Ask HN: Privacy policy of HN - <AUTHOR> I feel like this HN should be the leader in terms of setting guidelines for how to handle data and I would love to see a nice privacy policy. Is there someplace I haven't looked? The footer doesn't have it. <comment><USER2> More then likely they use the following: [https://www.ycombinator.com/legal/](https://www.ycombinator.com/legal/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, I had no idea. And I've been using Google Cloud for a while now. I wonder if there any legal consequences in saying that I am a business (when in reality I'm just trying out their APIs), or if I can get into any kind of trouble.

<comment><USER4> Wrong thread, dude :)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14695265](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14695265)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Seconded. I am also curious about old submissions, especially those that did not get any traction - are the held in the db forever, or are they aged off and deleted?

I'm expecting that all comments are held forever though.

Finally, who owns my comments, me or HN?

<comment><USER6> Regarding comments: you own them, and grant Y Combinator the license to use them forever, as per [https://www.ycombinator.com/legal](https://www.ycombinator.com/legal) -

 _" User Content Transmitted Through the Site: With respect to the content or other materials you upload through the Site or share with other users or recipients (collectively, "User Content"), you represent and warrant that you own all right, title and interest in and to such User Content, including, without limitation, all copyrights and rights of publicity contained therein. By uploading any User Content you hereby grant and will grant Y Combinator and its affiliated companies a nonexclusive, worldwide, royalty free, fully paid up, transferable, sublicensable, perpetual, irrevocable license to copy, display, upload, perform, distribute, store, modify and otherwise use your User Content for any Y Combinator-related purpose in any form, medium or technology now known or later developed."_</comment></comment>


Fantasy Sports Business Opportunity - <AUTHOR> http://www.darrenherman.com/2008/09/15/fantasy-sports-business-opportunity/

<comment><USER2> Check out teamrankings.com for statistics. Check out Ultimatefootballnetwork.com for fantasy sports. UFN just had some coverage from the TC50.

I am also aware of a new site coming out that will allow trading of sports figures.</comment>


Surface Blades – true innovation from Microsoft - <AUTHOR> http://betanews.com/2013/09/24/surface-blades-true-innovation-from-microsoft/ <comment><USER3> The pressure sensitivity of this is cool but lets not get ahead of ourselves with 'true innovation' \- this isn't the tactile feedback multi-use touch surface we've been waiting for.

I own a Surface (journalist freebie hand-me-down), and after playing with it extensively I've determined Surface's only real contribution to society is as a physical manifestation of Microsoft's inability to commit to design decisions. Should it run classic UI or Metro? Should it to run ARM or x86 apps? Should it have a keyboard or a blade? Microsoft's answer to all of these is YES, and that means NO polish and NO market share.

This blade is another example of not committing - are there any launch partners where you can use this with any software you want? Doesn't look like it. So we're to expect musicians are going to drop the music software they've been using for years for a cut-down v1 Microsoft remix app? If not, then who's it for? The uber casual remixer who.. probably already owns an ipad? Pick a market, guys.

I feel bad for the undoubtedly smart folks who put together the blade and the remix app, but who are stuck working on a crappy platform. Building an array of 1000 pressure-sensitive sensors into a touch surface is cool (I'm impressed w new blade touch architecture), but its also something that a committed hacker could do. And after doing it, they'd have as much market share and software partners as Microsoft does with this blade on Surface. So... I wouldn't call it 'true innovation'. Lets leave that distinction to groundbreaking research projects or highly polished new-ish ideas that finally go big.

<comment><USER4> > _Should it run classic UI or Metro? Should it to run ARM or x86 apps? Should > it have a keyboard or a blade? Microsoft 's answer to all of these is YES_

Do you understand _anything_ about how Microsoft works? Supporting everything is their thing, and it is one of the things that has made them big in the first place - for example, my parents (doctors) still use a DOS based program on their Windows 7 machines that has pretty much gone unchanged at its core for over two decades[1]. Now if that isn't vendor lock-in, I don't know what is.

[1] [https://www.promedico.nl/](https://www.promedico.nl/)

<comment><USER5> > Supporting everything is their thing, and it is one of the things that has > made them big in the first place

Supporting everything made sense when they built an operating system for something that was, for all intents and purposes, a legacy platform (doing ever so well, of course). I presume no one intends to run Promedico on their Surface table though.

Answering "yes" to every possible design question, just to make sure you don't piss anyone off, isn't a solution when you want to provide a well-integrated design. It leads to a messy UI with superficial metaphors and very little flexibility, because there are a million little things that aren't actually _meant_ to work _together_.

It also complicates the API and the programmer's work, which is the last thing you want to do when you're playing catch-up with the rest of the market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would say that:

IF Microsoft has really thought through this new strategy, and mapped its product release timeline out with enough care and analysis so that it will stick with and expand upon Surface (and its new vibe/product range in general), and hasn't just rushed into a new look and is will flail about and switch to something new in two years - if Microsoft really is committed and focussed - <USER2>

IF Microsoft can match the confidence and self-assurance with which Apple releases and iterates its core products and

IF Microsoft can effectively communicate and deliver upon its vision of technology and

IF Microsoft can genuinely make people feel excited and good about themselves when they use their products and

IF Microsoft can attract a developer/user community which feels as comfortable and at home as Apple's -

then Microsoft could be back in business.

It's a big ask but it's possible I think.

<comment><USER7> "If Microsoft were Google"

<comment><USER8> You mean Samsung. Google has more or less failed on all of those fronts too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > It may prove popular with professional musicians and amateurs alike.

Yeah, operating hardware without any tactile feedback in very dark environments sure sounds nice.

<comment><USER10> It's backlit... watch the video.

<comment><USER11> He didn't say it wasn't.

<comment><USER10> How are dark environments a big problem if you can see the buttons? Touch panel based mixing UIs are not unusual in said spaces; I've seen people using touchscreens instead of physical sliders. Given that, this device would be perfectly usable in a dark mixing studio or similarly poorly lit environment; no less usable than a traditional touchscreen (probably more useful, since they can carve little notches into the buttons so you can feel where they are).

It just doesn't make sense to criticize the lack of tactile feedback when a device like this provides _more_ tactile feedback than traditional touchscreens. That criticism only makes sense if you view it as a replacement for a hardware mixing board, which it obviously isn't.

<comment><USER12> > How are dark environments a big problem if you can see the buttons?

You can't see your hands.

<comment><USER13> I know where my hands are. They're attached to me. Getting my hands to a glowing button isn't a problem.

Or (earnest question) is this a problem which non-kinesthetic thinkers actually have?

<comment><USER14> I never have had a problem figuring out where my hands are in the dark. It's always figuring out where the damn "B" key is on my keyboard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't think the Jaguar ever had card inserts for its controllers. In any case, even if it did the Intellivision had them first. They were a neat idea, but putting another piece of plastic in front of buttons that weren't all that easy to press to begin with...

Blades could be a compelling feature, if done right. Apple forces users to do things according to the "Apple Way" and succeeds by polishing that way very well. Anyone who is happy with the "Apple Way" is a happy Apple user. Unfortunately, creating a significant amount of content on a tablet is not really a part of the "Apple Way". Tablets are for consumption, dummy! People who want to create stuff on a tablet are currently an under-served market. It remains to be seen if MS will find success in tablet-space, but at least they're targeting a niche that Apple is neglecting.

<comment><USER16> I don't know if you're being sarcastic or not.

1\. Apple makes the iWork suite

2\. Have you ever used a touch cover? You hardly can call the touch areas on these devices buttons. They give nearly as much feedback as touch screens: none.

