Mailgun Becomes an Independent Company - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mailgun.com/mailgun-becomes-an-independent-company/ <comment><USER3> Thus begins the piecemeal partitioning of Rackspace. It was pretty obvious that would be the ultimate result after being taken private by Apollo. To be sure, there was much inertia within the company to let go of services that weren't profitable/weren't the future of the company anymore even before the acquisition.

All the while, you have a leadership that continues to say "Everything is OK! This is good news overall for the company! Let's continue to work hard in solidarity with each other! We're one big happy family!" Its important for people (in general) to see past that kind of management bullshit, look at the numbers (profitability, customers etc.) and make a very informed decision about their future, lest they get caught unaware by "restructuring".

Disclosure: Obviously, a former Racker. Loved the peers I worked with and the company culture. Management was (is?) a total shit-show. I was lucky enough to see the future and take a better job before the company went private.

<comment><USER4> It seems that ever since Fanatical Support® became an actual line on our package, it's been anything but.

Kinda a kick in the teeth when you pay through the nose for an archaic machine because "we sell support".

<comment><USER5> Fanatical Support? Once requested custom pricing info, 56 hours later I got a call from someone who had no idea what I was asking about.

<comment><USER4> For non-technical users, you must use Plesk. Want to use WHM because cpanel is more familiar? Won't support the server at all.

Want to use CloudLinux because it makes multiple PHP versions easier for the less technical? Won't support your server at all.

So it's only fanatical support for a subset of what most vendors usually support.

Don't get me wrong, support is better than what you get with say eUKhost but a lot of stuff is faster to just do myself than pick up the phone and listen to some bad techno until I get through to Linux support.

Fanatical Support my arse.

<comment><USER6> Rackspace makes that clear from the beginning. Do you want someone who can support the most common usecases very well, Apache, Nginx, MySQL, Ubuntu, CentOS. Or do you want mediocre support that can support YOUR use case.

What you need is a consultant or a service that specializes in your particual use case.

<comment><USER4> Except that cpanel / WHM IS a common use case. Cloud Linux, I concede, isn't common but making multiple versions of PHP is a common use case.

<comment><USER7> As a former support racker I can tell you that while those might have fall outside our offical spheres of support you would have had no issues getting support for cPanel or WHM. CloudLinux support is a different story.

<comment><USER4> Well, we were told by the account manager there is support for it. Then a Linux tech said they simply do not support it.

Same case with CloudLinux but understand there. To be honest, it's a bit much for what I needed and confusing as hell to work with myself.

The support used to be awesome but I just feel in the last year or so it hasn't been that great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I agree, Mailgun is fantastic. However, their lack for 2 factor authentication is seriously worrying.

The only other issue that I do have with them is that the "history" for messages has a really stupid encoding. Basically, when a message does fail, or get marked as spam, we have a web hook set up. This works great. However, when looking at the message source, it has a dumb encoding on carriage returns, and colons. It's not the biggest issue, but still annoying.

We ended up making a little appliance to resend failed emails for our sales guys. Basically, this had to have the code "Replace("=\r\n", "").Replace("=0D=0A", "").Replace("=3D3D", "").Replace("=3D", "=");" instead of just being a straight copy paste. Ideally we could have a "resend" button. In the console.

<comment><USER9> Rather than trying to write your own quoted printable decoder, why not use a library? E.g in python it would just look like:

        quopri.decodestring(message_source)

<comment><USER8> honestly? because i didn't know the encoding was called quoted printable, lol. I wish I had have known that at the time as it would have saved me a lot of hassle. I'm going to go back now and use a library, as my guessing-at-the-html is probably wrong.

Edit: a quick cursory google shows [http://www.dpit.co.uk/decoding-quoted- printable-email-in-c/](http://www.dpit.co.uk/decoding-quoted-printable-email- in-c/) as a good enough solution for C#. I feel kind of stupid now, but had honestly never heard of QP encoding before.

<comment><USER10> quoted-printable is used to encode email messages quite a (7)bit :) Take a look of the source of most any HTML-formatted email.

In my experience, it's the only way to keep content of an unknown character set and highly diverse content from getting corrupted when going through processing stages (for email). A lot of the tools to manipulate an email message can (also) be destructive.

Email is weird.

I can see why they'd use it for this service, if the original email was also a part of the notification they're sending.

<comment><USER11> alternative is to use base64. some things you learn when you have to deal with emails.

also first time i was sending sms messages and not using ascii trying to determinate the message length was fun. and by fun i mean gsm 7bit annoying.

<comment><USER10> I wouldn't suggest base64 encoding for messages that are mostly text (plaintext, html _messages_ ), but it's just dandy for attachments.

Debugging something in an email message encoding in quoted-printable simply by viewing its source is doable sometimes. If it's in base64, not so much. I believe the size of your message would also be less using quoted-printable, rather than base64

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm a Mailgun customer and CEO of Jungle Disk (that I bought from Rackspace a year ago). As a Mailgun customer I'm really excited about this. For comparison at Jungle Disk we've already doubled the R&D investment in our first year and will continue to grow it over time. I believe the Mailgun team will be able to really accelerate what they're able to do too. Secondly, I'm happy to have more neighbors moving to our area of town!

<comment><USER13> Oh, so that explains what happened to Jungledisk! I was an early customer, loved it, then got fed up and left when the product stagnated, bugs were left unfixed, and support became terrible.

Somehow I'd missed the news of the acquisition, so it was all a bit mysterious. Maybe I should check the product out again... :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Mailgun's a solid service. They've got the best inbound handling of all of the services out there in terms of letting you apply rules before the messages hit your servers.

I haven't looked at their outbound service in a while because I've been so impressed with Sendgrid's dual DKIM CNAME setup so that they can handle automatically rotating your DKIM keys without bothering you...that it's really hard to even think about trying somebody else.

<comment><USER15> Have you used Postmark as well? I was very impressed with PM's inbound options and never looked further.

<comment><USER14> I haven't looked in a while. At one point over the last year or so I sat down and tried them all. For the most part they all seemed pretty much the same. Mailgun's big distinguishing factor was the ability to pattern match on different factors of the incoming emails to apply different handling rules. I believe they also had a setting that would let you download attachments separately when I looked, which gets to be big with volume inbound processing.

Postmark has a nice DMARC processing system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Maybe this means Mailgun lists feature will be friendly to DMARC? It was such a great solution for domains not really requiring a mail server for inbound mail, that is, until everyone started caring about p=reject (well, except for Gmail - I'm still not sure how much my mail has to not conform to standards before they refuse to deliver to even a spam folder).

<comment><USER17> Verifying that a valid mail exchanger (MX) exists for a domain when receiving mail from that domain is a fairly common thing to do.

That is, if an e-mail coming into my server purports to be from example.com, checking for the existence of a valid MX for example.com is a common "anti- spam" measure. If example.com can not or will not accept mail, rejecting (or marking as spam) the incoming message is considered acceptable.

<comment><USER16> The DMARC problem is not related to MX records.

<comment><USER17> Sorry, I was referring to _"... for domains not really requiring a mail server for inbound mail ..."_

If example.com sends out mail but can't or won't receive incoming mail, then some mail servers may reject those outbound messages.

<comment><USER16> You read past the part where I described receiving mails. It sounds like you have never used the service, so have no idea what I'm talking about, so have no idea what you're talking about.

<comment><USER17> To be clear, I was talking about a completely different issue (deliverability, in general -- not related to Mailgun). My mistake, I suppose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Congrats from a happy - and paying - customer. Sending around 500K transactional emails/month without an issue.

Hope they add support for tracking against SSL/HSTS sites.

