Rovio to Cut 260 Jobs as the Angry Birds Franchise Becomes Irrelevant - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/08/26/rovio-to-cut-260-jobs-as-the-angry-birds-franchise-becomes-irrelevant/ <comment><USER2> I tried Angry Birds 2 and was super impressed by the production quality and butter smooth graphics.

Too bad the entire gameplay is a 100% miss: You have to wait or pay to retry levels after a while. This goes completely against everything that defines angry birds gameplay, which for me is to instantly re-start the level if I'm not satisfied with the first bird shoot.

Absolutely ruins it.

I'd much rather pay $X upfront for unlimited gameplay. Now it just feels like they're trying to cheat me out of real money every 15 minutes feeding some kind of virtual slot machine. :(

<comment><USER3> Forcing the player to wait (or pay if they don't want to wait) has been proven to work well over and over again by numerous games.

<comment><USER4> Proven as a good user experience: no. Proven to suck money out of people: yes.

<comment><USER3> I have a number of friends who play candy crush and before that I had number of friends who play farmville. If you ask them they will say they having fun playing those games.

<comment><USER5> > I have a number of friends who play candy crush and before that I had number > of friends who play farmville. If you ask them they will say they having fun > playing those games.

I know several people who smoke. If you ask them, they will say that they enjoy cigars and cigarettes.

<comment><USER6> I mean, they probably do? Cigarettes and cigars contain nicotine, which is very pleasurable to consume. Now, yes, it also contains a ton of carcinogens and tar, but those don't actually make cigarettes not enjoyable, just not healthy.

<comment><USER5> That was the joke/analogy, yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm not surprised, they have been cranking out the same game over and over again, re-branded and/or adding slightly different abilities without changing the basic game. After playing the Star Wars version for a little while I deleted it because the concept (while initially fun and interesting) had gotten old. They did release something called "Bad Piggies" too which I thought was a fun different game but along the same theme but that didn't seem to take off.

<comment><USER8> Even so, Angry Birds 2 has a level of polish that makes the original look like some indie side project. If there's such thing as a AAA casual game, this is it.

Which really shows how sad this business is -- a true sequel to a smash hit that goes way beyond the original sells so poorly that it leads to mass layoffs.

<comment><USER9> It's probably because it was too late for a true sequel to arrive. When the market was ready to receive another Angry Birds they threw 2 or 3 other games that where exactly like the first one. If the second was Angry Birds 2, it would be better received.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Brings up an interesting thought exercise. Let's say you do start a small mobile game company and your game blows up into a cultural phenomena like Angry Birds.

And like all of these things, you know that one day in the indeterminate future, that phenomena will fade, much like Angry Birds has.

How do you best handle this? Do you sell early and get out quickly? Do you try to build something larger out of the resources you now have?

I'd be tempted to cash out early and just enjoy the fruits of my success.

<comment><USER11> Absolutely cash out. Internet fame and popularity is fleeting. Building up 800 employees because of one hit is a huge gamble. You could get another hit... but better odds are that you are just throwing money down the drain. Be happy for what you have, monetize the crap out of it, sell it at the peak if possible, and let it go.

<comment><USER12> It has been one of the criticism that gets brought up about the Blizzard CEO - the fact that he won't invest unless the game is exploitable over long periods of time:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kotick#Gaming_controver...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kotick#Gaming_controversy)

However when looking at Rovio and Angry Birds right now, it looks like a really sound strategy.

<comment><USER11> Gaming is a funny industry in that way - the moves that makes good business sense sometimes piss off your customer base.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The important chart missed is the Grossing rank for Angry Birds 2, which has been hovering at about #50 grossing since launch. It was not going to be a megasuccess like the first Angry Birds, or even a low-tier modern freemium title. (for reference, Fallout Shelter, a game that was highly experimental for Bethesda, is currently at #32 overall Grossing)

It probably doesn't help that there have been _more than 5_ Angry Birds games already and people are sick of the gameplay. I'll give Rovio credit for trying to diversify from physics based games (Fight, Epic, Stella, Rovio Stars, etc.).

<comment><USER14> This is very important. I would also argue that Rovio never really achieved the "Freemium ideal" in the way that top grossing games: Clash of Clans, Game of War, and Candy Crush has.

Now are other examples in the reverse, where the game is far too expensive to attract a large userbase.

But Rovio hasn't been able to "toe the line" between an attractive "free-to- wait" game that is fun enough to draw in massive amounts of paying users - like other developers have - _despite_ having a brand marketable enough to make a movie off of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The article paints Angry Birds 2 as a paid app losing out to freemium apps, but when I downloaded it, it was a free app with way too many freemium parts. I deleted it shortly after, as I'm not interested in freemium mobile apps.

<comment><USER16> Not really, the article quite clearly says "... and its freemium model doesn't seem to be working great."

At the end the article mentions the game wasn't designed with the current freemium model in mind (since the first iteration was pay-to-install), maybe that threw you off?

<comment><USER15> Very well could have

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > There is one last hope for Rovio — The Angry Birds Movie.

Dear god why?

<comment><USER18> That was my initial response to The LEGO Movie, which wound up being one of the best movies of the year. It'll all depend on the team behind it.

<comment><USER19> When I saw that The LEGO Movie had not even been nominated for the Academy Award for best animated picture, I immediately stopped the recording of the awards show, and deleted it from my DVR.

The decision to buy the DVD was absolutely effortless.

With respect to the team behind the Angry Birds movie, they're using Sony Pictures. On the one hand, they have a couple Aardman releases and Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. But on the other, they have The Smurfs.

<comment><USER20> The Smurfs was a bad movie, but did well with young children, which is exactly who a lot of the Angry Birds memorabilia targets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> 800 employees for this game? Why?

<comment><USER22> Hubris, mostly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> My 5yo son still plays some of the Angry Birds games on iPad (we have them all) and I was impressed with the production values of Angry Birds 2. 800 employees and offices in 9 countries sounds like a lot though, hopefully slimming down and releasing some new games will keep them going.

Movie - remains to be seen, but I've watched countless AB cartoons with my son and I'm not sure there is enough depth/meat in the characters, they don't really have personalities or even names you remember. Rovio has ambitions to be the next Disney but you really need memorable/interesting characters for that.

</comment><comment><USER24> [https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/rovio-entertainment- ltd/i...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/rovio-entertainment- ltd/id298910979)

Maybe we reached peak Angry Birds...

</comment><comment><USER25> I never understood the appeal of the original game; it was just not interesting for me to fire birds to destroy ever more elaborate pigs' structures. I found Tiny Wings to be a much more pleasant game about birds: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiny_Wings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiny_Wings)

Maybe I am just less angry than most people? It would be nice to not lose touch with the other people if I hope to make something with mass appeal some day.

</comment><comment><USER26> When the first game came out, it was written in Lua and they had embedded a runtime in the iOS application - interesting that Apple at first forbade that practice, to the point of scanning libraries for interpreters. It then became the #1 iOS game - goes to show, allowing companies to bring their own language to the platform allows for unexpected successes.

Hopefully Apple learned from that lesson.

All the same, 800 employees for a game seems excessive, but then we have 5000 employees at Facebook for a website..

<comment><USER27> > Facebook for a website..

That might be the greatest understatement I've seen for a while.

It's technically true but it really doesn't paint any kind of picture.

Facebook is a website in the same way that the Library of Congress is a 'place that stores stuff'.

I'm not a huge fan of Facebook as a company but I admire the engineering talent that goes into dealing with 1.5 _billion_ active monthly users, the incredible problems of adding even tiny features at that kind of scale.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> The key lesson here is that entertainment companies are closer to gambling than outsiders realize. That is, to turn an entertainment company into a viable long term business you need to diversify and reduce risk of new title launches. That's why we see the large game companies producing sequels as opposed to launching new IP or game concepts.

A mobile company that understands this model is tell tale games.

</comment><comment><USER29> Was it ever relevant? Popular, sure. But relevant?

<comment><USER30> How are you distinguishing between the two?

Relevancy is a relative quality. We don't say that something simply is or is not "relevant." It needs to be relevant in relation to something else. Usually some standard or topic.

Recency and popular culture are common guideposts to which we peg relevancy. If we choose to peg relevancy to 'current pop culture,' then we could say Angry Birds is less relevant today than it used to be in its prime. And we'd probably say that Angry Birds was quite relevant in its prime, being the premiere game in the breakthrough period of mainstream mobile gaming.

If we choose to peg relevancy to an industry standard -- say, 'current best practices in the gaming business' \-- then we reach a similar conclusion. Angry Birds was hyperrelevant in its heyday, but less so today.

<comment><USER31> Relevance is measured by influence, popularity by reach at one moment in time. Lots of boy bands are popular, but very few are relevant.

I'm not saying that Angry Birds is or isn't relevant, but there is a distinction between the two ideas that is fairly easy to observe in the wild.

