Introducing Outlook.com - Modern Email for the Next Billion Mailboxes - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.office.com/b/microsoft-outlook/archive/2012/07/31/introducing-outlook-com-modern-email-for-the-next-billion-mailboxes.aspx <comment><USER2> We haven't instantly forgotten how Microsoft handles Skydrive, have we?: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4265086>

I think I'll pass on putting my email through their systems. Although I have to admit this looks way better than GMail. I hope this inspires Google to do something about their interface design.

<comment><USER3> You needn't look any farther than Hotmail to grow wary of the merits of their new service.

And there's the whole Skype brouhaha.

Microsoft have an edge over Google in that they aren't perceived to be as morally bankrupt, when it comes to privacy and protecting their users (because they earn their money elsewhere), but with the Skype criticism, that may be subject to change. It's a nice flank of attack to use against Google, though, and the video ad in the submission hits all the right notes.

<comment><USER4> Not trying to be smug, but I bet you're younger than 30, if you can say that with a straight face.

<comment><USER5> Suppose we move 20 years forward. Are we going to see this type of comment regardless of what the company would be at that time? "No way, man! I bet you're younger than 50, if you... " Do you really think that ghosts from the past need to haunt people's minds for that long regardless of how the state of the world has changed? I perceive none of MS and Google as being protective of their users or respectful of said users privacy. Nonetheless, when we speak of events that have anything to do with morals, I guess we have to take into consideration the time that has passed since those events have happened, since both the morals and the scene could have changed dramatically.

<comment><USER6> The UEFI "secure boot" thing tells me they haven't changed one bit. They are still the same company. Trust them at your own risk. You have been warned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Microsoft really doesn't care about branding: once I logged in to my new @outlook.com Inbox using Outlook.com, I was redirected to live.com where I had a single message pre-sent to me from the "Hotmail Team" welcoming me to Microsoft Live Hotmail.

<comment><USER8> Outlook's url seems to be on the live.com domain... confusing at best. Let's make a comparison of url's from the "home" view:

New Outlook (wtf): <https://bay002.mail.live.com/default.aspx>

Gmail (better, could be cleaner): <https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox>

<comment><USER9> Does the URL really matter that much? I agree it's not unimportant, but I don't think it's a big deal. The program itself is much more important

<comment><USER10> It matters from a security perspective. A bad or inconsistent URL, especially a hostname that isn't instantly recognizable, makes phishing easier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've been using Outlook by choice, well, forever. I won't bother listing all the reasons for this. It's powerful and it works well. And, if you are a programmer, you can go to town writing your own customizations with VBA.

I use Yahoo Mail online for most of my personal stuff. Out of all the online email offerings out there I have found it to be the most "polished" (if I can use that term) and outlook-like. I tried Gmail a couple of years back and just didn't do it for me. As an example, the lack of a real time preview pane was a huge deal breaker for me. Both Outlook and Yahoo Mail have this. Maybe Gmail has this now, I don't know.

The other thing about Gmail that scared the crap out of me was to watch as one of our clients had their Gmail account evaporate because their AdSense account got shut down. They were new to the platform and made a couple of dumb and innocent mistakes off the line. Google bots summarily shut-down the account with no recourse or anyone to contact. As their account got suspended so went Gmail. I'll let you venture a guess as to whether or not these people are using any Google products now.

Here's a feature I wish email clients would implement: Tabbed accounts.

I run more than one company and regularly monitor a dozen email accounts. Outlook and Yahoo Mail allow you to setup rules to deliver email from specific accounts into designated folders. With Outlook you can also choose to store the email in separate files. That's all well and fine, but the whole thing has the risk of becoming cluttered and difficult to use after a while.

There's an Outlook hack that allows you to launch multiple Outlook instances. This works very well as I can launch one instance that opens the email addresses corresponding to one business and another instance with a separate business. Having multiple monitors makes this even handier.

What would be even better is if I could do the same thing with tabs. I want one tab per business --or a user-designated category. Each tab would receive and send email from one or many email addresses. They would all be independent while having relevant sharing capabilities (copy and past, drag and drop, etc.).

It's about context switching.

With something like that I could have a single email client handle all of my business email as well as personal within one application window. That would be slick.

<comment><USER12> Gmail allows you to sign in to multiple accounts at the same time (in different tabs).

I have two pinned tabs always open in Chrome - one for personal, one for business emails. Works incredibly well for me.

<comment><USER13> How does this work? If I sign out in one tab, it signs me out in another tab, on Google Chrome. Just tested it.

<comment><USER14> I click on my account picture in the top right, then click on "Add account" and log into the other one. Presto, two accounts.

Disclaimer: I am about 99% certain this is not some weird internal Google feature (not on the gmail team, don't worry), but it's also been > 1 week since I had to go through this performance so I may have forgotten some detail.

<comment><USER15> And then when you click on some Google service it always logs you in with a wrong account. Good luck trying to add something to calendar by clicking to a link.

<comment><USER16> I assume this is hyperbole (I'm not sure what magic you're expecting...maybe something like intents where it asks you every time which account to use?), but the logic isn't complicated. It just uses the first account you logged in with. I'm usually signed in to two accounts (and have a gmail tab for each open right now), so I just sign in to the one I do my primary calendaring, etc in first.

If you really want to keep them separated, you should just use Chrome's multi user accounts or their equivalent in other browsers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "Your password can't be longer than 16 characters."

Well, it failed my test. Sorry. I never trust my emails to small hard to remember passwords. I rather trust them to very large easy to remember/type passwords. Like horses-functional-pickles

Also their capcha, I cannot figure out it, i won't spend more than 2 minutes on capcha

<comment><USER18> This threw me off as well. I thought Microsoft was supposed to be security conscious, but putting in small, arbitrary limits in places where they don't belong is not reassuring in the least.

They also make it insanely difficult to use a password manager, as the login page URL redirects from outlook.com to some randomness that's 205 characters long.

<comment><USER3> I can sympathize with it being a preview and all, but the consequence will nevertheless be that there will be a bunch of people out the who will enter <= 16-character-length passwords and forget all about them.

I mean, unless Microsoft explicitly prompt them with a reminder of sorts, when they flip the switch on a sane password length, but what are the odds of that happening?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Nice UI, very light and simple, seems to be running fast even on my netbook. I guess I will start to use my 15 year old hotmail account again, good to finally have an alternative to Gmail.

Only one thing: Microsoft, I know its really chiq and en-vogue nowadays to have some element with position:fixed; on every page, but please: don't!

There is no reason whatsoever why I would want to see all the time the titlebar. I mean, why would I want to see it? I know I am using Outlook! I know who I am! And it's not very often that I want to access the settings!

But, I guess, there is no way around it, position:fixed; is just soooo "modern".

<comment><USER20> I hate position fixed stuff. I scroll a page, then have to scroll back a few lines because what I want to read next, instead of appearing next, is hidden under a titlebar that I really don't care about.

<comment><USER21> Stylish FTFW.

It's a pain maintaining override scripts for multiple sites, but pick your battles and you can make some positive improvements.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Just tried it out and from my initial experience gotta say this isn't bad. The UI feels pretty clean and easy to read (which I always found to be an issue with gmails web interface). Doesn't look like you can use IMAP with it though so I doubt I will use it for my main email address anytime soon.

<comment><USER23> I sort of disagree. The UI is clean but things aren't where you expect them to be and it makes it confusing. For instance, I didn't know where to put the subject when I was sending my first email -- it's huge but it's weirdly placed and unintuitive. I also couldn't find the Send button at first because it's on the Nav bar -- not where I expected.

I also agree with the post below re: branding. I went to "Help" to see what they had and it took me to a windows.com page saying "This page doesn't exist" followed by "Hotmail Help". Nice.

<comment><USER24> Just wanted to say that you can use the ctrl+enter shortcut instead of pressing send, like in Outlook.

You can also tab between "to:", "subject" and "body" parts of the email by just using tab (tab twice when finished entering email addresses).

I much prefer using a keyboard than a mouse.

<comment><USER25> I switch between Outlook and Gmail and frequently find myself wondering why ctrl + enter doesn't work in Gmail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> [http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/xgjrw/we_are_the_team_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/xgjrw/we_are_the_team_behind_the_new_outlookcom_service/)

Disclosure: I work at MS, but not on this product and have no special insight into their workings.

</comment><comment><USER27> The reason Outlook is the world's most used mail client is because people are often forced to use it to access their company email. While anecdotal, I don't know a single person that uses outlook because they choose to. However, hopefully, outlook.com can introduce some innovation in the space, although, I'm skeptical as I am with most Microsoft 'innovation.'

<comment><USER28> To give a counterpoint, I not only know maybe a half dozen people who voluntarily use Outlook; I know at least two who voluntarily use Outlook _on a Mac_.

I think the fact that few _developers_ enjoy using Outlook is causing you to overgeneralize. Most people who don't care about things like whether their email is in mbox format, or who don't want to learn how to use Mutt or notmuch, find Outlook surprisingly easy to use and powerful.

I poked around on outlook.com, and I don't see anything particularly innovative, other than it looks and works nearly exactly like Outlook 2013. But I wouldn't assume its lack of anything novel dooms it to obscurity, either. Outlook, unlike Notes, is a positive brand-name in some circles. I wouldn't be surprised to see this get a relatively large amount of traction right off the bat.

