Ask HN:paying customers but annoying co-founder: should I stay or go - <AUTHOR> I have a non-tech co-founder. I handle everything technical, he handles the rest
(including support, website maintenance, basic business stuff,...)
The guy is very stubborn and/or lacks communication skills.
I has happened that I asked him 3 times in the same email conversation 'did you read X', without him saying 'yes I did' or give any other indication that he read what I said or asked. Or that I tell him 'please make sure you do X or it won't work' and then he emails me back "it doesn't work", where after a couple of mails back/forth it turns out he just didn't do X. Or keeps on asking for a feature he would like but no one else would probably use. After 10 mails he seems to understand why I won't implement it, but 3 days later he asks for the same feature again.
He also takes pride in maintaining our site, but he has no feeling for design or anything, making our site look like it's the 90's on geocities all over again (without the moving homer simpson head). We've had customers tell us our site sucks.
I feel like I'm wasting my time. Which I hate.
We have a number of paying customers: enough to pay the bills, but by far not enough to pay us (still have day-time jobs and a family to feed).
I'm contemplating if it would be better to just drop the project, find another co-founder I'm on the same wavelength with or go solo and start something else. I'm a big advocate for building a working throw-away prototype before building the real deal. So maybe it's good to regard this project as such: a throw-away prototype of a startup and learn from my mistakes. I'd throw away years of work, but I gained a lot of knowledge and experience.
But it might be stupid to just leave things at this stage, seeing that we have a working product which people are willing to pay for. Which, as far as I understand, is a stage a lot of startup projects don't even reach?
What would you do? <comment><USER2> You'll want to read business books and consult a lawyer. Figure out what your options are. Dissolve the company, buy him out, get bought out, etc. A lawyer can best advise you on these matters, also did you assign your IP to the company? If not as others have suggested, just change the name on the door as the code is yours (or, your employers if you didn't get that sorted out). Also, consult a lawyer as there may be implicit agreements present, or legal obligations you are unaware of.

Don't cut and run just because you are the tech guy and he is the biz guy. Figure out the business side of things and get the guy out of YOUR company. It's not going to be the first time you'll have to get someone out of your company who has equity. This is a valuable opportunity to learn how to do this.

If your site sucks, change it. I assume as tech guy you've got control of the DNS records?

Stop asking for permission, and start taking control of your life and your business.

<comment><USER3> You're jumping the gun here. Two prerequisites must be met before you consult a lawyer:

1\. You've exhausted all other options; and

2\. You decided that what you're fighting for has enough monetary value to justify the time and money you'll spend exploring and pursuing legal remedy.

Of course it's worth knowing your position. If you have no contract it's a mess. If you don't have founder vesting it's a mess. He can walk away with half but then again so can you.

You can take the lack of such formalities as pretext: say to your cofounder you meed some structure. Say you need founder vesting and clear division of responsibilities. Make yourself CEO and then you can decide who designs the website. If necessary you can fire him then (without cause he'll still end up with a piece but that can be better than half).

Or simply talk to him about your grievances and concerns.

If those conversations fail just wAlk away.

<comment><USER4> _1\. You've exhausted all other options; and_

Many times it's worth consulting a lawyer earlier rather than later, as such a consultation can do all sorts of things for you - eliminate options you might have otherwise wasted time pursuing, illuminate options you weren't aware of, and also keep you from making any mistakes that could come back to hurt you later.

That last point is most important and most overlooked by non-lawyers, I think. I've learned from friends who have learned the hard way that in disputes like this involving money or business, it's crucial you know the applicable law from the outset and adhere to it, even if you only intend a legal solution as the absolute last resort.

If it does come to that, your case is strongly bolstered in court if you can show that you were aware of the applicable law and diligently followed it from the outset. For example, if your adversary in court broke the law, and then you broke it too to counteract him, the court will look unfavorably on both. Two wrongs do not make a right, especially in the eyes of courts. So it's worth positioning yourself from the beginning of any such dispute as completely in compliance with legal requirements.

If you don't know what those requirements are, an early consultation with a lawyer could be valuable.

PS - it's also less stressful to simply rely on the law to guide your decisions in this uncharted territory, rather than trying to make it up as you go. Don't reinvent the wheel here, instead leverage the hundreds/thousands of years of codified dispute resolution and legal theory.

<comment><USER3> I guess my point is that you want to avoid a situation where your cofounder is an "adversary".

<comment><USER4> Yes absolutely. Solve the problem by anticipating it and completely avoiding it > all. Unfortunately the OP appears past that point.

<comment><USER3> Not necessarily. His cofounder may simply be oblivious to his level of concern. Until he's sat down and said "I'm not happy with A, B and C and if I can't get satisfactory resolution I'm going to have to stop doing this" (perhaps leave out the ultimatum part at first) then it's premature to either fight or run.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > _I has happened that I asked him 3 times in the same email conversation 'did > you read X', without him saying 'yes I did' or give any other indication > that he read what I said or asked. Or that I tell him 'please make sure you > do X or it won't work' and then he emails me back "it doesn't work", where > after a couple of mails back/forth it turns out he just didn't do X._

That is normal. Basically 90% of non-nerds, and 50% of nerds, do that a lot. Get used to it. Get over it. You aren't going to be able to only do business with people who think in the same detail-oriented way that you (and I) do.

As annoying as it is, you should not make your decision based on that. What you need to consider is: what does he bring to the table? Can he effectively do something that brings substantial value to the company? If he can pull his weight for making a profit, then it doesn't matter if he's not as smart as you.

<comment><USER6> Astonished that this was voted down:

> what does he bring to the table?

is a very good question I didn't notice anyone else asking.

You talk about the negatives, and seem to _imply_ there aren't many positives, but are there any?

Another thing I didn't notice anyone else saying, is maybe you could take a cooling out period. Back away for a little bit (tell him you're doing this of course) and see what happens and how you feel if you get a little "space" for a week or two. I bet you'll get some clarity about what you want to do, one way or the other.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Run.

Been there, done that. (I didn't run soon enough)

The heart-to-heart stuff is nice and warm for about a week. If you have been having problems for a long while, trust your senses and leave before you are more heavily invested.

Remember all those books/articles/posts about how having a great co-founder is important. (Anyone got good quotes for this ?)

<comment><USER8> I've heard so many breakup stories recently that I'm starting to believe in many cases it's less risky to not have a co-founder and just get to the point where you can hire people.

<comment><USER9> I concur - it's worse than being married.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'll be the contrarian...

As a techie you have to take a step back and ask yourself: are my expectations like a programmer or like a person? People aren't machines and partnerships are usually far from perfect at first.

Being inexperienced, your partner is not going to grasp (and hold on to) X-tech concept as quickly as a veteran like yourself. It also sounds like he is wearing a lot of hats (on top of family and day job) so his attention could be very divided.

It may not be time to pay yourselves, but it may be time to consider outsourcing stuff that neither of you can manage - such as the website redesign.

</comment><comment><USER11> Throwaway account, since I don't want to link this to my real name. But: Leave. Your feelings will only get stronger, and it will be harder to leave if things seem to go better business wise. But you can't ignore your feelings, and will only get unhappier with the situation.. I did, and am happy I left, only should have done it earlier.

</comment><comment><USER12> It sounds like a lot of passive aggression on both sides.

Here's your problem - he thinks he's the boss, and you think you are the boss.

He asks you to implement a feature. You don't think it's a good idea. You both give each other a bunch of reasons why. He ends the conversation with "OK, it's sounds like it's a bad idea then". He retreats for a while, then decides to go another three rounds.

My S.O. and I have similar conversations, though it's usually about tech vs. clothing purchases. Who wants to spend 1000 on a sweater? A DSLR lens is a much better purchase. Anyway ...

The point is, you have unaligned goals or unaligned strategies for reaching those goals. As you've said, you aren't on the same wavelength. That's not really unhealthy - sometimes other people are right when they disagree with you. Sometimes not.

You have two options (IMO):

* You both have to agree that you trust each-other, but you are aware that you disagree at times (due to your separate skill sets, expectations, etc). You both have to work to minimize the impact of the quibbling, and you need mechanisms to help you here - most companies have minute books to record decisions for this very reason.

* Split.

</comment><comment><USER13> You're still very early in the project. You have paying customers, but it sounds like that's more-or-less just covering hosting costs, etc. You have a long way to go if you're going to turn this into a real business that makes you rich. A long way to go where you'll be working with this guy and splitting your profits with this guy.

Talk to him about your concerns and see if you can work something out. But if you have any doubt that he's the right cofounder for you (which it sounds like you still will after talking to him), get out now. The longer you wait, the more it'll feel like you should just stick it out because of how much work you've already done and how well it's going.

But though it may feel like things are going great right now, you really haven't invested that much time in this, and you don't want to spend 5 years with a cofounder that you don't feel is pulling his weight. If you don't think you can spend 5 years working with this guy, get out now.

</comment><comment><USER14> Pure business cofounders always seems to me as a wrong choice. MBA guys generally don't understand what goes into coding; they see tech guys as replaceable robots. I tried so far to work on friends projects or have friends working on my project with no success when the guy is pure MBA; most of the time project won't event take off.

I will say you are deep in it, you should fight and try to acquire more control and swing things your way.

</comment><comment><USER15> You really should be talking face-to-face as much as possible and I do not understand why you are sending e-mails in the first place. It sounds like you two live and work far away from each other and in that case I believe you are doomed anyhow.

