Why Homejoy Failed - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/backchannel/why-homejoy-failed-bb0ab39d901a#.2jviif7sd <comment><USER2> I think this is a demonstration of the limits in "app-ing" an industry. Uber worked fantastically because it leans heavily on the geolocation facilities in a smartphone - you're always moving, getting picked up from different places, by cars located in different places.

Homejoy had none of that. You rarely move home, and your cleaner rarely does either. Effectively, from transaction #1 you're in a perfectly replicable pattern - Cleaner X comes to your house every Y weeks and works for Z hours. No matter how great that initial app experience is, it's basically not needed afterwards.

There's also something interesting in here about the limits of the "gig economy". Arguably, by creating a marketplace of cleaners competing with each other for your money, they'd drive costs down for customers. In reality, inviting someone into your home is a very personal thing, and people much prefer to build a relationship with someone that they might pay a little more on a regular basis, than get a different person each time. It is a premium service, after all.

<comment><USER3> I use a service called Handy (app-based home cleaning and handyman). It works fine. And doesn't seem to be struggling from what I can tell.

[https://crunchbase.com/organization/handybook/](https://crunchbase.com/organization/handybook/)

edit: I'm in Chicago

<comment><USER4> A story about what it's like working for Handy, _" My Day Interviewing For The Service Economy Startup From Hell"_:

[http://thebillfold.com/2014/10/my-day-interviewing-for- the-s...](http://thebillfold.com/2014/10/my-day-interviewing-for-the-service- economy-startup-from-hell/)

<comment><USER5> On a side note, I wonder why the reporter bothered changing the name of the co-founder of Handybook in that piece. From the remainder of her description (e.g. the mention of a Harvard MBA and the experience at McKinsey) I was able to determine that "Ajay" was actually Umang Dua, after about two minutes on CrunchBase and LinkedIn.

<comment><USER6> He comes across as pretty sleazy in the article.

<comment><USER5> All the more reason to name the co-founder. I disagree that a co-founder has the same right to privacy as an employee. Employees can claim that they're following rules or policies, and that any sleaziness on their part is due to the constraints they're operating under. A co-founder has no such excuse. He or she sets the policies. If the company behaves sleazily (as it did in this article), it's due to the policies and culture that they've created.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "The steady leak of its best workers to direct employment arrangements with its own (now former) clients."

This is a huge hurdle in any direct services market. While you're not likely to hire your own private driver and thus end your working relationship with Uber, you're probably _very_ likely to find a cleaner that you like a lot and who does a great job cleaning your house and go on to form an exclusive working relationship with them instead of continuing to use a service that sends you random cleaners from a wider pool. Same with services of the same type- babysitters, dog walkers, etc.

<comment><USER8> I think it's an important question any entrepreneur has to answer: what value do I add to the business?

If you're providing some expertise or startup costs to purchase expensive investments (buildings, machinery...) or creating some sort of efficiency of scale, you've probably got a viable business.

If your business plan is to skim money off of workers who could do their jobs and get paid without you, your workers are going to eventually figure that out and cut you out of the equation.

<comment><USER9> > If your business plan is to skim money off of workers who could do their > jobs and get paid without you

Lead generation is a viable business, as demonstrated by Yelp (and previously Yellow Pages), it's just not hot and fast-growing.

<comment><USER10> Lead generation is IMO white-hot, maybe not for VCs but certainly to the stakeholders involved. Lots, and _lots_ of legacy businesses yearning for new methods of leadgen, and lots of money involved for someone able to solve it.

The problem was precisely that Homejoy was a leadgen product but attempted to extract a cut of the action _for the rest of time_ , rather than one-time as most leadgen goes.

saalweachter is right - the big question is what value Homejoy provides. In this case it's clear that Homejoy offers (to the cleaner and the customer) a substantial _one time_ value, and then provides little to no value for subsequent engagements. Because the product doesn't offer any value into the future, both participants were incentivized (and IMO well justified) in cutting them out of the deal.

<comment><USER8> It's worse than that, IMO: Homejoy was effectively _a leadgen middle-man_. Homejoy was itself relying on other lead generators, namely Groupon. I think if they had been doing better lead generation themselves they might have had a better chance of getting more rounds of investment. When you aren't doing good lead generation and aren't providing good value to your customers/contractors, what is really left to invest in?

This doesn't change what you said; they may still have had a viable business if they had been structured for a one-time transaction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Postmortems like this are always a bit unfair. You ask employees who lost their job when the company folded what was wrong with the company, and they'll air every little complaint or inefficiency that existed within the company.

Isn't the ethos of Silicon Valley to 'hack it together' with tape and glue? Moreover, I'm pretty sure that's the _reality_ of almost every high growth company. I'm sure you could find matching stories from within almost every winning unicorn: key bugs they didn't catch, poor decisions that cost them along the way, leadership gaffes, etc.

I think there are a couple interesting points to consider that the other comments address: difficulty of direct services, customer acquisition costs, 1099s. But we should expect more from reporters than to throw in every other possible anecdote they could dig up.

<comment><USER12> > Isn't the ethos of Silicon Valley to 'hack it together' with tape and glue?

Couldn't that be the problem, too?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Classic case of a company finding itself in the position of being a middleman with questionable value-add.

Once you introduce someone to their new cleaner there's zero motivation for the customer to not just kick out the middleman and deal with the cleaner directly. Especially when these app companies throw their hands up and say "hey they don't work for us... they're an independent contractor" if something goes wrong. They tried to have the best of both worlds (be a middleman with no responsibility) and, not surprisingly, the market called them out for it.

</comment><comment><USER14> Why Homejoy failed:

> "We didn't figure out how to deliver a consistently high-quality service"

The review sites agree and so does their churn rate. If you don't have a high quality service, you don't have anything. Trying to hack growth numbers with Groupons and extreme discounts while ignoring retention numbers demonstrates a lack of respect for the dynamics (basic math) and suggests expectations of a 'silver bullet' to success.

Additionally, home cleaning has got to be one of the most subjective services you could choose. Who doesn't idealize an absolutely spotless home, but act very differently themselves when tasked with actually achieving it. "This shiny new Internet will solve my problems perfectly." Unfortunately, all you're really getting is an under-trained, underpaid human laborer.

<comment><USER15> It seems to me that they focused really hard on the consumers, but perhaps it was the cleaners who were their true customers? Of course that becomes a niche business model which isn't that desirable for investors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm reminded by a simple but powerful message one of my professors delivered to my MBA class a few years ago.

"You can't just look for a gap in the market. You also need to verify there's a market in the gap."

Homejoy most likely saw opportunity in the first sentence, but it appears they may not have spent time thinking about the second (or didn't research a broad enough segment of the market).

'Disrupting' a market isn't simply about creating a mobile app, or a 'marketplace' for service X after all. That's just a game of buzzword bingo.

<comment><USER17> "You can't just look for a gap in the market. You also need to verify there's a market in the gap."

I am remembering this. One of those quotes that simplifies but essentially explains a host of unsustainable businesses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> _But on this particular holiday, a booking had slipped through unnoticed, due to a website malfunction, according to a former employee. Rather than cancel an appointment at the last minute, Homejoy's cofounder and CEO Adora Cheung grabbed a toilet brush and a vacuum cleaner. Then she headed to San Francisco's Mission Dolores neighborhood and scrubbed._

 _"The customer had no idea," said Arjun Naskar, one of the earliest employees at Homejoy, who shared the story as an example of the founders' intense determination to succeed._

Profiles in courage!

I mean, you can take this sentiment too far (I'm sure Cheung is a great person). But this is a website premised on capturing a premium off the work of people who scrub toilets every day, day-in, day-out, right? It's telling that a tech founder doing that job _just once_ constitutes a lede.

Semi-related reminder: tip your hotel housekeepers.

<comment><USER19> >Semi-related reminder: tip your hotel housekeepers.

Wait, what? What's the semi-relation there?

I really hope it's not going to be another variant of "it's a hard job, therefore the tipping model obviously makes more sense there than a pure wage model".

<comment><USER20> I think the intention is less "the tipping model makes more sense", and more "given that the tipping model is in effect, you shouldn't unfairly punish the housekeepers by not tipping them".

<comment><USER18> I don't think the tipping model makes sense at all, but as long as we're talking about people we pay to clean up after us, it's worth pointing out that hotel housekeepers have a _particularly_ raw deal, and despite the fact that people frequently seem surprised to hear this, you are expected to tip them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I read a comment on HN a while ago that went along the lines of "there is a new breed of startups that's in the business of selling dollar bills for 95 cents". I really like that formulation. Your job gets a lot easier as soon as you provide more value than you charge for it. Seems like that was one of the big problems with Homejoy: they were not able to charge more. The reality is that home cleaning is very price competitive. Anyone with a mop and a bucket can undercut your price, and as long as the customer trusts them and likes them they have no reason to switch. For example I know of a 12 year old kid who decided to start his own cleaning business. He calls it "a boy and a bucket", and from what I am told does a fantastic job. He also charges about 1/2 of the market rate around where I live, yet provides a superb service.

