With 2500+ customers, an epic journey has just begun at Wingify - <AUTHOR> http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/2500-customers-wingify/ <comment><USER2> I first heard about wingify September 9, 2009 when Paras sent me an email telling me that he'd got the idea from reading my presentation on A/B testing, and asking for initial feedback on the product that he was developing.

I'm glad to see how well it has done since.

<comment><USER3> Thanks Ben. You have been a great help in how the product has evolved! Initial feedback is always the most critical one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> FWIW, I love VWO and have used it for a few years as my primary A/B testing tool. I've emailed Paras a few times about small questions and feature requests, and he's always responded quickly - that speaks volumes about their focus on customer happiness (the support team is great too).

Thanks for the fantastic tool, Paras! Keep on doing great things!

</comment><comment><USER5> What ere some of your pain points with initial user acquisition? Was growth more tied to affiliates, PPC, media buys?

<comment><USER3> Initial user acquisition was purely done by writing content on popular blogs like Smashing Magazine. Word of mouth and customer case studies helped a ton!

<comment><USER5> thanks for the reply and congrats on the success.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Very inspiring story. Kinda OT: what is in 800K lines of code for website optimization? I cannot imagine.

<comment><USER3> Visual Website Optimizer started as the easiest A/B testing tool (it still is!), but there's a lot of features now. From cross domain tracking (that requires 3rd party cookies) to geo-behavioral targeting with 15+ variables to heatmaps. It's actually becoming a very comprehensive analytics and optimisation platform. Here's the full feature list <http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/feature-list.php>

Not sure if I answered your question, but the gist of my response is that features add lines of code. There's frontend, backend, test cases, housekeeping scripts, monitoring, etc.

<comment><USER6> Yes, thank you for the writeup. That page sums it up: a lot of features!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Crossed? How/why?

Edit: original title was "Visual Website Optimizer crosses 2500 paying customers" hence the question. It has since been changed.

<comment><USER3> It meant we have surpassed 2500 paying customers. I agree "crosses" is an odd way to put it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Respect.

<comment><USER2> This is not reddit.

If you don't have anything to say, don't say it.

<comment><USER9> I think that _was_ something, saying congrats is a perfectly valid sentiment to pass on such a momentous occasion.</comment></comment></comment>


The end of Reader: what does it say about Google? - <AUTHOR> http://brontecapital.blogspot.mx/2013/03/the-end-of-reader-what-does-it-say.html

<comment><USER2> that Google is now officially a hardware company, after Google self-driving car, Google Glasses, and the coming-soon Google Toilet (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrontojPWEE>)</comment>


Norway Proves That Treating Prison Inmates as Human Beings Actually Works - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/norway-prison_us_578418b6e4b0e05f05232cb7 <comment><USER2> Yeah, but how can we make money on that sort of thing while also satisfying the haters who want to punish people even more than stopping crime?

<comment><USER3> That's the tricky bit. Our leaders are moral and intellectual cowards, and we deserve it for choosing them.</comment></comment>


Having fun with IRC, making a simple bouncer, offering $10 per detailed bug - <AUTHOR> Having fun with IRC again lately, group is making a simple bouncer
https://github.com/toc-irc/jbnc
Simply connect to the port with a password and a bnc account is made for you. Yes we know it's open to abuse; all IP addresses are hashed through our webirc setup in gateway mode, so users are still unique. We'll add flood checks later; i'm sure a million connections making always on connections would crash it, I got it to crash at 7,500 connections
This is all experimental as to have a foundation to build off of; other bouncer projects are great too (kiwi, znc etc) we're just looking to have fun and create.
But the other stuff, such as bugs between bouncer and client and things not forwarding right/crashing for other reasons we are
offering $10 per detailed bug (with description and suggestion on fix), and $20 for fixes coded
I believe the budget is up to $2,000 - so for contributors we'll consider a bonus if the 2k isn't met
We're in #jbnc on irc.bitcoin.com / irc.imperialfamily.com
Long live IRC! <comment><USER2> > This is the missing link for IRC.

What exactly makes it the missing link? It looks like it provides basic support for its features, which software like ZNC does anyway, but without needing to hardcode the protocol like jbnc does. (also, you're missing a \r in your protocol messages, which would be necessary to actually be RFC1459 compliant. It looks like it is also missing SUMMON, so I guess it would be more accurate to call it RFC1459-like)</comment>


"Prince George Washington" at the Siamese Court (2016) - <AUTHOR> http://publicdomainreview.org/2016/04/21/george-washington-at-the-siamese-court/ <comment><USER2> Review site that focuses on Public Domain works, nice!</comment>


Guessing the pressed keyboard keys by analyzing the audio from the microphone - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ggerganov/kbd-audio <comment><USER2> Attempted to train it by typing for ~2 minutes. Basically typed everything on the GitHub page and tried getting predictions. Results were disappointing. I didn't see any accurate predictions. Even with the default p/q program I see mostly random results.

I tested on a 15" Macbook Pro 2018 (latest version of keyboard that is softer to type of / less noisy)

<comment><USER3> Sounds like the author has the same experience: if the keyboard is not mechanical, then this library doesn't work:

[https://github.com/ggerganov/kbd- audio/issues/3](https://github.com/ggerganov/kbd-audio/issues/3)

<comment><USER4> Correct. I just made a short video to demonstrate what a working setup looks/sounds like:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OjzI9m7W10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OjzI9m7W10)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've always thought Twitch streamers were opening up an attack vector through this exact method.

Cool to see someone follow through with it. Any streamers out there should figure out a way of avoiding keypress bleed or muting their mics when typing sensitive info (e.g. passwords).

<comment><USER6> Yes, countermeasures, such as playing other sounds around those frequencies and/or filtering the microphone at those frequencies would be interesting to explore. Filtering the mic seems the less annoying from a user perspective!

<comment><USER7> Most streamers, myself included, use a filter called a noise gate, which requires the volume of the mic reach a certain threshold before being broadcast. This filters out the majority of background noise on the stream.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Now determine the keypresses by filming the vibrations of a potato chip bag[0]

[0][http://news.mit.edu/2014/algorithm-recovers-speech-from- vibr...](http://news.mit.edu/2014/algorithm-recovers-speech-from- vibrations-0804)

<comment><USER9> They manage to do it (just sound, not keypresses) with a 60fps DSLR camera at the end by examining the rows of the video - does this mean that for any videos already in existence, sound can be decoded from the images?

<comment><USER10> Not for handheld videos.

<comment><USER11> Wouldn't you be able to filter out the camera motion, as long as the movement due to sound was fixed relative to something in frame?

<comment><USER10> I would say the motion blur and the rolling shutter effect would overpower the subtle vibrations due to audio.

<comment><USER12> Rolling shutter is exactly why this works.

Its not a complicated paper, give it a go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If someone hunts-and-pecks how close can you get with gaze tracking?

</comment><comment><USER13> Could you maybe do away with training beforehand on a single source and instead use multiple, very sensitive microphones and triangulate the locations of the keys being pressed? The estimations might not be accurate, but you could put the results through a smartphone typo correction algorithm.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is super cool. Very similar to timing attacks. I wonder if there is a way to tune the model. Essentially cater the probability of each key to a person with maybe a sentence or something.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, this is exactly the sort of thing where augmenting the base model with a language model will have some good returns...

<comment><USER4> In keytap2 I'm trying to make use of the statistical distribution of n-grams in the language. The idea is to first group the unknown keys into clusters based on how similar they sound. The prediction then is performed by breaking the obtained substitution cypher (assuming each cluster corresponds to a letter).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Can you combine this with or does it use relative positioning of the microphone? Seems like a good way to map where keys are (measure lower decibels which would be keys further from the mic).

</comment><comment><USER17> There is more research on this than what you have cited here, unfortunately the literature goes under the catchy keyword "acoustic keyboard emanations", try that in Google scholar.

</comment><comment><USER18> Primary use case is more tracking and surveillance, I presume?

<comment><USER19> Primary usecase is hacking. A keylogger without any software or trace on the target computer.

<comment><USER20> This is another reason why you want 2FA.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Someone has seen the movie sneakers! The blind guy did this in that movie.

