How do IoTs from multiple brands interact? - <AUTHOR> An irrigation IoT system will require constant monitoring from soil moisture IoTs. These may be manufactured by different brands. How will these two interact? What will ensure that newer systems stay relevant when being used to communicate with older systems.
Similarly, self-driving vehicles and traffic control systems, or drones and air traffic management systems, or mobile devices and lights, etc. There are thousands of pairs we can create.
What is the current approach for interaction between different IoTs? <comment><USER2> They often communicate through a central hub. If the hub is not supported officially, some middleware (hardware or software) can be implemented to make both device communicate in the same language.

Say I have an AC with just a remote control, and Alexa. They both don't know how to communicate with each other

A hardware device allows to simulate the remote to communicate with the AC, it thus become a connected AC. But that hardware still doesn't know how to communicate via alexa, it just gives me a phone app and web hooks to control the AC.

A software middleware then creates this connection, connecting to the webhook, and registering itself as a device on Alexa.

Now, this is all very clumsy and tends to break easily. Make it harder to maintain when you have like 10 devices with three middleware etc. But that's the IOT tech debt we have to accept until everyone agrees on the same interface, which might never come.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah!! I was facing this very issue. The comment by @schappim discusses more about this topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is why we have standards such as:

      - Infrastructure (ex: 6LowPAN, IPv4/IPv6, RPL)
      - Identification (ex: EPC, uCode, IPv6, URIs)
      - Comms / Transport (ex: Wifi, Bluetooth, LPWAN)
      - Discovery (ex: Physical Web, mDNS, DNS-SD)
      - Data Protocols (ex: MQTT, CoAP, AMQP, Websocket, Node)
      - Device Management (ex: TR-069, OMA-DM)
      - Semantic (ex: JSON-LD, Web Thing Model)
      - Multi-layer Frameworks (ex: Alljoyn, IoTivity, Weave, Homekit)

<comment><AUTHOR> Looking into these things. Thanks for handing me a treasure chest</comment></comment>


Malfunction, not iPad, played greater role in Galaxy returns - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57487895-37/malfunction-not-ipad-played-greater-role-in-galaxy-returns/

<comment><USER2> Still to have 1 in 10 buyers swap it for an iPad is notable.</comment>


Will anyone pay for anything? - <AUTHOR> http://www.building43.com/videos/2009/07/24/will-anyone-pay-for-anything/ <comment><USER2> This video is an hour of Guy Kawasaki asking a panel of teenagers if they pay for any online products or services (no), if they ever click ads (only by mistake), and what they'd do if a free service started charging (switch to a free competitor).

<comment><USER3> When I was a teenager, and even when still in college, I had the same attitude, mainly because _I had no money_ and I had lots of time (relatively speaking).

Now that I'm older I have a job, disposable income, and responsibilities that take up my time. I also have an appreciation for the work it takes to create anything of quality. So I am happy to give these people money if they satisfy a need I have and they satisfy it well.

As a developer myself, I think it also has to do with the fact that I hope people have the same attitude towards my product and are willing to pay for my product if they find it useful to them.

A similar example is music - I used to pirate 100% of it, but now that I understand that there is a person and a struggle behind each track, I happily purchase songs from iTunes and Amazon just to support the artist and keep them motivated to do more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't get this obsession with "free" stuff. I'm willing to pay for tons of stuff - Kindle books, blogs via Kindle, magazines, laptops, movies (when it's easier than torrenting), music (when it's easier than torrenting). The only reason I usually don't pay for things is when it's a pain in the ass to and or I don't want them enough. And it doesn't take a lot to make me want something enough to pay $10 or $20 or $30 for it - I impulsively spend that much on Amazon (usually without regrets) on book recommendations from blog posts or lectures.

Another example - I'll pay $100 for a good MySQL editor - one that gives me a visualization of my database (both schema and data), generates a human- readable schema representation of various revisions that I can keep in version control, generates SQL diffs of those revisions (both backwards and forwards), applies those diffs, and keeps my data when reverting. It isn't rocket science - I could hack together a bunch of scripts day, and debug it to stability over a month, that time is worth a lot more than $100 to me.

Give me something which seems worth paying for, and make it easy for me to pay you, and I will. Not rocket science.

<comment><USER5> Younger people(like me) are highly sensitive to prices, because they don't have a high paying jobs like adults do.

<comment><USER4> I'm not that old - 23. I agree that I was much more sensitive to prices during college, before I had a full-time job, but that's pretty natural for someone who doesn't have any money :-P

I suppose that does add a clause to the motto "make something people* want"...

* but not broke college kids

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Contrary to most of the comments I've seen I thought the video was very interesting.

I'm quite surprised the kids were so willing to walk away from services like FB in which they have a lot of 'emotional capital' invested. I would have thought FB would have been 'stickier' given the photos, memories of shared events etc.

It would have been interesting to dig deeper and try and work out how much of this free web attitude is learned behavior. It's clear everyone expects to pay for internet access, telephony and cable. Is there not scope for 'teaching' people that a lot of the web just _cannot_ be free over time?</comment>


Malicious tweet gives journalist Kurt Eichenwald an epileptic seizure - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2016/12/twitter-used-to-attack-journalist-kurt-eichenwald-triggering-seizure/ <comment><USER2> The AssociatesMind article[0] on this is much better than the ArsTechnica link, and goes into detail in the legal dimension of this question. In this case, Kurt's situation likely constitutes assault; and this would also likely be considered assault even if you believe that Eichenwald lied about having a seizure, as I've seen some people question.

Here's the conclusion of that article:

"Just as someone can be held liable for a spring-gun despite being miles away, there is no reason to think that someone cannot be held liable for assault delivered electronically across great distances."

[0]: [http://associatesmind.com/2016/12/16/can-you-sue-someone- for...](http://associatesmind.com/2016/12/16/can-you-sue-someone-for-a-tweet- that-induces-epilepsy/)

<comment><USER3> I hadn't heard of a spring-gun before. Basically this is a booby trap with a gun that shoots unattended when triggers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow, this is equivalent to sending someone a mail "bomb" that doesn't explode but electrocutes them severely.

I hope the offender ends up with a reasonable length prison sentence. There's a clear line, and the intentional infliction of physical harm is well beyond it.

<comment><USER5> So to be clear, you want someone to be imprisoned because they sent a tweet.

<comment><USER3> Yes. This is akin to shouting fire in a crowded theatre [1] or phoning in a bomb threat. In the United States, freedom of speech is limited in certain cases where the harm caused by the speech outweighs the damage of limiting freedom.

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

<comment><USER6> Please stop using the "fire in a crowded theatre" phrase, it's not actually part of law in the US. [1] The standard for restricting speech in cases like this is if it poses a "clear and present danger". That's likely the case here, as a premeditated attempt to cause a seizure is a clear and present danger to epileptics. There's plenty of law to cite that doesn't depend on over-broad censorious decisions that got overturned later on.

[https://popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a- hackne...](https://popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-hackneyed- apologia-for-censorship-are-enough/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's impossible not to reference Snow Crash by Stephenson. I wonder how much "physical" damage can you deliver with an electronic message or image.

</comment><comment><USER8> Precedent for this is the attack on Epilepsy Foundation website:

[https://archive.wired.com/politics/security/news/2008/03/epi...](https://archive.wired.com/politics/security/news/2008/03/epilepsy)

I'd support criminal charges for attackers who do this. It's just a digital way of causing physical damage. The federal government is already all over this stuff in terms of things like SCADA attacks. The FBI would be sympathetic to the case given that plus hating hackers in general.

</comment><comment><USER9> I wonder how hard would detection be for this kind of dangerous content. A basic detection for rhythmic spikes in frame brightness should not be very hard to implement.

<comment><USER10> Seems like the best solution to me would be an accessibility option on the device that prevents this type of flashing. May seem hard, but compare that against stopping people from being immature/malicious on the internet.

The added upside would be that it would prevent completely accidental cases of exposure to flashes (e.g. watching an episode of Pokemon).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> What if the accessibility settings let you set a maximum framerate for automatically playing moving image content in Safari?

<comment><USER12> I'm looking at [http://www.epilepsy.com/learn/triggers- seizures/photosensiti...](http://www.epilepsy.com/learn/triggers- seizures/photosensitivity-and-seizures), and it seems it's not just the framerate that matters. In particular, 5 to 30 frames per second might be enough, and it depends on the actual image contents. It also makes it sound like static images might also be triggers.

<comment><USER13> This explains why a guy had epilepsy in the metro few days ago. There are bulbs every few meters apart in the tunnel and while the train travels fast it looks like the windows of the metro train flash.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Twitter has a prominent checkbox in the setting allowing you to turn off autoplaying of videos and GIFs. Given that most are not epileptic, and that Eichenwald is, he should have had the mindfulness to check whether the platform could be adapted to his needs.

<comment><USER14> Prominence of that setting is debatable.

<comment><USER2> The checkbox is present in Twitter's main settings page (the one you land on immediately after clicking "Settings", not a subsection) and is also above- the-fold.

Also, I just found out he said a few months ago: "I was carrying my iPad, looking at the still image on the video and, without thinking, touched the PLAY button."

So it seems he's aware of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm looking for someeone who call help me build a mitigating plugin.

[https://github.com/fredzannarbor/strobefree](https://github.com/fredzannarbor/strobefree)

</comment><comment><USER16> No record of pressed charges as of this morning. Seems more likely to be a media redirection of his meltdown with Tucker Carlson.</comment>


It's Startup, Not Start-up or Start Up - <AUTHOR> http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2012/12/its-startup-not-start-up-or-start-up.html

<comment><USER2> We'll, Ill make sure two e-mail miself a reminder about that and e commerce.

