Add .txt As the Extension of Your Readme file - <AUTHOR> http://i.liketightpants.net/and/it-might-be-a-unix-sin-but-i-would-like-you-to-add-dot-t-x-t-as-the-extension-of-your-readme-file

<comment><USER2> Interesting... most commenters here (so far) seem to be against the extension.

Can someone explain why? Except for executables, _all_ the files I use have extensions -- .jpg, .html, .png, .mp3, .sh, and so on. Why should text files be any different? "README" doesn't tell me if it's text, or markdown, or HTML, or anything. Having ".txt" lets me know the format without opening it first to see.

I just can't figure out why anyone would ever _not_ put a ".txt" extension on a text file, when the entire consumer ecosystem of computing uses extensions to help automate actions more usefully.

<comment><USER3> I hate them because they're an abstraction leak. The type of a file's content is different from the application that I want to use to manipulate it, which both are in turn different from the name I chose to give the file. That current file systems and the GUI representations on top of them are so badly designed as to confuse three unrelated concepts is a failing of software and as clear an indication as you could ask for of the triumph of Worse Is Better.

<comment><USER4> > are so badly designed

Why are they badly designed? There are a huge amount of bright OS hackers in the world, and a huge amount of mindshare on the problem. When the culmination of all this effort continues to be hilarious[1], I can only conclude that the problem is less tractable than we expected.

And in fact, that is what the people who work on the problem say[2]: that it is not tractable.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_hid_the_facts>

[2] [http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2007/04/17/21583...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2007/04/17/2158334.aspx)

<comment><USER3> I'm not denying that fixing the problem requires a rethink. I guess I'm still just feeling beat up by the removal of the admittedly imperfect first class metadata from HFS in favor of file extensions. Roll that progress back, folks. Make NFS happy.

EDIT: I don't believe that the problem is tractable in a world where you need to maintain backwards compatibility; the solution then to me is ditch backwards compatibility. I almost always prefer elegant solutions to practical ones.

<comment><USER4> > the solution then to me is ditch backwards compatibility.

Backwards compatibility is a visible problem, but it isn't the True Problem with creatorcodes/metadata. The true problem is that a world with metadata is an unstable equilibrium, because what if just this once we get it wrong.

* Consider the case that the file's author got it wrong

* Consider the case of Python and RPython (or .js and .json, or .txt and .md) where a file can belong to multiple classes. Further consider the case where a system has a Python interpreter but not an RPython interpreter installed (or a JavaScript interpreter but not a JSON parser, or a text editor but not a MarkDown editor, or...)

* Consider the case where a document was saved with Excel 2013, but just happens to only use Excel 2010 features, because who really cares about whatever the heck they add in each new Office release

* Consider the case of a container format, like mkv or mp4, that does not alone completely describe the format of the data it contains

* Consider the case of sometimes-interchangable formats like m4a and m4b, mp4 and m4v, etc.

* Consider the difference between a storage format (.sqlite3) and the data that it contains (.localstorage, Firefox/Profiles/places.sqlite, ~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData/Envelope Index)

* Consider the case that that one day somebody just wants to make a " _monkey-fighting_ file without filling out this _monday-to-friday_ questionnaire" and either the "no really, it's a file" creator code is accepted by the International Body of Creator Codes, or it isn't and so there are five incompatible implementations.

As soon as you tolerate any of these (and probably the list is a lot longer than this), we are right back where we are now: trying to guess what kind of file it is by poking at it with a stick. Backwards compatibility is a red herring.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > An extension 'txt' also informs novice users about the role of these files: > they are not programming code, they are primarily meant to be read.

If only the file name hinted at that fact...

<comment><USER6> Using that logic, let's get rid of extensions entirely.

All applications from now on shall just be named EXECUTE.

<comment><USER5> Extensions should be for user convenience, not OS functionality. And files should be assumed to be text unless otherwise specified. IMHO.

<comment><USER6> So you're in favor of adding an extension to all executables, then?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I will not: I will not allow the ignorance that spews from Redmond to infect my software.

I will not: I will not cater to users with a broken OS.

I will not: I will not bother because it represents the minimal technical hurdle for Windows users.

<comment><USER8> What a facile display of false heroism. Ignoring users is the second easiest thing in the world, right after declaring that you're too cool for Microsoft. But this opinion has neither heart nor intellect behind it. It's pure hipsterism — "Yeah, I'm above Microsoft and all the sheeple who use their products!"

If you don't want to support Windows, that's cool. It's your choice. But don't act like this is some great moral stance any more than companies refusing to provide device drivers for Linux.

<comment><USER9> The idea of a minimal technical hurdle is important in free software. If we adapt everything from our free world to look just like the Windows world, Windows users will never notice that there's something else better. It's important that free software give itself some competitive advantage over nonfree software, especially for its users.

<comment><USER8> This is a much better-reasoned response. Like I said, excluding people is not inherently unreasonable. You almost always have to exclude someone, and you're free to define that "someone" in whatever way suits you best. But it isn't something to make blustering declarations about, as though you're taking some great moral stance — it's a practical choice that everyone has to make.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> martin-adams Forget adding a .txt to the end of a file. I want Notepad to understand \n.

<comment><USER10> Wordpad does.

<comment><USER11> Wordpad since 7 is awful. Dreadful. Especially for the usecase of reading \n EOL'd txt files.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's a nickel, kid. Get yourself a better OS.

<comment><USER12> Oh shut up. The issue here is much more than just "Windows suckzzz!!!!". Get off your high horse and stop being an OS elitist, it's pathetic.

edit: I now understand this is a reference to a comic that was published when I was five years old. Hah.

<comment><USER5> Besides being a joke based off a classic Dilbert cartoon, Windows really is broken, at least in this one specific area.

File extensions should only be used by people. The OS should have other ways of knowing the file type. And ".txt" is redundant. The default assumption should be "text" and only other file types should require extensions. IMHO.

<comment><USER12> Notice that I never disagreed with anyone on this. I also think that file extensions are broken. My issue is that you (and a few others) lay the blame solely on Redmond. The issue of file extensions goes far beyond Windows. Every operating system is subject to them.

<comment><USER11> No actually, not really.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> No thanks. The files are not broken, your idea of needing to double-click the file is the problem here.

<comment><USER14> Yea GUIs are stupid!

<comment><USER3> No, the idea that I don't own the file name is stupid. The goddamned computer should figure out what data type the file contains.

<comment><USER10> Until it has to figure out what data type files like this one contains [http://code.google.com/p/corkami/downloads/detail?name=Corka...](http://code.google.com/p/corkami/downloads/detail?name=CorkaMIX.zip)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> No. File extensions are stupid and broken.

<comment><USER15> Why? What's wrong with encoding metadata about the content in the filename?

<comment><USER3> Because it then prevents me from changing the filename the way I want to. Because legacy garbage.

<comment><USER16> In what operating system?

All my Windows and Linux systems let me change the filename, without selecting the extension by default, and in the rare case that I want, I can change the extension too, from the same interface.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> although it doesn't seems to bring much I'm not against the .txt extension for README but '.md.txt' feels like an horrid idea.

Maybe it's only me but I think it brings more confusion for pretty much no gain. is it markdown ? is it a normal text file? is it a custom extension ?

<comment> micro-ram .md is a special type of .txt file. Nothing wrong with having a README.md. Let the OS have a default for reading .md files. In Windows that may be Notepad or something completely specialized like markdownpad.com. If we are adding .txt because the target is novice users, then you should have README.txt so they can click on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> In fact Winzip recognizes extension-less README files quite well. It shows them in a different color and most users understand that it is something to be viewed. The name 'README' is pretty obvious.

While we are at it, do we still need to use the three letter extensions which are a legacy of the MS-DOS era and FAT filesystems? A couple of years down the line, people would wonder why we tried to save one letter by typing 'txt'!

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't work on anything with a README that is for nontechnical users, and I don't produce technical material for anything other than UNIX. No one I work with that I care about pleasing uses it. I'd rather stick with the tried and true convention.

</comment><comment><USER19> While it may make logical sense to some people, the ultimate implication when you see a .txt file is that the developer uses Windows. I'm not sure a lot of developers are comfortable with that.

<comment><USER12> Your comment is ignorant. There is nothing wrong with a developer that uses Windows and anyone who thinks similarly is equally ignorant.

<comment><USER20> Right. I thought we were only supposed to hate Perl and PHP.

I can't keep up with the dogma...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Your principles VS hundreds of millions of instances where people are forced to go through a right-click menu tree...

I think I'll choose the annoyance-reduction.

</comment><comment><USER22> I don't know why the OP is a screenshot of github that is linked to github. Maybe it is some new kind of link bait. Here is the content --

"But I really feel like these extensionless files are a bad idea for usability. They look odd in Windows explorer, and they break Quicklook on Mac.

An extension 'txt' also informs novice users about the role of these files: they are not programming code, they are primarily meant to be read."

<comment><USER23> "Maybe it is some new kind of link bait."

Ghostery shows one analytics package, Disconnect shows 4.

