Why Geeks Should Love HP WebOS - <AUTHOR> http://developer.palm.com/blog/2011/05/10-reasons-for-geeks-to-love-hp-webos/

<comment><USER2> I love it simply because its the best SSH experience of all of the smartphones. One click gets me the phones _real_ terminal and then "ssh -l me whereever.com". No bogus setup screens, with each server requiring a 5 minute fill in the blank session to connect to, no menus full of special keys to transmit (most covered with the orange key), just pure .ssh/id_dsa public key in my home-dir _win_.

Its 10x easier than the best thing on my ipad and its with me 24/7 because it also happens to be my phone. Other problems with WebOS and Pre? Sure there are. This makes up for all of them. Smartphone makers: rent-seek my terminal, you lose.

<comment><USER3> Have you tried Maemo? With Maemo, I can just launch an xterm and ssh to my heart's content. For that matter, I can also set up an SSH server and ssh into the device. I'm guessing Meego probably has the same support.

In my experience, it's the closest experience to have a full Linux box that I can stick in my pocket.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I can do all of that with my Pre 2 as well, and I had been doing it on my Pre for a while.

Heck, with xterm on my Pre 2, I can run a Debian or Ubuntu ARM rootfs and actually have a full Linux experience in my pocket.

<comment><USER5> Is there any way to connect a display/keyboard/mouse (the input devices perhaps over bluetooth) so it can even be a desktop?

<comment><AUTHOR> Bluetooth keyboards work on webOS 2.0 and later. The webOS emulator runs as x86 virtual machine and uses your keyboard and mouse from the host PC. Some people have boot that image directly on PC hardware with varying degrees of success.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _Just tap on the "Just Type" search bar and enter "upupdowndownleftrightleftrightbastart" (the classic NES Konami code!); an icon appears that lets you toggle this mode on and off._

Wait, really? If that's not a joke, then it's kind of cool.

<comment><USER7> Yep, the konami code to get into dev mode has been in webos since the very beginning. I am talking webos 1.0.

Also, WebOs is great. I really like it and the UI but so far the devices have been fairly unimpressive. The original Palm Pre was good for about 3 months. After which android and iphone have gotten so many updates.

If the Palm Pre 3 lives up to it's ideal, it would definitely be worth a look but unfortunately, as cool as the OS is, the hardware just doesn't match.

<comment><USER8> I am quite happy with my Pre 2 (a gift by the developer program - they aren't sold in Brazil). There are a couple issues, as it appears to have never been tested here - GPS seems slow and may have a bug in its software, various reception weirdnesses (hard to get it to use 3G), but, overall, it's a very solid and responsive phone.

I expect the 3 to up that a notch. Right now, I prefer it over iPhone and Android, as actually doing things (as opposed as to opening programs) happens more fluidly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow, browsing that site from my phone is a crippling experience, they have this:

        <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, maximum-scale=1.0, user-scalable=0" />

..yet they haven't actually optimized the site properly for a small display, meaning it's not actually possible to scroll/zoom to see any full line of text (tested on iPhone).

<comment><USER10> Strange, it works for me on iPhone 4. You might also try two-finger scrolling, which is a hidden workaround for independently scrollable divs.

<comment><USER9> Tested again, seems yes I can pan sideways (not sure why I couldn't before) but still can't zoom which makes no sense when the doc is wider than the viewport.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _sigh_

I remember getting excited when the Pre first came out. Sadly, it wasn't available in India. It still isn't. This is why Android will take over the mobile world: it's ubiquitous. Also, Samsung and HTC, the two largest players in the Android market, actually care about markets other than the USA and Europe. The Galaxy S II, for example, will launch in 120 countries.

<comment><USER12> True, why would I want to get an iPhone when I know it won't be serviced in India. India is a very smartphone hungry market, and Apple is doing itself a great disservice by not selling here.

PS:- Apple does sell, iPhone 3GS and iPad 2 in India. Except the iPhone, every other product is available within a week of the US launch. So the iPhone situation is quite strange.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I was hoping Palm would eventually license WebOS to companies that could make better hardware and offer more desirable form factors. WebOS is nice but the original Pre was just truly awful hardware. Under powered, fragile, terrible keyboard, screen was too small, etc. It doesn't look like the other WebOS devices released since have really improved on this much. Unfortunately HP would never consider licensing so hopefully they at least look at the SmartPhone market and realize people seem to like slim devices with high resolution screens. Big fat sliders with small low resolution screens have a very limited market these days.

<comment><USER14> I agree, but this is a problem that plagues Android too, though it's slowly getting better.

Even now though, hold an iPhone 4 in one hand, and hold the Nexus S in the other. Both are fine, fast phones with a wide array of features... but one feels plasticky and cheap, while the other feels solid, almost as if it was hewn out of a solid piece of glass.

Samsung, LG, et al really need to get their shit together. Apple sets a _very_ high bar for manufacturing precision, materials use, and industrial design. I feel like the OEMs are slowly getting the design aspect sorted out, but every time I see a new Android device I can't help but be disappointed at the cheap materials and generally good-but-not-great assembly.

<comment><USER15> _Even now though, hold an iPhone 4 in one hand, and hold the Nexus S in the other. Both are fine, fast phones with a wide array of features..._

But one feels dated, awkward and like it belongs 5 years ago with some light finishing polish to cover it up. Seriously dated. Do. Not. Want.

Samsung doesn't need to get their shit together. Just look at the Samsung Galaxy S II preorders. They are the highest ever recovered for any device. I think Samsung is doing just fine with their so-called "cheap-feeling" phone.

So sure. If things like the physical finish matters more to you than the actual capabilities of the device, then sure, continue buying Apple stuff. In a world where every competitor is cheaper, more open and offers more choice, this is really the only reason one could possibly have for choosing Apple these days.

<comment><USER16> Are you saying the iPhone 4 feels like it belongs 5 years ago and is "seriously dated"?

You realise that's a year before iPhone 1 was released and at a time when the "Best smartphone" category ( <http://reviews.cnet.com/4321-6452_7-6600061.html> ) had Nokia N95 and Windows Mobile 6 in it and mostly no touchscreen, no multitouch devices?

 _this is really the only reason one could possibly have for choosing Apple these days._

Untrue and inflamatory trolling. The app store or specific apps, iTunes store integration, familiarity, preference for iOS, loyalty to Apple corporation, integration with Apple TV, fashion,

<comment><USER15> _You realise that's a year before iPhone 1 was released_

My bad. So 4 years ago it was the best, despite lacking 3G. 4 years later and next to nothing has changed. I honestly think it warrants being labeled "dated".

 _Untrue and inflamatory trolling. The app store or specific apps, iTunes store integration, familiarity, preference for iOS, loyalty to Apple corporation, integration with Apple TV, fashion,_

The app store is in my opinion inferior to Android Market. And the constant changes which Steve goes about with ensures that fewer and fewer developers will put up with it. The iTunes integration _and requirement_ is for most people a bug, not a feature.

Preference for iOS is like you said, a preference, but it's hardly warranted. This thing haven't moved an inch since launch.

Loyalty to Apple corporation is a mental handicap to everyone not bitten by Steve Jobs RDF. Why on earth would you be loyal to a corporation? I'm loyal to me and my needs, and I want the best. The iPhone isn't.

Integration with Apple TV, a product useless in most parts of the world. Gee thanks. I'll consider it once Apple opens its TV/Movie store where I live, something they haven't done 3 years after they launched the music store.

Fashion? Are you serious? It may have been fashion a year ago, but right now everyone are getting Android phones. Apple haven't gotten any successor to the iPhone 4 out, and most Android phones in sale now, not to mention the dual- core models coming out as we speak, surpass the iPhone 4 on every metric.

The iPhone was a success based on it being the king of the smartphone game, and now it is slowly but surely lagging behind. Unless Apple does something unheard of with the iPhone 5 (including a near-complete rewrite of iOS) they will still be lagging when it comes out. They will release a device with dated software on day one and then they have lost. They will no longer be the better or premium option, they'll just have a glossy look.

I realize I'm an iPhone owner gone Android-fanatic. Yes. I am biased. But right now, the iPhone objectively has very little appeal unless you are burdened with the loyalty-handicap.

<comment><USER17> HN should add a "report troll" link for comments like this.

<comment><USER15> I think Apple is starting to lose the mobile war where they used to be kings. I don't think that telling people with the loyalty-handicap that their misplaced corporate loyalty is not a globally shared opinion nor truth qualifies as trolling.

But while I (obviously) disagree with your opinion, you are entitled to yours just as I am to mine. Have an upvote.

<comment><USER18> There is nothing to indicate definitively what you state.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If HP made an iPod Touch competitor, I would buy one in a heartbeat. I don't want to buy another phone, but I'd love to have a WebOS device to play with.

<comment><USER20> Agreed - been saying for years that Palm screwed themselves over by trying to get in to the phone market with the Pre. They should have gone after reinventing the "PDA" market which they'd invented years earlier. Something like ipod touch with webOS 2 years ago would have, imo, allowed Palm to be a much different beast today.

<comment><USER21> Agreed agreed! I don't care for a smartphone, and don't need a tablet- bring back the PDA! Palm needs to find its roots, not try to compete with Apple and Google/HTC head-on. If HP was smart, they'd step out of the fray and let Microsoft/Nokia/RIM try to deal with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> You know what's lacking from this list? A killer feature that both Android or iOS lacks. And that doesn't just have to be software, it can be the backing of other high profile manufacturers or a super low price point. The problem is that when you don't have market share you have to have bells and whistles the get geeks excited. I love HP as a company, and they're great as making stuff — but making an operating system is a different ball game of sorts.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point... if I was writing this again, I'd mention the Synergy system that ties in data sources from email, contacts, and calendar sites online into the core webOS PIM apps, giving you a unified view of everything. I didn't list it because it's a bit hard to build on, but I feel like it's the stand out feature.