3\. Why would a DJ or a gamer prefer this when the surface has a usb port anyway. They could use peripherals from traktor or the 360 game pad.

<comment><USER17> 3\. Because you can fold this up with the device, lock it magnetically, and walk away holding it in one hand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> They would have to be pretty darn cheap to beat out the USB Midi controllers people generally use now with things like Ableton Live, considering you can get something like this now for less than $100 that has the virtue of already being for sale.

It won't look half as cool with your Surface, though.

It might make sense from an industrial standpoint to replace a gazillion of those membrane pads at Micky-D's but as a consumer good? I'm not so sure.

<comment><USER19> You're right but I doubt that this is targeted at users who know what MIDI or OSC is.

If you're a professional there are a lot of better, established and thanks to Midi more configurable/hackable options available. However this might be popular among casual "musicians".

<comment><USER20> The casual "musicians", if they're at the point where they're buying hardware, will probably still consider real hardware vs this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I can see a lot of potential in this if the platform were to be opened up and customised blades could be manufactured cheaply. I'd love to see Microsoft license the technology to third parties and possibly have an open SDK.

This college workshop video suggests they may be planning to open it up. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9UAxHgXYxw](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9UAxHgXYxw)

<comment><USER21> Your comment makes me think - why not allow people to print out the membrane using their own inkjet printer? Some consideration about the material must be made but surely this can be solved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Fingerworks keyboards and touchpads--which were one of the first commercial implementations of capacitive multitouch--were popular with some music producers for specifically this reason. See for example:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qg8IB64yu8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qg8IB64yu8)

Fingerworks was purchased by Apple, and their technology integrated into the touchpads and iOS devices.

</comment><comment><USER23> I fail to see the "innovation" in this. Purpose built keyboards have been around for as long as i can remember, I am especially thinking about the TV production computers with special keys, colours etc... When i saw this i had my hopes high to see a touch surface with an electronically customisable layout, so that the app can essentially draw its own controls.

With e-Ink this is not difficult to do.

<comment><USER24> Yes, that would be nice. Those dual screen laptops are a nice idea, but not with double screens; no battery life/too heavy and such. With e-ink and especially mixed with something like Tactus[1] you could have a winner.

I would've actually expected something like that to appear in one of the big vendors' machines as an attempt to be the 'new iPhone/iPad wow moment'. Fail or not, someone has to try.

[1] [http://www.tactustechnology.com/technology.html](http://www.tactustechnology.com/technology.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> For reference's sake, Point-of-Sale systems (as per fast food retail) have been using completely custom _keyboards_ for years (only affects the last case).

<comment><USER26> Really? I'd assumed that nowadays everyone is converting to touch-screens for customised input.

<comment><USER27> Nowadays yes, but most POS systems I have seen almost look like they have inserts in them and are a covered in buttons every color of the rainbow. The trend is defiantly to move to touch but its not free and that industry moves very slow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm excited for the Surface 2 and will likely get one, but I'm not sure the idea of creating several use-case specific keyboards beyond a standard QWERTY makes any sense. Isn't the whole point of having a dynamic touch screens to enable ANY use case?

It also appears to be connecting via a proprietary connector rather than Bluetooth or USB which means it likely won't work with any hybrids/tablets from other vendors.

<comment><USER10> Think about it this way: the blade is a second control surface that allows you to make use of the full screen for data or other touch UI.

In audio mixing it's common to have an enormous digital mixing board that's linked up to the mixing software, so that you can fill most (or all) of the screen with the data you're actually working on. Some of those boards have literally dozens of channels with individual sliders, buttons, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is supposed to be the "innovation?" A static, physical, printed-on-a- touchpad input system for a touch device?

This input device was made to seem cool in an ad. In the real world the reaction will be puzzlement over why these controls are not implemented on the screen, where visual feedback and reconfiguration of the controls is possible.

<comment><USER13> Exactly. The whole point of a tablet is to show the buttons you need when you need them (and only then), without an external device taking up space whether you need it or not.

For a couple times the price of the static physical dedicated device, you could buy a second device and program the app to use that as expanded-screen input.

<comment><USER30> _Exactly. The whole point of a tablet is to show the buttons you need when you need them (and only then), without an external device taking up space whether you need it or not._

What if I want the buttons available without taking up space on the _screen_ whether I need it or not? The information density of a screen collapses in on itself when it is completely crowded out by control surfaces, so your very argument can be used as a counter-argument.

<comment><USER13> There are of course exceptions to every rule. A specialized controller might be suitable for a few applications. When talking on the scale of Microsoft and general-purpose tablets, the market for such specialized controllers are vanishingly small; great for a niche, but a paltry offering from a company in desperate need of mass appeal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Nothing in the music space is more innovative than beamz by Flo Rida [http://vimeo.com/72153180](http://vimeo.com/72153180)

Uargh...

<comment><USER32> This might have been the lamest commercial I've ever seen =) Who's the target audience anyway?

<comment><USER31> It has an iOS app that goes with it, go figure :)

Disclaimer: Just kidding, i am an apple user myself

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is like a parody of innovation! It looks like a concept project mostly. The key to making anything like this comes from how well it is integrated with the software, and audio production software is really hard to get right.

There is a need for physical controls for music software control (or any software) and there is a fundamental problem. The amount of parameters and functions that need to be controlled is vast. It will quickly overwhelm a control surface with limited amount of controls unless a lot of thought and design is put into the a method of switching the function of the controls. These types of controls are still virtual!

</comment><comment><USER34> I think this is a step-backwards. It's a terribly flawed concept for two reasons:

1) the screen is already an infinitely customisable graphical touch UI

2) you need to set your portable device down on a flat surface to use it

Without it you can easily page back-and-forth through multiple control screens each with a custom UI. You can still have a different screen for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Without it you can carry the device to a table and enter the data in situ. You can hold it in one hand and operate the device with the other.

This bypasses a mobile touch device's two main assets: its portability and its touch screen!

<comment><USER35> Yeah, that. The Nintendo DS does the "display plus touch-area separation" right by having a _second screen_. And you can use that in your lap.

imho, the DS is mostly held back by a resistive touchscreen and Nintendo's inability to think big-picture.

This blade thing stinks of being a solution looking for a problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Yes, this is potentially innovative, but not in the same way that the standard iPod/iPhone connector is. On iOS musical devices you can already plug them into music hardware - guitars, keyboards, mixers, etc. That's already happening.

I would actually argue that Surface Blades are not the best thing ever simply because for things like mixing you want 3 dimensional tactile feedback for subtle adjustments. Big buttons on a flat touch pad is probably better than a purely visual interface, but it seems like they are straddling the line between a non-optimal software interface for a middle ground that isn't the same as using a real mixing board, but it's maybe a bit better than using an on screen UI.

My guess is that musicians aren't going to flock to this unless they get some established producer to use it to mix some awesome beats and even then it's unclear that this is much better than a dedicated hardware device experience yet.

<comment><USER37> "Yes, this is potentially innovative, but not in the same way that the standard iPod/iPhone connector is."

Why does it have to be the same way? How will copying be an innovations then? Also, i could not understand your second sentence.....you can plug ipad into guitar? Was that the implication?

Tactile feedback can be generated using vibrations ala Xbox controller. I think they have Linkin Park's DJ behind them.

Get Dr.Dre on board. Market it like Beats headphones. Generate a following in music at least.

