What to do when your site is "too large" for Google Analytics? - <AUTHOR> http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/2141/site-too-large-to-officially-use-google-analytics

<comment><USER2> Professional Google-certified web analyst here.

According to the terms of use I'm familiar with, linking an AdWords account to your GA account, and spending money on it (even nominal sums like a buck fifty) has been sufficient to be exempt from any hit limits on GA. Your AdWords account does need to be explicitly linked to the GA account, and you do need to be spending some non-zero amount of money, but they're easy to connect and that's honestly still quite cheap for an analytics implementation. Omniture SiteCatalyst will run you in the six figures per year, minimum. It's possible that Google has changed its policy, as Google has a reputation for being somewhat fickle as an analytics provider, but I haven't heard anything via official channels.

That aside, only having your data update once a day should not be a problem. There is surprisingly little value in data updating multiple times per day. There's no reason to have data update more frequently than you can take action upon it, and most sites of most companies move at the speed of a glacier. There are a few business models where it is beneficial, for example news sites can benefit from knowing what stories are really popular right this minute. Besides, if you need data more often than once a day, you shouldn't be on Google Analytics anyways. Average data delay is a few hours, but it's not unheard of for data to be stale by a day or two.

</comment><comment><USER3> I got the exact same email today, and had to read their terms of service to know for sure I wasn't being had.

Apparently you need an adwords account 'in good standing', I'm not sure what they mean by that because we do have an adwords account, and as far as I know and can see it is in 'good standing', only we're not advertising any more using google because we found that it isn't making enough money in return.

See:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1593898>

I'd pay for analytics, it's a very useful service and I can't see the adwords angle, after all with something as vague as 'good standing' as the deciding factor how about simply charging for analytics?

I always figured that analytics was free because it provides google with useful data as well.

Maybe it's time to get my old stats suite dusted off and re-installed, I don't like operating against the TOS even if it is apparently something they'll let you get away with.

<comment><USER4> Good standing doesn't seem to be vague to me really. Your account isn't violating some ToS, delinquent, etc... Most accounts are probably in good standing.

I wouldn't worry about this too much. It doesn't cut you off, just limits it to updating once per day (basically just a day behind). Its possible that your business/company is dependent on information from hourly reporting in realtime, and if that's the case you should probably augment GA with some other paid service or roll your own BI internally.

<comment><USER3> I think it is a bit weird (and points to a fairly serious lack of 'Chinese walls') that google would change the behavior of their analytics package based on your account for a completely unrelated offering.

I see adwords, adsense and analytics (as well as search) as unrelated offerings by google.

<comment><USER2> Analytics has always been tied to AdWords. There used to be a page-view-per- month hard cap that could be removed by linking to an active (spending $) AdWords account. AdWords integration is also pushed pretty heavily in the GA training material, and even in the certification exam. In the real world, there are quite a lot of people whose only experience with GA is optimizing CPC campaigns. Personally, I've never used it for that purpose, but Google pushes them as a bundle.

<comment><USER5> That's curious, because I was just at a talk by Alma Whitten who said that Google didn't use any of the GA data for profiling or ad-related stuff, and simply provided it as a service. Did I misunderstand her, or, possibly, you?

<comment><USER6> Alma Whitten might be uninformed. (Was this talk recorded? Do you have a link to it?) There are some options in the account UI that, if enabled, allow Google to do some analysis of your data.

Link directly to their help center: [http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...](http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=87515)

<comment><USER5> Ooh, okay, I think I see where the misunderstanding is: I was asking Alma (in questioning time at a talk at the IFIP/PrimeLife summer school ( <http://www.cs.kau.se/IFIP-summerschool/program.html> ), which was unfortunately not recorded) about website users' information, not the data of the website itself. Though it's a pretty fine line there, isn't it!

I told her that I blocked google analytics because I didn't want it to find out things about me for advertising etc. She responded saying that Google doesn't do that, but now that I think about it she was probably saying that Google doesn't profile _me specifically_ , nothing about anonymised data... yeah, now I'm not so sure. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I designed and built high-end web analytics software for years.

Sampling your data by visitor/cookie (not by page view) is the number one thing to do that that no one does. Just sample your data down by a factor of 10 or 100. The costs drop by a factor of 10 or 100, query speeds improve, and the business value of the data drops by very, very little.

The only unfortunate prerequisite for this approach is that you need a company/boss that understands that sampled numbers are OK even if they are not exact. (So, explain, if you must, that your industry insider source tells you that the notion of 'exact' in web analytics world is very loose indeed.)

<comment><USER8> Yep. For queries with large volumes of data, Analytics does do sampling and gives you error margins (+/- x%) next to each number. I found that having these margins helps convince higher ups that it's OK, and also tells me when it's not OK and have to dig a bit more.

<comment><USER6> I think drosenthal is talking about sampling the number of hits you send to analytics. GA's tracking api supports this:

[http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/gaJS/gaJSApiBasic...](http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/gaJS/gaJSApiBasicConfiguration.html#_gat.GA_Tracker_._setSampleRate)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've run into problems with hitting a number of limits on Analytics as well and still have no good solution.

A couple of solutions I'm aware of:

1) Omniture Site Catalyst: A lot of big sites use this but it will cost you dearly. My site runs about 85mm pvs/month and they quoted me close to a million dollars a year at those traffic levels! I didn't even bother negotiating it down, even the negotiated price would still have been way more than I'm willing to pay.

2) Urchin: I don't know how similar/dissimilar Urchin is from Analytics, but the Urchin 6 software runs about $3k. This option could prove labor intensive since you would effectively be running and logging your own metrics on your own server. So the actual costs could go up (wrt to time, equipment, etc.)

There are plenty of smaller players in this space, but the problem that always comes up is, "Will these guys be around in a year?". When looking for an business solution, it's nice to know that your data won't up and disappear should the company go bankrupt.

I do wish Google would provide a paid service for those of us that could use it and would pay for it. I'm already using Google Doubleclick for Publishers for ad serving (which costs money), you'd think they'd also want to expand their other complementary offerings (like metrics).

<comment><USER10> Other services I've seen that seem to not fall into that "smaller players" category: Coremetrics, Webtrends, Unica, OneStat, and Clicky. I've worked with all of these (and some smaller players too), and I must say that for the value, you really can't beat Google Analytics. Even Omniture will have some times when the data is not available right away; especially as you start doing some more complex things with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Show off on Hacker News?

On that theme does anybody know what the maximum limit of money is before your bank account crashes? (or you have to start buying hotels instead of houses)? :-)

<comment><USER12> I once tried to deposit enough money in my bank account to cause a buffer overflow. I could never get the shell code to exec though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Buy Urchin and run it yourself -- it's virtually identical to Google Analytics (or at least used to be) because it's the company that Google acquired to make GA.

Avoid Omniture SC. It has a terrible interface, is too expensive, harder than GA to implement, and Omniture doesn't seem to be improving it much, if at all anymore.

</comment><comment> loup-vaillant Do not use it?

More seriously, what Google Analytics does that you can't do yourself when you have complete access to the logs of your web site?

<comment><USER14> The reason that Google is choking on this 30M pageview/month site is because analytics for a 30M pageview/month site is _hard_.

Things like unique visitor, unique referer, unique whatever tracking just explode when you have to compare each IP address you get with 20M-entry list.

If you try to do it on your webserver, you'll have a 3 hour window each day where a significant portion of your CPU and Memory is not available for serving web traffic. If you try to do it elsewhere, you get to ship 20gb daily logfiles around.

It's just not any fun. Which is why even _Google_ has difficulty with it.

Running your own analytics is great for relatively small sites. For big ones it starts to bog down once you hit a certain size.

<comment><USER6> Most stats providers compute unique visitors using client-side cookies; not entirely accurate, but quite cheap. You're right though, it's a lot easier to use an existing (and free or nearly free) tool than to build your own.

<comment> loup-vaillant I agree it's a lot easier. But Google Analytics has a drawback I can't accept: several sites I visited make me process scripts from Analitycs, and that takes a noticeable amount of time and bandwidth. When someone visits my site, she's giving me her time. I'd rather not waste it.

That, and the fact that I prefer to process my logs on my computers. As a matter of principle (decentralization, privacy, freedom, blah blah).

Now, I barely know Analytics. But it looks cool, so I'll check, and see if I can reap most of their benefits myself. (If I can't, I'll have a tough choice indeed.)

<comment><USER6> Yep, GA used to have the occasional problem with that, though I've been told some of it was due to a bug in the browser (Firefox's) code that decided what to put in the "Waiting for xyz..." spot -- if that's what you're referring to.

(Something about that bar not being updated until the first byte of the stream was read -- so if a static.foo.com was hanging connections, it would get stuck blaming whatever loaded right before it.)

GA now has asynchronous tracking though, which solves this pretty nicely. Though I'm not a JS guy, my understanding of it is that instead of sourcing the script and then issuing the tracking calls, you put some instructions into a global variable, and then source the script. Nothing blocks on the script's loading, so even if GA is down the rest of the page is supposed to load correctly. Once the GA script loads, it looks at the global and runs the tracking commands.

<comment> loup-vaillant I do use Firefox, so I probably hit that bug. Also, with NoScript, forbidding GA causes no problem.

But still, I would have liked the analysis process to be completely invisible from the client.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> We do not want Google to know the true size of our service, so we have analytics code in every 5th pageview (when templates are constructed by scripts, it inserts the analytics code only when the UNIX time is divisible by 5.

