Encoding your WiFi access point password into a QR code - <AUTHOR> https://feeding.cloud.geek.nz/posts/encoding-wifi-access-point-passwords-qr-code/ <comment><USER3> Most ISP put this kind of QR code on the provided "modem" in France with the default Wifi password of the device.

I love QR code. I think it should be everywhere. All legal documents and forms should have one. All supermarket bills should have one.

It's a fantastic way to transition from paper to bits.

Unfortunately most users have no idea what it is. They don't know what a URL is, so a QR code is out of the question.

Plus they don't necessarily have a QR code scanner on their devices: not all phones have one by default, most laptops definitely don't. Not to mention some QRcode readers are sometimes just the regular camera app (E.G: modern iOS), which is very confusing. And even if all that is not a problem, your QRcode scanner may not be able to understand a particular format or will read the Wifi code but just display it while it's supposed to save it as a new access point.

It's definitely not a solved problem.

<comment> matt-attack Are you not concerned that QR code's are just completely opaque URLs asking to be clicked? Do you confidently click on URLs in spam emails? Of course not since we all know URLs can point to malicious payloads. So why should we love QR code's that could just as easily do the same.

If I'm a spammer trying to get people to click on my bogus links in my email messages, why wouldn't I also print those same URLs as QR codes and paste them around my city with creatively enticing titles.

<comment><USER4> Do you never click URLs in emails? Of course you do, when you're confident the sender is reputable.

Parent was referencing trusted contexts: the default password printed on your wifi router, the bill a cashier just handed you for what you just bought, the legal papers you just signed, etc. The QR code just links the trusted document with trustworthy digital versions & extended content.

I'm not worried a spammer is going to get a bogus QR printed on the grocery store receipt I just received. I'm not going to scan QR codes printed & posted on subway walls for no apparent reason.

<comment><USER5> I can't imagine a qr code on a receipt being anything but tracker-infested spam.

<comment><USER6> That's how it currently is in some shops. Amazing how marketers are always ahead on such technologies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I really think manufacturers have really missed out on an opportunity with QR codes by handing them over to marketing. Most of the early QR codes in the US were just links to advertising. I'm not going out of my way to scan a QR code just to be advertised to.

On the other hand it could have been a great way to develop much better relationships with your customers. As a trivial example, I own a snowblower. It would be nice if there had been a QR code on the machine that identified that specific machine. I could have scanned it and immediately registered it with the manufacturer. Scanning the code could take you to a manufacturer page for your specific machine, where you could record routine maintenance like oil changes, get a copy of the manual, and order replacement parts. They could send you periodic reminders like, "it looks like it's been a while since an oil change", or "it's getting cold outside. Now's a good time to make sure everything is in shape".

There is a ton of stuff around the house that I need to record information about but have to have my own system. If the manufacturer provided a way to do that they could offer their expertise with the product and a convenient way for you to record that information. I'd love to have a QR code on the side of my HVAC system, water heater, filtration system, etc.

</comment><comment><USER8> I painted my wifi password as a QR code on 40x40cm canvas..

Painted as in with a brush and paint, it was a bit of work, but now it's both pragmatic and pretty :)

<comment><USER9> Pics or it didn't happen.

<comment><USER10> I mean, it's not _that_ hard to believe...

<comment><USER11> I think it is a joke-attempt at getting him to reveal his wifi password :)

<comment><USER10> I have hereby been whooshed, though in my defense I have a guest-only, throttled and isolated wifi network so the potential for misuse didn't occur to me.

<comment><USER12> I have exactly the same. I don't want the entire world to use it though, as it still uses my broadband connection, which contains my external IPv4 address. I guess I should tunnel it over a VPN instead.

<comment><USER13> Pretty sure only people who know where you live can use your wifi network, and only then when they are in range - not the entire world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There is a Merge Request to support QR code for hotspot created in GNOME control center: [https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-control- center/merge_re...](https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-control- center/merge_requests/644) Hopefully, shall be available in next release

</comment><comment><USER15> Fun fact: TicketMaster scanners can perform admin functions via QR code, including "testing" the tone that tells the agent your ticket is valid.

<comment><USER16> Ooo, care to share any examples? For… research purposes…

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Combine this with some automatism which changes the password of your guest WiFi and putting it on a cheap e-ink display.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is interesting, however my main problem with really long Wi-Fi password are devices that have bad ways to input text. Things like media box using a remote controller or a video game console using it's controller.

WPS was born to fix this, however the specification is so broken that it is literally useless from a secure standpoint.

<comment><USER19> Also, there's no need for 63 character passwords. You can get ~128 bits of entropy with around 22 alphanumeric characters.

<comment><USER20> On some devices it may be easier to enter a long password from a restricted character set than to enter a shorter password from a richer set.

For example, I've seen TVs that allow using a numeric keypad on the remote for entering digits in text and password fields, and require use of a clumsy on- screen keyboard for entering letters or punctuation. The on-screen keyboard is navigated with the up/down/left/right/ENTER buttons on the remote, and might have multiple shift states for case and punctuation requiring navigating to and pressing a shift key whenever the password has adjacent characters that need different shift states.

On such a TV, I'd rather enter a 39 character all numeric password than a 22 character alphanumeric password. Entering 39 characters on a hardware numeric keypad is way faster and way less error prone.

<comment> em-bee if the on-screen keyboard even has all the characters needed.

when we got new internet in our previous home i was forced to change our password that everyone had already set from previous use, because the new configuration interface didn't allow spaces. so i used underscores. then family visited and they had a tablet with a keyboard that didn't have underscores.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> If you choose to put a WiFi password up on a sign as a QR code, _do not_ post it in view of a window. Passers-by should not be able to connect to your network from outside your home or office. This advice also applies to plain text passwords posted on signs.

<comment><USER22> I taped the qrcode to the top of my access point so I don't forget where it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> And if you're using DuckDuckGo (and are not concerned about transferring your WiFi, or whatever data) you can try this query:

qr some text

[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=qr+hi+there&ia=answer](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=qr+hi+there&ia=answer)

<comment><USER24> I use DDG as my daily search engine and didn't know about this. I'm frequently impressed by all the "extras" that they include.

I think I'll start using this a lot!

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I do this in our house and it works great. I discovered one flaw though. When I say scan the QRCode I am immediately told "i don't knows how" Or asked "the what?" Or disapproved of with "I hate those things."

Fun fact no one has ever actually scanned the code... ever! Maybe if I was a cafe but not for house guests.

<comment><USER26> If nobody will use it, does it really work great?

<comment><USER27> Solutions that work technically but lack adoption is the default state of software engineering!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The DDG based encoding for the format: [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=qr+%22WIFI%3AT%3AWPA%3BS%3A%3CSSID...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=qr+%22WIFI%3AT%3AWPA%3BS%3A%3CSSID%3E%3BP%3A%3CPASSWORD%3E%3B%3B%22)

And Google charts: [https://chart.googleapis.com/chart?chs=150x150&cht=qr&chl=WI...](https://chart.googleapis.com/chart?chs=150x150&cht=qr&chl=WIFI%3AT%3AWPA%3BS%3A%3CSSID%3E%3BP%3A%3CPASSWORD%3E%3B%3B)

</comment><comment><USER29> Plasma (KDE) now has a button in its network widget that does just that - <USER2> the QR code for this wifi network.

</comment><comment><USER30> I have a picture frame in my house with a QR code for the wifi, and also an NFC badge so you can just lift your phone to it to connect.

NFC stickers cost approximately nothing, and you can program them using an app on your phone.

<comment><USER31> The ability to write your connection settings to a NFC sticker is also built right into Android.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Once I noticed Android supported QR scanning to connect to WiFi natively, I started implementing this at my hotels - I wish all businesses did the same.

</comment><comment><USER33> Is it only Android 10 that can do this with scanning a qr code, or also v9?

<comment><USER34> Android 9: Camera search icon on Google assistant (long press "home" and cancel voice command) offers "join network" option for this kind of QR code

<comment><USER35> I had to install Google Lens first. When I tap join network, the reply is that I have to manually join the network. This is Android 9, and is an Android One phone (yes, still on Android 9 and not even a year old).

Update: Actually it works with the build-in Camera. Point to QR, it decodes it and shows SSID and password, there's a wifi icon button, and pressing that immediately connects.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Very neat! However, IMHO 63 characters is a bit much for the password.

"If you use lower-case, upper-case, and digits, and if you generate it truly randomly, then a 16-character password has 95 bits of entropy. That is more than sufficient."

Source: [https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/15653/recommend...](https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/15653/recommend- length-for-wi-fi-psk)

<comment><USER37> A 63 character password with ten dictionary words is on average much easier to type than a 16 character random ASCII printable string, especially on phone keyboards.

<comment><USER38> Not on my switch or home entertainment system though.

<comment><USER39> The PS4 might be a pain (though I haven't tried the gesture typing feature), but the Switch has a touchscreen so there's no issue there.

<comment><USER38> Fuck me, you are right. I was doing everything with the joycons... Well, there goes half an hour of retyping.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I have an NFC card that contains the connection information with the QR code and plain text credentials taped to it. Even less devices support that, but when they do you don't even have to open an app. Just tap and you're in.

<comment><USER41> Which devices support this?

<comment><USER42> Pretty much any Android device from the past 4-5 years should support connecting to WiFi via NFC (assuming the device actually supports NFC).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> This can be helpful on devices which have a display device but no keyboard to help users connect during first-time setup.