<comment><USER29> Outlook on the Mac is actually a very decent client, and I prefer it over the other options.

<comment><USER30> I use Outlook 2011 on my Mac for the company Exchange email, contacts + calendaring. It's not bad at all, and Spotlight searching is very fast.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Sounds like a lot of interesting innovative features that a lot of people might use: social, quick-views, select-all-messages-from-sender..etc

I kind of have a problem with their design though. I guess it is all part of the Metro initiative which can look nice in some of their efforts (mobile) .. but here it just shouts at me something to the effect of: "I'm so new and cool and fresh that I don't need subtlety or pleasant earthy colors. Mail, People, Calendar, SKYDRIVE.. I dare you to click EVERYTHING!" Maybe I'm getting too old in my 30th year of life but that intimidates me more than it excites me.

</comment><comment><USER32> Google is asleep at the wheel. This makes them look bad. Gmail blew the doors off every other webmail client when it launched 5 years ago but it's time for a rewrite. The fact that they used Gmail mobile as their "Gmail Offline" product in Chrome tells me that the current client can't be modernized. I only hope that is what the Sparrow guys are going to be working on, because Microsoft isn't the company you would expect to be leading in HTML5 innovation.

<comment><USER33> outlook.com's DOCTYPE:

        <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
          "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

<comment><USER32> What is wrong with using xhtml?

<comment><USER34> That isn't "leading HTML5 innovation" but I got your point ;)

<comment><USER32> Ah, ok, I was talking about their use of CSS3 transitions primarily.

<comment><USER33> CSS3 is not [part of] HTML5. CSS3 is just what came after CSS2.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> cross-post from another thread because HN tends to bury things:

Wow. Very interesting. At first glance, the interface looks very mobile friendly and also very simple.

I'm incredibly impressed. The only feedback I would give is that the buttons in the top bar could stand out a bit - maybe a different shade of blue or a slight border. It wasn't immediately clear to me where 'send' was.

The ads are a bit more obtrusive than Google Mail ads, though I think that would just take a bit of getting used to.

I'm impressed as fuck, though. I can't explain how impressed I am.

</comment><comment><USER36> Precious $DIETY, take my $APPENDAGE. Please let the next version of OWA look like this.

</comment><comment><USER37> Signup captcha appears to be case sensitive (or something??). After try number 6 I give up. Nice work, Microsoft.

<comment><USER38> So I go to register at Outlook.com...

1\. Enter details with a short, simple email address. Submit the form;

2\. Sign up fails. I provided an alternative email address but not a phone number; apparently both are required for password recovery (why?), despite there being no indication both fields are required. Grudgingly give up phone number and try again;

3\. Sign up fails. Apparently my phone number isn't valid, and I have to delete the first digit (0 in the UK, to be replaced by +44) for the form to accept it. Try again;

4\. Sign up fails. For some reason the form has kept all my other details but has decided to lose the month and year of my DOB. Re-enter those details and try again;

5\. Sign up fails. I was presented with the same CAPTCHA for the first three attempts but apparently it's now changed; Enter new CAPTCHA and try again;

5\. Sign up fails. Finally, the form tells me the short, simple email address I chose is taken. There was no indication when I entered the address;

6\. Give up and forget about it.

<comment><USER39> They don't allow the password to have more than 16 characters as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I've never been a fan of the GMail web UI so this is a very refreshing change. I've been ready to make the switch away from GMail for a while so it's nice to have another option. I was seriously considering iCloud mail but I have some reservations about how committed Apple is to iCloud.com -- the Mail UI isn't terrible but it lacks features. I really need server side mail rules for example. My only reservation about OutLook is that Microsoft has so much Google envy they might do all the same things that are driving me away from GMail. At least with Apple I know how the game works. I give them money and they give me a product/service. I'm good with that arrangement.

</comment><comment><USER41> I think it will be a hard fight for mindshare, but Microsoft brings a ton to the plate. The Skype play could really gain them some ground.

As I think about it, Office was sortof like the original mashup (but applied to the desktop space). When they started integrating everything into Office (including the OS and the web browser) it started falling apart.

What I see with outlook.com is another mashup concept, but this time it is a very natural fit: the web is basically meant for this sort of thing.

And another thing: I use Skype. I am typing this on a mac, but I do have that one MS-owned property installed (Skype). This could be a vector that MS uses towards greater mindshare.

<comment><USER42> The comments on their Facebook announcement page[1] are surprisingly positive. I think it's worth remembering that while Hotmail and SkyDrive might not have 'mindshare' in Silicon Valley or even across the US, there's a large population of new and global users who have not yet formed opinions on the matter and, more importantly, are willing to try Hotmail out, especially when it's presented in a fresh and modern way like this.

[1] [https://www.facebook.com/#!/media/set/?set=a.101510045341137...](https://www.facebook.com/#!/media/set/?set=a.10151004534113721.424349.20528438720&type=1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Damn... it directly displays in Hindi language for me. I suppose their thought process is that if you have an indian IP, you must know hindi. What's more, even after I changed the language, some of the labels are still in hindi.

</comment><comment><USER44> Few posts are bashing Outlook in general but I will take it anyday over the biggest piece of shit we have at work: Lotus Notes. It is one of my biggest pain points at work.

</comment><comment><USER45> There's a blogpost on HackerNews' "best" links right now that complains that "Apple's new ads look like Microsoft made them" <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4313614>

Interestingly enough, the ads created by Microsoft touting Outlook.com don't have any of these problems the blogpost associates with Microsoft ads. In fact, the ads excites me and compels me to at least try the product.

</comment><comment><USER46> I logged in with my Microsoft account, which uses my work e-mail as the e-mail address. It happily presented me webmail for it.

That's going to confuse non-technical users. There's no indication that any replies are going to go right where it's supposed to, Google Apps...

Plus, when attempting to send, I get a captcha. Filling it out (correctly) gives me a "too many attempts" warning.

</comment><comment><USER47> Suddenly my Gmail looks cluttered and old. Bonus, I got my firstname.lastname@example.com. That's a big win. Hope they make good stuff.

</comment><comment><USER48> TL;DL: Thumbs down.

"Unsatisfactory" would be the word I'd use for the new outlook.com. Slow, terrible UI and UX, and I see no improvements on the junkmail filter at all.

I really would like to see MSFT getting better at this (or at anything, really; they are the underdog in so many categories of tech now). But they are not. I'm a Mac/Apple fan by choice. But I like competition in the market. And I do wish MSFT the best in getting it right (or somewhat right). But this is so far out there that I just don't know what they are thinking. To use the words "We think the time is right to reimagine email" is simply disingenuous -- the site didn't reimagine anything -- it looked like a re-skinned old hotmail to me in every aspect.

I will check it out again in a couple of months. Maybe they'll have time to fix enough problems that I'll change my mind then. But until that point, thumbs down.

</comment><comment><USER49> This actually makes we want to use my hotmail account a lot more. For the longest time I used hotmail for junk emails and random signups to shield my true email address. Interesting how UI/UX can completely change your attitude toward a service (I never expected to change from Gmail until right now).

</comment><comment><USER50> In terms of UI, the differences vs gmail seem trivial and possibly in the wrong direction. The three column format is identical; it is mainly cleaner because it removes useful features: inline email text preview, a prominent search box, navigation to other frequently used services, e.g. drive. On first glance sparse designs look better, but for frequently used software people tend to like the greater data density in practice. I also image that they will introduce l their own navigation bar to other services at some point, so that minor distinction would be temporary. On the hand it is far better than Microsoft's existing offering, and being able to integrate with third party social services rather than g+ is a substantial difference they should continue to run with.

<comment><USER51> There's a navigation bar to other services (click on the chevron next to the "Outlook" title). It's just less prominent and 2 clicks instead of one. Which I think is the right tradeoff, as wanting to navigate to another service isn't as common as Google would like it to be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> HN: Is this a feature or a bug?

My live id is a Gmail address. Went to Outlook.com, wanted to register but the form said 'login if you have a live id'. Did that, ended up on a very ugly hotmail-kind-of site.

Hrmpf. Went back to Outlook.com, but logged in now: The web interface lets me compose and send mails as me@gmail?

<comment><USER53> Confirmed. My Live account that I use for xbox live is my gmail account. I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to login to outlook.com with my gmail address. However I am concerned about the ability to send email from outlook.com that is sent as the name of another provider.

<comment><USER52> In general that'd be fine. The sender address can be easily spoofed anyway - smtp works that way.

The thing is, this seems to be broken by design in my world. Google should (have to check that again) publish a record that lists 'official' mail servers for GMail.

This whole setup could work just fine, even if it's a bit weird. But right now I suppose you look like a crappy imposter to any receiver AND you can never receive emails (they .. would end up in your GMail inbox of course).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I really like the way they use text in the user interface instead of graphical symbols. When Google introduced their new buttons it took some time to get used to remember which one did what.

Google has been probably quite successful in monetizing their web mail. It can be sometimes annoying for users, but I believe in the long run it is better to be using a system that has a viable business model behind it.

