The Failed Promise of 'The Verge' - <AUTHOR> http://brooksreview.net/2011/12/failure/ <comment><USER2> I don't think it's accurate to label the The Verge a "failure", however the article does bring up a larger, more interesting question - namely, the idea of "vanilla" reporting on tech/gadget sites, especially concerning reviews.

I'm not sure how I come down on the issue, but I do get the strong sense that reviewers at major tech sites are extremely reticent to take even a mild stance on a piece of technology, because they're afraid of the massive number of mail/comments their going to get from fans of said technology.

For example, look at what resulted from Josh's comment on a previous podcast about Windows being "poison". He said it in a joking/light hearted way, but anyone who follows him regularly knows he's clearly not a fan of the Windows OS. Consequently, he spent the next few weeks apologizing and backpedaling, even going so far as to devote a segmen of the Verge talk show to "prettifying" Windows.

One of the few sites that takes the opposite stance is Tested.com. If those guys think a piece of hardware/tech is shit, they will say plainly that they think it's shit, and give you their reasons why. Maybe it's just me, but I'm not offended or regard them as "biased" when they state a clear opinion with reasons attached. Sometimes I agree with them. But it's perfectly ok with me when I don't.

</comment><comment><USER3> The Verge got an excellent crew of reporters and a great product team behind it. They worked very hard on this project and I don't think it's fair to call The Verge a "failed promise".

So far the product reviews were excellent. The site created a unique experience with their layouts, engaging videos and editorials. The Verge is the only source of any creditable news on all mobile lawsuits. They also did an excellent job of covering the Carrier IQ fiasco and were the first who actually managed to talk to the Carrier IQ employees (ahead of WSJ).

Seems like the author of the post is really hurt by the Sphero review. If you read the whole review and watch the video you can clearly see that the conclusion is that the product is overpriced and boring. I'm not sure what else is to look for here.

Regarding the Galaxy Nexus review "Lack of opinion": From the review: "As I said when I reviewed the GSM version of the Galaxy Nexus — this is one of the best smartphones ever made." There are multiple examples of their 'opinion' and the quote is one of them.

I think The Verge is ahead of other tech sites by a mile and can only compare with WSJ and AnandTech. I think "brooksreview" is really wrong about all this.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm actually quite frustrated with this trend in consumer tech reporting. If I want tech specs and pictures, I'll go to the product's website. What I can't do is play with the object, use it, and decide (subjectively!) whether or not it's a good product.

This same problem neutered mainstream political reporting years ago: journalists became afraid that taking a stance would alienate a portion of their readership, so they started just reporting "the facts." Well, two problems: (1) sometimes the facts favor one side, and (2) facts without analysis are worthless.

To The Verge: I promise that I will not turn away if you take a stance I disagree with; in fact, it will make me want to read more.

</comment><comment><USER5> The Verge hasn't failed at all - it's surpassed all expectations. The site is excellent and delivers exactly what was always promised, a next-level tech site with an amazing design and some handy tools. The product comparison is great. And the MG Siegler comment is nonsense (at least with regards to the Verge) - Topolsky isn't pussyfooting, he's telling it like it is. Some products ARE good at one thing while others ARE great at other things - That's a fact. Josh presents these facts in a way that anyone can consume and doesn't take the "fanboy" approach with everything like some others do...which can get pretty obnoxious.</comment>


RobinHood: tail latency aware caching – dynamic reallocation - <AUTHOR> https://blog.acolyer.org/2018/10/26/robinhood-tail-latency-aware-caching-dynamic-reallocation-from-cache-rich-to-cache-poor/ <comment><USER2> This is similar to how continuous load shifting works in some massively parallel database engines, though working from a different architectural perspective. This problem is at the core of how you scale out mixed workloads when the distribution of data and workload is intrinsically unpredictable and non-uniform. However, in the database cases the cache itself is sharded and a fixed size (basically RAM fixed to a core), for performance and scalability reasons -- the cache isn't a separate system.

Since you have all the local cache metadata and you can't change the cache size per node, you ensure approximately uniform load across nodes by continuously and transparently shipping the smallest number of shards (while under full load) that will give each logical node approximately the same cache performance profile. This works well in my experience. It sounds onerous resource-wise but the number of shards you typically need to ship even in a very dynamic and high-throughput system is relatively small if your algorithm picks them well and the total latency to ship a shard can be pretty small (tens or hundreds of milliseconds?) depending on the design. As a percentage of system load the cost of shipping is pretty nominal and it all but eradicates hotspotting. However, the whole system has to be designed under the assumption that you'll be doing this, it isn't something you can reasonably add on later.

It is great to see more work being published on achieving effectively and apparently uniform distribution of load for data models that intrinsically have unpredictable and dynamic non-uniform distribution of data and load. There are many high-value data models that can't be handled at scale without addressing this problem directly.

<comment> d-- Author here: thank you pointing out the connection to parallel DBMs - I was not aware of the problem similarity but difference in approach.

Can you point me to a DBMs that does that, both an OSS or in production?

</comment></comment><comment> d-- Direct link to paper: [https://www.usenix.org/system/files/osdi18-berger.pdf](https://www.usenix.org/system/files/osdi18-berger.pdf)

Repo: [https://github.com/dasebe/robinhoodcache](https://github.com/dasebe/robinhoodcache)

<comment><USER3> What's the license of RobinHood's core algorithm? This seems useful.

But this being sponsored research (Microsoft) brings me to thinking of the old ARC cache licensing problem.

[http://www.varlena.com/GeneralBits/96.php](http://www.varlena.com/GeneralBits/96.php)

<comment> d-- No, we do not expect any licensing problems. There's an open issue on github: [https://github.com/dasebe/robinhoodcache/issues/1](https://github.com/dasebe/robinhoodcache/issues/1)

The issue mentions 3 Clause BSD, which will probably be implemented today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> How widely has this been tested? Is this being used in production?

<comment> d-- Author here: this is very much a research project with the purpose of prototyping the idea that _caching can help tail latency_. Previously, people didn't believe that caches can be used that way and it turns out you really have to rethink how you use the caches.

We build a testbed and replayed production workloads. This is not running in production yet. We're actively looking for new workloads and scenarios to test this at scale!</comment></comment>


YouTube requires YouTube's new "survey" for AdBlock/uBlock/Origin Users - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/5kcj49/adblockublockorigin_users_youtube_videos_taking/ <comment><AUTHOR> To who it may concern:

Title was too long. Hence, I "summarized" it.

<comment><USER2> Ahem. "Whom".</comment></comment>


If you opened your PayPal account before you were 18, close it - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@iDemonix/paypal-is-still-one-of-the-worst-online-examples-of-customer-service-42f3c13f6cd0 <comment><USER2> Also this is a great example of having rules that are bullshit enough that you can basically do anything to anyone and technically be perfectly justified according to some agreement, but also enforcing them arbitrarily enough that anyone who complains about the terms of the agreement will be brushed off as paranoid.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, in my initial outburst of rage to my other half about the situation I just described it as it's like a company turning around and sacking you because you took home an expensive stapler several years ago, it's just a random get out of free card they have stored thanks to their ToS.

<comment><USER3> Abusive ToS won't stand up in court.

<comment><USER4> Not many people are big enough to sue PayPal, and if they are, they probably aren't using it.

<comment><USER5> Small claims court?

<comment><USER6> Srsly. This is the UK so it's well within the limits of small claims. IANAL but the U.K. also has less tolerance of "fine print".

If PayPal closed his account because it was created before he was 18, did they do so because they believe that he didn't have capacity when he signed up? If that is the case then it makes you wonder if any of the TOS apply

<comment><USER7> well in the UK and other Parts in Europe I'm not sure if this ToS is even legal. You don't need to full-aged to open an account at a bank. you only need to be legally competent in Europe and as far as I know Paypal is a recognized bank, so they can't just make their own rules via AGB/ToS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If ever there was a single shining example of how not to treat your customers, PayPal is it. Every year or two there is another story of a different arcane rule they have in place that is enforced with zero human consideration, oftentimes to deprive people access to their funds. They don't learn from their mistakes, nor acknowledge them in the first place. I can't think of another company that has drummed up such bad will in me (probably not even United.)

<comment><USER9> What can I use instead of paypal?

<comment><USER10> Bitcoin.

<comment><USER9> Not very helpful.

<comment><USER11> You should definitely try steams bitcoin integration before you dismiss the possibility. Grab a bitcoin wallet on your phone, go buy $5 worth of bitcoin, and then use that $5 of bitcoin to buy $5 of steam credit.

It's a considerably smoother user flow than using a credit card, and it's just as fast. I think you'll be surprised and impressed.

<comment><USER12> First, given the track record of manufacturers with android security updates, I wouldn't install a bitcoin wallet on my phone.

Then, there is the problem with "buy $5 worth of bitcoin". Last time I checked, this was everything but trivial, at least here in Europe.

And finally, the last purchase I made with bitcoins on steam took more than 12 hours to get validated. I used the standard bitcoin fee of the bitcoin-qt client but it seems to be far from enough nowadays.

<comment><USER11> >And finally, the last purchase I made with bitcoins on steam took more than 12 hours to get validated. I used the standard bitcoin fee of the bitcoin-qt client but it seems to be far from enough nowadays.

So you know what the problem is, but you pretend that it's not your problem. If you use any modern bitcoin wallet, android or not, it'll automatically append a reasonable fee, and validate in about 2 seconds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Just close your account if you have a PayPal account at all. They limit and freeze funds at random and good luck resolving it.

