Apple's First Public Demonstration of the Mac, Unseen Since 1984 [video] - <AUTHOR> http://techland.time.com/2014/01/25/steve-jobs-mac/ <comment><USER2> This is a full-length, 1 hour 36 minute demo.

Paint demo is around 42 minute. At one point when Paint was demonstrated I heard a background noise "that's incredible". That's how incredible and how shocking people found when computer was no longer a terminal, but with a mouse and a control menu.

The Mac Writer (around 51 minute) was also very simple yet efficient. For example, once the writer entered the format mode, the options for line space is right on the top and easy to click. Then I thought "geesh, we can't even fit anything on the screen with all the buttons in Word unless we hide them into a drop-down list." I always have trouble locating the line space option in OpenOffice or Word. Having used Word 2003, I rather go back to 2003 and stay that way.

What have we done to our software? The tools we use are becoming so complex.

History note: being the first Macintosh, this is an expensive equipment. The sale didn't go very well because it was very expensive...

Here is the teardown of the 128K Mac; [http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Macintosh+128K+Teardown/21422](http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Macintosh+128K+Teardown/21422)

<comment><USER3> Whenever I see those classic demos like Engelbart's in the 60ies or the first Mac, I feel a bit ashamed for our profession. Computer Software really doesn't seem to have developed much in the last 50 years. We have turned working academic prototypes and concepts from back then into products, not even to the full extent they were perceived. Other than that everything seems to have turned in circles. The minicomputer, the PC, the LAN, the Web, mobile devices - it all brought cool new hardware capabilities, but when it comes to software it was just reinventing the wheel again. The hardware has usually dictated the way the device is to be operated instead of the other way round. Mac and iPhone have been notable exceptions to this.

<comment><USER2> While I agree with you, we should view it this way: we started out with nothing and so any progress we made back then would been incredible. Now we have so much progress we are just looking at how to fine tune things and so there aren't much surprising, revolutionary ideas out there. And because there are so many tools to turn people's idea into reality (which increases competitions), there is little room for surprise. The truly surprising technology that we start utilizing and making big progress would be 3D printing. It has been around for many years but now we finally start using it...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> At the ~3 minute mark, Jobs says, "Apple and IBM emerge as the industry's strongest competitors. [...] It appears IBM wants it all. Apple is perceived to be the only hope. Dealers initially welcoming to IBM now fear an IBM- dominated future. They're increasingly turning back to Apple as the only force that can ensure their future freedom."

It's interesting how the future played out: users have rejected the notion that freedom is valuable. Perhaps something else was meant by "freedom" in those days, but it's hard to imagine something less free than the app store.

<comment><USER5> _" it's hard to imagine something less free than the app store"_

I would argue that if you are not safe you are not free.

The vast majority of App Store users are non-technical and therefore open to scams, viruses and malware. The walled garden may take some freedoms away from the highly-technical but it pays back freedom in spades to 'normal' people. (plus the highly technical can always choose to leave the walled garden if the want to either by jailbreaking or by buying an open device).

We geeks have only ourselves to blame — if we won't police ourselves someone else will have to police us. We gave these freedoms away by using our talents to cheat and scam our customers.

We're not the first to need it of course, if it wan't for Victorian scammers using suspect weights & measures and adulterating flour with dust and the like there's be no need for Trading Standards Officers.

Trading Standards Officers give us all the freedom to buy food & drink safely and I don't believe anyone would truly see us return to a world without them.

<comment><USER6> > I would argue that if you are not safe you are not free. The vast majority > of App Store users are non-technical and therefore open to scams, viruses > and malware.

That would make great sense, if there was a way for technical users to opt out of the walled garden. But it's the very opposite -- Apple spends a lot of time and money making it harder to jailbreak the phone, in ways that have nothing to do with defending against malware. If they do their best to make it impossible to opt out, then it's not about protecting your safety. It's about protecting the business model.

There's an argument for protecting the business model, of course -- making jailbreaking more difficult also makes piracy more difficult. The App Store has funneled a ton of money to developers, which in turn makes for better apps for everyone. But the notion that Apple has gone to absurd lengths to prevent jailbreaking because ... "We [developers] gave these freedoms away by using our talents to cheat and scam our customers"? No. That's not how freedom works. This is about money, plain and simple.

<comment><USER7> To play devil's advocate, do you think in an alternative universe where Apple products have built-in easy to use native support for jailbreaking with the push of a button that some large malware outbreak that only affects those devices jailbroken devices won't be blamed on them anyway?

Apple has other motivations to maintain their walled garden, but their goals of controlling the whole experience also extend to things like that. They want there to be no question that any Apple device is "safe", regardless of legitimate user configuration.

And as long as users at large aren't demanding general purpose computers who can really blame them?

<comment><USER8> Well, we have millions and millions of people using Windows, and in my experience when viruses and malware affect them, they usually blame themselves more than Microsoft. So, no, I don't think they'd put the blame in Apple.

And if that would have been the case, remember the Antennagate? First they told their customers to hold the phone differently, then they said it was a software problem, and finally they said the problem was the antenna, but that all smartphones had a similar problem (which was a lie). So, in that case I would have expected Steve Jobs' reality distortion field in full power blaming everyone except Apple.

<comment><USER7>
        > they usually blame themselves more than Microsoft.

Did you not see how back with the Mac/PC ads Apple very much played on the whole aspect of Windows PCs being vulnerable to viruses? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3Z386vXrt4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3Z386vXrt4)

        > remember the Antennagate

I'm not saying Apple isn't capable of PR bullshit. I'm just saying that I can see why they don't see the benefit of allowing any kind of fragmentation on their platform.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Might as well work out what $2495.00 in 1984 equates to today...

I used this site:

[http://www.usinflationcalculator.com](http://www.usinflationcalculator.com)

$2495 in 1984 inflates to a hard to swallow $5,594.11, an increase of 124.2%.

Being a limey this this is hard for me to comprehend. So I looked at this page:

[http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/data/EXUSUK.txt](http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/data/EXUSUK.txt)

There were $1.4076 per £1 in January 1984, which roughly equates as £0.71 per $1. So if I wanted to buy a brand new Mac 30 years ago, I would have had to cough up around £3974 in today's money.

A quick browse for IMac prices, around £1300 (~$2135, the dollar had a higher value compared to the pound in 1984 than today).

My father's IMac boasts a 2Ghz processor. How many of your vital organs would you have to sell on Ebay to buy 2Ghz of kick in 1984?

Here is a picture of a Cray X-MP:

[http://images.tribe.net/tribe/upload/photo/8c4/74c/8c474c54-...](http://images.tribe.net/tribe/upload/photo/8c4/74c/8c474c54-5c11-43ed-840e-f7ecf617a5d4)

A Cray X-MP in 1984 would cost about $15,000,000 for 105Mhz, so I would require 19 Crays, costing a total of $285,000,000. Taking into account inflation, today that would be a bank-breaking $639,006,208.

I'm trying to remember the source, but I think the CDC 7600 packed 512Kb of memory back in 1969. The Mac had a comparable amount but cost about a 1000 times less.

<comment><USER10> The price of such a thing made my mind boggle as well. It makes me wonder what equivalent devices exist today in the '10x what is affordable' price bracket which we will all be enjoying and taking for granted in 30 years.

Any guesses?

<comment><USER9> > _Any guesses?_

I'm guessing a small proportion of the Earth's population will be cyborgs, but I am a _Ghost In The Shell_ fan.

Thought I'd work out how much mass in UK copper coins would be required to buy 19 Crays ...

just over 72,000 tons, you'd need about 10 _class 37_ freight trains to haul that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Steve demoing NeXTSTEP 3.0 in 1992. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gveTy4EmNyk](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gveTy4EmNyk)

Fascinating to see the Mac heritage in NeXTSTEP carry through the acquisition and transformation into OSX.

It's hard to remember, but in 1992 Microsoft had just released Windows 3.1 - NeXT was light-years ahead of Microsoft.

<comment><USER12> The thing that amazes me about Jobs is how he could present in such a way that it seemed so off-the-cuff and at the same time so polished. Anyone who has had to do presentations like these can learn a lot from watching him at work.

In the NeXT video, for example, he's very good at tying everything together into a cohesive whole, and speaking to his audience in terms they'll understand. He uses practically no filler words ("uh", "um", "basically", etc.).

Here's another presentation he did in 1980 that shows he had these skills almost from the very beginning:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lvMgMrNDlg](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lvMgMrNDlg)

<comment><USER13> I think an advantage he had was time. Bill Gates does similarly well on his presentations from that era.

Unfortunately we don't have the chance to do 35 minutes presentations anymore. Now everyone has to squeeze their pitch into 30 seconds information-free commercials :)

How do you get meaningful ideas across if no one has the time to listen? Only the most superficial ideas can be put across in an elevator pitch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My favorite part is Bill Atkinson's MacPaint demo at 42 minutes. I laughed seeing him mention how everyone thinks the paint bucket tool looks like a graduation cap - I always thought the same thing using it as a kid and never saw it as a paint bucket.

<comment><USER15> My favorite part is the demo. In the stricter definition of Demo [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demo_%28computer_programming%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demo_%28computer_programming%29)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Questions that the audience asked:

\- Is there a version of BASIC?

\- Is there a version of SmallTalk?

\- After you become an expert, would the mouse became a feature or a handicap.

I really take the ability to write in almost any mainstream programming language on my Mac for granted.

<comment><USER14> > I really take the ability to write in almost any mainstream programming > language on my Mac for granted.

Thank Stallman

<comment><USER17> Why? NeXTSTEP was a Unix and had multiple programming languages available to it--in 1989, without FSF-related anythings. Apple packs GCC with OS X, but it's pretty jokey to think they wouldn't just have packed BSD's compiler instead (and now Clang, which exists in no small part because Stallman and company decided it was a great idea to make extending the compiler hard because ideology).

