Evidence SARS-CoV-2 Emerged from a Biological Laboratory in Wuhan, China - <AUTHOR> https://project-evidence.github.io/#%28part._the-end%29 <comment><USER2> Haven't read much yet. But the first point already doesn't inspire much confidence. "This market is less than 9 miles away from The Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences". 9 miles away means that it's at the opposite of the city.

I mean, that text is trying to make it seem like they are close to each other when actually it just means that both are in the same city. 9 miles is not a small distance in a big city like wuhan.

It's like saying that Queens is next to the Statue of Liberty.

<comment><AUTHOR> It might be my fault as I linked to the conclusion, but you are reducing the whole article to a part of the 9 miles distance argument

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The author appears to have the honest intention of analysing this question as thoroughly as possible.

If there is some other website or paper that goes through this in more detail, it would be good if someone could post a link to that website.

It could be that next week someone discovers the intermediate host (like the civet cat was for SARS), and the whole discussion becomes moot. But for the moment I think we are still in "don't know either way" territory.

Also we may eventually come to a deeper understanding of the nature of zoonotic events, and whether it is at all possible that a scientific laboratory could accidentally become part of the chain of transfer.

For example, it might be that a coronavirus only rarely and temporarily exists in a state where it infects the source host and is capable of infecting the destination host. In which case such a transfer will only ever occur in a situation where large numbers of indidivuals from both source and destination species exist, ie in rural areas where wildlife mixes with people, or in farms, or some combination of those two.

Another thing I would note is that all the examples of laboratory accidents were of organisms already known to be dangerous human diseases. Those types of accidents can and do happen. Whether it is at all probable that such an accident could generate a _new_ dangerous human disease is not so obvious. This comes back to the question of what probabilities are involved in the events leading up to a typical zoonotic event.

</comment><comment><USER4> The alternative to me will be a rural farmer caught the disease through extensive farming. Contamination from a wild animal, directly or through livestock.

It then kicked around for months in a rural location, a lower R perhaps, with better weather conditions and less networked people. People died and family's moved on.

Until someone on a trip to the city passed it on.

Perhaps selling at the markets or perhaps to family there who then took it to the market through work or just shopping.

I would not write off the Lab theory, it's better than bats at a market, but there are other logical theories as well.

</comment><comment><USER5> While I was building the my covid 19 tracker [https://visalist.io/emergency/coronavirus](https://visalist.io/emergency/coronavirus) , I stumbled upon this and was taken aback. These are some hard hitting evidence. What does it mean, what repercussions this can have on the World? So china has finally won the world war 3?

<comment><AUTHOR> The article states that while the virus could have escaped from a lab, there is no evidence this was intentional.

<comment><USER6> Closing china internally while allowing outgoing international flights, and somehow convincing WHO to pressure outside world away from closing borders was intentional.

<comment><USER7> > Closing china internally while allowing outgoing international flights

That didn't happen. When China shut down Wuhan, they shut down all transit, including international flights. The airport was completely closed. Even foreign nationals needed special permission and special chartered flights organized by their governments to leave.

> WHO to pressure outside world away from closing borders was intentional.

The WHO has always been against closing borders during an epidemic. This wasn't a new recommendation. Just look up the WHO recommendations for every Public Health Emergency of International Concern. They discouraged travel bans in every single case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hacker News has officially lost the plot. Instead of flagging this and moving on we are now debating not whether or not to ban project-evidence on sight but whether or not the release was intentional or not.

Can we all come to our senses please? What are the chances that you'd find out about this from some github.io pages instead of from _all the intelligence services in the West_ who would have been on this like flies if it had a snowball's chance in hell of being true.

A large amount of evidence collected to make a certain narrative look plausible is not worth to be debated on its merits. There is evidence that Martians created our moon because gravity is real. Try refuting that.

<comment><USER9> Are we really at the point where we know for certain how this pandemic came about? Is there really only one true view?

There's basically 3 theories that have been put out:

1: The US military developed it. This theory from some CCP higher ups was quickly discredited.

2: It originated in a wet market in Wuhan

This theory does not account for a few things, such as (a) how did the bats end up there? (b) Is there any proof that there were every any bats there? (c) What about the early patients who had no connection to the market?

3: It originated from a lab in Wuhan

The report shows that there are 2 labs in Wuhan, and both of these labs dealt with bats that have a high probability of having this virus. They show this through the published research from the labs as well as other items such as job announcements, etc.

This at least puts the bats (and virus) in Wuhan, explaining how they ended up being there from so far away.

The report goes to great pains to state that no conspiracy is needed, or tie in to bio weapons, or whatever. We simply have some labs dealing with these bats and viruses, in the location where the pandemic started, and there are many possible avenues as to how the virus could have got out.

I don't see how the report delves into conspiracy theories.

<comment><USER7> You left out theory 4, which is what the vast majority of virologists believe:

4\. The virus transferred from an infected animal (not necessarily a bat) to a human, either at the Wuhan South China Seafood market or somewhere else, possibly in the countryside. The market might have just been the site of the first superspreading event. In a big country like China, millions of people come into contact with infected animals all the time. There's no need to invent a Hollywood-style theory about the virus escaping from a lab to explain how it got into humans.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> They present this as a conspiracy, but whether it escaped from the lab is a bit of a whatever in comparison to the coverup and the damage of suppressing the initial epidemic and playing it down after they were found out.

No one is really saying it was intentional; and while risky, the research into coronavirii that could trigger a future pandemic was valuable. But it was a screw-up; someone made a mistake or took a shortcut and here we are.

China is going to be under pressure regardless to either open up that research facility, or shut it down so it doesn't happen again there, or anywhere else in the world.

<comment><USER11> > whether it escaped from the lab is a bit of a whatever

It's actually a big difference:

It's the scenario of accepting a statiscal misfortune from mother nature versus the scenario of a lack of duty-of-care from a public institution, closely followed by having to pay reparations to a very long list of countries.

<comment><USER10> Duty-of-care is usually interpreted as what would a reasonable person expect them to do in that situation. As long as they took all reasonable precautions and followed the safety protocols required for handling a pathogen of that type, then there shouldn't be any liability.

My point is that they failed in their disclosure whether it came from the lab or not, and more likely where foreign governments would pursue them for any repatriations.

It's the same situation if there was a nuclear accident - once it has occurred the expectation is to be upfront with the facts so other nations can prepare and deal with any damage. The circumstances of why are only important as far as preventing it happening again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Evidence is of two types: circumstantial or direct. This thing only has the first, and doesn't try looking for evidence of the contrary.

At least they acknowledge this inconclusiveness at the end.

<comment><USER11> I would argue the same exercise could be made against the 'wet market theory', no?

What direct evidence do we have for the 'wet market' theory that is currently most widely accepted?

Looking from a distance, it appears that the volume of circunstancial evidence for this 'laboratory accident/negligence' theory is far larger.

<comment><USER13> Circumstantial evidence is what you use to support a theory you really want to be true but cannot prove. Direct evidence is what you use when you want to actually figure out what happened.

<comment><USER11> > What direct evidence do we have for the 'wet market' theory that is > currently most widely accepted?

<comment><USER8> A couple of million years of Zoonotic events should count as pretty good evidence that that is how these things happen.

<comment><USER11> True, but then for that to be consistent, the epicenter around patient zero should have been next to a habitat where a large pool of this virus exist. However the closest matched virus seems to be carried by a species of bat that doesn't exist anywhere near the region of Wuhan. But coincidentally, if we trust the facts brought forward by this repo, was a species that was studied in these virology labs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> An interesting read.

They present evidence of 2 labs in Wuhan, and each lab was doing work with bats with a high degree of likelihood of having this virus.

This puts the virus at the scene of the crime, so to speak.

This is opposed to the wet market theory which has no evidence of said bats at the market, or explanation for how bats from 1000 miles away ended up there.

</comment><comment><USER14> Writing standards for conspiracy theories are on the rise, huh?

Didn't read all of it, but I'm not sure what a GPG key is doing there.

<comment><USER11> I am sure it was not your intention but dismissing (what appears to be) factual information with references, as a conspiracy, is a common strategy of autocratic states when dealing with information that generates a lot of difficult questions. Is there a particular part of the text that you found innacurate?

The key is probably to allow for people to share encrypted data with the author/contributor? Although to me it feels that github is not exactly the best medium for anonymous info leaks.

<comment><USER13> Maybe it's just the fact that this theory perfectly aligns with the current west-based propaganda effort that seeks to demonise China? Dismissing information as a conspiracy is a common strategy of autocratic states, as is seeding the internet with lies that align with their own interests.

<comment><USER11> An extremely good point, we are all at risk of being vehicles of information wars.

However, information spinners still need to spread info based on reality or partial truth in order to be effective in their spinning.

To me the current volume of evidence for a 'lab accident/negligence' theory versus the volume of evidence for a 'wet market' theory sticks out like a sore thumb even if we account for information war effects.

<comment><USER12> I eagerly await for the James Bond movie sequel where instead of evil villain you have a control-freak trying to cover up their incompetence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have my own conspiracy theory that some group with a financial stake in wet markets or the general trade in wildlife meat/products is manipulating right wing racists to push the theory that the virus originated in a lab rather than due to unsafe handling of wild game meat so that the Chinese government won't feel pressure to further curtail wild game markets.

