Ask HN: My co-founders are trying to get rid of me. What should I do? - <AUTHOR> Hello HN. Me and 3 of my co-founders applied to an incubator (which I don't name) and we got in. The incubator took 6% and the rest of the equity was supposed to be divided among the 4 founders. I would receive 30% based on the time and money I put in.
I absolutely trusted my co-founders and didn't check the incorporation papers but it seems that the incubator (+ the mentors in that incubators) and my co-founders didn't want me as a founder and didn't allocate me any equity.
I have tried talking to them about this and they said we'll give you the equity after the incubator program is over which is nonsense. Since I'm not officially a shareholder, do I have any leverages to take my 30%? (In 3 months the product is going to be complete and since I'm the main engineer on the team, I think they only want me for that 3 months and are not going to give me my equity after 3 months)
what do you think I should do? My options are:
1. keep working and hope I'll get the 30% after 3 months which is unlikely
2. quit the company and work on the project alone. (I can directly contact some of the contacts we have and ask for money, then I can hire other people to help me out)
3. confront them and demand the 30%
UPDATE
Thank you all for all the help. I have been compensated for the past 2 months (everyone has been) but not the previous 8 months. We had a verbal agreement, but they have already failed to compensate me with the 30% of equity.
My co-founders are actually not very smart and rational, and I'm sure they haven't thought this through. They're on average 10 years older than me (they're all in their 30s and I'm 22) so I'm just a kid in their eyes that they can get rid off once they have the product.
the team consists of one software engineer, two electrical engineers (hardware guys but we're a software company and they mostly do business stuff) and a business guy. <comment><USER2> As others have noted, you are in a very strong position given your ownership of the code. DO NOT SIGN ANY IP AGREEMENTS! Also do not take any money from any of your co-founders or the incubator. Maintain your leverage over the situation and ask yourself if you really want to be in business with any of these people? To be honest it sounds like your best option here is number 2. The incubator acceptance is your personal market validation, think about incorporating your current effort and make this company (which you maintain 100% ownership of until you need a co-founder) the holder of the IP.

Another co-founder may have come up with the idea, but ideas are worth literally nothing so do not let that sway you. Above all, walk away. Quickly. And take everything with you.

<comment><USER3> I second that. The minute you take money from one of them you are an employee and they get to keep the code.

Don't sign anything or agree to anything verbally (in many countries that is legally binding) unless they are willing to immediately write it down and sign it.

<comment><USER4> Just don't sign anything until your lawyer has read the document that you're signing. If you don't have a lawyer already, you need to get one before you do anything else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Gather all of your correspondence, particularly anything written that discusses equity and speak to a lawyer. A short consultation won't cost very much and they'll be able to give much better advice that is specific to your situation than a bunch of random people on the internet.

<comment><USER6> Ignore the rest of the people here; you need to see a lawyer who can look at the contracts you have or have not signed, the emails you have, the state this company is incorporated in, and advise you as to what your rights are.

ps -- instead of being emotional and incoherent (it's natural to be upset about this, but it doesn't help), write out a short summary organized by date with any supporting documentation. Keep it brief. Make it complete. Give this to a lawyer during a consultation. It will do a much better job summarizing things than you trying to explain it all verbally with all the things you'll forget or tell out of order. This is from unfortunate personal experience.

<comment><USER7> An attorney can help you work through the mechanics of your situation, some additional things to keep in mind (while you're getting materials to talk to them because really, do that first):

1\. Try talking to someone who you trust & who is totally unconnected (maybe a family member) and get an alternative and more charitable interpretation of the other founders' actions. In the end you may not believe it but it's a useful perspective.

2\. Only work with people you like and trust. From the sound of it whatever the legal options you probably don't want to keep working with this team.

3\. Founder equity is not worth much if you don't also have a continuing role in the company (leverage) or a strong relationship with the remaining founders (trust). There are many things that can happen in future financing that are highly dilutive and if protecting your interests is not seen as essential your 30% could end up not worth a lot (or readily liquid). Cash in any amount is probably more valuable.

4\. Even if you legally can use the IP for a new company doing so could give the current team ammunition to take shots at your reputation.

Good luck.

<comment><USER6> I think you're totally right, but as the op was discussing taking the idea and pursuing it on his or her own, it would be a debacle to do that with a legal overhang. God forbid it takes off but he or she turns out not to own it...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > " I absolutely trusted my co-founders and didn't check the incorporation > papers but it seems that the incubator (+ the mentors in that incubators) > and my co-founders didn't want me as a founder"

There is already broken trust at this stage. Normally I would want you to ask yourself if you are sure you are reading the situation correctly and recommend you consult an attorney...but I've seen these stories play out time and time again.

Even if you work past this issue, the trust is gone, and it's just a matter of time before there is another falling out.

Even if you did get your 30% equity, very few startups survive messy founder breakups and I don't really think the equity will ever be worth anything.

Your best option (if you can legally) is to leave them and start a new company where you own 100%.

Your next best option is to demand a hefty payout in exchange for the code base and/or agree to finish building it out for a premium fee on your time.

Bottom line, get out of there ASAP...

<comment><USER9> Or consult an attorney and threaten to sink the ship. They should buy you out/pay you off/settle.

Don't feel bad, remember, they screwed you first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Huge red flag IMO. I would leave ASAP. If they didn't see your value from the get go, they probably won't see it until its gone.

If you try to demand the equity and they actually do give it to you(which I highly doubt will be anything remotely close to 30% IMO), you're going to have a huge target on your back in the future if you do continue working with them. They didn't even consult with you before deciding on the numbers. They did not give you ANY equity at all. So none of the 3 other founders said anything to back you up?

What legitimate reason is there to not give you the 30% from the get go?

</comment><comment><USER11> It's a sad situation. But if I were in your position, I would simply play hardball:

1\. Leave immediately.

2\. Don't work on the project alone. Just sit it out. Why? Because you could be accused of taking the IP, or something similar.

BTW 1: I doubt the incubator is being run by moral people if they are letting the other co-founders act like jerks.

BTW 2: How much time, effort, talent and money did the other co-founders contribute? Who came up with the idea?

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the reply. Fortunately there's no IP in place. One of my cofounder's came up with the idea but I have been the only one executing and making the product. Other co-founders have been doing "networking" and haven't had any success with it. All the codebase sits a Github organization which is administrated by me and a license text is attached to every single file saying that I own all rights to that code.

<comment><USER12> So what is the problem? Sounds like it is your product, not theirs. And seems like you don't really need them. Why not just go and develop it by yourself as a different company and have 100% of the equity?

They will have nothing but the name of the company and will not be ale to compete with you. Any moral obligation you had to the guy who came up with the idea got thrown out of the window then he tried to screw you out of the company.

Edit:

If that is really what is going on here. Make sure that it's not just a misunderstanding.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The suggestion to talk to a lawyer is not a bad one, but I'll add my voice to those suggesting you just walk out the door. It sounds like you haven't been working on this very long anyway. Have you been compensated in any form at all? If so, you might have to give them the code you've written. But if not, seems to me (IANAL) that all you had was a verbal agreement which they've reneged on -- so they have nothing to hold over you and you can do whatever you want.

If you've described the situation accurately, then it doesn't sound like your co-founders have thought this through very carefully. Who do they expect to build the product if you don't? Maybe if you actually walk out it will bring them to their senses.

</comment><comment><USER14> Lol. Funny to read you are in my situation 3 years back. Had joined a team where I did not at all trust that one guy but the others were ok. They asked me to join on an equal share basis and asked me to lead the dev team in Chile and relocate from Germany for that. That one guy came over for just the first month. I was not a beneficiary of the incubator and after a month in Chile, we had to found a company and that company was to be owned by only two of the four founders, with "that guy" putting himself at 50%. I brought up the topic in a skype meeting with 15 supporters and at the time I had figured that mentioning that I signed up for 25% of the cake might get people angry and "that guy" yelled at me he would fly down to Chile and kick my butt … anyway, long story short, I took my hat and our Chilean founding partner made sure I got my 90% reembursement of the reembursable money I had put in, and 100% of what I paid to our developers to make them good for what "that guy" and the other German partner didn't pay.

At the time, I was super stressed and worried and tried to document everything in case it will be of relevance later on.

Yeah, that was three years ago and I'm forever thankful for our Chilean partner that took a great financial hit later on when the startup finally went down but that I only heard second hand …

Anyway, I'm still in Chile and like it here.

Not all startups will be the next Facebook. Being in an incubator is not only a job. Make up your mind. Don't sign stuff against your interest.

</comment><comment><USER15> I think it's unlikely that you'll fix the situation and remain a member of your company with your 30%; cofounder disputes, especially at such an early stage, almost never end amicably, and they ruin many, many companies. It sucks; I'm sorry that things ended this way.

So it seems like you have two options: 1) Walk away 2) Walk away and hire a lawyer

Whether or not you hire a lawyer depends on whether or not the company is worth anything. The answer is probably no, if you're relatively new and have just been accepted into an incubator, but if the company has significant revenue, a real valuation, or other overwhelming signs that it really is valuable, then you could consider hiring an employment lawyer, with the knowledge that it will be a large out-of-pocket expense.

If you're passionate about the idea, go do it on your own, or with new cofounders. Don't take any code - it's not yours and it's a good way to cause yourself more problems in the future - but run with the idea and out-execute your old team. And good luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> There's not a lot you can do. You've done work for the company, but it seems they have not compensated you for it. Legal action is possible, but would be a horrible end.

