Shady URL: Don't just shorten your URL, make it suspicious and frightening. - <AUTHOR> http://www.shadyurl.com/ <comment><USER2> Pointless and bizarre, and therefore cool.

<comment><USER3> I almost want to start sending these links to people at work- just to see what they do. If they actually click on them, then that's bad.

If I could track clickthroughs like you can with Bit.ly (you could always just sketchify a Bit.ly link) then you could do some security testing to see who will click on anything.

<comment><USER4> Ah, but with URL shorteners, people are already clicking on anything! Which I'm guessing is the point to this whole exercise.

That said, the reason we've come to tolerate shorteners is that there's an implicit network of trust in the way they're used on Twitter. We trust that someone we follow isn't going to put a goatse behind that bit.ly because we know enough about them to believe they wouldn't (or at least we don't think they'd risk a massive loss of followers for it).

So by the same reasoning, if you send a ShadyURL to a co-worker, if they know you, they probably trust you won't be sending them anything malicious. Though I suppose the smart thing for a recipient to do would be to double-check with you that you sent the right link.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That's funny, <http://ycombinator.com/> turned into [http://5z8.info/great_business_opportuniy_b9m8_make- millions...](http://5z8.info/great_business_opportuniy_b9m8_make-millions- working-from-home)

</comment><comment><USER6> This is the best thing I've seen all day: <http://5z8.info/stalin-will-rise- again_e9m8_ip-stealer>

<comment><USER7> Nice. I got an exe!

<http://5z8.info/guns_m4r4_worm.exe>

<comment><USER6> Congrats!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Shortened URLs are _already_ suspicious and frightening, but _these_ are amusing at the same time!

</comment><comment><USER9> <http://news.ycombinator.com/> turns to <http://5z8.info/how-to-build-a- bomb_s2t1_-49exploit-begin--> turns to <http://5z8.info/startdownload_x5g2_blackmarket> turns to <http://5z8.info/molotovcocktail_m2x9_horse-slaughter..>. i wonder if this ever goes full circle?

</comment><comment><USER10> Title could also be: _Don't just shorten your URL, make it longer_

<comment><USER11> dickensurl.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I would love a Shady URL bookmarklet!

</comment><comment><USER13> That's perfect for Rick Rollin!

</comment><comment><USER11> <http://5z8.info/dogporn_n3p6_bomb-plans>

My happiness is confused. =) This is the best and worst thing I've seen all day.

</comment><comment><USER14> <http://5z8.info/enriched-uranium-supply_h4r1_inject_worm>

go on click on it I dare you!!

</comment><comment><USER15> There are no measures to the amount of joy this tool has given me in the past five minutes. Thank you!

</comment><comment><USER16> This is what people are using three-letter domains for? Well, I guess it's a .info, so...</comment>


Life before Google: What was it like? - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-44871028 <comment><USER2> I remember having to spend much more time on the existing search engines trying to find what I was looking for, even though there were much less sites. Since Google, sifting through all the data has become easier, although I worry about how it's also become influenced by our search history and navigational habits. This in turn, lands up limiting what we are actually exposed to and might reduce the probability of us discovery new things outside of our comfort zone. Do we go for something like DuckDuckGo, that isn't influenced by our history, or do we use google to present us with what we want?</comment>


Lisp implemented in under 1K of JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kanaka/miniMAL <comment><USER2> This person wrote a lisp in 1K lines of C (not bytes :)), the cool thing is that also includes a copying garbage collector.

[https://github.com/rui314/minilisp](https://github.com/rui314/minilisp)

<comment><USER3> I wrote a minimal Lisp compiler (targeting C) when I was a bit younger. :> My GC was just a really bad reference counting implementation though. I dare you to make fun of my "hash function". Hehe.

[https://github.com/eugeneia/microlisp](https://github.com/eugeneia/microlisp)

<comment><USER4> Your hash function is fast! So it's got that going for it.

<comment><USER5> I had to go look. Not hard to find.

I'll just say this, back in the prehistoric 1970s, a '%' operation was eschewed, because it _wasn 't_ fast (relatively speaking)!!!

It often was used anyway, because it's very effective considering its simplicity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So much effort to go under 1K (in the era of 128GiB fingernail chips), with this .gitignore:

node_modules _-uglify_ _-crush_ _-regpack_

</comment><comment> guard-of-terra Thank you for at least not writing another Brainfuck clone.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's JSON lists as s-exps, which means (as I understand it) that the author doesn't need to implement parsing, only traversal and evaluation. (Which can essentially be a big-ass case statement.)

        ["def", "foo", 1]
        ["fn", "foo", ["a", "b"], […]]

It's not the most attractive Lisp I've seen…

<comment><USER8> So write a lisp parser, then dump the result into this. I like that they didn't include a parser in compacted code, such a parser wouldn't be very interesting.

<comment><USER9> So, uhmm,

        def parse(s): return json.loads('['+re.sub('([")])\s*(["(])','\g<1>,\g<2>',re.sub('[^()\s]+','"\g<0>"',s)).replace('(','[').replace(')',']')+']')

works for python, I'm assuming javascript has something equally small

<comment><USER8> Yes, uninteresting, as I said. Lisp syntax is quite simple, so I would not expect it to be very difficult to make a regex to parse it. Btw, does that handle quoted strings, strings with syntax characters in them, and strings with escapes?

<comment><USER10> And dotted pairs ? I had a super cute sexp parser in PHP, until I started handling sexp fully.

<comment><USER11> Would dotted pair notation make sense for this lisp where lists are arrays, not linked cons cells?

<comment><USER10> IMHO, yes, binary building blocks matter a lot in lisp philosophy, whether or not they're built on javascript arrays.

<comment><USER11> Thanks for responding, man. That's my point though. There is no cons building block in this lisp. I don't think (1 2 . 3) _can_ be represented in it so having the notation for it makes no sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wrote a minimal Lisp for PHP in about an hour: [https://gist.github.com/TazeTSchnitzel/44720ea3aec64a9e330a](https://gist.github.com/TazeTSchnitzel/44720ea3aec64a9e330a)</comment>


Insightful Code: Common Lisp edition [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://iccle.googlecode.com/svn-history/r1968/branches/team/5/iccle_v0_1.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> Project page:

<http://code.google.com/p/iccle/>

Daughter project:

<http://code.google.com/p/iccle2>

</comment><comment><USER2> I can't judge how useful the data-mining stuff is, but there's some nice Lisp code in there. Simple, powerful, and makes it look easy.

<comment><USER3> Look into GBBOpen. Beautiful, industrial lisp code, thoroughly documented, though self-documenting as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This seems to be a joke project or something similar. A pdf with 170 pages and very very little content, except the three at the end with a joke about the project and the team.</comment>


To make an app, just add JSON - <AUTHOR> http://www.jasonette.com/beta/ <comment><USER2> This appears to be catering to the Hacker News crowd, where the LOL GIFS XD marketing tactic will likely backfire.

<comment><USER3> I don't think this is a serious project anyhow. They've basically just made it so that you can write JSON instead of HTML and given it a live reload feature. It has all the pain of HTML with the pain of having to convert that into JSON in your head added to it, with the only stated benefit being that you can live reload, just like you can already do with certain development servers for HTML and Javascript.</comment></comment>


Zynga sues sex app maker over Bang With Friends name - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23515738 <comment><USER2> Protecting trademarks is serious business.

Remember when Monster Cable sued Monster Mini-golf? Personally, I think Zynga has more important things to worry about, and I get this is a big deal for the startup, but it's just a corporate lawyer doing his job.

I'm not saying it's right, but if someone made another, more accurately targeted, ____ With Friends game, they could cite Zynga's inaction with respect to Bang With Friends as not protecting their trademark.

As with all things legal, the underlying reality is less interesting than the potential interpretation. Granted, if I'm wrong and they actually wanna put Bang With Friends out of business, well that would be just plain sad.

<comment><USER3> Is it OK, if BWF pays a cent in a perpetual royalty? Will Zynga have any obligation to license others the name at the same price?

<comment><USER2> I don't believe Zynga has any obligation to provide standardized royalty licensing to any particular person or entity.

Whether it's ok or not is entirely up to Zynga and their counsel.

<comment><USER4> Not that there's _any_ coherent logic to IP law, but logically what's the difference between zero royalty paid (aka not protecting the trademark) and settling on a fixed-price perpetual royalty of negligible cost?

It's so weird to me how in some areas of the law (criminal law, for instance) the "gray area" is embraced and fully considered, where in other areas (IP/business law) decisions seem to be so black-and-white. As a total layman, I'd guess this "tone" is completely set by case law?

If so, is there any precedent that says a fixed cost perpetual royalty priced at $0.01 or similar constitutes "protecting" a trademark?

<comment><USER5> That part of IP law is actually sane. Instead of perpetual monopoly over something the "owner" doesn't even care about. Names (i.e. trademarks) will go back into the pool when they are no longer used/valued/desired by "owner". The cost and requirements of "maintenance" also stops trivial, speculative, or trollish trademarks.

Copyright use to have similar sense (must apply, must renew).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There is something distinctly disgusting about Zynga suing somebody for using a phrase "[someting] with friends", that they feel they own - when the whole company is basically built on stealing ideas of other companies and adding "oh-look-wow-facebook-spam" to them.