My hard hitting github of evidence will include the fact that wet markets exist in China and also that racists exist in the US and other western countries. QED.</comment>


Reverse engineering a fake Tor browser bundle - <AUTHOR> http://dustri.org/b/torbrowserbundleorg.html <comment><USER2> > She/he told me that they are a small group (maybe from China) trying to > catch pedophiles;

If they indeed are from china, I'd say it's just as likely they're trying to catch people who evade the censorship or press rules.

<comment><USER3> >silkroad6cebts64.onion

Maybe the are the hacker version of Omar from The Wire.

<comment><USER4> It's all in the game

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Link is a 404, here's the correct one:

[http://dustri.org/b/torbundlebrowserorg.html](http://dustri.org/b/torbundlebrowserorg.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> [http://cuckoosandbox.org/](http://cuckoosandbox.org/) looks interesting, as does the way of detecting it.

</comment><comment><USER7> > Their server is a stack of outdated crap, proudly powered by cPanel, feel > free to root them for more details.

Hmm. Two wrongs make a right?

<comment><USER8> Well, I didn't read the part where OP stated that he was doing a right...

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> yeah better than implementing tcp stack in python :D</comment>


Ask HN: What's the best developer chair on a bootstrap budget? - <AUTHOR>

We're spend a ton of time coding.  Our rigs are set up just the way we like it, we have plenty of horsepower on our dev boxes and server, but as far as furniture goes, we just get by.<p>We're looking to get some chairs that we could sit in all day and be OK.  Ideally the herman miler aeron would fit the bill, but if we got one for every developer... that'd be quite a hit.  We're looking at second hand aeron chairs which are a bit cheaper, but haven't found a bunch of them (6-8 is what we need).  What's been your experience?  Any IKEA ones or other less expensive brands worth getting? <comment><USER2> I currently use the chair listed below, and they're on sale for $100 each now. It is a very comfortable chair, and I use it many hours each day. I have never had any problems with it.

[http://www.staples.com/Staples-Hyken-Technical-Mesh-Task- Cha...](http://www.staples.com/Staples-Hyken-Technical-Mesh-Task-Chair- Black/product_990119?cmArea=home_box1)

<comment><AUTHOR> That chair looks really sweet! Thanks! I'm going to go sit on one shortly since staples is close by

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think I'm in the minority, but I prefer to sit in a plain wooden chair, of the standard-issue kitchen table variety.

It's essentially a hard wood platform, so I sit upright while typing and seldom find myself slouching backward. That seems to do nice things for my posture. Nothing ever gets tired/strained/injured, even though I've been working this way for several years (and I'm 42, so if health problems were to be had, I'd have them).

Back in my cubicle days, I'd spend my time slouched back in the Aeron, with terrible posture all day. My butt would get sore because it was being used as a scootch-guard to keep me from sliding onto the floor. That doesn't happen anymore.

Around the same time, I started making a point of never reclining my seat on airplanes. Long flights used to be a giant butt-ache from the 2hr mark onward. Now, sitting upright like a human being, I'm good to go for 14hrs and beyond. Even sleeping comfortably with everything balanced on top of my spine.

Sitting up straight. It's the way forward.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's really interesting... Especially in light of the article on HN which pointed to sitting slouching back as being the "best" posture to be in (which is my preferred posture when coding), and having a good chair where the back tilts might actually help.

I do agree with you about the plane thing. When I'm flying redeye from SF to FL, I try to either find an empty row and lay down or lean on the window and sleep. I did sit in a Herman Miller chair before when working for a well funded tech co. and I used to look forward to sitting on the chair and getting in the zone. I was OK, even after sitting for a long period on those.

The oddest issue I had then was getting blisters on my back since the chair wasn't a mesh back (it wasn't an aeron) and tended to heat up from me sitting in it for a long periods of time. Although, that happened a few 16 hours day in a row.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> \+ 1 for the Ikea Markus. Have one at home and in the office. Its well built and very comfortable with a good back rest even for someone tall.

<comment><USER5> I have this chair as well but I am not enthusiastic about it. It's cheap and OK but nothing more. The armrests are not adjustable and the headrest is really a pain.

Do you lower the chair so much that the armrests fit under the table or do you just not sit that close to the table?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I picked up a refurbished Chadwick chair (designed by Don Chadwick, one of the designers of the Aeron) from ebay for about $170 on ebay. Its comfortable for being on the computer for long periods of time and was a great bargain for its quality.

</comment><comment><USER7> Move everyone to standing desks and cut out the costs of chairs. I'm not joking. I've been using one for over a year and I can't bear to sit for long periods of time at work any more.

<comment><USER8> >Move everyone to standing desks and cut out the costs of chairs. I'm not joking. I've been using one for over a year and I can't bear to sit for long periods of time at work any more.

Standing up for a long time is not good either. The key idea here is change. Stand up, sit down, move around.

<comment><USER9> I ran out and picked up 4 plastic crates, 1 for each corner if the desk. Presto - perfect height standing desk. For a chair I use a slightly used bar chair (the kind you use for kitchen breakfast bars) - but after 1 month I don't feel the deep thought and focus I would get when plunked in a chair.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> we had shitty chairs for a good 12+ months at the first start up i joined. i begged for a better chair, but it wasn't a priority for the founders at that point; 8 months in, i developed a spinal disc herniation from the chair and desk equipment. my toes were numb for 18 months and i couldn't lift my kids for the several months it took to recover. i purchased (myself) a herman miller embody and it was worth every single penny. fwiw: i was in my mid 20's, maintained an ideal weight, and was pretty active.

re: standing desks -- i can take about a half day of standing, then my knee and left foot start hurting. everyone has slight differences in their musculoskeletal systems; don't assume what works for you will work for others.

</comment><comment><USER8> Pretty much any chair will get uncomfortable if you sit in it long enough. I would just get a refurbished herman miller and take a lot of frequent breaks to stand up.

</comment><comment><USER11> My previous office had really nice chairs (don't know if they were Aeron)...but the chair I bought for my apartment was the $199.00 IKEA Markus

[http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/00103102/](http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/00103102/)

Pretty decent range of swivel, good wheels...I recommended them to my new employer, who is on a budget, and we all use them now. Can't complain.

<comment><AUTHOR> How well do they hold up over time? We got some cheaper Ikea chairs at one time and they weren't that great after a while.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Used Herman millers usually run around 3-400 in most major metro areas.</comment>


Startup Ideas I Would Fund (I'm a Teenager) - <AUTHOR> http://bitplace.blogspot.com/2011/09/startup-ideas-i-would-fund.html

<comment><USER2> Interesting post, here's some replies to your problems/ideas.

Problem 1, (Bad Teachers): I don't think this is a startup idea? But a thought and something that school districts should test and maybe address. There is ratemyteachers.com which does this to an extent.

Problem 2, (Motivate students with motivational material): Don't really understand this one? I'm sure there's lots of blogs out there with tips for students to stay motivated and lots of tips from teachers about this.

Problem 3, (Students can't code): I'd love for every student (including me) to have had the opportunity to learn to code in school. It may be too much of a niche, I don't know but I do know that at least HTML is taught in the UK. Which isn't much of a start. Not sure how a startup could fit into this equation. Maybe a campaign to push this.

Also I don't think most students have the $100 to spend on such courses. At least the students I know. But you're right, more startups like Codecademy should help people learn to code.

Problem 4, Twitter Analytics: Only Twitter could much of what you talk about (where people find you), I suppose Bit.ly already do this to an extent if you use Bit.ly. There's also Crowdboost an awesome YC startup which does a load of Twitter analytics.

Problem 5, Website creation with Google Integration: You could do all of this with tools from Google in Google sites. Although you're right that having a well designed site is important. I guess things like ThemeForest or hiring a freelancer (can be expensive) help. Even using Wordpress which is pretty flexible for those on a budget.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thanks for the comment! I'm not sure how to solve the problem of motivating students. An idea that popped into my mind was a blog of some sort, but looking back that's not a very good solution. For problem 5, I felt as if though having a onepagerapp.com for those professionals would make sense. To me, teaching kids to code in school isn't really a niche market. Not every school would recognize the value of having students well-versed with programming/computer science, but I feel like having this course as a way to incorporate web development into the curriculum without having to hire too many teachers makes sense. Thanks again for commenting!

<comment><USER2> Someone I know was working on a kind of About.me for professionals, to create simple one page sites. I think this is an interesting market.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Pre-Interview Programming assignment - <AUTHOR> I want to make my first hire and I have no way of testing undergraduate/graduate students since they don't have any professional experience or well thought code samples to review.
My thoughts are to ask them to make a simple program that they can demonstrate their coding style/skills.
I want to test the object oriented mentality they get from their Uni and whatever they solve the problem with messy code or they took their time to write comments and properly format the code and variables.
Do you have any suggestion? How much time they should invest? Are there any tools that can help them finish their task online/ test the result? <comment><USER2> Why are you hiring people with no experience?

<comment><AUTHOR> Somebody should hire graduate developers so they can gain experience... But I am not that altruistic, it's just that I live in an island that doens't have any software company except my own and one other, but the good part is that there is a university so this is my only resource of developers

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Don't. While I disagree with testing experienced candidates, new-grads it is ok if done correctly, but it is never ok pre-interview. You need to interview the candidate and talk to them first and then if you find they are a decent fit then do some further testing if it is needed.

Pre-interview testing is basically saying two things, 1. You don't respect the candidate or the candidate's time and 2. You don't know what you are doing.

Your most important job is to build a team, which starts with interviewing. Testing people like this isn't building a team it is starting the relationship off adversarially and telling the candidate you are more important than they are and you don't value their time. And frankly, whether the candidate articulates it or not, they'll have that feeling. Just because it has been somewhat common to do this, doesn't make it correct. I can't believe how many stupid mistakes the tech industry has to relearn every decade or two. We went through all this in the dot com boom/bust but many startups today still did not learn from our mistakes back then and continue to repeat them.