OP, You can refund the funds to the sender less Paypal's 30¢ cut, I believe. That might be the best way to get the money back to your friend, and then they can re-send it to you with something sane like Google Wallet.

<comment><USER14> > something sane like a bank transfer

FTFY. Zero fees, zero megacorps taking their cut, zero social graphs in the US growing a few extra tuples

<comment><USER15> in the US wire transfers cost about $30 per transfer, international cost about $50.

If you're transferring to another customer in the same bank then they're free but I've never had that luxury.

Were you referring to bank transfers to same bank customers? Because I've never heard of zero fees for bank transfers

<comment><USER16> Uk here - I can transfer amounts under 10k in under 2 hours without any fee, to any other uk bank. If I want to send more, it's about 20 pounds, and completed in a day. I can TransferWise money anywhere in Europe (not tested the US) for far less than those prices too.

<comment><USER17> Denmark here. November 21 2014 instant clearing 365/24/7 between danish banks via the Danish Central Bank was started. I can transfer money from bank A and have it be there on my account with bank B when I alt-tab over and refresh the browser with netbank B. Oh and its free(although a few banks have started charging a minor DKK 1 or DKK 10 fee for initiating the transfer, not mine though).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I can't think of a legal reason for this policy. Normally, one must be 18 years old to enter into a contract, so the policy of preventing users under 18 from using the service is rational. However, if a user under 18 turns 18 years old during the contract, the contract is "ratified" and becomes valid and enforceable. It's as if they were 18 years old all along. So, there is no legal reason for Paypal to terminate accounts for people who enter into the contract under 18 yet turn 18 during the contract period.

<comment><USER19> "I can't think of a legal reason for this policy."

Wouldn't it be that you committed financial fraud? Paypal initially allowed you to send/receive payments purely based on the fact that you stated you were an age you were not.

The Paypal signup form does not let you signup unless the DOB given, shows you're over the age of 18.

This guy lied about his age and then had the audacity to write a blog post about how bad Paypal is.

He shows he's willing to lie and also willing to commit financial fraud (as that is what it's considered.) - I for one, am very glad someone like him HAS been banned from Paypal.

<comment><USER20> I'm not sure you're being serious. Do you carefully read the EULA or TOS of everything you pay for, line by line? Do you consult a lawyer about how to parse the legalese? If not, you've almost certainly also committed fraud of the same degree.

<comment><USER19> I think you're getting confused as you don't know about the fact that you can not signup to Paypal under the age of 18, unless you lie about your DOB.

IE; if you're 17 and put your DOB into the Paypal signup process, it literally stops you from signing up.

This person lied to get an account.

<comment><USER21> Do you have any evidence that PayPal's sign-up process 10 years ago included verifying that you were over 18, or are you just making things up?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Had the same issue last month after reciving a $3000 bug bounty. PP limited my account I uploaded a copy of my id, bing -> banned.

However: After calling them, they told me to create a new account and verify it with the CC and bankaccount (that were in old acc). And as soon everything was verified they trasfered the money to the new account.

So apparently it seems not to be that difficult to get your money.

<comment><USER23> Which number did you call?

I'm trying to get $1,500 out of PayPal and I haven't found a way to talk to somebody at PayPal who was able/willing to help me with that (account got blocked, I uploaded all the paperwork, got told that they will hold the money for 180 days but that was more than 1 year ago).

<comment><USER24> I'd have filed a police report for that much money. This is ridiculous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I only ever use Paypal as a wrapper around credit card transactions for merchants I trust enough to purchase from, but not necessarily enough to handle my credit card information directly. I can't say I've ever had a problem using them that way.

<comment><USER26> Why do you care? It's easy to dispute credit card charges. Most banks will overnight you a new card if needed.

<comment><USER27> For a lot of people that is a pain. The old PAN is blocked and things that depend on it (and you might have forgotten about) cannot draw money from it anymore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Here's three rules someone once gave me which I can't emphasize strongly enough.

1\. Never use Paypal. For ANY reason.

2\. Never. Use. Paypal. For. Any. Reason.

3\. See rule #1.

<comment><USER29> What's the alternative?

<comment><USER30> Square Cash is absolutely fantastic, and extraordinarily easy to use. The mobile app is great. You can even send money to someone who doesn't even have a Square Cash account yet, by simply emailing them, cc'ing email@example.com, and putting the dollar amount in the Subject: line. That's it.

You can't beat it.

<comment><USER31> Square is just as bad as PayPal, IME. Lots of arbitrary rules, clients unable to pay me, funds withheld for no good reason, etc. I'll stick with bank transfers (ACH) or Bitcoin, personally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> > _There are alternatives to PayPal, it's just become so ingrained in to > online life that it can be easy to forget that._

This is very true, but I like to think of how predominant MySpace and Hotmail were at one time. Someone will come along and do it better. Stripe, PaymentSpring, heck even Bitcoin are all potential disruptors here.

I think the days of PayPal's dominance are numbered.

<comment><USER33> 100% agree. For Americans I don't find a reason to use PayPal and for other countries they can use Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies without dealing with the risk of freezing your account.

Indeed, I found PayPal simple to use as a merchant outside USA but now there are more alternatives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> So in this case where a friend's deposit is being held for ransom, could that friend simply chargeback or file a fraud claim against PayPal? After all, PayPal has stolen their money which was intended for another person (the author in this case).

</comment><comment><USER35> When I joined, the ToS explicitly allowed users between 16 and 18.

[http://www.screw- paypal.com/tos_exposed_section/tos_june_200...](http://www.screw- paypal.com/tos_exposed_section/tos_june_2000.html)

It looks like their ToS changed in February 2003 to enforce an 18-only model.

</comment><comment><USER36> I've had similar bad experiences with venmo. Apparently I had created an account a couple years ago that I forgot about so I created a new one to receive a payment from a friend. A day after I received the money and had it set to transfer to my bank account they closed both of my accounts citing some rule in their terms of service saying one account per lifetime. And now I can't ever have another venmo account. That $500 also never got to me and never got returned to the sender. Just overall a scam of a company.

<comment><USER37> Since Venmo is a subsidiary of PayPal, it's not surprising that the two have similarly anti-consumer policies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Or... Don't use Paypal.

They stopped "doing business" with me out of the blue.

I call them up and asked why and they said I need a subpoena to get the reason.

I call them back saying I have a retainer so what do I do to get the reason with my retainer on hand?

Seeing I was serious, the operator told me the reason as if he's letting me on a secret. The reason being I'm associated to somebody that owe them money.

Yeah seriously. Their reason for not doing business with me was that I know somebody that owe them money but they won't tell me who.

I asked if they can remove all my info. The dude told me it's secured because paypal use SSL. I wanted to to tell him that SSL is for connection encryption not data encryption but at this point I'm done with this bullshit ordeal.

2 months later paypal got hacked.

I only use paypal to buy chinese clothing over ebay since I'm a small guy and it's hard to get clothing in USA with my size.

</comment><comment><USER39> If you are in Australia and PayPal every pull anything remotely similar, contact the financial ombudsman. They are extremely good at putting Paypal back in line.

In some cases they fine financial institutions who don't resolve quickly enough.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm in the UK but my friend Mat is in Aus and does run in to problems with them now and then, I'll pass the information on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> > will now just have to move to my credit cards directly

One of the reasons I like paypal is that it provides a great amount of control over who I pay and when and how much. I can login and reasonably easy see all of my MRC subscriptions, and cancel them as appropriate. Technically possible with credit cards directly, but not as nice.

Best of both worlds right now is privacy.com for me, they generate credit card #s on the fly and provide that same level of vision and control into where the money is going with exactly 100% less bullshit and 100% less scumbag tactics.

If you're moving payments away from paypal (and you should) I would suggest considering moving them to privacy.com instead of directly.

<comment><USER41> Privacy.com does not load. After a quick search, I think you meant abine.com?

Thanks for sharing, anyway. I'll definitely give a try on their service. Hope it works for non-US cards too, but I find it unlikely. But $3 per month for virtual cards seems too good to be true. I'll take a closer read on the tos once I get to a desktop (unrelated, but am I the only one who can't stand to do a thing on mobile devices?)

<comment><USER40> Nope, definitely meant [https://privacy.com/](https://privacy.com/), not sure why it doesn't load for you.

Privacy is free, I assumed they were getting a small % back from their card issuer to cover costs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> PayPal told me I was 'violating sanctions against Iran' \- an accusation I think I will never understand because I mostly used PayPal to buy stuff from HumbleBundle at the time.. - and upon showing them id they froze my account because I was < 18\. It's been years since, and my account is still frozen, although I've attempted to get it back a couple of times.

Don't use paypal.

</comment><comment><USER43> As someone who uses PayPal on a multiple times per week basis and who has never had any issues, this type of story (as well as the general sentiments of many of the comments) makes me worry that my time will come soon enough.

Can anyone recommend a service like PayPal that would be good for online transactions between individuals, but that also allows for credit card use? Fees are to be expected, it's just that I have t been able to find another service that will allow CC. I'm really hopeful that Google wallet will begin to allow CC use sometime soon.

<comment><USER44> Venmo ... Oh that's PayPal too.

I'm not a fan, but maybe Bitcoin? What about mailed checks, as a backup?

<comment><USER45> In Canada we have Interact e-transfers. For about $1 you can send money between any two banks via email or sms. The fee is frustrating, especially when you want to pay someone back for lunch or something small, but it is _very_ convenient and basically everybody knows how to use it at this point.

