Did Google+ Hangout just kill Skype video? - <AUTHOR> http://amirchaudhry.com/did-google-hangout-just-kill-skype

<comment><USER3> From the blog post "Disclaimer: I still haven't tried Hangout, not enough people in my circles yet."

I don't think Google Hangout will have the same use case as most Skype video calls/chats (which are a one to one communication, or at least I would assume).

I think if anything (and this may be OT), companies like Path and the numerous group messaging apps should be the ones concerned with Circles and Huddle respectively.

<comment><AUTHOR> True, I haven't tried it (yet). There may be different use cases but there are still extra hurdles to using skype e.g sharing SkypeIDs and 'connecting', whereas on Hangout, that part is already covered. I can see that being pretty valuable once there are more people on the platform.

However, if I have the option, I think I'd rather run a conference call in Hangout than in Skype. The one issue would be that Hangouts are displayed to a circle whereas a Skype call is private to the people invited. Of course it would be trivial to set up a circle just for one hangout but that's still an extra step.

<comment><USER4> AFAIK, hangout seems to be a much casual thing. If you want to find specific targets I don't think you can do that with hangout. However I don't have an invite yet so I might be wrong.

<comment><USER5> As everything in Google+ you can choose a Circle, all your Circles, your Extended Circle, or just choose contact by contact, I think it's definitely a Skype killer :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Google hangout = multiple people with video + chat + you tube sharing! It's pretty awesome. Now only if they can get enough people on it ;)

<comment><USER7> For some strange reason Google has yet again decided to leave Google Apps users, who are perhaps their most ardent fan base, out in the cold again.

\- Wishing I Could Try Plus

<comment><USER8> Join #kohana on Freenode and message jtreminio - I'll send you an invite.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Yes. It absolutely murdered skype. I work with some friends on a project that has weekly meetings, and we've been doing them via phone conference calls. We have simply been unable to find something to handle conference video chats that didn't cost an arm and a leg. Google+ is going to be a major (positive) change in our work flow.

</comment><comment><USER10> I tried it out last night with a couple of friends. It certainly works fine, quality is good and all. And it was easy enough (aside from installing the plugin for the first time).

The Youtube sharing is an interesting idea, though it very quickly degenerated to rickrolls and nyancats.

Though it's called "hangout" that shows potential for other uses as well - <USER2> they could integrate something like shared desktop viewing it would definitely be killer.

I don't really have enough experience with skype video chat to say if this is as good or better, but it does seem promising.

</comment><comment><USER11> From what I've seen it has the potential to dethrone Skype but the major issue they have to overcome is that Skype is a household name when it comes to video calling. It's similar to how everybody still says 'Hoover' when really they should say vacuum cleaner.

It will take a lot to shift the mass market away from Skype.

</comment><comment><USER12> I tried it last night, though only two of the people involved had cameras.

We were surprised how remarkably well it performed. For group calls, Skype has serious competition.

Also, a lesser-known site that is probably doomed? Synchtube.

</comment><comment><USER13> The biggest problem that I have with skype is that there is not an easy way to know who else has it. If google can fix that small issue, it will be able to render skype useless for me.

</comment><comment><USER14> I think Microsoft will kill Skype before Google+ Hangout does

</comment><comment><USER15> Not until it supports mobile devices.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's possible there's something in the pipeline for Android.

However, I've rarely used Skype from my mobile devices since it's easier to just call someone (I'm also more likely to have their number than their skypeID). Also, I've never tried a conference call via the Skype apps. Is that possible?

<comment><USER15> Yes but this article is about using Skype for video calling. Until FaceTime works over 3G skype seems to be the best solution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It almost sounds like it could kill something like tinychat.

</comment><comment><USER17> I have high hopes they do.

</comment><comment><USER18> No it did not. You wanna know why? Because I don't have an invite yet. That's why.</comment>


SoftBank Invests $100M in Online Marketplace Globality - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/softbank-invests-100-million-in-online-marketplace-globality-11548160201 <comment><AUTHOR> I am an engineering manager at Globality and been working here for the past couple of years. Here to answer questions if you have any.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Text version [https://outline.com/D6Gzux](https://outline.com/D6Gzux)</comment>


Finalists for the Apps for America/Data.gov Contest - <AUTHOR> http://labs-beta.sunlightlabs.com/blog/2009/and-winners-are-2/ <comment><USER2> As a techie and journalist, I'm all for more open government and the movement to put more government data online. But at the same time I find some of these sites, particularly from this list Data Masher, somewhat disturbing.

For those unfamiliar with it, Data Masher allows you to combine two data sources with simple operators (+,-, etc.) and create maps and tables with the results. But how informative is this, really? Does dividing"Violent Crime rate per 100k pop" with the "percent of households with firearms" result in any sort of useful statistic?

No, since violent crimes covers a broad swath of criminal activity, including rape and aggrevated assault, which may or may not involve a gun.

I would argue presenting this manner of dis-information as having any kind of factual validity is just irresponsible.

It also seriously irks me that most, if not all, of the data provided lacks any kind of study details, even basics such as margin of error or sample size. Unless I'm seriously missing something, there is no way to measure the accuracy or validity of these statistics other than to say "Oh, well that data's from the CDC so it must be accurate." After all, the government IS always right.

Not good enough.

</comment><comment><USER3> thisweknow.org is fairly cool

<comment><USER2> Yea, actually. it has potential. I'd like to see richer linking, i.e. give me the material safety data sheet and a laymans definition of toluene when I click on it, rather than the current 'chemical.' But that may be in the pipeline.

Overall, though, it's facts nicely reorganized in a sensible and informative manner. That's moving in the right direction.

<comment><USER4> Thanks! (I'm one of the programmers)

Yeah, that kind of stuff definitely is in the pipeline, as is just adding lots more data. We felt from the beginning that is was the linking between the datasets that was most interesting. Unfortunately, we found this much more challenging once we started trying to do it since there is surprisingly little standardization in how different agencies report things.

Longer-term we're hoping to try to crowd source this kind of thing. So say you found the material safety data for toluene, you could link that up.

Anyway, thanks for checking it out!</comment></comment></comment>


Neqo, an Implementation of QUIC Written in Rust - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mozilla/neqo/ <comment><USER2> For people like me who wondered what QUIC was:

QUIC is an entirely new protocol for the web developed on top of UDP instead of TCP. UDP has the advantage that it is not dependent on the order of the received packets, hence non-blocking unlike TCP.

If QUIC is used, the TCP/TLS/HTTP2 stack is replaced to UDP/QUIC stack.

According to Wikipedia:

> As improving TCP is a long-term goal for Google, QUIC aims to be nearly > equivalent to an independent TCP connection, but with much reduced latency > and better SPDY-like stream-multiplexing support.

> If QUIC features prove effective, those features could migrate into a later > version of TCP and TLS (which have a notably longer deployment cycle).

So basically, QUIC wants to combine the speed of the UDP protocol, with the reliability of the TCP protocol.

<comment><USER3> >> If QUIC features prove effective, those features could migrate into a later version of TCP and TLS (which have a notably longer deployment cycle).

When I searched for it, this text is not present in the Wikipedia article about QUIC though it presumably was present in some version as many _other_ sites on the Internet quote this sentence. Can you say where you actually saw it?

The reality is probably closer to, a successful QUIC will replace TCP (and TLS) in future protocols or, such protocols will give up and move to HTTP so as to take advantage of QUIC anyway.

One reason is as so often, middleboxes. The usual corporate cycle (new technology is embraced on a small scale because it avoids the overhead of management oversight, grows to become important to the business, importance means oversight imposed, major benefit of technology destroyed, rinse and repeat) injures the Internet in the form of middleboxes, so of course a technology is deployed with the purpose of undermining the middleboxes and that technology is QUIC.

<comment><USER4> Despite middleboxes TCP and TLS are still evolving. It is slow and painful compared to green field designs like QUIC, but it still happens.

Latency-based congestion controllers such as CTCP and BBR have gained adoption to better utilize long, fat pipes while keeping bufferbloat down. TFO was introduced to cut down the connection setup latency by 1 RTT if the endopints have seen each other before before. There is some noise about upstreaming MPTCP to linux which would then eventually make its way to android where it would be a big deal for seamless wifi/mobile transitioning.

TLS' evolution is self-evident from new versions including dramatically changed handshakes rolling out.

<comment><USER3> Sure, but that has the relationship wrong. TLS development can't realistically import work from QUIC because the relevant work already is TLS. The relationship between TLS and QUIC in such a system is mutual, like a clownfish and an anemone - each needs the other, QUIC is not just replacing TCP here, it's also dependant on TLS (in a way TCP obviously is no) because it offers TLS guarantees (e.g. forward secrecy) in QUIC itself, as well as guarantees TCP has like delivery order preservation.

QUIC needs a cryptographic setup mechanism. 99% of TLS is the cryptographic setup mechanism, and then 1% is "Now that we've agreed everything, here is how to send application data", QUIC doesn't need that 1% but it takes all the rest of TLS 1.3 straight out of the box.

A QUIC implementation can hypothetically end up negotiating TLS 1.4 (some future compatible TLS 1.3 upgrade) and that'll work out fine, the keys get generated and then just as with TLS 1.3 they are used to encrypt QUIC's native packets not a TLS application data layer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So it's made by Mozilla. It is going to the implementation of HTTP/3 in Firefox?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I think this is the plan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A third rust QUIC implementation. They all have their own crypto lib. Neqo with NSS, Quiche with BoringSSL and Quinn with rustls.