<comment><USER16> though that would skew the referrals and other metrics wouldn't it?

<comment><USER17> If your numbers are large enough, no. As long as the selection isn't biased, it doesn't matter.

Another commenter on this topic has a good post about convincing management of the validity of sampled metrics, I'd read it then tip your chair back and stare at the ceiling for a while.</comment></comment></comment>


Fedora 21 will use Wayland as its default display server - <AUTHOR> https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel/2014-May/199045.html

<comment><USER2> I wasn't paying attention; is there somewhere with a quick summary of how to operate in the new world in the midst of the old world? I tunnel X clients across ssh a lot. Apparently there is a Wayland client that acts as an X server, which may satisfy my uses.</comment>


Boston Dynamics Spot mini dancing - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHBcVlqpvZ8 <comment><USER2> I'm going to be somewhat surprised if the US doesn't already have synchronized, camo-Kevlar-coated, M249-equipped squads of these little guys running around the Middle East already.

</comment><comment><USER3> can't wait to purchase this dog that does not take a shit, does not require to be fed and can dance as long as the battery is full.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think this is the first time in history a robot has twerked. A great milestone.

</comment><comment><USER5> video spliced at 0:57, you would expect a Robot performing pre programmed moves to be pretty repeatable, especially when operated by manufacturer, in perfect lab conditions

</comment><comment><USER6> is this dog moonwalking?</comment>


CISSP certification:Are multiple choice tests the best way to hire infosec pros? - jor-el http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/07/cissp-certification-how-to-hire-infosec-pros/ <comment><AUTHOR> The CISSP was never intended to be a technical cert. It's for managers, to certify that in the week before the test they learned what most of the words mean by cramming (and then likely forgot half of them). The funniest part to me is that I've never met anyone who thought it was actually a good measure of security knowledge, and yet it's widely acknowledged as the benchmark for being a security professional.

It's also a great example of the network effect; it's only valuable because lots of people have one. Therefore, you can use it as part of the HR screen and still get some people through to interview.

<comment><USER2> > The funniest part to me is that I've never met anyone who thought it was > actually a good measure of security knowledge

I've met CISSP qualified managers who think it's amazing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I feel the best analogy for CISSP is 'an mile wide and an inch deep'. I was under the impression it was a baseline certification to filter out those who don't know the basics.

</comment><comment><USER4> No.

</comment><comment><USER5> No.</comment>


Evite sells your info (and your friends info) - <AUTHOR> http://www.oracle.com/webfolder/assets/cloud-data-directory/index.html#/page/61 <comment><USER2> Maybe by now the question is: who doesn't?

<comment><USER3> Agreed, given that it's a free service (last I know) they obviously make money somewhere. Pretty easy to construct a profile of someone based on their invite contents...</comment></comment>


The Company Behind The Biggest Consumer Brands - <AUTHOR> http://timgaweco.com/pg

<comment><USER2> Consumer product companies sort of foreshadowed what happened to food (+), is happening to clothes, and will probably eventually happen to everything physical. The fundamental product (soap, razor blades, etc) is _done_. It works, involves no novel technology, and can be created at infintessimal marginal cost by any player in the industry. (Try to guess what the price of the soap in a bar of soap is. If your answer is expressable in whole cents, you are incorrect.) This suggests that prices would crater except that _branding works_ : there is no discernable difference in any product in the hand soap aisle, so they spend _tremendous_ amounts of money on advertising, over years, because they know that stamping that dove on the bar will dominate your purchasing decision years later.

I'm well aware of this, and I'm 30, and I haven't shopped for a bar of soap in America for 10 years. Ruriko and I were at a Walgreens on our honeymoon and needed to buy one. I immediately started looking for Dove and, when asked if I needed help, said "Try to find the white/yellow box with the bird on it -- that is the best one" before conscious thought intervened and said "Well, honestly, every box on these shelves is identical, but the difference in prices between $2.69 and $0.89 is so miniscule for the average shopper that they'll mentally respond to marketing like I just did."

\+ The e.g. tomato or pasta sauce is solved, cheaper than it has ever been, and (seasonal fluctuations nonwithstanding) will only get cheaper over time. It is an observable fact that, for any particular basket of food, we pay less than our parents did. This is discomfiting to people trying to sell us food. Most discussion of food in America is values signaling. (e.g. "Don't eat that, it's not healthy/environmentally sustainable/organic/etc" is, to a first approximation, likely as relevant as the color of your bar of soap.)

Clothes are trending in this direction, too. Have you heard "You should buy X, X is quality, X' was probably created in a Chinese sweatshop?" Horsepuckey, everything is created in Chinese factories now, by the same people, from the same materials, _using functionally the same designs_. The only distinction is the name on the label. (This is why clothing brands are in an epic battle with counterfitters, because if it weren't for criminal penalties for bringing fake Gucci bags into the country fake Guccis would be _absolutely indistinguishable from the genuine article_. They're like fake diamonds. You know what a fake diamond is, these days? It is _a diamond_ which did not begin life owned by the right people.)

<comment> olog-hai I think you're overstating the case. I found that Ivory soap dries out my skin, while Dove doesn't. The store brand single-blade disposable razors at Duane Reade tend to get badly clogged with hair, while Bic's version doesn't clog at all. The wooden spoon from the 99¢ store snapped in half after a few months of use. It's still true that you get what you pay for.

<comment><USER3> I agree. But it's often a little more subtle. Here in the UK, most major supermarket chains have "own-brand" lines of major product lines; everything from bread to plastic bags. The "own-brand" products are produced in the same factories as one of the branded products (it would make very little sense to anything else), but corners are often cut elsewhere. Own-brand pizzas have skimpier and lower-quality toppings, sliced bread is poorly mixed, paper towels have fewer plies, etc. On the other hand, some products, like whole milk, are harder to cut corners on, and others, like various area cheeses etc., are unique and the product of choice is simply the one who's taste you prefer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just to add some points/clarity.

The industry being discussed is called FMCG, abr. of Fast Moving Consumer Goods.

FMCG industry is characterised by few major players, controlling most of the market leading brands.

Such control is achieved through (1) marketing, (2) distribution and (3) mergers and acquisitions (M&A).

The simplified explanation:-

1\. Marketing.

To win the consumer market, the brands shall win over the general population by delivering brand message/advertising through channels that reach the most of the population. Last 10-15 years such channel was TV. TV advertising is very expensive.

The cost of launching new brand varies (country, market, etc) from $ 3-5M (small brand, one country) to several hundred $M (global launch, major market, etc).

To maintain the market share, brand ad spending shall more or less match such spending of the competing brands.

The annual marketing budget of FMCG company can reach 15%-20% of revenue, with appr. half going to TV.

So a company with annual sales of $10B would spent annually on marketing $1-1.5B. As a specific example, 10 years ago Coca-Cola was spending on marketing in excess of $1B.

Therefore, new entrants/smaller companies can not match such spending either for new launches or for sustaining the market share for their own brands.

2\. Distribution.

Most of the big players, like P&G, Coke, Pepsi, etc do direct sales/delivery and own fleet of vehicles to deliver goods to both chains and individual stores. Such fleet may cost tens of millions of $. Without such fleet in place [and existing relationships/clout with retail], new entrants can not ensure proper distribution/availability of their products. So even if they find money to spend on marketing campaign, when the customers will go to stores, they will not find the advertised brands and will buy what's available.

3\. M & A.

Those companies/brands that find a way to break in through

\- clever strategy

\- by playing in new and emerging market segments (Gatorade, etc)

\- catching a trend (BodyShop, etc)

are acquired by Big Co after they become clear winner and catch with consumers, but before they reach critical mass.

<comment><USER4> I did not delve into private labels, pricing matters, retail strategy and pricing, P/E and other bits, since the above is key and post was getting lengthy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not trying to be a troll but the thing that jumped out at me was the P/E listed for P&G and my mind immediately compared it to the FB P/E at the IPO.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, it's the norm for most tech companies to have high P/Es. It doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad investment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Another company in this sector not mentioned in the article is Reckitt Benckiser:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reckitt_Benckiser></comment>


Moto X review - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2013/08/05/motorola-moto-x-review/ <comment><USER3> Quick aside: This is a really well-written article in and of itself. Joseph Volpe seems like an actually-great writer, and it was refreshing to see some tech journalism that feels like old-school journalism.

It's not all bad out there, but as the lines between "writing" and "blogging a scoop to get page views" blurs further every day, it's nice to see some people still care about the writing itself.

</comment><comment><USER4> I cannot comprehend why they did not put this through the Nexus branding (of course with slightly adjusted specs and price). Instead of having one true Google line-up they segment even further away with this purified Google-ish Motorola phone, the Nexus line-up and already existing phones of other brands with stock Android (Google Play editions?).

Where is this heading?

<comment><USER5> Google is trying to spread the unmodified Android UX through at least three tiers of branding: Nexus, Google Play Edition, and normal Google-logo branding, but with a greater emphasis on a standard UX.

I think they could have done better. While the UX issue is annoying, the killer issue for enterprise deployments is timeliness of security updates. They could have had a pledge with incentives that would result in update SLAs with OEMs. Then customers could count on getting updates within a certain interval.

