Flaw in StartSSL Validation Allowed Attackers to Get SSL Certs for Any Domain - <AUTHOR> http://news.softpedia.com/news/flaw-in-startssl-validation-allowed-attackers-to-get-ssl-certs-for-any-domain-502257.shtml <comment><USER2> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11330877](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11330877)

</comment><comment><USER3> Wasn't this dismissed as incorrect? The extra email address was the one listed in WHOIS and used to be a valid option in the web UI, and is a reasonable choice for issuing domain-validated certs?

<comment><USER4> StartSSL's response: [https://www.startssl.com/NewsDetails?date=20160322](https://www.startssl.com/NewsDetails?date=20160322)</comment></comment>


334.6M domain name registrations in Q2, 2016 - keithb- http://cio.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/internet/internet-grows-to-334-6-million-domain-name-registrations-in-q2-2016/54444032 <comment><AUTHOR> And I have this sinking feeling that a huge percentage of the newly registered ones were used for one purpose only - spam.

I've straight up blocked most of the new TLDs, especially *.top because of the overwhelming amount of spam.</comment>


Thinking Scientifically to Get Rid of Acne: The SkinTheory Method - <AUTHOR> https://blog.skintheory.app/skintheorys-birth/ <comment><USER2> Yeah my struggle is hormonal acne but some products (e.g. niacinamide) will just cause normal acne then.</comment>


LinkedIn Data Dump - <AUTHOR> https://linkedin.thecthulhu.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Rather surprised this took so long to get released publicly, the other big dumps will most likely get leaked within a few days too.</comment>


NPMCompare – a new website for comparing npm packages - <AUTHOR> http://npmcompare.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Having a hard time choosing which npm package you should use? NPMCompare will help you by displaying a table of all the important information you need in order to choose the right package for you.</comment>


House Passes Bill to Sabotage Net Neutrality - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/house-passes-bill-sabotage-net-neutrality <comment><USER2> Some clarity is badly needed here. If you don't know some fairly arcane details of what's going on in Internet regulation, this looks as though it just prevents the FCC from setting price floors and price ceilings, which would be fine.

What's actually going on is fairly complicated, because there are five different parties involved: the consumer, a consumer ISP such as Verizon or Comcast, a backbone provider such as Cogent or Level 3, a business ISP such as Linode or AWS, and a business with a web site. The wires look like this:

        Consumer --- Consumer-ISP --- Backbone-provider --- Business-ISP --- Website

And the flow of money looks like this:

        Consumer --> Consumer-ISP --> Backbone-provider <-- Business-ISP <-- Website

For each connection, there is someone paying money who can take their money elsewhere if that connection is too slow. What's happening is that some consumer ISPs aren't happy with only being paid by consumers, and want websites to also pay them. That would make the flow of money look like this:

        Consumer --> Consumer-ISP --> Backbone-provider <-- Business-ISP <-- Website
                          ^_____________________________________________________|

The problem is that this arrangement would have businesses paying money to ISPs that they didn't choose, and can't walk away from. From a consumer's perspective, if a web site is slow, it looks like the website's fault rather than their ISP's fault, which distorts the incentives. This sort of arrangement isn't really compatible with free-market incentives, since the flow of money doesn't match who's providing services to who; it's less like normal business, and more like extortion.

Unfortunately, I don't expect Congress to have access to clear explanations of all of this. But if you happen to have a congressperson's ear: rather than convince them of a position, please make sure they understand the full shape of what's happening. They're smart enough to draw the correct conclusion, but are constantly bombarded by misinformation.

<comment><USER3> Consumer ISPs are not a free market, they're a collection of regional monopolies. The solution is not regulation, it's increasing competition. If every consumer had a choice of 5 or more competitive ISPs, then the market would sort this out. ISPs could literally advertise "We won't slow down your favourite websites! All websites equally fast!"

<comment><USER4> Sure, but the reality is that none of the ISPs are going to lay any new cable. Don't forget, all of the original copper laid was financed by the govt back in the 50's/60's. For fiber, unless there's a real need for an ISP to add more, they're just not going to do it. There is absolutely no incentive.

I am not a believer in big or overbearing govt per se, but I feel like, just like power or water, Internet is a utility and it needs to be regulated - hard. The future depends on it. Imagine you're a startup and between 2p-6p you don't have any or super stoddy internet access. Kinda like Comcast from 5p-11p actually..

Anyway, It's pathetic really; we invented the f-ing internet and other countries completely surpass our speeds and ability to access. My brother teases me all the time because he has gigabit in Japan (in the early 00's, he had 100 Mb).

Step outside the US and you realize our options are a total joke.

(Edits: spelling)

<comment><USER5> The solution, in my humble opinion, is having the government open up that cable. Figure out a way to share it, not keep it a monopoly.

<comment><USER6> We tried that in the netherlands. Our approach did not work out that well. In all cases there's the maintainer of the hardware (cable) and a lot of "providers" on that hardware.

I'm not well informed enough to know why, but in all cases (cable, railroad, powerlines, ether frequencies) the system devolved into a state where the "provider" linked to the hardware maintainer is the dominant player still.

I'm not syaing it can't work, just that over here it didn't really work.

<comment><USER7> It worked amazingly in Japan

Practically overnight (metaphorically) it went from only metered dial up or expensive isdn to ultra fast dsl. There was huge competition mostly lead by SoftBank Japan. The actually handed out routers at subway station exits. Every time their competitors including the old monopoly matched their speed they'd double it. It was awesome to watch

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> TLDR >> "a bill that would undermine the FCC's ability to enforce key net neutrality protections."

"Fortunately, President Obama has said that he will veto the bill if it reaches his desk."

</comment><comment><USER9> Vote breakdown by party (D = Democrat, R = Republican):

                    R    D
             Yes  236    5
              No    0  173
      Not Voting    9   10

The 5 Democrats who voted yes were Kyrsten Sinema (AZ 9th), Jim Costa (CA 16th), Scott Peters (CA 52nd), Collin Peterson (MN 7th), and Albio Sires (NJ 8th).

</comment><comment><USER10> Removing net neutrality is like allowing supermarkets to buy separate lanes on crowded city roads exclusively for use by their customers.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm old enough to remember land line phones in your house. The caller payed for the call not the person who received the call. With cell phones they managed to convince us both parties should pay money for the call and we are used to that, it's the new normal. ISPs now want the same double billing, they want both parties money and see no reason why they can't have it. They want me to pay to receive the data and the site to pay to send that same data.

</comment><comment><USER12> The headline is a huge overstatement relative to what the press release says, which itself is scaremongering relative to what the bill itself says.

<comment><USER13> I don't know about that - The legal criticisms of it are pretty severe, and it's bad enough that the president has promised to veto it if it comes to his desk.

EDIT: Engadget's review is much more damning. It would pretty much remove any enforcement power the FCC has re: net neutrality. It's a pretty big deal. [http://www.engadget.com/2016/04/13/president-veto- hr-2666-bi...](http://www.engadget.com/2016/04/13/president-veto- hr-2666-bill/)

<comment><USER14> If the police are in your way, remove the police.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The EFF really needs to spend their bullets more carefully. And instead of these panicked press releases in response to the normal machinations of government, perhaps find a way to get their opinions heard and words inked while the bills are being drafted.

Their only tool has been a hammer for decades now. And it's wearing thin.

You can't kill every bill just because something is poorly worded -- even if you scare smarty/lefty internet people into believing the whole point is the worst possible construction. Frankly, we don't have that much power. Time to build up the rest of the toolbox.

<comment><USER16> >You can't kill every bill just because something is poorly worded

Why not? Why should we _ever_ be OK with passing poorly thought out legislation?

<comment><USER15> Because laws are not rigid computer programs that solve logic riddles. They are broad strokes designed for the long term, to be interpreted by Judges.

ANY contract can be read at least three ways. One of the comments here discusses advocacy vs scaremongering and computer science people seem particularly prone to having their buttons pushed by sloppy legalese. I wish the real world were clearer, but it just isn't.

There's no excuse for poorly-thought out legislation -- but that's why we elect representatives. You can't rally the minions every time there's sloppy bricklaying. It does not scale. And as a citizen, you need to know when to spend your limited supply of outrage.

<comment><USER17> Then the industry are wasting an enormous amount of time and money making sure that the laws are written exactly this way. What idiots, right? Judges will ultimately make sure that the laws are interpreted in a way to favor net neutrality if we would just keep quiet about it.

<comment><USER18> What grandparent post is failing to understand is that we're part of the process. Our outrage was anticipated, and the system expects us to cry out when a bad law gets proposed.

