Intel Profits Fall as PC Slump Cuts Demand for Chips - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/17/technology/intel-profits-fall-as-pc-slump-cuts-demand-for-chips.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> What's interesting is that as a power user I still cannot buy a good ultrabook. I have a Samsung New Series 9 13" , that besides having major quality problems (dead pixels, clicking fan noises), lacks several essential features that I think many people would like to have:

-Retina display (at least like on iPad 3, 2048 x 1536 )

-Default fan-less thermal profile (i.e. no moving parts- it has fanless thermal profile, but it "forgets" it every time it's turned on)

Further down the road:

-Lid can be detached from the keyboard and used as a touchscreen tablet

<comment><USER3> Well, the Retina MacBook Pro very nearly fits your profile. The fans are whisper-quiet, and the screen is beautiful.

I'm a ThinkPad die-hard, but somehow Lenovo is managing to destroy every last bit of the legacy IBM worked so hard to build, so, sadly, I'm typing this from a 13" MacBook Air.

I couldn't bring myself to buy a cheapened fiberglass budget laptop after my lovely T60p.

<comment><USER4> It's frustrating. I bought a MacBook Pro to replace my aging but much loved Thinkpad X200, but it just doesn't measure up. The Thinkpad has a better keyboard, is more easily expandable (at least memory/hd), and most importantly for me, is built like a tank. The MBP already has a dented corner after an unfortunate tumble, the Thinkpad has endured much, much worse.

All I want is a newer version of the X200, but Lenovo has moved off in a different direction...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Intel is among the best at staying paranoid and investing into R&D. It makes how they've been pinched by the rapid shift to smart phones + tablets all the more amazing. A textbook example of how the best of companies can be caught with their pants down.

They've always managed to respond impressively in the past to challenging circumstances. Can they do it again? Their future depends on it.

<comment><USER6> It wasn't really that though. They saw it coming, but the margins were so low in this new field that they had to decide: stay in their high-margin but slowly dying business or turn ship to compete with the inevitable but not very profitable new order that was coming online.

It is quite easy to think that these big companies are not getting it, but they really do. Intel was and is basically in a no win situation: they could become like ARM and TSMC combined, but that wouldn't justify their valuation at all. Their only hope was to come out with a new breakthrough high-margin product, which might not simply exist right now (i.e. no big leaps to be had for the next 5-10 years).

<comment><USER5> It's not ARM that Intel has to compete with per se, it's Qualcomm. They're the new Intel.

People keep saying Intel stayed away due to the low margins. Well the market doesn't have low margins. Qualcomm has a 30% net income margin; it's 50% higher than Intel's today.

<comment><USER6> > Qualcomm has a 30% net income margin; it's 50% higher than Intel's today.

Qualcomm doesn't run its own fabs as far as I know, these comparisons aren't very meaningful.

Perhaps I mispoke using the word "margin:" Intel makes a lot of money as a hardware company. Of course, they have to invest in their fabs, but their 15% is on a much higher number than Qualcomm's 50%. So let's just think profit instead ($1.2B vs. $2B).

<comment><USER5> Of course Intel is larger - QCOM was founded in 1985 - but Qualcomm is making more money per dollar of sales they take in - 50% more in fact - and they're growing radically faster than Intel.

And it's not chump change either, it's $6.6 billion in profit, which makes them one of the most profitable tech companies on the planet. So it's not like we're comparing $11b in profit versus $300m (ARM Holdings).

Their market cap is already larger than Intel's, and that's not going backwards given QCOM's growth rate compared to Intel's contracting business.

Within three or four years at the current rate, Qualcom will be making more money than Intel. That's dramatic to say the least.

The comparison is perfect. With $13 billion in cash now, and no real debt, Qualcomm has begun talking about building their own fabs in the future. Which is exactly what they will do by necessity. They already make more money than TSMC. The notion of relying on TSMC long term would be absurd as Qualcomm grows so much bigger than them. Given the numerous problems QCOM has already had with TSMC, they have every incentive to soon abandon the fabless approach.

<comment><USER6> As soon as Qualcom starts fabbing, their margins will go down; that's just the nature of the hardware game. Microsoft, for example, was always very profitable BECAUSE they stayed out of hardware. But its really a false distinction: someone has to make hardware, and if you can do that profitably, why not?

But you are right: QCOM is doing very well, they should eventually overtake Intel in profits. They were very lucky to be in the cellphone business early on. I'm not sure if their tablet business is very profitable though. Its not like their are many successful tablets with snapdragons inside them.

<comment><USER7> Any data to show whose tablet business is very profitable except Apple? or more generally, is there any evidence showing that the "tablet market" is not equivalent to the "iPad market" anymore?

<comment><USER6> Most of the Google tablets seem to have Tegra's in them. Apple does their own chips of course. I'm not sure anyone is very profitable with tablets yet beyond Apple, but Asus might do OK.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Um, yep. If the average "PC" turns from a $500-750 laptop to a $200-500 tablet, Intel's going to lose a lot of business. It can't afford to live on Atom chip margins.

<comment><USER9> That's assuming that Intel gets a decent cut of tablet market at all. Intel making a decent low power CPU isn't going to make Arm go away, and Arm is only going to work its way up the ladder from its current dominance in the embedded and mobile space.

<comment><USER10> Arm exists because they went after a market Intel didn't care about. Intel was slow to react to the shift in market, but they have reacted and they are focused now. It is only a matter of time before Intel dominates the market. Their latest Atom processors are already better than Arms. They may not get the same cut from mobile processors, but they will have larger volume and there is an emerging market in the hybrid tablet space. The Surface Pro is considered a tablet but it still has an i5 in it. If Microsoft didn't screw it up so much it could have been a huge success.

If any company can touch Intel fabrication process, then maybe I will start to be worried about my Intel stock.

<comment><USER11> > _Their latest Atom processors are already better than Arms._

Source? Every review I've seen says they still struggle to beat ARM on power/performance/price.

I've absolutely not heard that their mobile chips are "better" by any margin.

<comment><USER10> [http://www.anandtech.com/show/6536/arm-vs-x86-the-real- showd...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/6536/arm-vs-x86-the-real-showdown/14)

On the horizon: [http://www.anandtech.com/show/6790/intels-clover-trail- dualc...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/6790/intels-clover-trail-dualcore-cpu- and-graphics-unveiled-at-mwc-2013)

<comment><USER12> I really wish people would stop using Javascript benchmarks as a CPU benchmark, especially across architectures. The amount by which they vary between browsers _on the same device_ should make it obvious they aren't a good general-purpose benchmark.

I mean, Kraken for one says my laptop is 60% faster than itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'd appreciate some thoughts from more informed people than myself.

As I understand it: Intel didn't go into mobile devices because of lower margins. Arm has now taken that market, and are killing it because they have the volumes to make the lower margins palatable and not much competition.

Intel is now going into the mobile space now as they have decided they are better off with low margins rather than no sales.

I could only imagine the total demand for mobile devices is a much bigger market than it ever was for PCs so surely with Intels production capability they can own this segment soon?

And with that being said, at the price intel stock is right now, we should be buying them up by the bucket load?

<comment><USER5> The companies leveraging ARM are the ones really killing it.

eg Qualcomm - 100% profit growth in 24 months, to $6.1 billion ($6.6b in last four quarters). They might be the size of Intel in three or four years at this pace, and their market valuation has already passed them (the market is making a clear bet there).

ARM itself is tiny by comparison. The real killing is being made by the companies leveraging ARM's designs (QCOM / AAPL / Samsung etc).

I view it as akin to taking commodity energy products (which often have good margins to begin with) and leveraging into the chemicals business with extreme margins (everything from Tide to perfume to industrial chemicals).

<comment><USER14> A few errors in your numbers, it was $6.02 billion, and this was gross revenue not profit - profit was $1.9 billion (still 91% growth in 24 months).

However, Qualcomm is more than ARM chips, so really those numbers are only semi-relevant. If Apple started making their own chips, you wouldn't attribute Apple's financial success to that alone.

Based on the fact that Qualcomm's profit is ~31.7% of it's revenue (in FY12Q4) you could estimate that the profit from chip sales was closer to $1b/quarter (based on annual chip sales revenue of $12.976 billion in 2012) and then the question is how much of this is from ARM sales, which I don't have an answer to.

As to their valuation passing Intel - again, this is based on more than chip sales, and Intel's market share is still almost four times that of Qualcomm currently (though this is likely to keep dropping, for sure).

Personally I'm still far more keen on ARM than the manufacturers. Having factories that create chips from ARM's licenses is very different to turning commodity products into goods like perfume - in the latter it is in part about creativity and marketing (and probably patents, etc. etc.) in the former it is much more about economy of scale, efficiency, etc.