The code is under your control use that as bargaining power, but you need to actually intend to leave (but I wouldn't work on it, without a lawyer reviewing it, with the intention of continuing the project on your own, that could get legally hairy) with it if this is not resolved immediately. That said they've screwed you majorly already do you really think that would be the end of it if you got your 30%?

I'd say demand 10% for the work you've done and for you to part ways amicably.

</comment><comment><USER16> I would walk away. Actually, consider yourself lucky that they've shown their true face so early on and you can get out now :-)

When considering hiring a lawyer etc., also take a look at opportunity cost: Even in the best case scenario, will you get more money out of it then if you freelance for a similar amount of time? Probably not...

(Also, learning from the Winklevoss twins, it seems preferable to sue a company when it is actually successful, because they got way more to loose at that point then now. Although I strongly doubt that they'll be successful...)

</comment><comment><USER17> Flow like the river. River always reaches its destination no matter what and how many obstacles she faces. Corny as it may sound it has worked for me so far. This may mean any of the 3 forks and other meanderings others have suggested. Get buy in for the value you create from as many people(team, investors, other stakeholders not even considered like family) as you can get support from responsibly. When majority sees/expresses value, minority tend to think twice about deliberately ignoring that value. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER18> If any code you've written (or anything you've produced that constitutes IP) is in their released product, they have to compensate you for it. In startups, the compensation is typically in the form of equity.

As others already alluded, in any case, it does not seem that you want to go forward in business with either the founders or the incubator.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the reply, no released product as of yet and there's no IP in place

<comment><USER3> It doesn't need to be released to be IP.

<comment><AUTHOR> I haven't signed any agreements to transfer the IP rights to the company

<comment><USER3> What about verbal agreements? They're a pain in the ass to enforce, but constitute fully legal contracts (at least in the USA).

Or accepting money from one of the other founders? That could make you an employee and then you don't need to sign anything for them to take your code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> dont give them access to your code, try not to share anything include idea, system knowledge etc until they are give the 30% like they promise.

For me, will take option 1 with consider above consideration.

<comment><USER20> agreed. at this point it won't help you to give them any more access to the code you wrote

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I agree with the sentiment in the other comments, except that

as with most complicated situations, there is often the urge to "do what's Right", such as "walk immediately" in this case, out of frustration. While that's understandable, it is also often the case that you should _Think Through_ the situation before acting.

You are not under pressure to respond right away--there is no explicit hard deadline, so you should take your time to think clearly, consult lawyers, and weight all your options before making a judgement. It could very well be that you might decide, after contemplating more, that you should walk, but do take the time to think about the pros/cons first and try not to make rash decisions. Your goal is to choose the option that benefit you personally the most given the situation

</comment><comment><USER21> 4\. Quit the company. Find better co-founders.

As a technical co-founder, you're the one in high demand. Why stay at a company that undervalues you? The opportunity cost is very high. Find better people working on something interesting.

I wouldn't continue working on this. Sunk cost fallacy. Recoup the cost instead. Ask them to pay you for the work you've put in so far before you give them the code. Then I'd move on to bigger and better things. Focus your energies on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems.

</comment><comment><USER22> Option #2 is a very good way to get sued and spend the next 2 years in court.

Walk away, and learn a very expensive lesson. Read your damn contracts!

</comment><comment><USER23> What is the current state of traction? As many will tell you, ideas are worthless...and in many cases, product is near worthless too. What is of value is customers. Do you/they have any? If not, you're not really walking away from much as it is, better to just leave this mess and start fresh with someone else or on your own.

</comment><comment><USER24> There is a chance I am familiar with the incubator you refer to and I am a software engineer who has had similar experiences in the past. Please send me an email at firstname.lastname@example.com if you'd like to connect and to see if there is any way I can help.

</comment><comment><USER25> Walk, if they want you back, charge them ludicrous consulting rates.

</comment><comment><USER26> 1\. For now make sure nobody but you has access to the code

2\. Lawyer up

3\. Please let us know how this turns out.

Remember, Greed kills. A former partner of mine never got enough. In the end, he ended up with nothing.

</comment><comment><USER27> Surprise no one has asked yet but which incubator is advocating removal of a founder and is okay with the other guys doing this?

Also age or whatever is not an excuse.

</comment><comment><USER28> I will prefer Third option if not work then second.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the reply, I have already kind of tried option 3 but they just gave me a lame answer that they'll give it to me after the 3 months

<comment><USER29> Reply and say "That's not good enough." Nothing else. Makes your position clear and leaves the ball in their court. You still have all options available to you, but might motivate them to act.

Sadly, unless I'm misreading the situation, the relationship is likely broken enough that you wouldn't want to continue with them. You'd be either going it alone with your codebase or asking them to buy you out, subject to you seeing it through to launch, perhaps?

If you can negotiate a payout rather than equity, it might be a better return given their networkers aren't networking.

<comment><USER30> Another variant is four words: "we had an agreement." This emphasises that you had already agreed to something.

I agree with everything else, it's very unlikely to work out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> You are and you will be an employee. Ask to get fully compensated for the previous 8 months and if not, leave right now.

<comment><USER26> Let this for a lawyer or judge to be decided. Besides this, this was not the question if he is an employee or not. He can be an employee AND have equity.

<comment><USER31> It is extremely easy to dilute ownership of equity. If double crossed, I would not fantasize about ownership. I would run away, if possible in good terms (paid for all previous work). Life is too short.

<comment><USER26> A well drafted contract can not prevent dilution but can make it very difficult do "dilute you out".

Currently all the balls are in his court. He could even demand "undiluteable" equity. I don't know what to expect from his start-up. But why just walk out with nothing when all the cards are in your hand?

<comment><AUTHOR> The startup is pretty solid, thats why I don't want to leave. Our beta hardware and software has around 20000 beta testers and is profitable

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> They need you to raise the money they'll use to replace you.

</comment><comment><USER33> 2\. quit the company and work on the project alone.

</comment><comment><USER34> Speaking from personal experience, ignore such warning signs at your peril. I wrote about what happened to me a while back, and there are enough similarities here that you might be interested in giving the story a read [1].

If you choose to fight over this issue, it's going to come down to the attorneys. You'll have to decide early on what the desired outcome is: do you want out, presumably compensated for your earlier investment, or do you still want to be part of the company with the rights due a shareholder? If, as I assume based on your wording, you invested money into the company as well as your labor, that helps make things much more clear cut which would make an agreement more likely. It'd still be long and messy, but not as long as a fight without that investment. It's also possible that just hiring counsel will help them budge. Legally, there's no real reason for them to delay awarding equity for three months unless they're purposely trying to prevent you from exercising any input during the incubator program (and with any negotiations that occur during that time). At a very minimum, it makes things more difficult for them by hampering your relationship--and that's something any outside investor will eventually stumble upon and start asking undesirable questions about assuming it doesn't scare them off entirely to begin with.

That said, even if you prevail without having to litigate, you're still going to lose. That, unfortunately, is inevitable: your co-founders have already amply demonstrated a willingness to stick a knife in your back. Even though shareholders have certain rights available to them, there's no guarantee your co-founders will bother recognizing those rights. There are a myriad of different ways in which a minority shareholder can be oppressed and frozen out of the business. Whether they're making decisions without informing you, cutting your wages outright (it's not like they'll be paying dividends for some time), or purposely diluting your shares, they have the ability to make your life miserable with a fig leaf of justification thanks to their majority status and your only option for recompense is through the courts. And while it's likely that you'd eventually succeed, it'd only be after lengthy and expensive litigation--assuming, of course, that the startup doesn't fail by the time you're done (and the battle itself would certainly harm the company, particularly in the eyes of potential investors).

Leaving hurts. Being forced to leave hurts even more. But sticking around? Even if you feel that you win this round, even if they capitulate immediately, the knowledge that countless more are waiting just around the corner will wear you down. It'll wear you down, suck away your savings to pay for constant legal advice even if you manage to avoid litigation, and it'll do so while destroying every last thing that made you want to found a startup in the first place. One day, you'll wake up and wonder just what happened to you thanks to what was, in the end, nothing more than a pyrrhic victory.

You won't be the first, and you most certainly won't be the last. As it stands, you're in a no-win situation. Consult with an attorney before you make a move to avoid any potential problems (for instance, how much code did you write yourself versus other programmers/employees), take your code, and walk away.

P.S. - If they're planning to get rid of you once all "the code" is written, it's unlikely that the startup is going to succeed in the end anyhow. That sort of short-sighted attitude makes it abundantly clear that your partners have no real desire to improve upon the product over time.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7579845](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7579845)

</comment><comment><USER35> leave</comment>


IDOS strikes back, returns to the App Store - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/20/idos-strikes-back-returns-to-the-app-store/ <comment><USER2> I thought emulators were explicitly not allowed in a number of places of the App Store terms? Did they convince Apple this is only like Capcom's Arcade app?</comment>


Apple is working on a new iPhone feature "Proactive" to rival Google Now - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-working-on-ios-9-feature-proactive-to-compete-with-google-now-2015-5

<comment><USER2> Since Apple has gone the route of presenting themselves as the protectors of privacy I struggle to see how they will have the ability to be half as useful as Google Now.