<comment><USER32> > _Lots of boy bands are popular, but very few are relevant._

Relevant to _what_? Relevant to their fans? Obviously. Relevant to the economy? Probably, since popular boy bands would have a great deal of influence over a lot of spenders. Relevant to culture? Definitely. A popular anything impacts culture.

Popularity pretty much implies some sort of relevance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is such an assumptive title. Angry Birds is still very popular with children. This is like saying that Mario is no longer relevant because Super Mario Galaxy sold less than New Super Mario Bros. Wii.

It makes me wonder if TechCrunch has a stake in seeing Rovio fail when I read clickbaity headlines like this.

<comment><USER34> When you make 260 employees redundant, I'd say it's ok for people to make assumptions about your brand.

<comment><USER35> It's even heftier percentage-wise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Rovio seemed to be building a content distribution network within their apps (toons.tv). I was somewhat surprised they didn't move further into that direction. They had the brand and merchandising, just not enough personality to create a Loony Toons-like experience.

</comment><comment><USER37> Don't large game companies frequently shed staff after a large title has been released?

<comment><USER13> They shed staff because they usually hire on extra staff (Art/QA) to meet deadlines. Mobile game development does not have that dynamic.

The press release ([http://rovio.fi/en/news/press-releases/696/rovio-sharpens- fo...](http://rovio.fi/en/news/press-releases/696/rovio-sharpens-focus-on- core-businesses)) explicitly says it's a cash flow issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> If game shops operate as movie studios, why don't they simply hire people temporarily. Movie studios cut their staff to marketing, sales, and licensing once their work is completed and released.

<comment><USER39> Game shop operators have wanted to do that for a long time. The challenge has been that ramping up at a game studio has been a much longer process than ramping up on a movie project. The tools, skills and processes are a lot more consistent between movies than they are between games. It often takes working through a whole game to figure out how to be really effective at a particular studio. In practice, game shops that grow and shrink rapidly have found it to be more expensive than just holding on to the staff. This also has made outsourcing difficult and limited in games.

The situation is changing slowly as the industry converges on a small number of standardized game engines. Knowing Unity or Unreal makes you easy to hire at a lot of places. But, if everyone knows Unity or Unreal, it also makes you easy to replace.

<comment><USER40> Even when using Unity and Unreal the ramp up time is still significant since we all use different source control, bug tracking and project management software. We also build large complicated systems on top of the game engine which come with their own terminology and best practises. Then there's the different back end and external APIs and libraries. I agree the situation is better now and getting better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Well, from a game perspective, Angry Birds 2 is pretty good. It gets rid of a lot of the annoyances in the first series of games. It's much easier to knock down small parts of buildings now.

</comment><comment><USER42> Quite frankly they shouldn't of been as popular as they were. They stole gameplay from existing flash games and threw an "angry bird" skin on it.

</comment><comment><USER43> Sounds like a case of too many eggs in one basket. Why didn't they diversify more into the micro transaction space with a different game I wonder?

<comment><USER13> They certainly _tried_ with Angry Birds Fight! ([https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/angry-birds- fight!/id9339580...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/angry-birds- fight!/id933958078?mt=8)) and Angry Birds GO! ([https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/angry-birds- go!/id642821482?...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/angry-birds- go!/id642821482?mt=8))

A few of the more recent physics games had strong freemium mechanics, like Angry Birds Transformers ([https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/angry-birds- transformers/id8...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/angry-birds- transformers/id869231055?mt=8)) as well.

<comment><USER6> My favorite Rovio spin-off of the Angry Birds franchise was Bad Piggies, sort of an Incredible Machines take on the physics game, where you had to build a contraption to complete the level objectives. So yeah, they certainly tried.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> We need Uber for software developers. The gaming industry is looking more and more like the movie industry. Long term contracts no longer make sense. The industry needs to adapt.

<comment><USER45> Ummm what? Part of the whole point of making companies is because individuals can't risk going bankrupt to make a game, while a corporation that takes investments from people who understand that they may lose money on the deal shifts the risk to those more able to take that risk on.

Uber works because the number of cab fares is large enough that over non-tiny durations the risk averages out and makes the situation tenable for the drivers. When you deal with programmers.

Or were you thinking of something like freelancing sites like rentacoder? The internet means that those basically provide work to people with spare time or in developing countries, not first-world countries.

<comment><USER44> Maybe using the Uber analogy was a mistake. I used the analogy because I wasn't exactly thinking exactly about rentacoder kind of place, I was referring to something more curated, where work is somewhat commoditized.

But I was also thinking of the relationships that actors and crew have with movies, or private contractors with projects. In my view, which admittedly is not that well informed, hiring and firing people à la Rovio or Zynga, based on market trends is a very inefficient way to manage your workfoce. If Rovio stumbles upon another hit, they will probably need all those workers back.</comment></comment></comment>


Did PayPal Just Clone Stripe's API Documentation? - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/08/did-paypal-just-clone-stripes-api-documentation/ <comment><USER2> (I work at Stripe, and I'm the author of the tweet cited in the article.)

The visual design and structural layout of the documentation is certainly not of Stripe's creation. That's all Jeremy Ashkenas. He gave us permission to riff on it a few years ago.

I called their docs a clone on Twitter because of the original elements that were copied: the language switcher along the top; sample curl invocations on the right, with sample responses immediately afterwards; etc. Even the tiny details, like the order of the sections and URLs themselves, are shockingly similar: theirs now too live at /docs/api. The strangest detail, in my opinion, is copying the motif of having a blueprint in the background on the homepage.

The end result is that they're pretty much identical.

All of this is fine. This is just a set of arbitrary design decisions, and they're absolutely free to copy them. We assert no ownership. But given how arbitrary the design choices are, the fact that they picked all of the same ones was somewhat surprising to us -- especially since there are many ways our docs could be improved. (We hope to do so soon.)

<comment><USER3> "(I work at Stripe, and I'm the author of the tweet cited in the article.)"

#humility

I would have gone for something like 'sup bitches this is Patrick Collison'. Perhaps thats why I'm not the CEO of Stripe.

<comment><USER4> Uh no, actually for him to NOT write what he did would make him a dick. So what he wrote is really the only thing he could have said without coming across and conceited and arrogant.

<comment><USER5> You registered an account to make this statement? Writing "I'm one of Stripe's cofounders", as he does in his profile, would not "make him a dick" but it is interesting that he didn't do so here.

<comment><USER2> Honestly, I just don't really like the self-aggrandizing ring of "I'm CEO and cofounder". And I don't think it's particularly relevant most of the time. Yes, I'm a cofounder, but the important part is that I work at Stripe—alongside many others.

<comment><USER6> Well said. I would up vote multiple times if I could.

The world needs more business leaders with that kind of humble, thoughtful, and down-to-earth attitude and approach.

Compare PayPal's typically corporate cult of ego statement: "Under David's leadership..."

<comment><USER7> >Compare PayPal's typically corporate cult of ego statement: "Under David's leadership..."

To be honest, I do wish such CEOs was more common.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is this really news? That two sites have a vaguely similar layout for their docs site? If they were actually identical sure that would suck - but it's quite a stretch to call it a "clone".

The web has always been about getting inspiration from other sites on the web. As long as it's not an obvious ripoff - this is how we move forward. Building on what works. Let's worry about bigger problems.

<comment><USER9> Exactly right. This isn't news at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The idea that the design similarities are a coincidence is just not believable on any level. Anyone that has worked with PayPal or eBay API documentation knows it's a complete disaster, and just happening to build new documentation that similar to a competitor with best-in-class documentation seems ridiculous.

If you want to see an example of some typical PayPal documentation, feel free to peruse this 150 page pdf on adaptive payments:

[https://www.x.com/sites/default/files/2102_pp_adaptivepaymen...](https://www.x.com/sites/default/files/2102_pp_adaptivepayments.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER11> Isnt this the default stylesheet of rocco? <http://rtomayko.github.com/rocco/>

Rocco is open-source.

<comment><USER12> Right. That's the first thing I thought as I was looking at that format for an API I'm building myself (other options include things like Swagger). Point is there are a bunch of formats and a lot of us use variants on what already works. Nothing to see here.

<comment><USER13> Richardjordan, I'm posting this in response to your comment, way back: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5144288>

Would you be willing to email the list of links etc for learning Ruby that you mentioned in that comment? Please send to info(at)tximmigration.com ... thanks!

<comment><USER12> Hi... sure I'll email you - might not get to it till after the weekend of kids' activities and family chores is over though :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> They all use a document generator: <http://jashkenas.github.com/docco/> (MIT License)

That is why they look so similar.

<comment><USER15> For what it's worth, we (Stripe) don't use docco. Though, the design was repurposed with permission from @jashkenas.

I probably was not the first person to extend the idea of the side by side layout to an API spec and example, but I had not seen anything like it when I built the Stripe docs two years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> They look similar design-wise, but both also look similar to Asana's API docs: <http://developer.asana.com/documentation/> . It's just a nice way of laying out documentation.

