Ask HN: How are comments ordered? - <AUTHOR>

Let me preface this by saying that I am aware the submission ranking algorithm is something of a trade secret and I trust this thread about comment ranking will be removed as appropriate if inappropriate. Likewise if there is already a topic on this with the goods then please link it, and feel free to insult my Google Fu while you're about it.
Here's what I have so far:
1.) Karma is used to rank comments.
2.) New comments have only 1 initial karma point, yet enter the thread quite high (if not at the top?) then, assuming they are insufficiently upvoted, sink.
3.) I don't know how important to a comment's ranking its descendants are, nor the extent to which a reply's karma affects its ancestors.
4.) The 1 initial karma does not contribute to the poster's total, so seems to me like a way to +1 some part of the ancestors' ranking score calculation to represent that it has inspired one new comment of discussion.
5.) I have no idea what happens in a "tie-break" situation.
This thread is motivated almost entirely by a comment I made today which has been upvoted a lot more than I am used to being upvoted. It is a first reply to another comment and at the time I replied, that comment was near the bottom of the thread. I chose to reply to it because the poster was making enough of the same point I wanted to make that I could just say "Indeed" and then post my own comment without having to establish context. Given that the parent is now the second highest ranked un-nested comment in the thread, and I've got a lot more karma than I'm used to, I rather wonder on whose coattails who is riding, or if the two of us are sailing some kind of slowish coattail catamaran. <comment><USER2> A few years ago PG commented with the code:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1781417>

But I don't think that's what's used now. The news code is available (written in arc) but I imagine the YC code is slightly different

</comment><comment><USER3> Not sure how HN does it, but reddit sorts by the wilson score. It seems like a logical way to sort these sorts of things.

[http://www.evanmiller.org/how-not-to-sort-by-average- rating....](http://www.evanmiller.org/how-not-to-sort-by-average-rating.html)</comment>


The Failed Promise of 'The Verge' - <AUTHOR> http://brooksreview.net/2011/12/failure/ <comment><USER2> I like the Verge, and what I like about the Verge is what Ben Brooks doesn't, I think. The reviews don't hit you like an opinionated ton of bricks; the style of the Verge recognizes that there are nuances in reviewing any product that are ultimately subjective. I don't want to read "buy the iPhone 4S and nothing else", I want to read what the reviewer thought the pros and cons are, regardless of how much he weights those pros and cons. Because I'll probably think some things are more important than he does.

The Sphero got a pretty harsh review, including the summary wrap-up of 'THERE ARE PLENTY OF BETTER WAYS TO SPEND $129.99' and a 5.0/10, which as anyone who reads reviews on any site knows is below average. I honestly don't see the problem, it's not The Verge is hiding its opinion that they wouldn't buy the product.

</comment><comment><USER3> > That's just stupid, I'm sorry, but it really is a stupid statement. It's > like saying: "This car is really fast, but it only gets 2MPG when in fast > mode. That's not a problem at all, but best to just turn off fast mode."

Well, that's quite what happens in modern luxurious fast cars, like M-powers, AMGs, etc. After pressing a button, the gearbox gives a more agressive spin, the suspension lowers and stiffens, the bucket seat and seatbelt hold you more firmly; in short: it turns on all the things that would make the car a PITA while driving around the block. BTW there is an Android 'Power widget', where it has the option to automatically switch the phone to 2g when on wifi, etc. So, maybe that's not such a stupid idea after all?

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm a big fan of The Verge. They are a step ahead of a great deal of the competition. That said, a lot of the criticism is dead on. They, represent, though, major trends in tech writing all around. The Verge just set itself up to rise above them and its failure to really do so is its greatest disappointment.

That said, I still read it every day at work and I have faith that we'll see steady improvements in quality as time goes on.

</comment><comment><USER5> This article is a year old (minus two weeks). Given that the Verge is only 13 months old (according to WP), i.e. it is NINE TIMES OLDER than it was when TFA went to press, this is probably a germane fact that should be mentioned in the HN title? Maybe it's silly to post meta-reviews that are obsolete by now, unless some kind of meta-meta-review is implied?</comment>


UK TV star is first to face jail over tweets - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1389562/TV-star-face-jail-tweets.html

<comment><USER2> So now they can't name the tv star who named the footballer, this is getting totally ridiculous...</comment>


Proposed law bans online "false or deceptive" statements, including the Onion - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/alternative-facts-alert-proposed-legislation-bans-fake-news/ <comment><USER2> [https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180AB1104)

wow

</comment><comment><USER3> At first glance this sounds ridiculous ... but imagine it passes and think of the fun we could have with President Trump and his Tweets ...

</comment><comment><USER4> How does this square with freedom of speech? Outlawing satire and jokes is outrageous, even if the actual aim is somewhat laudable.</comment>


Using deep learning and D3.js to predict personality from Facebook Posts - <AUTHOR> http://labs.five.com

<comment><USER2> Cool!</comment>


Modern cargo ships slow to the speed of the sailing clippers - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/25/slow-ships-cut-greenhouse-emissions

<comment><USER2> From what I understand, part of the reason for this trend is an excess of cargo ships. As a shipper it doesn't pay to rush cargo from one place to another if you have empty ships doing nothing.

But I doubt this will continue. The reason is the _customers_ don't like it. If I have a billion dollars travelling from Shanghai to LA I want it to get there quickly so I can sell my product and use that billion for something else. This is why much-more-efficient-but-slower airships could never compete with airplanes.

</comment><comment><USER3> It was amazing what a big sailing ship could do on a downwind course and with good weather (which for them was storms in the right direction).

The standard deviation in speed would be high, and not all destinations could be managed on downwind courses.

All that said, the length of time the Cutty Sark held its speed record was amazing and inspiring. IIRC it took modern multi-hulls to beat it (sailing).

</comment><comment><USER4> > Travel times between the US and China, or between Australia and Europe, are > now comparable to those of the great age of sail in the 19th century.

If this is true, why don't we all just use sailing ships, which require no fuel and produce no emissions?

<comment><USER5> They still have to pay the sailors. The Cutty Sark had a capacity of 1,700 tons and a minimum complement of 28 [1]. By contrast Emma Maersk can carry 154,000 with only 13 Sailors [2]. The fuel savings are probably not worth ~200 times higher labor costs.

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

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_M%C3%A6rsk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_M%C3%A6rsk)</comment></comment>


Gitea 1.10.0 Released - <AUTHOR> https://blog.gitea.io/2019/11/gitea-1.10.0-is-released/ <comment><USER2> Gitea is simply an amazing piece of software and a big thank you to all the contributors!

It really is comparable to Gitlab without the heft that Gitlab brings. Moreover, it is really straightforward to install and you can run it on a really low-end machine which makes it perfect to get up and running just to try it out.

<comment><USER3> I don't think the comparison to GitLab is reasonable: Gitlab brings a much broader feature set and has a much larger product vision [https://about.gitlab.com/direction/maturity/](https://about.gitlab.com/direction/maturity/) I'm mostly missing a native CI-support.

I do agree, that most "simply a GitHub-like web frontend for Git"-purposes Gitea sounds like a really awesome deal if simplicity and functionality. Looking at [https://docs.gitea.io/en-us/comparison/](https://docs.gitea.io/en- us/comparison/) is really an impressive list.