<comment><USER7> Serious question - can anyone explain how you would choose which of these to use? e.g. I'm aware that Quinn is tokio-based whereas Quiche is an async- agnostic state machine. Where does this one fit in?

<comment><USER8> Disclaimer: one of Quinn's maintainers.

Actually, Quinn is split up in two crates: quinn is the tokio-based async layer, but quinn-proto provides an async-agnostic state machine (and provides a trait-based abstraction over its use of rustls and ring).

Also, I think quiche and neqo are squarely aimed at serving their particular corporate goals, whereas quinn is really aimed at being a library for use in the Rust ecosystem. So far that has mostly been the tokio ecosystem, but that might change as the async/await story matures.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Are there any HTTP 3 benchmarcks?

</comment><comment><USER10> No description whatsoever of wtf Neqo is, nor wtf QUIC is... this must be some kind web library because every web developer is a narcissist that thinks nothing else but the web exists. Googling "QUIC"... yep, every time.

<comment> jon-wood I don't get the anger here. Quite simply if you don't know what QUIC is then you probably don't need a library which implements it, and so there's not much point doing all the groundwork to explain that.

<comment><USER10> "All the ground work"... only needs a short sentence. Is it a graphics library? A parser? A command line tool? A sorting algorithm? A heat equation solver? Oh, it's a tcp library.</comment></comment></comment>


One Weird Kernel Trick - <AUTHOR> http://www.oneweirdkerneltrick.com/?repost=true

<comment><USER2> Where're all these pseudo-scientific posts coming from these days?

<comment><USER3> Look again - this entire website is clearly a joke.</comment></comment>


A Lap Around Python in Visual Studio 2017 - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/visualstudio/2017/05/12/a-lap-around-python-in-visual-studio-2017/ <comment><USER2> Who would have thought 5 years ago that today some of the best tools for Python development would be developed by Microsoft as part of Visual Studio?

<comment><USER3> This is great, this will help getting support of a Python "stack" for enterprise projects. At the moment I am mostly doing them in C#/VB.net and always need to discuss a lot to get Python acceptance when scientific workload is required (it is easier to say Fortran + C#/VB.net than Python!).

Now, I will be able to add: " _Microsoft is fully supporting Python_ " and this will basically close the deal. I am happy.

<comment><USER4> /team lead here/

Thanks!

Regarding "Scientific" \- we just added the Data Science Workload to Visual Studio 2017. Check it out here:

[https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/visualstudio/2017/05/10/bui...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/visualstudio/2017/05/10/build- intelligent-apps-faster-with-visual-studio/)

Basically Python + Anaconda, R + Microsoft enhanced R, F# with .Net as a single install. Python & R work with any interpreter, including IronPython & Pypy.

<comment><USER3> Thanks a lot! This is exactly what I need, this will ease my arguments when I need to port/bring some "Matlab" code/models into a GUI tremendously.

Now, /me is dreaming of a cross-platform WPF with Python as language and integrated in the IDE like C#/VB.net. I am using PyQT but this is not the best on Windows.

On a side note, just comparing Visual Studio today and Visual Studio of my first real work days in VC++/MFC (something like 20 years ago), I must say that it really makes me ship good software faster and better. Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> And on the other side of the fence there's XCode, unable to refactor Swift …

<comment><USER6> Just talking to some swift/iOS devs that I've done some projects with the other day, and their workflow basically uses the JetBrains IDE and Xcode simultaneously - one for code and the other because the JetBrains offering apparently doesn't support storyboards (yet?). Coming from a backend perspective, it sounds pretty atrocious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wow, that looks like a lot of really cool stuff. Might have to get back in a python kind of mood, this really looks impressive, especially the c++ extensions.

</comment><comment><USER8> I do a lot of Python work and like most of the other "heavy" IDEs, this doesn't appeal to me at all. The more layers of stuff you wrap around what you're trying to do, the harder it is, in my experience, to make it easy to deploy and maintain. I guess I'm turning into a graybeard.

<comment><USER9> I can see how the value of an IDE is much smaller in a dynamic language than a statically typed one. In the statically typed language compiler output, test output source symbols etc are links to other things in the project. That's hard to accomplish in an editor + shell setup (or requires a huge config effort that effectively makes the editor an IDE). I would use vscode or similar if I did JS or Python, but for C# or Java you'd have to pry the IDE from my cold dead hands :)

<comment><USER10> Even with a dynamically typed language, the IDE can do type inference to provide a lot of useful stuff, like go to definition of a symbol, or refactoring.

<comment><USER11> And when the IDE exploits Python 3 type annotation, the "static vs. dynamic" gap is much less painful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The reasons to stick with macs are getting fewer and fewer by the day...

<comment><USER13> Why did you ever need a Mac for Python and what's so different now? macOS comes with Python built-in but in terms of IDE's there's PyCharm for macOS and PyCharm for Windows and they're both just as effective. You just install them. Code.

<comment><USER12> Python specifically, no particular reason. As a cohesive environment, Microsoft is chipping away at every reason I've had to stick with Macs and their limited selection of hardware. Learning that a new Mac Pro is at least a year away has me looking MUCH closer at Windows. And bit by bit, Microsoft is crossing out all the reasons I had in my mental "No Microsoft" column.

<comment><USER13> Since I'm a Cocoa developer and I don't like change for the sake of change I'm just using Parallels for Visual Studio and Windows software development and macOS for my main OS. I don't particularly dislike Windows but it's still a bit messy.

However under the hood Windows is catching up if not overtaking macOS since Windows Vista. I'm probably one of the few people that thought it was an amazing improvement over Windows XP at the time (using it on a machine with rock solid driver support perhaps helped). The graphics subsystem, security, driver model: everything was better.

I just want Windows to be incrementally improved and homogenized for a long while instead of half assed system wide changes every other release. The real beauty of macOS in my opinion is that somebody coming from the betas on a BW G3 in 1999 would still find his or her way easily on a 2017 Mac. But when they changed it from OS 9 to OS X they did it drastically and with a pretty clean cut from the past.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> (Entirely unrelated to the actual contents)

I find it remarkable how visually inconsistent _all_ of the shown screenshots are. (Look at all the small details that differ between each screenshot, like margins around buttons, button sizing, size of text entry fields, chevron styles and so on and so forth)

Windows (in this millennium, anyway) was never a really visually consistent OS, because it pretty much always had some leftover crud GUIs, and even today some dialogues from the early 90s exist nearly unchanged, though.

<comment><USER15> I use Visual Studio for work. I'm not seeing all the inconsistencies. The only component I loathe is the git integration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> What ever happened to IronPython running on the CLR?

<comment><USER17> It was divested for a number of reasons. First, there was (and still is) the Python 2 to 3 transition. Supporting Python 3 added a lot of overhead while full Python 2 support was not available yet.

It also turns out that a lot of popular Python libraries have dependencies on C/C++ code, so there were attempts like IronClad to provide support for these, but it wasn't as easy as CPython. There were benefits like the CLR being able to handle some workloads better than CPython with its GIL, but there are expectations in some libraries that it's CPython running the code.

Startup performance also takes a hit due to jitting, so IronPython had to implement some tricks to make it run scripts fast on the first run. This is a pretty common case.

Then you add in compatibility and testing with frameworks like Django, and balancing that against further development of the core. Even if you support these frameworks, you may not be able to support some of the libraries and tools that these developers coming from the open source world use, so their experience can be soured and the project appears to be more of a science project. That said, IronPython can excel in niches, such as adding scriptability to your .NET app. But that's not going to take over the world.

These problems also applied to IronRuby. Both of them seemed to be joined at the hip in terms of management, so I think that internal dealings at Microsoft were part of the downfall. I have no idea what happened, but in the bigger picture at that time, Microsoft was finally learning to do things a better way with ASP.NET MVC. For their constituents that may have been a better investment.

<comment><USER18> Plus, now you have Python for .NET[0] and similar projects that allow you to seamlessly integrate CPython into your .NET program. This gives you the best of both worlds and negates a lot of the value of a dedicated .NET Python implementation.

[0]: [https://github.com/pythonnet/pythonnet](https://github.com/pythonnet/pythonnet)

<comment><USER19> You can also use .NET assemblies from CPython using pythonnet, so it is bidirectional interop bridge!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Damn, they are killing it.

</comment><comment><USER21> I was really hoping Visual Studio 2017 for Mac would support this, but it looks like it doesnt have full extension support yet.

<comment><USER4> /team lead/

Unfortunately VS for Mac currently doesn't support Python or R (the two languages our team supports). However, if you are interested, please file the request on uservocie - that really helps us convince mgmt.

Meanwhile, VS Code has pretty decent Python support which can be used on Windows, MacOS and Linux:

VS Code: [https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/languages/python](https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/languages/python)

uservoice: [https://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual- stud...](https://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio-ide)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I really liked the VS IDE when I was a windows programmer, I'm still struggling to find something comparable.

My fears are still that python code on windows is still a nightmare, especially when you throw something like OpenCV into the mix.

<comment><USER4> /team lead/

Your fears regarding Python on Windows were quite justified. However, the world has dramatically changed, thanks in large part to folks like Continuum.io and their Anaconda distribution, Christoph Golke, and many other wheel providers.

Visual Studio actually provides an option to download Anaconda for you. It has a few hundred pre-built Windows pkgs ready to go. We also use it on our free jupyter notebook service and have been very happy with it.