The Google Play Editions have announced updates, right after Nexus got their's, so that's something. But even outside the Google Play store, I would like to see some kind of formal commitment from OEMs. I have been pretty happy with ASUS for updating, but their schedules seem to slip.

<comment><USER4> Every manufacturer slips when they release new top segment hardware. The real problem is Android being too free in terms of support. Google should have set requirements for distributors regarding updates. But then again Android wouldn't have grown this fast this big if they did. Now they try to fix the segmentation with mentioned line ups and work arounds (Google Play Services or something, releasing new core features as installable applications) but I doubt they will ever fix the core problems completley as it makes Android as what it is.

<comment><USER5> > _Google should have set requirements for distributors regarding updates._

Google could have done that as a condition of getting the proprietary apps and Google logo while maintaining unconditional openness in AOSP. And while you are right that they might not have had that leverage in the first year of Android as a commercial product, they could surely have started before now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Too bad the Droid line of phones with physical keyboards is dead. For those of us who write long paragraphs of text for work or need to ssh into a server, it's a big loss...

<comment><USER3> I'm really surprised that there aren't more options on this front. I feel like every day I talk to a non-tech friend who, despite the sinking business ship that is RIM, _really_ loves (or loved & misses) their BlackBerry.

And every. single. time. I ask them why, it's about the keyboard and only the keyboard. There is a solid contingent of people who just don't like touch keyboards and there's very little anyone is going to do to convince them or train them otherwise. Which is fine.

Apple's clearly a lost cause, but it seems to me that a well-designed, BlackBerry'esque piece of hardware (with a physical keyboard) running and properly mated to a smaller-screen Android OS would do quite well.

<comment><USER7> Have you seen BlackBerry 10? Even as an Android dev, it's my daily driver.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Joshua Topolsky's review on the Verge [[http://www.theverge.com/2013/8/5/4588922/moto-x- review](http://www.theverge.com/2013/8/5/4588922/moto-x-review)] seems to contradict the battery life claim:

> "Motorola could have built a monster of longevity like the RAZR Maxx — and > it should have — but it didn't. It definitely gets a full day of use: I used > it heavily for 15 hours before it died, and if you use it like most people > use their phones, you won't need to charge it during the day. It lasted for > 7 hours, 14 minutes on the Verge Battery Test, which loads popular websites > and high-res images with brightness at 65 percent; that's a very good score, > far better than the HTC One and the GS4, but well below class leaders like > the Maxx or the Galaxy Note II."

But personally, the biggest deal-breaker is this:

> "But there's a catch. The touchless controls are rendered nearly useless if > you have any kind of security lock on your phone. You can still use it to > make calls, but everything else requires that you unlock your phone, which > requires that you pick it up and interact with it… meaning you just defeated > the whole idea of "touchless controls."

That said, I'm very curious about the sensors they've included, and can't wait for Anandtech's breakdown.

<comment><USER9> Would it be possible to have voice verification when saying "Ok Google Now"?

<comment><USER10> It would be trivial for someone to record you saying it without your knowledge, to unlock your phone at a later date.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What sensors does it have? There doesn't seem to be a list anywhere on the spec sheets from Motorola. I'm especially curious if it has a barometer - <USER2> anyone know?

<comment><USER12> Just out of curiosity, what's your use case for the barometer? How accurate is a typical smartphone barometer?

<comment><USER13> [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cryptoz](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cryptoz)

<comment><USER12> Heh, that answers that. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I find it odd that they are pushing the, assembled with you, aspect but only one US carrier actually supports this feature (at this time).

Maybe I'm confused, but isn't this just a stylized cover plate? Similar to what is on offer at all the kiosks at various malls?

<comment><USER15> The cover is not replaceable, so once youve made the design, thats it.

(you could still get a case that covers the back i spose)

<comment><USER16> They seem to be suggesting that you've got two weeks to change your mind and return it for a different style, though I don't know how many times you can do that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> A lot of bla-bla, but missing the two most important questions:

\- Is it possible to remove/exchange the battery. This is a requirement for a business cell phone, as its usual that everybody is removing his battery on every phone, when talking real business. Having more then one battery is also a requirement for some games, e.g. Ingress.

\- Is it possible to exchange the Linux kernel. Motorola has the bad habit to publish the kernel source to follow GPL by word, but lock the kernel boot loader and prevent freedom by meaning. In result every Motorola phone has kernel bugs with known exploits, and every Motorola phone is ready for trashcan just after unpacking from security point of view.

<comment><USER18> Wow, those questions don't sound interesting to me at all. I'm sure they aren't interesting to 99% of the cell phone market.

<comment><USER19> Why do you say that? Being able to change the batteries is extremely useful for many people in countries were you check it out before buying a new phone.

Having security issues is very important for all the business market, and because of them the device might not be allowed in the business phones fleet.

<comment><USER18> I live in one of those countries...the battery is not the problem, otherwise they wouldn't sell so many iPhones here.

Putting a custom Linux kernel on your phone probably won't convince your IT manager one way or the other to let your phone on the network.

<comment><USER19> If I were in charge of security in a company handling sensitive data I would consider enforcing that all connected devices run a stable and open source os with root access and would add a special app checking for odds and phoning home regularly.

<comment><USER18> That would be a nice ideal, but that hardly represents the real world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The benchmarks are impressive considering its older architecture. Combined with the fantastic battery life and novel features, this may be the Android phone to buy. I'm not exactly sure why Engadget concluded that it isn't worth $200.

<comment><USER21> That's $200 on contract, an important distinction for some of us.

But the battery life is definitely one of the killer features of this phone. If you want good specs, without paying a lot, there is the very nice Nexus 4 (likely due for a refresh soon), but that phone in its current incarnation certainly can't boast great battery life.

<comment><USER22> I've seen people claim that the Nexus 4 has bad battery life, and just don't understand it. I charge my Nexus 4 roughly every other day. And not because it runs out of charge at that point, but because I don't like to have the battery go much under about 40% or so. In my normal usage, the battery would easily last at least 3 days. (I've got a screenshot of the battery being at 25% after 4 days since last recharge).

My use case is roughly:

\- About half an hour of screen on per day, mostly web browsing

\- About 2h of audio playback per day

\- About 3-4h on HSPA every day, on WiFi for the rest of the day

\- Several kinds of automatic syncing going on (for example all default Google services, Google Now enabled, automated podcast polling + downloads)

Now, that might not be the heaviest workload in the world. But it's certainly realistic, and at least compared to any other Android phones I've used the battery life is nothing short of amazing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I wish people would elaborate more on the 'always on' access to Google Now. To me, that's the most exciting, futuristic feature, since Google Now is already an amazing product.

Perhaps not enough people use Google Now to care?

</comment><comment><USER24> engadget and theverge seem to have fairly different impressions on battery life. Hoping anandtech will clarify. "mid-range" is not a bad word, and I'm willing to support locally assembled products.

<comment><USER25> Midrange isn't a bad word, but a midrange phone at high-end prices is a bit of a turn off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Battery life alone makes this best phone on the market at the moment.

<comment><USER4> Except that a phone is more than its battery alone.

<comment><USER27> You're right. If the battery's dead all the time, it can also be a paper weight!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It's funny, all this advertising...

They report and store everything their devices hear, now they're telling us that the devices are ALWAYS LISTENING.

</comment><comment><USER29> when you think; for $199 you can buy a HTC one and flash an AOSP ROM vs pay the same for MotoX. I would go with HTC One every time.

<comment><USER30> I agreed with you at first, the day they announced the Moto X. But now all the head-to-head comparisons are showing the X to perform either on-par with, or better than, the HTC One. Plus the X is a smaller form factor for the same physical screen size (since it doesn't have the two front-facing speakers of the One which I don't need). And it supposedly has better battery life, likely in part due to having less pixels to power (which again I don't need) and two less cores (which I obviously don't need if it performs the same or better for all practical usage). In short, I'm now leaning back toward the Moto X developer edition, which will have an unlockable bootloader.

EDIT: I should mention, the benchmarks I'm referring to are these:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmO5LeWUEeM&feature=youtube_...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmO5LeWUEeM&feature=youtube_gdata_player)

[http://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/smartphones/motorola- moto-x...](http://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/smartphones/motorola-moto-x.aspx)

And I swear I saw one with Sunspider et. al. benchmarks that more or less contradicted the benchmarks in this article.</comment></comment>


Quora Launches Blogging Platform - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/23/quora-launches-blogging-platform-with-mobile-text-editor-to-give-every-author-a-built-in-audience/ <comment><USER2> Suprised to find I can access blogs without signing in. I used to enjoy Quora. I would browse, then sign in and comment when I felt I had something relevant to add. Unfortunately the forced login to view content and Quora automatically posting recently read articles onto Facebook made me stop visiting.

These blogs won't draw me back. Many topics have aggregators you can submit you blog to. I would imagine building a readership on Quora will be no easier than running a self hosted blog.

<comment><USER3> This. Quora is probably the single most invasive site I have ever visited, short of something engineered with literally malicious intent. I will probably never significantly engage with it for this very reason.

I am incredibly wary of even clicking a Quora link, and when I do it's typically from within the context of an incognito browsing session.

edited : It's a shame, because the _content_ itself can be quite good. I have simply lost confidence in the site, as I do not believe they respect my privacy one iota.

<comment><USER4> Really don't get all the Quora hate on HN. I usually agree with HN on things but on this I'm the polar opposite. I love Quora (and HN).

