Tumblr Leaves Posterous in the Dust - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/tumblr_leaves_posterous_in_the_dust.php#more <comment><USER2> I've got to admit to taking a certain guilty pleasure in these numbers after Posterous' last campaign to get switchers. They were pompous, arrogent, and unnecessarily slagged on their competition. I'm pleased to see that such nasty tactics (apparently) paid little dividends.

<comment><USER3> I was actually about to use Posterous, but the campaign brought my attention to Tumblr, which previously I thought was just a tumble-log, not a blog with complete features.

After checking out Tumblr, it was not clear to me that Posterous was the better product and there were some issues with DDOS attacks at the same time. Also I saw two other people I knew using Tumblr as well.

If Posterous really became the clear-cut best blogging platform someday, I could always switch over with the switch tool, so the decision to use Tumblr for now was an easy one.

<comment><USER4> I swear, this might be hard to believe for some, this is EXACTLY the reason I tried out tumblr and ended up having a permanent blog there. It gave me the impression that tumblr was doing something right for posterous to try to "snag" their users.

I heard about tumblr all these years but never tried it before. Its funny how things work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The problem with Posterous is that the changes they have made over the past 8 months (since I started using it) have been small and irrelevant things (like code highlighting or such stuff).

When I write, I want to be appreciated and I want my writing to reach a big audience. Tumblr achieves that, posterous never made any change in that direction.

Posterous started off cool and fresh, but that initial slew of innovation has not been followed up on. Things like the backtype widget, view count, etc all were there from the start, and later not much new stuff came after that.

Posterous have focused too much on these technical stuff (like CSS buttons), and too little on the social stuff. I write for people to read, not for my page to look good.

Don't get me wrong, I like posterous a lot. But I just think posterous is simple by being limiting.

<comment><USER6> We're definitely working on it. =) But this feedback is super helpful. Thanks Max.

<comment><USER5> See reply below to Matt for more details of what I meant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> No one in his right mind, outside the HN hivemind, things posterous is a serious challenge to tumblr.

<comment><USER7> I have no idea what anyone thinks about matters like those outside the HN hivemind. How do you?

I started using Tumblr to jot down my notes because it looked cool and simple. To my regret, a couple times I found new "social" features on my dashboard, but that's it. I was actually afraid that this hobby project will fade away and shut down, unneeded. I was surprised to find it is not so!

<comment><USER8> Thought this too, until I moved in with two professional (that is, paid) bloggers in NYC. Apparently, there's quite an ecosystem of tumblr "publishers" who care deeply about their tumblr follower numbers, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The two metrics that the article is based on are the number of visitors to the services homepage. On Tumblr you login to the website to post content, Posterous on the other hand uses email and so doesn't get its members visiting all the time to post new content. I think this article is flawed.

<comment><USER4> tumblr also allows posting by email, not to mention large amount of desktop publishing software that can be used to publish posts on tumblr. I have never used the tumblr homepage to publish blog post and I know quite a few people who doesn't do it either.

<comment><USER10> They do not advertise that feature as much though, and by using email, wouldn't you miss out on at least some of their main social networking selling point?

A lot of what makes them popular can only be found on their site. You don't get any engineering vibe from them, they project a very sensitive image that appeals to the heart. By not visiting their site, you are not participating.

I think the posterous offering is not diluted by email posting, and it would at least appear to me to make more sense if more people on posterous use email posting.

<comment><USER4> I can only speak for myself. I personally user tumblr (only started few months ago) for private ramblings about random stuff that comes in my mind. My tumblr is blocked from search engine and I have not shared the link with anyone. I also blocked out comments and whatever other social media features there might be. I would have made it password protected if they allowed private tumblers to have access to API (you can't post to password protected pages from desktop publishing software AFAIK).

I know this is not how or why most people use tumblr. But thats ok. I use it only the way I like it.

I also have a "public" self hosted wordpress blog which I share with my friends and family and open to search engine.

posterous, to me, is just yet another blogging platform. Just like I don't feel like I need to try out every single new things comes out every week, I don't feel like posterous really sets them apart is such a way from all other existing blogging platform for me to even bother.

<comment><USER10> Of course Posterous is just another blogging platform. Have they tried to be anything else? The way you described how you use tumblr does seem to suggest that Posterous is actually a better fit, but it appears that you just found tumblr first and didn't bother to switch.

The Posterous switch campaign awhile back was targeted at users like you. That's how they were trying to set themselves apart. It might not have worked well, but the intention is clear.

There is only so much a utility product can do to diversify itself from competitors. A condom is a condom is a condom. As long as it doesn't leak, it works. Would you complain that Trojan's products are not sufficiently different from Durex?

<comment><USER4> If I were to take your analogy seriously than it would right to argue that all operating systems are just OS, it makes no difference whether you use windows, OSX, Linux, BSD, solaris.

The reason yor analogy doesn't work is because condoms are single purpose, blogging software and OS are not. They can be and has been able to set them apart from one another with features, implementations, ease of use and services.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> These two services have similarities, but someone could just have well written an article that says "Wordpress leaves Tumblr and Posterous in the dust."

I like the idea of a YC company taking on an existing one head on once in awhile, rather than looking for an overtly specific niche. Posterous still has a ton of users, and I think at one point and time the digg vs reddit chart looked pretty similar. Look at it today and you will see a different story.

<comment><USER12> Digg let down themselves. I doubt Tumblr is going to do. If nothing else, they have a decent design taste. That alone is enough to survive and multiply.

<comment><USER8> They do have good design taste, but their technical side is missing quite a bit. Just earlier today, I couldn't figure out how to submit an image by URL (since they automatically resized my original): kept getting some kind of "invalid file" error (I'm not uploading a file!). Scheduled-publication was also broken the 1 time I tried it. Very frustrating.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There's a timeshifting problem at work here. If Tumblr was indeed first to market, then it SHOULD be ahead. They are similar products with similar (viral) growth styles. A more interesting questions would be this: Is Posterous growing as fast as Tumblr when Tumblr was at this stage/age.

Similar articles were written about Facebook and Twitter and now Twitter is getting 370k new accounts per day. It just takes time.

Personally, I find the social network features of Tumblr really jumbled and confusing as an outsider. LiveJournal was a social network, too, and it plateaued.

<comment><USER14> Posterous was a year later than Tumblr but first to market doesn't count for as much as some people make out.

For social sites (Twitter, Facebook etc.) it's important because of the network effects but to read and interact with a blog on a particular site you don't need to have a blog on that site yourself (else we'd all still have LiveJournals). That means age or growth doesn't mean too much.

Of course that counts for Tumblr too which means that you've got to look at more standard factors for growth - functionality, cost, brand awareness and so on - and in these areas Tumblr seems to have an advantage which I suspect is why it's growing faster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't post to either, but Tumblr makes it 100x easier to explore content on the site. Posterous doesn't even try - they bury the "Explore" link on the bottom of the home page and clicking that just gets the visitor a list of random and unorganized posts.

<comment><USER16> Exactly. Also, tumblr is full of NSFW blogs and that's a huge boost in visits.

<comment><USER17> That point is exactly the first thing I thought of when I read the article. How much of Tumblr's traffic is for "photo blogs" of naked girls? Based on what I've observed, probably a good amount.

Not that that traffic is somehow invalid, but I think it makes the comparison a bit more apples-to-oranges.

<comment><USER16> Not exactly apples to oranges, because that doesn't make the community argument invalid. It's the fun of exploring content on Tumblr that made it possible to grow a network of erotic photoblogs (and not only erotic, check all the 'f __*yeahsomething' categories, all kind of lols and such). I didn't bother to check if Posterous' TOS somehow block such content, but still if it was there, currently it's not so easy to find and follow as on Tumblr.

<comment><USER10> Not exactly apple to orange, but more Facebook to LinkedIn?

A social network's content is its people. I think Tumblr did well targeting the casual crowd. Posterous blogs that I come across, on the other hand, are very "merit-arian," so to speak. Lots of industry focused minds on there that is famous not because of Posterous, but because they are also high in some other circle. In this case, Posterous is only providing them with the tools, with a small Posterous ad attached.

I wouldn't want to see them sacrificing that just to beat Tumblr.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Another very important metric, probably more important than raw traffic is number of users and number of posts to each service. You can get more creative in number of posts per blog per month, recency data (e.g. X% of all users have blogged at least once in the past 90 days) and get an even better picture.

Without this kind of context, raw traffic is kinda meaningless. At least the quantcast numbers for both are directly measured and not "estimated".

</comment><comment><USER19> Maybe I'm completely wrong but to me it always felt like Tumblr landed on a seriously awesome name. There's just something nice about it: simple, clean, clever, cute, and very contemporary. It just feels nice. I wouldn't be surprised if Tumblr's name played a small factor in getting people to come check it out.

Sadly I think posterous's name is quite bad. It sounds like a developer came up with it (no offense guys), it doesn't roll off the tongue and it sounds intimidating.

These are just my hunches, no data at all to back any of this up, but I do feel like the right name can make a difference.

</comment><comment><USER16> Tumblr is easy to love as it seems less obliging from the start. It's dashboard is a prime example of KISS, and it's easy to use most of the features as well as not use them at all. I came to Posterous for it's 'autopost' feature which works really fine and I've used it for some time.

Both apps are great, Posterous webservices integration beats Tumblr, but the latter wins in terms of 'hanging around' browsing stuff from the community and that's probably the key point of their success in stats.

</comment><comment><USER20> Is it me or is that not exponential growth?