<comment><USER4> Native CI is definitely going to cause a user base shift, drone-ci does the job but in my opinion the decision to not let users directly edit env vars makes it pretty annoying to maintain simple configurations - where you don't deport environment variables to some external secret manager which you'de put a key for in your CI, when such complexity is not needed for a project.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great software and I've started using it for some hobby stuff on my Macbook. Some of the default setup locations such as /usr/local/bin/custom/app.ini could be better, heck app.ini in that location could be anything! The FAQ at [https://docs.gitea.io/en-us/faq/](https://docs.gitea.io/en-us/faq/) does give a clear indication of where things go, so I put all my stuff in ~/.gitea and, a simple alias takes care of starting Gitea: alias giteaweb='gitea web -c ~/.gitea/custom/conf/gitea.ini'

<comment><USER6> I run mine in a container with a volume for persistence

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Pretty stoked to try this out... Just dug into Gitea about a week or two ago. The make sure checks have passed will be a nice feature to make sure I don't fat finger things.

I just wish migrating from Gogs was more straightforward, if you're on a newer version of Gogs, it seems like an odyssey. I got about halfway through and then saw I was going to have to upgrade version by version, and just bailed. With that said, I'll probably just migrate the bits of data out PSQL by hand that I want from Gogs since that seems easier and less error prone.

<comment><USER8> Recently moved from gogs to gitea and yes, it can sound a bit daunting to upgrade version by version, but probably didn't took more than 5 min. Give it a try, i bet it sounds more complicated than it is!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I understand that Gitea focus on light-weight, painless instance: Just run a binary and you're done. That far I understand why I would choose Gitea over GitLab.

But what are the USPs between Gitea and [https://gogs.io/](https://gogs.io/) ? Both Go-based. Both using the same claims. Actually from the very first impression Gitea looks more polished than Gogs.

 _Update:_ Okay - I learned that Gogs a) has only one maintainer and b) can not make pull requests between branches of forked repositories. Also [https://docs.gitea.io/en-us/comparison/](https://docs.gitea.io/en- us/comparison/) provides a first overview.

<comment><USER9> Gitea was originally a "community fork" of gogs

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > I just wish migrating from Gogs was more straightforward, if you're on a > newer version of Gogs,

For me it's either Gitlab (huge) or Gogs (small). Open source is great, thus Gitea could be forked and add more features. -- My instance works on Gogs fine since a long time, no reason to migrate.

<comment><USER11> There are some issues with Gogs not working with tags on Drone CI. I wouldn't have switched otherwise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I had thought that Gitea would be self-hosted.

<comment><USER13> That's actually interesting, but there is some work already done in that area, but Gitea opposed to GitLab is not a company (nor group of $$-oriented people), but just a community-based effort, so I would not expect someone will invest in infrastructure and maintenance. However, it does not deny the fact they actually self-host the experimental/staging area[0] and time have been invested to migrate outside GitHub[1].

[0]: [https://gitea.com/explore/repos](https://gitea.com/explore/repos)

[1]: [https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/issues/1029](https://github.com/go- gitea/gitea/issues/1029)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Thanks and congratulations! This may be the project that finally gets me to invest in learning go.

</comment><comment><USER15> Gitea is just incredible.</comment>


MyGengo launches $30,000 API bounty - <AUTHOR> http://mygengo.com/services/api/lab

<comment><USER2> Interestingly, since the API costs money to use, they could actually _make_ a killing from this. looking forward to the end of this.

<comment><AUTHOR> The API itself doesn't cost money to use but the translation service does though. Devs can charge a small overhead fee to their clients and profit themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Our mistake - actually the total prize money up for grabs is over $45,000

I'll throw up the updated number after some sleep!

<comment><USER3> Throw up as in (puke)?

Makes me sound like a hard-ass manager... :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow, that's a great way to get your API integrated all over the place. Win-win for the company and developers.

</comment><comment><USER5> awesome! can't wait to see what people come up with

</comment><comment><USER6> sounds exciting! might take a look myself</comment>


CHS: A mysterious cannabis-related illness - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/cannabinoid-hyperemesis-syndrome-underdiagnosed-canada-1.5362007 <comment><USER2> The weed zealots have been denying this for awhile now.</comment>


A Fair Day's Wage: The Return of Fair Pay? - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/09/fair-days-wage <comment><USER2> I don't understand how you have a discussion about this without discussing the total benefits an employee receives.

i.e. if may salary remains constant at $30k a year but the employer portion of my health care coverage is $6k/year and growing at 15% - I do not have stagnant wages (i just didn't have a say in how they were spent)

<comment><USER3> > I don't understand how you have a discussion about this without discussing > the total benefits an employee receives.

In the UK, most employer-provided 'benefits' are taxable in that their value is deducted from the individual's personal allowance, i.e. the amount they earn before paying income tax.

So it's even worse; not only does the employer 'spend' your salary on benefits you may not want, but it also hits your wallet by increasing the amount of income tax you pay.

One of the first things I do at a new employer is opt-out of as many benefits as possible. They do not compensate with additional cash, but it reduces my tax burden.

<comment><USER4> err? do you actualy work in the Uk? the only benefit that it can make sense to opt out of is company car -

The major benefit in USA terms is health is all ready provided by the NHS.

Do you realy opt out of the pension? when I worked for a big company that was worth 6% tax free - let alone the share save schemes

<comment><USER3> > the only benefit that it can make sense to opt out of is company car

And private health insurance, gym membership and dental insurance, which knocked £900 out of my personal allowance until I cancelled them at my last work place.

<comment><USER4> Did you not ask if you coudl have the equivelent benefits added to your pension ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What's not mentioned in the article: if your workers don't have to work at two or, worse, three jobs to feed their family, they will be able to use their free time to actually relax, thus being more healthy and productive.

And they are likely to be able to spend the money they earn in local stores - because when I'd have to work 80h+ weeks, I simply would not have time for any shopping except food - and everything else on amazon, where I can shop 24/7.

</comment><comment><USER6> One thing to note is that the weaker the social safety net is the more reason companies have to pay their employees more. If a company can have part-time (or sometimes full-time) employees who also receive food-stamps and Medicaid from the government then they've effectively found a free subsidy. The government is keeping their employees healthy for them.

But if an employee directly depends on a company for their wellbeing and the wellbeing of their family then that company must take responsibility for those things if they want their employees to be happy and healthy long term.

A fix, probably not very efficient, is if a company's employees are receiving X dollars in aid from the government, then the first X dollars of profit go towards paying that back. I think it's good we have social safety nets and they should provide value to business in the form of healthy and able-bodied workers, but companies shouldn't be leeching value in perpetuity from them. If an employee of a company is on food stamps then that company is simply not taking care of them.

It bothers me that we have people who work full-time who still collect benefits because the companies they work for aren't taking care of them. We don't fix their machinery if they refuse to pay for the upkeep, but we do pick up the tab when they refuse to pay for the upkeep of their human capital.

<comment><USER7> Wouldn't another, simpler fix be to stop providing government aid to those employees? This would stop the government from subsidizing companies that pay low wages. Suppose the market rate for someone is $30k. The employee hired wouldn't particularly care if he gets 20k from the corporation and 10k from government benefits. If you removed the government benefits of 10k, that employee would still need to be compensated 30k to do that job. Therefore, the company would need to pick up that tab.

If you claim that the employee is desperate and would work for 20k, then why would the company even bother paying him the 20k in the first place, and instead pay him 10k instead (minimum wage issues aside)?

I think the article takes too narrow of a view of what a market wage is. It's not the bare minimum a company has to pay someone. It takes into account other factors such as retention, satisfaction and the talent you attract. As the article states, "increases in wages do, in fact, pay for themselves". Wouldn't that make it the market rate?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Increases in wages do, in fact, pay for themselves." -- Good management is hard to find.