Example: [https://github.com/aderusha/HASwitchPlate/blob/master/Docume...](https://github.com/aderusha/HASwitchPlate/blob/master/Documentation/01_Arduino_Sketch.md#first- time-setup)

For this project, on first boot the device creates an AP, then displays a QR code containing SSID and key (along with text version of the same) that the user can connect to. Upon connection a captive portal will redirect the user to the configuration page, allowing the user to select the desired SSD and configure other essential values.

If you have a phone handy, just scan the display, accept the prompt to connect, and the next thing you see if the configuration page popping up as Apple and Android detect it as a login page.

</comment><comment><USER44> I used this when setting up mesh WiFi for my parents, a few years ago. I set up a guest network and a main network; the guest network had a fairly-long password, and the main network had a very-long password, both WPA2-Personal.

I put together a two-page PDF, page size about 4 inches by 6 inches. One side had the info for the main network; the other side had the info for the guest network. "the info" included the SSID, the password, and a large QR code.

I then sent the PDF to FedEx, printed on card stock, double-sided, and laminated, with instructions to cut the excess paper away before laminating. The result was a nicely-put-together "quick reference" card that my parents can use for whatever needed. If my parents get a new phone, putting it on WiFi is as simple as a QR-code scan.

<comment><USER45> That's such a better solution for guests too, I've visited many friends where I had to crawl under their desk to see the SSID and password printed on the back of the router... because they haven't changed the factory settings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> For those concerned about entering your network info into an online qr tool, some time ago I attempted a minimal JS and transparent site for generating these codes ([https://github.com/jamsinclair/wifiqr](https://github.com/jamsinclair/wifiqr)).

Or I suppose just use the cli tools, as mentioned, for extra safety...

<comment><USER47> Or is it extra safety to use the CLI?

Arguably it is easier to verify that a webapp is not sending the data to a 3rd party, than it is to verify that the CLI tool doesn't (easy network inspection from the developer tools).

<comment><USER48> Its also very easy to put a webapp into offline mode

<comment><USER47> Indeed it is! But we still need to reset the web app entirely after having used it. Service worker might cache messages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Shameless plug but I wrote [https://github.com/elsesiy/qrgo](https://github.com/elsesiy/qrgo) which you don't even need to install locally, check it out if you're interested!

</comment><comment> laurynas-s This is super helpful for mobile devices.

But it makes rather confusing on how to connect it on an e.g. laptop without having to scan the QR code with the mobile device first. If the password is 63-char length, typing it wouldn't be 'quick'.

<comment><USER50> There should be a laptop app which can import a QR code picture from a file. Most of the laptops also have a webcam nowadays, perhaps it could be used too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I can attest to the usefulness of this. I have a similar thing set up on my iPhone via the Shortcuts app and it's been quite nice to share my long password without worrying about the hassle of spelling it out. Here's the Shortcut, in case anyone wants to try it out: [https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/681b4f7b030543b79ab7de6afa3...](https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/681b4f7b030543b79ab7de6afa3996c2)

<comment><USER52> My (default) "shortcuts security settings do not allow untrusted shortcuts".

Well that's surprising and nice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Instead of installing a package to generate a QR code, you can simply use this free Google service:

[https://chart.googleapis.com/chart?chs=120x120&cht=qr&chl=WI...](https://chart.googleapis.com/chart?chs=120x120&cht=qr&chl=WIFI:T:WPA;S:SSID;P:PASSWORD;;)

Remember to URL encode the SSID en PASSWORD if you have any characters that can't go into a URL. (Also, you have to trust Google to not store that URL anywhere)

<comment><USER54> Yes, let's give all passwords for wifi networks to the company that notoriously maps all wifi networks they can find. What could possibly go wrong...?

<comment><USER55> This happens every time I use android to connect to a WiFi network. Google stores my info in clear text to them.

<comment><USER56> Thanks for the warning, I had no idea. Note to self: always give temporary guest passwords to Android users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> A secure random WiFi password in a QR code is great for Android and iOS, and the laptops/desktops that can sync their password database with them over Bluetooth.

But what about all those other random WiFi devices? I don't relish the thought of entering 63 characters into my printer's goofy interface, a games console, my car, etc...

<comment><USER58> Your car connects to WiFi? Oh boy, the security implications...

<comment><USER59> Every tesla car has a sim card and data connection that is used to connect to a vpn that high enough level engineers can use to run ssh commands directly on every tesla car at once or even target certain ones.

You know nothing john snow.

<comment><USER60> California is thankfully neutering that sort of backdoor access.

<comment><USER57> Really? Neutering it how?

Tesla already has a "Allow remote access" toggle, which defaults to OFF, that prevents you from connecting to it via the app etc.

(Whether this fully prevents _Tesla_ connecting to it remotely, I'm not so sure...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Wifi easyconnect is a very helpful feature that lets you connect to a wifi network by scanning a QR Code.

Create your Home wifi QR code [https://modemly.com/qrcode](https://modemly.com/qrcode)

</comment><comment><USER50> How do I read it then? My Android camera app only lets me copy the encoded text to the clipboard or share it with another app. What app should I use to use it to actually connect to the wireless network?

</comment><comment><USER62> But what if you want to connect something other than a phone to your network? I have a lot of laptop's that don't run iOS or Android. I guess I'm old fashioned like that.

</comment><comment><USER63> The Owlet baby monitor does this. When you need to connect it to WiFi you give the app the creds and then it generates a QR code. Then you hold it in front of the camera to scan.

</comment><comment><USER64> Robot barf? [http://peterromich.com/qr-code-robot- barf/](http://peterromich.com/qr-code-robot-barf/)

</comment><comment><USER65> I so wanted to use this for work, where there is a rotating password scheme, but unfortunately it doesn't work on iOS if the hotspot has a captive portal :/

</comment><comment><USER66> Another great barcoding library is BWIP-JS at [https://github.com/metafloor/bwip-js/](https://github.com/metafloor/bwip-js/)

You can immediately generate QR codes from it using this link: [http://bwip- js.metafloor.com/demo/demo.html](http://bwip-js.metafloor.com/demo/demo.html)

I use BWIP-JS in my electron app. Love it. Super easy and reliable way to print barcodes on a label printer using nice UI: [https://label.live](https://label.live)

</comment><comment><USER67> I have an old Kindle it would be fun to put the QR code on that.

And maybe somehow a script that rotates the password updating the Kindle.

<comment><USER68> I setup a raspberry pi with a small display showing the weather forecast, next 5 calendar events and a QR code for the WIFI using this:

[https://github.com/TeraTech/MMM- WiFiPassword](https://github.com/TeraTech/MMM-WiFiPassword)

weather:

[https://github.com/jclarke0000/MMM- DarkSkyForecast](https://github.com/jclarke0000/MMM-DarkSkyForecast)

Sits on the kitchen counter. Guest password is rotated and the display is auto-updated.

The raspberrypi is running MagicMirror, but I just have it outputting to a small display (7"). Looks great.

I use a Ubiquiti wifi AP and it has an API to change the guest password.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> When I see it spelled wrong (like in the title of the OP here) my mind pronounces it "whiffy"

</comment><comment><USER69> Https://Qr-edit.com

This editor supports wifi qr codes

</comment><comment><USER70> Extra points for assembling it from Lego.

</comment><comment><USER71> Also, NFC is awesome.

</comment><comment><USER72> Why would I want to make it EASIER for people coming over to use my WiFi?

<comment><USER73> You don't give your WiFi password to everyone that visits?

<comment><USER74> I think the OP is making a joke about the fact that some guests who get the wifi password, may spend all their time looking at their phones instead of socializing. That happens nowadays when one throws a party or movie night.

<comment><USER75> This should be as socially unacceptable as picking your nose at a party.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> If you are going to write an article about this on a website with geek in the domain name, and post it to hacker news, you are going to have to get more technical than that.

Explaining the "WIFI:T:WPA" bit would have been nice to see.

At the bare minimum a link to an article that explains it would be necessary to meet the bar.

In the current state this article is a users level how to document, and fails to met the bar for an article targeted at "hackers".

<comment><USER76> If you are going to comment on threads on a website, how do you know where the "bar" is?

By reading the "Guidelines" [0], of course!

In fact, the very first item on that page is titled "What to Submit" and explains exactly where that bar is:

> _On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes > more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the > answer might be: anything that gratifies one 's intellectual curiosity._

Apparently enough of us found it "interesting" for it to show up on the front page.

(The time you spent writing your comment would have been better spent banging your head against the wall -- at least you might have something (a bruise) to show for it!)

[0]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER59> Your comment breaks hacker news guidelines.</comment></comment></comment>


Cisco Shipping Equipment to Fake Addresses to Foil NSA Interception - <AUTHOR> https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/03/cisco_shipping_.html <comment><USER2> But why are they telling at all? They should keep this a secret.

Unless it's just a PR trick to soothe concerned customers.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't understand how this will work - first of all, how do you just show up at a random address to receive equipment, and second of all, how does this at all stop the NSA from just putting its spy devices in _everything_ that Cisco ships out? Seems to me that in the former case, you run the risk of getting ripped off, and in the latter .. well, the NSA will just find other ways, besides interfering with the UPS man, to get its tendrils in your soup, so to speak ..</comment>


How to build a brain – An introduction to neurophysiology for engineers - <AUTHOR> http://juliuskunze.com/how-to-build-a-brain <comment><USER2> I can recommend talks from Joscha who is trying to build an AI based on the idea how our brain works. Unbelievable great talks.

