Show HN: Firesub – Reusable checklists for teams [MVP] - <AUTHOR> http://firesub.com/

<comment><USER2> I'm confused, is this ready to be used or not? I was excited to play around with it so I signed up, only to be hit with a 'still in development' notification.

Typically, MVP implies a product that's ready to be use. This appears to be more of a landing page teaser.

Regardless, looks like a cool service, and congrats on your progress thus far!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, it was never my intention to trick anyone into beleving it was a fully functioning service. Thats why I put the [MVP] tag in the title. There is of coures different views on what a MVP is. Sorry again if you feel tricked. You can email me at email@example.com and I will remove your mail address so you don't get a email when this is ready to be tested if you want.

That being said, thanks for your encuragement, it helps! =)

<comment><USER3> "MVP" => Minimum Viable Product (at least here). You just showed the "M" part. I don't see how it's actually possible to misunderstand the fact that it should be a bit more than that.

<comment><AUTHOR> You might be right, but I could not come up with a anything better to put in the title then MVP, you have anything better I will change the title.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hi Frej, your MVP landing page is beautifully designed, but it it does not tell me why I would need your product, or really what it is. There are lists and lists of features, but no demos or examples to explain why they are useful. Sell benefits, not features. Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, thanks for your feedback, appreciate it, you are right, I fell in the classical trap of feature selling. I was aiming for a video to showcase the app, but it would have been a lot of work just to validate a simple idea: is this useful, do people need this?

<comment><USER5> "but it would have been a lot of work just to validate a simple idea: is this useful, do people need this?"

I would say the opposite. You could easily do rapid experiments to validate the idea before investing any development time, figuring out why you are building the product, and how people would use it. It's the whole purpose of UX experimentation and idea validation before investing code time. Not that I'm saying you wasted time, but rapid experimentation, prototyping and storyboard mockups is the opposite of a lot of work, its rapid validation that can help you start off on the right foot. I recommend this video "creating a culture of rapid experimentation [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-WLX8gc8WY"](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-WLX8gc8WY")

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, I missed your comment.

The initial plan was to release a viedeo of the app, like Drew Houston did with Dropbox. But in my mind the video needed to be perfect, not showing any signs of bugs or misshaps, so I got a bit stuck with that. So instead I decided to go with a good landing page and screenshots insted. Thats way I thought it would be a lot of work in making a video demo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I created something similar a few years ago: [http://openhercules.com/](http://openhercules.com/) . It supports reusing lists through an explicit clone. Source is at [https://github.com/flyingmachine/openhercules](https://github.com/flyingmachine/openhercules) .

</comment><comment><USER7> Looks great! Well done!

Just a quick comment about the first heading: "Every team have recurrent tasks to perform" doesn't sound right to me. I'd probably put: "Every team has recurring tasks to perform" \- or at least replace the 'have' with a 'has' :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much!

I have change the heading. Now it has has in it. =)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'v captured a screencast [0], literally a minute ago, of how app works, it's the worst quality ever but it showcases the idéa and the problem the app solves.

[0] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ivw7XEI8xDs](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ivw7XEI8xDs)

</comment><comment><USER8> If someone wants an existing but offline only checklists app you can try mine: Fast Lists [0]. It includes options for nesting and hiding the already ticked items so it can be used with large lists.

I haven't added synchronisation yet as I'm not sure the return would be worth the time and I'm also concerned about conflict resolution and data loss.

The OP has a picture of a cockpit which would imply a safety critical environment. I would think long and hard before selling my app in that way especially for an online service.

[0] [https://itunes.apple.com/app/fast-lists-checklists- for/id481...](https://itunes.apple.com/app/fast-lists-checklists- for/id481282554)

<comment><AUTHOR> Your app looks nice, good work.

When it comes to your valid concern about the safety of pilots using a always- online application I agree with you, that would not be very smart, but nowadays there is technical soulutions around this problem [0]. Alsow it is a hint to everyone who have read the book "The checklist manifesto" by Atul Gawande, I recomend it!

[0] [http://diveintohtml5.info/offline.html](http://diveintohtml5.info/offline.html)

Edit: Sounded to harsh, not my intention.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Looking forward to seeing what the first/final version of this looks like and offers. Definitely need this kind of service a lot. I was thinking about something like this ever since I heard them speaking of a social checklist app on [http://techzinglive.com/page/1419/250-tz-discussion-rise- of-...](http://techzinglive.com/page/1419/250-tz-discussion-rise-of-the-human- robot) . Actually I would strongly think about adding a way to share and find checklists, maybe even a checklist store for larger checklists (e.g. conference planning) instead of having to come up with every checklist from scratch.

Good luck and endurance!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Alex,

Thanks for the feedback.

The very first prototype had a discovery feature where you could publish your own checklist under categories, much like the App store but within the app and for checklists. I decided early on that it would be a version 2 feature, because what good does it make to be able to easily find new checklists if completeing them is not "butter-smoth", another concern is of course that the "store" would be exceptionally empty in the beginning. But the featuer is still in the "future features"-list.

Thanks for the enguragement, it gives energy! =)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you like the idea of this sort of thing, you might also check out [https://github.com/csquared/checkcheckit](https://github.com/csquared/checkcheckit). It lets you make checklists in Markdown, execute code in code blocks, and share progress live on the web with your team.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have seen it, and it's nice and a fun idea but for the ordinary man or women, well, I really don't need to say more. =)

<comment><USER10> Yeah. It works really well on a dev team. We use it in our team all the time for things before we transition them into a fully-automated process.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I really like this notion after reading "The Checklist Manifesto" and seeing how important recurring checklists are.

<comment><AUTHOR> Me too, recurring checklists is a very powerful tool.

A little "easter egg" is the backgrounds that comes after the first image in the header. Everyone who have read "The Checklist Manifesto" will understand. =)

<comment><USER11> Haha I noticed that!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I'm the creator of Firesub.

Hopfully you like the idea. I'm very happy to answer any feedback you guys have.

<comment><USER12> Clicking "Show more" doesn't show me an example. Could it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry of it is unclear, it is suposed to scroll you down so you can read more about the app, what browser do you run on?

<comment><USER12> It scrolls down, but I never see an actual example of the product.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a misstake I'v made, to not provide a demo. I'v recorded a quick screencast [0] how it looks and works that you can view.

[0] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ivw7XEI8xDs](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ivw7XEI8xDs)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Big hat tip!

I feel that to do apps are all very lacking in this respect, the reusable aspect.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I do to. Also I belive checklists in companies and teams are under used. There is a lot of great To Do apps out there but nothing specially design for reuse within teams and organizations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It should be titled MVC => Minimum Viable Concept

<comment><AUTHOR> That would have been a more accurate description. I can´t change the title now, the edit button is gone.</comment></comment>


Is gravity not actually a force? Forcing theory to meet experiments - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/04/is-gravity-a-result-of-thermodynamics.ars <comment><USER2> I really don't understand the question "is gravity a force?" It reminds me of the Feynman story:

        > "Say, Pop, I noticed something. When I pull the wagon,
        > the ball rolls to the back of the wagon. And when I'm
        > pulling it along and I suddenly stop, the ball rolls
        > to the front of the wagon. Why is that?
        >
        > "That, nobody knows," he said. "The general principle is
        > that things which are moving tend to keep on moving, and
        > things which are standing still tend to stand still, unless
        > you push them hard. This tendency is called 'inertia,' but
        > nobody knows why it's true." Now, that's a deep
        > understanding. He didn't just give me the name.

I don't get why this is "a deep understanding." Why should someone have to have some deep reason for believing that something at rest won't spontaneously begin moving? Should you also need a profound explanation for why things don't spontaneously change their mass or sprout kangaroo legs and start singing "La Bamba?"

And what does it mean to ask if "gravity" is not actually a "force?" The idea of a "force" is just an abstraction we use to describe our observations. How is it a deep question to ask whether we give gravity the label of "force" or not?

<comment><USER3> > I really don't understand the question "is gravity a force?"

The question is not "is gravity a force?". The question is "What is gravity?"

An accepted answer, what I was taught in school, and what I would answer if you asked me is "it's a force". And labeling something as "a force" has huge implications for people that know what that label means.

If a four year old asked me "What is gravity?", I'd know better than to give him a label, because he wouldn't know what a force is from school. Obviously.

If it turns out gravity is not really a force -- if modelling gravity as a force breaks down at some point -- that's a good fundamental result. It is a falsification of the theory "Gravity is a force". (So the line of thought goes: "What is gravity?", "It is a force!", "Is gravity really a force?", "Perhaps not!")

How is this not helping us attaining a deep understanding? How is this not advancing science? How is this any different from any science?

<comment><USER4> > If it turns out gravity is not really a force ...