<comment><USER38> Hmm. Linkin Park's DJ? How much more C-list can you get in terms of DJs to endorse your product. If Armin van Buuren plays a set in Ibiza with a Surface, I might possibly give it a bit more credit as a serious device. From a DJ and producer perspective, MacBook Pros and Mac Pros are still king. I don't know the specs on the surface, but I would bet running a full Ableton setup on the surface would be a bit stressful on that OS. Serato might run on it though, so the wedding DJ market might eat this up while the real producers and DJs will stick with their laptops, MIDI controllers and USB/FireWire mixers. I've never played in a booth that was so small that a Surface would be the only thing that fit. This Surface thing is going simply be a marketing pull like iLife is for Mac.

<comment><USER39> Hello I am a member of Microsoft's target market here. I've definitely heard of Linkin Park, and their music, but I've never once heard the name Armin van Buuren before. Does that make him D-list?

<comment><USER38> We're talking about DJs, not circa 2000 rock bands. Armin van Buuren is consistently ranked as the number one DJ in the world.

<comment><USER40> Electronic dance music (EDM) DJs are not well-known in the US. Only a tiny portion of the population listens to EDM. I'm 29 and have friends that are very interested in EDM and I've never heard of Armin van Buuren either, but have heard of Linkin Park (of course I was directly in the middle of their demographic when they broke out). I suspect this is a regional issue. In the US the marketing value of having <insert any known US band here>'s DJ is probably higher than having Armin van Buuren if you are trying to target a broad demographic out of the gate and not going for the hardcore early adopter strategy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Ah, yeah, true innovation alright; an application specific touch-UI? Dang, tablets will never be able to offer that XD.

In the comments: "Apple has a patent for a similar device. However their touch sensitive keyboard is also an e-ink type display so each software you run can have it's own custom keyboard/input tablet displayed without having to purchase or install anything extra. That will be a game changer and make the MS device look primitive."

Man oh man. There's no point in putting the '$' in M$ anymore. What a great day for the rest of the world.

I'm waiting for the infospasm posts self-assuredly advising start-ups leave room for your product to pivot by not implementing the UI in static hardware and 'How Flaviboard Increased Our Revenue by 30000% by Getting Hardware Out of the Iteration Cycle'

<comment><USER42> Honest question. Not just for knappador, but anyone else who wants to chime in. How do you all feel about a single piece of glass vs. actual buttons?

Personally, I tend to prefer real buttons more often than not. I'm fine with tapping and swiping when I'm just browsing stuff (browser, certain apps, etc) on my phone or tablet.

But I feel like if there's 9 or more buttons grouped closely together (maybe less), an interface where I can feel the boundaries between buttons without activating them and get a physical response when pressing them is just better.

I wonder how many people feel just a touch interface is on par or better. I know I've never really gotten used to typing on my tablet like I do my keyboard. But maybe I just need to spend more time with it.

<comment><USER41> The problem is, how much better is it really? The flatness of the cover by its very nature implies awful tactile awareness compared to Cherry MX's or any other such device wholly designed to aid tactile awareness. Looking at the images, I'm guessing I'm about as likely to gain a feel for this device as I am to start reading Braille spontaneously. What is there to give tactile feedback on this thing? Paint!?!? XD Subtle dips in an already subtle material?! I'd rather open a school teaching finger-navigation on felt than develop any application dependent on this. Who is this really a wake-up call to? I'd have to have been using an iPad to transcribe on for the last three years to buy an exclamation that relevant change has occurred. Hardly the thing that will stop the slide of MS, and good riddance. One less platform wholly and utterly founded on proprietary software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> This has a potential if Microsoft opens up the architecture and allows other companies to create their own touch covers. it will automatically boost Surface sales if big name software companies produce customized touch covers to work with their applications.

Think for example covers for video editing software, CAD etc

</comment><comment><USER44> It would be awesome if the 'keyboard' could be combined with an e-ink screen that overlaid it. That way, the touchpad could be reconfigured on the fly depending upon the app that you are using.

</comment><comment><USER45> The new Web MIDI spec allows hands-on devices with sliders, dials, XY pads etc to be accessible from javascript.

While the majority of MIDI controller devices currently target music apps it will be interesting to see how hands-on devices can help improve interactions with other types of app. As an example, here I tackle the fiddly business of graph navigation using a standard plug-and-play MIDI controller and the latest Chrome: [https://vimeo.com/74886850](https://vimeo.com/74886850)

</comment><comment><USER46> It really surprises me how in the middle of Microsoft massive failures, you can still find a couple of good ideas here and there, proving that some fresh blood is still pumping inside that company. I wonder what it feels like. Does it feel great like "i'm the one that keeps this company innovating", or bad like "damn, if only I were working at apple or google, i would be among other people like me, and management wouldn't destroy my ideas with their crappy execution" ?

<comment><USER47> Seriously?

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I wouldn't call this innovation... it's cool, yeah, but let's stop using the word innovation for each cool feature created

</comment><comment><USER49> I'm sorry, but are they calling MS innovative for reinventing the peripheral? Only this time for tablets!

</comment><comment><USER50> Meh. I dont feel much innovation there. They are simply using the keyboard port as a USB replacement to connect a dedicated peripheral. Its not bad per se, but its proprietary and you may as well throw it all away when you buy a non surface tablet late on. I doubt this will change anything.

<comment><USER51> I hate to say it: but when Apple comes out with such covers for the iPad during their fall iPad event, it will all suddenly be innovative and revolutionary. Some people will point out that the Surface has it, but then people will say 'but Apple added this feature that makes it work'.

Why can't we see it for what it is? Microsoft was the first (I think) to use an extremely very flat keyboard that doubles as a screen cover on a tablet. While not revolutionary, it is a good step forward, as good as Apple's introduction of covers that double as a stand. Now they added something fun and playful to the range. Maybe professional musicians won't use it, but it adds a lot of fun to the device for amateurs. And if they open up the 'platform' and provide an SDK, it may lead to interesting new covers.

They are trying nice new things (touch covers, hybrid devices), pushing tablets in new directions. In fact, my next tablet may well be a Surface Pro, after being an iPad user before it was introduced in The Netherlands.

<comment><USER52> Ha Microsoft is the scapegoat for most. M$ hate from the 90s just carrying over. Remember when they brought out the Flat Design, the amount of skepticism here was amazing. Slowly Gmail switched, then Youtube, Andoid, Yahoo and now IOS. MS gets comparatively less credit for anything they come up with but don't bother, its a techy hivemind thing and it will fade.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Microsoft is struggling to get developers excited about their platform. If they can't convince companies to invest the time to build software, they'll never convince anyone to manufacture hardware; hardware has a real cost per unit.

</comment><comment><USER54> My guess is that the blades are terrible and no one will ever use them. It is an easy prediction to make but looking at it doesn't inspire confidence.

</comment><comment><USER55> If a blade has to be flat enough to fold against the screen, it can't really offer tactile feedback. Why not a second touchscreen, just cost or power?

<comment><USER56> That's not entirely true. First, increasing amounts of haptic feedback can be faked with vibration.

Second, the surface keyboard had raised keys. That's very useful for quick operation where you are not looking at the keyboard. Something that I don't think you can do with a tablet without sticking things on the screen.

<comment><USER57> A keyboard in turn has limitations over game controllers. Why not provide a game controller interface for your tablet instead so that manufacturers can provide arbitrary controllers instead of just flat ones the same size and shape as the tablet?

iOS 7 for better or worse is doing that instead:

[http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/09/19/gamecase-the-first- co...](http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/09/19/gamecase-the-first-controller- for-ios-7)

[http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57589649-37/ios-7-ready- ga...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57589649-37/ios-7-ready-game- controller-hardware-spotted/)

<comment><USER10> You realize Windows has had game controller support since literally the beginning, and this tablet runs Windows, right?

