How I snatched 153k Ether after a bad Tinder date - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@rtaylor30/how-i-snatched-your-153-037-eth-after-a-bad-tinder-date-d1d84422a50b <comment><USER2> The "bad Tinder date" is completely irrelevant to the story, and is dispensed with after the first paragraph -- but it's oddly effective clickbait; I think this technique should be used more often:

* Apple releases iPhone X, after a bad Tinder date * Jamie Dimon Slams Bitcoin as a 'Fraud' after a bad Tinder date * Turkey Signs Russian Missile Deal, Pivoting From NATO after a bad Tinder date * Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, after a bad Tinder date

See? It works every time

<comment><USER3> Considering the fact that this was published under a pseudonym (as mentioned by another comment), I wonder if the Tinder details were a bit of misdirection.

This person purportedly stole ~41 million dollars from a number of parties. Who knows who those people were? They could be some bad people, they could owe money to some bad people, or they might be angered enough to become bad people. That's not to mention the fact that law enforcement would likely be interested in this. Or maybe some thugs might like to just beat them up until they squeal?

Assuming the author is truly the thief, I wonder how many of the details intermingled with their story are false.

Imagine you're the thief. You just stole $41MM. Now what?

You know _someone_ is gonna wonder where their money went - likely multiple people. The blockchain is a public ledger. The victims are going to hire people with expertise just like the author claimed to have in order to try following the ETH as it is mixed and laundered. That's a lot of money to launder successfully without making a single mistake. And I'd imagine a lot of people will be watching.

However, the author surely knows all of this. So why write a blog post with so much helpful information? Assuming all of it is true, we could easily deduce:

\---

> tinder user, went on a date w/ a creepy guy: author is likely either a > straight female, or bi/gay male, single

> bastille day celebrations outside: lives in france

>has two living parents who own a house, has an older brother who does not have a car, has a sister who is going/went to college

>has loans, does not own a house

\---

That's a lot of information, and isn't even all of it. Why just hand it out, knowing you're likely a big target on a few people's radar?

<comment><USER4> > ~41 million dollars

Please don't use this term, use the actual stolen property, 153k Ether, whose value will fluctuate daily (it gained and lost €100 in value in the past month, which would make your estimate inaccurate with about €15 million).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just for the record "Mitch Brenner" is the name of a character in the Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds", and the photo in the profile is of the australain actor that played it, Rod Taylor.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birds_(film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birds_\(film\))

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

<comment><USER6> Do you think there is any significance to this choice of pseudonym (unless the author's name is Mitch Brenner or Rod Taylor?) I cannot think of one, but I don't know the film well.

Under 'Reception and Interpretation', the film's wikipedia entry says

"Humanities scholar Camille Paglia wrote a monograph about the film for the BFI Film Classics series. She interprets it as an ode to the many facets of female sexuality and, by extension, nature itself. She notes that women play pivotal roles in it. Mitch is defined by his relationships with his mother, sister, and ex-lover – a careful balance which is disrupted by his attraction to the beautiful Melanie."

which isn't leading me anywhere (other than to think this analysis tells more about Ms. Paglia's interests than the movie.)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birds_(film)#Reception_and...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birds_\(film\)#Reception_and_interpretation)

<comment><USER5> >Do you think there is any significance to this choice of pseudonym

No idea.

Though I can say that often enough critics see in a work of art (be it a book, a painting, a music or a movie) even more than what the Author actually meant.

The only thing that strikes me is that - though a classic - it is not among the most reknown ones from Hitchcock among the "new generations", most probably if you ask anyone younger than - say - forty the only Hitchcock's film he/she will remember will be probably Psycho.

So, assuming that the author of the medium post is not that age or over it (and according to the "if I can get enough money for a nice early 20s retirement out of this" it should mean that the post author is twenty something), it is a "strange" choice, contradicting - possibly on purpose - other anecdata sparsed here and there (without any apparent reason), such as the use of Tinder, the reference to Bastille Day fireworks, the notion that 253 ETH are roughly "half a year salary", and possibly a few more that I overlooked and that seem "not needed" in the context.

The image conveyed is that of a single twentysomething (if male possibly gay, since the reference of Tinder is to a "he" that turned our as a creep and later there is a "I am not a rich guy") LEO (or however belonging to a security related organization) IT specialist (specifically working on monitoring coin exchanges of dubious nature), living in France (or however a place where the 14th July is celebrated with fireworks) and with a yearly wage around 120-140K US$, with a family composed of father and mother, an older brother and a younger sister, that had a work trip on monday 17 July 2017.

IMHO (and as other people already noticed) "too good to be true" or "too many data points" for someone that wishes to remain anonymous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a retelling of the Parity Multi-Sig Wallet hack, from the hackers perspective:

[https://blog.zeppelin.solutions/on-the-parity-wallet- multisi...](https://blog.zeppelin.solutions/on-the-parity-wallet-multisig- hack-405a8c12e8f7)

We're talking about 40mn USD here so I doubt that this account was written by the original hacker.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think the key to understanding this article is this:

> But Mitch, isn't this wrong? No.

Let's suppose the hacker really did feel no remorse for stealing 153k Ether then it seems they might not feel it necessary to keep their identity hidden. They might also feel proud enough that they feel it is worth the risk to publicly disclose their actions. Given that, it seems that perhaps some of what the author wrote might actually be true.

Despite that it seems that there is more than enough information here to identify them. There is only one country that celebrates Bastille day, they are apparently interested in men so either a gay/bi male or a straight female, they work for a security research company, they have excellent command of English, they are in their early 20s, they apparently have a fast and loose attitude. It seems those criteria would narrow down to only a handful of people.

<comment><USER9> Presumably whoever did it is a clever person. If I were in that position, I think it would be a fairly obvious step to season the article with subtle misdirections that send people on a wild goose chase. In fact it would be quite fun to do. So I wouldn't take the "information" in the article at face value at all.

<comment><USER10> I don't think being clever with code necessarily equates to having common sense. If he had common sense, he would have went on his merry way without bragging on the internet...

<comment><USER11> You possibly vastly underestimate how important it is for people commiting "perfect" crimes to tell the world it was them. There's a lot of stories about forgers including subtle clues in their forgeries to be able to claim their "art" and prove they duped people.

