The real damage Brexit will do do this industry is the one you won't see - <AUTHOR> http://www.alanzucconi.com/?p=5281 <comment><USER2> Original title: "What Brexit Really Means for Independent Developers"

I would add: "in the UK", since that is what the author is talking about.</comment>


Wikipedia has a ton of money. So why is it begging you to donate yours? - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/12/02/wikipedia-has-a-ton-of-money-so-why-is-it-begging-you-to-donate-yours/ <comment><AUTHOR> Wikipedia is a fundraising project that happens to make an encyclopedia. Having written a couple of articles on this topic, my main concern is that none of the donation money goes to the contributors, and instead goes to an ineffective tech and executive team, whose goal is more fundraising. All while Google makes millions by scraping and presenting Wikipedia's content. [http://newslines.org/blog/google-and-wikipedia-best- friends-...](http://newslines.org/blog/google-and-wikipedia-best-friends- forever/)

<comment><USER2> Much like Susan G. Komen is a fundraising project that happens to make pink ribbons and talk about breast cancer, right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> $77 million doesn't sound like that much for a site the size of Wikipedia

<comment><USER4> As the article says, it's about 3 times what it takes to run the site for a year.

<comment><AUTHOR> After you count the inflated headcount, yes. If it ran on a reasonable budget of $10 million it would be able to run for many years even on existing reserves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does Wikipedia "need" the money? Does any software need any money beyond the cost of servers? If Wikipedia is to remain relevant, it _needs_ money. But everyone has different priorities, and admittedly not everyone can afford to donate a few dollars to support free information. (Disclosure: I'm a community volunteer serving on the Wikimedia Foundation audit committee, so I'm a bit biased.)

</comment><comment><USER6> The stats in the article seem to be out by orders of magnitude.

374M Uniques in August viewed 17.9 Billion Pages according to [https://reportcard.wmflabs.org/#](https://reportcard.wmflabs.org/#)

but main graph in the article suggests ~20M Pageviews in 2015 - which seems to rather downplay the utility and influence of Wikipedia.</comment>


Klout to Quietly Shut Down Cinch Q&A App - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/apps/2014/04/18/klout-quietly-shut-cinch-qa-app-april-18/

<comment><USER2> One day startups will learn to stop building on negative/zero/low revenue social networks. After hearing about Zynga getting diversified almost out of existence on Facebook, Dalton Caldwell being served with a "Join us or else"[1] from Facebook, and the Twitter 3rd party castration[2]; it amazes Me that people are still trying to build services on top of social platforms. These platforms are generating very little revenue relative to their valuations. If you have this amazing service that starts making money or getting notoriety, it's in the social networks best interest to stop your business and build the feature themselves.

[1] - [http://daltoncaldwell.com/dear-mark- zuckerberg](http://daltoncaldwell.com/dear-mark-zuckerberg)

[2] - [https://blog.twitter.com/2012/changes-coming-to-twitter- api](https://blog.twitter.com/2012/changes-coming-to-twitter-api)

<comment><AUTHOR> While I agree with you in general, Klout actually launched Cinch themselves. It was supposed to increase the usefulness of their network to their users.

<comment><USER2> Ah I see-You're right. I thought they were a third party service. Shutting down their own products is fine. Thanks for the insight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> When I got the email yesterday, my first reaction was "what was Cinch?" Ironically, I couldn't use Cinch to actually answer that question.

</comment><comment><USER4> > 17 hours ago

> Klout notified users of its Cinch question-and-answer app in an email today > that it will discontinue the service on April 18th at 12pm PST.

So.... less than 24 hours' notice? Unless there are immediate security or legal reasons (doubtful) that's rather appalling.</comment>


Why I won't get a Google+ Custom URL - <AUTHOR> http://blog.vrypan.net/2013/11/08/why-i-wont-use-a-gplus-custom-url/ <comment><USER2> Here's how it works. The techies create something. The legals come along and say, OK, to release that in the wild it needs some T&Cs that cover our arses for everything and then some, because people keep sueing us.

In practice, would Google ever dare invoke this on a large scale? No, you know that. Yes, there should be some transparent process that is undertaken if yours were revoked, but Google only like stuff that scales, manual processes like that don't.

And really, if the ability to revoke your URL at any time wasn't in the T&Cs, do you really think it would make any difference to the revoke rate?

Sure, nobody in their right mind would depend on such a URL sticking around, but this post isn't "Why I won't get a Google+ Custom URL", it's "Why I won't use a Google+ Custom URL as the primary mechanism to link to myself online". I don't see much argument against just claiming one, if you're already a g+ user.

<comment><USER3> Me in 1993: Yeah, but seriously, nobody is going to start charging for domain names. Writing a hundred bytes in your named.conf? What would you charge, ten cents? Doesn't make sense. And everybody swaps secondary service with everybody else, and your upstream includes it at no extra charge.

<comment><USER4> Where can I read more about this seemingly magical era? I'm so young that it sounds like a faerietale.

<comment><USER5> It's hardly a canonical source, but very much on the 'seemingly magical' side of things -- there's a Twitter account devoted to crawling old boards and pages and tweeting interesting snippets.

[https://twitter.com/wwwtxt](https://twitter.com/wwwtxt)

Incredibly wonderful -- and very surreal. It's bizarre to think that only twenty years ago, the Internet was an entirely different culture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why I won't get a Custom URL:

> Many people have the same name. Add a few extra letters or numbers to this > URL to get one that is unique for you.

Why would I want yet another "MyName<randomcrap>" identifier? How does that help friends and family remember or identify me? What purpose does it serve?

I'm yet another person with a nickname that identifies me all over and has for years, I too own the domain. But Google+ keeps insisting I have my "real name" ... except it's not my real name because I have to add random crap to be unique.

I have no idea why they cling to this.

<comment><USER7> Even though I prefer +simoneau, e.g. [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=simoneau](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=simoneau), I had come around to living with +MatthewSimoneau (if only to keep someone else from getting it). When it required me to add some trailing garbage after my name though, I also canceled the process.

<comment><USER8> Same here, I don't understand why I'm forced to append junk, and I'm pretty sure my first/last name alone aren't taken.

I canceled at that point.

<comment><USER8> Interesting, a day later I got an e-mail that let me claim my full name without suffix.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> chestnut-tree How did Google not realise when they launched Google+ that URLs that end in ridiculously long strings of numbers (107350252619396782277) was a poor idea? Now it feels like they're adding a sticking plaster to fix their initial design decision.

Google+ on the whole seems quite poorly designed from a UX perspective. Most people seem to use Google+ like a blog, but the two column card layout on the desktop (three columns on some Google+ sites) makes it impossible to read posts in chronological order. This is so blazingly obvious, one can only wonder why Google went ahead with this pattern. If the site is optimised for mobile (which seems to be the case), why do they push the same design to desktop?

The way comments open up in a small scrollable panel also makes for a pretty miserable experience on the desktop. As does clicking a tag and having to explore everying from within the constricted space of a card (again why do they push this pattern to desktop users if it's intended for mobile users?)

Can you actually add titles for Google+ posts? It doesn't seem so. This means you redundantly repeat the name of the blog author as the title of every single card/post.

And what's with the bizarre gigantic image at the top of the page that only reveals itself when you scroll to the top? Was this meant to be a delightful surprise feature? It just feels odd.

Finally, there is a button on the left-hand side of the page in the header. It looks like a button, it's shaped like a button. But when you move your mouse pointer over the button, a menu appears automatically (on rollover). If it's meant to be a rollover drop-down menu, then don't make it look like a clickable button. As always with Google and their UX, it's one step forward, two steps back (IMO).

