NYT reader 2.0 - <AUTHOR> http://timesreader.nytimes.com/timesreader/index.html?campaignId=34W8F

<comment><USER3> Interesting EULA clause for the Adobe AIR component - don't even think of trying to read your NYT on a Tablet PC unless you are running Windows XP Tablet PC Edition...

"...you may not use an Adobe Runtime on any (a) mobile device, set top box (STB), handheld, phone, web pad, tablet and Tablet PC (other than with Windows XP Tablet PC Edition and its successors), game console, TV, DVD player, media center (other than with Windows XP Media Center Edition and its successors), electronic billboard or other digital signage, Internet appliance or other Internet-connected device, PDA, medical device, ATM, telematic device, gaming machine, home automation system, kiosk, remote control device, or any other consumer electronics device,"

<comment><USER3> I just spent 30 minutes with this App - It's a winner. I've subscribed to the $3.45/week subscription.

I've been a NYT reader for the last seven years - it's basically my home page - but for whatever reason, the web edition obscures my sense of what the entire paper is offering. Keep in mind I read the NYT.com web page 3-5 times a day for about two hours, and, seven years later, I _still_ feel like I'm missing out from the "Paper" experience.

The NYT reader has the following features that I love:

o Flawless Article-Map. I've got my sections on the left, the article number on the bottom, and the page number on the bottom right (Though, with a 30" monitor it almost 100% of the time will fit an article onto a single page).

o Great navigation - Cursor Right/Left changes articles. Cursor Up/Down changes Page. Command Up/Down changes Section.

o It's the NYT Paper edition, delivered electronically Sometimes, having that authoritative "We commit this to history" version of the NYT is reassuring, for all its faults.

o Great resizing - Text, Graphics all relocate themselves very well - <USER2> better than the nyt.com page. This app works just as cleanly on a 30" monitor as it does a 15" monitor - which is rare for Newspaper readers.

o Much less advertising - I expect that will change, but it's nice to have a pristine page without having to load up your system with ad-blockers - just a single banner at the bottom right now.

o News in Video - All of the video news in a single section. (Great Video Article on West Point Cyber Warfare today, BTW)

o News in Pictures - Nice roundup of all the NYT pictures of the day.

o Latest News - A nice addition - gives you the dynamic element of nyt.com in addition to the authoritative version.

We'll see if I'm as hyper-enthusiastic a couple months from now, but, this is where I'm going for my NYT news. Need to see if WSJ (which has better charts/graphics than the NYT, particularly on the financial side) has a reader as nice as the NYT.

[Added:] Back in 1999/2000 or thereabouts, there was an earlier version of the NYT reader that I did _not_ like very much. It wasn't as nimble as the existing one, and , incredibly, didn't come out until quite late in the morning. There were several occasions when the -paper- edition was available before the electronic, and the web site was always more complete. Fail.

I'm happy to see the following note when I subscribed:

"Getting it first So fast, you get delivery while our presses are still running "

We'll see.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the mini-review, sounds like they do deliver a better experience than the Web counterpart. What about links? say to comment on an article from a blog post, or following a link from another site to the NYT? I guess you still need the Web/HTML version for that.

Any reason why it can't be the same experience over a Web browser? Nothing wrong to try and sell subscriptions based on an enhanced experience, just that personally the NYT isn't worth $150+/yr.

<comment><USER3> Links: The NYT is pretty schizophrenic about links - most of the time they'll link to their own information on a link (ala Wikipedia, but nowhere near as useful), sometimes they'll link to an external resource (Marketwatch for companies), sometimes they'll actually link to the site under review (wolfram alpha) - all of them, of course, require internet access + your browser.

The good news is that all of these links are somehow maintained in the "Time Reader" version of the article - I have no idea how they accomplish that. Makes me think that the paper version is now a _derivative_ of some primary electronic version. Interesting.

Re: Same Experience in Web Browser - After I used Google Maps, I realized that Javascript can do pretty much anything, so I have to believe if someone really, really wanted to, they could create an application that would simulate the "Times Reader" in a browser. I'm guessing that the design team that did this for the NYT probably looked at the toolsets that were available, and that they knew, and just decided that AIR would be the fastest, easiest, and provide the best user experience. I'm guessing here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _"The New York Times offers you a digital experience that reads like a newspaper."_

I think this pretty much sums up why newspapers have problems. They aren't looking ahead, they're looking back. They're trying to squeeze an old- fashioned newspaper into a new format instead of using the possibilities and limitations that the new medium offers. Yes, they talk a bit about video but except for that it's just reinventing the old ways.

Instead they should focus on citizen journalism, user interaction, one-to-one communication, personalisation and all the other possibilities that the web offers.

It reminds me of the old Henry Ford quote _"If I asked customers what they wanted they would say a faster horse"_

It looks like The New York Times is busy making a faster horse.

Edit: Just read schwanksta's comment, and maybe I was a bit too triggerhappy in my criticism :-)

<comment><USER6> Newspapers should not look beyond quality. I value well-written reporting as a consumer and a citizen and want to see the NYT flourish. I really like the new reader.

Of the foci you mention: Citizen journalism - I can get this on the local broadcast news. Except for breaking local news - no thanks.

User interaction - there are a great number of sites that discuss issues and they are filled with citizen journalists. I would rather the NYT concentrate on well-written reporting.

Personalization - RSS feeds and sub-reddits are better at this for me.

I miss the pure joy of opening the newspaper and discovering something interesting such as an in-depth investigative report on a unknown or misunderstood problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I really like this. Offline browsing for a full 7 days, video and even a crossword puzzle? That's a pretty good bridge between Web-only reading and traditional newspapers. This app could really take off if they promote it right. At the very least, this would be awesome for an airplane or car trip.

Hopefully they roll out an iPhone/Blackberry/Whatever app too. Make it as mobile and easy to read as the real paper.

<comment><USER8> They already have an iPhone Application: <http://www.nytimes.com/services/mobile/iphone.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> They've done a great job porting this to Air. The Fl(ash|ex) platform has improved by leaps and bounds in the last few years, a kudos to both the NYT and Adobe.

Performance is a bit sluggish on my machine, but overall it feels pretty nice. There aren't many new features over 1.0 (having the crossword is great, and obviously cross-platform is super-important). I'm looking forward to future iterations.

(Full disclosure: I worked on the NYT Reader 1.0 back when I was at MSFT)

</comment><comment><USER10> If anyone is curious on how they structure their data you can look at the SQLite database files which are stored here (on windows at least): %USERPROFILE%\Application Data\com.nyt.timesreader.78C54164786ADE80CB31E1C5D95607D0938C987A.1\Local Store\

"newsreader.db" contains all the article information and eventRecorder.db contains records of all the actions you take in the application.

</comment><comment><USER11> This might be my youth showing, but to me, this looks like a browser customized to the NYT... nice, but why not let it be just another tab in Chrome?

Also, where are the social features? I want to solve the crossword puzzle faster than my friends, and post to my facebook profile how quickly I did it. I want to be able to share/discuss the stories with those friends, also - that's one of the reasons why I read them.

Aside from that, this is just a pretty redesign of the layout... not much to see, moving along.

</comment><comment><USER12> This seems much better than the horrendous New Yorker digital reader.

</comment><comment><USER13> Between this, map/reduce and everything else NYT has been doing the last year or so, it is easy to see who will survive when the newspaper industry comes crumbling down.

</comment><comment><USER14> Looks great and feels great.

But before you download, it says a subscription for full access to Times Reader is $3.45 a week.

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't understand why a proprietary reader when the browser is the best reader out there and html the best format.

Want to allow off-line reading? Give the user the full version as a single html file so it can be saved and read anywhere, anytime, on any device.

Thumbs down.

<comment><USER16> > _the browser is the best reader out there_

This is a joke, right?

<comment><USER17> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=601190></comment></comment></comment>


Designing a Reporting System - <AUTHOR> http://bentilly.blogspot.com/2009/12/design-of-reporting-system.html

<comment><USER2> This is great advice! I had never considered creating raw HTML tables of data on my websites for the express purpose of having end users connect to them with Excel.

<comment><USER3> Here's a way to easily do it with style:

<http://datatables.net/1.5-beta/extras/TableTools/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Did you read the story?

You're describing a technology to make a web page that can save data in Excel format. The story describes how to help users set up complex Excel spreadsheets that run a web report behind the scenes whenever they are refreshed. I believe that the latter capability is much more useful to users than the former.

<comment><USER3> I read the story.

My comment was a reply to a comment (not the story itself) which I felt was germane.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Would it be possible to use Open Office with this or IBM Lotus Symfony?

</comment><comment><USER5> Sharepoint, Excel Services, Analysis Services, Reporting Services.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is fine if you want to pay for the full Microsoft stack and are already in a full Microsoft environment. It doesn't work so well when your data lives in a non-Microsoft environment, you have poorly organized legacy tables, and or is a real need to establish consistent business metrics and terminology.

The reporting system I described was created in an organization with all of those problems. It has no ongoing licensing costs, fits smoothly into the existing non-Microsoft server environment, allowed me to hide the details of convoluted legacy table structures and data split across databases, and got different parts of the business to use the same metrics.

