Ask HN: Could secure offline transactions be possible? - <AUTHOR>

Offline transactions are available on many of our system :  machine distributor card, local transport card, Visa/Mastercard payments.
On the firsts case (machine distributor), the amount/credit is saved inside the card without a global synchronization mechanism; so an attacker could read/change the card, generate new money and put them in the network. (http://esec-pentest.sogeti.com/post/playing-with-nfc-for-fun-and-coffee)
On the second one (cardlocal transport card), Tthe balance isn't stored centrally on oyster cards - rather changes are uploaded to the central system IF you have registered it, at the end of the day. (https://www.reddit.com/r/london/comments/2dmasr/has_there_ever_been_a_case_of_someone_hacking/)
On the last case (Visa/Mastercard), the operation should be saved on the card and on the reader POS devices (POS). Most of the Credit Card Processors (like Square) accept transactions while in Offline Mode will be processed when you regain internet connectivity within 72 hours. ( https://squareup.com/help/us/en/article/5095-process-payments-with-offline-mode )
Is it possible build some extra features for offline system to increase the security? (ok.. cryptology is a suggestion but not a solution) PS: on the other hand, bitcoin network is completely distributed and totally synchronized by nature. <comment><USER2> I have been doing offline transaction in bitcoin for years now. Private keys on the offline system sign unsigned transactions from an online computer and the interaction is completely over an airgap (webcams and qr codes on/from either side).

Electrum is primarily what I use to do this, but there is an android app called Bither that does essentially the same thing.

Additionally, the Electrum 2.4 client has multi-sig features and it is very easy to setup and use so the security of your funds is distributed across multiple devices/co-signers.</comment>


Fake Receipts - <AUTHOR> http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/06/fake_receipts.html <comment><USER2> The fake receipts are $40/each by the looks of things. That prices the service out of the petty theft realm (i.e. you're not spending $40 to expense a fake $50 dinner) and well past most of the legally dubious but (arguably) morally acceptable reproduction of receipts for expenses you _did_ incur. IMO their sample receipts also didn't look that great, with the logos blurry on the edges and not as dark as the text, and the text not an obvious POS typeface.

Honestly the only interesting use I can see for this service would be on the side of the provider -- it would be amusing to see who would pay for such a thing and what they'd request.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's an IRS sting operation.

<comment><USER4> Is this an assumption or a fact? Strangely enough, that comment alone seems reason enough not to even bother visiting the site.</comment></comment>


Yahoo's Default = A Personalized Experience - <AUTHOR> http://yahoopolicy.tumblr.com/post/84363620568/yahoos-default-a-personalized-experience

<comment><USER2> They had already been doing this for IE since it became the default. I think it's time to implement browser "Do Not Track" as a built-in proxy server service along the lines of an anonymous version of Opera's Off-Road mode instead of a request.

</comment><comment><USER3> More accurate title: Yahoo now ignoring explicitly declared preferences because it's better for revenue.

Newspeak is unbecoming, Yahoo.</comment>


Chicago Hacker News Meetup: 8pm 4/30 @ New Wave Coffee - <AUTHOR>

Come talk, hack and play duck hunt. <comment><USER2> Anyone from evanston taking the purple line/red line? Hit me up (if you want to meet up before hand).

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, this would be my third event of the night. Any way to move it?

<comment><USER4> I'm down for something in early May. Also, are we a 21+ crowd? I might prefer a bar to a coffee shop.

<comment><USER5> Early may sounds good for me. And definitely at a bar if possible.

<comment><USER4> Sachin! Pick a date!

<comment><USER5> How about a week from this Thursday? 8 days from now? As for location, I'd prefer north side but I'm crap as far as knowing about good spots.

<comment><USER4> North side says "Hopleaf" to me, but I'm open-minded. I can make the date work.

<comment><USER5> Hopleaf sounds great. I'll break out my skinny jeans for the occasion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow, short notice, eh?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm here by the big screen.

</comment><comment><USER6> friday might be better..

</comment><comment><USER7> Good choice.</comment>


Snapchat CEO's 'poor India' comment sends ratings crashing - <AUTHOR> https://amp.scroll.in/article/834736/snapchat-ceo-faces-flak-for-once-saying-he-doesnt-want-to-expand-to-poor-countries-like-india <comment><USER2> As terrible as this sounds, this is a successful marketing strategy used for millennia. Countless luxury brands quietly do everything they can to prevent poor demographics from using their products.

For example a lot of high end clothing stores destroy extra inventory to prevent it being sold at lower prices and subsequently worn by the poor. I'm sure there's countless other examples that fly under the public radar.

I'm not defending this guy or this strategy, just trying to remind everyone that this is business as usual, and we should save some of the pitchforks for the Ubers and Enrons.

<comment><USER3> this actually makes sense, such a sad reality that we live in</comment></comment>


Google Employee's Anti-Diversity Manifesto Goes 'Internally Viral' - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/amp/en_us/article/kzbm4a/employees-anti-diversity-manifesto-goes-internally-viral-at-google <comment><USER2> It should be trivial to measure performance these days and figure out if there indeed is/isn't any biological difference or if certain parts of DNA/cultural background etc. are the decisive factors. It's Google anyway, "The ML company". They should internally test this hypothesis and then publish their findings (hopefully they can do objective studies with high integrity). If diversity programs cause them become less competitive, they will wither at some point; if diversity helps them they will earn economical success (unless all companies become alike). They have a perfect playground internally for that.

<comment><USER3> And what if people don't like the result? If the result will be that there is a biological difference between the sexes will people accept the result or just start calling google a sexist and bigoted company and then google will suffer? There is a Norwegian documentary about biological differences but that didn't change anything.

<comment><USER2> Let's wait until some research is done. It's premature to say what the real result would be even if we can argue whether pure primitive biology-based behaviorism/evolutionary psychology will be more important than more gentle approaches the civilization is built upon. Maybe we will even gain an insight where the breaking points are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > The document said that improving racial and gender diversity is less > important than making sure conservatives feel comfortable expressing > themselves at work.

I'm all for skill over diversity, but "making conservatives comfortable" seems like a weird thing to write. But until the document comes out it will be difficult to judge it, and hearsay and "shaking people" are not a good measure of it's content.

</comment><comment><USER4> Found another submission for this story: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14934581](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14934581)

<comment><USER5> Yeah, it was on the front page for a bit but got (I assume) flagged off.

Which, for once, I agree with. Sooner or later the document will presumably come out, but until that happens I seriously doubt any useful conversations can be had about a manifesto that nobody's _read_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If this was someone left wing who published a piece saying that women should be paid more then it would hardly cause any commotion. I haven't read the document but it seems that those that disagree with the contents now want to get the author fired. Which seems to have been part of the authors point, it is a safe space for people if they are ideologically left wing bit not if you are from the other end of the political spectrum. I consider myself left wing but echo chambers help no one.

<comment><USER7> How about people just stop talking about politics at work? If it isn't germane to your job and isn't pleasantries like talking about your weekend or your hobbies or moving or your kids or whatever, just leave it at home. It's just like dating coworkers: sure, it might not be expressly forbidden by office policy, but does that mean it's a good idea?

<comment><USER8> >How about people just stop talking about politics at work?

If someone else is talking toxic politics at work, and you don't contest them, you get their politics.</comment></comment></comment>


Haste language - <AUTHOR> http://haste-lang.org/ <comment><USER2> Meta-comment: this is an excellently written landing page. All the comments about the explanation prose you usually see on HN when a language or library is introduced could be rewritten as "Make it more like Haste's landing page".

<comment><USER3> I don't know. I think language landing pages look better with a little bit of code at least.

<comment><USER4> well... I mean it's Haskell.

code samples can really only give you a feel for the language, any more and it belongs in tutorials and API documents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > In essence, Haste lets you write your client-server web application as a > single, type-safe program, rather than two separate programs that just > happen to talk to each other over some web API as is traditional.

I've been thinking about this same idea recently and find it very attractive. As programmers we don't explicitly control how our RAM communicates with the CPU; we let the underlying abstractions handle it. Why don't we have similar abstractions for when a client-side program (CPU) needs to access something on the server (RAM)?

Does anyone know of other tools trying to accomplish this? I'm not a Haskeller but am tempted to dive in just for this feature.

<comment><USER6> I think it comes down to two questions:

(a) Does the abstraction actually lead to productivity gains in the long run, including time spent on debugging a possibly leaky abstraction?

(b) Does controlling these things manually enable you to provide a user experience that is sufficiently better to at least cover the costs of any lost productivity?

For any particular abstraction to be viable the answers need to be yes/no.

For abstracting away CPU/RAM communications the answers are clearly yes/no. But what are the answers for the abstraction that the OP referred to?

<comment><USER7> I think the main feature haste is providing is Haskell to JavaScript compilation. That will increase your productivity by

1\. Enabling you to lean on the compiler when refactoring.

2\. Decreasing the time you spend debugging.

The fact that it will split your program into client and server side parts is scary though, and interesting. I'll have to investigate further.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't exactly understand why Haste was made into a separate dialect when it "just" has a different stdlib?

> with a different set of standard libraries

Is there a technical reason why it would be ill advised to just make Haste itself into a separate library that can be included into the regular Haskell ecosystem? Doesn't this type of fragmentation cause huge delays in the progress of a language, ultimately?

Hopefully it's obvious that I'm entirely not knowledgeable about these things and that I'd love for someone to explain this to me.

<comment><USER9> This is a definitional issue more than a technical one - if you follow the link to the Haskell package documentation [1], the project actually consists of aforementioned standard library, plus a Haskell-to-JS compiler. This is a "dialect" of Haskell in the same way that we can speak of the GCC and Intel dialects of C and C++ - both compilers support the same standard, but each supports a different set of non-standard extensions. In this case, the Haste front page notes that it supports _most_ , but not all, GHC extensions to the Haskell standard.

