Rotten Apple: Right to Repair Roundup - <AUTHOR> https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/08/rotten-apple-right-to-repair-roundup.html <comment><USER3> This is such a bad article, I half suspect it's astroturfing and food intended for Apple apologists. It's focused on a single small part of the problem and unnecessarily misrepresented it.

As a reminder of the broader picture: Apple has a strong anti-repair stance, they have lobbied for this [1], have engaged in broad, deceptive strategies to remove 3rd party repair options, by confiscating legally refurbished hardware under the guise of "counterfeits" [2], attempting to confiscate grey market parts under the guise of "trademark violation" and threatening the 3rd party repair shops [3]. They profit from this continued attack by deceiving customers into expensive unnecessary part replacements, suggesting repair is not possible and generally coercing customers into buying new products instead [4].

[1] [https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180126/07355539089/apple...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180126/07355539089/apple- verizon-continue-to-lobby-against-right-to-repair-your-own-devices.shtml)

[2] [https://boingboing.net/2018/10/20/louis- rossman.html](https://boingboing.net/2018/10/20/louis-rossman.html)

[3] [https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/a3yadk/apple-sued-an- inde...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/a3yadk/apple-sued-an-independent- iphone-repair-shop-owner-and-lost)

[4] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2_SZ4tfLns](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2_SZ4tfLns)

<comment><USER4> This is the real issue.

Personally, I've replaced many components on iPhones through the ages. Often the replacement parts I've ordered have been sub-standard and that was the risk I've accepted as I was purchasing from unknown sellers. Sometimes the parts have been on par with the original components and I've been very pleased with my purchase.

The right to repair should be protected. When I am no longer able to fix my own purchases then I no longer feel I own the device.

This is especially true given Apple present themselves as an environmentally conscious brand. Often people don't have the opportunity to get parts replaced by Apple directly, or they don't have the means. Ensuring there are options for everyone promotes reuse and recycling. Additionally it limits the extent that a given company can build in planned obsolescence.

However. My opinion is that in purchasing a second hand device I want to know which components are from the OEM. This is especially important for components that are not easily validated, i.e. the battery. I can then take the risk of price vs quality at face value.

I get the impression here that people are very vocal about one side or the other, but I feel there is a balance to be made.

<comment><USER5> You stopped "owning" your device the monent you accepted locked bootloader and no root. It is weird that it is the battery replacement that triggered that feeling.

<comment><USER6> It's not about owning. It's having trust in the device that it will do what it says it will. Buying from Apple there is generally a trust that the device meet's Apple's bar and hasn't been tempered with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > By activating a dormant software lock on their newest iPhones, Apple is > effectively announcing a drastic new policy: only Apple batteries can go in > iPhones, and only they can install them.

I really dislike the phrasing attached to this story.

It's not a lock: a third party installed battery still _works_ , the phone isn't refusing to start up until you go to an Apple Store and have an authentic Apple(tm) battery installed. Rather, it's a warning in the "battery health" section basically saying "we don't know if your battery is any good, you might need to get it replaced".

That said, I'd prefer a clearer phrasing of their error message. It looks like it's just triggering the generic "your battery may need service" warning, which is more of a scare tactic than I'd like. "You don't have a certified Apple battery" would be completely sufficient.

Given the existence of refurbishment scams, where substandard parts are put into old phones to make them look good briefly, I can understand where Apple is coming from on this point. Someone who buys a second-hand iPhone and finds the battery dies after a month isn't going to be very happy with iPhones.

<comment><USER8> No. That's exactly what Apple are doing. Out of all the ways they could harm the consumer in this situation, that message is by far the most effective. Stop defending them. Stop giving them benefit of doubt. Stop misconstruing their malice for incompetence. Apple has repeatedly demonstrated that they'll go to extreme lengths to harm consumers and prevent 3rd party repair.

That message destroys the consumer's trust in 3rd party repair shops. It says battery health issue. Are sure you put in a real Apple battery? Did you even change my battery at all?

Outright locking the battery out would cause backlash and possible legal action. This 'technically works but will nag you forever unless you pay Apple to run a program to clear the message that they refuse to share with 3rd parties' solution is genius. Evil genius.

Imagine the car equivalent of this situation. Imagine you take your BMW to a non-BMW-authorised repair shop and they swap your battery to a perfectly good one for 1/5th the price. But now you have a permanent warning light on your dashboard that there's something wrong with your battery. This situation is actually impossible. There are laws that require carmakers to release repair manuals to 3rd party repairers and honour warranty after 3rd party repairs. Tech companies are shitting on their users because equivalent laws don't exist for electronic goods.

<comment><USER9> > Imagine you take your BMW to a non-BMW-authorised repair shop and they swap > your battery to a perfectly good one for 1/5th the price. But now you have a > permanent warning light on your dashboard that there's something wrong with > your battery. This situation is actually impossible.

You wouldn't believe it, but that's almost exactly how it works with bmws since around 15 years. The unofficially replaced battery won't function properly until "registered /converted/(or even) programmed" [0] at the official bmw service. The difference is that the software to do that is pirated and thus available to the 3rd parties

[o] [https://bimmerscan.com/bmw-battery- registration/](https://bimmerscan.com/bmw-battery-registration/)

<comment><USER8> 3rd party repairers have the ability to do this for you because they have BMW- compatible programmers. Because BMW must release make that possible for them. By law.

It's also there for a reason: the charging system needs to be told that the battery was changed and what type of battery it was changed to. Otherwise it charges it the wrong way. Unlike Apple batteries, the car batteries are dumb and can't tell the car about themselves.

The warning light won't come on just because you replaced a battery. It'll come on a few days later if you replaced a battery and didn't tell the system about it so now the battery is performing poorly because it was being charged incorrectly.

3rd party manufacturers, by law, have access to the programming tools required to do this for you. Apple holds the equivalent of these programming tools away from everyone and aggressively sues anyone that manages to obtain them or reverse engineer them.

I guess a better analogy would have been '3rd party repair shops installs genuine BMW battery but is unable to register it because the tools to do so are held hostage'.

[https://oppositelock.kinja.com/replacing-bmw-batteries- yes-i...](https://oppositelock.kinja.com/replacing-bmw-batteries-yes-it-is- ridiculous-1681775778)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _> Now, I'm not sure that Apple has thus far triggered that kill switch. But they can do so at any time. _

This is just scaremongering. Apple has not, in fact, triggered a "kill switch" or "locked" anyone out of using a 3rd party battery.

All it does is display a message that it's not a genuine Apple part. Deep in the battery settings. That's it.

Remember that old iPhones are frequently resold. You're going to want to know if it has OEM parts.

<comment><USER11> > Remember that old iPhones are frequently resold. You're going to want to > know if it has OEM parts.

I think this is lost on the HN audience. There's a lot of people out there being scammed by counterfeit parts, recycled parts, shoddy repair jobs, and straight up cobbled together FrankenPhones. Not to mention the danger in using lithium batteries from unknown provenance.

<comment><USER12> ...which is caused by making batteries irreplaceable to start with. If a phone's battery is user-repleacable, the user could buy it from Apple or any other reliable manufacturer. Now they have to go to either Apple or some third-party show who may use problematic batteries.

<comment><USER13> If the battery was user replaceable, how would that improve the issue? If anything, it would make it worse from the standpoint of Apple's customers getting a subpar product.

Batteries are the worst possible offender when it comes to counterfeits. If you're not getting them straight from the source, it's basically the wild west. I don't order them online any more because it's a 50/50 chance of getting a significantly worse product, even from reputable vendors ( _ahem_ amazon)

I think Apple is nudging their consumers towards getting an official replacement and honestly it makes perfect sense why they would do that in light of the market offerings.

Imagine an iPhone with a user replaceable battery. 30% of customers are gonna order the replacement from Apple anyway. 20% are going to order a mid high priced good battery from Anker. And 50% are gonna get swindled by an Alibaba drop shipper. The end result: the iPhone winds up behaving like a commodity android phone to the consumer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Lots of Apple apologists in this thread.

(1) They deliberately design new proprietary adapters, eschewing already popular and capable standards, in new devices - to sell you more shit

(2) They remove support for existing standards (e.g. headphone jacks) - <USER2> sell you more shit

(3) They file lawsuits against third-party repair providers who do a demonstrably better job than first-party repairs - to sell you more shit

(4) They add software checks which attempts to subvert the same third-party repair providers after their lawsuits fail - to sell you more shit

Apple consistently, at every step, serves their bottom line ahead of your interests. Quit letting tribalism blind you, Apple users - this behavior is unacceptable.