<comment><USER22> Competition is really the big thing. Redbox has pretty much doubled their price in the past few years, and they can because by now all the meat-space video rental stores are pretty much out of business. However, at $2 for a blu- ray, it's already at the point where if I'm not going to the store anyway, I will just rent through the cable company for $4 or $5 bucks. And then I don't have a chance of forgetting to take the movie back and getting charged again. If Netflix got more new-release movies, I wouldn't even have to do that.

<comment><USER23> For those who don't have a cable (TV) subscription, there are multiple online services that have new-release movies for rent on a transactional basis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I found the scheduling process to be flawed. The assumption that I'll be home at the same hour every week was not a good one. There wasn't a confirmation phone call, text or email to remind me. But yes, I could manually reschedule. The phone support wasn't glowingly friendly to boot, very forgivable though.

The initial cleaning needed to be deep and thorough. I honestly think that's what people want. Get you back to square 1 and then do maintenance cleanings from there on out. I wasn't blown away by the service enough to continue it. The guy spent 15 minutes polishing my tea kettle when I had much larger issues looming.

Also the experience of saying "I need an extra hour or time on my oven" was odd. Maybe I don't? Maybe I do? I'm not the professional cleaner, you guys are. What I want is to not have to think about this. If the onboarding process was actually _harder_ as in - provide us keys, your first cleaning is going to be an overhaul a big one, etc. I think retention would have gone up even though conversions would have been low. But no one wants to play the long game nowadays...

<comment><USER25> "There wasn't a confirmation phone call, text or email to remind me."

Really? That's about the _only_ thing I'd expect from a web-based service scheduling tool - something to remind/confirm/verify my scheduled appointment. Dare I ask what they're doing that something as fundamental as this didn't make the 'feature' cut?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> A lot of the problems with the gig-economy as it stands now is that too many everyday people feel that the elite startup entrepreneurs are trying to build a new feudal economy.If these entrepreneurs were more humble and just worked to empower the ones doing the gig then their reward would be greater. One could empower these hard working individuals by allowing them to set their own price, by building tools that they could use to gain credibility in the eye of their customers, and give them a stronger safety net longer they work. In order for capitalism to work, the ones who do the work need to be able to reap what they sow.

</comment><comment><USER27> Compare it to the Danish facility company ISS [1] whos been around since 1901 has more than 500K employers and is in more than 75 countries and pay their employers a fair salary. No freelance contracts or anything like that.

The real challenge isn't growing a company like that, it's being profitable from day one. And so the real innovation is going to be a company that find a way to either completely automate many of those areas or somehow manage to provide benefits beyond the stability a company like ISS can offer which is no easy task.

Managed by Q seems to be doing things in a much more realistic fashion IMHO.

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

<comment><USER28> The flaw in the model is that companies like these do not exist to provide a service to customers - they exist to persuade investors they're worth funding.

Homejoy was primarily a cash hoover, not a carpet cleaner.

On that basis it worked okay for a while. But the emphasis on Insane Growth [tm] as a metric for potential unicorn-hood meant that customer care, customer retention, and service quality - never mind basic business metrics like profitability - all declined to the point where these was only an empty shell of a business covered by a paper imitation of a multinational corporation.

The lawsuits didn't help, but I doubt they killed the company on their own.

<comment><USER27> I agree.

Also ISS was actually so modern that my own mom who was a simple cleaning lady had stock in the company and this is 20 years ago.

So actually disrupting them requires something more than underpaying your workers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The unnatural way Homejoy raised their seed rounds, with Cheung basically calling up Levchin and PG [1] was instrumental in setting up a failed business. This gave the startup undeserving social proof and let to the huge funding it should have never received.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVDmyRxeGCo&list=PLQ- uHSnFig...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVDmyRxeGCo&list=PLQ- uHSnFig5P7scrcPr3VPHrG1OylKhpt&index=3)

<comment><USER30> Without specific reference to any company, "Convincing an investor to invest in a company which is not, at the present moment in time, either profitable or cashflow positive" is not in any way exceptional or unnatural. That's the nature of the game in early stage investing.

They're _all_ high-risk companies which, if you simply linearly project out where they are today, will "default to dying" (to use PG's phrasing). Sophisticated investors bet that they can perceive some X factor about the business, the market, or the founders which will cause the business to actually not achieve the default outcome. Usually they lose these bets. Occasionally they bet that two Stanford gradudate students who know nothing about business will nonetheless figure out a terribly difficult CS problem allowing them to unlock money from an oversaturated low-margin business that every smart analyst correctly believes has no future. If you invest in nine $STARUP_WHICH_FAILED_INGLORIOUSLY and one Google you do _very well for yourself._

To misquote the Wire: "All in the game, yo."

<comment><USER29> I agree. But such access to Silicon Valley luminaries is rare and a seed round from PG and Levchin is going to distort and inflate investment in subsequent rounds.

The initial seed round gave Homejoy more rocket fuel than was natural. I watched the speech live, and at the time I felt that Homejoy was a Mini with a jet engine. It was imbalanced and was likely to blow up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> After reading this, I'm left to ponder why anyone would think this was a potential "unicorn" business where it made sense to take big losses to grow revenue. After all, as the article notes, cleaning services like Merry Maids are a well-established thing. (As are personal references for housecleaners.) That doesn't make a potential new entrant bringing a better UX to the process a stupid idea. But it would seem to limit the potential opportunity.

<comment><USER9> > After all, as the article notes, cleaning services like Merry Maids are a > well-established thing.

But so are the taxi companies and hotel chains.

<comment><USER31> Well, the taxi experience has oft-discussed problems in many places. And AirBnB is typically a different experience from chain hotels. There's also the skirting of regulation thing in the "sharing" economy. But leave that aside and Uber/Lyft and AirBnB are still qualitatively different in many ways from the incumbents they're competing with. (Not saying they're universally better, just different.) However, it's hard for me to see Homejoy as being much different from a cleaning service.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> It blows my mind that a company this small would have any desire to have an international presence. I get that the "growth first, profits later" mentality can have some benefit, but why on earth deal with the hassle of language, culture, currency, and legal barriers? These things are bad enough from state to state and city to city. The international push seems more about hubris and ego than out of any practical concerns -- at least until urban areas in the home market of the company are saturated.

Also, buying cleaning supplies for 1099 workers who do other jobs on the side? Why this was ever considered a core competency is beyond me.

</comment><comment><USER33> > But he said they were forced to rely on [deeply discounted first time > Homejoy cleanings] heavily because of intense competition with their chief > rival, Handy, which employed a similar strategy.

This is one of the bizarre aspects of VC that is bad for the economy as a whole. A regular business that is aiming for profit must be careful about how much it spends on customer acquisition. A VC-backed business that is aiming for "unicorn" growth must spend whatever is necessary, even if it's not sustainable. And the collateral damage is that traditionally profitable businesses (in this case, non-app-ified home cleaners) are priced out of the market.

<comment><USER34> The costumers do get VC-subsidized cleaning for a while though.

(Not saying it great, but it is good for the costumer is the short run.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> It can be pretty much boiled down to this one quote:

> ...and the steady leak of its best workers to direct employment arrangements > with its own (now former) clients.

Services such as Homejoy create value by providing a market for the discovery of those seeking work with those seeking workers.

For any regular type work the incentive for the employer and the employee (if you can call them that) is to cut out the middleman. Why this comes as a surprise to anyone is a mystery.

In attempting to take a commission off future earnings companies like Homejoy just don't understand their value proposition and are simply rent-seekers. But hey, X% of future earnings from a given job into perpetuity sure makes for one hell of a revenue projection slide in an investor deck.

Look at the case where "intermediation" works and why. Airbnb and Uber spring to mind. In both cases usage is likely to be unpredictable so a direct relationship doesn't really work.

3 hours of cleaning a week on a somewhat flexible schedule? That works really well with a direct relationship.

<comment><USER36> And now I am sad again because cleaning service discovery is still broken. Not that you're wrong, just that it would be really nice to be able to find cleaners through a service with good reputation tracking and recommendation. Which is intrinsically difficult to build for exactly the reason you specify.

<comment><USER37> I asked my neighbor about cleaners, they use X and gave me her phone number. I called X and she did an amazing job. Turns out, X has a higher incentive to clean my house because she can synchronize timing with my neighbor and reduce her overhead cost. The arrangement has worked great for everyone, running 9 years in a row and more neighbors have joined.

I see this as an ideal win-win experience for all parties involved. It would be really nice to have a service that can create this type of experience at scale.

<comment><USER38> Talking to Your Neighbour as a Service? Asking People You Trust for Recommendations as a Service? I'm not sure there's a VC-growth business to be had in there exactly.

I mean, Airbnb kinda tried to the latter by getting you to add your Facebook friends so you can see their reviews, but I don't get the impression that's gone far.

<comment><USER39> That's supposedly the thing about Nextdoor, and then rest of the social network ecosystem out there. Unfortunately, more and more people are ditching social network or disallowing apps sharing data, so what do you say?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> There is a Rocket Internet clone of Homejoy in Germany, Helpling, which already raised a high double-digit million euro amount [1] and tries to grow as fast as possible at all costs (ads with vouchers in every local train and on the streets). They also had talks about a possible acquisition of Homejoy before the shutdown.

I always wondered who invested that much in a not-proven market, will be interesting to see if they succeed where Homejoy failed (my guess: they won't).