<comment><USER19> We are working on SSL support now. While this has drawbacks, you can terminate on a service like Cloudflare and we can enable HTTPS link writing for your sending domain. Otherwise, hangtight for a more integrated solution.

<comment><USER18> Thanks for the tip. I didn't know that you can enable https link writing for the domains. I will test this for sure in one of our low-volume domain.

<comment><USER19> Sounds good. This feature isn't generally available, so email me at josh at mailgun and I will help get things configured on your sending domain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > If you are a current customer, you remain in good hands. Nearly every > Mailgun employee and all of leadership is continuing with the new > organization and excited about the mission ahead of us.

...except Bob over there, but he's kind of a grumpy old man anyways, so you can just ignore him.

Pro tip: Just write "The team is very excited" or something like that, its saves that tiny bit of awkwardness.

<comment><USER21> To my mind this kind of honestly is appealing, where "The team is very excited" would sound fake. Maybe a British vs American difference?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I moved to mailgun after the mandrill "incident" and I have been very happy since. I hope the service will stay stable!

<comment><USER23> Out of curiousity (either I missed it or I forgot) what was the Mandrill incident?

<comment><USER24> Mandrill became part of the Mailchimp subscription. Only for paid accounts. Basically making costs for low-traffic projects way higher than they used to be if you didn't use Mailchimp with Mandrill. (Mailchimp subscriptions start at 10 $ a month)

[https://mandrill.zendesk.com/hc/en- us/articles/217467117](https://mandrill.zendesk.com/hc/en- us/articles/217467117)

<comment><USER25> I got burned by Mandrill as well, even though I pay Mailchimp $59 a month.

After all the hate mail they recieved they opened up a free Mandrill plan if you are a paying Mailchimp customer. Who knows how long that will last though.

Basically I just recommend Mailgun or AWS SES now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Rackspace spun off both Cloud Sites team and Jungle Disk last year, along with shutting down a team or two. Seems they're focusing on slimming down.

<comment><USER27> They were taken private last summer: [https://blog.rackspace.com/why- rackspace-is-becoming-a-priva...](https://blog.rackspace.com/why-rackspace-is- becoming-a-private-company)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> i've used mailgun for several high-volume clients and overall it works - <USER2> the feeling I got when working with their API, their docs, their UI and their support is a product in maintenance mode. There is a lack of polish, a lack of effort, and a lack of overall robustness. But, it works.

I hope the spin off lets them focus on improving the service and the surrounding experience - I definitely would rather they succeed than go belly up. As it stands if someone pops up with similar offerings, I'd definitely check them out. But mailgun isn't impossibly far off from creating an exceptional product. The question is: with this change, will they?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm a big fan of Mailgun, but haven't actually sent enough mails in a month yet for them to actually charge me. I wonder what % of their users are the same?

<comment><USER23> We were having some deliveribilty issues with Office365 just putting everything in the Junk Mail no matter what we were trying. I found a write up on the issue from someone else who had the same issue and the solution (for them) was basically, pay Mailgun for a dedicated IP. It was going to be a tough pill to swallow because we send, MAYBE, 200 emails a month (they're basically for password resets and such, not mailing list blasts).

Their support basically refused to take my money and switched us to a different sending server that day and our emails were no longer hitting the junk folder within possibly less than two hours of first contact with their support.

As a developer it's incredibly easy to integrate with, the dashboards are very helpful for debugging, and the one time in at least a few years I've reached out to their support they were informative and expedient.

I've found their competitors to be harder to integrate with and focused more on mass mailing for marketing, wanting to funnel everything through their UI.

I hope Mailgun can keep up all the good work they're doing, it's a breath of fresh air to know sending emails from our web applications will take all of five minutes to integrate.

<comment><USER29> >We were having some deliveribilty issues with Office365 just putting everything in the Junk Mail no matter what we were trying. I found a write up on the issue from someone else who had the same issue and the solution (for them) was basically, pay Mailgun for a dedicated IP. It was going to be a tough pill to swallow because we send, MAYBE, 200 emails a month (they're basically for password resets and such, not mailing list blasts). Their support basically refused to take my money and switched us to a different sending server that day and our emails were no longer hitting the junk folder within possibly less than two hours of first contact with their support.

I literally went through the same problem, and they did the same thing for me, they didn't accept money for a dedicated IP

It seems that spammers are using their free tier to send spam emails, and because of that, some of their non-dedicated IP range are listed as spam by Office365/google

<comment><USER19> This is (and probably always will be) a work in progress for us. Our systems promote you into higher quality IP ranges as you send better e-mail. The downside is that this is a reactive process. We have some experiments that we're starting to run to help improve onboarding and IP assignment for legitimate users. In the meantime, support is always happy to review your account and expedite this process for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> > prior to closing

This gave me a mini-heartattack...I guess I don't think about VCs and investments as much as the average reader of these things.

</comment><comment><USER31> Best of luck, I all ask/need from them is to keep their free tier available, don't be another mandrill please!

<comment><USER32> Their free tier is kind of ridiculously valuable offering for free. I don't think I 'deserve' it, but I'd be awfully sad to see it go too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I see a lot of comments about alternatives and such. [https://postmarkapp.com/](https://postmarkapp.com/) is really nice. I've used them for years in all of my personal projects and it has always Just Worked™.

I've avoided MailGun & SendGrid entirely for various reasons.

<comment><USER33> i use sendgrid, and like the product, but the customer support is pretty terrible. i accidentially sent myself about 20k devlog emails, and they suspended my account. not just "i'm sorry you are over quota" but actually suspended, meaning I couldn't just upgrade my plan to fix things.

worse still, i sent them a request to un-suspend my account at 5:20pm on a weekday, had their indian support ho-hum about it over the next 13 hours until I finally submitted a new ticket around 7am in the morning and their USA support picked it up, fixing my issue in about 30 min. (total downtime near 14 hours).

i will keep using them because I doubt the disaster scenarios for other providers is going to be much better, but I'm also going to setup a second mail provider as a failover for the next time I have issues with them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm glad they learned the importance of support from RS and internalized it. I have noticed an increase in quality of support over the past couple months.

</comment><comment><USER35> Why the post is signed by "CEO of Mallgun"?

<comment><USER19> fixed!

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I really, really like Mailgun! and can't understand why they don't get more "press" or mentions on the forums, etc. It seems only their competitors are ever talked about.

Yet with Mailgun everything always works, the API is super simple and so is integration. And their free tier lets you handle 10,000 msg per month!!

Maybe they can use some marketing, because the product is great!

</comment><comment><USER37> Having used both Rackspace and Mailgun and had a great experience with both I'm sad that it's come to this.

Good luck to Mailgun! DFTBA

</comment><comment><USER38> I hope this helps them improve. The lack of decent error messages and support caused me to switch to SparkPost.

<comment><USER39> Can you please share other buying decision for sparkpost compared to mailgun? What about deliverability?

<comment><USER38> I like there system for deliverability too. They make you setup up the sending domain and verify it which really helps. Check out this tool if you are interested in deliverability: [https://www.mail-tester.com/](https://www.mail- tester.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Can anyone shed some light as to why companies might choose to spin out a division into a separate entity?

<comment><USER41> Not a spin out expert, but a few reasons I can think of right now:

\- preparation for a sale

\- raising capital for the spin out, but not the parent company

\- the spin out is not part of the parent's core focus, and is something of a distraction

\- the parent is transitioning to more of a holding company, and looking to make further acquisitions that have nothing to do with the spinout

\- the spin out is an idea developed by a parent company team, and that team wants to leave the company to develop the idea, so they work out a deal where the company and the team both get a stake

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> This is awesome news for Mailgun customers, kudos to Will and the Mailgun team for pulling this off.

