes to computers. All computer interfaces are different conventions. Now, some conventions are so common and so deeply learned, they seem like intuition. However, suggesting that they _are_ intuition presents a gross misunderstanding of what intuition is.

"The only intuitive interface is the nipple. After that, its all learned." (<http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/2002/08/nipple.html>)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This makes no sense. Firstly he says that he refuses to use anything with a command line .. then he says "accessible HTML isn't that hard, really". Well, that's text based isn't it? How can you condemn text based control in one context and praise it in another?

In a great many cases it is impossible to make a GUI to perform every conceivable action you want to do. You need to drop down to a more basic level, and that inevitable means text, whether it be programming languages (like HTML) or command lines. Drawing some arbitrary line based on when you in particular decided to stop learning new things is pretty meaningless.</comment>


From Media to Meaning: Classic Machine Learning [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuIGyfp7p-E <comment><USER2> "Media to Meaning" almost seems like a reference to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message)

<comment><AUTHOR> McLuhan's _Understanding Media_ is a seminal work and one of the books that most shaped my thinking. "Electric Speed is synonymous with light and with the understanding of causes..." That line inspired the name for the Internet consulting company I formed in 1999, and espeed has been my online handle ever since.

      At no period in human culture have men understood
      the psychic mechanisms involved in invention and
      technology. Today it is the instant speed of electric
      information that, for the first time, permits easy
      recognition of the patterns and the formal contours of
      change and development. The entire world, past and
      present, now reveals itself to us like a growing plant
      in an enormously accelerated movie. Electric speed is
      synonymous with light and with the understanding of
      causes.

      — Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's model-blind.</comment>


Top Best Android Phone Right Now - <AUTHOR> http://www.techlug.com/2015/08/best-android-phone.html <comment><USER2> is this just an ad for Infinix?</comment>


Ask HN: Like craigslist for developers - <AUTHOR> Is there a platform for developing and selling libraries for different programming languages? How do you think the idea? <comment><USER2> [http://www.binpress.com/](http://www.binpress.com/)

[https://codecanyon.net/](https://codecanyon.net/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Its not a bad idea, however, popular library site have been dominated by open source and selling will libraries will be hard to scale.

Keep up, with the dream, you can as well pivot.

More Grace!</comment>


The End of Gratipay - <AUTHOR> https://gratipay.news/the-end-cbfba8f50981 <comment><USER2> Back in 2015 Gratipay hosted it's second ever retreat; the idea was a full weekend of hacking and building with all of our normally-remote members of the team. The thing you need to know about Chad is he is exceptional at bringing people together and spreading his passion. I arrived a bit early to the retreat and was tasked by Chad to cook dinner. It sounded easy enough; I need to make dinner for 10 or so people, something easy like sandwiches would work right? That was when Chad brought out the giant oven-sized dutch oven, I couldn't believe we would be making so much food for 10 people! I was peeling potatoes for hours! Turns out that night we fed over 50 amazing people from Chad's life. All of his friends, neighbors, churchgoers, family, peers, and even random people he had inspired at the local pub.

And every time I hung out with Chad it was like this, people from all over the world, in all sorts of backgrounds and difficulties made it a point to be Chad's friend.

Chad, you may think you didn't get to change the world with Gratipay, but you did, you are the catalyst that will change the world for the better. Thank you.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for confirming something I suspected. During the crisis a few years ago, everything I read about him seems to point that he is a reasonable person and coming from the right place, with the right intention. I had a major issue how people ganged up on him. There were lists circulated at the time calling people to block anybody who was following him on twitter etc... (got blocked by several people because of this, took me a while to figure out why).

<comment><USER4> Chad linking to Geek Feminism Wiki to explain the "Gittip Crisis" is a testament to how effective the disinformation was, as that page repeats the lies used to whip up the crowd against him in the first place, including misrepresenting discussion on this very site:

>Shortly thereafter, Chad Whitacre, the founder of gittip, responded positively to (CW: Hacker News) a comment on Hacker News calling gittip "a joke dominated by professional victims" because women use it.

Actual comment:

>Yelling on Twitter and demonizing men for existing is not "promoting empathy and equality". Begging for legal money for your civil lawsuit is not "sustainable crowd funding" (hint: what is she being sued for? it doesn't say.). Sorry Gittip, but your site has turned into a joke dominated by professional victims.

It was never about women, and always about how "women in tech" is a glaringly obvious smokescreen to funnel money from real contributors to posers and grievance mongers. A gold star if you can guess which notorious "women in tech" activist this was about.

<comment><USER5> Deep breath, man. I've finally reached a place where I can let others tell their side of that story without feeling threatened by it. I worked hard to get to this point! Don't you go internalizing bad feelings on my behalf! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been trying to figure out how to get paid to do open source for a long time. The popularity of my open source projects has changed over this time, but this might give you an idea of the effectiveness of each approach if you need an alternative.

I used Gittip for a while, and it was a really nice platform, and netted me $5-15/month if I recall correctly. I left after some regulatory issues added an annoying amount of mental gymnastics to actually get money out of it. Later I built my own self-hosted platform for getting tips [1][2]. This tends to net me $20/month consistently, with occasional bursts due to one-time donations. Also, I know of at least one other installation in the wild, it's being used to support some Mastodon instances.

A few months ago, I set up a Patreon [3] where I earn almost $200/month. This is by far the most successful approach I've seen yet, though it rustles my jimmies a bit to be beholden to a proprietary, centralized service. In the end I'm still not making enough to work on open source full time. Thankfully I make enough today to break even on open source (that is, my infrastructural costs are paid for). Hopefully I can figure something out for full time eventually. It's _hard_.

Many thanks to the folks at Gratipay. It was an uphill battle for sure but they fought the good fight.

[1] [https://drewdevault.com/donate](https://drewdevault.com/donate)

[2] [https://github.com/SirCmpwn/fosspay](https://github.com/SirCmpwn/fosspay)

[3] [https://patreon.com/sircmpwn](https://patreon.com/sircmpwn)

<comment><USER7>
        I've been trying to figure out how to get paid to do open source for a long time.

Don't. Having supplemental income makes your life better in ways that quitting your day job won't. It reduces the size of your N months of living expenses and makes it easier to fill up that fund.

When you can walk away from a job it makes a big difference in your experience of it. Feeling trapped in a job you're not enjoying makes you even more unhappy. Feeling like nobody values what you do is rough. Not being able to afford to take a job doing something you'd love or really believe in, because it doesn't pay enough or has a 70% chance of cratering, is an experience I would spare anyone if I could.

But get over the hump and you're your own person. You can say no if they ask you to do something unethical. Take risks. Invest in yourself.

Keep taking the extra money. Put half of it in the bank. Keep some emotional distance from your day job. Enjoy the freedom.

<comment><USER6> I think everything you said is valid, but largely tangental to the subject of getting paid to do open source. I should clarify that I want to get paid to work on _my_ open source projects, not just any arbitrary project. I probably wouldn't take a pay cut to work on someone else's FOSS project.

<comment><USER7> No I get that. But when it's your day job then you are obligated. All those nice qualities as a pressure valve are gone and now it is your source of stress.

I've seen too many people start a Patreon and then their output drops like a rock. It used to be something they did for fun or love of craft and with a nice bonus of some extra money. Now it's a job. One they can't get out of.

Whoever said do what you love and you'll never work a day was a mean sonovabitch who destroys dreams. For a lot of people familiarity breeds contempt. Do your second most favorite thing and protect the precious one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thanks for the send-off, everyone. Feels right somehow to hit the HN homepage one more time before putting Gratipay to bed. So many lessons learned, already scheming about Next Time™.

See you down the line! :D

<comment><USER8> This is a startup shutting post on HN, and everyone here is focussing on how you are an awesome person. That's a first in the few years I've been here. Good luck with the next thing!