</comment><comment><USER9> This question has no answer because the word "fair" has different meaning for everyone.

Somehow "fair" reminds me of "Atlas Shrugged", especially, when uttered by government officials.

<comment><USER10> Fair is a completely subjective definition, but I guess the idea is that through a democratic process society as a whole comes to an agreement as to what is 'fair'.

Instead of setting goals to pay people 'fairly' though, policymakers should be looking for ways to 1) make it easier for people to acquire 'middle class' jobs, and 2) make it easier for people to start their own business (remove employer protections + improved access to financing). There are 300+ million Americans that each have a unique perspective of this world. Each of these unique perspectives provide the opportunity to creatively solve a problem in a way that adds value to someone else, and start a business around it.

Of course only a small percentage will, but that number becomes even smaller when you can't start your own firm because your employer has locked up your IP that's unrelated to its core business, or you can't save up the $5-10K needed to finance a prototype of your idea because your 'middle class' wages are too low. If you make it easier for more people to start businesses (read: not protect existing businesses), you create more jobs and the 'fair' wages take care of themselves. Also, by forcing 'fair' wages on employers, you further reduce the ability for someone to start a new business (specifically in retail or food service) because their burn rate is now higher due to higher labor costs.</comment></comment>


The Internet lives in Dog years - <AUTHOR> http://startupblog.wordpress.com/2010/05/11/the-internet-lives-in-dog-years/

<comment><USER2> Not a bad analogy</comment>


Using covered cellphone camera to measure radiation - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.camdetector.radiationalarm

<comment><AUTHOR> Click "Read more" on the linked site for more details.

Video from calibration: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQqgJVilFX8](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQqgJVilFX8)

It's a project of 2 students: Michał Gumiela and Rafał Kozik.</comment>


Go vs. .NET Core in Terms of HTTP Performance - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/kataras/go-vsnet-core-in-terms-of-http-performance <comment><USER2> I don't think Iris is goto framework for go developers. I would like to see pure go based benchmark.

<comment><USER3> Its also on Windows. A prod go server isn't going to run on Windows.

<comment><USER4> And it's stolen from different sources and hated in the Go-community ........

[https://www.reddit.com/r/golang/comments/57w79c/why_you_real...](https://www.reddit.com/r/golang/comments/57w79c/why_you_really_should_stop_using_iris/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/golang/comments/57tmp1/why_you_shou...](https://www.reddit.com/r/golang/comments/57tmp1/why_you_should_not_use_iris_for_your_go_projects/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/golang/comments/6hmlod/githubcomkat...](https://www.reddit.com/r/golang/comments/6hmlod/githubcomkatarasiris_was_bought/)

[https://github.com/julienschmidt/httprouter/issues/148](https://github.com/julienschmidt/httprouter/issues/148)

etc. etc. etc. .................

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> [https://www.reddit.com/r/golang/comments/57w79c/why_you_real...](https://www.reddit.com/r/golang/comments/57w79c/why_you_really_should_stop_using_iris/)

/edit and the author of this post is ........ kataras, Gerasimos (Makis) Maropoulos. The one who stole source code for Iris, lied about everything, faked benchmarks, flattend git history quite often to hide his tracks and behaves like a dumb kid who got caught.

<comment><USER5> And considering the author of iris has apparently "cheated" on benchmarks before, I would be extra careful reading these benchmarks,since kataras is the author....

[http://www.florinpatan.ro/2016/10/why-you-should-not-use- iri...](http://www.florinpatan.ro/2016/10/why-you-should-not-use-iris-for- your-go.html)</comment></comment>


Apple iBeacons - <AUTHOR> http://www.loopinsight.com/2013/09/20/apple-ibeacons/ <comment><USER2> I've implemented this as a hackathon project a month ago (an iPhone serving as a broadcaster and an iPad serving as a receiver). It's an awesome technology with a lot of promise but my one BIG gripe is the imprecision of RSSI. At home, the proximity indicator was somewhat accurate. At the office the proximity indicator was not accurate at all - half the time it would be good but the other half it would show the unpredictbale/interchangeable RSSI whether the receiver was at a yelling distance or a whispering distance. (Maybe due to signal interference)?

If RSSI cannot be relied upon, it severely limits the utility of iBeacons. A "binary" result (beacon found, beacon not found) can be useful but not near as useful as a reliable distance indicator. For example, my goal for the hackathon was to see if equipment in a lab could be activated by walking around with your phone. If the phone cannot tell that I am closer to equipment A than equipment B, then there is no point and moreover, we should not be referring to this new technology as "micro locations".

Having said that, I know of a company here in Minneapolis piloting iBeacons as indoor navigation (to find your way in a mall for example). I don't know if their technology works because they've found a way to ensure more correct RSSI readings, or if they are simply relying on the assumption that stores are far enough apart.

<comment><USER3> Since you've got some experience with it, do you have any idea how hard/easy it'd be to get an iBeacon working from a Raspberry Pi equipped with a Bluetooth dongle?

<comment><USER2> I used Apple-provided bluetooth capabilities so my experience is probably not particularly relevant to Raspberry Pi, sorry. One thing to think about is battery life, unless you only need to pair the broadcaster and the receiver once. What I mean is, if you have a listener that is constantly scanning for a signal and doing some logic depending on the signal strength, you are bound to have battery life as your biggest challenge and potentially a deal breaker to any real use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This gigaom post has more details on iBeacon: [http://gigaom.com/2013/09/10/with-ibeacon-apple-is-going- to-...](http://gigaom.com/2013/09/10/with-ibeacon-apple-is-going-to-dump-on- nfc-and-embrace-the-internet-of-things/)

<comment><USER5> _iBeacon's range is 50 meters (typical Bluetooth range), or 2,500 square meters._

That's some weird antenna right there. Assuming it's omnidirectional with a 50m range (radius) then it would cover more like 7,800 square meters.

 _The range of Estimote's beacons is 50 meters, but the recommended range is 10 meters. If you go with the recommendation, you need 1 Estimote beacon for every 100 square meters._

More like 314 square meters.

<comment><USER6> _> 2,500 square meters _

I'm not sure it's a weird antenna. Looks like the author took 50^2 (square with edge length 50 m) instead of \pi 50^2 (the traditional interpretation of 50 m range).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm so glad this is out of NDA. My coworker and I rushed through our lunches at WWDC to play with this. The API is so easy, and possibilities of what it can be used with are so broad. The immediate massive downside is that it's iOS only. But, it's a relatively open spec, so porting some logic in a non-copied way should be possible.

<comment><USER8> It should be completely doable in Android 4.3, but you'll have to do it via the Bluetooth API instead of a location API.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think its everyones dream to walk into a store, type what you're looking for into your phone and see how far it is away from you.

How cheap would these have to be in order to make them cost effective to put into every day product packaging?

And would too many of these near each other cause too much interference?

This would be a great way to cut the store out of the solution and just go straight from product -> customer?

<comment><USER10> > I think its everyones dream to walk into a store, type what you're looking > for into your phone and see how far it is away from you.

Soon you won't even need to go to a store, the things you want will be dropped off to your home or business...

<comment><USER11> You mean like amazon prime? I'll admit amazon isn't always the cheapest, but with subscriptions and whatnot, its way nicer to have things mailed to me.

That said the environmental impact of shipped boxes may not be better overall. But damn is it convenient.

<comment><USER12> Google Shopping Express puts Amazon Prime to shame. Same-day delivery, and some of the pricing is cheaper than Amazon (some is more expensive). Selection is, of course, more limited since it's just started this year.