UCI repo: [http://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/](http://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/)

Anaconda: [https://www.continuum.io/downloads](https://www.continuum.io/downloads)

Azure Notebooks: [https://notebooks.azure.com](https://notebooks.azure.com)

<comment><USER23> /Dev on Team/ Also many packages, NumPy for instance, have improved their builds for Windows. This is a combination effort of better support on the platform side to make things better but also from package maintainers to support Windows users better.

If you have been away from Windows for a bit, I think now is a good time to at least take a cursory look around again ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Has anyone used this for Django development? I currently use SublimeText 3 for just about everything but I'm always open to new ideas.

<comment><USER23> /Dev on Team/ I have used it with Django, but most of my Django apps are mere toys compared to things that other people are working on. This probably isn't that useful of a video, but this was a talk at PyData using PTVS + Django to demo some Azure Services [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PElcaj1iylA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PElcaj1iylA)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This looks awesome.

Does anyone have any opinions on how this compares to pycharm for similar IDE functionality and jupyter support?

</comment><comment><USER26> my first experience was with python tools for visual studio 2012. i still use vs2012. its a charm.</comment>


Open Sourcers Pitch Secure Email in Dark Age of PRISM - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/08/mailpile/ <comment><USER2> We don't need encrypted email so much, we need decentralized email servers with TLS enabled. I have half a mind to launch a service that will take a root password of a newly-created cloud server you own, set up a properly-configured IMAP and SMTP server and hand you the keys.

I am of the opinion that that will do more about email privacy than GPG (as long as you trust your hosting provider, at least).

</comment><comment><USER3> I was thinking about a system that combined these three properties:

        + Anonymous
        + Distributed
        + Encrypted

For anonymous, I was thinking that the service would be accessible only through Tor or i2p, so that neither the sender nor the receiver can be found out by tracing the message.

For distributed, I was thinking that the mail system would essentially be a freesites-style distributed hash table where the mail address (or a hash thereof) would act as the key. The mail or parts of the mail would be stored multiple times across many clients to eliminate single points of failure. Perhaps a TTL system would prevent old mails from filling up everyone's space.

Finally, the encrypted would be achieved by having the mail address act as the public key (or at least, the mail address is a key to a distributed KV store that contains the public key). This way, before anonymously sending the message to the various distributed hash table buckets, it gets encrypted so only the desired recipient can read it.

It seems like it should be possible to build this from already existing technologies without _thaaaat_ much trouble, though I haven't actually done anything about it.

Of course, getting people to use this would be another story ;-) and I guess people would want contacts lists, archives and so on.

<comment><USER4> I'd also add that you want to encrypt the metadata of the message. As we've seen, the from/to address metadata is often as revealing as the content.

How can you build a messaging system where the delivery service doesn't know where to deliver something?

<comment><USER3> I had some ideas about how to address this:

The return address is contained inside the encrypted portion of the message so only the recipient can see which address sent the message. The message should also be cryptographically signed with the senders private key so that the sender can be verified.

Next, the DHT key would likely be a hash of the recipients address so it would be difficult or impossible to determine who the messages in a specific bucket belongs to. Also since the service would only be accessed through tor or i2p, the actual sender and receiver would be hidden. Obviously the recipient address (or rather DHT key) must be known so that the message can go to the right place.

Also obviously anyone can technically retrieve anyone else's messages but since they are encrypted this shouldn't matter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It will be hard to make Mailpile user-friendly when you have to install it yourself on your own cloud server. But particularly with the end of free Google Apps accounts, I wonder if there is an opportunity here, either as something end-users can install themselves _or_ as something mom-and-pop shared hosting companies can offer instead of their current always-awful webmail. Maybe you could even build a business around an encrypted webmail tool you license to shared hosting providers.

If Mailpile or someone else is going to be self-installed, I'd love to see it built as PHP. (Looks like Python right now.) As much as I refuse to develop in PHP, that seems like the only way to make installation as easy and ubiquitous as Wordpress, which should be the goal.

(I realize that either Mailpile or my own suggestion---or anything hosted on someone else's hardware---is vulnerable to someone reading the data right out of RAM, but it seems like their goal is to evade snooping not by building a 100% secure system, but by making it easy and affordable for everyone to have their own email server, so that government surveillance has too many targets to be practical.)

<comment><USER6> Our goal is to create something you install on your desktop or laptop. Think Thunderbird, not Squirrelmail. We do happen to be using web tech for the UI, but that doesn't mean it has to live in the cloud.

<comment><USER5> Well that's even better. :-)

I'd love to see you guys pull this off. Best of luck to you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Public Understanding of Science" has been a big issue for several decades (maybe even longer?), but I think we'll see progress towards "Public Understand of Cryptography," or at least I hope so :)

It goes deeper than just using some PGP client. You need to understand how it works, to be sure that the bits coming out of your network are encrypted, and only you and Alice know how to decrypt them.

<comment><USER8> I've been working a little bit on cryptography education issues and so have a number of people I know, but now I'm reminded of Lancelot Hogben's books "Mathematics for the Million" and "Science for the Citizen". Maybe someone will create their equivalents for cryptography!

"Cryptography for the 2⁶⁴"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Open Sourcers - is verbing a thing now? Why not 'Open Sourcerers', or 'Open Sourcists'?

<comment><USER10> Are you seriously confused as to whether verbing is a thing? It's _been_ a thing for a long time now. ;)

<comment><USER9> Haha, not at all. I was just looking for an excuse to post 'Open Sourcerers'. Regardless, to quote Calvin (of '& Hobbes' fame), "Verbing weirds language".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I for one am looking forward to seeing how this project progresses. Maybe it can become another alternative within web hosting panels?

</comment><comment><USER12> Mailpile seems to get a lot of press if nothing else. I hope their engineers are as good as their marketing department.

<comment><USER13> I can tell you that there is no marketing department. They are engineers first and foremost. Check out Bjarni Einarsson's online OSS projects (which are not all he's done).

<comment><USER6> I can confirm we have no marketing department, it's just three geeks with a Twitter account. We are getting press because people think it's an interesting project and because privacy on-line is a hot topic right now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Added my 2 cents..</comment>


How Apple, Google and Blizzard Are Silencing Hong Kong Protesters - <AUTHOR> https://www.tomsguide.com/news/apple-google-blizzard-hong-kong-protests <comment><USER2> Companies like these do things like this specifically because they believe they can get away with it with little to no backlash, while appeasing the Chinese government/market and ensuring that their interests there stay steady.

That's why being able to vote with your dollar is such a powerful tool. Boycotts are effective because they directly impact revenue. So if you disagree with how these companies are handling the Hong Kong protests for example, the best way to have an impact is to directly speak to their financials.

As the article states, you can sort of see the effects that preliminary measures taken are already having.</comment>


The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012 (1992) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://ssi.armywarcollege.edu/pubs/parameters/articles/2010winter/dunlap_jr.pdf <comment><USER3> [http://www.duffelblog.com/2013/12/general-mattis-crosses- pot...](http://www.duffelblog.com/2013/12/general-mattis-crosses- potomac-100000-troops-president-senate-flee-city/)

Former Marine here. I thought this article was funny when it recirculated just prior to the recent election. But I also sort of thought to myself "Yeah I would vote for him over HRC or Trump."

Now I worry. A few thoughts:

1\. If the military remains the most-trusted branch of government that's a bad thing. We need to take steps to reduce its power now.

2\. If the Freedom Caucus is really committed to reducing the powers (and spending) of government they should be fervently resisting budget plans to expand the armed forces and pull us back from pointless non-productive conflict in the Middle East.

3\. It is critical that Congress finds ways to reverse the rise in income disparity or we're going to have an even more dissatisfied and formerly middle-class voter base next cycle.

4\. If Congress remains gridlocked by partisanship we are surely heading down the Road to Serfdom, and voters will either cede more power to Trump, or perhaps worse, be dissatisfied and demand an even stronger strong man.

<comment><USER4> "2\. If the Freedom Caucus is really committed to reducing the powers (and spending) of government they should be fervently resisting budget plans to expand the armed forces and pull us back from pointless non-productive conflict in the Middle East."

Unfortunately, there's the slight matter of the Carter Doctrine, the idea that the US has a vital interest in the continued uninterrupted flow of oil from the Persian Gulf.

The US can't just withdraw from the Middle East until Middle America withdraws.

There's a large portion of our population that has arranged their lives in such a way that they literally cannot leave their homes and return with a jug of milk, without getting in their cars and driving a long drive.

And so if the flow of oil from the Gulf is interrupted, the ramifications stateside would have them screaming bloody murder.

Ironically, these people are unable to see that it's their choices that lead to this: you choose where you live, you choose where you work, and you choose how you get there.

And until there's a sober discussion of the problem, there will be a US presence in the Middle East.

<comment><USER5> I think you're over-estimating the impact of Middle East oil in the US. Only about 12% of US oil consumption is from oil from the Middle East, half of that from Saudi Arabia. Losing that would be damaging but wouldn't be as bad as the gas rationing under Carter. Middle Eastern policy now has a lot more to do with terrorism, with the exception of Saudi Arabia.

<comment><USER6> Yes it's all about oil price stabilization. It's also a plan put in motion almost 30 years ago when we first attacked Iraq. So yes as solar and other developments change the landscape we are still foolishly following an old plan to insure the Middle East are willing client states able to be controlled by the global monetary system rather than erratic despotic wrenches in the system.

Terrorism and 9/11 likely is a false flag for ulterior motives. The motives can't be made so clear or nobody would believe the false flags and the media. We aren't to know just how important oil price stabilization is to the ruling elite's master plan.

