How Property Taxes Shape Our Cities - <AUTHOR> https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/6/28/how-property-taxes-shape-our-cities <comment><USER2> This is a great time to call out California and its Prop 13 (1978) where property taxes are capped at 1%ish and can grow no more than 2% from time of purchase.

As a result, a new homeowner in Silicon Valley ($1.5M median home price) will pay $16K this year. Meanwhile there's a homeowner in Atherton (where CEOs live) who has a $6M home and pays $3K a year (and their children inherit this rate.)

Disney pays about $0.08/sqft in property tax on Disneyland. The new owner will pay about $7/sqft.

Unsurprisingly, this has caused California schools to get about $9K/child in funding. About the same as Mississippi. But the cost of living/labor is 2x-10x.

Warren Buffett was always amazed at how he paid more in property tax for his place in Omaha than in California - simply because he bought in the right year.

[https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Buffett-s- Prop-13-co...](https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Buffett-s- Prop-13-comments-cause-stir-2595878.php)

<comment><USER3> One thing that always bothers me is how it is framed as something for the rich. Yes the rich do benefit, however prop 13 also does a lot of good for old people who live off a fixed income. My grandparents are really poor, in terms of savings and assets, and often times get help from my family. If it weren't for prop 13 they would have had to leave California a long time ago, and move away from all their family. I know that in other states , like New Jersey, the property taxes can cause a lot of stress for older people who live off fixed incomes. I am not entirely sure about the actual value for prop 13 for the entire state. But prop 13 does provide a lot of value for older people and that can't be ignored.

<comment><USER4> A proper tax relief program for the elderly would actually target the elderly, as many states do.

Proposition 13 does not target the elderly. It gives tax breaks to all property investors, including corporations and (due to Proposition 58) inherited estates.

<comment><USER5> It effectively targets the elderly because its benefits go disproportionately to people who bought homes many decades ago, in other words, the elderly.

Another way to determine who it targets is to suggest repealing it and watch who complains the loudest.

<comment><USER4> Yes, the limit on increase of assessed value helps the elderly. All the other property investors (such as grandchildren and corporations) are just happy to reap the benefits. In other words, the design does not target the elderly.

<comment><USER6> This is the correct answer. The effect is as follows, currently:

1) Elderly who bought early pay low tax, elderly who bought recently pay high tax

2) Younger people who are also rich pay high tax, but can afford it, and it is proportional to the amount of services they are receiving

3) Younger people who cant afford these property taxes are priced out of the area.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'll take this opportunity to bring up Land Value taxation as an alternative: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax)

Creates incentive to use land efficiently, coupled with fewer economic distortions.

<comment><USER8> Such a great system. I don't know why it's not used more often.

<comment><USER9> One of the things I always find frustrating about economists and economic writing is how often it completely and deliberately disregards the humanity of the actors in the system. My hunch is that the people who are drawn to economics like it specifically _because_ it attempts to offer a cleaner, more mechanical understanding of human behavior than humans actually demonstrate.

But, of course, using that model to then derive policy is obviously flawed since your model doesn't accurately capture the essential features of the objects being modeled.

If we let economists design furniture, every chair would be a miserably unpleasant cube whose dimensions match the median posterior.

Land value tax does have a lot going for it, but it overlooks one critical component:

Humans have a fundamental desire for stability, especially in where they live. I do _not_ want my home to be a rectangle of maximum market efficiency. I want it to be a place where it's worth the effort to garden because I know I'll get to watch those plants grow over the coming years. I want it to be a calm respite, a sanctuary that I can rely on in the face of the chaos of the larger world. And, as I get older and my ability to generate revenue natural declines, I want some confidence that hard work I did when I was younger will enable me to live out the rest of my years with some degree of stability.

Of course, our desire for stability needs to be weighed against the desires of the larger community. But you do that by balancing those desires, not by completely ignoring one half of the equation.

I'm not sure what an ideal solution for housing is, but I'm certain it's not based on a slavish devotion to market efficiency.

<comment><USER10> Why would land value tax undermine housing stability?

<comment><USER11> The unimproved value of land is still a function of its proximity to other desirable things. Barring remodeling, it's not generally the value of the building on a piece of land that goes up over time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> In Germany we have extremely high property taxes (6% of purchase cost on new buy and 1.2% annual in my region). Plus very high transaction costs associated with real estate business (notary costs).

It is interesting fact that more developed European countries, such as Switzerland (42%) or Germany (51%), tended to have a lower home ownership rate compared to less developed countries such as Lithuania (90%) or Romania (96%).

<comment><USER13> It's sort of an interesting tradeoff. On one hand, it's not desirable for most people to rent longterm, and owning property is an important way to store and grow wealth. On the other hand, you don't want a few well financed investors sweeping in and buying all the available housing just as a kind of depository for funds.

Texas has an interesting setup. Property taxes are relatively high, but you can choose one house that you occupy to get a "Homestead exemption" that brings the taxes down quite a bit. This doesn't prevent you from owning say, a vacation home, but does make it quite a bit more expensive (which seems to be fair).

<comment><USER14> >On one hand, it's not desirable for most people to rent longterm, and owning property is an important way to store and grow wealth.

Neither of these are particularly true in an economic sense, except in that homeownership in growing, zoning-throttled areas is a ticket to the rent- seeking wealth transfer those supply restraints create.

Homeownership is driven by this effect, federal subsidies, and general social norms encouraging it, but it creates labor market frictions by tying you to a place and ties up all your wealth in a single asset.

[https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/02/67...](https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/02/67635.html)

[https://www.economist.com/free-exchange/2010/04/21/rent- or-b...](https://www.economist.com/free-exchange/2010/04/21/rent-or-buy)

<comment><USER13> You can't live in or raise kids on a stock portfolio. If you're a single bachelor who moves wherever they can make 5% more every year, then by all means, rent.

Kids, spouses, and most people with friends, don't care to be constantly uprooted or at the mercy of a landlord who is likely to raise prices every year. Renting results in no value - it's a direct cost for never any gain. Even buying a house in a declining market will net you less loss then pure renting.

Does it tie up your wealth? No. It converts your wealth into a usable asset (a house). You can't build a shelter out of bricks of cash, or convert a money market account to a nursery.

<comment><USER15> I mean, it is certainly _possible_ to be uprooted every year as a renter. But I've lived in two places for 14 years as a renter, and switching from one to the other was a significant upgrade. The first apartment was even rent controlled, so I was guaranteed a renewal lease at a controlled amount, and I had lots of protections.

In fact, it's renting that _allowed_ us to upgrade our place when we had the opportunity, as we didn't need to sell our place in order to be able to buy a new one - we just moved our stuff over.

And to your point:

> It converts your wealth into a usable asset (a house). You can't build a > shelter out of bricks of cash, or convert a money market account to a > nursery.

You absolutely can do that - it's called "Renting" or "airbnb" or "subletting". The challenge is turning a usable asset back into a pile of cash if macroeconomic forces play against you.

<comment><USER16> As someone who generally agrees with you on the benefits of renting, my family has been uprooted twice in the past two years by landlords who wished to convert their assets into cash. And the most recent time, it was a forced downgrade due to rising rents. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Sprawl taxes are badly needed for the environment. What needs to be financially incented is extremely dense urban population centers. As in Manhattan everywhere.

IIRC Japan has density patterns like this.

Basically, if an area adjacent to a high density population area wants to expand into the area, it accepts a very very high entry cost, either ongoing property tax or initial permit cost. That would force only very large and dense building development.

Transportation could be exempted as could parks and certain low income housing which is basically government controlled anyway at this point.

That might also incent vertical farms, although I haven't kept up with the viable economics of skyscraper-class vertical farming yet.

One of the primary challenges of modern environmentalism is just sprawl: people driving too far, people spreading out too much, people buying too big of houses that are energy inefficient, people buying yards that they use 1% of the time

<comment><USER18> >extremely dense urban population centers. As in Manhattan everywhere

Sounds like hell to me.

<comment><USER19> The point is, one should pay enough that infrastructure maintenance of their location is possible.

StrongTown's thesis (that isn't really in question) is that suburban sprawl is financed by handouts from the government, but nothing finances the maintenance of that sprawl after the initial build out.

StrongTowns does a lot of analysis proving that densely occupied areas generate enough revenue to repair their gas, electricity, transportation, sewage etc- but less dense suburban areas do not.

If dense population is hell, then you better pay enough money for repairs that happen on 30+ year cycles, or else you're looking at another type of bad situation.

<comment><USER20> Most of the US is sprawl and seems to be adequately handling maintenance. Density is not a necessary precondition for economical maintenance...NYC's subway system is in a shambles despite the highest density in the US, and mostly affluent residents.

Only a few places in the US have both sprawl and very high labor costs. It would be a crisis if the entirety of the US resembled Palo Alto and had similar costs...but this isn't the case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> In Sweden we removed the property tax completely which has shaped our housing market a lot. People over consume living area and use their homes as retirements savings since it's dift cheap to sit on it, contributing to the housing crisis we've had for the past decade.