Looking through the PayPal docs quickly, they don't show any particular similarity to Stripe, besides both being REST APIs for a payments platform.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is stupid. These are run-of-the-mill websites using standard design concepts none of them invented, they are barely similar.

Of course new, better products will inspire others to try to best them; looking too similar is a sign that the competition is failing at that.

</comment><comment><USER18> Are we going to get up in arms about copyright of _documentation_?

If anything its an improvement.

<comment><USER3> There is no copyright claim here, the article says it's not illegal and they are right. But if MySpace decided tomorrow they wanted to finally catch up to Facebook and the result was a new site that was a near-exact replica of Facebook, naturally people would call them out on that.

<comment><USER19> I agree with you except for a few things :

1 - We are talking about an api documentation not a website used by 1B members .

2 - The person who called them out works at stripe...

3 - The design we are talking about is far from being very unique to stripe (today), except maybe for the blueprint.

If indeed paypal is copying stripe, it would have been more convincing demonstrating this through a set of new features they allegedly copied from stripe. That would have been more convincing and worth writing about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If only they'd copy stripes customer service instead.

</comment><comment><USER21> It's a two-column documentation layout. Beyond that, it looks as similar as any two documentation sets on the internet.

Non-story.

</comment><comment><USER22> I would just like to point out that, in the wake of the Flat UI DMCA fiasco, talking about things like this publicly was the recommended course of action, as opposed to some sort of pathetic legal action. So that's what Patrick did. He didn't himself seem to make that big a deal of it. So what are you complaining about (those of you who are complaining)?

</comment><comment><USER23> I've loved the django document generator[1] but it does not seem to adopted widely. Is the side-by-side layout more appealing?

<https://readthedocs.org/>

</comment><comment><USER24> This could be a good thing for developers who need to support multiple APIs.

</comment><comment><USER25> um, how is this even a thing?

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm just glad they're trying to improve it.</comment>


Ask HN: Books you don't recommend? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Anything by Jordan Peterson.

<comment><USER3> Can you please elaborate?</comment></comment>


Show HN: A CLI tool to access Product Hunt's products right from your terminal - <AUTHOR> http://sunilkumarc.in/product-hunt-cli-website/ <comment><USER2> Neat. So, this need a API from product hunt or does it scrape data from product hunt?</comment>


A new application for drones.. interesting - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/aerial-robots/walmart-delivery-drones <comment><USER2> Please don't editorialize the titles of stories you submit to HN.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> what do you guys think about this? is this a necessary application for drones?</comment>


Jimmy Wales call to stop extradition of Richard O'Dwyer to the US. - <AUTHOR> http://www.change.org/petitions/ukhomeoffice-stop-the-extradition-of-richard-o-dwyer-to-the-usa-saverichard#

<comment><AUTHOR> Back story for those who might not know:

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south- yorkshire-1654433...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south- yorkshire-16544335)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I think everyone should sign this.

His life is being destroyed and for what.....</comment>


Install Android packages directly from GitHub - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/blog/665-apk-downloads-for-android-projects <comment><USER2> Any chance GitHub could turn into a first-class Android market?

The inability to distinguish at a glance FOSS apps from closed apps has been one of the odd little components of the Android ecosystem for me.

<comment><USER3> Being able to find quality applications for my problems has been the biggest deterrent to me in participating, as a customer, in the Android market. I have not encountered any real problem in getting an application once I know it exists.

Whatever can make finding good solutions to my problems easy will become my first-class Android market. Right now I often find myself haranguing other people with Android phones or sifting through blog and forum posts in order to tease out what the quality applications are.

The sad part is I'd classify my mobile computer problems as really pretty simple compared to my lap/desk top problems. With my mobile (excluding communications) I'm almost always either trying to find/retrieve some specific fact(s) (how do I get from A to B, what is that star, is that a good price, what time was the meeting, show and tell with pictures, play music) or record some fact(s) (photos, voice, opinion on wine, exercise results).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a great feature. It's an example of a small, easy-to-implement change that makes their website just work better. I really like when things like this get done.

</comment><comment><USER5> Related tip: make your build copy the apk to your dropbox folder, then tap to install on your android

</comment><comment><USER6> I think this is just what Android needed.

</comment><comment><USER7> github had support for installing ruby gems and then dropped support. Hope this doesn't meet that fate

<comment><AUTHOR> This is infinitely easier to support than building rubygems. Fortunately, the ecosystem that has been built around Rubygems.org is a far better solution than what we provided.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Very cool! Thanks Github!

</comment><comment><USER9> Hey, I want this for my iPhone, too.

<comment><USER10> You'll have to take that up with Apple, unfortunately.</comment></comment>


Review my Translation Site (#2) - <AUTHOR> http://www.caterpi.com

<comment><USER2> For me, the thing that makes most nervous about translations is that I can't read them. They're a black box. They could say almost anything... 'all your base are belong to us' springs to mind (and it can be much worse).

So when I see:

'First available freelancer works on your order'

I leave. Tell me it's quick. Tell me it's easy. For whatever reason, that phrase just makes me lose all confidence in your site.

On another note. Are these translations audited? For an additional fee can I have another translator (maybe a 'senior' or 'trusted' translator) proofread them?

<comment><USER3> I would probably just have another from the same service translate it back to English. Paying double but it would help add some type of feedback for judging accuracy.

If it comes back good enough then I would accept it. If not I would ask for my money back. I wouldn't tolerate too many screw ups though before I went somewhere else.

<comment><USER4> The problem is that even if the meaning is clear, it can still be very poor language. In fact, you could possibly end in a situation where a certain idiom is translated directly which might give a bad result but look fine when translated the other way.

If you translate "I won't take no for an answer" directly into Danish, you would get something like "jeg vil ikke tage nej for et svar", which isn't very good Danish though the meaning is quite clear. Translated back, it would give you the impression that the translation is excellent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just signed up as a translator.

1) There is no confirmation email. However, since you do not require a choice of a password when signing up, this is doubly problematic.

2) You place translator emails in the clear, even when not signed in to the site.

3) There is no way to delete an account.

4) You need to be clearer about your fees. State explicitly that there are no fees for withdrawal if there are none.

5) The best solution for a a verified translation would be to allow translators to post a review rate, and allow clients to choose their reviewer(s). This will not be a free service for any but the most needy of translators. Eventually, this could be integrated into the translation ordering wizard.

6) You forgot a language: Latin, which is critical for legal translation.

7) More important than age is education, but above all, you should require translators to post their mother tongue. It is also virtually required to state one's field(s) of specialization.

8) The site design is smashing, although the translator sort and filtering is weak (see note above).

</comment><comment><USER6> I really like the UI, it seems to be very simple and user friendly.

It would be great if the translators were required to uncover information such as education and how old they are. It would also be great if you could filter out based on age and education. But maybe this isn't an issue if you have enough data and a good enough rating system...?

Anyhow, good luck, seems like a solid product.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks,

This is my 10th design iteration so I'm glad you like it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> You might consider having an additional meta field where the person requesting can write notes about the translation request to provide context for the translator. I worked on large piece of software that had to be translated into many languages and often the translators would ask us for comments in our string files so the could come up with the most appropriate translation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, once you add a translation to your cart you can add comments for the translator (and vice versa)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN,

Thanks for the last round of advice for caterpi (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1267012>)!

I've worked on a lot on design, bug fixes, and suggestions since then. Would appreciate some more advice especially regarding marketing/bootstrapping :)

Chris

</comment><comment><USER8> I registered at the site (<http://www.caterpi.com/people/545002>) and want to help with the translation of the site, but it's not possible to choose a language there besides what's already offered. Where should I ask to start translations into other languages? (Like Dutch, Esperanto and Portuguese).

One essential point... You don't see anything about the native language of the translators (and nothing about e.g. Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese). Also local languages are not there but might be in want. (If you put Esperanto in the list, better also Frysian for example)

But please try to find a way to not get details in the way. It's a nice and clean site and that's good :).

</comment><comment><USER9> I think you could aim this at non-native English speaking folks who write tech support emails in English.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's cool that you can pay in Ruby.</comment>


Ask HN: Real odds of making a living off a web app - <AUTHOR> My goal is to make a webapp that makes a middle class income.  It does not have to be Bay Area middle class, but say 100k a year.
What is the real probability this can happen?  Or is it a fool's errand?
I'm from a non-software field in my 30's, but I'm tired of grinding it out with a salary that can barely cover the expenses.  I'd like to work remotely and live somewhere more affordable.
I don't expect anything to happen right away, but over the next 5 years.  Because I don't see myself saving my way to retirement, owning a business where you control your time is the only end game I can see.
I like building apps and take pride in my work, so it seems like a good avenue for me.
Thanks. <comment><USER2> I hope it's not a fools errand, as I'm currently attempting to do just this. I have a SaaS product that currently profits about £400/ month, and I have about £20k saved. I'm aiming to be living from my web app in 9 months.