Oh, and really nice multitasking. Effortless app management... but those are more user concerns.

<comment><USER23> Well, now that the Google Tasks API is out, that should get integrated too.

Synergy is a great idea and it works for the most part. Still needs improvement though as some calendars have issues syncing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> If HP really wants developers behind it, they should consider giving away these devices to the developers. Even a $500 phone is a cheap investment with high returns, when made on a developer who's going to invest time (and money), is going to learn mostly by herself, and release an app in the market, even if in the hopes of making money for herself.

With Android already doing well, I don't see a developer risking her time as well as money on Palm, when it's uncertain how much success she'll achieve.

<comment><USER4> They were giving away Pre 2's. They probably still are giving them away if they still have them in stock.

<comment><USER25> According to the HP webOS Developer Forums' Hardware Section, the offer's done. In fact, a lot of developers who took part are still waiting for theirs from back in February/March. The Pre 2 giveaway to developers really could have been executed better, IMO. Some folks who were approved back then don't even know if they'll still get one, which is disconcerting. Google can drop 5,000 special-edition Samsung tablets in _a day_ , and HP's had almost _three months_ to fulfill.

I respect that they could have just not given any away in the first place, but HP's in a critical spot right now trying to keep webOS relevant with developers--especially given that many in the first wave of webOS developers from '09-'10 have already long left the platform. Better communication on the status of the program and fulfillment would have gone a _long_ way. I'm really hoping they can work the kinks out of the system when it comes to things like this with the resources HP has on-hand.

<comment><USER26> This is just anecdotal, but I signed up and received my developer Pre2 in about 2 weeks. I assume I must have gotten in before the rush because I signed on as soon as I heard about it.

On the other hand, I've been waiting 4 and 6 months to get a Cr48 laptop from Google and not a peep. So its not like only HP is the only one bad at communicating.

<comment><USER24> Did Google promise to send you one? Or did you fill out a questionnaire in the hopes of them sending you one?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I really want to like WebOS. I did when the original Pre came out, but the hardware was only so-so and the marketing was too little.

Now, the new hardware looks really slick and the Enyo framework is super powerful. Again I was happy... Until I tried to sign up in their dev center. It's a many step process during which you have to register with the IRS, for example. Then you have to email them and ask for access to the Enyo SDK. Then they send you a form letter back. I have lost almost all interest by now.

Palm... I really want to like you. Don't make it so hard.

<comment><USER28> You need to fill in the tax crap if u want the developer access and the Enyo early access. In other words if you are hoping to get any revenues from your apps. You also need a paypal account. Just for the SDK you can stick to the community member level.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> "You don't have to jailbreak or root your device. What other platforms call jailbreaking or rooting, we call entering developer mode."

As an iOS jailbreaker, _< 3_

I mean, it removes a bit of the fun, but still.

I ought to get a Pre.

<comment><USER25> Having had a Pre since the day Sprint launched it in 2009, it's truly a hackerphone for those that want to customize their experience, and one of the primary reasons I've evangelized the platform and my experience developing for and tinkering with it to all the developer friends of mine that'd listen.

They got it right from the start. No bootloader crap or jailbreaking necessary. Preware from webOS Internals is just icing on the cake.

<comment><USER30> And all user-made the patches available make the phone so much better

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I loved my Pre when I was still with Sprint. By far the most enjoyable to use out of all the phones I've had. My biggest complaint was (and still is) the lack of applications. If HP is able increase their app library, they will quite possibly find me buying another WebOS device.

I really hope they succeed if only because of the openness of their phones. It feels amazing to have full access to your device out of the box without having to jump through 1.5 million jailbreak hoops.

</comment><comment><USER32> Why Geeks should hate HP WebOS:

Only one recent device (at the moment) and it is carrier exclusive in most countries (for me, in germany). I like the new devices and the operating system, but sadly, I also have a good contract with a different carrier.

So: sorry HP, but i'll pass. I never bought a locked phone and I will not start because of your hypergeeky operating system.

<comment><USER33> You have been able to buy the unlocked Pre2 for quite some time: [http://www.shopping.hp.com/store/product/product_detail/FB32...](http://www.shopping.hp.com/store/product/product_detail/FB324AA%2523ABA/)

There are lots of reasons to avoid webos; but this is not one.

<comment><USER32> I said recent device. I am not interested in buying last years model if all they push at the moment is the new line of products. How should I develop applications for their new and shiny line, if I cannot even get a fully working device on my contract?

<comment><USER34> Pre2 is the most recent phone you can buy with any carrier in the US right now.

<comment><USER32> You surely haven't missed the fact that the current advertisement push of HP is not about the Pre 2 though, but about the new lineup which starts to be on sale from next sunday on (starting with the HP Veer, followed by the Pre 3 and the Tablet which integrates with those two).

So yes: technically, it is the most recent. Practically, only for 3 more days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I love WebOS because it has the only sane development model of all the smartphone platforms on the market.

edit: I actually think wp7/silverlight might fare well too from a dev perspective, but i haven't spent time with it yet.

<comment><USER25> WP7's suffering from its own developer adoption woes. The only problem with webOS' adoption, from my perspective as a webOS dev, has been marketing and hardware. Developing for webOS has been fun from Day One and continues to be nearly two years later.

The hardware part they look to have taken care of based on the Pre 3, Veer, and Touchpad I got to see and mess with back at their Dev Reception in February, and I'm pretty sure they have the money to market the product line now.

<comment><USER36> While the entry point is low, there are still many API's lacking which has prevented a lot of applications from being on webOS (for example, there was no mic API for the longest time).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> WebOS keeps getting more and more compelling. If the hardware becomes sturdier, this could do very well, especially in the tablet space.

</comment><comment><USER37> I think WebOS is great. But all the Palm devices are sliders which kinda sucks. I wish they'd come up with something comparable with Nexus S or iPhone 4. A simple, but cool nice little piece of smartphone. But, that's just me.

<comment><USER38> The Palm Pixi is not a slider, and I love it.

<comment><USER25> The Pixi is nice as a form factor, but 1) it's incredibly old comparatively, and 2) will not officially run webOS 2.x, and especially 3.x.

I know others who loved the form factor and feel of the Pixi; I'm hoping HP decides to throw them a bone in the future to get them back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> 1\. Ares 2\. Cards 3\. Notifications 4\. Just Type 5\. Exhibition 6\. OTA updates 7\. Gestures 8\. Synergy 9\. The WebOS community 10\. WebOS Internals

<comment><USER30> Wow, I hadn't seen Ares before. An in-browser SDK. Sweet.

Honestly, WebOS itself is way better than android or iOS, it's just that Palm sucked at marketing it, the Pre was only available on Sprint, they didn't attract many app developers, and they only sold 2 WebOS phones. I hope it's not too late for HP to fix it.

Between the gestures, notifications, card-based multitasking, and JS/CSS/HTML apps I'm in heaven.

<comment><USER40> Not only can you design and code your app from the browser, you have full debugging support in the browser that can remote debug on a physical device that's plugged in to the computer.

I love iOS and its SDK, but Ares sure beats 4 GB Xcode updates.

<comment><USER30> Wow. I will definitely be making a WebOS app now. It's really too bad Palm didn't think of Ares. It could have definitely changed the game.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, Ares has been available for over a year now -- the technology team behind it has been building our new Enyo framework for websOS 3.0.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Maybe if they made a good device that was available for my carrier of choice I'd be more willing to consider it.

As it stands I have half a dozen android phones to possibly choose from and the venerable iphone. I'd love to have a webos phone if it was closer to the iphone in terms of form factor, resolution, speed, battery life etc but from what I've seen its not even close.

Top it off with the fact that it seems like HP hasn't advertised a penny for the thing compared to verizon's droid adverts plastered everywhere.

Honestly HP needs to team up with a carrier and make it happen in terms of marketing. Windows Phone 7 might beat out webos in terms of mindshare at this point.

</comment><comment><USER42> WebOS is definitely very cool.

I doubt WebOS can overtake Android or iOS at this point, but it should be a solid third place in this market (I don't think other competitors like WP7 or Bada can make it).

<comment><USER43> Nokia makes WP7 #3 by default. A respectable #4 by volume would be fine if WebOS has a shot at #2 in quality.

#1 in quality is, I trust, sewn up for practically everyone reading this, though with disagreements at great length and volume on which name to fill in.

<comment><USER42> > Nokia makes WP7 #3 by default.

I don't get this argument. Nokia is big now, but why would it still be big with a completely different product, some time in the future, and after the market has changed quite a bit?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Is there any way that WebOS could be ported to Android? If they're both linux then the drivers should be fairly compatible with the respected kernel mods, right?

<comment><USER45> The interface (Luna) should be quite portable to Android, I suppose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> webOS sorely needs Galaxy S2 class hardware. HP should stop all else and get a slick device out like yesterday.

<comment><USER47> One of my main issues with WebOS from day one has been the lack of what I would regard as decent hardware.

Another issue in the past, which I hope has much improved since is the developer outreach which really sucked when I tried to engage. This was pre-HP acquisition. The fact that @unwiredben is active in this discussion is a good sign.

<comment><USER48> The Pre actually had decent hardware except for being light on mem. The OMAP chip was particularly overclock friendly and once overclocked along with some additional tweaks was nice and fast.

The problem was the earlier webOS versions had no GPU acceleration at all and ended seeming sluggish sometimes.

