Brackets, a code editor - <AUTHOR> http://brackets.io <comment><USER2> Previous discussions:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3917637](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3917637)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4159552](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4159552)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4619499](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4619499)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4919677](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4919677)

</comment><comment><USER3> The moment I saw brackets, I fell in love with it. I really saw it as an opportunity to replace SublimeText, so I went with it. I tried the Sprint 35 version on Ubuntu 12.04 x64, and my PCs performances are well over the minimum requirements.

Unfortunately it turned out to be very slow, I opened an existing project I am working on, where my JS files were not larger than 500 lines / file. The cursor is lagging, literally, when I press the "down arrow" for instance, the cursor disappears, then I stop pressing it and it reappears somewhere below. Scrolling had the same effect, just as well as changing the currently opened document, it all takes time, the amount of when you feel that something is not right. At first I had a couple of extensions installed, so I threw them all out, but it didn't change a thing.

I would really like to use brackets, it's concept/idea really works for me, but until it gets faster I simply can't . Looking forward to the next sprint, I hope things will change.

<comment><USER4> Can you file a bug? [https://github.com/adobe/brackets/issues/new](https://github.com/adobe/brackets/issues/new)

That level of performance degradation is definitely not normal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The deal-breaking problem I have under Linux with editors based on node-webkit like Brackets and Light Table -- for some reason they don't use subpixel rendering, making all text extremely blurry. Maybe it's that issue [https://github.com/rogerwang/node- webkit/issues/734](https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit/issues/734), but I'm not sure. Anyway, I am not aware about any workaround, and just can't use them in their current state.

<comment><USER6> Brackets is not based on node-webkit. Brackets is based on CEF3 which is a API exposing library that uses Chromium. Node-webkit uses Chromium as well. So it's most likely chromium that is the issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> >> Live HTML Development >> As you code, HTML changes are instantly pushed to browser without having to save or reload the page.

Who actually writes non-templated HTML any more?

<comment><USER8> I've gotta agree with you here. If you are a professional developer and are still writing non-templated html, I'd be surprised. I think it's crazy that all these tools keep coming out for handling vanilla html and css, while the development community is busy shooting miles ahead with far more powerful preprocessing. I'm working very heavily on convenience tools for advanced dev workflows, hopefully these will bring a similar level of excitement for devs who preprocess.

<comment><USER9> On big projects I work on, front-end developers start from the PSD and do the HTML first (they just do some templates, not the whole site obviously).

Then the JS is either made by them (depending if they know JS) or by a JS specialist.

Then the programmers integrate the HTML in the "code/templates" (CMS, whatever).

We develop in different web technologies and front-end developers don't learn how to code server side code (either they don't want to, don't have time, whatever).

Depending on the templating engine and programming language and final product (CMS, etc), they can or cannot edit or fix their CSS right in the final code.

Sometimes they need the programmers to tell them where the templates that they want to change are, etc. Imagine a big projects with hundreds of different templates made by a programmer, the front-end dev doesn't necessarily know where to change his stuff and if he's going to cause a problem elsewhere.

<comment><USER10> Front-end developer here. Yes, that is what I do. We have some really talented developers who design some awesome images of what the websites should like. (Hopefully as a photoshop file. Or at least, something that let me get exact measures and layers.)

If it's a small project, made to be beautiful, they will do the whole design of all the pages. If it's a huge Agile project, they would instead give me a style guide.

Then, I quickly turn everything into reusable HTML blocks and do the CSS (using LESS). If needed, I'll make custom jQuery (or pure Javascript, but that never happens, really) modules for the template. It's very quick. A full page templates takes me about 1 to 2 hours, if it's very, very complex I may take up to 4 hours.

While I'm working on those, the back-end guys are working of making the CMS work correctly. Sometimes, I give them the templates before they program the page, but most of the time I end up attacking the page after them. I then simply use the building blocks they gave me (and turn all the divs they made into the right HTML5 tags).

We use a lot of different CMS and some of the websites have custom backend (no CMS). We develop in both PHP and .Net.

I know PHP, and I'm comfortable developing Drupal websites. However, I don't get a lot of fun making the backend. The only time I would do it if we are working on a one pager or something like that, since it's faster if I do both back and front for project that are not complex.

I prefer working on the front-end. And I do mean front-end development. Not simply mindlessly slicing a PSD into an HTML page or adding content from a Word document.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I downloaded the editor about two weeks ago. It's fun and easy to use. My only criticism is of the live editing feature.

That's what drew me to the editor in the first place, but it seems to be very buggy. It stops updating the preview sporadically — and predictably, each time I open the JS Console.

As a front-end dev, I can't really count on a preview that doesn't function with developer tools open.

Having said all that, I understand that Brackets is relatively new, and it takes time to iron things out. I will keep up-to-date with their progress and consider using the service in the future.

<comment><USER12> It's a bug (design decision) of Chrome. Only 1 debugger can be attached to Chrome at any given time. So if you have Brackets live preview enabled, you cannot use the developer tools within chrome.

This is an issue with other tools that try to attach to Chrome to do this type of work. Sadly, Chrome doesn't see it as a big enough issue to fix.

<comment><USER13> Couldn't you set up a proxy that handles the multiple connections and keeps the clients in sync?

<comment><USER4> The problem is that one of the clients to be kept in sync is the dev tools itself. Currently the dev tools assume no one else is using the API, so there's significant work on the Chromium side to make them able sync up with changes caused by other API usage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've been using Brackets to prototype things for al out a year and love it. I design in code much more often than in Photoshop or InDesign or whatever, and Brackets is super useful for that.

I tried to get Sublime Text to do the same thing, live updating, and even found a plugin that mostly does the trick. But it required a lot of setup each time I used it, and still wasn't as good as Brackets.

Brackets has issues, it's slower than a "text editor" ought to be, and the general editing tools aren't nearly as developed as Sublime, but for rapidly producing visuals and designing in real-time, it's stellar.

<comment><USER15> What setup did you use for live updating in Sublime Text?

<comment><USER16> I use LiveReload (in conjunction with nodemon if it's a Node project).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If any of the Brackets team is reading this .. THANK YOU ! For one of the most _ergonomic_ editors I've ever used. I really can't explain it any other way, but everything just is where I expect it to be. And I was really surprised at the JavaScript auto-completing !

My plugin setup is only to add jsbeautify and JSONLint.

<comment><USER18> Thanks! We love to see feedback like this!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> If I may ask the author(s): what was the motivation of writing this app for native platforms but making use of webkit-node or similar technologies and tools? This to me seems like it has become a popular technique for writing cross-platform applications, but it also seems like it has many drawbacks which make it an unattractive option, with the only advantage being that the authors already know CSS/JS/HTML and can leverage that knowledge to make a protoduction-quality application. Can you confirm that this is the case, or was there some other reasons and/or factors that led to such a decision? Thank you for your time, and have a relaxing evening.

<comment><USER18> I wasn't there at the beginning, but I've been working on Brackets for a year.

We want Brackets to be awesome for web developers and designers specifically. So, how cool is it to be able to extend the editor you use every day using the exact same tech you're already used to? (And, of course, you can edit Brackets extensions in Brackets...)

This is likely part of the reason there are more than 200 extensions available for Brackets today.

<comment><USER19> That's a pretty cool idea actually.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> IMHO The title should be a little bit more humble.

<comment><USER21> This comment was more entertaining before I realized the title was changed.

<comment><USER20> Sarcasm is always entertaining, sadly there wasn't any in my previous comment :(.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> See demo video, [http://youtu.be/VKitqLpJtAY](http://youtu.be/VKitqLpJtAY)

</comment><comment><USER23> Just providing .debs is a dealbreaker. Yeah, packaging for everything is a lot of effort, just provide a tarball. Everyone can work with a tarball.

<comment><USER24> [https://github.com/adobe/brackets/archive/v0.36.0-10998.tar....](https://github.com/adobe/brackets/archive/v0.36.0-10998.tar.gz)

<comment><USER4> Fyi, that's not a stable build. See the notes that come with it: [https://github.com/adobe/brackets/releases/tag/v0.36.0-10998](https://github.com/adobe/brackets/releases/tag/v0.36.0-10998)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> What an incredibly strange trend that I keep seeing lately of externally using sprint numbers as version numbers. Actually labeling them as Sprint numbers prominently, I mean, instead of just v35 or v.35 or something.

<comment><USER18> Funny you should mention that, because we're actually changing from Scrum to Kanban so we do not have sprints in the same sense that we had them before.

I think this numbering was started because Brackets is "pre-1.0". We'll see how our version numbering changes after we release 1.0 :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> With so many transpiled JS languages, this seems like a tough space to be in. I wouldn't use this until it works with CoffeeScript. My friend won't until it works with ClojureScript, etc. Maybe there's a simple solution I haven't thought of? But it seems like the inline editors would be modifying the generated source instead of the actual source.

</comment><comment><USER27> As a dirty prototyping pseudo-dev, the one thing that keeps me using Coda is its native ftp/scp capabilities. I can open files on a remote server as if they were local and command-s saves them back there.

