Man victim of 'vomit fraud,' and his wife found the video to prove it - <AUTHOR> http://www.wday.com/news/4484702-mcfeely-west-fargo-man-victim-vomit-fraud-and-his-wife-found-video-prove-it <comment><USER2> My question is why there isn't a $1000 "false vomit report investigation fee" that is paid from the driver to the passenger? If the driver has to clean his car, they get $150, but if the passenger has to go pull security footage from a gas station, they get nothing? Lyft also needs to make clear that if there is a clear cut case like this one that the driver is permanently gone from the Lyft platform.

<comment><USER3> Because mere existence of such a thing would confirm existence of "vomit fraud" in the first place. There is no fraud according to Uber and Lyft, just maybe minor misunderstandings/clerical errors.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> See previous discussion [1]. What's interesting about this case is that the customer was able to prove what happened, and Lyft still refused to fully engage until the press was involved, and even then, refused to answer direct questions about how it investigates fraud cases and what penalties will be assessed against drivers who do this.

My own suggestion of a solution (in the short-term) remains to alert passengers that they are getting charged a fee for making a mess in the car before the trip concludes, within the app. It's possible this could lead to confrontation between drivers and passengers, but taxi cabs do this every single day. Moreover, I have to think very few Uber/Lyft drivers would be brazen enough to assess a charge when no damage had been done. At the very least, it would allow a passenger the opportunity to take their own photo and video before exiting the car.

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17587952](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17587952)

<comment><USER4> Car2GO has a similar setup. You self rate the condition of the car before you accept it (ie, when you unlock it and get in) and after you're done.

If you think the car is damaged they know it likely was the previous renter. It should be the same story when you get in a Lyft. "Is it clean enough?" and "Did you leave it dirty?" are your feedback to the company about how you think the place was left. Maybe add in photographic evidence...

<comment><USER5> I Shouldn't be the users responsibility. It should be part of the check out process for the driver, drop off XXXX, did the ride involve damage to the car? Please add pictures. tag them with the gps and time. If the rider doesn't complain that he got into a car with vomit, and the driver takes the picture at the location of the drop off before closing out the ride fully, then it's much harder to fake.

<comment><USER6> It's trivial to fake. You can tag any picture with any time and GPS coordinates you want.

<comment><USER5> YOU can, a driver who is taking the picture through the app is going to have difficulty modifying it, or even uploading a picture. Was there damage? -> load the camera -> upload the file.

Don't ask for pictures to be uploaded, just ask if there was damage before the next ride can be accepted, and if there was ask for pictures right there, right then. Flag anything within 10 minutes of the end of the ride as suspicious and that will cut out 99 percent of this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "The police view it as a civil matter, but could they look at it differently? Is there an ordinance that could be passed locally?"

This is more an issue with lazy or unmotivated policing rather than need for more and more specific laws. The driver is acting dishonestly to defraud the passenger of money. There are numerous statutes regulating fraudulent criminal conduct ranging from street scams to Bernie Madoff.

The fact there is a private contract between them regulating their commercial transaction does not obviate the need for both parties to comply with criminal law.

I wonder why the reporter did not seek any input from anyone legally trained. Relying on the police, who have no incentive to overly burden themselves with non-revenue generating police work, to inform the public on whether something is criminal or not is half-assed journalism.

</comment><comment><USER8> Lyft changed their policy to prohibit refunding crap rides. (Recently had a driver on their phone the entire ride, blowing through red lights; no material response from support.) Flipped me from a loyalist to (a) logging out of my account and (b) reporting their lawbreaking drivers to New York's TLC.

<comment><USER9> Had a Lyft driver that was high as a kite when she started driving. Proceeded to go down the wrong freeway and ignore my directions on how to get back on track. Decided to end the ride in front of a homeless camp.

I called Lyft to complain. The driver claimed that I assaulted her. Despite the GPS records, eyewitnesses, and police report to the contrary, Lyft sided with her.

Switched to Uber immediately, and charged back every ride I'd ever taken with Lyft.

<comment><USER10> > charged back every ride I'd ever taken with Lyft.

Uhh. That's not okay.

<comment><USER9> I could have sued them for quite a bit more than the value of the rides I charged back.

Lawyer estimated roughly $100k for false imprisonment, IIED and slander, not including punitive damages due to those being intentional torts. However, the case would have taken 5 years in the California court system and being a party to litigation can affect your credit quite dramatically, so I passed.

<comment><USER10> > I could have sued them for quite a bit more than the value of the rides I > charged back.

Then you should have done that, rather than fraudulently requesting chargebacks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The amount of money that drivers make on "vomit fraud" is going to be miniscule before the rideshare service, which is heavily incentivized to prevent it, flags and decommissions them.

Meanwhile, as a driver, you have to deal with someone vomiting in your car every few hundred rides. If it happens, you're done for the shift, and there's no making up for those lost hours.

Good grief, can it suck any worse to be a driver? Public outrage is focused on the exceptional case and ignores the common case.

<comment><USER12> As a passanger, I'm expecting a ride to my destination. There are chances the driver will run into an accident, speed, drive recklessly etc. The car could be dirty or smelly, broken or old. As a passanger, I do not expect to be a victim of fraud or any other criminal act committed by the driver towards me.

As a driver, my expectation from the passanger is that he will get in the car, do some small talk and get out of the car as soon as we arrive. There are chances that the passanger is sick, dirty, smelly, unpolite, unfriendly, noisy, drunk. With that comes the risk that he might mess up your car, especially if he is sick or drunk.

So I think, both, the driver and the passanger know exactly what they are getting into. No need for a "oh the poor taxi drivers!!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Looks like frequently recording one's life is becoming more and more important. Note here how there's video evidence of pure fraud.

The "terms of service" are there to absolve a corporation of fraud and what would otherwise be criminal acts by virtue of contracts. This is yet another example of how one-sided contracts of adhesion are in this country.

<comment><USER14> Why is it not mandatory for the driver to have a dash cam on all the time and if they want to charge for something like this they _must_ have a video of it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wonder how often the driver had been able to get away with this.

I assume there is an accepted normal rate of passengers vomiting. Maybe something like ~5% for midnight to 6:00am rides.

If a driver goes significantly over that rate, Lyft should be able to spot that something is up way before it gets to tracking down security footage.

<comment><USER16> They have a lot of drivers. Over the whole group, _someone_ is going to get vomit five nights in a row.

<comment><USER17> Not hard to flag it for a human analyst to follow them all up in the name of good service.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> While the cases of fraud are despicable, I think being reimbursed only $150 for somebody vomiting in your car is far too little. Your car will be pretty much similar to "The Smelly Car" episode of Seinfeld once it has been puked into.

</comment><comment><USER19> _Lyft is a California company doing business in North Dakota, in Fargo and West Fargo. Who is going to step in and tell them to knock this off?_

Well, I would imagine if it gets picked up nationally then some local politician or more probably the local DA. Someone will want to enhance their political career. A lot of these folks talk to others in their same positions in other communities, so it might end up being one of those waves. Lack of proper customer relations could come back and bite when dealing with the locals.

</comment><comment><USER20> IANAL, but isn't this technically wire fraud? I'm sure a few indictments from the feds will scare them into not committing a felony.

</comment><comment><USER21> If I had the means and inclination, I might have gone through the trouble of proving my innocence. But more than likely, I would have emailed Lyft and once I didn't get a satisfactory response disputed the charge with my credit card company. The few times I have disputed a charge, it was painless.

</comment><comment><USER22> Guess I'll be taking a picture when I get home late from now on.

</comment><comment><USER23> Honestly, just dispute the transaction with your bank. Why bother dealing with the company directly?

<comment><USER24> Like amazon et al, any chargeback ever results in a permanent lifetime ban with no appeal from these services

<comment><USER23> I work in chargebacks. That isn't true.</comment></comment></comment>


Complexity and Strategy - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/complexity-and-strategy-325cd7f59a92#.dv5bhfh20 <comment><USER2> Sixth posting this week... second posting this _hour_.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Complexity%20and%20Strategy&so...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Complexity%20and%20Strategy&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0)</comment>


512-year-old Greenland shark may be the oldest living vertebrate on Earth - <AUTHOR> https://inhabitat.com/512-year-old-greenland-shark-may-be-the-oldest-living-vertebrate-on-earth/ <comment><USER2> I wonder how much temporal awareness a greenland shark has. Does it have any inkling of how long it has lived? Apparently some sharks can be trained: [http://www.aquariumofpacific.org/blogs/comments/target_train...](http://www.aquariumofpacific.org/blogs/comments/target_training_a_shark)

</comment><comment><USER3> Article also discusses the required preparation for safely eating said shark.

<comment><USER2> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A1karl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A1karl)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Searching for a JS Library - <AUTHOR>

There is this particular javascript Library, the name of which I am not able to recall.<p>Are there any Directories/Forums/otherwise useful resources where I can  search this.<p>(Googling doesnt help since I dont know the name of the library) <comment><USER2> <http://www.jsdb.io/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

<comment><USER3> did you find it? just curios which js library doesn't let you take a nap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> or <http://microjs.com/></comment>


OneBit – Mastercard PayPass Integrated Bitcoin Wallet - <AUTHOR> http://www.getonebit.com

<comment><USER2> I like the product. I just want to offer you feedback that some of the copy reads awkwardly.

