You don't understand money – and it's a good thing for Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> https://beta.sapien.network/post/z8dAvLCzGywheZFtgLCjcu3hhuv9WrAi5 <comment><USER2> All of the author's core questions can be answered just as well for coins and notes as they can for bitcoin— Every greenback has a unique serial number, after all. There must be a central registry of them somewhere.

Money as understood by economists is not physical currency (coins, notes, etc), but an emergent property of the institutional use of IOUs of various kinds, like debts and fractional reserves. These also exist in the bitcoin world, and have already caused problems— How long did MtGox operate without reserves? Does Bitfinex actually have the reserves it claims to? If Bitcoin were immune from the problems of fiat currency, these questions wouldn't even make sense to ask.

<comment><USER3> > These also exist in the bitcoin world, and have already caused problems— How > long did MtGox operate without reserves?

Exchanges are not part of the bitcoin world, they are bridges to it.

Longer version of the above remark: what bitcoin is truly about is financial sovereignty, or, to put it in more layman's terms, lack of counterparty risk. The bitcoins held in a bitcoin exchange are mismanaged funds, you should never leave your cryptofunds in the exchange: "not your keys, not your coins".

PS: These days, you can even find "bridges", i.e. exchanges, that don't have even this problem anymore, e.g. HodlHodl exchange, which doesn't hold customer's funds, so it's impossible to achieve a fractional reserve malpractice.

<comment><USER2> I'm less concerned with philosophy and how people "should" be managing their assets than I am observing what people actually choose to do. The exchanges exist, their actions affect the value of bitcoin, and the value of bitcoin affects them. Therefore, any analysis of the bitcoin ecosystem must take them into account in one way or another.

Similarly, there's no fundamental barrier to promising to pay someone bitcoins later that you don't currently possess. That's the seed of a credit-based economy, and also the piece of the fiat system that makes things so complicated. It is disingenuous to make a comparison that includes this complexity on one side but not the other without giving justification.

<comment><USER3> It's no longer "philosophy" but education and awareness. The longer bitcoin exists, the more custodial exchanges get hacked and consequentially the better knowledgeable bitcoin users we will have.

You cannot bring points against bitcoin which actually happen more in centralization-backed entities than in decentralized scenarios.

<comment><USER2> There are plenty of examples of bank runs and other crises pre-regulation and pre-fiat currency, dating all the way back to the 1600s— that's about as decentralized as you can get. If you want to argue that there's something fundamentally different this time around, that's fine, but I'd appreciate evidence rather than assertions.

In fact, the least problematic time in terms of bank runs appears to be the years of the highly-centralized Bretton-Woods system post-WW2 (1).

It's also not like holding bitcoins yourself is entirely risk-free. You can accidentally expose your private key and have your money stolen or you can lose your private key and have it locked away forever. Either scenario means you no longer get to use your money, and any defense against one makes the other more likely; it's a difficult balance to ask people to get right.

(1) [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system)

<comment><USER3> Giving me an example of decentralisation set in the 1600s? Dude... The best way to finish this convo is the way Satoshi replied once: "If you don't believe it or don't get it, I don't have the time to try to convince you, sorry"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Take the questions we mentioned above, and apply them to Bitcoin:

Sure, you can easily answer cherry-picked questions about Bitcoin.

But the important thing is: nobody in his day-to-day life needs to know these answers about real money, nor have they ever wondered about it.

I can buy groceries just fine with my Euros, without wondering how exactly it has been created. Just as I wouldn't tailor my own paragliding chute, because otherwise companies could rip me off. I just trust in sensible regulations, paraglider-making experts and, finally, the social fabric of society.

<comment><USER5> > "I can buy groceries just fine with my Euros, without wondering how exactly > it has been created."

If literally all you know about money is that it is a token that lets you buy stuff at the grocery store, here is trwhat you don't know - _how long is that situation going to hold up._

> "Just as I wouldn't tailor my own paragliding chute, because otherwise > companies could rip me off."

I wouldn't try to sew a normal parachute let alone a paragliding chute. But one thing I know about safety-critical pieces of nylon or related things is that wear and tear is visible. A moderate rip, hole, tear in material, an engine that coughs, a tire that's deformed, all this stuff is a clue that there are problems ahead.

What signs tell you when there's problem in the relationship between your tokens and the grocery store? That's where a bit more understanding of money is useful. And, as the OP say, that understanding is difficult, actually (edit: tbh, that's literally the only worthwhile point in an otherwise terrible article).

<comment><USER6> > how long is that situation going to hold up.

But you don't actually need to know the internals in order to know how long it will hold up.

You can black box update your probability of fiat currency holding up every month that fiat currency doesn't crash (let's define it as "lose 50% of its value"). In fact, by this metric it's pretty clear that fiat currency probability of holding up is much better then that of most (and all major) cryptos.

If anything, a lot of what ML/data science/quantitative finance has shown us is that hand constructed explanations made by experts typically have bad predictive power and statistical estimates typically have ok predictive power. For things related to money I would trust data over any expert mechanistic explanation.

<comment><USER5> Well,

No one can know with certainty whether a given object or situation is going to hold up. Life isn't guaranteed.

Sure, you can tell yourself "X has worked so-far, that makes it continuing to work quite likely". But X is "driving your car without adding gas or oil", that it worked for a while hardly makes it more likely.

And, of course, you can't claim predictive power for a sequence of individual experiences. And if you apply regression to a Ponzi scheme, it will seem like a great idea.

<comment><USER6> Your argument would only work if cryptos performed at least as well as fiat. The fact is all major cryptos have been far more volatile than fiat. In your car example, it might be that fiat is driving a car without adding gas or oil; but by that comparison crypto is driving a car that is actively on fire.

<comment><USER5> Why do you think my argument has anything to do with Crypto currency?

I make no mention of it and I am simply replying to "black box is a fine way to understand things" arguments. My point, my only point, a point removed from crypto entirely, is that one need specifics and not mere trends, to understand anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What a terrible crypto-shilling (is that a new currency?) article. Can I have my time back? Since time is money, I'll take 30 euros please.

One thing that crypto-idiots don't understand is that whatever currency it is, it's not worth anything if no one wants to exchange it with food (or clothes or shelter). If in the upcoming Mad Max future that farmer only takes tea leaves, everyone will be running around trying to find tea leaves.

</comment><comment><USER8> > Don't you care to know where your food, your electronics or your clothes are > coming from, who made them and how?

This is a pretty strange choice of examples, considering how little most people know about the manufacturing of any of those things. Besides, if bitcoin were to ever reach the masses, we'd start banking in it (because banks and useful and necessary), so M0-M3 doesn't go away. As soon as someone is holding fractional reserves, "how many bitcoins exist" is as relevant as "how many paper dollar bills exist".

</comment><comment><USER9> My take from the article is that Bitcoin, as cryptocurrency, is a mechanism that can be used to replace fiat money. It will never be because of exactly the reason the article says: there will be a maximum of 21 millions Bitcoin and that's all. And since the current mechanism behind fiat money is inflation (usually you want to have a slow inflation, not a fast Venezuelan one) is what drives people to spend them and create economy - this will never be applied to Bitcoin ever. Hence you get deflation in case of Bitcoin, which drives people to amass them instead of spending and you get in the end the current purpose of Bitcoin -> art like investment.

The only way to make them a currency is, keeping them limited to 21M, is to create some sort of "bleeding" mechanism where you force the owners to spend them (spend or lose) - which will never be implemented.

</comment><comment><USER10> While this article don't cover everything, it acknowledges the complexity and that money is many things. Starting from coins and going towards things called 'money like'. And the author seems to know that not all bank lending is part of fractional reserve system.

Related to bitcoin one of the most critical and important aspects of fiat money from central banks is the liquidity. Liquidity means that money is available in price that does not fluctuate too much from day to day or month to month. Central banks are lenders of the last resort. Money should be boring and predictable, not exiting like Bitcoin. One of the definitions of money is 'most liquid asset'. If cryptocurrency can't do that, it can't replace money in daily business.

</comment><comment><USER11> Money is simple. Credit is complicated. And if Bitcoin is going to succeed lending Bitcoin will be normal and lead to similar behavior as in the gold standard.

<comment><USER12> This. I have never heard a remotely sensible discussion from crypto folks around following points:

1\. If fractional reserve banking is bad, what or who is going to stop the appearance of that in bitcoin world? You need to understand that literally only thing you need for that is a bunch of people trusting so much one organization that they are willing to use the IOU from that as payment method. (Cough, tether, cough)

2\. If fractional reserve banking is good or even okay, first thing you need to accept is that the bitcoin guarantee of fixed monetary supply does not exist. Second, completely unanswered issue is that why the heck bitcoin would be any better from fiat as the base of a fractional reserve banking system.

<comment><USER11> 1\. There's nothing to stop fractional reserve banking. Bitcoin is just a more convenient bearer instrument (more portable, divisible, verifiable than gold), so if you don't trust a bank, it would be easier to opt out.

