Ouya: A New Kind of Video Game Console - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ouya/ouya-a-new-kind-of-video-game-console <comment><USER3> It's funny, earlier I read the comments and they were mostly all about what a stupid idea this was, not a powerful enough system, can't force free, doomed to fail kind of stuff.

I pledged this morning thinking how unique games are really going to flourish. How the simple graphic games can come out to be awesome, I mean we all played the classics right? Those 8-bit marathon games that gave us hours of joy, then hours more when they remade those games on the new system with the same old graphics, barely a remake in fact just a future port. And, I've sat as a gamer and watched all my friends buy those classic games over and over again, same graphics, same sound, same awesome gameplay.

So now we have this chance to get a lesser powered system out to nearly everyone, people that can't afford to game but wouldn't mind the hours of time and boredom that is swept away by even the most casual of games. (heard of Zuma? Plants v zombies? etc.)

I remember this morning seeing all the negative comments. It's 1:55 PM my time now,and OUYA is at 938,733 dollars. Clearly minutes away from being fully funded, with another 29 days they'll go over their asking by three to five times (if any of the kickstarters I've watched grow like this act as a valid indicator, which they should). So I'm left wondering, how many people will be eating the words they said today? I don't think it'll be OUYA, or any of the people that have backed the project already, waiting for the day that this console fills in a niche that the big console makers never even considered needing filled. I for one can't wait.

As of finishing this post, the project is fully funded at $953,325.

<comment><USER4> As of 10:44 pm eastern time, it has increased to 1.8M. Sounds like people believe in this to me...

<comment><USER5> And now its about to hit the 3million mark. $2,935,681

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sounds like a great idea with lots of potential for spinoffs.

Basically any Android TV device with a dedicated appstore connected to your credit card has lots of potential. Its a continuations of the entertainment merge (radio, tv, video, games, etc, social web) and thats the correct general direction.

Being based on Android also opens up the possibilities for local variations. In Ireland for example, a great/cheap TV solution is SoarView (6 free-to-air terrestrial Irish TV channels) + FreeSat (UK free-to-air satellite channels) + Netflix (7 euro a month currently). That's not very common though because the hardware is crap and you need someone to come in and set it all up for you. You'll probably have 2 boxes & 3 remotes and need to press lots of buttons to get to everything. "Cable" companies wil spread out the cost, manage the hardware and get Irish & British TV into the same remote.

A box that can pleasantly handle it all and "ephemeralize" it (thus doing all the stuff we haven't thought of yet) would be excellent. Add in some gaming that appeals to wii people and some that appeals to facebook scrabble people and you've got a bomb.

Gaming is probably the best angle and any angle will do. Once you are shipping something that people connect to their tv, there are all sorts of things you can do. I'm glad to see experimentation going on here. I'm also glad to see that its getting to be in the reach of small companies.

</comment><comment><USER7> In the FAQ, they define free to play as "every game will be free to play: what this means is that there will at least be a free demo, or you'll be able to play the entirety of the game for free but may have access to additional items, upgrades, or other features that come at a cost."

I do believe that the first part is unequivocally not free to play... Xbox Live doesn't get to call itself free to play because it offers demos for almost every game. The 2nd part is certainly the freemium model that has been heavily used (and quite successful in my eyes).

But I think it is important to clarify that the system does not only feature free-to-play games, but there are paid games that offer demos. They do mention that by all games being "free" they mean that developers will be forced to include some playable content for the user, but I just do not agree with that wording, it could be much clearer.

Having said that, this looks cool :)

<comment><USER8> That FTP part really curbed my enthusiasm. I very much prefer paying some reasonable price for a game I liked, think is cool or just admire the developer than feeling compelled to "unlock" stuff. That's true even if I end up not playing it at all later. Unlocking/going pro/etc still has a scammy feeling to it.

<comment><USER9> Do you feel that way about demos?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I figure for $99 this is a fun experiment. If it sucks, I backed an interesting idea and I'm not out much money. If it doesn't suck, I have a neat new toy to play with.

At the very least, it might let me drop my XBox Live Gold subscription, which I only have so I can stream Netflix.

</comment><comment><USER11> If you're looking for a new kind of video game console, and haven't already heard of it, then you need to know about the Open Pandora:

<http://openpandora.org/>

This device is, really, amazing.

I have two. I will tell you whats so amazing about this GAMES machine: it has everything you need to build games, already onboard.

Both of my machines are set up with their own on-board development environments - full C/C++ compiler, and so on.

I have been able to port a metric tarball-tons' worth of games - and other - applications _with the device itself and nothing else_.

You can use things like LOAD81 (<http://github.com/antirez/load81/>) on the Pandora [http://repo.openpandora.org/?page=detail&app=LOAD81](http://repo.openpandora.org/?page=detail&app=LOAD81), and it really rocks.

You can put python (or rather, upgrade the existing python), ruby, haskell, &etc. on it. With great ease.

Also, you can play a hell of a lot of nice games, too. The free (in all meanings of the word) spirited community has constructed its own a-massing collection of titles:

<http://repo.openpandora.org/>

Emulators? There are very, very few emulators that are not already running on the Pandora; - I have 27 different 'retired architectures' software archives on one of my Pandoras.

New-school games? Well, they're out there, and happening. The Pandora may not have an Android App Stores' worth of apps, yet, but most everything thats in the existing repo, is quality. There are some true gems .. just check the public repo top-10 list at repo.openpandora.org, to see what I mean.

(EDIT: Actually, the Pandora can run Android just fine: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHPxE9om3Hc>)

Did I mention: 11 hours battery life, and it fits in my coat pocket? Oh, it has two nice little analog nubs, a workable keyboard, and a decent touchscreen.

The _next_ generation Pandora might be an almighty beast worth looking at, but the Ouya, well .. it has some serious catching up to do.

<comment><USER12> [http://www.gp2x.de/shop/product_info.php/products_id/223?osC...](http://www.gp2x.de/shop/product_info.php/products_id/223?osCsid=b863faffac07b98a020289c53e6a08bd)

Sort of neat, but...

That thing is $750, plus shipping. Every gaming system I can think of is cheaper than that, including decent desktop systems. Almost everything you describe can be achieved on a low end laptop, which has more utility, for half the price. Outside of "fitting in my pocket", I can't see any practical reason to own a gadget like that. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER13> It is only expensive now because its a startup. Once the economy of scale tips, with more users, it will get cheaper..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why isn't Google making every single Google TV set top box like a mini-Android console? It's not like they would have to change a whole lot about it. Just make sure it has a high-end ARM chip, 2 controllers included, and they actually try to give incentives to developers to port their games for it, which should be a minimal amount of coding if they already have an Android game.

<comment><USER15> Good Question. I think the majority issue is: 1\. Gaming in Android isn't that impressive yet. 2\. They are def. working on it. But they don't want to make so many enemies (Sony) before they have a chance. For them, it is not a huge profitable item. Getting the Google TV into the living room is more important. But I can see Google TV eventually will become a console and OuYA will die out.

<comment><USER14> It doesn't need to die out. They can continue to make the hardware, and adopt the new software. Not sure about the whole free-games thing, though.

<comment><USER15> Interesting. I thought about this. I think they will have their own market and not open to the official android market so that they will the cut of profit that games generated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> >We get it – smartphones and tablets are getting all the new titles – they're "what's hot." The console market is pushing developers away. We've seen a brain drain: some of the best, most creative gamemakers are focused on mobile and social games because those platforms are more developer-friendly. And the ones who remain focused on console games can't be as creative as they'd like.

Weird...I've this appeal many times before, but always with s/smartphone/console and s/console/pc.

The whole "Deep down, you know your best gaming memories happened in the living room" bit reminds me of "Don't reduce big screen movies to a household TV" and "Surf the Internet, swim in magazines" campaigns. Can you imagine if this was coming from a bigger name like Sony or Nintendo?

Sorry, just thinking out loud.

</comment><comment><USER17> Well if I backed the $700 level and got a pre-release version of this thing, I'd have to sell a game at $5 to 140 people in order to make my money back on the hardware. Considering there are already (as I am writing this) > 15k backers I think it's fairly safe to assume that with the promised promotion that I could at least make that money back. If I don't get paid for all the time and effort I put into making the game... oh well. I like making games so it's not time wasted even if I don't ultimately get paid for it. Sounds like a cool hobby project at least.

And what if it does take off?

For a growing population of gamers there is no need for highly optimized hardware designed for crunching polygons and shaders. Not everyone wants to play CoD: Modern Hate Machine 5 Extreme. It would seem that this project is hedging its bets that this population of gamers is large enough to support building a specialized hardware platform for these types of games that they like. Seems pretty reasonable to me.

I think I side with @notch (<https://twitter.com/notch/status/220971663003623427>): it would be awesome if this console does well. I think having a low-barrier development platform with wide adoption and a captive audience would be great. As it stands I can't just make a game for XBLA -- I have to suffer in obscurity in the indie store or create a real corporation with funding and a history of decent games and pitch my idea. Neither option is very attractive. I can't even imagine what developing for the PS3 would be like (as I haven't done any, but I'd imagine it would not be very fun). So I hope this project does do well. I think it will open a lot of doors and create new markets. That isn't really a bad thing for anyone.

