The U.S. just had the most Q1 layoffs in a decade - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/us-q1-layoffs-in-a-decade-6309b133-5212-4204-976b-347de6f4ad41.html <comment><USER2> "The report said worry about an economic slowdown was the main driver of companies' layoff intentions."

I sometimes wonder if these sorts of economic projections end up being self- fulfilling prophecies. If everyone tightens up spending because they expect a recession, that essentially guarantees there will be one.

<comment><USER3> It's not just projections or worries. Companies have real hard data, such as sales pipeline, inventories, orders etc. If your sales pipeline is down, inventory is stocking up, and your warehouse is idle compared to a year before, it is a manager's job to lay off employees.

a few interesting reports: [https://www.reddit.com/r/StockMarket/comments/aydpbu/first_h...](https://www.reddit.com/r/StockMarket/comments/aydpbu/first_hand_evidence_of_a_coming_recession/) [https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/1110161228507348992](https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/1110161228507348992)

<comment><USER4> This could leave you flat-footed when the economy picks back up or you realize it was a 'blip', so it's not an easy/clear decision to make because you see one or two numbers going down.

<comment><USER5> This is the "bullwhip effect": [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullwhip_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullwhip_effect)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> But then:

 _Job market bounces back in March with 196,000 gain in payrolls_

[https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/05/nonfarm-payrolls- march-2019....](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/05/nonfarm-payrolls- march-2019.html)

Everyone just kinda shuffled around it seems.

<comment><USER7> Way to ruin the narrative.

<comment><USER6> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > The impact: It's the highest number of job cuts in a quarter since 2015.

Highest since 2015 is less surprising than " highest in a decade"

<comment><USER9> Headline:> The U.S. just had the most Q1 layoffs in a decade

Article:> The U.S. saw its highest level of layoffs in a first quarter since 2009

This seems like a reasonable headline for the article.

<comment><USER10> You can always find catchy headlines if you get specific enough.

"The worst performing Friday the 13th in a non leap year ever."

<comment><USER11> This isn't a particularly contrived analysis. Year-over-year quarterly financial statistics are extremely common, especially in company analysis since many filings are quarterly.

<comment><USER12> It's also not very deep. The unemployment rate has been at record lows for a while.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This metric is incomplete without noting the number of hires. This does not mean a net loss in jobs.

<comment><USER14> I would like to see those numbers. Even if it's evened out with I'd be curious if there's more churn now, which anecdotally seems to be the case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> How many of these jobs are full-time versus part time? It's ridiculous that the only numbers reported on are these aggregate stats, when we live in a time where many people cannot make ends meet working two or more part-time jobs.

</comment><comment><USER16> Meanwhile, over here: [https://www.apnews.com/eac21eae21bb474c82bdd09069619cb7](https://www.apnews.com/eac21eae21bb474c82bdd09069619cb7)

> Hiring rebounds as US employers add a solid 196,000 jobs

</comment><comment><USER17> So basically the fear of recession may trigger a recession? Laying off, cutting spending and thus cascading economic contraction?

Don't think that would be a liquidity trap, but this type of recession always makes me think of Krugmans Baby-Sitting COOP model: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Babysitting_Co-...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Babysitting_Co- op)

<comment><USER18> Yes. Also known in economics as a self-fulfilling crisis: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self- fulfilling_crisis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-fulfilling_crisis)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> And yet: "Applications for US Unemployment Aid Fall to 49-Year Low"[0]

"Unemployment Rate Reached a Record Low in 19 States Last Year"[1]

[0] [https://www.usnews.com/news/business/articles/2019-04-04/app...](https://www.usnews.com/news/business/articles/2019-04-04/applications- for-us-unemployment-aid-fall-to-49-year-low)

[1] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-23/unemploym...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-23/unemployment- rate-reached-a-record-low-in-19-states-last-year)

<comment><USER20> Layoffs plus hiring. Will people realize at some point that volatility is a sign of health?

<comment><USER21> "It's a sign of health," he says from the comfort of his yacht, taking a slow sip of champagne between big spoonfuls of Beluga caviar all while watching the city burn. "Just look at all those construction and health-care jobs being created."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> And yet, markets are nearly at all time highs. I'd like to see a breakdown of who's buying stocks/equities.

EDIT: I know earnings are high, but much of our growth over the last 20 years has been during 2-4% GDP deficit. I don't think that's been priced into the markets. Markets may be assuming that the deficit party will continue.

<comment><USER23> The unemployment rate is the lowest it has been in 50 years. That stat isn't perfect but it is still that the number of people with jobs is about as high as it has ever been.

<comment><USER24> Trouble with the unemployment numbers is that it does not account for employment quality. There is a very high number of people who are underemployed or those who have stopped participating in the job market.

<comment><USER25> LNS12032194 - Employment Level - Part-Time for Economic Reasons, All Industries - Lowest its been since 2007

LNU05026645 - Discouraged Workers - Has gone up in recent months after having been lower than its been since 2007 for most of 2018.

[https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost?ln](https://data.bls.gov/cgi- bin/surveymost?ln)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> meanwhile "Hiring speeds up as U.S. economy adds 196,000 jobs in March" (ie adds as many jobs in 1 month as layoffs in 1 quarter)

[https://www.marketwatch.com/story/hiring-speeds-up-as- econom...](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/hiring-speeds-up-as-economy- adds-196000-jobs-in-march-unemployment-flat-at-38-2019-04-05)

</comment><comment><USER27> Job report came out strong today - [https://finance.yahoo.com/news/stock- market-news-april-5-201...](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/stock-market-news- april-5-2019-120248366.html)

</comment><comment><USER28> is # of layoffs a misleading metric?

if the workforce is always increasing in size, doesn't the number of layoffs each quarter have to go up?

<comment><USER29> I would guess job losses work the same way

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> That's weird, I just saw this from CNBC: [https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/05/nonfarm-payrolls- march-2019....](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/05/nonfarm-payrolls- march-2019.html) So, what the heck it going on then?

</comment><comment><USER31> I wonder if this is a net loss or a gross loss; I would love to compare this article with another detailing the amount of hires in the same period

</comment><comment><USER32> That's what left wing economists have been saying for ages. Cutting taxes for the rich does not create more jobs. Cutting welfare programs for the poorest destroys jobs. Trump did both:

[https://www.marketwatch.com/story/its-official-the-trump- tax...](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/its-official-the-trump-tax-cuts- were-a-bust-2019-01-30) [https://www.vox.com/policy-and- politics/2019/3/12/18260271/t...](https://www.vox.com/policy-and- politics/2019/3/12/18260271/trump-medicaid-social-security-medicare-budget- cuts)

According to them, cutting taxes can create some short-term growth spurs (like what we have been seeing) but is not sustainable. In 2022-2023 we'll see what state the US economy is in and who was right. Maybe Trump is the financial genius who will finally make Reaganomics work after so many neo-liberal failed attempts. But I wouldn't bet on it.

<comment><USER33> The layoffs are almost all lead by the retail sector, which is undergoing a shift due to digital disruption from the likes of Amazon.

There is no evidence the tax breaks have created (many) jobs...but there is even less evidence that it has "destroyed" jobs. If you can point me to a peer reviewed study that says that, and not a Vox article, I'll gladly read it. But I skim FRED sometimes and have never seen such claims from a legitimate economist.

In fact a lot of these jobs were reabsorbed elsewhere in other sectors, that's actually a sign of a fairly healthy economy. Which is actually pretty astonishing given the weakness in Asia at the moment; but as someone I've read (can't remember the author) pointed out the US has never imported a recession, even during the currency crisis of the early 90s and all the problems that Japan has had with growth since the early 90s.

<comment><USER34> >The layoffs are almost all lead by the retail sector, which is undergoing a shift due to digital disruption from the likes of Amazon.

Except YoY retail layoffs have shrunk by 20%.

And that's a very strange burden of proof to lay down for trickle down economics, considering that tax cuts for the wealthy are repeatedly claimed to generate jobs. Are you saying the job generation claim is a red herring? Would you equally defend me not paying any taxes since it "doesn't hurt anything", or do I need to be super-rich first to get the tax-cut apologizing?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> > Axios

Well that certainly explains the clickbait and built-in opinion.

</comment><comment><USER36> Is it possible that that mostly just signifies the highest holiday season short-term hiring in a decade?

</comment><comment><USER37> Axios.com, cherry-picking news for the Democrats since 2009.

</comment><comment><USER38> Best join the YangGang. Those layoffs will be coming for ya...

</comment><comment><USER39> Not according to Trump

</comment><comment><USER40> layoffs in retail, who knew?

</comment><comment><USER41> alt take from Bill McBride of CalculatedRISK:

[https://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2019/04/comments-on- march...](https://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2019/04/comments-on-march- employment-report.html)

Summary:

The headline jobs number was above expectations, and the previous two months were revised up slightly. The headline unemployment rate was unchanged at 3.8%.

This was a solid jobs report, and was probably boosted by some bounce back from the poor weather in February.

What's with the HN editor's obsession with posting "bad economy" reports lately? It certainly conflicts with their boosting SV unicorn IPOs.

<comment><USER42> IMO, politics seems like possible reason.</comment></comment>


Drug companies alleged to have flooded West Virginia with opioid painkillers - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/01/drug-companies-submerged-wv-in-opioids-one-town-of-3000-got-21-million-pills/ <comment><USER3> > The letter also reveals that in Kermit, West Virginia, a town of just 406 > people, the company delivered 6.3 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills > between 2005 and 2011. For just the year of 2008, the numbers work out to > Miami-Luken providing 5,624 opioid painkiller pills for every man, woman, > and child in the town, the committee notes.

> "If these figures are accurate, HD Smith supplied this pharmacy with nearly > five times the amount a rural pharmacy would be expected to receive,"

So it's normal to supply 1124 pills per capita&year to rural pharmacies? Something seems strange about these two pieces of information...

