Want a steady income? There's an app for that - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/03/magazine/want-a-steady-income-theres-an-app-for-that.html <comment><USER2> tl;dr App called "even" allows people with incredibly variable income (case study is on a massage therapist, lots of money one week, little the next) to even out their income. They evaluate their income history, then offer a stabilized value, say $380/week. Weeks they make more, the application takes it and puts it aside. Weeks they make less, it either pulls it in from a reserve, or an instant loan is made.

Costs users $3/week. Which is non-trivial, but less than a payday loan company.

<comment><USER3> For once I wished I came to the comments before reading. It was an interesting article, but it is definitely full of fluff

<comment><USER4> Brilliant from a PR perspective though for your average NYT reader.

I would kill to get an article like that written - it's lengthy, detailed, has an accurate representation of the actual function of the app with tone a that's not breathless or sycophantic, and just the right level of skepticism thrown in so that readers believe a deep, detailed analysis has been done and that this is the future.

<comment><USER5> What's the value of that PR? Attracting quality employees or boosting VC interest? Because I highly doubt their target market is reading articles about startups in the NYT.

<comment><USER6> Attracting quality employees I'd imagine. I think a twitterbot I had been using followed the user researcher in the article because she tweeted today about looking for talent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The article opens with the story of Heather Jacobs, a masseuse whose income is volatile, and it implies that she's a prototypical Even user. But she actually seems to be an undesirable user, from the company's point of view.

It sounds as if she's struggling not just to budget but to earn enough money to pay for all her expenses, both recurring and unexpected. (She says she's often "desperate" around the end of the month.) That's exactly the kind of user that Even should try to avoid.

I'm not necessarily faulting the woman for not being able to make enough; I'm just saying that Even's ideal user should be someone who, over time, earns enough to cover their expenses, but either has trouble sticking to a budget or would prefer the convenience of an app to handle budgeting for them.

For instance, my parents (one a teacher, who got paychecks from September to May, and the other a landscape, who earned little during the winter months) could have used an app like this when I was growing up. Between the two of them, they made ends meet, but they struggled to figure out how much to save so they'd have a reserve during the months when their incomes dipped.

One thing I am curious about, which the article doesn't touch on: What happens if I have a surplus in my Even account (which the article says is kept in a savings account), and I run into a huge unexpected expense? What are my options for tapping into that surplus?

If I have the same access to it as a regular savings account, does that kind of defeat the point of the app (to prevent people with poor willpower from spending their surplus instead of saving it)? Or is it treated like a withdrawal from a 401(k), with penalties for taking the money out earlier than scheduled?

<comment><USER3> Although it sounds like she doesn't really have enough money to live comfortably on. It does imply in the article that she isn't sure of where she should spend her money. Dollar store vs. Walmart for groceries, ect. With a consistent paycheck, then she would know exactly how much she can spend on groceries and other things. Often it is the unknowns which cause people to mismanage, not that the managing was impossible to begin with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looking at their website ([https://even.me/)-](https://even.me/\)-) this app both acts as a bank itself and interacts with a person's bank account. Some interesting notes - even is actually FDIC insured, so at least the money they are moving out of a person's bank account is insured in case the company collapses. Their linkedin page also notes they are...

"A bank that automatically manages its customers' finances. Pays their bills. Balances their budget. Saves and invests. And at the tip of the iceberg, gives each and every customer a weekly paycheck of purely disposable income. "

So not only is the income you get each week stabilized - the long term intent is the income you get is solely above and beyond bills and, presumably, investment goals.

At some point - Even could issue debit cards, link up with paypal accounts, and literally supplant the banks that they are working with currently.

Loans are a tricky concept, and Even is attacking a very appropriate market - more than 69% of payday loans are used just to pay normal bills, counter- intuitive to what I would have guessed (emergencies such as health and auto- repair are only around 16%).

Some math: $3 a week = $156 a year - savings of ~$360 versus average payday loan interest. 12 million people use at least one payday loan during a year, with numbers skewed as a higher % of population in states with "looser" regulations on payday loans (6.6% of pop) rather than states with "very strict" regulation (2.9% of pop). Average loan = $375, 8 separate loans taken during a year, plus $520 on interest payments across all loans. 6 of those 8 loans are actually extensions of just 2 loans!

If regular bills are budgeted for, and the money is literally reserved by Even, that eliminates the need for 70% of all non-extended payday loans. Add in budgeting for emergencies, and 84% of payday loans are gone - so whatever interest they do or do not charge for the other 16% is not going to approach normal interest costs.

As jawns points out - majority of loans are because people can't afford their bills...

Since they are FDIC insured - I'll assume they operate like a standard credit union overall and are buffering people's loans using other people's savings...again they also claim they want to invest people's money for them.

</comment><comment><USER9> > If you have no money saved, Even will boost your pay with interest-free > credit. You'll automatically pay the credit back the next time you earn more > than your average pay.

... then later

> ... Even is not a lender and Even does not provide loans.

I'm guessing this is to stay on the right side of lender regulations, but talk about being slippery with semantics!

</comment><comment><USER10> That's a seriously fucked-up webpage without Javascript =/ [http://i.imgur.com/Lr53m7u.png](http://i.imgur.com/Lr53m7u.png)

<comment><USER11> How the fuck? I go to ridiculous lengths to avoid using JS for anything critical (ya know, like SITE STRUCTURE!), and then these people waltz in....

<comment><USER12> Please continue to do so. I'm sure that there are others like me that seriously appreciate you doing so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Amidst all these verbose vignettes of precious characters, what DOES Even DO? Oh, ok, there's one paragraph in there that sheds some light:

"The app then holds back an "Even cushion" — a savings account it manages for the user. In the demo I saw, the app, drawing on a sample bank account, reported that "if you earn less than $380, Even will automatically boost your paycheck. If you earn more than $380, Even will automatically pay back boosts and save the extra to your cushion."

<comment><USER14> It reads like a precocious high-schooler wrote it. I stopped reading when I got to that paragraph.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Duplicate of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9460628](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9460628)

</comment><comment><USER16> This interest free loan makes it VERY susceptible to fraud or abuse.

Lets consider for example, a technology contractor, making $120,000 a year from various contracting jobs. The contractor could sign up for Even, and then retire, collecting a $2500 "paycheck boost" interest free.

I think this idea has a lot of value, but their current business model can't be profitable.

<comment><USER17> The interest free part of course limits them from generating profit directly that way, but alternate revenue models are certainly possible on top of the $3/week users have to pay on a continuous basis.

> The contractor could sign up for Even, and then retire, collecting a $2500 > "paycheck boost" interest free.

I'm not sure how things play out legally with them claiming to not be a lender, but I doubt the Even team hasn't considered something so basic as how to recover money they've "credited" to someone's account if the income they see drops to zero and stays that way.

In cases of outright fraud the person wouldn't just be risking collections or a court judgement to recover the money, they'd probably be facing criminal charges.