<comment><USER9> I actually like a lot of the UX, at least for the content that I consume. I enjoy viewing content in some of the photography and photo sphere groups, and for this a one column layout would be too wide without scrolling quite a bit more.

Now, that said, this is more casual consumption. I don't care if I miss a post or two due to your chronological post issue. I also imagine there are a number of people like me when it comes to this.

Clicking the tag and having it inline is a nice way to see if you actually want to lose your current context and go to the full tag browsing mode. I also like this.

The image at the top? Nice way to not lose screen real estate on first load. I find it fun.

So, obviously we have some differences of opinion, and some of it may just come down to the sort of content we consume/create, but count me in the group that actually largely likes the interface.

<comment><USER10> Hidden menus that pointlessly jump out into the oceans of unused space. Half- hidden photo and a hidden search box that bobs pointlessly up and down. Clunkily-unusable Circles. Endless pages that make it impossible to access old content (Facebook does this much better). Porthole icons. Pointlessly disappearing notification system. Mouseover popups that sometimes pop up (but don't contain any useful information) and sometimes don't pop up (compare "Community invitations" with "You may know").

The whole thing is full of utterly useless bits of "design". Some of these may contribute to making it horribly slow, though I'm sure there are other reasons why it's so bloated....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I noticed the same clause in the TOS last week and was taken aback. Ideally I'd love to be able to distribute my Google+ URL with the same confidence as I distribute my email address: namely, _if you send a message to this address, you can guarantee that I 'm the one who receives it._ The fear here is that, should Google start charging for this "service" in the future, and should I decline to play along, someone else could squat on my former URL and intercept any traffic intended for my page. Please, Google, for my own peace of mind, either make this a paid service _up-front_ , or pledge that a given URL will always alias to the same individual.

(Though perhaps the email analogy is a bad one, since IIRC both Yahoo and MSN periodically release long-dormant addresses back into the eligible pool. Though still unsettling, it's a more reasonable approach than "we may force you to start paying us an unknown amount at some unknown future date".)

Ultimately, I was about to go through with it anyway until I realized that doing so would _require_ me to register a phone number with my Google account, which I have so far avoided. That requirement was the final straw.

<comment><USER12> > I was about to go through with it anyway until I realized that doing so > would require me to register a phone number with my Google account, which I > have so far avoided. That requirement was the final straw

That's exactly how I feel. I try very hard to not give my number out, why the hell does google _force_ me to tell them, just to get a URL?

<comment><USER13> I think it's for Google accounts in general. Even getting a gmail account requires this.

<comment><USER14> it's not, it asks for one but you can omit it, even though it will keep bugging you about it from time to time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Alright you guys, I'm gonna blow your minds.

Try this kind of link: profiles.google.com/[YOUR USER NAME HERE]

For example, vrypan's custom link would be: [http://profiles.google.com/vrypan](http://profiles.google.com/vrypan)

<comment><USER16> Sweet. But how does this work? I'm not the only James Britt on g+, but profiles.google.com/jamesbritt goes to my profile page.

<comment><USER17> It uses your gmail id. This "profile.google.com/<emailid>" is there before the Buzz time, long before Google+.

<comment><USER16> Interesting.

Some data points:

I have a few gmail accounts. One is for james.g.britt, but profiles.google.com/jamesgbritt does not resolve to the g+ page for that email address.

I also have a g+ page for firstname.lastname@example.com (via google apps)

profiles.google.com/neurogami takes me to the g+ page for _that_ e-mail address.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I almost claimed a custom URL yesterday when I was writing up the YouTube comment change and in the process updating my G+ profile. They wanted my number to claim it, which I believe they already have for 2-factor on Gmail. In the end the whole process with YouTube was so galling that I just deleted my whole account. As OP notes, it's not like Google+ was the first place people would look for me, and it's not a useful resource for me, so why have it at all?

<comment><USER19> Deleting your account was less galling than using your phone number to confirm your identity? Hm.

<comment><USER18> No, the whole YouTube thing. Having a channel, unchecking a bunch of boxes and worrying about extra policies - having an extra Google+ page with its own Talk address and inbox, in addition to the channel's inbox, etc. I just realized I don't use it, probably won't ever, and it'll only keep trying to get me to connect via other means, so I thought I'd nip it in the bud.

<comment><USER19> If you don't use it, why don't you just ignore it, like 99% of most YouTube uploaders?

All of these recent Google+ changes, aside from "Real Names," only affect people with a large YouTube following.

I absolutely support you deleting your YouTube account in protest of the ever- increasing Google+ requirements. But at least call it what it is--deleting your account in protest.

<comment><USER20> Actually I sympathise with the poster here. I just tried to get back to the personalised vanity chooser thing in G+, and ended up clicking on Settings then to Account, which got me to a google account page. On the right handside there is a link to a profile, and there's a nickname listed. I can't even remember what that's for or what that profile belongs to. There's even some reference to Buzz that I thought I'd killed. I go around in circles. And don't even get the whole Youtube integration thing. So I just back away from it and try and ignore it. You get overloaded. I'm not at the point of deleting my account, but not far off - mainly out of confusion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Also worth noting is that you _cannot_ change the url once assigned. So, better hope you don't get married - or that a serial killer has the same name as you. [http://shkspr.mobi/blog/2013/10/googles-broken-name- policy-a...](http://shkspr.mobi/blog/2013/10/googles-broken-name-policy- again/)

</comment><comment><USER22> Is this really any different then the T&C that governs your cryptic [https://plus.google.com/107350252619396782277/](https://plus.google.com/107350252619396782277/) url?

Whatever the current T&Cs says, google can certainly reclaim or start charging for your current plus url, and heck even your google account. Google can do whatever the heck they want, and you really have no recourse.

</comment><comment><USER23> <vrypan> is upset that Google+'s TOU for custom URLs gives the company too much unfettered discretion.

In reality, Google+'s overall TOU for the service also gives the company plenty of discretion. As do similar ones from Twitter and Facebook. (Gasp! Bulk-delete your accounts now!) The overall Google+ TOU says, for instance, "Google reserves the right to restrict the content on your Google+ Page at its discretion."

Facebook says you can't create "more than one personal account" or provide any "false personal information," which probably half of the folks on HN have done at some time or another. Facebook can "remove any content or information you post on Facebook" if, in its own discretion, the company feels like it violates the TOU.

Twitter's TOU says it can "create limits on use and storage at our sole discretion at any time without prior notice to you." The company can delete tweets "at our sole discretion." And so on.

In reality, as <davidjgraph> says, Google (and Facebook and Twitter) would not invoke this on a large scale. There would be a reputational impact. The language does come from the lawyers, but largely because of the plaintiff's bar, not because SV GCs enjoy adding this language to TOUs.

tl;dr: If you're going to assume the worst from every company, you might as well never create any account or log in anywhere.

</comment><comment><USER19> Honest question: are these terms of service significantly different than other services? Do Twitter / Github / etc have similar terms?

<comment><USER24> From GitHub TOS:

> GitHub, in its sole discretion, has the right to suspend or terminate your > account and refuse any and all current or future use of the Service, or any > other GitHub service, for any reason at any time. Such termination of the > Service will result in the deactivation or deletion of your Account or your > access to your Account, and the forfeiture and relinquishment of all Content > in your Account. GitHub reserves the right to refuse service to anyone for > any reason at any time.