I consider it a sign of success that multiple people who moved on from that organization later contacted me and said that one thing they really missed is the reporting system that I had created. And yes, some of those people moved into Microsoft environments that use the standard Microsoft stack of solutions.</comment></comment>


Hacking debt - <AUTHOR> http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2013/04/24/hacking-debt/ <comment><USER2> I'm not sure I agree completely with his characterization of what happens. I've noticed that people, particularly in larger organizatons, will start shoehorning their "hacking work" into real projects if it is left out for too long. So, you end up with systems that are on bleeding-edge languages, tools, runtimes, and platforms because, frankly, the team was just dirt-sick of Scala/Java + Beans, even though that would've met the company's goals much more quickly and cheaply.

That said, I definitely support his statement that people should have some hacking / learning time budgeted, even if only to avoid the scenario I mentioned above.

<comment><USER3> Maybe it's better to let people do explicit side projects as a creative outlet so that they don't shoehorn them into production projects.

<comment><USER2> I completely agree. I've worked at a company where we had explicit weeks taken out of the schedule to do "app building" where we were expected to do a mix of kicking the tires on the product and experimenting with random tech we wanted to play with (subject to the Legal Overlords and their hatred for OSS, at the time). Speaking with my manager hat on, it worked quite well for exorcising those demons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ironically, the best way to pay off 'hacking debt' is with 'real work'.

If you want to learn technology X, the best way to do that is to build something with it. You want to build something that is motivational in itself, something that is useful or fun. Building something useful is real work.

<comment><USER5> I've had a lot of luck discovering technologies in my off-time and then figuring out how to incorporate them into my paid work. It's really an awesome approach.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have long noticed a similar correlation in my own work. Whenever I find myself using the phrase "playing around with" it usually signals that I am actually doing my most creative/inventive work. Hard becomes easy when insight arrives and work turns into play because of the joy of discovery.

</comment><comment><USER7> I thought this would be about hacking your financial debt. Perhaps useful tips to achieve financial freedom.

<comment><USER3> For hacking financial debt, see <http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2010/11/02/snowball-strategy/>.

<comment><USER8> I had a friend that approached me about 18 months ago regarding the best way to pay down his loans. I started with a simple model and as it came to fruition, wound up with a solution[1] that factors in the present value of savings, future interest rates, and tax consequences. This is a more mathematical effective strategy for paying down debt.

By considering the present value of savings, you are able to judge the relative difference between a loan that recognizes savings in 30 years vs 10 years, for example. Future interest rates are important here because it reflects your opportunity cost of paying down debt (ie you could be saving this money in a risk-free investment instead). Lastly, taxes are extremely impactful because, for those who qualify, paying down a tax-deductible mortgage or student loan ultimately lowers your after-tax income.

Although my site is still somewhat beta, I invite folks to come sign up for free and give it a try.

[1] - <https://beanjockey.com>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In the now-ancient Cringely book called "Accidental Empires" the author relates the story of how the lead engineer working on 3COM's first ethernet card paused his assigned work to measure the reflectivity of his office's ceiling tiles while the seedling company awaited his fundamentally important work. This is the sort of hacking that, while off-task, is still often valuable. Every suit's nightmare and yes fairly irresponsible in the context, but this really is productive overall if it staves off boredom. It's indicative of what I would call a born engineer: curious, resourceful, and compulsively productive regardless of material as long as it's by choice.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think Tom DeMarco makes the same point in the book Slack: [http://www.amazon.com/Slack-Getting-Burnout-Busywork- Efficie...](http://www.amazon.com/Slack-Getting-Burnout-Busywork- Efficiency/dp/0767907698)

</comment><comment><USER11> Technical debt is similar to real life debt:

1) Pay all your debt now, unless you have a sure way to make money at a higher interest rate _CONSIDERING INFLATION_ (ie if you hold debt at a fixed 2% annual rate and can access 3% guaranteed placement, don't pay your debts if inflation is <1%)

2) Never make any debt ever again _UNLESS_ it is for a productive investment. A productive investment is something that will pay the amount due + interest + leave you something to leave on. Physicial capital (tools) is an investment. Today you must have a really good reason to buy your own server instead of paying-as-you-go for a virtual server. Education may - or may not be, it 's a complex question (credentialing may mean you need paper diplomas more than the actual knowledge)

3) Leave beyond your expenses, save and invest. There're various websites with suggestions on how to do that exactly.

The most important thing is the endgoal : no debt, money in the bank, freedom to work on jobs or projects you value, without the short term constraints of putting food on the table.

When in doubt about making a debt, go see 2) - purchasing property to flip it on the market is taking a risk. If you have followed 3), it's a risk you can take.

Now let's translate that to development debt :

1) you should fix your code now, unless there are more productive uses of your time. Fixing old complex code is like fighting inflation - don't bother. You may win some battle but can't win the war. Fixing new code however is a good idea, while it's still clear in your head.

2) you shouldn't have made a technical debt in the first place, except to ensure a sale or quick money. if you did, you'd rather have a good reason and some profits to show

3) code in a "beginner me could understand that" way. Remember it takes someone twice as intelligent to debug some code, so make life easy for yourself.

The end goal is the same : code that work, with the freedom to repurpose it, without the short term hassle of fighting bugs everyday.

When in doubt about creating technical debt, go see 2) - feature creep to try to secure a sale is taking a risk. If you have followed 3) and your code base is clean enough, it's a risk you can take.

EDIT : Downvotes, really? At -1 now ?? Please tell me how I am not following the guidelines and not contributing to the discussion.

EDIT2: falcolas, sorry, but I see technical debt just like real life debt. It is a powerful and dangerous tool, and if one is looking for solutions on a blog where a guy advise playing around for the fun of it you're not doing to lower your technical debt - you're going deeper into technical debt.

In his own works : "hacking debt" : _"Some portion of a career should be devoted to hacking. Not 100%, but not 0% either. Without some time spent exploring and having fun, people become less effective and eventually burn out."_.

Huh? "hacking debt" won't resolve the "technical debt" - that's completely unrelated. I just don't and can't agree with his approach of playtime for the sake of it. One should remember the dead simple advice posted above (and heavily downvoted) before trying to do better. Not everyone is a rockstar or a special gem needing daily bouts of playtime to keep inspiration. Most however need to keep a training routine and consider which technical debt is worth taking on, and which is worth leaving aline.

BTW, as I posted 2 weeks ago (<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5508906>) :

 _"Take a military analogy - if you're not doing something "shippable" (ex: fighting), you are training to maintain or raise your potential for when you will have to get in action - or at least to maintain discipline."_

That's not playing for the sake of playing or having fun. That's playing with a goal.

<comment><USER12> >Pay all your debt now, unless you have a sure way to make money at a higher interest rate CONSIDERING INFLATION (ie if you hold debt at a fixed 2% annual rate and can access 3% guaranteed placement, don't pay your debts if inflation is <1%)

Some people over-emphasize this. Generally speaking, 10k in debt, 10k in the bank, at a non-usurious interest rate is far more stable than 0 in debt and $3.50 in the bank.

I'd contend that debts south of 5% fixed interest rate should be HIGHLY considered as "not worth paying down" until your retirement account is fully loaded with enough cash to retire TODAY as this is a very strangely low rate, and one that will be over the life of most loans in that tier, at or less than inflation (looking at historical levels of inflation)

You're not going to be able to borrow at 4% when inflation is at 5%, but you sure can keep on to that 4% debt from now for 10 years, and instead bank extra payments or invest them

<comment><USER13> _> Generally speaking, 10k in debt, 10k in the bank, at a non-usurious interest rate is far more stable than 0 in debt and $3.50 in the bank._

That's not usually the advice financial counselors give. Dave Ramsey, for instance, would probably say keep $1k in the bank and pay pay off $9k of the debt and [snowball] the remaining payments.

Also, assuming you can get a 12% ROI over the years, and accounting for inflation, you'd be left with 12%-5%-4%=3%

Is that hypothetical 3% gain worth keeping the debt, which has risks of its own? e.g. you are incapacitated due to an accident, or you incur a huge medical bill that you need to split into payments, but you can't pay much because, oh "i just have this loan at 5% that's not worth paying off.

<comment><USER14> > Is that hypothetical 3% gain worth keeping the debt, which has risks of its > own? e.g. you are incapacitated due to an accident, or you incur a huge > medical bill that you need to split into payments, but you can't pay much > because, oh "i just have this loan at 5% that's not worth paying off.

Actually, if something bad happens you've got $10k in the bank. So when you are incapacitated, you've got several months' of living expenses -- or you can pay off the medical bill outright.

The common "pay it all off; no debt ever" advice that I've seen given out for free on the internet is geared toward people with tons of debt. This advice is not great for persons with small amounts of debt, good cash flow, and a healthy emergency fund. When you reach this point, you have the option to use debt as a tool, and you have the ability to negotiate with lenders to get better terms. (Implied here is that you can negotiate better terms because you have the ability to simply pay cash and walk away from the debt-negotiation table.)

<comment><USER15> I'd rather go bankrupt than actually have to pay all my net worth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> How about 20% of time spent working should be spent hacking? Seems to be working well for Google employees.</comment>


Nexus One from an iPhone Developer's Perspective - <AUTHOR> http://iphonedevelopment.blogspot.com/2010/02/nexus-one-from-iphone-developer.html <comment><USER2> Ahem... I'm gonna take the liberty of reposting my comment from another thread where this "review" cropped up.