<comment><USER4> In rural areas almost nobody lives in the town limits, so the actual population is considerably higher than the quoted figure. It is still a staggering amount of narcotics.

I used to think that the old argument that drug companies killed marijuana legalization efforts behind the scenes was tinfoil hat stuff, but now I'm not so sure. This is basically a giant funnel of government money (many people in these tiny communities have been on government assistance ever since the mines shut down) directly into the revenue streams of these drug companies. Sure it also tears the communities apart and destroys countless lives, but it's great for the bottom line.

<comment><USER5> They are always free to choose another drug and walk away from this company. The market is free like that, the invisible hand distributing only where demand exists.

<comment><USER6> Let me tell you this from direct personal experience: Opiate addicts are not "free" to do much of anything -- very very least of all are they free to, on a whim, switch and/or stop the drug. Yes that sounds over-exaggerated, but it is not. There is a huge wave of opiate addiction that is sweeping back and forth across the USA,, and nobody seems to be doing anything about. The White House acknowledges the problem, but offers nothing more than platitudes for political points [and doesn't even do that convincingly] and KellyAnn McPlasticSurgeryLiarFace who couldn't find her own ass in the dark with both hands.

And yea, the pharmaceutical companies are to blame -- of course it's not _all_ their fault, but a huge, HUGE % of it is. It started with over-prescribing of pain pills. Particularly OxyContin. The pharmaceutical companies and their reps, intentionally and knowingly, told the doctors "don't prescribe a higher doseage, prescribe more pills of the lower dose" \-- along with giving them financial incentives including straight cash kickbacks. They knew how addictive these drugs were, and they didn't care, if any of them say different they are flat out _lying_.

Then the government steps in, the DEA either pressures the doctors who are over-prescribing until they give up and quit, or they shut them down directly. Now there's a vacuum with a ton of cold hard cash floating around in it - <USER2> addicts still have to have their opiates but the suppliers (which were their doctors) are gone... what an opportune time for the heroin dealer to step in and fill the void?!?! And that is _exactly_ what happened, and is happening right now everywhere in the country.

And it's not like the DEA doesn't know this is what happens, they would have to be bumbling idiots not to, but they have to show results in order to justify their budgets and keep their jobs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's something odd about this article. The opiod crisis _is_ a crisis, and we should go about mitigating the consequences of having so many addicts (And stop creating new ones as much as possible.)

I think it's because there are some hidden assumptions going on that the author just needs to come out and fess up to.

One, that drug companies should look at shipments per town as being an indicator of problems.

Two, that by shipping drugs, drug companies are causing the epidemic. They may be profiting from it, they may support legislation to make it worse, but it doesn't take millions of pills to get hooked. This is a _result_ of additiction, not a cause of it. You shut-off/slow-down the pill flow, you just create a bigger black market. Addiction is a natural result of using opiods to treat pain. It is not caused by too many pills.

Three, that drug companies are the only people with agency here. Surely there are doctors, pharmacists, nurse-practitioners, ministers, social workers, and a slew of other people in these towns that are exposed to this problem every day. Many of them assist in the problem, either directly or through studied ignorance. This is a complex social problem with lots of players. Simplifying it to "evil drug companies" dumbs the problem down to the point of being intractable.

I'm not sure this article educated anybody as much as it made them upset. I'm struggling to find something useful and positive to say about how it could be improved. I sure don't want drug companies using some kind of statistical process control to determine who can get pills or not. That's whack.

<comment><USER8> > Two, that by shipping drugs, drug companies are causing the epidemic. They > may be profiting from it, they may support legislation to make it worse, but > it doesn't take millions of pills to get hooked. This is a result of > additiction, not a cause of it. You shut-off/slow-down the pill flow, you > just create a bigger black market. Addiction is a natural result of using > opiods to treat pain. It is not caused by too many pills.

When you make the medication you know how additictive it is. You have all the studies you published showing that it's mildly addictive. You have all the studies you didn't publish showing it's somewhat more addictive.

You also know what safe dosing levels are, and what the target audience is, and how many pills you predict to sell per capita in a region.

So when you see a small doctor's office ordering vast quantities you should be clued in that maybe they're not a good doctor, maybe they're a pill-mill.

[https://www.wvgazettemail.com/news/cops_and_courts/drug- firm...](https://www.wvgazettemail.com/news/cops_and_courts/drug-firms-fueled- pill-mills-in-rural-wv/article_14c8e1a5-19b1-579d-9ed5-770f09589a22.html)

<comment><USER7> I follow the reasoning, it just strikes me as facile. Surely not every town with a statistically-outlying amount of opiod drug purchases is full of addicts. Some towns have hospitals that are not part of the town's population. Or clinics. Or pain centers. You're mixing up a bunch of stats and claiming a conspiracy.

Yes, _in general_ there's something amiss, no doubt. But in general people are married with 2.3 kids. Generalities don't public policy make.

If we're all going to go banging on the drug companies, and I'm fine with that, by the way, then let's talk about lobbying, kickbacks for doctors, marketing, and so forth. They're doing actual direct things that may be making the problem worse. Failure to follow up on anomalies like this isn't one of them. What would you have them do? Create a report, investigate each problem? Will you deny pain drugs to people who need them because other people in their town are using a pill mill? There's no remedy here that makes any sense.

What it feels to me like is an easy fishing expedition where you can put together some reports, make a few statements, bring in Big Pharma for a photo op. Maybe get some donations for the next election. It doesn't feel like any kind of process aimed at either discovering or dealing with causality. It's crap.

Worse still, you play these stupid games, you end up having discussions like we did with the cigarette companies. Most people who smoke do not get cancer. That's a true stat -- they usually die from heart disease or other causes before they live that long. Stats are fun. You can do all kinds of things with them, just about anything. (Insert long discussion here about the problems encountered when stats are used)

Sorry. I didn't mean to pick on you. Like I said, the article itself bugged me. We have a serious problem and we need to take serious action to help people. I think because it's such a serious problem, people tend to overreact in public discussion. A bit of hyperbole is fine. Personal attacks are not. Hopefully I didn't do that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Crazy to think I could go buy a 16yr old a pack of smokes and likely get in much more trouble than _anyone_ involved in this pill pushing operation.

<comment><USER4> Or go and buy a dime bag of weed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The wording of this article seems strange to me. Presumably these painkillers were ordered by local pharmacies on request of doctors/patients, rather than dumped by drug companies in some random places in the towns.

<comment><USER11> Pill mills - places where nobody has anything better to do than open a pharmacy where the pills get handed out. Prescriptions are needed so doctors have to be in on the scam too. Then word gets around amongst the addict community and this place becomes the place to be to get these drugs.

The story is actually very old and the writer may be very new to it - I have known of the epidemic for only a year and clearly it goes back a long time before that. Therefore 'strange wording' might be just because the writer is learning too. Since even Trump has paid lip service to the epidemic it is not that new but maybe the scam is new to most people.

'Only a decentralised blockchain can solve the crisis and win the war on drugs' would have been a new update to the story, alas no, here we have what we already know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This article suffers from a lack of precision in important terminology. "Drug companies" are typically understood to be research based pharmaceutical companies such as Merck or generics companies such as Teva (I realize there is some overlap).

The entities mentioned in the article seem to be drug wholesalers who act as middle men between manufacturers and pharmacies. This is not merely a semantic difference.

There is certainly an opioid crisis in this country but poorly edited journalism that does not adhere to the accepted nomenclature of the industry only clouds the issues and obfuscates who the actual bad actors are.

<comment><USER13> > …poorly edited journalism that does not adhere to the accepted nomenclature > of the industry only clouds the issues and obfuscates who the actual bad > actors are.

The drug wholesalers and drug companies both stand to make truckloads of cash. Seems likely that both parties know exactly what they're doing.

I'm not party to the industry and have no special insight — just a citizen watching from the sidelines but suspicious when it is suggested that it's just a couple of bad actors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The government has declared war on marijuana growers, meth cookers, cocaine suppliers, etc., and has failed utterly at it. Why would going after opioid suppliers fare differently?

<comment><USER15> Because opioids are regulated?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> So why aren't the doctors responsible for the over-prescription up in front of the ethics boards, then being struck off?

<comment><USER17> It may even be just one guy.

[https://www.wvgazettemail.com/news/health/drug-firms- shipped...](https://www.wvgazettemail.com/news/health/drug-firms-shipped-m- pain-pills-to-wv-town-with/article_ef04190c-1763-5a0c-a77a-7da0ff06455b.html)

"In 2015, more than 40 percent of the oxycodone prescriptions filled by Westside Pharmacy in Oceana were coming from the Virginia doctor, according to the committee's letter. The following year, the Virginia Board of Medicine suspended the doctor's license, finding his practice posed a "substantial danger to public health and safety.""

Possibly the person named here: [https://pilotonline.com/news/local/health/article_7b369428-0...](https://pilotonline.com/news/local/health/article_7b369428-0054-5131-aafe-55f95882b6bc.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Where is the DEA in all of this?

<comment><USER19> How about the FDA?

<comment><USER20> I'm fairly sure the opioids are highly effective when taken as directed. It guarantees repeat business.</comment></comment></comment>


You are already a distributed team - <AUTHOR> https://standups.io/blog/you-are-already-a-distributed-team/ <comment><AUTHOR> You are already a distributed team. Here I share a few thoughts on why you're already doing work in a distributed style/setup, and discuss a few ways to help you improve the communication in your distributed team.</comment>


Why build an entire computer on breadboards? [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCbAafKLqC8 <comment><USER2> I discovered Ben Eater from another post on HN: "Let's build a circuit that displays an image on a VGA monitor [video]" [0]. If you're new to his content, I'd recommend starting with that video; it's currently his second most popular video on YouTube with 2M views. After watching that series I became interested in how display capabilities are communicated in modern systems and I learned a bit about DisplayID [1], which is a superset of an older (and apparently rather dysfunctional) standard.