<comment><USER22> Here's a counter-argument. Keeping property taxes means that old people have to pay yearly rent to the government to simply keep their house. In Florida that's about 2k a year for my home. That's fine when we have an income. It's a bit more problematic when that's 10-20% of a yearly retirement income from which one also has to pay for necessities.

As to the housing crisis, what laws are preventing multistory buildings? SF blocks a lot of housing over 3 stories since they want to keep the mystique of the city from the Full House days ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_House](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_House)). This makes housing extremely expensive since no one can easily put up a 50 story luxury housing apartment complex (which could have 1.5k sq/ft for a mere $675k).

<comment><USER23> > Here's a counter-argument. Keeping property taxes means that old people have > to pay yearly rent to the government to simply keep their house.

So what? It's not like old people don't continue to use the roads, police services, etc. If they had kids, then they're also paying off what it cost to educate those kids (the property taxes they paid while their kids were in school covered only a fraction of the annual cost per student).

<comment><USER24> Why can't other taxes pay for that? There are surely plenty of other tax revenue streams. My parents, who were on a fixed income, had to move from upstate NY in part because of property tax increases. You never truly get to own your house and are instead renting from the government.

<comment><USER23> You're not "renting" from the government. You're paying for the ongoing services you use, which are connected to your property (roads, police protection, etc.). As to having other taxes pay for it--that just shifts the tax burden onto other people.

<comment><USER24> The road to our house was awful and in disrepair. The plowing was decent, I'll give them that. I know your answer: we need yet more taxes. It couldn't be that these taxes enable all sorts of non-essential and wasteful programs, while what's truly essential gets neglected. Do we really need all those cops setting up speed traps and fleecing drivers? Or all the cops looking to catch someone growing a plant on their property? That's the only time the police ever came to our property, to look for suspicious plants. Would people really pay for that or consider that an essential service if they weren't forced?

<comment><USER25> You like having phone lines right? and power? and not being invaded by canada? The reason you've never needed to have police on your property is in large part because they're doing a good job and keeping crime down. Yes, the government is giant and stupid at allocating resources, but its also fairly stable and allows you to live your life in peace (with the occasional inspection for naughty plants).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> So I've lived a few places now (Australia, USA, UK, Switzerland, Germany) so I've seen a few different systems.

Australia has a horrible system called stamp duty, which is a tax paid on the purchase of a property based on a sliding scale of the property's purchase price. This was fine back when a house cost $100k (and you might pay $2-3k to the government). It hasn't scaled with massive housing inflation and state governments (who administer the tax) are now addicted to the revenue.

The median house price in Sydney now is A$1.1m (last I checked). This seems to mean stamp duty of nearly A$50k. When household income may well be under $150k paying $50k after-tax to move is a huge barrier to moving and thus labour market flexibility. Want to move across the country for a new job? Enjoy the $100k in transaction costs for swapping houses.

The US property tax system with almost no transaction taxes is far, far better (IMHO). There are exceptions (eg NYC has a "mansion tax" of 1% on properties over US$1M). Of course this will never happen in Australia because all the existing homeowners, who have already paid stamp duty (even if it was 40+ years ago), don't want to pay higher property taxes.

Of course large parts of the US have voted themselves massive tax breaks for incumbents, the posterchild of which is Prop 13 in CA. All under the guise of "won't anybody think of the retirees?" (when you could individually give them tax breaks if you really wanted to). New York state has a series of property tax caps that greatly benefit established SFH dwellers (and SFH taxes are far, far lower than those on apartments/condos).

The biggest downside to property in at least English speaking countries (and elsewhere no doubt) is rampant speculation. I kind of liked the Swiss system for this in many ways. Punitive taxes on short term capital gains. Also, in Switzerland, when you owned property outright, it's notional rent was deemed income. So there's no point having a property sit empty because you're being taxed on the "income" anyway.

<comment><USER23> > The US property tax system with almost no transaction taxes is far, far > better

Many U.S. states have real estate transaction taxes. In my county in Maryland, for example, recordation tax + transfer tax totals about 2.2% of purchase price.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I remember someone claiming that property taxes in Greece only come into effect when a building in completed, and as a result there are lots of homes with unfinished roofs and whatnot. Any truth to this?

<comment><USER28> As far as I understand there are tax incentives for being able to add another floor to a house, as opposed to expanding another way. So the rebar out the top is due to tax.

I am fairly sure that you are not exempt from tax if you have an unfinished roof.

<comment><USER29> It has absolutely nothing to do with taxation.

It's simply easier (and cheaper) to add floors in the future that way.

<comment><USER28> I stand corrected! It's good to get the facts straight, there is a lot of misinformation about Greece and tax dodging (which, I imagine, is where I got the idea)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is a point raised in James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State:

> The shorthand formulas through which tax officials must apprehend reality > are not mere tools of observation. By a kind of fiscal Heisenberg principle, > they frequently have the power to transform the facts they take note of.

> The door-and-window tax established in France under the Directory and > abolished only in 1917 is a striking case in point. Its originator must have > reasoned that the number of windows and doors in a dwelling was proportional > to the dwelling's size. Thus a tax assessor need not enter the house or > measure it but merely count the doors and windows. As a simple, workable > formula, it was a brilliant stroke, but it was not without consequences. > Peasant dwellings were subsequently designed or renovated with the formula > in mind so as to have as few openings as possible. While the fiscal losses > could be recouped by raising the tax per opening, the long-term effects on > the health of the rural population lasted for more than a century.

</comment><comment><USER31> I recently learned about the concept of Allodial Title, a form of ownership of real property that exempts the owner from property taxes. This could protect landholders in unincorporated areas from a huge surge in property tax when their land is then annexed into a city. Is Allodial Title common? I can't seem find many examples of it.

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

</comment><comment><USER32> Ehhm, San Francisco...

</comment><comment><USER33> I wonder why we don't have a system where the norm is no property taxes on property that you designate as a personal residence which cannot be leased or otherwise monetized, and then a moderate property tax on properties beyond that. Ideally the goal of a property tax would be to discourage people from buying up immense amounts of land simply as a sort of naturally inflationary and stable wealth storage device, but as is the various rules seem to be really just all over the place.

<comment><USER34> Because then the government doesn't own your land and can't take it from you when you don't pay them off. Property "tax" is their way of forcing you into agreeing that they own your land and they sell it as giving you better schools in the area or some crap. And if people feel they REALLY own something and it can't be taken away from them then they will fight for it. We can't have people fighting for their land when the government comes to auction their house off to the highest bidder.

We have been moving more and more toward a Capitalist Communism where the government owns everything and you are merely renting from them (this is just straight up how it is in China, they don't even pretend), but we still sell it as Capitalism because businesses aren't owned by the government.

This is not the way life should be and all property taxes (i.e. government owned property rentals) should be outlawed.

<comment><USER35> When you say "government" or "they", you are talking about your fellow citizens and members of the community. Consider a hypothetical in which there is beautiful beachfront property in your town. Would you rather it be owned by a few wealthy citizens who pay no property tax or the government?

<comment><USER36> I would rather the beachfront property be owned by those who bought it out of their own savings, which they earned by providing goods and services to others. Not an organization defined first and foremost by its claim to possess a license to practice aggression, which transparently operates in a manner indistinguishable from a protection racket. (Nice property you have there... it'd be a shame if someone took it from you by force... Someone like _us_ , if you don't pay up.)

<comment><USER37> Who do you think enforces property rights? And by what basis do they lay claim to make other people respect those rights?

<comment><USER36> > Who do you think enforces property rights?

I assume that you intended this as a rhetorical question, but the answer is not "the government". Governments do not exist to defend property rights—that is merely propaganda. No criminal organization violates property rights more brazenly or systematically than governments do on a routine basis. Every tax, every regulation, every disproportionate punishment, every victim prevented from pursuing justice while those ostensibly granted that role do nothing—almost everything the government does involves violating property rights in some form. The only point in their favor is that, like any other protection racket, they are jealous of their monopoly and not very tolerant of lesser criminals setting up operations on their turf.

> And by what basis do they lay claim to make other people respect those > rights?

There is no need to "make" other people respect anything. That is what makes property a natural right; the very act of violating a property right naturally justifies a proportional response in kind. That is simple universality and reciprocation at work, the basis for any self-consistent system of rights, and it is more than sufficient to ensure that most individuals will respect others' property rights without being coerced, because they in turn need others to recognize their claims to property as valid. Those who chose otherwise cannot rationally object if their victims respond in kind, taking back their own property plus a proportional amount as retribution.

If you are interested in further reading on this subject, I can recommend Stephen Kinsella's "Punishment and Proportionality: the Estoppel Approach" ([https://mises- media.s3.amazonaws.com/12_1_3_0.pdf?file=1&typ...](https://mises- media.s3.amazonaws.com/12_1_3_0.pdf?file=1&type=document)).

<comment><USER37> What happens when a group of people with no property decide to come and take yours and kill you and your family?

As a side note, in regards to your original point about beach front property, the paper you linked only recognizes property rights of property that has been homesteaded. So there would be no way of some rich person purchasing acres of land for their own private use (using the structure definition of homesteading).