[1] [http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/25/rocket-internet- he...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/25/rocket-internet-helpling- idUSL6N0WQ1LG20150325)

Edit: Just saw that they already ceased operations in a few countries and fired 1/5 of their employees, so it seems they have the same problems.. (found only sources in german on that news)

</comment><comment><USER41> This might be an unpopular opinion around here but having an MBA under the belt or at least some form of entrepreneurial intuition and business shrewdness is an indispensable skill esp. when you're planning on taking on a new category or market.

I know that this analysis is bit skewed to justify and reinforce the conclusion placed in the title and repeated throughout the piece, and as they say hindsight is 20/20, but I still think that the founders made big rookie mistakes when it came to structuring a viable and sound business model for their venture and securing a recurrent revenue stream that they would have avoided had they been equipped with professional business education, knowledge and expertise.

</comment><comment><USER42> I pay my housekeeper $80 to deep clean my entire house. Homejoy wanted $145 for their non-professional apathetic cleaners to do a light cleaning. Thats why they failed

</comment><comment><USER43> > _Adora Cheung opted to sit among employees, rather than in a swanky corner > office._

It's a pretty sad state when it's considered admirable and rare that the CEO of a company that is spending other people's money, and making none, doesn't have a "swanky" corner office.

<comment><USER44> _No one_ should be sitting "among employees" \- everyone should be in a private office with a door that closes.

<comment><USER45> Wow, pretty sweeping generalization. You can't think of anyone who might prefer an open office arrangement, or you can't think of anyone like you who would prefer it?

<comment><USER46> I can't think of anyone

<comment><USER47> Many HN'ers like open offices so now you have someone to think of :)

Personally I would like a private office but I'd always leave my door open.

<comment><USER48> There's a world of difference between choosing to leave a door open door and not having a door in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> > Home cleaning represents an estimated $400 billion global market

Any limited critical thinking will show that this number is likely off by 1-2 orders of magnitude. Your median US homeowner is spending $0 on home cleaning a year, and the average is likely very close to that. Outside of the US and Europe, labor costs drive that small amount to almost nothing. I would be amazed to learn that the actual size of the market was over $10 billion.

<comment><USER31> Almost certainly high. US seems to be about a $10B market: [http://www.sbdcnet.org/small-business-research- reports/comme...](http://www.sbdcnet.org/small-business-research- reports/commercial-residential-cleaning-services)

Note though that, outside US and Europe, labor costs are indeed a lot lower but having a lot of personal help (cooks, housekeepers, nannies, etc.) is far more common also as a result.

<comment><USER49> That link appears to include commercial cleaning services, which I don't think a service like Homejoy would be able to "disrupt."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> A tangential thing I noticed:

>Unlike Uber, which requires a drivers' license, cleaners need more intensive training to do the job properly.

It's sort of bizarre to have higher expectations for cleaners than automobile drivers. Driving a car with multiple people around town to semi-familiar places? Sure, that driving test you took when you were 16 years old is fine. Cleaning a house? Waaaait one minute, what are your qualifications?

<comment><USER51> Most adults have clocked thousands of driving hours. Few have say, shampooed a carpet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> It was odd to see Groupon (somewhat) blamed for HomeJoy's demise.

Groupon's problem for businesses is that the customer has no intention of ever coming back, they just want the deal.

HomeJoy's problem, no matter how they acquire a customer (Groupon or other) is that once the vendor-customer relationship is established, there's no reason to ever involve HomeJoy again and let them take a cut.

<comment><USER53> I found that ironic as well. Seems like every new customer acquired increases the risk of losing them more cleaners. A steep discounting through Groupon would just expedite that as it would reduce the risk/cost of trying a cleaner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Homejoy raised $40 million. I doubt it was ever even close to Unicorn valuation. Am I wrong or is this headline fairly misleading?

<comment><USER31> Well, there's no formal definition of "unicorn valuation." But $40 million is a fair bit of money to raise and, if you figure 10x return as a target ballpark, that brings you up to $400 million which is at least in the ballpark of $1 billion.

<comment><USER54> I think Unicorn is very specific and $1 billion is the amount

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Fred Wilson recently wrote a blog post about this:

[http://avc.com/2015/10/negative-gross- margins/](http://avc.com/2015/10/negative-gross-margins/)

A lot of companies will fail because their investors will lose patience and no longer support subsidized pricing.

</comment><comment><USER56> The underlying question is "Does skirting employment law by using only 1099'ers make a profitable business solution?"

In this case, the answer is no. But the general answer to that question is "Yes, it is very profitable to upend employment law for the profit of the few, on the backs of the many."

<comment><USER9> After a certain growth period it might be more cost-effective for a company to convert certain contractors to W-2 employees. Company can now mandate hours and keep a highly-rated worker from switching to a competitor. Homejoy never passed that "certain growth period", though.

So it's not a clear-cut "contractors = good, employees = bad" thing. It's just that companies exploring these markets are all at early stage of their growth.

<comment><USER56> Why would it be? I'm seeing a lot of reasons to bust "employment". Here's some.

1\. Unemployment insurance? Well, you aren't employed.

2\. Get hurt on the job? You're not on a job, 1099'er.

3\. You "get" to pay the employer's tax as well as your own. Jokes on you, bub.

4\. Want to join a union? They kill your account.

5\. Real contracts can agree upon wages. How do you do this via Uber/Homejoy/"sharing job"? You don't.

6\. Pregnant or sick? FMLA protects employees; not you.

<comment><USER19> All of those points apply equally well to any self-employed person. Should self-employment be abolished too?

To the extent that there's a problem, it's in the fact that the law doesn't treat the self-employed/other-employed spectrum sanely, such that employer incentives don't align with social goals. We should fix that, not demonize business that optimize for the current broken system.

<comment><USER56> False equivalence.

Consultants have been around for a long time. And they command a high rate, because they are pros. No, they aren't an employee, nor would either side want them to be. They do the job, paid well, and part company. Most consultants get paid somewhere between $150-$400/hr . I know of one who's compensation is $500/hr.

This new thing, the "sharing economy" is a way to shove out employees from their protected status and government-fought for rights into the plan that mainly the professionals occupied. Instead, the companies that uses these tools figured out the masses can be convinced that these roles are better, somehow. These people are evident by the fact that they "work" for one company, have standards in which they must follow, and are paid around the low-middle wage for their services (8-12$/hr).

Big differences:

1\. Wage disparity

2\. Knowledge

3\. Lawyer or legal team

4\. Difference of liabilities

5\. "Works for" but not really

Tl;Dr. This is an intentional misclassification to skirt employment law.

<comment><USER19> My point is, you have to make that distinction more rigorous than "they make less money"; your original points applied just the same to consultants (and legit "independent contractors") as it did to Uber drivers. It seems your real objection and distinction is "but they make less money than my ideal model of an independent contractor". (I don't know what "knowledge" or "lawyer" or "difference of liabilities" means in terms of an articulable, rigorous distinction.)

>This is an intentional misclassification to skirt employment law.

That's specifically what I was addressing with:

>>the law doesn't treat the self-employed/other-employed spectrum sanely, such that employer incentives don't align with social goals. We should fix that, not demonize business that optimize for the current broken system.

<comment><USER56> Money is the biggest sign of a disparity. But it's not the only sign.

Another sign is "does each side know what they are agreeing to?" In medical industry, that concept is called informed consent. A party who is accustomed to making $150-$500/hr can afford a lawyer to understand the legal and fiduciary risk. Someone making 'Uber Salary' most certainly cannot.

Next, contracts that are discussed and hammered out usually have discussions of liabilities. "What happens if I don't do X?"; "What happens if Y happens?". Instead, Uber et. al. either do not discuss it, or sweep it under the rug, only for the end worker to be bit by it when/if it happens.

For example, accepting UBER means you should have commercial driving license by the state. You should also have insurance that covers that. And there may also be other license or tickets you need to be in compliance. UBER knows many of these laws, and they do not inform the workers of these liabilities. It is not a far stretch to see that UBER is in cahoots to subvert law and be an accessory to insurance fraud

>the law doesn't treat the self-employed/other-employed spectrum sanely, such that employer incentives don't align with social goals. We should fix that, not demonize business that optimize for the current broken system.

We already have a tool for businesses to use: hire them. Good 'ol W2 employment. They're choosing not to, and abuse a system traditionally meant for specialized temporary labor. And what are we to expect when one side has such power ($50 billion banked) vs someone who needs a job? One side is being abused.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> The risk here is that many of the comments are extrapolating to the larger market. Yet Handy seems to be doing well and has much higher retention rates. Homejoy could just be bad management. Seems like a classic case of a leader who was good early on (rushing off to do a bathroom on a holiday) but couldn't solve for the bigger problems at scale (retention) which Handy has.

<comment><USER57> Right, I think there is plenty of space for value-add in this market, it's just that Homejoy wasn't doing it. They thought they could act an uninterested intermediary whose focus was on scheduling and on demand cleaning but that's not where the gaps are in this market. It seems like there is a ton of room for them to leverage their economy of scale and that provides the moat that keeps cleaners from striking out on their own.