<comment><USER21> nope, just wanted to point out the same, and there's second comment about it too

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I wish Tumblr would start charging for something. These services that are completely free worry me in the long run. I've put my heart and soul into writing almost every weekday on my blog. I would be devastated if they ever shut down. I would gladly pay to use it.

<comment><USER23> We offer paid themes and directory promo spots.

Treat yourself to a pretty theme:

        http://www.tumblr.com/themes/premium

You'll also be supporting the theme designer in the process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I like tumblr - I like that I can point a domain there and essentially get free hosting. Problem is, the system is frequently down. And the way posts are queued to be published is just goofy.

</comment><comment><USER25> [http://siteanalytics.compete.com/tumblr.com+posterous.com+wo...](http://siteanalytics.compete.com/tumblr.com+posterous.com+wordpress.com/)

 _ahem_

I know people get worked up about new stuff, but that doesn't mean the new stuff is better than the old (often far more reliable, featureful, etc. etc). I went with wordpress.com a couple months ago, and have loved it (with email posting and excellent code highlighting, even for Clojure :-P).

</comment><comment><USER26> How do either of them make money?

Eyeballs are good, but revenue is better.

</comment><comment><USER27> I evaluated both of these platforms without really thinking that either were competing with each other (although, I guess it's obvious). I found that, yes, Tumblr is huge, more user friendly and community driven, but it's also over- run with 13 year olds posting Twilight pictures, whereas Posterous just felt a little more focused on the single user blogging experience. A lot less clique- influenced. I liked that. It's disheartening to know they're going for the same things Tumblr is.

<comment><USER28> That is something I've found, it is possible that the posterous user base can be more easily monetised than the tumblr mainly because on average they actually have money too spend. They both seem to lack a real revenue model currently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> > However for all of Posterous' hard work and bluster, it's been Tumblr that > has grown exponentially over the past year.

For _very_ linear implementations of exp()

</comment><comment><USER30> One word: Beauty.

I prefer and use Posterous; but somehow Tumblr seems to be much more beautiful; more Apple-ish. Posterous sites seems more serious.

</comment><comment><USER31> One of my biggest issues with Tumblr is the way they handle analytics. If you don't spend a couple minutes ahead of time setting up filters, you end up seeing all your own visits to a ton of admin pages like edit, themes, new and a few others. They make it pretty hard to accurately track your metrics.

<comment><USER32> Of course, with Posterous, you can't track your metrics at all, unless you use Google Analytics. Any JS embedding, including tracking snippets are not supported.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> "Celebrities and big media sites" listed as key to tumblr's recent explosion? No, the secret is the service allowing a HUGE forest of porn compilation sites such as <http://art-or-porn.tumblr.com/> and many like it.

<comment><USER34> What exactly do you mean by "the secret is the service allowing a HUGE forest of porn compilation sites"? That is, does Tumblr actively do something to help porn compilation sites use their service, or do they simply not ban them?

Also, since I often see this mentioned as a difference, does Posterous do something to block porn (however strictly)?

I suppose my real question is "Sure, Tumblr has a lock on the porn market right now, but _why_?"

<comment><USER10> <http://www.tumblr.com/directory/erotica> (NSFW, FYI)

I guess you could argue erotica isn't porn, but yes, they like it. The notion actually extends beyond sexually explicit material, as many popular tumblelogs in the directory has porn or something that alludes to porn in their title even though they have nothing to do with sex.

<comment><USER35> porn has always been a great early indicator on the web, and the fact that blogger porn sites have exploded on Tumblr indicates that is usability, and social features are superior.

I'm a big fan of Posterous but the social edge on Tumblr means more traffic and exposure for the blog which what attracts and keeps people on the platform.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I couldn't even get the import from tumblr feature to work on posterous...

</comment><comment><USER37> No idea about posterous but there are lots of robot created profiles on tumblr (presumably for SEO purposes)</comment>


Hiring of Kevin Rose by Google sends all the wrong signals to Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> http://www.siliconbeat.com/2012/03/15/hiring-of-kevin-rose-by-google-sends-all-the-wrong-signals-to-silicon-valley/ <comment><USER2> Perhaps Rose is hired as a fall-guy: take the helm of Google+ which is failing and be the public face of it's fall (kind of joking but I guess time will tell). I'm wondering why Google doesn't buy Pinterest to be honest, it makes a lot more sense and would tie in G+ to their entire search ecosystem nicely.</comment>


Machine Learning for Emoji Trends - <AUTHOR> http://instagram-engineering.tumblr.com/post/117889701472/emojineering-part-1-machine-learning-for-emoji <comment><USER2> If anybody else is confused why the first usage of the heart emoji () in text renders as a black heart (), it's because the page lost the 0xFE0F VARIATION SELECTOR-16 invisible character that comes after the U+2764 HEAVY BLACK HEART character to turn it into the emoji form.

Edit: What the, HN deleted both instances of U+2764 HEAVY BLACK HEART in the text, and left the VARIATION SELECTOR-16 behind. That's super weird.

</comment><comment><USER3> Pretty cool, I like how they figured out the French flag emoji is associated with italy, #montreal.

It reminds me of the Android app dango which does a pretty good job at suggesting emoji associated with full sentences

</comment><comment><USER4> This seems like it took very heavy influence from [http://getdango.com/emoji- and-deep-learning/](http://getdango.com/emoji-and-deep-learning/)

Or actually it could be the opposite, seeing as this post is about a year old

</comment><comment><USER5> I like this app that applies deep learning to Emojis: [http://getdango.com/emoji-and-deep-learning/](http://getdango.com/emoji-and- deep-learning/)

</comment><comment><USER6> This was posted in 2015, but now that fasttext ([https://github.com/facebookresearch/fastText](https://github.com/facebookresearch/fastText)), just released by Facebook and can scale to Instagram-sized datasets, can create word vectors better than word2vec which account for context ([https://arxiv.org/pdf/1607.04606v1.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1607.04606v1.pdf)), this type of analysis will only improve in the future.

</comment><comment><USER7> I imagine that a natural language AI which uses emojis would be better at passing a Turing test

<comment><USER8> Deep learning representations for anything, be them words, phrases, emojis, musical taste or images are not yet there. They form only the "receptive" part of an AI agent. What sits on top of them is the behavioral part, which is implemented with reinforcement learning (like AlphaGo which learned to "behave" in the world of Go)</comment></comment>


MySpace on Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://cambridge.facebook.com/networks/?nk=50447218 Corportate espionage or admission of a better platform? 185 Myspacer employees use facebook...probably over 60% of their employees... <comment><AUTHOR> really interesting that facebook supports a myspace network on their site...</comment>


Tech companies criticize travel ban but not their investor Peter Thiel - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/31/technology/tech-travel-ban-peter-thiel/index.html?sr=fbCNN013117tech-travel-ban-peter-thiel0703PMVODtopLink&linkId=33978055 <comment><AUTHOR> "Entrepreneurs are under a lot of pressure and Thiel ... [is] very powerful". What are some of the things/instances that show his power.</comment>


Peloton raises $550M at a valuation of $4B - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/03/peloton-raises-550m-at-a-valuation-of-4-billion/ <comment><USER3> This, right here is our Pets.com moment. The TAM for a $2k bike + $40/month is hilariously small. Think about it, you would need a decent sized home to fit one of these bikes. That rules out 90% of the world who live on 1-3 bedroom apartments. Next, there isn't any new disruptive technology being introduced. It is a bike and can easily be replicated. The value of "community" is overrated. Lastly, their competition is FREE. You can go running and biking outside. It is nice out there. Even a gym subscription provides more value.

<comment><USER4> I don't disagree at all... but I thought Juicero was our pets.com moment. Heck, I thought _uber_ was our pets.com moment, as it was significantly more expensive than any taxi I'd ever taken. I'm still not convinced that my wifi- connected thermostat is actually saving me money over my previous ancient analog model, and that's significantly more useful still than so many other things crying out for my dollars. With each passing month, for each new startup promising us magic, I find myself wondering like Walter in the Big Lebowski if the whole world has in fact gone crazy.

But, the question might be - ok, so yeah, it's a crazy valuation and raise for what it is, but it is actually going to bring down the economy like we are all foreboding? If WeWork or Peloton or even Bitcoin slide into the ocean with their out of whack financials, is it going to make a difference for my portfolio and retirement? So long as the answer is no, well... good for these folks padding their own wallet then, I guess. I'll stick to a walk around the block or the old fashioned "analog" bike.

<comment><USER5> > as it was significantly more expensive than any taxi I'd ever taken

Either you don't live in the US or you have only taken Uber at 2x surge or higher.

<comment><USER4> It's actually ironic that your name is Seattle_Spring, because I'm talking specifically about a Seattle experience. Flying into Seattle and taking a taxi or using a town car service downtown was at least formerly, much cheaper than what I have gotten on Uber / Lyft, to the point I've just gone to using the light rail even though it is slower to my destination. $65 on Lyft vs. $35 by taxi / town car, from my most recent experiences.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think there is an number of unfair criticism against the company. I am not here to argue about the valuation, I have not examined anything about the financials of this specific company BUT I do think these companies are hitting a sweet spot in this market. This company is not selling you an exercise bike, they are selling you the community surrounded from the classes. There was an interesting talk by the founder of Peloton regarding religion and community. His argument was that many areas of the country have largely transitioned away from being religious and the one downside is people lack community that religion used to provide. People are replacing this with fitness communities. Look out how people treat SoulCycle or CrossFit as if it was a religion. They don't go there just or the workout but also the community of people.