<comment><USER7> Well, given that they're basically a parasite on a host company that thinks it owns all names with the words "Face" or "Book" in them, are we surprised?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Honestly, when you first heard of "Bang With Friends," would you have been surprised if it was yet another quality Zynga production?

Even if you wouldn't have - "Bang With Friends" instantly connects with "Words With Friends" in my mind. This is a really unpopular and unexpected thing to say, but for once I don't think Zynga is in the wrong.

<comment><USER8> I didn't make the connection at all until today. I think it's because "Words" is a noun, and "Bang" is a verb. "[noun] With Friends" gets represented as a completely different thing in my mind than "[verb] With Friends" (i.e. the latter is an action, the former is language nonsense).

<comment><USER9> The pattern doesn't actually hold: Matching With Friends and Hanging With Friends are both Zynga titles.

<comment><USER8> You're right. I didn't know about that two.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wow, the creators of BWF must be celebrating tonight. Look at all this free press, now they can say they've been covered by BBC too!

<comment><USER11> Exactly what I was thinking. They were in the press early on, and had a huge boost in users. Looks like things have been slowly dying since then, down more then 80% since peak. All the coverage should boost them right back, even if they are forced to change their name.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I prefer it in French version: Sexe Entre Amis

1\. It just sounds more sexy. 2\. It avoids US Trademark issues. 3\. Carlos Danger is an investor.

<comment><USER13> Random note: My friend is married to a woman from France -- the first Christmas they were together after a few months of dating, she was like "have you seen 'Mother, I missed the Plane' it's a family tradition to watch it each Christmas," to which my friend said no. When she put the movie in, it was Home Alone

Gotta love random translations

<comment><USER14> The weirdest ones are titles that get "translated" into a different one, also in English. E.g. "The In Crowd" becoming "Sex & Manipulations".

<comment><USER15> One of my favorites is the German title for 'Die Hard', which is 'Stirb Langsam'. The literal translation of this is 'die slowly'...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> First they laugh at you, then they sue you, then you win.

BWF is a funny name, leverages the WWF name more than a little, and is going to get great press from the legal fight.

Congratulations to BWF for getting sued; you're getting traction. If the BWF network gets large enough, it could be renamed almost anything and it will still work.

<comment><USER17> This assumes that it's merely an injunction against the name. There's a real possibility of damages being awarded in a situation like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> As far as I can tell their trademark seems pretty specific that it applies to game apps only: [http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4806:p9i0qr...](http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4806:p9i0qr.3.30) . Is there a case to be made that BWF would somehow cause confusion?

</comment><comment><USER19> It was only this week that Zynga management finally decided whether to sue BWF or to greenlight Zynga's new, innovative "Bang with Friends with Friends" app. A rare paroxysm of self-respect at the company prevented them from taking both actions simultaneously.

</comment><comment><USER20> LOL. How can Zynga possibly win here? Bang with Friends gets free marketing......

</comment><comment><USER21> Doesn't the infringement have to be in the same category as the trademark? A dating app seems quite far from games.

<comment><USER5> Category "mobile apps". Just need right lawyer/judge combo to "prove" that in court.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Zynga will do better to actually make better games that someone will play than going after small app developers over flimsy reasons. Oh and they can't own the phrase "... with friends"!

<comment><USER23> Zynga has a lot of people to sue if they want to own "... with friends."

[https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22*%20with%20fr...](https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22*%20with%20friends%22)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Glad to see Zynga is laser-focused on stopping their revenue decline...

</comment><comment><USER25> Free press, mega-user adoption, change name then next news story is their acquisition.

</comment><comment><USER26> I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Seriously.

<comment><USER27> It does seem stupid but they have to. It's like the Bethesda / Mojang trademark battle over "Scrolls". Trademark law, at least in this country, is strict. If you don't go after potential trademark infringements diligently and in a reasonable time period, then you will quickly lose the legal right to do so.

<comment> shawn-furyan It doesn't really legitimize this suit to compare it with another famously absurd trademark infringement battle. "Scrolls" are a fantasy trope (meaning it's so commonly used that it's considered unimaginative)! You can't have that! I think that "Elder Scrolls" is distinctive and trademark-able. "Scrolls" is not.

Setting aside the issue of whether the phrase "With Friends" is distinctive, and therefore trademarkable, BWF and WWF do not serve remotely similar purposes, so they're not going to lose their right to defend the trademark in their own market.

Finally, their big trademark blunder was using an indefensible trademark. The damage there has already been done. It doesn't make sense to then hurt your brand's reputation by linking it in the minds of your customers with a hookup app. The fact that this story is on the front page of Hacker News means that the Streisand effect is hurting the brand already (not that Zynga has a sterling reputation here). Sometimes it's a tactical error to do what the legal department recommends, and this is one of those cases.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Reminds of me of the 90's when Maxis tried to claim trademark over any game who's name began with the letters "Sim"

</comment><comment><USER29> Only Zynga could make this headline believable

<comment><USER17> The Susan B. Komen organization has sued several charities over the word "cure" (and especially "for the cure")

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/07/komen-foundation- ch...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/07/komen-foundation-charities- cure_n_793176.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Thanks for sharing this comical story. lol. Zynga, of all companies. Suing? They're crazy.</comment>


Ask HN: Startup Movie - philipp-spiess

Hey,<p>I recently came across "Indie Game: The Movie" (more over here: indiegamethemovie.com). I really liked it and so I was wondering if there are any other movies out there which give an insight in how startups work? <comment><AUTHOR> For laughs re: startups circa 2001 -

"Startup.com", "e-Dreams", "Dot"</comment>


Show HN: Eventivore - Our Submission to the 36 hour Hacka2thon - <AUTHOR> http://eventivore.com/

<comment><USER2> I like this a lot! Not a fan of how you handle clicking on the pin icons, though; Google Maps uses those pins to open information in a bubble within the window, and having my click open a Facebook page bothered me. It's a shame that your map conveys no useful data except by opening new windows/tabs; possibly consider an interface that loads that FB data in a frame, possibly from the mobile site to conserve space?

<comment><USER3> If you log in with Facebook, a window will actually display on mouse-over that gives the basic event info. It's a bug that we're currently working to fix.

<comment><USER2> Good to know. Best of luck with this if you decide to keep developing it; I really like the concept behind it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Will you eventually have to pay for usage of Google Maps ([http://googlegeodevelopers.blogspot.com/2011/10/introduction...](http://googlegeodevelopers.blogspot.com/2011/10/introduction- of-usage-limits-to-maps.html)) if you go over 25000 views per day?

I'm asking because I'm cooking up a similar concept, and the upcoming price increase of Google Maps makes me a bit hesitant to use them.

The Google Maps Premier page, where my only option is to "Contact Sales" also doesn't seem very friendly to small sites and apps (<http://www.google.com/enterprise/earthmaps/maps.html>).

<comment><USER3> This was a hackathon project, so we haven't looked that far into the future quite yet. If we reach that point, then we'll consider all of the existing Map APIs and how well they fit into our application.

<comment><USER4> Makes sense. I was just curious if anybody has already looked into what makes most sense for this type of usage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Might be me, but w/ my Firefox, sitting in Tel Aviv, I end up with a disabled/grey map of the US of A and a modal dialog box that has no title / a ~crappy~ style and asks me for a US zip code. [1]

Not for me?

1: <http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1194203/Eventivore.png>

<comment><USER6> For now we're pretty much only targeting the US (hence the zip code thing). We originally had browser geo-location, but disabled that for a few reasons. We will re-enable it soon.

<comment><USER7> ZIP codes are far from being a US exclusivity.

I suggest a "We don't offer our services outside of the USA for now. Leave us your email and country and we will notify you when…" somewhere in the ZIP code pop-in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Didn't really work for London. I live about an hour away but am fine with going to London when there's startup events. The 5 events shown in London are all either joke pages, local bar quizes or people's private events (Birthday Parties).

<comment><USER3> If you sign in with your Facebook account, the events that you are connected with will be added to our DB, drastically improving your results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> FYI - Please click 'allow' when your browser prompts for geo-location. If you don't see many events around you, log in with Facebook and the system will fetch publicly-available events that are connected to your and your friends.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is really cool, a nice style touch would be to be able to see what happening "this week" or "this weekend". If you sign in and your facebook event is set to private or closed does it aggregate it?

<comment><USER3> We only aggregate public events. Our goal is to build a great event discovery application that leverages the massive number of events on Facebook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Update: we ended up second place in the Ann Arbor Hacka2thon. GooseCast (ccgoose.com) took the top honors. Thanks for everyone's feedback so far!

</comment><comment><USER10> Every time I click a pin, a pop up comes up in the map view then immediately closes. Am I using this incorrectly?

<comment><USER3> If you haven't logged in with Facebook, then that is most likely the issue. If you have, then it's probably a bug that we'll address in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Where do the events come from?</comment>


How I filled two dumpsters and went paperless - <AUTHOR> http://ryanwaggoner.com/2010/11/how-i-filled-two-dumpsters-and-went-paperless-with-the-fujitsu-scansnap-s1500/

<comment><USER2> My apartment got robbed the day after I got a brand new external to back up my MacBook. Guess where it was at time of robbery? Plugged into the laptop. Luckily, I had a second, much crappier-looking external with most of my stuff that the thief didn't take. But I still lost tons of pictures and music. I've been Dropboxing ever since. But would love recommendations on secondary online storage providers in case Dropbox ever whiffs..

