Should developers be sued for security holes? - <AUTHOR> http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/european-technology/should-developers-be-sued-for-security-holes/1109 <comment><USER3> Do you think we currently understand every mechanism by which software running in adversarial conditions (a web server with anonymous users, an operating system running a freshly downloaded application, that application handling random files off the Internet, &c) can be subverted? I don't; I've learned new bug classes within the last year, and I'm nowhere close to the best in my field.

If you're not confident that you understand all the avenues by which software can be compromised by attackers, how could you possibly be at ease with the idea that the law would presume vendors could secure their code before shipping it?

You may think, "I don't expect vendors to be at the forefront of security research," (which would be good, because even the vendors who want to be there are having a devil of a time trying to fill the headcount to do it) "but let's not excuse vendors who ship flaws readily apparent when their product was being developed". But who's to say what is and isn't readily apparent? How'd you do on the Stripe CTF? Last I checked, only 8 people got the last flag. But nothing in the Stripe CTF would have made the cut for a Black Hat presentation. You think a jury and a court of law would do a better job of judging this?

<comment><USER4> In the absence of some codified standard, it's not going to be possible to adjudicate a lawsuit. Do we understand every mechanism by which a building can catch on fire? No. But we still have a National Electric Code that specifies, for example, what size wire to use for a given load. If you install wire that's too small and it overheats and causes an electrical fire, you can be sued.

I think likewise if your app contains some known vulnerability, like you don't sanitize your database inputs, there should be a way to be held legally accountable for that.

<comment><USER5> Before we pursue this metaphor too far, some observations about the National Electrical Code.

One is that software is _many orders of magnitude_ more complex than an electrical delivery system. People have spent decades trying to figure out how to construct secure software by bolting together "secure components" in a simple way. Let's be charitable and just say: That work continues, and will continue throughout my lifetime. It's a much harder problem. Electricity is easy.

The other is that even the electrical code doesn't provide strong guarantees against malicious attacks by hostile humans. That's not in the spec. There's no armor on the wires that come into my house, no alarms that would go off if a ninja with a saw started cutting down a crucial utility pole in a DoS attack on my power, no formal procedures for screening the wiring in my walls for wiretapping devices. The electrical code doesn't even mandate a backup battery or generator, let alone that said generator should be tamper-proof.

Similarly, the fire code doesn't specify that my smoke detectors should have locks so that those ninjas can't easily remove the batteries before setting off a gasoline bomb in my living room late at night. There isn't even a gasoline-fume detector in my house. The windows aren't armored. This place is not defensible!

Of course, there are places in the world that are built at great expense to withstand attacks by armed bandits or trained spies. But if we wrote our building codes to incorporate such measures, what would happen is just what we see happening with software: People would line up to sign waivers and variances, so that they could just build a simple inexpensive house and get on with their lives.

<comment><USER4> FWIW, the life safety code (separate, but related to the NEC) does mandate emergency power for certain systems (fire pump, egress lighting) in public buildings (not homes). The NEC doesn't address attacks by hostile agents because that's not its purpose. It's to prevent people from getting electrocuted and to prevent electrical fires from starting. That's it.

My point is not that a code is going to provide 100% assurance from all possible forms of attack. It's quite the opposite. The code simply spells out how certain known failure modes are avoided. It's not a guarantee that nothing ever will go wrong. It's basically a list of specific things that have gone wrong in the past, and what things should be done to prevent them.

The point is to establish exactly what "reasonable measures" are for the purpose of determining liability, not to spell out a method for a fail-proof system. If you present yourself as a competent developer and the build someone a system that passes user input directly to the database and stores passwords in plaintext, you should be held accountable for damages resulting from a security breach that made use of those holes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > If you're poisoned by a burger you can sue the restaurant that sold it - <USER2> > why can't you take a software developer to court if their negligent coding > lets hackers empty your bank account?

Whoever came up with this example doesn't know much about law (and IANAL). To prevail in a court of law, the hamburger plaintiff would need to show a violation of prevailing standards of behavior, for example, health codes. But if a threat is unknown at the time of the injury, the defendant is generally held blameless.

An example is Legionnaire's Disease, which was ultimately traced to a decision to turn down water heater thermostats to save energy during the 1970s oil crisis. The hotel operators could hardly be held accountable for "negligence" in a case like this, where they had no possible way to anticipate a side effect of a reasonable decision.

It should be the same with software -- if a developer writes code in good faith and meets prevailing quality standards, he shouldn't be held to account for an exploit that arises later.

If the developer worked in collusion with hackers, that would be different, but it's not what's being discussed.

<comment><USER7> The key word there is "prevailing quality standards". If a developer writes something, in good faith, that's vulnerable to SQL injection, or stores passwords in plaintext on a server, is that negligence?

<comment><USER8> Maybe, it depends. What does the app do? If it's just a photo-sharing application, or a weekend project, then no. There's no expectation for the former to be secure, or for the latter to be a full-fledged product that meets standards.

On the other hand, if it is a file-sharing saas targeting small businesses, the failure to handle SQL injection or store passwords properly would be negligence.

<comment><USER3> I think it would be very easy to convince a jury under a straightforward liability framework that "failure to handle SQL injection is negligent". Which is unfortunate, because "failure to handle SQL injection" is by itself a mostly meaningless statement. Most SQL Injection flaws are indeed very dumb, very obvious bugs. But there are bugs that end up vectoring to SQL injection that are not obvious at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This article actually does a pretty good job of focusing on what really drives lawsuits: negligence. It's easy to establish negligence in food safety, because there is consensus on what represents "reasonable food safety" procedures. This will be incredibly difficult for software because of the wide variety in types of software.

If legislation passes, you can bet it will be bad. I hate to be cynical, but I've yet to see a technology law that was well written. Large software vendors will see this as an opportunity to hamper smaller software developers by lobbying for ridiculous requirements that have little to do with _actual_ security and everything to do with codifying expensive processes that big businesses already do.

<comment><USER8> * there is consensus on what represents "reasonable food safety" procedures. *

There really isn't. Food safety laws vary from state to state, and from country to country. The only real common ground is that refrigeration of food is required.

 _This will be incredibly difficult for software because of the wide variety in types of software._ Not really. There are more varieties of food than there are of software. Facebook, twitter, and groupon are all really just variations of CRUD applications for which we already have best practices.

 _Large software vendors will see this as an opportunity to hamper smaller software developers by lobbying for ridiculous requirements that have little to do with actual security and everything to do with codifying expensive processes that big businesses already do._

Well, yes. Such is life. Once an industry starts to become mainstream, tort liability starts to rear its ugly head. It is the third immutable law of life (after death and taxes).

<comment><USER9> > There really isn't. Food safety laws vary from state to state, and from > country to country. The only real common ground is that refrigeration of > food is required.

There isn't consensus in the language of the law, but there is consensus in the principles. Your example that refrigeration is required is an illustration of that point. Rather than focus on the details of the law, we can recognize that all food safety laws make some requirement related to the maintenance of temperature. Taken further, this is based on the principle that the available science is aware that food pathogens grow more rapidly at certain temperature ranges. There are many principles similar to this, upon which food safety laws are based, and these principles are the consensus.

The principle is what matters to this discussion, because that is what the laws will be based upon. I would expect that "software safety" laws will follow a similar tact. Even if I were to take the most cynical view possible, it doesn't seem plausible that legislators would attempt to write software safety laws for Java, C, C#.NET, Python, Ruby, Closure, etc, etc. Rather, they would attempt to establish principles, upon which process would be built.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> No problem. I'll sell two versions of the software. The first will be as you get today with no capability of suing me.

The second will be a lot more expensive, but you can sue. The accompanying documentation will list exactly how you can use the product, and anything outside of that voids the product. It will list an exact certified environment you can use it in (eg only certain Intel processors), versions of operating systems, firewall configurations, other components that can be installed (any more voids the product). Essentially the product will be useless.

The problem with the "suing the developers" approach is who pays. It will always come at a cost including increased development times, more restrictive usage modes, less functionality, insurance, lawyers, court time etc. Ultimately people buying the software will have to pay for those, and it doesn't really benefit them.

At the moment people can put their money wherever they want, and they can choose the level of security, timeliness, access to code etc. I don't see the problem with that.

</comment><comment><USER11> Perhaps, but if there is a liability on that code, you can be damn sure I'll be charging lawyers rates for writing it and it's going to take at least twice as long to produce.

In the end most industries that carry liabilities like this also are required carry error and omissions insurance or something similar. That cost will end up having to be factored in to the cost of the software.

</comment><comment><USER12> If you expect 100% reliability from a piece of software, that ought to be in your contract with the vendor. You ought to have a provision describing what happens if the vendor fucked up. And the only time it is okay to sue is if the vendor then does not abide by that contract and its described penalty for less-than-100% performance.

The US has a sue-happy culture which I believe is the cause for much ridiculousness in life around here. Somebody finds a way to hurt himself that nobody else has though of, and sues, which leads to everybody then patching that ridiculous hole and making everybody go thru hoops to avoid future lawsuits. Ad nauseam. (The same mentality that caused the rule mandating we take off our shoes at airports…)

</comment><comment><USER13> Are there any other situations where a completely unlicensed trade would be held to any standard other than caveat emptor?

Would regulating and standardizing software to the point where we could apply a standard of competence and sue people over even improve software security? If it did, would it be worth the potential chilling effect on innovation?

One thing I really can't stand about this is that at least professional associations (which I consider to be cartel-like in many ways) like the AMA or ABA do enable their practitioners to stand up to clients and employers. There are even laws around who is allowed to directly employ many licensed professionals.

Sounds like some lawmakers would like to deny any professional stature to developers other than the right to be sued, as individuals, for their work.