 _When you hit the home button, the previous application keeps running, which means it keeps eating memory, keeps using processor cycles, and keeps eating battery.....To truly quit most applications requires a multi-step navigation that is neither intuitive nor well-documented._

That one is one of the most pernicious bits of misinformation about the Android platform. Applications that are no longer visible to the user are NOT "background" applications like they are on a desktop OS. Applications that are no longer visible to the user are stopped. They no longer consume CPU resources, but the OS does hold them in memory in case the user returns to the app. Stopped applications may be killed by the OS, thereby freeing up the memory used by them, at any time by the OS when it determines it needs resources. Think of it like caching. The app state is cached in memory so that if you switch momentarily to another app (to answer a call for example) you can return immediately to the previous app with minimal delay and minimal resource cost (ie, the app doesn't need to be re-loaded, etc). The Android developer docs have more information: [http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/fundamentals.html#...](http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/fundamentals.html#..).

The only things that truly run in the background on Android are service process. These are somewhat like worker threads that are created specifically to handle long running background tasks (like playing music, or downloading data over the network, etc).

There is absolutely no need to go through any "multistep navigation" to quit apps, nor do non-visible apps continue "using processor cycles and eating battery" (with the exception of course of apps that are supposed to be using processor cycles, ie, music players, etc. running in a background service process).

<comment><USER3> I have little Android experience so forgive me if this is obvious after using the device, but your description makes it sounds like you can't reliably know if an app will be in the state you left it, is that true? Meaning sometimes the OS will kill the app if necessary but other times it will not.

If that is the case I'd prefer the iPhone way wherein the onus is on the developer to preserve the state and if they have, the app will always return to the way you left it or, if they haven't it will always be restarted from scratch. For me, knowing is better than not knowing.

However, if it is the case that the OS rarely kills apps then the Android method seems preferable.

<comment><USER2> That _would_ be highly unusable, but fortunately that's not the way Android works. Roughly what happens is that when an app (actually an Activity.. but we won't get into the difference right now) is no longer visible to the user, the OS automatically saves most of the apps state, and calls the apps onStop method to signal the app to save any app specific state. If the app _is_ later killed, the next time it's started one of the items passed to the app by the OS is a reference to the previously saved state.

The effect for the user is much like you describe it for the iPhone. It's as though your apps never die. Whenever you restart them, whether it's 5 minutes from now or 5 days, everything is exactly as you last left it. Except that, unlike on a PC, those "background apps" don't take up any resources. Obviously there is room for poorly written apps to flub up, or for apps to override the normal behavior for specific reasons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Some valid points, but much of the article seems very iPhone-biased.

I agree that a search button is totally unnecessary, and I never use it, but I've had a use for the menu button on every screen. Keep in mind that most iPhone apps have a button bar on the bottom with items. This is just smart screen management. The back button has a few software design quirks that give it inconsistent result, but again most apps use it well.

The author then assumes the higher resolution is just to show off a big number. There's a reason 300dpi is the minimum for print...the eye can detect lower resolutions (and usually higher) [1].

I find it interesting that he dismissed some Android features that "most people won't care about", citing the "average user", and then goes on to dismiss multitasking, saying:

"Everybody except most 'tech pundits' knows that the iPhone's Mach kernel supports full preemptive multitasking and also knows that at any given moment there are somewhere on the order of twenty daemons and other processes running on a stock (non-jailbroken) iPhone."

I don't know if that's a typo or a joke, but I don't think the "average user" cares, I think they just want to listen to Pandora while checking email.

I'm not going to pick apart everything I disagree with the author about, and I'm probably as much of an Android lover as he is an iPhone lover, but I do think this article presents a fairly biased view of the two devices, even though the author claims to not be judging them "purely on what [he] was already accustomed to."

[1] <http://www.clarkvision.com/articles/printer-ppi/> and other sites found on Google.

<comment><USER5> The multitasking bit stood as to me as well. From that point on I knew that I couldn't really take this criticism seriously. "Multitasking isn't important, but the iPhone _could_ do it if mother Apple really wanted it to so Nyah."

After that I noticed that pretty much everything the Nexus One does better than the iPhone was minimized or excused away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> You can pry the hardware buttons and the trackball out of my cold, dead hands. I love them.

 _When you hit the home button, the previous application keeps running, which means it keeps eating memory, keeps using processor cycles, and keeps eating battery._

It's a lot more complicated than this. There is a battery monitor application, and background apps don't use much power. (Keeping wifi on and scanning is my biggest power sink. It makes Locale more accurate, though.)

Background apps are quite nice. With K-9 mail and my home IMAP server, I get true push email. Whenever I order something from Amazon or forget my password or something, the little trackball lights up instantly. It's really cool, and it doesn't need any special support. If I had an iPhone, I could never get this functionality.

Anyway, apps are what make Android great, and it's strange that he didn't talk about any of them. If you want nice effect when scrolling through your Twitter feed, get an iPhone. If you want advanced software, get Android.

<comment><USER2> Agreed. The trackball is awesome for moving back and forth within a text field (to correct a missed typo for example). I also find it nice when browsing websites with lots of close together links.

<comment><USER7> * forehead smack * I did not know I could do that with the trackball until I read your comment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _While I tried to be fair, it should come as no surprise that I believe in Apple's approach to both hardware and software_

Wait, wait, wait. Isn't this sort of like a creationist reviewing evolution as a theory? What's the point of "reviewing" something when you already "believe in" the opposition?

[added quote below]

 _Not chintzy or cheap like the Motorola Droid or most cell phones. It feels solid and very much like the iPhone._

Ok, well, if "like the iPhone" == good to you, then maybe you should just ignore other devices?

<comment><USER9> Baffling. So, if you like one thing, you can't express your opinions about some similar thing? Isn't that specifically why we even have disclosure statements like the one he made?

If you like, take his review as "this is how far the Nexus One diverges from my favorite industrial design philosophy, as embodied by Apple".

<comment><USER8> Well, a more accurate title given the tone of the post would be, as another commenter on this thread has written:

"The iPhone is the best thing in the universe, and anything on the Nexus One that seems to be better actually isn't and anyone who thinks so is clearly mistaken"

If you think that's a post worth reading, we have very different preferences in reading material, that's all. The criticisms I directed at it were made given the premise that I expected to read a post about what the title said it was about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I give points for the excellent commentary on the search buttons and attention to detail in the UI. But I take them all back with the Apple apologetics concerning the things that the Nexus One does better than the iPhone.

It should have just read, "In conclusion, the iPhone is the best thing in the universe, and anything on the Nexus One that seems to be better _actually_ isn't and anyone who thinks so is clearly mistaken."

</comment><comment><USER10> One of the things I greatly dislike about the search button is sometimes it has a function inside an application, sometimes it's just a web search. So I have to use trial & error to figure out which apps actually use it and which ones are just going to send me off to an unwanted Google web search.

</comment><comment><USER11> Was I the only one expecting more of a comparison between Android and iPhone SDKs?

The article could be better described as a tech-savvy user opinion rather than a developer opinion.

</comment><comment><USER12> The one hardware button he thinks is worth having is the one that seems to me least useful (well, except search). "Home" would be a perfectly good option to have in the menu, or a function of holding down the "Back" button. "Back", on the other hand, is something I could hardly live without, and "Menu" is at least understandable.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is very similar with my experience with the N1. The screen sensitivity problems and outdoor screen visibility were too great of issues to ignore and I returned the phone for refund.

One additional comment about the scroll ball and hardware buttons is that the UX is poor when used in landscape mode and now you have to move your finger in a different position to perform the same task.

</comment><comment><USER14> He's right about one thing: Multitasking on Android is something of a disaster from a UX perspective. There's no intuitive and obvious way to see what's running, and 'quitting' an application is often inconsistent and non-obvious. Most people just push 'home', and treat it just like an iPhone. Of course, performance and battery suffer.

This leads to weird contortions in user behavior. For example, my father-in- law's favorite application on his Droid is 'Advanced Task Killer'. From my perspective, the fact that the application even exists is horrifying. A phone should not require sysadmin tools.

In stark contrast, look at how WebOS handles multitasking. You know exactly what's running at any given point, because you have a visible card up. To close an application, flick the card up and off the screen. It's intuitive and obvious, even to non-technical people. It's really an amazing design.

My suspicion is that Apple will never allow multitasking on the iPhone unless they can make it Palm-like in it's simplicity. However, that would probably require a major UI refactor, which is not going to happen any time soon.

EDIT: This contains some bad info. See thread below.

<comment><USER2> Actually, he's completely _wrong_ about multitasking on Android, and BTW, your father-in-law is (IMHO) wasting his time with "Advanced Task Killer". That app is in general a waste of time. Refer to my post elsewhere is this thread for more detail, but the short version is that apps _don't_ need to be specifically killed on Android. Apps do not normally run in the background at all, they are stopped as soon as they're not user visible anymore. Apps that _do_ wish to do things in the background, like play music, can register a service process, which is kind of like a background worker thread. The service process is the only thing that actually runs in the background.

<comment><USER14> I'm happy to be corrected on this particular point. From appearances, it looked like they'd taken the Windows Mobile model and made it even worse. Good to hear that it's actually sensible.

Apologies for spreading bad info.

<comment><USER2> No need to apologize. We're all friends here right? Besides, the odds are good you'll get to return the "favor" one of these days. :-)

BTW... The mis-information about how Android background apps work is pretty widespread, so I wouldn't feel bad about having it incorrect. Heck, that's what I believed the situation was until I got an Android phone. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Can anyone speak to the misalignment of the hardware buttons activation area? I'm seriously considering a Nexus One since my AT&T contract ran out and I could see that being a serious nit to pick (slowness and the misclicks associated with it being my major issue on my iPhone 3G right now).