<comment><USER3> I've been using Mozy for over a year now. It works fine with my 700GB of storage.

<comment><USER4> Serious question - I'm a photographer so generating 5-10GB of new data in a batch is far from unheard of, I've got hundreds of GBs stored and it's all on external drives. Mozy's FAQ doesn't seem designed for me ;-)

When I've looked into this in the past, every provider has had issues with the new and archived content volume, and sometimes even the use of external rather than internal drives (!) that has made it unviable. I couldn't see from Mozy's site whether this was the case with them as well? If not and I can genuinely back up several hundred GBs of data (phone calls from ISP notwithstanding) and potentially add tens to low hundreds of GBs new data per month, from whatever drive source I choose, this sounds like what I want. Would this be the case from your experience?

<comment><USER3> Mozy will indeed work for the scenario you described. I easily have over 100GB of photos and 300GB of home videos and have had no problems. When I purchased my Mozy account, it was for unlimited data (not sure what it is now). Syncing of new data is transparent and works very well (though sometimes I've had 5000 small mozy_temp files in my TEMP folder that never got cleaned up). Restore from Mozy will not be fast but they do offer DVD burning service at a decent price. Mozy has an online login but don't expect Dropbox.com quality browsing. I also use Dropbox for personal documents and it works perfectly fine with Mozy.

If you're adding 50GB/month, that's at least 1GB of upload per night. You'll definitely have to have a good internet connection. I haven't had any network speed issues with Mozy personally.

<comment><USER5> As a counter-point, I had Mozy for several years and eventually dropped it because they throttled the upload and it took forever to get my data onto their servers. If you are aiming to backup a lot of data then I would suggest you find the cheapest all-you-can-eat service to use as a backup to your real backup process and keep a mirror drive that you archive to every week and take offsite. An online backup service will save your ass if you get lazy or forgetful, but it may have a hard time keeping up and will be a PITA if you ever do suffer a catastrophic event and need your data back quickly. Think belt _and_ suspenders, with the regular practice of mirroring your important drive being the primary backup plan.

<comment><USER4> Thanks to you both; sounds worth a try. This wouldn't be my primary backup because I've already got a (semi-) regular mirror to a backup drive in my workflow, but domestic practicalities make getting an offsite copy complicated so that's what I'm really looking for here and Mozy sounds like a good fit.

I should stress too - 50GB / month is a worst case scenario, not a typical usage! Raws and processed JPEGs for a couple of big events can hit that together but I don't often have a couple of big events in the same month.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I did this over 5 years ago (Fujitsu fi-5110EOX w/Acrobat 6.0 Standard running on WinXP). It been a complete success, but we've also been a victim of it's success: I read about all the cool new features of the newer Scansnaps and am very jealous (chiefly because either automatic OCR + indexing isn't part of the setup we have, or I'm too dumb to have figured out how to enable it). This one feature is ALMOST enough to get me to buy a new Scansnap, but (a) the old one works just as good as it ever did, and our "filing system", such as it is, is "good enough" (to let us retrieve needed docs), and (b) new or old, these devices aren't cheap (and I'm not clear how much benefit automatic OCR + indexing would be). Anyway, it seems it should be a software only feature; if only I could use the old scanner with newer software... but I investigated a year ago and my scanner is in the "obsolete" category as far as the vendor is concerned (sigh; is there any open source software that can interface to any of the Scansnap scanners?). Also when I read the swooning reviews of the new Scansnaps, it seems the platform is usually Mac, which I have no plans to move to (are all the coolest features also present on the Windows version?). And yes, shredders have been far less reliable than the scanner: we must have gone thru at least 4 so far...

<comment><USER7> If you already have PDFs, isn't OCR simply a PDF --> PDF+metadata conversion? Why wouldn't some open source OCR software work, where you feed it your old PDFs and it outputs OCRed PDFs. Is this some kind of tactic for scanner manufacturers to sell newer versions of scanner or am I understanding this wrong. (Maybe OCR happens at the pre-PDF level where the scanner can read the document in a higher resolution?)

<comment><USER8> You can indeed do OCR at any stage. The only potential issue I see is that JPEG compression (as used by PDF) might interfere with some OCR algorithm and make it less reliable, so OCRing directly on the raw output of the scanner might yield a somewhat better recognition. Then again, I know nothing of the protocols used by scanners over USB; it might well be that scanners send their result already compressed, or that the resolution is so high compared to the letter size that this doesn't matter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One security consideration that I didn't see addressed -- if someone unauthorized accesses your electronic docs, it's easier for them to do it without your knowledge. If someone breaks into your house, you'll usually know about it.

This may not apply to government docs which are presumably stored somewhere electronically, anyway.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a good point, and one that I hadn't considered. However, like you said, most of my docs probably also exist in the databases of companies and the government. Ultimately, it's not something I worry about that much; I'm probably more concerned with losing access to my documents than someone else gaining access to them.

<comment><USER10> Encryption can help here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Another option to consider is NeatReceipts. The base version comes with a very slim USB-powered scanner that can travel around with you, and they sell a higher-end version with a sheet-fed scanner. It can also be set up to work with certain third-party scanners, I believe the ScanSnap is one of them. The default is that each page goes into its own PDF, which is pretty annoying, but you can merge files together to make bigger documents.

What NeatReceipts offers over bulk PDF is the ability to capture and extract lots of metadata that is specific to the document type (it supports three types: document, receipt, and contact). You can use it to extract and export contacts from your big stack of business cards, or to create a formatted expense report from a pile of travel receipts.

What you lose is portability and accessibility, since all of the files live in a "cabinet" on your computer.

I'm in the early stages of de-papering, and I'm considering using NeatReceipts for business cards and receipts, and dumping all of the docs to PDF's that I tag and organize using Punakea (a great tagging program for MacOS).

</comment><comment><USER12> I bought that same scanner. Freaking amazing. My intention is to scan 8 years of business documents, just need a plan to organize them for backup purposes. I did manage to scan my dad's novels he wrote on a typewriter in the 70s and 80s for him in record time. Tha alone probably justified the cost.

</comment><comment><USER13> When I moved from Ontario to BC about a year ago, I scanned about 95% of my books using a similar system. Carrying them in my computer (+ Time Machine + Carbonite) was much easier than hauling them across Canada in boxes.

I kept some books: my Tufte books (e.g. Visual Explanations), an old book of poetry that I inherited, my Physics 101 textbook (of sentimental value)...

I didn't run the OCR. I found it too slow and the final results didn't impress me. OCR can't handle mathematical equations. I suppose I could have used OCR on the novels, but I didn't bother.

Scanning my books was a gamble because there was no tablet or e-Reader that seemed good enough, but there were rumors of an Apple tablet coming soon. Thankfully the rumors were true!

</comment><comment><USER14> One thing I really like about his approach is he keeps it simple: instead of going crazy with a folder structure he relies on search. Instead of using some complex software product, he uses Spotlight. Very nice.

<comment><AUTHOR> I just know that I'm too lazy to make some complicated scheme work. I'd just end up with stacks of paper that I intend to scan "someday".

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Ok, I have a question about this:

        Should you do it?

I've done this for a long time. I have the fi-5110EOXM for the mac that I love.

Here's what I learned. I spent a lot of time scanning stuff. When in doubt, scan it. I spent a days and weekends here and there.

I felt SUCH a relief after tossing all that physical stuff, but keeping it "just in case".

But... I've NEVER looked at the stuff I scanned.

I mean, I _could_ look at it. I could data mine my power bills for trends. I could start categorizing my spending over the years and predict stuff.

The reality is that maybe I could have tossed the stuff (make a DECISION) and live with the consequences (which in my experience are zero).

I think I couldn't toss the stuff out of fear.

Maybe I could have used all the time saved to live a little more.

</comment><comment><USER16> I did the exact same thing a year back, except for the books. Spotlight for the searching, Dropbox for the backups and an scansnap for the pdfs. It's working great, whenever I want to look something up I just search for the key words and there it is. It's a pity there is no search functionality in the Dropbox site. I don't think I'll part with my books though, but being able to search through them would be awesome.

<comment><USER17> Same here, but used the ScanSnap-Evernote integration feature, so Evernote takes care of both the OCR and the searching, and if anybody is feeling particularly motivated they can also tag.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm working on similar goals right now, but focusing on making a bookscanner (see <http://diybookscanner.org> ) instead, namely because many of the books I have are out of print. I figure I can later just use the bookscanner for documents as well

</comment><comment><USER19> £30 cashback on these Scanners from Fujitsu in the UK, Germany, France and Italy. Just send them your invoice.

[http://www.fujitsu.com/downloads/COMP/fel/scansnap/s1500-cas...](http://www.fujitsu.com/downloads/COMP/fel/scansnap/s1500-cashback- promo.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER20> My wife and I just finished getting rid of two file cabinets worth of papers using this MFP: <http://www.okidata.com/mkt/html/nf/MFP.php?sku=b4545series>

The pdf's it created were pretty small and the result of the project fits into a very small chunk of my Dropbox account (50GB). Its great having all my files for the past 20 years available everywhere I go.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'd really love to do this too, but I just finished my studies and feel bad about spending 300 Euros on a scanner. Does anybody have good alternatives?

