Ello Raises $5.5M, Legally Files as Public Benefit Corp. - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/23/ello-raises-5-5-million-legally-files-as-public-benefit-corp-meaning-no-ads-ever/ <comment><USER2> Facebook's statement: "Trust us. We'll show you ads."

App.net's statement: "Trust us. We'll charge you so you don't have to see ads."

Ello's statement: "Trust us, we won't show you ads."

The statement we deserve is akin to email's promise: you don't have to trust us; competing providers keep the ecosystem honest. (And the service is federated so you can connect with friends on other services)

Ello strikes me as another silo'd service. What happened to the dream of building "big" services that outlast a single company or team? The 30 year lifespan of SMTP+email, the 20 year life of HTTP, the 10 year life of XMPP.

Today we have users voting with their feet: eg I use Twitter/I stopped using Twitter after they pissed off the developer community.

Wouldn't it be great if we built services where the decision isn't use/don't use, more, my identity follows me to the best service provider (heh, like email!)?

The real statement should be: "you don't have to trust us, this is a protocol: - developers can write services against it, users can choose the developers service they like the best. And when that service goes pop, or the developer moves onto a new project, you are not stranded - just switch providers.

(disclaimer: this stuff makes me angry and we're trying to solve it at Buddycloud Towers)

<comment><USER3> _Today we have users voting with their feet: eg I use Twitter /I stopped using Twitter after they pissed off the developer community._

The fraction of users who actually do this is so tiny that they don't make a dent in Twitter's userbase. The vast majority of users don't care about "trust", or "privacy", or ads, or federation, or API limits, or the ability to leave the provider if it turns evil. They care about where their friends are. That's literally the only feature that draws users in the numbers that make a social network last. I wouldn't expect Ello to be able to convince enough people to join and stay without massive, enthusiastic, engaged adoption -- and what engagement it has is coming from the bandwagon effect, not its promise of no ads.

By the way, remember Diaspora[0]? It's an open-source, federated social network that anyone can host, that requires no trust in any individual provider, and with no ads. It still exists, after attracting quite a lot of attention and Kickstarter funding a few years ago. And it dropped almost entirely off the radar, because its selling points have nothing to do with people's friends actually being there.

[0] [https://joindiaspora.com/](https://joindiaspora.com/)

<comment><USER4> I feel like they should rename the Millennials the "Give Up Generation". You guys just take defeatism to 11 every time any tries to say something hopeful for people to start doing what's better for the world. Good grief. Let the poor guy dream for a minute.

<comment><USER5> Millenials are actually much more optimistic and prone to idealism (as represented by volunteerism rates) than other generations: [http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/files/2010/10/millennials- con...](http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/files/2010/10/millennials-confident- connected-open-to-change.pdf)

<comment><USER4> Could you explain how idealism and volunteering are mutually inclusive?

I would definitely agree that Millenials are optimistic. About themselves personally. Defeatist about everyone else. That was what I was talking about in the above comment and maybe I should have clarified that more carefully.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Two observations:

a) after signing up there setting "Allow Ello to gather anonymous information about your visit, which helps us make Ello better. Learn more." defaults to YES.

This from a site that is selling themselves as a privacy conscious is simply comical.

b) [https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=ello.co](https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=ello.co)

\- SHA1 cert

\- No FS

\- Defaults to RC4

Their ops team has not paid attention to properly configuring TLS. Not encouraging at all.

If anyone at Ello is reading this there is an excellent resource for securing your TLS setup at [https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Server_Side_TLS](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Server_Side_TLS)

<comment><USER7> Their app is full of hilarious bugs and hacks. But I guess that money can buy them a real dev team?

<comment><USER8> Don't really fault them here. Every startup's app is full of hilarious bugs and hacks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I still don't understand what value Ello brings. It seems to be a social media network for the sake of being a social media network.

Myspace let young people (and then everyone) connect online, share photos, and declare who's their friend.

Facebook let young people (and then everyone) chat with and follow their classmates, and eventually let everyone keep in touch (using that phrase loosely) after graduation.

Ello let's -- uh, let's say tech-savvy 20- and 30-somethings? -- do -- uh, let's say send messages? -- without seeing ads.

The mission statement is equally vague.

"Ello is a simple, beautiful, ad-free social network."

<comment><USER10> Ello has a few USPs as I understand:

1\. They let you choose any name you want (none of the "real name" stuff)

2\. They are very friendly, focused and responsive to the needs of LGBT community

3\. No ads (and thus less incentive to data mine the users, one hopes)

4\. They simply don't have the history of Facebook and co

5\. At least right now they are young, hip and very exclusive with invite-only membership (unlike Facebook that has everyone AND your grandma)

<comment><USER11> > 2\. They are very friendly, focused and responsive to the needs of LGBT > community

What special needs does the LGBT community have, that are not being filled by other social networks?

<comment><USER12> I am gay and even I don't know the answer to that question

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Well, that's interesting, although I'm skeptical. Can anyone with legal experience say exactly how much this means? If Ello genuinely just did something that makes it difficult for future investors/acquirers to turn Ello into a ad-fueled, data-selling, privacy-undercutting behemoth, then that's pretty encouraging.

But ... it just seems "too good to be true." I've expected them to be about as "ad free" as every other business whose initial ideals are abandoned once the founders have gotten theirs and moved on.

<comment><USER14> IANAL, but the statute this is using is only a year old, so the answer will likely "we can guess, but don't know for sure until there is caselaw behind it"

Until recently most public benefit corporations were specifically chartered by the government (e.g. USPS, CPB), but a number of states have created a law for privately establishing them recently.

<comment><USER13> Wow, that's really interesting. Did not expect it to be something so new. I'm going to have to read more about this ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Lovely how $5.5M is thrown at a simple CRUD app without revenue, exists due to viral marketing and not even near a stable or representative user base (people want to get in for the sake of being in). How can a social network be invite only? It is the "cool people" table all over again.

Looking forward to the billion dollar valuations.

</comment><comment><USER16> Amazing to me that a site that is both hard on the eyes and not nearly as usable as its competitors has raised $5.5M. How do investors think they will make their money back? Simply by microtransactions and paid features? Perhaps the investors are that optimistic, and they think this is the future of social networking.

<comment><USER17> >>Amazing to me that a site that is both hard on the eyes and not nearly as usable as its competitors has raised $5.5M.

Raising money, at least initially, is about two things: user traction and good PR. I don't know how many users Ello has, but I've personally been hearing about them all over the place, especially from my early-adopter type friends on Facebook. This leads me to believe that the company has a really good PR firm working for them behind the scenes (PG's "submarine" analogy comes to mind).

And the thing is, Ello may be hard on the eyes and not be very usable now, but both of those things are relatively easy to improve. If they do have good user traction, that means they have solved the hardest problem, at least in my opinion. Achieve growth and the rest follows rather naturally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> "which Ello says makes it legally impossible under US law for investors to require Ello to show ads, sell data, or sell the company to any buyer who would violate those conditions"

Quite possibly the silliest thing I've ever seen written in Techcrunch.

<comment><USER19> Yes, the status is pretty weak if you think of it as some kind of protection from investors. A "public benefit corporation" compared to a regular corporation removes only one specific route investors could use to force a company to do something: a shareholder lawsuit alleging that the company is failing to maximize shareholder value. But in the post-WW2 era, even regular corporations have no legal duty to maximize shareholder value, and can be run according to a number of principles (the belief to the contrary is a mixture of some early 20th century cases combined with a good amount of urban legend about corporate law). Especially considering that nearly anything can be justified as "part of our brand image", and courts aren't interested in second-guessing that: if Ello thinks it's important to its brand image to not show ads, a court is not going to inquire into whether this is a good or bad business decision, regardless of whether it's a public-benefit corporation or a regular one.

All the other ways investors could force a corporation to do something, such as pressuring the board, voting in directors, voting on shareholder resolutions, etc. remain available. If the investors think Ello should show ads, or should sell to Google, or anything else, they have good ways of making that happen (given sufficient share ownership/etc.).

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> A benefit corp can always vote to remove its benefit corp status. If a majority of the ownership goes to investors, they can vote to revoke the no advertising clause.

Public Benefit Corporations really don't have teeth, at least as far as I am aware.

<comment><USER21> According to the Delaware Public Benefit Corporation rules it requires a two thirds majority of share holders to change status. If that is held up by the courts it's some teeth but not absolute protection against change.

<comment><USER22> If they gave over a third ownership to EFF things would become interesting. Don't see it happening though.

<comment><USER21> Under 2/3rds I wonder what would be best long term? A founder owning at least a third could be a problem if when they died, those shares went to someone who was more interested in profit than stated goals. Maybe to get access to the social network you have to buy a share? Spread out the shares to enough individuals and put in language to prevent proxy voting and require a minimum percentage of share holders to vote to change those stated goals?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Ello is demonstrating something important - you can now undercut "free with ads" on price. How much, per user, does it really cost to run a social network now? Not much. Hosting is so cheap that Atlantic will rent you a full-time virtual machine for $0.99/month. Ello's actual computing cost is probably less than that.

Selling ads is expensive. A majority of Google's headcount is ad sales reps. The main search engine, a few years ago, was developed and run by about 90 people, I was told by an ex-Google employee. Google probably spends far more running the ad side of the business than the search side.

Craigslist has 40 employees, and they've been able to crush the newspaper classified advertising industry. They charge for a few categories of listings. That's enough to keep them going.

At some point, users sense that there are too many ads. Myspace went there when they had a revenue drop and tried to make up for it by increasing the ad density. Big mistake. Myspace usage went into a screaming dive and never pulled out.

The big ad-supported web-based businesses are fighting Moore's Law. What they do is getting cheaper, but their price, in terms of ad density, isn't going down to match. That makes them vulnerable. There's hundreds of billions in market cap out there just waiting to be destroyed.