Companies like Peloton are trying to extend this relationship into the house. SoulCycle classes are expensive, $2k for a spin bike is not terrible, I would be surprised if the margins are not huge on this. So if I were to signup for Peloton I would not blink at the cost of the bike. $40/month for a subscription is also cheap when I compare it to things like SoulCycle. Sure its different but I am also able to workout at home.

I can see the value in these companies. Is $4b too high? Perhaps but I have not examined the marketplace. I think last numbers were 600k subscribers and they have no something like 29 physical retail locations.

<comment><USER7> As I said previously, I have exercise equipment and I am looking at two more pieces....

[https://www.nordictrack.com/exercise-bikes/nordictrack- grand...](https://www.nordictrack.com/exercise-bikes/nordictrack-grand-tour- pro-exercise-bikes)

[https://www.nordictrack.com/grand-tour- bikes](https://www.nordictrack.com/grand-tour-bikes)

But even _I_ can't justify $2000 for a Peleton bike.

On the other hand, when people ask me what exercise equipment they should buy, my answer is usually "none". I saw too many people who bought equipment and never used it.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/06/health/nutrition/06well.h...](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/06/health/nutrition/06well.html)

<comment><USER6> Meh. Yeah of course, most people don't need to buy exercise equipment but I feel that these newer products are filling a religious niche that were not filled prior with normal exercise equipment.

I could not specifically compare the two but I think you are buying into the workouts not just the bike. But just on initial view the peloton looks better. Magnetic vs flywheel. The workouts on peloton are night and day difference with a much higher level of quality as their are live streaming daily.

Is it an expensive bike? Yes Is it for everyone? No Do people need to buy exercise equipment? No.

Disclosure, I don't own a Peloton but own bike trainers. A good bike trainer is going to cost $400-$1k and that does not count my road bike. When I see peloton I don't blink at $2k if it was something I was going to be using on a regular basis.

<comment><USER7> Magnetic bikes are supposedly quieter. Which is a big deal since my home gym is a converted bedroom close to my son's room.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is pretty insane. I've used the Peloton bike because there's one in my apartment complex. It's a really nice exercise bike ( very stable, smooth, continuous pedalling without locking up ), but the tablet/software they attach to it left quite a lot to be desired. For instance, the UI is very clunky and I couldn't even figure out how to turn off the damn music. It's hard to just set a "free form" type of ride ( instead, you have to use their "classes" \-- basically a video of someone telling you whats happening during the ride, whether or not you're in sync with the cadence ). I don't think it would take much for one of the better bike manufacturers to duplicate the "nice bike" part, and the UI should honestly just be a bluetooth to your phone with a mount.

<comment><USER9> I don't know if it has long term legs or is just an (extended, at this point) fad, since I've never used one or done soulcycle or whatever, but all the stuff that bugged you about it is the selling point. The hook is that nobody ends up using standalone just-do-what-you-will fitness gear (I do have experience on this side!). Some level of "training" programming has been much more effective for a lot of people, and this is taking this outside the studio into a broadcast form.

My suspicion is that once you take it out of the class setting you've lost that hook, though.

<comment><USER10> I've had one for a bit over a year now and I really love it. You're exactly right about the hook for this product. Before using the bike I've just stuck with the same training I did in high school football because I've always needed structure and a way to track progress. The bike classes are kind of addicting since the instructors keep the tempo up (depending on the class) and you have leader board showing with a live ranking. Even if you aren't at the top it's still fun because you'll get used to seeing the same names around your rank (if you're doing the live classes) and it'll push you to compete with them. It's a lot like having a running group except you'll always have someone that is around your skill level to compete with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For a moment, I thought that CMU's and Andy Pavlo's amazing database project got serious funding.

[https://github.com/cmu-db/peloton](https://github.com/cmu-db/peloton)

I'm a bit disappointed now

<comment><USER12> "The Self-Driving Database Management System" Lol.

<comment><USER13> Is it satire? the rest of it looks legit so I don't know what to think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The thing I don't understand is that you can already do this for much less money and arguably in a more fun way. Get a nice-ish real bike ($1,000), some rollers or a trainer ($200), and a subscription to Zwift ($14.99/month). Zwift allows you to create a biking avatar that rides around virtual racecourses with other bikers who are also using the service (usually there are thousands of people riding at any one time). You can do races, talk to other people, and more, for a fraction of this cost. Plus you have a real live bike you can take outside and enjoy.

<comment><USER15> I got a trainer for winter riding, and it ate my tires. Also a good spin bike does a better job at keeping momentum which makes it feel more like a normal ride outside.

I think like most things the amount of use really determines what you should do. If you are going to ride outside most of the time, and just want an indoor option then a trainer is a great choice, but if you are going to be riding daily, spend the extra money and get a real spin bike.

<comment><USER16> You can even get a professional level Wahoo Kicker for $1200 (no tire wear), have money for a mid-range bike and still save a ton of money month to month with Zwift over Peloton's monthly cost...

Or buy a cheap training wheel and a $400 power meter and spend like $100 on the trainer.

Why spend more for a spin bike when you can use a real one with just as good or better power controls and feedback?

Point is Peloton is expensive indoors or out...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> An anecdote: My father broke his collarbone (in a real bike) and I got him a peloton to be a safer replacement. After about an hour of introduction to the product he now uses it every day and so does my mother, who has never biked in her life. I don't get the appeal necessarily but any new product that can hook someone in their generation is positive signal IMO.

</comment><comment><USER18> Why do they need financing? How is a company that sells $2000 exercise bikes not profitable?

<comment><USER19> I also wonder how big the market is for $2000 exercise bikes/treadmills + subscription service... especially when consumer debt is already at a high. Maybe they are thinking gyms/apartment fitness centers will buy them?

<comment><USER7> It's aspirational. People think if they have the "convenience" of working out at home, they will be more disciplined. Few actually do.

But on the other hand, having scheduled classes and the social aspect may serve as a commitmemt device.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Small installments seem to be gaining traction. With video games, it's micro transactions. With large ticket items, it's installments. I'd never expect an exercise bike to be part of this trend but here we are.

</comment><comment><USER21> My mother once bought a treadmill. My dad described it as the world's only $1200 clothes rack.

I guess the hope for Peloton is that people will subscribe and never cancel. Otherwise they're just another treadmill company and I can't imagine there'll be much VC interest in that.

But it's one thing to spend a few thousand on a treadmill and regret it. It's another to spend a few thousand and then another $100 a month.

<comment><USER22> I bought 3 treadmills over the past 6 years and ran [2 of them] till the motors burned.

And this why they say: YMMV

;)

<comment><USER23> a 2k treadmill only lasts 2 years? That's a bad investment.

<comment><USER22> _> a 2k treadmill only lasts 2 years?_

Don't know. Never bought a 2k treadmill.

(Simple treadmills last to 50c a mile. I think it is a reasonable price).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I interviewed for a marketing position with them a while back. It seemed like a team that really knew what they were doing. Good luck to them!

</comment><comment><USER25> Like the other commenters, I had never heard of this either until reading the latest funding round recently. Here's a summary from the WSJ[1] from yesterday:

> Peloton, founded in 2012, makes a $1,995 stationary bicycle. Most customers > use the bikes at home, paying about $39 a month to stream live classes that > the company produces using its own instructors. The New York-based firm, > which has showrooms around the U.S., plans to launch a treadmill this fall.

Part of the soul cycle bubble as well it looks like.

[1][https://www.wsj.com/articles/pelotons-financing-round- values...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/pelotons-financing-round-values- stationary-bike-maker-at-4-15-billion-1533255443)

<comment><USER26> Why is it a bubble?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Is it typical for techcrunch to assume the reader is familiar with every odd startup they cover?

I've never heard of this company, have no idea what they do after reading the whole article, and now I'm too frustrated to care.

All I got there was "connected treadmill"... ok?

<comment><USER28> Peloton started with a connected spinning bike. It takes advantage of the Soul Cycle fad ($30/class) and sells people a $2000 bike and a $40/month subscription (for live streams of classes) with the idea that they will save money over time.

More recently they released the treadmill.

<comment><USER29> > and sells people a $2000 bike and a $40/month subscription (for live streams > of classes) with the idea that they will save money over time.

I can't say this phrase without cracking a laugh. Really.

$40 is an ok gym membership. All the treadmills and bikes you can ride.

<comment><USER30> Most gyms make you pay extra to have somebody yell "the pain is an illusion" at you, though.

<comment><USER31> Not necessarily. At many YMCAs (in the US at least), unlimited group exercise classes are included with a monthly membership. 3 days/week, I teach an early- morning cycling class at a Y in St. Louis, using a "canned" format named SPRINT:

[https://www.lesmills.com/workouts/high-intensity-interval- tr...](https://www.lesmills.com/workouts/high-intensity-interval-training/les- mills-sprint/)

<comment><USER7> The Les Mill movement to canned classes was one of the main reasons I stopped teaching classes part time. But to each thier own.....

<comment><USER31> Understandable. I've found that I neither have the drive nor time (busy software developer) to create my own playlists and workout plans. I greatly respect instructors who do that week in and week out!

I find what LM puts together to _generally_ be pretty good. I also teach their BODYPUMP and CXWORX formats (used to teach GRIT as well). By experience, I've learned that to keep class participants happy, it's best to rotate material every 2–3 weeks. That keeps me and them from getting too bored of a workout, but also allows them time to master technique and discover areas in which they can push a little harder. LM publishes new stuff every 3 months, and I've built up substantial catalogs of quarterly releases, so it works out pretty well.

<comment><USER7> I am also a software developer. When I first started teaching was back in the days of Napster before iTunes. When the iTunes music store came along it was like manna from heaven. For cycling, boot camp, and the occasional water aerobics classes it was easy to put together a playlist just choose songs based on the drills.

