Ask HN: Am I doing this right (launching, press releases, blogs) - <AUTHOR>

We created our SaaS app (pacpacs.com) and initially released it as a kind of preview/trial to a select few people. We found it very hard to follow the "release early" mantra since the MVP for our service was not really that minimal, so drumming up any hype for the unfinished product was tricky.
A few days ago we opened our doors to the public and I'm now trying to get the word around.
I've started emailing relevant blogs and have put together a more formal 'press release' type page that I am linking to in my emails (https://www.pacpacs.com/press/20101007). But I'm not getting much of a response.
Is this the method most other people use in more niche industries?
Should we consider paying a newswire service to run the release too?
And a longshot: are there any physical therapists on HN that might be interested in giving any feedback :)
Any feedback on the site/service/biz much appreciated! <comment><USER3> You have a B2B product. Business rarely look for new stuff, you have to shove it down their throat. So just search for about 100 physiotherapy stations near to you and then email them a short email, asking them if you can actually email them with the product information.

A personalised email for EACH site individually. Hire someone to do this if neccessary. Track your replies. If nobody replies, then you don't have a product. Otherwise, lead them through it.

The more emails you exchange with a customer, the more likely he is to buy! B2B is all about communicating with the customer, making him feel safe with you, like you are a partner taking care of a small part of his business.

Always end every email with a hook that will make him reply to you.

Press-Release, Relevant Blogs and so on are NOT going to make you customers. You have to reach out personally! Your market is too small, too in-cohesive and too static for anything other than aggressive personal approaching your customers to work.

I've done years of these types of sales, and I hate it with a passion. If you don't like writing emails to people then figure out how to get someone else to do it for you.

<comment><USER4> Any book recommendations on this sales process?

I'm in the same boat as OP as to B2Bness-of-product and experiencing cold- email-fright at the moment.

<comment><USER3> I'm not THAT good. I'm not a salesman, I never made so many sales. All I know is what causes you to lose sales.

The process is like this:

1\. Approach your customer with a solution to a problem he has. Focus in the start ONLY to get him to reply your email. Don't sell yet! Make sure he replies, and half your task is done

2\. When he replies, be honest about what your product can do for him, and if he needs it.

3\. Allow him test it, or give him some special access, making sure to back off completely at this point. If he feels under pressure, he'll disappear. He has to impale himself on your stake, you don't drive it into him

4\. After that, if he indicates interest to buy, make it easy and painless for him

It's really all about honesty and solving peoples problem, the rest is just about not fucking up. It's like meeting a girl who likes you (customer that needs your product).

It's all about you just not fucking up the process, that's it. Just guide the person to the sales page gently, without being overeager or annoying. If he does not want it, he does not, if he wants it, he'll buy it you don't need to really sell it.

<comment><USER4> Thanks! That's really insightful and even eases the burden on a sales wimp like me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You have a product aimed at physiotherapists. Find out where they spend their time (forums, email lists, etc). Most niche forums are operated on a tiny budget, so you may be able to buy advertising for very cheap (perhaps in the form of a "sticky" topic). Find these places, and get in touch with the admins.

</comment><comment><USER6> First impressions. Please take with a grain of salt:

* I can see some market for this, but I have a strong feeling you've burned through a good bit of funds and may not see much come out of it immediately (like 3-7 years).

* Trainers will most likely provide sheets on what to do via printed sheets to their patients. This is cost effective and much easier than even logging in to a site and entering a patient's email address.

* To me you are not answering the question of how you are really making a trainer's life easier via this site until the demo is viewed. You need to have that _front and center_ in the top of the page, not a big picture of a laptop with hard to read writing. Just the fact that it is online, does SMS (?), and email, is not describing the need or how it fills it.

* Could you pivot to aim the site at health insurance companies or others that might want to actually replace the trainer and provide physical training online? For example, there have to be some people that need rehab in hard to reach places. Maybe you could provide trainers via webcam that could interact with these patients. It wouldn't necessarily be that scalable, but it might get you more business than you would have had otherwise.

You can spend time getting the link to your site out in various blogs by posting them yourselves in forums, etc. like others mentioned. But, I'd address these questions asap.

<comment><AUTHOR> * Trainers/physios certainly do use printed handouts, but the idea for this project was born out of those handouts being misinterpreted and therefore rehabilitation not being as efficient as possible. (you can also do printouts from pacpacs - but I get your point)

* Since that was not put across on the site, then I'll certainly rework the site to ensure that is clear.. great feedback thanks!

* One of our current clients fits the "health insurance/rehabilitation" label, but they tend to require totally customised products — it's certainly something to look at but it's quite a different market to the general physiotherapy practices which we're initially aiming at.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There has to be trade mags for the industry, contact them. They will most likely be desperate for stories/content so you should be able to entice them to do an article on your site.

I'd seek some sort of accreditation from a UK authority. That would give you credibility within the UK/European profession. This will help with the next point.

To get anywhere in the UK you are going to have to interface with the NHS. This could take a long time but could be lucrative. They will need to see some evidence that your system provides a benefit to the end patient (less time to recovery, less readmission to hospital etc). This will be expensive. You should seek to set up a pilot with them where you provide the service for free for x months and they gather statistics (via an independent third party).

Bupa like to add value added services for their clients so you should approach them about possible tie in's. Since bupa essentially use the same therapists as the NHS you will be reaching the same customers but stand more chance of becoming the defacto provider of this service.

I don't know much about the industry you are in but my first impressions are that there are going to be a few BIG players (industry, government, professional bodies) that you need to get on board to make any headway.

Good luck.

<comment><USER8> > To get anywhere in the UK you are going to have to interface with the NHS.

I would focus on private first. Completely independent is even better - <USER2> independent physiotherapists and practices exist? Leave BUPA and the NHS for later. Reasons:

1) The product is a quality one, not a value one. The focus of the people who buy for the NHS is to save money (their incentive to provide better care mainly ends up in high visibility areas such as trauma). I don't mean to sound negative. I think the NHS is great for what it does for us, but that's how it is. On the other hand, the sole purpose of private practices is to provide a better service than the NHS.

2) Once you have one private practice using your system, other private practices will look bad if they continue using just printed instructions, giving them a direct incentive to buy. This is helped because...

3) Patients talk to each other, especially so here because presumably there is a correlation between the subset of patients who go private and those with a particular socio-economic status. Patients will hear about the better product from friends and expect the same from their own therapists.

4) Validation from a smaller segment is incredibly valuable in moving up. A proven track record with independents will help convince BUPA (imagine trying without this). A proven track record with BUPA will help convince the NHS (and presumably the NHS won't accept it unless it directly reduces their costs or the expected quality of care rises such that your product is required).

Also, get this book: [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Crossing-Chasm-Marketing- Technology-...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Crossing-Chasm-Marketing-Technology- Mainstream/dp/1841120634/ref=pd_sim_b_3)

Edit: fixed typos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hey - nicely done v1! Really Nice!

FYI - I have a ton of experience marketing/educating to Health Care Professionals, patients etc. Give me a shout via email of you want to discuss further.

OUTREACH - Get a list from your local Medicare office: Get a few small wins by focusing on local therapists. Visit their offices. Drop off a postcard, talk with them in person. You can also get a list from your local Medicare office - they will tell you who in your area accepts medicare for Physical Therapy.

I can also query a database of HCPs for you - reach out to me.

OUTREACH- Blog marketing is time consuming. I am not saying don't do it but it is time consuming. I have had more success with twitter. It is more immediate - and you end up meeting the bloggers anyway.

OUTREACH - Set up an affiliate program Your product seems like a great fit for an affiliate program. Make one before starting you twitter work.

Website: I agree with some of the comments below. The site needs to get to the Aha moment quicker for therapists. As you described yourself, patients often complete these exercises incorrectly. Helping therapists avoid that seems to be the real benefit here. The other things, like email , tracking patients etc are cool but they require work. SO the real benefit is the increased likely hood that patients will do their exercises correctly.

Another idea: Have you considered licensing those videos out as standalone components. If you have rights maybe this could be another revenue stream. At least this way you could capture revenue from the offices that don't want to go through all the work of using the full app. And in the opposite direction - it may be a ice-breaker product. I mean that you get in the door with that - then up sell to the full app. You'd have to think this through - I am just spurting out ideas.

Shoot - just noticed you are the UK. My database query only contains US so it may not help out much unless your marketing here as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd hope targeting US would not be far off, but starting UK (and even more locally as others have suggested here seems like our first goal). Someone else mentioned sniffing IPs and showing USD pricing... this would be a pretty easy step towards US. Would love the help when we are at that point though thanks!

I've thought a little about affiliate programs, but couldn't see much working. What makes you think it would be a good fit?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I know nothing about your industry, but I think your design is sharp. On marketing, this blog post might be useful:

[http://balsamiq.com/blog/2008/08/05/startup-marketing- advice...](http://balsamiq.com/blog/2008/08/05/startup-marketing-advice-from- balsamiq-studios/)

You might also consider running some Adwords or other SEM campaigns.