<comment><USER18> Stop trolling. NeXTSTEP's objc compiler was based on GCC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is very, very interesting.

The first 15min more or less are what (most of us) know. Skip that

After that, they will show the real stuff. The manufacture of the Macintosh, and a lot of other things.

The deeper stuff. The laughable (now) things. A successful company yes, but still very vulnerable. A less experienced Steve Jobs.

</comment><comment><USER19> I still remember when my dad brought home a Mac. He got rid of it and lamented that he had. I found him a Mac plus and gave him for his 64th birthday this fall. Thing still works. Great machine.

</comment><comment><USER9> A few minutes in you see that famous tv commercial for the Mac. What I heard was that they only had to show it once, during the ad break for a football game.

<comment><USER20> It also was broadcast in 1983, in twin Falls, Idaho and was broadcast a few times more after the 1984 Super Bowl ([http://mentalfloss.com/article/29867/how-apples-1984-ad- was-...](http://mentalfloss.com/article/29867/how-apples-1984-ad-was-almost- canceled), [http://mentalfloss.com/article/29911/true-story- apples-1984-...](http://mentalfloss.com/article/29911/true-story- apples-1984-ads-first-broadcastbefore-super-bowl))

<comment><USER9> Thank you for correcting me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Steve Wozniak seems to have been omitted from the credits in the slideshow that starts at about 20:40, and yet he appears in it at about 29:28. I wonder why he wasn't listed.

<comment><USER22> He wasn't on the Macintosh team.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> FYI: If you don't do flash youtube-dl (in homebrew) will get this video without problems.

</comment><comment><USER24> Woz is on stage starting at 1:04 in the video.</comment>


Pingdom: Offering 1 year free service - <AUTHOR> http://allanjosephbatac.com/blog/2007/08/pingdom-offering-1-year-free-service-hurry.html

<comment><USER2> AWESOME DUDE

Thank you for posting that link, that's sweet. Seriously, you've made my week. I've just signed up with Pingability.com because they offer a (basic) test for free if you post a link to them on your homepage.

This service is MUCH better, and it's free because I use Firefox. Gotta love open source! :)

Thanks again terpua.</comment>


Under iOS 11, authorities won't be able to image your device without a passcode - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/09/its-about-to-get-tougher-for-cops-border-agents-to-get-at-your-iphones-data/ <comment><USER3> I have never seen a company both so technically capable and supportive of user privacy as Apple. It stands completely apart from all of the tech giants of today.

<comment><USER4> That is very true, but I find it very sad that, as much as Apple is pro- privacy, it's very anti-freedom. I'd love to switch to a device as private as an iPhone, but at this point you're just renting the device from them.

<comment><USER5> It's not anti-freedom. It's just pro-ease-of-use and it's easier to guarantee a quality experience when there are less unknowns and less variables to account for. When everyone is using the same device with the same software, it's much easier to guarantee a great experience.

<comment><USER6> Allowing side loading of apps would not impact usability in anyway.

Edit: It would massively increase the usability, allowing any apps to be installed, not just Apple approved apps, making the phone more usable to many people. Back in the day I had to buy a dev account just to load an emulator I wanted to use (it was open source) without rooting.

<comment><USER5> That is objectively untrue. Every system that has allowed sideloading of apps has been compromised by that very feature.

<comment><USER4> "Every society that has been allowed to drive cars has had car accidents."

I know the risks, I want to do it anyway. I don't want a nanny over my head.

<comment><USER7> That may be a better analogy than you intend. The problem with cars is that everyone suffers the consequences of your driving. In fact, you may have the least exposure to the carbon monoxide, pollution, or even accident risk. Pedestrians, cyclists, property owners, and other drivers are all at risk of your driving.

For that reason, societies tightly regulate car ownership and driving. More so than phones: I don't need a license to use a phone, nor do I have to register my ownership or have it regularly inspected.

But technology these days has this same characteristic: Others bear the costs of your decision. Every device connected to the internet is a DDOS vector.

I don't want you deciding whether to keep your device up to date with the latest security patches, because if you (and a few million others) don't, GitHub is down for me.

<comment><USER4> So, are you doing the responsible thing and not using a laptop, or any device that's vulnerable, like a router?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For anyone concerned that authorities force you to give up your password to them (thus allowing them to image your device), you can pair your iPhone to a computer with a MDM (managed device profile), which will prevent any other device from connecting to it. iOS security researcher (now Apple employee) Jonathan Zdziarski has 2 blog posts on this:

Counter-Forensics: Pair-Lock Your Device with Apple's Configurator:

[https://www.zdziarski.com/blog/?p=2589](https://www.zdziarski.com/blog/?p=2589)

Protecting Your Data at a Border Crossing:

[https://www.zdziarski.com/blog/?p=6918](https://www.zdziarski.com/blog/?p=6918)

<comment><USER9> That's a great idea! Does anyone know if this technique works with iOS 10? The linked blogpost is for iOS 7 and 8

<comment><USER10> Yes, the underlying technique has not changed and works for iOS 11 (beta).

By the way, the writer of this post now works for Apple on their Security Architecture team.

I would not be surprised if this change came from him.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _In the February 2017 case of a California artist who was questioned at San Francisco International Airport upon re-entry, after he finally agreed to unlock his iPhone, it was taken out of his sight for several minutes and could have been imaged without his knowledge. Under iOS 11, unless the artist, Aaron Gach, decided to actually give up the passcode (rather than type it in himself), he could at least have been reasonably confident that the phone could not be imaged without his knowledge._

So, doesn't this just mean that border agents will force you to write down your password, key it in themselves to verify that it works, then walk away with the phone to image it?

<comment><USER12> As mentioned elsewhere, Apple can't prevent "rubber hose decryption" (where someone compels/coerces/tortures you to get access to an unlocked phone). I suspect this feature wasn't designed to prevent that threat.

My guess is this somehow foils or mitigates the workaround that the Israeli company sold to the FBI after the San Bernadino phone issue.

<comment><USER13> They could add a "duress passcode", with an alternate reality of data. I don't expect them to, but it's possible. Bitcoin hardware wallets have this kind of feature to help avoid wrench attacks.

<comment><USER14> Lying to a federal agent is a crime.

Edit: No seriously. See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Making_false_statements](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Making_false_statements). Refusing to unlock your device is one thing. Claiming that you did unlock it but in fact just used a "duress passcode" is a lie and can land you in jail.

<comment><USER15> So don't lie about it.

"I just entered my duress pass code, the device is now wiped".

Can they charge you with destruction of evidence when they have no idea if/what evidence was on the phone?

<comment><USER16> If you're willing to destroy the data to prevent it being read, why not just wipe the phone before you leave and restore it from an encrypted online backup when you arrive?

<comment><USER17> Arriving with "empty phone" has also caused refusal of permission to enter in the past.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > These changes are coming in conjunction with another privacy-minded feature > that will disable Touch ID by pressing the power button five times.

Wow, that's really nice. I wish Google was so forward thinking about things like this. I see no reason why a fingerprint authentication should be forced upon someone anymore than a password unlock would be. The only reason this is how it works today is because it's much "easier" for the government for force your finger onto the phone, or take blood from you, or hair, and so on - <USER2> they can't really do that with passwords. But we can fight back with technology and ingenuity and ensure that a fingerprint auth is "just as good" as as password, at least from this point of view (government forcing you to give it away).

<comment><USER19> > I see no reason why a fingerprint authentication should be forced upon > someone anymore than a password unlock would be.

In Canada, there is a difference. A fingerprint is something you have. A password is something you know. Police can compel you to use your fingerprint to unlock the phone. They can't compel you to disclose the password.

<comment><USER20> Canada forces people to unlock their phones, when crossing the border, quite frequently - and have for years. They will make you unlock it, or disallow entry and/or detain you.

There's a whole series that shows this. It's Canadian Border Guard, or similar. I see it when I cross the border, which I do with some frequency. I just unlock my phone for them.

<comment><USER19> As does the States.

What I meant was that _inside of Canada_ , there are situations where the police don't need a search warrant for your phone. You can unlock it with your fingerprint, so it's legally "open" and searchable.

If you have a passphrase, then they need to _know your mind_ in order to unlock it, and they can't force you to disclose something you know.

<comment><USER20> Ah, okay. Yes, inside the US it is pretty much the same. Borders are the exception and, I think, you need to actually be crossing in order for them to demand it. Citizens are immune, for the most part.

Curiously, citizens aren't immune in Canada. I have dual citizenship and they still sometimes want to flip through my phone. No, I'm not sure why. They have had me power on and unlock my laptop a couple of times, as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> When you need Apple or any technology to fight for your privacy against your own government you know you are in serious trouble.

The government has no right to interfere with your personal effects, this is fundamental to freedom and democracy, and the idea of the private individual.

Yet it seems this too is 'normalized' and citizens are more interested in technology workarounds to deal with this abuse from the state.

</comment><comment><USER22> Here's hoping for multiple password options that unlock secret partitions. Best way through authority is plausible deniability.

</comment><comment><USER23> What if Apple also added a feature for showing an innocent/clean phone if a specific password is pressed? How would the law enforcement know the difference? You only need to show the cellular call log, because they already have it and could use it to prove that you used the "mode".

</comment><comment><USER24> Anyone could shed a light on how difficult would be the implementation of the following:

\- All data encrypted by default

\- The "dump" of the phone memory or macbook hard-drive makes it looks like the whole drive is full. It means that the free space is populated with random data that is, itself, encrypted.