In other news, I have two much time on my hands too worry about being a word nazi.</comment>


Spotify Running - <AUTHOR> https://www.spotify.com/int/running/

<comment><USER2> Clever. A bit of a bummer that all visible stock photo's are of attractive sweaty women running.

Remings me a lot of this video (warning: extreme violence in sarcastic context halfway through): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8b4xYbEugo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8b4xYbEugo)</comment>


Ask HN: MVP with little, to zero, code. Suggestions? - <AUTHOR> I'm a developer, with an idea for a side project I'd like to try. I'd like to try throwing together an MVP writing as little code as possible, mainly because: 1) I have little time available 2) It's an interesting challenge and I'd like to see what's out there to achieve this
If absolutely needed I'll write a serverless function or two to tie things together but I'd like to keep this to the absolute minimum.
The MVP will need: - Some way of capturing form entries with results going to a DB - Some way of taking payments (it's a very niche marketplace type idea, so will need to pay out as well, but fine to be manual) - A method of authorising users and creating accounts - A way of sending email notifications when something happens
I know this is all very vague but what services/apps/tools has anyone used to achieve similar? I'm looking for suggestions to start exploring.
I know I can achieve a lot of this with typeform + zapier + stripe + s3 but I'm curious what else is out there. <comment><USER2> There are more and more resources are the "no-code" movement.

Check some of the tutorials by Ben Tossell on makerpad.co

Glide (glideapps.com) is also gret to build mobile apps

</comment><comment><USER3> > typeform + zapier + stripe + s3

\+ Airtable will get you a long way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not heard of airtable before, thanks!</comment></comment>


Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) - <AUTHOR> http://releases.ubuntu.com/releases/11.04/

<comment><USER4> I've had it installed on my main machine since late December. There were some rough patches as things were landing during the beta period, but right now this is easily the best desktop I've ever used.

My workflow adapted to some of the additions in Unity so quickly that it was absurd. At this point I could never go back to something without Super+#, Super+w, Super+s and the other keybindings found here: [http://askubuntu.com/questions/28086/unity-keyboard-mouse- sh...](http://askubuntu.com/questions/28086/unity-keyboard-mouse- shortcuts/28087#28087)

Just be sure to install compizconfigSettingsManager from the software center and you can tweak Unity to some degree.

Just an FYI, what I tend to dev on is Ruby/Rails, Python, Javascript (Node/etc), some Erlang (not as much anymore) and Android dev. This system is so freakin' fantastic for all of those...really quite happy.

<comment><USER5> _> Just be sure to install compizconfigSettingsManager from the software center_

That's great to hear, I had just assumed Compiz wouldn't be available on Unity. I don't think I could live without Compiz Grid and Compiz Negative.

Edit: I see Unity is actually _built_ with Compiz. Somehow I missed that on the Ubuntu Unity website way back when I started reading about it to evaluate it.

<comment><USER6> Unity is a plugin for compiz and relies on other parts of compiz for some of its functionality.

<https://lwn.net/Articles/430686/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment> chao- When last I used the Unity shell, it was clearly not ready for prime time. I'll spend some time later today, cross my fingers, and discover if that has changed or not. There's much more in a new release than just that, but the supposedly-cleaned up Unity will probably get most of the press.

Some concerns aside, I respect a lot of the chutzpah that Canonical is showing: Unity, Wayland, trying to force KDE/GNOME to work together on a notification API. They want to see the Linux desktop improve, and even if people fight against them and they lose, to me it feels better than the inertia of the status quo. Stasis gets no one anywhere.

<comment><USER7> Canonical have nothing to do with Wayland. Mark Shuttleworth wrote a blog post saying they wanted to use it (in a ridiculously unrealistic timeframe), but they've contributed nothing to meeting that goal.

They haven't tried to "force KDE/GNOME to work together on a notification API". They did their own thing, then later on adopted and modified a KDE protocol (which in the first place didn't even do the primary thing they were aiming for -> menus), then complained about GNOME not adopting their code (which is a separate issue to the protocol).

They're basically doing their own thing now, not paying a lot of attention (let alone contributing) to upstream projects.

<comment><USER8> For those playing along, Jeff is heavily involved in the GNOME project and thus have a strong opinion on all these things.

Much has been written on the indicator spat and the tension between GNOME and Canonical, and it seems that's there's not and end to be seen of it.

Mark Shuttleworth has some thoughts (from the other side of the coin) on his blog here: <http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/654>

I'm not going to join in, but I have trouble reconciling the arguments "GNOME not adopting their code/protocol" and "not contributing to upstream projects".

<comment><USER7> GNOME rejected the libappindicator code and approach (largely because it was irrelevant and badly timed), but not the StatusNotifier protocol (as defined mostly by KDE, then once modified, the basis for libappindicator).

The "not contributing to upstream" comment has a much broader context than that particular issue though. One late attempt to push something fairly irrelevant upstream does not define the entire context for their engagement. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A short list of whats new in Ubuntu 11.04 - <http://www.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/whats-new>

And features - <http://www.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/features>

<comment><USER10> Also worth a quick look through the release notes - <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NattyNarwhal/ReleaseNotes>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is exactly the right direction for Ubuntu. I'm installing this remotely on my dad's computer as I type this.

The shortcut keys (using the Windows-button) are very useful and the dock-like launcher is a good replacement for the old task-bar.

It might take a couple more years but somehow I have the feeling that Ubuntu might be heading for the mainstream. Rightfully so.

<comment><USER12> _It might take a couple more years but somehow I have the feeling that Ubuntu might be heading for the mainstream. Rightfully so._

I'd like to think so, and they're doing a great job, but I can't help but feel they're a few years too late. I suspect general email & browsing is going to happen more and more on tablets and phones and people will only want full- blown computers to run specialized native apps, most of which will probably never be ported to Linux.

Of course, thanks to Android, Linux will be more relevant than ever in this scenario.

<comment><USER13> For consumers that can afford it, tablets may replace a lot of what a desktop computer does for those people, but there are many people who are lower income who will still depend on very inexpensive desktop computers, either ones the own individually or (more likely) ones that they can access at their local library. I think Ubuntu is heading in a direction where it will replace Windows for users that only need an office suite and a web browser but need to use a cheaper desktop machine.

<comment><USER14> I think it's much more likely lower income people will use a smartphone as their primary computer than a desktop machine. Cell phones already have incredible penetration, and the cell companies (not to mention Google) are going to push smartphones into that population in short order.

<comment><USER12> I agree. Everybody will have a smart phone because they're so useful and for a lot of people that will be all they need, particularly if money is tight. I'm in Vietnam now and most people here make next to nothing but they still have smart phones and I even see a lot of iPhones, even though they cost a fortune by Vietnamese standards.

I see a fair number of cheap desktop computers too but they're all running bootleg copies of Windows. People aren't paying for their software anyway so the price advantage of Linux is negated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As I use my Ubuntu desktop to actually get work done, I'm quite terrified about installing this release.

I'm not sure I'll upgrade for a while yet, I want to find out what the general consensus is first.

<comment><USER16> As a fellow day-job-using Ubuntu user, I'm with you. In fact, it's not just this release, I _always_ wait a bit to upgrade, since the general consensus seems to be that fresh Ubuntu's are often a bit touchy :)

<comment><USER17> Not only are fresh Ubuntus a bit touchy, but upgrading in-place has bitten me badly in the past. It's always a clean-slate install for me now.

<comment><USER18> Apt is the only system I've ever felt fully comfortable with when doing upgrades. It was neither a problem under Debian nor Ubuntu.

Do you have a tendency to make system changes that get in the way of the upgrades? (i.e., where has it gotten stuck for you before?)

<comment><USER19> In the past I've found that if I installed packages that weren't in the main release I would sometimes run into gigantic dependency issues that I couldn't resolve without a clean reinstall.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'd like to point out that this is a good time to really test your connection. I've never downloaded anything faster than a torrent of a fresh ubuntu release.

<comment><USER21> Though unfortunately upddate files are still distributed through centralized repositories.

I wonder whether there'd be major security concerns if a torrent layer was stuck over the main centralized backbone? It could probably reduce bandwidth costs for hosting and provide better speeds to people, though keeping the "swarm" updated might be kind of tricky.

<comment><USER22> Security concerns can be dealt with via the pre-existing public/private key crypto that's going on in apt already.

The problem with torrents is they don't work well for lots and lots of (relatively) small "file groups" where each user has a lot of the files, but each user has completely different files. Something based on tiger tree hashing or some other mechanism like that might be more suitable, perhaps?

<comment><USER21> True, in order to provide consistent benefit to users you'd need some sort of mechanism to determine whether it'd be faster to "grab from the swarm" or "grab from the repo".

Perhaps even setting up each already-existing mirror as its own seed-center would help - there are plenty of them around, and by definition they all have the same data. Worst case you end up getting only one connection, and you have the same performance as now, but in the best case you can download from multiple locations at once and get some rudimentary load balancing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Of course, this is the release that changes the desktop interface around quite a lot. I'm a bit hesitant, although this answer in the FAQ was soothing:

 _No problem at all. You can choose to launch the classic desktop experience when you log in to your computer._

Not sure if this really means that the choice has to be re-made on every login, or if is remembered. Anyone?

<comment><USER24> You don't get a choice if you run it in a VM, btw.

It's classic or aught.

<comment><USER25> What virtualization program are you running?