2\. Personally I think fractional reserve banking is at very least problematic, because it leads to competitive advantage, but also eventual systemic collapse. (More about it: [https://twitter.com/dpc_pw/status/1195932699141103618](https://twitter.com/dpc_pw/status/1195932699141103618))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As a filthy casual observation, it doesn't seem like the risk of crypto is going away. If money is the abstraction of value, then it seems more intuitive that you will entrust your assets to a group of humans in a direct way (laws, army, etc) rather than an indirect way, by having all your value in crypto that is supported by an infrastructure still controlled by the government and/or companies.

Until there exists a truly decentralized and robust worldwide network, anything built on the current Internet is indirectly owned by a centralized entity of some kind (if not directly).

</comment><comment><USER14> Anyone have book or article recommendations on how money works?

<comment><USER15> I haven't read it but I've been recommended Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber numerous times.

<comment><USER16> It's a highly verbose book but worth a read. Graeber makes some solid points such as money didn't evolve from bartering but instead evolved from debt

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Two issues with this article:

1\. Obscurantism: Yes, money is complicated and most people don't know much about how it's created and what it even means, exactly. However, the leap from there to the claim that you _can't_ know, or that _nobody_ knows simply has no basis.

2\. The BitCoin angle: While it is a good thing that you can easily (sort of) understand how BitCoin is created and how much there is, the article ignores the _implications_ of these facts about BitCoin. There can never be a democratic decision to inflate or deflate BitCoin; and - most BitCoin is already in existence and owned (the majority probably by a pretty small group of people), making it a sort of a pyramid scheme, as late-comers to the BitCoin game will be fighting over the scraps.

</comment><comment><USER18> > crypto-currencies are simple and transparent.

beg pardon?

<comment><USER19> I'm not saying you're wrong, but can you please state why this is a statement you find wrong?

There are so many levels to crypto, and my head is a bit too much in the crypto world that I can see a ton of reasons why this statement is correct. I can also see why it can be considered incorrect. What are the parts you take issue with?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Bitcoin is a multi faceted beast like nothing else. It is a cross between computer science/cryptography, governance/game theory and economics.

In my opinion the economics of bitcoin is the core, which is kept in balance and managed with game theory and decentralised governance and it is created with computer science and cryptography.

In order to truly understand what Bitcoin is then you need to fully grasp all these 3 facets. Most people don't, they read the headlines or look at bitcoin from one of the facets and write it off.

<comment><USER21> It is a clever hack, but it can never work as money. The money supply needs to roughly match the size of the economy. If there is too much of it, you have inflation. If there is too little of it, you have deflation, which in many ways is worse. With Bitcoin you have too little of it, because the total amount is limited, and that limit is smaller than economic growth is. That's why Bitcoin's price as compared to major currencies has soared. But people who used Bitcoin years ago to buy pizza feel really stupid because if they had held on to it, they would be much wealthier today. When it works that way, it isn't money. It's a mathematically interesting investment vehicle, perhaps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This article couldn't be more wrong-headed. The author seems to think that a fixed amount of money, or a money limited by the amount of some arbitrary commodity (like gold) is a good thing. But the gold standard was a disaster, and caused the American economy to explode every 15 to 20 years, complete with bank collapses and widespread hunger, or rampant inflation when a new gold rush occurred. A Bitcoin-based economy would have massive deflation, which would mean that nothing you could spend Bitcoin on, and keep, would be worth as much as just holding your Bitcoin, so people would be reluctant to invest in anything.

Central banks manage the money supply to be reasonably stable. Yes, bank loans create money, and the central banks regulate this process so neither inflation nor unemployment can get out of hand. This process offends libertarians who seem to think that a completely free system could work better, but it can't: you need a mechanism to keep the money supply roughly proportional to the size of an economy, and blockchain can't do that.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, the only thing the gets right is that few people have much awareness of theories of money.

But the thing with theories of money is that there isn't that much agreement among economists, bankers or government official on them. How much does it matter that the US government doesn't technically own/control the Federal Reserve? Opinions are divided. How bad is budget deficit? How bad is printing money? How exactly does one interpret fractional reserve banking? Opinions are again divided (that doesn't prevent periodic "everyone is ignorant on how money blah, blah..." article).

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> These ideas aren't permitted because...

"Sapien Logo Sapien is not yet available in your location."</comment>


Free phone support for AdWords advertisers - <AUTHOR> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/free-phone-support-for-adwords.html <comment><USER2> That's not "free".

"we're always looking for new ways to support you"

Really? REALLY?

How about a web form where you select a department, send in a support question, get a ticket number and eventually a response? FTFY. I didn't even go to Yale or pass your interview process and I could figure that out.

Call me bitter, but I'm an Android Market developer and what do I get???? How about pages and pages of desperate Android users and Developers asking questions into dead space:

[http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Android+Market/label?l...](http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Android+Market/label?lid=7dc8a5c590cd22ee&hl=en)

<comment><USER3> Yeah, but these questions are unanswerable:

[http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Android+Market/thread?...](http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Android+Market/thread?tid=710fb15147436b96&hl=en)

The way to get these questions answered is to ask your OEM or carrier. Verizon has a ticketing system, as does HTC.

<comment><USER2> Hogwash. Look through those questions. Look at all the help needed for download issues, error messages, install issues, developer console problems, stats problems, payout problems for sold apps, uploading issues, etc, etc, etc. If I emailed HTC and asked why I couldn't upload an update to my app for the last 4 days they'd tell me to go to Google.

<comment><USER3> I guess the question that I always have in this case is "why do you care". You can't upload an update to your app. It's your problem, not Google's. They don't need the money from your app. The Marketplace exists to have something, not to have something good. It's a checkbox for people thinking of licensing Android, which is where Google actually "makes money".

The problem that people have is that Google matters more to them than they matter to Google.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I thought their April Fools pranks were a little lacking this year- I guess that's why. They were saving their best one for today.

</comment><comment><USER5> My adwords account suddenly stopped displaying any ads about a year ago.

As I tackled the problem, my understanding grew that the Google's Adwords support staff didn't have any additional information than what was already published online. That kind of support is fine for maybe 50% of your users who don't read the online docs. Probably not of use to HN readers.

I suspect that Google doesn't provide information about recent changes to algorithms to the support staff that would help them understand what's going on. I can understand why they might not want to, but it reduces the quality of support that can be provided.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's part of their "local" push in order to bring back the tons of small business customers that tried adwords once, didn't know what they were doing and got burned.

Interesting to see how this goes. Adwords is so competitive that it's almost too expensive for small guys to hire big agencies & too time consuming to learn for small businesses to figure out themselves....

</comment><comment><USER7> An ad platform with good support and a simple interface would make a lot of money.

I'm new to internet ads, just launched my first psuedo-product as an experiment. Anyway, while waiting for Google to approve an AdWords campaign, I went to check out Bing advertising. Popup says: browser unsupported. Chrome. Promptly closed the window. The only reason I'm even using Google is that they gave me free ads. This whole system sort of sucks. Maybe I'll go check out Project Wonderful now. At least they have a memorable name.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is great. I really, truly hope it's part of a broader effort to unsuck their customer service.

</comment><comment><USER9> Hell has frozen over.</comment>


Security issue in blockchain.info's Android app - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/37oxow/the_security_issue_of_blockchaininfos_android/crolfk4

<comment><USER3>
      And the final mistake: They were using HTTP instead of HTTPS
      to make the webservice call to random.org. On Jan 4, random.org started
      enforcing HTTPS and returning a 301 Permanently Moved error for HTTP - <USER2>
      https://www.random.org/news/. So since that date, the entropy has actually
      been the error message (turned into bytes) instead of the expected 256-bit number.

This is so ridiculous I'm not sure if I should cry or laugh...</comment>


$89 Exynos4412 1.7Ghz ARM Cortex-A9 Quad-Core 2GB - <AUTHOR> http://www.hardkernel.com/renewal_2011/products/prdt_info.php <comment><USER4> This seems to be the closest I could find to a complete list of these kind of things: ODROID, Raspberry Pi, PandaBoard, BeagleBoard, etc.: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_single-board_computers>

Also, plug computers like FreedomBox: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug_computer>

And single board microcontrollers like the arduino boards, make controller, basic stamp, etc.: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-board_microcontroller>

I personally would like to see a build-your-own tablet type of thing that can run android or ubuntu. Of course there already is the nexus 7 though.

<comment><USER5> One of the first controllers I played around with was the BASIC stamp, by Parallax.

There is no single word for the horrible, utterly disgusting, nasty setup that these things required. There is some sort of tokenizer for Linux that kind of makes the required upload. The GUI is BAD. And when they had serial interfaces, you had to buy a USB-RS232 from them because they did screwy shit.

Thank the gods for the Arduino. Working with that cheap microcontroller is pleasant.

<comment><USER6> Actually, at the time the original BASIC Stamp was released (early 90s), programming a microcontroller directly from your serial port was a huge improvement. Most microcontrollers back then required a separate, expensive programming board, in addition to non-free programming software. You also had to remove most microcontrollers from your circuit to program them.

I agree that by today's standards, programming via serial port is cumbersome, but it's actually a good thing that the STAMPs are still available because they are used in a _ton_ of embedded applications that are still in use and need maintenance and replacement parts.

<comment><USER5> I'm well aware of what we came from.