\- User can switch from his user profile to a fake user-profile and import some data (like contacts/messages/photos)

<comment><USER25> This would be awesome.

<comment><USER24> No it is not. It signifies a divide between the tech sector which strives for privacy and government (which is/was supposed to protect the people)

<comment><USER25> Oh? I might have misunderstood your post.

I thought you were suggesting a way that meant phone backups all appear the same size as the disk 100% of the time. (meaning the true volume of content is hidden)

Then the second point is the user could potentially have two (or more) profiles on the device, and it is possible to unlock it into one or the other. Meaning a user under duress can unlock a device and not reveal the true content while the person trying to get into the device has no way of knowing if that is the true profile or not.

I figured that would be a pretty sweet feature. It would also tie neatly into allowing users to have multiple profiles on their device which is currently impossible on iOS...

<comment><USER24> It is a good feature, but my comment was on "awesome". It is not an awesome situation, far from it.

<comment><USER25> ahhh, haha ok I see!

yeah it isn't awesome that we feel we _need_ these security features. However I think even without the fear of government (etc...) this is still a great feature I would love to have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Here is a slide from the PRISM leaks:

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- srv/special/politics/prism-...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- srv/special/politics/prism-collection-documents/images/prism-slide-4.jpg)

#neverforget

<comment><USER27> The mention that is varies by provider is notable. Apple encrypts End-to-end all iMessage chats, as well as FaceTime (VoIP) calls. None of the other providers on that list do that, so at least there's that.

Also, people here act like Apple jumped willingly onboard the PRISM program. You can bet your ass their arm was twisted by the government or they were taken into the program unknowingly (datacenter ISP taps, etc).

<comment><USER26> "Apple encrypts End-to-end all iMessage chats, as well as FaceTime (VoIP) calls."

End-to-end encryption does not guarantee that Apple keeps your data encrypted, or that they don't process it for 3rd parties (NSA would fit as a 3rd party, where Apple would be for them a content provider, as the slide shows).

"You can bet your ass their arm was twisted by the government or they were taken into the program unknowingly (datacenter ISP taps, etc)."

Can you back that up ? How can you be so sure ?

<comment><USER28> > End-to-end encryption does not guarantee that Apple keeps your data > encrypted

I'm probably misunderstanding something here but doesn't "end-to-end encryption" mean that A encrypts it with B's key and [whoever is in the middle passing it along] can't decrypt it because they don't have B's key?

<comment><USER26> Yup, so Apple knows about your data.

And according to that slide they are a "provider" for NSA.

End-to-end encryption at least maybe guarantees that it is not your ISP that is selling you out to NSA (making it harder for Apple to explain why they are on that list).

<comment><USER28> How does Apple know about your data unless they have B's key?

<comment><USER26> Who generates the keys for B ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is why I love Apple.

</comment><comment><USER30> Until forensic companies get hold of new exploits. Which is how high-value targets have been getting dumped for a while now.

</comment><comment><USER31> Technological solutions to a non-tech problem. The US have demonstrated they'll quite happily just lock people up forever if they can't get to the encrypted data.

Good on Apple, but not a solution.

<comment><USER32> Do it to one man and its an oddity, do it to a thousand and lots of people will be demanding change. This makes it more likely it will happen to lots of people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> With it being such a closed platform, what are the odds this is actually true? There's no way to verify that they don't have a skeleton key.

<comment><USER34> At least I'm confident the French, Turkish and NK governments don't have the keys. The FBI wouldn't share the secret with simple policemen, unless for extremely rare reasons, in which case iPhone security isn't your main problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Face ID is going to screw this all up. Cops won't even need your cooperation to unlock.

<comment><USER36> Apple is adding a kill switch to iOS 11 that lets you discreetly disable Touch ID (and presumably Face ID) by hitting the power button 5 times. And of course if you're concerned you can opt out of Touch or Face ID entirely and simply use a pass-code.

[https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/17/16161758/ios-11-touch- id-...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/17/16161758/ios-11-touch-id-disable- emergency-services-lock)

<comment><USER37> I think I would prefer the passcode which can be set to a length much larger than 4 digits when travelling or getting anywhere near fed-gov.

<comment><USER35> Default PIN has been 6 digits since iOS 10, and you can make it a long passphrase instead.

<comment><USER37> I am aware. I don't know why I phrased it the way I did. I meant I would rather use that feature of the longer passcode instead of facial recognition. Bad grammar for the win.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> With facial unlock couldn't they just hold my phone up to my face to image it?

<comment><USER39> The article says they will no longer allow Touch ID to trust a computer, I imagine they also won't allow Face ID.</comment></comment>


Check your urge to build a microservice when you can buy - <AUTHOR> https://buttercms.com/books/microservices-for-startups/should-you-build-or-buy-microservices <comment><USER2> This is a bit of a challenging read-as I think the author and I use two different definitions of the term 'microservice'. The piece went on to describe things like SaaSes, APIs and authentication platforms as microservices, and finally announced that

"A CMS is the perfect example of a microservice (or set of microservices) that is not a differentiator for most businesses" and that's when I had to stop for a moment.

Maybe it's my understanding that needs re-alignment, but I don't consider many of what the article promotes to be microservices as actually being microservices-but my mindset is in a specific context of DevOps and Site Reliability.

Is the term really used so...liberally? This is new to me.</comment>


Tank – A very high performance distributed log service - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/phaistos-networks/TANK <comment><USER2> GH is now a magic land where "high performance" means "no numbers to back this up", "secure" means "we haven't actually been audited", and "awesome" something to the effect of "here, have this".

<comment><USER3> Some benchmarks added [https://github.com/phaistos- networks/TANK/blob/master/README...](https://github.com/phaistos- networks/TANK/blob/master/README.md). Will add consumer benchmarks later (our ops folks are on it). Apologies for not backing the "high performance" claim with numbers in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> No performance numbers. No tests. Nothing about how it manages concurrency, how it actually writes to disk, how it does replication.

It appears to be a server not a lib. Why would someone use this instead of kafka?

<comment><USER3> It is a service, and a library(C++). You can always check the implementation, but obviously that's the wrong answer to that question :)

The README states that replication is not implemented yet. I encourage you to also check this issue [https://github.com/phaistos- networks/TANK/issues/14](https://github.com/phaistos-networks/TANK/issues/14) for some details on the I/O semantics, and the Wiki for answers to other questions: [https://github.com/phaistos- networks/TANK/wiki](https://github.com/phaistos-networks/TANK/wiki)

<comment><USER4> So single threaded, blocking file io. Not very impressive or useful (as a lib).

<comment><USER3> Yes, single threaded, because the contention to the various files and the cost of serialisation would likely negate the benefits of using multiple threads.

Network I/O is obviously asynchronous - you may want to check the codebase. Disk I/O is synchronous, but: \- uses sendfile() and read readahead() to reduce or eliminate the likelihood of blocking reads: see here please [https://github.com/phaistos- networks/TANK/issues/14#issuecom...](https://github.com/phaistos- networks/TANK/issues/14#issuecomment-232614206)

\- AIO is either broken or supported on XFS (depending on kernel release, and also in the past, appending to a file on an XFS fs could block and degrade performance). But not using DirectI/O so writes end up in memory and only get flushed if it hits the commit count, or periodically - so, particularly for local disks, HDDs or SSDs, this in practice never blocks for more than a few ms when flushing, if at all.

<comment><USER4> > Yes, single threaded, because the contention to the various files and the > cost of serialisation would likely negate the benefits of using multiple > threads.

Multithreaded does not mean multiple files.

> But not using DirectI/O so writes end up in memory and only get flushed if > it hits the commit count, or periodically - so, particularly for local > disks, HDDs or SSDs, this in practice never blocks for more than a few ms > when flushing, if at all.

Unless you are actually using it under a high throughput scenario which is why you would use a lib like this. It will work great until you hit the actual flush point, then possibly block for seconds even minutes.

If your performance needs are high, mandating XFS is not unreasonable.

<comment><USER5> It's totally unreasonable to mandate a particular FS for modern general purpose software.

Multiple files does mean multiple threads. Unless you manage to run this without a modern operating system.

<comment><USER4> > It's totally unreasonable to mandate a particular FS for modern general > purpose software.

That is completely debatable. We are talking about a "a high performance distributed log service". Not a word processor.

> Multiple files does mean multiple threads.

Which is something entirely different from what I said...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't see any information other than a claim that it's "engineered for optimal (very high) performance": [https://github.com/phaistos- networks/TANK/wiki/Why-Tank-and-...](https://github.com/phaistos- networks/TANK/wiki/Why-Tank-and-Tank-vs-X)

</comment><comment><USER7> No JVM required. Way easier to set up than Kafka. I'm sold :)

<comment><USER8> Is headless install of the Oracle JVM that hard? Isn't it just a Puppet or a Chef snippet?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think I, or someone else maybe?, needs to run some benchmarks and produce some meaningful comparison metrics -- as pointed out by commenters here, and elsewhere. I suppose I should have done that already. Apologies for the lack of concrete numbers. There's some information about performance in the Wiki and Issues though.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm looking for something like kafka with an at least once guarantee. I believe this can be achieved with the kafka java client (not sure on that) but librdkafka (C++ client) doesn't seem to support this guarantee. Performance is secondary to messages not getting dropped in my use cases.

What kind of guarantees does tank make?

<comment><USER3> The Tank Client will immediately publish to Tank (it doesn't buffer requests). You get at least once semantics /w Tank(exactly once pretty much means at least once but with dupes-detection).

<comment><USER9> So if I have a subscriber that simply publishes a transformed message onto another topic I can have a guarantee that if the publish fails it wont move on to the next message in the subscription?

<comment><USER3> The consumers applications (which interface with Tank brokers via a Tank client library) are responsible for maintaining the sequence number they are consuming from.