<comment><USER16> Just because something is illegal doesn't make it any less costly to enforce. I agree that Even probably has some recourse, I'm just not sure what it is.

Part of me thinks that this is Even's first pivot. See if there is a market and then see if and how they can monetize it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I worked with a company a few years back that did this exact thing, although we couldn't get past regulations and ended up shutting down.

[http://finovate.com/videos/finovatefall-2011-tandem/](http://finovate.com/videos/finovatefall-2011-tandem/)

<comment><USER19> This is super interesting! Do you have any more details on the problems you faced?

<comment><USER18> So, I left a couple months before the final audit before going to public launch.

As far as I know, they were going to have to change a good bit of stuff focused around the taking out loans.

The sole investor cut his losses since we were already over time and budget. Also, we were having custom development done from the bank that hosted our accounts and the bank that provided us with credit limits. And we were going to have to have them go back and overhaul a lot of their system that had been changed for us, which was extremely expensive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What is to stop someone simply opening two bank accounts. Then paying their unsteady income into one and then transferring a steady amount of money into the other.

Combined with the old adage about spending less than one earns and the result is happiness.

<comment><USER20> The service automates that, and adds friction to violating your budget. (or at least that is how I see it).

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The article is very good and the business idea seems solid too. It reminded me of the article from last week about how etsy is a "B corporation" and they've committed to put social and environmental concerns before profit. It sounds like that would be a good choice for this company too. Providing financial products to poor people is a slippery slope if you're trying not to be evil. Payday loans, rent a center, layaway, check cashing all serve to perpetuate a cycle of poverty. If even can be a profitable company and also help to break that cycle it will be really great.

</comment><comment><USER22> I wanted to really hate this, but it sounds like a really interesting idea.

It seems like it would either be very capital intensive, or it's going to need to operate like a bank. Also, folks in these situations tend to be very transient and have fluctuating income. How do you establish an adequate virtual salary when the terms of the person's employment change?

Forget about massage people -- they are a bad example because two or three customers may make for a windfall-like experience. How about a person who works at the Gap or BestBuy? You might get 35 hours one week, 20 the next, then 18 for a month.

<comment><USER23> They probably will look at the average of your hours across several months. Trial and error. Should be interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Its kind of marketing tactic? Spend some dollars to get viral!

</comment><comment><USER25> TL;DR?

<comment><USER26> Sets aside money when you make more than your average paycheck, uses the money that was set aside when you make less than your average paycheck

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Thank you for double posting the infomercial for an app ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9460628](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9460628)) within a mere 6 hours of it's last appearance. (HN really should have a built in filter for this).

Also a big thanks to the new york times for their uninterrupted commitment towards high-quality journalism.

<comment><USER28> Those links were posted by different people. You might want to check ColinWrights submission history - they submit many interesting articles. They're not shilling or astroturfing for this company and your assumption is a bit rude because it's so easy to check.

About the dupe: This submission has a clean url, the earlier submission has a bunch of cruft which is probably why the dupe filter didn't spot it.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/03/magazine/want-a-steady- inc...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/03/magazine/want-a-steady-income- theres-an-app-for-that.html)

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/03/magazine/want-a-steady- inc...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/03/magazine/want-a-steady-income- theres-an-app-for- that.html?emc=edit_tnt_20150429&nlid=66702700&tntemail0=y&_r=0)

<comment><USER27> The article author obviously is astro-turfing for the company and if people want to link infomercials passing for journalism I can have an opinion on that. (I agree that I did not phrase my first comment well and it makes it sound like I implied ColinWright's involvement specifically, I've fixed that).

That doesn't change the fact that it's a duplicate from within 12* hours and should get removed.

<comment><USER29> > obviously

Or they think it's fascinating and want to share. I'm saying it's not "obviously" anything, to me.

<comment><USER27> Yes, because the fascinating thing about earning near minimum-wage in the US is that there is a new app to help you budget.

But I guess you can believe that if it helps you sustain the tech-companies selling apps are doing great things for society myth.

<comment><USER29> I highly recommend you watch the John Oliver segment on Payday Loans.

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

ANYTHING that helps get rid of those scum is a huge improvement.

<comment><USER27> > ANYTHING that helps get rid of those scum is a huge improvement.

And these guys are truly crusaders for the working-class poor that are going to fix the system? Or they are just going to cash in on updating payday-loans to the 21st century Iphone version.

I mean it's a good idea and I'm sure they can be very successful if it's well executed. AND I have no doubts they will be just as scummy-bag as the market & regulations allow them to be. Which is very American and I guess it's fine. But please excuse my low tolerance for packaging the profit motive of a company as _helping the working class poor_.

<comment><USER30> > _" But please excuse my low tolerance for packaging the profit motive of a > company as helping the working class poor."_

They're not mutually exclusive, to be honest. You can make a profit _AND_ help the target group. Additionally I hope you're honest as well, and say that's _okay_ instead of bashing them for "making a profit" while helping the needy.

On a curious side note... Where abouts exactly do you place "non-profits" in this whole thing? What about government?

<comment><USER27> > They're not mutually exclusive, to be honest. You can make a profit AND help > the target group. Additionally I hope you're honest as well,

Exactly - and talking about the app "helping the needy" is especially _dishonest_. Sure she can pay $3 a week instead of a $35 over-draft on her Bank Account -- and if you think that's _help_ then I assume you've never had to live on minimum wage.

> Additionally I hope you're honest as well, and say that's okay instead of > bashing them for "making a profit" while helping the needy.

To be clear, I did not bash the company. They picked a particularly scummy industry that hasn't been _disrupted_ by technology and they are doing their thing -- and the job of their PR department is to sell their technology and part of that is playing up "help the needy".

On the other-hand I have a real problem with this as an article. It doesn't start off talking about an app, instead it introduces a particular person, draws in the reader's sympathy to that person's difficulties and then resolves that into marketing a product - basically making a joke of the actual problems ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_United...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_United_States)).

No, I don't seriously believe there is any such journalist who interviews someone living on an unpredictable near-minimum-wage and whose honest first impulse and thought is "they need an app to help them". This is a shill if I've ever seen one.

<comment><USER30> " _Exactly - and talking about the app "helping the needy" is especially dishonest. Sure she can pay $3 a week instead of a $35 over-draft on her Bank Account -- and if you think that's help then I assume you've never had to live on minimum wage._"

It's not up to me to decide, nor does my income-level have anything to do with the validity of my arguments. You simply have to answer "is this person better off with this thing X".

If we go under the assumption that steady-income is better than unpredictable income, then the answer has to be yes because this app satisfies that requirement. Let's not confuse that component with discussion about "real" help for the needy. There may be better ways, but that's a separate talk of "what is the best help for the needy".

<comment><USER27> > It's not up to me to decide, nor does my income-level have anything to do > with the validity of my arguments. You simply have to answer "is this person > better off with this thing X".