A bit tangential, but I recently discovered the incredible Make: Encyclopedia of Electronic Components series (here's Vol 1 [2]) and immediately fell in love. It's one of those things which you don't know you need until you learn of its existence, and then you can't live without it. The topics covered by this series go far beyond what you learn as part of a computer engineering or electrical engineering undergraduate program, at least based on my experience and those of my friends.

Some commenters are asking about getting started with electronics. My standard suggestion is Make: Electronics [3], which is written for learning by discovery rather than learning by explanation. Read the first page of the Preface [4] for an explanation of what that means; consider picking up a copy if that resonates with you.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20375702](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20375702)

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

[2] [https://www.makershed.com/products/make-encyclopedia-of- elec...](https://www.makershed.com/products/make-encyclopedia-of-electronic- components-vol-1)

[3] [https://www.makershed.com/products/make- electronics-2ed4](https://www.makershed.com/products/make-electronics-2ed4)

[4] [https://imgur.com/ZR3anzQ](https://imgur.com/ZR3anzQ)

<comment><USER3> Your [3] link is "404 Page not found" for me currently.

<comment><USER4> Just remove the extra "4" from the end of the URL:

[https://www.makershed.com/products/make- electronics-2ed](https://www.makershed.com/products/make-electronics-2ed)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've built a z80 system on a breadboard. I did so because it's pretty much the last point where a regular person can understand what's happening from start to finish. Every single instruction. Eat that, "full stack". As soon as you add a GAL (that you didn't program), you've lost this, which on the home computer level, is the midpoint between 8bit and 16bit.

<comment><USER6> What is a GAL?

Edit: Gate Array Logic, thanks everyone

<comment><USER5> Programmable gate arrays - The neanderthal of the FPGA family tree. A lot of functions that started life as discrete logic (eg glue logic, address decoding, video output) got moved into GALs because they're much more suited to mass production. But from my point of view, they just introduce a "black box" into the design so I can no longer trace every single function.

As an example, if you have a very simple design with a 32k rom chip and a 32k ram chip, address decoding - controlling which chip is going to provide that address, is dirt simple. You take the highest bit of the address and use it as the enable line on one chip. Then you run the same signal through a NOT gate, and provide it as the enable to the other. So for addresses 0x0000 through 0x7fff, the high bit is 0, and one chip is enabled, and for addresses 0x8000 onwards, the high bit is 1, and the other chip is enabled instead. So when I address 0x8000, I'm actually addressing location 0 on the 2nd chip.

But when you look at contemporary designs, 32k & 64k ram chips were either unavailable, or an unnecessary expense. It's not unusual to see old-school devices with a whole cluster of 1k ram chips - and my nice, understandable decoding starts to get expensive. Now you're trying to compare the top 6 address bits, with lots of replication for each ram chip. If I were to do it, I'd probably use two 74138 chips to do binary-to-decimal, and then an AND gate per ram chip to compare the outputs. For 32k of ram, and at 4 AND gates per 7408, we end up with 2x74138 and 8x7408.

So as a hobbyist, I'd much prefer this as I can still describe the entire process end-to-end. For mass-production, replacing 10 discrete-logic chips with one programmable-logic chip, is several wins.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have just built my 8bit CPU on a custom-designed PCB. Ben really inspired me :)

Check it out:

[https://github.com/vascofazza/8bit-cpu](https://github.com/vascofazza/8bit- cpu)

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

</comment><comment><USER8> I enjoyed his entire series on youtube, but I personally think it's nuts to make it on a breadboard. Whenever I've built systems of this sort I've always opted for point to point soldering.

In the videos he talks about the importance of using high quality breadboards, but even so, it's so easy to knock a wire out accidentally that leads to having to trace every connection to figure out what went wrong.

But from a pedagogical standpoint and having people follow along with a minimum set of skills, I get it.

</comment><comment><USER9> If his chosen technology was wirewrap rather than actual breadboards I would a lot more confidence in this guy's judgement.

</comment><comment><USER10> Ah man.. that is super cool. Very tempted to build one now!!

</comment><comment><USER11> for most people who do this, id imagine the reason is because they are a computer engineering student and need lab credits

<comment><USER12> Or you just think it's _awesome_.

<comment><USER13> I would think the kind of people who go on a website like HN think this is awesome as well. I know not all the audience of HN is necessarily software / hardware engineers, but definitely there's enough of them on here go drive interest.</comment></comment></comment>


Think Your Password Is Secure, It's Probably Not - <AUTHOR> http://www.techiediy.com/think-your-password-is-secure-its-probably-not

<comment><USER2> This is ridiculous.

Expecting people to use passwords this long and remember them is infeasible.

If this is what it takes to have a secure password, passwords are broken.

Of course, we already knew that, didn't we?

</comment><comment><USER3> Long passwords like this are impossible to remember.</comment>


Ask HN: What is a software that you'd like to use? - <AUTHOR> Like right now, say you have a magical dev team that converts requirements to product immediately , what would you have them build? <comment><USER2> agi :-)</comment>


Let's Encrypt Hits 50M Active Certificates and Counting - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/02/lets-encrypt-hits-50-million-active-certificates-and-counting <comment><USER2> I love LetsEncrypt - the only problem I've hit is the rate limits (in particular 20 new certificates per registered domain per week, when moving domains). I guess I could have avoided this by combining names into a single certificate, but I wonder why there's not an option to pay/donate to bump the limit temporarily: when I hit the limit I would gladly pay $50 or $100 instead of going through the manual process with a legacy CA. Even though wildcard certs will make this better, the fear of accidentally hitting a limit and being unable to renew certificates remains a concern for me.

<comment><USER3> > I wonder why there's not an option to pay/donate to bump the limit > temporarily

> I could have avoided this by combining names into a single certificate

You can get a cert (via <=20, 100 SAN combined certs) 2000 subdomains per week.

I actually don't really understand your problem case though. What do you mean by:

> when moving domains

<comment><USER4> This requires sharing the same cert and key for everything. Lots of software doesn't really like this way of doing things, I've been bit by the 20 limit too - and yes, I could have swapped to SANs, it wouldn't have fit with the deployment tooling for all the different things!

<comment><USER3> > This requires sharing the same cert and key for everything.

That entirely depends on where/how you're terminating TLS.

Do you _really_ have > 20 different pieces of independent software all doing their own TLS?

This is exactly what things like HAProxy are for.

<comment><USER4> Yes, with Kubernetes, the patterns used are a little different than if you were to setup TLS and haproxy by hand (I actually use nginx, but it doesn't particularly matter).

You deploy software, that software declares it needs TLS for its endpoint, and certs are obtained.

While moving from one cluster to another, a new deployment of everything was done - about 20 different services - a few minutes work with Kubernetes. However, the fetching of TLS certs stopped working for the very last service!

Yes, I should have migrated the certs, however, the migration was happing due to a failure - I couldn't access the old certs.

I now make sure to backup those secrets rather than rely on re-issuance.

Still, for a usecase like Kubernetes, 20 certs per domain per week is limiting. I do totally understand that the quotas are in place because cert issuance is expensive, but I'd happily pay a yearly subscription fee to LE to cover the costs and help fund them if the option was there!

<comment><USER5> It's possible to have another implementation of the ingress controller that will not create one certificate per host

<comment><USER4> It's possible, but that would weaken security.

Each independent application is isolated from each other, sharing a TLS cert/key among them all means we're weakening security - again, the Kubernetes patterns here would mean we need to duplicate the secret data into each applications namespace, allowing a compromise of one to compromise the TLS of all.

There are legitimate reasons to not share a single TLS cert for everything in an environment like Kubernetes.

(I'm nearly certain it's not possible to reference secrets cross namespace when declaring an ingress secret, or mounting a secret)

<comment><USER5> > the Kubernetes patterns here would mean we need to duplicate the secret data > into each applications namespace, allowing a compromise of one to compromise > the TLS of all

yeah, this would be wrong indeed.

Is there any requirement for an TLS terminating proxy acting as k8s ingress to actually store the TLS secrets in the same namespace where the requesting ingress object lives?

<comment><USER4> The semantics require it, as the ingress resource references a secret without the option of providing a namespace for that secret.

There may be ways around this, however, I've never personally looked for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is there a form letter available for sites that don't have certificates or are using self-signed/invalid certs? It would have a brief introduction, background on LE, links to getting started docs, etc. Something like:

"Hi, I noticed your website does not support HTTPS. Have you heard about Let's Encrypt? Let's Encrypt is a free, automated, and open Certificate Authority. [...]"

Ideally available in multiple languages as well.

<comment><USER7> I have a couple of Let's Encrypt certs for some subdomains, but honestly I've left some others on plain HTTP simply through laziness.

LE imposes a requirement to renew certificates every 90 days, which is a nuisance. Logging-in, finding my process crib-sheet, running the update requests, updating DNS records, running the validation requests, shifting certs to servers, restarting services... all because the LE project wants to evangelise short certificate lifespans, which seems to have been bolted onto the original goal of 'encrypt all the things' because of someone's personal conviction.

I do wish they'd offer a longer optional lifespan. Even 365 days would be a huge improvement. Until then I really can't recommend it to less-technically- inclined colleagues; I just tell them go and buy a one-year cert from Gandi, chuck it into the ssl directory and forget about it until the renewal reminder arrives 11 months later.

<comment><USER8> It's not too hard to setup a daily cronjob to renew automatically.

<comment><USER9> I have found [https://github.com/Neilpang/acme.sh](https://github.com/Neilpang/acme.sh) to be incredibly easy to deploy in several different configurations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> 50 Million is a massive number for sure but its a drop in the ocean when you see the number of sites out there. As a user i hope you hit even more bigger numbers in the days to come! :)

<comment><USER11> Non-https traffic will start being marked as "insecure" in upcoming versions of chrome & firefox. That should push the numbers up significantly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> OT: Anyone know the best architecture using LE with a Docker Swarm cluster. I let one server do the challenge and renew the certificates with cron every three months. Those certificates are synced with every Docker Swarm node through Docker secret.