Mailgun has one of the best inbound/outbound API combinations available, great for companies with a strong developer team.

</comment><comment><USER43> This is great news and puts my Mailgun-related fears about the Rackspace acquisition to rest. I look forward to actually paying for Mailgun's service soon.

</comment><comment><USER44> Congrats guys!

\- From a happy customer.

</comment><comment><USER45> Congrats to the entire Mailgun team. I'm looking forward to seeing all the awesome stuff you do an an independent company!

</comment><comment><USER46> Has anyone done any comparison between API based email services like AWS SES, Mailgun and SendGrid?

<comment><USER47> MailGun has better delivery than SES and easier to get setup than SendGrid. I use both MailGun and SendGrid but stopped using SES awhile ago due to delivery issues.

<comment><USER46> Thanks, this helps. What sort of delivery issues you ran into with SES? Was it possible to diagnose?

<comment><USER47> I haven't used SES in over 2 years now so things may have changed but lots of ISP's blocked the emails. Even basic transaction type emails.

Also, if you send over 10k too soon, you may be throttled or shut down. Lastly, they also throttle you if your bounce rate is higher than 2%. To get around that, you must make sure your list is super clean or send emails slowly to make sure your bounce rate is not over 2% in any given month. Not ideal for newsletters or large customer lists imo.

Again, some of this may have changed since I used them 2+ years ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I'm a happy customer and I'm really glad to hear this.

</comment><comment><USER49> Next up, Object Rocket?

</comment><comment><USER50> Does this mean we can now identify and block Mailgun's IP block to reduce spam?

<comment><USER51> Sure, as long as your users don't mind missing their signup confirmations and password resets for Stripe, GitHub, Lyft, Slack, Pagerduty, Heroku, etc.</comment></comment>


Telegram follows Facebook in starting its own cryptocurrency - <AUTHOR> https://www.androidpit.com/gram-telegram-cryptocurrency <comment><AUTHOR> I dont really see a reason for another of these coins... The only benefit for the ecosystem is that its pushing the usability of blockchain technology further...

</comment><comment><USER2> I think the Telegram coin kicked off a lot earlier than Libra</comment>


Can an Introvert Ever Change? - <AUTHOR> https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201604/can-introvert-ever-change <comment><USER2> More importantly: should they? Just because a given society values extraverts more than introverts, should introverts change themselves? Is that even desireably? I think not.</comment>


Pissing Away Our Money With Google Display Ads - <AUTHOR> http://blog.aha.io/?p=2731 <comment><USER4> When I saw the title I thought, "oh another article by someone who has no idea what they are doing complaining about advertising on X platform not working and being a waste of money.

Except I have been seeing the same thing.

Google has all of the data. They know that publisher X's inventory performs at 1/100th (or less) of the competitions. They should be smart priced accordingly, at about a penny per click.

It was initially shocking. I have used a lot of ad platform in the past (nearly) decade and Google was the _only_ one that consistently delivered high quality traffic that was obviously real people.

Here are a few other really dirty tricks Google will play on you:

#1 If you are selling ads from the publishing side, Google will sell you your own ads by running ads on your site unless you explicitly exclude your site from every ad campaign.

#2 Engagement ads. These are video ads that play on a mouse over. They report a mouse over as a "click."

</comment><comment><USER5> Similar to this, I noticed a pretty crappy thing Google are doing on Youtube on the ipad last night. I did a youtube search and went to tap the first result only to have it replaced with an ad just before I clicked it, taking me through to some ad.

I experimented with this a couple of times, both times I did a search, and about 0.5-1 second after the page loaded the first search result was shifted down and its position taken by an ad link that looked the same as a search result.

<comment><USER6> Similar annoying thing with video pre-roll ads on Youtube: I'm used to pausing videos by clicking on them but when the video is an ad then it opens the link of the ad instead of pausing the video.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think google do sloppy shit whenever the "sloppiness" suits them. Take app permissions in the play store as an example; you mean to say google are so concerned by me installing unvetted apps that to do so, I have to click some check box somewhere in the settings, YET do not allow me to set app permissions on an app by app basis? That is downright sloppy, only it isn't really sloppiness, it's a state of affairs that one way or another suits their needs. Coz think about it: even after they've seen plenty of apps asking for permissions that are none of their business, apps that they've approved seeing as they're on the app store, they still don't change their permissions policy. I call that intentional slopiness.

<comment><USER8> I always thought it was really cool that apps had to request permissions up- front; that said, I much prefer the iOS approach of 'ask when it becomes necessary, and only then'.

<comment><USER9> If would only be cool if you could disable these permissions; as it is, they're not asking you if you want to grant the permissions, they're just warning you in the ways in which the app will violate your privacy. Thanks, but that's not enough.

(Unless you run Xprivacy or Cyanogenmod's Privacy Guard, etc.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> We had a similar problem with mobile search ads. The vast majority of clicks we got were misclicks, which is very painful when you're bidding $5+ click. We fixed the issue by putting a -90% bid on mobile ads. Now once every few months someone from Google calls us and tries to convince us to remove that -90% bid, assuring us the traffic is good and will convert. Pretty sleazy.

<comment><AUTHOR> In our account penalizing the bid for mobile ads didn't help because it looks like Google treats 'mobile' and 'tablets' separately. So we prevented ads on phones, but you can't penalize the bid for tablets so that doesn't work to prevent games on iPads.

The Google support person told me they can't tell the difference between tablets and desktops, but I don't believe that for a second. Our own analytics clearly showed the user-agent for all of the visitors was for tablets and not desktops.

<comment><USER11> Isn't it also the case that you can restrict your ads to Google search only which should avoid these in app ads? Or are you looking for placements on the display network as well (or only)?

<comment><USER12> This only applies to the display network. If you restrict to Search, you don't have to worry about game banners, or banner ads at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Everything in adwords seems designed to dump more money into google than you want to. Ads going to wrong places, "enhanced" campaigns that make it impossible to ignore mobile and tablet traffic, questionable quality score rating, etc. I've had my fill of it. Better to hire a firm to let them handle the mess.

<comment><USER14> It's similarly frustrating on the other end, where google will sometimes show adult ads even when you tell them not to show that content on your sites

<comment><USER13> Blugh, that would be unacceptable. I'm guessing the advertisers are doing some shady crap to get past the filters, but still...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I come from the other side of the glass. My toddlers have iPads and constantly tap ads that are usually larger than real, in-app actions. Often the ads are interstitial between two game screens, or float next to the content they are interested in. Besides being frustrating for the kids, I have to be vigilant on the content of the ads they're seeing. From my experience, the ads are not always appropriate for kids. I really wish Apple would offer a "No Ads in Kids Apps" policy.

<comment><USER4> This could be a reasonable class action lawsuit: both against advertisers collecting personal information from children (whether they intended to or not) and from platforms serving inappropriate ads to children.

<comment><USER16> very stringent rules around children's data in europe I believe

<comment><USER17> I think that Europe does not have class action suits. I'm not 100% sure. Anyway, USA has special laws around collecting and storing data of kids under 13 years old.

That is primary reason why facebook like companies tos excludes them. It is safe to assume that ad companies do not follow requirements written in these laws.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's been a little while since I've used it, but doesn't Google let you do placement optimization based on meaningful conversions or other user-defined goals?

It sounds like the problem here was just Google's ad placement optimization looking for CTR alone as opposed to something that means more for Aha! (e.g., clicking past the landing page). In that case, the solution isn't so much in excluding certain platforms as much as optimizing for the right goals.