Right now it seems that none of these other editors support that function. I know I can run ssh-fs or similar, but that requires much more setup.

<comment><USER28> Sublime Text + SFTP plugin will let you do this.

<comment><USER27> I've tried it. Requires a local copy of the files - I found it messy.

<comment><USER29> If by local you mean temp working file, that's a given isn't it? 'Save' still saves it remotely.

However, if the (S)FTP connection is broken and reconnected you can't continue in the same editor, you need to re-open it again which frustrates me.

<comment><USER27> If I recall it required a full local cache of the remote folder.

<comment><USER28> It technically only needs a local cache of the files you intend to edit. I work from a very large remote checkout on a development server, and only have a local cache of the directories and files that matter to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I've used Tailor, the Chrome port of Brackets, and it's a beautiful editor. I would love to use it full time on my Chromebook, however the Live Editing feature is broken and the Git integration is lacking. It also lacks some other standard things, like Find/Replace.

I recently found another Chrome editor, Caret, that feels a little more powerful (and more in line with how I use Sublime.) It's quite a big uglier though, unfortunately.

Caret: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/caret/fljalecfjcio...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/caret/fljalecfjciodhpcledpamjachpmelml?hl=en)

Tailor: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tailor/mfakmoghean...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tailor/mfakmogheanjhlgjhpijkhdjegllgenf)

</comment><comment><USER31> Sorry, I prefer vim. "Refresh Browser on save with inotify and xdotool" [http://peter-hoffmann.com/2010/refresh-browser-on-save- with-...](http://peter-hoffmann.com/2010/refresh-browser-on-save-with-inotify- and-xdotool.html)

<comment><USER4> Just to clarify - Live Preview in Brackets is significantly fancier than plain 'live reload on save.' As you edit HTML or CSS the browser preview updates continuously: on every keystroke, even while dragging a colorpicker slider. And it does it without a full-page refresh, so if you have any state on the page it doesn't get reset.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Brackets is cool. definitely great to have it as an option. Most important for me for new additions is the multi-line / cursor editing. I use Notepad++ for that but brackets could replace notepad++ if it had it for me.

That and the other day I had this xml file I needed to look at and brackets didn't open it on Mac. Right-click open with, Brackets. It failed. Not sure why it wasn't a bad or large file at all. Text-wrangler opened it fine.

<comment><USER33> Multiple cursors are coming in CodeMirror 4 and there is already a branch[1] of Brackets that implements the next version of CodeMirror.

The problem with the XML file might be encoding, because Brackets supports only UTF-8 encoded files at the moment.

[1] [https://github.com/adobe/brackets/tree/cmv4](https://github.com/adobe/brackets/tree/cmv4)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> This is amazing. I was sad that no good WYSIWYG editor existed. I was sad that Sulbime Text had no color picker. Well this is gonna be a game changer.

There is always a first phase in a project where I only code HTML and CSS. I create the layout, the scaffoldings, the different pages, etc...

And as amazing as emacs and ST3 are, it's a pain in the ass to do that part with them.

I feel like I'm gonna use Brackets a lot.

</comment><comment><USER35> So far so good. Eager to try a couple projects on it and see if it fits.

</comment><comment><USER36> I really like Brackets. And it's got some great plugins already. I've set mine up with a visual git sidebar, markdown preview, themes and a mini-map like Sublime Text has.

</comment><comment><USER37> Brackets is wonderful, but it's Brackets JS Completion vs Sublime Text multi- cursor behavior for me and the latter is too useful to give up.

<comment><USER18> Interesting! Multi-cursor is one of those things that I personally tended to use only from time-to-time when Sublime was my primary editor (I'm on the Brackets team, so you can guess what I use now).

Regarding multi-cursor in Brackets:

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/brackets- dev/FLMlU3P...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/brackets- dev/FLMlU3PSEj8)

<comment><USER37> The most typical use is for me to abuse the heck out of command-d. This will select the current word (if none selected) and then each subsequent press of this command adds the next occurrence of the selected text to the selection. I also like the ability to use option-drag down a column for block selection when I have text from some source that needs a bit of munging on each line.

Thanks much for that link. I'll check it out.

<comment><USER4> The thing I don't get about Cmd+D is, what do you do when you get to an occurrence you _don 't_ want to include in your selection? There doesn't appear to be any "skip" shortcut -- is there?

I always prefer nice Replace All commands where you can see a condensed overview of all occurrences and then uncheck things you want to exclude. When Brackets added that it made me very happy :-)

<comment><USER38> The "skip" shortcut is Cmd+K, Cmd+D. You can also undo selection with Cmd+U to step backwards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> i prefer gruntjs with coffee, jade and sass/stylus compilers + live reload. i barely work on vanilla html/css/js

<comment><USER40> Brackets is extensible. As a result, it fully supports everything you mention.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Cool. This is like Macromedia Dreamweaver except you don't have to switch in- between tabs or open a browser and refresh!

</comment><comment><USER42> Anyone else surprised they aren't using Adobe AIR for this project?

Are they just abandoning it or is CEF3 the new AIR?

<comment> ryan-allen I'm not surprised. Adobe have been pushing Air for years, nobody really likes it, I hate installing it, and the App performance is often sub-par.

By contrast Brackets feels very native. For once corporate policy didn't get in the way of building something cool!

<comment><USER43> >App performance is often sub-par

This is typically down to web developers building desktop apps without the same level of experience. There is nothing baked into AIR to make it perform poorly.

<comment><USER44> Air is slower than chrome or firefox

<comment><USER43> If you are talking about AIR as a web browser, then it runs webkit, so actually it was the same speed as Chrome when they both used the same runtime.

Now it's outdated, so I imagine Chrome is faster.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I would love for it to have jinja2 syntax highlighting support as well :)

<comment><USER46> Jinja2 should be the standard template syntax in all languages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Will this be part of Creative Cloud eventually?

<comment><USER48> There's Adobe Edge Code CC - I thought that these were pretty much off the same code base?

<comment><USER49> They are. Brackets was presented at a local js meetup a little more than a year ago; Edge code is one of the primary reasons why adobe is running this project.

<comment><USER50> So I don't understand, Brackets is their open source branch but Edge Code will be their officially supported release?

<comment><USER18> Brackets, the open source project, supplies the core of Edge Code which has added features that tie into Adobe services.

We want Brackets to be awesome and useful by itself, and to also provide the foundation for people who use the Creative Cloud.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Does it have code collapse yet?

<comment><USER18> Brackets doesn't ship with code folding, but there's an extension that adds code folding. (I haven't the extension personally, so I can't comment on how well it works...)

<comment><USER51> Any particular reason for that? It seems like it should come standard, and it's what initially made me switch back to Sublime.

<comment><USER18> I would expect us to ship code folding, but we just haven't gotten to it yet. Same for themes (for which there are also extensions that fill in the gaps).

It would be a great contribution to the project for people to pick up a feature like folding that ideally belongs in core and helps get it to "core quality" (unit tests, comments, etc.) It's possible that some extensions are already that good and we just don't know it.

<comment><USER52> I do believe that sometimes an existing extension is rolled into the core, or at least made a default extension that comes in the download.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> We all know Brackets aka Bones. We all love it. Sublime sucks and Bones rocks. This isn't news.</comment>


Apple Losing USB Is a Loss for Music - <AUTHOR> http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/1346-apple-losing-usb-is-a-loss-for-music/ <comment><USER2> Dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12820107](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12820107)</comment>


Woody Harrelson falls victim to Reddit in disastrous 'Ask me anything' interview - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2096768/Woody-Harrelson-falls-victim-Reddit-disastrous-Ask-interview.html <comment><USER2> Can we please get a link to the actual thread, rather than an article in the Daily Fail reporting on it without even linking to it?

<comment><USER3> It was previous mentioned twice on Hacker News: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3549985> and <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3551156> . The primary reddit thread is [http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/p9a1v/im_woody_harrels...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/p9a1v/im_woody_harrelson_ama/) . It's also the 6th link when I do a Google search for "woody harrelson reddit".</comment></comment>


Aaron Swartz's Jottit has been officially released - <AUTHOR> http://jottit.com/ "Hi there. Sorry to bother you, but you asked me
to send you an email when Jottit was out for you
to take a look at. Well, after a lot of hard work
by my creators, Simon Carstensen and Aaron Swartz,
I'm happy to say that things are finally ready.
Take a look at
http://jottit.com/
and let me know what you think. (Just reply to
this email!)
Thanks so much,
 - Jottit.com" <comment><USER2> Awesome. A Web 2.0 version of 'echo'! My old joke about Web 2.0 version of "hello world" is not funny anymore.

<comment><USER3> What tx says is funny. The site is absolutely simple.

I love it though. I just started learning html and javascript last week and now this thing provides an instant compiler. I change the border size on a table and, BOOM! Right when I finish typing the border shows up with the correct size. I see what it looks like instantly and can change what I want when I want. There isn't any clicking, switching windows, sftp-ing, downloading software, or anything.