<comment><USER16> Yes, you have to click slightly at the top of the buttons. It's like that on the Eris too, the only other Android phone I've owned, so it may be an HTC thing.

And the touchscreen really is less sensitive. Scrolling a web page is jerky, whereas on the iPhone it really does feel like you're dragging around a piece of paper with your finger.

And not having scroll bounce on the menus _will_ drive you nuts. It really does seem like the phone froze.

Something he didn't mention is that the new apps launcher blows hard. They tried to go with some pointless 3D effect where the rows snap into place. All it does though, is make sure that right after you scroll, your apps move just a little bit, making tapping the right one a game you'd rather not have to play every damn time.

However, all that said, widgets and multitasking are huge. I got rid of my Nexus One to go back to my iPhone, but only because I'm stuck with AT&T and couldn't handle edge for everything. Every day I miss the snappiness of switching between apps that don't close and regret having to open the calendar app all the time to check what's coming up because I can't make it a widget.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> So if the screen resolution is not such a big deal, how does the HD video from youtube on the iPhone compare to the HD video resolution on the android devices?</comment>


Dolphins apparently getting 'high' with the help of toxic puffer fish (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2530664/High-not-dry-Dolphins-filmed-chewing-toxic-puffer-fish-enjoy-narcotic-like-effects.html <comment><USER2> One thing to note here - the Daily Mail has been banned from Wikipedia due to its "reputation for poor fact checking and sensationalism." [0] Seems there may be a study behind the headline at least, but be aware that it's a _terrible_ newspaper.

[0] [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/feb/08/wikipedia...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/feb/08/wikipedia- bans-daily-mail-as-unreliable-source-for-website)

</comment><comment><USER3> I just followed that link on a Chromebook without any adblocker installed. I count 4 huge ads that take up about 75% of the screen real estate. The two sidebar ads regenerate new ads probably as fast as newbies respawn in a first- person shooter.

Thanks to that _and an auto-playing video_ , CPU usage is up so high I can't even scroll in the small area that remains for the content. It's nearly impossible to successfully read the content for the jank and the distraction from ad respawns on that page. This is a computer which can still play video smoothly on Youtube. (Ignoring for the moment the problem of time-stealing ads on Youtube.)

<comment><USER4> It's better to flag the article.

</comment></comment><comment> rv-de > But it seems they share some worrying vices as well.

Is this meant serious or ironical. I hope the latter I fear it's the former.

> At one point the dolphins are seen floating just underneath the water's > surface, apparently mesmerised by their own reflections.

An animal that seeks intentionally a consciousness-expanding experience must be conscious on a higher level. Evolutionarily such behavior mostly handicaps the ability to defend - so it must be addressing a psychological desire.

<comment><USER5> That doesn't necessarily follow: it may occur as a result of adaptation for another, more beneficial behavior.

<comment><USER6> Like in humans?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I spammed my friends when I tried to copy & paste title from the web page. It seems when I copy I actually get some extra spammy content to my clipboard. In my opinion this is also toxic.

<comment><USER8> ...did you not read the contents of your pasted message before hitting send?

I agree this is annoying but I don't think it quite rises to the level of "toxic".

<comment><USER9> If you use a CLI IM application, like an IRC client, you're toasted. I've been bit by this. The real question is why are websites allowed to manipulate what I copy into my clipboard. Imagine if, instead of adding some spam to the text, they slightly changed what the text says.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Discover Magazine has its doubts:

[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/science- sushi/2013/12/30/s...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/science- sushi/2013/12/30/stoned-dolphins-give-puff-puff-pass-whole-new-meaning/)

Tetrodotoxin (TTX) doesn't make sense as a narcotic:

> Tetrodotoxin simply doesn't make sense as a drug (and let's be honest—if it > did, humans would be snorting it off bathroom counters already). In very, > very, very low doses, tetrodotoxin causes numbness, tingling, and the slight > lightheadedness that fugu, the Japanese preparation of raw pufferfish flesh, > is known for. I guess it's possible to see how one might relate these mild > effects to the "high" feeling that comes from THC, the main ingredient in > marijuana*, but it's a stretch to say the least. Every illicit drug has one > thing in common: they alter minds. It's right there in the definition of > narcotic. Tetrodotoxin, however, doesn't cross the blood-brain barrier; it > doesn't change perception or enhance sensation. People get poisoned with TTX > every year, and there's a reason you don't hear anyone describing the > experience as a 'high': that's not how tetrodotoxin works.

<comment><USER11> It's a good thing people are looking at it from a pharmacological perspective.

However:

 _> In very, very, very low doses, tetrodotoxin causes numbness, tingling, and the slight lightheadedness that fugu, the Japanese preparation of raw pufferfish flesh, is known for._

 _> Tetrodotoxin, however, doesn't cross the blood-brain barrier; it doesn't change perception or enhance sensation_

How is "numbness and light headedness" not "changing perception"?

And how do we know that dolphins do not experience the "numbness and light headedness" that humans do as a pleasant/euphoric/etc sensation?

Seems a little light of a rebuttal.

The article is also hilarious for qualifying purported dolphin use as "illicit drug use". I knew about bird law, but not dolphin law :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Gah.. they're citing the daily news which has a lot of tabloid quality articles.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a write up of a BBC One documentary:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolphins_- _Spy_in_the_Pod](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolphins_-_Spy_in_the_Pod)

<comment><USER13> ...which has been on Netflix for a few years.

Ah... needs a "[2013]" in the title.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> [ _checks the score of other mammals_ ]

LaPorte man arrested, accused of licking toad in restaurant parking lot [https://www.wndu.com/home/headlines/LaPorte-man-arrested- acc...](https://www.wndu.com/home/headlines/LaPorte-man-arrested-accused-of- licking-toad-in-restaurant-parking-lot-309089671.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> _> But it seems [dolphins] share some worrying vices as well._

It's interesting how the author construes it as a "vice" by the second paragraph. That's a very Anglo-Saxon take on it (i.e. I doubt a Japanese or Brazilian journalist would have interpreted it so harshly from the get go).

In fact, getting inebriated seems pretty common in the animal kingdom, making it not much more of a vice than mating, napping, or eating tasty food:

[http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140528-do-animals-take- dru...](http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140528-do-animals-take-drugs)

I'd even argue that seeking to alter your state of mind comes with the territory of well, having a mind. Why else would people like roller coasters, movies, video games, coffee, etc. so much?

<comment><USER15> Exactly. They're kindred spirits, our porpoise-ful friends. First sex, then drugs, now we just need rock&roll.

<comment><USER16> I wonder if anyone has ever studied their reaction to human musical compositions? All I can find are articles concerned about the impact of sonar and ship noise, but as a purely intellectual pursuit would they enjoy Motzart? Drum and Bass? God help us... Ke$ha?!

<comment><USER17> Since dolphins hear so differently than humans, we'd probably have to transcribe (translate?) it to a version more suitable for them. Also with the much wider hearing range they are more sensitive to sounds and, I'm assuming, would not enjoy our narrower range of music. It would be very fascinating to study.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> are they capable of metabolising the toxin ?

<comment><USER16> Sort of, and humans sort of can too. The only metabolite of TTX I'm aware of is just the oxidized form. Primarily though it's excreted "whole" through urine. It actually doesn't matter if dolphins can metabolize it any better than humans if they're getting a low dose per kg. Humans eat puffer fish for the same reason, the residual toxin in the flesh gets you a little high. As long as it's a non-lethal dose, you excrete it (primarily in urine).

It's also a potent analgesic at low doses, so maybe they do it primarily for the buzz, or to relieve aches and pains.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Probably written by GP2.

</comment><comment><USER20> So that's why Dolphin crashes under OpenBSD by not having enough free RAM?

</comment><comment><USER21> [2013] (article is from 30 Dec 2013)

<comment><USER22> Thanks! We've also updated the link from [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/dolphins-seem- to-u...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/dolphins-seem-to-use-toxic- pufferfish-to-get-high-180948219/), which points to this.

<comment><USER23> Neither are good sources. The Smithsonian Mag article is blogspam and Daily Mail is a tabloid.

<comment><USER22> We'll gladly update the link if someone can suggest a better one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I made a meme for this:

[https://memegenerator.net/instance/84125558/dolphin-dan- litt...](https://memegenerator.net/instance/84125558/dolphin-dan-littering- and-littering-and-smokin-tha-puffer)</comment>


Ask HN: Domain hacking - <AUTHOR>

For those that don't know, "domain hacking" is using a TLD to spell out your domain like del.icio.us or blo.gs.
I'm considering using one for my next startup and would like to get some feedback on your experiences.  My biggest concern is that a lot of traffic will be lost due to typing in the equivalent .com domain.
I've considered the pros and cons, which I'll list below, but I'd like to hear your real experiences in order learn about benefits or repercussions that might not be obvious.
Pros:

  Very short domains
  Availability/Price
  Trendy
 Cons:

  Lost traffic/emails to the .com
  Brand dilution
  Not easy to verbally tell someone the domain
  Trendy
  Slightly risky using "foreign" TLDs.
 <comment><USER2> I actually just released <http://sit4.us> as a tool for coordinating your existing network of babysitters. I kind of figure that having to deal with lost traffic is like having to deal with scaling, it's a problem I wouldn't mind having because it means that people are at least trying to find my site. On the other hand, this is really just a little tool I built because I wanted to use something like it and I couldn't find any existing tools out there. If I was really banking on it becoming a business than maybe I would have covered my bases a little better with the domain name.

