Ask HN: How much work do you put into MVP? - <AUTHOR> Wondering how much work you've put into MVP to validate your idea, and how did you do it: mockup, video, prototype, doing stuff by hand with a primitive system. <comment><USER2> mine came from a hackathon. (for reference it was an online tournament platform) So it was two people and 48hrs building mocks, getting basic stuff rendered and implementing live reloading in browser (one of the main points for our idea). We ended up winning the hackathon (over 100 teams) so we considered that "validated" and decided we could try building the rest of it.

Spent another weekend building out basic functionality (login/register for tournament/report scores/"staff" ability to resolve disputes) Then we reached out to a gaming league who held tournaments three times a week. They used it had some issues, we fixed them. Opened it up to two more leagues and they all loved it and wanted to start putting money into it. This was the point when we felt "validated" again and considered this our MVP.

At that point it was about 6 days of coding and about a month of testing with these three "clients". We then ran with that MVP for another month, opening up to more people, and collected feedback before doing another round of coding.

</comment><comment><USER3> Unfortunately there's no good general answer to this. One could say an email blast with a _description_ of what you're trying to do with a credit card form would be the least possible work you could do. You're unlikely to get any real response from that method, though.

Others will say a fully functional prototype of what you're set out to do is what's necessary in order to fully allow prospects to understand what you're trying to do. Sadly this requires a lot of work which probably will be wasted, unless your goal was to simply to do it, and not to build a successful business as soon as possible.

in short, i'd say there are three criteria:

1\. how long would it take you to make a functional prototype?

2\. what's the potential upside of a good first-look?

3\. what's the downside of a bad first-look?

</comment><comment><USER4> Who here feels MVPs aren't MVPs anymore?

The expectations of MVPs from just about everyone have gone through he roof.

<comment><USER5> Very much so - I'm stuck on the periphery (operating the environments the system touches for data) an endless MVP...1.5 years when the initial sprint was 6 months. Management keeps adding more features before wanting to release it to a test group yet keep calling it an MVP. New teams are being brought in and have to be retained. New management is brought in each time with more ideas of what is "minimal". Yet they keep throwing money at it...

<comment><USER6> MVP is the new prototype, or so it seems. Remember, there's nothing that lasts longer than a prototype in production.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For me an MVP is a full application. One that a user can signup and actually use. So typically I'm looking at around 3-6 months of development.

<comment> reading-at-work Agreed. "Minimum Viable Product" means it's viable, i.e. people can use it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't think landing page with an email subscription is an MVP. Many people have done it and it definitely helps in gathering an audience and get your initial users, but it won't help you in understanding your product. Product is more than just users saying ok to try a product. It's about the will to pay or engagement. I think a working product with minimal core features can be called an MVP. The feedback from users after I launched my product* is what defined it. *[https://pipecourse.com/](https://pipecourse.com/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Seems that MVP is pretty much whatever the situation dictates. So I'll avoid getting to philosophical.

In my last case (funded, growing B2B SaaS company) we built prototypes on "paper" (actually mockups designed for an easy display on iPad). We then went out and pitched potential customers on the back of the prototype. Criteria was getting them to emphatically commit to the product if we were to build it. We were pretty strict on what commitment meant. Probably 1-2 months work.

When we hit the threshold, we built the minimum required, went back to those parties, closed the deals and worked out from there.

<comment><USER10> 1-2 months of work building the prototypes or 1-2 months of work building, iterating and getting commitments, or 1-2 months of work building a launchable product based on them?

Paper prototyping is HUGE. I don't get why more folks won't or can't embrace it. Not only can you do the testing that you have suggested but your engineers and designers will THANK you.

There is a huge upside to paper, UI issues can be spotted early and cheaply.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have spent usually between 1-3 months to build MVPs..but you can't generalise as it really depends whats viable. Talk to your prospects to define what is viable. For enterprise softwares its usually longer due to various reasons.

My first product was into travel and we spent months just to build MVP that we thought was viable. Stupidest thing we could do. The product didn't go anywhere.

Second product was into logistics. I spent most of my initial month travelling in field with my cofounders and doing stuff manually. This helped me understand what was viable and build product in a month's time.

My third product was education platform. This was a funded startup so they had sales people. I used them to gather information. Like what profs think about the problem space, what students think then what type of devices are they using, do they have good internet access. This greatly helped us figure out whats minimum that we need in product. Like we discovered that students in our country rarely have a laptop or desktop. They use desktops in school's lab.

My current product is about team productivity. I am on call with most of my ex colleagues, friends to figure out what would be minimum. My problem statement is kind of validated as most have felt a need for solution.

So spend more time with prospects to figure out MVP or MRP (Minimum Remarkable Product).

</comment><comment><USER12> As little as possible if it is a true MVP. The goal is to test the business idea.

If possible Google forms plus shlepping.

<comment><USER13> I think that's the way to go. From the outside it looks like the real thing but internally it's the bare minimum. But you have to be ready to scale up quickly if needed.

<comment><USER12> I think, based on experience and reading, that "being ready to scale up" is nice but you'd be surprised at how much you can do with email.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> First, I would consider the benefits of building it anyway [https://medium.com/you-could/build-it- anyway-6c43486e8a74](https://medium.com/you-could/build-it- anyway-6c43486e8a74)

When I built my project for behavioral and cognitive changes ([http://willyoudidyou.com](http://willyoudidyou.com)) MVP for me was something that _i_ could use, would want to use, and that would actually do something useful for me. Specifically, I needed to see a change in my behavior. I needed to brush my teeth before bed, do laundry with regularity, and eat healthier. I just needed someone (or something) to help put those things on my radar when they needed to be.

I reached MVP when there was nothing else that I needed to add, feature wise. Sure, there are things I WANT to add, but building out the core was important for me.

Before I slung most of the code... I had done some prototyping. Html/CSS files that I chopped together and tinkered with. It went on to influence the actual buildout, but was more of help with my own brainstorming.

</comment><comment><USER15> It depends on what you want to test. Atm, testing an idea is easier than ever before, but shipping an MVP gets harder every day. To test the underlying idea we asked contractors to fill in prices in Google sheets. After that we have spent 2 years building our MVP. People expect you to be as useful, adaptive and intuitive as unicorns from the very start. (Looking back, we could have ship it faster, but as always you know which edges should have been cut post factum) Imho.

</comment><comment><USER16> I really try to do as little as possible. You learn over time that it is better to launch early, get feedback, and iterate.

There was a great write up recently on indiehackers.com with Jeff Atwood about Discourse. He shared some of the older landing pages he first put up in the comments.

It is really a testament to launch early. If you look at Discourse now, its night and day from when it first started.

</comment><comment><USER17> I think it depends on your definition of MVP. Some are prove to an investor you have a good idea. The kind I like are good enough for your first 10 or 100 customers... time to complete really depends on the product. IMO the MVP should be the basis for all future work e.g. After this first step you are incrementally adding improvements

</comment><comment><USER18> There is a good book called Lean Product Process that I recommend. $15 and a few hours will help you find how much MVP you need to test hypotheses with customers.

</comment><comment><USER19> We did a basic 'demo' version of our product; it was very simple but had all the aspects of the full product.

</comment><comment><USER20> MVP is minimum measurable product. When you have analytics set up, you are ready to launch. (mailing list)

<comment><AUTHOR> So just landing page + mailing list "subscribe" button + Google Ads to drive traffic?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The minimum amount of work.

<comment><USER22> While this may be simply put this really is the best answer. The least amount of effort it takes to push something out the door is the ideal MVP, market validation is many times more important than early stage tech/code in a business, code quality at such stage does not correlate strongly with the success of a business idea.

Whatever it takes to get feedback from someone is the amount of work that is needed. Which means you can throw out 90% of the features and anything that even some what resembles an optimization of code, coding processes or business processes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> That really depends on what kind of MVP it is and what you're bringing to the table. Some startup ideas can be hacked together quite simply by reusing a few existing services, tools and a bit of programming. Others may require some prototyping and fund raising (e.g. hard tech). Whatever it may be, the MVP is a hack and experiment to prove product-market fit. It's the tiniest, minimal effort you can expend to build a test to prove that there are real people who desperately need something you could provide them.

An MVP is more marketing and sales than it is developing. Building your MVP should consume a fraction of your time and resources compared to the effort you'll spend trying to get people to see your hack and validate it. It's more market research than product development. You just want enough proof there's a business opportunity to continue spending time, money and energy on it.

For software startups, there's a few patterns you can employ to build an MVP. One of them is the Wizard of Oz test, where you provide a facade of a real product but do all the hard work behind the scenes manually (until you can automate the rest of it). Another is piggybacking on other existing services and solutions, modifying them to your specific business domain (e.g. form builders, communication services, integration services, open source, BaaS, etc). Then there's the launch page strategy, that attempts to lure sign ups or "beta subscriptions" to show demand without building anything more than a few prototype designs and a landing page.

It seems more compelling to just build it from scratch, but researching options and planning a more clever solution may save lots of development and money down the road. Treat it like a science experiment with incremental solutions and gather as much feedback as possible.