<comment><USER33> As might happen if you decide to stop paying the fee on your land to the government? Well, sans the killing. You'll just have your family split up, be imprisoned, and forced to live in dehumanizing conditions for years, while your property is taken and sold off for 'revenue.' It's much more civil...

For what it's worth I'm playing devil's advocate here, as usual, but I don't think this particular issue is so easy to defend. Something I was surprised to learn is that in the US, the police didn't even exist until 1838. Prior to that there were volunteer community watch and other such programs. I think the proper balance is probably one we've gone long past that's somewhere in between community efforts and heavily centralized paramilitary law enforcement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> It was frustrating reading the captions to the photos because for each one it would mention that tax policy affected various features of the building. Except that, over and over, it mysteriously left out the why and how of tax policy affecting roofing or windows being bricked over. That is, why would tax policy cause windows to be bricked over? I just found it exhausting being teased over and over. I don't read to be teased. I read to be educated, yet I wasn't even sure that the read would have answered my questions. I gave up instead.

<comment><USER39> Quoting from the first photo example:

"In the early 17th century, buildings were taxed by the number of floors leading up to the cornice of the roof.

Architect François Mansart ingeniously responded to this rule by hiding an additional story or two under the roof for additional living space, rendering it exempt from taxation."

...and hence the "distinctive architecture of Paris, with its mansard roofs".

You have to read the article, not just look at the pictures.

<comment><USER38> Why provide photos to illustrate your point and then not draw the relationship (between building features & tax policy) in the captions. To me, it was gratuitous. I know its a small point, but the subject matter is a bit light anyways. It could have been made more facile.</comment></comment></comment>


Bal Des Ardents - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bal_des_Ardents <comment><USER2> Anyone interested in this should check out Froissart's Chronicles [0], written at the height of chivalric culture. Some of the imagery and descriptions of battle are astounding even today. The Bal des Ardents is the third image seen in [0].

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Froissart%27s_Chronicles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Froissart%27s_Chronicles)

<comment><USER3> I've always loved the illustrations from Froissart's Chronicles. I'd love to find a full-color reproduction some day.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Froissart%27s_Chronicles#/medi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Froissart%27s_Chronicles#/media/File:BattleofSluys.jpeg)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Froissart%27s_Chronicles#/medi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Froissart%27s_Chronicles#/media/File:BNMsFr2643FroissartFol97vBatNevilleCross.jpg)

<comment><USER4> Never read about the Battle of Sluys [1], what a blowout :o

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I always thought this was a failed assassination attempt: "Now, now, your highness, don't dwell on the fact that your mental illness has become a major liability to the nobility and just have fun tonight! And by "fun", I mean, allow me to sew you into this highly flammable costume and chain you up to these other dancers, also in highly flammable costumes. It's really the done thing, you know. You'll be fine unless your brother, who is next in line to inherit the throne, happens to show up and start poking a torch at the dancers."

French royal weddings seemed like a dangerous place to be. A few centuries later, over a hundred people died at the wedding of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI[1], trappled to death fleeing a fire started by a firework mishap.

[1]: [https://findery.com/ChiefCurator/notes/tragedy-at-the- weddin...](https://findery.com/ChiefCurator/notes/tragedy-at-the-wedding-of- marie-antoinette-louis-xvi)

<comment><USER6> It's a fun theory, but it doesn't seem as if the evidence quite supports it. You'd have to be willing to kill several other powerful French noblemen at the same time, a risky business. And that group includes the guy whose idea the dance supposedly was.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Funny coincidence, I'm currently reading "de Bourgondiers"[0] and this event was just mentioned in the passage I read yesterday.

[0]: [https://www.flandersliterature.be/books-and- authors/book/the...](https://www.flandersliterature.be/books-and- authors/book/the-burgundians)</comment>


Marissa Mayer Wants To Give Every Yahoo Employee An iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/marissa-mayer-wants-to-give-every-yahoo-employee-an-iphone-2012-8 <comment><USER2> Considering her background was Google, it is interesting that she is going with Apple's products. Maybe it is a slap in the face to her former employer going to their main rival.</comment>


30 Apparent Reasons You Launched Your Startup - <AUTHOR> http://valleywag.com/tech/why/30-apparent-reasons-you-launched-your-startup-251240.php <comment><USER2> Strange. I submitted this 9 hours ago and no one upvoted it (though I found it funny).

It seems the morning gets more response than the evening (maybe because of east coast / west coast, evening here is already late in the night on the east?)

</comment><comment><USER3> What about "31. Read too many blogs and essays by smart, inspiring people"</comment>


CVE-2019-18183 (2019) - <AUTHOR> https://security.archlinux.org/CVE-2019-18183 <comment><AUTHOR> TL;DR: Pacman did a

        snprintf(command, PATH_MAX, "xdelta3 -d -q -s %s %s %s", from, delta, to);
        system(command);

And to fix it, they removed the delta update feature.

* * *

They removed a feature that _could_ work well over something someone did incorrectly. You don't even need to go full-on execvp and dup2 to fix this problem:

* it is super easy to escape a string for POSIX shell: wrap the thing in single-quotes, replace the single-quotes in-between with '\''

* it is not hard to verify that snprintf has enough space: just assert(snprintf(bleh, size, ...) < size).</comment>


Stepping towards a password-free world - <AUTHOR> https://www.ebayinc.com/stories/blogs/tech/stepping-towards-a-password-less-world/ <comment><USER2> This new methodology is generally a pretty terrible way of dealing with user authentication.

      Device Profiling

      Facial Recognition

      Voice Audio Recognition

I mean, christ, eBay has some niche concerns with fraud, but this really has no place across most of the internet, whether it's "already happening" or not.

Google already tries to profile my device and fails miserably at doing so, frequently locking me out, because Google thinks it knows how many laptops I own and have access to.

Authentic audio is a laughable idea. A: Just look at transcription, B: Replay attacks will probably be trivial, C: Vocal dopplegangers and electronic modulation are kind of easy to utilize and forge authenticity with; imitation is harder to notice than achieve.

Face authentication is not only hackable, it's intrusive, in that I don't want systems taking pictures of my face. Foibles aside, machines will probably miss uncanny valley deception (static sculptures, photos, video, puppets), nevermind algorithmic hacks that poke holes in training data learning gaps.

Ebay probably needs to guard against fraud, but not with some of the the laziest machine-learning hacks currently available. Using sly hacks to strengthen bold/cute assumptions doesn't make anything more secure. These are hacks of convenience, not security.

Passwords work, and dumb users and determined adversaries will always be a plentiful problem. Can we just admit that a lot of what happens on the internet simply isn't important, and doesn't demand high security, and then stop treating it like the blood of one's first-born is needed to create an account or use it?

</comment><comment><USER3> > Social sign up focuses on delegating authentication to social websites

So, don't ask for passwords, ask for another site so that it asks the user for the password.

<comment><USER4> What's the problem with that though? Delegating authentication feels like such an obvious thing: You allow a certain party to manage your identity, and trust _them_ with it. You _don 't_ want to trust every random website to implement proper password storage, add 2fa support, yubikey, security notifications, etc etc.

I have a problem with how OAuth2, when used for authentication, locks users into a certain provider. Wish there was a solution to that. But delegating authentication really should be taken more seriously.

(A good example actually is... ebay, the very author of this article, that despite managing entire businesses and moving tons of money around, doesn't have proper MFA, has really dumb password limitations, etc. I certainly wish ebay would let me log in with Google...)

<comment><USER5> > _What 's the problem with that though?_

You don't just delegate authentication. I trust Facebook to authenticate me. That doesn't mean I trust them with my entire web presence. Delegating authentication promotes centralisation, which is presently to be a greater systemic risk to the Internet than some kitty picture site getting hacked.

<comment><USER4> Which is why it's important to have alternatives, yes. You don't want to have to _only_ trust Facebook, you want to have it as a choice. The OpenID "dream": Users choose between different authentication services based on their needs.

I like Google auth because I pay for Google. I trust them because they're a lot better at security than statistically almost every other service on the web. I would trust Facebook, but I don't want them to know about my web presence as you pointed out. And to keep those services in check, you have to have alternatives.

The Payment request API is a good example of what we should be seeing for authentication. Secure delegation without lockin.

<comment><USER5> > _Users choose between different authentication services based on their > needs_

Network effects inherently promote centralization. Third-party authentication exhibits network effects. Furthermore, given nobody pays for this service, we not only have a bias towards centralization but also incumbency.

Individually weak but diversified is a more robust model than strong but centralized. That was the fundamental insight of capitalism and of the Internet. Third party authentication promotes the latter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I see nothing in the article other than the byline that says anything about going "password-free".

TFA: Password-free is the future... here's how we re-wrote our signup and authentication framework to do that same thing we've always done but be more buzzword compliant and also defend against bot signups with step-up captcha.

Oh yeah, and we keep long term session tokens if you install the app which you can unlock with Touch/FaceID... after you login with your _password_ the first time.

</comment><comment><USER7> If anyone from eBay is reading: why do u disable pasting password from password manager? This has made me to have a small password. Please..