<comment><USER23> That to me looks broader than Google, Twitter, or Facebook's TOU. I look forward to the impassioned post highlighted here on HN saying:

"Wait, wait, wait! Did they say that they may decide to charge me for my Github account in the future? And that they may remove it 'for any reason at any time?' A Github account is an identifier. I'll use it to identify myself on this service. I'll link to it from my website. I may print it on a business card. Like Github said in their email, I'll use it to 'make software development more collaborative.' But they can take it away for any reason or deactivate it? No way. Github is not a place I own, it's a place Github is kind enough to let me visit and have some limited activity, but they can always kick me off or ask for an (unspecified) rent."

Sigh.

<comment><USER25> This Google bashing on HN is really getting ridiculous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I think the author is making it a bigger deal than it really is, nothing stops google from bringing down the google plus or any other service he might be using(just like google reader or wave) so according to his logic (printed on business card etc...) you can't even have a long unfriendly URL because google can shut down google plus any day they want to or just start charging people.

<comment><USER27> Google Profiles used your email id as your unique identifier which made more sense. Now I have an email id, a name and a g+ profile unique url which are all different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> They authorized "JayFreemansaurik" and "JaysaurikFreeman" (both of which are highly confusing to even parse) for me, and the form won't even let me try to request "saurik" so I also gave up and am just a number.

FWIW, I was totally OK in a world without usernames. The problem with usernames is that people figure out how to take them from you, and they get burned forever. What happens when we all die? I respected the numbers.

When they added the username mechanism that seemed to be selling out on that wonderful principal. The result also is clearly suboptimal: cocacola has a username, but pepsi is just a number (as their trademark is too short).

</comment><comment><USER29> I have a name which is 100% unique in the world. There are no other people with my combination of first name and last name. Not in my ØÆÅ country. Not on the planet. None. Not making this up. It's a unique one. Certifiably.

And Google has the balls to ask me to create a Google+ URL with lots of numbers and gibberish added? What? They can just seriously fuck off.

<comment><USER14> as a data point, to me it simply proposed +GabrieleRenzi, which may be unique in g+ but is certainly not unique worldwide (heck, there are at least 4 people named like me on facebook).

So maybe they just decided that something like "€∂gàr sm0ll" should be considered the same as "edgar small" ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> The reason I won't get a custom URL is because after getting the "Click here to get your custom URL" email, I was informed I had to give them my mobile number before this process was achievable.

It seems Google is on an absolute mission to get my mobile number, they've been relentlessly hinting that it's essential that I give it to them for what feels like forever.

No Google, you cannot have it. Please, stop asking.

<comment><USER31> Note that you don't have to give Google your mobile number. You can use a Google Voice number.

<comment><USER30> That's not really the point is it? They said they couldn't give me a personalised URL unless I gave them my mobile number. Clearly I could have given them any number. It's the fact they're holding features to ransom that I find utterly disturbing.

Do no evil. Yeah right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> PROTIP: Just redirect _vrypan.com /plus_ to your G+ page.

Bonus: Use _vrypan.com /+_

</comment><comment><USER33> For this exact reason I registered my own 1-letter URL shortener domain and use it to create my own custom redirects whenever I want without submitting to someone's BS TOS.

It's better to promote your own brand than someone else's.

Send me email at: firstname.lastname@example.com :)

<comment><USER34> I got curious and checked c.gg and I see it is for sale.

Are you selling your own shortener domain you used to create your own short URL's ?

<comment><USER33> I tried to build business on it (didn't have time/resources to push it) then sell it in the past, but it didn't happen. Then I started seeing more and more value having your own, really short and easy to type URL shortener - for exact reason author wrote this post.

I plan to set it up like my personal "tiny.cc" allowing for vanity urls for easy navigations

For example:

[http://c.gg/regex](http://c.gg/regex) [http://c.gg/az](http://c.gg/az)

<comment><USER35> I have the same thing on pkn.me. That just resolves to my normal blog which redirects to the canonical URL. So I can have, for example, [http://pkn.me/r](http://pkn.me/r) for my resume and [http://pkn.me/mmp](http://pkn.me/mmp) for my book landing page.

I used to give random 5 letter strings to my posts as their ID but now I actually put some thought into it so I can have good, rememberable short URLs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> His reasoning can be applied to all free social media, which is a valid reason, and why smart people should avoid the step back in time to a central AOL-esque media hub. He has his own domain, what more does he need? Why feed the social media black hole (all things enter - nothing escapes)?

</comment><comment><USER37> My custom Google+ URL is [http://google.com/+AnžePečar](http://google.com/+AnžePečar) even though typing letters with diacritics is nearly impossible on 99% of the keyboards out there. I should have kept the random numbers...

<comment><USER38> [https://plus.google.com/+AnzePecar](https://plus.google.com/+AnzePecar) redirects to [http://google.com/+AnžePečar](http://google.com/+AnžePečar) so infact you now have two URL shorteners. Native tongue and english.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Why the phone verification is required to claim a custom URL? Custom URL is a poor incentive to provide Google your phone number.

<comment><USER40> I have a mobile number but have opted out of texting (they are blocked so I don't get charged) and instead use a free texting app which also assigns me a virtual number. Unfortunately the verification text from Google does not make it through. I tried two texting apps, and even tried my normal cell number hoping that Google had some agreement with my carrier to pass the code along.

Seems odd that Google would risk turning me away from Plus simply because I cannot receive texts. Get over it Google, I'm not giving you my cell number. Find another way to verify my identity, I only use practically _all of your services_ and have given you pretty much all of my personal information at one point over the last dozen years.

<comment><USER41> those verification texts work when sent to google voice numbers, for what it's worth (plenty of other similar systems break when you give them gvoice numbers)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> When you read this, think about how many words an otherwise smart man wrote about something that's completely inconsequential. Down-vote me all you want but please consider how you're spending your brain power.

</comment><comment><USER43> Google's decision is stupid: they make one person happy and a gazillion others with the same name - pissed off. I'm not sure if any business wants to be in this position. I'm boycotting it as I have the proper username with Twitte, Facebook, LinkedIn - you name it. Why would I want to be something that doesn't represent me on Google+? Sorry, but we have choices and only a small portion of my friends use Google+ anyway. Poor choice, Google - if you started in the beginning, it would have been a good choice, but it's a bit too late for such nonsense. I still have not been offered a vanity name anyway and a bunch of people with a couple of friends were. You either do at for all at once or you don't at all. People take it as fair if somebody was first to register it. People think it's unfair when Google decides.

</comment><comment><USER44> At this point, I'm not even sure how my identity is split up on Google's servers between my original Google account, my Google Plus account, and my legacy YouTube account. Sometimes I feel like I'm logged into three different things at once. And now I can't even use my original username as my Google Plus URL? Does that mean that my legacy YouTube account is no longer active? Or has it been merged with my Google Plus profile without my consent, despite consistently clicking on "no thanks" every time the window popped up?

This sort of quagmire causes me to unconsciously stop using the services causing it. Already, I've found myself much less interested in liking and favoriting YouTube videos.

<comment><USER45> Exactly my thoughts. The experience is very jarring, plus the whole "use your real name in YouTube" thing that Google has got going on is annoying at best.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> What I did before I got mine, was redirected mydomain.com/\+ to my Google+ profile, it's shorter, and more importantly, I control it.

<comment><USER16> Oh, clever.

I set up plus.jamesbritt.com to redirect to my g+ profile page.

Yours is cooler. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> One more important thing about these custom URLs:

1) Your Google+ profile is publicly indexable by searh engines.

2) Having a custom URL means anyone searching for your name on Google is going to find out your Google+ profile _easily_. Basically, your identity is now even more easier to discover. (When contrasted to the ordinary Google+ URL of random numbers)

3) If you are using the same profile picture on Google+ as your Facebook, people can track your Facebook profile, too. This is bad if you have a fairly active social life, but wanting a bit of a privacy.