There's quite a bit written about building MVPs. Here's some resources and inspiration:

\- _Lean Startup_

\- _Sprint_ (Jake Knapp)

\- Product Hunt Began as an Email List: [http://ryanhoover.me/post/69599262875/product-hunt-began- as-...](http://ryanhoover.me/post/69599262875/product-hunt-began-as-an-email- list)

\- Building Your SaaS Startup's Launch List: [https://medium.com/@cliffordoravec/the-no-bs-approach-to- bui...](https://medium.com/@cliffordoravec/the-no-bs-approach-to-building- your-saas-startups-launch-list-part-2-of-the-epic-guide-to-8cc371be772c)

\- Successful SaaS MVPs: [https://belitsoft.com/custom-application- development-service...](https://belitsoft.com/custom-application-development- services/successful-saas-startups-mvp-lean-paying-customers-first)

\- Wizard of Oz test: [http://blog.ycombinator.com/ask-yc-upfront-technical- investm...](http://blog.ycombinator.com/ask-yc-upfront-technical-investments/)

\- Shameless plug--I wrote more about MVPs here: [http://jameskoshigoe.com/how-to-build-an-mvp/](http://jameskoshigoe.com/how- to-build-an-mvp/)

<comment><USER13> "launch page strategy, that attempts to lure sign ups or "beta subscriptions" to show demand without building anything more than a few prototype designs and a landing page"

I think this is totally overused these days. It was OK the first few times but now I feel sort of used when I see this.

<comment><USER23> I agree it's a bit cliché and can be annoyingly deceptive, but there's less shitty ways of doing it, which is discussed in that SaaS Launch List article. Regardless, if it works, I wouldn't discount it. It's basically just a ghetto Kickstarter campaign page. I'd rather employ that trick than spend a few months building an MVP just to find out nobody cares. I've done the latter enough times to know how much it sucks when you're wrong about your assumptions.</comment></comment></comment>


Clojure vs. Blub Lang – Parallelism - <AUTHOR> http://ahungry.com/blog/2019-08-28-Round-1-Clojure-vs-Blub-Lang-Parallelism.html <comment><AUTHOR> Please add your own implementations in other languages here and I'll add them (with credit if desired) to the post.</comment>


Game in-app purchases are warping kids' understanding of basic economic ideas - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/873348/50000-coins-for-1-99-how-mobile-game-in-app-purchases-are-warping-kids-understanding-of-basic-economic-ideas/ <comment><USER2> I guess "not letting your kids play IAP funnels disguised as games" isn't an option?

Admittedly IAP funnels are an absurdly large portion of the games on the app stores.

"Making the kid grind for his own damn coins or buy them out of his allowance" is also a suggestion that comes to mind, and would probably start to teach him something about what his time and money is worth. Why is Daddy up late at night grinding in the IAP funnel for him?

<comment><USER3> > I guess "not letting your kids play IAP funnels disguised as games" isn't an > option?

The author states in the article:

 _Obviously, many parents avoid these conflicts altogether by simply banning such games altogether. While I sympathize with that sentiment, to me it seems extreme; fun and gaming strategies are legitimate pursuits for a child_

Personally I think that's a false dichotomy because it's possible to plays games (not necessarily on a screen) that allow fun and strategy while at the same time avoid IAP funnels disguised as games.

> Why is Daddy up late at night grinding in the IAP funnel for him?

Because the people who designed the IAP funnel are even more clever and insidious than the author realises and it's not just children they are after.

<comment><USER4> I agree, plenty games sans the iap bullshit to play, both digital and not.

The whole premise of the article is at best a failure in parenting

> Instead, I am drawing my finger over lines of imaginary fruit on an iPad, > trying to rack up points so he can better enjoy a game called Fruit Pop

really?

<comment><USER3> > The whole premise of the article is at best a failure in parenting

That's really what I was thinking throughout the article too. His child is in kindergarten. At that age, the majority of exposure to these games comes from the parents.

If you don't want your child exposed to games with broken economic principles that teach you to always want to consume more, then it's easy, let them play something else.

My (not yet kindergarten age) son's favourite game at the moment is hitting a balloon in the air with a paddle and seeing how many hits he can get before it hits the ground. He gets to keep score, practice counting, get some exercise and have loads of fun from all the near hits and misses. It's a game that keeps him amused, and needs minimal active supervision and all it costs is a new balloon every few days once the air from the old one runs out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great points, but a bit misleading if the intent is to present this as something new under the sun. The illogical decision to buy a game boost that will not recoup its cost is not much different from buying a name-brand pair of sunglasses instead of $5 cheapies. Both cases lack any marginal utility in the purchasing decision, so the purchase is justified by marketing. That is, a story is created that the consumer either accepts or denies.

In the game, playing with the boost is more "fun", because you have more agency in the game and thus feel more powerful. You are temporarily unburdened from the artificial limitations of the game.

With sunglasses, there are (often illusory) promises of quality or imaginary utility, or participation in a social narrative that says a certain configuration of plastic is more fashionable than another. Or plain old conspicuous consumption, also a social narrative.

Simply put, IAPs did not invent this style of anti-economic behavior.

<comment><USER6> I would argue that the analogy isn't really there because expensive consumer products can confer utility _just by being expensive_.

In a very simple, animal way having difficult-to-attain things communicates that you have the ability to recruit significant resources and therefore are a _cool and important guy or gal_ and deserve respect and consideration.

Whereas having a lot of game points communicates that you may be an addict.

<comment><USER5> That is conspicuous consumption, and digital goods can perform this function just as well. As an extreme example, the "I Am Rich" app. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Rich](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Rich)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've got a kid and I've written a line in the sand: we'll pay for apps and games, but we won't pay for in-app purchases [+]. He's free to download games that are filled with IAPs, but he'll have to play it the hard way. There's a lot of pressure from friends to join free-to-play games and it's just impossible to ban them entirely.

[+] ... some exceptions made here for DLC and expansion material that is priced appropriately.

<comment><USER8> > _...but he 'll have to play it the hard way_

Ah, but the game developer still nails the player anyway. The "hard way" (playing for free only) in many of these predatory freemium games is often designed to require an enormous time commitment to keep up (e.g. events that require user intervention one or more times daily, time limited premium in- game items that have a high price in free currency, requiring lots of grinding, etc.) that the free user is trapped online constantly to provide a social enticement for more players to join the game.

<comment><USER7> That's true. The consequence of this is that the kids will generally abandon the games after getting tired of this, switching to paid-for games with no IAPs. It's much easier (on me) to let the kids get bored of a game than telling them once a month they can't play a game because it's IAP-heavy.

<comment><USER9> I don't have children, but as a kid I had a strict cap on "screen time". In the IAP money-for-time bargain, this makes screen time even more rare and valuable a resource than it is for the rest of us.

I know parents who see this as a reason to give a small, fixed IAP allowance. Essentially they trade a little bit of money to make it less of an ordeal to get their kids to limit screen time, which they consider well worth the investment.

If you view IAP as simply the way of the world, and video games as a reasonable thing for kids to play, this bargain seems pretty reasonably pragmatic. Personally, I think this makes the most sense when that IAP goes toward something that makes the game itself richer, like Hearthstone decks instead of vanity hats, but that's a lesson for the children to learn.

I think a lot of us on HN would prefer a world where games have only up-front costs, but that's basically a niche market now. I'm also sure there are stricter schools of thought on parenting that find the idea of bargaining any of this with children a bit ridiculous, but without having any to help shape myself it's pretty far out of my purview.

<comment><USER10> Man, i remember the time when games weren't designed to be shit, and cheat codes were discoverable, came in magazines or were traded with friends.

Even sadder is when people end up calling non-shit games "a niche market" and don't even dare to call out shit games that sell cheat codes as "shit games that sell cheat codes".

<comment><USER11> IAP on mobile is mostly a disaster area, a wasteland of pseudo-gambling addiction mechanisms and timewasting. On other platforms it's not so aggressive yet and may be limited to cosmetic items (eg overwatch).

<comment><USER12> Even then, the loot crate model that is heavily present in most games today, pioneered by Valve in TF2, CSGO, DotA2 and slightly modified in Overwatch is based on those gambling addiction mechanisms. Random items, different rarities, etc. It's even more egregious in games like Overwatch because you already paid a nice sum for the game, and it's still asking you for more money, drip feeding you a few items here and there, making it pretty damn hard to get the cosmetics you want in the game you already paid for and should have already if this terrible model didn't exist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Here's a thought: If and when a kid wants to make in-game purchases using real money, allow them to earn that money through real-world work: housework, chores, etc. That way they can get a real sense for how valuable the purchases really are to them.

You might even offer a choice: Here, take this $5 bill or I can spend the $5 for you in the game.

<comment><USER14> Google and Apple should add this feature to their platform. Kids could decide if they want to spend their hard earned money on inapp purchases or in store (via Apple Pay).

<comment><USER15> Young kids don't have impulse control. Event most young adults can save from week to week.

If the in app purchase is in front of them now, and they have cash in the account, they will spend.

<comment><USER16> Not for all kids. My 10 year old brother has no problem with these things.

I wouldn't be surprised if having some sort of financial responsibility from a young age greatly limits this behavior.

<comment><USER4> eh, the freemium model isn't just based on impulse buy, the deepth and width of constant manipulative psychological tricks they use will eventually break them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Obviously, many parents avoid these conflicts altogether by simply banning > such games altogether. While I sympathize with that sentiments, to me it > seems extreme; fun and gaming strategies are legitimate pursuits for a > child.

That's one hell of a false dichotomy. Why not just ban games with in-app purchases?

<comment><USER18> I would love to limit games to those with no IAPs and a fixed up front cost, no advertising, and no dial-home advertising toolkit integration.

It's almost impossible to do in any practical sense, and that's extremely frustrating.

<comment><USER19> What do you mean? Pretty much all console games are like that. And Nintendo has a huge offering of good kid-friendly games on 3DS/Wii/WiiU.