<comment><USER46> It needs a bigger form factor in slicker package - CPU/GPU matter but not as much as form factor for the Pre atm. Having the tiny Pre screen does little justice to webOS.

If they could get a SGS2 or Atrix type device out with GPU accelerated webOS UI and may be ship Android compatibility until webOS apps catch up - it would become a really credible player.

<comment><USER47> Yes, I should have been more precise. I've never liked the form factor and packaging of the WebOS devices. TouchPad looks like it might be up to scratch, but still nothing that looks good to me on the horizon in terms of the handset.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> if only there was a good (and hopefully cheap) hardware device to go with webOS, it would definitely be cool to hack with. The Palm Pre, however, in my opinion did not function as a useful device, mostly because of the hardware (and lack of applications compared to iOS and android devices).

<comment><USER50> Care to elaborate on the hardware? Speed seemed decent enough (compared with e.g. the first iPhone) and I personally really liked the "pebble" form factor. Sad that it'll never see webOS 2...

<comment><USER48> webOS 2.1 can be installed on the Pre if you make use of the Meta-Doctor.

Some additional hoops to jump through but it's entirely doable along with overclocking, you end up with a pretty snappy device.

<http://www.webos-internals.org/wiki/WebOS_2_Upgrade>

<comment><USER25> You want to be working on current-gen hardware if you're baselining future development efforts at 2.x going forward.

What you don't want to be using as your sole dev/test unit is a two year-old device using an unofficial workaround to get an OS version installed that was never intended to be used on it.

It's fine if you want to support those people that decided to use the workaround by having one of these franken-units around as a secondary edge- case device to test on, but it should _never_ be the only device you use to develop and test with. I have a 1Ghz overclocked Sprint Pre at 1.4.5 as my "daily driver" and another Sprint Pre I've upgraded to 2.0 for testing such cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> > There's no cost to become a developer.

But there is, to submit (signed) apps?

[https://developer.palm.com/index.php?option=com_register&...](https://developer.palm.com/index.php?option=com_register&view=register&info) says

"Benefits include:

        Enroll in the webOS Developer program ($99/year; covers up to xx application submissions)
        Submit you webOS application(s) for review and approval by Palm"

Am sure am missing something. Also, these devices are too costly for geeks on other side of planet, if at all they are launched here.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing out the old text. When we originally opened the dev program, there was a fee for submitting apps, but this has all be eliminated in the last year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Why haven't they made a tool/framework for porting WebOS apps (non-native) to iOS & android? This would be a great way to leverage their superior developer experience to get more apps on their platform.

<comment><USER53> Their next app (web?) framework, Enyo, does exactly this (in fact, apps are developed in Chrome). They haven't announced the licensing options (i.e. if it will be legal to use on other platforms), but I've run the betas of it on my iPad and they work quite well.

When webOS 3.0 comes out, it's really up to HP Palm if they want to allow this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> I've always had a soft spot for WebOS and still prefer it over Android and WP7. However, Palm gimped themselves by making it Sprint exclusive and putting the OS on cheap plastic hardware.

<comment><USER4> They released all their phones to AT&T and Verizon shortly after the Sprint exclusive. The Pre 2, vastly improved over the Pre, was formerly available only as a GSM unlocked device, and now on Verizon. The Veer is an AT&T exclusive. Sprint distanced itself from webOS a long time ago.

<comment><USER55> By "shortly after" you mean 1 year after, I take it? Which also makes that available just under a year on AT&T today as well. So it hasn't really been that long and now we are hearing about a new OS and new hardware. Not sure I know anyone that would pay $150 for an outdated phone.

<comment><USER4> The point was it's not a Sprint exclusive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Pretty much every single point applies to Android as well, and if you have to pick based on mind share and momentum...

</comment><comment><USER45> I love WebOS. My DSL line just dropped this morning, and I'm using the WiFi hotspot built into my Pre to read HN. The 3G link is only slightly slower for web browsing (2.3 Mbps down, 330 kpbs up).

</comment><comment><USER57> I too am a big WebOS fan. So much so, I'm learning web development so that I can write some apps to help populate its market.

</comment><comment><USER36> #5: The source is easy to find.

Does this mean that all apps' source is accessible, or just Palm namespaced applications?

<comment><AUTHOR> PDK application are compiled C++, so you only have object code. Most of the apps HP ships on device are JS apps, so source is there. A developer can choose to only ship minified/obfuscated source code if they want, but there still has to be something for V8 to parse and execute.

<comment><USER36> Right, I understand that but what I'm getting at is: if I create an application that is purely JS/HTML/CSS based, will my source be available to other developers that put their phone into "developer mode"?

If so, is there any way to make it not publicly available?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, there's no way to completely hide the source. However, we do have a key manager API that can be used to hide encryption keys so they're not exposed in your source.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> If I love one device over the other because it gives me more potential earnings, does that make me less of a geek?

<comment><USER59> No. It makes you more of a man.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> WebOS is not open source so I fail to see why a "geek" should love it. On the contrary - they should avoid it!

<comment><USER61> You sound a bit like Stallman. Even if you are using open source software you still use closed source hardware most of the time.

What's really wrong with closed source?

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Just as Intel's AppUp, they require Paypal, which I've canceled and don't want to use any more.

<comment><USER63> If you are trying to convince others to cancel paypal, you are not doing a good job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> So when those new phones they showed some months ago at Mobile World Congress are coming out?

<comment><USER4> Veer is coming this Sunday. The other devices are probably coming next month, but probably a little later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Are you stuck with the hp app store or can you go to places like apptown?

<comment><AUTHOR> For purchasing apps, you use the HP App Catalog, but you can easily sideload applications using the developer tools, and that can install alternative catalogs like PreWare.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Looking forward to the Pre 3.

</comment><comment><USER67> #7: You can try cutting edge stuff.

Yet you can't even do css background gradients. Real cutting edge.

<comment><USER68> CSS background gradients are visually appealing, but I'm not sure that's what users want to spend the ergs in their mobile device battery on.

<comment><USER69> I think it's about having the choice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> but does it tether?

<comment><USER23> Yes.

There is even a free tethering solution. Install via Preware.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> I would love it but I can't make myself like an HP product because HP has been selling thousands frozen WindowsXP + IE6 computers to the universities in my country.

<comment><USER72> Considering how many management changes ago it was and the number of different divisions in HP, that's almost like not liking Germany today for WWII. How many years ago that happened? (IE6? must've been ~2004)

<comment><USER71> I wish it had been ~2004 but it has been happening since 2008. They sold that crappy computers to one of the biggest and newest university libraries in Europe.

So, I have a real reason to ignore HP products even if they have great platform.

<comment><USER73> Because they sold them something they were willing to buy? Sorry, that doesn't make any sense.

<comment><USER71> As a coder, ethical behavior of the company behind the platform I use is very important to me.

<comment><USER73> Where's your proof that this behavior was unethical? I know nonprofits and educational institutions that still require IE6 _today_ due to various reasons, and some on XP because they haven't okayed an upgrade cycle even if they're not using it. No offense intended, but your claims are difficult to take seriously. This sounds significantly more like "I don't like that they use Microsoft" than anything to do with what kind of Microsoft software they sold.

In the overwhelming majority of these cases that I've seen, there is _much_ more going on than "derp, we're gonna give them IE6 because we're eeeeeevil."

(And if that "ethical behavior" is really so important to you, you might as well just stop using computers because each and every one of them are, on one level or another, not fundamentally opposed to screwing the next guy to get ahead. Don't use Google or Yahoo. Don't use Twitter or Facebook. Don't send network packets over Cisco hardware. Don't buy Intel hardware. Don't buy AMD hardware. Don't buy nVidia graphics cards. The list goes on.

Even everybody's favorite guys over at Canonical have demonstrated a willingness to screw people over, viz. the Banshee project.)

<comment><USER71> Eropple, selling thousands of frozen computers with IE6 sounds ok for you? it's clear that there is nothing to talk about.

<comment><USER73> There's nothing "frozen" about a computer that has IE6.

I would respectfully suggest that you look and see if you're upset because they've got IE6 on them or because they've got Microsoft software on them. Your phrasing and behavior suggests the latter.

<comment><USER71> It seems you've been commenting without trying to understand what "frozen" means. I'm not surprised, go on

<comment><USER73> If you are using words in a non-standard way, it behooves you to actually clarify and explain what you mean.

You are doing little to change the impression of "upset Linux fanboy" that you created in your first post and have strengthened since.

<comment><USER71> I'm a fanboy of nothing except six things;

\- freedom \- freedom \- freedom \- wtf public license \- good software \- user friendly business models

You're right, I'm an upset linux fanboy. I'm upset about the time we've lost because of recent internet explorer versions and the companies supporting junk software instead of the modern ones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> adoption is so low gsmarena doesn't even list on the advanced search OS list...</comment>


Bootstrap CDN is down - <AUTHOR>

As of 17.00 UTC Bootstrap's CDN appears to be down. <comment><USER2> This is most likely related to: <https://github.com/netdna/bootstrap- cdn/issues/128>

All .js files on BootstrapCDN were distributing exploit code until it came back online (within the last 3 hours)

Oddly, there is no mention of this anywhere else.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The relevant link is here: <https://netdna.bootstrapcdn.com>

Not sure how long it has been down for but I became aware of this about a half an hour ago.</comment>


A brief history of fighting spam at Pinterest - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7ibuUXQYx8

<comment><USER2> The deploy-free rule updates are great - most email security systems do rules as a database to deploy to endpoints around the system to maintain performance.