<comment><USER57> Can a Surface RT run device drivers for full on Windows? It doesn't run regular Windows programs except ones compiled for it: Office.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> It seems like an awesome product but it's Microsoft so I guess it'll never get the recognition and the street cred.

</comment><comment><USER59> nomination for the most overused word of the year - innovation.

seriously, is any idea now innovation? is it true innovation? or fake? what about disruptive? paradigmatic? enabling?

absolutely clear what the headline is digging at (can't innovate my ass...). so tired of this bullshit.

</comment><comment> mkr-hn Give me a digital painting toolbox blade to go with that Wacom screen and I'll be happy.

</comment><comment><USER60> I was actually considering taking my Surface Pro down off of craigslist and keeping it to play with this for a while (depending on how much they wanted for it). I love synths and drum machines and am always interested to try new music toys and software (I'm far from a musician, so toys is the appropriate word here for me).

So I clicked through to the MS site for it and found that they won't let me order one. In fact, they're a bit condescending about it:

>Want your own Surface Music Kit? Join the #RemixProject and make a Vine video to show us why you deserve one.

I guess that I am willing to pay is not reason enough to one deserve one.'

Then I got to thinking "what's so innovative about this?"

If anything it's a step backwards, a proprietary connector attaches a keyboard/input device to a single model of (shitty) computer.

What about this is better than an iPad + usb midi controller? More RAM I guess...but then there's the laptop + midi controller option.

\----

As for the other uses for this, every other one seems better served by a regular tablet or PC. The Surface is not "no compromises" it's "All compromises".

In my experience, the surface pro sucks as a tablet, it's too heavy and the app selection is terrible, what is there is hacked together and offers few features (see the MLB TV app on win 8 vs iPad for a great example of the quality difference).

It also sucks as a laptop. You can't use it on a couch because they keyboard is not helping to stabilize it, every time you hit a key it wobbles about.

The trackpad is miserable. (Edit: miserable on both the touch and type covers)

Windows does not like high dpi Screens, and does not offer decent scaling ability. In order to have applications look crisp, they need to be tiny, and on an 11" screen with that many pixels tiny is really tiny. There's also no support for multiple scaling settings for screens. Plug in an external monitor and you need to take a trip to the control panel (and log in and out) in order to change the scaling....and it will be applied to BOTH screens.

If you want to use the touchscreen on a table with the kickstand, it tilts and the whole thing moves away from you, again the keyboard does nothing to help stabilize it, and there's no non-slip coating on the kickstand or bottom of the tablet so it just slides away if you push too hard.

RE-EDIT:

removed kvetching

<comment><USER47> This isn't SurfaceReviews.com

<comment><USER60> Fair enough, I got carried away, but custom keyboards will not suddenly make this a good device. I got caught up in ranting about it, because it looks and feels so cool, but is so infuriating to use. What I was hoping to get across is that adding these to the surface don't make it any more practical, and don't address the existing problems with the surface and its keyboard. Without the Surface, this is nothing new (custom input devices are common).

More about the article:

One of the best parts of touch based interfaces is they can change with context and can be customized/improved/fixed for the cost of changing the software. No need to ship a physical 2.0 for your POS when you want to change the button layout.

Also, with these blades, are you expected to carry around more than one and swap them out based on the activity? Then use the onscreen keyboard when you need to do any text input?

The thing is a computer. It has a USB port. One can attach whatever input devices they want. The only difference about a blade is that this doubles as a screen cover. In the medical and fast food examples he gives, the machines are stationary (and you probably want them to stay that way).

I'm all for dedicated input devices or customized interfaces to make jobs easier, but that's hardly a new idea.

<comment><USER61> You might be looking at it the wrong way. From what I can gander, these blades are going to be for application-specific use. I can see a double-folding math- character keyboard for Mathematica or design-tool for Photoshop being quite useful. Yes, this whole thing is novel, but as we've seen with the iPhone-era, novel gidgets and quirkets make people go bananas. Nothing new, yes, but still a cool thing if executed right. The big difference that people aren't getting here, is that touchscreen UIs take away screen real estate and are limited in size, these covers can be double or triple-folding and can have all kinds of LED-driven knobs, sliders, and whatnot.

<comment><USER60> I do like to see people trying new things, and agree that people love useless gadgets (myself included). I didn't notice the idea of double folding versions, but it definitely makes sense for mathematica and photoshop, you need the standard alphanumeric keys pretty often, and the keyboard is about as cramped as you woudld want it to be already, so they would need to be bigger to really offer extra utility.

I think they could have generated more interest and more money just selling them with more designs and sports team branding (The Surface is already used by the NFL, so some sort of relationship between them and MS already exists).

As for the knobs and sliders, I agree it would look 'cool' to see real LEDs light up for your fader or the active loops on your sequencer or whatever, but the reason actual musicians like physical knobs and sliders is because of the tactile response they provide. Thats why Serato's vynil controllers are still popular with a lot of people ([http://serato.com/controlvinyl](http://serato.com/controlvinyl)). With a touch keyboard like the one that the surface has you get the worst of both worlds. The (lack of) flexibilty of a hardware device and the (lack of) tactile response of a touchscreen.

<comment><USER61> Hm right, bidirectional input/output for lightshows and whatnot. We have to be careful not to tread into full peripheral territory - because the whole point of these things is to be covers as well? I guess we'll just have to see what M$ offers and hope it's innovative. Because I have no reason to buy yet another tablet unless there truly is something that makes me excited.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Discover music - get karma - <AUTHOR> http://songspin.fm

<comment><AUTHOR> Any bug reports or feedback on how to improve it is really appreciated.</comment>


How to make a salad - <AUTHOR> http://mattgphelps.com/howToMakeASalad.php <comment><USER2> A couple of cretan barley rusks are also a great filler for salads. They're a great match with feta and olive oil. They need a 2" soak in water before adding them. Only problem is that you'll have to find a deli that carries them.

<comment><AUTHOR> ooh thanks for the tip, haven't tried them before :)</comment></comment>


Books for Software Developers - <AUTHOR> https://sizovs.net/2019/03/17/the-best-books-all-software-developers-must-read/ <comment><USER2> Yet another collection of Amazon affiliate links (tag mustr-20 for USA).</comment>


China is Changing Public Telephone Booths into Wifi Hotspots - <AUTHOR> http://www.mobinode.com/2010/12/17/china-is-changing-public-telephone-booths-into-wifi-hotspot/

<comment><USER2> recently many places that used to be open wifi hotspots have become "china mobile hotspots" which are about one million times less useful.

example: starbucks in Beijing used to just be a WEP'd wireless connection, you buy a cup of coffee and they give you the password, allowing you to go online for as long as you want. Now, you go online and are redirected to a horrifically buggy interface that requires you to input a China Mobile cell #, at which pt they will send you the login information as a text msg to your phone. All sorts of whack limitations (4hrs max, if you get d/c'd you can only log back on 3x and you get dc'd frequently...)

It seems to me that this is very likely a decree from the govt, since wifi access tied to phone #'s is much less worrisome to them than anonymous wifi. could just be a money grab by china mobile though. in any case, I would imagine that these municipal spots will also use the phone # verification system, which totally undermines their usefulness.

</comment><comment><USER3> BT did this a while ago, starting around 2003.

I'm not sure how heavily used they are, though I'd suspect not tremendously.