Do you really think all the lives and money lost in the past 16 years has been the appropriate cost for just 3000 dead? We need to speak up and completely pull out of the Middle East immediately. The plan might have overall been good for the world but they were wrong and their dishonesty has destroyed people's faith in government and has made an entire region far more "terrifying" than they ever were. We are following an outdated strategy by outdated people that don't know better. That is to say they were never evil, but just impatient operating on a small big picture. I'm referring to the Bush Family, members of the Bilderberg group, the Rockefeller's, what remains of Standard Oil in obscured new company names such as Exxon and Mobil, and the tip top banking institutions that have been so arrogantly proud of the fact that money can be used to control the world and maintain peace rather than war as in past generations--for if everything can be controlled by money rather than might, we have the makings of a more peaceful world. So they thought...

<comment><USER7> Oil price stabilization? War in the area seems to have caused the opposite effect for the better part of the last 2 decades.

<comment><USER8> There you go again, trying to apply facts to a global political power game much bigger than you'd ever be allowed to even know about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One piece of this was poorly predicted: rising violent crime.

In the late 80s and early 90s, there were lots and lots of predictions that in another decade, violent crime would be at crisis levels. It was steadily increasing year over year and there was lots of disagreement as to the cause.

Then we reached 1994 or so, and everything started going down[0]. Lots of possible reasons, popularly that Wade vs Roe had been 21 years prior but lots of other competing theories may explain it, or be part of it.

I'm not saying that the future predicted by this story isn't alarming in some of its predictions but that this particular prediction was made by a lot of people and it turned out to be pretty clearly incorrect.

By 2012, America was probably as safe as it had ever been and continues to become safer despite popular belief to the contrary.

[0][https://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Pro...](https://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Production/Cms/POLL/ldah6rdp6ukvngoyqi1fcg.gif)

<comment><USER10> Freakonomics talked about the decline of crime in the 90s as being directly attributed to rise of abortion.

Basically, offsprings from poverty or low socio economic statuses tend to grow up without education and exposed to violence and dysfunctional families with parents who are likely uneducated and addicted to substances.

Growing up without fathers, young men adopt gang culture as a surrogate for the lack of positive role models.

It makes perfect sense that in the 90s there were lot less would be criminals (not by choice but genetic, environmental and socioeconomic factors) being born.

The financial burden on divorced men with children is far too skewed in benefiting divorced women in North America. My fear is children being born from this generation of turbulent and unstable familial organization as the middle class slowly erodes and job security disappears due to automation.

<comment><USER11> One of the theories (which I think has a lot of merit) is the elimination of leaded gasoline, and the subsequent reductions in environmental lead contamination.

<comment><USER12> [http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/02/lead- exposure...](http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/02/lead-exposure- gasoline-crime-increase-children-health) is an interesting article about this topic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This broke down right away:

"After the President died he somehow "persuaded" the Vice President not to take the oath of of ce. Did we then have a President or not? A real "Constitutional Conundrum" the papers called it. Brutus created just enough ambiguity to convince everyone that as the senior military of cer, he could—and should— declare himself Commander- in-Chief of the United Armed Forces"

Taking these two items in reverse order - Article 2 of the constitution is clear - the President is the CIC - full stop, period, no alternatives.

As far as the VP not taking the oath, that would pretty clearly make him/her fall in to the 'Inability' side of the Resignation or Inability statement, triggering Presidential Succession Act [2], which opens with the following language:

"If, by reason of death, resignation, removal from office, inability, or failure to qualify, there is neither a President nor Vice President to discharge the powers and duties of the office of President"

Refusal to take the oath of office would fall under 'failure to qualify' and 'inability', as taking the oath is required by Article 2 (section 1, clause 8)[1] before executing the office of President.

There's more, such as the 25th amendment, but that doesn't contradict anything here...

All of that is completely setting aside the deeply ingrained establishment of civilian control of the military in all modern liberal democracies - <USER2> established largely by the US constitution.

[1] [https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive- constitution/arti...](https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive- constitution/articles/article-ii) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_Succession_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_Succession_Act)

<comment><USER14> One thing we're rapidly learning in recent weeks is that the Constitution and the laws don't matter unless there are people able and willing to enforce them. Nothing is automatic, and if nobody with power will stand up to Brutus, then it can work even if it's supposedly not allowed.

I think that "deeply ingrained establishment of civilian control" you mention is the real problem with this scenario.

<comment><USER15> I'm honestly shocked a warrior monk like Mattis took the SECDEF job. I am sincerely concerned that upon meeting Trump, he decided to take the job simply to keep it away from real crony.

<comment><USER14> My thoughts exactly. I'm further convinced that Trump picked him solely because of the "Mad Dog" nickname.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> One bit I found funny was that the narrator argues that being forced into police work has made soldiers too restrained to function as warriors, when in our timeline, the opposite has happened -- police have become too aggressive to function as peace officers.

<comment><USER17> I actually think both have happened: the military has increasingly adopted traditional police tactics and mindset [1], while law enforcement has become more paramilitary it its equipment, tactics, and mindset.

[1] Personal experience. I was shocked to receive so much instruction from LEOs instead of infantrymen prior to my own deployment to Afgh. While there, we did a lot more arresting, and not nearly as much killing, as I think the situations I encountered warranted. ETA: not saying there _wasn 't_ instruction from the Army, but there was a _lot_ from beat cops contracted to train us.

<comment><USER18> Depending on when you were going through training, a lot of that had to do with the early (in Iraq and Afghanistan) issues of the military having no real concept of policing (the thing they were tasked with after the initial invasions) and going on to do things like abuse prisoners. The training was essential because our early actions or lack of restraint was a losing strategy (it directly led to insurgent numbers growing and propaganda against the US and US military, completely counter to the intended purpose of the missions).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There has already been an attempted American military coup:

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

<comment><USER20> "Attempted" seems like a strong word to use... even the Wiki article you linked, in the introduction, seems to put it somewhere between a hoax and a few people contemplating a coup (far from "attempting").

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm surprised this was written back in 1992, at a time when I personally hadn't noticed the rising tide of military adoration that the country experienced post 9/11.

<comment><USER18> It was on the increase then, a backlash against some of the vehement (or at least widely spread and popularized) anti-military rhetoric of the 60s and 70s (Vietnam-era). But not quite to the fetishization that happened post-9/11 where saying anything against the military (even straight up facts) could get you labeled anti-American.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The author won a competition with this paper, Colin Powell honored the author at the awards ceremony. I was an undergrad in polisci when this paper came out, and we took it semi-seriously. I'm pretty sure the class was about South American military juntas.

</comment><comment><USER23> The biggest problem I see with this is that is assumes something not in evidence - that the concept of 'freedom' actually means anything, ever meant anything, or could possibly ever mean anything. But then, that is true of nearly everything people believe in; self-deception is, IMAO, the primary nature of the human brain.

<comment><USER24> I would argue that far from the concept of 'freedom' not meaning anything, it means many things - it's heavily overloaded. For example - I have the freedom to reply to your comment if I choose. The concept of freely choosing to take or not take an action is surely meaningful.

I'll assume that you're not making the statement literally, that 'freedom.... could [not] possibly ever mean anything', and instead ask /which/ meaning of the word 'freedom' do you believe to be an eternally-meaningless self- deception?</comment></comment>


Fallacy of Hating the Rich - <AUTHOR> https://shubhamjain.co/2016/10/02/fallacy-of-hating-the-rich/ <comment><USER2> I'd put it even bigger: if someone didn't buy a Ferrari but spent the money on the food for poor, it would work. But if all or many rich did that, it would result in little but increase in food prices and decrease in Ferrari prices. Only second order effects (increase of food production because producers now make more profit so they will invest into using land more efficiently) will very insignificantly benefit the poor. Plus some auto worker strikes in Italy.

<comment><USER3> If you educate the poor, you accomplish more than simply causing the price of education to rise.</comment></comment>


Show HN: My first complete full stack web app, greekdeals.gr - <AUTHOR> https://greekdeals.gr <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN,

I would like to present you my first full stack web app. A side project which took me 1.5 years of great effort to complete, for the sole purpose to upgrade my skills on many contexts outside of my daily job.

It's in greek language but if that bothers you, you can translate it to your language using your browser functionality [0]

I would really appreciate to hear feedback from you. Reading HN all these years, really altered my mindset which affected many design choices which I had to make.

\----

Intro:

Greek Deals is a greek community where users can find and share -legit- deals & offers across every commerce sector eg from amazon online deals to local neighborhood market deals. To compel users to find & share deals, a point system has been made. When user creates a deal and depending of how complete it is (description, image, duration etc) he earns the analogous points. Users can also vote for deals. Votes have exponential effect to points. Users can redeem their points (WIP) for a variety of rewards (vouchers, netflix, services etc).

Tech stack:

* Front End: Next.js, React.js, Typescript

* Admin Dashboard: React.js, Typescript, Electron

* Backend: Flask, Python, a bit D, Postgres, Redis, Celery, Docker / compose

Key Features:

* Performant fuzzy autocomplete search with latin character support (greeklish), stemming, weights etc

* Deal faceted search

* Real time, daily and weekly deal alerts based on user's choices

* OWASP practices

* Dependencies to minimum

* No 3rd party UI frameworks, every React component is custom (except Mapbox).