<comment><USER15> > They deliberately design new proprietary adapters, eschewing already popular > and capable standards, in new devices

They have _one_ proprietary connector across all of their products that they sell, and that's Lightning. Lightning is seven years old, was launched at a time when the alternative would be the god-awful microUSB connector, and all rumours point towards it being phased out completely for USB-C in the next couple of years.

The hyperbole helps no-one.

<comment><USER14> Lightning, sure. How about firewire, and thunderbolt, and the 30-pin connectors for the iPod? Have you also forgotten their proprietary SSD connectors - SATA compatible but with a non-M.2 socket. Or ADC, a proprietary pinout for what's effectively a DVI cable? Or AAUI? Mini-VGA and Mini-DVI?

Apple has been doing this for longer than I've been alive. I'm happy that they're phasing it out in favor of USB-C - this is a positive step - but their past definitely helps damns them when fanboys come to their defense over right to repair.

<comment><USER16> To my knowledge those described have some distinct advantage over what was available on the market at the time. Firewire was way faster, ADC carries USB, Thunderbolt is connected to PCIe, mini-vga and mini-dvi are self explanatory and their proprietary SATA like connection was, again, way faster.

<comment><USER14> Their proprietary SATA was just SATA with a wrong connector. It was not faster. Firewire was faster at the expense of massive security holes. A practical reason for having Thunderbolt connected to PCIe never materialized. Don't kid yourself - Apple made these calls for one reason and one reason only.

<comment><USER16> There are external GPUs now that use thunderbolt, prior to this you could run external displays at a greater resolution than was available via HDMI at the time.

Firewire was mostly not used because people were content to endure USB, and USB had a larger availability on consumer hardware. Apple gained nothing by spending money to add the port to their computers so I find it hard to buy that they had a secret malevolent purpose in doing so. In this case they rolled the dice on a superior solution and it didn't pay off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So Apple's take is probably: A bunch of people get mad when their iPhones stop working, start running slow, etc; research data shows that when they need a battery replaced, they're more likely to go to the local third party (non- authorized) repair shop and get it replaced. We have no idea how skilled or unskilled these repair shops are, even if they use genuine Apple batteries. Our best bet for maintaining the reputation of our product is to make sure only Genius bar or AASP staff install the batteries and run the necessary diagnostics post-install.

I don't agree that they should be doing the battery authentication thing, replacing your battery is pretty easy and simple; but you have to look at this from Apple's standpoint:

Yes, Louis Rossmann runs a repair shop that is better than the Genius bar in every way and, should he join Apple, all of their repairability issues would disappear overnight. The issue is that many (most likely a majority) of local computer repair shops that get asked "can you fix this battery error on my iPhone" aren't on par with Louis Rossmann and will make mistakes such as improper installation, not re-sealing the phone for water resistance, using non-genuine batteries, etc. Apple could, by all means, make the process easier, cheaper, and more idiot-proof, but that would require engineering efforts. The best course of action, both for making money from repairs and not losing money to engineering and possible product changes ("don't sacrifice form for function", at least under Jony Ive), is to get the software to verify that Apple had complete control over the replacement battery from factory to phone.

<comment><USER18> We already went through all of this with cars and car mechanics. The only difference with electronics is that people have been convinced that their smartphone, laptop and electronics in general are somehow arcane magic. Nowadays, car manufacturers also seem keen to jump on this bandwagon, since it would also benefit their bottom line to keep third party mechanics from touching their cars.

Fact is, if Apple can fix their devices, then so can a third party without much problem, it's not that hard and most of it doesn't really take any skilled labor. Apple would be better served by releasing repair manuals and selling parts (like car manufacturers have been doing) if they're afraid of having their reputation ruined by third party repairmen. That, of course, is not their concern, a third party repairman ruining someone iPhone in no way affects Apple's reputation, and it's better for Apple's business since it helps their propaganda efforts against third-party repair. Apple and other electronics manufacturers of course are not going to spend any effort supporting third-party repair until they're forced to by legislation.

For what it's worth, I think the right to repair side needs to do a better job of delivering their message. While focusing dispelling the notion that electronics repair is hard is pretty important to undo decades of propaganda on the matter, currently the environment is the hot button issue, and throwing away repairable objects isn't all that great, particularly if it's an easy fix like changing a battery. Repair needs to be included explicitly into the 3 R's somehow, either by making it into 4 R's (Reduce, Repair, Reuse, Recycle, for example) or by including Repair into the umbrella of Reduce.

<comment><USER19> > We already went through all of this with cars and car mechanics. The only > difference with electronics is that people have been convinced that their > smartphone, laptop and electronics in general are somehow arcane magic.

With cars there _is_ a key difference: car service people usually are required to complete a multi-year long education with proper certifications (at least in Germany), and they get proper service manuals, genuine tools, spare parts and utilities from the manufacturers (as a result of the right to repair laws mentioned in the article), and third party replacement parts have to be certified as well (at least in Europe).

With phone repair shops, you have no guarantee that the person doing the repair is actually skilled, or that the repair parts are genuine/certified in any way. The right-to-repair laws have to be extended to force manufacturers to provide genuine spare parts, the sooner the better. Lithium battery fires are a real and scary threat.

<comment><USER20> Those key differences don't really hold up, and it's mainly dealerships that use "spare parts from the manufacturers", and they would like nothing better than customers being forced to use their services, but they can't.

The main body of car repair customers have a choice ranging from non- dealership shops to cousin Vinnie with the range of quality and cost that goes with it. It's up to the customer.

Batteries degrade and need replacement at some point. What Apple is trying to do here is fusing the tyres to the rims and claiming it's necessary and specialist work.

> Lithium battery fires are a real and scary threat.

As are cars crashes, but somehow having third party repair options hasn't had much of an impact on that.

<comment><USER19> > The main body of car repair customers have a choice ranging from non- > dealership shops to cousin Vinnie with the range of quality and cost that > goes with it. It's up to the customer.

> As are cars crashes, but somehow having third party repair options hasn't > had much of an impact on that.

Yes, because technicians are certified and trained, and because safety relevant parts are (no matter if first party or after market!) certified and tested. The relevant list in Germany is at [https://www.gesetze-im- internet.de/stvzo_2012/__22a.html](https://www.gesetze-im- internet.de/stvzo_2012/__22a.html).

Of course, sometimes there are problems with car parts (e.g. the airbag mass recall), but _counterfeit /uncertified_ parts generally don't end up in cars - vs. in the mobile/electronic industry where this is more routine than absolute exception.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm done with Apple. How can a computer company knowingly ship a product with a keyboard that breaks within a few months for three whole generations?

Mine lasted just 4 months and I was advised to invest in a silicone cover for it. Which is absurd for a $1500 laptop. And they made it sound like it was just a minor issue - "oh everything works great except the keyboard". As if a laptop without a keyboard isn't practically useless.

My wife's Macbook Air developed an issue last week after installing the latest OS update. The computer would just freeze randomly making it impossible to use. Apple Support said that it was a known issue with the update. A known issue that was still released?!

I moved to Apple because I was frustrated with Windows. But even the $400 Windows I've owned in the past gave me at least 2 years with their keyboards. And Windows has been painfully slow and error prone, but no update has ever crippled my laptop as the last macOS update did my wife's Macbook Air.

If you're going to charge me a massive premium for a product, at least make sure that it works.

Sorry for ranting here, but these two issues happened within a week of each other and I've just been angry and disappointed

<comment><USER22> It's put a big stain on them in the last few years thats for sure. That being said, at least the keyboard replacement program is basically a free extended warranty on the keyboard if they didn't have that I think the situation would be far more aggravating. I'm more pissed that they dropped USB-A about 5-7 years too soon.

<comment><USER23> The keyboard replacement program just forestalls the class action that will force Apple to do right by affected customers in about 20 years. They will fight hard for their expressed right to knowingly sell faulty hardware, or lemons as they're sometimes called in consumer laws prohibiting that. They will devote millions to preserving the option to ignore and lie about hardware faults for the first 1 - 2 years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Lots of people here to defend Apple in-spite of their outright anti-consumer stance against right to repair. In this case they could have shown a warning with option to permanently choose to remove/ignore, Instead of scary permanent "service" Message.