<comment><USER15> Grandparent (me) feels that if the EFF is trying to fight massive corporations and lobbyists with blog posts -- and the end result is three posts an hour on HN -- then perhaps the EFF needs to reflect upon its strategy.

Also killing every bill that you don't like isn't a long-term strategy. They come back. They come back hidden. They come back stronger. They come back sleazier.

Killing bills that are not perfect (obstructionism) merely pumps up the pressure cooker. This is not the path to reasonable legislation.

Sometimes the path forward is to enact a bad bill then sue to set case law.

I don't see a lot of these nuances discussed during the quarterly "this kills the internet" fire drills. Perhaps you still find them exciting? I do not.

<comment><USER18> Other than your idea about the path forward, I completely agree. I too am exhausted by the EFF's constant "the sky is falling" attitude.

Their strategy probably works for funding reasons, but I wish a more moderate voice would pick up the net neutrality cause, so I'd finally have a place to send my money.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Swatch Internet Time - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time#cite_ref-6 <comment><USER2> Still supported in Debian, as the gkrellm-itime plugin to gkrellm.

The time is 862.2.</comment>


Ask HN: Freelancers - What do you do when a client doesn't pay? - <AUTHOR>

A mashup of questions here -
I'm currently dealing with a situation where the contractually stated project-completion/payment date on a coding project has passed. How soon after a freelance project is completed, do you expect payment?
What steps do you take if a client simply doesn't pay you?
I'm not looking for official legal advice here. A summary of experiences and general advice would be very helpful. <comment><USER2> Welcome to contract work!

Customers paying late is a fact of life, and from time to time you'll need to be persistent and/or agressive about collections.

Get in touch with your contact at the client company and let them know you haven't been paid for your work yet. Ask for a contact in their Accounts Payable department. Follow up with that person and make sure that your invoice got entered into their system. Make it clear to them that they're past due, and unless you receive payment on the next banking day that you will begin assessing the late fee you stipulated in your contract (you _did_ stipulate a late fee, right?)

If you're dealing with quality clients, they'll almost never just try to stiff you on the payment; instead, it's because their accounting processes are completely disorganized (sometimes intentionally!). If your client isn't a large, trustworthy, stable company, always get your payment up-front. Even if they are a big company you trust, get an advance; it'll help tide you over while you're waiting for them to pay your net-15 invoice... net-90.

After consulting for more than four years, my past-due receivables balance (which at one point exceeded $200,000!) finally went to down to $0 only last week. And that's because I stopped taking on new work.

I've had customers who were nearly 90 days behind on payment (I used to be really bad / lazy about collections) and required almost a dozen followup emails and calls to get things straightened out. As far as I can tell, it was never out of outright malice, just the general disorganization and reluctance to part with cash that you find at big companies.

 _Don't_ take any aggressive / adversarial actions until you've exhausted all the polite request options. Give them the benefit of a doubt (unless your contact is already the person who writes the checks, and has no excuse). Be polite, firm, and extremely persistent. Get a commitment that you will be paid before date X, and if you haven't been paid in full by then, assess your late fee and start calling / emailing on alternate days until you do get paid, or until your patience is exhausted. Get lawyers involved only as a last resort. And next time, get paid in advance. :)

</comment><comment><USER3> I've posted this video a few times, recently. If you are a professional contractor / freelancer you should watch it.

<http://vimeo.com/22053820> \- Mike Monteiro - Fuck You, Pay Me!

</comment><comment><USER4> In the past, I used several different strategies - it all depends on what type of client you have.

For greedy clients - give them a discount that is only valid if they pay up to a certain date.

For corporate clients - threaten to go online with a blog post/ social media story about how they screw freelancers.

For callous clients - yeah, delete the code or switch on a few unexpected "extras". The funnier extras, the better.

It's a good thing that you have a contract, though, should come in handy if things turn out nasty and you'll need a lawyer.

</comment><comment><USER5> delete the code, take down the site

name them in a blog post about this topic

sell the debt to a collection agency

call uncle vinnie to take care of it

</comment><comment><USER6> If a phone call or face-to-face meeting with the client doesn't solve the problem, you should take your contract to a lawyer and figure out your options.

Depending on the amount you're owed, it might not be worth the legal fees or time to fight it.</comment>


Beginner's Guide to Social Media Marketing – 15+ Actionable Tips (Infographic) - <AUTHOR> http://www.ishir.com/blog/5636/beginners-guide-social-media-marketing-15-actionable-tips-infographic.htm <comment><USER2> Not sure about the above infographic but Pinterest actually has some really good social media marketing infographics [https://www.pinterest.com/explore/social-media- marketing/](https://www.pinterest.com/explore/social-media-marketing/)</comment>


Ask HN: Is there any website listing websites' UX compatibility per browser? - <AUTHOR> Dear reader.
Today, I've spent almost 3 hours trying to purchase a few items at IKEA online (the Spanish online store, ikea.es).
As a web developer, I find incredibly difficult to develop an end-to-end website online purchasing experience only compatible with IE11, which was the case.
Of course in order to figure that out, I needed a process of testing the same process again and again with the following list of browsers: - Chrome, Firefox and Safari latest versions for Mac OS X 10.14 and Windows 10. - Microsoft Edge on Windows 10.
None of the above worked. In some cases, an error was thrown so the payment form submission couldn't be correctly sent. In others, some data matching such as the shipping address wasn't simply accepted.
In the end, after complaining on Twitter and contacting them directly, I decided to give it a last try with IE11 and voilà!
To sum up: I would have found profoundly useful to have a website that lists if the full purchasing experience is compatible with my browser, the same that caniuse.com does with the Web APIs per browser.
Any ideas? <comment><USER2> An HTML analyzer with [https://caniuse.com/](https://caniuse.com/) or tests with

[https://github.com/mojoaxel/awesome-regression- testing](https://github.com/mojoaxel/awesome-regression-testing)

[https://modernizr.com/](https://modernizr.com/) reverse</comment>


Under the Influence: New York Hardcore - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRoEdcBgH2Q <comment><USER2> I used to listen to hardcore in the 80s and went to a lot of shows in Boston and a few in the NY area too. One of the interesting aspects of the scenes is they were really local (which led to intense and sometimes violent rivalries) and highly dependent on word of mouth, fanzines, and pre-Web distribution channels such as college radio, clubs, and special record stores.

I always wondered what happened to the people. It's cool to see that this music led to some really creative careers and different ways of thinking that they've carried through to the present. For myself, it sparked a DIY spirit and an idea that alternative paths can lead to worthwhile endeavors.

One thing that surprised me in this video is the fact that the music lives on and has sprouted new hardcore scenes, including overseas. I've gotten the sense in the past few years that guitar-oriented rock is fading as fans age, but it was refreshing to see young people still getting into the music and the spirit. It's totally underground, but that's OK, too ...

<comment><USER3> Maybe it's just observer bias, but it seems to me that the kids I used to hang out with when I'd go to hardcore shows in DC in the 80s and early 90s were some of the most creative and smartest kids I met. A lot of them went into software development (CS, CE, EE degrees) or some sort of visual arts career. There's something motivational about the music.

I still listen to old bad brains, cro-mags, youth of today, warzone, etc when I need to bang out some code (not really for when I have to design something, though). Overall, it's a really positive scene. I feel that a lot of people don't really get that, though.

<comment><USER4> Absolutely. People who aren't going to be interested anyway often don't look past the names. E.g., Hatebreed, one of the most relentlessly positive and inclusive bands out there. And Jamie Jasta is the very definition of DIY.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> If you're a hardcore fan, the series on Judge is good, too: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eHPIBP5a0Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eHPIBP5a0Y)

<comment><USER5> The Judge show in Austin at The Mohawk during Fun Fun Fun Fest 2013 was one of the best things I've ever seen. It was inside, so in a room that's about 20 feet by 25 feet, with a 2.5 foot stage. Completely packed with people. As soon as they started playing it immediately turned into one of those rare "mosh to survive" situations. If you're standing still you're probably not going to leave without getting seriously hurt.

The best part was how incredibly close to the records they sounded. It was obvious that they still loved what they were doing despite how long it had been since they were last around. Sometimes older bands that get back together just seem to be going through the motions. Judge definitely wasn't.

<comment><USER6> I think the first hardcore show I saw was an all ages show headlined by Converge when I was 16 or 17, right when they dropped their Jane Doe album. It was total insanity -- kids were hanging off the rafters in the venue and falling 10 feet into the pit, feet first stage diving so people were getting drop kicked, at one point the bouncers tried to stop kids from jumping on stage and formed a wall up front, which resulted in a gang of about ten kids tackling them and punching them in the middle of the set. The venue owners pulled the sound and had to call the cops to break up the brawl... needless to say there were no more hardcore shows at the venue, and the local scene quickly fizzled out due to the insanity.

