Picking a fight with an 800 lb gorilla, startup marketing - <AUTHOR> http://www.wepay.com/blog/2011/02/28/picking-a-fight-with-an-800-pound-gorilla/ <comment><USER2> Great description of when they realized how valuable the comparison with PayPal could be: "The first time we actively embraced the PayPal comparison was when PayPal froze the account of the Flux foundation – a non-profit arts organization – just a few days before the Flux Crew headed to the desert to build their famous Temple at Burning Man.

The Flux Foundation and a bunch of other people and organizations collecting donations ended up turning to WePay in protest (and in desperation). Our pitch was easy: yes, you can use WePay instead of PayPal. WePay.com is better than PayPal for collecting donations, and we won't freeze your accounts.

After that, people started referring to us as the consumer-friendly or "community-oriented" version of PayPal. CNN actually referred to us as the anti-PayPal."

<comment><USER3> Really amazing and Funny

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Something I'd be very interested to hear about is how WePay is going to handle fraud. Fraud and abuse prevention is a huge part of what PayPal does and I would guess the major reason behind their atrocious customer service and the issues with groups like the Flux foundation.

It seems like every other week on Reddit there is someone who says they have disease X or is raising money for disease X and would you please PayPal them some money. This is immediately followed by a bunch of people digging internet dirt on that person and declaring them a fraud, which is then immediately followed by another group of people telling the first group that the person is legit and that they made them cry.

I don't even know how you start to deal with that situation as a financial entity. Do you call the person up and ask them if they have cancer? Do they fax you medical records?

<comment><USER5> > Fraud and abuse prevention is a huge part of what PayPal > does

Interview with Max Levchin in "Founders at Work" is a good read in this context. After long part about fraud and prevention of it:

      Linvgston: So is PayPal in a sense a security company?
      Levchin: I think a good way to describe PayPal is: a security company
      pretending to be a financial services company.<…>
      So the company's core expertise, by definition, has to be in this
      ability to judge risk<…>.
      Livingston: What did you do that your competitors couldn't?
      Levchin: The really complicated part is figuring out the risk.

<comment><USER4> Agreed completely, I'd heard a separate interview with Max Levchin where I believe he quoted the amount of money that PayPal lost at around $150 million (IIRC). That was their "learning money" to figure out how to handle fraud.

Seeing as how Mr. Levchin has actually invested in WePay I'm assuming that they are have some strategy for fraud prevention.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6>
       It's also not easy for big companies to change course, add
       features, iterate, or experiment. PayPal can't simply decide
       to shift its focus toward consumers, nor would they want to.

This reminds me of an outstanding article I read some time ago which advised: "Attack your competitors' _strengths_ , not their weaknesses." In other words, WePay might have failed if their goal was (for example) _just_ to provide better customer service, PayPal's weakness. This is because PayPal could ostensibly improve their customer service without affecting their bottom line. _Merchant-oriented services_ are PayPal's strength, and WePay "attacked" that strength by catering to non-merchants, which, as the article states, they could not do without a core shift in values and focus.

<comment><USER7> I'm incredibly intrigued by the advice from that article, I'd love to read it. Do you remember where it's from?

<comment><USER6> Sorry... I searched for it, but for the life of me I can't track it down. I think the original article was talking about DuckDuckGo and Google; the "strength" in that case was Google's information-gathering: Google's bottom line is partially defined by using the information it records about its users to drive advertisements and other usability tweaks (such as marking search results with stars, etc). By focusing on privacy, DDG "attacked Google's strength"--Google _can't_ compete with DDG on privacy because it's precluded by what Google does best.

You can obviously frame "lack of privacy" as a weakness of Google, but the important part is that it's a weakness that _can't be addressed_ without huge changes to work around their established strengths.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm not sure if Richard Branson is really a 'little guy' taking on an 800-lb gorilla, but the idea of taking on competition by actively inciting them has worked many times.

It would be especially effective when:

\- you are able to gain significant attention (press, viral) over your comments/attack

\- the 800 lb gorilla doesn't even know you are attacking it

<comment><USER9> He is an 800-lb gorilla that thinks he is stronger than all the other 800-lb gorillas.

Always interesting to see two beasts battle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I posted this as a comment on the blog, but it kind of disappeared... so whatever.

I mentioned that sometimes the 800 pound gorilla isn't as slow or bureaucratic as you would think. With PostageApp, we have several large competitors (SendGrid and MailChimp) and they are frighteningly good at pivoting and offering new and exciting features.

I'm having a really fun time watching the developments of all the players in our industry. If you can take something away from fighting with the 800 pound gorillas, it's that you will learn a lot.

<comment><USER11> SendGrid and MailChimp might be large competitors _relative_ to the size of PostageApp, but the scale difference is orders of magnitude less than the scale difference between WePay and PayPal.

I counted 18 people on the "team" page of SendGrid, and MailChimp's website lists them as having about 70 people working for them. I haven't been able to find exact numbers of employees at PayPal, but I know it's easily into the thousands, and very possibly into the tens of thousands.

I think you have a good point: that relying on being able to move faster than your competitors can be dangerous if your competitors aren't actually slow. I don't think you can really make an accurate comparison between SendGrid/MailChimp and PayPal though. The scale (and culture) is just completely different.

<comment><USER10> You are completely right, they are huge relative to the size of PostageApp, but they are the 800-pound gorillas in the industry.

There are other, much larger companies such as Exact Target, Eloqua, and Constant Contact, but they serve a different market and are not directly in competition with us.

Wasn't a completely accurate comparison, but just an anecdotal way for me to explain that not all competitors are slow. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> WePay is awesome. I found out about them a few weeks back and within seconds had a account ready for my skydiving group to get going.

I'm still waiting on support for outside the US & it would be nice for them to support transactions & become a full-fledged paypal competitor, but with leadership thinking things through this well, I'm really hopefully we'll _finallY_ have another alternative.

</comment><comment><USER13> Still doesn't help individuals selling products online and are stuck using paypal and risking having their accounts frozen.

<comment><USER14> stay tuned...

<comment><USER15> ... for support outside the US! =)

I kid, I kid! Much love from someone whose spent 10 years now dealing with banks and the credit card companies.

<comment><USER14> the two requirements are pretty related.

Not many consumers (besides people collecting donations) need international, and very few merchants would be happy without it.

It's been made clear to us that this is a pretty big opportunity.

<comment><USER15> Don't worry, I know better then most all the issues you face in doing what you are doing, and frankly, you're being smart about it, which is why I'm rooting for you. =)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Apropos, but not directly pertinent information: male Gorillas range in weight from around 200-400lbs. The Wikipedia entry on Gorillas says they've reached around 600lbs but those were very obese Gorillas in captivity.

I certainly understand the idiom, but it's probably useful to remember it in context. You never know when you may need to know the approximate weight of a gorilla, and relying on a faulty idiom may just bring you into harm's way :>

<comment><USER17> That is an interesting piece of information. :) Thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I hope I'm not alone, but it's impossible for me to differentiate what you do versus as something already provided by PayPal.

PayPal was revolutionary, but WePay seems something that PayPal already provides.

Borland (with their IDEs and Quattro) taking on Microsoft is akin to a little- guy taking on a 800lb gorilla.

I fail to see the parallel here.

<comment><USER14> I'm not sure which comments to answer first: The ones that say WePay is nothing like PayPal and the comparison is misleading, or the ones that say WePay is just a feature of PayPal and therefore undifferentiated.

We'll just keep building the product and let people decide for themselves.