My dad had a few of these. One I distinctly remember was a 2 part combo. To write, you put the chip in a ZIF socket (he changed this from a socketed to ZIF) in a huge metal box, and what looks like a parallel port to the computer. Then, you realize that wasnt a parallel socket, but something going to an 8bit ISA card.

To erase, you had to untape the window and put the chip in a UV box for a few hours.

I've still got it around here, somewhere...

<comment><USER7> Thats an old school EPROM setup; never used one myself but heard they were a right pain to use.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPROM>

<comment><USER8> Newly-minted video game prototype collectors over the past decade have found themselves wondering why one-of-a-kind games in their collection kept coming up unreadable although they were perfectly usable when they first purchased the cartridge. In most cases, it's because they found themselves fiddling with the EPROM window and/or carelessly storing the cartridge until bit rot ran its course.

There was plenty of benefit to EPROMs back in the day to a developer, but long-term data retention was certainly not one of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Very cool. I'm building a new HW project, based on the Raspberry Pi, and I'm always looking for options that are similarly sized, but pack a bit more power ;)

The thing I wonder for things like this, though, is at what quantity I can get them, and what the reliability looks like. One of the things I like about the Pi is that it's well tested - Even if it's a bit slower, they're making 4K of them per day, and everyone's using one, helping map out the gotchas, etc.. If you go with a lesser known board, you're a lot more on your own..

<comment><USER10> > a bit slower

The rpi is far more than a bit slower, more than the cores and clock counts imply. The pi is a slower microarch and is cache deprived too.

For somethings this doesn't matter but many of those things should probably be done on a proper microcontroller.

The odroid stuff appears to have a lot of users too, and these devices are less 'weird' than the rpi— they're more like the pandaboard and beagleboard— so there are less sharp edges to figure out.

<comment><USER11> That's why I'm hoping the next-gen Raspberry Pi will be 64-bit based on Cortex A53. They should skip the ARMv7 architecture and jump from ARMv6 to ARMV8. It should make things easier for the people maintaining the Raspbian OS,too, if they didn't have to support 3 architectures at once.

<comment><USER12> I have been assuming that it's most likely they won't make another board - <USER2> at least not another design.

I assume that, because in that case - they'd be fanfaring a lot more about how their newer design is being worked on. I'm seeing that they're more focusing on developing the userbase and utilities of the current board.

ie. with expansion cards, refining the software stack and such.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Note Ethernet is via a USB device, which limits throughput and latency, and generally increases CPU load. Hard disk connection is the same: USB only.

Something like this with SATA and Ethernet on a fast bus would be awesome

<comment><USER14> I'm sure there is (or was?) a low-cost MIPS board with four gigabit Ethernet ports. I can't find anything about it now though.

EDIT: this was it, the Ubiquity Networks RouterStation Pro <http://www.ubnt.com/rspro> ; it was the basis of an official "MIPS Linux Starter Kit" <http://store.mips-store.com/mips-linux-starter-kit.html> which is now "[t]emporarily out of stock". 1 × USB2, 128MB RAM, JTAG, no video. $79 USD MSRP.

<comment><USER15> There's the Carambola:

<http://www.8devices.com/product/3/carambola>

Runs OpenWRT

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've got a Linaro build running on mine. (It arrived on the 24th, so I had a good Christmas!) it's actually stable overclocked to 2GHz and the Mali in it is also stable at 800MHz.

<comment><USER17> Could you comment on getting Linux up and running with the ODROID boards? I'm thinking of using one of them for a hardware project and even though I haven't really looked into it yet, it seemed to me that a full blown distro was not ready yet.

<comment><USER16> Well, I had a bit of a fuss as they are using ARM TrustZone, so the 3.0.15 kernel didn't want to compile with a newer gcc than the one that Hardkernel uses by default (CodeSourcery 2010q1 - which translates to roughly GCC 4.4.1 with their extras.) - through the help of a friend that is patched up (but sadly breaks it building with CodeSourcery (heh) - patch is at <https://gists.github.com/4395518> \- that will let you build with GCC 4.6.3 (Linaro/Ubuntu defaults) - if you want to build with 4.7.2, you will also need to edit line 234 of drivers/video/samsung/s3cfb.h and remove the inline.

After that, it's just like every other rootfs. I focus on Gentoo, so other distros... I don't know, but they will have an Ubuntu image up soon.

There are no graphics until X though, so you're stuck with ssh or serial console until then.

Kernel sources come from the BSP download on hardkernel's site. Should be a tarball in there named kernel_4412.tar.gz

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The problem with all those board - except rapsberry pi is that there are no proper gpu hardware drivers for them - at least under linux. So one can't build linux based XBMC media centre on them to play HD movies :( When it comes tocheap boards only r-pi can do this, other boards can only do this when you use Android on them :(

<comment><USER19> Depends on what you mean by "proper" drivers. The GPU drivers for the Raspberry Pi, like the drivers for most other development boards, consist of an open-source shim and a closed-source userspace blob [1].

HD decoding on these boards is performed using a digital signal processor (DSP) integrated into the SOC, the CPU (even with GPU support) is too slow for 1080P h264 Content. This is not specific to Android, for example TI supports use of the DSP of the Pandaboard on Linux as well [2] (it is still not very stable, at least on the OMAP 4430 version of the Pandaboard).

[1] <http://airlied.livejournal.com/76383.html>

[2] <https://launchpad.net/~tiomap-dev/+archive/release>

Edit: formatting

<comment><USER18> yes - but for exynos or allwinner 10 you dont even have that shim :( - <USER3> what i meant - you basicly cant run XBMC on linux on those with acceptable performance as of today. Im hoping this situation will change soon, but it looks like there is no interest by soc vendors to provide necessary tools.

I know this works on pandaboard and some others, but those boards are about 150$ range if i remember correctly.

<comment><USER19> Hmm Allwinner A1X and Exynos 4412 both have integrated Mali 400 GPUs, so there should be at least some GPU support on Linux [1].

There is an unofficial XBMC port for A1X devices which supports the HW Video Decoder of the SOC [2]. I have an A10 device at work, but unfortunately won't be in the office to play around with it for some time.

[1] <http://linux-sunxi.org/Mali400>

[2] <http://linux-sunxi.org/XBMC>

<comment><USER18> [http://www.j1nx.nl/xbmc-allwinner-a10-apologies-received- acc...](http://www.j1nx.nl/xbmc-allwinner-a10-apologies-received-accepted/)

According to what XBMC devs say - it doesnt work at this point, and there is some online drama going on ;-)

Although i would be super happy to see progress on this.

One of the links you gave me: "Allwinner officially only supports the Mali GPU driver on the Android platform only." :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Does anyone know of a small ARM computer board supporting gigabit Ethernet? The ones I find are physically too large, eg: [http://www.tweaktown.com/news/24233/via_introduces_amazing_4...](http://www.tweaktown.com/news/24233/via_introduces_amazing_49_apc_android_computer_we_go_hands_on/index.html)

<comment><USER13> What is your project? At GigE line rate you have approximately 8 CPU cycles/byte at 1Ghz, which doesn't count for much on ARM

<comment><USER20> My project is a tiny box in the living room that copies Blu-ray discs over NFS to a multi-TB fileserver. The difference between 100Mbps and 1Gbps when copying a 40GB image is 55 min vs. 5 min...

I should add that with DMA and checksum offloading, even a (relatively) slow CPU can handle 1Gbps data transmission rate easily.

brigade: thanks for the board tips!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Why is this cool?

I'm a designer who also programs, so don't fully understand why this is cool. Can someone explain?

<comment><USER22> This is the fastest computer you can get for $80 (plus shipping from Korea) Also it's smaller than a 2" cube and draws around 6 watts under load.

Just six years ago, a computer this fast would probably have cost in excess of $1000 and have been at least a minitower drawing 100 watts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> It feels like splitting hairs, but at 10W this uses significantly more power than a Raspberry Pi ("A" is 1.5W, "B" is 3.5W). Just a heads up.

<comment><USER24> Raspbery Pi is 700 MHz, single core, 256MB RAM.

This is 1.7 GHz, quad core, 2048MB RAM.

If anything, it's more efficient per watt than RPi (and per dollar).

<comment><USER25> The Pi (Model B which all the new ones they ship are), is 512MB RAM.

<comment><USER24> Shared with GPU, btw.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've been thinking of building Linux From Scratch [1] as an effort to better understand the workings of GNU/Linux. Would this be a good machine to build it on? It certainly seems to fit the bill!

[1]: <http://www.linuxfromscratch.org>

<comment><USER27> I'd do LFS in a VM first. If you try doing it on one of these devices, then either you're cross-compiling (which can be somewhat finicky), or you're compiling on this device (which will be slow).

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I think it is still expensive, manufacturers in China ship Android HDMI-usb dongles for samples at 55$ featuring 1.6GHz A9 dual core, quad core GPU, builtin 802.11n, BT 2.0 and HDMI output featuring Android 4.1 and more..

<comment><USER29> Any links to the "manufacturers in China"?