What would it take to beat Qualcomm when it comes to producing ARM chips, and can it be done - get the price lower, and yes it probably could be by someone like Texas Instruments, Samsung, event Intel if they wanted to, potentially AMD (who do want to but I think probably are too small to). How about beating ARM themselves - all of a sudden you're not just trying to out-price the same products, you have to come up with better architecture and get the world to switch over. Whole different ball game.

All that said, Qualcomm are definitely in a great position, and are doing really well. But from a spectator point of view I think ARM are much more exciting, from an investor point of view I think that ARM's long-term future has more potential, and short-term they are paying out dividends per share greater than Qualcomm's total earning per share.

edit: Oh, and remember that even after the decline in profit, Intel's quarterly net profit is still higher than Qualcomm's. For now.

Number sources:

Qualcomm FY12 Q4 [http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/089f7c6e-6b23-11e2-8017-00144feab4...](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/089f7c6e-6b23-11e2-8017-00144feab49a.html#axzz2Qgbslvzk)

ARM FY12 Q4 [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020474090457719...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204740904577194273282374432.html)

2012 chip sales [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldwide_Top_20_Semiconductor...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldwide_Top_20_Semiconductor_Sales_Leaders#Ranking_for_year_2012)

<comment><USER5> No, Qualcomm's profit was $6.1 billion in 2012. With $19 billion in sales. It was $4.26 billion in profit for 2011 with nearly $15 billion in sales.

So the error is on your side.

Their trailing four quarters was closer to the $6.6 billion profit range (note that I did not say in the 4th quarter, I said the trailing four quarters).

[http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=QCOM+Income+Statement&an...](http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=QCOM+Income+Statement&annual)

Here's Qualcomm's press release on fiscal 2012 confirming my numbers:

[http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/QCOM/992946673x618427...](http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/QCOM/992946673x6184273x612534/fad62ec7-8440-4f17-aad9-08e36edc1f60/Q4%2712%20ER%20Final.pdf)

$6.11 billion in net income, with $19.12 billion in sales.

<comment><USER14> Apologies, I misunderstood you. When you said $6.1billion you didn't specify what period that was for, and due to the proximity to their Q4 revenue ($6.02 billion) I mistakenly jumped in and assumed you were talking about their last quarter and had misread the numbers, when in actual fact you were correct we were just talking about different things. Sorry!

Regardless, whether you look at the year or the quarter, the rest of my points weren't related to my thinking you had made a mistake with your numbers.

<comment><USER13> Thanks for the clarification!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "An improving economy should help, as well as new products like its Haswell chips, a power-saving processor that supports touch-screen computing on ultrabook computers, which are hybrids of notebooks and tablets."

I was expecting this, let's see how it holds up against ARM.</comment>


iMessage purgatory - <AUTHOR> http://adampash.com/imessage-purgatory/ <comment><USER3> I went through this last month when I switched to the Nexus 5, had no clue I wasn't getting messages until someone with an iPhone tweeted at me asking why I as ignoring them.

However, all it took from me was a call to Apple's customer service, I told them I had just switched off my iPhone and no longer got texts from people with iMessage and they immediately sent me to a tech that fixed the problem for me.

Have you been explaining it correctly when you call? All I said was "I had an iPhone until last week, switched to another phone but I'm still registered for iMessage"

Edit: According to my phone I called 1-800-692-7753 (Which is just 1-800-MY- APPLE) and my call took 8 mins 25 seconds total. Not too bad of an experience.

<comment><USER4> This is the proper response. I feel like the linked post is just a reason to bash Apple. As someone who used to work in their tech support (and has no real feeling about the company good or bad), EVERY time someone calls with this issue, it is fixed with the click of a button that deauthorizes their iMessage token.

I know a lot of people are saying that this shouldn't even have to be a step when you switch phones, but the fact is that you chose to use iMessage for the features. It could have been turned off at any time, they are not forcing you to use it.

It would be great if there was a way to fix this without having to call (or unregister your phone number from your apple id), because of not being able to know that it's happening. But it's not like Apple is deliberately trying to keep your messages hostage. Besides, you've already switched phones.

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't be so quick to say it's just an excuse to bash Apple. According to the writer's tweets Apple doesn't even see his phone number registered in the iMessage registry, so there could be something even worse going on here.

Source: [https://twitter.com/adampash/status/466316191230087168](https://twitter.com/adampash/status/466316191230087168)

<comment><USER4> Ah, thank you for the link. I guess I was the one that was quick to judge.

It also just sounds like there was a bad experience with a particular tech support rep, who may be new. In my experience, these issues are ALWAYS exceptions to the $20 fee. If the 'standard' workarounds don't fix it, they will escalate you to a supervisor and put in a ticket with engineering who will resolve the issue within 48 hours __ _.

Maybe OP will see this and give their tech support another shot. If not, the token expires in about 28 days.

_*This information is less than a year old, but rules may have changed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I went through this a few months ago and discussed on HN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7166955](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7166955)

Here's my update: It's been about 4 months or so since I switched.

Nothing I was able to do or Apple was able to do fixed the problem. I was able to put Messages into debug mode and I sent Apple a full debug log (Apple bug report #15966535). They marked the ticket as "Duplicate" and I was no longer able to view any updates.

After about 3 months, most of the issue has resolved.

The majority of group-texts work now; iPhones now send the whole thread is MMS not iMessage. It's still not 100% but pretty good.

Most of my friends can send SMS without failures, but quite a few still get "iMessage failed" and have to "resend as SMS".

I've completely given up trying to fix the problem. Just hoping the remaining iOS devices resolve themselves at some point, or Apple fixes in next update.

<rant>Everyone thinks this is an _Android_ problem that they can't message me anymore. Really tough to explain to the world that it's _their_ phone that's buggy.</rant>

</comment><comment><USER6> What is interesting to me always is that my experience trying to send iMessages to people is usually the opposite: if someone's phone runs out of batteries or they start a phone call (on CDMA, which can't do voice and data simultaneously) I nearly instantly am forced to send them text messages. I also have found the "Delivered" notices very reliable: AFAIK they require a device to actually receive the message. Note however that it is "a device": if you have iMessage associated with another random device, it might be receiving your messages for you; I would be very interested in knowing if these people cataloged all devices they have from Apple (including Macs) and logged out of all of them. (It could, of course, just be a bug; but it at least doesn't seem to be some fundamental aspect of the design that it permanently hijacks messages.)

<comment><USER7> My sister has an iPhone, but no data plan. So, if she's out and I want to text her from my iPhone, she needs to make sure she doesn't have iMessages running on her computer at home. If it's on, I text her a bunch of times and I just get the blue bubbles. Then I get a bunch of SMS messages from her saying "where are you? why aren't you texting me back" and hilarity ensues. I guess I could just call her.

<comment><USER8> She could disassociate the phone number from her computer's iMessage account (Preferences -> Accounts). Then messages to her number would always go to her phone, and messages to the email account would go to the computer.

<comment><USER7> Thanks -- that's a good idea. I'll have to point that out to her.

<comment><USER9> The point is, why should you have to point that out? iOS 8 had better make it obvious -- "oh, I don't have data on my phone, so make sure it gets sent as an SMS too!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Even more frustrating, reading this just reminds me how much better the google voice solution to this problem is and it predated iMessage by several years. Google has just let it atrophy - then they introduced hangouts late (relative to other chat apps in the market) and still have not integrated the google voice features or pushed them with android.

Does anyone who works at/worked at Google know why this happened?

Were they trying to turn the telecoms into dumb pipes with the original Nexus and gizmo5 purchase, but when that failed just abandoned the idea? You'd think the success of whatsapp and facebook chat would make chat a priority. If people communicate using your platform they're more likely to use your account for other things.

<comment><USER11> To be honest, Hangouts of Google does a pretty nice job of SMS integration and multidevice communication.

First: if a person has SMS and also a google account, they are just put toghether under the same hood, but they don't get mixed, just get sorted. An SMS goes associated with the number so I would not receive a SMS as a talk message or what ever. Second: if I am getting a message ( over Gtalk or Hangouts ) all my devices ( including Chrome) are receiving it in the same (relative) time. No stealing around, all my conversations are sync'd everywhere.

<comment><USER12> Not quite. I have a Nexus 4 and a Nexus 5. If I turn my 4 on, I'll get notifications (and sound/vibration) only on the 4, until I start using the 5 again. Strangely this doesn't seem to hold true if I use Hangouts on my computer (messages alert all devices)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Mashable wrote about this problem months ago: [http://mashable.com/2013/09/16/imessage- problem/](http://mashable.com/2013/09/16/imessage-problem/)

A lot of my friends have complained about this problem as well.