Not the best video in the world, but check this out: <http://vimeo.com/18765571>

If you were to make a demo video of PayPal, what would you show?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> If you take a picture of someone, don't stand close and your camera in wide angle. Move away and zoom in. Your picture will look more realistic. When you stand too close the wide angle makes the centre part of the image look fatter because it is a fish eye. Model photographers never stand close to a model. The same for your webcam.</comment>


A floppy-disk Walkman using a Raspberry Pi - <AUTHOR> https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2020/09/a-floppy-disk-mp3-player-using-a-raspberry-pi/ <comment><USER2> Tangent. I had a Minidisc player for a while circa 1997 (bit hazy). It was so awesome. I spent a lot of time putting tracks on the minidiscs.

I always wanted to be able to use it with a computer to store files as well, alas that required a special drive. While it existed never really took off (at least in Australia).

Memory chips might be the future, but minidiscs still look cooler. Cool enough for Neo to sell one in the Matrix :D

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kU3BceoMuaA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kU3BceoMuaA)

<comment><USER3> I bought a Sony MD-N707 not too long back which I'm using as a nice way to chill out without screens, and for recording Shortwave radio overnight off a Sony ICF-SW7600GR world band radio. The MD-N707 has a cool maintenance mode feature accessed via a Konami code that lets you patch an EEPROM to enable features from other models.

My only gripe with NetMD is that you can put things onto MD from a computer, but it's an analogue trip back for recordings. This was an architectural decision due to DRM restrictions. One day I'd like to have a go at trying to bypass this, but it looks like a massive pain in the hole and I only have one MD recorder.

<comment><USER4> Back in the day it was easy to make digital copies from CD to MD using an optical (toslink) cable. This method would preserve the track markers accurately which was hugely convenient! It wasn't lossless, of course, since MD is itself a compressed format, but the results were pretty good compared to say the MP3s of the era.

<comment><USER3> Yeah my N707 has an optical in but _shakes fist_ no optical out :(

That does sound really cool that it preserves the track markers though!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I saw floppy-disk Walkman in 1961 in Helsinki. It was a dictaphone using brown circular pieces of floppy plastic. A doctor was using it, trying to decide if I had tuberculosis or tapeworm. I had rickets.

</comment><comment><USER6> My first thought when I saw the title and the picture: oh, it won't be _that_ bad — you could use Opus to compress a song with passable quality to fit on a floppy.

Author: uses Opus but puts an _entire album_ on there.

</comment><comment><USER7> This has left me wanting to run tests to see what level of compression is required to not trigger Content ID on youtube.

<comment><USER8> A proxy for that might be running it through eg. Shazam, I think they use similar tech.

From what little I've heard they make a spectrogram (frequency, intensity, time) and plot the peaks into a point cloud. Most of those should survive even the heaviest audio compression.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The sample 64k MP3 is 452KB, or over 1/3 of a floppy, yet is less than 57 seconds long and corresponds to a rate of 8KB/s. The fact that Opus can encode the same quality (or lack thereof...) with less than 1KB/s is amazing. To me, it sounds only slightly worse than music played over a POTS line.

<comment><USER10> I think the author may have gone: wav -> opus -> MP3. With the MP3 bitrate chosen to ensure no _further_ quality loss.

I don't think from the provided MP3 we can tell if that is equivalent to the encoded opus format. We would need to encode to both from wav to make that comparison

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, that's what I did. Opus plays in all browsers except Apple's. So I went for an mp3 bitrate which didn't degrade the sound any further.

<comment><USER11> Could you not just unpack the opus file into a pure uncrompressed .wav which I'm pretty sure all browsers will support. Or if you don't mind dropping legacy-IE support, FLAC would be an option.

Or would the extra bandwidth be enough to be a worry?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I really like this! I want to see it get a little easier to be carried around, but I want to build one! I'll be able to use my Sony Mavica to take pictures on floppy disks and my floppy-walkman to listen to music from floppy disks!

Now I also wonder what other horrendous uses of floppy disks there could be... I'm thinking it could be fun to store server web pages (without caching)... Or maybe to play some video feedback?

<comment><USER13> Around 1996-97, there was a Linux-based firewall/router that booted from a single 1.44MB diskette. iirc, it needed a very small amount of RAM too, something like only 8MB. The diskette could be used with write-protect enabled to prevent accidental (or malicious for that matter) modifications to the diskette contents. I believe it also had an SMTP relay. It was particularly useful for sharing dial-up and DSL connections at a time when commercial solutions would've been much more expensive than a stripped down repurposed spare computer with no hard drive. A bit hard to imagine now, but back then it was pretty fantastic to have an Internet connection shared between computers on a home or small business network.

Edit: Found its Wikipedia page! [0]

[0]: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Router_Project](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Router_Project)

<comment><USER14> Boy, does that bring back memories. I used precisely such a repurposed PC with this back in the day, to juggle two DSL circuits into our office.

Of course, a thumb drive can host a far more sophisticated router these days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I remember downloading my first mp3 from Napster (Star Wars Opening Fanfare) and thinking it wouldn't quite fit on a floppy.

Also deleting it a few days later to save space on my 4GB HD.

</comment><comment><USER16> I wonder what other interesting audio delivery/distribution formats we could build players for:

\- game boy cartridges (or even larger cartridge formats)

\- zip discography disks (i.e. one disk per artist)

\- small internal ram, transmission via infrared

\- eprom chips

<comment><USER17> Most Game Boy cartridges are just a NOR chip accessed through a parallel interface, so the only difficult part would be building the connector, then you could just bitbang to get to the data.

Unless of course you want to actually play the audio on the GameBoy, in which case the very weak CPU and unsuited SPU will make it difficult to achieve anything resembling proper audio. Of course that didn't stop people from trying, with quite impressive results given the limitations: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQLTYe0Gn70](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQLTYe0Gn70)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm disappointed; I thought it would involve storing audio in analog format on a floppy disk.

<comment><USER19> It's been done! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziVXF_tM4Gw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziVXF_tM4Gw)

<comment><USER20> Cool, wasn't aware it was possible to store an analog signal on a floppy using an unmodified disk drive. However, going from how often you hear the stepper motor in the video, the disk would fill up pretty quickly - I wonder how much analog music you could fit on a floppy with some optimization (slower rotation, tracks spaced more closely until crosstalk becomes an issue, maybe a spiral track like on a CD). My gut feeling is that you could fit more than 30 minutes on there...

<comment><USER21> Interesting question. I'll try some rough calculations.

A C60 audio cassette holds 30 minutes per side, and the tape is ~85 meters long ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_tape_specifications#Comp...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_tape_specifications#Compact_audio_cassettes)).

The diameter of the actual disc in a 3.5-inch floppy is 85mm ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_floppy_disk#.E2...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_floppy_disk#.E2.80.8B3_1.E2.81.842-inch_format)), so the circumference of the outer track should be about pi * 0.085m or 0.25m.

There are normally 80 tracks ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_floppy_disk_formats#Ph...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_floppy_disk_formats#Physical_composition)), so if all tracks were as big as the outer one, that would give you about 20 meters.

In reality, inner tracks are shorter. I can't easily find the inner diameter, but from pictures it looks like it's about 1/3 the outer diameter. So the track lengths (circumference) should grow linearly from 1/3 to 100% of the outer diameter, which means the total track length should be 2/3 of 20 meters or ~13 meters.

To sum all that up, with 80 tracks, there seems to be about 13 meters of linear space the head can travel across, or about 15% of the length an audio cassette uses for 30 minutes. If you recorded at the same linear speed as a cassette, you'd get 15% of 30 minutes.

But running a cassette at half speed is definitely practical ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_tape_specifications#Tape...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_tape_specifications#Tape_speeds)), and machines were even sold with a setting for that. So double that to 30%.