<comment><USER3> Maybe it's because I'm old and not used to that sort of moshing, but that just doesn't sound enjoyable. Back in the day (get off my lawn!), the pit was a strange mix between violence and friendliness. If someone fell, they'd immediately get picked up. If someone was getting pummeled, they'd get carried out of the pit. Stage dives were fun for the diver and crowd.

Sorry to sound like an old man, but I just don't understand this latest version of moshing. Maybe I need to go to one of these shows and get in the pit to see if I'm missing something (blow off some steam).

<comment><USER5> If I'm honest with myself, part of what really attracted me to hardcore punk as a teenager was the risk of violence at shows. It's rare that anyone gets seriously injured, but there's almost always this sense of tension and looming chaos. I'm a couple of months away from being 30 now. I still go to shows on a regular basis and that's still part of the appeal.

It's exactly like you said, "a strange mix between violence and friendliness". I'm usually friends with nearly every single person in the room but much of what happens would constitute assault in any other context. People still pick each other up when they fall, even that person just punched them in the back of the head. I suspect you'd find very little has actually changed.

On a semi-tangential note: It's always so amusing trying to explain this sort of thing to someone who has never been a part of punk. Another commenter in this thread said that it's self regulating. And that's what so many people don't get. There are rules. Unspoken ones, but they are there. Everyone in the room knows when something is actually out of hand. It may look like total mayhem at times to the untrained eye but if you've been around long enough you see the same sort of organic patterns of behavior at every show. Sometimes I'm inclined to think you've never really connected with others until you've been to a punk show with a hundred other like minded people crammed into a tiny dim smelly space with terrible music playing as loud as the speakers will allow, all the while loving every moment.

<comment><USER3> Great comment. Thanks for taking the time to reply. It sounds like, although it may be a bit more violent then in my days, it's still the mix of violence and friendliness. This makes me happy. That's what will keep the HC scene going into the future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't get why this is on Hacker News, but I like it.

</comment><comment><USER8> i had the pleasure of playing CBGB before it closed, and ABC No Rio before i stopped playing out. i've opened or headlined for a few bands in the documentary as well.

i mostly just want to brag, it is very rare my interests intersect like this. so i'll try to add some value: there is something we can all learn about community from the hardcore scene. regardless of how large it grows or how transient members can be, it is self policing of it's values which remain unchanged for probably 40 years now. it remains original and pure in a way that HN couldn't dream of.

<comment><USER3> Would you want to say which band you played in?

<comment><USER8> i played in "The Banner" and "Pellinore". neither is a staple of the New York Hardcore scene, but I'd like to think anyone involved in the NJ/NY scene from 2004-2012 is probably familiar. both are on Spotify, if you care to listen. :)

this is obviously kind of new school with respect to the documentary, but they feature some newer bands so I thought it was fair game. :)

<comment><USER9> Gosh, I used to love The Banner. I can't believe this thread is seriously happening on Hacker News but it's amazing.

I was at this show with Shai Hulud (all time favorite status) at ABC No Rio [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_52HtykF1gs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_52HtykF1gs).

<comment><USER8> hahaha, awesome m8. your comment made my day. :)

the odds of seeing a thread like this on HN seem slim, and the odds someone here is familiar with one of my bands even slimmer.

i stopped playing with them in 2009 when i landed a gig in the startup world that was too hard to pass up, so unfortunately i wasn't actually at the show in the video. but it still means a lot to me to see it posted here. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Anyone interested in both NYHC and HN would be into this if they haven't seen it (I'm sure it's been posted here before): the history of the old Kickstarter office, which is across the street from ABC No Rio, and is also the location of the Rancid "Time Bomb" video.

[http://fredbenenson.com/2014/01/19/digital-forensics- rancid-...](http://fredbenenson.com/2014/01/19/digital-forensics-rancid-reas- kickstarter-hq/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Really surprised to see this on the front page. Hardcore was my youth is a huge part of me still.

</comment><comment><USER12> If you liked this I recommend the documentary American Hardcore. It takes a look at the early hardcore punk scene with tons of interviews and footage.

</comment><comment><USER13> With so much politicization on the internet today, I was skeptical while I watched this, thinking there would be an ulterior message, but it's actually really good. I enjoyed watching it a lot. I also am not sure if this should be on HN, but it was enjoyable enough that I'm cool with it.

<comment><USER14> It's okay to mix hacker things and non-hacker-related things if they're interesting. It's how I live my life, actually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've been going to Agnostic Front shows since the late 80's, always a good time.

</comment><comment><USER16> What stood out for me was I didn't notice a single woman out of the hundreds of people shown in this video. And with a few exceptions they were all white.

I very much want to know the attitudes of all those white men toward women and non-whites.

<comment><USER17> There are in fact plenty of hardcore bands from past and present with non- white/female/lgbt members. Bad Brains, Limpwrist, The Comes... Of course there are some openly anti-female/non-white/lgbt bands, but they're by no means the norm. My experience in punk and hardcore was defined by the open and accepting nature of the people in the scene. Our local venue's official motto was "NO RACIST, SEXIST, OR HOMOPHOBIC SHIT TOLERATED" (Lucy's Record shop in Nashville)</comment></comment>


Vulnerability announced: update your Git clients - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blog/1938-vulnerability-announced-update-your-git-clients <comment><USER2> Current discussion [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8769667](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8769667) (101 points, 29 minutes ago, 21 comments) (It was submitted 5 minutes before this.)</comment>


There is a giant pigeon sitting on top of Paris Quickly Drag it away - <AUTHOR> https://mariusandra.github.io/pigeon-draggable/ <comment><USER2> Considering the rat epidemic in Paris right now, a rat would have been more fitting.</comment>


I will not sign the CLA for less than $100, payable in Bitcoins in advance - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/datastax/nodejs-driver/issues/33#issuecomment-90071348 <comment><USER3> I may be misreading the Contributor License Agreement Wikipedia page, but it seems to me that the core reason why CLAs exist is to undermine the core concept of OSS software. Essentially it allows some company to randomly re- license free contributions to turn them private/for-profit.

The fact that your contributions are now effectively owned by DataStax and then licensed back to the people who actually wrote them(!) gives me a very bad feeling, like you've just become an unpaid employee of DataStax.

I will fully admit that I haven't read DataStax's CLA in full, but that is because I cannot without giving them access to my GitHub account...

PS - I understand that the FSF does this also, but the FSF isn't a for-profit company so apples and oranges in my view.

<comment><USER4> > Essentially it allows some company to randomly re-license free contributions > to turn them private/for-profit.

On the other hand, without signing over your rights, you can effectively hold up a project from moving forward. For example, if a project wanted to move from GPLv2 to GPLv3, IIRC, you can't do that without the permission of all contributors unless they have signed over their rights. And as @trestletech has pointed out not all contributors are created equal[1].

One the one hand, you have people making significant contributions (and you don't want to just stomp all over them), on the other hand you could have people making tiny contributions, yet are holding up everyone else.

[1]: [https://github.com/datastax/nodejs- driver/commit/6f3c6b2f454...](https://github.com/datastax/nodejs- driver/commit/6f3c6b2f4543487a8a4c2ff04d88a500c4772298)

<comment><USER5> A contributor can have legitimate reasons for not wanting their code re- licensed. For example, the Linux kernel deliberately did not move to GPLv3. Would such a contributor be "holding the project up" or would they be rightly demanding that the license under which they contributed code be honored?

Obviously the devil's in the details of the terms of the CLA. I had previously thought the purpose of the CLA was to allow the projects organizers to make copyright claims in court, not to allow them to re-license.

<comment><USER4> My "holding up the project" comment was more in relation to people that make small contributions (e.g. correct spelling mistakes and/or typos), but (maybe?) legally still need to sign off on a relicense. In this case, it really comes across as petty to put up a huge fight.

<comment><USER6> What huge fight? The guy is just saying that he isn't willing to invest the time in understanding the full implications of the contract he's being asked to sign, and that they can pay him if they want him to bother. At a very reasonable rate, I might add, considering he's a software developer and that carefully reading a CLA might take an hour or more.

