How to make PCBs at home in 1 hour without special materials  - <AUTHOR> http://www.riccibitti.com/pcb/pcb.htm

<comment><USER2> I used to make boards like this all the time. Its often easier just to buy a pack of paper made for the transfer purpose (such as <http://www.techniks.com/>) since you know it will work.

If you use ferric chloride really take heed to the part about staining clothing, seems to always end up ruining some clothing so make sure to wear crappy stuff.

There is also a problem doing them the way he has done... if you use pads that are filled (as they are there) it can be difficult to drill the holes if using through-hole components. The drill bit will walk, or just bend because its so thin... using pads with holes in the middle makes it much easier. If you have a bigger board it becomes really annoying, especially if you have ICs with a lot of pins... they wont line up well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Supposedly, you can substitute ferric chloride with hydrogen peroxide and muriatic acid: [http://www.instructables.com/id/Stop-using-Ferric- Chloride-e...](http://www.instructables.com/id/Stop-using-Ferric-Chloride- etchant!--A-better-etc/)

<comment><USER3> When I read your comment, I thought, "Holy shit, he wants to use H₂O₂ because FeCl₃ is dangerous? Talk about 'out of the frying pan, into the fire!'" but the Instructable you linked to just uses the standard 3% H₂O₂ USP solution, which isn't particularly dangerous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Save yourself a lot of time, trouble and dealing with nasty chemicals and take a look at <http://www.apcircuits.com/> or <http://www.pcb- pool.com/ppuk/index.html>. I've used them both with excellent results.

Other people have also been happy with <http://www.expresspcb.com/> which offers free layout software.

<comment><USER5> mhb is right. This may look easy, but is actually a pain in the ass. It is fine for small circuits, like in the example. For big projects, drilling out all the vias or thru-holes is tedious. There are also registration issues and etch time issues.

There is a reason why commercially made prototype circuit boards are so popular.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> There is also lots of information in this page [http://members.optusnet.com.au/~eseychell/PCB/etching_CuCl/i...](http://members.optusnet.com.au/~eseychell/PCB/etching_CuCl/index.html)

about an alternative to ferric cloride, acid cupric cloride. It is easier to buy, since all you are doing is mixing 2 parts oxygenated water with 1 part muriatic acid/HCl (@33%), which can be obtained at any hardware store. It shares the same problem with Ferric Cloride: after etching, the resulting solution is hazardous and should be disposed accordingly (€€/$$).

I've done this at home just like the original article but with this other solution and after 3-4 tries got pretty good results. Good enough for some basic SMD circuits.

<comment><USER7> Can you actually get muriatic acid at "any hardware store" nowadays? I'm 0 for 4 on 3 Home Depots and 1 Lowes in eastern MA.

<comment><USER6> I'm in Portugal so I can't comment on your experience. In here one can get it at any 'mom&pop' hardware store, which are more common than 'Home Depot' style stores.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is amazing, wish I would have know how to do this before I made my microcomputer board. I ordered mine from 4pcb.com, but making it yourself is pretty sweet. Whenever I do something myself, it adds a lot of extra meaning to what I did.

</comment><comment><USER9> What are the advantages of homemade PCB boards over wire-wrap? Is compactness the only advantage?

<comment><USER5> Wire wrap creates a huge tangle of wires that is hard to debug. With careful PCB layout, you can create circuits that operate at microwave frequencies due to the lower parasitics.

Wire wrap circuits can't operate at high frequencies. There is too much series inductance and cross-coupling.

Also, chips are increasingly moving towards surface mount only packaging.

By the way, where are you getting your wire wrap supplies? I didn't know they still made wire wrap guns. I don't know anyone who has used one in the last 15 years.

<comment><USER9> > I didn't know they still made wire wrap guns. I don't know anyone who has > used one in the last 15 years.

I just use a manual wire-wrap/stripping tool (from digikey.com). I'm a software guy who dabbles in hardware, hence the arcane technology.

<comment><USER5> They are pretty good for that. Honestly, if you didn't want to go through the trouble to get a PCB fabbed by a commercial PCB vendor, wire wrap is a pretty good choice for simple circuits.

When I do that simple stuff like that, I use wires and solder instead of a wire wrap tool. Wire wrap might be a little faster.

If you want to prototype high speed analog/RF circuits without PCBs, take a look at "dirty" or "dead-bug" construction. HAM guys love it for building radios. You assemble your circuit over a piece of bare copper-clad board and solder the pins either directly together or short pieces of wire. People do this with both SMT and thru-hole parts.

Jim Williams has a great tutorial on this technique: [http://www.linear.com/pc/downloadDocument.do?navId=H0,C1,C11...](http://www.linear.com/pc/downloadDocument.do?navId=H0,C1,C1154,C1009,C1028,P1219,D4138)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> True Story: My first experience in making PCB's didn't go so well.

I was in junior high and just started getting into electronics because I was obsessed with the dream of creating my own car-audio amps (think Kicker, JBL, etc). Note I was way to young for even a driver's license but that didn't stop me from planning out for when I was old enough to roll (aka Weird Al - White & Nerdy)

Anyway, I created my first PCB in autocad and took it out into the garage for etching...

"Hmmm I needed something to pour the etching acid into... Something that I could throw away when I'm done... Ah! This pie tin will work out nicely!"

So I took the pie tin and placed it on the surface of my Dad's table saw and then placed my unetched PCB in the tin. Then next step of course was to pour the acid in the tin......

$%^& __!!!!!

The acid reacted violently with the metal of the tin and within seconds the bottom of the tin was completed digested by the acid which then proceeded to flow out of the tin, onto the table saw, and then all over the garage floor.

To this day, the table saw still has a rusty look to it and there is a nice brown stain in the concrete.

My career as a "EE" was founded on pure genius!

</comment><comment><USER11> Tom Gootee's article is worth reading. He did a lot of the heavy lifting summarized in this article.

I've tried this and it works -- but...

You must be very, very careful with the solution -- whether it's Ferric Chloride from Radio Shack or a muriatic/peroxide homebrew. Gootee's article and others show how to create safe 'bubblers' for this step. Look at these first.

Please be careful. You are entering 'Breaking Bad' territory here.

</comment><comment><USER12> This might be interesting for the reprap project, or?

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, RepRap is moving towards (literally) printing their circuit boards using both conductive and insulative materials.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Beautiful article - just in time for me to prototype my graduation project.

Personally, I prefer the extremely time-consuming method of building the very first prototype on a perfboard w/ wire-wrap; just because it gives me the flexibility of changing connections then-and-there as I attempt to get a working design and only then convert to PCB.

</comment><comment><USER14> Unless your ironing technique is exceedingly thorough and your boards perfectly smooth, you will get pitted/broken traces. I found that the more traditional photographic method is just as quick, and the supplies cost approximately the same.

</comment><comment><USER15> The premise was very cool, Mc Gyver style. But let's be honest, who has ferric chloride solution in their kitchen cabinet?

<comment><USER16> I have :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> how important are thru-holes? my friends and i are making a cheap desktop circuitboard miller. it mills away the copper with a blade rather than etching.

it can do both sides of the board in series, but no thru-holes. is this something anyone would be interested in?

</comment><comment><USER18> Sounds like a good way to turn your house into a superfund site.

</comment><comment><USER19> I saw the title and was hoping a PCB was something explosive :(

<comment><USER20> I was wondering why anyone would _want_ to make polychlorinated biphenyls at home.

<comment><USER21> That was the first thought that popped into my head upon reading the title. That's the problem with acronyms - namespace collisions occur far too frequently (and it's even worse in this case because both variants of PCB are used within the same technical domain). Fortunately, the authors at least bothered to define the term at the point when it is first used in the text (as is standard practice in science literature). There's nothing quite so annoying as encountering a blog full of alphabet soup that makes no attempt to define abbreviations properly.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Would a small touch interface on the back of mobile devices be useful? - <AUTHOR>

I imagine a small bit of glass on the back, that just records scrolling, and could be disabled. I think it would be nice because you could scroll without obscuring your screen, and it could allow for differentiation between scroll events and touch events. What do you think? <comment><USER2> It's an interesting idea, but I'm trying to imagine it while holding my phone, and it feels really awkward. The fingers behind the phone are supporting it, so I can't really "scroll" while keeping the screen stable enough to read.