</comment><comment><USER48> _facebook_ \- choose whatever username you want

 _HN_ \- choose whatever username you want

 _twitter_ \- choose whatever username you want

 _reddit_ \- choose whatever username you want

 _tumblr_ \- choose whatever username you want

 _Google+_ \- we choose it for you, you can't change it, we might charge you for it, and we might also take it away at some point

also - why does G+ need to insert the /u/0 after the domain name? twitter, facebook and the rest you can simply type domain.com/username but G+ just needs to make it so much less user friendly.

<comment><USER19> Seriously, did you read any of the other comments on this thread?

Facebook: "If you select a username or similar identifier for your account or Page, we reserve the right to remove or reclaim it if we believe it is appropriate"

Twitter: "We reserve the right at all times (but will not have an obligation) to remove or refuse to distribute any Content on the Services, to suspend or terminate users, and to reclaim usernames without liability to you."

Reddit: "Service Provider or third parties may charge you fees for products or services offered for sale through the Website, and/or for access to portions of the Website or the Website as a whole" AND "Provider may, in appropriate circumstances and at its discretion, suspend or terminate the access of and take other action against users, subscribers, registrants and account holders"

Tumblr: "Tumblr reserves the right to refuse registration of, cancel, or modify a Tumblr URL in its sole discretion."

And finally, you don't need any "/u/0" after the domain name. See: [https://plus.google.com/+LinusTorvalds](https://plus.google.com/+LinusTorvalds)

<comment><USER48> these are all terms of service considerations. you can still choose a username upon signup for almost any social media account except G+. g+ is the only service that assigns a username to you.

i did not know that about /u/0, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> > A URL is an identifier. I'll use it to identify myself on this service. I'll > link to it from my website. I may print it on a business card. Like Google > said in their email, I'll use it to "point folks to my profile". But they > can take it away for any reason or decide to charge me a (yet unknown) > amount of money in the future? No way. I'll stay with my current, unfriendly > one, > [https://plus.google.com/107350252619396782277/](https://plus.google.com/107350252619396782277/)

Uh, what makes you think that Google doesn't have the right to take away the numeric URL or charge money for the numeric URL? (Or simply change the URL structure/scheme for Google+ at any point in the future.) Whether you use a numeric URL or personalized URL is irrelevant: Any service/server you don't control can change at any time for any reason. You should always direct people to a domain you own and control, even if all that domain does is auto-redirect to your current Google/Facebook/Github/whatever profile.

</comment><comment><USER50> I firmly believe that using uncontrolled urls - such as facebook, g+, etc. - on business cards, print material, or even as your established "online home" is unwise. I think its better to maintain/publish urls originating from a domain name that YOU control...And then create links (with underlying associated metadata "rel=me" style links) or setup redirects...Such as: YourDomain.com/gplus or YourDomain.com/linkedin...etc...

This leaves YOU in control. Can be done on the really cheap. And if google, fbook, linkedin, or any of these services changes things around such as urls, or UI, or ToC, or anything YOU don't agree with, then you kill the redirection/links. Quick, easy and from one central point.

Granted their sites will have a little more SEO juice up front...And, maybe I'm being idealistic, but eventually all search engines will begin to see that YOUR domain is the authoritative point on the web for YOU...and that the start point is YOUR domain not the myriad of social networks.

<comment><USER51> I agree with this. Something like <first><lastname>.<tld>/social or /card and have that page list all your fb, g+, linkedin twitter links.

Bonus, you get a permanent email address that NO ONE can take away from you, for life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> This is weird. I could suggest a custom URL typing it myself. The form said that it would be reviewed but it got approved straight away.

May be is because I just used Google's suggestion but _removing the accent in my surname_ (I don't like them in an URL, and besides is the same thing I use in LinkedIn).

That was 9 days ago.

<comment><USER53> what is the process for this? do you have to wait till they approach you or is there an online application?

<comment><USER52> My session expired and had to log in again, and there was a form. I didn't apply or anything like that.

As I said it felt a little bit buggy ("we'll review your request", and then it was approved straight away), may be Google has refined the process.

<comment><USER53> so nothing triggered it? just random?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> At least the TOS are honest and transparent. Even if Google did not warn specifically that they can kick people out or start asking for money, they would of course be free to do so. So, is it worse if Google reminds you that you have no guarantees whatsoever? ...

</comment><comment><USER55> Doesnt twitter and facebook have the same type of ToS?

</comment><comment><USER56> Doesn't ALL free services have he same sort of clause?

I'm missing what's new compared to using... _put here any the non-paid service online_?

EDIT:

Here are Gmail Terms of Service[1]: \--- Modifying and Terminating our Services

We are constantly changing and improving our Services. We may add or remove functionalities or features, and we may suspend or stop a Service altogether. \---

What happens if they suddenly suspend their service? NOTHING! :-) we all _hope_ and have many reasons to believe that they wont do that, anytime soon.

[1]: [http://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/terms/update/](http://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/terms/update/)

</comment><comment><USER57> An example of such shenanigans is WeWorkRemotely.com. It was posted to HN recently, and was totally free. Less than a week later and they want $200 for a listing. Egregious behavior, especially for something put on by 37 signals.

</comment><comment><USER58> I tried to get a Google+ custom URL and couldn't. They require a phone number to send you a confirmation SMS. I no longer have this protocol (due to an abundance of more technically advanced, and free to use alternatives).

</comment><comment><USER59> This is based on inductive reasoning:

This process is heading toward a time when your online identity corresponds directly to your personal ID. This will create a debate between at least two sides:

1\. Privacy rights activists will argue that tech companies are complicit with the NSA and that we should fear totalitarianism and a police state's repression.

2\. Others will argue that this verisimilitude between the online self and the material self provides for security and convenience.

On the one hand you have those that value freedom and on the other hand you have those that value convenience.

</comment><comment><USER60> We hacked this nonsense by creating a simple redirect on our website: [http://eyevel.com/G+](http://eyevel.com/G+) ;) You can too! It's a simple htaccess line or a router on your app

put this into the .htaccess of your host and change where appropriate (yourdomain, extension and G+ long userID)

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourDomain\\.com$ [OR]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\\.yourDomain\\.com$

RewriteRule ^B\@G\\+$ "https\:\/\/plus\\.google\\.com\/103815970554408703928\/posts" [R=301,L]

</comment><comment><USER27> While choosing a unique url you also give Google the right to (almost) publicly list your mobile number (Helping a user find you if they know your number). I can see websites, which store all possible number combinations to drive page views, trying to get username, email and other details from this Google feature. Soon everyone who gives Google their mobile number will have their name, G+ profile and possibly email id made public.

</comment><comment><USER61> Wow, I didn't know that. I got the same e-mail and went all the way through with this exact same processor for one of my "pages". When I think about it, I don't really care as much about that G+ page as the other related social networking profiles, but this would still affect me if it were enforced at some point in the future. Well, I made the change, unlike you. Score one for actually reading the TOS.

</comment><comment><USER62> What about a workaround?

I'm /guillaumeish pretty much everywhere, and using my "real name" it's against my religion. I can't do it.

I got no time to test it atm (and I don't remember the G+ policies on name changes) but couldn't you just change your name to "Vry Pan", refresh and claim the VryPan handle... than change your name back to whatever it was before? They have a time restriction like facebook?