But yea just leave, a conflict like this just gets worse and worse. Specially when one of the parties in the conflict doesn't realize there is one. If you really believe in this business you could always take in outside help but I believe that is your only chance to fix the actual issue.

If you aren't prepared to do that, run.

<comment><USER16> IMO, In this particular case, face-to-face discussions will make the matter worse.

The co-founder doesn't READ his emails/IMs let alone remembering what has been discussed.

<comment><USER17> Newsflash. Nobody reads (I mean really reads) e-mails. Get used to it.

<comment><USER16> Are you saying that I was doing it the wrong way the whole time? :D

I mean, you really can't make that a rule. I read (and re-read) important mails, I guess I'm not the only one, am I ?

<comment><USER18> Of course you're not the only one who reads his emails. JabavuAdams is FOS as far as I'm concerned. I've been a developer for almost two decades and I always read my emails -- CAREFULLY.

In fact I have every client agree with me from the beginning that our emails serve as the written terms our agreements when we both agree in writing. And I ask them to always save every email they send me and every email they receive from me, so that we will both have a written trail of correspondence to refer to when (not if) there are any misunderstandings.

This system has served me well for many many years, so for someone to make an all-encompassing claim that no one reads emails is just plain ridiculous.

<comment><USER17> Come on, do you seriously believe that I'm arguing that 0 people read e-mails?

What I was trying to convey is that you'll constantly be surprised at the number of intelligent, educated, detail-oriented people who did not in fact read what you wrote.

If you optimize your communications to assume this, you will become a better communicator.

EDIT> There's another important subtext here. I've often seen the following pattern: developer is confronted with user behaviour, but continues to talk about "I do this, I do that", rather than internalizing that others do not do as he does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Have you directly brought these issues to his attention? If you haven't...

I'd list the items that are bothering you most and how'd you like to have them resolved. Maybe run it by a trusted friend - someone who will be directly honest with you. Then, break the list into two categories - can live with it and can't live with it. For the former, make like a duck - let them roll off your back. Just shrug your shoulders, roll your eyes, and say 'Oh that <cofounder name> is silly'. For the later, I'd look to directly address your partner in a manner that is meaningful to him. If you come to some consensus, set ways to monitor it to see if things are improving.

After this, you will have accomplished 2 things. One, you took ownership of the situation in a mature and constructive manner. This helps, especially if things don't work out, since you know you gave it your best (read: less regrets). Two, you'll have a better idea of how likely things are to improve.

If you have done this and things are not working, then look at the options. Is it worth sticking it out? If not, list your options. Often times, the black and white options (quit cold turkey and stick it out) are not the best. Consider options like decreasing your role, decreasing his, bringing in a third party (e.g. a design guy), having distinct boundaries of responsibilities, or you taking over the design element.

If it is time to part ways, I'm sure you'll do it in a professional manner that doesn't burn bridges.

Best wishes.

</comment><comment><USER20> It doesn't sound like this is the right co-founder and if you have any inclination that this is the case at this early stage of the company then do something about it NOW.

Aside from the personality issues it doesn't sound like he's bringing enough to the table to help your company elevate to where it needs to be - that's business and in addressing this you might get better mileage using this as the grounds for action because they are explicit and practical.

"You can't keep the site looking the way users want it" and "You don't have the product development skills needed as you are raising feature ideas that are not being asked" are all explicit issues you can use. "I don't like the way you communicate" is not, even if that is _really_ the issue.

I would be VERY careful about dissolving the company and then taking IP with you to a new company, as others have suggested. He would be in his right to lay claim to his share of the IP.

There are ways around that however. Getting the company to grant each of you a non-exclusive perpetual right to the technology, then dissolving the business, then you going off and setting a new business with it is one way (that also lets him do the same, with a new co-founder perhaps, so be confident he won't be successful).

But you MUST see a lawyer (retained personally, not on the business of course)

</comment><comment><USER21> Sounds like you do a lot of emailing. Email is a tough way to communicate. Have you considered trying another medium? (chat, texting, phone calls....etc.)

</comment><comment><USER22> From the sounds of it, do you even need him? Seems like something you can get an employee to do, and for cheaper.

</comment><comment><USER23> Judge if your other co-founder brings value in terms of the business network with potential markets, partners or investors. If you feel that he is needed for the business to function then you should probably be looking to outsource the website. Since you have paying customers for your project, you can do a simple A/B test by announcing that you are going to release the feature in question and provide a sign up/ i am interested form. You can tell be the number of customers who would be interested in the feature versus your existing customer base.

If you genuinely feel that the non-tech co-founder is not bringing enough value to the table, you must probably be looking at buying out part or whole of the stake. However, I suggest that you get knowledge of the other aspects of the business such as accounting, tax filing norms and such. Most of the other stuff, you can find others to handle for you without parting with your equity.

</comment><comment><USER24> You already have the technical aspect down. So disband the project, find a better co-founder and simply restart the same thing anew. You can be up and running in a fraction of the time.

Basically, do what Arrington did with Calacanis (with regards to running the TechCrunch conference).

</comment><comment><USER25> "What would you do?"

First I would get on his case, tell him the website needs to be updated because the service will not grow into a real business in its current 1990s design. Show him websites that I feel are a good standard and what I expect our site to be like. If he can't do that then it is the wrong partnership for me.

I would stop working on the project(in relation to his ideas/feedback/requests), tell him I need the website updated a few decades or I'm on my way.

and then plan do the whole thing on my own while keeping an eye out for another co-founder with some technical ability aswell as business interests.

\</comment><comment>-----

You should take the positives out of this project in its current state. You have the technical side down and you know you can get customers to pay for the service.

</comment><comment><USER26> Have you sat down and had a heart-to-heart with him? Cover all these points. I think his response will be a better indicator of whether you should stay or leave.

</comment><comment><USER27> Talk with a few advisors and lawyers individually, and then if you still don't have a clear idea, maybe meet with some advisors/lawyers with both of you in the room.

If all else fails, I'd re-write the business plan in terms of who does what. What are you good at? What aren't you good at? If he has a bad sense of design, maybe he shouldn't be handling that aspect, etcetera.

With that said, I hope that all goes well and that this startup succeeds!

</comment><comment><USER28> I think this is a typical 'go with your heart' situation. If your gut feeling tells you you're not enjoying it for such and such annoying reasons it is a clear sign that its not the best thing for you. In these situations ending is better than mending. That is because mending will take up your time only to have you end up in a marginally better condition. If you feel this is the case start from scratch.

</comment><comment><USER29> I was in a similar situation but with a much more competent partner. But for different reasons we just weren't headed in the same direction.

I said hey, here is a deal I am happy with. I am happy to be on either side of this deal, because it is fair.

Not sure how much I can talk about it, but it had to do with one partner getting the company and the other getting an X percent royalty for Y years.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for all the advice and different point of views. I though I'd be lucky to get 1 or 2 responses. I hadn't expected more than 40. It sure offers some food for thought.

Some people said: live with it, people don't read their email. Well, I send at least 20 mails a day at the daytime job, and I know quite well how much the average person reads from your mail and that when you ask a direct question, it usually gets answered. I've also seen the same email issues with customers.

What does he bring to the table? Well, basically he handles all things I prefer not to. Does he bring something unique that can't be replaced? No. It's pretty hard to find someone who wants to be an entrepreneur though and who wants to put in hard work that might make a profit later. For me it seems to be an almost impossible task to find someone who wants to be an entrepreneur, that is a complement to my skills, who I get along with and is fairly local to me.

I know lots of competent people, but none of them are interested in becoming an entrepreneur unfortunately.

I know from experience though that when working solo, once the fun technical part is over, it's too easy to find another interesting technology or idea and start hacking at that. I've got several of such unfinished projects. That's a big motivator for me to get a co-founder.

Concerning that it seems that we both like to be boss: well, we both have a management function (during the daytime job) where we need to coordinate/steer people. We both are used to being right.

I don't want to bring any lawyers to the table though and I don't want to just run with the project and leave him in the cold (although I could). I wouldn't want him to do that to me, so I won't do that to him. I also know that this would make me feel too guilty, which isn't worth it.

I thought having a working product and paying customers is pretty much, but the comments on here have made me realize that this is just the beginning. Which is it, we'd have to grow the number of paying customer at least 10-fold to be able to replace our current income from the daytime job.

Basically I've decided to give it 1 month and then re-evaluate. I'm planning on putting all issues in a notebook or file somewhere together with the date, because I tend to concentrate fully on work and family and forget about what happened when. Sort of a diary, to get a better view on things.

Thanks for all the advice and insight!

<comment><USER30> Listen, if he's your partner and he's doing the stuff you don't want to do and you have paying customers, it seems to me it's worth trying to salvage over the next month. If your partner is doing more harm than good in certain aspects, why not agree that you need to formalise those aspects to accelerate growth, and then do it in a way that actually helps him not screw up?

For example: you say your website is a mess. If he can make it ugly, then he has too much control. Move to a CMS with a tight templating system and eliminate this pain point. If he's making repeat (and poor) feature requests, move to a formal feature request system with upvoting and make it public. Then you can point out that a particular feature has no user support. If you're answering the same questions over and over, institute an internal helpdesk system and just refer him to the answered, closed tickets and the search when he re-asks.