Interesting concept though.

<comment><AUTHOR> you could also put it on one of the device's edges

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Motorola Spice has a little switch at the back.

It let's you scroll and click.

</comment><comment><USER4> That would be an interesting idea. Isn't there already a controller for some console that implements that?

Edit:

It may be the Wii U, I'm not sure.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think SONY PS Vita has one on it's back.</comment>


On the absence of EVAL in ClojureScript - <AUTHOR> http://axisofeval.blogspot.com/2011/07/on-absence-of-eval-in-clojurescript.html

<comment><USER2> Weird. Isn't client eval one of the big advantages of having the same language on both ends?</comment>


Request fron HN: A url forwarding aggregator. Anti government blocker. - <AUTHOR>

In lieu of the recent US government censorships, is there anyone planning on working on a domain aggregation service, you go to a site (lets say domainaggregator.com or a specific ip address) and type in a url. The site tries the url, if blocked, it will then use an alternate URL. The URLs are posted by the site owners because this is a service to them.
As a bonus we can make plugins to all major browsers to use this service to automatically undo the US blocking of domain names. If you go to a site, and the response is the censored site, your browser will look up an alternative and update your bookmarks.
The site can be a known IP# so we don't need a name lookup.
My reasons:
1) They will pry my constitutional rights from my cold dead hands only.
2) The US has no right to censor something world-wide. Just like a single state has no right to criminally pursue anyone anywhere in the world for a local law that indicates that "inappropriate" content cannot be served to children. <comment><USER2> There was a project to do this at the DNS level:

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

I don't know the history though or why the project was abandoned.

</comment><comment><USER3> Quite possibly not a concern. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1946951>

<comment><AUTHOR> I disagree. There is a bill on the horizon to make this a concern yet again. Even if the uses are legitimate, the US government does not have world-wide governing powers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> there are a number of ICANN alternative dns roots -

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

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I am hoping for a future-proof solution. Something that steps outside the DNS- level infrastructure and acts as a regular web service. If in some time the service becomes moot due to something more useful, it would be better to just use it as a database for bootstraping the better system (if applicable). I just wanted something we can use fast.</comment>


'Star Citizen' Court Case Reveals the Messy Reality of Crowdfunding a $200M Game - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ne5n7b/star-citizen-court-documents-reveal-the-messy-reality-of-crowdfunding-a-dollar200-million-game <comment><USER2> He lost because of a forced arbitration clause. This massive privatization of justice where any boilerplate service or product now comes with forced arbitration is making my blood boil.

The justice system should always be an option when arbitration fails, and arbitration should take no more than a reasonable time to fail (say, two weeks for this $5000 amount). The whole point of a small claims court is to handle such cases, not offload them to a dodgy corporate lawyer masquerading as a judge.

If the public service of justice is slow and expensive, we need to fix the public service, not replace it with a free market simulacrum. That's always the case with non marketable but essential public goods.

<comment><USER3> I'm more disturbed by the parts of the article which say that he never agreed to a forced arbitration clause in the first place because it wasn't in the ToS when he paid, but the judge decided to go with the later ToS anyway:

> According to Lord, the terms of service when he made the initial pledge > aren't the same terms of service they are today. The original terms of > service, according to RSI's own records, make no mention of arbitration > before February 2015. "These Terms of Service (TOS) do not affect any > transactions made before its effective date," RSI's terms site said. "All > prior transactions are governed by the TOS in effect on the date of such > transactions."

> Lord came to court prepared. He had printed out multiple versions of the > terms of service, all records of communication with RSI, and a long document > recording the 77 promises RSI hasn't fulfilled in a timely fashion, > including citations showing where and when RSI made those promises. But the > case never got that far. He said RSI's representatives understood that > Lord's pledges weren't covered by the arbitration clause, and he offered to > settle, again, for $3,800. They declined.

> According to Lord, when RSI's representatives stood before the judge, they > tried to argue the arbitration clause of their TOS. "Right off the bat, they > assert the arbitration clause applied to everything, even though it plainly > didn't," Lord said. "I had to give the judge a copy of the first terms of > services that clearly show that the arbitration clause was not there for the > first few transactions."

> ...According to Lord, the judge decided to apply the current TOS to all of > the transactions in dispute. "He said he didn't want two rulings floating > out there," Lord said. He may have lost this case, but he's not done > fighting. "I'm going to pursue it further. I'm not sure in what direction. > I'm going to be speaking with a couple of different attorneys to evaluate my > options."

I mean... what? So even if you do exercise your choice as a consumer to avoid a forced-arbitration clause, companies can simply add it to their ToSes later on and retroactively make it apply to all interactions ever with the company?

<comment><USER4> This is especially important, and I don't see anyone else here (at the moment of posting this) calling this out. This is a disastrous precedent to set for consumers, because it means that even though you are agreeing to terms on the date of the sale, those same terms of the sale can be changed on a moments notice and still affect you, without your knowledge or consent. It's a shame that he has to keep fighting this, but I would assume (edit: I should say, I really, really hope) that this decision will eventually be overturned.

<comment><USER5> In other words if ToS can be changed retroactively, it's a wildcard agreement. Is there even a point in reading it?

<comment><USER6> The simple solution is we need to ban all ToSs and EULAs. Make it a crime to try to enforce them on users, one that results in mandatory prison time (else companies will still use them to scare consumers, same as the warranty void if removed stickers).

<comment><USER7> We need a library of standard contract terms (so that every time you buy a thing you don't need to read a new contract, and to prevent shafting either side on the deals).

We also need those contracts to be much simpler. A single page of large font in language simple enough for a grade school graduate to understand what's supposed to happen.

<comment><USER8> But that would be s-s-socialism!!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I pledged a fraction of this fellow's total in Star Citizen, probably the lowest tier that would result in a digital copy of the game once complete. I was after a modern Privateer reboot, essentially, and figured it was worth the gamble.

I haven't followed the development with anything more than a casual, occasional glance and accompanying eye-roll. I doubt I'll ever see anything come of it. A shame, not necessarily a surprise.

I'm fully aware and prepared that kickstarting a game confers no guarantee, but the feature creep in this case is staggering. I suspect that if this case were to succeed they'd suddenly find themselves underwater with all the pledges clawed back once the precedent was set.

<comment><USER10> For me, Elite:Dangerous had a better model (although still not without it's troubles).

They delivered the base game in reasonable order and have been iterating and adding content since then.

Whilst the early game was pretty sparse in terms of content, at least it was delivered and reasonably complete.

<comment><USER11> That does seem like a better model. I might have to check that game out.

Games should produce the base game they promised, and then just add expansion packs or additional levels (free to initial backers) to try and get everything else in until the money runs out.

Maybe even the old shareware style route of releasing Episode 1, 2 and 3 (although in the shareware days, Ep1 was free and 2/3 were commercial .. like 1 was a really long game demo).

<comment><USER12> I love Elite, just be prepared it's very much a make-your-own-adventure game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Meanwhile, No Mans Sky, the underdog-turn-most-hated-turn-underdog-again game is releasing full multiplayer free upgrade next week. They engineered a PR disaster for themselves but have been adding great features at a slow steady pace, which is exactly how it should be done.

<comment><USER14> How does it compare to Elite Dangerous?

<comment><USER15> They're actually very different games. NMS is a "Roger Dean artwork generator" with a small survival game embedded in it, while ED is an inheritor of Elite for people who prefer a much more sparsely populated universe than Eve Online. And who like orange.

<comment><USER16> So. Much. Orange.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I was 25 when I backed this game. Not only am I hugely disappointed in the waterfall approach, and feature creep that pushed this over the edge.

But I am 33 today! My desire to play MMOs has also slowly evaporated.

<comment><USER18> Wait, that's 8 years. Article says they didn't start the kickstarter till 2012; _6_ years ago.

<comment><USER19> If they began backing before their birthday in 2012, today's birthday would make an 8 year age difference.

Happy birthday gp!