<comment><USER22> In what scene? I don't think he actually did... I'm pretty sure when they're trying to crack the guy's password they're using video to record and zoom in to watch him and he's blocking it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> definitely keep buying mechanical keyboards....</comment>


Startup Ideas - <AUTHOR> http://justinmares.com/startup-ideas/

<comment><USER2> Great ideas. Hackable hardware sounds the most enticing to me but probably one of the most challenging.</comment>


Graph everything with Graphite - <AUTHOR> http://www.xkyle.com/graph-everything-with-graphite/

<comment><USER2> This post it's quite old and graphite ecosystem improve, some examples:

Grafana from my POV is the best dashboard at the moment: [http://grafana.org/](http://grafana.org/) [http://grafana.org/blog/2014/05/25/monitorama-video-and- upda...](http://grafana.org/blog/2014/05/25/monitorama-video-and-update.html) [http://play.grafana.org/](http://play.grafana.org/)

About alert system I'm using cabot: [http://cabotapp.com/](http://cabotapp.com/)

About system metrics, at the moment I'm using Diamond. [https://github.com/BrightcoveOS/Diamond](https://github.com/BrightcoveOS/Diamond)

In the other hand, Influxdb is growing, maybe I'll switch to InfluxDB next year, some features are better than graphite, and it's statsd compatible ;-) [http://influxdb.com/](http://influxdb.com/)

Regards ;-)

<comment><USER3> FWIW I've found influxdb considerably easier to install and manage than graphite (graphite doesn't play well with virtualenv, which makes dependency management horrible, compared to influxdb's single static binary)

Also, I can see logging dictionaries being much more efficient and useful than logging single values -- with graphite if you want to track page hits per section of your site (of which you have 10) per user (100) per browser (5), you end up with 5000 individual metrics, and you need to have thought of them in advance. With influxdb you can log {"section": "front page", "user": "bob", "browser": "firefox", "hits": 1} as a single metric and then use an SQL-like query to filter by section / user / browser (or any combination of those) as and when you want to.

TBH the only thing I miss going from graphite to influxdb+grafana is the tree of metrics (grafana has autocomplete once you start typing, but you can't just browse) and a few of the rendering functions (moving average).

<comment><USER4> I think the tagging features in the upcoming 0.9.0 release [1] will help with the navigation of metrics. With that we're adding new types of queries to help in discovery. [2]

[1] - [http://influxdb.com/blog/2014/12/08/clustering_tags_and_enha...](http://influxdb.com/blog/2014/12/08/clustering_tags_and_enhancements_in_0_9_0.html) [2] - [https://github.com/influxdb/influxdb/blob/master/QUERIES.md#...](https://github.com/influxdb/influxdb/blob/master/QUERIES.md#list)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "If you can't measure it, you can't prove you made it better" is a core value in our organisations' tech culture. We have written an interface in our framework for automatically creating new metrics and it is very easy for a developer to set up a new graph that monitors theirs code.

Now, we have another problem. There are over 2 million metrics in our monitoring system and no one knows what most of them mean. Some graphs have been set up for features that don't exist anymore, other graphs were set up by developers who have already quit, there are lot's of duplicated metrics and in general it is a mess. So we are currently working on this problem. I still would like to mention this is a better problem then not having metrics at all, but still a problem.

If you ever had a similar situation, I will be thankful if you could share your experience on how you solved it.

<comment><USER6> [https://codeascraft.com/2013/06/11/introducing- kale/](https://codeascraft.com/2013/06/11/introducing-kale/)

<comment><USER5> Looks interesting, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I haven't had the best experience with Graphite. Namely, our main systems practically never crash but Graphite does fall over every few months. Seriously, Graphite is less reliable than the systems we use it to monitor. Furthermore, there hasn't been a release in about 2 years which makes me think the project is dead.

<comment><USER8> I ended up rolling my own replacement. My biggest problem with Graphite was that it managed to grind an expensive large RAID array into the ground with a relatively small number (in my eyes) of metrics. We had the realisation that we'd waste a tremendous amount of hardware or have to cut down drastically on our data collection if we were to roll out Graphite across the board.

(And yes, we had crashes too)

The reason for the disk grinding was simple: The whisper storage system is _ridiculously_ inefficient as it does tiny writes all over the places, and an excessive number of system calls to boot.

In our case, I decided we don't care if we lose some data if a metric server crashes - if it becomes an issue we'll run two or more vms on separate hardware and feed half our samples into each -, so the first step was to write a simple statsd replacement that shovels 10 second intervals of data into Redis with disk snapshots turned off, coupled with a small daemon that rolls up (I've hardcoded roll-up intervals as it made it easy to use naming of the keys to use "keys <timestamp for start of each interval to roll up>-<postfix for type of period e.g. we use 10 second then 5 minutes, then hourly>-*" to retrieve the keys of the objects to process each step).

We could've easily beat Carbon/Graphite on the same system just by doing more efficient disk writes, but since we were first going to replace it I figured I might as well keep things in memory.

Then a tiny replacement for the subset of the Graphite HTTP API we used for our graphing (if we'd relied on Graphite itself for our dashboards I'd have thought twice about this...).

Lastly a tiny process that archives a final roll-up of data past 48 hours (currently) to CouchDB for if/when we need to do longer term historical trending.

I keep wanting to talk to our commercial director about letting me release some of this code, though a lot of it is probably too specific to our needs to be all that useful to others (e.g. as mentioned, we only support a tiny subset of the functionality of the Graphite HTTP API, as I've only cared about being able to do the averaging and filtering etc. that we actually use). In general, though, if you don't use Graphite for the actual dashboard, replacing it is surprisingly little work.

<comment><USER9> I ended up setting up one machine with a 80GB tmpfs mount for the graphite data, and then rsync it to disk every hour. That allows carbon-cache to keep up, but I'm not happy with the setup.

Whisper is terrible for spinning disks.

<comment><USER10> if you use collectd to feed values into graphite, you've got the advantage of its bulk writes. This article describes how its solved for rrd only collectd installations: [https://collectd.org/wiki/index.php/Inside_the_RRDtool_plugi...](https://collectd.org/wiki/index.php/Inside_the_RRDtool_plugin) but the effect also becomes visible if you use it to send values to graphite.

Its also good in reducing the amount of data you need to send to graphite.

<comment><USER8> How do you figure? Unless recent versions of Whisper have been totally rewritten, whisper writes each metric to a separate file. Submit hundreds of metric per vm/server every 10 seconds, and you get ridiculous amounts of tiny writes (e.g. 4 byte writes) fenced by redundant seek()'s and a number of other syscalls, no matter how much you batch up stuff before sending it to statsd.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Graphite is a great tool, but the graphs can be a bit ugly and changing time can be a bit annoying. We use Grafana ([http://grafana.org/](http://grafana.org/)) for a nicer frontend to Graphite.

<comment><USER12> Grafana is surely the way to go when composing dashboards for your Graphite data.

Be sure to check out the screencasts to get a nice overview and quickstart of the features: [http://grafana.org/docs/screencasts/](http://grafana.org/docs/screencasts/)

Also if you are no longer using the Graphite web frontend consider switching to graphite-api: [http://graphite- api.readthedocs.org/en/latest/](http://graphite- api.readthedocs.org/en/latest/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Being a Windows shop, we had no interest in having a Linux box running with Graphite/StatsD so we went ahead and essentially ported Graphite/StatsD/CollectD to .NET/C#. We'll be be open-sourcing this toolset soonish.

For those interested (not much there yet): [https://bitbucket.org/aeroclub- it/statsify](https://bitbucket.org/aeroclub-it/statsify)

</comment><comment><USER14> I would love software developers stopping their use of names of real things for their software apps. It is so confusing.

It is like they have material world envy or something.

Graphite is already something very common. It makes it hard for people to search in a search engine, and in headlines like this it confuses the hell out of normal people.

I graph lots of things using graphite powder.

<comment><USER15> Could you give us a few examples of a better name?

<comment><USER16> Graphit, Graf(f)it, Grapheme, Graphol (graph-all), Graspit(e), Graphograph (as in tool to graph a graph :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Graphite is _awesome_ : We graph lots and lots of things. we have two datastore servers, and each of them has a static write load of about 60 megs a second (bear in mind that each update is less than 100bytes) we have many thousands of updates a second.

But why is it awesome? because it almost eliminates the need for log shipping. 90% of the time we can diagnose most problems with just graphs. Something is running slow? well we can see which server it is by looking at load, response time and queue size.

Because we are not doing silly things like parsing logs to gain metrics, we don't need a hadoop system. We plumb metrics collection directly into Cgroups (the primitive that docker uses) so we can get per process metrics (disk, memory, cpu etc)

The only time we need logs are when we are really stuck, or diagnosing a specific issue like "why" it went wrong, not what has gone wrong.

</comment><comment><USER18> The graphite project docs and github repo are also helpful:

[http://graphite.readthedocs.org/en/latest/](http://graphite.readthedocs.org/en/latest/)

[https://github.com/graphite-project](https://github.com/graphite-project)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Does anyone know of any good solutions for feature extraction from logs, for the purpose of making graphs out of these features?

Has anyone integrated a graphing system like this in to Graylog/Logstash and care to share some lessons or advice on how you did it?

Finally, monitoring suites like Nagios an Zabbix: they have their own data- collection and graphing features. When tools like Graphite are used in conjunction with these, would you bypass them entirely? Or would you leverage their data-collection features to first grabb the data and then somehow funnel that data in to Graphite?

If it's the former, what do you use instaed of all thosebuilt-in data collection tools? If it's the latter, how do you do it?