Some easy things I can think of where it makes sense for both cleaners & customers to stay with Homejoy

From the cleaner side:

\- Offer help with the business side of things for the cleaners (taxes, setting up retirement accounts, etc) \- Instead of giving cleaners supplies, raise the rates you pay and sell supplies to the cleaners at a discount by leveraging your economy of scale \- Group negotiation for health insurance

From the customer side:

\- Give customers a reason to continue ordering through the app. Maybe it's randomly giving away free cleanings, maybe it's a frequent buyer discount, maybe you offer monthly/yearly subscriptions \- Mentioned elsewhere but have a way to request the same person

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Soon the floors of Silicon Valley will be littered with the corpses of Unicorns. Sustainability surely has to take precedence over growth at any cost soon?! One can hope...

<comment><USER59> Haven't they always been ?

Possibly the only difference is that before they were given a sensible name (like "failed startup") instead of "dead unicorn".

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Seems to be plenty of blame to pass around. It would be interesting to read more perspectives and definitely enough material for a book. That HN job post is immortalized even more now.

But one interesting take-away it seems, not just for Homejoy, but for just about everyone in the market; the software is really bad. Not scheduling time to get from Point A to Point B - is that rocket science? If the customer support line is on fire, isn't that when you start fixing the bug? Failing basic usability and billing is not an MVP for a $40m funded startup.

One thing I'll say, is trying to own the experience, establish a heavy brand, and take a large cut means you have to be providing a valuable service in return to the contractor. For the on-demand economy, the way I think I would approach the problem is my customer is the service worker first, and their customer second.

These companies think about churn all wrong. The service provider is ultimately providing the service to the end-user, intentionally churning the end-user across different service providers is madness. You only win by making the service provider's job more difficult? I don't get it.

Obviously a lot of value in connecting a new household with a new service provider, whatever that service may be. Making that connection is a job well done and should be monetized at that time. If you can provide a new reliable _repeat_ customer then that's even more valuable to the service provider, and the startup who made the connection can in theory charge a higher price for those customers.

</comment><comment><USER61> I hope my next failure will be documented with an animated metaphor of a robot failing apart.

</comment><comment><USER62> So, what happened was they lost money on each job, couldn't retain customers, and then used venture money to accelerate growth (to be even more unsustainable)?

</comment><comment><USER63> Geolocation in smartphones turns people into nodes, and successful apps/services solve an impersonal, one-off matching problem between these nodes.

The more personal/temporally repeated/geographically repeated the problem is, the less you need a smartphone to have a successful service. Then you find yourself competing with web services companies and your competitive advantage is gone.

</comment><comment><USER64> I operate my business on such a tight budget it seems almost criminal for a business to fail with $40 million to work with. I could spend many lifetimes growing my business with that kind of money.

IMO you don't force a market to grow. You accept what the market gives you and then you grow into the market as it allows you to grow. Not the other way around.

This is one of the biggest flaws in how investors expect their businesses to grow. I would argue that having a small business that one day will be a big one (perhaps 10-20 years later) is far better than shoving a ton of money at a problem and if it doesn't grow fast enough then pull the rug from beneath them.

I think it's also a sign that investors who are actually in SV are not dictating how things are run. While this may be common knowledge, I'm unaware of precisely where money is flowing in from. But if I had to guess, I'm almost certain it's big money coming in from all over the world who expect VCs to treat startups like they would treat stocks and bonds.

<comment><USER65> That's the old bootstrap vs VC money argument, but bootstrapping doesn't work for a lot of business.

You can't make an Uber or Google or Facebook or Twitter without VC money, it simply can't happen.

<comment><USER66> I disagree. You can make a Google without VC money if you start in 1994.

<comment><USER64> I actually think within the next 5-10 years companies that require scale like Google, Facebook, etc. will be possible at very low cost. Low enough even that the project can be bootstrapped without funding.

They of course won't start out at that scale, but given the ease with which one can scale cloud products (or have it done automatically for you via things like Elastic Beanstalk) and how cheaply it can be done, I will be surprised if within 10 years there won't be legitimate competitors to all of those companies that were formed in the hypothetical garage startup scenario.

<comment><USER66> Well that's true that it's low cost. The difficulty I'd run into is how to get people to actually use it without spending on advertising.

<comment><USER64> I don't think the big problem will be trying to get people to use the system.

I think the whole thing (especially with social networks) rides on just how hard they want to fight to keep their users' data off of other networks.

If, for example, Facebook decides to prevent other social networks from pulling user data off of Facebook, then I think that will in large part drive end users' desire to find alternatives.

<comment><USER66> Well there's that too. But to get people to use a new social network in the first place, you either need to hope for a viral effect or spend on advertising. Unless I'm missing something.

<comment><USER64> I kind of think these days people generally understand the "groups" or "communities" or "family members" they are usually in contact with.

So I kind of envision that new social networks don't need to grow in that "all or nothing" model.

Also I see great potential for "glue networks". Or, in other words, networks responsible for facilitating the seamless transmission of data to / from different social networks depending on which one people decide they want to use.

I think it will get old real fast if people can only interact with people in Facebook while they're signed on to Facebook.

I want a social network that can seamlessly integrate with all of them so I don't have to worry about where all my friends are. I just decide I'm going to try something new and if it works well for me I might stick with it. In the meantime I'll continue to be able to communicate with people on other social networks because "I, as the consumer, should be allowed to dictate where my data can and can't go".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> The difference with Uber is that it requires a lot more trust to give someone access to your home while you're away to clean it. Not sure I would want to subscribe to a service where I would have to trust any local dude to visit my home. It's like a nanny. Picking someone to look after your kid is a very personal thing. It's not a lowest bidder thing.

<comment><USER22> Getting in a car is pretty much the most dangerous thing a person does in an average day. You may be trusting a cleaner with you possessions, but you're trusting that Uber driver with your life.

<comment><USER67> This is a VaR vs Average risk discussion. Yes the potential harm is higher in an absolute worst case with a taxi but it is a really rare event. Cleaner stealing stuff is unfortunately quite common. When you know the person the risk is relatively low but when it is a complete stranger that has been selected by an online company which itself never met that person, I would say the probability is too high for my own taste.

<comment><USER31> That's a reasonable evaluation to make. I'd note though that people use cleaning services all the time so Homejoy wasn't in any way unique in this regard (which was one of their problems).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> As a customer of homejoy and handy, first of all I have to say Handy is cheaper and better UI. Second, the key of the business success is about Quality of Service. If you can not control it, you will not succeed. For Uber, their service quality control is much simpler. The skills of the driver has been qualified by DMV. People only care about whether they arrived where they want. I do not care too much about the condition of the car as long as it is not full of shit.

For home cleaning, it is much harder. My experience with Handy or HomeJoy's service is really bad. I am not picky person, but I can see the persons they sent are not working well. And it is my house, so I care a lot!

</comment><comment><USER69> Wow, good thing all those employees ground their lives into dust for a while, working past 11pm to "get their hands dirty" for a business which was fundamentally a cash pit.

(And those are the "good jobs"...!)

</comment><comment><USER70> The lawsuit over independent contractors may not have been the deciding factor in their failure, but:

> For example, according to Zietsman, Homejoy city managers were tasked with > buying up and distributing cleaning supplies

They chose and supplied the cleaning supplies to workers? And still thought they had _any_ chance of prevailing in a lawsuit where they claimed the workers were independent contractors and not employees? Um.

<comment><USER71> Many franchise systems work like this, I wonder if they had provided a business class on llcing and then required training , supplies, and maybe even equipment how a lot of these cos would turn out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> I used homejoy about every month for a year. The cleaning maids never had good things to say about the company or the management.

</comment><comment><USER73> The part about Homejoy needing to keep up with Handy's flood of Groupon 'deals' just further drove home how destructive Groupon has been for businesses, except Groupon, which still has a multi-billion dollar public market valuation. Groupon should really be called Pandora's Box.

</comment><comment><USER74> > direct employment arrangements with its own (now former) clients.

There's really no way to avoid that, and it dooms the whole enterprise if Homejoy is serving as a middleman. I'm kinda curious how MerryMaids and the like work. Seems like the only viable system is simply a lead generations service.

</comment><comment><USER75> It failed because it was unreliable and a good deal of contractors felt no obligation to be loyal. I could never book the same person on the same day. As has been pointed out - cleaning is a routine.

They should sell the software to local providers, the booking features were quite nice.

</comment><comment><USER76> Does anyone else think the illustrations accompanying the article are unnecessarily mean-spirited?

</comment><comment><USER77> Here's my take on it as a former Homejoy employee:

[https://medium.com/@rockstox/an-inside-look-at-homejoy-s- fai...](https://medium.com/@rockstox/an-inside-look-at-homejoy-s- failure-391d74524a19#.2k6yiimz8)

</comment><comment><USER78> What I don't understand is if someone is willing at accept employment at a company under 1099 vs W2 why is it up to the government to say that it is not allowed? Can't that person just not work at this employer and seek employment elsewhere?

</comment><comment><USER79> Am I fair if I sum the business model as follows? Homejoy:

* proposed a service best provided by employees,

* planned to save money by using independent contractors,

* but had no plan about addressing any of the consequences of using independent contractors.

<comment><USER80> The service is "best provided by people who have experience doing that thing", be they employees or contractors. There's no value to any one of the three parties (Homejoy, customer, contractor) in the cleaner being an "employee". It's not bad/good; it's just not a factor in this situation. Do I care, as a homeowner, that the person coming from Homejoy is an employee or a contractor? It's likely that I prefer them to be an employee but, if the price is right, I could care less...