One thing where Microsoft could compete would be support for third party apps. I think there could be some possibilities for innovation on this area. Something that would strike a balance between security and flexibility. With GMail the options seem to be either gadgets (pretty limited) or giving full IMAP access to 3rd party apps (too much power).

</comment><comment><USER55> This looks really nice, but what's up with the URL?

[https://dub002.mail.live.com/default.aspx?id=64855&owa=1...](https://dub002.mail.live.com/default.aspx?id=64855&owa=1&owasuffix=owa%2f#!/)

Doesn't look like outlook.com to me.

<comment><USER56> looks like they haven't migrated all the boxes to the new outlook.com domain yet

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> I would hope that if they want to sway people back they'd do what gmail did to the garbage web apps around the time of its launch. I don't see anything groundbreaking in the video/screenshots. Do is it offer anything unique?

<comment><USER58> The UIs on this and even iCloud's webmail are so much better than Gmail's that I consider them functional improvements. They're clearly designed to make the most common use cases ergonomic and let you focus on the task at hand. Unlike Gmail, whose loud interface has no delineation between functional areas and bombards me with seldom used options.

When e-mail is one tab among 12 in my browser, I find this kind of focus and simplicity to be a real advantage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Starting to see a trend with Metro apps where they're sacrificing UX for candy.

The UX for this is a nightmare:

\- It's not clear that the Subject is editable (doesn't look like it's in a text box nor does the label look like a placeholder).

\- Clicking on BCC opens a CC box with a drop-down that covers the BCC field.

\- The Send button looks like a main navigation menu, where I'd expect clicking on it would navigate away from the page (and not send the email)

\- The Rich text buttons look part of the content, a light shade of grey wouldn't add any pixels but would provide separation between function and content

Back to gmail....

</comment><comment><USER60> It'd be nice if Microsoft worked on their spam technology along with upgrading the UI.

Just logged in to my @live.com account - 4814 messages in my Inbox, 17 in my Spam folder.

Guess how many in my Inbox are legit messages? None.

</comment><comment><USER61> There is currently a bug that I stumbled across that allows for spoofed emails to be sent.

If you have a Live account that has an external e-mail address Microsoft allows you to login here, without any additional authentication credentials, and actually will send e-mails using the account's original address. In my case this was my Gmail address.

Overall the requirement of Silverlight is a little annoying, but the same as usual for Microsoft. The UI itself doesn't look bad, and I actually prefer it to generic Gmail theme.

<comment><USER62> You might have already verified your Gmail when you first signed up for the Microsoft account.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> It says "Modern experience for modern browsers and devices.". Is that just an empty sentence or are they using a better engine? The paragraph after just talks about pixels and white space.

EDIT: More of the same, apparently: [http://blogs.office.com/b/microsoft- outlook/archive/2012/07/...](http://blogs.office.com/b/microsoft- outlook/archive/2012/07/31/introducing-outlook-com-modern-email-for-the-next- billion-mailboxes.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER64> People that use Outlook also tend to have more... valuable conversations in their inbox and demand more in terms of security and privacy from their mail providers. I hope that as part of courting this group of users to outlook.com, Microsoft has invested in things like S/MIME, PGP, 2FA, and other security enhancements. I haven't signed up, but can someone who has give an outline of what security features they are advertising?

</comment><comment><USER65> So I need to give my phone number to send an email or solve a captcha ?

I go for the captcha. 20 tries, no luck. Let's try audio. Impossible.

[EDIT] And now, a really funny one I just got :

      We've noticed some unusual activity in your Outlook account. To help protect you and
      everyone else, we've temporarily blocked your account.
      To unblock it, please {0}.

Well, alright, I'll {0}.

<http://i.imgur.com/auM4J.png>

</comment><comment><USER66> I just signed up and the first thing I see is a bar of bing ads selling me $500 TVs or something. On my gmail (I just checked) I don't even see an ad (does web clip count?). You'd think a billion dollar tech company can afford not to force product on me.

The second thing I see is, wow, this looks really nice.

But, that was the second thing, first I felt like I was at Best Buy. I don't have a TV and I don't even want a TV, go away!

<comment><USER67> I see at least two ads on my gmail homepage at all times. One line above the inbox, one below.

When I'm in an email, there will be one to several contextual ads (sometimes hilariously mistargeted) on the right.

Do you not see these?

<comment><USER66> No, I don't see any! I just checked my gmail, and two apps accounts. Add a screenshot? I would, but there's nothing to see here!

<comment><USER67> Do you have paid or non-profit apps accounts that are tied to the gmail? I don't see ads on my non-profit apps/gmail

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> mike-cardwell I can't see an option to disable the loading of external content. It just seems to happen by default. Am I missing something, or does it not exist?

</comment><comment><USER68> The promo video heralds it as email without 'creepy ads', but I signed up and without doing anything it displays 5 ads from restaurants in my town.

<comment><USER7> It can pull that off without reading your mail, which has been Microsoft's primary marketing complaint re Gmail.

<comment><USER69> It's still copying strings and passing them between functions, which is still a type of "reading" if you want to play by the fast and loose definitions of Microsoft's marketing teams.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> The ads at the right really bother me. Product ads and deal ads with big $ signs and "% off" feels much more intrusive than a google text ad.

</comment><comment><USER71> Finally, someone gets rid of the "Compose" button.

</comment><comment><USER72> 1- Get excited. 2- Create account. 3- Provide alternate e-mail address for security during signup 4- Login to the site. 5- See that outlook.com found out your facebook profile picture using your alternate e-mail address and started using it in outlook.com 6- Get turned off immediately. 7- Close browser, to never ever login to outlook.com, ever again

</comment><comment><USER73> Its definitely faster than the gmail interface.

<comment><USER31> I'm sorry have to disagree with this. Just signed up for a fresh, empty outlook account and every time I click on anything there is a noticeable 0.5-1 second lag not including the little slidey animations (I'll admit I AM on a rather ancient computer here at work). But at the same time I have over a gig of e-mail in my Gmail and almost every action is nearly desktop-fast (the speed with which emails come up after doing a search is faster than a file- search on windows)

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> The desktop Outlook application epitomizes everything I hate about enterprise software. I've been forced to use it by my last few employers, and outlook- induced frustration has been a frequent source of conversation among my colleagues.

If MS wants to start a new email service, the Outlook name is a sure guarantee that we won't want to use it.

</comment><comment><USER75> I tried going to outlook.com and it immediately kicked me out with a "cookies required" page. How is it sensible for any web site, anywhere, to make this the visitor's first impression? Even if a site does need cookies _somewhere_ , I think it's ridiculous to design something that requires a cookie _all the time_.

</comment><comment><USER76> I love how they give a history of webmail progress but totally understate what Gmail did for webmail and why it is so widely liked. Gmail did more than give a bigger inbox. It changed the game for web interfaces, especially webmail. Looks like Outlook is just imitating the Gmail look & feel.

</comment><comment><USER77> I find it baffling Microsoft doesn't support IMAP access to any of their e-mail properties. You're stuck with POP3 or else a webmail client when on the desktop.

They do offer Exchange Activesync for mobiles, but without EWS or IMAP you can't really complete the circle and give customers a decent email experience.

<comment><USER78> Outlook 2013 supports EAS.

<comment><USER77> Interesting, thank you! Now to wait for it to come to the Mac. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> If you are curious, this is a reskin of hotmail.com. It's still a separate codebase from the Exchange-backed OWA. Check out the preview of Office 365 and compare it to this experience, and you'll notice that the two are subtly different.

This is very interesting to see them converge the brands.

</comment><comment><USER80> Initial impressions are positive. It looks feature wise (space, the other Office apps), that's comparable to Gmail for many people. I think I'll play around with it to see if it sticks. It's nice to see some competition and MSFT stepping up and improving this. Props.

</comment><comment><USER81> This looks so much better than the Metro-ized ribbon disaster of the desktop preview that was released. It's actually looks a bit better that the new Gmail which I like as well.

The problem with M$ products of course, which makes us all very skeptical is how well it actually works.

</comment><comment><USER82> Does the new outlook.com support tags in addition to hierarchical folders? This is what I love about GMail. Plus, I generally hate the way the MS WYSIWYG editor has a live of its own and makes quoting of passages from received emails into multi-font nightmares.

</comment><comment><USER83> I just wish there was an open source project as good as GMail and maybe the new Outlook for a browser-based email you can run everywhere. Native clients are nice but they are native, so you can't take them with you (Different devices, operating systems).

</comment><comment><USER82> Does the new outlook.com support tags in addition to hierarchical folders? This is what I love about GMail. Plus, I generally hate the way the MS WYSIWYG editor has a live of its own and makes quoting of passages from received emails into multi-font nightmares.

\-- Olav

</comment><comment><USER84> I tried to send an email from Outlook.com but failed the Captcha four times. I tried the audio and thought maybe I was having a stroke because I couldn't make out a damn word.

Clean design though. I'm sure it actually sends email too. I'll try again later.

<comment><USER85> I failed the captcha twice and got locked out with the message that I could "try again later" (but still gave me another captcha to try). Awesome.