<comment><USER5> Yeah it's a little awkward tbh. There are so many other people that also put heart and soul into Gratipay! See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15614009](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15614009).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I met Chad when I lived in Pittsburgh and we had great times regularly hacking on Gratipay in a coffee shop. Chad would teach regulars how to code by making them do small pull requests on the project. Even when Patreon swooped up the market he had a profound sense of why the project still mattered -- Gratipay was open source, took no fees, and was funded entirely on its own platform. Chad you are a badass, cheers man!

<comment><USER5> <3

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > provocateurs continued to take advantage of Gratipay's overly welcoming > nature, until we had to admit that yes, online communities really do require > moderation.

I really appreciate Chad's honesty, humility, and transparency in all of this. I'm really glad to have these words in writing from someone who put so much effort into trying to do the right thing. I hope these words are heeded not just by the startups of today and tomorrow, but also by the megacorps now finding themselves unable to explain to an angry public what's going on on their platforms.

<comment><USER11> I think it's a lesson that the entire tech community is learning slowly (and marginalized people have been shouting about for years, to their credit).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> At the end of the "gittip crisis" it seems that they capitulated to the demands of a group of users who felt unsafe sharing information about how much money they made. Users who had mostly already left. I think this was a big mistake, as the "leader-board" features provided important social-proof that gratipay worked. That you could make money from it. Tracking how much money projects gave to other projects was good UX, it meant you could feel good about giving money to a large meta-project, because you knew it was passing that money down to smaller projects it depended on.

After they made the decision to remove leaderboards I mostly lost interest.

<comment><USER13> They could have made it opt out.

<comment><USER14> We did. In fact the option to hide one's income still exists in Liberapay today, more than 3 years after the initial implementation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I used Gratipay for a while, and I even contributed with one or two commits, I was also hanging around the IRC chatroom.

I am so incredibly envious of the passion, work-morale and ambitions that I saw in Chad Whitacre, what a great guy. I am sad that Gratipay shut down, and I am sad for all the roadblocks the project have had, I used it to donate to a few projects and it was great for that.

I hope Chad will find something worthwhile to do after Gratipay.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for contributing and hanging around, and for the kind words and for using Gratipay to donate!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Startups are ridiculously hard. The biggest mistake young founders and companies make is going heads down in code for 3, 6, 12 months without marketing and sales. I've been there and failed.

What is the market? Is it a good one? Open source while incredible, is damn difficult to build a proper business.

I'll reiterate my stance that the best products with the best technology often times don't win. That doesn't mean that you should not strive for perfection in products, it just means there is more to the game than that.

<comment><USER17> This comment seems almost entirely inapplicable to the article. Where did you get the sense that the founder[s] spent too much time working on the technology?

There are a number of reasons for which Gittip/Gratipay may have failed, but "Focusing too much on the tech" doesn't seem to be one of them.

<comment><USER18> Probably because of this paragraph from the article:

> At Gratipay we've spent the past year gearing up to relaunch with a renewed > focus on open source. However, funding open source is almost entirely about > marketing, and we spent most of the past year writing code instead. File > this one under, "open source needs all the skill sets," but also, "startups > need all the skill sets."

<comment><USER16> Bingo. @Permit go back and read it again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Patreon has cornered the market on funding projects which otherwise have not much revenue potential. I've been seeing more and more open source projects switching to that model. (The only bad thing about Patreon is no option for one-time contributions)

<comment><USER20> They also take a cut of the proceeds, and add overhead for creators/developers (who have to create perks). The Gratipay/Liberapay model has anonymous donations so people receiving donations don't feel beholden to specific donors.

<comment><USER21> > (who have to create perks)

Do they? I've seen pages getting a solid amount of money without having any perks.

<comment><USER20> Do you have examples? I'm not sure how to search for this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Wow they were really committed to resolving their issues in public. It's pretty interesting to go through their github issues.

It's amusing to contrast the difficulty of tipping another internet user before cryptocurrency and after. Due to regulatory cost it's still rough for a company to act as a conduit using cryptocurrencies, but accept a tip from another internet user is as easy as (BTC): 18bsU4fM14AbiQ6aXSRc7XSnduT75cCigX

</comment><comment><USER12> Liberapay seems pretty good, a lot like older gittip in UX. Leaderboards and all. I'd be interested in hearing more about it, why it split from gittip, etc. I may use it instead of patreon, but there's not a lot of information about, well, how it was founded.

I suspect I will be switching my matrix donation from patreon to liberapay. It would have been nice to know that was an option.

<comment><USER20> Here's why Changaco left Gratipay and a bit on starting Liberapay: [https://changaco.oy.lc/blog/goodbye- gratipay](https://changaco.oy.lc/blog/goodbye-gratipay).

Liberapay is a solid fork, and there doesn't seem to be any personal issue between Chad and Changaco. We've even implemented a direct migration tool for Gratipay users to move to Liberapay.

<comment><USER5> Changaco is awesome. We met in person for the first time last year (it was post-fork) and it was a great time.

<comment><USER14> Thanks Chad, the feeling is mutual. I'm actually going to Lille again in 2 weeks, I can already say that it won't be the same without you and Jess there.

<comment><USER5> <3

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Pro tip: do not listen to non-customers. Do not cower to non-customers. Do not appease non-customers.

</comment><comment><USER24> It's pretty interesting when companies implode in a way that's clearly visible on a graph.

The Digg traffic stats look similar in summer of 2010 after their controversial redesign where you can clearly see their users leaving for reddit: [https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2005-06-01%202...](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2005-06-01%202011-06-30&q=digg,reddit)

</comment><comment><USER11> They were one of the pioneers in the space of sustainability around open source, which led to many of the wonderful projects we have today. Thanks to Chad for putting so much work in over the years towards a worthwhile mission.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the kind words! I won't pretend I didn't put a lot of work into Gratipay over the years, but the reality is that so did a lot of other people. The most meaningful part about Gratipay for me is and has been the community building it. Gosh, I want to start naming names but then I'll forget someone. Aww, heck ...

Thank you clone1018, co-owner of Gratipay, LLC! Thank you mattbk, jessa, rohitpaulk! Thank you edoverflow and the whole (new) security team! Thank you dmk246 and kaguillera! Thank you Changaco and zwn and chrisdev and rummik and seanlinsley and bruceadams and duckinator and colindean everyone else from the Gittip days! Thank you techtonik and aandis and rorepo and wyze and oakes and joonas and patcon! Thank you nobodxdobon and shurcooL and dowski and tshepang!

!m _

<comment><USER5> Okay, now tell me who I forgot (I"M SORRY!!!!)! :D

<comment><USER5> Thank you pjz and everyone who ever used or hacked on Aspen.

Thank you jordanmessina and steveklabnik and joeyespo and everyone who put us on HN way back at the start. Thank you marvinpinto for putting us back here one more time. ;)

Thank you everyone who funded my/our Gratipay habit directly by giving to myself or the Gratipay team on Gratipay. Especially UkuleleRod.

Thank you Jessica and Leah and Miriam and Sammy and Ruthie and all of our friends and family for absorbing so much stress over the years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Having helped out very little with this project - it makes me sad to see it go. Chad is a great guy and means well in all that he does.

I wish him the best :)

<comment><USER5> Thanks, kzisme! Was good to have you around while it lasted, maybe some day we'll get to meet in person! Cheers! :^)

<comment><USER25> I'm in the Burgh fairly regularly! Keep in touch!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Well, dang. I'd just recently setup an account with Gratipay for our OSS projects. It's not brought in any money, but it seemed like the most transparent and OSS-friendly platform for raising funds.

Sorry to see it go. Funding OSS is a very, very, hard problem.

<comment><USER5> Ahhh, sorry for the surprise. :( Best of luck!

<comment><USER26> It's fine. Shit happens. I've had moments where I've seriously considered shuttering my OSS business (and I've closed a previous one, though for reasons other than money). Best of luck to you, as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Can anyone recommend a network where you can post open source jobs? Not an open source job board, but a live job board with open source jobs :)

<comment><USER28> Here's one: [https://www.fossjobs.net/](https://www.fossjobs.net/)

I've sometimes posted LibreOffice and Mozilla jobs to it.