<comment><USER24> _> How much, per user, does it really cost to run a social network now? Not much._

How much, per user, does it cost to run a social network? Not much.

How much, per user, does it cost to run a social network _at scale?_ Quite a bit more.

<comment><USER23> If the cost per unit goes up with volume, you're doing something very, very wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It all sounds nice, but we all know there's always two end senarios if their service takes off... They grow a user base, get shot a NSL: 1) Keep the success rolling and continue on business as usual while their naive users are data farmed. 2) Pull a lavabit.

Think we all know senario two is unlikely. I'll stay away from social media for the time being, perhaps until some decentralized mesh net encrypted p2p service becomes a reality. 2020?

</comment><comment><USER26> Note that the Twitter response to this news is generally "wait, Ello still exists?"

Additionally, let's say they'll make their money through subscriptions instead of display ads. Then they can just adjust the UI/UX to push toward subscriptions, which will result in the problem that Ello had claimed to be solving. The $5.5M has to result in an exit, somehow, and therefore the incentives between business and consumer are misaligned.

<comment><USER27> > $5.5M has to result in an exit, somehow.

Or maybe they'll run an actual business, instead of the startup pump-and-dump. Not every success story has to be "an exit"

<comment><USER28> The investors have to have some way to convert their ownership in the company into liquid assets at some point. Either that's on the open market through an IPO, by another company through an aquisition, or maybe Ello can have enough cash-on-hand to buy back those shares or pay dividends to their investors.

If there's other ways, please tell me; I'm genuinely curious about this! But as far as I can tell, even "run[ning] an actual business" has to have some sort of "exit" for the investors. It's my hope that Ello can buck the "acquire or IPO" trope, but their investors have to be on board with it. And with $5,500,000 invested, even the most patient investors have a limit.

<comment><USER27> Exit seems to imply the "get rich quick" scenarios of a buyout or IPO. I'm saying an alternative exists: Make money running a business the old fashioned way.

The last company I was a part of had a similar level of investment, and they aren't selling. They aren't looking at an IPO, instead they manage a healthy 20M/year in revenue, with a a healthy profit margin. Not everything is an "exit"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Ello is the new Clinkle

<comment><USER30> What's Clinkle?

<comment><USER31> The new Color.

<comment><USER32> LOL, This entire thread has me in crying. I think the underpinnings of Color were very ambitious, but the way the product was released was not orchestrated very well.

<comment><USER24> Indeed, it's almost like they fell onto the wrong Path.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best practices for keeping various business systems in sync? - <AUTHOR> https://imgur.com/a/NZvdkL4
We use these systems for our small business (20 employees, 3 physical locations).
(A) ERP: Handling Inventory and Accounting.
(B) Less Annoying CRM: Tracking Customer Interactions. It's a CRM.
(C) Mailchimp: Sending customer marketing communications
(D) Google Suite: Email, Contacts, Calendar and Drive
(E) Sparkpost: Automated internal emails with report attachments. Notification emails to customers.
(F) Server: Runs scripts for (E) and (G)
(G) Hugo/Netlify Main Site: Mostly static site. Interacts with (C) and (D)
My question is how do you keep track of everything and keep it all in sync?
Do you create a separate database and use scripts to update it from all these different sources?
How do you handle this at your companies?
I foresee increased interaction between all of these systems and it's getting overwhelming keeping them synced and working together. <comment><USER2> At a startup I worked We had our own database and synced those systems from our datastore

<comment><AUTHOR> I see. That's what I'm leaning towards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've seen this being handles using an ESB in the middle (solutions like WSO2, MuleESB). The ESB receives all relevant events and triggers actions based on that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting, had never heard of ESBs before. Found this which explained this briefly (for people reading)[0].

Does it sort of act like an API?

0: [https://www.mulesoft.com/resources/esb/what- esb](https://www.mulesoft.com/resources/esb/what-esb)

<comment><USER4> It usually consumes and publishes API's to facilitate the "ESB" function (which is incredibly vague, but pretty much acts as the "glue" to do all-the- things).

The ESB term is so overused, and products like the one you linked have so much functionality baked into them, they can act as pretty much any business or system function in an organisation. And they do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Zapier is one tool people use.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm using that in limited cases, but it seems like a stop-gap solution at best, because:

* Not enough granularity

* Uses polling for most integrations rather than web hooks

* Has task limits on all plans which may not be suitable for a high number of integrations/interactions.

<comment><USER6> Integromat solves these issues.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I'll check it out.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Indian Official Puts Public Webcam in Government office - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/18/business/global/in-india-an-official-puts-a-webcam-in-office.html

<comment><USER2> The point is that its not any official but a Chief Minister( akin to Governor in the US) that is doing this. The message that he is putting across to all other Government officials is much more important than us being able to see if he is slacking off or not.

<comment><USER3> I think this is to score political brownie points, but it still an interesting idea. It comes in the wake of what has been a very eventful year in India against corruption[1] which included fasts by a prominent social activist to pass India's first ombudsman bill[2].

[1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Indian_anti- corruption_mov...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Indian_anti- corruption_movement)

[2]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Lokpal_Bill>

<comment> jk-in This is no political gimmick. I am from Kerala, where Oommen Chandy is CM, and can quite understand what he is trying to achieve. Mr. Chandy is a straight forward and no non-sense person who speaks his mind. And he has created enough enemies in doing so. Now there are quite a lot of people who blame him for corruption for no reason. This is his way to put an end to such blame game; way easier than denying all allegations against him.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Reminds me of when my friend got flagged by a cop and him being in a rush, just slowed down enough to pass a cash bill to the cop. The cop refused and asked my bud to pull over. When my friend asked what the problem was, cop goes "you wanna show this(bribing) to entire Mumbai? crazy guy." He proceeded to give my buddy a handshake through which money was passed.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's just a trick to boost his "anti corruption" image, I presume.

You don't get bribes in the office, in a clear, visible way. It's sent through intermediaries, persons he trust. And even if you want to pay him in the office, which is never done, you could slip the money among papers or in so many ways which are not caught on camera.

I don't understand what we should expect to see. A person who offers a big pack of money or a suitcase filled with dollars?

<comment><USER6> You don't get the whole point of it.

In India, it is known that officials in the government slack during office hours. Delaying of process for unworthy reasons. Numerous time-breaks and other infinite 'small' but aggregatively deterrent forms of behaviours in the office.

The camera moves the whole system a step forward. Transparency is more easily perceivable to the public now. The necessity of a sting operation in the office does not emerge. People can have a fresh perspective on the laws for the government officials.

Psychologically, this might build a better work environment. It has been shown that adding monitoring video cameras does add a certain form of placebo effect.

I hope the 'mantra' should be improvement, no matter how small it is. A complete revamp of the system is more like dreaming about humans taking over all the nine(eight eh?) planets, and that too in an year.

<comment><USER7> "In India, it is known that officials in the government slack during office hours."

It's been known to happen in North America too. :)

<comment><USER8> The corruption in India is a bit different. If you need a electricity connection for you home you need to pay a bribe. If you need water connection more bribe. If you want to run a hotel you need to take 375 permission and for each you have to pay a bribe (all these 375 permission need to be renewed every year, well most of them). Even the poorest people who live less than $2 per day have to pay a bribe to get a certificate that says they are poor enabling them to take benefit of various social security schemes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Posting an official record of visitor logs, like what the White House currently does (though imperfectly), would probably be more useful than a webcam.

[http://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing- room/disclosures/visitor-...](http://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing- room/disclosures/visitor-records)

<comment><USER10> It may not be since it leaves interpretation of intention of the visit up to you. With the webcam, although the feed may be muted, you could still find out more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> A more important step would be to make each and every communication between government officials public on their respective website. A letter written, a order passed, a note on the file. Government officials generally scan and put the documents as PDF which makes it difficult to search.

<comment><USER11> On top of that, we would also require some kind of automated technology to scan through these public data (reports, documents, videos, etc.) and detect anomalies. Without such automated detection, at the rate any govt. produces data, manual detection would be very slow and it would be improbable to catch corrupt deals.

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure I understand how a program could be made that scans through reports and videos and reports possible instances of corruption, at least without a few huge steps forwards in AI and image processing.

<comment><USER8> The problem is a challenge but worth solving.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> johnx123-up OT: Google says it is 8:15pm in India, but still people working there.

<comment><USER13> you know Indians are hard workers :) [It's 12:50 am here right now]

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Gimmicks. The same guy is releasing a corrupt ex-minister from jail citing age as an issue. The minster spent maybe 40 days in jail after being sentenced to an year of imprisonment on corruption charges. You watch Indian politics for a while you get fed up.

</comment><comment><USER8> As if the corrupt deals happen in the Office. Generally CMs have agents who meet you in pub and get the deals fixed.

</comment><comment><USER15> although there's more to the story, the headline itself sounds so 1990s. (soon you'll even be able to order pizza online!)

</comment><comment><USER16> Black/corrupt/illegal money in foreign banks is coming back to India via Hawala/FDI/FII/NRI/PIO investments. This money is used to create jobs in the economy. Your anti-corrupt agitation will not create new jobs in India.

<comment><USER17> Are you seriously attempting to suggest that the Indian government should embrace corruption as a natural state of things?

Are you seriously using the possible threat of lost jobs as a foundation for this argument?

<comment><USER16> Yes</comment></comment></comment>


Rockwell Automation allies with PTC - <AUTHOR> https://www.controlglobal.com/industrynews/2018/teched-1 <comment><AUTHOR> Interesting move on the Industrial Internet scenario, looking for the convergence of IT and OT.</comment>


Sarah Jeong Is Watching the Web from Portland. She Sees a Pile of Garbage - <AUTHOR> https://www.wweek.com/news/2019/04/03/sarah-jeong-is-watching-the-web-from-portland-she-sees-a-pile-of-garbage/ <comment><USER2> She thinks the internet is a terrible place, yet she seems to think nothing of putting hateful content out there.