If you're interested I'm doing a completely transparent blog series about my progress - [https://blog.bugmuncher.com/2015/10/22/from-side-project- to-...](https://blog.bugmuncher.com/2015/10/22/from-side-project-to- profitable-start-up-part-1.html) and [https://blog.bugmuncher.com/2015/10/22/from-side-project- to-...](https://blog.bugmuncher.com/2015/10/22/from-side-project-to- profitable-start-up-part-2.html)

<comment><USER3> Hi Matt, the second link gives me a 404, but loving the honest writing in the "I'm Scared" post.

<comment><USER2> Ah balls, here's the correct link [https://blog.bugmuncher.com/2015/10/29/from-side-project- to-...](https://blog.bugmuncher.com/2015/10/29/from-side-project-to- profitable-start-up-part-2.html)

<comment><USER4> could you please tell us suspense or do we have to wait for other month? :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > I'm tired of grinding it out with a salary that can barely cover the > expenses

> owning a business where you control your time is the only end game I can > see.

I will encourage you to read first 4-5 chapters of "The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It" by Michael E. Gerber.

"The problem is that everybody who goes into business is actually three- people-in-one: The Entrepreneur, The Manager, and The Technician.

And the problem is compounded by the fact that while each of these personalities wants to be the boss, none of them wants to have a boss.

So they start a business together in order to get rid of the boss. And the conflict begins."

Excerpt From: Michael E. Gerber. "The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It." iBooks.

<comment><USER6> Great suggestion. This was one of the first books I read as I was starting a business many years ago. It proved invaluable. For anyone not familiar with it, a big focus of the book is about running your business like a franchise. Don't let the word franchise put you off... The reason this is so crucial is that like you mentioned, you don't want to create a bunch of new jobs for yourself. Rather, you want a finely-tuned system that runs itself and frees up your mind for the more important aspects. If you don't do that, you'll be spinning your wheels with little stuff and won't be able to step away from it.

<comment><USER7> Better be good! I ordered the book right away.

ty for the suggestion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Do you specifically want to make a webapp, or is independence the most important thing for you?

If the latter, I'd encourage you to look around at ALL the potential means of making money with your skills, not just creating a webapp. That could include consulting, infoproducts, some kind of SEO / affiliate play, training, etc.

Of all the available means of making a boss-independent living on the Internet, webapps appear to be one of the slightly harder ones. By no means impossible, mind - it's nothing like trying to make a living from the arts, for example. There are plenty of people on and off HN who have done it. However, depending on your skillset, there may be more straightforward ways.

<comment><USER9> At minimum, I would like something growing in my asset column, since saving enough to buy stocks or real estate seems unrealistic at this point[1]. So I have to create my own assets.

If I have to be extremely active in it, like consulting or training, then I'd just be creating another job for myself. I'd be less interested in that, as the goal is for asset growth.

Why is making a webapp slightly harder? The technical aspect, or are opportunities saturated, or the many hats you have to wear?

[1] I'm in the Bay Area with family. Alternatively, I can try to switch to software engineering for better pay, which is also one of the potential payoffs of building web apps.

<comment><USER8> My best guess on webapps vs, say, infoproducts is that there's more avenues for failure in a webapp.

With an infoproduct, you've basically got:

1) Screwed up your market research, no market. 2) Screwed up your marketing, no-one hears about you. 3) Screwed up the content, problem obvious.

With a webapp, you've got all sorts of design and usability issues. Features are non-obvious even once you've got the core value proposition down. Viral loop is trickier to engineer. Onboarding is a thing. And so on.

But that's just my guess.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Short answer: Absolutely. Why ? Because many people are already doing it (including me).

It all comes down to the path you take to get there. The destination is totally possible. The path will determine whether you are able to get there or not.

Write down 5 of your best ideas on paper or wherever. Then leave it for a few days. If you think of a new idea someday, go back to that old list and check if that idea was already something you wrote before. Give it an extra point. Rinse and repeat until you realize that you keep coming back to one idea more than others. Pick that one. Of course, you could already believe strongly in an idea and then you don't ned to do all this.

Next step is to build a prototype of this idea. If you can build a web app yourself, then do it using the language/framework you are comfortable with. DO NOT think about whether this is the right language/framework. IT DOES NOT MATTER AT THIS TIME. Heck, use Wordpress to patch a bare minimum working prototype if you really need to. But you need to get something out there. Something that is not in your head but something concrete. It does not have to be pretty or slick. Trust me. The other side of it is that you will NEVER release something and that is worse than releasing garbage.

Work on getting traction on this. I don't know how to tell you every possible way to achieve this as this is where the real challenge is.

Once you get decent enough traction, then you can choose to quit your job if you can afford to do that. Save, save save. If you want to have another partner/help, think about getting that person on board. Or may be you want to remain solo. that is fine for the type of business you asked about.

Then you know what comes next ?Just fuckin quit your job!! I did that. Yes, you can do that. There will NEVER be a right time to do it. If you are ready, you are ready. Otherwise you are never ready. Don't think about what you will lose by quitting your job. That is small compared to what you may be gaining. But be ready to lose it all. Have that spirit. You will do fine.

All the best.

<comment><USER9> Thanks, this is what I wanted to hear. I'm at the prototyping stage, and I was afraid that the market is already saturated with webapps. Or worse, was never that big a space as it would seem on HN.

<comment><USER10> np. Remember this. There is always someone else doing what you are doing. You should never worry about that. Just execute the heck out of it. Yes there are to may webapps but to be able to create 100K income is very possible. Remember, we are not talking about a high growth startup which is a different story.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The secret is sales and getting those first few clients. I have built a web application for professional and trade associations. I used to be Director of Research at an executive community with high annual fees - so I was building for a market that I had some direct experience in.

So far it has been much harder to get association leaders to change and try something new. I have feedback that it is cool and a premium product relative to what they currently do, but so far no one with money has gotten excited enough to actually buy.

On the other hand there are certainly people who have made your vision happen. If I had better answers I would have already solved my own sales problems.

Bringing innovation to a market is hard.

<comment><USER9> I've also have a "think different" idea, so I expect the sales part to be the challenge as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This journey is made easier by looking and speaking to customers first before you build anything. For people that just enjoy building apps, that is really hard to do. If you don't want to sell to people now, you won't when you have an MVP either.

Find a group of founding customers so you are building something specific based on their feedback. Your motivation and profitability are accelerated by having such involved customers.

You can investigate such a large number of ideas before you have to start building anything.

</comment><comment><USER13> How much do you have in savings? 5 figures, 6 figures?</comment>


Show HN: Python module to easily generate text using a pretrained char-rnn - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/minimaxir/textgenrnn <comment><USER2> Nice to see a preexisting model ship with the code. Always surprised me how difficult it is to find and compare trained RNNs, given how tiny a typical char-RNN model is, and how long they usually take to train. I hope in the near future it becomes viable to load different models on demand — models perhaps trained on the same corpus but differing in their choices of parameters, so that it might be possible to glimpse the qualitative impact of, say, window size on the model's output. (I'm especially curious what it looks like at n>1000, does it degrade? Pay diminishing returns? Do longer window sizes help RNNs to stay on topic for longer than a sentence or two? I'm really interested in the answer, but CUDA poops out on my machine generally around the n=256 threshold. So I'm hoping more projects like yours take off :)</comment>


Would you click on a link that contains Punycode? - <AUTHOR>

Would you click on (or type) a link that contains Punycode? Or even on a link that contains localized characters?  Example:
http://www.εδετ.gr and http://www.xn--pxabb4d.gr (they are the same site).
Or would you consider them phising "faster" than a latin spelled URL?
(The example I am giving is a legitimate site) <comment><USER2> These sites are created for people speaking a foreign language. So, if you ask to an English speaker they will probably say that it is fishing. For a speaker of the foreign language it will be perfectly natural.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Alert! Phishing attempt!" would be my first thought on reading the second URL.

I would click on the first one, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> You would because you are Greek and understand it. But what if it was Cyrillic or Chinese instead?

<comment><USER3> A domain in non-english characters communicates that the site has a high chance of being written in a non-english language.

Since I do not understand neither Cyrillic nor Chinese, I would probably not click on any of them.

Except:

1)...If I would really need to click on them (i.e. import some goods from China) in which case I would click on link and visit the site hoping that there is some kind of english description.

2)If I saw the link on Google (i.e. a search engine that I trust) and saw in the excerpt that there is some sort of legitimate description, it would be more likely that I would follow the link.</comment></comment></comment>


The problem is with the product - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/linked/2014/01/02/scoble-glass <comment><USER4> So I'm just going to say: I don't like Glass. For this reason: as far as I can tell, its only particularly useful function is as an eye mounted camera.

Having a camera on you totally changes the context of any interaction. Even if the other person says it's just for their private use; you don't really know. Maybe they upload it to facebook. Maybe they catch you in a bad picture, and you end up becoming some reddit meme like scumbag steve or bad luck brian or the "stop!" girl. Point being: if someone is wearing a camera on their face it's impossible to act normal around them. Glassholes don't seem to get that. I suspect it's that they're ok with being constantly on film, and don't seem to recognize why other people aren't.