<comment><USER30> Here's one for you, no need for samples - retails $51.99 with free shipping: [http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Android-4-1-Mini-PC-TV-Box- Ro...](http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Android-4-1-Mini-PC-TV-Box-Rockchip- RK3066-1-6GHz-Dual-Core-1GB-RAM-8GB/643888657.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Cool to see this on HN. We're sticking this board on our little legged robots for vision processing.

Power consumption is the issue though, even 3W is going to tank our battery life. I've looked around, but can anyone come up with something that is better in terms of a 'processing power to power consumption' ratio?

</comment><comment><USER32> Does anyone happen to know of any MIPS-based things like this? I'd seen quad and 16 core MIPS packages earlier--anybody know of attempts to put them on a board like this?

EDIT: Also, did anyone else notice the full credit-card number on the picture...? I hope they fix that. :(

<comment><USER33> The credit card number is the same set of 4 digits repeated 4 times - it's probably shopped.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Looks like a good upgrade to an xmbc on raspberry pi. This might be a stupid question but does anyone know if HDMI-CEC would work on it? I want to be able to use my tv remote just like on rpi.

<comment><USER35> The elephant in the room is always how well the Linux driver for the GPU works (if it exists).

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> This looks pretty cool, with plenty of power, and coming with the case. Adding the Wifi built-in would be better. Now it needs to add the bulky USB based wifi piece.

</comment><comment><USER37> Whoa! Amazing stuff. Gonna build something this new year :)

</comment><comment><USER38> caveat emptor with development boards, the term implies it might not be product quality. eg the sheevaplugs I bought died within a few months of purchase.

</comment><comment><USER39> What's up with the full photo of a credit card? (I understand the size comparison aspect).

<comment><USER40> What aspect is unclear then? Security? It seems safe to say that 4412 4412 4412 4412 is not a real CC number :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> There are a gazillion of these. (Most of these are dual, there are a few quad cores mixed in. For XBMC, the dual core is more than powerful enough. The quad core won't fix software rendering, it's up the OEMs to get CedarX working (it's close) or Pivos to push out more amlplayer updates for utilizing the Mali GPU for accelerated playback.) [http://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?fsb=y&IndexArea=prod...](http://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?fsb=y&IndexArea=product_en&CatId=&SearchText=cortex+a9+quad+core+set+top+box)

It's like the AMLogic-M3 f16ref. There are a dozen different flavors of these and the roms are interchangeable but there's no community around them to get continuous integration and good builds of XBMC setup. There should be an effort to get a distro that will generate nightly builds to target these devices with Linux/Android and optionally XBMC.

I keep rehashing this and everytime I do I say I should start a blog or set of resources for this... I need to follow through but my other projects are more immediately exciting :S

<comment><USER42> > _There are a gazillion of these._

Nope there aren't, not at this price. Even the pandaboard ES is more expensive (and TI is discontinuing OMAP :-(( ). Sure there are quite a lot Allwinner and Rockchip based boards, but these don't compare to a Samsung Exynos. Not yet.

<comment><USER43> TI is not discontinuing OMAP. They are discontinuing the tablet-oriented chips and refocusing on embedded. What that means for the hobbyist SBC market remains to be seen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> What ARM needs to do is start a multi-core revolution. Give me 64 cores, 128 cores, 1024 cores. That shit would be so useful for video encoding.

<comment><USER44> Parallela, featured on HN a few months ago, is aiming to do exactly that: [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/adapteva/parallella-a- su...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/adapteva/parallella-a- supercomputer-for-everyone)

<comment><USER24> It's not clear what the instruction set is. Is there any software that can run on it (and not on ARM A9 like in their demos)?

It's also not clear whether it's a SIMD solution. If that's the case, they are basically reinventing GPUs.

<comment><USER45> All the architecture documentation is available. The instruction set is custom. There's a gcc port. The OS is hosted on the ARM, but several of their demos involve calculations offloaded to the Epiphany chip, otherwise there wouldn't be much point.

It is _not_ SIMD. Each core is totally independent of the others. Basically the cores are structured in a grid, and all cores have 32KB in-core static RAM, but can also access the memory of all the other cores (at the cost of a few cycles delay), or main memory.

You could certainly use them as much like a SIMD if you wanted to, but then you'd likely get better performance out of a GPU.

We'll see when they deliver on their kickstarter project what type of performance people get out of it in reality...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


TetraVue Says It's Flash LIDAR is (much) better than the rest - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/self-driving/tetravue-says-its-lidar-will-dominate-the-robocar-business <comment><USER2> This is the first lidar company I've seen that says it measures the optical, rather than the electronic, time of flight.

<comment><USER3> They split the incoming light and modulate the other path, say with a ramp signal. The other path is left intact.

Then they measure both paths. They compare the modulated and unmodulated light and voila, you have time of arrival for the light pulse.</comment></comment>


Top 11 reasons *not* to move to the Bay Area. - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, since I started, might as well get all the controversial opinions out now. :-) Remember, advice is limited experience + overgeneralization.

\--

Building a startup is about leverage. Leverage is the ability to magnify your efforts. The bay area reduces your leverage. Especially compared to somewhere like Seattle, or Portland, or Boulder, or Salt Lake City, etc.

11\. Everyone is rude. It's like living in New York or LA. The laid back california of the 70s is no more. Maybe Eureka or Weed or Barstow are good places, but the bay area is harsh. Some relish the challenge, others just want to be left alone so they can be productive. Being productive on your product increases leverage...

10\. California looks so run down. This is because it is. The quality of life is declining rapidly. There's nowhere to go to escape urban sprawl-- not close anyway and getting there is hours in gridlock. Being unhappy decreases focus which decreases leverage.

9\. The population density is so high, everyone is on prozac. (I'm not kidding.) Being depressed reduces leverage.

8\. After spending 2 months there, I knew the business plans of 70+ companies in stealth mode. Everyone knows what everyone else is doing. Thus getting an edge on your competition is difficult, they may get your employees, and they do know your ideas. You have less leverage.

7\. Every resource is in high demand, thus time spent finding real estate, finding equipment, is higher. The local and state government levels of regulation are very high, and thus time spent dealing with the burocrats is much higher. All these are distractions you don't need.

6\. The availability of good startup quality employees is lower in the Bay Area. Because startups per capita is much higher there, there are more startups competing for the same employees.

5\. Office rent is expensive, Gas is expensive, Taxes are high, everything you could want to buy costs more. Your burn rate is going to be much higher.

4\. You can't find a place to live. Your employees can't either. Both you and your employees need more money to cover basic cost of living... your burn rate is much higher.

3\. Being in the bay area means being on the VC treadmill. This is the opposite of working for yourself, you are working for the VCs, and unless you triple their money in three years, you get nothing. This forces bad decisions and much less leverage.

2\. Long frustrating commutes reduce employee productivity and morale. They also reduce the length of the workday.

1\. The state taxes capital gains like income! So, even if you win, you lose.

The upside... what rocks about the bay area:

10\. Better S&M; clubs. Much. Better.

9\. You can fantasize about one day getting a boat and sailing out under the golden gate bridge.

8\. Skinnier (but more expensive) women who want to date geeks.

7\. More plastic surgery.

6\. More networking events.

5\. Better parties.

4\. More founders to commisserate with when you're forced out of your company.

3\. You can TP Arringtons house if he gives you a bad review, or doesn't invite you to a party, or says something particularly slimy about someone. Hell, just do it anyway.

2\. A lot of the good conferences are there, and if they aren't, Las Vegas is closer than to other cities.

And the number one good thing about the bay area:

1\. Well, at least its not Los Angeles!

<comment><USER2> As a bay-area resident who moved here from Canada a few years back, I'd like to give my own view - my numbers correspond to your numbered points..

11\. As you get closer to larger companies, people on the road tend to be more rude. I'm thinking of the San Jose/Milpitas area. I think most of those workers are unhappy to be treading off to their anonymous jobs :)

10\. Disagree. If you live on the 101, I could see how you would feel that way, but try to drive around los gatos or saratoga and say that. No urban sprawl. Plus, 'quality of life' is such a nebulous term....for me, quality of life is improved just by the energy of this place and the diverse types of people it attracts.

9\. I don't know anyone on prozac, and I'm not sure what that has to do with population density...

Speaking of population density/sprawl, I met this nice lady very recently who had just relocated from Paris. Having been lucky enough to visit there myself, I had to tell her how beautiful I thought her city was. She said that she was happy to leave, as the bay area was a "lot greener" (her words) and better for children.

8\. You point should show anyone why the bay area is a great place. Where else would you know 70 founders?? And getting an edge on your competition doesn't necessarily involve secrecy....

7\. Totally agree about having to find a home, etc. But the regulations are pretty minor from a biz standpoint relative to the benefits of doing business here.

6\. Would you rather be a big fish in a small pond? If your startup has potential, you should not only be able to compete with other startups to hire, you will be able to pick from among the best people in the world.

5\. Second order problems. Instead of looking at expenses, you should be looking at the place that allows your startup to have the most room to grow. If your primary concern is the cost of living, move to Thailand. Gorgeous beaches, your dollar goes incredibly far, and oh, the closest thing to a technology company there is the guy selling electronic keychains on the street...