<comment><USER8> Regarding pasting passwords, that reminds me: I signed up for one site, I think it was Paypal, which had a password limit of 20 characters. Okay, that's already pretty bad -- it's an arbitrary limit and not as secure as I'd like for a site that has access to my credit cards and bank info.

Anyway, I generated a password using KeePass with I think 60 characters and pasted them in without error or warning. Turned out that only the first 20 characters got pasted in and the rest were silently rejected.

When I tried to log in I kept getting an invalid password error. No indication that the password I was trying to use was too long.

Only when I tried to change my password and type one in manually did I notice that nothing was getting entered after the 20th character.

<comment><USER9> I ran into a similar issue myself. Why would PayPal, of all companies, have a problem with this?

<comment><USER8> Glad I'm not the only one. Now, in the "confirm password" field, I always backspace the last couple of characters and type them in manually, to make sure they match with what was pasted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> @

</comment><comment><USER11> They day eBay kills its passwords is the day I leave eBay and never come back. Is it really that hard to run a website that already has the established infrastructure to maintain user credentials? This is just colossal laziness from their devs trying to outsource basic business responsibilities.</comment>


Adobe will finally kill Flash in 2020 - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/25/16026236/adobe-flash-end-of-support-2020 <comment><USER2> > "We will stop updating and distributing the Flash Player at the end of 2020 > and encourage content creators to migrate any existing Flash content to > these new open formats,"

Does that mean existing Flash content, say old Flash games, will break at said date? Or just that there will be no more updates to Flash to any new content? After reading this, it's not 100% clear.

It goes on to say:

> A number of gaming, education, and video sites still use Flash, and Adobe > says it remains committed to supporting the technology until 2020 alongside > partners like Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla.

But that seems like that doesn't align with their quoted statement of just stopping updates/distribution?

Can anyone clarify?

<comment><USER3> It does mostly mean that existing Flash content like old Flash games breaks at that date.

Stopping distribution means that Adobe will no longer host official Flash Player plugins for download at all, meaning that old Flash games that try to helpfully auto-install the Flash player for you will fail as those links will go dark. Presumably archive sites may preserve installers to manually install the Flash Player after the 2020 shutdown date, but that will be an increased amount of effort that will make it less likely people will do it.

Stopping updates particularly means _security updates_ , which is an increasing reason for the ongoing maintenance of the Flash Player. That will add an increased reason for people to avoid manually installing the Flash Player as it will be an increasing security liability.

Most browsers are already on the path to disabling the sorts of plugin APIs that Flash Player has used for security footprint reasons alone. When the Flash Player no longer receives official security updates, the browsers will have increased reason to eliminate that risk, and disable those APIs for good. That means that a manual install of the Flash player will be increasingly unlikely to even work soon after the shutdown date. Most browsers have already been planning to disable such APIs and break such plugins near or around the date Adobe has given already, so this process has largely already started.

Flash content and old Flash games are going to break. The web will be a little bit different at that date.

<comment><USER4> I personally don't have flash installed on my main browser and I haven't seen it in .... months? over a year now?

<comment><USER5> It comes bundled with chrome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This article dates from 2017. I was hoping to see a more recent status report.

Any idea on what Adobe is currently up to in order to move this along?

</comment><comment><USER7> Is there any program like Macromedia Flash that made it so easy and fun to create animations and user-interactive content? I haven't done work like that since it was Macromedia Flash so I have no idea how close other Adobe products come or what other options there are.

But there was something magic about those vector graphics, keyframes and the really fast ways of creating interactive content. Is there like an HTML5 animation/game studio or something?

<comment><USER8> Flash as a content-creation platform is still around, albeit now renamed "Adobe Animate". What's being killed is the format and plugin player, the content-creation tools now support open formats like HTML5 Canvas w/ JS/WASM.

<comment><USER9> Wow, A thousand thanks for this.

Another one of those Discover and Distribution problem I encounter. How can I not know this exist.</comment></comment></comment>


Mistakes When Recruiting Software Developers - <AUTHOR> http://hashedbits.com/recruitment-mistakes/

<comment><USER2> You can't refuse to hire someone because they are from Elbonia. (Exceptions of course for citizen requirements.)

Also, they didn't reply to you (I agree, not good) but that was apparently because they hired someone, so, your advice doesn't help in this case.

<comment><USER3> I think the writer was talking about communication skills instead of country of origin.

At least I would think twice before applying again to a company, that hasn't previously answered my job applications in due time, so I definitely agree with the writer on that one.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Low-cost receipt printers for iZettle and SumUp - <AUTHOR> https://www.ploumpouloum.com/en/receipt-printer <comment><USER2> Could you use this with thermal transfer shipping labels and apps besides iZettle and SumUp?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thermal shipping labels : Yes, probably, even if not tested

Apps besides iZettle and SumUp : No, unfortunately the development is tailor made for those two apps.

But if you need anything specific for some given app(s), it might not be very heavy to adapt current code base. The most difficult part is to achieve to retrieve data. Here I hacked the system by using iZettle and SumUp APIs (i.e. my application does not communicate with iZettle and SumUp applications on your device but rather through the public APIs of these shops).

Do not hesitate to contact me if interested.</comment></comment>


Pragmatic Debian Packaging (2019 Edition) - jorge-fundido https://vincent.bernat.ch/en/blog/2019-pragmatic-debian-packaging <comment><AUTHOR> Had anyone tried to build a package using these instructions?

Did it work without issues?</comment>


Web forms design guidelines: an eyetracking study - <AUTHOR> http://www.cxpartners.co.uk/thoughts/web_forms_design_guidelines_an_eyetracking_study.htm <comment><USER2> I think that the most brilliant idea in the article is that of not using asterisks to indicate required fields. Instead put the word "Optional" in the field and have it clear when the user clicks on the field. (Screenshots in the article)

That is a very elegant and simple solution.

<comment><USER3> It's my gut feeling that asterisks are so commonly used to indicate required fields that most users have come to understand their meaning. Nevertheless I also like the "optional indicator in the field" idea, and I also agree with the advice in the article to only ask for required fields. In other words, if a field is optional, give strong consideration to omitting it from the form entirely.

<comment><USER2> _If a field is optional, give strong consideration to omitting it from the form entirely._

I totally agree. In that case less is more. You want users to go through a sign up form quickly and be able to get started. You can always provide a settings panel on the other side for adding extra, optional information.

By keeping those fields off the signup form you make things easy and fast for new users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> These are some helpful conclusions, but I'm not sure how much they can be trusted. The article says they tested with eight participants, each participant filling in two of the four forms. That's a pretty small amount of data to make recommendations on.

<comment><USER5> From 2000 (gasp), here's an article from Jacob Nielsen on why you only need to test with 5 users: <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000319.html>

More recently, here's a related article on Multiple-user Simultaneous Testing, when and why you'd test with more people and how to actually do that: <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/multiple-user-testing.html>

<comment><USER6> Some in Academia have debunked that testing with 5 is enough... See [http://uxexchange.com/questions/328/ideal-number-of- candidat...](http://uxexchange.com/questions/328/ideal-number-of-candidates- for-user-testing/380#380)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd love to find an eye-tracker and play with it to see what it is _I_ tend to look at. Anyone have any experience?

 _Chui Chui loves food, and is very fond of sugared squid!_

Good to know!

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I have this thing called a "visual cortex" which provides me with instant feedback on what I'm looking at. If you don't have one, get one! It's incredibly useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> this is a really good study, its nice to have someone sit and think really hard about those seemingly trivial decisions that can really affect a sites usability, like not using asteriks for required fields.

</comment><comment><USER10> The way to establish "guidelines" IMO is to prove what works the best with A/B testing.

The article provides interesting ideas, but little value in real world application as ultimate business value from form design guidelines should = form completion.</comment>


WTFM - Write The Freaking Manual - <AUTHOR> http://www.floopsy.com/post/32453280184/w-t-f-m-write-the-freaking-manual <comment><USER2> I would upvote this a million times if I could. I'm one of the kinds of people who wants to read the entire reference manual, front to back, before using a programming language, library, etc. I want to make sure I know exactly what it does, the proper way to use it, and what it doesn't do. This is both so I can make an informed choice about the technology, and it saves a huge amount of time in the long run.

But it seems like there's a big trend now to just "get things out there" and that good documentation isn't "cool" anymore, kind of like braces in syntax.

Examples of good docs: PHP, jQuery, MySQL. (The first two sites include user comments too, which make things even _more_ useful.)

Examples of terrible docs: Python, CoffeeScript (the worst)

I can at least understand insufficient docs for pre-1.0 versions when the implementation is changing constantly, but when something has been around for more than a year, it's just inexcusable.

I don't want a "getting started" guide that gives a bunch of examples. I don't want to type in the console to find out what methods an object has.

I want a friggin' reference manual, that includes (as applicable) syntax rules, exact rules governing whitespace, orders of operations, all functions, all parameters, parameters passed to a callback (why are these forgotten so often?), default values, flag values, all possible return values, specific exceptions that can be thrown, what input parameters result in undefined behavior.