<comment><USER3> megamark16 - can I just OT and commend you for your sit4.us idea. I think it's really good, just the right depth without being too far in. If you add some sparkle on that (style it I mean) I can see you get lots of interest.

<comment><USER2> Thank you very much for the feedback. I'm a major minimalist, so my work kind of reflects that, but I would like to spice things up just a little down the road. Thanks for checking it out!

Mark

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The answer depends entirely on what kind of startup you're trying to make and who your audience is. If you want businesspeople and grandparents, having a snappy dot-com is crucial. If they're more tech-savvy, what they remember to punch into Google is a lot more important than the URL. From memory, I believe the domain for Scriptaculous is scripta.culo.us, but I would _never_ type that into an address bar blindly.

<comment><USER3> tl;dr: Your use cases speak into it too.

For example, in FF once the awesomebar has your address then with sufficient use most addresses are only 2 or 3 characters away (6 entries shown gives a space of > 100,000 entries in 3 chars, way more if you include unicode addresses!). So if it's something I'm going to use often at home then I'd look at the opposition for a geek news site and choose a unique letter if possible (not s:slashdot, not d:digg, not h:hackernews, etc.). Of course if it's an Apple audience you don't need to worry about this particular effect but you get the idea. Um, where was I. Yeah, if you want me to hit your link when I'm on the road or using others computers as opposed to simply when I'm home, or if I need to _tell_ the address to n00bs not just email/tweet it then don't go for the geeky "domain hack".

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If it's not too late, adding "(like del.icio.us)" to the title would make it obvious that this is not a post about DNS security.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, can't edit it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think it's a novelty, however, I would not use a domain hack for a business unless I knew I could plug the leaks in traffic. For example, del.icio.us was a domain hack but they ended up buying delicious.com.

The average Hacker News reader knows domain hacks (I think?) but their parents probably do not and will just add .com at the end.

</comment><comment><USER7> I always had a hard time remembering the del.icio.us domain. I knew it was a .us tld but couldn't remember if it was delicio.us or de.licio.us etc.

</comment><comment><USER8> I haven't done what you are talking about. I did have the domain califmichele.com at one time. I was going by "Michele in California" online at the time and my email was califmichele (@ something). I wanted the domain name "michelesworld" but it wasn't available. It was a personal site of just stuff I was interested in, with no particular focus.

Trying to tell people the domain name verbally was a huge problem. My name is spelled with one L and many people automatically spell it with two. They also tended to think I meant Kalif or Caliph rather than short-hand for California. (As an aside: This was making me increasingly concerned that the site would attract the wrong kind of attention for the wrong reasons.)

I eventually left California and broke the site up into several sites, each with a specific topic focus. When I did so, I worked hard to find natural language domains that are easily conveyed verbally without having to spell them or add verbal explanations/provisos.</comment>


Harvard, 4 Other Schools, Make Up Most MBAs at PE & VC Firms - <AUTHOR> http://blog.pitchbook.com/harvard-4-other-schools-make-up-most-mbas-at-pe-vc-firms/

<comment><USER2> PE/VC firms are arms of the finance industry, and largely recruit from analyst classes at traditional investment banks (either directly, or after an MBA). The PE/VC firms are typically much smaller than investment banks, and are happy to let them handle basic training. The top 5-7 business schools sit in- between the two.

Why so few schools? Not because anyone thinks you can't get a top financial education at U of M, but because more aren't needed. Business schools don't offer substantial merit aid, so if you don't go to one of the top 5-7, it's either because you couldn't get in, because you didn't do enough research to know where financial firms hire from, or because you're geographically limited to a location outside one of the major financial centers (New York, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco). All of those characteristics are good filters for PE/VC firms.

<comment><USER3> I would just add that there is much more supply of folks interested in PE/VC than jobs. The firms have to cut the list somehow. Even limiting to the top 5 or 7 schools leaves them with way too many applicants. The other thing going on is people from the top 5-7 programs also get the right work experience immediately post-MBA, which helps the cause. Hiring in the industry is relationship driven, so people hire their friends....

The same thing happens in software, though perhaps to a lesser extent. Facebook and Google hire an awful lot out of Stanford, Berkeley and MIT, especially when they're small. Once their needs grow, they expand the schools they recruit from. PE and VC firms never grow large enough to require such an influx of hires.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Simple calculator, try urlcalc.com/1+2 - <AUTHOR> http://urlcalc.com/1+2

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi hackers. This is my first app. I made it to scratch an itch I had: Be able to make a calculation quickly and share the formula and the results (copy/pasting the link). In the next iteration I think I will add some share buttons.

As I said, this is my first app. Please please please give me feedback! Good or bad, everything helps!

Thank you

</comment><comment><USER2> Nice project, but could you tell me why I should use this over let's say Wolfram Alpha?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, thanks for the feedback. I am a fan of Wolfram Alpha. It is just faster, as it performs the calculations client side. I have been using a uglier version of urlcalc for a while, it just sits as a tab in my browser ready to be used for simple calculations.</comment></comment>


Adobe tries to strong-arm me into keeping Creative Cloud - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/roddds/a1f42bae598028ac7809 <comment><USER2> How is this "strong-arming"? If we keep devaluing the meaning of words, we won't have any left when something serious actually happens.

The rep ran through a couple of retention scripts, and then got mixed up because OP called on the last billing day. Then he promptly canceled the service without any charges, which is exactly what OP was looking for. (And no, it's probably not because of the threat to contact his supervisor; customers overestimate how scary that is.)

There is literally nothing to complain about here, except maybe OP felt a little bit annoyed. I'm all for calling companies on their BS, but this feels just a bit too trigger-happy to me.

<comment><USER3> > How is this "strong-arming"? If we keep devaluing the meaning of words, we > won't have any left when something serious actually happens.

In the age of click bait headlines, don't expect anything to change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would not call this "strong arming" just a sales consultant trained to try and keep a customer from leaving. This not something unique to Adobe, it happens when you try cancelling a phone plan, when you try switching utility providers and plenty of other things. The fact the customer was available to resolve the situation without subsequent follow-ups to me indicates that Adobe did nothing out of the ordinary here.

And with all due respect, the customer decided to end their plan on the same day the billing period renews which clearly confused the sales consultant and made it harder to cancel the plan. Why leave it to the last minute when you could have done it the day before, week before anytime prior to the renewal date? I am an Adobe Creative Cloud customer and even I am aware of how their billing works.

<comment><USER5> > I am an Adobe Creative Cloud customer and even I am aware of how their > billing works.

To my knowledge, this is exactly the same as to how any subscription works. They always auto-renew, although some let you opt out. Heck, it's part of the definition of the word "subscribe".

Without timestamps there's no way to be certain, but this entire conversation could have taken place over less than 10 minutes and it's highly unlikely it took much effort to type "no thanks, please cancel" a few times into a text box.

Considering that it didn't take much effort to cancel it, why is customer service dissuading someone to cancel a subscription worthy of discussion?

<comment> shawn-furyan High pressure sales techniques are awful, and they exist because they work. I don't think having to say "no" 50 times is reasonable, and it makes you feel like an asshole just for not being an easy mark that can be pressured into buying something s/he doesn't want. I've learned to close the door in the face of over-aggressive solicitors, but I know people who have trouble with it, because it's objectively rude to do something like that. The only reason I find it acceptable is that these sales techniques are intentionally designed to exploit people's hesitancy at being rude to other human beings.

So yes, it's common practice. That doesn't mean it's not a practice that is loathsome and bad for society.

Note: I think strong arm is a completely reasonable description of this. The sales person offered multiple carrots, and then upon being rebuffed, brought out the stick (keep in mind that the context is someone cancelling on the last day of their subscription):

>Chaitra: Devon, you have purchased a subscription with annual commitment, since you wish to cancel the subscription before the end of one year period, you will be billed 50% of your monthly rate for the remaining months in your annual commitment as early termination fee.

>

>Chaitra: If you pay early termination fee, you will not be able to use the product, however If you continue with the subscription with 2 month free subscription you will be able to use the subscription and also get two months free subscription. In this case, I would suggest you to take an advantage of two months free subscription.

This wasn't a good faith misunderstanding, this was a situational script aimed at maximizing retention in the particular context. This is a lever that is being intentionally applied to cow people into buying an extra year of a service they don't want.

<comment><USER6> I agree that the early termination fee is a dishonest ripoff. That said, it's a poor culture if people feel like assholes for having to refuse a few counter-offers (and no, I don't think it's a core human trait, as haggling is common around the world). Negotiation is an important skill to have as an adult, and this is the 101 level.

One thing I do find disagreeable (though not to the point of considering it strong-arming) is the use of the client's first name. "Hi Devon"? Since when has "Mr. Campbell" stopped being the norm?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is why I refuse to buy software-as-a-service. If I run software on my own hardware, I want to own it. When Adobe introduced recurrent billing, I decided to switch.

Fortunately a bunch of affordable, non-subscription competitors to Photoshop and Illustrator have sprung up in the recent years.