Basically, look at it as a management issue. The human factor is always going to be an issue no matter what startup you pursue; if you lack the soft skills to deal with it well, a systems approach might take you 80% of where you need to go until you've expanded enough to bring in another person who's designated job it is to take responsibility for these decisions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> If you are looking for boolean answer: GO

What's the point in staying in a company where you are not happy (in this case because of cofounder). You can either resolve the issue or separate and start something of your own.

</comment><comment><USER32> Talking to your co-founder will not help, from what you have written seems like he has a personality issue and this will take a long time to correct......you first have to get him to accept the issue is with him. My advice would be to be smart, put personal feelings and emotions aside and try to engineer a way to get him out of the company or you and the company away from him. Time is so precious, you can't waste it on someone not ready/mature enough for the start up world yet, especially when you have a family.

<comment><USER33> Be careful-- We all know from experience that there's two sides to every story. The other guy's perspective could just as easily make it appear as if the OP has the personality issue.

The truth is that every founder is different and every one of them has issues. The successful team is going to be able to compensate for each other's weaknesses.

The key here is to really step up the communication-- if you do that and still nothing works out, I'd say only then start the plan to leave.

The day you believe in your heart of hearts that you did your best, but it wasn't enough to compensate, then you've fulfilled your obligation to the partner. I don't sense the OP has yet tried his true best-- or else he'd know there isn't more he could do to make it work.

Would you want him to bail/cut-out on you because he felt like you two couldn't communicate? At least without coming to you first to figure out a way to improve the communication issues?

<comment><USER32> "The day you believe in your heart of hearts that you did your best"

Sometimes when u wait that long, the opportunity has been taken by someone else, you running out of money or your customer's are just too frustrated with your business. I believe that you are correct that stepping up communication is important but we also have to keep in mind that time is money. My advice would be to put a time frame on it and if the issue is not solved start executing your plan. Also always remember that the health of the business comes first.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Tell him you're leaving, and offer him (as an alternative) to buy him out for a low price.

</comment><comment><USER35> Could you potentially buy him out? Just replace him.

</comment><comment><USER36> If you decide to go solo or drop the project (so as to not have to worry about buying out your partner, or maybe because you're over this one and want to move on), have you considered selling the company?

I'm interested in hearing more about the company and would consider buying it. You can contact me via email on about.me/sir

(ps. I'd probably want to hire you back ;))</comment>


Robotic suit gives shipyard workers super strength - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22329803.900-robotic-suit-gives-shipyard-workers-super-strength.html#.U9_rW_ldVu0

<comment><USER2> _" At the time, most of the yards we toured were significantly more advanced in robotic welding than the US yards performing naval ship construction, and had been for a long time," Gene Mitchell, the retired US Navy officer who led the research told New Scientist._

That's depressing. I don't know why many US industrial firms seem so slow to do their own training, but instead complain about a shortage of skilled workers. There's not much point in spending a lot of money training in some highly specialized area like heavy robotics if you don't know where the demand is.

<comment><USER3> Commercial shipbuilding in the US has long sailed. The industry leaders are now Japan, South Korea, and China. Nobody in the US is even trying to keep up, because there's no way to compete with the cheap labor force and efficient yards of those countries. For the most part, the only ships still being built in the US are for the military.

<comment><USER4> I was shocked to hear this so I did some research. As it turns out, it has a lot to do with foreign subsidies, similar to solar power.

Apparently up until 1981, the US had the Construction differential subsidy program [1][2] that subsided shipbuilding construction. During the Regan administration, the US eliminated subsidies whereas countries in Asia did not. Now the top 10 shipbuilding countries are in China, Korea, or Japan [3][4].

Outside of a few exceptions, such as a 1920 law forcing US-based natural gas to only be transported on American made/manned ships [5], the US shipbuilding industry has one customer: the military. Without additional subsidies it's unlikely the US can effectively compete with places like China, which continue to increase subsidies for shipbuilders [6].

In this political climate (especially post-Solyndra, post ethanol-subsidy) I think it's unlikely the federal government would increase subsidies for a private industry. On one hand, this might not be a bad thing: Chinese- subsidized industries don't always work out the way they planned (e.g., the construction of ghost towns). However if the military doesn't keep the industry up-to-date technologically, a shipbuilding tech gap could form, which might impact national security.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Range_Shipbuilding_Program](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Range_Shipbuilding_Program)

[2] [http://www.marinelink.com/article/shipbuilding/the-future- am...](http://www.marinelink.com/article/shipbuilding/the-future-american- shipbuilding-805)

[3] [http://www.marineinsight.com/marine/marine- news/headline/top...](http://www.marineinsight.com/marine/marine- news/headline/top-10-shipbuilding-companies-in-the-world-in-2012/)

[4] [http://thediplomat.com/2012/11/u-s-navy-take-notice-china- is...](http://thediplomat.com/2012/11/u-s-navy-take-notice-china-is-becoming- a-world-class-military-shipbuilder/)

[5] [http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/09/20/boom-in-natural-gas- pro...](http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/09/20/boom-in-natural-gas-production- sends-us-shipyards-into-overdrive/)

[6] [http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/09/us-china- shipping-...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/09/us-china-shipping- idUSBRE9B80Q320131209)

<comment><USER5> You're completely right.

The U.S. is so far ahead of the rest of the world in almost all defense technologies that it's a hard pill to swallow politically that there could be one relatively-small segment (non-nuclear surface warships) that we'd be better off actually buying from our closest allies.

We export so much defense equipment to our allies, that you'd think it would be okay to maybe possibly import one thing that's built better and cheaper elsewhere. But no, we'd rather subsidize our shipyards to continue churning out ships designed in the 1980s...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think this is an amazing and inevitable outcome. However, sort of disappointed by the 60 kilo max. I feel like these suits need to be an ordwr of magnitude better than humans to be viable. There are certainly people who can lift 125lb objects. I understand that fatigue and uniformity factor in, but it will be great to see 300lb+ suits

<comment><USER7> That's overengineering--being able to consistently lift 60-100 kg. would be quite useful.

<comment><USER6> Right. That was sort of my point, I understand it is useful to consistently lift and move heavy stiff without fatiguing oneself. I think if you were to improve it to say, 250kg it would fit a lot more usecases. Overengineering, in my opinion, would be asking for an iron man suit.

<comment><USER8> I suspect that when you get up to 250kg you run into stability issues as much as strength issues. Even if you could lift it easily, it would be really tricky to hold it in a way that you won't tip over and drop it.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, it'd need to be combined with research going on atm with bipedal robots; they'd have to be able to keep themselves balanced.

<comment><USER10> Or just have really heavy "feet". That's what the big block of steel/concrete on the back of a forklift is for.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, but automated balancing might be significantly more energy efficient than sticking quater-ton blocks of metals to the feet.

<comment><USER10> Maybe you could use the extra mass to provide super-protective steel toe caps, as per a comment above :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hate to see what happens when a bug causes the wrong motors to fire and the thing breaks all of your bones. Be awesome to use one though all the same.

<comment><USER13> It seems feasible to design an exoskeleton suit that is mechanically incapable of breaking your bones. You could pick some flexibility constraints that define a conservative model of how human limbs can bend and swivel, and then design the hardware with physical interlocks that prevent it from moving beyond those limits. Picture an elbow joint that has a metal flange situated such that if the motor tried to extend the arm beyond the normal human straight elbow angle it would be mechanically blocked.

The thing that I find more worrisome is the fact that little squishy people will be handling things that are so heavy that, if fumbled, would carry enough momentum to rip right through them. Imagine letting a 250 kg piece of metal slip -- if it hit your flesh, that's a problem. Once the strength of these suits gets high enough to handle loads like that I think we'll have to see more actual exoskeleton armor to protect the pilots.

<comment><USER9> A 100kg limit is feasible, that's not yet heavy enough (I think?) to cause major damage if a mishap happens. ATM workers are handling loads like that - and heavier - with cranes and clever tools that make the pieces they handle effectively weightless (check car assembly workers for example), those also don't carry that much risk when handled right. Laws and regulations for these will be just as stringent as other industrial tools, I'm sure.

<comment><USER14> Your basic steel toe cap work boots have a toe cap rated for a 200 joule impact. That's equivalent to a 20kg weight dropped from 1 meter.

I sure wouldn't want to drop 100kg of weight on my foot from 1 meter :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Yeah... they had those in 1958:

 _Iron Man: Ralph Mosher, an engineer working for General Electric in the 1950s, developed a robotic exoskeleton called Hardiman. The mechanical suit, consisting of powered arms and legs, could give him superhuman strength. Mosher subsequently made a simpler version that permitted him to sit in his chair and pick up refrigerators._

[http://www.hizook.com/blog/2010/09/07/telepresence-robots- ne...](http://www.hizook.com/blog/2010/09/07/telepresence-robots-news)

</comment><comment><USER16> > it can lift objects with a mass of up to 30 kilograms.

Shouldn't factory workers be able to do that anyway? Or even 60kg.

<comment><USER17> 30 kilograms is 66 pounds. OSHA recommends a two-man lift for weights over 50 pounds : [https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/etools/electricalcontractors/mater...](https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/etools/electricalcontractors/materials/heavy.html)

<comment><USER10> So any child above 5 years of age needs two parents to carry them?