Unless your product/service really has no target audience among people who happen to use mobile or play games, excluding mobile/games with a blanket exclusion _may_ be the wrong choice. Personally, I'd rather target whoever seems to be converting most in terms of things my business cares about rather than drawing arbitrary lines for which platforms see my ads.

<comment><USER19> Yes, that's true. When you set up the campaign/ad group, you can choose to optimize for clicks, or optimize for conversions, and at least one other optimization. I burned through a few grand choosing optimize for clicks myself...

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The way to avoid wasting money like this is to ramp up your spending gradually using what's called 'discovery campaigns.' This is a risk management method that helps you to avoid the shittiest publishers (which is almost all of them). If you had done this you could have avoided this unhappy incident.

You can also bypass discovery campaigns by just running managed placements, which means whitelisting certain publishers only.

Google does a disservice to its customers by making it seem like 'anyone' who can paste an image into its tool can advertise effectively. Technically, yes, it's so easy that even a greedy pigeon with a corporate credit card can do it.

Practically, in many if not most verticals, it takes reading at least a couple textbooks worth of material to be effective, plus creative experience.

Google is not being shady in this instance. The only shady thing that it is doing is using its marketing to delude people with large enough budgets to hurt themselves into managing their own campaigns.

Another issue highlighted in this post that many professional advertisers complain about is that over the last few years, Google has tried to frogmarch desktop advertisers into tablet/mobile advertising, whereas it requires more finesse and planning to tailor campaigns to those devices than most clients are interested in using.

<comment><USER21> As a "professional advertiser" myself with a deep background in search this is spot on.

Also, people don't poke around enough in the help files or in the settings for their targeting to see that there are easy ways to avoid this from the start.

For example, Site Category Exclusions would be a good start, although the specific negatives they mention are good to note as well since I'm not sure the category exclusions will catch everything.

<comment><USER20> Thanks!

Yup. As a quasi-professional advertiser with a medium-depth background in search, I'm glad to hear that I'm on the correct track.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The architecture of the digital ad industry was created with computers in mind; it was only ported to touchscreens out of convenience. You just can't assume clicks imply intent on such inaccurate devices.

<comment><USER18> So don't optimize your campaigns simply for clicks.

A lot of people here are complaining that Google is doing something "shady" by making ads available to mobile platforms (mobile ads are here to stay regardless of how people feel about them - and that's not Google's fault) and optimizing by default for clicks (there's not much else that would be better as a default).

If it's not just clicks you want, then optimize for whatever you care about - conversions, sales, whatever. Mobile has simply made that distinction more clear than before.

<comment><USER4> The complaint originates from Google preventing advertisers from separating desktop & tablet bids. It is not that Google made ads available for mobile platforms but that they force you to purchase them. Kind of like if you want HBO.

<comment><USER18> Again, if you've set up your campaign to optimize for what you really want to see (not just clicks), then why would you even need to care about desktop vs tablets? There are more and more devices every day that blur the line between desktop and tablet, so it's really not _that_ useful of a distinction to make.

What about desktops with touchscreens? People are probably just as likely to click your ad by mistake there as on a tablet. The problem isn't the platform or the method of user input. The problem is how your campaign is being optimized.

<comment><USER23> You can't optimize your ads for conversions until you've already had a minimum number of conversions (I think 30 per month?). Google can still run up hundreds of dollars of paid clicks that will never result in conversions before then (and mobile apps for kids are one way to do that).

As for desktop vs tablet, some people might be advertising a tablet-only app or a desktop-only app. In that case it's best to advertise on the device people can use it on, to streamline the download/purchase.

<comment><USER18> That's true. Still doesn't mean you should optimize for CTR when you're really interested in conversions. But I do see your point that in some cases - especially when starting a new campaign on a tight budget, it would be useful to manually target the campaign with more precision (including tablets vs desktop control and more obvious control for apps). Ideally, Google would allow people to start optimizing for conversions from the beginning, but I guess their algorithms have to start with something (clicks being the most abundant form of response data).

As for the desktop-only or tablet-only app, I'd still rather let that work itself out with conversion optimization (given that download conversions can be tracked effectively) rather than assuming my conversions are going to come through a certain channel. It comes down to the idea of making marketing decisions based on real data rather than what we're "sure" is best.

It just sounds like many people don't bother setting up conversion optimization out of ignorance - they think Google is somehow doing this app/game placement just to try and steal people's money, when really it's just a natural consequence of the CTR optimization. In the case of Aha!, it appears that most of the "wasted" money was spent before even realizing what was going on - and once they did figure it out, they apparently found the way exclude mobile apps without too much trouble (though I'd agree Google _should_ make it easier).

<comment><USER23> Oh definitely, if you have the option to optimize for conversions, you should definitely try it. From memory that was a key factor in patio11 finding success with Bingo Card Creator.

That said, if your conversion rate is the typical "1% of trial users buy / x% of visitors download", it can take a long time to optimize. And if you try to use trial signups / downloads as a proxy conversion for sales, you can end up optimizing for the wrong thing (eg optimizing for freeloaders / kick the tyres, not buyers).

Curious to hear if Aha!'s mobile app exclusion method actually works - I tried a similar exclusion and it didn't work for me, I still play mobile app whack- a-mole. Google called me when I stopped my ads & told me that entering a -300% bid for mobile was a hack from engineering that would stop showing all ads on tablets, but the interface wouldn't accept anything more than -100% (which I already had).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Are there any SaaS apps that people recommend for managing online advertising?

The Google ads UI is overly complex for a typical small company, and that obfuscates what it really going on with your ads. In addition I would love to see a UI that automatically handled experimentation and A/B testing with display ads (by automatically generating the ad images based on set of possible captions and background images).

<comment><USER24> Sure, there are plenty offerings, for example: Adobe AdLens, Adspert, Kenshoo, Marin Software, Wordstream.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestions. None of these are really what I had in mind - <USER2> tool that hides the complexities of campaign management and optimization. Where is the Zendesk of advertising?

I had a look at each of the websites. Wordstream is the only one that has any information on pricing. Adspert appears to be on target, but the pricing information just says "Adspert is affordable for every business". It looks like Adobe AdLens doesn't exist any more. A google search shows ads - but they just lead to a whitepaper signup.

<comment><USER25> Your adwords rep will hide the complexities if you like - be prepared to bleed money all over the place though - in many simple, complex and esoteric ways.

Most of those "no price listed" tools run somewhere between 5-15% of ad spend. Many times with high minimums. I see no reason to choose one from scratch.

Either learn adwords (really learn it, practice, test, do it right) or hire someone who knows what they're doing (and beware of all those who think they do but don't...)

Google is super optimized to get into your wallet so either play ball or stay the hell out of the path of the greatest money machine ever created as it rakes in cash all the way til it can't monopolize more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> You are unhappy with the results because you're optimizing towards clicks. You should always optimize towards whatever is important to you. So if you would like people to click through to a specific page, define that to be a conversion and then optimize towards conversions. Optimizing to clicks is not great even if you exclude mobile devices - it's just not what you want.

<comment><USER27> Do you have any resources that talk about how to optimize for conversions?

<comment><USER28> In AdWords it's under Tools - <USER3>

You have to setup conversion, and insert corresponding javascript into your conversion page.

Than make your AdWords campaigns to focus on conversions instead of clicks.

<comment><USER26> This, if you would like to do it yourself. However, the display advertising space is not currently as turnkey as search advertising, so in most cases you're better off handing off the trafficking of the campaign to an ad network. Quantcast and RocketFuel are two that focus specifically on delivering conversions, and both consistently beat Google on CPA (cost per action). Disclaimer: I currently work at Quantcast.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This problem extends to more than just kids playing around on mobile games.