Trying to rack up pageviews for future ads?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This isn't _only_ of use to Windows users - lazy ZSH users can set up a suffix alias for .txt, so that you can open README.txt just by typing its name, but that doesn't work for files without extensions (like README).

</comment><comment><USER23> Do people use README or README.md for README files formatted in markdown?

<comment><USER25> README.md or README.markdown which IIRC is the proper extension for markdown files since .md had already been claimed by some other (now most likely obscure) file format prior to Markdown's rise to stardom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> the quicklook problem on mac can be solved with this plugin: <http://whomwah.github.io/qlstephen/>

</comment><comment><USER27> IMO, using .txt extension is just fine and a good idea. But it will not help until MS fixes their notepad to handle standard Unix text files.

</comment><comment><USER28> That's ironic coming from a site where the header appears in Comic Sans to me because of some web font usage.

<comment><USER29> > That's ironic coming from a site where the header appears in Comic Sans

Which is odd because the site doesn't use Comic Sans. If it's appearing as Comic Sans to you, the problem is on your end.

Also, not sure how that makes it ironic.

<comment><USER28> > appears in Comic Sans to me because of some web font usage Which I was > admitting: this is on my end.

It's ironic because some opinions in this thread sounded like old-school "You want .txt because of Micro$oft", exactly the Microsoft-bashing we were used to read back then when websites where in Comic Sans.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> README_FOR_WINDOWS_USERS.txt

<comment><USER17> I assume this would explain how to open an extensionless file? ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> READ.ME</comment>


2017's Most Wanted Tech Employee - <AUTHOR> https://hiringsolved.com/blog/hiringsolved-identifies-top-skills-backgrounds-make-2017s-wanted-tech-employee/ <comment><USER2> > HiringSolved, a technology company that leverages artificial intelligence > and machine learning to solve problems for talent acquisition > practitioners...

I almost stopped reading at this opening sentence. We've got "leverage", the double base covering with "artificial intelligence and machines learning", and the coup de grâce, "talent aquisition practitioners."

Slow clap for the buzzword compliance hat trick.

<comment><USER3> Considering they didn't even bother mentioning "synergies", I wouldn't take this firm too seriously.

Edit: Nothing about "disruption" either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Maybe these are the top 10 languages/tech employers have a need for, but nothing beats pure intelligence, analytical/problem solving skills, and ravenous curiosity/drive to learn.

</comment><comment><USER5> What an awful article. Good to know putting Verilog on your resume is a Most Wanted thing! You can put it to use by becoming an intern /after/ you graduate with a CS degree.

</comment><comment><USER6> Time to scrap all our Ruby on Rails apps and rewrite in Perl, folks.

</comment><comment><USER7> Perl and Matlab? Seriously?

<comment><USER8> It's fashionable to declare Perl dead, but the truth of the matter is Perl is still everywhere.

Often in places like automation, or gluing disparate systems together.

While I know the TIOBE index has its flaws, Perl is consistently in the top 10 and has maintained that level of popularity for 20+ years.

With a history like that many critical systems are going to have a Perl dependency somewhere which means companies are going to need Perl developers.

<comment><USER7> It is true that Perl being superseded doesn't make it immediately disappear. Even COBOL hasn't disappeared completely.

That said, Perl openings do seem to be in serious decline. Right now on indeed.com, there are 700 openings mentioning Perl for the BA. There are 4000 Python openings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Getting 504. I guess it's HN effect.</comment>


Get Them Gators- a book about dynamic equity-- is free on Amazon for two days - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HCY93VE/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00HCY93VE&linkCode=as2&tag=slipie-20

<comment><USER2> Interesting, though it's just a short pitch for a not-free book: [http://www.amazon.com/Slicing-Pie-Company-Without-Funds- eboo...](http://www.amazon.com/Slicing-Pie-Company-Without-Funds- ebook/dp/B0096EFHBI)</comment>


How Home Depot Copied Apple to Build an Ingenious New Bucket - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/design/2013/12/home-depot-reinvents-buckets/#slideid-383941 <comment><USER2> That "pocket grip" on the bottom is "prior art-ed" by old mountaineering equipment, as any climber or alpinist would be aware. ! [1]

[1] The "pocket grip" is literally a pocket for grip sewn into the round cylyndrical shape of old sleeping bag stuff sacks (similar in shape to a bucket, but with a sinch lid). The purpose is exactly the same...to hold the bottom of the round cylender when you manipulate the open end. The only delta here is the soft textile is replaced with a hard-plastic and the pocket is molded not an actual pocket.

</comment><comment><USER3> 'Copied' is completely the wrong word here. This really has nothing to do with Apple at all.

</comment><comment><USER4> Classic Title manipulation to get more clicks. This is probably one of the worse offenders.

</comment><comment><USER5> Contractor pails have lids - which are useful

<comment><USER6> Not only do they have lids but one of the main functions of buckets for contractors is to mix things. The non uniform bottom and non circular shape make this prohibitive. While this bucket is nice for pouring water it serves little purpose for most applications.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have 2 different buckets downstairs and they both have a molded grip on the bottom.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's a bucket. I know most of Wired content is just low-brow astroturfing anyway, but this is ridiculous. It's a plastic fucking bucket.

</comment><comment><USER9> that bucket is awesome, but I don't know why apple was mentioned...</comment>


Ask HN: In-depth posts on interesting topics? - <AUTHOR> I usually spend about two hours every day doing research. Mostly, I do books; spending a few weeks or months on a topic. From time to time I have a free day, or I want to dip my foot in the water and see if I like the temperature before jumping in.
I'm looking for in-depth tutorials, posts, and even short books, that can be completed in less than a day (or two), and offer a decent exploration of the topic they're dealing with.
Some examples I liked:
- ANNs: http://karpathy.github.io/neuralnets/
- Music Generation: http://teropa.info/blog/2016/07/28/javascript-systems-music.html
- Logs: https://engineering.linkedin.com/distributed-systems/log-what-every-software-engineer-should-know-about-real-time-datas-unifying)
- Encoding: http://kunststube.net/encoding/ <comment><USER2> Apache Kafka documentation is an interesting read even if you do not plan to use it: [https://kafka.apache.org/documentation/#design](https://kafka.apache.org/documentation/#design)

</comment><comment><USER3> ACM Computing Surveys. Typically I find title and then google to get the PDF.

Lots of variety, so there's probably something for everyone. And there's some real gems (e.g. [http://opera.ucsd.edu/paper/csur15-survey.pdf](http://opera.ucsd.edu/paper/csur15-survey.pdf)).

</comment><comment><USER4> This isn't probably something that can be done in one day but it's still a good tutorial [https://ruslanspivak.com/lsbasi- part1/](https://ruslanspivak.com/lsbasi-part1/)</comment>


Why can't I sell this App? Be honest, please - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN, As a side job, I've taken up developing, designing and trying to sell apps. The market is crowded and there seems to be no room for my apps. I had a pretty good first week selling an app that I've spent seven months of my free time on, making $200 on the highest day. Now, it's down to about $2 or $3 a day - barely selling any copies, constantly slipping in the charts.
Are there any people on HN with serious experience, willing to help out a beginner? Together we could come up with a list that can really help people. I feel like I'm the only person in the room who doesn't get get the joke. Should I just quit?
p.s. I've tried some things already, which unfortunately didn't work for me:
- Bamify Ads - Getting my Designer to dribbble the app - Writing bloggers - Having Sales $2.99 -> $0.99 - Improving the app - Adding features that were requested - Having a nice website - I don't think being young helps you either - Trying to get some exposure on HN - Being in the Instapaper App Direcoty - Having a Youtube video - Having a great name: Read
The app: http://rdit.in/get
Email me if you want a promo code: firstname.lastname@example.com
This is a repost, since in my submission earlier I forgot to mention the app <comment><USER2> Looking at your iTunes page, when it first loads the description I can see of the app does not make me want to buy it.

Because of the Christmas special text you've put in, all I see about the app is "Read is a beautiful and revolutionary app to consume your favorite news, blogs or stories. Flick left & right to jump"

Lots of people claim their apps are beautiful and revolutionary. I have no idea if your app is either of these things, but also neither of these points is particularly useful for me to decide whether to buy it.

"Read your favorite news, blogs and stories without adverts" would sell it more to me. You either need to convince me to spend the money with that one line, or at least to click the 'more' link to see the whole description.

When the description is expanded, the list of features needs to be adjusted. I have no idea what "Casual Google Reader Integration" is, rather than normal Google Reader integration.

Personally, I would re-order this and put "Get rid of all the Ads & Clutter with our Clear Read technology" at the top - say what the feature does before what it's called.

Second, I'd put your point about streams.

As the third point, I'd probably have "Read more easily with our hand-picked fonts." or something similar

The other points I'd probably split in to a separate list. They feel more like details that I'd kind of expect in a reader, rather than big selling points. However, I'm not an iPad user so I'm not comparing this to other apps I've seen.

Personally, I'd have thought mentioning Instapaper & Read it Later would just remind people they already have an app that makes it easy to read some content they are interested in. However, as I said I'm not particularly familiar with this space, so that could be good. I'd definitely have them down on the list of features though, as that sort of point starts confusing people who don't know about those services.