<comment><USER20> No it wouldn't. If they were 25 on some date in 2012, then they'd be 31 on the same date in 2018 and the oldest they could be at any point in 2018 would be 32

<comment><USER19> Whoops, I misremembered my age in 2012 when calculating that. Their birthday yesterday would, in fact, make at most a 7 year age difference. Maybe gp simply misremembered too ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I choked on my coffee when I read "Lord is a data scientist who works on developing AI for SAP—a data-processing company in Colorado." SAP as in the 90k employee German-based European multinational software corporation?!

<comment><USER22> That bugged me too. It makes me wonder about the quality of the journalism in other places.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I had an opposite experience of crowdfunding just yesterday. I had played the f2p clicker heroes (with iap, but it was easy to hack your save to get them for free, but i didn't) and liked it a lot. Never having supported them in any way, I thought that them asking for $20 to make a sequel was a perfect opportunity to give back even if I got no game for it. And yesterday, half a year after they asked for money the beta is out!

Anyway I feel asking for your money back sounds like it would ruin crowd funding. How can the developers spend the money on development if there is a risk they need to refund people en masse? And if they can't spend it, what's even the point? I mean yeah I guess if all the money's gone to luxury resorts and bunga bunga parties then that's not acceptable but if they spent it trying and failing that's just tough shit.

<comment><USER24> Well, the guy's point is that they changed what they were making after they took his money. This isn't something that's outside of their control, and it's not unreasonable to suggest they shouldn't do that unless they're willing to refund.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've dumped about a grand into Star Citizen over the course of 4 years. I've followed updates and developments with mild interest, and ever once and a while I jump back into it to see what's changed. It's always amazing to see the progress they have made, wither it be the engine tech or just the game play.

Do I think it will come out in the next year or two? No, but I think it will. Development is on going and active. Progress is transparent (which is why I don't pay attention- I like the surprise). Milestones have been reached, and expectations have been met. Do I think I've gotten $1k of enjoyment from the game back when I was playing it? Yes. =

<comment><USER10> When you say "expectations have been met", did you expect the game to take this long to develop?

Looking at the original kickstarter from 2012 [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cig/star- citizen?ref=na...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cig/star- citizen?ref=nav_search&result=project&term=star%20citizen) it looks like the original ship date was Nov 2014, so it seems that at least some people's expectations aren't likely to have been met.

<comment><USER25> I knew when I got involved I was putting money into a black box. I was (and still am) enthralled with the idea Chris Roberts has presented. When I was able to jump into a ship and play Area Commander with other People, I felt like what I signed up for was delivered. But, I'm excited with what else is coming.

And honestly, I'm glad. If they had just stuck to the initial scope, it would be less exciting. I'd rather dream big and be let down versus not have the chance to dream in the first place. I've backed some kickstarter projects that did what I signed up for, and awesome. I've also backed some projects that got widely popular and the people decided to increase the scope of what they were trying to do. Some of them worked, some of them didn't, and some looks like they are going to. I'm not sure which is better, but for me I lean towards "let's try to do awesome."

EDIT. A point I wanted to share is that you also need to quantify enjoyment and wow factor. I've seen things come out of Star Citizen that make me feel like a kid again. They have done some awesome stuff in terms of visuals and engineering. I would still love to have a finished project, but from what I've played and seen already, I would not be overly disappointed if the game disappeared tomorrow.

I've enjoyed the journey, and will continue to enjoy it. That has to count for something. I'm not saying I don't expect a full game to come, I do.

<comment><USER10> Enjoyment is always subjective and if you feel that you've got appropriate levels of enjoyment for the money you've spent then it obviously works for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > But games change during development and, according to Lord, Star Citizen > changed a lot. According to the game's original pitch on Kickstarter, it > would be a space sim with a co-op multiplayer game, an offline single-player > experience, and a persistent universe. It's since become a massively > multiplayer online game and a separate single-player game with first-person > shooter elements called Squadron 42, which RSI originally pitched as "A Wing > Commander style single player mode, playable OFFLINE if you want."

> Along with the game—which originally had a targeted release date of > 2014—Lord was supposed to have received numerous bits of physical swag. "So > aside from [the game], I'm supposed to get a spaceship USB drive, silver > collector's box, CDs, DVDs, spaceship blueprints, models of the spaceship, a > hardback book," he said. "That's the making of Star Citizen, which—if they > end up making this game—might turn into an encyclopedia set."

This is a clear breach of contract. He should work with a real lawyer and seek punitive damages. Changing what the product _is_ shouldn't be allowed. Hopefully the lawyer includes Kickstarter in the suit, because they also should be able to step in when a product changes fundamentally from what its funders paid for.

<comment><USER27> What's the difference between a persistent universe and an MMO?

<comment><USER28> Persistence universe just means the game world and any changes done in it still exist (and possibly continue to be simulated) even when you log off. There's no true end to the game.

MMO means massively multiplayer online. Hundreds, thousands, or more in a single world.

While the two are often hand-in-hand, they don't have to be. A persistent universe that is only open to you and 4 friends wouldn't be an MMO.

SimCity 2013 is often described as an MMO, but I would argue it really isn't, since each region you play has a maximum of 1 player per city in the region (though 1 player can play multiple cities), which each region having only a few cities, and each region is completely independent of other regions. Effectively, each region is its own universe instance played by 1-16 players. Players can make their regions public, allowing cities to be claimed by any other player in the world, but claims are permanent until the player chooses to release their claim.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> > "Like they were some sort of charity, or like I just gave them $4,500 > because I like them," he said. "I gave them $4,500 because I wanted them to > give me a video game."

So I am not sure what's the state of affairs today but certainly in the early days it was pretty well understood that Kickstarter is not a store and every dollar you put in there might just disappear and you are relying on the good faith of the campaign runner.

</comment><comment><USER30> While i regularly throw $20-$50 into game kickstarters, I stayed away from both Star Citizen and Elite Dangerous when I saw how hyped they were. Nothing good was going to come out of that.

Personal statistics: 19 kickstarters backed, got a finished product on 9 of them so far, 2 more have builds that show everything is on track. Everything I got was acceptable, with at least 7 being good or above.

Also, ALL of them were late delivering.

Not bad, will crowdfund again. Never $4500 though.

<comment><USER31> Your skepticism is well-founded, but I'd like to put in a good word for Elite Dangerous. I bought it for $15 on sale long after the Kickstarter had ended and it constantly impresses me with its sense of scale and level of polish. Sometimes I'm amazed that game exists at all, let alone that it successfully came out of a Kickstarter.

It's not for everyone but if the idea of "Euro Truck Simulator in space" appeals to you, you'll probably enjoy it.

<comment><USER30> Is it Euro Truck Simulator in space? Because I read some previews a couple years ago (multiplayer, mind) and they sounded like a clone of Eve: Online...

<comment><USER32> It definitely can be played as Euro Truck Simulator in space, but there's also a lot to do in terms of exploration, combat, missions and multiplayer. It's a game where nothing is really forced on you and you can play as you'd like.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> >one of the worst cases of feature creep in history

crowdfunding campaign that exceed expectations put the developer in a really tough spot. Star Citizen asked for $2 million but got 6. If they had said they keep everything the same, the schedule would stay sane but everyone would call it a money grab because they take $6 million to develop a $2 million game. The other option is to make use of the additional $4 million, but in almost all cases that will destroy the schedule.

Now if you are like Star Citizen and keep raising money (and get another $180 million) that same principle quickly pushes you deeper and deeper into feature creep.

It's a systematic problem every crowd funding project has to solve. Star Citizen seems to have stabilized their predictions of total money raised to get a fixed feature set, but I can't blame them for not predicting that they would raise over $200 million until release and planning for that.

<comment><USER34> > Star Citizen asked for $2 million but got 6. If they had said they keep > everything the same, the schedule would stay sane but everyone would call it > a money grab because they take $6 million to develop a $2 million game.

What? That's not how crowdfunding works. If you crowdfund a bag for $200k and you get $1 mil, you don't turn that into a jetpack - you just ship the bag that you promised.

<comment><USER35> A $2 million game will cost (more or less) the same to develop whether it goes on to sell 1, 100, 10000 or 10 million copies. The cost of producing a handbag depends a whole lot on how many you need to produce.

So assuming that shipping more copies is very cheap once the game is developed, what do you do when you get $6 million in funding for a $2 million game?

<comment><USER36> You profit? That's what every other company that sells software does.

