Increase conversion rate by making your site ugly - <AUTHOR> http://www.conversionvoodoo.com/blog/2010/04/increase-your-conversion-rate-by-making-your-site-uglier/

<comment><USER2> In my A/B testing experience I've never seen aesthetics be a major factor, and only rarely have I heard of it mattering for anyone else. That experience has been echoed by other people I know who do A/B tests. Instead messaging, usability, clear calls to action, etc win consistently.

But if you build a site with those goals and without worrying about aesthetics, you're going to wind up with an ugly site.

However that said, there are a couple of amusing cases I know about where deliberately making something ugly was an A/B testing win. Photoshop found that by setting ugly default fonts they push people to poke around the application to change the defaults, which results in a lot more usage of other features. Similarly Freshbooks redid their invoicing some time ago, and found that people overwhelmingly preferred the new version, yet conversions to paying customer were better when people were given the old version and forced to figure out that they could change it on their own. (And yes, most of the paying customers actually did change it.)

But in general aesthetics simply don't matter. And any theory based on the assumption that they do is wrong.

</comment><comment><USER3> My favorite usability story was at my expense. I was watching a demo for a tool crib software - essentially, it allows people to gain access to tools like a library. The one that impressed everyone the most

* was in Visual Basic 6

* was ugly as anything I had ever seen

* had an incredibly cluttered screen

but everyone raved about it when they left. Why? It was far and away the most _usable_ software we had seen. Instead of thinking about the pleasantness of the screen, they were thinking about workflow. Every time we asked, "can it do X", it did so, and with far greater elegance than we had hoped.

Even with the clutter, it was easy to use. Now, when I look at designing a user interface, I think of it with completely different eyes.

</comment><comment><USER4> Coming from a user interface design background, I thought this article posited a couple of false dichotomies which were perplexingly echoed in the comments here. Their suggestions appeared to be targeted at either amateurs, ad professionals, or flash jockeys, because a good designer would likely be taking this advice already. The gist of the article is summed up nicely by a commenter here: "Usability trumps design every time." I find that perplexing, because my goal as a designer was always to find the most usable solution through design.

1\. Value -- a good designer will take the time to understand the the target audiences. Many target audiences aren't looking for value, they're looking for status or something just as intangible. Implementing a visual design which communicates something the target audience isn't searching for is closely akin to pricing your product incorrectly. In fact, design approach is almost completely analogous to retail product price stratification.

2\. Trust -- this again depends on audience. Sometimes "labor of love" is the most relevant trust mark, but in other cases it's "well-established" or "industry leader."

3\. Accessibility -- this is kind of a 'duh' for any experienced web developer. Most design-oriented site you go to are built for modern browsers only, but that's because all their visitors are using Firefox. Any good web designer still knows how to fix an IE6 margin-doubling bug, for example.

4\. Flexibility -- um, it really is possible to design sites with good UI and flexible content. Would anyone here make the argument that Craigslist would have failed with proper whitespacing, appropriate font selections, and logical visual hierarchies? Those can all be accomplished with a single stylesheet.

5\. Function -- this really is the point of design. Most good designers would tell you that. Design without utility is bad art. I love user interface design because I can build things that look good and work well. The two go hand-in- hand.

I may be reading too much into the comment that "in general, aesthetics simply don't matter." If that's really true, do you have a good explanation for Apple's success? How about Nike?

<comment><USER5> "Would anyone here make the argument that Craigslist would have failed with proper whitespacing, appropriate font selections, and logical visual hierarchies? Those can all be accomplished with a single stylesheet."

Many successful websites (Google, craigslist, ebay, wikipedia, myspace etc) are both highly functional and divergent from "good design practices".

What I find troubling is that I don't believe any of those sites would have been constructed in their successful form by a design professional. We don't fully understand how people's perceptions are shaped by the presentation of information.

Having appropriate whitespace/fonts etc produces a clean looking site which conforms to a very particular aesthetic which has no proven connection to the success of a site and may substantially harm it.

<comment><USER4> There's no doubt that some of the most successful sites have been pretty ugly. But to imitate the ugliness smacks of cargo cultism -- reproducing side effects in hopes of receiving a similar result. To me, the commonality shared by the sites you mentioned isn't their aesthetics, but rather that they represented either a radical innovation or a radical improvement over existing services. I DO believe this was a result of their engineering focus in the early stages, a side effect of which was poor aesthetics, but I don't think it's a clear indicator that an engineer-driven product cannot also benefit from smart design. Google's move to break the Altavista portal mode of thinking and present the user with a large, isolated search box was first and foremost a design decision.

I think Mint is a good example of design driving success. Mint is largely built on the Yodlee platform, but they made the interface their primary focus. I don't get any information from Mint that I can't get on my bank's website. But since signing up for Mint, I check my accounts twice as frequently, classify all of my purchases, track my financial history, and set budgets. I didn't have to wrestle myself into these habits, either -- they came naturally because Mint made them easy and available. And honestly, I would never have trusted my bank account information to a site that looked like early-days eBay.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The takeaway from the email study is not that ugliness converts.

Versions A and C have other navigation/messaging in the spotlight. Version B has the fewest distractions.

Poor illustration of the point, if you ask me.

This is like assuming your users are stupid. Strive for accessibility and ease of use, not ugliness.

<comment><USER7> <http://www.mrgreen.am/affiliate-marketing/the-ugly-truth/>

I found this article to have better examples. In particular, the ChristianMingle ad -- same wording, different treatment, different results.

<comment><USER8> What many of those examples really shows is that people will put up with amazing amount of shit to save money. Take the Ryan air site for example. Everybody I know hates that site with a passion and do everything they can to avoid both the site and the airline. Most people check every other available option before reconciling themselves to dealing with Ryan air.

However since they offer a competitive product at very competitive prices people put up with horrible usability and service. So no, ugly design doesn't sell, cheap sells, and if you're cheap enough people are willing to overlook ugly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Usability trumps design every time.

HN is a nice example. Imagine if you let a designer loose on it, the disaster that would ensue. It would be eye candy for sure, but we'd all be leaving in a hurry.

Especially for stuff that is used frequently less design is usually better, 'b(l)ing' is for kids with too much money to spend on their cars. Tools have to be functional first.

They can aesthetically pleasing, but only if the form follows from the function they have. Once you can't remove stuff any more the design is optimal.

<comment><USER10> That's only because you're created a straw-man definition of design. Don't buy the hype: design is about influencing the subjective state of the audience. Sure, beauty is one kind of experience, and maybe it gets a lot of attention, but it's certainly not the only thing designers care about.

I think the main skill that designers bring to the table is empathy. Unlike traditional artists, who can safely ignore what other people think, designers have to be interested in how something feels to their audience. This is important if you're building things for people who aren't like you and don't think like you, and you want to get their attention, get them to think what they're buying is useful and usable and yes, maybe beautiful if that matters, and the people who made it are trustworthy and reliable.

Design is about communication--it's a kind of language. Who could argue that words don't matter, only function matters?

<comment><USER11> _I think the main skill that designers bring to the table is empathy._

How do business results show the benefits of empathy?

<comment><USER10> This seems kind of obvious, but OK. How do you know what a customer needs? How do you know whether your idea meets that need? You have to look at the world from their perspective begin to answer those questions.

<comment><USER11> Follow-up question here, as I have just come from attending a focus group this evening. Is what you describe a typical part of the job description of a Web designer (what prompted my question above) or is it really the job of, say, a focus group facilitator?

<comment><USER10> A focus group facilitator doesn't try to influence the audience. And focus groups usually don't even empathize with the customer, they simply write down what the customer wants, if they prefer blue or red, not why they prefer it and what that says about their overall goals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Excellent article. The only thing I would quibble about is the word "ugly". I'm not a designer or a visual artist of any kind, but I don't find Amazon ugly. It simply doesn't approach either extreme of the beauty spectrum.

</comment><comment><USER13> Excellent article. I agree that distracting elements on a website impact conversions and should be avoided. However, there is definitely a difference between a well planned "clean" website and an unprofessional "cluttered" website. The product being sold (if retail) is also a major factor in the design.

A more professional-looking (clean) website is also more important for a services business (accountant, health care, restaurant, etc.), where your website is a representation of your business.

</comment><comment><USER14> How a site's look affects traffic patterns and revenue is an incredibly complex and well-researched nebula. For example, Marissa Mayer talks about how a couple pixels of whitespace and subtle differences in color shades drastically affect traffic on Google.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6x0cAzQ7PVs> <<= (I think that's the talk)

I don't buy that un-categorically "if your website looks BMW-fancy your visitor is going to assume BMW-pricing". Rather than opining one way or another about what look is "right" for sites, I'd be interested in the process of finding that look.

</comment><comment><USER15> About time web designers are realizing this. I'm so glad 'pretty' but totally unusable flash designs are going away.

Although now I think the same 'pretty' process is happening with the Ajax realm...

Just because you can have a nice looking mouse over or cool looking dynamic (but confusing and useless) navigation bar doesn't mean you should.

</comment><comment><USER16> I think he means, "Keep your site simple." He even alludes to that in the last paragraph.

Clean and simple _is_ beautiful.

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely right on the simple.

But my favorite example - plentyoffish.com - isn't exactly "clean" IMO.

It's amazingly ugly and crowded with colors and text, but the usability remains true to user's expectations.