The risk portion of the presentation was also informative. The "undo" is a key to a lot of good security systems.

I was pleasantly surprised by the practical and informational nature of this talk! Fairly worth the time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Most of these concepts apply broadly to any good security/adversarial system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> 32 points, 6 hours old, and no comments. Weird.

<comment><USER4> I think it's because

1\. it's late at north america right now

2\. a pdf/blog post is much more preferable than a youtube video.

<comment><USER5> 1\. Written article

2\. Video presentation

3\. Just the slides, a bonus with speaker notes

I hate links that are just a speaker deck. It's 2015 I'm not asking for the production values of Top Gear. Just grab your mic and HD sliders as your laptop presents.</comment></comment></comment>


Zuckerberg's refusal to testify before UK MPs 'absolutely astonishing' - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/04/will-2018-be-the-year-of-the-neo-luddite <comment><USER2> Why does the UK authority think it is relevant here? Is the UK going to IP ban Facebook services from being used in the UK? Ultimately, populism wins, if the people want Facebook, they will have it. The UK government is astonished because it still thinks it matters and yet it does not.</comment>


Perhaps I should refactor this code... - <AUTHOR> http://screencast.com/t/4RX6wAmky

<comment><AUTHOR> I found this snippet when I was looking back at some code I wrote a long time ago when I first started using node.js - I should probably be ashamed, but I just think its hilarious. It's like a poster child scenario for using coffee script. It has to be some kind of record or something.</comment>


Sad reality: It's cheaper to get hacked than build strong IT defenses - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/09/23/if_your_company_has_terrible_it_security_that_could_be_a_rational_business_decision/ <comment><USER2> Why is that "sad"? Nature has gone the same path. We have basic defenses that are "on" all the time (passive immune system - nonspecific), and we have an adaptive response that reacts to what actually happens to us, which also means threats we actually encounter will be recognized and fought more quickly and better in the future. Or houses - having lived in the US, those front doors are at least an order of magnitude less secure than any German front door, but even those are not really able to keep out any determined intruder.

Why should be mount a very expensive all-out defense against a lot of perceived threats? It's similar to " _every_ child (programmer, etc.) MUST know this!". Making demands is easy. If people don't care there probably is a deeper reason. Yes, the heuristic gets it wrong, that's why it's a heuristic, but that it is one in the first place also has similar reasons.

It sure is possible to criticize a concrete company for concrete problems, but the blanket statement of the headline is not useful.

<comment><USER3> The problem is that this isn't about saving money _overall_. Users pay the primary costs of the company's security errors, so it's a moral hazard problem.

Right now, companies that lose data don't pay any costs at all until afterwards, and those costs are usually minimal. The reputational damage is reduced because no one knows until (well) after the breach, and any financial info lost is consumer credit cards rather than corporate accounts. Yes, users sometimes get free identity theft monitoring, but those services are quite cheap to account for the fact that they don't actually _work_.

More specifically, this is asymmetric information and therefore the market can't adjust for it. When Yahoo loses my data, will my passwords be salted and well-hashed? How could I possibly know in advance? Consumers aren't making privacy and risk choices, they're using the internet as best they can and getting repeatedly burned for it.

If you want a clear contrast, companies are enormously concerned about "whaling" attacks, and are working hard to prevent them. Those attacks take corporate money in real time, so the costs are properly factored in. Moral hazard is inherently about broken cost-benefit measurement.

<comment><USER4> The real problem is most payments & identity are pull vs push and the username is the password. If they were push, then there wouldn't be customer payment information to steal in the first place. All that would be taken would be personal shipping addresses, and those are mostly public as it is already.

Same with social security numbers and identity in general.

To solve the root cause in this case although was decided to not be good by the infrastructural organizations. Eating the fraud is cheaper than putting up barriers to payments.

If fraud liability was moved %100 to banks, payment providers and governments, we would see the problem fixed pretty quickly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One reason it's true is because companies only measure actual cost, not opportunity cost. How much did it cost Yahoo to have every tech-savvy person in the world switch to Gmail because of Yahoo's lousy (and Google's excellent) security infrastructure? Where the tech-savvy go, the tech-unsavvy often follow. As they did with Gmail.

But lost revenue opportunities don't show up in the bottom line, so cost- focused managers don't think about them. And they conclude it's "cheaper" to not invest in this or that thing that their smarter competitors are doing.

"What gets measure gets managed." People think this (apocryphal) Drucker quote is advice. It is not advice. It's a warning.

<comment><USER6> Not sure I agree that it was Google and Yahoo's respective security architecture that caused people to switch, even tech-savvy people.

<comment><USER5> Sure. But all the things Gmail offered were things that probably looked like lousy investments to Yahoo. Why offer more storage? Why have better spam filtering? Why have better security? It all costs money!!!

The point is only looking at actual cost, not opportunity cost.

<comment><USER6> Yep. Good clarification.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am sick of seeing headlines about teenager hacker being put in jail. It's not because they are geniuses it's because of poor IT defense. The companies should be severely fined for criminal negligence.

<comment> saiya-jin I get what you mean, but poor defense ain't no excuse to hack the hell out of company, neither legally nor morally. plus i don't buy the notion that some teenager had no clue what he was doing would harm other's livehood (if yes, then he should go through psychiatric evaluation).

if I don't put 3m electric fence with automatic sentry guns around my whole hypothetical house and land, does it mean everybody is automatically invited to freely try to break in, do damage, steal my stuff or post my private and legal data online for others?

state should have better use for these guys, but there should definitely be punishment, not reward in any way. that's how all countries run these days

<comment><USER8> I am not sure the analogy is very accurate. You do not advertise your house as a place where other people can come and freely store their valuables and then take it out as they please.

If you did, there is a name for what you have built: a bank. And you can be pretty sure people then will not have any issues with whatever security measures you take. Most of all, your cost of security installation is now covered by other people's money, which effectively gives you very precise calculations on what exactly you can and cannot spend. You are more than free to return the money and shut down shop if you feel you are in a completely unsafe neighborhood which makes your bank impossible to run at a profit.

To stretch this point a little further, imagine you did have a bank, and your customer comes and demands to take their money out, and you say "Oops. I had just left it out here on this desk, and when I went to pee, a kid just came in and ran out with all your money. I feel bad for you, but the cost of moving the stuff back and forth between front desk and the vault would make the service unprofitable. Its not my fault, its all these children in the neighborhood who keep pranking me".

The lowered barriers to hacking, combined with an ever moving target for what constitutes good security, are genuine concerns. But as a company, you are expected to shoulder the burden of security as a precondition of making the claim that you provide a good service. One way or another, people actually pay you to take care of their data as part of the service.

<comment><USER9> > You do not advertise your house as a place where other people can come and > freely store their valuables

A house offers protection, no doubt about it and anyone but a social recluse will potentially offer it to others, although not foreigners. You are certainly not trying to say negligence would be OK as long as it concerns foreigners.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think this article is making a decent point but with bad data. We know of many cases where the cost of insecurity drastically outweighed the cost of basic security. The most obvious is banking where no security would drain all their money. So, they combine preventing, detection, auditing, and computers hackers can't afford to keep losses manageable. Another example on putting a number on it is the Target hit that, in last article I read, was something like $100+ million in losses. Lets not even get to scenario where they start targeting power plants or industrial equipment whose management foolishly connected to net.

It also helps to look at the other end: minimum cost to stop most problems. Australia's DSD said that just patching stuff and using whitelisting would've prevented 75% of so-called APT's in their country. Throw in MAC-enabled Linux, OpenBSD, sandboxed (even physically) browsers w/ NoScript, custom apps in safe languages, VPN's by default, sanest configuration by default, and so on. Residual risk gets _tiny_. What I just listed barely cost anything. Apathy, which the article acknowledges, is only explanation.

A nice example was Playstation Network hack. I didn't expect them to spend much on security. I also didn't expect it to come down to having no firewall (they're free) in front of an Apache server that was unpatched for six months (patches are free). That this level of negligence is even legal is the main problem.

</comment><comment><USER11> I wonder if one of the problems is that the focus is too much on costs.

What I see all the time in IT security that for many people doing security means spending lots of money on products with highly questionable promises. It's very doubtful that many of the security appliances you can see at RSA or Black Hat do any good, in many cases they add additional risks. But the industry is selling a story that the more boxes you buy and put in front of your network the better.

For a lot of companies there are very cheap things they could do to improve their security. This starts with such simple things as documenting on the webpage who outside security researchers should contact if they think they found an issue in the companies infrastructure.

So I have quite some doubts that the formula "spending more on security == better security" holds.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's sad because it's true. In 2018 the data protection EU regulation gets put into play though, which might change that partially by effectively increasing the cost of losing control of data.

<comment><USER13> For Reference: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regu...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regulation)

This directive will drastically increase fines for data leaks in the EU.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Everybody's probably seen this but please more forcing companies to internalize their externalities. More law suits, please. I never thought I'd say that. [http://www.scmagazine.com/class-action-lawsuit-filed- against...](http://www.scmagazine.com/class-action-lawsuit-filed-against- noodles-company-over-breach/article/521276/)

</comment><comment><USER15> "Cheaper" is not including the full cost of compromised data. Compromises don't only affect companies' bottom lines, but also those who were compromised. The costs to individuals are undoubtedly much harder to quantify.

<comment><USER16> I totally agree, but I think in this case they are saying it's cheaper _for the company_ , which is what really matters in this context (since they're comparing it to how much the company would pay for security).

I mean, if the company's website gets hacked and your credit card data is stolen, then your card is charged $1,000, it's not the company that pays for it, right? You either talk to your bank to mark the purchase as fraudulent and get the charges reversed, or pay for it yourself (e.g. if it's a debit card).