It's bagged up, so less cruft than Amazon which has to worry about freight delivery.

Neither does groceries, so I'm stuck with Safeway deliveries for that (which hasn't been a completely stellar experience).

I would be singing the praises of InstaCart, but they happened to no want to deliver to my area of the SF bay yet :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is informative:

[http://estimote.com/api/index.html](http://estimote.com/api/index.html)

Doesn't seem like there's a standard API yet.

</comment><comment><USER14> Besides Estimote, another startup that provides dev kit including Bluetooth LE Beacon and API is kontakt: [http://kontakt.io](http://kontakt.io)

<comment><USER15> Unfortunately, their pre-order link 404s.

<comment><USER16> They're back online. I had visited them yesterday and got 404s , as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> For people pursuing this, it's worth looking back at the successes and failures of Jini, from both technical and market perspectives.

<comment><USER18> What specifically has Jini got to do with this?

<comment><USER17> Jini was trying to solve the same sorts of problems. I mention it because when we look at a new technology, it's often instructive to look at older technologies that were trying to solve the same (or similar) problems. In particular, it's helpful to look at why they succeeded and why they failed.

For example, the "web services" community would have been well-served by looking at the successes and failures of CORBA, since the web services folks mostly replicated all the mistakes of CORBA.

<comment><USER19> Was that really an accident? I know many of the WS-* proponents liked to say, "This new web-based technology will be so much simpler than that crufty old CORBA junk." But in many cases it was the same companies with the same agendas doing the design and standardization work, so it's not too surprising that the result was more or less bound to go down the path of CORBA. The main difference, and of course the main motivation, was a protocol that would run on port 80 and have a chance to be "web-routable" through firewalls.

<comment><USER17> That's a really good point. Certainly the product vendors had the same motivations. But at the time I was often disappointed when I listened to the conversations of developers I worked with, because I rarely heard anyone draw parallels between the two. It was frustrating to work on projects where we'd be six months in and people would be surprised that the ORBs - er, I mean web service platforms - had difficulties talking to one another.

<comment><USER20> It wasn't just the product vendors. The people on the two specs were also the same. WS-* was literally the ex-CORBA contributors reimplementing all the same stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> There's another company with iBeacon style sensors that I've seen at ArtPrize in Michigan called GeLo: www.gelosite.com

<comment><USER8> There is also Tile ([http://www.thetileapp.com/](http://www.thetileapp.com/)) which is using them as a way of distributing the finding of lost things. It's an interesting concept, but something I'd never do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Here is a good article that describes some scenarios that provide a glimpse into iBeacon's potential:

[http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9242393/Why_Apple_s_i...](http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9242393/Why_Apple_s_indoor_GPS_plan_is_brilliant)

</comment><comment><USER23> I have to imagine iBeacons could be more about the iwatch than the iPhone. I don't want to take my phone out of my pocket all the time to check for new notifications. I would glance at my watch.

</comment><comment><USER24> Can someone tell me how this compares to something like StickNFind? [https://www.sticknfind.com/](https://www.sticknfind.com/)

<comment><USER25> StickNFind or Tile are designed to be sticked to moving objects in order to estimate their location from owner phone.

Estimote is designed to be sticked to fixed location. Think about it as a lighthouse that is broadcasting its presence and location, so smartphones and other smart devices could estimate their relative location and get the context.

<comment><USER26> So that implies that the app locating these fixed beacons needs some kind of data backchannel to understand what it's seeing? Unless you have a cached map of that particular store and it's beacons already in your device, right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Does anyone know if there is an open version of these motes? And what phones other than the iPhone support bluetooth low energy?

<comment><USER8> See [http://www.bluetooth.com/Pages/Bluetooth-Smart- Devices.aspx](http://www.bluetooth.com/Pages/Bluetooth-Smart-Devices.aspx)

The Galaxy S3 and S4 have home grown BLE stacks and Android 4.3 has finally announced BLE support in the stack so it should show up on Android phones that get the update (the hardware has been there for ages.) Blackberry 10 announced support this summer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Isn't this just another spin on NFC?

<comment><USER29> With greater range. NFC has a practical range of about 4cm; iBeacon has a range of about 10-20m.

<comment><USER28> Ah, then it must be Bluetooth Low Energy.

<comment><USER30> Correct, it's also not based on RFID like NFC is, and so can in theory be used for a whole lot more.

<comment><USER31> There are lots of cool things, easiest way to get started on the peripheral side is to buy a TI Dev kit "Cow Bell" [http://www.ti.com/tool/cc2541dk- sensor?DCMP=blestack_ota&HQS...](http://www.ti.com/tool/cc2541dk- sensor?DCMP=blestack_ota&HQS=blestack_ota-pr-tf4) , its pretty cool. Temperature sensor, Magnetometer, Humidity, Pressure etc. you will have to flash it to support HID instead of GATT.

<comment><USER30> This is awesome! I've been looking for something like this for a while, thanks a lot for the tip.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> PayPal is building an iBeacon too for payments in store.

</comment><comment><USER18> It's worth noting that iOS devices themselves can serve as beacons - so, for example a payment terminal app running on an iPad can announce itself to nearby iPhones.

<comment><USER25> Hi, this is Jakub, Co-founder of Estimote (YC S13).

That's correct and any iOS device (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch) could be turned into a beacon.

We have even developed a Virtual Beacon app you could already download from the App Store and simulate beacon and proximity: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/estimote-virtual- beacon/id68...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/estimote-virtual- beacon/id686915066)

If one wants to pickup the Virtual Beacon's signals programmatically then our API website could be helpful where we have included source code of few apps [http://www.estimote.com/api](http://www.estimote.com/api)</comment></comment>


Notmuch: command-line email search and tagging - <AUTHOR> http://keithp.com/blogs/notmuch/

<comment><USER2> Cool. I've been enjoying sup on a daily basis for quite some time now, and it's great. C-speed search and robust emacs integration sound wonderful; it's too bad these features sprung up inside a different client... but it's good to have options. I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes.</comment>


Yahoo sending mass SPAM - <AUTHOR> This is only spam email from one hour:<p>firstname.lastname@example.com email@example.com email@example.com firstname.lastname@example.com email@example.com email@example.com <comment><USER2> It's probably not yahoo proper sending the spam. Likely their account creation was either hacked, or a new/faster method for creating accounts is not capable. Not to say that yahoo hasn't sold out their customers before.

I stopped using yahoo mail, when they would distribute (sell) your account email address faster than you could change the default privacy settings (quite a while ago).</comment>


Satellites detect 'thousands' of new ocean-bottom mountains - <AUTHOR> http://m.bbc.com/news/science-environment-29465446 <comment><USER2> I hope the U.S. Navy incorporates this into their nautical charts, but, sadly, I doubt they will. I wonder if this data would have prevented the 2004 undersea collision of the USS San Francisco. see, e.g., [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_San_Francisco_(SSN-711)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_San_Francisco_\(SSN-711\))

<comment><USER3> They had the data. VMS indicated the navigational hazard but they have ignored it. It was a combination of insufficient training and poor chart review procedures.

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure if this is meant to contradict my comment somehow, but I think we are saying the same thing -- read differently, it sounds like you might be suggesting they don't even need the new data. Whether on VMS, or notice to mariners, or whatever, what they had was a report of discolored water. Different, therefore from new data revealing underwater topography.

Removed redundant and pedantically incorrect extra use of word "new".

<comment><USER4> It's, "new data revealing 'actual/correct' underwater topography".