Oh wait, there's _context_ to those hateful tweets. Sorry, I keep forgetting that there's _context_ to the things we say and do. I guess I forgot that context still exists in our viral-story-obsessed culture.

Seriously though, why anyone still thinks that it's okay to act like an a-hole on the internet and then - with no self-awareness - criticize the culture they've helped fashion.

I think Miss Jeong needs to grow up.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't think someone that vicious has anything to tell us about the Internet.

"I'm not embarrassed by any of those tweets."</comment>


Hermes: A Lightweight JavaScript Engine Optimized for React Native on Android - <AUTHOR> http://hermesengine.dev/ <comment><USER2> Looking really cool! Hope there will be talks about implementing this and the benefits that it will bring.

Is this also coming to IOS or are there app store regulations that would prevent apps including Hermes from being uploaded?

<comment><USER3> It will probably never reach iOS since App Store rules prevent engines from JIT'ing (is considered "arbitrary code execution" and could circumvent their own static sandbox verification requirements).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Start Using Hermes link is broken</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a strong news/review site for cross-platform development? - <AUTHOR>

There are a number of pretty impressive resources for cross-platform development that don't seem to get enough HN love in my opinion; for languages, LiveCode, Haxe, and PureBasic come immediately to mind. For frameworks: JUCE, Framework7, wxPython, Mono, Qt, Cordova, etc.  Many, many others exist.
Some of these solutions can be perfectly good for LOB apps or even simple games, even if they can't be used for the next COD. I would love to be able to find reviews by knowledgeable devs to help when deciding how I plan implement my next project.
Is there a handy central news/review source where cross-platform frameworks are discussed? Or (gulp) is it time to make one? <comment><USER2> Would quibble with some of your choices of what's a language vs. what's a platform. But yes. Are you only talking about open source or also commercial?

<comment><AUTHOR> Commercial too. I think corporate devs are perfectly fine with a few rough edges or less than cutting-edge tools or even (gasp) having to pay for software. It would be awesome to know what firms have actual functioning support contracts, for example.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: When and why did you give up on starting a company? - <AUTHOR> Many people never try to build a company or never come across a problem they think is worth solving. But I'm curious about those who have (or have considered it) and then, for whatever reason, opted out of the path.
What did it feel like to give up? Does it still bother you? What was the shift in mindset necessary to get you over the emotional/psychological hurdle of quitting? Are you absolutely sure you'll never try again?
Trying to get a contrarian perspective. <comment><USER2> Once upon a time I set out to just build a startup fueled by ambition. I designed and strategized, e.t.c basics of the product, but I always found it hard to find a (technical) cofounder despite talking to friends. After learning to code and realizing how much work (& burnout) I'd have to put in before this takes off, I opted out knowing I wasn't trying to make a product users want. A proof of that was the difficulty in finding a cofounder despite having skilled enough friends. I got into depression. As I opted out, started learning the process of creating products that actually have real users wanting. I read carefully all of PG's essays, used Headspace for meditating & focused on good diet. The most important lesson was about fixing broken problems in your daily life. Now, I'm working on a new startup with 2 other cofounders who are actually passionate about what we're building. We have alot of feedback/subscribed users and safe to say, we're on the right track.

I guess the idea of 'think big' is just wrong. Young folks get pressured into 'making it' that they believe thinking big would solve your problems/make you great. That's what I experienced. Don't think big, focus on discovering the tiny little things - the ones broken, and fix them. That's joy enough for a Hacker.

<comment><AUTHOR> That last point you make is very PGesque. IIRC, he wrote that the truly good problems exhibit pants-on-fire demand amongst a small number of people, and are therefore at first generally very niche. I think he even said there's usually no way to predict if you'll ever break out of that niche.

Hope your new startup goes well!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I started a company (LLC) to develop something I was trying to patent (utility patent). I kept things going as a side business for about 5 years while I worked a full time job, wrangled the patent, and put money and time into manufacturing, designs, and marketing. I hoped to build up a customer base to show the value of the patent and then license the patent to other manufacturers.

When the patent application failed, I decided to close the business. Without the IP, the more I built the market, the more likely someone else would come in to compete, and an established manufacturer could definitely beat me on price.

I learned a lot about how difficult marketing is (I come from a mathematics and software background) and how much footwork goes into sales. I also made some mistakes in the patent process I won't make again.

It sucked to give up, but was also a relief. I wasn't betting my future on it, so it wasn't a huge hurdle to make the call. No patent == no business.

I'll probably try again some day.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed about marketing and sales. I feel like the hacker mindset tends towards 'build it and they will come', with a ???? for the phase in between.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I haven't 100% given up, but I've postponed it indefinitely.

When? For the past 4 years.

Why? For several reasons.

I started a company before (3 times actually).

The solo business was a slog, spending a lot of time doing things I hated to for barely enough money to feed myself, and with little outlook for growth.

The first VC-funded startup burned me out big-time. I'm not cut out for years on end of 60-plus hour weeks for a tiny chance at a large payout and a 98% chance at nothing. Especially given the opportunity cost of a senior engineer's salary.

The second startup I almost didn't do, but I was super passionate about the topic. Unfortunately, the team fell apart, but not before the stress impacted my health (permanently) - and the other things I learned from that experience informed the other major reason I'm not doing that again any time soon.

Which is that ideas are a dime a dozen, but good ones are rare, and marketing is HARD.

If I were to stumble across an idea I couldn't pass up, that would make a solid lifestyle business (no way I do the VC dance again) and that I could build in my spare time... ok, I might try again.

But starting a company and hitting it big areno longer part of my dream.

Instead I'm working on moving to a place I want to live, finding a 20-30 hour/week gig (be it contract or salaried work), and living a life that I can actually enjoy day to day, spending time with people I care about.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a really great account and it sounds like the experience at least helped inform your outlook on life in a positive way. Thanks!</comment></comment>


WikiLeaks Has Morphed from Journalism Hotshot to Malware Hub - <AUTHOR> https://backchannel.com/wikileaks-has-morphed-from-journalism-hotshot-to-malware-hub-1bdd68cc560 <comment><USER2> Boy, just like so many MP3 sharing services of yester-year. What a curious development!

Standard practice to poison the well of your enemies.

This is a phased approach by the way, and malware is a preliminary step. Next come reputation smearing forms of pornography, and hardware destroying payloads for the ones that have no reputation to smear.

<comment><USER3> That's what I thought, too, when I just read the headline. But on reading the article, it becomes clear that they're just insufficiently curating the files they're distributing.

What should happen if some corrupt official's email contains a malware attachment? There is some value in not curating the data - it would be good to know if they responded to a social engineering attack, for example. Perhaps a payload reveals that some other government got into their email years ago, and has been blackmailing them?

Similarly, it would be informative to find that someone was using email to share pornography of themselves, especially if that pornography was blackmail material, but there ought to be some curation.

<comment><USER2> Oh, clickbait. Nevermind.

I suppose maybe this identifies the polarity of backchannel.com's political alignment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Spam" folder in my Gmail account contains lots of malware too. It means Google is evil and gmail is designed to spread malware.

<comment><USER3> Clearly Google is not evil for having malware in your spam folder. But it would be unethical to post the contents of your email account, expecting people to download and inspect the email in a context where they could be infected by the malware in your spam folder, without at least a warning that it contained viruses.

I think the best resolution would be to post the contents of non-spam mailbox folders with a warning that some attachments may contain viruses, or scrub attachments. Post the spam folder and suspicious attachments separately, most people aren't interested in that part of the email archive. This would save bandwidth and prevent users from becoming infected. The small risk that something important in the spam folder is missed is outweighed by these benefits, IMO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I see this cites the 'Turkish women were exposed' meme, rebuttal here ([https://glomardisclosure.com/2016/08/08/what-a-hit-piece- aga...](https://glomardisclosure.com/2016/08/08/what-a-hit-piece-against- wikileaks-looks-like/)) but really all you had to do was see Conde Nast at the top and you could predict the tenor of the piece..

</comment><comment><USER6> I would highly doubt that Wikileaks is serving malware.

<comment><USER3> They're not, they're serving email databases, which contain spam which contains malware:

> Bulgarian security expert Vesselin Bontchev ... figured that the average > email database is likely to contain some harmful attachments, and that > casual WikiLeaks visitors might now be endangered. His hunch was right, and > he quickly uncovered a collection of malware...

<comment><USER7> >and that casual WikiLeaks visitors might now be endangered

The horror.</comment></comment></comment>


Some notes on Affiliates & Referrer Marketing - <AUTHOR> http://alexblom.com/blog/2010/09/some-notes-on-affiliates-referrer-marketing/

<comment><USER2> 30% seems a little high in terms of retention. What industry?</comment>


Ask HN: Identifying duplicate data from a large dataset? - <AUTHOR> Hi,
We have a dataset around 150 million URLs and other meta data in ElasticSearch and looking for an efficient way to identify the duplicate URLs/titles from our dataset. Used ElasticSearch term aggregation but it becomes very slow and returns only 10,000 URLs and most of the time it misses the URLs.
Currently, we have a redis with Sorted Sets, before any indexing URL, we look for the into redis set.
Options we have explored:
1. Clickhouse, storing all the URL and running aggregation etc. on it later on? 2. Storing the URLs in redis along with bloomfilter.
If you have worked on a similar thing, would love to hear your feedback.
Thanks. <comment><USER2> This is easier than deduplicating the many different URLs which have the same content. A harder problem awaits you!