<comment><USER18> Carrying your own offspring is not the same as being employed to carry weight all day (and not necessarily because you really like that profession.) The regulation is in place to protect the worker, be it from the employer or those who don't know any better from themselves.

<comment><USER10> But 50lbs is pretty light. If you're in reasonable shape moving objects of that weight every day should be fine. It's only (approximately) one big Olympic plate.

<comment><USER19> That's not just some thing they happen to do once a day. Its what they do ALL day, in addition to many other things. The purpose of the exoskeleton isn't really to increase how much you can lift. Its to make it so it is less tiring.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Let's be honest, if these things become commonplace in shipyards - we are all going to want one.

<comment><USER21> There's pretty much no reason not to use them everywhere. Every construction site on the planet would benefit from augmented workers. A ridiculous amount of heavy lifting is still involved in putting up just normal buildings, and an injured worker is a big cost and set back.

<comment><USER22> Family is in heavy construction, and I think there might be a bit of a misconception on what holds workers back - its not weight.

The most common complaint that I hear is that between climbing and harnesses, flexibility suffers. Adding in an exoskeleton would probably not be the best idea in that case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Soon we will be able to fight off the Aliens.

</comment><comment><USER24> Why is this technology being wasted on shipyards when I could be using it to reenact scenes from Aliens and play rock em sock em cyborg in my backyard?</comment>


Laptop size, weight, and power - <AUTHOR> http://www.marco.org/2011/05/08/laptop-size

<comment><USER2> I have a singular criterion: The most capable (for the 10 years, Mac) laptop that I can fit into the saddlebag of my Harley.

</comment><comment><USER3> Make a keyboard / form-factor that does not have the front edge pressing into my wrists particularly when I am at a table or desk that does not have the "correct height" (café, conference room, etc.).

If the thing is not comfortable to use, the rest doesn't matter.</comment>


The Atheist Who Strangled Me - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/05/the-atheist-who-strangled-me/309292/ <comment><USER2> Sam Harris does not appear to be a rational individual who discovered atheism through logic and evidence. The man just appears to be bat-sh*t crazy.

The author casually tries to put this man in the same leagues as other atheist such as Richard Dawkins. But in my view Dawkin's is a sane individual trying to cope with an insane world. I cannot say the same about Mr. Harris after reading this article.

<comment><USER3> Can you expand on that? The article is about a man who enjoys meditation and brazilian ju jitsu. What in this article makes you think he's bat-sh*t? I did not catch any such vibe.

<comment><USER2> The man practices chocking other people to the brink of death in some sort of pseudo-BDSM tournament. What sort of sanity comes from a hallucination induced by oxygen deprivation?

<comment><USER4> You immediately associate Brazilian ju-jitsu with BDSM and he's the crazy one!?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> A follow-up interview by the same author with Sam Harris on the techniques of unarmed combat against armed attackers:

[http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/04/what- mar...](http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/04/what-martial-arts- have-to-do-with-atheism/275273/)

<comment><USER5> I'm not familiar with the full range of Harris' writings, but I found it interesting that as an explicit and unapologetic 'atheist', Harris actually says at one point:

      ...we don't know what happens after death.

It is in the context of discussing death with a child, but still... the hardcore atheist position would seem to be that we do know what happens: nothing, the total cessation of experience. To say "we don't know" seems to allow for some tiny shred of religious mystery, which I didn't expect from Harris.

<comment><USER6> Your "hardcore" atheism is more correctly known as gnostic atheism. You will be hard pressed to find philosophically educated gnostic atheists.

<comment><USER7> Using the label "agnostic" as a philosophical weasel word to give a nod to solipsism every time it is politically convenient is a form of lopsided pedantry. Unless you think a specific religious god is more likely to be real than, say, vampires or Harry Potter, the distinction does not actually add any useful information. People normally just use "agnostic" as a device to try to frame a debate in a precise way in order to put the burden of proof squarely on the positive claim.

<comment><USER6> I used the word "gnostic", not "agnostic".

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure you understand what I said. Let me explicitly state what I tried to imply about your use of the word "gnostic": people who call themselves gnostic atheists are not generally being philosophically ignorant or dishonest.

<comment><USER6> I just didn't see how your comment applied. I never said that gnostic atheists were philosophically ignorant or dishonest. I just said that they would be harder to find.

<comment><USER7> Okay. I took your statement "You will be hard pressed to find philosophically educated gnostic atheists" to imply that most people who go by that label are likely not philosophically educated, presumably because realizing that true certainty about anything is impossible invalidates the "gnostic" part. If that's not what you meant, then I apologize. I often see this line of thinking, so I patterned matched incorrectly.

<comment><USER6> No worries. In my experience, the majority of gnostic atheists are like some of the kids on /r/atheism. There exist educated gnostic atheists, but in my experience, they are more rare than educated agnostic atheists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's almost as if atheists live life with hobbies and interests like decent, churchgoing folks. Isn't that a marvelous piece of "human interest".

(Did I miss a story somewhere?)

</comment><comment><USER9> _"Most martial artists get illusions in training," he said. For example, if you are trained as a boxer, you come to trust that an opponent won't try to tackle you to the ground—because that's not what people do in boxing rings. Instead they hit each other, with gloves on (another condition that is not very realistic)._

BJJ also assumes a set of rules, not unlike boxing, wrestling or karate. You're not allowed to take a bite out of your opponents arm while they are choking you, or pull their ear off, or stick your thumb in their eye.

BJJ is also often practiced wearing a _gi_ which allows for different techniques than if your opponent were wearing say, a t-shirt (or no shirt at all).

<comment><USER10> This is true, and we often use the phrase "sport jiu-jitsu" to make this clear. I have trained BJJ for close to 9 years, and I am a purple belt. Most people who train jiu jitsu also train no-gi, though. Personally, I try to favor strategy that I think would also work in MMA or even a real fight.

However, what differentiates jiu jitsu, wrestling and boxing from a lot of "traditional" martial arts is live sparring. I think that people who practice a martial arts with an emphasis on live sparring will have an enormous advantage if a real fight because live sparring is a close _simulation_ of the real thing. Yes, your opponent won't follow the same rules. But, you're only good at what you train. And in order to train something regularly and not get constantly injured (or worse), you need to have rules.

Chael Sonnen, an MMA fighter who will fight for the UFC light heavyweight belt, makes a great observation in this interview. His observation is, in MMA, figure out what techniques were illegal in your opponents main discipline, and do those: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33BrIxAu7-M>

(Yes, Sonnen does a lot of trash talking before his fights, and is full of hyperbole. Don't let that fool you. His analysis of MMA is some of the best I've heard.)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are some interesting ideas in Code Editing and Development tooling? - <AUTHOR> Sublime style multiple cursors, for example, have been quite popular these days. Fuzzy search and fuzzy symbol navigation is interesting as well.<p>What are some useful or interesting and less well-known ideas in Code Editing and other development tooling? <comment><USER2> [https://telepresence.io](https://telepresence.io) is interesting if you use k8s</comment>


Simplifier – Optimized Solar Cell - <AUTHOR> https://simplifier.neocities.org/optsolar.html <comment><AUTHOR> Amazing work by Simplifier on so many basic building blocks from scratch.

"The solar cell shown in the video (and at the top of the page) has a maximum open-circuit voltage of 525mV and a maximum short-circuit current of 6.5mA, or roughly 0.9mA/cm² over an active area of 7.5cm²"

Has anyone done the math to compare this to a commodity solar cell?

<comment><USER2> [https://us.sunpower.com/solar-panels-technology/a-series- sol...](https://us.sunpower.com/solar-panels-technology/a-series-solar-panels)</comment></comment>


Microsoft researchers reach human parity in conversational speech recognition - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.microsoft.com/next/2016/10/18/historic-achievement-microsoft-researchers-reach-human-parity-conversational-speech-recognition/ <comment><USER2> I wonder when the day will come when human like speech recognition, object recognition and muscle movement will have open source models running locally.

It's a fantastic achievement so far but the latency of interacting with Siri/ok Google drives me mad.

</comment><comment><USER3> The NSA will be delighted...</comment>


Google wants self driving cars on roads by 2018 - <AUTHOR> http://www.techradar.com/us/news/car-tech/google-wants-some-form-of-self-driving-cars-on-roads-by-2018-1130660 <comment><AUTHOR> "Much efforts will be put into designing of vehicles with robot brains. Vehicles that can be set for particular destinations and then will proceed there without inteference by the slow reflexes of a human driver. I suspect one of the major attractions of the 2014 fair will be rides on small roboticized cars that will maneuver in crowds at the two foot level neatly and automatically avoiding each other."