Not, "new data revealing 'new' underwater topography."

Sorry if that sounds pedantic, but it's an important distinction imo, these 'underwater mountains' didn't come into existence recently.

<comment><USER2> Obviously, but I edited my comment. My inner pedant jumps for joy.

<comment><USER4> 10 days late; but... As it should. <3

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> They are inferring mountains and trenches based on the observed effect of their gravity on the water above. But can't there be mass concentrations that aren't mountains, like the lunar maria?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_concentration_(astronomy)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_concentration_\(astronomy\))

</comment><comment><USER6> Can someone tell us the importance of this discovery?

<comment><USER7> Its mainly scientific.

Plate tectonics theory was born by looking at the ocean floor. During second world war, in the Atlantic, there was huge effort by both parties to obtain good quality maps of the ocean floor. This was to drive/combat the german U-boats. In addition, "new" sensitive magnetic devises were developed to detect large bodies of steel (e.g. submarines). After war (during 50's and 60's) these new data came out and researchers found several striking features: first, the ocean basis were not deeper in the middle but, on the contrary, were deeper just by the continents. In the middle they found a mountain chain that goes from pole to pole with an average height os 5000m (over seafloor, still submerged). Actually this is the larger mountain chain on Earth.

Second, they found that seafloor rocks have a permanent magnetization. This is not surprising giving their composition, but the ming blogging feature is that this magnetization has a clear pattern of stripes parallel to the mid Atlantic mountain chain.

These two observations, that didn't fit at all with the theories of Earth evolution of the moment, were the main triggers of the new Plate Tectonics theory. Nowadays, despite there is little doubt on how the Earth and oceanic plates behave, it is not clear how is the exact mechanism driving tectonic plates.

The thermal state of tectonic plates, hot at the mid oceanic ridge and cold near continents, explains the observed bathymetry. Nevertheless there is no agreement in the geophysical community on how this cooling happen. The first order is absolutely clear, but if you go to the details two theories compete to explain observations (the so called "half-space cooling" vs. "Plate Model"). Detailed bathymetry is key to distinguish which one is closer to what happen in Nature. We need better observations that the currently available to advance in our understanding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Clarification for the busy reader: these new mountains are newly _detected_ , not newly created.

<comment><USER9> Thank you. Thought The Old Ones were returning there for a sec.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Duplicate of

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8408514](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8408514)

submitted 22 hours ago (alas, without discussion, so it's good to see some comments here). I see how that was done.

<comment><USER11> The submitter of the current post did just fine.

Reposts are ok if it's a good story that hasn't had much attention [1]. The duplicate detector is deliberately left porous to allow for this. Otherwise the luck of the draw would prevent many—if not most—good stories from being seen.

1\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

<comment><USER10> I was by no means complaining, but always liked Colin Wright's reports of duplicate posts, because I'd wonder "Haven't I seen that before?"</comment></comment></comment>


What A Hacker Learns After A Year In Marketing - <AUTHOR> http://brooklynhacker.com/post/29901112213/what-a-hacker-learns-after-a-year-in-marketing <comment><USER2> I come from a marketing background, and I have to say that sometimes the negative view of marketers is completely deserved. All it takes is some kid in business school to watch The Social Network and decide he needs a "code monkey" to build his awesome idea. He becomes the "idea" guy, tries to find someone to give 10% equity to build everything, and gets ready to snort cocaine in Palo Alto.

But if you've ever worked with a truly talented marketer, it's an incredible experience. The way they can take something, craft the messaging to it's JUST RIGHT and find the proper channels to market on - it's a beautiful thing. But for someone who doesn't come from a marketing background, it's very hard to discern.

I'm sure there are really bad hackers (or do we still call them "hackers?"), but if you're a marketer it's hard to tell the difference.

Generally disrespect comes from a lack of willingness to understand what actually happens on the other side. I think it should be mandatory for every marketer to learn how to code - even if it's some basic HTML/CSS/JavaScript. Hackers should all have to try and acquire customers, and see that it's not all sending out a couple of tweets or emailing a TechCrunch columnist. Whether you consider the other side a "code monkey" or a "non-technical idiot," you're in big trouble. It takes two hands to clap, and both are immensely difficult to accomplish.

You have to specialize, but you also have to understand.

<comment><USER3> _He becomes the "idea" guy, tries to find someone to give 10% equity to build everything, and gets ready to snort cocaine in Palo Alto._

I think marketers would be well served to do some self-marketing and figure out a way to spread the word that "idea guy" != "marketer". As you say, a truly talented marketer is something special. Most random "idea guy" types know bugger-all about marketing.

<comment><USER4> Actually in my experience, a lot of the best people in marketing are very much "idea guys". Some of them along the HN-hated template of "well just get some coder to knock it up" (being good at marketing doesn't automatically mean you understand anything about what technical people do..), some of them realise this isn't realistic or sensible.

<comment><USER3> _Actually in my experience, a lot of the best people in marketing are very much "idea guys"._

Right, marketers can (and probably should) be "idea guys", but not all "idea guys" are marketers. Most "idea guys" (in my experience) don't know much about anything at all. It's that distinction that I think real, professional, talented marketing people should try to make... otherwise they risk getting lumped in with the chumps.

 _Some of them along the HN-hated template of "well just get some coder to knock it up" (being good at marketing doesn't automatically mean you understand anything about what technical people do..)_

So this is where my opinion may be biased by my technical background, and where I may go against the grain a bit... but I think really good marketers (of technical products, that is) _should_ have at least a modicum of technical knowledge, and should understand exactly what their product does (if not the deep details of _how_ it does it), and should be able to articulate - in some detail - how their product addresses a customer problem. To my mind, not being able to do that, as a marketer, is shooting yourself in the foot.

<comment><USER4> When it comes to marketing technical stuff, I'm on the fence. As someone who works in marketing, and whose inner geek loves tech stuff, I agree with you in principle - however my experience has shown me plenty of people who really know little about what they're selling and yet do a fantastic job. Possibly the reverse of this experience is that maybe they're better at short-term sales, worse at actually giving customers what they want and therefore worse at keeping customers, I suspect this is the case.

But anyway, when I was talking about good marketers who don't understand tech stuff, I didn't mean people who are marketing the same tech products (such as Twilio). For example I was speaking to a client this morning, a fairly important guy in a company that makes certain types of consumer PC components. Ask him about several areas, such as PSUs, and he knows everything, in so much detail. But my conversation this morning was helping him work out who in his company he needed to speak to about creating a small landing page, and how to get the subdomain he wants. He doesn't know the meaning of any of the following: "DNS", "IP", "sub-domain". Great at marketing, great at understanding the products he markets, but if he had an idea that involved any coding, he wouldn't have a clue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I cannot stress how useful this is. When I came to the SF Bay Area I was working for Intel, but I too felt that some day I wanted to run my own company. My job at Intel was an engineering job but I spent all day interacting with the marketing group and the design engineers as a liason. I realized I had some built in assumptions about how 'easy' marketing was and I didn't even know what they did.

When I was recruited into Sun I had a choice to either take a job offered by Marketing (Carol Bartz was my boss' boss :-) or the kernel group. I chose Marketing because I really wanted to learn that skill. It was a hugely valuable choice. After 18 months I decided at my heart I was an engineer and switched over to the systems group, but having that knowledge gave me a new found respect for what marketing folks have to do, day in and day out.

That in turn let me recognize the difference between good marketers and mediocre ones, and to understand what they needed from engineering to communicate to future customers.