4\. I've been in the valley since 2000 - it's much easier to find a place here now than it was back then. And salaries aren't that much higher here than they are in other tech centers in the USA or even Canada.

3\. Disagree. Since when is having more options a negative thing? If you don't need VC money, don't spend your time chasing it. But if you do, you'll have a much better chance getting it here.

Face it - if you need VC money, the treadmill exists regardless of which city your business is situated in - you'll just have an easier time getting on the treadmill if you're in the bay area.

2\. Can't disagree with that...commutes certainly suck, and they're longer here than most places.

1\. Agreed...which is why holding onto a stock for 1yr is good, but that's a different conversation...

<comment><AUTHOR> A couple follow ups-

8\. No, I didn't know 70 founders, I didn't even know one. But having a friend in the industry who didn't even work for a startup let me know the private details of 2-3 companies a day. This was standard dinner conversation- who's doing what, etc.

6\. We're all in the same pond. I'm saying that your chances of beating Bay Area companies is better if you are not in the Bay Area. Most of the best people in the world do not live in the Bay Area.

5\. Thailand is probably not a bad place... recruiting bright engineers right out of college is probably easier. Who wants to go live in a cubicle in a generic tilt up rather than a bungalow on a beach in a small town? Cutting these costs means you can pay people more, means you can hire better people, etc.

4\. IF this is true, that's even worse. With the dramatically higher cost of living, that means your employees are having more trouble making ends meet (or sharing houses, 2 to a bedroom.)

Anyway, don't want to debate it to death, and was talking tongue in cheek to some extent. Locality is much less important than it was in the 1980s and 1990s. And past success has made the bay area somewhere I'm increasingly less interested in even visiting.

<comment><USER3> Those are the reasons why I'm moving to malaysia to create my startup....

1\. Living cost are cheap

2\. good internet access

3\. lots of people speak english there so you can go on your daily life with english (good for attracting employees from other countries)

4\. While I don't discount the usefulness of the networking effect in the bay, it's much more useful if you need investors... Since I plan to bootstrap my company, this is not such a problem....

5\. Nice weather, smiling people makes for a place where people are not depressed....

6\. I strongly believe that the best employees for a startup are curious and adventurous, an employee that is willing to relocate to malaysia display those qualities

<comment><AUTHOR> Right, all the areas where you previously had to build infrastructure are now free or you can rent them ... and they have become commidtized.

Thus a team of a few can focus just on adding value, making the bootstrapping runway dramatically shorter.

I'm not sure what the benefit of physical networking is (and thus being in the bay area) other than being closer to VCs, and if you don't need VC funding, there's no point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yes... Bay area is terrible... very expensive, crowded, rude. Please, don't move here.

My favorite beach was packed with 10 other people there last weekend. It was awful. ;)

</comment><comment><USER5> Very nice post. After attending startup school I found myself wanting to move for the first time since living in Austin. Then I thought about how much cheaper I could live in Austin while working on the startup. Of your reasons _to_ move to the Bay Area, I am most attracted to 2 and 6. I think there is probably a right time to make the move though.

<comment><USER6> Well, you can always fly to conferences and network there.

As for 6 - Thinking back to something Paul Graham said about how the number 6 startup hub should really not even be considered to be in the same league as the number 1 or 2, I wonder if there might be a non-geographic effect to be gained by all the startups who are NOT in the Valley joining virtual forces to be a counterweight to the SF-club.

I think there are likely alot of us, and the bar for our success is certainly lower than it is if you live in the SF-area.

Weird that there aren't any pure Startup conferences, at least that I know of. They all seem to be organized by the funders or by people who are out to make a buck on the conference itself. A conference organized by startups with their interests in mind i.e. no $1500 presentation fees, would potentially still attract investors/press/etc. without having to have the impreteur of some internet celebrity organizing it. Its almost like the word 'startup' itself has enough celebrity around it now to pull its own weight.

We should have it in some decidely non-startup hub, like Hartford CT or something...

<comment><USER7> Look for alternatives to conferences - meetups for example, like the one in Boulder:

<http://www.feld.com/blog/archives/001932.html>

I've been to a few Technology Meetups like these where 3-5 founders get to present each month and there's usually no fee's involved, other than perhaps a small entry fee to help cover the meeting location if it's not sponsored.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Moving from London to the Bay Area actually halves costs. A fantastic reason in addition to the obvious network effects which makes it worth moving there,

</comment><comment><USER9> you could have 11,000 reasons not to move to the Bay Area and they would be out numbered by the one single biggest reason to move here:

This is where the best startups have been formed and will be formed.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's not a reason, that's an assertion of your opinion. You're not alone in that opinion.

The real question is why? This has never been answered, other than "closeness to VCs".

There's no fundamental advantage to the Bay Area over, say Seattle, or other places that has been mentioned here.

All of the resources you could want are either a lot cheaper elsewhere, or the same price (because they are delivered over the net.)

With the exception of venture capital...

So, fundamental ot this idea of relocating to the bay area is the assumption that you must take venture capital. (And I think this assumption no longer holds.)

<comment><USER9> No. Only the second part of my statement "best startups will be formed" can be labeled as an assertion of my opinion.

The first part is fact. SV has produced more great startups than any other area in the world. Arguing with that fact is futile.

It's not just VC that SV has as an advantage. Its a high density of angel investors and young people wiling to take a risk and launch startups.

As for the assumption of taking venture capital not holding any longer, venture capital in the narrow sense i.e. VC firms - possibly but in the general sense of needing to raise investment at some point, name me a successful startup that hasn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> And yet so many companies are still be founded here. I wonder why?

<comment><AUTHOR> Two factors: 1\. Its not as disproprotionate is it seems due to the amplifiction effects of mainstream media. 2\. In the 70s, most of the problems I have identified didn't exist, and so it was a good place to form high tech companies. Now, four booms later, not so much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> You like truck pulls and pit bar-b-que</comment>


DisplayCabinet - our 24 hour Internet of Things hack. What do you think? - <AUTHOR> http://www.iamdanw.com/made/displaycabinet/

<comment><USER2> Have you seen the Bonfire project? <http://ils.intel-research.net/bonfire>

</comment><comment><USER3> Very nifty! I really like that you use the sell by date found on the online receipt to determine when food will expire.

Great stuff.</comment>


What Is Design? An Interview with Charles Eames (1972) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.scielo.cl/pdf/arq/n49/art11.pdf <comment><USER2> Overall a pretty nice document, although the spelling mistakes do put you off.</comment>


Show HN: Pleasant Fish, a platform to get feedback from co-workers - <AUTHOR> https://pleasantfish.com/ <comment><USER2> We are thrilled to announce the launch of our Professional Feedback platform 'PleasantFish'.

PleasantFish is a platform to get 'real' feedback about how you perform at your workplace by your colleagues anonymously. Its your professional venue where not only you can get feedback on how you perform but also give honest feedback to your colleagues and peers so that they know how to perform better.

Often we see that some very talented people are unable to get the jobs they deserve due to a bad interview. On the other hand, companies sometimes hire people who appear to have a great profile but when they are actually hired they don't turn to be exactly an A* performer.

At PleasantFish, we have tried to address this issue by allowing co-workers to give each other real feedback on their leadership, personality, professionalism and collaboration capabilities through a series of carefully selected questions.

Their profile represents the feedback they have obtained on these different qualities from their co-workers.

<comment><USER3> Interesting. What do you see the usage workflow being for this, for example would it be used at a company in place of its current annual review process?

The main page seems to be encouraging a user to get feedback for their performance but the person you describe (not an A* performer) or someone who's just trying to get by with lowest performance would not be the person who would invoke a performance review so would his/her manager invoke one for them?

Also do you post the profiles and scores of everyone who is reviewed on the public site. I'm guessing some people wouldn't want that especially if they dispute a review score.

<comment><USER2> Thank you! The usage workflow is pretty straightforward. You are a professional. You want to ensure that your strongest traits and qualities (through verification from your colleagues) are visible to the world and to your potential employers. You make a profile here and just get feedback by your co-workers on different qualities.

Based on the feedback score from you colleagues on different qualities, we graphically represent all the traits you are given feedback on.

If someone is not an A* performer or has not received positive feedback on some qualities, he has total control on his profile to display that data publicly or not. Users create their own profile, so if they are not on the platform they wont receive feedback. Also, if someone decides to quit, he will deactivate his account and won't receive feedback from anyone.

They can always dispute a review and our content curator checks for random unnecessarily negative feedback (All negative answers) and remove it from the system.</comment></comment></comment>


Oh bill to doctors 'reimplant ectopic pregnancy' or face abortion murder charges - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/nov/29/ohio-extreme-abortion-bill-reimplant-ectopic-pregnancy <comment><AUTHOR> [..] A bill to ban abortion introduced in the Ohio state legislature requires doctors to "reimplant an ectopic pregnancy" into a woman's uterus – a procedure that does not exist in medical science – or face charges of "abortion murder".

This is the second time practising obstetricians and gynecologists have tried to tell the Ohio legislators that the idea is currently medically impossible.[..]

<comment><USER2> That's crazy, but also off-topic for HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why is it off topic?