<comment><USER27> Thanks. I posted an Apache Impala freelance gig, just waiting on the manual review process for now. :-)</comment></comment></comment>


Our Latest Way to Bring Your Government to You - <AUTHOR> https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2016/10/13/removing-barriers-constituent-conversations <comment><AUTHOR> The White House is open-sourcing,

[https://github.com/WhiteHouse/fb_messenger_bot](https://github.com/WhiteHouse/fb_messenger_bot)

President Obama's Facebook Messenger bot:

[https://www.messenger.com/login.php?next=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.m...](https://www.messenger.com/login.php?next=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.messenger.com%2Ft%2Fwhitehouse%2F)</comment>


Blueprint: Reverse engineer server configuration - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/devstructure/blueprint <comment><USER2> Blueprint: a clever automated tool for reverse engineering an existing linux server into something that can be deployed by Puppet, Chef, etc.</comment>


What is involved in setting up a HN Meetup? (Bath,UK) - <AUTHOR>

I saw a recent post for HN London and thought it would be great to have one in Bath, UK. What would I have to do to make it happen? <comment><USER2> I'm one of the HN London organisers. Feel free to drop me an email if you want any help or have any questions. Contact info in my profile.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, will contact you shortly :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I work in the center of bath and would be interested in a HN meetup, add me on twitter if you would like to discuss @MattWritesCode

<comment><USER4> royka118 @SamClift

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't hold out much hope for a Bradford on Avon HN Meetup so I'd definitely come along to one in Bath.

</comment><comment><USER4> This, I'm from the South West (Midsomer Norton) would be interested in a HN Meetup

</comment><comment><USER6> I Second that. Be good to meet up with some like minded souls.

</comment><comment><USER7> Bath here, too. Set up a twitter/eventbrite, and I'd recommend prodding Felix to broadcast it on @welovebath - I'm down for it.</comment>


Congressional Leaders Suggest Earlier Snowden Link to Russia - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/20/us/politics/congressional-leaders-suggest-snowden-was-working-for-russia.html

<comment><USER3> > "He may well have. We don't know at this stage."

I find it completely unacceptable that our representatives continue to make blaming statements. You can't say he did and then say you don't know. Diane Feinstein needs to go away. Vote accordingly.

<comment><USER4> _" Vote accordingly [in four years]."_ Mike Rogers is a representative and could be out _this year_ if Lansing voters pull heads out of asses.

Edited to add: The quote from Feinstein was in response to a question - <USER2> didn't bring it up. It's probably overstating things, but it's dramatically more cautious and less damning (of the utterer) than any of the quotes from Rogers (who the article focuses on much more). Rallying against Feinstein over this _particular_ piece seems horrifically misguided for both these reasons and that I alluded to in my initial post - and I say this as someone who has voted against Feinstein every single chance I have had.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Business Meetings over Lunch - <AUTHOR> Are you into sales or business development?
Have you ever invited your client to discuss business over lunch?
What's the % of deal closure - business meetings over lunch Vs business meetings in office premises? <comment><USER2> Used to be in business development for a consulting firm. I think the situation is more nuanced than your question suggests. Large contracts ($100,000+) typically take several meetings to secure. As part building a relationship taking the prospect to lunch is sometimes an option. In my experience it depends upon the person(s) you are dealing with. Some people look forward to a business lunch, others will decline any offer.

However, these days, people seem to be too busy to indulge in a couple of hours for a fine dining lunch. From what I have heard the dynamics are different for some of South America and Europe. So there are cultural overtones to consider as well.</comment>


Why is Yahoo boosting domain fees by 30%? - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/05/12/why-yahoo-boosting-domain-fees-30

<comment><USER2> Couple of options here:

1\. The Microsoft deal fell through, and their stock plummeted

2\. The Google deal never materialized, either

3\. Q1 ad revenues, while up YOY, seem to have slowed with the economy

4\. Since it only applies to existing customers, and not new ones (although, after the first year, wouldn't a new customer become an "existing" customer?) it's the old cable TV trick. Come on down for $9.95 (for the first twelve months only). Extended use may cause diarrhea, headaches and dizziness. If symptoms persist, call a doctor.

</comment><comment><USER3> perhaps it was a "loss leader" for them before (cause they included so much) now they are sick of the loss

</comment><comment><USER4> Welcome to capitalism.</comment>


Managing Engineers on the Spectrum - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
I'm a software engineer with ~5 years of experience in the industry turned newly-appointed engineering manager.  I manage a small group of people, each with their own projects, while I continue to have my own engineering projects that I contribute to in parallel to my managing duties.
One of the people I manage is having difficulties in their position.  Although I am not a doctor, I am fairly certain that this person is high functioning on the autism spectrum (what might otherwise be diagnosed as Asperger's.)  I say this only because I myself am diagnosed as Asperger's, and I see many of this person's behaviors in a younger version of myself.  Despite the similarities, I'm unsure how to help them.  They are a wonderful caring person with clearly very strong technical abilities, but are being held back in their career by certain difficulties.
They're having problems with task management and stress.  They will take an inordinate amount of time to complete otherwise simple tasks, rehashing work that has already been completed for the sake of organizing it in a way that is pleasing to them (formatting, commenting, etc.) rather than working on the deliverable objectives of the project.  This leads to delays, which causes increased stress, which in turn causes more delays.  This sets up a feedback loop that ends in them "shutting down" and that eventually requires intervention.
I've tried being a mentor to this person and helping them improve in these problem areas, but the advice or constructive criticism I've been giving on how to manage these issues does not seem to be helping.  Are there any good resources for learning how to manage people (specifically engineers) on the spectrum, or even just resources for new managers in general?  I'm worried that if things don't improve, this person will end up being let go by the company. <comment><USER2> I did managed some people on the Spectrum and it is an eye opener.

The best way to explain is:

Imagine you can only see black and white (no gray tones) and all other people can see full colors.

Then someone says:

"look at that Orange and pink tones" <...>

That is it. They can't identify these "orange and pink" tones.

Example on priorities:

1\. You set 5 task on priorities;

2\. CEO/Big Boss secretary calls because report Y is not printing;

3\. Your fellow on Spectrum says rigidly: "Sorry that is not important or priority, bye".

That may look "funny" but these people suffer a lot. In work, relationships everything.

They can't see "pink and oranges".

Sheldon from Big Bang theory is "funny" until it is not.

What is my suggestion:

1\. One task by time (only leave ONE task on their queues).

2\. Be EXPLICIT . VERY EXPLICIT. Examples:

2.1 "I Need this class to input X,Y,Z, and produce Z with W,G results. Do not change code-style,lint or whatever."

2.2 "We need to improve W but we Can't turn off Z. or Y"

3\. Ask and understand how they think (example with real cases):

3.1 "Why you turn off the whole call center electricity? A. To restart all machines faster after Service Pack."

3.2 "Why you blocked CEO mailbox? A.: "There was a virus running and I did to safe him"

The thing is to be their "pink and orange tones".

One Task only, be explicit what you want, be VERY explicit what is the result.

Once you reach this you will have a fine tuned productivity machine.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's possible they are burned out and are stressing out on the task management because they don't 'believe in' or have confidence in the outcome. If your work environment is characterized by a lot of re-work due to changing requirements then that might also force someone into analysis paralysis which would look like they are not making any progress.

One thing that might help is to meet with them once a week to list on paper or sticky notes the higher priority tasks and discuss whether there are any unknowns or dependent items that need to be resolved before they can make progress.

</comment><comment><USER4> I am sorry I don't have any specific advice for your situation. I am answering the part about good resources for new managers.

I personally learned a lot from "First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently" (ISBN: 978-1531865207). The key idea is to not try and change the basic nature or capabilities of any person but to give them tasks that help them showcase their natural strengths. This may not always be possible.