Really, it's just not that hard. It may be grunt work, but if you'd rather make your users waste a cumulative 25,000+ hours figuring things out, rather than you spending 100 hours of your own explaining things, I just can't have respect for your product, no matter how otherwise amazing it is.

<comment><USER3> You're in a small minority, what you want and don't want is irrelevant. It's 2012, nobody reads dry reference manuals cover to cover, nevermind doing so before firing up a shell window and an editor.

Reference manuals are still nice to have of course for clarifying edge cases and solving language lawyer disputes. However claiming that they are a superior learning and time-saving tool than the learn-by-example techniques is way out of touch with how most people actually learn.

<comment><USER4> People learn in a variety of different ways, and I'm also a developer who always prefers a reference manual over learn-by-example techniques. You may not be one of those developers, but that doesn't mean we don't exist. I imagine there are plenty of people who don't learn by the reference manual but would prefer to have it available - if it was available - as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When it comes to open source work, which I mostly do on my own, limited time and don't get paid for, I have a choice. I can spend time writing code or writing documentation. The former I enjoy very much, the latter I don't like at all. Guess which I am going to pick.

The times when I've actually ended up writing some docs, I don't think anyone has ever read them. And writing the docs is just the beginning, they have to be maintained too. Out of date docs are perhaps worse than no docs at all.

I don't read docs either, because they tend to be out of date. Formal specifications are an exception. But when it comes to open source, I just tend to read the source because it's never out of date and tells the whole story. What was obvious to writer of the doc isn't obvious to me and vice versa.

The first person who comes to me asking for documentation to my projects volunteers to write them, like it or not.

<comment><USER6> Conversely, I don't even use open source software that doesn't have a simple README on Github showing me plentiful examples on how to use the damn library.

Sorry, if you don't have documentation, even a little bit, you're just not worth my time. There are at least two other libraries out there with better documentation. The fact they might be worse software doesn't even matter because all I'm looking for is a _solution_.

<comment><USER5> GitHub READMEs are an excellent compromise. Doing more detailed docs are quite a lot of effort (that is better spent coding), especially to projects that are at an early stage.

Projects which are an early stage (like most of my projects) should mostly try to attract potential contributors, not just consumers/end-users so it's not unreasonable to require would-be users/contributors to walk the extra mile and actually read (at least parts of) the source. I do that even for projects that are well established with docs if I intend to depend on them.

If there actually were libs that are well documented and do the same thing, I wouldn't have started the projects I did but contribute to the existing projects instead. This may not be true for all kinds of projects.

<comment><USER7> There's a double standard here. You want developers to contribute to your project despite the lack of documentation but you require that libraries you contribute to are well documented.

<comment><USER5> > ...but you require that libraries you contribute to are well documented.

You misread me. I almost never read the docs because they suck more often than not. I start from example and test source code and almost always end up reading parts or most of the source code.

<comment><USER7> > If there actually were libs that are well documented and do the same > thing...

I thought you were implying that you required libs you contribute to to be well documented.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> And please, WTFV isn't enough. I don't have time to watch or search through a 40 minute video to find out how to set a few configuration options. Text is king when it comes to documentation. Videos are fine for tutorial purposes, but I need a solid reference that's well indexed and searchable.

<comment><USER9> Video is also a poor replacement for text because it is MUCH more laborious to create and update, so it probably won't be updated.

If someone were willing to make a video, writing text should be a given.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> There are actually many open-source projects that have excellent documentation and there are many that don't have documentation at all. I think there's actually a shortage of projects with simply adequate documentation.

Many open-source projects also allow you to contribute to the documentation, so I don't think you should criticize projects you're actually using but rather that you should help maintain the documentation (even if it's just bug reports).

If you have an open-source project with very few users, you'll often find that you can't get traction simply because when people can't figure out how to use your software, they'll go elsewhere. Want fame and (maybe) fortune? Make your project useable.

</comment><comment><USER11> I fully endorse this. Coming from a sysadmins / devopps perspective, documentation is key to providing a reliable, dependable, available, scalable service. And dramatically improving the quality of my life.

 _How_ that documentation is written also matters. _A lot_.

Much proprietary documentation is also crap, for numerous reasons. Marketing having too much say is key (every reference to a Trademarked(r) Name(tm) Phrase(c) is both fully expanded and badged. Might keep the marketers and lawyers happy, but it's hell to read. Descriptions are vacuous to the point of idiocy ("More magic: select this option to enable more magic") -- tells me absolutely _nothing_ not inherent in the control, and in particular, fails to tell me what the _effect_ of enabling "more magic" is (feature name changed, but this construct is all too common in docs).

Usage notes and examples are mandatory.

As much as Free Software docs are pilloried, I still find that they tend to compare favorably with non-free docs.

Noted here: [https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/bLaDaXNe...](https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/bLaDaXNeJu4)

<comment><USER12> Coming from the same perspective, I agree completely.

Software pushers all seem to give the same puzzled look when I ask to see their full docs before evaluating their product.

It's exactly as you describe, if the documentation isn't sufficient for me to learn everything I could possibly need and likely want to know about how things work - I can't confidently design, build, scale or support it.

Documentation in the "Enterprise" world seems almost intentionally bad, as if to force customers into professional services and support contracts for products which lack the proper design to be sold as full on SaaS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Yes, this. I'm looking at you, freedesktop.org... PulseAudio documentation is poor. Considering it doesn't really work out of the box on half the systems out there that's pretty bad. fontconfig docs are some of the worst I've seen in a long time. In general, I feel dizzy when I find a link with "freedesktop.org" in it labeled "docs"...

There are plenty of other examples. Seriously, documentation is extremely important. Especially if you're relying on config files, _document them properly_.

</comment><comment><USER14> i'm currently writing a tutorial/manual for a library i wrote several months ago. the library took maybe 1 month to write and now the tutorial has taken 3 months. creating examples, illustrations, demos, determining and writing the sections in a sensical, progressive order takes a _long_ time (epecially when it's done in your free time) :(, but without it, the project is DOA and no one will use it.

also, writing a tutorial has helped me refactor and decouple parts of the lib a few times to simplify and hone the API to something much more elegant than it was in the beginning. sometimes i feel like Git could have used the same kind of process to create an much more refined, wart-free API also.

</comment><comment><USER15> To be honest, good documentation is more or less my #1 criteria for choosing which library to use.

Not only is it much easier to work with something that is well documented but I also find as a general rule well documented projects seem to be maintained for a lot longer.

</comment><comment><USER16> I think after you write a manual for your first few projects and clearly less than 1% of your users read it, it gets hard to motivate yourself to write another manual.

<comment><USER11> The advantage of documentation isn't that users read it _before_ asking questions.

It's that you answer questions by pointing at the relevant section of the docs.

If that section doesn't exist, it's a good practice to see that it does (either write it yourself, have another contributor write it, or encourage the person asking the question to submit a doc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I couldn't agree more. The lack of good documentation is a plague which is not emphasized quite enough. To me it is as (or even more) important than writing tests: debugging code is easy in comparison to figuring out what it is supposed to do in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER18> Any pointers on how to make it easier to wtfm? If anyone out there actually enjoys writing documentation I'd be willing to pay for some help and guidance on a rather large commercial open source project that is in need of some tlc regarding documentation

<comment><USER19> In the Python world, readthedocs.org has made writing docs easier - it takes care of rebuilding documentation each time you commit. It's implemented in Python, and most popular with the Python community, but it can be used for other languages as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The root of this issue is that writing documentation is not something that really good hackers like to do...these days [1].

And it's damn sure not something that good writers are interested in...unless they are paid. Paying good writers to write documentation is not a core competency of the FOSS community, nor part of its ethos.[2]

[1] These days being the age of the internet and languages implementing brogrammar. People like McCarthy and Knuth wrote their own documentation to a dead tree publication standard, not a rough draft of a Wiki standard.

[2] Erlang and Go aren't going to give the world another RPG or PG writing passionately about their wonders.

<comment><USER21> One thing I've done a few times is to help out just by writing docs for open source projects.

I know it's a drag. I know it's not that much fun. But it massively - MASSIVELY - improves the project's value, especially if it's low on the totem pole.

<comment><USER20> But of course, your profile lists lisp.

<comment><USER21> I beg pardon, what do you mean by that?

<comment><USER20> Lisp has a literary tradition stronger than other languages. See Richard P. Gabriel, or Paul Graham for that matter. Python and Cpp may have polemics, but none as useful as _Let Over Lambda_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Reminds me of the old expression: "fast, cheap, good. pick two."

When we were largely buying shrink wrapped software they almost all came with decent sized manuals (quality varied, of course). He tagged the post with a bunch of open source projects, which has almost never been an area of good manuals. It's very uncommon for "scratching your own itch" to lead to comprehensive documentation for obvious reasons. Developers seldom write the extensive manuals, tech writers do.