Suppose one such application is consuming every new event that's publishing ("tailing the log"). As soon as another application successfully publishes 1 or more new messages, the consumer will get them immediately. If the application that attempted to publish failed to do so, or didn't get an ACK for success, then you are guaranteed that no new message(s) were published(i.e no partial message content).

I am not sure if that answers your question, if not, can you please elaborate?

<comment><USER9> I believe so. I suppose I'm asking for an abstraction that makes maintaining the sequence number simple and fails safely in the presence of errors.

I'd basically like to be able to map messages from one topic to another with a guarantee that none of those messages will be lost; even when some error occurs (either a programming error, system downtime, or network partitions). I'd prefer the application to stop producing messages than lose any of them.

It sounds like that is possible with Tank so I may end up giving it a try.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looks like it is abandoned; first commit was June and last September.

<comment><USER3> I am the core developer. It's not abandoned at all. There are updates that haven't been pushed upstream, but no new features. Was going to support replication via an external consensus service (etc, consul, etc) -- but looks like implementing Raft directly into Tank for interfacing with other cluster nodes is a better idea, all things considering (no external deps., simplicity).

The reason this hasn't happened yet is that, other than lack of free time to pursue it, we(work) haven't really needed that feature yet. We run a few instances and they are very idle and we can also mirror to other nodes (via tank-cli).

<comment><USER11> Can you please please please use the etcd implementation[1] of raft and not the normal go-raft or consul raft implementations? They've done some serious business fault injection and integration testing with etcd as part of google's hosted kubernetes (GKE). There are still some lingering issues with consul at scale that make me a bit gunshy. Mesosphere did some of this work themselves: [https://mesosphere.com/blog/2015/10/26/etcd-mesos- kubernetes...](https://mesosphere.com/blog/2015/10/26/etcd-mesos-kubernetes/) , but I know that Google engineers have done tons of work on this as well.

[1] [https://github.com/coreos/etcd/tree/master/contrib/raftexamp...](https://github.com/coreos/etcd/tree/master/contrib/raftexample)

<comment><USER3> Thank you - yes, I was planning to base the implementation on etcd's. I appreciate the heads up:)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Netflix - Our learnings from adopting GraphQL - sahin-boydas https://medium.com/netflix-techblog/our-learnings-from-adopting-graphql-f099de39ae5f <comment><AUTHOR> This article mentions Falcor, which leaves me wondering what the future is of Falcor. It does seem like Falcor and GraphQL cover very similar ground, and with GraphQL adoption on the rise, perhaps its time to consider it the winner of the fight?

Not that's it has to be a Highlander-style battle where there can only be one, but it might be a good idea to see something of a merge/quickening here. Some of the JSON Graph stuff in Falcor would be great to see officially added to the GraphQL spec, for instance. I've seen several incompatible approaches for describing "normalized"/"shared"/"deduped" data in GraphQL and something like Falcor's JSON Graph References would be useful to have as a more official API or API extension in GraphQL.

</comment><comment><USER2> I've got to say, I have been trying out GraphQL and Apollo in a GRAND stack app on a new project and once you get up to speed with it it is an absolute pleasure to work with. Here's some benefits and a bit of an overview of GraphQL and Apollo.

First think of GraphQL as a competing ideology for REST API endpoints. With GraphQL, you only collect data you need which they say in terms of no over or under fetching of data happens. In making a request it is visibly apparent how your data is shaped meaning you know what properties would be defined when you chain them together.

You have to create a schema and in this schema you define the types of each objects' properties (this should not replace database schemas, but should basically define how data should enter and exit from your GraphQL endpoint to your client.) There are two types of schema types mainly 'type's which are models for data that can be queried and 'input's which are models for data that can be inputs for data creation and modifications. This leads to the only two types of queries namely 'queries' and 'mutations'. There is also only a single endpoint for all types of queries including mutations, so you don't have to try and remember all the different ones. I guess the equivalent of remembering routes is remembering the names of mutations you make, but this is aided by intellisense and the easily searchable schema from the playground.

My favorite part is the tooling. For example the GraphQL playground which is provided by Apollo Server allows you to have the equivelant of intellisense for your queries it lists and autocompletes what properties are on a given branch/property of the type you are requesting. Another benefit to the playground is you can view and search your schema and follow links between different types. This tooling makes development pleasurable, and is no doubt able to be made due to the design decisions that GraphQL made.

A few other neat things that I know are true of Apollo server but am not sure if they are in the GraphQL spec is that your return values from your resolvers (resolvers are like route handlers in rest, but they are specific to the types in your schema) become your response to your client. Asynchronous values (e.g. Promises) are waited on before being sent back as a response. Uncaught errors thrown in resolvers are automatically handled and sent back to the client. Overall it's starting to make me like having more type safety than JavaScript typically has. Also using Apollo client with React is really nice and fills a good gap for adding model and controller layers to React's view layer, so you don't really need Redux or the like with Apollo client.

</comment><comment><USER3>
        We also considered Falcor...

Didn't netflix create Falcor ...?

<comment><USER2> Yep. If you click the link it links to a domain containing Netflix. I've also heard previously that Netflix created Falcor before GraphQL existed, so it makes sense that they might evualuate a new tool.</comment></comment>


The C++ Lands Map - <AUTHOR> http://alenacpp.blogspot.com/2009/06/c.html <comment><USER2> I thought the upper left corner said "Programmers _cat_ each other here" - it's merely _eat_ , though ...

(Sucker for maps, as in <http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/> \- have a couple of hours free, if you're also vulnerable.)

And, hey, we also need an update for this: <http://xkcd.com/256/> . Using a 2007 map in 2009 is apt to end badly.</comment>


Ask HN: Your preferred cloud API for voice/SMS and why? - <AUTHOR> I stumbled upon this HN discussion of about 2 years old http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1996970
Want to know fresh thoughts from people using different services recently?
Metrics are Price (including international calls), reliability, support/docs, and anything else you like about a service. <comment><USER2> twilio is the entire package. If you use OpenVBX along with twilio you can replace your phone system. And if you still want to hold onto your phone system you can use SIP out with twilio. Pretty soon they'll have SIP in as well.

Overall, twilio is more robust, more reliable, priced better, and more flexible. No one in the market even comes close. I've been doing telecom for over a decade and there's nothing better than twilio for telecommunications.

</comment><comment><USER3> Definitely biased here, since I work for Voxeo Labs, but Tropo is free for development, supports SIP, SMS, Shortcodes, TFN's ITFN's, ect. We also have great support ( 24/7 ) and fantastic documentation. Our product is also available on premise, should you want to go that route. It is also being deployed into many large carrier clouds, such as AT&T, Deutsch Telekom, ect.

</comment><comment><USER4> Twilio. In my personal experience nothing comes close. Their API is awesome and I was up and running in literally minutes.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree! But are they also better than others in terms of price and other features? I think price is the most crucial for telephony apps, provided reliability is not compromised.

<comment><USER5> Yes, you really also need to consider reliability - building an app for the phone and imagine the phones go out - your customers will not be happy, so for me twilio is definitely worth it. Also at scale twilio price is definitly more price competive then the smaller guys can offer... Additionally, queue is a huge feature that twilio offers - not sure the others offer that...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Plivo. I use it to provide voice/text services for my personal line and I couldn't be happier with them. I think the price is slightly cheaper than Twilio and you get a similar set of features. I've run into the occasional quirks here and there, but I've always been able to get great support right away.

</comment><comment><USER7> At Babelverse, we first used Tropo's APIs to hack together a crisis-response tool - literally overnight - post-Japan earthquake & tsunami. We've been quite happy with it since then.

</comment><comment><USER8> Plivo. SIP.</comment>


Too many people are buying cars using financial products they do not understand - <AUTHOR> http://timharford.com/2017/06/trapsfordinosaurs/ <comment><USER2> This goes for many things outside of cars. Insurances, Mortgates, student debt, lottery tickets, consumer debt, credit cards and so on.

In general people are sitting ducks when it comes to being fleeced by parties with a plan.

I always wonder why schools don't even teach the beginnings of finance to everybody. You'd almost think there is a reason why it explicitly is not being taught.

<comment><USER3> These products sell because people want them.

They want low payments.

They want to flip houses for massive gains in short periods.

The facilitators aren't fleecing them as much as just meeting their needs. Anyone who tells you that you can't afford that car or that home prices won't appreciate to the sky tomorrow isn't going to get your business.

And my school and my kids school teaches basic finance. No one ever remembers it because most kids aren't interested in it.

<comment><USER4> > The facilitators aren't fleecing them as much as just meeting their needs.

That's a misleading statement, unless you replace "needs" with "wants".

<comment><USER5> I feel like the difference between "needs" and "wants" is an elementary distinction we make on a day-to-day basis. But when we're talking about firms and economics, the distinction does not exist except as labels for the amount of elasticity in demand something has.

<comment><USER4> ...but, when we're talking about individual human beings, who may be misinformed and shortsighted, the distinction is pretty important.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Maybe I didn't understand the deal I bought a car with, or maybe it's an unusual deal, but I'm happy with it.

My car costs me a set amount per month that I can afford, an amount that is actually equal to the monthly depreciation it would face anyway (on average) over a three year period (including the initial low value deposit I paid, this is still true).

Even if I bought it outright, which I couldn't afford to do, I'd 'lose' the same amount of money _in total_ thanks to that depreciation. Effectively I'm 'renting' the car for the same 'cost' as owning it, just without the upfront payment.

Further, GAP insurance purchased at a one off price of about £100 (which was far more tricky to make sure I got the correct thing) will cover any difference in the 'hand back' price at the end of my term and the value of the final payment. So basically if the car does depreciate below the value of the final payment then the GAP insurance will make up the difference. Likewise if I have an accident etc.