I think that factors into the genuine feel of it - feels like one guy did it because he wanted to help people find a love connection . . .

<comment><USER16> You're right about "clean." It doesn't have to be there. The key is definitely simple.

Google (my favorite example, although they are morphing from this in the last year or so), Craigslist, and Twitter all kept it clean and simple.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I loved this typo: keeping your site flexible [...] may not be ascetically appealing"

Those darned designers and their ascetic ways...

</comment><comment><USER18> independent of this article making a very good point, i appreciated the grouping of 'java applets' with html5 as an example of 'cutting edge' tech on the web!

<comment><USER19> JavaFX _is_ cutting edge! (Released in 2008)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Might want to fix your rss feed (the one defined in the <head> section). I was about to give up until I noticed your on site rss icon.

</comment><comment><USER21> I found the quote from Scoble ironic - "We trust things more when they look like they were done for the love of it rather than the sheer commercial value of it." - meanwhile, Scoble has gone quite stylized, what with his new logo and all.

</comment><comment><USER22> aesthetics aren't meant and shouldn't be expected to improve your usability. aesthetics have a role in cases where appearance is important (the example used was bmw).

"We've battled designers and CMO's day in and day out for nearly a decade but overwhelmingly following the 5-rules laid out above drive results that simply win."

aesthetics are not bad, although the tone of the article makes it seem like ui designers are bashed when they shouldn't be. both practices serve their own purposes, and usability should not be confused with ui design.

</comment><comment><USER23> And, don't forget that simple and ugly is not arrived at by _not_ designing. It is _designed_ to convert, _designed_ to elicit a certain visceral response. The definition of design is not "beautiful."

For some situations maybe you want to say "this is really expensive" and in others you want to say "this is really useful." In either case you are designing.

</comment><comment><USER24> Despite the title, there's not much here about "ugly" sites ... perhaps it a bad choice of words. In the examples he gives, I wouldn't consider all of them ugly.

Plus, some of them (Drudge and MySpace) don't have ecommerce "conversions" which is what the rest of the article appears to talk about.

</comment><comment><USER25> their example with the 3 variations for ordering flowers is pretty biased. the other two have the "order now" button likely below the fold of most email clients. consequently it has little to do with the overall design, and more so about the placement of _one button_ which should have been obvious if the email was actually designed by a seasoned designer. some things are elementary.

bad way to close a biased post that doesn't acknowledge the value of design; design is form AND function. the real problem here is that designers have been shelved by inexperienced (read: affordable) i-downloaded-photoshop-and-forget- to-learn-the-fundamentals.

</comment><comment><USER26> From my experience with PPC landers, this is almost certainly the case. Getting someone to click an ad works better if the site is ugly. I am not sure on why but my guess is less distractions and perhaps 'get me the hell out of here.'

</comment><comment><USER27> This article proved to me that Hacker News is truly invaluable.

</comment><comment><USER28> Wow this article is incredibly stupid. My favorite moment is this :

"They scaled to huge numbers of visitors with tiny staffs – keeping your site flexible enough so the CEO can change the homepage content may not be ascetically appealing, but it sure does beat a static beautiful website.

A website that's easy to change, update, and experiment on is better than one that relies heavily on advanced CSS, Flash, images etc that you can't change quickly. "

Since when are good design and flexibility exclusive ? Where do you see any sign of such a trend on the internet ?

</comment><comment><USER10> And sometimes bad usability is what sells too. That's why you have TVs that come with remotes with a million buttons on them, it makes the buyer feel like he's got something powerful, and by extension, makes him feel powerful. If your target audience is interested in feeling powerful and achieving a sense of mastery, there's a way to design for that. If you want the audience to feel like they're getting something for cheap (Amazon, Craigslist, Ebay), there's a design for that.

Ugly design is still design though, it works in one context and fails in another. But that doesn't mean you've freed yourself from the tyranny of aesthetics, you're just using the aesthetic that works.

There's a great temptation for programmers to conclude that if they can't do something by themselves, it must not matter, and anyone who claims otherwise is probably a corporate drone or something. Maybe this works in some cases, but that doesn't mean it's not also a mistake.

It's like that joke about the guy who lost his keys in the alley behind a bar one night. His friend finds him on the sidewalk looking under a street light, and asks him why he's not looking in the alley. The guy says "It's too dark in the alley, I can't see a thing!" The moral of the story: when faced with a difficult real-world problem that you don't know how to solve with your current skillset, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to try to change the problem into a different one that you do know how to solve. Maybe you don't need good design, but if you do, you should get a designer, and ignore blog posts about how pretty things are for girls.

<comment><USER29> "That's why you have TVs that come with remotes with a million buttons on them, it makes the buyer feel like he's got something powerful"

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AyVh1_vWYQ></comment></comment>


Announcing Async -- a new monadic concurrency library - <AUTHOR> http://ocaml.janestreet.com/?q=node/100

<comment><USER2> Is there any link to more information other than "it has been released"? I looked for docs or example code but could only find a tarball download.

<comment><USER3> There is a link at the very first line of they message, while at the bottom there is a link to they complete archive.

<http://www.janestreet.com/ocaml/async-107.01.tar.gz>

<http://ocaml.janestreet.com/?q=node/13>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I hope OCaml will deliver on node's promise.

</comment><comment><USER5> Please stop giving libraries names that are exactly the same as the words used for the abstract concepts they implement. It confuses absolutely _everybody_ , especially search engines and people just coming in to a new language.</comment>


Ask HN: What Linux distribution do you use? - <AUTHOR> See title. <comment><USER2> This question made me laugh. Seriously. I have a laptop and a desktop, each with 32GB of RAM in them. 2.1 TB of storage in the laptop, about 3TB in the desktop.

Here's why I give that detail... they are both VM host machines.

Host OS is Ubuntu 13.10.

For VMs, It's in this order of frequency. Ubuntu 13.10 (all work-related VMs use this) Arch Linux CentOS 6.5

Ubuntu 14.04 RHEL 7b ElementaryOS Maui Project (non-Linux OSes)

</comment><comment><USER3> Ubuntu 13.04 and 13.10.

Though I don't like where Ubuntu is heading, so I'm trying to find a new distro to switch to. But no luck yet.

<comment><USER2> Curious to hear more about your feelings on this, and what other distros you've looked at.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Arch for personal and small stuff, Ubuntu LTS or RHEL otherwise. If you want to go uberlibre, go for Parabola.

</comment><comment><USER5> Debian testing (Jessie). Not a huge gnome3 fan, but once I got xmonad working it was smooth sailing.

</comment><comment><USER6> I favor Arch on the desktop/laptop and Debian on the servers.

</comment><comment><USER7> CentOS on production servers and on VMs on local dev machines.

</comment><comment><USER8> ElementaryOS on my laptop just because it's clean and simple, but retains ubuntu compatibility since it's based off of 12.04.

Ubuntu 13.04 at work.

</comment><comment><USER9> My journey to Linux : Ubuntu -> Arch -> and now Gentoo. Wonderful way to go deeper and deeper into the Linux world. :-)

</comment><comment><USER10> I have been using Debian for a long time, and now a days I also use Porteus Linux from my USB.

</comment><comment><USER11> Fedora, mostly. Sometimes CentOS.

</comment><comment><USER12> Elementary OS (Based on Ubuntu 12.04). Just started using linux.. beautiful UI. :)

</comment><comment><USER13> Ubuntu 13.10: Saucy Salamander -- but I'm eager for the LTS release of 14.04

</comment><comment><USER14> Desktop: Linux Mint 14 with Cinnamon | Servers: Ubuntu 12.4 LTS

</comment><comment><USER15> Ubuntu on workstation and laptop, Debian for everything else.

</comment><comment> chao- Across various machines, a mix of Crunchbang and Debian Sid.

</comment><comment><USER16> Ubuntu 13.10 on both desktop and laptop. I just love Unity.

</comment><comment><USER17> Laptop: Mint 15, Desktop: Mint 14, Servers: Ubuntu 13.10

</comment><comment><USER18> Am i really the only person so far who uses gentoo?

<comment><USER19> You're not the only one. Switched a few months back after using Arch for years. It was one hell of a time sink to begin with but I find it to be unfathomably stable for a rolling release distro. I'll be sticking with it, at least until I get an irresistible itch to try Linux From Scratch.

<comment><USER18> Yea man, gentoo has a learning curve, but portage is just a dream. If you don't hack it and properly use the package.files the way they were intended it's amazingly customizable and portable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Debian stable + KDE apps and Awesome as my WM.

</comment><comment><USER21> Slackware on my laptop.

Slackware on my desktop.

Slackware on my servers.

(Mint on GF's lappy).

</comment><comment><USER22> Slackware for personal use. CentOS for work.

</comment><comment><USER23> Debian testing (Jessie is really top notch.)

</comment><comment><USER24> Debian unstable.

</comment><comment><USER25> Mint 16 on laptop ubuntu 13 on new servers

</comment><comment><USER26> Debian unstable

</comment><comment><USER27> Ubuntu 12.04 LTS on desktop and servers.

</comment><comment><USER28> Linux Mint 15 (Olivia) w/ Cinnamon

</comment><comment><USER29> Slackware 14.1 to do everything I need.

</comment><comment><USER30> Debian Testing

</comment><comment><USER31> Ubuntu 13.04, it's sexy as hell.