</comment><comment><USER18> Feels like amateur hour.

I would honestly be shocked if they can ship a console with even those specs along with a controller and all the assorted bits and pieces you need, to an end user for $99 without eating some hidden costs themselves (which, if their budget is under a million, doesn't seem like something they're going to do). I'm not a manufacturing expert, so maybe I'm missing something enormous here, but given the history of console manufacturers taking a loss to sell bundled software, and the high list price of android devices, I don't see any evidence to support that their target price is remotely realistic.

Even worse, the hardware specs are just... short-sighted. 8GB of storage is not remotely enough for a console that has no physical storage medium for games - Microsoft gets away with selling a 4GB XBox 360 because customers can pop a DVD into the drive, but anyone who is actually downloading games off the internet is going to need way more space than 8GB. I've got individual games on my Android phone that are over a gigabyte, and that's ignoring the amount of space used by the android OS itself along with other data (like saved games) - many modern PC games have individual save files that are over 10 megs. That stuff adds up. If you force players to add/remove games from their system in order to fit into 8GB, they're going to spend a ton of time waiting on their internet connections (and you would expect a guy who worked on the OLPC to know that a lot of people out there don't have fast internet yet.) USB2 for external storage means that expansion options will be limited - loading game assets off USB2 would probably have pretty dire performance consequences.

There's also other assorted details that just make this feel lazy. The buttons on that controller mockup are only color-coded, which means it will be difficult (if not impossible) to clearly communicate to a color-blind player which button is associated with what action - even worse, they use all four colors, so it will probably affect people with every type of colorblindness. This is a mistake that none of the other console vendors have made: Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo all made sure that each of their buttons has a distinct shape or letter associated with it so that in-game text and UI can communicate clearly to anyone who plays.

Furthermore, they show various games in their mockup material - <USER2> Minecraft, and Triple Town, and Shadowgun - but apparently they haven't made deals with all of these developers to show up in the promotional material (let alone use the platform), which makes it seem like they really believe they're just going to ride the Android Market all the way to success. Can they even provide access to the official Android Market without meeting the requirements that Google imposes for shipping the Google Experience apps or whatever they're called?

I could also rant about the fact that they think a Tegra 3 and Cortex A9 is adequate for a game console, but honestly I'm not worried about that. People have done amazing things with low-spec hardware before, but it certainly doesn't help if the hardware is poor along with the other poor decisions on display here.

<comment><USER19> When I read your post, I feel like I'm reading someone who is hoping for them to fail. It brings to mind this quote.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

<comment><USER20> Yes. I had a critical initial reaction to OnLive (video games streamed from the cloud) because of latency; also, it has such lovely benefits for publishers that they'd _wish_ it to be true... but when better networks and more local servers arrive, they will be placed to own it. They might even overtake "consoles". They just need to survive - which they can do, because for _some_ use-cases, for _some_ people, the present service is useful.

Similarly, the next generation of SoC GPUs (e.g. PowerVR G6200) has approximately the power of an xbox360's xenos GPU (which seems to have been enough for players, despite x10 better GPUs on PCs). When that arrives (next year), these guys will be there - they just need to survive. Another relevant quote:

      No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I admire them for trying to bring a cheap platform for (indie) gaming and such, but I don't get some points:

They are claiming that "all the games will be free-to-play" and then in the FAQ they rectify it by saying that all games will have at least a "free-demo", which is not F2P, but nonetheless it means it will offer both kinds.

Now let's see what kind of games they might bring to this platform: most of the F2P games that are available are either MMORPGs or some kind of FPS (ruling out flash games, of course). You don't find these formats on consoles, and why? Keyboard and mouse, which is totally the opposite of what they are trying to offer. Even though there are a lot of FPS games on consoles, there is not a single one the F2P format.

The other kind of games (the non-F2P) will be mostly indie games, which is great. But still limited to the use of a controller! There are some amazing ones like Super Meat Boy and Bastion, but not many!

</comment><comment><USER22> Why does the period in "Hackers welcome." link to <https://twitter.com/YourAnonNews/>?

<comment><USER23> Cheap attempt of controversy/publicity I would guess. Fits the presumptuous feeling I got from the kickstarter text quite well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don't want to be pessimistic, but given the hardware configuration, what kind of games this will be able to run ? I don't really feel like playing Angry Bird HD on my TV forever.

<comment> Tim-Boss <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBl-goBrWno> The Tegra3 quad-core processor doesn't perform awfully, and comes with 1Gb RAM... I'm not sure how much better you can get for $95 (lowest backing point to secure a console)!

<comment><USER25> I don't know about others but poor (relative to PC and console) game performance on mobile games is only acceptable to me because the machine fits in my pockets.

I don't sit in my living room to play iOS/Android games, the fact that the device is hooked to a bigger screen won't change that.

Also, they seem to be confusing two target audiences here. People that grew up with games as a central part of their lives are (in my experience) people that STILL play a lot of games and prefer to do so on consoles and a PC, while people who are into social and mobile games are mostly casual people that won't be bothered to sit in front of a big screen to play anyways.

I've felt like the console market was ready for some change for a while but envisioned it as a kind of Steam-console more than a big screen phone. That being said, I wish the best of luck to these guys, it's an ambitious and exciting project.

<comment><USER26> Did you watch the video? I'm not sure what resolution that is pushing, but it clearly beats the Wii hands down and looks to be roughly competitive with the XBox 360/PS3. If that's 1080p it may even have a slight edge on them. (But I'd guess 720p. For the most part on a TV console it's not really worth pushing twice the pixels for such a marginal image quality gain.)

<comment><USER25> Pushing 1080p off a mobile GPU on a console with 1Gb of RAM is cool and all but good luck doing anything else impressive besides... well pushing 1080p. This thing is closer to a phone than a real console.

<comment><USER14> The consoles are 7 years old. Mobile games are getting pretty close to their performance. All the new ARM GPU architectures coming out this year and next year will support OpenGL ES 3.0 (OpenGL 3.2 features) and OpenCL 1.1.

Next year's hardware should also be 4-5x faster in GPU performance than Tegra 3 (that includes Tegra 4, as well as other chips), and around 300 gigaflops each, which I think already surpasses the Xbox 360 and PS3, or it's around as powerful.

If Google and many of their partners would put these chips in $99 set top boxes/consoles, and let them play 3D Android games, it could disrupt the console market, simply by flooding the market with the help of multiple manufacturers, a low price, and a decent gaming platform, that could only grow bigger if it takes off, not unlike how Google dominates the smartphone market through the sheer number of Android devices released by many, many manufacturers.

I just hope Google is smart enough to recognize this and actually go for it, instead of focusing solely on their "smart TV" strategy with their Google TV boxes.

<comment><USER9> _Next year's hardware should also be 4-5x faster in GPU performance than Tegra 3_

Which makes it extra-stupid for Ouya to plan to ship a Tegra 3 console in 2013.

<comment><USER27> Ship early, ship often. Better to ship than wait for someone else to ship before you (like duke nukem forever)

<comment><USER9> They should be able to meet the same schedule with Tegra 4 or quad Krait (although at higher cost). So someone else may be shipping a box that's 4x the performance at the same time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I don't understand all the negativity in this thread. Sure, nit-pick it to death for this and that. But if this was executed correctly it would change the gaming world and collapse multiple console markets within the timeframe of one console generation.

I learned to program by making games... so this is exciting to see!

</comment><comment><USER29> Why was the title changed from OUYA to Ouya? OUYA is the name.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm surprised they're not also pursuing media center features, either baked-in or through third parties. Netflix clearly wants to live on every box in the universe, and the open-ish stack lends itself well to Flex, XMBC, etc. It increases the value prop while the game library is still being built up (how many people bought a PS3 because it doubled as a Blu-Ray?)

Also: how the heck is Ouya pronounced? Feels a little awkward to say, like the first year of the Wii. It's important that people are able to talk (and brag!) about your product.

<comment><USER31> > _Also: how the heck is Ouya pronounced?_

From the FAQ:

 _OOO-yah. Apparently it doesn't have the most pleasant meaning in Swahili._

<comment><USER32> Anyone know what the meaning is? I'm curious to know. They don't say, Google Translate doesn't have a clue, and a quick Google didn't turn up anything...

<comment><USER33> I think its 4 symbols to use for button identification.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Kicktraq, which calculates estimates for how much a project will make extrapolating from the current rate. Are estimating that OUYA will reach $39m if they can keep this pace.

[http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/ouya/ouya-a-new-kind-of- vid...](http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/ouya/ouya-a-new-kind-of-video-game- console)

<comment><USER35> Kind of curious as to why they'd use a linear extrapolation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> a) "8GB of internal flash storage & USB 2.0 (one)" That does not sound like it would be too useful if you want to play more than 2 games (exaggerated).

b) Why would I invest into a project where "there are plenty of other people involved, but some of them would get fired if we tell you who they are"?

<comment><USER14> We're talking about Android games here running on an ARM processor. They are a lot smaller than a PC game. I've only seen a couple of games that approach the 500 MB mark on Android, and there may be a few bigger ones I haven't tried. But most 3D Games should only be a few hundred MB at most.

<comment><USER23> If I would buy such device I would want big games and emulators. You easily fill up 8GB with emulators.