For example, Affinity Designer is a great replacement for Illustrator, and its cheaper than the academic Illustrator license I got years ago.

Maybe if I was a full time designer, I could justify renting Adobes tools, but for an occasional user they are way too expensive.

<comment><USER8> I wonder if there's any (paid or unpaid) alternatives to Lightroom (and Apple Photos).

<comment><USER9> There are numerous, with upsides and downsides:

\- Capture One Pro (Paid): This is the most complete alternative in my opinion. It can handle ingestion, taxonomy and editing. Ingestion and taxonomy are adequate but not fantastic. Editing is superior to Lightroom in my opinion. It's a little more complicated than Lightroom but I usually produce better results in a shorter amount of time. Also the processing quality in Capture One Pro is pretty consistently better than Lightroom in my experience.

\- Photo Mechanic (Paid): This is solely for ingestion and to a limited degree, taxonomy. It has zero functionality for editing but plenty for moving photos around, copying them from places and to places etc. I often see it recommended by professionals as the fastest way to pull in and pick photos from a shoot.

\- DxO Optics Pro (Paid): Zero taxonomy or ingestion capability. This is solely an editing tool. Its main target is superior optical correction and processing quality. I find it delivers on both of these but I also find its "magic" features like "smart lighting" to get in the way. Capture One Pro usually produces better results for me. One thing DxO does to fantastically though is noise reduction. Whatever PRIME is, it does a damn good job. On the other hand, DxO seems to have issues with my Sony A7II where the colour is consistently wrong (colours always have a red offset). I haven't noticed this with other cameras though.

\- Polarr (Paid, with a free online version): Solely for editing. It's very much like Snapseed (an Android/iOS app) on the desktop. Interestingly, their desktop app appears to be a repackaged version of their web app ([https://www.polarr.co/](https://www.polarr.co/)). I find it to be very high quality and very easy to use but I really prefer having my editor integrated with my library and keep coming back to Capture One Pro. If you're editing things separately, I think Polarr is a fantastic choice. I'd actually rate it higher than DxO Optics Pro (based on the output I've had from it).

\- Darktable (FOSS): Does ingestion, taxonomy and editing but doesn't really any of them well. The UI is confusing and (at least to me) unappealing, the editing tools are limited and the taxonomy, while more present, is too complicated to figure out. I've tried to like Darktable but I just can't.

\- RawTherapee (FOSS): Zero taxonomy but all the knobs and sliders you'd want when it comes to editing. They've put _a lot_ of effort into their image processing and it's high quality and extremely customisable. You can fiddle with demosaicing algorithms and the like all you want. Hell, you can even implement one yourself with little effort (I wrote one that's currently sitting in a PR somewhere). Same issue with this that I had with Polarr though, I like having my library and my photos integrated.

\- Nik Collection (Paid): A product that was acquired by Google and still appears to be developed. They have a bunch of individual tools tailored to particular kinds of output that seem to produce high quality results but should really be integrated into a single package. No taxonomy or ingestion, pure editing.

<comment><USER8> Excellent. Many thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10>
      strong-arm:
      . using or characterized by force or violence.

This is clearly a sales representative trying to retain a customer.

      Since today is the billing date, the monthly billing
      has already been started and it is not possible to stop it.

That sounds fair, albeit far from ideal. I mean, the last\first day of a billing period is always a point of contention between the customer and the provider — it was good of Adobe to relinquish the contract instead of persisting. Then again, would've been bad-will to do so anyway.

<comment><USER11> Wouldn't Adobe be better off if this story wasen't on Hacker News?

First rule of Adobe in 2016; Don't piss of anyone who falls for this pay monthly for our software?

Yea, I know it was the first day of the new billing cycle, but at this point in the game; give the customer a day of your software. Adobe is not on the position to lose anymore customers. On Tuesday, in Novato this incident will be brought up in office meeting.

I don't need Adobe like I did ten years ago. My last purchase was Lightroom 1.0, and when they wanted more money for every minor improvement--I said hello IPhoto.

<comment><USER8> and then iPhoto turned into Apple Photos and lost a few features - does it still work for you?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I canceled Creative Cloud recently as well after losing my job. Yes, the customer service agent did make a bunch of offers to try to keep me. I assume they are required to do that by management, so I don't really hold it against them.

They were pretty polite the whole time, though, and when it became clear I didn't have any valid card to pay with, as is needed on overdue accounts before any changes, they actually canceled me with no fee even though I wasn't completely done with my subscription yet, after management approval.

So, yeah, it sucks getting bugged when you end your subscription and just want it ended. But sometimes they come through for you too. I was just expecting another bill to pay in the end, but hopefully less than keeping my subscription, but ended up being free. Will definitely buy Adobe again in the future.

</comment><comment><USER13> > _Me: Can you connect me with your supervisor?_

> ...

> _Chaitra: I am canceling it now_

So, "Can you connect me with your supervisor?" are the magic words?

<comment><USER14> They always are.

<comment><USER15> On a rather remotely related note, when dealing with automated call routing systems (the jungle that is automatic voice recognition menus), I've found that resorting to swearing _will_ connect me with an operator.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> My wife had a similar issue last week. She just notice the 600 CAD charge on her credit card. She is on maternity leave and, therefore, she is not using the software. She had no warning prior to the automatic renewing date and no invoice after the charge. She called to cancel as soon as she noticed and they decline saying that the 14-day grace period had passed. They "can" only reimburse 50% of the yearly subscription. I know some will say that it is her fault for not having marked the calendar or something, but I disagree. I think that this unfair practices. Furthermore, I'm 95% sure that this kind of behavior is illegal in Quebec. We are still waiting for an email from the "supervisor" on that issue. To be continued..

<comment><USER17> Interesting. I thought you could reverse with the credit card company, _then_ deal with the supplier. Do credit cards work differently in Canada?

<comment><USER16> I am not familiar with the conditions needed to withhold payments although it is defensively possible in Canada as well. I will keep that in mind, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So it sounds like you can lower your subscription cost from $50 to $30 per month just by asking to cancel. Has anyone done this?

</comment><comment><USER19> I wouldn't consider that so much strong arming but someone trying to retain a customer using either uninformed or false information.

</comment><comment><USER20> I work in the vfx/animation industry and I have to say that I find Adobe's Creative Cloud billing is horrible for studios. The idea that you have to commit to a year is terrible for post-production companies because they scale up and down wildly. Need 10 artists for one week? Sorry, you'll need to commit to renting 10 licenses of Creative Cloud for a year! Other software that is even more expensive than Adobe's Creative Suite (like Autodesk Maya) have also moved to a subscription model, but Autodesk allows you to rent Maya by the month, if you want. Adobe is getting the best of both worlds here by not allowing you to own their software and at the same time not giving you flexible rental options. Linux support at least for After Effects would be nice as well, if you're reading this Adobe!

</comment><comment><USER21> Maybe it's just because the custrep was confused and maybe English isn't the custrep's first language. I mean personally that convo was kinda confusing. But nothing in the conversation looks deceptive, just another long, annoying, and boring process of canceling something.

</comment><comment><USER22> Went through a similar process when I cancelled by Creative Cloud. I got an email that my credit card had expired, so I put in the details for the new credit card. I hadn't even realized I was still paying for Adobe CC, so I then called to cancel the service. Support agent went through this same script, I was forced to pay the absurd termination fee and thought that was the end of it.

I got an email the next day thanking me for updating my Credit Card information and that my Adobe Creative Cloud subscription had been renewed because the charge on the new credit card info went through. I had to call Adobe yet again and jump through through many, many hoops but eventually got it taken care of.

What a terrible experience, I'm going Sketch all the way from here on out.

</comment><comment><USER23> So they tried to keep a customer? It's not like they refused to do it outright. They just tried to convince him to stay. Cool.

Y'all remember trying to cancel those AOL trials back in the day? Now _that_ was a nightmare.

</comment><comment><USER24> Looks like they were trying to trick him into paying 50% for this year? I'm sure a lot of people would go "oh damn, better paying full price 'cos I'm not using it".

</comment><comment><USER25> That's ugly. I can see trying to entice the customer with discounts etc. to keep them going hoping they let it go on for longer, but the shenanigans about billing cycles, etc. is really not good. I'm guessing Adobe doesn't officially condone this behavior, but they should see to it that this behavior is swiftly defeated by policy so no one in customer retention does this and also continues to work for them.

<comment><USER26> > I'm guessing Adobe doesn't officially condone this behavior

Mate, it would be in the script. IT was clear the consultant was going through a checklist of offers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is one of the reasons Adobe's software gets pirated. Although I must admit 29.99 is not a bad deal why isn't that the price to start with?

</comment><comment><USER28> This isn't the most pleasurable experience to cancel, but frankly, some of the offers to stay might have been compelling.

This is a far cry from strong-arming.

</comment><comment><USER29> This sounds like Comcast tactics, if you ask me.

</comment><comment><USER30> After this post, everybody is going to negotiate Adobe down by threatening them to cancel the subscription :)

</comment><comment><USER31> Sigh, so to get the real price on CC you have to pretend you're cancelling? Same as with mobile phones?

<comment><USER26> You can use this to your advantage with a bit of upfront wokr. I have a bunch of stuff I have maneuvered to expire around the same month each year (stuff like insurance etc).

Each year, I pick a day just before expiry and do the call rounds and negotiate a better price. This is either by threatening to cancel, or insisting on being upgraded to new plans that only "new" customers are eligible for - there's always an angle.