[https://media.ccc.de/v/31c3_-_6573_-_en_- _saal_2_-_201412281...](https://media.ccc.de/v/31c3_-_6573_-_en_- _saal_2_-_201412281130_-_from_computation_to_consciousness_-_joscha) [https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7483-computational_meta- psycholo...](https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7483-computational_meta-psychology) [https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8369-machine_dreams](https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8369-machine_dreams)

31c3, 32c3 and 33c3 are the yearly german hacker group ccc conferences at the end of december.

2017 was 34c3 and held in leipzig. (google img search to get a feel what i'm talking about [https://www.google.de/search?q=34c3&source=lnms&tbm=isch](https://www.google.de/search?q=34c3&source=lnms&tbm=isch))

All talks are free to watch (there are a lot more on media.ccc.de).

<comment><USER3> To be clear, this article is about neural computation, while Joscha has chosen to ignore the constraints imposed by this computational paradigm.

<comment><USER2> Yes but others have asked on how a brain works on system level.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think that (speaking as a neuroscientist) one important physiological aspect this intro glosses over, that would be relevant to any of you machine learning gurus, is how neurons manage their synaptic weights. Most artificial neural network models I've seen utilize a partial derivative-based backprop algorithm to update 'synaptic' weights. In neurons these weights (in the case of fast excitatory transmission) are proportional to the number of glutamate receptors currently in a given synapse. During learning (let's say associative learning, where I associate the sound of your voice to the visual info about your face) something happens to increase the number of these receptors at key synapses. That way, the next time the upstream neuron fires, it more easily elicits activation from the downstream neuron, because it has more receptors at those synapses. So the same quanta of neurotransmitter release by the neurons activated by the unique auditory signature of your voice will be released at all its terminals, but since the downstream terminals for the visual info of your face have upregulated their receptor number, those neurons are going to be easily activated. (thus when you call me on the phone, your voice will readily activate those visual neurons for your face, and I remember what it looks like).

If you are interested in seeing how the postsynaptic neuron manages its synaptic receptor numbers (and the intricate process the backprop algo is cheating), you might like to check out a 3D simulation I've made to model this process.

Animation: [https://www.youtube.com/embed/6ZNnBGgea0Y](https://www.youtube.com/embed/6ZNnBGgea0Y) Code on github: [https://github.com/subroutines/plasticity](https://github.com/subroutines/plasticity)

(note the animation is not too exciting, so you might want to skip forward a few times)

But basically you will see that neurons rely on stochastic surface diffusion of receptors to deliver new receptors to synapses. The takeaway is that during rest (or whatever you want to call it... baseline, non-learning, etc) synapses will reach some steady-state number of receptors. If the synapse undergoes some learning event, it needs to 'capture' more receptors to increase the steady-state amount. It does this by modifications to proteins just below the surface of the postsynaptic membrane that act as velcro to surface receptors floating by. Thus synapses take control of their synaptic weights by managing the surface diffusion rate of excitatory receptors.

<comment><USER5> Thank you for interesting comment.

Can you give me rough time scale for how quick neurons learn (synaptic plasticity)? I have a recollection that the time scale is in order of tens of milliseconds but I might be wrong.

<comment><USER4> As @radicalOH mentions, there are several timescales depending on whether you are talking about immediate, short-term, or long-term synaptic potentiation, each coordinated by a cascade of events (that have been extensively documented in you're interested in knowing more).

To specifically address your question about how quickly learning happens in neurons... it's fast. Is it ~10ms? mmm, that seems incredibly fast, and I'm not sure I can provide any definitive answer. I think it heavily depends on what you're willing to interpret as 'learning' when examining events on the molecular level. There are events that engender near-immediate alterations to ongoing transmission; and other events that support lasting electrical changes (necessarily?) develop across longer timescales. You might think of this distinction as the difference between being able to hold a phone number in consciousness via repeating it over and over, and then actually being able to recall that phone number 5 minutes later. In the former certainly something internally must have changed because a moment ago you weren't repeating this number in your head, and now you are. On the other hand, can we really say it was learning if the number is immediately lost the moment it leaves consciousness. Anyway, I"m not going to wax philosophical on that. I'll just show you some data for timescales we think are sufficient to produce lasting increases in synaptic efficacies...

Here is a video showing a single spine just after 2-photon 'glutamate uncaging':

[https://goo.gl/rfgjrW](https://goo.gl/rfgjrW)

(as I mentioned above, glutamate receptors are the primary receptors involved in fast-excitatory transmission; so uncaging tons of glutamate right next to a spine is going to evoke immediate plasticity changes - particularly under these experimental conditions)

Note that in just a few seconds the spine has doubled in size. Morphological change in the spine are probably not the first events that alter synaptic transmission, but morphological changes to the spine are a reliable sign of a lasting memory trace.

Here is a whole cell recording of the electrical response in a neuron to incoming signals, before and after stimulation like that above ('EPSC' stands for 'excitatory post synaptic currents'):

[https://i.imgur.com/0OTMwH5.png](https://i.imgur.com/0OTMwH5.png)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Note that this means that for transmission over short distances, we are not > constrained to all-or-nothing encoding and in fact amplitude-based encoding > is preferable due to higher data rate and energy efficiency. This explains > why short neurons never use spikes in the brain.↗ p. 36

Fast high-bandwidth interconnects use this, too, in optical fibre modulation for telecom, and not just plain Amplitude Modulation either. I guess the interconnect between the processing nodes of a supercomputer are connected in a similar manner.

I would really like to know how brain waves figure into this, does the brain do "wifi" between distant nodes?

> How do brains information?

You accidentally a word! Not just there, by the way.

</comment><comment><USER7> While it's just an introduction, what I am actually missing is the proper introduction of the neural processing model. How it works in the physical brain, with potentials and a couple of ! different neurotransmitters is a whole different matter!

By using just the model of neural processing one can achieve amazing results. Whether a neuron activates its output links, depends on the weight sum of the activated input links. If the sum is strong positive the Neuron activates its output, if it's strong negative the neuron even inhibits activation of successor neurons. But, even that basic tidbit is missing in the text.

"The neuron adds inputs in some way..." Really? Oh man. I consider myself an engineer, but that article doesn't say anything about _how_ neurons and neural nets specifically work.

<comment><USER8> Not sure exactly how biological neurons work, but artificial neurons are just a weight matrix and some type of sigmoid function. Pretty much all a neuron does is perform logistic regression.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The thing with brains is that even if you understand all the building blocks, that really doesn't tell you much about how the brain actually works. Trying to understand the brain from neurons is like trying to understand Microsoft Word by looking at its machine code. Of course the brain has the added complexity that it isn't designed by humans, and so it's difficult to pinpoint where one region ends and another begins.

<comment><USER10> I disagree that is the reason we haven't understood the brain. If we could replicate the underlying process, we could attempt to simulate a brain and maybe successfully so, even if we don't understand why it works.

The main problem seems to be that we actually _don 't_ understand all the building blocks, at least according to the article:

> There are fundamental questions left unanswered: What information do neurons > represent? How do neurons connect to achieve that? How are these > representations learned?

Until we figure out how and why connections are created between neurons, we only know how the brain responds to stimuli it has already learned, but not how it learns new information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is really incomplete and written in a way that's not constructive in any way. This is not why things are the way they are.

</comment><comment><USER12> This predictably omits large scale features such as boundary conditions and resulting pattern formations.

Think guitar string: what matters to tune it is the tension more than composition. In the same way, standing waves in brain tissue reflect geometry and connectivity as much as membrane potentials.

</comment><comment> bra-ket Relevant: "How to Build a A Brain" by Chris Eliasmith [https://www.amazon.com/How-Build-Brain-Architecture- Architec...](https://www.amazon.com/How-Build-Brain-Architecture- Architectures/dp/0190262125)

<comment><USER13> Also relevant: _Principles of Neural Design_ by Sterling and Laughlin [https://mitpress.mit.edu/neuraldesign%20](https://mitpress.mit.edu/neuraldesign%20)

<comment><USER14> Also relevant, though maybe deviating a bit from engineering: Principles of Neural Science by Kandel and Schwartz [https://www.amazon.com/Principles- Neural-Science-Fifth-Kande...](https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Neural- Science-Fifth-Kandel/dp/0071390111)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > There are fundamental questions left unanswered: What information do neurons > represent? How do neurons connect to achieve that? How are these > representations learned? Neuroscience offers partial answers and algorithmic > ideas, but we are far from a complete theory conclusively backed by > observations.

Calling the answers "partial" is fair, but I feel like the author understates the number of observations backing typical neural models? The lab I belong to created Spaun, which admittedly uses a pretty simple neuron model, but still matched a ton of neural and behavioural data! There's also Leabra, which I have some qualms with, but still has a pretty large collection of results.

</comment><comment><USER15> > In the brain, slow conductors make it hard to have a synchronized clock > signal. This rules out digital coding,

But clockless processors exist, although they are not particularly popular.

<comment><USER6> I don't think "clockless" is apt, asynchronous, sure, but the gates are still, well ... gated, as far as I can tell, e.g. in the arm amulet research. There's no central clock, yes, but it's still time discrete, I guess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> > "...slow speed of the sodium pump recovering the resting potential..."

Any neuroscientists out there know if cycles (from graph theory) are possible in the brain?

Put another way, would the signal generated from neuron1 be able to travel around in a circuit of other neurons and come back to activate neuron1 again? Or is this not possible because neuron1 would still be recovering?