ML & basic stats

<comment><AUTHOR> What approach would you be going for initially for deduplicating same urls?

<comment><USER2> You might look at a real data processing system, like something from the Apache projects</comment></comment></comment>


Linux Journal goes 100% digital - <AUTHOR> http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/linux-journal-goes-100-digital

<comment><USER2> I really liked the physical version, because it was a nice break from hanging out in front of the screen. But sure, this is likely the signal to go shopping for an e-reader.

[http://text.krona.tm/post/9155074593/linux-journal- goes-100-...](http://text.krona.tm/post/9155074593/linux-journal- goes-100-digital)

</comment><comment><USER3> I read this earlier today. If I could get LJ on my iPad I would buy a subscription. Seriously, I have been buying Wired on the newsstand for like more than 10 years, but now that I can get it on my iPad for $4 less it's a no brainer. I think the future of many magazines is on platforms like the iPad.</comment>


9th Circuit finds copyright in program did not extend to the program's output [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2017/02/09/14-16701.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Key part below. The decision does not address the general question at hand, but finds that DDC has not demonstrated facts that align with the authority they cite.

"The district court, relying on an unpublished district court decision, rejected Design Data's argument that the SDS/2 copyright could extend to the program's output. See Design DESIGN DATA CORP. V. UNIGATE ENTERPRISE 9 Data Corp. v. Unigate Enters. Inc., 63 F. Supp. 3d 1062, 1068 (N.D. Cal. 2014) (citing Atari Games Corp. v. Nintendo of Am., Inc., No. C 88-4805 FMS, 1993 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8183, at *11–12 (N.D. Cal. Apr. 15, 1993)).

Other authorities, however, suggest that the copyright protection afforded a computer program may extend to the program's output if the program "does the lion's share of the work" in creating the output and the user's role is so "marginal" that the output reflects the program's contents. 4 NIMMER ON COPYRIGHT § 13.03[F] (quoting Torah Soft Ltd. v. Drosnin, 136 F. Supp. 2d 276, 283 (S.D.N.Y. 2001)).

Assuming, without deciding, that copyright protection does so extend, we nonetheless conclude that Design Data did not raise a question of material fact that the imported SDS/2-generated images and files reflected the contents of its program. Design Data did not present evidence establishing that SDS/2 "does the lion's share of the work" in creating the steel detailing files or that the user's input is "marginal." Torah Soft, 136 F. Supp. 2d at 283. Thus, the district court correctly rejected Design Data's argument that the SDS/2 copyright protects the images and files that UE imported and distributed.</comment>


MineSweeper in ReactJS - <AUTHOR> http://harpb.github.io/bug-sweeper/

<comment><USER2> I miss the auto-empty feature that MS Minesweepers has where any neighbouring 0 tiles to a 0 tile that is clicked on are uncovered.</comment>


Text-align: Justify and Responsive Web Design - <AUTHOR> http://www.barrelny.com/blog/text-align-justify-and-rwd/

<comment><USER2> Did he just pwn "grid system" implementations (grid classes, to be specific)?

<comment><USER3> I don't see how, you're still having to calculate percentages at each break point. Maybe I'm missing something but it seems it's only saving you calculating the margin/padding. If you're using a tool to calculate the percentages for you such as [http://semantic.gs/](http://semantic.gs/) I don't see how you couldn't do the same with less calculation and much less CSS.</comment></comment>


Looking for a co-founder in law background, specifically immigration law - <AUTHOR> We are currently looking for a co-founder who has background in law to build a startup together to disrupt the existing industry. Anyone who is interested, free feel to send the resume or linkedin profile to email@example.com. We are located in SF Bay Area. We are in the product validation stage. <comment><AUTHOR> bump it up</comment>


Elmore Leonard's Rules for Writers (2010) - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/feb/24/elmore-leonard-rules-for-writers <comment><USER2> Tell your story with the fewest words possible.

Don't cheat the previous rule by using sesquipedalian words.

Describe the action instead of the irrelevant details. Every detail you include is a Chekhov's Gun that will have to be fired later.

Take out the character that is most like you. Take out the character that is least used. Make them fight to the death in their own short story, and reward the winner with a nice, hot shower in a post-apocalyptic dystopia. If they survive, they can be more interesting in the next story you let them into.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've enjoyed his prose for exactly these reasons, though he's not a favorite author or anything.

If you're a film buff, you can thank him for Quentin Tarantino + Joel & Ethan Coen.

If his story-telling philosophy sounds appealing, check out Justified. It's a TV show loosely based on some of his characters, but it's written like a love letter to his work. It finished just after his death, and was refreshing to watch right around when the concept of "prestige" TV started to collapse into itself / constant navel gazing trying to be the next Breaking Bad. There's a lot to take in about modern Appalachia (it takes place in rural Kentucky), but there's no heavy-handed metaphors. It's not trying to be a Greek tragedy or a Dickens novel, just razor-sharp dialog and fun action that somehow adds up to more than the sum of its parts.

<comment><USER4> Big second for Justified. It was a great show with few low points and a solid finish. And, oh the dialogue... It's like what Sorkin would have written if he wanted his characters to sound like human beings.

<comment><USER5> Tim Olyphant as Raylan Givens and Walton Goggins as Boyd Crowder absolutely nailed their parts. Leonard expressed his appreciation for the actors and for the writers on numerous occasions. An amazing but underappreciated show.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Related:

[http://gioclairval.blogspot.it/2010/02/umberto-ecos-rules- fo...](http://gioclairval.blogspot.it/2010/02/umberto-ecos-rules-for-writing- well.html)

The original Italian by Umberto Eco:

[http://www.webnauta.it/wordpress/40-regole-per-scrivere- bene...](http://www.webnauta.it/wordpress/40-regole-per-scrivere-bene/)

which was in itself inspired by William Safire:

[http://www.listsofnote.com/2012/01/fumblerules-of- grammar.ht...](http://www.listsofnote.com/2012/01/fumblerules-of-grammar.html)

[http://www.maximumawesome.com/reference/g-safire.htm](http://www.maximumawesome.com/reference/g-safire.htm)

</comment><comment><USER7> "My most important rule is one that sums up the 10: if it sounds like writing, I rewrite it."

There's an interesting relevance to software here. You don't usually want your creation to foreground its own artifice.

<comment><USER8> If anything sounds like writing, it's this comment.

I agree with the sentiment, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Some pretty good advice overall, but it's more important to understand why these rules are important and why it's valuable to follow them (and why it might be worthwhile to break them). Also note that there are exceptions to every rule, but _you_ are probably not the exception.

Most importantly, writing (like coding) is not a process of scrubbing through a checklist of rules and making sure you follow each one. Build your toolkit through practice, refine it by editing yourself with a critical eye (using lists of advice if you like), learn to improve what comes out the first time in the future, and get closer and closer to a natural cycle of being able to reliably produce good writing without herculean effort. It's the same as in coding. You need to learn the lessons to know what patterns of code are useful, what code smells are worth putting in the effort to fix, how to effectively refactor code and go from one design to another without dropping the ball or hitting a wall along the way. It'll never stop being work, but you can get good enough so it will feel natural and you'll be able to produce stuff that you can feel proud of (even when you look at it years later).

</comment><comment><USER10> > Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip. Think of what you skip > reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words > in them.

There are two good pieces of advice here, I think.

One is about thick paragraphs of prose, and I think it really comes down to ergonomics. It's hard to read big walls of text. Word _count_ in this context doesn't matter so much as word _spacing_.

The second point is that some writers tend to include all the mundane details and in-between stuff that surrounds the story, but isn't actually part of the story itself.

What constitutes "the story" and what constitutes "the other stuff" is, of course, dependent on the story being told, the author, and even the reader. If you're reading Tolkien, the journey is the story. But if you're reading modern fantasy, you might want to skip all the walking between battles.

<comment><USER11> I thought the same about Tolkien. Tolkien breaks almost every suggestion from the list: he is verbose, his writing is intrusive -- he's constantly reminding you there's an author, with weird phrasings and lots of "and lo!" \-- his descriptions of weather and geography go on forever, as do his prologues.

BUT I don't think Leonard is saying Tolkien is wrong. He's just saying you aren't Tolkien, and that most writers should take heed of his suggestions, not that _every_ writer _must_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This might be good advice for a lot of writers, but it might depend on genre. In particular, some of it is surely wrong for science fiction...

<comment><USER13> Because science fiction is known for the quality of its prose? ;)

<comment><USER14> It is these days. Check out China Miéville for starters. And Michael Chabon won a Hugo award.

<comment><USER13> Those names shine so brightly because the sky is so dark ;). China Mieville is awesome, as is Michael Chabon. And I'll throw in Charles Yu ( How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe). You're right that there are lots of talented writers out there in the field. I love science fiction, and my criticism was a bit of "making fun of your own." You can't deny there is also a huge mass of third rate hackery - same as with other genre fiction like Crime, Romance, Historical Fiction, etc. Its not all Ursula LeGuin and Samuel Delaney ;).

<comment><USER14> Fair enough. And I did see your wink. :) I do think the trend is increasingly towards literary sci-fi, though, especially in print (less so in film and TV where it's become almost synonymous with action).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The eleventh rule should be: understand exactly why all of these rules exist, so you can know when it's possible (or necessary) to break them.

</comment><comment><USER16> These items are rather common sense guidelines almost everybody would agree with. As I'm not in crime fiction and since English isn't my mother tongue, I have to confess that I don't know EL. I'd suggest to another rule though: don't write a book if you have nothing new to add. Recommend some classic instead.