If you are using VirtualBox you can run apt-get install virtualbox-ose-guest- utils. You'll also need to enable 3D support under Settings > Display.

<comment><USER26> Though Unity works as expected (awesome!), there still seems to be some other bugs with VirtualBox integration. A big one for me is that seamless mode doesn't work when running 11.04.

<comment><USER27> Well it would work if you disabled unity - since unity is rendering everything as 1 display and not multiple windows the way X Windows wants.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Since I've been using Ubuntu (year and a half now), upgrade was always easy, and always resulted in a month of little annoyances afterwards. But I look forward to it nonetheless.

Upgrading now and feel like a kid on a christmas morning :)

</comment><comment><USER29> Ok... this seems pretty much out of place but I dont suppose I can get a better answer anywhere else, so here it goes.

I'm a student in India and in a dilemma about buying a Mac or buying a windows machine (dual booting with Ubuntu 11.04 ). At about 3/4th the price of a Mac I can purchase a more powerful windows laptop and boot up Ubuntu ( and thus avoid windows altogether ).

I need a workstation for Ruby on Rails/ Node development. Since my parents will be the one paying, I want to be sure if Mac is worth it. I've never worked on a Mac before but since I've read that most startups that are hiring offer Mac to developers, I'm guessing owning a Mac would really make development more enjoyable. Would love to hear your guys' thoughts on this.

Thanks a lot.

<comment><USER30> Preface: I develop on a Mac.

There is no easy way to answer this question. You can definitely get a more powerful PC for the price. With the Mac, you are buying some brand, some better construction, and a lot of better customer service. You are also buying OS X, which may or may not be attractive.

I used Linux for many years as a primary development machine, and it was great. Ubuntu is doing a good job solving the "there is no good desktop for Linux" that was pretty true five years ago.

That said, I prefer my Mac because I get almost the same ability to play at the command line (I spend most of my day in Emacs right now, including running my shells there), but I also get a refined experience when I'm interacting with applications outside of development (e.g. Garage Band, Pages, Keynote, etc).

In the end, I didn't switch for development, I switched for all the time I use my laptop when I'm not developing. For me, it was worth it, but YMMV.

<comment><USER31> Thread hijack...

If you use Emacs all day on a Mac, what do you use for the Meta key? I find I'm not really happy no matter what I do. If I make Option into Meta, I have to bend my thumb way under my palm to hit Meta. If I make Command into Meta, then I lose access to lots of global Mac UI shortcuts. I guess I could experiment with swapping Option and Command and then using Option as Meta, although I'll have to retrain a lot of muscle memory.

And then there's the fact that one Emacs window in a terminal is still not as productive as five Emacs windows under X11, and X11.app still sucks, and the various native Mac Emacs ports still don't feel right to me.

Overall I find using Emacs on Linux X11 still provides the best Emacs experience. This alone will probably keep me on Linux as my primary work environment for the foreseeable future.

<comment><USER32> For me-

* Meta is mapped to the Command key (and the option key). * Control is mapped to control. * I suppose I should try to remap the Fn key to be Control to really make it work right instead of the weird curve that currently has to happen.

When I really am interested in getting typing done I hook up a MS Natural 4K. It's a much more pleasant experience. My keybindings are customized for maximum ease there (and believe me, my hands/wrists do not hurt after a long- term coding session there). Laptops are fine for messing around for a while, but after a period of typing my hands hurt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm not going back to linux on the desktop until it can sleep my laptop reliably. OSX is so nice for that. Just close the lid and go... I can't imagine working any other way now.

<comment><USER34> It isn't that sleep works reliable on OSX, it's that sleep works reliably on a _Mac_.

You see, when you buy a Mac you know every feature (including sleep) has been tested thoroughly. When you decide to install an OS on a computer you already own, _you put the onus to test on yourself_. I don't understand why people continue to make this unfair comparison. If you want a linux computer where sleep just works, by a preinstalled linux computer. System76 makes fantastic ones. They thoroughly test every feature. They test when new versions of Ubuntu get released. You'll have the same experience you have when buying a Mac or when buying an HP.

<comment><USER35> That makes a lot of sense.

Are there any major PC manufacturers that ship with Ubuntu? I imagine the day you go to Sams and buy an Ubuntu system will be a big milestone for Linux.

<comment><USER36> Dell did ship Ubuntu awhile back. Not sure if they still do.

<comment><USER37> Not for laptops anymore, as far as I know. They still sell their Inspiron netbooks with ubuntu, though (8.04).

<comment><USER38> I see 4 laptops and 1 netbook at [http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/laptops#facets=80770~0~179...](http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/laptops#facets=80770~0~1791343&p=1) (use OS filter if link doesn't apply) different models running 9.10, 10.04, 10.10. For some reason the link on dell.com/ubuntu only shows the two Latitudes, not the three Inspirons.

Not major manufacturers, but also see Zareason and System76.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Are there any up-to-date statistics how many people uses ubuntu? Ideally also compared to other linux distributions, windows, osx.. Google gives me only few years old numbers or estimates, I guess its not easy to do these kind of stats?

</comment><comment><USER40> Serious question: Do any of you use Avant Window Navigator? How does Unity compare with it?

</comment><comment><USER41> Been using Unity and natty for a few weeks now. The only feature I really miss from the gnome interface right now is the ability to add / move / remove toolbar widgets. Has anyone figured out if it's possible / how to do this in Unity?

Overall I feel a lot more productive with Unity. The numerous super- functions are really helpful and nifty. I especially like the super- 1-9 for positioning/resizing windows on the current monitor.

</comment><comment><USER42> I find the description of which image to choose confusing. You need the a 64-bit image to handle processes over 4GB, right? Why is the x86 version recommended for "most machines with Intel/AMD/etc type processors and almost all computers that run Microsoft Windows." (That's from the server description, too.)

<comment><USER43> No. Memory > 4GB is not a reason to use 64bit.

If you want to address > 4GB of RAM on 32bit, install the PAE kernel. I think the meta package is called linux-generic-pae.

Use 64bit if you want to run applications that will benefit from it.

EDIT: If in doubt, use the 32 bit one as it will give you less friction for general purpose desktop use.

<comment><USER44> He said _processes_ accessing more than 4 gb, not total memory - aren't individual processes are still limited to 4 gb of memory with PAE?

<comment><USER45> I don't know the technical reason, but most 32 bit apps on Linux are limited to 2GB (2^31 bytes).

<comment><USER46> As jsprinkles alluded to in his post, the 2GB limit (or 1GB or 3GB, depending on kernel configuration) is to allow space for the kernel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Both the launcher and the dash are awesome. Takes very little time to get used to.

</comment><comment><USER48> WARNING: Installing Natty may brick your Macbook Pro

<https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/774089> [http://old.nabble.com/Ubuntu-11.04-broke-my-MacBook-Pro- td31...](http://old.nabble.com/Ubuntu-11.04-broke-my-MacBook-Pro- td31505951.html)

I really love ubuntu, but if you have a macbook pro be careful! I may have to have my logic board replaced!

</comment><comment><USER49> On Sandy Bridge graphics,X server freezes or flickers everytime anything interesting happens, like screensaver or suspend or console switching. New graphics bugs are reported daily. My X has frozen hard 6 times in 2 days. Nvidia drivers have some trouble also. In short, 2011 hardware is not compatible with Unity or Compiz at all. Legacy Metacity is slightly better, and disable all power management to get a mostly stable system..

</comment><comment><USER50> I have upgraded and a all of the CPU hogging problems I have been suffering recently have gone away. I am very happy with the upgrade so far.

</comment><comment><USER51> I've been running this on my MacBook Air for a couple of weeks now. Some rough edges, especially with GNOME3 from a PPA.

<comment><USER52> FYI for other users: installing Gnome3 via UGR (<http://ugr.teampr0xy.net/>) will _break_ your unity install.

Ubuntu (and Unity) is still Gnome2-based (I haven't heard anything, yet, concerning a move to Gnome3 for a future release).

So upgrading to Gnome3 is a one-way upgrade and will break your Gnome2-dependent environments. Although I've done a ppa-purge to uninstall the UGR packages and things seemed to have gone back to normal, pretty much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Ubuntu's website shows of its Dash "Spotlight", Launcher "Dock", Status Icons "Menu bar with status", Workspace "Spaces", Ubuntu Store "Mac App Store".

It's almost like they're trying to directly compete with Mac OS X, with "killer features" that match exactly with what apple regularly shows off with Mac OS X.

<comment><USER54> I think most of these things were actually on Unix/Linux first, just maybe not as pretty as on OS X.

<comment><USER55> Lets go through the list:

* Spotlight - OS X

* Dock - <USER2>

* Spaces - <USER3>

* Software Repositories - Debian [1994]

<comment><USER56> Desktop search predates OSX with Beagle (unfortunately now defunct)

<comment><USER55> The first pitch I ever heard for Beagle was 'it's like searchlight', so I always assumed it came later- but I looked it up, and it's hard to tell. inotify 0.8 was announced about a month after Steve Jobs started advertising spotlight, and Beagle grew out of Dashboard which certainly has design documents that indicate they wanted to do that. So... I think you might be right.

On a related note, are you Ubuntu's jcastro?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> upgrade failed, unity/compiz does not work with my graphic card. none of that detected, worst ubuntu upgrade so far.

</comment><comment><USER49> Networking is extremely flaky in my home LAN. Since I set up a new box with natty, my box had been crashing my actontec DSL modem. There are some workarohbds online for disabling ipv6 and restarting wifi when he module crashes and the indicator Applet loses its connection to he network-manager service.

</comment><comment><USER58> The upgrade's going - another 40 minutes or so.