[1] [http://hackage.haskell.org/package/haste- compiler](http://hackage.haskell.org/package/haste-compiler)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm a bit disappointed this is getting so little response here. It's clearly trying to improve the state of the art of web app dev, and in a powerful language, to boot.

Do you really think we're going to be writing raw JS the whole time? The trajectory of computing has always been to build higher levels of abstraction, especially when the implementation technology is kludgy.

</comment><comment><USER11> Haste is looking more and more awesome! However, we've taken the route of clojurescript/om for building on top of a Haskell web app. cljs just seems a bit more "there" as a compiles to js language. I would have loved to have used something like Haste or Fay, but for right now (taking a deep breath and giving up the type safety) I think the clojurescript eco-system looks the stronger for functional programming in the browser. The browser repl from emacs/lighttable is also a pretty impossible feature to beat!

</comment><comment><USER12> So out of all these options for Haskell ([http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/The_JavaScript_Problem](http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/The_JavaScript_Problem)), what's currently got the most momentum behind it?

<comment> pseudonom- My impression is that Fay has been in (at least moderate) use the longest. GHCJS seems to be getting a lot more viable lately. Elm (which is only Haskellish rather than fully Haskell-compatible) isn't listed on that page, but is getting quite nice.

<comment><USER13> I usually hear that Haste produces the nicest target Javascript and GHCJS perhaps the worst... but GHCJS will probably continue to get more momentum.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've been thinking for a while about reimplementing a large CoffeeScript (horrible language) project that we have at my work in Haskell, just to see if it could work, how easy it would be, how much smaller it would be, and if I could get the same or better performance out of it without going crazy. One of the demands of the existing software is that it both run in the browser, and server-side. This project is awesome because I could reimplement it in Haskell, and run a binary version on the server, with a JS version in the browser. Very cool! Now if I could only convince my company to switch...

By the way, on the "Try Haste" project, it would be nice to see the generated JS output, as they do on the "Try CoffeeScript" page. Even though it's not really meant to be looked at in javascript, it's informative for those who know a bit about both languages to see what kind of transformations are taking place.

<comment><USER15> Youre probably well aware of this but I do gather that:

One of the biggest problems with coffeescript is that when you are troubleshooting production code you need to decipher the generated JS back to what was actually written in coffee.

It strongly suggests haste will present the exact same problem perhaps in greater scale.

<comment><USER16> If you're still suffering that pain you need to switch to better build tools. Source map support is pretty mainstream now.

If I open Chrome Dev Tools on my production site, it automatically grabs source map files from my server (accessible only to me), and I see the whole source tree of original coffeescript files, with complete access to breakpoints and stack traces.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> [http://ocsigen.org/js_of_ocaml/](http://ocsigen.org/js_of_ocaml/) is a similar project for OCaml.

</comment><comment><USER18> My big worry here is debugging. With, say, CoffeeScript, my code translates trivially and it's easy to map my JS back to the source. But it seems like it'd be a lot more complicated here. I'd love to hear the perspective of someone who's used this for real -- was that an issue?

<comment><USER19> It's important to stress that JS is really just the target language "instead of ASM" for Haskell-to-JS compilers, not just a convenient preprocessor. Development happens in Haskell (or Core, an intermediate representation, "the final human-readable step before compilation") land, and very rarely in the JS (or ASM).

<comment><USER20> But bugs happen everywhere, and I don't expect Haste to abstract and fix all possible browser bugs. When <experimental feature X> changes subtly and you get an exception, how do you track it down? How about when the browser just freaks out and inserts a NaN in a place type safety says it can't?

<comment><USER19> Whatever the cause - code, compiler, browser - what you have is a NaN in the wrong place, so the usual techniques apply: Test your code (which usually consists of fairly small functions) using Haskell's excellent testsuites, figure out error location with Debug.Trace, etc.

In the end, this is like asking what happens when the assembler "freaks out" (inserts 0 at a random location), or your architecture is wrong (Pentium FDIV bug): things may become difficult. (There is no type safety to help you on the JS level, much like there is no type safety in machine code. When you insert a wrong value, your code will misbehave in an unpredictable way.)

<comment><USER20> Except that such things happen a lot more often on browsers. And "softer" errors, like experimental features being subtly different because user X toggled checkbox Y (which you don't know about and cannot reproduce) are _not_ going to be caught by test suites.

They _can_ be caught by client-side crash logging / reporting. But if they're useless, you just lost the ability to fix bugs you don't see yourself in your nice up-to-date dev environment. These bugs happen with surprising frequency in any reasonably-used site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is interesting (and exciting). I would love to see an implementation of TodoMVC ([http://todomvc.com/](http://todomvc.com/)) in Haste.

</comment><comment><USER22> How is it more useful than Yesod ([http://www.yesodweb.com/](http://www.yesodweb.com/)) and other existing web app frameworks in Haskell?

<comment><USER23> Presumably because you can write in-browser apps that you would typically write in JS, in Haskell. AFAIK Yesod is just another web framework a la rails, django, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Haste is a great approach to compile Haskell to JS. But I yet have to play with it...

I did play with an alternative approach Yesod+Fay; where Yesod is the webframework and Fay the compiler of Haskell to JS. This approach is a bit more traditional in sense that the server-side app and the client-side app are separate (with some code shared by both).

I wrote a blog on how to get a Yesod+Fay example app setup on a recent Ubuntu:

[http://www.hoppinger.com/blog/haskell-in-the-browser- setting...](http://www.hoppinger.com/blog/haskell-in-the-browser-setting-up- yesod-and-fay)

With Haste the server-side and client-side code live side-by-side in the same files. I "got it" by reading this code:

[https://github.com/valderman/haste- compiler/blob/master/exam...](https://github.com/valderman/haste- compiler/blob/master/examples/sendfile/sendfile.hs)

For what I understand Haste does client-sever communication over websockets and yields webapps that are full-JS (therefore difficult to do SEO).

I often read the people are afraid of debugging with compiled JS; I must say that since I need a lot less debugging when using when compiling Haskell to JS. So far all my debugging needs are fulfilled with simple print/alert/console.log statements.

<comment><USER25> This is one way to use Haste but you can also use it similar to how you are using Fay. It does not yet have plugins like Yesod and Snap do for Fay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26>
        While a certain increase in code size over hand-rolled Javascript is
        unavoidable, an optimized but uncompressed Haste program is normally less than
        3x the size of an equivalent hand-written program, making the latency penalty of
        using Haste minimal.

A type safe environment is most useful for large(r) applications; you don't really need it for your 200 or 2000 SLOC jQuery script.

But larger applications quickly grow quite a bit, reaching a megabyte or multiple is not uncommon in the land of GMail and similar apps.

Growing your JavaScriot "binary" size by a factor of three might be a problem for such applications. It doesn't sound that much, but the difference between download, parsing, and running 1 MB of JS vs 3 MB of JS is several hundred milliseconds on a very good connection and a beefy desktop machine.

<comment><USER27> We use Fay at FP Complete, which produces similar sizes as Haste, and our 15K line Haskell codebase compiles down to 1.3MB plain text → 386K through uglifyjs → 36K gzip'd. Actually, Haste uses GHC's STG backend, which desugars and greatly simplifies, so it should output code even smaller (and more efficient) than Fay. It's true that parsing is heavier when you go above the 1MB range. When I open plus.google.com my browser temporarily freezes, and I'm on a recent MacBook Pro. At least transfer-wise, generated code compresses well because it's the same repeated patterns over and over which gzip is good at. In the end, though, we prefer the issue of "our page loads a bit slowly, how can we compress or segment our .js files better?" is a much easier and isolated problem to solve than writing such a big codebase in plain JavaScript.

<comment><USER28> Thanks Chris, that is interesting.

BTW, I am a happy customer of FP Complete. I have bought four Haskell books in the past, but Haskell has never really clicked for me (but studying Haskell has helped using Clojure). Whenever I get some free time I use your IDE and online lessons. My hope is that by the time my one year subscription is up, that I will be comfortable sometimes using Haskell instead of Clojure or Java on large projects.

<comment><USER29> Hi, Mark. I'm curious at what point Haskell lost you, if you can identify that. I'm asking, because I'm also learning Haskell at the moment, but because I'm also interested in teaching and I'm thinking about how certain topics could be taught better.

<comment><USER28> The "problem" I have had has been not setting aside enough time to use Haskell exclusively for a while. I need to do one reasonably large project in Haskell, which is a problem in setting aside the time.

<comment><USER27> I have the same problem with Agda and Idris. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Should really have a link to the great examples: [https://github.com/valderman/haste- compiler/tree/master/exam...](https://github.com/valderman/haste- compiler/tree/master/examples)

</comment><comment><USER31> Was the Haste site made with Haste? The top links do nothing when viewing it on my (somewhat older) phone so I'm curious how well sites degrade in different browsers and devices.

<comment><USER32> It looks like: [http://haste-lang.org/main.js](http://haste-lang.org/main.js)

...and yes, I tried disabling JavaScript and it doesn't work.

<comment><USER33> Also, predictably: [http://haste-lang.org/main.hs](http://haste- lang.org/main.hs)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> These layers upon layers just seem painful to me.

<comment><USER16> Then you may want to consider staying out of the software business. It's layers all the way down.

The relevant question is only how leaky each layer of abstraction is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What exactly is the use-case for this? Can't quite get it from the site.