</comment><comment><USER32> 13.04

</comment><comment><USER33> CrunchBang linux on laptop

</comment><comment><USER34> Ubuntu 13.04 with xmonad

</comment><comment><USER35> arch,and rhel/centos for server

</comment><comment><USER36> Kubuntu 13.10

</comment><comment><USER37> LUbuntu 13.10

</comment><comment><USER38> debian x64 on my dell vostro.

</comment><comment><USER39> Fedora.

</comment><comment><USER40> Centos

</comment><comment><USER41> debian stable

<comment><USER37> (L)Ubuntu 13.10</comment></comment>


Ask HN - Are Dataless Apps the next big thing? - <AUTHOR> Serverless -> Dataless?  Recently at a developer conference, someone from AWS came to talk to us about serverless apps.  We joked that the next stage would be "dataless" apps.  Apart from the joking, however, I thought there might actually be some truth here.  If laws lead to taxing data as a liability, maybe a dataless app could be something like a bunch of neural networks per user where the data ephemerally comes in, contributes to training the network, then is deleted.  All that remains are weights in the networks.  Thoughts? <comment><USER2> I doubt it, just because you never know when data will come in handy. The cost of throwing it away is greater than the cost of storing it.

I mean, it's a pretty basic consideration that has been around forever: should we store our data, or throw it away when we're done with it? The only thing that is really changing is data is getting cheaper to store, so if anything, we'll see more data being tucked away.

</comment><comment><USER3> Now if you could just get rid of those pesky users, you might have something.</comment>


Welcome to Beijing: where helping the homeless can get you evicted - <AUTHOR> http://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/2121647/welcome-beijing-where-helping-homeless-can-get-you <comment><USER2> from what I have experienced the Chinese have a totally different concept of humanitarian values and standards. I am not sure if this is related to living in high population areas or if it's a philosophical difference.

<comment><USER3> I think in this case it's mostly because of groupthink and respect for authority. Many Chinese probably think "This doesn't seem right, but I don't understand politics and the people in charge have decades of experience, so I'm sure they do the right thing". And because of the seniority system the people in charge are often very old and have formed their value system during the tumultuous and poor Mao Zedong era.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's the local government's policy to kick out as many working class people as they can to ensure political security.

Alternate article: [https://www.hongkongfp.com/2017/12/02/authorities-evict- beij...](https://www.hongkongfp.com/2017/12/02/authorities-evict-beijings-low- end-residents-chinese-ask-humanity/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Most Chinese metropolises don't make it "welcome" to migrants from outside administrative region in the fist place.

That said, it's a hard problem to tackle. You can't have 25 million people swarm your city and be able to manage things properly to ensure safety and proper services, but additionally, it's hard to economically engineer even economic development --which is the root cause of the issue. Migrants come because their prospects in the big megalopolises are better even while it being entailing administrative disadvantages.

</comment><comment><USER6> When I visited Beijing, I noticed the nicest and most secure places were always the bank and government buildings.</comment>


Computer software that graded students exams blamed for 19 suicides - <AUTHOR> https://www.firstpost.com/india/19-telangana-students-commit-suicide-in-a-week-after-goof-ups-in-intermediate-exam-results-parents-blame-software-firm-6518571.html <comment><USER2> Is it the computer's fault, or those who put such a level of pressure on kids that they would feel compelled to kill themselves rather than fail a test that was purposely designed to segregate them?

Computers are a great scapegoat, until you dare to look at the bigger picture.

The bug was fixed. The lives were not.</comment>


Raising Money On AngelList: 21 Tips From Two Active Angels - <AUTHOR> http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/63010/Raising-Money-On-AngelList-21-Tips-From-Two-Active-Angels.aspx

<comment><USER2> This is kind of O.T but I've never really understood this:

 _"Don't wait too late in your rounds fund raise before you apply"_

When you "do a round" is there some sort of legally binding time and funding limit? Or is this just some kind of self imposed thing (like when you're selling vacuum cleaners door to door and say to the customer "Better get in quick! We only have 5 vacuum cleaners left and they're selling fast!").

<comment><USER3> Yes, the rounds usually have an end date written into the term sheets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _21\. The best thing you can do is get traction_

Why is the supposedly most important idea listed last? It's no wonder startups waste time on the wrong things, if this is the way advice is structured.

<comment><USER5> Sorry about that. The tips weren't listed in any sort of "priority" order. The reason the traction one was last wasn't because it's the least important, but because I thought it was a good way to "close" the article.

Often, the last item in a list like this gets read much more often than the middle items.

In any case, it's a fair point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I read the Angel List T&C. It says they (the founders of Angel List) have the right to participate in any fundraising up to %50 of the amount raised, on the same terms as others.

This means, if you find an investor who brings something other than money, and you agree to terms that take this into account, the owners of angel list can get in on half of the deal at those terms.

So, would you agree to the same terms with a star like ashton kutcher, or dave mcclure as you would to someone you've never heard of who is just offering money? (Personally, I might not give either of the "stars" better terms, because I would want a venture investment to be about money, not intangibles, but that's me.)

I don't know the people behind angel list, so, lets presume they are great. But I'm wary of entering into a situation where, unless you read the details of the T&C and discover it, you've agreed to give people you don't know half of your funding round, on terms that you might have set based on qualities that the angel list people don't also possess.

This is what prevented me from getting an account there, and without an account it is hard to know much about how angel list works, or what it is like. (so, feel free to enlighten me.)

I'm not bashing them, just expressing a concern that I obviously can't express there (because I'd have to agree to the T&C to open an account.) It's also quite possible I'm wrong or misread the T&C.

<comment><USER7> Hey, this is Nivi from AngelList. That is a dumb clause. We are changing it. We will also look through the terms for other dumb clauses. I'll follow up on this thread with the revisions later today.

People submit bug reports to us all the time. This is the first time we've gotten a legal one. Thank you.

<comment><USER7> We went through the terms and deleted the following:

DELETED: "We also have the right to invest in any business on the same terms as are offered to Investors, or on better terms if we are able to negotiate them with Entrepreneurs, and we have no obligation to make those investment opportunities available to anyone else."

It was dumb. We also made a few other changes. Let us know if you have any other feedback <http://angel.co/terms>

We've taken small allocations in a few investments on the site but we've had to talk our way into the deal like every other investor in the world.

The terms are still not perfect nor will they ever be. I would like to rewrite and simplify them one day but that might be wishful thinking.

Thanks to our counsel for the quick fixes. And thanks for the bug report.

<comment><USER5> Awesome. Time elapsed between the reporting of the bug, acknowledgement, resolution and release: < 3 hours.

<comment><USER8> Really. I'm half tempted to start a startup just to be able to use a service that is that responsive. Anyone want to push forward with the Trails version of Google Street with me? :-)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why does Google think I'm a Skyrim addict? - <AUTHOR> http://www.holehouse.org/thoughts/why-does-google-think-im-a-skyrim-addict/

<comment><USER2> interesting, i get similar results. (with a similar background of not being very interested in the game, but having watched a few youtube videos)

with iGoogle active i get exactly the same skyrim results, plus laptop, "way to loose weight" (no idea where this comes from) and a few others which may really be related to some of my former searches.

without iGoogle i get a totally different list: smartphone, tablet, number, source for windows compatible scanner-driver.</comment>


EU says social platforms can be ordered to take down unlawful content worldwide - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.co.uk/article/wired-awake-041019 <comment><USER2> This is an intentionally misleading headline which seeks to play into the US tech community's carefully nurtured scepticism about regulation originating from the EU.

What has actually happened: the CJEU has decided that EU law does not place a restriction on member states' legal systems with regard to whether or not they can issue injunctions or request content be blocked worldwide. It is a case of the CJEU deciding that EU law does not affect existing processes.

<comment><USER3> Usually it's not the US tech community that carefully nurtures it, it's the European tech community that hammers it at every possible opportunity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well, not sure what the EU really said (Wired might be biased towards "big- tech" more than to strange European (or more likely: select-minority-being- successful-in-interparty-fights) ideas of the rule of law) but as it stands this is really concerning as it either shows

a) a neo-colonial relapse: Europe knows what's right for the world.

b) another step at the official adoption of authoritarianism on this world. How about the Chinese government taking down any material on the existence of Tinamen-Square-massacre (yeah, I know, it was just a peaceful sit-in and the people just progressed to a higher plane of existence so there's noone left to tell the story) or the existence of the NRC worldwide? It's great for business certainly!

<comment><USER5> It shows neither.

The decision simply states that EU law does not prevent a national court from specifying than an injunction to remove content from a platform should apply worldwide, as long as it is otherwise legal to do so (it also complies with international law, etc.). [1]

" _the Directive on electronic commerce, ..., does not preclude a court of a Member State from ordering a host provider ... to remove information covered by the injunction or to block access to that information worldwide within the framework of the relevant international law, and it is up to Member States to take that law into account._ "

[1] [https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/201...](https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2019-10/cp190128en.pdf)

<comment><USER4> Well, what kind of law is internationally valid (at the level, where American presidents casually give orders for murder)? Do "hosters" now have to employ lawyers having knowledge of all 193 "official" states on earth or otherwise they risk getting sued again?!

<comment><USER6> Yes, you have to comply with laws in all the countries where they operate.

If Facebook were to pull out from France, there is almost nothing that France could do to force Facebook to comply.

This is why Google left the Chinese market. They did not want (or, more specifically, their employees refused) to comply with certain Chinese laws.