<comment><USER23> I think his point was more that clearly the developers want people to use what they built. So taking that extra step and writing good documentation would only help ensure that people used their software. Not doing so actually hurts their chances. Not doing so and expecting SOMEONE ELSE to do it is just dumb.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I agree with the author, I have found myself in similar situations and it is frustrating. However, I also think programmers need to RTFSC (SC == Source Code)

</comment><comment><USER25> And please, run your source through a tool like doxygen for me to get a better understanding of how your software is built and designed. I've been advising a startup that is facing issues with documentation not being available for the platform they chose to use. The platform looks good, and the code is fairly readable, but there is no documentation. To complicate things, the platform is under active development and things change weekly (if not daily). The solution? The startup is looking to have their application written in another platform. All we need is for you to explain how stuff works in a language that even a grilled cheese sandwich will understand.

</comment><comment><USER26> And while we're at it: Javadoc is not a substitute for writing documentation.

</comment><comment><USER25> There is a big need here waiting to be satisfied. Documentation is very important and a lot of projects are losing traction due not having the basics or it being done poorly. I'm actually working with a new platform by writing their documentation for them. Why would I do that? I have a talent for it, and it allows me to offer a service other full-stack engineers won't even think about doing. Writing documentation as a job is a great way to improve my engineering skills. If I can explain it to people, then I definitely know how something works.

</comment><comment><USER27> Relevant, I think:

<http://www.ginandtacos.com/2012/09/24/tab-a-slot-b>

In it, the author speculates that one of the reasons that kids have such a hard time following directions is that they never learn to read them, because nothing comes with directions anymore (you just "figure it out"). It's sort of the dark side of ubiquitous discoverable UI.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is one of the reasons I consider my Safari subscription indispensable.

It provides immediate access to generally well-written and structured documentation and instruction covering a wide range of topics. The one downside would be the obvious lack of bleeding edge topics as those books have yet to be written.

</comment><comment><USER28> Good documentation is _really hard_ to do, but it's also one of the most important things for any product or project. If no one uses what you make then it truly is useless, and you will never get people to use something unless they can figure out how.

</comment><comment><USER29> Here's a great approach to solve this issue. Also, it's a good talk too.

[http://blip.tv/pycon-us- videos-2009-2010-2011/pycon-2011-doc...](http://blip.tv/pycon-us- videos-2009-2010-2011/pycon-2011-documentation-driven-development-4896872)

</comment><comment><USER30> "The whole point of the Doomsday Device is lost if you keep it a secret. Why didn't you tell the world?"

I can't be the only one to hear Dr. Strangelove's voice every time documentation is missing, can I?

</comment><comment><USER31> I've been trying to get better about just helping to fix the documentation when its bad- but that is dependent on me being able to figure it out in the first place with broken/poor docs.

</comment><comment><USER32> Amusingly, I gave a talk with pretty much this exact title at DjangoCon last year, and am submitting an updated version of it for PyCon next year :)

</comment><comment><USER33> I agree - I often just give up and read the source to figure out how to use advanced features.

</comment><comment><USER34> I'm pretty sure that if there was a manual for the software or application you are using, you wouldn't read it anyways. The software should be intuitive in the first place.</comment>


First image of the next tallest building in the world - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5826867/the-first-image-of-the-worlds-new-tallest-building

<comment><AUTHOR> Apparently the top floors on the Burj Khalifa, you can get motion sick from the wind slightly swaying the building ... you'll probably get pretty sick on the top floors of the Kingdom Tower</comment>


Microsoft Creates Half-Electron Quasiparticle for Its Future Quantum Computer - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/how-will-microsofts-wild-electron-splitting-topological-1824142429 <comment><USER2> They didn't create "half-electron". They created Majorana quasiparticles inside a superconductor.

Majorana particles are weird because they are their own antiparticle, but they are not "half-electrons". Moreover, probably neutrinos are Majorana particles, but nobody is sure, and currently there are some experiments to try to prove it.

<comment><USER3> Any Dirac 4-spinor can be formally decomposed into two independent Majorana spinors, so yes a Majorana spinor May be thought of as half of a conventional Dirac spinor.

On a 1D lattice this manifests itself in that one can formally decompose each electron on the chain into two Majorana spinors.

This is a trivial relabelling if degrees of freedom in the bulk of the lattice, however it reveals the possibility of topologically distinct states on the boundaries of the lattice by leaving dangling bonds on the edge.

<comment><USER2> But the two Majorana particles in the decomposition are the Majorana particles they are measuring, or they are different? In particular, if they join two of the Majorana particles they are measuring, can they form an electron or they get something bigger?

[This is a tricky question, because the "electrons" in a crystal are not exactly the electrons in vacuum, for example they have a different effective mass.]

Also, can they measure the charge of the Majorana particles using the Hall effect or something, or trying to measure the charge destroy the quasiparticle?</comment></comment></comment>


Java Man - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Man

<comment><USER2> _The current consensus of anthropologists is that the direct ancestors of modern humans were African populations of Homo erectus (possibly Homo ergaster), rather than the Asian populations exemplified by Java Man and Peking Man._

Somewhere I drew an analogy to Java the language, as described by pg in "The Hundred Year Language" - <http://www.paulgraham.com/hundred.html></comment>


Feedback Wanted for 'Free Global Job Board for Startups and Entrepreneurs' - <AUTHOR> https://www.startupmatcher.com <comment><USER2> Wow!, this has been kicking around HN for a long time. [https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=startupmatcher.com](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=startupmatcher.com)

I wonder what's been going on with the project in all those years.</comment>


The most powerful person in Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/90285552/the-most-powerful-person-in-silicon-valley <comment><USER2> "$300 million in uber for dog walking app"

How can I pitch him my brilliant idea of "Tinder for Potatoes"?

Breeding the best potatoes for making the best fries, reducing global hunger and making the world a better place by revolutionizing food.

</comment><comment><USER3> The top says 'long read'. This is where I stopped reading:

> The room where I wait is spartan. There is an empty desk in one corner, and > a conference table with a fake-wood veneer.

In this day and age why is it necessary to write in this manner as if people have nothing else and are sitting on the beach and simply want to kill time?

<comment><USER4> Right, I wouldn't mind it being long if it were concise and to-the-point.

<comment><USER3> By the way this 'spartan is good' and 'frugal is good' theme has been making the rounds for a long long time (obviously pre internet). It always impresses writers. It is so wholesome to them and the audience. Opulence is derided as wasteful and de facto bad. It's like the story of the guy out in the wilderness who makes do w/o power tools. Somehow people eat that type of thing up. Salt of the earth and so on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Excerpt: "After almost four decades of building SoftBank into a telecom conglomerate, Son, an inveterate dealmaker, launched this unprecedented venture two years ago to back startups that he believes are driving a new wave of digital upheaval."

</comment><comment><USER6> I see Masayoshi Son as the kind of person who's not well-known to the average person, but highly recognizable to startups, tech, and venture capitalists. I agree that he should be a name to look out for in the future.</comment>


What the Heck is Cliff Up To? - <AUTHOR> http://www.cliffc.org/blog/2012/04/06/what-the-heck-is-cliff-up-to/ <comment><USER2> "In other words: we got plenty of unreliable CPU, memory, disk & network… but we can't get at with the same ease the hardware guys made possible when going to dram from multiple CPUs connected over internal buses. Until we break that ease-of-use barrier, we'll never get every-day programmers coding distributed systems as easily as we do single machines now."

Isn't that the problem that MapReduce/BigTable/etc. are already solving?

And if the problem you're trying to solve is making distributed systems like MapReduce/BigTable _themselves_ as easy to code as single-machine systems, I strongly believe that will never be possible. Distributed systems are far more complex and have failure modes that don't exist in single-machine systems. Trying to hide that would only give you a horribly leaky abstraction.

<comment><USER3> > Isn't that the problem that MapReduce/BigTable/etc. are already solving?

Not in realtime, and it is somewhat cumbersome. I think Dr. Click's friendly debates with Rich Hickey regarding STMs have been taken to a new level. H20 and Datomic are somewhat competing visions.

Cliff (if you are reading): I think R on top of H2O is an excellent choice, but as I have been thinking about this same sort of architecture, I would suggest that front-ending H2O will be Scala's killer app. [I will take the pill if Trinity shows up :-)]

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The github repo for 0xdata's new "h2o" database is still empty, but there's another interesting project containing highly concurrent in-memory java data structures: <https://github.com/0xdata/high-scale-lib>

Here's a talk that Cliff gave a while back about writing a lock free hashmap: <http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2139967204534450862>

<comment><USER5> That is just a fork of the original.

<comment><USER6> The original is on sourceforge: <http://sourceforge.net/projects/high-scale- lib/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Somehow I always thought Azul was Cliff Click's startup.

<comment><USER8> It was; I guess he has moved on.

<comment><USER7> He just worked there: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azul_Systems#Company_history></comment></comment></comment>


Awful Computers for Kids - <AUTHOR> http://etbe.coker.com.au/2008/07/07/awful-computers-for-kids/ <comment><USER2> The best "toys" I had as a kid were not toys at all. I think kids are often frustrated by toy versions of real things. Kudos to the author for suggesting a real laptop instead of the cheeseball alternatives.