It's simple and I love it. Since it handles Javascript I now have an instant way to deploy simple functions and tables. I can figure some useful relation, put it up using html and Javascript, and suddenly anyone anywhere has easy access to my results.

This thing also provides an instant way to write and test content for Google Gadgets, something even more useful than the editor Google provides.

And I think the design is clean, nice, and simple.

<comment><USER4> If all you want is a preview functionality, how about

<textarea name=foo onkeyup="document.getElementById('preview').innerHTML=this.value;"></textarea>

Hardly rocketscience is it...

<comment><USER5> Or try the Web Developer Extension for Firefox:

<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/60>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Allows links, doesn't have nofollow or CAPTCHAs in place. Anyone wanna take bets on how long before it turns into a giant cesspool of spam?

<comment><USER7> I'm sure they'll make links nofollow. It's not hard.

<comment><USER8> Since Jottit doesn't link to its users' pages, their rank in the beginning is 0, and so is their attractiveness for spammers. Once Jottit builds a catalogue of user pages, it's dead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Now maybe his co-founder will leave, and the founders of Digg will be so impressed that they invite him to be a co-founder--on equal terms.

<comment><USER10> Oh, give it a rest. At least Aaron's still creating value even though he's already rich. He could just sit by the pool all day.

<comment><USER11> He could have or he could waste his time. He chose the later and why is that impressive?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why is this interesting?

<comment><USER8> In the first place it shows how user registration should look like.

<comment><USER12> You mean, like Mediawiki?

<comment><USER8> Have you tried jottit? I can't imagine anything simpler than that, I mean the registration process. Although the idea itself is probably not new.

<comment><USER12> I don't get it. Can you really "win" with an application just by making registration easier? I know the "every field, half your users" rule, but... is there anything more to this application?

<comment><USER13> Here are my observations.

It's clean

A demonstration of what the site does happens in one click.

The editing view is responsive and fun to play with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Wow, I'm quite surprised that so few of the people that have commented see the value in this. I just took a look at the site and I have to say it looks awesome and I can definitely see exactly what it was trying to address. It's not a blogging tool and it's not anything like Wikipedia. IMO it's simply a place to take notes, have them be available from anywhere else and I'm guessing to share them with others. As the name implies you simply jot something down. I love the fact that you can do that right on the home page, no annoying clicks. It reminds me of OneNote which I used to use on Windows or Google Notebook.

</comment><comment><USER15> I too am struggling with the value of this site. However, I think the minimalist design is very compelling.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm reminded of the story "The Emperor's New Clothes". Jottit is the emperors invisible clothes.

</comment><comment><USER17> another pointless project. yawn.

</comment><comment><USER18> Hey, Google has this same layout but when I click the button it gives me back something useful

</comment><comment><USER19> At least you guys got to see it.

Right now, this is what <http://jottit.com/> says:

 _500 - Internal Server Error_

What, no customized error page?

<comment><USER20> I checked it it's up again. Tried using it but I can't seem to find the value in it....

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I like the user interface a lot. The color scheme picker is sweet, and it's fun to see changes in real time. Since it's so easy to use, I'm sure there will be people who find it useful.

</comment><comment><USER22> This site is neat in that it works simply. However, since this site is largely geared to hackers AND startup founders, what is its target market and how can they make money off of it? Or is the object here to be purchased by Google or one of the other sites that have bad HTML editors as their default?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think Aaron started it with the idea of how to make money from it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Dangit, Aaron beat me to the punch with the idea of creating a globally- modifiable page and then later creating an account to claim ownership. The demo I'm working on right now works the same way. I'm still one-uping him, though -- just a button on the front page, no text box.

<comment><USER24> Really? I'm doing the same thing, except it's just a button. When you click the button, a page comes up and says, "You have clicked the button. To click the button again, click the button" When you click the button again, it says, "You have clicked the button again. To click the button again, click the button again."

I'm trying to get it down to the absolute _minimum_ of annoying configuration and deployment options. I don't think I'll ever match the masters though:

<http://www.zombo.com/>

<comment><USER23> You have way too much text on your front page. It should just say, "Button clicked. Click again to click again." Better yet, why not just click it for them automatically? If they intended to do something else they'd have already gone to another page.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm missing the comment functionality here though. Jottit may become a perfect semi-blogging platform once they add commenting. "Semi" is because articles won't be linked to the date of publishing - something that always annoyed me on all other blogging platforms.

</comment><comment><USER25> What's the point of Jottit? I don't get it...

</comment><comment><USER26> I actually like the simplicity and usefulness of this website. Congratulations Aaron -- well done!!

</comment><comment><USER27> So nice and so simple. I'm amazed

</comment><comment><USER28> It's a good site in its own subtle way, but where's the purple cow?

</comment><comment><USER29> Anyone know what they've written it with?

<comment><AUTHOR> Probably Python and web.py.</comment></comment>


Kickstarter backers ready class action lawsuit against Code Hero dev - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/primerist/code-hero-a-game-that-teaches-you-to-make-games-he/comments <comment><USER2> This is a drama that will play out on the web and not in a courtroom.

In this sense, the crowdfunding forum gives a focal point for thousands of not only backers but also spectators to debate a continuing thumbs-up/thumbs-down narrative over whether something is great/viable/the-hope-of-the- future/flaky/scammy or whatever. By definition, such a forum will invite submissions from promoters who are, variously, supremely gifted, naive and unrealistic, crafty and conniving, or just hopeful founders who see this is their best funding mechanism, whether it turns out to be good, bad, or mediocre at it plays out. For any given project, who can tell exactly who the promoters are apart from the reputations they manage to build as they do various things in the development community or otherwise in the startup world. If they were doing a true securities offering by which they were selling equity in their ventures, they would be liable if they raised funds through intentional misrepresentations or other forms of fraud (which can include making specific promises without ever having any intention of performing them). But where is the liability when no equity is being sold and instead you have commitments that backers will receive only little perks associated with a completed development effort? There are all kinds of startup ventures that never manage to bring their development efforts to completion because of unforeseen technical issues, bad market conditions, lack of funds, and all sorts of other reasons having nothing to do with fraud or other actionable wrongdoing. If this is true where a venture sells equity interests that are true securities subject to the protections of securities laws, it is doubly true where the only thing being offered is a small perk tied to a development effort that is not guaranteed to be brought to completion or at least that is not guaranteed to be brought to completion within any specified time period. In such cases, you _might_ conceive of cases where actionable wrongdoing might be proven, e.g., if a promoter raised the funds and immediately absconded with them, having made no effort toward development whatever. In almost every case but that extreme one, though, it is pretty hard to prove that a promoter never had any intention of making some good-faith effort to do the development, even if the promoter is flaky or uses bad business judgment in how funds are spent. In front of a jury, that one is a long shot by any measure and very likely a loser.

Which brings us to the economics of a federal class action case. Only specialty lawyers handle such cases. They are procedurally complex, take years to process, and are worth doing (usually) only against defendants with deep pockets where the remedy sought is (a) damages in a sufficient sum to make the case economically worthwhile for the lawyers or (b) an injunctive or other specific performance remedy aimed at curbing some abusive, recurring practice by a large company or important player in some key market.

Those conditions, by definition, do not exist here. A lawyer billing hourly would easily bill a six-figure sum in a typical class action case just to get through the class certification phase. Of course, such cases are not billed hourly precisely because the whole point of a class action is to allow the courts to aggregate a bunch of little claims to allow for a practical remedy for cases that would not be economically worthwhile to pursue separately. Thus, the class action vehicle requires that one or more "class representatives" appear in the action as named plaintiffs to represent the innumerable small claimants. But the claims of the class representatives have to be typical of the claims of the others, meaning that they are small claims as well. Because of this, no named plaintiff will be fronting hundreds of thousands in legal fees on behalf of the class and so, by definition, such cases are always done on contingency. That means that, for the lawyer, the case has to make sense as a business matter: it must involve the prospect of getting a recovery that will be large enough so that a 20% or 25% (or whatever percent) cut of such recovery will make the case attractive to the lawyer for the likely thousands of hours that will need to be poured into it (in cases where there is no money recovery, you still need defendants who, as part of a settlement, will be able to pay what is usually millions in fees to compensate the lawyers for their efforts in effecting the settlement). Of course, it is possible that a lawyer may be willing to take on the case, at substantial cost, just to get publicity or for some other non-monetary motive. That too would make little sense here. Class action lawyers are highly specialized and very busy. They will occasionally do something that is the equivalent of a loss leader but not in an area for which there is no long-term practice advantage. Since, for the reasons just mentioned, I don't see any long-term future for class action lawyers pursuing smallish claims over failed crowdfunding ventures, I can't see a lawyer doing it for that reason either.

To sum up: dubious liability, no deep-pocket defendant, a very small amount at stake, no economic or other normal motive for a lawyer to do this = no ingredients for federal class action.