If you're wearing a camera on your face, you're only going to see my "public", "don't say anything to offend people" persona, not the person I normally am, and I'm going to avoid you. So frankly I hope Glass fails, hard, because it's one of the most antisocial products ever developed.

<comment><USER5> Here's a question: imagine someone who loses an eye, and gets a prosthetic. These days, that means a small camera that feeds a video signal to their optic nerve. But, obviously, this camera could _also_ have its feed tee'd somewhere else. How would you feel around this person?

<comment><USER4> Depends on the person, but I don't think I'd feel weird around them. The difference with the prosthetic and glass isn't the technical capability, rather it's the perceived intent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> All Gruber seems to be saying is "if people don't use a product all the time it's a bad product" which is pretty obviously false to anyone who gives it a second thought.

When it suits him he argues that history is irrelevant (Android won't "windows" iOS) but because it suits him here he tosses in a fairly distant historical analogy (Glass is the Windows Tablet of wearable computing) and that's QED for him.

I really like 90% of Gruber's analysis, and the bulk of "Fanboy" accusations against him are totally bogus, but this is weak.

Maybe he's jonesing for a team to root against because it's the baseball off season.

<comment><USER7> I don't think your restatement is entirely fair -- "if people don't use a product _at all_ it's a bad product" would be closer.

Even that's somewhat reductionist, of course; there are a lot of good products that we use only occasionally. But there are some products which are designed to be with you most of the time: smartphones are an obvious example. Watches are another one. How about a smartwatch? I think it'd be fair to say that if you're wearing your smartwatch most of the time when you go out, it's a success for you; if you don't like wearing it -- for whatever reason, whether aesthetics or because it isn't that functional (or both) -- and mostly only trot it out to show people, it's really a failure for you. If most of the smartwatch's buyers are in the "only trot it out to show people" camp, the product is arguably a failure.

And, I think it's fair to use the same criteria for Google Glass. Are most of the people who own a Glass using it regularly, or are they only trotting it out when it'll be cool to show people? Scoble is, whether he puts it that way or not, effectively arguing the latter. Gruber is in turn saying that if that's true, it means that Glass -- even if it's a marvelous technology showcase -- isn't a good product.

(As for the contention that Gruber will argue history is relevant when it suits him and irrelevant when it doesn't, well, we _all_ do that, and I think we'd all claim that we're doing it because in some cases history is relevant and in other cases it isn't, right? Whether Android will "windows" iOS depends on whether you think the mobile computing market will follow the same trajectory as the PC market did; if you think the _concept_ of Glass will take off one day, maybe dramatically, but Glass itself will be something of a footnote, then the Windows Tablet comparison is apt.)

<comment><USER6> > As for the contention that Gruber will argue history is relevant when it > suits him and irrelevant when it doesn't, well, we all do that

Agreed. But tossing out an analogy and claiming it applies is the lowest form of that. I think to make a real contribution you have to make some attempt to justify why the analogical bits are more relevant than the contradicting bits.

I'm not saying Gruber is wrong, or that he doesn't have a point to make. Just that he's "phoning it in" with this post. The points you make, in detail, make for much better analysis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Truth to be told, the original Scoble's article is full of inaccuracies. First of all, not every Google employee is allowed to dogfood glass, it's only for the selected subset of internal and external people. Second, statements like "facebook is not on glass, therefore it's glass' fault" are simply BS. If facebook wanted to implement an app for glass, they could clearly do it, the SDK is available for a while. 'No contextual filtering', 'price is too high' and 'photo workflow sucks' are missing the point that the glass is the work in progress and cost of manufacturing, limited availability and _free_ hardware upgrade for explorers totally justify the $1,500. Obviously, it's absolutely reasonable to expect the market price to be _much_ less when glass goes for a public availability. And, I absolutely don't buy 'the product is bad' commentary from an apple fan boy, Gruber. What else one could expect him to say?

<comment><USER9> _> an apple fan boy, Gruber. What else one could expect him to say?_

"This is such bullshit it hurts my head." [...] "The point isn't about what Apple can do but what they should do. And they shouldn't be doing this." [http://daringfireball.net/2008/09/podcasters_rejection](http://daringfireball.net/2008/09/podcasters_rejection)

From an imaginary app-store reviewer diary: "Rejecting all of them, consistently, would in fact be no good at all. The feeling of being part of the monolith — of being the monolith — really only surges when I use my position to act capriciously. To act fairly would be to follow the rules. To act capriciously is to be the rules." [http://daringfireball.net/2009/05/diary_of_an_app_store_revi...](http://daringfireball.net/2009/05/diary_of_an_app_store_reviewer)

"Translation" of Apple PR into English: "We decided from the outset to set the formula for our bars-of-signal strength indicator to make the iPhone look good — to make it look as if it 'gets more bars'. That decision has now bitten us on our ass." [http://daringfireball.net/2010/07/translation_iphone_4](http://daringfireball.net/2010/07/translation_iphone_4)

<comment><USER10> Now _that_ is some cherry-picking.

<comment><USER9> amaks: Gruber is a "fan boy" whom we can expect to say only positive things about his irrational religion, Apple.

jccc: Here are three examples (from three separate years) of not just criticism but particularly hostile points of view against Apple.

valleyer: Cherry-picking!

What amaks did not say: Maybe Gruber sometimes gives them heat for things they do, but he tends to favor Apple so take what he says with a grain of salt.

What jccc did not say: Gruber is totally even-handed and doesn't favor Apple any more than Samsung, Google or Palm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Google is just researching and trying out new products that can potentially help their bottom line - so what if some may not explode in popularity.

Their bottom line is to get more exposure to their ads, and I'm not arguing if that's good or bad. Driverless cars would mean that passengers have more time to be exposed to web ads on their phones and tablets (I'm not saying that's the primary motivation or benefit, but it certainly is a factor in Google's involvement). Expanding Internet access in cities through Google Fiber means more people can be exposed to their ads. Sharing Android freely with anyone means increased access to the web and thus Google ads. It's not too difficult to see what the motivation for developing Google Glass is - you would potentially be exposed to ads all day long, not just when you whip out your phone or when you are using your computer.

<comment><USER12> I never really understood the reason behind driverless cars until I saw that they create 3D models of the environment they drive through. If everybody would drive a google car that would mean google has the potential of mapping the outside world in 3D in real time or atleast any place where cars can be used. The possibilities with this kind of data are pretty crazy and also a little scary.

<comment><USER13> < I never really understood the reason behind driverless cars

Really? It might sound crazy but I think people would just buy them because they are, you know, useful for getting places.

<comment><USER14> And will save perhaps 20,000 lives and many more serious injuries in the US alone every year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What Gruber I think is missing is that if Microsoft (or Google) employees continued using products that weren't great products yet, but were commonly viewed as 'the future', the company could take the experience of those employees and improve the product to the point where it was good enough and they did want to use it.

I think Google did the right thing making Glass a limited release product, what they don't seem to have done well enough yet, is to iterate it to the point where it is adding value. Sadly, with the current backlash, I doubt they'll get there.

<comment><USER16> I doubt it. What you describe is a continuous process that normally occurs _before_ releasing a product.

Collecting feedback from employees is indeed useful and in effect priceless when done right. Doing the same with a set of early adopters who know what they're getting into as well.

The same with a large pool of anyones, however, is a recipe to turn your not- yet-quite-ready product into something customers buy, eventually stop using, and never touch again no matter how much you improve it later on.

Think of it this way: You buy a game that is get mostly good reviews. You're unimpressed and are left scratching your head as to why it's getting them. It eventually gathers dust somewhere. A few years later, you hear that it needed this or that patched up ruleset, along with this and that mod or extension to be fun and playable. I predict that your odds of unearthing said game to give it a second try are about nil. The game had its chance and failed; you moved on, and so might Google Glass users.

<comment><USER15> But Google Glass hasn't seen 'public' release. I can't go out and buy one.

<comment><USER16> From where I live I can't say for sure, as I've yet to see any Google Glass near me. But seeing how it's been widely available as a product to the press and early developers (to build hype; and it worked), and how basically any developer can now get one [1], that seems widely available enough.

Look... If, by now, Google execs consider they've collected so much feedback from its plethora of potential in-house users that they look elsewhere for more feedback, and employees ultimately aren't excited to use it themselves, it doesn't bode very well for the product's future. A golden rule to good product development is to market dogfood that you're drooling to eat (and ideally eating) yourself.

[1]: [http://www.google.com/glass/start/how-to-get- one/](http://www.google.com/glass/start/how-to-get-one/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The coolest example of someone using Glass was a friend of mine on our recent company retreat. Up in the mountains in a beautiful hotel, out early in the morning, and looking at a beautiful view. I wanted to take a picture, and that meant fumbling out my phone in the cold, cold morning air, and taking a picture.