Moving to the website:

I can't see most of what's going on in the app when I click on the links as the mock iPad is mostly off the screen when I'm reading the text. Also, your tag line is going to be 'below the fold' for most people when they load the page.

What's with the weird eye in a ring?

The text doesn't sound particularly professional, e.g. "Going through articles is an estimated 170% faster than regular browsing. Since all the clutter is gone, Read will only load the most important stuff: content."

"Going through" and "stuff" doesn't fit with a pro reading app. Also, "estimated 170% faster" sounds made up.

Looking up forgotten words doesn't fit under "Personalized".

Under "Simple" you say "Don't think of Read as a feed browser", which I wasn't, as I can't tell what it does do on the website. I can guess it's an app to read stuff in, because of the name and the amount of text on the screenshots, but you don't actually tell me what the app does on the website.

Personally, I'd move the mock iPad over to the left, then put some text next to it on the right which tells me what the app does which is unique and why it's nice to use. You can do extra selling underneath, once people know what the app is.

I'm sorry if this comes across as a bit brutal, but you did ask. From what I can see you've done a load of work in the app. Getting the website and App Store description improved should be a whole lot less work, and should help you convert a little better.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is an interesting problem. I have a few suggestions.

1\. I echo the other people that the description needs some work. Its not very compelling above the fold. 2\. I think you can get rid of the announcement about your Christmas sale and fill that space instead with a better description. Its doubtful the "80% off" text is a worthwhile marketing strategy compared to the space it takes up. That strategy usually works best when people know the price of what they are buying beforehand. But people probably don't know what your app was priced at beforehand, so they're unlikely to think they're getting any sort of deal. 80% off my favorite grocery item is huge. 80% off something I've just heard of? Not so big. You can use the space better. 3\. Improve your screenshots. Marketing is about creating an image. You don't need the instructional shots with the hand in there prompting people how it works. You need amazing, awesome, cool pictures that make people go wow. They'll figure out how it works. Wow them first. 4\. I would raise your price to match your competitors and keep it there. Or maybe just below them. People don't do a lot of price comparison on the App Store (at least I don't). I just bought a $400 phone, I'm not wasting time seeing which app is the best deal to save a few cents. I'm searching for the app that solves my problem and I'll buy it. If it solves my problem, its worth it. If I had to hazard a guess, dropping your price doesn't gain you any ground over your competitors as much as it loses you sales. I would put the price back up and leave it there. Don't put your app on sale again.

Lastly, I would say some people are right when they advise you to let this one go. You're stuck between some well funded, good competitors and free. Its not a good place to be. People buying apps like to go with the leader because they feel it must be good, because other people have bought it. Or they like to go free because they're cheap. Unless you have the marketing budget to convince people you're as good as Flipboard or all the other apps more popular than you, then its likely you can't put enough effort into this by yourself to make a big difference. In purely economic terms, if you put in 700 hours of marketing work, you would probably make less money than doing 700 hours of freelance developing. You've learned all the lessons you can learn from this app, use your time instead on other things with better returns.

I would advise putting in a bit of work to make everything look good and fixing any remaining bugs, then move onto something else. Its not a failure not to be #1 when you're a single person. Some business niches just require more capital, whether its a marketing budget or development time, and you might not have it.

Don't quit, just study your next project carefully. Pick the one requiring the least development time, having the easiest marketing strategy, with the highest return. Until you have a company with 50 people to do all your work, that should be your strategy.

</comment><comment><USER4> Your app is actually more successful than most of the apps in the App Store: the median annual income per app is less than $1000. See [http://communities- dominate.blogs.com/brands/2010/06/full-an...](http://communities- dominate.blogs.com/brands/2010/06/full-analysis-of-iphone-economics-its-bad- news-and-then-it-gets-worse.html) for a good analysis. Income in the app store is distributed according to a power law, which means that the most successful apps make thousands of times more than the average. They are the lottery winners, and nothing you do is likely to put your single app in that category.

On the bright side, you've created a cash cow. It requires little maintenance and generates about $100/month. To get that same return from an investment, you'd need a sizable chunk of cash, probably in excess of $25,000. So don't think of your app as a failure, think of it as a $25,000 trust fund. Now go out and create some more.

</comment><comment><USER5> If you build it, they won't come. That generally only happens in Field of Dreams the movie. It's all about marketing. Putting your App inside the App Store alone isn't good enough. It'll get you some sales possibly but if you want to rocket your growth, you need to be more strategic about marketing.

Having said that, I don't see any real compelling reason why I would personally want your App. If you're going to compete with other reading Apps, whats your advantage? Do you even have a small number of people who love your App who can help drive feedback and promote the App without being asked (this is one of the first steps for any entrepreneur).

</comment><comment><USER6> This is a crowded space as you mentioned. I don't know why this is any different then Flipboard from reading the description, only thing maybe is that you remove advertisements and make it easier to read. However, the big difference between you and Flipboard is that Flipboard has a brand that I know of, its free, and I know there is a large team behind it making it better all the time (or at least trying to).

Edit: One thing I forgot to say, is that the app actually looks pretty nice. Sadly, I don't think that is enough to break into the market.

<comment><AUTHOR> I understand what you mean, many companies like Flipboard, Zite, FLUD are backed by teams and incredible high funding. I'm 19 and worked on this whole thing on my own, which makes me sad

<comment><USER7> If you knew this, and felt like you are at such a disadvantage (as evident by your tone), why are you surprised that it is not doing well?

Let this one go. Be more innovative on your next project.

<comment><AUTHOR> Because I honestly believed, and still do, that my app provides a service that was missing on the iPad. About being more innovative - ideas do not come easy to me. Any suggestions?

<comment><USER8> My advice would be to use this app as your 'portfolio' for building other people's ideas on a contract basis. ODesk or Guru.com are decent places to start, although here in Chicago Craigslist has a suprising number of iOS contracts.

You will likely find people to partner with that have more niche markets to go after. One of your problems, IMO, is that you're product is very general and therefore has lots of competition. Once you are familiar with a smaller (but not too small) market, you will likely end up with many more ideas for products people will pay money for.

Contracting is underrated in the startup world, IMO. You can spend 6 months out of the year building other people's ideas, and the rest of the time building your own until your own products can support you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Your description is a terse list of techno-babble that will baffle my mother. I still don't know what a stream is. Or clear read. Or "casual" reader integration. Basically every sentence is a mess. Explain your product to a non-technical human, then let her write the marketing blurb. This is why marketing people exist.

</comment><comment><USER10> You are obviously talented, so I wouldn't give up. But marketing is also a skill.

I mean people are fighting hard to be in the top 25. That's where all the money is!

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Tail>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link: <http://rdit.in/get>

</comment><comment><USER11> maybe you should offer a free version including advertisements

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm planning to do that

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Well, it looks nice and polished. Haven't tried it yet, I will later. If I was looking for such an app I would have considered it, have I known about it.

But: it's an RSS Reader.

Most people have already settled on one by now -- NetNewsWire or Reeder mostly, but there are tons of others out there.

I don't see any great differentiating factor from those two, so any success you can have can only come from:

1) being there first with that app (you weren't) 2) having more visibility (which you don't, ie. less money to spend on ads, less reviews for you app in re: Reeder and NNW, etc).

My suggestions:

1) Check the sore spots of other RSS Readers, especially the market leaders and try to correct some of those. Then post about how you corrected such and such.

2) Add some unique, your-app-only, feature. Or a bunch of them. Post about those again.

3) Engage the community of potential buyers. Setup a forum and ask people what they would like to see in an RSS Reader. Add the best/more popular of the suggestions.</comment>


Snapchat Source Code GitHub Leak Caused by Bad iOS Update - <AUTHOR> https://sensorstechforum.com/snapchat-source-code-leak-github/ <comment><USER2> This article is not very information rich, but one thing is clear: this is not a github leak, the code was just posted to github by whoever got access to it. So the headline is pretty misleading.

<comment><USER3> Okay. So the code was "leaked" _on_ Github. How is the headline misleading?

<comment><USER4> The headline is misleading because it implies the source code was already on GitHub.

If the source was not already on GitHub, then a "GitHub Leak" of that source could not possibly be _caused_ by a software error.

<comment><USER3> It doesn't imply that to me.

<comment><USER5> Just by reading the title my first though was somehow a iOS update caused a bug in GitHub that led to the source code leaking.

<comment><USER6> I figured the iOS bug somehow leaked credentials that gave access to GitHub.

Regardless, many of us agree that the title suggests GitHub as a central role to the leak. If, as other commenters say, it was just used as a file host.. it doesn't belong in the title imo. It's just there to pull in more views. It may as well been Piratebay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The DMCA request reads like its written by a 14 year old. ALL CAPS. LEAKED SOURCE: TAKE DOWN PLOX

<comment><USER8> Exactly what I was wondering about -- couldnt illegitimate DMCA requests be an attack vector to shut down a public GitHub repo temporarily? There wasn't much to the quoted DMCA request.

Edit: I'm guessing there's enough in the redacted part of the notice to prove SC's identity. But I think the question of DMCA abuse remains.