I've wondered this for awhile would love it if someone had the answer :)</comment>


What cha think of my startup: PocketLoot - <AUTHOR> http://www.pocketloot.com

<comment><USER2> >Your beta registration could not be processed for some reason. Maybe you didn't type in one or more of the fields or your internet connection hiccuped? Message: error

All the fields are filled out correctly. I did forget to fill out the comments section the first time I hit "send", maybe that's behind it. Why is the comments section even a required field?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey thanks for trying to sign up I see the issue in my logs.. working on it.</comment></comment>


Every Fucking Website – Insert Keywords Here, Carl - <AUTHOR> http://everyfuckingwebsite.com/ <comment><USER2> The footer is my favorite part. I think this is his real website link, for others who were curious [http://www.alexbeuscher.com](http://www.alexbeuscher.com)

</comment><comment><USER3> © <?php echo date("Y"); ?>

Nice.

</comment><comment><USER4> > *By clicking the button below, you are agreeing to all of our terms of > service, our eula, our privacy policy, and all kinds of other shit.

On mobile safari the button is above this text.

<comment><USER5> I assumed that was part of the joke.</comment></comment>


'Hella noms', swag and secrecy: inside the world's largest tech intern gathering - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jul/12/internapalooza-san-francisco-tech-industry-interns <comment><USER2> I wish the article had mentioned how much pain the event caused to the thousands of interns who were invited (by RSVP), left work early to get there, many travelling all the way from South Bay, and were told to wait for 3 hours outside and then leave as the event where 4500+ people RSVPed for was capped at under 1500. The arrogance and lack of communication from the organizers who claim to care about the interns was appalling.

One other thing missed in the article was the inclusion of a VIP table for interns at "elite" companies or with connections.

Is this how to promote inclusion in tech?

<comment><AUTHOR> > the inclusion of a VIP table for interns at "elite" companies or with > connections

Are you saying that, say, Google or Apple interns got to sit at some kind of special table while interns for say, a new, small startup did not have access to such tables? That does sound pretty bad...</comment></comment>


Show HN: HelloBitcoin. A "Hello World" of Bitcoin, Written in Go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/prettymuchbryce/hellobitcoin

<comment><USER2> You acknowledge your random number generator not being cryptographically secure. ([https://github.com/prettymuchbryce/hellobitcoin/blob/20af54c...](https://github.com/prettymuchbryce/hellobitcoin/blob/20af54ce63ef2182cbc7b83fc3629999206a0422/keys.go#L87)) Reseeding the generator every time is wrong as well.

Why not just use crypto/rand instead, which is suitable for this kind of job?

<comment><USER3> It even has a Read([]byte) method for automatically filling a []byte with cryptographically secure psuedorandom numbers, so the loop would not be necessary!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I worked this summer as an intern at Conformal Systems where we developed a more sophisticated version of this, essentially a simulator [1] where random transactions between wallets can happen. The main reason for this was to stress-test btcd [2], the full-node bitcoin client that is developed by Conformal. Overall it was a great experience working with Go and bitcoin.

[1] [https://github.com/conformal/btcsim](https://github.com/conformal/btcsim)

[2] [https://github.com/conformal/btcd](https://github.com/conformal/btcd)

<comment><USER5> Interesting. This is a tangent, but how does Conformal make money? Are they for hire contractors? They seem to be doing a lot of open source work that doesn't appear to pay anything right now and they also appear to be a small team.

<comment><USER6> While perusing the Conformal homepage[1] it seems their main commercial offering is Cyphertite[2], which they bill as a cross-platform "scalable high security solution for online backups" complete with paid data plans (similar to tarsnap).

[1] [https://www.conformal.com/](https://www.conformal.com/)

[2] [https://www.cyphertite.com/](https://www.cyphertite.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> [https://github.com/KeshavZbhide/zeroweight](https://github.com/KeshavZbhide/zeroweight)</comment>


How We Lost User Engagement After a Redesign - <AUTHOR> https://icons8.com/articles/how-we-lost-47-of-our-users-after-a-redesign/ <comment><USER2> The thing that I'm still confused about is why they offered users the ability to "Request an icon", when really, users would be _suggesting_ an icon. As a user, I _expect_ "requests" to be answered. That is, I expect a special service, just for me, that I'll probably have to pay for unless the site is 100% free.

Under that model of user expectations, I envision two groups of users: 1. the users who want to casually _suggest_ an icon (and don't need it for anything critical or want to pay for it themselves, but who would happily use it if it became freely available) 2. the users who have a special request and would pay to have it done, regardless of how many other users want it.

Group number 1 won't bother clicking on "Request an icon", because they figure that the button is for members of group number 2. Group number 1 won't see an option for them, which changes site perceptions, because group number 1 has an impression that the site is for paid requests.

Group number 2 will click on "Request an icon", hoping to place an order, but will be disappointed and/or confused by what they see. Members of group number 2 might note that "Oh hey, it'd be nice if I could get this for free". But given that their need was sufficiently critical for them to want to pay commission, the option to submit an idea that _may or may not be voted into existence at some unknown time_ won't seem promising enough for them to invest any more time in the matter.

<comment><USER3> You nailed the piece of information I didn't even understand from the article at first. The feature is to _suggest_ an icon, not request one. _Requesting_ an icon sounds like custom work ("I'll pay for this"), whereas _suggesting_ one is clearly "here's an idea for you".

That one word choice would have made a great deal of difference to me as a user understanding the feature. Yes there are glaring design issues with where they went as well. But that one choice of word is huge.

<comment><USER4> How about "petition for an icon"? I find 'suggest' goes too far the other direction, it's discouraging because it means nothing. But here, if I can get a few votes from other users, I do actually get it. That's a petition for me. Or maybe even 'start a referendum', but I don't know how commonly known that word is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just glancing at the design I can see that the whitespace is all messed up. The previous design was more compact, one could easily view most or all of the necessary information in a smaller space. But that is just glancing at it. The newer design seems to be following the newer web motif of flat design, generous space, etc.

Back in the 2007-2010 era of websites, somebody mentioned that "ugly" websites work. Not that fancy or flat design is bad. But the sheer simplicity of ugly websites forces people to focus on the content, context and functionality. The ugly websites pointed out were MySpace and Craigslist mainly, but you could probably add a few others like Drudge Report and Plenty of Fish. Even Hacker News is pretty "ugly" but it obviously works great.

<comment><USER6> There is an ongoing trend of equating "simplicity/removing distractions" with "hiding or removing information/making it less useful".

Make something as simple as it needs to be, _but no simpler_. Most designers I see these days seem to forget that last bit.

In this specific example the whole purpose of the request system is to vote and secondarily get other people to vote with you. The new design eliminated almost everything that made the old one useful. It isn't simpler, it's _simplistic_.

<comment> a-nikolaev I may be wrong, but I think that this site's UI is far from simple. It looks clean, but that's different thing.

The new interface feels very unconventional, in fact. It may become convenient once you've learned what everything means, but until then you'd feel puzzled.

~~ Of course, I could not try to work with the old site, but the old screenshots looked more informative than the new ones. Not surprised at all by the results.

<comment><USER7> What's complicated about it? Click on an article to read the article. Click on the comments link to read the comments. Click on reply to reply.

It's hard to imagine something simpler. HN even maintains a good information density.

<comment> a-nikolaev I were talking not about HN, obviously.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looking at the 'before' and 'after' designs, I'd say that the biggest difference is that in the old design the first question you ask (via a textbox) is one to which the user already knows the answer ('what icon do you want?'). Whereas in the new design the first question is 'please pick one of these three options (with which you are not already familiar)'. So the questions requires the user to _think_. See _Dont Make Me Think_ :) IANAUXD, just my $0.03

<comment><USER9> I would tend to agree. It runs afoul of the UX maxim "If you can't decide what you want your user to do, they can _certainly_ not decide what to do." If you really want them to pick "custom" or "fast-track" or whatever (for which there is no coherent explanation visible in the mock I saw... fast-track? What does that even mean?), bring it up _after_ they've committed in spirit to doing the thing you want them to do (request an icon).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Even going into the new design with an understanding of what it was trying to achieve, the tab title "Free for share" threw me off. It was so jarring that I completely stopped reading the article and started trying to grok the UI.

Am I required to 'share' my icon in order for it to be made, like on of those "Like on Facebook for coupon!" sites? Where can I share it? Can anyone vote for my icon, or only people who see it from my 'share'?

I would suggest that simply "Free" would be a much clearer, with the social/share component available but not required. Then, if they want more people to vote on their icon, they can choose to share it or not.

"Free _for_ share" makes it sound transactional, like I'm paying for the icon with a 'share', which is a concept I absolutely hate.

Okay, back to finish the article...

<comment><USER11> And, on top of that, the new options make you think that you're the alternative. Instead of saying "hey, great, I can get a free icon!" you only notice that you could also get a fast-track or custom (whatever those mean), and you can't help but think "free for share" is the lowest priority thing.

Also, that entire page was impossible to parse. I had to go to their main webpage to even try to understand the concept of what they're doing ,and try to put the page snippets in context. Page snippets on a white background, placed over another white background, are confusing as hell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I see that, as usually happens, the politics of website redesigns have prevented the simple, user-centric fix of "go back to the old site which worked fine." Like any other deployment, redesigns should have a rollback plan. If you installed a major system update and suddenly production throughput drops in half, you'd roll back to the old version. If you deploy a new design and your traffic falls in half.. why is there so much resistance to just rolling back to the old version?

I understand in cases where it's a big switchover and basically a redesign riding the coattails of a huge middleware/backend rewrite. I don't understand in a case like this when it wouldn't break major back office processes to just put the old site back.