I'm surprised Apple hasn't moved faster to come up with a solution. Seems like a lawsuit waiting to happen.

<comment><USER14> They're not Apple customers anymore. It's not a problem (in that it's not effecting their customers, it __IS __their fault).

The best way to get this fixed would probably be for iPhone users who lose the ability to message their friend to complain to Apple, not the former customer.

Sad though. Apple is so good at customer service in many contexts. But sometimes they seem to decide on one of these seemingly purposeful blindspots and treat people terribly.

<comment><USER15> The people with iPhones are still Apple's customers, and it's their messages that are disappearing. That's a perfectly good case for a CAL.

Suppose that someone tried texting someone for medical assistance (silly, I know...), and that message was not delivered because the recipient changed their phone but kept their number, is that the fault of the person that changed their phone or is it the fault of Apple for not being able to realise that people might someday want to change devices?

<comment><USER16> >not being able to realise that people might someday want to change devices?

They did realize it. There are two mechanisms for handling this issue - turning off iMessage in Settings before deactivating your iPhone, and calling Apple after deactivating your iPhone. Both are documented.

There is no way for your iPhone to know it's been deactivated and still communicate with Apple. If anything it's the fault of the carriers for not providing Apple with an API hook for "this iPhone was just deactivated."

Also SMS is many times more lossy than iMessage. I've had messages show up to my friends on AT&T several _days_ after they were sent, and not all. SMS messages longer than the length limit almost always arrive out of order, and sometimes parts don't arrive at all. Relying on non-iMessage texting for medical assistance is stupid to begin with.

<comment><USER17> The problem is that there are so many edge cases with this. iMessage is a group messaging platform. Replacing SMS is just a small part of what it covers. You might be switching away from you iPhone but you still want to be able to use it on your iPad or Mac. It would be much better if Apple introduced a separate SMS application or created / supported iMessage on other platforms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> IM and SMS are different ideas. SMS moves a message from one _device_ to another. SMS also knows nothing about the receiving device or whether the message got there.

IM (under which I include iMessage) is user-to-user, not device-to-device. It _can_ know about the recipient and whether messages are received.

Each of these things has advantages.

SMS works because the phone network is always tracking a device. It is very addressable. The receiving device is mobile, rarely changes, and is singular.

IM has a notion of sessions. The user signs off and on. It can travel over any IP connection. The device on which the user is addressable changes a lot. There may be multiple devices, making the definition of "delivered" a bit less deterministic.

Conflating these two makes for a confusing mental model for the user, and for failures like this.

</comment><comment><USER19> For what it's worth, I switched to Android and did not have to pay Apple $20 to disable my iMessages, despite not having an active support contract.

I did, however, have to do a quick Google search, log in to my iTunes account through the web, and de-register my Apple devices. The problem was solved relatively quickly and for free.

This should be simpler, but I'm not sure how much easier Apple can make it. They can't make an iOS app to help you because you got rid of the iPhone. It seems strange to make an Android app to help you. That leaves the web. Better luck to you!

<comment><USER20> > This should be simpler, but I'm not sure how much easier Apple can make it.

You have to keep in mind that your steps don't work for everyone. There is no definitive set of steps that consistently work. I say this is as someone who has gone back and forth between iOS and Android a couple of times. What worked last time doesn't necessarily work the next time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I switched to an Android phone 3 weeks ago and I am also still not receiving texts from iPhones. Apple's customer support said the same thing to me as they did to you. They told me that one customer had to wait 40 days before they were fully removed from the system. I am just hoping that it gets fixed for me by the time 40 days has come around.

I filled a complaint with the FCC at [https://esupport.fcc.gov/ccmsforms/form2000.action?form_type...](https://esupport.fcc.gov/ccmsforms/form2000.action?form_type=2000B). It is a form for complaints against wireless carriers for number portability issues.

</comment><comment><USER22> Wow, this has been going on for at least a year. I can't believe that Apple hasn't already fixed this problem, it really calls into question their commitment to doing the right thing.

<comment><USER23> Yeah it's stupid issue but extremely easy to resolve. My messages went to purgatory for about 15 minutes. [http://phandroid.com/2014/04/07/turn-off- imessage-iphone-to-...](http://phandroid.com/2014/04/07/turn-off-imessage- iphone-to-android/)

<comment><USER24> I've done all of that. The number is no longer associated with my Apple ID, but other iPhones still send messages to that number via iMessage — which means they go nowhere.

<comment><USER23> Well shit. Sounds like Apple has an issue clearing cache.

In the hopes of actually solving your issue, I hate to suggest this, but try reconnecting your number to imessage (and make sure you get any new imessage texts), then properly turn off imessage from that device. The defacto unplug it plug it back in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I briefly switched from an iOS phone to an Nexus 5 and had the same issue. For other reasons, I switched back. A colleague of mine liked the Nexus a lot and made the switch after I did. He has been fighting this for _months_. Everything works properly for a while. Sometimes, several weeks will go by. Then, out of the blue, my phone tries to send the message to him as an iMessage. It's bizarre and frustrating.

</comment><comment><USER26> Even more of a disaster with iMessage group threads. I had a thread w/ two friends, and when I switched to my Moto X, I didn't realize that I was no longer receiving messages on the thread from ONE of them.

Turns out, one of their iPhones recognized that it should start texting me, while the other's iPhone kept iMessaging me w/out delivering failure reports. So frustrating that I forced them to get WhatsApp!

</comment><comment><USER27> Sounds like it would be easier to find new friends.

Seriously though, iMessage should have some sort of interoperability on other devices, even if its just a web interface you can log into to make configuration changes, including the deletion/deactivation of an account associated with a mobile phone number.

Edit: Or even monitoring iPhones associated with a number and disabling iMessage if said phone is no longer online with that number? Could possibly even forward unread messages, etc.

<comment><USER28> It does. Log into your Apple ID at [https://appleid.apple.com](https://appleid.apple.com) and un-associate your phone number.

Though this only works if you attached your iPhone to your Apple ID in the first place. The phone bugs you about it repeatedly but many people do not do so.

<comment><USER27> Then I fail to see why this is really an issue - blog explains no proper solution, need to pay $20, engineers can't figure it out, etc... Sounds like hogwash.

<comment><USER29> Unnecessarily dismissive.

The OP has said [1] that he dissociated his number from iMessage and people who text him from iPhones are not getting through to him. That is problematic if you want to receive text messages on a non Apple phone.

It would seem he wrote in his blog in order to get help or bring it to a wider attention.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7740438](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7740438)

<comment><USER27> No reference made to this in the article.

The solution is there however, Apple just needs to fix their iMessage software to properly disassociate the number with iMessage.

Again, like my unnecessarily down voted comment suggested, unlike this blog suggests, the solution is there, it just doesn't work.

<comment><USER30> If it doesn't work, it's not a solution.

<comment><USER27> When you held your iPhone 4 wrong and the connection dropped, people didn't claim that there was no antenna.

<comment><USER30> An antenna is defined by physical characteristics, not whether or not it functions suitably for a given application. A solution is something that solves a problem -- it is only a solution with respect to that problem, and only to the extent that it actually solves it. If it doesn't work, it doesn't solve the problem, and isn't a solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I had this same issue. Apple wouldn't help me, unfortunately. If I recall correctly, I had to disassociate iMessage from my AppleID completely, which seems to have worked. Although I still can't be sure.

I have a weird feeling the messages still aren't going through and a lot of my friends think I'm being an asshole.

<comment><USER32> This feels exactly like the dark days of Microsoft[1], where they would support a protocol halfway, and then make it impossible for people to switch away from their version of the protocol.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I ran into this issue 2 years ago when I dropped iPhone for Android - <USER2> seriously can't believe it's still a problem. Even following Apple's official KB article, it will still take a few days for all of your messages to start going through again.

</comment><comment><USER34> Well it seems that Apple has little incentive to fix this and have been dragging their feet: They're hoping that a brand new Android user will blame non-working SMS messages to their phone and return it for another iPhone.

Just another lock-in behaviour from them.

</comment><comment><USER35> The easiest way to avoid this problem is to make sure you turn off iMessage on your iPhone before you switch devices then you don't have this problem in the first place.

[https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3392014?start=15&tstart...](https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3392014?start=15&tstart=0)

<comment><USER36> When I switched from an iPhone to an Android handset, I found that I not only had to switch off iMessage, I had to switch it off while my SIM card was still in the iPhone. Switching iMessage off after the fact didn't seem to work.

<comment><USER35> Yes, you need to do it before porting your number.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> My friends and I have never ran into this issue switching from iOS to Android. The main thing to do is to disable iMessage on your old iPhone before you get rid of it; that should unregister it on Apple's servers. If you do that, then you should be unregistered unless you have another device hooked up (i.e. Mac).