<comment><USER22> Buy a used one, scan everything, then sell it. That's what I was going to do, but I liked the scanner so much I just kept it.

<comment><USER23> The problem with selling it is that society as a whole hasn't gone paperless, so you still have boatloads of inbound paper, which means you continuously have to scan stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> _For shredding, I picked up the Fellowes Powershred W-11C Cross-Cut Shredder. Also not super cheap, and pretty noisy (what shredder isn't)_

My Fellowes Powershred MS-450Cs isn't. I paid $170 for it, but totally worth it as I hate the loud shredders.

</comment><comment><USER25> I went through my only filing cabinet the other weekend and realized I had no reason for holding onto 99% of the crap that was in there. I threw it all away, and I have one small file folder with stuff in it, and most of it sentimental. Good riddance.

</comment><comment><USER26> I did the same thing, but I got the ScanSnap S300M because it's more portable (and coincidentally the same shredder).

I use Everynote, which does OCR automatically, though I'm not sure I should be trusting them with sensitive documents...

</comment><comment><USER27> Why doesn't someone make a good scanner like the Snapscan that also has a cheapo laser-printer attached for when you need to print out something like an airline boarding pass or a cheatsheet etc?

<comment><USER28> That's kinda like asking "why don't more toasters have coffee pots built in?" They're two separate devices, which do two separate things. (Actually, you could come up with an argument for the toaster+coffeepot thing, since they're at heart both resistance-coil devices...)

Most MFPs are horrible amalgamations, basically discrete devices held together with cheap plastic shells and shitty driver software.

Back in the 90s I remember seeing some dot-matrix printer addons that turned the printer into a scanner, and there might have been similar gadgets for inkjets, but modern scanners and printers wouldn't share many parts. There's little to be gained from an engineering standpoint by combining the two.

<comment><USER29> I have a Canon MX850 all-in-one. It's almost two years old. It's a good printer, scanner and fax. The printer has two paper trays and a cradle for printing CD/DVD labels. The scanner has a flatbed scanner and an automatic document feeder with double-sided colour scanning. It's listed at US$275 on Amazon.

I've used it with ABBYY FineReader Express[1] on my Mac to achieve the same result as the author for myself and my mum.

If you are after a toaster with a kettle, you can get one from Breville[2] and other manufacturers, including one with an egg fryer.

1\. <http://www.abbyyusa.com/finereader/express>

2\. <http://www.breville.com.au/products_detail.asp?prod=435>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Anyone know if either version of this scanner would work under Linux?

<comment><USER31> There seem to be a few reports of success, but not a lot of details.

See, for example, here <http://www.documentsnap.com/fujitsu-scansnap-in- linux/>

And from an Amazon review (November 30, 2009): _Also of interest is that the scanner works under Ubuntu GNU/Linux using SANE drivers and gscan2pdf. However, in my experience the scanner controls are not as complete under SANE and gscan2pdf as with Fujitsu's proprietary drivers on a MAC and PC. Other seem to have had better experiences than I. Ultimately, Linux users should know that it is possible to use this scanner; however, it may take some tweaking. But if you use Linux, you are most likely used to this._

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> It's your own personal Rainbows End!

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbows_End>

</comment><comment><USER33> Curious, did you PDF business cards to keep the image, or just save the OCR data to your contacts?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't collect a ton of business cards, and when I do, I usually just type it into my address book, or increasingly, friend them on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> If I wanted to try this on a PC does anyone know of a good indexing app for Windows 7?

<comment><USER35> Windows 7 comes with Windows Search as part of the system, and it indexes PDFs and is excellent (unlike the prior iterations of Windows Search/Indexing Service)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> This is exactly why I have a Scansnap (s1300) on my wish-list this december.

<comment><USER37> did you research the differences between the s1300 and s1500? if so, can you let us know?

<comment><USER36> Why I choose the s1300 over the s1500: Price, size, hybrid (runs mac & windows).

Someone else already did the comparison for me (and you). In short; if you want to scan a lot at once and care about the speed, go with the s1500.

[http://www.documentsnap.com/fujitsu-scansnap-how-are- the-s13...](http://www.documentsnap.com/fujitsu-scansnap-how-are- the-s1300-and-scansnap-s1500-models-different/)

Speed: 20 ppm vs 8 ppm

Capacity: 50 pages vs 10 pages</comment></comment></comment>


JavaScript to PHP source-to-source transpiler - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/endel/js2php

<comment><USER2> Nice project, but IMHO, PHP2JS would be more useful, specially for migrating prehistoric php applications.</comment>


Rocket Racing League demos X-racers & augmented reality raceway in the sky - <AUTHOR> http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/rocket-racing-tulsa-demonstration-100426.html

<comment><USER2> I think rockets are cool, and racing is cool, but I don't see this being that much different than pylon racing with faster planes.

Now, the thing that really bugs me about RacketRacers is how they try to compare themselves to NASCAR. I think the reason NASCAR has become popular is because just about everyone has driven a car and can imagine what it would be like to do it on a circle, banging with other cars. Not many people have had the chance to drive a plane, much less a jet or rocket. It's cool, it's novel, but I don't think it will get the following they hope.

As for the last part of the YouTube video where they guy says this could be the first time virtual racers compete with real racers (soon, not here yet), that reporter should probably check out:

<http://www.iracing.com/> \- real race car drivers are racing normal people almost every day.

<http://www.nascar.com/trackpass/about/raceview/?sc_cid=hp53> \- NASCAR's RaceView, which is realtime race data visualized in a sim racing type environment.

It seems to me, it's only a matter of time before iracers can compete, in realtime with real racers.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> In case you missed it, here's a decent summary of Saturday's live webcast: <http://www.youtube.com/v/0lXfy43L8Og></comment>


Lego-building robot aspires to bigger things - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/technology-45024268/lego-building-robot-aspires-to-bigger-things <comment><AUTHOR> There's also a blog piece from Autodesk about it with a little more information here: [http://blogs.autodesk.com/inthefold/can-machine-learning- tur...](http://blogs.autodesk.com/inthefold/can-machine-learning-turn- industrial-robots-masters-assembly-construction/)

<comment><AUTHOR> And some wider discussion of it on Fast company too: [https://www.fastcompany.com/90204615/autodesks-lego-model- bu...](https://www.fastcompany.com/90204615/autodesks-lego-model-building- robot-is-the-future-of-manufacturing)

Not surprised they had to change the name to BrickBot from LegoBot. At least it was never called LegosBot! (since the toy is Lego not Legos)</comment></comment>


HTC Willfully Violates the GPL in T-Mobile's New G2 Android Phone - <AUTHOR> http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/sjs/htc-willfully-violates-gpl-t-mobiles-new-g2-android-phone <comment><USER2> What I don't understand is _why_ phone manufactures are even worried about rooting. If it's about service and warranty, they can simply make it clear that replacing the OS voids the warranty and they won't provide service for the phone.

Besides warranty and service costs, what else are they so worried about that they feel it necessary to add these protection measures?

Surely the percent of customers that root/mod a phone is so small that it's not worth the man-power and engineering to try to "fix" the problem. It seems there must be some other concern they are trying to resolve that escapes me.

<comment><USER3> I guess it's because virus writers also to try to root the devices to install rootkits. I'm quite in favor of requiring hardware mods (although I'd prefer a jumper...) to modify the OS.

<comment><USER4> But they can do that now already, just like the regular phone-rooting hackers.

<comment><USER3> The article mentioned that the new version needed hardware hacking to root. Maybe at one point a software hack will be found, I don't know. I'm just saying that there is a legitimate reason to lock down the software, especially for a mass market product like a phone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Call them, and demand that your complaint be escalated. Call back daily until this is fixed. Unlike emails which can be disregarded phone calls cost money to process. This means that the FOSS community can impose a financial cost on non-compliance without going through the courts.

I just got off the phone to HTC Australia, and apparently they'll be getting in touch. If everyone did that ...

<comment><USER6> Just bring legal action or ask the SLFC to investigate.

<comment><USER7> Only a copyright holder can bring legal action in this case. If you're just a customer, you can't bring action by yourself, as you're not a party to the violation or license agreement between HTC and the copyright holder(s).

<comment><USER8> If you've bought a G2, you are a copyright holder for the code in question.

<comment><USER9> If you buy a copy of a copyright-able work, you are a licensee. The "copyright holder" is the person who owns the legal ability to specify and grant the rights under which the work may be copied.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is only become an issue because of the new security permissions on the phone. If the phone was easily hackable nobody would be complaining.

That said HTC played some mean tricks here, such as releasing the souce for the HTC magic with bits and pieces of the vision source clearly removed. At the same time while we were trying to reverse engineer this code and the binary we saw major inconsistencies even though the disks are the same model and spec.

They(HTC & TMO) really made it hard this time but once we figure out how this works once it will likely be just as easy to hack as before.

</comment><comment><USER11> "within 90 to 120 days"

Maybe this tactic has something to do with product life cycle though I can't think what. Surely a phone has a longer shelf life than 3 months . .

<comment><USER12> Well it may not necessarily be malicious. Maybe the developers responsible for say preparing the source tarball properly have just been given a lot of other pressing work.