For the record, I'm generally opposed to the creating a developer's cartel. Anyone can read a book on PHP and hang out a shingle as a developer, which is fine by me. But it would be particularly offensive to be subjected only to the liabilities of professional recognition with none of the perks.

<comment><USER8> _Sounds like some lawmakers would like to deny any professional stature to developers other than the right to be sued, as individuals, for their work._

Actually, one of the major features of being a "profession" is that the practitioner is held liable for the quality of their work (as measured against their adherence to pre-established standards). This is why teachers, businessmen, and programmers are not considered "professions": they do not have clearly defined standards for proper work conduct, or liability for their work product.

<comment><USER13> Here's the definition of malpractice from the free legal dictionary (IANAL, of course)...

(<http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/malpractice>)

"The failure to meet a standard of care or standard of conduct that is recognized by a profession reaches the level of malpractice when a client or patient is injured or damaged because of error."

...

"Negligence is conduct that falls below the legally established standard for the protection of others against unreasonable risk of harm. Under negligence law a person must violate a reasonable standard of care."

So you're right, it's not so much quality of work as failure to meet minimum and pre-established standards of care. I suppose this might work with software - not so much "your code was low quality" as "you clearly violated one of the top 10 OWASP security vulnerabilities." Perhaps completely failing to validate input would be malpractice, whereas writing crappy code to do this wouldn't.

But this is all by the wayside, it's not really related to my main point - which is that I don't _think_ there's any precedent for holding a practitioner liable for professional "malpractice" in the absence of a profession that sets standards (and controls the right to practice).

And, as I said above, I tend to be very suspicious of professional associations. I'm not saying I think there should be no regulation on who is allowed to be a medical care provider, but I do think the AMA (along with many other prof assns) show extremely cartel-like behavior that can be very damaging.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Of course developers should be held accountable for security flaws in their code - right after we hold bankers accountable for blowing up the economy and plundering the world.

</comment><comment><USER15> I do think that at this point code being shipped by people who consider themselves professionals should be free of the types of common types of problems (SQL Injection, buffer overflows, integer overflows, etc...) There is no real excuse for having one in this day and age. I am less convinced that legal liability will cause a meaningful decrease in vulnerabilities. I do think that, like healthcare, the liability would cause less to get done by more people. Developers would evolve techniques for passing the buck on down to someone else.

If legislation was used the big boys (Microsoft, Google, Oracle, etc...) would unintentionally shape it in a way where startups would have most of the liability for not having "adequate security procedures" like having your own security team, certain tools, etc... And that would be bad in the long run.

</comment><comment><USER16> If one would have to be an idiot to write server sotware (because one would be liable for things beyond her or his control), only idiots will write servers. If this sounds glib, it's only because the suggested regulations here are so utterly insane.

</comment><comment><USER17> <devils advocate>Yes - it will encourage them to be more diligent in their work.</devils advocate>

<comment><USER18> <da>It would discourage anyone from writing a library or component that could be used in other software</da>

<comment><USER8> The same way that people are discouraged from making parts for cars, or ingredients for foodstuffs, or...

What silly argument were we making again?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> In the case of consumers, certain clauses restricting consumer remedies would be unlawful due to legislation protecting consumers in any event.

This includes removing implied terms like the implied term to exercise reasonable care and skill in the provision of a service. A consumer could argue that a developer has failed in this duty if they provide software which had an avoidable defect. As the article identifies, the problem is it would be a difficult process to identify what is truly avoidable. Due to the complexity of software and the ingenuity of hackers (for want of a better word) certain flaws will always be present. There is also the issue of contributory factors like the user's own failings in updating etc.

In reality, I think the main barrier to consumers bringing an action would be the cost and expense of litigation, not necessarily the terms of a EULA.

</comment><comment><USER20> Should architects be sued for burglars that get into your house?

<comment><USER9> If one could show that:

A) There was a reasonable expectation that the architect was responsible for the security of the home under a design agreement.

and

B) That the architect was negligent in their duty to provide said security.

Then yes, they could be sued.

You're focusing on the wrong aspect of the argument. You can already be sued for any number of things related to failing to meet an agreement.

The core question here is not whether software developers should be liable for security issues arising from their software, but whether or not software companies should be able to disclaim liability in such broad ways in their EULA language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> There is a whole lot about a specific deployment that generally isn't known during development (that isn't contracted for the specific task) that is highly relevant to both liability and threats. If I build a tic-tac-toe app, someone uses it to land 747s, and terrorists turn it into a fireball using an obscure timing attack, that's not my fault. Liability should rest with whoever deployed the system, and if they're not comfortable with that they can pay to have the developers or publishers (or insurance companies) adopt more of it. The real problem is that EULAs are impenetrable walls of legalese, half of which is unenforceable in any given jurisdiction, and so go unread, and so there's no pressure on companies to do anything but waive everything they can get away with waiving.

</comment><comment><USER22> If the restaurant poison you, you will sue the restaurant owner, the restaurant owner can sue the cook, but i'm not sure you can or would sue directly the cook, that would suppose you know who cooked your meal i guess.

Also I believe if a new branch of software industry was developed where every library, os, patch, updates, firmware , framework is certified as "developed without any negligence for any use " only the defence and nuclear industry would be able to afford it. Actually I guess they already did that for their own use.

So the wish to have a software certified without negligence (and for any use the customer use it) is probably too expensive and customer would just keep buying the same as today if they would be given the choice.

</comment><comment><USER23> So to sidestep this issue, a developer could provide a product configured to be completely locked down with little to no access to network/filesystem/kernel and provide a blurb as to being completely secure with the "recommended" configuration. Any configuration opening up access would be considered to be at the users own risk.

</comment><comment><USER24> it's a really bad idea unless they properly grandfather it. people have sold software under the assumption of limited liability and if they are now are suddenly held liable then it could financially ruin some companies or at least end up being a massive transfer of wealth from software companies to consumers.

</comment><comment><USER25> Software need to be sold 1000x ~ 10000x more expensive to overcome this law.

</comment><comment><USER26> Yes, but only if you want all software development to move offshore.

</comment><comment><USER8> Yes. Lawyers need work.

But joking aside, developers do need to be held responsible for their work product. Every other industry that makes things is held responsible for the safety/workablity of their output, and many of those products (i.e., cars and planes) are far more complicated than software. [There are some narrow exceptions, i.e., vaccines, where the industry is shielded from liability because alternative mechanisms provide for consumer redress.]

This does not mean strict liability (i.e., liability without actual fault), but it does mean that negligence should be on the table.

What would negligent liability require? Merely that developers follow best practices regarding their product. They already exist for the most common types of projects. Where no best practices exist, following standard conventions is usually sufficient.

Also, users can waive the developer's liability for simple negligence (but generally not for intentional negligence), so this is unlikely to impact most developers.

<comment><USER27> Cars and planes aren't under constant bombardment from invisible human adversaries all over the world. They're required to withstand failure in the face of known natural conditions and flawed workmanship, but not constant attempts by human adversaries to break them.

And an example that proves the rule - we don't sue car manufacturers when their lock system fails to prevent a thief stealing the radio or the car.

And, should we hold military vehicle and fighter aircraft manufacturers legally responsible for damage to their products by enemies shooting at them?

If a delivered software product doesn't meet a contractually-agreed-upon spec, then there is legal recourse for that. Maybe software contracts should specify exactly what penetration attempts it has been designed to withstand, and in very specific, not general, terms.</comment></comment>


Show HN: RecBox.io - <AUTHOR> I wanted to get two things from building an App
1) I wanted to learn how to build and deploy an app with react-native and google cloud.
2) Also, I recently purchased an item in a department store and gave my personal email address and I received my receipt as expected. But I also received a load of emails about promotions over the coming weeks which cluttered my inbox.
My App can be found here:
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/recbox-io/id1378437194
and
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.recbox <comment><USER2> Are my receipts shared with advertisers? The app actually looks pretty useful, but I'm a little worried about that.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, that's what I want to know too. I'd rather not my purchase data be shared with advertisers.

<comment><AUTHOR> The ads do not look at what you have purchased at all. I used Google Admob to help cover cost but these are generic ads and not based on what you have sent to your recbox email address.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd suggest either a more descriptive name ("rec" being ambiguous) or a better icon with more than just the name.

<comment><AUTHOR> OK Thanks for your feedback. I will look to see if I can come up with a better logo.

<comment><USER5> I'm a product designer and have just started messing around with react native, this looks like a cool and useful project. If you need design help / would like to collab - feel free to reach out.

<comment><AUTHOR> That would be great, drop me an email.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> but thats what Gmail promotion tab is for... isnt it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi - you are assuming everyone uses gmail . The other benefit is I am not always happy giving out my personal email address with a load of people in earshot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> nice work!

</comment><comment><USER8> this seems really useful</comment>


The Deployment Age - <AUTHOR> http://reactionwheel.net/2015/10/the-deployment-age.html <comment><USER2> Fascinating article. Long read (I'll be honest, I skipped the middle bits), but the conclusion in interesting.

This was the tl;dr for me:

"Some things we've learned over the past 30 years – that novelty is more important than quality; that if you're not disrupting yourself someone else will disrupt you; that entering new markets is more important than expanding existing markets; that technology has to be evangelized, not asked for by your customers – may no longer be true. Almost every company will continue to be managed as if these things were true, probably right up until they manage themselves out of business. There's an old saying that generals are always fighting the last war, it's not just generals, it's everyone's natural inclination."