<comment><USER18> True, I'd been assuming a context of mobile apps. Though IAPs in console games are on the rise as well, so I don't expect that to last much longer. So far still clear of tracking adverts (far as I know) so they would be good on that front - for a while yet, anyway.

<comment><USER20> FWIW I have been avoiding mobile games almost entirely since they all started going the freemium route, and I will definitely point my daughter toward non skinner box games (as well as never paying for consumable or "cheat" IAP). If this limits her to mostly non-mobile games, I'm OK with that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm surprised no one has mentioned the shitstorm that followed the release of Nintendo's Super Mario Run on iOS.

The game comes for free with 3 levels. To unlock the full version, you need to make a one-off in-app purchase that costs around $10 depending on your local currency. But other than that, it has a pretty traditional pricing.

So after release, this otherwise awesome, deep game was getting tons and tons of negative reviews because of the fact that the in-app purchase was, according to many, way too expensive. I followed this topic a little bit on Twitter, and what I saw (I know, very unscientific) was that most of the people complaining where youngsters that most probably spend their most time playing games that require you to pay in order to progress faster in the game. Of course, they usually pay a fraction of the $10 that Nintendo wants, but they do it many times over the lifecycle of a game.

Just compare the $10 that you have to spend in order to play Super Mario Run (assuming that you already have an iOS device) to what you would need to pay to play a Mario game on Nintendo hardware: the cheapest you could do is to pay ~$200 for a Nintendo 3DS + ~$40 for the game. Of course, once you get the hardware, you can play more games on it, but the games are still 4x more expensive than the one release on iOS.

To wrap this up: I think that in-app purchases are really, really bad for the gaming industry and should not be abused the way they are now. Especially Apple should intervene here and maybe put a limit on the items to be sold and ban completely "pay to level up quicker" IAPs.

Also, Apple should offer a demo option for their apps already, instead of forcing developers to abuse in-app purchases for that.

<comment><USER22> But Apple will never do that, since they earn a lot of money on IAP, and the users who are exploited don't complain. I think what is needed is legislation, but formulating it seems difficult without banning all IAPs entirely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm surprised th article doesn't mention the fact that many games actually change the game design dynamically as soon as you buy IAP in order to milk you for more IAP. They alter the difficulty curve and change the reward levels to encourage more spending so you're effectively playing a different game.

My wife and I essentially banned IAP for e.g. Coins after reading an article about how Candy Crush does this. As soon as it's the game playing you rather than you playing the game, It's time to draw the line.

I don't care that most of the games out there have IAP. There are still plenty that don't, and many of the ones that do are still perfectly playable without buying IAP - even Candy Crush, which my wife still plays.

I've got no problem with IAP that are just DLC, such as extra maps, but buying in game currrncy is a definite no-no. I know for sure the game designers know their business much better than I do.

</comment><comment><USER11> No, I think this process does a very good job of illustrating an important idea: prices are what people are prepared to pay, not any objective kind of "value". This includes what you can trick people into paying until it's actually made illegal.

These games have a lot more in common with the toxic reinforcement of gambling than they do with regular pay-once games.

</comment><comment><USER24> Honestly, seeing the "offers in app purchases" message on an iOS appstore listing makes me extremely unlikely to download it.

<comment><USER25> I always check what kinds of IAP there are in those apps too. If it looks dumb, I won't download it.

I'm sure they weren't too happy about Apple showing it's an app with IAPs because it lets people avoid the mental traps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I just set up emulators with older games that don't have this kind of crap built in...!

</comment><comment><USER27> > Partly, this is mandated by the business model of apps. In the home video > games of the '80s and '90s, Sulaitis explains, a player might pay $60 for a > DVD that could provide hundreds of hours of game play, and that consummated > the economic relationship; game companies had no economic stake in the > playing outcome. > By contrast, the "freemium" model popularized by Apple's > App store effectively requires game companies to give the initial product > away for free.

The biggest problem is that there is virtually no piracy possible on the iOS platforms, and even on Android people don't install shady cracks because they've been bitten by premium-calling trojans.

On a PC, I can try out a cracked game on which I'll spend 50 € or something, but I sure as hell won't spend so much money on a tablet game when I can't test it for at least a day instead the joke 15min that Google offers. The worst offenders need half an hour alone to download ingame assets (Real Racing!).

Also, with a PC or console game I feel I have something valuable - not just the look and feel, where no tablet game can ever beat a real console, but also a physical medium where I know that I can reinstall the game even a decade in the future... in contrast to a mobile platform where I have to trust:

\- the platform operator to stick around for the next decade (I'm looking at MS and Google). I can always go to a junkshop and assemble a 1995 PC, or grab an old console, but no way to do so with mobile devices.

\- the vendor not disappearing or pulling their apps from the store, thus rendering my purchase worthless if the device where the game is installed breaks

\- the vendor keeping their apps up to date - I can still, on W7 x64, play EarthSiege 2 from early W95 days. Try this with an iOS game last updated 2012...

<comment><USER8> > _The biggest problem is that there is virtually no piracy possible on the > iOS platforms, and even on Android people don 't install shady cracks > because they've been bitten by premium-calling trojans._

Ironically, game publishers have turned to the freemium model because it's one of the few models that's both profitable and resistant to today's ubiquitous piracy.

> _Also, with a PC or console game I feel I have something valuable - not just > the look and feel, where no tablet game can ever beat a real console, but > also a physical medium where I know that I can reinstall the game even a > decade in the future..._

Not really. If/when the services for your PC or (particularly) console game go away, your ability to access patches, including the now _de rigeur_ day one patches to fix last minute bugs, as well as DLC goes away with it. Online service for the Sony PSP and original Xbox have ended already, for example.

It's one of the reasons I'm very particular about buying games from GOG whenever they're available there vs. other services, since those games are DRM-free.

<comment><USER28> > ubiquitous piracy.

I disagree on "ubiquitous piracy", as much as there will always be people pirating just because, with steam and the much higher risks in terms of malware for pirated games, I doubt piracy is anywhere near as high in percentage terms as it used to be way back. Not to mention that anti-piracy software these days (Denuvo) seems to be extremely resilient.

(some) game publishers have turned to freemium because it makes more money with less risk: would you risk spending many millions of dollars to compete with something like Witcher 3 (lots of risk, uncertain rewards) or spend a LOT less and float several different "freemium" balloons and then invest in marketing for what seems to have traction? (very little risk, very certain rewards)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> He should just buy his son a laptop and put a zachtronics game or factorio or minecraft or any other game that has some sort of educational or artistic goal. Heck, for high score, just put runner game on there. Mods can fulfill boosts, etc.

<comment><USER30> His trump card is the fact that all of his friends are playing [free game] and so he also will play it period and will be exposed to the in app purchases. We are fun little social creatures.

The question is what options do game designers have that don't involve making crummy games and yet still allow for free games and in app purchases? 'Hats' and other cosmetic options and genuine expansions are the only two I am aware of. What else has others heard of or seen?

<comment><USER31> Things that improve the playing experience of friends, rather than simply pay to win, also work.

For example: "lures" in pokemon go mostly help other people.

<comment><USER32> Only time I payed for in-game currency was so I could buy lures to drop for players at the restaurant or park I was at, or so my girlfriend could stay occupied while she was stuck in bed when recovering from surgery. It made me feel good to buy that stuff and spread the wealth, instead of feeling awful, and it was easy to justify because "it's only a dollar". I'm convinced that companies need to tap into this a lot more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Free to play games are very carefully designed to manipulate you into making In App Purchases. This ethically dubious when the customers are adults, but with children it's downright sleazy. My kids are young enough that I can choose which apps they can install, so I can ban all apps with IAP or ads. This means they are heavily slanted towards Toca Boca and the BBC. Incidentally, Amazon Underground is great for getting paid Android apps legitimately for free, including free IAP.

<comment><USER34> I recently looked around at "baby apps" hoping to find something to launch before letting my one year old play with my phone. (She loves smartphones more than any other object but I don't appreciate the random calendar entries and text messages she sends.) Every single one I found had advertising and half of them had in app purchases. The people making these apps must assume I'm an idiot.

<comment><USER33> Look at Sago Mini games. When mine were one, their favourites included Sago Mini Babies, Boats, Space Explorer and Forest Flyer. My three year old still loves them, and my five year old still plays them occasionally too. Also Toca Boca, though those are mostly aimed at slightly older kids. Toca Pet Doctor was a particular favourite when they were younger, though it does require some fine motor control (and is excellent for teaching tap and drag control) . Let me know if you want any more suggestions. It's no coincidence that these are all paid apps. They have no ads or IAP. You can get a lot of them free on Android with Amazon Underground if you have Prime.

<comment><USER34> Thanks for these suggestions (thanks also to dunham in sibling comment). I was having a hard time finding/evaluating the paid options, it's great to have your insights.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> It sounds like we're just coming around full-circle to the days of video game arcades. Except instead of going to the mall and possibly seeing other people, we've all got the arcade in our pocket.

Inflation-adjusted, these in-app purchases on freemium games are still cheaper per-play than the quarters I fed the machines as a kid.

<comment><USER36> Talking Tom Gold Run: 5400 dynamite costs £79.99

To unlock a track costs 3999 dynamite. There are 6 unlockable tracks.

There are some characters that can be unlocked. Some are premium: King Tom costs 5399 dynamite; Cyber Angela costs £39.99; Hyper Tom costs £29.99; Super Angela costs £22.99; etc etc.