<comment><USER9> This happened to the SickRage project a while ago when a developer was not happy about the project being forked. The repositories were down for some time.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/sickrage/comments/6oep02/false_dmca...](https://www.reddit.com/r/sickrage/comments/6oep02/false_dmca_request_has_taken_our_repos_down/)

<comment><USER10> So, a developer of software geared towards piracy issues DMCA against OSS. _face palm_

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> No explanation on _how_ a bad iOS update leaked source code? Can't imagine Apple is too happy to be blamed for this with no details.

<comment><USER12> I'm guessing that somehow a chunk of their source code got marked as "copy to the bundle" from within the project's build phase. One scenario I could think of this happening is a bug in a custom build script that was intended to copy other resources (images, sounds, etc.) to the bundle and copied an unintended directory containing the leaked source code as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> [https://twitter.com/i5aaaald/status/1025563719877709825](https://twitter.com/i5aaaald/status/1025563719877709825)

> _The problem is that we tried to communicate with you but to no avail. The > source code has been published on Github and I will publish it again until > we get a response._

<comment><USER14> Ah, it's an extortion attempt. Sad.

<comment><USER15> Couldn't have happened to a nicer company.

<comment><USER16> This says more about you than the company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The user mentioned in the DCMA notice has a second repository containing what appears to be SnapChat source code, which _hasn 't_ been taken down.

It's been forked 49 times so far.

<comment><USER18> But forking on Github is useless, if the parent project gets memory-holed, your fork will disappear too.

But git is a distributed version control system, so git clone before the takedown would help.

<comment><USER19> Off topic but that would be pretty bad if you forked code and did significant work for years only for it to randomly disappear overnight

<comment><USER6> Yea I didn't know that this would happen. If I fork a repo and plan on maintaining it myself, I guess I have to fully clone it, removing the fork.

<comment><USER20> It doesn't happen: [https://help.github.com/articles/what-happens-to-forks- when-...](https://help.github.com/articles/what-happens-to-forks-when-a- repository-is-deleted-or-changes-visibility/)

If you fork a public repo and the original is deleted, your fork survives.

<comment><USER21> It has previously happened, in the special case of repos GitHub removed (like DMCAed ones). That is a different case from the original repo owner removing it voluntarily.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm confused, did they somehow just include the source code in the app bundle? As a resource perhaps? Or can source code leak into the app through some other vector?

<comment><USER23> Once I was hacking an android app to get free coupons. After some investigation I found out they decided to generate the same coupon for n-customers, the coupons were changed every day, the coupon was based on MD5 or SHA1 of generated deterministic value (based on customer ID and date). There were 32k possible coupons per day. App was checking if the account and coupon is valid on their server, but it was always valid as they used the same algorithms in the app and on server... The core of the application was written in C#, launched by Mono on Android.

Java was compiled correctly with ProGuard (code obfuscator), but C# code was compiled in debug mode. C# in debug mode keeps variable/class/method names as they are in source code, leaves comments in the binary, binary file is bigger and slower. You can decompile it to compilable source code, literally.

I managed to get incorrectly protected secret key (they used GPG to encrypt JWT to server lol), later I managed RE of their API, make my own app with identical UI and working coupons. This allowed me to get free coupons every day for next almost 2 years. There were several updates in Google Play since then, but they haven't changed the logic or anything, the app is still in debug mode and anyone can use it. What is interesting, they have also app for iOS which is not in debug mode. Consistency is the key.

After I stopped using their services, I checked their ToS that you have to accept before registering and they prohibit app decompilation, but I never registered and never before read ToS, so it's OK for me ;) I wanted to report the problem but they have literally no contact information, I spent a few hours trying to find their contact details, Twitter is dead since 2014, no contact@ email, no contact form on website... nothing.

Lesson for you: check if your apps are correctly compiled and secrets protected, there are tools for it. In my previous company we had a Jenkins job to test it before release.

<comment><USER24> This sounds like fraud, is it wise to be admitting to this publicly?

<comment><USER23> No, but it's great story on how not to make apps with coupons. I've learnt a lot from it and you can too. Just look at the bigger picture of it how many antipatterns they implemented and how many things they did wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Did anyone here take a look at the source? Anything we should be worried about?

<comment><USER26> It wasn't very exciting. It was only a tiny fraction of the whole source. Some UI controls, some headers for the lens engine and their job system.

<comment><USER27> So this is not quite a big deal. Others do share the code for free to go in wide open.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> What is the effect of this? Apart from some security through obscurity measures that might now be useless, what could the worst negative effect of this be? I can't imagine it could hurt Snapchat.

<comment><USER29> Same potential damages from source code leaks : revealing secret projects in roadmap, security or privacy malpractices, lack or respect of SW licenses.

<comment><USER5> Yeah definitely the SW licenses as SnapChat is mainly US so there probably won't be any real repercussions related to privacy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> [https://twitter.com/x0rz/status/1026735377955086337](https://twitter.com/x0rz/status/1026735377955086337)

</comment><comment><USER31> If you're interested in it you can find other repos by searching Github for Source-SnapChat and Source-SCCamera.

</comment><comment><USER32> I find it strange their app is all Objective-C and no Swift.

<comment><USER33> AFAIK neither does Spotify. Swift is nicer in a lot of ways, but it is still not as safe a bet as objc for large projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> This is a case of the Streisand Effect[1] in action.

If anyone is really curious, it is called Source-SnapChat and it is all over Github.

Github is going to have to mass delete these mirrors, and prevent anyone from re-commiting it anywhere. Snapchat sending DMCAs is not going to be enough.

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

<comment><USER35> When specific repos are blacklisted on GitHub, they have a system that automatically flags uploaded forks. Not sure if/why they haven't blacklisted this codebase yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Is it weird that all of their methods start with SC? I guess we do that a little bit for the product I work on but it's also just one product in a much larger company and part of an entire platform. Snap is just snap.

<comment><USER37> This is pretty common for Objective-C, I believe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Well, what is the verdict? Was there anything interesting in the source code? Does having it publicly available matter at all?</comment>


Dreamy First Night with MacBook Air - <AUTHOR> http://www.victusspiritus.com/2010/11/02/dreamy-first-night-with-macbook-air/ <comment><AUTHOR> Admission: this is my first laptop ever.

In early comparisons this 2.13Ghz, 4Gbyte ram paper weight is an adequate replacement for my monster dual core 3Ghz, 4Gbyte ram Dell desktop running Ubuntu (appropriately named Juggernaut).

I don't do heavy animations with Adobe. My standard fair is light gaming and web scripting front/back end. I'd like to push 3D JavaScript graphics with HTML5 but don't yet have a need.</comment>


How long does it take to create a 16TB file? - <AUTHOR> https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20071204-00/?p=24313 <comment><USER2> The article is from 2007. I'm wondering how long it takes now for the same test.

<comment><USER3> The article is from 2007 but is about what happened at the time NTFS was developed, so likely the time it happened was 1992/1993 or so.</comment></comment>


Zodb 4.0 adds support for python3.3 (August 2013) - <AUTHOR> https://pypi.python.org/pypi/ZODB#id1

<comment><AUTHOR> Even though I've been working on and off with Plone lately, this one snuck in under my radar.</comment>


A list of tech job openings – Expertly reviewed by tech workers - 0-o https://reviewedjobs.com <comment> 0-o Creator here: Please tell me what you think about the idea, and what other features you'd like to have a job opening reviewed on!</comment>


Solaris + ZFS = The Perfect Home File/Media Server - <AUTHOR> http://bitdrop.st0w.com/2009/05/16/solaris-zfs-the-perfect-home-file-and-media-server/

<comment><USER2> Good setup, but way too expensive for what adds up to a highly-advanced NAS.

I don't at all disagree with the OpenSolaris/ZFS assessment, but the hardware is a bit on the heavy side. You really don't need that server motherboard (knock 100 dollars off the price). The CPU is also overkill, and ECC RAM isn't necessary though at that price it's not exactly a bad idea either.

The remaining cost is just HDs - you can knock one off the list if you use RAID-Z instead of RAID-Z2 and remember to replace a drive as soon as it goes bad.

OpenSolaris itself doesn't need a full 320GBs for the OS and its software: an 80GB hard drive will suffice and then some.

<comment><USER3> For the really cheap solution, you can just get a mini-itx atom board, mini- itx case, and a few external usb enclosures for the hard drives. It's what I have at home, running opensolaris on Xen. I mapped the usb drives natively to opensolaris so I'm not creating disk images on each. It's still fast enough to stream movies on. Not counting the external hard drives, it'll probably cost you around $200 for the PC, and about $125 per terabyte (usually around $25 per usb enclosure).

One of the reasons I used Xen is because OpenSolaris still lacks proper network drivers for just about all the network cards I own. It also had issues with my external usb drives, so it was just easier getting linux to handle the hardware interfaces to opensolaris.

I use it as timemachine backups for my macs & media storage... but on a cheap budget.

<comment><USER4> Have you tried/thought about VirtualBox?