<comment><USER46> someone who asks you for that $5 back, is always that person that will borrow $500 from you and never pay back, why spend a dollar for such a small amount.

<comment><USER45> Where are you going for lunch?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> You are a programmer in PayPal. The manager tells you to program "close accounts that are created when under 18". And the programmer cannot complys.

When I say to my manager that this thing won't work etc he imlies that I'm smartsass jerk. Thus I no longer argue with him. I don't suggest anything to him anymore. I do exactly what he says. Probably this is the same case with PayPal too.

</comment><comment><USER48> I was able to determine the year I opened my account in the Account Settings page:

[http://imgur.com/y6Rpc4G](http://imgur.com/y6Rpc4G)

<comment><USER49> An exact date would be better, for those who turned 18 in the year displayed.

<comment><USER50> the best way to find our the exact date is to find the sign up email, if you still have access to it.

<comment><USER48> Inspired by your suggestion, I located my original PayPal account activation email from May 2006: [http://imgur.com/ztYGLxP](http://imgur.com/ztYGLxP)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> What an epic failure on PayPal's part. Is there some banking law that I'm unaware of that would cause them to take such drastic actions? It sounds like the OP is definitely above the age of 18 now too, so why would PayPal suddenly decide to yank the rug out from under him?

It'll be interesting to see if there's a follow up.

<comment><USER52> Not sure about UK laws, but my (limited) understanding of US law is that a minor lacks the legal capacity to sign a contract (i.e. agree to TOS). I suspect that's the legal reasoning that's caused PayPal to adopt this policy.

PayPal could and should find a better way to handle transitioning people who, out of necessity, lied about their age when they first signed up. Was signing up under false pretenses a form of fraud? Probably, but it's a form of fraud that's essentially benign and is so pervasive, online and off, that it's just stupid to treat it as such.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm pretty sure PayPal have updated their ToS since and I've had to re-agree upon login? Would that not cover me?

<comment><USER53> Terms of service, and conditions, are part of a contract they are not a contract in and of itself.

You signed the contract when you started your account. Which, is why they want you to start a new account so that you will sign a new contract with them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> They had Paypal Student before, where your account would be linked to your parent's account. But they shut that down recently, with no way to reactivate or unlink the account, and you're unable to reuse your email when making another account.

<comment><USER55> I had a Student account, and when I turned 18 they seemed surprised that I would want to disconnect it from my parents' account and turn it into a regular PayPal account. (I had some back-and-forth with their support, who eventually explained that my parents had to cancel my account so I could sign up for a regular account with the same email address.) This seems like the sort of thing you'd at least have a KB article about, if not an automated process, given that _every single user of the service_ is going to want to do this eventually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Same experience my end: [https://twitter.com/MaximHarper/status/847071547772821505](https://twitter.com/MaximHarper/status/847071547772821505)

PayPal is unfortunately still pretty central to eBay & I'm a payment geek so I've made a new account. Glad I didn't have any funds frozen though, that must suck.

<comment><AUTHOR> eBay is the biggest heartache for me, I do a lot with older cars and motorcycles, so buying/selling parts is routine for me and will be a pain to sort out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> While it's good that the author got their money back at least, if it was invalid for the author to have an account for 10 years it was also presumably invalid for PayPal to take any transaction fees during that period. Might be an interesting avenue for small claims.

<comment><USER58> _While it's good that the author got their money back at least_

Did you miss the following? It was toward the bottom, but it was in BOLD:

 _My only hope is that within 6 months, I will get a mystery email from PayPal letting me know that they might be willing to let me have my money._

Or is the submitter also the author? In which case, yes, he does post elsewhere here that he reversed the payment into his account. (Less fees, of course!) If so, it's unfortunate he didn't update the article itself with this new information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> I've completely blocked PayPal out of my life. I've been screwed over by them so many ways over the past 15 years it's impossible to count. I refuse to do any business which requires their services.

<comment><USER60> Same here. Never. Again. It only took once, but that was enough.

I'm actually surprised that people are just discovering how much PayPal sucks as a service this late in the game. They have had verifiable horror stories of seizing people's money and property for well over a decade.

I've skipped purchasing things that I really wanted when the only option for payment was PayPal. I always send a nice message to the seller to let them know exactly why I decided not to purchase their product / service. Surprisingly few respond, so I guess they're doing great with their current setup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Snarkly I will mention that this is the same company that 'HN darling' Elon Musk was part of prior to his current life. Everything that everyone hates about paypal existed back then.

<comment><USER62> > _Elon Musk was part of prior to his current life._

I also find this interesting. Musk's startup history is often cited as evidence of his serial success, but it's hardly mentioned that the startup that earned his fortune is widely detested as a "necessary evil".

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> You regularly transfer money with this guy but you're both happy eating transfer fees every time?!

Seriously? Wtaf? BACS and Faster Payments (through your banks) are free. You're literally pelting the Devil with your money for getting in the way.

<comment><USER64> almost no American banks support either, there are extremely limited bank to bank transfer options in the USA. You can do a wire transfer but you are looking at $50+ in fees

<comment><USER65> The author is British, so I don't see how this is relevant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> This exact same thing happened to me, though I was thankfully allowed to withdraw my money and open a new account with the same bank details.

Call your local PayPal support hotline and explain to them what happened, I was immediately escalated to higher level support who had me provide details of why the money was in my account, which they verified and then unlocked the withdrawal and bank accounts. Still had to make a new account, but that's a small price to pay!

<comment><AUTHOR> I was tempted to call, but I just managed to refund the money (sans fees) to my friend and we'll use something else now. I'm not going to call or contact them at all, I'm no longer interested in using their services. I'm just going to unlink my account from everything and spread some well-deserved hate within a useful PSA.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Interestingly, this article just tanked from 6th to 38th according to hnrankings.info, maybe I've found a conspiracy for my next Medium article.

<comment><USER67> What you've likely observed is the "overheated discussion detector" algorithm kicking in: this submission has received a relatively large number of comments in a short period of time. If you have a concern or questions, I recommend contacting the mods via the Contact link in the footer.

<comment><USER68> > "overheated discussion"

That's the most polite synonym for "flamewar" I've ever heard. I'm going to use that.

<comment><USER67> It is nice, isn't it? I picked it up from 'dang:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22overheated%20discussion%22%...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22overheated%20discussion%22%20author:dang&sort=byDate&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Do people not realize PayPal has phone support? It's not some black hole of support. Just call them up like a normal company... they've been helpful for any odd issues we've had in the past.

<comment><USER70> The phone support is absolutely terrible. After spending 15 minutes on hold, you get connected with script readers with indecipherable foreign accents, and if they can't help you because it's not on their script (yes, I know how to use a web site, here's why the steps you gave me won't work), they advise you to open a case in the Resolution Center just to get you off the phone -- where I have one pending now for over six months (I paid an eBay seller who didn't ship me my item and whose account got banned by eBay shortly after I purchased it, so I can't open a claim on eBay to get a refund -- as a buyer, the UI for opening an eBay claim is completely inaccessible if a seller's account is banned. PayPal insists it's an eBay problem and I should talk to eBay, eBay insists it is a PayPal problem and that I should talk to PayPal; it's deadlocked). If you mention the word "eBay" at all to PayPal on the phone, they immediately transfer you to eBay (and vice versa). Classic game of "pass the buck." At one point, I managed to stump the PayPal script reader (my unique situation wasn't on the script), so they just transferred me to another T1 agent. There's zero recordkeeping at all (likely no ticketing system), so nobody knows anything at all about my case so it's like I'm talking to them for the first time any time I'm talking to a new person.

So yes, it is some black hole of support.

<comment><USER69> They definitely have a ticketing system, and they do have support that knows what they're doing. Maybe it's just business support or something? We haven't run into issues like this when we call.

<comment><USER70> I'm using the normal customer service number 1 (888) 221-1161 that you get just by Googling for it. If you know some other way to get actual support, please do share. I want my money back!

Until then, I'll believe it when I see it (extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> Is there a list of good PayPal alternatives besides Stripe? Bonus points for companies that work outside of the USA.

<comment><USER72> Curious: What's the issue with Stripe? Also, in Europe you can look into GoCardless.

<comment><USER73> Also, in Europe you can just do a SEPA wire transfer. It's free with all reasonable banks, can be done from the online banking interface and takes only one business day.

<comment><USER74> I think it's free by regulation now.

<comment><USER72> No, unfortunately some banks (in Cyprus, for example) still charge. They also ignore the directive in terms of time to process transactions

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> I'm 30s and living in SEA, opening PayPal with CitiBank card and provided proofs (scan of ID and bank statements) then they immediately closed my account. They just stated that my info wasn't met their standards. So fine, I don't use PayPal otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER76> If you opened your PayPal account _at all_ , close it now and open another for the next payment. Rumor has it that PP cares much more about not pissing off new customers than the old ones.

This works pretty well for me ever since my first account had been locked for bullshit reasons when I needed it most, of course with the money locked inside. Thankfully it was almost nothing, but thank you PP for reminding me to never keep anything of value in there.

Granted, I only use PP when I absolutely must, which is no more than maybe once a year, so setting and tearing down these accounts is no big deal. I traditionally select "poor customer service" and "worry about security" as the reason I quit :)

</comment><comment><USER77> I too started a paypal account when I was underage with mother's permission, help, and her checking account attached so I could sell thrift store finds on ebay. I've been with them over 10 years and never used another payment service. Uhg.

</comment><comment><USER78> Look at opening a Monzo account, lets you have a monzo.me link to get paid in the UK.