The characters have power ups. You can increase the duration of the power ups by collecting in game items from vaults. You can open vaults early using dynamite.

You don't need these characters, you can probably complete the game without them. You don't need the power ups, and you could slowly grind your way through the upgrades. And you can unlock the tracks via playing the game.

But it's baffling to me that you could pay > £100 and not have the complete unlocked content.

<comment><USER37> The other lesson these kinds of things teach is "This is how piracy and hacked APKs work. This is where you download them, and this is how you keep your device safe."

I learned about piracy/copyright infringement when I was 7 years old, using "Fast Hackem" for the C64 for getting around disk sector errors. Those lessons stuck with me up to today, where pretty much anything is available, at any time.

Is it wrong? Is it right? I'm not going to moralize. Not my place to. But one thing I can say, is stunts like what these skinner-box designers do, and what a lot of content companies do, end up hurting them in the long run.

Relevant comic: [https://xkcd.com/488/](https://xkcd.com/488/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> > the global market for in-app purchases (not all aimed at kids) is estimated > to hit about $30 billion next year, which is especially impressive > considering that fewer than ten years ago it was zero

I wonder if people are shifting their discretionary spending patterns or if it's one of those situations where the market is 'creating' money.

As a random comparison the North American comic book market is about a billion USD.

<comment><USER39> Well if all IAP buyers would collectively decide to buy comic books instead, and all IAP programmers would decide to switch careers to comic book illustrators, the output of comic books would be comically high. So I'd say it's a shift in spending, mostly.

"But!" you may say, empathically, "these programmers lack not just self- respect and purpose in life, but artistic skills as well". I'd say it doesn't much matter – they'd probably find _some_ other work, and the money would find _some_ other purpose and the net difference would be "how much more efficient were they at producing IAP content vs. their second best job option" and "how much worse is whatever consumers buy instead of IAP content".

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I think if a game is in any way competitive, paying money for extras should automatically require you to compete only against others who paid the same amount. Then it becomes a challenge based on who spent the same money the most effectively, and not rich kids decimating people with less time or money to invest.

In addition, EVERY TIME a purchase is being made, the game should be required to remind the user of how much money they're really spending, by comparing the purchase to something common (like food). For instance: "The $9.99 you are about to spend on this one-time-use box of gems for this one game could also have bought you lunch today. Proceed?".

<comment><USER41> Should the place you spend 9.99$ on a sandwich at tell you "You could have bought the ingredients for 2 sandwiches and made them in 10 minutes"?

Or more equivalently "You could have made 10 meals if you at canned beans and rice instead of our food?"

The money for games should come from disposable income that can be lost without harm, people who don't know that won't listen to advice from the games.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I've been concerned about predatory freemium games for a while. They seem to extract immensely more value from customers while providing little in return other than quick dopamine fixes.

What can we - specifically engineers without the power to make beneficial changes in distribution channels like the App Store - do to curb this?

<comment><USER43> Stop working for predators?

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Where do we place products like League Of Legends? I would never in a million years pay for consumables in a game but something like LoL in which you purchase characters and skins seems justifiable to me. I purchased £40 of content from that game because that's typically what I paid for such a high quality PC game in the past. I've heard of people spending hundreds though.

To me these mobile games are forgettable grindfest machines with gamble mechanics created purely to trick kids into spend their parent's cash...

<comment><USER45> IMO, paying for characters is at least bordering close to pay-to-win, but skins are more or less donations.

I like SMITE's way of handling this: you can either buy/grind for gods individually, or you can pay $30 to get all gods immediately. After that, the only remaining microtransactions are pure cosmetics, like skins.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I don't mind paying for DLC content but spending money on in-game consumables is a no-no. With games designed to maximize spending of gems, it's hard to find games worth playing these days.

<comment><USER47> There are plenty of good games out there that don't go the IAP route, but they're pretty rare on mobile platforms - this is one of the major reasons I prefer PC gaming.

I've even had games that I purchased (Galaxy on Fire 2) that didn't have IAP go 'free to play' and add IAP after the fact, making my fully purchased version now loaded up with advertisements.

I simply don't purchase or play games on mobile platforms anymore, and neither do my children.

<comment><USER46> Yes, I primarily meant mobile. I could see myself playing some mobile games if there was a way to find any. But the market is filled with hundreds of Clash of Microtransactions clones and it's impossible to find anything by browsing.

I mostly play on PC but it's not totally unproblematic either. There are so many games but not too many good ones.

But the vast majority of the games industry produces mobile pay to win games because it is more lucrative. I would welcome a change.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Glad I uninstalled clash of clans for this very reason

<comment><USER49> Clash of Clans is actually fairly balanced if you don't pay at all. The most common use case for buying gems is to make upgrades happen quicker (typically if you are in a close clan war), but it is completely possible to spend no money at all and still progress.

<comment><USER50> In addition, the IAP can get you to a particular state faster but it doesn't really give you an advantage once you're there. So it's a fair fight between someone who's been grinding for a year vs someone who's been playing for 3 months but paid to speed up his progress.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> A general question to parents: Is it possible to raise a kid without a smartphone today?

<comment><USER52> It's getting harder. There's the obvious social pressure of course, when every other kid has the latest iPhone starting in kindergarten. My family is fortunate to live in a community where there's a fair amount of social diversity and tolerance, so the kid with no cellphone doesn't stand out very much.

Our kids are now in high school, and some teachers are beginning to expect kids to have smartphones. My daughter told me her teacher sent out an announcement of an assignment, and was surprised that some of the kids didn't find out about it instantly.

It's not uncommon for kids to have their smartphones taken away from them, either as a punishment, or because the phone has become an addiction. We have had to impose the rule: "When you are in the house, your phone is on the charger in the kitchen, where we can see it."

I know parents who have gotten their kids flip phones, to break the phone addiction. Tracfone still offers them, AFAIK.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's not in-app purchases. It is: cheat codes

Literally every other name you might choose to apply there is less correct than that one, and by using any other name all you do is perpetuate the idea that they are anything but that.

Worse, you keep people from making the easy logical steps in judging game, wherein if you do think of "iap" as cheat codes, the game design becomes either "can be played normally" or "nigh-unplayable without cheat codes". A game to which the latter applies thus becomes easily evident as what it really is:

Broken.

<comment><USER53> Cheat codes don't expire.

Battle toads was nigh unplayable without cheat codes

<comment><USER10> Even expiring cheats are still just cheats.

Battle toads as a game was broken, yes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Remember when you did not have a cell phone and instead you loaded games on your TI86 calculator? All those games were free!

</comment><comment><USER55> A reasonable course of action is to vote with your wallet and only buy full- priced games. If you were going to spend money on IAPs anyway, might as well use that money to support higher quality products that deliver a deeper experience and whose business model does not involve getting people to cave in a little more dough every week.

<comment><USER56> Crashlands by Butterscotch Shenanigans is a wonderful example of a criminally underpriced premium game with dozens of hours of fun and entertaining content. Best of all is you're supporting a handful of guys and gals who are committed to ethical (and fun!) game creation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> I think the article touches on some interesting points, but it doesn't really go into any of them, including the warped understanding of economics.

However, I am interested in learning more about these exchange rates that don't add up and the bonus' that don't help the players but still appeal to them.

</comment><comment><USER58> There's really no difference grinding away at work or grinding in a game. Or buying a bottle of water containing the same thing you flush your toilet with.

</comment><comment><USER59> It's crack Madden cards I spend a crack habit weekly for my son all his cash I have to hold like he on drugs only positive it's not

</comment><comment><USER60> This is by design.

</comment><comment><USER59> Yess it crack Madden cards spend a crack habit weekly

</comment><comment><USER61> By design</comment>


Ask YC: advice for a young programmer living in Africa - <AUTHOR>

I am a web programmer living in Africa(Nigeria) and i will like to have some advice on anything that can help me imporve on my art(i.e. programming) and any other thing that may help, note: I only use open source software, e.g python,linux and mysql <comment><USER2> Not advice for improving your craft, but advice for life:

Move away from Nigeria. I know it's your home but it is a hostile environment for economic success. Heck it's a hostile place to live for a multitude of reasons (of which I am sure you are very familiar with).

When I lived in south america, I went to school with a couple kids who's family worked at the Nigerian embassy. They flat out refused to move back to Nigeria. They spent the vast majority of their effort securing visas to the US. I recommend you do the same (or to South Africa or the EU somewhere).</comment>


This Is Business, Not Personal. - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/19/this-is-business-not-personal/ <comment><USER2> Since the Twitter service is free, the "only" money to be made is in the displaying of the content. I believe this is recognized by UberMedia and also by Twitter and the cause for the "kill-switch."

IMO, Twitter should charge $0.001 per tweet and make $2M+ per month ([http://royal.pingdom.com/2010/06/08/twitter-now-2-billion- tw...](http://royal.pingdom.com/2010/06/08/twitter-now-2-billion-tweets-per- month/)). They could also charge API users at $0.01 per sent tweet and $0.001 per received tweet and let the ad- or fee-based 3rd party twitter clients compete with a free Twitter(tm) client.

<comment><USER3> Twitter would die immediately if they started charging anything per tweet. Overnight all the thoughtful individuals would ditch it, and you'd be left with a marketing ghetto that would wither on the vine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I didn't find this article that interesting (MG articles typically aren't). Twitter kicked companies who continually violated their terms of service and refused to stop when contacted multiple times. Why is there at story here? Am I missing something?