I just read apple.com/privacy/ statement again. Many felt it was a shot against Google. It just says selling your information to marketers and no back doors for government ever. So it looks like Apple's privacy statements are not broken by Google Now's actions.</comment>


Wikipedia founder (Jimbo Wales) sets his sites on Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/114/features-why-is-this-man-smiling.html <comment><USER2> I would personally hate for my start-up to be positioned in this way in media during its starting stages. Another example is Powerset which has raised millions, has been touted as a google killer and hosted cool Valley parties-- and is yet to launch.

My BS meter just shoots up when I know more about a start-up's PR success than its product.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Yeah it would really put the pressure on you. It's a cool idea really but I don't see it being able to 'overthrow' Google. I guess if you have thousands and thousands of volunteers editing things but I don't see how that's going to happen.</comment>


WordPress creator slams Wix: 'Your app editor is built with stolen code' - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2016/10/28/wordpress-creator-matt-mullenweg-slams-wix-your-app-editor-is-built-with-stolen-code/ <comment><USER2> Back when blogging was just starting out, MovableType was the most popular platform. Written by Ben and Mena Trott, it was open source and written in perl.

It was awesome, super popular and could have been WordPress today.

They raised funding. Possibly under VC pressure, they made the license terms more closed source and restrictive.

Meanwhile, Matt Mullenweg had forked b2 and created WordPress under GPL.

When MovableType went closed source/more restrictive, their users fled to WordPress. The rest is pretty much history.

So what this historical context helps us understand is that firstly, WordPress/Automattic is very careful about ever going closed source with anything because they learned their lessons thanks to MovableType and what happened to them.

So WP has chosen to be open source, stay open source and defend open source because history has shown that is what the market wants and if you don't do that, they'll divorce you.

Living in that world as a multi-million (billion?) dollar company is a tough gig because, as Matt himself did with B2, anyone can fork your code and run with it.

But the one thing that WP/Automattic can count on is the GPL. If someone does fork the code, they are forever bound by the same competitive constraints that Automattic/WP is bound by. In other words: someone else can fork their code and so on in perpetuity.

So as long as WP enforces the GPL over WordPress, they will never have a competitor stronger than they are who can develop proprietary IP off their platform and gain a competitive advantage. The GPL ensures that anything created out of WordPress is always available to all competitors. And the competitor with the greatest head-start wins and that's WordPress.

This is really the basis for how multi-billion dollar companies are built out of open source. They count on the GPL to ensure everything they create never becomes a proprietary competitive advantage to a competitor that isn't also available to them.

So Matt M has a strategic imperative to always enforce the GPL on everything open source they do, or else they're building the foundation of the company that will kill them.

<comment><USER3> How could they enforce the GPL against a company offering Wordpress as a SaaS application? This Wix app is different since it's a mobile app I believe. Unless WordPress uses a version of GPL that accounts for SaaS they couldn't do much about anything but someone offering on-prem solutions or actual apps right?

<comment><USER4> You are correct. Since WP is GPLv2, there's nothing to prevent a hosting provide installing WP, making changes, and charging for the 'enhanced' service and keeping the code for themselves, because the hosted app isn't being 'distributed' to end users. (There may indeed be some nuance if part of WP is client-side JavaScript...)

And this is exactly the case that Affero GPL was written for. (Affero is a modification to GPLv3.)

<comment><USER5> any recommended resources to learn more about licenses, differences and when to consider what?

<comment><USER6> I'd like to know what is the most Stallmanite license out there. The kind that corporate lawyers would like to stay far away from, that forces downstream projects to be as open as the source.

<comment><USER4> Affero GPL. If the public can touch the product or service, you have to provide the source. My company avoids incorporating any GPL-licensed libraries, even those with linking exceptions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wix developer replying: [https://medium.com/@talkol/how-i-found-myself- accused-of-ste...](https://medium.com/@talkol/how-i-found-myself-accused-of- stealing-code-from-wordpress-a7350da9f9f2#.bgj085y0q)

<comment><USER8> _The WordPress GPL Rich Text component in question, is actually a wrapper around another Rich Text component named ZSSRichTextEditor which is licensed MIT. In retrospect it would have been easier to use it directly._

Yes, that would have been a much better decision, for a library to use in a closed-source app. Ripping out the GPL code and substituting the MIT code should be the next thing you do. Then you can apologize to all of us for not understanding how popular software licenses work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Good artists borrow, great artists steal"

More seriously, he hasn't actually shown any stolen code, just that the app feels "surprisingly familiar" [https://ma.tt/2016/10/wix-and-the- gpl/](https://ma.tt/2016/10/wix-and-the-gpl/)

Edit: I just checked the Android app and having a package named "org.wordpress.android.editor" matching the stuff in [https://github.com/wix/WordPress-Editor- Android/tree/9f0e776...](https://github.com/wix/WordPress-Editor- Android/tree/9f0e776c74ba9021cba6e1cdb7d8962131c507b8/WordPressEditor/src/main/java/org/wordpress/android/editor) is pretty convincing.

<comment><USER10> He mentioned that you can look and see on GitHub that Wix explicitly forked Wordpress repositories.

The gist I got was this - Wordpress was working on this in open source. Wix took their work, built on it, and didn't make their contributions open source, taking advantage of the repository and giving nothing back.

<comment><USER11> >>Wix took their work, built on it, and didn't make their contributions open source, taking advantage of the repository and giving nothing back.

Which is fine if the code was BSD licensed, but the article states that Wordpress uses GPL, hence Wix may be violating the license regardless of the breach in attribution etiquette.

<comment><USER12> Although it seems against the spirit of GPL, the GPL doesn't explicitly protect against code hosted as a service, so the wix website isn't in violation. That's why AGPL exists.

IANAL, but their private fork (I couldn't find a public one on Github) is also technically permissible, as it's not a redistribution of the code.

Edit: if what's in question are strictly web assets (images, js, etc), then I'm pretty sure, but not certain, this is a violation

<comment><USER13> But the app is? If they release a modified version of a GPL Android app, they would need to supply the source code, no? The Wix app would constitute a derived work.

<comment><USER12> That seems fair. The GPL has a loophole for network-provided services, but apps are native.

<comment><USER14> Correct, unless WordPress goes AGPL then Wix can keep their hosted code to themselves. However, the Android App which they should of made themselves will need to be open sourced or taken down and open sourced. The GPL if I remember correctly makes it so upon request (thinking of BMW) you must be able to provide access to the source code, even if you sell the product, that means that whoever buys a GPL'd product from you must also receive the code, but if they didn't buy your product there should be no reason for them to have it if I'm not mistaken. The GPL is interesting, and while not my first choice, it's definitely not a terrible choice.

<comment><USER13> GPL is absolutely useless for commercial products, imo. Unless you can run it encapsulated on some sort of web service as a standalone executable. If the goal is to have more open source code, and more code sharing across systems and services then more code should actually be BSD licensed.

<comment><USER14> I don't think it's completely useless. If you have software you invested a lot of money into and the company goes out of business and you have your own internal engineers (maybe you didn't want to go this route beforehand because said product was good enough) now you can carry on without the main company. In the case of WordPress unless they disappear somehow, that is when a fork will come. Look at LibreOffice vs OpenOffice. MariaDB is a great example of someone selling a product they made for a LOT of money, and then continuing on with it, now that Oracle has taken MySQL some have taken to using MariaDB instead. Don't knock the GPL, it makes many things possible.

<comment><USER13> I totally agree on that, _BUT_ I can't use it in a commercial product without releasing my entire commercial source code? The GPL prohibits many commercial applications, and even if I would want to use in something, I often cannot, because it's not feasible to release my entire codebase. There's a lot of GPL software that's just off limits, exactly because of that. In a way, it contaminates commercial codebases. That makes me sad, because a lot of GPL code is of top notch quality.

Why not opt for a BSD license? The things you wrote also apply to BSD licensed open-source software.

<comment><USER14> If you're releasing your code, it's only to the customer. The one's who receive the code are only the ones who receive the binaries and ONLY upon request, think BMW's code they released upon a customers request. Sometimes it's better to use GPL or BSD, because some customers will not use your product if there is no code to guarantee if your company disappears they can't move on without you. Look at WordPress, their code's right there, and yet nobody can overshadow them yet.

Edit:

I agree with you, but I was mentioning GPL because you placed it in question. BSD is great, MS-PL is a little nicer if you need to protect any patents too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> CEO of Wix responded: [http://www.wix.com/blog/2016/10/dear-matt-mullenweg-an- open-...](http://www.wix.com/blog/2016/10/dear-matt-mullenweg-an-open-letter- from-wix-coms-ceo-avishai-abrahami/)

<comment><USER16> About "everything we improved there or modified, we submitted back as open source", the GPL doesn't let you redistribute modified code and only release the modified code unfortunately. I guess "we will release the app you saw as well" may mean that they'd open source the whole app and thus be compliant.

Also the fact that the company was once also known as "Wixpress" is easy to verify [1], not sure why he would contest that.

[1] [http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/AMDA-29IDMU/0x0xS1193...](http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/AMDA-29IDMU/0x0xS1193125-13-387285/1576789/filing.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> A lot of people here are missing one of the core tenants of the GPL, in that any linked application must also be GPL.

Wix developers created an MIT licensed wrapper to bypass this restriction. In the terms of the GPL that isn't allowed. This is why you see BSD or MIT code being ported to the Linux kernel but it doesn't go back the other way.