Pro-tip for people with laptops that have switchable graphics - Go into your BIOS and set the default to "Discrete graphics" and not "Switchable". Otherwise Ubuntu will default to integrated and you'll miss out on all the fancy animations.

</comment><comment><USER59> aargh! I just installed it in Vmware Fusion on Snow Leopard only to realize it does not support OpenGL for Linux OS. Ubuntu went into a fallback mode and disabled Unity. Seems like I need to switch to a different Virtual Machine Software, any suggestions?

<comment><USER60> I really love Oracle's VirtualBox and use it daily for my dev environment.

<comment><USER61> Oracle's VirtualBox. Sad remembering the day Sun set.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I got nervous with Ubuntu releases when 9.10 came out, and it was really buggy; definitely shouldn't have been released in that state.

This time round I upgraded a couple of nights ago from the repos, and I'm pleased to say there have been no dramas.

<comment><USER41> I've had the 11.04 beta installed for a few weeks now, and though there have definitely been some bugs that have come up, even the beta of natty has been really stable overall, much more so than some of the previous Ubuntu releases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> I am wondering, if Unity isn't supported due to lack of hardware acceleration, does it fallback to Gnome2? (does it mean it still bundles Gnome along with Unity?). This is essential to make a choice between Xubuntu and Ubuntu when running in a VM

<comment><USER62> Yes, it does fall back to "Ubuntu Classic", how it is called.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> I'm so regretting upgrading to 11.04.

There are a lot of small but annoying bugs. It has just lost my custom keyboard shortcuts.

It installs privacy-questionable program and don't give any warning about that (zeitgeist package).

</comment><comment><USER64> Just in time for my new laptop, perfect. I am eager to see the Unity interface! :)

</comment><comment><USER65> I always was a little skeptical about unity , and thought I'd rather go with the gnome3 , but consider it a peer pressure or whatever i am upgrading to unity as I type this :) [and yeah i'm every bit excited] , cheers .

</comment><comment><USER66> Heh, just installed ubuntu-10.10-dekstop-amd64 on my EverRunNote notebook.

Now this came out :)

Btw, there is no ubuntu-10.10-notebook-amd64 - probably because there are not many 64-bit notebooks?

<comment><USER6> You should install ubuntu-11.04-dekstop-amd64. There was never a notebook version of Ubuntu. For a while, they had a separate "netbook remix" that you could download and install, but that has been discontinued.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Updated our server. Only issue was that I needed to reinstall Mercurial.

<comment><USER68> What benefits over the 10.04 LTS does this release have for the server? All I am hearing about it Unity, have you seen an improvement?

<comment><USER5> I'd like to know this too. Ubuntu Server is headless. I tend to stick with the LTS versions even for my desktop unless something really amazing is introduced in a subsequent non-LTS version.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> I was very impressed by Unity, I'd been using a tiling window manager for a while but after rebinding some miscellaneous shortcuts to Super+(right hand key) I'm totally happy with it.

</comment><comment><USER70> 12 hours later I think I have everything working as I intend . . though my productivity is still taking a hit trying to find various things.

</comment><comment><USER71> i'm shopping for a new laptop to put this on. i'm looking for something maybe like the samsung series 9. ideally, i'd like it to be as slim as that, but have a 15" screen. anyway, looking for laptop HW recommendations from others here. i've run ubuntu on a number of thinkpads before, but i want to buy a new laptop to replace my MBP.

<comment><USER71> just ordered the samsung series 9 from costco 1549 free shipping. read some ubuntu forum pages that said natty works great on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> Why is it so hard to find a changelog for the server edition of 11.04?

</comment><comment><USER73> Can I upgrade a Ubuntu 10.10 machine in-place? Don't worry its a VM.

<comment><USER74> Yes, Update Manager should prompt you. If it doesn't then run: update-manager -c

<comment><USER73> Thanks. Right you are, right after a reboot the prompt appeared. Maybe that's why my question was gathering (-1, Moron) downvotes. Remember people, there are no stupid questions only stupid users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> Dare you?

<comment><USER75> I did dare. I'm in, but it took getting very scared looking at a black command prompt with no gui. Doing "sudo apt-get remove flgrx" (to reset the graphics settings) did the trick. After a couple of restarts I was in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> I've had it for a little bit, but I went back to Ubuntu Classic when I saw I couldn't add a "Show Desktop" to the panel... Between gnome-do and the window snapping feature a-la Windows 7, "Ubuntu Classic" works well for me.

Besides, I'm experimenting with moving all my servers to Debian Stable. It's interesting how much Ubuntu does for you automatically...

</comment><comment><USER77> So, I'm running Ubuntu 10.10 - but I use awesome-wm instead of gnome. Is it worth to upgrade to 11? After reading the comments here it seems like the big thing about 11.04 was the new gnome shell.

</comment><comment><USER78> Already downloading.</comment>


Mirror, Mirror: Discovering Parity Isn't - <AUTHOR> https://www.aps.org/programs/outreach/history/historicsites/nbs-2011.cfm <comment><AUTHOR> >" _Parity conservation enjoyed exalted status among the most fundamental laws of physics, including conservation of energy, momentum and electric charge._

It implies that Nature is symmetrical under reflections in a mirror. As a consequence, two similar radioactive particles spinning in opposite directions about a vertical axis should emit their decay products with the same intensity upwards and downwards. Yet although there were many experiments that established parity conservation in strong interactions, the assumption had never been experimentally verified for weak interactions like beta decay. Indeed, when the weak force was first postulated to explain disintegration of elementary particles, it seemed inconceivable that parity would not hold there as well.

In the 1950s, high-energy physicists began observing phenomena that could not be explained by existing theories, most notably the decays of K mesons emitted in the collision of a high-energy proton with an atomic nucleus. The K meson appeared in two distinct versions, decaying into either two or three pi mesons, (which necessarily had opposite parity), although in all other characteristics they seemed identical. In June of 1956, theoretical physicists Chen Ning Yang and Tsung Dao Lee submitted a short paper to the Physical Review raising the question of whether parity is conserved in weak interactions, and suggesting several experiments to decide the issue.

Lee and Yang's paper did not immediately spark more than passing curiosity among physicists when it appeared in October 1956. Freeman Dyson later admitted that while he thought the paper was interesting, "I had not the imagination to say, 'By golly, if this is true, it opens up a whole new branch of physics!' And I think other physicists, with very few exceptions, at that time were as unimaginative as I." Richard Feynman pronounced the notion of parity violation "unlikely, but possible, and a very exciting possibility," but later made a $50 bet with a friend that parity would not be violated.

One of the simplest proposed experiments involved measuring the directional intensity of beta radiation from cobalt-60 nuclei oriented with a strong magnetic field so that their spins aligned in the same direction. Parity conservation demands that the emitted beta rays be equally distributed between the two poles. If more beta particles emerged from one pole than the other, it would be possible to distinguish the mirror image nuclei from their counterparts, which would be tantamount to parity violation.

The NBS team set about performing beta decay experiments. When the results were in, they arrived at the astonishing conclusion that the emission of beta particles is greater in the direction opposite to that of the nuclear spin; parity was clearly demonstrated not to be conserved. Leon Lederman, who at the time worked with Columbia University's cyclotron, performed an independent test of parity with that equipment, involving the decay of pi and mu mesons, and also obtained distinct evidence for parity violation.

Feynman lost his bet.

 _The result shattered a fundamental concept of nuclear physics that had been universally accepted for 30 years_ ,

thus clearing the way for a reconsideration of physical theories and leading to new, far-reaching discoveries - most notably a better understanding of the characteristics of elementary particles, and a more unified theory of the fundamental forces."</comment>


Show HN: The Exponential Project - <AUTHOR> https://exponentialproject.org <comment><USER2> What will you do with the money?

</comment><comment><USER3> Aaaaand it's gone.</comment>


Blocking Consumer Choice: Google's Dangerous Ban of Privacy and Security App - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/08/blocking-consumer-choice-googles-dangerous-ban-privacy-security-app

<comment><USER2> Makes me sick. Now I have to navigate my way out of another privacy pirate's cove - this is the most pervasive one yet though.</comment>


Show HN: Spark School – Codecademy for hardware - <AUTHOR> http://www.sparkschool.co/

<comment><USER2> Added myself to the list. I hope it turns out nicely.

Messing with hardware is one of my biggest procrastinations. I always decide that I'm going to stop fiddling with programming languages that I'll most likely never use and start fiddling with some home automation. However, I've never done anything with hardware, so I look for more hand-holding than I can ever seem to find. In the end I end up trying another safe experiment. I feel like this is in part because hardware costs money, which was hard to come by until my graduation last year. Anyhow, I think something like this could really be a good start for myself and hopefully others who may be daunted by hardware as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a cool concept, and I added myself to the mailing list.

However, I do wish there was _something_ \- anything - to sample other than a generic landing page. This is basically pre-beta, and (as far as the user is concerned) purely conceptual.

</comment><comment><USER4> Any further details?</comment>


Learn Redis the hard way (in production) - <AUTHOR> http://tech.trivago.com/2017/01/25/learn-redis-the-hard-way-in-production/ <comment><USER2> Author here. Feel free to ask me anything</comment>


Introducing The Disqus Commenter's Dashboard - <AUTHOR> http://blog.disqus.com/post/2339155154/the-commenters-dashboard <comment><USER2> I hate disqus so much. Who thought seeing all the comments for half a second and then having them disappear under a progress bar for 5 more was a good idea?