EDIT: I tried visiting outlook.com again a few minutes later and, hey, it looks like I have an account! Hope I didn't miss any important welcome steps (like, I never got to pick an outlook.com email address)

EDIT: ah, but I get the captcha again when I try to do certain things. Still haven't solved it — can't tell if I've been rate limited. I'm definitely human :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> Captcha problems aside, it actually looks pretty slick.

It's nice to be able to grab email@example.com too.

</comment><comment><USER87> The interface is currently broken in Australia where a "ninemsn" logo in the top left corner has pushed the menu bar down to obscure the top of the menu and mail listing panes. Other than that - looks like a big improvement to Hotmail.

<comment><USER88> If you do a hard refresh it should be fixed. And there's always the option of filtering it `live.com##div.c_htr` :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER89> I must really want to try this out because the signup took me 5 minutes. Between giving my real number, chosing for an availble nickname and having to retype more than 10 times the antispam code (it just wouldn't take my input???)

<comment> k-mcgrady Giving your number was optional. You could provide a second email address and security question (you had to click a link just below the email address field to use a security question instead of your number).

</comment></comment><comment><USER90> No thanks, I've had enough of Microsoft monopolies, I'm not helping them build another. As recently as the Skydrive mess they've battered the customer. I'm even moving off of gmail because Google is getting the same way.

</comment><comment><USER91> I like how in their first chalkboard mock-up "Oldmail" looks identical to Gmail.

</comment><comment><USER92> Seems nice, but unusable for using other than outlook.com addresses as I can only use their SMTP server and they give no information for setting up SPF.

That causes other servers to think that email sendt from outlook.com is spam....

</comment><comment><USER93> It's just a rebrand of Live Mail, which is just a rebrand of Hotmail. Which is a service not written by Microsoft, but which they bought.

A complete waste of time apart from the fanboys who can gloat at the Window 8 look... ;-)

</comment><comment><USER94>
        Your password can't be longer than 16 characters.

        ... we provide an inbox with ... rock solid account protection
        powered by your Microsoft account ...

Those two do not chime that well.

</comment><comment><USER95> What. An. Awesome. Video!! I wish I could (afford to) make videos like that.

<comment><USER96> Pretty sweet job considering it's advertising an e-mail app, although I was somewhat disappointed by the absence of unicorns.

</comment></comment><comment><USER97> Curious video. While sketching out Google's Gmail UI, they place a sticky over the advertisement area that says, "Creepy ads."

Yet what do I see upon logging in to Outlook.com? Crappy ads.

I'll take creepy (relevant) over crappy, thanks.

<comment><USER98> So you'll rather have Google read every email and every attachment within your inbox, track you around the web, YouTube etc to give you "relevant" ads - rather just a few ads for other MS products?

</comment></comment><comment><USER99> I created two aliases for my account and I can no longer sign-in to my account. I tried my original id, and two new aliases and nothing works. Hope I haven't lost everything in this migration!

</comment><comment><USER100> Just maxed my captcha failures and have to try again later. Either I'm going blind, I'm dumb, or their captcha is broken. Regardless, I hate captcha's -- there has to be a better way.

<comment><USER44> Every form if using a capcha should have another checkbox saying "I cannot figure out this stupid capcha and hence I am/can not going forward with this form. You lost a potential customer"

</comment></comment><comment><USER101> 'Your password can't be longer than 16 characters.'

The password requirement description only shows '8-character minimum; case sensitive'.

Disappointing. And apparently no 2-factor authentication either … :(

</comment><comment><USER102> I like the new integration with the social networks, and the UI theme. However, I think the UI could benefit from more spacing between items, as it feels very cluttered.

</comment><comment><USER103> Finally, an alternative to GMail. The only problem is hundreds of different one-time use websites that are registered to that email and send a ton of "spammy" mails.

</comment><comment><USER104> So, instead of "creepy ads" along the right of the window ("Welcome to Outlook.com", 0:12), we get the exact same creepy ads along the right of the window?

</comment><comment><USER105> More interesting that this is a Microsoft project and they are hosting their videos from YouTube. Haven't they built their own video streaming service?

<comment><USER106> Why should they? It is good that they are embracing youtube rather than try to start promoting something of their own.

</comment></comment><comment><USER107> Seems to be up and down like a yoyo.

Also, there's an issue displaying correctly in Chrome on a Mac. I suppose that's not MS's favourite software/hardware combo though.

</comment><comment><USER108> I'm just excited that I got a 4 character username!

</comment><comment><USER109> I haven't used my microsoft ID in a while - open it up now and my profile picture is pornographic. Interesting welcome to a new service.

</comment><comment><USER110> I was happy to see the interface and tried to sign up. Outlook.com would not let me set my password bigger than 16 characters. wtf?

</comment><comment><USER111> The only compelling feature for me on this is the Skype integration. I would love to use GTalk/Hangout if only more people use it.

</comment><comment><USER112> Interesting to note that outlook.com considers firstname.lastname@example.com to be a different account to firstname.lastname@example.com, unlike gmail

</comment><comment><USER113> I don't understand... Why implement picture slideshow using Silverlight? I thought Microsft was abandoning this piece of tech.

</comment><comment><USER114> It is terribly slow here in India. I agree, Gmail UI is pathetic. But it win solely because of its speed, almost anywhere.

</comment><comment> brown9-2 This preview features screenshots that you can not zoom in on or open the full version. That seems a bit self-defeating.

</comment><comment><USER115> Slightly OT - Office 365 is one of the worst services to setup I've ever tried. I couldn't recommend for my clients.

</comment><comment><USER116> Looks seriously ugly in Firefox. Microsoft MUST embrace other browsers like FF and Chrome to succeed and survive.

</comment><comment><USER117> "we remimagined email"..."there are 30% more emails visible."

Doesn't sound like a "reimagination". But the visuals are nice

</comment><comment><USER118> I don't see any reason as of yet to go back to my HoTmail. It still looks the same in the new outlook.com.

</comment><comment><USER119> I got a 403 -- Forbidden from the corporate firewall.

I thought microsoft made corporate-friendly products. Must try harder!

</comment><comment><USER120> _And there are no display ads or large search boxes that take up extra space_

I am wondering what this refers to :)

</comment><comment><USER121> Wow. I love how they baked Skype right into Outlook.com. A great use of an expensive acquisition.

</comment><comment><USER122> Just tried drag and drop attachments, and no joy. That's a deal breaker for me. Sorry msoft.

</comment><comment><USER123> i think microsoft is making a slight comeback, this is not groundbreaking, but it seems to tie together several of their products and make them more cohesive. i see somewhat of a strategy emerging here which is more like the microsoft of old.

</comment><comment><USER124> So, I think the interesting thing here is that it does not seem to work at all with IE8.

</comment><comment><USER125> Totally broken in Opera. Fail.

</comment><comment><USER126> Wow, this is really nice. It even works in IE8, Gmail no longer works for me in IE8

</comment><comment><USER69> Besides the Metro thing, what's so modern/different about this versus Hotmail?

<comment><USER106> The integration with other services like Facebook, Twitter, I believe?

<comment><USER69> Can't it be Hotmail v2? There looks to be vestiges of Hotmail/Live Mail everywhere. So, a better question is: is this just added features and a reskinning on top of Hotmail?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER127> wow - it looks fantastic - totally stripped down to the minimal needs and everything is fast (try search).

Nice work again, Microsoft. Its almost sort of a trend now (Surface, Azure VMs) - has Microsoft got its act together?

</comment><comment><USER128> It's funny that microsoft uses youtube for their video demos in their blogs!

</comment><comment><USER129> "Your password can't be longer than 16 characters." Is this from Hotmail?

</comment><comment><USER130> Is this just a simplified Hotmail? It seems like mostly CSS tweaks. No?

</comment><comment><USER131> So: Email integrated with social network feeds? That's kinda cool.

</comment><comment><USER132> i am reading lot of comments about not to trust Microsoft. Am ready to waste time to read the problems/issues, common people faced while using Microsoft products.

</comment><comment><USER133> Why do the need to ways to verify that it's me. one is not enough!!

Cancel :)

</comment><comment><USER134> "Your password can't be longer than 16 characters." really?

</comment><comment><USER135> Anything is an improvement to Outlook Web Access

</comment><comment><USER136> The comments on that article looks bogus...

</comment><comment><USER137> No POP/IMAP. No forwarding. No thsnks.

</comment><comment><USER138> Does it still do top quoting?

<comment><USER138> Oh dearie, it basically elevated top quoting into a design principle, showing a "conversation view" with the newest message on top (twitter-like). It seems the era of replying to individual bits and pieces of an email is over -- or even in general, long form email writing is a thing of the past.

</comment></comment><comment><USER139> still super messy.. switches to hotmail screens in some of the settings pages.

</comment><comment><USER140> How is this innovative or modern? They don't even sprite their icons. Microsoft: don't waste my time.

</comment><comment><USER141> seem to be gmail with a flat template, with a bit of sparrow style.

</comment><comment><USER142> oh dear. i. actually. like. this.

Sigh ...

</comment><comment><USER143> is anyone else having trouble with the captcha?

<comment><USER144> Lot's of trouble. Had to validate my account by having them send me a code number via phone and then typing it into their page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER123> wait a minute, no support for imap?