By your logic of: _better off == "helping the needy" == Saving a few $bucks_

General Mills cereal coupons are "helping the needy". That's seriously complete bullshit.

If you are going to use strong terms like "helping the needy" I would expect e.g. improved quality of life or another reasonable indicator backed by a well presented position and/or statistics.

> my income-level

I very much doubt any person living on minimum wage would say "Yes, my quality of life would be improved by a budgeting app for my IPhone". But if you had lived on minimum wage at some-point and honestly thought so, I would have considered it relevant.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Mediocre People - <AUTHOR> http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2012/08/the-seven-habits-of-highly-effective-mediocre-people/

<comment><USER2> Previous submission, which reached the front page with quite a few comments:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4403906></comment>


Lifepath.me on eBay - <AUTHOR> http://www.ebay.com/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=140610305563#ht_500wt_1036 <comment><USER2> My entrepreneur friends and I have many apps like this that were learning experiences or that never materialized into anything. I was having a conversation with someone just yesterday brainstorming with them how to wind up a project like this and helping them to get past emotional attachments, sunk costs, etc.

The thing is that when someone buys an app you've finished, but that isn't generating revenue, they're buying both an opportunity and a problem.

The opportunity is obvious - maybe you can turn it into a money printing machine.

The problem is the developer cost to maintain and improve the app. Unless it's a complete business that's generating cash already (in which case it would be worth more than $10K), it's going to cost significant $$ for another dev to maintain and build on it.

Most dev salaries are around $50k to $150 per year. But lets assume you offshore it, find some killer talent and pay them $20k per year. If it needs 2 years of work and growth to be successful, that's 400% more than the $10K it costs to buy it in the first place. [Ignoring time value of money]

The point I'm making is that the $10K price tag is arbitrary to a buyer because what they're really getting into is a much larger commitment and quite a bit of risk.

So what to do?

I don't have the answers but I'll throw out 2 ideas:

1\. Open source the project and recruit your friends to keep building it. Use the publicity and interest surrounding it to drum up consulting gigs worth more than $10K and funding and credibility for future projects and businesses.

2\. It might not be a home run because Facebook has done it, but spend an additional 20% of the time you've spent so far to put in place a payment processing system and charge for the service. You may make more than $10K per year in recurring revenue. Just because Facebook did it doesn't mean you can't too.

<comment><USER3> Too big to kill, too small to keep. Story of my life. The 'worst' point to be at is $7K per month without any way to grow the business. You'll become dependent on it so you have to continue but it eats up enough time and energy that you can't break free. It's worse than a day job, there you could at least get fired or laid off to get you out of the rut.

<comment><USER4> A consistent $7k per month doesn't sound too bad - if it's really using up more time than a day job then it should still be possible to flip.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Slightly off-topic, (and I mean no snark), but how much of the Dustin Curtis brand factors in towards the price?

Or is this inexpensive?

I'm asking because we were thinking of selling one of our assets too and wanted to know what would be considered a fair price for a Rails app (which was once live and is now shuttered).

<comment><USER6> I think it's selling via ebay and not a regular domain/site selling marketplace as it would be sold for much less.

I don't see how it's worth nearly 10,000 when before Facebook ate their lunch it made $50 a month.

<comment><USER7> You might not see the value, but someone else will. Value is always determined by the market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A little more backstory on Dustin's creation of LifePath and Facebook: [http://blog.dustincurtis.com/facebook-timelines-and- lifepath...](http://blog.dustincurtis.com/facebook-timelines-and-lifepathme)

</comment><comment><USER9> The thing:

1) was built in Rails

2) can be a really decent alternative to Facebook's Timeline, if it finds a new home

3) does not necessarily depend on other people's data

4) has a path to generate some revenue (charging to buy an account if you don't have an invite)

5) has the possibility to go open source

-

I see all these things, and I can only think how Diaspora should be _running_ to get this.

<comment><USER10> Diaspora? Is that thing still up and about?!

<comment><USER11> They email me periodically to remind me that the invite I requested over a year ago is "still on its way".

<comment><USER12> Google couldn't pull off a good Facebook competitor—do you really think Diaspora will stand a chance?

<comment><USER11> Maybe my cynicism wasn't clear :)

No, I don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "If you buy Lifepath, I'll give you some of my time to help you do whatever you want to do with it."

For me, this would be the most interesting part of the auction, which makes me wonder whether well-known designers (and coders) could auction off their time chunks, instead of offering a fixed hourly rate. (e.g. available for three months this year, to the highest bidder).

<comment><USER14> Could be an interesting concept. In the current climate where good developers and designers are highly sought after, it might work. However, it would probably also be very sensitive to market changes in demand for developers / designers.

<comment><USER13> "it would probably also be very sensitive to market changes in demand for developers / designers."

So is your market rate as a freelancer.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, that's the point. Freelancing rates and salaries take a dive during low demand. An auction is focused on getting a high price for something which is in high demand. If there is not a high demand, you wouldn't have a need for an auction model (when talking services / hours, not physical products).

Unlike a physical product, every developer / designer will have a minimum price which they won't go below. Thus the auction will never favor the buyers. In a low market, buyer will pay only minimum price, hence the auction format loses its purpose, as there will be no bids.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I tried selling my app via eBay and got very few hits to even look at the page (less than 20). My app included: website, special Chromebook app, Android app, partial (80%) complete Windows Phone app code, partial (~10%) iOS app code. I spent a lot of time on it and although it isn't making money and isn't completely polished, the guts are all fleshed out fairly well. It also wasn't costing me any money as I was on the free plans of AppHarbor and MongoHQ (I highly recommend MongoHQ by the way, I pretty much will use it on every future project as it has made worrying about databases a non-issue for me). I'm thinking about trying out in-app purchases but I don't know if I want to invest the time or just throw the whole thing up on github.

Maybe I'll start a post about it, as I don't want to derail this conversation, but from my limited experience there is too much spam site noise on eBay to sell a legitimate project you've worked hard on.

<comment><USER16> eBay is the wrong place to sell websites--very high noise and low quality. Look at Flippa instead: <http://flippa.com>

<comment><USER17> I tried to sell my website, Lifemall.com, on eBay however unfortunately it turned out to be a wasted exercise. Similarly, I also used Flippa but again no sale. Can anyone suggest another venue for selling a website?

(On a related note, if you're interested in acquiring Lifemall - a nice clean, django marketplace and community, email me)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Give <https://flippa.com/> a try if it doesn't sell on eBay

</comment><comment><USER19> Lifepath.me presents a completely different world view than facebook timeline. FB reminds you of your past shiny happy moments you cared to capture with a camera. Lifepath in its current form is almost a reminder of your biological limitations and that every single day counts. It caters for much smaller audience than FB, because people in general do not wish to be reminded about their death. With the lack of pictures I can see it could become a sort of anti-facebook private diary of achievements that really mattered. I too think that Diaspora with their idealistic vision of social networks would be an ideal buyer here. They could also use some design lessons from this app, they badly need it.