<comment><USER7> By "pull out" do you mean Facebook would have to stop doing business with advertisers in France? As long as the servers are in another country, the French government would have to create a Great Firewall to stop its citizens from accessing that content.

<comment><USER8> "As long as the servers are in another country, the French government would have to create a Great Firewall to stop its citizens from accessing that content." Not really.

How to avoid Great Firewall, while blocking FB:

France could expect Facebook to deny requests for content originating in France, regardless of where FB servers are. No need for a Great Firewall; make FB implement the firewall.

Legal justification (if not ethical):

The server locations are irrelevant because the data has cross the border into France.

Enforcement (how to force FB to block itself):

Easy: make the executives criminally liable. Also, anyone working on FB infrastructure could be held criminally liable.

France is a big and important country, they have heft to get their way from companies like FB.

<comment><USER4> Geoblocking is common and if they are doing business in a country it's perfectly reasonable to expect them to do it as well as for the state taking measures to enforce non-compliance (though criminal liability of corporate executives is something we won't see anytime soon I guess).

What's not reasonable is to force them to block people in other countries (and also those taking significant efforts to conceal their identity) - at least there is no international law (compared to international deals) justifying that anyhow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Weirdly worded. Am I missing something? I understand this to mean that the court (not the EU!) said that EU law doesn't forbid the take down orders that are issued by EU members, it does _not_ say that EU law (or national law of member states) is applicable world wide.

It didn't rule on whether a global take down notice is lawful, just that the take down notice itself isn't unlawful in general.

</comment><comment><USER10> Yeah, I don't know about this. If a certain item may be "unlawful" in the EU, but not India. What then? Why should I not be able to see such content just because some government halfway around the world has a problem with it?

Furthermore, take this hypothetical case: A government makes it illegal for folks to share any information about ongoing crises/protests in the country on social media. Does this mean that people _outside_ said country also won't be able to talk about it on social media? That would be disastrous for discourse on the internet as it exists today.

</comment><comment><USER11> ... and then they can be sued for taking down content unlawfully... and they we ll have supreme courts fighting each other

</comment><comment><USER12> So basically what China does: take down content that is illegal according to the way we see the world or exit our market.

<comment><USER13> All fallout from the DMCA when the US decided it could police the world.

<comment><USER12> I don't like censorship in any form, but I find stopping free speech to be much more despicable than stopping piracy.

<comment><USER13> Not sure how the DMCA prevents people in boats from hijacking ships, but your view isn't of any relevance, what's of relevance in France is France's view.

The DMCA allows people in non-US countries, working for companies in non-US countries, who have broken no law in those countries, to fall under arrest if they accidentally get into U.S. jurisdiction.

So when complaining that people in the U.S. who don't break U.S. law, may be prevented from doing business in France if they've broken French law, think back to what you sewed 20 years ago when the FBI decided that U.S. courts had global jurisdiction and arrested foreign citizens for not obeying.

The age of American exceptionalism is over.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> They cant stop the internet, and neither can China. Technology will move too fast for these governments to get an iron grip, the cat is out if the bag.

<comment><USER15> China has clearly succeeded at this point, the internet is not a new thing anymore.</comment></comment>


The Internet should be a 'human right' - <AUTHOR> http://www.apnewsarchive.com/2014/Web-inventor-says-affordable-protected-access-to-Internet-should-be-basic-human-right-/id-4ba381738cb8480b8217abfc0484c8d5

<comment><USER2> Sure, if it doesn't end up above clean water. Its cheaper, so I can guess it will. And depending on how its done, it may actually stifle free speech, not encourage it.</comment>


Gmail plugin that lets send (or receive) email later [invites] - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/apps/2010/08/12/boomerang-for-gmail-send-and-receive-email-when-its-handy-for-you/?awesm=tnw.to_16g7C&utm_medium=tnw.to-other&utm_source=direct-tnw.to&utm_content=twitter-publisher-other <comment><USER2> In case anybody knows:

\- Does this plug-in send any data from the client to their server?

\- Why does the plug-in require access to my history?

\- What is the relative possibility that someone could gain access to (a) read existing mail/mail headers, (b) have ongoing access to read my mail/mail headers?

<comment><USER3> It's simple if you think about it: the company has its own servers, and as far as I understand, what presented as a "plugin" is a browser extension.

So yes, I'm very sure it's not something that runs only on your machine and only communicates with google.

Call me paranoid, but I wouldn't give one more company the access to my e-mail. However it seems quite common today, that's what a lot of "social" sites prompt people and they gladly enter the login data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Boomerang rocks. It's the simple functionality that I've wanted in my inbox for YEARS. I get a cubic butt-load of email and the problem with it, is it's all on the schedule of someone else. I need to deal with things, but not right now, but if I don't, it gets lost below the fold. I've tried special labels (and compound special labels). I've tried starring things (and plus labels and compound special labels). I've tried reminders outside of email. I've failed at all of them. Inbox 1, Tom 0 - though it's more like Inbox 365, Tom 0. Failing at this is VERY bad for a bootstrapping startup founder. You cannot afford to drop these balls.

Boomerang started as a get stuff in your inbox when it's relevant tool and that's been the biggest win for me. But the scheduled sending is quickly rooting itself into my email workflow. I am almost always heads down coding late at night and will often take breaks to wade through some email. Replying to everything at 3am is not ideal as I then get caught in the 4 - 8am slam of crap email that fills everyone's inbox. Choosing to have my stuff hit an inbox at 10 or 11am, so I'm after the crap and before lunch rocks. Wait, did I just give up one of my super secret competitive advantages over all the rest of you startup folks?

Anyway, I've been using Boomerang since early in their alpha. I've also know the Baydin team really well (we went through TS together in 2009) for a while. Good guys working really hard to solve real problems and make email not suck.

Is it perfect? Not yet. It requires a new version of FF, the Boomerang button is on the left of the Save Now button when you're composing (change this please Alex!), and it can't reply to my email for me, but so far it's pretty freaking awesome. Inbox 0, Tom 1.

</comment><comment><USER5> In response to Jmaygarden, I've used their plug-ins before, and have met the guys behind this project as well. They're a trustworthy Boston based company, and excited to finally get to use this for Gmail, where I do most of my mail.

</comment><comment><USER6> Can anyone vouch for this company? The plug-in looks useful, but I'm paranoid about giving out access to my email account.

<comment><USER7> Sure, I know Alex and he's a very trustworthy guy, in as much as you should trust a guy from MIT ;-) (Those beaver rings are some kind of secret decoder ring I'm sure of it.)

He's been working on making email more useful for a while, and was in the same TechStars Cambridge class I was last summer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The Firefox & Chrome extensions can be found here it appears (via a Scoble tweet): <http://www.baydin.com/boomerang4gmail/download/>

<comment><USER9> If that doesn't work, try this instead: Chrome: [http://www.baydin.com/boomerang4gmail/download/boomerangforg...](http://www.baydin.com/boomerang4gmail/download/boomerangforgmail-0.1.1.crx) Firefox: [http://www.baydin.com/boomerang4gmail/download/boomerangforg...](http://www.baydin.com/boomerang4gmail/download/boomerangforgmail-0.1.1.xpi)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Well... that's interesting. A bit like my own new 'startup' DuctMail. Except rather than a plugin, DuctMail is usable from any email system. Works the same way though. Send an email, tell DuctMail when you want it to send you the email later, and it sends back the email. No plugins required. Works with email.

</comment><comment><USER11> I would love this if it were an Outlook plugin (or even better, a BlackBerry app) - but I'm guessing that the Enterprise market will come much later, if at all.

In the meantime - or if you don't use Gmail - I find hitmelater.com is good for something like this, although I'm not crazy about their lack of timing granularity.

<comment><USER12> After entering code: "We've heard things like 'this has totally changed my work life' about Boomerang for Outlook, and we hope you'll have the same experience with Boomerang for Gmail!"

For Outlook 2003, 2007, and 2010 it's a 14-day Trial ($14.95 purchase) at <http://www.baydin.com/boomerang/>

So, not free, but it's available.

<comment><USER11> That's what I get for simply reading the article, as opposed to clicking through - thanks!

Now to begin the crusade to get IT to let me install this...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Bah. Doesn't work in Google apps. Shame, it looks really useful.

</comment><comment><USER14> Two word: GOOGLE CALENDAR

</comment><comment><USER15> b4gtweet

Enjoy :)</comment>


Ask HN: GCP or AWS Credits Without VC/incubator? - <AUTHOR> How would a bootstrapped startup achieve this? <comment><USER2> Depending of if whether you qualify you can get "up to $15,000 of AWS Promotional Credits" with Stripe Atlas.[1]

[1] [https://stripe.com/atlas/faq#what-resources-will-i- receive-f...](https://stripe.com/atlas/faq#what-resources-will-i-receive-from- amazon-web-services)</comment>


Dreamforge (YC S12): Make your own superhero - <AUTHOR> http://toys.dreamforge.me/

<comment><USER2> I was sad to discover there was no way to create a female superhero. The editorial in the newspaper page (homepage) mentions a female but she is only the ex-girlfriend and a _fashion_ blogger. Disappointing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the note. We're definitely adding her soon. We had to start somewhere, but she's coming next.

<comment><USER3> I was also hoping for a female superhero to make one with my niece. Looking forward to that announcement.