<comment><USER13> There is no preparing. They don't own the code. They need to release it in exactly the same state it was in when deployed as binary. Otherwise, they are violating copyright (often referred to as pirates).

That said, I'm almost certain that the linux kernel is released under a modified form of the GPL, or at least Linus refuses to enforce parts of the GPL. Binary modules and blobs are a clear violation of GPL, but they exist in the Linux kernel to a great extent. There has been some fighting over the issue in the past.

At any rate, I know that Linus is not as adamant about freedom as RMS. He's using the GPL as a tool and not a principal. There was the whole Tivo-ization argument, where Linus supported the hardware manufacturer and RMS released GPLv3 explicitly forbidding that type of stuff.

<comment><USER14> _That said, I'm almost certain that the linux kernel is released under a modified form of the GPL..._

Nope, it's standard stock GPLv2-only. There's a _clarification_ included in the COPYING file that reminds people that userspace binaries that use the documented system call interface are not considered derived works, but that's not a modification of the license; it's just included for clarity reasons.

 _or at least Linus refuses to enforce parts of the GPL._

Not entirely. He's stated that he doesn't believe that a kernel module is automatically a derived work of the kernel. For example, he's of the opinion that the nvidia binary driver is not a derived work of Linux because the driver core was first designed and written for a completely different OS.

Regardless, Linus Torvalds is not the last word on this: just about any kernel contributor with copyright ownership could file suit.

 _There is no preparing. They don't own the code. They need to release it in exactly the same state it was in when deployed as binary. Otherwise, they are violating copyright (often referred to as pirates)._

Exactly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Blog posts do not help. Take them to court.

<comment><USER16> Blog posts absolutely _do_ help.

<comment><USER17> Good argument.

<comment><USER16> Just stating the obvious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wonder where they got the _within the requirements of the open source community_. It doesn't sound like something they would just make up.

<comment><USER19> Sounds like something their lawyers made up, perhaps?

The first comment on the post has a pretty relevant paragraph, which I think sounds plausible: _Section 3(b) allows you to provide a written offer for source. I think HTC is interpreting this to mean that if you respond to their written offer for source, there's obviously going to be a delay for them to get your written request, put together the source code and send it back to you, and they've decided that 90 to 120 days is a reasonable amount of time for that._

The commenter also says it seems this is pushing it, and I agree - but HTC's lawyers clearly think it's worth the risk.

<comment><USER20> Although further comments point out that there was no written offer provided, so that section is irrelevant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Which is surprising how? Android's aim has always been to be open for manufacturers and providers. The user-wise openness is an implementation detail and may or may not be there.

And the more time passes, the better manufacturers and carriers get acquainted with the platform, the least common Android devices will be open as far as the user is concerned.

<comment><USER22> > The user-wise openness is an implementation detail and may or may not be > there.

This is not an implementation detail for the GPL.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> If Google really wants Android to be open sourced, then it should be open source for users too, not just carriers. I'm pretty sure HTC did something illegal here.</comment>


Three Rules for Startup Success - <AUTHOR> http://learntoduck.com/three-rules/three.rules.startup.success <comment><USER2> Very lyrical but not very insightful.

</comment><comment><USER3> There's only one rule for startup success guys.

That rule is to build stuff that some defined segment of the market will want to buy and to build it so when you sell it at the price they think it's worth that you will make a whole bunch of money.

Every other rule, consideration, or other form of pontification on this subject is total B.S.</comment>


How Dropbox Will Die - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidcoursey/2011/10/18/how-dropbox-will-die/ <comment><USER2> I wrote something about this in another thread. I don't think dropbox will die, and here is why:

Dropbox is only a 'feature' if you already have everything else, an operating system, and an installed base of a large number of devices.

But dropbox the product, not dropbox the feature is what exists today.

Seamless filesharing at an affordable pricepoint (including a free tier) across _all_ devices and across _all_ major operating systems, including linux, apple and windows. And that includes versioning and so on.

So it isn't a feature.

Don't forget that the universe of computing is far larger than any single operating system, no matter how successful, and that this will likely always be the case.

Dropbox is infrastructure, not a feature. And it's fine to run infrastructure, you can actually charge for it and people will pay. See also: toll roads, ISPs, the petroleum industry, your power company and so on.

Commoditizing the essence of storage wasn't such a bad idea at all, and to turn it into a product, not just a feature is what gives it long term viability.

Forbes being a print magazine I'd bet good money that Forbes the print edition will die long before dropbox.

Besides dropbox having about 250 million factors in the equation helping it to stay alive a little longer Forbes writing about it in two different places on one day will help dropbox just that much more. There is no such thing as bad advertising. Plenty of the Forbes visitors reading this might think, ok, dropbox is going to die, but until then this is mighty handy.

<comment><USER3> I agree with most of what you write save the fact that Dropbox is not a feature. I use dropbox constantly to the point it is invisible to my work. My files move around without me worrying about it. From a consumer point of view (ie, non-tech) how your files synchronize doesn't matter. The fact that the files are there when you need them is what matters. In the consumer eye, Dropbox would be a feature of all their devices.

<comment><USER2> As long as enough people are willing to pay for the 'feature' I'm sure that the dropbox founders don't care too much what people call it :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think it is a silly article with a link bait headline. The author has taken his very narrow use cases and extrapolated it to all users. If he can replace dropbox with evernote then he is using dropbox in a very different way from me, not to mention that his implicit message seems to be that all operating systems are going to become Apple-owned, which is silly. Yes, icloud might hurt dropbox but that's a far cry from a death knell.

<comment><USER5> Agreed.

The article basically says "I don't pay for dropbox, therefore it will fail." The backup for this is "Dropbox is a feature, not a product." And "other companies that I have made this statement about have failed."

Somehow this isn't convincing for me at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've often thought they need a lower tier than the $100/year option. I get a remarkable amount of value from Dropbox, but somehow knowing I'm only using < 20% of the free tier makes it psychologically difficult to justify paying them $100/yr. If there were an option to pay $20 or $30 or so for what I'm getting for free, I'd probably just do it. $100 is a little too far outside the no- brainer price range for me though... (I guess by the time you get to "9 digit acquisition offer" size, a "donate via Paypal" button would look pretty low- rent...)

<comment><USER7> Why would you pay for what they happily offer for free?

<comment><USER2> To make sure they stay in business? I think a lot of people are more than happy to pay for useful services just to keep them in business. As long as the utility is larger than the price charged transactions will be made.

One website I'm familiar with has a freemium product, lots of users there pay just to support the site, even if they never actually use the premium bits.

<comment><USER7> Ok, why would you pay for Dropbox of you didn't have to and they didn't ask you to? They clearly are not going out of business, at least until something better comes along.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Who cares if it's a feature, not a product? The question is - is it a vertical or horizontal feature? You can't sell cut-and-paste, because there's no advantage in having the same cut and paste on every device (no horizontal advantage), and you'll lose out to the manufactures ability to bake deeply integrated cut-and-paste into the OS (big advantage for the vertical implementations). For file sync, there's not a huge need for vertical integration (OK, Erik Sink's written about how different platforms can be a PITA - <http://www.ericsink.com/entries/quirky.html>, but it's still possible if you have the resources and smarts); and you have a huge advantage over horizontal players, because people want their data safe on different devices.

There's a little company called Microsoft, which sold OSes. The OS is just a feature of computers. They had the chops to smooth over the vertical issues (drivers, etc), and got boosted by the horizontal advantages (your programs work on any computer with Windows). So the OS became a product, not a feature, because it carved out a large horizontal niche, blowing away the vertically integrated "features".

</comment><comment><USER9> > _A feature is something that really belongs or can easily be built into > something that already exists._

Such a loose definition that really can be bent to fit whatever point you want to make.

Forbes is a feature not a product, Apple could provide the content themselves and people would just get it on their iPhone, who needs a seperate company creating it?

Gmail is a feature not a product, it belongs in your phone's operating system or in a product such as MS Office.

Realistically feature vs. product is subjective, it is entirely down to whether users want to use a seperate service on an integrated one.

To move away from the web startup world, how about satnav systems as an example. We all know they can be built into cars, and that's been happening for a while, and for those cars that have them, it is certainly a feature of the car. That hasn't killed the companies selling dedicated systems, such as TomTom.

Or for computer hardware, speakers are really just a feature of your computer, not a seperate product, yet people still buy speakers that aren't a part of their PC, just connected to them.

Both these examples, it is possible to get them as features rather than products, but the demand for standalone products has kept them in existance.

</comment><comment><USER10> The great thing about Dropbox is that it is a feature. Why? Because it's decoupled from any other product - with iCloud, I have to buy into the OSX/iOS ecosystem, which even if I wanted to do, I can't afford. With Dropbox, their product has no reason not to support as many different OS as possible - so I can have a mac syncing with an Android, etc.

</comment><comment><USER11> Given that Gartner estimated OSX as having only about 10% of the desk/laptop market share in 2011, the idea that Dropbox is going to be put out of business by iCloud is laughably ignorant. Unless Apple decides to make iCloud available to Windows users, but IMHO that seems unlikely.

The competition isn't much better on the MS side. Windows has the bulk of the desktop/laptop users, but it's pretty unlikely for them to offer a file sync client that'll work with the iPhone or Android, and Windows Phone 7 is still looking for an audience.