<comment><USER12> This. This is also essentially the premise for (the original) Death Note (except a God complex rather than proving they pulled a fast one).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This isn't a real story, it's sensationalized fiction loosely based on reality. I wish they would put it in huge letters at the top of the story so you know that going in.

<comment><USER6> Then I would like a spoiler alert before that statement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Are you really untraceable if you switch from ETH to BTC and then to dollars or euros? I don't really know how Ethereum works, but if every transaction is recorded, whichever exchange he used would have the origin ETH and destination BTC wallets and whichever bank account it's going to, wouldn't it? I would appreciate some insight on that.

<comment><USER15> And also what happen when your dollar or euro bank account takes +30 millions in few days ? Do banks have alerts when someone's account activity is unsual compare to historic usage ?

<comment><USER16> Your account will almost certainly be frozen until you show up and convince the bank you're not a money launderer. Given the complexity of AML laws, you probably actually are at that point. And therefore the conversation with the bank might not go in your favor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The real kicker here is the tip jar at the end of the article.

</comment><comment><USER18> So, is this an admission? Or a theoretical? Or only part of the story?

Is the writer using a pseudonym?

<comment><USER19> I agree this reads like fiction, and it would be idiotic to admit it.

If real, the people he stole from may be even less ethical than he is (and they must have noticed the ETH were gone, and at what time). This could paint him as a murder target, a position I wouldn't want to be in...

<comment><USER20> except it is possibly a grey area, the contracts are written such that extracting the money is only possible if you fulfill the contract, if you find a loophole and fullfill the contract and take the money did you really steal it?

<comment><USER21> With the usual caveats (IANAL, this may vary per country/jurisdiction) laws and contracts are usually about intent, not pure semantics. And you'd probably have a hard time to argue that this way of 'fulfilling' the contract was the intended way.

<comment><USER20> I understand that contracts are usually written this way but an ethereum smart contract is a different kettle of fish. It is written to be a program so if you can get the program to respond to your inputs then you have fulfilled the requirements of the smart contract as it was written. Of course it may be that it was poorly worded but that is an issue for the contract writer.

<comment><USER22> Because whoever invented them called them "smart contracts" doesn't mean they're considered as such in the jurisdiction where people using the said "smart contract" are living. Matt Levine has written extensively about the subject.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm curious why the attacker converted his ETH into BTC. Why not Monero first? Once the money is converted into Monero, it should be untraceable, right?

<comment><USER24> Liquidity. There's enough demand for ETH-BTC that you can convert $30m worth pretty fast; for ETH straight to Monero, you would be in for a much longer wait.

<comment><USER16> Monero is also not quite untraceable with the defaults. It requires understanding Monero a bit, and spending days churning your coins. The idea that Monero is so unlinkable is horrible marketing and is going to get someone busted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> lol at this guy putting a tip jar at the bottom of the post

<comment><USER26> it's a ropsten (testnet) address

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> William Gibson was doing this in the 80's.

</comment><comment><USER28> Out of curiosity...is this a man or a woman?

EDIT: What's with the oversensitivity here? Is there anything wrong in asking a person's sex? What if it's for studying inclination towards certain decision making criteria? Geez folks, not every question is sinister. If you don't want to answer it, just move on. No one is being attacked here.

<comment><USER7> > EDIT: What's with the oversensitivity here?

It's not oversenstivity, there's literally no reason to care about the sex of the person who wrote this. It's completely offtopic and irrelevant.

What does "studying inclination towards certain decision making criteria" mean anyway? Reading between the lines it sounds like you think women behave one way and men the other way (which is fine if you think that btw), but wanting to "study" that using this article is just dumb.

<comment><USER29> Note that the question was phrased as "Out of curiosity...". This is essentially a disclaimer that it _is_ an off-topic and irrelevant question. From the way I see it, your comment is even less reasonable in this context.

<comment><USER7> You mean like if I used the same disclaimer and asked you this:

"Out of curiousity, are you male?"

Can you not see what that implies?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I was in a bad mood before I read this. Great read! Thanks.</comment>


Is the Breakthrough Advertising book worth $400? - <AUTHOR> https://capitalandgrowth.org/questions/1003/is-the-breakthrough-advertising-book-worth-400.html <comment><USER2> No.</comment>


The Raspberry Pi Will Bring Fun To Computers Again - <AUTHOR> http://www.dreamintech.net/2012/01/the-raspberry-pi-will-bring-fun-to-computers-again/

<comment><USER2> _when you felt like you had power over the machine and today you're just part of a mainstream movement_

This is something thats been scratching around in the my brain for a while and has driven me away from software. To me, software used to represent infinite possibilities, this blob of clay that you could sculpt into anything you wanted it to be. These days software is quick to slap your hand away when you get too close to messing with the fiddly bits.

I'm a bit more jaded than this poster, but I don't think the Pi will be able to bring the lost world back to us. Tinkering isn't what it used to be in general. Instead of popping down a product and an accompanying RFC that allows anyone to write other software to interacts with it, creators want you in their playground, doing operation they approve or nowhere near the tech at all. They're not just tight-lipped, I even see encryption to keep the tinkerer out.

My brother is a snowmobile gearhead. He used to machine a piece of metal that went somewhere in the engine. I don't really pay attention to that stuff to know the full details, but essentially modifying that piece of metal would tune something in the engine. Whatever that piece of metal controlled has now been replaced by a computer chip. It is an awesome idea, with amazing possibilities. He could set up his machine on the dyno and just sit there adjusting variables to tune and get exactly the performance he wants. Iterations between adjusting and testing is infinitely faster because he doesn't need to go do metalwork.

But thats not the way it works. He can't change the values on the chip. It has gotten orders of magnitude less work to modify, but he is physically unable to. He can bring his sled to the Bombardier dealership where there, and only there, can he tune the sled. He can't tweak values to find maximum performance. He can choose from Configuration A, Configuration B and Configuration C.

This is where software is taking the world my friends. It is why I don't tinker anymore.

<comment><USER3> Sounds like the camshaft in a mechanically-timed ignition system. Those went by the wayside with the advent of fuel injection.