</comment><comment><USER145> It's like they forced Facebook and an email client to mate.</comment>


Earth 100M years from now - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGcDed4xVD4&NR=1

<comment><USER2> This has nothing to do with Google Maps, it's just a video about how the earth's surface looked from 500 million years ago to today and how someone thinks it will look in 100 million years. Their prediction seems to be today's map with lots of flooded areas, so maybe this is some kind of global warming propaganda.

<comment><USER3> Am I missing something? Who said anything about google maps?

<comment><USER2> The title was originally Google Maps 100M years from now</comment></comment></comment>


Twitter Announces Flight, an Annual Mobile Developer Conference - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/09/10/twitter-announces-flight-an-annual-mobile-developer-conference/

<comment><USER2> Not to be confused with Twitter Flight, an event-driven UI framework: [http://flightjs.github.io/](http://flightjs.github.io/)</comment>


An Unbreakable Code? - <AUTHOR> http://www.developer.com/tech/article.php/742151

<comment><USER2> It's just a one time pad with a novel key distribution system, where instead of directly sharing the key, you share the information necessary to extract the key from a random stream. In addition to not introucing any new security advantages, it brings in a potential weakness - what if the source of random numbers isn't as random as the designer thinks? Someone could potentially retrieve the key without having access to the key extraction information...

<comment><USER3> It's slightly better than a one time pad, in that a finite-length key (namely, a time offset) could transmit an infinite-length message.

Of course, the assumptions required are still completely unrealistic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is kind of silly ...

It's basically just a one-time-pad, with a magical shared pad that can't be intercepted. They just assume away all the problems with OTPs.

</comment><comment><USER5> I encourage the author to read Cryptonomicon :-)</comment>


Starship Update - <AUTHOR> https://www.spacex.com/webcast?d=20190928 <comment><USER2> I do find this to be actually legendary. At a target rate of about one per month, he is set to produce stainless steel, rapidly reusable, 150-ton-capable Mars transports. And is doing this using currently "about 5%" of the resources of his own commercially built satellite launch company, grown from scratch in a decade or so and out-performing every other nations satellite launch programs - by a large margin.

His presentation is noticeably a little self-concious, but not so much as to obscure his enjoyment to be standing in front of the first massive shimmering yet wielded and dented together rocket ship, which is due to demonstrate lift off and landing in a month or so.

<comment><USER3> I think he's beating even his own expectations with SpaceX. This company is just wildly successful in reaching seemingly impossible goals that they keep setting for themselves.

I think it mainly shows just how ineffective and inept the established players have become. The companies and organizations that got us to the moon 50 years ago still exist but seem to have lost a lot of their ability to get things done.

Now that other countries are landing on the moon, the pressure is on to deliver the next persons to the moon and ultimately to Mars. Working backwards from that goal and the goal of going to Mars, Elon Musk has done what Nasa has not been able to get done for decades at a fraction of the budget they've consumed not getting there; or even deciding to go there. Better still, he's turned that into a profitable company.

<comment><USER4> Do you think this is because the people at SpaceX are incredibly motivated by what they are working on, because of the inspiring leadership of Elon Musk, because they actually have enough money/funding, because of some unique agile way of working that SpaceX has developed, because they don't have to deal with (or have found a way to deal with) as much stifling regulation, or some combination of all of the above?

I am genuinely trying to understand it as an outsider to SpaceX. It seems like either SpaceX has figured out a formula for organizational success that we all need to learn from, or it also seems like there's a possibility something else is going on. I really can't tell.

EDIT: If anyone has any books or reading material on this topic, please share!

<comment><USER5> I don't think money is the issue. NASA has a much larger budget than SpaceX, courtesy of taxpayers. But NASA is a government agency, with more red tape and bureaucracy than necessary. SpaceX doesn't have to go through a 6 months approval process to order a part.

SpaceX also benefits from a constant, unbroken vision: develop cheap, reusable rockets -> lower launch costs -> build a spaceship to go to Mars. That's roughly the plan, and they've stuck to it since their founding. NASA, meanwhile, sees every new administration flip the table and change the mission, because every president wants to have their Kennedy "We choose to go to the Moon" moment". This makes long term planning impossible, and budgets are cut when Congress gets impatient.

NASA is still riding on the coattails of the Apollo program, but it takes more than that to inspire people to work for you. No doubt that NASA remains a desirable employer full of bright and motivated people eager to contribute to the larger goal, but NASA just doesn't have this "it" factor anymore. If you asked someone on the street what NASA is doing back in 1970, they would say "send people to the Moon". But today? NASA is involved in a plethora of projects, from the Mars rovers to aeronautics to climate change monitoring, which is nice, to be sure, but also sucks time and resources from the kind of "Moonshot projects" that SpaceX and other private actors are working on.

<comment><USER6> NASA is basically a jobs program at this point. Congress keeps funding it primarily as a way to direct federal money to certain states. There's no vision.

There are lots of good people at NASA and they manage to do some great work, but they could do much more with the budget they have if they weren't subject to the political whims of two branches of government.

ESA/Ariane are in a similar situation. They rejected reusable rockets a couple of years ago explicitly because they were afraid of the effect it would have on the jobs on their production line--the calculus is purely political, and jobs won out over not being left behind with an overpriced single-use launch platform. To their credit they recently walked that back and are now developing a reusable launch platform.

<comment><USER7> Hit the nail on the head. If Starship/Superheavy succeeds the contrast will be stark, with the relative inefficiency of ESA/NASA making them look like employment schemes that do space as a side-effect. If they care about remaining relevant in rocketry both organisations need to wake up, smell the coffee and start disrupting themselves before SpaceX becomes the only game in town (ESA efforts notwithstanding). This is very much what I would love to see, it's 2019 and we should have at least a moonbase by now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "One of the really interesting interesting things to contemplate is the total mass to orbit capability of a large reusable system where you have a significant fleet in operation. If you've got something like Starship where you've got maybe 150 tons capable to orbit and the ship can fly, is capable of say theoretically flying four times a day but you know they call it like 75 percent uptime so theoretical three times a day, three hundred sixty-five days a year. So that's like about a thousand flights a year for the ship. The booster can do a lot more than that. This is obviously max theoretical. You've got, you know, 150 tons that service, 150,000 tons to orbit per year per ship. If you've got say ten ships you'd have [...] one and a half million tons to orbit per year. Twenty ships you've got three million tons to orbit per year. I think the total rest of world capacity, if you take all rockets on earth including Falcon, the total capacity to orbit I think is around two to three hundred tons currently. Total Earth capacity to orbit is about two to three hundred tons if all rockets launched at max rate. So we're talking about something that is with a fleet of starships a thousand times more than all earth capacity combined. All other rockets combined would be 0.1% including ours."

How is this not massively disruptive to the entire space launch industry?

<comment><USER9> Isn't space launch already demand constrained? SpaceX has flown 9 times this year, with a few dozen undated upcoming missions listed as well [0]. He's talking about being able to do tens of thousands of launches per year, but who's going to pay for it? If almost no-one is paying to put a few tons into orbit now, where is the demand for millions of tons a year going to come from?

[0] [https://www.spacex.com/missions](https://www.spacex.com/missions)

<comment><USER10> I think you would be firmly in "creating completely new markets" territory at that point. It would be like trying to imagine what one would need 1000x as many transistors for, at the dawn of semiconductors. The world certainly wasn't buying that many vacuum tubes, was it?

From my perspective, these are the big ones in the near term: 1) LEO satellite internet. Fixes the lag issues with GEO orbits, making space internet directly competitive for some applications. 2) Tourism: I would certainly pay a very pretty penny indeed to see the earth from space.

Longer term: 3) Global sun shade or other system for preventing global climate catastrophe. In 30 years I think we'll be talking a lot about this. 4) Resource extraction, which otherwise doesn't make sense with expensive rockets. 5) Self sustaining mars base. Still can't figure out what the economic incentive is for this. It will cost a lot of money for what return exactly?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "We could see people flying next year".

O_O

This is "Elon Time" at its best, but worth keeping in mind how fast Starship development has actually gone. Elon Time is becoming more realistic.

<comment><USER12> I have not seen the presentation yet. Still, I am willing to bet anyone a non- trivial amount of money that we do not see people flying next year.

<comment><USER13> Well, crewed Dragon was supposed to fly this summer, then this fall, but will probably slip to 2020.

The Boeing Starliner was supposed to fly uncrewed in 2018, then October 2019, and now Boeing is shipping it to the launch site but not giving a date.

<comment><USER14> Right, and in response to the parent, a more interesting bet may be whether crewed Dragon flies first or a crewed starship flies first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Musk said at the start of his presentation that the magnitude of earth's gravity is such that we are right on the cusp of rocket flight possibility. If the magnitude were a little more, rocket flight would be impossible. If it were a bit less, it would all be a lot easier.

Can anyone expand on that, assuming it's the truth..

<comment><USER16> Ok so doing super-approximate maths:

A fully fueled and loaded Saturn V weighs about 3,000,000 Kg, and has a payload of about 40,000 Kg to the moon.

So that means once you've put all the bits of the rocket together that collectively give you sufficient thrust to get you to the moon, you've only got about 1.3% left for actual payload.

S if earth's gravity had been ~1.3% stronger, then the weight of the "getting us there" bits of the rocket would have left no room for payload. Any more gravity, and we wouldn't even be getting to the moon.