* Automatic image conversion to WEBP, fallback to JPG for unsupported browsers

* Infinite scrolling with the ability to restore scroll position

* Took a good dive to Postgres. I leveraged many of its goodies, like geo queries, full / fuzzy text search, materialized views, CTE, functions etc

* Dynamic banner creation for og:graph by visiting a HTTP endpoint, suitable for social media use. That resulted in a decent increase of impressions & engagements through out our social channels. example [1]

Flutter app for iOS and Android is WIP

LOCs: ~30K

Monthly budget: $75 (2xDO droplets, DO managed db, s3, mapbox, rsync.net)

[0] unfortunately using the translate.google.com proxy breaks JS and the sidebar on desktop monitors won't appear. Using the in-place translation through the context menu works normally.

[1] [https://api.greekdeals.gr/v1/social/images/deals/XobXd4D](https://api.greekdeals.gr/v1/social/images/deals/XobXd4D)

edit: syntax & formatting

<comment><USER2> What do you mean by 0? Are you saying including the script breaks the front end? If so, could you just create a proxy for it on the server and expose an API?

About fuzzy search, do you feel ok about the performance? I had a general feeling that for that type of stuff you need a dedicated search thingy, maybe elastic search?

<comment><AUTHOR> I mean that if you visit [0] to see the translated version through google, JS throws errors: the sidebar won't render, search won't work and pretty much everything which needs JS doesn't respond. Using the in-place translate doesn't have that issue.

About the search part, imagine that in busy days we'll have at most 2-3K active deals, therefore Postgres can do the job really fine with that amount of data. Elastic search was in the table but I think it would be overkill for my use case. Also by having 100% indexable queries performance impact is small. PG provides a lot of goodies to get the job done.

You can try to play with it, just type an english word in the search bar eg "game" and then "geme"

[0] [https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=el&tl=en&u=https%3...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=el&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fgreekdeals.gr%2F)

[1] [https://github.com/wolfgarbe/SymSpell](https://github.com/wolfgarbe/SymSpell)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Neck Check – App that reminds you to fix posture and ends Text Neck - <AUTHOR> http://www.tecshala.com/neckcheck <comment><AUTHOR> Neck Check helps remind you to use your phone with good posture to reduce neck pains and ultimately end Text Neck. The app takes advantage of sensors in your phone and notifications so you can be reminded to hold your phone at eye level while you are using it. I was in eight grade when I came up with this idea during a school project about Text Neck. I was working on multiple iOS apps at the time, but as quarantining rolled up at the end of my senior year, I realized the importance of good posture now that everyone is on their phones. I decided it was the perfect time to bring this idea from 4 years ago to fruition. Here it is and I hope you like it.</comment>


New evidence there may have been life on Mars - <AUTHOR> http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1001/09marslife/

<comment><USER2> Here is why we should hope they find no life on mars. <http://www.nickbostrom.com/extraterrestrial.pdf> (PDF) This is also an interesting discussion by Nick Bostrom on the Fermi paradox and why we may be alone in the galaxy.

<comment><USER3> Interesting read. One candidate I had heard for the Great Filter discussed in the paper is MMORPGs. A civilization advances to the point where they develop immersive games, then vanishes. I tried to track down the source of that idea. Anyone know?

One quote from that paper is interesting: "Considering that space travel was science fiction a mere half century ago..."

Space travel, in the terms the paper is talking about, is still arguably science fiction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One thing I don't understand in all of these discussions about there having been life on Mars in the past: wouldn't it still be there today?

Even given that the planet's climate has changed entirely over time, as long as life had begun at some point and had a non-negligible amount of time to evolve it would have expanded into every available niche. There's life here on Earth in environments far less hospitable than those on Mars, isn't there?

<comment><USER5> Well, the article is about studying a meteorite for ancient fossils. If sufficient evidence is found, we will be pretty sure there was life, but it's not enough evidence that there still is life in a place like Mars, it does raise the possibility.

The thing about Earth is that there's water almost everywhere, which can provide a suitable protective environment, even if it's mostly frzen. Not the same with Mars. Also, Mars has just been so cold and dry for so long that it might be too long for life to last through.

Finding evidence of past life would be less expensive and still serve the purpose of showing that life is not unique to Earth. Trying to find those isolated ecological niches that may still hold life would be very challenging and expensive. Also, if we already know life existed on Mars before, the ideological breakthrough would have been made. Finding current life on Mars would still be interesting, but only scientifically, not in the social and ideological way that extraterrestrial life's existence at any time does.

<comment><USER6> > Also, if we already know life existed on Mars before, the ideological > breakthrough would have been made. Finding current life on Mars would still > be interesting, but only scientifically, not in the social and ideological > way

I sort of agree, except that when it's "only" bacterium-level organisms, I think the social impact is still going to be minimal. If a Mars-trilobyte- equivalent fossil (or fish or velociraptor) was discovered, people/religions would freak out. But, I think the layman doesn't really consider bacteria to be life anyway (or maybe it's just that fossils of bacteria aren't too compelling).

On the other hand, I think it's freakin' awesome. I don't think the timing works, but wouldn't it be great if we turn out to be Martians? :)</comment></comment></comment>


You Can Now Go to College in Germany for Free, No Matter Where You're From - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2014/10/10/germany_college_is_free_there_even_for_foreign_students_why.html

<comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8443045](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8443045)

I posted a similar story that might interest you.

I understand that you have to learn German right?</comment>


Adobe giving away the whole of Creative Suite 2 for free - <AUTHOR> https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?e=cs2_downloads&pid=4485850

<comment><USER2> Link is legit. It's not working right now because every single online community is linking to this page.

</comment><comment><USER3> 3 hours in and the link doesn't work.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm very happy that adobe did this! I sure hope photoshop/premiere CS2 is as good as CS5.

</comment><comment><USER5> Did anyone even get this? It throws an error for me.

<comment><USER6> The link should be working now. I'm currently downloading it on an old laptop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Remember, CS2 won't run on OSX Lion and above.</comment>


The Finkbeiner Test: for measuring gender bias in stories about women in science - <AUTHOR> http://www.cjr.org/the_observatory/finkbeiner_test_gender_gap_fem.php?page=all <comment><USER2> TL;DR: Journalist decides to actually write about the professional life of the scientist rather than their private life and private properties when asked to write a professionally-focused profile.

Question: Why the hell did this take so long? Nobody writes 'X is a great role model for people with Y hair', even though there might be few people with Y hair in a given field, nor does anybody think it appropriate to write 'Even though X is shorter than average, X still achieved enough to serve as a role- model for other short people'.</comment>


The Original Flat Design - <AUTHOR> http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/67/Twm.PNG

<comment><USER2> That should effectively counter the argument that flat design is inherently "beautiful."</comment>


Hackable Humans Are The Future? - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/27/this-vision-of-the-future-includes-eyeball-embedded-ar-hackable-humans-and-gamified-everything/

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely terrifying, yet deep down I find it fascinating!

</comment><comment><USER2> i just got bricked updating my own firmware...</comment>


Your Twitterverse. Visualized. - <AUTHOR> https://www.yesgraph.com/twinmaps/ <comment><USER2> Hey folks! My team made this as a visualization side project. Let me know what you think!</comment>


Mediacom is Hijacking HTTP Requests to Google and 404 Responses from Other Sites - <AUTHOR> http://mediacomcable.com/CustomerSupport/forum/index.php?topic=911.20

<comment><USER2> This is why you should use https when it's available. <https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere></comment>


Joining a startup: high salary, no equity OR "startup salary" with equity? - <AUTHOR> http://watilo.com/joining-a-startup-high-salary-no-equity-or-st <comment><USER2> I would absolutely love to work for a startup as an early engineering hire. I'd take an enormous pay cut for the right firm, people, and product.

However, for 1%, 2%, 3%, or even an unheard of 10% equity, it's just simply not worth it when it's so cheap and easy to start something myself or find a co-founder.

It's odd that I follow Hacker News and lap up everything startup and YC related, but I wouldn't even click on one of the YC job postings as the prospect of this kind of deal does not appeal in the slightest.

Joining say 3 co-founders with 33% each against my 1% as the first senior engineering hire would really stick in the throat unless they had monster traction or funding [in which case they'd already probably be bigger then 3].

I just do not understand who takes these roles with very early stage startups as the entrepreneurial 'rockstars' that they are asking for can easily have a go themselves with not much less chance of success, pretty limited downside if it fails, and high opportunity costs either way.

For that reason, if I went to work for a very early stage startup, I'd want a much, much, much higher salary than I could get in the market at a big company. This would be to compensate me for the additional risk, the additional workloads, plus the fact that I would be helping them add outsized value in terms of building the company for them.

<comment><USER3> If they're not paying you and you accept <10% equity, you're getting ripped off.[1]

But if they've raised money and you're drawing a salary? The startup is massively de-risked. You should accept far less equity. You take on virtually none of the downside risk and still participate in the upside risk.

As an employee, the situation you want to avoid is the quick flip. Do the case analysis:

Failure: better to be a first employee than a founder. You should be better paid, and your 3% of $0 is the same as 50% of 0.

Quick flip (aka HR acquisition): Founders make out much better than first employees, since they'll typically be granted large retention bonuses. Best case you get a free option on a job at the acquirer which probably comes with a reasonably good bonus structure for the first few years.

Acquisition for value: Everyone gets rich. Founders get very rich, first employee gets much richer than he possibly could have working any normal job.

Don't work for people who want to flip their company to Google in 6 months. Work for people who want to change the world.