<comment><USER23> Making a JavaScript app with type safety guarantees. Also the pleasure of haskell in general. Same reason people use CoffeeScript. It compiles to JS, but you get several advantages of not using JS directly. Either syntactical, or abstraction of idioms.

Haste of course goes WAY further than CoffeeScript. But the rationale is the same. I enjoy writing Haskell much more than JS. If I can write Haskell and convert it to JS, I'll do it every time.</comment></comment>


Reddit traffic doubles in less than a year, to 2 billion monthly pageviews - <AUTHOR> http://blog.reddit.com/2012/01/2-billion-beyond.html

<comment><USER2> I'll admit to being one of the latecomers to reddit in the last year. I use to avoid reddit like the plague, because I thought reddit was just www.reddit.com (the main page) which the few times I visited was filled with random assortment of stuff I didn't care about.

Later, I discovered the true essence of reddit, sub-reddits. Things like r/loseit, r/fitness, r/gamedev, r/<things I actually care about>. Now I'm hooked--I visit the sub reddits multiple times every day. I no longer subscribe to the main reddit feed.

So, for things in store for 2012, you absolutely must focus on "help new users better understand the way reddit works".

In addition, if I were in charge of reddit for a day, I'd get rid of the reddit main page aggregation and instead replace it with a word cloud and the heading "Pick a topic that interests you to visit that sub-reddit for _valuable_ discussion and content". Because, on the whole, the main reddit feed devalues the entire site with slop.

edit: removed misleading line.

<comment><USER3> One huge problem, though, is that shit (specifically racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, fat shaming, ableism – oh, I guess that list really isn't all that specific) tends to crop up everywhere. It's a very reddity kind of shit.

Encountering blatant (and highly visible because upvoted) sexism (for example) in such harmless sounding subreddits as /r/soccer or /r/minecraft really kills all my fun. There are a few nicely moderated places, though, so not all hope is lost (and /r/soccer is at least usually devoid of shit).

<comment><USER4> I think politcorrectness is the ultimate kind of bigotry of them all. Just like kids growing up in sterile environments start to have all kinds of allergies PC is already starting to show similar effects. Sterility screws up the immune system of our body, PC screws up immune system of our minds. The worst part is it does not help to fight those issues, on the contrary — it just discourages even think about those issues. And there is huge difference between joking about some particular subset of humanity and actually disliking that subset. Then there are people who just get "offended" by everything — those should really get their heads examined. They most likely don't even know why something offends them. Just because it is "offensive". Why is it offensive? Who knows. Some picture of naked tits offends you? Really? What absolutely amazes me, that showing people being killed, heads exploding, limbs ripped off is ok and not harmful. But god forbid someones dick will be visible for a fraction of the second—that's a major scandal. Don't you think it is weird, that depiction of people killing people is wildly advertised and easily accessible, while depiction of people making love is almost (and in some places truly) outlawed?

<comment><USER5> Well, if you subscribe to a solipsist, intent-is-everything idea of morality, then it makes sense to believe that the mere act of saying that women are hysterical bitches who need to get back in the kitchen, doesn't make you a misogynist. But that isn't the point.

Entertain this notion; words mean things, whether you like it or not. Your conscious state of mind is completely irrelevant to anyone but yourself. When people roll their eyes at your unfunny racist jokes, it's not necessarily because they think you're racist; it's because you're saying racist things.

So, why is it offensive to say black people are criminals who love KFC and watermelons? Well, maybe you should ask a black person, because you certainly wouldn't know. But be sure to use "offensive" in scare-quotes to hammer home the point that you Just-Don't-Get-What-The-Fuss-Is-All-About. Remember also to point out that most people are too stupid/crazy to understand why AIDS jokes which may include a synonym of the word "faggot", can be offensive to homosexuals. Because hey, it's just a word after all. There couldn't possibly be any societal, cultural, or historical contexts behind words, right?

And then you blab on about sexual taboos like it has any real bearing on anything. But really what could anyone expect from someone who thinks that the attempt to use more inclusive language in public discourse amounts to "the ultimate kind of bigotry of them all".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love the reddit community, and I've been an active member for almost 6 years now. Congratulations to the reddit team for building a huge, diverse and successful community. However, I think that this latest stage of growth brings a lot of problems. The entire tone of reddit (in general) has become a lot more hostile during the last 1.5 years. It's what someone said about groupthink - downvoting or posting a quick, hostile reply to something you disagree with is much easier than actually articulating why you disagree. There is a lot of hating and lots of personal attacks instead of honest discussion.

I've been thinking about this for a bit. As an outsider it seems a lot like an up-scaled version of American society. Reddit used to be a relatively homogenuous group of people, but is now _very_ heterogenous, in the same way the US is. The problem is that reddit doesn't have the custom of politely avoiding contentious topics in the public space. So you end up getting mens' rights activists and militant feminists yelling at each other, Christians and atheists, racists and minorities etc.

I think this problem is only going to keep growing. Reddit has survived a long time, but this is a fundamental issue which is more about keeping an open mind and being tolerant of differences of opinion. It has more to do with societal conditioning than technology. It's a great example of what happens when you put radically different people within shouting distance of each other without traditional common courtesy to moderate things.

Like I said, I've been on Reddit for almost 6 years, but things are getting pretty bad. Almost every single time something that is considered controversial by any group is posted, there are multiple aggressive comments...which are upvoted if they are formulated in a sufficiently assertive way. The community is moving away from rational discourse, to a more traditional extroverts-first system where being loud and assuming that your opponent is wrong gets more recognition.

<comment><USER7> _The entire tone of reddit (in general) has become a lot more hostile during the last 1.5 years._

On the contrary, I think the groupthink was much more obvious before they started policing the subreddits more closely in the last year. It used to be that /r/business was the most anti-business place on the web - any post that was positive about business would get instantly downvoted to oblivion, in favour of posts decrying how businesses were exploiting individuals and the government in various ways.

Then they split it up into multiple sub-sub-reddits, and now /business is actually a sensible place to read stuff about business.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> To put that in perspective, Flickr is at 1.5B. LinkedIn, 2.7B.

Edit: I'd like to go on record with a bet that by the end of the year, reddit will get more traffic than LinkedIn (which currently has a market cap in excess of $6,000,000,000).

Anyone want to bet against me?

[https://plus.google.com/u/1/109191382354704910211/posts/ZRiC...](https://plus.google.com/u/1/109191382354704910211/posts/ZRiCqWFxzxR)

<comment><USER8> LinkedIn's audience/traffic is far more valuable though, so I'm not sure why you added the bit about their market cap. Reddit users by and large are there for entertainment and don't click on ads. LinkedIn's users are there for work and by and large _are_ the ads.

<comment><USER9> I don't think reddit is really trying so hard to monitize. (And given the nature of their user base, maybe it's the smartest thing to do.)

The banner ad unit on the right of reddit is almost never running a real ad. It's always an ad for a subreddit or a pretty picture. That one single spot at $1 cpm at 2b pageviews could net reddit $2mm a month. That's a lot of money to be left on the table.

<comment><USER8> $1CPM for the whole page (all the spots) would be very tough for a social news site, doubly so for one with porn and triply so for one with porn and reddit's demographic.

To put that in perspective, if Facebook were to get $1CPM they would be bringing in over $1B a month from just advertising. Facebook's revenue is about a third of that and doesn't all come from advertising (Facebook Credits and what not). It's even more bleak considering that Facebook has the ability to target advertising much better than reddit.

They can certainly make a bundle of cash, but it's a tough nut to crack.

<comment><USER10> >Facebook has the ability to target advertising much better than reddit.

I'm not sure I buy that. Reddit knows your interests due to your subreddit subscriptions, and if they wanted to scrape your comments they could easily find out a whole lot more. The fact that they don't is likely due more to their limited engineering team and a general distaste for that kind of invasiveness than due to its inherent difficulty.

<comment><USER11> ...While on facebook, users willingly and explicitly define their interests, dislikes, personal information, etc.

Facebook doesn't need to 'extract' that information based on browsing information (although it probably could, given the number of sites that share information or use the fb api, and the links that users share with each other) and user posts (statuses, wall posts, notes).

Facebook has far more information available than reddit, so yes, it should be able to target ads much better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Condé Nast had no idea what they were buying. The best decision they made, one I'm sure that was the result of the Reddit team making the case for it, was relatively hands off mgmt.

I suspect CN still doesn't really know what to do with it other than sit back and not screw it up.

<comment><USER13> If you don't actively unscrew it up, it will screw itself up.

Reddit is already in steep decline even though page-views are up. It's attracting a different crowd now. They're just one Digg-bar moment away from disaster.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, I wasn't referring to the quality problem (I'm in full agreement with you on that). I think they are in a better position that Digg at the Digg-bar point (even with low qual participation, engagement still seems deeper than Digg at that time), but the quality is decidedly Eternal September (lower, really).

This is a movie plot. Seriously. Condé Nast is the government. They are largely incompetent and mostly concerned about political infighting and palace intrigues.

The reddit team is the hodge podge group of geeks that happened to be (insert constrained environment here):

* on a cruise ship with the worlds top nuclear scientists (and a bomb!)

* touring an underground viral research facility on a school outing during which there is a "containment breach!"

* orbiting earth in an experimental space plane they built in their barn when the entire GPS sat system FAILS!

The government (condé nast) can do nothing to assist them other than sit uncomfortably on the edge of their chairs, wrinkling their expensive suits, waiting to see if our intrepid developers succeed.

Unlike a Hollywood production, however, we don't know if this plot has a happy ending. I'm rooting for our plucky team, but the clock is ticking.

Tick.

Tock.