Worst case, most things you pay annually for in your personal life are a commodity with low switching costs, so its even practical to actually swap things like energy (cuz they are just retailers) every year to keep getting the best deal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> You should just tell them you are moving to the platform that they don't support. When I canceled some services when I made my move to Linux, places didn't try hard to retain me. (Well, they can't if they don't have workable solutions available.)

</comment><comment><USER33> Turns out "May I please speak with your supervisor?" are the magic words to get out of an early termination fee from Adobe. If only it were that simple with Comcast...

Thanks for the tip OP!

</comment><comment><USER34> Developers on macs, you have lots of alternatives! Affinity Designer and Pixelmator, for vector and raster graphics. Apple Motion is still in the app store for compositing.

</comment><comment><USER35> If you think this is bad. Make sure you never ever ever get SiriusXM even if it's just free with your new car.

They still call me almost weekly.

<comment><USER36> "Please take me off your list" seems to work on legitimate businesses.

Have you tried asking them to not call you again?

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Adobe sucks, stop using them for stuff.

</comment><comment><USER38> Well played, Adobe!

I learned some new moves today.

</comment><comment><USER39> I recently changed my credit card. That solved the issue with Adobe.

</comment><comment><USER40> Wow we've allowed these companies to implement horrific consumer practices, holding us hostage, making canceling incredibly inconvenient. We need new consumer protections, this goes beyond trying to keep a customer, it is borderline harassment.

<comment><USER26> Wow, how do you manage in the real world?

Copy, paste, "No interest". After a point, escalate. Boom problem solved.

<comment><USER40> You must be a corporate shill who thinks its a acceptable to hold someone's money hostage by extending past my "no interest", wasting my time and really trying to sell me crap I don't need or want. We should be able to cancel as easy as we sign up. In the real world it is never as easy as "no interest" with many of these companies, look at all the stories of people trying to cancel their cable packages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> does the customer service rep get some negative points if an account is cancelled by them ?

<comment><USER42> Well, if you work in the retention department, how else would your performance be measured except by the number of customers you retain? :-)</comment></comment>


F.D.A. Panel Recommends Approval for Gene-Altering Leukemia Treatment - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/12/health/fda-novartis-leukemia-gene-medicine.html <comment><USER2> this is revolutionary. they have passed the final clinical trial stage of I understand correctly. How does this makes the trial and approval process for other types of gene alteration therapies easier, apart from the president it has set?</comment>


Show hn : DIY - sit | stand | away - laptop workstation - <AUTHOR> https://sourceforge.net/p/frankenstand/wiki/frankenstand/ cost ~$100, consists of 2x4's, shelving standards, hinges, thick wire, clamps, high tolerance for poor skills! <comment><USER2> That is a serious frankenstand,

Once I settle into a more permanent location, I'm going to get two height adjustable stools, the air pressure cyclinder type, and put a desk on that with a bar between the pressure switch so they both go up and down at the same time.

That seems much less complicated than this one.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Productivity."

<comment><AUTHOR> do you mean i don't need to stand, or that there is a cheaper faster way to to do this?</comment></comment>


Copycat – An extension to test web apps without writing a line of code - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/omergulen/copycat <comment><USER2> I expected a ton of comments regarding record/replay automation being worse than programmatic, but--speaking from one of my past hats as UI Automation lead--this kind of tool can be really useful. It's super-quick to get something going that works _today_. Just don't expect the tests to live a long time.

That makes it really great for popping up some end-to-end "scaffolding" tests during incubation or primary development that you delete or reimplement later with "real" programmatic tests for stabilizing ongoing or incremental development. You don't really want to design the longer-lasting tests until UI flows have gelled, but this sort of quick-and-dirty you can do anytime.

There was also a really intriguing talk a number of GTACs ago that asserted that often the cost of just having to scrap and re-record a replay-based test when it breaks is lower than maintaining an equivalent programmatic one.

I'm not sure I believe that will frequently be true with proper UI automation design (page objects or some other kind of UI map, driving development of test hooks, etc). But I do suspect there's truth there vs. improper UI automation design.

If UI Auto isn't anyone's field on the team or a company doesn't want to sink significant resources into it, it's probably more likely you get the improper than proper designs by scripting, then they turn into maintenance sinkholes over time. At that point maybe record/replay is actually better.

<comment><AUTHOR> Firstly, thanks for your feedback. I really got your point.

Like every field in tech, using this tool has some trade-offs, like you said tests may not be permanent and require hand-written tests. Yet, creating them is easier when you compare with writing tests with coding/hand. Also, this tool can be used as a helper. For instance, getting unique selectors, or creating a test with this tool and then modifying it by hand could be really useful, too.

As a conclusion, according to my developing this kind of tools can really improve and ease the test phase, and can encourage developers to create more tests.

<comment><USER2> Hopefully it was plain my comment is highly favorable to your tool!

Record/replay gets a bad rap, basically, but for anything short-lived it's often the superior choice.</comment></comment></comment>


The New Stock Market: Sense and Nonsense - <AUTHOR> https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2580002

<comment><USER2> This paper explains the exploitations of High Frequency Trading and it's effects on the stock markets of today. The authors are from Columbia Law School and Columbia Business School - The B-school being one of the top business schools for investing specialists (particularly value investing).

If you've read _Security Analysis_ or _Intelligent Investor_ by Benjamin Graham (also from Columbia), this shouldn't concern you. Even the conclusion from the paper is that "there is no emergency requiring immediate, poorly- considered action." The day-to-day micro trades of a HFT firm bear little consequence to the long-term performance of a security. What should concern you is Mr. Market[1]. Mispricing of securities (i.e. from a poor earnings report, sell from an instituitional index fund because it dropped from a large cap to a mid cap, etc.) and the inefficiencies of irrational trades create opportunities for investors, even for the individual investor.

In a bull market like our current one that is going over 6 years strong, it's hard to find that value (and even then, if you don't have time to learn investing, you're still best off holding a broad, low-cost, tax-efficient index funds in stocks and bonds), but it still exists. And it's not being exploited by HFT or Institutional pollution. You just have to know where to find it.

[1] [http://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/mr- market.asp](http://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/mr-market.asp)

<comment><USER3> Good post. I am currently writing my seminar paper on NLP (Latent Dirichlet Allocation) in regards to quarterly earnings reports and stock price :) good stuff.

Just remember this: "The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent."</comment></comment>


Big Data and Government Transparency - <AUTHOR> http://www.applieddatalabs.com/content/big-data-and-government-transparency

<comment><USER2> I have big hopes for large-scale data analysis to lend more transparency to government and sniff out corruption.</comment>


Why is the AWS pricing calculator so horrible? - <AUTHOR> https://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/index.html
<rant> It is embarrassingly bad. It looks like it was released in 1997 and hasn't been updated since. It is missing calculators for several AWS services. The UX is painful. I mean even the list of services in the left navigation panel is in some indiscernible order. You have to either manually look through it or Ctrl+F to find what you're looking for.
This is the thing that customers use BEFORE deciding to invest in your platform. Why not invest 1-2 development weeks and clean it up?
It's mind-boggling to me. I've heard some speculate that it's because AWS wants to obscure the true cost, but I lean towards Hanlon's razor.
By contrast, Azure's calculator is fucking amazing. Or at least it looks like it was designed this decade, functions for all of Azure's service offerings, and provides a way to find the service you're interested in quickly. What an engineering marvel.
I honestly can't believe Microsoft isn't using this directly when selling to businesses deciding between the platforms. Any reasonable layperson who knows nothing of either platform would look at these two tools and think that AWS's tooling is shit (they wouldn't be TOTALLY wrong, but still).
You have teams upon teams building the coolest shit on the planet across so many AWS products. That this piece of garbage is the first thing many potential customers see is a travesty. Get your shit together, AWS. </rant> <comment><USER2> For the same reason why Aws has no upper limit on how much you can spend in month.

Think about it.</comment>


Trump's CIA Director Wants to Return to a Pre-Snowden World - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/11/trumps-cia-director-wants-to-return-to-a-pre-snowden-world/508136/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> The headline makes it seem like there was radical change after Snowden. That's fake news. The major movements after Snowden were to quiet public dissent about the disclosures, make legal the former collections policies, and move the authorities under which the programs were authorized, and to restart the programs as soon as there was reduced public attention.

Rather, proposed CIA Director Pompeo wanting increased mass surveillance capability is part and parcel for all intelligence directors, who have consistently (pre- and post- Snowden) called for increased budgets, capabilities and use of mass surveillance to inform propaganda and other intelligence activities.

<comment><USER3> Pompeo demanded death sentence to Snowden.

<comment><USER2> Yup! Washington absolutely hates Snowden, and especially the fact that he appeals to the majority of people - that in large part some even consider him a hero.

Pompeo is not unusual (perhaps unfortunately) in that regard.

<comment><USER4> > fact that he appeals to the majority of people

citation needed.

<comment><USER5> Snowden was leading the public polls for Times Magazin man of the year 2013. They had to put the new pope before him.

And now Assange is leading the public polls for 2016. They will put Trump before him.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It would be newsworthy if he didn't support expanding intelligence community powers...

Considering it was Hillary's core national security position, listed on her website, to do an "intelligence surge" and expanding the collection of data this is exactly what we could have expected from that administration as well.