Shame we don't have anything like Square Cash :(

<comment><USER79> I have a Golden Ticket if you'd like it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> Ah PayPal, all the power of a bank, none of responsibility.

</comment><comment><USER81> The day Bitcoin will replace Paypal for online transactions can not come fast enough.

<comment><USER82> As much as I dislike PayPal, I would never want to trade it for Bitcoin. All it takes is one zero-day exploit for all of my funds to disappear at once without a trace. Any purchase I would make has zero protection and zero recourse for recovering funds if I'm ripped off. No, thanks. I just want something like PayPal, but that is run by people who have empathy and care about providing a good experience.

<comment><USER83> Depends how you store your bitcoin. You can't zero-day exploit a cold wallet.

<comment><USER82> I don't use bitcoin, so I might be missing something, but don't you have to transfer funds from the cold wallet to your device at some point, and doesn't that mean that any malware waiting on your device could just grab the whole thing at that exact moment?

In any case, even if you could secure the wallet, it still doesn't address the fact that once the funds are sent, they're not recoverable; I think it's unreasonable to expect a payment system with no rollback mechanism to go mainstream.

<comment><USER84> It should be possible to generate a transaction on a secure system and only move that to the networked system.

The transaction data would only be useful for the specific transaction, it couldn't be used to move funds to addresses not in the transaction or to move additional funds between the addresses, etc.

It'd be a glorious pain in the ass to do it, but it is possible.

<comment><USER85> IIRC Armory provides a user interface for doing this. Still, that's probably too paranoid for most typical transactions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER86> > I'm not really sure what half a year of holding on to my money will help > PayPal achieve?

If they have a pile of similar money (likely, by the stories we hear), then they earn interest, and may (IANAA) be able to point to that cash as an "asset" in situations where they need to show assets.

<comment><USER87> No, that's illegal. A financial institution cannot represent customers' assets as its own. Those are not company assets, they're liabilities (because they're not owned, they're owed).

</comment></comment><comment><USER88> Seriously vote with your money and just close it. I just did. More and more big companies think they can treat customers however they like. Paypal just seems to be a frontrunner. I just voted and closed Paypal. At least in Germany we got many other options.

</comment><comment><USER89> Paypal just cancelled my PP CC because I was late with payment twice. They autocancel it. I have looked into why I was late and realized that PP failed to process my payment. I asked them how come a failure on their end causes this but tey never replied.

</comment><comment><USER90> Ha! Apparently I signed up for paypal 3 days before my 18th birthday. What are the odds.

</comment><comment><USER2> Is there a way to find the precise age of your paypal account retroactively? It says mine was created the year of my 18th birthday, and I'm sure I did it all above-board, but it'd be nice to have it confirmed.

Update: It _looks_ like you can get some day/month number if you check your account limits at [https://www.paypal.com/de/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_lift- limits](https://www.paypal.com/de/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_lift-limits) if you still have any, and combine them with the year it actually displays in the account settings. Makes me feel better at least.

<comment><USER91> Or search for the "Welcome to Paypal" email if you haven't deleted it. Turns out my account was created when I was 14.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, looks like my mail backlog for that account falls a few years short. I guess I didn't know about IMAP back then, or had weird ideas about data retention. :/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER92> I close and reopen a PayPal account for every individual PayPal transaction I (rarely) need to make. It's a hassle, but I see no alternative if I don't want the account-based "features".

</comment><comment><USER93> Thanks for the heads up! I normally only use PayPal for purchases, but I looked up my email logs and realized I did create it when I was 17. it was easy enough to close my account and open another.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wish I'd known prior so I could have done the same, I've spent all day having to try and transfer accounts for hosting and so on. At least it'll help others avoid the same, takes away some of PayPal's 'get out of jail free' cards and maybe convinces a few people to stop funding them!

</comment></comment><comment><USER94> I signed up for PayPal (and eBay) on my 18th birthday, before I even got dressed and went downstairs to eat breakfast.

I'm still worried that they might want to block me though, because I have more than one account. PayPal accounts must be linked to a bank account in the same country. So I now have different PayPal accounts in the UK, US, New Zealand, Korea, and Taiwan.

<comment><USER95> Why were you so enthusiastic to sign up for PayPal and eBay?

<comment><USER94> My parents had always been helping me buy things online. I lived in the middle of nowhere, so online shopping was my only way to buy things I wanted. The freedom to do this by myself without asking them every time was a huge step for me, coming of age. If you're American, I guess it's like driving a car for you. (I still can't drive).

<comment><USER95> Ah, got ya. Cool! Sounds like a huge day :). Googled your name and found you GitHub page. Seems like you've travelled the world a lot since then. Wow!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER96> Forgive me if I sound dumb, but why bother creating PayPal account in the first place?

If you are mostly buyer, then online payment is already easy (few clicks and 1 SMS password away).

If you are seller, setting up your website to support credit card payments takes maybe two hours.

I really don't see the use case for PayPal, especially given the constant complaints.

</comment><comment><USER97> Yeah. Paypal are plain street robbers. Not only they charge like you a church, but they have awful support considered that you trust them with your money. Unfortunately as a freelancer I had to use them, but I moved asap to a bank solution. Today that so many fintech startups are there, there is no reason to use them.

</comment><comment><USER98> It was long obvious to me that PayPal is one of those "good while it lasts" entrprises.

As in, you should factor in from the day one that they might stop working with you at any random moment. They never contributed towards any other image.

(I wonder if you can sue them in locales where they're legally a bank)

<comment><USER99> Banks really aren't that much better. My employer is based in the US, and it took around 3 weeks for their bank to setup the wire transfer to pay me here in Europe.

As such they sent my first pay cheque via Paypal. As it was a large amount my account was limited, but after uploading the documents and a quick phone call (their phone support are a lot better than their email and chat support), my funds were unfrozen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER100> The bright side is now that its on HN, you have a high chance the issue will be resolved for you.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've managed to recoup most of the money (minus fees, after 30 minutes of digging and switching to the classic UI), I'm not interested in using PayPal anymore. The good thing about it being on HN/Medium and getting some views is hopefully I'll save a few people the same hassle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER101> Hopefully between virtual credit card providers, invoicing providers for b2c like klarna, cryptochains, challenger banks like monzo... one of them will land PayPal in hot water, it's about damn time, they are one of the most toxic companies online.

</comment><comment><USER102> Is there a bitcoin solution that looks like this without having either party directly deal with bitcoin?:

currency in bank account of person 1 --> bitcoin --> currency in bank account of person 2

or

credit card of person 1 --> bitcoin --> currency in bank account of person 2

<comment><USER103> That sounds like a scenario that only gets the downsides of bitcoin and no benefits.

<comment><USER102> Why is that? The risks of holding bitcoin would be avoided.

<comment><USER103> But all the security risks and complications are still borne by someone, presumably the company doing the transaction.

Both users need to trust that company, so they don't gain anything by the use of bitcoin. They in fact lose money because of the extra transaction fee, and possibly more in conversion fees/inefficiencies.

Oh and there's privacy loss too from putting it on the blockchain.

The only 'benefit' is that there's a sticker saying "now with bitcoin!". No party involved gains anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER104> I was asked to "confirm" my credit card a while back, but I don't have the supposed charge on my credit statement.

So I shot them a support ticket to sort things out.

Like over a month ago.

I don't see how it's possible to manage your company so incompetently.

</comment><comment><USER105> Don't deal with any payment system you can't sue in small claims court.

<comment><USER106> Speaking of which, why can't this be resolved that way?

<comment><USER105> PayPal's customer contract forces arbitration. Although you can opt out within 30 days after sign-up. That has to be done by paper mail, to make it maximally inconvenient.

[1] [https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/ua/useragreement- full](https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/ua/useragreement-full)

<comment><USER107> Wow, that's some shady shit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER108> As someone who has been working online since 16 years old, this worries me.

<comment><USER86> [If you are underage] have your parents or some other trusted adult relative open an account for the sole purpose of receiving your payments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER109> In the image of the email you got from them it looks like they are telling you to create a new account. You can't do that and have them xfer over the money to the new account?

</comment><comment><USER110> Every story I've ever read about PayPal is a cautionary tale not to ever use or rely upon PayPal.

Of course like others I use it for eBay but never, ever, for anything important.

</comment><comment><USER111> Can we shorten this to if you have a paypal account close it? Who wants to send money to a company that may or may not actually let you access your own money?

</comment><comment> mk-61 I would really like to see amount of customers who have no problems with PP against customers who had. That would be the best, objective and simple analysis.

</comment><comment><USER112> I hate PayPal, but thankfully I created my account in my mom's name when I was 12 so I think I'm safe, will create another one in a year.

</comment><comment><USER113> When did they add the 18 thing? Mine's fine and I've had it open since 2000, when they barely had a website, let alone a good EULA.

</comment><comment><USER114> At this point I cannot hold any sympathy for people in tech getting screwed over by PayPal.

We have all read the horror stories and, if you're still using them, you've got no one else to blame but yourself. At which point you will write your own horror story with the faint hope that it goes viral and forces PayPal to make things right.

This is specially true for someone who, like OP, immediately liquidises the asset. Pick a digital currency, any currency.

</comment><comment><USER95> PayPal has good rates on micropayments ($0.05 + 5%). But they terrify me. Anyone know of any competitive processors?