<comment><USER4> I wasn't aiming in particular at this person with the "huge fight" part.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I won't sign Apache/Google-style CLAs either, because there's no way to terminate the agreement for any future contribution. Once you've signed, you're bound forever that anything you "submit" is a contribution - <USER2> basically everything is a contribution - from Google's CLA:

      For the purposes of this definition, "submitted" means any
      form of electronic, verbal, or written communication sent
      to Google or its representatives, including but not limited
      to communication on electronic mailing lists, source code
      control systems, and issue tracking systems that are
      managed by, or on behalf of, Google for the purpose of
      discussing and improving the Work, but excluding
      communication that is conspicuously marked or otherwise
      designated in writing by You as "Not a Contribution."

For example, if you so much as talk to a Googler at the airport bar about a project you've signed a CLA for, bam, it's a contribution unless you remember to be explicit about saying "This is not a contribution". On the other hand, if you don't sign, only things that you explicitly mark as a contribution or otherwise suitably license are contributions, and someone who's signed the CLA is free to integrate it without needing to ask you.

I don't want some agreement following me around for life, and I don't want to have to disclose to every future employer that "Oh yeah, I've got an agreement with X that unless I remember to say otherwise X gets the rights to use it".

I'd sign a CLA that included a clause that said "This agreement may be terminated by either party in writing. Terminating this agreement does not revoke any licenses granted to the project while the agreement was in force."

</comment><comment><USER8> chmac's single, substantive contribution to the project: [https://github.com/datastax/nodejs- driver/commit/6f3c6b2f454...](https://github.com/datastax/nodejs- driver/commit/6f3c6b2f4543487a8a4c2ff04d88a500c4772298)

<comment><USER9> I think he still has a point. Perhaps not for him in particular on this project.

<comment><USER8> I think he all-the-more has a point: that he shouldn't waste his time reading and signing some scary contract to be able to contribute a correction of a typo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The CLA protects users of the software from contributors coming back later and saying: "Hey I own that code and now you need to pay me!" Apache projects in general rely on CLA documents.

It's totally in the right of the contributor to refuse to sign this document. But don't expect your contributions to be applied, or work on any Apache licensed projects :)

<comment><USER11> I am not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure that how non-cla open source projects handle it also protects them from that eventuality.

All contributors are required to say "This code is released under X license" which prevents the person from later coming back and asking for money for them to use the code.

Edit: Assuming my above comment is correct, what this means is that the only real point of a CLA that I'm aware of is to allow the owner of the CLA to change the license on code without asking the contributors.

<comment><USER12> I think the point is that if a project is big enough, it will inevitably go to court at some point (probably at many points). Having a CLA will make this a lot less expensive for the project maintainers.

<comment><USER6> Why is it cheaper with a CLA?

<comment><USER13> Because the Contributors, in advance, have already agreed to confer a certain set of IP rights to the mainter and manager with respect to the code they've contribute. This means there's less questions during litigation about the rights to the code the maintainer holds and prevents the maintainer from having to track down individual contributors during a lawsuit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> As they're releasing the code under Apache 2.0 anyway, what is the motivation for having contributors sign an additional CLA?

I'd much rather see them use a Contributor License Agreement (e.g. the Harmony ones that Canonical uses [1]) than requiring the contributors to assign their rights to the source code (which he or she might not be able to do legally).

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

<comment><USER4> Those contributors contributed when it was _not_ under the Apache license. They either need to get all rights assigned to them (DataStax) and then they can relicense it under Apache, or they need to get all contributors to agree to relicense under Apache. Looks like they are taking option 1 because it will make relicensing less of a headache in the future if it becomes necessary.

<comment><USER14> Ah, thanks. That part was missing from the issue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Ignoring the issue of CLAs, I can't help but find the "You did it!" confirmation message a bit patronizing.

</comment><comment><USER16> That doesn't seem like a terrible deal. $100/per CLA wouldn't even be that bad for a thousand CLAs, i.e. it would scale for a while.</comment>


Ask HN: Would having read and studied any particular books help a CV? - <AUTHOR>

A bit difficult to cut it down to less than 80 characters. Better read the rest. :)
To continue the never-ending discussion of how to make it easier for your potential employer to assess your skill, and the recent discussions of the canonical SICP, are there any books that would make it easier for you to interview me and assess my applications and skills, if I had read them?
It's obviously easy to slap on some books that you claim to have read and studied on you About section on your website or other digital calling card, but you would obviously be able to call the bluff in an interview.
Maybe I could fork my answers to any (particular) exercises in said books.
Many fields have their favourite books - Bibles to some - and it gives people a better way of finding a common ground and talking together, and, presumably, gives you a decent topic to discuss in an interview.
I know people and companies haven't been known to do this, but, putting this aside, could this be explored and used by both programmer as well as potential employer? <comment><USER2> I'd hesitate to put books on my résumé. My fear would be that the interviewer would then pick the hardest part of the book to ask me about.

OTOH, if I were interviewing someone, it might be worthwhile asking them what good programming books they've read lately, and drilling down into that with them.</comment>


Tech Startups Feel an IPO Chill - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/tech-startups-feel-an-ipo-chill-1445309822 <comment><USER2> > And as of Friday, at least 11 of 49 venture-capital-backed U.S. technology > companies with IPOs since the start of 2014 traded below the per-share value > where they last raised money as a private company, an analysis of stock-sale > documents by The Wall Street Journal shows.

Here's why I think this matters. Previously tech companies, Microsoft being the prime example, paid employee's a fair market wage but then gave options or restricted stock as well. The rising stock price acted as a sort of bonus to employee's.

With companies now spending more time private and getting more of their gains as private companies, what's happening is that private equity and vc companies are now capturing more of those gains that the public would.

Employee's are also the one's holding the bag here. With their lockout periods after going public they are the most exposed to busted IPO's.

One other worrying trend is that investment banks are no longer backstopping the IPO's they shop. If you remember the Facebook IPO, there was a lot of buying at the ipo price from the book runners to ensure that facebook didn't drop below that price. The last few tech ipo's had no such support and happily "broke", or traded below their initial offering price.

<comment><USER3> This is why I wouldn't take less money just Because Startup. If they want to give me equity in some format, that's nice. I expect it to be worth $0 and if that lack of faith makes me seem like a bad employee, so be it. If I wanted to play the lottery I'd go buy some scratch tickets at the 7-11.

I'm perfectly willing to take less money for other reasons, but not in exchange for a lottery ticket.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> paywall get around.. [https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB8QqQIwAGoVChMI_9KOzsnRyAIVCf0eCh1e0Qef&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Ftech- startups-feel-an-ipo-chill-1445309822&usg=AFQjCNE4W4F0iiaAqqdoxkmU_y7YzW1WuQ)

</comment><comment><USER5> > In a sign of wariness among pre-IPO investors, an analysis of funding rounds > by law firm Fenwick & West LLP in March found that 30% of private companies > valued at $1 billion or more promised a specified IPO price. In some cases, > the companies agreed to give additional equity to investors if the IPO price > wasn't met.

This is not necessarily a "sign of wariness." The investors are just doing what reasonably sophisticated investors do: protecting against downside risk. As long as the companies they've invested in can get out to market, the investors really can't lose. The companies themselves and other shareholders lose.

> Dropbox received the $10 billion-valuation offer from BlackRock after just > two days of investor meetings, said a person familiar with the fundraising.

The company and its valuation don't matter. The terms of the deal do. You can make enormous profits investing in bad companies if you negotiate great terms.

If BlackRock structured its investment well, which it almost certainly did, Dropbox could go public with a $5 billion valuation and BlackRock would still achieve the desired return.

As I wrote in a previous comment, it's kind of amusing that so many in Silicon Valley rail against Wall Street and "financial engineering" when the biggest "winners" of this tech boom are products of Wall Street and "financial engineering."[1]

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10403067](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10403067)

<comment><USER6> >it's kind of amusing that so many in Silicon Valley rail against Wall Street and "financial engineering" when the biggest "winners" of this tech boom are products of Wall Street and "financial engineering."

A lot of people have an irrational hatred of high finance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> BUBBLE WUT BUBBLE THIS TIME DIFFER–

Different primarily as maxxxxx says: 'IPOs are mainly a vehicle to sell stocks to the public where the investors have pretty much extracted all likely gains already'

PLS god one more crash I need affordable house thx

<comment><USER8> Sadly a crash might not do it. Next big trend, Chinese rich people sneaking money out of the country and into California real estate

<comment><USER5> Next big trend? This has been happening for years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> with so many companies faltering after IPO, why do you as a an individual have any reason to stay at a company past it's IPO? seems like the best thing you can do for yourself is use the company's momentum of going public to ask for more money in a new a job

<comment><USER10> Partial vesting, and hope the price doesn't drop below your strike price. You might also enjoy where you work! The opportunities etc.. Some companies are long term companies.</comment></comment>


Ex Nokians launched a compnay called Jolla to continue working on MeeGo - <AUTHOR> http://twitter.com/JollaMobile/statuses/221540251670298624 <comment><USER2> Now, if only we could flash it into Lumias and convert them into N8.75's...