New grad interview method:

1\. Call them on the phone (or video chat) and talk to them. Spend 10 minutes getting who they are and some background on them. Just talk to them as a human being not some "tester". Then spend 10-15 minutes and just ask a series of technical questions but vary the level of those questions randomly, e.g. ask something easy, something hard etc. Ask them some basic thought questions on design, this helps you see how they think. The most important part of this call is seeing how the person communicates more than anything else, and the small technical interview is just to learn if the candidate is worth a more thorough interview, and this is how you protect your time and not waste it interviewing a bunch of non-qualified people. In sales terms, this is qualifying your lead.

2\. If they pass step 1, either bring them on-site (or do it over phone/video if they are remote) and complete a more in-depth dive into their thought process around design, more technical questions and get to the point you know whether they know their stuff you need or not (this may even be 2 different people calling and interviewing the candidate or doing it onsite). Don't ask useless questions here that the company isn't actually using today or in the next 6 months and be realistic with this. If you are writing a web page that 10 people might look at in the next month, stop asking how to write complex data structures, you might still ask about them to learn about what they know, but it isn't a deciding factor on interviews. The most important part is be realistic with what you need now, and who the person is. That doesn't mean settle for incompetent people, just that you need to be realistic with your expectations, especially if you are not offering market wages.

3\. If they pass step 1 & 2, then have them interview with a non-technical team member(s), for small startups this would be a founder, for larger it would be project/product manager types. This interview is more to help confirm the feelings from the other interview that the team fit is good and the candidate adds to the company and can help it grow.

4\. If there is still some question on this person, provide a small test or challenge to them, and tell them it is to help you solidify your decision. Make it 1hr or less and then make your decision.

For a small startup this process should be less than 10 days, ideally less than 5 from the first interview. If you aren't doing that you are wasting too much time and it should be a red flag you are not focused. This is also how you can get really good candidates before larger companies snap them up, because you move fast you can get the better candidate usually at a better price than the larger startup or enterprise.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your answer, it's really helpful since I don't have any experience doing this.

I will try to follow this 'guide', it sounds better than my non existing plan :)</comment></comment>


Little's Law: An insight on the relation between latency and throughput - <AUTHOR> http://blog.flux7.com/blogs/benchmarks/littles-law <comment><USER2> To me, the interesting thing in terms of building reliable, performant systems is what do you want to do when the request rate (incoming desired throughput) exceeds your possible throughput.

Broadly, you have to choose between quickly failing the additional requests, queueing them up yourself (have a fixed number of requests you process at a time) or you just attempt to process them as they come in.

\- If you don't plan for this eventuality you'll basically end up doing the latter option.

This will overwhelm your processing step, which will then typically cause the latency of _all_ requests you are processing to up. (e.g. because you're over your working RAM set, CPU budget etc). Worse, it will go up in unpredictable ways, often with a sharp hockey stick curve.

\- If you queue up requests, you're adding latency to everything right there. Your backend is still cranking away at the same low latency, but your system latency now additionally has the queue dwell time added in. On the plus side, you'll avoid unpredictable performance "cliffs" where everything drops down to nothing. On the downside, if your queue gets too long, you'll end up in the unhappy state of very quickly processing stale requests which no-one cares about.

\- Simply failing the additional requests protects your system, but exposes error conditions externally. (Of course, so does having an 10s HTTP request time...)

Hybrid approaches can work well. (e.g. running a managed queue but cull the queue (and fail the associated request) before you get into the "queue of death" scenario).

Aaaaand....every approach apart from "just try to process it" requires you to have an understanding of your backend capacity.

You can to test and measure to find a static number, but an additional problem is that the load caused by real-world requests can differ from your test load.

And your backend capacity can be affected by failing components, high load on adjacent components, code deployment, backup, cold cache restart, etc etc.

So it's best probably to have a queueing/failing strategy which takes into account the real-world health and latency of your backend.

Which appears to handle all cases, except that due to the sharp hockey-stick latency in response to overload, by the time you detect a problem it may be too late.

Fun.

</comment><comment><USER3> Amazing how broadly applicable Little's Law is. (I suppose that's why it's a big-L law.)

We were just recently using it in business school to look at cycle times in assembly line output.

<comment><USER4> Very versatile -- It can also be applied to drug R&D organizations (one Dr. Jeffrey Low has proposed such an analysis)

<comment><USER5> The reason for this broad applicability is because it holds for any queueing system. The beauty of the law is that it holds for any distribution of arrival, occupancy, and latency. Just multiplying the averages gets the job done!</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there a "dating" site for coders and designers? - <AUTHOR>

Is there a site where coders and designers can find each other? So as a use case if I'm a user experience designer it would allow me to say find an objective-c programmer, or if i'm a ruby dev i could find an icon illustrator. i know there are sites like Dribbble that just showcase design (or stackexchange for answering code questions) but is there something like a "dating" site for people with different digital skills to discover each other? (and to be clear this is co-working not actual romantic dates)<p>PS Linkedin should be this, but they're bad at discovery and every coder i know hates them with a passion. <comment><USER2> I don't hate LinkedIn. It's a terrific resource.

For what you're talking about, you could also try Meetup.com

<comment><AUTHOR> You know you just made me realize that the tech meetup here does have a mailing list, maybe i might try that. It's not 100% but it's a start -- thank you!</comment></comment>


Why the US Government Is Terrified of Hobbyist Drones - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/02/white-house-drone/

<comment><USER2> Here is a prediction: A Pakistani student whose uncle got blown up by a drone will build a drone that flies a few hundred miles, nap of the earth, nobody knows where from, and blows up a few people on a US military base. He will build it using his university's 3D printer, hobbyist materials obtained mail order, and plans (except for the exploding parts) from Make Magazine.

All of a sudden, drones and other autonomous and remote killing machines will be seen as if they are land mines, and will be beyond the pale for any civilized nation. After all, a land mine is just a drone that waits for you.

The US will have to be dragged to this position by international pressure. The FBI will track down all purchases of drones (welcome to some list, somewhere). And talking heads on the news will tut-tut drone hobbyists as terrorist enablers.

<comment><USER3> Also, everything Jeff Bezos half-jokingly predicted about drone delivery services will come to pass... through the efforts of drug dealers-turned- venture capitalists.</comment></comment>


Lego previews Boost robotic kit – cheaper junior version of Mindstorms - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnet.com/products/lego-boost/preview/ <comment><USER2> LEGO is doing really good by offering free software-, firmware-, and hardware developer kits for their stuff. Their official firmware is even open source under a GNU license. You can actually view the electric schematics for the MINDSTORMS hardware. The resulting community support for various custom sensors and languages is awesome. They are also being a good internet citizen by allowing downloading without any account registration.

[https://education.lego.com/en-us/support/mindstorms- ev3/deve...](https://education.lego.com/en-us/support/mindstorms- ev3/developer-kits)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Mindstorms#Programming_la...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Mindstorms#Programming_languages_2)

</comment><comment><USER3> What's absurd is that the Mindstorms EV3 is $350 and just the CPU brick is $190.

Given that since Mindstorms first came out, systems-on-a-chip like Raspberry PI and Arduino are down to $10 or $20 dollars, why hasn't Lego brought its Mindstorm prices down?

I loved, loved, loved Lego as a child and my kids love them still (even my 15-year old) but their prices reflect Scandinavian economics and not middle- class U.S. economics. I've come to dread walking down the Lego aisle at the toy store knowing that I'll have to drop $120 on a non-trivial set. I can't stand the thought that we live in a world where Lego bricks are an elitist toy.

So, does Lego really believe that if I want my kid to play with robotics outside of school, I want to spend as much as an iPad or Chromebook for a one- chip microcontroller? That's just price gouging.

<comment><AUTHOR> China is coming on that market too, with Xiaomi Mitu ( cf [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bd0tjYW_-1I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bd0tjYW_-1I) ). It's only available in China for now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Before I became a parent, I didn't understand Lego. Now I love Lego. My kids love Lego. We'll spend an hour at the Lego store every few months filling up a bucket of parts and spend hours piecing different inventions together at home in quiet focused play.

The only complaint I have about Lego is the price. The kits are very expensive, even the basic kits that don't feature licensed superheroes or star wars. A little police truck or car is $20. My understanding is that the expense comes from the precision with which the bricks must me manufactured, but $160 for a robotics kit is still prohibitively expensive for many people.

That said, this kit does appear awesome.

<comment><USER5> You can save a fortune by buying it second hand, basic bricks in particular are worth almost nothing on the second hand market.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Introduction video by TechCrunch at CES: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uueBgpxOGzY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uueBgpxOGzY)</comment>


Milk Inc. to shut down Oink on March 31st - <AUTHOR> http://www.oink.com <comment><USER3> What the....

I'm super surprised by this, and Kevin Rose just lost a couple of points of respect in my book. Must be nice to have investors who will throw money at you, so that you can give a half-hearted effort at something (or maybe less than half) only to shut it down a few months later to "try something else".

It's like ADD at the business level.

Terrible decision. I don't even think anyone even tried to make this a success.

<comment><USER4> "People talk about pivoting all the time now, but if something isn't working after four months, we'll just shoot it in the head and start again" - <USER2> Rose, last April [http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/04/milk-kevin-roses-new- compan...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/04/milk-kevin-roses-new-company-aims- to-solve-big-problems-on-the-mobile-web/)

In fact, I think it shows a lot of discipline to stick to what they said they'd do.