I have found this idea to bear out in my experience. If you try to make a cat bark, it will result in a lot of frustration for both you and the cat. Personal growth and learning is a long, difficult journey and you as a manager can only give ideas or hints. You cannot mold your reports' nature or style of working.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, this is really good advice. We have been working with this person to try and find tasks that they are better-suited for, but unfortunately the type of work our company does involves fast-paced one-off projects that seldom require the level of meticulousness that this person seems to want.

<comment><USER5> This sounds like my situation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I had a co-worker who was on the spectrum. Communicating with him face-to-face or on a voice call was difficult. He would often latch onto a small aspect of the conversation that didn't really matter, and then walk away from the conversation with only that small thing in mind. This would lead him to work on seemingly random things. I found that communicating with him in writing seemed to work much better.

If you have not already, try switching to written communication. Beyond that, I don't have any advice to offer.

<comment><USER5> I find written communication much easier too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Maybe you could have the person write an auto-format script to format it how they want. You might lose a day or two as they develop it, but maybe that would save time in the future.</comment>


Will the Nokia X series be able to save the aging company from doom? - <AUTHOR> https://techgeekforever.wordpress.com/2014/03/23/will-the-nokia-x-phone-be-able-to-save-the-aging-company-from-doom/

<comment><AUTHOR> What do you think?</comment>


White House Announces Apple Pay Support for Federal Payment Cards - <AUTHOR> http://www.macrumors.com/2015/02/13/white-house-federal-payment-cards-apple-pay/ <comment><AUTHOR> In addition to tapping into the $26.4 billion in transactions, people will be able to use Apple Pay for admission to national parks.</comment>


PHP Needs Its Own ES6 – DEV Community - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/hamatti/php-needs-its-own-es6-28fa <comment><USER2> Hell no, the current state of the front end should be quarantined and kept under control.</comment>


Bowel cancer screening in younger groups may do more harm than good - <AUTHOR> https://www.newscientist.com/article/2218691-bowel-cancer-screening-in-younger-groups-may-do-more-harm-than-good/ <comment><USER2> I was diagnosed with stage 4 bowel cancer at 36. There should have been no good reason for me to have a colonoscopy, as my doctor suggested I probably just had IBS. No family history, or severe symptoms at all.

If he hadn't suggested the colonoscopy (just to be safe), I'd be dead in year or 2.

<comment><USER3> FYI you weren't screened. You were investigated. Screening is for asymptomatic people. There is a huge difference. The pre-test probability will be very different.

And congrats to you and your doctor. You both made good decisions and saved your life.</comment></comment>


WhatsApp Cofounder Brian Acton on Why He Left $850M Behind - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2018/09/26/exclusive-whatsapp-cofounder-brian-acton-gives-the-inside-story-on-deletefacebook-and-why-he-left-850-million-behind <comment><USER3> This article seems a little unfair to the WhatsApp founders when it suggests they should have known that any assurances Facebook made to them as part of the acquisition were obviously lies. Sure in 2018 it might be obvious to most of us that nothing Facebook says or promises can be trusted but I don't think that was necessarily as obvious when the acquisition happened and they can be forgiven for thinking they weren't being lied to.

<comment><USER4> What year would it be ok to be naive enough to think that any for profit company's main motivation is not to make as much money possible?

<comment><USER5> There is such a thing as business ethics.

Facebook's complete disregard for them should not be the norm, even if it, sadly, might be more often than not.

<comment><USER6> >> What year would it be ok to be naive enough to think that any for profit company's main motivation is not to make as much money possible?

> There is such a thing as business ethics.

> Facebook's complete disregard for them should not be the norm, even if it, > sadly, might be more often than not.

It's alarming how businesses' lack of business ethics is getting normalized by comments like the grandparent's. We should require that companies be ethical and condemn them when they aren't. Yes, we'll often be disappointed, just like we're disappointed with the fraction of humanity that becomes criminal, but that doesn't mean we should lower our standards.

<comment><USER4> How do we as individuals "require" companies to be ethical? At the end of the day, we don't have the power to enforce ethics. We have to work within the framework of reality and get everything in writing.

<comment><USER7> Boycott them and don't purchase or use their products.

If you feel strongly about it go further and organize more people to do the same. Try to convince people who don't feel the company is unethical that it is.

But in the end you can't expect because you don't like a company that your feelings on what should happen to come to be.

It's like so many people complaining on Twitter about Twitter not banning voices they don't like. If you don't like Twitter's policies then stop using their product. If enough people agree with you and do this they will change. If you feel it's worth spending your life organizing people to boycott Twitter then spend your life doing that. But the culture of demanding that platforms must adhere to someones arbitrary expectations as if using their platform is a right is ridiculous.

<comment><USER8> This is exactly what I do with Uber. I don't use it. I use Lyft. This is because I don't consider Uber an ethical company, nor do I particularly like their HR and other management practices.

I don't know very much about Lyft but I have yet to hear anything bad about them which is pretty encouraging.

<comment><USER9> Peter Thiel is a major investor and board seat holder in Lyft. If your politics lead you to believe Uber is not an ethical company, that might also give you pause.

<comment><USER10> Genuine question. Is Peter Thiel known to be unethical?

<comment><USER11> Why does Peter Thiel think Donald Trump is so awesome?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm sure Acton and Koum told themselves they were also keeping the power to be in control. I'm sure they went into it thinking they could avoid this end. The brain is a powerful rationalizer when it sees generational wealth within reach.

The indignant tone of the comments here make me laugh. There are very few things I can imagine readers of HN not doing for a billion dollars. People may say otherwise, but until they've been tested I choose not to believe them.

<comment><USER13> Not saying you're not mostly right, but there is the case of Jean-Baptiste Kempf, maintainer of VLC, who apparently turned down tens of millions to put ads into VLC. (I suppose that is two orders of magnitude smaller than a billion.)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15372048](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15372048)

<comment><USER12> And if he chose to criticize the WhatsApp founders, it would carry a lot of weight with me. I didn't say altruism doesn't exist...I just don't believe it's in this comment thread. :)

<comment><USER14> I don't know the details, but he could've turned down monetization of his work for purely selfish reasons as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I feel like I'm coming across more of these "exit, then atone" profiles and none of them seem to have any teeth. They read like self-help articles for the ultra-rich: "Broken moral compass keeping you up at night? Try driving a Honda Odyssey."

I get it; you took the money. I'd sure as hell take the money. One anecdote about sniping at Sheryl Sandberg is washed away by this milquetoast sentiment:

 _"It was like, okay, well, you want to do these things I don't want to do," Acton says. "It's better if I get out of your way. And I did."_

<comment><USER16> I also fail to see how driving a minivan makes you a better person. I don't understand why we fetishize the rich who live like they aren't.

I get not overconsuming, but if you're gonna buy a car might as well make it a nice one - the impact is basically the same.

<comment><USER17> The environmental impact, sure, but there's also a "keeping up with the Joneses" factor. If people don't flaunt their status, other people won't feel as pressured to either.

I once heard a very wealthy guy complain that "everyone these days wears a Rolex", so he needs to buy something fancier. Well, once every super wealthy person goes out and buys something fancier, then the less wealthy people will want _that_ and the effect trickles down. The fact is that conspicuous consumption is a problem for our society in that it leads people to buy things that they can't afford. By driving a minivan, Brian Acton isn't contributing to that problem as much and I commend him for it.

<comment><USER18> It's a Red Queen effect, I guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Acton is being incredibly disingenuous and it is disappointing. When you sell your company to another for $19B, you should surely know that the expectations for monetization will be very heavy indeed. Well beyond Acton's suggested metered-user model.

I'm certainly no great fan of Facebook, but anyone who thinks that they deserve to use a service free of charge and also avoid advertising is extremely entitled and disconnected from reality. There is no free lunch.