My friend just stood there, taking it all in, and just had to utter 5 simple words, and took a picture, never taking his eyes off the view.

We can talk all day long about how some people might find it creepy, others might find it useless, or how it's not feasible in real life yet. But what Gruber and many other miss is this simple point: why shouldn't I be able to just look at what's in front of me and take a picture? It's so much easier than anything else.

<comment><USER18> We didn't miss it. It's just that its benefits are not worth its costs to many of us.

He also didn't say you shouldn't wear it. Just that if you don't, it's not your fault.

<comment><USER17> You missed it. Again. And I spelled it out simply for you: why shouldn't I be able to take a picture of what I'm seeing?

That's it. Full stop.

Back to the Glass itself: "If Glass were a good product, people who have them would wear them." But they do wear them. Do they wear them all the time? No. But then I'm not always carrying my phone with me, either. Does that make it not good? What Gruber is saying is essentially: "Yes, the iPhone is not good because I am not using it right now."

Just like my friend would use Glass when it made sense, I use my phone when it makes sense. It's as simple as that. And he preferred it to pulling out his phone. And I was envious of it.

So yeah, you missed the point.

<comment><USER18> I didn't miss it. I completely understand that you'd like to take pictures of what you see and nobody or certainly not me is saying that you shouldn't.

What I am saying to you is that _I_ don't dislike Glass because I couldn't fathom a useful application, but because on the whole I see more or at least more substantial downsides than upsides. I don't expect you to share my view, but just because I don't share yours, it doesn't mean I don't know what it is and why you have it.

I also made no comment about how much you should or shouldn't wear Glass (or phone). What I said is that _if_ you are using something less often than expected, then it's not your fault (at least not in most cases).

I know English is not my first language, but I am reasonably certain my previous short comment said more or less this same thing.

<comment><USER17> I'm curious than, what's the downside to being able to take a picture of what I'm seeing?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Google tries many more high-profile "MoonShots" than most other companies. While this is not motivated by some altruistic desire and in the end is expected to make money, this is not necessarily a bad thing.

In fact this is the essence of Silicon Valley- try innovative stuff, move the needle on what the public sees as "cool" & get more people talking about the possibilities.

Gruber is too quick to write-off products that are "creating the market" if they do not have a certain Fruit logo.

Edit: Spelling

<comment><USER20> Google attempts high-profile "moon shots" to appear innovative.

<comment><USER21> Given the dramatic nature of that statement, can you back it up with more than just a one-liner? You're implying an extreme cascade of things.

As one example in that huge cascade of implications, you're suggesting they're spending ... a billion dollars a year to look good and that Sergey Brin has no intention of creating anything ground-breaking with his life & time (while he stares down the looming parkinson's while having $30b in wealth; ie there are other things he could be doing with his time, but his goal is to appear innovative, rather than be innovative).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> So many are commenting on how it "looks" and if they were as fashionable as sunglasses that it would become mainstream.

I couldn't see this being farther from the truth. If it was a useful product in its current incarnation then people would be using it. I think the real problem is as of right now it just isn't that useful.

<comment><USER23> exactly. fashion is completely abstract, whether something becomes fashionable is largely based on how useful it is otherwise. Dark glasses covering your face would be supremely ugly, if they weren't so useful at shielding your eyes from the sun. Because they are useful, they have become fashionable.

Wearable technology will come into vogue the same way - you can't make something fashionable just by making it unobtrusive or inoffensive, it will be considered fashionable when the celebrities who set trends find it useful enough to start wearing it. And no google, paying models to wear it during fashion week doesn't count.

<comment><USER24> I think they need to rethink the design to make something more along the lines of conventional eyewear. For instance if they teamed up with Oakley and had some useful actual glass in front of the eyes then - in an instant - <USER3> sports market would be not just interested in the product but able to find new applications.

For instance, I would not mind an overlay 'head up display' on a cycle commute with cadence, an idea if I was on time relative to my normal journey and generally better 'telemetry' than available with the glorified digital watches that pass for cycle computers. If I could also use Glass to communicate with other riders on the road then I would be able to find more uses, e.g. if cycling with a friend and not wanting to shout whilst riding two abreast. Just having decent eyewear - the part an Oakley could bring to the table - might be the reason I would wear the things.

The rise of Oakley - starting way back in the 80's when their cycling goggles looked like ski glasses - is something I think the Google Glass team can learn from.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think a search for a single cause/effect in what makes a good product is misguided. Of course, I also think if Google were to make a marketing effort to get glass out there, it would probably do surprisingly well. And I don't even know if I like the thing.

</comment><comment><USER26> The concept of eyewear computers is cool as hell and has tons of practical applications, but they have to actually look like eyewear. They can't make you look like the Borg.

<comment><USER27> Check out meta's spaceglasses. They look a bit "aviator", but I'm keen to get hold of some. Plenty of potential.. plus some serious domain knowledge behind them (e.g Prof Steve Mann).

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> In my opinion, the form factor is the key issue.

Ask people if they would wear one? Not just techies, everyday folk out on the street.

Until the form factor is indistinguishable from a pair of sunglasses, this wonderful piece of equipment will remain a niche tool.

<comment><USER29> And will the average person want wear glasses all the time?

The another point is people might not want to advertise the fact they work for Google in case they are subject to rants from weirdos in bars etc.

This is the one of the main main reasons that British Telecoms' staff where told don't post in the uk.telecom usenet groups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I always wanted a tablet PC, but mainly for the resistive touch. I continue to be in the silent majority that wishes Apple would add fine-point stylus support to the ipad (via resistive touch or any other technology).

<comment><USER31> IPad-style capacitive touch can be combined with a pressure-sensitive stylus.

I have a ThinkPad Tablet 2 which includes a Wacom pen. The pen is great - <USER3> sensitivity is very fine-grained and makes a big difference from finger painting. For finger use, the screen is as responsive as the iPad. (Windows 8 knows when the pen is hovering over the screen and treats it like a mouse, so you get a crosshair cursor near the tip the pen. Otherwise the cursor never appears.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> If Google wants to send Glass my way, I'd wear it every day.

<comment><USER31> Why is that, do you have some particular use case? If not, are you sure you'd keep doing it after the first couple of days?

<comment><USER33> Here's a thought for you. I wear glasses, I have for every day of my life for more than two decades. If Google offered me almost indistinguishable glasses that work just fine but also have a HUD that shows me things I care about (Google Now is the first step towards that) then how could I say no?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Although I would not wear google glasses, i believe that they are "preparing the ground" for upcoming, better products (that won't be necessarily only glasses). Additionally, there are some niche markets that will adopt feats of the glass quite soon.

So no, Google Glasses are not that good , but yes there is potential that may lead to different trends.</comment>


Ask HN: What's a cool old/vintage computer to buy? - <AUTHOR> Are there any cool computers from the 80s/90s you'd recommend picking up that aren't super expensive or rare?
Just want to have some fun messing around with an old system to see what its like and get a better understanding of what computers used to be like. I started on Windows 95 so never had a chance to experience any of these old systems.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> You might have a lot of fun with DOS, if you wanted physical hardware look for a 486 cpu with 8 or so megs of ram, you can put on DOS6.11 and Windows 3.11 and have a play, this was (close enough)the final step before Windows 95

Also have a look at installing djgpp and you can see what a DOS based text-ui IDE looked like.

Also install Desqview for what an alternate desktop environment looks like.

One thing you'll learn is that installation of all of this will require some tweaking and research, you'll have to learn about config.sys and playing with extended memory managers, but that's part of the fun!

Might be more fun to do this on an emulator though, because otherwise you'll have to mess about with floppy disks or maybe early CDROMs and getting hold of functional ones might be challenging.

That era had tons of great games too! Duke Nukem 1 and 2, Blake Stone, Nyet, Jill of the Jungle, DOOM, try a few games too

Have fun! Shout out if you get stuck!

</comment><comment><USER3> Commodore VIC-20

\- Has a decent built in BASIC in ROM Only 3.5K or programming RAM (well, a little more if you know where to POKE... heh) Has a 22 column by 23 row screen (composite or RF)

\- Uses Atari 2600/8-bit standard joysticks, paddles.

\- Either use cassette tape or Disk or get one of the current compact flash Drive options to do storage (CF can allow you more easily get things from the internet connected world to the VIC and visa versa)

\- Very well documented on programming and hardware - [http://www.bombjack.org/commodore/](http://www.bombjack.org/commodore/)

\- Still an active community for VIC-20 enthusiasts.

\- If not a VIC-20 I'd suggest a Commodore-16, then you have 16K and much expanded BASIC as well as a built-in machine language monitor assembler/disassembler. Still can use the Disk Drive CF, but you may need an adapter to use the more common Commodore tape drives... and adapter for Atari Style joysticks.