And there are a handful of floppy formats that use more than 80 tracks (one even uses 240), so let's assume 160 tracks is possible. So double again to 60% of 30 minutes.

And that's just one side of the floppy, so using both sides means you can double again to get 120% of 30 minutes. So yeah, it seems possible! (Which incidentally is NOT the answer I was expecting.)

If the 160 tracks thing doesn't work out, you could probably compensate slowing the rotation more.

On a side note, the two-sided thing creates the potential problem of a gap at the 15-minute mark. Apparently there are read/write heads on both sides ([https://computer.howstuffworks.com/floppy-disk- drive2.htm](https://computer.howstuffworks.com/floppy-disk-drive2.htm)), so I guess you could do the transition by recording a few seconds of audio on both sides, then cross-fading between them. In other words, start at the inner edge of the disk, reading from one side for 15 minutes as you slowly move the head to the outer edge of the disk, then cross-fade to the other head and continue back for another 15 minutes back toward the inner edge of the disk. You would need to have a good method for being sure you make this transition at the right time, though.

Or you can always just record 15 minutes of stereo sound, reading each channel from one side of the floppy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > A floppy disk can hold a maximum of 1,457,664 Bytes.

Ahhh, the kids of today.

Having started with the 133mm 1541 on the Commodore 64, with its double-your- disk-capacity-with-a-hole-punch, and then onto the Amiga with its 89mm disks of 880KB capacity, and then working on Honeywell front end processors in the early 1990's with their 203mm disks with around 240KB ...

<comment><USER23> Ahhh, you kids that started with the Commodore 64/1541 and 170k of capacity.

I started with a TRS-80 Model 1 with a Shugart SA-400 drive connected to an expansion interface. 85K capacity.

<comment><USER22> Well, I started with a VIC20 and a tape drive -- but in terms of floppy disks, that wasn't until sometime after the C64 arrived.

My neighbour was a developer working in assembler, producing games for the TRS-80, and my first 'real' (as in monies being handed over) job was as a tape-copying, paper-folding, inserting-both-into-a-ziplock-bag monkey.

<comment><USER23> The original comment was regarding floppy drives so I mentioned the first computer with a floppy drive I used. The first computer I would have used was my father's Heathkit ET-3400 microprocessor learning system in 1976. That required each time typing in the machine code for the high/low game I played on it. The TRS-80 Model 1 was purchased a year or so later and originally had a tape drive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Reminds me of the Neuromancer computer game sound track by DEVO [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNmpTIMxmrU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNmpTIMxmrU) (granted this was only heard during the intro, the actual game ost was a chiptune remix)

<comment><USER25> some 80's tracks suitable for encoding on 1,44 MB disks:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cI3tE9wNL5s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cI3tE9wNL5s) (1985, JP)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjOvzWJbFdA&t=20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjOvzWJbFdA&t=20) (1989, SU)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=notKtAgfwDA&t=40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=notKtAgfwDA&t=40) (1985, US)

(ok, he doesn't really have the hairstyle, but he does wear gloves)

<comment><USER24> Nice selection, haven't heard Megazone 23 in a while.

<comment><USER25> Hatsune Miku (時祭 イヴ) concerts are a thing now, as is synthwave (retro 80's). Now all we're missing are manipulative governments engaged in secret wars, and the mecha?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> " buffer-underruns" choke me neatly. Those were the days of cd based Walkman. Not sure it happens to cassette tape one.

</comment><comment><USER27> I suddenly feel the need to build a Floppy-drive Walkman that plays mods and MIDI files on the inserted floppy.

<comment><USER25> after that, add visuals: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNCqrylNY-0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNCqrylNY-0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This reminds me of the days in high school of compressing the hell out of my MP3's to 64kbps or such just to fit as many on my 64(?)MB generic MP3 player at the time. What an adorable project.

</comment><comment><USER29> Cool :), I've been working on a 3d printed case for a floppy disk walkman, for old PC floppy disk drives -

[https://github.com/anfractuosity/turbodrive](https://github.com/anfractuosity/turbodrive)

I had the case 3d printed, but need to finish the electronic side of things.

I bought some music from - [https://strudelsoft.bandcamp.com/](https://strudelsoft.bandcamp.com/) (which comes on a floppy disk :)

</comment><comment><USER30> Wasn't there a way for Linux to format 3 1/4 inch floppy disks beyond the standard 1.44MB all the way to 2MB? Or was that simply using a compressed filesystem?

<comment><USER31> I seem to recall the Windows 95 or 98 install floppies being 1.68MB each, but you could go further. If I remember right this involved either reducing redundancy in the FAT or increasing cluster size.

Looks like this came up on HN before: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19583531](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19583531)

<comment><USER11> While they did tweak things like the number of root entries and such, the main way to get more space was simple to cram more sectors onto each track than the standard format (and make sure they weren't using cheap floppies that couldn't work correctly with the extra data density).

Some cheap/grotty/dying floppy drives were not happy either the extra data density either, though that was a rare problem (anecdata: I experienced one drive that didn't like the format but would read everything else I expected it to).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> You could also fit many MIDI soundtracks from old DOS games onto one floppy disk.

<comment><USER33> If you excuse the self-promotion, I started working on this in 2018, that I'm still hacking on. I'm happy to answer any questions people might have.

Blog post: [https://terinstock.com/post/2018/09/Hardware-MIDI-Player- Par...](https://terinstock.com/post/2018/09/Hardware-MIDI-Player-Part-One/)

FOSDEM Talk: [https://terinstock.com/talk/2019/02/Building-a-Hardware- MIDI...](https://terinstock.com/talk/2019/02/Building-a-Hardware-MIDI-Player/)

<comment><USER34> Impressed with your kernel patch, nice story.

<comment><USER33> Thanks! I spent over a week trying to track down when the bug was introduced and ended up git-bisecting to the commit I already thought was interesting. My mistake for not checking first. If it had taken any longer, I probably would have lost all momentum for the project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> It's even got a headphone jack!

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha! Perhaps I should have used a Pi Zero and Bluetooth dongle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> When real audio 2.0 was released it was possible to get the encoder. So back in the mid 90s I ripped Dark aside of the Moon to wave (I had a massive SCSI disk) and transcoded it to the smallest settings. I got it down to two 5 1/4" disks.

I revisited the experiment a few years ago here:

[https://virtuallyfun.com/wordpress/2017/04/20/getting- first-...](https://virtuallyfun.com/wordpress/2017/04/20/getting-first-side- dark-side-moon-onto-floppy-diskette/)

Now I'm wondering why I didn't go all the way and make a custom player...

</comment><comment><USER37> Back in the days, I had a miniCD mp3 player.

250MB per disk and only half the size of a regular CD mp3 players, which were the way to go back then, because everything else didn't have enough space or was too expensive.

</comment><comment><USER38> Ah, I was working on a similar idea when I was in upper secondary school. But I was unable to do get what I want with my very limited electronics knowledge back then :)

I was thinking of storing and playing the data in an analog way, pretty much like a regular compact cassette meant for audio. I thought it was a better idea after seeing audio casettes can store 60/90 minutes of audio but they can hold only very little digital data (I had a commodore that I found in my grandma's cellar and those casettes were my unit of measure)

</comment><comment><USER39> Next step might be to have the SD card store only the bootloader, and have said bootloader load Linux into RAM from one or more floppy disks.