<comment><USER3> that's why we call it "constructive" criticism</comment></comment>


Ask YC: What kind of desktop to buy? - <AUTHOR>

So, I find myself in the market for a new desktop, and am having trouble finding anything that meets my needs. I have the rest of my setup (Kinesis keyboard, two giant monitors, etc)  and just need the actual computer.
My requirements are:
-Under $1000
-At least 16GB of Ram (i.e., 8 DIMMs)
-At least 5 internal HDD bays, but I only need one fast (10K RPM+) HDD preinstalled.
-At least 4 CPU cores
-Supports Linux (Debian, ideally)
Things I don't care about include:
-How fast the CPU cores are
-What kind of video cards it has
-How big it is
-How cool it looks
Will anyone sell me a computer that matches my needs for a reasonable price? Or do I just need to buckle down and build it myself? (I've priced it out, and should be able to do it within my priced range, but I've found building computers to be more trouble than its worth)
I know the Mac Pro meets most of my requirements but it's a bit out of my price range at the moment, and OS X doesn't easily support all the software I want (I currently have an iMac, and I spend more time than I care to trying to make it behave like Linux). <comment><USER2> _I currently have an iMac, and I spend more time than I care to trying to make it behave like Linux_

Really? OS X runs everything I've ever needed/stumbled across - for everything else I use a VM (e.g. I can't be bothered using a Linux 64bit cross-compiler toolchain on OSX, so I just do it in a VM).

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, my iMac tops out at 3GB of RAM, which makes running a VM a little tough.

As an example, yesterday I was doing some work in SBCL (Lisp) that required multithreading. Due to a bug in sb-thread in the Mac implementation of SBCL I needed to use a Linux VM. However, the 2GB of memory I could afford to devote to the Linux VM was insufficient (in fact, the entire 3GB would probably have been insufficient - that being part of the reason for the upgrade).

Take me at my word when I say I need Linux and 16GB of Ram (I could probably make do with 8GB, but I'd rather be future-proof with 16GB).

<comment><USER2> _Well, my iMac tops out at 3GB of RAM, which makes running a VM a little tough._

Shrug - Just curious really.... I run a MBP with 3Gb as well - Eclipse and 2 VMs, runs pretty well. One is the repo, the other is a build/test VM. I don't allocate nearly as much RAM to them, however. Occasionally fire up a Windows VM to check I haven't broken the Win32 build.

For larger tests I've built some Linux headless boxes. I just ssh in and co/make/run when necessary. For my needs a pretty inexpensive way of going about it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I personally prefer building my own systems so that I can upgrade or repair it easily. All of the big box manufacturers use non-standard cases, motherboards, and power supplies. They will use standard components like RAM, drives, etc. but motherboards typically won't be a standard form-factor like ATX.

</comment><comment><USER4> [http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=81&th...](http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=81&threadid=2242545&enterthread=y)

Build the Monster Workstation from that link...it's only 8 gigs of RAM but it's close and you can basically have a Mac Pro for under a G...

Just buy a retail Leopard disc so you don't feel guilty every time you press the power button...</comment>


New Outlook - <AUTHOR> http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook-com/

<comment><USER2> I thought they've been "new" for a while now already. What's new in this new?</comment>


Tracking DHS Plane Flying Over San Bernadino Mass Shooting - c-slice http://www.flightradar24.com/8266504 <comment><AUTHOR> N404KR ? Or another?

<comment> c-slice And N497PC (has no callsign) [http://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/NNum_Results.aspx?NN...](http://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/NNum_Results.aspx?NNumbertxt=N497PC)

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a Pilatus light turboprop. ICE, Immigration Customs Enforcement ~7 years ago. [http://flightaware.com/photos/view/53716-5521e014cab4a6aa9de...](http://flightaware.com/photos/view/53716-5521e014cab4a6aa9de9979cc3cb711373ae88e8/all/sort/date/page/10091)</comment></comment></comment>


Millions of Target shoppers face new debit card limits - <AUTHOR> http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/12/22/target-jpmorgan-idINDEE9BL00N20131222 <comment><USER2> I really like the way Simple handled this situation. Their notification to me was actually the first I heard about this happening. They even suggested leveraging the feature to temporary block the card as an added security measure.

An excerpt from their message:

 _Due to a recent data security breach at a large national chain, we're sending you a new Simple card. No worries: your current card will continue to work as normal until you receive and activate the new card in about 5-7 business days. And of course, there's no fee to replace this card._

 _We have no evidence to suggest that your specific card was compromised. We are taking this step as a precaution, since you shopped at the store in question during the time of the compromise._

</comment><comment><USER3> Not sure if it's related, but today, at 12:45PM (on a Sunday), I went to the local Chase branch (in San Jose) to withdraw some cash from the ATM. The branch was open and staffed, with tellers assisting those customers who needed to withdraw more than $100. I thought that was pretty cool.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, it's related. I got an email yesterday about the new limits until my new debit card arrives in the mail (I didn't request it). It re-iterated that I wouldn't be responsible for any fraudulent transactions and that branches would have more staff on hand to accommodate withdrawals beyond the temporarily imposed limits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is why nobody should ever use a debit card... just get credit cards.

<comment><USER6> Huh? What's to stop them from doing this to credit cards?

Edit: To clarify, I understood the parent comment to mean that this lowering of limits was why I should use credit cards over debit cards.

<comment><USER7> Nothing.

The difference is that, when fraudsters hit your credit card, you're not out any money, _ab initio_. You call the card company and make them take the fraudulent charge off your bill. If they refuse, they have to sue to get your money. But if the bad boys nail your debit card, your account is dinged immediately, and you have to deal with the bank to get your funds restored.

Therefore, you should use ATM cards at ATMs only and only use credit cards to shop and travel and dine out (and enjoy the float and the points and pay in full every month). If your ATM card has a credit card logo (called a "check card"), call your bank and complain, and they'll issue you one that is _only_ an ATM card and _cannot_ be used to shop without a PIN.

It's worth noting that the Target case is confined to credit cards, not debit cards. To hack a debit card, the attacker must intercept both the mag stripes and the PIN that goes with them. That's hard to do, given the way PIN pads work. Reportedly, in the Target case, they did not succeed in doing that.

<comment><USER8> There are a few inaccuracies in your comment.

>If they refuse, they have to sue to get your money

First, they wouldn't refuse (at least in the USA) because Visa and Mastercard contractually require issuers to cover debit cards at the same level as they do for credit cards, which is complete protection from all liability.

Second, with credit cards you can't just decide what to pay off and what not to. If the issuer refuses fraud protection to you for whatever reason your credit rating is on the line if you don't pay off the balance. They may sue you, and they may damage your ability to get credit for a long time.

In other words, the situation between debit and credit card protection is basically the same: in both cases the issuer will almost certainly protect you, and you're screwed if they don't.

> To hack a debit card, the attacker must intercept both the mag stripes and > the PIN that goes with them.

This is not true in the USA. Debit cards can be used in non-point of sale transactions (e.g. phone or internet) and point of sale non-PIN "signature" transactions where you use your debit card like a credit card.

<comment><USER7> > _Debit cards can be used in non-point of sale transactions (e.g. phone or > internet) and point of sale non-PIN "signature" transactions where you use > your debit card like a credit card._

That's true of most debit cards, namely the ones that sport a Visa or MasterCard logo. They are called "check cards" and can be used in either debit mode (enter PIN on PINpad, no signature) or credit mode (sign if over the merchant-defined limit). Either way, the charge goes against your bank account as soon as the bank receives it.

The difference between credit and debit mode is in who processes the charge. For PIN-less signature mode, the credit card network handles the transaction. For PIN debit mode, the debit network (e.g. NYCE) handles it. The debit networks are immediate: the money comes right out of your account. The credit card networks are slower. It may take a day or two for a transaction to hit your account.

I remember fifteen or twenty years ago when my bank introduced check cards. I called them and asked if the new MC logo meant the card could be used without entering a PIN. They said yes, and I said I didn't want it. A replacement minus the logo (and with a different PAN) arrived a day or two later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why not just issue new cards?

I recently received a new debit card from my bank... Claiming they had 'detected a problem with my magnetic strip', which seemed spurious as I had never detected any problem with using the card. When this happened before, my old card continued to be okay until I activated the unsolicited replacement. This time, I was denied use of the card at two stores before I called my bank, who told me the card had been suspended - by the 'anti-fraud unit'. They didn't wait for me to confirm I received the new one by activating it.

I had indeed used that card at Target in the past three months.

<comment><USER10> Chase is issuing new cards -- the limits are temporary, and until the new cards arrive.

"Watch for your new card. We plan to reissue all affected debit cards and Chase Liquid Cards automatically over the coming weeks. Until then, you can use your debit or Liquid card with the temporary limits."

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I originally was going to sign up for a debit red card, but they wanted a voided cheque for my account. I don't even have any cheques for my checking account so thankfully I opted for the credit option and got a decent limit.

Going forward, I doubt I will ever decide to link my actual bank account to any retailer cards in the future. It's safer, in my opinion, to just use credit for everything since if that card is compromised it's the bank's money that is being taken and not the actual money directly from my bank account. Which results in less consumer inconvenience at least for me.

<comment><USER12> > but they wanted a voided cheque for my account

Any time an institution asks for a voided cheque, all they're going to do with it is copy the bank, branch, and account numbers off the bottom of it. You can just give them a piece of paper with those three numbers on it instead and they'll take it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> it seems like a reasonable move. limit the amount of damage, without completely cutting people off from there money.

</comment><comment><USER14> Why don't they replace (and invalidate the old) cards for everyone affected instead?