<comment><USER4> Lots of smartphone mobile contracts come with free wifi on the big hotspot providers like BT Openzone. I suspect most of their use is phones automatically hopping on to them when their users are walking down busy streets. I doubt they'd still be active if no one used them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hong Kong now has free wifi in many government buildings and spaces, including libraries and public parks. So you can sit in a park and connect to the internet fast and for free.

<http://www.gov.hk/en/theme/wifi/program/>

</comment><comment><USER6> This is far too forward looking to ever happen in the U.S.

<comment><USER7> What if a threat to public safety such as a terrorist or drug dealer was to use this service??

<comment><USER8> How's that any different from a library?

<comment><USER7> Don't ask me, I was being sarcastic. If I was to continue with that mode, I'd say "We need to close those too, what if a terrorist learned how to operate a screwdriver from a public book??".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Secondarily, Chinese 3G services (no matter provided by China Mobile, China Unicom or China Telecom) are still slow and patchy. "

I'm actually impressed by how well 3G works in Shanghai and Suzhou.... I'm using China Telecom and haven't had any problem

</comment><comment><USER10> Cool, I suppose. However, it doesn't really seem to matter that the wifi hotspot used to be / still is a telephone booth. They could've put the router on anything and achieved the same effect.

<comment><USER11> It doesn't matter for the users at all, of course. But I'd think that phone booths have a few benefits that makes this a good idea.

For one thing, there's a phone connection right there. I imagine that they would plug into this for the hotspot.

Plus, they don't have to figure out where to put the hotspots: just use the booths, period. It would probably make the deployment simpler and faster.

Also, the overall coverage will most likely not be perfect, so the booths are a visible structure to get close to if your signal is weak (as opposed to try to spot a standalone router for example).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a great idea and could really compliment 3G networks.</comment>


Analog Activity Tracker: Alternative to Fitbit and Its Ilk - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/05/analog-activity-tracker-isnt-ridiculous-sounds/

<comment><AUTHOR> Given the post yesterday on FitBit's IPO ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9507751](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9507751)), this is a timely article, though seemingly more satirical of the all-the- bells-and-whistles digital trackers.

</comment><comment><USER2> Being skeptical of the value of activity trackers, I really enjoy the fact that the guys behind this originally thought it up as a joke.</comment>


From Geek to Freak: How I Gained 34 lbs. of Muscle in 4 Weeks  - <AUTHOR> http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/04/29/from-geek-to-freak-how-i-gained-34-lbs-of-muscle-in-4-weeks/

<comment><USER2> I am very skeptical of the article. It seems highly unlikely that with only four hours of weight training that he packed on 34 lbs of muscle. The research he quoted wasn't as esoteric as he purports. I was a regular reader of misc.fitness.weights around '01-'04 where the adherents of various methods slugged it out. The general consensus was that High Intensity Training (HIT) is no worse than other workouts at best, and even the proponents of HIT made no such outrageous claims as he did. There are enough bodybuilders and weightlifters out there that every technique has likely been tried hundreds if not thousands of times, especially with money on the line, and any technique that had such a dramatic result would have spread like wildfire.

The photos on that webpage already exhibit several of the tricks used by the exercise equipment infomercial industry to make the difference between before and after pictures more dramatic: untightened versus tightened muscles, posture, tanning, shaving, strategic placement of clothing. I will not guess at any other techniques he used which can't be proven by examining the photographs.

If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

<comment><USER3> the pictures are definitely played up, as is a lot of the rhetoric.

for me, the process worked because i wasn't very strong to begin with, but was athletic. its much easier to put on muscle mass when you don't have much to begin with, as opposed to being a bodybuilder to start and then try to use this process to bulk up even more. there are diminishing returns.

the point of the post is valid, imo -- minimal time and work, when done intelligently, does show large results. in this case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> old article.

for what its worth, the process outlined does works, i tried it. part of it is metabolism and body type, though. not everyone will gain as much. and not everyone will really want this type of muscle. its bulky and slow, not the best for more dynamic athletes. you can alter the routine to build more lean muscle, though, and it works the same way. you just won't be able to say you put on some huge number of lbs in muscle.

p.s. - don't use supplements and such. they're bad for you.

<comment><USER4> How do you recommend altering it for leaner muscle?

<comment><USER3> decrease weight, increase reps and slightly increase speed. aim to do around 3x the reps you would be doing according to the article before you hit failure. use freeweights as much as possible instead of bars or machines.

note - i'm not an expert and this is based on my personal research. its worked for me, though. i actually decreased in size but maintained strength after switching from one style to another.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This guy Tim Ferriss is a master BS artist.</comment>


Ask HN: Please rank programming languages by how well they provide OOP support. - <AUTHOR>

Is Smalltalk the best? Is Perl's Moose better than Python's built-in OO? How does CLOS measure up? Where do C++ and Java land on the scale? <comment><USER2> CLOS is probably the best, if you ignore the fact that built-in types aren't actually objects. (They can pretend to be, but aren't. You also can't make built-in functions generic, which is quite annoying.)

Moose is a close second, and provides a lot of sugar that I really wish I had in CLOS. Roles are pretty much mandatory for proper OO these days, and Moose is the only production system that has them. I also love sugar like lazy_build. The type constraint system is just wonderful.

Continuing down, Ruby is a bit better than Python, but both are workable. They give you what you would expect from class-based OO, and you have a basic MOP, too.

At the bottom are Java, C++, and PHP. This style of "OO" barely resembles OO. Java is probably the worst here, but C++ makes it very hard to do things right. PHP's design simply makes no sense at all. None have any useful MOPs to speak of, unless you consider "reflection" a metaobject protocol.

Smalltalk is a special case; it is obviously pure OO, but the features it provides to the programmer are less numerous than other systems. Smalltalk is what Java should have been, before Java was even conceived.

Anyway, my advice is to try them all and decide what you like best. CLOS has features I wish Moose had, and Moose has features I with CLOS had, but they are both quite usable, and allow me to model my program cleanly. It is also easy to steal features for one from the other.

The key feature of Moose and CLOS is their extensive MOP, which lets you tweak or completely override nearly every feature of the object system. Instance storage, method calls, attribute behavior, etc., etc., is all implemented in "itself". The end result is that you can extend the object system with the object system that you are extending. This is powerful because it means your extensions can be written in your extensions, making for code that works exactly how you desire. No compromises. (Moose is an object system built on top of Class::MOP, and it is possible to write Moose extensions in Moose. Excellent!)

Python and Ruby have a MOP, but it is not as featureful. Compare the availability of meta-object-protocol extensions for CL, like Elephant and Context; and for Perl, like the entire MooseX:: namespace; with extensions available for Ruby and Python. It is just not close

Even if you don't care about the MOP for yourself, you will care about how easy it makes writing useful libraries. Most of the MooseX:: modules you will find compose and work perfectly with other MooseX:: modules. The metaobject protocol makes sure everything stays compatible.

Personally, when I start using object systems other than Moose and CLOS, the implementation details get in the way of writing good code. I avoid them when possible. (If you haven't used Moose or CLOS, please don't reply and say, "oh, Java is fine, you're using it wrong". You don't know enough to make that argument.)

<comment><USER3> Clearly you've neverheard of Common Lisp

<comment><USER4> uh, the first system mentioned is CLOS (the Common Lisp Object System). So what exactly are you talking about?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _Is Smalltalk the best?_

Define "best".

 _Is Perl's Moose better than Python's built-in OO?_

It is more complete. Better? Maybe, maybe not. It's very nice, though.

 _How does CLOS measure up?_

Measure up to what? Other LISP object systems, or Smalltalk, and Moose, and Python?