<comment><USER37> That's not how crowdfunding works though. You aren't selling a product, you're asking for money to cover the production expenses for a product.

That often includes a salary for the creators, but it's hard to justify a multi-million dollar profit (from the crowdfunding itself).

<comment><USER38> I think the point he was trying to make is that they had no obligation to make crowdfunding work like people expected it to. They were perfectly within their rights to just ship on time and bag the rest as profit.

<comment><USER39> I agree that it is well within their rights to do that. But I also feel that this is a reason why large software products are not inherently a great fit for the Kickstarter model. I think Steam's "early-access" model is a much more intuitive fit for both the developers and the consumers of these games.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> As a total newbie (well almost newbie, I've released one tiny game) I just want to ask: why not gray-box the whole damn game first, then paint rough 90s looking graphics on top, then gradually paint the whole game over with modern graphics? While tuning the gameplay the whole time? That just seems like the only sane way to build something huge, but instead all the big developers like CIG seem to start with ultra-detailed vertical slices for some reason.

<comment><USER41> Because Star Citizen is not really a game at this point, more a funding vehicle to get more money out of kickstarters - many of whom are suffering from the 'sunk cost' fallacy.

Grey boxing is a step towards a complete game, but it doesn't allow you to collect money the way that a glorious, fully modelled giant spaceship (that people can buy for $250 - years before there is even a game to play it in) does.

<comment><USER42> Star Citizen has pretty much given up all hope of trying to give people realistic expectations of a game. At this point, it's just everything anyone has ever wanted in a space MMO, no matter how grandiose or pointless a complicated feature would be to the overall gameplay.

It amazes me that people are still being duped by it.

<comment><USER43> Ha. Makes me think of the way Trump makes promises. Seems like a great way to get a crowd riled up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I love reading about game dev/watching videos and I've watched a few Star Citizen developer updates. Seems like they were wasting a tremendous amount of time refining small details like adjusting the vents and decals and landing gear on ships that could already be considered complete. It struck me as absolutely awful time management.

<comment><USER45> It sounds like they might simply need a good (and empowered) project manager to crack the whip on schedule and say no to scope creep. I'd love to see what their internal estimates and work breakdown looks like! When they miss a milestone, what corrective action do they take? Do they give themselves any real deadlines? So many games would make such interesting project management case studies.

<comment><USER46> Head over to their website and take a look. They have some of the most seasoned game project managers on their books.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> That sucks, but it seems almost inevitable with these new funding/purchasing models: the risk necessarily shifts from the developer and onto the consumer. This is a big reason why I'm a "patient gamer:" why should I be the one exposed to uncertainty when there are plenty of other complete and patched games out there vying for my attention?

<comment><USER11> I mean, it does need to be treated like an investment, and you can lose on an investment. You can say, "That Camera rig is amazing. I've always wanted something like that. There's nothing on the market like that."

If you put like $600 in, you're hoping for a return on that investment in 8 months of a product. You might get something amazing, or something okay or nothing at all. Just like any other venture.

Okay, so you might say, "Well I don't want to invest, but I'll buy it once it's build if other people put up the funding." It's successful aaaaaand that's it. No more units.

That's a big issue, because now people with existing units may not even have a repair path. Devices could start getting rare and go on eBay for tons. This might even violate some basic product warrant laws in some country.

This doesn't apply here though, because games can always be purchased and distributed to people later without having to get them made in a factory.

<comment><USER48> If you are have no expectation to get your principle invested much less potential for additional monetary returns then it is NOT an investment. The potential monetary returns on this is $0 in all cases.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Why don't people understand that crowdfunding is not indie shopping? It's a high risk investment. You support projects you believe in (in the religious sense of the word) and if you're lucky, you might get something.

<comment><USER50> > Why don't people understand that crowdfunding is not indie shopping? It's a > high risk investment.

Because what is being offered is neither a debt or equity instrument but a defined good or service, just as with other shopping vebues, and because the kind of detailed financial and other information that would be made available to investors for due diligence with normal high-risk investments is not offered or available for most crowdfunded projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I'm a backer and I have no problem with this. Many AAA titles take a decade or more from start to finish. For example, between Diablo 2 and 3. I want the best space sim and I like what RSI is doing. I'm not holding my breath, just living my life and when the game is finished I will be happy to play it. Although, I also did not drop 5 grand on this game.

<comment><USER52> > Many AAA titles take a decade or more from start to finish.

AAA titles that take a decade or more to develop are usually stuck in some sort of development hell.

>I want the best space sim and I like what RSI is doing.

You like that instead of making the best space sim, they are adding focusing on adding an first person combat? It's clear as day that Roberts and Co. lack any sort of discipline. It's a perfect example why sometimes constraints on creative freedom (usually forced by eviiiil publishers) are a good thing.

<comment><USER51> Unfortunately, I do like it. To each his own.

<comment><USER52> To each his own indeed, but I think it would be a good idea for them to release a kick-ass space sim, and then refine and expand gameplay in Star Citizen 2.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I've read somewhere that you should not lend to those more powerful than you. :)

<comment><USER54> Though, it's not a loan since you don't get your money back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Its been so many years and this game still is no where near completion. A great example of feature creep and why waterfall approaches are sometimes not the best.

</comment><comment><USER56> I guess my biggest issue with this all is that it's called a "pledge." I pledge money on the condition that I get a game. In this case they're just taking my money with a huge chance that I'll never see anything remotely close to what I pledged for. My end was fulfilled, their end not so much.

<comment><USER57> A belief that Kickstarter or similar services are anything other than a donation to a hope that something happens is willfully ignoring reality.

<comment><USER56> I was coming at it from the viewpoint of a regular consumer that gets wrangled into these "schemes." I understand the risks, the regular consumer sure as hell does not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> There's a crowdsourced tracker of all of the promises made to backers of Star Citizen over the years thoroughly documented with links to the proof.

[https://starcitizentracker.github.io/](https://starcitizentracker.github.io/)

Since posting this always gets a lot of hatred from the koolaid drinkers, I'm going to pre-emptively suggest that, if you have a problem with something on the tracker, you should submit a correction. You should not attack me or the people who contributed to it.

<comment><USER59> I feel like this is generally fair, but things that get pushed back from one patch to the next shouldn't count as broken promises. It seems disingenuous to count "3.2 didn't have mining, it's been pushed to 3.3" on the same level as "we said you'd be able to run your own server with mods, but now you can't". Maybe you need another category for Delayed

<comment><USER60> Yeah, I had a bit of a look and a good number of the "not implemented/ignored/delayed" is hardly surprising. The game is still in development and the stuff in "broken promises" is basically slipped ship dates, hardly a massive shock.

Given that they seem to be tracking basically everything, even down to the level of "mentioned once in an interview that this might sometime be possible", I would be super interested to see this after an official 1.0 release and for the years of patches after.

I really hope they have history tracking for the entries, so you can see how they have been categorized over time and when they went from one status to another. I'd be way more interested in those stats, seeing what they have delivered over time.

However I'm sure this will stop being updated once CIG start releasing stuff as it appears the only thing keeping it going is anger.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Has there ever been a high profile early access game that crossed the finish line? It seems like studios usually take the money and run, like Bohemia Interactive with DayZ. Five years and tens/hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and the game is abandonware.

I guess Minecraft is one notable exception.

<comment><USER62> Warframe would be another, imo.

<comment><USER63> Rust left early access this January, after 4 years. [https://rust.facepunch.com/blog/leaving-early- access/](https://rust.facepunch.com/blog/leaving-early-access/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Wrapping every purchase in a binding arbitration agreement is absurd. It completely defangs consumer protection laws.

<comment><USER65> You're not purchasing anything on Kickstarter though, you're making a donation.

<comment><USER10> Nope. I see that argument many times relating to crowd funding and it just isn't the case.

When you pledge to a kickstarter, they're committing to providing the rewards stated for the money provided.

The difference between that and a standard purchase is that the product generally doesn't exist yet, which is why there is a risks section attached to every campaign, so that backers are aware that the product could run into problems.

However it's not a donation.

<comment><USER66> You're not committing to a purchase though, there is some inherent risk in a kickstarter that they won't deliver. And there is very little mechanism to chase them (usually they have either done a runner or gone belly up) So this is an interesting case, because the company is still around, and especially so as the poor guy is suffering MS and so has a more time limited domain to see a reward

<comment><USER10> indeed in most cases where kickstarters don't deliver by such wide margins the company is long gone.