Here is a good presentation from the quantcast guys about the "natural born clicker" problem. The people clicking on your display ad are probably anything but actual potential customers.

Clicks is just an easy holdover metric from the paid search side of digital advertising. It doesn't make sense in the context of early funnel ads. You need to measure the effect your display ads are having on your purchasing endpoints. Which is what the whole cross channel attribution industry is about.

[1][http://www.slideshare.net/hardnoyz/display-ad-clickers- are-n...](http://www.slideshare.net/hardnoyz/display-ad-clickers-are-not-your- customers)

</comment><comment><USER30> Some of the mobile games definitely use questionable ways to present the ads. If anyone has ever played Subway Surfer (on Android), they can probably remember the countless amount of times one may accidentally click on the ads. On top of that, the ads load in such funny ways at times that it is hard to avoid clicking the ad.

As an advertiser and publisher myself, I feel bad for the people spending money on advertising in that game, because the 99% of the time that I have clicked on an ad in that game is because it was a mistake.

</comment><comment><USER31> Facebook is worse. If you use FB promoted/boosted posts you can not untarget mobile/tablets, which especially sucks if your ads are for desktop centric products.

Anyways- Is there a easy way on adwords to ONLY target desktop users? No tablets, no smartphones, no dumbphones.

<comment><USER32> Post goes through some detail on that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I wonder if you can see as an advertiser which keyword caused your ad to be shown in a particular app? That would be pretty interesting as it would let you weed out ambiguous keywords (I don't know.. Memory the game vs memory as in RAM), and see real gaming of keywords (like a Flappy Bird clone with "Business", "Laywer" or "Mesothelioma" keywords).

</comment><comment><USER34> I had the same issue a few weeks ago. All my ads were shown to drawing apps for kids :(

</comment><comment><USER35> Not being funny, but how many of us read the article, followed the link to Aha!, scrolled down to the bottom and went straight back to HN? Maybe the product just does not sell too well on an ad.

</comment><comment><USER36> Always always exclude adsenseformobileapps.com in a display campaign. It's recommended for a remarketing campaign as well.

PPC #201

</comment><comment><USER37> I bet this was a big Aha! moment

<comment><AUTHOR> The Aha! moment didn't come until I called Google and the support person pointed out that the placement screen wouldn't show data for today. Until that point we spent a few days scratching our heads wondering what could account for the weird traffic patterns.

We have really detailed web analytics and the visitor patterns were just so unlike what we normally see. Especially the fact that the same visitor (almost always from an iPad) would come back multiple times with about 10 hours between visits. I am guessing that Google doesn't show the same ad to a user for some time after there has been a click which explains the 10 hours. But we were mystified why people who never left the landing page would click an ad again and again. Once we realized it was kids playing games it became obvious. Many times I have had to rescue my kids who accidentally clicked on an ad while playing an iPad game and gotten lost in some website.

<comment><USER38> What keywords did you use? Curious to see how unrelated games might have been related to your keywords.

<comment><AUTHOR> Aha! is a tool for product managers to plan a roadmap, so keywords were related to "product management", "visual roadmap", etc. I am not sure how keywords match a game like Solitaire but my guess is that the game somehow contains a dictionary that they pass to google when ads are being chosen. Or perhaps the description of the game is keyword stuffed?

<comment><USER38> Follow up post here: [http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2014/04/04/aha- mom...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2014/04/04/aha-moment-the- devious-world-of-free-games-and-paid-google-display-ads/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Shorter article: "We have no idea how to operate the machine we're dumping cash into! Clearly this is the fault of the manufacturer!"</comment>


A Brief Introduction to the Java and .NET Patent Issues - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoq.com/articles/java-dotnet-patents

<comment><USER2> > If Google had made Android based on a mix of Mono and code from .NET Micro > Framework, they could likely have made it so all parts are covered against > Microsoft patents

But all that would be only to allow the use of _language_ as described in the given document. The way they took gave them the nice functional development environment not bound to the Windows OS.</comment>


12 Signs You're Working in a Feature Factory - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/12-signs-youre-working-in-a-feature-factory-44a5b938d6a2#.s5s72jcrg <comment><USER2> Oof... like, 9/12 of those describe my team.

I don't kid myself into thinking I'm doing anything meaningful here, but to have so much of process put so bluntly is eye opening. I suppose it's comforting to know that it's so common it could be put into a list like this.</comment>


We are raising a generation of deluded narcissists - <AUTHOR> http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/01/08/are-raising-generation-deluded-narcissists/

<comment><USER2> I work with a group of coworkers that are a little less than half my age, 1 or 2 years out of college. They are all excellent.

Of course they goof off and sometimes make inexperienced decisions like every kid their age (ex. thinking that sharing a 1 bedroom apt with a stranger is a good idea, even though the bathroom is in the only bedroom). But I did the same things at their age, but they are surprisingly professional and make mature decisions at work. If I didn't spend a lot of time with them and only spent time with people my age, I probably would think the same thing, like my parents probably thought of me and my friends. It's the fallacy of age, and it happens every generation.

My wife, on the other hand, works with someone who is is the epitome of the article. Self-entitled, bratty, arrogant, etc. But I think this is more the case of the upbringing and not necessarily to do with the generation.

I think they're going to be just fine.

<comment><USER3> I don't know. I'm in my final year in college (London), and it is very, very rare that I meet someone my age who is genuinely interesting. On the other hand, I meet very often students who think they are "cutting edge".

For example, I've met maybe a couple of persons who have an iPad _and_ tap into its potential (e.g mobile digital library that enables annotations and dictionary; wireless, customisable MIDI controller; client for remote controlling your computer; digital notepad; etc.).

I may have very high standards, tho; but that's because I grew up studying the lives and works of humanity's champions (scientists, arists, etc.), instead of popular culture.

<comment><USER4> "For example, I've met maybe a couple of persons who have an iPad and tap into its potential (e.g mobile digital library that enables annotations and dictionary; wireless, customisable MIDI controller; client for remote controlling your computer; digital notepad;"

So this is what qualifies as being interesting / cutting edge now huh? I don't know, maybe the article is right...

<comment><USER3> No, that's what qualifies as tapping into the potential of an iPad beyond using it for very simple stuff (e.g Web browsing). A friend said to me the other day she plans to buy an iPad. I said "that's great! I really love mine. What do you plan to use it for?". And she shrugged; but she insisted she wants the mini one. So, I showed her some of the ways in which I use mine, that I thought she would find interesting as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ironically written by a deluded narcissist.

</comment><comment><USER6> What on earth is this story doing on Hacker News? It's an editorial at Fox News. Flagged.

<comment><USER7> As opposed to editorials or op-eds from the NYTimes, HuffPo, Salon, TheAtlantic (see a link just below this one), WSJ, Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, Business Insider, Techcrunch, etc etc etc?

The article could be better written but let's debate the merits of the writing, not where it was published.

<comment><USER6> They're all bad. I try to flag them all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The report says the freshmen who take it report less studying, higher ability, and _considerably higher grades_ than cohorts in the past.

People think they're good at things who got significantly higher grades without having to study much than people in the past. Who would have thought that would lead a person to believe they could do something and rate their capabilities higher.

</comment><comment><USER9> It's a good thing this was written. Otherwise I would have NO idea about how terrible college students must be. Now I have proof, so let's all take steps to keep them unemployed, shun and criticize them.

And I'll continue to watch a heavy heavy amount of fox news in order to properly evaluate the things I'm unfamiliar with. How else will I maintain a moral compass?