<comment><USER3> I've been feeling like some of the recent disruption is just somebody taking an existing process and codifying it into well made software. Zendesk, Uber, companies like that, aren't providing anything that didn't exist before (meaning HR onboarding and on-demand taxi services), they're just able to offer it at a larger scale, with a better experience, for cheaper, because instead of paperwork and phone calls being run by people, they have databases and APIs being run by computers. I think if your company relies on exchanging information and enforcing internal rules and _isn 't_ codified as software, it's just waiting for somebody to disrupt them and pull the bottom line out from under it.</comment></comment>


Sta.li 0.0 ISO released - <AUTHOR> http://lists.suckless.org/wiki/1603/2264.html <comment><USER2> Nice! I'm hesitantly excited and plan to be watching closely.</comment>


Ask HN: Reusing a Domain - <AUTHOR> We picked a domain for a new service some months ago, after some simple sanity checks. It was used earlier but had been inactive for some months and did not appear in any blacklists. We built the service, took the domain live and now we find that this domain gets 25K-50K requests per day for links which (presumably) once existed on this domain. A very large majority of those come from Googlebot. I presume Google thinks that too many pages fail on this domain with a 404 and hence lowers it in the search rankings (lots of red flags in the search console). We are contemplating handling some of those with a 301 redirect to a valid (but unrelated) page, return a 410 to hopefully tell Google that the page is no longer there or serve a dummy page to avoid the 404s. Clearly all of these will not help a human user who found one of these links via search and who is best served with a 404 page having an explanation. Has anyone else had a similar situation and/or have suggestions to handle this? Also, is there a way to check such things in advance before a domain is bought (for future reference)? Thanks! <comment><USER2> Your dummy page idea with an explanation may be the best and most authentic way of dealing with this situation rather than just returning a 404? It may also have some minor positive affect on your rankings too.

I'm sure google say having lots of 404's doesn't harm your rankings but it is a waste of googlebot resources that can be better served crawling your site rather than a bunch of dead ends.

There are plenty of resources showing you backlinks to a given domain name. Some are paid and some free.

A couple of decent free ones: [https://neilpatel.com/backlinks/](https://neilpatel.com/backlinks/) [https://domainstats.com/](https://domainstats.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for that! Will check out those - will help in getting new domains!</comment></comment>


ZorinOS 10 ReleasedAtypical Design and Nice Effects in Ubuntu-Based Distro - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0ex176JySU

<comment><USER2> Damn, that is a pretty OS, will probably appeal to a lot of windows users with that start menu :)

Edit: making a live USB of it, too tempting with those visuals :)

Edit: or maybe not, since I'm not really into paying for Linux</comment>


Endogenous Technological Change (1990) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~promer/Endogenous.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> In my very humble view, this 1990 paper by Paul Romer (who later won the Nobel prize in Economics) is perhaps his most brilliant one.

It has collected more than 1,600 citations [0] on Econpapers alone.

[0]: [https://econpapers.repec.org/scripts/showcites.pf?h=repec:uc...](https://econpapers.repec.org/scripts/showcites.pf?h=repec:ucp:jpolec:v:98:y:1990:i:5:p:s71-102)

</comment><comment><USER2> Thank you very much for sharing it! This paper is not only poignant, but surprisingly readable.</comment>


Simplenote - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/2009/07/simplenote

<comment><USER2> Classic iphone marketing strategy: make something Gruber likes.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd be really interested to see what this article did for their sales.

<comment><USER4> Well, DF linked to my latest app Boxcar (<http://boxcar.io>) today, which does push notifications for Twitter @mentions and DMs.

As far as what it did for sales with just that short little blurb? Awesome. That's what it did. :)

I can post actual growth percentages tomorrow once I have confirmed the data from Apple vs. my own analytics. It certainly made my day!

<comment><USER5> Great app, btw. Just bought Boxcar. I wonder what a HN mention will do to your stats?

Is support for multiple accounts on the roadmap?

<comment><USER4> It is - very soon. v1.1 was submitted last Monday evening, which includes support for Twitterfon, Twittelator and Twinkle. Plus a small bug fix.

Multiple accounts will most likely make it into v1.2, as long as Apple doesn't surprise me and approve v1.1 before this weekend.

j

(and, thanks for buying it :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Evernote works great. It syncs to a web client which then syncs to native clients which are available on Mac, iPhone, and Windows.

Not as fast as Simplenote appears to be, but excellent nonetheless. Has saved me in a datacenter without my laptop many a time.

<http://evernote.com/>

<comment><USER7> I'll second that. It is more feature-rich than simplenote, which I prefer: voice notes, pictures notes, etc. There is also a plugin for Firefox extension for grabbing clips. I (and several of my friends) are very happy customers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The demo looks neat - <http://www.simplenoteapp.com/></comment>


Techcrunch: Yahoo To Announce Closure of Yahoo Photos Tomorrow - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/05/03/breaking-yahoo-to-announce-closure-of-yahoo-photos-tomorrow/ <comment><USER2> Given a previous discussion on Yahoo's sluggishness in implementing Panama (i.e. rewrapping Overture), is it unfounded to say this is yet another case of Yahoo's failure to recognize and integrate a superior service? Also similar is the failed pair of Google/dodgeball.

Another loss from bureaucracy?</comment>


Evidence that pop music is getting sadder and angrier - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20190513-is-pop-music-really-getting-sadder-and-angrier <comment><USER2> Short explanation: the music industry has discovered that capturing the teenage market pays dividends and teenagers are emotional.

Unrelated anecdote with a different explanation:

I had a fascinating conversation with my parents recently. They are both children of the 60s and grew up in San Francisco. We often share music just to talk about it. I was playing some heavier (dubsteppy-metal) music to them, and wanted to dig into why they didn't like it.

The reason that I like heavy music (especially at shows) is because it is very rare that I get to cut my rage loose, and let it flow. Mosh pits are the only place I can think of where this is an acceptable form of self expression. This feeling is sometimes a good gateway to making me feel like I can win (aka, be alright) when I'm feeling down.

I asked them if what I just described, and the feelings that the music engendered made intuitive emotional sense to them. Regardless of whether they agree that it's positive or negative, does that emotional drive resonate with them. And the answer was, shockingly to me, "No".

Through our conversation, we settled on a convenient narrative (with absolutely no research or sources to back it).

In the 60s and 70s, the rebellion was not against the machine, it was for betterment. They saw the moon landings, and went to concerts in Golden Gate Park that sang about love and freedom for all, and they said that there was a feeling that anything was possible. You just had to do it. And there were lots of problems, but we made progress, it just took doing.

While there is likely some rose-tinted-ness about this recollection, I found it interesting that this was not the way I grew up seeing the world. I grew up with the narrative that everything was wrong, everyone was wrong, and so fuck everything - tear it down.

A short list:

Rage Against the Machine

Eminem

System of a Down

Our convenient narrative was that when our leaders act in bad faith, the result is generations of damage (i.e. the Vietnam war), and that this is reflected in culture. Interestingly, this polarizes both ways politically. So you get a feedback loop of culture becoming more extreme to differentiate itself while serving a polarizing society.

Aside: I'm so happy to see charts with error bars!

<comment><USER3> The 1960s were almost apocalyptically bad— the arms race, vietnam, lynchings, inner city riots, bombings, assassinations, etc. There was plenty of angry protest music— there just wasn't much of an angry audio aesthetic.

<comment><USER4> I'm surprised at the proportion of people who have never heard of the Weather Underground and the SDS.

<comment><USER3> There was also plenty of right wing terrorism (the Klan in particular)

<comment><USER4> I don't support right wing terrorism (the Klan in particular).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm a fan of generally more aggressive music, and I'm also an old fart, but whenever I'm (usually accidentally) exposed to anything from nowadays, it sounds "too happy" to me - saccharine, treacly, shallow, heavy on notes 1, 2, 3 and 5 of the major scale, full of "millenial whoops" ([https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=millenial+whoop](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=millenial+whoop)) and so on. So hearing that "pop music is getting sadder and angrier" surprises me.

<comment><USER6> Precisely, the millenial whoop carries a little bit of bitterness because it is a minor third. It would be totally different with a major interval (then it would sound closer to some excerpt from the electro-pop era). Edit: I just got aware there are also a lot of minor third in most of the "happiest" electro- tunes, so I am off the point. Maybe it is something else then, like how it is accompanied, the drums, etc. For example, I don't feel very happy when I hear a lot of synthesizer "hand claps" and too much pitch vibrato.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is true. They swapped happy HiNRG / Eurodance with the ....t we see today. It is music for psychos, it does not make you happy. Even newer Italo Disco (my favorite) is getting sadder, it has lost that happy melodies of the 1986-1989 era or the happier early Eurobeat 1988-1993 sounds. Even moder Eurobeat is getting dark (MeganrgMan has not, thank you). We are heading to a depressive and dystopian pop/rock/disco style.

Bye bye Venga boys, bye bye Dr Alban, bye bye Alexis and GoGo Girls , bye bye Mel&Kim or Jackie Rawe, we will not see you again.

</comment><comment><USER3> It seems implausible that music is angrier than it was at the height of grunge and industrial and gangster rap in the mid 90s.

<comment><USER8> The article is about "pop music", not music generally. The article is asserting that pop music—you know, the music that is considered a strictly middle-of-the-road, top-40, polished studio-establishment production; the music that is safe to play over the PA in a restaurant, and is used as an image-song for a character in the latest summer blockbuster; _that_ kind of stuff—is what's getting sadder/angrier.

Which _is_ surprising. It reflects a change in what people consider an acceptable emotional range for pablum. It's as if airplane food started tasting like something. It's something that deserves an explanation.

<comment><USER3> I'd just like to see how he scores songs that charted like Smells Like Teen Spirit, Closer, You Oughta Know, Creep, Beautiful People, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder how much is it due to general attitudes towards profanity and generally colloquial speech being increasingly relaxed. They only analyzed the word content, not the meaning of the songs per se.