<comment><USER15> I think the sheer number makes that logistical impossibility in the short term. It's in inconvenience for Chase members, but I think they are taking the right actions here to make things as easy as possible for all parties involved.

<comment><USER14> The right course of action would of course be a combination of

a) reduced withdrawal limits

b) replaced cards, ASAP

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I still don't get how they had the mag stripe, the PCI compliance [1] documentation is pretty clear about that:

 _Sensitive data on the magnetic stripe or chip must never be stored. Only the PAN, expiration date, service code, or cardholder name may be stored, and merchants must use technical precautions for safe storage (see back of this fact sheet for a summary)_

[1] [https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/pdfs/pci_fs_data_storag...](https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/pdfs/pci_fs_data_storage.pdf)

<comment><USER17> A helpful comment from "Paul C" posted on krebsonsecurity.com:

"Speaking as a developer with 9 years of POS application experience, and 8 years POS support experience at a major OEM who's hardware isn't in Target stores anymore …

re: end to end encryption There's a financial difference to the retailer between authorising a transaction with a card #, name and expiry date and authorising one where the retailer has the full track info. The card processor historically charges the retailer a smaller %age of the transaction total if they can supply the full track info, since that implies the retailer physically saw the card and so cuts down on 'card not present' fraud. Ironic, isn't it?

Historically the pinpad has given the unencrypted data to the POS terminal, where the application is responsible for authorising the card (either over dial up line or internet connection) with the card processor. Note that the POS application typically does not do this itself – it hands it off to a dedicated application on the POS terminal to do that. So in this case we've already got unencrypted data going from the pinpad to the POS application to the processing application. Whether the processing application encrypts the data is between it and the bank, but most of the ones I'm aware of don't (or at least didn't when I dealt with them). Now, modern pinpads have the abilty to authorise themselves directly with the processor without even giving the card info to the POS terminal, but that then requires a pinpad have internet access, with all the headaches that entails …

re: storing of card numbers by retailers Consumers are lazy. We like being able to return a gift without a receipt, and have the retailer look up the transaction based on the card we used to make the purchase. We also like being able to log in to our favourite website and make a purchase, billing it to the card we used last time. In both cases the retailer has to store the card # & expiry date in order to make this work. Sure, the retailer can not do this, but how many customers are they likely to lose to the store next door which does offer this functionality? It's only when something goes wrong that we start complaining about it.

re: writing "Check ID" on the signature line of the card The signature on a credit card is not to prove you are the cardholder, it's to say you agree to the terms and conditions of the card. If the card isn't signed then the retailer has no way to know that once they give you the goods you will actually pay the card company – obviously you can still not do that (hence all the people in credit card debt), but there's a difference between not paying the card company when you are legally obligated to, and not even having the obligation. In the first the card company will come after you for lack of payment, in the second the retailer is effectively giving you the product with no recourse to anyone if you don't pay. The reason most people get away with it is because (a) most people don't know the rules and (b) most store managers and cashiers don't want to be the one to enforce it. See [http://usa.visa.com/merchants/risk_management/card_present.h...](http://usa.visa.com/merchants/risk_management/card_present.html) for more details.

The retailer could quite easily mandate to their staff that all card purchases in store require a check of photo ID, but that takes longer (who wants their checkout time to take even longer?) and puts the onus on the cashier to verify the identity (and the retailer probably wouldn't want that either)."

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> We cant prevent credit card credentials theft. what we can do is, opt for 2 factor authentication, one of my credit card companies does that. It's a little pain but it worths it.

</comment><comment><USER19> I wonder: What information does Palantir have about this situation?

</comment><comment><USER20> So much for "you aren't liable for fraudulent activity".

<comment><USER21> I think you may have missed this part: "Chase and other banks say they will cover unauthorized transactions that customers report."

<comment><USER22> I think your parent misunderstood, thinking there was an implicit promise that you won't even be _inconvenienced_ by fraud.

<comment><USER20> They're inconveniencing you for potential fraud that may not even happen. It seems like a high price to pay for what is ultimately someone else's problem.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Interviewing devs made easy - <AUTHOR> http://codeinterview.me/ <comment><USER2> I started watching the first video, and it said "Check out the remake". "Okay," I say, "if it's better, why isn't it on the main site? If it's not better...why is it so prominent?" And then it turned out that both videos were, in a word, awful. You lost me after the first 100 seconds or so of each one. I don't know if they ever advertised your website--I didn't get that far. PS: The one on the main site has misspellings in the lyrics.

I also looked at the main description:

>Let your candidates code in their own IDE where they >feel comfortable and check the results in Google Docs.

"Ah," I think, "he's about to pull some kind of voodoo so that I can show my interviewer what I can do with Vim and SLIME." Then I actually investigated, and found out that by "their own IDE" you mean a "common IDE", and by "common IDE" you actually were referring to only two IDEs, neither of which I have used or want to use.

The web version is actually cool, and I'll probably use it with my friends (I actually _just_ finished typing some code into Facebook to help a friend out-- it would've been great to use this website instead). But I had my hopes built up about my "own IDE", so using the web interface turned out to be disappointing.

So my humble suggestions:

1) Trash both videos.

2) Change some wording to make it clear that most people will use a web interface that niftily allows real-time editing by two people.

3) Since your product is so cool, mention that if the customer uses Eclipse or IDEA, there's a plugin so he can use his own IDE!

</comment><comment><USER3> Why is this free? B/c you're not charging for your product, I'm skeptical that you'll be around long enough for it to make sense to learn how to use your product. Remember you're target is businesses, who are much less price sensitive, and are much more interested in stability. PLEASE CHARGE.

<comment><USER4> PLEASE CHARGE.

Best suggestion in the interest of the business and for the business to remain stable enough to learn the target customer. Can't upvote it enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Or just use a screen sharing tool like Skype. That's how I got interviewed by the company I'm working for right now, and no browser based tool can match it. I could use my favorite editor(Vim) and show off my command line skills too. It was one of the best interview experiences I had.

<comment><USER2> I can't decide if I'm happy or not that non-coding skills can leave such an impression.

I'm still at my first job (I'm only a HS senior), and for the interview I was asked to bring in some code. I brought my laptop, whose splash screen proudly displayed "Crunchbang Linux". I believe this was the moment that gave the most "points" in their eyes. Then I opened up my code, did some basic-but- impressive-looking flying around with Vim (it's not like there was actual editing involved), popped over to a terminal to `cd' around and then run it, and left a very good impression.

And my PM has a habit of asking me for help with bash. I have a rudimentary- at-best knowledge of it, but he's happy when I kludge together something with pipes and grep and sometimes "after that command, vim will open. You should then press the following to find and replace the text as desired." I'll then include as a footnote, "There's a much better way to do this as a one-liner with sed and awk...I just don't know how."

So of {beautiful code, working product, knowledge of tools} they only value two...and I'm just surprised it's the last two, not the first two. I guess I can't complain though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Another alternative: <http://i.seemikecode.com/>

A little lower barrier to make an interview, although there's no IDE involved.

<comment><USER7> What about Google Docs?

<comment><USER8> Google Docs is great, especially because everyone knows about it and it just works. We started off by writing IDE plugins that posted to Google Docs but latency was horrible. Should give it another shot in a year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> How does this work exactly? I'm on Firefox 3.6 and I can't type anything into the box. Same goes for IE8.

I don't know who you're targeting, but I certainly don't expect interview candidates to be running the latest and greatest.

Finally, the URL is way too complicated to give out over the phone... oops?

<comment><USER8> Seems the library we chose is not the best one when it comes to cross browser support. We'll have a fallback version soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looks great! It's very simple and useful.

One comment: on both (interviewee & interviewer) page I'd recommend having a box in the right rail with the following:

"Give this pin: __* to the interview[er|ee]. If you already have a pin, enter it here:

[ INPUT BOX ]"

<comment><USER8> This sounds good, added to tasklist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Cool idea! I have been going through the dev hiring process currently, and it is a huge pain in the ass to write up a test and email it to everybody, then review the answers and try to keep them straight. It would be great if the interviewers could create specific questions and keep track of individual candidates answers, as well as comment on specific parts of the answer and (maybe) even rate the answers or sort them by 'best' answer for internal use.

<comment><USER12> Hi

I created something like that: <http://www.codingquiz.com>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Honestly I wouldn't be very happy doing live coding in a stressful situation in some random web interface (emacs not supported? heretic) - half of the time would be wasted on writing import statements, non essential functions, etc.

I understand why companies would want to see somebody code, but if they can critique some code that they have never seen before that is properly as good a signal and it is easier to give the same test to the candidates.

<comment><USER14> I ask a lot of coding questions in my interviews - if the candidate starts writing imports, they've already missed the entire point of an interview. I'm not interested in knowing your intensely deep knowledge of Java boilerplate.

Interviewers who demand compile-ready code on-the-spot are frankly, insane.

I use typewith.me (an etherpad clone, I think), and it's great. The _big_ win for using real-time typing apps is evaluating fluency. Someone can probably bang out some reasonably looking code if you give them homework (assuming they did it themselves!), but there's no faking the keystrokes of someone who's intimately familiar with the syntax of a language and knows WTF they're doing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> typo in Why Do You Need CodeInterview: "How do you know his is a ninja?". I'm assuming this wasn't as intentional as blag may have been ;)

<comment><USER16> And aren't there such things as female ninjas?

<comment><USER17> Indeed there are: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunoichi>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Any chance of having one of these that works two-way? I have found a need to type things back to the candidate.

<comment><USER8> Google Docs document sharing/collaboration?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Awesome. Are there any competitors?