For classes where I had to stay on beat like step, cardio kickboxing (early on, it was a fad), and general strength training, it was a combination of buying 32 count aerobic mixes and creating my own consistent beat mixes music with CoolEdit (now Adobe Audition).

I could find plenty of 32 count combos by going to other instructors classes and turnstep.com.

My wife just started teaching for a local les mills type organization that has prechoreagraphed workouts and she loves it and her classes do look fun especially for people who naturally have rythym and can dance.

I had neither, but I could do pretty well to standard 128-136 bpm, 32 count phrased music.

<comment><USER31> LM formats, at least the ones I teach, mostly consist "counts of 8". With respect to beats in the music, each count is 2 beats. In BODYUMP, for example, a "slow" clean-and-press is 8 counts (instructor can comfortably and naturally say aloud 1-2-3-4-..., from start to finish of the movement), but it's indicated on the choreography sheet as 2x8. In SPRINT (HIIT cycling), I might say something like: "next interval is 25 seconds seated sprint, then 10 seconds standing power, then another 25 seconds seated sprint, then rest for 25 seconds". That equates to head-counting with the music of 8x8, 4x8, 8x8, 8x8; but strictly by beats would be 16x8, 8x8, 16x8, 16x8.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is ridiculous, these bikes are a fad. The company will get sold to a gym or furniture giant for pennies once people get bored and realize they paid $2,000 for a clothes hanger.

I will say it's an interesting take on an old business. Furniture and exercise equipment manufacturers have this problem where everybody buys their stuff and they go bankrupt because nobody needs new equipment after the initial purchase. So attaching the subscription business model to this might give them a bit more longevity!

<comment><USER33> Think about how many people sign up for gym memberships and then never use them _but_ keep paying the monthly fee.

<comment><USER34> Doesn't make gyms $4 billion businesses.

<comment><USER33> What other fitness equipment manufacturer has cashflow not tied to equipment sales?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> So... at $550MM in funding. Just to simply get the $550MM BACK from selling the bike and getting users, that means youwould have to sell 183,000 NEW bikes AND have them maintain 2 years of paid membership fees (24 months at $40/mo)

\---

So, then you assume some attrition of those users, which means you will need to upsell the remaining users on some new products and continue to get new buyers of these bikes and services.

You'll have to spend a fair bit on marketing, development and the general maintenance of paying your existing costs/overhead etc...

I can't even come up with any fictitiously optimistic napkin math that would make this work.

So, what do the Peloton people know that we dont know that allowed them to get $550 MILLION dollars in funding? All theories welcome.

Heck, whomever it was that was able to get VCs to invest in this should be selling their services to a ton of startups...

<comment><USER26> Seems pretty obvious:

1) They're selling a ton of these bikes. I bet they'll sell another 200,000 in the next 12 months.

2) They're selling even more subscriptions than bikes. They had 600,000 subscribers six months ago. That's basically pure profit.

3) They're introducing new products. A treadmill this fall, and I'd expect an elliptical, a rower, and perhaps some other things to follow at some point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Some of my colleagues got one of those connected treadmills in California.

Seriously, why would you not go on a REAL bike ride instead of using an indoor bike? Everyday is a beautiful day outdoor.

I'm all for tech, but in sport and fitness I think that sticking to the basics that work well is a pretty good idea.

To me it looks like an attempt to capitalize on the crowd of geeks//nerds that wouldn't do fitness otherwise by gamifying the product.

<comment><USER37> Sometimes it rains. Sometimes it's really hot. Always, there's a lot of cars around.

I generally agree and love to run outside, but I can easily see the appeal for a lot of people.

<comment><USER38> And sometimes you have small children who nap, allowing parents a small, often unpredictable, amount of time to exercise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> They sell these treadmills and bikes with video training and scenery on it. I have no idea who is buying their products though.

I bet this is just another pump and dump startup.

<comment><USER40> Adding some context since you said you have no idea:

This is actually a huge market: Biking outside is dangerous/exposed/has real terrain that may not be amenable for your current intervals etc. It works when you do it for commute/weekend rides, but if you want anything like a training plan, you need an indoor trainer.

Biking also is a rich (wo)man's sport nowadays: There are bikes you can get for $10-15k and many folks (like software engineers) don't bat an eye. Anecdotally, I personally have 5-6 bikes (one is in parts...) and add about 10k miles a year, and I am not even a racer at the lowest categorized level.

NOTE: I don't own a peloton, I have a wahoo kickr. Similar trainer without the social aspects because I didn't care for that.

As more and more people start becoming fitness conscious / want an active hobby - they are going to want a weekday option to keep up the fitness. This is it.

Other companies to look at are Wahoo / Strava / Zwift / Trainer Road / Training Peaks / Flywheel / Soul cycle / sufferlandria and a ton more I am probably missing.

<comment><USER41> $2K stationary bikes + $50 a month is still a niche market.

<comment><USER40> So is $5 a latte. But seeing how Starbucks is doing - you can figure how this market will play out.

The initial amount is steep - but I wouldn't be surprised if lease plans show up very soon.

<comment><USER41> Coffee is ubiquitous and everyone can afford a $5 latte now and again. It's easy to 'try once' and then to stay hooked. They have the benefit of chemical addiction.

'Stationary bikes' are already a niche market to begin with, then add on the crazy price and monthly?

Crazy.

The problem with regular financing is that these things have little to no residual value, i.e. difficult resale. You can put a price on a used car so it can be kind of de-facto collateral. Not Pelotons.

Don't any of you remember 'Bowflex'?

<comment><USER19> "Don't any of you remember 'Bowflex'?"

$50 or Best Offer. Every time I visit an estate sale.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> No mention of what the company does?

<comment><USER43> Spin class you can dial in to. You have to buy the dial in apparatus for $2,000.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I wish a company would get valued this big on just getting people outside on their bikes.

</comment><comment><USER45> $4B? That's insanity. I know it's a dead horse but valuations are totally detached from reality.

</comment><comment><USER41> I lived through the .com bubble and the last couple of years I feel warrant a lot of comparison.

The tech bubble burst because of a 'spook' i.e. interest rate change and massive bubble in the regular markets that needed to be cooled. So the smart money fled first, the dumb money later, and things became difficult.

The underlying economic impetus these days is reasonable - but it could be fudged any moment by Trump's 'trade wars' (I'm not saying anything about him or the policy, just that there is risk), or it could be revealed that a marginal shift in rates really does have a bad effect.

The all of the surplus 'lift' in the market evaporates and all of this gets wiped out.

ICO's in particular are a really bad sign.

CEO's are currently trying to get in on the IPO market while they can - <USER2> companies like Sonos popping on float day even with not particularly strong fundamentals.

It's not that startup land is bad, it's just that fundamentals don't justify the valuations.

These Peloton bikes and their services are _way too expensive_ for mass market, and I'm not confident. It seems like one of many fitness fads to me.

Note: this is series _F_. At $4B Billion. This behoves the question, why not public? Maybe because any amount of public scrutiny wouldn't bear such a lofty valuation? It makes you wonder who's writing these big cheques. This is not Uber or AirBnB which have naturally massive markets and cashflows. These are $2K + $50 / month stationary bike / status symbols.

<comment><USER46> Yeah, _way_ too expensive is right. That $2k for the bike is enough to buy a nice mid-range bike and a nice indoor trainer, with the added benefit of being able to bike outside, if desired. And I believe there are tons of streaming workouts free on Youtube.

Not to mention that a lot of people already think >$1k for a bike is crazy, so $2k for a stationary bike seems like it'll be a hard sell, but what do I know?

I'm sure there's more to it, and they add more value than just that, but like the OP, I'm really skeptical.</comment></comment>


Please Suggest a weekend electronics project - <AUTHOR>

I am tired of spending my weekends watching serials, movies and playing games and I want a break from work.
I was thinking that a two-day electronics project would be an ideal way to spend the weekend. I have built some robots before (http://www.beamindia.net) and have some fundamental electronics knowledge, soldering skills etc. A robotics project more complicated than the last robot I built (was a long time ago) would be time consuming and I don't want to do a smaller robot either.
So I need something simple enough to be done in 2 days and not a robot. I don't to buy any DIY kits either. Any suggestions? Thanks. <comment><USER2> I would like to have something that monitors my plants and alerts me if they need water (in step 2, maybe even water them by itself).

I don't know enough about what plants need and how to measure their situation, though. But there is a "twittering plants" project already.

Apparently it uses this: <http://www.botanicalls.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Solar powered light-seeking desktop miniature robot?

        http://www.solarbotics.net/library.html
        http://bestiary.solarbotics.net/default.htm

We're planning to build one here at work soon as a project to teach new programmers about the basics of hardware.

</comment><comment><USER4> Arduinome!

Will probably take more than a few days, but it's what I've been desiring to build recently.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Was hoping to get more suggestions.

</comment><comment><USER5> guitar effects pedal</comment>


Let's Write a Firefox Web Extension - <AUTHOR> https://hacks.mozilla.org/2015/09/lets_write_a_webextension/ <comment><USER3> So killing off XUL is great and all, but two of my favorite add-ons [1] [2] are already planning to call it quits because the Web Extension API likely won't be powerful enough. Tree Style Tab isn't far behind, I'll bet. These add-ons are the reason I use Firefox.

It seems like Firefox is going to become just another browser.