<comment><USER6> Killer story Chuck. You should write a post of your experience. That stretch in Sun's history is always something that fascinated me - never get tired hearing stories from that period.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was a bit hesitant to click the link, but I'm glad I did.

 _"As it turns out, the ones who do it well are rare and far less visible because - like good programmers - their work is a lot harder to notice."_

This sums my experience perfectly. It takes a long time to be able to understand who is good at something and who is not.

Pardon my language but many marketers are charlatans. When I first started in marketing I thought the charlatans were the ones who were good (incompetent people [me at that time] are the least competent at recognizing those who are good). Now, after a decade at it I can firmly agree with the statement above and I think it bodes very well for the author.

I believe the 2nd point is the most important to understand when trying to get good at marketing. The rest is ancillary to doing a great job, but having the data is essential to knowing _what_ to do.

I believe great marketers are like methodical scientists. They can put aside their own biases and test their hypothesis and analyze the data. Beyond that, they can look at the data in front of them, identify what they need to know more about, and discover things they did not expect. Through this they can affect change that improves the entire organization.

<comment><USER8> "I believe great marketers are like methodical scientists. They can put aside their own biases and test their hypothesis and analyze the data. Beyond that, they can look at the data in front of them, identify what they need to know more about, and discover things they did not expect. Through this they can affect change that improves the entire organization."

GREAT quote. Bravo. Way to put into words what I struggle to say. Thanks.

<comment><USER6> +1, but to be fair to the discipline, I think there are fair number of posers in any important line of work. Programming is plagued by the same affliction, as anyone who has ever had to fill head count will tell you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> That was a great little read. Whenever I try to explain to my developer friends why my job is important, I'm usually shrugged off rudely. This guy gets it, experience is the only way to learn WHY marketing is so essential.

My humble request to developers: Stop being dismissive of marketers, they are an essential part of the equation.

<comment><USER9> I think it goes back to what Rob highlights in the post.. the bad marketing is what sticks out. When we think of marketing, we think of booth babes, commercials with bad actors saying awkward things, and airheads who don't understand their business or product.

The best "sales" guy I ever met was a guy who just stopped and listened. He would ask a few questions, work to understand the underlying problems, and if he couldn't help directly, he'd put you in touch with someone who could.. and then buy a beer the next time he saw you.

I believe marketing should be the same way.

(Disclosure: I report to the OP at Twilio.)

<comment><USER8> You're entirely right, the good sales person and the good marketer spark the conversation and keep it going. They shouldn't be the dominant voice. See my reply below as it pertains to this.

Sidenote: I love Twilio as a company and have ever since you guys sponsored a Startup Weekend in Chicago about 3 years ago. I wish y'all were hiring.

<comment><USER10> They are hiring! <http://www.jobscore.com/jobs/twilio/list>

<comment><USER8> You're right! I actually checked before submitting that comment, I should have said, "I wish you guys were hiring IN CHICAGO."

<comment><USER9> If you're interested in Developer Evangelism in Chicago, email me. We make it there but not nearly often enough.

I'm Austin based.. and it's way better than SF. ;)

<comment><USER8> Austin is a town I want to live in some day! I'm emailing you now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you're a coder, build something and figure out how to take it to market. Then, and only then, you'll understand marketing.

If you're a marketer, try and build something. Then, and only then, you'll understand development.

There's no better way to learn than to fail miserably.

<comment><USER6> I hear you here Dan, but I have to admit seeing it done _right_ is pretty powerful as well. Working with Danielle Morrill and Lynda Smith in particular strongly accelerated my understanding of this business discipline.

I think there's room in the universe for both approaches.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm a writer and editor. I've done marketing and financial writing, and the job I'm starting in two weeks will require me to do technical writing. I've also started learning to code, because I'm interested in it and because it's an important part of how important systems in the world work.

There are common attitude problems on both sides of the the technical/non- technical fence. From the non-technical side, there's a sense of unfairness, that people with the interest to pursue technical subjects are guaranteed 80k/year jobs right out of college, that they are stuck-up and dismiss the ideas and opinions of people with fewer credentials, etc. Like most stereotypes almost none of that is true. My coder friends are some of the most generous, respectful people I've ever met. It's much harder even for someone trained in CS to get a job than it looks from outside. HN is largely technical --you know that there are reasons for how technical people behave even when it might seem strange to outsiders.

The most common mistake I see technical people make about non-technical people is in the area of algorithms and specifications. To but it simply: in a lot of disciplines, there aren't any. The common misunderstanding is that there are formulas you can use, or rules you can follow, to get the result you want in non-technical disciplines. There are huge numbers of artifacts in the world that aren't empirically measurable. Take a pair of jeans and say, "Is this OPTIMAL?" The question is as nearly meaningless as makes no difference. Look at a wedding bouquet, or a corporate event, or a logo. The people who make these things are constantly making choices informed by their education, experience and perception, but those choices aren't based on data that's easily quantified. At best, you start to notice patterns that work and patterns that don't work, which is something that I think can also be said about software development.

</comment><comment><USER3> Good stuff. I guess, as hackers go, I was always a little weird, in that I always found marketing fascinating. But over the past year or so (and especially the past 6 months) I've been diving into marketing _big time_ , studying as much marketing (and, to a lesser extent, sales) material as I can, and starting to do things like putting together a tentative marketing plan for our startup.

Wow. The OP is right, this stuff is NOT easy. Here's one for you... a guy named Chet Holmes, who is a fairly well known marketing guru (and who unfortunately passed away recently, R.I.P.) spoke a lot about "core stories" and how "market data trumps product data," and suggests that the "story" you tell about your product be informed by data _about the market of the people you're selling too_. So, if you're selling software to,say, bolt & screw manufacturers in the Southeast, you need to know what's going on with bolt & screw manufacturers in the Southeast, what the trends are, what problems they face, and how to talk to them in terms that relate to _their problems_ first and foremost, and NOT your product first and foremost.

So, here's your homework... go out and start researching bolt and screw manufacturing in the Southeast, identify some meaningful trends and patterns, come up with hard numbers, economic issues, etc., and then find a way to use that to use that to tie your product to a problem those guys are having. And now write up a compelling educational brief for that market, which tells a good story, and educates, while contributing to demand for what you do.

Now come up with a great headline for your story that will capture someone's interest.

Now figure out how to get it in front of the people that need to see it.

Now call them and try to get a meeting so you can talk to them in person about the issues at hand.

Now do this for each identifiable target market you're pursuing (note: I'm referring mainly to B2B scenarios here, since that's what we do).

But wait, there's more... you also need to think about your "ultimate strategic position" and how all of your messaging contributes to that positioning, and about how to achieve "top of mind awareness" among your audience. And for extra giggles, coordinate PR campaigns, manage events, do market research which is more "product focused," etc., etc., etc.

Nah, this stuff is definitely not easy. It's hard in a way that's different from hacking (which is what makes it fun, to be honest), but hard nonetheless. I really have a newfound respect for the really good marketing people out there, and it's growing as I learn more about what marketing entails. Hint: It's not just throwing a few Google Adwords out there and waiting for the money to roll in (well, not for most of us, anyway).

(aside: I'm taking a very broad view of marketing here. I see marketing as a strategic component, which entails selecting the ideal customer segments, driving product decisions, receiving input/feedback from customers, determining the vision the company wants to communicate to the market, and communicating that to the market... as well as the tactical elements such as "create brochure," "create whitepaper," "create screencast," "organize PR campaign," "do focus group," "take pizza and t-shirts to hackathon," etc.)