</comment><comment><USER20> First, I think Lifepath is beautiful. Being a developer first, and designer second, I often find myself having a hard time breaking out of the mold when it comes to designing my applications. Usability doesn't have to mean boring, and I think Lifepath is a great example of that. I could see a company like Greplin taking this and turning it into an auto-generated timeline curated from the various social networks they can tap into. It's obvious that Dustin out a ton of time, effort, and love into this project, so I hope there is a happy ending!

</comment><comment><USER21> I really don't understand why people are trying to compare lifepath and facebook timeline, from my point of view they are completely different. Facebook creates the time line based on your activity, lifepath guesses your past/future. This plus the amazing graphics made me want to get an account.

</comment><comment><USER22> It was interesting to read that the price does not include the existing users and data. Which would in my eyes, possibly be the most valuable part of purchasing a website like this. You could pay for or develop something similar for much less that the starting price here.

<comment><USER23> I think selling people's data after asking them to pay for something like this, even if it's public data on Lifepath, is kind of a shitty thing to do.

<comment><USER24> I think it's actually a pretty good thing to do, both for the seller and the users.

If companies didn't sell on the account details of their existing userbase these users would effectively be frozen out of any future site development/improvements (unless they re-entered all their data).

And since acquiring users is hard, from the seller's point of view an active userbase is probably one of the site's biggest assets (and also a validation that the site has some potential to it).

<comment><USER22> This is what i meant that the user data is valuable otherwise you would have frozen out the existing users and have a web platform you would have to build up a userbase on again, which if this was the case then you would just start your own project as you are starting from scratch. The only upside is existing traffic to the website. Existing users who turn up one day to realise the content they have added is now gone would be a disaster for the user, then asking them to sign back up to recover that data is another unnecessary step.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I hope to see this finished some day. Poor code or not, the design and concept looks fantastic. The way it shows one's life, from start to end, really gives a feeling of mortality.

<comment><USER26> I think Facebook plans on finishing it for him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's a neat design. timeline with horizontal scroll (lifepath) is more natural than vertical scroll (fb). Of course FB designs this way because of its layout limitation.

</comment><comment><USER28> On that note: I've been wanting to sell my website www.twimemachine.com for a while now. If anyone is interested: message me.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'd pay a non-trivial amount just for the PSDs, in order to learn from them.

</comment><comment><USER30> is the starting bid from sloccount or something? this doesn't add up to me.

<comment><USER23> What doesn't add up? It's an auction.

My plan is to open source it on Github or something if no one thinks it's worth 10k.

<comment><USER30> i think the app is really slick, i'm just not sure why someone would pay so much for a niche app with no users. i could pay half that and get my own app with no users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you want 10K for the site, you should probably add IE support!

<comment><USER14> Down-voted for suggesting IE support I suppose. The point was that 50% of end- users won't be able to use this site. I'd have said the same if the site didn't work in Firefox.

You do not make a site that doesn't support the dominant browser, especially not if you intend to sell, and double so, if the end-users are consumers and not businesses who might be forced into using a certain browser.

To you people who put your love for an arbitrary piece of software, above your common sense: Get a grip.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It has a bid! No, not from me.

<comment><USER31> It's my bid.

Impressed by the design. I'll add a bit of Ruby and business model.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Why is this on eBay and not Flippa?

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm guessing Facebook Timeline triggered this sell?

<comment><USER34> If by "guessing" you mean "reading the ebay page that says _'Why I'm selling it: Facebook released Facebook Timelines'_ " then correct.

<comment><USER33> doh! i just looked at the pictures.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> If only he'd gotten a software patent! </troll></comment>


Memacs – What did I do on February 14th 2007? Visualize your life in Org-mode - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/novoid/Memacs <comment><USER2> Cool idea. Not to start a flame war, but wish there was a non-Emacs (vi?) version. Or notes on how it was started, so I could look into doing my own.</comment>


Is there a reason Hillary Clinton's logo has hidden notches? - <AUTHOR> https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/73601/is-there-a-reason-hillary-clintons-logo-has-hidden-notches <comment><USER2> They don't want the bottom color peeking out, so the notches ensure there are no coincident edges.

<comment><USER3> what's a scenario that this would happen?

<comment><USER4> Any scenario where the SVG's shapes are rendered with anti-aliasing, and the edges of both overlapping shapes are mid-pixel: the edge of the top shape would be rendered with partial alpha, and then beneath that, the edge of the differently-colored lower shape would bleed through as it is _also_ rendered, at that contiguous line, with partial alpha.

EDIT: You can actually see this very effect in action if you zoom in on the diagonal edges of the yellow and blue faces of the logo on the BBC's page for the EU referendum happening right now: [http://www.bbc.com/news/politics/eu_referendum/results](http://www.bbc.com/news/politics/eu_referendum/results) \- on these anti-aliased diagonal edges (enlarged: [http://i.imgur.com/GmxUD60.png](http://i.imgur.com/GmxUD60.png)), since there's no indentation like the one this SE question highlights, the red shape underneath both of the shapes bleeds through.

Compare the outlines of the shapes with the red shape conterminous beneath them ([http://i.imgur.com/Nwyl8YE.png](http://i.imgur.com/Nwyl8YE.png)) to the outlines they have when that shape is removed ([http://i.imgur.com/iOQmyJx.png](http://i.imgur.com/iOQmyJx.png)).

<comment><USER5> You can see similar problems even without anti-aliasing. If you have three collinear points A B C, drawing a line from A to B and then B to C may hit slightly different pixels compared to just drawing a single line from A to C. If you try to draw a polygonal mesh which has T-junctions (overlapping edges whose endpoints are not identical) you can end up with slight gaps between adjacent polygons.

In 3 dimensions, a similar phenomenon causes "Z-fighting". [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-fighting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-fighting)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am @iconjack, poser of the question, ask me anything! Kidding aside, as an avid user of the whole stackexchange suite, it is kind of interesting to me how popular this question became. It was only my second question on graphics design and it's become the all-time 3rd ranked question. Keep it going, folks!

If you're curious, the reason I was looking at the logo svg was that I thinking about making a bumper sticker. When I saw the notches, I was perplexed, and threw the question up on a whim.

You noticed I put the disclaimer at the top about the question not being about politics. I honestly thought there was a chance things would get ugly because of the __loose __tie-in to the whole election grotesquery. One time I asked a question on english.stackexchange.com, Is "Sent from my iPhone" correctly punctuated and capitalized?" and I practically got hate mail. Not only did I get snarky comments and answers, I believe the question was down to −8 at one point. It's since been upvoted into positive territory and some of the nasty remarks have been deleted, but I never really got what all the hate was about. One friend suggested that Apple fans would think I was dissing the iPhone or something. That's the only theory I've got.