</comment><comment><USER5> Was this ever a question? Of course it is business.</comment>


A "new" Amazon waffle maker came with an old crusty-looking waffle already in it - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/1/3/21047550/amazon-waffle-maker-babycakes-marketplace-seller <comment><USER2> I've cancelled my Amazon subscription and I suggest others do as well. There is simply no way to avoid counterfeits and scams when buying on Amazon right now, and that's not a problem I should have to worry about.

<comment><USER3> Why are we instantly siding with the accuser who has an easily fake-able photo? No longer innocent until proven guilty?

<comment><USER4> I received a "new" product I bought on Amazon that had something on it that could have either been a lubricant for the product or someone's food. The entire product was very greasy and there was other weirdness that lead me to believe what I received was someone else's return. I sent it back and ordered directly from the manufacturer. When I opened the package it only confirmed my suspicions. No greasy stuff. Paperwork that was missing in the Amazon shipment. Protective packing. Etc.

My conclusion was that the Amazon product was returned and no one even looked at it before taping it up and sending it out to me. Maybe the customer lied to them about why they were returning it. I don't know.

Whatever it was, it certainly means I'm not dismissing this customer's story out of hand.

<comment><USER5> Iron products are supposed to be shipped with a mineral oil coating.

<comment><USER4> I assume you're offering this as a counterpoint, suggesting I might have just been mistaken about it being a return?

1\. It wasn't mineral oil. It lacked the feel, appearance, and odor of mineral oil. The substance was buttery and it would not surprise me if it had been butter.

2\. The greasiness wasn't the only weirdness with the device.

3\. The device straight from the manufacturer lacked the greasiness and other weirdness, but was otherwise clearly the same product with the same packaging (except some extra bits the one through Amazon didn't have).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _Paging BigCliveDotCom_

It's time for another Amazon hotdogger / deathdapter / waffle-smasher tear- down and circuit diagram. [http://bigclive.com](http://bigclive.com)

EDIT: I bet it's from return stock where the seller/Amazon didn't open it and just assumed it was clean / sellable.

</comment><comment><USER7> Shit happens. At least with Amazon it's super easy to make a return (at least here in Germany).

<comment><USER8> I've never had a bad experience returning items here in the US, either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I once bought an electric toothbrush sealed in the box at a Costco store which had clearly been used at least once.

</comment><comment><USER10> Vox are garbage, out for clicks

An expert explains why Burberry, H&M, Nike, and Urban Outfitters destroy unsold merch — and what it says about consumer culture. [https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/9/17/17852294/fashion- bra...](https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/9/17/17852294/fashion-brands- burning-merchandise-burberry-nike-h-and-m)

If you're totally freaked out about wheat products on a second hand product (Yes, it was bought as new and looks gross) your great grand parents would be ashamed of you, that's privilege.

Just return it if you must. This one story is not worth the millions of views it's getting.

A working product should be destroyed because it had old food on it? That's fine, but don't pretend next week you are an amazing human who recycles.

Humans still work at Amazon and they make mistakes do we really need blood on this?</comment>


Predator drones use less encryption than your TV, DVDs - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/12/predator-drones-use-less-encryption-than-your-tv.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss <comment><USER2> Come on now - lets focus on what is important here - US national security or the profits of Disney Co?</comment>


Ask PG: has the hotness algorithm changed? Stories seem to stay longer… - <AUTHOR>

In the past few days, I've felt that stories have stayed on the front page longer than usual.
Right now, I see a lot of stories that I saw this morning or maybe even yesterday (e.g. the Higgs boson cartoon, the Flip ship, the next Microsoft, PageRank and soccer, MVC/MOVE…). A couple have a lot of points but the Flip story for example has "only" 230 points and 27 comments but is 18 hours old. Fairly unusual it seems.
Not that this is necessarily a bad thing and it could just be that there have been less visitors or something else… but I'm curious. <comment><USER2> I had the same feeling, to a point where, wanting to send some link replying to a friend, I am condfident that story will still be on the first/second page.

These two may help see what's happening <http://hn4d.com/>, <http://hnrankings.info/>

For the time being, I'll skip the pleasure of investigating.

Edit: I am also very often surprised that something showing in /newest feed (even 1st, 2nd page of /newest), shows on front page, too.

</comment><comment><USER3> Do you think it might be that there are fewer quality articles submitted? Or a greater number of stories submitted in general making it less likely that a story gains significant traction?

I have no opinion one way or the other. Just curious why you think the an algo change is the explanation?

<comment><AUTHOR> It could certainly be some other factor. It's just that I can't really think of anything besides 4th of July tomorrow, but I'm not convinced that would have such an effect.

Some stories are still getting a lot of upvotes, so it doesn't look like a big decrease in traffic.

So to answer your question: it just that to me it doesn't feel like there's anything different except for the fact that the frontpage seems to decay story slower. But maybe I have just been less busy, thus more on HN in the past few days? :)</comment></comment>


Creative Pros on Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://creativesare.com/blog/community/100-creative-pros-on-twitter.php

<comment><USER2> I dislike lists like this. It takes forever, and a zillion mouseclicks, to sift through them all and follow the interesting ones. "Handpicking" 100 people is still a lot of effort for the end user - there must be a better way.</comment>


Lytro and the Magic Camera: Light Field Photography - <AUTHOR> http://bhorowitz.com/2011/06/21/lytro-and-the-magic-camera/

<comment><AUTHOR> If you visit the Lytro gallery be sure to enable flash:

<http://www.lytro.com/picture_gallery></comment>


The AWS Tax and the Innovator's Dilemma - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@jrodthoughts/the-aws-tax-and-the-innovators-dilemma-9bb6735cdecc#.hi7d6irr4 <comment><USER2> Not so sure what the connection is and why AWS is so special.

Google Cloud and Azure both have compelling offering with a good chunk of market share. Azure is almost 20ms closer to my house in latency, for one thing...</comment>


Geeks use keyboard shortcuts - <AUTHOR> http://www.kbshortcuts.com

<comment><AUTHOR> If you are using the mouse to copy and paste then this tool is not for you. Seriously, learn some shortcuts :)

This is the second version of the site and I added lots of new features, so let me know what you think.

Here is the list of new features:

\- feeds everywhere e.g. search for visual studio and subscribe to that feed to get all newly submitted shortcuts with that search term

\- user voting (digg like), so vote to make sure only the good shortcuts make it

\- best and latest shortcuts (and feeds)

\- top 10 search queries

\- user registration

\- much better UI and UX (I think)

More features coming soon:

\- favorites

\- printer friendly

\- and whatever you guys suggest.

Thanks and I hope you find it useful.</comment>


Document Your Code - <AUTHOR> http://www.re-cycledair.com/document-your-code

<comment><USER2> Although documentation is great, too often I have seen it get out of date, especially the big block comments above the functions. It also becomes to understand a big block comment, especially if the comment is too detailed, since you have to keep jumping between parts of the code and parts of the comment.

I like shorter high level block comments and a lot more short comments that are directly next to the complicated parts of code it tries to explain. This way the block comments will stay up to date, and it is easier to update a short comment next to the specific lines of code. Since writing a short sentence about what you have just worked on is easier than adding to a large intimidating paragraph.

But the from my experiences, the beast practice is to write clean understandable code that does not need comments; updating code is mandatory to fix bugs but updating comments is an annoyance. Code reviews do marvels at reinforcing this, especially if the reviews are done through some tool that allows your coworkers to attach comments to specific lines of your code. This way the people can see specific problems and learn from each other. Also the social pressure of having your code definitely seen by others makes you write much cleaner code, as making the same mistakes over again will make you seem stupid.</comment>


Performance Mushrooms - <AUTHOR> https://lairdsuperfood.com/products/performance-mushrooms <comment><USER2> This is just an ad...

<comment><AUTHOR> True. But the concept is just so...</comment></comment>


A courier guy stuck with NP Problem - <AUTHOR> http://functionspace.org/articles/25/A-courier-guy-stuck-with-NP-Problem-

<comment><USER2> I was hoping that by using "courier" instead of "traveling salesman" that this would be a real-world case of needing a Hamiltonian cycle. However, it identical to the TSP in having the non-realistic prohibition on visiting an intermediate city twice.

Specifically, this recasting of the TSP says "revisiting any city is just wasted effort."

In real life, a courier may visit the same city twice. As a trivial example, a courier starting in San Francisco with deliveries to San Rafael, Novato, Petaluma, Rohnert Park, and Santa Rosa (all north of San Francisco on US 101) will visit all of the intermediate cities on the way back to San Francisco. Other routes, while possible, take more time and fuel and are wasted effort.

And oddly, the term "Travelling salesman problem" doesn't even exist on the page.</comment>


Ask HN: How much to charge for first website? - <AUTHOR>

I work in a small business, and i have a pretty good grasp of web design from months of practice.<p>I offered to create my work´s website from scratch, but being my first profesional work of the sorts i have no idea how much to charge. It would be a simple web, no forms or logins, and I´m confident i can do a good work. Ideas? <comment><USER2> Here's what I would do:

$400 for the template $200 for variation of template $50-$75 per page, depending on complexity

If the template is super fancy you may need to charge more. Special application coding (custom PHP, ASP, C#, etc.) code at hourly $75 or more per hour.