</comment><comment><USER38> This happened to me when I got my android phone with a new number. When my friends with iPhones texted me, the text always shows up as iMessage and I would never receive it.

The thing is, I have not owned ANY smartphone before this one. My guess was the previous owner of this number had an iPhone and registered for iMessage service. iMessage route sms through its own server it never reached my carrier's network. I tried to get help from Apple store technician, but since I am not an apple customer, past or present, employee did not see a need to help.

Problem is I really liked that number. After 2 months of struggle I gave up and changed to a new number.

I will admit I never liked Apple and do my best to purge iProducts from my life. But I guess you just cannot avoid being screwed, anyway.

</comment><comment><USER39> A friend found this

[http://support.vodafone.com.au/articles/FAQ/How-to- deactivat...](http://support.vodafone.com.au/articles/FAQ/How-to-deactivate- iMessage-if-you-re-switching-from-iPhone)

TLDR; Deactive iMessages on your iPhone before switching or go here if you don't have access to your phone. [http://supportprofile.apple.com/MySupportProfile.do](http://supportprofile.apple.com/MySupportProfile.do)

Sounds like that's not enough from reports below tho

</comment><comment><USER40> Easy (yet long) fix:

on iPhone - Disable iMessage from the settings menu. \- Go back to messages and send a standard text message to the phone number. \- Enable iMessage from the settings menu.

Done.

</comment><comment><USER41> How can the engineering team be clueless on how to fix this? Now I admit that I don't know the inner workings of the iMessage protocol and servers, but presumably all that needs to be done is to disassociate the number with the Apple ID. If I were to guess this would involve dropping a row in a table somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER42> Google Hangouts on my Android phone keeps bugging me to intergrate SMS into Hangouts, as well as to "confirm" my mobile number. My fear is that something analogous to the iMessage "purgatory" might happen, though I haven't heard of anyone experiencing it.

<comment><USER43> As of now, there's nothing to worry about. The problem with iPhones occurs because (1) Apple's implementation is apparently crappy, and (2) Apple tries to treat SMS and iMessage as just two identical channels through which a message can be received. You send a message to a person, not a phone number or iMessage account, and Apple figures out how to route it. The problem occurs when they guess wrong.

Google isn't doing #2. The SMS integration with Hangouts is limited to just showing your SMS and IM messages in one view. When you send a message, you send it through one channel or the other explicitly. Google doesn't ever guess how you wanted to send it, so they can't guess wrong.

<comment><USER42> The part that concerns me with Hangouts is that it wants to know my mobile number for some reason. They say it's for discovery purposes. For now at least.

<comment><USER44> If you're using Google apps on your phone, they already know your mobile number. I'm not sure what you're concerned about.

<comment><USER42> Google as an organization has my mobile number from a variety of sources, but that doesn't mean I want to associate my mobile number with my Hangouts usage in such a way that other people with my phone number can automatically contact me via Hangouts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I ran into this too and ended up calling Apple. Their solution was to tell everyone who had my number to erase their iMessage history with me.

Somewhat odd - I can receive individual texts from two people that have iPhones but if one of them sends a group text to both of us, I do not receive it.

</comment><comment><USER46> There was a story posted the HN that was very similar to this semi-recently, in fact I though it was a repost until I saw this was published today. I can't seem to find the previous post, does anyone else remember that/have a link? Thanks!

<comment><USER47> From 100 days ago, 398 points: iOS holding my phone number hostage = the worst bug I've ever experienced (blog.benjaminste.in)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7166955](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7166955)

<comment><USER46> Apparently I need to re-evaluate my usage of the term "semi-recently", thank you very much for the link! I bow to your superior searching skills. I used the HN search site [0] if you don't mind me asking what did you use to find or did you just have it bookmarked?

[0] [http://hn.algolia.com](http://hn.algolia.com)

<comment><USER47> I posted in that thread, so I was able to find it in my comment history without too much digging.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I've been here for almost a year.

It's not clear why this seems okay. "We've stolen contact for a year. We're working on it."

Seems like anti-competitive behavior. Stopped buying Apple 100% immediately once I found out.

</comment><comment><USER49> I encountered this problem recently on a smaller scale. I disable iMessage for various reasons, but recently had to factory reset my iPhone, which led to iMessage being enabled. I completely forgot about it and after I remembered to disable it, I suddenly could no longer receive text messages from my friends with iPhones.

I gave Apple a call and initially the only response I could get from them was "Just turn on iMessage" and general confusion about why I had it turned off in the first place.

Eventually someone I talked to said they could fix it, and shortly after I started receiving messages again.

</comment><comment><USER50> I have read about these issues plaguing people. It is strange because whenever I have roamed overseas or have disabled data for whatever reason. People still can text me, albeit I am sure there is a delay between when they hit send and when I got the message.

Friends of mine have moved from iPhone to Android, when I send them a message it tries with iMessage - and I get the message failure exclamation mark. It then resends as a text and doesn't try iMessage again for some time. Haven't really had the black hole experience yet...

</comment><comment><USER51> 1\. Validation seem to happen when you send the first message to check if given number is associated with iMessage 2\. Second time onward it only checks if the sender is in Data Network or not. 3\. There is an option in the iMessage settings > Messages > "Send as SMS" if this option is not selected once the device/iAccount knows the other device is iPhone and you are on Data ... it just sends an iMessage.

Turn "Send as SMS" so that it falls back to SMS if the destination is not available for iMessage.

</comment><comment><USER52> Their support page makes it sound like they can just de-register iMessage with your account.

[http://support.apple.com/kb/ts5185](http://support.apple.com/kb/ts5185)

A few comments here seem to suggest that this is a carrier or cellular infrastructure issue. It isn't! iMessage doesn't route over SMS-- that's the whole point. It routes to Apple's servers, which should be capable of doing a lookup to see if the number still has an associated iCloud or iMessage account.

</comment><comment><USER53> There is (or at least used to be) an option on your iPhone that forces the messages to be sent and received over SMS rather than iMessage. I wonder if one could turn on that option on their old phone before switching numbers.

There was a fairly recent change in how iMessages are handled. In one of the iOS updates, you can receive iMessage messages on numerous devices tied to your Apple ID such as your iPad. I wonder if that's where the bug comes from.

The other option is to switch to Android at home and get new friends.

<comment><USER16> I wonder if one could turn on that option on their old phone before switching numbers.

Yes, one can, and this is the correct and documented way to avoid this problem. Unfortunately, people don't generally think about it before asking their carrier to swap out phones on their line, and your iPhone has no way of knowing you intend to deactivate it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> I had a very similar problem when I drowned my iPhone and switched my SIM to an old Windows Phone 7 I had lying around. If you have your old phone, you can disable iMessage while the SIM is still in it, which apparently works -- but if you don't, you're basically up a creek. I ended up changing the email address on my iCloud account.

It baffles me that online iCloud doesn't have a dashboard for controlling this. Doesn't seem it should be that hard to unlink phone numbers from iMessage.

</comment><comment><USER55> I had the same issue, but I was able to still retrieve the messages via another apple device that was still connected to the iMessage service. I was then able to disassociate my number with the service.

When I had my iPhone, I had originally linked both my email and my phone number to the same iMessage account, so fortunately I never lost messages.

If it was tied to your email as well, you might be able to disable the service via another apple device.

</comment><comment><USER56> It's even worse if you want to keep an iDevice registered for facetime/iMessage use. You can't toggle it on and off on demand.

</comment><comment><USER57> Unfortunately I'm in the same boat right now. Tried calling them and having the number removed, etc...

Been going on like this for over a month.

</comment><comment><USER58> I've been having the same issue and it ruined part of my vacation as people I was meeting up with on vacation thought I was ignoring their texts and we never met up.

What adds insult to injury is that all ios devices are shipped by default with the setting set to not send by sms when user not found on iMessage.

Apple should own up to this problem publicly and compensate users.

</comment><comment><USER59> The only reliable fix I've seen for this is to have your friends remove and re-add your mobile number from their contacts.

</comment><comment><USER60> Whenever I look at the iMessage icon on my iPhone/iPad, I feel it had so much potential when it came out but Apple just squandered it like a brat. If only they had opened the gates on interoperability ..sigh !

Sometime back they were arrogant and brilliant, not just the former.

</comment><comment><USER61> What's wrong with iMessage on Android app? [http://imessageonandroid.com/](http://imessageonandroid.com/)

Why this exact same issue is poppup up in HN every now and then...

<comment><USER61> Sorry my fault. It's a scam.

</comment></comment><comment> X-Istence Had a friend recently go through this. She called up Apple, had her number deregistered and about a day or two later everything started flowing correctly again...

</comment><comment> vhost- Same story here. Switched to an android decide and no one could text me for months. Months! It's almost unbelievable.