</comment><comment><USER7> Avoiding graphic artifacts makes sense, but I'm going to bet on conspiracy, probably involving the Masons.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm getting an infinite redirect from this link.

<comment><USER9> Me too, but this link works: [https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/73601/is-t...](https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/73601/is- there-a-reason-hillary-clintons-logo-has-hidden-notches/73665)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Weird, this link is giving me infinite redirects. I went and found it on the stackexchange site myself under hot for graphicdesign and it did the same thing. The other answers on that subdomain work just fine. Strange.

<comment><USER11> Do you use HTTPS Everywhere? (I don't know why that would apply in this case, but I recall various people having similar issues with it and Stack Exchange's partial HTTPS support.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> "It's not a bug, it's just how the algorithm works!"

<comment><USER13> Not a bug, just a bad algorithm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Are there any solutions to this that don't involve rendering into a higher- resolution buffer and downsampling (or the MSAA moral equivalent)?

<comment><USER15> I guess it depends on your definition of "solution" and "MSAA moral equivalent". What you're essentially asking is, "Is there a way to approximate the combined contributions of overlapping polygons to a set of pixels without sampling the exact color at multiple points per pixel?"

One approach would be to avoid sampling at all, by using boolean geometric operations to find the exact shapes of visible polygons within a pixel, then using their color and areas to calculate their combined contributions. I expect the calculation involved will be impractical relative to multisampling, though.

Another approach would be sample exactly once per pixel or, equivalently, render the polygons without antialiasing. Naturally, that would eliminate the show-through of hidden geometry at the expense of the accuracy of pixels around polygon edges. You might then be able to approximate the antialiased values by a post-processing filter, maybe guided by the presence of edges, although doing so will introduce its own set of artifacts.

And if you consider "one sample per pixel" to be a budget over the entire image, you could sample the polygons more densely near polygon edges and more sparsely elsewhere, using nearby samples to approximate the values of pixels with no samples.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Countdown until this guy is arrested for violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 for deconstructing that SVG image.

</comment><comment><USER17> I was hoping for something a little more sinister.

<comment><USER18> It's hiding its crooked nature just like Hillary, WAKE UP SHEEPLE

<comment><USER19> hahaha, this comments wins for use of the word "sheeple"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Mmm, this answer is much better than mine because it uses the word _alpha_.

<comment><USER21> We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11965054](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11965054) and marked it off-topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's a dent made by Kennedy's car.

<comment><USER23> I can tell there aren't many New Englanders on HN from how buried this comment is...

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Seems crooked, Trump was right all along!

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm seeing a ton of (rightfully) down voted comments here with no clear reason from the down voters. Anyone who gets a down vote for their joke might just think it's because the joke is bad, instead if the more accurate reason that HN comments are more serious.

One of the nicer things I've seen on Reddit was when a mod leaves a reason for removing a comment. It serves to inform the commenter and also remind the community of the rules.

In a thread such as this one with potential for interesting discussion, it'd be a shame if the mods ended up killing it because the comments got out of hand.

A top stickied comment reminding people of the rules and replying to people who had their comments down voted into oblivion with a reminder might go a long way to having a civil discussion about something like this.</comment>


Etsy tells sellers it's going to advertise their goods and take a big cut - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/26/21155193/etsy-advertising-program-angers-sellers-cut-of-sales <comment><AUTHOR> Had to shorten the title due to length limitations.</comment>


Store(): a temporary mailbox for all your incoming email - old-gregg http://blog.mailgun.com/post/store-a-temporary-mailbox-for-all-your-incoming-email/

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting fact: This feature has been implemented from scratch by our intern, Satshabad.

</comment><comment><USER2> Interesting, love this functionality. Why the three day limit? Why 'temporary' at all?

I've been looking for essentially an API for an email inbox. Does something like that exist?

<comment><AUTHOR> We've introduced the temporary storage because it's exactly what our customers asked for: in most cases they don't want us to store the messages, but instead need a temporary storage so they can pull fully parsed messages when it's more convenient. However if there's a lot of demand for the persistent storage, we'd definitely consider adding it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Awesome. I'm really looking forward to the point when I can kick Gmail and use mailgun as my email service provider :-)

<comment> old-gregg Oh my... You have no idea how much Mailgun engineers would love actually do that. "Gmail for geeks" is a wet dream around here.</comment></comment>


Pharmacies take a $10B hit as Amazon lands Whole Foods deal - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/cvs-stock-price-gets-whacked-as-amazon-stock-price-surges-2017-6 <comment><USER2> They take a 10B hit.. as amazon buys a company that _doesn 't_ have a pharmacy?

Not very clear what's going on here.

<comment><USER3> Putting pharmacies in a store that caters to those seeking health from food and alternative treatments? Never gonna happen. The Street has its head extremely far up it's ass today.

The more likely play for Amazon to get into the pharmacy business via an acquisition is by buying Target.

<comment><USER4> Medications have absolutely nothing to do with food. I am puzzled by your comment. There are, sure, some anti-vaxxers and alternative health kool-aid drinkers who shop at Whole Foods, but I'm pretty sure that's like 1% or so of their clientele.

You can't generalize a target market by the fringe groups that might be part of it.

<comment><USER3> That's interesting, my doctor (an MD) prescribes nutrition education. So does every other doctor in the same healthcare corporation, Healthcare Partners.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Would be very curious to see if this is, in fact, a play to get into other industries via the backdoor by reimaging the whole foods layout. Seems odd on the surface to pay a premium for a Grocery store with slowing growth at a time when rivals from across the pond (Aldi and Lidl) seek to gain a foothold in the market. If anybody has some expertise in gamesmanship and would like to give their two cents on the deal, that would be nice.

<comment><USER6> No expertise here, but hopefully they aren't planning to do anything major with the stores. Unless I've seen a really skewed sample, the thing is that Whole Foods stores are not that large. There just isn't room to add anything major like a pharmacy at (I'm guessing) most existing locations. While they could make larger new locations, there must be better options if that was their primary focus. Even adding Amazon lockers will be tough at many locations. My guess is that they care most about the grocery aspect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can't read, requires disabling add block or subscription.

</comment><comment><USER8> The problem with pharmacy is that it is a (an overly) regulated business. That isn't necessarily something Amazon can easily tackle anymore than anyone else can. Target has struggled with it for years. Target puts pharmacy management on the hook for store sales. The result is you end up waiting for your Rx longer than actually necessary in hopes you will go browse in the store and buy something.

<comment><USER9> Is that still true? Target switched to using in-store CVS pharmacies.</comment></comment>


India's Data protection bill:Strong on companies,weak on govt. surveillance - <AUTHOR> https://blog.mozilla.org/netpolicy/2019/12/10/indias-new-data-protection-bill-strong-on-companies-weak-on-gov/ <comment><AUTHOR> Bill has been referred to joint select committee of both houses of the Parliament.