<comment><USER36> It has a free ssd slot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I love the idea and I have talked about the possibility of an ARM-based console for the past 2 years, but the Ouya is one of those cases where the execution doesn't seems right.

There's a lack of differentiation, it has no exclusives like big consoles have which can be critical to move units. The GTA series alone moved more PS2s than any other games in that console, and it had tons of great titles. By the time GTA3 made it to the Xbox the PS2 was getting the blockbuster San Andreas 8 months before any other platform did. In comparison most of the games on display for the Ouya are phone/tablet games. The anti-console crowd argues that people wont buy consoles anymore despite the fact that big consoles like the X360 have exclusive games not even available on PC. Simply put, why should I buy a Ouya if I can get the _exact same games_ on my phone or tablet?

I don't really understand the whole "hackers can modify the hardware"-part, wasn't the fragmentation of the Android ecosystem due to multiple hardware variations the reason why many developers stick to iOS? Wouldn't homogeneous hardware like that of the Kindle Fire make more sense in this situation?

Since it's a console and not a handheld portable device I don't see why it couldn't have a HDD for storage instead of the paltry 8GB it has. It could easily pack 500GB in a 2.5 drive, leaving tons of space to store games, but with just 8GB less than 10 1GB games will use up all of the storage space, so users will have to delete those games and then redownload them every time they want to play, and waiting for a 1GB download is way slower than DVD loading times on consoles, let alone HDD times.

<comment><USER38> I get the impression that the Ouya's bread and butter will be coming from casual gaming. Hardcore gamers will always want to stick to a beefier console anyways.

Someone wanting to play Tetris, Canabalt or other low-time-investment game is probably plenty satisfied with something like the Ouya.

<comment><USER37> That's even worst: a casual's only reason to buy a console is to get the games that they _cannot_ get on their phones and tablets

Why buy additional hardware like the ouya if it's the same exact same experience?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I read the Kickstarter page, then read the HN comments, and then went back and refreshed the Kickstarter page, and in perhaps twenty minutes, it had jumped almost a thousand pledges and over $100,000. That's... impressive.

EDIT: Another hour, another couple thousand pledges, another couple hundred thousand dollars, and it's funded. (And they bumped up the $99 pledge point from 5K to 10K.) That was fast.

</comment><comment><USER39> I was really excited about this until I saw the specs; they seem singularly unremarkable.

1 gig of ram, and a say what, a T33 maybe?

Am I completely off the deep end here or is that like an order of magnitude less powerful (abit with more ram) than say, an xbox.

So its cheap. Big deal, so is the Pi and say, [http://www.androidauthority.com/remember-the-74-android- pc-n...](http://www.androidauthority.com/remember-the-74-android-pc-now-it- has-a-53-little-brother-95354/)

I'm kind of dubious about the value proposition of something that wants to be a full blown console, but is basically just a slight lower spec'd version of my phone.

If you want to get me excited, stick 8 GB of ram on that thing and an intel based 3.2 Ghz cpu with a gpu that can run say, UT. That would effectively !!!! all over the state of the art for android devices AND consoles.

This? It'll be obsolete by the time it even exists.

<comment><USER14> No, it's not an order of magnitude less powerful. Tegra 3 games look almost console-like. And you can play a lot of older emulator games on this, too. Next year's ARM hardware should all but match the Xbox 360 hardware performance.

<comment><USER40> Xbox will probably be refreshed next year, though.

<comment><USER14> Sure, but it will cost a few hundred dollars more. And many people might not want these just for games, but for media stuff, and they would find the $99 price a lot more attractive than $300-$400 for such tasks.

<comment><USER40> Not trying to denigrate the new device, just pointing out that comparisons are being made of a new device with a device which is near the end of its rather long refresh cycle. Of course that tends to favor the new device. I expect the xbox to jump ahead in performance by a significant amount after the refresh.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> It already reached 200K! WOW! Looking forward to this one...

</comment><comment><USER42> I want this to succeed and it's high time somebody tried something like this.

I see 2 problems though, firstly the price. It's simply too cheap and this is reflected in the hardware specs, if they wanted enthusiasts they really need to bump up the hardware. A console with a small SSD and a desktop class nVidia/ATI GPU would be way more exciting.

The other problem will be getting "killer apps" which is a huge part of console marketing, would the Xbox have been so successful without HALO? the wii without "wii sports"?

This is where having a more "open" console provides disadvantages because they are in a weak position to score exclusivity deals since MS , Sony or Nintendo could simply see which are the most popular titles on the platform and strike deals with the developers to port them over to their platforms.

<comment><USER43> >if they wanted enthusiasts they really need to bump up the hardware.

It looks like this thing is aimed squarely at indie game developers, and the type of people who play indie pc games. Indie gamers aren't really known for their craving for top of the line graphics.

Using android saves them a lot of time and putting it on an arm platform allows it to easily run all of the popular android games.

There isn't a commodity SOC that comes with a desktop class GPU, so I don't see anyway they could realistically do that--it would require a whole lot more than a million bucks to develop it.

>...most popular titles on the platform and strike deals with the developers to port them over to their platforms.

This would a lot of time. Since these games are written for android a port will probably be a complete rewrite (see minecraft for x-box), and take a year at least.

Why wait a year to play a game when you can get access for only $99?

Sure eventually console makers might make tools and processes to make it easier for indie developers to get android games onto their consoles, but that would be fantastic (and would accomplish the goals of this project anyway).

<comment><USER42> _It looks like this thing is aimed squarely at indie game developers, and the type of people who play indie pc games. Indie gamers aren't really known for their craving for top of the line graphics._

I'm not sure there is much of a demographic of people who are "indie gamers" , most people who play indie games also play AAA games, so a console for Indie games only doesn't seem like it would have a huge target market.

 _Using android saves them a lot of time and putting it on an arm platform allows it to easily run all of the popular android games._

Android stuff is mainly Java, so I can't imagine that porting would be that huge a deal especially considering there are also ports of android for x86. You must also keep in mind that most android games are designed around touchscreens, so it's not like they are suddenly going to have a big library of games that are playable with a controller without significant redesign.

 _There isn't a commodity SOC that comes with a desktop class GPU, so I don't see anyway they could realistically do that--it would require a whole lot more than a million bucks to develop it._

Couldn't this be mostly done by using a motherboard from a laptop or similar? Since it's a console, space and weight are less of a factor than with a tablet etc.

 _This would a lot of time. Since these games are written for android a port will probably be a complete rewrite (see minecraft for x-box), and take a year at least._

This is basically a chicken/egg problem. Indie developers are unlikely to develop around a platform that does not already have significant user base. Most of the popular indie titles, supermeatboy , braid etc were developed around the 360 first because it already had a significant market.

<comment><USER43> >I'm not sure there is much of a demographic of people who are "indie gamers" , most people who play indie games also play AAA games, so a console for Indie games only doesn't seem like it would have a huge target market.

It looks like they are trying to take the PC indie game market and bring it to the TV. It doesn't matter if indie gamers also play AAA games, the point is (and what I was replying to) that people who play indie games, of whom there are many, are willing to overlook graphics for gameplay.

>that huge a deal especially considering there are also ports of android for x86

Almost anything resource intensive is done with the NDK which is in C/C++, if they used x86 almost no Android games would play out of the box.

>Couldn't this be mostly done by using a motherboard from a laptop or similar?

It could be done, yes. But at _significantly_ more expense. Think about the price of a mobo, CPU, GPU and RAM. You can get an arm SOC with all the above included for less than $25--that's how they're able to sell these things for $99.

>Indie developers are unlikely to develop around a platform that does not already have significant user base.

That's why the $99 price tag is such a big deal, hopefully it will help them reach critical mass.

Additionally since it runs android, developers can develop for it as well as touchscreen android devices with almost no extra effort (for non touchscreen essential games).

>...developed around the 360 first because it already had a significant market.

X-box primarily attracted indie developers b/c they made it easier for them than any other console. But the PC has way more indie games than the X-box because it is even easier to develop for and distribute (even though there are way more console gamers than PC gamers).

<comment><USER42> I guess the point is , why would I buy one of these instead of or in addition to an xbox360. Just being slightly cheaper won't really do it.

Most indie games don't really sell very well and the ones that do will be ported, Indie games generally also have the advantage of being very easy to port, especially if you use SDL for the graphics.

Plus anybody who's into really obscure Indie games probably has a PC already. The advantage AAA consoles have is that they can provide high end PC level graphics for much less money than a high end PC because the are subsidesed.

They might have more luck making something for the casual gaming market and consentrate on making an innovating controller that works well for exiting android touch screen games but can be used at a distance from the screen.

<comment><USER43> >why would I buy one of these instead of or in addition to an xbox360

They've just passed $1,000,000 on kickstarter, so it looks like around 10k people have decided to buy one.

>The advantage AAA consoles have is that they can provide high end PC level graphics for much less money than a high end PC because the are subsidized.

That's not really true except for the first year they come out. After that PC hardware outpaces them, and the only advantage is that it's easier to use and it sits in your living room. Look at the Wii, it wasn't anywhere near PC level hardware even when it came out. In fact the next gen of consoles won't really be faster than top of the line PCs even when they debut.