This one is probably on older Kickstarter T&Cs so it'd be harder to get money back. In more recent times Kickstarter have tried to toughen up a little after early failures like ZioneyeZ

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> > It's also worth noting that we're in a cultural moment in which the > relationship between fans and creators is becoming more toxic. Star Wars > fans who don't like The Last Jedi are demanding to remake the movie to fit > their expectations. Trolls think the new She-Ra cartoon doesn't fit their > highly specific conception of what is "feminine." Creators, of course, > should be free to create what they want without fearing a mob. That's how we > got the things that people are fans of in the first place, and RSI should be > free to make Star Citizen what it wants. That being said, it's no wonder > that Star Citizen fans feel like they have some degree of ownership over > what it should be, seeing as how so many of them invested thousands of > dollars in funding its development.

Kindly fuck off, Motherboard. This modern trend of forced arbitration clauses and IP owners, not just creators, getting their panties in a bunch because turns out they're not perfect and their fans can be very opinionated has to end. It's not "toxic," it's people who don't want to see their memories being violated to make a quick buck, or promises being blatantly broken over and over again.

</comment><comment><USER11> So what other good single player space sims are out there today? I'm not an MMO person. The last good one I played was Strike Suit Zero/Infinity.

Back in the day I played Wing Command I, II, III, IV and Prophecy (still have many of them on CD). I was also a big fan of TIE Fighter/X-Wing. It seems like this genre has stagnated quite a bite in the past few years, or has gone entirely MMO.

Is anything doing anything new and good in this genre?

<comment><USER31> I really like Elite: Dangerous and commented about it elsewhere in this thread[0]. You can play it solo if you want and never have to worry about encountering other players. Combat is real-time and you even have to dock the ship yourself. Like I mention in the other comment, I'm constantly impressed by the scale and polish of the game.

I'll watch some reviews of the new No Man's Sky update and if it looks decent I'll probably get it on sale.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17559080](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17559080)

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> It isnt freature creep. Being crowd-funded is their business model. New features, new hype, means new money. They cannot ever finish because then it all stops. The game will only be released once the cowdfumding well runs dry. Therefore, the best way to get the eventual game is to stop supporting it with money.

They lost me when they hired gillian anderson. I want to believe, but that was jumping a shark too far.

<comment><USER60> I'll be honest in that I've not followed development at all but hearing they have hired an actress just leads me to assume she is voicing/mocaping a character in the SP portion of the game. How is that any different from CoD hiring Kevin Spacey or Mark Hamil in Wing Commander? Let alone jumping the shark.

<comment><USER68> Because crowdfunded developers running on tight budgets generally don't throw money at stars. It might be a good business investment for a movie or television show, but most early supporters would rather the game be out sooner with B or C-list talent. Star power is icing a cake that isn't yet baked.

Particular to Star Citizen, fans remember well the use of Mark Hamill in one of the Wing Commander games, the one that came spread across six cd-roms. It was an interesting cross-media experiment but the industry took from that incident that gamers want a game, not cutscenes.

There is also great danger in hiring a star for something that will not come out until many years later. She may not be as famous in 2-5 (10?) years when the game actually arrives. She could be involved in a scandal. She could star in a series of flops. She could simply retire. Then the extra money spent on her will have been wasted. It is very odd decision to pay a premium for her over literally hundreds of equally capable but less-famous actors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Crowdfunding can clearly serve a useful role as part of the modern mix of societal funding sources, but it's definitely still more wild west when it comes to uniformity of terms and regulations. It's not "investing" in the classic sense but it's also certainly not "donating" either, nor is it a preorder. "Backing" involves its own set of concerns and scale and rules should reflect that, and by design it primarily involves members of the general public who are not financially sophisticated. That should have implications vs how traditional investing is managed.

I actually think that the single biggest missing piece right now is the lack of a more standardized, orderly and general public friendly equivalent to the bankruptcy process and laws. There should be minimal uniform legal standards for determining when a project has "failed", both in terms of simply running out of money but also in terms of passing deadlines. For example, project proposers could be required to declare a hard final deadline (they could have other earlier soft deadline projections that'd be separate) in the initial campaign. If they reached that without completion, backers could then be required to vote on whether to accept an extension. If not, the project would go to the "failed" process. If a majority approved it'd receive another year or two, at which point another vote would be required (I'd make a super majority be required after the first one but that's an implementation detail that could be debated). The idea would be to price in some level of planning and certainty and also to help ensure, just like the full bankruptcy system, that there are no "zombie corps" hanging around tying up economic assets and that instead things get wrapped up promptly so whatever is left can be redeployed. And project corps should be taking deadline projections seriously, and should need to make a case for significant alteration. Given how passionate and understanding (arguably too much) most backers seem to be about things they believe in I don't think that's a huge stretch either, but it should still need to happen.

If a project ended up in "failed" status (be it fund exhaustion, the creators declaring a failure, or a final deadline extension denial) then backers would automatically be treated as senior creditors with the possibility of non- financial renumeration. Money should be proportionally returned of course, but additionally backers should receive something along the lines of a non- exclusive, perpetual global license to any original IP assets the project generated. Even merely some models or the like could then at least be recycled by backers into something else of some value.

When dealing directly with the non-financially sophisticated public being presented with take-it-or-leave-it terms it is not unreasonable to expect higher requirements for ensuring information symmetry and that proposers have performed proper diligence first. Failures are entirely inevitable, but the results don't have to linger nor value be quite as tied up as the current state of things. Yes, these requirements might mean that some developers don't seek out crowd funding or face increased upfront work, but I think that would be acceptable.

\----

With regards to this case specifically and legally the details are curious, and I wonder if anyone who knows the system well could find the exact ruling on PACER (if small claims proceedings even end up on PACER)? I don't think infinite return of backed should be a general requirement, but after reading this and other coverage the specific grounds of the decision are confusing. Retroactive arbitrary application of a TOS change is odd. Like, if the lawyers had said that the TOS changed before (or during) his playing the beta and taking other active involvement, and that he had specifically agreed to an updated TOS at that point in time, I could see the moral argument but that at least would kind of make sense as something that might be straightforward. Updating TOS and requiring agreement for continued use or else refusal and then an argument under the old ones is hardly uncommon either. But the article frames it as a "beta is equivalent to delivery" argument, which more sounds like trying to bamboozle the judge. On the other hand, it's clearly though understandably slanted from the perspective of the plaintiff, and while small claims court is explicitly intended to be friendly to the general public with no need for a lawyer it's still possible he made some basic but significant blunder due to self-representing.

This specific case seems like it touches on a number of broader concerns like the spread of binding arbitration and TOS shenanigans but since it's a specific case the specific details matter. I'm not sure what it broadly means for crowdfunding if anything precisely because crowdfunding is currently such a hodgepodge. And that goes _both_ ways too, I've seen a scary number of project proposers who have no so much as established an LLC to do it through and thus face personal liability issues. That's not even counting any amateur projects who did so but then have not done basic accounting and stayed respectful of the corporate veil. A sensible framework could make crowdfunding a lot more sustainable, fair, less prone to abuse, and in turn more efficient for all parties involved.

<comment><USER70> PACER only has federal court documents.

Small claims court decisions probably don't end up anywhere. I doubt there is an "opinion" even written, just a judgement.

<comment><USER50> > Small claims court decisions probably don't end up anywhere.

I would think in the usual case they would at a minimum be public records held by the court and subject to the usual mechanisms for accessing public records.

<comment><USER70> Yes, the judgement. There is almost certainly no written opinion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> if I was RSI with that much money, I'd say : "let's never finish the game, we got plenty of money to live on for years, making cool tech demo's"...

<comment><USER72> Then you'd be an asshole.

<comment><USER71> when one comes to money I'm afraid some can come to super complex justifications for pretending they're not an AH when they clearly are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm actually confident that Star Citizen will eventually come out. While $200m sounds like a lot of money, a popular online game can make much more than that. The pre-sales have proven that there is a fanatic audience. If the project is horribly managed now, expert developers and investors can be brought in to achieve the goal. The passion and awareness is golden.