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> app-ing an industry won't allow you to charge more for the same service. Real innovation is supposed to bring costs down and productivity up which in turn increase demand for the service.

</comment><comment><USER82> "disintermediation"

How about a business model that takes that into account.

</comment><comment><USER83> Three words: Negative Gross Margin

Even a lemonade stand cannot stay in business when the price you're charging for lemonade is less than what it costs you.

Fred Wilson has written about this..

</comment><comment><USER84> TLDR. Summary: Burn was too high.

<comment><USER16> ..because they didn't have a business plan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> I feel like this is the founders story to tell, not some medium blog. Not that you can't learn anything from this, but Adora and Aaron have the most insight, and deserve the chance to share it (if they chose to).</comment>


Huawei set for limited role in UK 5G networks - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-51283059 <comment><USER3> I think the Economist had a good take: [https://www.economist.com/leaders/2020/01/25/huawei-is-a- cyb...](https://www.economist.com/leaders/2020/01/25/huawei-is-a-cyber- security-risk)

There is a real risk in using Huawei equipment, but the risk can be mitigated.

If the Chinese government tells Huawei to insert a backdoor, Huawei will certainly comply. But state actors don't necessarily need backdoors to exploit equipment. They're going to look for bugs, which they're just as likely to find in competitor's equipment as anything else. So the real solution is not to exclude Huawei because they're Chinese, but to make sure engineers fully understand the system from the hardware on up. This means insisting on open source systems and then conducting thorough audits.

<comment><USER4> This is missing the point.

All Comms kit has back doors in it. Its about choosing whom you allow to put them in.

Cisco was riddled with backdoors, and if you were interesting, the five eyes would specially intercept your kit and put extra bits in before it was delivered to you.

The issue here is geopolitical. Who has control of your friend's internet.

Now there are few ways to look at this:

1) this is the present government's master plan to use this as a bargaining chip in negotiations

2) The kit is going to be at the edge, which if the network is designed properly, will mitigate attempts to snoop or spoof

3) GCHQ et al, can't plan for shit.

4) The government and civil service can't plan for shit, don't understand how tech can influence geo politics

5) Trump is trying to get allies to buy shitty expensive kit from the USA.

Out of all of these 4 is my favourite hypothesis, but there are bound to be more factors. Yes, Huawei have sponsored a lab to prove that their kit is secure. But of course they would, they are not going to ship gimped kit to be tested.

Also, As Huawei kit already operates vast parts of openreach's network (the company that runs the vast majority of landlines and fibre) the point is kind of moot. The decision to allow this is why marconi bit the bucket, killing the last bit on comms design the UK had. (like every other pioneering electronics/computing company in the UK.)

<comment><USER5> Maybe UK would rather be spied upon by Chinese Gov. than by US Gov. I know I would.

<comment><USER6> Why would you want that?

The USA is our long time ally. Yes, I can roll things off the top of my head where they've stitched us up but I can also do the same for areas where mutual cooperation with the US has greatly helped us.

That's everything from military cooperation during the Cold War to the original Human Genome project.

I can't easily do that with China. I can point to the constant cyber attacks coming from China or their closed markets but I can't think of many ways China cooperates with us.

Perhaps I've missed some examples and someone could enlighten me where China has acted in the UK's interest?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In Europe Huawei have been under constant scrutiny from government spooks and telecom companies for at least 10 years (without news about it). Nothing has never been found and US has never provided any evidence. They are just worried. Some of that worry is reasonable but going all or nothing is not.

For years now, some European network operators (especially if they have government contracts) have silently limited what they buy from Huawei. Base stations and most hardware is OK. Operating services, network control, visitor and location registers, mobile switching centers, network monitoring, and related software dealing with the core network can be bought from others if there is need. Interfaces are standardized and you can buy different components from different vendors. Many EU countries just "happen" to have one or two carriers with strategically shielded core networks.

The real problem with Huawei has been lower quality software relative to competition. If I had to guess, I would say that NSA exploits holes in Huawei software to spy European allies at least as much as Chinese do or as much as Europeans spy each other.

<comment><USER8> Only someone working to promote Chinese influence would say this.

It's no different than Russia and China govs having a blanket ban on Windows and some western hardware.

Interesting twist at the end there, so the NSA is the big concern even with China designed and built hardware eh? Exactly how gullible do you expect readers of your comment to be? Let's say for a moment that even though China (a nation very hostile to the US and UK with a myriad of APT groups who focus on different goals such as corporate espionage,strategic compromise,misinformation and state espionage!) has the advantage of being able to instruct (not coerce since in China this wouldn't be against Huawei's rights) Huawei to implement layers of hardware and software backdoor,they somehow exploit Huawei devices at the same rate as NSA,let's say that's true, so what? Do you expect people to believe the NSA would target the UK as much as China does? Haha, let's say even that is true,so what? The UK are the US's closest ally, while China is probably the most hostile nation to the UK right now, vulnerabilities mean nothing without a threat that causes their exploitation to reduce a security property right??

You're essentially using clever wording to say "Hey, that's just a wooden horse,so what if our enemies left it at the gate? Even our allies send us gifts sometimes,they are just as likely to use it to a malicious end"

And no wonder your comment is top! I use to see this a lot when I was using quora a few years ago. Chinese "trolls" are so different than russian,they're always intelligent,word things well and very very subtle with good knowledge of western context but the propaganda angle is always clear like this. They specifically target influential academic(ish?) sites to exert influence. I am not fully sure you're one of them,but your comment is uncanningly similar. I never thought about an influence operation on HN,but man it makes so much sense.

<comment><USER9> You've broken the site guidelines badly here. Please read [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and stick to the rules when posting to HN.

There's years' worth of further explanation at [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20astroturf&sort=byDat...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20astroturf&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=true&page=0) if anyone wants it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Since this topic with Huawei started, I keep thinking that the US doesn't want Huawei to sell equipment to anybody, not so much because , you see, the Chinese will use the equipment to spy, but rather that they(the US) won't be able to spy using this equipment.

edit: remove paste garbage from the beginning

<comment><USER11> I think it's common knowledge that every nation state spies. The real question is - which nation do you trust to spy on you? Last time I checked, the US's spying did not result in people getting kidnapped and tortured into black jails for something as benign as comparing their leader to a cartoon character.

<comment><USER12> As a US national, I trust China to spy on me far more than the US government.

China couldn't kidnap me - they'd get huge political repercussions from the US. China kidnapping me on US soil would be very risky for them too.

On the other hand, the US could totally imprison me on bogus charges constructed from spy data.

If I was a Chinese national living in China, all of the above would reverse.

<comment><USER11> There are Chinese political and religious dissidents that would disagree with you here.

EDIT: By the way you are wrong about kidnappings in the US by China. This has happened in the past and still happens today where China uses Chinese nationals based in the US to locate dissidents or "tax-evaders" and force them against their will to fly back to China.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It feels like everyone is talking about national security when this seems more like a fight over who gets lucrative contracts to supply millions of pounds worth of equipment.

What's the capital investment of 5G — how much money are we talking about here?

The article doesn't mention one, but is there a major US supplier of telecoms equipment that is vying for these contracts, being propped up by the state department?

 _Edit: The following report says £2.5b capex, £1.7b opex over the next decade_

[https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...](https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/577965/Exploring_the_Cost_Coverage_and_Rollout_Implications_of_5G_in_Britain_- _Oughton_and_Frias_report_for_the_NIC.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER14> I put together this post a little while ago examining the HSEC report and letter from the ISC. It is, I hope, a fairly unbiased take. There aren't any good options and the time to do something about this was 20 years ago. [https://blog.eutopian.io/huawei-5g/](https://blog.eutopian.io/huawei-5g/)

</comment><comment><USER15> I understand the concerns here given the track record of the Chinese government. But, there is (AFAIK) not a single proof of a backdoor currently installed on Huawei telco equipment. Whereas there is a huge number of security bugs, hardcoded passwords (looking at you, Cisco), dubious certs and other nastiness discovered in equipment of other manufacturers. .

So really, given the amount of auditing that has been done on Huawei equipment recently, we could almost say that their equipment can be trusted more than that of other manufacturers.

<comment><USER16> Are you even looking? I did one Google search, and found this [1]:

> The results of the analysis show that Huawei devices quantitatively pose a > high risk to their users. In virtually all categories we studied, we found > Huawei devices to be less secure than comparable devices from other vendors

[https://www.scmagazine.com/home/security- news/vulnerabilitie...](https://www.scmagazine.com/home/security- news/vulnerabilities/huawei-products-riddled-with-backdoors-zero-days-and- critical-vulnerabilities/)

<comment><USER17> That article is based on Finite State's report, who sell static analysis software and are highly incentivized to not check too closely whether everything flagged by their tool is actually a vulnerability. They probably did find a bunch, but not nearly as much as they claim.

There was some good discussion on the report 6 months ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20421148](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20421148)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is anyone familiar with the economics of the 3G,4G,5G ... XG rollout?

Are the margins thin and production slow so that multiple suppliers are needed? If someone does not trust a supplier why it is hard to just keep them out completely? Is it more about politics beyond the network rollout?