</comment><comment><USER11> You need to be going out and demoing this to physical therapists if you want to secure customers. Product looks great, under priced.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, yes pricing has been an ongoing discussion, we decided to set a price we don't think anyone would argue with, then re-evaluate it later – obviously without upsetting anyone on the current plan :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you can find the physical address of the editors/authors and FedEx(not sure in the UK, though) them a press release with a cheezy gift that somehow ties into your offering, you will get attention.

Also, follow up by phone, to make sure they received the package and you can talk up your service again.

<comment><USER12> Also, you may want to have U.S pricing, too (detect by IP).

And, since I like you... <http://www.womenssportslink.com/PhysicalTherapy.shtml>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> With your pricing, you can't do direct sales or 1-to-1 email marketing effectively... But it might be worth doing to test out the viability of your product. You'll need to find scalable customer acquisition strategies-- SEM, other advertising, channel sales, etc. You don't build sales by building "hype".

Related: "Online Rehabilitation Exercise and Client Management Software" is descriptive, but is a pretty weak marketing headline. I'd suggest spending a week or two reading voraciously about online ad copy and landing pages. If your business succeeds you'll either have to be amazing at that or you'll have to raise your prices dramatically.

</comment><comment><USER14> It can't help that your page title on google is "PacPacs | Signups Closed".

I have a relative who's a physical therapist. I sent her the link and asked for feedback. Where can I forward her response?

<comment><AUTHOR> GoogleBot seems to be on hiatus for the domain at the moment ...probably on a monthly crawl as so little changed until recently... rather frustrating.

Thanks for the forwarding, any responses can go to team at pacpacs.com (which is myself and co-founder)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I would find every physiotherapist that ever went to school with you or that you otherwise know through friends of friends and linked in/branchout and email them about your product. Ask them for feedback, and for as many as are responsive, continue the conversation until they tell you how to sell your product to their company, with their support of course. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER16> I believe that patient information even at the Physical Therapist levels require HIPAA compliancy. I'd speak to a lawyer before you start having people use this, so that you are not liable.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the heads-up for the US, patient data is regulated under the Data Protection Act and ICO in UK (and a few other Health related acts about releasing the information). I will consult a lawyer about the EU and International implications.</comment></comment>


What is their real motive? - <AUTHOR>

Let's say you joined a tech incubator.  Let's say you decided that it was in the best interest of your company to depart towards the end.
Let's say when reaching out to deliver your incubators' stock certificates they declined to accept them and preferred to offer you a promissory note on really generous terms...
Would you smell a rat?  Why would they not want the stock certificates?
One may say; "they don't want them because they will be worthless as you're likely to fail - especially without their support."
Ok, but if the stock certs are worthless, why invest in high power lawyers to draw up a promissory note where the "startup doomed for failure" will have no chance of paying the money back anyway?
All I can come up with is this; a) bound by the terms of the initial offer letter, their providing you with the outstanding balance of services they failed to deliver is more expensive than just drawing a note b) maintaining oversight of their investment in a startup doomed for failure is more expensive than issuing a note...
Really want to make sure I'm thinking about this from all angles.
Please - I welcome you guys' thoughts. <comment><USER2> Stock certificates may also be subject to dilution at the whim of the majority shareholders.

<comment><USER3> That, or if the startup gets acquihired, the purchasing entity may just pay all the cofounders directly and declare the value of the stock to be zero.</comment></comment>


Baraza: Google's Newest Q&A Service  - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/baraza/en/ <comment><USER2> According to this question [http://www.google.com/baraza/en/thread?tid=3084c339e2379cf8&...](http://www.google.com/baraza/en/thread?tid=3084c339e2379cf8&table=/baraza/en/&clk=cts_ht) It's meant to be Q&A for Africans.</comment>


Wine 1.6 Released With 10,000 Changes - <AUTHOR> http://www.winehq.org/news/2013071801 <comment><USER2> Is there any more impressive open source project than Wine? I mean, yes, the Linux kernel itself and maybe GCC, but Wine just blows me away. The sheer audacity of sitting down and deciding to reimplement the entire Win32 stack _including_ bugs to the point where DirectX is reimplemented in OpenGL and everything runs natively is just unbelievable. It's truly a testament to open source. No business would initially fund a project like this, it's nuts. And yet it exists, and continues to improve, and now companies like Codeweavers are built upon it. Congrats!

<comment><USER3> Have you seen [http://reactos.org/](http://reactos.org/) ? The are reimplementing the whole Windows NY system, with the help of wine actually.

<comment><USER4> ReactOS is great, but the project seems to have died in the last few years.

<comment><USER5> dead? the last trunk build is today!

<comment><USER6> Yeah it is not dead. He probably got that impression from the stall they got when they had to do a massive code audit

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why the fsck are all of you people commenting running OSX? We were fighting for a free, open OS, remember?

I really can't understand why hackers, coders, etc are happy to sign up to the shit Apple are doing. I do understand that "normal" people love Apple, but I just can not understand why coder people, who grew up learning to code in a GNU world (like me) can succumb to go Apple.

<comment><USER8> I'm someone who used desktop Linux exclusively for 10+ years before switching to a MacBook Air running OS X.

I made the switch because I no longer had the time and interest in maintaining my OS - I wanted it to just work. Much can be said for Linux distros' improvements in hardware support over the years, but it pales in comparison to paying for a superbly built computer (even Torvalds uses an MBA) and never having to think about hardware compatibility or OS breakage again. That's worth the (significant) premium in cost for me, and it is worth it for many others on HN.

(This is only on the desktop side, obviously; I use an Android phone and run Debian/Ubuntu on my servers.)

<comment><USER9> > I made the switch because I no longer had the time and interest in > maintaining my OS - I wanted it to just work.

I feel that is no longer a valid excuse. I use ubuntu on thinkpads, and it just works.

I see people around me with more issues with their OS X machines in fact. That might be just anecdotal, of course.

<comment><USER10> I gave up on Ubuntu when I could no longer have faith that my environment would be recognisable from one release to the next. For me, and my mother, that's a very important part of "just works".

<comment><USER11> If you want something stable that doesn't change much from one release to the next, you could just not upgrade. Ubuntu LTS releases are supported for 5 years, and that support includes backporting hardware-enablement work.

<comment><USER10> Sticking to LTS releases was actually the worst way to do this as it meant catching 10.04 which was effectively a "one off" UI, resulting in two changes to the UI rather than one big overhaul.

My mother started off on 8.04 LTS. When upgrading to 10.04 LTS the window buttons changed sides and there was a new theme (this is enough to throw many users). When upgrading to 12.04 LTS there was a change from Gnome to Unity.

My mother now chooses to use a Mac because she was fed up with her computer "changing" each time I updated it. I doubt I could convince her to try any Linux distribution again - there are no perceivable benefits for her.

<comment><USER12> I feel like 10.04 was a real high point -- I was running it the desktop for a long while, and the netbook edition was great on smaller screens. The netbook shell was a one off, it only was 10.04, and I think it's nearly impossible to install now. Unity was a descendent of it, but (IMHO) going the wrong way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Wine 1.6 has major improvements for OS X.

"\- A native Mac OS X driver is implemented, for better integration with the Mac desktop environment. The full range of driver features are supported, including OpenGL, window management, clipboard, drag & drop, system tray, etc.

\- X11 is no longer needed on Mac OS X, but the X11 driver is still supported, e.g. when running remotely."

<comment><USER14> Ken Thomases from CodeWeavers has done a great job implementing the winemac driver. It's getting a lot better with each release but there are still some performance issues compared to X11, so I wouldn't dump X11 just yet if you have a stable app using it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The Wine project has always impressed me and seeing all of these wonderful changes just keeps impressing me more. Take a look at that list of graphical and audio changes? Whoa. VMR-9 video rendering support, the slew of Direct3D additions and strengthening of the implementations of some of the features, better networking support including NTLM and negotiate authentication protocol support.

Refraining from going into full fanboy mode, but I hope the Wine project gets to the point where one day any Windows app can run with an almost guaranteed inside of the Linux operating system. The day I can run Adobe Creative Suite 6 from within Ubuntu basically bug free is the day I ditch Windows completely for Linux.

<comment><USER16> Some Windows apps will never run on Wine due to the scope of the emulation, but you might someday run them on ReactOS which uses Wine and takes over where Wine stops.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Internationalized domain names [1]

Does anyone know how this works in general?

It seems like an invitation to severe cybersquatting to allow someone to register e.g. goógle.com. I know those marks mean something in non-English languages, but for me (and I suspect most English speakers) it's very easy to mistake for dust on the monitor those symbols that Europeans insist on putting over their letters, like "`" or "'" or [[cos(90), sin(90)], [-sin(90), cos(90)]] * ":" [2] or other weird symbols that I don't even know how to type because they aren't linear transformations of ASCII characters.

[1] [http://www.winehq.org/announce/1.6](http://www.winehq.org/announce/1.6)

[2] [http://xkcd.com/184/](http://xkcd.com/184/)

<comment><USER18> \-- disclaimer: this is old info and I never got too deep into it, so take it with a (big) grain of salt :) and please, correct me if I'm wrong somewhere!