I reject the idea that PCP deals are like 'buying and selling a series of homes using interest-only mortgages'. Cars lose value, always. Whether you buy it outright or not, it'll depreciate in value (save for some hyper rare beasts you aren't going to be buying on PCP anyway). But the article doesn't address this point at all as far as I can see and it's an important part of the value proposition of using these types of deal.

<comment><USER7> My understanding is GAP insurance only comes into play if the car is written off (and makes up the difference between what the car was worth and what the insurer pays out). I didn't think it was designed to cover any shortfall in the hand back price?

<comment><USER8> This is the way I've seen it too. It may not be everywhere now, but it was meant to be a safety net in the event that a car was totaled and you still owed the finance company money. For the finance companies, this was essentially free money. Of course they ran loss statistics on it to make sure that it was in their favor, but I did see it save people from a really bad situation. My coworker, driving to work one day got hit and totaled his car. He actually got his car loan at the company we worked for before he started working there. They just wrote off the car, and he was able to go and get a new 0% interest loan. Total win for him. This is the exception not the norm though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> People are buying cars they can't really afford because the monthly payments seem to be affordable. I think they know it's an expensive way to have a nice car but the alternative (because they don't have the capital) may be buying an old banger or having no car at all.

<comment><USER10> The article seems to be talking about short term (2-3 year) interest-only leases.

There's a middle ground your comment hasn't mentioned. Instead of leasing or buying a used car, consumers can finance a new car (e.g. 5 year loan). It requires slightly higher monthly payments to cover the principal, and you can't switch cars as frequently, but you have ownership of the car (and freedom from payments) after the loan ends.

I tend to think that buying used is a much better value, especially in areas that don't regularly salt their roads. But it's good to know about all available options.

<comment><USER11> how does road salting affect the value of leasing versus financing a used car?

<comment><USER10> It affects the value of buying a used car vs buying or leasing a new car.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm not familiar with this particular structure, but it sounds like the sequence of cash flows are:

1\. Customer receives car.

2\. Customer pays monthly amount based on the prevailing interest rate and predicted depreciation of the car.

3\. Customer returns car after X years, at which time the depreciated value of the car along with the payments they've made pays for the car they received X years earlier.

Can someone explain to me how this is functionally different from a fixed-term lease?

<comment><USER9> The traditional way of financing a car purchase in the UK is a hire purchase agreement where a large deposit (usually half the value of the car) is paid upfront. This can be cash but is often covered by the part exchange value of the customer's existing car.

At the end of the term the customer owns the car outright. And, from the outset, he has some equity in the car by means of the large deposit.

The author of the article is talking about contract hire schemes where there is a monthly payment but, crucially, the deposit required is often only 2 or 3 months advance rental.

At the end of the term the customer owns nothing and can be liable for minor damage. The contracts also can have a mileage restriction which is well below average.

So, sure, it's no different to a fixed term lease. These have been widely available to businesses for some time in the UK. The change is that offering these deals to the general public has now become much more common.

The author is suggesting that people are not sufficiently financially sophisticated to understand the implications of this arrangement if their circumstances change unexpectedly.

I disagree. I think most people know what they are getting into but now they have the opportunity to drive a new car they would never have been able to afford otherwise any concerns are put to the back of their mind.

<comment><USER13> Is the lack of car leases a UK-only thing, then?

In the USA, car leases are extremely common. People understand that they have to return the car after the lease. Hell, even the common advice given is "buy a Toyota, lease a BMW" where the assumption is that consumers should buy reliable cars like Toyotas, whereas BMWs/Mercedes/etc that come with more reliability issues after the warranty period should merely be leased.

<comment><USER14> The US industry has always been on the forefront of trying to convince people that they can afford stuff they actually can't and came up with a lot of creative ways to do this. The best example of course is the recent housing crisis. I'd say europeans in general are more debt and risk averse, this even shows in the lack of credit card adoption in places like germany.

<comment><USER15> > I'd say europeans in general are more debt and risk averse, this even shows > in the lack of credit card adoption in places like germany.

Anecdotally, it's also much harder to get approved for credit in Germany. While in Canada, I had banks offering me credit cards with insane limits ($5,000+ for someone in their 20's who finished university but without a job).

In Germany, it was difficult to even get a credit card, and the only card I was approved for has a 2,000 EUR limit. This is with a SCHUFA score of "very low risk", so it's not like I have bad credit.

I would say the lack of credit card usage in Germany is multifaceted:

1\. Germany has a high utilization of cash for transactions because cash can't be traced easily. Germans are typically very mindful of their privacy and thus choose not to use Debit/Credit cards for most transactions.

2\. Ease of online payments. I can pay via Vorkasse (SEPA transfer), direct debit (SEPA-Mandat), or instant methods such as SOFORT Überweisung.

It's easy to buy airline tickets without a credit card. However some companies do require a credit card to rent a car (e.g. Sixt).

So a credit card isn't really necessary if all you want to do is buy things online.

<comment><USER14> While i agree, not sure about 1) Germans use debit cards everywhere, it's just that credit cards are used very rarely but also accepted very rarely which is probably due to some fees that make it not worthwhile, while in the US you cna pay für $3 coffee with a credit card.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I was under the impression that the whole point of auto-financing was to get even _even more_ money out of the consumer. When I bought my last car, I just bought it outright (because it wasn't particularly expensive) which appeared to baffle the dealership. I was actually a little concerned that the dealership told me it was the largest check they'd ever seen (for ~$14k).

Getting people to sign off on a contract they don't really understand is a great way to get more money out of the consumer than they'd otherwise spend.

<comment><USER17> That seems insane that it'd be the biggest check they've seen. I've bought an 80k BMW and an 80k Jaguar outright, and they both shrugged at me paying by check. BMW let me use a personal check, Jaguar wanted a bank check (easy enough).

Edit: A normal down payment for a luxury car of any brand can easily be 20k up front.

<comment><USER18> That heavily depends on where you go and the area. Not the same as a car, but when I went to get the check for the down payment on my home (which was 6 figures), I went to my bank which happened to be in a pretty upscale neighborhood were houses were significantly more expensive on average than what I was buying.

So when I asked the teller to give me a multi-hundred-thousand dollar check, they didn't even blink. "Please enter your pin number sir. There you go sir, have a nice day".

I assume this is very similar. A place selling BMWs is probably used to seeing newly minted millionaires on a daily basis.

<comment><USER19> It's weird getting big checks if you aren't used to it. I had some money coming out from a home sale and got a cashier's check for 50k or something. They asked for ID and checked it very slowly, but nothing past that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Obligatory john oliver episode on the subject [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4U2eDJnwz_s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4U2eDJnwz_s)

</comment><comment><USER21> I feel like there is a natural tension between adults having the right to make their own decisions, and 'protecting' them from making bad decisions. Maybe what we need is a two-part market for financial services, a tightly regulated one where only regulator-approved, simple products can be sold, and one with much looser regulation, but that only those consumers willing to take a financial literacy exam are eligible for (with the financial firm being responsible for checking, and contracts being void if sold to unqualified buyers). After all, even brokers and traders have to take an exam before they are allowed to trade more complicated financial instruments ([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_7_exam](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_7_exam)). We also don't allow people to drive a car without proving they can do so reasonably safely.

The public could reasonably assume that the government might provide guarantees for products in the first group, in the way they do for bank accounts. Products in the second group would explicitly be excluded from any government guarantee - if you passed the exam, and want to risk your own money, totally up to you, but don't come expecting your fellow citizens to bail you out if things go terribly wrong later.

So for example, interest-only home mortgages are almost always a bad choice for most consumers, so they would probably be in the second group. So you could still get them if you _really_ wanted one, but you would have to prove you knew what you were doing, and were willing to give up any hope of a government bailout.

<comment><USER22> _interest-only home mortgages are almost always a bad choice for most consumers_

Just for future reference, if anyone lets you make an infinitely leveraged 500,000 dollar bet that you can walk away from at any time, you take that bet.

<comment><USER23> On the other hand, if someone offers to let you make an infinitely leveraged 500,000 dollar bet that you can walk away from at any time _provided you are OK with the consequence of being unable to access another mortgage loan or to rent (because of outstanding housing debt)_ , then probably don't take that bet.

<comment><USER24> But wasn't a big part of the '08 crisis the fact that you actually could walk away from all of it as a home owner and the banks were stuck with the loss? Sure it sucks to be homeless but it suck a hell of a lot less than being homeless with huge debts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> _> What auto finance needs — what most consumer finance needs — is for key information to be made simple and salient. Competition cannot work if consumers struggle to understand what they're being sold and what it will cost._

And if you agree with that, then let me tell you a story about the healthcare industry...

<comment><USER26> Healthcare, phone plans, internet/cable plans, vehicles ... they're all variations on the (financial) security (for the seller) through obscurity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I liked the term "junk finance". There's a subset of financial products that are essentially the equivalent of going to McDonalds every day, and ordering a Big Mac to go.

</comment><comment><USER28> While car contracts can be unnecessarily confusing they are not the only opportunity for reform. Service contracts need simplification as well, whether your agreement for internet or cell service, to merely using one of the online streaming services. There is a lot of boiler plate in there that could be minimized with some good changes to the law.

This story is UK based, is there no Truth In Lending type act to help simplify these contracts into terms people can readily understand? A recent car purchase I made in Georgia (US) was very easy to understand, all the numbers on one sheet.

<comment><USER29> Usually taking out finance and making some investment decisions requires that you are given a Key Facts Illustration, which looks roughly equivalent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I bought a prius recently and where they were hoping to make the money was on the extended warranty. I demurred on that so I got a 3 year 0% lease.