Isaac Asmimov at the time of the 1964 worlds fair when asked to predict the major innovation at the 2014 world's fair</comment>


Internet marketing savvy entrepreneur wanted for collaboration - <AUTHOR>

Do you dream of starting up a successful online company and are very knowledgeable about driving the marketing, SEO and other online campaigns?  Are you looking for a dynamite site idea?  Well, come put your energies to work on a stock picking site that shows the small investor how to invest like the large fund managers.  It was developed by a 15 year Wall St. analyst veteran who needs marketing expertise and help to drive it.  Call 206-459-6155 for further info. <comment><USER2> Are you looking for someone local or are you willing to work with someone remotely</comment>


Supreme Court overturns CA's violent video game law; violates First Amdt [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/10pdf/08-1448.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> Scalia: "Reading Dante is unquestionably more cultured and intellectually edifying than playing Mortal Kombat. But these cultural and intellectual differences are not constitutional ones."</comment>


Ask HN: Any computer vision specialist here? I have a problem with OpenTLD - <AUTHOR> Hello, guys. I have a problem with OpenTLD and tracking. Here is example: https://jpg.wtf/YDVBO/ Like you see, OpenTLD looses tracking point and Kalman filter is "moving away".
Inside I have: OpenTLD + MedianFlow (with LKTracker), after that I correcting result with FERN-features. The output from OpenTLD going trough Kalman filter. The input image (280x280 pixels) to OpenTLD going trough Bilateral filter.
Maybe anyone has any ideas how to improve the result, or where is the best place to ask this question? <comment><USER2> The FAQ points to a Google group [https://github.com/zk00006/OpenTLD/wiki/FAQ](https://github.com/zk00006/OpenTLD/wiki/FAQ)</comment>


Casino-like apps have drained people of millions - <AUTHOR> https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/addicted-losing-how-casino-apps-have-drained-people-millions-n1239604 <comment><USER2> Gambling (in its many forms) has been getting out-of-hand for so many demographics recently.

Not just loot boxes and in-game casinos, but cryptocurrency gambling, sports betting, options and stock gambling, and much more. It seems like everywhere I go I enter _huge_ gambling markets, and I see the same patterns of behavior in all of them, and the amount of people that are hurt terribly, sometimes to the point of complete financial ruin or even suicide, is immense. More immense than we believe if you ask me, because it's very shameful to admit this stuff, and I think most of it goes unnoticed.

In theory I like the idea of consumers getting to spend money however they want to, but it's clear that the downsides of letting apps manage their 'virtual item' gambling however they want to is terrible for so many consumers, and it's unfair how addictively-engineered these games are, often using optimization techniques and psychological tricks that the users do not understand, and doing whatever it takes to deceive people about their luck, odds, prospects, and so on.

Just that these companies will do anything they can to retain their whale shows how predatory it can be - they will not just offer free in-game items to keep you, but the true high-spends they will offer free products to like a free iPad or iPhone, and will sometimes dedicate significant employee time to using any trick they can to make sure these people keep spending their money on gambling.

<comment><USER3> As a student I worked in a casino for a short time. It just really drags you down immensely if you get to know people spending their last dime.

All kinds of people were there from completely different backgrounds. People know that the chances are rigged against them (it is mandatory in my country to write down winning odds directly on devices and tables), but they are all waiting on this one time they will finally win. Some do so, but just continue playing again because they cannot stop anymore.

It is a disease and addiction and people are profiting off it. The coffee might be free as the bank always wins anyway.

</comment></comment><comment> tuna-piano There are so many "basically online gambling" adjacent companies. They seem to take advantage of the same psychological loophole, but likely leave the vast majority of people involved worse off.

-Penny Auction sites. Tons of TV commercials for these. They let you bid on expensive items. For example, bid for a $500 iPad for $4. The trick is that you must pay for each bid, so it's more like a lottery than an auction.[1]

-Omaze is an interesting one, and seems to be growing pretty large. It's a type of lottery, but they seem to give the majority of proceeds to charity.[2]

Of course people should be able to do stupid things with their own money. But when you read the stories of folks involved with this stuff, it does feel sad.

I used to be quite overweight. There were times in my life where I was mentally weak, and I would absolutely have paid money to remove the temptations (fast food) from the streets for my own benefit. Of course, there is no real market way to pay to remove temptation. This really does feel like a true market failure, the same as having these apps in the app stores...

Perhaps legislation to remove temptation is actually what is best for most everyone involved. Anytime there is an industry/company with high percentages of dissatisfied customers, that is not a net positive thing to have.

[1][https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0037-online-penny- auct...](https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0037-online-penny-auctions) [2][https://www.distractify.com/p/is-omaze-a- scam](https://www.distractify.com/p/is-omaze-a-scam)

<comment><USER4> That is a great point, and I have been fascinated by these, especially the penny auction sites. DealDash is clever and has a mechanic where if you bid it keeps the auction alive for 10 more seconds (which must keep user engagement sky-high). Someone does actually win something, but everyone else loses both time and money - which is the difference between this and, say, eBay.

The difference, I think, in online casino gaming is that the vast majority of players do not actually spend money at all. Only a small amount of players do, and of those only a fraction are the hardcore people mentioned in this article. Thus it's hard to show it's causing harm in court, because the companies will simply say "it's a free app, microtransactions are not mandatory", and ignore the people who are taking our second mortgages on their houses. It's a scenario where a small fraction of the consumer base spends so much money that they subsidize the free players.

<comment><USER5> Almost everyone does extended time on bid now. Even places like Copart auto salvage auctions, the thing is for B2B sales yet looks like Vegas slot machine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Worked in this industry for quite a while (too long, in retrospect). The amount of micro-targeting towards "whales" was insane. People would essentially pay for the experience of feeling like they were in Vegas, and a certain small percentage of them would have latent gambling addictions that we'd unlock.

Economically you only needed a single-digit percentage of whales in your player base, simply because the LTV of those users was so incredibly high. Even at $10+ CPI's, you could still make tons of money, and sell in-game coin packages at a straight-faced price of $99 (or even $199!)

Additionally, there is no reason that these games had to be "fair" (unlike a regulated casino). You needed to know your payback percentages, but that was just to avoid destroying your economy. People start playing a new game, and get tons of wins and bonuses, and then it slowly settles down to ~85% RTP and sucks all their cash away.

<comment><USER6> I'm not super familiar with the industry what are LTV, CPI, and RTP?

<comment><USER4> LTV = lifetime value, how much $$ a player is expected to spend (usually expressed in cohorts)

CPI = cost per install, needs to be lower than LTV or else you have a failed product

RTP = return to player, which means on average how much a game pays back to the player over time. In Vegas, this is regulated and is generally in the 85-93% range for slots. Unless you stop playing after a lucky winning streak, you _will_ lose money long-term. The house always wins. For a non-regulated online game it can be whatever the devs want.

<comment><USER6> Any reason the RTP doesn't approach zero?

<comment><USER4> Zero wouldn't be fun. You need to allow people to win, just not over time. Slots is a random series of losing, small wins, bigger wins, and very occasionally big bonus rounds (every ~100-200 spins) which is the dopamine hit. The key is that over time, the losing needs to happen more often than the winning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Semi unrelated, I remain stunned at how effective free2play games are at generating revenue.

I occasionally play World of Warships, which is one of those games where you can either grind your way up to a better ship, or pay real currency to accelerate the process. Being a cheap <explicative deleted> I've ground my way up to medium high tier ships; it's fun enough.

Then I looked into the company, and they have 1,750 employees, which is really expensive! It's unbelievable that a "free" game can float such a massive development budget.

I think the positive spin is that the great thing about free2play is that you get to "try before you buy". If I tried World of Warships and _loved_ it, spending $10 on more slots for ships makes sense. But the cynical part of my brain suspects that a small number of whales are draining their personal accounts in order to support development and subsidize the free play of people like me.

<comment><USER8> They have a few other similar games that uses the same tech and feel to them (Tanks instead of ships), but your point stands (and they are all F2P AFAIK, same formula).

I've had a insight as to what you're suspecting (for another similar game), and I can say that it is definitely something like the top 1% that generate most of the revenue, and the rest of the 99% serve as kind of an AI for them to dominate.

<comment><USER7> It's not even clear that spending money gets you an actual advantage in the game, it appears to mostly just accelerate the process of getting the higher tiered ships in a given nation's tech tree.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The implications of this article – that addiction can happen even without real-world reward – seems to be inline with how non-U.S. courts have reasoned when it comes to regulating lootboxes (e.g. Overwatch)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loot_box#Regulation_and_legisl...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loot_box#Regulation_and_legislation)

<comment><USER9> In my opinion, they are identical. Purchasing an intermediary currency, buying spins at the wheel (buying lootboxes), experiencing the buildup and hype for the boxes opening, and the rush of dopamine for winning/losing.

The only real difference is how you use your winnings. One lets you spin again, the other lets you show off your prestige. In this respect, Overwatch et.al. dominates the categories of 'getting more people to pay to spin the wheel', and the long term feeling of "it was worth it".

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Addiction By Design" by Natasha Dow Schull is a really great book about the slot machine industry.

The author draws a distinction between two types of gambling addiction. One kind of addicted gambler is what you would typically think of -- they are motivated by some kind of perverse desire for a thrill, they may try to bet big to make back their losses. They tend to play table games or bet on sports. This is a stereotypically masculine group.

She describes the gamblers who play slot machines (stereotypically feminine) as having a very different psychology. They're not really trying to win big and don't imagine what they will -- they're in it to keep playing, to stay in what she calls the "zone".

So for this group of gamblers, it kind of makes sense that it's possible to reproduce the same mental state without the possibility of actually winning money. Winning more tokens really is rewarding, because it increases the amount of time they can continue playing.

An interesting thing is that lot of techniques recognizable to the tech industry were done first as early as the 90s by slot machine companies and casinos. Very sophisticated A/B and UX testing of both the slot machines and the casino environment with a focus on optimizing time on device.

Also, an incredibly sad story I remember from that book: Schull describes a gambler who got to the point where she could not compel herself to get up from the slot machine, yet was exhausted and wanted to go home. She began to mentally treat each loss as a win and each win as a loss, because she knew she wouldn't be able to leave until she had lost all her money.