From what I can remember of some of Chrome's and Firefox's battles with this, one of the end-states was something like this, using punycode (example here[1] seems more useful than the wikipedia page[2]):

If system language matches domain name's language, display in localized characters. Otherwise, display punycode, to prevent homoglyph attacks.

"domain name's language" is of course a very vague definition. A better one might be "same UTF section". And it's all hairy and a bit problematic and I don't recall any conclusive, ideal solutions, and somewhat doubt it's possible. But handling the vast majority of legitimate uses in the best- possible way while preventing homoglyph attacks is pretty darned good.

And yeah, there will be sin/cosine/theta/pi.com attempts. But having an un- typable name is a choice made by the domain owner, just like any other. There's nothing preventing me from buying fdaocclasuro-- ieja83q92e-jfksdl7a.com, which is at least as obtuse as any punycode URL, but that hasn't been a complaint in the past.

[1] [http://mothereff.in/punycode](http://mothereff.in/punycode) [2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punycode](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punycode)

<comment><USER19> _And yeah, there will be sin /cosine/theta/pi.com attempts_

I apologize for being thick skulled but I do not understand what you are referring to and I did not understand that similar statement in the comment to which you replied. What am I missing?

Thanks in advance for explaining something to me that everyone else seems to have no problem understanding.

<comment><USER18> No problem :) I mean that people will buy / try to buy π.com, Θ.com, ☃.com, and even 🍤.com (pi, theta, snowman, and fried shrimp characters, if you can't see them). It's inevitable. Even though you can't really type them, people will buy them because they're weird / unique / well recognized. I'm merely saying it's not a problem.

<comment><USER19> Thank you for your reply. I was fixated on the equation (and xkcd image) from the original comment at the expense of overlooking "weird symbols that I don't even know how to type."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Now that Apple has abandoned Carbon and Rosetta, I can use Wine to play Starcraft 1 on my Mac.

<comment><USER21> Shameless plug: I wrote a blog-post detailing how to do exactly that using Wineskin:

[http://marzzbar.wordpress.com/2012/11/06/how-to-play- classic...](http://marzzbar.wordpress.com/2012/11/06/how-to-play-classic- blizzard-games-on-mac-os-x-mountain-lion/)

Not sure how the improved driver for Mac makes this better or worse.

<comment><USER22> Out of curiosity, does multiplayer work? My main concern is LAN/Battle.net.

<comment><USER21> Worked for me.

Battle.net is a little shakey. Make sure to follow the steps to install fonts, or it won't work at all. Also, it'll probably look really funny (textures won't load properly), but it'll be functional.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I use wine with PlayOnLiunx [http://www.playonlinux.com/en/](http://www.playonlinux.com/en/) and I find it's quite usable. (PlayOnLinux makes it easy to setup different wine environment each with different parameters.)

</comment><comment><USER24> Changelog here:

[http://www.winehq.org/announce/1.6](http://www.winehq.org/announce/1.6)

</comment><comment><USER25> Now that I've switched mostly to OSX, and with many apps moved to "the cloud" and virtual machines, Wine is getting rapidly irrelevant (to me!).

However, I wonder if a project similar to Wine will be needed in a few years, to run OSX applications.

<comment><USER17> Isn't Mac these days a UNIX-like OS on x86? What happens if you just move a Mac binary to a Linux machine (with all its dependencies) and try to run it?

I'm assuming it'll break, but what difference between the two OS's makes it break?

<comment><USER26> To put it simply, it would take about the same effort to port a Linux application to Mac as it would to Windows. Everything talks differently, and you have to adapt for that.

<comment><USER27> I'm gonna stop you there—this isn't true. Yes, the interfaces are completely different, but if you can sidestep that (command line tools, games go directly to OpenGL), the systems are very compatible. I've written a LOT of hairy code that is perfectly compatible and would be straightforward to emulate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> What's the best way to use Wine on OS X?

<comment><USER17> Reformat your hard drive and install Linux Mint.

<comment><USER29> I haven't tried mint, but Ubuntu is a crap experience on my mac. I had it on a separate partition for a while, but I just couldn't stand all the graphical glitching.

I work in linux all day long, but i love osx. I have never, ever, thought to myself, "man, I wish I was running linux."

To be fair, while at work, I never think "I wish this was osx" either.

<comment><USER30> I use Ubuntu 13.04 on my work iMac (mid 2011, as I recall, i7 / 16GB RAM) as my OS, with LXDE.

Previous to 13.04 Ubuntu acted very strange and had a multitude of problems. Since 13.04, and with ATI finally having proper drivers it works really well.

<comment><USER31> Does that have the broken EFI implementation? I only tried to boot linux on a MacBook Pro (17" unibody, 2011 I think) and while it worked, it was pretty annoying. Since the EFI implementation was non-standard, I had to boot with some BIOS emulation layer that started my SSD in IDE mode (slower), prevented proper sleep (forced to do a full shutdown whenever moving locations), and reduced battery life from 6.5 hours to about 2.

If all that's a thing of the past, that'd be excellent news.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> 16 months is a long development cycle for an open source project. Has the Wine project considered smaller, faster releases? I imagine they need a lot of test time to find subtle compatibility regressions because there are so many crappy Windows applications that depend on Windows quirks and misfeatures.

<comment><USER33> I'm not part of Wine, but it seems like their project is uniquely vulnerable to regressions. They not only need to write their software correctly, but they need to write their bugs correctly as well. Unfortunately, their is no good way to test for these regressions other than time.

<comment><USER11> Well, not exactly -- there's an enormous unit test suite, and most changes come with associated tests to prove correctness (tests, in turn, are deemed correct by automatically running them on a dozen different versions of windows).

Regressions still happen, of course -- we might not be testing the right thing, or we might hit an edge case where implementing something completely correctly caused an application to break that was secretly relying on one wine bug hiding another wine bug.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> My long-time observation is that compatibility is one of areas where open source really shines. Wine is a highly successful project, and so is Dosbox. OpenOffice, LibreOffice go to great lengths to achieve .doc compatibility. While OSS tends to suffer in creativity department (you mostly get free X - free photoshop-like program, free Word, FreeCiv, countless Quake1 clones, and heaps of "clone" games), compatibility of OSS is unmatched.

</comment><comment><USER35> I just moved to (arch) linux from OSX, whats it like running photoshop via wine? Is it usable? I've yet to try it.

<comment><USER36> Latest version of Photoshop (CS6) has Gold status which means it runs reasonably well. To check the status of any application or game, a quick search through the WineHQ App Database does the trick: [http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application...](http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&sTitle=Browse%20Applications&sOrderBy=appName&bAscending=true)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> So how do you actually get a bug fixed in Wine? There's a whole lot of blockers for anything based on the Wix installer.

<comment><USER38> Pull the source and get to work? :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Question for Wine aficionados: has anyone tried using Visual Studio on Wine? Thanks.

<comment><USER37> You _may_ be able to get VS2010 hobbling along, but VS2012 is stopped by this bug: [http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=17273](http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=17273)

<comment><USER39> dang :(. thanks a bunch for checking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> It's great to see so many improvements in the DIB engine. I had to run Electronics Workbench through Wine a couple of years ago, and while it was definitely usable, it occasionally got messy corrupted graphics.

</comment><comment><USER41> It would be nice if they moved development to Github. Easier to take a first glance and contribute to the code.</comment>


Philips wins $10M L Prize for LED-based 60W replacement bulb - <AUTHOR> http://www.edn.com/blog/PowerSource/41224-Philips_wins_10M_L_Prize_for_LED_based_60W_replacement_bulb.php

<comment><USER2> I am most impressed by the 900 lumens. This is a true 60 watt replacement, unlike the LEDs that claim to be 60 watt replacements, but actually output far less lumens, and claim "it's OK, the light is directional, so it counts for more".

And the 10 watt is impressive too - that's better than CFLs (13 watt), which is not something I've seen before in an LED.

Most commercial LEDs in the market today (and by market I mean physical stores, not specialty online places) are worse than CFLs in a lumens/watt measure. (And they rarely actually tell you the true lumens.)

I'm not personally willing to pay more than about $5 for such a bulb, but the price will come down. (Since I can get 10,000 hour CFLs for $2.)

Edit: Maybe I will pay more - those 3 watts in savings add up to about $11 over the 25,000 hour life of the bulb.

<comment><USER3> You can definitely find smaller CFLs. My house is old and has a lot of places where there used to be gas lamps and instead tiny electric lamps have been put in, so I have several 8, 10, and 13 watt CFLs in my house. I think I got almost all of them at either Lowes or Costco.

Here is a GE one: [http://www.amazon.com/Lighting-Compfluo-85382-Compact- Fluore...](http://www.amazon.com/Lighting-Compfluo-85382-Compact- Fluorescent/dp/B0044UOU44)

Though of all the ones I tested the Sylvania seem to have the most pleasant color temperature, and online I can only find their 13W ones.

<comment><USER4> I think the impressive in "And the 10 watt is impressive too - that's better than CFLs (13 watt)" is in reference to the lumen/Watt measure of the lightbulb, not to its wattage alone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The question is how much and how long will it last in reality.

My last "forever" led bulb just died, it lasted 3 years.