</comment><comment><USER25> People hasn't understood yet that even if they pay over $1500 for a phone, they're still not the owner of that hardware. And this concept is already deep integrated in Smart TVs or all other IoT gadgets around there. Fortunately, we have still some choices, concerning PCs, but on the Apple side, the war is lost

<comment><USER26> Not sure about you, but I am the owner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The irony is this is such a big issue because iphones are one of the few products they make that are both easily repairable and expensive enough to be worth repairing. Nimble fingers and the right screwdriver and it all comes apart and back together again unlike many rival sealed glued products.

</comment><comment><USER28> If a message displayed by the first-party software is an intentional message that obfuscates the true status of the device for the benefit of the manufacturer, is this not fraud?

</comment><comment><USER29> iClaymore - front toward enemy

</comment><comment><USER30> Naked Capitalism is my goto blog for what's really going on.

</comment><comment><USER31> Apple Care isn't that expensive - I've rarely had an apple product break that hasn't been free or under $100 to have fixed at the Apple store.

Louis Rossmann is the best, but I've never really encountered a reason to care about Right to Repair...

<comment><USER32> This argument sounds like "I don't care about cancer research because I don't get sick". It should matter to you for many reasons that have nothing to do with whether you're affected or not. I don't want to see the hostility towards customers you see e.g. from tractor companies creep into my computing devices.

<comment><USER31> I use Hacker News mostly to avoid vapid responses like yours.

However, I should say that the right to repair a device like a tractor is something I very much support. But that's a $100k+ piece of equipment that someone's livelihood depends on and should last in excess of 10yrs.

Apple devices and phone toys... please...

The issue with apple devices is that they're intended to be discarded and replaced, not that they're "unable to be repaired". Have you seen how poorly most people treat their phones and computers? There's a reason Apple doesn't engineer products to last that long - because a majority of their customers will manage to break them anyway and inevitably will buy a new one because they want to be "cool" like all their other friends (an societal and consumerist trend I honestly take more of an issue with).

I understand your point, but I hope this has helped you understand my point of view a bit better :)</comment></comment></comment>


F - <AUTHOR> http://founderpools.com <comment><USER2> Shaan Puri has a podcast called My First Million and he talks about a concept really similar to this. He's active on Twitter. You may try to get him to look at it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Will check it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Fascinating. 3 points: 1\. Site loads a bit slow 2\. Do I need to be an accredited investor? 3\. How is value assessed?

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. Thanks, we are working on it 2. Yes 3. Based on the value of your stock, determined by fair market value and other assets you hold

<comment><USER4> Accreditation is easily achieved just by having raised money for your company. A founder who owns 20% and raised at a $5M cap/valuation meets the $1M asset threshold.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm one of the founders behind Founderpool. This is one of 10 or 12 best ideas our team has come up with ;)

</comment><comment><USER5> This is a really cool way for founders to work together. Would it be organized into rounds or a general pool?

<comment><AUTHOR> Its organized in rounds, but current pool members can invite other startups in with a unanimous consent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great idea & looks super interesting. there must be something like this that already exists?

<comment><AUTHOR> We didn't find any, so we had to build it. Thank you for the feedback

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is there a voting mechanism? who picks the companies

<comment><AUTHOR> It's peer selection based on ranking. We are moving to a version of Gale- Shapley stable algorithm for pool construction

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> serial entrepreneurs will love this, interested to know how cashing out will work

<comment><AUTHOR> disbursements will happen at exit or liquidity event. If a company gets acquired, proceeds go to pool members pro rata. Stock distributions if it IPOs</comment></comment>


Snow Leopard users face compatibility issues - <AUTHOR> http://brainstormtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2009/08/26/snow-leopard-warning-your-apps-may-crash/

<comment><USER2> If you use MacPorts, there's a compatibility list here: <http://trac.macports.org/wiki/snc/snowleopard>

When you upgrade to 10.6 your old ports will continue to work, but you may bump into additional issues installing additional ports.</comment>


Ask HN: Where do we stand with Self-replicating nano machines? - <AUTHOR> The key element of any SciFi and mega scale space project.<p>Are there any advances in the field? Startups trying to do it? Recommended places to learn more? <comment><USER2> I remember reading _Engines of Creation_ some 35 years ago and actually believing it, but there has been essentially zero progress. It remains pure science fiction and I expect nothing else in the foreseeable future.

<comment><USER3> I don't want to hijack this thread, but a while ago I posted an Ask HN requesting introductory books to nanotech -> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18059301](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18059301).

Never heard of Engines of Creation, but it looks like what I'm looking for (just ordered from Amazon). Apart from Engines of Creation are there any good intro texts?</comment></comment>


The world's knowledge is being buried in a salt mine - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20161018-the-worlds-knowledge-is-being-buried-in-a-salt-mine <comment><USER2> Perhaps we should form an organization of a few thousand people and dedicate it to safeguarding this location, making sure it never falls prey to local politics and other unpleasantness during the temporary fall of what we currently consider civilized culture. This foundation would need a descriptive name, and could probably use a plucky mayor to get things done. And we should set up a second one about a thousand miles off the coast of New Zealand.

If my calculations are correct, this should reduce the length of this neo- dark-age from 30,000 years to a mere 1,000.

<comment><USER3> The foundation should aggregate all of human knowledge in one giant encyclopedia, which should be of help even when mankind venture to the galaxies after the dark age.

<comment><USER4> You're talking about the plot from the foundations series of books, by Isac Asimov. Where's the line between sci-fi and reality.

One foundation will keep all of human knowledge, while the universe goes at war for 1000 years straight.

Spoiler Alert: A second foundation, secret and hidden even from the first one, will keep all of human knowledge as well and protect the first one.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It would be great if similar archives were distributed in salt mines around the world. Having a single point of failure in Austria does not sound very robust.

They should also sell those tokens as a means of generating revenue. I'd buy some and hand them down.

The article also talks about the possibility of civilizations losing the ability to read in three generations, but there's no mention of a plan to deal with that. These archives would be mostly useless to an illiterate society, except maybe as objects of wonder or worship.

That would be an interesting challenge, actually -- how could you teach an illiterate, collapsed civilization to read if they don't have access to electronic gadgets like audio players, computers, monitors, or projectors?

My first thought is to have some audio on wax cylinders with hand-cranked players or something. But then there's no guarantee that the hearers will even speak the language. Assuming the language is similar enough, though, it would still be challenging to teach someone to read merely by such primitive audio recordings. They'd have to be paired with some visual aids, and the people listening would have to be really motivated to learn.

<comment><USER6> It's probably more true that you realize. Salt mines across many countries are being used to store all sorts of knowledge.

For instance here in Kansas is a huge salt mine that Hollywood uses to store original prints of many many classic films and works.

In Kansas City Missouri is one of the largest underground limestone cavern converted to storage for all forms of records. From film to paper archives for government.

I imagine it's more coming than we think because it's not sexy and these types of facilities do not get much press.

<comment><USER7> That's great, although that's a long shot from this project. Ideally a project like this should contain much of humanity's knowledge and history, include multiple languages, and be in a form that can last thousands of years. And then mark it's location somehow so people in the future can find it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One of the biggest problems with putting all this in a single location is that, no matter how secure the location is from the elements, it is not secure to people (or else it would be useless).

Given the length of time imagined, I think the odds that the place is accessible by individuals or groups who believe they should destroy the data approaches 100%.

See the deliberate destruction of ancient sites all across the Middle East. See the sacking of Rome by the Vandals, the *goths, and the Normans. See the destruction of the Library of Alexandria. See the rise in religious extremists who seem specifically to hate artifacts belonging to other cultures on their soil.

How does a physical repository of human knowledge defend itself against this?

<comment><USER9> I personally agree with you but this is how they attempt to address that point on their website:

> The token shows the location in such a way that a future civilization will > be able to interpret its correct meaning. This will require a technical and > scientific understanding which is comparable to our own. This is the > guarantee that the archive is suitably protected from premature access. Only > a civilization which fulfils these requirements will be able to find the > archive as well as being able to process, decipher and comprehend its > content. The depiction on the token: Two intersecting lines span a map of > Europe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Now 'what if' the worlds knowledge had already been buried ages ago by a long gone civilisation, they had the same idea as us to use 'ceramic microfilm'. For your consideration I present the Dropa Stones ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dropa_stones](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dropa_stones) )

Maybe fake but still food for thought.