Perhaps that's the solution though: a way to directly associate fraudulent purchases with security breaches where credit card data has been stolen, and a law that requires the breached party to pay all expenses related to that fraud. _That_ would get all major retailers scramble to get their shit secured.

<comment><USER15> Good point about what the article was comparing. I missed that.

I guess I'm just sour that articles like this tend to gloss over what is often the most important impact of a security breach--the end-users' data and privacy--and instead focus on easy-to-report numbers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm not so sure it's cheaper. The business cost can be enormous. See the Target breach, which led to FIRING the CEO. And Yahoo, which may have their deal with Verizon at risk now due to the latest breach.

</comment><comment><USER18> That is why as a sole dev I no longer offer full-stack solutions: clients simply do not want to pay for the hours it takes to keep their back-ends monitored and secured. Yet, dynamic data is mostly inevitable in any modern web solution so I am increasingly relying on BAAS providers. My gamble is that it should be easier/cheaper for BAAS providers to maintain a team of knowledgeable and experienced engineers to tend infrastructure that runs several back-ends. It seems like a natural step from _hey I trust you can run my hardware take my money_ to _hey I trust you can manage my data take my money_

</comment><comment><USER19> I think it's possible the global economy literally could not take the expense of actually making everything secure.

<comment><USER20> Definitely not if it was implemented in a big-bang, but a more gradual approach might work.

The counterpoint of what will the costs be if we carry on with the current level of security and drive IT systems more into everyone's lives has to be considered too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Yes, you notice it when you deal with sites where bad security can be costly, like on a (bit)coin exchange (i.e. Bittrex). You get an email at every successful login, 2FA is encouraged from the start, enabling the API keys requires 2FA, Google reCAPTCHA at every login, logout as soon as you close the browser, api keys with different levels of functionality, API requires SHA512 hashing of API key and API code and a time fingerprint. It's pretty refreshing to be honest.

<comment><USER22> Seriously? Bitfinex was the latest, greatest bitcoin business with a security breach, and they just pushed the losses onto their customers. Bad security at bitcoin exchanges does not generally affect the company itself, but the users.

<comment><USER23> Volume at Bitfinex has gone _way_ down; bad security is definitely costing them in lost business. Equally, how could those losses not get pushed onto customers? They were larger than the assets the company had available.

Bitcoin services aren't a good example here - they're very different than data breaches. If anything, they're a rare example of a case where hacks usually do lead to the destruction of the company; that Bitfinex wasn't killed immediately is an exception, not the norm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Yahoo customers are advertisers, not people with email accounts. Account holders are just a resource, and in aggregate I'm willing to bet most won't know what this hack means to them, even if they learn about it. What are they chances they lose 30% or more of this resource, users terminating their accounts? The stock price suggests the account holders don't care or have no meaningful recourse.

</comment><comment><USER25> Well physical security is the same. You could make your house entirely thief proof but nobody does because the cost isn't worth it.

</comment><comment><USER26> Part of the issue is that legally in the U.S. a) privacy violations are usually punishable by law only if a specific non-privacy harm comes of it and b) privacy is treated as an individual right and not a societal good. If a company gets hacked and loses your credit card and bank information afaik it's punishable only if someone actually fraudulently uses the information. It's up to individuals to jointly complain about specific damages to effect changes, and for any given individual there's little incentive to make your own life difficult for vague potential benefits. Also in most cases the individual harm is quite small, even if in aggregate or viewed as a societal harm there is huge damage.

</comment><comment><USER27> I found this to be true of securing my house. I had several break ins and the total cost (mostly repairs) was still far less than the cost of installing an alarm system, to speak nothing of paying for police response to false alarms.

<comment><USER28> Is there an emotional cost?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I think a lot of these problems could be nipped in the bud by more aggressive code auditing and patch management. It's better to start with fewer zero-day vulnerabilities. Once the zero-day exploits are out there, you have to act to mitigate them. Another way to think about it is to compare it to home construction.

You have to use good building materials to start. After the house is built, you get into the decision cycle of maintaining, repairing or replacing the home.

</comment><comment><USER30> Sadder reality: This principal has been extended by many CEOs to justify not doing _any_ security. The OP speaks of the costs of running a top-notch system. That's expensive. But please do something. Something more than just relying on your head of IT and your web designer. Read the Ashley-madison report by the canadian privacy commissioner. A supposed unicorn and they were doing nothing.

</comment><comment><USER31> Has your identity been stolen? If so, were you able to determine if a large scale hack was the cause of that? Then were you able to go back and sue that company for your losses? You probably don't even have much recourse, i.e. it's cheaper for you to try to fix your own stolen identity issue than to sue the company that got hacked for renumeration.

</comment><comment><USER32> All we have to know that it really doesn't matter to the business world despite all the drama in corporate IT over security (if that) is that Apple, Target, and Home Depot are having great quarters after their security breaches so any consumer backlash is materially ineffective even if people do care - not _enough_ care.

</comment><comment><USER33> This may change as the plaintiff's bar gets more sophisticated. Many probably remember the Home Depot data breach a few years ago. The card issuers brought a class action against HD and the complaint (under MDL No. 14-02583-TWT) reads like a nice treatise on causes of action in various states implicated by a breach.

</comment><comment><USER34> I feel like a lot of our problems would go away if companies faced penalties with teeth for losing customer information.

</comment><comment><USER35> Now people ask why Oracle is still around? And this is the answer.

At least companies have somebody (with $$) to sue when security breach happens.

I'm really confused with following: 1) people want free services and 2) people want extra security

The above is like getting free home security system and then complaining how alarm do not work consistently.

</comment><comment><USER36> unless you work in an industry that deals with fairly private and regulated data, but aren't a huge company with tons and tons of cash to burn. Then you are horrendously screwed.

The hardened security infrastructure is still extremely expensive to implement and maintain. You can't just deal with breaches because the fines (straight from Uncle Sam) can be huge relative to your profits. Even if the fines weren't bad enough at face value, you aren't a huge corporate giant, so customer churn after a bad enough breach is going to be worse than it would be for a bigger/older company. You are also paying large insurance premiums that don't even fully cover the fallout of a potential breach.

</comment><comment><USER37> it's actually the tip of the ice burg. Given that there is no standard of care and that there is no barrier to entry to being a software developer there are a lot of things that are poorly done in this industry. Security is just one of them. With that being said I've seen a lot of secruity people go overboard with security and not take the other factors into account. IE: security people trying to prevent the CEO from having acccess to resources, or adding in policies that cost more to implement than the cost of the threat etc..

</comment><comment><USER38> You see this in users as well.

I don't monitor the Apple forums nowadays, but it was common in the early switcher days to have people asking how to disable UNIX security and make it work just like Windows 9x.

</comment><comment><USER39> Unleeeeessssss you are a bank.

The costs of intrusions against financial institutions are seldom fully understood by people outside the industry but represent a lot of ongoing costs.

</comment><comment><USER40> What's even worse?

A mountain of bureaucracy that slows down everything as much as if you had strong defenses, but is effectively as weak as bad security.

</comment><comment><USER41> "Oh, we just leaked the passwords of 300 0000 of our users? Too bad. Let's make a tongue-in-cheek apology on twitter and move on!"

</comment><comment><USER42> Time to start class-action lawsuits and force IT companies to at least buy _insurance_.</comment>


Twitter reports $645m loss for 2013 - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-26059710 <comment><USER2> Before we jump the gun on this "loss", read this first:[1]

      Net loss - GAAP net loss was $511 million for the fourth quarter of 2013 compared to a net loss of $9 million in the same period last year. The company's Q4 GAAP net loss included $521 million of stock-based compensation expense, of which $406 million was for restricted stock units previously granted to employees, for which no expense had been recognized, until the effective date of our initial public offering in accordance with GAAP.

      Adjusted EBITDA - Adjusted EBITDA was $45 million for the fourth quarter of 2013 compared to $18 million in the same period last year.

      Non-GAAP net income / loss - Non-GAAP net income was $10 million for the fourth quarter of 2013 compared to a Non-GAAP net loss of $0.3 million in the same period last year.

Oddly enough the _" The company's Q4 GAAP net loss included $521 million of stock-based compensation expense, of which $406 million was for restricted stock units previously granted to employees, for which no expense had been recognized, until the effective date of our initial public offering in accordance with GAAP."_ seems be tucked away in "Research and Development" part of the P&L.

It's worth noting they have $2.2b in cash:

> _Cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities - As of December 31, 2013, > cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities were approximately $2.2 > billion, compared to $321 million as of September 30, 2013._

TL;DR - This $645m "loss" isn't what you think it is.

[1][https://investor.twitterinc.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=...](https://investor.twitterinc.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=823321)

<comment><USER3> Stock based compensation still costs investors money. They are effectively using investors' money to pay their employees, and that should and always will be priced into the stock.

With its 18% decline in after hours trading today, Twitter's market cap is still $36.63 billion. Even if you analyze it based on the shell-game of adjusted EBITDA, and assume that it will stay at $45 million/quarter, you come out with a P/E ratio of 165.

Twitter is not Facebook. Their growth trajectory isn't remotely close. Personally, I am staying away. I don't want to party like it's 1999.

<comment><USER4> > Stock based compensation still costs investors money.

Hi, could you expand upon this, perhaps with an example? Thanks.

<comment><USER5> When the company floats they release a given amount of stock to the market.

If they then also release stock to pay their employees then the total stock in the market goes up.

If the total number of stock (i.e. shares) goes up but the company profits go and the money in the bank (and other assets) also goes down then the value of each of those individual stock items will also be going down.