I'm not buying a $40 bulb, even from Philips, unless it has a 20 year warranty.

I think I am going to try this one next, $15 but available in soft-while intead of just pure white and it's assembled in the USA supposedly: [http://www.goldengadgets.com/gt-7d-7-watt-led-globe-light- bu...](http://www.goldengadgets.com/gt-7d-7-watt-led-globe-light-bulb.html)

Note the helpful chart on that page halfway to the bottom (should be near the top!)

<comment><USER6> > The question is how much and how long will it last in reality.

Same goes for the CFL bulbs. For me the failure rate was so high that I started writing the date on the base of the CFL every time I install a new one(1). Average lifetime of a CFL bulb so far: 9 months. A _very_ far cry from the promised lifetime.

(1) I don't buy the cheap knock-offs at the local Big Box Store. I get top-of- the-line Sylvanias and Phillips CFL's. No difference -- they die just as fast as the cheap ones do.

<comment><USER7> That would make me start to wonder about the quality of the power in my house. I've seen the power here at my house in the Atlanta area actually drop below 100V for extended periods of time and I could see that causing stress on the ballasts in our CFLs. Our bulbs that have gone out always seem to be shortly after one of those events. (This is incidentally why we also have UPSs all over the house on anything even mildly sensitive)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have two LED bulbs like this by Philips. The 12.5w (60w replacement) and the 17w (75w replacement). I like them both a lot, and think both brightness and light quality are good enough for everyday use. Bonus: They apparently don't attract bugs because they produce less UV light than incandescents.

<comment><USER8> See here:

[http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/03/philips- ambientled-l...](http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/03/philips-ambientled- led-light-bulb-12-watts-review-shop-price.php)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This seems to be an iteration on an 800lm/12.5W version which they examined in [detail][]. There is an incredible amount of electronics packed into these things but they seem to do a better job than CFLs of replacing ye olde tungsten-filament-in-argon-filled-flask.

[detail]: [http://www.edn.com/blog/PowerSource/40511-Philips_LED_bulb_T...](http://www.edn.com/blog/PowerSource/40511-Philips_LED_bulb_Tear_down_Part_I_light_patterns_.php)

      The yellow plastic of the Philips bulb not just a bulb-like cover
      over the LEDs, but the phosphor itself. ... The bulb is able to
      make use of the remote phosphor's characteristic of emitting light
      omni-directionally and uniformly, rather than as a point source
      such as in a standard white LED.

</comment><comment><USER10> Do this bulb flicker at [50/60hz] like (consumer grade) LED Christmas tree lights?

<comment><USER11> I don't actually own one, but the datasheet[1] for the dimming circuit uses a 120 kilohertz flyback transformer.

1: <http://www.cypress.com/?docID=25961>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Analysis of presumably an earlier model [http://sevengens.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/ind...](http://sevengens.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/independent_ambientled_analysis020111.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER13> Good for them! I have one of these at home, and of the various LED bulbs I've tried this is the only one that worked well enough to be a true incandescent replacement.

<comment><USER14> How do you have one of these at home? I was under the impression that they haven't even started production yet.

<comment><USER15> [http://www.amazon.com/Philips-Ambient-Dimmable- Replacement-L...](http://www.amazon.com/Philips-Ambient-Dimmable-Replacement- Light/dp/B004IUMGV4)

<comment><USER14> Wow. Thanks!

*edit - this is NOT the same product. The one for sale has a CRI of 80, and looks different too.

<comment><USER2> This one has 800 lumens instead of 900, and uses 12.5watts instead of 10.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> They're the only company to even submit an entry :)

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm using their 860 lumens version which looks very similar. It works great</comment>


Show HN - Calculator that estimates your cloud costs - <AUTHOR> http://www.kloudcalc.com

<comment><USER2> Is it just me, or is could computing and the associated costs really difficult to figure out?

I'm not sure wether this is something I need to know, or is it specialist knowledge that server admins need to be on top of?

Maybe I'm dumb, but keeping up with all the software stuff coming out (frameworks, libraries, best practices etc) is hard enough. Personally, I'm struggling to figure out what's going on with hardware and could computing.

It's especially difficult when it comes to services like Heroku, where it seems I'm expected to know about hundreds of these "things" with on-trend logos and ambiguous names before I can feel like I've gotten anywhere near to making an informed decision.

Or maybe I should shut up moaning and read more... but where's the time man! WHERE'S THE GOD DAMN TIME! I"VE GOT OTHER THINGS TO DO!!!

<comment><AUTHOR> I feel your pain. I just attended a NoSQL conference this week and my head is spinning with the amount of service providers and solutions there exists. One day, I'd like to extend my calculator to include doing a full blown IaaS vs PaaS comparo.

To answer your question, getting a good handle of knowing your operation costs has happened after the fact your servers were spinning. Most of my clients assumed that going to Cloud will help you save money. That has not been the case and I had to keep calculating costs over and over again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Can you also add a daily (next to hourly) amount input? Because in our case (and I guess other companies/users) a big chunk of servers is running non-stop throughout the day and it is easier to get your mind around this figure.

</comment><comment><USER4> For Amazon AWS, I find Amazon's tool to be much more detailed: <http://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/calc5.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> This was the source of my fustruation. I needed something quick and dirty to share with my clients. While I could create a spreadsheet to do it and there are a lot of them out there, I'd figure I just help others out there by creating a simple app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It would be great to see Windows Azure costs on this calculator. Great job indeed! People usually also use Cloud Storage services (s3 etc), maybe you can do something for that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Storage has been on my todo list. It's been a little difficult to grasph since AWS and Rackspace offer both block storage as well which charge differently than just straight GET/POST/PUT operations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd like to be able to compare the same thing across providers.

e.g. what's the price difference between an AWS medium instance and the equivalent on Joyent/Rackspace?

<comment><USER7> Try <http://www.cloudorado.com/> it does exactly that. You specify the requirements (RAM, CPU, etc) and it finds appropriate options from multiple providers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Suggestion: it would be nice to see RDS instances in here too.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is also on the roadmap as well. Since I'm seeing the trend for Database- as-a-Service.</comment></comment>


Haskell School of Music by Paul Hudak - <AUTHOR> http://haskell.cs.yale.edu/?page_id=276 <comment><USER2> Its author, Paul Hudak, is undergoing a lung biopsy today. Send your best wishes his way.

</comment><comment><USER3> I pulled the Euterpea source from the website and tried the tutorial in GHCi 7.0.4. It complained that the definition of

      times (n+1) m

is invalid.

If anyone is trying out the tutorial and gets the same error, replace that definition of "times" with

      times n m = m :+: (times (n-1) m)

and you should be good.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hm, I guess that means n+k pattern matching is finally removed.

<comment><USER4> Yes, it was removed in the Haskell 2010 standard, which is the default from GHC 7.0. [http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/haskell- prime/wiki/RemoveNPl...](http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/haskell- prime/wiki/RemoveNPlusK)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's hard not to appreciate Paul Hudak, who's at the forefront of research in functional reactive programming. If you've heard of Yampa or Fran, they're children of his, as is Euterpea (which this book is centered on). He also wrote the Haskell School of Expression, an introductory text which touches on multimedia more generally.

IIRC he was diagnosed with a serious form of leukemia awhile back. It's good to see that he's still finding time to do cool things!

<comment><USER6> One of his other children is a US champion freestyle skier.

[http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700109560/Skier-Jen- Hudak...](http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700109560/Skier-Jen-Hudak-takes- inspiration-from-her-father.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Direct link to the PDF: <http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/hudak/Papers/HSoM.pdf>

<comment><USER8> He was just starting this book around 2008 when I attended a computer music class he taught. Really great class - opened my eyes to the power of functional programming. I'm really happy to see how far he has been able to take this, despite the leukemia diagnosis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Paul Hudak also has a video of a presentation of some of this material at <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtmo6Bmfahc>

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm looking forward to going through this book. Hudak's 'Haskell School of Expression' is one of the books that helped me understand FP, and Haskell in particular. Multimedia applications are not among my current interests, but there were many subtle nuggets in that book that sharpened my functional viewpoint.

Although 'Haskell School of Expression' is written to be an introductory text, I have trouble seeing it that way, in part because of the multimedia aspect. Graham Hutton's 'Programming in Haskell' is a carefully written beginner text.

Functional programming, and Haskell in particular, reward patience. Hudak's and Hutton's books both have a high impact to time spent ratio. I suspect 'School of Music' will as well.

[EDIT - Just looked through it. It _is_ School of Expression rewritten for music rather than multimedia. Cool]

</comment><comment><USER11> This is exactly what I've been looking for. I've been searching (for years) for a good alternative to SuperCollider and thought Haskell would be great for DSP, but couldn't find a library ready to use. Now I get a lib and a book! :)

</comment><comment><USER12> I loved the HSoE; I found it ages ago in a bookstore in London, while on vacation. I read it to rags. Looking forward to the update.