<comment><USER3> I used Xen because I know it well. I'm sure it would probably work with VirtualBox or dozens of other virtualization platforms.

<comment><USER4> I see... but unfortunately Xen dom0 has becoming unavailable in the latest Linux distributions, e.g. Fedora and Ubuntu. Also Red Hat seems that it will go with KVM in its next version.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love ZFS. I was on the mailing list for a year just to watch it develop. It is amazing. I love Solaris. When I deploy applications on it I get warm and fuzzies.

I've used ZFS + Solaris at home and with Sun hardware in several companies for 'appliance' servers that we deployed on-site in remote locations. We were able to achieve reliable storage on a 1U server without paying for a RAID card. It was great. ZFS is great for the budget. Now I want it at home.

But where's the simple appliance to do this? For a home fileserver I just want a small box large enough to hold 4 disks, and I want it to set me up a RAID-Z or mirrored ZFS when I pop them in, and serve them via all the common methods I pick via a simple web interface.

Why has nobody done this? I've looked, and the only ZFS 'storage appliances' are software packages.

At present I have a RAID-1 mirror on cheap external drives on a mac mini, and I _KNOW_ the array will degrade within a couple years. Has always happened to me with software RAID. ZFS would be great, but there is no such appliance. (And yes, I tried the patch to make OS X write to ZFS... so slow it virtually locked the system).

Please, someone: build this. It will be a great product. You can offer much better storage reliability than can cheap RAID with ZFS.

<comment><USER6> It sounds like what you are looking for is a Drobo (www.drobo.com). It has some shortcomings, but it is great for dead-simple backups that protect against hard drive failure.

<comment><USER7> I am excited about drobo but I've heard too many horror stories.

<comment><USER8> What kind of horror stories?

I am looking for something like this instead of tape backups. I looked at some NAS devices that hold five drives and seem pretty robust. One of the devices can mirror itself to another NAS over the network so you can have two separate places to store your data and not have a hardware failure of one device kill the other.(one exception would be the case where the master device gets degraded to the point where bad data is being written to it and then propagates the changes to the other device. I don't know how likely this failure situation is though.)

<comment><USER7> I've just heard whispers of data loss bugs more than a few times. I recommend some searching.

I think the dual NAS idea is a good one; I'm considering it.

I do crave a higher bandwidth connection to disk.

I wish OS X would ship with ZFS. A mac mini + zfs + JBOD seems fascinating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've build something similar for home/small-office use. My experiences are at <http://johnandkaren.com/blog/file-server>. Daz at <http://sigtar.com/> has done similar things as well, and I've found his site to be invaluable as I have built my file server.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for the links... You've made my day with that ACL rule.

I had the new file permissions issue but hadn't had time to hunt down the solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This looks nice, but $1300 seems a little overkill for a home file server! (unless it's a home office?)

<comment><USER11> About half of that is the cost of the drives. That's not going to change no matter which solution you get.

Compared to the 4-bay $500 Drobo, (plus $200 for DroboShare) it's not bad considering he's getting exactly what he wants.

The trade off is that he has to maintain the Solaris box, and the size/footprint of the overall solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hopefully acquiring Sun will accelerate Oracle's work on btrfs, and we Linux users can get our own copy-on-write system.

<comment><USER13> More likely Oracle will abandon work on BTRFS now that they have real ZFS.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, if I were Oracle I'd definitely throw away a native Linux filesystem in the late stages of development and start porting some goofy jock-ware from an alien kernel. But I'm _not_ Oracle and so they're foolishly carrying on with their insane scheme: <http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.file- systems.btrfs/2880>

<comment><USER13> Oracle have said that Solaris is the main reason they bought Sun.

<comment><USER14> Nothing I have said contradicts this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've had a lot of success with ZFS in FreeBSD running on some very old hardware with a small ram upgrade and a stack of SATA hard disks.

I did try OpenSolaris first but it didn't like my old hardware.

</comment><comment><USER16> I don't know if anybody is interested in Qnap TS-219, it's green and cheap

<http://tinyurl.com/p5szxs>

It uses an arm based 1.2GHz CPU with 512MB memory, it is officially supported by Debian:

<http://www.cyrius.com/debian/kirkwood/qnap/ts-219/>

</comment><comment><USER17> there was a similar post on nerdblog recently: <http://www.nerdblog.com/2009/04/good-enough-zfs-nas.html></comment>


TechCrunch EU and Zeus trojan - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2010/09/08/242657/Zeus-threat-increases-as-detection-rates-fall-warns.htm

<comment><AUTHOR> Only two out of 43 AV can detect this sample

[http://www.virustotal.com/file- scan/report.html?id=d756a1bd9...](http://www.virustotal.com/file- scan/report.html?id=d756a1bd936e30739fe23cbe2896e1b301825f347aae72ff8a7f428831e1819b-1283786063)

Let's see how long will it take for major AV to provide protection.</comment>


Ask HN: Why not ask for show adds? - <AUTHOR> Why do advertisers dont ask permission for show ads? When you watch a video or browse a website, a small message of 5 seg, saying 'would you like to see an ad to support website/content creator?'<p>It would be more efective as user choose to watch it.. <comment><USER2> > It would be more efective as user choose to watch it..

Do we have any data to support that ?

I'd intuitively think it works as good as donations, aka not that good.

<comment><AUTHOR> A common example undertaken in research studies uses this foot-in-the-door technique: two groups are asked to place a large, very unsightly sign in their front yard reading "Drive Carefully". The members of one group have previously been approached to put a small sign in their front window reading "Be a Safe Driver", and almost all agreed. In one study, in response to the "Drive Carefully" request 76 percent of those who were initially asked to display the small sign complied, in comparison with only 17 percent of those in the other group not exposed to the earlier, less onerous, request.</comment></comment>


Google admits failure in copying iOS - <AUTHOR> http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2012/07/21/google-admits-failure-in-copying-ios-excuses-its-patent-infringement-with-communist-rhetoric

<comment><USER2> As someone who grew up in a country where "communism" isn't a swear word, I had to laugh when I hovered over the link and saw the full URL for the article in my status bar.

Definitely not clicking it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Talk about link bait...

They guy never really gets to the point, just meanders around throwing accusations at Google.

</comment><comment><USER4> The article talks about When Google stole java code, and then stole ios... I smell some hyperbole.

</comment><comment> jack-r-abbit Holy mess of rambling and rants, Batman. I feel dumber for even trying to read that rubbish.

</comment><comment><USER5> Is there a point here beyond "Google should be ashamed of themselves"? Apple plays in the patent war zone, and this is what happens there.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've been following the author of this article for a few years now. Although he's been mostly consistent in his writings until 2010, when Apple got into the patent wars game he changed his stance from "Apple is wise not to exercise patents offensively, let other industry players ruin each other doing it" to "Of course Apple has a right to defend their intellectual property, and even be aggressive about it".

Do a Google search for "site:roughlydrafted.com not aimed at the iphone" and you'll find this article from 2009

[http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/11/21/inside-googles- andr...](http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/11/21/inside-googles-android-and- apples-iphone-os-as-software-markets/)

About two thirds down you'll find the paragraph heading "Not aimed at the iPhone". Read that paragraph. It is a sample of how the author used to think about the mobile landscape ca. 2009. Come 2010 the author abruptly and disingenuously changes stance to the point where the tone of all articles he writes is about agreeing with SJ's "thermonuclear" war against Android.

So yes, Daniel Eran Dilger, if you're reading this, I think you're an arrogant and disingenuous Apple fanboy motivated by a blind hatred of everything that isn't Apple.</comment>


Ask HN: Check out my little app - <AUTHOR> http://huddle.im

<comment><USER2> This is beautiful. Simple, immediate and actually useful to real people. Great stuff. I hope you don't add any features that will compromise its simplicity.

<comment><USER3> I'll bite. Feature request: make it an iPhone app.

<comment><AUTHOR> I can make an iPhone version of the website, but is it really necessary?

<comment><USER4> You should build one if your customers ask for it.

And if you do well they will ask. Most iPhone apps are just web-apps w/a "phone-top" interface. Running your app through Safari on the iPhone feels too slow and looks crappy next to a native app. I think having an iPhone app is going to be as standard as having website soon, if not already.

Also agree w/ sibling poster about access to your contacts + other richness.

Otherwise, good luck! I really like how you ritually slaughtered all the BS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd note that there is already a company called huddle <http://www.huddle.net/> and given they are fairly well known and do online collaboration, I'd suggest getting a different name.

<comment><AUTHOR> One of huddle.net's features is conferencing. I noticed they have an affiliate program. I could put a link that says something along the lines of "Looking for something more heavyweight? Check out Huddle.net!"

<comment><USER6> I am not 100% clear on the law but I believe they'd have an infringement case against you. Although, I did a quick search and did not look like huddle.net has registered the huddle trademark. (A brief 5 minute search, looks like all 'huddle' communication related ones were abandoned)

But if they did have a trademark case, this would likely strengthen it. If you benefited from a referral program, huddle.net could prove you profited from domain infringement.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think they do, because huddle is a dictionary word that means "to crowd or draw together". I don't think they might have a trademark case against me, especially since my huddle is not a company.