</comment><comment><USER73> I'm also a golden ticket holder and my patience is evaporating.

I can't believe the single player campaign has not been released yet! Also the published roadmap doesn't seem to end anywhere that is satisfactory.

They need to kick out a whole bunch of features (perhaps temporarily) to get the game in a state that it's somewhat complete and playable.

<comment><USER74> Golden ticket holder here as well, personally I don't mind, I check back into the game every 3 or so months, enjoy whats new, read the monthly pdf's and thats that. I understand that the game will take time, and am satisfied with my investment in the development

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> I will never know how so many people get sucked in and used like this. Surely at least some of the "blame" for this situation lies in the individual that got used.

<comment><USER76> You can know it:

STAR CITIZENS: 2,058,546

[https://robertsspaceindustries.com/funding- goals](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/funding-goals)

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> Star Citizen is the Elon Musk of video games

</comment><comment><USER78> Two things you can get a lot of money from for putting on a good show: Early access games and ICOs.

</comment><comment><USER79> It is now incumbent upon Kickstarter to ban such private arbitration clauses on its site.

</comment><comment><USER80> Cases like these are the reasons why common law grand juries should be utilized. Done correctly, they can serve as a check and balance against institutionalized judicial corruption that operates federally divorced from the people it is supposed to serve.

</comment><comment><USER81> Mandatory arbitration clauses need to be eliminated. There is absolutely no valid use of them anywhere.

</comment><comment><USER82> Vice reveals the messy reality of running both an accurate, non-biased and "edgy" "news" outlet.

</comment><comment><USER83> In my opinion the game looks great so far and I hope they take their time to finish it.

Should they manage to match their own high expectations, the game will be played for years to come, like WoW, and it'd better have a good base then.</comment>


The (Mathematical) Theory and Practice of Juggling - <AUTHOR> http://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/JugglingTalkSummary.html?JugglingTalk

<comment><USER2> I love the idea that we can have a ball going backwards in time by creating a ball/anti-ball pair. Using the idea from quantum physics that an anti-particle is just the particle going backwards in time is cool, especially when quantum uncertainty is used to justify the energy requirements of E=mc^2.

Fun!

Does it actually help you juggle?</comment>


Books for Anyone Who Wants to Get Ahead in Life - <AUTHOR> https://www.inc.com/christina-desmarais/24-books-for-anyone-who-wants-to-get-ahead-in-life.html <comment><AUTHOR> [https://archive.is/CZbpH](https://archive.is/CZbpH)</comment>


Pastery – The sweetest pastebin in the world - <AUTHOR> https://www.pastery.net/ <comment><USER2> Looks interesting (like the expiration=never). Uses Mozilla Persona, which I hadn't heard of before. Apparently 'Persona' is no longer being developed by Mozilla since early/2014(1). Also... warnings that 'Persona' isn't secure for high-value data(2).

(1) [http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/08/mozilla-stops-developing- it...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/08/mozilla-stops-developing-its-persona- sign-in-system-because-of-low-adoption/)

(2) [http://benjamin.smedbergs.us/blog/2014-02-11/dont-use- mozill...](http://benjamin.smedbergs.us/blog/2014-02-11/dont-use-mozilla- persona-to-secure-high-value-data/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Very nice. Good defaults. All posts are private, expires in 1 day unless you choose otherwise.</comment>


Egypt blocks the encrypted messaging app Signal as it continues cyber crackdown - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/26/1431709/ <comment><USER2> I'm from Egypt, I think it's more an economic than political initiative, telecom companies are among the last standing pillars of the economy and they are losing money more than ever as more and more people using chat software than talking using mobile phones or even using their shitty 3g internet connection which is still applied so far. Any connection on https is impossible to decrypt here anyway as our government isn't that competent.

<comment><USER3> so how does not being able to decrypt traffic make them lose money?

<comment><USER2> Telecom companies which employed tens of thousands mostly young educated because of the massive growth since early 2000s, have been facing now slowdown if not shrinking because most people here are now communicating for free using whatsapp and viber. These companies were doing also nasty things like injecting advertisement codes inside plain html pages to earn money, as most people here are browsing only facebook and twitter which use https, it became harder for them to compensate their losses on their main service (phone calls). They were colluding with the government to ban some chat apps on 3g communication and postpone new technologies like 4g and faster adsl connections in order to make people obliged to return to phone calls. The government knows very well that these companies are too big to fail as they are maybe the biggest employer in the country.

<comment><USER4> So their answer is corruption/fascism?

<comment><USER2> > corruption/fascism

that's what we call national security/stability here in the middle east :D. Seriously though, the government and the three telecom companies Orange/Vodafone/Etisalat falsely think that this is a win win situation to save the telecom industry and national security, however when it reall comes to terrorism, you can organize a terror attack using facebook chat without anyone knowing anything about you, maybe even after the attack if you are paranoid enough and take all social engineering precautions.

<comment><USER5> FWIW this happens in other Arab countries too. In Dubai the same carrier Etisalat got a ban on the audio functionality of mobile apps - no calls on Whatsapp, Viber etc. You can still text though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article seems to be scarce on details... I'm not sure if this is about the blocked access after signal deployed its "domain fronting"[1] mitigation technique (Dec 21) as the original reported cited by the article[2, 3] is from before the mitigation technique is deployed (Dec 17).

Are there more details about if domain fronting can be blocked as well?

[1]: [https://whispersystems.org/blog/doodles-stickers- censorship/](https://whispersystems.org/blog/doodles-stickers-censorship/)

[2]: [https://twitter.com/ircpresident/status/810148053952892928](https://twitter.com/ircpresident/status/810148053952892928)

[3]: [https://twitter.com/NoraYounis/status/810268132187242497](https://twitter.com/NoraYounis/status/810268132187242497)

<comment><USER7> [1] answers it clearly:

> With today's release, domain fronting is enabled for Signal users who have a > phone number with a country code from Egypt or the UAE. When those users > send a Signal message, it will look like a normal HTTPS request to > www.google.com. _To block Signal messages, these countries would also have > to block all of google.com_. (emphasis added)

It can be blocked, but doing so will block google.com. Basically Open Whisper Systems is making a block that much more costly to implement, since Google is ubiquitous in so many different areas.

EDIT: forgot how to add the emphasis, is fixed now.

<comment><USER8> Why isn't all HTTPS traffic being declared this way (hiding the real endpoint)? Is there any downside doing this?

<comment><USER9> SNI requires the hostname to be sent over the wire as plaintext. The reason why SNI is useful is because it allows one server to host many HTTPS domains. Perhaps some innovation to SNI would fix this problem.

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

<comment><USER10> This. The current advent of the encrypted web would not have been possible without SNI - the costs for exclusive IPv4 addresses (especially when using a CDN) would have been prohibitive.

SNI isn't as much as a security risk if you consider that before resolving, you usually need a DNS request too - which would expose the endpoint to your ISP anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> We need to reach the point where there's no easy way to simply "block" things you don't like. Quite the opposite, it should be absurdly expensive to even _try_ to do that, with numerous technical and geographic hurdles to overcome.

A truly secure protocol should have no easy way to identify its traffic (e.g. no obvious domain-name patterns that can be disallowed with a single regex, no common IP address blocks, and no suspicious volume of traffic that couldn't just as easily come from 100 other things on the Internet). The backbone itself should also have more than one off-switch; difficult in practice for some remote areas but theoretically doable in combination with satellite radios, etc.

</comment><comment><USER12> Curious how you "block" an app. If you're saying blocking though an app store. But what about sending the files through other means, zip in an email, Dropbox, whatever. If the app connects online me somehow Egypt "knows"?

Asking because I don't know

</comment><comment><USER13> Is it still blocked even after that change Signal made to the app a few days ago?

<comment><USER14> According to the comments below the article it seems it was blocked for a week but is currently working.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I mistakenly thought Signal was an app on your phone that encrypted/decrypted text messages. What part of that has to be online, other than getting updated public keys, or is that the part that was blocked?

<comment><USER16> Signal is really an XMPP client with a custom protocol extension. _All_ of its encrypted messaging functionality relies on being able to communicate with the official Signal server(s).

The Android version can, or at least used to, send and receive text messages, but these were unencrypted. I believe that it was just to make Signal useful as an all-in-one short messaging app.