Don't know how small you can make Linux but for example there is [https://hackaday.com/2020/07/08/the-latest-linux-on-a- floppy...](https://hackaday.com/2020/07/08/the-latest-linux-on-a-floppy- in-a-486/) and also there are some Linux distros for routers etc that can be made very small such as OpenWRT

<comment><USER26> Originally I thought someone fit a pi zero into a floppy with some lipo power and a ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> That has a certain deformed beauty that appeals…

 _> Sadly, the Pi Zero doesn't have an an audio out jack. But the USB floppy drive is pretty big, so we don't lose much space by going for a full-sized Pi._

You could use a ZeroW which has bluetooth, and a bluetooth-to-3.5 adaptor to allow a wired connection. That would take less space than a full-bodied Pi and add extra parts to the hack for a bit more "dear [deity], why would you?" goodness!

<comment><AUTHOR> I looked at getting an HDMI to Audio converter. But I couldn't find one which could be powered by USB.

<comment><USER40> Getting audio out on a pi0 requires a little bit of hardware hacking, but it's not at all impossible - the signal is there, you need a handful of components and some device tree settings: [https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-the- raspberry-pi-zero...](https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-the-raspberry-pi- zero/audio-outputs)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> If you give up on the idea of having an entire albums, a floppy disk can easily contain even a fairly long single track at nearly-CD quality.

<comment> 867-5309 forget CD wallets, you could have a whole album in a floppy wallet

<comment><USER41> It's almost as if that's the origin of the term "album" for a collection of singles, huh.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I love this because it's nostalgia for something that wasn't even a thing - music on floppy disks!

Minidisc execpted.

<comment><AUTHOR> Now I'm wondering if I can encode movies onto an 8-Track...

<comment><USER42> And then you can compress everything down to the number 42.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> This really makes me want to see someone recreate the Sony Mavica digital camera using a Pi and a USB floppy drive. Those things were awesome back around 1999. Would be pretty straight forward.

</comment><comment><USER44> Clearly this should be called the Floppy Diskman.

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

</comment><comment><USER45> Similar in size to many portable setups you already see on HeadFi.

</comment><comment><USER46> I found it funny that it actually sounds like crappy AM radio.

</comment><comment><USER47> > (I've re-encoded it to MP3 in order for it to play in the browser.)

Opus plays fine in browsers that aren't apple-patent-lock-in-ware.

</comment><comment><USER48> as horrifying as tempting

</comment><comment><USER49> love it</comment>


Ask HN: Startup related Mistakes you've done - <AUTHOR>

Learning from mistakes is much more powerful than learning from reading or doing it perfectly
What are start-up mistakes you've done over the years. There are lot of blog posts and lists, I am just curious of individual/personal ones here.
Resources: http://www.paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html <comment><USER2> 1\. Trying to start solo

2\. Not asking for help soon enough

3\. Thinking that the market was broken but really just failing to understand the market

4\. Never being "finished" enough to go live

5\. Listening to experts

6\. Completely and utterly underestimating how hard it would be to get customers.

<comment><USER3> Me too. All of the above. Still doing 1. :)

<comment><USER2> It was the biggest mistake I made. My usual tendency is to work alone but I learnt that only works for small projects. What I really need is someone to bounce ideas off, complement my skill set and occasionally fight with :) I'd never try and do anything substantial alone again. Actually I'm looking for a co-founder so if anyone knows someone who's also looking <http://ineedacofounder.wordpress.com>

<comment><USER3> I understand the problem but I've been burnt one time before by a cofounder so I'm a little gun-shy there.

I'm primarily interested in creating a company that relates to outdoor sports and the environment and travel. I also envision NOT sitting in front of a computer all the time and creating a company thats very Patagonia-like w.r.t employing people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If we would learn from mistakes, we would be the brightest person (Charly Brown)

Here a small fraction of my mistakes. And yes, I do sometimes repeat them.

* Not outsourcing my tax stuff.

* Distraction. :)

* Being too proud to ask for help.

* Slow in realizing that it is hard to sell inner value if the outer appearance sucks.

* Being too afraid to be seen as stupid.

* Listening to my tech-hacker peers when it comes to business. Or to care too much about their opinion.

* Not learning from non-tech business people around me.

* Not being interested in business but in technology.

* Over engineering.

</comment><comment><USER5> 1\. Assuming I know what my users want. 2\. Thinking that build-and-they'll- come will work. 3\. Thinking that when build-and-they'll-come fails, that my product sucks.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'll start

* Not surveying and making sure there is a market for it: A cooking recipe site with features allowing for evolving recipes... the market was too small, and after launch realized using a website along with cooking didn't go hand in hand.

* Hiring or bringing in skill over will: A rockstar coder is nothing if their not passionate, that just ended in pure disaster. Getting a passionate and willing person to learn and acquire skills works better than the other.

</comment><comment><USER6> Not working harder on my business when I had a job. I wish I had done most of what I am doing now when I had plenty of income and plenty of time.</comment>


India's Techies Angered Over Internet Censorship Plan - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/2011/12/12/143600310/indias-techies-angered-over-internet-censorship-plan <comment><USER2> I don't think the technical community will take it lying down, even if such legislation passes. For example, check out the new SOPA bypassing extension:[http://torrentfreak.com/firefox-add-on-bypasses-sopa-dns- blo...](http://torrentfreak.com/firefox-add-on-bypasses-sopa-dns- blocking-111220/)</comment>


Europe Isn't Quite Ready for the Sharing Economy - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-06-03/europe-isn-t-quite-ready-for-the-sharing-economy <comment><USER2> Not if Sharing Economy means that the ones doing the least work get the biggest share.</comment>


Wired.com Nav menu turns into ad, back into menu - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com

<comment><AUTHOR> This is brilliant. How did they do this? HTML5 + JS?</comment>


How a Pyramid Scheme Doomed the World's Largest Amphibians - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/05/how-a-pyramid-scheme-doomed-the-worlds-largest-amphibians/560786/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Sounds click-baitey but is actually (IMHO) pretty interesting (and kinda sad and crazy.)

> From 2004 onward, the number of farms grew rapidly. The government > encouraged them as a way of boosting the fortunes of otherwise poor rural > areas. Official licenses were issued, but many farms ran illicitly. By 2011, > they held around 2.6 million salamanders between them. In some counties, > salamander farming became the main industry.

> Bizarrely, only 3 percent of the animals raised by the farms are eventually > sold to restaurants. The rest are sold to more start-up farms.</comment>


The First Phone I've Been Excited About In A Long Time - <AUTHOR> http://mattmaroon.com/?p=629

<comment><USER2> Nice article, but I have one thing to say: your list of priorities for features is probably what you _think_ you want. Before I got the iPhone, I never browsed the internet on my Treo because the experience was just absolutely terrible (the experience on blackberry is also terrible). Now I browse the web on my iPhone more than I use it as a phone.

While investigating how to make the best UI, I've found that people's priorities come from their habits and not necessarily from their needs. At first this seemed kind of illogical to me. But if you think about it, before the iPhone, no normal people really could imagine a mobile browser as good as mobile Safari, so no one really put "a desktop experience web browser" at the top of their requirements lists for phones (obviously tech people did, but average people did not).

I wonder what would happen if you bought an iPhone.

<comment><USER3> I think you underestimate the importance of his items 1 and 2 (call quality and email/SMS) to the business population.

A dropped call at the wrong moment can cost a sales guy a _lot_ of money; and a hard-core Blackberry user is not going to give up that keypad for a nice browser. For them, the importance of reliable, rapid communication with business contacts outweighs the pleasure of a good browsing experience.

With the Palm, you theoretically will get to have a keypad, a choice of carriers, and a nice browser (assuming the fact that it uses the same HTML rendering engine as the iPhone means the browsing experience will be equally good).