In addition when you consider the prius' high gas mileage, low maintenance, high lifetime (over 500k miles) and high resale value it's a great deal if you're planning on driving quite a bit.

</comment><comment><USER31> So I guess the whole car thing is probably going to be this cycle's mortgage bubble? Considering car sales are falling off a cliff I guess we're in 2007 right now.

<comment><USER32> No one buys a car expecting the value to go up so the vehicle market probably won't unravel in a collapse (vehicle debt is also about 1/10 the size of the mortgage market).

<comment><USER33> At the high-end of the market, lots of people do, in fact, buy cars expecting them to appreciate in value.

Manufacturers are increasingly offering limited edition cars to cater to this kind of investment.

<comment><USER34> Yeah, nobody is financing Porsche 918s.

<comment><USER35> yes they are. rich people get loans to buy expensive things instead of giving up the cash, often collateralized by their other toys/stock/trust fund/whatever. rich people also overspend, over-leverage, and overindulge just like everyone else.

the difference is they call up their banker and accountant instead of filling out a form at the dealership.

if you're expecting an asset like a 918 or 911RS or R to go up in price, you'd be stupid to not leverage your cash at a low interest rate and put the rest of it to work somewhere else. at this point it becomes a business move, not a trip to the mall. it's like financing a construction project.

do you think they buy jets and yachts and big homes in cash also? of course not. they setup holding companies and finance the purchases, and then charter or rent the asset out to make some of the money back and to pay the crew of people that run these types of properties. that's why you can rent an amazing vacation home for $1k a night, or spend a few days on that yacht with a bunch of friends for $5k, or rent a ferrari for a few hundred bucks.

rich people are exceptionally good at monetizing and leveraging facets of their life that look like giant expenditures to you or i. poor people try to emulate this behavior, and meet their financial ruin, because they aren't savvy or rich enough to make it work.

<comment><USER34> I'm plenty of aware of how people with assets are able to use them as collateral to borrow money, but this article has nothing to do with that kind of financing. It's about 72mo high interest loans on cheaper downmarket cars marketed to people who used to buy old junkers.

<comment><AUTHOR> From the article:

> Graham Hill, of the National Association of Commercial Finance Brokers, told > the FT recently that using a PCP, drivers could pay less for a new BMW or > Mercedes than for a second-hand Ford Focus. Or, as Bob the Dinosaur might > put it, "they just make you sign papers!"

People don't tend to think of BMW or Mercedes as cheaper down markets cars.

<comment><USER36> Perhaps not in the UK, but in many parts of the US the leased (low-end) 3-series or C200 is the car if the so-called $30,000 millionaire (i.e., people living a lifestyle they can't actually afford by renting all the trappings).

<comment><USER37> The lower end BMWs are not fancy cars in the UK either. I don't know if they'd class as "cheaper" or "downmarket", but the typical example probably isn't exactly the opposite either. There are a lot of 3-/4-cylinder 1-4 series on the road, and the 520d is common too. Something similar applies to Mercedes and Audi as well.

(see, e.g., [https://www.whatcar.com/news/the-10-most-popular-cars-in- the...](https://www.whatcar.com/news/the-10-most-popular-cars-in-the-uk-right- now/))

<comment><USER38> Interestingly, lesser cylinders is spreading up the range of BMW (and other marques) and no longer an indicator of a cheap model. The 2017 330i is equipped with a 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> The two-step plan for effortlessly being better off than you otherwise would be (I won't say getting rich): 1\. Buy the cheapest car you're OK with. 2\. But the best house you can afford.

This is simple. Cars (especially new cars) depreciate super-fast; and houses have appreciated at crazy rates at least for the last few decades. Don't put your money in a fancy car.

<comment><USER40> I thought house prices were relatively flat, on a long-term, inflation- adjusted basis.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case%E2%80%93Shiller_index](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case%E2%80%93Shiller_index)

<comment><USER41> It depends on the country, in the UK (which this article is about) prices have been increasing above inflation for years.

[http://landregistry.data.gov.uk/app/ukhpi/explore](http://landregistry.data.gov.uk/app/ukhpi/explore)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Which is why contracts should include warnings, as Senator Elizabeth Warren proposed.

Dangerous equipment should have warnings so that you don't lose your fingers and financial tools should have warnings so that you don't lose your shirt.

A decade ago I bought a Fiat (in Brazil) and was offered financing at 0,99% a month. This was worth it, as fixed income investments were paying more than 1% a month. Except that the administrative fees made the effective rate something like 1,99% (which was not worth it). The salesperson argued that I could pay the fees in installments too. It made me angry that they are allowed to do this to people who can't do the maths.

<comment><USER43> > Which is why contracts should include warnings, as Senator Elizabeth Warren > proposed.

How would this work? Isn't the contract itself supposed to be the warning? Obviously contracts can contain a lot of legalese and potentially unenforceable language that makes them difficult for most people to interpret, but that language is also necessary to specify the contract at the level of detail the law requires. If you require a warning for the contract, how do you ensure that the warning is sufficiently authentic?

<comment><USER44> In Ireland, mortgage offers at least have to have plain-English warnings, illustrations of the numbers involved in paying it off, etc. Never got a PCP, but I assume it's similar. The problem is, people don't read them. To be useful, you'd arguably need to give the borrower an exam in what they're signing (which might be a good approach).

PCPs, in particular, are complex as far as consumer finance goes, and a lot of people seem to sign them thinking they're a normal loan. An analogy seem to be the (now thankfully almost obsolete) endowment mortgages, where you took out an interest-only mortgage coupled with an investment product which was theoretically meant to pay off the principal on maturity. These ran into difficulty when inflation dropped to practically zero for a decade, and lots of people who had them thought they just had repayment mortgages...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I think it may be easy to buy a relatively bad PCP deal, because of the difficulty in comparing like for like when there's a lot of variables in the deal. But I'm not sure that PCP is often a bad deal compared with outright purchase (whether on finance or not), because it creates a lot of certainty, particularly with good gap insurance, and doesn't require a lot of capital.

<comment><USER3> PCP should be the best way to purchase, just like leases should be. You just pay depreciation/cost of ownership/cost of financing, and don't have to worry about getting out of the car when you want a new one.

But like leases, it sounds like the problem with the PCP is the financial complexity. The option at the end of a lease has actual value, and it's difficult for a consumer to value it properly. The interest being charged is also hidden, making it easy to hit you with a far higher rate.

If you could buy a car on a PCP where the finance costs and end contract purchase price were reasonable and market competitive, it might be great. After all, a car shouldn't always be a forced savings plan where you are required to own it after 4 or 5 years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Tim Harford does a fantastic podcast called 50 things that made the modern economy. It is some of the usual suspects but mostly things you would not have considered before. Highly recommended.

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04b1g3c/episodes/player](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04b1g3c/episodes/player)

</comment><comment><USER47> I can't believe the car bubble isn't a bigger story. I know a waitress who is single, can barely afford an apartment, can't afford internet service, and who just financed a brand new Jeep. This reckless lending is setting the country up for catastrophe. The next economic downturn will cause people to lose their homes and their cars.

</comment><comment><USER48> Isn't the European version of the APR exactly designed to overcome that problem? (It's mandatory for every loan in the European Union) [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annual_percentage_rate](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annual_percentage_rate)

<comment><USER49> It's very good for the loan part of the equation, but it's still often hard to compare lease plans when the depreciation etc is factored in. After all, some kind of unknown valuation of the condition of the car will happen after N years and it's nearly impossible to know beforehand what cost that will incur.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> The bit about banning complex contracts is funny, especially contrasted with the alternative of having machine readable versions. My guess is that a machine readable format sufficient to express all the complexities of these contracts, especially conditional payments, is going to be Turing-complete, or pretty close to it. Anyway, it's going to be really hard to do that third- party comparison. The obvious solution is to only allow contracts that can be analyzed in some tractable logical framework... but limiting complexity is where we started.

</comment><comment><USER51> Headline has too many words. Feel free to remove "cars using"

<comment><USER12> Technically people are _selling_ financial products they don't understand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I don't think that this would be as large scale an issue in the United States at least if public transportation was as good as say, Japan's.

That would put a lot of pressure on the industry indirectly to be more transparent to the average consumer. I would think anyway. I don't have anything except anecdotal evidence and a gut feeling to back this up.

I think car ownership being needed outside the major 12 cities (Lookin' at you NYC!) that have good public transit is a national crime in and of itself.

</comment><comment><USER53> The idea of not paying cash for a car is insane to me. A could justify a loan for a house, or even an education. But a car?! I just don't even understand this mindset.

<comment><USER54> I got it at a time when I was just out of college with only $6000 in my account...so yeah, people like me need financing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Some examples would've been nice.

</comment><comment><USER56> Sounds a bit like mortgages circa 05

</comment><comment><USER57> that is not the biggest problem in the way we buy cars...

</comment><comment><USER58> My aunt lectures at a nursing and hospital-school. Many of her pupils are stuck in the "Car"-Deal. They all leased or lend a expensive car to show off, got into accidents or expensive repairs, could not pay off the accumulating debt, and now are basically indentured in debt-slavery to the car industry with half of their monthly paycheck.

<comment><USER59> I thought full insurance would be an unwaivable requirement in those cases of leasing. How could they be in debt for accidents?

<comment><USER60> In the UK a new car purchase/lease requires comprehensive insurance for the duration of the lease. Only after the lease has expired and you've purchased could you opt for 3rd party, fire and theft insurance.

The maximum exposure during the period of a lease is whatever the excess on the policy is.

The GP comment can't be applicable to the UK.