(I'll leave the rest of you to imagine the movie poster)

<comment><USER13> If you don't weed out your counter-productive citizens you end up with Digg. If you do, if you keep it tight, you might be lucky enough to have a metafilter.com which after a decade is still an amazing place.

Strangely, Something Awful is actually a great model for a community. A great case-study in how to keep a community from imploding.

<comment><USER14> Hah really? Something Awful is site where everyone rehashes five-year-old in- jokes, has a weird cult-like mentality towards the rest of the internet, and makes money by repeatedly banning a small number of people over and over again. I'm a member there, and the place is clearly dying out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Reddit's growth has been amazing. It gets a lot of hate because of users reposting content without giving credit, but it really is an amazing site. I used to search Google endlessly for sites to get, for example, help on video games or services for video games, but now I think, "Well, I'll just check out their subreddit and see if anyone else has this problem." It's great for news and breaking stories. Sometimes I see it on reddit before I even see it breaking on Twitter.

I think Conde Nast did a good job as well in not fucking it up for the site. They let the owners do their own thing and let the site grow (an action I really wish other large companies would take when acquiring startups) instead of forcing them to put annoying ads all over or other stupid things.

However, I wish reddit would make it easier for users to find features and generally understand the site. I'm still finding useful features that have been hidden in the software.

I thank the reddit staff for their amazing work and hope that they keep it up. :)

</comment><comment><USER16> Whatever you think of @reddit's march towards decline...this was my favorite part of the blog post...and something I hope rings with other popular sites:

Here's a list of things we don't (and won't) do for traffic:

We don't get traffic through ads.

We don't participate in any traffic trading.

We don't email our users (unless they choose to enter an email and then forget their password).

We don't harass users to sign up.

We don't harass users to invite their friends.

We don't pester you to download our app.

We don't use slideshows and other pageview gimmicks.

We don't know anything about SEO.

We don't integrate with Facebook.

We don't even link to our Facebook or twitter accounts.

<comment><USER17> Regarding the "decline" of Reddit: any site that gets 2 _billion_ monthly page views is going to be wholly different from its incipient form of several years ago. Surely the users of Reddit who pine for its past have many alternatives today.

<comment><USER18> The alternatives often seem to come in the form of communities splintering. e.g. /r/gaming, /r/gamingnews /r/games, /r/truegaming etc. The expansion and decline in quality (i.e. rage comic spam) is usually followed quite rapidly by new sub-reddits being created and communities forming with stricter areas of moderation.

<comment><USER19> Still that is a suboptimal divide, and leaves a discovery problem. Someone will solve it and replace reddit in at least some profound ways.

<comment><USER20> _Someone will solve it and replace reddit in at least some profound ways._

Doubtful. These are deep-seated patterns that have been playing out in online communities for _decades_ , and every "oh we'll just build a new thing that won't have that problem" attempt has... had the same problems.

For examples, and some interesting thoughts on the issue, start here:

<http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html>

<comment><USER21> Well, fundamentally, we've been designing online communities in the same (flawed) manner for decades. This is basically the recipe for reversion to the mean:

1\. Allow any user to add themselves into the community; and then,

2\. allow the course of discussion to be set by majority rule.

The site (or subreddit, or newsgroup, or whatever)'s focus and usefulness will gradually disintegrate as people in secondary demographics join (e.g. for programming, people interested in web design) and then _tertiary_ demographics join who are only interested in things the _secondary_ demographics like, and actually don't care about the original, _primary_ focus of the community at all.

For examples of tertiary-demographic takeover, see Reddit's /r/music and /r/movies. The primary demographic wanted media _discussion_ ; the secondary demographic wanted to discuss specific pieces of media; and the tertiary demographic just wanted links to new media they hadn't heard of. (Which—for /r/music at least—when combined with the average new-Internet-user's set of "music they've heard of", the way people have a more positive association with music they've heard before, and the way democratic interest floats up the _most_ agreeable items, the front page becomes basically "Reddit's Top-40 chart.")

Any community that avoids this will fundamentally have to avoid doing either #1 or #2.

<comment><USER22> This sounds pretty easy to avoid by moderating to keep focus and prevent drifting. "This subreddit is for media discussion _only_. Irrelevant links will be banned."

<comment><USER20> This hasn't worked for reddit. It hasn't worked for any other site that's tried it.

Seriously, folks, read Clay Shirky. The man knows what he's talking about.

<comment><USER23> It has for r/askscience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Congrats to our local HN'er kn0thing and everybody else at Reddit. 2B is quite an achievement.

Regarding below questions about the business side of Reddit, see the previous conversation here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2966628>

</comment><comment><USER25> It would be really cool to see an architecture update post from them regarding where they are now and where they want to go. Pretty please? :)

<comment><USER13> It's still in shambles and probably serves as an example of how not to host your site. Amazon is causing me all kinds of grief lately and their AWS customer support is the worst in the industry, useless to the point of comedy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> That's incredible. Congrats!! :)

Are we allowed to ask how/if they're making money?

<comment><USER27> I'm guessing they are making money (ads & reddit gold) since they have been able to make a few hires recently.

Unfortunately the overall quality of content on reddit has really gone downhill. Even after unsubscribing to the subreddits that were the worst offenders, it's really hard to find interesting stuff with meaningful discussions. These days I'm almost embarrassed to tell people I use reddit.

<comment><USER28> Reddit is the new Digg. Groupthink on an epic scale, linkbait headlines, and hordes of people that want to feel angry about things so they can at least feel _something_. (Just like old media!) Now, there is some good content on there, but there's way too much crap to wade through in order to find it.

<comment><USER29> Is there a way to create a customised frontdoor without having an account? I remember reading something about chaining subreddits in a URL, but never gave it a shot.

I'm also in the "embarrassed mentioning Reddit" camp, but I do like AskScience and anything like that.

<comment><USER30> You can do exactly what you described by chaining subreddits in the url. Just go to reddit.com/r/sub1+sub2+sub3...

That being said, making an account is suprisingly easy and has its benefits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The most surprising figure to me is that 65% traffic is from the United States. I think for a lot of the biggest sites, that number is much lower and going down.

</comment><comment><USER32> I admit that it's hard to measure this in an absolute way (and I agree pageviews is a flawed metric), but I submit that in two years, reddit will be as popular as Twitter is now.

</comment><comment><USER33> I sorta wish the title added the (YCXX) tag (which was YC05 IIRC ?)

</comment><comment><USER34> I guess this answers my question to how badly reddit crushed digg.

<comment><USER35> Here is another nice view of that: [http://gs.statcounter.com/#digg_vs_reddit- ww-monthly-200905-...](http://gs.statcounter.com/#digg_vs_reddit-ww- monthly-200905-201112)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Could this have something to do with the quality being halved?

</comment><comment><USER37> No wonder the comment section now competes with YouTube for most inane on the net.

</comment><comment><USER38> was getting tired of digg in the past, esp when its boss sometimes was shown as the headline there for no reason... nice to see reddit is making it.

</comment><comment><USER39> One of their sub sites uses the "f" bomb, not a very professional way to operate a company.

<comment><USER40> One? I suppose you are aware of /r/gonewild _for starters_

<comment><USER41> gonewild?

r/teen_girls

r/picsofdeadkids (yes, it's what it advertises)

r/DeadPeople

r/rape

r/incest

Basically, everything moderated by violentacrez: <http://code.reddit.com/wiki/help/faqs/violentacrez></comment></comment></comment>


Take a break from your startup, work on mine: need appengine(java) developer - <AUTHOR>

Hello HN I tried looking at the regular freelancing websites (elance, odesk...) then I thought communities like Hacke news, reddit and stackoverflow maybe better places to look for good developers for relatively new technology. I need a developer for a google app engine (java) project. Maybe I can hire someone who has been working on their own startup and would like to take some time off for a month or two.
I am giving all the details below, appreciate your suggestions or responses.
skills required
        - good knowledge of google app engine (java), its limitations, tricks, pitfalls and best practices (esp with the datastore)
        - good java skills (speed) and knowledge of oop
        - basic html/css and javascript skills

    - work schedule
        - The website is to be completed in March so it will start right away
        - In most of March there will be daily communication and almost daily deliveries, so your calendar needs to be free

    - about the website
        - it is a website based on sports, at the start it will focus only on one sport
        - basically fans can follow tournaments, interact with each other and play some simple sport related games (not flash)

    - <USER2>
        - prefer billing by number of hours
        - will pay with my credit card using the option with least overhead
        - willing to make payments weekly/daily...

    - <USER3>
        - The site will be coded one feature at a time with a very plain html ui. Expect something like this:
            - first chunk of work: a User class, a user registration page, login page (session), user's profile editing page, an admin page to view new users
            - second chunk: classes: Tournament, Match (Tournaments consist of matches), a Tournament page, a match page, an admin type page to enter and delete data
            - third chunk: user can add Tournament or match to his list, this list can be seen on his profile page
        - the nifty features (usually done with javascript) will be implemented with simple basic html elements and minimal javascript
        - once all the features are implemented in the backend I will get a designer to make a photoshop design
        - photoshop design will be converted to html/css (by me or you or another front end designer)
        - site will be operational before april and fixes will be made as required
        - after May the site will be expanded by adding more sports and features

    - current status of project
        - I have a very well definded minimal set of features
            - complete organization of the website (content of each type of page, whats in the menu's where, which page links to what etc)
            - basic layout/wireframe(on paper) of each type of page
        - I have a very well defined deadline too   :)
 </code></pre> If you are interested please reply with your work sample, working hours, hourly rates etc (my email id: email@example.com) Again, I appreciate any suggestions you might have for me. <comment><USER4> Random thoughts:

1) Not everybody here is actively engaged on a startup. It's a common misconception that I fell victim to for a long time while I lurked. There are hopefully plenty of people to help you out on this that are either freelancing, between gigs, or what have you. Good luck.