<comment><USER4> If anything, this should have been an A/B test.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Imagine for a second if this service was provided through another medium. Let's use radio for the sake of simplicity. The old design was full of information. It was akin to a common radio station talk show. Few pauses. Lots of information flowing in at every moment. The new design is akin to a radio station talk show that takes a silent break every 5 seconds. The information isn't quite flowing anymore. People lose interest. They change the station. That's why they stopped commenting. They were _expecting_ and needed a certain amount of information in order to use the service and join in the conversation.

</comment><comment><USER14> I suppose this is not about desing (or redesing). Styles, whitespace, etc.

The new page is just confusing. What am I supposed to do on it? Nothing looks like button or a hyperlink.

</comment><comment><USER15> The title of this post is clickbait. It should be titled something closer to "How we lost user interaction after our redesign".

They specifically mention that they did not lose any traffic/visitor numbers: "Important: our overall traffic didn't change. The same amount of people came to this feature's page."

It appears as though the "lost users" were really lost interactions with the vote button: "our voting numbers decreased by ~50%."

It's fascinating to me how far people are willing to go when skewing the information to pique interest. I'll bet a lot less people would read it without "lost users" in the title.

<comment><USER16> As a writer, I know quite much about clickbait name and use them extensively, true that. However, in this particular case, the point is true: ~47% people stopped using the feature (user = someone, who uses). Meaning the conversion between people who found the feature and started using it has dropped by 47% as well.

<comment><USER15> So, if traffic numbers are EXACTLY the same (as noted) but less people click on a single button, you've "lost those users"? Doesn't make any sense to me. You've lost interaction with a button from your unchanged user base. Like you said yourself, click conversion from your users changed. Users changing interaction ≠ losing users

If you had lost 50% of your users, you would have half of the overall site traffic that you had last time.

<comment><USER17> Yes and no. I see what you are saying, but in my opinion every site can have its own definition of user and visitor. For some sites the terms may be interchangeable, while for other sites they have completely different meanings.

Let's take HN for example (I don't know if HN considers this their metric or what, just using it as an example.). Let's say they made a change that now requires everyone to login to the site each time they visit. So if you closed your browser window or were inactive for a period of time you would have to log back in. While you could still read posts and comments, you would be unable to submit new stories or comment until you logged in. While you are not logged in you would be considered a visitor. But when you log in, you now become a user.

While at first the traffic, or visitors, may remain the same, without participating users on the site the number of visitors will eventually drop as not as many people are submitting or commenting.

A site that does not require interaction, may on the other hand, simply use the two terms (visitor & user) interchangeably.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The analysis seems more like a post-hoc rationalization of why the traffic dropped, which, while fairly reasoned, may not provide the full story.

Specifically, did solving the issues identified _restore traffic back to normal levels_?

<comment><USER16> Going to apply fixes (or fight for them, in my case). And then publish the results. Thing is, we're still getting requests and designers have something to draw.

It's just me, who sees some drawbacks of this drop in the future. For others in my company, it may be just 20 votes reduction.

<comment><USER19> What's the business model behind drawing icons for people who get a dozen votes?

<comment><USER16> It's a fueling part of a bigger model: forming a community-driven product - icon pack.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> So the proper way to do big changes like this is to support both versions and to only roll out the change to select users. It's this radical new concept called A/B testing.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm quite supposed another possible cause to the drop in user votes is not mentioned in the blog that seems pretty obvious to me: _Where are the vote buttons?_

Even if I already fully understand their system and are highly motivated to vote, I wouldn't know how to actually do that in the new design.

In the new design, you have to hover over one of the numbers (without there being any indication that hovering does anything) - after which a grey up- arrow without any text appears. If you're familiar with reddit, etc and know that particular language of symbols, and also know this is a voting system, and you're not distracted by the gray color which could indicate "action not available", you can make an educated guess that this is likely the vote button.

In the old design, it was a button with the word "vote" on it.

</comment><comment><USER22> Cleaner/simpler isn't always better. It's better to be a little more cluttered, if it's a lot more informative.

</comment><comment><USER23> What was the rationale behind the redesign?

Was there any sort of A/B testing done beforehand to see if the changes would bring actual improvement or was it more just trying to mimic current design trends?

<comment><USER24> The "original design" was the UserVoice support system, a fact conveniently missing from the article, which leaves us to speculating as to why they would have moved away from that platform in the first place...

<comment><USER16> The logic behind the redesign is not a mystery and was mentioned in the article. Here I can elaborate it: 1\. To add several new features, UserVoice wasn't flexible enough to provide 2\. To automate a few administrative tasks (tracking requests, updating, uploading) - thus no connect the system with our website backend more tightly 3\. To cover all these changes in a modern, simplified version of the design.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Looks like you learned the hard way about hovering over to expose features. If you've got touch screen users those features will be virtually useless as well.

One thing that would have been cool to see your writeup would be how you used direct customer feedback. Maybe it was none at all, but I suspect talking to customers (or even internal employees) helped you reach some of the conclusions you made. It's really difficult to look at a graph and go, yes this is the thing that caused the change.

<comment><USER16> What actually made me dig into analytics and numbers are usability studies in the first place. They were planned as a routine I follow after every new design needs to be tested, but made me reveal some deeper problems like navigation, questions etc. Now, after covering the big picture, I maybe will write an article on smaller ones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I feel like this is a classic example of abusing your knowledge about your product. You gotta account for the fact that users will usually come in having little knowledge about what your product is and will derive that from the functions available on your page. In the previous designs, you look at it and see:

\- user generated requestst \- crowdsourced voting \- how easy submitting a request is, and what it entails \- the volume of requests you have

I see this in the larger context of icons8 and I get the sense that is akin to voting for a feature. This is something I could do, if I wanted.

The new design shows me:

\- Weird titles that may or may not be some sort of request

And that's about it. Only five of them. Take that in the context of icons8 and I really can't parse what it means so I would probably just completely ignore it. On the request page, I don't see how approachable the request feature is, so I ignore it.

Uservoice does it better.

</comment><comment><USER27> So essentially, they wanted to save $ 500 a month on uservoice.com and learned the hard way, that software is not a simple as it looks. That is also why they are not just rolling back but instead have used the opportunity to at least get some PR out of it.

<comment><USER24> Yea, it's not mentioned in the article at all - imho it should be - that the "original design" is in fact the UserVoice system and not icons8's design at all.

UserVoice has no doubt put a tremendous amount of effort into ensuring that users interact with the support system as much as possible. Not very smart to assume that you can re-do all of that work yourself.

Full disclosure: Happy user of the UserVoice system myself, grandfathered into the free plan but otherwise no relationship.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Wow! Terrible redesign

Went from being Simple left to right, top to bottom style to some weird layout that it very hard to navigate.

I would give that sucker a grade of "F".

Great reminder to have users test products before shipping something.

As well as use common sense in your designs.

</comment><comment><USER29> Compare the web site of the world's leading icon designer, Susan Kare.[1]

[1] [http://kare.com/](http://kare.com/)

</comment><comment><USER30> And, of course, I'm greeted by a huge image that I have to scroll all the way past in order get to the content. I'm not sure they learned their lesson.

</comment><comment><USER31> People really like to make their life complicate, do not change the design of an existing product. There are other ways to make life interesting.

On the one hand designs tend to be overcomplicate - any design that is noticeable is overcomplicate - and on the other hand every 2 or 3 years people feel a urge to fix things that work.

</comment><comment><USER32> Why don't people ever test shit?

<comment><USER26> Because they don't know how to. (so even if they do test it, they fuck that part up too).

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Amazon is great at A|B testing their way to a great user experience. You may not agree just by looking at the UI but the metrics don't lie. Ok sometimes they are misinterpreted or gamed. But an honest look at feedback will work every time.

</comment><comment><USER34> stepping back and looking at the big picture, I get this same feeling about many apps. Especially ones produced by Google, when you upgrade an app, suddenly the UI is totally new and you don't know how to use the app in the same way you did before.

Yes Google might not have chosen poor words in this case, but it does create friction when you switch around the whole UI.

The example I always cite is when Microsoft switched the whole UI in Office from the 2003 version to 2007 version. People who had mastered pivot tables were suddenly up the river without a paddle

</comment><comment><USER35> I didn't know I was reading about lifehacker.com

</comment><comment><USER36> Why not simply treat every search that returns zero results as a request, and dump the UI entirely?

</comment><comment><USER37> So... did they put it back?

<comment><USER12> Nope, it's still the "new" design: [https://icons8.com/request- icon/free/hot](https://icons8.com/request-icon/free/hot)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> This could be the post of Snapchat team in one week.

</comment><comment><USER39> If it ain't broke..</comment>


Show HN: What is the cost of your javascript package? - <AUTHOR> https://cost-of-modules.herokuapp.com <comment><USER2> Cool. But I got an error "building took longer than expected. Try again in a minute?" for every non-negligible package (for which this would actually be useful). I only got it to work for left-pad.

Either way, nicely done!</comment>


FUSE for macOS: Why a popular open-source library became closed source (2019) - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.com/2019/12/16/fuse_macos_closed_source/ <comment><USER2> Sad, but fully understandable.

> I hope we see more of this in the future: developers realising that the work > they do has value and that they're not required to spend their lives giving > it away for free

[I hope we see more of this] - Really? mac users... they are just really special...

I think open source developers know that fully well. What is new is perhaps the expectations leveled against them if their project becomes popular.

There might be some idealism in open source software, but it certainly brings results. If it doesn't fit your expectations, you can improve it yourself. Leveling expectations towards developers would be rude though.