[1] [http://www.downthemall.net/the-likely-end-of- downthemall/](http://www.downthemall.net/the-likely-end-of-downthemall/) [2] [https://github.com/sparhami/BeQuiet/issues/2](https://github.com/sparhami/BeQuiet/issues/2)

<comment><USER4> Oh come now, that's not fair. Sure _XUL_ can't be the key to a good extension mechanism. If devs stop writing (or choose not to port) it's because of the economics of Firefox extensions, which is to say, _there are no economics to writing Firefox extensions_. Except some minor reputation points and feel-good points. (The exception, of course, being those add-ons that make a SaaS more usable.)

Out of curiosity, if there was a Firefox App Store, how much would you pay for Tree Style Tabs?

<comment><USER5> > Out of curiosity, if there was a Firefox App Store, how much would you pay > for Tree Style Tabs?

Probably a few bucks. TST is pretty fundamental to my Firefox workflow.

<comment><USER6> Well according to Mozilla TST has 100 000 users. At a few bucks that's 300 000$ I suppose that could be enough :) With that money you can even maintain a separate Firefox patch-set to allow the plugin to work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It would be pretty awesome if we can get to a place where browser extensions are truly cross-browser. At least for some definition of "browser extension".

I'd be OK with a "common core" that's cross-browser, and the browser makers continuing to support their own extension APIs as well, IF the "core" API never becomes as powerful as the old, native APIs. I'd hate to see the native APIs go away completely though, as I don't like the idea of artificially restricting the range of possible plugins.

Then again, I am already annoyed by Chrome ditching NPAPI and leaving us in a place where, AFAIK, you can't run the Java plugin in Chrome. OTOH, JWS still works (I think) which is something at least...

<comment><USER8> To be fair, no one should be using Java applets in this day and age, and hopefully this will finally kill them off for good.

<comment><USER9> Though, now you can't make certain types of sockets in browser...

<comment><USER10> Nor can you integrate with the local filesystem, or call native APIs. With a hidden Java applet, it was pretty easy to make a full-fledged application that just happened to have a web-based API. That's getting a lot harder.

Chrome extensions have an API called Native Messaging which is roughly the postMessage API over stdin/stdout. It works, but isn't cross-browser. Alternatively, you can start up a local server and make XHR or WebSocket calls to localhost. However, both of those require the user going through an external install process. Maybe, in the current security landscape, that's the way it has to be, but it's kind of annoying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Now someone just needs to write a small converter that instantly converts an existing Chrome extension for Firefox, and a script that allows people to install from the Chrome market, too, and instantly the available extensions for both browsers doubles.

<comment><USER12> It's been tried[0][1][2], but doesn't work very well. Similar to how PhoneGap tries to create a cross platform solution, it will always feel kludgy compared to developing with native APIs.

[0] [http://kangoextensions.com/](http://kangoextensions.com/)

[1] [http://crossrider.com/developers](http://crossrider.com/developers)

[2] [http://crossbrowser.com/](http://crossbrowser.com/)

<comment><USER11> Well, with this new API Chrome extensions run natively in Firefox, if one adds a single tag to the metadata json file.

So, doing this should be easy.

<comment><USER12> I wouldn't phrase it like that. Instead, Firefox is implementing a similar extension API, which overlaps with Chrome and Opera's APIs. What you described, "instantly converting an existing Chrome extension for Firefox" is a long ways off.

There's a lot of gaps in Mozilla's implementation right now. To do anything interesting (beyond cat gifs), you have to fall back to the old QueryInterface/ns* APIs.

<comment><USER13> Are we still allowed to use the old APIs?

See [http://www.downthemall.net/the-likely-end-of- downthemall/](http://www.downthemall.net/the-likely-end-of-downthemall/)

<comment><USER12> From the original post[0]:

> A major challenge we face is that many Firefox add-ons cannot possibly be > built using either WebExtensions or the SDK as they currently exist. Over > the coming year, we will seek feedback from the development community, and > will continue to develop and extend the WebExtension API to support as much > of the functionality needed by the most popular Firefox extensions as > possible.

[0] [https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2015/08/21/the-future-of- dev...](https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2015/08/21/the-future-of-developing- firefox-add-ons/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> At the moment there are more gaps than API and the debugging experience is such that you have to go back and forth between Chrome (debugging any changes you made) and Firefox (looking at the global console, checking that you're within the small supported subset).

Recommending gulp is ridiculous overkill. Chrome loads files from disk directly, Firefox plans to.

</comment><comment><USER15> ... and in FF50 they'll replace gecko with blink to be on par with chrome and opera.

Seriously, I use firefox because of its addons, for which no equivalent exists for chrome, e.g. downthemall, shelve, tiddlyfox. As it looks there is little chance, these addons will continue to work with future releases of ff. So why should I continue using FF?

</comment><comment><USER16> Any break from the XUL days are a huge plus. XUL gives you so much power but is very unsafe for the users since anything goes and that system is also very poorly documented. I sometimes had to look at the Mozilla source code to understand what was possible with the XUL based extension system. Now that we have a really great set of native dev tools inside Firefox maybe we don't need XUL anymore? I say that because maybe something like Firebug isn't possible without XUL.

</comment><comment><USER17> > _The only thing I would add is that while Mozilla is implementing most of > the API that Chrome and Opera support, we're not restricting ourselves to > only that API. Where it makes sense, we will be adding new functionality and > talking with other browser makers about implementing it as well._

At least focus on making it possible to do secure communications inside a browser, where for instance you may not want to trust the service provider and want to do the crypto locally. I know for instance that Nadim Kobeissi was in the past praising Chrome for its packaged apps and how they allow better security for Cryptocat than Firefox does. Make extensions such as Mailvelope be at least as secure as native apps.

Focus on stuff like that rather than enabling extensions to change how the browser looks, which likely introduce their own security vulnerabilities by design (I know many have cried about stuff like that when you announced deprecating the old add-on model).

Maybe even do that with browser components that are written in Rust. Speaking as a Chrome user and very occasional Firefox user, the more Rust you use the higher the chance you'll have to convert someone like me who cares about security and continues to choose Chrome based on that. The sooner your sandboxing architecture is on par with Chrome's the better as well.

Someone like me is not "just a niche". It's also the type of person that recommends (evangelizes even) a browser or app to every single friend he has. Don't forget that's exactly how Chrome "beat" Firefox, if I can say that - <USER2> winning over the evangelists.

<comment><USER18> Chrome won by being bundled as shovelware into Windows installers.

<comment><AUTHOR> For example, Chrome was bundled in Adobe's Flash Player installer (in addition to Chrome bundling the Pepper Flash plugin).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Really looking forward to some sort of interoperability between browsers plugins between Chrome and Firefox. That would be really great. However my intuition tells me thats going to be quite difficult. Not only from the technical point of view but also the perspective of developers of existing extensions... Would there be some common extension repository? What if someone takes somebody else's Chrome extension and puts it in the FF repo as his own, etc...

</comment><comment><USER20> Wait. Isn't that the browser¹ that requires you to use an online certification process to install even your own addons/developments, unless you're on a Nightly version and change a hidden setting? _skims the article_ Ah yeah, they avoid the subject by using Nightly anyway due to the changing API. Note that any build other than Nightly won't let you install unsigned extensions, period. Not by changing about:config values or in any way for form I'd know about.

①: Firefox fan forever. Since they decided that no, you are not allowed to install your own build of Vimperator/TST etc. without a signature from Mozilla, I'm looking for alternatives. Unfortunately there's no real competition, it's either Chrome or FF - and FF seems to move into directions I don't like.

<comment><USER21> You can install unsigned addons in Developer Edition. I've been using Developer Edition as my primary browser for over a year. If you're the kind of power user that needs to install unsigned extensions, it's a pretty reasonable compromise...

You can always build release channel from source.

Adding a pref to release/beta for this would defeat some of the purpose of the feature - bad actors always find ways to install their shitty extensions into the browser. When the browser does signing checks before loading them, that raises the challenge significantly vs. setting some prefs and dropping a file in the right place.

Chrome has a similar extension policy. Edge probably will too. History has shown that nothing less than this will cut it. :-(

<comment><USER20> I feel that Developer Edition would solve my problem.

That said: Building FF from source takes ages. It's not something I like to do, honestly, to build/package/install a couple of JS files.

And I do think that this is a crappy idea. Okay, require signatures if you want to install something directly from the web, maybe? But if I point that thing at a .xpi file, locally, let me install that. Hide it behind a flag in about:config, but let me install that.

Saying 'ah, but someone might toggle that box for you' is weird and reminds me of Raymond Chen's 'Wrong side of the hatch' security reports. If you can do that, if your installer can mess with my about:config, why can't it f __* up my whole system?

A free idea for malware distributors: Bundle your own release channel build of FF and just remove the official one, keep the user's profile. Your MSI runs elevated, I'm reasonably sure I could do that ~somewhat easily~, if you make your money with shady stuff you're bound to make this work. Tada! Every extension can be installed again, please add a couple useful and set a decent home page.

The premise is crap. The implementation is unfortunate and follows the premise.

(Again: Thanks for the DE hint. That's listed in [1] as well, I must have missed that in the past and - Nightly isn't exactly what I want to run on a daily basis. Or at least not as my main browser, a side by side install is often present on my machines)

[1]: [https://wiki.mozilla.org/Addons/Extension_Signing](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Addons/Extension_Signing)

<comment><USER21> Bad actors in this case are not exclusively malware authors. Among others, they include the developers of Skype, Java, Adobe Acrobat, most antivirus software...