<comment><USER13>
        read it to rags

I like that. My LY and RW are pretty raggedy, and I've basically written my own indexes for those books. (Let's not forget the other books: Hutton, Thompson, Road to Logic, Bird's Pearls (which i haven't read))

<comment><USER12> I remember staying in a friend's basement flat in South London, and taking baths with HSoE. The book was largely destroyed by the time I got on the plane home, but I was entranced.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Read the title as Haskell Musical, and thought the name was pretty clever. I'll just leave this here.

</comment><comment><USER15> i've googled and amazoned and the yale site is down. how do i buy a print version?

<comment><USER16> There were two reasonably-priced used copies of the book at the Strand in New York as of yesterday afternoon.

<comment><USER17> Are you referring The Haskell School of Expression? I don't think this new music book has been published in physical form yet.

<comment><USER16> Yes, sorry. The article link was down when I was first read the comments, so I wasn't aware of this new book.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Megaprocessor, a micro-processor built large. Very large - <AUTHOR> http://megaprocessor.com/ <comment><USER2> In case you're wondering why this obviously amazing thing hasn't provoked any discussion, it's been submitted before.

The major discussion is sufficiently old that comments are closed there now, but it's here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9755742](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9755742)

The man himself is there as well.

Here are some other submissions from different sources, with differing amounts of detail:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12047375](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12047375)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12044870](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12044870)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12004572](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12004572)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12003138](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12003138)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11991897](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11991897)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11977317](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11977317)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11955324](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11955324)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11847298](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11847298)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11805791](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11805791)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11754667](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11754667)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11750289](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11750289)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11564268](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11564268)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11459225](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11459225)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10621309](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10621309)</comment>


Startups - Great ideas vs. Great experiences - <AUTHOR> http://www.sergiutruta.com/2007/05/01/startups-great-ideas-vs-great-experiences/ <comment><USER2> The second thing. Where is this brilliant idea going to come from? Get started doing something first and better ideas will come. Don't sit around waiting for an epiphany.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> what do you think is a best approach for a startup? waiting for a brilliant idea, or starting with a simple idea and then focusing on giving a good experience to your customers?

<comment><USER3> "On the other hand, there are also companies which started their businesses from brilliant ideas: Microsoft (operating system), IBM (personal computers),"

IBM was around for just a few years prior to the PC:-) It's a good point nonetheless.</comment></comment>


What's a Senior Product Manager's Job? - <AUTHOR> http://blairreeves.me/2018/10/16/whats-a-senior-product-managers-job/ <comment><USER2> I always find these kinds of blog posts entertaining. First, using the word "job" greatly minimizes the work a PM does. Second, the most important responsibility of the PM is missing!

A PM's responsibility (not just their "job") is to build and grow the BUSINESS (I don't mean selling), however what's listed in this article, despite loads of buzzwords, is HOW that's done, but there's more.

The PM must, most importantly, have a firm understanding of the market opportunity with a comprehensive business model and product strategy that allows them to capture the opportunity. You know, that whole part of business about making money? It's always forgotten in articles like this, despite being the most important responsibility. Ok, I'm done ranting for now.

<comment><USER3> interesting. where i work they stand around all day and talk to each other about craft beer and hockey. this is usually between meetings where they decide what work other people will actually do.</comment></comment>


NATO and Pelosi Apparently Unaware That .ly Is Owned by Qaddafi - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2011/04/libya-twitter-nato/36481/ <comment><USER2> Although Libya does own that TLD, it's not as though bit.ly or ow.ly are Libyan sleeper cells ready to redirect our traffic at whim. The worst that could really happen is that the TLD is shut down, and none of the links work anymore. I guess theoretically Libya could put a 300-redirect on every .ly domain to forward to some propaganda page or something, but it's not like you're supporting Qaddafi by using bit.ly.</comment>


MoviePass no longer lets you see the same movie more than once - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2018/04/27/moviepass-no-movies-more-than-once/ <comment><USER2> One of my co worker got an email, saying that they're beta testing a feature, where they need to upload the receipts or else their account will be cancelled. This is such a bad business model. Can anyone else confirm this.

<comment><USER3> I mean the whole thing is such a bad business model.

<comment><USER4> This should be make for a good case study for business schools some day. MoviePass was billed as using the gym membership model because it relied on paying customers who don't use the service. However they totally ignored what makes the gym membership model work.

It isn't that people are just too lazy to cancel a product they don't use. People feel an obligation to have a gym membership and many of those people don't use it because they simply don't enjoy working out. Canceling a gym membership is admitting failure in achieving a goal to work out. There is therefore a huge emotional investment in maintaining a gym membership. That pressure doesn't exist for MoviePass. Almost no one feels pressure to go to the movies so you don't get people signing up for the service out of obligation. And everyone who signs up enjoys going to the theater at some level so low usage members are hard to come by.

Meanwhile the marginal cost of an extra customer in the gym membership model decreases at scale. Adding a single heavy user that works out 10+ hours a week isn't really going to alter a gym's bottom line. This isn't the case for MoviePass. Each ticket costs the company the same amount. If you get one heavy user that buys a ticket everyday, MoviePass might need as many as 25 paying customers who barely use the service. It just doesn't scale.

<comment><USER5> _> MoviePass was billed as using the gym membership model_

This was never their business model. MP doesn't win if customers pay $9.95 but sometimes forget to go to the movies.

MP wins when they get revshare deals with theaters.

Naturally theaters don't want to share, so MP is buying negotiating leverage with free movie tickets.

MP is trying to get 20 million movie patrons hooked on an all-you-can-eat model so MP becomes the source of a large percentage of traffic. Then MP can threaten to shut off the tap if they don't get a cut.

Theater chains are betting that MP burns through their cash before they get big enough to make that threat.

<comment><USER6> This sounds dysfunctional. Business partners hoping to be the one that benefits at the expense of their partner.

<comment><USER7> Is it too different from Spotify? Very similar situation.

<comment><USER8> Similar to the whole iTunes / CDs thing, for sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Shockingly, their terrible business model allowed them to grow quickly as long as they could lose prodigious amounts of money. They're facing competition now from the theater chains (Cinemark, who runs my nearest theater, has a discounted movie pass club that's not nearly as good a deal but is actually a viable business) and it looks like they can no longer afford to lose as much money. They're doomed.

<comment><USER10> > They're doomed.

Honestly, this was my assumption when I signed up for the service. People like me will keep them in business longer than they ought to be (because new people signing up delays their financial failure). But I'm almost at break even after just 1.5 months. As long as they last through June, which I expect they will, I'll have saved money on (mostly) movies I'd have gone to see anyways.

<comment><USER11> New people signing up and using their service actually will accelerate their demise. They pay the movie theatres full price.

<comment><USER12> They recently switched their pay model to upfront quarterly, which gives them an influx of cash short term. Not a good sign for long term but it will keep them afloat and allow everyone to burn VC money for a bit longer. In their minds, I'm guessing that as long as they grow exponentially or close to, they will eventually have the leverage over theatres they need to get a cut of concessions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This reminds me a lot of Jukely.

Jukely still lets you see a concert every day, but there are so many hidden restrictions now that the service is practically unusable.

You can pay by the month, but certain shows force you into a three-month contract. You can pay for a +1, but some shows don't let you claim more than a single ticket (a dealbreaker for me, since I share the service with my wife).

And the quality of the shows has gone down the toilet. I was seeing some big names when the service was new, but now I just get crappy artists that can barely fill half a venue. Of course, all of the sought-after artists have the aforementioned restrictions.

This kind of subscription service seems always doomed to fail.

<comment><USER14> Never heard of them before. From the looks of it (being as they mention saying you're on a guest list) they're acting like a promoter and using their block of tickets for subscribers. That's an interesting way to go about it (if thats what they're doing).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> What they need to do is target parents, then they'll be raking it in. I've had MoviePass for 4 months and haven't had a chance to use it yet.

</comment><comment><USER16> also, you are the product, of course -- [https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/05/moviepass-ceo-proudly- says...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/05/moviepass-ceo-proudly-says-the-app- tracks-your-location-before-and-after-movies/)

kinda crappy business model... but kudos to them for being transparent about it, i guess?

also, there really hasn't been more than 1 good new movie per month on average lately. mostly it's just kids movies and superhero stuff. i'd say i'm breaking even on it.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is on top of only allowing new users to watch four movies per month.

Cinemark has a 8.99 a month plan where you get one movie credit per month, and they roll over the credit if you don't use it. That's starting to sound like a far better offer.

<comment><USER18> The credit only persists as long as your account is active so if you accrue a bunch of tickets and then cancel, you also lose your tickets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Haha, well you at least have to give them credit for trying.

> We hope this will encourage you to see new movies and enjoy something > different!

</comment><comment><USER20> That is sort of hilarious. I still don't understand how you grow a business which currently consists of taking money from venture capitalists and giving it to people so they can go to the movies. The VC's would get more mileage out of it if they just rented a showing of a movie every day and offered it free to whomever wanted to do if they wouldn't mind sitting through a 30 minute pitch that would feature one of their portfolio companies. And they locked the doors so you couldn't skip the pitch.

At least that way they could be helping to mitigate the customer acquisition cost of their portfolio companies with no reduction in the efficiency of movie pass (actually better efficiency since they wouldn't have to pay any moviepass employees!)