There are practices in software that don't have value. Software signing and notarization for example hasn't provided anything in my opinion aside from "security®" and some gate keeping.</comment>


Build a Wi-Fi Walkie Talkie-Like Device with a Raspberry Pi - <AUTHOR> http://lifehacker.com/build-a-wi-fi-walkie-talkie-like-device-with-a-raspberr-1786436503 <comment><USER2> send details on how and I will try marshall scales on facebook</comment>


Plivo (YC S12) launches scalable API platform for Voice & SMS Apps - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/09/yc-backed-plivo-launches-its-scalable-api-platform-for-voice-sms-apps/ <comment><USER2> "Plivo is not a direct competitor with developer-friendly Twilio, but is targeting larger businesses in need of scale."

I'm confused how this is different from Twilio - my understanding is that Twilio gets most of their revenue from large businesses in need of scale, as well.

<comment><USER3> This is a great question to ask the right people :)

<comment><USER4> If you get bored, could you explain what a carrier is in this context? AT&T? I presume you're the founder Venky?

<comment><USER3> Hey earl, yes i am one of the founders. Yes, carriers here would be AT&T or Level3 etc..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> SIP support is a win for Plivo. I love Twilio and the overall constant innovation in the space, but inventing proprietary mechanisms (Twilio Client) is backwards for telephony.

Plivo is on the right track -- <http://plivo.com/opensource>. I'm excited to use this and watch them grow.

<comment><USER3> Even our hosted cloud supports SIP and we dont lock you in with our carriers. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just talked with Rakesh via olark (very helpful) on the Plivo site. I do a lot of stuff with Twilio and after talking with him, it sounds like Plivo has some valid strengths and advantages.

<comment><USER7> Could you elaborate on what those advantages may be, for those of us who don't quite understand the difference?

<comment><USER3> Aaron,

I am on of the founders of Plivo. Let me share with you what we think is different:

1\. Native SIP Support. Works with any SIP Device. 2\. Realtime Call Control (like in-call notifications etc..) 3\. No Limit Conferencing 4\. No carrier Lock-in 5\. Volume pricing from the start

If you have any questions, feel free to ping us at firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER8> Venky, dumb question, but any idea if the call control can occur during a live call (two endpoints are connected instead of just one endpoint connected to plivo)? I'm trying to write an app that depends on this functionality but can't seem to do it in twilio or tropo.

Also, does plivo provide a softphone or client library?

<comment><USER3> Yes we can do that. Use our Transfer API and transfer both legs instead of just one :)

Soft phone library is in roadmap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hey all!

I run biz dev for 2600hz, a competitor in the Voice API space. What Plivo is doing is really cool for a couple of reasons:

1\. Open-Source development framework

2\. Lets you bring Non-Plivo carriers

I do have a couple observations, specifically adding the $.004 tariff onto carrier calls kills any real option for external carriers. For those of you who aren't in the Telecom game, a 4 tenths of a penny addition on every minute can make an arbitrage business model much more difficult.

Second, Plivo is not very open about the tools that they use to get where they are. This is built on FreeSWITCH, they are doing a basic implementation of this Open-Source software as the media server. This is also the underlying stuff powering UberConference so it's good stuff, but it's important to mention the giants upon whose shoulders you stand.

Lastly, on-net calls should be free. As of right now they're $.004 per min for full IP routing. That's bogus in my opinion.

Oh and by the way, everything you can do on Plivo can be run on 2600hz and our architecture is fully scalable with over 50 APIs for all of the Telecom functionality you'd ever want. Best of all, you can run your carriers, in your cloud, without paying us a dime.

Github: <https://github.com/2600hz/2600hz-platform>

Kazoo Beta: <http://invite.kazoo.io>

Source: I write thepbxblog.com and I work for 2600hz.

Edit: Grammar.

<comment><USER10> Uh, aren't you guys on FreeSWITCH too?

<comment><USER9> We utilize FreeSWITCH as our media server. I would never denigrate FreeSWITCH; I personally think it's an excellent media server and it handles transcoding like a boss.

I tried to clear up the misunderstanding above in my comments to be, but if you have any further questions, I'm happy to answer.

To be clear, I didn't mean to appear as though I were attacking Plivo, that's not my intention at all. I simply wanted to applaud their efforts and point out a couple ways they could improve.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Venky/Plivo Congratulations!

Venky, Hope you don't mind me asking this question (unrelated to Plivo), but it will help some of us Indians who plan to apply to YC -

How did you plan/manage to create a startup using your visa? Did you already have a Green card? Or were you on H1? Does YC encourage founders already on H1? Also how about someone on H4 visa, do you know if YC is ok with that Visa and would help found the company (if selected)?

Sorry to ask you these questions, as I haven't found any convincing answers to these nagging questions.

Wishing your team all the best!

</comment><comment><USER12> Here is the launch post from their blog:

[http://blog.plivo.com/post/13402619187/launch-of-plivo-an- op...](http://blog.plivo.com/post/13402619187/launch-of-plivo-an-open-source- alternative-to-twilio)

I like how their API is similar to Twilio. I'm interested to some of the use cases that the FreeSWITCH platform allows, especially with Skype and Google Voice.

<comment><USER3> Try Plivo Cloud. We support Google Talk as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > _Unlike Twilio, which runs on Amazon's cloud, Plivo runs on dedicated > servers. "We know that when you run things like that on Amazon's cloud, the > voice qualities degrades, and you cannot guarantee quality of service to > customers," explains Venky._

Care to elaborate?

<comment><USER3> It is a known fact that for realtime voice encoding/decoding and mixing, virtual machines may not guarantee proper kernel timing, hence leading to issues in Voice quality.

Amazon instances are virtual in nature. Bare Metal Server work the best here.

<comment><USER14> This. I had an argument about this with the CTO of Twilio during my DevOps interview with them. Their excuse is that it works "good enough".

Can't expect much else when one of the founders comes from AWS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Just asked them and looks like they will support webrtc too:

→can I mix it with webrtc for web calls conf or do you plan to support webrtc in the future?

plivo: Yes webrtc coming very very soon

plivo: :)

→so I could make free conf through webrtc and add people through regular phone using plivo?

→good work anyway :)

plivo: Thanks

plivo: Yes once its out

→ok, cool

<comment><USER8> I can't really tell from reading about it... is webRTC browser support happening soon? I downloaded canary last night to try some demos and had it crash 4 times in a row.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> What is the volume pricing guys? 1/2 million SMS, 1 million SMS, 10M, 100M?

<comment><USER3> Our pricing starts at 0.8 cents per SMS. Thats already a price which is lower than other providers. If you have more than 1/2 Million SMS a month shoot us an email at email@example.com and we will help you out.

<comment><USER17> I strongly suggest you communicate your pricing as $0.008 instead of 0.8 cents. Be consistent with your units and more importantly: how people think.

<comment><USER3> Nice feedback. Will do.

<comment><USER18> As a counterpoint, I think in cents per minute regarding phone calls. I can translate $0.008 with a bit of thought but 0.8 cents is immediately obvious. Perhaps that would trip up people at Verizon[0] who think 0.99 cents is equal to 99 cents, but I think your units are fine as-is.

[0] [http://verizonmath.blogspot.ca/2006/12/verizon-doesnt- know-d...](http://verizonmath.blogspot.ca/2006/12/verizon-doesnt-know-dollars- from-cents.html)

<comment><USER3> hmmm, food for thought!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ok, given that we've got Plivo, Trello, and Twilio now, (and 2600hz?), can we start standardizing the CallAPI?

I think it's a net win for everyone if users don't have to worry about api lock-in....

<comment><USER19> don't forget we also have tropo. +1 to standardizing CallAPI.

<comment><USER10> Oops i meant to type tropo but wrote trello instead. Must have been all those posts about it this morning!</comment></comment></comment>


A personal data visualization tool - <AUTHOR> http://your.flowingdata.com/explore/

<comment><USER2> Is there a page that gives us info about what it is before deciding whether to give it access? The linked page just redirects me to a twitter allow/deny prompt.

<comment><USER3> It seems to be a site where you input an event ("wakeup", "drank beer", etc) and it timestamps it. Then they offer some sort of (unspecified) analytics over that data.

Edit: <http://your.flowingdata.com/guide/></comment></comment>


Show HN: Few minutes app – Popular stories, sorted for your available time - <AUTHOR> http://fewminutesapp.com/

<comment><USER2> cool!</comment>


Introducing #Event - A Twitter-based Calendar - <AUTHOR> http://hashtagevent.me/

<comment><AUTHOR> Scratching a personal itch of mine. I was missing out on a lot of events because I didn't know they existed. With #Event you can simply tweet something like: "#event Going to the #hack4ac in London on July 6th 2013" and all of your followers will have this event created for them.</comment>


B2B-esque: The "safest" revenue models are B2B-based - <AUTHOR> http://adii.me/2011/02/b2b-esque/ <comment><USER2> Fairly obvious but true, good B2B companies usually have strong balance sheets and often minimal debt. The Internet appears to be B2C from a users perspective but fundamentally, the business models i.e advertising, commission, are basically B2B. (Google Adwords, eBay Stores)

I'm working on a B2B startup if anyone's interested in discussing or exchanging ideas. Traditional B2B businesses (non consuming facing) are largely lagging in terms of the transition to the Internet meaning there's definitely opportunities.

<comment><USER3> What are you doing, if I may ask?

I've recently dipped my tail into writing Android applications, and I've been shocked at how my existing (business) clients jumped on them. Now I'm developing a web app / mobile app combination to see if I can generalize it.