</comment><comment><USER10> Consider the source.

This does not correspond at all to my experience teaching part time at a local liberal arts college. My students have been smart, hard-working, and very realistic about their abilities and the real world. They are so far ahead of where I was at that age...

</comment><comment><USER11> Isn't this just a ramification of of the dunning-kruger effect? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect>

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm sympathetic to the thesis, but this is a really poor article.

Read Christoper Lasch instead.

</comment><comment><USER13> Link to the actual study, or a real synopsis.

</comment><comment><USER14> GET OFF MY LAWN!!!!

</comment><comment><USER15> Faux News rants on the HN front page? Oh dear. Time to move on.</comment>


Ask HN: Do remote workers need a H1-B visa? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> If they're outside the United States they won't need a visa. They can visit and work in the United States office on business trips (usually max 90 days).

</comment><comment><USER3> if you live in US and not a US citizen, you need a work visa to work in US</comment>


WhatsApp Web - <AUTHOR> https://blog.whatsapp.com/614/WhatsApp-Web

<comment><USER2> They implemented end-to-end crypto in this web client as well. Since it's JS served on each request, it's vulnerable to compromise on the server side. I also don't know how key material is securely provisioned to your browser by scanning the QR code.

That being said, they are in a good position to roll out a Chrome extension or plug-in that can keep the crypto implementation on the browser. That would be a nice solution.

<comment><USER3> Hi,

I am trying to se what AJAX calls are being made but cant see noen. Whats the secret to this!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8924600](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8924600)

</comment><comment><USER5> Awesome! Really wanted this feature for a long time not having to switch between my phone and keyboard while at work.

</comment><comment><USER6> I wonder if this is related to them rolling out end-to-end crypto on Android but not yet on iOS.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know if limitations are for crypto or something else relate to apple API.

"Unfortunately for now, we will not be able to provide web client to our iOS users due to Apple platform limitations."

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Anyone has info on what are the blockers for allowing it to run on other browsers?

</comment><comment><USER8> What are the iOS restrictions that don't allow for this?

</comment><comment><USER9> They thought said they'd never do this :)

</comment><comment><USER10> Can anyone share screenshots?

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://i58.tinypic.com/27yd0ue.jpg](http://i58.tinypic.com/27yd0ue.jpg) [http://i61.tinypic.com/2a8jma8.jpg](http://i61.tinypic.com/2a8jma8.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> So far so good.

Update: emoji support :)</comment>


Facebook Open Sources Imaging Library for Android Called Fresco - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/facebook/fresco

<comment><USER2> Hello, I am one of the engineers on this project. Please see our blog post: [http://code.facebook.com/posts/366199913563917/introducing-f...](http://code.facebook.com/posts/366199913563917/introducing- fresco-a-new-image-library-for-android/?__mref=message_bubble)

and our web site: [http://frescolib.org](http://frescolib.org)</comment>


StumpWM: A complete window manager in Lisp - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/stumpwm/stumpwm <comment><USER2> If you'd prefer to use Scheme over Common Lisp and would like to get your hands dirty, consider hacking on guile-wm. I try it out from time to time and make small patches to improve it. You can modify guile-wm at runtime by connecting to the REPL server using telnet or the geiser Emacs extension. I recall StumpWM not having something as convenient.

I wish guile-wm was under more active development, so maybe a few more hackers could help get the ball rolling.

[https://github.com/mwitmer/guile-wm](https://github.com/mwitmer/guile-wm)

<comment><USER3> You are mistaken.

One could always modify StumpWM at runtime, via SLIME, which is far superior to geiser. Common Lisp is also superior to Scheme (as a language) and SBCL/CCL are miles better than Guile in particular, Guile being one of the worst Scheme implementations out there.

<comment><USER4> Those are a lot of claims to throw out there in one sentence. Can you elaborate a bit (although I'll give you SLIME over Geiser)?

<comment><USER5> The incompatibilities between Schemes is one for starters.

<comment><USER4> The core Scheme language seems pretty small compared to CL so compatibility might not be the best argument to make. The best you can say about CL is that it was designed with the expectation of incompatibility.

For libraries, CL has the same problems as Scheme so it's a wash. I hit this keenly when interacting with the OS (POSIX calls, mostly).

<comment><USER3> No, CL doesn't have the same problems as Scheme, not by a long shot. See Quicklisp or cliki.net even. All these libraries (Quicklisp alone has 1000+ libraries last I checked) work perfectly fine on __multiple__ CL implementations.

You doing work on Linux and need a very fast compiler? Use SBCL, 3rd party libraries continue to work (unless they're platform specific)

Doing work on OSX or Windows? Use CCL. 3rd party libraries continue to work (unless they're platform specific).

This flexibility is absent from the Scheme world, with the myriad slightly incompatible implementations and extremely fragmented library space. The emergence of Quicklisp for Common Lisp was so important that it alone KILLED Scheme for any sort of practical use. For most cases, one has not the slightest incentive to stray from using Common Lisp these days, and if he does, he better have a good reason.

What is the equivalent for Scheme? The SRFI hell? __shudder__

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Been using Stump for a few years. It's perfect for my development needs. I find it very hard to use Mac or Windows now that I'm used to all my custom shortcuts and functions.

I usually have my editors on workspace 1, local terminals on 2, dev chrome on 3, some other local terminal / API on 4, logging on 5, remote terminals on 6, personal chromium on 7 (gmail/slack/music), IRC on 10.

But anytime I can just ctrl-t-ctrl+c which gives me a full-screen terminal, split the screen in half with ctrl-t-ctrl-s with two applications side-by- side, usually two terminals.

To be honest, I haven't tweaked the stumpwm config in a while.. maybe in a year. But I remember the first few months was so cool to add all lisp functions to manipulate the window manager. I.e. select a word, press a key, it opens google and search for it.

</comment><comment><USER7> I use StumpWM and I'm very happy with it - the lack of any chrome whatsoever maximises screen real estate and minimises distractions.

My setup is here:

[https://github.com/duncan-bayne/mint- setup/tree/master/conf/...](https://github.com/duncan-bayne/mint- setup/tree/master/conf/stumpwm)

<comment><USER8> Thank you for that file. I have thought about trying StumpWM. Your setup is going to be helpful.

<comment><USER7> Glad to be of help :) If you have any questions, ask away ... and be aware that the battery status support in there is an ungodly kludge.

<comment><USER9> Couldn't you simply parse the output of "acpi -b"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> There is also another project written in Common Lisp, The Deep Space Window Manager : [https://github.com/dss-project/dswm](https://github.com/dss- project/dswm)

Does someone have some experience with it ?

The README has the following statement :

"DSWM is a fork of StumpWM, so have most of all features, which have StumpWM, but it designed for better usability and better integration with emacs."

<comment><USER10> Tried it a few month ago, haven't noticed any actual superiority compared to StumpWM, besides StumpWM have active community and dswm seems to be developed mostly by 1 person.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for you feedback.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've been using StumpWM for several years now; it's great!

There are some issues because the various desktop environments really don't want their in-house WMs replaced, and don't really document what needs to be done in order to just swap out the WM, leaving everything else. It's kinda sad really, and extremely anti-Unix.

Still, StumpWM is so pleasant and easy to use that it's worth the minor pain of getting my desktop environment working with it each time I update machines.

Highly recommended!

</comment><comment><USER12> StumpWM's defaults can be very unusual, I remember the first time I used it was like the first time I tried to use Vim. But after using it for a while, it's become almost unthinkable to drop it for something else. This is in part due to the fact that Common Lisp is the language I know best, but Stump really is a very pleasant environment to work in.