<comment><USER58> Most people dont know, but insurances regularly wriggle themselves out of anti-debt-insurance that are usually sold with leasing contracts.

<comment><USER60> In the UK this does not happen.

You are required to get your own fully comprehensive insurance, and can select from the whole market. The vehicle will not be released to you from the car dealership without proof that you possess such insurance.

Please declare which country you are talking about, as the article described the UK and your claims are not true with regard to the UK.

<comment><USER38> There are many UK car dealers that will sell you a 7 day insurance certificate to 'drive away today'. This is quite convenient usually as it allows them to tax the car as well for you, so it becomes road legal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> I noticed that the people saying this type of financing is a good deal, were comparing it against just buying a new car outright. But, you don't have to buy a new car.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> A better title might be "too many people are buying cars using financial products they do not fully understand."

<comment><USER62> That's good because it's the article's own summary. Thanks.</comment></comment>


Justice Dept. charges professor with hiding ties to China - <AUTHOR> https://apnews.com/91a976953cf66f4f64c8d6e02bee2a09 <comment><AUTHOR> >Prosecutors say Hu defrauded the National Aeronautics and Space Administration by failing to disclose the fact that he was also a professor at the Beijing University of Technology in China. Under federal law, NASA cannot fund or give grant money to Chinese-owned companies or universities.</comment>


Be Careful How You Override - <AUTHOR> http://carboni.ca/blog/p/Be-Careful-How-You-Override

<comment><USER2> It's a draft? OK. In the final version, could you remove the words "pe" and "nis" and respell "butt" as "but"?</comment>


Blizzard sparks a GPU Holy War with StarCraft 2 anti-aliasing decision - <AUTHOR> http://gaming.icrontic.com/article/starcraft-2-and-anti-aliasing-a-tempest-in-a-teapot/

<comment><USER2> To be honest, it depresses me how much politics are involved in starcraft 2 by now. Hugging ATI/AMD for anti aliasing at one side, snuggling with facebook on the other side, having fun with RealID in the dark... while Zergs are boring and everyone starts playing terran. (Probably I am a bit unfair here, but to be honest, I don't care too much right now :) )</comment>


The Rise of Privacy Tech virtual summit - <AUTHOR> https://www.riseofprivacytech.com/event/tropt-inaugural-virtual-summit/ <comment><AUTHOR> Join our community of privacy tech innovators, investors, experts, and evangelists on June 24, 2020 for rigorous discussions on the latest in privacy innovation.

We will cover the privacy tech landscape, fundraising, privacy engineering, COVID-19 privacy tech, privacy and security communications strategies for privacy tech startups, and more.</comment>


Show HN: A Better UI For Watching Videos - <AUTHOR> http://howmo.com/

<comment><USER2> Not sure what about this is better than Youtube itself, but I notice a feature called "Leaderboard" which I assume ties into this somehow; can you explain? Sounds like it could be interesting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah the Leaderboard ;) The idea is really simple. People who are frequent watchers get rewarded with points and they show up at the top of the Leaderboard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Made something similar: <http://www.pintube.tv>

But, besides the self-promotion, I do agree that youtube's default logged-in feed view could be made a bit more visual and up-to-date with the trend of image-heavy UI's. Can't wait to see what updates they have coming out soon. My friend had a url to their beta UI, but can't remember what it was. Arg.

<comment><AUTHOR> Really cool, and awesome implementation. I'm really digging the smooth transition on the infinite scroll. Also, the design and UI much better than the default bootstrap I've slapped on my app.

Has pintube gotten any traction yet?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> looks a lot like <http://chartbrain.com></comment>


Google Learns Lessons in the Ways of Washington - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/20/business/media/20lobby.html?pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> I love getting insights into how our government truly runs. Now all we need is billions of dollars to spend on lobbyists and maybe the people can have a true say in all of this.</comment>


Ask HN: It's 2018, what to build now? - <AUTHOR> Enough is enough. It's now 2018 and I've spent months trying to come up with good side business/product ideas and have hit an analysis paralysis point with no good ideas. I'd like to focus on small business problems but just can't seem to find any.  I've emailed businesses, scoured the web and am having little luck. My last product was a hypothesis that never gained traction so I'm now extra cautious (maybe too much) about jumping into any new unvalidated ideas.<p>Any entrepreneurial advice on how to get out of this funk? And also any advice/approaches on how to identify a good idea? <comment><USER2> Speaking as an anthropologist: go into the field. I bet very few great ideas came from behind a desk. Ask people with jobs you don't know much about simple questions that are _not_ directly aimed at finding out what you can sell them. Be genuinely interested in their day.

"What do you do first when you get to work?", "Do you dress a certain way?", "Do you eat with co-workers or alone?", "Do you like to go outside during the day?", "What are your thoughts on <habit x/y/z>?".

It surprises me time and time again how deep a seemingly simple line of work turns out to be, and how many simple things are in a complex job. If you ask many questions, something that you have good thoughts about on is bound to pop up.

<comment><USER3> Also you could go into the field at different levels, right? Level 1: by canvassing random businesses asking about problems. Level 2: by attending conferences where business owners are open to discovering new solutions. Level 3: by crawling business forums where owners discuss specific problems they have. Level 4: by crawling reviews for solutions where business owners complain about specific problems they have with existing solutions.

<comment><USER2> I would try not to focus on 'discovering problems' when 'going into the field'. Consider what you will get if you ask directly what someone's problems are: only the stuff everyone knows about and no one has solved in 200 years since the industrial revolution, ± 60 years since the first computers and ± 30 years since the commercialisation of the internet. They probably haven't been solved because there's some horrifying ROI maximalisation scheme behind it that you cannot beat, or solving the problem is terrible ROI for yourself.

Going into the field anthropology-style means participatory observation; you join those that you are researching in whatever they are doing. You try to _experience_ their world and uncover their interpretation of it. You make an honest attempt to blend in and _almost_ become of them.

And then you don't become one of them, because your being-different enables you to identify opportunities that others in that field cannot. And that is the stuff great ideas are made of.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was something like 10 when I had my first business idea - "I'll do library/rentals for comic-books \o/"!!!

My room window was just above neon sign for video/movies rental shop (VHS stuff - where I'm from it was called "Video Klub"). And naturally I used paper, scissors & glue to make my own sign to hang from my window as of course I wanted to "tap into" people looking at VHS-shop neon sign...

And let me tell you - business was doing awesome ... Until one day an older neighbor (like a grandpa) asked my parents what's up with sign hanging from one of our windows saying "Strip Klub"?!? (context: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comic_strip](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comic_strip))

And in the ~25 years since then - I've had plenty of those "not the brightest idea". However over time, most of them these days are good, though almost all are either a bit too late or too early, so I didn't quite yet come up with million bucks idea...

I still keep trying - and it's the combination of knowing two things:

1) The only reason everyone can walk (that is able to physically) is because they kept trying until they did it!

2) On your death bed - only things you'll regret, are the things you wish you tried but didn't ...

Keep trying!

</comment><comment><USER5> Don't come up with ideas. Finds problems.

[https://medium.com/black-n-white/the-problem-with- problems-4...](https://medium.com/black-n-white/the-problem-with- problems-47ee63bb3511)

</comment><comment><USER6> You know people say - never be afraid of discussing your ideas? I believe one of the reasons for that is everyone's vision is different. So, even if I gave you an idea, I might see things differently than you do.

That said, here's my advice on finding a good idea - sell shovels during a gold rush. Now what it means find places where you can provide value by connecting two different parts of society.

One of the ways you do this is by building a robust "Customer Acquisition Strategy" for X business.

People had spare bed/couch at home but no way to find customers. Answer - Airbnb. The platform is so robust now that even full time B&B are using it for their customer acquisition.

People wanted to earn some money using their cars, especially in cities. But they had no way to connect with people wanting a ride. Answer - Uber.

Restaurants were spending tons on advertising but not getting steady stream of customers. If they wanted to provide "home delivery" it was an additional burden of maintaining a delivery fleet. Answer - Uber Eats, Grubhub, Postmates etc. Even review sites like Yelp etc are part of customer acquisition strategy as not only helps in great advertising when people see 4-4.5/5 rating but also assuage concerns on food quality.

So find a niche where people still have this pain and you might have a unicorn on your hands.

<comment><USER5> All of these businesses share one common theme.

They are all aggregators.

<comment><USER7> Recent non-aggregator examples for the "cloud" gold-rush: Docker and Hashicorp (Terraform especially).

I reckon there's plently of money left on the table for cloud-shovels (though the market is getting fuller by the second).

Though of course, as pointed out in a different comment - you'll need some experience with the problem-space in order to figure out what problem to tackle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Copy a startup that got acquired last year.

Try using [https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/](https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/)

Or searching HN.

<comment><USER9> Companies that went under are a source of good ideas too. Many of them failed because they accepted too much funding and thus lost the option of being a modest success, but for a small team of one or two people, you can possibly make the idea work and be profitable.

<comment><USER8> Why waste your time on failures when you have successes that already have customers waiting for you to get your money .

<comment><USER5> Because it might as well be a timing or a strategy issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can I suggest instead:

Pick a market - no point in building things for people who don't have the ability or will to pay for them

Join their community - make like you're interested in getting licensed or participating. Look around for forums, almost every specialty field of hobby or business has online forums and they're generally easy to get into.

Pay attention to what people complain about and which problems come up repeatedly. You can ask people who are complaining to explain what their issues are and they'll often be happy to tell you. An even better way to gather information is dispute the basis for the complaint, insisting that The Problem isn't a big deal - as a newbie on the forum this will usually inspire someone to put you in your place with a detailed rebuttal that they might not otherwise have bothered to spell out for you.