It definitely isn't. The word "force" implies a Newtonian model for physics. Under general relativity, gravity isn't seen as a force but a consequence of curved space-time.

The title was probably chosen by an editor without deep knowledge of the subject. It doesn't accurately describe the article's content either.

<comment><USER3> I humbly bow to anybody's superior knowledge of physics.

To clarify, I wasn't actually trying to say anything about physics, just about science. So it would have been better phrased as a hypothetical; If we assume that gravity is currently best modeled as a force, why is it valuable (nay, essential) to question whether or not it actually is a force? I hope I answered that hypothetical properly :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I thought Einstein said that over 100 years ago. From my understanding gravity is not a force but a curvature of space time, did I misread something?

The really interesting bit about black holes and universes encoding information on the surface is this: The Chandrasekhar limit radius for a mass equal to the weight of the universe, once you figure that out, look up the best known estimate for the radius of the universe.

<comment><USER6> Or in other words, a black hole is something that light never escapes from, and the universe is also something that light never escapes from.

Ignoring hawking radiation of course...

... unless the cosmic microwave background is the equivalent of the hawking radiation given off by black holes (note: for the picky, before you object, consider that hawking radiation consists of when one part of a short lived mutually annihilating pair of particles falls into the event horizon and the other falls out (hence gets radiated away) and thus from the point of view of those inside the black hole it would appear as those there was a constant rain of particles falling in... which I'm equating here to the microwave background noise), which would imply that our universe is shrinking...

...unless it implies that our universe is getting bigger, maybe if our universe is a black hole with hawking 'radiation' then on the other side of the 'universal event horizon' things work a bit differently and it is matter which is more likely to fall in, not anti-matter...

... which would explain why baryonic matter in this universe has an overwhelming tendency towards matter instead of anti-matter, which is one of those really big still outstanding questions in science...

<comment><USER7> Did you read this somewhere or are these your own thoughts? I'd like a citation or to subscribe to your newsletter, respectively. Very intriguing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What's remarkable about this is that it uses the one winning strategy we've got in quantum gravity today.

In QG we've got two things: (i) general principle such as unitarity and the holographic principle, and (ii) specific models such as loop quantum gravity, string theory models, supergravity, etc.

Results based on type (ii) information are always going to be iffy because the detailed models are all about what happens on the Planck scale or inside a black hole so experimental confirmation is going to be difficult -- it may be hard or impossible to prove or disprove any one of these models.

Type (i) results, however, will hold no matter what is correct on the type (ii) level. Because we're not assuming a huge amount of "superstructure", the results are much more intellectually convincing than type (ii) results -- and with more certainty on the theoretical front, there's more "gravity" in the confrontation of theory and experiment...

(We accomplish very little by experimentally disproving any particular type (ii) model because we've got 100 others to take its place)

<comment><USER9> Your last bit reminded me of something one of my professors said. I remember it as "Hmm, our theory didn't pan out at the predicted 7 TeV? Must be at 14."

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Redefining the laws of physics in terms of information theory is not new, but so far as I know hasn't been tried and expressed well with gravity.

Certainly all of QM can be done in terms of information, and I think Seth Lloyd is working on this right now. Cool to see a new take on gravity though.

Also, it's neat to think that black holes are deterministic from their surface, though it's sort of required if you force thermo on it. After all, if the information's beyond the event horizon, it's not really in our universe, and thus violates thermo assumptions about closed systems. Sort of a case of mashing theory against the universe.

-Cd

<comment><USER11> This same guy that the article discusses, Erik Verlinde, has formulated a "holographic" theory of gravity, which made some waves about a year ago.

<comment><USER12> I hope that pun was intentional

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > it has not gone through peer review

I think this is really all we need to know.

<comment><USER14> It has not _yet_ gone through peer review. It's a long process. I doubt that this is one those "scientists" who deliberately avoid peer review.

Ars regularly do this, discuss papers that are "hot off the press" and have not been fully peer reviewed yet. This is simply the reality of following the bleeding edge of science. They are always up front about it, I don't see a problem.

<comment><USER13> The problem I have with this, as a reviewer, is that an amazing amount of junk gets submitted to journals with no hope of passing peer review. With your standard, all this junk is merely things "hot off the press". As to whether this is "one of those scientists", I don't know (probably not). But the article hints that his idea has _already_ been falsified, and yet it still goes through with publishing about it breathlessly!

Peer review is a more important standard than you take it to be. For every announced-but-not-yet-peer-reviewed revolutionary discovery -- Wiles's proof of Fermat's Last Theorem comes to mind -- there are a _massive_ number of P!=NP papers "awaiting peer review", every one of which is dead wrong, but each of which will excite some moron in the press to write about it.

The press has such an incredibly bad track record at this that my personal estimate, based on the performance of similar breathless "hot off the presses" articles I have read, is that without reading the article there is over a 95% probability that this paper won't pass peer review. Once I _read_ the article, based on the fact that half of it is a sheepish admission that there are problems with the theorem, I think that this prior probability was more than confirmed.

With a probability this low, I see no reason to waste my time reading breathless articles like this.

<comment><USER15> I don't think you're giving enough credit to the author of this summary by calling it "breathless." His conclusion is:

 _This is how science works. Ideas are proposed, they are backed up, they are shot down. Over time, it would not surprise me to see Verlinde defend his work. Perhaps Kobakhidze's derivation and its extension to the microscopic case is incorrect. Perhaps Verlinde will revisit his original work to revise how microscopic cases should be handled. Whatever happens, science will move on; time, further arguments, and experiments will be the ultimate arbiter of which drastically different view of reality is correct._

I think this article has two purposes: explain a new, untested theory, and demonstrate how science works in practice. He links to, and discusses, two papers that refute the theory. You call that a "sheepish admission," but I think that was one of his goals.

<comment><USER14> Ars deal with this in the _first paragraph:_

 _"In this article, we are going to look at a manuscript that purports to overturn hundreds of years of accepted ideas about gravity, and use it as an illustration of how controversial ideas are dealt with in modern physics."_

I don't think you can be any more up front than that. It's not a sheepish admission, it's the whole point of the article. Ars are trying to highlight exactly the problems you're talking about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Could light be like a harmonic overtone of gravity at a much higher frequency, with both being vibrations/ waves in the ether of space-time?

/serious-face

</comment><comment><USER17> Gravity is not a force; gravity is a hoax. I am glad that physics establishment finally is realizing this: <http://science1.wordpress.com/2008/12/25/dear-physicist/>

<comment><USER18> That's certainly an unorthodox view. As far as I can make out from that post and the rest of your blog, you seem to reject Newtonian gravitation in favor of Kepler's laws of planetary orbits. How does your model account for the perturbations that are observed in three-body and more complex systems?

For instance, right now there is a satellite called SOHO at the Sun-Earth L_1 Lagrangian point. Why do you say that Newtonian gravity is a myth, when the existence of such an orbit violates Kepler's third law but is in perfect agreement with calculations according to the Newtonian model?

<comment><USER19> <OFF TOPIC> There's a live feed from that satellite with some interesting moments - [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpNyAtU-3Tc&feature=share](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpNyAtU-3Tc&feature=share)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This won't help me learn a new technology, build my startup quicker, or even introduce me to others who are trying.

But it is pseudo-science babble that I might find in an e-mail forward.

Not Hacker News.

(Hit my 365 days yesterday so I am officially "allowed" to complain.)

<comment><USER21> The guidelines suggest different criteria for what constitutes "Hacker News" [1], specifically the first paragraph: "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."

Also in the guidelines: "Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did."

[1]: <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html></comment></comment>


Anti-depressants: Major study finds they work - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-43143889 <comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16434618](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16434618).

</comment><comment><USER3> > meta-analysis

I knew a lot of other grad students, myself included, who would throw anything with meta-analysis in the introduction in the trash. You cannot deal with controls across completely different studies in meaningful ways.

I'm also hesitant about anything that tries to claim things definitively without question. Science is about continually questioning your axioms. Without [doubt]([https://khanism.org/science/doubt/](https://khanism.org/science/doubt/)) there is no progress.

As someone who has been on various anti-depressants, I will say that some of them "worked" .. but the side effects were quite high. _Working_ only lasted the first few weeks with several different SSRIs. Eventually the side effects ended up being worse than the treatment.

I found the most effective thing for me was simply a really good therapist. She did try to recommend drugs to me again after I had quit, but she did respect my wishes to not be on them. I feel that having someone who really showed me my options and truly helped examine negative thinking patterns helped a lot more than the drugs ever did.

That being said, I know people who say they'd be in serious trouble or dead without SSRIs. It's a tough line to talk about. I personally would rather not ever be on them again. Dulling the pain for me also meant dulling life.