Once the certificates got renewed the secrets are not working anymore because they must be immutable.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is what success looks like. Thanks for making TLS easy and free.

<comment><USER14> I work at a nonprofit and I've had great success pushing LE there. We used to have an org-wide wildcard certificate and we'd buy additional certs as necessary, and at first there was some serious skepticism about "free certs" even though I pointed out the significant players behind it. The IT people are now on board and looking to spread it to more projects.

It's been great for us in many respects. We no longer have certificates shared between servers, which removes the vulnerability to DROWN and some other problems. We also tend to serve multiple domains from a single IP, which requires a cert that covers all domains. LE lets us trivially get a cert to cover multiple domains, which would be especially expensive with project managers who can't make up their minds on what domains they want to use. And, we get the usual benefits of LE - effective forward secrecy in case someone obtains a single key/etc.

There was a little bit of pain at first getting the renewal infrastructure set up properly. My setup still isn't quite perfect, so far the standalone certbot option is the least painful for me. I have a cronjob which shuts down httpd, starts up certbot-standalone, does the renew, and restarts httpd, so we are down for an additional ~5 seconds per day while we renew. Not the end of the world for our usage.

<comment><USER3> Depending on what your non-profit is in support of, Koalephant (my company) may be able to provide some pro-bono hours to assist/advice on that 'not quite perfect' setup, if that's at all of interest to you.

My email is in my profile if you want to get in touch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I recently bought a domain online and used let's Encrypt to get a certificate. So, from a grateful user, thank you!

</comment><comment><USER16> Awesome work people</comment>


German union IG Metall wins right to 28-hour working week and 4.3% pay rise - <AUTHOR> https://www.irishtimes.com/business/work/german-union-ig-metall-wins-right-to-28-hour-working-week-and-4-3-pay-rise-1.3382445 <comment><USER2> You know, that's great and all but now I don't want to hear anyone else accusing us Greeks of being lazy and unproductive because we prefer to lie on a beach and drink souvlaki instead of working. You know- like the German media did back in the height of the crisis.

(no, you can't drink souvlaki. Unless it's very warm, or you have been drinking too much of the other stuff).

<comment><USER3> It should be noted the 28-hour work week is accompanied with proportional salary reductions and is limited to 2 years. It is supposed to provide greater flexibility for the worker, e. g. to provide for a sick relative.

<comment><USER2> Nevertheless, it's a 28-hour work week.

Meanwhile, Greeks work the longest hours than any other people in the EU:

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2015/03/13/contra...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2015/03/13/contrary- to-what-most-people-think-greeks-work-the-longest-hours-in-europe- infographic/#b03e3932983d)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not just any union, but the largest union in Germany!

</comment><comment><USER5> And some or almost workers will be against unions. if you ain't a capitalist, it's almost a no brainer to join a union or to form one</comment>


Samsung releases Galaxy S II ICS source code - <AUTHOR> http://androidcommunity.com/samsung-releases-galaxy-s-ii-ics-source-code-20120319/ <comment><USER3> Download is still going, but isn't this just the standard GPL parts - <USER2> kernel & some libraries?

( _EDIT: it is indeed just the GPL parts_.)

In which case, can someone explain how it's really newsworthy? Samsung have been exemplary in all their GPL compliance for all their Android releases to date.

 _open source code ROM builders and other modders will be able to do more advanced ports and advanced ROMs._

Well, now they can build with the latest kernel instead of the Gingerbread kernel, but does that really make much difference to anything else? Are there outstanding kernel bugs in the Gingerbread releases, or new kernel features that ICS AOSP needs to run?

<comment><USER4> The bigger question, to me, is what drivers are included. Many of the chips in all these phones do not have specifications freely available or community- built drivers. Does this include, say, the GPU driver? Or is that still a binary blob that has to be (usually illegally) copied from the device's built- in software?

<comment><USER3> The Mali (GPU) kernel module source is there, but not the proprietary userland libraries. So the situation is as you say.

(AFAIK the only Android manufacturer to secure binary distribution rights for GPU drivers was Google with the PowerVR GPU in the Nexus One, and that download comes with heavy restrictions - only for Nexus One, only for Android, do not redistribute, etc. I don't know why GPU manufacturers are so paranoid.)

That said, I don't really know the S2 but I'm fairly sure the Mali GPU libraries and the baseband are the only closed components in the EXYNOS platform. So it could be worse :/.

<comment><USER5> We're not paranoid; that resistribution restriction on our driver didn't come from us (I work for PowerVR). As a rule of thumb, it's the device or SoC vendor that calls those shots and controls redistribution.

<comment><USER6> I interviewed once for a graphics driver programming position for Imagination Tech. (who own PowerVR) and my impression was that they were indeed absolutely paranoid about open source. The first thing the guy had a go at me for was my pretty meager contributions to open source. Apparently this was a solid indicator that I would give out all the company secrets!

<comment><USER5> If the interviewer had a problem with your open source contributions then I'm sorry, since that really shouldn't be any problem for us whatsoever. There is absolutely no feeling at the company that open source equals the leak of secrets, and I find it hard to believe your story because of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As an Android user, I do not want the TouchWiz overlay. I want the pure, unadulterated ICS UI goodness. Why doesn't Samsung "get it"? (Don't answer that).

<comment><USER8> You're a hacker purist. Most consumers are not. Many actually like the features that Touchwiz brings.

It's actually interesting in that "pure, unadulterated" Android has very heavily borrowed from Sense UI, TouchWiz, and Motoblur. Those custom skins were what really helped move the platform forward.

<comment><USER9> I don't know. As somebody that was a day-one G1 customer, I think the influence of Mattias Duarte coming on board has had far more impact on the platform than any of these OEM skins. You can see the influence of Duarte's previous work at Palm _all over_ ICS, far more so than any of the custom skins.

What I _have_ certainly seen is manufacturers breaking baked-in functionality on Android trying to differentiate themselves. Moto managed to break both manual Exchange configuration and Facebook sync on my Droid 4, for example. It's not like those are obscure functions nobody uses.

<comment><USER10> I'm not sure in which update you're referring to Facebook sync being "broken", but this was purposefully removed from stock by Google in Android 2.3.3.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is really good news. I just hope the article is correct and this can actually be modded fairly easily for T-Mobile(T989) and AT&T phones.</comment>


New VC Model For Small Scale Financing - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/new_vc_model_for_small_scale_funding.php

<comment><USER2> Shall we stop misusing (particularly while simultaneously overusing) the word meme?

If you must (needlessly) use an arcane biological term to describe something, read the arcane biological text to understand it.

[http://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Gene-Richard- Dawkins/dp/019286...](http://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Gene-Richard- Dawkins/dp/0192860925)

</comment><comment><USER3> I read this and for the life of me couldn't actually find mention of the New VC model mentioned in the title. Anyone care to elaborate/speculate?</comment>


Plastc Card - <AUTHOR> https://www.plastc.com/# <comment><USER3> They say this supports chip-and-PIN, but I don't believe them until they explain how. If I have a chip-and-PIN card from my bank, the chip has an unreadable secret used to generate one-time cryptograms to verify the authenticity of the card. There's no way to get that secret onto my Plastc card. You'd need partnerships with banks to get a new secret the way Apple Pay does. Without those, this sounds like it'll be useless once the chip-and-PIN switch happens in a year or so.

<comment><USER4> On the bottom of their wallet tab [1], they list several participating banks, so it sounds like they might have those partnerships you mention.

[1] [https://www.plastc.com/wallet](https://www.plastc.com/wallet)

<comment><USER5> Question is what exactly does "participating" means.

Banks generally hate anything that takes away their branding. Less sleek of this -- i.e. reprogrammable Visa cards -- have been around for a few years but banks never supported them, again because of branding.

<comment><USER6> It looks like it displays the logo, so it isn't out of the question for banks (now starting to be scared at being disintermediated) to maybe throw in some "support" (aka tepidly allow access). After all, apple pay also reduces branding ( _and_ Apple takes a cut), and threatens a lot of the industry as what you pay with becomes a minor manner (and also massively encourages a single default card).

<comment><USER7> Does Apple Pay actually reduce branding that much? I bet I'm not the only one who saw the Apple Pay demo and noticed that it displays a nice, large, full- color image of the card being used. Cards with a certain cachet, then (AmEx black, other high-end cards) will still be quite prominently displayed. Indeed, a backlit display might even make more of a brand impression than the physical card, in some situations.

I also am not certain that Apple Pay "massively encourages" a single default card. It looked quite easy in the demo to display multiple cards and switch between them. Looked easier than taking a card out of a crowded wallet and putting it back in, actually.

<comment><USER6> Eh, as far as default goes, it is another step; the second page of google results is easy to get too, but people don't. Part of what generates alternate card usage today is the messy wallet, sometimes the card isn't in the right place, or doesn't come to hand.

Also there are some practical in RL issues that come up with most NFC payment readers (namely a lot of the installed readers have short range, and awkward pad placement) which makes non default much less attractive.

As for the display issue, the issuers concern is that they are pretty limited as far as making things distinct. I mean hell, every card company is going to have black cards. There are no sideways cards, no premium materials, no metallics, etc. They have a relatively small image, which has to still look good even if cropped to lose the bottom 80%. Basically they get space for bank logo, card logo, and a non distracting background.

So if they are willing to give up on all that and a fee, it doesn't seem all that out of the question for them to allow their logos to be used on a flexible card, and (presumably) not pay a fee.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The ridiculous number of features on this card makes it really hard to believe that an unknown startup has the resources to pull it off in the form factor as thin as a credit card. Coin still hasn't gotten there yet (they claim it works at 85% of the locations they visited). Adding more features including wireless charging coils and unknown method for duplicating chip and pin makes me really skeptical that this will ever make it to market.