<comment><AUTHOR> marquis, please drop us a note at email@example.com and we'll definitely send you an email when we have the female superhero added

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting.

So for those of you who know of Figureprints [1] its like that except only one guy. Clearly the market here is for over sexualized super-heroines but stepping back from that moral abyss for a moment, I like the integration of webgl as the 'design stage.'

One of things I keep thinking we could do with 3D printers (of the ABS variety) is to create a service whereby an owner can 'register' their printer with the service and take on 'jobs' on occasion where a web API effectively selects from the list and throws and STL file at it. Creating a spot market for printing services. This is how I imagine it might work:

Person who owns a printer registers it with the service.

To complete registration service sends a test STL file and a shipping label PDF.

The user gets activated once the printed test case is received and verified.

Now when a print request goes out the service flings it your way, with a shipping label. As soon as the shipping label shows up 'in-transit' by the shipping service your account is credited with your print commission. Ideally enough to cover the cost of materials and scaled for complexity/time to print.

In practice person says "Oh I need 500 of these (insert STL file)" which gets distributed to 500 printers and then the mailman shows up with 500 boxes of widgets.

Entirely unclear if that is 'practical' but it is certainly disruptive...

[1] <http://figureprints.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Sign us up - we'd actually love to send orders your way, if you can set this up. Quality control is just super important for this to work, but we'd be happy to be a pilot customer.

We're small right now (2 people) with ambitions that do surpass our size.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> FYI, I hit this glitch: <http://imgur.com/QxQT0>

In retrospect, I should've ordered it...

<comment><USER6> Sorry about that. We noticed a few bugs like this during development that seem to be due to the 3D renderer rather than the code to resize the superhero, but we'd love it if you could save the superhero if you encounter this again and pop us an email (to email@example.com) linking to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Am I missing something or is the only thing you can make a generic looking man in different colours?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment. For our first product, we have a standard looking superhero which you can morph musculature, change colors, and pose. More different figurines to follow.

</comment></comment><comment> chao- Neat. Very similar to something we're working on for a client (<http://www.actionfigurelabs.com>).

There's probably no chance I live near you (Houston here), but if I did I'd REALLY love to grab a beer and chit chat about some of the battles we're both fighting with WebGL, and the different choices we made as a result.

And for anyone who plays with it, please forgive some functionality on Action Figure Labs at the moment. It's not meant to take web orders for another few days, as we built up the tech to show off at some local comicbook cons and take orders there.

</comment><comment><USER8> <http://www.myrobotnation.com/> is similar and it has a much larger set of styles/parts/colors.

<comment> chao- Huge props to My Robot Nation. Especially on their 3D tech. In some ways they have it easier doing robots instead of human shapes (e.g. performs better on hardware that can't render as many polys), but in many other ways, they really knocked the ball out of the park. Especially some of the drag-and-drop stickers and little add-ons like gears and what-have-you.

Don't know if they are leveraging three.js (the way action figure labs and dreamforge are), but it seemed like they have their own custom rendering. Props indeed.

<comment><USER9> Wow they are doing an amazing job. I feel like Dreamforge is launching a bit too early. Every design looks very generic at the moment.

<comment><USER10> YC encourages this, they can grab a lot of feedback and iterate on what they have with the attention they are getting from launching.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Cool to see custom toys taking off, <http://makie.me> launched something similar earlier in the year.

</comment><comment><USER12> Interestingly I see different sites in different browsers. I don't see pages <http://toys.dreamforge.me/users/sign_up> and <http://toys.dreamforge.me/assemblies> in Firefox for instance...

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the heads up - could you email us some more details (firstname.lastname@example.com)? It seems to work fine in Firefox for us so we'd really like to get to the bottom of this for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Just ordered my very own 3D printed superhero! First YC S12 company to get my money!

<comment><USER6> Super! Really happy you like it - we'll be in touch about the delivery.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is really cool. Does anyone know if there's something like this for making Bobbleheads? Most of the Bobblehead services I know require you to send them photos, etc.

</comment><comment><USER15> Do you plan on making it possible to use custom images for clothes etc ? A customized costume with a Kid's name on it would certainly help me find ideas for birthdays.

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely - it's really high on our priority list

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Great stuff! Very cool, wish I had this when I was little.

</comment><comment><USER17> I wonder if there will be copyright issues to worry about. E.g. Can we expect Marvel to "DMCA" the design of physical goods (or even the goods themselves)?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your comment. It's an interesting question and quite a bit of of certainty. Here's a bit of an overview: [http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-05/31/3d-printing-c...](http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-05/31/3d-printing- copyright)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The site told me how to enable webGL in my browser (Safari) which is helpful, but I wonder how many Safari users will actually follow said instructions.

<comment><USER19> It told me how to engage webGL in Safari, but I was using Chrome. And apparently it recommends Chrome to anyone using firefox... fancy a game of three-browser monte?

An image of what we luddites are missing out on would improve the no-webGL error message, and make me more likely to take the time to turn webGL on. (Yes, I hunted down the gallery, but no, that's not the same.)

<comment><USER20> Weird, I got the error in Chrome but it worked fine in FF.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> How big is the ceramic figurine market?

</comment><comment><USER22> Are you going handle ordering and shipping for other companies? Like a cafepress model?

</comment><comment><USER13> Very cool! But does he have to stand like that? Or can we change it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for checking it out! That's right, you can change his poses in our product. We're adding some crazier poses in the days ahead - drop me a note if there's a particular pose you're envisioning and we'll add it in.

<comment><USER13> Thanks nemild, just ordered one. Took a few tries, but once I got it, I made sure to pin it, tweet it, facebook it! Good job guys!

<comment><USER23> That is awesome, can't wait to deliver it to you :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Btw, are you using WebGL?

<comment><USER6> Hi! Yep, the viewer is WebGL. We're using the Three.js library (<http://mrdoob.github.com/three.js/>) to handle the actual rendering for us, and there's lot of programming magic behind the scenes to customise the meshes and textures on the fly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Read landing page, <insert gender-alienation lecture here>

</comment><comment><USER25> nemild, I was the founder of CloudFab - we did 3DP sourcing and mass customization interfaces. Would be happy to help connect you guys if needed.

</comment><comment><USER26> I want a good 3D Printer!!!

</comment><comment><USER27> In my Firefox 14.0.1 it says " Sorry, WebGL is required Your browser doesn't support the technology we use to help you design superheros. Please consider upgrading to a better browser" linking to the Chrome. Are they paid advertisers of Chrome, or do they really think the only browser in the world which supports WebGL is only the Chrome?

<comment><USER28> Typically they just recommend whatever browser the guy who wrote the error is fond of. I wouldn't take it as anything more than that.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're spot on. No slight meant to Firefox, and we'll change the wording.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Beta users flocking over to competitor - <AUTHOR>

Hi all,
We recently discovered a competitor that launched much earlier than us and have more traction. We then even noticed that some of our earlier Beta users have also moved on to said competitor. We know, because we require a domain name to sign up for an account, and, since they use a stealth iframe pointer/redirect on their domain name, it's easy to find out what platform they are currently using. Think JanesCustomJewelry.com switching from Volusion to Shopify.
My question to all is: what next? Clearly our users are choosing our competitors because they have better features and more customization options, which are crucial for a white-label solution, even though their price point is higher. It will be hard to differentiate via a features battle; they have an army of developers.
Any advice? Or do we just do our thing, engage with our users, and reiterate until product/market fit? It's hard to ignore a competitor and very tempting to copy what they do. We have a feeling that whatever paying customers we have are only paying customers because they have not discovered our competitor. That is pathetic.
Update: indirect link to our site - http://www.fezzl.com <comment><USER3> I am not your audience, so what I think is not that important, but I looked at your homepage.

Your opening pitch has too much jargon. I'll avoid using specific words (geez, you are trying to hide from _Google_? Good luck, Winston Smith!) but you sound like you're talking to a Techcrunch editor in an elevator. Pretend you are selling your product to people who don't know what it is and think it is made by elves.

Meanwhile a lot of the text on that page is _white on beige_ , for the love of god. (In Safari/Mac, Flash blocked). Please hire a designer who can see. Or, rather, one who can't see so superhumanly well that they can _read completely invisible text_ and not notice a problem.

Your homepage is dominated by a giant out-of-focus video preview image in what appears to be 120 by 120 pixel resolution. In other words, my first impression of your site is that you _literally_ lack focus and polish.

Don't rely so much on the video and the clickable previews. I never click them. They tend to play sounds, which disturbs my fellow inmates. They tend to waste valuable seconds of my life. They take my mouse too far away from the back button. Sometimes they just don't work. Try to hook me in the first six seconds without any additional clicks.

I found what I bet is your competitor's homepage. (Google took me right to a bunch of great SEO, surprise surprise.) The page I found is full of reassuring pep talk about how their product is going to improve my business. Words like _audience_ and _revenue_ and _affinity_. They have helpful links to really basic FAQs about what is, after all, a brand-new fashion trend in business which a lot of people haven't heard of yet. Their design is clean and sharp. It's like an infomercial. I tend to roll my eyes when I read such stuff, but that's my _problem_ : I read too much Techcrunch, I'm too cynical and I know too much about the web-services sausage factory, I am not your audience. Your audience probably appreciates being sold a product in terms that they understand, that they have heard before. It's no mystery to me why your competitor is cleaning up.