</comment><comment><USER3> As a matter of national economic and technology policy, Finland needs a backstop to Nokia. And the world could use another open platform for phones.</comment>


UN-Sopa wikipedia - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/1632296 Bookmarklet that lets you work today <comment><USER2> cache:en.wikipedia.org

Works for Chrome anyway.</comment>


Code Hoarders - <AUTHOR> http://blog.8thlight.com/uncle-bob/2014/04/03/Code-Hoarders.html <comment><USER2> This is a good article. It uses hoarding as a metaphor. Unfortunately, it get hoarding wrong. (This doesn't affect the actual point the article is making though.)

Hoarding is possibly a subset of obsessive compulsive disorder. OCD is listed by WHO in their ten most debilitating illnesses. Or maybe it's a separate thing - it's only recently attracted research. (One important difference: A person with OCD knows that their thoughts are intrusive and their rituals don't help, while a person with hoarding may not recognise it as a problem even though it's affecting them and other people clearly see a problem).

Hoarding causes significant impairment, and sometimes death (by fire or crushing).</comment>


Building a reactive calculator in Haskell - <AUTHOR> https://keera.co.uk/2020/05/28/building-a-reactive-calculator-in-haskell-1-5/ <comment><USER2> Red language offers a different approach: [https://github.com/red/code/blob/master/Showcase/calculator....](https://github.com/red/code/blob/master/Showcase/calculator.red)

Truly native and cross-platform GUI with declarative DSL for its specification, built-in reactive framework (no FRP though), and semantically rich evaluation model (e.g. note that calculation of typed expression is a one-liner).

<comment><AUTHOR> So as a minimal example, yes, that is short. But it mixes model and view which, in very large applications, may produce codebases that are really hard to maintain. Are there examples that are much bigger, for example, with at least a few hundred widgets?

By the way, the library used in that blog post is also truly native and cross- platform. Keera has apps and games that work on Windows/Mac/Linux/Web/iOS/Android, all from the same code.

<comment><USER2> It mixes them because it's a small educational example, no one stops you from following MVC practices if you want.

Most of the Red GUI examples I know of are "programming in the small", like CRUD interfaces, games, and various interactive environments. [1, 2]

The graphical engine relies on OS widgets internally right now, which are resource-heavy and don't scale well (at least on Win32 backend each widget is just that, a window); in the future, more lightweight graphical objects (aka GOBs) will be introduced for use-cases like spreadsheets and data-intensive apps, there's already a PoC for that. [3]

For evaluation and benchmarking, I recommend to check out 7GUIs project [4] and add Keera Hails entries to it; here [5] is Red implementation, for comparison. Some tasks in it directly address MVC separation of concerns.

[1]: [https://github.com/red/code](https://github.com/red/code)

[2]: [https://github.com/red/red/wiki/%5BLINKS%5D-Projects- showcas...](https://github.com/red/red/wiki/%5BLINKS%5D-Projects- showcase-\(links-to-remember\))

[3]: [https://github.com/qtxie/red/tree/GOB](https://github.com/qtxie/red/tree/GOB)

[4]: [https://eugenkiss.github.io/7guis/](https://eugenkiss.github.io/7guis/)

[5]: [https://github.com/9214/7guis-red](https://github.com/9214/7guis-red)

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool! Thank you!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Would you prefer paying $1 per 1000 API calls or $30 fixed monthly? - jonathan-kosgei <comment><AUTHOR> There's a rule that's relevant here: innovate the product or the pricing, but not both.

So if you're innovating on the product.. market the innovations to your users, and focus their attention on the benefits of your innovations. They should be big, obvious improvements--think 10x (not 10%). For pricing, copy it from your competitors.

If you're innovating on the pricing, then that's frequently a freemium model... but it could also be flat-rate pricing, etc. To build a foothold in an existing market, you'll need to aim for pricing that's 1/10th of your competitors. If you're going to deliver a big price cut like this, you should make it as obvious to your customers as you possibly can.

So the answer to your question very much depends on your strategy, but also the industry you are in and how your competitors price their products.

Perhaps the worst thing you could do is both... since innovations cost money and price cuts cost money... it's a great way to die. Doing less of both just creates a mediocre product without clear marketing; making it more complicated for your users to understand the benefits of your service.

<comment> jonathan-kosgei Thanks for replying. To give you some context the API is ipdata.co pricing at ipdata.co/pricing.html I've gotten feedback from multiple users that my pricing is overwhelming. The API is pretty much feature complete and my main focus right now is selling.

<comment><AUTHOR> A few comments:

\- Your index page is missing. (I can't see your marketing angle.. so I'm not going to comment on the actual pricing... let me know when you fix it)

\- you're following a freemium model, but it's not obvious enough. The first plan on the pricing page should say "FREE". Your index page (which I cant see), should say free signup & no credit card required.

\- That's a lot of plans. Compare to Maxmind, they have 3 plans depending on what data you want (Country, City, Insights) + a free trial.

\- In the faq, it says I need to email you to update my credit card or change my plan. I guarantee you some user will email you their credit card number. This should all be available from their account without emailing you.

<comment> jonathan-kosgei Please follow this link [https://ipdata.co/](https://ipdata.co/) the site is up, just checked.

What I do is ask the user to sign up for the new plan and refund them on a prorated basis for their usage of the first.

But good point I should make this more clear in the faqs.

I'm looking to either cut some of the plans or move to cost per usage, maxmind offer downloads of their data. If I remember correctly their webservice is charged per request but is way more expensive compared to my fixed plans. Whereas I charge by based on an API usage bucket.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not up... content says "Page not found. Sorry. That page doesn't exist." has a blue button "RETURN HOME". Status code is 403 - permission denied. Here are the response headers:

      age:267
      content-length:1879
      content-type:text/html
      date:Sun, 04 Mar 2018 20:28:28 GMT
      etag:"12ccf5f30d33b193fec3a71a4c5529e2"
      last-modified:Thu, 01 Feb 2018 00:46:26 GMT
      server:AmazonS3
      status:403
      via:1.1 7fd13f5c4b32635feca1c61001387a16.cloudfront.net (CloudFront)
      x-amz-cf-id:eE3tjl3Dx6V32_J2s1k1cO1z_d5bu5sZClNZFTvkuugMGWngdtEK5w==
      x-amz-error-code:AccessDenied
      x-amz-error-message:Access Denied
      x-amz-version-id:null
      x-cache:Error from cloudfront

<comment> jonathan-kosgei Please try now.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm able to see it now. It seems like there's some work that needs to be done whether or not the pricing model needs to change.

Prorating the first month is ok.. but it should be something obvious for the user. Days left in the month is frequently used, and something you can calculate up front. Which means you won't need to issue a refund later. This (like changing plans and credit card numbers) should be built into the signup/account.

If your plans are cheaper than maxmind, that's not obvious at all. Simply because your plans do not follow the same model as maxmind, and to find out if they are cheaper, I would need to convert them manually to the same units. That could be made more obvious.

I don't think the free plan is obvious enough on the front page. The "Purchase a plan" subtitle under the "See the docs" button could be "Signup for a free account". (Edit: Consider adding a free account so users already have data in your system, and just need to upgrade to a paid account. This will also give you email addresses to market to.)

Am I right that the only way to signup for a plan from the front page is to click on "Pricing" in the header or the small subtitle "Purchase a plan" and then click "Get Started" on the plan? That needs work - "Get Started" should be "Signup".. especially since you use "Get Started" on the front page to go to the docs. IMO, getting to signup from the index should be easier.

Overall I like this service.. But I think your users are right.. the pricing and account management needs to be simplified. These are just my thoughts after a few minutes--you know more than me here, so feel free to ignore anything you think is offbase.

Edit: are there not actually accounts on this service? The pricing page just shows a stripe payment popup. If so, consider changing that.. this could be simple. Ask for email+password, give a dashboard with a few charts (like query counts), a profile, and subscription info. Now the user can login, change their subscription, upgrade to a paid account, and you have their email to market improvements and upsell to.

<comment> jonathan-kosgei Thanks for all the feedback and sorry for the connection hiccup.