</comment><comment><USER21> Makes me wonder if the small subset of people who would regularly watch the same movie multiple times in a theater are: (1) movie buffs, highly likely to see _a movie_ even if it can't be the same, and (2) high concession spenders?

If it's not sold out, seems a bit like licensing already built software: (if it's going unused and doesn't cost to on-board new users or otherwise affect higher paying customers, might as well get butts in the seats)

<comment><USER22> In my experience people who have access to a theater during their daily work/chores/gym-run/etc. will buy tons of tickets using their account to help get groups in to a movie.

I saw black panther for free thanks to my friend getting like 8 tickets for 6 of us. He had so many tickets he didn't even know where all of them were or how many he had so we found another couple in his car a few days later.

Movie pass just puts on the money on the card, but they're unaware of what you're actually buying with that. You can buy the same movie for a date in the future over multiple days. I'm sure many will try to do the same using up movies they don't care about.

<comment><USER23> You do know that's fraud, right?

<comment><USER24> Only if it's an individual doing it. If a startup finds a way to cheat/hack the system, it's called "disruption".

<comment><USER25> Slightly off-topic but this sentiment always reminds me of the saying "any crime that happens above street-level is called politics"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> They did just introduce this feature in like January too. I'm surprised this is what they're revoking. Must be a lot of repeat offenders.

</comment><comment><USER27> MoviePass is great for kids... who have a tendency to watch the same movie again and again.

</comment><comment><USER28> I thought they never did?

</comment><comment><USER29> No one is forcing you to use their "services." Stop using their app?

<comment><USER30> No one is forcing you to think critically about anything in the world or read critical comments from others. Stop using this website?

(You can just copy and paste your comment for every complaint about any business ever other than true monopolies for truly essential things; you'll never have to discuss and consider any concerns ever again.)

<comment><USER29> Wow, who crapped in your Cheerios?

With recent shenanigans MoviePass I wonder why people use their app. That's why I made the comment.

Why use a service that restricts you? Tracks you (now removed)? Go from unlimited movies, to restrictions?

Why use something that you have to pay for and NOT get much value for it? Just go to the movie theater like everyone else?

<comment><USER30> I hadn't even heard of MoviePass until seeing this posting at HN. I don't watch movies, and MoviePass sounds ridiculous.

I was critiquing your comment because it had no substance and seemed anti- intellectual. It actually sounded like what you see people write to _defend_ bull-crap like MoviePass, as in "Don't like Facebook's terrible actions? You don't have to use it…" used as an argument against people complaining (as opposed to an argument that people should leave Facebook because the complaints are legitimate).

Maybe it was just a misunderstanding. Seems you didn't do a good job of making your initial point, and I replied to the words I read.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Things My Boss Says - <AUTHOR> http://thingsmybosssays.eu-4.evennode.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Inspired by some of the things bosses have said to me over time I decided to create a place where people can share some of the outrageous quotes they have encountered from their bosses in the past.

This is a quick throw together site so the feedback would be really appreciated.

Also feel free to add some quotes, as currently at the time of writing this there aren't any, and the more generated, the better testing I can do.

Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER2> "...that is not my cup of tea. Do you have that phrase in Belarus? Or do you say, "Not my glass of vodka"?" unbelievable.</comment>


Ask HN: Review Labels.io - <AUTHOR>

Just launched the public beta of Labels.io (http://labels.io), a jobs site that approaches online recruiting from a new perspective: instead of creating lengthy CVs, professionals define themselves with key attributes which are then matched in real time with jobs posted by employers.
The first three jobs are on the house so feel free to take it for a test drive!
Looking forward to your thoughts on it.
Octavian <comment><USER2> Have been building something similar, if you're at all interested in talking:

\- <http://cl.ly/0p193Q2c190s2R3W3C0K>

\- <http://cl.ly/233P0K3n2P0B0n0X0e2p>

\- <http://cl.ly/0N0S2d25003z283T463g>

\- <http://cl.ly/0h2N36100z2o3J1C443L>

</comment><comment><USER3> The LinkedIn URL here has no target: <http://labels.io/mediademo>

As far as I can tell it is a nice way of trying to find employees by matching them. I have not tried your system yet, but if it works like that it does sound interesting.

However there is a lot of competition in that space, so unless you have a real driving force behind marketing or really good reasons for companies to use your service it will be pretty tough.

Also do you support "Web presences" like stackoverflow? I can imagine that developers want to use that as resumes, too.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Will fix the LinkedIn URL. About stackoverflow/hresume - sure, what other web presences do you think we should have there?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Looks nice, drop me a line - octavian at labels.io</comment>


It's Time For Google To Let Google Voice Live Up To Its Promise - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/29/its-time-for-google-to-let-google-voice-live-up-to-its-promise/ <comment><USER3> I just got a iPhone 4S on Sprint.

They are the only carrier to offer deep Google Voice integration.

Unfortunately and not surprising there are many issues with Sprint's GV on iPhone. If you want to use Siri to send text messages you have to use iMessage and there is now way to get your Google Voice text messages integrated with iMessage. Many Sprint iPhone GV users have noted the call quality is lacking, as there is a delay. Also, when you go to a Sprint store (since it's a new thing) they have no information. One rep advised that I port my Google Voice # out, in which I did and after doing so realized that was mis-information (lost my GV #).

I will miss GV, especially the SMS service in the cloud. Though I am curious to hear other readers experience. Are you using Google Voice on Sprint with your iPhone? How is it working out for you?

<comment><USER4> Why was this downvoted? I found it very informative and interesting - personally, I can't wait for GV to be a native option on the iPhone 4S w/ Verizon, though that'll never happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I use GrooveIP ($5 on Android Market) to use Google Voice over the data connection on both my actual Android phone and my ASUS Transformer tablet/netbook (which has no cellphone chip at all inside of it, just wifi).

Granted, it would be nice if this were more of an integrated part of the OS and the Voice app, without needing to set up or use a third party SIP provider and it all Just Worked including seemlessly handling incoming calls, but there are some options out there now to get this sort of setup working.

</comment><comment><USER6> Google Voice is a great product which could be so much better, it's pretty clear it's one of those things Google has not looked after or worked on much. It's also a complete pain to set up. Your average Joe is going to struggle to get it up and running and nicely integrated with Gmail. I've watched two reasonably techie people struggle to work out to make/receive calls inside of Gmail.

Note that if you struggle with cell reception and want to make calls over wifi then T-Mobile's UMA service - they call it "Wifi Calling" - is a good solid solution which just uses wifi as an alternate bearer for all your phone's usual capability. (voice, text, data)

</comment><comment><USER7> I have my cell phone's voicemail use Google Voice and it's a huge improvement over T-Mobile's voicemail.

I also give out my Google Voice number and it rings both my cell phone and my always-open Gmail window at the same time.

If I'm at my computer with headphones on, which is most of the time, then I can make/receive calls for free inside of my web browser. I know people want to use GV for more mobile things, but I'm extremely happy with the way I'm currently using it through Gmail.

</comment><comment><USER8> I used to be a huge fan of Google Voice, but I'm not so hot on it anymore. I started using it because I didn't have good at&t reception at my house. It was a godsend at first, I could actually get text messages without having my phone in a very specific place.

But as I continued to use the service...

\- Not having MMS shouldn't be a big deal, and it isn't. Until someone wants to send you one. "Oh no, send it to my other number, sorry about that. Which number? Oh, you told me not to text there, so I deleted it." But then people start sending everything to that number, and you have to tell them which number to use for what thing. People hate this, and I don't blame them--it gets confusing.

\- GV is seen as a landline, goodbye all of those cheap m2m minutes, you're now costing your friends part of their anytime minutes even though you're actually talking to them on your cell phone. This isn't a huge deal, except for those people that don't have many anytime minutes--because they mostly only call cell phones. I'd love to know whether this is a problem when you port your GV number to Sprint, but I have no idea.

\- GV will sometimes drop SMS forwarding. I miss around 1 message a week (call it 1 in 1000), it'll show up on google.com/voice, but it never makes it to my phone.

\- For several years, all the Google forwarding numbers (the numbers that you will get an SMS from, a unique number per contact that is generated the first time they send you a message) were in the 406 area code. This made it pretty easy to always be sure of which number you were sending to. Last year, they started assigning numbers based on any area code. This means you must be very rigid in how you add phone numbers to your contacts. It gets confusing when you have a contact with two SMS-capable numbers, now you have 4 numbers (Home, Work, Pager, Home Fax?). This is a big problem if you sync with Exchange, less so if you can assign custom number labels (Home GV, Work GV, etc.).

\- Sometimes messages are delayed. Perhaps once a month I'll start getting messages delayed by an hour or so. This happens with cell carriers too (although I rarely see it on that side), so not as big of a deal as dropped messages.

\- I won't even get into the lack of an API and the frustration that causes for those that choose to write apps that utilize or extend GV.

After years using GV, I now have a MicroCell at home, and I've switched everyone back to my at&t number. It's just less confusing. I've wanted to love GV so badly, but it just isn't the silver bullet that it is advertised as.