None of this is to excuse FB's bad behavior. The fact that they claimed they wouldn't attempt to link accounts but had teams elsewhere in FB working on that very task is yet another example of the true nature of that company and its highest ranking people.

<comment><USER20> > [...] anyone who thinks that they deserve to use a service free of charge > and also avoid advertising is extremely entitled and disconnected from > reality. There is no free lunch.

We are using Hacker News, free of charge, without advertising. Or for a bigger example, most Wikipedia users have never donated and yet use the service with zero advertising. Or there's Signal, as mentioned in the article, and countless other examples.

Perhaps there is a free lunch after all.

<comment><USER19> Hacker News is subsidized by perhaps the most successful venture capital firm of all time. Wikipedia routinely raises lots and lots of money via donation. Signal is funded by a multi-billionaire.

There is never a free lunch. Employees must be compensated, capital equipment must be bought/rented. The revenue has to come from somewhere.

Neither of Hacker News nor Wikipedia nor Signal was purchased to the tune of $19B. So who set that price? Let me assure you, Facebook would have gladly paid less. And, of course, Facebook bought WhatsApp with the intention of turning a profit. The rest follows logically.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I want to tell a story about Whatsapp that is unrelated to that, but incidental, and the reason why this seems too much to me. I don't like the company even if I use Whatsapp every days since the start, because when it started to spread in Europe, at the start of the iPhone and Apple store era, Whatsapp was the worst thing ever in the app store in terms of how strongly they advertised their platform, almost in a spammy way, everywhere. Moreover the application was pure garbage. It was not just unencrypted, but the IMEI of the phone hashed with the phone number, or something like that, was used to _authenticate_ to the service. There was _zero attempt_ at privacy. Later when they made big money they fixed it, but still... Fast forward the acquisition, there was another element I did not like: they really did a big noise about how scalable was Whatsapp 'cause it was FreeBSD + Erlang based, one thing that I believe was not honest. Whatsapp was very scalable fundamentally because they just acted as a bridge without storing anything. The backends were probably also decently designed, but not because FreeBSD + Erlang, you could do it differently with the same results. Moreover many times here in Europe where it is massively used, during like xmas or at the new year party time, it goes down, so... like everybody else on earth. And now that story. I never liked the company vibe, and I think he should stop with this Facebook story, because you are the actions you make: don't trust the big social network model? Well, develop your company and find a business model you like. Now it's late to cray. Besides I don't think Facebook is doing anything terrible with Whatsapp.

<comment><USER22> I remember that they false advertised it on App Stores as "WhatsApp - <USER2> SMS".

<comment><USER21> Exactly, among the many other similar things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > The company is also set to charge businesses for messages they receive from > potential customers via the WhatsApp platform — of between a half a penny > and 9 cents, depending on the country.

Didn't knew this and takes back to the outrageous SMS pricing of 10 cents per SMS.

I as a consumer can change easily but it's sad to see that business will have to deal with this crap.

<comment><USER24> While I understand the sentiment and generally agree with you, someone has to pay for the service, right?

And businesses have been paying for all those Toll Free calls customers are making. It's only toll free for the caller.

<comment><USER25> If Skype hadn't been a thing I'd agree, but it was.

The fact that we aren't using peer-to-peer encryption in our message apps today is solely because companies want to charge you money for sending messages.

Because Skype had the capability to operate as a decentralized encrypted messaging app, and now 10-15 years later, there isn't an app like that. Not because it's not possible but because giant tech companies have become the equivalent of fossil fuel companies, killing innovation by buying it and absorbing it, altering it or shutting it down.

<comment><USER26> Do you remember how skype worked in 2011? You could send messages anytime, but they would only be delivered if you and your conversation partner were both online at the same time. If you used two computers, the conversation history would sync up if both computers were online simultaneously -- or you would sometimes get it from your conversation partners if they were online.

That's fine in the world of desktops with always on connectivity (often not even NATed), but it doesn't work on iPhones were when your app isn't on screen, it isn't running (they have a limited amount of background execution these days), and anyway connectivity is spotty.

<comment><USER27> so offline messaging was such a difficult thing to solve without selling? I doubt it. Skype hasn't improved much, not only because MS is not doing its best, but also ISPs typically throttle that.

<comment><USER26> Centralization was more or less required to do offline messaging. Not so much the selling bit (but note that Skype had already been sold twice before Microsoft bought it in 2011). I agree Microsoft hasn't done a good job with it, though.

<comment><USER28> You could cache encrypted messages on a P2P network until the offline party comes online. There is no money in that, but from a technical PoV it is very doable.

Systems like the lightning network on Bitcoin or Raiden on Ethereum are working on something similar for outsourced channel monitoring (aka watchtowers).

<comment><USER26> You could, but in order to make that reliable, you have to use a lot of other people's space storing other people's messages... It's a lot simpler to keep it reliable if the service owner owns this (this is also part of the reason the Skype supernodes moved to be company hosted)

<comment><USER28> How much replication do you need? 10x? 20x? If these are text messages that's probably less than 10KB per person per week of being offline. Delete the messages if the recipient hasn't come online in a week.

I believe you could build a highly reliable P2P offline texting app without any centralized services. I'm not sure anyone would want it and it seems difficult to monetize, but it is doable.

<comment><USER29> Messaging apps nowadays also allow you to send images and even videos.

How would you handle those? Or only allow sending text when the other person is offline?

<comment><USER28> I agree that once you start adding features like images and videos that it tips the balance more toward centralization.

> Or only allow sending text when the other person is offline?

I think that is an excellent idea.

Also I'd propose a vector-based image format with a maximum file size and fixed resolution (for online and offline messages). That way you could send drawings and diagrams without increasing the data requirements. It would also give the app a unique look and feel and would make it more difficult but not impossible for people to send hideous photographic content.

The real question to me is how many people are willing to have less features for more decentralization. I suspect that is a small number of users.

<comment><USER29> Yeah I like your vector-based image idea. It would make it look unique and still be usable.

I've already got some ideas about potential UX flows for this...

And I think it there is a big enough community that would use this kind of messaging system.

Build things that don't scale - so they say ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Here's an interesting post about the departure from the perspective of a Facebook exec: [https://www.facebook.com/notes/david-marcus/the-other- side-o...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/david-marcus/the-other-side-of-the- story/10157815319244148/)

<comment><USER31> "About connecting people". Well, and getting as many eyeballs on the newsfeed ads as (in)humanely possible. Does that count as connecting people?

<comment><USER32> Probably in the same way a company is a legal person in from of the law.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Now I find myself in the unfortunate position of defending Facebook, a site I barely use and whose founder does not to me represent the best of Silicon Valley. He took their money. He should just shut up. There was never any question about what Facebook was dealing with its data. Never. They have always been explicit about it in their user agreement. He didn't seem to mind when he took billions from them. I have an old-fashioned sense of ethics and cannot understand how someone would like that would bad-mouth the public company he benefited so richly from, when he knew all along what they were doing. There are no heroes in this story.

<comment><USER34> I think like most people who sell their business then see it multiply in size and value afterwards, hindsight is a bitch - he regrets it. He was tortured for years thinking about 'what if' he hadn't sold the company and been in control of its destiny. Rather than appreciating the position he's in, which is probably what he should be doing.

<comment><USER33> I can't read his mind so I don't know if you're right... but it sure feels that way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I get the frustration of seeing your pride and joy used in ways that you hoped to avoid. But he likely would have retained more control of WhatsApp if he stuck around and played ball. Now he has some money, zero control, and he has absolutely scorched the earth for his co-founder or anyone else who wants to minimize ads or find alternate monetization options.

<comment><USER36> Which cofounder? They've both left.

<comment><USER35> The other co-founder left later, and it's unlikely that the acrimonious departure helped.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I can't help but go back to Mark Zuckerberg's letter when Facebook was preparing to IPO:

"... we don't build services to make money; we make money to build better services.