<comment><USER19> I work for a major wireless provider in the US (as a wireless engineer). Huawei equipment is almost an order of magnitude cheaper than the Scandinavian companies. Samsung is such a small player in the US that they don't really matter.

Personally, I'm worried (not sure that's the right word) that China will just do it's own thing in the near future. It was a miracle that LTE phones work worldwide, IMO. China had/has its own 3G CDMA tech. I wouldn't be surprised if the market gets fragmented in later releases of 5G or with 6G.

<comment><USER20> I recall reading that China went with CDMA (which is Qualcomm intellectual property) as a condition on entering the WTO, as mandated to them by the United States.

So they were allowed to join the WTO, and Qualcomm made billions in IP royalties.

I don't have the evidence at hand. Perhaps someone else can find it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> What is the urge to use Huawei is there no other alternative no competitor with equivalent hardware? Does Cisco not make 5G hardware at all or at the same level as Huawei?

My concern is the 23.8GHz frequency used by 5G being devices so close to the 24GHz used by meteorology satellites.

</comment><comment><USER22> FWIW how this happens is Huawei gives still influential former gov folks cushy jobs:

[https://twitter.com/_JakubJanda/status/1222496191897731073](https://twitter.com/_JakubJanda/status/1222496191897731073)

</comment><comment><USER23> How did the U.S. lose out on advanced telecom design and manufacturing so badly?

<comment><USER24> GSM started in Europe. Qualcomm continued betting on CDMA way too long. It ended up with Ericsson buying the infrastructure part of Qualcomm back in 1999:

[https://money.cnn.com/1999/03/25/europe/ericsson/](https://money.cnn.com/1999/03/25/europe/ericsson/)

[https://www.wired.com/1999/03/ericsson-qualcomm- accord/](https://www.wired.com/1999/03/ericsson-qualcomm-accord/)

The americans won the really lucrative (and powerful - witness Trump/Brexit) application layer though (e.g. Google/Facebook/Amazon) so they shouldn't feel that bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Interesting decision. I interpretate this either UK does not believe US that China is spying or little spying doesn't really matter since the price is better and we can control it.

<comment><USER26> I think it's a compromise to try and avoid annoying both the US and China at the same time - not sure if it has worked though.

<comment><USER27> The UK is also at the beginning of post-Brexit trade negotiations with the US trade agreement being a central one. This is going to be part of those negotiations going forward and is all part of the governments strategy.

<comment><USER26> You think the UK will offer to drop Huawei as part of a US trade deal? Wouldn't that mean a remarkable loss of face for the current UK government?

<comment><USER28> Not if it's a good enough trade deal.

The US will be looking for the UK to pay US-style inflated prices for pharmaceuticals, change food safety standards to accept subsidised US farm produce, and install an ISDS court to protect corporations' anticipated future profits.

Compared to these, banning Huawei - which isn't even a British company - <USER2> be a trivial concession.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> just yesterday, Senators John Cornyn, Tom Cotton, and Marco Rubio to Boris Johnson: "The facts on Huawei are clear. We hope that your government will make the right decision and reject Huawei's inclusion in its 5G infrastructure."

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/01/27/congress-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/01/27/congress- warns-britain-stay-away-huawei/)

</comment><comment><USER24> My interpretation: UK is kind of desperate for allies post-brexit.

</comment><comment><USER29> Strikes me as a good decision.

The deal is that core networks are supplied by European NEP's mostly Nokia and Ericsson and radio elements are supplied by Huawei. There is very little information can be gleamed from from RAN, its all encrypted between the end point and the core network. Anyone wanting to harvest data will want to backdoor core network elements.

Another factor is that Huawei code has been provided and audited for a number of years now. Sure that is not full proof, but its way more than we have had available from any US vendors. I will be honest, as it stands I would trust a huawei box, way more than a cisco box.

On another note I expect this is a political play. The UK gets to not piss off the Americans too much (well putting aside Trump and his crazies) and the Chinese see us as favorable still. It's also quite interesting how this is coming off the back of Trump stating his displeasure at the UK governments plans to tax the tech giants more, with most of them being companies who are spying on global citizens at a volume never seen before.

</comment><comment><USER30> An unfortunate decision.

<comment><USER31> I thought that we were beyond that. The whole issue about spying was a hoax. It was a Bloomberg fake.

<comment><USER32> Huawei was on the danger list for years before the Bloomberg article. This is unrelated.

<comment><USER33> What proof de we have against it.

<comment><USER32> Accusations have been going around since the early 2000s but I don't think any governments released the hard evidence to the public.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Huawei#Espionage_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Huawei#Espionage_and_security_concerns)

<comment><USER34> Huawei stole the Cisco iOS source code. I'm also sure the CIA/NSA has other information. However leaking such info might compromise a source.

Guess we'll need to wait 50 years to get an idea.

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10485560675556000](https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10485560675556000)

<comment><USER35> "Cisco iOS source code"? What are you talking about?

<comment><USER36> Cisco "IOS" with a capital I, the operating system that runs Cisco hardware.

<comment><USER35> Ahhhh thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> AIUI Huawei supply a lot of the current infrastructure (so it's unlikely to be getting worse?). Also, a GCHQ spokesperson gave an interview on BBC Click late last year and said, basically, there's very little risk. The programme pointed out that China are ahead on the technology.

I trust the Chinese more with our data than USA, tbh. Businesses should be end-to-end encrypting any way, so ...

I'd like to have seen them [UK politicians] tell Trump to go suck it, like "we'll use the technology we want and aren't going to be bullied into using USA companies just so you can get access to our data through NSLs". That would have been a display of this mythical sovereignty we're burning the country down for.

</comment><comment><USER38> Still do not get it. A networked device can revolt anytime. It is in the flash code they can change anytime. There might be a war one day and if so, you will be dead NT he ware.

</comment><comment><USER39> Didn't the NSA get numerous backdoors put in by US tech companies? Didn't some guy last name Snowden, first name Edward, disclose some of that?

Don't take this as sticking up for China. It's more, shitting on all governments.

</comment><comment><USER40> What's it matter to the UK government if private citizens get spied on by China.

<comment><USER41> The UK government is using the same networks...</comment></comment>


If you have $3,650, you're among wealthiest half of people in world - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11161150/Are-you-among-the-worlds-wealthiest.html

<comment><USER2> I am the 50%!</comment>


Eclipse Mars (4.5) released - <AUTHOR> http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/

<comment><USER2> New and Noteworthy: [http://www.eclipse.org/eclipse/news/4.5/](http://www.eclipse.org/eclipse/news/4.5/)</comment>


Baltimore Blew Off Ransomware Demand Only to Find Data Had Never Been Backed Up - <AUTHOR> https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20191004/19564743128/city-baltimore-blew-off-76000-ransomware-demand-only-to-find-out-bunch-data-had-never-been-backed-up.shtml <comment><USER2> I remember hearing lots of back and forth on whether they actually used EternalBlue or not, I'm still not sure if that's settled or not, is it?

"Given the fact that $6 million has already been pulled from parks and public utilities funds to "harden" city systems, the $76,000 demand now seems like a bargain."

That doesn't seem fair at all. They'd still have to harden everything and it would still likely cost millions. From the looks of it they'd at least have their stuff back, probably, but they'd still need to put all the same time/money/work in, wouldn't they?

<comment><USER3> First of all, it's a terrible article, it's full of typos; why aren't we linking to the source article on ArsTecnica?

Secondly, Later on in the article is the more relevant

>The city figures it will cost $18 million to recover from a rejected $76,000 ransom demand. I guess if you're going to play chicken with extortionists, you might want to make sure your backup plans at least meet min spec.

Either way, it's a terrible article and I'm on the fence about flagging it.

<comment><USER4> on the contrary, i kinda liked this sarcastic writing..

>>The person in charge of the city's systems was Frank Johnson, who went on leave (presumably permanently) after a post-attack audit found the IT director hadn't done much IT directing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The techdirt article author suggest they should have just paid the ransom.

Even knowing that paying the ransom is no _guarantee_ you actually recover, and that you have to then harden your system anyway after that (which you should have been doing all along)... I tend to agree.

I am a Baltimore resident, and I've also had that opinion since the day after the ransomware attack was announced -- just pay the ransom. (In part because from what I experience of Baltimore City government, i was pretty sure the backups and recovery/continuity plans were going to be basically nonexistent).

But on previous HN threads, it was a _very_ unpopular opinion, in the articles right after the attacks were announced, very few in the comments threads seemed to think it was acceptable or a good idea to pay the ransom.

I'm curious if that remains true?

<comment><USER6> I work with a cryto exchange, and fwiw, can tell you that most businesses would agree with you. They pay the ransom. And they use common exchanges like Coinbase, Binance, and Bittrex to do so.

The only way not-paying the ransom is beneficial (aside from having proper backup systems in place obviously) is if there was a large public sentiment shift promoting NOT paying ransoms. If society at large came together and decided the majority of entities are NOT going to pay, then ransomware viruses would be less profitable and thus not as favorable projects for hackers/scammers.

But that would take a lot of effort, organization, and favorable circumstances to have everyone do that simultaneously going forward. And there would be casualties at the beginning before the public sentiment cemented itself in the collective conscious.