Equally, if the earth's gravity had been 1.3% weaker, we could have doubled our payload to the moon (or done things way easier).

Contrast that with a Boeing 747 which has 50% of total mass as payload, and so is relatively insensitive to changes in gravity.

<comment><USER17> I recently realized that if we got in Jupiter's gravity well we could probably never escape it again. Someone correct me if I'm wrong. The thought made me feel really uneasy.

<comment><USER18> If that were true, it would be impossible to leave the solar system, since everything is currently in the Sun's gravity well, and the Sun is larger than Jupiter. But we have sent probes outside the solar system (did they fully leave the Sun's gravity well yet though? Not sure)

<comment><USER19> But we didn't send the probes from the Sun.

<comment><USER20> Plus I don't think it got its velocity from Earth, but by using gravity assists to steal momentum from other planets (which, if you don't know how that works, do yourself a favor and read the wikipedia page, it's pretty great).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I didn't notice this being mentioned in the webcast or in any of the follow-up articles I've read on the presentation: while the timelines for 6-months-to- orbit seem insane, I believe the underlying drive for an aggressive schedule here largely derives from Mars launch windows. [1]

We have a launch window to Mars open from July 2020 - September 2020, the tail end of which is almost exactly one year away. Starship will have to be orbit capable well before this window, such that the flight and maneuvering characteristics are understood well enough to reasonably justify taking a crack or two at an unmanned cargo Mars mission within the 2020 window. Musk might not have explicitly mentioned it in the presentation, but I would bet that the Starship teams are internally being driven to these targets.

FTA, Musk is quoted in 2017, saying SpaceX was targeting uncrewed Mars missions in 2022, but given his ambitions and depending on the progress of the Starship/Super Heavy, I can see them actually aiming for 2020 such that any failures would still guarantee a path to making the 2022 window.

All of this is my own amateur speculation, would love to hear corrections or other ideas.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration_of_Mars#Launch_win...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration_of_Mars#Launch_windows)

<comment><USER22> I don't think the schedule is aggressive enough for a 2020 Mars launch with the Starship.

It is likely that Starship will be capable by then, but the wow factor is missing. I don't think an interesting mission would be ready. Don't forget that Musk's Tesla was already launched to "Mars". So it would be safer and just as impactful to have an interesting mission planned using Falcon Heavy. The only mission I can think of which might be viable is Starship landing on Mars. However I don't think SpaceX would have proven Starship enough to get approval for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The most surprising thing to me was nixing the transpiration cooling with methane and switching back to heat shielding tiles for half of it.

<comment><USER11> It was such a cool idea, but I imagine it was going to be very hard to make it work.

<comment><USER23> Reusable heat shielding tiles are also very hard.

<comment><USER24> Could it be easier compared to other rockets/shuttle since the space ship is made out of steel?

<comment><USER25> It makes it a bit easier because as Elon mentioned the steel structure can get much hotter without it being an issue. This makes it easier to connect the tiles directly to the ship.

However still the primary problem is still to have some surface that can handle the heat without deterioration over multiple flights.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A couple of takeaways for me:

1\. oldspace and its supporters, if they have a clue, should be even more terrified than before by the scale of the vision. Even if only a percentage is achieved the disruption should be shattering

2\. the unspoken juxtaposition between Musk on the one hand - on the face of it unpolished and light-hearted to the point of flippancy about a topic no less grand than the destiny of humanity, yet in reality visionary, fiercely determined and stunningly successful, and proceeding with at least as stated altruistic goals; and oldspace on the other - polished, solemn, pompous, claiming the sole capability and privilege to act as gatekeepers to space, yet in reality outdated, inefficient, outclassed, and acting like a resentful dog- in-the-manger in response to SpaceX. There's something tragicomic, almost Shakespearean about it all

<comment><USER22> I don't think any of "oldspace" are terrified by the Starship. I would bet they are almost as excited as SpaceX.

SpaceX's improved launch capabilities will not kill off "oldspace" companies. Mainly because access to space is a national/military security issue. The launch providers for China, Russia, India, and the EU will continue to exist, if only because those entities don't want to be beholden to SpaceX for their access to space.

If anything I would expect an increase in funding to some of those "oldspace" launch providers as countries try to catch up with SpaceX's technology.

<comment><USER7> > I don't think any of "oldspace" are terrified by the Starship. I would bet > they are almost as excited as SpaceX.

Not so sure about that - ESA's saltiness suggests they are not thrilled: 'Asked about how the Ariane 5 compares to lower-cost alternatives on the market today, such as SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, Stefano Bianchi, Head of ESA Launchers Development Department, responded with a question of his own. "Are you buying a Mercedes because it is cheap?"

Ranzo, sitting nearby, chimed in and referenced the India-based maker of the world's least expensive car. As he put it, "We don't sell a Tata."'

You are correct that it won't kill off oldspace, but the pressure to change will be inexorable: it's not difficult to foresee a scenario where commercial work all goes to SpaceX, apart from situations where companies are forced to use a national provider; but even then, those companies will thus be forced to eat the cost of subsidising an inefficient provider, which will lower their profits making them less competitive, etc. There could be a similar pressure when one considers military payloads, i.e., the cheapness of launching with SpaceX offers the US a game changing capability to put materiel in orbit.

[https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/07/as-the-spacex- steamr...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/07/as-the-spacex-steamroller- surges-european-rocket-industry-vows-to-resist/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Is there a transcript somewhere?

<comment><USER27> Sure, go to the video on Youtube [0], click the three dots menu on the right hand side below the video and open the transcript from there. This loads all of it at once, so you can even search through it with your browser's in-page search function! Clicking a line in the transcript jumps to the correct position in the video.

It might be the most amazing feature that Youtube has.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOpMrVnjYeY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOpMrVnjYeY)

<comment><USER26> There is a transcript that youtube provides.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It looks like something from Fallout or Rocketeer ... the space nerd in me is disappointed at the "look" but I really really hope it works.

</comment><comment><USER29> SpaceX always beats my expectations, unlike Tesla.

</comment><comment><USER30> It's time for Elon to step down as the face of SpaceX. He ruins every presentation he's involved in. I can't imagine how awkward it was to be there in person and be help prisoner by a completely unprepared, rambling, lazy talk for over an hour.

<comment><USER31> You're not the target audience for this presentation. It's goal was to provide an information dump for the people who have been closely following the project, and it achieved that extremely well.

It's not aimed at the kind of person who prefers a flashy presentation over substance, which in this case is extremely rapid progress towards the most capable rocket humanity has ever built.

<comment><USER32> Considering the amount of time he spent explaining rudimentary spaceflight concepts (getting to LEO is about speed not altitude, who knew?), I wasn't sure how technical this was going to be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> What a painful presentation to watch. Musk really needs to either work on his public speech or delegate them to someone comfortable.

His product reveals could be so much more impactful and inspiring did he not jump between points he's trying to make and stutter his way through the entire presentation.

<comment><USER34> You just described what makes him seem genuine and direct. He's not the best of speakers, but his cult following can be partly attributed to his quaint style of communication.

<comment><USER6> Many years ago I heard a best-selling nonfiction[1] author speak who had a similarly unpolished speaking style. A friend asked me afterwards if his speaking made me think less of him, and I had the same reaction as you: to the contrary, it seemed more genuine.

[1] There have since been allegations that he mixed a nontrivial amount of fiction in with his nonfiction.</comment></comment></comment>


How is this patent active? US9804672B2 - <AUTHOR> https://patents.google.com/patent/US9804672?oq=US9804672B2
Total layman when it comes to IP - I came across this ridiculously broad patent describing Human-computer user interaction.  Trivia - If anyone remembers that huge mechanical monstrosity the Novint Falcon, it's describing some aspects of that.  It appears Facebook acquired this patent as well, and this dates back to 2010.
The patent is very long and describes 50 - 100 examples of how this applicable, for example there is a wall of text describing how "Throwing" could be achieved.
As the patent goes on, it is literally listing nearly every interaction possible in any game/simulation.
My question is, how enforceable is this patent?  My layman's instincts tell me that unless you are achieving desired effect using the hardware described, which in this case, seems to be the novint falcon, then you should be good.  Then again, patent trolls are a thing.  But my understand is that you can't patent an "end" only the "means" to the end.  And if simulating all these interactions is the end, the only thing Facebook could sue on is if you copied their specific hardware solution.
Feel free to point out my ignorant reading of this, perhaps I focused on the forest and missed the trees. <comment><USER2> I can only guess: It is likely judges do not know what they are adjudicating. Another bad case is a patent on driving I2C-enabled RGB LEDs via I2C. It's a patent on using a product as intended. It's like patenting the act of using a brake with a hydraulic line to stop a car.

The guy goes around trolling makers with it and forcing people to pay huge royalties.

<comment><USER3> Judges don't grant patents, patent examiners do. AFAICT it doesn't seem this patent has been litigated in court.

I went to law school[1] with several patent examiners. Some of them not only share the belief that these patents are B.S., they're often programmers and Free Software advocates. Nonetheless, they've _approved_ patents like these because their job is to adhere to the interpretive guidelines written by Patent Office lawyers, and to be as fair and consistent as possible.