</comment><comment><USER8> I must admit to having wondered why there is not a greater use of Lisp in window managers. Lisp would seem the ideal language to use for tweaking a desktop. Xmonad (in Haskell) seems to have taken most of the attention of keyboard lovers and tweakers, but Lisp would seem to me to be a better fit.

<comment><USER13> Why not write the window manager itself in Haskell (e.g., xmonad [1]) to take advantage of Haskell's type system, and provide extension points to allow users to tweak the desktop environment in the language of their choice -- for example, Scheme [2] or Python [3]?

[1]: [http://xmonad.org/](http://xmonad.org/)

[2]: [https://hackage.haskell.org/package/husk- scheme](https://hackage.haskell.org/package/husk-scheme)

[3]: [https://github.com/bjpop/berp](https://github.com/bjpop/berp)

<comment><USER14> Why not write the product in language X and then make it extensible via language Y?

Well... For one it wouldn't be the emacs of window managers.

If you want to go the full mile, you should go the full mile. Trying to do half a mile subset and hoping it is the right subset gets tiresome pretty quickly.

I deeply respect them for doing it this way.

<comment><USER15> >Well... For one it wouldn't be the emacs of window managers.

Emacs is some primitives written in C wrapped by a massive amount of Elisp extensions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Using StumpWM for quite some time. Someone already pointed that it causes minimum distractions while working. Also makes it really easy to hack it in any way you want. :)

Using minimalistic config myself: [https://github.com/grepz/dotfiles/blob/master/.stumpwmrc](https://github.com/grepz/dotfiles/blob/master/.stumpwmrc)

</comment><comment><USER16> Brings back memories of the old sawfish as the GNOME WM.

</comment><comment><USER17> I used to run ratpoisone, StumpWM's predecessor (it's written in C). The "inspiration" is pretty A+:

Re: SCWM, Pot and the GPL... [1]

[1] [http://www.nongnu.org/ratpoison/inspiration.html](http://www.nongnu.org/ratpoison/inspiration.html)

</comment><comment><USER18> I started using stumpwm but I have a small problem that's been annoying me.

I'm used to emacs, where if I kill a buffer while split, the killed buffer will be replace by a hidden buffer, or the frame will unsplit.

However, in stumpwm, sometimes I'll end a program while split, and I will be left with an ugly blank space where the program's window used to be. Then I have to manually unsplit and resplit to restore the layout I had before.

Am I doing something wrong? I'm looking up how to get around this. I think it'll involve

        *destroy-window-hook*

I just want stumpwm to take advantage of the whole screen at all times.

Thanks.

<comment><USER6> I think I know what you mean, but it's just a key away from removing that "blank" screen (which is called a frame IIRC).

For me, (ctrl-t backspace) remove the current frame. I like the flexibility of Stumpwm where it differentiates between the space taken by an application and where it fits on the screen (Frame) vs the application.

The scenario you are describing happens if you have 2 frames while only one app running. Otherwise the next app would just fill that frame that is now available. Personally it doesn't bother me.. I'll just either remove the frame with (ctrl-t-backspace) and then my only app will now be full-screen on that first frame. Or I'll open another app in that empty frame, such as a terminal.

<comment><USER18> Thanks for the tip!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've used StumpWM before and enjoyed it. It's pleasantly surprising to see how much development seems to have happened on it in the last year.

</comment><comment><USER20> Does anyone have experience with both StumpWM and i3? How do they compare? I'm happy with i3, but am curious about other similar window managers.

<comment><USER21> I would say stick with i3 unless you are really a fan of lisp. I used StumpWM for years until I discovered i3, however a few months ago I switched back to StumpWM.

The floating layer in stump is quite frankly terrible. Pop up dialogs often act oddly. Yesterday I was updating ebooks in Calibre menus were appearing full screen and the progress dialog would grab focus and pop to the front on every tick. These are the types of issues that caused me to stop using it 4 or 5 years ago so unless you are willing to fix them yourself I wouldn't count on things improving.

That being said I much prefer the StumpWM tiling over i3. The tree structure that i3 uses is a bit odd. Stump is much more straightforward you have frames and windows. Windows are displayed inside frames and you can split and resize frames however you like. I never have to focus parent in order to split a frame vertically instead of horizontally as you might in i3.

<comment><USER20> Thanks! I'll stick with i3 _even though_ I am a fan of lisp, because it did what I wanted with very little configuration.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I used to use StumpWM and clfsWM, but instabilities in CLX drove me to Openbox.</comment>


Ask HN: Copywriting for Startups Newsletter – Good Idea? - <AUTHOR> Hey guys
After switching from copywriting to the startup world, I noticed many startups neglect copywriting…
Even though it's one of the easiest and most powerful ways to increase growth, revenue, sales… And more.
So I had an idea...
Start a free newsletter to share simple, easy hacks from copywriting - that you can use to accelerate startups.
But I'm wondering, as many of you are involved in the startup world... Is this something that interests you at all? I.e. how copywriting can be applied to startups?
If you want to see what I'm talking about, I already made the first post a few days ago. It's a mini-hack that lets you describe a startup in 4 words or less.
And if you have a couple of minutes to spare... It would be awesome to get your feedback, and to see if this type of content is useful to you or not.
Here it is (with a subscribe button at the bottom if you liked it):
copywritingforstartups.io
And please be as honest as possible with your feedback, I promise I won't get offended. I'm here to learn and improve!
Cheers, Bezan <comment><USER2> Sounds cool. So you are going to teach me how to write? When someone says the word "copyright" to me, I think of the © symbol, and not so much of the text that goes on the page. I know I know I'm probably wrong and you're right to call the copy of the page copyright, but that's just what I think of. The blog piece you wrote is good. Keep it at.</comment>


Using Gmail "Dot Addresses" to Commit Fraud - <AUTHOR> https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2019/02/using_gmail_dot.html <comment><USER2> > Each of these accounts is associated with a different stolen identity, but > all email from these services are received by the same Gmail account. Thus, > the group is able to centralize and organize their fraudulent activity > around a small set of email accounts, thereby increasing productivity and > making it easier to continue their fraudulent behavior.

I'm sure there are creative & compelling uses of Gmail dot addresses to commit fraud out there, but this one barely counts as fraud. I'm not sure what the point of the article is.

<comment><USER3> Fraudsters are taking advantage of email aliases to get other people to pay for someone else's account.

Example:

1) Fraudster create an account and put in a bogus card number.

2) Fraudster changes account email address to firstname.lastname@example.com. email@example.com already exists in Netflix's DB - but email@example.com does not, so Netflix is ok with this.

3) Netflix emails firstname.lastname@example.com and says "hey your card is bad, please update it" by clicking here.

4) The real email@example.com receives the email, clicks the link and is taken directly to a "update your card screen" and types in their credit card information.

5) Fraudster has their Netflix account paid for by the real Joe Smith.

Granted, Netflix could fix this by requiring a login before updating billing details. But the dot aliases in Gmail are a part of the scam.

<comment><USER4> A few years ago I noticed an uptick in services sending out "magic links" that take you direct to their service, already signed in. I've always thought there has to be some sort of vulnerability in that, perhaps this is it?

<comment><USER5> The fact that netflix lets you create an account without verifying you actually own the email address they are sending the token to is the real bug.

Besides, even without a magic link, they could still phish you into clicking a link to a malicious page that performed a login-csrf which would have the same effect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Thus, the group is able to centralize and organize their fraudulent activity > around a small set of email accounts, thereby increasing productivity and > making it easier to continue their fraudulent behavior.