Therefore (and conceding that I know little about the particulars here), I would imagine that the "class action preparation" here is mostly a rhetorical device by which to call out the promoter involved in this venture and, by the measure of those questioning his motives, to expose the fact that he allegedly took advantage of innocent backers in a way that went beyond the pale of what is legitimate. This may be a worthwhile debate but it will never see the light of day in a courtroom as a class action unless it defies all odds of how such cases work.

<comment><USER3> An excellent analysis, except for the part that I don't doubt for a moment that the plaintiff lawyer will attempt to tie Kickstarter in through some theory of shared negligence and structure that demand such that Kickstarter's percentage of it alone would satisfy the class. The person behind the Kickstarter in question, by definition, is either insolvent or nearly so, and that only leaves one target.

By this same reasoning I expect that if a litigator can't figure out a way to pull in Kickstarter then the case will never be filed, or will end up being 1000 small claims actions.

<comment><USER4> In the event Kickstarter is not a valid target, it is very unlikely that it will end up with 1000 small claims since the target left would be insolvent and only a few irrational donaters would bother going down that road.

<comment><USER5> Excellent analysis above.

This is also why I _facepalm_ when people suggest that most regulation can be replaced by private litigation.

<comment><USER3> In a sad way I suppose it suggests a business opportunity to robo-file small claims actions on your behalf.

BTW, I don't think this is a good example of replacing regulation with private litigation, I expect it will be an example of behavioral change in the presence of more literal examples of the risks. As lots of people point out in this thread, clearly a large number of people were thinking "store" not "random guy who might come up with the goods" when they backed a project, having a few of these get a lot of press might have a chilling effect on backers.

<comment><USER5> I wasn't trying to suggest that Kickstarter should be regulated because of situations like this, but pointing out that grellas's analysis of why nobody would bring suits in this case applies with equal force to most situations where large numbers of people have their rights infringed in ways that are not patently easy to prove.

In theory, a class action suit would resolve whether the failure to deliver was just over ambition, etc, or due to some malfeasance, but for the reasons grellas outlined, such a suit is unlikely to be filed or carried through to a conclusion. In effect, the deck is systematically stacked in favor of the potential wrongdoer. He wins not only if he really did nothing wrong, but even if he did something wrong but it is non trivial to prove that he did something wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I cannot say much about how Alex would have used funds, but I can speak to his passion for this project: I have known Alex Peake for many years (not very well, mind you), and even had a meeting with him back while he was still living in Santa Barbara (late 2007, I believe), regarding initial funding for his project.

The main thing I could tell is that this is the thing he seemed most to want to accomplish in the world (even though I wasn't certain it would work, thought he hadn't thought through the complexities, and might not have enough experience to pull it off).

In the intervening years, I have run into him at various conferences, and his interest in Code Hero has never seemed to wane: he even was making credible progress on it, and supposedly the game actually got released (although I am currently unable to find it? I'm on an iPhone, though).

I also recently ran into him at Science Hack Day last year, and I was _floored_ at how well he was interacting with the kids there, teaching them enough JavaScript and Unity3D to make a "game" (actually, just a model and some floating platforms that you could move through; I don't even think you could land on the platforms: no collision detection).

I thereby highly question the validity of a malfeasance claim against him. I can appreciate that "he didn't spend the money well and the stated improvement project failed", but honestly: welcome to KickStarter... it is your responsibility to decide whether your money will be used effectively, as the entire point of the site is speculative funding.

<comment><USER7> Regardless of if he is indebted to fulfill the Kickstarter project itself, he's still required to send out the rewards. Furthermore, his lack of transparency on the issue (while continuing to give the media attention) is really what people are pissed off about. There's no excuse for that. He may very well be an incredibly passionate guy, but he's lost the trust of those who were willing to support him even if things hit the fan simply due to the lack of communication.

<comment><USER8> I think Kickstarter would be very well served by creating higher expectations in terms of project updates.

Set a standard. Say once a month for a minimum. If you don't have _something_ to say to your backers once a month I have to wonder if you are placing the proper priority on the project.

If projects don't meet that standard, turn their page amber or something similar. A big visual sign that the project is not meeting the standard. If it goes 3 months with no update turn it red. Make it stand out. Make people feel some pressure to communicate.

In the end, it's best for Kickstarter to push projects to better relationships with the backers.

<comment><USER9> Perhaps Kickstarter needs a project liaison for projects over a certain dollar threshold; people who ask "How is it going? What are you doing?". Kiva does this for the people I lend money to (even though I lend without the expectation of the money ever coming back, I want to know how the borrow is doing regardless of the outcome).

This can be built into the cost of the Kickstarter project, and for projects $100K and above, believe it to be completely reasonable.

<comment><USER10> Kickstarter doesn't want this because it can bring possible liability. They want as little to do as possible with the actual projects success or failure while still seeming to be wanting them to win :)

<comment><USER9> This isn't copyright law, and turning their head isn't going to remove liability (a la Craigslist sex workers debacle). Good luck arguing financial safe harbor provisions ("we're just a marketplace! It's not our place to regulate!").

<comment><USER10> Craigslist was never actually found liable that i remember, they settled.

But yes, they are basically trying to present it as a marketplace they have no control over, to avoid liability and getting themselves regulated by the SEC/others.

Whether this is going to be effective, I actually tend to agree with you and think it won't, but it's almost certainly _why they are doing it_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> From the guy who seems to be leading the Class Action charge:

"Guys, I want to love you so badly... I met you at PAX and was worried how the exchange was going to go, considering we're so far behind schedule, updates are very insufficient, and I pledged at a high level ($313). You were very apologetic and assured me that things were going to take off right after PAX, but that is another commitment that hasn't been met. I'll be happiest if I can get my money back, but I doubt that's a possibility. I had time and energy to dive into this stuff earlier this year. Now I'm married, working different hours, and have a very different life. Lots has changed since the estimated delivery date flew by."

You were funding a product that you were told may or may not meet with success. You're now going to need to show in a civil court that there was wilful recklessness in the use of funds.

Kickstarter sits on the fence, too - it states that the creater is obliged to deliver pledges or refund, but that it hopes requests for refund will only be used for bad faith projects.

Given that he gave a video interview in November stating he felt the project had a year to go, and that the pledges specify "Estimated Delivery" only, I think that's a hard road to plow, leaving aside the fact that a malicious, or even unlucky/ill-planned project could keep pushing out the dates.

Some investments fail. Too many people view Kickstarter as an online store.

<comment><USER12> Well, that's the grey area, isn't it? It's one thing if I invest in something and it fails. It's another thing if someone pretends to take your money as an investment and instead goes to Vegas and blows it. In other words, the difference between merely a bad investment and fraud.

Kickstarter can't afford to conflate the two, or people will stop investing. So they're in a tricky spot, trying to ensure that users understand that they aren't customers and that the startups can fail, while also ensuring that customers have faith that the vast majority of startups will succeed.

<comment><USER13> Isn't the problem with that whole argument that, in reality, the vast majority of startups do _not_ succeed?

I'm glad that Kickstarter is trying an alternative business model, but I do worry for their long term viability/growth prospects. People reading HN probably understand concepts like investment and lack of guaranteed rewards. People who sign up to a $1,000,000 project for what looks like a really cool game that their friends showed them, and who then get told they weren't really buying anything but a possibility, might not. And in the long run, whether or not those people should have understood their role, they are the only ones who get a say in whether they open their wallets again in the future to support someone else's project.

<comment><USER14> > _"People reading HN probably understand concepts like investment and lack of > guaranteed rewards."_

Investments usually have an upside commensurate with the perceived risk.

"Pay the regular price of a game, and you have a 50% chance of getting the game, and 50% of getting nothing" is not really an investment - it's a charitable contribution to someone's dream that you _might_ see something out of.

This is why I think the current Kickstarter model is doomed in the long run. Once it becomes clear that a large portion of Kickstarters will never deliver anything close to what they promised (if they deliver anything at all!), the whole concept of crowdfunding will become a whole lot less attractive to a lot of people.

Not unless prospective projects were willing to take a substantial discount to soften the risk - but that destroys the viability of Kickstarter for many projects.

<comment><USER6> > Investments usually have an upside commensurate with the perceived risk.

My mental model of Kickstarter is more like giving money to the EFF: maybe they give me a hat (they did, actually; I didn't want it; they seemed to refuse to let me leave without the hat... it was weird, as it almost made me want to give them money less, as they apparently were spending some of it on hats people didn't want, but hey: maybe it was some accounting thing), but the real reason I do it is I know I contributed to something that I believed in, _even if_ it sometimes doesn't accomplish the things that they wanted to get done.

When I see a Kickstarter, I think the same way: I think of it more like deciding whether or not to give the guy on the street corner some money in the hat (more hats...) that they have next to them; I don't really get anything in return for that money (arguably I got the music they already played, but I could have easily freeloaded that): I'm just contributing to his life as an artist, in the vague hope that I've helped something beautiful exist in the world.

<comment><USER15> That may be your mental model, but what's enforceable is the terms of service, not your mental model.