The developer is arguing that the advantage consoles have is TV access (easy TV access). So she's looking to combine the TV access of a console with the ease of development of a PC. And it looks like there is a sizable number of people who agree with her.

Look at the sales so far. 10k units presold in a few hours, the X-box 360 only sold 300k units its first month in North America, and that was with a huge advertising campaign and an actual product on store shelves.

They also don't need to beat x-box, I'd wager that almost anyone who would buy this will buy it in addition to X-box.

From the results, clearly there's a market here.

>Indie games generally also have the advantage of being very easy to port, especially if you use SDL for the graphics.

Why wait for the game to be ported when this thing is only $99.

>Just being slightly cheaper

It's _half_ the price of the cheapest 360, and there's no xbox live subscription fee. The average game price will be much cheaper as well.

The other thing I think you're missing, is that most of the I know _run out_ of games to play. If this thing is just provided 10% extra content over what they have now, they'd spend $99.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> _"The entire first production run of consoles will have YOUR USERNAME and BACKER NUMBER ENGRAVED INTO IT"_

Well, at $10,000 that's an expensive barrier but I hope they're carefully checking those usernames.

</comment><comment><USER45> I find it interesting that when someone gets a chance to build a controller from scratch in 2012, it ends up looking essentially no different than one from 1997: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_Analog_Controller>

On a completely separate note, this might be a great reason to target android... if it works.

<comment><USER46> The human hands are notoriously hard to design for; controllers are a very hard to improve design, much like computer mice.

<comment><USER47> I wonder how comfortable it'd be if the controllers were split in the center and the resultant looked like dual nunchucks. You could join them by a cable and add motion detection too. Since the left and right hands are essentially now independent to move, the developers have a lot more creative freedom with movement controls.

<comment><USER46> Are you thinking about this? :)

<http://i.imgur.com/lpDqH.jpg>

<comment><USER47> Well not EXACTLY that, but close :D

Just imagine taking your normal 360 controller and split it along the center. Now add gyroscope/accelerometer and two tracking cameras/LEDs (just like the WiiMotes).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> In spite of the pronunciation guide to the name of this console, I choose to pronounce it OOHHHHH YEEEEEAAAH in Macho Man Randy Savage's voice.

Cheap hardware, open platform, and a decent looking controller. I would buy one, and I know a dozen other people who will too. OOHHHHH YEEEEEAAAH!

</comment><comment><USER49> I'm wondering how they try to solve the problem of getting a touch optimized game to work fine with a analog controller. I know that they said something about a touchscreen, but havn't shown some sort of concept for it.

<comment><USER50> This reminds me of one of the problems with the never-released Infinium Labs Phantom console -- making PC games designed with a 2ft UI playable at a distance of 10 feet in the living room.

This project's goals strike me as quite similar to the Phantom's, actually, but with mobile games instead of PC games. And inverse problems -- Infinium had the UI problem but their controls were pretty well figured out, while OUYA's UI situation seems fine but the controls may present a challenge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> In a way, I want to invest in this. Yet, something in the back of my mind tells me it would not be an investment, but a transfer of cash from me to them...with no product at the end of the bargain.

<comment><USER9> That's just how Kickstarter works. Everyone should understand that before putting down any money.

<comment><USER51> 2 years from now, it's going to be interesting to see what percentage of projects actually delivered on their promises.

In this particular case, time to market is going to be super critical. They must get to market within the next 9 months or these hardware specifications will be laughable and Android 5+ will already be out there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I wonder how hard it will be to write an Android app that's compatible with both the OUYA controller, and the Xperia Play keypad?

</comment><comment><USER53> current android smartphones have similar specs and plug into TVs via mini-HDMI and can connect to PS3 controllers for example. But i still like the concept :)

</comment><comment><USER54> Gaming on android is a sad, laggy affair. There's too much input and audio latency for it to be a serious gaming platform.

<comment><USER55> Will that not change with Jelly Bean and Project butter?

<comment><USER56> They're doing triple-buffering and vsync with Project Butter, which, if I recall correctly, increases input lag.

<comment><USER57> Hmm? I might not know excactly what you're referring to and so on, but...

I guess you increase input lag if you're doing vsync and double buffering and your drawing things can't keep up with the refresh rate (so framerate gets halved and that).

With vsync and triple buffering, compared to vsync off, you should only (potentially) miss out on stuff like "I could have drawn the bottom third of this new screen I've rendered one frame earlier".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Why not just wait for Google TV?

<comment><USER14> I don't think Google has even made Google TV open source yet, probably because it's still based on Honeycomb. Also, unfortunately, Google doesn't seem interested to want to promote their Google TV set top boxes as mini-consoles, other perhaps than mentioning it in the bullet list *run Play Store games.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> The UI seems have a lot of similarity to the XBox 360 Metro UI, Windows 8 and Zune, even the fonts.

[http://cdn2.sbnation.com/entry_photo_images/4547820/ouya2_ga...](http://cdn2.sbnation.com/entry_photo_images/4547820/ouya2_gallery_post.jpg)

<comment><USER60> Personally, I really like the new Xbox360 dashboard. Once I got the hang of it, I found it very easy to move around and get to what I want quickly. Using triggers for "tab" navigation makes a lot of sense.

If that's (partially, at least) what they're basing their UI off of, then I'm all for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Everything sounds fine, except being Android based.

Worst platform ever.

Also good luck getting most of the hardware like game developers do with java.

<comment><USER43> Android has an NDK that allows you to write native code in C\C++. Most of the resource intensive code for Android games is native.

That's why you can't play most of the games if you have an android phone with a MIPS processor (they're all compiled for ARM).

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> heh.

</comment><comment><USER63> The real mistake is Free to play...

<comment><USER57> But then the "free to play" part doesn't mean much.

From the FAQ:

"For gamers, every game will be free to play: what this means is that there will at least be a free demo"

So it's free to play in the way that a great number of games not generally considered free to play are free to play. Or in the way the XBLA is a free to play platform or something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Oh look, AndroidTV.

Prediction: Sidelined by the AppleTV in 6 months.

EDIT: More detail: What do you think will happen when Apple comes out with an SDK for AppleTV, folks? I suppose the only thing missing is the controller. :-)

<comment><USER65> Apple is not going to let the AppleTV run iOS apps. If only because the mess of resolutions and aspect ratios you find in everyday TVs.

Thus without the iOS ecosystem Apple would be competing on specs and marketing. They could do it but they would be giving OUYA a run for its money.

Besides, 6 months is a long time in mobile land.</comment></comment>


Humor Is Associated with Positive Outcomes in Psychotherapy - <AUTHOR> https://www.psypost.org/2019/02/study-finds-humor-is-associated-with-positive-outcomes-in-psychotherapy-53160 <comment><AUTHOR> Here is the abstract of the original study:

Considerable anecdotal evidence points to the usefulness of humor in the therapeutic process, but empirical evidence is lacking. The purpose of this study, conducted in Belgium, was to search for an association between humor and therapy outcomes in a population of 110 adult psychotherapy clients who attended at least 10 therapy sessions. Clients and their therapist evaluated the frequency and intensity of humorous events, as well as therapy effectiveness, therapeutic alliance, perceived hope, and pleasure in participating in therapy sessions. A strong positive correlation was observed between humor and therapy effectiveness, from both client (rs=0.40; p<0.001) and therapist perspectives (rs=0.37; p<0.001). The link between humor and therapy effectiveness remained significant in subgroups of clients with more severe illness, although these clients reported less humor in their therapy sessions. Further research is needed to determine whether humor enhances outcomes or whether positive outcomes trigger occurrence of humor.</comment>


Yes, it really *is* different for girls. - <AUTHOR>

HN disallowed my comment because I'm New-ish. Valid reason. But I still have something to say.
It's different for us. But, we're used to it. At least, I am. The trik (write this down) is to always be in a position to say No. "No, I will not have sex for you in exchange for an A." "No, I will not have sex with you to hold onto my gig."
Nope. <comment><USER2> > HN disallowed my comment because I'm New-ish

We blocked new accounts from commenting in that thread because trolls were beginning to descend upon it, and they often create new accounts to ply their trollish ways.

Sorry you got locked out in the process. We don't like turning that switch on precisely because legit new users do show up to comment.

</comment><comment><USER3> A submission like this without context is useless, despite gender or sex (yes those are different)

I wish I had more context to what you're saying.

<comment><USER4> I believe this is the article Jody was referencing: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7687784](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7687784)</comment></comment>


Red meat and the risk of bowel cancer - open-source-ux https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/red-meat-and-the-risk-of-bowel-cancer/ <comment><AUTHOR> Red meat is not a risk. Excessive iron is the risk they are referring to. You can research the side effects of consuming too much iron and decide for yourself if you are at risk.</comment>


Combinatorial Algorithms (1978) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.math.upenn.edu/~wilf/website/CombinatorialAlgorithms.pdf <comment><USER2> Combinatorial testing is an important area to apply combinatorial algorithms. [0] is a website to start with Combinatorial Test Case Generation.

[0][http://www.pairwise.org/index.asp](http://www.pairwise.org/index.asp)

</comment><comment><USER3> Obligatory mention of Wilf's "generatingfunctionology" that is also an excellent book [1].