"And we think this is a good way to build something. These days I think more and more people want to use services from companies that believe in something beyond simply maximizing profits." [1]

I mean, there was no way he was going to drop $22 billion dollars on something and not get a return. But I can't help but notice how the article depicts him as someone who is thinking more strategically, contractually, and businesslike (i.e. profit-driven) than someone who would write something like the quote above. Whatever he was then, he seems to have taken a step away from it and become... a CEO.

[1] [https://www.yahoo.com/news/mark-zuckerberg%E2%80%99s-ipo- let...](https://www.yahoo.com/news/mark-zuckerberg%E2%80%99s-ipo-letter--why- facebook-exists.html)

<comment><USER38> >I mean, there was no way he was going to drop $22 billion dollars on something and not get a return.

There's plenty of valid business reasons to spend money on ventures that aren't "net present value of cash flow projections exceed costs". There can be indirect effects like maintaining a moat - buying WhatsApp can be worthwhile simply to ensure that other companies can't use it to compete with Facebook's core business. Or there can be real option considerations. Or it can drive down the price of the complements of your core product.

<comment><USER37> Definitely, great point. For Facebook + WhatsApp, I'd bet that this is a case of Mark having a giant ad revenue hammer, and everything else that's corralling eyeballs is inevitably going to be a nail.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> If you think about it, there was no other way this could have played out. Acton (and maybe Koum) are privacy idealists, but could never have gone to the next level of philanthropy via massive wealth just by organic Whatsapp growth and revenue.

They needed the FB acquisition to supercharge their wallets, needed the pound of flesh to be demanded for the price that was paid in order to revisit their original mission, and now we're seeing Acton at least refocus on easy-to-use encrypted communications via Signal and potentially other platforms. The FB money has allowed for potentially more investments in the privacy tools sphere, if Acton continues his work in that area.

Whatsapp is a massively dominant messaging service, but the drive for privacy amongst consumers will continue to increase. It'll be interesting to see how we all communicate with the next evolution of all these apps in 10 years.

<comment><USER40> On one hand I wonder if money should really be apportioned to people who'd sell their user base to FB, like, will they make the best decisions down the road? Another part of me thinks well, better the money in a good person's hands than FB's. But you have to assume Acton et al are truly better people than FB, and still the user base is offered up as a sacrifice to that. Doesn't feel great to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> "used him"

i have little sympathy for such actors. i've known people who got rich on stock options in the '00s and then fled california while decrying the rat race. this is the same thing.

if you really mean it, donate all the money to charity, an ed foundation, or some such. i'll even forgive you for keeping 10mm for yourself. otherwise, cry me a river.

<comment><USER42> From the article (first paragraph, too):

> Brian Acton, who left Facebook a year ago — before going on to publicly bite > the hand that fed him, by voicing support for the #DeleteFacebook movement > (and donating $50M to alternative encrypted messaging app, Signal)

And:

> And for leaving a cool ~$850M in unvested stock on the table by not sticking > it out a few more months inside Zuckerberg's mothership, as co-founder Jan > Koum did.

Sounds like this actor may in fact be worthy of a little sympathy.

<comment><USER43> You left out the part where he expected and tried to get the $850M but FB's lawyers pushed back and he settled after burning bridges. $50M is 0.7% of his net worth last I checked (maybe it's changed).

Look, I'm glad they're not still at Facebook but this is hypocritical posturing. They're not giving the money back. They're crying all the way to the bank.

<comment><USER44> It specifically says he didn't settle, because he didn't want to sign an NDA.

<comment><USER43> Sorry I meant gave up after burning bridges. Their plan was always to bail before monetization kicked in and be able to say they had nothing to do with it. But you don't get a $19B valuation from Facebook for a text messaging arbitrage app without being _fully aware_ of where that money will come from. That's why they didn't forbid it, only required accelerated vesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> One does not "use" the CEO (or whatever his title was) of a billion dollar company. Either it was part of his duty and responsibility to the company or he willingly cooperated with deceiving a regulator.

To portray it otherwise is just a spin.

At least he admits to "At the end of the day, I sold my company. I am a sellout. I acknowledge that,". I'm sure it's much easy to be remorseful with a few billion dollars in the bank.

</comment><comment><USER46> ""I called her out one time," says Acton, who sensed there might be greed at play. "I was like, 'No, you don't mean that it won't scale. You mean it won't make as much money as . . . ,' and she kind of hemmed and hawed a little. And we moved on. I think I made my point. . . . They are businesspeople, they are good businesspeople. They just represent a set of business practices, principles and ethics, and policies that I don't necessarily agree with.""

Would have loved to be a fly on the wall in _that_ room!

<comment><USER47> It really does not scale. Charging users after a certain threshold of messages is a silly idea. Can you imagine if Facebook charged after a certain number of status updates and photos shared? It's not that it doesn't make as much money, it's that people would have quickly jumped ship.

<comment><USER48> > _Can you imagine if Facebook charged after a certain number of status > updates and photos shared?_

I can't, and neither can you, because it doesn't and it hasn't really been tried in a popular app.

Whether it's as obvious as you think that it doesn't scale and/or it wouldn't work, people would jump ship etc remains to be determined.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> How an individual can leave $850M on the table to prove a point blows my mind.

I'm in awe at that guy, but I can't help but think that with $850M he could have funded so many interesting projects/research.

<comment><USER50> When you have money and principles you believe in, its not that hard.

<comment><USER51> How many times have you walked away from 9 digit sums?

<comment><USER52> The same number of times i've received 10 digit sums

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> > At a meeting over the issue he said Zuckerberg also told him: "This is > probably the last time you'll ever talk to me."

I realize this was probably said in fruatration, but I think it paints a pretty clear picture of Zuckerberg's arrogance and entitlement.

<comment><USER45> I think that's a reasonable position in response from an employee trying to "activate a clause written into their contract to allow them to immediately get all their stock if the company began "implementing monetization initiatives" without their consent" .

Now whether or not he was in the right to demand it, when actually doing so I doubt anyone expected to have a working relationship after that.

<comment><USER53> In a vacuum, perhaps, but I think there's more to it than that.

Another account yesterday mentioned plans to put Kevin Systrom under a different manager that would have given him "less access to Zuckerberg." Earlier accounts described them as friendly, always seen together, etc.

It seems like Facebook is a company where access to the CEO is so tightly controlled that it's basically used as a political weapon.

<comment><USER54> > _access to the CEO is so tightly controlled that it 's basically used as a > political weapon_

This is true at almost any organization of scale. Access to top decision makers must be restricted. The people who make decisions about the restrictions, therefore, gain influence through that process. The power can be used properly or improperly. In this case, it appears to have been used properly: there was no further discussion on the matter, and the employee had shown themselves to be out of line with the CEO's strategy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Mark Zuckerberg seems to be the master of putting things in contracts that play out in his favor.

The article says they wanted a clause that granted them approval over monetization strategies. So Zuckerberg gave them some version that he knew had no teeth in order to close the acquisition. But he got exactly what he wanted in the end, without any real compromise.

This falling out with Acton and Joum seem like just another case in the long line of bad relationships: Saverin, and perhaps the Winklessvoss twins, although that "business" relationship was for the sole purpose of ripping them off.

<comment><USER56> It is not like he personally wrote those contracts! Like any mega corp, FB must be having super high priced lawyers who do the dirty work.

Hell, I am a lowly engineer in a tiny company who got screwed by a single line in a contract. I saw first hand what lawyers can do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> If I understand correctly, Zuckerberg forced Acton to hold onto his Facebook shares - and the value of those shares then doubled in a three-year period. Surely that must mollify Acton's animosity somewhat.

It reminds me of the scene in The Big Short where at one point the investors a clamoring to withdraw their money from Michael Burry's fund. They hate him and call him names, but he refuses to let them withdraw. Later when he pays out a huge profit he emails them saying, "You're welcome".

</comment><comment><USER27> > At the end of the day, I sold my company. I am a sellout. I acknowledge that

I think he's acknowledging that his company was un-monetizable and selling was obviously the best thing they could do. And 10 years later, it remains unmonetizable, that's sad.