</comment><comment><USER63> You all already have a nice looking google+ url, you just don't know about it. It's:

        http://profiles.google.com/first_part_of_your_gmail_email

For example, my email is firstname.lastname@example.com, and my google+ url is:

        http://profiles.google.com/peteris.krumins

    .

<comment><USER64> Does everyone have that, or only people who created Google Profiles before Plus replaced them?

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> I remember having been similarly surprised by the TOS.

However, the only annoyance and consequence of it, to me, is that I cannot share the link anymore than I used to. So I switched, and I'll switch back if they ask me to pay.

I am much more worried about them discontinuing Gmail. Since Reader, I have no idea what they are ready to kill.

</comment><comment><USER66> Unfortunately, there is likely [please correct me if I'm wrong] a similarly- worded array of clauses in the contracts for many of their other services (or even g+ itself), that if taken seriously (i.e. not in a legalese manner), would likely cause a similar level of _unjust_ alarm.

</comment><comment><USER67> I wrote about this over a week ago, also they demand your cell phone number and apparently don't allow you to change it.

[http://privasectech.com/2013/10/terms-service-google- vanity-...](http://privasectech.com/2013/10/terms-service-google-vanity-url/)

</comment><comment><USER68> In other news, Google can do whatever they want with URLs they own & control. To think that your long number URL is any less safe is equally as amusing as thinking just because they give you a vanity URL, it's yours forever.

Google will do what they like with any Google-owned property.

</comment><comment><USER69> Does anybody know if Google plans to allow claiming a deleted account... ever? I'm hoping that since I was granted +MyName in G+ I will be allowed to recover (long story) email@example.com... (It was email@example.com and I wasn't happy... and let it expire...)

</comment><comment><USER70> There like domain names. No surprised at all. I'm surprised twitter hasn't charged yet.

</comment><comment><USER71> I'm sure the exact same things apply to the current unfriendly url you are using now.

</comment><comment><USER72> Panayotis, you spelled the word "intellectual" wrong on your homepage.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> Gplus.<mydomain>.com I fixed this problem a while ago.

<comment><USER33> Make it: me.<yourdomain>.com

(In case big G will decide to abandon G+) :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> Got the +Custom Url in the end, despite the unchangeability. Does this matter much, if one has their own domain name, anyway ? Btw, the long form url still works

</comment><comment><USER75> I will soon make a post: "Why I don't care that you won't change your Google+ Custom URL."

</comment><comment><USER76> I got mine! The only place that I didn't get my name exactly the way I want it is on Twitter.

</comment><comment><USER77> Wait, you read the T&C's?

</comment><comment><USER78> i thought this article was going to be about how the "verify your phone number" system doesn't actually send you a text message to verify your phone, thus making it impossible to actually claim said custom URL....

</comment><comment><USER79> That's why I never agree to anyone's terms and conditions online.

</comment><comment><USER80> Why I won't read articles that begin with "Why I"

</comment><comment><USER81> The argument makes no sense. URLs are not meant to point to the same resource forever. They are not 'permanent'.

And Google won't just start billing his credit card without consent...

</comment><comment><USER82> Wait, people still use Google+?

<comment><USER83> When did they start?

I follow some tech sources there, mostly related to Android (and therefore, tied into Google's ecosystem anyway), but that's about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> im pretty sure those 3 points are true of any service, anywhere.

</comment><comment><USER85> Tl;dr I like to whine.

</comment><comment><USER86> I don't understand why they call it "custom". More like "assigned".

<comment><USER87> You can technically apply to make it anything you want, and the set of allowed names should technically be far larger than the set of disallowed ones. But I'm waiting to see if they'll let me take +akkartik rather than +KartikAgaram, so we'll see.

<comment><USER88> They made it possible to request a different URL for maybe 12 hours after launching custom URLs, but quickly stopped offering it. Probably got inundated with requests. By the time I got my invite (about a day after they started sending them), there was no such link.

Also, they weren't just allowing people to register any old nickname or brand name. It was probably more about letting people make minor corrections.</comment></comment></comment>


Dotcom and the 'doomsday device' - <AUTHOR> http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10826176

<comment><USER2> Like what they said about Kevin Mitnick: that he could "whistle into a telephone and launch a nuclear missile from Norad."</comment>


Delightful Puzzles - <AUTHOR> http://gurmeet.net/puzzles/ <comment><USER2> There are some nice puzzles there. There is some overlap between my favourite puzzle page, by Rustan Leino: [http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/leino/puzzles....](http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/leino/puzzles.html), but both have a number of puzzles the other doesn't.

Edit: corrected Leino's name.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a nice list, thanks for sharing. Here is another which many of you probably know but isn't linked at the bottom of the article: [http://paulbourke.net/fun/](http://paulbourke.net/fun/)

I do wish the comments were hidden by default.

</comment><comment><USER4> I worked briefly on the same team as Gurmeet while I was an intern at Google. He's an incredibly smart guy and had tons of interesting puzzles to give out.

</comment><comment><USER5> Great list. Many of you may also like: [http://mindcipher.com](http://mindcipher.com)

<comment><USER6> More puzzles: [http://www.folj.com/puzzles/](http://www.folj.com/puzzles/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> the graphical soln to 40 is beautiful.</comment>


Podcast: VP CX at Orbit shares how chatbots performed better than humans reps - <AUTHOR> https://plantt.io/blog/the-cx-podcast-michael-callahan <comment><USER2> Great insights on the how to create better custom chatbots, I can attest that the bots can really outperform human reps when it comes to customer support, we have been using a chatbot in our site for quite some time now and our customers are in love with it.

With the help of the team - Chatifai Technologies [https://bit.ly/customchatbot](https://bit.ly/customchatbot) -

that helped set it up, we are continuously improving the chatbot's knowledge base to meet more needs of the customers, reducing the time our human reps have to interact with the customers.</comment>


Ask HN: What happened after acquisition? - <AUTHOR> I'm conducting research on what it's like to work at a company that gets acquired, especially if you were NOT one of the first employees. If you've been in this scenario, I want to know: What employee number were you? What was your role at the company? Did you say onboard after acquisition? How was this experience overall? <comment><USER2> Experience from the other side...

I've acquired and had to integrate several companies. I can remember writing the operational playbook that was used to handle the types of questions you are asking. After acquiring the companies I also had to manage them for several years and hopefully this sheds some light on what you're asking.

2 top level things. The acquired entity can stay together as a whole or it can be broken up into its functional pieces.

While there are exceptions, the back office functions and people (accounting, finance, admin, etc) will usually get folded into the back office functions of the acquiring entity. If you are an employee in this function, most likely you will get absorbed or let go.

Depending on what the terms and goals around the acquisition the other functions and roles will be absorbed. For example, if the goal is to find "synergies" then redundant or non critical resources might be reassigned or let go.

In one acquisition I kept the product, engineering and business development team completely whole and located in their own building and tried to not mess with the success they had but just give them what they needed. We planned what we wanted to accomplish and then I just let them run and help get the bureaucracy out of the way.

Cultural fit is hard and important. When I acquired another company we tried to fold them in and it was hard on everyone. Within 2 years only 1 engineer remained and he was the one that was hired right before the acquisition so it wasn't as big if a cultural impact to him. If the culture of the entities don't jibe, it can create an unhealthy tension.

Best advice I can give you is to understand the goals of the acquisition, how your role maps or fits into the combined entity, the level of specialization your role has and what your personal goals are.

It will be a process. I've been wildly successful and a terrible failure. My take away is that the goals and people matter.

Hope this helps give you some perspective.