When I was young, instead of toy version of real tools, my father managed to find me kid sized versions of real things. Instead of a plastic pretend hammer and screwdriver, I had real metal 1/2 sized versions of these tools that could actually make things.

I had a small soldering iron by the time I was 8 or 9 and after a disappointing experience with a pre-made "1001 electronic projects" kits, my dad just started bringing me bags of surplus transistors,caps,resistors,and ICs which I would solder together into little lumps of partially functioning goodness.

I did these things because no one ever told me that 9 year olds shouldn't be doing this. This is the message I'm afraid that these toy versions of things convey. The kid world should be impotent and pretend because the real world is not for children.</comment>


We Open Source Everything - <AUTHOR> https://blog.latency.at/2018-03-28-we-open-source-everything <comment><USER2> Good stuff. Sentry does this too and I think it benefits everyone.

On the other hand, man that custom font is tough on the eyes.

<comment><USER3> Wow, you weren't kidding, that font is rough.

<comment><USER4> But you have to love "Reader Mode" (Firefox Aurora aka Developer Edition 60b06).

<comment><USER5> Why the version reference? Reader view has been available in Firefox (among other browsers) for quite a while now.

<comment><USER4> I couldn't remember whether it was in ESR yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So the idea is that they are so confident in their human capital, clientele and business processes that even with all of the code no one could potentially compete with them? Or that they want to create more competitors?

<comment><USER7> They're selling an operational service that their customers can't easily replicate, even with the code.

Their product is a globally-distributed monitoring system. Running these systems all over the world, and keeping them running, is a serious operational headache. It's probably at least as complex as operating the service the customer wants to monitor - perhaps a lot more, given that most services are _not_ globally distributed.

As long as they price below "double your ops budget", they'll remain value for money - even if the code they use is free.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h Or in short: They're selling a service, not a product, so they can give away the products that they happen to use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi,

I'm the guy behind latency.at. So far it's really just a little side project.

Since few people asked: I mainly open sourced it because I believe it's useful to have a complete, real life service as an example/inspiration.

</comment><comment><USER8> Does open sourcing everything affect software developers' job prospectives in anyway?

<comment><USER9> I have mixed feelings about it, it seems to me giving away your code for no return indicates you don't really value it that much. Whether it will have an affect on the industry I don't know.

There was an interesting paper linked on HN a couple of years ago that indicated a lot of the money is disappearing from software sales. The inference was the availability of mysql depresses the revenue from MSSQL, the availability of Linux depresses the revenue from Windows and so on.

<comment><USER10> If you think about it, software is a tool, and more than that, it's usually a brick in a construction. I wouldn't expect bricks to go up in price.

<comment><USER11> Software isn't a brick though, it is changing and updating and is a brick that has to be maintained. When you put software bricks together you get a construction that is more powerful than the sum of its parts. It is something inherently valuable in and of itself.

<comment><USER10> If I need 1000 software bricks I need for my house, you can't really convince me to pay a premium for each. Especially since I often have alternative bricks.

Psychology plays an important part in how markets work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Which immediately resulted in a bug-report noting that their mailgun API key was committed into code:

[https://gitlab.com/latency.at/latencyAt/issues/36](https://gitlab.com/latency.at/latencyAt/issues/36)

:)

</comment><comment><USER13> Hope they read this: they have a typo: provides -> provide.

<comment><USER14> Fourth paragraph, "sites performance" -> "site's performance"

<comment><USER15> "builting upon"?

Proofreading works, everyone!

<comment><USER16> It's a good thing they open source everything, then :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm going to hijack this thread to mention that I'm thinking of open sourcing a SLAM system I've been working on under BSD or MIT.

Ive been working on this because I'm interested in underwater drones (uuvs), and hope to commercialise this in the form of services.

My current understanding is as follows:

\- most open source systems come from universities and are GPL, with the option for licensing. (PTAM, ORB SLAM, DSO, SVO, LSD)

\- Optimistically, it would require $1-3 million to build a compedative system privately. The sky is the limit here.

\- No one, neither the universities nor private entities, is making serious money by licensing just a SLAM system. The well performing startups are somehow coupled to a product or a service.

\- All systems basically solve the same problems, but mix and match different solutions. For example for initial motion estimation, you could rely on constant motion (DSO, ORB SLAM), image alignment (SVO), or solving directly for rotation between cameras (GSLAM).

\- As a researcher, to implement a new idea, you either need to implement an entire system from scratch, or modify a GPL'd system. This is great in theory, but since everyone is playing the GPL or pay game they are reluctant to accept contributions.

I'm imagining something like opencv, with implementations of common algorithms accompanied by wiki pages describing high level details. Components could be mixed and matched into different reference SLAM systems targeting different use cases, do you want something that will run on a MAV or a self driving car?

From a commercial point of view, companies could worry more about tweaking things to work for a particular use case without needing to start from scratch. I believe that universities, with their many departments, have more opportunity than anyone else.

My belief is that it's time for a liberally licensed SLAM system. Has anyone come to a similar conclusion or care to comment to the contrary?

Thanks HN

<comment><USER18> Can companies really get away for not licensing properly with GPL? I mean selling your product without buying the commercial license. How to get yourself caught? Different SLAM solves the same problem anyway.

<comment><USER19> We (sentry.io) open source everything as either BSD/MIT or Apache2 and we not only get away with it but also think it's the best way :)

<comment><USER20> Do the code to handle paymet system, user management, plan etc open source as well?

I'm not really familiar with Python yet and try to find some example of these code.

Thank you.

<comment><USER19> No. Nobody who runs sentry on prem needs that functionality.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


What Happens When Web Services Do Not Backup? - <AUTHOR> http://webworkerdaily.com/2008/01/13/who-protects-your-cloud-data/

<comment><USER2> I'm not too surprised. I was just reading a blog post ([http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/zoho_omnidrive_data_sta...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/zoho_omnidrive_data_standards.php)) from a year ago, in which the CEO of Omnidrive posted a mistake-ridden comment defending their decision not to use WebDAV. "The reason why you can't write a WebDAV client in Javascript is because XmlHttpResponse() is a HTTP function, not a WebDAV function" Huh?</comment>


Calculating the Long-term Value of a Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> http://www.tristara.com/blog/2013/calculating-value-bitcoin/

<comment><USER2> Ha, If bitcoin has 10% chance of succeeding it is worth 13k? No,politely just no. Read the following and reassess. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Petersburg_paradox>

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't understand how this disproves that the value could be $13K in the future?

St. Petersburg paradox seems to say: calculate the maximum cost vs Expected Value.

So if we assume that bitcoin has a future EV of $1000 buying it at $130 would be a +EV decision with a 10% chance of success. If it has a 1% chance of reaching $13K buying at $130 is still +EV.

What I'm I not understanding?</comment></comment>


Dwolla raises $5M to continue its work on "really freaky stuff" - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2012/02/07/dwolla-gettin-freaky/ <comment><USER2> It's fun to see a startup talking about having "A good relationship with the Federal Reserve."

There is a big competitive advantage to not being in SF or NYC. They are in Des Moines, where people work on insurance, payments and risk management.

But there is no way that the credit card companies won't be trying to protect their margins and block a new payment network that avoids interchange fees.

<comment><AUTHOR> True. VISA/MC will eventually do something to protect their hegemony, but what can they do? Lower fees to $0? I think their days are numbered (good riddance).

<comment><USER3> They'll do what any self-respecting, old-money hegemony would do: take some senators out for golf and steaks and write a big campaign check.

They will lobby to implement more regulations with regards to "money transmitters" in the hopes of increasing their costs enough that they have to raise fees.

See: [http://www.quora.com/Aaron-Greenspan/Posts/In-Fifty-Days- Pay...](http://www.quora.com/Aaron-Greenspan/Posts/In-Fifty-Days-Payments- Innovation-Will-Stop-In-Silicon-Valley)

<comment><USER4> They won't have to try hard. There's only four states left (that don't regulate money transmitters)!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A few months ago, when Gowolla got bought out, I thought sadly, "there goes that cool payments company." Apparently I was thinking of Dwolla.

I'm not sure whether this says something about naming your company or just about me.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm sure banks and credit card companies will use the entirety of their resources, both political and capital, to ensure that no organization is ever permitted to enable money to move this easily.

But, really, it should be one of the primary things that the public should be fighting for. And it will be a fight, quite possibly a literal one. We're talking about nothing less than cutting the financial throats of every banker in the world. When it comes right down to it, though, it flat out does not cost more to work with large numbers than it does to work with small numbers. The idea of the bankers or card processors getting a percentage of every transaction is fundamentally flawed and unjustifiable. Of course, this is operating on the idea that a market should be based upon people trading value for value... an idea that doesn't seem to have much footing today. If you have no value to offer, but you've got the political capital to get people forced into the playground you own, that's seen as successful business as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Banks aren't being disrupted. On the contrary they have an incentive to join FiSync and work with Dwolla as the current interbank systems are ancient.

The credit card companies are certainly being disrupted though. Their model is based on a limited communication capability which evaporated years ago. They will claw and hang on for dear life but it's just a matter of time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Payment processing has been ripe for disruption for a long time - so glad they are getting around the barriers to entry.