<comment><USER19> Ryan Smith's "Building Metrics From Log Data" is an interesting talk about this:

[http://vimeo.com/68183624](http://vimeo.com/68183624)

Also check out Heroku's Lumbermill project, which handles extracting router metrics on their platform:

[https://github.com/heroku/lumbermill](https://github.com/heroku/lumbermill)

If you're on AWS, CloudWatch is capable of ingesting log data and extracting metrics via pattern-matching:

[http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudWatch/latest/Developer...](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudWatch/latest/DeveloperGuide/WhatIsCloudWatchLogs.html)

When I used Graphite with Nagios, I bypassed all the Nagios data-collection and graphing features. Instead, I funneled all the data into Graphite and used check-graphite to alert on it:

[https://github.com/pyr/check-graphite](https://github.com/pyr/check-graphite)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> You might also be interested FnordMetric ChartSQL ([http://fnordmetric.io](http://fnordmetric.io)) which is a SQL-based graphite competitor.

<comment><USER21> Thanks for this link. Most of the data I deal with is in relational SQL databases so this looks very promising for my use cases. Maybe its just me but most of the graphing libraries and APIs are geared towards JSON data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I very much like the way in which metrics 2.0 enhances the duett of collectd and graphite ( [http://metrics20.org/](http://metrics20.org/) ) See the amazing video how you can select across the data in the cluster of dieterbe's employer.

</comment><comment><USER22> If you are on Windows and want to send metrics to graphite, I created a set of PowerShell functions to do it: [https://github.com/MattHodge/Graphite- PowerShell-Functions](https://github.com/MattHodge/Graphite-PowerShell- Functions)

</comment><comment><USER23> Reminds me of an older post about how Graphite + StatsD can be a powerful tool to measure everything. [https://codeascraft.com/2011/02/15/measure-anything- measure-...](https://codeascraft.com/2011/02/15/measure-anything-measure- everything/)

<comment><USER10> It should be mentioned that there is a huge bunch of various implementations of the statsd pattern; depending on ones existing infrastructure one may prefer one or the other. Heres a comprehensive list of them: [http://www.joemiller.me/2011/09/21/list-of-statsd-server- imp...](http://www.joemiller.me/2011/09/21/list-of-statsd-server- implementations/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> How awesome would it be if they hired a great visual designer to add some polish to the overall look of the graphs and software.

</comment><comment><USER25> :) I gave a presentation about this as well. brilliant approach. we do the same for getstream.io</comment>


Some SEO Advice For Bill Gates - <AUTHOR> http://searchengineland.com/some-seo-advice-for-bill-gates-34303

<comment><USER2> Somehow I think Bill Gates will do just fine, SEO or no. When you're a behemoth, people visit your blog whether or not they can find it on Google, and in time he'll naturally migrate to the top of any relevant search. He's a voice that people want to hear, and that's several orders of magnitude more important than how your blog pages are titled and what you put in your meta tag.

Probably useful advice for those that actually need to worry about traffic and findability, though, if they aren't using off-the-shelf solutions that already do most this stuff for you.

<comment><USER3> not mutually exclusive

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I see most of the comments are about the fact Bill Gates doesn't need SEO.

I believe the point of the post is to offer some case study of how to improve one's SEO. And I find it very informative.

He makes his case study even more pertinent by choosing a well-known target, Bill Gates, but that's not the main point.

</comment><comment><USER5> Didn't he just start this a week ago? The fact he's on front page already says to me, he doesn't need it at all.

<comment><USER6> Although I agree with you on the SEO some of the suggestions are good ideas in terms of user experience, i.e. information rich title tags.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Bill's blog has been around for what, a week now? Being #4 in so short a time seems pretty good to me. :P

</comment><comment><USER8> This is meaningless. Due to software problems, my blog has been dead for a few months. The title is "It works!". But if you search for "Jonathan Rockway blog" the default Apache2 "it works" page is the first Google result.

Google's algorithm is more than just looking at the <title> tags.

(And wow, it's been _months_ now? Time to fix that bug...)

</comment><comment><USER9> Yeah, an SEO is exactly what he needs now. sure.

<comment><USER10> I downvoted you for the sarcasm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Eyes: ... SEO ... Bill Gates

Mind: Bill Gates is worth 40-50 billion, doesn't care about revenue

Mind: Bill Gates is known world-wide, doesn't need promotion

Mind: Bill Gates' blog received widespread media attention

Mind: What could this be?

Hand: _Click_

Eyes: searchengineland.com

Mind: Never heard of it

Eyes: Quasi-intelligent comments

Mind: Relates more to the age of te website than anything else

Mind: SEO is like change for the poor. Close.</comment>


Help request: How to find programmers for a startup - <AUTHOR> http://theplanis.com/blog/preview/recruitingengineers/

<comment><USER2> Another point I'd add/emphasize is: don't treat engineers as stupid. This includes downplaying complexity and the amount of work involved, but also not being serious about the business side of things.

The worst thing to say is "Just build it, and let me worry about selling it", or "Everyone will be excited about this, trust me". To an engineer this just sounds like you haven't done any actual work yet, besides thinking of the idea, and you are unlikely to do anything, ever. If you expect a coder to build something for you, have a plan of work that you will contribute (even though it will change).

Also: "Anyone who hasn't spent a whole night awake writing blog posts, calling Japanese leads and obsessing over traffic numbers will probably view the product as the most important thing in the enterprise."

Should it be "will probably _not_ view the product..."? And what about partnerships a being bad thing to mention? This would be helpful to me too, to know more about what to watch for :)

<comment><USER3> > Should it be "will probably not view the product..."?

I don't think so; the idea that the author is attempting to convey is that people who haven't spent a lot of time working on the parts of a business that aren't building the product won't realise how important those other things are. Admittedly it could have been explained a lot more clearly—I had to go back and read that sentence over too.

<comment><USER2> Ahh, I get it now :) I thought the sentence was about why this specific product is the most important out all products out there. And it's actually comparing the product to other things involved in making it, like markering and customer support.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you're the first technical person in a company, you're either a founder/co- founder or an chump. I simply not only refuse to answer emails from "business guys" who "came up with the next great idea and are looking for an engineer to build it", but I also will not even consider _funded_ start-ups that don't have technical co-founders: it's safe to say, that they will lack true technical leadership and their engineer team will be composed not of people who wish to work in a start-up, but of people who have nowhere else to go.

More often than not, if you look at successful technology companies even the "business guys" (the CTO and even the CFO) often have an EE/CS/Math/Physics degrees and have, at one point, have held technical roles. Engineering/math/natural sciences act as "brain gymnastics" which come in handy in any role which requires fast, analytical thinking.

That being said, in enterprise software having a strong sales team is often more important than having a strong product. Ideally, you'd want to have a founder who had worked in roles such as field sales/application engineer/sales engineer/consultant and has a Computer Science background: this way they will understand both the technology involved _and_ the acute pain the target customers experience.

For consumer Internet, however, "sales guys" are only needed when you have something to sell (e.g. a critical amount of impressions in an advertising- supported site). The canonical examples (Craigslist, eBay, Google AdWords/Overture) are brilliant in that they're self serve: you don't need a large sales force to sell them.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'll throw in some more advice: if you're going to start a company w/o a technical person, pick an idea that allows you to pre-sell. Enterprise applications are a good, because it's not uncommon to get commitments from buyers before the product exists. If you can do this, it demonstrates two things to prospective developers:

1) The idea/market has legs

2) You can pull your own weight

<comment><USER4> I wouldn't start an enterprise software company w/o a technical person either. A non-technical sales person from an enterprise company won't be aware of the acute pains the customer's IT/engineering departments have. They'll be able to make sales pitch, but given an equal sales pitch by Oracle/IBM/SAP and a start-up-you-never-heard-of, which one (as a non-technical manager) would you choose?

As I've said earlier, the best person to start an enterprise software company would be an applications engineer/field sales engineer/professional services consultant from either a large or fast growing enterprise software company.

Not only will they know how to sell, they will also understand the technology, be able to program well enough to create a prototype, be interview developers, know how to _support the customer_ , deal with the end-users and know most importantly what the end-users want (best enterprise software is the enterprise software employees are begging to install).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> also, buzzword-laden mass emails sent from business school students to engineering student email lists are real turn-offs :) if you're a business school student, i'd advise to get some friends who are hackers to read over your recruiting emails before sending them out.

<comment><USER7> If they had hackers as friends, they wouldn't need to send out recruiting emails. Most of the time your first hires are your friends. If you can't convince a friend to be a cofounder, how can you ever expect to convince a stranger to work for you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> In some sense, hiring engineers is like selling. In both cases, you need to convince them that you've got something that they want. Neither group cares about what you need/want.

Two related points.

If you can't "sell" an engineer, why are you sure that you can sell to your proposed customers?

While developing your pitch, be sure that you'll be happy with folks who want what you're offering. If it's not unique, you'll lose the good ones to folks who offer "more".

</comment><comment><USER9> > Engineering respect is an inverse log scale

What is the inverse log scale? 1/log(x) or exp(x)?

</comment><comment><USER10> And for God's sake, don't ask for "programming ninjas".

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Finding engineers/programmers seems to be a real problem for potential entrepreneurs.