[1] [https://www.math.upenn.edu/~wilf/gfologyLinked2.pdf](https://www.math.upenn.edu/~wilf/gfologyLinked2.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER4> > For computers and calculators.

Aw, I wish they made an edition to be read by humans.

</comment><comment><USER5> I notice that when I open this PDF using Preview on my Mac, I can't select and copy text. I assume this is because (1) text selection is disabled somehow, or (2) the document is just a collection of images. Does software exist that can convert a printed page with a lot of math notation into a truly digital document?

<comment><USER6> OCR?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> is it common to implement these algorithms yourself anymore?</comment>


Self-Driving Uber Strikes and Kills a Pedestrian - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/dr-gridlock/wp/2018/03/19/uber-halts-autonomous-vehicle-testing-after-a-pedestrian-is-struck/ <comment><USER2> This could pave some unforeseen regulations on self-driving car testing for all companies. Not a good news for anyone. Prayers for the victim and her families.

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16619917](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16619917)

1400+ points</comment>


Sencha Previews Cloud Services Sencha.io Src And Sencha.io Sync - <AUTHOR> http://www.sencha.com/blog/previewing-sencha-io/

<comment><USER2> More great stuff from Sencha. They really are doing great things from web app development, and open source with Sencha Labs.</comment>


All thick clients should be Mozilla-based - <AUTHOR> http://asserttrue.blogspot.com/2009/02/all-thick-clients-should-be-mozilla.html

<comment><USER2> Rubbish title - and also the author drinks a lot of kool-aid (does that taste like Ribena?)

A Mozilla monoculture would be just as harmful as an MSIE or Webkit monoculture, in my opinion.

Also, Mozilla is pretty expandable, but it seems like it's leading the way to first prize in the cruftiness competition.

For building apps on a web-ish stack, I like the concept of AIR. Webkit + a library seems a lot less evil than the whole Mozilla stack does, and has the right separation of players and responsibilities. Shame its got Adobe and Flash near it, though.</comment>


Exploiting the Wi-Fi Stack on Apple Devices - <AUTHOR> https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2017/09/over-air-vol-2-pt-1-exploiting-wi-fi.html <comment><USER2> > _More concretely, the Wi-Fi vulnerabilities presented in this research > affect many devices in the Android ecosystem. For example, two of the > vulnerabilities (#1, #2) affect most of Samsung's flagship devices, > including the Galaxy S8, Galaxy S7 Edge and Galaxy S7. Of the two, one > vulnerability is also known to affect Google devices such as the Nexus 6P, > and some models of Chromebooks. As for Apple's ecosystem, while this > research deals primarily with iPhones, other devices including Apple TV and > iWatch are similarly affected ..._

> _We'd also like to note that until hardware host isolation mechanisms are > implemented across the Android ecosystem, every exploitable Wi-Fi firmware > vulnerability directly results in complete host takeover. In our previous > research we identified the lack of host isolation mechanisms on two of the > most prominent SoC platforms; Qualcomm's Snapdragon 810 and Samsung's Exynos > 8890. We are not aware of any advances in this regard, as of yet._

<comment><USER3> >iWatch

1\. It should be Apple Watch. 2\. I thought the newest Apple Watch uses Apple's own W2 Chip instead of Broadcom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So this is off topic, but does anyone else hate that swiping left/right in blogger navigates to other blog articles? I don't know often people use that for real — I'm almost always directly linked to just one article in particular. But what's worse is that it's so sensitive without enough visual confirmation and ability to stop it. I find it naturally happens while scrolling on my iPhone without any intention, and then I lose my place and have no idea where I ended up. Just feels like a gigantic amount of UX flaws for a purpose that's likely rarely used.

<comment><USER5> Yes, it's the most annoying thing I've seen on the web since <marquee>. Scrolling long fragments of code always takes me to another page when I'm reading. Who thought it was a good idea?!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The iOS 11 leaving the Wi-Fi on but unassociated creates a privacy vulnerability because the chipset will broadcast all of it's known SSIDs. Plus, whatever vulnerabilities remain in the chipset. This is terrible. When Wi-Fi is "off" it should be off.

<comment><USER7> Ugh!!! For those who aren't aware, see "Wi-Fi told me everything about you" [1].

So what's the workaround? I have to go into Settings and turn it off there? Will that actually turn it off? We've already established that turning off wifi on Android may or may not actually turn it off [2].

1: [http://confiance-numerique.clermont- universite.fr/Slides/M-C...](http://confiance-numerique.clermont- universite.fr/Slides/M-Cunche-2014.pdf)

2: [https://hal.inria.fr/hal-01575519/document](https://hal.inria.fr/hal-01575519/document)

<comment><USER7> Looks like iOS does MAC address randomization during Wi-Fi probing since iOS 8.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Before anyone freaks out that their iPhone is about to get pwnd:

> The vulnerabilities affecting Apple devices have been addressed in iOS 11.

<comment><USER9> 11.0.1 it's a separate update. Not included in the main update. Very confusing.

<comment><USER10> No, not confusing as your statement isn't accurate. The iOS 11.0.0 security release notes from 9/19 specifically identify these CVEs as fixed.

[1] [https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208112](https://support.apple.com/en- us/HT208112)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > In the next blog post, we'll use our firmware debugger in order to continue > our exploration of the Wi-Fi chip present on the iPhone 7. We'll perform a > deep dive into the firmware, discover multiple vulnerabilities and develop > an over-the-air exploit for one of them, allowing us to gain full control > over the Wi-Fi SoC.

ahhh cliffhanger! Looking forward to the next post!

</comment><comment><USER12> "Lastly, we require complete control over all aspects of our Wi-Fi router."

Perhaps this is something users of Apple's WiFi-only/Ethernet-deficient devices might want.

He provides a useful hint on how to construct a router that allows complete control, utilizing a general purpose computer and two AR9271-driven USB WiFi adapters.

AFAIK this driver is available for both Linux and BSD.

"In my own lab setup, the role of the Wi-Fi router is fulfilled by my ThinkPad laptop, running Ubuntu 16.04. I've connected two SoftMAC TL-WN722N dongles, one for each interface (internal and external). The internal network's access- point is broadcast using hostapd, and the external interface connects to the internet using wpa_supplicant."

"Note that it's imperative that the dongle used to broadcast the internal network's access-point is a SoftMAC device (and not FullMAC) -- this will ensure that the MLME and MAC layers are processed by the host's software (i.e., by the Linux Kernel and hostapd), _allowing us to easily control the data transmitted over those layers._ "

</comment><comment><USER13> > As for Apple's ecosystem, while this research deals primarily with iPhones, > other devices including Apple TV and iWatch are similarly affected by our > findings.

The "correct" name for it is Apple Watch, just FYI.

<comment><USER14> Meh, iWatch and iMessage are surefire ways to get people to think of the right product. Technically incorrect terms, but they'll get the message right.

<comment><USER13> iMessage is a real thing–I'm not sure what you're getting at here.

<comment><USER15> The service is iMessage, but the client is "Messages" on both iOS and macOS. The client was _previously_ called "iMessage", leading people to assume that the marque "iMessage" is no longer part of Apple's branding. But no; extensions you install inside Messages are still called "iMessage extensions", and so forth.

<comment><USER16> Actually, both clients have been named "Messages" as long as they've supported iMessage.

The iOS client has been "Messages" since iPhone OS 3.0; before that it was called "Text" and had "SMS" written inside the chat bubble in the icon. iMessage wasn't introduced until iOS 5.0.

The macOS client was originally "iChat", then "iChat AV", then "iChat" again; in this era it supported multiple protocols including AIM and Jabber. In OS X 10.8, the client was renamed to "Messages" and gained iMessage support in addition to the older protocols. Support for the older protocols was removed in the just-released macOS 10.13.

<comment><USER13> Actually, Jabber support still exists. It's all the other things based on IMServicePlugIn that were removed.

<comment><USER16> Oh… you're right. During the betas, sending messages through Google Talk gave me an error [1], and I removed the account. But I guess it's still supposed to work, at least in the release version.

[1] With a delightful/odd error message: "The targeted service Potato has been discontinued".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is Apple mad about this?

<comment><USER18> I can't imagine why they would be. If I were them I'd be happy to have such a comprehensive pentesting resource to test against.

<comment><USER19> I suppose he means the disclosure and not the testing itself.

> The vulnerabilities presented in this research are present in iOS up to (and > including) version 10.3.3 (apart from #1, which was fixed in 10.3.3).

This seems like it's old enough that Apple probably doesn't mind anymore.

<comment><USER20> Project Zero discloses the vulnerabilities to the affected 90 days before releasing to the public. It's probable that Apple was notified and patched this because of Project Zero. Once it's been patched or 90 days are up, then Project Zero discloses to the public.

<comment><USER21> They mentioned it's fixed in iOS 11 so all Apple has to do is tell people to update their devices (which they always push anyway).

It's not like there is no fix for it.

<comment><USER22> A lot of corporate customers have still not approved iOS for upgrades, so it's actually a big issue

<comment><USER23> Sounds like the corporation's problem, willingly ignoring security updates.

<comment><USER24> > Sounds like the corporation's problem, willingly ignoring security updates.