There are trade offs and we need to talk about them and have full discussions on the consequences of mind alternating drugs. When things are written into pure absolutes, it is a means of killing real discussion and dialogue.

</comment><comment><USER4> Reposting from the other thread about the study.

>"We excluded quasi-randomised trials and trials that were incomplete or included 20% or more of participants with bipolar disorder, psychotic depression, or treatment-resistant depression."

Wikipedia defines treatment resistant depression as "cases of major depressive disorder that do not respond adequately to appropriate courses of at least two antidepressants."

Maybe I'm unfamiliar with study methodology, but doesn't this undermine the study's conclusion? It's essentially stating that forms of deppresesion that respond well to antidepressants respond well to antidepressants.

<comment><USER2> Please don't repost across threads. It makes merging them much more of a pain. If there are two discussions going on about the same thing, you're welcome to let us know at email@example.com.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> For me this paper fires of the typical warning signals for antidepressant studies.

>It should also be noted that some of the adverse effects of antidepressants occur over a prolonged period, meaning that positive results need to be taken with great caution, because the trials in this network meta-analysis were of short duration.

Issue one for me due to the typically long effect of depression. There is little to no assistance to coming off of antidepressants. For me personally even on a moderately ineffective dosage, the withdrawal symptoms are nearly incapacitating.

>The median duration of the acute treatment was 8 weeks (IQR 6–8).

The effects of long term depressive disorders seem to be essentially unstudied. I can't say I'm a valid source, like most people commenting this comes from a place of subjective personal experience, however with a median outcome time of 8 weeks this seems almost pointless to me?

>The great majority of patients had moderate-to-severe major depressive disorder

We're talking about a greater than middle ground level of depressive disorders and the study outcomes are judged at the 8 week mark. While admirable the study to me seems to just exemplify the fire and forget attitude towards depression in most developed countries. The costs are astronomical and these costs are not simply due to 8 weeks of treatment.

>Our primary outcomes were efficacy (response rate measured by the total number of patients who had a reduction of ≥50% of the total score on a standardised observer-rating scale for depression)

Considering it's a greater than 50% reduction, that appears to be a considerable enough reduction to assume the full recovery of the patient? However with all the numbers around costs etc. It seems a 50% reduction in 8 weeks, while great on paper, doesn't amount to much more than a slightly comforting silver lining to a storm cloud. Perhaps you won't be dead but you'll feel like it forever.

I'm writing this from a place of great personal distress in response to my so far completely ineffectual treatment after over a decade of attempted treatment and I simply cannot put faith in these papers and especially not these headlines. So apologies if my comment comes of as arrogant, incorrect or just plain offensive. I'm still in my early 20s and full of angst and regret.

The headlines remind me of the countless comments that tell me things will get better while I watch my life fall to pieces around me as I drain the finances and time of my already struggling family and partner who have to come to terms equally as I do that while 'major study finds they work', myself and my father continue to see little to no improvement in our quality of life.

Personal feelings aside, to summarize, I simply cannot see this paper as anything more than egotistical numbers surrounding psychiatric medication that has been the topic of debate among medical professionals regarding who is right, rather than who it helps.

Thanks for reading.</comment>


Anonymous shell companies buying American real estate - <AUTHOR> https://www.revealnews.org/article/unmasking-the-secret-landlords-buying-up-america/ <comment><USER3> > All-cash transactions have come to account for a quarter of all residential > real estate purchases, "totaling hundreds of billions of dollars > nationwide," the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network – the financial crimes > unit of the federal Treasury Department, also known as FinCEN – noted in a > 2017 news release. Thanks to the Bank Secrecy Act, a 1970 anti-money- > laundering law, the agency is able to learn who owns many of these > properties. In high-cost cities such as New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles > and Miami, it's flagged over 30% of cash purchases as suspicious > transactions. But FinCEN also cites this bill to hide this information from > the public, leaving the American people increasingly in the dark about who > owns their cities.

> For journalists, it requires undertaking a tremendous investigative effort > to find the real owner of even one property, let alone millions.

</comment><comment><USER4> Just charge a vacancy tax like Vancouver does.

[https://vancouver.ca/home-property-development/empty- homes-t...](https://vancouver.ca/home-property-development/empty-homes- tax.aspx)

<comment><USER5> And then the owners can do what they did in Vancouver and rent the properties out to students for a couple months before tax time, claim the lots aren't vacant and avoid the tax, then jack up the rent so high they're forced to move.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-04-16/college-k...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-04-16/college- kids-are-living-like-kings-in-vancouver-s-empty-mansions)

[https://www.theglobeandmail.com/real-estate/vancouver/in- van...](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/real-estate/vancouver/in-vancouver- empty-units-evade-new-tax-amid-fuzzy-definitions/article38309993/)

<comment><USER6> Couldn't you just tax based on a percentage of the year a house sits vacant?

<comment><USER7> Even better, just aggressively tax owners based on the land value. This requires them to either eat high costs for their speculation, or use it for income-producing purposes (someplace to live or someplace to work).

<comment><USER8> > just aggressively tax owners based on the land value.

What about old people who bought the house long time back when it was cheap but dont have good source of income to pay the inflated tax?

<comment><USER9> Then they can cash out, realize their gains, buy a modest bungalow, and live out their golden years in style. Seems fine.

<comment><USER10> That "modest bungalow" might be 50 kilometers away. These "old folks" lose their entire local social network, and perhaps have to buy a car.

<comment><USER11> a car that they might not even be able to drive.

I never understood why people consider equity to be essentially equivalent to liquid money.

<comment><USER12> Because home equity is highly liquid. You can refinance your mortgage (and take money out), or take out a reverse mortgage (which pays you monthly in exchange for eventual ownership), or a home equity loan. Tons of ways to turn your home equity into cash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is not just a phenomenon of titans, there are plenty of mom-and-pop operations too. I worked with someone who got in a fight in the office with her father over the phone. He was pissed she wouldn't accept a $250,000 deposit into her US account from her uncle's account (his brother) in China. The goal was to buy a house in the name of her cousin in LA.

<comment><USER14> Majority are likely small-time landlords, local investors, and etc, as it is very easy to set up an LLC. Also, I wonder if HNers describe their startups as "anonymous shell companies"?

<comment><USER15> Honestly property ownership being default-public seems like a weird anachronism. Why should anyone who has my address be able to tell if I own the property?

I haven't looked into the exact details as I've never bought a house but from what I can gather I'd want to wrap it in an LLC.

Also FWIW the Sean Hannity example in the article seems like a weird strawman conflating consumer protection laws with "name and shame" accountability. If it's wrong to evict someone for XYZ reason, that should be protected by the law, not by fear of being "named" as the landlord. [TBC I am no fan of Sean Hannity.]

<comment><USER14> > Honestly property ownership being default-public seems like a weird > anachronism

Land registry is a necessary function of local government. But this is one of those things which was historically only available within a government office, and now can be found in a second on the internet.

Personally I would be perfectly okay if my local government required disclosure of the personal ownership of LLC property owners. But I have no idea if that's constitutional or legal under federal laws.

<comment><USER16> >But this is one of those things that was historically only available within a government office

If you want to know where a person lived pre-internet, you looked them up in a phone book, which is substantially less privacy preserving than looking up the owner of a house.

Well, post-internet, 2FA has been leaked to advertisers.

<comment><USER14> I was typing something in response, but I think the best advice is advocating mental health services. Sorry if that violates the rules.

<comment><USER16> Don't worry, Trump tweets assist in my mental stability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why does it matter if owner is known or not known?

Person or entity wants to keep invested in real estate to protect assets against market fluctuations and frivolous lawsuits and it turns that real estate is a great investment.

Why is that wrong?

As long as person/entity complies with all laws (including whatever - <USER2> housing tax?) - it shouldn't matter.

FinCEN _has the right to know_ and it does, but it hides this info from public because probably some prominent political figures are in play here.

<comment><USER18> It's not wrong for an individual to choose an investment vehicle that aligns to their overall strategy.

However in an overall social sense, I do think that residential property investment in itself is wrong because I view housing as a utility and a basic necessity along the lines of water, healthcare, fire/police services and internet.

The issue is actually a simple trade off - whether it's more important to ensure people can own their own homes, or that people are allowed to use real estate as an investment.

I don't blame individual investors for this, but I do support the idea of introducing laws to limit property speculation. Bear in mind that I'm from Australia, where property investment has become a cancer that has drawn money away from productive assets (like startups) and into property, which is relatively speaking non-productive rent-seeking (outside of its effect on the construction and design industries). There's no net output from acquiring debt to buy a house so that you can do nothing but sit on it and flip it three years later for profit.

<comment><USER7> You should check out Georgism/Land Value Tax if you're not already familiar with it. This comment is spot on.