</comment><comment><USER62> frustrating, indeed. the short answer is, if you are in the know, and you switch from iphone to android, disable iMessage on your iPhone first.

It would be great to see an interoperable solution replace iMessage, but for now, it is (purportedly) secure and often more reliable than text messaging. I still pay for an unlimited sms plan.

<comment><USER63> > I still pay for an unlimited ams plan

I just couldn't bring myself to be extorted 25 or 50 cents per text. Why is there no government investigation in to this? No class action?

I thank Apple for at least allowing me to text the majority of my friends for free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Why aren't they making sure there's an active iPhone number associated before delivering any iMessages?

Obvious solution.

</comment><comment><USER65> I have similar issues with an iPhone and iPad synced to the same account. Stuff is always out of sync.

</comment><comment><USER66> Is it conceivable that Apple are deliberately ignoring this issue as it does exactly what they would want?

It punishes people who move away from their platform with social isolation.

It's easy for them to overlook this issue and not put any effort into fixing it, because the investment would result in a better experience for everyone who switching away from Apple.

<comment><USER67> No. This is not conceivable. In fact, Apple has never taken a single documented action which would be at all similar to this.

If one thinks about it for just a moment, one can see the hilarity of even suspecting this. Apple has very consistently provided the best overall experience and service in the industry over the last 15 years. They have done this regardless of whether you are using one of their products (PC users who use iTunes) or their entire ecosystem of products.

It strains credulity to think that Apple would attempt to punish a customer who is moving away from a given iPhone (perhaps even to a new iPhone!). That customer could very well still use several other Apple products for years or even decades in the future. You expect us to believe that Apple would antagonize that customer in a grade-school fashion, out of spite?

It's just nonsense to even think this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> This again? FFS RTFM...

<comment><USER69> Hey look, the new comment-approval policy _totally_ fixed trashy low-effort comments on HN.

<comment><USER70> Please don't reply to trashy low-effort comments on HN with trashy low-effort comments on HN.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> > save the green vs. blue bubbles, which are in their own way a sort of weird > social/status indicator

Save your opinionated anti Apple rhetoric. The color coded indicator allows people to know which features are included in the service, or whether your text was delivered and read or in your case, not delivered...

<comment><USER71> While color coding totally serves a useful purpose, it's also DEFINITELY used by some as a indicator of status or inclusion in a group. People are super tribal, and will use any indicators available to indicate inclusion or exclusion.

<comment><USER72> _Think different..._

<comment><USER73> Oh cmon, how is this any different from Google Hangouts? Messages sent from Google Hangout's are green, and default SMS is grey.

<comment><USER30> iMessage uses shading based on transport (SMS/MMS vs. iMessage) for both your messages and others, but from looking at my own mixed SMS/MMS/Hangouts threads, Google uses green for your outbound messages sent with Hangouts, and grey for your outbound SMS/MMS messages and all incoming messages (with "via SMS" and "via MMS" alongside the time display on in- and out-bound SMS/MMS messages.)

So, to the extent that the Apple behavior can be seen as signalling in-group membership with color of messages, it is distinctly different from Google Hangouts, since the only person whose messages are colored to indicate delivery method in Hangouts are _yours_ , not the ones you receive from others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> I find it interesting how so many people still find it acceptable in 2014 to be using a "phone number" as their id.

It's a number you can't even pick yourself: you _pay_ to get a randomly assigned digits, at best with the ability to reroll (also not always free).

To me, it feels like someone using an `@aol.com` email in 2014. Or a rotary phone.

<comment><USER75> The phone number is a backwards compatibility feature. We have modern ways of locating a user (see SIP, Email), but those won't be compatible with POTS.

The use case here, Apple's iMessage, in fact allows users to use alternate methods of user lookup, including multiple email addresses.

If you don't find it acceptable, what do you propose as an alternative?

<comment><USER74> > If you don't find it acceptable, what do you propose as an alternative?

So far, the best alternative for id that I've found is...

Email address.

It's highly available, free to create, and you can pick your own letters/numbers that are meaningful. It can even be your name. Definitely better than phone number digits at being an id that I can share with my friends or those who I want to be able to contact me.

(For voice calls, I primarily use FaceTime Audio because they support email as id. But I also have skype, voip number for backwards compatibility, etc.)

<comment><USER30> Phone numbers are portable between providers, email addresses are not. So email addresses make _worse_ identifiers (where consistency rather than encoded meaning is the important thing) than phone numbers.

(Also, the "pay to get a randomly assigned number" isn't always true: my Google Voice number was free, and I got to ask for particular digits string to be included and got to choose from a list of numbers that met that requirement.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> This site has a solution:

1\. Reset your Apple ID password and do not log back in on your device(s)

2\. Send a text to 48369 with the word STOP

It won't happen immediately but over a 12-hour period, you should start receiving texts on your Android device that are sent from iPhone users.

[http://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-keep-receiving- sm...](http://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-keep-receiving-sms-from- iphone-users-after-making-the-switch-to-android/)

<comment><USER77> Official Apple knowledge base info: [http://support.apple.com/kb/TS5185](http://support.apple.com/kb/TS5185)

<comment><USER25> I think it's important to note that the Apple KB explicitly states that the steps outlined in the parent comment and article do not work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> Is the destruction of SMS as a technology necessarily bad? I don't think so. Like ripping off a band aid, get it over with and move on.

<comment><USER79> This isn't about destroying SMS, it's about Apple's OS blocking communication to a number because they make permanent assumptions about the device at the other end.</comment></comment>


Health IT standards (HL7) to become freely available - <AUTHOR> http://www.hl7.org/about/faqs/FreeIP.cfm

<comment><USER2> At it's core, HL7 is basically a very, very horrible xml-like markup system (but with weird binary delimitation.) Is this the "IP" they're making free? If so, they can keep it.

<comment><AUTHOR> HL7 is an organisation responsible for many different health IT standards such as CDA (clinical document architecture), RIM (conceptual model), VMR (virtual medical record) and others. 'HL7 messaging' is what you're thinking of.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: I have trouble finding the right JS/Canvas solution - <AUTHOR>

I'm still a novice when it comes to JavaScript and though I did a few smaller projects in Angular and dabbled a bit in using Canvas for games I'm far from having the knowledge to find the right answer to most problems.
I've been working on a project that involves a large amount of images which need to be moved, resized and categorized. I think it's comparable to what Microsoft has shown on the Surface. So far it's pretty static, which means instead of dragging pictures into zones to tag them I just select them by clicking on them and then open a dialog. Pretty easy to do, pretty useless for large amounts of images. Using the DOM and a framework everything is cut out to solve this problem.
Problem is, it is too slow and too rigid. I wanted to add selection by drawing a box, or even a polygon with a pen. To my understanding this is both possible in Canvas and WebGL, but neither allow me to use the DOM or frameworks build on top. There are frameworks which make the Canvas more accessible, but they are all targeted at making games and basically no interaction which is made easy with DOM + JS is implemented.
Is this a gap in the world of JS no one has yet filled? The only remotely active framework that promises more than just game development is KineticJS. I havent found any project using it and flagship projects like Mozilla's Bespin were all abandoned in favor of projects like Cloud 9 or Ace which use the DOM.
I feel like I would be stuck rolling out my own solution to this problem, which is far out of my reach. <comment><USER2> three.js is very quick, and works well with CSS3D for DOM stuff. Example: [http://www.mrdoob.com/lab/javascript/threejs/css3d/periodict...](http://www.mrdoob.com/lab/javascript/threejs/css3d/periodictable/) <\- Each periodic table element is a group of divs in the HTML.</comment>


Ask HN: How do I create a Terms of Service for my Application? - J-H

Hi,<p>I'm a high schooler who just learned PHP for the last year or so, and created a website for business owners and consumers to connect with each other. I'm now wondering how can I create a Terms of Service - I don't have any money for a lawyer, but I also don't want to go to get sued if something goes wrong because I don't have a Terms of Service? Is it possible to not get sued without one? Thanks for all help! <comment><AUTHOR> If you choose to go with a template take a look at Automattic's TOS (<http://en.wordpress.com/tos/>) which is licensed under Creative Commons. You can make changes according to your own site and reuse it freely.

<comment><USER2> Their privacy policy is also licensed under Creative Commons and completely free to take and adapt: <http://automattic.com/privacy/> \- great move from Automattic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> There are services like <http://termsfeed.com/> that will make one up for you on-the-fly depending on your site's features. I can't vouch for them, but if you're concerned, they might be an easy place to start.

<comment><USER4> I'm looking for something similar ... so checked it out.