Hence his assertion that "Apple's strategy has worked well, but it has major holes, and this Palm unit looks like it exploits them".

<comment><USER4> So, (1) a dropped call at the wrong moment is not going to cost a sales guy a lot of money unless that sales guy works in Scranton and is trying out for the CIA, and (2) am I the only one here who uses an iPhone as their primary phone and has never had a dropped call?

<comment><USER5> I've never had a dropped call with my iPhone either. The only person complaining about call quality in this thread is Matt.

It's a bit disingenuous to make declarations about how poor a product is when you don't even own one. It seems to be a common theme when he writes about Apple.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Essentially he's saying he likes the Pre because its imagined features are better than the iPhone ones that he hasn't tried. The article is about pitting an ideal vs. a bias. Who will win?

<comment><USER7> Are they imagined features when you can watch a video of them? Why would you think I've never tried an iPhone? I actually wanted to buy one before I did.

Seems like kind of a silly comment to have 25 points. I wonder if it were about Microsoft instead...

<comment><USER8> _Are they imagined features when you can watch a video of them?_

Could the Apple Newton recognize your handwriting? It was really accurate in the commercials!

<comment><USER7> If I saw a video of it recognizing a TechCrunch writer's handwriting, that TechCrunch took, then the answer would be yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> >> "But the iPhone platform is also, in many ways, problematic. Programming native apps in Objective C is really hard work (or so the friends who've done it tell me). Palm greatly reduces the barriers to entry by making app development html/css/javascript-based, meaning any web developer (maybe even me) could get started."

A warning to bloggers: when you don't know what you're talking about but talk anyways, it's very obvious. And it hurts your credibility. I wouldn't complain about problems with the World Series of Poker in a blog post, and if you've never used Objective-C/Cocoa, it's best if you don't complain about it.

<comment><USER10> Maybe so, but it's hard to make the case that web development tools aren't faster than compiled ones for many things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Palm's embrace of "developer friendly" open platform philosophy for its new handset in development, in constrast to the decidedly unfriendly sandbox approach Apple has taken, certainly must be applauded. And a flock of delighted developers are cheering them on, as indicated by the cited article discussion, as well as tech sites across the net. However, I see no reference to a factor that looms larger than software platform — quality of the hardware.

Palm devices (PDA and their foray into mobile phone market space) are notorious for their unreliability and low quality. Historically, they are poorly made and break rather easily. Back when I toted a Palm PDA in my work travels, it frequently had to be replaced. And I remember giant pallets of refurbished PDAs in Fry's Electronics, where devices would be recycled for second and subsequent deaths.

Experience with Blackberry devices, I do not have, but my iPhone performance and reliability (other than on OS upgrade days) has been stellar. In fact, the iPhone is more solid that it was nearly 15 months ago. I have not even witnessed battery degradation yet on my first generation model. Yes, I realize there are iPhone lemons, but I'd assess the iPhone defect rate at a fraction of all those Palm products.

</comment><comment><USER12> Not sure I understand the point about development at all. You can program apps for the iPhone using HTML/Javascript/CSS as well. In fact, when it was first announced, many people criticized Apple for not having a native SDK. People felt that it was too limiting and you couldn't really tap into the power of the phone. We've seen some great applications since the SDK has come out that shows that these folks were justified in their initial critiques.

As it is now, you can still program apps for the App Store using web technologies through the WebView object.

</comment><comment><USER13> >> "The iPhone's call quality is notoriously abysmal"

I've heard other people complain about call quality with the iPhone, but only people in the US. Is this a US only phenomenon?

Surely this is down to the network, and not the handset. I know that doesn't help much if you don't have a choice of network, but I haven't heard of any UK users complain about call quality.

All in all my experience of call quality in the US on _any_ phone has been abysmal, including land lines...

Also I think you place way too much importance on the app store. I doubt that many people buy a phone based on the apps they can install on it, obviously to hackers it's important, but for most people I'd say the app store is a sort of bonus they didn't know about.

I tried out a G1 yesterday, and although it looked quite nice, the keyboard is so small it's impossible to use :( Still thinking of getting one sometime, wondering how it stacks up against the iPhone.

Great to see some more competition though :)

<comment><USER14> > I tried out a G1 yesterday, and although it looked quite nice, the keyboard > is so small it's impossible to use :(

I have to completely disagree with you here. The keyboard is one of the G1's redeeming features. I type much faster and make much fewer mistakes on it than when typing on my iPhone. It's especially better than all those phones with physical keyboards with weird non-standard layouts. YMMV...Just thought I'd offer a counter example to yours :)

<comment><USER13> Yeah you may be right, I just couldn't work out how I'm supposed to use it... One finger, two thumbs, 2 fingers? With the iPhone i use 1 finger and can type pretty fast, but with the G1 it was just really hard to hit the right key, and you actually have to press pretty hard which slowed me down a lot.

How long did it take you to get used to it? Does it always take so much effort to register a keypress, or does that 'loosen up'.. :/

<comment><USER15> If you're trying to do 1-finger typing, no wonder you found the G1 inconvenient. Use the G1 keyboard with two thumbs, holding the device with both hands. (I can't even figure out how you would use it with two fingers.)

<comment><USER13> Yeah I just can't do 2 thumb typing. iPhone one finger peck works for me... does the G1 also have an on screen keyboard?

<comment><USER14> It will... [http://lifehacker.com/5115473/touch+screen-keyboard-shown- in...](http://lifehacker.com/5115473/touch+screen-keyboard-shown-in-android- cupcake-video)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "If your phone is on multiple carriers that collectively serve four times as many customers, it only needs to be some amount greater than 25% as appealing to get the same market share."

If you measure "appeal" by market share, then this is a tautology. If you measure appeal by some other method, it's almost certainly false.

<comment><USER17> That math is wacky. The >25% number is assuming that people won't switch carriers for a really cool phone like the iPhone. So it's obviously wrong. The point he is trying make is that if it's the best Sprint phone, the best Verizon phone, and the best T-Mobile phone, it's going to get a lot of sales, even if it isn't the best AT&T phone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why is it that everyone bitched when the iPhone offered a Javascript widget API and now Palm is being praised for it?

<comment><USER19> Because this adds a fuckton of standard libraries to JavaScript -- a full set of syscalls for manipulating files, contacts, etc -- it's not just a standard browser, and your shit is stored on the device.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Matt's article links to the Pre intro page at palm.com <http://www.palm.com/us/products/phones/pre/index.html>

It has a "notify me" button to register when there is more info. Since noone outside Palm has touched a Pre yet but we _all_ know about it, I think somehow I'll be kept informed either way ;)

</comment><comment><USER21> Matt, white on black is really tough on the eyes.

<comment><USER22> Not for me.

(If we're dishing out opinions, I thought I'd throw mine in.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think the Pre looks interesting, but the biggest draw for me when it comes to the iPhone is the tight integration to my mac. If a smart phone isn't going to synch easily and seamlessly with my PC I'm not interested.

</comment><comment><USER24> Ahh, early adopters, you can always rely on them.

</comment><comment><USER25> I find the call quality to be really good, much better than my Nokia could ever achieve.</comment>


A huge listserv. Each day, only one random person can write to it.   - <AUTHOR> http://thelistserve.com/

<comment><USER2> Seems like one of the people behind this, joshbegley, is hellbanned on HN. His comments on this page so far are just showing up dead.

Any ideas as to why this is? It makes me wonder about entering my email address on his site.

Edit: If you don't have showdead on, he says that plus signs are now accepted in email addresses[0], and that they won't be serving ads, and are looking for an inexpensive way to send mail[1].