<comment><USER35> Monetization is really hard. The '90s was filled with the wreckage of companies that couldn't get it right, with debris spreading out into the early '00s. The ad monetization model is one way to do it, and it can be rolled out to a wide variety of products, but it is unlikely to be the only model.

Business is hard, and it can take a long time and many failures to be truly innovative. I'm an engineer, but I'm a little sad that so few people with strong business backgrounds are trying new things. Maybe in another decade or two.

<comment><USER58> I guess the lesson here is to stop making a business out of burning venture capital, and start with a real business plan. There are plenty out that are building things people are willing to pay for. WhatsApp is super popular, because you're giving away the worlds 100th iteration of a chat client for free.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I find the article interesting from a cryptographic perspective--specifically have they implemented searchable encryption or such a "encrypted environment" where they able to capture more than meta-data.

These quotes specifically:

The challenge was WhatsApp's watertight end-to-end encryption, which stopped both WhatsApp and Facebook from reading messages. While Facebook didn't plan to break the encryption, Acton says, its managers did question and "probe" ways to offer businesses analytical insights on WhatsApp users in an encrypted environment.

...

When Sandberg, Facebook's COO, was asked by U.S. lawmakers in early September if WhatsApp still used end-to-end encryption, she avoided a straight yes or no, saying, "We are strong believers in encryption." A WhatsApp spokesperson confirmed that WhatsApp would begin placing ads in its Status feature next year, but added that even as more businesses start chatting to people on the platform, "messages will remain end-to-end encrypted. There are no plan

<comment><USER60> They are not that interesting. You have no way to verify if their statements about encryption are true, so you'd be nuts to bet much on assuming they are. WhatsApp being sold to an advertising company is just one fine example of why it's nuts.

In fact given the recent bill's introduced into the Australian parliament, it's irrelevant if they are true. The bill allows the government to demand they produce a version of WhatsApp with a bug that sends a copy of all data receives somewhere, and also allows them to demand they download that app via the automatic security patch mechanism. So unless there is a way to verify what software you have isn't bugged you have to assume even if it isn't now, it could well be in the future.

There are ways out of this mess, but none of them are based on taking someones word for it. Yet the "it's secure because that's what it says on the box" seems to be the most common security model people adopt. It's so clearly wrong I sometimes think I'd be less perplexed if most of the world's population started insisting water wasn't wet.

<comment><USER59> Actually a fellow on HN the other day demonstrated that you could decompile their APK and inspect the code, so you can make a pretty solid attempt to verify product statements if you have the skill and the time.

Also, I think we're cross talking about their statements--I can't divine anything specific from what they say, but their answers (esp. Sandbergs non- answer) seem supportive of other things I've seen claiming the encryption they're using is leaking business analytical information to FB on purpose (effectively undermining the lay understanding of end-end encryption).

BTW That situation in Australia is saddening.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> > At a meeting over the issue he said Zuckerberg also told him: "This is > probably the last time you'll ever talk to me."

</comment><comment><USER62> So... Basically he cashed out billions. That is ridiculous amount of money. Now he said "no" to $850 millions for moral reasons, and the moral action here is mostly that he won't work for facebook any more.

For me this sounds quite ridiculous. He already cashed out as they sold the unprofitable service for ridiculous amount of money. Facebook has to generate profit for shareholders so they have to monetize it somehow. It is quite easy for him to say "yeah I'm morally superior, thanks for the money but I don't want the product to be profitable that way you know, now when you have paid me..."

<comment><USER63> > "At the end of the day, I sold my company," Acton says. "I sold my users' > privacy to a larger benefit. I made a choice and a compromise. And I live > with that every day."

Seems like he's aware but Forbes is desperately trying to spin it differently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Are Matrix clients reliable and fast enough to use them? I am looking forwards to install them to my family but last time I tried they were a little bit unresponsive.

<comment><USER65> I switched from WhatsApp to Riot, connecting to the public matrix.org server, and it's working well for me. The app is pretty nice. It looks like any other modern chat app.

The end-to-end encryption had some issues earlier (last year?), losing my encryption keys and making all messages in the conversation unreadable, but it seems to be working well in the latest version. It still warns you that encryption is experimental when you enable it, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> I have just deleted WhatsApp from my phone. I am not really sure though what to replace it with for the occasional foreign phone calls.

<comment><USER67> Signal would be the obvious choice.

<comment><USER68> An app people actually use would be a more obvious choice.

<comment><USER69> _This is anecdotal._

Out of my 356 contacts only 46 are on Telegram and among them 11 were seen recently (let's assume they still have the app). In last few weeks only 8 of them replied to my messages or read them so I'd say only 8 are actively using it (I checked with the remaining :P).

On Signal, there are just 13 and only 3 replied to me in last few weeks. All of those 3 were coerced by me into installing it on their phones after I deleted my WhatsApp account recently. So basically none of my contacts was actively using Signal (the remaining 10 didn't even receive the messages).

No one was on Matrix/Riot and no one installed it even after my repeated evangelistic encouragements and promise of full time tech support. Can't blame them as I myself find it difficult to use the service/app for any non- Slack/non-IRC kinda usage i.e person to person messaging.

One day I checked just for testing and more people are on [https://hike.in](https://hike.in) than on Telegram from my contact book. That was surprising. Didn't try any further and uninstalled it.

Almost everyone was on WhatsApp and almost everyone was on Fb Messenger too when I used them.

My contact book is very generic - obviously not the very tech savvy specific circle but a decent mix professions and backgrounds. Also, I have keep my contact book regularly trimmed and limited otherwise it would have been a lot more than 356.

So, if I have to choose WhatsApp's replacement based on this criteria then there's really no other choice sadly :( Though I do have some hopes from Acton's $50 million.

PS. I had checked one day and around 20 are on Apple devices (shows iMessage option for them but a lot of them might be on macOS) and except 3-4 of them none use iMessage at all.

<comment><USER70> >One day I checked just for testing and more people are on [https://hike.in](https://hike.in) than on Telegram from my contact book. That was surprising. Didn't try any further and uninstalled it.

This reminds me of Viber, a local success in the Eastern Europe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> > _Acton said he tried to push Facebook towards an alternative, less privacy > hostile business model for WhatsApp — suggesting a metered-user model such > as by charging a tenth of a penny after a certain large number of free > messages were used up._

> _But that "very simple business" idea was rejected outright by Facebook COO > Sheryl Sandberg, who he said told him "it won't scale"._

> _"I was like, 'No, you don't mean that it won't scale. You mean it won't > make as much money as…,'_

This doesn't scale because people would ditch WhatsApp in favour of a messaging app that didn't restrict the amount of messages you can send behind a paywall.

I know that hating Facebook is in vogue, but frankly with that line of thinking he sounds like would have made poor business/product decisions.

</comment><comment><USER71> Zuckerberg: Take the money.

Acton: I'm not taking it.

Z: Just take it.

A: No!

Z: Look, I don't give a fuck, but the boys'll feel better.

A: Fuck their feelings!

Z: [Brian], we're a team.

A: A team? You guys are fucking insane. I'll go back to the Valley, I'll [create messaging apps]. It can't be like this.

Z: It is. I'm sorry, but it is. It's ugly, but it's necessary.

A: I became a [developer] to put away dealers and criminals, not to be one.

Z: You sound just like me. I know what you're going through and feeling. You're scared.

A: I'm not.

Z: Yes, you are. Everyone goes through that the first time. I did. The sooner you match what's in your head...with what's in the real world...the better you'll feel.

Z: In this business...you gotta have dirt on you to be trusted. When all this is behind you, a whole other world will open up for you.

Z: I walk a higher path, son.

Z: I have the keys to all the doors.

</comment><comment><USER72> Smart guys.

At some point in the very near future you are going to end up rotting in a grave. 850M will not do you a lick of good then.