 _Where do C++ and Java land on the scale?_

On a scale of 1 to Verbose, they're pretty far up the scale.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Define "best".

As someone replying to the discussion topic, you may choose any interpretation of "best" that you wish. In fact, that would be preferred, as it would probably produce more interesting discussion than me attempting to rigidly define "best" in order to allow someone to post "given your definition of 'best', language Y is 'the best'".

How about this: which language's OO implementation do you _like_ the best, and why?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What's the goal of this ranking? What are you trying to accomplish?

<comment><AUTHOR> I was hoping it would lead to comments such as, "$lang1's OO implementation is good, except that it's missing $feature_X and $feature_Y, which means I can't do $technique_Z", or "$lang2's OO impl is more useful to me than $lang3's because it allows me to do $U and $V which I can't do in $lang3".

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> emacs or vim? You aren't asking a technical question, you are asking a religious question.

<comment><USER8> No it's not a religious question. You and I can take our respective dieties to task by choosing a test problem, then praying hard to see whose diety exists/answers, etc. Most likely, both of us will be disappointed (otherwise I would have had a jetpack by now :-)

Quality of object systems can be tested by posing a computational problem and letting people solve the problem in their language/object-system of choice, we can then rank the answers by various criteria (development speed, code clarity, code speed, system integration, run-time portability, scaling, maintenance costs, etc.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> <http://www.jvoegele.com/software/langcomp.html>

<comment><USER10> That article is kinda slanted and pretty out of date. I suggest taking it with a very large grain of salt.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Hacker News wants to know your location" - <AUTHOR> So... what's up with that? Has HackerNews always had location popups, or is this new?<p>And if new... why? <comment><USER2> I haven't seen this. What browser?</comment>


6th RISC-V Workshop Proceedings - <AUTHOR> https://riscv.org/2017/05/6th-risc-v-workshop-proceedings/ <comment><USER2> Is anyone using RISC-V in commercial, shipping projects? If so, was wondering what the process was to convince management to go this route over the huge choice of other platforms out there?</comment>


Google has removed that viral Chinese-app scanner from the Play Store - <AUTHOR> https://www.inputmag.com/culture/google-has-removed-that-viral-chinese-app-scanner-from-the-play-store <comment><USER2> It's not clear how that app was violating Google's "Deceptive Benavior Policy".

Whatever one's stand on China, it seems more like an informational app than anything else since user's cannot be expected to find out the origins of a software by themselves.

<comment><USER3> It's a clear violation of this line "Apps that encourage or incentivize users into removing or disabling third-party apps or modifying device settings or features unless it is part of a verifiable security service." from [https://play.google.com/about/privacy-security- deception/dec...](https://play.google.com/about/privacy-security- deception/deceptive-behavior/)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What type of phone system do you use? - <AUTHOR> I'm looking for advice on setting up a phone system for customers to call in. We've experimented with both Twilio and Grasshopper and had some reliability issues (calls not going through, voicemails being left on employees phone, etc).
Any operationally heavy startup out there figured out a good option on a budget?
Matt - Founder at ScriptDash <comment><USER2> If you want something you understand and can control, you could build your own phone system with Asterisk. Inbound calls could come via VoIP (if you can find an upstream phone company you trust) or PSTN (if you're willing to invest in having the necessary ISDN/phone line installed, and in the hardware to connect to those).

If you're doing it for the first time, you might be best served with specialised Linux distribution (e.g. Elastix[0] or PIAF[1]).

The cool thing about this type of setup is that you can do pretty much what you want (e.g. triggering scripts when calls come in, setting up fancy call routing rules, ...). The not-so-cool thing is that there's a learning curve and, if you doing anything fancy, then someone will need to make sure those things are working solidly. Also, as with any other server, you need to arrange for backups and disaster recovery.

[0] [http://elastix.org/](http://elastix.org/) [1] [http://nerdvittles.dreamhosters.com/pbxinaflash/](http://nerdvittles.dreamhosters.com/pbxinaflash/)

<comment><USER3> > If you want something you understand and can control, you could build your > own phone system with Asterisk. Inbound calls could come via VoIP (if you > can find an upstream phone company you trust) or PSTN (if you're willing to > invest in having the necessary ISDN/phone line installed, and in the > hardware to connect to those).

If you want to install it yourself / or not, have support, use a fully open source solution: go look at 2600Hz [0] (disclaimer: I'm a backend engineer there)

[0] [http://2600hz.com/](http://2600hz.com/)

<comment><USER2> I found your company's home page hard to understand, and to navigate. Also, the links at the bottom of the page are really low contrast (at least on my computer, running Debian 8).

But, I finally found links to the open source software you mentioned:

[http://2600hz.org/bluebox_download.html](http://2600hz.org/bluebox_download.html)

Your packaging approach seems similar to the Elastix folks. An ISO that does an unattended install of CentOS, with a PBX and a GUI. Except that you're using FreeSWITCH instead of Asterisk, and Blue.box (is this your own thing?) instead of whichever GUI they've skinned/modified.

EDIT: Hmm. This doesn't seem promising. The ISO download link on that page is broken (404) and the linked GitHub repo was last updated in June 2013. Going to [http://repo.2600hz.com/Bluebox/](http://repo.2600hz.com/Bluebox/) shows an ISO file from 18 months ago. I'd be more confident with a recent release of Elastix or PIAF.

<comment><USER4> I work there, just saw this.

Bluebox was an old project to provide a GUI for freeswitch. Kazoo has been the focus for the past 4 years, bluebox is now a community project if I recall correctly.

Kazoo is a multi-tenant hosted pbx and trunking solution. It is an erlang cluster which uses amqp as a messaging bus and erlang apps which provide centralized call control and features across multiple freeswitch (media server) and kamailio servers (sip proxy). A shared cluster wide database is provided by bigcouch.

The difference between this and a cluster of asterisks (or broadcloud, kandy etc) is that you as a user or account, are not tied to a single server, any phone on your cluster can utilize the resources of the entire cluster as the erlang apps and AMQP bus provide a glue joining all servers in the cluster into a single "switch". Most of the "cloud" telephony out there is not distributed, it is mostly a lot of boxes with at best HA fail-over to another box that sits in as a warm standby with a unified provisioning layer to hide this from the users.

You can checkout kazoo at github [http://github.com/2600hz/kazoo](http://github.com/2600hz/kazoo)

There is a kazoo all in one ISO, which lets you run all the services in a cluster via a single server. You can get it at [http://repo.2600hz.com/ISOs](http://repo.2600hz.com/ISOs) version 2 has the new GUI monster-UI.

Edit: phone does not a good comment make, spelling broken links ...

<comment><USER2> Thanks for taking the time to provide this background and level of detail. I will try out the Kazoo ISO some time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It sounds like primarily a level of service problem.

This might [0] be a case where having your own POTS [1] hardware makes sense. There is a vast expert technical infrastructure to support POTS and it is dedicated to reliability. The marketplace is highly competitive across market segments, by which I mean that there is heavy competition for two line systems and five hundred line systems. Above a certain threshold many systems are modular and provide 2x-4x linear growth.

Sure, maybe it won't scale out to a vast distributed team and you'll have to swap it out in two years and that will be painful. In two years your company will be swapping out phone systems if it is successful anyway...or it will be putting up with a system that's designed for the wrong larger scale until your company grows into it. That friction will probably reduce the the odds of getting there.

Telephony is hard enough to have given us Unix, C, Erlang, and information theory. For a business (and it looks like your company may be one) that will live and die by it's telephone system, controlling the hardware is consistent with Spolsky's approach to StackOverflow: it has its own servers because it can't afford to have critical infrastructure maintenance and repair happen on someone else's timeline. [2]

Good luck.