Hence the drop in the share price.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The stock fell 18% because "monthly active users" grew "less than 4 per cent...between the third and fourth quarters," with US user growth at just "3 per cent quarter-on-quarter". "Facebook," by comparison, "increased its user numbers at the same 4 per cent rate from a much larger base in the same period" [1]. The GAAP loss highlighted is due to one-off accounting charges related to stock compensation.

Note that revenues came in 4% above expectations and 110% higher than last year's.

[1] [http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a1ecfc6e-8eab-11e3-b6f1-00144feab7...](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a1ecfc6e-8eab-11e3-b6f1-00144feab7de.html#ixzz2sV3UgwVB)

<comment><USER7> They actually mentioned the stock-based compensation and it's impact on GAAP profitability in their S-1.

 _Following the completion of this offering, the stock-based compensation expense related to Pre-2013 RSUs and other outstanding equity awards will have a significant negative impact on our ability to achieve profitability on a GAAP basis in 2013 and 2014._

[http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1418091/0001193125134...](http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1418091/000119312513400028/d564001ds1a.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I like how the article introduces Twitter as "Microblogging site Twitter..." as if you haven't heard of Twitter but are familiar with this thing called microblogging.

<comment><USER9> I think it's more about making Twitter sound less relevant, as if it is "one of many".

<comment><USER10> Isn't it though?

<comment><USER11> Yes, in the same sense that Google is just "one of many" available search engines.

<comment><USER12> Photo-sharing site Facebook...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm not of those people who thinks all tech valuations are insane, but I think it is hard to justify twitter being worth 150x their quarterly revenue (~$36b valuation/~$240m revenue). I understand twitter's valuation reflects the fact that it's a growing company, but even a company like facebook is only valued at 60x their quarterly revenue ($158b/$2.5b quarterly revenue).

But at least the consensus on wall street and the financial press seem to agree that TWTR is clearly overvalued.

<comment><USER14> >but I think it is hard to justify twitter being worth 150x their quarterly revenue (~$36b valuation/~$240m

What do you think is easy to justify for Twitter?

(I'm actually pretty confident in Twitter, I guess. They took ten years-ish to IPO and not a day goes by where I don't see a hashtag on several products be it a local political group or a super bowl commercial)

<comment><USER15> It used to be AOL keywords. Times change quick.

<comment><USER14> >It used to be AOL keywords. Times change quick.

Interesting idea. I was around for AOL keywords, they weren't the same nor were they used the same way by as many different types of people. AOL has a billion dollar market cap still, despite the times changing quickly. Does it mean Twitter will be around 100 years from now? Of course that's unlikely. (Isn't GE the only one left from the original US stock exchanges?) But I think Twitter has a solid shot for the next several years. #TwitterCouldLose80PercentOfItsUsersAndStillBeLargerThanAOLAtItsPeak

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I saw a provocative question on Twitter this afternoon:

"What exactly does Twitter need 2300 employees for?"

<comment><USER17> Sales. Being a sales company requires a lot of salespeople. That's frankly a small number considering the number of companies that advertise.

<comment><USER18> But they are also an Internet company where the ad signups are done online, so it's not immediately obvious why they would have all those salespeople. (Not saying that they don't need a large number of salespeople, but that it isn't an immediately obvious need)

<comment><USER19> Guess how many salespeople Google has.

<comment><USER20> Any chance you know? Would be interested to know their numbers vs twitter.

<comment><USER21> "Several thousand" according to WSJ.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> 18% drop in after hours trading... ouch

[https://www.google.co.uk/finance?q=NYSE%3ATWTR&ei=68TyUrjPF4...](https://www.google.co.uk/finance?q=NYSE%3ATWTR&ei=68TyUrjPF4PCwAOWxwE)

Anyone who knows more about Twitter, how exactly can they make such a big loss? What exactly are they doing?

<comment><USER23> Tons of employees + tons of machines + tons of bandwidth - very little advertising revenue = big loss

Have you purchased anything or viewed many ads on Twitter?

<comment><USER22> Wikipedia says they have 2,000 employees last year, without meaning to sound rude what exactly do they need all those employees for?

<comment><USER24> It's an interesting question. By comparison, at the end of 2010 Facebook had about 2,000 +/\- employees and $2b in sales for that fiscal year. Twitter is roughly three times overstaffed compared to Facebook.

<comment><USER25> Do you happen to know how the active user base compares between 2010 Facebook and 2013 Twitter?

<comment><USER26> Facebook had ~820M MAU at the end of Q4'2010\. Twitter has ~230M MAU at the end of Q4'2013.

Sauce: [http://lighthouseinsights.in/wp- content/uploads/2013/07/face...](http://lighthouseinsights.in/wp- content/uploads/2013/07/facebook-mobile-q213-mau.png)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Duh? Who really thought Twitter would suddenly become profitable after the IPO? The VCs cashed out and walked away laughing at the imploding building.

THERE (STILL) IS NO PROFIT MODEL.

<comment><USER28> No profit model? Completely wrong.

According to the IPO docs they make about $2/1000 views in America (which is good) and were projected to make $1 billion in revenue this year (also good). This article reports that their first quarter revenue is about $250 million, more than double the previous year, which makes their prediction definitely feasible. The remaining question is whether they can turn this revenue into profit, and my answer is yes, because (1) the growth of their operating costs is dramatically outpaced by the growth of their revenue, and (2) most of their losses are due to acquisitions (and they are smart acquisitions). So overall this is a pretty strong portfolio and I'd say it's a completely reasonable bet they're going to be significantly profitable soon.

Now. Serious question: did you read this article? If yes you should be embarrassed at your misapprehension here, because in spite of the title, this data in this article actually paints a pretty damn rosy picture of Twitter's future. If no, then _why are you commenting here_? Here I am sounding cranky, but if you're going to do the ALL INTERNET SHOUTING CAPS thing then you'd better take care not to say something silly. Just my personal opinion, but next time I'd start by both reading the article _and_ understanding the article, and I'd follow that up with taking care to make it sound like I don't think that everyone who disagrees with me is, blanket statement, stupid. Because some of us _have_ done our homework and still disagree with you.

<comment><USER29> If you read the article, you should know the primary concern is not the profits or revenues but rather the decline in product engagement/growth. What is your response to that? Your comment doesn't even make a single mention of the #1 reason to be very concerned about twitter.

<comment><USER28> Thanks for the spirited reply, Zaid, but I never said I disagree with any of these points. I'm responding specifically to the _ridiculous_ notion that profit could not possibly be in the future of a post-IPO Twitter, not this stuff about whether Twitter is actually in trouble. If you want to take issue with my position you should probably respond to something I actually said. It is less productive to pretend I am debating a different set of issues and then complain when I don't address these other issues.

(I also don't appreciate your assertion that I didn't read an article from which I cited specific factual statements. Obviously I did. This is all particularly annoying, since you seem to believe something that I think is mostly true, and not on something which I concretely disagree; it makes it seem like you're hunting for a disagreement and not conducting this conversation in good faith.)

<comment><USER29> _Timeline views were down nearly 7%, suggesting users were refreshing their feeds less often._

(1) Twitter makes most of its revenues from timeline views

(2) Timeline views are declining

(3) When a recently IPO'd company's biggest money making product is on the decline in terms of usage, that is hardly a rosy picture.

<comment><USER28> Sure, it is certainly debatable that "rosy" was the right choice of words here (it probably was a bit bombastic). But unless your plan is to claim that it is impossible to be optimistic about this situation (which is more or less the position I have taken issue with), then I'm not interested in having this discussion.

I'm open to the possibility is wrong; I'm not open to the idea that this debate about the semantics of "rosy" is the most interesting thing to be said here.

Sorry if this is a bit blunt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Has a social network at twitter's scale ever been able to undo a growth plateau? In this business you live and die by organic growth.

I have so many problems with the twitter product I don't even know where to begin. I am working on writing my own UI to twitter to look more like facebook. At its essence, I long for a twitter that:

* makes it easier to follow and indulge in conversations(facebook does this)

* filters out noise, such as retweets or same links showing up 5 times from 5 different people

* remove the 140 char limit; we've moved away from 140 chars with sms for a reason and it is time for twitter to do the same

<comment><USER30> If you want Twitter to be more like Facebook, why not just use Facebook?

I agree that I'd like for it to be easier to dive into a conversation. It's a lot better than it was years ago, but I still struggle with the UI for that sometimes.

As for the 140 char limit, I think that should never change. Removing that would remove the entire essence of Twitter and turn it into endless drivel.

<comment><USER29> I do already use facebook pretty much all day. But twitter has a different audience and has more conversations relevant to work. Except the UI sucks and makes me work my ass off to engage in those conversations. If facebook or linkedin ends up eating twitter's lunch at some point, I won't complain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The thing that I don't quite get with Twitter is that I genuinely do not know anyone in real life who actually uses it.

Some people I know have accounts so they can use it as an aggregator, and the occasional person tweets a question at a pseudocelebrity who isn't otherwise accessible, but I do not know anyone who uses it for its intended purpose.

For comparison, all my (24, m, Australia) friends use Facebook, most have Snapchat, half have Instagram, some have Pinterest, few use G+ or tumblr). No one uses Twitter.

With that in mind, the kind of valuations Twitter has seem insane to me. It seems like the only people who like it are celebrities and media companies who desparately want me to 'join the conversation'. Both of those groups are more than happy to move onto the next big thing, as we saw with Myspace.

It could be me who is just an outlier (this is, after all, completely anecdotal), but I have a feeling that the outlier might actually be Silicon Valley.