<comment><USER9> The microcontroller, smart card interface, eInk screen, bluetooth capability (including antenna), NFC (including antenna), and touch screen all seem reasonable and there isn't anything earth shattering tech wise (but probably a customized asic using off the shelf bits). Connecting this all together on some fiberglass or plastic substrate is hard, and expensive to tool for (I'd expect), but definitely possible.

The interesting bit is how they're fitting the battery and getting anything remotely like reasonable life. Even down in the single digit micro-Amp consumption range (typical for low power microcontrollers plus some resistive touch), a battery small enough to fit inside a credit card will likely only have a few mAh, at best. This will lead to needing to recharge quite often if the bluetooth turns on or eInk screen updates more than once in a blue-moon.

<comment><USER10> You really believe you can fit an eink display, a touch screen digitizer, a microcontroller, bluetooth and nfc on a card that thin and sell it for 155 dollars?

<comment><USER9> Yes. If the eInk screen uses the card plastic in place of the glass which usually backs such a screen, it can easily be thin enough for a credit card form factor.

Touch screen digitizing can be done resistively with overlaid wires over the screen. Their touch interface doesn't have to be super accurate, you only seem to touch in a few distinct locations.

A microcontroller is already inside every chip and pin card on the planet. They usually run Java. Yes, Java :)

Bluetooth is just more silicon to do the radio, not hard to stick it on the side of the microcontroller silicon or even have a two-die configuration with wire bonding between the dies. Go look at TI or Freescale 2.4 GHz radio+micro parts, same thing just there it's in a QFN or other solder-down package, but the dies themselves are quite small. A 2.4 GHz antenna is easy to fab out of printed silver or other printable conductive material onto plastic.

NFC is already in many credit cards for the whole "tap to pay" thing. It's just some extra silicon on the side of the microcontroller in existing solutions. Harvesting power from NFC is just some diodes and a resonant circuit along with loop antenna.

Realistically, such a piece of silicon plus the antennas plus the plastic card should only cost you single digit dollars in volume to manufacture. Adding an eInk screen like that is another couple bucks, at most. The $155 price point is probably so they can make back their up-front costs as getting customized silicon isn't cheap, nor is some of the development work they did to get all the features integrated.

If this concept takes off, I'd expect in 2-3 years that cards like this are issued by banks for free to customers. The cost of manufacturing really isn't that high.

EDIT: But getting enough battery packed in to avoid charging every day or two, that's really the novel part if they have real bluetooth operation.

<comment><USER11> The only part that actually has to be as thin as a credit card is the part with the magnetic strip. Below that (where the screen is), it could be as thick as they need and still be swipeable. So they could shove the battery, charging coils, etc. behind the touch screen.

<comment><USER12> Not the case. For chip-and-PIN cards, the entire part of the card containing the chip needs to be inserted into a reader, as in this example: [https://i.imgur.com/0nn5lpo.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/0nn5lpo.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Faked video.

I downloaded it and went frame-by-frame and you can see the card display contents move around with changing margins. It's all CGI.

Not that it's inherently wrong to do simulations, but this is notable because they don't include a "this is a simulation" disclaimer (AFAICS).

<comment><USER14> It was quite _obviously_ either completely rendered, or rendered on top of an actual video. It felt like a plain commercial, with "cgi" added ontop of it for effect. I mean, no one expects little flying transparent windows to pop out the side of their card, do they? Of course not. So I don't think they were doing it surreptitiously, but merely to make a pretty "commercial" to sell their product.

<comment><USER13> I'm talking about the product itself, not the explanatory popups.

<comment><USER15> You can actually see it with the naked eye.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What need does this address? Are cards taking up too much room in people's lives?

This solution doesn't reduce the height or width of the encumbrance at all, and reduces the depth only by n*.76mm, where n is the number of cards that will be replaced. I don't get it.

Also, [http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?TheZenOfProgramming](http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?TheZenOfProgramming)

<comment><USER17> I have a lot of cards. Between gift cards, loyalty cards, and credit cards, I have at least 20-30 that I'd like to carry on me. I end up leaving cards I don't use every day in my car (and am always paranoid about the valet as a result). I use a KeyRing app for loyalty cards, but it's a pain and requires me often typing numbers into things. I often find myself in a Starbucks, realizing I left the Starbucks gift card in my car. Etc.

This would let me get away with a much slimmer wallet and is therefore quite convenient. If it works.

<comment><USER18> I don't get how you can end up with so many cards, it's seems like a very american problem. I have 5 cards in my wallet: * Debit card and a Visa credit card: both with chip&pin and allowing me to do secure transaction on the internet * A public transport card: RFC, also allow me to rent bikes * An ID card, also with a chip&pin, allow me to sign documents and fill my taxes * An insurance card which is not even a magnetic or electronic card, it's just a piece of plastic with my client number printed on it

And I don't really see why I should need or want more cards

<comment><USER19> I'm an American, and I have no idea how someone ends up with that many cards. I carry two: my credit card and by debit (ATM) card. I could easily leave the latter behind, since I very rarely use, but it feels prudent to keep it with me in case I need cash in an emergency. Beyond that, I could understand having a single company credit card if it makes sense for your job (it doesn't for mine).

For gift cards, I suppose it would be nice to have those all aggregated, but I do very little brick and mortar shopping, and virtually no _impromptu_ brick and mortar shopping where having a library of loyalty cards with me at all times would be useful.

The same applies to loyalty cards. I do have a Macy's card, but they can just look that up for you at the store, so I don't carry it. I've probably lost the physical card.

<comment><USER20> Well I have no fewer than 4 checking accounts. I have a debit card for all them. I don't use any of the debit cards except at the ATM once in a while so I could probably go without three of them on my person.

Then I have 4 credit cards.*

That's 8 cards right there. Then I do my shopping at 3 different grocery stores, so they all get their cards. 3 because I take advantage of the sales at each and the selection. One doesn't have some of the stuff I want but the others do. This is pretty common, I know if I want a particular product I have to go to a particular store to get it. I go grocery shopping probably 3-4 times a week because I only buy enough stuff for 1-3 meals. This is to reduce waste. Less often shopping leads to food waste for me.

Sure they can look me up, and I used to not carry the grocery store cards, but I find flashing the card about 1000 times more convenient.

We are up to 12 cards.

I have to carry two IDs, driver's license and US GOVT ID. Card count 14.

Then I have a drugstore card that I use to get "points" for filling my prescriptions. These points are really worth it - you cash them in for merchandise and they are very generous with them. While they have ALL MY INFO (after all, they need it to fill the prescription) but about 70% of the time they want my card, I don't know why. It is just a billion times easier to have it on me.

Card count 15.

Library card - card count 16.

The rest are just random rarely used loyalty cards I __don 't __need to carry but at this point why not carry them?

I don't get gift cards.

People ask why I have so many checking accounts, and it is to better manage my money (for example, I get just enough of my paycheck auto deposited to cover automatic withdraws and put that in a separate account so I know that's my "no touch" money) and take maximum advantages of all the rewards and benefits of each card or bank account.

I don't find any of this that daunting. When you already have to carry a few adding a few more isn't that big of a deal. I don't really have a problem with carrying these around and I prefer separate cards to some "smart card" that is some electronic thing to charge and break.

*I want to mention even with 4 CCs I don't have any CC debt.

<comment><USER17> Everyone should have at least 3. If you aren't fully taking advantage of credit card rewards you are subsidizing people like me who do.

<comment><USER20> "Everyone" is a far stretch. More like "people who like to (or don't mind) managing their finances at a finer level and also don't spend above their means."

Which is maybe 35% of the American population.

Some people are just fine not bothering with credit cards because convenience/simplicity/ease is more important to them. It's all about individual preferences and priority.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Whilst I wouldn't go as far as to say "never going to happen", I am fairly cynical about this and similar products like coin.

Not for any particular technical reason (although I'd be very interested to hear how they plan to make this work with Chip & PIN) but from a risk/liability perspective.

At the moment most banks that I'm aware of provide an online fraud guarantee and a credit card fraud guarantee, so as long as you keep your credentials secure, they'll pay back if you get defrauded (I know it's not quite as simple as that but for the purposes of this comment I think that'll do)

so the problem with this kind of product is that you're adding another company (plastc) to the trusted list, you're going to have to provide them with all the card details. So unless the banks agree to this not affecting your fraud guarantee, you'd be taking a real risk by using this solution.

For the banks to agree that there would need to be something in the deal for them, to compensate for the loss of branding on their cards and the additional fraud risk.

<comment><USER22> > loss of branding on their cards and the additional fraud risk

Loss of branding is a fair point, but I think this would reduce fraud risk. Automatically deactivating itself when lost or stolen more than makes up for the risk of trusting Plastc.

<comment><USER21> Possibly although the attack surface of this kind of solution is quite a bit bigger than that of a traditional card. Introducing complications like smartphone apps and increased complexity of programming on the card itself, has quite a bit higher potential for exploitable bugs compared to a traditional Chip & PIN card.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think most people in the market for something next-generation are going to be looking for more than just "how do I consolidate onto 1 physical card". They're going to want to fundamentally improve the payment system with a completely cardless, PIN-less (save for unlocking it once in the morning), wrist-based device.

Plastc is $155 and you still have to:

1\. pull something out of your wallet

2\. select a virtual card

3\. enter a PIN to unlock it

4\. share your real card number with the merchant with all the fraud potential that carries

5\. sign the receipt or enter your card's PIN (another PIN!)

Apple Watch is going to leapfrog all that so hard.

\- it lives on your wrist

\- it stays unlocked as long as it's on your body

\- you just tap, no signing or card PINs

\- it uses tokenization so you never have to worry about stolen card numbers

\- it does craptons more stuff than payments too

One advantage Plastc has is it will work everywhere right away while Apple Pay needs NFC terminals. But those upgrades are happening thanks to chip-and-PIN.