But yeah, the only way ransomware will stop is if it stops becoming profitable: which means companies either need to have proper OpSec and backups (so they have no need of paying), or collectively agree that no one will pay ransomware attacks.

Seems like a pipe dream that we'd ever get to that point though. So I imagine companies will continue to fork over the ransoms.

Edit: this got me thinking, say for example, the US government outlawed paying the ransom to hackers. And they could somehow enforce this law effectively. Wouldn't that pretty much stop ransomware attacks in the US? or where ever a law like that could be effectively enforced?

<comment><USER5> I think society has come together and decided we're all going to pretend we're not paying and talk publicly about how nobody should ever pay, while mostly everyone is paying.

Society also seems to have come together and decided we'd rather save money than spend it on effective backups and security.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> You never know who's swimming naked until the tide goes out.

Would be great if every organization conducted targeted attacks in order to probe the reliability of their assumed safeguards. If your system hasn't been tested by someone who has a real incentive to break it, you have no idea if it is really as secure as you think it is.

<comment><USER8> We do this. Every place I have worked at I've had the senior admin explain and show the backup plans for servers and desktops and demonstrate various restore requests. I have caught a few with their pants down.

Another important thing is fine granular permissions on network shares.

<comment><USER9> We have our own pen testing team in addition to the 3rd parties who also do it. There's a big DR test this weekend for our 2 largest data centers as well to make sure backups and fail overs happen. Plus multiple networks for different products that's completely different from the regular employee network. You even have to sign in if you plug into our Ethernet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For a while I worked with some products that were popular with municipalities, and school districts in a previous career. The scale of under funding, and incompetent leadership in those roles is staggering, and sadly not surprising to me.

Internal politics are always an issue of course, especially at schools where a handful of luddite teachers / administrators can kill good idea, but that's also an issue of IT leadership too.

I was glad to move away from those products.

<comment><USER11> I briefly worked for a school district that had 8000 Macs to support. They fired the entire technical team (for reasons unknown) except for me and then proceeded to hire people who had never used a Mac in their life. The woman in charge of the department was like Lorraine Bracco's character in Hackers - extremely overpaid, could barely figure out how to work a computer, and used God as her password. I'm still disgusted when I think about how corrupt and incompetent that district was and likely still is. A few of the fired guys wound up with a nice settlement, I'm sure the webcam recordings of the superintendent exchanging teaching positions for "favors" probably worked to their advantage.

<comment><USER12> Reasons unknown? For starters, they were conspiring to covertly spy on their employer.

<comment><USER11> Nope, the district had no idea they were doing that until after the firing. I did hear the actual reason was because they were considering joining a union, but I didn't stick around long enough to dig any deeper.

<comment><USER12> Conspiring criminals tend to do lots of conspiracy-ish and criminal-ly things. If they secretly installed webcams, they likely also were reading users' email and viewing confidential documents like performance reviews, budgets, salaries and student test scores. Their firing was likely highly justified.

Since you seem to know all kinds of facts that discredit the school district, the superintendent, and the IT supervisor, yet "didn't stick around" to absorb info that might look bad for the group of employees, makes you a narrator who is difficult to believe is being objective and non-biased.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you don't test your backups, they're not backups. But I guess in this case if you don't have backups at all, you also don't have backups... 1 is 0, 2 is 1, etc...

<comment><USER14> Question:

OK, so I know how to test — manually — that a few randomly chosen files are correctly backed up in my backup systems.

But what if there are larger classes of systemic error in the process I haven't thought of testing? What if some particular file type or directory tree has vanished from the backups, but since it isn't in my manual testing process, I never catch it? Are there best practices for validating that whole directory trees are correctly backed up across the board? Or any form of automated testing for backups (but, presumably, separate from the software that does the backup process)?

<comment><USER15> I would just use ZFS snapshots and replication. They're read-only, and they only use as much space as the difference between the current state and the snapshot.

Plus, you'll have solid data integrity instead of relying on buggy firmware in your RAID controller.

<comment><USER16> And there's no way to compress/eliminate snapshots?

Also, redundancy and snapshots are _not_ a backup.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I have to wonder if, in macro economic terms, we'd be better off spending whatever is necessary to successfully investigate and prosecute scammers/telemarketers/ransomers.

<comment><USER18> We are best off not paying them regardless: if there is no payout the bad actors will give up the attack. If you are in a group that pays out target them. It doesn't pay to target someone who has good backups (though it might not be worth checking if infecting everyone is easy)

<comment><USER19> >if there is no payout the bad actors will give up the attack

I'd argue that isn't true. Ransomware is a form of terror in the form of "losing everything". And that threat of impending loss combined with 'backups are hard wahhhh' and the fact that no Corp I know backs up user machines...

As a numbers game, it pays. Well. And even if it didn't, some still hack for the "lulz".

<comment><USER20> Definitely. Look at all the people pursuing "make money fast" scams. Some people will happily do anything they think might make them a buck. Not paying out will help, of course, but it doesn't eliminate the problem.

<comment><USER18> When there is no money in it nobody will be developing the exploits that make it easy. There is a large difference between buying a recent vulnerability and exploiting it vs finding a vulnerability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The irony in this is absolutely hilarious. I remember we were all praising the city for having such forethought and for doing their due diligence (unlike most of these cases) and keeping backups of their data.

<comment><USER22> I wonder how the IT director was hired and who monitored what the department was doing. I worked at a place that hired a MS system support person but no on one knew anything about it and he seemed to know more than they did. He was fired a couple months later as he actually knew nothing and spent all his time making support calls trying to get someone to tell him what to do. He was on the phone for hours every day. Then when he was fired no one changed passwords so he logged into the DNS server and randomized all the IPs, leaving the whole company without networking. Hopefully not the same person...

<comment><USER23> Baltimore has been through a good amount of IT Directors who were caught up in scandals/corruption. Not surprising as in the past ten years we have had two disgraced/corrupt mayors abruptly leave office.

<comment><USER24> What is the end state for Baltimore?

<comment><USER25> as a city? probably status quo: continued grift and unaccountability as a once proud manufacturing town decays.

it's somewhat attractive price wise simply because it's a very affordable urban east coast city. there's a vibrant/edgy art scene (to include drama, etc.) that's attractive to younger artists, sort of like what detroit is going through (as i understand it)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> >>The person in charge of the city's systems was Frank Johnson, who went on leave (presumably permanently) after a post-attack audit found the IT director hadn't done much IT directing.

love this writing man :) :)

Dont know why would a city's chief digital officer go backup free?!!! even at worst , backblaze would have helped :|

</comment><comment><USER26> I guess a failure to do backups of any kind is beyond any solution we could offer, but if one could take even a _single step forward beyond nothing_ , a read-only (immutable) offsite destination is well worth your consideration.[1]

Most end users looking for "ransomware protection" probably just want to drag and drop some files, like Dropbox, which is why a simple SFTP (filezilla) solution is nice, but of course you could point any old thing[2] if you were more sophisticated ...

[1] [https://www.rsync.net/products/ransomware.html](https://www.rsync.net/products/ransomware.html)

[2] borg, restic, rclone, git-annex ... rsync ...

<comment><USER27> Surprised someone would use or recommend FileZilla after their numerous adware issues.

<comment><USER26> I'm just thinking of simple SFTP clients ... WinSCP ? psftp.exe ?

Whatever works for you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> To be fair, the CIO was only on the job for 1.5 years when the ransomware hit. It's not known whether or not he had the budget for reorganizing all of the data, etc. Maybe it was on his list of priorities, but it didn't have the funding, etc, and it was pushed off until the next year. I'm not absolving him of this because backups are a first order object when you're dealing with IT, but it could be part of the reason why it wasn't implemented yet. This is the reality of working in a bureaucracy like city government.

</comment><comment><USER29> How do we increase IT competence in the public sector? There's no reason important servers should be running on Windows machines with "backups" consisting of making a copy of a file on the same hard drive as the original.

<comment><USER30> Apply for a job. Run towards the fire. Help fix it.

<comment><USER31> I applied for the Baltimore City director of digital operations position. I interviewed with Frank Johnson and a variety of other city department heads.

I got the impression they were a group of people that broadly understood their problems and were finding it very difficult to steer the city towards good solutions.

Although Mr. Johnson was the City's Director of IT, realistically he had very nominal oversight over many of the city's actual IT departments - which were spread across a series of departments with their own employees, budgets, and resources. This was something he had been actively trying to improve but with limited progress.

I don't know what the best solution is - their hiring process is flawed and it's difficult to remove or replace problem employees. The budget is about 60% of what it probably needs to be and there's no path towards improving it.

<comment><USER30> That sounds right. Good for you for going out for it. Hiring / firing in government is certainly not helping the situation, and budget fights are always a struggle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> "That can't be real?"

Really? I'll never forget the description given to me by a close friend who had left a "Government IT" job for the private sector: (1) You have standards and practices like everywhere, but forget one and you're explaining yourself to a judge instead of a boss and (2) there's never enough money for doing all of the things required to meet regulations let alone make things better which is why you'll see silly things you haven't seen on banking websites in a decade still prominent as "security features" on state treasury websites.