</comment><comment><USER11> A few Ideas I want someone to work on:

\- Code/Product Documentation SaaS tool for early stage tech companies (very few good products, one is ReadMe.io)

\- An ad network for progressive web apps (PWA have good future and as of now there is no exclusive ad network for them)

\- CRM kind of SaaS app for startup founders (where founders can manage all their relationship, communication and contacts like investors, journalists, team, power users, etc.)

You wanted B2B so I shared those. I have a few B2C ideas as well in case you'd like to explore them as well. Hope it was helpful.

<comment><USER12> What is ReadMe.io missing that you'd like to see?

<comment><USER11> It looks like a well built product. Its just there should be more products and alternatives in every niche.

I'd personally like to see a simpler version that offers a free plan too which students can use. Just like how many B2B and developer targeted SaaS apps offer a free plan that has some limitations but help people to get started.

Students globally are not documenting their code, projects and startups because there is no simple and more importantly free/cheap alternative that they are aware of.

Readme.io is pricey and is simply beyond the reach of students and developers of developing/underdeveloped countries.

Their is no Readme.io like SaaS app for small and budget-sensitive projects as far as I know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> 1.- If you are in the right mindset, ideas will come effortlessly. Read articles, work with cutting-edge programming languages (even for toy projects), be involved with communities.

2.- There are no blatant problems awaiting for a solution anymore (it's 2018!). Successful startups have to provide an original, excellently-executed approach to old problems.

3.- You have huge competition; be aware of that. A whole generation has been taught to pursue the same goals as you.

4.- Finally, one always can network. Lots of non-tecnnical founders are looking for CTOs.

<comment><USER14> > There are no blatant problems awaiting for a solution anymore (it's 2018!).

This is unlikely to be true. It's at least as untrue as it was in any previous year. Good ideas are only blatantly obvious in hindsight.

<comment><USER13> I disagree. Airbnb, Uber, Amazon and many others are extremely basic ideas that some person or another would have come up with sooner or later.

Basically it was a matter of being in the right place, right time, right knowledge (and execution, of course)

Winners took it all.

<comment><USER15> Blatantly obvious ideas, and those that someone will come up with sooner or later, are distinct categories, more or less by definition.

There are plenty of problems, the shortage is in problems with obvious solutions that have not yet been implemented yet. One could argue that these opportunities are becoming more fleeting, as more people are being drawn into the search for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Go and do some contracting work at a small business or startup - even if its short term. You'll bump into all sorts of pain points that should be addressed by someone taking the time to develop and market a good product.

It's no coincidence that there have been many successful products that have started as internal tools written to solve internal problems.

</comment><comment><USER17> Is there any industry or history where you can draw from personal experience?

What inefficiencies have you noticed?

What problems have you noticed from the consumer end of your relationships with businesses?

Could you make something obsolete with automation, or make something else more efficient and profitable?

You don't need to be the first one to come up with an idea for a startup. Most startups fail, even if they came up with a very new and unique idea.

You just need to be the one who does executes it better.

For people starting out, I would suggest looking at "inevitable" trends. Things that seem like they will certainly be popular or prevalent in 2 to 5 years.

Examples:

\- Cannabis legalization: It's virtually inevitable that cannabis will be legal in all 50 states, there's lots of room for ancillary businesses.

\- Crypto currency: This is becoming more and more mainstream. If you can come up with some way for the average person to benefit from and want to use crypto, there's great opportunity available for you.

\- VR: The tech for vr is improving every year, and mainstream adoption is increasing. There's still no "killer app" for VR (a "killer app" is software that convinces people to want to buy the hardware en masse).

\- IoT: Adoption is increasing for smart lights and other devices, but they're still a luxury for most people. Can you come up with some connected everyday device that people can't live without?

Look at what's working well in similar industries that could work well in emerging industries.

One of the first "successes" I had was to create very simple apps for Android in 2008/2009 which simply showed quotes from popular celebrities. The technology was not impressive at all, but it was obvious to me that many people would get smartphones in the next few years. I learned that you could take something people love in one medium, and reproduce it for a new and emerging medium to gain "free" marketing as the medium grows.

<comment><USER6> > \- Crypto currency: This is becoming more and more mainstream. If you can > come up with some way for the average person to benefit from and want to use > crypto, there's great opportunity available for you.

This might be both good and bad as the steam runs out of the current climb.

That said, I have been wanting to build something which might solve the volatility issue in cryptocurrency but see multiple problems. For one, I have zero programming knowledge and I have been trying to learn but it is going no where very fast. Second, the cryptocurrency crowd is difficult to please. This service, at least for starters, might cost a lot of money which might not go down well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think that one business model that will never get old is information spread. Most (all?) of the problems we see in the world today could possibly be fixed if people were more knowledgeable. And I don't mean necessarily textbook knowledge, but common stuff as well.

For example, I live in a somewhat small city and it's not easy to know where can I go to have swimming classes. Google could help me with that, but usually these places aren't very tech-savvy (or they do have a certain presence, but they don't keep it updated).

Another great example: [https://www.pointy.com/](https://www.pointy.com/).

</comment><comment><USER19> I would also be happy to find a cool thing to work on the side that could benefit people and/or companies. But, just like you, am not exactly the "Idea generator".

</comment><comment><USER20> If you have an idea, try putting it on Halfbakery.

The ideas I've had that I don't feel like pursuing are on my profile: Age of Empires Theme Park, Removing wires, fences with two cameras, Translated Search, Vibrating Wristbands for GPS, Web TV Channel. If you need ideas, read around there to get some inspiration.

[http://www.halfbakery.com/user/peterburk](http://www.halfbakery.com/user/peterburk)

</comment><comment><USER21> Pick one your ideas. Start meeting people who are already working on something similar. Start meeting potential customers. Just talking to people in the same space and potential clients will change your idea or help it grow. Then start working on it. Build anything. Don't try to be perfect in version 1. But plan for long term perfection instead over multiple iterations. Be proud of what you create. Whatever that may be

</comment><comment><USER22> Come up with a way to support creators by buying individual articles, videos, podcasts, etc. Ads aren't gonna work for much longer, Patreon type solutions don't seem sustainable for everyone and people won't be putting down money on dozens of subscriptions anytime soon either. There needs to be a way to pay for content like a physical product.

First person or organisation to fix this problem will rake in the cash.

</comment><comment><USER23> >> "My last product was a hypothesis that never gained traction"

Best place to start is where you already are, not a new venture - what exactly was the product and what did you do to gain traction?

EDIT: You posted a "Show HN" linking to the site below [1], is this the project you're referencing?

[1] [https://www.helloreads.com/](https://www.helloreads.com/)

</comment><comment><USER24> One thing I would find really useful is a web tool that can scrape/ filter/ list events. E.g. in most cities, it is impossible to get a simple listing of all screenings of films in cinemas, let alone filter them by location/time/... or mash them up with tools tracking your own taste. Same for concerts, theatre, art exhibitions, ...

<comment><USER14> The hard thing about this is fragmentation. Building a web scraper for events means extracting information from a wide variety of non-standard websites. Even Eventbrite aggregates events manually, I think.

<comment><USER24> Yes, except you'd only have to do it once for each entity (e.g. chain of cinemas). Plus, this should not be rocket science, so maybe you can crowd source extractors...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Asymmetric knowledge is hard to come by, people aren't going to give it away here. For what it's worth the few times I've had an idea that turned out to be valuable (retrospectively) it was because I learned a new technology. Might be worth specializing in some niche tech for a few months instead of focusing on product ideas.

</comment><comment><USER26> Evergreen: [http://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html)

Also: [http://www.paulgraham.com/ambitious.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/ambitious.html)

</comment><comment><USER27> You could consult and see what problems businesses are having that you work with.

<comment><USER28> This is a popular suggestion but I don't think as well as people make it sound.

Lots of problems don't have solutions that would be viable for a new startup (especially not for lean bootstrapped ones).

The problems tend to be either so very specific where the solution would be "just use Excel" or "you need a custom made software", or somewhere in between there.

Or so common and obvious and popular where the solution is already hyper saturated with million dollar and billion dollar companies.

For example very few businesses have customer service support software needs that are not already satisfied by the huge array of existing solutions.

Even if they do, that knowledge is not suddenly going to give you any advantages. You end up at the position of building a feature of a much bigger software ("We like Zendesk but it's missing ____ feature").

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Do you have friends working in different fields ? Spend more time understanding their day to day job. IT people lives aren't a good starting point to come up with new business ideas. Use other people's lives instead.

</comment><comment><USER30> Did you mail businesses out of the blue? What did you write to them?

<comment><AUTHOR> I did. I emailed a bunch of different smaller companies in different sectors/industries. Explained to them that I build software to help small companies and am interested in knowing if they either have been looking for a product that doesn't exist or are unhappy with a current product. Got some friendly responses but most said things are working well.

<comment><USER31> You asked the wrong question. You should only ask how do they work, and think yourself about the solution. They are business, not software developers.

<comment><USER32> Respectfully, I hear this advice for sales all the time, and it sounds silly unless you've already built a relationship. If someone cold-calls me and starts asking open-ended questions, they're wasting my time.

<comment><USER14> This isn't sales. It's market research. Your point stands, though. It's actually harder to get market research meetings than sales meetings, because you have nothing to offer. You have to go through your network, or meet people obliquely through interest groups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Why limit to small business? Talk (not email) to a company with a lot of money and figure out their biggest pain point. That is how I would do it now if I had to start over

</comment><comment><USER34> I'm in a very similar situation and would love to connect. We may be able to help each other. If you're interested let me know how I can get in touch.

</comment><comment><USER14> What problems have you had in your own life? Surely there's an opportunity there that at least deserves further market research.

</comment><comment><USER35> What do you do now? I found problems at work.</comment>