</comment><comment><USER115> I prefer Google wallet for P2P payments... If zcash ever takes off that's be my preferred currency of choice

</comment><comment><USER116> You can simply refund the money and tell your friend to send somewhere else , well that's what I did

</comment><comment><USER117> I registered when I was 15. I guess I should make sure to use paypal as little as possible from now on.

</comment><comment><USER118> In some/many? jurisdictions contracts are not enforceable against people under age of 18.

</comment><comment><USER119> Why does anybody use paypal anymore? Go buy litecoin or ethereum. You can then send anybody anywhere money in an instant. If you afraid of volatility not going your way, buy bitcoin -- its more stable.

Sure, cryptocurrency is not stable in value yet... but its getting better -- fast.

<comment><USER120> The reality is as PayPal is one of the oldest payment companies, their vast feature coverage covers so much more use cases. It probably has the most extensive international support out of any payment processor, it can be used for programmatic payouts and handles 1099 forms or other tax forms by default.

It also means they have a lot of legacy APIs, complicated overlapping features. However one thing they should be fixing, but they aren't, is their terrible customer service. Their product should work for all their customers, and if it doesn't, they should be bearing the cost of making it work with decent customer service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER121> How come there is no competitor and alternate solution to PayPal ?

</comment><comment><USER122> Thanks! Closed.

</comment><comment><USER123> Just closed my account. Have you tried Transferwise instead? You'd save a fortune on fees.

<comment><USER124> you have to transfer to another currency. you cannot do transfers within the same currency (USD to USD or EUR to EUR) with TransferWise.

they are _excellent_ for foreign exchange, however.

</comment></comment><comment><USER125> Fuck.

<comment><AUTHOR> My initial response.

</comment></comment><comment><USER126> Good enough reason to close my account, thanks for the heads up. Fuck PayPal.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wanted to end the article with 'Fuck PayPal' but I felt it was implied by that point.

I've spent my entire Saturday so far logging in to things and updating them to use credit cards. Unfortunately there is one thing so far I'm struggling to use without PayPal, but I've contacted them and will hopefully resolve that one.

What's even more annoying is I could use the PayPal account of my other half for now, but she thinks she opened hers around 16/17 too so I'm not taking that risk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER127> PSA: Do not use PayPal for any reason, they are unethical and unreasonable.

How many more times must this happen to people?

</comment><comment><USER30> All this, plus, Peter Thiel founded it. So you know, a priori, that it sucks.

<comment><USER128> so did Musk ....

</comment></comment><comment><USER129> I bet his practice of "share money with friends and family" looks shady. I mean who sends a friend 300 bucks with a 19 dollar fee. If you do a lot of that it probably looks like drug dealing or something. Last time I bummed a few hundred from family or friends: never.

<comment> a-saleh I do. I.e. my wife's sister helped my then-girlfriend-now-wife to pay for part of her living expenses when she studied. Now we, as a way of paying it forward help out her younger brother at college in similar fashion. And because sometimes I had to send him money across country border, it would look quite similar to "300 bucks with 19 dollar fee".

</comment></comment><comment><USER130> _> I'm not really sure what half a year of holding on to my money will help PayPal achieve _

It doesn't help them. If it were possible they would complete every transaction with minimal fuss.

The reason transferring money is so difficult is due to governments who wish to prevent capital flight, "laundering", etc. Paypal fought against this intensely early on.

<comment><USER13> My traditional bank has fewer restrictions on money movement and _far_ better customer service when further verification is needed than Paypal. They have to comply with the same regulations.</comment></comment>


China's Citywide Quarantines: Are They Ethical and Effective? - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/chinas-citywide-quarantines-are-they-ethical-and-effective/ <comment><USER2> Virus's don't care about ethics.</comment>


Social-Media App Musical.ly Is Acquired for as Much as $1B - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/lip-syncing-app-musical-ly-is-acquired-for-as-much-as-1-billion-1510278123 <comment><USER2> I used to work in the social influencer space, and often attended conventions in which top influencers were treated like A-list movie stars by legions of (mostly young) fans. The last few years, the Musical.ly kids were the ones causing all the crowd control nightmares.

One kid's performance on a stage in the convention hall was canceled by security because the crowd was dangerously large and packed-in (as they all fought to get as close as possible).

Another kid caused a major stampede by walking through the public lobby of the convention center (something they were very much not supposed to do). Literally hundreds of fans ran after them, to the woe of anyone trying to walk through the lobby.

You and I have never heard of these kids, and we don't understand the appeal, but this is a huge business. The engagement and brand loyalty that Musical.ly stars get is like nothing I've ever seen.

<comment><USER3> But kids this age have always been crazy fans of pop stars. Now they're choosing their content and engaging more directly rather than having (often skeezy) middlemen such as agents, producers, music labels, etc manufacture and force stars onto them (and then keep most of the money for themselves)

<comment><USER4> I'm 100% sure that any of these influencers making money most definitely have agents, producers and most likely deals with record labels (or similar). The entertainment machine is way too powerful. The large agencies have entire departments dedicated to finding these influencers and boosting their visibility through deals/partnerships/etc. While the path to fame may be changing, or has changed, the people controlling them are, and will, continue to be the same.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think more and more the trend is for aggregators to buy networks and strengthen themselves. Facebook did so with WhatsApp, Instagram, and TBH. Amazon did so with Whole Foods. Google bought DoubleClick. Software can be easily replicated, but not ecosystems because of the difficult cold start problem.

If Toutiao wants to play in US markets, then this acquisition could make a lot of sense as the first defensible foothold.

</comment><comment><USER6> I wonder how many people would feel surprised as I did the first time I learned that Musical.ly was built by a Chinese team based in Shanghai.

</comment><comment><USER7> While $1B is certainly a lot of money this is the first time (in a long time) I would have rather seen the founder not sell. Musically has a very unique approach to encourage and enable users to create content that I have not seen on any other platform (challenges, smooth video creation process, etc). While I am certainly not in the target demographic I am sure we will see this approach in future (video)content platforms.

<comment><USER8> > I would have rather seen the founder not sell.

You're not in his shoes. He has investors that probably pushed him to sell when they all saw that growth had plateaued. Selling gives the founders and investors all 'wins.' Once they took VC money, their future was either sale, IPO or bankruptcy, so the sale was the logical choice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> HN has a nice blog on acquirer Toutiao here:

[https://blog.ycombinator.com/the-hidden-forces-behind- toutia...](https://blog.ycombinator.com/the-hidden-forces-behind-toutiao- chinas-content-king/)

Strategically, its a good way for a Chinese consumer internet firm to enter into Western markets. As well as short form, digestible, interactive video optimized for mobile.

</comment><comment><USER10> I don't get lip-syncing part of it. Their website says it's "musical.ly is a social media platform for creating and sharing short videos." I think this abstract "short" word explains a lot: Youtube videos lose a lot of views, because Youtube tells how long they are. Impatient kids are like "Nah, it's too long". But by promising the videos are short, you can probably make viewers to spend even more time with an app, watching many shorter videos instead of a long one. No data to prove it, just gut feeling.

<comment><USER11> I can relate that to my personal experience, I often choose not to watch a movie since I don't want to spend a couple of hours on entertainment but end up watching youtube videos for a longer time

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> my kids haven't touched this app for a year, nor have any of their friends...it seemed to be intensely popular for two weeks

<comment><USER13> I can't imagine that no one uses the app if it was just acquired for a billion dollars. It's possible your experience is not representative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> One billion dollars, well perhaps they will have a little spare change to invest in protecting their users ... [https://www.channel4.com/news/children- bombarded-with-sexual...](https://www.channel4.com/news/children-bombarded- with-sexually-explicit-chat-on-musical-ly-and-live-ly)

</comment><comment><USER15> Shows how valuable brainwashing children with advertising truly is.

</comment><comment><USER16> I think it ought to be noted that Musical.ly videos are frequently passed around pedophile communities online.

It worries me that an app designed for preteens to film themselves dancing can swell to such a size. Parents have completely stopped being accountable for what their children do online, and the consequences thereof...

<comment><USER17> First off, the criticism of this app being used for kids to sexualize themselves was what early doomsayers shouted down about both Vine and Snapchat, among almost all other video-social startups. I don't think it's a valid or reasonably realistic concern.

Secondly, you definitely need to source some evidence for the claim about pedophile communities.

<comment><USER16> I am writing an article right now (to be published soon) about this, and I can tell you that there are lots of underground communities that just share YouTube, Musical.ly, Snapchat, etc. links for sexual reasons, with no attempt to hide the pedophilic nature of their viewing.

I am not about to post links to these places, for obvious reasons, but perhaps I'll post my article once it is finished. If HN had a PM system, I would bookmark your name and send you a link. Maybe just keep a look out in a month or so, or check back on my page for submissions. Lots of fact-checking and analysis to do before I publish this, not to mention protecting some of the children I am documenting.

There's also a large community of teens on these networks that consume pseudosexual content of kids their own age, and you obviously have to factor out of any statistics about pedophilia. I myself consumed a lot of preteen/teen model stuff when I was 13-15, but that content has only gotten more disturbing to me with age.

There are some disturbing trends out there, and it's clear to see the cause- and-effect in many cases. Kids are figuring out that if you dance on camera, you get a lot of views - but if you dance on camera in your underwear, you get A LOT MORE views. These sites are putting forth little to no effort to curb this kind of content, and there is little public oversight.

It's not illegal, but there are people profiting off of the ad revenue associated with this content, and there are children sexualizing themselves online, often without their parent's knowledge. It's not something we should ignore, because this is just going to keep getting further normalized as people try to downplay what is actually happening.