Interesting Marc Echo is an investor - <http://blog.dwolla.com/>

_I first met Marc at Big Omaha during his amazing talk on disruption and innovation. Marc's advice has ranged from telling me to be more confident to telling me that our logo sucks. It's always been incredibly unfiltered and at times… harsh. But that's actually what we really need, and when we need the truth I know I can always look to Marc for a totally good opinion on all things in life. I can't say I've ever met anyone like Marc, and his partners at Artists & Instigators just get it._

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> More from the CEO about all this disruption. <http://blog.dwolla.com/closes- series-b-round/>

</comment><comment><USER8> Dwolla has always sounded interesting to me, but I have yet to run across any business that actually accepts Dwolla payments. I set up an account a while ago and I have yet to actually use it. The fairly high barrier to entry (giving an unknown company direct access to your bank account) also makes it hard to convince friends/family to join up.

<comment><USER4> That's because the majority of Dwolla's volume comes from Bitcoin-related transactions.

I'm happy to be corrected on this, but right now they have nowhere near the presence in mobile payments as the press seems to think.

<comment><AUTHOR> I seriously doubt that there's a $1m in bit coin per month.

<comment><USER9> I could be wrong in what I think you're saying, or in what I'm reading at <http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/> but according to that site, MtGoxUSD alone had $17M worth of trades in the 30 days.

<comment><AUTHOR> I stand corrected. I made an assumption based on a bias and lack of info. (aka "never mind")

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I couldn't be happier to see a start up like Dwolla thriving in my home town. Congrats Dwolla!

</comment><comment><USER11> Good terms with the federal reserve? Im not sure if I should feel bothered that the entity that can make tens of trillions of dollars appear out of thin air likes a certain startup.

What I see is a federal reserve that realizes green slip anonymous transactions are annoying as hell and wants to expand its power, what better way then to get some sweetheart deals to the future hub of all money transactions. Hook up these guys with big money, control the money transactions globally instead of domestically.</comment>


Show HN: I made an iPhone app that helps you manage your S3 files - <AUTHOR> http://cloudcatapp.com/

<comment><USER2> Looks great. Nice design, though I'm not sure that I would ever need to manage my S3 on my phone.

 _Shameless Plug_

Coincidentally I just launched a similar app for OSX - [http://bucketsapp.net](http://bucketsapp.net)

</comment><comment><USER3> Can't believe I didn't find any alternative before. This will be great for uploading assets when I just feel like blogging on iOS. Good job!

</comment><comment><USER4> Does it support signing an object in your S3 bucket and sharing the signed link to someone?

<comment><AUTHOR> You can copy the url of the object and anyone can see it if it's public (you can make it public from the app). I'll add signed urls soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Your site has really weird scrolling on an iPhone 5S. Any idea what's going on?

<comment><AUTHOR> it was the size of the iPhone image. Reload :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> will give it a shot today!

also-- the main "cloudcat" text in your <h1> is being cut off on the end. take the font weight of 500 and turning it off or just making it bold will stop it from being cut off.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

<comment><USER6> you're welcome!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can it bulk uploader pictures?

<comment><AUTHOR> not yet, but that's a nice suggestion. thanks.</comment></comment>


Programmer's dark side - <AUTHOR> http://www.krista.cc/posts/44

<comment><USER2> Oh my, some mix of mature and immature adults find it easier to poorly communicate than to properly and patiently communicate.

They are also in a particular profession. Let's add gender for no particular reason. This doesn't belong here.</comment>


NSA Blackmailing Obama? - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6m1XbWOfVk

<comment><USER2> Blackmail is a worthwhile consideration. Considering how many politicians today are dethroned by some scandal or another, any scandalous data captured by the NSA would make for excellent leverage. Further, however, this simply highlights again the need for a restructured communications layer atop the internet capable of mixnet-style encryption. It's past time for there to be an affordable and simple way to onboard large numbers of people into Tor, I2P, Secushare, Bitmessage, and other such systems.</comment>


A photo app that takes out every human from the picture - damjan-ski http://www.byebye.camera/ <comment><AUTHOR> The theory is nice but a $3.00 product for iOS that doesn't explain itself beyond a few example images (hosted with non-SSL cert), doesn't quite leave me confident in the app.

<comment> damjan-ski Hui, thank you for pointing that (SSL) out! And a good call with the explanation. We'll update the app description. woot

<comment><AUTHOR> +1 for getting that cert in so quickly! Hopeful to hear more about this project when you have time to update details.</comment></comment></comment>


A smart replacement for animated GIFs - <AUTHOR> http://coub.com

<comment><USER2> I'm on a slow connection. The gifs loaded. The coubs didn't appear to load before I left the page.

I couldn't find any terms of use for coubs. Is it an open spec? Is it patent encumbered? Where will it work? Where wont it work?

Sorry this is so negative! If you get something better than gif, and small, and portable, that's great.

</comment><comment><USER3> ...runs on Flash? Thanks, I'll pass.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is NOT a replacement for animated .GIFs. This is just a video that auto plays ( _and loops_ ) without sound ( _until you click on it_ ), which is very different than a .GIf.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's high time that somebody replaces GIF with a modern alternative, seriously.

</comment><comment><USER6> youtube runs on flash, guys. and nobody died

<comment><USER3> YT runs on html5 as well, and nobody died, either. But _Flash_ is on the way to the grave, apparently. Also, if you haven't noticed, there is no Flash support on iOS, support for Android is close to none, and the Windows and Linux versions are extremely resource-hungry. In this sense, anything built on Flash is a _very_ bad replacement for anything.

Moreover, I'd say that the standard to measure against is "how is this a significant improvement over the existing state," not "at least it's not lethal."</comment></comment>


Suit to soup: Indian MBAs serve as waiters in UK - <AUTHOR> http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/uk/Suit-to-soup-Indian-MBAs-serve-as-waiters-in-UK/articleshow/6849227.cms

<comment><USER2> Is this really true?</comment>


I, Cringely 2019 Prediction 1- Apple Under Tim Cook Emulates GE Under Jack Welch - <AUTHOR> https://www.cringely.com/2019/02/27/2019-prediction-1-apple-under-tim-cook-emulates-ge-under-jack-welch/ <comment><USER2> Jack Welch pioneered stack ranking. Anyone trying to emulate him should be looked at dimly by the workers. It is a disaster to employee culture due to its nature of backstabbing and dirty tricks to get the best "score" to keep your job. Being on an "amazing team" becomes a bad idea, because even if everyone is amazing, someone's gotta get fired still.

Jack Welch ended GE as a company that symbolized good products and turned it into a financial company. Jack Welch represents American job loss.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think that's a very dangerous pivot though. True, there is a lot of money to be made in financial engineering, financing, et al.

I also think that's where companies go to die long term, even if it is a huge profit center short term. It means you are no longer looking forward to innovation and are now just looking to grease the wheels as much as possible.

<comment><USER4> My thoughts exactly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Transforming into a financial firm might be OK for Apple's cash hoard and shareholders in the short run, but it would also be turning away from the most interesting and beneficial parts of the company - the ones that make technology companies valuable to humans in the first place.

I'm more interested in a company that applies technology to create tools to help people work, play, learn, create, and communicate. Or one that helps to improve health care and education. Even businesses like streaming music and video, improving cars, or making headphones and speakers seem more interesting and beneficial to humans.

</comment><comment><USER6> Tim Cook is a supply chain expert and is positioning Apple to profit accordingly. By controlling who can sell and repair the hardware, who can sell software and at what margins, he is making a lot of MBA-smart moves.

But it looks like Apple has moved into a phase where it is milking its ecosystem and customer base rather than building it.

In the same way, Apple engineers are focused on creating Apple devices than trying to create new and innovative products.

I love Apple. I had an Apple II and there are three different Apple devices in front of me right now, but I'm not optimistic about the future of the company.

You either die a hero or live to become Microsoft.

<comment><USER7> > _You either die a hero or live to become Microsoft_

Indeed the comparison I see a lot is to Steve Ballmer, milking Windows for all it was worth

The Jack Welch/GE turn is a new one though

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think one of Apple's biggest issues right now is the incessant focus on margins and profits. For a company with a cash horde of 150+ billion, they should be focusing on attracting more users.

I have no idea how Apple is going to transition to a services business when they price their products for a very high-end consumer, and most of their services are tied to their products which means a limited customer base.

Also, I know people are going to think I'm crazy but I think Apple should buy DropBox. I personally iCloud is not fixable, just buy something that works.</comment>


Facebook, Microsoft Circulate Immigration Open Letter - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-02/facebook-microsoft-said-to-circulate-immigration-open-letter <comment><USER2> This is a great start but misses on few things and will not appease Trump. For example, if you look at the last sentence, they included American businesses, American values but what about American worker?</comment>


Inside the Indian BuzzFeed competitor you've never heard of - <AUTHOR> http://factordaily.com/wittyfeed-viral-content/ <comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing this. These numbers are phenomenal!</comment>