[0]: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3824420>

[1]: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3824434>

<comment><USER3> apologies if this is a dumb question, but what does 'hellbanned' mean? i understand folks' concern about dubious intentions, but if it's any consolation, this is merely a class project from Clay Shirky's Designing Conversational Spaces class at NYU.

<comment><USER4> Hellbanned means the poster sees his own comments as normal, but no one else can see them. Someone who is hellbanned typically does not know they are banned until someone tells them (or they eventually get suspicious of no one commenting on their comments or up/downvoting).

Frankly I find the idea of hellbanning childish, but it has a long history on the internet.

<comment><USER5> You mean for people like Losethos?

<comment><USER4> I'm not familiar with Losethos...mind explaining? A particularly egregious user?

<comment><USER6> He wrote a 64 bit OS from scratch where the shell uses C as it's scripting language, and I believe everything runs in Ring 0. Also no protected or virtual memory. So if you go over on an array index, well you could screw up some of the kernel memory space. Brilliant, but crazy. See above, and read some of his comments. He seems to be some sort of fundamentalist christian, and IIRC his comments were about saving everyone though Jesus or some such thing.

<comment><USER7> > Brilliant, but crazy. See above, and read some of his comments. He seems to > be some sort of fundamentalist christian, and IIRC his comments were about > saving everyone though Jesus or some such thing.

This isn't the whole picture. He's, unfortunately, schizophrenic. Read [<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3642308>] and [<http://qaa.ath.cx/LoseThos.html>].

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Tried to enter an email address with a '+' sign in it: "Email address is invalid".

No it's not.

<comment><USER9> Around 20% of the web still tells me my firstname.lastname@example.com e-mail address is invalid.

.info domains have been around for 11 years now, and I can't work around these sites by removing a character.

<comment><USER10> I have heard personally from many Abuse email admins that .info domains are no longer a threat anymore.

You cannot be penalized in any way for sending email from a .info domain, so why don't so many websites accept them still?

<comment><USER9> It's just bad code, not a conscious decision to block any specific e-mails. Here's the code of a local construction project's e-mail subscription form:

      validationexpression = "^([a-zA-Z0-9_\\-\\.]+)@[a-z0-9-]+(\\.[a-z0-9-]+)*(\\.[a-z]{2,3})$";

It assumes all e-mails end in 2 or 3 letters after a dot.

I run into it all over the place. I can't redeem reward points on my Visa card because the redemption 'shopping cart' requires an e-mail to notify you when the rewards ship, and says mine isn't valid. I was blocked signing up for a checking account online because of my "invalid" e-mail, but opened the same account at a branch with the same e-mail address, where they now e-mail my statements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Let's start off by seeing how long the name lasts:

<http://www.lsoft.com/corporate/legal.asp>

<http://www.lsoft.com/corporate/trademark.asp>

<http://wiki.list.org/display/DOC/Mailman+is+not+Listserv>

This is why people call them 'mailing lists'.

<comment><USER12> _sigh_

Lawyers ruin everything.

<comment><USER13> In this case, as in most cases where this accusation is thrown around, the lawyers are merely agents of the people actually doing the ruining. Also, trademarks are not bad things.

<comment><USER12> >the lawyers are merely agents of the people actually doing the ruining.

And without lawyers, trademark laws would likely not be of the scale or complexity that they are now. But that's another rant :)

>Also, trademarks are not bad things.

In this case, I tend to disagree. Especially as "listserv" should be genericized by this point.

<comment><USER11> > Especially as "listserv" should be genericized by this point.

Have you read the history? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LISTSERV>

It appears as though the author of the software decided to commercialize it and now you fault him for trademarking it? I think you're kind of baseless in your argument here.

Update: I don't fault the guy for taking some software, re-writing it and then commercializing it. If the original authors didn't want to trademark the name or even protest the trademark application, then that is their fault.

<comment><USER14> Sorry, but have you?

\</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--

The original LISTSERV software, the BITNIC LISTSERV (1984-1986), allowed mailing lists to be implemented on IBM VM mainframes and was developed by Ira Fuchs, Daniel Oberst, and Ricky Hernandez in 1984.

In 1986, Eric Thomas developed an independent application, originally named "Revised LISTSERV"

LISTSERV was freeware from 1986 through 1993 and is now a commercial product developed by L-Soft, a company founded by LISTSERV author Eric Thomas in 1994.

\-----

Eric Thomas started a competing product years after the original LISTSERV, and trademarked the name. He didn't trademark Revised LISTSERV - just LISTSERV. He wasn't the first to use it, but will now be the last. I absolutely do fault him for that (I don't know where that stands legally, but I do know I wouldnt want to get sued to find out).

</comment><comment><USER15> This is not going to end well. Mark my words.

Temptation to game an access to a 1 mil opt-in mail list is very real. From auctioning a chance to write, to product placements, to ads, to god knows what else. That's not to get into messages on highly controversial subjects.

<comment><USER16> FWIW, I pretty much solely signed up to see what "interesting" emergent behaviors get displayed. I _want_ it to be creatively gamed. So long as the list sticks to it's "one mail per day" claim, I'm perfectly happy to sign up for "one creative possible spam email per day".

If it turns out dull, I'll just unsubscribe (and, if it turns out dull _and_ malicious about not unsubbing, I'll just filter it like all the other spam)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Question: Will there be a publicly viewable archive of said listserv?

</comment><comment><USER18> <http://play-fame.com> is a similar premise for Twitter.

As recommendation algorithms and walled gardens fragment and homogenize our private online bubbles, perhaps these "anti-recommendation"/serendipity apps will help broaden people's horizons.

<comment><USER19> That's a novel idea. I'd like to see a webservice that keeps track of what I look at and intentionally shows me things that aren't like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is a great social experiment. What happens when you give a normal person a voice magnified far beyond what they are used to. Will the self-promote? Share a social message? Spam like crazy? I for one am interested in finding out.

<comment><USER21> Or give advertisers a huge audience and tell them 'just write it like you are an average joe'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> A clever enough idea that I decided to sign up, but my question is not on the FAQ. How many have signed up so far?

<comment><USER23> There's a progress bar right under their video. 2140 just now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Cool idea. A current count on the subscribers would be nice, so I could have an idea of how much progress has been made towards the initial goal of 10k.

</comment><comment><USER25> A million people are signed up? How long do you have to wait on average to win a one in a million daily lottery.

<comment><USER26> Assuming people can "win" more than once and no one else signs up, the expected wait would be 1 million days.

Edit: Guess I need to explain the math since I've been downvoted.

Let X be the random variable representing the number of draws until you are the winner. The probability that X = _k_ is (999999/1000000)^( _k_ -1) * (1/1000000)

From the definition of expected value: E = Sum(n*P(X=n), n, 1, Infinity)

From here it's a simple matter of arithmetic to calculate E. Here's the Wolfram Alpha link since I don't feel like typing up math in this input box (shortened so as not to overflow the layout): <http://bit.ly/HzRUUt>

<comment><USER27> True, but the median wait time would be merely 693147 days, or around 1900 years.

1-(999999/1000000) __(693147) = 0.5

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Pretty cool... are you planning to switch from Mailchimp, though? It lists $240/month as the fee for 25K-50K subscribers. I'm curious about the business model behind something like this.

<comment><USER29> "Dear Everyone at the Giant Listserv,

Boy, do I love Snickers! They are my favorite snack, I eat them all the time. Their crunchy texture and silky smooth chocolate satisfies my cravings like nothing else.