2) Are you tied to Java? You may have better luck if you go language agnostic. I don't know if you're already entrenched, or what the decision was, but it doesn't seem like the most popular language around these parts.

I can't help, but I hope you get the guy you're looking for.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I am tied to Java, I have to go with app engine and do not know Python, so java is the only alternative. Since I will be coding some of the projects myself and maintaining all of it I cannot be language agnostic.</comment></comment>


Cloning another app? - <AUTHOR> Hi all,
I wanted to know how legal it is to literally clone another app. For example, if I havev an online platform that helps people compare different cameras and its already up and running - what stops someone from scraping all my data and making the exact same website, but just executing it better?
Do I have any legal grounds for this? <comment><USER3> This will clearly shift a considerable measure from nation to nation, however the essential thought is that you can't make a correct clone, yet you can make a knock-off rendition.

</comment><comment><USER4> in your question "Do I have any legal grounds for this?" Do you mean for or against creating the clone?

<comment><AUTHOR> Against creating the clone. For example, if I have made my site - I have made all the images, collected all the information. Someone scrapes it all - <USER2> the image and displays the same information but has better developers than me, can I take legal action?

Right now I'm looking for people to test my platform, but im worried it could end up in wrong hands before i get big...

<comment><USER4> you can watermark the images to help with that. And you can use professional beta testers to limit the worry during that stage. Over and above that I would probably ask an intellectual property attorney about what other protections are available because without protection you may have no basis for a suit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Facebook came at Snap with an offer. Snap refused. Facebook builds their own Snap. Apparently, there is nothing illegal about that.

Microsoft created Hotmail and Live. Yahoo Mail. Then Gmail. While not exactly the same, they are all email systems. Nothing illegal about it.

Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, and Slack all have a whole bunch of clones, and while similar, there is usually the developers own twist added on to it.

There is nothing stopping anyone from scraping your data, though you can certainly make it harder for them by adding your website into the data. Doesn't hurt to add in, "Originally appeared on..." or "Original source from..."

It might not stop someone from stealing your exact data, but it will make them have to do some extra work to remove that. Also, if you have a Terms of Service, you might want to state that the information can be used, but cannot be copied. This still won't technically stop people from using your idea or scraping data, but it will make them think twice about it.

Unless you can patent it, in which case it certainly would be yours legally. Pretty sure there are ways to do that.

I mean, if you think about it, none of your data on Facebook or Google or even the Internet is actually yours. I'm not sure you even own your own website. Though a web hosting company would probably not assume the responsibilities of taking over and are just renting you the space and the computer to present your information. (Though certainly up for discussion -- I mean, a landlord does not own your stuff, even if you don't pay your rent)

But you don't technically own that digital data. Lets take an example: I run a website, Confessions of the Professions ( [http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com](http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com) ) and I have hundreds of contributors every year that submit their articles to the website. Every author OWNS and claims credit for their articles. But once it is published, what is done with it is no longer in the authors hands. If this were the case, than I would not have permission to place ads on articles. I do not own their article, per se, but I do own the digital data. So in my terms, once the article is published, it can never be removed. That is what I "own". However, I cannot claim the article is ever mine because I truly did not write it. I believe this would constitute plagiarism. I have had authors contact me for removal, and the only thing I can do is remove the fact that they are an author or any identifying information, so after that, the author becomes anonymous and no one is associated with that article.

I do allow other websites to copy any page on my website, but also in my terms, they MUST give permission to the original author AND state the original source that they found it from on the newly copied page. While not 100%, I have seen other websites copy some of the infographics from my website, AND they usually will put "Original Source" or something like that underneath, a link back to my website. I believe it is good for SEO practices and favored in the eyes of Google.

So I wouldn't fret about people copying your data, BUT you should have somewhere that if they are to copy it, it is plausible to give credit where it is due. In doing this, your website has the potential to become even more popular and acquire more traffic.</comment>


The real reason Slack became a billion dollar company (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@satyavh/the-real-reason-slack-became-a-billion-dollar-company-f14c22b15a29#.sylma3sq4 <comment><USER2> All the attempts at 'slack best practices' since this article was written in June 2015 are basically to not do #1, #2, & #3. If Slack is an authoritative source of information that cannot be ignored, you simply aren't doing it right. Slack is a success in my org specifically because it enhances our communication and documentation, not because it has become it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I really don't agree with the main thrust here at all, and I think I agree with the analyses the OP was trying to rebut: it basically boiled down to luck. There were other viable (and even better) chat products out there.

Lacking a "reply" feature almost kept me from using Slack. It is still the only new feature I want in Slack. I would trade half of the integrations (I mean, Giphy sucks, it really does, and the Hangouts integration is just a race condition with an icon) to have that one thing.

</comment><comment><USER4> IRC client -> ZNC -> Slack IRC => logs*

Sync them with Syncthing => locally saved logs, you can read them later.

Problem solved.

<comment><USER5> Problem solved for technically savvy software engineers who enjoy wasting a day of their time for a worse product (and an hour or so every so often with maintenance).

<comment><USER4> Worse product? You're cute.

Slack without the unicorn farts is much less of a hassle and a distraction; I have enough things to keep an eye on to appreciate plain text communication.

<comment><USER5> There is a reason 90% of the world writes their text in Microsoft Word / Google Docs rather than Vim/emacs/Sublime/Notepad. Something tells me Slack is going after the 90%.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> the one thing that bothers me about slack is the notification model - i am always distracted and compelled to check notifications (whether they are relevant or not). as such i try to minimize the application and only respond when im called out by name and or channel or @here notifications are posted, but still there are also channel users who abuse these notification broadcasting features.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Ironically though, doesn't slack HAVE a way to reference messages? You just copy a link to the post you want to reference.

</comment><comment><USER7> Real reason = Idle middle managers/project people trying to justify their existence + stupid VC + marketing + hypetrain</comment>


Fixing employment with consulting call options (Church of St. Michael, May 06) - <AUTHOR> http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/05/07/fixing-employment-with-consulting-call-options/

<comment><USER2> Oh come on, get that stupid parenthetical out of the title...

It's an interesting idea, and I'd love to see HN discuss it.

<comment><USER3> Yes, this is definitely an intriguing idea. It's too bad nobody is seeing this post because it's stuck at 4 upvotes. :-(

Also sad that this is one of the few very egregious cases of "title editorializing" that _should_ actually call for an admin to fix the title, and it's been sitting here like this since it was posted.</comment></comment>


You might want to reconsider that donation to the Reading Rainbow Kickstarter - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2014/05/28/you-might-want-to-reconsider-that-donation-to-the-reading-rainbow-kickstarter/ <comment><USER2> "All this adds up to a criticism that has been levied at high-profile Kickstarter campaigns before: Crowdfunding is theoretically supposed to bolster charities, start-ups, independent artists, small-business owners and other projects that actually need the financial support of the masses to succeed. It's not supposed to be co-opted by companies with profit motives and private investors of their own … which, despite Burton's charisma, is exactly what the Rainbow reboot is."

Says who?

Look, it's a consensual relationship between backers and people looking for crowdfunding. Obviously outright fraud is wrong, but the article isn't alleging that this is anywhere close to that -- everyone agrees that they're asking for money for what they say they want money for. (And corporations with profit motives and outside investors are, oddly enough, a hedge against the biggest problem with crowdfunding -- the risk that the product won't be delivered upon. "[C]harities, start-ups, independent artists, small-business owners" are more likely to fail to deliver than an otherwise successful business that turns to crowdfunding to support a project.)

<comment><USER3> Yes, exactly. The other half of the article feels exactly the same: "PBS decided to kill the show, so LeVar is obviously wrong for wanting to continue anyway". It doesn't present an argument that teaching language is more important than creating a desire to consume books; it just appeals to PBS's authority.

But aside from the article's shortcomings, I do agree with their sentiment. You typically see Kickstarter pages explain what they need the money for in some level of detail -- who would want to give strangers money otherwise?

The idea of promoting literature to children is great, but that's just a mission statement. The entire pitch is frustratingly unspecific about what exactly they're making with their million dollars. I can take some pretty good guesses, but why should backers need to guess at that?

<comment><USER2> I haven't really checked out the Kickstarter -- Reading Rainbow doesn't tickle my nostalgia fancy as much as some people, so while I'm glad they have a chance to contribute if they want, I'm not really interested in it myself.

But when the history of this day and age is written, we're going to look back at Kickstarter as a candle in the darkness -- right now it's one of the very few ways in which "new media" is grappling seriously with the idea of figuring out how to get consumers pay content producers for content they want, rather than requiring content producers to figure out how to turn their creative endeavor into a convenient medium for advertising. The way some people want to throw it under the bus just because people are actually using it to make money rather than keeping it "pure" for the starving artist annoys me. I want people to make money off Kickstarter. I want more and more content to be made because it's what consumers want, not because it's how advertisers can reach consumers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "If Reading Rainbow is so epically popular, then why was the show cancelled to begin with? And now that it's coming back — as a for-profit company, not a charity — is it really the best vehicle for teaching literacy to "millions of children"?

So the crux of the argument is that Reading Rainbow is no longer a non-profit. I really don't care about that.

<comment><USER5> "If Reading Rainbow is so epically popular, then why was the show cancelled to begin with?"