Live your life, don't obsess over the zeros.

</comment><comment><USER73> Why are people acting like this is a big deal? His net worth is $3.6B (not sure if that includes the $850M he walked away from).

Giving up $850M when you already have $2B doesn't seem like much of a sacrifice, and is unlikely to change his life _at all_.

Giving up $850K when you have $2M would be a bigger sacrifice than giving up $850M when you already have $2B.

<comment><USER74> I'd say it's a big deal because $850M donated to a worthy cause (e.g., GiveWell) could have made a big difference in the world. I've suffered far more for far less.

<comment><USER73> If you're going to call him out for not staying at FB long enough to get the $850M to donate it somewhere, why not also call him out for not donating most of his $3B fortune? Surely he could scrape by on even a paltry $1B.

What's the difference from telling someone to stick it out long enough to vest more stock versus telling him to just donate some portion of his already vast fortune?

<comment><USER75> It would be good if he did either or both of those things. The original question was why giving up $850,000,000 is a big deal when you're already super-rich. The answer is that, even if it won't affect your living standards, it's still worth $850,000,000 to the people you could use it to help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> David Marcus responded to Brian's interview (Defended Zuck heavily): [https://www.facebook.com/notes/david-marcus/the-other- side-o...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/david-marcus/the-other-side-of-the- story/10157815319244148/)

</comment><comment><USER77> Right. I have been in a disturbing number of these fucking companies.

The value attached to "I am going to absolutely lose my shit if I have to put up with this for another second" is underrated IMO.

He had FU money already. They tried to put more on him. He balked. QED. Mental health is a thing.

</comment><comment><USER78> Please note that it's a lot easier to walk away from $850M if you already own billions.

</comment><comment><USER79> A genuine question. How are ads possible in WhatsApp if it's end to end encrypted?

<comment><USER80> The ads won't be targeted based on your messages. They'll just be targeted based on all the other info FB has on you.

<comment><USER81> what if you don't use Facebook and only use WhatsApp? not much information besides contacts and rough location

<comment><USER80> They can do quite a lot with your phone number and contacts: [https://gizmodo.com/facebook-is-giving-advertisers-access- to...](https://gizmodo.com/facebook-is-giving-advertisers-access-to-your- shadow-co-1828476051)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> I'm so sick of the self-righteous moralizing and bullshit by the tech elites and the news companies that help push that narrative.

Brian Acton didn't create whatsapp to "do good". Facebook wasn't created to "do good". Google wasn't formed to "do good". People create companies to make money. Why is this so hard for people to understand?

The guy spent 3 years creating a silly messaging app and growing a userbase and sold it for $20 billion. It's like winning the lottery. Maybe he feels guilty. But stop with the patting of one's back and pretending to fallen saints.

He knew well enough what selling whatsapp ( a company that didn't make a single penny ) to facebook for $20 billion meant. Monetization. I would have also sold a shitty messaging app I worked on for 3 years to FB for $20 billion. But I wouldn't go around pretending I was a saint who got hoodwinked afterwards.

Besides, even if the guy didn't sell to FB, he would have had to monetize and sellout eventually because he had venture capitalists to satisfy.

These slimeballs are trying to eat the cake and have it too.

<comment><USER83> We live in a society that requires money just to survive. How can _any_ venture not have money as a goal?

Therefore, it's always _at least_ about money but probably _more_ than that. And when you consider the time investment and risk associated with a startup, it might be a loss if you're only considering the money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> Anyone get the feeling that Acton is, for want of a better term, one of us?

I feel like you'd see him here on HN advocating for the moral tech choices he's actually made, at great personal expense?

</comment><comment><USER85> Would be re$pectable if this fellow used his FB winning$ in a con$tructive way or return them to Zuck.

Whining about thing$ after FB made you a billionaire just makes you look like you need a therapi$t.

</comment><comment><USER86> Why do any of you care about this?

</comment><comment><USER87> anyone notice the picture they used. The founder are standing behind an artistic rendition of a fiery bird... somewhat akin to phoenix. Which is written in elixir. Which is what whatsapp was written in.

</comment><comment><USER88> It's quite interesting how so many comments here are pro Facebook, anti Whatsapp founders. How big is Facebook's astroturfing department? (Just a theory. But it seems a bit glaring to not point it out.)

<comment><USER89> My thought is most of the commenters don't see the big picture of what happened but just what they want to see.

</comment></comment><comment><USER90> The Four Seasons is technically in East Palo Alto -.-

</comment><comment><USER91> He left $850M on the table? After $3.8B? Wow.

</comment><comment><USER92> Post-acquisition morality is tiring.

<comment><USER93> The moral pangs suffered by the filthy rich, concerning the means by which they became wealthy is as old as time. Sadly it works. How many people remember Alfred Nobel as the "merchant of death" and how many remember him for the Nobel Prizes? If they were more than trivially bothered they're always free to divest themselves of their fortunes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> What does whatsapp uses right now to make money? From what i know i dont see any ads there

<comment><USER94> WhatsApp up until now was not pivoting to a full social network. That, on its own, was worth a lot to Facebook ; if WhatsApp did and was successful, it would have cost Facebook much more than 20B, perhaps closer to 100B in value.

Now that FB got their money's worth of "WhatsApp not competing", they want to actually profit of it.

Also, whatsapp's Interaction and name database ("metadata") is super useful to Facebook. Likely not $1B useful, but still a database FB would otherwise pay millions for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER95> You must be either the most naieve person on the planet or a complete moron to sell your company to an advertising company and not expect them to put advertising in your product. Of course he wasn't noble enough to turn down the money in the first place and turn his product into a big buisness by himself. WhatsApp was literally just a user grab based on a ToDo list app idea released at the right time. Guy should spend Facebooks money on some therapy and move on with his life.

<comment><USER96> > You must be either the most naieve person on the planet or a complete moron > to sell your company to an advertising company and not expect them to put > advertising in your product.

I know both Acton & Koum from Yahoo!. To describe either as "naive" or "a complete moron" is ridiculous. If that is the depth of your thought, it would explain why you're writing angry comments on a message board while they are retired billionaires.

<comment><USER97> I mean, there are plenty of billionaires who make ridiculous statements from time to time. Donald Trump being one of them, for example.

WhatsApp's founders are awesome! But Acton shouldn't be surprised that FB behaved as they did. He is smart and knows that publicly he should act surprised.

<comment><USER98> > I mean, there are plenty of billionaires who make ridiculous statements from > time to time. Donald Trump being one of them, for example.

I think it was established during the election that he isn't a billionaire. He also makes ridiculous statements on a weekly if not hourly basis, so "from time to time" is misleading.

<comment><USER97> I think your analysis is like disagreeing about the salinity of different oceans. Either way, they're all pretty damn salty compared to potable water.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER99> SavedYouAClick: because he is a billionaire.

I am amazed at just the plain stupidity of some of the writers of well nown papers.

<comment><USER100> Even if you're a billionaire - $850M is not chump change. I would have a non- trivial time walking away from that much money no matter how much I was worth.

<comment><USER101> I would hope that someone worth 3.6 billion would have a much easier time walking away from 850 million than someone worth 1 million would walking away from 200 thousand.

To violate one's moral code should surely be worth more than 200k, if they're already taken care of financially.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER102> You sell something for billions of dollars to a giant entity who makes money by selling user data, you should realize they will want to make money to pay for those billions. Most of the time such a purchase results in the original founders departing. You may as well leave at first opportunity. You can always build something else, now with your own money.

<comment><USER103> This comment doesn't add anything that isn't explained in the article more than once by Acton himself.</comment></comment>


Atmel's flexible touch sensors will revolutionize mobile device design  - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/electronics/125325-atmels-flexible-touch-sensors-a-revolution-in-device-design <comment><USER2> keyword 'sensor'. I watched the video and was impressed by the display but I had to keep reminding myself they are just talking about the touch sensor.</comment>