</comment><comment><USER10> Seems it goes up during bad times and then down during good times. Makes kind of sense. Pop music often tries to be counterculture.

<comment><USER11> That is the basis of the 13-year cycle theory[1], but this is showing that each cycle never recovers, so to speak, resulting in a continual trend towards sadder and angrier.

[1] [https://globalnews.ca/news/4082568/the-theory-of- the-13-year...](https://globalnews.ca/news/4082568/the-theory-of-the-13-year- rock-vs-pop-cycle-alan-cross/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think the 2010-2013 peak is interesting - pop music was more upbeat than it had been since 9/11.

</comment><comment><USER13> Interesting article. Too bad they resort to a clickbait title as opposed to the title used for it here on HN.

My willingness to post an article on social media to share it with others is inversely proportionate to the clickbaityness of its title.

If it has a clickbait title I ain't posting it. And this one does, so I won't. Too bad, because the article is good.

<comment><USER14> So the clickbait was actually providing the payoff it promised? The article was good, so you aren't going to post it because its title was too catchy? "Clickbait" is when you get suckered into clicking bad content via a catchy headline. It isn't clickbait when it's actually a good article that "delivers" on the headline's promise.

<comment><USER13> It's a clickbait type of title because it doesn't convey a good reason to read the article on its own — it's enticing you to click in order to find out whether the article is of interest or not.

HN non-clickbait title:

> Evidence that pop music is getting sadder and angrier

Original clickbait title:

> Is pop music really getting sadder and angrier?

It needlessly formulated the title as a question to intrigue people to click it.

Writing the titles in this way serves no purpose but to waste people's time by tricking them to click through.

I refuse to partake in the further proliferation of any article that practices this style of writing titles.

Clickbait titles need to die. The only chance we have of getting rid of them is to not give them traffic. That won't ever happen of course, but at least we have the useful policy here on HN to shield us from being manipulated by the titles when we decide what we want to read and not.</comment></comment></comment>


Disney+ to Launch in November $6.99 Monthly including 30 Seasons of the Simpsons - <AUTHOR> https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/disney-plus-streaming-launch-date-pricing-1203187007/ <comment><AUTHOR> "At launch, Disney+ will include 7,500 episodes, including from 25 original series; 400 library movie titles; and 100 recent theatrical films releases, according to Agnes Chu, senior VP of content, Disney+. That includes exclusive rights to all 30 seasons of "The Simpsons," which Disney obtained through the acquisition of 21st Century Fox. In year five of Disney+, the company expects to have an annual production slate of some 50 originals, Chu said. Disney+ will be an ad-free service, supported solely by subscription fees. It's going to have a wide platform footprint, spanning game consoles, smart TVs and connected streaming devices, including Roku and PlayStation 4, said Michael Paull, president of Disney Streaming Services (formerly BAMTech)."

</comment><comment><USER2> AppleTV?</comment>


This app warns heroin users when their drugs are laced with fentanyl - <AUTHOR> https://news.vice.com/story/this-app-warns-heroin-users-when-their-drugs-are-laced-with-fentanyl <comment><USER2> No, it doesn't.

The submitter changed the title. All this is is an opt-in SMS blaster to notify users when there are reports of fentanyl ODs that have _already happened_ in the area. The app does _nothing_ to analyze any specific sample, let alone track seller trends.

It also has an autoplay video.</comment>


The Long Past of C - <AUTHOR> http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=4304

<comment><USER2> I'm truly happy to sill be being paid to write brand new C code, and its 2012. Of course, its 2012, so C isn't the only language I write and work in, but it is still a very strong contender in certain pro software industries, for good reasons. It really doesn't take much effort to become a good C programmer, fast, these days.

And all other language arguments aside, C is still pretty fun to code _any application_ in, if you do it right. It is true of all languages, but 21st Century C is uniquely appealing.</comment>


Yahoo Meme was a microblogging site launched by Yahoo Inc. in August 2009.  - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Meme

<comment><USER2> Meme was a direct Tumblr competitor at the time, or at least they thought it was.

A very friend of mine was involved in the project and it was developed by Yahoo's São Paulo office here in Brazil. :)

I don't know the real reason why they shut it down, but probably because they couldn't fetch Tumblr's success or something like that.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder if it was meant to be pronounced 'meame' or 'me-me'.</comment>


Bose announces new flagship Noise Cancelling Headphones 700 - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/29/18644135/bose-noise-cancelling-headphones-700-price-release-date-specs <comment><USER2> I really hoping for better audio quality without bass distortion and/or improvements to the ergonomics. From this article it sounds like a lot of price difference is going to be justified by things that most people aren't going to actually use, like an "Audio VR" system and Siri integration.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is Bose's successor to the ever popular QC35 IIs.

It's an interesting update. Not sure I really understand the use cases for Bose AR yet. If you have used the recent Sony 1000X M3s, several similar features that were introduced there have been added to Bose's lineup with this model.</comment>


Why is Silicon Valley helping the tech-savvy jihadists? - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/12008689/Why-is-Silicon-Valley-helping-the-tech-savvy-jihadists.html <comment><USER2> The author of this piece used to be the Prime Minister's chief speechwriter. She previously wrote a piece for The Times, headlined 'Internet giants are the terrorists' friend': [http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/article4517...](http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/article4517419.ece) (paywalled)

She studied English and Poetry and, since resigning her role in the Prime Minister's office in June, has published a children's book called 'Kitchen Disco': [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kitchen-Disco-Clare- Foges/dp/0571307...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kitchen-Disco-Clare- Foges/dp/0571307884)

</comment><comment><USER3> here's an opinion piece on this article:

[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151123/10050732890/teleg...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151123/10050732890/telegraph- publishes-dumbest-article-encryption-youll-ever-read-written-david-camerons- former-speechwriter.shtml)</comment>


Ask HN: Raspberry Pi Clones - <AUTHOR>

I love my pi as a media center, the only thing I'd like is for it to have a little bit more speed - I find the CPU gets maxed quite easily. Does anyone have any experience with the pi clones out there, such as HummingBoard or Banana Pi? Any recommendations? <comment><USER2> Have a look at the Cubieboard, and the PCDuino - But be aware many on ebay are based on the A10 which at 1GHz are reasonably quick, the newer ones (hence more expensive) are based on the A20 and more development is done on those these days. The two boards above have lots of GPIO and some revisions have a SATA socket too so you can hook up a laptop drive. They all have real (not usb) ethernet ports, and can drive their USB ports with a sensible amount of juice, unlike the PI.

Links? No, I trust you can google the terms :)

The MK8xx devices all seem to be A10s (but that might have changed now)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll have a look at the Cubieboard, thanks!

<comment><USER2> Additional, the beaglebone black is a nice board too ... but unfortunately there has been upwards of six months with no supply.

I did see an announcement of a feature-limited clone, but it's not appeared on my radar since.

If you still have your sights on a cubieboard, take a look at cubian ... a debianish distro.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you're using the Pi as a media center only, maybe you should consider products like the MK808 which often have Linux ports?

<comment><AUTHOR> How's its video output?</comment></comment>


Microsoft's CoreRT turns C# into cross-platform C++ - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoworld.com/article/3131551/open-source-tools/microsofts-corert-turns-c-into-cross-platform-c.html <comment><USER2> The use case is advertised as allowing you to port code to new devices. But the github repo says it only supports Ubuntu, OSX, and Windows. Lastly C++ isn't generally considered a _portable_ language.

Frankly the idea of porting a C# runtime to a new platform sounds more exciting then debugging 10,000SLoC of machine generated C++ to a new arch.

<comment><USER3> If they only use a limited subset of C++, it is a pretty portable language. If they use all bells and whistles the language has to offer, then it will be a nightmare.

<comment><USER4> Why the limited subset? I know that STL and embedded aren't the best of friends but where else is there a problem? Is it the threading stuff?

<comment><USER3> Embedded devices usually can't compile the entire C++ language, because of limited hardware and/or compiler tools.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Unity has already developed their own AOT compiler.

[https://blogs.unity3d.com/2015/05/06/an-introduction-to- ilcp...](https://blogs.unity3d.com/2015/05/06/an-introduction-to-ilcpp- internals/)

</comment><comment><USER6> This has already been submitted to HN recently: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12735260](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12735260)

Using the search tool is not that difficult

<comment><USER2> Serious question. What search tool?

<comment><USER6> This little box with a "Search" label which is sitting at the bottom of the page.

<comment><USER7> wow I've never seen this before. o:</comment></comment></comment></comment>


World's Smallest Website - <AUTHOR> http://guimp.com

<comment><USER2> In an age of ever-increasing landing page images, never-ending scrolling, this was a treat to navigate.</comment>


Windows 10 updates to be automatic and mandatory for Home users - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/07/windows-10-updates-to-be-automatic-and-mandatory-for-home-users/

<comment><USER2> I'm not even mad. They found a way to give enterprise an opt-out, and force everyone else to stay updated. I see this as a good way to make sure that the worst web users (those on IE and never updating due to negligence) are finally getting the latest version of their browser. That's all I really care about and wished for the past decade to happen. The one bummer is that it probably won't ship with any rate-limiting or scheduled timing of update downloads. Maybe it will be possible to pause the download? I don't have Windows 10, so school me if needed.

<comment><USER3> Here's one example why this is a bad decision. From a sailing forum [1]:

"I just read an article... that says that there will be no way to turn off updates on Windows 10. That's going to impact cruisers with limited access to the internet. Trying to download an important email? Please wait while we phone home to Microsoft first, then download 1.2GB of updates..."