Calling it stolen code is a little strong, in reality they are in violation of the GPL. If the Wordpress plugin has been LGPL or MIT then it wouldn't be an issue.

</comment><comment><USER18> [http://www.wix.com/blog/2016/10/dear-matt-mullenweg-an- open-...](http://www.wix.com/blog/2016/10/dear-matt-mullenweg-an-open-letter- from-wix-coms-ceo-avishai-abrahami/)

</comment><comment><USER19> Can someone clarify?

WP is not only SAAS, but also packaged software. You can use WP's platform to host your blog, or run it on your own server.

Wix is strictly SAAS, AFAIK (can I get a few more abbreviations in there?). You can only use their software on their platform - there is no packaged software that you can run on your own server.

Is this a GPLv3 thing? Did they somehow plug the SAAS hole?

Otherwise, it doesn't seem Mullenweg/WP has a leg to stand on.

</comment><comment><USER20> Don't get me wrong, but doesn't the gpl allow for (or at least not stop) you to charge for the code?

[https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html)

Couldn't wix just charge some ungodly sum and be done until someone ponies up the $$$?

<comment><USER21> If you are granted access to the compiled version to a piece of software covered by the GPL then the GPL grants you the right to request source for that software. For Wix to do what you suggest would also mean they would have to price the compiled app out of range its intended audience would pay thus making the app pointless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Wix CEO open letter:

[http://www.wix.com/blog/2016/10/dear-matt-mullenweg-an- open-...](http://www.wix.com/blog/2016/10/dear-matt-mullenweg-an-open-letter- from-wix-coms-ceo-avishai-abrahami/)

</comment><comment><USER23> So copyright infringement isn't 'theft', yet violating the GNU is theft? You can't download a car....

I'm really tired of these arguments. If you release something and say that it's 'free', it's pretty disingenuous to chase after someone for not releasing their own changes.

Calling it 'theft' doesn't really make sense because nothing of value was actually stolen. The original code is still there for all to enjoy.

Most places I've worked stay away from GNU code (besides compilers, servers, and anything not used in the main product) like the plague because of people like Matt Mullenweg.

I would much rather have the BSD license, which is truly free for everyone.

UPDATE: I always thought HN was the place for intelligent discourse, yet I am always disappointed.

<comment><USER24> GPL is Free as in "don't use this if you want to close it".

If you infringe the copyright on something closed, you do it by spreading that thing when you aren't supposed to. If you infringe the copyright on something open, you do it by refusing to distribute your enhancements to it when you're required to. They're not directly comparable situations.

Freedom goes in two directions. "Freedom to" and "Freedom from". The BSD license is a "Freedom _to_ enhance the code as you wish" license. The GPL licenses are "Freedom _from_ someone enhancing the code without sharing those enhancements". A "freedom to" license is great in the short term; it encourages individual products. A "freedom from" license is great in the long term; it encourages growth of the ecosystem as a whole.

Calling it "theft" is a stretch, just like in other cases of copyright violation. Still, the community is owed a release of the modified code. "Theft" captures the spirit of the situation, even if it's not applicable in the literal sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think it is a fitting punishment for those who copy parts of the Wordpress codebase in their product that they must now maintain Wordpress code in their product.

</comment><comment><USER22> Reply from Wix.

[http://www.wix.com/blog/2016/10/dear-matt-mullenweg-an- open-...](http://www.wix.com/blog/2016/10/dear-matt-mullenweg-an-open-letter- from-wix-coms-ceo-avishai-abrahami/)

</comment><comment><USER26> [http://www.wix.com/blog/2016/10/dear-matt-mullenweg-an- open-...](http://www.wix.com/blog/2016/10/dear-matt-mullenweg-an-open-letter- from-wix-coms-ceo-avishai-abrahami/)

* Grabs popcorn _

</comment><comment><USER27> The reason why someone would use something like Wix is that they don't have to deal with source code. So they wouldn't lose any business if they released their source code. They might even gain good will and popularity by doing so.

<comment><USER28> You mean they won't have to deal with hosting, 99% of Wordpress users don't look at the source code, same with Ghost, Drupal, Silverstripe, etc.

<comment><USER27> Do you think Wordpress would make more or less money if they where open/closed source ?

<comment><USER28> I think they probably wouldn't be in business if they were closed source. They built a business on top of an open source product which already existed (but was created and maintained by the CEO of Wordpress) that open source platform allows them to claim that they run 25% of the internet with the consequent brand awareness and ecosystem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> So WordPress finally created something that can be reused outside of the walled garden in other competing projects. Yay! [https://medium.com/@velmu/dear-drupal-and-wordpress- please-c...](https://medium.com/@velmu/dear-drupal-and-wordpress-please- create-decoupled-components-d91b72267716#.bw2995nd7)

I just hope Wix then pushes their changes to the editor. And then we can in the future use the UI components of the WP Apocalypse project: [https://github.com/Automattic/wp- calypso/tree/master/client/...](https://github.com/Automattic/wp- calypso/tree/master/client/components)

</comment><comment><USER30> If he had a case, he wouldn't be giving interviews about it. He'd be suing them. And he'd be right to do so.

The fact that he's slinging accusations in print rather than using the legal system to settle a legal dispute suggests to me that he does not, in fact, have any evidence Wix is doing anything untoward beyond "this smells kinda fishy to me."

<comment><USER31> In cases like this, the court of public opinion can often be all that is necessary to resolve the issue and push the violator to do the right thing. This avoids costly litigation and makes things easier on both sides. If the violator chooses to ignore the public outcry, then certainly there is the legal path to follow next.

In a non-software example, if my neighbor intends to violate my property line with his new fence plans, I'll drop by, have a glass of lemonade with him, and discuss the issue. If we come to an agreement about the property line and can resolve the issue right there, that's the best outcome. If he insists on continuing to violate my rights even after we talked about it, only then would I seek legal recourse. To jump straight to court over it not only costs me and him a ton of money, it costs something more valuable: A fractured neighbor-to- neighbor relationship, ensuring that any future encounters will be hostile and costly.</comment></comment>


We've been doing full-a$$ SCRUM for 6 months, here's what we learned - <AUTHOR> http://bostinno.streetwise.co/channels/weve-been-doing-full-a-scrum-for-6-monthes-heres-what-we-learned-1/?hm

<comment><USER2> The last three items on the list are very true but don't really have anything to do with SCRUM, that's just the way it is and you probably already knew this before you started using SCRUM. :)

</comment><comment><USER3> two week sprints :-) try doing real RAD deliveries are done every day.

Also doing stand up at the start of the day strikes me as silly doesn't take account of people commutes I prefer end of day wash-ups so when you get in first thing you can get started and not hang around for the daily scrum meeting.

<comment><AUTHOR> different strokes for different folks. The AM daily has just worked for us

<comment><USER3> mm wouldn't work in London or any where with considerable commuting I used to get in a 8:45 the rest of the team at 9:30 - that is 45 mins per day used suboptimaly.

<comment><AUTHOR> we do it at 10:30a, and most of the team is in by 9:30.

<comment><USER3> so you have over 1.5 hours potentially of people hanging around waiting for the meeting to set the days priority's.

From a time and motion perspective Better to do it at the end of the day so that you can be productive from the get go.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How can I do plain language stock market history queries? - <AUTHOR> I want to know things like "what are the 50 tech stocks that gained most in the last x weeks?"<p>Does anyone know anything in the web that does that? <comment><USER2> The "Text to SQL" parser bundled with Allen NLP may be a good starting place ([https://demo.allennlp.org/atis-parser](https://demo.allennlp.org/atis- parser)). The devil is in the details when you have to make assumptions on what the user wanted though. For instance, does "What was the worst week for tech stocks?" mean by market cap, largest relative losses, etc. If you can constrain the problem you may be able to get away with just named entity recognition.

</comment><comment><USER3> I use [http://iexcloud.io/](http://iexcloud.io/) for this...you'll have to code around it a bit but you can get the information you want.

</comment><comment><USER4> not web per se, but MS Excel has really powerful tools for stock prices. I haven't fully explored it, but I think you may have to manually specify the set of stocks you care about. But you can get prices over any dates etc.

<comment><USER5> interesting, where would I find information on that?

<comment><USER4> Docs? Probably other places [https://support.office.com/en-us/article/get-a- stock-quote-e...](https://support.office.com/en-us/article/get-a-stock- quote-e5af3212-e024-4d4c-bea0-623cf07fbc54)</comment></comment></comment>


All the best, YC Winter 2013 interviewees - <AUTHOR>

If you've been invited to interview for the YC Winter 2013 class, all the best! I am sure there are some amazing teams and ideas still in the running and we'll look forward to reading all about them.<p>A YC reject <comment><USER2> I second that. Good luck all of selected teams!</comment>


SYNQ: Upload, Store, Transcode and Deliver Videos with Simple API Calls - <AUTHOR> https://www.synq.fm/ <comment><USER2> Slightly unrelated, but is there a service that offers RTMP streaming, transcoding and automatic uploads to platforms like Youtube? I know Ustream offers this as a feature for their main streaming offering.

</comment><comment><USER3> Cool, but I'm curious: how does this compare with other solutions out there like Wistia and Video Cloud? I've only had experience with Wistia before, but this offering does sound somewhat similar.