[0]: Or might not.

[1]: I'm cheating a little with "POTS", probably there's a VOIP component, but the big idea is a box in the closet with some telephony company's logo on it and a box of user manuals on a shelf.

[2]: edit - I might double down on controlling telephony as critical because of HIPPA.

[3]: edit - Outsourcing may make sense for non-patient call streams...e.g. sales and vendors and other generic business operations where a lower level of service might be acceptable.

</comment><comment><USER6> I have heard good things about these guys. They got accepted into TechStars and rejected the offer and are doing very well. They have great reviews for their services. Here it is [http://talkroute.com](http://talkroute.com)

</comment><comment><USER7> Mightycall looks solid. I currently use TalkDesk - but do not like it - so am also in the market for a switch. I also found Bitrix42 but seems to offer way more features than I need. any others out there?

</comment><comment><USER8> I use a CISCO IP 303 Phone and pay traci.net next to nothign for VOIP service.

</comment><comment><USER9> i like 2 options:

1_ Mightycall ([http://www.mightycall.com](http://www.mightycall.com))

2\. Skype with a business phone number.

Wasnt too happy with grasshooper which I also tried.</comment>


Offer HN: Buy my p2p video conferencing site - <AUTHOR>

http://www.chatride.com
ChatRide is a free video conversation tool that lets you do a video chat from within your browser window. Once you initiate a chat, you will get a permanent URL for your chat session that you can send to your friend. Once they click on it, your video chat starts. You can also go fullscreen or do a text chat simultaneously.
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/chatride-free-video-conversation/
http://www.baixaki.com.br/download/chat-ride.htm
http://chatride.appappeal.com/
400,307 Calls have been made.
492 calls are made on average daily
All Time
Adsense Revenue: $2,454.83 Visits 426,688 Unique Visitors 329,096 Pageviews 804,393 Pages / Visit 1.89 Avg. Visit Duration 00:02:21 Bounce Rate65.65% New Visits 77.13%
Annual Traffic
Adsense Revenue: $2,454.83 Visits: 160,172 Unique Visitors: 132,483 Pageviews: 291,252 Pages / Visit: 1.82 Avg. Visit Duration: 00:02:13 Bounce Rate: 67.18% New Visits: 82.26%
Monthly Traffic:
Adsense Revenue: $1204.26 Visits: 12,835 Unique Visitors: 10,786 Pageviews: 23,062 Pages / Visit: 1.87 Avg. Visit Duration: 00:02:16 Bounce Rate:66.18% New Visits: 84.42%
Please send me a message here or email me at firstname.lastname@example.com, I'd be happy to consider any offer. Thank you very much
http://www.chatride.com <comment><USER2> I had an itch to create a project using webRTC and I did it over the weekend. Since it was a weekend project, I hacked together a quick project using some open source libraries. Its not perfect but got my itch scratched :).

Check out the demo link [https://github.com/imomin/videoChat](https://github.com/imomin/videoChat).

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not really in the market for a video chat site, but I'm sure the HN community would like to hear more about the tech-stack.

Looks like it needs Flash? ;( I think that WebRTC is more the way to go for this right now.

What does it run on the backend?

Have you considered Flippa? That might give you a better market.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure. It uses Adobe Stratus, mysql and Coldfusion Backend. I'll be happy to recode it using WebRTC if you're interested. I've not tried using Flippa, will make a post there too though. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Whoops. I messed up the monthly and all time revenue. This is what it should be.

All Time $2,461.35

Annual(june 2012-june 2013) $1,234.20

Monthly $119.86</comment>


I Built a Super Simple Conference System for Startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.LeanCall.io/

<comment><AUTHOR> LeanCall.io was built with a focus on small teams, startups and small business. You can dial in and leave it on all day and talk to remote team members if you like, or just conduct regular conference calls. Marketing speak aside, we have extra capacity on a high quality bridge/switch that we use for our other products and I wanted to spin up something else. The app is supported by the same team maintaining our other products with 4.5 million registered users, 2+ million monthly uniques, multiple sites and a total of 8 years in business so it's not a fly by night sort of thing.

First: Signup is insanely simple, just an email. We send you your dial-in info and an email you can forward to people so they can connect too.

Second: No annoying hold music.

Third: Login gets you a few more free features like presentation mode and leader (host) mode.

Fourth: It is just meant to be super simple.</comment>


Countries with poor human rights records spend millions on public image (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/12/17/19051/us-lobbying-pr-firms-give-human-rights-abusers-friendly-face <comment><USER2> PR firms seem to do a lot more than foreign lobbying and propaganda, and seem to be engaged in active manipulation of clients' populations.

In South Africa, UK PR firm Bell Pottinger was engaged by the Gupta family to promote their (widely reported to be corrupt) interests. Direct protests against the PR firm, including by South African expats in the UK, and SA-owned clients led to Bell Pottinger dropping the Guptas. Nonetheless its been widely reported that Bell Pottinger's strategy included fomenting racial division in order to divert attention from President Jacob Zuma and the Guptas. By many accounts, they have succeeded.

I'm sure that this sort of thing has been going on for decades, but it is notable that the victims of a PR firm (the South African public) were able to turn the tables and force a first-world PR firm into damage control mode.

<comment><USER3> Things like this make me wonder if we need a morality police now that poor morals have no social consequences anymore.

<comment><USER4> This exists in the form of the foreign and trade (and occasionally military) policies of other countries toward yours.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> US spends millions on public image too, no?

<comment><USER6> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism)

<comment><USER7> I _think_ the point he's trying to make is that countries spend millions on public image regardless of their human rights records. There isn't a meaningful correlation until we have examples of countries with good human rights records which aren't spending millions on their public image.

<comment><USER5> Yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> And Israel is notoriously omitted.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This article is from 2015.

The mentioned Qorvis/MSLGroup now runs e.g. [http://www.arabianow.org/](http://www.arabianow.org/) (also in German: [http://www.arabianow.de/](http://www.arabianow.de/)) which promotes the brutal regime of Saudi Arabia:

"This content is distributed by Qorvis MSLGROUP on behalf of the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia. Additional information is available at the U.S. Department of Justice."</comment>


Locked Tesla stolen in 30 seconds in London with fob relay trick - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/locked-tesla-stolen-30-seconds-london-signal-relay-2019-8 <comment> matt-attack This attack against key fobs has been around for years. The recommendation is to keep your keys in a metal container (faraday cafe) when at home. Or at best, not on a hook right by your front door.

<comment><USER2> With my car the fob has to be within 2 feet to unlock the door. At first I thought this was due to using low power transmitters, now I see it as an unintended security feature.

<comment><USER3> The attack uses a directional antenna and a signal booster / relay, so it works against short-range fobs.

<comment><USER4> They could use timing to limit the distance due to the laws of physics but it's difficult.

<comment><USER5> They could use rangefinding to limit the distance without dealing with precise timers.

<comment><USER4> How does rangefinding work?

<comment><USER6> Most short distance rangefinders use an interferometer. You send a radar/laser/sound wave at a target and compare it against a reference. You measure the displacement in the phase angle of the beam bounced off the target to determine distance. You can get insane precision using short wavelengths.

The most common long range rangefinders use nanosecond timers to measure the delay between a pulse and a response. At 100 meters, a laser beam will take 666ns to bounce off a target, 200 meters will take 1300ns etc... The precision of this method is a lot less because of confounding factors like the precision of your timing device, refraction, etc... Data will be encoded into the laser pulses similar to a GPS signal to reduce issues with cross talk between rangefinders and jamming. These measurements are confounded by the huge speed of light. A 1 nanosecond mis-timing will result in 0.3 meters loss of precision.