<comment><USER4> The psychology is very important. All the big players in this space employ people with experience designing actual Vegas slot machines, and the goal is to try to replicate it as much as possible. Everything from the line patterns, to the way words and icons pop, to the arpeggiated audio cues, is taken straight from tried-and-true Vegas templates. For someone who has spent time in real casinos, these games will feel very familiar, and trigger the same emotions.

The trick with online, free-to-play versions is to forcibly stop the player when they've run out of coins, and say "come back tomorrow to collect your small refill, or pay us $2.99 right now to keep the fun going". And then throw every pricy psychology trick in the book at them to try to get them to break the seal of that initial purchase (because then the rest come much easier).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This article makes me wonder about the value comparison between spending even $3.99 on an app store game you really like vs. buying some scratch-off tickets. They both come with an excitement factor, but only one puts a substantial payoff on the table, generally increases the tax revenue base, and gets you out of the house...

</comment><comment><USER12> I saw how much my mother spent on Candy Crush after she passed away. It breaks my heart with a whirlwind of emotions... like whether I should be angry these apps know how to exploit human emotion, or at peace because they provided her comfort in a rough time. They're not gambling, but clearly they know how to trigger some personal & psychological investment.

This wasn't $5-10 here or there or on weekends... this was a daily pattern and with some of the larger in-app purchases. I had to sift through email receipts to get the exact amount, the Google play store also does a fine job of obscuring the spend.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is actually quite fascinating. If I'm understanding the article correctly:

"Unlike in a real casino, there is no way to win money back or earn a payout on coins."

These apps apparently have no monetary payout. So it seems that people are simply paying to play a casino simulator. Clearly they have an addiction to real world gambling to some degree, but I find it really curious that they still find some sort of satisfaction in playing a completely fake gambling game.

Definitely in need of some regulation, no doubt this kind of gambling and others (I.e. loot boxes / skins) would only reinforce that addiction.

<comment><USER9> The act of spinning the wheel is its own reward, dopamine wise. The anticipation of winning it big. The colorful displays. The hope as the wheel looks like it's going to land on the big payout. Even losing is its own rush.

And if you do win... can cashing out for boring dollars ever compare to the excitement of being allowed to spin the wheel again - for the chance of an even bigger prize?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder, if instead of trying to regulate these companies, it would be more effective for the government or some sort of support organization to award a grant to some free software developers to flood the market with actually free "casino simulators."

Similar to the "give drugs to drug addicts" approach. Give them something of minimal harm they can use to satisfy their addiction until they can find a way out.

It's not like these would be particularly difficult apps to make, just need some good UX to make feel satisfying.

<comment><USER14> I would imagine there's a strong psychological benefit to earning coins with "real" world value. People love the feeling of "winning" $10 of tokens; even if you can't cash them out...

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fate/Grand_Order](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fate/Grand_Order)

<comment><USER16> There's a lot of these about, but I'm astonished to see how much money FGO has brought in.

<comment><USER15> FGO is astonishing in that it combines a combat system that isn't that bad, an abominable English translation, an advanced Moe character system similar to Pokemon, Neptunia, etc and (in the general 'Fate/XYZ' meta-setting) an astonishingly good pretense.

Put Moe addiction together with gatcha and you will get some Otakings to spend $70k or more on the game.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> They're talking about Robinhood, right?

<comment><USER18> I recognize and understand the snark/sarcasm regarding that sort of stock market gambling, but regardless of other details, at least you can cash out any earnings in Robinhood, no?

The apps discussed in the article are more like the video slots/poker/etc. that I've seen in bars around here. Real video gambling machines aren't legal so they make them for "entertainment only". Some (many?) bars let you cash out under the table as a way to keep people playing, but if someone managed to win a lot of "credits", the bar would be under no obligation to pay out since technically they aren't allowed to anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The strangest part of this - winning is literally impossible, right? They buy chips in the game, but there's no way to turn them back into money...

<comment><USER20> I'm completely confused here. I have always assumed gambling addiction is centered on winning it big, to recoup prior losses, or to otherwise change one's station in life. None of these things are possible on these apps.

I'm actually at a point of disbelief. I simply don't believe that gamblers spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a game they know will never make them any money. I'm open to the idea, but it certainly strains credulity. Why? Why would anyone do that? What would even drive one to do that?

<comment><USER6> My cynical take: there's probably a nontrivial amount of money laundering going on through these apps. Especially prevalent in any game that accepts "gift cards" as payment. Typically you'd pay people cash in hand to go buy a $1000 worth of gift cards in cash.

My non-cynical take: gambling addiction seems pretty prevalent in at least American society and this is just the market responding to those conditions.

<comment><USER21> > there's probably a nontrivial amount of money laundering going on through > these apps.

You can't really launder money through an app that offers no way to get money back out of it.

If there were a way to "gift" coins to people, which would allow them to be sold on sites like eBay, then you could launder money, because you'd be able to buy coins from Big Fish, and sell them elsewhere at a discount. You'd lose money on the flip but then, when you launder money, you always lose some portion of it (often quite a large portion).

(I don't know enough about these apps to know whether that's an option or not, but I suspect not.)

The only way Big Fish could be used to launder money is if they were owned by the people doing the laundering, who would then have a route to get money "through" the company. For third parties I don't think it's a possibility, unless they were in cahoots with the owners.

Actual gambling apps would provide a much better option for laundering money, which is perhaps a bigger motivator for regulation of that industry than addiction is. Or at least they would in a cash environment. Apps maybe less so because there's always a paper trail for the money (not to say it can't be done though).

Take all this with a pinch of salt because it's hardly my area of expertise but the main point stands: to launder money you have to have a way of getting money both into and out of a business.

<comment><USER6> Apologizes, I meant to say that if you owned the application, it would be a super easy way to launder. Especially due to the sheer volume of similar apps on the play store and numerous grey-market giftcard processors.

dirty cash -> giftcards -> casino app -> app developer

<comment><USER20> That certainly sounds plausible.

I wonder if a 30% cost for big players is considered acceptable in money laundering. North Korea laundered $81 million (that they stole from banks) through Philippine casinos [1], so it isn't an outrageous idea that an app could be used for money laundering.

[1] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-08-03/a-baccara...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-08-03/a-baccarat- binge-helped-launder-the-world-s-biggest-cyberheist)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Apple and Google could easily remove these type of apps from their stores but of course they won't. They're culpable.

It shouldn't be possible to spend a hundred thousand dollars in in-app purchases.

<comment><USER23> A problem with thoughts like this though, should I, the consumer, be able to choose what I want to do and not my app store of choice?

IMO this falls inline with smoking weed or drinking alcohol. If I choose to do something and it doesn't directly hurt others, why can't I?

I know, being drunk can cause accidents and kill people; same for drugs (weed is a bad example here) and destroy families and stuff, but it should still be my choice if I want to do these things myself.

Too much regulation is just as bad as no regulation.

All of this said, the only casino game I personally play is MyVegas which offers real rewards at real MGM properties (and others). I've spent maybe $100 real currency in the app since I started playing years ago and have gotten free nights at their hotels, tickets to shows, etc... so it's not allllll doom and gloom.

<comment><USER9> > ... should I, the consumer, be able to choose what I want to do and not ...

Society has decided that, for the good of society as a whole, this answer is no. That the good of society is more important than the desires of any given individual.

For example, most countries (an organized society) have laws regulating gambling (and drinking, and smoking, and ...).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> >In a response to NBC News' inquiries, the company issued a statement saying its games are not gambling and should not be regulated as such.

>"These games are not gambling because, among other reasons, they offer no opportunity for players to win money or anything of value," the statement said in part.

The monetary reward is 0, but you're still playing a game of chance in order to win a prize, and you still need to put down money to play (presumably after losing all your initial free coins).

I don't know what the legal definition of gambling is, but that still seems like gambling to me. Maybe that's too wide of a definition, but regardless it appears to be tapping in to the same addiction hooks as gambling.

<comment><USER25> It is indeed a very wide definition. Is going to an arcade now gambling? Perhaps this hinges on how much chance vs skill is involved in the game, but it's difficult for me to see a principled difference between these apps and any situation in which you pay money to play a game.

<comment><USER24> >Perhaps this hinges on how much chance vs skill is involved in the game

It does. Arcade games are typically games of skill rather than games of chance (although that obviously varies). Additionally, in the end what it probably comes down to is how much attention the purveyor draws to themselves.

If arcades started becoming so successful that they create addicted children to lose thousands of dollars of their parents money, I'm sure you'd start seeing arcade regulations. And in fact when pinball games first came out, you did see lots of governments get involved as it was viewed as corrupting children.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> As an aside, I used to love playing slots in Vegas when real coins would fall into the hopper when you won. Apparently they spent a fair amount of effort making sure that sound was memorable.

Now that physical coins have disappeared there's absolutely nothing 'fun' about the process! Playing a computerized slot machine is about as pleasurable as feeding a parking meter.

</comment><comment><USER27> Not only can't you cash out these apps but the apps are basically charging for zeros. They give players the option of buying and playing $10,000 chips for $3.99 or you can get "value" instead by buying $1,000,000,000 chips for $99. Gameplay is the same in both just with more zeros

<comment><USER28> And according to the article those $99-type whales are elevated into the "high-rollers" areas where the amounts gambled for are larger... leading to a similar amount of playtime at "higher stakes" only because of digital zeros.