<comment><USER6> No: this has nothing to do with terms of service, this is "what do people use the service for". If your mental model of Twitter is "a place to have group discussions, in public" (a common use case), I think you are pretty crazy, but it obviously has nothing to do with the terms of service. The EFF gave me that hat: they seemed to consider it _imperative_ that they did so; I did not for a second consider myself to be purchasing a hat.

I maintain that if Kickstarter is "pay money now for gifts later" then they are not in compliance with either Visa's terms of service (no delayed renumeration for payments, a policy explicitly there to avoid "I have money ten months ago, and am now angry"), as well as laws regarding collecting sales tax (which are quite clearly written in a way that keeps you from just claiming "oh yeah, this thing where people give me money and I give them products? trust me: that's not a purchase... don't tax me, bro").

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I originally came here to make a "Kickstarter is not a store" comment. I totally side with the backers and their ire, and if the devs really did squander the money "recklessly" as indicated then they have what's coming to them but the chorus of "I'm officially requesting a refund" was making me thinking of Michael Scott declaring bankruptcy.

Come to find out, from the Kickstarter ToS[1]:

      Kickstarter does not offer refunds. A Project Creator is not required to grant
      a Backer's request for a refund unless the Project Creator is
      unable or unwilling to fulfill the reward.

If Alex Peake really _did_ blow through $170k and the product is in fact totally scrapped, then these folks (the Primer Labs folks) seem to be in a world of hurt, owing out a lot of money that they seemingly don't have anymore. And call me a jerk if you want, but I think this is probably the best thing that could happen to Kickstarter; a decent precedent gets set for what happens when you don't deliver on a physical product before the service gets so big that it gets totally out of hand.

[1]: <http://www.kickstarter.com/terms-of-use>

<comment><USER17> "unless the Project Creator is unable or unwilling to fulfill the reward."

Read that again. If they haven't fulfilled their explicit promises, a refund _is_ required.

<comment><USER18> Unfortunately, I think that statement is written too loosely to hold up in court. It will be too easy for a lawyer to say "my client is both willing and able to fulfill these rewards, he just needs more time/money/etc". Unless there are more specific constraints in the full TOS (which I haven't looked at), this statement won't offer much protection to the backers.

<comment><USER19> "He is able, he's just not able"?

<comment><USER20> I am able to get a degree from a college. I just need more money and time.

<comment><USER19> When talking about abstract capability, sure, but that's never what it means in a legal sense...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I used to live with Alex, and saw several iterations of Code Hero (originally called Primer after a book in Niel Stevenson's "The Diamond Age"). His enthusiasm for teaching kids to code, singularity stuff, etc was infectious. He was able to recruit developers very easily at Noisebridge, and various events.

When I first met him, his game was very rudimentary- basically just a tree in space. That was actually pretty much it. He was able to weave such a compelling story around the project that a lot of people pitched in to help him with it. He was able to actually get some pretty high calibre people to spend a lot of time advising him and giving him contacts.

At one point, he had 5-6 developers working with him to get the game ready for a YC application. He was actually able to get someone to let him use a large office for free in SOMA, while they waited for the response from YC. When the YC funding didn't come through, a lot of people were pissed at him. But honestly, nothing is certain in a startup, and they should have known that.

I've personally always found his ideas very inspiring, although maybe his business sense lags behind. He really has thought out an entire dream for what he would like to build, and it is very compelling in a way. It's unfortunate that he's let his gift of gab get ahead of him.

It looks like his main mistake here was not sending people their trinkets? not sure from the KS page, and I haven't talked to him in a while. Honestly, so many startups fail, and it seems like it would be pretty tough to build a full 3d game with a built in code editor on 170k. There are many many startups that have gone through way more money and not shipped.

<comment><USER22> Everyone who has interacted with Alex says he is a stand-up guy... and that counts for something.

But if I took people's money to build them an X, and I failed, I would feel really bad about it. I would offer a heartfelt apology, and I would give them what I could to compensate them for my failure.

Alex may have tried hard. And he probably doesn't have the money to refund to people. But he could help his case by being honest about the project, and to recognize that he failed to deliver to those who invested in him.

Not only will that calm many upset investors, but it's the right thing to do.

<comment><USER21> He's a good guy, but some of his practices resulted in people getting very angry at him. He definitely believes in what he's trying to do and is very good getting other people to believe as well. People coded for him for weeks and sometimes months, under the assumption that some type of funding was going to come through. When it didn't, they were less than pleased. But I'm hesitant to comment any further because I may not have the full story on anything, having never been directly involved.

Like I said, he sometimes let his gift of gab get ahead of him, promising things that were not possible with the resources he had at his disposal. He's one of the most persuasive people I know, and had an easy time talking people into things.

Here's a previous venture of his, which also resulted in a lot of bad blood, although he seems to have resolved it to some degree: <http://blog.sinthetik.com/?tag=tacticalcorsets>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I saw Alex speak at a Unity meetup in San Francisco on October 17th of this year. He demoed Code Hero, and (I thought) he said it was available for purchase. I thought he came off as passionate about the project. I wasn't convinced that this would necessarily be a good way for noobs to learn programming, but nevertheless I thought it was a pretty impressive demo. Just my 2¢. (I'm not a kickstarter backer of the project, and this is the first I've heard of these allegations.)

<comment><USER24> Yea, I saw him pre-Kickstarter at the Open Science Summit over a year ago. Saw a pretty cool demo and always wondered what happened to this cool project.

This is a shame. He's not a "scammer" as some here are saying. He's a guy who's in over his head and probably in depressive paralysis. They say entrepreneurs are people who jump off a cliff and build a plane on the way down - this is what can happen when you hit the ground first.

Just remember: bad news is ALWAYS better than no news. This was probably salvageable a few months ago, but now it seems unlikely.

What other suits (other than the 3D Systems v. Kickstarter & FormLabs) is Kickstarter currently involved with?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> At the very least, I would be wary of any project which offers so many rewards for so little money. It's poor planning and poor allocation of money. And thus it reflects poorly upon the project creators.

For this project you have 1217 backers at the $42 level who get a digital download, a usb drive boxed up and signed by the whole team, and a t shirt. Obviously for such little money and so much in return, this is going to be incredibly popular. So now you have to sit your entire team down to sign their name 1200 times, purchase 1200 USBs and produce 1200 tshirts. That's too much time and money wasted. And yet money is exactly what you're asking for.

<comment><USER26> How much would it cost to buy and ship 1217 USB drives and t-shirts? That's probably $5-10 for each $42 backer.

<comment><USER27> You think just like every first timer on kickstarter. A friend of mine says she's never going to offer t-shirt rewards on her kickstarter projects anymore. In the end, it cost a lot more than what she thought, and involved significant physical labor which detracts from the purposes of the actual project at hand.

<comment><USER26> I think you misunderstand. I was suggesting that the rewards would consume a nontrival amount of the funding. I thought my estimate of $5-10 per backer was a generous underestimate. <:)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> For sure some lawyers will make some money, assuming they can find one to take the case. But I'm thinking they'll need _another_ kickstarter project to get it funded unless it is on a contingency basis.

If you invest on Kickstarter do it on the assumption that you'll never see the project realized and that there will be no net benefit to you personally. Do it because you wish to back the people, not the project per-se and if it works out then be happy.

This all looks like crying over spilt milk and trying to find a way to blame someone (anyone!) for the loss of little bits of money. If you can't afford the loss then _DO NOT INVEST_. Not in kickstarter nor anywhere else.

Going in without expectations will make it a much better experience for you as well as for the people trying to realize their project. If this guy spent it 'recklessly' then you're going to have to come up with some iron-clad proof of that and by definition you've already made your case impossible because clearly you're going to have a real problem to collect.

This case is a non-starter.

</comment><comment><USER29> I have a hard time believing they're going to find a lawyer willing to take on a class action case over $170k in damages and a defendant that is probably broke.

IANAL but you probably want to incorporate before posting on Kickstarter to protect yourself from backer lawsuits if things go south.

<comment><USER30> Not only that but it seems like they could fulfill a lot of the tiers of rewards pretty easily. Just release "Code Hero" in whatever its current state is. Is it just 5k of useless spaghetti code? Well, as per the standards set by the rest of the software industry, no claims were made about suitability of purpose! Enjoy your game! And then they could follow through with the minimum possible effort on the rest of the mostly vaguely worded rewards.

The most problematic reward is the $42 one with 1217 backers because it promises a physical box and USB stick, but you could get those pretty cheaply, much cheaper than the $51,114 of the total that represents.

<comment><USER31> Release the code. The backers are the code heroes. They can fix it. That's the game.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I think we're beginning to see the major disadvantages of using KickStarter and crowd-funding.

"Dealing with People"

Things fail by default. Look at how many companies have been started by geniuses, funded with hundreds of millions of dollars, mentioned on blogs all over the internet, and still the majority of them fail. So you can only imagine how the average person running a kickstarter feels when they can't reach their deadline. At least VCs understand the success/failure ratio.