<comment><USER17> The Android client does support regular SMS handling, which is what makes it great. Regular unencrypted SMS for users without Signal, and end-to-end for users who have it, all in the same application.

It used to support encryption over SMS, unfortunately it was removed and is now the primary focus of Silence[0], while Noise[1] is now for Signal without the requirement of GCM for signaling.

0\. [https://silence.im](https://silence.im) 1\. [https://copperhead.co/android/docs/usage_guide](https://copperhead.co/android/docs/usage_guide)

<comment><USER18> Upvote for Silence. It's the only solution for people who don't or won't have a data connection open permanently. It also requires no signup and depends on no external service.

I'd not heard of Noise. I'm glad that all the interesting crypto work that Open Whisper Systems is doing is being forked and diversified - it's too valuable to be only available through one centralized provider.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> signal ftw!</comment>


Show HN: HN In Your Terminal - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ciaranarcher/hacker_term

<comment><USER2> This would be infinitely more useful if there was a view that scraped the comments for each article or (even better) scraped the article itself (instapaper style). I would love to peruse hacker news this way in-between working as I hate getting distracted on websites.

If I get some free time I might look into adding that myself.

<comment><USER3> Links comes pretty close. Here's some of the output of this comments page:

        $ links -dump 'http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4992951'
          [IMG]    Hacker Newsnew | comments | ask | jobs | submit    login
          [IMG] Show HN: HN In Your Terminal (github.com)
                37 points by ciaranarcher 5 hours ago | 14 comments
                _____________________________________________________________
                _____________________________________________________________
                _____________________________________________________________
                _____________________________________________________________
                _____________________________________________________________
                _____________________________________________________________

                [ add comment ]

           [IMG] bstar77 1 hour ago | link
                 This would be infinitely more useful if there was a view that
                 scraped the comments for each article or (even better)
                 scraped the article itself (instapaper style). I would love
                 to peruse hacker news this way in-between working as I hate
                 getting distracted on websites.

                 If I get some free time I might look into adding that myself.

                 reply
           [IMG] slajax 1 hour ago | link
                 I would use this but I also think it needs to implement at
                 very least the comments page view. Otherwise you might as
                 well just stick to the browser. There are a lot of times I'll
                 read comments before I read an article, so I could still find
                 it useful even if you didn't scrape the entire article to
                 it's own view but allowed me to browse the comments.

                 reply

           ....

           Lists | RSS | Bookmarklet | Guidelines | FAQ | DMCA | News News |
                   Feature Requests | Y Combinator | Apply | Library

                               Search: __________________

<comment><USER2> very nice, then it's definitely possible to just have this gem use a links dump to display the comment content. I think links by itself is a bit clumsy for everyday use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I already use hnews. <http://rubygems.org/gems/hnews> Good work though, looks pretty awesome!

<comment><USER5> Wow, thanks. I'm the developer behind hnews, great to see others using it and other similar projects being worked on :)

If you would like to hack on it feel free, the source is at <https://github.com/bencevans/hnews>

<comment><USER4> Ironically, I found your gem after wanting to build my own HN CLI. Saved me a bit of time. Thanks!

<comment><USER6> In true hacker spirit ~ Don't repeat work already done, and share your own

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I use lynx or links to browse hacker news. Useful too.

</comment><comment><USER8> Nice project, I may end up using this for stealthy HN browsing at work ;-)

I wrote a Hacker News plugin for Sublime Text a little while ago that lets you browse HN from inside the editor. If anyone is interested, the repo is here: <https://github.com/dotty/HackerNews-SublimeTextPlugin>

</comment><comment><USER9> I would use this but I also think it needs to implement at very least the comments page view. Otherwise you might as well just stick to the browser. There are a lot of times I'll read comments before I read an article, so I could still find it useful even if you didn't scrape the entire article to it's own view but allowed me to browse the comments.

</comment><comment><USER10> Looks nice, but it seems to eat all kb input on 10.8 except for up-down arrow keys :(

oh-my-zsh, retina MBP, 10.8.2

</comment><comment><USER11> Can't wait to apply this and the gems mentioned below to a Pebble or other hacker hardware. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER12> Looks nice!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! If you have any suggested improvements then just create an issue on Github and I'll try get around to it (or create a pull request alternatively).</comment></comment>


Ask HN: WWDC worth the price of admission? - <AUTHOR>

Is access to Apple people at WWDC worth the $1599 price of admission? I could see the possibility that we'd get multiple times that value in terms of exposure, possibility of Apple people getting excited about our app/technology, and direct access to work with Apple engineers on technical problems, but I could also see it being not so worth it. Having never been, it's really hard for me to guess. If you've attended before, what kind of value have you derived from it? <comment><USER2> Well, every year's a full house. It used to be a great event where you could meet people in IT, web developers, Objective-C developers, Mac developers and iOS developers. Now, it's pretty skewed towards iOS development, but it's still fun.

I think it's absolutely worth it to meet the Apple community. You'll get a pretty interesting sampling of people who are really enthusiastic about developing for the platform, including members of the Mac press and some folks who are just trying to learn things. And you won't find a better group anywhere else.

As for the labs, I've had a mixed experience with them. Some teams are really approachable (the Accelerate team, awesome guys), some not so much. I've heard some very funny stories from some of my friends and from people I respect regarding the labs for the App Store review team... I don't know if Apple has App Store labs anymore. Wouldn't be surprised if they went away.

Regarding food; Moscone West's lunches have always been kinda suspect. For some reason, food quality tends to go down quite a bit as the week goes on. Consider eating at the Metreon or Mel's instead for a quick burger for a protein boost. The WWDC bash more than makes up for the rest.

Not going this year, pursuing other interests at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER3> Apple really does a good job with this conference. Food is great, sessions are great, and the people are excellent.

Is it worth it? Overwhelmingly yes. First, the labs are the most useful thing you can get out of the conference if utilized. I cant tell you how many issues have been solved and bug reports have been filed because of WWDC labs. If you do find a bug, Apple Engineers really like the challenge of finding a workaround using public API's.

The best part about the conference is the motivation-boost that you and your dev team will get after attending. It can bring so much more productivity to your team just by spending a week with thousands of people, all who challenge you on an intellectual level.</comment>


Why 0.999, ...=1 - also bashing OOP - <AUTHOR> http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/08/14/why-0-999999-1-also-bashing-oop/

<comment><USER2> A quote: "However, that leaves us reliant on an analytical concept: a limit. It's true within mathematics as we use it. But is it inherently logically true?"

The answer is that there's no difference -- a mathematical theorem is also a logical one.

Also, the notion of a limit has been examined very carefully, and it passes muster with those who care about logical consistency. Not only that, but the idea of a limit can be replaced with the idea of infinitesimals, with no change in the outcome and no logical inconsistency:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinitesimal_calculus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinitesimal_calculus)

Quote: "There are other mathematical regimes that have different rules."

Let's not allow post-modernism into mathematics, all right? Mathematical principles aren't -- shouldn't be -- a matter of opinion. There's one set of mathematical principles -- we don't get to roll out own.</comment>


I refuse to tolerate assholes - <AUTHOR> http://jacobian.org/writing/assholes/ After reading this thread https://github.com/torvalds/linux/pull/17#issuecomment-5654674 (especially this comment), Friend of mine sent to me this article. Maybe it's coincident maybe not. But kind of good response. <comment><USER2> I have to say I agree.

Sure, you might say, there are some geniuses in Open Source who are obnoxious, and we need them. But my question is this - how many geniuses who are quiet and confrontation averse have left Open Source, never to return, because of the way they were treated?

</comment><comment><USER3> The problem is that not everybody agrees on who is the asshole. Somebody who wishes to force professionalism (ie a suit whether he wears it or nor not) on me is a bigger asshole than one who writes good code but can start a good flame war.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> After reading this thread [https://github.com/torvalds/linux/pull/17#issuecomment-56599...](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/pull/17#issuecomment-5659970) (especially this comment), Friend of mine sent to me this article. Maybe it's coincident maybe not. But kind of good response.

<comment><USER4> Wow, Linus does not come across well in that thread at all.