You have politicians passing bills for medical procedures that don't exist.

It is literally a fictional procedure that is being sneakily added to the law and policy before thanksgiving. For the second time in the last three years.

May I ask this out of curiosity? Do you think it is 'off topic' because it makes you uncomfortable?

'Murder charges' for failure to do the impossible and fictional medical procedures would make me uncomfortable.

<comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> yes?

Does it not intrigue you that people are making up fictional medicinal procedures to pass off as law?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Title should be "OH bill...", As it refers to a bill introduced in the US state of Ohio.

<comment><AUTHOR> Capitalization automatically corrected

<comment><USER4> Not on my machine. Still showing up as Oh.

This is also complete and total horsefeces. Unfortunately, my opinion wouldn't matter a lark as I'm not an Ohio resident, nor do I know anyone who is.

Let it be a cautionary tale of the folly of uninformed legislators, however.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am sorry. I should have been clearer.

I wanted to say that my capitalization to 'OH' was automatically corrected to 'Oh' by HN. I don't know how to make it right.

An ectopic pregnancy occurs in the Fallopian tubes and cannot be 'replanted' in the uterus.

Doctors and gynecologists have made statements that such a procedure doesn't exist and an ectopic pregnancy is seldom viable. It's can also be incredibly dangerous for the woman to 'carry it'.

I don't understand how this is happening AGAIN. They tried it once before in 2016 much to the bewilderment in the medical community.

The experience is devastating and heartbreaking to women. In this time and age, why is this happening in America?

My heart swells with grief and it feels like it would explode when I hear from women who have to experience any kind of loss. They are not criminals. Their bodies failed them..just like someone with any other illness or disease. They are not 'hosts'. They are not 'vessels'.

It's times like this when I feel the primal stirrings of a hidden sisterhood..all women are 'me'. If it can happen to one of us, it can happen to any of us. Something turns and wakes up inside me and I feel like I 'get' it.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/parenting/wp/2017/03/30/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/parenting/wp/2017/03/30/theres- no-host-for-an-ectopic-pregnancy/) : [..] The definition of ectopic is "in an abnormal place or position." It affects one to two percent of all pregnancies, still accounts for up to 10 percent of pregnancy-related mortality, and is the most common cause of death in the first trimester. With a tubal pregnancy, even if a heartbeat is detected, there is no chance of viability for an embryo, but there are necessary precautions that could save a mother's life. Misdiagnoses or a delay in treatment accounts for nearly half of the deaths associated with ectopic pregnancy. A third lab test to check if my numbers were still climbing prompted my doctor to prescribe a chemotherapy drug, methotrexate, to halt further cell division. The decision to terminate my pregnancy wasn't a decision at all. The injection would protect my right fallopian tube, which could burst and cause extensive internal bleeding. Not only would this drug save my tube, it would safeguard my future fertility, and end a pregnancy that would never yield a baby. [..] On the day my lab tests read non viable, Oklahoma Representative Justin Humphrey submitted a bill, which passed out of a House committee, requiring a woman to obtain a signature from the father of the fetus in order to terminate a pregnancy. Earlier that month, Humphrey called women a "host" for a baby. A Heartbeat Bill vetoed in Ohio three months ago would have prevented the termination of a pregnancy as early as six weeks along. A Personhood Bill, introduced by Congressional Republicans, would protect and grant rights to fertilized eggs, zygotes, embryos, and fetuses as "persons."

In some cases, ectopic pregnancies have a heartbeat detected by sonogram in the fallopian tube. A bill that protects heartbeats or designates nonviable fertilized eggs as persons blatantly ignores the risk and rights to the heartbeat of the person who's pregnant. In some cases like mine, there's no time to waste. Legislature that interferes with a woman's ability to make decisions about her health cause far more damage to living, breathing women than to the unborn, some of who would never survive otherwise. The methotrexate wasn't covered by my insurance, so I paid the $48.95 and carried it to the nurse, who then injected it into my hip. I was instructed to flush the toilet twice because of the medicine's potency and I had a toddler at home who shouldn't get near it. Within days, my numbers drastically fell and I wouldn't require further intervention.[..]

<comment><USER4> It is happening because it is unfortunately the case that there will be repeated attempts to get the same bloody bill passed because the once and done nature of our lawmaking makes this type of behavior desirable. They only have to pass it once, and then heaven and earth must be moved for a repeal to take place.

I'm horrified the women/medical practitioners of Ohio have to even fight this poorly informed piece of legislation; but only they can keep this from happening in that state. Letter to the rep,and a visit to their office if you really want to get the message across.

I know you're raising awareness here, but you may want to take it to a more Ohio centric platform. If I hear about anything like this at a Federal level, a letter to my Reps would most certainly be on the way. Good luck, and godspeed. Hate seeing people having to suffer from terrible lawmaking.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


It's not ok for billion-dollar companies to crowdfund - <AUTHOR> http://www.androidauthority.com/billion-dollar-company-crowdfunding-804008/ <comment><USER3> Pre-sales have always been a thing. Tesla is a $60B company. Can they not presell the Model 3? Calling it crowdfunding is just a new branding of an old idea.

I would argue the opposite—as a consumer I am considerably safer putting my presale funds into a product of an established company as they are more likely to honor the arrangement. They can't just go belly up and move on to the next big thing.

<comment> aaron-lebo That it is a rebranding of an old idea shows you exactly what it is - <USER2> attempt to sell a business model.

If established companies were just a tiny bit better with the way they do presales, this might be okay. But I've bought too many products in the last five years that were literally broken (videogames are the prime example) after forking over $60. Some of those products have remained broken for months. That's unethical. What shocks me most is this has happened with flagship franchises, which tells me those companies simply don't give a damn. Why should they, when the pay now, deliver later business model works?

Companies need to prove that their product is valuable, you can't do that when you flip the relationship, the power dynamic is completely out of whack - we're the billion dollar company, but we want you, the consumer, to give us money now for a product which we promise will be good later.

As consumers, we should expect more.

<comment><USER4> Imvestors beware! I've only ever purchased 3 pre-release games and all delivered. With a keen enough eye it's pretty easy to tell if a game is going to deliver on its promises in a satisfactory manner. If you are having trouble discerning the lemons from the good stuff, maybe you shouldn't be investing in games.

<comment> aaron-lebo I was referring to Microsoft's Master Chief Collection which was almost unplayable until six months and multiple patches after release.

You're putting all the onus on "investors" (really, consumers, because these aren't actual investments). They're expected to pay money if they want new products and then they get victim blamed if they aren't careful enough. They're not the ones at fault.

<comment><USER5> I'm with you here. But I'm not sure how I'd actually articulate why this practice is _unethical_. There's an at least theoretical risk that the more pressure (of any kind) we put on the expected launch quality of so called crowdfunded or pre-sales models, the less risky the industry is going to be in aggregate, in terms of taking on bolder steps. While I'm sure there are numerous instances where this gets abused, I'm not sure on which side of the sweet spot we are.

<comment><USER4> It's definitely unethical sometimes. Like the No Man's Sky incident.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I can't say I agree with the author here. The biggest problem in "product" manufacturing has been trying to understand whether or not your "great idea" was in fact great or just something you and you alone liked. Crowd funding sites do two things for you, they give you a slope and an intercept. The slope, how quickly people sign up, is a good indicator or market interest, the intercept (the final point you end up at) is a good indicator of overall addressable market.

Why _wouldn 't_ you take advantage of that before committing possibly millions of dollars into a project?

That said if you're a successful company you really should execute perfectly on your crowd funded product, it should ship when you say it will and it should have all the fit and finish of a professional product. If, as a company, you consider crowd funded products to be somehow a 'cheaper' alternative to "real" products, then I have an issue with that.

<comment><USER7> Agreed, as long as the fact that it's an already-successful business is disclosed up front.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sorry, I really don't agree with this. It doesn't matter how big or small you are, any company has a right to crowdfund. Big companies have their own set of problems, and crowdfunding can be a way to help those companies solve them. The point of crowdfunding is to allow the "wisdom of the crowd" to determine what ought to be funded and what not to. In that sense, if enough people believe that a project is worthy of funding then it is worthy.

<comment><USER9> Did somebody say they don't have the legal right? I can't find that in the article.

<comment><USER10> You're right in that nobody mentioned anything about legal rights.

The article in question, however, is titled "It's not okay for..." and alludes to corporations who supposedly are violating the 'moral rights' by participating in crowdfunding practices. The parent post is merely extending the debate regarding the same moral rights but taking an opposite stance, claiming that the right(not legal, but moral) is not exclusive to the start- ups.

<comment><USER11> As long as funders are aware that its a corp, not 3 broke-ass code jockeys.

<comment><USER12> In a "get the product" crowdfunder, as opposed to a "t-shirt and our eternal gratitude" one, them secretly being a large corporation would be my least concern.

In any case, that corporate crowdfunder could even be both at once: three low- tier engineers with an idea who got an undecided result in the internal pitch, a small budget for crowdfunding preparations and "all in" with a whole new department if that succeeds to raise n money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Agreed. Obviously they have every right to do this, but what are these companies actually contributing to the crowdfunding community, outside of (seemingly) inferior products like the Nebula Capsule [0] or Opal Nugget Ice Maker [1]? Why do we need to sacrifice more of our sacred startup / maker spaces to megabrands?