I do agree that Dropbox could do a _lot_ to make their person-to-person sharing more compelling and easy.

<comment><USER12> You can use iCloud on Windows... Check the website.

<comment><USER10> Android? Linux? Why would I want to use a cloud service that I can't sync most of my devices on?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> In those critical first few seconds where I am determining if I want to read further, and instead I have to battle text jumping around because of ads, it makes me wonder if anyone at Forbes cares about usability.

</comment><comment><USER14> "There is also the question of how Dropbox is different from an online backup service available on a file-by-file basis across multiple machines. That is how I use Dropbox, only occasionally sharing files in Dropbox with friends and coworkers."

And with that I realized I had wasted my time reading this article. How can a journalist be so oblivious to the primary use case of a product?

</comment><comment><USER15> I use Dropbox as of today, but I would easily - already considered it - replace it with multiple alternatives. The valuation of Dropbox got me choking more than LinkedIn valuation; they aren't worth a fraction of that. Every reality-checked human on this planet knows that. They should have accepted Apples offer, I think Bitcasa will get it instead.

</comment><comment><USER16> "(I should probably do a post explaining why Evernote is an application and Dropbox only a feature.)"

Yes, this would be great. A lot of this article seems to be based on the author's very loose and short definition of a feature, so I didn't really get a lot out of it. A comparison would help me better understand the point trying to be made here.

</comment><comment><USER17> If Dropbox solves this, they're golden: <http://xkcd.com/949/>

If they don't, they'll die.

<comment><USER18> Copy it into ~/Dropbox/Public. Right-click, Dropbox, Copy public link. Paste. Done.

<comment><USER19> That's assuming you have drop box install on the computer, have an account. The point is my mom doesn't have a dropbox account so she's still sol in this example.

This isn't particularly on topic though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> How about Ubuntu One? They have Ubuntu, Windows, iOS, and Android support plus 5 GB of free storage. Mac support doesn't exist yet, but hopefully it'll be coming soon: <https://one.ubuntu.com/>

</comment><comment><USER12> Dropbox executed well. But where can Dropbox expand to? Unless dropbox can get better and better, eventually the competition will catch up.

Better device and product integration? That will require more and more cooperation from Windows, Apple, and Google.

<comment><USER10> It already supports Android, OSX, Linux, Windows...

I'd quite like it if they had Music syncing option, mind.

<comment><USER12> Music syncing, etc. was what I was referring to. I don't think they'll flame out right away, but in 5 years, what will they have that doesn't ship with your OS?

<comment><USER21> "Dropbox" is becoming a verb. They need to keep that up, so people ask if their device has Dropbox, or more appropriately (if incorrectly), ask if it "can Dropbox?"

It is a feature, a service, but so is Netflix, and Dropbox isn't encumbered by movie studios. They just have the neat "whoa this is almost magic" part.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> He's correct. Eventually Apple and Microsoft will replace dropbox with tiny, tiny, tiny branches in their codebases. Unless they come up with a different product, that's their fate.

</comment><comment><USER23> Box.net is giving away 50GB to anyone that signs up or logs in through their mobile app. It's an amazing service but Steve Jobs is right when he says it's a feature.

<comment><USER24> Box.net's dropbox-like sync program for desktops is a paid account only feature too. And your limited to small file sizes. It guts the usefulness of that 50GB.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Is a car stereo head unit a product or a feature?

<comment><USER2> It's a feature of a car when you buy it, it's a product when you upgrade the crappy unit that came with the car for something a bit nicer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> iCloud is useless to anyone not exclusively using Apple products. How are they even a threat right now?</comment>


Ask HN: TIL JavaScript switch is weird – why? - <AUTHOR> Given the following, what do you think the console output will be?

    var x = 1;

    switch (x) {
        case 1:
            console.log('case 1');
        case 2:
            console.log('case 2');
        case 3:
            console.log('case 3');
        default:
            console.log('default');
    }
 Before you raise your hand, yes I've intentionally omitted the break statements.
And, the answer is:

    case 1
    case 2
    case 3
    default
 The switch is designed to execute every case after the first match, which is the reason for placing a `break` after each case.
My assumption was always that the `break` was to avoid wasting the interpreter's time on checking the remaining cases when you knew they'd all be non-matches, not that `break` was basically required.
This means that the switch statement itself is basically useless without `break`, unless each case is ordered in a 1[2,[3,[4]]] fashion (I imagine that's quite rare).
Is this just an artifact taken from C, or is there something else I'm overlooking? <comment><USER2> Artifact from C. This is by design for consistency. Java does the same.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is how switch statements work in a _lot_ of curly-brace languages.

Intentional fall-through isn't as rare as you seem to think, though--not useless at all.</comment>


How to Get Your First Web Dev Job with No Experience - <AUTHOR> https://hashnode.com/post/how-to-get-your-first-web-dev-job-with-no-experience-cjt5rc3tq000byts12uaan4pe <comment><USER2> TL:DR;

Title:How To Get Your First Web Dev Job With No Experience

First paragraph:

Have a portfolio ready

> _If you don 't have any experience as a web developer other than the > projects you did in some class, that's not going to work_ unless those > projects can be turned into something portfolio-worthy.</comment>


The Brutal Truth About Climate Change - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/10/william-vollmann-carbon-ideologies/568309/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> If I could save the planet from climate change for a dollar, the nations of the world would be discussing how to divide that until it's too late.

There is a fixed sum of yearly Global GDP we'd need to spend to fix this. It may be unknown, but that doesn't make it less existent. Estimating it has been a whole area of work, but we haven't found a system to actually pay down that planetary tech-debt. Carbon Engineering can get a ton of carbon out of the atmosphere for roughly 100$. Driving down that price further while aggressively scaling the deployments of that technology would be one engineering solution.

But the political, economical and possibly even legal parts of this stay unsolved. Who's working on this, how are they even paid?

<comment><USER3> You can't fix climate change with money.

<comment><USER4> If you can't fix climate change with a careful allocation of money then you can't fix it with anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I had a minor epiphany last week. I (instinctively) switched my stance from "hey we need to do something about climate change" to "I need to work to protect me and my family when shit hits the fan". Then it dawned me. I'm a small, insignificant human, yet I'm taking a selfish stance on the problem. The people who can actually change something, that is, the people with some kind of power, probably think in the exact same manner: their energy is dedicating to saving their asses when it goes South, not to solve the problem.

We're fucked.

<comment><USER6> There are ways of reversing climate change - for instance, by increasing the area under vegetation (which reduces temperatures, reverses desertification etc). But the issue is that these methods are not being pursued for whatever reasons.

<comment><USER7> You mean something like the great green Wall of China and Africa and the billion tree project? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three- North_Shelter_Forest_Pro...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three- North_Shelter_Forest_Program)

<comment><AUTHOR> Whilst useful, I'd focus on wwetlands rejuvenation. Hectare for hectare, orders of magnitude more effective.

<comment><USER7> or even more effective and cheaper: protection of existing habitats

<comment><AUTHOR> Included in what I'd suggested, though expansion would almost certainly be necessary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "He envisions her turning the pages of his climate-change opus within the darkened recesses of an underground cave in which she has sought shelter from the unendurable heat; the plagues, droughts, and floods; the methane fireballs racing across boiling oceans. Because the soil is radioactive, she subsists on insects and recycled urine"

I can kind of see the "methane fireballs" (I'm guessing, the methane trapped under the tundra escaping when the permafrost melts and then igniting because, er, the ambient temperature reaches the methane auto-ignition point at 600 ⁰C?) but how does the soil get to be radioactive, because of climate change?

I think this is a weee bit exaggerated.

<comment><AUTHOR> Climate change tends to precipitate other forms of instability. Social, economic, political, militarry, technological.

Several of those represent scenarios on which radioactive soil might be present in areas, limited or otherwise.

<comment><USER8> But those sorts of instability are not sollely associated with climate change. We might yet have a thermonuclear war even before the climate warms up.

Equally, why stop at thermonuclear war brought on by economic instability, brought on by climate change? We can go all the way and imagine hostlie aliens taking over the Earth now that humanity is nearly wiped out by the rising temperatures.

There's a point at which predicting the future stops and imagining it begins, and that stuff about methane fireballs and radioactive soil seems to be over it.

<comment><AUTHOR> _...those sorts of instability are not solely associated with climate change..._

That was not the question, or assertion.

 _...hostile aliens taking over the Earth..._

That is an uncorrelated exogenous risk.

As I said above, and for wwhich there is ample historical evidence and contemporary risk analysis by governments, militaries, and others, the second- and higher-order consequences of climate change include a wide range of effects commensurate with the scenario as spelled out in TFA's review.

More generally, one can divide risks into endogenous, or correlated, scenarios, and exogenous, or uncorrolated ones. I and Vollmann's view is that the first set seems larger than is generally realised.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Reading this stuff makes me borderline suicidal, and the only thing that stops me is that I have young children who would be worse off without me.

I've gone from hoping science will save them, to hoping we have a decade to make a few happy memories before things get truly awful.

The only way I've been able to find peace lately is to think about how the universe will eventually collapse on itself in a few billion years, and to try to put human history and my family's lives in context with that. Both are tiny points of data on a chart.