How were Gmail's dot-addresses a central feature of this fraud? It looks like it just made it a tiny bit more convenient. And regarding the Netflix example, why isn't it 100% on them for not verifying email addresses?

<comment><USER7> I agree, it implies they were using the . as a means to generate new emails vs the . actually playing a pivotal role in a specific compromise. I've actually used the . and + feature for years to manage different accounts.

<comment><USER8> I know, this is infuriating. Dots and extensions are part of the spec, and it's the fault of the party mishandling them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> An email address should not be treated as some kind of closed-world constraining identifier, but purely as an open-world point of contact. The suggestion seems to be that businesses should view Gmail addresses with dots as a sign of "abuse", presumably how the same broken philosophy views Mailinator addresses. In reality if you're concerned about either of these, you're doing something wrong.

Schneier should know better than to give credence to this snake oiled tripe.

</comment><comment><USER10> The part about tricking Netflix users was posted and discussed here before. [1]

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16781959](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16781959)

</comment><comment><USER11> I was convinced someone was trying to perpetrate fraud against me using my gmail address w/o the dots. I just didn't understand how. I continuously got (and still get) emails from Amazon about app purchases (all free) because someone has created an account using my gmail address minus the dots. I have called Amazon 3 times and each time they have either removed my address from the other person's account, or deactivated the account (or so they said).

And then I finally got an email from someone, the alleged fraudster? Asking me to stop using their email address......

</comment><comment><USER12> This is a non-issue, I'm surprised it's on front page. If you can defraud companies just by making email aliases, what's stopping those hardened criminals from just registering new addresses?

Companies have had procedures for dealing with duplicate addresses/telephones/email addresses since forever, and if they don't, it's a fault of their business model.

</comment><comment><USER13> What other vanity email providers besides Gmail implement "dot addresses" or similar systems for their email addresses?

Update: The table on this wikipedia page provides a list under the "Address Modifiers" column. Curiously, it doesn't mention dot addresses for Gmail, only plus addressing.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_webmail_provider...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_webmail_providers#Features)

<comment><USER12> If we're nitpicking, it would be why Google allows dot aliases for regular accounts, but not for G Suite, while allowing plus-sign aliases for both.

<comment><USER14> If I had to guess, because corporate admins want to have separate inboxes for people with similar names... 1 with a "." and one without.

<comment><USER12> That's more trouble than it's worth. email@example.com and email@example.com will receive many emails not intended to them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> [https://github.com/kdeldycke/awesome- falsehood#emails](https://github.com/kdeldycke/awesome-falsehood#emails)

</comment><comment><USER16> > _The account "firstname.lastname@example.com" maps to the exact same address as > "email@example.com" and "email@example.com" \-- and so > on._

Just a minor nit: the distinct _addresses_ map to the same _inbox_ or _google account_. I fail to see how this breaks email.

<comment><USER12> Wait till he finds out about bruceschneier+whateveryouwant.@gmail.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is a poorly sourced article. Where does this metric come from? > Submit 48 credit card applications at four US-based financial institutions, resulting in the approval of at least $65,000 in fraudulent credit How does one even open a line of credit with just an email address?

</comment><comment><USER17> I've used dot addresses in referral queues to bump myself up the queue.

Remember the Oneplus referral based phone ordering/shipping? Yep, I cheated that one just to see if it would work.

It did.

</comment><comment><USER18> I have a catch-all domain. Just imagine all the fraud possibilities!

</comment><comment><USER19> Can someone flag this as bullshit?

</comment><comment><USER20> What a dumb article. Whoever considers email addresses to be identities is an idiot, they are not, they are simply a contact address, and obviously you can have as many of those as you want. If your software can't deal with this fact, your software is broken.</comment>


A talent war? - <AUTHOR>

I'm currently looking for a technical co-founder (having no technical background myself) and I'm wondering whether the lack of labour supply in the software developer market is having an averse effect on the willingness of software developers to join startups on the basis of sweat-equity? Is there an impending bubble? Are their services being overvalued? Are the current state of things in the tech world usurping the willingness of currently employed software developers to jump ship and join startups as co-founders?<p>* I apologize in advance if this has been discussed already. <comment><USER2> Apology accepted. ;-)

The thing you've failed to realize is the answer you seek is discussed repeatedly here to the point where it is essentially "group-think" _BUT_ it is constantly repeated in a form you might not recognize...

The constantly restated phrase is, "Ideas are worthless."

Considering the above, when you present yourself as an "Idea Guy" then you can guess how you are valued.

Developers have ideas of their own, and quite often, their ideas are more, ummm, developed --or better said, more thought-out in technical terms.

Given the endless stream of posts looking for technical co-founders, the typical offer of "You do all the work, and we get rich" is entirely unacceptable.

In a round about way, I have just implied you are worthless, and for that I apologize. Stating the commonly held beliefs and perspectives very clearly is important even though it is less than polite. Try to look at it from the perspective of a talented developer (with an entrepreneurial streak); he'll ask himself the question, "Why do I need you?"

EDIT: The following link might be enlightening.

[http://www.quora.com/I-am-a-creative-guy-with-a-startup- idea...](http://www.quora.com/I-am-a-creative-guy-with-a-startup-idea-Where- is-the-best-place-to-find-a-rockstar-developer-to-bring-it-to-life)

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't think it matters what the market is like, it will always be hard to get someone to work for you for sweat equity, especially if they have to leave their jobs to do so.</comment>


SocialDevCamp Chicago Event - <AUTHOR> http://socialdevcampchicago.eventwax.com/socialdevcamp-chicago-techthursday Meetup this Thursday, March 4th (6-9pm) at OfficePort Chicago to talk social web. <comment><AUTHOR> We are collecting donations for a n interesting charity at the event. Check out TechGYRLS <http://bit.ly/1ty3zI> \- programs to teach technology skills to teenage girls.</comment>


delete me - <AUTHOR> <comment><AUTHOR> Last year, I mentored a few students who are learning coding to become a software engineer from non-traditional backgrounds. Rather than encouraging them to leetcode and practice for interviews, I taught them software engineering practices and mentored them to build c0d3.com together as a team. c0d3.com will be a free learning site where other students like them can learn coding and then help improve the site. As a senior engineer, I made sure to not write any code myself and focused on helping them with code reviews, architecture questions, and holding sprint meetings every Monday at 9:30pm. We document our daily sprint updates here: [https://github.com/garageScript/c0d3-app/wiki/Sprint-H1-2020](https://github.com/garageScript/c0d3-app/wiki/Sprint-H1-2020)

To get beta users for our app, we started a free coding group at our local libraries and got a few dozen active users: [https://www.meetup.com/San- Jose-C0D3/](https://www.meetup.com/San-Jose-C0D3/)

I am pretty happy with the outcome and the code quality. The students wrote unit tests with every pull request, listened to feedback, and achieved 100% code coverage in the codebase. Now, after some user feedback and iterations we are ready to give a preview of what we worked on. Any feature suggestions / feedback will become learning opportunities for the next generation of students.

Last month, a rec opened up on my team and I was able to hire one of these students. If I could hire all of them, I would. If anyone here is hiring, please consider hiring these awesome students who worked hard to make c0d3.com possible (I've listed their code contributions and linkedIn profiles): [https://github.com/garageScript/c0d3-app/wiki](https://github.com/garageScript/c0d3-app/wiki)</comment>


Six Strikes Anti-Piracy Plan Delayed Till 2013 - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/six-strikes-anti-piracy-plan-delayed-till-121128/

<comment><USER2> I'm glad I switched to a more customer-friendly ISP.</comment>