This is still a very early version of the service. Account management is currently limited to signing up via Stripe and getting an email with your API key and a how to get started guide :)

I can make the free tier more obvious, you really don't need an account or credit card to get started with the API that's why "Get Started" links to the docs. You can just copy and paste the commands/code examples and get started. I see now that's it's not at all clear and will fix this.

Otherwise I'd say the pricing units are really just the number of calls. A really interesting idea might be to have a comparison on the site between my service and Maxmind's web service!

Some really basic account management like you describe is very much in the works. There're currently no accounts on the site. But it's something I'd like to do possibly offering a higher free tier quota to users who sign up, so that I'm able to communicate with them and have stats on conversion etc

<comment><AUTHOR> It sounds like you're heading in the right direction.

I think adding the accounts, improving the signup flow, and reducing the number of plans would go a long way. It seems like those are bigger issues than the pricing itself.

After getting a better handle on the service, one issue that occurred to me: how do you track the free tier usage? I assume its by request IP, but that should be stated in the docs. That could be another advantage of signing up for a free account -- to be able to see your usage; and knowing that you're below the max would provide some peace of mind and make them more comfortable building on the API.

<comment> jonathan-kosgei By IP address, referer and api key.

I'll mock up something really simple that does just that in the next couple of weeks.

Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> d--b I really dislike pricing per API call, because I'm vulnerable to bugs or attacks (on my or your side) that can cause the pricing to blow up.

Also, I have the impression of getting screwed because there is no relationship between my usage and your cost (unless your API call is a call to a really complex task, 1000 calls will cost you mere pennies in equivalent CPU time, so the more I use your service the bigger your relative margin!).

The only place I am happy to pay per use is for cloud services, where I rent CPU and I get billed per time used.

<comment><USER2> It seems like it'd be far easier to track usage and prevent/resolve disputes with a monthly charge, too.

<comment> jonathan-kosgei And to handle traffic spikes. I however pad my user's daily quotas (by a percentage of their plan) to be able to handle temporary spikes up to a certain point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The answers HN readers give won't be representative of the "revealed preferences"[1] your prospective customers - even if both are from the same person. Get 10 people excited about your product and have conversations/casual pricing negotiations with them.

1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revealed_preference](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revealed_preference), [http://www.beyondcostplus.com/blog/stated-vs-revealed- prefer...](http://www.beyondcostplus.com/blog/stated-vs-revealed-preferences- pricing)

<comment><USER3> In case a future reader stumbles across this thread.. today I read someone else's description of exactly this. From [https://www.kapwing.com/blog/unexpected-challenges-of- making...](https://www.kapwing.com/blog/unexpected-challenges-of-making- money/) ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16542603](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16542603)):

> 8\. Customers are bad at telling you how much they would pay: Before we > added the paywall, we asked a sample of users if they'd be willing to pay a > fee to remove a watermark. The majority said they wouldn't be. But when we > actually added the paywall, several people who said they wouldn't pay did. > After we launched, some people have told us our product is cheap and plenty > have said it's too expensive. Takeaway: The easiest way to tell if people > will pay is to make them an offer and see if they cash in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> $1 per thousand with a $30 maximum charge.

<comment><USER5> I agree with this. This gets you the cheapest offer (pay as you use) while having an upper cost bound giving you peace of mind.

<comment><USER6> An upper cost bound can also be applied with a hard user-configurabe usage cap.

For a company, having your largest customers have negligible marginal cost for increased usage seems unwise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> At a very high level —- I'm willing to pay a premium for a service at any reasonable cost, and if my business is dependent upon it. Metered use encourages consumers to be more mindful of how they use APIs. Monthly fixed fees help consumers to forecast spending more loosely; however, as a business that is depending on your service, I am also concerned about your operational scale (all you can eat is great until too much has been eaten by the aggregate customer base).

As most others will probably say: it depends. If your service is a commodity that I can switch out for another service easily, perhaps a fixed monthly fee is the only way to go. But if it's a very unique service, metered may be the way to go.

<comment><USER2> Maybe x/month plus y/call over a certain amount, for the people who use a disproportionately large amount of resources?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think a good way to price this out is logarithmic pricing. $1 for the first 1000, an additional $1 for the next 2000, then $1 for the next 4000, etc. Play with the numbers, based on how many calls you expect the bulk of the smaller customer to make, yet still cover your expenses if you land a handful of very large customers.

<comment><USER9> I hate pricing schemes like that. They force me to spend time trying to predict usage, which is often impossible or frustrating.

<comment><USER10> This seems strictly better than the price/1000 calls, since at least you only have to predict the order of magnitude of usage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Depends on whether other people control how often I call the API. Is it a scheduled task I run? Then I'd rather pay $1/1000\. Is it a trigger that fires when a new user signs up for my service, or sends a link? I'll take the guaranteed flat rate.

<comment> jonathan-kosgei It's actually called on each page load so I imagine you'd 100% go for the flat rate :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It depends how many API calls I plan to do monthly. So it depends on the service :-)

</comment><comment><USER13> More information needed. $1 / call might be a deal if that is actually a savings over an alternative means of achieving the outcome. Or, $30/mo might be a real bargain for the consumer but a terrible business model for you. Also, depends on the target buyer and their expected usage.

<comment><USER14> I would agree with this — this question seems like it would be better with more context.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'd rather have the choice to pick and the choice to switch later: some thousands of calls can be okay during initial development/testing and the first days of the product, then as I use the API more extensively, I switch to a subscription.

This is similar to how most online content is sold: most require you to subscribe. I follow some NYTimes newsletters, and I'd pay for the individual articles I read, but I don't want to subscribe, even if that may end up being cheaper sometimes.

<comment> jonathan-kosgei There's actually a free tier of 1500 requests a day for development.

</comment></comment><comment> FLUX-YOU Fixed monthly, but you'll likely have rate limits of some kind anyway so it's the same thing.

$x/month is much, much more ergonomic for cost planning, requisitions, etc.

</comment><comment><USER16> Both. I'd pay per 1K API calls below a certain threshold but the peace of mind that if I get sudden spike (or make a mistake) it's not going to bankrupt me.

<comment> jonathan-kosgei I'd probably do the same thing. If I'm not using a service a lot I don't want to pay for it or I only want to pay when I use it.

Otherwise for constant usage I'd prefer to be able to know my spending ahead of time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I really love the Twilio model personally. I've got a system that is pretty seasonal, and it costs $10/mo for the DigitalOcean VM and pennies/mo (+$1 for the number) most months for Twilio. Around holidays and long weekends, the Twilio costs ramp up quite a bit (I think it hit $100-200 in a weekend once), but it's fine because that's when it makes money.

Only having to pay when we use it helps keep the overhead down dramatically. I've never considered looking at other options because it's been great.

For developers, too, I think the pay-per-usage or fixed-monthly model works well when it's something that they can tangibly understand. Looking at my example above, I'm fine with the fixed monthly DO cost because I know that there's some fraction of some real computer "out in the cloud" that is reserved for me and that is running my code continually. I also know that Twilio has a finite number of phone numbers available, and $1/mo to reserve one of those makes sense to me. But I also know that the way most telecom agreements work is that they bill based on usage, so me getting charged based on usage works fine for me. If they wanted to charge me $20/mo for a number even if I had not sent any messages at all, that'd be harder to swallow.

Edit: also, it probably depends on whether you're selling to small businesses or enterprises. My experiences with enterprises is that they seem to prefer having fixed costs even if it ends up costing more. Seems like it has to do with how budgets and funds get allocated. "Our SMS sending costs went up by a factor of 100 because it's Christmas" doesn't seem like something that flies very well, even if the pay-per-usage model averages out lower over time.

<comment><USER18> swings from pennies to $200/day!

What do u use Twilio for? Is it pure telephony based product?

<comment><USER17> Without going into too many details, it's a customer loyalty and retention product. Small businesses use it to keep in touch with customers who have opted in. They seem to be pretty bursty about when they use it :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Depends on the API.

Generally I prefer flexible pricing, since we might need to scale up - i.e. if we double some limit, I want to be able to pay $60 rather than be blocked.

Some other considerations:

1\. Have a free tier to let developers play with your API. i.e. first 1000 calls per month are free.

2\. If you do variable pricing, let people set a limit and alert them before they hit that limit.

<comment> jonathan-kosgei I actually do both those things! I have a free tier of 1500 requests a day and once you subscribe you get an email when you're at 90% your usage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm surprised how many posters interpret this as $1 / call, when the question says it's $0.001 per call.

</comment><comment><USER21> Possibly you're just gathering data.

If you're thinking about how to price a product of your own:

1) nothing wrong with starting very simple because you're not making your product better by writing billing code

2) common answer to your question is "do both" — google two part tariff

</comment><comment><USER22> Whatever is cheaper, of course!