</comment><comment><USER10> chris hedges often talk about his experience covering wars (such as in Yugoslavia) that, despite being an ordained minister within the Presbyterian Church, quickly stripped any american-fashioned persistent demand for hope, because in those situations, it is more important to take a real accounting of the situation, rather than be hopeful.

Hope might land you in a worse situation than otherwise.

And if your prospects are grim, it is better to understand that, than deny it.

He's not so hopeful about the environment, either.

<comment><USER11> We should focus on scenarios where we can move the needle. The consequence of this: When things look great we should be paranoid, and when things look bad we should be hopeful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Suggested for readers tired of excessive climate optimism: David Archer's _The Long Thaw._ It is harsh in its own way. Rather, I should say it is implacable: 100 years of bad decisions will reverberate for an additional 100,000 years. It mercifully does not indulge in cinematic fantasies like "methane fireballs racing across boiling oceans."

</comment><comment><USER13> The world's population is going to have 20% more people by 2050. I don't see how we are going to stop climate change let alone reverse it. Without phasing out fossil fuels completely as all effiency gains will be lost with higher usage. The best we can do now is slow it down a bit when we really need to reverse it by carbon capture or something.

<comment><USER14> I wonder why more discussions about population control aren't seen. It seems that fewer people will result in fewer pollutants.

<comment><USER15> The countries with rapidly expanding populations are not the ones with significant per-capita carbon emissions.

<comment><USER16> True, but a) it's very much on the plan of every country without significant per-capita carbon emissions to become a country with significant per-capita carbon emissions, and b) the expanding populations can and often do emigrate to countries with significant per-capita carbon emissions where they add to the per-capita.

High emissions come from a monetary economy with a requirement of profit. Soon each remaining part of the world outside that economy will be a part of it, because this is how the monetary economy expands: putting regions "outside" under it's control. I just don't understand how people are sanguine that "now" it's "fine" because the rapidly expanding populations are outside of regions with intensive economic development, because very soon they will be inside such regions, either because a capital-intensive region enveloped them (no more free sheep grazing on the meadow, etc) or because the need for money in some area of their lives drove them into a capital-intensive region (favelas, etc.).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> NB: Print rather than Web title used.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Beyond the topic and book, I found description of author William Vollmann's manner, style, editorial relations, and biography distinctly engaging. And not unrelated to the result.

</comment><comment><USER17> The environmentalists have been saying for decades that we are destroying ourselves. Yet as a whole, this is the best time in history for humanity. We live longer healthier lives. Fewer people as a percentage live in poverty than ever before. Climate change is real, and the effects are real. However, it is in the billions of people coming out of poverty and into a "modern" lifestyle that we find hope. We will have billions of people who will now have the time and opportunity to fully develop their potential. The wonders of the scientific revolution of the 15th-20th centuries was with humanities hands tied behind our back as it was only limited to the elite western white male. Now we are opening up opportunities to all genders, races, ethnicities, and countries. The scientific advances and technological breakthroughs of the 21st and 22nd centuries will be amazing. Humanities politics may be bad, but our creativity is amazing and will be our salvation.

<comment><USER18> Not really. Modern capitalism is a serfdom of sorts, 99% working off 25 year mortgages with the proceeds going to the 1%. Soon it will be 25 years of hard work to get the deposit to get started on the 25 year mortgage, which is not the same thing as 'fully developing one's potential'.

A century ago everything was organic. There were no plastics to buy on a daily basis, there was no glyphosate in food. There might have been tincture of arsenic and other nasties, food might have not been affordable and so on, but progress for the better does not mean that everything is better. What point is there if things are better but everything is polluted?

I do not believe that community has got better over the last century, before the television made its appearance in every front room people did go out for their entertainment a lot more. Village halls, church buildings and public houses used to be where people would go to participate in things. The world was not a spectacle to be watched. Today it mostly is.

We also live in an age where the motorcar and planes are omnipresent. Kids used to play in the street, now they have Snapchat. One day of playing in the street - even if bullied - is worth an eternity of Snapchat, even if not 'cyber-bullied'. Cars also have a way of killing all forms of life, not just people's pets but every life form that is not well versed in the Green Cross Code. The billion or so car drivers think it is their divine right to right of way, that climate change does not concern them and that bicycles are for kids.

As for the wonders of scientific advances and breakthroughs, the ancients in Greece, Persia and elsewhere worked out all the difficult maths. But 99% of people get lost at the mention of cosine and would not be able to solve a simultaneous equation even if their life depended on it.

Even this longer, healthier lifespan you speak of is questionable. Who doesn't have elderly relatives that have been on some kind of life support for decades? Fed through a straw, needing a bed hoist, this might be better than dead, but if the Alzheimer's has set in does it even matter? This extended life also ties up the potential of younger generations, care workers who pop by three times a day do not come for free, they too have potential and, whilst they are doing the bed hoist thing, they are not writing the next War And Peace or spending time with their own family.

I am playing devil's advocate here, however, we live in an era of Trump and maximal human stupidity. The baby boomer generation had a better gig in the last century.

<comment><USER19> Oh god, I'm not the only one realizing your statement on 25-30 years for the mortgage, on top of the 25-30 years already spent to pay for the down payment.

It is either save for retirement or save for a house.</comment></comment></comment>


JetBlue + Facebook Places = let the games begin - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2011/01/24/jetblue-offers-rewards-for-checkin-facebook-places/

<comment><AUTHOR> So how long before people have autoscripts that game this... game.

<http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/checkin></comment>


PebblePost: Look at your browsing, deduce your address, send ads in the post - <AUTHOR> https://pebblepost.com/ <comment><USER2> Competitors: [https://mailinglists.com/data-solutions/ip- targeting](https://mailinglists.com/data-solutions/ip-targeting) ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16964303](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16964303))

[https://datafinder.com/products/address- append](https://datafinder.com/products/address-append)

I don't think most users realize that their home IP may well be reversible back to a mailing address, nor that commercial IP-to-mailing address databases exist. If an end user has routinely submitted their physical address in Web forms, it's probably in one of these databases.

For customers of Comcast and many residential broadband providers, DHCP hands out a hardcoded per-customer or per-CPE IP, not the next available address from a pool. For all intents and purposes, the DHCP-assigned address is static.

At least as of a year ago, Comcast support won't let customers change their effectively-static "dynamic" IP.</comment>


Google doc listing companies that Support SOPA - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xjisu18X6s7lPtAsIQg5Ol3KJjymPT2az1kasQVwGiw/preview?pli=1&sle=true <comment><USER2> Wasn't there an article some time ago here that busted the "Microsoft, Apple & coare are behind SOPA, because they are in the Business Software Alliance"?

<comment><USER3> Yea, I thought so too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How have these claims been verified?

<comment><USER5> You've missed the point. This is an internet hate mob formation. The facts aren't important.

<comment><USER6> Why is that such a concern to you? Nobody advocating apathy should care as much as you seem to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think it will be a great idea to call the companies you've been customer(s) of. Like I was thinking of calling Microsoft and Apple as I use both of their products.

So, when you call, mention that you are a customer and would love to keep that relationship alive. Maybe if a few hundred calls go this way, some of them will budge.

</comment><comment><USER7> It is interesting to see that there are a lot of companies not related to Hollywood or the entertainment industry. They seem to be worried about product piracy.

It's weird that they think SOPA will solve their problems.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm wondering which side Netflix is on. They stand to gain if this goes through. But being an internet company, they must have some reservations. Anyone has any links stating their official position on this?

</comment><comment><USER9> Better yet, leave poor reviews on online rating sites for their product/service.

The network itself is not the place to be stopping criminal behavior. The place to stop it is at the source, with due process. Prosecuting the humans involved. If those people are overseas then guess what? You cant prosecute them because they never agreed to your laws.</comment>


Interview: OPSEC with the grugq - <AUTHOR> http://blogsofwar.com/2013/11/11/interview-hacker-opsec-with-the-grugq/ <comment><AUTHOR> If people are interested in learning more about OPSEC and how to actually protect secrets (i.e. guard your privacy), this is a good overview of the issues.

As always, my focus is on hackers, but the issues are not solvable with technology (alone).

</comment><comment><USER2> There is a really good video of OPSEC by grugq on YouTube from Hack In The Box Security Conference. Basically gives you some rules and things to think about, but also talks about where lulzsec went off the rails, and how they were caught. Really interesting talk.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XaYdCdwiWU](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XaYdCdwiWU)

</comment><comment><USER3> In the not-too-distant future, doing things on the internet that we currently consider mundane and ordinary will require using alternative identities carefully compartmentalized from our real identifies using the type of OPSEC he describes. I'm practicing this now before it becomes more critical.

</comment><comment><USER4> _The authorities view hackers as modern day witches, something to be feared and destroyed._

The story our of our era is the third option: _co-opted_.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is a lot less common than many people like too think.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How best to describe my service? - <AUTHOR> I'm a technical guy. I know nothing about marketing and how to speak to people who are not technical about my ideas.
Recently, I've been working on a side project which is nearly finished. I'm building the homepage and I have a hard time finding the wording that will make non-technical or semi-technical people know what it's about.
This is what I have so far: http://discrete.li/
So I'll explain my service to you, technical people:
It's basically google analytics but only for AJAX requests. You plant some javascript code on your web application, and my service logs every AJAX request your application makes. The problem this is solving is analytics for single page applications. I have found current analytics solutions to be inadequate for large SPAs. In google analytics, for example, you would need to manually track every AJAX request.
Sure, you can use server side logging, but you can say the same thing about page views, and still everyone are using google analytics... it's not trivial and people are using services to make it easy for them.
Plus, my service also tracks errors so you will have the client side data when researching issues. Also, it automatically tracks request latency (again, from the client side so you get a clear view of user experience), and full searchable payload logs.
Is my technical explanation clear? Does the homepage present this service in a good way?
thanks for any help... <comment><USER2> I think it is important for you to think about how/to whom you want to sell your product. Do you want to have a bottom up approach where you sell to the engineers touching the code everyday? Or do you want to sell to the CXO of an organization?