$3.99 to make 100 spins at fake-$100 each, vs $99 to make 100 spins at fake-$10,000 each. (numbers totally made up, btw)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Related: Online and Mobile sports betting is legal in Colorado now. Watching a few of the games this weekend, the ads for the mobile apps are _everywhere_. Like with the fantasy football craze a few years back, I have a feeling that this will also be dialed back a lot.

[https://www.denverpost.com/2020/02/25/sports-betting- colorad...](https://www.denverpost.com/2020/02/25/sports-betting-colorado- online-casinos/)

</comment><comment><USER30> > A 42-year-old Pennsylvania woman said she felt saddened that she spent > $40,000 on Big Fish Casino while working as an addiction counselor.

Crazy and very sad and kind of funny all at once.

I lean very very heavily in the let people do dumb stuff if they want camp but it feels like they have just found a way to break the minds of a certain group of people. It feels to me like this would be a good case for regulation. On the other hand this already makes zero sense. How would you even legislate against it?

</comment><comment><USER31> A ton of games use psychological tricks to get people to spend. Look at hearthstone from Blizzard. You have to keep buying cards until you get lucky... and you never do. The randomized fashion makes it so you never stop spending even though you are one card away from your ideal deck. It has all the elements of gambling minus the real life rewards. There definitely needs to be some sort of regulation — perhaps punishing the randomized reward mechanics.

</comment><comment><USER32> It obviously wouldn't be nearly as lucrative but these no-payout virtual slots could easily avoid exploiting people by simply selling access to these slots with a one time purchase. The whales would probably still purchase every slot available but at least you set an a cap on how much they can spend and they can still get their fix.

</comment><comment><USER5> >about $150,000 in the game in just two years.

Probably still cheaper than two years of mental health care for two people in US.

</comment><comment><USER33> This is an interesting insight into slot machines too - take away any opportunity to win any money at all and some types of people will _still_ throw tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars at them.

</comment><comment><USER34> "We lie in bed next to each other, we have two tablets, two phones and a computer and all these apps spinning Reel Rivals at the same time," she said. "We normalize it with each other."

Maybe just have sex instead?

It's interesting these games don't actually payout. It sounds shocking at first. But then again, if they did actually payout you'd still end up with nothing in the end if you play it long enough.

"After a long legal battle, 2 million players, including Shellz and her husband, will be eligible to get a small part of their losses back — about 20 percent for those who lost $10,000 to $100,000."

I'm guessing the company doesn't care and is probably fairly assured these people will just pump it back into their machine.

<comment><USER35> > Maybe just have sex instead?

And what should they do afterwards? They will still have a lot of time remaining.

<comment><USER36> And raising children can be more expensive than these games. Have you seen how they've gamified the college admissions racket and now everyone has to submit multiple applications. It's just like the games here.

<comment><USER37> I've heard you can have sex without having children these days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> This is another example of using technology to skirt local laws and regulations. In the US we need more competent regulators and legislators to keep up with technological change. Hoping to get innovators like Andrew Yang into government to change things for the better.

</comment><comment><USER39> If it wasn't apps, it was going to be the casinos, right?

<comment><USER40> The article is implying though that _actually winning money_ is not required for people to become addicted. It's as if you go to a casino to play slot machines, with no expectation of ever being able to cash out. You just get high in winning and losing chips, with no attached monetary value.

I wonder if an actual casino could get away with that business model.

<comment><USER27> Many casinos operate these apps as well

[https://www.wynnlasvegas.com/casino/wynn- slots](https://www.wynnlasvegas.com/casino/wynn-slots)

<comment><USER40> Sure, but I'm asking if a physical casino could operate without cash out being an incentive? Say you get a certain number of chips for free each day you come, and then you can pay for more chips.

<comment><USER27> Probably with some market downsizing. It'd essentially be an arcade but with slots. The appeal might be to use large denomination machines, like with the apps - lots of zeros</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


YouTube easing up its content policy? - <AUTHOR>

Just a curious question:
I noticed that there increasingly full length records of TV shows (daily upload of a CBS show on an unofficial account) and concert videos on YouTube (full length, a few thousand views, a few month up.)
Is this just a "fortunate incident" or did anyone else notice this development? <comment><USER2> It's probably just a coincidence.

But it's really weird that stuff like this is still up:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvRewZKsikc> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZSqnjo0erg></comment>


Ask HN: State of Internet forums - <AUTHOR> I need a forum. I do not have much money to spend for this (personal thing; probably can do up to $49-59).<p>What is the stablest/greatest/latest thing out there with at least some plugins, and preferably a way to implement a single SSO system against an existing database with at least a few thousand users?<p>* I can't afford vBulletin, Xenforo, etc.<p>* Last I checked, phpBB no longer serves downloads temporarily due to some hack, or something, I don't know.<p>* SMF's community and ecosystem is kind of terrible.<p>* FluxBB is nice, but I'm waiting for the laravel release for integration, otherwise migrating will be another pain.<p>* PunBB is basically an abandoned FluxBB?<p>* NodeBB, FlaskBB seem really immature at this point, or at least not enough moderation tools or other management, and I am not comfortable enough in node.js to do manual editing.<p>* esoTalk is nice, but effectively stalled while waiting for Flarum.<p>* Discourse's resource usage is a bit on the high side, and I am not comfortable enough in rails/ruby to do manual editing.<p>* Why are the vast majority of forums in PHP? <comment><USER2> I think the mast majority of forum software is in PHP, because it's what was around long ago when forums were in their hayday...

Unfortunately I don't have any good suggestions one way or the other on which forum software you should use.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Why are the vast majority of forums in PHP?

Easy - the vast majority of forums are set up by people who just want a forum, and aren't necessarily technically savvy, and PHP is dead simple to deploy to on a free shared account. Most of the popular forums are dead now because forums in general have been supplanted by social media, and hosted services.

It's kind of unfortunate because I think there is still a place for self- hosted forums.

</comment><comment><USER4> Check out Discourse.org. I set this for for Dane Maxwell & Andy Drish of the Foundation and it is a solid modern forum solution. And it's open source.

</comment><comment><USER5> Try [http://www.mybb.com/](http://www.mybb.com/)

But the most powerful forum is phpBB

</comment><comment><USER6> Since you checked many of them, did you also take a look at Mybb?</comment>


Blaze: Next Generation NumPy - <AUTHOR> https://speakerdeck.com/sdiehl/blaze-next-generation-numpy

<comment><USER2> Aside: What is the appropriate website to host _video_ or _audio_ of talks with slides?

What I don't want: Just slides no audio. I also don't want video of the talk uploaded to youtube, because sometimes the slides aren't visible in the video.

My talks involve slides that make no sense without the audio. If there is video capture of the talk, it's nice to include some of the video too. But I guess I would be content with just audio + slides.

I do not want to have to do complicated video editing; I want an existing solution for this problem.

[edit: clarifications]

<comment><USER3> Infoq do this, but I'm not sure if they accept arbitrary content.

<comment><USER4> E.g. [http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Taming-Effect-Simon- Peyto...](http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Taming-Effect-Simon-Peyton-Jones)

I love this, and every time I am pointed to slideshare or speakerdeck I hope they have implemented something like this :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very cool! I'm impressed at all the energy and fast pace of development coming out of Travis Oliphant's new company. Also, I'm curious about how this will interact with numba. Blaze seems to have a much richer type system and lazily constructs AST trees. Numba, on the other hand (as far as I can tell), does function-at-a-time specialization using much simpler array & scalar types. How will these two different schemes interact?

<comment><USER6> Numba actually uses the Python AST, so it's not too different. Currently it's also using Mark Florisson's Minivect internally to reason about Numpy arrays and array expressions. This will be much easier when Numba encounters a Blaze array, since the value transformations will be expressed in the AST, and the index space transformations are more explicitly represented in the Blaze expression graph.

Both projects are designed to work very well with each other, although both have applicability outside the region of integration. Numba will compile regular Python functions that consume Numpy arrays, and will not require Blaze. Blaze will produce lazily-evaluated expression graphs and dataflows on disjoint and out-of-core arrays, and can evaluate these efficiently without Numba. (This is what the Array VM is all about; you can think of it as an improved Numexpr.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't get it. Am I supposed too just look at the slides from a presentation and get what it's about? If the presentation is any good that will be quite hard.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is really interesting although a little dense/cryptic as slides. Does anyone have a link either to a slightly more leisurely exposition of the theory behind it, or perhaps a more user-focused summary of what kind of features and optimisations this new magic might enable?

As I understand it from a quick non-expert skim (please correct!): the idea is to use a fairly flexible and expressive metadata language under the hood to specify the physical memory layout of a multi-dimensional array -- more expressive than numpy's existing support for strides. Sounds like this will allow arrays to be reshaped and joined together without copying, support arrays larger than core memory, etc.

I wonder if the language is too powerful, if this could make memory management (e.g.: can I free this contiguous chunk of memory?) quite hard to reason about.

Also: seems like this makes it easier to push the cost of array layout manipulations in a somewhat lazy fashion from the producer onto the consumer of results. At which point does one decide that traversal is now excessively complicated and the thing should be copied into a flat layout. Especially since this might affect one's ability to use certain BLAS routines, take advantage of certain hardware optimisations etc. Is the idea that a compiler makes this decision for you, or you make the decision explicitly or implicitly?