Unlikely to pass in this session but could be taken up in the budget session in February-March.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> India is due to introduce a very strong Personal data protection bill in the Parliament today.

Draft bill can be accessed here: [https://www.medianama.com/wp- content/uploads/Personal-Data-P...](https://www.medianama.com/wp- content/uploads/Personal-Data-Protection-Bill-2019.pdf)

This bill seems to be drafted on the lines of GDPR but exempts govt. entities.

Strong regulation on social media:

(Page 41): the Central govt may notify "social media intermediary "whose actions have significant impact on electoral democracy, security of the State, public order or the sovereignty and integrity of India" as a significant data fiduciary.

<comment><AUTHOR> Live thread from a local news team:

[https://twitter.com/medianama/status/1204308889128169472](https://twitter.com/medianama/status/1204308889128169472)

<comment><AUTHOR> Gaming companies are going to have a bad day,

Data fiduciaries will need to verify a child age & obtain consent of their guardian. Data Protection Authority can classify some as "guardian data fiduciaries" if they target children or process large amount of children's personal data.

<comment><AUTHOR> The bill has expanded right to correction to include right to erasure, once the data is no longer necessary for the purpose for which it was processed.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Worst Voter Turnout in 72 Years - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/12/opinion/the-worst-voter-turnout-in-72-years.html?referrer=&_r=0

<comment><USER2> Make it harder and harder to vote, make people's votes less likely to have any impact, have two parties, all while rarely having candidates the any more than shills for the companies that sponsored them. It's like a perfect storm of terrible voter turnout, but not by chance, since people who have lived in the same place for 20 years and are old enough to easily take a day off are most likely republican.

Maybe voting shouldn't be a one day affair. Maybe it should go for an entire week. Maybe candidates should have a chance even without heavy corporate backing.

</comment><comment><USER3> If only there was an app for voting...

<comment><USER4> The amount of distrust would be astronomical.

<comment><USER3> Compared to the current amount?</comment></comment></comment>


California taxis sue Uber, allege false advertising, unfair competition - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-taxi-uber-unfair-competition-lawsuit-20150318-story.html

<comment><USER2> News like this one, and other similar ones, show that Uber is really disruptive. It's no surprise that its valuation is what it is.</comment>


Mr. Robot Hackers Behind the Scenes - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/2016/07/real-hackers-behind-mr-robot-get-right/ <comment><USER2> i couldnt take the serious serious after they talked typical random "darkweb" bullshit in the very first 10 minutes :/</comment>


Show HN: WorldBrain – full text, local search of your browsing history - <AUTHOR> https://worldbrain.io/# <comment><USER3> One of the reasons I keep coming back to Firefox is that Firefox seems to already be doing this. At least it searches all parts of the URL and the title, so I'm 99% successful at getting the right URL in the awesomebar when I'm looking for something.

Chrome is just horrible when it comes to this, and I can never get back to previous pages when searching via the addressbar.

<comment><USER4> Chrome does this deliberately because they want you to do another google search instead of looking at your history.

<comment><USER5> Citation?

<comment><USER6> Well just try it yourself, it's really that simple.

On the other hand, Chromium (the open-source version of Chrome) does this too so maybe it's simply a UX decision rather than an evil plot to send more data to Google, though I personally believe that it's the latter…

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've tried to find a solution to bookmark searching for a while. I've never found a product I liked or trust. Lately I've been manually adding bookmarks to a custom google search engine. I'm considering building an extension that will add them directly or sync chrome bookmarks. I figure google already knows what I've searched, so I feel much less sketchy about it.

Would this extension be interesting to anyone? It would be very simple, open source, and have no middle man. It would send links directly to a google CSE via their API.

<comment><USER8> I would have privacy concerns, because I'm not using Google all the time for my searches and there is no need to give them even more data.

The only solution I'd accept is one where all data is stored and indexed locally and there are good guarantees that deleted entries are actually deleted and/or wiped from the indices.

<comment><USER7> I'm not suggesting that you have to use google for the originating search. But you would need to use CSE to index any content you wanted to search for later. Arguably you could do this with a new google account if you're concerned.

<comment><USER9> A few years ago I would have been excited about this, but I _personally_ won't be giving Google any more data unless I'm forced to. I'd love a self-hosted and local-first option, but either way I wish you good luck on your potential project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I get the point of this, but me personally, I prefer to have aspects of me forgotten/gone rather than remembered, stored and searchable in the future. Yes, it's true that, about once every two months, I am looking for something that I swear I came across on the Internet at some point. However, the rest of the time, I'm able to re-find it just by doing another search, whether on search-engine-of-choice, or a search box on particular-website (e.g. socnet, stackoverflow, reddit, github, hacker news...).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Extension source code -> [https://github.com/worldbrain/Memex](https://github.com/worldbrain/Memex)

</comment><comment><USER11> To think that the classic Opera browser used to do this within the search bar... man, good times those.

</comment><comment><USER12> this project has been around for a while, see also some interesting comments: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13427360](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13427360)

</comment><comment><USER13> Looks like I can mark my Softwarerecs question as answered. hahah.

[https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/q/46270/16751](https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/q/46270/16751)

While I've been waiting for this, I've been using 'Export History (2.2)' browser extension in Chrome. This saves your history to CSV or JSON.

<comment><USER13> OH! Not so fast. After a test drive, I think the Results page needs to have a button to use the same search on the web if no (useful) results are found.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Nice! I hacked something together to do this 12-odd years ago. I had something to save the pages I visit to folder, and then a desktop search tool dtSearch that I bought to index them. It was invaluable when I really needed it, but too awkward to be really useful. Often it ended up being easier to find the page again with Google if I remembered something unique about it.

This extension looks like it could finally make it convenient enough to be more commonly useful, and privacy focused enough that I'm willing to try it. Great work! Are you planning to charge something for this in the future, or for extra features? I would definitely be willing to pay for it.

<comment><USER15> Hey eloff,

Oli here, from the team developing Memex. Memex is open-source, so the browser extension will always stay free to use.

What we will charge for are some of the services that require us to host stuff. Like backups, multi-device syncing, API calls etc. We will run it as a completely modular pricing model, where you can upgrade on only those features you need. We don't like those usual 3 tier model, where you have to upgrade to the 'monster mega plan' in order to just get one feature :) But you can also completely self-host that, as we will make the server software open-source as well.

Hope Memex can be useful to you. We are running a crowdfund to support its development, where we offer some good discount on the future features in return: worldbrain.io/pricing

Let me know if I can be of more help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Seems like the Falcon extension has not gotten any updates in the last year or two:

[https://github.com/lengstrom/falcon](https://github.com/lengstrom/falcon)

</comment><comment><USER17> The landing page emphasizes the word "focussed", with double S's, which didn't look right to me. Apparently both "focused" and "focussed" are acceptable, with the single S version "focused" being highly preferred [0].