<comment><USER19> Amend to that. Pity it is not better known. "homeownership" is such a rotten ideology in the US and has led to so many problems.

<comment><USER20> I'm very sympathetic to Georgism, but you all seem to have taken a wrong turn somewhere and ended up in a discussion about the real estate ownership anonymity.

<comment><USER21> Georgism won't work very well if you can't work out who owns the land or if it is owned by offshort corporations.

<comment><USER20> Of course it will. You just need to charge the land value tax to the owning entity. The same is true now for any taxes, fees or fines regarding that property.

If those are not paid, government can seize and auction-off the property.

<comment><USER19> Yes anonymous ownership and Georgism aren't strictly mutually exclusive, but the path that led us here is a decidedly incompatible ideology of land just being another asset.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> There really should be limits on who can buy residential property and how much of it one can own. Maybe property taxes that ratchet up exponentially the more residential property under one's ownership. Large anonymous property firms owning peoples' _homes_ simply shouldn't exist.

<comment><USER23> This has been done in Sweden.

The results are disastrous :

[https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news- insights...](https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news- insights/trending/bf9u6czrfvmwslicy1parq2)

[https://www.reuters.com/article/sweden-economy- housing/swede...](https://www.reuters.com/article/sweden-economy- housing/sweden-grapples-with-housing-market-reform-as-risks-mount- idUSL8N28L43A)

Stockholm, a fairly small city by global standards (~1.5M in the central area) is extremely hard to get a place to rent. It has been for 20 years.

<comment><USER24> The CEO of Spotify (based in Stockholm) told the government the housing shortage is a problem for their growth. I'm not sure which policies are to blame, but Stockholm's not an example of good housing policy.

[https://qz.com/661319/sweden-must-change-quickly-spotify- thr...](https://qz.com/661319/sweden-must-change-quickly-spotify-threatens-to- leave-the-country/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> There's no doubt these laws can be used to maximize gains by nefarious individuals.

At the same time, the ability to hold a property as an LLC, thus limiting overall liability to the property value alone in the case of a lawsuit, incentivizes more individual investors to purchase rental real estate. In many instances these assets help facilitate retirement savings that are more stable than market securities.

I'm all for transparency - and it's likely the increase in LLCs could be attributable to more savvy, legitimate investors rather than only attracting wrongdoers.

<comment><USER26> > ...limiting overall liability to the property value alone

LLCs don't limit liability resulting from negligence, malpractice, or other personal wrongdoing, which may be germane in a lawsuit over something besides unpaid debts.

[https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/limited-liability- pr...](https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/limited-liability-protection- llcs-a-50-state-guide.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Wouldn't it make more sense to simply fine the LLCs for their misdeeds, and confiscate the properties if the fines go unpaid?

It is already kinda deranged that one's name and other details become public records in many states as soon as you buy property or start a company.

EDIT: Surprising number of downvotes in a forum that often focuses on privacy concerns!

<comment><USER27> Some people value privacy but not complete unaccountable anonymity.

<comment><USER28> Seems entirely possible for the local government to hold the LLC accountable for following local rules without having to know who's behind the LLC

The meta-conversation going on within these threads is more to the point of folks suggesting hard-to-implement laws about who can own what, and how much of a thing they can own, and what sort of penalties exist to control the way that the population of owners can develop.

All that secondary stuff seems too chaotic to control... better to just -

a> allow for the LLC to do what it was designed for: protect the owner from liability beyond the cost of the house

and, b> let the municipality fine the LLC according to whatever rules exist about whether it's morally reprehensible to remove a renter for failing to pay a fine

<comment><USER29> The issue is that without knowing who owns the LLC, then you can use a different LLC for each property and skirt rules around taxes and other restrictions on multiple property ownership.

<comment><USER28> Maybe i don't understand... what restrictions exist on multiple property ownership?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> All real estate should have named human owners. That ownership should come with the equivalent of fiduciary duty.

</comment><comment><USER31> Is it hard to enact laws to prevent this? I remember reading some German towns buying properties from shitty landlording companies to control housing situation getting out of hand.

I am a first time buyer and I am finding it hard to buy, despite making six figures a year

<comment><USER32> Where do you live?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> All this crap is essentially supported by a handful of countries: USA,UK( with all its dependant islands pretending to be innocent), Luxembourg, Switzerland, Netherlands and a few others. The rest of the world,including these countries themselves pay astronomical price for this. It's fascinating to drive down Park Lane in London and see empty building opon empty building in one of the most expensive streets on the planet.

<comment><USER34> Actually this sort of thing has been going on for hundreds of years in most European countries. In my city over half of the old town is owned by the Catholic church. This includes over 30 churches, but there are also many more adjacent buildings that are much larger in area.

Most are derelict or unoccupied, and in very expensive areas if you were to buy. Properties are not owned directly by the Catholic church, but by local parishes or diocese, i.e. subsidiary corporations that are controlled by them. This is no different than the situation in Vancouver, except the church doesn't need to pay any taxes :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> America in 2020: If I use a VPN I have to prove to google I'm not a robot... but using a shell company to buy up real estate? Definitely no picking out all of the buses in a bunch of pictures.

<comment><USER24> Disney used shell companies to buy up land for Disney World in the 60's. They did it so buyers couldn't find out it was Disney and demand more money.

[https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-disney-shell- companie...](https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-disney-shell- companies-20160408-story.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> US net international investment position is at -$11T: [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IIPUSNETIQ](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IIPUSNETIQ)

That's ~50% of GDP.

Worrying about a few homes here and there is quite pointless against this backdrop.

</comment><comment><USER37> It reminds me of Moldova after the fall of the Soviet Union: oligarchs running wild, stashing their gains in buildings," James Wright, an attorney and former Treasury Department bank examiner, told me. He now helps foreign governments combat money laundering. "Back then, you'd walk down the street, and people would say, 'That building is a washing machine.' Everyone knew it. Today, America is not that different."

Are we that different from the Soviet Union?

<comment><USER38> Less sarcastic, but overall not that different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Look at Boston SeaPort. 80% of high end condos are empty and sold for a few years now. My guess is high networth foreigners- from Venezuela, China, Russia are "parking" their cash in these assets.

<comment><USER40> I can't imagine anyone actually wanting to live in the Seaport, and certainly not for the price that those new units are being rented/sold for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> This is one more way corrupt government officials around the world can launder their stolen money

</comment><comment><USER42> What problem are we trying to fix here? So much faux outrage

</comment><comment><USER43> It's another bogeyman red herring. The issue is very straightforward: central planning fails.

Nearly all critical infrastructure in the form of homes (zoning), roads, water, and electricity and related services are centrally planned.

It is almost impossible to do anything outside of a municipality, which didn't used to be the case.

Without this central planning failure it would be impossible to "take advantage" of any market, as home builders would just build homes until the "launderers" run out of cash.

<comment><USER44> Have you ever been to a developing country? They work they way you suggest. People just run electricity and water wherever they can and throw up houses anywhere.

Turns out it's not actually an improvement though.

<comment><USER45> Nonsense, I've lived in several and it was great.

$500/mo rent and much better quality of life than a similar $4000/mo place in SF.

<comment><USER44> Yeah living in the developing world is great when you're there telecommuting and have an american or uk passport and can just leave whenever you feel like it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Incendiary titles, written by ignorant writers, looking to impress politicians, and rattling the cage in order to gain eyeballs.

There are many reasons NOT to own a piece of Real Estate under an individual name, under a trust (for estate purpose) comes to mind and it's now very cheap to do and the public in general is more educated on it; so that alone accouts for a large chunch of declining in % of homes owned by individuals.

Then there are the Real Estate investors/entrepreneur landlord and flippers; who for liability purposes use LLCs.

And yes LLC need not to disclose the name of their unitholders (shareholders). So what? That is not a problem.

Yes money laundering is an issue, but picking the fact that LLC (and Corporation) are not required to disclose the name of their shareholder is not an issue. In some part of the world, those are called "Anonymous Society", sounds cool, but it ain't inherently bad or malicious.

Can we have better writing and reporting instead of these emotionaly-driven pieces?

<comment><USER47> >And yes LLC need not to disclose the name of their unitholders (shareholders). So what? That is not a problem.

Why isn't it a problem?

> Tenants can't figure out to whom to complain when something goes wrong. > Local officials don't know whom to hold responsible for code violations and > neighborhood blight.