Maybe Google will fix Google Voice, but I'm not as optimistic as I used to be. :(

<comment><USER9> Did you switch your GV number to AT&T? Or did you use a new number?

I have been considering switching my GV number back to a cell carrier for a while, but I have heard/read that there might be issue doing that. Primarily with SMS/texting receipts, incoming calls from other GV numbers, etc.

<comment><USER8> I didn't port (and wouldn't for the MMS/landline issues alone, I think) - <USER2> did it all 'on top' of an at&t and an ipkall.com/SIP/asterisk number.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm an American expat and I really want Google Voice to work for me, but sadly it just doesn't.

\- International Call Forwarding - I can't grasp why they don't do this. I work around it by having my GV number forward to a US Twilio number, which forwards to my foreign cell. Complexity = problems, and I'm giving Twilio a bunch of cash I could be giving Google.

\- VoIP Calls - I wouldn't even have the above problem if GV supported VoIP. Even if it's only limited to WiFi, it would still be a major plus. The tech exists (Skype app), and Google has implemented it for GMail and even SIP at one point.

\- Buggy iPhone app - This is what really shows me GV is a low priority for Google. The app is buggy as hell, crashes, doesn't pick up where you left off when you re-open it, doesn't always display most current inbox information, etc... For such a simple app, it shouldn't be this horrible.

</comment><comment><USER11> Google Voice has a bunch of nice features, and integrates very well with Android phones, but I gave up on it after dealing with too many cases of dropped audio during calls. (I have a very low tolerance for any service, free or paid, that screws up communication with my clients.)

I ended up porting my Google Voice number to a commercial service, Toktumi:

<http://www.toktumi.com/>

There are some things Google Voice does better than Toktumi (particularly contact management and Android support), but Toktumi doesn't drop my calls, supports VOIP, and lets me completely block callers that withhold their Caller ID information. I've been switching over to iOS devices, and I've found the Toktumi "Line2" apps to be better than Google Voice on that platform.

</comment><comment><USER12> You can do exactly what he's asking for a one-time cost of $45 with OBiTALK. I used it on my iPhone while traveling in Europe to make several flawless calls to the US, each lasting an hour or more.

<comment><USER13> If you are logged into Gmail with voice then Obitalk will not ring when you get a call.

Google Voice will only ring one Google Chat endpoint. You have to sign out of all other Gmail and Google Chat sessions for it to work. It's a nice solution, but the Obitalk site should mention this limitation.

<comment><USER14> If you use an Obihai device, I highly recommend that you setup a new Google voice account for it, separate from your main Gmail account, for just this reason. You still get an extra phone line that you can make and receive calls on, and you don't need to worry about your Gmail session intercepting your phone calls.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The latency of text messages is what killed Google Voice for me. You just can't rely on it and it's really confusing to ask people to text you on one number and call you on another.</comment>


Ask HN: Are you sure your password is not stolen? - <AUTHOR>

I am looking to start a product around password storage.
Have few questions to better understand is there a real demand for such product. Thank you in advance.
1. Do you feel safe entering login/password to bank or your critical resources (facebook, twitter etc)?
2. Are you concerned that malware could steal password, even anti-virus is installed?
3. Do you use any password storage software 1password (Mac), Roboform ?
4. Will you buy a service that will _guarnatee_ your login/password is not stolen or compromised? How much would you pay?
5. Could you share any additional features that you are missing in current products. <comment><USER2> And how do you intend to find out if it is stolen or not? Besides, if you want me to give you my banking passwords, telling me 'hey there, I'm pretty sure your passwords won't be stolen, but if they are we'll let you know' aint really comforting.

Rather than giving you my passwords and waiting anxiously for that fateful email saying 'Your passwords have been compromised', wouldn't I be better off just not giving them to you?

Also, how do you guarantee that they won't be compromised? If you have really cracked this, then I think you're sitting on a fairly big pot of money.

<comment><AUTHOR> unfortunately I can't share details at the moment.

But one thing i could share - we won't require your passwords, it is just totally wrong from security perspective :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Say I compromised a website that was storing passwords in the clear. There should be no way whatsoever for you to know I've done this, or even that I've -used- this password. What, if any advantage would you have over a password manager storing single-use passwords? A very good web implementation of this, with client-side encryption so that the service has no access to your actual passwords, is clipperz.com. Do you believe you can offer me something better? As someone who spends a lot of time studying security, I think you've made some extraordinary claims..

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, if the site is compromised than nothing you could know. But this is kind of unlikely in case of major players like banks.

Zero knowledge web app - is nice theoretical approach but I don't see a way it will be adopted anytime soon.

As to mine claims, I will post application when it will be ready, and we could discuss attacks against of it. It will be quite different from clipperz etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> 1\. reasonably 2\. no 3\. yes, 1 password 4\. guarantee? as in if it is stolen or compromised, you pay X amount? if yes, how much i would pay would be based on how much you pay out as really, you are just selling insurance.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks.

Product is not about insurance, product is exactly about the fact that password is not stolen.

When it is stolen you will know it right away without any probability factor it will be 100% fact.

<comment><USER4> how?</comment></comment></comment>


Realizing too many good things gone in HN newest, I created this after 2 hours - <AUTHOR> http://www.cahella.com

<comment><USER2> You should be able to get to the URL to the article's comment thread on HN.

It would also be nice to have filters. I particularly want to be able to get a list of only Show HN posts, only Ask HN posts, or only posts that got at least N upvotes.

Also, it would be nice to have an option to see more results per page. I like to set the number to 100-500 so I don't have to open a giant mass of tabs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point about urls from the article's comment thread. That definitely things that mostly people missed.

For filters and option, I was thinking the same. A bit doubt about why I need that, until you share your thought.

I'll update here soon regarding this features.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is nice, thank you!

Other people have mentioned some filters. I agree that it'd be really nice to see all "Show HN" posts, or "Ask HN" posts.

I'd also like a filter like the Lessmeme site (<http://lessmeme.com/less.html>) which filters out some common domains that get posted to HN.

It'd be great if these filters could be built into extensions and be used on the regular HN site, I guess.

<comment><USER4> There is already <https://news.ycombinator.com/ask>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I use <http://skimhn.com> to quickly filter submissions by domain/author/keyword.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> For people who already visit this site maybe notice that it's not well updated as <https://news.ycombinator.com/newest>.

Why? Because I put update only for every one hour (respect HN rule)

Nothing much fancy stuff there yet, since I only want to archives. Soon, I will make "save" button works to collect which posts that may related with my works and interest.

<comment><USER6> Nice! I was thinking about doing something similar to show all the 'Show HN....' that never make the front page. There's a lot of good stuff that barely gets any views for better or worse.

<comment><AUTHOR> We have same thought here. Glad if that help you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Or, you could just read the RSS feed: <https://news.ycombinator.com/rss>

<comment><AUTHOR> Bad news that RSS feed not cover newest links

<comment><USER8> Also, being able to combine rss with custom filters mentionned in other comments would be a killer feature - in order to be able to get all of one interest from the world most active tech feed.

Yes, it begins to be difficult feature requests, sorry about that :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Cool, though on page 3 it skips from 9 hours ago to 22 hours ago.

Is there any reason the code is skipping the hours in between?

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right Paul. I pushed update on the <http://cahella.com> to using datetime from HN rather database record time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I agree with csense points, also, it would be nice to specify how long links will be kept in your site: since you planned this as archive it would make sense to put a limit (let's say, one month) and then give access to links posted "one day ago", "n days ago", "n weeks ago" etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Got your point, it will make it easier to filtering the links

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It seems to me that sometimes HN freezes in some posts for days, and they are not specially upvoted compared with other posts that go down, It seems to happen more on weekends. Has anybody noticed this?

<comment><USER4> There's less traffic on weekends, so it takes fewer upvotes to get to the frontpage just because there's less competition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Well done, nice way to respond quickly with a possible solution to the "falling" new post issue.

</comment><comment><USER13> for newest I think <http://hckrnews.com/> is doing the best job</comment>


Top Feburary Startups To Watch - <AUTHOR> http://www.startupplays.com/blog/top-35-startups-in-tech-that-techcrunch-missed-out-on-feburary-2013/

<comment><USER2> Franco, thanks from the team here at Testin for featuring us on this great list. Some great startups here I'm glad to be introduced to!

</comment><comment><USER3> Ton's of great startups on the list! Thanks Franco for getting these startups the coverage they deserve!

</comment><comment><USER4> Photopoll and Hubba look like great startups, very cool! Thanks for getting us in at #15.

<comment><USER5> Photopoll developer here, thanks for the kind words! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Love seeing worthy startups get some lime light! Awesome post Franco, keep them coming.

</comment><comment><USER7> Very happy to be featured in this. Thanks a lot Franco!</comment>


Launching Openfolio on Product Hunt - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@hal2001/launching-on-product-hunt-116a0f5c6cfd <comment><USER2> I've worked with several of the guys currently hacking on Openfolio in the past, and I'm excited to see where their platform goes from here. The ability to compare your decisions against those of some of the biggest names in investment management is strangely attractive, and I find myself going back to the site more and more frequently as time goes by.

In any event: congratulations on the launch!