[0] [http://www.future-perfect.co.uk/grammar-tip/is-it- focussed-o...](http://www.future-perfect.co.uk/grammar-tip/is-it-focussed-or- focused/)

<comment><USER18> TIL, was about to say the same thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I nice idea, but an open source browser plugin with all local storage would fit my needs better.

I prototyped something roughly like this several years ago. I wrote a simple Firefox plugin that communicated with a locally running server written in Closure with a Clojurescript web app for browsing that used the same server backend. I stopped working on the because services like Evernote do a better job, at the loss of some privacy.

Edit: I didn't intend to imply that Evernote reads or uses user data.

<comment><USER20> [https://github.com/hedning/recoll-web](https://github.com/hedning/recoll-web)

<comment><USER21> The description is horrible on their github page, do you know if this integrates your browser history into recoll or what exactly?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It would be great to be able to change the search engine keyword from 'w' to something else. My brain has hardwired that to the Wikipedia search.

Otherwise, I think this is super!

</comment><comment><USER23> This seems a very interesting project. I'll see how this works in practice.

It starts to get icky when you notice the devs have a business plan to outsource the indexing to the cloud, but there's a commitment to keep the servers parts open source too, so that you can self host.

<comment><USER15> Oli here from the team building Memex.

Yeah indeed, having stuff in the cloud is not ideal when it comes to privacy and centralisation.

One of our core values is privacy and data ownership. So we do our best to make our business not dependent on (analysing and selling) your data, and instead provide you with service value you're willing to pay for. We are built with interoperability in mind, that will allow you to switch providers of Memex and Memex Cloud without frictions, in case there are breaches of trust, or simply better service.

We follow these values by currently building for offline first usage, where your data is locally indexed and searchable primarily. With our search technology you'll be able to get up to 5 years of your research done in the browser.

For the cloud part, it is unfortunately not yet possible to do performant search on encrypted data, otherwise it would not be such a big issue to have your index in the cloud. Equally unfortunate is that it comes with a lot of drawbacks to replicate all your data on all nodes, as opposed to have a central point to query. Especially when we are looking at phone usages. There it is really not practical, so there is a need to have some sort of cloud - <USER2> is still very important. Most people can't be bothered with the drawbacks of decentralised and distributed systems (yet). We hope to get that switch in multiple smaller steps that guide (non-technical) users through a smooth transition to a Memex system that is as distributed as possible. (Check out Dat [https://datproject.org/](https://datproject.org/), a technology we likely use to make that first step possible)

And as you already noted, this stuff will be self-hostable. We see ourselves as a service provider first and want to serve people who can't/don't want to run their own server. A bit like the Wordpress model.

You can read more about our approaches to running this business in our vision post: worldbrain.io/vision

<comment><USER23> Thanks for the long response.

I was wondering about mobile usage too, and agree that having a server somewhere available for queries is the best solution. Since this deals with such private data, having a possibility for self-hosting is the correct solution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Wouldn't it be a better alternative to use an autosave plugin for the bookmarks and use a local indexer like DocFetcher or OpenSemanticSearch through the browser? Then you can also search other resources and files.

</comment><comment><USER25> "Search every word of every website you visited"

That will most likely return a lot of hits for sites I didn't like and would like to forget about.

<comment><USER26> But a normal web search already has this trait, which is presumably how you ended up on the garbage site in the first place. If you eventually found your result, a more narrow search can help you re-find it a few months down the road.

<comment><USER15> Oli here, from the team developing Memex.

Yeah indeed, just full-text search can let you end up with a lot of garbage. This is why it is so important, that you can search for various other "vague memories" to narrow down your search.

What you often remember about an article is stuff like: Did I bookmark it, when did I visit it, did I like/share/cite it on social media You can already filter by time, tags, domains, bookmarks, and soon also if you liked/shared or even seen it in your newsfeed, or on a friends wall, on Twitter and Facebook.

We gradually expand it so you can search with as much of your associative memories as possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I was imagining this for a long time. Wondering, how much more space/energy Chrome uses with this extensions enabled.

Any research on that?

<comment><USER27> [https://worldbrain.io/#faq](https://worldbrain.io/#faq)

Info on RAM/CPU/Storage, but no info on energy pressure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Sounds like the very first version of Google Desktop Search before they turned it into a widget engine.

</comment><comment><USER29> Nice, now you just need to enable a feature to search anyone else's browsing history

<comment><USER15> Oli here from the team building Memex :)

Good news: that's the plan! worldbrain.io/vision_deck

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Sadly there is a lot to improve to be useful. I had horrible results with the searches.

</comment><comment><USER31> Ive been building my own for a while. Will definitely give this a go!

</comment><comment><USER32> for researching on a topic and bundling them.

</comment><comment><USER33> how do you solve the problem of banning / not a robot captchas after to many requests to a site while indexing?</comment>


Dripcap Packet Analyzer - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dripcap/dripcap <comment><USER2> And why it's "next generation" ? Main site that is linked in github repo is not working for me. There is only screenshot, nothing else. From the screenshot it seems like very simple packet analyzer. I don't see any reason this is "next gen" or why i should use this instead of WireShark.

<comment><USER3> It's javascript. Erm, electron. So it is next gen. Meh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Same question, why is this better than Wireshark. Can I do custom packet analysis and packet matching? Is there a better scripting engine? (I love Lua hooks in Wireshark, makes it easy to pull apart complex traces / flows.)

<comment><USER5> Looks like it's a NodeJS app wrapped in Electron shell, parsing/analyzing packets via "packages" (implemented via ES6 modules).

I guess that what makes it "Next generation" :)

Maybe the article poster or the author could enlighten us on how and why this implementation might match Wireshark's proven track records...

<comment><USER6> Nice, this _will_ be full of opportunities to pwn researchers via remote exploitation then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have to say the screenshots looked really good however I could not get this to work on OSX. It starts up, however, it won't let me enter a session name or start a capture session if I hit play. Hope it improves tho.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's UI looks very nice. I hope all native UI's die as soon aa possible. What is last time you have tried gtk on Windows? Or Qt in gnome (yes I know, with some tweaking, it would be better). All of them feel so inconsistent together. At the other hand Web UI (and electron apps) is so nice to work with I don't even consider using native one when there is one with electron engine available.

<comment><USER9> Qt isn't native.

<comment><USER8> It is, it tries hard to emulate native look and feel with its abstraction layer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There doesn't seem to be a windows binary.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, no wonder Windows struggled to open the .zip; seems to be a macOS .zip.</comment></comment>


ApplePy: An Apple ][ Emulator in Python - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jtauber/applepy

<comment><USER2> Another article about this was posted a few days ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2854974></comment>


Elon Musk teases Mars breakthroughs as Starship design radically changes [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-ceo-elon-musk-mars-breakthroughs-starship-design-radical-changes/ <comment><USER2> A lot of haters here, while Space X is launching rockets on rockets and selling Tesla like hot cakes.