Interesting stuff anyway, look forward to hearing more about it!

<comment><USER6> > Does anyone have a link either to a slightly more leisurely exposition of > the theory behind it, or perhaps a more user-focused summary of what kind of > features and optimisations this new magic might enable?

No, but those will be forthcoming as we build out more of it. We are targeting an end-of-November preview release, as the slides indicate, and it will give people a much more concrete idea of the things Blaze can do.

> the idea is to use a fairly flexible and expressive metadata language under > the hood to specify the physical memory layout of a multi-dimensional array

Yep, that's exactly right. The challenge is to constrain this is that it is not too general, i.e. enters into PhD research land, but still useful for a large number of use cases.

One of the core ideas is to more coherently represent the metadata about location, locality/compute affinity, and index spaces. Numpy has the beginnings of some of these ideas in its various flags and View object semantics, but it's all stuck in its very rigid, contiguous-memory origins.

> At which point does one decide that traversal is now excessively complicated > and the thing should be copied into a flat layout.

This would be a great Master's research project. :-) The hope and the belief is that one can punt on resolving this in generality, and still solve a number of interesting, concrete problems in an efficient way.

<comment><USER8> Nice one. Sounds like you guys have thought hard about the right balance between expressivity and allowing these structures to become excessively hard to reason about or traverse.

Incidentally I found the use of topological manifold terminology (atlas of coordinate charts, homeomorphisms, ...) in the slides quite intriguing, are there topological connections here or is that more just an analogy?

<comment><AUTHOR> There is a connection, we can view mappings between linear memory spaces to higher arrays constructs as a series of coordinate transformations in the same way we deal with transformations between charts on manifolds. Except in our case our charts are necessarily disjoint, so the boundary conditions on charts are trivial.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is so cool! I think that something like this could really extend the power and flexibility of NumPy, and having some one like Travis Oliphant behind this project gives it a lot of credibility. I am excited to see what comes out of this next!

</comment><comment><USER10> I sometimes think I know Python/NumPy, but then I see Travis' company projects and I'm blown away.

Good work, Continuum Analytics!

</comment><comment><USER11> This is from his PyData talk. All of the talks are being recorded, but I'm not sure when they will be released: <http://nyc2012.pydata.org/abstracts/>

<comment><USER12> One of the Continuum guys said to expect "a week or so."

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hey all - apologies, most of the Continuum people are busy travelling from PyData and dealing with hurricane sandy travel plans, we'll be commenting on these discussions shortly.

</comment><comment><USER14> Any benchmarks for this? (I didn't find any via google.)

<comment><USER13> implementation is not done yet, it's more about the proper mental model for generalizing numpy

<comment><USER15> a lot of the design ideas are pulled from some great research [http://justtesting.org/repa-3-more-control-over-array- repres...](http://justtesting.org/repa-3-more-control-over-array- representation) (that paper is the most current relevant one, though theres a few others).

chatted with stephen about Repa and hpc code engineering the evening before the talk, its all haskell ideas ported to python land under the covers :)

(as the slide deck admits!)

<comment><USER6> > its all haskell ideas ported to python land under the covers :)

Well, that's not _entirely_ true. It's based on many of the same ideas which underlie some of the good Haskell ideas, and have a natural expression in Haskell because it's a type algebra on index spaces.

An incomplete list of the inspirations: Paralation Lisp, Merrimac, APL / J / K, Manticore, FORTH, Chapel & ZPL (and VCODE), SISAL, OLAP & MDX, LINQ, various PGAS approaches, etc., etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Cert says opendns. Problem?

<comment><USER17> speakerdeck had wobbly DNS for a while. Sounds like you're using opendns and it hijacked a failed lookup?

<comment><USER16> Not using opendns that I know of.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How does a developer find a digital artist? - <AUTHOR> I am a CS student currently working full time and I develop some side projects for my entertainment. One area that could really use attention is graphics design / art. For example, I am looking to slap together a wireframe of a project to make a proposal, but it looks quite bare, so I'd really like to get some mock-up art or basic logo design done.
As I'm not a digital artist, nor do I have the time to try some basic art myself, how would you recommend finding someone to offer concept art, keeping in mind these constraints:
- This is not a full-time paid position, just a side-project
- I am a college student with not much money to spare
My first thought was to use sites where one posts a request for art and provides a budget, and artists across the internet can "bid" on the project by submitting samples. However, these can get quite pricey (see constraint above). What would be a great scenario is having fellow students contribute art for the sake of putting it on a portfolio, and, in the case of larger side-projects, I could offer % stake in the project, granted that the payout would likely be minimal to none. Any recommendations? <comment><USER2> > What would be a great scenario is having fellow students contribute art for > the sake of putting it on a portfolio, and, in the case of larger side- > projects, I could offer % stake in the project [...]

Ask yourself whether you'd want to/be able to work on these conditions. A portfolio does not pay for your food today, neither does a stake in a project.

What worked for me: Get some money to pay immediately (say $500) for a very limited graphics job. YOU put in the time to define precisely what you need; you PAY the artist for that. Figure out whether there is something you could do for the artist instead of a proper payment (e.g.: hosting his/her website for 5 years, including domain costs; scripting his contact form etc). And it really helps to have the artist nearby - if you meet in person you will save both of you a lot of time when it comes to fleshing out the details.

</comment><comment><USER3> Try asking around at your school. Talk to your professors and see if they can put you in touch with graphic artist professors. Talk to other CS students and see if they know anyone. Many students may want something for their own portfolio so it is a win-win for both of you.

</comment><comment><USER4> Try dribbble.com, lots of talent there.</comment>


Things I wish I had known when I started programming - <AUTHOR> https://www.brainstobytes.com/advice-for-new-developers-or-things-i-wish-i-had-known-when-i-started-to-program/ <comment><AUTHOR> I wrote a series with some tips and other things I wish I'd known when I started programming, and I thought it might be useful for someone so I'll post them here.

The series has 8 articles right now, navigating to them it's easy from the one linked on the top. I really hope this helps someone, even if it's a little bit.

Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER2> I wish my parents had known that when I was writing code on the computer as a kid, it wasn't just 'playing games' and that it would result in a great career.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's incredible how little value our old folks gave to things that were not tangible. Glad you kept writing code and made a career out of it.</comment></comment>


Twitter tests massive profile redesign that focuses on photos - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/11/5402186/twitter-tests-profile-redesign-that-focuses-on-photos-facebook-google-pinterest <comment><USER2> Don't like it in a slightest bit:

I like it when app has the same width on all pages (profile currently has min- width set to 1024 too). This new update suddenly changes design for one page while the rest are the same. Maybe they'll move other pages to the similar design?

Fonts. Please, i'm not 80-year old with myopia and no glasses. I can handle 13-16px fonts just fine.

Number of tweets per screen - 3 (down from 8). What is this? A feed for ants?</comment>


Show HN: Discover and listen to podcasts that are worth your time - <AUTHOR> https://podcastgang.com/?ref=hackernews <comment><USER2> I don't see the criteria for what makes the choices 'worth my time'. And, after taking a minute to scan the choices (and limited categories) available on the page, I see little evidence of what those criteria might be.

Many _many_ offerings are vying for my attention. Picking one at random, subscribing, downloading, listening for a half-hour (in some cases 20 seconds) is very inefficient. The solution _might be_ a _qualified_ curation process that I understand!

E.g. any podcast that regularly begins with an ad had better be worth skipping past that part.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing your ideas. Will definitely make improvements on the points mentioned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is a knee-jerk reaction so take it for what you will, but I thought I had landed on the iTunes podcast page. And while I know it wasn't actually that page, it was hard for me to "trust" these recommendations as being any different than what I see when I load iTunes.

</comment><comment><USER4> Nothing happens when I press enter in the search box. (Firefox 67.0.2)

Edit: It turns out I just type faster than your popout script can execute. Nothing comes up for most things I type in. Even podcasts I actually listen to and enjoy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, @CondensedBrain. You can suggest some of your favorite podcasts and it will be added as soon as possible.

<comment><USER4> How about an OPML import? Doing them one by one will get old fast.

<comment><AUTHOR> That would be great too

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> On the website your slogan employs poor word choice:

Discover and listen to amazing podcasts that's worth your time

Should be "that are worth your time."

Just like you have it in your show hn headline. Sorry to nitpick!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for this. Will make necessary amends.</comment></comment>


Best practices for deployment and configuration of Macs in a small business? - <AUTHOR> Hi there. We are a growing small business making extensive use of Mac/Apple devices for our business.
To date, we have purchased Macbooks at retail stores and followed a low-tech checklist to download apps, create and configure accounts and passwords, upgrade to latest versions, and other tedious tasks of new hire onboarding. We have about 12 employees and this approach has not scaled very well.
Additionally, once onboarded, we don't have a great way to manage or control the company inventory or force updates, other than whatever built-in compliance tools are available for the platforms we use (Office 365, Dropbox, Slack, OSX, etc.). I've noticed there are iOS services available (I believe, given the larger enterprise usecase there), but there aren't many for Mac OS (or both).
Any suggestions on services or small business administration tools or services in a Mac environment would be very helpful. Thank you. <comment><USER2> As far as I know, JAMF is the de-facto standard.

[https://www.jamf.com](https://www.jamf.com)</comment>