</comment><comment><USER11> Just so long as distant future generations don't confuse this with the salt mine containing America's nuclear waste...

<comment><USER12> "Be wary, wanderer. One of those caves contains the lost knowledge of the ancient civilization that came before us. The other will kill you in a slow, painful way. Are you up to the challenge?"

<comment><USER13> At least we didn't decide to _really_ test our descendants and use the same mine for both!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is there a chance that knowledge of entire languages are lost to catastrophe/time? What use are tablets in English, French, German, etc. if no one can decipher them?

<comment><USER15> There's certainly a chance that that will happen, yes. We don't need a catastrophe for that, just different socio-economic conditions that don't favor reading, writing and doing intellectual things, generally speaking.

On top of that languages like English, French and German are pretty "new", so to speak, I mean they're not older than 1000 years, at the most. I'm pretty sure most native English speakers need a "modernized" version of Chaucer's works (meaning a translation) in order to understand what he wanted to say, and the same goes for the French and Rabelais's "Gargantua and Pantagruel". 2,000 years ago no-one on this continent (Europe) was speaking neither French, nor English, nor German, so it's plausible that in another 2,000 years these languages will have changed to the point of becoming new ones.

<comment><USER16> OTOH we have little problem understand latin or greek texts.

<comment><USER17> OTOH The number of people capable of understanding latin or greek is rather small.

Language can go extinct in a way that nobody can learn them anymore

<comment><USER16> There is nothing keeping more people from learning it, though; as soon as a few people have learned it, the knowledge about a language can be proliferated to others. It's just that we generally don't care a lot (beyond employing a few thousand(?) people world-wide per language) for ancient texts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why not sapphire instead of stone? I guess it's stone they don't go into much detail about the medium used even on their website and the two videos explaining the project.

A company called Fahrenheit 2451 makes sapphire disk that can withstand high temperatures and supposedly lasts one million years.

Fahrenheit 2451 is still tying to get funding but they seem to be able to make/grow the disks already.

<comment><USER19> They probably picked stone for its low intrinsic value as otherwise there would be an incentive to plunder it. This is a fairly important consideration for something that needs to last long term.

<comment><USER18> True but maybe there is more of a chance the disk and information on it will be found if it is valuable. A rock may be ignored because it's so common.

All we want is for the information to be read by someone after that it doesn't matter what happens to the thing it's written on.

<comment><USER20> > maybe there is more of a chance the disk and information on it will be found > if it is valuable. A rock may be ignored because it's so common

Well, a modern first-worlder wouldn't ignore a rock covered in writing, but peasants overwhelmingly do just that.

If you want durability, stone isn't a good choice either; poor communities repurpose worked stone into the things they want, because breaking up a big wall somebody else put up a long time ago is much easier than quarrying your own new stone and hauling it back to town. Tungsten would probably be a good choice -- a primitive society would be unable to melt it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm sure it is massively more expensive but why not put some probes on the moon and have those probes syndicate.

Maybe have a couple of those probes become read only after a couple of centuries (to avoid a hack/attack of overwriting and blowing away all data).

The moon has very few impacts with asteroids and very little geo activity.

<comment><USER22> Space is really harsh on electronic storage making long term storage impractical. Sending hard copies like those shown is ridiculously expensive, roughly replace everything you want to send to the moon with solid gold for a cost estimate.

<comment><USER21> Yes I'm sure the tech is not there yet and I'm not saying make a hard copy and send it to space.... but how far are we off? Hundreds of years or decades? Is there an iterative process... perhaps satellites at first (since landing is generally complicated).

I guess it also depends on what you want to store and what you use to store. There are crystals that could store data for pretty much eternity [1].

The problem with shoving stuff in a hidden salt mine is that no one (ie aliens, future people etc) will know where it is where as on the moon or satellite you can effectively have a much more salient sign of here is the data (ie what is worse the data is destroyed or the data is never found?).

[1] [http://money.cnn.com/2016/02/17/technology/5d-data- storage-m...](http://money.cnn.com/2016/02/17/technology/5d-data-storage- memory-crystals/)

<comment><USER23> The problem with the moon is that it's being constantly bombarded by small rocks - anything you place on the surface will be eventually hit. So you want to bury things - and that's a completely different scope of problem than just landing things on the moon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Reminds me of Germany's archive mine [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarastollen_underground_a...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarastollen_underground_archive)

The english article is not very extensive, but on the german one you'll see at least a few pictures of the storage [https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarastollen](https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarastollen)

</comment><comment><USER25> Now we can only hope that we don't forget where we put all that knowledge. I'm still looking for a pair of scissors I kept "someplace safe."

<comment><USER26> 4325's Salzkammergut Cave Scrolls

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'd be very interested to know what the impact of a severe solar storm would be. The article appeared a little vague on this point.

<comment><AUTHOR> The British government report it links to ([https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...](https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/449593/BIS-15-457-space- weather-preparedness-strategy.pdf)) is less so:

 _The 'reasonable worst case scenario' for severe space weather is based on the Carrington event of 1859, aligned to our current understanding of the vulnerability of modern technologies... Research suggests that a reoccurrence of the Carrington Event has a 1% annual probability..._

 _It is anticipated that the impacts would be:_

 _\- localised power outages;_

 _\- disruption of satellite operations, including to Global Navigation Satellite System outages (GPS) and SATCOM disturbances;_

 _\- disruption to High Frequency communications;_

 _\- increased radiation to aircrew and passengers in flight, particularly over polar regions; and_

 _\- further disturbances to small-part electronic systems._

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> If you like this I'd recommend checking out the "The Invisible Photograph" series, part 1 features the underground Corbis Image Vault. [http://www.nowseethis.org/invisiblephoto/posts/2](http://www.nowseethis.org/invisiblephoto/posts/2)

</comment><comment><USER29> In the event of a total nuclear war, wouldn't it be imperative for all sides to destroy all cultural and scientific artifacts of their opponents?

</comment><comment><USER30> Is anybody selling those tokens?</comment>


WikiVS: intelligent technical comparisons with examples, pros/cons - <AUTHOR> http://www.wikivs.com

<comment><AUTHOR> I found the MySQL vs PostgreSQL page very helpful:

<http://www.wikivs.com/wiki/MySQL_vs_PostgreSQL></comment>


Wind energy used to mine cryptocurrency to fund climate research - <AUTHOR> https://julianoliver.com/output/harvest <comment><USER2> The interesting abstract idea here is to use excess power capacity during the night or windy periods in given region for computing applications (like mining or high-latency cloud computing) where geography is irrelevant. This is a cool strategy for arbitraging away one of the biggest problems with renewable energy sources (intermittency). And it should only get more effective as the ratio of power society devotes to computation vs. physical use (heating, cooling, etc.) increases. Not sure why I'd never heard of it before.

(The application of the earned money to funding climate research is basically unrelated.)

EDIT: Maybe not. I'm getting article with conflicting estimates for future growth, but this study

[https://eta.lbl.gov/publications/united-states-data- center-e...](https://eta.lbl.gov/publications/united-states-data-center- energy)

suggests that data center energy use has recently slowed dramatically, to just 4% per year. Very surprising to me.

<comment><USER3> Bunch of aligning trends reducing energy usage in recent times, will be interesting to see if it keeps up. (more virtualization means less machines, strong push towards efficiency in both computing and cooling, especially among the big DC operators, trend towards Cloud computing means more computation happens in those high-efficiency DCs instead of smaller, inefficient setups)

The only big examples of "high-latency" computing I can think of have been these volunteer distributed projects (BOINC, SETI), but maybe there's a commercial angle for that as well?

<comment><USER4> What makes the "cloud" data-centers energy efficient? Just oversubscription of VMs to hosts? Can't most datacenter-operating businesses do that with their vSphere installations?

Or is there something about the actual power distribution, machines, cooling, etc?

<comment><USER5> Both. First, the largest data centers have developed virtualization platforms that are significantly more efficient than vSphere. A major factor is that they provide fine-grained billing for compute, storage, etc instead of selling VMs, which allows them to optimize more effectively. Amazon can provide high- latency Glacier storage or spot instances for spare compute at very low cost.

Second, they optimize physical cooling and power distribution thoroughly. Google has an overhead of just 12%. Here's a good overview of what they do: [https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/efficiency/internal...](https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/efficiency/internal/)

<comment><USER6> >First, the largest data centers have developed virtualization platforms that are significantly more efficient than vSphere.