I thought I might try and write up some of my experiences - I plan to post this to a whole bunch of the London start up lists where the worst offenders hang out. If you have any suggestions for improvements I would appreciate them.

Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER11> My opinion: make it clear that they will not be drug tested nor do you care about how they may choose to relax in their free time. This will set you apart from many large corporate environments as well as indicating that you value a programmer's productivity rather than their conformity.

</comment><comment><USER12> While I agree with ALL of the OP's points, I also wonder why any serious engineer would even bother reading these kinds of requests in the first place. It's usually obvious within the first few words whether a potential client "gets it" or not.

</comment><comment><USER13> Stop using the word "engineer". There isn't such a thing as a "software engineer", it's a made-up business/defense-dept. term. Software engineers don't seem to be recognized by professional engineering certification body nor should they be.

Just call them computer programmers or software developers but treat them with respect, don't treat them like code monkeys.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks to everyone, some very good comments. I'm doing a revision before posting it :-)</comment>


Facebook Privacy is as bad as ever, but you have options - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/security/108081/facebook-privacy-remains-open-ever <comment><USER2> This post conflates security and privacy. Facebook released two new security features, and the author criticizes them for not being about privacy.

<comment><USER3> That's a valid point, facebook-defender.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How can I improve my immune system? - <AUTHOR> I want information about how improve my immune system from the HN community. Do you take any supplements? Do you think about it ? Any special/secret small tip that you think is important for your .
For me, I realized that drinking a lot of water make the difference for my general health including my immune system.
Thanks in Advance <comment><USER2> > [...] that drinking a lot of water make the difference for my general health > [...]

Anything that you eat or drink will affect your "general health"; from your gut bacteria to the pores on your skin. Water and caffeine-free herbal loose- leaf green are both very healthy in this regard.

Others have mentioned diet, sleeping, stress management, eating lots of fruits/veggies.

I'll add: Get regular, consistent, intensive exercise. Preferably something that targets your larger muscles (your legs/glutes) and your core. Doesn't matter what it is. Some people swear by Rippetoe's Starting Strength, but you choose what you like.

"Immune system" is a holistic term. Making sure your heart is healthy and strong, your bones are healthy, your gut is healthy, and so on, all contributes to your immune system.

Supplements are supplements. They're nice to have but they can't replace a diet that you can depend on every day. And they can't replace breaking a sweat during exercise either.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice thanks. Yeah exercise is great. I started work out when I was a teenager, 12 year ago. Lifting weights is a pleasure for me, I have a strong body. However, it is so normal in my life that I do not have a "basis/notion" to compare . About coffee free teas, I believe I can help my body decreasing my caffeine daily dose. It will help my sleep. Thanks again

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Eat lots of fruits and veggies. try to make 50% of your diet fruits and veggies. the other 50% should be Whole grain, beans, nuts/seeds.

if fruits and veggies don't sound appealing, it's usually because someone's taste buds have been blasted to death with artificial ingredients. but, if you get off all that stuff for a few months, your normal taste buds should re- emerge.

Fasting has been shown to have countless numerous benefits that is extremely powerful for many purposes.

Be Careful with Supplements. in the US they are COMPLETELY unregulated. They could put whatever they wanted in there, even if it contradicts what's on the label. You don't need supplements in the first place. Just eat food. Nature's food already has everything the body could ever want. humans spent millions of years adapting to Nature's food, there's nothing better out there than that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I believe I can improve my diet with more veggies, fruits and grains. My diet has a lot of animal protein .

Yeah supplement market in US is crazy. I am another country where I buy from a great source when I need to complete my diet.

<comment><USER3> > Thanks. I believe I can improve my diet with more veggies, fruits and > grains.

That sounds like a great start!

Once in a while, i like to take a hike in the forest and look around and marvel at all the nature. It's really impressive. And to think, that everything you see before your eyes was the only thing humans had to eat: mostly edible weeds, various types of leafy green veggies, and whenever they were lucky enough to find it, they'd gorge themselves on a fruit tree/bush. One of the things you'll notice very quickly is how much abundance of choice we have in the supermarket (compared to how little in the forests and plains) with so much access to so many delicious fruits and veggies - it really makes you greatful for all the abundance we now have.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's encouraging that you've had good result from staying hydrated. I think it makes sense.

I've learned the hard way the importance of mental health as someone who had unfortunate pleasure of getting shingles in late 30s.

The first thing my doc asked me when I suspected shingles; "are you under a lot of stress?"

I nearly broke down and cried. I realized killed myself over work for nothing. For what? Never again. My outlook changed since then.

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely. Mental health has a big influence in our body and immune system. I work a lot in this moment of my life, but my exercises, books and relaxing times are mandatory in my week.

And some days of the week I avoid to be with a lot of people for a long time. I don't know, but for me after a meeting or group work I fell drained.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Get sleep. Manage stress.

If you are worried about coronavirus, flu, etc. the best protection is washing with soap and water frequently.

<comment><USER6> Washing hands and not touching your face are still the best recommendations.

<comment><USER5> It drives me nuts that so much crackpot advice has been voted over this. It's how doctors and nurses manage to see many sick people a day and not be sick all the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sunlight, fresh air, food, sleep, exercise. Fermented foods. Medicinal mushrooms like Shiitake, Reishi, Oyster..

</comment><comment><USER8> My wife has an auto immune disease and we have both switched (through progressive stages) to the Wahl's Protocol. I've never felt healthier and her symptoms are improving--she's also on disease modifying treatment, so we're doing this in addition to medication, not instead of it.

The Wahl's Protocol is designed for cell and brain health, so it may be exactly what you're looking for.

See Dr. Terry Wahl's Ted Talk here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLjgBLwH3Wc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLjgBLwH3Wc)

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice that you are improving together. I will give a look. thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It surprised me how important my oral health was for my overall health. I started taking it more seriously in the last year and had a much better year.

</comment><comment><USER10> In India, it is pretty common to eat the leaves of the plant Tulsi, as it is known to improve the immune system. Personally, I used to catch cold almost 3-4 times a year, but taking Tulsi (in the form of one drop of concentrated tulsi extract mixed in my morning drinking water) has helped me immensely. The frequency with which I catch cold/fever has reduced dramatically.

</comment><comment> jerome-jh Maybe not the answer you are expecting, but the true way is to expose yourself to diseases.

D vitamin may help: you best get it by exposing your naked skin to sunlight.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah . Nice add. I believe I already was exposed to differents diseases. I grew up in a third world country. Also, I did a exchange program in a multicultural US University where I had contact with different people from around the world.

I will try to expose more to sunlight , arms and legs. I spend all my day indoor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Get breastfed for the first 2-3 years of your life.

</comment><comment><USER12> Eating good stuff, good sleep, doing physical exercise if you like that, managing stress if any.

</comment><comment><USER13> Coconut seems to be very good for the immune system. Turmeric is also very good. You may consider taking daily pills on magnesium, omega-3 and C vitamin. Don't take sugars, either directly, from sodas, etc, or indirectly from grains, bread, cakes... Take oils instead. From walnuts and others. You'll improve a lot with this discipline.

<comment><USER14> turmeric is more or less similar to antiseptic

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Eat less times a day, eat more meat and less vegetables. Look for Carnivore Diet.

</comment><comment><USER16> Focus on lowering inflammation in the body. Try intermittent fasting, etc.

</comment><comment><USER14> black pepper is very good for your immune system

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, I didn't know. I will try it. Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Goji berries.</comment>


Microsoft's FUD goes mobile - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/28/microsoft_mobile_sued/

<comment><USER2> This isn't FUD; this is just business. They didn't even sue HTC. If MSFT infringed on a patent of Google's, you can bet Google would be taking the exact same approach.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps not FUD, but I think not releasing what exactly is infringing is suspicious to many.

I've not noticed that Google is particularly litigious: perhaps as the company gets older it will enter the ethos.

I can understand software patents when your competition poaches your staff, but it seems a little unjustified years later because you happened for have an idea first.

Imagine if Novell acted this way.

<comment><USER4> "Perhaps not FUD, but I think not releasing what exactly is infringing is suspicious to many"

Why? Think about it from the patent licensee's point of view. You are paying a patent owner money for permission to practice one or more of their patents.

Why would you want to tell your competitors what those patents are? So they can look at them and make sure they work around them, and so don't end up having to license them, and so get to offer their competing products at a lower cost than yours?

<comment><USER3> That could be a little inaccurate. In this case you create a product using and open-source product and an industry player comes along saying Linux infringes on it's patent portfolio heavily. But this infringement was unproven: Microsoft may not have a case.

This looks like extortion--- where product makers rather than face down Microsoft, accept that they must pay. It it likely that HTC does not think it has too much choice as part of the market for their phone is windows mobile.

Many patents could be claimed on any device built now, you don't see IBM, Novell and Oracle lining up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well... Guess I will not buy an HTC phone. I'll not support a company that gives in to empty threats or blackmail.