EDIT: For a more specific example, at various points in the past local native apps like uPlay have been exploitable such that random websites could drive-by execute scripts or download malware. Pretty much any native app (legit or not) could potentially load an extension or install a protocol handler that lets a random website own your machine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> from the article: >>> [...] I think it's time to add a build script. I hear that the go-to build tool these days is gulp, so I'll wait here while you go install that, and c'mon back when you're done. (I needed to install Node, and then gulp twice. I'm not sure why.)

what should have been:

I hear that the go-to build tool these days is gulp, but fuck gulp and use make.</comment>


Chance to win 100 tickets to Google I/O'17 Firebase.foo, ARG from Firebase - <AUTHOR> https://firebase.foo <comment><USER2> Cool thanks for sharing!</comment>


In place of traditional fundraising sources, Bitcoin fills a gap for hate groups - <AUTHOR> https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2017/12/27/place-traditional-fundraising-sources-bitcoin-fills-gap-hate-groups <comment><USER2> I'm not going to visit that webpage to justify their authoritarian bullshit with ad or page views. This is just run of the mill propaganda. Of course bitcoin fills the gap for hate groups. Just like it does for independent journalists when the US state dept. puts pressure on Visa/Mastercard/etc to prevent donations (remember wikileaks).

Cash isn't evil because criminals use it. And they use it because cash is useful. Bitcoin isn't evil because people with opinions you dislike use it. They use it because it's useful. Just like all the other people using bitcoin that make up the majority.

<comment><AUTHOR> too bad you didn't read what it said since the most interesting is that they are looking to trace out members of these groups by analyzing their bitcoin transactions and have announced they'll be releasing the list soon.

For all you know I'm posting this article as a warning that "authoritarian" groups like SPLC are seeking to "out" law-abiding racists and nazis. Which of course is not true. SPLC is not a government organization and has no "authority" whatsoever over anyone.

<comment><USER2> Oh. So they're doing a witch hunt with plans for libel too? Sounds like a nice group of people.

<comment><AUTHOR> As do Nazis !</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The attack on Do Not Track - <AUTHOR> http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2010/12/the_attack_on_d.php <comment><USER2> I suspect that tracking is important enough to online operations that if more than a small percentage of people opt-out, sites will start requiring users to opt-in to view content. There's no free ride, after all.

Carr believes that this turn of events would be an improvement - instead of the current _unwritten_ trade of content for information, everything is out in the open and users can make informed choices.

I think it'll be a disaster - I doubt many users want to take the time to make this decision multiple times a day. People will continue to click through agreements without reading them, but since these agreements will now be opt- in, publishers will be more and more comfortable loading them up with intrusive terms. Law of unintended consequences in action.

<comment><USER3> There will probably be a rider to the law that states that you can't discriminate against users that select "Do Not Track". That will be added by the Trial Lawyer's Lobby so they can ensure a class action lawsuit is filed.

<comment><USER4> 6 years ago called. He said that John Edwards hasn't been on a general election ballot since 2004, and there's no organization called the Trial Lawyers Lobby.. he suggests demonizing community organizers and voter registration groups instead.

<comment><USER3> Of course there is a Trial Lawyers Lobby. They meet on alternating Thursdays at the Stonecutter's Lodge (it's BYOB).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If this all goes through, I suppose it's only a matter of time before websites detect your Do Not Track preferences and essentially limit the content you can see like the pay-walls some online content providers have now. "Add this site to your Do Not Track exception-list to view full articles."

<comment><USER6> So? That's the purpose, after all, to give the viewer a choice rather than default to whatever the web site wants.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The author bills it as 'freedom of choice', but I would argue we already have freedom of choice when it comes to advertising on the internet. In the same way that I can mute the TV when commercials come on, I can also turn on ad blocker, flash blocker, cookie blocker, and other such plugins or extensions. These steps will foil all but the most invasive advertisers, for whom you can still foil by more sophisticated methods. The choice is there, but it's up to the consumer to take action.

<comment><USER8> The average user is not sophisticated enough to implement most of the steps you are comparing with a mute button so the comparison isn't really that great. It's more about being a matter of "freedom of choice" for everyone and not just those that are technically savvy. Anyone can fill out the form to get a phone number on the do not call list, not everyone can install and maintain an ad blocker, cookie blocker, flash blocker nor manage to get those turned off when they actually need a feature on a site that isn't related to tracking them but the service that is provided.

<comment><USER9> Actually, you can. You can buy software to do this for you. I believe Norton does this, as do other internet security software available for home users (not entirely sure here).

DNC was different: People called you. On the internet, web sites don't call you; rather, you "call" web sites.

<comment><USER8> I can't speak to the most of these pieces of software but things like Norton don't do any good. They don't block ads and they allow you to remove cookies after the fact during their scans but not during sessions so you are still being tracked during any browsing sessions you may have between scans.

While you "call" websites you aren't telling the advertisers on those websites that you want them to follow you around the Internet you are interacting with the site you chose to visit and it's operators. That seems very much like an unwanted telephone call to me. They are both unwanted interactions with third parties that you should be able to opt-out of.

edit: These software solutions are still not even close to being comparable with the mute button used in the first example and barely comparable to the DNC. More importantly they are of questionable effectiveness.

<comment><USER9> You make some good points. As I said, I'm not really aware first hand of their capabilities. I'll just say that I still think that if a problem exists, the solution should be solved by the market, rather than any attempt at some form of "legislation." There are things that the browser makers and software vendors can do still. The problem, I think, is no one wants to pay for their privacy, but a lot of people, I imagine, would pay to give it up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> does one opt out of long-term cookie tracking by having a long-term cookie stored that says "do not track me"?

<comment><USER11> If the default is "don't track" then the _absence_ of a cookie could just as well signify "do not track me"

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Excellent points. Do Not Track is enormously popular, just as Do Not Call was, so it's a real challenge for companies who have prospered by tracking customers without telling them or giving them a real opportunity to say no.

</comment><comment><USER13> How would this even work? Would every browser need to have a "don't track me" mechanism that the server would have to obey?</comment>


Ask HN: How did you find your last job? - <AUTHOR> I'm looking currently and wondering the most efficient way to do it. Based near London, open to contract/perm & remote.<p>Edit; what I'm really wondering is if there's a place I can go that I pay the money to and they find jobs I might be interested in, for places I don't yet know about. <comment><USER2> Make sure to keep in contact with old coworkers, especially if they've moved on to other companies. I've gotten contract work from former coworkers and actually got my first job because my boss' boss found out that I did some development and he was working with another startup that was looking for a junior programmer.

Otherwise I've had some success with recruiters, but the quality of the recruiter does matter.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've had hit and miss results with recruiters too, and by large prefer to avoid them if possible. They tend to want to pick you up and shoehorn you into anywhere they can.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Find videos from conferences with technologies you are interested in. Watch any / all talks from that conference. Take note of company behind each interesting talk.

You know that the company is trying to make a difference with their community. You are gifted a topic to discuss during an interview.

You can also use the companies that host local meet ups.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a good idea I hadn't thought of. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've found these;

[https://triplebyte.com/](https://triplebyte.com/) (and HN who's hiring also) [https://nomadlist.com/](https://nomadlist.com/) for remote [https://remoteok.io/remote-jobs](https://remoteok.io/remote-jobs) also for remote

Not a lot is for London specifically. Triplebyte only lists a few startups in London, some of which I'm already in the process of applying for.

</comment><comment><USER4> In addition to having a network with old colleagues and LinkedIn (which can be really good, if you have a network).

Do consider headhunters. Some can be very good and professional (my area is finance and IT). If you're not sure how to contact them, search via LinkedIn - for time efficiency, avoid the bigger shops and look for ones with small looking independent websites (again, finance IT type headhunters) as they're likely to have a personal network of employers to fit you against.

Non financial IT, I've little idea.

</comment><comment><USER5> A friend asked me to join up.

Since I've been in my industry for 15 years and since people seem to like me (dunno why) I haven't gotten a job but through personal recommendations in 8 years.

Please don't pay people money to get you a job. Just get your cold-call game on.

Go through the phone book and find any place that remotely looks like they could use your skillset.

Ring-ring "Hello, are you looking for what I do? No? Ok, thanks for your time." 10 times a day for a month and you should be fine.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not so much paying people to find me a job. What I'm looking for is a reliable way to find good leads at companies that do the simple things to keep their staff happy and are continuously looking to make whatever they make the best possible. So far I haven't found a good way to find that through just trawling the internet and hoping to find gold.

People such as yourself (and to a lesser extent me I guess) have a solid professional network. That network kind of pre-vets stuff before they send it on to us. That's really good because you tend to stay in touch with people you like, and we usually like the same things as the people we like.

Things like HN who's hiring do help because the kind of companies that post there are likely to have a similar outlook to me (after all we frequent the same place).

Edit: when I said I have a professional network - it's not that wide. While a couple of things have come up from it, it's not like other stories of just letting people know they're available and getting hired

<comment><USER5> > reliable way to find good leads at companies that do the simple things to > keep their staff happy and are continuously looking to make whatever they > make the best possible.

Just word of mouth, right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My most recent job was from StackOverflow Careers (careers.stackoverflow.com). Before that, I got a job via Angellist Jobs (angel.co/jobs). In both cases creating a profile was all I had to do, then the companies reach out and say hi.

</comment><comment><USER7> My last job or my current one? Current: AngelList exclusively because I was new in town and knew no one. Last: I was asked to join by colleagues who left a former company after it was bought out.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're the second person to list AngelList - are you located in SF (or near)? Would you use the same if in another location?