Finally, you've heard of A/B testing, right? Because I wouldn't assume that I'm not completely full of it, here. I'm just throwing out hypotheses [1], I'm just one guy, and I'm never going to buy your product anyway.

\---

[1] Except for the white-on-beige thing. That is a _bug_ , my friend. A _high priority_ bug.

<comment><USER4> Apparently he has, I guess he's not a huge fan: <http://blog.zuupy.com/the- disadvantages-of-ab-testing>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's impossible to answer this properly without seeing your site. With that in mind, here are a few thoughts:

1\. Features don't matter in the abstract. You can succeed with fewer features by being, for example, simpler. That's the 37signals "do less" line. You say features are crucial for your white-label solution. Are you so sure? Why do you think this is? How do you know this is why you are losing customers? ("Clearly" is a dangerous word). Who do you think your customers are? What if your customers were somebody else? (See point 3).

2\. "...even though their price point is higher..." - this suggests you don't know that high price is often _precisely_ why customers choose things. High prices suggest high quality, and in the absence of other ways of distinguishing between products, it's a very easy one for people to follow. Perhaps you charge so little that you give the impression of not being serious? And, relatedly, perhaps if you charged more you would be able to spend more to acquire users?

3\. Pick a niche and own it. If your site works for user types X, Y and Z, just pick some subset of X to go after. Your product will be more targeted to them, which makes it easier for them to see it as something they could use, and it also should make it easier for you to market. See, for example, the many sites that offer build-your-own-websites for photographers, as opposed to simply just build-your-own-websites for everybody.

4\. Win on design, on copywriting, on user experience, on humour, on speed, on sociality, on security, on reliability, on locality, on trust, on friendliness. Win on anything that's not what you can't win on. On the internet, there's room for more than one winner.

But, like I said, if we could see your site you'll get better answers.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm going to take a guess because I'm obviously not part of your core team so I have no inside knowledge to how or what your doing.

As other have posted in classic purple cow speak [1], you build a better product and remember "your product is not THE product"[2]. Part of Ash's lean canvas[3] even has a spot for alternatives which may even include competitors. The focal point is you need to start testing everything so you can: create a customer feedback loop of _learning_[4][4b].

Ash's model is a variant of the original "Business Model Canvas" which is also very good. I would urge you and everyone to LOOK at the examples and iterations of these models on the main site[5].

Some of the questions you start asking in this exercise are: \- What is the problem your solving, and what are the possible solutions? \- How will you reach customers, who are the early adopters?

Its never too late, and like I said actually the beginning of the exercise.

Even if you 'know this already', I would urge you to re-test and re-focus on your previous lean canvases/models. Success is in the finer details. Remember, you never stop learning about the customer. You want a 'specific' customer? You develop a strategy - focused on the problem.

So there you go, a 'teaser' on building a better product. Now go read Eric Ries's[6] book[7], Steve Blank's book[8] for overall strategy. See the business model generation book and site[9] (there is an ipad app!) for more finer details. There is also a cheat sheet for Steve's book[10].

I myself am learning this as I recover from a failed startup attempt[11]. Yes, I'm for hire atm and would LOVE to join another team. Hit me up!

[1] <http://www.sethgodin.com/purple/> [2] [http://www.ashmaurya.com/2011/06/your-product-is-not-the- pro...](http://www.ashmaurya.com/2011/06/your-product-is-not-the-product/) [3] <http://www.leancanvas.com/> [4] <http://www.slideshare.net/ashmaurya/running- lean-canvas> [4b] <http://www.ashmaurya.com/2010/08/businessmodelcanvas/> [5] <http://thestartuptoolkit.com/> [6] <http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/> [7] <http://lean.st/> [8] <http://www.stevenblank.com/books.html> [9] <http://www.businessmodelgeneration.com/> [10] <http://www.custdev.com/> [11] [http://jasongiedymin.com/post/6040811222/even-more-start- up-...](http://jasongiedymin.com/post/6040811222/even-more-start-up-failure- lessons-learned)

<comment><USER7> re: "I'm for hire atm and would LOVE to join another team." ... add a few links to your HN profile.

Although I'm not hiring at the moment, I'm always curious about who's around, and the first thing I did when I saw that was click over to your HN profile page. With nothing there, I can't find out more about you.

<comment><USER6> Sorry about that. I updated the about.

(Right now on mass transit, at least I put some urls in).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _Clearly our users are choosing our competitors because they have better features and more customization options_

How do you know? Did you ask? It doesn't sound to me like you asked: Go ask.

<comment><USER9> Agree with this point, and here's a suggestion about one way of doing this.

You have a set of users who you believe are now using a competitor. Put a survey together specifically for these users. You need to ask them a mixture of questions about your product, and how you compare to your competition. Ask them a mixture of fact-based questions (yes/no, select from this drop down etc) and opinion based questions (both free text, and of the form: very satisfied, satisfied, dissatisfied, very dissatisfied)

Once you've got your survey together, email it to a proportion of these users - maybe 30% of them. In your email, take the approach of... we are beta and are requesting feedback from users on our product and service etc. Keep the email short. Tell them the survey is 10 questions long and should only take 2 minutes to complete (both of these points need to be true!)

Take the view that a 5% response rate is a good response rate (anything over that is a real bonus). Monitor for a few days, maybe a week. See whether the answers to your questions are of any use at all - your questions could come across as lame or open to mis-interpretation. If you are getting problems like that, make some adjustments to your questions. Then email it out to the other 70% of users.

Hopefully you now have some useful information on where you can improve.

What have you got to lose?

<comment><USER10> That's one way. There's another, even better way: _Ask_. Ideally, talky-talky over the phone, if you can get it. Direct, personal, simple emails if not.

<comment><USER8> This is more along the lines of what I was thinking.

I'd normally call, get as close to the decision maker as is possible (not always easy in big companies), tell them you're sorry that you weren't up to snuff, then LISTEN.

It's amazing what comes out of these conversations: Your product might be slow, missing a feature, their general counsel might have had reservations your startup, your account management might suck, the decision maker might play golf with the CEO of the other company etc. etc.

Your guess that your _users are choosing our competitors because they have better features and more customization options_ is correct in only one of these cases. You're doing a startup: You don't have time to fix problems your customers don't have. So ask.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm currently getting the following error when I try to view your site:

      Over Quota

      This Google App Engine application is temporarily over its serving quota. Please try again later.

That can't be good for business.

<comment><USER12> & it redirects to "<http://www.zuupy.com/> if that helps.

edit: *Never mind, it was intentional per the message below to prevent indexing

<comment><USER11> Yeah, the redirect works, but when I get to zuppy.com I see that error.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> <http://www.fezzl.com> results in a page saying:

 _Over Quota

This Google App Engine application is temporarily over its serving quota. Please try again later._

Not a good impression, if you ask me.

</comment><comment><USER14> The first thing to do is to shake of the "feeling" about your product. Don't forget about the fact that you have been able to get customers pay for some value you created.

Secondly, follow "nudge's" advice of picking a niche. No product can be all things to all people.

All the best, and soldier on ..

</comment><comment><USER15> Sounds like a tough position to be in. I'm not sure that outright ignoring your major competitor is such a great idea. You could perhaps use them to differentiate yourself in the eyes of your customers?

For example I'm currently working on a language learning app that will be a direct competitor to (what once was) smart.fm. When I discovered their app (a long way into my project) I was at a loss because they have millions in funding and an army of developers.

I realized that their approach to language learning is prescriptive, i.e. they decide what you should learn. To differentiate myself from them, I'd have to go for the opposite approach, in other words, provide a much more exploratory experience for my users. There are a number of other fights I could have picked, but this is something that my users wanted and an easy way to set myself apart from my big hulking competitor.

Is there some fight along these lines that you can pick with them? Could you perhaps play the less/simpler features card instead of trying to compete on features? Is it that their marketing is just better?

</comment><comment><USER16> Engage with lost customers and ask them what made them leave and what would make them come back.

</comment><comment><USER17> Genuine (almost entirely off-topic) question: why the _indirect_ link?

<comment><AUTHOR> We don't really want to be indexed by Google for _this_ thread.

<comment><USER18> You need to stop trying to be so clever and get back to business basics. Make a product that people want. Tell them about it in clear language. Delight them when they sign up. Have a conversation with them. Make the product better.

And for goodness sake, feed the hamsters in your servers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Build a better product. Pretend they don't exist.

<comment><USER20> There is no such thing as "better". There is only "better than". In this case, the OP is asking how he or she can build a product that is better than his or her competitor. In that context, pretending the competition doesn't exist is only burying your head in the sand.

<comment><USER18> I emphatically disagree. As pg says all the time, don't worry about your competition. Worry about your customers and yourself. Make a product that people want. Continue making it better.

And get a server that can handle a small influx of HN traffic. Jeepers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> There's no alternative, you must build a better product.

<comment><USER22> Very true. Though, the crux of the matter lies in what exactly does better mean. Another commenter made the great point that you should try speaking to find out why they left. Also, it is worth keeping in mind that if you are competing against an army of developers, you need to be super careful about what you put your efforts into. This will make you focus on the most crucial features and usability issues, which in longer term (if you make it) could be a blessing in disguise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Figure out how you can differentiate from them. If you can't beat them feature to feature because you don't have the dev team then don't. Either fix a problem that they currently don't or just focus on something like usability and customer experience.