<comment><USER5> "Really don't get all the Quora hate on HN."

I'm not sure what's hard to get exactly. How would you like it if Google forced you to sign in to search and then one day told the whole world what you were searching for? Yes they backtracked on the latter but it's fucking ridiculous that it would have even went live in the first place. It makes me never want to sign in to Quora again. And since you can't even browse the site effectively without signing in, the whole thing is useless.

<comment><USER4> Every platform has things about it which are not perfect and every startup makes mistakes. Many on HN seem to be either completely unaware of or purposely ignore all of the other amazing things about Quora, and that's a shame.

<comment><USER6> The founders are ex-Facebook, they know what kinds of features they're making before they launch them. I wouldn't be so quick to allow them the garage- startup space to make these kinds of mistakes. Consider the source, fruit of the tree, and all that.

<comment><USER4> Agreed.

Like Facebook, it's a great product created by people who have made some questionable privacy decisions. However whenever Facebook is discussed on HN 95% of the comments are not negative.

I'm not saying Quora is perfect and above criticism, but there are a lot of great things about it and its not so bad as to warrant the extreme and near- absolute criticism it gets on HN.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _> Quora's new blogging tools will appeal to two demographics. The first are people without any web celebrity already. Quora's Kah Keng Tay writes that Quora blogs suit people who "(1) don't have a big, established online presence already and (2) don't want to do the time-intensive, heavy lifting of marketing their blog and slowly building an audience._

It's a double edged sword, since (1) might accelerate your path to internet stardom by a little bit, but by taking (2), you lose the control and a large part of the benefit that comes from achieving internet stardom (if that's you thing) in the first place.

If you are looking for marketing enhancers for your online blogging, you're usually at least partly considering some ends beyond increasing eyeballs (affiliate ads, consulting leads, ebook sales, etc.) [1]. Using Quora as your primary platform puts a damper on the output of these 'ends', and using it as a secondary "Crosspost" location fragments your audience and increases your labor overhead anyways.

Addendum: Benefit (2) is largely moot since its upfront cost reduction for a blogger is not going to be significantly larger than Tumblr, if at all.

[1] If you weren't at least considering these things, then you'd probably be happy staying on your own domain.

<comment><USER8> I saw quite a few consultants or e.g. lawyers already post on quora to establish themselves as experts in their field. I could imagine that this is interesting for them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Oh great, will I have to log in to read blog entries beyond the first one?

<comment><USER10> No

<comment><USER11> Not until they build enough traction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Quora really needs to fix this.

I just launched my blog at <http://ececconi.quora.com> and then opened up an incognito window on Chrome. Navigating to the site took me to the Quora signup homepage. I have to enter in the address again into the bar and press enter to navigate to the blog.

One of the things I dislike most about Quora is how the website obscures the content in attempt to get more people to sign up for it.

<comment><USER13> <http://ghost.quora.com/Why-we-ask-people-to-sign-in>

<comment><USER14> As an early user, I started contributing _less_ when I realized this was happening. Why should I contribute to something that's not going to be accessible by non-users?

Wikipedia didn't need to wall off content to grow. Nor did stackoverflow, everything2, urbandictionary, and basically every user-generated content site since expert sexchange.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Quora hate aside, given the supposed reasoning behind this,

 _The Internet is full of experts with no one reading their insights. It takes a lot of work to build a following. So today Quora launches a blogging platform that automatically distributes posts to its Q &A site users who follow related topics. Thanks to its upvote system, home page feed, and a new mobile text editor, anyone with something brilliant to blog, even first- timers, can find a readership._

I guess it's too bad Quora didn't pickup Posterous.

</comment><comment><USER16> So, how do I create my blog on Quora? Or is it invite only?

Edit: Create your blog here: <http://www.quora.com/blog/add>

Edit 2: Won't be using this. I can't write code snippets using a monospace font. What gives?

<http://sergiotapia.quora.com/adsf>

<comment><USER17> You can write code blocks using the [code] tag.

E.g.

[code]

Multiline

code

[/code]

OR

This is some inline code: [code] /usr/bin/xyz [/code]

<comment><USER10> Also, it supports syntax highlighting using [code=language]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I am kind of disappointed that you cannot use LaTeX math in the entries. On quora it JUSTWORKED so I was hoping that it would work on their blogging platform but nope: $\sin\theta$ just sits there in its dollar signs...

Feature request: math support.

<comment><USER17> Have you tried using:

[math] \sin \theta [/math]

(instead of $)

<comment><USER18> Thx. It works, though the line height seems kind of weird.

<http://topicmodels.quora.com/Test-post>

Still kind of cool to create a blog in two clicks ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This seems like quite an interesting development. Isn't this method of 'blogging' something similar to whatMedium is doing? I wonder if they'll start allowing anyone to post ahead of schedule.

</comment><comment><USER20> The blog layout didn't have to exactly copy the default Wordpress layout. But the ease of use is awesome in terms of selecting topics to write about, showing the count of people following that topic. Quora would be a much more frequented place with blogs being visible without signing up.

</comment><comment><USER21> <http://wordpress.org/></comment>


Show HN: Really Simple Tasks with Baqqer - <AUTHOR> https://baqqer.com/posts/1529 <comment><AUTHOR> We just added simple task tracking for team projects on Baqqer. It's basically a no-nonsense todo list to help a project keep moving forward. Let us know what you think. :)</comment>


V/STOL Wheel – Aircraft and Propulsion Concepts - <AUTHOR> https://vertipedia.vtol.org/vstol/wheel.htm <comment><USER2> Missing tail-sitting rotor wing aircraft: very few components that aren't used in both modes of flight.

Thor: [http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/drones/thor- tran...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/drones/thor-transformer- drone-hovers-and-cruises-with-no-compromises)

</comment><comment><USER3> They left out the recent DARPA idea of helicopter-style blades that retract into a disk-like wing.

They left out designs that transition rapidly and automatically, without sustained hover. For example, an aircraft with a pair of thrust-vectoring engines could be equipped with a nose gear that tosses the front upward, allowing an automated takeoff. (too fast to be done manually) Landing could be similar, with a long and heavy-duty node gear that can take a bit of shock. Another approach is a solid-fuel rocket, again just enough to support the nose.

</comment><comment><USER4> Shouldn't the falcon 9 be included?

<comment><USER5> While F9 is really awesome, it is not an aircraft ^^

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Am I the only one who thinks the X-32 got shafted in the JSF project? It's a pretty good example of keeping a design simple.

<comment><USER7> No, I thought it was a good looking plane. Too bad they changed up the requirements so late in the selection process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Oh man so cool, there are great footages on YoyTube under Nasa Dryden I think. Like old research videos on flat spins, aeroelasticity, one these was in there the Vertol 76 that's a cool video that bubble canopy and those twin rotors.

</comment><comment><USER9> This seems to be old; the X-35B is now F-35B: [https://www.f35.com/about/variants/f35b](https://www.f35.com/about/variants/f35b)

</comment><comment><USER8> Do cyclorotors count or no

Also the jet engine stand that they tilt forward and they cruise around on single man. It looks like a flying podium haha.

What about jet-tip helicopters or fall under helicopters too yeah

</comment><comment><USER10> Missing the Lilium Jet and the XTI TriFan 600.

</comment><comment><USER4> Many of these become very viable with the advent of electric aircraft. Tailsitters being the simplest.

<comment><USER11> Why would electric power make any of these more viable? All the battery technology we presently have has worse energy density than av gas or jet fuel.

<comment><USER4> The main thing is a small electric motor can provide a lot of power. It's difficult to provision a gas powered aircraft with an engine powerful enough for vtol but it's not a big deal for an electric.

<comment><USER11> Aren't all commercially available, and military grade, VTOL aircraft either liquid hydrocarbon powered or rockets? I'm not aware of any electric powered aircraft in the same markets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's an interesting alternative to visualization of tree-based hierarchies

</comment><comment><USER4> How about a gyrocopter or is that not a short takeoff?

<comment><USER6> Most are not especially short takeoff but many can pretty much land vertically</comment></comment>


Team Fortress 2 source code has leaked - <AUTHOR> https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/team-fortress-2-source-code-has-leaked-and-you-can-apparently-get-malware-by-playing <comment><USER2> What is up with the strange sensationalist claims in the article on and Twitter? Source code availability is not a prerequisite to people finding vulnerabilities or RCE exploits in games, there are many established games with open source game clients. Security researchers routinely reverse engineer proprietary software.

Bizarre.

<comment><USER3> Source code availability makes it a lot easier to find vulnerabilities. Open source code is much more likely to already have been audited better. Closed source code often depends more heavily on security by obscurity, and unexpected source release can definitely make vulnerabilities immediately apparent that weren't known prior.

<comment><USER4> > Open source code is much more likely to already have been audited better.

Common wisdom. I just happens to not be true. People just aren't auditing random code on github for fun. Auditing code is hard, and time consuming. Most vulnerabilities are found by techniques like fuzzing, not by combing through thousands of lines of code.

<comment><USER5> > People just aren't auditing random code on github for fun

No, just the important code that everyone is running.

<comment><USER6> Afaik it had the opposite effect for OpenSSL. Not only was the code so bad that it would crash if ran with a secure malloc implementation. Due to being free and open source nobody felt the need to donate[1], with only one developer employed to work on it full time.