<comment><USER7> Sorry for the late response. I'm in Boston, MA. I would definitely advise it in Boston, SF, NYC. Elsewhere, let's just say that I would also use it first, but depending on the market I would move to other resources. It's great for startups but don't go there for jobs at large companies. All in all, I would definitely use it again if I was jobless today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Recruited on LinkedIn - best job ever. It was a really recruitment message though from someone who referenced very specific things on my profile, not a random generic one.

<comment><AUTHOR> Out of the blue? Or was the recruiter already a second or third relation to your contacts?

I'm just wondering because linkedin seems to have pockets of good people and then pockets of spam recruiters. Right now I'm in the spam trap and 90% of my traffic is boilerplate recruiter spam. I'm not sure how I'd get myself noticed by good recruiters like this.

<comment><USER9> for some recruiters it's a numbers game.

the more time/effort they put into understanding your background the better they can tailor their message / asses if you are a good fit for the target positions they have. Most good recruiters put a lot of time in before reaching out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I was approached by a VC firm to consider a job at one of their portfolio companies and it has worked out fantastic so far :)

</comment><comment><USER11> I met several of my now coworkers at a meetup group.

</comment><comment><USER12> I contacted someone in my professional network.</comment>


How Silicon Valley Rediscovered LSD - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/0a5a4404-7c8e-11e7-ab01-a13271d1ee9c <comment><USER2> The fifty year legacy of the Summer of Love is "It boosts worker productivity".

</comment><comment><USER3> Is there a non-paywalled version of this article?

<comment><USER4> [https://archive.fo/oZ17p](https://archive.fo/oZ17p)</comment></comment>


What blogs drive the most iOS downloads? - <AUTHOR>

Downloads on iOS devices either come from the Apple ecosystem (being at the top or featured), or from blogs.<p>Which of blogs are significant download drivers? US: freeappaday.com France: appgratuites.com and iPhon.fr Any others? <comment><USER2> Jay Is Games (<http://jayisgames.com/>) maybe, they're pretty popular in casual gaming though I've no idea if that translates to sales or not.</comment>


Show HN: Prdc – Hack Product Hunt by getting weekly reviews to top PH hunts - <AUTHOR> https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/prdc <comment><AUTHOR> prdc ain't a Product Hunt parody account, it's a newsletter that'll make you check your email more! prdc is a weekly email blast that reviews top PH hunts, products and apps.

Drop your email in our PH upcoming page, help build a community and be one of the first to hack through Product Hunt and receive weekly email blasts full of features, reviews and curated crowdsourced opinions!</comment>


UK firms routinely hire criminals to steal rivals' information - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/the-other-hacking-scandal-suppressed-report-reveals-that-law-firms-telecoms-giants-and-insurance-companies-routinely-hire-criminals-to-steal-rivals-information-8669148.html

<comment><USER2> How much does it cost to hire Booz Allen Hamilton?</comment>


LG G Watch R - <AUTHOR> http://www.lg.com/global/gwatch/index.html#main <comment><USER2> Correct me if I'm wrong, but most (all) of those product photos are faked. If you're curious what it looks like on a real wrist:

[http://media.gizmodo.co.uk/wp- content/uploads/2014/10/DSCF71...](http://media.gizmodo.co.uk/wp- content/uploads/2014/10/DSCF7149.jpg)

From full Gizmodo review here: [http://gizmodo.com/lg-g-watch-r-review-worthy- of-your-wrist-...](http://gizmodo.com/lg-g-watch-r-review-worthy-of-your- wrist-even-if-andr-1652833562)

<comment><USER3> Wow, that looks bad on a small wrist. That's basically a deal breaker for me. I also think that default watchface looks very tacky, though I'm sure that can be changed.

The Moto 360 suffered the same problem. Here's what it looks like in a promotional shot:

[http://www.droid-life.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/03/moto-36...](http://www.droid-life.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/03/moto-360-2.png)

And here's what it actually looks like on someone with thin wrists:

[http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN- EK187_PTECH__G_...](http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN- EK187_PTECH__G_20140904164633.jpg)

<comment><USER4> I've seen the moto 360 in person, on a smallish wrist (compared to mine) and it looked fine, I only noticed it was the 360, because the screen was off.

Somehow it looks thicker in the pictures than it does on your wrist, then again I don't really care because I got a WP which won't work with any of google's stuff D:

<comment><USER3> I just saw a Moto 360 on display at Best Buy, and you're right. It's a lot smaller and lighter than I expected. Although it does look bad in that photo I linked to, honestly I was really impressed with how it looked on my wrists-- and my wrists are pretty small.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This page makes 360 separate requests and loads 55MB of assets. They did not minify or concatenate assets. It disables itself unless it is used at specific aspect ratios. It disables scrolling and requires clicking small triangles to navigate sideways.

Just so you can look at photos that are all fake.

Fire the designers.

<comment><USER6> It also ordered me to rotate my screen 'for optimal service' (in fact I received no 'service').

Suboptimal to say the least.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> In all the smartwatch reviews I have read, I fail to see the high-level overview: what kinds of tasks should I be able to accomplish with this kind of device, at all?

Are Android Wear devices only usable in a vicinity of my Android phone or can I use them without one? Could I use them with an iPhone, Firefox OS phone, Surface Pro tablet, 3G modem or any Wi-Fi source (Moto 360 does have Wi-Fi)?

Do Android Wear devices need apps written specifically for them, and/or specific support in a tablet/phone app. Say, I know there is a VK app for Android, but I'm not sure about smartwatch support. Should I be getting VK notifications (or whatever watch is good for) by default?

Could I pair a Wi-Fi-equipped smartwatch with a Bluetooth headset and get rid of a phone, with smartwatch providing VoIP connectivity over Wi-Fi?

What kinds (if any) of non-default configurations can I expect to use a device like that? (default being pairing it with an Android phone and a specifically supported app)

<comment><USER8> I'm not sure if you're asking because you legitimately don't know, or just underscoring how terrible some of the marketing and advertising for these devices has been. If it's the former, though, a lot of the info you're asking about can be found online[0]. In general, though, the primary mode of operation of an Android Wear device is to work with the existing notification system of an Android device, so most apps should automatically have some reflection on the watch. If they take advantage of Android notification actions, you may be able to interact to a degree with them right off of the watch.

Android Wear devices don't (as far as I know) work with non-Android phones because non-Android phones don't give them the required integration with the notifications and applications.

[0]: [http://www.android.com/wear/](http://www.android.com/wear/)

<comment><USER9> The Microsoft Band at least seems to be more targeted towards health focused users although it can do all of the smart things that these smart watches do.

[http://www.microsoft.com/Microsoft-Band](http://www.microsoft.com/Microsoft- Band)

<comment><USER10> except you have a massive 1/2cm thick chunk of hard plastic the whole way around your wrist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11>
        Facebook

        Alice Yang tagged you
        in a post: Jon, check
        out this song from
        utube, it's aweso

[http://www.lg.com/global/gwatch/index.html#outdoorstyle3](http://www.lg.com/global/gwatch/index.html#outdoorstyle3)

Pass, thanks.

<comment><USER12> Just chilling on the beach with my smart phone and sweater.

There very definition of not "getting" the beach.

<comment><USER13> not to defend the lousy advert too much, but up in the Northern Coastal areas, we have beaches too, and they're nice to go to even when it's a little chilly (actually the next month or two is actually my favorite time to go to the beach, temperature in 50s and 60s, nobody there, wildlife is out in droves migrating or fattening up for winter)...

but then again, he's wearing shorts so....

<comment><USER12> Yeah if the guy were wearing pants I wouldn't have made the comment.

I mean clearly it's an aesthetic for an advertisement, but it does not make said aesthetic appealing to me. Yay, I can take my work to the one place I should find some semblance of relaxation and best yet I can dress like a Lands End model. Sold!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'd love to see a round smart watch that homaged the Rolex GMT look-and-feel and then utilized a rotating (and maybe clickable?) diver-style bezel for input (maybe like the 1st gen ipods) in addition to the touch screen.

Classic, understated look, but another few interesting dimensions of input.

<comment><USER15> Wow, why has no one done the rotating bezel yet? I hadn't thought about it before, but that seems like such a simple, obvious way to interact with a smartwatch. That should be done.

<comment><USER16> I think some of the trouble with a rotating bezel is accidental input. I have a diver with a sturdy, mono-directional bezel, and it gets bumped around to odd positions from time to time -- maybe once every couple weeks. And that is with a bezel _not_ designed to be used often.

A UI-driving bezel would have to be bi-directional, for starters. Then, it would have to be looser AND more resilient than normal bezels, since they will be used more often. And even once those items are fine-tuned, we only have navigation without confirmation. Do we press the bezel to confirm? Can the bezel be mounted as a rocker, for multiple inputs, like a volume key? Maybe. A glass or ceramic capacitive bezel, though, would really "wow" me!

I concede that I'd rather have a bezel input than Apple Watch's crown input, which to me looked inconvenient, but seeing as the jury is still out on round vs. square design for these "smartwatch" UIs (a rotating bezel only works on round watches) it would be quite risky from a usability perspective.

<comment><USER14> I think the bezel would need to be tight enough to not bump easily, and then not be used for destructive input. If it was selection (maybe face selection by default) and got bumped, not a big deal. Or maybe a mix of both a physical bezel with a capacitive function to determine if a finger is causing the rotation? (I do love the tactile click when I rotate mine.)

The concept does require OS-level support though, to get value out of it. Given that Apple didn't do it, I have a hard time seeing it coming out any time soon.

Too bad. I wanted my smart Rolex GMT.

<comment><USER16> Agreed, the satisfying click of the bezel rotation would be a painful loss.