<comment><USER13> I'm in a very similar position currently. Do you have any recommendations on resources/books to study? Actions to take?

I've been in the process of trying to redefine how we talk and show our product, build product flyers, discount flyers, pricing sheets -- all for using at conferences we attend and for attaching to e-mails. In addition, learning about the customer segment is something I've been trying -- but it is HARD!

E.g.: \- How much can you really talk to your existing customers, or potential customers, to gather information before stepping over the line?

Building a great understanding of your customers is absolutely necessary to be an effective marketer. Building that understanding, and having a sense of how tuned-in you are, is hard and something I haven't yet figured out.

<comment><USER14> _E.g.: - How much can you really talk to your existing customers, or potential customers, to gather information before stepping over the line?_

My tip on that would be to seek out the customers that are having the biggest problems / most pain. You'll find that they're _really_ happy to talk for as long as you like to help solve those problems.

They're also the most forgiving when it comes to any marketing missteps you make - since you're helping with one of their big pain points.

I've found a tendency among some dev-oriented folk to treat the "important" customers - the ones that you need most - with kid gloves. In fact those customers tend to need you just as much as you need them, so are much more willing to talk, advise and forgive than the larger market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Nice piece - as a coder turned entrepreneur, the sales and marketing side of things has been exceptionally hard for me. It's a battle everyday, and if I could turn back time I would have ensured I worked in a marketing department, or with people skilled in the area before embarking down my current path...

That said, I'm in the hole now, learning as fast as I can, solo. Can anyone make some current/and also seminal marketing book must-haves?

<comment><USER16> > as a coder turned entrepreneur ...

As an entrepreneur turned doer-of-everything, I recommend you reconsider your path unless you're truly confident in your ability to execute on whatever skills you learn in RL, for real money. I'll give you vague suggestions anyway, but please realize you not only must have the sales and marketing down pat, you need serious money and cajones to go "solo", else you better have an impossible string of luck or one idea of the century after another.

This is not directed at you in particular, but HN is no different than other forums in other industries: you have a ton of people fronting like Jesus but who make shit revenue, then you have the people who make shit revenue, meanwhile 5% or less of the total posters are truly raking it in. Don't be willing to forefeit your field of specialty and competitive advantage after getting starry eyes on [insert website here], and 2) when you go to learn sales and marketing it is critical you learn only from truly proven people.

Well how about some suggestions: everything from copywriting classics (Ogilvy), contemporary marketing video course legends (Kern), to psychology and successful sales trainers.

stackthatmoney.com (not an affiliate)

If you are a coder, you have a significant advantage in that - assuming you're willing to approach your marketing and sales learnings like you approached learning to code - you can become better at sales and marketing than a (surprisingly) large number of life long salespeople and marketers. The question is, are you going to make the sacrifices necessary to both learn it all and then go out and do it.

<comment><USER15> Thanks for the tips - I've worked as a freelancer for the last 10 years, and have now run my own company for the last 2.5 years, so doer-of-everything is in my nature, and its just a matter of making the decision to really knuckle down with study and hard work.

For me, it's really about being frank with myself and rapidly addressing the areas of my knowledge and experience that are lacking, even if part of me doesn't want to. I'm surviving in my own business though, and my stronger concentration on sales and marketing is what will push me to the next level. Thanks again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wrote about the exact opposite: what I've learned about getting users without any marketing or PR.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4415473>

I am posting this here in case someone who's good in marketing or PR sees it and reaches out.

</comment><comment><USER18> I can absolutely attest to this. Rob came to a hackathon I participated in a few months ago at the University of Miami. He did a great job and really made Twilio seem totally awesome. He was great to work with and really pushed my team to reach above our potential.

<comment><USER6> Thanks yo! I just wore my UHack shirt the other day at the Red Sox game and a couple Hurricane alumni gave me a high five.

Had a great time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> There is a big difference between marketing for a brand and now always knowing your exact quantitative output in monetary value and performance based marketing. I work in performance based marketing running a variety of online ad campaigns for a number of clients. At the end of the day you always know exactly how much revenue you brought in and at what margins. It's exciting, creative, and extremely data driven. In this day and age marketing is partly creative, but is also subject to a variety of algorithms and mental calculations.

</comment><comment><USER20> _Now I can code all goddamn day and probably never achieve the same impact as that little conversation in the middle of a busy conference._

Correlation is not causation. Sounds like the author is about to enter that glossy pink world of hybris where you think the words that come out of your mouth is what makes the world go 'round. ;)

I'm not saying those words of encouragement where worthless, but they did not cause the development and launch of a successful business.

</comment><comment><USER21> _"... Sales and marketing were skills I just didn't have and were I to ask others to entrust their livelihoods and their families in such an enterprise, it would be incumbent upon me to learn. ..."_

Business/marketing readers, this would be the line you give back to hackers who say learn to code and point number 4, _"You Can Learn To Schmooze"_ highlights a hackers weakest link, people.

</comment><comment><USER22> It's good to be exposed to this sort of thing as an engineer. What it teaches you to do is how to make an impact--you can figure out that feature X, despite seeming boring and uncool, will dramatically change your business. That's a great skill to have and will definitely help your career in the long run.

<comment><USER6> I hope so. The strange effect has been it has up-leveled my community impact for the developer communities in New York I care most about. Learning this stuff has definitely helped me converse better with my own kind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Thank you for giving a little bit of reputation for our trade of skills around here :)

<comment><USER6> It's tough work. Not sure I'll ever be good enough at it to be a marketer, but hats off to you lot. It's tough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> WRONG TITLE: This post is about developer evangelism than marketing lessons. Please make sure you know what you're talking about @author

<comment><USER25> Developer evangelism is marketing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Old-style marketing is where you run around to meetings and conferences, build relationships, convince people one on one. Old-style marketing is dead. I say this as an old-style marketer.

Why dead? Old-style isn't repeatable, it doesn't scale, and you can't train for it. Old-style is expensive, and doesn't mesh with developer culture.

Growth hacking has replaced old-style marketing. (google it!) Growth hacking has super-scale, repeatability, measurabilty. Growth hacking is code-driven - it is developer culture.

IMHO the best approach is Steve Blank style customer development, followed by product development and growth hacking. Developer culture top to bottom.

<comment><USER27> It's not dead. Far from it. You still need to have meetings and conferences. The amount will just depend on your industry.

I really like the idea of growth culture, but thinking that it will apply to all industries is short sighted IMO.

I run a marketing analytics groups and I'm an ex-hacker/ex-database analyst (C/perl/php/mysql/postgresql/SAS/Oracle).

Most of the good marketers making their way to the leadership positions with digital marketing in my n=1 perception have a mix of marketing and hacking on their resume.

I find the two skills very complimentary.

<comment><USER26> Well, I have to agree. How you go to market depends on your business and industry.

But to the extent that you can align your business with growth-hacking style marketing, the better off you're gonna be. IMHO.</comment></comment></comment>


Mac malware signed with Apple ID infects activist's laptop - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/05/mac-malware-signed-with-apple-id-infects-activists-laptop/ <comment><USER2> Headline says "sighed with Apple ID" as if that's a bad thing, but it's actually a good thing, as it means Apple has already revoked the Apple ID (and presumably the associated certificate), so as soon as your computer updates its certificate revocation list, it will refuse to run the application (even if you try to bypass gatekeeper).

<comment><USER3> Good and bad. Actually, bad right up until Apple revokes the cert.