Consider replacing "Tap & pay anywhere where there are credit-cards. Interested in early access?" with "Tap & pay anywhere credit cards are accepted. Interested in early access?"

</comment><comment><USER3> Love hearing the phrase "Let's face it. Today, it is still ridiculously difficult to spend Bitcoin in the real world."

I love Bitcoin but I can't integrate it into my life because it is just way to complicated in most of my transactions, not due to my lack of understanding of how to use it.

<comment><USER4> The issue really is that bitcoin isn't suited for retail transactions.

I work in the payments industry and we took a long hard look at integrating bitcoin payments into our point-of-sale and determined that it was effort we would get no reward for.

Merchants wont use it. They love no chargebacks and no real fees, but we can't guarantee they will ever get the money for the sandwich they just sold.

Working with risk levels and calculations around zero confirmation transactions work but they still pose an element of risk that isn't necessarily present with cash and credit.

On the processing side, we're scared to death by anti-retail thinking and things like replace-by-fee which, in our opinion, would outright kill off retail transactions using bitcoin. There's just way too much uncertainty that someone will decide a patch like that is needed and start deploying it even if it isn't in the core.

It's the upside and downside of decentralized systems really.

<comment><USER5> > Merchants wont use it. They love no chargebacks and no real fees, but we > can't guarantee they will ever get the money for the sandwich they just > sold.

A _guarantee_ isn't what you want. Cash and card isn't guaranteed either — the cash might be counterfeit; the credit card might be stolen.

What you _want_ is to reduce the rate of fraud. So let's compare the rates of fraud between bitcoin and cash/card. Credit card transactions are fraudulent around .1% of the time. [1] But I've never even heard of retail bitcoin fraud with zero-confirmation transactions. Have you?

You seem to be afraid of the wrong thing, and you don't seem to be basing your opinion any facts or statistics. It sounds like you're just untrusting of new technology. Yet you're on hacker news? This confuses me. How did you get here?

Similarly, your fear of replace-by-fee is very strange — that proposal is never going to happen. You don't have any faith in the bitcoin community, but you have faith in credit card companies not to raise fees or block your business? Why is that? Do you only trust old boys' clubs? Are you from the east coast? Are you a luddite?

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_card_fraud](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_card_fraud)

<comment><USER6> > But I've never even heard of retail bitcoin fraud with zero-confirmation > transactions.

Then you are simply not very well informed. Problems with BTC transactions have happened repeatedly. Here is a great example of a successful 10k double spend during a chain fork: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5372956](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5372956) It was was made possible buy slightly different behaviours in the different client versions. The core developers had to get on IRC with the miner using the 0.8 version and talk them into giving up their (correct) chain to resolve this problem. Currency of the future!

<comment><USER7> This incident had nothing to do with zero-conf txs. In fact okpay did wait for multiple confirmations, and was still hit by this $10k double spend!

This whole thing was possible because of an accidental fork of the chain which lasted a few hours. This is the only accidental fork that occurred in the last 3 years.

Details: [https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0050.mediawi...](https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0050.mediawiki)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One of the founders has made some comments[1] on r/bitcoin

[1] [http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/31qlwx/onebit_maste...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/31qlwx/onebit_mastercard_paypass_integrated_bitcoin/cq409ij)

</comment><comment><USER9> Please allow people to sign up with a + in their email address.

</comment><comment><USER10> Isn't that exactly what we shouldn't want, that the credit card companies _also_ record our financial transactions made via a currency created to be decentralized?

This basically ends as a bit of convenience for us, at the cost of them keeping the near monopoly on world-wide transactions...

What's the point of bitcoins if VISA, MasterCard, etc. still know everything we buy world-wide, conveniently accessible in their databases?

<comment><USER11> Recording financial transactions has nothing to do with decentralization. I see nothing wrong with this.

<comment><USER10> Recording financial transactions has everything to do with centralization, when only a handful of companies control world-wide purchases.

These new electronic currencies are inherently untied from anything. What happens when the same handful of companies control them also?

Wasn't it Russia who was denied its own credit card by the same US companies? That's way too much power to have over the world. If we finally have a chance to decentralize some of these transactions, to remove some of that power they currently have, we certainly should take that chance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> 1\. This isn't possible on an iPhone unless you jailbreak, right?

2\. Aren't those Android screenshots in that iPhone frame?

</comment><comment><USER13> This product helps people who already have bitcoin convert it to fiat more easily and offload the bitcoin->fiat conversion fees onto the merchant.

Is there a market for this? It simply uses bitcoin as a store-of-value instead of fiat in a bank. Unless you're in the tiny minority of people who can acquire bitcoin but cannot acquire a bank account, I don't see the benefit to consumers or merchants. Not to mention with bitcoin's current volatility it is rarely appealing as a store of value.

(NFC seems to be another problem, but other commenters have discussed that well.)

</comment><comment><USER4> I sincerely wonder why companies are wasting their effort on the contactless market, especially smaller companies.

This product will be stillborn in the U.S. as NFC terminals are fairly rare and even after the education delivered by Google Wallet and ApplePay, 43% of people who attempt to use ApplePay at a terminal that supports it fail and the clerk provides no meaningful assistance.

If they won't support ApplePay, they won't support this.

<comment><USER14> As right as you are about the American market, it's extremely annoying that the rest of the world doesn't get to use services like Google Wallet and Apple Pay. In Canada, I've been tapping to pay for years, yet there are no popular 3rd party services to use my phone for paying.

So sure, it'll be stillborn in the US. But I don't give a crap about the US, you guys get enough of the cool stuff. This is a sweet deal for every other country with the infrastructure in place. This is a great idea for those countries, and definitely not a waste of effort in my eyes.

<comment><USER4> I will admit that while scanning through the content on the site again, I missed an important piece of wording that initially formulated half of my opinion here.

It is important to note that it does say World-wide. If they are poised to launch in other countries besides the US then I retract my statement about it being a waste.

However, I've seen much of this financial tech go straight to US for launch. If its NFC it's dead. Going that route, they may be out of business before they can even launch it elsewhere.

<comment><USER15> Wasn't there recently some kind of legislation in the US that encouraged the adoption of NFC-based terminals, which was one of the main drivers behind the release of Apple Pay in the first place? I remember reading about it somewhere in the middle of a Google Wallet vs Apple Pay flamewar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This clearly is a landing page of a non existent product.

</comment><comment><USER17> Is it possible to read the amount and currency type from the NFC terminal rather than typing it manually? I think that would be a sticking point for credit-card users who are used to just sliding and having the proper amount deducted without user input.

</comment><comment><USER18> Anybody knows who is behind this product/company/website? Can anybody integrate with Mastercard PayPass or does Mastercard choose integration partners?

<comment><USER4> You can view their list of apis here [https://developer.mastercard.com/portal/display/api/API](https://developer.mastercard.com/portal/display/api/API) but they do require you to go through some exercises before you can get to some of them. With the PayPass program i'm not sure on the specifics but I would assume a fairly strenuous look at your business and what you intend to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> With this scheme, the merchant still has to pay for swipe fees (which are ultimately transferred to the customer through higher prices -- the ultimate hidden fee!). Swipe fees are evil.</comment>


Open Source: From Community to Commercialization - <AUTHOR> https://a16z.com/2019/10/04/commercializing-open-source/ <comment><USER2> > _Open source started in the mid-70s, and programmer that I am, I call this > era 0.0 – the "free software" era. Academics and hobbyists developed > software, and the whole ethos was: give software away for free. As ARPANET > gave way to the internet, networks made it much easier to collaborate and > exchange code._

> _I remember going to work at MIT or the Open Software Foundation at the time > for work, and I had no idea where my paycheck came from. There was no > concept of a business model, and the money behind "free software" > development, if there was any, came in the form of university or corporate > research grants._

Though I was not in the industry at this time, I don't think "give software away for free" is a sufficient summary of the free software movement. Many free software advocates - then and now - are very quick to point out that "free" doesn't mean free-as-in-beer, it means free-as-in-speech. In other words, freedom as an ethical and political construct, not as a statement of value or price. I think the author glosses over this fact because it doesn't jive with a corporate interpretation of the utility of open source software.</comment>


Tell HN: My project is turning into a death march - <AUTHOR> Ugh.  My software project is turning into a death march.

  It is not ending.
  The todo list goes on and on.
  Things always take longer than expected.
  I'm losing faith in the project ever coming to completion.
  I'm now just grinding through the tasks in a state of numbness.
  I seem to add three tasks for every task I complete.

 Classic deathmarch.
Unfortunately it's MY project and I'm the only developer.
It's disheartening.  I have reduced scope once already.  I think maybe I need to do so again.
I need a few slaps on the back and cheers of support from other developers to spur me on to completion.... <comment><USER2> There are some typical things that apply to just about any software project that you can try.