There's like a whole modder community around custom fuel-injection controllers with reflashable firmware. Serious performance wonks replace the entire board -- CPU, memory, everything except for the output lines -- to the fuel injector with something they can order online. The new board has like a flash memory chip that lets you sit there with a PC and tweak variables until the engine has the performance characteristics you want.

I was approached about the feasibility of writing an Android app so these people can do the tweaks with their smartphones.

There's still tinkering going on.

<comment><USER4> But that's the point cbs made.

The learning curve has become a bit too steep with today's modern SoC systems. You can't just wire a transistor to a parallel port and call PRINT LPT(0),128 or whatever the hell the call was. You need to write a program to call a userspace driver, or modify your kernel, or whatever else you need to enable in the platform.c file to enable the port to raise the GPIO to blah blah blah I quit.

So now his brother, if he wants to tweak a setting on his ECM, needs to understand how to hack into the module without bricking it. Then he needs the correct tools to create the new engine profile and burn it in. There's probably a hardware dongle or two involved. Does that make sense?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I...don't know about that.

It's a computer, cool, but I think that most of the people who are looking for "fun" in computers are already finding it in things like the Arduino.

Something I _will_ hope for is that this disrupts some hobbyist economics. Things like the IOIO board from sparkfun (plugs into android, gives you 50 GPIO pins) are still really expensive ($50).

The arduino is too...$30 for a board that doesn't have wifi or any way of connecting to a network without an external card (shield).

The real holy grail of this stuff will be an arduino or a raspi with a wifi chip in it that costs $30 or less.

These little computers are all good, but when you have to tether them to something or buy an expensive add on to make them see the rest of the world, it kindof ruins the form factor for me.

<comment><USER6> But I think this is the hope that everyone has for the Raspberry Pi. It has network connectivity, it's easy to program (HDMI port for audio and video, USB for keyboard and mouse), and (so far) it's easily expandable. I'm watching the GPIO video on their blog right now (<http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/500>) and I can't wait until I can drop my Arduino set up and start programming in one of my preferred scripted (ruby) or functional (clojure) languages. I think it will make computers fun again.

<comment><USER7> I've tried something like that in the past - I've used ruby on Linux to program a robot, with I/O piped through an Arduino. It was _painful_. I've ran into lots of timing issues. The whole thing was incredibly unpredictable. Disabling the garbage collector improved things a little, but it's still annoying when your robot falls down because a cron job started.

An RTOS is much more suitable if timing matters, and a language with a more predictable runtime helps as well.

<comment><USER3> force a gc every time through the main sense-and-actuate loop of your control program

it's a trick used by lisp game programmers -- there are a few games floating around the app store written in gambit scheme and they all do this to avoid gc pauses

also why tf are you running cron jobs on your robot's computer?

where i work we deploy linux robots all the time, we control the software loadout so shit like this doesn't happen

<comment><USER7> I should have started with a disclaimer: this was 3 years ago and I don't perfectly remember all the details. It was a system cron job, not one added by me. I think it was logrotate. I've removed it, but finding out what was happening wasn't that easy. Which was my point, with the whole thing being so unpredictable, debugging the system sucked.

<comment><USER3> Linux is hella predictable -- darned near real time -- if all it runs is your stack and especially if you set the process priority high enough.

Next time start with a minimal system and build up, rather than starting with a fully-loaded system and trying to isolate and remove which of over 9000 processes kicked in to plage you with that slowdown.

PROTIP: /sbin/init can be whatever the hell you want. Symlink it to /usr/bin/emacs and you have a poor man's Lisp machine.

Oh, and uhh -- turn off swap.

One of the reasons why I left Debian was that it takes a very kitchen-sink- included approach to a base system -- including, as I found out the hard way, things with unpleasant exploitable vulnerabilities. And it's hard for a person of ordinary Unix skills, not versed in Debian arcana, to pare it back to a manageable state.

I'm an Arch man to this day for this reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Sorry for the down time. My server is back up, I did a reboot because Apache was out of memory. Thanks very much for your patience :)

<comment><USER8> Looks like it's still struggling.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, it went down again so I'm doing some RAM upgrade which might take 5 to 8 minutes. Sorry.

<comment><USER9> Ah, the HN effect at its worst.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why You Need Terminal - <AUTHOR> https://blog.nrobinson2000.me/2017/10/08/why-you-need-terminal <comment><USER2> What terminal emulator/theme is shown here?</comment>


Isn't Email Supposed to Be Dead? - <AUTHOR> https://www.sparkpost.com/blog/isnt-email-supposed-dead/ <comment><USER2> "in one private place"

I think not.</comment>


SpaceX's entry into $70 billion U.S. launch market draws Lockheed jab - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/spacexs-entry-into-70-billion-us-launch-market-draws-lockheed-jab/2012/12/23/a0e4fd0c-4a2e-11e2-b6f0-e851e741d196_story.html <comment><USER2> "The Defense Department on Nov. 27 directed the Air Force to end a launch monopoly" "A week later, the service awarded the trial missions to Musk's firm, known as SpaceX." "SpaceX...now has the opportunity to prove that its rockets are capable of launching satellites serving Pentagon planners, ground troops and the nation's spies." "The missions, scheduled for 2014 and 2015, are designed to help the company become certified to carry the military and spy satellites."

\- Much will be made here of Lockheed's comments. To me the real story is a h/t to government for opening up and encouraging disruption in a key market. Given the general negativity (often deserved) towards government by entrepreneurs it's important to acknowledge when they do positive things.

<comment><USER3> _Given the general negativity (often deserved) towards government by entrepreneurs it's important to acknowledge when they do positive things._

It's important to also realize they aren't doing this because they're motivated to disrupt the military/industrial complex, they're doing it because Elon is a master of public relations and has promoted SpaceX heavily.

<comment><USER4> Or maybe because they (the government) think they have a shot to lower the cost of actuals 460M$ launches. Competition is great even for public contracts.

Moreover in this case it seems quite unexpected some peoples have been crazy enough to start building rockets and one day directly concurrence and disrupt Boeing and Lockheed. I'm sure Boeing and Lockheed would never have thought such possibility. It's amazing imo.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure the government is particularly concerned about cost containment. It's the canonical example of people spending other people's money.