This needs a citation. One of the issues with AWS/etc is that they don't know the usage pattern of a customer that allocates a VM. A well managed vSphere system can be heavily oversubscribed with mostly idle VMs that don't need high performance.

<comment><USER7> On a PaaS like Heroku where dynos are statefree and short-lived, don't need to allocate CPU/RAM/HDD for a contiously-running VM. And scaling running dynos can be done automatically. We did this based on work to-be-done (message queue length), with scaling decisions taken every 20 seconds. Many parts of system had no dynos running as the default, only when needed.

With a function-as-a-service type computational model like Lambda, it becomes even more fine grained.

<comment><USER6> True, but the vast majority of cloud computing is still just VMs.

<comment><USER7> Yes, for now. The trend is (and has been) towards more and more elasticity. And since there are economic incentives on both platform provider and buyer side, I believe this will continue. It is somewhat predicated on tooling and programming models continuing to improve alongside. Because for many smaller projects/businesses, compute costs are dwarfed by engineering costs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It is worthwhile to note that by 2010 the GAO estimated over 100billion in total federal dollars on climate spending[1]. This number doesn't include other nation's spending, or private spending.

By contrast, Skylab's entire program cost was about 10 billion in 2010 dollars.

It's naive to think bureaucratic inertia is not a problem in climate change. In other words, it is not free of one of the problems the War on Poverty and War on Drugs saw: that they became industries focused on preserving themselves rather than ever fixing the problems they were meant to.

Whenever we spend our own money to fix problems that affect us, we consider the opportunity costs carefully. But when the collection plate is passed to us and we want to demonstrate virtue, our money is given into the hands of people who have a reward system that is not ideally suited to using it altruistically.

Is more money going to solve the climate crisis? Is there a better way, such as political reform? If not, I'd just like to be honest about how many manned missions to Mars we are passing up on to instead pay for this.

I know people say that "people will die from climate change," but people are dying. We have people even here in the USA without access to clean drinking water, basic healthcare, or safe neighborhoods to live in. Around the globe people die from malnutrition while the world produces a surplus of food. People don't die in 2017 because of a lack of tech or resources, they die because of politics and greed, or maybe even from one of the 26,000 bombs we dropped last year.

1-[https://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2011/08/23/the- alarmi...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2011/08/23/the-alarming- cost-of-climate-change-hysteria/) 2-[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylab](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylab)

<comment><USER9> Climate change is a mind-bogglingly large-scale problem. We've known that for decades, fossil fuels was energy expenditures that accrued debt for short-term growth... it's not going to be cheap to fix.

Actual wars are a better place to look - the US has been spending an average of $300B/y on war in the Middle East for a cause that kills next to no one. Cut backs on war would more than pay for all our healthcare, space exploration, and climate change needs.

<comment><USER8> I agree that our wars need to be either cut back or shut down. If you're interested, Rand Paul is actually putting up a fight in the senate for that right now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This has always seemed to me like an obvious setup for anyone with enough solar capacity to routinely run a surplus - particularly in states where the local utilities have purchased legislative support for near-punituve connection charges or effectively zero rates for anyone interested in selling surplus power back into the grid.

Edit: Not an outdoor setup but a setup to use all electricity surplus to regular needs for mining instead.

<comment><USER11> How does that compare to selling the excess power then putting the money into a (let's say) index fund? I have no data right now, so I don't have the answer.

<comment><USER3> Parent explicitly talks about situations in which you can't just sell your excess power.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The siting of the tubine is indeed art. It will produce close to nothing at that height as air slows down near the ground due to friction. That's why turbines try to be located as high as possible (usually in a trade-off between cost of the tower and revenue from more wind).

</comment><comment><USER13> This is like the Euler's identity of Silicon Valley buzzwords.

<comment><USER14> It's the most _2017_ article I've ever read.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Reminds me of "Google Will Eat Itself" ([http://www.gwei.org/](http://www.gwei.org/)).

</comment><comment><USER16> 'crypto-currency' is an accounting treatment, it's not 'value creation'.

There's no net-value created by doing the 'mining part' \- in fact, it's a value-destroying activity.

Why waste electricity doing nothing?

Generate electricity that others can use, sell that, and pay for research.

<comment><USER17> On the contrary, mining does create value, by creating a demand for computing power therefore financing the development of more advanced lithography, one of the very few areas in which our species is still making substantial progress.

Now if they were getting the electricity by burning coal, a case could be made that the environmental harm outweighs the benefit. But getting it from a renewable source also expands the economies of scale on that renewable source just a little more, so it's a win across the board.

<comment><USER18> >On the contrary, mining does create value, by creating a demand for computing power therefore financing the development of more advanced lithography

This is like saying hurricanes create value because they create demand for construction

<comment><USER19> Or Frederic Bastiat's "Candlemaker's Petition", which was a satirical request that officials block out the sun in order "to encourage industry and stimulate employment".

[http://bastiat.org/en/petition.html](http://bastiat.org/en/petition.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This seems a very roundabout way to do things - climate modelling is CPU- intensive enough already, why not use the wind energy to power _those_ computations instead of this extra step in the middle?

<comment><USER21> It's an art project. The idea isn't to efficiently create money but to be thought-provoking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> What is the cost per watt hour of this setup when all of the electrical hardware is factored in?

</comment><comment><USER23> At the end, 100% of the wind energy is heating the air. Just think about it.

<comment><USER24> How? And how much more than not using wind in such a way?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Generating huge amounts of waste heat in the process.</comment>


PCI Compliance for Amazon CloudFront - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/pci-compliance-for-amazon-cloudfront/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is good news; it was always the "missing link" in hosting PCI-compliant services on AWS forcing you to use something like a different hostname for the checkout flow vs the rest of your site.</comment>


Most Functional Compiler - <AUTHOR> https://www.ioccc.org/2019/lynn/hint.html <comment><USER2> An inspiring example of someone who went on to write an award winning compiler after failing the Stanford CS Compiler comprehensive exam. Bravo!

</comment><comment><USER3> The site doesn't link the source code file

<comment><USER4> All contest files here: [https://www.ioccc.org/years.html#2019](https://www.ioccc.org/years.html#2019) (under "lynn" section)

Direct link to C source (not the only relevant file): [https://www.ioccc.org/2019/lynn/prog.c](https://www.ioccc.org/2019/lynn/prog.c)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Love it:

Line 7:

P I,C,K=24,M,E

Line 46:

O,b,f,u,s,c,a,t,e,d,_,p,r,o,g,R,A,m</comment>


Hello HN: I am taking the plunge. What do you think? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.shopyist.com/let-the-madness-begin-3

<comment><USER2> While I'll give a fellow-HN reader my best optimistic wishes, I tend to agree that this is probably not going to be an out-of-the-park success. I have a better idea than most just how much work it took to make Shopify what it is today.

However, we should all be way less dick-ish about encouraging would-be entrepreneurs regardless of how shallow their ideas appear. It reflects well on us as a community if we encourage people before we put them down.

After all, how many posts about embracing failure get posted on this site, right?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Peter. Coming from someone who has been there, it means a lot.

The reasons I am doing it is I am an average developer who doesn't have any interesting ideas but who wants to foray into entrepreneurship and be his own boss. I considered a lot of free services which would rely on ads to generate revenue but I they didn't seem beneficial in terms of monetization.

So, I just thought about a lot of paid service and settled down on something which has plausible profitability. I am not copying shopify but there sure would be many features which work in the same way; after all, the ground premise is the same. I do have some differentiators but it's too early to call on them.

tl;dr My idea is not original or extra-ordinary; I am an average developer looking to be my own boss and this suited me the best.

<comment><USER2> Can I give you some advice?

On one hand, I agree with you that there's always room for another player in SaaS. If your goals are modest then it's possible that you could reach your goals. If you manage to line up 5-6 things over two years, that could be a healthy income.

However, if you really want to create wealth — for yourself and for the world — then you need to recognize that humans are really bad at identifying problems that really need solving. You need to pack your virtual bags and go deep into the country, looking for communities of users that you'd never consider in your normal every day life.

Start researching industrial organizations, hobby clubs, non-technical groups of all kinds. Lurk on their forums and pay attention to the problems that they have. Take notes. Not every problem is a potential business, but there is a world of opportunity out there.