And there are people out there who become fixated on online personas, and this can lead to some very dark scenarios. The last thing we need is adults preying on children in environments that children frequent, and parents are ignorant of. These places are candy shops for pedophiles, and kids often don't notice that their peers on these sites aren't always fellow kids...

<comment><USER18> It really makes you think when we're slowly shifting towards a future where NN and CP producers aren't adults anymore, but the children themselves. I think they need earlier and better sexual education to fully understand the consequences of their actions. Not only that, but also in regards to social media before they receive free access to computers that are connected with the Internet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Didn't know the app. I can only see compilation videos on youtube. What does the app do exactly ? It remaps the time of the video to match/sync lips with the lyrics, that's it ? Does the user has any other control on the result ? Thanks.

<comment><USER20> Basically a user chooses an audio track (this can be a wide variety of things. YouTube video, song, or other pop culture track, or silence), then they click record. The track is played and they can either match their lips or actions or both to the track. This simple style of recording tends to create some pretty impressive videos. Musical.ly took this and made it into a platform similar to Instagram or Vine.

Here are some examples: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njtMuGaSIGg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njtMuGaSIGg)

<comment><USER21> Ok clicked this and a truly shocking amount of young girls in very little clothing. Don't know what this app does other than to get teens to pose sexy for youtube. Which is of course very nice, nothing wrong with that. "Women" need to "own" their sexuality as I learned on HN when the Maker-person was up for debate.

Edit: check the talent on these videos, wow! Hopefully I can see these in adult videos when they come of age.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbNTm21H2UA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbNTm21H2UA)

<comment><USER22> $1B seems like a lot to pay for videos of half-naked teenage girls, but I haven't tried to launch a child porn start-up, so what do I know?

<comment><USER23> Successful technologies always get their start transmitting porn.

Until BitCoin manages this feat, it's doomed.

<comment><USER24> Bitcoin was probably used to pay for sex slaves, that's why it's been so successful. /speculation

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is my maths right? It works out at $13+ per active user. (Ignoring the various, dubious definitions of active.)

Seems high given that, as noted in the article, the sale implies the owners think growth has plateaued.

<comment><USER26> By your same math, Snap currently works out to $90 per DAU. Whether the model is sound is up in the air, but IMO Musical.ly / Live.ly's product is very similar to snapchat.

<comment><USER27> To copy from thefreedictionary: Dümmster Anzunehmender User (German: Dumbest Assumable User; play on words, see GAU)

How are you using DAU here?

<comment><USER28> Daily Active User, I imagine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Previous Discussion (11hrs ago): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15667753](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15667753)

</comment><comment><USER30> it's like the instagram of the new generation...no surprises here!

</comment><comment><USER31> This was very popular over the summer in Sweden. Barely used anymore.

The big game these days, that has a solid revenue model is Star Stable. A Huge virtual world, monthly subscription required, 12 languages and you can ONLY choose female characters.

<comment><USER32> Star Stable is very sketchy.

<comment><USER31> In what way, you mean for users of the game, or the business model?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> For everyone talking about kids under 13 read this:

Eligibility . THE SERVICE IS NOT FOR PERSONS UNDER THE AGE OF 13 OR FOR ANY USERS PREVIOUSLY SUSPENDED OR REMOVED FROM THE SERVICE BY MUSICAL.LY. IF YOU ARE UNDER 13 YEARS OF AGE, YOU MUST NOT USE OR ACCESS THE SERVICE AT ANY TIME OR IN ANY MANNER. Furthermore, by using the Service, you affirm that either you are at least 18 years of age or have been authorized to use the Service by your parent or guardian who is at least 18 years of age. [1]

My question, can you use the app without an account?

[1] [https://musical.ly/en-US/term](https://musical.ly/en-US/term)

<comment><USER34> I tried to report someone who was clearly under 13 but the process involved giving musical.ly a huge amount of my personal information (above and beyond Name / email address) so I decided not to bother. They know their target audience is young children.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> $1Billion for Musical.ly? Did people even use the app?

<comment><USER20> Its currently #58 on the app store. They are getting at least 150,000 downloads a month [1].

[1] [https://www.quora.com/How-many-downloads-do-I-need-in-the- Ap...](https://www.quora.com/How-many-downloads-do-I-need-in-the-App-Store-to- reach-the-top-50-and-top-10-of-the-most-downloaded-games-in-US-and-China)

<comment><USER36> At least 150k a month is an understatement. My app ranks around ~ 150 in Photo & Video (musical.ly is #6 in that category) and get that many downloads a month. Musical.ly must have at least 1-2M download a month for that ranking.

<comment><USER20> Thanks for the input! I searched around quickly and couldn't find a reliable current source.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Mirror: [https://archive.fo/JPCLG](https://archive.fo/JPCLG)

</comment><comment><USER37> Toutiao is a behemoth in the media space. Will see when it invades the US

<comment><USER38> It certainly grew fast, no question. It's not a behemoth however. It has 1/5th the sales of CBS, which is just one of dozens of big US media companies.

It's very unlikely they'll be able to invade the US in a meaningful sense. Toutiao's primary business is media content aggregation. They're going to be incapable of presenting non-censored news, content, media. The CPC will require that anything they allow in their publishing space globally, be controlled and censored strictly to present the views of the CPC. What China allows their domestic companies to do internationally when it comes to media, is not very different from what they allow domestically. That's why companies like Baidu and Tencent, which are drastically larger than Toutiao, have been entirely unable to crack the Western media markets. The restrictions Chinese companies face due to the strict authoritarian regime at home, is extremely different from what companies in eg Japan faced when they 'invaded' the US 30 years ago (such as Sony in music & movies).

It's why there will never be a Chinese Reddit conceptually. Free expression is illegal for all Chinese media companies, it leaves them at an extreme disadvantage when competing globally.

<comment><USER39> But it would be interesting to see how they use musical.ly. Toutiao has AI capabilities and I think they want to make use of the lip-syncing ability.

<comment><USER38> I agree and I actually would expect Toutiao to do plenty of innovative things within the space they can work in, within the confines of what's allowed.

I would expect one of these companies will want to attempt what Sony did and accumulate a music business. The question will be how they can manage to align that with the media restrictions they have to live within. Maybe Toutiao is young enough to still dare to attempt it, I think the older, larger Chinese Internet companies long ago learned to avoid challenging the CPC's boundaries.

In a less restricted atmosphere, companies like Snapchat or Twitter would be prime take-over targets for some of the Chinese giants looking for international expansion. I think a company like Tencent might have acquired Twitter by now if they could operate the platform without censorship trouble.

<comment><USER39> I agree with you. When it comes to media restrictions, there are a lot of challenges chinese companies will face. In Musical.ly's case, it is an app. More importantly, a teen app - a market, companies have been trying to target and succeed but have been unable to barring a few (Snap amongst the list).

When it comes to app, companies will be ready to compromise to get as much data as possible (available).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> The girl in the spandex on the landing page is mesmerizing.

</comment><comment><USER20> To understand why they have such a large valuation you need to understand that:

1\. This is massive with the tween/teen market. That is why not many people understand its popularity; you either need to know a tween, or have one as a kid.

2\. Musical.ly became Vine after Vine shutdown. The content moved from lip- synced videos to more of a mixure of vine-like videos and lip sync.

3\. They currently have 60M monthly users, and as of now Musical.ly is still #58 on the App Store (they have been in the top charts for the past 2 years at least). Its hard to say people aren't using it when its above some large companies on the charts (Linkedin, Shazam, Dropbox).

4\. Their influencer network is huge as well. Nearly every popular musical.ly star has some sort of swag from the company. Think about that in the tween's mind: you're just a normal kid going to your normal middle school with your normal friends, then a national company wants YOU to be a spokesman for the company. That is quite literally getting famous for these kids. At popular industry conferences like Vidcon, they literally are celebrities.

<comment><USER41> I have a tween/teen, but I don't let her use apps like this.

Have you taken a look at it? Maybe I'm turning into an uptight old man, but it's not a good idea, knowing what I do about the internet.

<comment><USER42> I have a teen daughter as well. My wife and I go back and forth on this, but my take is that she's learning how to communicate with her peers in ways that I will never understand. I don't have to live in the world she will inherit, I'll have my furrowed brow and my 401k and she'll be deciding what being an adult means for her.

At the end of the day, I can only coach her on how to conduct herself online, she's going to be the one out there.

<comment><USER24> This is the age when our ancestors were teaching there kids about the tigers, lions and wolf's out there. If they tried to keep them safe that would have been the death of the whole tribe, as the kids that didn't understand the dangers would have done something stupid and got a bunch of people killed.

Sheltering kids is bad, teaching them and finding a mutual understanding is the best way to handle them. There are predators out there and they need to be thinking about that whenever they make an interaction on the internet.

Good parenting!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> what happened to the bubble burst?

</comment><comment><USER44> WTF. Is 1B even a meaningful number any more. I literally hear about these guys for the first time.

<comment><USER45> This has turned into a very well-curated A&R scouting platform. The valuation isn't surprising to me at all.

<comment><USER46> Do music/entertainment companies even scout anymore? Seems like a redundant role, given music publishing is largely dying out as well.