<comment><USER17> Yes, everything except the admonition against describing the weather is _extremely_ common English-language writing advice, as mentioned in countless books and essays over the years. With the bit about weather, he tries to be punchy, but he immediately has to backtrack and explain what he _actually_ meant: get quickly to character action and don't belabor set-dressing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> What works for one writer won't work for another. It depends on many factors, such as the audience or the genre of writing. It's possible to break these rules and have huge success. Some people like huge expository descriptions. Others like dialogue. Some like short and simple words. Others like complicated.

<comment><USER19> Yes,

It's worth noting Leonard is described as "hard boiled crime writer" and his rules for paring down writing to the minimum seem for the kind of writing that moves the reader relentless forward, not wasting any time to "stop and smell the roses". That legitimate approach - just not the only approach.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> There is a great chrome extension waiting to be written based on this.

<comment><USER21> I don't know about Chrome extensions, but there's Grammarly and the Hemingway App.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I read this as rules for winters and was hoping for a list of things that help cure seasonal depression brought on by winter.

It's clearly starting to mess with my head.

</comment><comment><USER23> not uncoincidentally, these make for great transitions to a screenplay. Leonard's screen adaptations have been, in the aggregate, very successful.

</comment><comment><USER24> Rule 11: Develop your own voice, and know when to completely ignore rules 1-10.

</comment><comment><USER25> Shorter: Just write dialogue.

<comment><USER26> I think "just write _action_ " would be more accurate, though dialog is an important subset of action.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> A pretty standard set.</comment>


What YIMBYs Get Wrong About Housing - <AUTHOR> https://www.governing.com/columns/transportation-and-infrastructure/gov-yimby.html <comment><USER2> Straw man alert. I've never heard a YIMBY argue for "build anything, anywhere." I've only ever heard them argue for exactly what the article proposes, i.e. smart, context-aware density.

<comment><USER3> Really? That's not the impression I get from comments here on HN. It does sound more like some people support the idea of unlimited construction, at least they might just be the most vocal.

I live near Boston, and Boston reached its peak population in the 1930s--over 800,000. Today the population is closer to 600,000, and the number of units of housing available in the city is about 60% higher than it was in the 1930s. Is it cheaper to live here now? No, it is not. The idea of induced demand is definitely in play with housing: when more is available, more is demanded.</comment></comment>


Building a Progressive Web App in React, using Firestore for offline support - <AUTHOR> https://blog.truthlabs.com/building-a-progressive-web-app-in-react-11c77a7fccb3 <comment><USER3> For those wanting an open-source/self-hosted PWA solution with arbitrary offline data, Apollo is quickly getting there. You can see an (awesome) state- of-the-union roundup at [https://github.com/benseitz/apollo-link- offline/issues/1#iss...](https://github.com/benseitz/apollo-link- offline/issues/1#issuecomment-371678922) .

The real problem with all of these systems is that it's very hard to get arbitrary offline mutations "right." For instance, a GraphQL mutation changing nested objects would likely need to translate to a database transaction... and although Firestore supports such transactions, it doesn't support them offline: [https://firebase.google.com/docs/firestore/manage- data/trans...](https://firebase.google.com/docs/firestore/manage- data/transactions)

Of course, if you can structure your data such that it can be represented by a CRDT - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict- free_replicated_data_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict- free_replicated_data_type) \- offline sync comes much more naturally. [https://irisate.com/crdt-for-real-time-collaborative- apps/](https://irisate.com/crdt-for-real-time-collaborative-apps/) is a great writeup that includes links to some actively-developed JS libraries.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've recently started experimenting with building a PWA, and for others as allergic to JavaScript as me, I can heartily recommend Elm, and especially [https://github.com/halfzebra/create-elm- app](https://github.com/halfzebra/create-elm-app) as a project bootstrapping tool. Per its "Users Guide" at [https://github.com/halfzebra/create-elm- app/blob/master/temp...](https://github.com/halfzebra/create-elm- app/blob/master/template/README.md#making-a-progressive-web-app):

 _" By default, the production build is a fully functional, offline-first Progressive Web App."_

For building a UI, you could do worse than starting with one of the following:

\- [http://package.elm-lang.org/packages/debois/elm- mdl/latest](http://package.elm-lang.org/packages/debois/elm-mdl/latest)

\- [http://package.elm-lang.org/packages/rundis/elm- bootstrap/la...](http://package.elm-lang.org/packages/rundis/elm- bootstrap/latest)

\- [http://elm-ui.info/](http://elm-ui.info/)

\- more at e.g.: [https://www.reddit.com/r/elm/comments/7713wm/elm_ui_libs/](https://www.reddit.com/r/elm/comments/7713wm/elm_ui_libs/)

</comment><comment><USER5> I recently had to develop a quick PWA for a small conference. I had no serious web-development experience prior (i know the basic of js, HTML and CSS) and decided to use ionic. I expected a lot of struggle, but I was seriously surprised, it was really easy. I can definitly recommend ionic if you want something app-like!

It's all open-source: [https://github.com/hackundsoehne/talKIT-Event- App](https://github.com/hackundsoehne/talKIT-Event-App) beware, I was under a lot of pressure and often it's quick an dirty.

I built the whole thing in 2-3 days, including the backend.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for sharing. We also started building PWAs for events recently and we think it's a very good use case. There is too much money spent on event native apps these days by organizers and those native apps are typically uninstalled after the event is over.

Our project: [https://chatbird.io](https://chatbird.io) (PWAs are not communicated on the landing page yet since we started with bots)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What will happen with your Startup if Google decide to increase prices for Firestore, just like they did with Google Maps last week (it's like 40x more expensive now than before). Google is very famous for increasing prices and deprecate their products - they deprecated more than 100 products now as you can see on Wikipedia: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products#Discon...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products#Discontinued_products_and_services)

</comment><comment><USER8> At this point, has "progressive" come to mean "will render without javascript (or css)"? I suppose eventually I will need to accept this definition, but I personally do think that this concept - a valid, valuable one - <USER2> probably have a different word. Either that, or we need a new word to describe a web app built with progressive enhancement.

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

The idea to progressive enhancement (to me - I understand these terms weren't unambiguous even as they emerged) is that you start with content, add structure (HTML), and slowly "enhance" to higher and more elaborate UI features (CSS, javascript). You add each layer in a way that you can always fall back to a simpler method or rendering. It is not necessary to render the structure to access the content. It is not necessary to render the styling to access the structure. It is not necessary to render the interactivity to access the styling.

Now, a web app built progressively doesn't necessarily meet the criteria for progressive enhancement, since plenty of people add html, css, javascript, and beyond without preserving the ability to render from a previous stage. But I think people have confused the ability to render to a previous stage with progressive enhancement as well. It's a good quality in a javascript framework that you can still view your site in lynx or with a pure html browser, but writing your app upfront in a JS heavy manner and relying on the framework to fall back for you? I think that's something other than "Progressive Enhancement", because you didn't enhance your app progressively, you started at the highest level of UI. I'd call that a "backwards compatible" web app.

</comment><comment><USER9> I am making an app with Vue and Firestore and am excited by the potential of PWAs. Really, the only thing that frustrates me at this point is that Apple doesn't support local notifications. If they did, I really wouldn't have to consider making a native app at all.

<comment><USER10> I'm building a PWA - good luck trying to get OAuth logins in Android or iOS when the user has pinned to homescreen. ;(

<comment><AUTHOR> Take a look at [https://firebase.google.com/docs/auth/](https://firebase.google.com/docs/auth/)

<comment><USER10> Yeah, doesn't work if a user has already added to home screen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Stupid question but what does the Service Worker actually do? I thought they were used for offloading work to another thread but nowadays I always see it used for "offline mode". Why can't you just solve it with caching? Feels like I misunderstand something.

<comment><USER12> You are probably mistaken SW for Web Workers.

Web Workers are used to offload work to another thread and can communicate with messages

Service Workers is a new API which is now supported by all major browsers.

SW is branded as: Rich offline experiences, periodic background syncs, push notifications and more. "A service worker is a script that your browser runs in the background, separate from a web page, opening the door to features that don't need a web page or user interaction."

Full article on this topic: [https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/primers/servi...](https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/primers/service- workers/)</comment></comment>


How Patio11 built a product business (part 1) - <AUTHOR> http://productpeople.tv/2012/12/19/patio11-part1/

<comment><AUTHOR> My favorite story is how he learned to program without a computer: all he had was a "bunch of graph paper to represent the memory in a computer and the display."

He simulated programs by hand using graph paper. That's commitment!</comment>


Stop wasting time with email - <AUTHOR> http://davidbatey.com/productivity-hack/2013/09/06/reducing-email-noise.html

<comment><USER2> This reminds me of the following 2 minute video:

Could this be the end of email overload? [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqbfLwRRe6o](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqbfLwRRe6o)</comment>


Polymagnets in (mind-blowing) action - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IANBoybVApQ <comment><USER2> Makes me wonder if Polymagnets can have an application with Goodyear's concept spherical tires:

[https://corporate.goodyear.com/en-US/media/news/goodyear- rev...](https://corporate.goodyear.com/en-US/media/news/goodyear-reveals- concept-tires-for-autonomous-cars.html)

Video Here: [http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/a19747/goodyear- eagle-3...](http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/a19747/goodyear- eagle-360-spherical-tires/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I love this guys stuff.</comment>


Ardour 5.9 released - <AUTHOR> https://community.ardour.org/node/14850 <comment><USER2> If you like Ardour, consider a monthly donation! As other mentioned, it's a longtime work of Paul Davis and a close-knit community. Paul works full-time on Ardour thanks to these donations.

See "Finance" sidebar at [https://community.ardour.org/community](https://community.ardour.org/community)

<comment><USER3> Didn't Ardour use to sell binaries? I was looking at it a while ago for inspiration on how to make money for Octave. Have they switched to a monthly subscription donation service?

<comment><AUTHOR> If you follow the "Ready-to-Run Program" prompts on the official download page[1] as an anonymous or unsubscribed user, you will reach a page that explains their method/philosophy.