<comment><USER5> While I'm not disagreeing with this, I wonder if it will impact the users of Milk Inc tools' willingness to participate in future projects. For services which run off of user's submitting content (reviews in the case of Oink), I'd imagine users may become hesitant to contributefor fear of the project (and thus their work) getting shot in the head.

I'm not saying terminating a project that didn't meet expectations is wrong, I'm just curious about the lasting implications.

<comment><USER6> I was one of the (seemingly) few people using Oink in Orlando, FL, and I thought it was great. I'll certainly be more hesitant to create any more content for a Milk product because it kinda feels like I just fired off information in to a black hole.

I figured it would be killed after how little people in my area were using it and I knew what I was getting in to, but I think I'll still let other people be the test dummies next time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So many armchair commentators… Nobody here has the data about Oink that Milk do. The data required to tell if this venture was something worth doubling- down on or moving on from.

Business is an art. And great artists know that moving forward often requires you to say "this didn't work, let's start again."

"If you want to live your life ... as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you've done and whoever you were and throw them away." — Steve Jobs

<comment><USER8> You can also paint (no pun intended) metaphors about artists dedicating their whole lives to something, seeing through their vision to the point of insanity, dying broke and starving only to be appreciated for their genius later on.

"____ is an art" is often used as an excuse when ____ is being approached with a total lack of discipline...

<comment><USER9> But within that perserverence is the willingness to scap everything and restart again.

Some authors rewrite their books over and over again. I know in the crafting of a story that held firm to my vision, I had over 30 or 40 rough drafts that went into /dev/null. I will never know if any of those drafts were better than my final story, but my art is is in holding strong to my vision, and to be willing to discard, rewrite, ruthlessly edit, and endlessly revisit every single one of my assumptions about the plot, characters, mood, structure.

That is art, and no amount of armchair commentation will capture the beauty, frustration, and joy within this process.

Yes. It is possible for an artist to spend an entirety of his/her life reworking one single piece. and yes - it is true that within this work, he/she would have said no a million times to a million possible decisions, and restarted from scratch a million times.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As a founder of a company in the same space (chee.rs) I was surprised to see them pivot from the idea so quickly.

Our internal analysis of share/engagement metrics was showing that our own users were way more engaged than Oink's. We were expecting that if they noticed us in the market they'd have been working on rev 2 of the product - gathering intel from products like ours and integrating it - rather than shutting it down.

<comment><USER11> Honestly I had no interest in anything associated with Kevin Rose thanks to Digg.

<comment><USER12> I haven't really been involved in social bookmarking very long, but isn't Digg what spawned the voting-system type site that we see in Reddit and HN? My understanding is that slashdot based on discussion instead of a straight-up voting mechanic.

<comment><USER13> The difference between Digg and Slashdot is that with Slashdot, all the stories were placed by editors. You _might_ have been able to submit stories to the editors, but there was no upvoting and the front page was purely up to the editors. Of course, later Slashdot added Firehose, and then awhile after that I stopped reading Slashdot.

Slashdot had moderation for comments, but no similar mechanism for stories. Digg had the voting system for stories and for comments.

<comment><USER14> And even after all these years I still think that slashdots comment moderation system is the most effective one on the web today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why would anyone bother committing to one of their products again if they just arbitrarily shut things down when they are working on the next big thing?!

<comment><USER16> Agreed. If I were a user, I'd feel pretty burned getting attached to an application then have the company "shut down" to work on something better.

Maybe oink just wasn't driving the engagement they wanted (or something).

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I was an Oink user and deleted it a few weeks ago from my phone. It seemed like an intriguing idea (to see recommendations of things rather than places), but ultimately there are only so many photographs of beers, burgers and coffees that one can stare at.

But I really do appreciate that they offer a way to download my data as I've done it and discovered a beer I'd forgotten about: <http://www.meantimebrewing.com/our-beers/meantime-wheat>

<comment><USER18> > ultimately there are only so many photographs of beers, burgers and coffees > that one can stare at.

Instagram hopes to prove you wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Wow...the vitriol to Kevin here is ridiculous (or telling - depending on your perspective). HN is supposed to be a place where people are encouraged to start things - with the acknowledgement that not everything will work out and we are the testing ground for many of those new ideas.

The price for being a cutting-edge digirati is that many of the services you use, will not survive. If you can't deal with that, wait until they go mainstream and have some viable way to stay alive. Don't complain about it.

Yes, Kevin has raised money on his name - but why all the hate? Let him do his thing and you do yours.

Try launching a product and building your own, rather than criticizing other efforts. Either way, bootstrapping, getting funding, pivoting, abandoning is not easy. Doing it with such public scrutiny is even harder.

Take a chill pill and take solace in the fact that you are in the digirati that can even see these things. Your mom likely doesn't even know what Oink is. If you would rather be like her, then stop hanging out here and complaining.

</comment><comment><USER20> How come Oink didn't got any traction, even with all the publicity they did everywhere when it was launched? When oik hit the app store I thought "god, If only I have 1% of kevin rose visibility to use it". I guess this ain't enough.

I think people are getting tired of using apps to tag stuff, take pictures, "like" this and that, etc... It feels like we are working for a company and not having fun or create anything, and Oink! just gave me reason to think this way even more firmly. There's no market for this anymore, because we don't have that much time to spent in dozens of different communities, and so,the less populated die.

So please, if you want to build something, please work on something real and that actual solves something, not another Flickr meets Facebook/twitter app.

<comment><USER21> Yep, you're right. What was the purpose of Oink? There weren't a ton of reviews or opinions - not enough anyway for it to be vastly useful as a replacement to Yelp. And it wasn't no Angry Birds so why even use it in the first place?

And they got a bunch of publicity, but ask yourself this question: of all the apps you reach about in Techcrunch, Mashable, etc, what % do you actually use? Publicity doesn't always translate to lots of users. They probably got a ton of initial downloads from curious geeks, but that's about it. Their churn rate was probably ridiculously high.

Publicity is pretty good for 1 thing for sure: search engine rankings, and Oink wasn't a website.

<comment><USER22> I wasn't a fan of Oink from the beginning. On its first use I was able to like such arbitrary things like my own T-shirt, or a piece of gum on the floor. I knew right then this was going to get way too noisy and it did.

I do see where they're coming from though. The reputation system was supposed to balance this out. Kind of like social news websites where people submit tons of links. Somehow through upvoting things become relevant no longer noisy and I'm pretty sure that's what Oink was going for. It was all very well designed.

I think a lot of people who used it didn't treat it that way. They treated it as another review site, which it also was. But treating it that way makes it such a chore to "build" and so eventually we all lost the point of it all.

<comment><USER23> I would think that if successful the reputation system would have to be constantly fiddled with and change like that, "OMG I lost my reputation", would be a constant community management challenge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> IMHO it would have been better PR to "pivot" even if it is to an entirely different thing. It would sound more respectful to people that used the app, covered the app and those that cheered them on.

I'd really be interested in seeing what next they build.

<comment><USER25> No offense, but why are you interested in seeing what they build next? Seems to me they are nothing more than a small group of overfunded kids with computers.

<comment><USER24> Interested, not excited. I want to see the "better idea".

I am suspecting this episode will offend people who are working real hard on what they think is are more important ideas and are struggling to get finding, only for Kevin to throw away millions for fun.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This really speaks to how we should look at apps, specifically those based around social networks. Consider the analogy of an app vis à vis a roller disco. The roller disco was a fad, so why can't apps and their subsequent networks be "fads" too? Maybe that's the point: they're cool because they're relevant now. Maybe longevity isn't the goal. We should enjoy the ephemeral things (so later we can say "remember when...").

</comment><comment><USER27> I think one of the biggest hurdles to ranking and rating systems is how the data comes in. Imagine a two-dimensional histogram where Y is the number of ratings and all of the items are arranged on the X axis.

What I saw with Oink was this X axis (the number of items to be rated) growing faster than the Y axis (the number of ratings): in effect, noise growing faster than signal.

They weren't aggressive enough in filtering out duplicate entries and/or working with businesses to upload their catalogs onto Oink so users didn't have to add (and re-add) them. Not saying it was an easy task, but essentially this is the main challenge to such a product.

</comment><comment><USER28> First line sheds a bit of light on their philosophy: "We started Milk Inc. (the company behind Oink) to rapidly build and test out new ideas. Oink was our first test and, in preparing to move onto the next project..."

Sounds like they are trying for a shotgun approach (didn't the company behind Angry Birds do the same thing? I don't know the official business term for this methodology). Where they have an internal API/system to roll out an idea FAST, then see if it gains any traction within their internal goal (whatever short period of time they set for themselves), and if not, scrap it to move onto the next thing...?

I think that works great for little one-off games. But with websites where people are expecting it to be around for years? Will that burn users too often, too fast, and sully your reputation? I don't know. I'm curious.

(imo, I don't know if I'd have put those two sentences in the shut-down notice - sounds like they were just experimenting with the site to see if they could make a quick buck, weren't really serious about it unless the $ or pageviews started flowing, and the users were just the guinea pigs...but that's just me.)

<comment><USER29> Milk was founded/funded on cult of personality rather than quality of ideas.

I wish them success, but maybe they should spend more time thinking up a quality idea instead of sitting around on a bunch of couches drinking beer and tea appreciating the brilliance of their hipsterness through their macbooks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Question: what is the font they used for the "OINK" logo? If anyone has an idea, I would love to know.