A properly vetted update requires both compatibility testing and security testing. It would be irresponsible to push an OS update without verifying that it will not damage productivity or bring down defenses.

<comment><USER25> Businesses that provide or allow iOS devices need to be ready when new OSes are released to the public, which can easily be done since Apple offers regularly-updated betas for months in advance. This is particularly important because even managed devices cannot be prevented from upgrading to new OSes unless all traffic is routed through controlled networks that block access to Apple update servers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> At least Apple has a simple way to disable Wifi right from the control center. Oh wait, they removed that in iOS 11. Now clicking the Wifi icon doesn't actually turn off Wifi. I guess no one will ever find similar issues w/that release </sarcasm>

<comment><USER27> You should probably get the facts[1] from Apple, before parroting Internet knee-jerk hysteria.

1\. [https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208086](https://support.apple.com/en- us/HT208086)

<comment><USER28> That article says exactly what coleca was saying?

<comment><USER29> Not really. This controversy is similar to people complaining about the loss of PC power buttons in 1997.

The previous behavior was turning off the radio, which is often not the intent of the user. They replaced it with turning off joining networks, which is more often user intent.

With the proliferation of personal connected devices like smart watches and cars, and point to point WiFi services like airdrop, users often want or need to have the radio on to utilize those services. At the same time, users may not want to join WiFi networks due to poor performance (ie one-bar WiFi), ineligibility for use (I'm at a Hilton for a conference, but am not eligible for free WiFi because I'm not staying there), or some other reason.

The previous behavior also duplicated the behavior of the "airplane mode" button in some scenarios.

IMO the iOS 11 behavior adds value in most cases and has two easy workarounds (airplane mode or system preferences) for people who want the radio off.

<comment><USER30> Gonna have to disagree.

I want them off. That has always been my intent and those I've informally asked.

<comment><USER29> Do you have an Apple Watch?

<comment><USER31> I don't.. why does that matter? Do the watch and phone not communicate over Bluetooth?

<comment><USER29> It uses both to improve reliability.

Additionally, increasingly important services like Airdrop and HomeKit use it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Google is using their security research as a marketing weapon against Apple. From the article itself, Android is arguably more vulnerable as measured by percent of users running a device whose OEM has not distributed an update.

<comment><USER33> Android was the target of the original post, this is more of a followup demonstrating that a similar attack works on Apple hardware too.

[https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/over-air- ex...](https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/over-air-exploiting- broadcoms-wi-fi_4.html)

<comment><USER34> The irony is that all Apple devices will get the updates, whereas the Android ones....

<comment><USER35> Anything iPhone 5 or lower will not - 10.3.3 fixed one of the issues, but 2 more exist.

I do wish they would at least put out a 10.3.4 to fix the security issues, but I understand not putting the resources into a phone from 2012; I'm happy to at least have gotten 10.3.3 considering my Nexus 5 stopped getting updates last year and it was release in 2013.

<comment><USER36> > but I understand not putting the resources into a phone from 2012

I don't, but I have more sympathy for a company who quit supporting a phone from 2012 than a hypothetic [1] company who quit supporting a phone from 2015.

[1] Tho certainly a plethora examples would fit here.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Full Help – Self-hosted help desk and knowledge base software - <AUTHOR> https://www.fullhelp.com/en?ref=hacker-news <comment><USER2> Very nice launch. I probably will buy this in the next week or two to power a product I will be launching myself soon.

The non-recurring pricing model makes it almost too cheap, but it's right in the sweet spot of pulling out the corporate card and not even thinking about it.

$129 is cheap enough for the all but the tiniest projects.

I do like the simplicity of a single price point with no tiers or feature table, but it's hard to shake the thought you're leaving a lot on the table, or almost even disqualifying yourself from someone looking for a "premium" solution. I might suggest a $499 and $1999 version which offer merely higher tiers of support, just to see if anyone buys it. Pick some price which feels almost outrageous to you. At the very least it would anchor the $129.

At $129 the support should be limited to forums and self-help only.

docs.fullhelp.com - "Powered by FullHelp".

Dogfooding doesn't get better than this! I didn't see an active live chat widget though?

You should be highlighting this as your product demo effectively.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey!

Thanks for checking it out! The software can be used by multiple companies or product simultaneously so one license may be enough. Of course, multiple licenses can be purchased if that's necessary just so you know

For the live chat, there's a live working widget on the landing page (fullhelp.com), it's located at the bottom right corner. From there, you are able to initiate conversations and also browse the knowledge base site.

The software has a Restful API which is used for the dashboard. Dogfooding there also! haha

Edit: Also, thanks for the pricing suggestions, sounds like a good approach.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Very cool. We are current HelpScout customers -- my biggest complaint with HelpScout is our inability to properly gate our knowledge base behind our application's authentication -- the only choices are private (must have HelpScout account to access) or public URL.

I could see this being a viable alternative, but it appears to be missing a key feature for us, analytics. As an B2B SaaS app, we have support SLAs that mandate specific response times. HelpScout makes it easy for us to report response times. We can also tag support themes to help focus product development; being able to see metrics around theme frequency is very important.

Analytics also tell us which Knowledge Base articles are most popular as well as phrases users search so we can be sure we surface the correct article.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi!

I agree. Analytics is something that will surely be added, along with SLA management which is also missing. Knowledgebase sites have basic analytics which tells you how many visits, session and what are the popular articles, collections, and categories, but nothing more at the moment.

Thanks for checking it out and your feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Test driving it, like it a lot! Some initial feedback:

* I sent a support request by email with two screenshots. The first screenshot did not show up in the web view (the cid: remains in the HTML source).

* A demo account with lots of dummy data might be useful for a quick glance at the product.

* Might want to add a Letsencrypt wildcard SSL domain for [https://*.demo.fullhelp.com](https://*.demo.fullhelp.com)

* Missing language string when creating an article: Title.created

* There is a non-deletable dummy note attached to a customer from a certain Peter Richards ;)

* Typo: shoirtly -> shortly

* Theming: this is quite a big feature, so understandably a bit rough right now, perhaps offer a blank template .ZIP file to get started?

* I'd like to be able to modify language strings, but perhaps this goes via the theming ZIP

Looks quite cool!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi!

Thanks for taking the time to check it out and the feedback!

For the theming feature, I was thinking of adding a way to export the installed themes, that way the user can download the theme being used and apply any customization and re-upload as a new custom theme.

A blank template for new designs is an excellent idea.

I've also created a small node based command-line program that syncs local development changes to the live knowledge base portals. This helps a lot with testing and previewing the themes. I've not released it just yet, I plan to do so with an MIT license on GitHub. It is similar to Shopify's Themekit ([https://shopify.github.io/themekit](https://shopify.github.io/themekit)). This is what I use to work on theme designs.

For knowledgebase language strings, you are right, that's possible at the moment through the theme locale files.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looks very nice.

I know you decided against selling this as a SaaS but please reconsider. That you _are_ self-hostable is a selling point that will drive potential hosted customers to you.

It's the same story with Gitlab: I love that it's open source and self- hostable. I prefer they take care of the hosting for me, but it's good to know if they go under, I can switch to the self-hosted version and there will be very few workflow changes for my team.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey!

I will be considering it, you are right. Some people just don't want to bother with the technical stuff that comes with managing servers and/or installing the software. I'll definitively consider a SaaS version.

Thanks!

<comment><USER6> Something to consider is that often I'll test drive a product with a few people on the cheapest possible plan, or free trial, for a month or two before rolling it out. Being able to do that really quickly, without setting up hosting, is a big benefit. If a customer can jump in straight away for a month long trial it might increase sales.

Also, I'm not in the market for this right now but I keep a list of products I've seen and liked. The need to sign up for your demo stopped me looking at it. Consider if you can remove that crucial barrier to people seeing your app. Something like read only, a preset user, or generate an account automatically with a disposible email address.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looks nice, maybe you can add an existing account to your demo-system, so that I do not need to register myself an account.

Edit: And maybe point out, that the Documentation ([https://docs.fullhelp.com/](https://docs.fullhelp.com/)) is actually the software you are presenting. I did not realize that immediately.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey!

You are right, a demo account will be great! I'll be working on it, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Congrats, new help desk options are always cool. I can see this being great for web-based businesses, which I suppose is the target from what I can see. For my needs, I unfortunately need help desk software for a corporate environment. That means I need asset management integrated into the help desk software.

We are currently setting up GLPI + OCS Inventory NG because we couldn't find any other options that had good asset management. That being said, GLPI is _clunky_. It's not my first choice, but I couldn't find many options out there that integrated asset management.

I feel like as more and more web-based businesses grow, traditional help desk requirements are being left behind (perhaps helped by some organizations going BYOD). Bit jealous of all the people who need help desk software but don't need integrated asset management.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

The software is focused on web-based businesses at the moment, mainly because it makes it simpler. However, I'm always open to suggestions. I'm not familiar with the asset management part, but I will definitively check it out and see if this is something that can be added, either built-in or as separate add-on or application. Just like you, there are other people that may benefit from it, especially when you say there aren't many options with a good integration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great product. Do you not worry about someone copying your code and selling it as a saas? I am selling premium Wordpress plugins and it's incredible how many people try to purchase my plugin and then offer it as a saas

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey!