<comment><USER32> Do you watch sports?

<comment><USER31> Yeah, I'm a season member of two sports - cricket and AFL.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> > Twitter brings in money largely by selling advertising space and data on > tweeting habits.

It's the first time I hear about Twitter selling "tweeting habits" of their users. I don't know what that means, does anyone?

<comment><USER34> I don't know much about the specifics of what Twitter are selling, but there's two possibilities:

1\. They're just selling raw feeds of data that people can pay for and analyse as they wish. This is something they definitely are doing, it's called the "Twitter Firehose", and isn't cheap to get access to.

2\. They're selling their own, presumably anonymous, analysis of users for external advertising purposes. For example if I've tweeted about wanting to buy a car, maybe some car company's agency wants to buy data that will allow them to (re)target me outside of Twitter - I put (re) in brackets as it's the same concept as retargeting, but technically just targeting as I wouldn't (necessarily) have already visited that car seller's website. I've no idea if Twitter do anything like this, and I'm not entirely sure how it would work from a technical point of view, I've done marketing based around very targeted data, but only ever through companies that specialise on figuring out who to show adverts to, so I've never had to worry about how they were doing it.

<comment><USER35> An ad deal with Twitter comes with an analytics dashboard and an ability to run surveys on users targeted across various dimensions.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Wsta – a CLI for working with WebSockets written in Rust - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/esphen/wsta/ <comment><USER2> I have been using `wscat`[1] when I was developing a WebSocket app last year. It was a nifty little tool although it would require the entire nodejs / npm stack to be able to run it. `wsta` is probably more portable as all we need is just a native binary to run.

[1]: [https://www.npmjs.com/package/wscat](https://www.npmjs.com/package/wscat)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, wscat is pretty a pretty nice tool! I used it as well, but it always bothered me that I couldn't tell it what to send to the server when running it. It's super handy to be able to file bugs with a one-liner to reproduce the bug.

That lead me to fork it and send a PR with that feature. It never got merged, so I simply created a new project, which ultimately lead to this :)

<comment><USER2> Glad to hear the back story of wsta! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Can I use this to send an initial JSON message and then pipe audio data from my mic?

(I wouldn't be surprised if this is possible with standard UNIX magic... But I just don't know how.)

<comment><USER4> Something like: arecord -fdat | wsta ws:// ?

<comment><USER5> Supposing this is correct, you can add the json with cat: arecord -fdat | cat init.json - | wsta ws://

<comment><USER3> Yep, that sounds like the magic I was looking for. I'll try it out later today.

<comment><AUTHOR> Holler if it works, that sounds pretty awesome!

<comment><USER3> I tried a few different things and couldn't make it work. I think the problem is that the audio data is getting sent as a text websocket message rather than binary message. I got a whole bunch of "error: stream did not contain valid UTF-8" and "No JSON object could be decoded" errors that I think both came from the remote end.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Shameless plug: I built something similar in Golang a while ago: [https://github.com/oliver006/ws-client](https://github.com/oliver006/ws- client)

</comment><comment><USER7> For users, I think it's better to ask to install rustup from rustup.sh, and then just `cargo install wscat`.

<comment><AUTHOR> Quite true. Thanks for the tip!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> But it needs a better name. I'm thinking telweb :-D.</comment>


A journal article reviewed weekly - <AUTHOR> http://www.founderscholar.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> I started this blog to share some of the research that I've been reading on management and entrepreneurship. As an investor and entrepreneur, I've never looked at academic research--I always considered it impractical. Now I am reading 5-6 papers a week and most of it is, well, impractical. Some of it is intriguing or thought-provoking.

I'm sharing a brief review of the best one I come across each week (a la what Adrian is doing here for CS [https://blog.acolyer.org/about/](https://blog.acolyer.org/about/)).</comment>


It's all about typography - <AUTHOR> Crafting awesome digital experiences is difficult. Let alone create a good set of rules of a good reading experience!
In the last days I spend some time dissecting Medium.com typography to find the secrets for their secret sauce.
Usually a great reading experience require a great font. Like Medium.com does.
However using google fonts in your web projects is always a good idea as their cdn's are lightning fast  (and they are free).
I tried all fonts in google fonts website and found out that you can recreate their reading experience very very similarly with free fonts.
The best fonts (in alternative to Medium ones) in my opinion are:
- Lora, as content font - Playfair display, as brand font - Montserrat, as UI font
I recreated their reading experience for a blog post in a live demo: https://codepen.io/lucagez/full/bQObBe/
I found myself always struggling for for a basic set of rules to make a decent reading experience. So I made a minimal boilerplate useful for bootstrapping a project. I hope someone will find it useful.
Git repo: https://github.com/lucagez/medium.css
Happy typography,
Gez <comment><USER2> > However using google fonts in your web projects is always a good idea as > their cdn's are lightning fast (and they are free).

No, it is not _always_ a good idea. If you care about your user's privacy a single bit, you should self-host. Easily done thanks to [https://google- webfonts-helper.herokuapp.com/fonts](https://google-webfonts- helper.herokuapp.com/fonts)

<comment><USER3> Or use the fonts installed on their computer. Let me, as the client have some say in rendering things. In many cases, where absolute placement of words doesnt matter, font families are just fine.

<comment><USER4> Or let me, as the content provider decide how I'd like to display my content, that you're not paying for, thanks.

You're more than welcome to make your on effort stripping that out after the event, of course.

<comment><USER5> Using the bandwidth and batteries _you_ didn't pay for.

<comment><USER4> haha, ok? That's a bit of an ambitious stretch towards a counterpoint, but I'll bite — You pay for the bandwidth you choose to consume (assuming you're on a metred connection), I pay for the bandwidth on the content I choose to deliver (assuming I run a server), but ultimately you choose what to consume — you have every right not to not even bother with my content and its gorgeous choice of font.

Heck, if I've done my job properly, you can nix all my styling and read my content as you wish, but that's your palava.

As for your battery - I'll plant a tree and say a small prayer for its sacrifice.

<comment><USER3> By default, unless you NEED web fonts, why not just be respectful and use system fonts. Using web fonts us unnecessary for the bulk of websites. Every system has a helvetica/arial and georgia/baskerville family. Build a strong font family, and use webfonts sparingly when spacing and consistency are actually important. Why bloat bandwidth and page speeds for little gain.

<comment><USER4> 'Respectful' to what exactly?

And what if I want to use Garamond?

Your stance makes no sense beyond your own peculiar prejudice.

\- ed

Again, if YOU don't like MY content the way YOU want it - then YOU make the effort to change it as to how YOU want.

Anything else is simply, well - disrespectful - as you choose to imply.

<comment><USER3> Why cant you use system fonts by default, unless you need to use a web font? Youre making web fonts the first, go to choice, in call cases.

<comment><USER4> Evidently you have your own thoughts on this, so it's pointless me bantering away - but why can't and why shouldn't I make my choice my default?

If I set up the stylesheet to have an order of preference, with a fallback to default system fonts that mangle my considered layout, then you're perfectly free to do what you will - but again (and we're going around in circles here) - it's my content, I'd rather like to display it as I wish.

Look, I'll be honest - there are times and situations where I wish there were still properly text based browsers that could read web content (assuming it's been marked up well enough in the first place) and display it in green-glowing monospaced terminal text - but there aren't. The world's moved on - I'm sorry you don't like it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The assumption behind your whole argument is wrong. Choosing a typeface _is not_ typography.

See: [http://ia.net/blog/the-web-is-all-about-typography- period](http://ia.net/blog/the-web-is-all-about-typography-period)

> However using google fonts in your web projects is always a good idea as > their cdn's are lightning fast (and they are free).

I would argue that the exact contrary is true. Using web fonts in your project is always a bad idea for performance and functionality reasons. Stop bloating the web. Use system fonts.

See: [http://mrmrs.cc/writing/2016/03/17/webfonts/](http://mrmrs.cc/writing/2016/03/17/webfonts/)

Edit: fix URL, formatting

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you mrzool, I accept the criticism. I think I will try to understand better the use of system fonts (:

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Medium no longer uses a custom or proprietary font for body text. They _used_ to use Freight Text, but now they use Bitstream Charter, which is free (in several variants):

[https://practicaltypography.com/charter.html](https://practicaltypography.com/charter.html) [https://www.samiam.org/blog/2014-07-04.html](https://www.samiam.org/blog/2014-07-04.html) [https://ctan.org/pkg/xcharter?lang=en](https://ctan.org/pkg/xcharter?lang=en) [https://software.sil.org/charis/](https://software.sil.org/charis/)

Charter is an excellent and very legible font. I wish more people would use it, especially in the LaTeX world, where most people stick with the to-my-eyes nearly unreadable default Computer Modern.

A few critiques of your design:

You put linebreaks in unexpected and jarring places, breaking the flow of paragraphs. For example, in the paragraph under the heading "The Hero".

You use a narrow column for body text. This is often recommended by typography nerds, but it doesn't play nicely with elements that can't be hyphenated and split across multiple lines, such as  spans. See eg. the paragraph under the heading "Content font". I suggest using a wider text column to make the resulting line-breaks less jarring relative to their surroundings. You might also want to enable "hyphens: auto" in your CSS, or use a JS hyphenation library (make sure to load it asynchronously so people on slow connections can still read your content while it's loading!).

And finally, there's more to typography than choosing typefaces, as I hope the above makes clear.

<comment><USER8> Computer Modern is indeed a poor font from the stone age of digital typography. It's the Comic Sans of computer science.

However it effectively communicates "I'm a serious expert in this computer stuff and you won't understand this text anyway", which is why blockchain ICO fraudsters write their zero-content whitepapers in Word but change the font to Computer Modern.