What the Font was unsuccessful in determining it.

<comment><USER31> Looks like Gotham Black to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'm not sure if this was more of a "fail fast, move fast" effort or that they realized it was stupid to begin with.

</comment><comment><USER33> Glad to hear that Kevin Rose is sticking to his guns. I wonder if the Milk team will tackle a harder problem next time around.

Edit: Kevin Rose said he would kill off any project that wasn't gaining traction and he did just that. This is what I was referring to.

<comment><USER34> "Sticking to his guns" is not the first phrase that came to mind after reading that he'd canned Milk Inc's flagship product after only three months.

<comment><USER35> but that's not the point of Milk... Milk was founded on the idea of pumping out lots of small things and seeing if any of them stuck.

If they kept Oink alive until it took off (if ever) they wouldn't be able to build the _next_ thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I applaud the Milk folks in their first effort, but I must say if you've used Oink you would realize that: 1\. it's not sticky 2\. it's value proposition is relatively low

When it launched I played around with it for a few weeks before eventually uninstalling. Reason being, when you can check-in to places via FourSquare, recommend food/items you like from restaurants via Yelp, why would you use a system like Oink (especially when it has a smaller social-footprint than the aforementioned services)?

Maybe this app was awesome for you Bay area folks, but in NYC I never found much when I used the "find nearby" feature. Their interface was also inundated with too many data points as well (see there item detail screen).

I think the next wave of apps, now that we're experiencing check-in fatigue, is "passive utility" apps (Highlight, Sonar, etc). Their value can be ascertained with little friction (literally all you have to do is walk by someone) and there's tremendous room expansion on its core concept (dating based on shared interests, linkedin introductions based on shared contacts, etc.).

<comment><USER37> It wasn't bad for us bay area folks, but it still lacked utility. I occasionally browsed the app because its feeds we're filled with big pictures of interesting local stuff (mostly food). I added a few dishes to my todo list, but I can't say I ever went out of my way to try any. I also never really _trusted_ the content like I do with Yelp, I just liked the feeds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I think it's funny how people consider Kevin Rose a seasoned entrepreneur... what a joke. Their process is throw it against the wall and see what sticks because they apparently have no idea what actually constitutes a good idea. These guys are clueless, straight up. What an embarrassment.

How many Apple products have failed? How many 37Signals products failed?

</comment><comment><USER39> Glad they are moving on. IMHO never understood what problem OINK was solving or why so many people ran to support it simply because Kevin Rose was attached. I have the utmost respect for Kevin but oink was very "emperor's new clothes" for me. I wondered what everyone was looking at while I saw nothing but junk

</comment><comment><USER40> What a coincidence! This just reminded me to migrate my SimpleGeo apps; they are also shutting down on March 31.

</comment><comment><USER41> it seems like they intended to use oink for data gathering: from: [http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/03/14/kevin-roses-milk- shutt...](http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/03/14/kevin-roses-milk-shutters-its- first-app-oink-after-just-over-3-months/)

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>- This is an interesting case. It seems like the group designed, built and shipped a pretty slick ratings app all in a bid to gather data. Rather than mine existing databases or pay other companies to license their information, they were able to garner attention via the app launch and gather their own. \</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--

if this is indeed the case, they should have been upfront about it. This is like taking users for a ride. 'Now that we have enough data, we're going to shut this thing down'

<comment><USER42> I don't buy that. Where did nextweb come up with the idea that the app was just an information gathering device?

They "inferred" it from this quote: \</comment></comment><comment></comment><comment> We are extremely grateful for all of your effort finding and rating the best things in the places around you. We've discovered thousands of awesome pizzas, pastas, coffees, teas… and roller coasters, zoo exhibits, paintings, sculptures, vistas… and sodas, salads, sliders, soups… and so much more. \</comment><comment>----

That's reading into it way too much.

Oink was a beautifully designed app. If they just wanted to gather info, I don't think they would have spent so much time making it look good.

I think it just didn't work out the way they wanted it to, they are learning from this experience and quickly discarding what doesn't work and moving on to the next thing.

</comment><comment><USER43> Trying different business models is a great thing. Businesses become successful in different ways. When they announced Milk they said that this would be their business model and they have stuck with it. It is going to be interesting to see how this works out in the end.

</comment><comment><USER44> Disregarding all the traditional startup acumen (lean, agile, blah blah blah), in an environment where businesses are expected to be tested and discarded within months how will our 'ecosystem' tackle the bigger more meaningful problems that have a deferred payout for seeing it through? It seems to me that real innovation comes a lot more from long hard teeth grinding slogs than it does from rapid iteration. It seems like the startup environment has lately transitioned to business methods that largely aim at finding the most efficient means to get the last of the low hanging fruits.

</comment><comment><USER45> I can't help but wonder what the cost would have been to keep it running, unsupported even?

I knew Milk was going to do multiple apps - I didn't think they'd delete their old ones before they started on their new ones.

It now seems apparent they're looking for 'the one' that sticks and they're not interested in building a portfolio of products with a strong fan-base. I would have thought keeping their early-adopter user base happy would have been a really valuable asset.

I feel they'll get a less favourable uptake for their next app now, so if Oink didn't get the traction they were looking for they might struggle more next time.

</comment><comment><USER46> Seeing news like this makes me less inclined to be an early adopter in Milk's next project. Going into business with the primary intent to start a lot of projects and fail until one succeeds seems like a recipe for failure. While it's always an inherent consideration in every startup, it should never be your core strategy. Unfortunately for Milk, it seems like that was exactly what they had in mind. Kevin has a personality that makes people WANT him to succeed, but every user has their limits on how much they will continue to forgive.

</comment><comment><USER47> I think this is really tough on users. But it's also indicative of Rose's power and pull with a large user base. I think people will forgive him and sign up to his next new thing because he's a smart dude and has a great team.

For better or worse, this is kindof a blip on the cosmic radar, even in the tech world.

I dunno how I'd react if I was an investor - I guess you invest in a guy like that because you're long on him, and in that case, the failures don't matter as long as your equity carries over.

</comment><comment><USER48> Obviously start-ups pivot all the time, but Oink entered a crowded space of ratings and reviews. While they got the 150,000 sign-ups it was mostly due to the fact that it was Kevin Rose. I think they realized it would be hard to be real profitable quickly and that people may not want to review items inside places. I think all you need is a review of the business.

Plus, its not like Rose cant just move on anyways. He's got plenty of $$ and connections to fund his next venture.

</comment><comment><USER49> there are different philosophies on when to kill a project... and imho, this was way too quick. By way of personal example, it took us 2 years to build BizRate.com into something that could even get funded, another 5 years before it started making money as Shopzilla, and 9 years total before we had our "overnight success" -- Many points along the way we could easily have pulled the plug. Persistence / sticking to your vision is something that is sorely lacking these days. (Another more obvious example: How long did it take for Apple's design+hardware+software philosophy to strike a mainstream cord?)

Timing aside, this method of "putting a bullet in its head" (which is not even a good expression to use colloquially), was a terribly callous way to treat their current users too... Especially given the fact that for a few thousand dollars a month (max) they could have kept the system rolling in the cloud indefinitely, without investing any time in it. They then could have put out feelers to find it's users / content a new home... (For example, our new start-up chee.rs would gladly have welcomed oink users -- in fact we're working on a quick oink importer as I write this. :)

Or, even if they weren't interested in transitioning users to someone else, they could have kept things running at least until their next big idea came along to announce to their users: "Hey we've got this new great thing, come on over and now that we have it, we've decided to finally and reluctantly shutter Oink, because we hadn't seen it gain much traction. Sorry about letting you down... blah blah blah."

Much better for PR than "We put a bullet in your head and moved on... But, we hope you'll join us again for another round as soon as your headache subsides."

<comment><USER49> Here's an importer to turn your old oinks into @cheers! :) <http://chee.rs/oinkimport>

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I'm not very surprised by this decision, I like Kevin Rose and his ideas, but in my opinion OINK was late to the game. In a time where you have so many app options to check-in or review things, this app becomes very unnecessary.

I guess this proves that even a great design and great execution are not enough, you also need a clever idea huh. What do you think?.

</comment><comment><USER51> However you look at it, with the clout Rose has (over 1 mill twitter followers) whatever he does next will get a ton of press and interest,probably even more so given the quick shutdown of oink. So why not save some cash and go for something new, at least they've come out and said it rather than leaving it to slowly die and not commenting.

</comment><comment><USER52> Fundamentally its a question of Novelty versus Utility. Is it just this months new, new thing, or is it something that fundamentally solves a problem, makes your live easier/better, or sates a desire. Most of the 1st wave of apps are (understandably) novelties...its the utility equation that will be the next wave

<comment><USER53> I agree. This looks like they were testing some hypotheses and they didn't prove to be true. Maybe the engagement metrics just weren't there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> This is a good example of how extremely hungry entrepreneurs often have the advantage. Established companies and serial entrepreneurs rarely stick with their ideas if there isn't immediate success. Yet most large successes take time to mature and build momentum. Really sad to see kevin and milk give up so fast.

</comment><comment><USER55> This seems a bit... premature. Not that I've used it. But in all seriousness, if Twitter, Pinterest, or Facebook had shut down after the first few mediocre months... well, we'd probably all be better off. But you get the picture.

Was Kevin Rose involved in Pownce? That felt like another "meh" effort from the former Diggers.