Granted, if you have Pro, maybe it's not as much an issue because you can delay it for months. But I still think MS is making a bad decision in their attempt at control.

[1] [http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/f13/windows-10-and- manda...](http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/f13/windows-10-and-mandatory- updates-149627.html)</comment></comment>


Proof That Game Theory Isn't Fully True - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2010/08/12/oracle-google-android-lawsuit/

<comment><USER2> Maybe I'm overlooking something, but in what way does Oracle's suit against Google (or the article) prove that "game theory isn't fully true"?

</comment><comment><USER3> Not everyone acts according to their best interests. That doesn't mean game theory is wrong.</comment>


Building a Brain in the Lab - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/building-a-brain-in-the-lab/?WT.mc_id=SA_TW_MB_PW <comment><USER2> Down with the paywall!</comment>


A design degree's worth of typography rules neatly summarized - <AUTHOR> http://practicaltypography.com/summary-of-key-rules.html <comment><USER2> Interestingly, I was sent to a /graylist.html page accusing HN (among others) of profiting from the traffic. Normally these pages make the (absolutely fair) point that they need to earn to live, but without the accusatory tone. It might be just bad copy that inadvertedly includes HN on the freeriders accusation, but to the cynic in me, this seems a little bit as a psychological technique to make me feel guilty... what do you think about this copy?

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't see that. I think the writer needs to either sell a book and offer whatever he wants for free on the blog, or offer everything for free with no restrictions. I don't see the point in the writer begging or making others feel guilty as a monetization strategy. Either it's free or not.</comment></comment>


Design for Humans or 14 Principles of Good Design - <AUTHOR> https://uxplanet.org/design-for-humans-e8fc7924286d <comment><AUTHOR> Favorite quotes from the article:

 _Good Design is simple._ > A user interface should be so simple that a beginner in an emergency can understand it within ten seconds.

 _Good Design is timeless._ > If you can make something that appeals to people today and would have also appealed to people in 1500, then there is a good chance it will appeal to people in 2500

 _Good Design is redesign._ > The easy, conversational tone of good writing comes only on the 8th re-write.</comment>


A History of Commodore's 8-bit Computers - <AUTHOR> http://lowendmac.com/2015/a-history-of-commodores-8-bit-computers/ <comment><USER4> I think one could build a business course entirely from the history of CBM. There are so many interesting mistakes and successes.

The C64 is a classic case of a company not falling prey to the innovators' dilemma. They built the C64 when they already had one of the most successful computers on the market in the VIC-20. Tramiel had shown an uncanny knack for spotting evolution in the market on multiple previous occasions and leapt from one profitable business to another, leveraging the success of the earlier to fund the latter.

And, then, the faltering began. Instead of once again shooting for a big hairy audacious goal (64k for $595, in the case of the C64), they cut corners and delivered less power for more money (C16 and Plus/4, both massive market failures, because people aren't idiots). The article doesn't cover it, but the Plus/4 was extremely weak for games, compared to the C64. Despite having support for more colors, it didn't have hardware sprites and sound was a regression to the old bleep bloops of lesser computers, compared to C64's beautiful and powerful (for the time) 3 voice synthesizer chip (designed by the dude who went on to found Ensoniq, a leading sampler/synth company of the 80s).

The SX64 is less clear cut of a mistake...it was a beautiful machine, built well, and competitive with other portables of the time. Not sure why it did so poorly. I guess the business market wasn't into the Commodore brand by that time, and it was the only market that could afford it. I remember seeing "Name Brand Computer!" closeout special ads in the various computer mags at the time, and it was clearly an SX64...I remember wanting one, too, but couldn't afford it even at the drastically reduced prices. I still don't know how to interpret it in the history of CBM. Marketing failure? Poor market fit? Just too expensive?

It took them years to bring out a C64 upgrade in the C128, which was a modest success. I think part of the reason it wasn't a bigger success was its high cost (both for CBM to build and consumers to buy). The Z80 chip was a boondoggle bolted onto the side of the design that nobody used. Again, failure to achieve any meaningful hold in the business world meant there was no C/PM usage on C128 to speak of, and it was wasted effort and cost to try to tackle it.

The dedicated game machines are also a failure blip on the radar, and I think it's clear why: They reduced the utility of the thing, delivering less value, at a slightly lower price point; trying to boost margins at the expense of customers was a mistake they'd make over and over. The cost-cutting instinct at CBM was strong, but not in the direction it needed to go...people want more value for less money. They never want less value for less money. I don't know how to express this truism, and I don't remember where I've read studies about it, but people don't readily accept downgrades like this, and Commodore introduced these kinds of downgrades _constantly_ , and it's an explanation for almost every one of their big failures, and when they went against that grain (and delivered more value for similar money, they had big hits).

Other later examples...the Amiga 500 was effectively an Amiga 1000 for half the price. Sure, smaller case, but it was just as capable of a computer. And, it was the most successful Amiga model, by far. Had CBM _always_ followed this model of delivering more for less, without pursuing all the stupid side projects that were clearly bound for failure, they would still be around today (though Gould may have even been able to kill that successful of a company).

Even as a kid, I could see that the C16 and Plus/4 were bound to fail. They were utter shit for games, and games were the primary reason families were choosing C64 over other low cost options. Likewise, one could see that the C128 was going to struggle because it cost a lot to produce and had features that weren't going to be used (I never saw any C/PM software for C128, and I was using a C128 and then C128D until I got an Amiga in 1991...I was a hardcore user), and yet they kept shipping out that goofy hybrid concept for all those years (that's why the C64 kept going longer than the C128...it was simply cheaper to make and cheaper to buy, and still provided pretty similar value to the 128, because so little software for 128 existed).

Likewise, Amiga got the chopshop treatment on a few occasions, where they tried to make gaming versions and home entertainment versions. Always too little value, given competitors of the time, including compared to the Amiga itself. All trying to goose margins, without delivering more value.

<comment><USER5> The C128 and C128D were actually surprisingly successful. They sold an aggregate 4-5 million in 6 years. Comparable to the entire Amiga range, and a substantial proportion of what the C64 models sold over their 12 year production period...

Almost shocking consider its deficiencies and being sandwhiched between the C64 and Amiga for most of its existence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> One important thing they left out about the C64C was that it was actually a masterstroke rarely seen from Commodore management after Thomas J. Rattigan took over.

Tramiel had kept Commodore constantly moving at breakneck speed with very little room for error by cutting prices so aggressively there was next to no margin. It was actually one of his price cuts that caused him to get pushed out, as well as savage Comodores retailer network (they had tons of hardware in the pipeline, announced a massive cost cut and refused to reimburse or credit retailers for the difference in recommended retail price, causing lots of retailers to lose lots of money, many of whom subsequently dropped Commodore).

But the C64C went the opposite direction: Despite 8-bit machines being past their prime at the time, the C64C was launched at a _higher_ price point, often obscured by bundled that included GEOS and/or Quantum Link. At the same time it was _drastically_ cost reduced. Some of it is obvious - if you open an early C64 vs a C64C the case seems pretty much empty in the latter; the 8x8KB RAM chips are replaced by one or two; lots and lots of 74xx series chips are replaced by a couple of custom asics etc. Some are not so obvious - <USER2> different types of screws etc.

The result was that the C64C was a large part of saving Commodore at a very difficult time (when was Commodore not in crisis?) by dramatically increasing Commodores margins. Probably the first and only time that Commodore had margins similar to Apple, though still at a much lower price point.

Of course, shortly after essentially saving the company from one of its worst crises ever, Rattigan was fired by Irving Gould, and Gould personally took over as CEO - allegedly because Gould was annoyed that Rattigan got lots of positive PR. Rattigan later won a $9m lawsuit against Commodore over the firing... The history of Commodore management is that success was as bad for your continued employment as failure.

<comment><USER6> > it was actually a masterstroke rarely seen from Commodore management after > Thomas J. Rattigan took over.

The Digital Antiquarian has more fascinating details on Rattigan's role at Commodore [1]. In this telling, he comes off as not-so-bad, actually pretty competent, but ultimately foiled by the egos of the executive board.

[1] [http://www.filfre.net/2015/11/the-68000-wars-part-4-rock- lob...](http://www.filfre.net/2015/11/the-68000-wars-part-4-rock-lobster/)

<comment><USER5> Being "foiled by the executive board" was pretty much routine at Commodore, unfortunately. The executive chairs were spinning at high speed.

<comment><USER7> Board room meddling is a plague upon the business.

You could see that with how HP was flip flopping around as the board was brining in new CEOs ever so often because the share value was lagging.

Or now just as Nokia seemed to be coming back around the board brought in Elop...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> When I was a kid, I somehow ended up with a copy of the 1989 edition of _The Secret Guide to Computers_ , by Russ Walter. While it was already outdated by the time I got it (this would be around 1995 or 1996), I found it an absolutely fascinating resource for a number of reasons. One, it was my introduction to programming, and the tutorials in the book really opened my eyes. Two, it was filled with a wealth of information about the home computer era, which was something that I never really got to experience firsthand: my family had Macs when I was little (I was born in '84, and my parents got a Mac Plus in '86, starting my love affair with computers), and we eventually switched to PCs in the mid 90s. All I knew firsthand about the era was from the Apple II models at school. Reading this book introduced me to a whole new history featuring companies I knew next to nothing about, such as Commodore, Atari, and Tandy.

Anyway, a few stories about Commodore's history were imprinted on me thanks to this book, and I'm going to repeat them here from memory.