<comment><USER3> Thanks Kamil... appreciate it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hey all, I'm the original author here. Would love to get your thoughts.

<comment><USER4> The article as a whole reads more like an advertisement for Product Hunt (e.g. PH's history + metric) than a chronicle of your experience.

<comment><USER3> Ha, well not intended to be that way. Our experience with PH was really pretty positive so I guess that shows.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _Some may worry about obvious Silicon Valley echo chamber effects. This is a community of early adopters who want to use products to solves their own needs_

i.e. not the typical customers of your product.</comment>


F# Survey 2015 Results - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Ly_W1ZUH3x_ph4H6I_64uvEib2brDx34j-FoaZkeYLI/viewanalytics <comment><USER2> I've been working with the language for a few months. Overall, I love pretty much every single aspect of the language. I am even starting to feel like the few things that I would like to have aren't necessary (such as HKTs and ML- style functors). In terms of platform support, F# has done almost everything right (I feel like Scala made boat loads of bad compromises to support Java interop, which I don't find at all with F#). There are entire classes of frameworks for web and mobile development in C# that are made obsolete even by the simplest language-level features like Agents, ADTs, Computation Expressions, Active Patterns, Type Providers, etc.

My disappointments so far are super frustrating though. Like Jarcane, I've found quantity of documentation to be an issue. Most tutorials assume that you a) already know C# and b) are using VisualStudio, and the whole ecosystem is still very Windows-centric. It is nearly impossible to learn the language without an IDE, and all of the non-VS IDEs are pretty crappy in terms of F# support. The whole msbuild or whatever it is behind the scenes doing the building is completely opaque and incomprehensible. The compilation order issue (you basically have to tell the build system the order of compilation, with no cyclical dependencies) is pretty difficult to understand and sometimes very difficult to work with. It also makes code organization very unintuitive (you can't put code in directories?!).

All in all, it is pretty frustrating, but at least they got the language right. The frustrations will likely go away in time, so I'm willing to put up with them for now. Maybe I'll get good enough at the language to actually fix them :)

<comment><USER3> Something that's kept me from pursuing learning F# is whether I need to know C# and/or Windows development, plus concerns about lacking access to Visual Studio.

I'm learning Scala now and found that it's relatively approachable without knowing Java, but Clojure was definitely easier to approach from the "never used Java" perspective. But it seems like F# is a much bigger leap to make for someone with no MS stack experience than Scala/Clojure for someone with no JVM experience.

It seems like Scala and F# are the only real choices for typed functional languages in relatively common use in industry (in comparison to Haskell and OCaml).

<comment><USER4> You definitely do not need to know C#. Knowledge of the .NET Framework or Mono is however desirable (which if you do not know C#, you are unlikely to have) in order to get things done.

Learning on anything other than Visual Studio will probably be challenging. You know you can get full Visual Studio 203 for free now? [https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/products/visual-studio- co...](https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/products/visual-studio-community- vs.aspx)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's interesting to see that a lot of the respondents wrote basically the same thing I did: the documentation for actually making even a simple application in pure F# is basically non-existent.

<comment><USER6> That's not true. There are loads of web learning resources for it.

<comment><USER5> I literally know of only a single pure F# application tutorial on the internet, Scott W.'s Calculator, and the style reads more like Java than any idiomatic FP code I've ever seen.

There's scattered bits here and there elsewhere, but none actually present a complete picture of the process. They wind up resembling, as one survey respondant suggested, feeling like the old "how to draw an owl": Step 1) draw the eyes, Step 2) Draw everything else.

<comment><USER7> From Microsoft itself

"Real World Functional Programming" \- [https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/vstudio/hh314518%28...](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/vstudio/hh314518%28v=vs.100%29.aspx)

Some higher level presentations - [https://channel9.msdn.com/Tags/fsharp](https://channel9.msdn.com/Tags/fsharp)

Then there are the Erik Meijer teaching FP series, even though they are based on Haskell, given their ML common roots is also a good series to follow.

[http://channel9.msdn.com/Series/C9-Lectures-Erik-Meijer- Func...](http://channel9.msdn.com/Series/C9-Lectures-Erik-Meijer-Functional- Programming-Fundamentals)

<comment><USER8> This might sound a bit stupid, but I was looking into F# a while ago (26 days ago, if the timestamps of the few files I wrote don't lie :-) ) and now I'm wondering I could have found those things (especially RWFP because I usually don't like learning from videos) if I start on fhsarp.org?

[http://fsharp.org/about/learning.html](http://fsharp.org/about/learning.html) does not list them, and going from [http://fsharp.org/about/index.html](http://fsharp.org/about/index.html) via the "Language Reference" link to [https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/dd233181.aspx](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/dd233181.aspx) doesn't list RWFP in the sidebar anymore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> That hiring myth is a killer. Project I'm helping on would have been much better off with F#. But the CTO is very scared they wouldn't find "F# developers". Despite any C# dev worth hiring would not have a problem learning. Despite that his second hire just happens to know F# anyways.

There was also concern that "valuation of the company might tank due to use of non-standard code".

I think these are incorrect ideas. I'd take some pay cut to work on F# code instead of C#. Everytime I write anything in C#, I keep thinking how easier and shorter it'd be in F#. Just this week, we lost a whole day to a mutation bug:

      inputParam.Bar = Baz // oops, now we just updated the callers notion of that .Bar property

Yeah, we coulda caught it in code review. We could have tried to make things readonly, but C# 5 still doesn't have a simple readonly record concept like F#.

I'd guess that if you advertise an F# job you're going to get more good replies, because people want to work on F#. And you can still leverage someone's knowledge of .NET, the frameworks and libraries and all that. So it's less risky than using, say, Haskell, where you're all alone - F#'s still compiling and consuming IL even with all its magic on top.

When I was 7 years younger, I predicted that obviously F# will take over at least 20% of C# development 2010 - it was just too awesome for people to ignore. There was no reason _not_ to use it apart from legacy or bad management, but no one could ignore such benefits. I have, uh, recalibrated since.

(The biggest technical hurdle I had was frameworks that didn't target .NET, but targeted C#. They'd depend on undocumented output of the C# compiler expression trees. Those were a bit of a pain to fix, but not too hard. Another annoying thing is the MVC teams decision, since C# doesn't have tuples, and dictionary creation syntax is too clunky, to pass arbitrary types as parameters (@Html.Foo(new { this="is", just="some", anon="type" }). Then they go using reflection to inspect the properties of the type. That's just dumb and has caused tons of bugs. And would have been avoided had C# a nice way to write lists or tuples or something. But the MVC team wanted it to "feel like Ruby". This isn't _hard_ in F#, it just looks as bad as it is.

<comment><USER10> I have tried to convince my manager to let us implement chunks of F# code into our projects. It would make development times much shorter and reduce complexities in our application. Despite his personal interest in functional programming, he is still hesitant to incorporate it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interesting note from TIOBE about F# just yesterday:

March Headline: All time high for F# at position 11

Microsoft's programming language F# is about to sneak into the top 10. It is not clear why F# is gaining popularity. Possible reasons might be the F# web- programming framework WebSharper and the promotional work of the F# Software Foundation as Tomas Petricek (author of "F# Deep Dives") stated in an interview about 2 weeks ago.

<comment><USER12> Except that the April data is out now, and it dropped to 14, so 'about to sneak into the top 10' seems a bit premature, in hindsight.

<comment><USER13> Except that #14 is for April 2014.

The Tiobe score for F# improved by +0.23% (which might be from March 2015 to April 2015).

 _afaict_ the data tables for previous months are unavailable, and not recoverable from the Internet Archive because of the way the data is displayed.

<comment><USER11> Yes they are not recoverable but try google cache. Actually I've used google cache to bring back the headline article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you have used F#, you can take the survey here: [http://fsharpworks.com/survey.html](http://fsharpworks.com/survey.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> > How would you classify your day job? - Data or anal

I guess you gotta be anal to do data.

<comment><USER16> :] Actually came here to ask if anal is really the typically use abbreviation of analysis/analytics/... For _some_ reason I doubt it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I have only used F# for a couple months, but I have a decent background in ML thanks to the Dan Grossman's incredible programming languages course.

[https://www.coursera.org/course/proglang](https://www.coursera.org/course/proglang)

I would say that if I can use F# Data or Deedle on a project, I will. Those tools totally make it worth learning a little F#.

[http://bluemountaincapital.github.io/Deedle/](http://bluemountaincapital.github.io/Deedle/) [http://fsharp.github.io/FSharp.Data/](http://fsharp.github.io/FSharp.Data/)

</comment><comment><USER18> [https://sergeytihon.wordpress.com/](https://sergeytihon.wordpress.com/) is a good resource for F#

</comment><comment><USER19> I made a language safety score to help explain F# to myself and coworkers, and its helped make strong inroads with them. With the defaults, F# is as close to C# in safety as C# is to JavaScript. [http://deliberate- software.com/programming-language-safety-a...](http://deliberate- software.com/programming-language-safety-algorithm/)

<comment><USER20> I would say F# is much safer than C# as it has immutability by default, non- nullable reference types, Option types, units of measure, and stricter casting rules.</comment></comment>