VC investors are giving, few in numbers, and understanding. Crowd funding backers are the opposite: large in numbers, a pain in the ass to deal with, and irrational. If they give you $5 so help you Jesus/Alah/Buddha they will find every reason imaginable to yell at you for spending those $5 incorrectly. (see Amanda Palmer's kickstarter backlash story)

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm curious about the two people who pledged 10,000 to this project. That seems like a pretty ridiculous amount for a game like this, even if you really do believe in the cause.

Maybe the guy has a couple of reallly rich friends?

I've also heard speculation that, if a project is near it's funding goal but looks like it won't quite make it, the people running it might pitch in the rest.

<comment><USER34> I've never thought about that last point, but it makes a lot of sense. If it's the difference between getting most of the money or none of it, and the creators can afford to make up the difference, then in a lot of cases it might be rational to do that. That has to have happened at some point.

<comment><USER26> Someone should have suggested that to the developers of "Alpha Colony" who missed their $50,000 funding goal by just $28:

[http://www.joystiq.com/2012/12/04/alpha-colony-misses-its- ki...](http://www.joystiq.com/2012/12/04/alpha-colony-misses-its-kickstarter- goal-by-28/)

<comment><USER35> Christopher Williamson (DreamQuest founder) is a friend of mine, and posted on his FB wall that a donor pulled out at the absolute last second. There were plenty of people who would have chipped in, but they couldn't react in time. :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Can anyone, in a short summary, explain what happened and why people are suing code hero?

<comment><USER37> Code hero has had a rocky past; It was an indie darling, after a cool looking demo, but along the way the creator has done all the classic scam-artist things - Gone dark for a significant amount of time, been unclear on status in updates, gave strange and only half believable excuses for lack of progress. These are all trademarks of inexperienced devs, too, which is why it's hard to prove malfeasance.

There was a demo at PAX, which I saw; It looked okay, but barely more than the unity dev tools. There was something slightly off about the person I talked to at the booth, they seemed oddly desperate, but I'd put it down to it being a slow day for them.

I'm glad to see this fail, actually, if it fails - It was ambitious, and would have been cool, but if it fails it's a good wake-up call that these are, in fact, attempts - Not guarantees. I feel sorry for the ~20 people who put $1k+ into this for essentially nothing, but caveat emptor.

<comment><USER38> > caveat emptor.

Ironically, that doesn't even apply here - 'emptor' means 'buyer', but the whole point of Kickstarter is that you're _not_ a buyer - you're a backer.

Your point still stands; I just found the aphorism amusing, since the whole point is - as you said - that Kickstarter projects are _attempts_ , not guarantees (purchases).

<comment><USER15> But you are a buyer. By the terms of use of the site, you are purchasing the reward offered at the level you pledge, with a right to a full refund if the reward is not provided.

The problem is that project creators are treating Kickstarter as if it were a source for speculative investment with no obligation to deliver rewards when Kickstarter's own terms make it a system for purchasing with a commit to deliver or refund.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I never backed this project, but I did come across the project creator and I did actually watch him and others play what seemed like a functioning version of this game.

I don't know what happened or why the need for a lawsuit, but this could have some very scary implications for crowdfunding. Especially as Kickstarter is now the subject of a few lawsuits ([http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/21/3d-systems- sues-3d-printer-...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/21/3d-systems- sues-3d-printer-company-formlabs-for-patent-infringement-and-kickstarter-for- promotion/)). It is interesting that Kickstarter chose not step in.

I really hope Kickstarter doesn't end up like EBay and Paypal, the go-to marketplace of scammers.

<comment><USER3> _this could have some very scary implications for crowdfunding_

One of the really interesting things about the entire kickstarter model has been how it doesn't seem so scary to people offering up a kickstarter project. I remember raising the first round of funding at a startup and how "real" it suddenly got when you had a big chunk of someone else's money and some serious expectations there. But I knew people in the dot-com days who got funded and almost immediately blew through their series A on re-designing their workspace and buying awesome chairs and video games for the cafeteria.

One of those weird childhood experiences that I got while growing up in Las Vegas was seeing people suddenly come into what they consider a "lot" of money. Some folks would get meticulous and figure out how long they could make it cover their current expenses, some would spend it in lavishly stupid ways for cheap thrills. The trick is that when you're walking around the models at a car dealership and you realize you could write a check for any car they had on the lot with no haggling, you don't succumb to that. You find the place were you assume you have no money available and work out what the best value is. Easy to say, hard to do.

A friend of mine from Sun cashed out his stock and asked me what he should go out and buy. I suggested he pay off his house. That would translate the money into a monthly 'benefit' in the form of one less bill to pay, and it would save him a ton over the life of the loan which seemed like a pretty reasonable rate of return. He did, and thought it was a really boring use of the windfall. Until 2001.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> A note from Alex on Primer Labs site:

<http://primerlabs.com/developmentcontinues>

Changed link for the actual post.

</comment><comment><USER41> I don't think failure to deliver is the biggest issue; the real problem is that he seems to have gone completely dark on his backers while apparently continuing to cheerfully update his Facebook status.

I'd guess that he's somewhat overwhelmed by the situation and unable to deal with it, so he's pretending it doesn't exist. If this is the case, I hope, for his sake, he manages to face it long enough to get it out of his system. I know from experience this sort of thing can eat away at you, and that letting people know you messed up can be a huge relief.

</comment><comment><USER42> Hello Hacker News. I'm Alex the lead developer of Code Hero and here is my response to this news story, updated as I continue to answer the specific questions people have:

<https://primerlabs.com/developmentcontinues>

Here's the Google Hangout where you can talk to us:

[https://plus.google.com/hangouts/_/2f0778f953e6506ccb5e95232...](https://plus.google.com/hangouts/_/2f0778f953e6506ccb5e95232cf91282f361e6b3?authuser=0&hl=en- US)

Here

Code Hero development continues. We released the first alpha build of the game after PAX and we're releasing alpha 2 soon to show you the latest progress.

<https://primerlabs.com/download> (You do have to buy the game to play the alpha as that is how we sustain development, but you can see how the game has evolved over the last year in the trailers: <http://primerlabs.com/trailer>)

UPDATE: We reached Dustin Deckard by email. He said he wants the game to succeed and that his position is being misinterpreted in some media reports. He's not suing us, he's just trying to get answers about the project's progress as we hadn't replied to his email before. We're answering journalist and backer questions since posting the first response and posting them here. Our ongoing updates will be posted below as we answer people's questions as transparently and quickly as possible to make sure people are clear that the game development continues and we're going to communicate everything about its progress from now on.

UPDATE: We're on a Google Hangout you can join if you want to ask us whatever you'd like. Some journalists have questions and a lot of our friends and supporters who believe in us have reached out and asked how they can help.

[https://plus.google.com/hangouts/_/2f0778f953e6506ccb5e95232...](https://plus.google.com/hangouts/_/2f0778f953e6506ccb5e95232cf91282f361e6b3?authuser=0&hl=en- US)

We are committed to finishing this game and although progress has slowed down and the release is taking longer than we planned, we remain dedicated to working on the project and will continue to do so because we believe in this game and we believe in making programming fun to learn.

We are testing a second alpha release of the game to release soon so you can see what we've added since the first alpha. We exhibited our first alpha release at PAX and you can download it here.

Some of our Kickstarter backers are frustrated with the lack of updates on progress, and Code Hero lead developer Alex Peake would like to make a personal apology:

Hello backer. I owe you a thanks for your support and an apology for our lack of updates on all the progress we've made with your help. I started the Code Hero project to make a game that teaches people how to make games and you backed us to help make that happen. We are going to finish this game for you and everybody else in the world who wants to learn how to code.

I believe in this mission and I'm grateful that you and so many others have believed in Code Hero too and supported us to work on this project. I worked on the idea to make a prototype for a year before asking for your help on Kickstarter, I built a team to work on it for a year since, and we are committed to finishing this game and continuing to add to it so you can make games of your own.

Game development is hard and many studios and projects fail, but I can't let you down because what we're making is important. It's important to me personally to give all the people in the world a way to learn to code that is actually fun. I won't let any obstacles stop the Code Hero team from completing this. It's my life purpose to make this game because I want to see you make games of your own. Software development is hard work and we're behind schedule and solving technical challenges to add player level creation much harder than the already huge creative challenge we set ourselves to begin with. But every big project faces big challenges and we're going to figure ours out and get the game out and keep updating it and expanding it to make it grow to keep challenging the skills of our players as they learn more and more game coding skills.

Many of you may not have tried the latest alpha we showed and released at PAX. I encourage you to download it and try it and see how much we've accomplished so far. The first alpha shows a world called Gamebridge Unityversity and your first mentor Ada Lovelace who guides you through the tour of the game. First you visit the Arcade you can play and post player-created games built with the world editing tools, but first you visit the Labyrinth where you learn how to edit the game's variables to beat it. Next you visit the Library where you can learn about Unityscript programming. Then you visit the Real Artist Shipyard where you're introduced to the Scenebox world editor to make and ship your first level. The tour is designed to take the player from playing an adventure game to making their own right from the outset. It isn't complete yet, but it shows what we built and we're hard at work expanding on that first release to get the new functions fully working and the new training levels fleshed out.