[1] [https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2014/04/tech-...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2014/04/tech-giants-chastened-by-heartbleed-finally-agree-to-fund- openssl/)

<comment><USER5> Well. eventually someone looked at it. And probably Heartbleed has been used a long time before it was published.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The leak also includes most of something called F-STOP, a cancelled Portal project, that apparently looks like Superliminal: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/eebagv/gameplay_of_a...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/eebagv/gameplay_of_aperture_camera_fstop_valves/)

<comment><USER8> The F-STOP included in this leak, from my understanding, isn't Valve's prototype. It's just in-development fan-made game to try and replicate Valve's unreleased prototype.

<comment><USER9> Strong evidence that this is fan-made: there is Cave Johnson dialogue in the video [0]. F-STOP significantly predates Portal 2 and I presume the Cave Johnson character as well.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HboQWe3FYbg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HboQWe3FYbg)

<comment><USER10> Cave Johnsons name was referenced in portal 1. It could be they already had the character idea in mind

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Cheats and hacks were already bad enough, I imagine this won't help :( Darn, one of the most fun games I like to play.

Sadly, OSX Catalina killed the game for Mac users because Apple recognized the extreme demand by casual users to break all their old 32bit applications.

<comment><USER12> I literally just downloaded Steam on the mac to show my boys Team Fortress only to be met by this sad news :(

I really hope something like TF2 resurfaces in some form again. I never liked the feel of Fortnite.

<comment><USER13> You should check out Overwatch, which I consider to be TF3. They reimplemented many characters 1:1 including soldier (pharah), medic (mercy), demo (junkrat), engi (torj), as well as the 2 point capture and pushthecart modes.

Valorant, a beta game from Riot, is then a blend of overwatch + csgo, making it closer to tf2 6s.

<comment><USER14> The person you're replying to said he was disappointed to find that MacOS Catalina can't run TF2. Why recommend a game that won't run on any version of MacOS?

<comment><USER15> > I really hope something like TF2 resurfaces in some form again. I never > liked the feel of Fortnite.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Maybe they should just embrace it and open source the code (without giving away the trademarks). The community is pretty engaged, so I bet it would be a boon for both security and modding.

<comment><USER17> I don't know what this contains, but many times games cannot be open sourced because they use libraries that would have to be removed before they could open source it.

<comment><USER18> I've heard this a few times as well, but couldn't the game still be open- sources just without those libaries?

And anyone who wants to compile it, needs a licence for those libaries, which in many times is free for noncomercial purposes, or students. Btw. what expensive libaries do exist in that area anyway?

<comment><USER19> So I've been involved in this sort of process before. IANAL but the answer likely yes, but it is complicated.

So, firstly IP rights may not be your only encumbrances, NDA's can be even more restrictive, since leaking information about a library may be covered, for instance.

Additionally, the IP of the game code itself may be encumbered, for instance with publisher agreements, or if your code is derivative, source for instance may still be considered partially derived from id code, which zenimax, or maybe some other party may own, and getting those rights may be difficult, (even if some large percentage may be released in the GPL'd id codebases) And if your core engine is IP encumbered, that may not be something you could "just release without"

So then someone is going to have to actually do the work of separating out all the third-party libraries, which may not be trivial depending on how many, and how well separated they are.

Then at any reasonably risk-averse company, somebody is going to have to do an audit, which could be a lot of work.

And then we might not just have other people's files to remove, while it may not be an copyright violation to reference API calls of a copyright work (I'm honestly not sure) It sure could be an NDA violation depending on the NDA. Not to mention code that may be derived from library samples. So you either have to cut out all of that code, or rework it to just not be in violation.

And lastly, most companies care enough about their reputation to not want to just dump a large pile of broken code in the wild (Maybe it'd be better if they would) but want to make sure it builds and runs. So once you've removed all those other bits, it may be a lot of work to just get everything building, or running again. And not to mention that asides from just IP issues, a lot of the build system may depend on local infrastructure, perhaps connecting to local databases, or cache servers, so you will want to make it work without that, and we also have to ensure no secrets are accidentally being divulged (maybe signing keys, or credentials to servers)

As I understand it, Valve licenses Havok, which they possibly use for any and all collision (or maybe just rigid-body stuff, who knows) and if so, even if you get the game running you may fall through the world, or perhaps not be able to move at all, which is hardly the TF2 we all want open-sourced. And that's just one possible library, maybe they use RAD Granny to do animation, etc.

Or if you want to allow people to buy the licenses to compile it, you still have to do almost all of the above, then setup the infrastructure to download the correct version, and set it up for builds, and that only works if they didn't make any internal modifications, or maybe they can setup a patch file that doesn't violate any copyrights, but that's also work. And that also implies that the company the libraries are licensed from still exists and is still selling, and still offers the old versions the game is built with. And now you have to release the engine under a license that's compatible with the third-party licenses, which given the precedent of using GPL that adds some extra complications.

So, yeah, there is a good chance it's possible but there is a varying amount of work, which is most likely at least a lot.

As for libraries that exist in that area, of the top of my head some examples:

* Havok/PhysX, physics library

* FMod/WWise, audio libraries

* Natural Motion, animation libraries

* Everything that RAD Game Tools offers, including audio/video codecs, compressors, animation libraries.

* Scaleform, animation libraries

* SpeedTree, tree modelling libraries

* Enlighten, lighting (global illumination) libraries

* Platform specific libraries

* NDA encumbered IHV libraries

Keep in mind, some of these are expensive, but some are more dependent on a corporate relationship, which is not the sort of thing that frequently offers a student or noncommercial version.

<comment><USER18> Thank you for your detailed answer!

But I now go to bed, dreaming of a world, where Open-Source is the standard and IP and NDA madness forgotten ..

<comment><USER19> Ohh, I agree, I've been working on trying to make this happen for a project I worked on previously for about 4 years now. Have gotten some traction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> @valvesoftware has commented on Twitter as of ~25m ago, I guess, by retweeting [https://twitter.com/CSGO/status/1253075594901774336](https://twitter.com/CSGO/status/1253075594901774336)

<comment><USER21> [https://twitter.com/valve_software_/status/12529934603547402...](https://twitter.com/valve_software_/status/1252993460354740224)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is another reason why I have a computer for specific uses. One used exclusively for gaming and nothing else, with the same for bills, random browsing, and development. It's much easier for maintenance and sanity.

<comment><USER23> The more common and realistic attack is anti cheat software and DRM. They are functionally identical to rootkits/spyware in that they install themselves as kernel drivers and monitor literally everything you do (sometimes when the game is not even running) to work out if you are cheating/attempting to crack the game. And we have no idea if they are limiting themselves to just that, they could be selling your browsing history on the side as well.

The DRM is super invasive as well, A lot of wine developers have to deal with denuvo repeatedly banning them as well as one user reporting that they were banned from valorant after plugging in their phone to charge it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Once you have the source code, how easy is it to "build" the game?

Using this code could I edit the character models so that certain characters looked like Sesame Street characters and then publish that game to my personal PC for my kids to have fun with?

<comment><USER25> You could already do that even easier with the modding tools available for TF2

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Maybe the community can help recompile the Source engine for 64 bit on macOS now.

</comment><comment><USER27> Is there some kind of secret agent inside Valve? Half Life 2 source code got leaked before it's release date as well (or parts of it).

The TF2 subreddit announcement: [https://www.reddit.com/r/tf2/comments/g64t0b/data_leak_warni...](https://www.reddit.com/r/tf2/comments/g64t0b/data_leak_warning/)

<comment><USER28> That was 2004, so not a very busy agent...

I'm slightly shocked with the phrasing in that post "It is definitely possible that someone could install a virus on your machine by just being in the same server."

That.... seems like a pretty shocking security hole, unless they are talking about unknown possibilities, in which case the term "definitely" is a bad choice. If this can be done with the source, it could have been done before, no?

<comment><USER29> That sounds pretty reasonable to assume for _any_ game, even those that are singleplayer, if they access the network.

Game code is particularly known to be "spaghetti", "code cowoy"-style, where the result is more important than the form or correctness. I mean, that's art, after all, so that seems obvious.

And do you think a lot of companies update their games after they are out? Most often, the code is definitive, refactors are out of the question, etc. I've never seen a bug that fixes a security issue (CVE), let alone for old titles.

And that's when RCE is not by design. It is in Garry's mod, but that's for client-side mode scripted with lua, so theoretically sandboxed. Unreal Tournament 99 though, has plenty of servers that put some dlls for "anti- cheat" software on your computer before you join. That one probably sn't sandboxed.

While we talk about anti-cheat software, can we think a moment about everything that could go wrong with a piece of software that has a very deep access to the system, is sometimes in-house, and not necessarily audited, and whose functionality often includes:

* downloading challenges from servers, patch them into RAM and see what happens

* scan the RAM of the whole system, plus the filesystem, for known exploits

* upload parts of that RAM and filesystem to random servers for analysis

* take screenshots, log keypresses, monitor the system and upload all of this.

Takeaway: sandbox your games. There's a reason I run Steam in a flatpak, on Wayland... Convenience is part of it, but that's not the main one.

<comment><USER16> > Unreal Tournament 99 though, has plenty of servers that put some dlls for > "anti-cheat" software on your computer before you join.

D:

People put up with that?

<comment><USER30> Better than putting up with cheaters ruining the game.