I'm sure Paul would be happy to speak to you on IRC (#ardour on Freenode) about successes/failures but of course I can't say this for sure.

Also, I am awaiting a stream of Paul's upcoming talk (as I can't get to France for LAC2017[2]) "20 years of Open Source Audio: Success, Failure and The In- Between"[3]. I hope part of the talk will address the financial aspects that are of interest to you.

[1] [https://community.ardour.org/download](https://community.ardour.org/download) [2] [http://musinf.univ-st-etienne.fr/lac2017GB.html](http://musinf.univ-st- etienne.fr/lac2017GB.html) [3] [http://musinf.univ-st- etienne.fr/lac2017/lacProgramGB.html](http://musinf.univ-st- etienne.fr/lac2017/lacProgramGB.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ardour is one of my favorite open source projects, and it's especially admirable considering that it's not a developer and/or server admin tool. It's rare to see people hack away for years on open source desktop software and constantly improving it.

<comment><USER5> Blender is another excellent example of this.

<comment><USER6> Add Inkscape to that list :)

<comment><USER7> And Krita

<comment><USER4> And Gimp

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In time for the Linux Audio Conference in Saint-Etienne, which starts this Thursday. ([http://musinf.univ-st- etienne.fr/lac2017GB.html](http://musinf.univ-st-etienne.fr/lac2017GB.html))

<comment><USER9> For anyone going, I highly recommend checking out the printing museum in the wonderful twisted wooden building that is the old city hall of Lyon (50km away).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I just downloaded Ardour (after trying it out a while back and somewhat giving up) and it's a pretty fantastic application.

What prompted me to get into it again was that I wanted to combine it with Hydrogen ([http://hydrogen-music.org/hcms/](http://hydrogen-music.org/hcms/)) using JACK ([http://www.jackaudio.org/](http://www.jackaudio.org/)).

I can _immediately_ see the power of JACK, but I just can't get my immediate use to work, which is when I hit play/pause in one application, the other starts as well.

In general though the potential in JACK just seems awesome, it's almost as intuitive as just routing patch cables in meatspace and I can't wait to get into it more. It also seems like something that'd be brilliant for a touch- screen.

I'm considering setting up another partition just for audio work.

<comment><USER11> > which is when I hit play/pause in one application, the other starts as well.

Is this the problem you are trying to avoid, or what you are trying to achieve? Assuming you want the play button in Hydrogen to start the other apps, you need to use the "J-TRANS" and "J-MASTER" buttons at the top of Hydrogen. In Ardour there is a toggle button for "Internal" or "JACK" and you need to set it to JACK.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm here late but wanted to mention what I consider to be Ardour's "younger sibling" (functionality-wise): Audacity.

It's usually enough to do what I need, clipping & cropping existing audio.

[http://www.audacityteam.org/](http://www.audacityteam.org/)

</comment><comment><USER13> Now that the MP3 patents are expired, it'd be nice if Ardour added MP3 import / export. I understand why they didn't in the past, but it's been a showstopper for times when I wanted to recommend a FOSS audio editor to non- technical friends.

Here's the latest discussion I saw on it: [https://community.ardour.org/node/14616](https://community.ardour.org/node/14616)

<comment><USER14> Export works for me in 5.8.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Ardour if fantastic. Its mixer is better and more usable than pretty much any other DAW I've tried. They are competing with software that costs hundreds of dollars and winning in many aspects. They should be an example.

<comment><USER11> Another thing I like is the routing grid. So flexible. Along with Jack, this does add some complexity and sometimes extra manual configuration, but the expanded possibilities are worth it for me. I have yet to encounter a patching scenario I can't handle with Ardour and Jack. Including things like playing an Ardour session over Skype to a music teacher while doing real time effects processing on my guitar all while recording the audio of the Skype session. Ardour + Jack is a powerful combo.

<comment><USER16> Absolutely. Another added bonus: it is really easy to use Ardour as a mixer and effects plugin host for experimental synthesis software like Supercollider or PureData

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I have been very pleased with Ardour - only took me a few minutes to have my XLR mic go through a compressor / limiter / expander virtual rack effects setup for better screencasting.

<comment><USER4> I've used it for recording music, combining some MIDI tracks with many audio tracks and samples. Once the audio system was set up and stable, working with Ardour was a pleasure and results were very good.

The main problem was getting high quality effects/plugins, paid or free. There are a couple, but in general life is much easier in this sense outside of Linux. That was 2-3 years ago, and hopefully things have improved since.

<comment><USER18> The CALF Plugins are pretty excellent, for the most part. Those are free (as in beer and as in speech, IIRC).

[http://calf-studio-gear.org/](http://calf-studio-gear.org/)

<comment><USER4> Those were the main ones I worked with, plus another commercial package, I forgot its name, which was decent.

The Calf compressor and bass enhancer were very good. I'm seeing that a lot of plugins have been added in the time since I last worked with Ardour. Makes me want to start making music again :)

<comment><USER18> Nothing like knocking the rust off :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'd love an open source DAW that was easy to use and didn't slavishly follow the UI constraints of a physical mixer (which works great on a physical mixer, but not so great when you're trying to control it with a mouse). Is there one?

<comment><USER20> What exactly would a mixer with a better ui look like?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you are curious about Ardour (or creative software for Linux in general) I highly recommend back issues of the Linux Voice magazine (RIP) which often reviews and explains such software:

[https://www.linuxvoice.com/creative-commons- issues/](https://www.linuxvoice.com/creative-commons-issues/)

For example issue 24 reviewed Ardour 4.6 and some plugins.

(no affiliation. the issues are under CC BY-SA )

<comment><USER14> Worth mentioning: [http://libremusicproduction.com/](http://libremusicproduction.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> For those interested in learning Ardour, YouTube has a lot of tutorial videos that have helped me. Seeing someone do something is sometimes easier than RTFM, especially when it comes to workflow. You do need to use some caution because there are so many videos and some are outdated.

</comment><comment><USER21> I bought Ableton years ago after trying really hard to tame JACK, Ardour, Hydrogen, and a handful of associated utilities unsuccessfully.

It makes me REALLY happy to see this community still going. I know it takes time but the results are usually well worth-it, to get open software ecosystems thriving.

<comment><USER22> There are some Linux distros, like AVLinux[1], which do all the heavy lifting for you.

Just boot in to them and you've got Ardour, JACK, Hydrogen, and a whole ton of other music apps all ready to use.

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

<comment><USER21> That would have been really nice 9 years ago when I was trying to assemble a linux based DAW. I might check it out one of these days.</comment></comment></comment>


Mosaic HIV Vaccines in Late-Stage Trials - <AUTHOR> https://www.verywellhealth.com/mosaic-hiv-vaccine-sparks-hope-4173079 <comment><USER2> I was thinking it'd be a huge bummer to this team if one of the Ad26 Covid vaccines ends up the frontrunner, and it ends up that tons of people have preexisting immunity to Ad26 when it comes time to give them this new HIV vaccine, but it turns out Janssen (who's behind the leading candidate here) _also_ has an Ad26 Covid trial, so I guess they're not that worried about it? If not, I wonder why not... some of the other adenovirus Covid trials, at least, suggest poorer performance in Phase 1 trials in people with preexisting immunity to either the actual adenovirus strain or the vaccine, so my impression was that for any given adenovirus strain, you pretty much only got one shot at using it to vaccinate (no pun intended).

<comment><USER3> Interesting! Could they deliberately mutate the strain in ways that decrease people's pre-existing immunity to it, before engineering it to become an agent to deliver the vaccines?

<comment><USER2> I don't think so, or at least, the Covid vaccine trials so far suggest that if it is possible, they either haven't done it or it didn't work, given that some study participants _did_ have pre-existing exposure, and it made the vaccine work less well. Worse still: older people, having had more opportunities for exposure over their lifetimes, were most likely to experience this outcome. Slight caveat, I guess, that where I've seen this discussed, it's been about CanSino's Ad5-vectored vaccine, rather than any of the Ad26 ones, but I don't know of any reason it'd be different.

From what I understand, part of the reason that the Oxford group chose a chimp adenovirus was specifically to avoid this issue, as the odds of people having been naturally exposed to chimp adenoviruses is probably pretty low.

<comment><USER4> From my very very limited understanding isn't the adenovirus just a delivery mechanism? Is there a dependency on ad26 that would mean nothing else could be the delivery mechanism?

<comment><USER5> I'd imagine that ad26 is just the serotype used, and so if you used a different serotype for other vaccines that don't have much cross immunogenicity, you'd be in the clear.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


VaynerMedia Is Bringing Sports Chants To Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/28/vaynermedia-is-bringing-sports-chants-to-twitter/ <comment><AUTHOR> for an "internet brand consulting" group, these guys sure picked a crappy tag to promote. I mean, #J_E_T_S_JETS_JETS_JETS .....is just plain stupid.

a) It's too long, Vaynerchuk is supposed to know twitter...why is he using a hashtag that takes up so much space? The same thing could have been done with #GOJETS or something along those lines.

b) It's too long to remember to spell properly. Is it 3 jets or 2 jets at the end. Is the first one jets with underscores or is it some other position.</comment>


Show HN: Ballpoint.io - <AUTHOR> https://ballpoint.io/files/examples/gopher <comment><USER2> I love how it lets you immediately jump in. These easy-to-access and use online tools are great. It's frustrating how tough it can be to find the right image manipulation tool; will add this to my toolbag.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is amazing, especially compared to the way my machine is brought low by Inkscape.

(I know Inkscape has a lot more features, but just loading one image + adding text on top should not lag a 2 GHz Quad-Core / 8GB machine.)