Love,

IEatSnickers

PS: eat snickers"

<comment><USER30> Never saw that coming...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> We did an interview with the Listserve guys at Betabeat: [http://www.betabeat.com/2012/04/10/the-listserve-nyu-itp- pro...](http://www.betabeat.com/2012/04/10/the-listserve-nyu-itp-project/)

Seems like a super cool project.

<comment><USER11> It is shocking to me that as a reporter, you wouldn't even bother asking why they're using a heavily protected and trademarked word for their name.

<comment><USER32> What? You find this shocking? While you may be biased towards looking at things from a trademark/copyright perspective, you must at least assume some people look at things from other perspectives. It is more interesting to look at this from a social impact/psychology perspective, rather than to undermine the idea based on a word trademark.

<comment><USER11> Sorry, but I don't see how getting people to sign up to a mailing list so that they can receive a random email from a stranger once a day is such an amazing idea. It sounds rife for abuse and the fact that the authors didn't bother to check to see if the name they choose was trademarked first shows to me that they don't seem to care what anyone thinks. My guess is that this doesn't end well and your email address gets sold to the highest bidder.

<comment><USER33> You're taking this _way_ too seriously. "They don't seem to care what anyone thinks" because they're thinking about it at a scale and profundity exactly appropriate for what it is--a one semester class in a grad program that's very big on experimentation, rapid prototyping, and art, but not very big on process, paperwork, or structure. It's a school project. Remember that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Question for someone who's already signed up: What's the process to unsubscribe?

<comment><USER35> It's MailChimp, so super easy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> kind of the social equivalent of the million $ website

</comment><comment><USER37> Very clever idea. However, it sounds much more beneficial to the person sending the email than to those who are receiving it.

It will be interesting to see if it will collapse for this reason, or if some unexpected mechanic of humanity will keep it afloat.

<comment><USER38> My guess is the same mechanic of humanity that keeps people buying lottery tickets. Maybe, just maybe, tomorrow it will be me!

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Interesting gimmick if it's legit. (I mean gimmick in a positive way.)

</comment><comment><USER40> Signed up with a few mailinator email addresses. :)

</comment><comment><USER41> Woah. Join our giant spam list. I can't see anything in this which encourages messages to not be a form of spam. Daily spam. No thanks.

<comment><USER42> But it's just one message daily. It isn't cost-effective for spammers to abuse this, I think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> this takes what I'm working on to a whole new level! I love it. I'm already joined. Check out mailbait.info for another side of a similar coin.</comment>


NBC Agrees To Sell Women.com, Backs Away, Gets Sued - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/04/nbc-done-lawsuit/

<comment><USER2> why would NBC sell those domains? What's 1 million dollars to them vs the potential of a memorable/great domain (something I'd say is pretty rare)

<comment><USER3> Why would they? Probably shedding non-performing assets.

The point is, they offered them for sale. Then after an offer was made (which obligates them to sell in most states), they are _trying_ to back out of the deal.

I predict they'll have to pay substantially or surrender the domains.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Pre-installed Ubuntu Linux Workstation Vendors? - <AUTHOR>

Can anyone recommend any UK based vendors (apart from Dell) who sell pre-installed Ubuntu Linux workstations? I'm looking to buy a couple for the office and don't want to have to go through the effort of sourcing supported parts to build the units myself. <comment><USER2> I've bought machines with Debian and Red Hat (back in the day) preinstalled from <http://dnuk.com> and would buy from them again. I've never bought a machine with Ubuntu preinstalled from them, but they do give the option.

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks great and awesome configuration options. Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> System76 will start shipping to the UK soon

[http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/11/system76-to-begin- shippin...](http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/11/system76-to-begin-shipping-to- the-uk-end-of-this-month/)

</comment><comment><USER4> What's wrong with Dell? I've had pretty good luck with both the computers themselves and the service.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nothing! I just can't find any reviews within the last 2 years. What did you buy and how have you got on?

<comment><USER4> Not a workstation, but a laptop - I have a Latitude e6500, and it's worked fine over the last year. I had a previous one, which had a problem, which Dell fixed very quickly:

[http://journal.dedasys.com/2007/11/20/and-were-back-in- actio...](http://journal.dedasys.com/2007/11/20/and-were-back-in-action)

And that was a US-purchased laptop in Innsbruck, Austria. Not bad at all.</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook breaks logins - <AUTHOR> https://developers.facebook.com/bugs/207955409343730 <comment><USER2> This is a good time to remind ourselves: Facebook's API is a service and can be a single point of failure for your business. Unlike AWS, you don't even pay for it and it has a history of being problematic[1].

Allowing users to log in to your application using Facebook is quite common. It can be easier for users. It can give you access to demographic data with less work. But the API can die, change, or act generally unpredictable. And you have zero control over it.

This particular issue is impacting 9gag, Pinterest and others. Whilst many of these sites support user logins without Facebook, just as many of them don't. Imagine if tomorrow Facebook charge to connect to their API or there's some extreme exploit. How much damage would your application face?

[1]: [http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/11/facebook-wins-worst-api- in-...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/11/facebook-wins-worst-api-in-developer- survey/)

<comment><USER3> You can get the best of both worlds by making it so that your user (has to?) also set a password when they finish logging in via facebook the first time.

This way, if facebook ever down (or removes their services), you have an _out_ for your users to login via the traditional username/password.

<comment><USER4> You don't even have to make them set a password when they first register - just verify their email address and handle setting a password though the usual forgotten-password flow if you ever need to.

<comment><USER5> Remember when they changed everyones default email to be firstname.lastname@example.com? Yeah, thats pretty much all you're going to get from the API.

<comment><USER6> A) not true, the API releases "primary email" which is usually NOT facebook. and B) even if it were that's why you check and verify: if u pull a @fb address don't save it, just prompt the user.

To me as both an app user and developer, single sign on feels like the Right Thing To Do. I'm sick of running through the same sign up flow for every single service I use, like a hamster wheel. Maybe the solution isn't fb, it's some kind of apple or google SSO? Why aren't AAPL and GOOG pushing their own SSO hard on the mobile ecosystems they control?

<comment><USER5> _shrug_ maybe all my developer friends are wrong. I don't bother with FB API.

The solution is definitely not Facebook, Google, or Apple. They all plugged SSO into an existing platform and allow developers to perform actions on my behalf with the same credentials. Sadly, Microsoft's Passport.net was the closest anyone has gotten to a real solution because they treated their own properties as just another consumer. They killed that by trying to tie it directly into your Windows login which are inherently insecure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For omniauth/rails people out there, we found this to work.

       fb_options[:client_options] = {
            :site => 'https://graph.facebook.com',
            :authorize_url => 'https://www.facebook.com/dialog/oauth',
            :token_url => '/oauth/access_token'
          }
       provider :facebook, api_key, secret_key, fb_options

<comment><USER8> The explanation:

> (according to) Andrew Fowler (from the comment thread on facebook)

The solution is to replace your OAuth Dialog URL: "<https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/authorize?......> with the up-to-date URL: "<https://www.facebook.com/dialog/oauth?......>. They removed support for some parameters without fixing the redirect from their old endpoint.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if Facebook stores it's password in clear-text, since you can login with either 'Password' or 'password', does it hash the first character and the rest into 2 different hashes? If not, we have a our passwords in readable form in their database that have huge privacy and security issues.

<comment><USER10> Facebook stores three hashes of your password (let's say it's "pAssword"):

* "pAssword" - the password as it is

* "PaSSWORD" - the password, case inverted, in case you have caps lock on

* "PAssword" - the password with its first letter capitalized, for those with mobile devices that insist on Capitalizing Everything.

<comment><USER11> I don't think they store three hashes, but just try to validate password with three hashes.