One: The PET's launch was filled with problems. Commodore originally wanted a guaranteed retail channel, so when they first started developing the PET, they approached Tandy about a partnership where Commodore would make the computer and Tandy would sell it. Tandy politely declined Commodore's offer... because Commodore sold them on the idea making of a home computer so well that Tandy decided they should both make _and_ sell their own computer, cutting Commodore out of the loop and resulting in the TRS-80. The PET's development was filled with delays, and by the time it actually launched, the TRS-80 has beaten it to market. It was already obsolete by the time it came out, and then IIRC they had problems introducing the floppy drive as well, with its launch plagued by delays and mechanical problems. When Commodore began work on the VIC-20, they weren't so much following up a successful product with a next generation as they were desperately trying to make up for the PET's problems.

Two: With the VIC, Commodore found out that naming a computer was harder than it looks, especially when you're trying for an international launch. They originally wanted to name it the Vixen to promote it as sleek and sexy, but the name ended up being too sexy for the European market since "Vixen" is pronounced like _Wichsen_ , which is German for "masturbation". So they shortened it to Vic. Unfortunately, they discovered that a German would pronounce it like _Fick_ , which means "fuck". Ultimately, they decided to go with different names for different markets: they named it VIC-20 in the US and VC-20 (short for "VolksComputer") in Europe. On a similar note, the medicine company Vicks had the same problem, so they chose to spell their name as Wicks in Germany.

</comment><comment><USER9> My first "real" computer was a VIC-20. I used an optical detector hooked up to the joystick's ADC input to observe that my fluorescent lamps were not "steady" but instead flickered at some frequency.

I became an embedded computing guy later on... :)

</comment><comment><USER10> If you want to know more about other obscure products and prototypes see the secret weapons of Commodore: [http://www.floodgap.com/retrobits/ckb/secret/](http://www.floodgap.com/retrobits/ckb/secret/)

</comment><comment><USER11> trip down the memory lane: i coded apps (programs we called them, like a small joystick drawing tool or a little program that put out a boilerplate BASIC code) and games (rpg, asteroid like mini-shooter, ...) on the C64 (basically via "forking" and combining programms available in printed magazines) - <USER3> nobody "grown up" saw value in them. i was told not to waste that much time on the computer - and after the energy-supply-thingie went up into flames, i was sent back to watch TV...

gladly -as i found out in the first dotcom bubble - that not much has changed. ok, everything has changed, but "writing programs" was still "writing programs" and it wasn't that much of a jump from BASIC to "that stupid subset of PERL that the template engine of that long gone agency used".

we should bring back that "printed code" magazines. i mean really just a magazine where there is pure code and only a short discussion about it. not that patronizing how-to shit thats currently available.

<comment><USER12> My family always described what I was doing with my C64 as "playing with the computer". Sure, I played games on it, but I also spent a lot of time typing in those programs from the magazines. Younger developers today are shocked and amazed when I describe the hex dumps with line-by-line checksums they used to print, and that your first challenge was to type in the code-entry program mistake free, without relying on the checksums to get every character correct.

To this day, even though I touch-type most of the time, I can still type quickly with one hand, while the other hand is used to keep my place on a printed document I'm transcribing. (Not that I do that much anymore.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you love Commodore computers, then Brian Bagnall wrote a really good book on the history of Commodore's 8-bit machines.

[http://www.amazon.com/Commodore-Company-Edge-Brian- Bagnall/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Commodore-Company-Edge-Brian- Bagnall/dp/0973864966)

<comment><USER14> It covers the history of Commodore, including the 16 bit era. Very good book. Many present commentators tend to ignore Commodore's impact in favor of Apple's, this history is an antidote to that.

<comment><USER15> Actually it doesn't cover the Amiga era. There's been a new book by the same author in the works that does, but it's not yet out.

<comment><USER14> Just checked, you're right. Not sure why I had that impression.

<comment><USER5> The first edition did cover everything in one volume, that's probably why.

The second edition is substantially extended and has been split in two and only the first volume has been released yet (the second volume is finaly close to finished, thanks to a Kickstarter).

<comment><USER14> Thank god I'm not crazy!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have to imagine that the movie War Games starring Matthew Broderick helped spur sales. After seeing that movie, I had to have a commodore computer ;) That movie, alone, changed me. I was an eletronics geek and after seeing that movie, I knew the future (for me) was computers.

<comment><USER5> War Games didn't feature a Commodore machine, it featured an IMSAI. It might have helped boost mainstream interest in computers, but by then Commodore was already a big, well established company and - I believe - hadn't yet thoroughly burned their reseller network.

<comment><USER17> Well it was the C64's time. If you got enthused about computers by the movie, in 1983, chances were you'd get a C64.

Wasn't Broderick's character using an IMSAI to show he didn't have the money for new hardware, and had to make do with 2nd hand stuff?

'War Games' isn't a half bad game on the C64, either!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> On similar topics, but with even more detail, there is "The Digital Antiquarian" (Ostensibly mostly about the history of adventure games, but with some amazing articles about the home computer revolution thrown in): [http://www.filfre.net](http://www.filfre.net)

</comment><comment><USER19> While it wasn't hardware I wish they had mentioned GEOS: If you had enough money for a disk drive this would give you a Mac OS feel to your C64: [http://toastytech.com/guis/c64g.html](http://toastytech.com/guis/c64g.html)

<comment><USER20> I was always bummed when Loadstar started including GEOS programs I couldn't run because we didn't have the machine for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The Digital Antiquarian has a lot of really good posts about that era, extensively covering the hardware and software. Start from [http://www.filfre.net/sitemap/](http://www.filfre.net/sitemap/)

</comment><comment><USER22> I still have memories of burning out two VIC-20s by POKE-ing where I shouldn't. (I was five; the memory map wouldn't mean much to me until much later.)

</comment><comment><USER23> A VIC-20 was my first computer. I still have fond memories of writing random- sentence generators in BASIC on that thing.

</comment><comment><USER24> amyjess, if you read this, your comment is showing as dead, don't know why, sometimes the moderation on HN catches out people that don't deserve it. Thanks for passing on the stories.

<comment><USER25> There's a much better solution than posting off-topic comments like this: click on the comment's timestamp to go to its page, then click 'vouch'. This indicates that the comment shouldn't be dead. When enough users vouch for a comment, the software restores it. (There's a small karma threshold, currently 30, before a user sees 'vouch' links.)

In addition, moderators review the vouched-for comments and in many cases have unbanned accounts that didn't need to stay banned.

amyjess's comment was killed by a spam filter. Users vouched for it, so it was unkilled by the time we saw it.

<comment><USER24> Thank you for letting me know about the timestamp trick dang, that's useful. Are there plans to make the vouch link available for dead comments without needing to click on the timestamp? I believe it'd help.

<comment><USER25> Vouching works the way flagging works. Flagging comments has always required an extra click, presumably as a high-pass filter to cut down on impulsive flagging. That design seems to have worked well, so we probably won't change it. It does leave a discovery problem though.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: One ajax call or two simultaneous calls? Which is faster? - <AUTHOR>

I have to get an image and comments related to it. Now I have an option of making one ajax call and getting an html page with the iage and comments or get the image and comments in two simultaneous ajax calls. Which option is faster or better for the user? <comment><USER2> I was considering a similar issue not long ago and decided on one call for the following reasons 1) user percieved speed - I can't control the users bandwidth, or memory, and two ajax calls means two pages being retrieved by the users browser, and then two different functions to place those pages into the users browser 2) error handling - what if there is an error with the image or comments? the user will get one portion returned, and not the other (minor disconnects happen all the time and usually it isn't detrimental, but the more ajax calls, the more opportunity for failure).

In the end I decided to do one ajax call and the split the returned data into two strings and place them on the page.

You can check out the results at www.HearWhere.com

Also, if you are always getting the image with related comments, I would suspect that they would both go within the same area/div of a page, so why split them?

</comment><comment><USER3> I guess I don't really understand the question. You're loading text based content, and an image, and you want to know whether or not to get everything in one XMLHTTPRequest, or to load two separate XMLHTTPRequests?

Why do you need a request at all for the image? If you've got the information you need and predictable URLs, you could use one XMLHTTPRequest, and simultaneously create an image in JavaScript and set it's source, right? This will obviously be faster than first going to your server, then creating the image in the resulting html. Of course, if you can't actually generate the image tag without hitting your server, then this is all moot.

</comment><comment><USER4> my rule of thumb, that i would apply to this situation, is _keep it simple_. if you want to optimize, test both options in your own app. i don't think that one can generalize this situation to say for sure which option is faster or better without also having the context of your application in mind.</comment>


A rant about the TSA ranters - <AUTHOR> http://shankman.com/a-rant-about-the-tsa-ranters/

<comment><USER2> > a) It's not going to kill you.

No, probably not. And yet, from the response of UCSF PhDs, it sounds like there needs to be more research into what the effects will be. Let's get that done before we foist it on the flying public (particularly kids, pregnant women, cancer survivors, etc.).

> b) Naked photos!

We've all seen this one by now: <http://bit.ly/9AbQ82>. The difference between the two is a software setting--but the resolution/quality of the image isn't really the point:

> c and d) Suck it up, you chose to fly.

I choose to drive, but the policeman who pulls me over for speeding does not have the right to pat me down unless he can prove he had cause. The Constitution protects me from that. I'm not sure why it doesn't protect me from the TSA.</comment>


Acodeclass - <AUTHOR> https://acodeclass.com <comment><AUTHOR> A code class, the A stands for advanced, which means you just cant help but move forward when you use any of our services.</comment>


Visual Cryptography - <AUTHOR> http://www.datagenetics.com/blog/november32013/index.html <comment><USER2> The exceptionally cool follow-on to this is David Chaum's work on using visual cryptography for voting --

      http://www.constitution2.org/wiki/files/2004_chaum_secret_ballot_receipts.pdf

People have since built further on that work, but I seem to recall that Chaum's paper is what started a wave of work on end-to-end verifiable voting.