If they do, however, I think they might chill with the fact that I would be giving them some customers. Even if not, it's a good thing that I'm not living in the US at the moment (and not moving back until late 2010).

<comment><USER7> Yea, but the word 'apple' is a dictionary word that means "fruit with red or yellow or green skin and sweet to tart crisp whitish flesh," but the lawsuit between Apple the computer company and Apple the record company has been pretty well publicized, not to mention lengthy and expensive. See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v._Apple_Computer>. I would consider changing the name, or keeping it and plan for a legal battle if this becomes any kind of success.

It is a nice service though, and awesomely simple.

<comment><AUTHOR> Touché ;D.

<comment><USER8> Hate to be the bearer of bad news, dude, but to my knowlege Huddle have a global trademark on the use of the word "Huddle" in relation to collaboration. Would suggest re-considering the name.

IANAL, however, just a programmer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I built this in about two hours. The phone number is provided by dropio, but I plan to switch to twilio in the near future. I built it out of boredom, so constructive criticism, even if harsh, is welcomw :)

<comment><USER9> Nice. I was wondering how you did this. I've not used dropio phone numbers before, but I've done work with twilio. You could certainly add some killer features using twilio. Very nice app.

[edit] Actually, I'm not sure about twilio's conference call abilities, so maybe I spoke too soon.

<comment><AUTHOR> They have the ability to connect calls, which is basically the same thing. I bult it with Dropio first as a proof of concept, as I did not want to spend much time with Twilio if no one was going to use it (TWIML is not very Ruby- friendly if accessed through Twilio's ruby library).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My first hesitation was... will this work? I would explain what service it is using, or something to inspire some more confidence. Nice idea though and good name.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is really impressive. I'd love to be using it. The trivial interface for setting up a call is absolutely something I'd value over Freeconference.

The security of this scheme worries me, though. Here's several requests for the same key:

Location: /chinashop

Location: /chinashop9556

Location: /chinashop3025

Location: /chinashop1230

Location: /chinashop5900

It looks like I could probably write a little program to slow-poll for conferences on targeted keywords and find out other people's conference IDs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Random numbers are added to the name if it already exists. I will probably add optional password protection in the near future. Also, I don't want to take much credit for the system, because, as I said, it is provided by Dropio for the time being - I just built a simple front end as a proof of concept.

If I see enough demand, I will make my own system with the Technology from Twilio, which would allow me to have more control over the system, and add a bunch of extra features like optional call recording and whatnot.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, I see the random numbers there... they're just too small. =)

Use a 128 bit hex string from /dev/urandom or Java's securerandom or whatever you have that isn't PHP's mt_rand, and you'll be fine.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll have it in mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The first time I called (218-486-3891), I immediately heard someone speaking (in a foreign language, not sure which). It went on for a minute or so, then I hung up. I called again and got the expected prompt... something's a little off here.

In other news, why not give this place a test? If you're reading this, call in!

<http://huddle.im/hackernews>

<comment><USER13> I did but nobody was there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Like it. When I use this service, what am I agreeing to as far as privacy? How do I know whether or not my call is recorded? How comfortable should I feel about discussing confidential information?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good points. I will add a privacy disclaimer. And no, calls are not recorded, neither is your phone number ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> How will you make money from this?

<comment><AUTHOR> If/when I move to Twilio, I might charge a (very) small amount to power users. Twilio isn't really that expensive and I'm not interested in profiting from the app in the near future. Dropio is as hands-off as it gets, so I hope I can achieve the same level of simplicity with Twilio.

<comment><USER16> Can I ask what your using now? I haven't found many alternatives to Twilio. --> Ah, found below that your using drop.io, no idea they offered phone stuff :).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's an interesting idea and it seems a lot quicker to setup a call than going through FreeConference.com. However, I'm a little more methodical and the site doesn't explain how the process works.

A few questions come to mind: \- Who are you and why are you giving away free conference calls? \- Will participants hear ads during the call? \- Is there a limit on the number of participants? \- What about international callers (btw what country is this for?)

I like the clean and simple design and I encourage you to keep it that way. Perhaps linking to a FAQ or a page with a little more background.

Good luck and congrats on the release!

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right. As I have mentioned numerous times (I will add it to the site later), the phone number is provided by Dropio. I will move to Twilio in the near future to provide a 1800 number instead of a New York one.

In fact, most of the information you want is in the links "learn more" in the homepage, and "about this number" in the number page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is it possible to make the drop.io workspace private? I created a Huddle named testuddle and I can access <http://drop.io/testuddle> with no restrictions.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. I mentioned in a comment that I will add password protection to Huddle, which would protect the Dropio workspace as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's nice. It's not initially clear exactly what it is or how to use it, but I think that would be rather simple to fix. Keep it simple when you start working on the visual front.

<comment><AUTHOR> I did add that information at the "learn more" link, but I will try to make it more apparent.

<comment><USER19> It's just such a simple app I think you should be able to sum it up in that first blurb.

And maybe separating the phone# and the PIN would simplify it a bit. something like "Call this number to begin a conference call: XXX-XXX-XXXX. This is your PIN. You will be prompted for this after dialing." Or whatever..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> 1\. have the conference number generated be of lesser digits unless you are expecting and ready to support 10^9 simultaneous conferences. Having something like 4 digits should suffice.

2\. Not sure how serious you are about this app, but the next features I would want would be to allow users to register and permanently reserve pin numbers. This will ensure I can set up numbers and put them into my meeting invite for that meeting next week

<comment><USER21> I disagree that only 4 digits should suffice, after all, that means that once there are 10,000 simultaneous conferences going you can basically just try pins at random and see whose huddle you drop in to. And with less conferences the chances would still be pretty good, just try a couple of times.

The pin is the only thing between an outsider and your conference. (assuming the phone number is the same, which seems to be the case right now).

<comment><USER20> That would be the next level feature - ability to define your own pass key that you pass on to invitees and change every time.

Professional conf systems offer that all the time

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Here's my 2 cents:

Pluses:

+++ It is very nice and simple. I never subscribed to any teleconferencing solutions simply because I think it may get complicated and it probably requires subscription.

Minuses:

\- The phone number & pin shows up intermingled in Firefox.

\-- I need a global teleconferencing solution, and I don't see myself saying, come on guys lets call this number in new york for connecting up.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have only tested in chrome, I have to optimize it for other browsers.

And, one of the reasons I would like to redo it in Twilio would be the ability to provide a 1800 number instead of a NY one, which would make it easier for people in the US. Unfortunately, I haven't found a way to provide numbers outside the US.

<comment><USER23> I assume you are not making any money per minute on those inbound calls? That's the model that Freeconference call uses, and apparently the same thing that drop.io is doing. That's why the number is based in either Iowa or Minnesota.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The learn more link doesn't do anything in MobileSafari.

Nice simple and clear introduction.

Your target market are business execs that are currently paying a lot more than free for thus service. Convincing them that your app is stable and credibile is your challenge.

<comment><AUTHOR> Like I mentioned in a previous comment, the phone number is provided by dropio for the time being, while I make the switch to Twilio and add a 1-800 number instead of a NY one (if I can figure out a way to even out the costs.).

My target audience isn't really business execs, rather the more causal web users market who want to collaborate together. Let's say a twitter user and his/her followers, or a freelancer and his/her client(s).

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Great idea. Quick thing. The app says 'The number is based in New York City, for the time being (sorry!).' but the number that displayed for me was 218-486-3891, which is Duluth, Minnesota according to Google. Should that output read 212?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll check up on that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is great, well done. I have one minor suggestion: make it a one page app. Don't make the user go to another page when they click create. Use ajax to show the results just below.

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm not exactly the target audience of this, but I discovered this fact only having created a number. A little more description on the home page will definitely help.

<comment><AUTHOR> I will take that into account, thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> it's cool (love the name), but I would just use drop.io for conference calls, since I use it for other stuff.

what i would LOVE though, is a free, simple, web-based screensharing tool.

i've used skype but it requires, obviously, installing their software. drop.io comes close, but only allows me to share content already on a drop. and tinychat sounds cool, but isnt free.

thoughts?

<comment><USER29> dimdim?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Add an API. That would be sweet! Then this could be integrated with any sort of collaboration web app!

<comment><USER31> I think that all the backend of this uses drop.io's (<http://drop.io/>) API to get the phone number. This (quite cleverly) adds a simple interface to it.

I would also check out Twilio if you're interested (<http://www.twilio.com/>).

<comment><AUTHOR> Hit control+find and search for Twilio ;)

I do plan on adding twilio, I am playing with their conferencing API as we speak. I'm also checking out an alternative, that looks pretty promising. I'll see how it turns out.

I made it with Dropio as a proof of concept.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I love the interface, very simple and no fancy features. It's awesomly simple and selfexplaining.

</comment><comment><USER33> Is there a way to be notified of an incoming call?

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately, no.