It'd do the world a service if this was the narrative/reality that was being disseminated by the media rather than pretending it was possible the change would come from within the existing IC community or national security establishment. And as much as Trump has promoted 'draining the swamp' and talked of being anti-establishment, this never seemed at all about to include curtailing the current defense community.

</comment><comment><USER7> everybody should listen to this podcast of Malcolm Gladwell

[http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/02-saigon-1965](http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/02-saigon-1965)

<comment><USER7> all this data collection is useless and doesn't change anything. billions of dollars wasted.

<comment><USER8> as a former employee of the military industrial complex, i've always wondered how much of the funding went into these categories

       - simple graft
       - strategic investment in technology so that it might be available later if needed
       - strategic investment in people and industries so that they will be on tap later if needed
       - pointless waste
       - things of actual tactical value

seems like it might be a combination?

<comment><USER9> I would guess that pointless waste makes up the majority. Getting sufficiently competent people in the right positions and the right authority and removing organizational politics is really difficult.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> koga-ninja So much legal thinking that my brain is bursting. Government has one legal and one illegal avenue. They can use plausible denial and say that post-Snowden Everything is better.

The legal argument would be that everyone in the world Is spying on us, so we have to keep up with what foreign powers know about the U.S.To be sarcastic, the CIA does not want to buy its intelligence from Great Britain and Russia.</comment>


Two of China's Biggest Exchanges Stop Bitcoin Withdrawals - <AUTHOR> http://www.coindesk.com/two-chinas-biggest-exchanges-stop-bitcoin-withdrawals/ <comment><USER2> So basically, reading between the lines as a long term China resident and also the first employee of a major US cryptocurrency exchange, the Chinese government's 人民银行 ( _renminyinhang_ ; People's Bank) has met with domestic exchanges and requested immediate additional processes on withdrawls. These probably include government reporting and/or blacklist processing. Since US exchanges are already subject to AML/KYC processes, this merely brings Chinese exchanges roughly in line with their US counterparts. I can see nothing to imply any additional restrictions so far.

Zooming out a little, there is good reason to believe that the Chinese government is less afraid of Bitcoin than the US, because Chinese mobile payment penetration through wholly owned systems (mostly WeChat) is already near 100%. Domestic transactions are therefore pretty much safe from Bitcoin... which offers slower settlement with more hassle on a much smaller range of goods and services. Also, relative to the US, taxation is very low and easily calculable across all of China (regardless of product type, buyer and seller location) so the appeal of Bitcoin for shortcutting that overhead is not present, as it is within the US with its famously antiquated multi- state tax nexus conundrums.

<comment><USER3> removing Bitcoin withdrawal means basically stop to capital outflow which could be circumvented by using Bitcoin instead of RMB, this just put Bitcoin in line with RMB and make it more difficult to get money out of China

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It seems that contrary to discussion in yesterday's bitcoin thread [1], this is not 'unnecessary FUD.'

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=13601083&goto=item%3Fi...](https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=13601083&goto=item%3Fid%3D13600249%2313601083)

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure if this is good or bad.

On one hand, having the government lay down a set of rules for the exchanges to follow could be seen as a stabilizing force.

On the other hand, it also, in my mind, increases the likely hood that if the government becomes unhappy with the exchanges that all the exchanges will be shutdown at once, which isn't great for bitcoin.

Big question I'd like answered.....

If I hold bitcoin, I'd do some very serious looking into what happens if most of china's exchanges and miners suddenly are brought off line for a couple of weeks.

I'm mostly interested in the secondary effects.

\- ie will it lead to mass redemptions at other exchanges?

\- which exchanges are fully cashed up? and which are working with fractional cash reserves?

<comment><USER6> "If I hold bitcoin, I'd do some very serious looking into what happens if most of china's exchanges and miners suddenly are brought off line for a couple of weeks."

As much as I don't like bitcoin, there is one bit of robustness built-in. If China were to shut down all of the exchanges and farms, the balance of hashing power for the bitcoin network would essentially leave China and be split between the remaining connected exchanges. This would hurt yuan/bitcoin rates, but would probably stabilize rates for the rest of the world economies attempting to utilize it.

<comment><USER7> If China were to shut down bitcoing mining, my understanding is that the worst case scenario is much more dire. The network only adjusts the 'difficulty' relative to current network hash power every 2,016 blocks. Depending on the severity of the overall hash power reduction, new block discovery might slow down significantly. This would also delay a recalculation of the new difficulty accommodating the reduction in hash power.

The network could be severely throttled for weeks.

<comment><USER8> How can you actually shut down mining? Maybe they'd make it harder for miners to convert bitcoins to fiat, but that wouldn't stop the mining.

<comment><USER9> I doubt they actually care about the mining, but they certainly could shut it down if they wanted to. I mean, it's China. It's not exactly difficult to locate the miners either - look for the building using 400 MW that doesn't have any steel or widgets coming out.

But I think the parent's point was that, if the Chinese exchanges were shut down, that could have a big impact on price _if_ the hypothesis is true that most bitcoin activity is evading Chinese capital controls. If the hit was big enough it might push mining into unprofitability. This is all speculation, but not impossible.

<comment><USER10> First, yes, there are large farms of miners, but that's only some of the mining power. While these mining farms can be targeted and shut down, a significant amount of mining power is actually held in places that wouldn't be easy to locate. Those miners are going to keep mining as the owners have a strong economic incentive to do so, even if their mining pool in China gets shut down. They could, for example, just connect to a pool outside of China.

Also, what would happen to all the mining equipment should a mining farm get shut down? If the shut down is permanent, you can bet the people that own those machines would try to sell those miners as quickly as possible to people outside the country that can run them.

The economic incentives of bitcoin are such that there will be significant resistance to any government attempts at shutting down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Both exchanges are still allowing withdrawals in renminbi. If you have any funds there, get them out now.

The statements from both exchanges are almost identical, indicating the statements were dictated to them. The PBOC itself has a statement: [1] (Reuters summary [2])

"Following the early January on the "fire network" and "currency" two major Bitcoin currency trading platform to carry out inspection, the afternoon of February 8, the People's Bank business management department inspection team also engaged in other bitcoin currency transactions (List of companies: CHBTC, BtcTrade, HaoBTC, Yunbi, Yuanbao, BTC100, Jubi, BitBays and Dahonghuo.)

"The main person in charge of Bitcoin trading platform to inform the current Bitcoin trading platform problems, suggesting the trading platform may exist legal risks, policy risks and technical risks, understand the operation of the nine trading platform, and put forward specific requirements Shall not violate the state's laws and regulations on anti-money laundering, foreign exchange administration, payment and settlement, etc., and shall not violate the laws of the State on taxation and administration of industry and commerce advertisements, and so on, and may not engage in money laundering activities. If there is a Bitcoin trading platform in violation of the above requirements, (and) the circumstances are serious, the inspection team will be brought to the relevant departments to be closed down according to law."

The PBOC had previously, back in January, made some exchanges stop allowing users to trade on margin. That's what the first line is about.

[1] [http://beijing.pbc.gov.cn/beijing/132005/3248926/index.html](http://beijing.pbc.gov.cn/beijing/132005/3248926/index.html) [2] [http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-bitcoin- idUSKBN15O1C...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-bitcoin- idUSKBN15O1CR)

</comment><comment><USER12> at the prices of bitcoin right now, about every day I wonder if it's the day to cash out. While I see these changes are to stop money laundering, I wonder what percentage of the bitcoin worth is from it being used for money laundering.

<comment><USER13> And more importantly, how much have you benefited from it? I don't mean in the moral sense, but as in how much of Bitcoin's gains have come from a house of cards with no long-term foundation, and how much from "organic" growth as a currency?

<comment><USER14> I hate bitcoin because by design it burns resources, polluting the environment, and by design it enables extralegal monetary remittance subject to the laws of no one, no matter how "legitimate" those laws and no matter how well they reflect the will of the governed. The idea of government is fundamental: otherwise, might makes right. Bitcoin makes it impossible to ensure anything like that is happening.

I state all this as my "credentials" for making the statement that theoretically it is not a house of cards. Transactions could take 72 hours to clear. The blockchain could be 1.7 terabytes in size. And transactions could cost hundreds of dollars. None of this would stop bitgold from having a market capitalization in the hundreds of billions. (What could stop it is some technical bugs or mismanagement.)

It is emphatically not a house of cards. (But I don't like it.)

In what way is it a house of cards? It is a legitimately scarce resource being legitimately used exactly as designed.

<comment><USER15> About the environment, I have not crunched the numbers, but I suppose Bitcoin is actually greener than gold. Literal mining is messy.

<comment><USER16> Presumably bitcoin mining is generally done in places that have hydro-powered electricity (cheaper)?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The following is my exchange if anybodys looking for a new one. [http://bitcoinsexchange.itmustbetrue.com](http://bitcoinsexchange.itmustbetrue.com)

<comment><USER18> Has the same problem as Expert's Exchange had back in the day.

Idea: A registrar service that helps to identify and avoid awkward lexical ambiguities like this one. Or one which generates them!

<comment><USER19> Doesn't anyone look at the domains they click...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Keeping anything in China is inherently risky. Rights (ie property, monetary, human, civil, etc.) aren't consistently certain from one day to the next.

</comment><comment><USER21> the chinese are not fools. they have a good control over the btc network hash why would they give up this power?</comment>