\- Commodore 64 prices are getting a bit high, but if you prefer something more 80s mainstream the Commodore 64 or 128 are way more popular. But for uniqueness and fun at budget VIC-20/C16 are it... Maybe Plus/4.

<comment><USER3> Trivia: Linus Torvalds first computer was a VIC-20 :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd start by playing with emulators a bit. It's not the same as having the actual thing, but is a cheap way of seeing what you might like?

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd suggest a NeXT Cube. Got a friend with one that's not running and finding parts is extremely difficult however.

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

Another one, a phone I personally owned, is a Palm phone, it was the Kyocera Palm Phone 6035 from 2001! This was a smartphone before that term existed and was eight years before Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyocera_6035](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyocera_6035)

</comment><comment><USER6> For just messing around, I suggest a C64. That one has games, demos, and is a lot of fun to program.

An Apple 2 is also good, but for different reasons. Gaming can be fun, but the real benefit to that machine is that it is completely documented, with schematics, and almost entirely software driven. It's a lot like an early PC, with slots, etc...

Both machines have lots of cool devices that make them easier to work with today.

Once you have a machine, you can program it, make some hardware for it, interface it to various things, write programs, and do so in a small scale environment.

Marvel at what people actually got done!

Have fun.

</comment><comment> chung-leong Amiga is a system I would like to get my hands on. I still remember being trolled by Amiga aficionados at my local BBS. While I was trying to get my CGI screen to display more colors there were these rebels talking about the miracle of HAM.

</comment><comment><USER7> Totally biased recommendation: Commodore 64.

<comment><USER8> I totally second that!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Cheapest _complete_ option is probably an even older PC, which you can install DOS on.

</comment><comment><USER10> As far as home computers - Amiga (any one, really)

For crazy fun, deskside SGI Onyx RE2.</comment>


Ask HN: What and How many VPS/hosts/servers for side projects? - <AUTHOR>

I'm wondering how many VPS, etc other HNs use for side projects?  I currently have one shared hosting (for blogs) and one VPS (for real apps).
I do a good bit of Rails, but also have a couple of Django projects and I've lately been dabbling in node.js and Clojure.
My current setup is dev (local), test (local), staging (VPS), production (same VPS), but I only have Ruby/Rails and Python/Django on the VPS (Apache).
I'm thinking Google App Engine, Heroku...<p>What have you found best so that you can have multiple projects out there and keep your costs down?
Thanks. <comment><USER2> I was just asking myself the same questions. Here's the best way I can explain what I do:

I use Linode as my VPS and have had amazing results. I pay ~$20/mo for their most basic VPS and I'm currently running a web server (lighty) and asterisk on it, both of which have very low activity levels (as in, I have one phone and a couple low traffic static websites), but it seems capable of running much more. I've had mail servers, databases, a Quake server, and all kinds of other random things running on it at the same time, and it just performs really well. Performance and uptime have never been issues. If you go with a VPS, definitely go with them.

For anything I want to test, I just build into ~/local. Including the latest python, ruby, etc. It's very easy to setup your paths so that you can have your own little OS for your user inside of your VPS. If I need to test something out that's hard to do on Windows 7 (my main OS), I develop directly on my VPS with screen and vim.

I've also become more accepting of using web services. For example, instead of installing blogging software of my choosing, I just use Tumblr (it's surprisingly flexible, and it has a supportive community). Instead of hosting files on my VPS, I just host them with S3 or Dropbox. Instead of running a mail server, I use Google Apps. You get the idea.

On the whole GAE vs Heroku thing:

My impression of Heroku is that it's really hard to figure out what they're offering. Linode tells me what to expect for RAM and storage, and GAE is very explicit about what their free limits are. With Heroku, I get the impression that if I'm wondering how the pricing will work out, I may not be the kind of customer Heroku wants.

I've used GAE a few times now, and I like it. If you stay in the path of what Google expects you to do with it, it seems pretty easy to handle. I plan on using GAE for new all my new web app projects, because GAE doesn't restrict features for non-paying users, they just put limits on how much you can use. Google doesn't want me to care about how many worker daemons and web server daemons I'm running; they just do the hosting and it works. If I blow up and have billions of users, I have confidence I can just pay Google to raise the limits and they'll figure it out without me ever speaking a word to them.

With Heroku, spending any less than $70/mo seems like it will place serious limits on what I can achieve, even if I have hardly any traffic. I know it costs at least $36/mo just to get one background worker; so if I want to code anything that uses background tasks, it looks like I need to sign up. If I want to handle two web requests at a time, I'm up to $72/mo. That is just silly expensive, given what my Linode can do at $20/mo.

I don't know if this is intentional and Heroku simply wants to keep out the riffraff who aren't yet ready to scale up; or if Heroku wants to bring in indie developers and doesn't realize how inaccessible their platform seems to be for the little guy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the reply maqr.

I've had similar successes with Slicehost. I've been wanting to look into Linode and Prgr, but 1) haven't found the time, and 2) can't really justify the cost of two VPS yet.

I'll definitely try out GAE for my clojure projects (I'm under the impression they'll work okay), and see if I can't convert some of my Django projects to see if they'll work there too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Personally I have five VPS servers (all hostname'd / subdomain'd after US presidents):

\- 1x UK VPS for websites (hst. / truman)

\- 1x US VPS for websites / backups (jfk. / kennedy)

\- 1x UK VPS for apps/services e.g. VPN (usg. / grant)

\- 1x UK VPS for testing/dev (fdr. / roosevelt)

\- 1x US VPS for.. nothing, really (gwb. / bush)

Not 100% sure why I still have gwb... hence it's name, I guess.

Not the most efficient use of servers, but only $100-200 (cant remember) a month, and it's nice to have that level of flexibility.

</comment><comment><USER4> I have one semi-beefy dedicated server. A dual core 4GB. That can handle everything I do easily and it's only $80/mo.

<comment><USER5> Colocated? If not, what is the provider? $80 a month for that seems quite cheap.

<comment><USER4> Pretty bare bones no frills low cost provider: <http://joesdatacenter.com/>

<comment><USER6> Wow. I think their prices are really good. How's the stability and support?

<comment><USER4> Two minor outages so far (in 4 months) and support has been good for the few tickets I have opened.

If you don't need much hand holding and don't care if your server is unavailable for 20 minutes every few months I would recommend them. Otherwise it's probably better to go for one of the bigger (and more expensive) players.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Enveluv.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.enveluv.com/blog

<comment><AUTHOR> Enveluv.com is a new site, going to start their beta service from next month in Malaysia. Its a free web to postal service to send a physical greetings card or a letter to anyone in Malaysia.

<comment><USER2> Just in Malaysia?! That seems like a very limited market, especially for an apparently English-language service.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Tailored vs. Assembled tech - <AUTHOR>

My current understanding of launching a new consumer startup involves going as fast as possible with a product's bare minimum that should make you uncomfortable launching.
I am launching a new mobile web app (ecommerce), we have competitors and know that the idea works (i.e. it is something people want). We are just adding a different angle to it. To be able to launch fast I assume one would most likely assemble existing technologies and use existing frameworks, but I need confirmation.
My CTO is very much building everything from scratch, including every tool my team needs, and customising every little things (like the scroll, things like that). We are building our app based on his own Javascript framework (built before this startup).
Now I am concerned this might not be the right approach as it implies delay, and unnecessary customisation. We are going to take ~6 months to build this platform from scratch before launching it (already 4 into it).
Do you think that's reasonable? Should I require my team to use only existing tech to build upon, and customise things as necessary only after launch? (depending on feedback, time, priorities).
Experience + feedback much appreciated. <comment><USER2> Most startups I've been a part of have done a combination of both.

It really depends on which parts of the stack the lead devs are most comfortable with. If you've got a front-end ninja leading the charge you'll most likely end up with standard frameworks / generally-recognized-best- practices for the back end, while on the front-end they'll want to push the envelope. And visa versa if you have a backend person leading the team.

A little bleeding-edge is a good thing. I wouldn't shy away from it on premise, but it does require that you trust your CTO 100%; and that they do their homework. Embracing a non-standard framework is great, as long as you truly understand what you're passing up. If your solution is better (and you can talk coherently about _why_ ) then more power to you.

As far as onboarding new team members and/or supporting the system once it's built: in my opinion: thorough documentation and test-coverage are the crucial parts there. It'd be rare for a senior developer to be scared away just because you weren't using framework XYZ... but if your choice of framework is undocumented and untested that might make other devs say "screw it, either we're rebuilding this thing with best-practices or I'm walking away" ...not a situation you want.

All that being said: at the end of the day, this person is the CTO... at this phase in your startup the _MOST_ important thing is that you two get to a point where you can talk this kind of stuff out. This is one of the easiest/least-stressful decisions you'll be trusting them with; if you cant get to a point where you feel good with their explanation/decisions, then there might be bigger problems at play here.