We're testing a new second alpha release tomorrow to show what we've added since then and we're working towards a third more feature complete alpha that will be ready for general use as a complete learning tool.

I know the level of frustration some people have is high right now and that it is my fault for not communicating about our ongoing progress, but I want to reassure everyone who has backed us not to panic: Code Hero is not dead and we will not let our supporters and Kickstarter backers down. All our backer rewards will be delievered along with the game. It is taking longer than we hoped, but the game is becoming awesomer than we planned too. I'll post a more detailed update soon with the new alpha build and answer any questions and concerns people may have.

If you'd like to reach me, my email is firstname.lastname@example.com and I'm on Google Hangouts and skype username "empowerment" and I will answer your all your questions or concerns.

<comment><USER21> Hey, great to see you in here- how is the timeshifting dubstep codetana coming along?

<comment><USER42> The Codetana is pretty awesome and the next step in it is to integrate the scoring system so you can do some challenges with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> For many of the backers, it seems to me like that's just the risk of investing in new products/companies. If they didn't receive the promised reward for their level of contribution, that seems like a problem though.

<comment><USER44> Of course it's a problem. That's what happens when you create expectations that 100% of fully funded projects are going to go on to completion (leaving along the murky middle ground of completed but sucking terribly.)

VC's, who are professional investors and certainly better versed than the general public on how to triage projects going sideways probably have ~5% of projects totally fail, where the product never reaches production.

Kickstarter needs to manage expectations and have a solid policy on how to deal with situations like this... else, they'll be the next failure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> For everyone who is a backer and has met Alex personally, please vouch for his passion on Kickstarter. Doing it here does not help.

I don't consider Alex the most experienced dev, but I do think he is one of the most passionate people I have met. He tries for the stars and often times falls short, but so did the Wright Brothers, Tesla, and Edison.

Even the best of startups fail. I think the rate is like 1 in 100 that succede. I hardly think we should hold kickstarter projects to a higher standard.

I have contributed over a thousand dollars to Kickstarter projects, and I don't consider any of those dollars, purchases. I consider them donations. Some projects will succede while others fail.

Don't let the legal system make an example of this.

Prosper is still a great company, but legal quagmires made it much less than it's original vision. I'd hate to overly regulate kickstarter.

<comment><USER46> > I don't consider Alex the most experienced dev, but I do think he is one of > the most passionate people I have met. He tries for the stars and often > times falls short, but so did the Wright Brothers, Tesla, and Edison.

It doesn't matter if he's the most passionate person in the world. Lack of communication and failure to deliver is what matters here.

> Even the best of startups fail. I think the rate is like 1 in 100 that > succede. I hardly think we should hold kickstarter projects to a higher > standard.

If a startup receives $170k in angel funds you'd better believe the angels would expect frequent, regular updates on the progress (or lack thereof).

> I have contributed over a thousand dollars to Kickstarter projects, and I > don't consider any of those dollars, purchases. I consider them donations. > Some projects will succede while others fail.

It doesn't matter if you consider them to be donations, they're not. If a company promises to deliver items like shirts and USB drives in exchange for money they're legally obligated to follow through.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I met Alex personally and visited him at his apartment. He gave me a demo of Code Hero. A lot of things worked. A whole lot of things didn't work, and if I could understand if a programmer would feel embarrassed for the code to be released that way. I've also had occasion to overhear discussion about the project. From what I've seen, there was a tremendous failure of project management. From what I understand, there was no form of automated testing. There were team members who didn't work well with others, and the team's overall capability (or lack of) resulted in frequent broken builds.

In short, I don't think there was any malice at work here.

</comment><comment><USER48> I totally wasn't aware Alex even had a kickstarter. I actually know Alex since I go by Noisebridge and saw him there a few days ago. Does Kickstarter bind you to a date to deliver a product or consider the whole thing as failed?

</comment><comment><USER49> Part of the lesson here might be "don't delay the release of the originally promised project because your scope has become 'awesomer' than you originally planned. You can scope creep forever.

TL;DR: Don't Duke Nukem your backers.

</comment><comment><USER50> This is the risk in investing, period. Kickstarter should do what it can to reduce the risk of scammers (properly screen and check into submitted projects and their founders history), but they're not in existence to be an insurance policy on consumer's bad investments. The lesson here is even in a very simplified world of investing, research and knowing before you invest is crucial.

I do wish the pursuit on the side of Alex Peake success, people should ask questions and investigate how he lost all that money. I like the idea of crowd-funded & crowd-accountable.

</comment><comment><USER51> The average pledge is $23. Class action seems a little bit unreasonable. Especially since these are supposed to be donations. Are they not?

</comment><comment><USER52> A class action lawsuit over $200,000?

This is why crowdfunding is a bad idea. Even if you are a scam artist (which I am not saying potential defendant is).

<comment><USER53> A class action lawsuit is a great idea. It is clear from the comments here and on Kickstarter that this situation has been worsened by conflicting expectations. A lawsuit will help clarify what the public can expect from crowdsourcing, and for project founders it will help clarify their responsibilities.

<comment><USER54> I would suggest that a lawsuit will help clarify what the lawyers and judges expect from crowdsourcing while completely ignoring what is best for crowdsourcing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I, for one, think it's delightful that more people are getting to understand the vagaries of product development from an investment standpoint. The more people experience the pain, hopefully the less broken things will become.

</comment><comment><USER56> Is there a short explanation of what's happened? I haven't heard of all this.

</comment><comment><USER57> So what are the actual terms of Kickstarter? I always assumed it was something more like venture capital than a loan, and if a project wasn't completed... that's that, the funders get nothing.

<comment><USER15> It's not. Its more like a loan (well, actually, its more like a sale: the creators are obligated to provide the rewards offered to backers or to refund any backers to whom they cannot provide the rewards.)

Which, if you think about it, makes sense -- fixed rewards (the loan/sale model) come with obligations to provide the reward, equity stakes carry more risk.

It wouldn't make much sense for Kickstarter to use a worst-of-both-worlds equity-like downside risk with loan-like upside reward.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> I am afraid once a successful class action lawsuit is unleashed, many similar lawsuits will be in the rise. It will definitely stifle innovation, defeating the very purpose of kickstarter

</comment><comment><USER59> No one should ever expect that an investment will provide any specific return. Especially when it's not SEC regulated, audited, or otherwise credentialed at all. And extra-especially when the platform on which the funding is made explicitly disclaims any expectation of project completion saying "Kickstarter does not investigate a creator's ability to complete their project. Backers ultimately decide the validity and worthiness of a project by whether they decide to fund it."

</comment><comment><USER60> Shameless plug: we handle t-shirt reward fulfillment :P <https://teelaunch.com>

</comment><comment><USER61> <http://primerlabs.com/developmentcontinues>

</comment><comment><USER62> Kickstarter is neither purchase nor investment, it's a grey area.

I guess the lawsuits were bound to start flying sooner or later.

</comment><comment><USER63> How is it that the word 'hubris' failed to appear in any of the 177 comments?

</comment><comment><USER64> Can they request chargebacks through their respective credit card companies? That seems like it's the easiest way to get their money back, although it's a bit old at this point.

<comment><USER65> You can't do chargebacks on purchases from 10 months ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Couldn't the backers just request a chargeback?

<comment><USER67> Probably not. There's a time limit on chargebacks, and Kickstarter is pretty explicit that when you put money into a project promising some result at a future date, you're not actually paying for a committed shipment of that product.

<comment><USER34> Apparently Kickstarter's terms do state that project creators are legally responsible for fulfilling their pledge rewards, though. If those aren't fulfilled, then backers are entitled to refunds from the project creator (at least as far as Kickstarter is concerned).

This seems to be meant to give some legal pressure on project creators without punishing them too much if their projects fail for whatever reason. It's interesting though that many projects (like this one) promise rewards that explicitly require the completion of their project, in effect making them completely liable for refunds.

<comment><USER68> This is a great point. Leaving aside the practical issues of getting money from people who don't have it, this really raises some red flags about the Kickstarter model. Unless it's just a way of raising capital up-front for a fairly ho-hum project that basically just requires time and energy (and, even then, stuff can still happen). But Kickstarting projects of the sort that routinely fail a decent percentage of the time, like video games, looks a lot less attractive if the received funds look something more like a loan than an equity investment.

<comment><USER34> True, but if project creators don't promise completion as part of the pledge reward, then they don't assume so much risk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> and it sure won't be the last ...

</comment><comment><USER70> Context?

<comment><USER71> Found this on google - [http://www.giantbomb.com/code-hero/61-39471/code-hero- dev-ta...](http://www.giantbomb.com/code-hero/61-39471/code-hero-dev-takes- the-money-and-runs/35-570344/)

Not sure I get it, seems a lot of people don't understand things can fail, then people become overwhelmed and to scared or inexperienced to deal with the issue.

Maybe there's more to it and the are still trying for money?