Go in the opposite direction as everyone else. Recognize that often low-tech solutions are best. Listen more than you speak. You will find people who desperately need you to help them, and in doing that you will likely get further ahead than building a Shopify also-ran.

Good luck.

<comment><USER3> I don't think the poster necessarily wants to "change the world", but rather build something that will be of value and generate income. For which this idea seems appropriate (although I haven't researched the create-a-shop space or know much about it).

Your advice is excellent though, but I get the impression the poster is in Asia? That would make it harder to do real-world research in the US (which is the market he seems to be going after)?

Sometimes doing the same, just a little different/better, is not such a bad idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _The implementation isn't going to take much time._

Famous last words. :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Famous/notorious? May be, yes.

Last words? For sure, no:-).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> First, I applaud your enthusiasm, and for not responding in kind to some of the negativity in the comments. While I'm sure that there are a few who are just negative, most of the people offering criticism probably genuinely want to help. You'd be wise to listen to them.

And in the spirit of offering advice, here's my two cents: read "Four Steps to the Epiphany" and actually follow the advice. If that's too much, then just call or email 100 potential customers, outline your idea, and ask them what they think. These should be real potential customers who you envision would really want your service, not friends who once sold a piece of furniture on Craigslist. I can tell that you've got some emotional attachment to your idea, so this step might be hard, because you could find after 10 or 20 calls that things aren't quite the same from your customer's experience as you thought. But just keep going. By the time you have talked to 100 potential customers, you'll know exactly what they need, what they don't need, how they find new products, how to market to them, etc.

Good luck, and please do keep us posted with your progress :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback.

Talking to potential customers is surely something I am going to do.

> read "Four Steps to the Epiphany" and actually follow the advice.

First time I heard about this book. Looked at the review and summary at amazon. Sounds interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Don't listen to the naysayers and nanny-poos. Be persistent and willing to learn and you'll shift the odds in your favor. This is a personal journey as much as anything else, and only you can walk it.

Just the the other day I was talking to a small boutique baker (cakes, cookies, etc) and she was telling me how confusing it was to try to setup an online store. I said, "Have you heard of shopify?" and she said, "Uhh, no". You might find that your hardest part of this is getting to those customers because they don't know what to look for.

Take care, good luck, and stay strong.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Don't listen to the naysayers and nanny-poos.

I read a lot and I have developed a selective comprehension. For anyone whose thoughts I admire, I found a lot I disagree with. For example, the recent debate about "Linus vs C++", there is a lot to disagree in Linus's criticism of C++, but from where I see, he is making some very valid points and if we cut the flame, it's an interesting post.

I am trying to apply the same principle here. I am filtering the not-so-polite words, pondering over what the critic has to say and then making the decision if I agree or not. For example, I don't agree with "having a formal business plan". I have considered it and I don't see the usefulness of it.

>You might find that your hardest part of this is getting to those customers because they don't know what to look for.

This. This is the biggest hurdle I have. I can pull off the technical aspects of the product and I can work on the SEO and have it featured on Google search results when you search for "online store". It might not concur exactly with my plans but atleast I know how to go about it. But I have no damn clue how do I reach the customer base who needs the service but is ignorant towards it.

I know there are a lot of people who want to have online stores. I know many of them use shopify and I see that shopify advertises more than 6000 stores. This puzzles me. 6000 is too small a number for the web. I might sound over confident but frankly, I am not very concerned about shopify. I am willing to compete over prices and features. But what concerns me is there is a huge untapped market segment and I have no ideas how do I capture them.

<comment><USER6> > But I have no damn clue how do I reach the customer base who needs the > service but is ignorant towards it.

This is the key issue you need to dig into. Everything else is cursory. Don't go randomly talk to customers. Don't do market research. Go find a group of customers that you can effectively reach and then figure out how to find more of them. Is it single person bakers, like the person I mentioned? If so, what magazines do they read? Where do they buy their supplies? Do they hang out on specific online forums? What channels can you use t get your unique message across to them?

This is trial and error. Finding a niche like this will help you not differentiate on price, but instead, differentiate on unique features your niche is interested in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Before you go further, I suggest you study your market with some market research, and set a target audience, make some test on that niche, a "there's enought room for everybody" approach is the wrong one. Good luck

<comment><USER8> Good idea. A niche approach is a great way to start.

The most important thing he has going for him is that he is starting with little expectations. As he begins to execute in the market, he can be incredibly flexible to attack opportunities that reveal themselves. The trick is to learn through testing as quickly as possible, rather than swing for the fences on an idea that is half baked.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your time. I am keeping my options open for now. FWIW the service is largely going to remain same irrespective of what you are selling.

That's how I start building. I am considering some niches viz. cartoonists selling merchandise, authors selling digital goods. I am talking to a couple of potential customers about why they aren't doing it already.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I applaud anyone willing to quit their job to follow their own passions. Does this guarantee success? Of course not.

However, do not underestimate the value of truly knowing that you control your own destiny and do not have to 'grind it out' at some desk for the next 30 years.

FWIW, I believe that if you hard worker & are a kick-ass programmer you can make up for a lot of supposed 'deficiencies' i.e.: market analysis, planning and product development.

Good Luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks.

Just checked your baby (zferral dot com) - looks good.

> a lot of supposed 'deficiencies' i.e.: market analysis, planning and product > development.

Some of them are deficiencies viz. "no ideas how to market my product to people who need the service but aren't using it" and some of them are by choice. Eg: I don't believe doing market analysis of potential customers would give me an edge. Shopify has 6000 active stores and I would say even a constrained market analysis would come up with a number much, much bigger than this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think you should probably work a bit more on why your service is going to be better than your competitors. More than one competitor existing isn't really a great business plan.

Imagine if Pepsi's marketing campaign revolved around "Because Pepsi isn't Coke."

<comment><AUTHOR> > service is going to be better than your competitors.

To each his own, but I am not going to do this. Internally yes, but I am not going to compare to the competitors externally.

From what I know, comparing to the competitor is generally a bad idea. Current users of the service take any comparison or criticism personally and all it does is drive potential customers away.

For the new customers, I am willing to believe in the intelligence of the human race. Prospective customers are smart enough to do their research before settling on a service. My job would be to make the features lucid and clear and highlight the differentiators. As I already mentioned, I do have some differentiators in mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Big whoop. This kind of post pops up every few days. No business plan. No market analysis. No real idea of who will use your shopping service and why. No description of value, benefits, and features. Reads like wishful thinking and dreams of grandeur. All you have is an idea and a domain name.

<comment><AUTHOR> > No business plan.

I am not going to have one ever:-). On a more serious note, I am not selling out or going to ask for capital ever. The only person that needs to be convinced of the business value is me and I am convinced.

> No market analysis.

And that would affect me how? If there is an existing market for it, I am tapping into it. There is an existing market; I didn't feel the need to do research to prove that people are interested in selling things online and e-commerce is hard and if you are a merchant, you are more interested in selling thing than taking the pains of implementing it.

If there isn't an existing market for it(hypothetically speaking), I know people want to sell things. If they aren't selling it online already, it's only because the services aren't up to the mark, and that would be a good thing for me.

> No real idea of who will use your shopping service and why.

No, there isn't a real idea. The idea will change every week with the implementation and keep on changing until something clicks. But the ground rules are laid out. The service is for anyone who wants to sell things online and does not have the time/resource/interest to implement it himself.

It is for you if you want to sell tee shirts with funny graffiti; it is for you if you are a writer who is embracing new media and wants to sell his ebooks; it is for you if you are selling anything online. You can either attach the widget to your existing blog/site(would be helpful for web- cartoonists or people who already run a high traffic site) or create a new store and host us with us.

> No description of value, benefits, and features.

Value and benefits are what I have already detailed. I have just begun and features would be finalized as we work on it. If that looks like bad planning to you, so be it. That's the mode that suits me.

> Reads like wishful thinking and dreams of grandeur.

We will see about it:-).

> All you have is an idea and a domain name.

I didn't claim otherwise.

<comment><USER12> > On a more serious note, I am not selling out or going to ask for capital > ever.

You are thinking a TON of steps ahead. You have nothing. Ideas are cheap.

> I didn't feel the need to do research to prove that people are interested in > selling things online and e-commerce is hard and if you are a merchant

That is NOT what it means to do market research. There are always competitors in 99.9% of startup businesses. And the 0.1% that actually are truly unique don't just magically stake their claim and stay that way forever-- imitators and competitors emerge.