<comment><AUTHOR> very helpful comment, thanks a lot. I do trust him 100%, and we do talk a lot, but having second opinions is always very helpful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Yeah, you're pretty much doomed. If your framework is so great then it should be its own company; conversely if the framework isn't good enough to be its own company then you shouldn't be using it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, that's what I thought.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Creating your own tools will only add more friction into the process. One thing to be careful of is that a developer may invest time into a project because the developer loves building that project. That doesn't necessarily mean that it is good for the company. You might need to get an outside opinion on this, as the CTO is going to be attached to the project.

<comment><AUTHOR> you're correct that he loves building in general, and for that project in particular. Now getting an external person to give an opinion will be great but I have to make sure it's easy to swallow for the CTO.

<comment><USER4> Yeah it's not going to be easy. It depends on how the project is being financed, but you'll need to make it clear that the goal is to invent as little as possible, and re-use as much as possible. The CTO could open source the library and work on its as a side project.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with you. Thanks for helping.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What happens when the company grows? Who will maintain the app that's built on his custom framework?

<comment><AUTHOR> CTO is currently very sceptical in hiring new people, even though he's getting his framework better and better documented. Bottom line is it will be difficult to train new guys, and we only want the very best (i.e. not a normal engineer).

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Do startups build their own tools at all? At what stage do they usually start building custom tools?

<comment><USER3> Almost all good tools were built for in-house use first. Rails is a classic example and there's a front-page article today about the history of Cassandra. But you should only build a tool if that's less work than learning/adapting an existing one, which is almost never. Either existing stuff has to be really bad/nonexistent or youhave to have an idea(+execution) for how to make something 10x better _and a need for 10x better_.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How much a 'Promoted Tweet' costs on Twitter? - <AUTHOR>

Does anyone here has experience with advertising with twitter? How this thing works? What does a 'promoted tweet' costs? Is it just too high for a startup ? Not much information is available on twitter.com <comment><USER2> I know this is a bit off topic, so vote me down if need be...

But have you ever considered advertising on public transit? It's actually cheaper than you might think. I'm from Toronto and recently came across this article about advertising on our subway and tram system called the TTC: [http://www.blogto.com/city/2010/10/ever_wondered_what_it_cos...](http://www.blogto.com/city/2010/10/ever_wondered_what_it_costs_to_advertise_on_the_ttc/)

It might be worthwhile to check out your local subway system, if that form of advertising would hit your target market.

<comment><USER3> This was very interesting to me. Thank you for posting it. Marketing on the web is effective and easy to measure, however I think that we often overlook the potential of offline advertisement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Try contacting twitter -- [http://support.twitter.com/articles/142161-information- for-a...](http://support.twitter.com/articles/142161-information-for- advertisers). I bet they can give you more information than we can.

</comment><comment><USER5> Wouldn't it be more valuable to create a twitter account for the startup and get involved? By giving time to the community on twitter you reinforce the impression that you care about the users. Respond to @messages and keep people up to date on what you're working at. If you're good, you'll get coverage through followers and retweets, and it'll be free.

Maybe I'm misreading this, but promoted tweets look ripe for abuse by people who think social media is just ``another source of free traffic.'' (I've stolen that from the blurb of this article: <http://blog.kissmetrics.com/social-media-abuse/.>) The truth is, for me, that I automatically ignore content that is an obvious form of advertising.

To summarize, Perhaps you'll get more ROI with an active (and free) twitter account than with one-shot ads that cost a lot.

As a final question: What is the lifespan of a promoted tweet? Are they less transient than normal tweets?

</comment><comment><USER6> There is a site called Ad.ly where you can browse through an extensive menu of people who will tweet for money.

<comment><USER7> That's very different from Twitter's official "promoted tweets", and the prices are probably not comparable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Promoted Tweet and the promoted trending topic are 2 different things yeah?

<comment><USER9> yes

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Upwards of $100,000, according to the WSJ -- [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870379380457551...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703793804575512711786346900.html?mod=googlenews_wsj)

<comment><USER11> This figure is accurate. I was told at a marketing day in London by a Twitter representative a figure of 70k GBP > 80k GBP.</comment></comment>


Kali Linux Adds 'Undercover' Mode to Impersonate Windows 10 - <AUTHOR> https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/kali-linux-adds-undercover-mode-to-impersonate-windows-10/ <comment><USER2> From the title I had expected a mode where it will emulate TCP flags and attributes like Windows 10.

But on the GUI side I think the best way to hide is to make something slightly Word-like looking as a terminal emulator. Because it doesn't matter that much whether you have a Windows file manager, people will think you're up to something if you're typing in a terminal window in either OS.

The same happens in IntelliJ or Eclipse, non-developers looking over your shoulder will ask what it is because it has a certain look of "complexity"

<comment><USER3> Having been working in many parts of the world, in many different kind of environments - coffee shops, hotels, airports and train stations, restaurants, co-workings, and a lot less common places like public benches, beaches, or post office - I very, very rarely had someone asking me, or even looking what I was up to.

I may have not noticed a curious eye once a while, but not sure it would be able to pick up if I'm spinning up a Kubernetes cluster, or pentesting the nearby bank's network.

Cool feature though!

<comment><USER4> Whenever I'm on a flight and I open my laptop and start coding in vim on my tiling window manager, I always worry that someone is going to freak out that I'm "hacking the plane." It hasn't happened yet, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if it did.

<comment><USER5> > It hasn't happened yet, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if it did

That's what we call confirmation bias.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In ~15 years of running Linux on laptops I've yet to have anyone care what I was running looked "weird", including when running e.g. bspwm or other tiling WMs that look totally alien to them.

<comment><USER7> There are definitely environments where "weird stuff" on the screen would get attention, but that will apply even if you're running Windows - it just has to look "hacker-like" enough. So I'm not sure disguising the desktop and the file manager will help if you still spend most of your time running shell commands.

If everyone in a workplace spends all their time on corp gmail (white background) and in terminal sessions to some mainframe somewhere (let's be generous and say teal text on black in like 20pt courier), anything that doesn't match either of those appearances will stand out pretty dramatically.

<comment><USER8> I confess to stopping and asking what it was when a colleague was 3270'd into an AS/400, the font IBM used for that is gorgeous.

<comment><USER9> That font in modern formats...

[https://github.com/rbanffy/3270font](https://github.com/rbanffy/3270font)

<comment><USER8> That isn't it - this one had serifs. Have an upvote anyway :-)

<comment><USER9> Interesting, as it is definitely the classic 3270/5250 font. Your friend must of specified a very "not 3270" font for their terminal emulator.

The most unixy iconic serif monospaced font I can think of would be Sun's Gallant Demi: [https://images.app.goo.gl/Nx2wzRvY71DczMVdA](https://images.app.goo.gl/Nx2wzRvY71DczMVdA)

Or more recently, the Golang monospaced fonts: [https://blog.golang.org/go- fonts](https://blog.golang.org/go-fonts)

<comment><USER10> Wow that's cute. Also your link breaks the back button, this is post-redirect: [https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.furorteutoni...](https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.furorteutonicus.eu/wp- content/uploads/2014/06/console.jpg&imgrefurl=https://www.furorteutonicus.eu/2014/06/03/solaris-11-2-beta- feedback/&tbnid=0yv5K7EugE4aYM&vet=1&docid=bLBcCF6r-WeWdM&w=635&h=185&q=sun+gallant+demi&source=sh/x/im)

Direct link (no idea what the google wrapper does; the related images are completely different fonts): [http://www.furorteutonicus.eu/wp- content/uploads/2014/06/con...](http://www.furorteutonicus.eu/wp- content/uploads/2014/06/console.jpg)

<comment><USER11> Post it's from: [https://www.furorteutonicus.eu/2014/06/03/solaris-11-2-beta-...](https://www.furorteutonicus.eu/2014/06/03/solaris-11-2-beta- feedback/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Nice, I hope it will also be added back to Tails, used to be a feature but I think they had to drop it because it was no longer maintained.

</comment><comment><USER13> Cute!

I hope that background doesn't get them into copyright trouble though.

<comment><USER9> That background was apparently a fairly complicated project:

[https://gmunk.com/Windows-10-Desktop/](https://gmunk.com/Windows-10-Desktop/)

<comment><USER14> I'd always assumed it was a render or a drawing -- it never occurred to me that there would be photograhs involved! Thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It should add evasive mode so things like openvas and masscan use brower user agents and obfuscate payloads where possible to foil detective capabilities of the target. You don't want to do that in a vuln scan (scanner allowed), but you (and real attackers) will do that to evade detection.

</comment><comment><USER9> GTK theme that does something similar: [https://github.com/B00merang- Project/Windows-10](https://github.com/B00merang-Project/Windows-10)</comment>


Using Social Listening to Focus Your Online Marketing Message - <AUTHOR> http://www.pagewiz.com/blog/social-media/social-listening-online-marketing

<comment><AUTHOR> Learning how to converse on social media, knowing your audience, listening to their concerns, providing high-quality content and measuring your results, you can create successful campaigns to push your nonprofit to the next level.</comment>