<comment><USER4> Gatekeeper really can't do much against a spear phishing attack. If someone's running a scam specifically to target a single person or a small group of people, and has spent the time and energy figuring out how to get them to open a malicious file, having an Apple ID is a $100 speed bump.

Gatekeeper is meant to prevent a wide-ranging attack. If you've got someone custom crafting an attack vector for you specifically, you've got some serious problems. I don't think Gatekeeper adds any more false security than an antivirus app would, and I don't know of _any_ software that'd prevent an attack like this.

At best, it adds a small amount of information for authorities to try to track the attack. I doubt it'll be fruitful, but it's better than nothing.

<comment><USER5> What I don't like about Gatekeeper is that there is no way to revoke Apple's cert and replace it with another. Not that that would protect the activist in question, but it would certainly make a company machine secure against this kind of attack.

<comment><USER2> If I understand you correctly, it would also prevent you from launching _any_ codesigned application, including the OS-provided ones, since they would all be considered to have an invalid code signature.

So yeah, I guess in a certain light, a machine that can't launch apps is definitely secure.

<comment><USER5> Good point. I think you half misunderstood; their certificate should be replaceable so that you disallow third-party software from developers in their developer program and allow it from your company only or vendor A only. Obviously one would need to implicitly allow certain OS processes and Finder for the system to work, but my point is basically that we should not be beholden to Apple beyond that, the CA should be something we can choose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I posted numerous stuff on Facebook. Critical of both our government (US) and Israel. Then I noticed a lot of Spear phishing emails ostensibly sent from my facebook friends. I use an alias on facebook and they addressed me by my alias name (something friends wouldn't do) so I knew what the nature of the email was. Seems like governments are investing a lot in electronically targeting outspoken individuals.

<comment> brown9-2 Or perhaps your Facebook friends had their own accounts randomly hacked and phishing messages were sent to every one of the account's Facebook friends.

At any given point in time, half of America is posting some sort of critical message about the government online.

<comment><USER6> So that was my first thought. I accused them of carelessly falling for phishing and other stuff. But they had not seen any emails from their facebook friends or any other phishing attempts. And it seem like I was being targeted by various different facebook friends. Which increased the odds of me being the target.

<comment><USER7> Facebook plays fast and loose with data, perhaps one of your friends used a FB integrated service at some time which captured their friend list (e.g. you).

<comment><USER6> >perhaps one of your friends used a FB integrated service

Again that's what I thought too. But it was coming from different friends. Which means all of them must have done the same thing.

I also sent the email to my friend who works at facebook for investigation in case it was some service that wasn't playing by the rules.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In a way, I prefer malware to be signed. If nothing is signed, essentially everything has full permissions, so we'll ignore that part for now, and just look at the differences once malware is signed.

First and foremost, it cost $100 to get the signature. It was paid somehow. Hello money trail, this is way more information on malware authors / pushers than we tend to get. If they somehow obfuscated every bit of data in that account to the point that it's worthless, then it's merely identical to it lacking a signature, no worse.

Second, it can be revoked. This _severely_ limits the spread, reducing the total damage. Sure, the people prior to this are impacted, but they would be if it didn't have a signature, so again, no worse, no matter what.

Third, people click 'yeah, let this program do whatever the hell it wants' all the time, so the _lack_ of a signature really doesn't prevent its spread / limit the damage. Maybe for the techy-elite, but they're less likely to get this anyway. Probably more likely to run unnoticed because it's signed, but I'd argue not by much. Slightly worse.

</comment><comment><USER9> There was a relevant update to iTunes last night (or earlier this week) for both OS X and Windows. It is usually these types of updates i keep an eye out for, as it is most importantly an update to certificate validation.

CVE-2013-1014 as it impacts iTunes for Mac OS X v10.6.8 or later, Windows 7, Vista, XP SP2 or later (<http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5766>) -

"Impact: An attacker in a privileged network position may manipulate HTTPS server certificates, leading to the disclosure of sensitive information

Description: A certificate validation issue existed in iTunes. In certain contexts, an active network attacker could present untrusted certificates to iTunes and they would be accepted without warning. This issue was resolved by improved certificate validation."

There were almost forty other CVEs for iTunes on Windows. And just a last bit - the discussion and quality of submissions here at Hacker News has taken a substantial fucking nose dive in the last year. I change my name every so often, but i can tell you that i've been here long enough to say that.

</comment><comment><USER10> >the servers used to receive pilfered data from infected machines has been "sinkholed," Intego said. Sinkholing is the term for taking control of the Internet address used in malware attacks so white hats can ensure that compromised computers don't continue to report to servers operated by attackers.

I'd be interested to know how this works? How can you just "take control" over a server/IP address like that? Is there some law that allows botnet control servers to be seized?

<comment><USER11> mailto:firstname.lastname@example.com?subject=ToS%20Violation

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was confused why the submission title specifically mentioned that the laptop belonged to an activist, but the end of the article indicates the persons life might be endangered as a result. I can't decide if this is sensationalized or not.

<comment><USER13> It seems to be quoting a tweet by Jacob Appelbaum. I think that the idea could be that they don't know who put the malware there. As this person was an activist, it's possible that it was there by the government this person was opposing. How does the Angolan government treat activists?

I imagine that if a similar thing happened to an Egyptian activist during Mubarak's time in power that it would not be such a stretch to say such a thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I first read that as Apple's ID And thought it was like the Microsoft certificate attack.

Looks like Macs market share is growing. Was this distributed in the store?

<comment><USER13> Probably not. The article said it was from a link in n email. As this was a spearphishing attack, the attacker probably doesn't care that the developer account doesn't work anymore.

<comment><USER15> Exactly. Everybody with 100 USD can get such an ID and then let it be revoked once discovered.

<comment><USER16> I thought the point of requiring a payment was that the ID could be traced back to a real person or company, so law enforcement could follow things like this up?

<comment><USER17> The point of requiring a payment is to make money. There is no meaningful mechanism to require a true "real human being" identity. It's no different than the presence of a TLS cert on an arbitrary domain, all it tells you is that the attacker cared enough to expend resources on the attack.

<comment><USER18> If Apple wanted to actually 'make money' from its developer program fees, it'd cost a lot more than $99 - even more than it cost before the Mac App Store. I realize that $99 may be a lot of money for people like you, so I appreciate that this might be difficult to grasp at first. Keep trying, I've got faith in you!

<comment><USER19> this isn't reddit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Not as bad as this

"Android malware attack spreads via e-mail"

[http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/03/28/android- malwar...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/03/28/android-malware- attack-irs-email/2028845/)

[http://securitywatch.pcmag.com/mobile- security/311417-window...](http://securitywatch.pcmag.com/mobile- security/311417-windows-malware-techniques-spread-to-android)

<comment><USER14> People were saying for years that the superior UNIX design and the bad Windows code is the reason that Windows had a huge malware problem but Linux and Mac did not.

<comment><USER13> People were mostly talking about drive-by infections and the fact that an unpatched Windows machine idling on the Internet could be infected in an hour or so.

There's nothing anyone can do if a user installs software. UNIX design or not, if the user runs a program, it can access everything that the user can. Nothing that this malware did needed special access (e.g. root exploit).

<comment><USER21> If you put in a lot of effort, you could try mounting /home and other user- writeable areas as noexec, use SELinux/AppArmor to do funny things to confine administrator-installed programs etc. etc.

However, this will break nearly everything – and I am rather positive that Windows offers similar security measures, if required.

<comment><USER22> This is basically sandboxing by hand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Derp, my girlfriend was at that conference with her macbook air. I feel like I should put a condom on mine now.</comment>