</comment><comment><USER3> I was employee # 10, the fourth software engineer. We (a 30 person company) were acquired by a much larger company (600 people), with whom I stayed for 3 more years. I received a decent retention package (walked away with ~$250K in cash from equity when I left, plus the 3 years worth of increased salary). From the day the acquisition was announced until we switched offices, however, it was nerve-wracking. We were all convinced that we were going to get laid off, no matter how many times the leadership said we wouldn't. (I mean, what else are they going to say, right?) It turned out that our fears weren't realized, and things were OK after all. There was a reshuffling of leadership, and the former CEO was let go, but everyone else pretty much stuck around for a relatively long time.

I was the last of the original team to leave. People started leaving within 3 months, and pretty much every 3-6 months another person would leave. I didn't mind it so much. Our new parent company didn't meddle too much until the end of my stay there. By the time I left, the company had grown to 2500+ employees, and I had been with the company longer than 95% of the employees. Kinda crazy.

My advice during an acquisition would be to a) get your boss to fight for you and push for a great retention package, b) polish up your resume, c) hope you don't need B because the new company is awesome. If they suck or they meddle too much or they don't actually share your personal/team values, it's time to leave.

Of course, the best advice is to be C-level, so you get a lot more than regular employees. ;)

I enjoyed my stay at the new company, but they acquired another company whose values I did not share, and that's when it was time to leave for me.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER4> The company I was at was purchased by a much larger competitor. It wasn't a startup in the least. It was a 12 year old company. The first employee was an IT guy. He didn't win anything. Most of the 250 employees were laid off except for the IT team of 25 or so people. Customer Service, collections, marketing, operations, etc, etc, all gone. It was a high pressure situation and heartbreaking to witness and also somewhat gut wrenching to wait for the other shoe to drop.

One thing I learned is that during situations like that, the acquiring company sometimes NEEDS you to be there to ensure that their purchase does not lose value. In those cases they will provide valuable incentives. So if you find yourself in that situation and unhappy, feel free to find a better offer since you may well get a high value counter-offer.

<comment><USER5> Probably one of the few good times to accept the counter offer. You know you're out in the end anyway; might as well cash in on the deep pockets of the acquirer.

<comment><USER4> Usually would agree, but I ended up staying for a few years (and a couple of retention bonuses) and I think it turned out to be the right decision. It was a tight-knit team and I think they only lost one person during the whole acquisition process, and that to a lucrative offer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have worked for five companies that have been acquired whilst I was there. None were startups, I was never an early employee.

The first company I worked for was acquired within a couple of weeks of my starting to work there. It was a huge employer that kept the local economy afloat, then the new owners instigated tens of thousands of lay-offs. I left as soon as I could.

Another company was sold off very cheaply after being asset-stripped. I jumped ship as soon as I could but I'm still in touch with some people there and the new owners made a success of it.

Another firm got merged with another to provide a better range of services. There was almost no impact on my day-to-day work and no changes to terms of employment.

The next company was a small, scrappy player that got bought by their biggest competitor. A drip-feed of really crappy little changes ensued: no more flexi- time, must stay in this hotel chain, Lotus Notes for email. I had been planning to leave anyway and quit soon after the deal. Eventually everyone from the original team quit and some started a competing company in the same market.

Another company that I worked with got bought by a competitor. It became very clear that office politics trumped engineering practices throughout the new organisation. I stuck around for over a year trying to make it work but eventually I counted that my team of three engineers had five different managers each using us as leverage screw over the other guys - quitting time again!

In every case the new management said positive things, the outgoing management said positive things but there were never any actions or incentives to keep staff. This is understandable when buying market share, but that was not the case every time. Given that most coders can get a 10% raise by switching jobs, providing a 5% retention bonus seems a good way of getting engineers to ride out the changes of an acquisition.

Those managing the transition should pay attention to the little things too. I actually heard one HR person say that our coffee machine had to go because it was better than those in all the other offices of the group. You can imagine how well that change went across.

</comment><comment><USER7> The experience really depends on why you were acquired. I was brought in as a consultant to support a Google acquisition 6 months in. It seemed like everyone had been interviewed during the acquisition process and depending on how you did, you became either a full-time employee or a consultant. Those that were consultants, were given a bonus when it was time to leave although some people were extended and some consultants were converted to full time. When it came time to leave, everyone left on good terms. However in my current industry vertical, companies are typically bought as cheap customer acquisition so most people are fired within 6 months.

</comment><comment><USER8> I've worked as a consultant for 4 or 5 large companies that got acquired. One of the first things that happens is they throw out all the consultants of the acquired companies. This is different than startups. In the case of large corporate acquisitions, the benefits are mostly cost savings. "We have this many overlapping functions, if we can get rid of 40% of the people in each of them, the deal pays for itself."

To answer your direct question, I was very late into all of the companies, and didn't survive any of the acquisitions. The changes were very quick. It's part of life as a consultant. (I'm not one anymore)

</comment><comment><USER9> My former employer acquired their 53rd company, at the end of 2015. They laid off 20% of staff. ~1600 jobs.</comment>


Iminlikewithyou Raising $2 Million for Shift to Casual Game Business - <AUTHOR> http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/6/charles_formans_iminlikewithyou_raising_2_million_for_casual_games

<comment><USER2> I wondered what had happened to them. iJustine was raving about them about a year (?) ago and then I never saw them get any traction in the areas I hang around (Twitter, etc).

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a cool site, very addictive. The site seems very innovative to me.</comment>


The Smell-O-Vision - <AUTHOR> http://thedailywtf.com/articles/the-smell-o-vision <comment><USER2> Well this is typical dailywtf - while amusing most of the stories are massaged to be more entertaining to such a degree it become unrealistic.

While Windows XP will offer to to do a repair when it gets shutdown suddenly normally doing that won't cause filesystem corruption or even HARDWARE damage as is implied in the story.

My guess from the description is that the generator power is probably dirty - the right fix would have been an online UPS here with an app that shuts the machine down on power loss.

A second factor might be that the PC was set to start automatically when Power was applied and while booting up it gets turned off again several times I think a Windows XP (and windows 7) machine will then ask for user interaction.

You can turn this Function off tho and Windows will ignore power loss after that.

<comment><USER3> > the right fix would have been an online UPS here with an app that shuts the > machine down on power loss.

That's my thought.

I've done enough end-user work to know I really should try to avoid all possible issues relating the user, assuming my work allows a timeline to do so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I find the language off-putting. Calling people who don't understand technology "grunts", and then "facepalm"-ing repeatedly at their failure to understand what you are an expert at...I believe this is called "Outgroup derogation": [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingroups_and_outgroups#Outgrou...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingroups_and_outgroups#Outgroup_derogation)

Also see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out- group_homogeneity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-group_homogeneity)

Put yourself in the place of that "grunt": would you expect a toaster or a microwave to be carefully shut down first, or expect it to be just fine when you turn the power off?

IMHO, if their software is expected to be used in real-world, on-the-road situations by untrained generalists, then it is the failure of the software firm to have built resilience as a feature.

To suck at requirements elicitation, suck at UX and then blame the user is not appropriate, IMHO. Did the "grunt" ask you to choose Windows XP as the vehicle of choice for your implementation? Ironically, it is exactly this kind of disconnect with paying customers and fellow humans beings that causes management to view programmers as the "grunt"-workers.

Sorry for the screed. Summary: UX "R" compassion.

<comment><USER5> > Calling people who don't understand technology "grunts"

Not a native speaker, but since the customer is the military, "grunt" is likely not meant derogatory, but just is (quoting Wikipedia) "an infantry man, in military slang".