[0] [https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/capsule-the-world-s- most-...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/capsule-the-world-s-most- advanced-pocket-cinema-party-travel#/)

[1] [https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/opal-nugget-ice- maker/#/c...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/opal-nugget-ice- maker/#/comments)

</comment><comment><USER14> I understand the general consensus in this community will be one of "pro- business" (large corporations should crowdfund), but I'd like to share the contrary.

The whole purpose of crowdfunding is to hedge the financial risks of bringing a product to market. This is something that "3 college kids" should consider (and may even be necessary), but a business with hundreds of millions in revenue should be able to avoid for the consumer's sake.

Why should we, as the consumer, accept to pay for something before it's even made? If the product ends up being subpar, the company has nothing to lose, so what's their incentive to make a quality product?

I'm not coming from a legal standpoint, this is just my opinion, of course they _can_ do whatever they want.

<comment><USER15> I agree in general, if the product was going to be made anyway.

But one situation where crowd funding might be appropriate is where a product manager or developers can't get budget to fund development. So unless a crowdfunding project is successful, the product will never get developed.

That may or may not be the case here, but in general I can see a few scenarios where crowdfunding in large companies might be appropriate as a way of seeing if a real market exists and gaining traction internally, prior to development.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hard to agree with the sentiment behind this article, as the entire argument seems to be rooted on this arbitrary idea that crowdfunding is some sort of sacred ritual that's reserved for the underdogs only. Who mandated this rule? I certainly didn't agree to abide by it, and will continue to fund any product that I deem to be fund-worthy regardless of the current financial capabilities of the creator entity.

<comment><USER16> I had the same impression while reading the article. I think that somehow, author is equating crowdfunding to charity (which would explain why they would think it's outrageous rich companies are trying to take advantage of it).

To me, crowdfunding is more about testing market fit, which is especially critical when building physical products that need manufacturing - so it's for everybody. Actually, the simple fact that refund is automatic when campaign goals are not met is probably better than any usual presale.

<comment><USER12> To be fair, if you only look at the kickstarter model of crowdfunding, where campaigns can claim anything they want no matter how factually wrong and the only guarantee given is that your card won't be charged unless the funding goal is met, then charity is the closest analogy. It works best as a money collection tool for community projects were trust is already established off- site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's part marketing campaign, part pre-sales to prove demand with an easy out if nobody wants to buy it. There's nothing wrong or unethical about it IMO

<comment><USER12> Depends on the amount of deception involved. There is outright lying on kickstarter because truthful claims of "smallest/first/only in the world" of some campaigns has been mindlessly cargoculted by those who are clearly not.

Presales by established companies would not do that. Next are expected product features that turn out to be impossible/too difficult to deliver on time or budget. Happens all the time, there are entire software development processes built around this uncertainty. For presales, this is really solved by precise language clearly differentiating between the definite and the possible. With zero effect on customer enthusiasm and disappointment, because we all ignore them every single time. Just be careful to not "not-promise" too much.

Then there is the pre-sales rebate. The least suspecting of all pre-sale perks. But many products get cheaper over time. How long does the announced "post-presale price" have to stay valid so that the pre-sale rebate is not deceptive? Clearly it would be ok to slash prices when when the successor model is announced two years later. Clearly, it would be absolutely outrageous of they only sold one unit to a guy hired by marketing at the announced full price on release day, to then immediately go below pre-sales price. At what point between those extremes does a pre-sales rebate become deceptive?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It seems the core of the objection is "billion-dollar companies using crowdfunding platforms violates the spirit of crowdfunding platforms". Doesn't seem to be much in the way of hard evidence as to why it's a bad thing though.

</comment><comment><USER19> This doesn't sound like a real problem.

<comment><USER20> The problem would be bigger if they used their own money to fund development of new products in existing markets; that would put small startups at a disadvantage. What the article speaks about does not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm not exactly a "free markets solve every problem" guy, but in this particular case I think we have a platform with an agreed set of rules, and when a willing exchange can happen there is really nothing wrong with it.

I see these rules as:

1\. The vendor is using the platform to sell a product that's not ready for market yet. They are not willing or able to develop the product without securing the funds to do so from willing buyers. Note that the distinction between "not willing" (a company swimming in cash that doesn't want to take a risk) and "not able" (a guy with no financial means whatsoever) is blurry in many real cases (e.g. three guys in a garage that _could_ spend their whole life savings and mortgage the house but aren't quite willing to, as the in- between case).

2\. The buyers are getting a product they can't get elsewhere, at a price they are willing to pay. This implies they feel adequately compensated for the risk they know they are taking on.

3\. The platform earns a fee.

A giant corporation playing by these rules seems to me to be fairly contributing to the ecosystem just like a small player. If their proposition is not on terms that buyers accept, they'll simply fail.

</comment><comment><USER22> Not anti-crowdfunding for large companies, but consider this: what happens if these companies start flocking in Indiegogo and Kickstarter? The main ethos of crowdsourcing platforms is to give extra leg-up to lone inventors and small startups so that they have a chance to be competitive too, but if you have large companies with their big budgets and finely tuned marketing, would these platforms still provide fair ground for everyone?

As the author pointed out, Indiegogo is supposed to focus on the "underdogs":

 _" Our mission is to empower people to unite around ideas that matter to them and together make those ideas come to life... We know building something from scratch is hard, so we've got your back."_

<comment><USER12> The platforms have already been taken over by finely tuned marketing, no need for large companies to get involved.

In fact, large companies might bring some refreshing linguistic restraint into the game, as I would expect them to be much more cautious of claiming "best/first/only in the world" about products that are clearly not. I rarely see a product kickstarter that does not look like exactly how a highly polished parody of product kickstarters would. At least with a big company, you would know that they put more into the product than into the campaign.

What is currently ruining the platforms (well, at least ruining kickstarter) are campaigns were this is clearly reversed, e.g. campaigns trying to do a moneygrab with something as commoditized as USB power banks.

<comment><USER22> They won't just bring "refreshing linguistic restraint" though, if you have two campaigns doing the same product idea, but one has a slicker video and can promise bigger rewards, which would you back? For crowd-funding platforms that proclaim support for the "small people", I can understand if some people feel a bit cheated.

Personally, I like to go for the artsy projects because these can't be found elsewhere (except maybe Etsy) so I've learnt to filter out the "money- grabbing" spam. Inevitably you'll have noise in a system, like eBay's counterfeit problem, but I just don't think that you need large companies presence to deal with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'd rather buy from an Anker kickstarter/indiegogo than "Three guys in college looking to try and get their prototype into the world".

There are some really cool ideas on Kickstarter and some things that seem incredibly well designed (they crop up on uncrate.com all the time). Execution seems to be the challenge - a good product isn't just the design of it, it needs to perform its task well, safely, and durably.

Would be nice to see colleges themselves forking over some of those sweet, sweet endowments into students ideas.

</comment><comment><USER24> I wonder if you could find a way to distribute assembly tasks and others to the "crowd". I bet you would find a lot of people who would be willing to put in significant work to help build some cool gadget. So you could get initial funding from the crowd and then also let them do the actual work. The only thing you have to do is to cash the profits. A little simplified but I bet someone will figure that out at some point.

<comment><USER25> Its probably more efficient to just hand over money and let the organizers pay people to do the work.

Unless the work is highly modular and distributable. But it depends on the product being worked on, some things work well (open source software development), other things don't (design, hardware, physical stuff).

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I don't get the impression we'll ever be able to prevent it, but I do think crowd funding platforms should require disclosure of this kind of thing, and should spend time vetting new accounts (at least the ones who will want to create campaigns) to ensure the disclosures are accurate. This way the public will be able to draw their own line of what's acceptable and what isn't.

</comment><comment><USER27> what better way to market test product then crowdsource interest and sales? all points made above mine make it clear this is not a problem nor new

</comment><comment><USER28> _" Being asked to put money down for a product that hasn't been finished, hasn't been seen by tech sites, and that definitely doesn't have any reviews, would normally sound crazy."_

But we can ignore that when pre-ordering games... because they look fucking awesome!

Seriously, not an issue. Why would companies not crowdfund? If anything, they have a higher chance of delivering on their promises.

<comment><USER29> I do think that it can also be a way to get companies to make niche products happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> The issue here is the following:

Crowfunding implies that you don't have enough money to start making and holding inventory for $something. And $something is usually small, under some hundred dollar device that the markets haven't figured out yet.

Like, the recent RISC cpu board - its new, novel, and really neat. But to make them costs a bit per board. $25 each, which in lots of 1000, is up to $25k capital. But the design and idea is awesome, and lots of others agree. So people put money in, and take a bit of risk, to see that this is made, and they get it, and prove there is a market to continue.

When big companies do this, they have plenty of capital and ability. The risk they're taking is that if the "market bears it". And using crowdfunding platforms, they also shunt the risk almost completely off since those platforms offer pretty much nothing in terms of guarantees.