<comment><USER6> To be fair, it's not like there were an awful lot of people for whom "giving in to empty threats or blackmail" is a point to be considered when purchasing a mobile phone, so if they changed their patent licencing practices based on your opinion, they would be "giving in to empty threats or blackmail" as well.

<comment><USER5> Your reasoning is flawed. My threat would only be empty if I were to buy an HTC handset. Since I won't, it's not an empty threat. I intend to follow through.

It's, however, not a substantial threat, unless growing a spine becomes a requirement for selling mobile phones. This, unfortunately, is not going to happen anytime soon. Yet, I feel I should take a stand, as principles matter.

Too bad. I would respect them more if they bought Palm. That would probably make them own a lot of patents both Apple and Microsoft cross-license.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My take: Microsoft can't make a mobile OS that doesn't suck, so they want to leech income from those who can, using the power of Extremely Broad Software Patents.

I don't see this as a story about new and interesting alliances of enemies. I see it as a story about substituting litigation for innovation.

<comment><USER8> Actually, Microsoft _does_ make a mobile OS that "doesn't suck", at least in the sense that it's a mobile OS that HTC wants to sell on their own devices.

This is just price negotiation inside an existing business relationship, nothing more. It's true that MS used this trick in the 90's in ways that were anticompetitive (Dell paying MS for every computer sold meant that they had no incentive to bundle other operating systems), but that's not the situation here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Might offer some additional insight into this: [http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/28/microsoft-htc-android- apple...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/28/microsoft-htc-android-apple- patents)

</comment><comment><USER10> not a lot of details to go on here, there's no telling what the issue actually is.

<comment><USER11> This might be the case:

\- HTC agrees to sell MS phones only

\- They also agree to pay MS when they start selling other brands

\- They start selling other brands

\- They pay MS as agreed

<comment><USER12> I'm inclined to agree with this theory. Ironically, much of this article is also FUD. i.e.

 _The deal could be seen as a veiled threat to other handset makers choosing Android - if they don't have such an agreement in place then presumably Microsoft is at liberty to sue them for patent infringement?_

theregister fails to take into consideration that MS is a longstanding partner of HTC's and that HTC was making WM phones almost exclusively until the last year or two. It's very likely that this is the result of an agreement made long ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Or perhaps, Microsoft and HTC enter into deal to help combat Apple.</comment>


How to relax with all the powers of the universe at your fingertips - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/this-happened-to-me/ba5f744e21d5

<comment><USER2> Developers can really create their own universe. To put that in perspective:

My father was in a meeting discussing how to increase the amount of power they could get to run a communication satellite. An equation was written on the board. A suggestion was made by someone that they increase this one value and, if they did so, it would increase the power output of the solar array cells.

My father had to point out that the value was the luminosity of the sun.

<comment><USER3> I'm pretty sure that you could do that, the only problem is that it would accelerate the sun going nova and the eventual engulfing of Earth ...

It's all a matter of priorities. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You have the power of the universe right between your ears, no computer necessary. It works in the dark, on the road, while drunk, without power, without money, but it's a blunt sword at first. It takes years of honing and sharpening and exploring before it starts truly being useful.

It's often easier to leverage other machines that only tell truths. It allows for laziness. No thought necessary when something else could do it so much faster. But stepping back and thinking for a moment can save a lot of cycles. Maybe not right away, but if you're investing your time, a small amount today can be an awful lot tomorrow. (I wish I was a better writer, as I would write a cool story about computers vs. human brains - where either interpretation would be 'right', as to computers, a human tells its own truths (the preconceptions of a life), where to a human a computer only tells truths.

It's easy to take incremental steps. Every single moment you spend on this website is an incremental step. You can see where you were before, you can see where you are now. You can't notice changes when everything is incremental. There is a lot of power in being able to step away, to back off, to explore other parts of your mind than just the one that's connected to the internet. There's a lot of life to live that doesn't involve a computer. And when you (inevitably) come back, you'll notice all the things you could never have noticed if you were on the computer the whole time.

Edit: To use a workout analogy - you don't want to only work out your right forearm. You have an entire brain to exercise.

</comment><comment><USER5> Upvoted for the title, but the content is a little thin.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point actually, I'd really like to extend this idea into a fully fledged (1000-2000) post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think the best analogue I have for this piece is that of an athlete who obe hand wants to compete and play, but on the other hand must take his time to rest between workouts and competition to re-build his energy and at the end if the day be able to better perform or in this case solve complex problems by coding. I also gave to day that the title of the post is really beutiful.

</comment><comment><USER7> What's with all the medium.com blogspam of late?

</comment><comment><USER8> Definitely not just true for programming. I design chemical manufacturing equipment (and LED lighting, which I suppose is closer to programming in a way), and find myself constantly anxious about this and that little detail.

I suppose similar to defining what a program would do and why it's possible to make it work... with additional constraints. The constraints might make it a little easier, but for a sufficiently creative engineer it ends up being more like mental aikido against reality whereas for programming it's perhaps like mental aikido versus math...

I wish there were more... you know... examples of "How to relax with blah blah" in the article though. There's nothing here with ideas of things to do, just stating that it's important. That's rather on the useless side, just saying.

</comment><comment><USER9> I find that in order to relax I need switch to do something else or somewhere else.

I.e. I love coding and reading all technology-related, but from time to time I work on my car or motorcycle, play guitar randomly, if it is cold - get some wood and fire fireplace, etc.

Even foosball is so popular in tech companies for a reason - it allow you to switch your focus in to completely different area.

So... I believe switching what you are doing is the best way to relax.</comment>


The Power Of Silence: Why The SimCity Story Went Away - <AUTHOR> http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/04/22/the-power-of-silence-why-the-simcity-story-went-away/ <comment><USER2> I facilitated a workshop recently where one of the speakers specialised in, among other things, crisis PR. She said that the two best ways to approach most brand attacks were 1) Silence, and this wasn't appreciated enough by brands wanting to respond; and 2) to 'burn' the story by giving access to mid- level news organisations or softer journalists - once they run with the story, it's often 'burnt' for larger / hard-hitting outlets because it's been covered.

Definitely won't work for all crises, but was eye-opening to me, and a good lesson to those of us with businesses.

Bonus tip: the best / worst time to make a social media complaint is on a Friday night - most businesses don't pay someone to monitor social media on the weekend, and conversely most people interact when they're not at work, so complaints are more likely to go viral without a response for many days.

<comment><USER3> _Definitely won't work for all crises_

The golden standard for PR crisis management is probably Johnson & Johnson: [http://www.aerobiologicalengineering.com/wxk116/TylenolMurde...](http://www.aerobiologicalengineering.com/wxk116/TylenolMurders/crisis.html)

They definitely didn't choose silence. You're right, you definitely have to choose your strategy carefully, depending on your situation.

<comment><USER4> If something goes wrong and it's your fault and you don't want to pay the consequences, silence may not be so bad.

J&J had the opposite situation. Something went wrong and it _wasn't_ their fault. Choosing to pay the consequences anyway made them look double good; once for taking responsibility, and again for doing it when other companies might've walked away.

The problem with EA is not so much their PR strategy per se, but their general unwillingness to fix fuckups. No amount of marketing can fix a fundamentally broken company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can't speak to the media/publishing side of things, but personally I stopped talking about SimCity because I stopped playing it.

Looking back at the whole fiasco, I'm positive that the always-online requirement and server overload will forever define the game, but there was a much bigger problem lurking below that issue, which is that the game sucks anyway even if you disregard the early technical issues and the politics around "always-on".

It is, IMO, by far the least fun Maxis "Sim" game I've ever played, and that holds even if you include Spore.

<comment><USER6> I concur absolutely with you - I am the worlds great sim fan, and I've lost countless thousands of hours watching my little guys (and gals) run around in Stronghold, Settlers 7, and Caesar 3. I also got a lot of fun in previous Sim City games.

The Latest SimCity got about 6 hours out of me, before I just went, "meah." - I didn't really get the same sense of progress, or emergent features, or ownership of the process and events that I get from other sims.

But - EA scammed me out of the $60 before I discovered that the game actually sucked, so - maybe it wasn't such a bad strategy on their part after all. But, with that said - this approach (hyping a game, limiting its playtesting, not providing extensive reviewer copies) - only works so many times before people start to get wise to your ways...

<comment><USER7> > But - EA scammed me out of the $60 before...

Chargeback if you can't get a refund (like me, I bought on Origin). I called up Amex, identified the charge, told them EA misrepresented the product, and a day later I had a credit on my statement. Took three minutes.

<comment><USER8> EA made it quite clear if you were to do a chargeback they would cancel your Origin account. Fine if you only have SimCity on there but you could end up losing a lot more than $60 if you had a few of their games via Origin.

<comment> qu4z-2 If I were in that situation, this by itself would be enough to make me do a chargeback.

Possibly over-reacting, but I hate it when people use underhanded tactics like this, and I'd be ok with losing my other games just to spite them.