<comment><USER5> If their budget gets cut, then they will be concerned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> _"You can thrift on cost. You can take cost out of a rocket. But I will guarantee you, in my experience, when you start pulling a lot of costs out of a rocket, your quality and your probability of success in delivering a payload to orbit diminishes.''_

This sounds similar to the cry of every company that is about to be painfully disrupted.

<comment><USER6> This is why assume-worst-case/at the edge/corner case thinking is particularly useful.

> _OK guys let's invert our thinking and stop joking around for a moment. > Let's say SpaceX is going to destroy us. Now what do we do?_

Being able to think like that should somewhat immunize people against disruption.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Lockheed and Boeing are both very capable of building planes at scale, and in a competitive environment. Currently their space vehicles are built on a cost- plus model, but I think that L-B can adapt. Musk has an advantage today in cost, and should be able to maintain that for a few years, but don't think that Lockheed or Boeing can't compete once they realize that the gravy days are over.

It should be an exciting next decade for space travel. Maybe all the sci-fi I read will start to come true. Getting anything into space is a big challenge and hopefully soon the market will have several private companies competing in a real market for space travel. For a nice short story, look up "The man who sold the moon" by Robert Heinlein. Then we can discuss whether or not Elon Musk is the re-incarnation of the fictional character DD Harriman.

<comment><USER8> I don't know why you say this. Changing your cost structure is _extremely_ hard for businesses. Particularly if, as with Lockheed and Boeing, your cost structure is distributed through a web of other businesses (ie subcontractors) who are all going to be inclined to push back.

<comment><USER7> Which particular this are you referring to? Just the changing of cost structure forced upon you by the adapt or die that sometimes happens in the marketplace? or were there other parts that required more explanation on my part.

<comment><USER8> That changing of the cost structure exactly.

It is much harder than it looks like to do, and is exactly the sort of change that existing industries routinely fail to do, leading to their demise.

I believe that in 20 years SpaceX will have serious competition. I'm pretty sure it won't be Boeing or Lockheed-Martin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Of course Lockheed is upset. They got used to getting fat contracts with money amounts that had nothing to do with the cost of what they were building. Now they'll have to actually compete as a normal company would do in the market.

<comment><USER10> To give Lockheed some credit — their original goal was probably reliability over all else. In most cases their payloads are insanely expensive (ignoring opportunity cost — how much is having a surveillance satellite in place when needed worth?) and saving money on the launch is a false economy. Now they're having the fat pulled out of their contract (i.e. the launches where reliability isn't paramount but the cost structures were already established).

Whether SpaceX can establish itself as a mission critical alternative to ULA remains to be seen — 66 launches is no minor feat (but according to Wikipedia they have had at least TWO failed launches, is that 2/68 or 66 successes in a row or what?)

<comment><USER11> Not to mention, how much is _not_ having top-secret surveillance satellite land in your neighboor's backyard worth?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Lockheed is going to be in for a rude awakening one day, the jab they're giving SpaceX is nothing compared to the jab SpaceX is about to deliver in return.

Price is indeed just one factor in competition. But if your reliability is the same as or equal to the competition and your price is substantially lower the door is wide open for a massive shift. Ignoring that or making fun of it isn't going to help one little bit. Maybe Lockheed is willing to postpone slashing their prices until they are absolutely forced to but by then it may be too late to stop the shift from happening.

</comment><comment><USER13> Some days ago, I toured a Lockheed plant. It was an amazing experience overall. Watching how _airplanes_ get built inside a building. The scale of it just blew my mind. But, at the same time, I was looking at the business aspects of it. In my mind, what I was seeing was a business operating as it still was the 60's. Sure, there were some robots, and a lot of automation. But the whole underlying production pattern was old. made me realize that Lockheed peaked a long time ago and is now riding the gravy train. I'm sure projects like SpaceX will end up replacing them. Funny thing is that it won't take a long time. If Musk manages to turn himself into a good governement supplier (meaning he can make a good track record (so far so good)), then all these old behemoths will have their days counted.

<comment><USER14> Well, I think part of the problem is the size of their market. How many more people do you think would buy Mach 6 spy planes if the cost could be reduced by a couple orders of magnitude? Government would buy a few more, but John Q. Public doesn't really have a need for a vehicle that can fly him to 100 kilofeet (even if it only costs a couple hundred grand). So, unlike the car business, where you expect to sell tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of units _per_ _year_ , the best you can ever expect in the airplane business is a few hundred to a thousand over the total useful life of the model.

To further put this in perspective, Honda (not the biggest automobile manufacturer) sells almost as many Accords (not their most popular model) in just one month as total number of 172's (the most-produced civilian aircraft) that Cessna has _ever_ sold in all of history. Note that the wikipedia page on this topic (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_produced_aircraft>) is dominated by military aircraft produced for WWII, as well as pre- and immediatly-post-war civilian aircraft.

What this means is that you can't just hand-wave away the costs of building tooling (for making forged parts with complex shapes, for example) and optimizing the assembly line. Fixed, upfront costs do _not_ get amortized to a near-zero per-unit cost they way they do with software and most consumer electronics. This is also part of the reason avionics prices always seem to be so badly out of step with consumer electronics: As an avionics manufacturer, the maximum theoretical size of your market is tens to hundreds of thousands, (there are on the order of half a million civilian airplanes in the world today) and your suppliers usually want you to go through a distributor for orders that size.

There was a company, named Eclipse, that recently tried to revolutionize the way aircraft are produced. Among other things, they badly mis-estimated the size of the Very Light Jet market (which they more-or-less invented) and failed to over-deliver (some would say they over-promised). Suppliers, creditors, customers, and investors got soaked, though the firm is apparently still a going concern. One data point doesn't make a trend, and Eclipse faced fairly daunting macroeconomic conditions, but the fact remains that the manufacturer using the most "modern" production techniques had to go through bankruptcy.

One final point: The aviation market also tends to be cyclical. Loans don't go away, but you can have your employees work fewer hours.

<comment><USER13> Very good points. I appreciate you taking the time to make them. I'm not very well versed in the aeronautics market or its financials(aside from knowing to not buy airline stocks).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win."

</comment><comment><USER16> The pot shots at LM are a little bit misplaced. Let's not forget that it was the DOD and LM, Rockwell, etc, that built all of this technology in the first place. The industry is now mature and ready for competitive, cost-focused companies, but SpaceX is riding some very long coattails here.