</comment><comment><USER3> Awesome! I (almost) didn't believe the fish thing. I had to PRT-SCR and use paint.net to change the white to transparent to overlay them. It's real!</comment>


Employee Termination As A Service? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/Human-Resources/Employee-Termination-As-A-Service <comment><USER2> It's called contracting, and you let the agency handle it.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Disclosure: I am the OP on Quora who posted the question.</comment>


Ask HN: Looking for two cofounders - <AUTHOR> One full stack mobile engineer. One design person. My background is education BS MS in software engineering and MBA and multiple years experience in both fields. Also decently connected in SV. <comment><USER2> I'm a UI/UX designer, please feel free to contact me, my website is credej.github.io

</comment><comment><USER3> What's your pitch? What do you want to work on?

<comment><AUTHOR> AR. I'd be happy to pitch once things progress to a Skype call.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> can you share contact details? firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER5> Views on remote?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm open to remote.

<comment><USER5> Mind sending contact details?

email@example.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Emailed. Thank you.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Graphing Calculators Are Still Around; Here Are the Best for 2018-19 - <AUTHOR> https://www.techpoweredmath.com/best-graphing-calculators-for-school/ <comment><USER2> Target has one for $39 in this week's sales.</comment>


Show HN: Apprise – A lightweight all-in-one notification solution - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/caronc/apprise <comment><USER2> This is pretty cool, I drop the following shell script on all my servers:

        #!/bin/bash

        if [[ -z $1 && -z $2 ]]; then
            echo "No Message passed"
        else
            if [[ -z $2 ]]; then
                curl -s --form-string "token=MYAPPTOKEN" --form-string "user=MYUSERTOKEN" --form-string "message=$1" https://api.pushover.net/1/messages.json
            else
                curl -s --form-string "token=MYAPPTOKEN" --form-string "user=MYUSERTOKEN" --form-string "title=$1" --form-string "message=$2"  https://api.pushover.net/1/messages.json
            fi
        fi

It's SUPER basic and probably shitty but for me it's perfect. I can add " && push 'Command is Done'" to the end of any command and get a notification on my watch/phone/(and desktop? But I don't have pushover on my desktop installed). Great for things you threw into a screen/tmux session and want to know when they finished.

</comment><comment><USER3> Cool stuff! But what about AWS SNS ([https://aws.amazon.com/sns/](https://aws.amazon.com/sns/)) or Firebase Cloud Messaging ([https://firebase.google.com/docs/cloud- messaging/](https://firebase.google.com/docs/cloud-messaging/))?

<comment><USER4> I'm not familiar with all of the services listed. Perhaps one of those provides SMS messaging? (the main benefit of AWS SNS in my eyes).

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just a project I put together to make the many notification services out there easier to use. I'd love to hear feedback and/or suggestions!

<comment><USER5> Actually, I was wondering that there is no XMPP module.

<comment><AUTHOR> No reason for this other then simply not having a request for it (until now) :).

After some quick Googling, it sort of appears everyone uses this protocol differently with different payloads (I could be really wrong here and would love if someone were to weigh in here). For example Google Talk servers require you to define additional XML which includes a token, where as other services just require you to send the sub/pub standard XML. These differences in payloads would make it difficult to build a simple URL with (while following the current convention).

So rather than support XMPP, maybe it would be better to create a notification per service you want to attach too? Did you have one in mind?

<comment><USER5> Currently, I use a simple Go client [1] and a self-hosted XMPP-server (ejabberd). In fact, I don't know what the Google servers require, but due to the federated nature of XMPP (similar to e-mail), I think it would be best to create a generic version rather than one for a specific service.

[1]: [https://github.com/arendtio/xmppsend](https://github.com/arendtio/xmppsend)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for sharing this. I'll definitely investigate this further!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Awesome work, this is great! It seems like I have to write notification code for every little project I build.

One that'd be interesting would be to have an Apprise "server" where all config lives, and a client that receives commands. This way, a single Apprise installation could service multiple hosts without having to duplicate configuration files.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm... I don't know if I'd want the headache of having everyone's passwords, tokens and API keys on a server I managed and deal with the privacy that goes with it...

But I was thinking of still supporting YAML or JSON formatted files to which users could protect with permissions and store their personal data there instead of being visible on the command line. the url would be something like file://path/to/config.yaml or [http://localserver/path/to/config.yaml](http://localserver/path/to/config.yaml). So in a way, this kinda/sorta fits with your idea too :).

Thanks for your positive feedback!

<comment><USER6> I meant a self-hosted server, and self-hosted client.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is awesome! I work at a company where we have to abstract away from multiple services like this. We face some interesting challenges and are constantly learning from our experiences. I think you will have some similar challenges and would love to hear your/HN community's thoughts on how some of the issues would be tackled.

We are basically providing an API on top of multiple services which may work their own way and have some idiosyncrasies.

\- I do not believe there is a specification/standard that is being followed by all libraries (i.e: Do not think something like OpenID Connect exists for these). Will we always be able to provide this API? What if we want to add a service that requires slight adjustments?

\- How will we monitor and update our implementations when a single service is updated?

Edit: Formatting.

Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> What you're describing you're building might be more complicated then the problems I faced.

For apprise, I focused on what was common across all notification services: all of them had a body, most have a title, and some allow you to attach images. Anything outside of these 3 fields then became very specific to that one (notification) service. The sacrifice made is that if you want in-depth functionality of a specific service with rich features, you won't achieve it with apprise. It can however accomodate some additional attributes via arguments... For example with email you can define the smtp server, from address, etc., but that wouldn't be applicable to say Twitter.

I know I'm drifting from your question, but with respect to what was said: \- enforce your own specification as you're right, you'll find everyone solves great problems differently. \- use inheritance. Base classes make life soo much easier. \- decide what is common or what you want to make common across your API endpoints and stick with that. Like the body, title, image issue I resorted too. Maybe you want to assume you'll always need a user and password too. Prepare to support tokens and open ids out of the gate in your base class \- don't try to extend on one endpoint too much regardless of how much feature rich functionality it offers. Focus on getting them all endpoints working using the standards you come up with. This will help you achieve your goal. Build onto it after. \- unit tests! They're a pain to learn, but you won't regret knowing your code remains stable!

As per monitoring, I presume you're running a web service at the end of the day. So there are many great monitoring solutions out there that can check your servers availability constantly. Nagios (or forks of it) for example can email you when your service gets disrupted allowing you to take action right away. Heck, Nagios+apprise and you can get a text message. There are lots of more modern monitoring tools as well that can do all this for you.

Sorry for the wordy reply, I hope I answered your questions!

Good luck

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This seems useful. Is there anything like this for nodejs?

By the way, the logo on top of the README is not working.

</comment><comment><USER9> Looks great, not having a go at you, but instantly reminded me of this

[https://youtu.be/8wfG8ngFvPk](https://youtu.be/8wfG8ngFvPk)

<comment><AUTHOR> Apparently this video is not available to be watched in my country (Canada).

But now that you struck my curiosity, what is the video about? :)

<comment><USER10> it's about the cross-portal messaging system WUPFH.com from the US series The Office

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Does it deliver notifications to phones in China where google FCM notifications don't reach?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, unfortunately it only simplifies the use of existing notification services.

I don't recall supporting a service that does that though. Perhaps I need a wrapper for Twilio? That service may at least allow text messages to the specific China phones you speak of... Not sure though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Looks good. Ha What about WhatsApp via this [https://developers.facebook.com/docs/whatsapp/](https://developers.facebook.com/docs/whatsapp/) ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks,

I'll look into this. I actually added Facebook support, but it was around the time Zuckerberg got in trouble with data leaking. The API at the time became utterly useless (for Facebook).

But I never looked into the WhatsApp side of things. Thanks for the idea!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sadly growl seems to be mostly obsoleted but it's cool to see my code show up in a project like this</comment>


How Twitter Could Lose The Game By Design - <AUTHOR> http://dembot.com/post/182271103/how-twitter-could-lose-the-game-by-design

<comment><USER2> I have a theory that one of the things that makes twitter appealing to many people is it's ephemeral nature. Seen this way it's historical flakiness is actually one of the the things that makes it popular. Whether valid or not, there is a sense in which twitter seems to be a good venue for casual social messages that aren't going to be archived and potentially used against you at some later date. Whereas facebook (again validly or not) sends a message that this is the repository of your accomplishments, and that it will be your permanent record.

The thing is that as human beings we need both fireproof digital libraries that can keep our memories safe, and the electronic equivalent of the floating world where the record of what was said evaporates with the morning dew.

<comment><USER3> I don't think it's quite accurate to call Twitter ephemeral, though. All kinds of third-party services are trying to index and archive as many tweets as possible, plus there's always the possibility that Twitter will cut a more formal deal with Google (or any other search engine).

Plus, there have been numerous documented instances where deleted tweets can still be found by Twitter's own search engine.

In short, the old rule of thumb still applies: if you don't want it archived and indexed and preserved forever, don't put it online in the first place.

<comment><USER4> It's the _perception_ of ephemeral, through the UI and the way twitter presents "real-time" (most recent first, difficult to scroll through older stuff, less than stellar search (at least compared to other services)).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I know exactly what the writer means by that problem. The first page is really useful to search for new tweets on a topic, but once you login to use what you found, you can't revisit the original home page without logging out.

I find that to be really annoying, especially when I want to tweet about multiple topics that I want to search for first.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've run into that twitter logo thing on summize.com (search.twitter.com) so many times. Every single time I'm there like a fool I click on the twitter logo, I never learn.