The most basic market research you need to do is to identify the size of the market you're attacking. Put a real number on that somehow. It may be guesswork, but do some serious digging.

Then you want to figure out how much your competitors are making: estimate their costs, their profit margins, etc.

Based on where your competitors fit in, you may decide that you can't compete on price and that changes your whole approach. If you have an idea to open a 24/7 grocery store in a town that has a Wal-Mart, you're probably not going to be able to beat a 2% profit margin coupled with specially negotiated prices. You may however be able to cater to a niche audience like college students by offering additional services, like making hot sandwiches (drunk kids love chicken parms at 3am).

These are the kind of decisions that affect the _entire_ direction of the company.

> If they aren't selling it online already, it's only because the services > aren't up to the mark, and that would be a good thing for me.

No, actually there are myriad reasons why someone would not be selling online right now. Maybe they haven't ever heard of Shopify? Or maybe they don't trust Shopify to handle their setup? These are marketing challenges, not necessarily technical ones. Just being a great, determined coder does not guarantee you will be successful.

Also:

You mentioned you're quitting your job in 2 months to do this full time. Why? Do you have a ton of cash that you can do that? When do you expect to break even? How long can you survive on no salary? What are your expenses?

Don't let me (or anyone else here) discourage you. Just have a real plan and put some real effort into the business side of things or make a disclaimer that tells us you're rich and aren't in it for the money. :)

<comment><USER3> "The most basic market research you need to do is to identify the size of the market you're attacking."

I'm sorry but that's wrong. These numbers you mention serve no purpose whatsoever. "Online commerce is a x billion market and x% of people aren't happy with current options", that's just marketing speak (and I mean that in a bad way, this time).

<comment><USER12> I outlined other extensions, but that is the very start of all marketing research. I don't see how you can possibly just launch into a project without having any clue of how much money there is to be made in the area.

The approach above is important because you need to be able to estimate how much revenue you should expect at various levels of growth. I suppose for me it's about whether I just want to have faith that my product is viable because I would use it, or I want to have a ballpark estimate that tells me how much I can realistically expect to get out of the company.

How much can someone make at selling online commerce software? Don't you think that's an important question to have some handle on?

<comment><AUTHOR> > but that is the very start of all marketing research.

Call it marketing research, but I am just interested in the potential market. I am reasonably sure there are many people who want to sell things and there are many who already are trading online.

For me, the crux is how do I attract people who need this service but aren't aware of it. Unfortunately, I don't know how to go about it. In other thread, it is suggested it's mainly trial and error and I go with talking to actual customers and figuring out why they aren't selling/buying online. Things would be easier if I figure out my niche market and there needs.

I respectfully disagree with your number analysis. My analysis is going to be vague. I have calculated the initial development cost(which is just the cost of living of 2 partners; we are paying our own expenses, no overheads for the product) and the server cost for initial days. I have plans for bootstrapping. I am reasonably sure the number analysis or the focus group stuff never translates to real figures. Shopify is at 6000 which is far, far less than any number analysis will come up with. In short, I know my investment, I have a vague idea how much I am going to charge and how long it will take for me to break even. Other than this, the only research I will be putting on will be in finding a way to reach out to potential customers.

> The approach above is important because you need to be able to estimate how > much revenue you should expect at various levels of growth.

I would say that sounds good in theory but never works in practice. Can you point out some evidence(anecdotal) that things worked out as per the estimates? I am talking about the revenue estimation. I think there isn't a way to actually, successfully predict it. You can make an educated guess, but that's that.

> How much can someone make at selling online commerce software?

I honestly think there isn't a correct answer to that question. And I am not selling commerce software, I am offering software as a service over the web.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step -the most important thing to being a successful entrepreneur is to just start - so good luck and roll with the punches!</comment>


Intel wants USB-C to replace the headphone jack - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/27/11516410/intel-usb-c-audio-no-headphone-jack <comment><USER2> Discussion on the source article from yesterday: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11575550](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11575550)

<comment><AUTHOR> Apologies for not seeing that.

I was actually submitting [http://hackaday.com/2016/04/22/hackaday-dictionary- usb-type-...](http://hackaday.com/2016/04/22/hackaday-dictionary-usb-type-c/) and realised that what had led me to look for that I hadn't seen on HN, and I trusted that HN dupe checker would just upvote The Verge one if it existed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The 3.5mm jack will be very hard to give up. It always works, and (usually) there's no interference / hiss.

I find that digital devices are complicated enough that, unless I'm buying well-researched, high quality products, compatibility issues lead to glitches. I still encounter lots of glitches with Bluetooth, so I'm not ready to give up my trusty 3.5mm jack as a reliable fallback.

Furthermore, things like sampling rate and bit density will actually make supporting this somewhat complicated. If it's locked at 16 bit, 44.1khz; then the playback device needs to have an excellent noise shaper and sampling rate converter to play thing like "mastered for iTunes" that decode to floating point and assume a 24-bit DAC.

In contrast, if the format allows any bit per sample, and any sampling rate, then lots of compatibility issues will arise on cheaper devices.

<comment><USER4> >I find that digital devices are complicated enough that, unless I'm buying well-researched, high quality products, compatibility issues lead to glitches. I still encounter lots of glitches with Bluetooth, so I'm not ready to give up my trusty 3.5mm jack as a reliable fallback.

That seems like more of a function of wireless vs wired than analog vs digital. Audio over HDMI or optical seems just as reliable as 3.5mm.

<comment><USER5> I've found that HDMI connectors are not nearly as resilient to constant plugging and unplugging.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is somewhat unrelated, but I find that switching from analog to digital hardware is also forcing consumers to replace their hardware instead of fixing it. Turntables and tape recorders, you could somehow tweak it and it would "work again". It's becoming increasingly difficult with new tech.

I broke countless headphone jacks, and if I was lucky, all I had to do was resolder the pin. Can I still do that if my USB-C headphone plug now comes with a bloody decrypter + sample-rate converter built-in?

<comment><USER7> When my headphone jack broke on my laptop, I desoldered the microphone jack and resoldered it into the headphone jack's slot on the motherboard. It had seven pins, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to get a replacement part for it that would fit the existing PCB holes in any other way, short of buying an entirely new motherboard.

I guessed one pin each for tip, ring, and sleeve, one each for tip disconnect and ring disconnect, but then there were two pins left over. Perhaps signal and disconnect for a second ring? I couldn't find a near-enough match for the part from anywhere that I knew to look for it.

If there were a universal 3.5mm TRRS standard, I could just buy the standard jack receptacle and replace the part, rather than cannibalizing my microphone jack.

The other problem is that if I just removed the broken jack, my laptop would never use the speakers again, because it would think that tip signal and tip disconnect were no longer shorted, and ring signal and ring disconnect were no longer shorted. Electrically, removing the part is the same as always leaving a 3.5mm jack plugged in. I'd have to permanently short those contacts on the board to simulate a never-in-use jack, and I didn't know the pinout for the 7-pin device in my hand unless I wanted to disassemble it with forceps.

So yeah, screw the 3.5mm TRRS port. Give me a universal standard. And let's not just specify the mechanical properties of the plugs, but also the allowable locations and spacing of the pins for compliant through-hole, cable- connected, and surface-mount devices!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "The 3.5mm headphone jack is one of the elder statesmen of the personal tech world, having become ubiquitous with the rise of mp3 players, smartphones, and other mobile devices" \- maybe the author is too young to remember that, but I think the "mobile device" that really helped make the 3.5mm headphone jack ubiquitous was the Sony Walkman back in the eighties.

<comment><USER9> came here to say the same thing.

It's even called the "mini" jack because it's a smaller version of the 6.35mm "phone connector" which dates... all the way back to 1878 when it was used for manual telephone exchanges (!)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phone_connector_(audio)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phone_connector_\(audio\))

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> >Moreover, as AnandTech points out, with the extra power and programmability on offer, in-ear headphones could also be used to track health data like temperature, which can in turn feed into the growing array of fitness-tracking databases.

I'm glad that they're just straight up admitting that the reason that they're doing this is snooping. That's quite refreshing.

<comment><USER11> One mans "Snooping" is another mans "breakout feature".

I'd be interested in a set of headphones that do heartbeat tracking for when I run... I don't like wristbands and I haven't ever really been interested in watches.

As with anything, it's a tool in the toolbox to be used for good or ill...