<comment><USER20> Other related projects/sites/products include Blueberrytree[1], Trollim[2], CodeYourIdea[3], HappyJobSearch[4], OneDayOneJob[5], and the aforementioned iSeekMikeCode[6].

[1]: <http://blueberrytree.ws>

[2]: <http://trollim.com>

[3]: <http://www.codeyouridea.com/coders/>

[4]: <http://www.happyjobsearch.com/>

[5]: <http://www.onedayonejob.com/>

[6]: <http://i.seemikecode.com/>

<comment><USER21> I'm the Founder of One Day, One Job. Not sure I'd consider it a competitor here, but it's at least tangentially related.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> or just use etherpad.

<comment><USER23> How does etherpad (acquired by google) compare to just using Google docs? Recently went through an interview with Google where we used a shared document, it was a horrible experience. I remember thinking that no sane person would code with a plain text editor and there should be a better way to do it. The ideal service to me would be something like a web based collaborative emacs.

<comment><USER24> We've tried using google docs for interviewing, and found that the code will not always sync. The remote developer would tell us "here's my code, it's ready", and we would see a blank doc for like 5 minutes.

Etherpad (and its clone instances) is awesome. Never had a problem.

Try it yourself:

<http://typewith.me>

<http://ietherpad.com>

<http://sync.in>

<comment><USER25> How recently? Google Docs has gotten faster at syncing in the last year or so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Can you select languages other than Java in the web interface?

</comment><comment><USER27> looks pretty cool, congrats.

btw the blog link in the nav says "blag'

<comment><USER28> I'd be surprised if it was not intentional: <http://xkcd.com/148/>

<comment><USER29> I find it funny but it makes me not take this company seriously.

<comment><USER30> After watching the video you'd come to the same conclusion. Doesn't seem to have anything to do with the product ..and so they code..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Upvoted for the ...and so you code.. song. Nice one!</comment>


Everything we thought we knew about the gig economy is wrong - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1299513/the-gig-economy-may-be-smaller-than-we-think/ <comment><USER2> Cool</comment>


The Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy (Woodberry 2012) - <AUTHOR> http://www.hillcountryinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/MissionaryRootsOfLiberalDemocracy.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> excerpts: [https://plus.google.com/103530621949492999968/posts/B9wZDbZu...](https://plus.google.com/103530621949492999968/posts/B9wZDbZuzpG)

popular media coverage: "The Surprising Discovery About Those Colonialist, Proselytizing Missionaries: They didn't set out to change history. But one modern scholar's research shows they did just that." [http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/january- february/wo...](http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/january- february/world-missionaries-made.html?paging=off)</comment>


Losethos submits OS to reddit, answers questions - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/compsci/comments/zcgwp/crazy_mans_operating_system_now_has_new_website/

<comment><USER2> I believe the appropriate phrase is "Shine on, you crazy diamond."

I'm impressed by the amount of work he's put into his software and depressed by his condition. I hope that I could be as prolific under similar circumstances. :)</comment>


Learn by Doing – Volume 27 - <AUTHOR> https://www.kylegalbraith.com/learn-by-doing/volume/27/serverless-linear-algebra.html <comment><USER2> Kyle finds some of the best material for his chosen areas of focus. I continue to be very impressed with his curation skills and original content. I have been meaning to promote his stuff on my Chinese social media channels and need to find time for that this week. Kudos!

</comment><comment><USER3> Is there an archive of the previous volumes?

<comment><USER4> [https://www.kylegalbraith.com/learn-by- doing/](https://www.kylegalbraith.com/learn-by-doing/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can not submit form.

<comment><USER5> Ahh, I had tracking protection enabled. All good now.</comment></comment>


Growth of services to help students cheat in online courses - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/11/cheating-through-online-courses/413770/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> If the value of knowledge is lower than value of grades, students will cheat.</comment>


Network Damage After Sandy Through The Eyes of A Disaster Forensics Expert - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/security/network-damage-after-sandy?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+IeeeSpectrumFullText+%28IEEE+Spectrum+Full+Text%29 <comment><USER2> Another consideration Verizon can make to improve their disaster recovery would be to change the locations of their telecommunications offices. Both buildings mentioned in the article were located in evacuation zones. If they were to put their infrastructure more inland - like AT&T - these problems could have been avoided.</comment>


Launch HN: Keeper Tax (YC W19) – Find tax writeoffs in bank statements - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
We are Keeper Tax (https://keepertax.com). We help US contract workers automatically find tax write offs in bank statements. We do this by monitoring their purchases for tax deductible expenses -- like phone expenses, insurance payments, and home office expenses -- using a team of accountants aided by fancy computer stuff.
The company is born out of frustration with how many people doing 1099 gig work -- rideshare, taskrabbit, online tutoring, and so on -- are overpaying on taxes. By our estimates, the average gig worker overpays on taxes by 21% (for context, that's around $2,000 if you earn 40k) [1]. A fancy accountant could prevent, but fancy accounts are expensive. That's why we're building Keeper.
But it's more than just a low price. We want to make something accessible to people who don't actually know much about taxes, or care to (i.e. most of us). That's why we think the solution is to tell, not ask, when it comes to tax deductions.
Your monthly phone bill is a great example. Many gig workers wouldn't think their phone bill is a tax deductible expense. However, it's partially deductible since you undoubtedly use your phone for work. But that sword cuts both ways -- many people will eagerly try to deduct haircuts, clothes, and other personal effects. The IRS is very strict that these are not tax write offs, so these folks risk getting themselves in trouble for an understandable mistake.
The user experience is: we text you yes / no questions a few times a week. Examples include "Hey, was today's lunch at McDonald's shared with clients / coworkers?", or "Do you use your Spotify account to play music for your rideshare passengers?". The text messages are partially automated, but we hire an accountant to monitor things and jump in when needed. At the end of the year, you can export your write offs seamlessly into TurboTax, H&R Block, etc to file.
We're currently piloting the service with +100 paying users. We charge $10 per month because it's simple, but eventually want to move to a model where we charge a small percent of the tax write offs we find for you. Aligned incentives :)
Thank you HN! Looking forward to hearing your ideas and feedback!
[1] 21% stat is based on comparing a sample of eleven 1099 contractor's 2017 tax returns against what we found when digging through their bank statements. Biggest sources of this discrepancy is missing the home office deduction, forgetting to claim car insurance payments and other non-obvious transportation expenses, and forgetting to track business meals. <comment><USER2> > We do this by monitoring their purchases for tax deductible expenses -- like > phone expenses, insurance payments, and home office expenses -- using a team > of accountants aided by fancy computer stuff.

Are you storing or otherwise processing the transaction records for any other purposes or data mining? Alternatively, do your terms allow that in the future?

Knowing _every_ purchase a person makes is going to be a tantalizing data set.

> We're currently piloting the service with +100 paying users. We charge $10 > per month because it's simple, but eventually want to move to a model where > we charge a small percent of the tax write offs we find for you. Aligned > incentives :)

Maybe not totally aligned though as it'd be in your interests to be as aggressive as possible with write off claims while the customer would presumably be on the hook for any rejections or audits.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for your initial thoughts! We do need to store purchase history to improve our predictions, but we have no plans at the moment to do anything else with the data.

@pricing - we haven't really figured out our pricing model yet - that's why we're sticking to a low flat fee for now!

<comment><USER4> > we have no plans at the moment to do anything else with the data.

If I had a nickel..

<comment><USER5> And yet to a different concern about granting access to digital data the response is"what concerns do you have with sharing purchasing data?"

Naivety or purposely deflecting from the very real concerns many have and everyone should?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What percentage of these workers benefit from itemizing deductions? This seems very helpful if you're itemizing, but I thought most people will just take the standard deduction, especially after the recent standard deduction increase.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great question! Lots of components here. In short our stance is that 99% of contractors should itemize at least some of their expense write offs.

What about the standard deduction? [https://blog.keepertax.com/posts/should-i- still-track-expens...](https://blog.keepertax.com/posts/should-i-still-track- expenses-for-part-time-1099-work)

Mileage vs. actual car expenses: [https://blog.keepertax.com/posts/should-i- claim-mileage-or-a...](https://blog.keepertax.com/posts/should-i-claim- mileage-or-actual-car-expenses)

<comment><USER6> That first article is fantastic. Especially the personal vs. 1099 deductions chart. I'd love to know what else falls in "... and so on", but I guess that's where your service comes in :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Woohoo! Yeah part of our ethos is to make taxes easier to understand for everyone so we put effort into our content.

We do list out tax write offs for different types of contracting work on the blog as well, but we don't go very deep into personal write offs since it doesn't matter much unless you're part of the 1%.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The site currently vomits up a really nice debugging page if the browser's localStorage is disabled (as my usual browser is). The gray text at the bottom suggests that you've got a "development" flag currently turned on in production. Might wanna check that.

I'm not 1099 currently, but I was for about 10 years and taxes are one of the 2 main things that eventually kicked me back to a regular job. I was terrible at keeping track of all the little charges and receipts for everything. Xero helped, but ultimately I ended up owing about $8k of taxes on $30k gross a few too many times and it just wasn't livable.

So I really hope you guys do well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Repro'd the localStorage debugging and you're right - we'll clean that up.

Thanks for sharing your story re: 8k on 30k - that's pretty bad :) either you claimed next to nothing in write offs, or you were in a very high tax bracket ... maybe both.

Nice to meet you Rob.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> $10/month undersells both the value of your service and your cost to provide it. My first thought was : either they're going to go out of business or they are going to raise prices.