However, the later-model iPods had a pretty satisfactory capacitive wheel with 4 selection inputs on each directional. The capacitive nature inhibits accidental inputs... maybe not all, but most.

The Nest UI is also wonderful with it's rotation and selection method.

Honestly it would be very interesting to see something like a movable bezel be utilized on a watch... I would definitely like to see it be explored.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The website is horrible. I hate that it dictates how your browser should be sized, with the brilliant text "Please adjust your BROWER for optimal service." \- [http://cl.ly/image/2i3w2y3h3K35](http://cl.ly/image/2i3w2y3h3K35)

<comment><USER18> It's using some weird kind of JS resizing, too – window size doesn't matter but aspect ratio does. Side scrolling instead of vertical, and almost all of the text content is contained in background images. Just terrible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Call me a nitpicker and you'd be right, but the screenshots in this[1] and other ads[2] where they showcase this watch for GPS navigation while on a bike (or motorcycle) where the watch is _not_ doing a 90 degree rotation on the content area so you can read it while your hands are on some handlebars really bugs me. I guess it bugs me more than some model getting on a motorcycle wearing what looks like a blazer with no helmet or gloves, too.

But to make this comment, say, 20% hn worthy, can someone explain whether it's unrealistic that I think the accelerometer should be able to figure out the "holding handlebars with forward velocity" scenario and orient the display properly?

[1] [http://www.lg.com/global/gwatch/index.html#urbanstyle5](http://www.lg.com/global/gwatch/index.html#urbanstyle5) [2] [https://play.google.com/store/devices/details?id=motorola_mo...](https://play.google.com/store/devices/details?id=motorola_moto_360_leather_black&hl=en)

</comment><comment><USER20> I find it weird that these smartwatches don't have GPS built in them. I feel like if you were to use it on your runs/bikes, you'd prefer to just be able to take your watch rather than having both your phone and watch.

I could definitely see how excluding it would help price and battery life, but to have a selling point be "it helps with fitness" but with a caveat of "oh, but you have to bring your phone with you too" kinda kills the whole appeal.

<comment><USER21> Excluding GPS doesn't just _help_ battery life. GPS is a power monster.

<comment><USER22> This. It seems like most people don't realize how much power GPS requires, especially for it to be on 24/7\. Even advanced sport watches (e.g., Garmin's Forerunner 620) don't last half a day with it on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I wish someone would flip the paradigm upside down. Put the whole computer in the watch and then have a dumb screen the size of a credit card that fits in your wallet. You can use that for talking on the phone, browsing the web etc. Make the watch primary and the big screen secondary.

<comment><USER24> A watch like that would probably have battery life of about 0.3 femtoseconds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Product apart, this website is horrible. I can't scroll with my mouse. When I opened it on my vertical screen, all I had was a white background with "please adjust your screen"( [http://www.lg.com/global/gwatch/images/common/rotate_bg.jpg](http://www.lg.com/global/gwatch/images/common/rotate_bg.jpg) )...

That's horrible. I had never seen this before.

<comment><USER26> Was going to say the same thing, saw that both on my iPhone and on my desktop (with a half screen width browser). Way to piss users off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> "Take the Next Turn! Turn-by-Turn Navigation."

On a motorcycle, on the highway, looking down on your wrist and reading the directions off a watch is a sure shot way to get killed. What were these designers thinking?

<comment><USER28> Maybe they were thinking that you wouldn't use it on a motorcycle?

<comment><USER29> The accompanying photo on the website is of a dude on a motorcycle.

[http://www.lg.com/global/gwatch/index.html#urbanstyle5](http://www.lg.com/global/gwatch/index.html#urbanstyle5)

Hopefully he's wearing a single-ear bluetooth or something in the ear you can't see and getting his turn by turn that way, but the inset of a screenshot and the highly visible watch on his wrist to match certainly give an implied bit of poor usage advice.

In any case, more of a failure of the website marketing team than the watch or Android Wear designers, but it is a valid point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Those photos are massively overexposed or have some strange HDR processing on them, but it's lovely to see material textures and facial hair in such detail.

The one photo to sell "checking your stocks" is a funny one. "I'm on a yacht looking to the horizon and I NEED to know whether I should BUY BUY BUY or SELL SELL SELL". What a witty photo.

<comment><USER31> You could probably apply that reasoning to 99% or so of all text messages and facebook status updates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I really wish the could name their products better. Their two watches right now are named:

\- LG G Watch

\- LG G Watch R

Fortunately, the product is fairly decent. (I've seen it in person.) I happen to have a Samsung Gear Live, which is quite comparable in terms of specs. I think that Android Wear probably needs another year (or 2nd generation of watches) to mature a bit more.

<comment><USER33> Wonder if they will get a nastygram from Casio. "G-Watch" / "G-Shock".

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Perhaps a very naive question - how hackable is this?

I mean how hard is it to strip Android off all its phone-home Google goodness and have just the kernel, basic OS services with complete root access? I used to do a lot of embedded work, but I have to plead almost complete ignorance of Android. This watch though ... damn ... so many possibilities for making such a nice toy out of it.

</comment><comment><USER35> Given the amount of big brand smartwatches that keep surfacing but don't seem to be gaining traction (or at least doesn't appear so) I get the feeling they are going to go the way of tablets - in other words "there isn't a tablet market, there's an iPad market".

<comment><USER36> "there isn't a tablet market, there's an iPad market".

This was true in 2010, but things change. Apple's tablet market share is at 23%

[http://www.macrumors.com/2014/10/30/apple-ipad-market- share-...](http://www.macrumors.com/2014/10/30/apple-ipad-market-share- satisfaction/)

<comment><USER37> What about profit share? Are any major tablet vendors aside from Apple actually making decent profits?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> BE AWARE OF THE RECENT STATE OF YOUR (CURRENT) HEALTH

That's... quite interestingly worded. It seems to suggest that it only supports repeated single readings on-demand, a shame for sport enthusiasts who would rather not be talking into their watch during the action.

</comment><comment><USER39> "Be aware of the recent state of your (current) health by monitoring your heart's pulse"

"Stay fit, keep control of your body"

"Please adjust your browser for the optimal service"

Guessing this is a translation of another site?

<comment><USER30> All you base are belong to us!

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> _The Skeuomorph is strong with this one._

Why isn't there a single chronograph type clock face that displays the current date in an easily readable form and does't clutter month and day of month all other the place? It's just feels quite unimaginative to stick to the limitations of an mechanical apparatus when you're using a digital display.

Is it possible to have some kind of reflective semi-translucent high contrast High-PPI E-Ink with with a P-OLED Backlight? Or have it flippable?

</comment><comment><USER41> Why do these product images, all of them, look like a rushed photoshop slap-on hack? Does it mean that LG views this watch as an experimental throw-away project or something?

<comment><USER42> I think LG, like others, is struggling to push this product out in time for Christmas shopping. Won't be surprised if they ship it with rather obvious hardware or design issues.

That "where to buy / coming soon" image is not clickable for me, though it looks like an input field. Anyone else tried using it to find a pre-order form?

<comment><USER43> It's already available in the UK and has been for a couple of weeks now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> The fashion type ad is very good, and very different from most of the other smart watch ads that I've seen. The other ads focus on the watch and technology. The LG ad emphasizes the fashion aspect of the watch and is more consumer oriented which is probably the best thing to do when expanding the market to beyond the early adopters and techno types.

</comment><comment><USER45> wow, that's an obnoxious website. It won't show anything except a promt to resize my browser window for "optimal service". my browser is covering half a 27" 2560x1440 screen, i think it's probably big enough to show a picture of a wristwatch

</comment><comment><USER46> This is the first smart watch I've seen that actually looks good. It's clearly aiming to look as much as possible like a traditional watch when not actively being used.

It does look huge on the woman's wrist on the second slide/page/section thing. Big watches tend to be a men's fashion thing, so I wonder if this will present problems.

The heart rate feature seems really out of place and useless. What use is a recent history of your heart rate? Presumably there are plans to integrate more features into the health part of things, because at the moment it looks a lot like a "because we can" feature.

<comment><USER47> Large sunglasses quickly returned to fashion so it might work for a women's watch too?

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I haven't seen the LG G Watch R nor the 360 but from the specs the LG G W R would be the one i would buy.

A better and more efficient processor makes things better on the LG.

</comment><comment><USER49> love the jab at google watch. As a watch wearer, I can see myself getting on- board with this if the battery life is reasonable.

I doubt they will find too many female takers in its current form factor.

</comment><comment><USER50> CAMERA None

Such a strange feature to highlight.

<comment><USER51> Judging from the heated reception that Google Glass got in certain places, it appears that wearable cameras are a mixed blessing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Wow. A "responsive" page that hates all but a couple specific aspect ratios. It literally won't show you the page if you aren't in an aspect ratio it expects. WTF? [http://d.pr/i/12ZBj](http://d.pr/i/12ZBj)

<comment><USER53> I had a similar issue, tfw "responsive" means adapting to the site rules, not the other way around. Reminds me of "This site is best viewed in 1024x768", just poor web dev work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> I wish that this doesn't require any phone. I wish that the watch could completely replace the smartphone. You'd look really stupid looking at your watch all the time while you are walking or in the restaurant.

<comment><USER55> I'm not sure that's possible or desirable. They're relying on a bigger device for their cellular connection. Given that there's no immediate mention of battery life, we can assume it's quite a problem already without jamming more radios in there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> On the 4th or 5th tab, the note ...

"Idea for an all new park that delivers fun, friendship and safety for children of all ages."

... made me wonder, what have I done today to change the world in a good way? [Spoiler alert: sarcasm]</comment>