If the design changed radically, it did change radically, I guess we'll again be amazed when it'll be revealed.

Being good at marketing is essential for keeping people interested in space exploration in those dark times.

I'm sometime very tired of the pessimist sentiment here.

<comment><USER3> > Being good at marketing is essential

This claim is dubious. That you can sell people space exploration by hyping it up.

It does not show in money, or people going to STEM field. It probably increases interest for scifi books or videos.

> I'm sometime very tired of the pessimist sentiment here.

You want to be inspired/entertained as a consumer. People who must be constantly emotionally propped and mentally supported are not the ones who are willing to go and work toward Mars.

<comment><USER4> > It does not show in money, or people going to STEM field

Anecdotally, I know many a kid who has taken an interest in space and rocketry after watching a SpaceX launch.

What empirical data have you to show that there is no correlation between space awareness (whether by Musk or anyone else) and STEM enrollment?

<comment><USER3> > Anecdotally, I know many a kid who has taken an interest in space and > rocketry

I was personally inspired to go to physics partially because of my love of sci-fi and all space related. That's completely orthogonal to the skeptical sentiment or lack of moon landings in my lifetime.

Real "space awarenes" comes with facts, not with hype. You can drive only so much motivation from outside.

<comment><USER4> And the facts, as stated in this article, are that the Starship design has changed, which you seem to conflate with marketing. So which is it.

<comment><USER3> I was not discussing the article.

It's the frequent meta comments like dimillian above about "hate" and "negativity" that I find negative and harmful. They try to steer the tone of discussion to direction that the commentator feel more comfortable with.

Wanting protect feelings from getting hurt even in discussions related to technology and science are absurd.

'Say only positive things or the fragile Mars mission will collapse.'

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It'll probably change several more times before something actually gets constructed.

<comment><USER6> I hear that SpaceX has some excellent simulations for their rocket design process. These constant changes preceding actual production are probably their engineers refining designs in simulation before putting anything on the pad. Usually you don't see this process at other companies (they do it behind closed doors.)

SpaceX does really seem to enjoy hyping up their fans so we get to see a lot of their early iterations. Here's hoping there isn't some huge limitation that is slowing down the "Spaceship" showing up in simulations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> No actual data other than "What exactly those breakthroughs could be is entirely unclear."

<comment><USER8> An Elon company exaggerating their current progress?

Say it aint so!

I liked Elon about 3 years ago before we found out he was a master Marketer. I feel played.

<comment><USER9> > I liked Elon about 3 years ago before we found out he was a master Marketer. > I feel played.

What's wrong with him being a master marketer?

<comment><USER10> He doesn't really do much of the things he markets. He frequently makes a big announcement for something huge in 1-2 years. Then, 1-2 years later, he makes another big announcement to keep the previous announcement out of the news.

The most relevant example is actually his recent public statements about a Mars base. He actually stated in 2016 that he would be sending an unmanned rocket to Mars in 2018. 2018 is almost over, so he quietly pushed plans back until about 2023, and started hyping up his Mars base stuff for the far- future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > If the rich wanted Mars or lunar bases as "escape hatches", there are dozens > of multibillionaires that could singlehandedly fund Musk's estimated $2-10B > price tag for the completion of the entire BFR development program while > still retaining 50-90% of their net worth.

This is a bit of a naive view of how wealth and capital expenditure works.

<comment><USER12> Tell us how.

I don't think the guy you are replying to actually thinks that the dozens of multibillionaires out there are holding their billions as cash that they could hand over to Musk tomorrow. Their wealth is held in assets with varying levels of liquidity, and, most notably in the case of stock, trying to convert them to cash would decrease the value of the remainder. But if Bezos wanted to get his hands on 10 billion to fund Musk, why could he not? (Ignoring the fact that he has his own aerospace thing going on.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> ''

<comment><USER3> As a Musk hater, let me clarify:

* My view about Elon Musk is net positive. He has serious failure modes and his seems like asshole as a person, but he can also do interesting stuff that lives past his companies.

* My view about Musk fanboys is completely negative. They fill discussion forums with discussion that is fit only for sports fan or religious people. Only positive thinking or you are a hater.

It's actually good that he says that people are going to Mars to work themselves to death and die in accidents etc. Because when others try to say it, Musk fanboys are thinking they can play computer games there and the main issue is boredom.

<comment><USER14> Come now. Let's not draw people with broad strokes regardless of whether they are sports fans, religious people, or fans of Elon Musk. When you make harsh statements about groups that big you're the one that looks bad, not them and your point gets lost.

<comment><USER3> I would like to argue that the so called "Musk haters" are not a group made of haters. Wast majority has neutral or analytic approach but labeled as Musk haters.

The Musk fanboys on the other hand form more clearly defined segment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm a big fan of NASA running space programs for the good of the American people and I'm pretty cynical about the relentless Barnum & Bailey marketing from Musk. Teslerati is essentially an oligarch fan site.

<comment><USER16> Has NASA developed reusable, landable rockets and then successfully landed 2 of 3 launched as a triple booster heavy rocket package?

Out of Musk's companies, SpaceX is the farthest from a hype circus. They are delivering on real science and engineering.

<comment><USER15> I'd like NASA to develop reusable, landable rockets rather than a private company, and to be answerable to the American people.

<comment><USER17> Well they don't and they aren't so

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "the ad for going to Mars would be like Shackleton's ad for going to the Antarctic."

A widely-spread myth? [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/shackleton- probabl...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/shackleton-probably- never-took-out-an-ad-seeking-men-for-a-hazardous-journey-5552379/)

<comment><USER4> Then it will read like the mythical ad. God. The pedantry around here is astounding.

<comment><USER18> I have grown weary of statements based on truthiness.

Shackleton's failed expedition goes around in business circles because it was a successful failure. No one died, despite the ship being caught in the ice, the men holed up on Elephant Island, and the incredible voyage of the James Caird to South Georgia and trek across the mountains to the whaling station.

The mythical ad builds on pop culture resonances, like the 2003 book "Shackleton's Way: Leadership Lessons from the Great Antarctic Explorer", and "Leading at The Edge: Leadership Lessons from the Extraordinary Saga of Shackleton's Antarctic Expedition", plus scores of other books and movies.

Tell me, downvoters, why don't we see 'mythical ads' for real failures, like the Scott's Terra Nova Expedition? Presumably they would have been just as heroic, no?

Or, would you interpret that fake ad the same if you replaced Shackleton's name with Scott's?

<comment><USER12> In a similar vein, Mallory's justification for attempting Mount Everest is often repeated. He died in the attempt.

We hear about heroic failures too.

<comment><USER18> Indeed. The Terra Nova Expedition I mentioned is one of those failures.

Would you have the same interpretation if Musk had referenced a similar fake advertisement but recruiting people for Scott's final expedition instead of Shackleton's famed one?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>