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> This whole thing is a scam , plain and simple. I'm sorry for those who invested in that kind of product , but when you deal with real VC , the business you are investing in cannot just ignore you. You meet the executives on a regular basis , you get reports , business plans , previsions , etc ... Crowdfunding simply doesnt work if the project is just barebone. Crowd funding should be the last step of a project industralisation , not the first. There was close to no code in that project , only smoke... whoever invested in that scam , i hope you learned your lesson.

</comment><comment><USER73> I don't know enough about the story here to have a strong or moralistic opinion, but from what I've read, this whole thing stinks.

Kickstarter is supposed to make it easy and lightweight to raise money for projects, but if a failed project can ruin your reputation, then that money is coming with some severe strings.

If he really is fraudulent, then he probably should be sued and he shouldn't get funded again, but I see a bad precedent and a chilling effect here.</comment>


The DEA Seized Bitcoins In A Silk Road Drug Raid - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/27/the-dea-seized-bitcoins-in-a-silk-road-drug-raid/ <comment><USER2> After reading articles about seized bitcoins, I can't help but think about all those other digital assets floating around that could be valuable: Eve Online spaceships and Plex, prepaid years of service (Dropbox plans are $99 and up)...

</comment><comment> the-kenny Protip: Always store your Bitcoin private keys on multiple locations. I don't think the DEA has moved the bitcoins itself, they most like just took the harddrive with the wallet on it.</comment>


Startup book for micro-entrepreneurs - <AUTHOR> http://www.startupbook.net/ This is really good stuff. I'm reading the sample chapter now and it's just hitting point after point for me. <comment><USER2> Having bought this book and reading it currently, i thought I'd chime in:

Overall, a pretty decent read so far. Walling makes a very, very strong case for marketing as an essential arm of entrepreneurship - something I was honestly content to ignore till now. He also underrates the act of development - whether this is what he genuinely thinks or an attempt to off-set a natural bias in his reader, I am not sure.

Definitely worth a read, but I am not happy to see the price at $19, when I bought it just a couple of days ago at $24. You listening, Rob? :)

<comment><USER3> Yep, I'm listening. The price has been $24 for a while and I just lowered it last week. Apparently you just hit the wrong side of that timing.

If it makes you feel better I can raise it back, or for that matter drop a fiver in the mail for you :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> why the price of the pdf/epub version is the same as the paperback?

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah I was a little put off by that too. But then I figured it was pretty cheap anyway. I haven't bought it yet, I'm going to re-read chapter one and then buy the pdf I think.

<comment><USER3> >>then I figured it was pretty cheap anyway

That's the idea. If you can't afford a $19 book you're going to have a hard time starting a software business...even a one-person operation.

<comment><AUTHOR> I really like your pricing strategy. I nearly bought the paperback/pdf package at $31 (I'm in the UK) until I realised that I really don't need the paperback too.

But you nearly had me! Throwing in the PDF was a huge motivation to upgrade. I think (if I may be so bold) that you should throw in the PDF with all paperback sales, and make that obvious on the homepage, eg:

[Download Sample] [Buy PDF $19] [Buy Paperback & PDF $24]

Re-reading chap.1 is on my list for today and then I'll buy the PDF.

<comment><USER3> Good suggestion - I'll test it out.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Vote on NASA's Z-2 Suit Design - <AUTHOR> http://jscfeatures.jsc.nasa.gov/z2/ <comment><USER2> I can already hear all the complaints about having the public weigh in on this, and even on the waste of organizing it, but I think this is a pretty brilliant move on the part of Nasa.

There's far too little to 'inspire' kids anymore and I imagine far fewer kids saying they want to be astronauts. This does the double duty of involving the public even in a tiny way and of hopefully coming up with a design that moves people a bit as well.

Both good things in my book.

<comment><USER3> As much as I like this as a way to get kids interested, and I know that NASA couldn't offer massive fundamental design differences to an uneducated public (just not knowing what is safe), I was hoping for a little more than what pattern the LED lights appear on the suit. Designs 1 and 3 look like glow bracelets stitched into the suit, and the [as of this post] current winner is just modeled after Tron.

That said, I'd donate a month's paycheck if they remodeled it to use Buzz Lightyear's color scheme and design.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In case people comment without scrolling to the bottom and reading the FAQ:

"Is the design that is selected going to fly to space?

No, as the Z-series is still in the prototype or non-flight phase. The cover layer of a non-flight suit, which is used for ground-based testing, serves as abrasion/snag protection, a cover for technical details, and to a lesser extent, aesthetics. For a flight suit which is actually used for a spacewalk, the cover layer performs many other important functions such as micrometeorite, thermal and radiation protection. These requirements drive selection of specific high-performance materials and design details that would preclude us from using many of the features you see in these options for the Z-2 suit. "

</comment><comment><USER5> I liked the way the old suits' exteriors looked so much better than any of these ideas. Even the Z-1 they show at the top of the page is so, so much better.

As often happens, an instance of designers mistaking their own taste for something that everyone will see as better.

</comment><comment><USER6> To infinity and beyond?

[http://wordlesstech.com/wp- content/uploads/2012/12/NASAs-Z-1...](http://wordlesstech.com/wp- content/uploads/2012/12/NASAs-Z-1-new-Spacesuit-1-640x430.jpg)

<comment><USER7> It bums me out this isn't an actual option for the vote, I thought the same thing as soon as I saw it and got very excited to place my vote, only to find it wasn't an actual option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What about fast-tracking the skin tight futuristic one being worked on at MIT?

[http://www.businessinsider.com/dava-newmans-skintight- spaces...](http://www.businessinsider.com/dava-newmans-skintight-spacesuit- could-be-nasas-future-2013-12)

</comment><comment><USER9> I am disappointed that they are all the same and they all look pretty bad.

</comment><comment><USER10> I saw a pretty fly space suit at the top of the page. I saw some very disappointing things that looked like a 12 year old made them with duct tape. I got to choose between those disappointments. I then read that these won't even make it to space. I hereby conclude that this is a pretty bad PR move.

</comment><comment><USER11> Why do they all look like the astronauts made the suits themselves out of duct tape?

</comment><comment><USER12> Suits should be personalizable, and vivid for search-and-rescue situations. These grey camo styles are inappropriate. How do I vote 'none of the above'?

</comment><comment><USER13> we're sending our best and brightest into space and making them wear _shorts over their pants_?

<comment><USER14> They'll be prepared in case a hockey game breaks out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Space has extremely high contrast light conditions due to the lack of reflective materials in a vacuum, shadows have zero visible detail. To counter act that effect you'd want an all white suit to help diffuse as much reflected light as possible.

<comment><USER16> > No, as the Z-series is still in the prototype or non-flight phase. The cover > layer of a non-flight suit, which is used for ground-based testing, serves > as abrasion/snag protection, a cover for technical details, and to a lesser > extent, aesthetics. For a flight suit which is actually used for a > spacewalk, the cover layer performs many other important functions such as > micrometeorite, thermal and radiation protection. These requirements drive > selection of specific high-performance materials and design details that > would preclude us from using many of the features you see in these options > for the Z-2 suit.

Basically this is just them allowing people to have impact on what the next iteration looks like, not what the actual suit will look like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> If we're gunning for aesthetics, with a little dye and some extra lighting, that first one might be a decent Garrus approximation.

[http://silentstephi.com/Misc/garrus14.png](http://silentstephi.com/Misc/garrus14.png)

<comment><USER18> I don't think they'll be doing that many calibrations in this suit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is anyone else missing the text from the page? Chrome 33.0.1750.154 m, no extensions.

[http://i.imgur.com/a7lfdrY.png](http://i.imgur.com/a7lfdrY.png)

</comment><comment><USER20> Completely PR. Design can't even be used in space.

<comment><USER21> $4.4 million has been spent to manufacture and test it. Seems like it that's a stretch too far for PR from NASA.

Why couldn't it be used in space?

<comment><USER22> They themselves say so: "requirements drive selection of specific high- performance materials and design details that would preclude us from using many of the features you see in these options for the Z-2 suit"

<comment><USER23> That quote is referring to the outer layer of the suit only. This vote appears only to be voting on the outer protective layer of the suit while testing is being conducted on earth, and the outer layer will be replaced for actual space use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Sigh: The process cannot access the file 'D:\JSCFeatures\z2\Default.aspx' because it is being used by another process.

<comment><USER25> Didn't see any cached copies, so here is this: [http://i.imgur.com/6o5rBLV.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/6o5rBLV.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Why do we need manned missions, is there something a drone can't do?

<comment><USER27> React intelligently in real time five light-minutes from Earth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Why are aliens wearing them?

</comment><comment><USER29> aka, "hey this el wire stuff is pretty cool!"

<comment><USER30> Though, I thought EL Wire (at least, the stuff consumers can get their hands on) is sensitive to UV light and leaving it in the sunlight (in the Earth's atmosphere!) reduces its lifespan. Space would be the wrong place for that stuff, assuming that they haven't taken this into account.

EDIT:

Looks like the suit is for ground testing only, though this would still apply if they're using it in the sunlight.</comment></comment>