[1] Unless you've co-founded it with like, Steve Jobs. In which case you should probably take 1% if that's the offer. Also, you are probably a necromancer.

<comment><USER4> "Don't work for people who want to flip their company to Google in 6 months. Work for people who want to change the world."

That's a great point. I really think any entrepreneur looking for a quick out is another sign of an (un)intentional scam artist.

<comment><USER5> You make a very good point.

Is someone who is doing a startup in hopes of hitting the startup lottery (when you get bought out) a scam artist?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting conversation. The answer is actually much simpler. "Never work for a salary that you can't live on." which is to say that if you are an employee of a startup you should first make sure that you can live day to day on your compensation before you talk about equity. Remember that compensation consists of salary, benefits, and vacation time. They all contribute.

Once you have that out of the way, you can think about 'extra'.

Getting the 'extra' as equity has the highest _potential_ return and the lowest _probable_ return. Which is to say that if the startup has an exit that involves the common stock you could potentially get millions of dollars. However startups are startups because they are as yet unproven businesses. Their chance of failure is high early on and it goes down in proportion to revenue.

What that means is that when a startup is later stage, has a product and some revenue, its less likely to fail than when it first starts and before it has a product or revenue.

So generally you can split startups into fairly large risk baskets.

Basket 1: pre-product / post-product

Startups that are pre-product are the highest risk, and the getting 'extra' as equity here is something of a sucker's bet. The company has yet to prove they can even _build_ what it is they want to build, much less sell it or get users.

Basket 2 (post-product): pre-revenue / post-revenue

Startups that have a product can be spit into those that have convinced a customer to pay them money for their product and those that haven't. The sad truth is that some products cannot be sold profitably or at all. So the next big 'milestone' is that there is revenue coming in from customers who are using/buying the product. Pre-revenue is higher risk, post revenue lower risk.

Basket 3 (post-product, post-revenue): Traction / No Traction

The third split is the traction/no-traction split. If a startup has customers and revenue, they have crossed the 'big' hurdles, but to grow they need more customers. That is where traction comes into play. Is the startup getting new customers? What is it costing to get them? Do those costs outweigh the revenue they generate?

If your startup is post-product, post-revenue, and has traction _always_ take equity. It is going to pay back better than salary.

<comment><USER7> I think your answer is perfect: make sure you're making enough not to worry about money unduly and then pick whichever one seems more fun. I find worrying too much about getting the highest expected return just isn't worth it, at least to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> First, it depends on your risk aversion. If you have kids to support, you usually can't afford take as much risk - so the "startup salary" might not even be an option.

But assuming you can afford the risk: Make a guesstimate about the expected value of an exit, add some risk premium, and compare. e.g.

If you assume $1B exit with prob. 3% (and no other outcomes), the expected value of the company is $30M. If you are offered 2% of the company over 4 years, that amounts to $600K or $150K/year at most (probably less, given tax considerations, exercise price, etc -- but let's assume the maximum).

Now the risk premium: you can be fired at any point, you are 97% likely to only be left with salary, and there's the opportunity cost (if something good comes your way, you'll have to choose and essentially forgo the equity). Altogether in my book, that's a 75% risk premium. It's down to ~$40K/year for the equity value.

So, in this case, I'd value e.g. $120K "no equity" with $80K "with equity".

Now, if you think the company is going to top out at $100M at 3%, I'd value $120K "no equity" as $116K "with equity".

When you look at it this way, it is clear that in the vast majority of cases, you should treat options/RSUs as lottery tickets or potential bonuses, but not much more.

Unless you happened to be an early Microsoft, Google or Facebook employee (what's the probability of that?), you're almost surely better off with high salary.

<comment><USER9> This is a good comment because it steps through the math. People seem to go to amazing lengths to avoid doing back-of-the-envelope calculations of this sort. Thank you.

I will say that "3% of $100M (and no other outcomes)" would be an extremely pessimistic assessment of a startup, a so-called "risky double."

<comment><USER8> > I will say that "3% of $100M (and no other outcomes)" would be an extremely > pessimistic assessment of a startup, a so-called "risky double."

It's a way to get people to think of expected value. I Could have instead said "$3M expected value". Would you say it's pessimistic to assume that's what a startup will eventually bring in (as cash) to shareholders?

I think it might even be optimistic. There are thousands of 3-people startups that fold giving out $0.

<comment><USER9> Point well taken. Maybe $3M is a good default value for a "credible" startup nowadays or maybe it's a bit high. Depending on the particular risk factors and assets the startup has (team track records, market, etc.), it could be either a low or a high estimate. The important thing, I think, is that people do that analysis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This seems like a really clever social hack, but I'm not sure it holds true. It certainly stands to reason that people are more willing to give away the things they don't value, but does it really make any sense that a founders willingness to share equity is automatically an indicator of success probability?

I tend to favor sharing of equity, because I want commitment from my core team members. It's not that I don't value equity in my company. I do. I value it in the higest regard, which is why I don't offer it to any stragler who comes along. You can rest assured that if I do offer you equity in my venture, I hold you in high regard.

It's very hard to tell if you want to be in business with someone. I'm fortunate to have had an opportunity to work with some of my co-founders in a normal business relationship prior to becoming co-founders. Had I not had that experience, I'm not sure how I'd evaluate that decision, but I can tell you it wouldn't be based on whether I was offered a high-salary or stock options.

</comment><comment><USER11> high salary.

Even if the startup is positioned well with deep pocketed investors you won't be able to cash out the equity for at least 8 years (a typical time span from launch to IPO or buyout for a successful startup) assuming you still work there (or you quit and purchase your vested options with your own money) ... and the odds of any given startup reaching a miletone where the equity is worth selling is small.

<comment><USER12> FYI, median time to exit for VC-backed companies is down in the 4-5 year time range:

[http://www.dowjones.com/pressroom/releases/2011/04012011-VCE...](http://www.dowjones.com/pressroom/releases/2011/04012011-VCExits-0124.asp)

A few years back the median was more like 7.

<comment><USER13> I would estimate that the exits that are sooner tend to be smaller.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think you also need to look at where YOU are in your career, relative to other opportunities. Out of school, I took some positions with low salaries and some (now worthless) equity at startups becuase I was fresh out of school, had low living costs, and saw it as a good opportunity to build a diverse skill set that would help me further along in my career. Additionally, the economy was just starting to tank so it wasn't exactly like there was a plethora of good positions available anyways.

Looking back on it, it's easy to say that I made a "bad" decision (e.g I should have seen the writing on the wall and realized these startups were going to tank), but I'd probably do the same thing over again, for a few reasons. Although the startups ultimately failed, I was still paid enough to have my own apartment, cover my expenses, etc. On top of that, the "jack of all trades" role I took on in these startups allowed me to pick up a lot of other skills (sysadmin, design, etc) that I wouldn't have been exposed to had I been paid market and chose to go the corporate path. I also made some invaluable connections that I still rely on and am in contact with to this day.

Now that I have a few years more of experience working at both startups and nonstartups, it's a much tougher decision overall. As tferris pointed out, the opportunity cost of giving up a portion of salary for a tiny slice of equity is much higher as an experienced developer with a broad skill set. Interestingly enough, working at a startup in my earlier years out of school played a vital role in acquiring that skillset. So, you really need to other factors like the founding team, traction, market, etc when considering a startup as well as both where you're at and where you're trying to go in your career.

</comment><comment><USER15> The article's thesis seems to be that you can predict the future success of a company by how willing they are to hand out equity.

The big thing, though, to remember when negotiating with professionals? they are professionals. Their only job is to profit from information asymmetry. It's probably a mistake to think that you are better at the information asymmetry game than they are.

just as a real-world data point: I have been very, very stingy when it comes to giving out ownership in prgmr.com. While this /does/ signal a long-term commitment from me, it really has more to do with the fact that I don't have a clear 'exit strategy' than anything else- prgmr.com is not a 'get big fast or die' kind of company. I very well might be running this business until I retire, and, well, you probably will have moved on by then.

I'm talking about partnering with some other people on other ventures with a shorter timeframe, and for that? sure, I'm happy to share.

</comment><comment><USER16> If the CEO has been a success before at a level you want to be: consider equity.

If there's no track record, the equity isn't worth the paper it's printed on.

You'll come out ahead with the high salary until you are really on an all star team with a track record.

<comment><USER17> Be careful with this. If the founders already had a successful exit and are already set financially for life, they'll be more willing to turn down life- changing amounts of money at the shot of an even bigger payout.

<comment><USER16> This is a totally insightful and important point. If the founders aren't working every bit as hard (or smart), if not harder, than the rest of the team; RUN.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A very important aspect that people usually overlook in these cases is the exercise price (in case of options), or immediate tax consequences (in the case of an RSU 83(b) election). If the question is relevant to you, CONSULT SOMEONE WHO'S PROFESSIONALLY DOING THIS STUFF, or at the very least, make sure you read a lot about it.

Generally speaking, the equity you receive (in whatever form) will effectively only reflect _increases_ to the company valuation.

In the case of options, if you get 1% of a $100M-valued company, it is worth $0 if the company value stays <=$100M, and will only be worth $1M if the company value increases to $200M.

In the case of RSUs, if you get 1% of a $100M-valued company, you are taxed as if you were just gifted $1M (pay 35% to Uncle sam today, and a few more % to uncle state as well), although you can't do anything with it, and if you forfeit it (because you're fired or quit or the company folds) you can't get the tax back. However, if the company does get to $200M valuation, and you manage to sell your equity, you'll get $2M in proceeds and only be taxed on the $1M increase this time.