Sadly, I don't own any EA games, so I can't do this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> That's not "silence", that's the power of the "2 week give-a-damn limit". In today's society we're overwhelmed with constantly breaking news from all over the world. People tend to forget about things after about 2 weeks. There's just so many new things to care about that it's impossible to not move on from old news. Especially when it's just about a game. I'm sure gamers will keep the Sim City fiasco in the back of their minds and pirate later games published by EA but for now, we're really just tired of hearing about old news.

Same thing happened with the whole "WarZ" fiasco. That team had false advertising on Steam, a glitched game released, artwork from the walking dead was stolen, bug reporters banned from the forums and censored. It was a lot worse than SimCity, yet 2 weeks later we just stopped caring. It's a shitty game, moving on, lets focus on something more important, like plastic in our oceans.

<comment><USER10> _There's just so many new things to care about that it's impossible to not move on from old news. Especially when it's just about a game. I'm sure gamers will keep the Sim City fiasco in the back of their minds and pirate later games published by EA but for now, we're really just tired of hearing about old news._

Yeah, I think this about sums it up. When it comes down to it, all that happened is that a company made a bad game. Companies have been doing this for many years and will continue to do so for as long as the medium exists.

If anything, this whole SimCity fiasco has made me less of a fan of RPS in general. It felt like half their site was dedicated to bad-mouthing the game and EA for the first week or so after release. And, of course, they need to throw out a piece like this after a while to generate page views and remind us how terribly angry we should be that such a tragedy could have been allowed to happen.

<comment><USER11> You misrepresent what happened severely. It isn't the case that this is simply about a bad game. This is about a game which didn't work for the people buying it. Which got great previews and reviews(!) before the issues with their servers arised. And which wasn't even a good game, because it was fundamentally flawed, which at the beginning remained undiscovered.

Furthermore, this is not even about the game at all. It is about the crisis management of EA/Maxis, who simply lied (I doesn't care whether she lied or not, in effect it was a lie) when claiming that the Always-On-DRM, which prevented people from playing the game, was necessary to run the game at all because of server-side calculations.

I think RPS is right to make a story out of this fact. Companies who get away lying their customers and the press should feel consequences of this. All too often, and in EAs case this seems to me especially true, companies who behave unethical create a growing mass of disgruntled players not respecting, and not buying from, that company anymore, which the company can ignore for quite a while when focusing only on quarterly results (and given the arrival of new players all the time), until the negative image becomes so overwhelming that their customer-base collapses.

<comment><USER10> _You misrepresent what happened severely._

Whatever you need to tell yourself in order to maintain the level of anger you desire.

Nothing I saw from EA seemed out of the ordinary for a company trying to sell the game they made. Unless you expect companies to only promote games that meet certain quality standards when they are released.

I mean, look at Aliens: Colonial Marines. From my perspective, it was in much worse shape than SimCity upon release, and I don't see RPS coming out with stories about how the game has disappeared from the limelight.

Honestly, I feel like people got so angry about SimCity to deflect their own responsibility for the purchasing decision they made. No one forces people to buy games on release day, and everyone should know that the smartest thing to do is to sit on a new game for at least a couple of days to let any issues arise. That's the responsible thing to do as a customer, and obviously it was something many people chose not to do.

<comment><USER12> > No one forces people to buy games on release day, and everyone should know > that the smartest thing to do is to sit on a new game for at least a couple > of days to let any issues arise.

If that were true, no one would buy anything ever.

<comment><USER13> > > the smartest thing to do is to sit on a new game for at least a couple of > days to let any issues arise.

> If that were true, no one would buy anything ever.

Your comment only makes sense if you assume that everyone always does the smartest thing -- which seems not to be the case.

<comment><USER12> Actually, it makes sense if you include the context that I quoted. Namely the "everyone should know" bit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I blame the over-reliance of the journalism profession on PR to get stories. Few bother to do their research nowadays and access to celebrities, company spokespeople and officials are prised more than actually useful information. You can see it in also in politics, science reporting.

RPS actually looks pretty good with this - maybe the web can provide a solution to this question? PR and paid publications are ultimately boring, even with the best efforts put in by professionals. If opinion and reporting find a better way of getting monetised on the Internet we may see solution for the boring, corrupt and uninformative media we have today.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, I dislike the websites' reliance on PR, too. Some of the stories are so obviously copy pasted from the press release. For example when Intel launches a PR with a headline like "Intel Launches Amazing New Chip", 90% of the tech sites out there are like "Intel Launches Awesome New Chip" or something along those lines, and then proceed to basically rewrite's Intel press release. No critical thinking involved. They do this with many other stories, too, especially the ones they don't understand that much. They basically become a distribution service for their press releases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> While the story went away, did the problem for the company? I personally didn't buy SimCity and I know several people that didn't because of what was up in arms at the time.

To me the damage is done. I won't bother complaining or yelling. I just won't pay $80 and if certain organisations keep associating themselves with poor releases/games why would anyone keep handing over their money.

Especially when you're releasing something like the next SimCity sequel which plays on older gamers' nostalgia, why would people pay for SimCity 2 in a years time if they remember how poorly this one was sent out into the wild?

<comment><USER17> I didnt buy it either and I haven't bought any EA games since Origin started. I figure there are a lot of other games out there from businesses I'd rather support.

I am confused by people that post on forums and get outraged then buy the games anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> That might simply related to the fact the SimCity is a failed game, people stopped playing it and moved on.

There are bigger news to run.

</comment><comment><USER19> This reminds me of the Instagram TOS fiasco. Instagram essentially was burned very badly by doing the right thing, i.e. by being extraordinarily forthright about changing their terms. Usually TOS provide the company the ability to change their terms without any notice whatsoever; we are somewhat unreasonably expected to regularly check back ourselves and try to find changes. Instagram tried to do right by their users by clearly communicating upcoming and significant changes that would affect their users, and the Internet collectively and unilaterally sh*t the bed. I remember thinking they were crazy for doing that, because it was obvious exactly how it would play out.

Sometimes doing the right thing is the wrong thing. Unfortunately sometimes silence is golden.

<comment><USER20> Instagram was burned for telling a story about their ToS which didn't match what they wanted to claim and then tried a classic non-apology apology rather than admitting overreach. If the new ToS had only claimed what they said they wanted this never would have blown up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm quite glad the story went away. Some company released a crappy product and people got angry. Why? Just don't buy it.

It's not as if EA has redeemed themselves in any way. SimCity still has a 1.9 score on Metacritic. The public still agrees this game is a failure and their sales will reflect that.

<comment><USER22> A number of reasons:

1) People pre-ordered, but didn't find out about the crippling problems until after installing it. By that time, they'd opened it. People are used to servers being overwhelmed for a few hours right on launch day. After that's passed and the problem persists, the whole thing is too late.

2) EA was refusing refunds of digital downloads. [1]

3) Even if you subscribed to their crap and waited for them to fix it, the game still exhibited crippling flaws which they refused or took ages to address, for example with the game's pathfinding system [2].

I am sure there were other issues that people faced but not being someone who actually fell in to the Simcity trap, I didn't follow it any more closely.

In short, the whole 'just don't buy it' attitude does not work as it's a naive view that completely ignores several key parts of the puzzle. Importantly, those key parts of the puzzle all involve the power resting in EA's hands where the consumers have little leverage to affect change. EA already had their money and had disclaimers on not needing to offer refunds, so the approach of shut up and let the problem go away was fine for them.

[1] <https://help.ea.com/article/returns-and-cancellations> [2] [http://games.on.net/2013/03/maxis-to-address-simcity- pathfin...](http://games.on.net/2013/03/maxis-to-address-simcity-pathfinding- complaints-as-more-bugs-are-found/)

<comment><USER23> In a sane market, people would learn not to preorder after something like that.

Nut games isn't a sne market. Most people with experience on it move away.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I think the simpler alternative is that it's just not a very interesting story. A game company trying to cover their asses for a bad launch of an unpopular design lied their asses off. So what? They seem to have got the server issues under control now, and people are enjoying the game, so it's no longer got the power of public anger behind it.

</comment><comment><USER25> Maybe it just wasn't a very intetresting story. Gamers had to wait a couple of days for EA to fix their servers. Not very shocking at all.

<comment><USER6> The issue was more the fact that they had Always On DRM built into the game, and didn't tell the full truth about what it was there for.

<comment><USER25> You mean like every game on Steam.

<comment><USER6> Has Steam ever claimed that their DRM (where it's used) is either for (A) Offline compute, or (B) MMO use?

Personally, it's not so much the DRM that EA has infected their latest games with, or not even so much that it requires a constant internet connection (though, Sim City was one of the great play-alone games left) - but that they've been too cowardly too just come out and say, "Yes, we require you to be connected to the internet to play this game so that we can reduce piracy."

Lying (or not telling the truth) about this obvious situation only makes them look bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I think the power of silence depends on the severity of the crisis. If your product is physically harming people or cost someone a lot of money, the controversy probably isn't going away after a few weeks of silence. People will not forget about a loved one being seriously physically or financially harmed.