That seems like a problem to me.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: "Math is hard!" - The limits of individiual mathematical ability - <AUTHOR>

I got a head start in math because when I was young my parents signed me up for Kumon, the Japanese math tutoring service. In high school, I was definitely ahead of the vast majority of people.
However, Physics did not come naturally to me like other math classes. On the first test (speed/velocity), the teacher told me I got the highest grade out of all his students. It got progressively worse as the material got more difficult. Combined with the fact that it was almost senior year, I almost failed a semester or two.
In college, I was absolutely awful with math proofs. Awful. Like I would stare at the sheet of paper and not even know where to start. I took one class involving them (inear algebra) and decided this was way too hard to continue my Math career. A really hard statistics class was similarly very hard (a regular stats class was quite easy.) Not sure if that was because the textbook and teacher were hard to understand.
I'm revisiting many things though. I did very poorly in high school for english and now I have writing clients on odesk. So it makes me think - what are my true abilities with math?
Math is partially IQ related. That cannot be denied. <comment><USER4> "Art is hard!"

It is common knowledge that math is hard. But it's not common knowledge that art is just as hard. Did you ever try to compose a song like Beethoven, to paint a picture like Van Gogh or to rap like eminem? Probably you did, but did you succeed? If you don't have affinity with a task, you will find it hard to invest your capacities to finally get a good result. It's the same with mathematics.

So why do people see mathematics as special? It is not because it is exceptionally hard. It is because of two reason.

1\. We can determine the correctness of a piece of mathematical work.

2\. Society forces everybody to learn mathematics to a much higher degree than art.

So what can we do about these points? In regard to the first, I'd say that it's an advantage of mathematics and other areas should take it as an ideal.

The second reason is a consequence of the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics to predict nature. There is nothing I can say about this besides observing it.

</comment><comment><USER5> IQ measures how well you do on IQ tests.

Math is many things. Math is arithmetic. Math is geometry. Math is algebra. Math is topology. Math research is proofs. Math calculation is quite different.

Physics uses math, but physics has is own set of concepts. Solid state physics uses different concepts than particle physics, and both are different than astrophysics or biophysics. A lot of learning physics is to understand those models, and only part of that is to understand the math used to make the models.

That you could calculate math doesn't mean that you could do proofs, or think like a physicist. I say the last with experience - I found as a physics graduate student that my math undergrad meant I could follow the math, but I had problems with the intent.

"what are my true abilities with math?" \- My belief is that if you believe there are 'true abilities' then the first time you stumble you will start to believe that you don't have those abilities, and that will keep you from going further, when the more likely answer is that you need to practice more, and learn more, and ask for help in understanding.

Mind you, there's plenty of other things in the world besides learning math. You may decide to take up watercolors. Or waltz. Or study history.

</comment><comment><USER6> Different math is also hard in different ways.

I knew physics students who found calculus infinitely easier than doing trigonometry proofs. But there's others for whom the very idea of calculus is horrifying, and statistics and calculus were literally different tracks entirely when I was in school because it was pretty common for people to utterly fail to get one even if they could ace the other.

</comment><comment><USER7> math IS hard. i didn't learn this until recently. i never met a practicing mathematician before a few years ago, and when i did they told me that they struggle to get stuff. that was a HUGE relief. if you enjoy it, then maybe you can apply yourself to it for the hours it may take to understand something - <USER2> book, a topic, a paper, etc.

i think a lot of what it comes down to for me - and maybe you - is mental discipline (staying focused for more than an hour without straying), knowing that it is very common for it to be tough, and learning how to play with math and explore it. i was never taught those things (or at least i never learned them), and so i have had to learn them the hard way. maybe you suffer from some of the same hurdles? try and overcome them, it's worth it.

as for writing proofs, one of those mathematicians got me interested in this book:

[http://www.amazon.com/How-Prove-Structured- Approach-2nd/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/How-Prove-Structured- Approach-2nd/dp/0521675995)

</comment><comment><USER8> You have latent mathematical abilities that only hard, long, difficult labor will unlock. You will revisit topics that used to be impossibly hard, and without your noticing the change, they will be trivial; you'll know them effortlessly, fluently. Meanwhile, the next ridge will beckon.

</comment><comment><USER9> It is not. Nothing is hard if you are interested i.e. have fun out of it. It is about personal preferences, what you enjoy and what you don't. That's it.

<comment><USER10> What makes you say this? Is it based on personal experience, definitions, or some consensus? I have definitely known people who found things interesting but still thought they were hard. I have friends who find math fun and engaging, but also find it hard and (seemingly rightfully so) don't think they're very good at it.

<comment><USER9> Yes, personal experience and watching other people around me as well. Mostly, hard is boring, i.e. when you don't have enough interest to pursue it. As for math - it is not just about being good, but also the process itself - <USER3> becoming good, i.e. learning. When this process seems interesting and fun, I doubt someone will say it is hard.

E.g. for many people, literature classes or some other humanities stuff is hard.

<comment><USER10> >when this process seems interesting and fun, I doubt someone will say it is hard

That doesn't mesh with my personal experience. I know some very, very smart people, who have found the process itself interesting and fun, but who still find it hard and also don't think they're that good at it. Perhaps your personal experience is difference, but I've seen that interesting and fun does not preclude subjective feelings of hardness.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Autonomous Artist in a Box - <AUTHOR> https://vimeo.com/305196056 <comment><AUTHOR> Part of the #NeurIPS2018 Creative Art gallery currently in Montreal.

This machine artist creates a new piece of art every few seconds - indefinitely.

Inside, the particular neural network developed an affinity for depicting portraits of people with one blind eye. Once in a while this is compensated with a face having a third eye.</comment>


Grafana Downloads Down - <AUTHOR> https://grafanarel.s3.amazonaws.com/builds/ <comment><USER2> We are looking into this.</comment>


F# performance on the Xbox 360 - <AUTHOR> http://sharp-gamedev.blogspot.com/2010/12/on-performance-of-f-on-xbox-360.html

<comment><USER2> I suppose this shows that the CIL generator for C# and F# are roughly equivalent. After the CIL it's the same JIT and runtime, so the difference would have to come from the CIL generators.

<comment><USER3> Not quite. The article says the algorithm for each language is quite different. I'd be interested in seeing what the performance of the F# algorithm implemented in C# is. The F# compiler does many more transforms than the C# compiler. (For instance, tail recursive calls in C# just get emitted as normal calls; F# will often convert them into a loop.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's worth pointing out that the xboxlive truerank algorithms were first implemented in F#. (and perhaps still are)</comment>


Suicide prevention tools powered by AI - <AUTHOR> https://code.facebook.com/posts/286893341840510/under-the-hood-suicide-prevention-tools-powered-by-ai <comment><USER2> Can this be used to predict homicide or even perhaps mass shootings?</comment>


$80k/month App Store Scam - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@johnnylin/how-to-make-80-000-per-month-on-the-apple-app-store-bdb943862e88 <comment><USER2> This is particularly annoying while my beta is "waiting for review" so I can have the privilege of giving it to a few beta testers.

How does apple not expect that annoying developers with their app store process (so much so that things like this exist: [https://fastlane.tools/](https://fastlane.tools/)), _AND_ charging them 30% _AND_ apparently not actually reviewing anything about the apps making it into their store isn't going to eventually drive people away from it?

(Why yes, I am cranky over the amount of hoops I had to jump through to get to the point of asking apple for permission to put my beta on my co-founder's iPhone)

<comment><USER3> You can use HockeyApp ([https://hockeyapp.net/](https://hockeyapp.net/)) or just get your friend's UDID and build an IPA yourself to distribute the build to your friend's device, even if he or she is remote.

Testflight is more intended for "semi-open" betas where you only have tester's email.

<comment><USER4> _get your friend 's UDID_ \- yes, you can, but there is a 100 device limit. you can reset that list once a year. it is meant for your team, not for testers.

<comment><USER4> See now that the OP talked about co-founder. So that is a good use case for an Ad Hoc build for sure.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, thanks for the advice everyone.

I'll totally admit that apple dev flow (not writing the software, just how to get it to run on devices) is completely foreign to me. Concepts like "itunes connect" (which seems extremely odd to me, since I always thought of iTunes as a media player, not something I would use for software development) are confusing.

Figuring it out, though. Thanks again for the advice (and sorry if I accidentally threadjacked this).

<comment><USER5> I am pretty familiar with the hoops and even to me it's pretty much a huge pain. It's not just you with that opinion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> #1 - Apple has a quarter of a trillion dollars in cash. You would think they could afford intelligent, reasonable app review teams. Clearly they don't bother, based on the complaints from honest developers and evidence of pure scams like this.

#2 - Average computer/phone users are willfully ignorant. I would say stupid, but that's a judgement call (even though I think it's true). Someone with knowledge can advise them, but they cannot be bothered with all that fuss. They'd rather ignore sound advice and push buttons. After all, look at the who runs the country and the complacence of many of its people.