A triangulating range finder (Usually a LIDAR) will further refine the above measurement by positioning sensors a distance apart to make medium distance sensing more accurate. This allows LIDAR scanners to increase their precision down into the millimeter range.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Needs some '2FA', like actually putting the key in the ignition. :)

Or a tiny motion sensor in the key, if it's still then don't authenticate.

[Edit:] Suitable sensor, 2012 technology! [https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1317349#](https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1317349#)

<comment><USER8> There is 2FA, they just didn't enable it. There's a PIN to drive feature where you have to put a pin number in on the main touchscreen. It also moves to a different location each time so nobody can look at fingerprints.

<comment><USER3> I've never used the PIN, that is awesome that it shifts around!

Does the order of the digits shuffle, or does the whole UI element move, or both?

<comment><USER8> Whole UI element moves</comment></comment></comment></comment>


"Lessons Learned" – A New Type of Venture Capital Pitch - <AUTHOR> http://steveblank.com/2009/11/12/%E2%80%9Clessons-learned%E2%80%9D-%E2%80%93-a-new-type-of-vc-pitch/

<comment><USER2> To be fair, they had raised seed capital and a previous VC round before this pitch. They had already laid the groundwork and this was to show they are still getting somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very interesting slides. Also interesting to see how long it took them to get there (they started CafePress in 1999, and they ran 9 other businesses in 6 years before that!). Another "overnight success takes years of hard work" story.</comment>


Brands/ - <AUTHOR> http://osmlab.github.io/name-suggestion-index/brands/index.html <comment><USER2> There's a blurb on the page, but I'll try to say bit. The pages there are rendered from some structured data that has been collected to facilitate mapping businesses in OpenStreetMap. Mapping the brand to OSM tags makes it easier for new users (and everyone else) to figure out which tags make sense for given store.

It's real nice when mapping using street level imagery, any brand in the index can be quickly mapped just by searching on the name.

Tracking the wikidata items serves 2 purposes. The first is that wikidata is a decent place to go look for further information about the brands. The second is a bit of a trick of curation, the existence of a wikidata entry tends to imply that the brand exists.

There's some plans in the works to use icons from social media in OpenStreetMap editors to further reinforce that the correct brand has been tagged. That's one of the things that is useful to add to wikidata, Twitter handles and Facebook pages.

</comment><comment><USER3> Maybe a better title: "Canonical common brand names for OpenStreetMap"</comment>


Hackers do the Haka – Advanced packet and stream manipulation language - <AUTHOR> http://thisissecurity.net/2015/11/23/hackers-do-the-haka-part-1/ <comment> maze-le Cool, that looks like the monitoring tool I always wanted... tcpdump and wireshark are nice tools, but not always the best option, especially if you just want to have a quick glance of what is going on on the wire

</comment><comment><USER2> Wow, I skimmed over that and everything was readable. What a syntactically beautiful language. This is definitely one of the things I will going to try out in my free time. I've never been interested in programming that plays around with packet.

Looks like learning Haka for me is just right round' the corner!

<comment><USER3> The language is Lua BTW. It does seem to make good use of Lua's syntax for function calls on a single table, e.g.

        func {
          key1 = "value1",
          key2 = "value2"
        }

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the sharing the info! Yeah, it seems really easy to learn and use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Aww, I was looking for another display of the Maori war dance.

<comment><USER5> My thoughts exactly!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> So, Haka is basically _sed_ for network packets instead of lines of text?

</comment><comment><USER7> Having written Snort rules in the past, I'm pretty excited to see this. This will lead to some really great security tools.

I'd bet money on this project getting acquired by one of the IDS companies.

Are there any performance metrics?

</comment><comment><USER8> This is pretty awesome, thank you however made it. I was just reading the linked article and I can already see dozens of applications using this...

Now it'll be good to see how it performs :)

</comment><comment><USER9> Is it possible to install this on my pfSense router today and give it a try?

<comment><USER10> Seems so. They have a website [http://www.haka-security.org/](http://www.haka- security.org/)</comment></comment>


The problems with quality open source software - <AUTHOR> Take a looke on this case.
The IPython (very popular) is Open Source something like Wolfram Mathematica, Matlab, etc.
Exist some bug around PDF export from 2016y. No changes fix.
What you all sugest for this type problem for OS softs?
There is many examples of this type around other software like Linux, Python, Blender etc..  as big projects. We want use OS, but some time is soo hard in case that problems are not solved. <comment><USER2> I maintain open source software with bugs 10 years old. It's my free time and I can choose what to prioritize and work on. Popularity can be a burden because more users lead to more support cases. [https://mikemcquaid.com/2018/03/19/open-source- maintainers-o...](https://mikemcquaid.com/2018/03/19/open-source-maintainers- owe-you-nothing/)

> What you all sugest for this type problem for OS softs?

If it fits your purpose use the OS software. If it doesn't (yet) then paid software (with support) like Wolfram Mathematica, Matlab

<comment><AUTHOR> The choice is depend of quality, comfort.

The problem is that OS community advertising solutions, "product", ideas, and after some time we staying with "nothing" or watching for problems.

Sometime I think that OS leaders cheating my by promises. Some ppl doing business by books, etc.. but model of all chain is stupid.

Maybe this is question not only about quality but including future. If we watching some projects like linux (Sue, Redhat, mayby Canonical/Ubuntu), looks better.

Google Sumit Code financing sometimes some ideas. Maybe should exist some fund, fundation that can collect some project list of task to solve to hit some level?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Closed source software from proprietary vendors also have long-standing bugs.

You just don't have any easy way to get a list of them.

All dev teams (no matter if they are OS or not) are always shortstaffed. That means bugs needs triaging (prioritizing) and only important (either due to risks of the bug or then number of customers it hits) are fixed swiftly ...

On open source you can at least fix it yourself (or pay somebody to fix it for you) if it gets sufficiently annoying..

<comment><AUTHOR> Soo it's bug managment problem and priority in proprietary /companies, but they have funds.. more often I belive.

It this slogan "pay somebody to fix"? Anybody have some experience with this (I pay and I have repaired)?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> [http://github.com/jupyter/nbconvert/issues/456](http://github.com/jupyter/nbconvert/issues/456)</comment>


Udacity vs Stanford's vs MIT's OCW vs Khan Academy vs Code Academy - <AUTHOR>

Which one do you like? Do you know any other online learning? Do you wish for any new services, application , tools for online education. <comment><USER2> Coursera just blew me away by offering courses that aren't related to computer science! I am definitely looking forward to seeing how those blow over. Udacity doesn't have the funding that Coursera has, but also promises to be great. Udacity, however, is focused solely on computer science education. I believe this is a mistake and free education should be for everyone, not just computer dorks.

Also, it's Codecademy, not Code Academy. :)

<comment><USER3> _Also, it's Codecademy, not Code Academy. :)_

They both exist and have both been in the news. Codecademy gets talked about more because its free and YC funded but Code Academy is also recommended by 37Signals, etc... See:

<http://www.codeacademy.org/>

<http://www.codecademy.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Stanford Coursera current offerings are comprehensive. Udacity is getting there.

PS - Computer Science related courses only

</comment><comment><USER5> I like them all. Any gate to education is a gate worth keeping open.

(Code Academy is going to really interesting though once more people start submitting courses. REAL interesting.)</comment>