</comment><comment><USER17> > _You can take cost out of a rocket. But I will guarantee you, in my > experience, (snip) your quality and your probability of success in > delivering a payload to orbit diminishes._

What else, conceivably, could Lockheed say?

<comment><USER18> "Here at Lockheed, we know just how much is involved in making a successful launch like this and we'd like to congratulate SpaceX. Well done, and we welcome your competition. Ultimately, new competitors push us and advance the market as a whole. Over the course of our 66 consecutive successful missions, we've blah blah blah..."

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Knowing that the military-industrial complex has strong influence on US government and its agencies one has to both wonder and be surprised that SpaceX (presumably not part of that complex) gets such a lucrative account. NASA is one thing but US military...

</comment><comment><USER20> In sales they teach you that making fun or otherwise disparaging your competition is not the way to close deals. I guess it doesn't apply when you're a billion dollar corporation and you can throw your weight around. Or think you can?

</comment><comment><USER21> Well, they've stopped ignoring! Next will be attacking.

<comment><USER11> I love how that quote has generally been re-interpreted as proof that being ignored means you're winning.

<comment><USER6> The quote uses conditional probability - you must have an aforementioned high impact strategy to make it a useful quote.

For example - starting a PC company in the 70s would be a good place to use this quote.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This must be my favourite (worst) argument ever:

"Cost doesn't matter at all if you don't put the ball into orbit," said Lockheed's Stevens, who is retiring as chief executive [officer]...

Effectively trying to rationalise doubling costs of every project as "necessary". He thinks this will win him credit in any industry?

</comment><comment><USER6> I have a list of contra-indicators, which are indicators that I use to probabilistically look for interesting industries that are about to change a lot/see a lot of disruption/have various competitors who are about to head downhill.

Making fun of your competitors or suing them into the ground to show your own superiority is indicator #7. If you have to talk to explain your walk then you will soon be mocked.

MSFT is doing that with it's Google attack ads. AAPL is doing that with its various Samsung lawsuits and general adolescent behaviour.

<comment><USER23> What are the other indicators?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Its a great timing for SpaceX as all government agencies are looking to reduce their costs with fiscal cliff and all.

</comment><comment><USER25> Have anyone noticed that Musk is distrubing too much in two important industries whith billions of bollard involved: military/space and transportation? I am seriously concerned about his health, if you know what I mean...

<comment><USER26> No I don't...what do you mean?

<comment><USER27> It's a bullshit conspiracy reference meant to make the GP look ever so cynical and wise. Specifically, saying that GM, Lockheed, Honda, and Boeing will all get together and assassinate Musk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Launching a multi-billion dollar satellite is a different than a hello world rails application. The ULA record of successfully putting dozens of satellites into the _correct_ orbit is important here. Which I don't even think SpaceX has done yet.

<comment><USER29> All three times Dragon has flown, it has ended up in the correct orbit. SpaceX also put RazakSAT in the proper orbit atop a Falcon 1. The Orbcomm failure was only due to the extremely tight restrictions placed on the mission by NASA (the mission called for relighting the second stage to raise the Orbcomm sattilite's orbit, but since they had used slightly more fuel than planned due to the engine outage, NASA didn't let them relight, it's quite likely the rocket was _technically_ capable of completing the mission).

Obviously they have a ways to go before they can be considered 'tried and true,' but comparing SpaceX to a couple college kids putting together the next Instagram-for-Cats in their basement is disingenuous, at best.

<comment><USER28> I suppose the point I'm making is to the general sentiment I'm seeing in this thread. It will take better than a 50% success rate of putting satellites into orbit before Lockheed starts thinking about the huge disruption I keep hearing about on this website. If you were to put a billion dollar satellite into orbit who would you choose?

<comment><USER30> That satellite is a billion dollars _because_ of the expensive existing launch options.

Having a launch option an order of magnitude less than what exists at the moment is pretty important - it means people can build and launch two satellites for the same price.

<comment><USER31> True. The highest cost is development, producing a second one is far less expensive.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


"We've covered our sponge up": Harvey reveals problem decades in the making - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbsnews.com/news/harvey-reveals-problem-decades-in-the-making-houston/ <comment><USER2> _" This is what climate scientists have been telling us would happen," he said. "Absolutely, it's a game changer."_

I have my doubts this will be a game changer in any meaningful way.

<comment><USER3> It will make flood insurance costs rise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Houston famously has almost no zoning laws and is extremely developer friendly and car-oriented. To the point where a developer friendly mayor managed to knock us back thirty years in terms of mass transit, completely blocking a rail plan because the critics envisioned it sending people past their malls and new housing developments.

It's also a very large metropolitan area thanks to a city charter that originally granted it broad annexation powers. The city proper is ~600 sq/mi or 1560 km^2. So there's not one single solution to our paving over arable land or water management. Realistically we should probably buy out people living behind / upstream Addicks Reservoir and rebuild the dam from just rammed earth with concrete caps to something larger and stronger. The dam was overtopped by this storm and Army Corps of Engineers had to release water from the reservoir due to concerns about that and preventing it overtopping in the "wrong" spot. See [http://i.imgur.com/usZAici.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/usZAici.jpg)

Since this storm is potentially the new norm expanding the area to catch and hold water is most likely the right path, but there's almost zero chance it'll actually happen.

</comment><comment><USER5> Put 50 inches of rain on any populated coast in the world, and you're going to see mass destruction.

<comment><USER6> Hong Kong and Southern China is getting ready to absorb their third Typhoon in three weeks. They just take a day off work and then dust off and get back to work the next day.

<comment><USER7> Hong Kong isn't flat. Water drains easily into the sea.

Houston is __FLAT__ water doesn't drain nearly as well.

I live in Houston. There are many problems to solve here, but your comparison is not relevant.