<comment><USER31> Even if you actually believe this, Riot is _not_ known for their high-quality code. This sounds a bit snarky but is entirely serious: Giving games root rights is bad enough, I absolutely don't want to run _anything_ in kernel space from the same people who wrote the client for League of Legends.

And it's not even about trusting that Riot are not bad actors, tencent conspiracy nonsense aside, it's about leaving that trash running with that level of access in a way that some malicious process could use to elevate its permissions. That is the (ab)use case that worries me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Remember that, while available, it isn't legally so.

My advice is to avoid getting tainted. Do not read the code.

Of course, archivists, please do archive it. Even if Valve does never open source this, it should be possible to preserve somewhat adequately, and it should be legal to publish, at some point in the future, in some country or another.

<comment><USER33> Avoid getting tainted? What does that even mean.

<comment><USER34> Avoid reading the code, being inpired by it and using the same pattern (or worse, snippets) in your project (which could result in legal actions against you).

I have often heard it in the context of windows operating system developper which should be careful of not accidently introducing open-source code in the kernel if it might have a license that is not compatible with Microsoft's one.

<comment><USER33> There's no law against that unless you're implementing a patented algorithm, which is dumb in any case.

<comment><USER32> Alternative implementations of programs often use Clean Room reverse engineering, for a reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> usercheto21351 posted a magnet link that appears to be legitimate, but which is now [dead] for some reason. Do we really want to read speculative blogspam while rejecting the original material?

</comment><comment><USER36> Any clues as to Half-Life 3?

</comment><comment><USER37> What are the odds that this is a black hat move by Epic?

</comment><comment><USER38> If the remote code execution thing in CS:GO is true I wonder if it could lead to virtual item theft. We're talking about potential loss of items worth of tens of thousands of dollars. I'm sure Valve could eventually recover them but that could be some serious anxiety and opportunity loss for item holders that are affected.

<comment><AUTHOR> So far what i've send of the RCE i've seen so far has been a way of triggering pop-ups on the start screen - not to say its not more dangerous than that, but just thought i'd give some context.

Most RCE's aren't carte blanche to run arbitrary code on a users computer, but are some way of triggering a particular code path on a remote computer.

<comment><USER39> RCE by definition involves being able to run arbitrary code, for some reasonable definition of arbitrary. "Triggering a particular code path" doesn't get you anything: if you have a webpage you can trivially make your visitors' computers execute plenty of predictable code paths, like the one to render text to the screen or to send audio to the speakers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> The fact that the servers didn't immediately get shut down is pretty irresponsible. There's tens of thousands of people logged in to tf2 who are at risk of having their computers pwned because the tf2 servers are still up.

<comment><USER41> Valve has no control over user-owned servers, only the listings for the server browser. Valve was informed of this leak years ago. All of this talk of an RCE is pure speculation; the leak hasn't even been out for a day.

It's good to be informed and take steps toward being safe, but we're talking about a leak where any meaningful security flaws have had multiple years to be patched.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Your best advice on how to price and market a dev tool? - <AUTHOR>

I'm writing a small dev tool for Android developers. I'm into the home stretch now and will be releasing it in a month or two I hope. Please forgive me not saying what exactly it does yet.
Difficult decisions remain; how to price it, how to market it.
It's a small tool but the selling point is it should shorten a time consuming task I found myself having to do almost every day and should be a common experience for many Android devs. It's not trivial to re-impliment there is nothing that does this that I am aware of and I hope to compete on quality should someone copy the idea but the main point is it is supposed to save developers a couple of hours a week.
I'd love to open source it but I have no idea how to live off an open source licence in this case.
A starting point would be say $49 and hope people won't copy it too much and stay honest. I've got to sell quite a few copies a year to live off that though. Some have suggested to me that I should price higher and hope enough companies buy several copies and loss lead with individual devs copying it.
It will not do everything in it's domain perfectly from the 1.0 release but I intend to continually improve the tool by adding new features and paying attention to bugs and offering regular updates (e.g. weekly).
So what are your experiences and/or advice?
thanks. <comment><USER2> I don't want to burst your bubble, but you probably won't make enough off it to live. Let say there are 5,000 android developers in the world (you can probably get the exact number off Google somewhere), out of those maybe 10-20% are doing it professionally.

Lets say you can convince 10% of those developers to buy your app, that's 50-100 sales. At your price point that's between $2,500 - $5,000 in revenue.

(these are back of the envelope calculations, so I may be mistaken here, but it seems unlikely there's a huge market).

You might be better off selling it as a service rather than as a product, because at least that way you'll turn it into a recurring revenue stream rather than a one-off one and won't have to deal with piracy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Are there so few Android devs out there?

<comment><USER2> Even if you assume 50,000 Android developers the numbers don't come out great. My number might be wrong but it's probably not wrong by two orders of magnitude.

Update: <https://www.mylookout.com/appgenome> reports that number of developers on android between Aug 10-Feb 11 grew by 4,000. So the number of android devs is probably in the low to mid tens of thousands.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> There's a YC startup working on this problem of helping startups decide their pricing - <https://freshplum.com>. You should email them to ask for help.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks.</comment></comment>


Why bad science persists - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21707513-poor-scientific-methods-may-be-hereditary-incentive-malus <comment><USER2> Repost of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12551814](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12551814)

</comment><comment><USER3> I would like to see: "Why bad jornalism persists", because this is the main support of bad science and every day news like coffe is scientifically good in the first six months of the year and scientifically bad in the rest.

<comment><USER4> To at least some extent, because bad university press offices exist. The newspaper articles are terrible, but so are the source press releases. That and the urge to churnalism.</comment></comment>


Our Backup Strategy - Inexpensive NAS - <AUTHOR> http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/02/our-backup-strategy-inexpensive-nas/ <comment><USER2> Our backup strategy: Automated iSCSI snapshots made 4 times a day to a datacenter across the country from the actual servers. And we don't even have any user data.

When it's this simple, everybody can do it.</comment>


Ask HN: I have the dream to retire when I turn 40 - <AUTHOR> Hi Hackernews,
I need your advice! I have the dream to retire when I turn 40.
So, I'm 30 years old and I'm living an average life. i.e. after having finished college I got my first job developing Apps for a small company. Then I moved to a huge old-school company… I'm not doing the innovative things I always dreamed of when I was at university, but I'm earning good money and I'm just working 35 hours per week which is the best.
Since o was 25 y/o I've been dreaming of creating something that will give me enough money that I can quit any job and then I can focus in my own projects and enjoy life without doing stupid work (my opinion) for others.
How realistic is this dream? I know I'm not the only one having it. How should I start? <comment><USER2> If you aren't playing the startup lottery, there is one and only one way to retire early: save aggressively and spend as little as possible.

This is a great blog on early retirement and what it takes to get there.

[http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly- sim...](http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-simple-math- behind-early-retirement/)

<comment><USER3> And then you have to have a clue about what you're going to do that won't blow through your nest egg before you're pushing daisies because if you try to re- enter the job market 15 years on it will only be to say _Welcome to Walmart!_

<comment><USER4> Walmart greeters won't exist!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd argue that you are thinking and/or discussing this in the wrong terms.

You have to do something.

If you're doing what you want it's not really work even if it is. Right around your age I reached a point where I didn't have to work. I moved to the beach in Costa Rica, I travelled and it was fun. Fairly quickly I realized that would not sustain my interest for very long. I taught myself to code and I am pursuing a startup idea I believe in. It doesn't feel like work. It's the most work I've ever done in my life.

I suggest finding how you want to spend your time, and why, and go do that. Then, even the things that you hate doing aren't work because they serve a purpose in the bigger picture of your life.

<comment><USER6> Fluffy as it sounds, I think this is right. Ultimately we often was to preserve optionality rather than "financial freedom". I.e. I want to be able to choose not to work by the time I'm 40 and/or I want to be able to choose what to work on. Financial independence is over-kill if this is your objective. There are simpler paths.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It is realistic under certain circumstances. Here is the advice I would've given myself at 20-30 if I could have.

One, invest aggressively in real estate or the stock market. Personally real estate is more predictable but everyone has their thing. Don't focus on startups or reducing your income with the promise of future earnings. Maximize every dollar you can make and pour it into investments. You will have an infinitely greater chance to retire younger this way.

At the same time there is a critical factor to never forget. If you are miserable doing your job it isn't worth the sacrifice. So when you are choosing to "maximize every dollar" as I say, that really means maximize within the limits you are comfortable or happy with living under. A little sacrifice is fine but do not suffer with the thought later in life it will be great as you never know what the future will hold and if you are miserable for more days then you are happy in a given month, quarter or year you should really reevaluate.

<comment><USER8> >Don't focus on startups or reducing your income with the promise of future earnings.

I would rephrase this as "Don't focus on startups _that reduce_ your income with the promise of future earnings."

Nothing wrong with startups if that's where you are most happy. Just be realistic about your _options_ and don't expect to become a millionaire from them.

<comment><USER7> Yep I totally agree.

My point was not against startups, but more that if you have this as a real defined goal (not just saying it would be cool) you have to focus on the most likely methods to make it happen.