In an oddly ironic way <http://termsfeed.com/terms-of-use> and <http://termsfeed.com/privacy-policy> return empty pages

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Make your startup successful and worry later, when your service will take off then you will afford a lawyer, until then search terms of service generator on google and use a predefined template.</comment>


Show HN: Fireform – Hook your website form into a hosted private back end - <AUTHOR> http://fireform.org/

<comment><USER2> Just in case it might be helpful for someone else (I know it's been helpful for us at the college the past few years).

Here's a great Wufoo-like self-hosted Forms Application (version 4.0 sounds like it's right around the corner too): [http://www.appnitro.com/](http://www.appnitro.com/)

The software is called MachForms (I don't remember how I found it, but I'm definitely glad I did). I was able to add in LDAP authentication on my own with some customization of the core code (I wish it would be built-in as a feature, but aside from that it works really nicely out of the box).

<comment><USER3> We have a simple version of JotForm in the same space. You can install it on any LAMP server: [http://www.interlogy.com/products/jotform/](http://www.interlogy.com/products/jotform/)

It does support LDAP as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Anyone have the link to the other online form api/processor that was posted the other day?

it was like POST email@example.com

Just wanted to compare a few of them

<comment><AUTHOR> formspree.com, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7298195](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7298195)

<comment><USER4> cheers

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> All these static form hosting tools make me think maybe one of our side projects had some possible legs: [http://formend.com/](http://formend.com/)

It's a backend for form data. The idea being you never set up a schema or layout ahead of time, you just send named fields and file uploads and it just works.

The implementation is a bit buggy though, it was more of a proof of concept.

<comment><USER6> I love the concept, but I'd much prefer to self-host such a tool.

I'd pay for something that easily handle all the ad-hoc forms we want to cook up on our otherwise static marketing site.

<comment><USER7> Funny, I've been working on a tool that is exactly that. Sounds like it might be worth uploading to Github?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What I want/need is a more robust system to handle spam/server side validation. i.e. filtering out known bad email addresses or domains, blocking IPs, blocking known spam phrases from text fields, validating selected dates between ranges etc. Any plans for things like that? Also what about email alerts for submissions etc?

</comment><comment><USER9> Ahh.. this takes me back to when you had your page on something like Angelfire or Geocities and someone else would provide free guestbook or "contact us" type forms. You just had to plunk some code into your html and go.

This is the Web 2.0 version of that.

<comment><AUTHOR> So glad someone remembers the good old days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Awesome!!

Can I assign a custom tags on a form? I'd love to differentiate when the form was submitted on a dev environment, a landing page 1 or landing page 2..

<comment><AUTHOR> You can add a hidden field with the URL or a flag. You can also sort off that field in the results.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's really awesome we were able to build this completely on Firebase's system. The zapier integration for email was clutch too. Ne sweat on the scaling.

<comment> at-fates-hands I noticed the Firebase reference on your page. Very nicely done. I just started working with Angular and using Firebase is a no-brainer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Their demo is really a pain to use in my 1024x700 browser windows. And even when I switch to fullscreen actually (but I'd rather not).

<comment><USER12> Making mobile-responsive tables is a pretty involved thing, and would have been even more complicated by the fact that the table sorts. I think that most people will be able to scroll if they happen to check the backend on a phone or 90's era computer.

<comment><USER11> I'm not using a mobile. I'm using a recent laptop, I just don't like to browse in fullscreen. Is it okay with you?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> looks sharp, but doesn't wufoo have a pretty solid foothold in this market?

<comment><AUTHOR> We made this because we are particular about our markup and wufoo's iframe and banner in the form was a non-starter for our client's needs.

<comment><USER14> This. Wufoo is a PITA when it comes to doing custom stuff. I've spent hours mucking with css trying to overcome their layouts.

<comment><USER6> Yes. Their process is backwards. Lots of folks don't want to start with their markup. It'd be much better to be able to code up your forms and submit _whatever_ you want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Regrets for the sizing issue. Hopefully it still get's the job done.

<comment><USER15> Is the sample form suppose to look like this?

[http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/09b77l09xvfrta7/2014-02-2...](http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/09b77l09xvfrta7/2014-02-28%20at%2012.07%20PM.png)

<comment><USER16> "how to milk a goat" LOL

<comment><USER17> The answer to this important question was tragically not found on our Fireform example, so they had to turn to Google. Haha

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What are your thoughts on pricing for this? How about a form builder?

<comment><AUTHOR> We are not sure about pricing for now. We shied away from making a form builder. A la wufoo or google forms. This is made to be as close to HTML forms as possible. It's made to work on any static site with any form markup. If you are like us you are picky about your markup and wouldn't think of using an iframe.

<comment><USER18> makes sense. Since you used angular, I'd love to see JS form serialization that does good markup output. This way, you don't have to build a form builder (but I might), and the tool supports storing these forms in DB easily. Food for thought. I've written something like this already, and it's been very helpful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> do you need to design a schema for the backend or does it automatically create it based on the form data that is posted through?

<comment><USER17> It automatically creates the schema based on the form data :)

<comment><USER19> cool, what happens if I change the form?

<comment><USER17> Right now if you add fields, you'll automatically get that new column of data added. We haven't added a way to delete fields yet, so if you remove fields, you'll still see the old data in there.

<comment><USER20> You might be interested in our "Preemptive Schema Data Modeling" technology ([http://crudzilla.com/doc/eu-doc/#data-modeling](http://crudzilla.com/doc/eu- doc/#data-modeling) )

It basically allows you to do what you are doing without having to manage tables by adding and removing columns.

The idea is simple, preemptively create a table with a certain distribution of column types and then allow the developer to define models in their app and map properties of their model to available columns.

It is a pretty robust idea and works well, we use it in our product.

I'll be doing a thorough write up on it sometime in the near future.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Edmond! We used Firebase's validation rules to create a basic schema but something more robust might be called for in the future.

<comment><USER20> no problem, feel free to get in touch if you need assistance trying it out.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


AP Finally Learns that You Can Link to Other Sites on the Internet - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110720/15543515185/ap-finally-learns-that-internet-you-can-link-to-other-sites.shtml

<comment><USER2> They are most likely putting the bitly links in parenthesis so that the story can be printed as is.

<comment><USER3> Of all the things they use, bitly is their choice? Idiotic. How hard is it for them to pick up the phone and get their own short domain service so that their news postings won't become useless if, for instance, Libya decides to can the bit.ly domain?

<comment><USER4> Exactly, for crying out loud their domain is <http://ap.org> and they couldn't figure to do <http://ap.org/l/pDHZ6h>

how ridiculous.

<comment><USER5> Hell, they could have just subscribed to bit.ly's Pro or Enterprise service and used their own domain...

Unless AP has some sort of agreement with bit.ly, this would seem to be a pretty big win for bit.ly. Lots of new visibility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> AP is a co-op, From their about page [<http://www.ap.org/pages/about/about.html>]

"AP is a not-for-profit news cooperative"

The techdirt article makes it sound like AP just figured out how to hyperlink.

If you read the original article,[[http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/07/ap-will- link-back-to-newspa...](http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/07/ap-will-link-back-to- newspapers-who-get-scoops/)]

its easy to see that that AP is proposing to link the actual story (scoop) from its member news organizations and only from their member news organisations.

Running as a non-profit co-operative news organisation presents its own set of challenges other than just technical, I guess.

</comment><comment><USER7> If they didn't put links in parentheses, they might break compatibility with teletypes! ...I'm not actually suggesting any newspaper still uses actual teletype machines, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are still plenty of workflows that evolved from teletype use.

The teletype and Baudot code do have a pretty amazing legacy. Baudot code was invented in 1870 as a 5-bit mode-shifting character set. This, of course, predates data processing with punch cards (1889), alphanumeric data processing (1929), and binary computers (1937-1941). Even after the introduction of ASCII, the smaller Baudot character set remained a common subset available on a wider range of machines. This is seen in C's "trigraphs", where ??/, for example, may be substituted for \ on machines that don't support that character. Even the Apple II+ had a teletype-style keyboard, supporting only the characters found in Baudot code (the Apple IIe keyboard was the first to support all of the 7-bit ASCII characters).

</comment><comment><USER8> Hm. Being that the AP is a major competitor for my current project (<http://www.getconduit.com>), I can't help but smile at this. In regard to the parenthesis, I can understand to some extent with printing of scripts and what not, but based on the original article here (<http://bit.ly/nEmkQS> <\-- See what I did there), it seems like it was a lack of effort more than anything.