<comment><USER18> That understanding of RSU taxation is _completely_ inaccurate, so I would agree with your advice to consult with a professional beforehand, rather than "read a lot about it".

<comment><USER8> Other than stating that you're smarter, could you point to a factual error in my numbers?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> High enough salary to make life comfortable.

Enough equity to give you a sense of urgency and personal investment in the success of the company.

Your personal 5 year plan should treat those options as worthless. If the salary doesn't mesh with that 5 year plan, then it's too low.

</comment><comment><USER20> If someone asks you to trade a significant part of your salary for equity, you're effectively investing in their company.

If someone asks you to invest in their company, approach it the same way as if they were asking you for cash - do your due diligence and ask lots of questions. I can't stress this enough - do your homework. Don't make assumptions that just because the founders are successful people that the company will be successful either.

Evaluate the same things a VC would look at - how does the founding team fit, what is the revenue model, burn rate, marketing strategy, who do they plan on staffing, what kind of investment do they have already, plans for raising another round etc. Don't be shy with these questions - the founders want you to trust them and be a part of the team and you have a right to know the answers.

Basically don't base your decision on a gut feeling and some ad hoc criteria, think like an investor before you invest.

</comment><comment><USER21> Hard question. A rational decision would lead to high salary w/o equity:

\- Probability that startup fails > 95%

\- You will get usually about 0,5-2% vested over 3 to 4 years with a cliff, you'd get more if you joined _before_ a funding and took the entire risk and had no salary for some time

=> So working at least 3yrs for max 2% (rather 1%) with an exit probability of less than 5% yields too high opportunity costs; as a talented developer you could miss many other opportunities

</comment><comment><USER22> I've come to realize that equity is really just a proxy payment for the risk that the company will not continue to exist / how much influence and impact you may have on the continued existence and success of the company.

Likewise, the salary offer is about the combination of your negotiation skills, expected marginal utility of your work, and the current state of the company

</comment><comment><USER23> Think the general rule is maximize salary always. Next ask yourself if you'll be in a decision making role. If you aren't then skip the equity. If you are, then use this as leverage for more equity.

</comment><comment><USER24> This is perfect timing. Can someone offer me advice? I'm young.

I'm in the process of negotiating to join a biotech startup in the Bay Area. I am a graduating undergraduate student, and interned with the startup team previously when they were working in research at BigCo. They left, licensed their own hardware patents from BigCo, and are starting up. They are asked me to join them in return for housing reimbursement, a meager living allowance, and an uncertain amount of equity.

I know it depends on how much risk I am willing to shoulder, but what would be reasonable terms for salary and equity, considering I'm a fresh grad?

They would bring me on as an early engineering hire, and they are currently bootstrapping from savings while working on the product and courting angels. Series A would certainly be far off. The founders have solid connections, and have brought in an experienced woman to act as CEO/advisor until they have funding. She was previously the CEO of a well-regarded company in the same space.

The equity would be in the form of RSU, and salary would increase after angel funding, and to market rate later on or with Series A. The personalities of the founders are great, and I believe in the product.

I don't have an employment history, but I interned at well-known research institutions each summer, later at BigCo, and attended (private) school on a full merit scholarship. My skill set extends beyond software to several other areas (that would, if mentioned, make it possible to identify me). I'm wet behind the ears, but capable.

I also have a regular "corporate" offer elsewhere, at a salary comparable to a low-end Bay Area market salary.

<comment><USER7> Take my advice with a grain of salt because I'm still a student, but I'd join the company. You don't really need large amounts of money just after graduating, and besides, most people in other majors probably end up making even less. On the other hand, working for a small startup would probably be more interesting and exciting, especially if you like the founders. Then, if it doesn't pan out, you would probably have no problem finding a job at a bigger company for a sufficiently high salary. So maybe you'd make less money overall in the event of a the biotech company's failure, but you'd still have enough to not worry and a more interesting experience.

Also, your risk tolerance as a fresh grad is much higher than it will be in the future. You (probably) don't have an expensive lifestyle or a family, and you can live pretty cheaply yourself. So you have much less reason to be leery of equity than somebody older and more established.

I personally think that the best time to work for a small startup is just after graduating, and that it's definitely worth doing at some point in your life. So I would go for it in your position.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Depends on definition of high, and what the startup is (if I think it will work). With no other info I go high salary every time though.

</comment><comment><USER26> High salary. Most businesses fail.

Sure, they might win big, but you'll enjoy life a lot more and be less stressed with a higher salary.

</comment><comment><USER27> High salary 95 out of 100 times.

I look back on a "startup salary" with equity and wonder what the hell I was thinking. They recently had a very small exit and after raising money and screwing over early employees on options...high salary would have still been ahead.

</comment><comment><USER28> Here's a thought: high salary, no equity.

After one year, no raise, but 20% (or perhaps more) of your salary as equity at the company's most recent valuation.

Would any startups consider taking this?

Would any other potential employees of startups consider it?

</comment><comment><USER29> Most likely, the startup will go bust and you won't get anything. Even if it doesn't, I don't think they can possibly give you enough (unless it's Facebook or you are getting 50% of the company) which equates to months or years of your life that you can't ever get back.

My solution? Salary only and I take the salary and fund my own startup.

<comment><USER30> I wouldn't go so far as demanding only salary because it kind of implies that you are certain that the startup _will go bust_ rather than _might go bust_. However, I definitely prefer as competitive salary as possible; I don't know about the rest of the country but working long hours in SF gets expensive (apartments, eating out, laundry services etc).

<comment><USER21> Easy: Ask for too much salary and too much equity at the same time. When negotiating compromise just on equity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> High salary.

If you're actually a real partner (a concept that makes more sense in lifestyle businesses than in VC-funded startups, where only founders and VC implants end up being partners) then equity can make you rich. If you're the 35th person to hop onto the train, you're really just an employee and you're better off with a decent paycheck. The options might pay off, but they won't make you rich in most cases... so it's usually better to have a salary, which might not make you rich either but gives you stability.

The #1 concern should be what you'll learn and what kind of role you'll have, though. Unless we're talking about order-of-magnitude differences, or at least orders of binary magnitude, that's more important than either.

</comment><comment><USER32> It depends on what the difference between high and startup salary is. Some startups which are well funded are offering generous salaries to start with. It is difficult to predict if a startup with be successful or not, but if you really believe in the idea, are excited to join the startup because of the problem they are solving, I suggest take a salary and some equity. If you are not really excited about the startup's idea or their product and just want to work there as a job, then take the _high_ salary</comment>


HTML5 Web Standards Tests for IE9 - <AUTHOR> http://samples.msdn.microsoft.com/ietestcenter/ <comment><USER2> This is a very carefully selected set of test cases that only cover a small subset of HTML5. For example, most of their CSS test cases focus on border- radius (mostly obscure corner cases), but what about shadows, gradients, independent transparency, etc? I appreciate Microsoft's efforts to support HTML5 in their next release of IE but this page is simply ridiculous.

It seems like they picked a few features of HTML5 and decided to support only those but support them well down to the most obscure corner cases, as opposed to the "let's do everything now and then we will fix it later if it's not working properly" approach of open source browsers.

The main problem is that IE release cycle is considerably slower than other browsers'. If they only implement a few features, we have to wait several years to other features, if they implemented all features, we would have to wait several years for Microsoft to fix the bugs. The web these days is just too fast paced for that. It would be a lot better if they switched to a more frequent release cycle.

<comment><USER3> So the countermove is for other browser vendors to go through the list and fix these "small" cases. This takes away any of IE9's bragging rights and we'll have 5 browsers that pass on this exact subset of tests. Microsoft is forced to be more compatible and html5 arrives on the scene sooner. IE9 takes us to 2014 or 2015. Let's push Microsoft to do even better.

<comment><USER4> It won't matter. For them to have constructed such a biased test shows how much in denial they are. It's pretty depressing actually.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> They missed the most important categories:

 _Works on millions of existing Windows XP installs_ :

      FAIL  Internet Explorer 9
      PASS  Mozilla Firefox 3.6.3
      PASS  Opera 10.52
      PASS  Apple Safari 4.05
      PASS  Google Chrome 4.1

_Supports CANVAS_ :

      FAIL  Internet Explorer 9
      PASS  Mozilla Firefox 3.6.3
      PASS  Opera 10.52
      PASS  Apple Safari 4.05
      PASS  Google Chrome 4.1

<comment><USER6> While lack of canvas support is definitely a noteworthy omission, I say people running an OS almost a decade old can't really complain when the newest software doesn't work.

MSIE 9 uses hardware acceleration for faster rendering which involves APIs and interfaces which are not found in Windows XP. If you want the world to move forward, you will occationally have to leave someone behind.

That time has long come for Windows XP.

<comment><USER5> Since DirectX 10 has been demonstrated as portable to XP, the lack of acceleration is not a technical or administrative problem - it's a financial decision by Microsoft to force people to upgrade.

But this will backfire on them because it's MUCH easier and cheaper to use another browser than to upgrade your OS.

<comment><USER6> By the very same logic there is no reason (apart from investing time & money) that Firefox shouldn't be able to run on 16-bit systems. But you don't see anyone complaining about that.

You have to draw the line somewhere. XP is old. There are a lot of decent OSes and upgrade-options out there. I see no problem ignoring XP for any new, major development projects, especially if new APIs will need to be developed in the process.