Have you ever had a friend who was a lawyer? Did you ever get some traffic ticket and think, "Hey, I'll ask Bob if he can help me handle this!"? I'm guilty of this once in a while. But "average users" are guilty of doing this to technical people all the fucking time. And when we advise them of behaviors to change to avoid future incidents, they nod and agree, but then repeat the stupid behavior later.

Sorry for the rant, but perhaps it's time to just start replying to scammed/screwed users with, "Oh wow, that's really unfortunate. I guess you'll have to go buy a new phone/computer." Maybe that will jar them into actually using their brains.

* Edit for wine-related typos.

<comment><USER7> Well, they're a tiny bit better than Google when it comes to app reviewing. I mean, Google Play is literally filled to the rafters with low quality ripoffs of known franchises that clearly break every copyright and trademark law in the book, along with the kind of scams mentioned in the article.

But in either case, it seems like the 'submission review process' is far more minimal than whatever Apple and Google advertise on their websites. Seems like unless a lawyer/the police/authorities send a take down notice, the companies don't give a toss about anything resembling quality control.

<comment><USER6> There is some responsibility as gatekeeper of applications (especially if you make an effort to create a walled garden) to ensure some level of quality. And as this article points out, Apple obviously made little or no effort (or is very stupid? I doubt that.)

Consider the potential number of new apps per day to an app store. Now imagine that each app requires 10-60 minutes of a halfway intelligent human's time to review. That's not such a huge staff required, especially compared to the revenue of said app store.

Or let's be generous and reduce the responsibility of app stores to just police the top 20 or 50 apps. If, daily or weekly, the top 20 apps were reviewed for quality, that would obviously require a very small staff... and it would prevent situations like this.

Ultimately, situations like this will result in class action lawsuits (like the one Amazon dealt with that resulted in them refunding a lot of childrens' in-app purchases). Perhaps what's happening is that companies decide it's just easier (organizationally) to handle legal problems than to manage business better. After all, final settlements tend to be fractions of actual costs to consumers.

<comment><USER7> I'm more wondering whether Apple and Google's review processes might make them unable to be protected by safe harbour laws. I mean, there was a case where a forum type site got in trouble because members had posted illegal content and the moderation team had apparently approved every submission manually.

So I'm almost wondering whether at one point, we might either see a copyright holder sue Apple (or Google given Google Play is even worse here) for allowing infringing apps or the authorities treat them as complicit in fraud.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> How does garbage like this get through the App Store? I thought Apple was notoriously strict on approvals?

Also, do people still use the App Store? I don't think I have casually browsed for apps in 5 years or more.

<comment><USER9> Years and years ago when we first launched a video chat room app, they denied it. They said it wasnt allowed to have a listing of rooms. So we simply had the app request a file from our server on app launch. If the file was present, we hid rooms. Once we got approved we just removed the file. We kept that up for a few months but it seemed like after the initial approval apple never bothered to check again so we just abandoned it after that.

<comment><USER10> What was their reasoning "listing of rooms"? I'm somewhat familiar with the developer guidelines and not familiar with that one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> These App Store ads are the Wild West right now. I've seen multiple cases where I search an exact app name, and that app's competitor has the top "spot" due to buying an ad. It's like if you searched for Uber and saw an ad for Lyft above it.

How long will apple allow this? At the very least it should be impossible to bid on trademarked terms, and no ad should ever outrank an exact match result.

<comment><USER12> Contrary to what other commenters believe, this is the way that all PPC systems work - search for "Uber" on Google, Bing, etc and you're guaranteed to see a Lyft ad.

<comment><USER13> just did in incognito and saw an uber ad but no lyft one

<comment><USER14> No doubt Uber paid a lot of money for that to be the case...

<comment><USER15> They're paying money so that I don't see ads? That seems quite nice of them.

<comment><USER14> Not sure if you're being facetious or not, but they're paying Google to not show ads for their competitors when a person searches for "uber".

<comment><USER16> As far as I'm aware, that's not something that Google allows you to do. Is it?

It seems more likely that:

\- Other services have decided not to bid on "Uber". It may be more useful to bid on general keywords like "taxi" or "black car", etc.

\- The price for that keyword is too high to be worth it

\- The performance of the ads is poor such that Google doesn't show them.

\- It's also possible that Lyft _is_ bidding on the keyword "Uber", but only in certain geographical areas where they're trying to grow their presence.

<comment><USER17> It's indirect. Lyft sets a max price of $0.05 for an ad placement, so uber has to set $0.06 to ensure that they get the ad and lyft doesnt.

<comment><USER18> What's with everyone chipping in knowledge of things they have no clue about? In your scenario, Google would just put the Lyft ad below the Uber ad in the search results, not make it invisible.

<comment><USER19> What stops Uber from making a third party company that outbids Lyft for the 2nd ad? Presumably it's just not worth it, people click the first ad or skip to the results?

<comment><USER18> That is against Google TOS.

<comment><USER13> [https://www.google.com/search?q=credit+card+report](https://www.google.com/search?q=credit+card+report)

Ads for both freecreditreport.com and experian.com display, owned by the same company

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Some keywords need to return help topics instead. If you search "virus scanner", Apple should tell users their device really doesn't need one

<comment><USER21> In hindsight, this seems obvious, and a great idea. Are there any "banned search keywords" now, or is it completely unrestricted? I'm curious if there's just no mechanism for this at all, or if they just aren't using it when they should.

<comment><USER20> I don't think there is, or I haven't come across any

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> One thing of note: the spelling errors are deliberate to let only the most gullible people through to the last step (improving the odds that the person in question will not know how to report this as a scam or initiate a chargeback). The same tactics are used by ads on porn sites[0].

[0] Or so I have heard ... from a friend

<comment><USER23> There's a paper from Microsoft IIRC explaining this behavior. I'm on mobile right now, otherwise I'd find it and link it here.

<comment><USER24> This one [https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/why- do-...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/why-do-nigerian- scammers-say-they-are-from- nigeria/?from=http%3A%2F%2Fresearch.microsoft.com%2Fpubs%2F167719%2Fwhyfromnigeria.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> There has got to be more to this story. People would refute accidental purchases of $400/mo. Perhaps these guys are using tech support scams etc to drive traffic to this thing, or they're simply using stolen credit card numbers to setup Apple App Store accounts. Perhaps that's why the spelling and layout is so bad...it's possible that they don't intend anybody outside of themselves to actually use it.

<comment><USER26> > There has got to be more to this story. People would refute accidental > purchases of $400/mo.

There are plenty of folks out there who pay little to no attention to what's being billed on their cards.

As an example: [http://www.nbcnews.com/id/14838642/ns/technology_and_science...](http://www.nbcnews.com/id/14838642/ns/technology_and_science- tech_and_gadgets/t/spent-rented-rotary-phone/)

<comment><USER27> Poor lady. It sounds like she may have been fully aware of what she was paying, she just never did any research to find out that she was overpaying by about 500x. Which, is almost as bad as never looking at your bank statements.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> wow, I'm pretty pissed off by this. One of my clients is a medical marijuana startup and we have had to jump through so many hoops to stay compliant with Apple's random app store rules. We have been rejected on several occasions and pulled from the app store.

I also had another app that was accepted into the app store then when I pushed an update release I was informed that my logo had to change because it used Apple's camera emoji. I only did this because another popular app did the same thing (down for lunch). In order to stay compliant, I had to change my logo.

I'm fine with said rules existing as in theory they are meant to protect lay customers from junk like this. How on earth did this thing make it through a review process that's so hard on some apps?

I wish Apple would apply it's rules and vetting with more consistency.

</comment><comment><USER21> I was under the impression that the approval process for the app store was somewhat rigorous.

How did this app get through that?

<comment><USER29> Apple is rigorous (I've been rejected close to 20 times). But app review is also hard, especially when there is a flood of new app submissions every week, day and hour. Validating that an app does what it says it does isn't really what App Review is for. Most of my rejections were for how I described a feature, not how a feature worked.

Also there are ways to defeat App Review. Geo-fencing, time-boxing, etc so your illegal code never runs during review.

<comment><USER8> Shouldn't it be a giant red flag to a reviewer when the app is focused on an entirely fictional premise?

If the app was claiming to grow a dinosaur in your backyard after you pay $400/mo would it be treated any different?

<comment><USER30> > If the app was claiming to grow a dinosaur in your backyard after you pay > $400/mo would it be treated any different?

Honestly, that already sounds like a significantly better app than "Mobile protection :Clean & Security VPN".

I do agree though. It's quite odd that something as clearly bad and misleading as this could get past the review stage even assuming timeboxed code and so forth. That would imply that it would have to do something both useful and congruent with its description during the review process, and presumably not be full of spelling mistakes and badly described features. That seems unlikely.