<comment><USER33> Thanks, I was thinking of having the phone number in google ads and being notified of calls. Congratulations for the great app!</comment></comment></comment>


Salman Khan on SOPA and PIPA [Video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzqMoOk9NWc

<comment><USER2> Enlightening video as always. The most interesting bit was the analysis of how the bills are worded. Grouping in sites that enable or facilitate so called theft of U.S. property clearly shows how dangerous this bill could be to the internet.</comment>


Rebrickable helps breathe new life into your kids' old Lego sets - <AUTHOR> http://coolmomtech.com/2015/05/rebrickable-lego-building-instructions-for-old-kits/ <comment><USER2> I do like this idea, but surely I'm not the only one with fond memories of just bloody building random crap with the bucket of lego pieces I had as a kid.

Why not just encourage them to enjoy Lego for the random fun that it is, instead of needing step-by-step guides for absolutely everything?

<comment><USER3> It's a little trickier these days because Lego sets now consist of a high percentage of "custom" bricks, not the basic core building blocks we're used to. Also, as mentioned by another, building from plans can be really fun, too.

<comment><USER4> LEGO does sell some "creative" and "basics" sets that are just a bunch of bricks without too many specialised weird bricks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We've used rebrickable since early 2014 I believe, it is unbelievably useful. We keep our full inventory on the site, and it's really convenient to be able to see how close you are to having the retail sets as well. The guy who built the site (someotheridiot) used to be fairly active here, he built it originally as an exercise in Postgres if I recall correctly. He even has an API for the site.

<comment><USER6> I'm still lurking around, don't have time to contribute much here anymore :)

<comment><USER5> We bought the android app this week BTW, thanks for keeping this thing going. Dang we love this tool. If you need help or anything lemme know (mostly a business analyst, but I'm web/python savvy too)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What's up with kids today?

When I was a kid, maybe I built the instruction thing once, but after that, the actual fun started: modification and building new thing!

Do the kids nowadays only do coloring or connect-the-dot books? How about a blank paper? Blank paper is super cheap and can't be monetized nearly as well, so there's no marketing for that...

<comment><USER4> >> When I was a kid, maybe I built the instruction thing once, but after that, the actual fun started: modification and building new thing!

They still do that. Here's what me and my 5 year old built, from the instructions, and then what he turned it into.

[http://imgur.com/a/OvwWU](http://imgur.com/a/OvwWU)

Talking to them while they're doing it is fun. Those recycle blocks are there for a reason - "because these, they RECYCLE YOU" (in a the most threatening voice a 5 year old can muster). The clear-orange bits on the wing are lava bombs.

(If people don't know lego: those orange ski bits are a tool sold with some sets.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Neat. This set me off on a search of what people are doing with automated Lego brick recognition and sorting. Apparently it is a diverse field with no solid solutions yet, as predictably, the 3D image recognition challenge is the largest. It is pretty cool to see someone's solution that involves building the robotics side of their solution entirely out of Mindstorms NXT parts [1].

[1] [http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/8580-a-...](http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/8580-a-lego- brick-sorter-competition/)

<comment><USER9> Even LEGO sorting as a business is something I would totally pay for. We have way too many bricks. I hope someone cracks this nut.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Everyone is different. Some love plans, others hate them. Some like to make something and keep it on display, others like to make it then play with it, while others just want to make stuff. Some of my kids have used sites like this [1] for years while others ignore them.

[1] [http://www.brickshelf.com/](http://www.brickshelf.com/)

</comment><comment><USER11> You could also follow this guy's prolific custom LEGO building and use some of his instructions:

[http://jkbrickworks.com/category/models/](http://jkbrickworks.com/category/models/)

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm surprised no one has tried using computer vision to identify the parts you have. That would make this site useful no matter what bricks you own.

</comment><comment><USER13> Cool site, but something about the article itself bothers me.

There is a whole world of AFOLs (Adult fans of LEGO) out there (including myself), but the impression I get from the writer is that LEGO sets are for kids.

Constructing MOCs and free-form building are one of the ways I have been able to recapture some of my fond childhood memories and also stretch my creative muscles. Its very relaxing and therapeutic for me to just build something.

Having ideas of how to re-use existing sets of bricks, or even instructions on how to perform techniques seen in other MOCs are invaluable.

<comment><USER14> Uh, what? The article is on a site called coolmomtech.com. The article is going to be about kids because it's aimed at mom's.</comment></comment>


Software-dependent devices: do they now need expiration dates? - <AUTHOR> http://circuitbored.com/communicate/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=187 <comment><USER3> As time passes the more I think that Stallman was right:

Today there is no way I'm buying a device that a company can turn into a paperweight by flipping a switch.

Tomorrow I won't probably buy anything where I'm not controlling the software.

<comment><AUTHOR> Some instances of software truly need the Internet to run, E.G. Facebook or GTA Online. Many software tools don't need that connection to run, but are heavily embedded with connection dependencies like a calculator app (stable technology). Many of these apps and devices become totally useless if an active connection is not available. This is a bad move companies make all the time to encourage our dependence. The same goes for Hardware -- Do you really need to send a Tweet from your refrigerator?

Identifying the frivolous items that do not need to be Internet reliant and avoiding them altogether might be the key to sanity, unless you want GE logging each time you open your refrigerator door and spying on what you buy and store in it.

This discussion ties into so many issues faced in modern day society. Technology should serve in making life easier, less expensive, and more efficient for all of us, not in manipulating our emotions, costing more over time, and in tracking our decisions and movements.

<comment><USER4> I've been harassing my dad for ages over his purchase of a WiFi-enabled LG fridge.

Neither of us know why it's connected - but it is, and it proudly displays a WiFi icon with a backlit LED right above the water dispenser.

The only thing you can possibly gain from a WiFi-enabled fridge (it has no voice commands, no screen, etc) is just being monitored and/or hacked. There is literally no benefit to the consumer from having WiFi on that device.

<comment><USER5> > The only thing you can possibly gain from a WiFi-enabled fridge (it has no > voice commands, no screen, etc) is just being monitored and/or hacked. There > is literally no benefit to the consumer from having WiFi on that device.

Does it at least have cameras inside the main cavity so you can see what you're short-of on your phone when you're at the supermarket?

<comment><USER6> Take a photo before you go mate

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Perishable software is a huge problem - things keep operating only in dynamic equilibrium, such that they would fall apart as soon as we stop putting energy into fixing flaws.

I have been thinking for years that as a society, we need 100-year products. It would be a global good to counteract the local incentives for producing perishable software.

However, over time I have realized that there are legitimately unforeseen circumstances that come up - for example, the general realization of the need for stricter security around logins (e.g. two-factor authentication). Maybe a 10 year time window is realistic for now.

In the meantime, requiring expiration days would go a long way towards calling out how perishable our devices and software are.

<comment><USER8> > such that they would fall apart as soon as we stop putting energy into > fixing flaws

This is not true. The only reason software needs constant updates is because new features are constantly being added to stay competitive. If you stop adding features, in theory you will eventually run out of bugs to fix as well.

The problem is feature creep. Software doesn't "decay," and thus does not need infinite maintenance.

<comment><USER9> That is assuming that software is ever written 'correctly', which outside of (semi-) academic exercise is never the case (so far).

You can have a program with 1 purpose and no added features experience a variety of critical flaws over a period of 30 years. While there might not be a 'decay' as such, there definitely is new understanding and as such new attack vectors.

The same goes for the stuff the software runs on top of. Your program might be programmed just fine, but if the CPU it was programmed on no longer exists and the replacement CPU has new features that allow that program to be exploited in new ways, that is still a flaw of the software. It couldn't have been foreseen, but it still happens.

The concept dat the things we build are frozen in time never holds up. The difference with software vs 'other things' is that it doesn't degrade or get 'used up' (as you wrote yourself). But the things around it do and as you cannot write programs against all possible future contexts, it will need maintenance for as long as it is in use (from a software perspective - <USER2> business thinks differently about that, especially risk analysts).

<comment><USER10> Not really. There is literally precedent in this regard. TeX is stable. Very stable.

Has it been extended? Yes. And some extensions can be seen as borderline required. But I'm not unconvinced that one of the biggest factors in this is that he tried to make it stable. And showed great restraint in what requirements to go after.

<comment><USER9> Which TeX? Over the last 10 years, over 20 serious and critical vulnerabilities have been found in various TeX implementations. They were all fixed via... maintenance.

<comment><USER10> How many of those were extensions? Pdftex, as an example, is not TeX. There have been roughly, what, eight releases in TeX since version 3? Hence we are now at 3.14159265.

This is not to say things couldn't have been done better. But I love that all of my documents still compile just fine. Modern practices? Nope.

<comment><USER10> Coming back to this after a few days. I also can't help but take a double take at 20 vulnerabilities in 10 years being a serious criticism. Is the implicit claim that this is a bad record compared to other software legit? (Honest question.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> No, they need expiration dates _more than_ milk, because at least the dairy farmer isn't coming into my house to curdle my milk in the middle of the night.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. Planned obsolescence has always been a valid threat against our financial futures. Pushed software updates can secretly render IOT devices useless or slow them down. i predict there will be a ton of class action suits in years to come over this, the real tragedy is that bilked consumers will likely never be the ones who recover the loss. It's unfortunately the way of capitalism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Maybe a better analogy isn't milk, but car seats? I was surprised to learn about car seat expiration when I became a parent, but it makes sense -- the materials themselves break down over time, and safety standards and research evolve. I don't think it's too big of a leap to see software in a similar way. Even if the code itself still runs just fine in ten years, likely the context it runs in has long changed.