If you want to sell to engineers, I think your page is fantastic. It is solving a problem that engineers face regularly - error/performance related analytics. But I don't think it really appeals to the business side. Most business folks do not know how to translate those pieces of analytics to business performance.

</comment><comment><USER3> Your homepage and demo look good. Everyone will appreciate this. The information is concise. Technical people will appreciate this.

What's missing is an explanation for non-technical people why this information is valuable.

Taking the extra step to illustrate ease of use, why the data is valuable and how it can be used in a context would be helpful.

Your pricing seems a little off, meaning very cheap to get started and then it jumps to expensive. Is this is achievable with AWS CloudWatch, or something similar? How does their pricing compare?

To answer your additional question, the service is presented well, and I think you are 80-90% there. I'd like to see an update.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is pretty good already. You might want to consider narrowing it down further to "Analytics for single page web apps" like you mentioned above. It might make it more understandable for nontechnical folks, even if it doesn't cover the full AJAX scope.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think it's pretty clear. It seems a little like Segment / Sentry. There's definitely a need for this type of product.

The live demo is cool, although it was a little slow for me. Looks good overall.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback. I'm trying my best to make it faster. Because It's based on analytics warehouse (BigQuery) it's not trivial...</comment></comment>


You should install QoS on all your servers - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/firehol/netdata/wiki/You-should-install-QoS-on-all-your-servers <comment><USER2> This looks like a good frontend to tc. Looks like it's bundled with this other firewall product though, which is a shame as I am very happy with firewalld on CentOS.

<comment><AUTHOR> netdata is standalone and will work with plain tc

fireqos can be used independently of firehol - they are just in the same distribution package

firehol has advanced features, like this: [https://github.com/firehol/netdata/wiki/Monitoring- SYNPROXY](https://github.com/firehol/netdata/wiki/Monitoring-SYNPROXY)</comment></comment>


New Siblings, Old Secrets - <AUTHOR> https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/New-siblings-old-secrets-DNA-links-4-strangers-13724844.php <comment><USER2> At home genetic testing is changing what we think of as family. We keep seeing stories of people who are excited to learn they have a bunch of half-siblings, stories of people who are devastated to find out their parent was a serial cheater, stories of old people who are now living in fear that their indiscretion from fifty years ago might suddenly be found out.

It'll be interesting to see if this leads to a rise of therapists as people try to cope with these new realities.

Another interesting note, as an engineer, these stories are the perfect example of the need for forward secrecy. People shouldn't be able to discover your fifty year old secrets. :)

<comment><USER3> It will be even more interesting to see if this changes the root behavior. Will people still cheat if they know there's a high likelihood that it will come to light? Will people still agree to get married if these outcomes become more common?

A lot of people have pushed for mandatory paternity testing and it's usually rejected at the state level. This looks a lot like de facto mandatory paternity testing.

Seems like it will lead to positive outcomes tbh.

<comment><USER2> > Will people still cheat if they know there's a high likelihood that it will > come to light?

Probably, but they're probably more likely to use contraception and/or get abortions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have been casually following a few general advice kind of subreddits for a long time (/r/relationships, /r/relationship_advice, /r/parenting, /r/TwoXChromosomes, etc), and there's definitely been a noticeable uptick in posts seeking advice regarding a situation where a father found out that his children were not biologically his, or children found out that their biological parents/grandparents are not who they though they were, and other similar kinds of scenarios, because of cheap, easily available genetic testing kids.

It's a fascinating and entirely predictable turn of events, and it's not going away any time soon given how useful and profitable genetic testing is.

I suspect that a few decades from now, the notion of a time where no one could know for sure if their "genetic" family was really who they thought they were (unless you're a Baratheon) will seem quaint and romantic.

<comment><USER5> I sometimes wonder if we'll see a genuine men's rights movement around the question of false paternity, now that it's trivial to document.

There are many issues that disproportionately impact men — but that's one that basically uniquely impacts men, and where women's rights movements (such as feminism) have shown a distinct anti-male tendency.

Food for thought:

[https://youtu.be/3WMuzhQXJoY](https://youtu.be/3WMuzhQXJoY)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Side note only because I'm curious: As I'm looking at this the story has 2 points. How does a story with two points make the home page -- I thought they had to have 3. Has it changed/or was I always wrong/or was this manually selected for home page inclusion? Thanks for any insight and sorry this comment is, by it's nature, off topic.</comment>


A Pseudoethnography of Egregores - <AUTHOR> http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2016/12/01/a-pseudoethnography-of-egregores/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is bizarre and I couldn't tell if it was satire or not for the most part.

FYI: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egregore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egregore)</comment>


How Manpacks boosted their average order size 84% and reduced churn to under 2% - <AUTHOR> http://blog.perfectaudience.com/2012/11/01/manpacks-grow-customer-base-customer-service/

<comment><USER2> > Adding the "snooze" function has helped decrease the churn rate down to just > 2%.

> By adding more products and flexibility, the average order size increased by > 84%.

This is pretty much all there is in the article about "how" that is so prominently featured in link title.

<comment><USER3> Agree that the article is a bit thin. The adding more products isn't such an ingenious strategy, pretty logical if you ask me. I like the snooze function though, one of those extremely powerful ideas that make consumers happy.

<comment><USER4> It wasn't only adding products, but adding the flexibility to easily add/remove products via a customer dashboard (while we curated/marketed products we liked) that allowed us to up our AOV. When we launched it was just "pick your plan" and we'd automate the rest -- so we sacrificed a little of the simplicity of automation for the flexibility of service and customization.

Nothing ingenious, just a decision we made that worked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does anybody know how companies like that differentiate themselves from 800 lb gorilla that is Amazon (they do recurring orders)?

Disclaimer: I haven't done any subscription/recurring orders, but am genuinely interested

<comment><USER6> A good friend of mine worked for BirchBox, a subscription beauty service for women and men (Birchbox men), as an intern last summer. From what she told me, the work they did to create a community around the service helps the company beat out gorillas such as Amazon. For instance, people will record themselves opening their Birchbox order and post it on Youtube (do a Youtube search, the top unboxing I get has 57,996 views). I think Manpacks also plays to the community, as evident by them tweeting with the fellow who wanted safety razors.

<comment><USER7> Technically Amazon didn't have a Beauty site that was in competition to BirchBox until Quidsi launched Beautybar.com

Both companies leverage sampling in "boxes" to acquire new customers and hopefully they will order full sized products in their respective stores.

"Opening box" videos are a popular practice in retail (ecommerce) especially in the beauty industry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd like to check out their site but on the other hand I don't want someone seeing "manpacks.com" in the DNS resolution logs here at work.

<comment><USER9> Do you not work in an equal opportunity workplace? Are you concerned that someone might be grepping the DNS resolution logs to find closeted homosexuals? Are you legitimately concerned about retribution if someone believes that you're homosexual?

<comment><USER8> Whoa - whoa. None of those things!

It falls in the same bucket as russianbrides.com. I just don't think there's a reasonable explanation for browsing such a thing at work.

I can pass off HN as keeping tabs on current software and industry trends.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've always wanted to get onboard with the Manpacks but it's hard to justify $10/shirt when I can get a 5-pack of the same kind on Amazon for $18.

<comment><USER11> You're paying to outsource the obligation to remember to order shirts.

Shirts are a little different, but I use it for stuff like razor blades that are consumable.

<comment><USER12> You can do that on Amazon too, though only on consumable items where they think it'll be likely. If there's a "Subscribe & Save" link at the right, you can choose to make the order recurring instead of one-time, with intervals ranging from 1-6 months. Random example of a product that has such a feature: [http://www.amazon.com/Gillette-Fusion-Manual-Cartridges- Coun...](http://www.amazon.com/Gillette-Fusion-Manual-Cartridges- Count/dp/B004B8AZH0)

<comment><USER11> Sure, but they don't have a nice GUI or good messaging around why I should use that to solve this problem specifically.

Also, in a world of politically correct egalitarianism I respect a company that has the literal and figurative balls to stand up and say, nope, this is for men (and go so far as to bake that assumption into the product name)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've never heard of manpacks until an hour ago, but thanks to this article, I'm now a customer.

I'm curious what their churn rate was before it was reduced to 2%.

<comment><USER14> Definitely agree that more data would be helpful, like:

\- What was churn rate before? \- Is (new churn + snooze) greater or less than original churn? \- What percentage of customers come off of snooze and repurchase?

Without more information, it's impossible to pinpoint whether it really is an effective strategy or just makes a nice headline.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Snooze Fest. perfect audience isn't even a good remarketing company! Other good options:

Fetchback Dotomi Criteo Steelhouse Media</comment>