</comment><comment><USER56> When I read Milk Inc. the first, second and third thing that came to my mind is the Belgian vocal trance band: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_inc>

</comment><comment><USER57> Called this one a few months ago [https://twitter.com/#!/zinssmeister/status/15514462538288332...](https://twitter.com/#!/zinssmeister/status/155144625382883328)

But actually I am still surprised how quick this got axed. As a user you gotta ask yourself these days if it's worth investing a lot of time and content into a new app. An App that might be shut down, just because the builders want to go try out a new idea. To give Kevin Rose some credit here, he always state up front that Milk was going to "try" different ideas and move on to another if one wasn't bringing the right amount of traction. Now I hoped that the transition over to a new idea wouldn't mean the instand death of the previous and that's probably the biggest surprise here.

<comment><USER58> if only you could make money from not investing in things

<comment><USER59> A penny saved...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> People need to get over this. Milk originally said that they would try a series of experiments, that would be killed if the required traction wasn't there.

We will see what happens with their next effort.

</comment><comment><USER61> Make the source code available; the app and website!

<comment><USER62> Or how about finding a new home for the product (eg. another startup, media co., anyone!).

While I understand there is a large amount of effort involved in transacting something like that, certainly there is a legitimate & appropriate organization out there who could foster and grow the community that is Oink.

This action would mildly address the concerns about continuity and trust in product longevity.

<comment><USER61> Now I'm kinda wondering why they didn't spin this out on it's own like a startup assembly line.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Kind of a shame, I was looking forward to an Android version of Oink. Now it's too late. :(

Although they were taking quite a while to put it out.

</comment><comment><USER64> being a serial entrepreneur is easy, making a huge success of every endeavor is hard. 9 out of 10 startups die, so even if you are Kevin Rose this means you will probably have more failures than successes. Kill it and move on. Just make sure you can say you gave it your utmost best.

</comment><comment><USER65> First thought: what the heck is Oink?

</comment><comment><USER66> Sad to see it go. Oink was really fun for the few days I was using it :)

</comment><comment><USER49> we're helping @oinkapp users cheer up! Here's an importer to turn your old oinks into @cheers! :) <http://chee.rs/oinkimport>

</comment><comment><USER67> perhaps kevin rose is joining the bandwagon of SoLoMo to compete with the likes of Highlight, <http://LetsLunch.com>, Glancee etc

</comment><comment><USER68> What is it about Kevin Rose and commitment ?

</comment><comment><USER69> Read that as oink.de legendary torrent site

</comment><comment><USER70> "It's better to burn out, than fade away"

</comment><comment><USER71> Lots of Kevin Rose hate in this thread for whatever reason. Reads a lot like Reddit...

</comment><comment><USER72> What did Oink do?

</comment><comment><USER73> A shame to see Oink getting shut down _again_.

<comment><USER74> Again?

<comment><USER75> Joke is the music pirate club Oink was shutdown.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> If they didn't really believe in this "innovative" idea of taking pictures of food and posting them on the internet, and didn't have the resources and conviction to see it through, then why will they be more successful next time?

</comment><comment><USER77> I have a question..

How ethical is this to set something up to obviously collect 'free data'?

</comment><comment><USER78> Mark my words: no tech startup founded by a hipster will ever succeed.

<comment><USER79> What a stupid statement. I'm nowhere close of being a hispter but this remark is so stupid and useless that I don't understand how you had the guts to press Enter

<comment><USER80> It's kind of amusing to see how "hipster" has become a catch-all insult, particularly in nerd communities. Are you youngish and slightly unusual in a way that I don't like? Hipster!

I don't like Kevin Rose, but c'mon, at least find some more creative insults.</comment></comment></comment>


Is it a good idea to put adsense ads on a start-up promotional blog? - <AUTHOR>

I started a blog primarily to promote my start-up company (it is under a ".blog" sub-domain of my start-up site) by helping the page rank of the site and by driving more traffic to the site.  It is still in its early stages and I only have 2 written posts up, but in the future I aim to get more authors to contribute on topics that relate to my start-up.  I also want it to personalize our start-up company since we are only 2 hard working hackers trying to make a go of it, and I think that will appeal to our customers.<p>I started working on putting Google Ad-Sense ads on my site to see if getting some extra revenue from ads would help pay for server costs of the blog and the main site.  Is there really a huge backlash against start-up blogs that show ads? <comment><USER2> I'm fine with adverts on any website, as long as they aren't intrusive or damaging to the flow of the content. I use AdBlock plus but specifically disable it for sites that I know use adverts responsibly.

I wouldn't be afraid to add one or two small slots in the sidebar. As long as it doesn't become your main source of revenue I wouldn't be put off by it at all.

</comment><comment><USER3> From my little experience, generally... it is not a good idea for a new startup to put ads on it's website.

But if it's urgent for you to put ads, then don't put more than 1 rectangle ad per page!</comment>


Ask HN: YC lawyers, what are you doing about GDPR? - <AUTHOR> I recognize that people have asked if HN is GDPR compliant, but I haven't seen an official or unofficial response. Given that HN is a marketing tool for YC, that YC has LPs from Europe as well as portfolio companies, and HN is used in the application process, I think the HN community would interested to understand how you'll be dealing with this and what you're recommending to your portfolio companies as it would be helpful for many of us that don't have the resources you do. <comment><USER2> (Just a heads up "Ask HN" generally refers to asking the community, not YC itself. I don't think the YC legal team reads this.)

I'm a lawyer, YC alum, and have a CIPP/E cert. I took a crack at the "Does GDPR apply to HN?" question here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16615351](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16615351)

The answer is "probably not" because HN is neither established in the EU nor do they target the EU specifically. Maybe there are facts I don't know, but YC itself is also probably out of scope (read more here: [https://gdpr- info.eu/art-3-gdpr/](https://gdpr-info.eu/art-3-gdpr/))

I'm also CEO of Aptible. We make a SaaS platform (Gridiron) that a bunch of YC companies are using for GDPR prep.

<comment><AUTHOR> It seems that it didn't have to be targeting specifically.... given what I've read I still think that insofar as they're investing in European companies and have European LPs, then they'd be exposed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> There are a lot of interesting questions (only some with answers) on Reddit here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/gdpr](https://www.reddit.com/r/gdpr)

I've had fun reading how scared all the adtech companies and content farms are.

</comment><comment><USER4> How is HN used in the application process?

</comment><comment><USER5> interesting</comment>


Show HN: An App That Forces You to Quit Your Bad Habits and Addictions - <AUTHOR> https://fineillquit.xyz/ <comment><USER2> Couldn't even read the website because the text disappears as you scroll past it.</comment>


Reissued – A curated social marketplace for vintage goods - <AUTHOR> http://reissued.com

<comment><USER2> Cool idea. Site looks great too. One small thing: there is a typo: "REISSUED GIVES YOU EXCLUSIVE ACCESS INTO A WORLD NO ELSE CAN DELIVER" should be "REISSUED GIVES YOU EXCLUSIVE ACCESS INTO A WORLD NO ONE ELSE CAN DELIVER"</comment>


Google plays the yield curve - <AUTHOR> http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/05/google-plays-the-yield-curve.html <comment><USER2> A commenter on this blog, L. Zhang, made an excellent point that most of Google's cash is trapped overseas. Repatriating it to the US to buy US companies would cost them 35% in tax.

Borrowing US money at 3.75% to buy US companies is far cheaper than using their own cash reserves.

<comment><USER3> Accoring to [http://torontostar.morningstar.ca/globalhome/industry/news.a...](http://torontostar.morningstar.ca/globalhome/industry/news.asp?articleid=381481) Google has 17 Billion offshore and 20 Billion in US they are not as cash strapped as Microsoft which has almost all its cash outside of US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think what they are doing is getting some practice issuing bonds. Since they are Google, they can't just dip a toe in the water.

They have a great name and their ad business is looking more like reliable cash cow. Over time it makes sense to leverage stable cash flow. My guess is they will continues to issue bonds over time.

</comment><comment><USER5> No. What they are doing is heavily betting that inflation will go up, or that the US currency will fall relative to other currencies. They don't need an extra $3B to buy anything. That would be like me borrowing $3k when I already have $37k to buy furniture and nick nacks. Sure a good sofa might cost $2k or so, but most of the stuff I'll be buying are way less than that and I certainly don't need the extra $3k.

<comment><USER6> WIth $37 billion in cash currently they are bleeding money with negative real interest rates. It doesn't make much sense that Google is worried about inflation here. Also, consider that Google has about $17 billion in cash overseas to avoid US taxes and may not be able to deploy the full amount of funds at home.

Google may be altering their capital structure to include more debt which will do a few things, 1) lower to firms cost of funds and allow it to better operate in a lower interest rate environment. 2) Debt offers firms a tax shield, by putting out some debt,Google can lower its effective tax rate.

With interest rates at historic lows it makes sense to borrow as much as you can. We have negative real interest rates currently. If you borrow at a big economy like Google, paying back the debt will be much easier in this environment and the lenders stand to loose on a purchasing power basis.

<comment><USER5> "the lenders stand to lose on a purchasing power basis."

Because the the long term debt's interest rate will be lower than the inflation rate, correct?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > An alternative explanation is that Google has a very high option value for > the cash, which more or less implies they see a lot of acquisition and > investment opportunities in their not so distant future. A lot.

But don't they have $37 billion in cash already?

I think the critical point is that a lot of that cash is overseas, subject to taxes when brought back home.