<comment><USER23> Forget a "wrist-based device", I'm waiting for PluseWallet, that completely device-free payment system that works by scanning the circulatory layout of your hand: [http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/7/5281692/pulsewallet-pay- wit...](http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/7/5281692/pulsewallet-pay-with-your- veins-fujitsu-palmsecure)

<comment><USER13> Non starter. Requires merchants to install palm scanners. Apple Watch works with standard NFC terminals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> 1) The process of selecting a card and paying appears to have many more steps compared to merely selecting the appropriate physical card and using that. Is the sell here something to do with security (not displaying the card number all the time)? Does this support temporary/ burner numbers?

2) I would like to know what target demographic, if any, that that ad was not intended to irritate.

<comment><USER25> The prospect of getting away without a wallet is exciting to me! If I could get down to just driver's license, this, and billfold, that'd be pretty cool.

<comment><USER26> I would pay 2x what they're asking if it worked like it's supposed to, and I could leave everything else behind.

But realistically, I think mobile payment systems are much more likely to succeed. Plus, I already have my phone with me anyway, and it doesn't seem too far fetched that it could provide all the info on my driver's license. So with that and widespread adoption of ApplePay (or whatever ends up succeeding in that space) I'm down to just leaving the house with my phone and whatever cash I want to carry.

<comment><USER24> > I think mobile payment systems are much more likely to succeed

It's not either/or. Something like this or Coin are essentially interfaces for what will be legacy devices. If it were either/or, then mobile payments would certainly be the better solution.

<comment><USER26> That's true, though I think once major retailers, gas stations, grocery stores and ATMs are accepting mobile payments, you'd be able to get by without any "legacy" forms of payment pretty easily.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The problem is doing this without compromising security. There are at least the following problems:

\- Remote RF-based attacks on the card.

\- Attacks on the phone app.

\- Leaks at the point credentials are transferred into the card. It turns out that most chip and pin cards do not use a public key/private key pair, with the private key inside the card. Visa actually recommends against this. ([http://usa.visa.com/download/merchants/bulletin-chip- recomme...](http://usa.visa.com/download/merchants/bulletin-chip-recommended- practices.pdf)) So getting the credentials off a chip and pin card is possible.

\- Leaks from the servers at "Plastc".

\- Customer liability beyond US law limits for bank credit and debit cards. (What if it's Plastc's fault? The bank blames Plastc, and Plastc dumps the liability on the customer, citing their "it's never our fault" EULA).

\- The device is a great tool for "carders". Previously, "carders" using stolen credit card info had to make sure nobody saw them putting a white card in the ATM. Using a stolen credit card required access to convincing-looking blank cards and an embossing machine. Now, with Plastc, anybody with a list of stolen card numbers can easily create fake cards. At least if businesses are willing to accept Plastc cards.

</comment><comment><USER28> The problem I have with this product, as well as Coin, is that seems to be far less convenient than pulling a card out of my wallet. Maybe George Costanza would get some use out of one of these, but I'm usually choosing between an ATM card or one or two credit cards. Plus, I don't need to worry about having my phone, charging batteries, electrical gremlins, &c.

All I'm seeing is an expensive ($155?!) solution to a non-existent problem.

<comment><USER29> Also, credit cards are simple, cheap, and robust. Most of them become pretty thrashed with a year or two of frequent use -- this thing would theoretically be used more than any single card; how robust will it be?

(And you'll still want a backup card in case it fritzes.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Wow I can't wait for the "scroll to make the picture change" form of user interaction to go away.

<comment><USER31> 1000000% agree, I don't know why that's the "in thing" at the moment

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Hmm, I thought this might be what Coin turned into but I see that onlycoin.com is still taking pre-orders for their all-in-one card. I get the consumer appeal but find the appeal for the banks less strong. I would love a one time credit card app where every time you swiped it, it changed numbers. And it seems making the card 'smart' like this could enable that sort of thing.

<comment><USER33> Has anyone received their Coin? I ordered in December and still have yet to receive it.

<comment><USER34> They are rolling it out very slowly. You should've received details in your email about the rollout. I have a friend who has received his already.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What would actually be slightly lower in cost and leverage existing infrastructure better would be this Plastc card but remove the bluetooth, the touch interface, chip-n-pin, and the internal battery. Just have an app on your NFC phone and have it send the card data over NFC to the card when you want to use it. In this way you could just have an app on your phone which can work with the bank over the Net to generate throw-away numbers for every transaction.

Having any credit card number which you've ever used only usable for one single purchase would make fraud have to change to adapt. But you could probably sell such a thing easily today with all the recent loss of credit card number news. Granted, the vendor of such a card has to partner with a bank to enable this feature set, and then only a small number of people will want such a card as it imposes a new workflow for paying for things.

<comment><USER35> Yes. Keep all your financial information on a general purpose consumer computer accessible over the network, and never worry about the safety of your financial data ever again ;)

<comment><USER9> I already do this. Amazon knows my credit card info, so do many other merchants. If I'm doing any kind of mobile payments thing then my phone has access to my bank somehow, too.

My concept is basically just "mobile payments" but enabling it for locations where merchants don't have the infrastructure yet. The added benefit is every transaction has a different card number, so merchants who store card numbers and get hacked provides no benefits to the thieves. Granted, any of the mobile payments things should be doing this kind of security thru obscurity, but I have no idea if they are.

This is not novel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> From the fraud perspective:

One of the costs associated with fraudulent card use is turning a set of number into a physical object. Several retailers will avoid the "Just write the number onto an existing card" approach by verifying that the last four digits on the card match the number on the magstripe, which increases the cost per cloned card by a reasonable margin. Using Plastc instead would break that assumption. It'll be interesting to see how merchants react.

But, more problematically, this answer:

> What happens if one of the cards stored on my Plastc Card is declined?

> The acceptance of any transaction has nothing to do with your Plastc Card. > In this event, we recommend you contact your bank.

seems like a problem if the auth failure that comes back is one that requests that the merchant retain the card…

<comment><USER37> If I were a merchant, I would not accept one of these. Fraud claims always side with the cardholder, what do you say as a merchant? "Yeah, some guy came in with this black piece of plastic and a screen on it and I just swiped it."

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> It claims to support Chip & PIN (EMV) but I don't see how this works. EMV is designed so that you can't clone a card and in practice is it impractical to attempt to clone a card that uses EMV.

The only way I could imagine it would work is if you have the support of the bank that issued the card. However, I doubt any bank would agree to a scheme to allow a 3rd party to generate a clone of an EMV card.

<comment><USER39> > The only way I could imagine it would work is if you have the support of the > bank that issued the card.

At the end of [https://www.plastc.com/wallet](https://www.plastc.com/wallet) there's a list of participating banks, so I assume that's exactly how they do it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I really like the idea, but at $155 this is a luxury item for people who have disposable income. Also, with the release of Apple Pay, I truly think eventually all brick and mortar businesses will support paying with your phone.

<comment><USER41> >eventually all brick and mortar businesses will support paying with your phone

There are brick and mortar businesses that don't even support credit cards. It could be a long time before _all_ brick and mortar businesses support phone payments.

<comment><USER7> Very few.

If 90-95% support this, and they will, very soon, that's plenty.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> How is this bs even legal?... I'm going to render a spaceship and put it up for pre-orders.

Do not give these people your money, nor the other tech companies that pull this kinda shit when so many real innovations are in the market.

</comment><comment><USER43> The websites for both Plastc Card and Coin do the "animate images and diagrams as users scroll" pattern.

I want to punch the designer in the face who ever thought this was a good idea.

<comment><USER31> Strongly agree. But I'll lose my commit privileges if I remove it... worth it? Maybe :P

<comment><USER44> Hey, if I had my way, everything would have been star wipe. Scroll -> star wipe to next page. Scroll -> star wipe! Scroll -> star wipe! It could have been AMAZING.

<comment><USER31> Do it. Lets throw in a <marquee/> too.. I'll even "git filter-branch" your commit afterwards. No one will ever know. :D

<comment><USER44> Don't tempt me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> This is a faster horse, not an automobile.

<comment><USER46> Automobiles don't get invented every day, or indeed every year. In a world where the horse is king, a faster horse is a good thing.

<comment><USER47> But this is $155. It needs to be an automobile :)

<comment><USER46> You make an excellent point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Am I do only one having a huge (yet still growing) list of preordered and backed projects and waiting for their delivery? If I sum up the pending ones up, it's thousands of dollars. If I put all that money in the stock market and buy the products after they are on the market, and read the reviews, I'm sure I'll be saving money and not be worried that I'm getting schemed all the time.

<comment><USER49> I'd supplant savings account with stock market. The stock market is a little frothy as of late and a pull-back has been in the works for a while.

<comment><USER50> The money in your savings account decreases in value with inflation, so that's not a risk-free strategy either. Maybe inflation-indexed treasuries are what you want, but those are also not risk-free!

<comment><USER49> Valid point. How could I forget inflation?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> A credit card that requires charging?

Haha, no.

<comment><USER52> Oh gods, that sounds like a horrible idea (the site is unavailable at the moment, so I can't see the list of features). Only slightly worse than the idiotic start-up idea that made the rounds two years ago, whereby all of one's cards could be combined into one (Oh goodie, if I lose one card, I lose EVERYTHING!).

<comment><USER53> Well, you generally lose everything either way anyways. I would imagine most people lose their entire wallet, instead of just a single card.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Check out the privacy policy: [https://www.plastc.com/legal](https://www.plastc.com/legal) These guys expect to own every part of your information. Yet they still charge through the nose for the tech. Have your cake and eat it why don't you.

</comment><comment><USER55> This is a either a future vaporware from naïve people or a straight up scam. Either way, I'm betting that before the tech will be good enough for this kind of product the Apple Pay and similar products will be ubiquitous - this is simply a faster horse.

</comment><comment><USER56> How in the world would remote wiping a lost card work? It only supports bluetooth from what I can find, so you'd have to be nearby?

<comment><USER57> I'm guessing it pairs with your phone, and automatically wipes once it disconnects (maybe after some timeout).