<comment><USER4> I couldn't load an image with this, though. Overall, it's lacking many features, too many to be useful. Key feature missing are keyboard commands, efficient ways to convert bezier handles (smooth to corner).

I use Sketch, and I highly recommend it.

<comment><USER5> As per Sketch, I used to love it when I was on a Mac, then I switched to Windows and since there's no Sketch for windows I switched to Lunacy (Windows only), a completely free native app that's 100% compatible with Sketch and that's equally good, if not better. I simply kept working on the same files and it just works, impressive.

<comment><USER6> That's also impressive from the Sketch side, as they apparently made their file format so easy to parse/use that another program can read them without any issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can't believe how good that is, browser apps have come a long way.

<comment><USER8> Well, let me tell you.. [http://www.quakejs.com/](http://www.quakejs.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This loads fast and is very responsive, unlike other browser apps I've used that try to offer an alternative to native apps (Google Docs comes to mind). I like it!

</comment><comment><USER10> Figma is a cross-platform equivalent and it's free for personal use (figma.com) work's in your browser and is quite fast actually</comment>


Bloomberg's chip story reveals murky world of national security reporting - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/04/bloomberg-spy-chip-murky-world-national-security-reporting/ <comment><USER2> Everyone's saying "remember PRISM!" but that's not how I remember it. PRISM (which now even has a wikipedia page[0]) was an interface for the NSA to browse their legally obtained FISA data from these companies. Now, I hate the FISA laws in general, but I don't think it comes as any surprise that the tech companies were following the law.

I remember the furor on HN at the time, and to my recollection a lot of the allegations were about backdoors for the NSA into their data and such, and that's what the companies denied.

Looking at Google's statement[1] of the time, I'm not sure I can find any fault with it?

To me, the big revelations from Snowden were about the NSA capturing all data on the internet backbone, and tapping unencrypted links inside Google's network without their knowledge.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_\(surveillance_program\))

[1] [https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/what.html](https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/what.html)

<comment><USER3> FISA et al are unconstitutional. You're doing nobody any favors by referring to it as legitimate.

<comment><USER4> They never said that they're legitimate, simply that they're legal. Until it's overturned by a court or legislation, that remains absolutely true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you look at Apple denial ([https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2018/10/what- businessweek-got...](https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2018/10/what-businessweek- got-wrong-about-apple/)) they make a curious statement:

"Our best guess is that they are confusing their story with a previously- reported 2016 incident in which we discovered an infected driver on a single Super Micro server in one of our labs. That one-time event was determined to be accidental and not a targeted attack against Apple."

Compare this to statement issued by Apple in 2017 when queried about the 2016 story:

"Apple is deeply committed to protecting the privacy and security of our customers and the data we store. We are constantly monitoring for any attacks on our systems, working closely with vendors and regularly checking equipment for malware. We're not aware of any data being transmitted to an unauthorized party nor was any infected firmware found on the servers purchased from this vendor."

(taken from [https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2017/02/apple...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2017/02/apple-axed-supermicro-servers-from-datacenters-because-of- bad-firmware-update/))

While their 2017 denial was technically correct (it was an infected driver and not infected firmware) it's still a serious red flag on their credibility on these matters.

<comment><USER6> > While their 2017 denial was technically correct

So if you assume that their current denial is technically correct, what loop hole is there in it? Because they seem to have covered all the bases.

<comment><USER7> Was discussed in previous thread. They make very narrow statements: "Apple has never found malicious chips, "hardware manipulations" or vulnerabilities purposely planted in any server." This holds true if it was found by a 3rd party.

"Apple never had any contact with the FBI or any other agency about such an incident." This holds true if private 3rd party was handling the incident.

"We are not aware of any investigation by the FBI, nor are our contacts in law enforcement." This is meaningless it might not be FBI them not being aware doesn't mean there is no investigation and so on.

<comment><USER8> Wouldn't this fall under the remit (and expertise) of the NSA? I thought that the FBI were like Interpol - i.e. federal-level cops. The NSA being the technical spooks (and the CIA being the meat-based spooks).

<comment><USER9> I believe there's been a bit of a shake up since 90s - at the time secret service got the hacker beat, because: wirefraud. But also the FBI, because: felony crossing state borders.

The nsa were signals intelligence first, but their civilian mandate had (has) to do with protecting national interests in the "signaling" world (ie: the Internet etc). Arguably they were never very good at that... ("Snowden", "crypto backdoor"...).

But I believe "cyberspace" is now accepted as an actual thing, and so falls naturally under the FBI (cross border, spying on us soil) and police ("crime").

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's also possible that amidst the trade war China vs US, a few people in the US fed a business-oriented outlet about Chinese spying. You can add micro chips in a few Supermicro servers and Bloomberg journalists would eat the story like candy. This would dramatically decrease electronics imports from China, and putting even more pressure for trade talks. See the Vice President's speech yesterday .

I could be wrong. But we had previously paranoia about Japanese corporate spying 40 years ago.

<comment><USER11> > It's also possible that amidst the trade war China vs US, a few people in > the US fed a business-oriented outlet about Chinese spying.

On the other hand, "vehemently deny this or our business relationship will be soured" is _exactly_ what you would expect from China on this. It's not as if censorship isn't in their playbook or putting a lid on this isn't in their interest.

It would be very disappointing to see US companies cowed by something like that, but it's not as if US companies knuckling under to China's censorship requirements is without precedent.

<comment><USER12> For anyone wanting a citation, China recently threatened to ban airlines from flying to China unless their global websites (including outside of China) were changed to list Taiwan, Hong Kong & Macau as part of China:

[http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-04/qantas-to-refer-to- tai...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-04/qantas-to-refer-to-taiwan-as- territory-following-chinese-demands/9833606)

Several American airlines (Delta, American, United, Hawaiian) agreed to comply:

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-24/u-s- airli...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-24/u-s-airlines-are- said-to-accept-chinese-demand-on-naming-taiwan)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This makes for interesting reading alongside:

* _The Register_ 's analysis [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/10/04/supermicro_bloomber...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/10/04/supermicro_bloomberg/) ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18146307](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18146307))

* Joe FitzPatrick's analysis [https://securinghardware.com/articles/hardware-implants/](https://securinghardware.com/articles/hardware-implants/) ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18144538](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18144538))

</comment><comment><USER14> Once upon a time, a university friend of mine spent his summers working for the Australian public service. His response to the rumours about Eschalon, before the Australian spooks confirmed them [1], was: "They're capable of doing that. So of course they're bloody doing it." That stayed with me.

Maybe it doesn't matter if these chips were implanted in the particular boards that they're alleged to have been in. No one is suggesting that this would be technically infeasible, so you can bet the PLA has planted them somewhere. I would, if I was defending China against Trump.

[1] That drunken Christmas party excepted.

</comment><comment><USER15> > Yet, to Apple — and Amazon and other companies implicated by the report — > they too might also be in the dark. Assuming there was an active espionage > investigation into the alleged actions of a foreign government, you can bet > that only a handful of people at these companies will be even cursorily > aware of the situation. U.S. surveillance and counter-espionage laws > restrict who can be told about classified information or investigations.

I think this may be key in this case, which would give plausible deniability to Apple and Amazon. Conversely, I'm also not fully convinced by this argument, I think it applies more easily and more often when companies are directly subpoanaed by authorities not when there are the initiator. In the case of this kind of breach if one engineer find this issue I would think it would report to senior management first, before contacting the authorities. Also Apple directly stated there are not constrained by any gag order, which leave only one possibility if they genuinely think what they say is true: could it be an _unkown unknown_?

<comment><USER16> I'd think the denial press releases were cleared all the way up to the respective CEOs and even if there were such sensitive conversations with the FBI that the CEOs weren't party to the details, they'd still know of their existence.

I'd be surprised if Justice Department guidelines allow completely going behind the back of the executives of a domestic public company, at least unless they are suspected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> All I can say is that if these chips don't _actually_ show up soon and get analyzed, Bloomberg is going to have a serious black mark on their credibility.

How many days can this go on without _SOME_ report of these things after such a ball-buster story?

<comment><USER18> Indeed. They also said a major hosting company got sabotaged gear. Surely someone at said hosting company took a picture of the board, kept a board, or something. People at hosting companies aren't paid very much, so they're not incredibly loyal. Still they must have said something to friends, family, facility workers (why are you throwing away all that supermicro gear?), etc.

It doesn't make sense that no one has produced at least a picture of one. Why the need for secrecy here? It's not like the US govt made the chip, right? Right? RIGHT?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> _Where reporters across any topic and beat try to seek the truth, tapping information from the intelligence community is near impossible. For spies and diplomats, it's illegal to share classified information with anyone and can be — and is — punishable by time in prison._

Even worse, feeding reporters false information is not that difficult. Given the scarcity of sources, it must be extremely difficult to get technically knowledgeable people who will corroborate these kinds of stories.

Consider who wins the most if the chip story turns out to be false: an administration hell-bent on reshoring US manufacturing capability.

Whether the story is true or part of some domestic propaganda operation, the result isn't good for the US.

</comment><comment><USER6> Why wouldn't the US gov show one of the infected motherboards? It seems like it would be perfect proof that China is engaged in aggressive hacking. The story is in the open now. If it's true, China knows that we know. So what else is there to hide?

<comment><USER20> Maybe they were happy to use the same backdoors for themselves?

<comment><USER21> Maybe "they" were happy to have China do the dirty work and take the fall, but it was all conceived and execute by "them."

<comment><USER20> I think its pretty clear from context that "they" refers to the intelligence agencies of the US government.

<comment><USER21> Oh there is no confusion over who we are referencing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > Today's bombshell Bloomberg story has the internet split: either the story > is right, and reporters have uncovered one of the largest and jarring > breaches of the U.S. tech industry by a foreign adversary… or it's not, and > a lot of people screwed up.