<comment><USER4> Looks to be a lot more developer focused at first glance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This looks like a decent offering at 1st glance. Haven't done any price comparisons but it seems reasonable, esp at the entry level.</comment>


The Innovator's Dilemma: How Money Ruins Creativity - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/robasghar/2014/01/03/the-innovators-dilemma-how-money-ruins-creativity/

<comment><USER2> I'm willing to live in a homeless shelter to realize my goals. I believe when money has no power over a person, they are ultimately empowered to pursue their dreams without repercussion or worry.

The best quote I've ever heard was from a billionaire who won and lost his fortune many times over. He was asked why he kept going. His reply was that he had come into the world with nothing, and was going to leave with nothing -- the _worst_ he could ever do was break even.

Money is a utility. Money is not a goal.

</comment><comment><USER3> This isn't really a dilemma. Creativity doesn't vanish once you can afford to do certain things you couldn't previously, well-funded companies just tend to find ways to use the funds available to them to grow (ideally in addition to developing own ideas for new projects). That doesn't mean they don't need creativity to stay or become more profitable.

</comment><comment><USER4> In our world money describes your amount of freedom. No money, no freedom. A bad world.

</comment><comment><USER5> I stopped reading at the useless jab at Apple not being innovative.</comment>


10 things you might not know about India - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22772391 10 things you might not know about India <comment><USER2> I want to add two more here.

1\. India != Hindi. It's just that most people speak Hindi not that everybody knows Hindi and it's not a national language, as many people would think. According to Indian constitution there's no national language, but there are 22 scheduled languages including Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Bengali, Marathi etc.

2\. India != Bollywood. There are other film industries in India besides Bollywood. Checkout this wikipedia link: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_India>

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd guess that India doesn't appear on a whole lot of people's "places-to- visit" lists, but it really should.

I spent 11 days in India last December, and was utterly enthralled, repulsed and fascinated in about equal parts. It's an eye-opening experience to see how the majority of the world lives, and Indian culture and architecture is wonderfully rich. I definitely plan to go back again, as I was only able to scratch the surface of a tiny bit of southern India in 11 days. I'd encourage anyone else considering it to go.

Shameless plug: Here's the blog post I wrote about my trip.

<http://jasonlangenauer.com/2012/12/india/>

<comment><USER4> Thats an excellent description!

>> "... it's a scanty collection of rare and rarified bubbles where wealth can temporarily repel the squalor, poverty and filth. Step outside these bubbles, as you must, and you find India."

I grew up in India in privileged conditions, well shielded by all the filth and dirt that exists everywhere. It's only once i started attending university that i realized the extent of filth in the streets and the dysfunction in public infrastructure. Most car owning/laptop wielding Indians i know never realize just how privileged and shielded their lives are...

<comment><USER5> Sounds like Iowa 50 years ago. I grew up in a landscape of rusty machinery, wind-powered wells and mud roads. Our house was uninsulated, water froze inside the house in winter.

"Yeah, grandpa everything was terrible when you were young". Well it was. What saved us was the REC, crop insurance and better roads. There's hope for India if the new wealth translates in some way to better infrastructure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> how is this HN content

<comment><USER7> +1</comment></comment>


RIAA wants ISPs to filter for pirated content - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/02/forget-dmca-takedowns-riaa-wants-isps-to-filter-for-pirated-content/ <comment><USER2> Oh boy this again</comment>


Threat Spotlight: TeslaCrypt – Decrypt It Yourself - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.cisco.com/security/talos/teslacrypt

<comment><AUTHOR> TeslaCrypt, the latest-and-greatest ransomware branch off of the CryptoWall family, claims to the unwitting user that his/her documents are encrypted with "a unique public key generated for this computer". This coudn't be farther from truth. In actuality, the developers of this malware appear to have been lazy and implemented encryption using symmetric AES256 with a decryption key generated on the user's machine.

If any of your machines are afflicted, Talos has developed a tool that can be used to generate the user's machine's symmetric key and decrypt all of the ransomed files. (From citpyrc - Slashdot)

</comment><comment><USER2> Luckily at least some malware authors suck at cryptography, too. Generate a random symmetric key, encrypt all files with this key, encrypt the symmetric key with an asymmetric public key included in the malware. Game over. At least until someone manages to obtain the private key.

<comment><USER3> However, you do lose deniability -- if you have possession of that key, you have to explain it.

There might be more value in not requiring you keep track of a key, at the loss of some users who figure out how to unencrypt themselves (of course, I might be overestimating malware authors!)

<comment><USER4> > However, you do lose deniability -- if you have possession of that key, you > have to explain it.

Full disk encryption + encrypted VMs that are powered down when not in use + religious adherence to TOR and basic OpSec common sense -> deniability is almost irrelevant

<comment><USER5> Assuming that TOR isn't safe - which there's strong evidence to believe at the moment, and you can track down who's involved, crypto becomes as strong as the resistance to pain of the people involved.

<comment><USER4> > Assuming that TOR isn't safe - which there's strong evidence to believe at > the moment

There actually isn't strong evidence here, but regardless you should be proactively paranoid anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Post analyzing a recent sample of TeslaCrypt here: [http://www.malwarefor.me/2015-04-27-angler-ek-pushes- teslacr...](http://www.malwarefor.me/2015-04-27-angler-ek-pushes- teslacrypt-0-3-6-ransomware/)</comment>


Cool Augmented Reality App for Fixing Cars - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mn-zvymlSvk&feature=player_embedded

<comment><USER2> What's neat about this is that it essentially takes a skill, and packages it up, and allows anyone who can turn a wrench to do the same job with extremely minimal training.

Not enough Marines in the motor pool to fix all the broken trucks? No problem, augment them with some cooks.

<comment><USER3> I wonder if with this and some other stuff( for example, diagnostics using car computer) , people could easily fix their car on their own?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So how do these systems work? Do the goggles have some sort of position measuring devices or do they work through image recognition of what's in the field?

<comment><USER5> It must be positional; image recognition would seem a little too good to be true.

Would be delighted to be contradicted, though!

<comment><USER6> I've been looking into augmented reality technologies lately; vision systems are getting really good. There are some good ones here (click twice to load Flash videos, or download AVIs):

<http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~bob/research/research_ptamm.html>

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the link. Fascinating stuff, makes me want to quit and go jump into AR.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can anyone explain the importance of reducing overall head movement?

<comment><USER8> Maybe it's a rough indicator of how much looking is required to locate a part. Maybe it reduces the odds of cracking One's head on large metal objects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> DIY, internet guided surgery here we come.

Seriously though, there seems to be some very interesting potential for this type of augmented reality.

</comment><comment><USER10> This seems like is might be awkward for mechanics who were all ready good at the job.

<comment><USER4> It seems to be aimed at military in-field repairs, though, in which case it probably makes sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> neato. I did some work in his lab 10 years ago. Back then the AR getup looked something like the Ghostbusters backpack.

</comment><comment><USER5> With these maintenance tasks seemingly pretty well-defined in terms of movements and actions with 3D objects in a 3D space, it doesn't take much imagination to see a suitably equipped robot could be doing this kind of thing pretty soon.</comment>


5 reasons why consumer 3D printing is going the way of dodo - <AUTHOR> http://stratnel.com/2016/07/14/5-reasons-why-consumer-3d-printing-is-going-the-way-of-dodo-2/ <comment><USER2> I think given the cost of the larger devices, that 3D Printing as a localized service will start to appear in many areas... where you simply pay for materials + render time + membership fee(s).

There's some opportunity there, but I think the hardware still has some room to improve before it's common.</comment>


Super Fast Local Workloads with LXD, ZFS, and Juju - <AUTHOR> http://www.jorgecastro.org/2016/02/12/super-fast-local-workloads-with-juju/ <comment><USER2> For those interested, please find here [1] the recordings of Juju sessions (day 2 & 3 only) at Config Management Camp. Mark Shuttleworth's keynote is also recorded [2]. Recording of James Page's presentation [3] "Building a private cloud with the OpenStack charms" (day 1) might be available on the Ubuntu youtube channel [4] next month.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzSGDpUWtiotngRgVqpa8...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzSGDpUWtiotngRgVqpa8jeCBQ2CCjzfo)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sp_Re8Mx9xk#t=1h8m15s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sp_Re8Mx9xk#t=1h8m15s)

[3] [http://cfgmgmtcamp.eu/schedule/speakers/JamesPage.html](http://cfgmgmtcamp.eu/schedule/speakers/JamesPage.html)

[4] [https://www.youtube.com/user/celebrateubuntu](https://www.youtube.com/user/celebrateubuntu)

<comment><USER2> James Page's presentation came available at [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGeSxIB3KzY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGeSxIB3KzY) published at [4] [https://www.youtube.com/c/jujucharms](https://www.youtube.com/c/jujucharms)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't think the author of this post really understands ZFS.

Is that a 4 disk mirror? You'd be much faster using a raid10 there.

ZFS 'cache' devices are't for write cache either, you'd want a log device for write perf reasons if that's your constraint... Even then it's unlikely to make a difference on a workstation workload with 16GB of memory..

<comment><USER4> Yeah.. it is a subtle difference between

      zpool create home mirror a b c d cache e

and

      zpool create home mirror a b mirror c d cache e

<comment><USER5> Could you elaborate on the semantics of "cache"? I do understand the mirror keyword, but I know next to nothing about ZFS and don't really get what "cache" means, considering bouth your and OPs comment.