<comment><USER13> The car seat thing is actually mostly unfounded. There's a lot of social panic about child safety.

[https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.marketplace.org/2019/11/14/...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.marketplace.org/2019/11/14/is- there-any-data-that-says-secondhand-car-seats-arent-safe/amp)

<comment><USER12> And in a future where software-dependent devices have expiry dates, we can debate if worries about using them past their published expiration are warranted or are examples of social panic. I think a future where those debates happen, as opposed to one where the majority of people are not even aware of it as an issue worth considering, is a better one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> m-p-3 A good example would be Chromeboxes and Chromebooks. They really should put an expiration date / EOL on the packaging and system itself.

<comment><USER14> Chromeboxes and Chromebooks should _not_ have expiration dates. The company that built them should be fined for dropping them.

<comment> m-p-3 Indeed they shouldn't, and it should be easy to flash a custom OS to give them a second life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The software doesn't "expire" or "perish". The software isn't gone. The software may go into a state of not getting updates.

A lot of the problems outlined in the post have to do with device and solution design decisions rather than in software expiring.

This also touches on open source software lifecycle choices. PHP may be updating quicker than it used to but the backwards compatibility is amazing.

Angular 9 moving at this pace of change is an example of a lot of churn. Churn is fun for us devs while we work on things but not great for the solutions our stuff is embedded in.

<comment><USER16> It sure does expire its usefulness. Try running old phpBB forum, Android 4 phone, or browser from 2011. Software degrades into a point of uselessness.

<comment><USER17> And yet, Windows XP and IE 5 still have a nonzero market share for some reason.

<comment><USER18> Windows XP and Vista have a market share of less than 0.1% if we are to believe steam stats. [https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/](https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/)

Either that, or steam doesn't work on these and the missing 0.1% are Windows Server OS. Turns out, software does stop working for real.

<comment><USER19> Steam dropped support for XP and Vista last year

[https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=1558-AFC...](https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=1558-AFCM-4577)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The "Buy it for life" movement would absolutely need to flag software- dependency as an anti-feature. My recent smart TV purchase is regrettably tied to a fixed China-hosted domain name to fetch the main pages, and despite many calls to the manufacturer they refuse to tell me how to change that hard-wired address to another one. I hope the consumers can rally together and create a crowdsourced BIFL database of which brands to avoid, and perhaps how to circumvent these software dependency.

<comment><USER21> You could do it at the router level.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The problem with planning obsolescence in this manner is that different people use their devices differently and have different expectations, both of which make their devices go obsolete at different times.

An ancient phone that hasn't had an OS update in years still has a good shot at being able to handle texts and phone-calls. If that's all a user wants from it, it's not obsolete until it becomes so old it can't talk to their carrier's network. This is the sort of user who might not be afraid of replacing batteries.

Another user might want to do a fair bit with his phone and be just barely satisfied with the quickness of the interface when he first gets his device. A couple of updates, with their associated bloat, might reduce the speed of the interface enough that the phone becomes, as far as this user is concerned, ready for the junkpile.

If you're making the phones these two users are buying, how do you choose an expiration date? If you put it somewhere in between the above two extremes, one user will angrily bin their phone long before the expiration date and place no further trust in such dates, or your brand, while the other user, knowing how long his phones typically last, might not even buy a phone with such a short official lifetime.

Expiration dates are for milk and eggs. What users want is for the makers of the products they're using to commit to meeting their needs for a reasonable time period. People understand that hardware goes obsolete, but are less understanding when companies provide software updates that have so much bloat that devices become progressively _less_ capable and effectively lose features. People get _mad_ , and rightfully so, when companies refuse to sell repair parts and actively sue anyone making third-party parts.

<comment><AUTHOR> Then perhaps companies should price these devices accordingly to correspond with flawless performance during a pre-specified time period. Right now, if we spend $1,000 on a new XXXYZ Phone, there is no commitment to flawless and essential updates from the company. As they release new devices each year pretty much, it would be in a company's (shareholder-driven) best interests to encourage their user base to upgrade each time a new device is released. This tends to drive the need to intentionally degrade older devices via updates for industry leading companies, by driving annual revenue upwards on a more predictable schedule.

<comment><USER22> If a company raises their prices and commits to spending more on software updates, users are going to buy a similarly spec'd phone that's cheaper. Their perceived value of software updates is "free".

It's arguable that many manufacturers already have wide enough profit margins on their devices that they could easily spend more on software, but choose not to specifically for the reasons you mention. Artificially accelerated obsolescence is a key part of many manufacturers' business models.

What needs to happen is for consumers to start looking at devices in terms of cost/lifetime rather than just the up-front cost. This would necessarily involve placing value on repairability and software updates that don't degrade performance. Phone designs are practically runway fashion now though, and seem deliberately designed to frustrate such a shift in consumer sensibilities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I don't know about expiration dates, but I think a hard-to-miss warning in the product description and packaging would be highly desirable.

</comment><comment><USER24> The problem with expiration dates for software/hardware is that it's difficult to predict when they expire. A new malware attack can make an entire class of device obsolete overnight. IoT devices might be fine if you keep them on a private network but expire quickly if exposed to the internet. A device might be abandoned by a company (no more firmware updates) but later adopted by the open source movement and then updated for a decade. Everyone might be using a device thinking it's safe when actually an APT has had a compromise for it for years. Maybe a better solution is the ability to force obsolescence, but then companies might misuse that and it could be an attack route itself to turn off the devices. An expiration date or forced obsolescence can destroy many things that are actually still useful. A companies commitment to provide updates may be some indication of expected life, but is also a guess and how can you trust that small companies (innovators) will be around in the future?

Maybe the solution is the old fashioned approach to hardening devices; keep improving them until we know they are stable and reliable and then keep making the same thing, like old Unix servers. But people like new things and there are always desirable features that could be added. All changes are the potential creation of new vulnerabilities.

The Soviet Union used common parts to make many different devices, which made them last forever because they were easy to fix. But that also kept them from switching to new devices because it would obsolete so much infrastructure and the social functions built around it.

The only long term solution may be to change society so no one has an interest in doing bad things, it becomes boring and unattractive. That doesn't eliminate all risks though, because the world itself changes and can cause new unforeseen problems.

A layered approach could protect devices better, giving them a longer useful life. And if they were designed well (by iterating) to start with, that would help too. A plan for what to do, just in case, might help as well. Risk and cost assessment can help make wise decisions. Sometimes the only solution will be to just pull all the devices and replace them, at high cost.

We're already facing multiple problems along these lines (compromised home routers, bugs in CPU's, zero days, people not updating software) so there is something to be learned from current problems and solutions.

One really difficult problem is we don't really know how to make things that last a long time at a reasonable cost. Have a look at the projects of the Long Now Foundation:

[http://longnow.org/](http://longnow.org/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Companies should really get a grip on how long things last under normal conditions... They issue warranties on a lot of their goods. Software rarely comes with useful or valid warranties because it is often updated, but for business users they have fixed periods of support, where the company pays a subscription fee for membership. Developing something like that (reasonably) into the price of software could bridge the gap. Someone has to do something firm in terms of policy now that so many software makers are actively playing with the loopholes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> A perfect example: the Sonos debacle from a few weeks ago.

<comment><AUTHOR> And they're pretty much wireless speakers... Something that really shouldn't need updates ever. But somehow they require remote updates. :[

<comment><USER26> They're not 'pretty much wireless speakers', else any Bluetooth or AirPlay speaker would be an equivalent substitute.

They're self-meshing wireless routers combined with a media streamer and packaged into a speaker. They also self-cluster / coordinate to support surround sound, grouping, and AirPlay.

Complicated stuff. Sucks that they don't provide the option to offload some of that work to a computer or appliance, letting the speakers be less smart and have increased longevity, but that's the trade-off in a smart speaker system where customers can start with just one speaker and not need to buy anything else.

<comment><AUTHOR> I get it... Smart TVs with embedded apps are being retired in the same way, but at least when that happens you can use an aux connection to make the device still viable in some sort of way. I use an HDMI wireless connection from my laptop for example, never needed apps to run from my TV since day 1.

I avoid buying most devices that do things that my Laptop and desktop PCs can do these days with function-specific (dumb speakers), because even if worst comes to worst I can always install Linux and keep grinding for the most part.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > Hardware now (storage, memory, and processing power) are finite in devices > like most mobile phones, eventually due to storage, and processing power, > they slow down and eventually need to be retired.

Pet peeve. Hardware if ever slows down. It's the software that gets worse.

<comment> safety-third Always on accident of course. There is no way a hardware manufacturer would intentionally sabotage their products to boost sales.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> That would be nice but people still complain even if the support lifecycle is known in advanced as with Windows XP and 7.

</comment><comment><USER29> We need software escrow for consumers.</comment>