<comment><USER9> thank you to the link to a sign-up page

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The publishers that use the AP tend to be _deathly_ afraid of anything that might lead users away from their sites, so I'm not surprised to see that they haven't used hyperlinks until now. That said, I have no idea why they chose bit.ly, although part of me suspects this is some sort of covert advertising campaign that bit.ly is paying the AP for.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm not sure if its a reason for their reluctance to do this earlier, but reporters tend to dislike updating their stories once posted (its better to write new copy), and links often have to be watched, because the serving site may change its urls or worse (if it were particularly annoying) place different copy at the linked page

<comment><USER12> And the different copy may include something that would look pretty bad for the linking party; e.g., "AP claimed they were linking to a Boston Globe story about the Tea Party, but instead it was something about a Lemon Party! And it didn't look like the kind of party I want to attend at all!!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> they are probably using bit.ly because its hiding the domain name of the other sites, as to not give free promotion.

LOL

</comment><comment><USER14> omg you can LINK??</comment>


FollowUpThen: Free, Fast and Simple Email Reminder - <AUTHOR> http://www.followupthen.com/ <comment><USER2> seems like a less useful version of <http://www.FollowUp.cc> which has way more features and is still simple and flexible</comment>


Mark Suster Is Wrong, You Should Be A Startup Entrepreneur - <AUTHOR> http://collaborable.com/blog/mark-suster-is-wrong-you-should-be-a-startup-entrepreneur

<comment><USER2> It's not that Mark is wrong. He doesn't try to answer THE question, because there is no right or wrong answer. It's not so black and white, yes you should do it or no you should not. What he did was giving great advice that should seriously be considered, but the choice is up to you.

Read his advice, he tells it like it is. If you choose to do it, then you have answered the question for yourself. If Mark advises against it and you think he's right, indeed you're not an entrepreneur. If you do it anyway, simply prove that it's the right answer.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree that Mark's article is full of great advice, and that he is not explicitly answering the question for anyone.

This blog was my genuine reaction to Mark's list of characteristics, which is something that in the past I may have read and felt discouraged.

It's a shame to discourage when I now know the truth: that none of those characteristics must be identified in order to get started and eventually succeed at a startup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm amazed you took the leap with zero savings and a two-month old baby to support. Congrats; what is this 'financially rewarding' startup you created?

<comment><AUTHOR> My entrepreneurial story isn't over, but I started around 3 years ago with an ecommerce niche store (I'll get into specifics on my blog soon).

I make twice what I did before I took the leap, and that's because most of our resources go back into the business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like the sentiment. I too think that anyone who has an entrepreneurial spark should give it a go (with proper preparation of course.) It also seems folly that if someone isn't predisposed to certain attributes, they shouldn't attempt the launch.

However, if you're going to throw down a gauntlet with a linkbait title like that, don't wuss out like this: "Okay, maybe I should say "I disagree" with Mark on this issue"

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, thanks for the feedback, maybe next time I'll up the hard-assery :)

<comment><USER5> I encourage it. I have a theory that all good meritorious technology communities are strengthened by mild aggression towards members.

By which I mean things like "Why would you EVER think this was a good idea?" not "You're fat, ugly and I fucking HATE your skank of a wife".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I would love to hear feedback on this blog from entrepreneurs and wantrepreneurs alike.

</comment><comment><USER6> <http://xkcd.com/386/> 'nuff said.

</comment><comment><USER7> Suster's remarks are similar to many others for starting a business in information technology, software, Web 2,0, social media, etc.

For all these remarks there is a very simple response: In the US, coast to coast, villages, towns, cities, on Main Street there are successful businesses in everything from pizza carryout, Chinese food carryout, franchised fast food, portrait photography, jewelry, fashion boutiques, dentistry, medical family practice, CPA, wines and spirits, auto parts, auto repair, auto body repair, gasoline, convenience store, plumber, electrician, plumbing supply, electrical supply, hardware, building supply, on and on. A significant fraction of these Main Street business are _big truck -- little truck_ , that is, buy in large quantities at a low price per unit and sell in small quantities at a high price per unit.

These businesses are a huge fraction of the US economy. The fraction is so large that there is no chance that any significant fraction of the business founders could satisfy any list of personality characteristics as specific as Suster's.

Yes, nearly none of these Main Street businesses will become worth over $1 billion (McDonald's, Domino's, maybe a few more did). Still, the businesses are successful, e.g., commonly last decades and for an owner pay to support a family.

So, what about the businesses Suster is considering in Web 2.0, etc.?

Well, these businesses have some big advantages including Moore's law and the Internet and commonly can be started for much less money than even a carryout pizza shop or, really, nearly any of the Main Street businesses.

E.g., the people who mow grass in my neighborhood drive nice, new trucks, each pulling a low volume, handmade trailer carrying a high end lawn mower worth something over $10,000. Altogether they arrive to mow some grass with capital expense ruining $40,000 which now would buy one heck of a first-cut Web 2.0 server farm.

So, setting aside Suster's focus on businesses that can be started for the cost of a computer and a good Internet connection and a some amount of hacker time and soon be worth over $500 million, just why should the advantages of Moore's law and the Internet require such particular and rare personality characteristics when millions of Main Street businesses without these advantages do not?

The answer is simple: The business based on computing don't require satisfying any such list of particular and rare personality characteristics.

So what's going on? Suster is working way too hard looking for the _secrets_ and, thus, is getting way off the track.

<comment><USER8> _just why should the advantages of Moore's law and the Internet require such particular and rare personality characteristics when millions of Main Street businesses without these advantages do not?_

Well, mostly because starting an internet business is a lot harder, because there's (more or less) a single global market and it's more competitive.

If I have the only sporting goods store in Iron Knob it doesn't really matter that there's a much bigger and better one in Medicine Hat. But if I start a crappy online bookstore it's going to have a lot of trouble competing with Amazon.

It's a winner-takes-all market, so in order to succeed you need to be doing something that nobody else is doing, or else doing it better than everyone else, or _at least_ doing it the same as everyone else but having significantly better traction. That means that most internet startups are aimed towards doing stuff that nobody has ever done before, which requires a lot more hard work and brainpower than ordering tennis balls by the thousand and selling them by the can.

The upside of the winner-takes-all marketplace is that the winner takes all. The downside of the winner-takes-all marketplace is that the winner takes all.

Now I suppose there are _some_ unoriginal business opportunities on the internet, but they're largely a bit sleazy -- buying up domains and sticking SEO-optimized crap on them, for instance. Even that is a lot harder than buying a lawnmower and knocking on the doors of folks with messy lawns though.

<comment><USER7> You gave a good explanation of a major point I omitted, the common situation of Main Street businesses having a strong _geographical barrier to entry_.

And your point about "winner take all" on the Internet is simple but basically correct.

Okay, but still: Joe has an _idea_ , maybe _Facebook for cat owners_ , optimized for mobile with a special alarm when GPS says they are near a cat owner of the opposite sex, a _pivot_ from his semi-successful _MySpace for dog owners_ , a _pivot_ from his quasi-successful _MeetUp for gerbil lovers_. To Joe, each of these is a really _new, unique, no competition_ idea. And "romantic angle?" "Nearly all romantic angle." And, if he gets just 2% of all the ...!

Maybe Joe's ideas are terrific, and maybe they suck. If he does _fail fast_ , then for each such pivot he will soon learn which case is true.

So, all that said, just where in there does Joe need all those special personality characteristics Suster listed? I mean, Joe has a brother Sam who started a Chicago style pizza place in LA -- that was his _innovative_ idea for a Main Street business. Like nearly all Main Street business owners, Sam is just a regular guy, just like his brother Joe.

Net, I see Moore's law and the Internet as mostly just advantages except for the one issue you mentioned, the flip side of the great opportunity of serving the world is no geographical barrier to entry. So, if Joe's _idea_ really is new and good and he is on the way to tens of millions of _uniques_ a month just from his cable TV ISP connection and some mid-tower case servers on wire shelf racks in his spare bedroom, then I'm missing just why Joe has to have personality characteristics different from the rest of Main Street. Or, if Joe's latest pivot idea basically sucks, then the solution is to think of a better idea and not have some rare personality characteristics.

Uh, Suster is right in the soup of _Internet social media entrepreneurship_ taking in ideas, thoughts, impressions, etc. from a fire hose and pushing them out at the same rate. Or, Fred Wilson once commented that he doesn't see how Suster gets any sleep. But my view of Suster is that, however successful he has been or is being, he's not the most _disciplined_ thinker. Of course, with the fire hose rates he is using, even if only some of his ideas are good then he can do well, which I suspect he is.

In a sense, I cheated on Suster: I turned his _context_ around to essentially just another Main Street business except exploiting Moore's law and the Internet (and as you pointed out, also needs some real novelty to make up for the lack of geographical barrier to entry) from his context of, say, Mark Zuckerberg as he crosses the stormy seas of growth to 600 million users, Steve Jobs when he executed his semi-triumphant role of _return of the native_ , Andrew Mason growing Groupon and telling Google that they didn't have money enough, etc.