<comment><USER6> a cache drive is l2arc. Brendan Gregg's post[0] explains it well, but the TLDR is that l2arc is very much like an l2 cache in a cpu. Recent and relevant items are held on a fast drive in case it will be needed in the near future. It is really an L2 cache: L1 is called ARC and is held in dram.

If I recall correctly, the extra indexes and tags mean l2arc requires more memory to work efficiently.

[0]: [https://blogs.oracle.com/brendan/entry/test](https://blogs.oracle.com/brendan/entry/test)

<comment> semi-extrinsic When your "medium-sized test server" has 128 GB RAM and half a TB worth of SSDs... in 2008! Damn.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> LXD is great. It lowers significantly the mental burden of running something in containers because they behave essentially like a VM. That being said LXD and juju are very Ubuntu things. LXD needs wide adoption for it to be attractive as a serious workload.

<comment><USER8> If you like LXD, why can't you just use it and not care whether Redhat is using it?

<comment><USER9> Many organizations use RHEL, and individual workers cannot just spin up Ubuntu for their bank database servers.

<comment><USER8> I guess we should all give up and only use what RHEL provides to us, then, since it is the only universally available distribution.

<comment><USER9> Your sarcasm is missing the point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is a great development experience for distributed software. I'm really looking forward to Ubuntu 16.10 -- a lot of things seem to be coming together there.

<comment><USER11> Oh? I'm sure 16.10 will be great but there's a bunch of things coming in 16.04 which have me excited!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> LXD looks sweet, and seem to have many advantages over Docker. The only issue I got with it is the network settings where I miss a configuration that let me isolate the containers from the LAN, while still giving them Internet access.

<comment><USER13> The default setup for LXD is to create a NAT bridge which is what you seem to be asking for.

Maybe something went wrong with your install?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> if you want to try LXD Demo [https://linuxcontainers.org/lxd/try- it/](https://linuxcontainers.org/lxd/try-it/)

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

</comment><comment><USER15> Seeing how much it's used there, I wish ZFS would land in linux(-next/-staging) already :-).

<comment><USER16> We'll, it'll be in Ubuntu 16.04 :)

<comment><USER17> This is because of Debian's recent announcement about packaging ZFS, right? Or is more work involved in getting ZFS into Xenial?</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do you have a CS degree? - <AUTHOR>

https://twitter.com/RecodingBlog/status/269167842505662464<p>If you're a full-time programmer, do you have a degree in CS?  If you've got one, how was it?  Did it help?  If not, how did you convince your employers to give you work? <comment><USER2> I have a BSc in Comp Sci. I enjoyed getting it very very much. I have held three programming jobs, and I currently work for Google.

My first (programming) job didn't care about the degree, and I used virtually nothing from my degree.

My second job, I think they probably wouldn't have hired me without the degree, but I used very little of my CS knowledge.

I might have gotten the interview at Google without it (unclear, but I had strong internal references), but the interview process heavily depended on the sort of knowledge I got from my degree program. And I would have had a lot more trouble getting a visa without my degree; possibly prohibitive. And at this job, my CS theory skills are the least important part of my ability, but they are a necessary part. I'm also nearly the least-credentialed person on my team, FWIW.

On the other hand, one of my high-school friends also now works at Google, is senior to me, got a visa, etc.... and has no degree.

Overall, I think that 4 years of employment-while-pushing-yourself-to-learn is probably at least as valuable as a degree.... but some employers (many sweatshop ones, but also some awesome ones) won't believe that. Also, if you want to work in a country were you aren't a citizen, a degree is so helpful it's almost essential (never thought it'd happen to me, then it did).

</comment><comment><USER3> First of all, a CS degree is not just a prep-for-a-job program. CS a wide and interesting field, and a good undergrad program will give you a set of analytical tools that can be used in many places, not just software development job.

That being said, it's not for everyone.

Personally, I really enjoyed my undergrad studies and continued to get my Master's degree as well.

In terms of work, I think that a well-rounded CS education gives you an edge over uneducated programmers in the first couple of years - A CS graduate is trained to analyze and abstract problems, which makes it easier to deal with large and complicated problems faster. After a couple of years, this edge is gone - Experience matters much more at a soft-dev job.

As for convincing someone to give you a job - Show them something impressive that you've built.

</comment><comment><USER4> I interned at a defense contractor a couple of years ago. Their entry level position required either a bachelor's degree in Computer Science or four years of programming experience. Higher levels were similarly structured -- they considered four years of experience to be essentially equivalent to a degree.

While I don't agree that four years of programming == degree, for their business, it pretty much was (I would argue that the experience was more important in this case). Most of their programming team was made up of long- time engineers turned C++ coders. Come to think of it, out of a pool of four interns, three of four were CE people they were asking to do application development.

The nicest thing I see about having a degree is that it gives you an "objective" measure of your value relative to other applicants. Its considered safer to hire someone with a degree because, hey, some college has given them credentials! You can convince people you're smart by being sharp in an interview and having an impressive portfolio, but for a true programming job where innovative thought isn't really necessary (it wasn't at this place), I see a bias towards people with degrees because its seen as low risk.

Full disclosure: I have a CS degree.

</comment><comment><USER5> Although I attended university for a couple of years, I dropped out once I figured out I'd had enough of structured learning. At the time, it was not for me.

I've been programming since I was 7, professionally since I was 21 and I'm now in my late 30's. Over the years, I've been involved in some fantastic projects and companies on both sides of the pond. I've since started the move up the chain whilst keeping my fingers dirty at the code level. I've been able to mentor younger developers, deliver projects that I find interesting and contribute to opensource projects that appeal to me.

Although, I do not think my lack of a degree has held me back in any way, it does depend a lot on the country in which you live. Some countries rely more on educational background, whilst others do not.

However, times now are different than they were in the early/mid 90's. Now you're expected to have experience, education and to have launched a successful start-up before your 21st or 22nd birthday. The pressure to be awesome is incredible, and every young developer wants to work for Google, Facebook or Twitter. You know, the cool companies that are developer led and have the best toys.

</comment><comment><USER6> I didn't even graduate high school and had no means to afford a real education even if I had. I learned everything I know from tinkering with open source and the break/fix cycle.

In interviews it can be a real bummer to not have a degree because almost every business regurgitates the same live-coding tests and tests aren't the way I learn or excell. I learned most of what I know from google. Ironically google is also what lead me to the answers to the coding questions some of these companies repeatedly use which helps. However in the end since I'm up against CS students who are well versed in testing I just don't stack up in a lot of cases, so now I don't even bother interviewing with companies who can't take the time to interview me as an individual. I can completely understand why these well known .com's take this approach for efficiency but I personally don't think it's the best way.

In the long run I feel learning from my experience rather then school is a real asset because I see things differently then a lot of CS students and I've had to be extremely versatile and adaptable to get to where I am. The 4 year head start on my peers helped too ;)

</comment><comment><USER7> Dropped out recently after a year and a half. Working full time in Redwood City, CA @ Inflection, LLC as a Software Engineer currently.

I originally started out at Inflection this Summar as an intern with the unspoken goal of being full time by the end of the year - Within a few months that happened. My manager told me later on that he knew I was shooting for that without even asking. I definitely think the first year of school helped out, but I've personally found that I learn more efficiently when on the job or just experimenting with projects on my own rather than being knee deep in class work. That being said, I really think it's a personally decision - Everyone learns differently.

</comment><comment><USER8> I do, but I've worked with much people that don't and didn't have any slight knowledge about data structures and ended up being the CTO. If you spend the 4 years of college socializing instead of actually studying, you will get a bigger output of money, if that's what you are looking for. Knowing what a big-O notation is doesn't mean shit unless you work in a engineer/comp. sci ruled company like Google.

I live on a third world country and those big companies in the US like Facebook or Google got only sales operations here, so... I kinda regret getting the degree for now. But maybe the future will show up something that makes it worth every penny spent(and time!). ;)

</comment><comment><USER9> Yes I have a CS degree and I loved getting it. It was an okay liberal arts school, in other words, the CS department was nothing incredible. It was actually my introduction to programming and I fell into the program purely by chance. Ended up loving it and surely would not have gotten involved with computers or programming otherwise. For the last two out of three jobs, having a degree was not a requirement, but these place were very startup-ish. I think the answer really depends on how big the HR department is (or whether there is even said department). My current job could care less about degrees, they looked more for skill and love of programming.

</comment><comment><USER10> I have a Bachelors in CS

If I had to give a simple, concise answer: Yes, it helped.

If I had to give a longer winded, more precise answer, summed up by a simple, concise answer: It's ultimately debatable, but I'm glad I have it.

</comment><comment><USER11> I do not have a CS degree, though I do have two Bachelors in other areas. It has not gotten in the way of my freelancing or start-up work--as long as I have work to show and can demonstrate my knowledge, which is relatively broad, I've had a fine time getting contracts and getting job solicitations for start-ups. However, I will say that I had a much harder time when interviewing at places like Google, which seemed mainly interested in whether or not I had a CS degree, unfortunately--whether or not that was actually relevant.

</comment><comment><USER12> I have a CS degree but I'm still working at the company I interned for (been here for 5 years). I could have stopped two years into my degree and still be in the same position regarding money and position, but I felt that would be painting myself into a corner. Whether or not someone will care if you have a degree when you have 5 years of experience, I'm not certain. I've not had anyone in an interview (phone or personal) ask me about my education. Maybe that's because they assume if I got to that point I had one but I'm not sure.