<comment><USER58> I would assume the same thing, the problem is if I leave my wallet upstairs and take my phone downstairs (breaking the BTLE tether) will it also wipe? If so does it automatically re-load when I get back in range? If it doesn't auto- reload then it sounds like a PITA and if it does auto-reload it sounds like a security nightmare (Clone the BTLE MAC and get the victims phones to unknowingly push all their charge cards to your sniffer).

<comment><USER56> My thoughts exactly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> How could anyone trust a company to do this after Coin sold their "preorders" without producing a single working unit?

<comment><USER60> You've just described the bigger startup/crowdfunding scene, my friend. Technology is religion these days - most people aren't able to penetrate the mysteries, and instead have faith in a positive outcome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Unlike the scammers of Coin, these guys might have thought a bit further. Unfortunately this looks too ambitious. We have been making these kind of cards for years (for other companies) and know what kind of things you can cannot do currently; you _can_ actually do this technically, but you'll be in a lot of pain getting this mass-produced. Let alone the things like patents, certification and adding 3rd party cards to it (oh the hell...); all politics & money. Good luck anyway.

</comment><comment><USER62> Seems like most people who will opt for "payments 2.0" will just wait for Apple Pay and Google Wallet to be more mainstream. Especially with wearables in the mix.

</comment><comment><USER58> I pre-ordered Coin and have signed up for the beta and while this card seems to be much cooler (and 3x more expensive) I feel like Coin has a better chance of making it to market. Their idea and product just seems more "do-able" than this.

It's easy to throw up a list of tech specs on a website, it's a lot harder to actually ship those features. I'm highly skeptical of their support for chip- and-pin. In my (uneducated on this matter) mind it seems like the ability to do this undermines a large security consideration with chip-and-pin. What's to stop a crook from swiping my card on his reader? Does this not just make it all the easier to clone cards?

Also the battery life is an annoyance. Not one that I couldn't live with (I look at my Pebble and Pulse battery levels every few days to determine if I need to plug it up at night) but Coin's approach to this problem seems cleaner. Coin was a reach for me, this is way out of what I would spend to "fix" this problem. Also as other's have said with Apple Pay entering the fray Coin is rapidly losing its appeal as neither Coin nor this card offer the consumer protection that Apple Pay does (like not giving them your real CC number).

<comment><USER63> Coin doesn't handle the chip and pin problem at all for the moment. Even they say that the next version of the card will work with chip and pin. As far as the battery is concerned, Coin will just stop working after two years. At least with this card, it will be rechargeable, even if I have to do it monthly.

My biggest concern would be pre-ordering anything like this for the time being. I was left pretty jaded with Coin promising for a year that they were running on time with shipping. Summer 2014 came and went and they finally admitted just two weeks after the previous update that they wouldn't be able to make it for at least another 6 months. Now this product is advertising a more advanced feature set to be released at around the same time. I wouldn't bet on it.

<comment><USER58> I too am jaded by Coin's delays (though after a year of Soylent delays, each one promising delivery "next month", I guess I should know better). As for the battery life I really don't expect to still be using the same Coin in 2 years. I imagine I will have an upgraded Chip & Pin version or just be using Apple Pay by then. I fear that all of these card-replacement solutions will be downed out by things like Apple Pay (I assume other companies will introduce competing services, and no Google Wallet is not a competing service IMHO). I might be able to get a Coin refund but I'm not a huge fan of pulling funding from them (even if it's only $50) and I still think it's a nifty idea. I'm still very much so looking forward to getting my Coin sometime in December (supposed to ship by the end of November), that is of course if they stick to that timetable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Wow, this will certainly give Coin ([https://onlycoin.com/](https://onlycoin.com/)) a run for their money.

<comment><USER65> I can't help to think this and Coin are each a solution in search of a problem. Do you know many people that use more than 3 cards regularly? If the norm was to have so many cards they barely fit in your wallet this would be perfect.

<comment><USER26> Well - I carry 3, and would carry 7 if I wasn't trying to slim down my wallet.

Those 3 are:

* An personal AMEX cashback card, that gives me a very nice 5% back in certain categories, and 1% back on everything else.

* A Visa Airline miles card, for places that don't take AMEX or travel spending where I earn 2x or more miles.

* A business Visa credit card for the business my wife owns.

The other cards I'd carry if I wasn't annoyed by a thick wallet are:

* A Costco AMEX that gives me extra cashback at Costco.

* A couple store-specific Visa cards that give me nice benefits at stores where I shop at least semi-regularly.

* A work credit card for my work.

I'm a bit of a miles/cashback junkie, but I'll bet many people have at least a few cards they'd like to consolodate. The average American family has 8.

Like I said in another comment, I'd be thrilled if I could replace all those with one card, and I'd be happy to pay what Plastc is asking if it worked. But the most likely scenario I see for that happening is mobile payments a'la ApplePay.

<comment><USER50> I'm not a junkie, but I still have three cards:

One I use for everything, until their idiotic fraud department is confused as to how I'm spending money in Chicago after taking a flight to Chicago I bought with that card.

Another I use as a backup, for this situation.

Debit card, for extracting paper money from ATM machines.

<comment><USER26> Oh yeah - I totally forgot about my debit card. So I guess I carry 4 and would carry at least 8 without space constraints.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Lot of comments here is how Apple pay will rule. But not everybody can or want to buy iPhone. Or even expensive Android with NFC... That is why I think Coin and Plastc - if little cheaper may be succesfull. I usually have 2-3 debt cards, one credit card and I have few bonus cards for different stores - <USER2> I do not take with me, because I like small wallet. This solves my problem.

<comment><USER67> > But not everybody can or want to buy iPhone. Or even expensive Android with > NFC...

You can't afford an expensive phone, but you can afford to spend $155 for the convenience of not carrying around 3-4 additional cards?

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> Really cool, but I can't help but think this is too little too late. With Apple Pay set to launch this month, this feels lackluster.

</comment><comment><USER69> I hate to be so cynical, but product names nowadays are bordering on parody. And what's with the poor special effects in the background video? The e-ink display doesn't even line up with the card when it moves! You'd think they'd put just a little more work into that, since it's the first thing people see.

</comment><comment><USER70> Looks interesting. Was thinking of waiting until a v2 just to let them work through security issues. Seems like the website itself has some front-end glitches - like the "About" page for example (this code visible: <?php if( extension_loaded('newrelic') ) { echo newrelic_get_browser_timing_header(); } ?>)

<comment><USER31> Sorry yeah my bad, was in the middle of re-writing git history when this got pushed, took a few minutes to revert :) No security problems on frontend, in fact it was the parser protections which kicked in, preventing <?php from parsing etc.

<comment><USER70> Cool thanks - like the website and glad to hear you fixed it so quickly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> I think something like this should replace credit cards used today (or at least having it as an option seeing the price). Authentication on the card could be extremely useful and secure. They should ditch the magnetic stripe tho, it's completely insecure, use only the chip.

Situations: 1) someone steals your pin code (there are overlay devices for ATMs, could happen), after that they steal your card (they can't clone it since it does not have a magnetic stripe). They can't use it since it has locked itself (default state being locked, unlock before transactions).

2) Buy something online, specify that you buy with plastc, it guides you to a challenge response authentication page. Type the challenge in the card, type back the response to the page. They hack the site, get every credit card info and your money on your bank account remains safe.

</comment><comment><USER72> Cool at first glance but I do have skeptical questions:

(1) Durability was my biggest question -- how much flex and bend can this thing survive? How about being chewed on by a toddler, put through the washer and dryer (high heat), taken into a hot tub by mistake, dropped and stepped on with hard-sole shoes, etc.

(2) Ditto the other skeptical questions re: chip and pin.

(3) How big is the niche for this? I mean, I only have one debit card I use routinely and one credit card I use rarely. Carrying two plastic cards is not that big of a deal. I wouldn't pay $155 just to merge them into one card that can run out of battery power.

(4) Speaking of recharge... now there's another device I need to plug in or otherwise mate with some kind of charger? No thanks.

</comment><comment><USER73> The moment they said "you recharge it" I closed the video

<comment><USER74> What were you expecting?

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> Like a lot of my fellow news hacker I preordered coin and was still waiting for it until today. Today I asked a refund. Between Apple Pay, Bitcoins and all the other payments technologies coming up I'm less and less convinced that my problem is to carry 2 cards in my wallet. I realized that my problem is to have to carry a wallet. I might end up buying the Coin or this fancy Plastc, but really I don't need it at all.

</comment><comment><USER76> Does anyone else get the idea this is just a turbo-charged horse and buggy? Have they actually done market research beyond "oh that's cool" to "I actually have pain pulling out a separate card?"

It seems like they are making an age-old start-up mistake. Swift death to the founders so they can move on to something far more interesting than a re- imagined credit card.

</comment><comment><USER77> With chip & pin (and the October 2015 deadline for the US to switch to chip & pin) this is awesome, and might actually make it up to Canada, where we've moved onto NFC and chip & pin.

I have a sneaky feeling that Coin's long radio silence and pushed ship dates are them re-engineering to have chip & pin at launch.

</comment><comment><USER78> How does Chip and Pin work? Do they cut your existing card's out? I very much doubt they can clone the Chip..

</comment><comment><USER79> All this money being spent on magstripes. Let's just move to chip and pin (coming Oct 2015) and move on.

</comment><comment><USER80> This looks kind of neat, but the mere idea of needing to charge my credit card seems kind of ludicrous.

</comment><comment><USER5> Reprogrammable stripes have been around for a while, and while this is a more attractive implementation the new EMV rollout (accelerated likely by the recent card breaches) will make this impractical. You can't reprogram an EMV.

</comment><comment><USER81> I do agree that the process of selecting a card on the device is a bit more tedious than just pulling one of my 3 cards out. But the idea of having less bulk in my wallet - or - not caring one at all is pretty exciting.