The repeated facepalming is clearly outgroup derogation, though. That's just thedailywtf.com; their articles are always like that. I had them in my feed reader, but got tired of that writing style eventually.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Cryptocurrency portfolio app on Blockstack - <AUTHOR> https://coinsapp.co <comment><USER2> OT but I'm in a situation where I have hundreds of different altcoins on a handful of exchanges. I'm looking to move these into my own wallets but it seems that I will need to get so many different wallets that it's not worth the hassle. Why isn't there a wallet which can handle all kind of cryptocurrencies? The most I've seen in one is like 10.

<comment><USER3> The Ledger Nano S hardware wallet can hold just about every cryptocurrency, including ERC20 tokens.

<comment><USER4> As the sibling says, it's much less than "every" and closer to 20. There's a lot missing, eg Monero, which we've been waiting for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Neat!

I built something like this with a postgres database of transactions, a python script that scrapes the coinmarketcap api, and influxdb + grafana. It works well and suits my needs.

<comment><USER6> How were you able to update the database frequently with python? I'm trying to basically have a database that mirrors historical data on an exchange, that also updates every 5 minutes — I'm trying to decide between a node server / python aws lambda.

<comment><USER5> I'm not updating the database that frequently. Every 5m I poll for new data and I update prices in the db.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> You may also like [https://cointracker.cash](https://cointracker.cash) It's simpler to use than lots of apps available to track altcoins. Free version is available to test all the functionality and with a one off payment you can unlock the full cryptocurrency set of over 1000+.

</comment><comment><USER8> That's odd that coinsapp claims to be "one of the first apps built on Blockstack ever" but Blockstack does not even mention coinsapp in the "Featured Apps on Blockstack" section on the main page.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, if you are in the Blockstack browser, you'll see it right there on the home page :) there's a delay between the homepage updates (marketing) and what is live within Blockstack itself

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice work! This is really slick :)

Blockstack is new to me. I've just been starting to dig into Ethereum. Would be really interested to hear experiences / comparisons between the two.

</comment><comment><USER10> Really digging the design and functionality on this! Nice work.

<comment><USER11> Indeed great Desktop design!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I gave it a quick try - Coinsapp only seems to support a very few coins while there are plenty of portfolio apps out there that include pretty much every single altcoin out there (Blockfolio comes to mind).

For me, this is not yet the killer app that lets me track all my coins that are spread around various wallets and exchanges.

One more note: not all coins are bought, some are mined. It would be nice to have an option when adding a holding that it has been mined and not bought.

</comment><comment><USER13> Wow, well done. This looks really polished. One minor nitpick I have is just on the landing page.. you have these gradient circles for each feature which doesn't really add anything to the content. It would be better to have icons or even remove them.

How long did this take you to make?

</comment><comment><USER14> Somewhat similar:

[http://www.cryptoport.net](http://www.cryptoport.net)

The idea there is just to have a simple portfolio bookmarked without login, emails, passwords cookies or an app installed.

I'll write a separate Show HN later. Sorry for the shameless self-ad.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is the first Mac application that I have come across that does not support my version of Mac OSX (10.11). Too bad it doesn't work in the browser version of Blockstack.

<comment><AUTHOR> Coins, or Blockstack? It's just a webapp, so it should work in any mac os version :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> What language was used for the backend and frontend? I'm trying to make a web interface for a small project but I think I love Java too much to learn JS or HTML...

<comment><USER17> What a pristine example of next level stockholms syndrom! With that attitude it might benefit you more than anything. Theres nothing that gets me to not hire someone than the person saying "Im a {language} developer"

<comment><USER4> Might be the opposite, for example there are some languages I consider a waste of time and refuse to learn. Mainly languages too close to my current skillset, as I feel there are other languages that can teach me more with the same effort, or languages I consider downright badly-designed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Yeah, nah. Dont store your coins in sites or dapps or anything that you do not control 100% yourself.

The best option for folks today is exodus.io, which is a multicurrency platform-ind js wallet. You control 100% of the key material and control the funds.

There is also jaxx and coinomi.com that can act as multi-currency wallets.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree! However, you're not storing your coins in this app, it's just to track how they're doing within the larger crypto market :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> its cool idea, but I like the idea of holding my own keys on my machine/paper opposed to delegating it to an app.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'd love to use it but... No HTTPS!?

<comment><AUTHOR> We've been getting sporadic reports that people are using `http` vs `https`. It _should_ auto redirect you to `https`! Apologies, we 100% intend for every user to use https, will dig in further :)

<comment><USER21> you can't use Blockstack storage on sites served over https at the moment

[https://github.com/blockstack/blockstack- browser/issues/631](https://github.com/blockstack/blockstack- browser/issues/631)

<comment><AUTHOR> That has been fixed -> [https://github.com/blockstack/blockstack.js/releases/tag/v0....](https://github.com/blockstack/blockstack.js/releases/tag/v0.14.0)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What will happen to entertainment industry during/post Covid - <AUTHOR> How will actors work together? The crews and sets all involve people working close to each other.
Does this mean we don't have any new series shot? Does it mean more animation and studio creations? Will there be robots and voice talent? What about the porn and adult industry? Are we going to have sex bots?
Thoughts? <comment><USER2> A consequence could be the industry goes more virtual using CGI and AI. This way the financial rewards go more to everyone on the team, not just the people at the top, or the lead actors and singers. Coders become the superstars.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not looking forward to it. That would be dismal entertainment.</comment></comment>


Apache Benchmarks for Calxeda's 5-Watt Web Server - <AUTHOR> http://armservers.com/2012/06/18/apache-benchmarks-for-calxedas-5-watt-web-server/

<comment><USER3> There are lies, damned lies, and benchmarks.

The Xeon machine is running at under 15% utilization due to the gigabit ethernet bottleneck, yet they're using the system TDP (that's the worst case thermal specs which you design your cooling around).

If you put a 10 gigabit NIC in there, the advantage would be closer to 2x performance/watt, since the Xeon would be processing 6.66x as many requests (1/0.15). This is also a last generation Xeon - Ivy will be out by the time this CPU is.

That they're not just taking the power at the wall of both systems probably means doing so would tip the balance closer to the Xeon - and you pay for at the wall power, so that's what matters.

In addition, their choice of 4gb for the platform is worrying; it's almost certainly a 32 bit machine. Which rules out an almost perfect use case for the machine; a memcache server.

ARM in servers is coming, to be sure. 64 bit ARM will bring unprecedented gigabytes of ram per watt. But toe to toe on CPU heavy tasks, they will still lose out badly on performance/watt at full load.

At least from the numbers in the post, I'd stick with virtualisation.

<comment><USER4> ad RAM: the platform (if it is real) is little bit more interesting - <USER2> have cards with 16GB RAM per four 4-core CPUs (SoCs) - these cards are to be used together in amount of tens, connected with high speed switched fabric in the host board.. so it's something like server cluster on board design.. [http://www.calxeda.com/technology/products/energycards/quadn...](http://www.calxeda.com/technology/products/energycards/quadnode/)

<comment><USER3> Now _that's_ interesting. Why on earth aren't they leading with it?

I can understand these kinds of faux benchmarks and whitepapers to convince pointy haired bosses to switch between mature, mainstream technologies.

But the early adopters of fringe technology like this are going to be companies with specific needs, and those making the decisions are going to be highly technical. Not to generalize, but they (me included) love details and possibilities, and abhor marketing puffery.

Calxeda should be sketching out novel ways to use the interconnect bandwidth to solve hard problems, with power efficiency x86 can't touch. Not running ab against an ARM core and misinterpreting the results. Sheesh.