Big companies using crowdfunding also short-circuits the idea for these - which is that big companies ignore many market segments because of their size. In the short and long of it, they are bad actors.

Read my previous comment history and tslug's comment about how capitalism reduces an infinite amount of dimensions of ethics, value, and liability down to a single scalar : money.

Of course bad actors (read: big companies) are going to hack and use it ways that aren't intended. They have no ethics(legally required, except for benefit corps), only governmental fines which are some percent of the damages they cause.

<comment><USER18> It seems like a ridiculously inefficient system you're promoting. Why should companies be forced to risk spending millions developing a product using only a best-guess system as to actual demand for a potential product, when they could have people put their money where their mouth is? Sure, they don't have to use crowdfunding platforms, but if they're not set up to do pre-orders for things themselves, they might judge the platform fees worth it.

The ethics aren't what you say they are either. First, while if a startup crowd funds a product and fails, you're SOL. When a billion dollar company crowd funds a product, even if the platform makes no guarantees, if it fails do deliver _then you have recourse against the company_. Second, Why should only small players be able to address previously unaddressed markets? Isn't that one of the complaints about big companies, that they ignore small markets? And now that they've got the ability to actually test out a market - and serve it in the process! - that's a bad thing too?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> The emphasis might be on the "crowd" part as opposed to the "fund" part. Companies can try and size the actual market for their products, once a MVP is found properly fund it. I think this actually make it a level playing field for products between the big and little guy.

</comment><comment><USER32> On my way to work, I'm passing a store of a bag manufacturer that's in business for 25 years. Now, they advertise their Kickstarter campaign that will still run for a few days. Out of the 100k funding goal for a new bag(!), they reached almost 500k. Mind blowing for me.

</comment><comment><USER33> I disagree. I feel like it's a great way for a company to suss out actual product interest before investing millions in fleshing out an idea. Just think of it as pre-ordering.

</comment><comment><USER34> Large companies just have better odds of delivering the product than the average Joe (because you are not guaranteed a product on Kickstarter alikes).

</comment><comment><USER35> Yes it is, it's up to the people (i.e. the crowd) whether or not they want to crowdfund something. Free market should do the rest.

</comment><comment> cup-of-tea Well it's not as bad as billion-dollar companies crowd-sourcing.

</comment><comment><USER36> Isn't their form of crowd funding to do a public offering to raise cash?

</comment><comment><USER37> A stylistic critique here: I think the trend of taking a quote from the article and presenting it on its own somewhere else on the page is overused, especially in blogs and magazines.

For example, in this article, we have a sentence pulled from the article and presented in a larger font with italics, a quote block and green text:

 _If this was three guys in college looking to try and get their prototype into the world, great. But this isn't a start-up._

This seems like a poor sentence to use for two reasons:

1\. That sentence literally appears immediately before the quote block in the article in a vertical layout, which means I read the same sentence twice, back to back.

2\. The sentence itself doesn't seem...noteworthy?

It seems like this concept was cargo culted from the design zeitgeist of modern magazines, to the point that it's worked in as stylistic sugar where it doesn't really make sense.

<comment><USER38> I agree with you. I've always assumed these things were used to catch somebody's eye as they flipped through the pages of a newspaper or magazine, as highlights to draw the reader into the content. I haven't been able to figure out what value anybody thinks they provide online for the same reasons you point out. They are just irritating repetition.

<comment><USER39> I think it's fairly common for people to read the first 1 or 2 paragraphs, then scroll down to the conclusion + comments. Pull quotes are likely a way to re-engage those users, thus increase their time spent on the page + ad impressions.

| Pull quotes are likely a way to re-engage those users, thus increase their time spent on the page + ad impressions.

I agree though, execution is pretty hit or miss.

<comment><USER38> I guess I do that sometimes, though I scroll too quick for pull quotes to matter. Usually I'm going for the comments anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> let the open market decide.</comment>


Is this the worst website ever made? - <AUTHOR> http://www.fabricland.co.uk/

<comment><USER2> No. Yvette's Bridal Formal was the worst ever made, as others have noted. Sadly, it is gone. A site with a similar feel is <http://www.thecountrycupboardtoo.com/>

If Yvette's was a 10 on the badness scale, that one is only a 6, but it gets the point across.

<comment><USER3> The Wayback Machine knows all, tells all:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20110718150425/http://yvettesbrid...](http://web.archive.org/web/20110718150425/http://yvettesbridalformal.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Amazing site - actually reminds me a little of the Million Dollar homepage :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If Hacker News stays the same, it may be a contender in a few years. It's starting to look like the Craigslist of social news sites.

</comment><comment><USER5> Geez, many major Japanese retailers' websites are far worse...

e.g. Bic Camera (market cap $70 billion): <http://www.biccamera.com>

The basic design goal of Japanese retail sites seems to be "complete visual overload" (stun your customers into buying?)...

[Come to think of it, this rather matches their physical stores, but it's a lot more annoying crammed in your browser... in a store, it's kind of fun...]

</comment><comment><USER6> Click on the links on the left frame and be prepared to be blown away by the load speed. Better than anything most programmers can achieve.

<comment><USER7> No external css, no javascript that I can see, and probably no database backend or dynamic templates. Just plain old school html files. A visual abomination but also, yeah, lightning fast and robust. Unintentionally a good argument for the KISS principle.

And if it's been making money for its owners with this code for this long, how hard can we really laugh at it? It seems to be working for them. Shame about the yellow though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think this one has it beat: <http://www.bountytowels.com>

</comment><comment><USER9> I really love this one <http://www.samirnasri.fr/>

</comment><comment><USER10> as an online marketer that actually creates revenue as opposed to 95% of HN readers that have unprofitable startups. These sites arent bad at all. Just because they arent resposive and dont have jquery or whatever junk dosent make them bad.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just because a site makes money doesn't make it good. Think about how much more they could make if they actually invested in a half-decent web presence.

My housemate used this site recently to try and order some stuff and was almost reduced to tears !

<comment><USER11> On the contrary: Just because a website doesn't look good, doesn't make it bad. To me, the website presents all the information it needs to: the products they stock, their price and where to get them.

Not every business wants to become internet only. Or, for that note, even have a website in the first place. There are plenty of perfectly profitable businesses that don't. Both staff and customers often value the human interactions a physical store brings. They may make more money with a "half- decent web presence" (might not!) but their business will be reduced to one of simple order fulfilment and lose the what makes running the business enjoyable in the first place. Fabricland has a shop in the town we live. My (non internet using) wife goes there often and appreciates their great service. If they went internet only she would lose this and have to go elsewhere, though I don't know where.

By the way, for your housemate, ordering instructions are there on the front page: "TO ORDER PLEASE CALL US WITH YOUR CREDIT/ SWITCH/ DEBIT CARD DETAILS, WE ARE WAITING TO TAKE YOUR CALL! [...] NO SHOPPING BASKET, JUST CALL PLEASE" It's not as convenient as clicking an item into your shopping basket and paying by paypal, granted, but it's not too difficult either (though does involve talking to someone).

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not suggesting that they should go internet-only, just that they may want to consider making their website ... consistent and readable ?

I don't care that they don't have shopping carts, or "buy now" buttons, or online payments, or shipping calculators, or modern web technologies, or nice image carousels.

I do care that I can't read some of their pages, that there are basic spelling errors on the homepage, that they have no search box, that products are hard to find, and that certain image thumbnails are so small and badly shot as to render them useless.

It's great that they are running a business they enjoy, and promoting face-to- face contact with customers (more should), but it's not an excuse for incompetency.

Whether they like it or not the website is an advert for their business, and in it's current state it looks like they're advertising a half-digested pizza, vomitted onto the pavement by a demented baboon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Perhaps, but then it was written by the owner of the company. She would probably consider my attempts to identify and cut fabric just as poor :) OK it's not up to professional standards, but perhaps the target audience doesn't care?

</comment><comment><USER13> No, Yvette's Bridal Formal was the worst ever made. Sadly it has passed on. Google it, have a look at the images. Then imagine a collection of midi music playing at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER14> While scrolling down the tabled, framed, left side "menu", I had a visceral feeling of reminiscence and nostalgia of roughly 1998, when I started playing with HTML.

Amazing.

</comment><comment><USER13> Try [http://www.lostateminor.com/2012/01/05/yvettes-bridal- formal...](http://www.lostateminor.com/2012/01/05/yvettes-bridal-formal- website/)

</comment><comment><USER15> For some reason I like this page of a local group of the german party SPD: <http://www.spd-engenhahn.de/>

</comment><comment><USER16> Patio11, what percent conversion optimization do you think you could gain them with a few strategic A/B tests?

</comment><comment><USER17> No, it does its job. If I were a customer, I'd be able to find what I wanted. Yes it's ugly, of course.

<comment><AUTHOR> My housemate couldn't find what she wanted despite being an art technician.

\- No search \- Items placed in bizarre categories \- Pages with 404s

Fail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> <http://arngren.net/> is also pretty horrible.

</comment><comment><USER19> not even close - I can read everything on the site - I might need to put on two pairs of sunglasses, but there are lots worse - any site with a tiled background image for starters...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Or can you beat it ? :)</comment>