<comment><USER31> >Honestly, that already sounds like a significantly better app than "Mobile protection :Clean & Security VPN".

They are both scam apps, that take your money and give you nothing, so not sure how that is any better?

<comment><USER32> The dinosaur app doesn't hijack your internet traffic or (presumably) sell your contacts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> You know, it's sad that people are eager to pay Apple nearly a thousand dollars for a phone, buy an iCloud subscription to go with it, and maybe buy a MacBook (Pro?); and then content that after _all_ of that money changes hands, Apple _still_ wants to fill 80% of your screen with an advertisement. Then, if it wasn't bad enough, they don't vet the advertised applications for basic legitimacy (meanwhile legitimate apps frequently get caught up in endless nitpicking at submission).

I get why people do it, but it's sad that they do.

<comment><USER34> im really happy with my macbook.

its reasonably powerful, doesnt make any noise, has an SSD and is a unix system without any of the linux haggling.

paying 1k extra for not having to deal with shit was really worth it for me. certainly made sense from a quality of life perspective.

and im anything but an apple fanboy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> This kind of things make me wonder why I am honest and poor (I mean not rich to the millions, I am not actually "poor"). I could do scams like this and be rich by the minute...

<comment><USER36> You said it yourself: You're honest. Take pride in that and keep being you.

I have just enough knowledge and just enough free time to maybe pull off one of these kinds of scams, but two things stop me: One, I have to look at myself in the mirror every day, and two, even if I set my morals aside, given my luck, I'd be the one Apple finally decides to make an example out of and sends the feds to my doorstep.

<comment><USER37> > given my luck, I'd be the one Apple finally decides to make an example out > of and sends the feds to my doorstep

This usually has more to do with honest people not being good/experienced at being criminals, rather than luck.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> How are chargebacks handled on the App store? I would assume a scam like this will receive a relatively enormous number of chargebacks.

<comment><USER39> they will threaten to close your account if you chargeback too much.

<comment><USER40> I tried to get a refund from Apple once, for a fraudulent app, but I never heard back. So I disputed the charge with Visa. I thought I'd solved the problem until Apple locked me out of the app store. The only way to get back to installing apps (even free ones) on my phone, if I remember right, was to use a new credit card.

Later on I did successfully get a refund for being charged twice for the same content when I bought it again on a family-shared device. Free tip: in-app purchases apparently aren't sharable to the family.

<comment><USER10> Counter anecodote: I got a (Mac, not iOS) app refunded within 2 days because it didn't function as well as I thought it would (email client). No hassle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I don't understand why such an obvious scam works; Apple keeps the money for a while so they should be able to cancel the developer account and refund all users.

<comment><USER42> Apple earns 30% per scammed user and let the app pass through review. The implication is obvious.

<comment><USER43> The whole point of the App store and Apple's bragging about it was that you were in a walled garden, and shit like this didn't happen. It's in their own interest not to kill their golden goose by allowing this kind of scam in their garden.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> At what point do you say "no, the app store experiment has failed" and give users control of their own devices?

Never, I guess.

<comment><USER45> We need an extension of net neutrality (app neutrality?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I get the feeling that companies like Amazon and Apple purposefully try to hide as much as possible/tolerable the fact that you are subscribed to something (specifically, Apple apps and Amazon's Audible). I've spent tens if not hundreds of dollars towards subscriptions I didn't even know I had, and I'm afraid this might account for a shocking amount of revenue, as this article suggests. Microsoft on the other hand seems to let you know when you are going to charged again (I've experienced this with my office license subscription).

</comment><comment><USER47> Looks like many of the keywords you can buy Ads for are underpriced. To advertise for a keyword you need to build can "relevant" to that keyword. It takes time for legitimate app developers to build apps to take advantage of those keywords. Until then, the underpricing of ads is taken advantage of by these "scammers" who build costly non-functional apps and recycle the earnings into buying ads for them.

<comment><USER48> That won't fix anything. When a scammer is successfully charging 50 times as much as a legitimate app, they can outbid any real ad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> And I thought Apple vets the apps (and from what I heard even betas and upgrades/updates too?) before letting it go live on the App Store.

As a long time Android user (and no I wans't happy for most parts; and I wanted to taste the iOS waters both as an user and a mobile dev) who recently moved to an iPhone SE I feel really disappointed.

</comment><comment><USER50> Haha I thought this was a how to guide initially as a "good entrepreneur" mind you good to me is subjective, or is it personal. Money is money right? I can't ask my clients to pay me so I obvs don't support that.

Nice into the rabbit hole though, should see how bad it gets with VMs.

<comment><USER51> Are you saying you're a scammer? I'm having a hard time understanding this comment

<comment><USER50> No I'm not a scammer. I can't even ask my clients to pay me. Most recently these people got a big SEO audit pdf and I'm the poor bastard that has to do it for no pay hahaha. They're like "alright so... all these urls and how the db/pages work? Rewrite them..." and I'm pretty sure I'd break a good part of it, just because of how expansive the site is. (I'll decline at least on this part as it's beyond me, like being asked to integrate a PayPal recurring API payment thing)

Nah they're like my second best client ever but it's still I don't get paid hourly/"a reasonable fixed price" so no in short form, I have no self respect.

I was scammed once (at least), it was a site that said "Sell your ideas for money!" hahaha, I "sold my ideas" For a non-refundable fee of $99 and this also overdrew my bank account.

^^ That reinforces my original thought, I could build a similar "legit looking site" throw a payment system on there and get some poor schmuck like myself to fall for it and pay. Good job on me who built that site for say $17.00 and some time.

edit: I was scammed by this lady (beat up looking face) and this guy, her "son" or whatever... they were asking for gas but insisted I give it to them in cash (at the gas station). Yeah I'm pretty stupid.

<comment><USER51> I see, i commiserate. I got stiffed for a months work by a recent freelance client, i empathize. I'm sorry if I slighted you, guess I read the wrong thing out of your comment.

I hope you don't get scammed in the future.

<comment><USER50> No I'm out of line anyway (talking about clients when I'm publicly traceable), but it is true regarding not being paid. I've had a great client that actually paid me hourly but my skills were not up to par though. Mostly I've just been doing "fixed price" work which can drag on for months. Oh well... hopefully I build "SAAS" products or something.

No prob I didn't take offense I just talk too much haha

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> While it's frustrating if taken at face value, Sensor Tower's numbers aren't totally valid. They get the number for a few of my apps really wrong. The download stats are more or less true, but the revenue can be way off.

</comment><comment><USER53> Yeah.

And Apple just rejected my app because it has a 'register free trial' link. Which is actually free, actually a trial, no CC info asked, no in-app purchase.

Their response was "if you offering something - you should be using in-app purchases".

Oh. OK.

</comment><comment><USER54> When I read stuff like this I really lose faith in the human race.

<comment><USER55> That's my current feeling looking at the Bitcoin price chart.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Does nobody from apple read hn? How does one recommend iPhone to NGOs, privacy activists, other vulnerable people?

</comment><comment><USER39> yeah app store quality has dropped to google play levels to the point that one of ios last, actual, concrete advantage for non technical users is becoming moot.

<comment><USER33> The Mac App Store seems to have been considerably worse than the Google Play store since inception. I think that the iOS app store is just coming down to the level of the Mac App Store: barely suitable for distributing Apple's own applications.

<comment><USER57> They've built an entirely-new store that's shipping with iOS 11, apparently. Might fix a few things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> > I've also never clicked on a Google Ad.

I've never done it, either. I clearly remember the only few times I clicked on AdSense ads - once by mistake, and was extremely annoyed at the results (it was a sort of list like search results), and 2-3 times to test my own AdSense ads (yeah, against ToS).

Yet AdSense is raking in billions. I've always wondered who actually clicks on the ads :D

<comment><USER59> If you are on HackerNews, you probably aren't the typical internet user. I bet my 60 year old mom clicks on tons of ads without even knowing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> There's no way that a huge portion of the blame for this is not Apple's. Some of the ways they run the App Store were pretty silly starting out, and now just outright ridiculous.

Little distinction between ads and search results? No filtering or approval for ads? Scammy $100/week subscriptions for nothing? Meanwhile you're not allowed to make fun of the presidents elbows or whatever. Come on.

</comment><comment><USER61> Brilliant! Wish I would have thought of that xD

</comment><comment><USER62> finally i can be rich too! too bad i am not an ios dev. these apps are made by people from 'nam. i doubt you could do this in a civilized country without getting sued into the ground though.</comment>


Show HN: A tool that helps you focus on startup metrics that matter - <AUTHOR> https://unubo.com/views <comment><USER2> Put up an example board of all the metrics that a user will see prior to them needing to sign-up.