Source: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Hong_Kong](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Hong_Kong)

<comment><USER6> It may be more comparable if you refer to your geography a few miles inland from the islands of Hong Kong to the city of Shenzhen and indeed the 20+ million people living in the Pearl River Delta. This is the totality of the area that I referenced. It's a delta and port, flat all around, just like Houston. Further, I also own a home in Houston, so I'm in full command of the comparison. There are plenty of things that Houston can learn from this area about infrastructure and flood control.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the clarification - I'll have to check it out.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Can AES-128 Be Cracked With Brute Force? - <AUTHOR> http://www.eetimes.com/design/embedded-internet-design/4372428/How-secure-is-AES-against-brute-force-attacks-

<comment><AUTHOR> If you assume:

* Every person on the planet owns 10 computers.

* There are 7 billion people on the planet.

* Each of these computers can test 1 billion key combinations per second.

* On average, you can crack the key after testing 50% of the possibilities.

Then the earth's population can crack one encryption key in 77,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years!</comment>


Ask YC: Non-US founders - <AUTHOR> I am from Russia and would like to apply to YCombinator. As far as I know, you can get to work in your own startup in the USA only if you
- are a student (J1 visa, not even sure if this works),
- plan to invest $100K in the US (E-type visa),
- can be considered an "alien of extraordinary ability",
- a US-based company that has an overseas office transfers you from there to US (O-visa)
As far as I know, the founders of YC-funded companies who came from abroad used one of the above methods.
Neither of the above is a way I could go (not a student, don't have $100K, do not qualify as alien of extraordinary ability, don't have an established company in the US).
I assume that it is impossible to start a company and work for it without a work permit in the USA, so YCombinator would not even consider my application.
So, are there any other ways to get to YC for foreigners?
And on a related note, what countries are more friendly to foreigners and have a startup community at the same time? I've only heard of Canada.
Thank you, really, for any advice!
--Nikita <comment><USER2> An E-2 visa is not contingent on $100k, the money invested just has to be sufficient for the type of business to be established. So for a software startup, it can be on the order of ~$20-30k.

You'll have to write a business plan, and submit that as part of the application. The main deciding points - apart from a reasonable plan and presentation - are, that the business will eventually employ US citizens, and that the money invested comes from abroad.

Worked for me, good luck to you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, will dig deeper into E-2

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You should go thru an American Broker.... maybe one in the Philippines</comment>


Angel Returns Outpace VCs' - <AUTHOR> http://www.redherring.com/Home/23153 <comment><USER2> _The study, sponsored by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and the Angel Capital Education Foundation_

A bit like Microsoft sponsoring studies showing Windows beats Linux, isn't it.</comment>


Facebook's "I F*cking Love Science" does not love artists - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/compound-eye/2013/04/23/facebooks-i-fcking-love-science-does-not-fcking-love-artists/ <comment><USER2> Nor do they love science. Most of the things they post are not accurate. The picture of the universe and a synapse for example springs to mind.

They are just a "Like" farm. They use their tracking of likes to mine relationships so you can get personalized spam that appears that it came from your friends.

<comment><USER3> I think we should relax about the idea that most people post inaccurate facts when they're cheering science.

What they're doing is cheering for the idea of science. It's similar to people cheering at a basketball game. They're not basketball players, so most of what they have to say about the topic is going to be wrong. But they're still rooting for you, and this is a good and powerful thing.

<comment><USER4> >this is a good and powerful thing.

... until they have a gross misunderstanding of an issue relevant to public policy and spread that misunderstanding to others.

There is no "good ignorance".

<comment><USER5> We're all ignorant of the vast majority of facts relevant to almost anything. Comprehension is expensive and scarce. That being the case, simple extensions of good faith count for a lot.

<comment><USER6> Ignorance is fine -- it is an unfortunate fact that nobody can learn it all. But to think that one is "engaging" in science -- I suppose most fans of the Page think they're somehow engaging in it (anecdotal) -- is, well, wrong.

As much as I'd like it to be true, looking at a bunch of .gifs about quantum mechanics and astrophysics plastered with white majuscules does little for one's understanding of science. In other words, IFLS is to the scientific community as r/atheism is to the religious-sceptics community (not the best analogy...).

<comment><USER7> The problem here is willful ignorance, what a person does when confronted by fact. There's probably a lot of antivaxers new-age woo believers and homeopaths who enjoy the fashionable "quantum" quips but have zero interest in doing anything but republishing the images. They ape the language, but don't understand the mindset.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I run a popular fan page on Facebook, and _if_ I know who the artist/author is, I will credit them. If I don't know who they are I say "artist: ?" and someone will _always_ send a message to let me know who the artist/author is.

I too, sell t-shirts (through TeeSpring) and my latest experiment was quite successful - I found some designs on another t-shirt site that I quite liked the look of, emailed the artist and said I'd pay them $1.50 for every t-shirt I sold. They agreed, and sent me the images. I sold heaps, the artist made extra money and my fans were happy.

</comment><comment><USER9> The bottom line is this:

1\. Elise Andrew is making money off IFLS. (Whether or not she's giving it out to charities is non-relevant.)

2\. IFLS' success rests largely on the high quality content created by artists, scientists, photographers

3\. A small part of IFLS' success rests on Andrews' eye for picking out good/funny/clever quotes/cartoons/photographs/artwork

Given (1) and (2), I'd say not only is IFLS largely indebted to the artist/photographer/science community at large, but not attributing work is an incredibly selfish thing to do. Whether she didn't attribute the work out of laziness, negligence or malice is non-relevant. My only point is that IFLS is a very good target for the blog post.

If someone stole my code and used it without attribution and to make money off of it, I would be pissed. If someone that's received the major media attention IFLS has stole my code and used it without attribution to make money, I'd be even more pissed.

Also note that artwork can have varying licenses, as well - similar to MIT, GPL, etc. licenses we see in source code. Some licenses preclude _all_ non- endorsed distribution. She's had a ton of media coverage in the past 6 months (especially after the whole Twitter thing), so the "small corner of the internet" argument won't fly.

Neither will the "Reddit/9gag/etc. does it" argument. Reddit, for example, is a mass-user-driven aggregate. Reddit can't possibly police all posts and ensure that attribution is given. Conversely, the IFLS page is _not_ an aggregate. Andrews picks the images very carefully and in a conscious manner; in the latter case, there is clearly room for attribution.

However, I think that IFLS has garnered the same type of militant defenders as /r/atheism/ or fans of Carl Sagan (or, more recently, NDGT). Ironically, this type of blind following is exactly what the aforementioned groups are trying to dissolve. Andrews screwed up. Badly. This is not a rookie mistake; it's something she could get sued for. Lets leave it at that.. enough with the apologists.