As a side note though, if you really want this article to be taken seriously (especially by people at twitter), I would rename it. I'm sure they see a million "why twitter will fail" style posts every day, so the honest points of your article doesn't shine through.

</comment><comment><USER7> That article would have benefited greatly from the N-list approach.

<comment><AUTHOR> Too many too list :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> _I have used Twitter daily for years_

No, you haven't.

<comment><USER9> Twitter launched in early 2006, so I'm not sure how I see how this is impossible...

<comment><USER8> Sorry about that. I really should check my facts before being snarky. For some reason I thought twitter was only a year or so old. Maybe that's when it really took off or something.</comment></comment></comment>


University of Chicago researchers discover empathy in rats - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/a-new-model-of-empathy-the-rat/2011/12/08/gIQAAx0jfO_story.html

<comment><USER2> Good article. Not too surprising given what great pets rats can make. They are smart and can be friendly.</comment>


How United Onboards New Users - <AUTHOR> http://www.useronboard.com/how-united-onboards-new-users/ <comment><USER2> Hi all! I'm the person who made this. If you have any questions, critiques, or beyond, I will be checking the comments regularly. Fire away!

</comment><comment><USER2> @nnx Thank you for sharing this!</comment>


First-Time Startup Entrepreneurs: Stop F*cking Around - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/05/first-time-startup-entrepreneurs-stop-fucking-around/ <comment><USER2> Some of this is good, but I don't really like this particular bit:

 _Think about the opportunity cost here. You could be off making six figures but you decided to swing for the fences with your startup. That takes guts. So why would you slack off and waste time?_

Maybe you didn't leave the 6-figure job solely to "swing for the fences", but also because you wanted a different lifestyle? I know "lifestyle businesses" are perennially unpopular in parts of SV, but part of the whole _point_ of being your own boss is that you really can choose to, say, spend 10% of your workweek attending meetups, _even if_ it doesn't produce a monetary ROI, and you don't have to justify it to your employer. One thing I do agree with in that regard is that it's worth making sure you aren't doing things just because they feel productive, but really aren't, which endless meetings can sometimes fall into. But, participating in interesting communities and culture can be worth its own opportunity-cost price of admission.

<comment><USER3> +100. I can tell the guy writing this essay is young. Not that there's anything wrong with that, I'd love to be young again too. But when I look back over my twenties I don't find myself wishing I had worked more hours on my startup.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for saying that. Comments like yours have prompted me to reconsider my goals as of late. For a couple of years now, I was sure that I wanted to live the startup dream: move to the Bay Area, work for an early stage startup (or even pursue my own), let it take over my life, compete compete compete... However, now I'm not so sure that's how I want to spend the rest of my twenties.

I would still love to work at a startup at some point, but I'm not going to rush into it. I want to take advantage of my youth to discover more things that make me happy. I want to travel—a lot. I want to learn new languages. I want to meet amazing people. I also want to design and build things, but I don't think that it has to take over my life.

I'm very fortunate to be where I am now: fresh out of college, already doing something that I enjoy, and making enough money to be comfortable while working a reasonable number of hours per week. Do I have to dive immediately into the startup world to be happy? I don't think so.

Here are a few other posts that have hit home recently:

[http://mrooney.github.com/blog/2012/07/01/freelancing-a-6-mo...](http://mrooney.github.com/blog/2012/07/01/freelancing-a-6-month- retrospective/)

"In short, I felt that given a finite lifespan, there were more fulfilling and enjoyable ways to spend some of my healthiest years than 40+ hour weeks in an office."

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4213386>

"I think the kind of worry in this post is a response to the world born out of hyper-competitiveness, and I don't think its a healthy one."

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4213736>

"His mission statement shouldn't be that he wants a better epitaph. Other people get to write his epitaph, and by that time he'll be fucking dead. It's out of his control. What is in his control: whether his life was meaningful to himself. Did it express his unique talents, did it give him and others joy, did it help others? Did he make his own rules about how to evaluate his life or was he a slave to the caprices of fame and fortune? And this is about so much more than just a career."

<comment><USER5> Yeah you should go for it. Do the things that make you happy. I used to live in Sunnyvale for a few yrs working for a big corp. Then I quit and moved to Vietnam. Best decision I made ever. Didn't make as much money but wouldn't trade it for the world

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think one of the things that I find hard to do wrt to time management is whether to take meetings or not. I've tried both ends: both taking all meetings, and taking no meetings. I've found that taking all meetings, the vast majority of them aren't useful (to them or to me). In taking no meetings, I was able to focus, but I do wonder what could have been.

So where's the middle ground? Usually, I find that my default stance is 'no'. I have work to do, and I have to guard my time. So I'll only take meetings that are interesting. But I think after reading this, I'll have to also add 'need genuine help' to the criteria.

I think something that Stammy could have added under "Workdays are Sacred" is how to say 'no'. What if it's a warm intro to someone that doesn't heed genuine help?

<comment><USER7> How about just telling everyone that wants to meet that you work from (for example) some coffee shop from 3-5 on Thursdays? Then you can work or meet with the people that come. And nobody is "scheduled" so if three people show up then things will just work out. Or maybe you'll introduce them to each other if the meeting isn't useful.

I've heard people call this "office hours" too.

<comment><USER8> That would also have the advantage of letting you get more feedback. Maybe websites don't have this problem as much, because the interactions are more standard and it's easier to gather data, but seeing 3 people use your iPhone app is a pretty big data point for UI.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Startup founders stop using obscenity and cuss words

<comment><USER10> Why? "Fuck" is an extremely expressive word when used properly. Entrepreneurs must have a thick skin, and know when to use "fuck" and similar words.

<comment><USER11> >Why?

Obviously the only way to answer this is with personal opinion. For me, whenever I see a blog post with "why this fucking sucks" or other language I'm not necessarily offended. However I do feel like I'm suddenly talking to a child.

Fuck, Fucking, Fuckshit etc isn't shocking or expressive anymore. It's just an indicator of inexperience.

I can't seem to get my point across so instead I'll say I can't seem to get my FUCKING point across.

<comment><USER12> When writing I often use the word "fuck" or something similar to put a certain feel on a phrase. For effect. Not because it's offensive or a cuss word per se, but because I want the phrase to make a certain sound when the reader reads it.

It's a perfectly useful stylistic flourish when used appropriately. (just like deliberately using bad grammar can be ... or emoticons ... or sometimes even putting a delimiting punctuation, but not actually delimiting a sentence)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Founders who end up successful usually learn this lesson early on. It's not something you can read and understand, you just need to live the lifestyle. Don't allow yourself to get distracted, complete small but manageable goals, and just go one day at a time.

<comment><USER12> Interesting fact, _everybody_ goes just one day at a time. That's how time works!

<comment><USER14> Don't try to constrain me with your personal measure of temporal granularity, man!

Time is a continuous domain, so they don't really go one anything at a time. (Well, unless physiology is shown to have some kind of fundamental clock period.)

<comment><USER12> It does. Experiments have shown that in lieu of all external time signals humans will natural sync to a roughly 28 hour day.

Oh and eventually go completely insane.

<comment><USER15> Really? Is there a study or some other resource I can read more about this at?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What was the observable behavior recognized in your colleagues that prompted the judgement of them slacking off?

<comment><USER17> I would also love to know this.

<comment><USER18> Me too. it appears that the author is talking about the author's friends' startup, not his own. This doesn't seem to be about actual work habits but the perceived work habits of friends that go to meetups and try to act all "cool".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> As someone who has been struggling to get my first startup off the ground, this is exactly what I needed to hear. Thank you.

And my own piece of advice: if you've been trying (unsuccessfully) to launch your first company, listen to what this article is saying. Stop fighting, stop arguing, stop counter-pointing. Just listen for once. And then Do.

</comment><comment><USER20> I think I'm going to get my fiancee to tell me once every day - "stop fucking around!"

</comment><comment><USER21> Can't we just say "Fucking"? That little * in place of the "u" isn't fooling anyone.

</comment><comment><USER22> TC;DR.</comment>


Search for Low Airfares Gets More Competitive - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/11/business/11air.html?_r=1&ref=technology

<comment><USER2> Great press notice for Hipmunk, but a shame there's no link. Aargh.

<comment><USER3> So it goes :) can't complain about NYTimes love, though.</comment></comment>


Get things done. More building, less talking: A rule of thumb for raising money. - <AUTHOR> http://garry.posterous.com/get-things-done-more-building-less-talking-a <comment><USER2> My main beef with this posting is that I represent a possibly large percentage of Entrepreneurs who have potentially amazing ideas that just don't attract the "free" tech talent that they need to get off the ground.

What makes this worse is that literally as I was writing this comment, I got my denial email from Y Combinator...

<comment><USER3> I have been approached, numerous times, by friends, acquaintances, and random folks on the Internet who think that their napkin is just a bit of free engineering away from being Google.

I will not comment on the contents of your napkin. However, with regards to "'free' tech talent": I've been programming for twenty years, got into a good school and graduated with an engineering degree, got into the workforce and realized I knew nothing, fumbled forward for a few years increasing nothing to a little more than nothing, then founded my own business and worked hard for three years to get to a sliver more than a little more than nothing.

When you have done the work necessary to know a sliver more than a little more than nothing, you will have all the "free" tech talent you need. And you will know exactly how much "free" costs.

<comment><USER2> We already have a well thought out and award winning business plan written. But I'm sure we can all agree that business plans mean nothing without execution. And execution in our case, means design and development.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> But, if you've done too much building, generated too much revenue, got too many customers, you grow right past the "sweet spot" for YC and become less likely to be accepted - so, what is the optimal amount of building by the time your YC application is considered?

</comment><comment><USER5> Yeah yeah, we know: "just do it." this story is getting old (but is, of course, still true)</comment>