<comment><USER4> well, there is a promising HP project Moonshot, which was going to build on this platform, but it seems that they recently decided to switch to Intel solution.. [http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/20/project-moonshot-take- two...](http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/20/project-moonshot-take-two-hps-low- power-gemini-servers-let-go/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a very poor (and misleading) comparison.

First, the author admits that the Gigabit ethernet link was the bottleneck for the Xeon system, capping it at a mere 15% CPU utilization. However, he goes on to use published TDP numbers as the system power draw. TDP numbers are only approached under the most demanding of loads and 100% CPU usage, which this clearly was not. At bare minimum, the author needs some sort of power measurement device to make a reasonable comparison.

Second, serving static web pages is not a difficult task. The Xeon system is overkill for such a task, so of course it will be less energy efficient. In the real world, the extra capacity on this server could be used to perform more difficult tasks or run other processes.

Third, if we assume the Xeon server would scale linearly without being bottlenecked at 15% CPU usage by the Gigabit ethernet link, then it would serving approximately 46,300 pages per second, or almost 8.5X that of the ARM server. Take into account that the actual power consumed in the real-world will be less than the TDP, and the efficiency gap between the ARM server becomes very narrow. Even if the Xeon TDP numbers are accurate, the new margin is still less than 2X.

Finally, the Total Cost of Ownership calculations in the conclusion are based (as the author admits) on the flawed benchmark numbers. If they can only achieve a 77% TCO reduction by completing handicapping the Xeon system, then the ARM system may not be that advantageous. Especially when you consider that without the bottleneck or with a more demanding workload, you would might need as many as 8 times as many ARM servers to replace the performance of the Xeon server, which isn't going to help real-world TCO.

I'm a big fan of the ARM platform, and I'm very excited to see ARM servers enter the marketplace. However, false benchmarks like these aren't going to help anyone. ARM servers will have certainly have their place for a lot of different workloads, but to suggest that they are 15X more energy efficient and have a 77% lower TCO based on these numbers is disingenuous.

</comment><comment><USER6> We've all savaged Calxeda's blogpost now, but it's worth noting the positive sides too.

• It looks like the real world power savings will be something like 66%. I know hosting facilities that base your bill on your watts. That looks like a powerful incentive.[1]

• Virtualization is nice (#1), but if you aren't a big enough fish to own all the slices you are at the mercy of your box mates and the financial pressures of your hosting company. If you have your own ARM server you get to live in a predictable world.

• Virtualization is nice (#2), but isn't there an embargoed Xen interdomain security flaw right now? How long have bad people known about it? Is your hosting provider in on the loop to get the fixes before they become public?

• For small sites, it doesn't matter what the efficiency of a Xeon at full load is. You won't get there with a dedicated machine, and you don't want to be on a virtual server that goes there.

• It looks like the boards actually have 10gbit interfaces. The 1gbit limit was either architectural to get to the client machines or deliberate to keep the Xeon in the same ballpark. Either way, it is reasonable for sites that aren't going to have more than a 1gbit drop anyway.

• 48 of these quad core ARM systems fit in a 2U box.

I'd much rather have a dedicated ARM than the tiny slices of Xeons that I use now. I don't need a random performance problem brought on by anyone other than myself.

EOM

[1] It may be that if your workload is network bound you won't be offered wattage based pricing. That might eliminate this savings for the people that could best use it.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think I might have invested $19 in a Kill-a-watt meter before I published that benchmark.

Using TDP for the Xeon that is operating at a small fraction of capacity is going to mislead. Leaving out the disk drive (let's say 5 watts) helps make a great multiplier, but is divorced from reality.

Their Performance/Watt number in the table is, I think, actually a transactions/energy. The watt multiplier would be about 19.

</comment><comment><USER7> Another thing to consider beyond simply the fact that your particular benchmark ran into a network bandwidth bottleneck: web server benchmarks should not be conducted using ApacheBench until Apache makes AB multi- threaded.

Use a multithreaded benchmark tool such as WeigHTTP ( <http://redmine.lighttpd.net/projects/weighttp/wiki> ). WeigHTTP is essentially identical in behavior to ApacheBench, but with a -t argument to specify the number of threads.

You can approximate the same behavior in ApacheBench by kicking off multiple AB instances in parallel, but then it is up to you to aggregate the results.

</comment><comment><USER8> We saw similar claims for atom based servers.

If this was accurate, Google would have adopted it immediately, the savings on their power bill would be astronomical.

The only time atom and arm are 1500% more efficient is at idle.

<comment><USER9> <http://research.google.com/pubs/archive/36448.pdf>

"So why doesn't everyone want wimpy-core systems? Because in many corners of the real world, they're prohibited by law—Amdahl's law. Even though many Internet services benefit from seemingly unbounded request- and data-level parallelism, such systems aren't above the law. As the number of parallel threads increases, reducing serialization and communication overheads can become increasingly difficult. In a limit case, the amount of inherently serial work performed on behalf of a user request by slow single-threaded cores will dominate overall execution time."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> in the next benchmark, use SSL/TLS connections, and we'll see..

</comment><comment><USER10> An actual Xeon is not going to draw its TDP in power under a simple workload like serving static files. Even if you get it up to 100% CPU utilization, it will probably not be drawing its TDP. Modern intel processors have a bunch of mechanisms built in for managing power draw (and similarly, heat output) - they can clock up and down in response to workloads, bringing a single core up above standard clock to speed up single-threaded loads and bringing all the cores down when the machine is doing less intensive things (like running a message pump or waiting for socket connections).

If anything, I'd expect static file serving on a Xeon to produce no more than say 40% of TDP. If you're lucky, serving up all the static files will load all the cores fairly evenly and get the CPU close to '100%', but none of the floating point or integer logic units will be remotely loaded - it'll be almost exclusively branch/copy work, which isn't going to put much load on the CPU itself or draw much power or generate much heat. It's also going to be spending tons of time waiting (on the NIC, etc) instead of actually doing computation, which can generate a lot less heat if the waits are done using the modern busy wait instructions instead of a spin loop.

EDIT: A comment in the OP provides a conservative estimate of 43W for the actual draw of the entire xeon-based system (not just the CPU) in the benchmark. He also points out that it has more RAM (which will increase power draw).

<comment><USER11> Serving static files is a kind of thing that could be done with very little CPU involvement. Once the file is cached (or memory-mapped), just point the NIC processor to it and tell it to pipe the memory block through the network connection and head off to nobler jobs.

BTW, are there NICs this clever around?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Again with these silly benchmarks. Let's just throw numbers out there and see what people can make from them.

Obviously whoever ran this benchmarks doesn't know what the real bottleneck is here. Hint: It's not the CPU.

6k req/sec is nothing to be proud of. A gevent python web server can handle 10k requests/sec, and a vanilla nginx can make 24k reqs/sec on a commodity machine.

</comment><comment><USER13> Really "ab" as a web benchmark? I had no idea anybody used this anymore, how about a benchmark tool that at least supports HTTP v1.1?

</comment><comment><USER14> Aside from the questionable benchmark, can you actually buy one of these right now?

<comment><USER4> i'd ask: did anyone see this machine in real? it's funny they're still promoting with unpopulated PCBs :) [http://www.calxeda.com/wp- content/uploads/2012/05/Capture387...](http://www.calxeda.com/wp- content/uploads/2012/05/Capture3870_large.jpg)

<comment><USER15> it's more energy efficient without all those pesky components :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Ok, where can I get one?

</comment><comment><USER17> May be Intel has paid them to publish these numbers? Otherwise I have no idea why they are stupid enough to post it on the net.</comment>