I'm not sure if the design is an all or nothing approach - meaning PH, Stripe, and GA are required, but if there is the ability to position the metric views on boards, having an example for users to look at or even themes based on type of products would be interesting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good feedback, letting people see the board beforehand - thank you.

<comment><USER3> It would be crazy cool if the "Example board" had the real data for your company.

If we could track your progress using the tool you are selling it makes it really fun to root for you!

I know that is really difficult information to give out though, especially when one of the numbers isn't what you would want to advertise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Am I seeing this right? They're selling insights into your data, but providing no examples or previews of how that data might be visualized? If thats the case and its not just my browser acting up, Im not going put time and effort into running a trial.

If the team is reading along: You have to make me SEE some actual value output here. Time is precious.

<comment><AUTHOR> Who are you referring to when you say "They're" in relation to the selling of data. Just to clarify either way, we will never sell any kind of data. This is something we take very seriously.

Otherwise, the feedback on seeing an example is valid and noted. Thanks for taking the time!

<comment><USER5> They are referring to your company, and the "selling" being what you are selling to your customer - aka - your product.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for clarifying. It's been a long day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interestingly, they show a capture of a "bad" dashboard on their "About us" page that IMO displays way more useful information than what their product can offer as of today:

[https://unubo.com/static/about/bad- dashboard.png](https://unubo.com/static/about/bad-dashboard.png)

Sure it's not Material design, but who cares?

<comment><AUTHOR> What we're doing is stripping everything, then only adding the immediate things we want to see, in a way that's glanceable. To each their own, some want tons of information, we don't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I hope the founding team doesn't mind some feedback here. The launch stage doesn't offer much value because it doesn't provide anything actionable to help "amplify" the launch. It would be great for example if you had a unified inbox feature where all social media mentions and blogs are dumped and sorted by importance so you can reply to them quickly and efficiently. You only have a small window to work with when you launch and being passive (watching signups, pages views, etc) is probably not the best way to make the most of it.

As for the other three stages, they are very Stripe heavy. If I don't have Stripe, then I can't use your product and if I had stripe I'd probably start looking at other solutions as well like Baremetrics (which by the way has a great example/demo board as someone suggested).

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi there, don't mind feedback at all. I think it's implied by posting here. Thanks first of all, for this well considered feedback.

This marks our starting point, so yes. At the moment, the Launch view serves as a place, that unifies the things you check during a Product Hunt launch, nothing more.

Many people use Product Hunt, many people use Stripe, so we started there. The way we've set things up however, is entirely flexible, so as long as useful data is exposed via API, there's something we can do with it.

So, now we've launched, and then the real work begins. We'll listen to all feedback, and then see what views and integrations to work on next.

We can implement new views quite quickly, so watch this space. If you want to stay in touch with what we're doing, feel free to join us on Telegram: [https://t.me/joinchat/AAAAAE9hRjYlBpzqRr7FyA](https://t.me/joinchat/AAAAAE9hRjYlBpzqRr7FyA)

Again, thanks for your feedback, it's appreciated.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Leandro here, co-founder of Unubo.

We created Unubo to provide more cohesion between all of the online services we use - mostly in silos, switching from one tool to the other.

In a nutshell, it brings together your data from places like Stripe and Google Analytics, to help you make sense of what's happening in your startup.

Here for questions and feedback.

<comment><USER8> Just a heads up on the site itself -- the height/width/clipping of your .header-background is glitching in Chrome for me so everything in the content body is blurry. Looks nice when i disable that element!

<comment><AUTHOR> Appreciate the heads up, thank you! We'll look into this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> [https://www.amazon.com/Goal-Process-Ongoing- Improvement/dp/0...](https://www.amazon.com/Goal-Process-Ongoing- Improvement/dp/0884271951)

</comment><comment><USER10> It's missing customer acquisition cost, this is pretty important imo because it gives you a framework to measure and explore ways to improve it.

<comment><AUTHOR> If the data we need to calculate it is exposed, and there is a demand, then this is something we can add.

Good feedback, thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Kind of weird that upvotes and comments on Product Hunt are the first listed metrics. I guess Twitter/Reddit/Facebook/etc. should be listed too? Or is that to please the crowd for the Product Hunt launch :) ?

<comment><AUTHOR> For the Launch view we used Product Hunt as a starting point, and yes of course we're targeting it specifically to PH. Our platform is very flexible, so if enough people request particular integrations, we'll add it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> 10 day trials are rare, what made you choose 10 days?

Looks cool, will check it out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just a gut feeling. 7 kind of felt too short, and 14-30 a bit too long. We feel that you'll experience the benefit in 10 days. We can always adjust if needs be.

<comment><USER13> Too long by what metric? Personally, I dislike short trials. If I get distracted by something more important before I have time to fully investigate the product, I'm likely to just forget about it when the trial prematurely ends.

<comment><USER14> We have an API product and thought about this a lot. The 7 day trial does not work great as the users require to learn about the API / test calls etc.

Currently thinking about having a 7 day trial that starts ticking after say 10 successful API calls. Do you think that is a good compromise?

<comment><USER15> I don't think this solves the problem of people getting distracted. If I make 10 API calls and then get called away to do Super Important Thing for the next 6 days, I'm probably pretty likely to give up on a service if my trial period is reduced to 1 day.

Have you thought about N API calls for a trial? That's what I've used for API- first products in the past that worked pretty well for me.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to Incorporte on a Limited Budget? - <AUTHOR> Is incorporating a company necessary to sell services as SaaS but limit personal liability?<p>If yes, where is the cheapest/easiest to incorporate as a European/International including all associated costs? Something like Stripe Atlas is way too expensive for a small project. <comment><USER2> Where are you located?

Look at your own country's procedure to incorporate a company, it may be simple enough. For example if you're in the UK I doubt anything will beat simply registering a limited company, but not all countries make it so simple and cheap...

Just checked and Atlas is priced at USD500. That's probably cheaper than the total cost of incorporating in many EU countries so if that's too expensive then incorporating is probably too expensive full stop unless you live in a 'cheap' country like the UK.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hungary, and setting up a limited company starts at ~$10k here.

Indeed, UK is one of the options I'm looking at[1]. Compared to the alternatives I checked (e.g Estonia) it seems too good to be true, so I'm a little worried about hidden costs of running a business there, especially as a non resident.

Stripe Atlas starts at $500, but then you have franchise tax added on top of that and it quickly adds up if you need an accountant not to miss a tax filing (even though the cloud credits sound nice). For launching a funproject which will probably never generate that kind of money I can't justify the outlay.

[1][https://medium.com/@trevormydata/week-2-incorporating-a- comp...](https://medium.com/@trevormydata/week-2-incorporating-a-company-in- the-uk-cost-me-15-what-s-the-catch-4a7aa954fd6c)

<comment><USER2> I am in the UK and I can confirm that the article you quote is accurate. You can manage the company (annual accounts return, tax return) online.

Two things, though, if you are not residing in the UK:

1\. The company must have a registered office address in the UK. There are plenty of companies providing that service for an annual fee (usually about £30 per year but, obviously, extra fees to forward mail).

2\. It may be difficult to open a bank account either in the UK or in Hungary.

But to be honest, if you don't expect to generate even in the range of $500 then incorporating will likely be too costly however you look at it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> What kind of liability are you looking to limit? Would something like errors and omissions insurance or some other policy provide enough protection, at least to get you started?

<comment><AUTHOR> All kinds of liability, better safe than sorry. Runaway cloud costs from a misconfigured job, serial chargebacks from malicious users.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Anyone else seeing Google Apps. install themselves? - <AUTHOR> It appears that Google is using the Chrome web browser to install other applications. On OS X El Capitan I've found Google Search is now installed as a seperate application, or at least I now have a random link added in Launchpad.<p>http://www.cio.com/article/2993065/os-x/os-x-el-capitan-remove-unwanted-google-chrome-apps-from-launchpad.html <comment><AUTHOR> In my instance it seemed to just be a LaunchPad link added to 'Users\\[my user]\Applications\'.

Easy enough to remove but still worrying that Google thinks this is okay behaviour.

</comment><comment><USER2> I installed Chrome in ~/Applications and saw what you are talking about. I believe they are really just shortcuts for Chrome for various Google services. I deleted them and haven't seen them since.</comment>


Instagr.am is no longer registered - <AUTHOR> http://whois.domaintools.com/instagr.am

<comment><USER2> Their DNS disappeared earlier today. Right now there are 2 different IPs being reported <http://www.whatsmydns.net/#A/instagr.am> screenshot <http://i.imgur.com/SVML7Wi.png>

</comment><comment><USER3> OpenDNS has put in a fix for its users until Instagram fixes the problem. (nameservers 188.8.131.52, 18.104.22.168)</comment>