Edit: I would just like to re-iterate that the burden does _NOT_ lie on the artists to scour the internet looking for mis-attributed pieces of artwork. But rather, on the _distributor_ of the work. Just about every judge in existence would agree with this.

<comment><USER10> > 3\. A small part of IFLS' success rests on Andrews' eye for picking out > good/funny/clever quotes/cartoons/photographs/artwork

This isn't hard, and can be automated... it's the 9gag model. Just view the cream of the crop that bubbles to the top of reddit and randomly pick out a few every day.

<comment><USER11> Small part of Shakespeare was picking the right words and phrases and putting them in right order.

Small part of every DJ is picking the righ music to remix.

<comment><USER9> I'm sorry, are you seriously comparing Elise Andrew with Shakespeare?

"Picking the right words and phrases and putting them in the right order" is not even in the same plane of existence as "looking at a picture and deciding if it's remotely funny or interesting."

<comment><USER11> Nope. Not seriously. I just feel that belittling her work on finding the right content is very wrong.

More serious analogy would be photography. How you do make good photos? Do you create them? No. You just make hundreds of photos (adhering to some technical limitations) and the you pick and crop the right ones from all the photos you made. That's what Bresson did.

Picking content is the creative part. The rest is just pointing the camera, turning the knobs and pushing the button.

On the internet artists create respective images. But she's also the artist who picks and crops creating her feed which many people apreciate the value of.

<comment><USER9> Bresson was a pioneer of the French New Wave. Again, the comparison is just completely off-base, I'm afraid. What Andrews is doing is just plain theft. (Especially given the fact that she's making money off of IFLS.)

<comment><USER11> I'm not comparing her to Bresson. I'm comparing her to a photographer. Bresson is just an example. My friend who photographs does exactly the same. I just invoked Bresson to show that even masters in the field do that. Also it's a keyword for google so you can see what his creative process consisted of.

You just completely missed my point that picking content and reframing it is valuable creative activity.

Theft would be to resell those images as stock photos.

Besides seems your broad definitions of theft would classify half on the internet as such. That's not a very pleasent view of the biggest cultural invention since printing press.

<comment><USER12> If you truly believe that photography is nothing more than framing, then you have a very limited understanding of the medium. Given the same camera, same subject and same point of view (let's take a still life setup and a camera with a prime lens anchored firmly to a locked studio camera stand) I can make any number of completely different photographs that convey very different meanings and emotions. And that's _before_ making any darkroom/post-processing decisions.

<comment><USER11> Yes you can intentionally take different photos of the same thing by varying lightning. You may even learn what type of lightning invokes what emotions in your viewers. I'm just saying thats not how photography is usually done. You set up the set, the lightning and the camera to the best of your knowledge but you don't take one picture. You take loads of them varying your setup slightly and then you pick the right ones. Of course photography is very varied field and there are guys who get their highs from taking one picture with shoebox but they are not that common among photographers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't know if it's necessarily fair to call out "I F*cking Love Science". The same could be said about Reddit/9gag/thousands of other Facebook groups/etc.

It's an Internet-wide problem, not just one FB group.

<comment><USER14> A fellow robs my house. I catch him and hold him for the police. He complains, "No fair! Most robberies are unsolved because we lack the manpower to chase every lead!!"

Lie is indeed "unfair" to him in some statistical sense, but I am absolutely not being "unfair" to him in a moral sense.

Or to put it another way, the reality of the Internet as you describe it is that a certain %age of copyright violations go unpurusued. It's a statistical model, just as it's a statistical model that a certain number of robberies are unsolved and a certain number of people are killed by lightening.

Is that unfair? It may seem so when you're being struck by lightening, but someone has to be struck by lightening.

Likewise, given enough copyright violations, someone is going to be called out. Today the blow falls on Elise.

<comment><USER11> Your analogy to reposting is a robbery? Really?

Mine is, telling your friends a joke without bothering to establish who originally invented it.

<comment><USER15> It's not like many of the original artists want a payout. They just want attribution.

<comment><USER7> These things usually have passed around the internet several times before it gets to the meme aggregators, I wish there was a better solution than watermarking. Tineye/GIS would theoretically work, but it'd find every instance where the meme was passed around, not its origin!

Do you have a suggesting for finding each "owner"?

Such requirements would shut down all these sites (not that we'd have a huge loss by doing so, but I'd like to think that a social/technological solution would be possible.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Jacking everybody else's internet subculture for your mainstream, bland and toned down for-profit site is nothing new. I remember ebaumsworld stamping everything on earth with their logo that they didn't create, same with I Can Haz Cheeseburger? blatently ripping off all the caturday user content uploaded to 4chan.

If it exist on the internet and is hilarious somebody will steal it and milk it to the masses for money.

</comment><comment><USER17> Would've been great if the author had contacted Elise to discuss the article.

Of course content should be used legally, but IFLS has grown so quickly that I think it's fair to defend Elise as having made an honest mistake, or simply not considering the issue until now.

Instead, Alex comes off as overly bitter, utterly failing to advance the cause of a _"mutually beneficial relationship"_. Presumably in the pursuit of blog impressions.

<comment><USER18> Yes, terrible not contacting someone about something posted on the internet...

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Here's a slightly different question.

If I've posted a picture to my personal timeline, can someone post that picture on their own Facebook pages without giving me credit? Can they even modify the picture (add a slogan or whatever) and do the same? I think the Facebook TOS allows both of these:

<https://www.facebook.com/legal/terms>

Is that how you read it?

<comment><USER12> It is indeed the case. The sharing mechanism depends on cascading assignment of license of publication rights, and the thumbnailing/cropping for timeline/feed entries requires rights to create derivative works (which, unfortunately, has the side-effect of permitting almost any sort of derivative work that wouldn't be covered by libel). Although you still retain copyright (and can separately license works outside of Facebook under other terms), you are granting extremely broad and transferable rights (the "friends" chain can get to be pretty long once sharing is allowed) to a work by posting it to Facebook. If you don't want to relinquish control of a work, don't post it on FB. Never post images of value in a valuable size, and watermark the hell out of anything that is low-res and commercial.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Would this be a situation where the artist could justify filing a DMCA notice?