<comment><USER5> It has been repeated several times: Linus doesn't come across well because the troll deleted some much nastier comments.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't know about this part of the conversation. So in that case, where I can find original one? Any mirrors where created, that we know about?

<comment> jack-r-abbit It was discussed on HN earlier this week.[1] One thing you will note is that Linus addressed his comment to a Joseph, but none of the commenters before that are named Joseph. Joseph removed his comment. No one had a mirror but people recall the gist of the deleted comment.[2]

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3973816> [2] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3974008>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One could argue that while assholes may write good code, for all we know they're putting off people that would write as good or even better code and not be assholes.

This especially applies to women - sure there are misogynistic jerks that are great coders, but who's to say the women they are putting off wouldn't be better in the long run?

I hear the argument that if someone is dedicated enough they'll overlook the abuse they get and do what they do anyway, but the entire premise of the overarching debate is that social skills don't really correlate with technical skills, which blows that argument out of the water - people might not have the social skills to deal with shitbags, but that doesn't mean they aren't fantastic amazing programmers.

<comment><USER3> Why is it that people care so much about how many females there is this industry? Isn't it more important how good code I write, than the fact that I have a cock between my legs and not a cunt?

Anyway social skills are pretty much just a filter between what you want to say (how many times to you think "this guy is an asshole" and don't say it) and what you actually say and part of this is the ability to pick up (and care about) what others feel and guess (and if really good) force their reactions and desires to match what you want them to do (see the end of the previous paragraph for an example).

None of that has anything to do with code. The compiler has no feelings and doesn't care about yours.

So if you want somebody in charge of the project, make sure they can deal with people (including assholes). If you want code written, accept that the people who can do it best have better things to care about than feelings.

<comment><USER7> > If you want code written, accept that the people who can do it best have > better things to care about than feelings.

Are you suggesting that all the 'best coders' are arseholes? If so, do you have any evidence to back that up?

<comment><USER8> "have evidence to back that up" the cop out for things you don't agree with.

how the fuck did you even conclude that they have better things to care about than feelings means being assholes. do you have evidence to back up that's what he means?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The irony of the post is that he is one the most prolific trolls of competing libraries to his own in Python. Asshole hater, un-asshole yourself.

</comment><comment><USER10> Having never done open source before, I'm wondering about something: if an open source project is started, once it becomes popular and attracts community of developers and other contributors I assume the power shifts from the guy who started the project to the community. Does the person who started the project still retains his power to boot out the assholes from his project or not?

<comment><USER11> It depends. The founders tend to hang around and retain power. Larry Wall (Perl) and Guido van Rossum (Python) have kept a fair amount of control and strongly encouraged a friendly atmosphere. Debian Linux became a voting democracy and is reasonably pleasant.

Nothing stops someone from forking an open source project, making their own version. The BSD Unixes are famous for schisms, and some of the new founders are famously ... opinionated. One of benefits of open source is that obnoxious but competent people boot themselves out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> In summary: "I refuse to tolerate assholes, only if it's not steve jobs or cult figure in my cult."

(not aimed at jacob, he wrote this in a different context. but this is aimed at xando who submitted it)

</comment><comment><USER12> I mean the name of the post alone makes him an asshole</comment>


Alternative to Amazon EC2? - <AUTHOR>

So I have been reading a few tutorials on setting up EC2 and it seems like you need a fair amount of system admin experience (which I do not unfortunately have). Plus, it also seems you'lll need to actively manage your instances and consistenyly backup your database in case an instance crashes.<p>I have been exploring other 'cloud' hosting services and came across mosso (www.mosso.com). Does anyone have any experiences with them? It seems to be as easy as setting up your site on a shared hosting service. Anything I should look out for? <comment><USER2> Linux newbie here. Used ec2 image for over six months now. The only problem I had is that sometimes google did not answer my linux questions on first page, and I had to tweak the search query a little.

Yes, starting is a little weird, but once you create your ami(the os) everything works great. There are free public images ready for development and I am using one of the Right Scale CentOS images.

Six months ago I did not know anything about PuTTY, WinSCP, Crons, nohups, mc, installing software packages easily(which really surprised me). Thank you Yum.

Backing up your data is needed, but it is needed anywhere anyway. I've restarted that instance once in six months and it was not needed at all. Just had to test restart functionality :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Mosso is one of those used-car-dealership services. They insist that you're getting something amazing, but they won't exactly tell you what you're getting.

More importantly, their $100/mo plan includes 3,000,000 requests - that's not a lot considering that every CSS file, image, page, javascript, etc. is all another request. So, they're giving you a server that can handle 1.16 hits per second - DreamHost could do that!

Let's say you have a nicely busy site with 20 hits per second - your next big thing. That's 51m hits/mo. You'd be hit with over $48,000 in overage charges for requests alone - nevermind bandwith overages. Even if your site is a small next big thing and has 5 hits per second, you'd still be hit with nearly $10,000 in overage charges.

Plus, do they really guarantee automatic scaling? No. They're not going to auto-scale a twitter or reddit. You're buying the idea that you never have to think about server administration and that it'll come cheap.

Amazon has a realistic offering. Mosso is a way for you to tell people that no one has to worry about scaling until it hits the fan and you're finished.

If you disagree, maybe you could shed some light on Mosso. Do they automatically set up mysql clusters - multi master and all - as you get too large for one database server? What if I decide to write a page with a looped query: do they just scale that? What if I'm joining 20M records against 10M users (an expensive, On^2 operation)?

There's no such thing as a free lunch.

<comment><USER4> yeah, they just announced that the 3mil requests was over, and they are going to something closer to MT and saying 'compute units' (I was at over 6.5mil requests last month).

They don't do good clustering or good scaling, They are a good solution for small-time resellers, and that's about it.

Small time resellers that would have small sites and need multiple platforms (php 4,5 IIS 6,7, mysql/mssql).

even then, like I said, downtime is a serious issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> We use flexiscale. It does have an api, its just web-based (<https://api.flexiscale.com/current/doc/>). We have worked closely with their engineers to create a simple desktop app for managing/viewing server status (<http://cogniscale.cognifide.com/>). This work is on-going.

However, EC2 is a great platform. Flexiscale is an alternative but EC2 is much further down the line. I'm watching this space.

</comment><comment><USER4> Mosso is easy to manage. Sure. check out <http://status.mosso.com> to see their downtime track record. It's bad. I'm currently leaving mosso for EC2.

IMO, you may be better off in the long run to figure it out on EC2 (possibly with rightscale).

The other possibility is to do it in python and use google appjet (publically available this week, just announced at IO)

</comment><comment><USER6> I think Google is targeting people like you (who don't want to deal with sys admin issues) with their Google App Engine offering.

</comment><comment><USER7> Not sure if you're still looking, but if you are, you should definitely check out GoGrid (<http://www.gogrid.com>). The interface is a lot easier than EC2's and there's no need to constantly backup the data on your cloud server instances as (unlike EC2) the storage is persistent.

I've been using the service for just under a year now and I completely swear by it.

Mosso is very limited by comparison---but I guess in the end it depends on what you're looking to do and how much flexibility you need.

</comment><comment><USER8> EC2 is the best you can get at the moment in my opinion. I guess it's time to learn some *nix! It's not that hard, really.

And for databases, the new persistent storage feature ([http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/thread.jspa?t...](http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/thread.jspa?threadID=21082&tstart=0)) is what you want/need. (still private alpha)

But unless you have a multi gigabyte database, a simple mysqldump and an upload to s3 should do the trick.

</comment><comment><USER9> there is flexiscale (<http://www.flexiscale.com/>) we use them... they are ok... you still need plenty of sys admin experience... but they have good uptime... and you pay per use time and bandwidth...

they don't have an API yet to start and stop but they have a web interface... the thing is that provisioning used to be manual I think its done from web interface now!

</comment><comment><USER10> Check out RightScale: <http://www.rightscale.com>

Cheers

</comment><comment><USER11> Try GoGrid (www.GoGrid.com) thats actaully the true alternative to Amazon EC2 (windows support as opposed to Amazon EC2 which doesn't support it. It is also cheaper)

</comment><comment><USER12> Check out Slicehost, it's mentioned on here a lot.

</comment><comment><USER13> See: MobileMe 20 GB storage. Easy to use. Price: $99/yr.</comment>