Judges can sometimes be equally knowledgable, though it's worth pointing out that Federal judges of general jurisdiction tend to have a more restrictive view of both patentability and copyrightability. Whereas judges that spend more time adjudicating these disputes tend to hold a more expansive view. Sometimes subject matter experience is a bad thing.

There's a widespread strain of legal and economic thought that believes using property rights as a vehicle for the exchange of inventions and creative works is almost always the most economically efficient method of facilitating innovation and creativity. If you hold this belief, you'll tend to take a very expansive view of patentability and copyrightability, have a very strict interpretation of obviousness (patents) and originality (copyrights), and will significantly discount the apparent costs these legal regimes impose; you're convinced that you're actually lowering costs and expanding markets, but that this benefit isn't readily discernible. So if you've ever wondered why an examiner or judge might permit patenting a swing, it may be because they actually believed the world would be better off for it. It sounds crazy, I know, but this type of thinking exists, these people are sincere believers, and they have mountains of "research" to back up their views.

Hackers just aren't usually exposed to such views because for better or worse, and particularly in the context of patents and copyrights, we live and work in an echo chamber. Unfortunately, the views of lawyers and legal scholars in our community aren't representative of even mainline legal opinion, let alone the opinions of the people I just described. Ever wonder why Lawrence Lessig has an abysmal record at winning and predicting cases, especially for big Supreme Court cases?

[1] I've never practiced law, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> My wife is an attorney at an appellate court and tells me she doesn't think a high majority of judges even know what a PDF is.

I'm guessing this patent is put there to give a big company like Facebook some basic legal framework to flex their muscles if ever needed; but I can't see this being enforced very easily. Maybe that's wishful thinking on my part though.

<comment><USER3> Probably not, but general jurisdiction judges do know what excessive litigation looks like, and if you told them that PDFs are a pervasive and, presently, largely royalty-free mechanism for exchanging documents, they'll be able to predict fairly well the consequences an expansive or restrictive interpretive view might have regarding future litigation. General jurisdiction judges are so overloaded with cases that they tend to be biased against legal interpretations that might increase litigation, unless they have a strong opinion on a particular issue. And because their cases are of relatively diverse subject matter, they don't tend to become invested in the same legal nuances as IP lawyers and scholars do; they'll prefer simpler, more easily applied rules.

On the other hand, the legal and economic strain of thought I described has been growing for quite some time, especially wrt to copyright (e.g. copyrightability of the bat mobile, which seemed inevitable to me, but was clearly a break with precedent). Liberal patentability hasn't gone mainstream in the same way, if only because the specter of patent trolls is so obvious, whereas we've all become inured to the reality of perpetual copyrights and a nearly non-existent public domain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's my understanding that in a patent the only text that matters are the claims.

This patent has just 4 claims, 3 of which are dependent on claim 1. Claim 1 describes simulated breathing in a virtual environment.

It's not quite the all encompassing patent you thought it was...</comment>


Ask HN: Is Pinboard abandonware? - <AUTHOR> I've been a long-time Pinboard user but noticed a potential problem with the archiving feature. I sent a support request on April 12th but haven't heard anything back. I just sent another now, but noticed that their Blog is now offline.
The problem I'm having is that Pinboard's crawler is overwriting previously cached copies with 500/40x errors if the page is now offline. I need to know if they keep historical copies or the "last known good" version and if not, sadly need to migrate everything yet again to a new system.
If anyone has any info I would very much appreciate it. I know idlewords is an HN user too so I figured this site was my next best place to look. <comment><USER2> Your support request is aging in the support cellar, and will be answered!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!</comment></comment>


LendingClub CEO Resigns Following Loan Sales Review - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/lendingclub-ceo-resigns-over-sales-review-1462795070 <comment><USER2> Lending Club is building a two-sided marketplace, which is always hard. I've been lending on the platform for almost 3 years now. It was always difficult for me to find loans that met my criteria. Borrowers have 14 days to get their loans funded by lenders and loans were typically funded by lenders within 1 day. So lenders were outnumbering borrowers.

Starting in January this year, however, loans started taking longer and longer to fund. Recently, I've seen them timing out. This means that in the marketplace, the balance shifted and borrowers outnumbered lenders. Another indication that Lending Club was experiencing a shortage of lenders: they began offering bonuses up to $2,000 for new accounts.

Finally, this earnings release indicates that loan originations, while still growing, has slowed considerably. That is the formal evidence confirming a significant slowdown in new lenders.

I suspect that there was a lot of pressure internally for sales personnel to bring in new capital through either retail of commercial lenders (they've served both markets for quite a while), and, someone or some group got too aggressive. Whether LaPlanche knew and ok'd the deal, or whether he was just 'person in charge' and has to take the fall, I don't know. But this will be a major wound. It's really sad that it is self-inflicted.

<comment><USER3> I refinanced two credit cards for what I thought was a large amount ($9k + I included the LC fees) and I was honestly skeptical that it would even get funded.

It was funded by a single investor in less than two hours.

I've often thought about investing in the platform but I've always been skeptical of the ability to make consistent returns on it - it seems like a platform where unless you have significant capital invested, one or two defaults above what you expect and you could be wiped out.

<comment><USER2> It is important to lend to many borrowers. Lending Club recommends at least 100. That normalizes the risk. My returns have been consistently 9.5-10.5%, net of defaults.

I started with an experiment: $2,500 loaned $25 at a time to 100 borrowers. Lending Club forecasts the default rate based on their own credit rating. It went well and the actual return was about 1% higher than they forecast.

<comment><USER4> I am literally doing the same thing right now, with my tax returns.. Anxious for the end of this month, when the first payments are due..

<comment><USER5> Take my advice ... forget about it for a while, and check back in in a few months :) Generally speaking, first payments tend to come in ... it's not until later that lates and defaults happen ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I lend on Prosper but I am worried that there are borrowers who have figured out how to game the system. If you look at the borrower applications they are clearly not filled out by real people. When I first started lending there in 2007 you could tell it was a real person applying for the loan because the application form contained more information about the borrower and they actually answered questions. It seems pretty sketchy to me but I haven't pulled my money out just yet.

<comment><USER7> > [... I am worried that there are borrowers who have figured out how to game > the system]

I thought this as well, but on LendingClub.

Out of all of my notes that have defaulted, they all seem to share the same pattern:

They make about 4 perfectly on-time payments then never make another payment again.

I believe the loans were taken out by real people, but I feel like they were people who knew that they were ultimately going to file for bankruptcy anyway, so they figured they might as well grab some quick cash before doing so. This is just my guess. It just seems too odd that all of my defaulted notes look pretty much the same. Maybe the 4 on-time payments were done to avoid any claims of fraudulent intent?

My fear was that there was some Reddit thread or something which was instructing people on how to do this.

They could have done the same thing with a credit card, but with LendingClub, you end up with actual cash, and I bet it's easier to get a loan funded on LendingClub than it is to apply for a credit card of the same amount.

[EDIT]: To add, apparently, if someone obtains a loan immediately before filing for bankruptcy, the creditor can move to basically have the loan un- wipable if they can prove that the loan was taken after the person already knew they were going to file for bankruptcy. However, I doubt LendingClub goes through this trouble for each note, which could make the platform more attractive for this type of fraud.

<comment><USER8> Why pay back some of the money at all then? If you are knowingly scamming the system (and the lender) you don't take out a $2,000 loan, just to pay back $400 before declaring bankruptcy.

<comment><USER7> My guess is to avoid the possibility of the creditor claiming that you took out the loan after already knowing that you were going to declare bankruptcy.

The 4 on-time payments make it look like you tried to pay the loan back but just couldn't afford it.

If no payments were made at all, it would be easier to prove that there was intentional fraud. If such is proven, it may be impossible to wipe the loan during bankruptcy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > The Wall Street Journal reported last month that Jefferies was working with > the company on a sale of bonds backed by LendingClub loans to less > creditworthy borrowers.

Ah! So we're back in the derivatives market. Buy up crap, package and obfuscate it, then sell it off as "high quality" crap to investors desperate for yield.

<comment><USER10> There are no derivatives here. Jefferies was going to sell bonds backed by the loans. The payments on the loans would effectively flow directly to the bondholders.

A derivative (e.g. a CDS) would be more like a side bet between two (possibly unrelated) parties based on the performance of those bonds.

<comment><USER11> This is actually a pretty typical example of a derivative. You can buy these bonds to get exposure to the loans without having to worry about managing them directly.

A CDS would be a derivative on a derivative. It would allow you to get exposure to these bonds without worrying about being long or short a particular issue.

<comment><USER12> By that logic, S&P 500 ETFs would be 'derivatives' too.

(They're not.)

<comment><USER13> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset- backed_security](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset-backed_security)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Other platforms, such as Prosper Marketplace Inc., Avant Inc., or On Deck > Capital Inc. have reported either slowing investor demand for loans or a > drop in lending volume this year, the result of investors' skepticism of > future returns on online loans and because they see greater opportunity in > other bonds.

So where is the smart money going? Lendingclub and Prosper have had reasonable returns for me, and seem like a good way to diversify my investments a bit.