</comment><comment><USER13> Yes, i have a Bachelor in CS, and YES it helped, gave me the foundations. I also have post degree courses and certifications that validates the experience and expertise acquired.

</comment><comment><USER14> I don't and never had any problems because of not having one. For me its been almost exclusively about showing projects and then of course knowing all your stuff at the interview. As far as knowing your stuff like algorithms and CS concepts it might help you having an CS degree, but I think that all depends on what type of person you are. For me I just like picking up src code and a debugger and teaching myself how something works.

Hope this helps :)

</comment><comment><USER15> I used to be a full time programmer, now I'm part time and getting a humanities degree at UCLA. I've never taken a CS or programming class. I've also never done math higher than Stat. Web development has more to do with understanding markets, design, flow, and what's important to the consumer, over what they teach you in CS. My 2 cents. I do like working with CS majors though.

</comment><comment><USER16> Yes - BSc in Maths and Comp Sci (earned in 1993, cue stroking of beard and dyeing of grey hair). It definitely helped land me my first job, although my then-manager never had a degree and was / is far and away the best developer I've known. The value of the degree drops off with experience, but at 'year 0' it's definitely worthwhile in most situations.

</comment><comment><USER17> Dropout... Err... I mean leave of absence ^_~

</comment><comment><USER18> Almost.. 1/2 year to go.</comment>


Ask HN: referral reward system - <AUTHOR>

I am looking to implement a referral reward system for a project I am workign on, but wondering if there are already easy to use plug-in-play systems available which can help me reward a user bringing in his friends to our system.<p>Free is good, cheap is ok. <comment><USER2> There are many different types of such systems available on the internet. If you need it to get sign-ups for a website that will be launching, you can use <http://launchrock.com>. If you have a wordpress blog, you can use various wordpress plugins: <http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tags/referral>. There are many general rewards scripts you could use, e.g. [http://www.hotscripts.com/listing/projektirs-referral- reward...](http://www.hotscripts.com/listing/projektirs-referral-reward-site- script/). If you want to pay cash rewards, then you should use a general affiliate script. You can look at some examples here: [http://www.hotscripts.com/category/scripts/php/scripts- progr...](http://www.hotscripts.com/category/scripts/php/scripts- programs/affiliate-programs/)

</comment><comment><USER3> What type of reward? If it's money, have you considered the regulatory costs of running it in-house -- the collecting W9s and cutting checks and mailing out 1099s and all that? That's the kind of stuff an affiliate network takes care of in exchange for a cut of the commission.

<comment><AUTHOR> Its not monetary reward, but giving extra resource like dropbox provide extra space on referral.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sounds like you're looking for curebit: <http://www.curebit.com/>

</comment><comment><USER5> <http://zferral.com> helps you implement an affiliate program.</comment>


Is Google down? - <AUTHOR>

Is google down?  I cannot search for some reason for the last bit... <comment><USER2> Nope.</comment>


First Person Tetris. - <AUTHOR> http://firstpersontetris.com/?pointlesssites

<comment><USER2> I don't know if it's the game or not, but I have a headache now.</comment>


Why would someone steal the world's rarest water lily? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/news/2014/oct/28/-sp-plant-crime-of-the-century <comment><USER2> > At the time, Kew possessed virtually the entire planet's population of > Nymphaea thermarum.

If preservation is the goal, maybe the plants ought to be spread around a bit. Sounds like the theft could be a net gain for the species (shrug)

</comment><comment><USER3> Synopsis: The plant is endangered, but we like it that way, since we control the IP.

<comment><USER4> It seems it isn't that simple. It looks like wild plant conservation lacks funds, and that the operation of saving a plant from extinction is hard. To the thief it doesn't matter if he sells the last lily on the planet for $10k. That's $10k he wouldn't otherwise have. And he has no particular interest in selling to a conservationist. It doesn't matter to him if the plant dies.

However, in general, we care. We want to preserve these plants for their own sake. But thieves don't. There is a strong feedback loop: the fewer of a plant there is, the better the gain from stealing. That's bad for us, since we want more plants, not fewer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The article mentions the actual reason for the theft multiple times, and still seems to not notice it - they have had many collectors requesting to purchase seeds, but they have refused to release any due to bureaucratic reasons.

Plants aren't artwork that's supposed to be unique, and most plants aren't animals that are hard and slow to breed, and have a limited number of offspring - if you have an endangered species, and there are seeds left remaining after they've sent them to the relevant seed banks and interested scientific institutions (as they had done), then you _should_ distribute them. The current policies on endangered species, as described in the article, seem to prohibit this. Such policies are simply evil and broken - either by design or accident - and they should be changed, otherwise they simply facilitate extinction of such species.

There is no reason why Kew gardens should be prohibited from selling the seeds/saplings to any interested collector at a price appropriate to the rarity and the limited supply. It would reduce incentives to employ thieves, as any collector can simply obtain the species legally, and it would produce revenue relevant to funding further maintenance of such species in Kew gardens.

</comment><comment><USER6> Because people are dicks. I know I'm going to get downvoted for stating this, but its the truth. People are dicks, and dicks do diskish things. The only thing you can do in life is to not be them.

<comment><USER7> Do you think you'll get downvoted because people disagreed with you, or because simply insulting the perpetrator is pointless and doesn't reveal anything about the motive? Because I think it's the second one.

<comment><USER8> "doesn't reveal anything about the motive?"

Semms misplaced. TLDR: Human nature. Nothing new to report.

<comment><USER7> "Human nature" is neither an explanation nor a motive; it's a punt. I am also human, but I did not do this. I have been a dick now and then, but I never stole a rare water lily. These pseudo-pithy explanations are about as useful as answering the question "What causes things to fall when you drop them?" with "TLDR: It's natural that when you drop things, they fall. Nothing new to report."

We all know that humans do lousy things, but there are usually specific reasons beyond "human nature" why they do them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is pretty much a high art theft.

Sure, people taking advantage of openness of displays of high art aren't cool, as perhaps some sort of oceans eleven, steal from a rich person who keeps it locked up kinda Hollywood way.

But the only way to save species now, is stopping more habitat destruction.

I do like high art, it does look pretty and while it's not commercially available the conservatory does hold a unique exhibit which makes life interesting.

But don't confuse it with saving the world.

</comment><comment><USER10> The article isn't "question in title, answer in article", it's "set scene in title, story in article". It's not a FAQ.

</comment><comment><USER11> It seems absurd that they actually think that by essentially prohibiting trade that they're going to make these plants more abundant.

</comment><comment><USER12> Because it's the world's rarest water lily.

<comment><USER13> That was the exact same thing I thought after reading the title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Because humans.</comment>


Ask HN: Would you use this service? - <AUTHOR> Hi fellow developers,
For some time I have been working on a website for developers: developerAcount.com
It is a profile page where you can list everything about you as a developer. Plus some of the URLs you enter will be scraped daily so your profile page gets updated automatically (some parts that is).
Is this something you would use as a developer? If not, what are you missing or what needs to be changed for you to use it?
A demo profile page can be seen on http://www.developeraccount.com/bbb/baris-canatan
You can also sign up to test it out, but the edit profile section is not what I want it to be, so I will be completely rewriting that part. <comment><USER2> No. I don't want to maintain _another_ account that provides me with no value.

I know you say that it updates automatically, but that's only if I don't switch other services. For instance, if I switch most of my projects from Github to GitLab, then none of my new activity will be carried over on this site that I already forgot about. And I don't want accounts that I've forgotten about competing with ones I actually use when searching for my name.

</comment><comment><USER3> No ... not really.</comment>


A New Concept for Usable Touch Interaction in Cars - <AUTHOR> https://www.theturnsignalblog.com/blog/new-touch-concept/ <comment><USER2> I have a 2000 BMW 318ti as a daily beater. I was adjusting the clock on it the other day and loved it.

It ticks over very slowly, 1 second is 1 minute when you hold the Minute(M) button down.

I just held it whilest driving and counted to the minute, and when I let go later and glanced it, it was right.

So satisfying. I think Mazda have announced that they aren't going for touch interfaces any more. Personally with more things becoming increasingly digital I find even more satisfaction in touching well made physical objects...

</comment><comment><USER3> Touch interfaces in cars should be banned. They're 95% unusable without taking your eyes off the road.

Whomever first came up with the idea should end up mentioned in historical footnotes alongside Thomas Midgely Jr.: Inventor of leaded gasoline and freon/CFCs; a man who probably caused more destruction than any other living organism in history.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr).

<comment><USER4> Midgley made lots of lives better, at least for a while. I don't think the same can be said of touchscreens in cars...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I agree with the other comments here. Physical knobs and buttons are superior for cars. Until operating a vehicle can be done safely and reliably without driver focus (true autonomous) then we should really be focusing on physical knobs and buttons.

My car has a physical button that is customizable. Much like the radio station preset buttons, but it could be for switching to radio or cd or bluetooth. I think there were a few other options besides just media, but there were only like 5 or 6 options in total. I would love to have a wider selection of functions available to set for that button, and to have at least a handful of programmable buttons that could handle some simple tasks like switching to Android Auto, toggle between Spotify and my podcast app, activate voice, or setting the climate control to a certain setting.