Imagine reading this after the Snowden leaks:

Today's bombshell Guardian story has the internet split: either the story is right, and the biggest Silicon Valley companies are giving the NSA access to their data… or it's not, and a lot of people screwed up.

<comment><USER23> The Guardian is an established newspaper with a firm commitment to (what it sees as) the truth, and has a top-flight internal technical team which gives them credibility on this kind of topic. (Interestingly we did see an internet split after the Guardian reported vulnerabilities in WhatsApp's security, but at least in that case there was no dispute on the facts, only their interpretation).

Bloomberg is an upstart with an awkward funding model which has already faced serious, credible allegations of political interference and a lack of journalistic integrity (a major investigative story about corruption in China was allegedly spiked at a late stage by management for business reasons).

<comment><USER24> Are we meaning the same Bloomberg News? Hasn't it been around, at least for business news, since about 1990? If so, that seems to me to be well past the upstart stage. But maybe they rebranded or reformed and have no relation to the other name?

<comment><USER23> I perceive them as an upstart in traditional-journalism terms, certainly compared to a newspaper that was founded in 1821.

<comment><USER25> So they're lying because they've only been around for 30 years? What sort of logic is that.

<comment><USER23> They don't have the same level of history and reputation that the Guardian does. So people don't trust them as much as the Guardian. Which seems fair and reasonable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I find it somewhat curious that the 3rd party in Ontario, Canada that actually found was and remains unidentified.

Was that off-the-record for the story? Or delibrately omitted? It seems unlikely they are part of the intelligence community so protected in any way; they're in another country and they must be somewhat known in the DC industry if Amazon used them commercially.

<comment><USER27> I have no special knowledge about this, but Chipworks is a well-respected Ottawa (Ontario, Canada) company that has been doing silicon-level reverse engineering and teardowns for a while. It looks like they're part of TechInsights now, but seems like the right kind of crew to be doing this.

See eg. some silicon analysis on the iPhone 7 [http://www.techinsights.com/about- techinsights/overview/blog...](http://www.techinsights.com/about- techinsights/overview/blog/stmicroelectronics-time-of-flight-sensors-and-the- starship-enterprise/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is pretty fascinating. The statements by Apple and Amazon on one side vs. Bloomberg are very hard to reconcile.

I'm very interested to see where this goes. I hope we get to find out who is full or crap on this. Either Bloomberg got seriously played (I'm assuming they wouldn't just make up stuff for a good story or report based on sources that didn't appear credible) or Apple and Amazon are lying fearlessly and in great detail. This doesn't seem like the prism situation where it was pretty easy to reconcile the company PR statements with the snowden leaks.

<comment><USER12> Just to throw some extra info into the mix, Australia's media [1] is reporting that the Australian Department of Defence and Bureau of Meteorology also had contracts with Supermicro. The current Australian Defence Department statement:

 _A Defence spokesperson said the department was "aware of recent media reporting involving the unauthorised implantation of microchips within servers, used by United States corporations, in the production of Supermicro microchips"._

 _" Defence will continue to work with the ACSC [Australian Cyber Security Centre] to continue to monitor the situation," the spokesperson said._

And from the Bureau of Meteorology:

 _The Bureau of Meteorology said it does not comment on security matters._

[1] [http://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2018-10-05/supermicro- mal...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2018-10-05/supermicro-malicious- chips-china-australian-government/10342006)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I am skeptical of the story. Bloomberg should have at least had pictures of the chips on a board, something from reality. Instead they had illustrations. These were commercially available products, they should have independently found a smoking gun board sample with such chips and analyzed it, and not take their sources' word for it. This seems like a planted story to me.

</comment><comment><USER30> post has been deleted sometime after January this year: [http://web.archive.org/web/20180126235643/https://blog.cari....](http://web.archive.org/web/20180126235643/https://blog.cari.net/carisirt- yet-another-bmc-vulnerability-and-some-added-extras)

</comment><comment><USER31> I think it's time Bloomberg either puts up or shuts up. It's that simple.

Either they can show an xray of a motherboard showing the chip, and can further explain how it exfiltrates data, or their story is rumour and bullshit, and they should be culpable for Supermicro's stock drop.

It's just that simple, and I'm calling them on it.

<comment><USER32> It might not be that simple. If the story was done properly, Bloomberg received information from a source that they were able to verify using other sources. Maybe they saw parts of the report they talk about, but likely they just talked to sources. Bloomberg likely cannot reveal anymore information without revealing sources. Their options are to stand by their story, or retract it.

I'm waiting for another news outlet to bring more information. Additional sources will come forward and more reporting on this story will only get us closer to the truth.

<comment><USER31> I disagree. Bloomberg knew what kind of financial effect the story would have on at least Supermicro, and if they can't back up the story with actual, provable facts, then they are culpab!e. They know this.

So let's have some facts. Like an x-ray.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> FYI: "Britain's national cyber security agency said on Friday it had no reason to doubt the assessments made by Apple and Amazon that refuted a Bloomberg story that their systems contained malicious computer chips inserted by Chinese intelligence. [...]"

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-cyber-britain/uk- cy...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-cyber-britain/uk-cyber- security-agency-backs-apple-amazon-china-hack-denials-idUSKCN1MF1DN)

<comment><USER13> It's a fairly non-committal statement below a Reuters headline that is not borne out by the actual article. And it is not alone.

* [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18148811](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18148811)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> If the story is true, show me some of these spy chips. It should not be hard to indicate the exact location and allow anyone with supermicro motherboards find them.

<comment><USER35> You haven't read the article properly. Just specific batches for targeted Supermicro customers were infected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I don't understand why people are discounting the fact that the said companies wants to do business in China and you can't do that by accepting the Chinese state is trying to hack their companies.

IMHO, this is a very big aspect and companies lie all the time. Even if this came out to be false, they don't get as much heat as they would get now.

</comment><comment><USER37> What's the point of this article exactly? To make an excuse from the Bloomberg reporters? Cause all clues point to the fact they made that story up.

[https://twitter.com/TubeTimeUS/status/1047979340477083648](https://twitter.com/TubeTimeUS/status/1047979340477083648)

</comment><comment><USER38> apple is deeply commited to discouraging people from reversing and inspecting their products, just like oracle.

</comment><comment><USER39> Hey Bloomberg, why don't you show the world one server motherboard with the Big Hack Chinese Chip on it?

</comment><comment><USER40> Why is it we believe these companies statements?

Is the PR of fortune 500 companies bound to tell the truth always?

I'm a capitalist, but I cannot deny that it is in the best interest of companies to hide and deny negative news.

<comment><USER41> It's not in their interest to issue a strong denial if they know the story is going to be confirmed later. It just makes them look worse than if they'd issued some generic language about how much they care about security. So either they genuinely believe the story is false, or they believe it's impossible to prove, and given the scope of the story I'm not sure there's a difference.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What do engineers prefer in terms of project management? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Don't do process for its own sake. Before you do any practice, understand what it is for, and what you hope to get out of it. Trial it and abandon if is more effort than reward.

Make doing the right thing easy. Commits to source control should be easy because people do them a lot. Same with writing tests.

Make doing risky things slow. Deploying to live should involve some checklists and "management sign off" because you want people to slow down and think about whether they are about to fuck up. Ditto anything that could sink your business or unexpectedly cost a lot of money.

If you are delivering contracts, and a lot of enterprise sales involve these, then you signed up to deliver something. Track what that thing is, and have a way of proving you delivered it.

Some people genuinely enjoy filling out repetitive forms. They also enjoy writing them and getting doing one accepted as part of your project cycle. Spot these people by boilerplate to content ratio in the documents they are writing. Keep them away from core development.

Don't cargo cult. Don't re-invent the wheel. Use tools that don't get in the way.

It is useful for teams of 4 or more / mixed abilities to have a process just so everyone knows what they are doing and doesn't have to think about it. If you are in that kind of situation, just do scrum with actual postit notes for a couple months, then start dropping some bits and using tools for others. Scrum is only a good estimating tool if your developers don't do operations too. Less people than that (even as a team within a larger company), can probably get away with just talking, shared todo lists.

</comment><comment><USER3> "The simplest thing that works and still meets all legitimately needed requirements."</comment>


Building a complete Tweet index - <AUTHOR> https://blog.twitter.com/2014/building-a-complete-tweet-index

<comment><USER2> Will this new index be accessible via the Twitter API? It seems like this only impacts manual searches via the web/client.

<comment><USER3> Not that I know of. This historical index actually has been in place for many many months, but Twitter just decided to publish this article recently. The API sometimes has less than a week of data, as little as 3-4 days I've noticed. And some days (like once every 3 months) it returns 50% less data, but so does the web app.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, this really isn't interesting to anyone except maybe their investors. If they provided this functionality in their API it would've been big news.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting to think that half a trillion tweets is about 70TB of data, and that can be stored for about $10k/year in Dropbox.

<comment><USER6> Tweets contain a lot of metadata too though. In practice a tweet is really about 3K, not 140 bytes.

<comment><USER7> Yes, taking the example in the API docs [1] it gives me 3K of JSON, which can be gzip'd down to 1K.

[1]: [https://dev.twitter.com/rest/reference/get/statuses/show/%3A...](https://dev.twitter.com/rest/reference/get/statuses/show/%3Aid)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Without sounding facetious: Am I amble to search (or at least paginate) through all of my own DMs yet?

</comment><comment><USER9> Didn't backtweet do this? It was the most useful twitter search ever before Twitter bought them and shut it down...

</comment><comment><USER10> That's just a news for "investors" I don't see it coming to the api so I wonder why this is an hacker news...

<comment><USER11> It's a technical post on their engineering blog about how they implemented it. Why wouldn't that belong on Hacker News?</comment></comment>