Avoid feature creep by writing down the exact list of things you _need_ to do, and if you come up with more ideas, put them on a separate list.

Try to build a Minimum Viable Product, which is a vertical slice of the most minimal version of your product that works.[1] If that doesn't work out, build some feature-complete tech demos and refactor them into an MVP.

Find a friend to help you with it. A fresh pair of eyes can help you validate your project and see what you could be doing better!

Experiencing friction means you're learning. Too much friction, however, can burn you. Don't burn out. Take a break. If you find yourself feeling unable to finish a task today, either try a different task on the todo list, or do something that relaxes you instead. Worrying about when you'll finish won't get you any further, nor will pushing yourself past your limit.

Best of luck in your endeavor!

1: [http://blog.crisp.se/2016/01/25/henrikkniberg/making- sense-o...](http://blog.crisp.se/2016/01/25/henrikkniberg/making-sense-of-mvp) (has a really nice infographic that might help you understand!)

P.S. It's okay to fail. Fail forward.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the helpful support. Good link.

A friend of mine thinks of an MVP as throwing anything out the door as soon as he possibly can. "Hello World up and running? There you go, that's an MVP, let's ship it!" Well not quite, but he's certainly more minimal than viable.

I think of an MVP as Minimum Valuable Product - i.e the minimum that allows execution of the core concept.

Part of the problem for me is that alot of stuff needs to be in place for the concept to hold together. It's quite a technical product - the sort of thing where you couldn't deliver a plane without a rear tail. First customer: "Hey nice plane! I like your innovative tail-less design, lets take her up for a flight!" Me: "Errr, how about you go on your own and I'll keep working on the tail."

<comment><USER3> ROFL Yeah! let others fly the tail-less plane. Isn't that a different way of describing v1 (aka beta test) of many products?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> All projects look like this for a while as you discover the full scope of what you are building.

One day it will actually start to burn down, and you will look at your task list and it will be empty. You will not believe it for several days.

But, yes, it will happen. Just keep going, but expect it will take 2-3x whatever you thought it would.

</comment><comment><USER3> I can understand how you feel. I embarked upon a 3 year project which after 8 years is 3 weeks to completion.

Knowing when to persevere vs pivot vs fold is hard - but an essential skill.

Perhaps if you shared about your project some others might see its brilliant value and be willing to lend a hand to see it to completion.

</comment><comment><USER5> You need to limit the scope of the work.</comment>


Show HN: Disc, a project visualisation tool for your node/browserify modules - <AUTHOR> http://hughsk.github.io/disc/

<comment><USER2> How about including the treemap[0] approach like in KDirStat [1]? Here are some other techniques that are interesting ->[2]. It may even be interesting to break this into two modules. One that builds the tree for Browserify and another that builds tree visualizations.

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treemapping](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treemapping)

[1] [http://kdirstat.sourceforge.net](http://kdirstat.sourceforge.net)

[2] [http://www.randelshofer.ch/treeviz/](http://www.randelshofer.ch/treeviz/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Very interesting transitions and cool palette, but isn't this a filesystem visualization tool ? I couldn't get any further information about the code itself (Firefox 22/ Win x64).

<comment><AUTHOR> Given one or more node-style CommonJS files, it resolves the files that are actually being used before including them. I'm looking to add a few other metrics, but I've updated the title to something more appropriate :)

<comment><USER3> Ah, the resolution part is great ! The traditional OO crowd loves their metrics visualizers, so you can be on the vanguard of a new fetish in js-land :D !

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Love the file size / file count transition!

OT: I recall old and apparently abandoned Windows program called "Overdisk"[0] for examining entire filesystem, which uses similar visualization pattern and for me is pleasure to use while decluttering hard drives.

[0] [https://www.google.com/search?q=overdisk](https://www.google.com/search?q=overdisk)

<comment><USER5> The best I've ever used, and continue to do so is:

[http://windirstat.info/](http://windirstat.info/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looks great; is it feasible to adapt this to another languages?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Fairly feasible - the harder part would be resolving the correct files, with a small tweak to the API it'd be possible to pass that list to the tool directly.</comment></comment>


Intel CEO's Stock Sales May Warrant SEC Examination - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-08/intel-ceo-krzanich-s-stock-sales-seen-warranting-sec-examination <comment><USER2> Good analysis as always from Matt Levine:

 _I am always skeptical that stories like this are actually about insider trading, just because it would be too dumb and obvious for Krzanich to dump his stock just before announcing bad news. Also: The news doesn 't seem to have been that bad for Intel's stock, and in fact Krzanich's sales last year were mostly at prices below yesterday's close. As a diabolical plan it seems pretty unimpressive._

[https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-01-05/citi- forg...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-01-05/citi-forgot-to- fix-its-money-laundering-systems)

<comment><USER3> The law doesn't care how stupid your plan was. You could plan a theft in the middle of the day stealing $5 and still be a crime

Insider trading is trading with the knowledge of privileged information not available to public investors. If he did it, it's a crime. Doesn't matter if he made $50 million or $5.

<comment><USER4> [https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse- edgar?action=getcompany&C...](https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse- edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001538580)

Their CEO has a well-documented six-year history of acquiring and disposing INTC stock. As the CEO, he implicitly _always_ has access to privileged information. How exactly does the SEC determine the legality of a _specific_ trade?

I'm not trying to be flip here, I don't really have an opinion on the matter. It just seems that when the CEO is allowed to apparently buy/sell as they please, and not on a predetermined announced-in-advance plan, you could argue that every single trade was illegal insider trading.

<comment><USER5> When it was the Qwest CEO the legality appears to have been determined by his lack of cooperation with the NSA:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/the-story-of-joseph- nacchio-a...](http://www.businessinsider.com/the-story-of-joseph-nacchio-and- the-nsa-2013-6?IR=T)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> First Equifax, now Intel. Let's assume no bad faith. That means committees and control functions are failing to (a) appreciate the damage a security vulnerability (or exploit) can cause _and /or_ (b) receive timely notice of said occurrences. We might need a new disclosure rule. Prompt disclosure whenever a material security vulnerability or hack is discovered.

<comment><USER7> > Let's assume no bad faith.

Sounds good. Let's also assume data-driven decision-making.

> failing to (a) appreciate the damage a security vulnerability (or exploit) > can cause

As far as I'm aware, neither of these is known to have resulted in damage yet, so as far as I'm know there is nothing to fail to appreciate.

> failing to (b) receive timely notice of said occurrences

This is a problem if and only if the above damages actually do occur more quickly than the people in charge have time to act. So it loops back to the above. _______________________________________

EDIT: It seems everyone is misunderstanding my point. I'm _not_ looking at this from the standpoint of either of the parties. Yes, they can sue for damages, and perhaps they even _should_. That's perfectly fine! That has nothing to do with what I was trying to say.

Rather, I'm looking at the problem from an 'outer' standpoint -- the same perspective I would assume a lawmaker would have (or at least should have), which is the perspective of: _" Is the system able to handle its problems?"_ If the legal system can already handle this "exception" and sort out the problems and hand out appropriate penalties for everyone involved, then the system is working as designed, i.e. we _fail_ to have grounds for e.g. requiring early disclosure. On the other hand, if people who are _not_ parties to the case _are_ getting hacked and/or having their identities stolen, then _that_ is a failure of the legal system that needs to be addressed, e.g. by requiring timely disclosure.

Basically, the fact is that we all _like_ timely disclosure (myself included) and yet we are failing to explicitly show what problem exactly it would solve. So far, it is not clear that earlier disclosure would have prevented any problems that we are already seeing. If and when we get solid data to that effect, _then_ we have grounds for blaming lawmakers and demanding change.

<comment><USER8> > As far as I'm aware, neither of these is known to have resulted in damage > yet,

How many sysadmins have been working overtime to investigate this, deploy out of band patches, and test their impact on infrastructure that may now be underprovisioned? Meltdown and Spectre are already inflicting serious costs even before exploits are found in the wild.

<comment><USER9> But would that have been mitigated by earlier disclosure? We'd all be going crazy trying to homebrew our own temporary fixes instead of installing patches made by kernel devs.

<comment><USER7> I was going to say this but then realized people could just claim to be referring to (a) rather than (b) [1], so I didn't bother mentioning it.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16103154](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16103154)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The facts:

 _In 2017, he set up pre-arranged sales of 28,000 shares_

And then in November he sold almost 900,000 shares.

 _on Nov. 29, Krzanich exercised and sold 644,135 options and sold an additional 245,743 shares that he already owned_

<comment><USER11> That's pretty damning. It looks like they set up a pre-arranged schedule to sell but the amount to sell is determined at a convenient time.

<comment><USER12> It's actually worse than that. He completed the prearranged sale of 28,000 shares that he had declared for 2017 in October. Then he sold an additional ~845k shares in November!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Anyone know whether there will be any repercussions for continuing to keep the flawed chips on the market, and for that matter continuing to sell these as of today.