<comment><USER15> Theoretically, this is the best time for small investors to buy LC loans. The hedge funds have backed out, so you can get better yield loans for much more competitive pricing. This is unless you think the institutional investors know something you don't, as opposed to just rebalancing their portfolios.

<comment><USER14> I'm not very strong on finance at all, but if the hedge funds have pulled their money out of the Lendingclub platform then shouldn't that reduce the amount of money that Lendingclub has to lend and therefore drive up the cost of taking a loan from them, assuming demand for their loans hasn't dropped as well? Like a basic supply and demand thing?

<comment><USER16> No loans just don't get funded

<comment><USER17> Yeah. The Lending Club loan would still need to compete in the broader market, which means that there is a point where the borrower would opt to not take the more expensive loan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> An interesting tidbit embedded in the news is that $22mm in loans was sold to a single investor - the model they talk about on the website is peer to peer, but this appears more peer-to-institutional-buyer (which I always kind of suspected, but this clarifies it)...

An article on the trend: [http://qz.com/355848/wall-street-is-hogging-the- peer-to-peer...](http://qz.com/355848/wall-street-is-hogging-the-peer-to-peer- lending-market/)

<comment><USER14> I think a lot of their volume is peer-to-peer, though, and there's nothing saying this $22m was from an institution and not a rich individual (though an institution seems more likely). I imagine this is more of a case of "I have a lot more money than your normal customer so I want special treatment" and Lendingclub then abusing that to take advantage of the investor. I wonder if the investor had taken their $22m to the automated web platform and setup their investment criteria if this would never have occurred.

<comment><USER19> I think you're dramatically underestimating the degree to which institutional investors are involved in peer-to-peer. There are entire software startups selling analysis software to hedge funds for peer-to-peer lending.

It almost certainly was not a single wealthy individual.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I stopped investing in lendingclub once I realized the taxes on my gains. Interest is basically counted as income, which makes capital gains in stocks much more attractive.

What I did notice that I was pretty bad at picking notes. Lots of handpicked ones flopped and a lot of random/automatic ones are still going.

<comment><USER20> You can invest in Lending Club via a tax deferred account like an IRA. You won't be taxed on gains that way.

Agree that handpicking is a waste of time. Let the autoinvest feature work for you.

<comment><USER21> You can also use 3rdparty API's like LendingRobot that promise higher returns than LendingClub's own auto-investing feature.

<comment><USER22> Interesting. Have you used this?

<comment><USER21> Yeah, I learnt about it from a fellow co-worker and have been using it for the last 6 months. It's pretty seamless to get started with it and has offered better returns for me then the LC's own auto investing strategy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> All I know is when I started getting mailers DAILY from lendingClub with magical terms I figured it was some sort of pyramid scheme. I worked in finance during the recession, you can smell a desperate entity a mile away trying to cover its books.

<comment><USER24> What does it typically look like when they try to cover their books?

<comment><USER23> Increased marketing for deals on terms so favorable to the client that there is no way they could make a profit. Usually when they rope in these clients, they then book 'future revenues' on them against their current losses.

<comment><USER24> Depending on the risk of what is being sold here, is this always necessarily a bad deal for the clients? Or could they try to cover their losses on one product by marketing favorable terms on a different product that might perform well?

Not sure if that's worded the best way--still learning about how the accounting for this works.

<comment><USER23> If you're buying a product, sure you can make out like a bandit. But in this case its a contract that can stretch into unforeseen consequences. For example you get a loan on X terms with Y seller. Y seller goes out of business (due to being a pyramid scheme) and now your contract is sold to the highest bidder to satisfy investors in bankruptcy court. You now hold X contract with Z seller who may be strongly incentivized to take advantage of any terms in your contract that allow for changes.

In order to make out you need to satisfy the terms of Y seller's contract before they fold -- and balancing the incentives vs unknown risk of Z at unknown time, its probably not worth your time.

The exception to that is: You have enough capital to sign a contract so big it actually forces Z event, then have the political clout to make sure the court rules in your favor rather than the investors. All the while also buying insurance against Z event. Then you have something similar to Goldman Sachs' profitable moves during and after the Great Recession.

<comment><USER24> Really great explanation--thanks for sharing. Are there any good sources you'd recommend for reading up more on this, or search queries I might want to try?

<comment><USER23> The Big Short (Book) is the easiest way to be introduced to these concepts of contracts and risk.

'Margin Call' is an excellent and thrilling film that dramatizes these concepts and shows how they can play out on the trading floor.

<comment><USER24> Saw The Big Short movie--does the book go into much more realistic (ie. non- Hollywood) technical detail?

Will check out Margin Call.

What about outside of huge industry shifts like The Big Short portrayed? I'm most interested in how this plays out in the day-to-day when there isn't a huge industry-wide scandal at play.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Hopefully my side business won't tank! Plug for LendingClub mobile apps:

iOS: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lendingclub- order/id10461141...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lendingclub- order/id1046114132?mt=8)

Android: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jamesys.le...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jamesys.lendinglightning&hl=en)

<comment><USER26> People downvoted and flagged this, but I think a comment like this is ok when the author is a regular user, doesn't do it often, and is up-front about it.

<comment><USER27> Shouldn't the comment have something in it besides two app-store links and one sentence about those links?

<comment><USER26> I don't think so, if the links are relevant enough and it isn't overdone.

If someone's using HN primarily for this purpose, that's a different story. But seibelj's most recent comments include housing, transportation infrastructure, freenet, and software licensing. Sounds like a real community member to me. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> What happened? Why is lendingclub doing bad? From the outside it looks like a good business model. One that should do better I thought.

<comment><USER29> It's a good business model for Lending Club, but maybe not for investors.

LC is responsible for grading the loans and calculating the risk of each borrower. However, it does not take any of the risk of the loans being traded on its platform. So there's a big concern that LC may not be very scrupulous about the borrowers it accepts.

It's a similar situation to the last financial crisis where companies were happily accepting risky mortgage applications, doing little or no checking, and then selling them on for a quick profit.

<comment><USER30> > So there's a big concern that LC may not be very scrupulous about the > borrowers it accepts.

I haven't read this anywhere else other than your comment. Do you have any other evidence for this claim?

<comment><USER31> Read the article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> He was a cofounder, chairman and CEO so it's a big, and sadly a very negative, event.

<comment><USER33> Who is this big and sad for? The loan buyer?

It isn't sad for retiring CEO Laplanche is it? I mean, it looks like they cooked the books, and now he's quitting before having to deal with the repercussion.

My guess is that he was forced out, but I'm not sure it matters if it was under his own will or not. Either way, it's definitely not sad for him or LendingClub.

<comment><USER17> "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"

We probably don't know enough yet to be clear what the real details for the departure are. It could be that all of this is due to poor oversight, and not malice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> My condolences to all the LC employees. By all accounts Renaud was a well liked CEO, and he was there since the start. This must be such a morale killer :(

</comment><comment><USER34> _" the application date on $3 million of those loans had been altered to make them comply"_

I'm curious whether the initial discovery of this problem came from API users noticing the discrepancy, or from a more traditional route, like a whistleblower.

</comment><comment><USER35> Lending Club is definitely not two-sided marketplace. In marketplace there is always notion of price - to manage demand and supply. LC is just scoring loans and then selling a "product".

</comment><comment><USER36> If LendingClub were to go bankrupt, what would realistically happen to all of the outstanding loans?

</comment><comment><USER30> The quarterly report states that the investigation found this was an isolated event that affected only $3M of the $22M in the sale.

"The board also hired an outside expert firm to review all other loans facilitated in the first quarter of 2016 and the firm did not find changes to data in these or other Q1 loans."

From the quarterly report: [http://ir.lendingclub.com/QuarterlyResults.aspx?iid=4213397](http://ir.lendingclub.com/QuarterlyResults.aspx?iid=4213397)

</comment><comment><USER37> No paywall:

[http://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/09/lending-club-shares-tumble- af...](http://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/09/lending-club-shares-tumble-after-ceo- resigns.html)

<comment><USER38> Does everyone on HN pay for the WSJ or something? I don't understand why anyone upvotes these submissions.

<comment><USER39> Click the "web" link under the title and then click the first Google result to bypass the paywall.

<comment><USER40> Wow, been on HN for years and never realized that haha. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Ungated -> [http://www.wsj.com/articles/lendingclub-ceo-resigns-over- sal...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/lendingclub-ceo-resigns-over-sales- review-1462795070)

</comment><comment><USER42> The stock is way undervalued tho. They have a solid growth.

<comment><USER43> Let me guess... You have shares of LC.

<comment><USER42> yes, I just bought some.</comment></comment></comment>


Awesome Indie Game on Kickstarter - People like this need our support - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/addogames/robots-love-ice-cream-game-for-the-ipad

<comment><USER2> Is this a joke? They want $18,000 to make what looks like a low quality flash game? They don't have anything beyond an idea and some pretty horrible looking concept art and people are actually giving them money?

Am I missing something here?

<comment><USER3> It seems to me that you might be missing the close-tab button on your browser, which is the perfect way to vote against a project you would rather not support.

I could easily see the contract price for a game like this going well above $18k for artwork, music composition, development and so on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "tasty, weaponized ice cream treats" - I didn't need more convincing.</comment>