</comment><comment><USER23> Depends on the service and availability. Look at Mailchimp for their options. Especially buying credit is always useful. If you need to charge them at the end of a period, you will lose money.

</comment><comment><USER24> Do both i.e. charge them $1 for 1000 calls, and cap it at $30 per month for a period of 3 months - after which they would need to sign up for the monthly plan to continue to get the $30 rate.

</comment><comment><USER25> $X/mo + $y/kCalls. X is for license to the code, y is for API hosting costs. i don't know why we don't see such a cost structure much, it seems the fairest for consumer.

<comment> jonathan-kosgei $X could be spread out over the lifetime of the consumer to remove the initial costs of setup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> All inclusive/fixed rates are predictable...tend to be budget friendlier. I guess someone doing some rough bootstrapping would want to pay-as-they-go

</comment><comment><USER27> Depends:

I hate it when companies insist that I pay monthly for something I use infrequently.

For something I need all the time I might be OK with a monthly fee if the price is right.

</comment><comment><USER28> Seems like people are missing the point of the question. Saying $1 is too expensive for 1000 calls without knowing what that API call does shows you're thinking in terms of value, not in terms of a pricing model that is favorable. The OP hasn't told us if he's doing ML calculations, spinning up machines, painting a Tesla, selling an airplane ticket or what. Think in terms of the pricing model only. Yes it would be nice to know what the service does, but the OP probably can't give that away.

</comment><comment><USER29> Assuming that $30 represents 30,000 calls I would prefer to pay $1 per every 1,000 and have the flexibility of more granular pricing.

</comment><comment><USER30> $1 per 1000 easily, because your cost is upfront, a quota means your wasting people's time by trying to game the cost of each call.

</comment><comment><USER31> Which allows you to build a viable business?

<comment> jonathan-kosgei A fixed monthly absolutely does, because;

1) I can offer discounts on annual prepayments which helps cash flow and gives the user a bargain

2) The payment is upfront and there's no need to send dunning emails at the end of the month when several user's card payments fail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Depends what the API does. But ultimately depends if I will reach 1000 or go over or under

</comment><comment><USER33> $1 per 1000 calls, with 10,000 free per month (free tier)

</comment><comment><USER34> uh, try $1 per 10,000 API calls and maybe you're on to something.

<comment><USER35> How can you possibly say that without knowing what the product is?

<comment><USER34> Because it's an API and I'm a developer and a fully developed adult with several decades of computer, internet, and professional working experience in tech.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> this some kinda brain teaser or somethin?

<comment><USER37> Its an exercise in learning how to price a product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I've worked on a lot of API integrations and $1 for a single call is way more than I've ever paid. At that price, I'd burn through more than $30 on the first day just by testing out the integration.

<comment><USER28> While he's suggesting $1 for 1000 calls, I find it interesting to suggest $1 per call for "anything" wouldn't be worth it... for example would you pay $1 to pull someone's credit report? (not that you need to, but just as an example where $1 per API call would actually be cheap).

<comment><USER39> Agree very much here. I would argue I'd even pay _more_ per API call versus pulling someone's credit report through traditional web app/fat client methods, as they business value is in the machine processable format.

The trick is to align your pricing with the API consumer's value received. You want a piece of their take for the value you're delivering.</comment></comment></comment>


Google Maps, Bing Maps, & Yahoo Maps: Cartographic Design Differences - <AUTHOR> http://www.41latitude.com/post/557224600/map-comparison <comment><USER2> Don't forget OpenStreetMap <http://www.openstreetmap.org/> a Free wiki map of the world. It has a very unique style that I think is very nice. One of their statements is "We make beautiful maps"

<comment><USER3> I think you're lucky it was forgotten.

\- It's highway markers look like gel capsules

\- Many users put their hometowns so that they're visible when you zoom out really far (you see the suburbs of Salt Lake City & L.A. before you see SLC & L.A.)

\- There seems to be 80 airports in every county (I've never heard of most of the ones around my area)

\- It's incomplete in many places

\- It doesn't even give you directions

I'm sorry, but I just don't trust OpenStreetMaps over Google Maps. I'm sure there aren't many inaccuracies, but it's not worth taking the chance when I'm traveling in an unfamiliar area.

<comment><USER4> > It's highway markers look like gel capsules

There's a long-running bug in Mapnik (the rendering engine for the tiles) that, when completed, will allow for SVG highway markers.

> Many users put their hometowns so that they're visible when you zoom out > really far

Can you give more examples of this? More than likely it's due to problems with the import of TIGER data a couple years ago. It should have been fixed.

> There seems to be 80 airports in every county

Yea ... I'll give you that one :).

> It's incomplete in many places

... and in many more places it is more complete than Google, Yahoo, or Bing.

> It doesn't even give you directions

<http://openstreetmap.org/> doesn't (the website is for the data and the community around it), but there are several examples of websites that do offer directions using OSM data: <http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Routing/OnlineRouters>

<comment><USER3> _> It's highway markers look like gel capsules There's a long-running bug in Mapnik (the rendering engine for the tiles) that, when completed, will allow for SVG highway markers._

It doesn't really matter that they'll be fixed in the future... What matter's is that's how they look _now_

 _> Many users put their hometowns so that they're visible when you zoom out really far Can you give more examples of this? More than likely it's due to problems with the import of TIGER data a couple years ago. It should have been fixed_

See: [http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=40.64&lon=-82.05&z...](http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=40.64&lon=-82.05&zoom=6&layers=B000FTF)

New York: insignificant NYC suburbs are visible; NYC isn't (Huntington, Islip)

Michigan: no Detroit on the map; but Zeeland and Warren appear

Indiana: Angola, Auburn, Warsaw -- all cities <15,000 pop.

Ohio: Louisville and Willard

Illinois: Algonquin and Harrisburg

Pennsylvania: no Philadelphia on the map; Hazelton and Camden

 _> There seems to be 80 airports in every county Yea ... I'll give you that one :).

> It's incomplete in many places ... and in many more places it is more > complete than Google, Yahoo, or Bing._

This is subjective.

 _> It doesn't even give you directions <http://openstreetmap.org/> doesn't (the website is for the data and the community around it), but there are several examples of websites that do offer directions using OSM data: <http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Routing/OnlineRouters> _

Your solution is too complicated for normal people (read: non-tech people) to figure out.

<comment><USER2> Both Warren and Detroit are 'cities' in the US, so both are tagged "place=city", i.e. both at the same level. The map rendered can't draw both, so it can't decide which to show, so it picks one. It's hard to come up with a good way to rank the hierachies of cities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just this week, zooming in my local city Google map, I was struck by the apparent importance of random small businesses.

At 'z=17', I'm getting a 'dance academy' and similar shops I never heard of, or noticed, labeled at the same level as a huge Sheraton hotel. A nearby residential hotel, which I also never noticed, gets to shout its name in all caps ...

</comment><comment><USER6> Google's pretty well known for not being so good with design, but when design affects how functional their product is then the do a bang-up job.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've long lamented how none of these are anywhere near as beautiful as a decent printed map. Some of the OSM projects (e.g. toposm) are better, but still not as good as (say) Rand-McNally or ADC. On my hope-to-do list is to write a renderer for OSM data that produces really beautiful maps meant for printing rather than viewing on a <100dpi screen.

</comment><comment><USER8> I first read this title as Catastrophic Design Differences, which isn't far off. The author is biased in favor of Google Maps (it's a bit hard to differentiate between Google's 1st and 2nd level city markers), but I like the comparison.

<comment><USER9> I don't think its biased. Google is clearly more legible and useful. Bing is so so but way too many quirks and unuseful stuff, less legible, Yahoo is just insane. I don't think I've ever used Yahoo so I didn't realize just how bad it was.

Very interesting reasons and analysis of the small differences that all add up to Google maps market dominance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The author clearly prefers Google Maps and is so biased in his analysis it is worthless.

Take the coloring of highways. I actually find Bing's use of multiple colors greatly increases legibility. The increase in contrast also makes it easier to scan over the map. I cannot see how the author can state that less colors results in increased legibility.

Bing Maps to me has a superior coloring scheme. When I look at Google Maps they look like FisherPrice drew the map. Bing Maps' warm and desaturated color scheme makes it feel more mature and consequently much more pleasant to look at.

<comment><USER11> Can we knock off this "worthless" bullshit? Just because someone has an opinion on something, doesn't mean that their analysis is "worthless". Comments like these cheapen HN.

OnePlusOne, the same can be said about your comment: "The author of the above comment clearly prefers Bing Maps and is so biased in his analysis it is worthless."