I'm not talking about recalls of purchased product, just that Intel chose to continue to keep chips with _major_ known issues on store shelves instead of choosing some other option.

<comment><USER14> Intel did release a microcode update (which "couldn't" be released early due to "responsible disclosure").

Taking all their processors off the shelves would be suicide.

<comment><USER15> How does a microcode update work? My sparse understanding is that instructions are physically encoded in the chips. That you could take a microscope and look at the different instructions.

<comment><USER16> That was a very long time ago.

Microcode can be loaded by the BIOS.

<comment><USER17> Most of the microcode nowadays is loaded by the OS (not BIOS)

<comment><USER18> Today I learned something.

Doesn't that open a huge attack surface? This code would run super-privileged isn't it?

<comment><USER19> CPUs will only accept uploads of microcode if they can verify the digital signature, of which the private keys are only known to the CPU manufacturer (i.e. Intel or AMD). Probably it will also only allow upgrades, not downgrades, on a running system. So the only "attack" you can perform if you've gained root is to patch CPU security vulnerabilities by upgrading to a newer valid microcode, and then also only until the next reboot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The number of security events that have significantly affected stock values is very limited. Only equifax comes to mind.

If I recall correctly, Weev tried to short AT&T in advance of the iPad hack, but only got a tiny intra-day dip. The stock that week ended higher every day.

It is risky to short based on security mistakes. I am willing to give this guy the benefit of the doubt. I wish the financial markets valued security more. There just isn't a lot of evidence to support that hypothesis.

<comment><USER21> How many security mistakes have translated into anything more than a minor one time cost to the company involved? I can't think of any.

<comment><USER20> I would argue that part of the decline of HTC has been Because of their FTC penalties.

Look at the last year of equifax's stock price. One major dip related to one major news story.

Their are a few anecdotes, but most of the time, there is no major financial impact.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _" People who are CEOs of companies like Intel don't make mistakes like this."_

Right. That's because this isn't a mistake, it's a criminal act with forethought.

 _" That sale decreased his overall holdings by about 50 percent, bringing his ownership level nearer to what he held at the end of 2013 and at the minimum number of shares he must hold under Intel's ownership requirements"_

That's pretty much all I need to read. The guy sold every share he could possibly sell without violating any contractual agreements and company policies that are/were in place.

Give him an orange jumpsuit and be done with it.

</comment><comment><USER22> As we now know, insiders have been selling Intel shares long before the vulnerabilities became public. The impact is already baked into the price, whatever it was. So we'll never know whether Krzanich made money at the expense of his shareholders, but I can't imagine he thought no one will ask themselves that question.

<comment><USER23> > As we now know, insiders have been selling Intel stock long before the > vulnerabilities became public.

I understand this is just not legal, but otherwise why should they had not (i.e. why exactly is it illegal)? What the rationally logical plan they should have taken? Telling everyone about the vulnerability is irrational - it should be told to those who are supposed to write patches first, keeping the shares when you know they are going down is irrational too.

<comment><USER24> >keeping the shares when you know they are going down is irrational too.

Which is why we have insider trading laws: to make it rational again.

"I know this insider information that means my shares will be worthless tomorrow when everyone finds out. It's not rational to keep them."

"If you do that you'll go to prison."

Still irrational?

<comment><USER23> Is it rational to have laws that rationalize irrational artificially?

<comment><USER24> Yes of course. As this example demonstrates in fact: the rational behavior would be to do something that hurts everyone for the sake of an individual who has privledged information. The penalty makes the behaviour we need to encourage become the rational course.

I'd say a large portion of rules of society function this way for this reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm more curious if any of his family or close friends (who hold significant amounts of $INTC) sold during the "pre-public" period.

</comment><comment><USER26> Right, so he sold at a time where the cpu flaws was already discovered and heat building up

<comment><USER27> Exactly.

I stick by my prediction from the thread when this came to light... he's going to prison or at least going to be ruined, and someone at the SEC is going to make their career.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16067322](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16067322)

<comment><USER28> I doubt it. The very rich seldom go to prison, especially if they are US citizens at US companies.

Intel can afford very good and very many lawyers for him. Intel may pay a fine to the SEC, after many years.

<comment><USER29> CNBC's American Greed is a good place to see how wealthy people are being prosecuted and sent to jail on a regular basis.

Martha Stewart did some time for what appears to be much less than what the Intel CEO has done. And as far as the general public is concerned, she is much higher profile and was likely quite a bit wealthier than Brian Krzanich.

<comment><USER30> Not quite — Martha Stewart was convicted of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and lying to investigators.

You can get away with a lot of things if you're rich, but annoying federal prosecutors is rarely one of them.

<comment><USER31> I'm not sure if Martha Stewart is on par with the Intel corporation, but she is worth half a billion dollars, so I digress.

<comment><USER29> By "higher profile", I just mean as far as the general public is concerned. I've worked in tech my whole life and I couldn't have told you who the CEO of Intel is. But everyone knows Martha Stewart. It's a Good Thing®

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Yeah! Just like Equifax really got nailed ... wait.

</comment><comment><USER33> Most companies would recall a product if it was unsafe, just to avoid the potential liability. However, the problem is that almost no guarantees are made in any way when you buy a product from Intel and any guarantees you think they made are immediately absolved of liability by legalese you "accepted" when you opened the packaging, etc.

Also, technically, their caches / tables still work as designed we just didn't understand that design very well.

</comment><comment><USER34> A proper examination is best so that he can clear his name once and for all.

</comment><comment><USER35> Massive server slowdown requires more hardware to be used; AMD can't supply many servers, so it's a big win for Intel sales as they will sell many more servers than anticipated. IMO Krzanich is going to lose a lot on premature stock sales.

</comment><comment><USER36> Brian Krzanich earns around $20 million p.a. at Intel. He sold 900,000 shares for about as much, total.

Even if he expected the stock price to be cut in half, he'd save just half a year's worth of his regular compensation. And Intel stock barely budged.

That would be an enormously stupid attempt at insider trading. Not only doesn't it pay very well. A CEO of such a company is closely watched by stockholder, the company's own lawyers, the media, competitors, and the SEC. The SEC regularly nails mid-level executives of unknown companies giving tips to their friends' dentists.

<comment><USER37> Why is this downvoted? This seems like a reasonable debunking of the insider trading theory, unless someone has better information than this.

<comment><USER6> > _This seems like a reasonable debunking of the insider trading theory_

Martha Stewart went to jail for avoiding $45,000 in losses [1]. People don't always act rationally. More pointedly, you don't have to act in bad faith to break securities law. The lack of any disclosure surrounding this material issue, which Intel knew about for months prior to the CEO's sale and prior to Intel's Q3 Form 10-Q, is jarring and could result in liability.

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

<comment><USER37> What does that have to do with insider trading, though? I'm reading elsewhere in this thread that this was a scheduled sale ahead of time. Supposing it was indeed pre-planned well before they knew of the vulnerability, cancelling the sale would _also_ be insider trading.

<comment><USER29> The scheduled sale was for less than 100k shares. He modified the schedule to 900k shared after finding out about meltdown.

<comment><USER37> That sounds pretty damning then, do you have a link?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Doesn't the board have to approve all such sales months ahead? Just seems strange that people are acting as if he sold all he had and ran for the hills when the bad news were released.

<comment><USER39> The issue is that the sale was scheduled after intel was aware of the issue.

<comment><USER40> My problem with this idea is that it assumes this is the ONLY issue that a multinational corporation would be aware of.

There would be so many counterweighting forces at play at any time that it would be EASY to rationalize why this one shouldn't affect the share sale's view in the court of public opinion. Given that none of the other sales did either.

Case in point, we are analyzing this timely disclosure a full quarter later. I count at least five 8-k's since then, let alone form 4's

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> good this was reckless

</comment><comment><USER42> Setting aside what the law currently is, why is it illegal? This WaPo article [1] always seemed spot on to me. For most of us, individual stocks are a David and Goliath thing, and there should be no illusion of equality.

[1] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/07/26/insid...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/07/26/insider- trading-makes-us-richer-better-informed-and-could-prevent-corporate-scandals- legalize-it/)

<comment><USER43> So you think that people who have the ability to affect the value of a publicly traded good should be allowed to trade on actions that they can plan and know about in advance? Especially when the way insider traders benefit the most is by selling off stock before an announcement like Intel's, which by definition hurts whoever they sell to as they are left holding the bag.

If you care that little about equality why not go all the way and just say laws don't apply to the rich, not just in fact but by law.

The only point of having laws is prevent people with power from amassing ever more power and hurting others. Without that there would be no reason for anyone to not take whatever they can the moment they get an opportunity

<comment><USER44> > which by definition hurts whoever they sell to as they are left holding the > bag

Of course. The Intel CEO sells stock to investors without telling them that there is a vulnerability that makes the stock worth much less than they think, thus hurting these investors. Sounds intuitive, right?

The investors he sells to had already sent an order to buy to their broker. They were going to buy at the same or worse price anyway, so they aren't harmed by this. Someone else is harmed, but that's the market professionals who, months later, don't get an opportunity to profit off of the news before everyone else. I'm sure economics not being intuitive has something to do with why democracies end up with bad policies all the time.