</comment><comment><USER24> Go out on the streets and talk directly to SMBs to acquire new customers.

Does your competitor offer data export? Offer free data import and huge discounts to their customers if they move to you.

Target businesses already featured on Groupon or other big daily deal sites. If they had successful runs with those, they will now have an email list they can advertise to directly.

Focus on one type of business?

Keep building a kickass product.

Stop blogging for a nerd audience. Blog about your customers' interests. Interview them. Get them featured on popular daily deal blogs like yipit's or Rocky Agrawal's (the guy who recently ripped groupon to pieces).

</comment><comment><USER25> Would it be possible to ask some of them why they are switching. Could be some stupid issue.

</comment><comment><USER26> just do our thing, engage with our users, and reiterate until product/market fit

^^ This.

It seems like you haven't considered the possibility that your users who haven't "jumped ship" so to speak actually use something that your competitor can't provide. You just have to figure out what that something is. Build a bunch of tests and try to gather data on what that something is.

Don't try to copy the competition. That difference could be your distinguishing characteristic.

<comment><USER27> "Don't try to copy the competition. That difference could be your distinguishing characteristic."

I thought this was interesting because it reminded me of Facebook's changes to their newsfeed a while ago. At that time, a number of people (incl. myself) cried that this seemed to be copying Twitter, and that Facebook shouldn't change. I don't know if Facebook was merely doing their own thing rather than responding to Twitter. Regardless, it seems what they did worked out.

<comment><USER26> Well, there's also something to be said about convergence and overall direction the market is heading. Touchscreen features? Everyone has them, but they got to that after coming from different directions, and they're all being adapted to different interfaces. Perhaps Facebook came across the newsfeed from a different direction than Twitter's stream, but it ends up looking the same because it's the round peg to fit in the hole.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I get a "This webpage is not availableThe server at www.youtube.com...". That looks unprofessional.

Get some free website monitoring at alertfox or pingdom.

This will not solve your main problem, but having a reliable website is a prerequisite for any success. For many users, especially website owners - <USER2> customers - such a "bug" makes the website look abandoned.

</comment><comment><USER29> Knowing about competitors who beat you to market, have traction, and have an 'army of developers' is probably something to do before you build a product.

At this point all you can do is work on your product. Maybe you can find a pain point of people using your competitor and cater to the users who are chafing under that pain point.

</comment><comment><USER30> Add free survey widget by kiss metrics and ask visitors what do they want from your web app. This way you'll be able get insights from visitors

Get it here : <http://www.kissinsights.com/>

</comment><comment><USER31> The logo looks an awful lot like twitter's.

</comment><comment><USER32> I would find a new business model - your competitor already has a ton of traction and after seeing Groupon's numbers it isn't even that attractive. Correct me if I'm wrong.</comment>


Ask HN: Learning Python, Looking for book or class on software construction. - <AUTHOR>

I want to learn python and become a relatively decent programmer. I feel as though the following classes (first three) and the last item (a book) will help get me there. However, I am missing the class that involves actually building software. I found one on MIT open courseware that is called "Elements of Software Construction." It uses Java, which isn't the worst thing, but I'd rather find one that uses python. So my question is too fold: 1. Is there a book or preferably a class that teaches Elements of Software Construction in python? 2. Is there anything I need to add to the list below that would be beneficial?<p>Introduction to Computer Science and Programming -- MIT Open CourseWare Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programming -- MIT Open CourseWare Computation Structures -- MIT Open CourseWare Introduction to Algos -- MIT Open CourseWare Data Structures and Algorithms With Object Oriented Design Patterns -- Book <comment><USER2> I highly recommend going through Zed Shaw's "Learn Python the Hard Way". Other great Python related books to pick up are:

Pro Python by Marty Alchin Expert Python Programming by Tarek Ziadé

If you're looking to get into web development then, I'd suggest picking up:

Practical Django Projects Pro Django and Django 1.1 Testing and Debugging

Hope that helps!</comment>


An Investigation of the Therac-25 Accidents - <AUTHOR> http://courses.cs.vt.edu/~cs3604/lib/Therac_25/Therac_1.html

<comment><AUTHOR> This classic started me seriously thinking about software, safety, and rigorous design.</comment>


Welcome to the Simulcasting Video Player beta - <AUTHOR> http://1080.plus/W1rrchK83fM.video <comment><USER2> I can't believe I'm seeing this website again. I forgot its name a few months ago and thought it would disappear into obscurity. Nice to see that it's getting some recognition on here!

There's an IRC client tucked somewhere in there, and the owner is in one of the channels.

I talked to him on it a while back through it, it's a side project of his. It's meant to be some kind of Youtube browser simulcast multi-tool (think: watch Youtube videos with your friends simultaneously over the internet... in 3D!!!).

</comment><comment><USER3> This seems like some hosted video player with a confusing interface and a set of strange functions (look closer, world wide chat).... Am I wrong? This is confusing.....

</comment><comment><USER4> I imagine this is how the "internet" looks in an alternate universe

</comment><comment><USER5> This makes me want to buy a Dawner Prince effects pedal and I don't even play guitar anymore. Pretty effective advertising.

As a side note, the Look Closer button consistently crashes my browser (firefox 48.0.1). Anyone else having the same issue?

</comment><comment><USER6> Strange, confusing site. Sort of fun to explore though.

</comment><comment><USER7> quick google searches: [https://www.patreon.com/1080plus](https://www.patreon.com/1080plus)

</comment><comment><USER8> Pretty much the same exact reaction I had: What is this? I like it

</comment><comment><USER9> Doesn't seem to do much on iOS.

<comment><USER10> throws an error and reloads the page in a loop for me on iOS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't understand anything.

</comment><comment><USER12> Controlling the volume wasn't obvious to me at first - or maybe key parts weren't rendering? - so for any others maybe similarly confused, drag the red box to the right of the Volume label left and right.

</comment><comment><USER13> It is a guitar effects pedal: [http://dawnerprince.com/products/boonar](http://dawnerprince.com/products/boonar)

</comment><comment><USER14> WHAT IS THIS

</comment><comment><USER15> This crashed my Macbook Pro in Chrome. Full reboot.

</comment><comment><USER16> one of the buttons crashed out my firefox, I'm liking the 3d asciisector thing it's showing at the moment though :O

</comment><comment><USER17> I ended up watching more videos from the site.

</comment><comment><USER18> I tried to get the thing to play Rich Hickey's _Simple Made Easy_ talk... Couldn't get the thing to work.

</comment><comment><USER19> looks like a bucket brigade analogue delay pedal of some type.

</comment><comment><USER20> OSX 10.11.6 (El Capitan) FF & Chrome: black screen and nothing else</comment>


The Story of Siri, by its founder [video] - <AUTHOR> https://wit.ai/blog/2014/12/18/adam-keynote

<comment><USER2> Oct 4: Apple launches Siri

Oct 5: Steve Jobs dies

      One kind of side note. On October 5th, Steve Jobs died.
      He had been involved in a lot of the process leading up to it.
      We know that he was watching this launch from his house.
      I don't know what he thought about it, but I like to project
      that he saw it, said "It is good. This is the future, Apple's
      in the middle of it. I can go now." I don't know if that's true,
      but that's a projection that I like to put onto it.

I suppose this is the kind of statement you could expect from the creator of a predictive personal assistant, but wow.

<comment><USER3> I too found this extremely gratuitous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This video should be broadcasted to every politician remotely involved in industry, job creation, research or education (yes, that means probably all of them) to show how a succesful technology really is the (slow) product of an entire ecosystem combined with great minds of all kinds.

</comment><comment><USER5> I thought the talk about Siri being a service orchestration engine was pretty interesting. With the growing amount of internet services, and most importantly, services competing within the same domain, perhaps the most interesting web apps of the future will be mostly amalgamating the data between these services in intelligent ways.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Synopsys:

        Walking backward in time, Adam discussed the technical
        history of Siri as well as how the vision of virtual
        personal assistants evolved over time. He wowed the
        audience with a video from 1987 on a concept from Apple
        where predicted a Siri like device 24 years in the future
        and was only off by 2 weeks.

<comment><USER6> Unfortunately brought 1980s gender prejudices with it. Siri and Cortana defaulting to female voices? Way to miss an opportunity, market leaders.

<comment><AUTHOR> In France, Siri has a male voice!

<comment><USER6> Pas mal! But lurking beneath France's crisp white egalitarian shell lies a deeply unequal, slime-ridden underbelly.

Still, every little helps.

<comment><USER7> When designing Siri, the people involved crafted a backstory for Siri, answering questions like "Is Siri a male or a female?", "Is Siri human, computer, or something else?", "Is Siri an Apple employee (or what's the relationship to Apple)", etc. You'll be happy to know that Siri was designed to be neither male nor female, no matter what voice it speaks with -- ask it and you will see...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The ontology IDE was so amazing.

</comment><comment><USER9> "Sorry, because of its privacy settings, this video cannot be played here."

Is this only me? I'm not blocking cookies or anything like that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that, it should be fixed now. Can you please confirm?

<comment><USER10> works for me</comment></comment></comment>


McIntyre: The deleted data from the "Hide the Decline" trick - <AUTHOR> http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/26/mcintyre-data-from-the-hide-the-decline/

<comment><USER3> I'll probably never know what the data supports (although I'm admittedly skeptical), but I do know that discussing deleting emails and data to avoid responding to an FOI request is probably illegal, and definitely casts a cloud on everything else the participants have touched.