</comment><comment><USER82> As someone who frequently travels all over Africa, I would want a secure password on this. If this card gets stolen without such a password it would mean the thieves can empty out several of my cc accounts.

<comment><USER83> If they don't mess up the implementation then it would appear to be _more_ secure than traditional cards. Especially in places like Africa (I assume) and the US where Chip and Pin has yet to be rolled out.

I appreciate the point you're making in that stealing this one card is equivalent to stealing a whole wallet-full. But isn't it usually the case that you lose the whole wallet in one go?

<comment><USER84> Actually, according to this worldwide map of card and terminal EMV deployment, Africa/ME had chip & pin tech, as of Q4 2013, in 38.9% of cards and 86.3% of terminals.

[http://www.emvco.com/images/EMVCo_WorldMap-9-2014.png](http://www.emvco.com/images/EMVCo_WorldMap-9-2014.png)

The other regions are:

(Region/percentage of cards/percentage of terminals)

Americas (excluding USA): 54.2 84.7 Europe: 81.6 99.9 Australasia: 17.4 71.7 Russia: 24.4 91.2

<comment><USER83> That's fantastic! Thanks for the information and apologies for making assumptions (dangerous things!).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> I still prefer American cash. Besides, half the places in SF are cash only.

</comment><comment><USER86> A little bit off-topic: Would it make sense to use something like this for GPG? It feels safer than fingerprint to me and it's definitely better than those smart card readers that with keypads.

</comment><comment><USER87> If the card presented by the customer can show the picture and signature for authentication, my hacked plastc will show my picture and signature along with my fraudulent magstripe.

It's security theater...

</comment><comment><USER88> If your bank allows generation of one-time-use temporary CC numbers, you could load this up with a bunch of them, and have any fraud be limited to the number you have left unused. Cool!

</comment><comment><USER89> What is the difference between plastc and Coin? And why would I use this over Apple pay?

Will retails at the mall accept these cards? Usually the bigger chains are picky about credit/debt cards.

</comment><comment><USER90> These all-in-one cards are expensive, and in an awkward space between traditional plastic cards and technologies like Apple Pay and Google Wallet.

I really can't see these things taking off.

</comment><comment><USER91> Am I the only one who thinks their use of the e-ink display is super friggin' cool? I'm personally not aware of may other use cases beyond e-readers.

<comment><USER92> Google "smartphone e-ink case", there seem to be a few of these. Very cool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER93> I am leery of pre-ordering unproven but fancy looking items given the history of many kickstarter projects. I would love to buy one if they actually make one.

</comment><comment><USER94> I don't think I want to charge my card every night. That seems to render the added convenience invalid. Also, not a viable option for traveling.

</comment><comment><USER95> I had to check if it was april fools.

No way you could make something as thin as a real credit card do all this in 2015 and have a battery, etc.

Maybe by 2020, but not yet.

</comment><comment><USER96> I love it, if they steal this card they stole all my cards, even the ones not in my wallet. Yey. Now I get to cancel them ALL.

</comment><comment><USER97> I feel this product would just be a short stopover until mobile payments start to gain traction.

</comment><comment><USER98> Product description describes remotely wiping from your mobile phone ...

How do they propose doing that ?

<comment><USER99> It appears that your data is stored on your phone. So I think that the sentence "Completely wipe your card data from your phone." doesn't mean that you will remotely delete data from your lost card using your phone but delete data from your lost phone using some other device. But yeah, it is very ambiguous.

<comment><USER100> From reading the front page and only blog post, I gathered it is paired with bluetooth to your phone, and you set a timeout before self-destruct.

So if you set an hour, if your card hasn't been paired with your phone in over an hour it can erase itself. The phone probably rewrites the data as soon as it identifies the card again and the pin is entered.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER101> so, my main question is where would I source the ble chip that is this thin? I know its probably just a rendering to test the market but it would be nice to be able to source some of the supposed parts in this thing.

</comment><comment><USER102> Am I the only person here who still prefers to carry a wallet and pay with cash?

<comment><USER103> I hate cash and can't wait until it's gone forever. I hate wasting time getting it out of the bank, I hate having to make sure I have enough at all times, I hate the crappy little coins I get back in change, I hate not being able to track where my money went easily.

</comment></comment><comment><USER104> I find the promotional video incredibly well made. Anyone know who made it?

</comment><comment><USER105> I really doubt the future of replacing cards is a smarter card :)

</comment><comment><USER106> Look, everyone! Cool tech in need of an actual problem to solve.

</comment><comment><USER107> Put my credit card on charge ? Really ? No, I'm out.

</comment><comment><USER108> Plastc is using an open-source checkout: [https://github.com/airbrite/diy- checkout](https://github.com/airbrite/diy-checkout)

</comment><comment><USER109> Sweet Jesus that was an annoying promo video.

</comment><comment><USER110> bah you have to charge your this? Who in their right mind wants to add another device to their charging mix. epic fail.

</comment><comment><USER111> So.... this is just Coin, but with e-ink?

<comment><USER112> Well, I briefly scanned through some of the comments here, one thing I didn't see mentioned was the fact Coin is not rechargeable, once it's dead, you are required to buy a new Coin.

Apparently according to plastic, it is rechargeable, therefore once you buy it, you never have to buy another. Another interesting point was it's wireless rechargeable from the video, which is interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER113> To good to be true.

</comment><comment><USER110> it's craptastic!

</comment><comment><USER114> Looks pretty rad!

</comment><comment><USER115> smells fishy

</comment><comment><USER102> Where's the "i" in plas--- oooh, I get it.

</comment><comment><USER48> Totally unrelated, but the model from the Facial Authentication video has beautiful oceans for eyes making everyone want to drown in them...</comment>


Cloudkick (YC W09) raises another $2M - <AUTHOR> http://deals.venturebeat.com/2010/04/28/cloudkick-funding/

<comment><USER2> I find it really annoying that these tech news sites (read TechCrunch) never link to the company. Always to crunchbase or in this case some silly twitter search about Cloudkick.

Anyway, they do seem to have pretty good coverage for the major providers (<https://www.cloudkick.com/providers/>) Anyone used their service in production?

<comment><USER3> Lots of YC funded startups use them. Everyone seems happy with the service.

<comment><USER2> Cool. I am pretty excited about this idea: <https://www.cloudkick.com/hybrid- cloudkick>

<comment><USER4> They are doing a webinar with live demo tomorrow: [https://cc.readytalk.com/cc/schedule/display.do?udc=5qtmfxkb...](https://cc.readytalk.com/cc/schedule/display.do?udc=5qtmfxkbz297)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is the first time I've seen Cloudkick, and it looks amazing. I love watching companies that enable other companies to focus on their end product instead of all of the technical operations surrounding their end product. Congrats on your recent round, and it will be fun watching your feature set grow.

</comment><comment><USER6> Go Polvi!</comment>


Show HN: Bill Skip: Delay Paying Any Bill for 6 Months - <AUTHOR> https://billskip.com/ <comment><USER2> On Chrome on OS X at least, this webpage seems to be using jankyscroll.js [http://zweig.co/jankyscroll/](http://zweig.co/jankyscroll/)

You might want to look into if any Javascript is interfering with the scrolling.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, thanks for spotting this!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> We got a few "test submissions" from the HN community already which is great lol. But we can't pay a bill if your name is HJSKLAL haha

For anyone who submitted a test it would be awesome to get your feedback on the flow and product in general!

</comment><comment><USER3> You probably should put a prominent notice somewhere that this is not endorsed or affiliated with paypal (unless it is). If it isn't, the "powered by paypal" at the top is a bit misleading I think.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good thought, maybe we'll revise to say "secure transactions via PayPal" or the like.

Thanks for your suggestion!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Saw this on Product Hunt :) what is your twitter username to add you as a maker?

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome! It's @highintent. Totally didn't know that we are on there so I'll head over and answer comments their as well. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why not just sign up for PayPal Credit directly?

<comment><AUTHOR> @heydonovan thanks for the comment! A couple of reasons. First most billers do not accept paypal so there is no way to use it to pay a bill. Second, the "no interest/no payments" special financing is not available for cash advances using PayPal Credit (i.e. if you pay yourself). So Bill Skip is the only way to use that promo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Pretty cool guys

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! We're really trying to help people deal with tight financial times. The 4% fee is lower then credit cards, payday loans, auto title loans, etc.

<comment><USER7> ...well, it's low assuming that the person pays back on time. I'd expect that a fair number of people will use the service because they are in financial trouble, and some of those will then find 6 months later that they are still in trouble and won't be able to pay you back. It looks like those people will face a bit more than 4%:

> If you do not pay in full within the 6 month period, interest (Annual > Percentage Rate is 19.99%. Minimum interest charge is $2.00) will be > calculated from the posting date (which is usually within a few days after > the purchase date) and will be billed to your account.

It will be interesting to see how this business ends up being perceived. I can see it going two ways. If most of your customers end up being people who just need a little help with a bill now and then and are able to pay in six months and so only incur the 4% rate, I think this will be perceived as an innovative and useful service.

If a lot of customers turn out to be people who are in more serious difficulty and many cannot make the six month deadline and so get hit with the 19.99% annual rate, expect a firestorm of criticism accusing you of exploiting the poor.

I'm curious about the legal aspects of this. In most states with usury laws, 19.9% is above the limit, although there may be exceptions for specific types of loans or for specific types of businesses. Have you done your legal homework on all this and obtained any required licenses and so on, or is this one of those "disrupt first, try to satisfy the regulators later" kinds of business?

<comment><AUTHOR> Great thoughts tzs, thanks for this comment. We're hoping to perceived as being helpful. We think it's pretty transparent and we also send users monthly reminders advising them to pay at least 1/6 of their bill each month.

In terms of your last question it's definitely disrupt first! However we did consult a lawyer who thinks we might be ok as PayPal Credit is licensed throughout the U.S. But we'll see!</comment></comment></comment></comment>