However, if the issue is a buggy piece of software that costs $60, that is going to be quickly forgotten. People don't have the energy to stay upset about something that in the grand scheme of things is so minor. If this is still registering on your personal radar a month later as a serious problem, consider yourself lucky.

</comment><comment><USER27> I'd been wondering why all the news suddenly dried up. Illuminating article.

</comment><comment><USER28> If neither silence nor the truth are options, the third best approach is to wait until there is a larger story in the industry that you can hide behind. Perhaps that was what EA was attempting, but unfortunately no larger scandals have occurred.

Being able to ride (and manipulate) news cycles is an incredibly powerful skill.

</comment><comment><USER29> I don't think it really went away, at least for the fans at <http://www.reddit.com/r/simcity>. It's like a constant steady flow of hate on there, such that I actually feel bad for Maxis after reading a few posts.

</comment><comment><USER30> This is also true for getting attacked personally on the Internet. If you're getting hit hard by say, 4chan, because they think you did something terrible or whatever, completely ignoring the personal attacks goes a long way towards stopping them.

</comment><comment><USER31> There is an easier answer in all of this. RPS is out of news and trying to bring back to life a story that got them a lot of clicks. Other than when they are attacking someone, I don't see a lot of RPS links making the rounds.

</comment><comment><USER32> Why did the SimCity story go away? Because the story _isn't that important_

</comment><comment><USER33> Those pictures freak me out.

<comment><USER34> SILENCE WILL FALL.

I must say The Silence are a rather awesome enemy for the doctor.

<comment><USER35> I think you are wrong, those are just middle ranked PR division in EA.

<comment><USER36> The middle ranked PR division in EA is a good enemy for the doctor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> When I looked at the big hubbub about Yahoo's decision to end telecommuting, I couldn't help but think that Mayer was making the right decision by not commenting. She was hired to turn around a company in crisis, there were major problems, and she based her decision on data (seeing that many people who were supposed to work via VPN weren't even logging in according to their VPN records).

It was clearly a unique decision for a unique situation and not a comment on telecommuting in general, despite what all the screamers were screaming. Judging from various comments from alleged insiders, it was a good decision because many of the telecommuters were just loafers.

Fact is, who cares what the screamers were screaming? Would people boycott Yahoo's products because they ended telecommuting? This so cannot be compared to buying products made in sweatshops, which many people clearly did for years anyway (and still do). Would employees stop wanting to work at Yahoo? Apparently, job applications are way up, including what industry considers top tier candidates.

When you make the right decision, sometimes the best option is to stay quiet and let the truth come out naturally. Of course, OP is more about the strategy in general, not whether or not the truth comes out naturally (in fact, in OP, they cared not for truth). I'm just saying I felt throughout the whole Yahoo telecommuting thing, Mayer did the right thing. Screw the screamers. They had no idea what they were talking about and wouldn't affect Yahoo in any way anyway.

<comment><USER37> Nothing boosts the morale of a company in crisis than having a boss that rules with decrees instead of leading.

<comment><USER3> I'd love to hear a confirmed insider's view. Because I've ONLY heard good buzz about what they've been up to. Everything has been anonymous sources only (albeit many from journalists who promised anonymity), but I've yet to see any anonymous upset sources. It really seems like Yahoo's got swagger back. So I'd love to hear a confirmed insider's view.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Unfortunately, EA holds a position where they can ignore the complaints of fans. Fans of Sim City, Diablo, etc are the minority of their customers and they can treat us however they want to.

Let's face it, Madden '13 and NCAA '13 will sell way more copies than Sim City has. Why should EA give a crap about a few stories on the internet?

</comment><comment><USER39> I would be interested to know about "why" this whole debacle happened, but much later after I actually get to play the game. I love SimCity, loved almost every single version that Maxis has released, but this latest offering got me scared. So from others out there who play the game...is it even usable at this point?

<comment><USER40> Usually I'd say pirate it, put 10 hours into it, and buy it to support the authors if you like it.

But right now, you can't play the new Simcity without shovelling dollars into EA's pocket, and reward them for producing a fundementally broken game.

You just have to decide for yourself which is more important to you. Providing feedback to bad corporate behavior by refusing to give EA your money, or your curiosity to play (and ultimately be disappointed by) a shitty sim with all depth and complexity removed in favor of "social" interaction and microtransactions (buy packs of 2 buildings for $5, i.e. [http://www.amazon.com/SimCity-German-City-Online- Game/dp/B00...](http://www.amazon.com/SimCity-German-City-Online- Game/dp/B00BLS4H22)).

However, if you care about the future of games, please don't give EA money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Or the story didn't have that much mileage to be begin with. After all, it's just a game, in a sea of other games.

</comment><comment><USER42> Mostly I just stopped caring because I already knew EA was horrible, Origin sucks and people only use it when forced by EA, and SimCity is a crappy game (even independent of the DRM issues).

Bioshock: Infinite came out and was good. Other than that, I just sit and wait for Civ V's next expansion, GTA:V, etc.

</comment><comment><USER43> When I heard all the negative press around SimCity, I became nostalgic for my childhood, and bought SimCity for iPod. I've really enjoyed playing it twice. Even though the controls are different, I picked up the knack right away.

</comment><comment><USER44> It went away because people don't talk about new games after they are released for a couple of weeks. They whine and then most of them move on and look at other upcoming games.

</comment><comment><USER45> It may seem shocking, but this happens throughout industries (and indeed with governments up to a point - the luxury of silence isn't always available).

</comment><comment><USER46> I guess crisis PR is exponentially more challenging in today's social media reality. They can't just talk to a bunch of reporters to bury a story.

</comment><comment><USER47> The Power Of Silence: Why The Linode Story Went Away

</comment><comment><USER48> "That the claims weren't true does not provide room to conclude that [Maxis studio head Lucy] Bradshaw was 'lying' [...] such accusations don't help this discussion."

What!? Perhaps part of the reasons evil triumphs in media situations like this is that "good" white knights like the author carry water for people who, like Bradshaw, objectively make the world a worse place.

Hanlon's razor is irrelevant here. Regardless of whether Lucy is so stupid/irresponsible that she really didn't know such an essential detail of her studio's feature product or is simply a manipulative sociopath, decency dictates she be replaced.

<comment><USER49> _Bradshaw, objectively make the world a worse place_

I'm a huge Sim City fan and I'm really upset I'm not getting the Sim City game I wanted, but let's keep some perspective here. Bradshaw and anything that EA/Maxis says or does has absolutely no effect one way or the other on the world.

<comment><USER50> So, there is no point in them existing then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> The me the kicker was in the comments (one of the first few):

"JarinArenos says:

I browse plenty of gaming sites… but stories like this are why RPS is the only one that gets AdBlocker disabled"

LOL, this is the audience we're talking about here - people who proudly proclaim to the world how they support their causes by _gasp_ disabling AdBlocker! I can see this guy sitting there, basking in his own self- righteousness, how he's such a good guy for allowing some ads (all of which he ignores) to be shown. And then people wonder why companies need to turn to always-online DRM for their software? Ever wondered why the world is turning SaaS-only, with all it's negatives? See it epitomized here.

PS thinking of it (and OT), isn't there an AdBlocker version that overlays ads with a white float, rather than not downloading them at all?

<comment><USER52> The world is turning SaaS-only because it's easier to do business when you have predictable monthly income, processes that are easily debuggable because they are only on your platform, and a far simpler customer support scenario (fixing one person's bug is fixing all persons' bugs). SaaS is basically wholly unrelated to blocking ads.

What should this guy do to meet your approval? Unblock and click every ad? AdBlock gives users more power to enter into agreements with websites that are respectful with their users' attention and reject websites that are not. Use a website occasionally? Add them to the whitelist. Meanwhile you never notice the scummy websites that have giant ads mid-article nor the 20-year-olds in your area trying to meet you for sex.</comment></comment>


A gathering spot for ex-Googlers to reminisce and comment on the latest developments in search. - <AUTHOR> http://xooglers.blogspot.com <comment><USER2> The blog is best read from start to finish.

If the "voice" of the author sounds familiar, it's because Doug Edwards created the PR language of Google.</comment>


Ask HN: How much would you charge for developing a website like (link in post) - dev-ious

[http://madriver.coursetour.ca] <comment> n-gauge Ok - I'll bite.

Disclamer: I don't play golf (keep this in mind for my comments below)

The website is informative and is well done. Links work well - you may want to consider preloading those images though.

Graphics are neat too. I'll guess you could get like £500+ for a website like this nowadays. By this I mean that the code would be £500 + whatever the graphics designer fees are.

I assume the customer would be paying the hosting fees to.

<comment><AUTHOR> IMO that is significantly low if you're being asked to develop it. I wouldn't do it for less than maybe 3x that price

That's probably what it's worth on flippa or something--maybe that's what you meant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> XSS [http://madriver.coursetour.ca/hole.php?hole=1%3Cscript%3Eale...](http://madriver.coursetour.ca/hole.php?hole=1%3Cscript%3Ealert%28%27hello%27%29%3C/script%3E) Better filter your input.