<comment><USER43> A: if you are going to just slip in an insult there with the line about economics being unintuitive, go fuck yourself. If you honestly didn't mean it as an insult, then I apologize.

B: you've moved the goalposts. I said it hurt others when they sell based on information they know as an employee, of the company whose stock they are selling. You are arguing that its fine because those people would probably be hurt anyway. If it was really fine then why didn't the CEO tell everyone about the vulnerability before making the sale? Those investors would have just bought it anyway, right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Easy, easy; the guy just decided to buy some crypto-coins)

</comment><comment><USER46> The 1% owns this country and can get away with murder while Joe Schmoe is left holding the bag.

</comment><comment><USER47> Well, most every CPU was affected not just Intel's. If I were Intel's CEO my primary motivation for selling would be NVIDIA and ARM, not this exploit.

<comment><USER48> It doesn't matter if other architectures are vulnearble as well. It looks like that the Intel CEO acted (sold stock) upon information which by its nature should have been made available to all stockholders prior to this. The whole matter is reported here [0]. It really looks shady from the outside.

[0]: [http://www.businessinsider.de/intel-ceo-krzanich-sold- shares...](http://www.businessinsider.de/intel-ceo-krzanich-sold-shares-after- company-was-informed-of-chip-flaw-2018-1?r=US&IR=T)

<comment><USER47> It is fairly normal to sell a portion or all of shares received from excercising stock options to cover tax liabilities. I don't think it's clear that knowledge of the exploit changed his behavior. Furthermore the stock has not taken a major hit on the news. It is still up compared to a month ago, 3 months ago etc. it is down a little over the last week. The idea that he sold to avoid a stock crash doesn't really hold if the stock didn't crash, right?

<comment><USER49> Though it is true that Krzanich has consistently sold stock every 4th quarter, for this recent transaction, he massively increased the amount he sold. Krzanich sold so much in fact that if he had sold any more stock, he according to Intel corporate mandate bylaws would no longer be allowed to continue as CEO.

If you don't believe me, look for yourself:

[https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/12/19/intels-ceo-just- so...](https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/12/19/intels-ceo-just-sold-a-lot- of-stock.aspx)

[https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/50863/00011276021703...](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/50863/000112760217033679/xslF345X03/form4.xml)

And 'coincidentally', this massive increase in selling just seemed to somehow perfectly fit right in the middle of Intel being privately informed of Meltdown in June but before any public disclosure kept locked away all the way until now in January.

This is blatantly illegal insider trading. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Where's the line for material non-public information, vs something not obvious to most of the public, but discoverable through research?

Any engineer sufficiently motivated to do so could have examined a CPU at any time in the last ten years, and, through skill, access to publicly available information (the instruction set, cpu datasheets) and immense amounts of hard work, uncovered the Meltdown flaw, without any access to Intel's internal trade secrets.

<comment><USER51> All insider information is non-public, but not all non-public information is insider.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> The argument that his sales might've violated insider trading rules is puerile, populist, and patently absurd. The whole point of having pre-arranged stock sale plans is precisely this: so that execution of them does not leak any information whatsoever into the market. Think about it: if he had a pre- arranged plan and _didn't_ sell because he feared running afoul of insider trading rules ahead of a drop, it would have alerted other investors to the fact that something that spooked him was going on, and they would have preempted the unknown risk and rushed for the exit, crashing the stock.

In short, his is precisely why CEOs insist on these pre-arranged plans to make their stock grants and stock options valuable without causing them to incur the damoclean sword of being 'allowed' to monetise only when they have absolute certainty that none of the no doubt innumerable problems they are aware of and paid to manage will leave negative impacts on stock valuations (meaning: never, making their stock worthless).

There's nothing to see here.

<comment><USER17> He did sell like 32 times more than the "pre-arranged" plan.

<comment><USER52> As I understand it, because he had more than he had ever had before, and had just received the biggest payout ever. So again, yes... but probably not unjustified.

<comment><USER53> Also, after a couple of years of trading in a range in the low to mid-30s, in September the stock began a surge up to $47+. That's a pretty good time to sell off a large chunk of stock regardless or whether he knew anything about this defect (he knew).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Laws against insider trading should be abolished. The statutory prohibitions cause real economic harm by making markets less efficient, while there isn't actually anything immoral about insider trading. It's not fraud, it's a victimless crime, and markets getting non-public information faster is good because it allows faster correction of the allocation of capital to companies that are worth more or less than is publicly known. People who have knowledge of the deficiencies of a company should have an incentive to make the public aware of them and correct the price at the same time, and a trade does just that.

<comment><USER54> I generally agree with Friedman that insider trading is not as bad as it is portrayed for some of the reasons you mention. But there is also another side of the coin, particularly with CEO's: he had the command to disclose there was a high impact security issue, and chose not to and profited from it. In this case, he was participant in creating the trade.

As such, he sold stock to people that didnt know about a piece of information he was withholding. So im not so convinced there shouldnt be any insider trader laws.

<comment><USER44> He did not profit from it at their expense, though. The people he sold stock to were already going to buy stock at the same or worse price, just from someone else. There may be a good case to be made that he should have been required to disclose that there was an important vulnerability, but insider trading laws don't solve this problem or make the people he sold to better off.

The people he is profiting at the expense of are not the investors who buy the stocks he sells or the investors who would have otherwise sold to the former investors, but the investors who would, many months later, once the vulnerability was public, sell or short the Intel stock. There isn't really any reason _these_ people should profit from the information rather than anyone else, and the CEO isn't interacting with them in any way.

<comment><USER54> > He did not profit from it at their expense, though. The people he sold stock > to were already going to buy stock at the same or worse price, just from > someone else

That's not really true, it is so in an individually imperceptible way but its there. If he then after stock plummeted 10% went back and bought back shares and kept the 10% as a profit, where did that money come from? It has to come from someone elses pocket, it was created out of thin air. Its just impossible to return that money to who it belongs to, because it belongs to everyone that traded the stock in a certain interim.

This is all related to information disclosure, which sometimes is necessary and sometimes isn't. A guy selling stock is a poor proxy to a disclosure of a security issue like this. I think intel is more responsible for untimely disclosure than the CEO for untimely selling.

<comment><USER44> It is really true. The money does come from somewhere, but instead of being the people he's selling to it's the people who would have reacted to the news of the vulnerability months later. These people are not being deceived or defrauded by the CEO in any way so they are only victims in the sense that they are not going to have this opportunity to make a profit months later because the price will already have been corrected. Realistically, the people who were hurt by this trade (assuming for the sake of argument that it was insider trading) are investment bankers, hedge fund and portfolio managers, and analysts.

<comment><USER55> All of whom are managing money for _other_ people including pensions, 401k, and mutual funds.

If you chase it all the way down the chain, I hold funds that track the S&P500, which includes Intel. A tiny portion of that money he makes by insider trading comes out of my pocket.

<comment><USER44> Yes, to some extent. But why do you and other people who had nothing to do with Intel, the CEO, or the vulnerability deserve to make money off of this any more than the researchers who discovered the vulnerability or, if the researchers decided not to make money off of it, the insiders who can correct the price before the disclosure?

If this is just about wealth redistribution, there are much better ways to do wealth redistribution. If this is about how Intel should have disclosed that there was a vulnerability earlier, then laws against insider trading didn't make Intel do that anyway. If this is about how people shouldn't be allowed to trade with asymmetric information, the prohibition against insider trading doesn't apply to the security researchers.

<comment><USER55> I don't deserve to make money off this vulnerability.

Indirectly, I deserve to lose some money because I am indirectly invested in a company that made faulty products.

However, I also do not deserve to lose money to the CEO of Intel because he was able to not only know about the faulty products before his sale, but to conceal that information from me while executing the trade (not an argument against responsible disclosure).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Walmart is taking a direct shot at Amazon and making checkout lanes obsolete - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-lets-shoppers-check-out-without-cashiers-at-more-stores-2018-1 <comment><USER2> Two questions

1\. If customers are scanning their own goods, doesn't that make it likely they will occasionally, for one reason or another, miss a scan? That's huge for Walmart's margins. $15 total expense per hour labor saved is not that huge a savings.

2\. How does this work with items sold by weight? Have they installed new scales that can allow you to select the item weighed create a barcode for the price of that weight of that item?

<comment><USER3> All the self checkouts Ive seen have scales built in both the scanner and where they set the items</comment></comment>


US student declared dead reportedly 'kidnapped to teach English to Kim Jong-un' - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/david-sneddon-found-north-korea-english-12-years-byu-kim-jong-un-a7220951.html <comment><USER2> Want there something about a previous NK leader kidnapping a South Korean actor and actress to satisfy his own whims about creating more movies with them in the lead roles?

This is almost as strange.