</comment><comment><USER3> If they're smart, they'll just make the website part of your work responsibilities and get it for free.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh they´ll try, i´m sure. i can manage my ups though. Thanks for the tips guys.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> go high - shoot for $2-3000. like peg_leg said, if they have custom coding charge much more.</comment>


Facial recognition company Clearview's client list stolen by "intruder" - <AUTHOR> https://www.thedailybeast.com/clearview-ai-facial-recognition-company-that-works-with-law-enforcement-says-entire-client-list-was-stolen <comment><USER2> From the article:

"Security is Clearview's top priority," he said in a statement provided to The Daily Beast. "Unfortunately, data breaches are part of life in the 21st century. Our servers were never accessed. We patched the flaw, and continue to work to strengthen our security."

Servers never accessed? Then how was the client list stolen? Was a paper copy stolen from a filing cabinet? I find this posture somewhat arrogant and dismissive. Also, the article is light on technical details- does anyone have info on what flaw was exploited and patched?

<comment><USER3> Could the "intruder" have been Joe from sales who came back the night he was laid off using his secondary keycard, which IT hadn't quite gotten around to deactivating yet, and grabbed his old rolodex?

<comment><USER4> And how was Joe "patched"

<comment><USER5> With extreme prejudice.

<comment><USER6> The only way to patch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> World's smallest fiddle. I hope they get the ever living snot sued out of them so they understand they can't throw security to the four winds and just swim around in their profits. They were reckless and irresponsible in assembling that data and I have no doubt they were reckless and irresponsible in storing it.

<comment><USER8> Agreed. Maybe if the company wasn't doing the things they were doing they wouldn't have been targeted. I have about as much sympathy for them as I do for Hacking Team, FinFisher, et al after their respective breaches.

</comment></comment><comment> vic-traill I apologise for a low value comment, but I can't resist the opportunity:

Did Clearview get a picture of the 'intruder'?

</comment><comment><USER9> some earlier discussion:

>The firm drew national attention when The New York Times ran a front-page story about its work with law-enforcement agencies. The Times reported that the company scraped 3 billion images from the internet, including from Facebook, YouTube, and Venmo. That process violated Facebook's terms of service, according to the paper. It also created a resource that drew the attention of hundreds of law-enforcement agencies, including the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, according to that report. In a follow-up story, the Times reported that law-enforcement officials have used the tools to identify children who are victims of sexual abuse. One anonymous Canadian law-enforcement official told the paper that Clearview was "the biggest breakthrough in the last decade" for investigations of those crimes.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22424828](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22424828)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22426599](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22426599)

</comment><comment><USER10> >Unfortunately, data breaches are part of life in the 21st century.

They are not. Just don't collect the data in the first place.

<comment><USER11> 21st century tech companies: "If we fuck up, too bad for you." All the profits, none of the responsibility.

<comment><USER12> That's the whole idea behind the term "identity theft". They are too cheap to set up proper systems so let's just move the problem to the customer.

<comment><USER13> The proper title is, of course, "identity fraud" or "bank fraud" at a bank, where the fault is on the part of the bank to prove that you are you, not on the consumer to "protect" their information that someone else lost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > "Security is Clearview's top priority,"

Clearly...

<comment><USER15> "Everything in JIRA is the default 'medium'."

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I know not popular, but set your email and other retention periods to a relatively short time frame - even a year or two drops tons of sensitive data off. Flag important or file elsewhere for stuff you want to keep.

<comment><USER17> This is often not legal. For example, Sarbanes Oxley requires seven years retention for public companies in the US[0]. Depending on industry it can be higher; I believe some financial segments are required to retain email indefinitely.

[0]: [https://www.sec.gov/rules/final/33-8180.htm](https://www.sec.gov/rules/final/33-8180.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> No doubt the same "intruder" who hacked the Office of Personnel Management a few years ago.</comment>


Ask HN: Best data sources for Covid-19? - <AUTHOR> What are the best (continuously updating) sources of data for regular folks to consume?
I've complied mine so far here (in part thanks to HN): https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-data-sources-on-Covid-19/answer/Benjamin-Stingle
But I'd love to get better ones, and to know what the best way to curate such links.  I find it to be quite hard to distill facts our of the media.  I figure making it easy for folks to find all this data could be helpful, and reduce paranoia. <comment><USER2> Here is the data underneath John Hopkin's map

[https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/tree/master/csse_...](https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/tree/master/csse_covid_19_data)

</comment><comment><USER3> Official Italian data is here: [https://github.com/pcm- dpc/COVID-19](https://github.com/pcm-dpc/COVID-19)

I made a gsheet that auto pulls data every hour (file > make a copy, to use it. script included in README): [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xAyDSpzEp3n4iiu54_XL...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xAyDSpzEp3n4iiu54_XL6MQxNXtrOnHSZf8zx2HZgEU/edit#gid=833526927)

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/02/the-latest- coronavirus...](https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/02/the-latest-coronavirus- cases/)

OR

[https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/)

The latter is currently more up to date. The play by play of BNO is nice

</comment><comment><USER5> [https://twitter.com/kr3at](https://twitter.com/kr3at)

</comment><comment><USER6> Well updated and high quality: [https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html](https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> [https://www.coronatracker.com/analytics/](https://www.coronatracker.com/analytics/)

<comment><USER8> Strangely it excludes USA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> One core challenge is that there is no good data on the spread, at least in the USA. No testing === no data.

<comment><USER10> Granted, most people in the world don't care about that there is no data from the US, because most of us are not there :)</comment></comment>


Bitcodin.com Launches World's Fastest Cloud-Transcoding Service - <AUTHOR> http://www.bitcodin.com/blog/2015/03/bitcodin-com-launches-the-worlds-fastest-cloud-transcoding-service-moving-beyond-the-limits-of-real-time-transcoding/

<comment><USER2> I'm using the bitcodin service for several projects and it works like a charm. I highly recommend it.

</comment><comment> art-now we have tested many systems and thought there would be no real solution. until we came across bitcodin.com

</comment><comment> daniel-e sounds like a great and powerful service to me

</comment><comment><USER3> really a great service, highly recommended!

</comment><comment><USER4> super fast and good to integrate

</comment><comment><USER5> sounds like a great service</comment>


Study estimates that AVs will shift ~$1T USD in Real Estate Value - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/99-mph/1-trillion-of-real-estate-is-on-the-move-heres-why-94ee9233e5eb?ReillyBrennanFoT <comment><USER2> The article doesn't really address some of the other things that affect where people choose to live, i.e. availability of fast internet; utility reliability; schools; etc. I agree that commute times are a big factor, but they're not the only factor.</comment>


OpenSSL is Written by Monkeys   - <AUTHOR> http://www.peereboom.us/assl/html/openssl.html

<comment><USER2> I wouldn't go so far as to say "written by monkeys"... but this is part of why I distrust OpenSSL. Unreadable code tends to be insecure code.</comment>


Contad: SVG + CSS3 craziness - <AUTHOR> http://www.freeger.com/projects/contextad/ <comment><USER2> So I started writing something about how we were supposed to get away from the awfulness of flash, and it's stupidities like long loading screens, with CSS3 and HTML5. But I viewed the source and this _is_ flash. Well the loading screen is. You see it's currently downloaded 4Mb across 2 .swf files and it's only about... a third of the way through, although it's hard to tell on the "fill in the word" progress bar.

My third-world 2Mbit internet connection doesn't seem to be up to scratch. At least my web browser is if the browser checking code has already run. This is like c2001 except then we did "if (ie) {} else if (ns) { }"

I hate to complain without actually having seen the subject matter, but flash, loading screens and "if (chrome) else { fail }" is harking back to a bad past.

Edit: I think the download died at just under 5 Mb. I guess my 2Mb internet really isn't up to scratch.

</comment><comment><USER3> Here's a native (non-flash) version that supposedly also works in Firefox and Safari

[http://dabblet.com/gist/6046779](http://dabblet.com/gist/6046779)

Made by Verou: [https://twitter.com/LeaVerou/status/358726425454444545](https://twitter.com/LeaVerou/status/358726425454444545)

<comment><USER4> Thank you, I was really disappointed to be told I could only find out what I was looking at if I installed chrome.

<comment><USER5> a message like that is a tipoff that what you're seeing was made by amateurs, just be thankful they gave you the warning and move on to things worth your time

<comment><USER3> I feel that's unfair. It's a demo.

It's like complaining that someone built a proof-of-concept app and only made it work on a Mac.

Now if it had been a production website that only worked in one browser, _then_ you'd be right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I strongly contest that Chrome is the 'world's best browser'.

<comment><USER7> ^W

"Only in [browser name]" is so 1997.

<comment><USER8> yeah, going back to that now. HTML5 fanciness has replaced animated .gifs, too. And modal dialogs have replaced popups.

[rant]seriously, why do a third of the sites linked to HN open up with a meaningless modal dialog / popup asking me to join a mailing list or fill in a survey. I'd fill in a survey if you'd actually let me visit your site to see what the survey questions are about![/rant]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> >This site is running only on the world's best browser

Wow. Why don't people use feature detection or something? I don't understand the rise in vendor locking websites to Chrome.

I think we should just outright abolish the user-agent.

<comment><USER8> User-agents can be abolished once all browsers are created equal; same HTML standards support, same performance. Pretty sure it only works in Chrome because it has good support for the latest HTML technologies, good performance, and good developer tools.

<comment><USER10> We have feature detection for this.

And the site _doesn 't_ work for me in Chrome Canary (that supports everything that stable Chrome does and more).

Author of that site is just a troll/fanboy or incompetent at using latest web standards.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Loaded it in Firefox and was told I needed to download Chrome.

Loaded it in Chrome and was told I needed to download... Chrome.

Guess my Chrome isn't bling enough.