<comment><USER45> This article is a little dated, but dives into the engagement model and the multivariate role the app plays: [https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wdbxxn/the-social- media-a...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wdbxxn/the-social-media-app- musically-is-changing-music-marketing-v23n07)

Publishers have successfully been able to increase metrics like Spotify and YouTube plays with exposure via the app. Its one of the few examples in the creative/publishing industry thats great for both the artists and the publishers alike.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Zoom execs dumped millions in company stock before shit hit the fan - <AUTHOR> https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2020/04/06/zoom-execs-sold-millions-stock-coronavirus-pumped-share-price/ <comment> core-questions How is selling their stock when it is on the rise underhanded? It's not like the people who bought it didn't believe they stood to profit from it, and many did.

<comment><USER2> > Zoom Video execs made millions of dollars by dumping company stock during > its recent price rallies.

Indeed, this sounds like clueless click bait. Anyone paying attention would think that the price of Zoom stock is headed _up_ , not _down_. It's far from clear that they made "millions", or even any money at all.

And in either case "dumping" isn't unethical unless the dumper is acting on inside information, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I can't help but wonder if these were planned sales which they barely touch on until the end. Should'n't this be explicitly determined prior to running the article?</comment>


AFP (Agence France Press) forbids to use Wikipedia as a reference [FR] - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wikimedia.fr/l%E2%80%99afp-interdit-d%E2%80%99utiliser-wikipedia-comme-source-entre-evidence-et-ironie-3299

<comment><USER2> I'd be astonished if any news organization used WP as a reference. It totally wouldn't make sense.</comment>


I made a tool to create better how-to guides - <AUTHOR> https://www.goodannotations.com/how-to-guides?ref=hackernews <comment><USER2> If this allowed you to annotate an actual website and be responsive - it would be a killer product</comment>


Why almost all multicellular organisms begin life as a single cell - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111215141615.htm <comment><USER2> I just skimmed this article, but it doesn't appear to make the interesting point that came to my mind when reading it, which is: in a multicellular organism, what the article calls a "cheater", we call a "cancer". A "cheater" is just a cell which, despite its common origin, has mutated to compete with the other cells instead of cooperate with them. And indeed, we see cells do that; we also see adaptations -- the tumor suppressor genes -- specifically designed to inhibit such cells.

</comment><comment><USER3> Isn't this kind of a confused presentation? (I'm talking about the popular article, of course; I have no doubt the researchers know their stuff.) The cells of multi-cellular organisms like whales and humans aren't just cooperative, they are genetically _identical_ , which means their evolutionary prospects are tied together. The DNA in a pancreas cell is the same DNA as in a sperm cell, so it's "in the pancreas cell's interest" to help out the body. (Really, the key idea is the evolution is a competition between the _bits_ stored in DNA, not the physical DNA itself.) And the root reason the cells of multi-cellular organisms like whales and humans are identical is because of sexual reproduction. So the key bottleneck isn't the one-ness of the one cell, it's the genetic identical-ness.

Now, yes, once you say all that I guess you can say that the mutations in animal cells leading to non-cooperative behavior (i.e. cancer) are evidence of this 100-division limit. But the amoebae are qualitatively very different since they aren't all genetically identical. It's really closer to the cooperation between human * families* than human cells, isn't it?

<comment><USER4> > The cells of multi-cellular organisms like whales and humans aren't just > cooperative, they are genetically identical

[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090715131449.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090715131449.htm)

<comment><USER5> The article didn't explain the genetic difference very well... can you provide an explanation?

<comment><USER6> They found out that the pathogenic mutation was only present in vascular tissue, but not in blood cells.

DNA replication errors occur all the time, even in multi-cellular organisms. Some of them lead to cancer, but most of them are either lethal (for the cell), or, most of the time, innocuous.

The most likely scenario for the abdominal aortic aneurism is the following: A mutation can occur during organogenesis, in utero. The earlier it occurs, the more cells will be affected. Said mutation can be initially benign, but become problematic in the long run. If the mutation occurs after the differentiation between fibroblasts and blood progenitor cells, only affecting the former, you get the scenario described in the ScienceDaily article.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A surprising Node.js failure: deterministic code becomes probabilistic under load - <AUTHOR> http://www.smashcompany.com/technology/a-surprising-nodejs-failure-mode-deterministic-code-becomes-probabilistic-under-load <comment><USER2> Are you waiting for the data set to fully load before allowing the process to respond to requests?

Are you running just a single node.js process or more than one?

Does the node.js process restart if it crashes?

Could you run in a debugger with a breakpoint inside a check for records being empty?

</comment><comment><USER3> > it stores 4 gigs of data in memory

I'm not sure how a single node process was able to load 4 gbs worth of data into memory? I thought there was a hard limit of 1.5GB per process.

<comment><USER4> It's 1.7GB (for 64bit node) unless you change the limit with the `--max-old- space-size` flag.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Link to source broken.

<comment><AUTHOR> What do you mean? If I click the headline I go to the article.

<comment><USER4> The article has a link to "source" at the bottom that 404s.

<comment><AUTHOR> That article is the source, but yes, the source link should not be there.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


"What type of geek were you?"  Type 3: The Tinkerer. - <AUTHOR> http://www.suck.com/daily/99/02/10/nc_index5.html

<comment><AUTHOR> The whole thing is pretty insightful: <http://www.suck.com/daily/99/02/10/index.html></comment>


Papers We Love Conf 2017 Videos - <AUTHOR> https://pwlconf.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> Each individual video is also on the individual speaker's page:

[https://pwlconf.org/2017/kenichi-asai/](https://pwlconf.org/2017/kenichi- asai/) [https://pwlconf.org/2017/elaine- chew/](https://pwlconf.org/2017/elaine-chew/) [https://pwlconf.org/2017/chas- emerick/](https://pwlconf.org/2017/chas-emerick/) [https://pwlconf.org/2017/ron-garcia/](https://pwlconf.org/2017/ron-garcia/) [https://pwlconf.org/2017/james-long/](https://pwlconf.org/2017/james-long/) [https://pwlconf.org/2017/heather-miller/](https://pwlconf.org/2017/heather- miller/) [https://pwlconf.org/2017/fabienne- serriere/](https://pwlconf.org/2017/fabienne-serriere/)</comment>


Your pacemaker could be put in the witness box against you - <AUTHOR> https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2017/07/24/your-pacemaker-could-be-put-in-the-witness-box-against-you/ <comment><USER2> The implanted RFID chip that one company is implanting in 50 volunteers could likewise be used against a person to prove when they are in the office or when they are not. But I think this is the first time a medical device and access to the devices information through medical records has been used in this capacity.

Technology can do wonderful things but there will always be the flip side such as when that technology could be used in ways that someone may not like.</comment>


Sexy prime - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexy_prime <comment><USER2> Numberphile video on sexy primes: [https://youtu.be/WJ12DYBuazY](https://youtu.be/WJ12DYBuazY)

This is one of my favorite youtube channels. They make videos on various math topics that are understandable by laypeople.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is there any practical use to these classifications? It seems to me that lager primes are distributed more or less randomly, so I don't really see the point of looking for constellations like this. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER4> Number theory is always pointless until an application is found and it becomes a separate field of research.

<comment><USER5> I guess the question is more: what makes these primes more interesting than, say, cousin (differ by 4) or twin (differ by 2) primes, or any other differ- by-n primes.

<comment><USER4> In this case, nothing that I know of. Again, that's the kind of math that is classified as "number theory". It's just pure investigation of relationships between numbers. Occasionally you gain some insight that is useful.

A lot of cryptography used to be just number theory until computers came along and were powerful enough to make use of it. How to tell if something if someting is divisible by 3. Checksums as used on credit cards. Euler's algorighm.

No, sexy primes don't really have a point other than they are identified and there is probably some unused conjecture that they are infinite in number.

<comment><USER6> Using Euclid's algorithm (not Euler's) is certainly not the easiest way of checking for divisibility by 3 - a number is divisible by 3 if and only if it's sum of digits is divisible by 3. You can repeat the process until you have one digit.

<comment><USER5> But what if you start with a binary representation?

<comment><USER7> Do it in quaternary. Add pairs of bits.

<comment><USER8> Or you can form the alternating sum of the bits, e.g. for 0b10011001 you calculate 1-0+0-1+1-0+0-1 = 0 which is divisible by three. (That's similar to the divisibility test by 11 of a number in base-10, or more generally testing if a number in base `b` is divisible by b+1)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Last year both my sister and I, and my mom and dad had sexy prime years. The coolest thing is that all my family of 5 had a prime number of years, pretty incredible. I wrote about it here: [https://medium.com/@0x0ece/primes-twin- primes-and-my-moms-bd...](https://medium.com/@0x0ece/primes-twin-primes-and- my-moms-bday-14188d149b57)

<comment><USER10> Last year my family was all prime: 5, 7, 47, and 53. Six years from now, we will be 11, 13, 53, and 59. And then 36 year from now when the kids are approaching middle age.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > In an arithmetic progression of five terms with common difference 6, one of > the terms must be divisible by 5, because 5 and 6 are relatively prime. > Thus, the only sexy prime quintuplet is (5,11,17,23,29); no longer sequence > of sexy primes is possible.

Pretty neat.

</comment><comment><USER12> This page contains visualization of sexy primes up to 1 million - [https://prime-numbers.info/article/sexy-primes#visualization](https://prime- numbers.info/article/sexy-primes#visualization)

You can also compare their density with normal primes on this page - [https://prime-numbers.info/special/visual-type- comparison#se...](https://prime-numbers.info/special/visual-type- comparison#sexy-prime--prime--1)

Best thing is that you can enjoy those videos for 11 hours. :)

</comment><comment><USER13> Sounds like the name of an Amazon adult streaming service

</comment><comment><USER14> Before reading the article I thought it would be about prime numbers which encode erotic images in a similar fashion to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_prime](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_prime) . (in which case if the image depicts a minor, it would be a sexy illegal prime...)