If you're going to bitch about bias, do it without inserting your own.

<comment><USER10> I attempted to make clear what I said was purely my opinion and personal preference. The author gives the impression that he is doing an objective analysis when in fact he is just giving a personal opinion. It is deceptive.

<comment><USER12> OnePlusOne, there was nothing deceptive. It's a fucking blog. It's someone's personal opinion.

 _I attempted to make clear what I said was purely my opinion and personal preference. The author gives the impression that he is doing an objective analysis when in fact he is just giving a personal opinion._

The author also attempted to make clear that what he said was purely his opinion and personal preference. From the 4th line of the post: ..."I analyze the merits of each of the different styles and discuss _what_ _I_ _believe_ are the advantages and disadvantages of each"...

Your comments are completely out of line.

<comment><USER13> People like OnePlusOne are why I don't allow comments on my blog.

The author was quite clear that he was stating _his opinion_.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to disable charging with a MagSafe connector plugged in - <AUTHOR> http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/87924/how-to-disable-battery-charging/132332#132332 <comment><USER2> I don't think taking precautions for your laptop battery matters much nowadays : you can expect it to last at least 3 years.

And you're not even sure that you're going to make it last much longer by storing it at 40% or draining it once a month (or whatever is the myth du jour).</comment>


Steve Jobs' response to an insult during developer Q&A (1997) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF-tKLISfPE <comment><AUTHOR> Audio is a little garbled, here's a transcribe from r/Apple [0]

Man: "Mr. Jobs, you're a bright and influential man. It's sad and clear that on several counts you've discussed you don't know what you're talking about. I would like, for example, for you to express in clear terms, how, say Java, in any of its incarnations, expresses the ideas embodied in OpenDoc. And when you've finished with that, perhaps you could tell us what you personally have been doing for the last seven years."

Jobs: "Uh... You know, you can please some of the people some of the time, but...

One of the hardest things, when you're trying to affect change, is that people like this gentlemen are right in some areas. I'm sure there are some things OpenDoc does, probably even more that I'm not familiar with, that nothing else out there does. And I'm sure that you can make some demos, maybe a small commercial app, that demonstrates those things. The hardest thing is, how does that fit into a cohesive larger vision that's gonna allow you to sell 8 billion dollars - 10 billion dollars of product a year?

One of the things I've always found is that you've got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology. You can't start with the technology and try to figure out where you're going to try to sell it. I've made this mistake probably more than anybody else in this room, and I've got the scar tissue to prove it. And I know that it's the case. As we have tried to come up with a strategy and a vision for Apple, it started with "What incredible benefits can we give to the customer? Where can we take the customer?" not starting with, "Let's sit down with the engineers and figure out what awesome technology we have and then how are we going to market that. And I think that's the right path to take.

I remember, with the LaswerWriter - we built the world's first laser printer, as you know, and there was awesome technology in that box. We had the first Canon cheap laser printing engine in the United States. We had a very wonderful printer controller, we had Adobe's PostScript software in there, we had AppleTalk in there, just awesome technology in the box. And I remember seeing the first print-out come out of it. Just picking it up and looking at it, and thinking, "You know, we can sell this." Because you don't need to know anything about what's in that box. All we have to do is hold it up and go, "do you want this?" And if you can remember back to 1984 before laser printers, it was pretty startling to see that. People went, "Whoah. Yes."

That's where Apple's gotta get back to. I'm sorry that OpenDoc is a casualty along the way, and I readily admit there's many things in life that I don't have the faintest idea what I'm talking about. So I apologize for that too. But there's a whole lot of people working super, super hard right now at Apple. You know - Avie, John, Guerrino, Fred, I mean the whole team is working - burning the midnight oil, and hundreds of people below them - to execute on some of these things, and they're doing their best.

And some mistakes will be made along the way, by the way. That's good. Because at least some decisions are being made. We'll find the mistakes, and we'll fix 'em. And I think what we need to do is support that team. Going through this stage, as they work their butts off - they're all getting calls to go do this, do that, the valley's hot - none of them are leaving. And I think we need to support them, and see them through this, and write some damn good applications out in the market. Mistakes will be made, some people will be pissed off, some people will not know what they're talking about, but I think it's so much better than where things were not very long ago. And I think we're gonna get there.

0: [https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/3faz2u/steve_jobs_in...](https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/3faz2u/steve_jobs_insult_response_transcription/)</comment>


Learn MongoDB in 15 min using Python MongoEngine - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQSfoRvCz6E <comment><AUTHOR> In this 15-min video, we will go through how to use MongoDB with Python. We use MongoDB Atlas DB in the cloud and Python3.

\- TIMESTAMPS - 00:00 MongoDB Quickstart

00:16 What is MongoDB

01:28 Create a MongoDB Atlas Database

02:40 Connect to the database

05:10 Define a Book Document Collection

06:34 Create a new book document and add it to collection

07:10 Fetch the document

09:18 Update the document

10:26 Fetch all documents

11:17 Run queries on the Collection

13:43 Delete document

Link to source-code - [https://github.com/rahularora/Youtube-source- code/blob/maste...](https://github.com/rahularora/Youtube-source- code/blob/master/python-mongodb/mongodb_quickstart.py)</comment>


Ask HN: Would you use a fruit vending machine? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Have seen vending machines which steadily rotate and allow individual compartments to unlock, with all manner of different food items in them, but especially including apple and banana as options.

Bananas in particular are very good at visually communicating their level of freshness and ripeness, which is why this format works ok for them. I can see strawberries being less successful.

The answer is yes, and people already use them every day. Would I ever own one is a completely different issue. A typical snack location would probably only sell a single digit number of pieces of fruit in a given day, and the margins there are low (if even positive). A vending route operator can replace a dozen bottled waters in the time it takes to replace a single piece of spoiled fruit, and (in the case of the drinks) he can neglect his machine for two months with little impact to profitability, something he can't do when there are perishables involved.

I'd consider it much more appealing to engage in a 3x-per-week direct fruit delivery at the office (with a monthly fee). You're paying for the labor either way.

</comment><comment><USER3> Unless it was an execution that allayed my fears for the cleanliness of the fruit and also where it was sourced from (organic), I would not. And I can't envision a cost-effective solution to this that would provide the fruit to me at a reasonable price point.

</comment><comment><USER4> My two cents : My grandfather runs a small vending machine business. A few years back in France, snack vending machines were forbidden in schools in France. My GF replaced the snacks with fresh stuff (fruits, healthy juices, ...). The problem was not so much the feasability than the fact that students wouldn't be ready to pay for healthy stuff. He ended up removing the machines, relocating them to companies and putting the snacks back in.

IMHO the idea might be interesting, but you probably have to make it "cool" to buy your products, which means build a real identity around your stuff.

</comment><comment><USER5> I might use one if it was inside a building and associated(/partnered?) with a business within that building. The main reason for this is I'd perceive them to be more invested in maintaining the freshness of the fruits more than some outside company (you don't ever want your employees/customers/yourself to have to deal with smelling or looking at spoiled fruit while working).

I think the only real markets I can personally see for this are within schools (more college and university level), within businesses, and maybe some malls appealing to the organic crowd.

</comment><comment><USER6> Japan is vending machine crazy. I know they do sell fruit in this manner. You might want to research their solutions.

</comment><comment><USER7> On a related note, how about considering instead the means of small scale food production in the urban environment, eg. installation and/or maintenance of rooftop gardens, or indoor hydroponic gardens in less hospitable climates?

</comment><comment><USER8> yes, but it's gotta be more than a banana dispenser. make sure it comes with a little bag I can use for the remainder of my food, until I find a trash can. make that bag look good.

I haven't ever seen a fruit dispenser machine though where I live.

</comment><comment><USER9> We have fruit (~apple) vending machines in our company and are very popular. (Hungary)

</comment><comment><USER10> Maybe, if it solved the problems of keeping it fresh and not bruising it.

</comment><comment><USER11> If it was organic!</comment>


Show HN: Weekly Digest on JavaScript and Frontend Development - <AUTHOR> http://esguy.com <comment><AUTHOR> There is RSS feed also [http://esguy.com/atom.xml](http://esguy.com/atom.xml)</comment>


Counterfeiting and the 3D Printing Revolution - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/02/illegal-immoral-and-here-to-stay-counterfeiting-and-the-3d-printing-revolution/

<comment><USER2> I wished the author would have compared 3D printing to the printing press. see the article from wikipedia: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printing_Press#Printing_revolu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printing_Press#Printing_revolution)</comment>