I feel that by comparison B2C mobile apps are infinitely more risky (if more scalable), and don't really understand why everybody is so set on them...

<comment><USER2> A business to business marketplace/network, exclusively focused on enterprise/opex. If you think about real world opex e.g office supplies, travel, insurance, advertising, online is the future. The largest marketplaces currently focus on B2C and realistically, there's only two (Amazon, eBay), which explains both the opportunity in B2B and the possibility to build a large company that benefits from network effects.

Edit - Technically, eBay is C2C like craigslist, though I'd imagine the majority of their revenues are from B2B, eBay stores. C2C/B2C currently has nearly all the mindshare but as the Internet moves deeper into enterprises this will change. If anything, I'd imagine that the greatest opportunity is B2B, especially when you consider the financial/industrial markets and overall business spend is far larger than consumer goods/services.

The problems with B2B are mainly price (negotiation), but also the actual transaction process i.e most businesses operate credit accounts, with varied terms. Get this right and you will have something people want.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The site's down. Is it cached anywhere? It's not on nyud.net or Google.</comment>


Reverse engineering the OP-1 drum patch - <AUTHOR> https://schollz.com/blog/op1/ <comment><USER2> Looks like a hug of death, see [https://web.archive.org/web/20200519073029/https://schollz.c...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200519073029/https://schollz.com/blog/op1/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I bought an OP-1 and it is the best product I've ever used. However, I was wildly disappointed to find the MIDI control input doesn't work with ALSA sequencer consistently (I need this functionality for a programming side project). I submited a support request, but it's kind of frustrating that I don't have the capability to just fix the firmware myself. (Specifically aseqdump only works after restarting the computer and RtMidi qmidiin doesn't print anything and also prevents aseqdump from working if called..., if anyone knows why I'd love to understand)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's too bad! I've used the MIDI and it works well albeit I've only written things in using WebMIDI not the ALSA sequencer. I'm really curious about your side project, would you mind sharing it?

<comment><USER3> For sure! I'm working on an open source gameplay framework and one of the 'upgrades' I'm planning is MIDI based manipulation of trees of gameplay values at runtime from knobs. You can read more here [https://wesxdz.dev/bicycle- mango](https://wesxdz.dev/bicycle-mango)

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool, thanks for sharing!!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice article. The synth, though cool, is way overpriced. Just about doubled since release. Nice if you have one, not worth the money to buy now though

<comment><USER5> Yes it's expensive in some ways and in others it isn't. Can you get a better synth for the money? Sure. Can you get a better sampler for the money? Sure. Can you get a better sequencer for the money? Sure. Can you get a decent synth, sequencer, and sampler for the money? Well, not necessarily. I'm not saying the price is entirely justified. You certainly pay a lot for the "brand". But on the other hand it might not be as overpriced as one might think by intuition.

Plus, as a owner, I hope price will only go further up, or at least stay on that level :)

<comment><USER6> > Plus, as a owner, I hope price will only go further up, or at least stay on > that level :)

How does a high price benefit you as you own it already? Seems a bit egoistic. Maybe you're planning to sell it? Then I would understand your sentiment, but otherwise, seems a bit strange.

<comment><USER7> It's nice to buy an instrument that ages well. A lot of synths do not hold their value once they leave the store shelf. The OP-1 managed to become something of a classic in a short period of time. If you're like me, you want to buy things that hold their value, so you can trade out gear without leaving a bunch of money on the table.

The price hike on TE's side doesn't really have anything to do with this, though. It's likely due to having to source old parts or finding new parts that are more expensive, and adjusting the design to accommodate.

<comment><USER8> I think when it became part of MoMA's permanent collection it really solidified a special place for itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I would be interested to know what teenage engineering say about this. Hopefully they'll approve and provide more details. If it's "You will void your warranty", then I would avoid buying from them.

<comment><USER10> TE are known to not be fans of modifying OP-1. The OP-1 repacker project which is used to patch and load new firmware had its maintainers reach out to TE on their official forums and the thread got deleted by admins if I'm remembering things correctly (it was a while since I hacked on the OP-1). In any case, they definitely did not publicly endorse modding the OP-1s and they do not like to see it done.

<comment><USER11> Evidently, only they are allowed to do engineering. The rest of us are expected to shut up and buy the products.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> How hard would it be to develop an open hardware platform to deliver something similar to an OP-1? Do any such projects exist?

<comment><USER13> This is close enough [https://github.com/OTTO- project/OTTO](https://github.com/OTTO-project/OTTO) and [https://www.critterandguitari.com/organelle](https://www.critterandguitari.com/organelle)

<comment><USER3> Mmm, these might be a nice start, but I don't think they're in the same tier as the OP-1. The appeal for me is the world class integrated visual design and build quality.

<comment><USER14> Get an Axoloti synth, add your own preferred world class visual design and build quality:

[http://www.axoloti.com](http://www.axoloti.com)

My favourite is the Chlorophyll box, which just kicks so much ass:

[https://www.filipruisl.com/work/chlorophyll/](https://www.filipruisl.com/work/chlorophyll/)

<comment><USER3> The Axoloti looks great! I mainly have the OP-1 to make a chiptune OST, but Axoloti Patcher seems like it would be more functional. What I really want is something that can emulate old gaming console chiptunes and be portable.

<comment><USER14> I have an Open Pandora which has pretty much every old gaming console onboard. ;). Maybe you can find one - they're amazing machines, or .. get a Pyra, which is an update of the concept by the same folks.

[https://openpandora.org](https://openpandora.org)

Or, maybe what you want is Anaologue Pocket?

[https://www.analogue.co/pocket/](https://www.analogue.co/pocket/)

Dunno if its shipping yet though..

Maybe Axoloti is the answer. Its a very nice bit of hardware, I should use mine for things more often...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Nice work automating some tedious work. But come on, that spec is only 31 pages. Read it.</comment>


How to Protect Your App Idea: A Lawyer's Simple Breakdown - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/app-partners-how-to-start-your-app-startup/how-to-protect-your-app-idea-a-lawyers-simple-breakdown-1b200044aeb <comment><USER2> "Don't worry about someone stealing your idea. Worry about no one giving a shit when your idea comes to life."</comment>


Servies – a bash micro-framework - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/minond/servies

<comment><USER2> This seems dangerous. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it incredibly unsafe to run most standard nix packages on untrusted inputs?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't 100% understand what you mean by "untrusted inputs" (http?), but you are correct in assuming something like this is dangerous.

I didn't really write it with the intent of using it for a real project, or for someone else to do so, but just as a project to become a little more familiar with bash.</comment></comment>


In cancer science, many studies don't hold up - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE82R12P20120328?irpc=932

<comment><USER2> Publish or die.</comment>


Dear Sam, What Are You Doing About This? - <AUTHOR> For reference:
http://theundercurrent.com/the-guide-to-legal-tax-evasion/
http://theundercurrent.com/global-tax-evasion-you-cant-trust-white-people/
How many of Y-Combinator stable of Unicorns are headquartered in the US but incorporated in Ireland or engage in other "legal" forms of tax dodgery?
Some of the biggest "legal" tax dodgers are former Silicon Valley startups (including Dropbox), and actively continue to contribute to a culture and a practice of global corporatocracy. When are we putting our foot down?  Corporations can solve many of the worlds problems, but only democratically elected governments of, for and by the people can represent or act on the people's behalf. And to do that, they need people and corporations to actually pay taxes. <comment><USER2> Speaking of startups generally rather than YC specifically:

1) Essentially no startups on the VC trajectory are incorporated anywhere but Delaware. This is largely because investor confidence in the enforceability of their rights to what they're purchasing trumps every other factor in incorporation. For companies which have substantial business dealings outside of the US, they typically have foreign subsidiaries which are owned lock- stock-and-barrel by the US entity. That is not a tax optimization.

2) The overwhelming majority of startups pay no corporate income tax. They use an old, old strategy to avoid it: _don 't make profits_. If you have no profits, you pay no income taxes, and instead book an asset for all the taxes you'll get to offset after you finally start making money some years after IPO.

Startups don't simply avoid making profits because they've got creative international structuring going on where they're charged $15 million a year for their own IP by an entity in Ireland. They don't make profits because their revenues are far lower than their expenses. They run a substantial risk of running out of money and folding catastrophically _and this often happens._

Startups, like all businesses, generate substantial tax revenue outside of their corporate income tax returns. California, for example, will hit every company doing business there with a franchise tax, which is basically "welcome to California, for the privilege of doing business here please remit $800+." Startups are also filled with highly compensated employees when they're doing well, and these highly compensated employees both pay substantial income taxes and have substantial FICA/etc taxes paid incident to their employ by the company.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> 1) Agreed, in fact I believe YC requires incorporation in Delaware. So it is probably important to distinguish between early-stage/growth-stage startups and companies that are profitable or have exited to IPO. Dropbox is a good example... I assume it was a Delaware company, until it became an Irish company. In fact, its probably a similar story with Apple, Microsoft, and many, many more...

2) Again, yes, this would apply to companies not making profits which are primarily early stage and growth-stage (although, even massive companies like Amazon can be "growth-stage" as long as they re-invest all their profits). But I think you are missing the purpose of this post, which is not to argue that most startups are avoiding taxes... but which YC ones that shouldn't be are? If the eventual life cycle for successful YC/VC backed companies IS to dodge taxes, wtf?