</comment><comment><USER8> They're getting cash to buy Twitter?</comment>


Don't Trust Your Mother. Small Usability Tests Are Worse Than No Usability Tests - <AUTHOR> http://www.envis-precisely.com/blog/dont-trust-your-mother/

<comment><USER2> I've been involved in two types of usability studies. The first are academic, rigorous, well-designed experiments testing readability, visual search, or other issues in web site design. These were designed to provide statistically significant results. The second are small focus groups used to test, predominantly, GUI design elements.

This article claims the second kind of test is worthless and misleading, but I think that's ignoring obvious benefits. No, you don't get statistically significant results, but in most cases you're not aiming for some result like "85% of users prefer the blue button". More often, you want to watch a handful of people use your interface and a result like "2 out of 5 were really confused by the menu structure, so we should rethink that". That is, your useful data comes from watching the process, not recording the result.

Rigorously-designed experiments which provide the potential for statistically significant results are great and they definitely have a place. But they're not the only tool in the box.</comment>


Show HN: DiscoHash – 5 GB/s serial hash - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cris691/discohash <comment><AUTHOR> I think speed can be improved further, by constructing a parallel version. Possibly, this would be similar to how BLAKE3 used Bao mode to parallelize.</comment>


Why Mailchimp is no longer in the Shopify App Store - <AUTHOR> https://community.shopify.com/c/Shopify-Apps/Here-s-why-Mailchimp-is-no-longer-in-the-Shopify-App-Store/td-p/493593 <comment><USER2> We run Shopify across a plurality of domains. Over the last 12 months, especially with the release of "Shopify Payments" (Stripe Connect) - they have become a lot more opaque, greedy and dangerous for merchants.

Anecdota: \- Their "Shopify Payments" onboarding is highly shady. They onboard you _without_ performing KYC. Once you are committed to the platform, they perform KYC. They refuse to perform KYC before moving to their platform.

\- Once you commit, you can't go back to Stripe - they remove Stripe from the list of providers. In the past, support would reenable it upon request. Now they refuse.

\- We have a high volume site that migrated to Shopify Payments, after 4 years of Stripe without issue. Two weeks later, they sent an email stating we were not eligible Shopify Payments, refused to let us return to Stripe (would not reactivate it), and held the money collected for three months.

\- On another store, a competitor issued a trademark infringement email. Shopify pulled all products immediately, without communication - and refused to reinstate, despite letters from our legal team showing proof of capitulation from the accusatory party.

The _platform_ is great. It out performs Magento, Presta, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, etc etc with its interface, product management, raw performance and core feature set.

However, it is most definitely the PayPal of the eCommerce world: they can, have, and will happily kill accounts and clients based on their whims.

<comment><USER3> May I point you to our own competing platform? [https://en.storeden.com](https://en.storeden.com)

<comment><USER4> Sounded interesting, but your team doesn't seem to be on the ball. :(

The HTTPS certificate for one of your main websites (submitting bug issues), linked from your front page, expired last November.

[https://assistenza.storeden.com](https://assistenza.storeden.com)

For a lot of things, some forgiveness is in order.

But for an eCommerce place, it seems a bit much. :(

<comment><USER4> And, 1 week later the certificate is still expired.

Clearly people should avoid storeden.com.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I found Shopify app store excessively expensive and risky. Most plugins are subscription based with poor support, no guarantee of future updates and just reeks of poor quality. I am not a store owner so I can't comment on how useful some of these plugins are but the whole idea of business critical services (such as a store front) needs rock solid foundation and support, without it I would get extremely nervous.

Imagine if I have 8 plugins that I pay anywhere from $10-30 a month, per plugin. That's 8 things that can break when Shopify changes some API related things and now I have 8 _different_ parties that I need to seek support from to get my store up and running. God forbid if the developer ceases to exist and bailed out of Shopify ecosystem. I am getting nervous just thinking about this whole "app store" model for business critical infrastructure.

May be I am not well informed in this space, but there are also services that help glue various other services such as IFTTT, and a few others that combine GSuite, Asana, Dropbox, Slack, etc... I can't remember them but I wonder what kind of nightmares I would have to rely on fragmented infrastructure that consists of chained API calls managed by independent companies. Mind you, the middle broker of API also wants the slice of the business so they're going to either charge $/month or worse - ads. Then there is the whole privacy/security aspect. Holycrap what a mess!

<comment><USER6> Sounds like Heroku's business model and that works fine for a certain type of business/consumer. Of course you could spin up your own VPS or code your own Rails ecommerce app. But that's not always economical - up to a certain scale.

API changes breaking sites is another matter entirely than their subscription plugin model which could be solved while maintaining that structure.

This change by Spotify seems to be related to Mailchimp not providing a certain standard of service that they demand from other plugin-services on their platform. I could see that being a costly choice for any customer who has to now migrate to other services, but the intentions were largely good and pro-customer.

Hopefully there was some sort of data migration process in place and some upfront warnings before your email marketing system gets cut-off.

<comment><USER5> I think the problem I am describing goes deeper than just the API calls.

It is about support and accountability. As a business owner, I want as few parties responsible for my infrastructure as possible with healthy portability possibilities (to avoid lock-in).

With Shopify app store, the whole idea is insane to me - I have to now deal with Shopify + plugin developers individually to fix issues. Things break all the time, just go to Shopify forums for support. And then, there is the risk of a developer leaving Shopify ecosystem with a dangling plugin never to be maintained.

<comment><USER6> Sure but supporting your own infrastructure is exactly _why_ people choose to use a service like this.

From my experience running your own services is far more fragile and subject to maintenance-overhead due to API changes than a service like Shopify or Heroku.

The main drawback is a lack of flexibility and customization - not so much the lack of stability in service.

<comment><USER5> I agree and I can see why supporting your own service would probably be more of a headache.

What about stores such as Squarespace? They don't have a market place of apps and everything they do is in their control. Ofcourse, now there is a risk of lock-in and unable to extend/scale your store if needed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This of course is one side of the story. Looking forward to hear the Mailchimps side of things.

Edit: here we are [https://mailchimp.com/shopify- statement/](https://mailchimp.com/shopify-statement/)

<comment><USER7> Shopify:

> Shopify has had growing concerns about Mailchimp's app because of the poor > merchant experience and their refusal to respect our Partner Program > Agreement. Our terms require app partners to share all important data back > to the merchant using Shopify's API to help them run their businesses.

Mailchimp:

> Throughout these negotiations, we refused to agree to terms that jeopardize > our users' privacy and require us to hand over customer data acquired > outside of Shopify. From our perspective, that's not our data to share.

<comment><USER8> I had been working on an integration between our product and Shopify via an app for just about a week when their updated ToU came out. It is a pain in the butt. I side with MailChimp here, that customer data isn't ours to share with Shopify, especially since it concerns a whole different segment of our merchants' customers (brick and mortar vs ecommerce).

What's not mentioned here is that they also updated the terms to prohibit selling anything on behalf of a merchant without using their checkout api, if your software is integrated with Shopify. But we make a special-purpose POS, that's our value-add. It appears that they just want their cut - of customer data and of fees.

Edit: a link to the ToU discussion on the Shopify forums. [https://community.shopify.com/c/Shopify-APIs-SDKs/We-ve- upda...](https://community.shopify.com/c/Shopify-APIs-SDKs/We-ve-updated-our- API-ToU-and-Partner-Program-Agreement/td-p/490397/highlight/false)

<comment><USER9> Exactly what data is this dispute about? The article says "customer information captured on merchants' online stores" but what exactly does that mean?

<comment><USER8> The definitions are frustratingly vague. "Any customer data excluding sensitive personal data", which doesn't exclude stuff that isn't relevant to them, or things that don't fit in the API.

Also, it states that apps "not use an alternative to Shopify Checkout for web checkout or payment processing, or register any transactions through the Shopify API, without Shopify's express written authorization".

That's from 2.3.17-18 of the api terms of use: [https://www.shopify.com/legal/api-terms](https://www.shopify.com/legal/api- terms)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So Shopify is mad that Mailchimp isn't sharing data with them?

I'm no fan of mailchimp (for e-commerce customers I recommend Klaviyo) but Shopify+ is hell to work with. I haven't had as much grief with a platform as I've had building e-commerce stores on Shopify (and I come from Magento). For the price of plus, you get practically nothing. Clients ask me incredulously why they don't have something as basic as Wishlist support or access to custom fields inside their product pages. Shopify's own sync tool for dealing with multiple stores doesn't sync much and their answer to the admin hell of managing multiple stores is to give us a single login and a store selector. For everything else well there's an app for that.

Yes there's an API. Yes you can build apps. But that's an investment and at that point you might as well build something on Woocommerce or Magento. Yes you have to maintain a server and updates on the other platforms but you'll need that for Shopify anyway. If you want to roll your own Wishlist app (you'll want to when you see what's on offer from the shopify store) you'll need a server, a database - the architecture that Shopify says you don't need to begin with.

<comment> steve-benjamins Shopify does include Wishlist and Custom Field features. They're available as apps— not in the core.

The whole point of the app store is to avoid the mistakes of Magento: building a confusing, monolithic mess because they tried to shoehorn too many features into the core.

<comment><USER10> They're available by third parties. You can argue that customfields are supported by Shopify but wishlists aren't. If you need a Wishlist you need a database externally storing customer and product data.

So no, Shopify doesn't have a Wishlist feature. Shopify lists other Saas' that offer to fill in the many gaps.

That may work for some retailers. As with Magento, some will like that approach and some won't.