<comment><USER4> The CRU have publicly asserted that they have not deleted emails or data.

"No record has been deleted, altered, or otherwise dealt with in any fashion with the intent of preventing the disclosure of all, or any part, of the requested information."

[http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/2009/nov/homepagen...](http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/2009/nov/homepagenews/CRUupdate)

<comment><USER5> Phil Jones, Wed Dec 3 13:57:09 2008: _About 2 months ago I deleted loads of emails, so have very little - if anything at all._

[http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=940&filen...](http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=940&filename=1228330629.txt)

Hat tip: Steve McIntyre.

[http://camirror.wordpress.com/2009/11/24/denying-email- delet...](http://camirror.wordpress.com/2009/11/24/denying-email-deletion/)

<comment><USER4> Deleting emails is not the same as deleting emails to prevent disclosure. I delete emails all the time; I presume everyone does. The email being quoted here doesn't say anything about why Jones "deleted loads of emails". You are inferring more than is warranted.

<comment><USER6> I've never deleted a genuine email in my entire life. I've deleted thousands of emails, sometimes in one go, but I've never mentioned 'deleting loads of emails' it's "I deleted a shit load of spam today, it was a fucking boat load, you could feed a third world country!"

Perhaps yes he deleted a lot of spam, but no one on the planet considers them emails. Why would he be any different?

<comment><USER7> I try to go through and regularly delete emails I don't feel to be important. I archive the ones that I do want to keep, but the rest get deleted. I simply don't need to hold on to things like old conversations with my advisors about registration, emails from Facebook, Twitter, etc. containing updates, random emails amongst friends, and many more. I don't consider those to be spam, and some of them were definitely genuine email for the time, regardless of how you define something ambiguous like "genuine email", but I just don't feel the need to be a digital pack rat. There's a decent chance that I'm not the only one that feels this way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> From the email:

"The data are attached to this e-mail. They go from 1402 to 1995, although we usually stop the series in 1960 because of the recent non-temperature signal that is superimposed on the tree-ring data that we use. "

So who of the discussing people is well versed enough in tree-ring data to have an informed opinion on this? It sounds as if in recent times tree-ring data has to be read differently (which seems possible, other factors could affect growth, don't know).

<comment><USER9> This is interesting too-

"I really wish I could be more positive about the Kyrgyzstan material, but I swear I pulled every trick out of my sleeve trying to milk something out of that. It was pretty funny though - I told Malcolm what you said about my possibly being too Graybill-like in evaluating the response functions - <USER2> laughed and said that's what he thought at first also. The data's tempting but there's too much variation even within stands. I don't think it'd be productive to try and juggle the chronology statistics any more than I already have - they just are what they are (that does sound Graybillian). I think I'll have to look for an option where I can let this little story go as it is.

Not having seen the sites I can only speculate, but I'd be optimistic if someone could get back there and spend more time collecting samples, particularly at the upper elevations.

Yeah, I doubt I'll be over your way anytime soon. Too bad, I'd like to get together with you and Ed for a beer or two. Probably someday though.

Cheers, Gary Gary Funkhouser Lab. of Tree-Ring Research The University of Arizona"

[http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=12&filena...](http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=12&filename=843161829.txt)

There really does need to be a full and detailed explanation of all this, immediately.

<comment><USER10> Doesn't that message support the reading "drat, I can't filter out enough noise to make it statistically significant, so I don't have anything to publish"? (Genuine question.)

<comment><USER9> It's in response to the climatologist trying to get him to publish anyway. He was being pressured to make his data fit.

<comment><USER8> Publish or perish. This all sounds very normal to me. I don't see references to making data fit, rather it sounds as if he is looking for a ways to extract some useful information from it.

Anyway, you know what: people believe what they want to believe. This discussion is completely pointless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Here's my question, to anyone that knows: is the data set in question the only data set that the (alleged, I suppose) warming trend is observable in?

Or is this merely a nitpick at one particular set of data, while other independent ones exist that were generated in different ways?

I ask because in fight the over evolution, a lot of fuss has been made over a few very minor results that are seen as vulnerable in order to try to get people to ignore the big picture, which is clear as day (and doesn't depend at all on the individual results being picked at). While I realize not all AGW skeptics are anti-evolution, there's a big enough overlap to wonder if the same tactics or delusions might translate over...perhaps that's a cynical thought, but conservatives have earned no benefit of the doubt as regards scientific matters, so please forgive my prior bias in favor of the mainstream scientists - in every scientific field that I have personal experience in, the mainstream scientists these days are generally solid and honest, and _certainly_ never fraudulent.

If this is really the only data set that shows a warming trend, then that's a lot more worrisome.

<comment><USER12> This is not the only data set that the warming trend is observable in.

[ In fact, some AGW skeptics don't deny a warming trend, but instead argue against human impact causing this warming trend (the A). ]

Nevertheless, here is what Real Climate says regarding the "hide the decline" bit (in more detail than their original post):

>>Declines" in the MXD record. This decline was hidden written up in Nature in 1998 ([http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v391/n6668/abs/391678a0...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v391/n6668/abs/391678a0.html)) where the authors suggested not using the post 1960 data. Their actual programs (in IDL script), unsurprisingly warn against using post 1960 data. Added: Note that the 'hide the decline' comment was made in 1999 – 10 years ago, and has no connection whatsoever to more recent instrumental records.

So, every climate record produced in recent years has no connection to this data. And there's lots of these.

Your evolution analogy is apt. Many (very smart) people would like to pretend this simply isn't happening or isn't possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> the real nightmare here is that this is going to cast a huge shadow on legitimate climate research -- and science in general -- for many years to come. these douchebags need to rot in jail for a long time.

<comment><USER14> It's a bit extreme to put them in jail. I too think their actions are deplorable, but jail? We didn't even put the criminals behind the financial collapse in jail, why put morally reprehensible scientists in jail? I'd say the financial criminals caused more problems than the climate team.

<comment><USER13> Correct me if I'm wrong, and I'm not a British citizen so my understanding of the nature of publicly funded work may be a bit different, but if they are colluding to change the results of a study paid for with public monies and destroy evidence requested by an official inquiry, isn't that sufficient cause for criminal charges? The coordinated aspect of their fraud -- exemplified in the leaked emails -- adds a damning, worrisome aspect to the whole affair.

On a sociological level, this is a very dangerous situation. The impact of human endeavor and pollution on global climate is almost impossible to judge on a local personal level, so the public must have faith in the scientists we elect to study this problem.

Criminal charges would send a strong, immediate signal to scientists in all areas of research: check your personal opinions at the door when processing data. We are all human but if we allow this kind of thing to creep into all areas of research we risk undermining the very scientific underpinnings of our modern secular approach to public policy and, ultimately, the governance of our natural resources.

Scientific research must remain balanced.

As an aside: the people behind the economic crisis are not in jail, but they should be. Just because they have so far escaped the reach of justice doesn't mean we should lower our standards for other blatant crimes just because they are of the white collar variety.

<comment><USER15> > if they are colluding to change the results of a study paid for with public > monies

What study? Are you referring to the fact that at some point they drew a graph that updated data extrapolated from tree ring data with actual data from thermometers, and that that graph may or may not have actually been published? How long a jail term does that merit?

> destroy evidence requested by an official inquiry

What official inquiry? They talked about deleting emails they considered private. How long in jail for that?

> Criminal charges would send a strong, immediate signal to scientists in all > areas of research

On our backward little island we don't yet throw people in jail on the basis of their academic research. I'm sure we'll get there soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> As someone who has done some experimental work, I can appreciate how emails like this sound bad but may actually not be.

With every set of data, there is a lot of additional information necessary for interpreting it. I'm sure that if someone is just given my raw data, for example, it is open to interpretation -- however, ALSO given the "metadata" (which is often in my lengthy, informal lab journal), the rationale behind my interpretation is more clear ...

If I had to explain every little nuance to amateurs and explain why their interpretations are incorrect, I would certainly not have much time left in my day!

<comment><USER17> And therefore you would start deleting emails, ask others to delete emails, claim that original data has been lost when it has not in fact been lost, etc?

What would you do if you have a hypothesis and you see that from a particular date onwards the data doesn't support your hypothesis? I think you would try to find out why that is.

And if your work directly influences policy and taxes and living standards you might have to provide an explanation that "amateurs" can understand because "we the amateurs" are the same as "we the people" mentioned there:

<http://topics.law.cornell.edu/constitution/preamble>

<comment><USER8> I could see myself starting emails if somebody hacked my accounted and started publishing my private correspondence.

<comment><USER17> Obviously it's not desirable to have email accounts hacked.

But what has emerged so far is work related correspondence of public employees working on publicly funded projects. And the content of those emails is about trying to hide data that is supposed to be subject to public scrutiny and peer review.

Depending on what kind of organisation you work for, deleting that kind of "private correspondence" may constitute a crime.

It has been suggested that some of the data these people were trying to hide was subject to a FOI request (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_Information_Act_2000>). I don't know if that's actually the case, but if it is we may see prosecutions in the future.

<comment><USER8> I didn't follow this in detail, so far I have mostly seen some words taken out of context that can mean one thing or another. Personally I prefer not to judge words that are taken out of context.

In that sense, I suppose an actual prosecution would be a good thing, to end all the senseless speculation.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>