<comment><USER3> I think what you're referring to was a South Korean actress and her ex-husband filmmaker being abducted back in the '70s. There's a book titled _A Kim Jong- Il Production: The Extraordinary True Story of a Kidnapped Filmmaker, His Star Actress, and a Young Dictator 's Rise to Power_ about this story, pretty fascinating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why doesn't he just hire people, I am sure lot of people will be willing to do so.

<comment><USER5> How many people will be willing to work for an employer that can have them executed based on how poorly his morning bowel went?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The word should be "reportedly", not "actually".

<comment><AUTHOR> Point taken. I have updated the title.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Accelerator advice - <AUTHOR>

My cofounder and I have applied to a few accelerators for product that has a two-sided market. In terms of BFS, one in particular seems to like our team but not really our product. They are offering us 25k for <8% equity + AWS credits etc.<p>They want us to make some significant changes, that we don't agree with but are otherwise willing to let us join. We are both broke college students and the cash and support would be super helpful but I'm concerned they don't seem to really understand our product. Can anyone offer us some advice? <comment><USER2> You could interpret the requested changes as a "no", they don't want to fund you, and that they don't have confidence in either you or your idea, or both. Some venture people will fund people they like, because they have confidence in whatever they will do and figure out. You may be near that category for this funder.

Or, perhaps time to continue looking for other support and funding. You are in the market for support and funding, and have not found your funding market. Keep going. But take note that they liked you.

Consider the possibility that this requested change is the first of many, and that you perhaps may not agree with the next requested change. Is this the kind of advice you want? Are these the advisors you want? Do you trust them? Do they have something you need, besides money? Are these the fellow company owners you want?

Perhaps it is the kind of advice you want or need. Get a better understanding of how the potential funder is correct and why you are wrong about your idea (or why you are still right).

Even better, try to get a utterly ugly and bare-bones minimum-viable-product example running, so you can start testing your idea on your real market, the people who will purchase your product, and get feedback from those users to improve your idea and its functionality. Flickr.com, for example, started out as an online game, with a photo-uploading capability. They following the user interest to develop their idea and product.

</comment><comment><USER3> Make your decision based on the quality of the program, mentorship, and imprimatur. You're most likely going to pivot around anyway at some point in your life.

25K isn't really very much money, but if you can get paid to have an awesome learning experience, deeply engaged guidance, and a significantly increased chance of getting some angel funding after the program, that seems like a pretty good deal and might be worth being flexible on your idea.

On the other hand, if you're super-passionate about your idea and really know it's what you want to do, you should stick to your guns. The accelerator may be impressed enough to let you in anyway, but you should obviously be ready to go it alone.

</comment><comment><USER4> Successful start-ups existed before Accelerators/Incubators became the thing. Find creative ways to hack your personal accelerator, including funding. Nothing beats good, regular dialog with potential users/buyers.</comment>


Startups where multiple founders may not work out as well as just one (think X-Plane by Laminar Research) - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Unless a company will only have one employee forever, there is no knowledge "specialized" enough. If you are exceptionally skilled in something, you can find someone who possess what you are lacking. Especially in an investor's point of view, it might seem dangerous to have a single founder running the show. You need someone to back you at times, and disagree and say you're doing it wrong at other times.

Instead of finding exceptions, why not have the statistics work in your favor?

<comment><USER3> I think "have the statistics work in your favor" means "be average".

<comment><USER2> I would not run unnecessary risks just to avoid being "average". Would you?

Sometimes being a rebel-without-a-cause isn't the best approach.

<comment><USER3> What I meant is that you should base your decisions on your own situation, not statistics. You are likely to end up average anyway - that's the nature of statistics. If you don't, that shouldn't bother you..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It seems to me that if a startup requires very specialized knowledge, then one founder may be better than two or three. An excellent example of this would be X-Plane by Laminar Research:

http://www.x-plane.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Open source projects such as TeX and TeXmacs also support this view.</comment></comment>


Bankruptcy, not bailout, is the right answer - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/29/miron.bailout/index.html?iref=mpstoryview <comment><USER2> This is a good article, and I generally agree, but...there's a danger in calling this particular bailout plan "more government", and then arguing against it by saying that more government is always bad.

The problem here isn't "more government" -- it's that the government is showing a willingness to prop up an unsustainable system. If the proposed legislation was a package of hard-nosed reform and regulation, plus some money to bail out the most critical banks to our economy, it would make much more sense. However, in its current state, the bill oinks and waddles just like congressional pork.

We got where we are through a _lack_ of government (regulation), and the solution to the problem almost certainly involves more of it; it just has to be the right type.

<comment><USER3> >We got where we are through a lack of government (regulation)

I hear this a lot, but what particular regulation do you think would have mitigated the crisis? I can't think of any, except restricting subprime lending - which would be directly contrary to the Government's other goal of more home ownership.

Meg Mcardle had a good discussion of possible regulation:

[http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/09/hindsig...](http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/09/hindsight_regulation.php)

<comment><USER4> I am still a little confused as to what exactly is causing this crisis. I looked into the whole sub prime Fannie and Freddie thing and I found some surprising things. The first thing I found was that poor people get home loans through mechanisms other than sub prime lending. They go through the whole Ginnie Mae umbrella, where all the inner city HUD and FHA stuff is handled, along with rural housing, housing for native americans and there is also a special allowance for veterans of the military to cover them under Ginnie. All of these groups use mechanisms OTHER THAN SUB PRIME! Or rather, sub prime or not, these people have loans that are guaranteed EXPLICITLY by the government, unlike the loans backed by Fannie and Freddie which had IMPLICIT guarantees. How can Ginnie Mae be sound and Fannie and Freddie be such basket cases? Even if 100% of the poor people defaulted, Fannie and Freddie would be untouched. Another question is, who, exactly, was using these sub prime mechanisms that Fannie and Freddie ended up backing? The auditors are claiming that they were primarily used by people making between $40000 and $150000 to afford mortgages that they would otherwise be denied. But something is out of place. Why would the middle class be defaulting at such a high rate? There is some money missing here. I have yet to get a really complete understanding of what went on exactly. After reading through all of the financial info, I am left even more confused.

Is there an economist on Hacker News somewhere that can explain these inconsistencies to us? The only thing I could come up with is that these people wanted to live beyond their means. My quandary is that I have either severely underestimated the number of middle class Americans who want to live beyond their means, or overestimated my capacity for financial analysis.

And yes . . . it could be both.

<comment><USER5> This American Life "The Giant Pool of Money" episode offers a good background on the crisis: <http://www.thislife.org/extras/radio/355_transcript.pdf>

Act I: "Alan Greenspan: 'The FOMC stands prepared to maintain a highly accommodative stance of policy for as long as needed to promote satisfactory economic performance.'...

What he's technically saying is he's going to keep the Fed Funds rate at the absurdly low level of one percent. It tells every investor in the world: you are not going to make any money at all on US treasury bonds for a very long time. Go somewhere else. We can't help you."

Act II "And they sold so many mortgages that there came a point in 2003 where just about everybody who wanted a mortgage and was qualified to get one .... had gotten one.

But the pool of money had just gotten started. They wanted more mortgage backed securities.

So Wall Street had to find more people to take out mortgages. Which meant lending to people who never would've qualified before."

"At the height I was making between 75 and 100 grand a month" -Glen Pizzolorusso, who was an area sales manager at an outfit called WMC mortgage in upstate New York."

Act III: "The global pool of money is avoiding anything with even the slightest hint of risk and that affects everybody, no matter who you are. It's harder to borrow money to buy a house, or build a factory, or bring your country boldly into the 21st century. Take Iceland. A year ago it was easy for them to borrow billions. Now, they're seen as too risky. Their central bank has to pay more than 15 percent interest get anyone to loan them money. They could do better putting their national debt on a credit card."

<comment><USER6> Here's what i don't understand. If the global pool of money is getting tighter, why aren't interest rates going up?

<comment><USER7> _Some_ interests are going up: Google "TED Spread". Also, note that 3 month Treasury securities, the safest investments in the world, have been selling to yield less than 1%. LIBOR - the "prime" rate for loans between banks, hit over 5% - for 1 day loans! Banks are very scared of lending to other banks, because they don't have any idea whether the other guy is broke.

<comment><USER6> Does 'increasing the supply of money' fix this?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> They're going to try to ram it through again on Thursday, so if you agree with this economist call your reps. (Sorry for the politics, but I've been on the phone all week about this. I probably deserve some mods down, so pile on!)

<comment><USER9> I think the best commentary I've seen so far is this:

[http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2008/10...](http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2008/10/my- views-on-the.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I find it entertaining that Aaron Pressman (author of the counterpoint argument listed by someone else on this thread), who holds a B.S. in History from Columbia, is calling Jeffrey Miron a "know-nothing," who has a Ph.D. in Economics from MIT and is Senior Lecturer and Economist at Harvard University, in addition to the 166 academic economists who were against this bailout. Who else said the CRA is responsible for our current crisis? What's that, Ron Paul?

Sounds like these guys just know a whole lot of nothing...