But if you're telling a retailer that Shopify offers a Wishlist feature you need to be sure to mention that it will cost them $x/month/store and that the app isn't built nor supported by Shopify.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Shopify's Plus offering is also really shady. If you ever choose to try it out, they will not let you return to your previous payment processing rates (credit-card fees). We had been grandfathered in to their old (good) rates. But after trying Plus they gave us their new (much worse) rate and refused to give us the old ones. And this was after they lied about the rate we'd be getting with Plus. And after they gave us a low teaser rate to try out Plus.

<comment><USER12> hey we are a small team that developed a multitenant ecommmerce system geared towards B2B type businesses. I would love to get your feedback about the solution that we built. please shoot me an email at email@example.com if you have 10 minutes to chat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > The data captured on behalf of our merchants belongs to those merchants, > it's as simple as that.

No, it doesn't. It's the end users data.

> and this isn't possible when Mailchimp locks in their data

Complaints about lock-in from you is pretty rich.

> Mailchimp refuses to synchronize customer information captured on merchants' > online stores and email opt-out preferences.

You're intentionally misleading the reader here. This isn't about opt out preferences. That's just a useful excuse.

Any idiot can see you're trying to build up a complete picture about user's spanning across stores.

This isn't about your customers, this is about you wanting to push mailchimp out.

<comment><USER14> Wait, when you supply your data to vendors … do they own rights to that supplication, ergo the data?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Well, Mailchimp is starting their own "ecommerce platform" after hiring people from the now defunct LemonStand. How about that for the real reason for pulling them off the Shopify app store? :)

</comment><comment><USER16> I used to use Shopify about 5 years ago and remember thinking they were one of the good ones (company wise). Good platform, easy to work with API, etc.. I even created a few custom apps for a client's site that ended up doing 100k+ through Shopify's POS hardware in a month.

But from all of the comments here it sounds like they've gone down hill. I haven't used Shopify since then mainly because I haven't tried to pick up new work where I manage an ecommerce store for people but is it really that bad now?

How many of you are really going to use an alternative solution for an ecommerce site?

<comment><USER17> I was kind of shocked that they discontinued their WordPress integration. I get the feeling they want their customers to be completely dependent upon Shopify, which is part of why I avoid them when possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> as a small wholesale business owner I was shocked that I have to pay $300 a month to Shopify system that lacks a million things and then I need to pay 30-50 dollars a month for each plugin and it was my job to figure out how they will work with each other. I am not even talking about support and where I should get it from after spending around $500/month on the whole 'solution'. Instead of paying $6k per year or close to $20k for 3 years I got my own ecommerce system custom built.

<comment><USER6> "$20k for 3 years" instead of 3 years of custom development costs is nothing... sure it's expensive but that's positioned in a marketplace where the alternatives are far more expensive for the average non-technical e-commerce store owner.

If $6k per year is a big expense for you then obviously this isn't the service for you, but enough people are willing to pay that where they are a billion dollar per yr in revenue company.

If some half-baked open-source PHP ecommerce platform with a p/t solo developer over a couple yrs is sufficient to run your business, that's fine. But that was always an option before Shopify existed too and they probably found they weren't interested in that subsection of the market.

<comment><USER12> half baked open source thingy costs $50 a month, im talking about fully custom solution that actually can handle business cases that Shopify can not. such as this product is shipped by itself in a box. that product is actually a combination of the other 3 products. and give accurate shipping quote for an order is 3 boxes 37 pounds each not 1 big 111 pound box. you will need 17 different apps plugged into shopify to get this to work. and yeah you are right, there is a million generic stores that ship apparell and other random crap doesn't have specific inventory and shipping needs and thats Shopify's market. for anything more advanced you need to shell out $2000 per month for Shopify Plus. And let me guess your response to that will be "any serious business can afford that". its like businesses have hand over their cash to Shopify so that can claim to be a serious business. Shopify is a rip-off and clearly abuses their market dominance in the cases like with MailChimp

<comment><USER18> What outbound shipping system are you using that you're happy with?

<comment><USER12> www.CartSpark.com

<comment><USER19> Nice sales pitch. Should probably just be explicit that this is your business.

<comment><USER12> this particular comment didn't ask for that but I have mentioned that I am developing CartSpark in multiple comments on this thread

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Shopify and all other service providers MUST stop letting people comment announcements like this. No one is adding anything valuable but advertising their own product. This announcement just looks like Quora spams.

</comment><comment><USER20> Last week was about Apple VS Spotify, now Shopify VS Mailchimp. I just can't understand why big companies can't get along while there is so much money to make or lose.

I tend to support opensource apps like Magento or WooCommerce. Shopify is extremely easy but I don't get how they can complain when they actually hold all the ropes of their clients and say something about another services' data collection. What's the logic behind it exactly? Users want to use Mailchimp, and it is not always e-commerce related.

<comment><USER21> I suspect since easy investment money with no questions asked is slowing down and there's increasing IPO activity, companies are starting to care about their bottom line more and along comes with it strategic fights with potential competitors over a share of a smaller pie.

<comment><USER12> could be. reminds me of the times when Twitter/Facebook and all others first acted like a platform to build upon and after watching some companies become successful these 'platforms' tightened data access for the the apps/clients and pushed them out of business

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I use MailChimp with my Shopify store and it's pretty irritating to be impacted and have to plan to deal with this. I put quite a few hours into getting everything set up as it is now with our MailChimp followup emails (products left in the shopping cart, etc). From my view, I don't care at all to have my MailChimp account more connected with the Shopify API. Shopify has plenty of data on me why do they need more? And, I don't need or want to control my followup emails from within Shopify. I obviously like MailChimp enough to chose them, independently. So, I smell BS in reading this Shopify post.

</comment><comment><USER23> Sorry Shopify, I think I buy MailChimp's side of the story more. I wonder what percentage of Shopify stores are just drop shipping fronts. I can see that hurting MailChimp's deliverability.

<comment><USER24> How are drop shipping companies harming email deliverability?

<comment><USER23> There are a bunch of Shopify plugins that just let people sell Alibaba express items with no intermediate work. These kinds of drop shippers engage in shadier marketing campaigns. If email coming from MailChimp starts getting reported for spam, other legitimate mail coming from their ips will see delivery suffer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Off Topic: recommendation for a payment processer for a market place?

So this is a market place for virtual goods. Maybe 10K users, with $10-$1000/month/user paying into OUR ACCOUNT, and about 100-1000 users are sellers, pulling in about $10K/month from OUR SHARED ACCOUNT.

Our biggest concern is not commission or speed. It is simply not being arbitrarily black listed !!

</comment><comment><USER26> Very interesting. Our company just announced switching to Shopify from Magento (against my advice). We don't use Mailchimp but this doesn't sound good from the Shopify side.

And from some of the comments here, given that we have a highly customized Magento site (with deep integration to our ERP system) and 100K+ SKUs, I'm very worried what this will do to our site. I wouldn't be surprised if our company will be shocked at the how limiting and expensive it will be.

<comment><USER10> I'd be very interested in hearing more about the switch. I'm a Magento dev that's recently done a Shopify+ store and would love to hear from people in the trenches rather than marketing blog posts

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Reading this & Mailchimp's response, the crux of the debate is sharing things like the user's opt-out status?

</comment><comment><USER28> So they are both saying it's the other ones fault. And both saying because the other one is sharing private data....

<comment><USER29> > And both saying because the other one is sharing private data....

No, they aren't. Shopify is saying that Mailchimp isn't sharing data Shopify insists be shared, Mailchimp says sharing that data is not acceptable, because it's private.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> If you are larger merchant, we recommend Hubspot.

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm curious what good alternatives to Mailchimp exist? My experience working with them is that they're a solid but outdated option.

For example I went to import some contacts today and was surprised that Mailchimp was unable to automatically correct basic syntax errors such as "usergmail.com", "user@gmail" or even "email@example.com <FirstName LastName>"

The fact that their product management team never thought it was a priority to include such an easy time-saving feature makes me think they have a rather hard-headed culture that is missing the boat on a lot of things. I can see why they would be difficult for Shopify to work with.

<comment><USER32> You say they are basic syntax errors but fixing them is not the place of the application. "usergmail.com" could have the @ at basically any spot before the I and be a totally believable email address. Sure, statistically speaking, "email@example.com" is the most likely option, but "email@example.com" would be a perfectly believable email for a game master that manages ail.com.

Given that mailchimp is a bulk email delivery service, I would hate to get spam at email@example.com just because someone forgot the @ on their "email@example.com" entry.

<comment><USER31> That's a good point. I guess I'm looking at this from a UI / usability standpoint. I feel it is Mailchimp's job to speed up my email marketing-- that's the job I've hired it to do. If I just wanted to send email I would use a leaner service at a lower cost.

Mailchimp already filters out bad email addresses (firstname.lastname@example.com, etc.). Most addresses have a format like "sallysanders11" or "michael.smith." The chances of there being another user on the same domain are scarce and indeed at least on my mailing list, 70% of the people signed up are on Gmail.

There's no reason why a good piece of software should not be able to use a little bit of intelligence and ask me if I want to auto-correct my addresses-- within reason, of course.</comment></comment></comment>


Don't Give Up  - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/08/dont_give_up.html

<comment><USER2> I thought this was an excellent read and thought I'd pass it on.</comment>


PlayNice.ly: Using Redis to store all our data (slides) - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/playnicelyapp/redis-schema-design-for-playnicely-redis-london-meetup

<comment><AUTHOR> Source blog post: [http://playnice.ly/blog/2010/05/28/slides-followup-first- lon...](http://playnice.ly/blog/2010/05/28/slides-followup-first-london-redis- meetup/)</comment>