<comment><USER10> How long until this technology is used to get a discount on your insurance? How long after that until it's mandatory for insurance?

<comment><USER11> It's amazing that you are here... in a Faraday cage behind 8 layers of tor on a secure linux cd distro...

It's either that, or you should be farming cows with the Amish...

because everything goes against this statement...

How long until cash is removed so they can track you via credit cards? How long until the Insurance company requires your credit card receipts to show you've bought local farm grown and not McDonald's? How long until...

You can take the "how long" excuse to extremes...

Who knows where we will be in 5/10/100 years... Who knows what wouldn't happen if "but they might use it to spy on use!!!" blocked all forward progress...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The great thing about the 3.5mm and 6.35mm jack is that I can use old hardware that still works great with new headphones. The equipment I spend money on _lasts_ and continues to work as I upgrade individual parts over a long period of time. The consumer wins.

OTOH, you can't argue with their business model! Decades-old standards are _meant_ to be deprecated, especially at the expense of the consumer. /s

</comment><comment><USER13> 99% of my complaints about the headphone jack could be solved by manufacturers simply making stronger plugs. Other than that I really don't see a persuasive reason to go through this change - requiring a USB interface will surely make earphones more expensive.

<comment><USER14> Because you're not a manufacturer.

Think of school kids. Because you can't learn without an ipad, and a classroom of kids watching youtube cartoons instead of learning need earphones or earbuds or they'll all go crazy.

Now instead of selling $5 earbuds that last 3 months until they break or are lost, they parents will shell out $20 every 3 months. Also when the jack is ruined by kids yanking on it, instead of having a 99% usable ipad they'll have an unchargable ipad, leading to even more sales.

<comment><USER15> Definitely true, it's manufacturer driven.

All which calls to using Android and it's openness in schools. Which didn't take a genius to know in advance.

And now that Google is in bed with the music industry, let's hope they won't shove USB-c down our throats.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Great, so now you can't charge your phone and listen to music at the same time.

<comment><USER17> Hey man either we increase the size of the exceedingly tiny interfaces we interact with every day in order to get work done or we start to use more dongles. /s

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This seems like a terrible idea. I don't really have any complaints with my analog headphones. Why fix something which is not broke?

<comment><USER19> Because most of the tech industry has no other reason to exist?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I hope that nobody get's the idea of encrypting the audio data for playback. I still can remember the problems of trying to play movies over HDMI which didn't work because some device didn't support the encrypted channel.

<comment><USER21> [http://anandtech.com/show/10273/intel-proposes-to-use-usb- ty...](http://anandtech.com/show/10273/intel-proposes-to-use-usb-typec-cables- to-connect-headsets-to-mobile-devices)

As Anandtech points out it gets HDCP, so I'm sure there's going to be some uptake for apps that require a protected path.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> If Apple does introduce a Lightning-only iPhone in the fall, I am increasingly convinced they'll include some whiz-bang EarPods to sell it as a feature.

Any reason they can't miniaturize some ADC/DACs for nifty adaptation to ambient noise run on the phone?

<comment><USER23> You mean I will be able to listen to the music on my phone only using god- awful horrible-sounding hard ear-buds from Apple whose only redeeming quality is proprietary lightning connector?

Thanks, I'll pass.

<comment><USER22> Surely they'll offer a dongle to give you the old analog jack.

But I'm pretty excited to see what they can do when they inevitably put computation (and networking to an overpowered phone!) inside each ear & the mic (or in the case of wireless headphones, exploit the existing computation to do a little more than shuffle Bluetooth packets).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > What's their big problem with the established headphone connector? Well, > it's an analog, single-purpose port on digital devices that are now defined > by their multipurpose efficiency.

You know, we could remove that huge screen using that same rationale. No more lugging around that huge 6" bulky old thing! Now your phone is as small as a chicklet!

</comment><comment><USER25> I would be ok with this as it would mean I can get noise cancelling headphones that are powered via the connection to the phone and don't need their own power source.

Yes it will make the $3 headphones more expensive but considering I would never buy such headphones I don't have a problem with that. Anyway there will no doubt be $2 USB-C to 3.5mm converters available for people who want to use old headphones.

The nice thing with 3.5mm though is it "just works". I worry that with a complicated interface such as USB we will end up with incompatible headsets even worse than we do today with 3.5mm TRRS.

<comment><USER7> It just works until the plastic housing on the receptacle cracks, and you can no longer get a good electrical connection. The big problem is that the jack acts as a lever that can transmit enough force into the receptacle to destroy either one or the other rather than breaking the connection.

And the more ring conductors you want to add, the longer the lever can become.

I have been really happy with all my devices that have standardized on USB for charging. In contrast, Apple's proprietary 30-pin and Lightning (and MagSafe, while I'm at it) just make me think they're being colossal dicks, doing whatever TF they want, rather than meaningfully contributing to a standards consortium and licensing their patents to it.

<comment><USER26> I hate proprietary connectors, but I love MagSafe—it's saved my laptop many times. Why can't all connectors be magsafe?

<comment><USER7> In short, that's because Apple flat-out refuses to license the patent to _anyone_.

Never mind that magnetic power connectors had already been invented, and that Apple's patent is essentially another "this already existing thing _except on a computer_ " patent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> If a phone only has one USB-type C connector on it, how will you both charge and listen to music with your headphones with it? Is there going to be two connectors, one at the top and one at the bottom?

<comment><AUTHOR> A small USB type c hub, powered from the thing it's connected to.

May be as small as a cable inter-connect 3 type c sockets, 1 for the phone, and one each for whatever you want to connect to. You could daisy chain these or have hubs that offer 1 in and 6 out, etc.

<comment><USER28> If I'm on an airplane listening to music/watching a movie on my device, the last thing I want is another dongle to keep track of.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> As always, the problem is all those old earphones, headphones, and so on. The only chance of such thing prospering is if all those main cellphones come with earphones using such connection.

In computers, on the other hand, I'd love to have a phone with USB connector instead of the 3.5mm. That way I could get rid of those noise (caused by motherboard consuming power in variables ways), without using my USB- soundboard.

<comment><USER30> The proposal sends analog audio out on the auxiliary pins, so adapters will be passive and dirt cheap.

<comment><USER31> Presumably this also means it won't fix the issues of noise mentioned in the parent comment.

<comment><USER30> You've got analog on the aux pins and digital on the main pins. The digital isn't active unless selected, so it doesn't induce onto the analog. Best of both worlds. (except for the adapter required part).

<comment><USER32> You'd still have to worry about the power lines, and it'd be nice to have audio while charging.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> finally the audio drm'd connector we've been clamoring for!

</comment><comment><USER34> With Intel backing this, it's almost doomed for failure. Their track record with most things entertainment related is terrible. Think about all of this various smart home, smart TV, IP TV streaming, media hub things that Intel made splashy announcements on and then flopped. Intel just gets stuff like this wrong.

</comment><comment><USER35> Suddenly headphones become an attack vector.

That's my main concern with using USB for everything. Imagine a headphone virus that attacks your iPhone when it's plugged in via USB. Imagine a charging station that slurps all your data. (Hence the USB "condom", I guess.) We've discussed this all before.

</comment><comment><USER36> That's awesome - I have to buy more shit now.

For the vast majority of people, the headphone jack with built-in DAC and existing headphones are very sufficient. The forced push of new tech which doesn't improve anything other than hw manufacturers' profits is just maddening.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm as huge a fan of USB-C as anyone, but this is simply not a good idea

</comment><comment><USER37> A true advance, a Jobs and Ives worthy advance, would be to superseed it. Use the 3 prongs of a jack with mic for ground tx,rx,and keep it backward compatible with analog only devices.

</comment><comment><USER38> The 3.5mm jack always works! I have some digital headphones and my next ones are going to be analog because of its digital issues every now and then

</comment><comment><USER26> Why not use Mini-TOSLINK or something similar? Digital connection but backwardly compatible with existing 3.5mm audio.</comment>


WhatsApp Encryption: A Good Start, but Far from a Security Panacea - <AUTHOR> https://threatpost.com/whatsapp-encryption-a-good-start-but-far-from-a-security-cure-all/117230/ <comment><USER2> If anything, the FBI's recent success in cracking the iphone without even Apple's help should tell us that this is merely more security mummery. A mummer's farce if you will. Real security is more in line with Stallman's position of not using cellphones at all except maybe to fake normality.</comment>