</comment><comment> dev-ious clickable: [http://madriver.coursetour.ca](http://madriver.coursetour.ca)</comment>


Blizzard Exempt from iOS and MacOS Security Sandbox - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/i0n1c/status/738018742710460420 <comment><USER2> Tweet has been deleted: [https://twitter.com/i0n1c/status/738258436161449984](https://twitter.com/i0n1c/status/738258436161449984)

 _I deleted the tweet with the picture of the sandbox because people start hyping it up without linking the clarification._

And the "clarification" tweet: [https://twitter.com/i0n1c/status/738084828202053633](https://twitter.com/i0n1c/status/738084828202053633)

 _For those late to the party: the sandbox bypass exception for Blizzard only affects the access() family of syscalls - probably harmless_

Edit: Original tweet screenshot [http://imgur.com/c8RnYjo](http://imgur.com/c8RnYjo) (it's still in Google cache… for now).

<comment><AUTHOR> I Google'd and here is one result, showing at least one theoretical security vulnerability of access(): [http://stackoverflow.com/a/14333217/3650441](http://stackoverflow.com/a/14333217/3650441)

If an attacker knows what files Blizzard is calling access() on, they could likely use this exploit and execute arbitrary code.

<comment> yoz-y Could they though? The way I understand the answer is that the security hole happens if a privileged user which manipulates files for an unprivileged user calls access() and then open(). In this case Blizzard's application is an unprivileged user, thus even if you manage to insert yourself between the calls, you will only be able to make Blizzards application execute code. The application still runs in a sandbox so you will not get that far.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I recall a story of how the windows 95 team (or the like) was crazy dedicated to backwards compatibility, so they had a check to see if the user was running Roller Coaster Tycoon and if so, disabled virtual memory so the game would run.

Though I'd like to know more details, like:

* Why does blizzard need to run in the sandbox on Mac OS X? The app sandbox is opt-in (though required for App Store apps)

* Can anyone set their team ID to blizzard's?

* Are blizzard games attack vectors?

<comment><USER4> Okay, nitpick time. Your story about the game is surely wrong. Rollercoaster Tycoon was developed for Windows 95/98.

Perhaps you meant it's a later version of Windows, or the game's spiritual predecessor, Theme Park, which ran in DOS.

<comment><USER5> Probably SimCity, there's a bit about Microsoft adding a workaround for a bug in the game in this article [http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000054.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000054.html)

Edit: Maybe not this since it's unrelated to virtual memory but it's along the same lines, going to some lengths to keep software compatible

<comment><USER3> You're right that's the story I was thinking of. I didn't remember all the details though, I guess I knew some old version of windows, some simulation game, and something involving memory. Turns out the actual details got mixed up in my head!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There are a lot of checks for specific apps in the Cocoa framework. It's pretty much what the undocumented CFExecutableLinkedOnOrAfter() is for (sometimes called in conjunction with a check for a specific bundle name).

<comment><USER7> Do you have examples?

<comment><USER8> one example is Popover controls on iPhone. [http://marksands.github.io/2014/05/27/how-apple- cheats.html](http://marksands.github.io/2014/05/27/how-apple-cheats.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nobody saw this yet?

[https://mobile.twitter.com/gruber/status/738149554978070529](https://mobile.twitter.com/gruber/status/738149554978070529)

Turns out a complete non-story.

<comment><USER10> Non-story? This just confirms that Blizzard indeed got an exception.

The reason doesn't make it a "non-story" in any way.

Nobody sane expected the reason to be anything besides something like that (e.g. some evil root access plan) -- and it's still a story.

<comment><USER9> Yes non-story, read through tweets and links in the link I posted.

The "story" here was that Apple was being irresponsible by giving Blizzard an exception to the sandbox.

In actuality it's little more than a shim to make a buggy Blizzard updater not crash by thinking it could do something it couldn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> When I worked at Apple before Steve came back there were tons of checks in MacOS for particular versions of apps, especially for Microsoft Word and Excel, working around their buggy behavior (or their workarounds for Apple's buggy behavior, a vicious cycle). While I have no idea if this person knows anything it would not be surprising.

<comment><USER12> Yeah. We port Windows applications to Mac at work. A couple years ago when Apple switched on a more stringent code signing requirement, we found many of our ports worked without the updated code signing, while some others would warn about an invalid signature. It was clear there was some internal whitelist for old, known signatures which had picked up many, but not all, of our ports. User friendly, I guess, but pretty ugly.

<comment><USER13> What's the alternative, users wait for some porting house to finally get around to releasing an update to be compatible? Oh, you don't have it in your contract to do that work, and the parent company isn't keen to pay you to do it, sorry users.

Maybe your update is now a paid update, so people can either pony up, or not upgrade, or abandon your software. Hello CS6. Was your latest update $10k? *major enterprise developer thanks you for the multi million dollar windfall your OS update gave them by forcing all their deploys to pay for a compatibility update, caused by "you".

Being a major platform developer is full of hard decisions balancing user experience and security, performance and future looking direction. It's not a problem most developers have to concern themselves with in your average app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Horribly misleading title here. Blizzard is exempt from _one tiny piece_ of the sandbox, namely the sandboxing around access(). Which is nearly irrelevant.

<comment><USER15> Why does Blizzard need an exception while the rest of us have to deal with it as is? Exceptions to rules mean the rules are broken.

<comment><USER14> I have no idea, why are you asking me?

<comment><USER15> Figuring you know the what so maybe you know the why. You often know more than most.

[edit: why the heck are people voting mikeash down, legitimate question after all in tone and spirit]

<comment><USER14> I'd speculate that access() was inadvertently left open before, Apple subsequently sandboxed it, this broke Blizzard, and Apple put in an exemption for them to avoid breaking millions of people's games.

But that's a complete guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Hearthstone is used for competitive play on iOS devices regularly. Would this exemption let them employ some anti-cheating functionality?

</comment><comment><USER17> This guy published an app that did jailbreak detection and some other stuff on the App Store, it was taken down, and has been rambling since then in a very very childish way about stuff like this: [https://twitter.com/i0n1c/status/738286205708738560](https://twitter.com/i0n1c/status/738286205708738560)

Truth is--he knew what was going to happen, so this looks just like another excuse to rant.

<comment><USER18> He is known in the jailbreak scene as someone who cannot stay serious - he's always involved in some kind of drama.

If I recall correctly, the pangu dev team attended some of his sessions about iOS hacking and used this knowledge to create a publicly available jailbreak tool. He then started to rant about how they "stole" his technologies on twitter (see for example [https://twitter.com/i0n1c/status/481020166483238912](https://twitter.com/i0n1c/status/481020166483238912)).

More about his childish public behavior related to the jailbreak scene can be read here: [http://www.iclarified.com/41983/pangu-jailbreak-stops- using-...](http://www.iclarified.com/41983/pangu-jailbreak-stops- using-i0n1c-bug-burns-another-exploit)

<comment><USER19> The problem at the time was that they had used _his_ bug that he gave away only for training purposes to the people attending his class.

After the first release, pangu replaced his bug by one of theirs (and both bugs were fixed by apple in a subsequent iOS release.) He probably had to spend some time finding a new bug to use in his classes so it's understandable to be pissed.

<comment><USER20> How do you own a bug? Was the bug something in iOS? Wouldn't that be _Apple 's_ bug?

A sibling post said they took his code. That's a fair complaint, was it clear when they saw it that it was not code that they could reuse?

<comment><USER21> Actually, I believe that's the next (or current) big debate in software due to privacy/search warrants/recent FBI vs Apple iPhone unlock debacle.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where to transfer a .it domain? - <AUTHOR>

I am purchasing a .it domain from a 3rd party vir a broker. Normally I would transfer it to my Godaddy account, but apparently Godaddy does not support transfer of .it domains. I would leave it with the current registrar for simplicity, but they are a bit difficult to deal with.<p>My question is, can someone suggest a good registrar to whom I can transfer a .it domain? I have heard good things about Gandi, would anyone recommend that? <comment><USER2> I would move it to domainregister.it

Good, honest people. No idea if/how well they speak English, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> cool, have you had reasonable interactions with them? most importantly, are they prompt in replying? (that's the main problem with the current registrar the domain is with. I worry in dealing with them if I'm not dangling money in front of them)

<comment><USER2> Hi, and sorry for MY late reply. Yes, they are quick in replying. But I must say I write to them in Italian :)</comment></comment></comment>


Ehsan Akhgari: A glimpse of hope - <AUTHOR> http://ehsanakhgari.org/blog/2009-06-15/glimpse-hope <comment><USER2> WTF! Is HN now the default Iranian-Elections forum? If I want to follow such news, there are hundreds of other news outlets. Let HN be about hacking.

<comment><USER3> Hi, you must be new here. Hacker news is about news that are interesting to hackers as well as startup-related news as per ycombinator and not infact about hacking news.</comment></comment>