This, of course, assumes perfect knowledge and efficiency. I wonder if the author of this piece would make the same sloppy argument against, say, _Tell Me More_ , which, NPR announced this month, will be cut ([http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo- way/2014/05/20/314256024/npr...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo- way/2014/05/20/314256024/npr-to-end-tell-me-more-lay-off-28-people)). Or consider _Firefly_ , the arch-example of clueless program cutting ([https://www.blastr.com/2013-5-3/netflix-exec-explains-why- th...](https://www.blastr.com/2013-5-3/netflix-exec-explains-why-theyd-never- bring-back-firefly)).

I'm not saying this program was good or should be brought back (I never watched the original and don't know anything about it) but doing a hack piece on a KS campaign with such scant reasoning is not cool.

<comment><USER6> I think Star Trek is an even better example. It was under constant threat of cancellation (saved only by fans writing in), then finally moved to a death slot and killed after three seasons. Then it went on to become the second- biggest science fiction franchise ever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Everything else in this article aside, I think the point about "fewer than half of households with less than $30k income having access to high-speed internet" is a bad one.

The flip-side of that statistic may well be "close to half of households with children below the poverty line have high-speed Internet". If that's the case today, the trendline is probably going to continue in the direction of more people getting access to high-speed Internet access.

So look at the timeline of a project like this (setting aside whether it's a good project or not, which is besides my point) and think 5 years out; think of the number of households we're _already_ talking about with the current statistic, and how many households it'll be in the future.

<comment><USER8> It may well be more than half considering Pew made an odd decision to exclude 3G and even 4G cell phone networks from its definition of "high-speed internet."

[http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/08/29/how-pew- rese...](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/08/29/how-pew-research- calculates-broadband-adoption/)

To be fair this may not have much effect on their results now, as they say only 10% of their respondents had a smartphone but no home internet; even so, for many people cell phones give the best value and as wireless networks improve and get cheaper I bet more people drop expensive cable operators in favor of wireless--or, alternatively, people who just never saw the need for wired home internet will say "oh, this Facebook thing is neat, I can keep in touch with family and do it right here on my phone."

<comment><USER9> The WashPo article takes this into account by attempting to ding Burton for targeting "desktops first", when lower income families are more likely to access the web via phone.

But my understanding is the new Reading Rainbow will be a website, meaning it will work fine on phones if it follows modern web standards.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm not at all convinced that focusing on _how_ to teach kids to read is ultimately better, which was apparently one of the reasons the show was cancelled. If you give kids a reason to _want_ to learn to read then maybe the hows will fall into place.

My kids and I loved Reading Rainbow so I think whatever shape it comes back as is going to be a plus. If it's only a vehicle for LeVar advocating reading then that's good enough for me.

</comment><comment><USER11> LeVar is currently giving an AMA on Reddit [http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/26sn1c/im_levar_burton...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/26sn1c/im_levar_burton_but_you_dont_have_to_take_my_word/)

</comment><comment><USER12> I think some valid points were made. It also saddens me that "love of books" takes a back seat to "learn to read". What went wrong? Has education quality decreased? Has parenting quality decreased?

<comment><USER13> [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States)

> he study, the most comprehensive study of literacy ever commissioned by the > U.S. government, was released in April 2002 and reapplied in 2003 giving > trend data. It involved lengthy interviews of over 90,700 adults > statistically balanced for age, gender, ethnicity, education level, and > location (urban, suburban, or rural) in 12 states across the U.S. and was > designed to represent the U.S. population as a whole. This government study > showed that 21% to 23% of adult Americans were not "able to locate > information in text", could not "make low-level inferences using printed > materials", and were unable to "integrate easily identifiable pieces of > information."

Depends what you call literacy. The US has good rates of literacy (over 95%) but as can be seen from the study quoted in WP that doesn't seem to mean much if between 1/5 and 1/4 of the population can't use printed material to extract information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > _In other words, when Reading Rainbow began in 1983, the big question was, > "how do we get kids interested in reading?" By 2009, that question had > become, "how do we teach kids to read, period?"_

> _Unfortunately, it's unclear how the new, digital Reading Rainbow will > address that disparity — if it chooses to at all._

Maybe it will address that disparity by recognizing that there _is_ a disparity: those are two different things that both need to be addressed, and it was ridiculous to focus on one while completely abandoning the other in the first place (to be fair, PBS funding somewhat forced the issue).

This is Reading Rainbow continuing to go after "fostering a love of books" and no, not teaching the basics of reading. Why is that an issue?

edit: it also isn't going to be for the desktop, but for the web, something still much more ubiquitous than tablets, especially in low-income areas. Explicitly supporting and testing on the mobile web would be a great goal for them, though, if they don't already plan to do so.

</comment><comment><USER15> One point the author makes that I'm hoping the Reading Rainbow team will address is the need for high-powered devices to consume this content. I don't think a million dollars is going to cover the subsidy needs to get this content into the hands of kids that could use it if it has to cover the cost of iPad-equivalent-performance devices to handle all the audiovisual bells and whistles that we see in the tablet app (and, to some extent, that made Reading Rainbow so much fun to watch on TV).

So I have some concern there... But in general, a project betting _against_ devices in the future---even in the hands of at-risk demographics---being more powerful is a project that is targeting wrong. So the concern may be overblown.

</comment><comment><USER16> Joke is on them; I was already willing to drop $250 on an autographed headshot of Levar Burton.

</comment><comment><USER17> The problem isn't merely that they're a for-profit entity. It's that they're a for-profit entity semi-masquerading as a charity. "RRKidz," a company with multiple large, private investors, is appealing to donors' sense of altruism to receive $1 million+ in additional revenue. The investors (not donors) are all expecting a share of the profits in proportion to their investment.

</comment><comment><USER18> ''' ...in 1983, the big question was, "how do we get kids interested in reading?" By 2009, that question had become, "how do we teach kids to read, period?" '''

I remember learning to read. I taught myself (mostly) because I wanted to read books. I went to a tiny rural school with 3 grades in each room. After school it was an hour or so before my dad could come get me. I sat and looked at books. When I didn't know a word, a very patient older lady, the teacher, would tell me what it was while she sat and graded papers (probably cursing my dad to herself). I learned to read in kindergarten, a full year before the rest of the class (admittedly this wasn't a high achieving school and was nearly 40 years ago).

The point is... To teach kids how to read is just like teaching anything else. Get them interested in it. Or, we can keep trying to club them over the head with reading. Even though that approach doesn't seem to be working.

</comment><comment><USER19> >In fact, while the Kickstarter promises to deliver more books to low-income kids, there are already some hints that it's not totally up to speed with those same kids' digital realities. It's well-documented fact, for instance, that low-income households are disproportionately more likely to access the Internet by cellphone. And yet Reading Rainbow wants to put its app on desktop computers first — which requires both computer ownership and high-speed Internet access. (Less than half of households earning less than $30,000 a year have high-speed broadband, per Pew.)

It looks like the writer of this article may be one of those disadvantaged illiterates. Or at least a technoilliterate. The kickstarter is about getting Reading Rainbow on _the web_ , and thus everywhere; desktop, tablet, phones. I see no mention of any desktop-specific app, or indeed any app except the pre- existing iPad one.

</comment><comment><USER20> I actually think that Washington Post has some other interests they are not mentioning here, in order to write this article against Reading Rainbow.

WP writes say "neither WNED nor PBS wanted to pony up because both believed that the show was no longer the best way to teach kids reading skills. "

However if you google a little bit these two, you can find that PBS has a partnership with Washington Post. PBS said in their website: "We're very excited to announce this partnership because the Washington Post is an ideal partner for many reasons." Read: [http://tinyurl.com/mj48log](http://tinyurl.com/mj48log)

</comment><comment><USER21> Just because the focus of publicly funded programs has shifted from encouraging kids to read more to teaching them how to read does not mean that RR has become less useful or its' goal less noble, only that the checkwriters have different priorities.

That the kickstarter was so successful among the kids of yesterday speaks to its' long lasting influence and positive impact. Even if it's just nostalgia and a catchy themesong driving the money, they will certainly do some good.

</comment><comment><USER22> Oh noes - my Obduction pledge was driven by nostalgia and fed to a for-profit company!

</comment><comment><USER23> Kickstarter is basically tech's closest thing to a PBS pledge drive. This is quite a bit less problematic then Sesame Street. I really don't get the writer's outrage other than he needed to fill column inches.

</comment><comment><USER24> It's a nostalgia tax for my generation.

</comment><comment><USER25> Shouldn't Reading Rainbow be economically viable and self-sustaining? I don't see what the problem is here.

</comment><comment><USER26> In the campaign page, it states that 1 in 4 kids is illiterate in the US. Is it just me or does that seem untrue? I would of expected it to be something like 1 in 10 maybe...

<comment><USER13> It depends how you define illiterate. People need to show what figure they're using when they claim a particular illiteracy rate.</comment></comment>


Why We Love How-To Videos (2016) - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/79/catalysts/why-we-love-how_to-videos-rp <comment><USER2> The actual title is: Why We Love How-to Videos

And the subtitle is: Instructional videos can teach us anything—especially if you watch them this way.</comment>


Show HN: SpaceExperience.club – app to explore Astronomy Picture of the Day - <AUTHOR> https://spaceexperience.club/ <comment><AUTHOR> I just wanted to try some new technologies (server side rendering with React), and that's why I decided to play with nasa apod api. If anyone is interested, code can be found on [https://github.com/caspg/space- exp](https://github.com/caspg/space-exp).

I hope you will like it.</comment>


Stock Plan Used by Hundreds of YC Companies - <AUTHOR> https://www.clerky.com/yc-stock-plan-forms <comment><USER2> This is an improvement in some areas. However it allows companies to terminate employees for cause _and take back the shares they have already vested_.

In my opinion, if equity is presented as an important part of compensation, it shouldn't be something that can be taken back any more easily than past salary could be. Looking at what happened at Skype, Zynga and other companies is enough that I would mostly discount any equity offered under such an agreement.