<comment><USER5> There are millions, possibly a billion XP installs out there (I'm one of them). They can run all the newest software still, it's 99% the same API as Vista and W7. Plus XP is still faster than Vista or W7, uses less memory and FAR less disk space to do the same functionality.

Don't confuse the need to sell more software with the previous version not actually being outdated. There's a huge difference between Windows 3.1 being extinct and XP.

<comment><USER6> Good for you. You are obviously a power-user and any restriction placed on MSIE will not really affect you as I assume you are using some other browser anyway.

The fact remains that XP is almost a decade old, and just because your OEM paid $20 for XP 9 years ago, does not entitle you to having free support, patches and new APIs backported to XP forever.

Microsoft has officially ended regular support for Windows XP and are now only providing patches/bug-fixes while on extended support until 2014.

Windows XP might _work_ for you, even under these conditions, but don't delude yourself into thinking it isn't outdated just because it works. When the vendor stops supporting it, it is outdated.

Unless you are running on a machine with less than 1GB ram, I see no reason to cling on to XP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm deeply suspicious of any page provided by any vendor in which all of their tests pass and everyone else is missing some.

I think it's really great IE9 is doing HTML5/SVG/CSS3/etc full steam, but I'd much prefer to see where they are failing too.

<comment><USER8> <http://caniuse.com> is much more trustworthy and has broader coverage.

<comment><USER9> Hmm.. I find it interesting that they have kept IE6, FF 3, Chrome 3, Opera 9.6 and Safari 3 in far-past category. Doesn't IE6 is Far-far past then?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Google Chrome 4.1", sure let's test the development version of IE, but not the dev version of chromium (chrome).

No mention of workers, canvas, audio, video, <device>, web databases, or advances in javascript speed improvements. Just talk about separate specs, CSS3 and SVG.

Anther waste of time, presented by Microsoft...

</comment><comment><USER11> Although I love the effort put forth by MS for even thinking about HTML5 but the webpage is silly. Firstly, why are they even testing other browsers. Should I thank MS for testing out everyone else? Secondly, as mentioned already, someone should send them a memo on <canvas>. Lastly, the first thing I saw was that border radius with dotted style is not supported in chrome so I tested it and it works flawlessly. This was the first and only test I conducted from their data and it was enough for me to dismiss this article.

</comment><comment><USER12> No mention of canvas. Doesn't the IE team realize that developers are reading these blog posts?

</comment><comment><USER13> Although the tests only cover a tiny subset of HTML5 cases that IE9 supports, I like the approach. If each browser had a test suite that they passed 100% and could run against the other browsers, it would be an interesting way to move towards compatibility.

<comment><USER14> Better yet, make automated test cases part of the standard.

<comment><USER15> The pages used for this actually are test pages they developed with the W3C, which is almost making them part of the spec.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Only Microsoft would be able to come up with test results that show Internet Explorer as the perfectly standards compliant browser while all the others aren't.

</comment><comment><USER17> Their test for "Set selectionStart and selectionEnd on a text field" tests that selection start and end can be set which should pass in Safari but their test fails because they are asserting that window.getSelection().anchorNode == null after they've set the selection start and end points. This doesn't make sense to me and I don't get that from my reading of the spec. Am I missing something?

</comment><comment><USER3> On most compatibility tests, IE9 always seems to come up way short. It looks really good on their tests. Where does IE9 really stand? What are the chances of getting <canvas> support? IE9 could be the key to taking the web to the next level.

</comment><comment><USER18> In comparison on the Acid3 test...

      IE9 Platform Preview 68/100
      Firefox 3.6.3 94/100
      Opera 10 100/100
      Safari 4 100/100
      Chrome 4 100/100

source: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid3>

</comment><comment><USER19> Don't worry. It will default to 'compatibility mode' and there won't be any way to force the browser to use the new engine. It will still be full of security wholes, take forever to parse simple javascript and no doubt offer an overall inferior browsing experience. I don't think Mozilla/Apple/Google have anything to worry about.

As a web developer, I'm quite happy with the way Firefox's rendering capabilities are progressing, despite what these phony tests might suggest. And seriously, how can they compete with Firefox's 'AwesomeBar'? I seriously couldn't live without it.

I just hope these make believe test pages don't fool the end users :(

<comment><USER6> _I just hope these make believe test pages don't fool the end users :(_

While these tests are certainly biased, they do show that MSIE is at least progressing now (as opposed to standing completely still for years and years) with regards to standards compliance and HTML5.

And really... Would you want end users on MSIE6/7/8 or MSIE 9? For the group of users with no technical interest, sadly that is usually the choice you have.

<comment><USER19> The problem is that it isn't a choice of MSIE6/7/8 or MSIE9, it is MSIE6/7/8 AND 9. Maybe I've just been burnt one too many times, but they really should just give up. Sure, it might pass a few tests here and there, but MSIE9 will just be ANOTHER buggy web browser whose idiosyncrasies web designers will have to consider when they build someone a web site.

Anyone can make software to pass standardized test, but take my word for it, MSIE9 is just another MS browser full of wildly inconsistent renderings of simple HTML, a half baked Javascript implementation and fruity vendor specific extensions that developers will have to cater for.

MSIE6/7 and 8 aren't going anywhere soon.

<comment><USER6> _The problem is that it isn't a choice of MSIE6/7/8 or MSIE9, it is MSIE6/7/8 AND 9._

While it hasn't always been that way, at least lately (since MSIE7 and 8) Microsoft has been working hard to get rid of the older versions as well and the newer versions (while certainly not perfect) most definitly improves on the shitty standards support found in MSIE 6.

In MS's latest technet newsletter there is even a link to a paper on virtualizing older versions of MSIE so you can upgrade to something modern while retaining compatibility with older legacy apps requiring MSIE 6. [1]

So while MS can be blamed for _producing_ MSIE 6, the blame for that MSIE is _still around_ lies entirely in corporate IT and them not using the options they most definitely have for getting rid of it for mainstream use.

[1] [http://www.dabcc.com/documentlibrary/file/Solutions_for_Virt...](http://www.dabcc.com/documentlibrary/file/Solutions_for_Virtualizing_Internet_Explorer.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I strongly disagree with this HTML5 standards test from Microsoft. They have included only a small subset of the HTML5 standard, and have excluded important parts, in particular the HTML5 canvas element. As a result, Internet Explorer 9 will lead to an even more fragmented web where browsers interpret standards differently.

This is why we started the Internet Explorer 9 HTML5 canvas campaign: [http://freeciv.net/internet-explorer-html5-canvas- campaign.j...](http://freeciv.net/internet-explorer-html5-canvas-campaign.jsp)

</comment><comment><USER21> Fine, it's bias.... but I like the attitude and love the fact that a primary competing factor between vendors is how compatible with the HTML5 umbrella they are! It's win all round.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm so very confused by the chosen subset of html5 and css3, it looks like they implemented a few things and ran like 20 tests on those few things that other browsers have yet to adopt while the actual things that other browsers are accepting aren't even shown.

I really hope they IE team continues to work on putting html5 and css3 in their browser and if it turns out to be the most standards compliant browser kudos to them but this was disappointing.

</comment><comment><USER23> MSFT has a history of spouting out bs claims about its own browser superiority over others. They have recently going after Google Chrome at full stream[1]. They obviously feels threatened by the new comer. As for me, I can't wait for them to die.

[1] [http://geektechnica.com/2010/04/microsoft-continues-its- trad...](http://geektechnica.com/2010/04/microsoft-continues-its-tradition-of- misinformation-with-ie8/)

<comment><USER24> > MSFT has a history of spouting out bs claims about its own browser > superiority over others

who doesn't?

<comment><USER25> Yeah, but at least most other browser vendors merely _distort_ the truth; here Microsoft purports to do an HTML5 feature comparison, and they don't even get around to mentioning <canvas>! That's flat-out lying about what it means to be an HTML5 Web browser.

Sigh... part of me really hoped that IE 9 would finally give Windows a standards-compliant built in Web client. But perhaps something about the culture surrounding the IE team is so fundamentally broken that we'll never see such a thing short of a major Microsoft reorganization.

<comment><USER24> > Yeah, but at least most other browser vendors merely distort the truth

promotion, marketing, ads, they are not meant to tell the truth. If you want truth, use your own judgement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> "The table at the bottom of this page provides details and links to _each of the new test cases we submitted_ to each appropriate W3C working group"

Translation: cherry-picked for maximum green in their own column.

</comment><comment><USER27> ill believe it when I see it.</comment>


Ask HN: Selling a brand - <AUTHOR>

I'm in a situation some HN readers may have been through before. Last year I effectively shut down my startup - after putting in several years, it hadn't lifted off, and I decided to move on. During that time, I accumulated different forms of IP around the company name: not just the domain name, but the US trademark, all popular toplevel domains and other variants (e.g. close misspellings), social media accounts, etc.
I'm not sure what to call this collectively, so I'm calling it a "brand".
I may start another company in the future that could use this name, but since I don't have immediate plans to do so, I'm wondering how these could be sold. Certainly the complete package has much higher value, to the right buyer, than the domain name alone.
Have you been involved in the sale of such a thing before? If so, how did you go about it? Did you use a broker? (If so, can you recommend a good specific one?)
Or did you go with cold-calling specific prospects? If so, how did you identify them? Did you contact individual companies?  One thought I had was to contact VCs who might be funding in a related space.
Full details, since I know someone will ask: http://mobilewebup.com/
Cheers, Aaron <comment><USER2> [https://flippa.com/](https://flippa.com/)</comment>