Just to expand on this topic a little bit: [http://jtame05.wordpress.com/2008/09/30/we-dont-need-a- bailo...](http://jtame05.wordpress.com/2008/09/30/we-dont-need-a-bailout-and- the-sky-is-not-falling/)

<comment><USER4> The problem is rampant misuse of CDS, CDO and derivatives in general. ie - Mortgages that were improperly secured. That is at the root of what is threatening the financial system. As a former quant I am well acquainted with the top end of the issue. My problem is understanding the bottom end.

The bottom end is a secondary problem, people defaulting on mortgages. Which the system would be able to tolerate in a market place where mortgages are properly secured. That is, a marketplace where people on the top end do their jobs right. This problem is caused only in part by CRA, AND in a manner different than Ron Paul argues. CRA encouraged a large number of middle class people to move back into the city cores around the country. Poor people moved out, hip, young, creative class moved in. All funded by CRA allowances. Gentrification and all that. Basically, Fannie and Freddie were moving 'good' people in, while Ginnie moved 'bad' people out. Problem was, according to the auditors, these "gentrifiers" are defaulting in droves. To the point where Fannie and Freddie collapsed. And, to add insult to injury, Ginnie is fine. The problems it does have it acquired in government attempts to rescue Fannie and Freddie.

I, frankly, find this state of affairs difficult to believe. If we were redeveloping the city cores, and then letting the same people who lived there before buy the redeveloped housing, then I could see a high level of defaults. But the people in those neighborhoods now are actually pretty solid. That is one of the most perplexing facets of this entire mess to me. I understand the bad risk assessment at the top end, I think ANYONE generally assigns a higher risk to people in poverty, and a lower one to people in higher socio-economic classes. I would have gotten that risk assessment wrong as well if I was judging that market. So how can so many solid home buyers be hitting the skids at the same time? I would like to think there is something more going on here. I am simply unable to find it.

<comment><USER11> I'd like to read more about the majority of defaults being middle-class, gentrified buyers. Are there public sources available? It's very much at odds with the "common wisdom" portrayed by the media.

As for how it could happen - my cubemate bought a house in the South End of Boston in 2006, right next to downtown. He's a well-established professional, solid skills, solid resume, and I believe makes over 6 figures. But he bought the house with a $500k interest only mortgage. His banker told him that nearly everything they wrote these days is interest-only, and he should buy the biggest home he could afford. So if housing prices fall, he has every incentive to walk away. It hasn't happened yet (he got promoted to CTO, and prices are still rising in the South End), but I could imagine there're many people who took out similar terms but don't have the same wherewithal to pay them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I agree that the solution to bad government behavior should not be more of it. The core problem is that over the past 30+ years, the government has tainted the home buying market. The gov encouraged lenders to act irrationally, pushing home prices too high. Had home prices not been able to get so high, they would not have as much room to fall. The last thing we need here is more irrational behavior from the gov - like buying worthless assets for real money.

</comment><comment><USER13> I disagree.

Take a midsize bank market cap of $5B and multiply it by 25-50 for the number of banks that might fail. That is a total loss of around $125B-$250B for which shareholders and employees of these companies bear the losses. Also should these banks fail, the government will have to step in via FDIC. The problem with this is that assuming an average balance of $10000 per depositor $700B covers 70 Million accounts. While this is probably sufficient for average individual depositors, what is to happen to the small businesses that have greater than $100k in assets? Also, what happens to the availability of credit with so many banks in default?

Bankruptcy actually seems more risky, as the people who would lose are small businesses and those with over $100k in the bank, people who would _never_ have recourse to get their money back. Rather than socialized losses (through inflation), its losses for an unlucky few. The bailout plan, however, which involves taking warrants in the companies we are giving money to seems to have a good chance of repaying at least a significant portion of what it costs overall.

Thoughts?

</comment><comment><USER14> The crash is only indirectly based on the fact that getting a loan was joke. The real problem is the financial institution which bundle these bad loans in short term currency and starting selling them. It was all good while the housing market was still going up as if the loan wasn't getting paid to could just take back the house, but when it went down these short term bonds where without any value.

</comment><comment><USER15> Fascinating video from the Newshouur with Jim Lehrer: [http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/july- dec08/bailoutta...](http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/july- dec08/bailouttalk_09-23.html)

We do need some kind of government intervention, but the current form stinks.

</comment><comment><USER16> Why not just give the $700b to healthy banks so that they can lend to businesses and credit worthy consumers?

If we have $700b to give, why use it to buy up toxic debt? I understand wanting to keep the markets moving, so why not address the problem there?

</comment><comment><USER17> Since no one seems to have mentioned leverage and credit default swaps, here's the first summary I could find: [http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2008/04/credit-default- swaps-...](http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2008/04/credit-default-swaps-and- bank-leverage.html)

There are many better if anyone cares to look; the mortgages defaulting lend themselves to a house of cards analogy. Banks were so heavily leveraged that they may not even be able to handle even a small number of defaulting loans on property that decreased in value.

</comment><comment><USER18> For people seeking an informed and academic perspective, you may find this PDF on Liquidation Cycles during the Great Depression to be of interest: <http://econ161.berkeley.edu/pdf_files/Liquidation_Cycles.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER19> Yes this is the root problem with the credit markets; bad mortgages.

However, this doesn't account for the root financial problem of our country that has plagued us since 1913; the federal reserve. These crooks sway the entire economy and have exponentially inflated our currency. The dollar is worthless today. It is worth $0.02 to the dollar of the beginning of the 20th century.

We went off the gold standard, we decided fractional reserve banking was a good thing, and we put in charge idiots and crooks to create a lesse faire market that only benefits them.

Don't believe me?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:USACPI1800.svg>

Usury, fraction reserve banking, and crooks.

</comment><comment><USER20> Exactly. The government ultimately has to print the money that it uses to bail out these guys (who deserve to fail anyway) - the consequence of this printing is that the dollars in your pocket can't buy as much as they could before.

Taxes are not the only way to tax people.

* Yes, the government has been playing this game for around a century. But does that make it right to tack on another trillion in the theft?

</comment><comment><USER9> The right answer is: some other site.

</comment><comment><USER21> counterpoint: [http://www.businessweek.com/investing/insights/blog/archives...](http://www.businessweek.com/investing/insights/blog/archives/2008/09/community_reinv.html)

<comment><USER22> However, non-CRA lenders did pressure CRA regulated banks. From the reference:

"Many of these companies are like the one in which my next-door neighbor is employed: they are middlemen who arrange mortgage loans for borrowers including "subprime" borrowers with banks, including CRA-regulated banks"

<http://mises.org/story/2963>

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Neither bankruptcy nor bailout are the right answer.

Compromise is the right answer.

<comment><USER24> Would you care to elaborate?

<comment><USER23> Not particularly.

I am not enough of an economist or politician to be able to tell you in detail what the ideal compromise is in this situation, nor do I care to claim that I am.

What I do know, however, is things are not black and white. Baying for the banks' blood and shouting "liquidate!" is exactly what they did in 1929 and that kind of behaviour is even more reprehensible than the banks'.

Similarly, handing the banks a giant wad of cash with no strings attached is not right either.

The solution lies in the middle, as always.

<comment><USER25> The middle and compromise are not in and by themselves the right answer.

Moderation is often a far superior strategy then extremism, but a little of both is not a superior answer to the question: Is this circuit on or off?

The "middle is always right" attitude reminds me of the US media, which will often juxtapose facts and spin, then idly stand by, pointing out that both "extreme" positions are equally valid.

<comment><USER23> Economics is not an on-off problem.

<comment><USER25> Never the less, compromising for the sake of compromising is by no means a smart strategy.

<comment><USER23> How about compromising for the sake of having a job/customers/money?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Bankruptcy leads to more business opportunities and jobs.

</comment><comment><USER27> You should read up on the great depression.

<comment><USER18> I don't know why this was modded down ... it's a fascinating subject. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression>

Every entrepreneur knows that those who choose to ignore history are doomed to repeat it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> OK so how long will this all take to go to shit (one way or another), I am impatient.

</comment><comment><USER26> bailout is a lose-lose proposition

</comment><comment><USER29> We need a new economy.

Tech guys create jobs, and save money for old companies with ease. I mean, what's the utility of some of these idiots? Seems like the next phase of obsoletes are just raping the system before they're noticed as completely useless.</comment>


Obama names IIT-ian Arun Majumdar as America's Green Czar - <AUTHOR> http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/news/world/us/White-House-names-IIT-ian-Arun-Majumdar-as-Americas-Green-Czar/articleshow/5030671.cms

<comment><USER2> Why are Indians so obsessed with the IITs? What's the point of addressing someone as IIT-ian? Do we call Obama the "Harvard-ian Obama"? Honestly, who cares which college you went to? There are tonnes of people who have graduated from the IITs who have not done anything remarkable in their lives. When will this obsession about IITs & IIMs go away?

Disclosure: I am an Indian.

PS: Mr. Majumdar is also from UC Berkeley. Why not call him "UCB-ian"?