</comment><comment> kyle-rb Website displaying random pairs: [http://primes.sexy](http://primes.sexy)

</comment><comment><USER15> This is clickbait done right.

<comment><USER16> Interesting we call, a topic never will know as it is not too sexy. Just number even one may say, but why they have patterns.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Now earwormed to the tune of "baby shark".

Also, Mersenne Prime, Happy Prime, Lucky Prime etc...

</comment><comment><USER18> They didn't have the guts to call a prime triplet involving a sexy prime a threeway or ménage à trois? Boo!

<comment><USER19> Came here to say that. I was going to recommend it be called a prime threesome though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> They're primes which are separated by exactly six non-prime numbers. It remains an open question whether or not there are infinitely many sexy primes.

More generally, see the article on prime gaps: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_gap](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_gap)

<comment><USER21> > They're primes which are separated by exactly six non-prime numbers.

That doesn't match what the article says: "prime numbers that differ from each other by six". So they're separated by five other numbers (which are not necessarily all non-primes).

<comment><USER4> Separated by five natural numbers.</comment></comment></comment>


Phishing Protection – Comparing DNS Security Filters - <AUTHOR> https://firstname.lastname@example.com/phishing-protection-comparing-dns-security-filters-9d5a09849b91 <comment><USER2> You should consider that only a very small amount of phishing domains and URLs ever make it to phishtank,openphish and similar services.

I welcome what the author is doing but you need to do a bit more for phishing protection, like blocking newly registered and/or uncategorized domains.

I wonder if there are browser extensions for this sort of stuff?

<comment><USER3> Yes there are browser extensions that offer phishing/malware protection

[https://malwaretips.com/threads/updated-3-6-18-browser- exten...](https://malwaretips.com/threads/updated-3-6-18-browser-extension- comparison-malwares-and-phishings.80915/page-5#post-739934)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is not very scientific.

<comment><USER5> Agreed, and very light on the technical. A few months ago when I was working on setting up a pi-hole with and testing DNS blocking, I came across a few articles like this. Long story short, I could not find a -verifiable-, in depth and even slightly scientific method approved study for the major free services. Ended up going with blocklist on the pi-hole and using quad-9 just for the DNSSEC addition. No problems so far, and not buying into the other snake oil.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What about false positives?

</comment><comment><USER7> I doubt that the free OpenDNS is maintained now.

<comment><USER8> It is, but the OpenDNS resolver tested is for FamilyShield which is only advertised as blocking "Tasteless, Proxy/Anonymizer, Sexuality and Pornography."</comment></comment>


[Kinect] Microsoft exec caught in privacy snafu - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/15/microsoft-exec-caught-in-privacy-snafu-says-kinect-might-tailor/

<comment><USER2> Ads tailored to me is fine. It's what -else- they might do with that data, like sell it, that bothers me.

I'm -rather- watch ads that are targeted to me than ones that aren't... And of course, I'd rather not watch them at all, given that choice.</comment>


Anti-vaccine activists spark a state's worst measles outbreak in decades - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/anti-vaccine-activists-spark-a-states-worst-measles-outbreak-in-decades/2017/05/04/a1fac952-2f39-11e7-9dec-764dc781686f_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_hp-in-the-news%3Apage%2Fin-the-news&utm_term=.7886190129e8 <comment><USER2> Discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14280709](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14280709)

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> TL;DR

"...a discredited theory spread through the local Somali community, by meetings organized by anti-vaccine groups. The activists repeatedly invited Andrew Wakefield, the founder of the modern anti-vaccine movement...

Anti-vaccine activists defend their position and their role, saying they merely provided information to parents.

"The Somalis had decided themselves that they were particularly concerned," Wakefield said last week. "I was responding to that." He maintained that he bears no fault for what is happening within the community. "I don't feel responsible at all," he said.

...activists started showing up at community health meetings and distributing pamphlets, recalled Lynn Bahta, a nurse who worked with Somali nurses to counter MMR vaccine resistance within the community. At one 2011 gathering featuring Wakefield, armed guard barred her, other public health officials and reporters from attending."</comment>


Grooveshark Redesign - <AUTHOR> http://www.grooveshark.com

<comment><AUTHOR> It's been in the works for a while, but was only available to paid users, finally hits the mainstream! :D</comment>


Car and Driver's Review of the 1981 De Lorean (1981) - <AUTHOR> http://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/1981-de-lorean-archived-first-drive-review <comment><USER2> I considered buying a Delorean once to drive around. I was at a point in my life where I didn't really need a car for transportation, yet, being a single guy, it was socially easier to have a car. So, I figured, why not make a statement?

Besides the obvious visual "wow" factor associated with the car and the Back to the Future franchise, they're surprisingly inexpensive for such an iconic car. The main problem with them is that Delorean Motor Company didn't really follow the concept of "model years," instead changing things as they went along, so restoring one to original condition is practically impossible. I was also not a fan of the aluminum engine block, since, if it ever got just slightly too hot, there's a good chance it would be ruined forever.

My second choice vehicle, BTW, would have been some kind of van painted up like the Scooby Doo Mystery Machine. :)

<comment><USER3> > The main problem with them is that Delorean Motor Company didn't really > follow the concept of "model years," instead changing things as they went > along, so restoring one to original condition is practically impossible.

I've heard there is a new car company that does something similar (not having precise model years) and also offers a car with gullwing doors.... I think it starts with a "T".... I wonder if they'll be hard to restore when collectors look back in 20 years.

<comment><USER4> Teslas will be effectively impossible to maintain. On the upside there are way fewer moving parts to go awry.

<comment><USER5> There will be some forum on the internet where a bunch of guys are reverse engineering them, much as they do for 6502 based systems now.

<comment><USER6> That's when I will probally buy one. I was just thing about this the other day. I was thinking when they get to the used market, and guys start modifying them; that's the day I'll put on my dielectric gloves and put that charging station in my garage.

Right now, a vechicle I can't modify, and work on is just not my style. If I had disposable income, it would probally be a different story.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Now here's the modernized De Lorean.[1] Stanford's auto shop (yes, they have one) upgraded a DeLorean. They pulled the engine and power train, and put in an electric drive from Renovo, which makes supercars. Then they put in the controls for autonomous operation. Then they programmed it to drift.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNIDcT0Zdj4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNIDcT0Zdj4)

<comment><USER8> ... and they named it Marty.

<comment><USER9> Driff Tanen would have been in order.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _the rattles had squeaks_

That's a great bit of writing right there.

<comment><USER11> The writing definitely struck me as well. I wonder whether this was just par for the times or if this a particular writer's take on fine writing for car reviews. It's almost inaccessible, but it is definitely interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> > "every one of us is rushing back to the typewriter with more questions than > answers"

Those were the times...

</comment><comment><USER13> > We hereby hand the onus back to the kind folks at DMC who laid their > progress and problems out for all the world to see. Clearly, their future > pivots on a single unresolved issue: will the Dunmurry plant rise to the > cause and start building the silver bullets John Z. intended? Or will the De > Lorean become another Concorde—a technological marvel that turns out to be > an economic disaster? Find out for sure in our next installment.

Well, we saw how _that_ went, albeit for reasons other than the difficulty of producing a reliable gull-wing door.

</comment><comment><USER14> 130 HP? Has the definition changed?

<comment><USER15> No. Cars are amazing now. 35 years of tech, like compound interest, it adds up. Also, i think the time machine was widely regarded as being a bit underpowered. 9 second 0-60 wasn't all that great, even for then.

<comment><USER16> On the other hand:

1953 Corvette: 150 horsepower

1963 Corvette: 250 horsepower

1970 Corvette: 300 horsepower

1971 Corvette: 270 horsepower

1973 Corvette: 190 horsepower

1975 Corvette: 150 horsepower

The 1970s were dark, crummy times, due to emissions regulations and the oil crisis. By 1981 when the Delorean came out, the Corvette was still stuck at 190 horsepower.

So, building a powerful engine isn't hard, but building a powerful engine that fits within post-1970s emissions standards is.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, that's fair. And not much computation available for design work.

Still, cars now are amazing. I mean, you could pick up a $60k 700hp mass produced monster this year. I can't think of the last time i've heard of a tire failing. Stuff is made by machines, they're unbelievably reliable. You should easily get 100k out of any new car.

<comment><USER17> Modern sports cars are truly amazing. I have a C6 corvette and it's both a monster on the track and comfortable enough to run coast-to-coast with ease (something I've done twice now). The technology just keeps getting better and better. Throw in 28 mpg on the highway, and it's just silly.

<comment><USER18> What I find interesting is that some of the most amazing engines are actually produced by tiny companies e.g. the 500hp 3L V8 designed by Atom:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariel_Atom#Ariel_Atom_500](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariel_Atom#Ariel_Atom_500)

<comment><USER17> I just saw an Atom drive by the other day - the driver looked happy, ha ha.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wouldn't mind seeing more cars with brushed metal exteriors. The doors I can skip.

</comment><comment><USER20> A few years before that, I went to the FedEx office at the St. Louis airport to pick up a package. While waiting in line, I overheard a guy talking about how he was a driver for a new car company and was taking it around the country to show potential dealers to get them to sign up to sell it. I struck up a conversation with him and he invited me to come out and see this new, different type of car and, there it was, one of the first minted DeLoreans.</comment>