Startups are not the most likely way to do it as cash based income is usually partially traded for equity. In most cases that equity is worthless or not worth the same amount you gave up taking the reduced salary. The rare cases are where it really pays off. So at least IMO you take a job at a startup not to "get rich" but because you believe in the mission and want to work with the team. If it works out that you win the startup lottery awesome, but to me it is the journey and intense learning that makes startups fun.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> You should check out the financial independence subreddit[0]. The sidebar has links to a lot of material for you to read on this topic. People there are working toward FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early). Some people in the community care about the FI aspect only (and want to continue working in some form) and some care primarily about the RE side. Whatever your goals are, there are a bunch of people there that can help get you started.

The FI subreddit is one of my favorites -- I enjoy reading through the daily threads and the Monday milestone threads. There are so many people who are younger than me who are way further ahead. I've learned to not let it bother me. I've mapped out my own path to FI and I'm working towards it. Even with extremely conservative estimates I will shave 10-15 years off my working career.

[0] [https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/](https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/)

</comment><comment><USER10> "Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life."

I think finding a job you love and doing that will put more happiness "under the curve" than toiling at a job until you can retire, even if you can retire early.

I love going to work and I've been doing longer than you've been alive - if I was going to burn out it would have happened by now. :-)

<comment><USER10> I'll add a trick that I think helps: work for very small companies or ones with very small software groups. A startup qualifies of course but there are lots of small companies where you can work on interesting stuff without the risk of a startup.

Large companies tend to have enough employees that people tend to specialize - it's an optimal arrangement for them[1]. Your "reward" for becoming the expert with technology "X" is that after a while you mostly get assigned to work with "X".

At a small company, that is less likely to happen. At my last job as an employee in a 2 developer company I would find myself doing high level GUI (WPF/C#), low level computer vision (algorithms/C++) and bit-banging stuff out a communications port while watching the responses from the laser controller using a data logger - all in the same week. A small company can't afford to have a developer dedicated to a single thing so by necessity you wind up wearing a lot of hats and learning a lot in the process.

[1] See theory of comparative advantage [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage)

<comment><USER8> I'm glad to see I am not crazy.

I really dislike the idea of being a specialist. I feel like a dweeb for banging on about disliking "corporate culture". I don't know how else to express that thought.

But yeah, I go crazy if I am specialized / pigeon-holed into only doing one thing all day, every day.

<comment><USER10> _" I'm glad to see I'm not crazy."_

That doesn't prove you're not crazy. ;-) Call it ADHD, but I'd go nuts (nuttier?) doing the same thing every day too. These days I'm doing a computer vision project (C++/OpenCV/3D math) and a laser monitoring project(C#/WPF). I just wrapped up a radar graphics project(C++/OpenGL).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Save $300k and move to India.

<comment><USER12> Still not enough if he wants to maintain the same lifestyle (health care education for children etc)

<comment><USER11> By working a couple of days a month in addition to $300k, he could have a big 5-room house, car with full time chauffeur, maids, electricity, broadband internet, clean water, all 6 of his children in private schools.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Entrepreneurs, how do you get introductions from investors decline? - <AUTHOR>

I'm currently raising money from investors for my revenue-generating startup. I've reached out to all the angel and VC investors I know, and whenever someone declines, I ask for introductions to other investors they know - this process has resulted in exactly zero introductions.
This morning I heard from angel investor David Cohen, to whom I had sent my executive summary "over the transom" (I don't know David and had never been in touch with him prior to sending him my exec summary) - he had said it wasn't a fit, so I asked for introductions as usual. Here is what he said:

     I can't do referrals - they'll just ask why I'm not investing and it won't help you.

     brad feld has a good post on why -> http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2007/11/dont-ask-for-a-referral-if-i-say-no.html

     i am always happy to look at potential deals. thanks.
 (That third line was in response to me asking if he'd like me to introduce my entrepreneurial colleagues to him when my colleagues are seeking funding - by the way, though David wasn't interested, I very much appreciate his welcoming of executive summaries, and his quick replies - if you are raising money you should contact him)
Brad Feld's article summarizes why David Cohen, Brad Feld, and presumably most other investors will not make introductions to other investors for deals they decline. I didn't realize that this "no intros if I'm not interested" policy was so widespread.
Thus my question: have any of you entrepreneurs been successful in getting introductions from investors who decline your deals? If so, how did you accomplish this? <comment><AUTHOR> Brad Feld's post: [http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2007/11/dont-ask-for-a- refer...](http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2007/11/dont-ask-for-a-referral-if- i-say-no.html)

</comment><comment><USER2> Don't be a pain in the ass... Move on. Its not very difficult to reach a VC, anyways...</comment>


A&E Has Lost Half Its Viewers Since Dropping 'Live PD' - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-e-has-lost-half-its-viewers-since-dropping-live-pd-11595588402 <comment><USER2> [https://www.latimes.com/entertainment- arts/tv/story/2020-06-...](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment- arts/tv/story/2020-06-11/running-from-cops-live-pd-canceled-podcast-police)

"Basically, it presents a world that is much more dangerous than real life," Taberski said. "It presents the police as being much more successful than they really are. It misrepresents crime by people of color — the raw numbers are about the same but the show front-loads crime, and especially violent crime, by people of color. And anyone who's worked in television, especially reality television, knows that you front-load your best stuff, you hook people in the first act."

Thus... this show gave Americans the incorrect belief that (1) drug crime is rampant (it isn't), (2) that most criminals are black (they aren't), and (3) cops are good at their job (they aren't).

</comment><comment><USER3> "In some weeks, the "Live PD" universe accounted for more than 85% of A&E's daily programming."

Every bit of this story is grotesquely moronic, lol. I'd say they're justifiably paying the price for letting their channel become so dependent on a single genre/show in the first place.

Also a reminder that A&E used to stand for "Arts and Entertainment"

<comment><USER4> Let's watch some The Learning Channel instead!

<comment><USER5> Why did you have to go and remind me of that? I remember when that channel's programming was actually good. I to this day cannot understand what bloody happened that apparently necessitated taking a channel built around educational or informative programming and swapping all that out for... whatever TLC does for itself now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> They need to bring it back.

<comment><USER7> _why_?

<comment><USER8> For some people, authority figures shining their flashlights in the faces of poor people is entertaining.

<comment><USER9> Please do not disparage the opinions of others in such a snarky way.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Lua (and community libraries) for web programming - <AUTHOR> Is it possible to use Lua (and community libraries) for full-fledged web programming instead of say Python or Ruby or NodeJS.<p>What are the advantages and shortcomings ? <comment><USER2> The OpenResty community is a good place to get answers on Lua web development. [https://openresty.org/](https://openresty.org/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I think this website provides all the answers you are looking for: [http://lua.space/webdev/the-best-lua-web- frameworks](http://lua.space/webdev/the-best-lua-web-frameworks)</comment>


V-EZ is now open source - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/GPUOpen-LibrariesAndSDKs/V-EZ/commit/e433a4f7722e1ec88d918ff1cc2abbf324f34f83 <comment><AUTHOR> From the overview:

"V-EZ is an open source, cross-platform (Windows and Linux) wrapper intended to alleviate the inherent complexity and application responsibility of using the Vulkan API. V-EZ attempts to bridge the gap between traditional graphics APIs and Vulkan by providing similar semantics to Vulkan while lowering the barrier to entry and providing an easier to use API."

Overview: [https://github.com/GPUOpen- LibrariesAndSDKs/V-EZ](https://github.com/GPUOpen-LibrariesAndSDKs/V-EZ)

Documentation: [https://gpuopen- librariesandsdks.github.io/V-EZ/](https://gpuopen- librariesandsdks.github.io/V-EZ/)</comment>


"/* should we even bother? */" nomx: The world's most secure communications - <AUTHOR> https://scotthelme.co.uk/nomx-the-worlds-most-secure-communications-protocol/ <comment><USER2> Nicely thorough. Wow.</comment>


Ask HN: Why / Why Not Use Electron? - <AUTHOR> More and more apps that I've seen published here are heavily disliked for their usage of Electron.  What experiences have you had with Electron and why / why isn't it a good idea to write an application with it? <comment><USER2> _Why not:_

In my experience, Electron apps tend to be bloated, not very performant and/or energy inefficient. This means that developers make a choice regarding users' disk space, user experience and battery life. The extent to which users notice any of this is of course dependent on a combination of their machine (e.g. old/new hardware, laptop/desktop) and the application being run.

Also, since you don't use the platform's native widgets, there's poor (or nonexistent?) accessibility features for users with special needs - not to mention the implications (HCI-wise) of redefining/replacing standard interface elements.

In my opinion, all this reeks of poor design, and is arguably (in some cases) downright user-hostile and unethical.

To portray it as "native" is, frankly, ridiculous.

 _Why:_

The main thing Electron does well is lower the barrier to entry and maybe increase development speed.

I can definitely see use cases, such as quick prototypes and internal applications. And it is cross-platform. There's probably other good reasons to use it as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> I personally love it. I've only written a couple of small, really simple apps, but I've got a couple more under way. To me, the idea of writing desktop, native apps, utilizing the web development technologies I already know, is bad ASS. the sizes are on the high side for some things, sure, but that's not really a HUGE deal breaker for me.

<comment><USER4> I agree, our users don't care about a 50mb download - they love the native feel of our app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I dislike Electron apps that I use because they're incredibly bloated. I don't know if that's always a guarantee with Electron.

I've seen people criticize Electron for being slow/unresponsive, but VS Code is incredibly fast and responsive, so I know for a fact that Electron usage doesn't guarantee slowness.