Something inline this: [https://github.com/bungle/web.php/blob/master/password.php#L...](https://github.com/bungle/web.php/blob/master/password.php#L50)

<comment><USER12> What's the password doing on their server?

Also, why is there no salt in the comparison. It calls a naked crypt, that whole ... interesting ... hash() function is sitting there unused.

I have serious doubts whether this code actually serves the user's interest - despite trying to be cute and helpful

<comment><USER11> You seemingly don't understand a bit about it. And you seemingly doesn't understand how crypt works. Let me educate you:

1\. When user registers, his password is hashed with that hash-function, and that hash is stored in a database (it uses random salt).

2\. When user tries to access the site, a password is hashed against the hash stored in a database, and it should return same hash if matched (this is how crypt works!).

3\. In non strict mode we try also two different passwords to match the hashes (just like Facebook does).

Code example:

1\. $hash = \password\hash('user entered password'); // store it to db

2\. retrieve hash from db, and check it:

$valid = \password\check('user entered password', $hash, false);

3\. // Now these passwords are valid:

'user entered password' // == correct form

'User entered password' // == Mobile browser capitalizing first char

'USER ENTERED PASSWORD' // == CAPS LOCK on

And one line example:

$valid = \password\check('user entered password', \password\hash('user entered password'), false); // == true

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I was having lunch recently with a few developers, and the topic of "What is the worst API you ever had to work with" came up. The unanimous answer was immediately "Facebook". Everything from the documentation, to multiple ways to do similar things (each of them incompletely documented), to deprecations that never actually go away, to arbitrary breaking changes.

<comment><USER14> I'd go with Instagram's over Facebook's.

<comment><USER15> What did you try to do?

I've worked with both and Instagram is… pretty straightforward. Granted, I only ever authenticated and consumed feeds, but still.

Facebook on the other hand is a maze of twisty little passages, all alike

<comment><USER14> Pain points we've run into:

* OAuth redirect_uri is locked to a single domain. No test.example.com/staging.example.com for testing - you need to create a new app for a testing/staging environment.

* Max of five apps in an account (see above) - we're having to register an Instagram account per app so we can create dev/test versions of the app.

* Can't grant access to other devs for an account.

* Access to the commenting API is whitelist based. API gives an e-mail address, which never responds. Trying to _use_ the API returns JSON with a bitly link to a Google form, which also never responds. We've been waiting some time for them to respond with a yay/nay on comment whitelisting.

* Docs say you should respect privacy setting of photos, but API doesn't tell you which photos are private anywhere.

* The Google Group seems to be a place feedback/bug reports go to die.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have to admit that I sort of struggled to understand what Facebook were trying to communicate to me when that message popped up on my account.

Maybe if you worked with the Facebook login system / followed their API frequently it would have made sense. For someone who once integrated Facebook logins into their site it felt a little bit cryptic.

<comment><USER17> I've done way too much work integrating Facebook login and payments, and their error messages never make sense. You just have to learn how to map their undecipherable gibberish into actual errors, and then go fix it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Yep, that worked for me: added this in devise.rb: config.omniauth :facebook, FB_APP_ID, FB_APP_SECRET, {:scope => '.....', :client_options => {:ssl => {.....}, :display => 'popup', :setup => true, :site => '<https://graph.facebook.com>, :authorize_url => '<https://www.facebook.com/dialog/oauth>, :token_url => '/oauth/access_token'}}

</comment><comment><USER19> Does anyone know if there is a workaround if you are currently using the FB.login method to authenticate users?

</comment><comment><USER20> It's still broken for mobile web

<comment><USER20> <http://developers.facebook.com/bugs/> is broken as well if you are logged in. Big bug.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> seems fixed.

</comment><comment><USER22> Is the United Breaks Guitars guy available?

</comment><comment><USER23> <http://imgur.com/V5LD0EB></comment>


American Airlines to Provide Samsung Tablets to customers - <AUTHOR> http://www.tekgoblin.com/2011/06/17/american-airlines-to-provide-samsung-tablets-on-some-flights/

<comment><USER2> Neat, but seems a bit behind the times in a sense. There's nothing 'first class' about a tablet - an ipad is $500 - less than the cost of many flights. Anyone who wants one and flies can already get one, and probably have a better experience with it.

What would make far more sense is to offer wifi on the planes, and offer in- flight purchases of content (movies/magazines) for android and possibly iphone/ipad. html5 or epub books for $1 while you're trapped in flight? I'd do it.

They could then be making marginally more money from all the passengers.

<comment><USER3> _Neat, but seems a bit behind the times in a sense. There's nothing 'first class' about a tablet - an ipad is $500 - less than the cost of many flights_

Sure, it's only valuable if it's loaded with good content. Stick a decent movie/TV show collection, some good games and some e-books on it, and it's both better and probably a lot cheaper than one of the fancy seatback TV systems, even once you account for breakage.

 _What would make far more sense is to offer wifi on the planes, and offer in- flight purchases of content (movies/magazines) for android and possibly iphone/ipad. html5 or epub books for $1 while you're trapped in flight? I'd do it._

Eek, no thanks, customers hate being nickel-and-dimed. (Which probably means United will do it, because they love nickel-and-diming.) Still, especially if you're in First Class you definitely shouldn't have to pay for entertainment.

Budget carrier Jetstar in Australia is doing it with iPads: [http://www.intomobile.com/2011/02/16/jetstar-ipad-rental- ser...](http://www.intomobile.com/2011/02/16/jetstar-ipad-rental-service/) \-- oddly they were supposed to start in April this year but I can't find a review of what the service is actually like.

<comment><USER2> I hate being nickel and dimed too. I don't consider paying $1 for an ebook _that I'd download to my own device to keep_ nickel and dimed. What I do hate is paying $4 for a bottle of water, $3 for a 2oz bag of cookies, $10 for a 'lunch' box that would make my middle school lunch lady cry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Using tablets means that the equipment is easier to upgrade/replace. With integrated systems like VirginAmerica's Red, the whole plane would have to be re-outfited.

Do you really want another store to buy stuff? These tablets will have a way to purchase wifi access. I think that is the easiest way to make money because downloading things opens up all types of questions like "I started the download when we were at 14K feet (wifi cuts off at 10K), can I have my money back?" or "The download failed and it wants to charge me again"

Flight attendants shouldn't be tech support nor is it their job.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd rather stare at the back of my eyelids, thanks.</comment>


Show HN: MY First Ever Wesbite - <AUTHOR>

Over the past couple of weeks I've decided to learn more about web technologies and I've taken the time to build myself a personal website. This is the first website I've ever built, and I would appreciate some constructive criticism and honest opinions from you guys: http://joncordeiro.com/<p>Thanks! <comment><USER2> My first impression is I wanted the nine pictures on the front page to click somewhere and they didn't. They look a lot like UI elements, and I assumed they would lead to different pages.

My basic, basic setup for building quick and dirty websites (before I started learning about frameworks)was to use Twig for templates and Skeleton for html/css. Having something like that (where your 'pages' would be child templates which extend the 'main' template containing everything around the container) makes style consistency and the workload of changing things much easier.

I'd recommend repo.js (<http://darcyclarke.me/dev/repojs/>) to embed your github account into your site to let people browse your work -- that with a cv page would give people a better organized idea of what you do and more importantly what you're offering.

I can't comment on the blog? It doesn't seem like a blog without commenting.

Also, having underlining show up on the link css on hover shifts the elements around and that's kind of annoying.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it. I'll check out repo.js and make sure to tweak those hover underlines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Pretty good if you've written the markup and styling by hand. You'll need to integrate some kind of submissions form to get the full experience, which I recommend some kind of framework.</comment>