It's always a concern for me. I'm looking for ways to detect such cases and that way terminate the licenses, which will prevent the user from downloading any release. Another approach that may work (just an idea), is to secure the documentation and allow access to it to logged in users with one valid license at least, but this has some disadvantages like the affected user experience.

A legal notice is always an option.

<comment><USER10> Don't block access to the docs. I always go through the docs first before purchasing software, it cuts through the marketing messages and helps me understand if the software does exactly what I need. No available docs = no purchase.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Re-post as suggested by a moderator due to problem with account and post visibility.

I'm Gerardo, a web developer based in Puerto Rico.

Full Help is a self-hosted help desk and multi-knowledge base software created for small businesses and freelancers.

The backstory:

I was using Help Scout and Zoho Desk before considering creating something like Full Help. Both services are excellent, the problem with Zoho Desk is that it is more focused on large businesses, with complex requirements.

I gave a try to Help Scout, and I was impressed. It was simple and perfect for companies of all sizes. My main issue with Help Scout was the pricing and the limitations of each plan, especially on the lower ones. It was expensive (and still is for me).

Another problem for me with Help Scout was the lack of customizability on the docs sites. The only way I was able to customize the look and feel of the knowledge base sites was through custom CSS and JavaScript. I wanted to get my hands dirty with my own HTML and site structure, but that wasn't possible at that moment (and still isn't I think).

I then started considering creating my own help desk, something small (yeah right); something that could give me the flexibility I wanted and at the same time, lower the costs.

I started working on a knowledge base management system in my free time that allowed me to create several knowledge base sites that I needed for multiple projects and products. I finished it in two months or so, can't remember exactly. It worked and got the job done.

I was using a regular email account for customer conversations and the knowledge base system for customer documentation, etc.

I was missing the integration I had between the knowledge base content and customer conversations. With Zoho Desk and Help Scout, I was able to quickly search the docs and insert a link into the email/chat message, along with other useful features. Also, I was considering selling it as a hosted service at that time, and for me, the knowledge base system alone wasn't enough for a commercial business app.

Then started the second stage, creating a "simple" communication management system. Something that could receive and send emails and could be integrated with the knowledge bases.

I started working on it by first designing a flexible and scalable database structure for the conversations feature. I wanted something that could allow the possibility of adding other conversations channels in the future.

The conversations section was finished, and everything was working as I initially wanted. It was receiving and sending emails (powered by Mailgun), and I had the integration between conversations and help content. Good!

Remember when I said, "something that could receive and send emails"? The other guys had live chats, something trendy these days. It wasn't smart to release a cloud help desk solution without live chat support, right? I added the live chat and while I was on it, developed a widget where customers could chat with support agents, and browse the knowledge base content from within the same widget, without leaving the main website.

But, wait! This is a cloud business solution, we need teams! I rolled a full team feature with role-based permissions and an invitation system. (currently, only "Account owner" role is present on the software; more roles coming soon!).

In conclusion, the small knowledge base system turned out into a big application with lots of useful features created to provide a full help desk software that's focused on small businesses and freelancers.

There are lots of other useful features planned, like more conversations channels, Single Sign-On, Integration with third-parties, and many more.

The software is a single page application. The UI is powered by a versioned Restful API. The API can be used for integrating the help desk with existing software, without hacking the core.

About the codebase:

It was developed with Laravel 5.7 using the Test Driven Development approach (Can't live without unit and integration tests!). The codebase follows today's standards. I'm a fan of thin controllers and thin models, so the logic is mostly split between service classes, presenters, and models (when necessary).

Anyone that understands the Laravel framework will be comfortable working with the code.

As I've mentioned before, my initial plans for Full Help was to launch a small cloud-based help desk service, mainly focused on Puerto Rico and other Latin countries. I decided to release it as a self-hosted solution because of the lack of good options along with the cloud space being crowded.

Regarding the distribution/sale method:

I opted to go with a custom made checkout system mainly because of the flexibility and better brand integration/control. There's also an affiliate program which is currently private, with plans on opening it to the public in the future.

The checkout requires an account registration (which some people don't like, unfortunately). This is for better license management (like renewals) and to give the user access to all his orders and invoices. I have plans on adding an app store (not anytime soon) where the user can purchase knowledge base themes and other extensions or services.

What are your thoughts, comments or suggestions? Any feedback regarding the software itself, landing page, pricing or anything is much appreciated.

Thanks for your time!

<comment><USER11> Very Nice! Congrats on launching. I'm definitely checking this out soon for support in my freelance gigs.

I like the pricing model, I'm intending to do something similar with my next product. Selfhosted, pay once, use forever, optionally renew after 1 year for updates. I wish more software was like this. Only I'm also adding a SaaS option for people that don't want to bother with hosting.

You seem to have written the licensing/checkout/renewal yourself. How much time did you spend on it? I'm working on solving exactly this problem with my product and I would love to have a chat about your experience/problems regarding this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

It's a good pricing model which benefits both ends. A SaaS option for people that don't want to bother with technical stuff is a good idea.

I've created the checkout/licensing and renewal myself because of the flexibility and not depending on other external companies. The licensing system is quite simple, the software doesn't ask for license verification at the moment. The system will allow the downloads based on the license the user selects. The license system is integrated with BitBucket. On each release BitBucket sends a POST request to a secure endpoint with a prepared ZIP file containing the app files. On each release, a new entry is created on the licensing system indicating the version and other details. Licenses are tied to the major release version number (e.g., "1" in v1.2.0). When v2.0.0 is released, new licenses are tied to the v2. Users will only have access to minor and patches releases until a renewal is made. That's a brief description of how the system works.

For the checkout, I've created two Laravel packages (currently private) for sale statements (quotes, orders, invoices, etc) and another package for the affiliate program. I'll be releasing them with MIT license on GitHub.

Sure! Feel free to send me a PM on Twitter @gerardojbaez or an email to g[at]gerardobaez.com. I'll be happy to help.

<comment><USER12> I see you even built in a coupon system. Any chance you have a coupon for us on HN? :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure! Use "hackernews" for a 23% off :-D

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Super super awesome launch! I love your landing page, and have been looking for something _exactly_ like this for a product I am launching soon.

I'll be in touch! Great stuff.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Feel free to reach out to gerardo[at]fullhelp or support[at]fullhelp.com anytime you want.

<comment><USER13> Sweet! Thank you. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Looks fantastic! If you had integration with a phone number (And tell me what calls I missed + voicemails left), analytics on all tickets and calls, and on the support button integration for my website - if it had live chat, leave a message, and suggested articles from my public knowledge base, and added 1-click deployments to AWS/DigitalOcean/etc. - Then I would switch from ZenDesk

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

Those are all great suggestions! Some of them are already present, like the live chat, leave a message (the same as live chat which fallbacks to email if the user gets disconnected) and article suggestions from a knowledge base (manually configured with JavaScript).

All the other suggestions are great and will definitively consider them.

Edit: I suggest to sign up to the newsletter at fullhelp.com to keep up to date on releases. :-D

Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Looks great and really uncomplicated. The demo works flawlessly, including receiving email attachments. Good job!

Love the readability and content of the license terms as well. In particular the parts on software modifications.

One feature that is a show-stopper for our workflow is the possibility of shared drafts, i.e. where an email response can be prepared and stored by one person and later reviewed, perhaps completed, and sent by someone else. Do you think this is something that you might consider adding in the foreseeable future?

edit: btw, might serve as a differentiation over Zammad [https://github.com/zammad/zammad/issues/629](https://github.com/zammad/zammad/issues/629)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi! Thank you! :-D

The license is based on DuetApp's ([https://duetapp.com/](https://duetapp.com/)) version. I liked its simplicity and asked the creator if it would be OK with him to use his license as a starting point.

Shared drafts sound like an interesting feature and one that seems easy to implement on Full Help. I've added it to my Trello board. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Your project looks very promising. I'm not sure if this feature doesn't exist or I cannot find it anywhere on demo account, but: what's missing for me is fine grained ACL/permissions management.

In our company we are using [https://www.bookstackapp.com/](https://www.bookstackapp.com/) as knowledge base solution for multiple clients/projects (separate installation for each). Main requirement is to be able to control which user or group can access particular document or group of documents. Is it possible to achieve something like this using your project?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

There are role-based permissions implemented, but they are only for team members on the help desk.

ACL/permission for knowledge base sites is not present at the moment but may be a good addition for a future release. I have added it to the Trello board.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I really like the Knowledgebase feature, which is currently missing from our Zammad setup (also open source helpdesk).

I'm guessing it's based on PHP/SQL since you mention Wordpress?

What are your roadmap for the software?

I think a demo would bring a lot more sales.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey!

Yes, it's based on PHP/MySql (Laravel 5.7 to be precise).

For the roadmap, the goal is to provide a complete self-hosted help desk solution. A complete alternative to existing cloud-based offerings.

In terms of development, there are many things still on the Trello board. Things like Single Sign-On, Metrics, Integration with third-party apps like Trello, Stripe, PayPal (for conversation context), enhancements to the live chat, etc.

Thanks for checking it out!

Edit: you can checkout the demo here: [https://demo.fullhelp.com/en/register](https://demo.fullhelp.com/en/register)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This looks awesome.