<comment><USER6> Performance surely depends on many factors. In my experience, VS Code for big Unity C# projects on OS X slows down a lot soon after launching the editor, and all the OmniSharp/IntelliSense things become unusable. Even in that case, the editor UI itself remains very responsive, so maybe it's the omnisharp implementation to blame, since it can take 15-20s for simple code completion to show up. The latest VS Code updates have tried to address some of the performance issues, but still have not solved all of them. What's more, one of its recent issues was 'Electron Helper' process hogging nearly 100% CPU usage, which might have given the idea that Electron is the culprit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Bigger drawback is that it's bloaty, I have a mix of Chrome apps and Electron apps, the Electron are big (40+ MB) and take much longer to start because they have their own Chrome to open, while the Chrome apps just use the global Chrome instance that's already open.

I wonder if we'll someday get something akin to the JVM for Chromium-based stuff. We'd finally have a single install that could be updated and every app being kilobytes instead of megabytes.

<comment><USER8> Well but what about those people who do not even have Chrome installed and are not even planning to use Chrome for privacy reasons?

<comment><USER7> I'm not saying "just install Chrome", that wouldn't solve the problem. I'm saying it'd be nice just have a Chromium install that's used by the other apps. If you use anything based on Electron you're using Chromium anyway.

It's not about installing an additional browser, it's about unififying all the Chromium installs in a single package. Imagine how nice would it be if every Java app had its own copy of the JVM: They would be incredibly bulky and near impossible to update (considering the sort of vulnerabilities that the JVM gets, it would be a disaster). It's a scenario for JVM, it's a reality for Electron.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Pro Simple to build, cross-platform - even linux supported.

Con The default electron build is quite large, typically >50mb for a single page app.

</comment><comment><USER10> Something I have always wondered.

The first version of firefox was 5 mb and chrome was 9 mb or so. Can't we bundle such a light version of the browser, instead of always bundling the latest and greatest? Shouldn't it be enough to render the gui's of native apps?

</comment><comment><USER11> [https://youmightnotneedelectron.com/](https://youmightnotneedelectron.com/)

</comment><comment><USER12> Pros:

\- Productivity: The browser renderer and Node (as well as the open source ecosystems that accompany those environments) offer you a lot. HTML, CSS and JS are relatively easy and because there are a lot of web programmers out there, your access to developers, developer resources and libraries is vast.

\- One portable target: Develop your app for multiple operating systems without worrying about many of the problems inherent in web programming (ES6 support, CSS inconsistencies between browsers, etc.) or cross platform development (compilation, dynamic linking, header / include guards, etc.)

\- Decent OS integration: Interacting with filesystem, native OS menu bars, notifications, etc. is fairly simple.

\- Multiple language support: Electron uses JavaScript for application logic but you could alternatively use CoffeeScript, TypeScript, ClojureScript, Elm or any language that can compile to JS.

\- Performance when you need it: Use something like node-ffi [1] or SWIG [2] if you need C or C++.

Cons:

\- Memory usage: An Electron app is essentially a fully-featured Chromium browser and a Node process that communicate via IPC. This might be a bit bloated for some applications, particularly if you're targeting systems where memory is limited.

\- Large builds: Packaged Electron apps contain everything they need to run so they're typically quite large. Don't be surprised if your "hello world" app ends up being over 30MB.

\- Not truly native: Sure, you can make your app look great but the only way you can make it look 100% "native" is to use the widget toolkits of whatever operating systems you're targeting. Electron does not give you access to this.

\- The DOM can be your worst enemy: This is where the performance issues of many Electron apps (Atom comes to mind) arise. Depending on the complexity of your app, you'll want to either limit how many elements you render to the page at any given moment or look into using something like HTML5 canvas to render.

\- Single threaded: Node is single threaded. If true concurrency is important to you, you might consider another platform.

Overall, I love Electron. It's not the right choice for all applications but if you have experience developing for the web and want a desktop application platform that is easy to get into, I'd give it a shot.

[1] [https://github.com/node-ffi/node-ffi](https://github.com/node-ffi/node- ffi)

[2] [http://www.swig.org/](http://www.swig.org/)

</comment><comment><USER13> Being totally honest, I have _very_ little experience when it comes to designing desktop apps. Most of my experience in UI development has been in either Swing (ew) or Qt/C++ (slightly less ew, but still ew).

I kind of hate the idea of Electron, and this is for a variety of reasons:

* I think Javascript is a terrible language. * I think HTML/CSS is a terrible language. * I think the web is too bloated as it is, and extending that paradigm to the desktop only encourages more lazy, bloated development.

That being said, I get the appeal Electron has for a lot of people. If you already know web development, then writing a desktop app becomes a no brainer. If you're already a destkop UI guy, you can learn Electron and be a web front end guy too. All good things.

But the idea of using a fucking _gigantic_ framework (I mean think about it, just Electron by itself is _all of Chromium_ basically, or at least the big complicated exciting bits) is a massive code smell to me. It's like using an ORM or a heavyweight web framework: whenever you're leaning on that much code just for your baseline of functionality, you're making a lot of assumptions that should, as a developer, at least give you pause. One of the things I love about Swing is that I can spin up a basic prototype in a couple hours with just a couple hundred lines of <insert non-java JVM language here>. And besides the built-in language UI framework, I own every piece of that code and can tell you what it all does. I feel like web development (an by extension, Electron) doesn't have any of those desirable attributes.

Web development often involves hundreds of lines of boilerplate, the import of a several-thousand line Javascript API, a heavy CSS framework like bootstrap (for prototyping, at least), and the assumption that the magic will all just work. I know that fundamentally there isn't that much difference between writing an app in Swing versus Electron if we're talking about complexity, nor is there that much difference in performance for simple cases. But it just _feels_ better for me if all I'm doing is a few API calls (even if the underlying code is similarly complex).

Now, there is one exception to all of this: one of the apps someone on my team supports at work is our monitoring dashboard/customer service portal. Because of some bizzar-o rule from up top, we aren't allowed installing anything except for absolutely essential apps on the support machines. Electron proved to be a lifesaver here because we could wrap our web-based portals in "desktop-y" apps and get rid of the web browser entirely. For cases like that (or like a friend of mine, who is currently working on medical instrument displays and uses JS/Electron in a couple of experimental projects because it's easier than Qt and the machines run Linux or Windows 7 anyway) where really what you need is a website, wrapped in a clean sandboxed container, I can kind of understand its niche.

<comment><USER14> > we could wrap our web-based portals in "desktop-y" apps and get rid of the > web browser entirely

This is by far the most powerful 'feature' of Electron, to take a largely already written webapp and insta-package it into a cross-platform desktop application.

<comment><USER13> I totally agree! Hence why I gave it special exception.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why not use React native? Putting a browser inside your mobile or desktop app is always going to be bloated and slow compared to using JavaScript to drive native views.

(Users might not notice that bloat and slowness if they're on a desktop system with a fast CPU and lots of RAM, which is one reason why Electron seems okay in certain cases.)

<comment><USER5> React Native is for mobile, whereas Electron is for desktop. They're not substitutes for one another.

<comment><USER16> Well, there _is_ react-native-desktop for macOS...

[https://github.com/ptmt/react-native-desktop](https://github.com/ptmt/react- native-desktop)

But that's me being pedantic.

<comment><USER15> react-native-desktop is what I was thinking of when I wrote my original post. I think it's a matter of time before there's a Windows version.

<comment><USER17> Also available from Microsoft: [https://github.com/ReactWindows/react-native- windows](https://github.com/ReactWindows/react-native-windows)

Seems to be only Windows 10 and xbox though.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


People Considering Bankruptcy Leaning Towards Obama : Fort Worth Startup Blog - <AUTHOR> http://www.fortworthstartups.com/2008/10/08/people-considering-bankruptcy-leaning-towards-obama/ <comment><USER2> "Personally, I'm not convinced either candidate is really well equipped to "lead" us back to enconomic growth. However, you can be sure that if either candidate somehow manages to raise taxes on small business owners and their employees/customers, the American economy will suffer further and we may see more businesses in bankruptcy."

Except Barack Obama want to brings taxes for small businesses and startups.

<http://www.barackobama.com/issues/economy/#small-business>

<comment><AUTHOR> not really sure I follow your comment.

In any case, saying you're going to do something and doing it are two different things. Time will tell.

<comment><USER2> On the other side of the link, it states that Barack Obama would like to bring taxes for Small Businesses and Startups to 0%.

Sorry for the incomplete sentence.</comment></comment></comment>


Atlas.md – Medicine without middlemen - <AUTHOR> https://atlas.md/

<comment><USER2> $10-$50/mo/patient for unlimited home/work/office/technology visits, no copays, all office procedures are included free of charge and wholesale prices on meds/labs/imaging/pathology for up to 95% savings. And can decrease employer premiums by 30-60%

</comment><comment><USER3> interesting use of the .md tld. I think thats the first time I have come across that one.

<comment><USER2> thanks, [https://www.max.md/](https://www.max.md/) has been in busy for years - i think i've add the domain for >6</comment></comment>


Data Science Beginner - <AUTHOR> Can somebody please suggest good intro level books/MOOCs for Data Science. Also what should be the reading material for further in-depth explanations.<p>Thanks <comment><AUTHOR> Also, I have some prior experience with python but every blog I read, it mentions R. Does it have a kind of upper hand?</comment>