If you want an easy promotion say that it's $20/month and HackerNews readers get a super sweet, time-limited, doorbuster 50% discount.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right.

Hacker News, go and lock in your sweet time-limited doorbuster 50% discount BEFORE we go and update our prices to $20 per month! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > We charge $10 per month because it's simple, but eventually want to move to > a model where we charge a small percent of the tax write offs we find for > you.

Does that mean you'd need to examine the person's full tax filing in order to determine what you've found that they did not?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question! We'd love to do that if there was an easy way to. It would actually just be a portion of all savings due to write offs recorded with Keeper. Savings are calculated using your actual effective tax rate, and other necessary multipliers.

<comment><USER9> My point was more that it would be hard to identify savings recommended by Keeper that were previously unknown the to user. It could recommend tax savings due to heating/phone/internet of the home office but, if the user was already accounting for those, pointing them out provides no actual benefit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why is this a monthly fee and not a one-time purchase that occurs when filing taxes? You can just export my purchase history all at once.

Do you support your users when they get audited? My tax software guarantees support if there are issues.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting idea!

So basically we'd hold the data hostage ;) I'm curious - why is that's a better model, in your mind?

We support users if they get audited in the sense that we'd give them all of their data recorded with Keeper and help answer any questions. Ultimately, we base all of our suggestions on information the user has told us, but we can't guarantee that the answers were truthful.

I'm curious - what tax software do you use, and what's their audit claim?

<comment><USER10> No tax software is going to offer to defend you in an audit. Dollars to doughnuts the fine print claim is that they will take responsibility in the case of a math error or bug in their software that triggered an audit.

Deductions rely fully on what the software user enters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wonderful service. I really like the idea. I think $10/month is way too low for the value you provide - think of the tax savings, and auditing capabilities you could provide. Good luck, I think you should charge more.

<comment><USER12> agreed. I'm not a contractor. But these days 10$/month is almost too low for me to even think a service is going to actually work. My price point would be closer to 25-30$ per month

<comment><USER13> $10/month is a great price for "I'm not sure this is going to provide me with value _yet_ ".

"As of now, we've now found you deductions that'll save you more than $3000 in taxes this year alone. To get more deduction information this year, please upgrade..."

<comment><USER12> That's a good point. But why not provide a free way to gauge how much the service can save you, then charge appropriately? Why should I pay 10$ to see how much I can save? I'd rather know that for free, then pay a higher amount to actually have you tell me what those ways to save are.

It could be that I'm weird, but 10$ for me triggers some bias in my mind that makes me think the service is not legit, is fragile, won't realy do all it claims, etc. Strange.

<comment><USER13> "Here's a free service, give it access to your bank statements" does not inspire confidence.

(And I imagine that if you paid $10/month and it didn't find anything worthwhile, you could probably request a refund.)

<comment><USER12> ha yeah good point. tough to give anyone access to bank/transaction info. interesting that paying someone else money and then giving them access to your bank statements would make you feel better!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have a separate credit card that I use for all business expenses and I write everything off from the credit card statement during tax season. Is there still value for me to use KeeperTax?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question!

Yes. Two reasons: (1) we will auto-categorize your business card expenses, and (2) many tax write offs are split personal / work expenses. Examples: gas if you drive your car for both work and personal use, home office expenses, phone bill, electronics, etc. Those write offs are really easy to miss out on!

<comment><USER15> OP will probably pay for these with the business credit card and then deal with the personal/business split at tax time for specific kinds of expenses which are on that card. Some will be 100% business only, and some (like vehicle-related) will be split.

In Canada, the CRA wants self-employed people and business owners to keep track of their odometer readings and log all trips that are for a business purpose. They could ask for that if they audit the individual. The fraction of business use kilometers versus driven is then applied to recurring expenses like fuel and oil, and also to capital cost allowance: the yearly depreciation of the vehicle asset.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey folks, co-founders Paul and David here. We'll be hanging out in the comments section today - looking forward to hearing your ideas and feedback!

<comment><USER16> I think you should probably e-mail/call all groups/agencies that contract out to workers and sell a bulk deal as a perk for the agency (ie. maids-r-us contractor pays keepertax $x or x% of total write-offs and maids-r-us can offer unlimited service to all its housekeepers). I think it will get you guys more users quickly and allows you to reach out to more potential customers for less.

<comment><AUTHOR> Word. That sounds right. One of the challenges we've been up against is just figuring where these contractors are actually spending their time. Thanks for the tip.

<comment><USER17> I did some consulting work for a similar problem with growth. Home measurement company that sells to realtors at $100/service. Margin of 15%. Avg customer only uses service 3 times a year. So they make a whopping $45 a customer. The only way we were able to grow (initially 50k arr to 500k in 6 months) was going after big accounts. Its the same amount of work to close a big brokerage with 100 agents that represents 100k a year in sales vs each agent, one by one. Send me an email or message if you want to chat more. Id be happy to walk you through that transition and how we did it (what went well and what didnt)

<comment><AUTHOR> Fantastic. Sending you an email now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Scratch that - how do I message you? I don't see an email on your account

<comment><USER17> firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER17> Use this instead. That previous temp expired. firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Love the idea and is very applicable to me. I no longer give access to my finances from any app but I would suggest building out an about page about the company with faces and names and backgrounds. I know you might be at the MVP stage but there's a lot of trust missing in a service like this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the feedback! We agree. Need to get some semi-professional headshots and approval from our on-staff CPA first, but it's on the shortlist.

I'm curious, why the hard stance on granting purchase data?

<comment><USER19> I have a similar stance as the parent post, and it's mainly due to the pervasive secondary uses of access to privileged consumer-level data for advertising and marketing purposes.

Plenty of companies gain access to privileged information for a specific purpose, but utilize that privileged access in completely opaque ways to create secondary revenue streams. Unroll.me[1][2] is an example of this, as is the countless apps that ask for location services access for specific functionality within the app, but then resell that location data to third parties for ad/marketing/consumer intelligence purposes. With weather and news apps being the worst offenders.

Since you have a CPA on-staff, your usage may be bound by law[3] to not be used in such a manner. But I have no idea if so. And without that guarantee, it's pretty terrifying to give you direct access to my accounts. There's a whole lot of signal intelligence in that you can glean. If you're using something like Plaid for automatic transaction aggregation, they even come with several nifty prebuilt endpoints[4] for you to leverage that authorization to get a complete view of my assets, an estimate of my income, and a live view of all of my account balances. Outside of a relationship that has privacy and confidentiality guarantees enshrined in law, that isn't a level of insight I want to grant to third parties.

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/24/technology/personal- data-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/24/technology/personal-data-firm- slice-unroll-me-backlash-uber.html)

[2] [https://unroll.me/your-data](https://unroll.me/your-data)

[3] [https://www.bna.com/confidentiality-tax- practice-n7301447401...](https://www.bna.com/confidentiality-tax- practice-n73014474017/)

[4] [https://plaid.com/products](https://plaid.com/products)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "but eventually want to move to a model where we charge a small percent of the tax write offs we find for you."

Make it that or $10 a month where $10 is minimum. ;)

Edit: You might want to make pricing closer to what H&R Block does online. They've set some market expectations. I think they tried to charge me $30.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha yes the tax filing giants (TT, HRB) are the kings of funky pricing claims. They say "File for free!" oh and by the way "State Filing costs $39.99". As if anyone would only want to file federal.

<comment><USER21> I'm not sure if it's your entire point, but there are 7 states with no personal income tax, which is a population of ~70M people.

<comment><AUTHOR> Touche.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is awesome. Does you guys look at credit card statements? We've moved all the business expenses to a separate credit card to make sure we don't miss anything. How about Paypal?

<comment><USER23> [https://www.gotruffle.com](https://www.gotruffle.com) supports PayPal.

For the record I think Taxkeeper is super cool. Truffle is totally different; less of a recurring tool and more of a one-time tool.

Disclaimer: I work on Truffle.

Congrats Keepertax on launching!

<comment><USER3> Thanks! I'd love to learn more about what you guys are doing as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Looks cool!

How are you getting access to bank accounts? Eg are you using Yodlee or another aggregator? My understanding is there's no inquire-only banking API available in the USA.

<comment><AUTHOR> Correct. We use Plaid to get access to people purchase history and to charge our monthly fee.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Great idea. Do you support Canadian users too? Thanks

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes we do! Our service is based on US tax law, though. It'll still be helpful from an expense tracking / organization standpoint but keep that in mind :)

<comment><USER5> Except you're selling a tax service, that's where the ROI comes from. There's a million expense trackers, many custom tailored to us Cannucks

<comment><AUTHOR> There's only one way to find out ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In an audit situation, can a bank statements prove a purchase, if the detailed receipt has been thrown out?

<comment><AUTHOR> Great question! Yes :) [https://blog.keepertax.com/posts/paper-receipts-are- required...](https://blog.keepertax.com/posts/paper-receipts-are-required-for- taxes)

</comment></comment><comment> throwaway-1283 I've always wondered why there isn't a mint-like service to help anyone minimize taxes..

<comment><AUTHOR> Us too!

<comment> throwaway-1283 But why was the obvious first use case for 1099 workers?

I guess I was thinking of an app that would, say, see I have a losing investment and recommend that I sell before EOY to offset some taxes.

Or put more money into my 401k if I hadn't maxed out by EOY if I was close to being dropped to a lower income bracket.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, we wanted to start with something that directly and clearly puts money in your pocket. Tax write offs are a good one for that - we feel like too many people donate to the IRS.

When it comes to financial advising, there's a lot we can do but it's also trickier to automate.</comment></comment></comment></comment>