<comment><USER12> That's because when you load it in Firefox it will redirect you to another URL. Then you copy/paste that in Chrome and you see the same message. I hate when websites do this...

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Quite funny. I attempted to load this in Chrome and I still get 'This site is running only on the world's best browser' with a link to download, ironically, Chrome.

</comment><comment><USER14> It's like the old, only works in IE days!

</comment><comment><USER15> > This site is running only on the world's best browser

Not worth my time

</comment><comment><USER16> Runs horribly on the world's real best browser.

</comment><comment><USER17> Took a while to load but it scroll surprisingly smoothly. The sign-up button takes me to a wikipedia page about contextual advertising. Is that intentional?

And for those who can't view the project, try the post about it (from their homepage) : [http://www.freeger.com/project.php?projectid=174](http://www.freeger.com/project.php?projectid=174)

</comment><comment><USER18> Agree with comments above- doesn't even run in my Chrome, Ubuntu 12.04

</comment><comment><USER19> I don't understand how the number of people who viewed this yesterday goes up. Shouldn't that be a fixed metric? If it's just a demo, maybe some better number to demo would be better.

</comment><comment><USER20> "This site is running only on the world's best browser", the new "Well it runs fine on my computer so...".

Other than that, nice piece of work!

<comment><USER21> > "Well it runs fine on my computer so...".

You mean this? [https://www.dropbox.com/s/o9wb9k0bbqfc2bw/IMG_20130718_17103...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/o9wb9k0bbqfc2bw/IMG_20130718_171033.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> hmm. Amazing what the front page can do for a story, even if that story doesn't deserve it.

</comment><comment><USER23> I don't really like it.

What irks is that it tells you "scroll down to proceed" but then you can't scroll back up and control what's going on. Why not keep the page fixed and have the content within in scrolling? You know, like in a video?

</comment><comment><USER24> Looks like it was flash and then converted with Swiffy: [https://www.google.com/doubleclick/studio/swiffy/](https://www.google.com/doubleclick/studio/swiffy/)

</comment><comment><USER25> By the way: Top browsers in Germany [http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-DE- monthly-201206-201306](http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-DE- monthly-201206-201306)

</comment><comment><USER26> Sites that do autodetect and ban access on the result are BAD BAD BAD. You can detect them and add a banner to inform the user the site might not work, and even explain why.

Also bad is using flash to detect it!

</comment><comment><USER27> Pretty amazing and perfect execution. Runs perfectly in OSX Chrome.

</comment><comment><USER28> Runs fine in Arch Chrome... though Contad Presents (the first bit) is centered based on window height. I didn't even see it until I made my Chrome window wider.

</comment><comment><USER5> why does chrome think the page is in Russian?

</comment><comment><USER29> super cool design and website. only one gripe. it took over a minute to load. not many people will wait.

</comment><comment><USER30> ok, background music that can not be turned off? WHY?

</comment><comment><USER31> Echoes of gabocorp.

</comment><comment><USER32> I want my bandwidth back. Two thumbs down. Boooo. BOOOOOOOOO! Good DAY sir.</comment>


The true cost of free-to-play games - <AUTHOR> http://www.imore.com/true-cost-free-play

<comment><USER2>
      > Most of us won't pay $1 for a great game, but will pay $99 in IAPs

Here's the difference: by the time you're even considering an in-app-purchase, you already know you love the app. Would you rather support a product that has given you lots of pleasure, or an unknown product that lobs a couple of screenshots before footing you the bill?

While I don't have much experience with purchases in iOS, I can say for sure that of the apps I've purchased through Android, all but one (around three dozen total) SUCKED. They had good reviews and good screenshots - that's what made me buy them - but they didn't follow through with the promise. I'm willing to take the <$5 risk to try a new game with "good" reviews and pretty "screenshots", but so far, empirically, it has almost always ended poorly.

... lending the more interesting question: how do we get out of THAT rut?

</comment><comment><USER3> If you like the business decisions made by some developers, and you don't like the business decisions made by other developers, vote with your wallet and support the ones you like.

</comment><comment><USER4> I just wish free to play games were a little more balanced. It shouldn't be almost _impossible_ to play/finish the game without buying stuff in it. I think at least 30% of the people playing it should be able to do that given they put enough effort into it. If I get a game and notice I can't even pass level 5 without paying for stuff, even after multiple tries, then I'll be uninstalling it.

The game should be balanced in such a way that people who _really_ don't want to pay for it, can finish it, while people who are "lazier" could pay for some stuff to get them over some levels. But even then it shouldn't be like $99 for a game, except maybe for 0.1% or less of the players. For the vast majority of those who play, it shouldn't cost them more than $5-$10.

I think this way you get a game that is very popular in downloads due to it being free to try and play, and it should also make at least as much money as if costing $5-$10, but because it's free to try, and it could get addicting, and also because some players may spend tens of dollars on it, then it also has the potential to make a lot more. Just don't make it so anyone who wants to finish it must spend tens of dollars on it.

<comment><USER5> Why do you say it "should" be balanced this way. Is that your gut feeling? A level you have found most profitable through empirical evidence? Or some other reason?

Not an attack I'm curious as to how one arrives at the level of in app purchases. Reflecting on it myself I feel there is likely a maximal profit level that one can achieve that you should go for. Do you think differently?</comment></comment>


Switching editors is just as hard as switching languages - <AUTHOR> http://codeulate.com/?p=12 <comment><USER2> Reminds me of the experience I had trying to learn Emacs. I was never a vi power user though but I still hated how hard things were in Emacs compared to something like TextMate. I really liked the idea of being able to start using something right away and mouse around looking for menus at first and become a power user later. First time I started emacs I couldn't even figure out how to exit it.

</comment><comment><USER3> My advice: be an atheist when it comes to your tool selection. Use the tools that get a specific job done the fastest.

Anecdotal evidence: back in 1998 I insisted of doing websites in Vi and Photoshop. Refreshing a graphic layout would take me an hour, slicing pictures, measuring pixels and editing the corresponding HTML. Along came a demonstration of Macromedia's Fireworks and Dreamweaver where the guy on stage did the same thing in under 5 minutes. While the generated HTML wasn't as "pure" as my hand edited code it was close enough to realize that I was wasting major time with my existing method.

Never looked back being an tool atheist...

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd qualify that. Switching editors _should_ be as hard as switching languages. If not, your editor eith isn't powerful enough or you aren't using it right.

<comment><USER5> That's a good insight, especially when you consider that it was the concluding paragraph of the article:

 _Before I wrap up, I'd like to point out that if the title of this post sounds suspect to you, consider it a huge red flag. If the thought of switching editors doesn't fill you with quite a bit of dread, what you're using now is almost certainly underpowered, and you definitely haven't customized it enough. If this is you, take a look at one of the editors I've been discussing here, and take the time to learn it–I promise it's worth the trouble. Just, uh…choose carefully._

<comment><USER4> Love the snark!

<comment><USER5> I'm sorry, my reply was really uncalled for. It's just that I always find it funny when someone echoes an idea almost exactly that they seemingly missed in the article. I think it's part of my assumption that the people on Hacker News actually read through an article before voting or commenting on it, but that could be changing (or I could just be wrong).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Computers and counterculture - <AUTHOR> I'm interested in learning more about the links between computing and the 'counterculture', both in terms of the social history and in terms of radical thinking about computing's role in society/culture. By 'counterculture' I'm primarily thinking of the late 60s/early 70s hippy movement and maybe the 90s free party scene (seems quite linked to technology, especially in Germany?), but I'm keen to learn about other links.
Some books/thinkers I've come across already are: - Stewart Brand and the Whole Earth Catalog - Computer Lib/Dream Machines by Ted Nelson - Erik Davis' 'Technopagans' essay in Wired - Jaron Lanier's 'Who Owns the Future'
As well as books I'd be super interested in any links to good mailing list archives, or even first hand accounts, that anyone can share. <comment><USER2> Steven Levy's book Hackers goes a bit into free/tech culture in both the SF Bay Area and in Academia.

textfiles.com might give you some of the later era source messages

Mondo 2000 Magazine also did a lot of 90s cyber-hedonism stuff

<comment><USER3> +1 for Levy's "Hackers", especially if you're interested in the counter- culture aspects of computer folklore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> YC did a recent podcast with former Artforum editor Michelle Kuo on Experiments in Art and Technology

[https://blog.ycombinator.com/experiments-in-art-and- technolo...](https://blog.ycombinator.com/experiments-in-art-and-technology- with-artforum-editor-michelle-kuo/)

And then there's Mondo 2000. Defining periodical of "cyberculture". Remains deeply influential even today

[https://archive.org/details/mondohistory](https://archive.org/details/mondohistory)

I'd also recommend the documentary "We Live In Public" as a cautionary tale regarding networked utopias ;)

</comment><comment><USER5> To me, the most radical thinking about the relationship between computing and society is copy-left. It uses copyright law to subvert the presumed uses of copyright law. I think it is the most influential new idea from the second half of the twentieth century. The world runs on Linux.

</comment><comment><USER6> Books: What the Doorknob Said, by John Markoff. From Counterculture to Cyberculture, by Fred Turner.

</comment><comment><USER7> In Germany, history of the Chaos Computer Club.</comment>


How Steve Jobs Got Away with Not Having a License Plate (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2011/10/how-steve-jobs-got-away-not-having-license-plate/44224/

<comment><USER2> So (assuming that he worked this out himself or was involved in it rather than it being something someone at Apple came up with to keep him out of trouble), this isn't so much him saying "I don't care about your rules" as it was him saying "screw your rules, if I don't like them I'll find a way around them".