<comment><USER9> Do you find Knuth's books ugly and hard to read?

<comment><USER8> Computer Modern is bearable in print (although there are many better-designed options from commercial font designers if you want a good 18th century style Didone face).

The problem is that most documents set in Computer Modern are not read on paper but on screens, where its legibility is very poor due to the extreme contrast between stroke widths.

<comment><USER10> The spindly nature of Computer Modern that you see on computer screens is because of a poor translation of Knuth's Computer Modern design (whose default parameters were tuned taking into account the amount by which ink spreads on the page, on the printing devices Knuth was targeting) into outline fonts (which do not take into account the fact that there's no ink spread on the screen). See for example [https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/361722/48](https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/361722/48)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Thanks for the Codepen. I think you did a good job of replicating the Medium look. Unsurprisingly, you are catching flak from HN users whose idea of perfect typography is "motherfuckingwebsite.com".

Typography does matter, especially in a time when "websites" are links I click on via a HN/Reddit/Twitter link and usually never visit again. Very different from even 15 years ago, when I pretty much only visited sites on my bookmarks list.

For sites that have visibly attractive, readable typography, I find myself wanting to stay on the site longer, if maybe just to explore some more content. That usually doesn't happen on most sites, since you can tell right away that it's a CMS template where the defaults weren't changed at all.

Right away I get the vibe that the content on the site is mass-produced, and not a good use of my attention. Sites that invest in good, unique typography on the other hand make me feel more like the content matters.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Sites that invest in good, unique typography on the other hand make me feel more like the content matters" That's a very good point of meditation!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The Medium Design blog is a great resource if you want to unpick their design. They talk in great detail about the various typefaces they have chosen over the years, and why. [https://medium.design/](https://medium.design/)

Butterick's Practical Typography is the best beginner's guide to type on the web that I know about. If you want to know how to lay out pages with good typography, this takes you through everything in easily digestible chapters. [https://practicaltypography.com/](https://practicaltypography.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you, I didn't know about medium.design!

</comment></comment><comment> open-source-ux _" I found myself always struggling for a basic set of rules to make a decent reading experience"_

This is an excellent talk on web typography that I think you might find helpful. It includes a series of easy-to-follow guidelines to help improve web typography. If the pace of the talk is too slow, you can speed up the video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbIZX6tE9JY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbIZX6tE9JY)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! I will definitely check it out!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Back in 2012, Errol Morris performed a typeface experiment on unsuspecting NYT readers [1]. The results are worth reading (hint: use Baskerville if you want to be trusted)

[1] [https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/08/hear-all- ye...](https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/08/hear-all-ye-people- hearken-o-earth/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Whoa! Fonts shaped our minds D:

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I just want to thank you for taking the time to make all this and I applaud your attitude toward a lot of the criticism (which can often be so erroneously certain of itself here on HN).

I'd just say that with type it's important to take it back to its first principles: the interplay of positive and negative space in letterforms and their context. There is a little science, or a few hard rules, in typography but it is still a subjective design discipline and driven largely by the philosophy of the designer on the other side of the screen. Many of the best designers in the world often disagree with one another about the minutiae of type (Massimo Vignelli believed Helvetica was one of the only good typefaces a designer could use, while Erik Spiekermann dislikes it intensely and David Carson finds it dull and uninspiring).

On this foundation you can build a view of how different typefaces interact with one another. Do they harmonise when it comes to m-width, letterform curvature and/or thick-thin contrast, or do they instead complement one another in their differences? Both can be valid approaches and lead to good results.

In the end, typography like all design is a matter of context. Who will be reading your text, what will they be reading it on (phone, desktop, piece of paper?), where will they be when they read it (sitting in a lazy chair at home on a Sunday or on a train commute to work on a busy Monday?), what fonts can they support etc.

Thanks very much for your hard work :)

</comment><comment><USER15> For me, in typography the four most important things are these, in this order:

\- appropriate choice of content/mono/headline typeface to the usage (regular content / preformatted content / headlines); that's really easy;

\- spacing settings: line height, character horizontal spacing; that's also easy, though there's much more room for nuances;

\- vertical rhythm, that's a big one; when wrong it's not as destructive to readability as what I mentioned above, but it feels really wrong, i.e. you're not sure why, but you just want to leave the site. Vertical rhythm is very hard due to technical reasons, and it's nuanced as well;

\- and, finally, in the last place for me, the typeface choice. I find the differences between various fonts of the same type to have, by comparison to the things mentioned above, the least influence on my experience, whether in the aesthetic or functional sense. Not that I'm not sensitive to differences between typefaces, it's just that those other things seem to be much more influential.

I'd like to hear others' accounts of this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely a checklist to add to my typography toolbelt. Thank you! (:

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Nice! Thanks for sharing your research.

Edit: BTW, this shuld probably be a "Show HN:" post.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your feedback! Sorry I am new to hacker news and I didn't know about that feature!

<comment><USER17> It's less of a feature and more of a convention. Just put "Show HN:" in front of the title if you're showing your work, or "Ask HN:" if you're asking a question without linking to an existing article. For "Show HN", it's customary to only submit each project once.

There is also "Tell HN:" but afaik it's mostly used by the mods, dang and sctb, to announce rule changes or new features.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Matthew Butterick's _Practical Typography_ is a great primer on all things typographical.

[https://practicaltypography.com](https://practicaltypography.com)

</comment><comment><USER19> This is great work!

However, I would just drop the drop cap. I don't really think they serve any purpose on the web, and I don't think they work terribly well either (they're especially silly when a paragraph starts with a two letter word like "It", which on Medium they have both letters of as the drop cap: this may or may not be the correct way of doing it, but it looks ridiculous).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you bshimmin!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Looks good, I have some remarks though. Is making your blog look exactly like medium legal? If it is, isn't that a dick move though?

<comment><USER15> I wish we'd presume, as a society, that everything intellectual is, at least implicitly, free to use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Fonts and Typography in Newspapers has always been incredibly important, when it comes to the audience they're trying to reach.

</comment><comment><USER22> Nice work. I'm always after some thought out opinion when choosing colors and font so I'm glad to see this.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am glad you find that helpful (:

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The problem is, you are talking about art. And art is in the eye of the beholder. There are plenty of people who will disagree with your opinion and chosen fonts. I like all the fonts you used but don't like how they're used in your example.

So this becomes similar to a color palette site where someone shows a bunch of colors that you purportedly are able to use and are told they work well together. Until you use them together on your site and find them to be garish/boring/loud/goofy/amateurish/etc.

Of course, this is why we have typographers and graphic artists.

btw, if you go to real typographer web sites, you'll often read some groaning about Google fonts and you'll see that few, if any, use them for all the reasons they groan about them.

<comment><AUTHOR> I understand your point of view. However I am mainly a web developer but I often find myself doing also the design side of projects by necessity. So this is only a basic attempt to learn how to make things look a little bit prettier. BTW thank you for your feedback (:

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Imho biggest problem for creating SaaS experience is subscription management.

I've been looking for a drop in subscription manager with support for manual payment/credit card/bitcoin

But it seems no unified effort is being made in this direction.

I wonder where i can find a community of SaaS builders

<comment><USER25> I've had luck with Recurly in the past ([https://recurly.com/](https://recurly.com/)), I don't think it has support for Bitcoin though.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you host your personal domain email accounts? - <AUTHOR> I'm looking at getting an email service provider account to associate my own personal domains email address with. Who offers the best service/price? How much effort is it to host it myself? <comment><USER2> Fastmail.com

They are reliable and I like to know that it'll just work™. I've been a customer for over 3 years or so now.

<comment><USER3> My old workplace uses that for their entire staff, and I use the personal 5€/month plan, with no complaint.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Epik.com seems to be the cheapest. Most providers are at least $10/mo but for only one address I'm paying $3/mo at epik

</comment><comment><USER5> With ProtonMail you get 1 custom domain and 5 addresses for $5/mo.

</comment><comment><USER6> Migadu. Pay by number of mails sent. Not by number of domains.

</comment><comment><USER7> Zoho.com (it's free).</comment>


Ask HN: State of the art mobile messenger (end to end encryption) - <AUTHOR>

Which mobile messenger is currently considered secure? I know of two messenger apps: Threema, which is not open source and telegram, which has its own crypographic routines, which have been cracked at least once (as far as I understand it). Is there any recommendation (please include a link/source). <comment><USER2> @tptacek (matassano) seems to like very much these guys[1].

[1] [https://whispersystems.org/](https://whispersystems.org/)

<comment><USER3> TextSecure from them has a lot of good people behind it (Moxie Marlinspike being one notable). It is open source, actively developed, and they have plans for an iOS and desktop client on top of the already existing Android client. They support both SMS and data for sending messages. It is aesthetically pleasing, simple to use, and supports group chat. I highly recommend it. Their blog has some interesting posts about some of the crypto its built on, if you're also interested in that stuff.</comment></comment>


Emails prove traffic shutdown was political payback from office of NJ governor - <AUTHOR> http://www.northjersey.com/news/christie_kelly_bridge_lane_closures_emails.html

<comment><AUTHOR> What's interesting about this is apparently you can get anything back from Google gmail via a warrant.

Also, without the press, this would have been completely buried. Note how it was done to another mayor and no-one believed him until now.</comment>


Ask HN: AppFog vs. Heroku for a Rails App - <AUTHOR>

What does everyone think of AppFog? I've been using Heroku for my Rails app, but I've been thinking about going over to AppFog. <comment><USER2> Heroku. No other choice. It's the best!

What did you made think bad about Heroku?</comment>