<comment><USER21> In theory, yeah.

It's never occured to me to wonder about how you file a DMCA notice against facebook though, or if that's something that happens and how effective it is for the filer.

Is this something that one can do on facebook? Facebook appears to say yes: <http://www.facebook.com/help/190268144407210/>

But it would be interesting to hear from someone with personal experience, on either end of a DMCA takedown notice on facebook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I feel like it's a little bit unfair to Facebook Inc. to have their name as the first word of the title since a glance at the title makes it seems as if Facebook yet again overstepped their boundaries (though it speaks volumes to FB's past behavior that I have that reaction right away)

<comment><USER2> Facebook has the power to take down posts. They take down pictures of breast feeding mothers. I would think it is no more difficult to take down copyrighted works. Google image search finds duplicates quite well. FB should do something similar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm confused by the implication that running an image without permission but with credit is legal, but without permission but without credit is illegal. Copyright, in the US anyway, so far as I know has no such relationship to whether proper attribution/credit is given.

(If the given work was publicly licensed CC-BY, that's another story. Then you HAVE permission, under that license only if you credit. But that's something the CC-BY license does, not some built-in part of copyright law).

It's certainly _good manners_ regardless of the law. But, while you may or may not be illegally 'pirating' an image to use it in a facebook post without permission, whether or not you give proper attribution is unlikely to be determining factor of whether you are or not.

</comment><comment><USER23> I 100% agree that IFLS should be crediting the artists who make great work and direct traffic to IFLS's page. What I am having trouble understanding is why the general thrust of comments on this page seems to be "This is UNACCEPTABLE!!" when (and please correct me if I'm wrong) the general thrust of comments on pages about, e.g., The Pirate Bay seems to be "There's absolutely nothing wrong with The Pirate Bay!" Aren't both of these sites making money by hawking stolen wares? Why is The Pirate Bay so fiercely defended and IFLS so roundly condemned?

<comment><USER11> IFLS is not a government target. It's loved by every one. So haters gonna hate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> In addition to the main point of this article, it's interesting to see that people are building a career out of Facebook pages in a similar way to we saw with prominent Youtubers taking off.

</comment><comment><USER25> Yes, I agree. But why call out something like this page? Surely there are more successful and profitable content farms.

Not justifying the behavior, just saying that this example is the 'little guy'.

<comment><USER26> Considering she's working on a TV deal, I bet not many. Plus it doesn't matter who is larger, wrong is wrong.

<comment><USER11> Except it's not wrong. Unless you'd like to shut down half of the internet because it's wrong until it streightens up.

<comment><USER18> Cool, let's just rsync the whole internet to itself and enjoy the race to the bottom

<comment><USER11> Aleady in progress. An you know what? It spawns lots of very imaginative stuff.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Veteran Visionaries Will Save the World - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-10/st_thompson

<comment><USER2> You know, one of the points people like to make about the recent financial crisis is about the financial services industry sucked into lots of talented people who could/should otherwise have been doctors, scientists, teachers, engineers and so on. But what about all the talented people who also could have been but instead are working on _another_ cool-but-useless Web 2.0 startup? Isn't the social cost of that at least as high?

<comment><USER3> A lot of things that seem cool but useless turn out later to be useful. Back in 1995, a lot of people thought the web itself was cool but useless.

<comment><USER2> Not really. The web was invented for a specific purpose: Gopher had proved inadequate for scientists informally publishing papers and collaborating. Even if consumers had never taken it up, it would still be being used by the physics community for its original purpose.

<comment><USER4> When Tim Berners-Lee was traveling around pitching the WWW in 1991 he didn't present it as a physics-only project, or even an academics-only project.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Please review my webapp for Twitter over IM - <AUTHOR>

Would love to receive comments on my app: http://www.twimapp.com/ <comment><USER2> I like it, it was easy to sign up and worked first time (and I'm not a big twitter fan). It's good that you solicit ideas in your forum...but take some time out to do some graphic design so it doesn't look like a student project.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I appreciate the note. I spent a lot of time on the signup. I'm glad you found it easy.

One reason I kept the website barebones is that users of this service will rarely visit the website. But I know first impressions are important.</comment></comment>


Untitled Startup has a title: Simply Measured - <AUTHOR> http://simplymeasured.com/

<comment><USER2> A little more on how we made this decision over on Techflash: [http://techflash.com/seattle/2011/01/why-we-changed-our- name...](http://techflash.com/seattle/2011/01/why-we-changed-our-name.html)

<comment><USER3> ...and from another co-founder of the startup formerly known as Untitled Startup... thanks everyone for the awesome support and insight that turned a few guys with a crazy idea into a real company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Congrats to the Untitled Startup team, I've followed your trials and tribulations from the very beginning. You have done a great job at giving others a transparent view of how you have come to build your products. Data geeks rejoice in your success! Look forward to seeing where you go from here.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's been awesome to watch RowFeeder's progress -- nice to see the product(s) going post-beta, in a complete package. Onward...

</comment><comment><USER6> Goddamn this looks good. I've just finished a project that required us to do an audit of 20 social media dashboard tools and in 30 seconds these guys have made me want to go back to the client and show this to them.

Looking forward to starting the trial.

</comment><comment><USER7> Congrats on getting a name! I'm not sure, but that might be the longest naming decision period ever...or at least the most customer traction gained by an untitled startup before settling on a real name :)

</comment><comment><USER8> Love your website. But as a "new" user having Row Feeder and Export.ly link in the bottom is a bit confusing because the three products mention Excel. Should I register to the three of them ? Why ?

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the response! We can definitely do a better job in that area.

We're all about providing the simplest way for you to get to the data and analysis you need without having to buy or even deal with the whole enchilada. But we've still got some things to figure out on how we get people from A -> B -> C when they don't discover us organically, and that's going to be one of our main focuses over the next several months.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Site looks great, congratulations on the the name!

</comment><comment><USER10> Beautiful logo, evoking pretty charts and the letter 'S'.

</comment><comment><USER11> wow. real networks is still around?

<comment><USER12> <http://www.google.com/finance?q=RNWK>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Rock on guys~</comment>