<comment><USER3> I agree. I studied in IIT. Calling me IIT-ian is same as <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_calling>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> this is so inspiring... I have followed his research and he is truly an awesome scientist and extremely well known in the research community..

now.. i wish.. obama government can act upon the founder's visa.. .:)</comment>


The Tech Celebrity Effect - <AUTHOR> http://bruun.co/2012/08/12/the-tech-celebrity-effect

<comment><USER2> So the reason app.net will be successful is because people are talking about it? What happens when people stop talking about it?</comment>


Ask HN: Review our Startup: Wireframing via Recognition (video) - <AUTHOR> http://www.pentotype.com/ <comment><USER2> I've been doing UX for fifteen years, and I feel like I've tried every software solution, but nothing beats paper for concepting. My wireframing tools end up being used for documenting ideas, but they're terrible when you're generating ideas.

The problems in this video are exactly the problems I face.

The only place I had a problem with the solution was the idea that drawing on a tablet is the same as drawing on paper. For me, it's just not. My dream solution would let me draw on paper to begin with.

That said, the solution here still looks better than trying to develop ideas in Visio/Omnigraffle/Axure/InDesign/Keynote/whatever by orders of magnitude.

I'm very excited to try this out.

<comment><USER3> On our Bamboo tablet the feeling is a lot better than on a iPad for example. But we're optimistic about iPad and Android tablets getting closer to the paper feeling.

<comment><USER4> Your comment got me searching and I found this:

<http://adonit.net/product/jot-touch/>

Looks pretty darn close to feeling like paper. Pressure sensitivity doesn't matter for your app, but their other stylus options are fast and accurate too.

Any chance your app will work on my touchpad?

[EDIT] They also have JotStudio coming out. The app works with the pen and "overwrites the default finger offset, giving you 100% accuracy with the world's most accurate stylus."

They have an SDK so you can also support their pen. Sigh, I guess I need to buy an iPad3.

<comment><USER5> We really want to make pentotype offer an experience like on paper, so we also keep an eye on pens that improve the drawing accuracy.

Do you mean an HP Touch Pad? We don't have one, so we cannot say anything about that currently. It depends on its JavaScript and Canvas performance in the browser.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That looks awesome. For most of the video I couldn't help but think about how I could do the same thing on Google Docs, but your "Export" and "Simulate" features are obviously your money makers. And I would definitely pay for this product and use it a ton. Great work!

From a technical perspective, great choice sticking to browser technologies instead of native apps. I think it fits your product extremely well and I love seeing HTML5 technologies being pushed.

One piece of advice - remove the bit about not having your computer so you have to resort to paper and then transfer to software when traveling part. There is the same issue with your product as you've described it. So unless you're planning to add some easy transfer option, remove that bit.

<comment><USER3> Thanks, really happy to get your feedback.

So, if i understand correctly you don't need the collaboration part

About the transfer part: We often use our iPad on the go and we thought that it's more likely that you have your tablet on the go (compared to a notebook). However, it's always good to know if other people do have an iPad on the go too.

Thanks

<comment><USER6> No I definitely would use the collaboration part. Google Docs does collaboration very well. I was just saying that your product doesn't offer anything new or different without the transfer and simulate features.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I'm one of the founders of pentotype. We're creating a new kind of wireframing software and we'd really love to hear your feedback. We have been working on this for more than half a year now, doing some customer interviews and building a prototype. We're planning on launching an MVP in a few months, but we've gotten to a point where we'd really appreciate some broader feedback. Especially, we would like to know if you faced the problems shown in the video, if you see other problems and what you think about our solution.

Thanks Waldemar, Johannes and Thomas

<comment><USER4> I've been designing software for 20 years, reviewed over a dozen wireframing tools, and I still use Photoshop. But Photoshop sucks for low fidelity comps and creating interaction guides.

For the low fidelity comps, I bought myself a LiveScripe echopen so I could draw out things and import them for manipulation, instead of throwing out paper, etc, but I haven't explored it to its full potential yet. The benefits are that I can easily import and manipulate drawings and that I can record audio as I draw, and then click on a drawing to hear what I (or clients) said at the moment I drew what I clicked on. Very helpful for remembering all the ideas and flow when I get to a computer.

Your solution looks fantastic for low fidelity. It would be super cool if I could control it with that pen like this: [http://www.livescribe.com/store/20070723002/paper- tablet/p-4...](http://www.livescribe.com/store/20070723002/paper- tablet/p-486.htm)

The next step is when I start replacing low fidelity with medium fidelity photoshop mockups. Once approved/done, it goes to real graphic artists and coders. It would be great if I can easily copy selections of a photoshop comp over specific parts of drawings to move it's fidelity up the ladder piece by piece and page by page as components and pages are done, and get feedback on it as I go. With an easy way to keep track of what has been updated recently or commented on and by who, and a way to mark off comments that are addressed, and to know who has seen what and if they approve or not with comments.

The other thing I wonder about is how you organize things. I'm currently designing a giant app for all platforms. The specs are huge and it has lots of subtle animation state changes etc that might be challenging to map out, where clicking makes just one bit of the page do something, not going to a whole page. (Like opening a menu or flipping a card to see what's on the back.) It would be nice if it could somehow deal with that and deal with reusing sections on several mockups for different media. I'd want to switch between the same page (if it exists) for tablet, phone, and PC. And when I upgrade the fidelity of an elment on one mockup, it would replace it everywhere else it is used.

So, that's my initial thoughts on what my dream wireframing tool would be.

Generally love what you are doing and want in immediately to see if it speeds up things for me! :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, also for the note about the LiveScripe echopen. How essential is it for you to have live audio recordings?

We'd like to start with screen flows, but we want to support more stateful element changes in future releases, too. Would you like to do a Skype call with us in the next few weeks and talk a little bit more about your workflow?

<comment><USER4> The audio recordings are a god send. I sleep with that notebook and take it everywhere. I don't lose any ideas because of it.

Yes, we can do a skype call. I'll contact you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Well guys it all looks very nice. I'm just afraid you misjudge the situation. If I'm already working with electronic device why should I draw anything, not just drag&drop UI elements? It seems to be waste of my time.

Merits of paper are huge and can't be overvalued.

\- Paper has no limits, because it has extremely simple user interface. No predefined style, rules and guidelines. No predefined interaction. \- Paper is vastly collaborative - easy to share, easy to pin on the wall and discuss with team mates. \- Paper doesn't bond you. You can always easily throw away what you have designed in 5 minutes. You don't need to focus on details! \- Paper teaches designers that what they have in mind matters, not tools

Your tool doesn't address those advantages of paper properly.

Adobe created similar app and doesn't achieve much.

Besides, problem with conversion from paper into digital wireframes is already resolved. UXPin notepads and UXPin App are quite popular in the UX world.

Check out the video: <http://youtu.be/-7VitOBVfCE>

You can start your design process on paper by sticking UI elements on paper to the notepad, take a picture of it, send it to the app and it will be auto- converted.

So while your website looks nice and the video is great, your conception seems to miss the point.

Sorry about that. I wish you all the best.

<comment><AUTHOR> We've learned about the benefits of UXPin from our customer interviews. However, we've also learned a lot about the disadvantages of UXPin and paper in general.

We agree with you that paper has a lot of advantages. That's why pentotype aims to keep all the benefits of paper. At the same time we'll enrich the paper experience with the interactivity of software.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. We'll take them into account to make pentotype even better. ;)

<comment><USER7> All right!:) Cheers for your reply.

I don't believe UX designers will leave paper. We are not using paper now because we have bad software, we are actually using paper because we sometimes want to keep ourselves away of computers (tablets counts as well).

90% of UX designers use paper (according to research by Todd Zaki Warfel).

Adobe learnt that recently. They did app very similar to yours and didn't succeed much. Personally don't know single UX designer using it. And they put a lot of money into marketing.

<http://www.adobe.com/products/proto.html>

It looks shiny and cool, but it's useless in UX design process.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Synchronized Collaboration Environment is also a topic attracting academic interest. There were desktop white boards GUI that are similar to this, but I think porting it onto tablet and the recognition part is a game-changer. Question: will the backend be open source?

</comment><comment><USER9> Looks very nice indeed. I'm a big fan of early testing on wireframes rather anything higher fidelity.

I hope you include an android tablet version rather than just ipad!

<comment><USER5> As pentotype is a web app, it only requires a browser. In principle, it will work on all high performance tablets, no matter which OS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I had a different sense of "recognition" going in than what was portrayed in the video.

<comment><USER11> Me too. I was really hoping for an app that could take a scan of a handwritten diagram / mockup, and "recognize" the shapes, converting them into objects that could be manipulated (resized, removed, repositioned etc) through the app.

<comment><USER12> I am waiting for this app as well. With AR-style overlay of the already placed wireframes over the camera picture, making positioning/sizing very easy: just move your tablet, and press the shutter once the new stuff is in the right place. lets start this with OpenCV on Android.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Looks interesting, would be great to see screenshots/video of the actual product.

<comment><USER3> We've already build a prototype. Now we would like to know which part of pentotype is needed most. How would it be useful for you?</comment></comment>