</comment><comment><USER3> Don't have time to go through the docs just yet, but great to see mentions of cashless exercise included. A more generous post-termination exercise window would have been a nicer default, but I get that's still the norm in many YC companies.

Over time I suspect that will change as more and more people learn the questions they should ask when evaluating an offer, i.e., as they transition from naive price takers to more sophisticated price setters. This link was circulated on HN a few weeks(?) ago, but it's worth reposting: [https://github.com/jlevy/og-equity-compensation](https://github.com/jlevy/og- equity-compensation).

And here are some companies that offer >90 days: [https://github.com/holman/extended-exercise- windows](https://github.com/holman/extended-exercise-windows) (e.g., Coinbase and Pinterest with 7 years, Quora and Asana with 10 years, etc.). Interesting to see two companies in the list founded by early Facebook employees -- well, cofounder and CTO -- do longer periods. Wonder if people got burned there by the standard period?

<comment><USER4> Cashless exercise is one of those things that costs the company very little, but is incredibly advantageous for the employee.

However, companies don't always love it, because it removes a lot of the "golden handcuffs" that serve as a shady way to retain employees as valuation climbs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Curious if there's been any attention given to Progressive Equity, the stock plan that Andrew Mason introduced for Detour almost a year ago:

[http://blog.detour.com/introducing-progressive- equity/](http://blog.detour.com/introducing-progressive-equity/)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9336392](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9336392)

It seems like a good way to fix problems of early employees being under- incentivized to take on startup-level risk, and to stay with the company once later high-level employees have been hired above them. Have any YC companies tried it out? Any plans to incorporate this into Clerky documents?

<comment><USER6> Seems like a solid plan to address issues with disparity in compensation / upside between different tiers of employees. It spreads the reward but still allows the founders to maintain larger ownership chunks, which is the important part. Since equity is such a critical part of compensation [1], I'd love to see this implemented more, but I have a feeling it will mostly get lip service with people hiding behind "this is the standard." Founders shouldn't accept the "it's standard" argument from VCs when negotiating terms, and employees shouldn't accept the same argument from founders. You can't have your circular logic and eat it too. Standards change and just because something is a standard doesn't justify it's existence. Slavery was pretty standard for awhile and I'm glad we got rid of that one.

[1] [https://medium.com/the-wtf-economy/in-his-essay-on-income- in...](https://medium.com/the-wtf-economy/in-his-essay-on-income-inequality- paul-graham-credited-me-for-pre-publication-feedback-ff8a0b295a1b#.okgzweqp6)

<comment><USER7> How difficult would it be for a startup to create two stock classes, where one has outsized voting rights? Then the monetary value could be spread more evenly to non-founders (i.e., not a 50-to-1 ratio between founders and employee #1), while the founder and investors maintain voting power.

<comment><USER6> I believe it's very possible, just not standard. A number of companies have adopted such measures to great effect for the founders to maintain power over investors [1], but not many have used similar legal tools in reverse to help spread the upside with earlier employees as suggested in the first comment. Perhaps the standard should be for founders to get 'super-voting' shares and use some of the power to distribute better upside distribution. Sell it in both directions, longer term stability and more employee alignment.

[1] [http://www.businessinsider.com/googles-co-founders-are- going...](http://www.businessinsider.com/googles-co-founders-are-going-to- sell-44-billion-worth-of-shares-2015-2)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've reviewed the stock agreements of three YC companies (one fairly recent) and they're close but not nearly identical to these documents. In particular, none of the plans I reviewed had triggers (but perhaps those are saved for C-levels).

The agreements don't leave room for non-uniform vesting (e.g. 10/20/30/40, which takes many lines to write), which is nice. In my experience, the only employees who appreciate those grants create as little value as the execs who think it incentivizing to award them.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is great. I've added it to my startup onboarding guide blog post (which already has Clerky as an immensely helpful service): [https://goeric.quora.com/Startup-Onboarding- Guide](https://goeric.quora.com/Startup-Onboarding-Guide)

<comment><USER10> Is Zenefits still a good recommendation, with all the fuss around their (possibly illegal?) practices, and the negative comments from HN users that seem to come up every time the company is mentioned?

<comment><USER9> Startups that scale that quickly are bound to make mistakes. Breaking the law is not okay, and there was some bad judgement there. But you'll find a lot of negative comments about the competition, too. Nobody is perfect. But Zenefits is free.

I've had almost all positive experiences and they've saved me an immense amount of headaches. Did I mention they're free?

<comment><USER11> If you're not paying for it, you're not the customer. You're the product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The big question with all of this is, what value does stock have if the odds of seeing an exit seem to be shrinking substantially?

<comment><USER13> Stock value is essentially worthless in a private company until they allow selling of shares to investors or an exit occurs. Since such a small percentage of companies actually do either of those things I think it's not bad advice to treat them as worthless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Having the optional clauses laid out is really nice for founders... And I like the table that spells out all of the parameters of the grants—very employee friendly.</comment>


How Duff's Device Works - <AUTHOR> http://tenaciousc.com/?p=753

<comment><USER2> The history behind this actually goes the other way if I remember correctly; it was unclear for a time whether or not this sort of thing was allowed. The standard was modified so that Duff's device would be legal code after it was being used.

<comment><USER3> Tom Duff himself writes about it here:

<http://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/duffs_device>

In particular,

        The device is legal dpANS C. I cannot quote chapter and verse, but
        Larry Rosler, who was chairman of the language subcommittee (I think),
        has assured me that X3J11 considered it carefully and decided that
        it was legal. Somewhere I have a note from dmr certifying that all the
        compilers that he believes in accept it. Of course, the device is also
        legal C++, since Bjarne uses it in his book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You can use this to implement coroutines in C when you're stuck without Python/Scheme/al.

<http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/coroutines.html>

</comment><comment><USER5> Really interesting! But why wouldn't you copy the data in a simple while loop? What do you need the switch statement for?

<comment><USER6> Kids these days. I guess the OP didn't really understand everything or didn't bother to explain, especially my favorite bit about "computed goto" and the fact that if you code your compiler to emit assembly instructions with labels it's quite "natural" to implement it.

Duff's device is an example of the "loop unwinding." Say you have n divisible by 8, then you can loop n / 8 times and have eight assignments in the loop stated explicitly. Now instead executing n assignments and n looping instructions (there can be more instructions needed for one loop and the cost of jump can also be visible) you can have less, n / 8 looping instructions and still n assignments.

When such thing should be done? 1) If you measured your loop and it was too slow with a one assignment and one loop pass for every n. 2) you know that your compiler can't do the loop unwinding automatically -- modern compilers can do such things even if you write a normal loop if the compiler estimates that this can really help and when you give to it a specific direction to produce such code (e.g. aggressively optimize for speed).

Only now comes the reason for using Duff's device: how to code the case where n is not divisible by 8? Well you can have a loop for the remaining number R of elements, but then you have R assignments and R looping instructions. More clever thing is to have the sequence of the assignments in the code stream, one after another and to _jump_ directly inside to execute exactly R assignments.

Turns out, C was made in seventies, but Fortran was made in fifties and already had the construct which allowed exactly that, the direct jump. So authors of C created something smarter -- a switch statement was implemented so that it compiles to the series of if ... goto or even to the "computed goto" sequence, not needing to do more comparisons if the values for jump conditions are one after another.

So now we're able to have one sequence for a direct jump (say 8 assignments in a switch) and one sequence for unwound loop (loop around 8 assignments). But why not trying combining them? That was Duff's insight, and the Duff's device is a result of it. The benefit: instead having 16 assignments in the generated code, you'll have just 8 which are going to be used both for R assignments and for unwound loop.

Just that last step (reducing the number of the assignments in the resulting code from 16 to 8) is something that you probably won't measure as a direct speed benefit, you'll only have a bit smaller resulting code. So I guess it was more a curiosity than something that must have been done exactly so even as it was written. Still it nicely demonstrates how people who know what is produced by the compiler are able to think, on one side, and how C can be used for "assembly level" optimizations, on another.

<comment><USER7> > When such thing should be done? 1) If you measured your loop and it was too > slow with a one assignment and one loop pass for every n. 2) you know that > your compiler can't do the loop unwinding automatically -- modern compilers > can do such things even if you write a normal loop if the compiler estimates > that this can really help and when you give to it a specific direction to > produce such code (e.g. aggressively optimize for speed).

Note that many compilers generate crappy code for duff's device. The switch statement, specifically the intermediate destinations, keeps them from generating good code for the unrolled loop body.

The compiled code can be so bad that a "not unrolled" loop to get to alignment followed by an unrolled aligned loop is significantly faster.

And, because this stuff is never simple, the fastest version may be range dependent, as in one version is faster for up to 100 elements while another is faster for more than 100.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> well worth the read

</comment><comment><USER9> After a spell at Bell-Labs working on Plan9 (his Mothra web browser is my favourite HTML2 renderer), Duff is now at Pixar.

<comment><USER10> "Back at Pixar" might be more accurate. Though I think when he was there the first time it was still part of Lucasfilm. That's where he invented the Device. He's been at Pixar since 1996.</comment></comment>


Dilma Rousseff Is Impeached by Brazil's Lower House of Congress - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/18/world/americas/brazil-dilma-rousseff-impeachment-vote.html <comment><USER2> no, she is not impeached yet, the lower house voted to move forward with the request, meaning it will be sent to the senate now.