Please prioritise reviewing your pricing/hosting model. If you want to serve your users well, you will want to work on this full time. Making enough money will make it more likely you can do this.

Even if your objective is to be much cheaper than your competitors (and serve people who can't afford them), you can still offer this as a SaaS product, but:

\- have a lower monthly price than the competitors you mentioned (even 50% lower)

\- charge much more for plans that include features important for large customers, but which smaller companies can easily live without (e.g. SSO)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey! Thanks for your suggestions! I will definitively keep that in mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Love it! Like the fair pricing scheme and no monthly subscriptions. Keep it going and we might move from helpscout's overpriced bloated tool.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! :-D

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Looks pretty decent. Was strongly considering crisp.chat but this looks promising.

Just an FYI, after test driving the knowledge base in the demo (creating an article etc) clicking on "View site" yields a "NET::ERR_CERT_COMMON_NAME_INVALID" error.

I had to manually update the url to [http://](http://) in order to view the knowledge base

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi!

Thanks for checking it out. The demo domain is missing a SSL certificate for the knowledge base sites. That's something that needs to be fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is it possible to write a bot using the rest api? Are webhooks available when new requests come in? I work in a big company and our main issue from my perspective is, that it takes up to a few hours until a ticket was dispatched correctly. It would be easy to automate this process but our ticket system does not offer any kind of interface.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi!

Not at the moment but both are planned. Webhooks will come first as this facilitates, even more, the integration between other systems.

Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> My current employer is currently using a self-hosted instance of Zammad.org. Might be interesting to compare the two.

<comment><AUTHOR> Zammad.org looks great! It seems to be missing knowledge base portals based on another comment. However, it looks a good solution.

<comment><USER23> You have a healthy attitude towards competition.

<comment><USER24> I came to comment on this. Love your attitude and how you have fielded every suggestion and criticism sportingly. Keep it up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Neat. Would have a comment/feature request for the backlog after playing with the demo: I will be uld have expected autosuggest behavior in both the frontend search as well as in various admin input fields and actually waited for suggestions to appear before realizing this isn't in there yet.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey! Thanks for checking it out and the feedback! I will make sure that future versions have the autosuggestion behavior on search fields and any input field on the admin side that requires it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This looks great! One minor corner case I noticed: If you click "Need help?" on the lower right with a small viewport (I had Chrome dev tools open), the modal content and title bar gets cut off, even when scrolled to the top, meaning you can't close the modal.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! The help widget isn't working that great on small viewports, you are right. On iOS, there's also the issue of autozoom when text fields are focused. This is something that will be addressed for the next release which is planned for this week.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Really badass product. Well done. I will be buying in ~2-3 months

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!! :-D

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Awesome launch, congratulations! Looking forward to the day that we can ditch ZenDesk and use a self hosted option.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! :-D

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I did a search in the docs for "report" and nothing showed up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey!

I don't think that word is present on the few docs created. Try "requirements" which should show two results: [https://docs.fullhelp.com/en/search?query=requirements](https://docs.fullhelp.com/en/search?query=requirements)

<comment><USER30> I may be wrong, but they are most likely asking if there is a reporting module (KPIs?) with this product?

<comment><AUTHOR> In that case, the knowledge base dashboard has several statistics ([https://imgur.com/5Z60SWl](https://imgur.com/5Z60SWl)). Help desk reports are not present at the moment but is something that will be added definitively.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I use HESK for this purpose.</comment>


"taking it easy is the best policy" - <AUTHOR> http://www.waseda.jp/student/weekly/english/people/e061p.html

<comment><USER2> Be nice to know what he created which the article touts as never been done before. I can't read Japanese.

<comment><USER2> His first company, now ecnavi.co.jp, owns several internet services such as price comparison, video portal, social bookmarking, game avatar, and encyclopedia. This according to google translation [http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&tl...](http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fecnavi.co.jp%2Fservice%2F).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This seemed very unusual (I live in Japan), so I looked for more info...

 _Shigeo Ozeki, the CEO at Internet marketing services firm axiv.com, opens a closet in his office. Inside are some untidily folded keys to business success at his firm -- sleeping bags. Ozeki's 19 full-time employees work long hours, many from 10 a.m. to 2 or 3 a.m. seven days a week. "But it depends on where they live and if they have to go home or not," says Ozeki. Often there just isn't time to go home._

<http://www.japaninc.com/article.php?articleID=91>

</comment><comment> daniel-cussen But, you know, I think you should have as much fun as you can when you're an undergraduate and play around until you're bored. That way, you'll be a more interesting person when you're a full member of society.

</comment><comment><USER4> Lazy people are compelled to find the easiest way out, but also the simplest and therefore most effective.

<comment><USER5> Be careful with the word 'lazy.' This statement is implying 'lazy' is not willing to work hard.

Laziness in my book is only useful when you are deciding to do less by eliminating everything not absolutely necessary (cutting the fluff).

<comment><USER4> Actually that's exactly what I mean by lazy (not willing to work hard, that is). Obviously there needs to be a balance. Not everything can be done with minimal effort, and not everything is best done with the most effort.

I'm sure you often hear people saying "if you just did it the _hard_ way you would have finished by now" or some variant of that. But doing it the hard way is like hard coding, and the easy way is like doing a function.

It turns out that coding the function might actually take longer the first time, but it saves so much effort later on by being reusable.

The smart person is probably often unintentionally driven by the fear of repeating some difficult time consuming task to implement a more clever solution.

But this smart person is partially helped by the fact that coming up with a reusable or more clever solution is much more mentally stimulating, something they may not have anticipated before starting. And so it turns out that even though doing some clever solution is initially harder, the person ends up not even noticing the increased effort.

The smart person knows how hard copying the dictionary is, but it's often not possible to grasp the difficulty of something novel, like a scheme to copy it faster by using multiple pencils.

So rather than taking the known hard way, the smart person chickens out of fear of working hard and takes the mystery box (a new unknown method), only to find out that the sheer novelty of the mystery box was all that was needed to motivate him/her to work hard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great article, but that bio picture looks like a mugshot.</comment>


Show HN: Weekend Project: Facebook Graph Visualizer (raphael.js + mindmap.js +) - <AUTHOR> http://shalecraig.com/friendspore (raphael.js + mindmap.js + jquery + facebook api ++)
I was bored over the weekend, so I decided to make a mashup of the facebook api, raphael.js, and a couple more javascript frameworks.
Aside from facebook's api and google analytics, it is all run locally. No ajax calls being made to me.
Hope you enjoy, and leave comments below.
I'll post the source to Github if requested. <comment><AUTHOR> I was bored this last weekend, so I've made a facebook friend visualizer. Built from a modified mindmap.js framework, using raphael.js+jquery.js for visualizing your friends.

Interestingly, raphael uses the canvas element, and the facebook api used is javascript based.

From that, there is no communication between my server and the client. Everything is client side. :P

Contact me if you have any questions/etc.</comment>


Peter Thiel Met with the Racist Fringe as He Went All in on Trump - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rosiegray/peter-thiel-donald-trump-white-nationalist-support <comment><USER2> At a certain point you have to call a spade a spade and acknowledge that Thiel is apparently a cryptofascist. I wonder if this will hurt the reputation of Founders Fund and his other ventures or whether the Valley will continue to pretend that this is not a problem.

<comment><USER3> Seems that Thiel is to HN what Trump is to middle America. Blind, cult-like admiration for someone who is basically a terrible human being. I never understood either one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've heard people say, oh we have Thiel on the board to have a diverse set of views.

Please describe to me the beliefs of the person who would balance Thiel's? I don't see it.

<comment><USER5> any normal person that's not a nazi I suppose. In my mind being associated with Thiel should be seen as a serious stain on someone's reputation, here people band it around as a badge of honor. Needless to say, I'm not impressed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why is this on HH? Its literally buzzfeednews.

<comment><USER7> Buzzfeed started out as a purely clickbait outlet, but they made a stunning transformation into a very successful investigative journalism outlet.

Also, this is on HN probably because it's about someone who is very influential in tech circles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> oh cool, another place for me to be bombarded with politics.

<comment> grey-area Sometimes, to remain human, you have to pick a side.</comment></comment>


Secret Rules Make It Pretty Easy for the FBI to Spy on Journalists - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2017/01/31/secret-rules-make-it-pretty-easy-for-the-fbi-to-spy-on-journalists-2/ <comment><AUTHOR> >SECRET FBI RULES allow agents to obtain journalists' phone records with approval from two internal officials — far less oversight than under normal judicial procedures.

The classified rules, obtained by The Intercept and dating from 2013, govern the FBI's use of national security letters, which allow the bureau to obtain information about journalists' calls without going to a judge or informing the news organization being targeted. They have previously been released only in heavily redacted form.

Media advocates said the documents show that the FBI imposes few constraints on itself when it bypasses the requirement to go to court and obtain subpoenas or search warrants before accessing journalists' information.

The rules stipulate that obtaining a journalist's records with a national security letter requires the signoff of the FBI's general counsel and the executive assistant director of the bureau's National Security Branch, in addition to the regular chain of approval. Generally speaking, there are a variety of FBI officials, including the agents in charge of field offices, who can sign off that an NSL is "relevant" to a national security investigation.</comment>