I found the story about "important data on a desktop drive", and the shock it caused, surprising. Maybe my past life (a decade ago in infrastructure) was unique, but I specifically recall an incident where I was called down to make an _old_ IBM NetVista (mind you, Lenovo had owned that line for a while at this point) boot up[0]. I noticed some numbers on a printed label and a boot error about the CMOS battery, realized it was drive telemetry, realized that nobody who was looking at the problem had ever heard of plugging in those values (or probably had touched an IDE controller -- server guys -- and it was ancient technology).

The rest of the story I might not have completely correct as parts of it are assembled third-hand, but this desktop was located in our data center, hooked up to a modem (2400bps) and it handled submitting charges to another carrier to the tune of "a few layoffs" for every week it wasn't functional.

How does this happen? Well, the company went bankrupt and emerged, then was purchased by another company. During that time, a large part of our operations was moved from one state to another, hardware and all (but mostly not the people). This predates all of that, of course. At some point, a NetVista was put in place to test setting up an automated process for billing this carrier -- something carrier imposed (must have been one of the big guys). The developer who set up the test system was successful ... on his final week of work before being laid off. A few months later, the carrier continued working the migration plan and switched things over, and after a short delay, accounting rang the alarm bells. A busy developer stepped in, found the offending system was connected to test and re-configured it to point to prod. Everyone went on their day. And hey, when desktop migrated everyone to Windows XP, they put UPSes at every desk so it literally ran in a cubicle until the Data Center migration (where it failed the first time and the label was printed). Rather than figuring out what, on earth, it would take to fix it, they put it on a shelf and plugged it into the UPS in the rack until I was called several years later.

[0] I was one of two people who were called when everything else was tried. This sort of incident happened to me in very similar ways at least 4 times (once with an old Thinkpad Laptop).

</comment><comment><USER33> It makes perfect sense!

The same kind of people that would say no to a pocket change ransom, are the same kind of people that would use taxpayer money to not just do a poor job, but to not do it at all!

The kind of people whose shit don't stink.

<comment><USER18> Never pay a ransom: it just encourages the bad guys to try harder. Soon they will figure out how to corrupt your backups as well (if there is anyway to do that - now we are in an arms race). Better to write off the loss now and ensure the bad guys don't continue to think of new attacks.

There is one exception: if the ransom is paid in such a way that the FBI (or equivalent) can track where the money goes and thus arrest the criminals.

<comment><USER8> Well when the FYI recommends paying what options do you have?

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/14/opinion/ransomware.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/14/opinion/ransomware.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> TLDR; if your company / city has millions invested in a cyber infrastructure get cyber insurance. :facepalm:

Also $76,000 is oddly low... like low enough to be the price of a well established firm to do a pen test on your network...

<comment><USER35> True, but managers also usually fail to account for the time and cost of remediation after a pentest.

Had the city engaged in the pentest, would there have been an appetite to spend 10-20x that amount on remediation?

<comment><USER36> Paying the ransom doesn't cover the need to spend money on fixing the problems. Having a ransom payer mark on the organization raises the security requirement, doesn't it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> This headline gives me anxiety.</comment>


Linode and the Google Cyber Attacks - <AUTHOR> http://blog.linode.com/2010/01/15/linode-and-the-google-cyber-attacks/

<comment><USER2> Totally unrelated to the article, but I've got to put my good word in for Linode. I've never had such good service from a hosting provider, and frankly for a (currently) tiny account.

<comment><USER3> <http://prgmr.com/xen/> gets good reviews here, is run by a HN member, and has the cheapest prices out of any VPS by far.

<comment><USER4> _has the cheapest prices out of any VPS by far_

This is not accurate. There are many VPS's which are cheaper, many of which have much greater capacity for the money. Some are fly-by-night scams. Others have several years of stability with good support. Check forums and VPS review sites to find the best match.

That said, I have nothing against prgmr or linode and would use them if I needed a super-reliable VPS. (My main VPS is Linode, my secondary is with Kerplunc Hosting)

<comment><USER3> I meant cheapest per unit of RAM. Do you know of any decently reliable VPS provider with cheaper prices for 256/512/1024 MB of RAM?

<comment><USER5> Average website backends shouldn't really be limited by RAM unless you're doing some really heavy lifting, or made some bad choices.

I'm more concerned about bandwidth. prgmr is close, but not quite as cheap as linode when it comes to bandwidth.

Depends what your needs are though.

<comment><USER6> That's simply false. RAM is the constraint of interest for plenty of single- server websites that are running MySQL as a backend. You want a bunch of memory for the database, plus enough left over to accommodate your web app. That often means wanting a 2-4 GB machine.

Linode is something like $55/GB RAM per month, while prgmr.com is $14.

<comment><USER5> 2-4GB? wth are you doing?

I remember a post on here saying how hackernews was running on a new 8GB server or something. There's no reason it couldn't run on a 200MB server easily.

(Related: Is HN _really_ sluggish for everyone else as well? Like 3-4 seconds per page load)

<comment><USER3> If you really think you could run HN on 200MB of RAM, write a blog post about how to do it and submit it here. I'm sure the community would like to know how. I think your ability to write applications using minimal amounts of RAM is out of sync with the median RAM use here.

<comment><USER5> It'd mean writing in some 'un-hip' language. So I doubt anyone would be interested in it here.

Using even 1GB of RAM for something like HN is just crazy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I take it Google used Linode as a neutral/anonymous place to access stuff from?

<comment><USER8> I read it that way too. But I am still very curious where and in which context Linode was mentioned in media.

<comment><USER9> _"The servers used in both attacks employ the HomeLinux DynamicDNS provider, and both are currently pointing to IP addresses owned by Linode, a US-based company that offers Virtual Private Server hosting. The IP addresses in question are within the same subnet, and they are six IP addresses apart from each other,"_

Quote attributed to VeriSign's iDefense security lab in [http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2010/01/researchers- ide...](http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2010/01/researchers-identify- command-servers-behind-google-attack.ars)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> One article I saw implicated a Rackspace server in the attacker's side of event. I presume that meant Slicehost.

If I was breaking into computers "off the clock", I'd probably look to just-a- CC# no-questions-asked hosting providers (probably overseas) as my staging ground. This is something new. Commodity virtualized VPS systems like Slicehost are an awfully convenient way to launder attacks.

It's only been in the last couple years that VM slices have been so quick and easy to buy.

<comment><USER11> Except to pay for one of these, you still pay via credit card, paypal, etc. that links to real identifiable info. I was wondering why, if one of the attackers instances were discovered by google, they didn't just hand it over to the authorities and have them get a subpoena for the account info? or maybe they did

<comment><USER3> If you can stage an attack like this, you can steal credit card numbers or phish your way to a Paypal account

<comment><USER10> Not that it matters (I'm sure if they're actually paying for VM's they're using stolen cards), but you can trade cash for anonymous credit card numbers in a number of places. Simplest example: Google "Vanilla VISA".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Linode is great, indeed. I'm a fan of <http://arpnetworks.com> lately, though. Great service there too, and a good product for a good price.</comment>


NASA and Foursquare team up for the first extraterrestrial check-in - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/22/foursquare-space-astronaut/

<comment><USER2> "...unlocked the NASA Explorer Badge..."

And so our space program takes yet another small step towards being replaced by wishful thinking. NASA is scrapping one real exploration program after another, while using precious orbital payloads to study rose fragrances and ant colonies in 0G. If the 470th person in orbit is a "NASA Explorer", then I guess we should just make Neil Armstrong a Deep Space Admiral. Then we can all pretend like we've colonized the galaxy while we play EVE Online.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Fascinating example of PR done right (by Foursquare, NASA and and JESS3). Quite sure this is going to be picked up by pretty much every blog and newspaper.

Yup, not everyone has quite the same leverage, but you have to hand it to these guys for pulling this off!

<comment><USER3> I think Nasa does some of the best PR there is. Far from all of it is great but sometimes they have awesome ideas and execute them in an excellent way. The anthropomorphized Mars Phoenix on Twitter was just lovely and very successful (<http://twitter.com/MARSPHOENIX>).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> JESS3 advising NASA, I am guessing there was a Foursquare partnership over Facebook Places probably due to timing. If I can speculate for a moment, Places probably didn't exist yet at the planning stages of the partnership as this was probably in the works for a while.

If Places was rolled out just a bit earlier, and the right connections were in place, they maybe could have been a bigger consideration by JESS3. I'd say this is a big miss for Facebook.

<comment><USER5> Hi Charlie --

Thanks for your note, very reasoned and thoughtful. I was the strategic lead from the JESS3 team and we did in fact talk with Places; hope to do something in the future, but they aren't set up to handle larger initiatives... yet :)

Don't hesitate to shoot me an email with anything further: firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Check out the extra data they served in the source that went to space: <http://yfrog.com/86ul8p>

<comment><USER7> Foursquare Labs seems to have an excessive number of employees.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> JESS3 also did NASA's Buzz Room (<http://jess3.com/nasa-buzzroom>)

<http://buzzroom.nasa.gov>

</comment><comment><USER8> My only exposure to foursquare was there was a point in time when some people tweeted where they are with it, most people complained about those tweets and then it all went away. Haven't heard about it since (I see no point in it). Honestly, it sounds like something that will die sooner rather than later.

</comment><comment><USER9> Awww, shucks. And here I was hoping ET checked in. _That_ would be the first extraterrestrial check-in IMO.</comment>