<comment><USER3> In the US, that formality us called impeachment.</comment></comment>


Advice for a beginner iOS developer? - <AUTHOR>

Hi, HN! I recently got into iOS development, and I absolutely love it. Last year, I fiddled around with Python, web design, some Java, and even a very tiny amount of Android development. I knew for a while that I wanted to move towards iOS development, but I thought that because I didn't have a Mac, my dream was just a dream. Well, I came to a pretty huge turning point in my life last year, and that shift completely changed my view on what can be reality. I ended up trading my gaming laptop with a friend for a Macbook Pro. After a bit of testing a few methods of learning Objective-C (I tried Stanford's iOS Development class on iTunes U, but I was only able to get through the first assignment), I got Big Nerd Ranch's Objective-C Programming eBook and literally blew through it in a week. I loved it! Immediately afterwards, I bought BNR's iOS Programming eBook, and am now blasting through that. It's an extraordinarily awesome feeling to tackle and accomplish the challenges within the chapters. I also have a few ideas that I cannot wait to build after finishing the book.
Anyway, I apologize for my novel, but now I'll get to the point. Can any current iOS developers share some advice?
Here are the main things I am looking for:
- What are the best ways to get noticed? (My main goal is to work for a startup - I am 18, and a freshman in college as a CS major, but I am open to taking a hiatus if the opportunity came up. I also started meeting developers in my area, and blogging is beginning to be a natural activity for me.)
- What are your experiences with building/marketing your first (few) app(s)?
- What are the biggest things I should look out for as a beginning iOS developer? Any and all advice is highly appreciated!
Side note: I am not solely interested in iOS development but it is 99.9% of my focus right now. I hear, "Software engineering is an industry where you will adapt and constantly be learning," quite often, and that is exactly what I want to do! <comment><USER2> "I am 18, and a freshman in college as a CS major, but I am open to taking a hiatus..."

Finish school first. The degree (and the knowledge you'll gain while you pursue it and the free time you'll have to pursue other avenues of interest) is priceless. It's easy to want to rush through college and be a Gates or a Zuckerburg but realize that there are tons of people that dropped out of college and are worse off for it.

Working at a start-up is a very risky venture and you're only going to drastically increase your long-term financial risk by not having a degree going into it. One may argue that the knowledge you'll gain at the start-up will be worth more than a degree but my counter is that you'll be closing doors to other (more-traditional) opportunities by not finishing (it is substantially harder to go back to school if you take a hiatus for a number of reasons beyond admissions).

As far as "getting noticed" goes, scrub that mentality right now, prove yourself first. If you spend 10 hours a week the next 3.5 years writing apps (and polishing your abilities) and giving them away for free without ads you'll have proven yourself, getting noticed at that point is just pointing to an existing body of work. (If you don't know what app to make just clone every game you've ever liked but make sure it has an awesome UI).

Mind you, these are just my two cents. In my life I've found that as long as I set a metric for "progress" and work to meet it I've been able to accomplish my goals. Best of luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> First of all, thanks for the advice. I am not necessarily planning on dropping out, but I want to keep myself open to any potentially wonderful experiences. I also really enjoy school (mainly the CS classes), and I truly understand how beneficial it is. I've been setting small goals yhat lead to bigger goals for myself, and it's been working so far, and that is an awesome feeling. I really want to polish all of my abilities, and assuming I stay in school, I will dedicate a good portion of my free time to that.

Again, thank you for this bit of wisdom. I realize that I have to remain realistic, along with being incredibly motivated and pushing for innovation.

<comment><USER2> You sound like you have a good head on your shoulders so I have no doubt you'll do fine. The one thing I should mention that I didn't cover already is : be able to handle failure and rejection. It's a little divergent from your original question but the less you get discouraged by the big set backs the more likely you're to succeed. There's a lot of commentary on this subject but the tl;dr is : don't give up even if you don't succeed at first.

In the end it all boils down to an odds game, you can do everything to increase your odds to a very favorable level but you still have to keep putting yourself out there when things don't work out as hoped (I haven't heard of anyone successful who didn't fail drastically at some point.)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's another great point. From what I've observed, failing seems to be a natural part of the entrepreneurial process. As you said, anyone who has had any success, has also tasted failure. When I face this harsh lesson someday, I will do my best to remember that it happens. Statistics was my favorite class in high school, so I tend to think of every outcome as a result of odds.

<comment><USER2> I just ran across this : [http://www.thielfellowship.org/become-a- fellow/about-the-pro...](http://www.thielfellowship.org/become-a-fellow/about- the-program/) which seems like another option if you really have a dream to chase and don't want to wait the 3.5 years. Still risky but less so because Thiel is attached.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's funny that you bring that up. A few months ago, there was a show called "20 Under 20," which was a two-day special that followed the Thiel Fellowship application process. I literally waited 2 months to watch the show, and it was amazing. Students (all under 20) were put together to accomplish a wide array of interesting tasks. They got to talk with each other and build a mini- network within their group. They were put to the stage to give speeches in front of some of the Valley's top people (entrepreneurs, investors, etc.). In the end, a handful were chosen to receive $100,000 to follow their dreams, but they had to drop out of school if they took the offer.

Thanks for the link, though! I really appreciate this fellowship!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I agree with RandallBrown, get something out there and show the world that you can finish an app. It'll be good experience too.

As for getting noticed, if you get you get fast at developing, I'd recommend participating in a hackathon and developing a simple, but useful, app with a random team. It's a great networking opportunity, and I still get startups and recruiters trying to hire me from my last hackathon (over a year ago now) in New York (I wasn't event looking for work).

My main experiences in building my first apps were:

1\. Novel UI is usually not very intuitive, using what Apple gives you will take you far. People know how to use the basic UI elements, trying to teach users new behavior is hard (learned this the hard way).

2\. Managing data will be messy if you don't use Core Data. I highly recommend going back to Stanford's iTunes U course and watching the one (two maybe?) on Core Data (and watch the Grand Central Dispatch one too if you're unfamiliar with it). Believe me, Core Data is awesome and once you learn to tame it you will learn to love it. Far better than rolling your own data storage/management.

3\. Getting people to use your app is hard - make something _useful_. People download plenty of apps, but only open a handful of them. Don't bank on being another Instagram (there are plenty of clones), but make something really useful. TurboScan is a good example of this. Their UI is rather horrid, but its really good at doing what its meant to do. Its an app that is truly useful, and has made it to my (and my closest friends and family's) first screen. I probably use it 1-3 times a day because its actually very useful.

Good luck with your iOS adventures, love to see what you'd produce.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the incredibly helpful advice! I definitely want to participate in a hackathon within the next couple of years. The experience seems grueling but extremely rewarding (for most people).

1\. It seems like a good idea is to keep functionality more or less the same, but maybe amp up the design aspect of the view.

2\. BNR's book has an entire chapter dedicated to Core Data, but I will definitely check out the lectures on that subject (I may even go through the entire course if I feel the need).

3\. This is a subject that I have witnessed many developers struggle with. The idea of creating something that people will WANT to use is something that excites me more than anything. I realize that I should focus on building concrete features before I attempt to make a plethora of them. I want to plan out my future apps before actually coding any of them. I want to teach myself to develop professionally, right from the beginning.

I really appreciate these tips, as I know I will be checking this thread again when I really start my own projects.

Thank you! I cannot wait work on amazing projects someday!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I recently graduated and got a position doing iOS development for a start-up. I'm nearing completion of my first app and two iOS concepts I've found to be of vital important are Core Data and GCD. Being able to persist the data you're working with and manage it in a multithreaded context are keys I've found to creating a good UX.

For learning, I've browsed the Stanford slides, but I mainly read www.stackoverflow.com. Determining the issue at hand and then seeing how other developers have solved that issue, I've found, is the easiest way for me to learn.

<comment><AUTHOR> First off, congratulations on your graduation and employment!

\- Would you recommend the startup route for a first job?

Core data seems to be one of the top 3 important things with iOS development. I will make sure to go above and beyond when I get to learning Core Data and GCD. That shouldn't be more than a week from now!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Build some cool stuff and send out your resumes if you want a job. Smaller startups are going to be harder to get in with if you don't know someone, but not impossible.

A really great way to differentiate yourself is to build and publish an app. It doesn't have to be popular or even that great. Just showing you can build something from start to finish is a big deal.

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess I assumed that most younger (or just beginning) iOS developers had built apps prior to getting offered positions. Right now, I would love a part- time job or an internship (that pays, because I wouldn'y be able to survive without money), so that I could remain in school, while doing something within the software engineering field. I've applied to some local internships, and am keeping my fingers crossed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Keep meeting developers in your area. meetup.com and google and yahoo groups are good. Sign up for linkedin.com and add your contacts. Start shipping apps. The developers you meet will lead you to paying gigs.</comment>


Gmail SMTP Certificate Just Expired - <AUTHOR> http://i.imgur.com/7AvO3VH.png

<comment><USER2> Does this have anything to do with the certificate issues from a week ago? [http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.de/2015/03/maintaining-...](http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.de/2015/03/maintaining- digital-certificate-security.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm seeing this also. Was this expected?

Edit: it's happened before: [https://www.seroundtable.com/archives/017825.html](https://www.seroundtable.com/archives/017825.html)

<comment><USER4> Judging from the comments there, this is at least the _fourth time_ this has happened.</comment></comment>


Horus: An Interactive Tool for Designing Quadrotor Camera Shots - <AUTHOR> http://stanford-gfx.github.io/Horus/ <comment><USER2> This looks interesting, but with a heavy dependency on google earth/maps.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi itsyogesh! Definitely it depends on having a 3D model of your environment! With all the advances in drones performing 3d scanning of an environment (dronedeploy.com and skycatch.com) we imagine we can easily incorporate the acquisition of a 3D model into our tool.</comment></comment>