Kind of figures in that it's Jobs saying "I'm smarter than you" more than him saying "I don't give a..." (which given his focus on the way things were perceived is pretty unlikely).

Dumb law though. If I had to get a new license plate for my car I could have it printed at on the car in under an hour from leaving my seat right now (and no, I'm not sat in a garage, I'm in the office). Why anyone thinks it might might be reasonable to allow six months (with all the attendant issues that come with having the car unmarked for that period) is beyond me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe it's an old law which has not been revised to keep in sync with the modern times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Seems like taking a lot of trouble for a one-time activity (getting a licence). Perhaps he couldn't decide on one, like he couldn't decide on how to furnish his apartment. Given his obsession with minimalism, it is one less detail to worry about.

</comment><comment><USER4> Friend of mine also told me this story (about him just getting a new car every 6mo) from when he was working at Apple. Funny!

</comment><comment><USER5> Old article from 2011. Please update title

</comment><comment><USER6> So old.</comment>


Ask HN: What is the most impressive home automation setup you've witnessed? - <AUTHOR> Most homes I've visited used very little home automation technology. I've only seen a few motion sensors and clappers. My own experiments with x10 equipment have been pretty limited due to time and budget constraints. I'm curious what kind of state of the art systems are out there and how well they perform in practice. <comment><USER2> I always liked the idea of music following me from room to room. Bill Gates; house (52 miles of fiber optics [http://www.therichest.com/luxury/celebrity- home/the-million-...](http://www.therichest.com/luxury/celebrity-home/the- million-dollar-home-of-bill-gates/)) had that feature years ago.

"a GPS system in his car could alert his networked bathtub to begin filling itself with hot water as Gates approached his home."</comment>


2014 MacBook Air: Performance benchmarks - <AUTHOR> http://www.macworld.com/article/2150841/lab-tested-new-2014-macbook-air-benchmarks.html <comment><USER2> Really, really sloppy benchmarking work here -- only four machines were tested, and every one of them had a drive from a different manufacturer. They weren't even all the same size! It's already well-known that Apple sources SSDs (as well as other parts) from a variety of suppliers, and not all of them perform identically. Concluding that the 2014 model is "slower" than the 2013 models from a sample this small is totally inappropriate, though.

<comment><USER3> > already well-known that Apple sources SSDs (as well as other parts) from a > variety of suppliers

Ah. Why would they do that? Someone could spend $3000 on MacBook Pro 16GB + SSD highest spec and risk the chance of getting bad parts? I never knew this was a practice. Is this even common in the industry otherwise Apple?

<comment><USER4> It's risk-aversion. Think of it this way: if drive-models are assigned to Macs in a round-robin fashion, then if there are three drive manufacturers and one has shipped a buggy drive, at most 1/3 of customers would be sending their laptops back for repairs. On the other hand, if their _only_ supplier gave them buggy drives, then _everyone_ would be sending their laptops back.

It also lets them have a stronger negotiating position to drop a crap supplier. They can only maintain that negotiating position, though, if they buy drives from all of them; if they only used drives from whoever was the at- the-time "best" supplier, then if that supplier started to suck, all the others would demand a king's ransom for the "privilege" of switching to them.

<comment><USER5> Interesting. I could also imagine that the inverse of that point is also true: if one of the suppliers is really good and reliably so, if Apple depends on them more than the others, the cash inflow will help that one supplier more than the others, which that company could put back into R&D to widen that quality gap. And if one supplier is far superior to the others, then the comparability == competition between suppliers lessens, and so does Apple's bargaining power.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Could anyone offer any tips for evaluating processors in this post-megahertz age? My 2012 Macbook Air (base 11" model) has a 1.7 GHz Core i5 processor, yet I understand the 1.4 GHz (Haswell) Core i5 in the latest machines performs significantly better.

Is the generation of the processor always the dominant factor nowadays? Is there a convenient way to estimate performance without poring over benchmarks? What are people's favourite sites for finding out about these things?

<comment> Tuna-Fish > Is the generation of the processor always the dominant factor nowadays?

No.

> Is there a convenient way to estimate performance without poring over > benchmarks?

Unless you are willing to quite a lot of time learning, not really. And unless you've been willing to do that, you haven't been able to conveniently estimate performance for about 14 years now.

> What are people's favourite sites for finding out about these things?

[http://www.anandtech.com/bench/](http://www.anandtech.com/bench/) is pretty good, as they standardize all results into a convenient database with easy head-to-head comparisons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> ...and still only 4Gb of memory.

<comment><USER8> I think a non-anemic amount of memory is the most important feature lacking in the Air. I often find my 4GB 2011 Air chugging and breaking a sweat swapping to "disk" simply because I've had Firefox open for too long. Would it be that difficult for them to finally double the amount of memory in the next base model to 8GB and make 16GB an available option?

<comment><USER9> I think this could have something do with 16GB dimms being a new thing and not supported by Intel on the laptop chipsets.

Lenovo has a similar problem in their new models. X240 has only one dimm slot and currently supports max 8GB of memory. While investigating the issue I found a discussion[1] where somebody mentioned that Intel would need to add support for these new dimms in the "memory reference code"[2].

[1] [http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad- Laptops/16GB-m...](http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/16GB- memory-for-X240-available-does-it-work/td-p/1476774) [2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_Reference_Code](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_Reference_Code)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I will admit I did not read the article.

Flash is trending towards fewer higher capacity chips. In some cases this is resulting in less parallelism and slower response times for individual reads and writes.

Not saying anything about this article and set of hardware, just in general that this has been my observation with new models of SSDs as they are released.

Unfortunately the way most applications are written the response time of SSDs is the primary benefit because they present low concurrency and don't parallelize the procesing of data as it comes off of disk. Still way better than seek times on spinning disk, but far from what could be.

<comment><USER11> The situation with NAND flash has been pretty disappointing, I think; in the quest for more capacity, manufacturers have been sacrificing other desirable aspects of storage, like write endurance and data retention. In particular, 3-bit and 4-bit MLC are becoming the norm, and they are both slower and less reliable than older 2-bit MLC or SLC, while requiring more complex error correction and bad block management. The relatively increasing fragility of flash storage is never mentioned, and many people don't find out until it's too late --- because the typical consumer only focuses on capacity.

I still miss the days when SLC was the norm, and you didn't need complex error-correcting-codes and bad block management. Now SLC is considered "high- end", even in enterprise applications, and becoming rarer to find, while 2-bit MLC, which used to be considered the inferior, consumer-level grade, has also become more difficult to find and a "professional" feature. Considering that endurance and retention decrease exponentially with each additional bit-per- cell while capacity only increases multiplicatively, the tradeoffs don't seem quite so great.

<comment><USER12> I'm glad TLC exists; the 840 Evo is fast enough and reliable enough and it's much cheaper than a 2-bit MLC SSD.

<comment><USER11> I'm not saying it is a bad thing if you understand the tradeoffs and can work within them, but what I'm getting at is that a lot of consumers unfortunately _don 't_.

The extreme endurance torture tests that get reported often don't tell the whole story either - the more flash cells are cycled, the "leakier" they become and retention goes down significantly. Figures I've seen for SLC are 10 years retention after 100K P/E cycles, earlier-generation MLC 5 years after 10K P/E cycles, newer MLC is 5 years @1.5~3K, TLC is _1 year_ @ <1K. Of course retention tests don't make for as interesting news articles as endurance ones since they're almost like watching paint dry, but IMHO they are just as if not more important, and manufacturers should provide warnings that flash-based devices are intrinsically unstable and their retention ability is measured in _years_. "Bit rot" is a reality with NAND flash. I only hope that people who think they've "backed up" data onto used SSDs, memory cards, and other forms of high-capacity flash don't find that much of it has literally self-erased and disappeared after only a few years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Crap - I just bought a new Macbook Air the first day it was available. Oh well, I guess I'll never really notice...

<comment><USER14> Hopefully you'll benefit from a better build. My 2013 MacBook Air has a nasty issue where trackpad doesn't work properly if the machine is tilted even 15 degrees. The adapter has failed once already and the second one stopped charging last week.

Whatever you do, get the 3 year care is all I can say.

<comment><USER15> In the Netherlands, there are several shops that are offering 3 year guarantees on all laptops sold. Including Macbooks.

Considering the terrible customersupport that I've received multiple times from Apple, I bought my latest Macs at one of those stores.

<comment><USER16> I'm in America and I've never had anything but incredibly good customer support from Apple. Interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> mixing up machines order and what is in bold for sensationalism much?

The 2014 drives were faster than the 2013 in many of the test cases, specially 2nd page.

</comment><comment><USER18> And it's still faster than PCs. :)

<comment><USER19> Apple makes some nice hardware but they are not alone in making good stuff. They have some stiff competition.

For example my Sony Vaio Pro is significantly faster than any of the numbers mentioned in the article. It gets nearly 1GB/sec in read speeds: [http://i.imgur.com/24GdPiz.png](http://i.imgur.com/24GdPiz.png)

The drive is partitioned so ignore the odd size.

<comment> SG- The thing is, you don't need 1GB/sec for an 11-13" laptop.

<comment><USER20> Why would someone in this day and age say something like "X is enough" when talking about tech? Is that a wish to be featured alongside Bill Gates?

(yes, I know Gates' quote is apocryphal)

<comment><USER21> You can do much worse than being featured alongside Bill gates!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>