In addition to bringing back physical interfaces, I think car designers should focus on improving NLP/voice recognition to the point where a driver shouldn't have memorize keywords or commands (too much thinking is also very distracting).

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm surprised to see no mention of haptic feedback. I've always thought Apple's Force Touch was a gimmick on a phone, but in a car it could be very useful on a touch screen like what Teslas have. Imagine being able to run your finger over the screen to "feel" the climate control touch area then "hard press" it to activate.

<comment><USER7> The problem is that you wouldn't be able to feel the haptic on a shaky car (running on a highway).

<comment><USER6> That doesn't discount it from being useful in most scenarios, though.

<comment><USER8> "Car on road and in motion" seems to cover most scenarios where operating the controls of a car would be something you'd want to do.

<comment><USER6> I drive a Tesla. I'm speaking first hand that this would be a useful feature. Most of my driving is not on a gravel road that's bumping so much I can't feel anything; it's on smooth surface streets and highways where a little vibration from the screen would be beneficial.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I despise touch interfaces in cars and you should too. Every time you add a control that requires the driver take their eyes off the road, you kill people. Every time you have a control you can't touch without activating, you kill people. A completely blind passenger ought to be able to control the stereo and air conditioning.

<comment><USER10> I despise touch UI _everywhere_ (at least in its present incarnation). The only things it's good for is saving space on a small device, or simulating the experience of having no nerve-endings in your hands.

The industry could sell another trillion mobile phones, and it still wouldn't change reality: (a) it's uncomfortable to hold your hand hovering in midair for more than a few minutes (b) fingers are opaque and block screen real estate (c) to use a finger with precision requires tactile feedback (edges, textures, nubs) (d) a hand can't comfortably and quickly manipulate a screen larger than about 10 inches.

I look forward to the day when I can use a touch UI able to _feel_ and _sound_ like buttons, keys, sliders, etc. Until then, I will favor devices that don't use it.

<comment><USER9> I just let out a wistful sigh at the thought of a smartphone with a big juicy d-pad below the screen. Imagine being able to scroll without your finger on the screen. I think we hit peak usability with the TH-55's rear-mounted scroll wheel and it's been downhill from there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> You're putting touch surfaces _way_ too far for a normal driver to interact with. There's a reason why many of the automakers are using knobs/buttons by the resting position of the right arm to allow for interactions while in motion. My Mazda even disables the touchscreen while moving for this reason. With no proprioception on a touch surface you need to watch where your finger is going and that's a distraction. Not to mention gorilla arm fatigue.

You might also want to look at what Cadillac has just shown for their Lyriq EV:

[https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp- content/uploads/2020/08/my23-lyr...](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp- content/uploads/2020/08/my23-lyriq-gallery-api-0126-v2.jpg?w=620)

<comment><AUTHOR> Great point, I'd say it is the main drawback at the moment. I tried to test this using VR and it was not a problem then, but I must admit that I used a small hatchback as interior model. So I don't think it would work in its current form in a wide SUV

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is nearly identical to the infotainment display in a Tesla. Was the author only looking at 1 type of car?

</comment><comment><USER13> Upvoted for potentially interesting discussion, but with the standard first question of how long we have to wait before the safety regulators ban the foolishness of using touchscreens for important driving controls entirely.

There are some very interesting display technologies for cars that have been at least the subject of experiments or small-scale applications. Imagine if the little HUDs, night vision systems, navigation displays and camera feeds that have been appearing in recent years could be combined, AR style. When you were driving at night, your main view could be enhanced with the night vision and danger recognition technologies. Essential navigation information, such as the required lane/path for your route, could be clearly visible right in front of you as you approached each junction, though subtle enough not to block your view of the outside. Displays from external cameras could be overlaid as appropriate depending on the type of driving or manoeuvres being performed.

There is so much potential in these kinds of technologies to make driving safer and easier. And yet manufacturers are going with touch screens and naff UIs, because shiny and, presumably, much cheaper for now.

</comment><comment><USER14> To those doubting touch screens in cars, how do you explain Tesla cars amazing real world safety data then? Despite having most controls via touch screen they outperform other vehicles in avoiding accidents over ten-fold.

"Q2 2020 In the 2nd quarter, we registered one accident for every 4.53 million miles driven in which drivers had Autopilot engaged. For those driving without Autopilot but with our active safety features, we registered one accident for every 2.27 million miles driven. For those driving without Autopilot and without our active safety features, we registered one accident for every 1.56 million miles driven. By comparison, NHTSA's most recent data shows that in the United States there is an automobile crash every 479,000 miles."

[https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport](https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport)

<comment><USER13> There are plenty of plausible explanations for those statistics where the comparison isn't a good one. The 479K figure given appears to be an average over the entire population of vehicles and drivers.

But what is the performance like for other drivers of expensive cars? Teslas aren't cheap, so it's a reasonable hypothesis that their drivers might be more likely to take care of them than the owners of a 20-year-old hand-me-down that is nearing the end of its useful lifetime anyway.

What is the performance like for drivers in other cars that have relatively good driver aid technologies? This might be correlated with more expensive cars, but more basic models typically gain a lot of the safety tech as well after a while.

What is the performance like for other drivers of the same ages and experience levels as Tesla drivers? Given the cost of the vehicle, Tesla drivers might tend to be older and more experienced than average, and both of those factors are known to be strongly correlated with safer driving.

Or maybe Tesla's own statistics are based on such a small population that they might not be representative anyway?

Or maybe Tesla's "registration" of accidents is flawed, and lots of minor incidents go unreported in Tesla's stats but some of them would be counted by NHTSA?

Or maybe Tesla's touchscreen controls are simply so complicated or annoying that many drivers avoid using them as much as possible?

As I said, there are many plausible explanations that would make that "amazing real world safety data" look a lot less impressive. It's impossible to evaluate that record intelligently based on just the data you quoted.

<comment><USER14> Don't you think the data from Tesla's computers on wheels could be more accurate than the second hand data (accident occurs, is written down, then provided to the government agency) used by the NHTSA and other researchers. Surely there is some loss here in unreported incidents that Tesla would not lose, making the NHTSA reports actually better than the reality potentially.

<comment><USER13> Could be? Sure.

Definitely is? Again, there's no way to tell from just the data you cited.

We don't know what Tesla counts as "registering an accident", and clearly it isn't a neutral observer here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A friend worked on an automotive version of these physical pressbuttons with tiny OLED screens[0]. I thought it was a potential option for the difficult problem of putting reprogrammable/contextual UI into a vehicle, where positive touch interaction is inherently infinitely better than smartphone/ipad style touchscreens.

0: [https://www.alliedelec.com/product/nkk- switches/isc15anp4/70...](https://www.alliedelec.com/product/nkk- switches/isc15anp4/70192511/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=surfaces%20across%20google)

<comment><USER16> Why not just physical buttons below (or next to) the screen, like they sometimes do (badly) on ATMs? They used to do this on the old Nokia phones before touchscreens too.

Would be cheaper than separate OLED displays on every switch.

You could even have assignable physical buttons on the steering wheel, with a HUD on the dash that shows what each button will do.

There's lots of different options and a touchscreen is the absolute worst one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Can't say I've ever had issues with any of the touch screen systems on Fords, Mazdas and Tesla's I've own/ed

When driving touch screen is maps, all interactions come from the steering wheel or a voice command except for heating and thats pretty quick, its not like you dont have to look at what the dial is on for physical controls.

<comment><USER13> I could control the heating and other environmental settings in every car I've ever owned without ever looking at them. You could immediately feel which way a dial was currently pointing. The buttons were either in a clearly distinguishable pattern or marked with a ridge or other touch-friendly indication so you could tell which was which within a row.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I absolutely refuse to buy a car with a touch screen interface (unless it also has physical buttons). Touch screens like what are in Tesla are NOT good, for many reasons. Car companies should copy the idea of the electric car, but for the love of God, please don't copy their terrible touch screens!

<comment><USER19> Right there with you. It's one of three reasons why I refuse to buy pretty much any car manufactured after 2010, the others being the sheer size of modern cars (why is every car getting so much bigger?) and the increasing hostility to user-servicability.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Good ideas.

</comment><comment><USER21> Why are we putting touch screens in cars while ignoring the fact that touchscreens are inherently more distracting. We're having the wrong conversations about car interfaces.

<comment><USER22> One reason is that having a screen is now required in the U.S. in order to comply with backup collision safety regulations.

It doesn't necessarily have to support touch, but once you've dedicated all that space and cost to putting in a screen, making it a touchscreen becomes a lot more appealing.

<comment><USER23> The true reason is that it's cheaper than mechanical switches, gauges, and wires.

<comment><USER24> You can't software update mechanical switches and gauges. I think it's reasonable to pick a vehicle that can receive over the air updates improving the user experience during the period of time when you own it versus one frozen in time with static mechanical controls.

<comment><USER13> _I think it's reasonable to pick a vehicle that can receive over the air updates improving the user experience during the period of time when you own it versus one frozen in time with static mechanical controls._

And who gets to decide whether a change is "improving the user experience"?

Hint: It's usually not the user in this scenario.

I'm just fine with having a car where I get to choose whether I like how it works before I buy it and then it stays that way and doesn't give me any unwelcome surprises. I doubt I am alone in this. Magically self-updating cars are about as good an idea as magically self-updating operating systems, with the added wrinkle that if something is broken or confusing after the update, people could actually die.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>