3) The $800 franchise tax is substantial when multiplied by the 2.2+ million taxable business in California... but not when compared to $59.9 Billion Apple, just Apple is currently estimated to owe in US taxes? Here's a fun little article show the crux of the conflict - [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/05/apple- tax...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/05/apple-taxes- cupertino-mayor-infrastructure-plan)

I don't think JUST corporations should take a haircut... investors and capital funds are going to have to as well since it is their demand for returns that pressure companies that want to "do good" into becoming tax dodgers. It's a cultural problem as well as a structural one. The point, again, is when is YC (and the investors and individuals who make up YC) going to start making a change? I'm a fan of YC, and the companies they invest in... but in this I see a blindspot, albeit one that is shared by most of the global business community.

</comment><comment><USER3> > _incorporated in Ireland or engage in other "legal" forms of tax dodgery?_

Ireland has a low corporate tax rate, and a slightly compliant Data Protection regime. But the UK is, IMO, a much bigger tax haven than Ireland. All those little crown dependencies, like the Channel Islands, Isle of Mann, etc are massive tax havens. One channel island has 24 company directors for every person! Yes, they aren't part of the UK proper, but they are close.</comment>


Apple Ran Out Of Gold iPhones Because It Underestimated How Much Asia Likes Gold - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-out-of-gold-iphone-5s-because-asia-likes-gold-2013-9 <comment><USER2> Watched something on TV a while back on how ingrained gold is in the Indian culture. I don't have any links handy to back up my claims, but I think India accounts for a majority of the gold market worldwide.

Edit: Quickly searching I found this: [http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57376057/indias- love-a...](http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57376057/indias-love-affair- with-gold/)

</comment><comment><USER3> It has little to do with the color gold and more to do with the social status.

Money spent on home appliance is minimal and an after-thought, and this is because you cannot impress people with your home appliances while you're out of your home. Meanwhile you can flash your _Gold_ iPhone everywhere you go and it implicitly shows everybody around you that you can afford a _Gold_ iPhone.

Social posturing is a central part of East Asian cultures and the _Gold_ iPhone appeals directly to that mindset. There is no racism but instead it's just the reality of the situation -- hubris is ingrained and prevalent.

<comment><USER4> Isn't that prevalent everywhere? Some cultures show off gold, others show off cars and their accessories, others show off the latest tech toys.

"Look at me, I have so much income, I can afford to spend it frivolously!"

<comment><USER3> It's especially prevalent in China. Their one child per family policy has created an entire generation of people with too much money, so extravagance and opulence are approaching _and exceeding_ interesting levels of absurdity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The pervasive casual racism when discussing the gold iPhone is just astounding. If news outlets were talking about black people this way, there would be riots in the streets. Why is this considered acceptable?

<comment><USER6> What exactly is racist about saying one product type appeals to a certain set of cultures more than others? It is well known the Korean culture values extra settings and controls as a sign of status, for example, and that Koreans value replaceable batteries more and carry them around more often. Is it racist to say replaceable battery phones sell better in Korea than elsewhere? There are already OEMs that make different SKUs for exactly this reason, like LG.

<comment><USER5> It's not racist if it's backed up by data.

So far I have seen no data whatsoever to back up this idea that Asian people prefer gold more than other people in the world.

Articles like these simply take a racial stereotype and run with it to the conclusion they want to reach. That's racist.

<comment><USER7> Red and Gold are the Chinese lucky colors.

India values gold disproportionately as well.

Those are such well known facts, maybe the authors didn't think they needed to explain them

[https://www.google.com/search?q=gold%20in%20asian%20culture](https://www.google.com/search?q=gold%20in%20asian%20culture)

[http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Importance-of-Gold-in- Chinese-...](http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Importance-of-Gold-in-Chinese- Culture&id=4126178)

[http://heryyansen.hubpages.com/hub/The-significance-of- the-c...](http://heryyansen.hubpages.com/hub/The-significance-of-the-colors- red--gold-in-Chinese-culture)

In India, gold is usually part of dowrys. (I read a great National Geographic article which I can't find online)

Edit:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6431446](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6431446)

and the sibling comment

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6431521](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6431521)

<comment><USER5> Which of these is supposed to support the idea that it's _disproportionate?_

Of course they love gold. Everybody loves gold.

Americans are going crazy over the gold iPhone too. But nobody's talking about that, because they'd rather talk about Asians.

If it can be demonstrated that cultural preferences have translated into a disparate demand for gold iPhones in Asian countries, then and only then can this claim be made with a straight face. As it stands, it's just uninformed discussion about people who are "different".

<comment><USER8> > Americans are going crazy over the gold iPhone too.

That's racist!

^ This is what you sound like ITT...

<comment><USER5> What's your point?

<comment><USER8> That you're just making threads toxic with your white knight attitudes.

Saying that BI is racist because they generalize the Asian market is what's wrong with the world. Not only do you generalize an entire continent by reducing it to race (racist against all Asian races?), but you then go on about how they can't generalize.

Almost all markets generalize. They need to. It's how you do business. If target age 24-32 female, white, etc...

Stop being such a white knight and attempt to read the article and bring valid points up for discussion instead of derailing it and wasting many a programmers time.

<comment><USER5> "White knight"? Sure, because I couldn't _possibly_ be directly affected by issues like these.

Until and unless the assertion is actually _supported_ , it's racist BS.

I read the article. It completely fails to support its assertions. It talks about behavior the entire world appears to be engaging in, but singles out Asians for no reason.

They're telling a story they've basically made up, and are taking advantage of the "mysterious other" to do so.

This story would not pass muster if it were about black people. The author would get run out of town!

I believe that my points are perfectly valid. There's been a whole slew of articles about "Asians love gold" with absolutely no data to back them up, which are clearly based on a racist narrative rather than anything rational. How is that invalid?

"Wasting many a programmer's time"? That's hilarious. Even if the story is completely true, it's a waste of time to read and to comment about.

Personally, I think pointing out how casual racism is tolerated and ignored in certain situations is quite a bit more useful than the other comments on this article.

<comment><USER9> They're talking about geographical markets, not categories of people.

Saying "X is popular in africa" would not be racist either.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the ray of logic.

Personally, I find it more offensive when people get offended by non offensive things than by ignorant generalizations, like grouping all Asians into a race, by grouping all black people into a culture, by mixing up culture and race (this one is tricky however), etc..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If gold hadn't sold out, it would have been a failure. The only function of the gold iPhone is to be hard to get, if it were common as mud, it'd be seen as the bedazzled tacky fashion-gadget shit it is.

<comment><USER11> I bet you gold isn't going to stay hard to get (harder to get than any other 5s, at least) for very long at all.

<comment><USER10> Not for too much longer than it takes for the new iPhone to come out, I think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Nailed it. I knew this was yet another Asian play by Apple. The iPhone is getting long in the tooth in Western markets, but there are still many virgin markets in the East.

<comment><USER13> Really? Because like every other person has an iPhone here in Beijing. I saw a gold one on a flight last night from Singapore, I think this is purely a Chinese thing; weird that they said Asian and not Chinese.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Maybe its a marketing thing. I remember the same thing used to happen with white iPhones. They would run out way faster than the black ones.

<comment><USER15> I would really be surprised if they underestimated the demand, Asia is known for loving gold. I would bet more likely it is a marketing thing, the news that they have all sold out pushes up demand even further and also hits all the headlines. How many people are going around now saying "I have one of the new gold iPhones" to all their friends and colleagues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> To be fair, the 5th avenue New York store consistently "over-indexes" (as the article puts it) with shoppers of Asian heritage. Until recently at least, it was not very easy to buy an iPhone of any type in many Asian countries, and as a result, many tourists on vacation to the US would buy multiple devices to take home. Even now many Asian countries are among the last to have new Apple products roll out to them. Certainly don't have data to back this up, but I lived in New York for 6 years and took more than the occasional trip to the Apple store and witnessed these types of bulk purchases. Point is, even the "data" this article introduces doesn't necessarily have anything to do with gold.

</comment><comment><USER17> Or, more simply, Apple ran out of gold phones because they were rightfully cautious about over-producing an untested color. Just like the first all-white iPhone, there's no rush prioritize the new color while proven ones are already selling as fast as they can be made. Of course, this doesn't make for good link bait.

Is the article racist? Yes, a bit. Only long-term sales data will reliably tell us which colors are preferred in which markets. Right or wrong, the article is rushing to judgement based on flimsy racial stereotypes.

<comment><USER18> I don't think the article is racist. Just poorly sourced. It's rushing to judgement based on anecdotes (which are probably rooted in a bit of stereotyping - just in the case, there is some data backing up the stereotype). This comment has a good round-up of evidence that gold is more popular in Asia than elsewhere: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6431520](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6431520).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It always seems Apple has a problem with color production. Don't quote me on it, but wasn't the white iPhone 4 that was different in color and had a weird yellowish tint to some of the early models? It seems that they have quality down, as of now. It's just a matter of quantity by the looks of it.

<comment><USER20> Supposedly there were production problems that came up when the white iPhones were released. It was a couple months until that all ironed out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> They call it "gold" because Asia likes gold. But I saw the gold 5S in the store and it is definitely not gold. It is a beautiful, classy champagne color. If I were buying one, I'd definitely pick "gold".

</comment><comment><USER22> Sounds like Apple needs to jack the price on the 5S..</comment>


The Yin Programming Language - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/yinwang0/yin

<comment><USER2> Not very much info on it, it's written in Java? What's it compile to? JVM bytecode? Hello World example? Something?

<comment><USER3> Java is just for bootstrap, the compile to native code.</comment></comment>