Both contexts are relevant: Of course, Suster wants $1 billion or so exits, but a lot of entrepreneurs would be happy owning over 50% of a $50 million exit.

Maybe Suster is saying that for a $1+ billion exit, or $50+ billion, need a Facebook, and for that have to go through some wild and crazy times, and for that need a Zuckerberg, and for that need Suster's rare personality characteristics.

I still don't buy it.

Here's another approach: A calm, very carefully reasoned guy gets told in high school that his goal of going to MIT is a hoot. But he goes. Basically he gets done in three years but sticks around for a fourth year and, then, takes two reading courses. One of these is in Lie Groups and Lie Algebras from I. Singer. Then he goes to grad math at Berkeley and cleans up a really messy proof for a major result in differential geometry. He is back at MIT for a while, then goes to military work at the Institute for Defense Analysis at Princeton, gets fired for giving _Newsweek_ an interview about the Viet Nam war, then becomes Chairman of the math department at Stony Brook. There he works with S. Chern and gets a new result that now physicists like for their work with differential geometry.

Then some earlier little efforts in business pay off, and he invests the money and plays the stock market. He does well, in two years or so multiplies his money by a factor of 12. He leaves to start a hedge fund and does better and better. Finally he takes human judgment out of the trading and does it all with software based on math ideas and carefully _back_ tested. Soon he is paying himself about $2 billion a year. Last year he retired and now is doing philanthropy and is back to math.

Uh, Brookhaven National Lab wanted to collide some heavy ions, see if they could create a _quark-gluon plasma_ , needed $12 million or so; Congress wouldn't fund it; so he did.

Lesson: He's very successful and is not a wild or crazy guy.

Sure, he's Jim Simons, COB of Renaissance Technologies on Long Island as in his biographical lecture at MIT

[http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2011/01/james_simons_sp.ht...](http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2011/01/james_simons_sp.html)

and his testimony before Waxman's committee with article at

<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/14/business/14hedge.html>

and Simons's video at

[http://video.nytimes.com/video/2008/11/13/business/119483281...](http://video.nytimes.com/video/2008/11/13/business/1194832812497/testimony- of-james-simons.html)

I. Singer? He's as in the Atiyah-Singer index theorem which won one of the first, maybe the first, Abel Prizes created by the Nobel committee as a Nobel prize in math.

Uh, for success on the Internet, we agree on the need for powerful, new ideas, hopefully with a barrier to entry from difficult to duplicate or equal technology and not just from devoted users, and for that we need to be quite open about where the ideas come from. Uh, Simons is one of a kind in hedge funds. Well Internet entrepreneurship needs to be welcoming one of a kind people, also, and Suster needs to be looking for them; then Suster needs to throw out his list of personality characteristics.

Drawing from the first Indiana Jones movie, with his list Suster is "digging in the wrong place". His _filter_ is just independent of anything that makes any sense and, thus, is throwing both wheat and chaff indiscriminately.

Beyond that, there's another push on Suster: Recently John Doerr spouted off again on the old saw that "Ideas are easy, and execution is everything.". No: Bad ideas are easy, and then execution is everything. Good ideas are difficult, and then execution is routine.

Well, for evaluating ideas as new, correct, significant, and powerful with valuable results for business, can count without taking shoes off all the information technology venture partners who can do such evaluations: Uh just doing well evaluating new, correct, and significant takes a peer-reviewed journal editor, and there may not be even ten information technology venture partners in all of the US qualified to be a journal editor.

So, basically the venture partners ignore the ideas and, instead, say, for a seed round look at the user interface and evaluate if people might like it, for a Series A look at ComScore numbers, for a Series B look at revenue and earnings. Basically their view is that at each _stage_ , doing well on their criteria makes also looking at the idea unnecessary. But this does not mean that ideas are irrelevant or that good ideas are easy. Still, from this old saw, Suster goes too far and expects that execution will be some mad house where he wants his personality characteristics. If he wants a mad house, then he can have it.

<comment><USER9> Because many of those markets aren't really markets.

In all likelihood, the market of _Facebook for cat owners_ is no different than the market for _Facebook_. Why would a cat-owning user prefer a dedicated site over Facebook itself? They lose their social network, they have to check multiple websites to stay up to date, and the website owner doesn't have the benefits of scale that FaceBoook does. There's no competitive advantage to that particular idea.

The characteristics that Suster list are important because this is the _norm_ in winner-take-all markets. The vast majority of things that you think are viable markets aren't really; if they were, a competitor would already have gotten to them. So you have to strike out and do something new over and over again, until you finally hit on something that actually works. That's really stressful, particularly when you're doing it without knowing where your next paycheck is coming from.

<comment><USER7> Yes, Facebook for cat owners is absurd; it was supposed to be a hoot and a parody of a silly idea.

Your description of trying over and over is common but should not be the only way.

Broadly another way is really the old entrepreneurship paradigm: Find a nasty problem that many people have and that has no good solution and where a large fraction of the people would be eager to have a good solution.

Look for a good solution. If actually find one, then go forward, implement the solution, and offer it to the people who wanted it.

Then there's the old saw that "Whatever you are working on, at least 20 other people are working on the same thing with the same ideas.". Well, this claim is silly: Anyone who has done much peer-reviewed original research can see clearly that, a large fraction of such research, especially once the work has been reviewed and accepted for publication, is unique with no one else doing anything very close.

E.g., once I was working in a research project applying artificial intelligence (AI) to system and network monitoring and management. Well, one of the first needs is doing well detecting problems in real time. Such detection is for either (A) old problems seen before or (B) new problems, _zero day_ , never seen before. Assume that whenever we see a B problem we implement corrections and, thus, convert it to an A problem and solve it so that we never see it again. So, we are left with detecting B problems.

I thought that the AI techniques we were using were junk.

Indeed, clearly, as we monitor, there are two ways to be wrong, (1) a false alarm where we say that the system is sick when it is healthy and (2) a missed detection of a real problem where we say that the system is healthy when it is sick. So, clearly we are now necessarily close to statistical hypothesis testing with Type I error (false alarms) and Type II error (missed detections).

Then we are necessarily close to the classic Neyman-Pearson result on the way, for each rate of false alarms, to get the lowest possible rate of missed detections.

Well the whole field of zero day monitoring had not yet gotten even this far, which is really just a junior level course in mathematical statistics.

So, we want to do a hypothesis test. Okay but for the large literature of such tests, we have two issues: First, from server farms and networks, we can collect data on many variables, not just one. So, we want to be _multi- dimensional_. Second, especially being multi-dimensional, we have no hope of knowing the probability distribution of, say, a healthy system. So, we want our work to be _distribution-free_.

Well, can look through the literature, especially, say, E. Lehmann, and find nothing on multidimensional, distribution-free tests.

So, one Saturday I put my feet up and created a large, new family of such tests. I wrote out theorems and proofs to justify what I was doing. I wrote some corresponding software. Then I had some data from a complicated server farm, washed it through my software, and saw that I was getting what my theorems said. Then I did a long series of Monte Carlo tests with some very complicated data; my detection techniques worked just as intended.

So, get to select false alarm rate in advance and get that rate exactly. There is not enough data to get all of Neyman-Pearson, but in a powerful sense, asymptotically, for whatever false alarm rate is selected the techniques give the lowest possible rate of missed detections.

So, my work is progress in zero day monitoring of complex systems and networks. I published the work.

Got to tell you, history since I did that work and published it shows clearly that I was the only person in the world doing anything like what I did.

Is there a business in this, say, to be sold to HP, Microsoft, IBM, EMC, Cisco, or some such? Maybe, but my current project is easier to do and more valuable.

The lesson is, broadly, if really have something new and advanced, the chances that someone else is doing the same thing are small.

Of course, what I'm really talking about is applied math as the crucial, core 'secret sauce' to get a much better solution to a nasty problem and not just routine software for just some intuitive idea.

Then this is a broad area of opportunities: In column A list nasty problems people would like to have solved. In column B list some applied math techniques, old or new, that take in data and spit out results. Then find a good pair, a problem from column A and a solution from column B where the solution is much better than anything else for the problem and likely difficult to duplicate or equal. Now write the corresponding software and proceed with little risk of anyone else doing the same thing. The key is making the project one in applied math, not just computing or computer science.

Where'd I get this _paradigm_? Sure: The US DoD has been doing such things with great success all the way back to WWII, and I started my career around DC in DoD work.

Can this paradigm work in _Web 2.0_ and _consumer-facing_ Internet? I do believe so!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


No one should be a billionaire - <AUTHOR> https://theweek.com/articles/848221/no-should-billionaire <comment><USER2> This article tries to ask the question: who should earn more, the workers or the CEO? The problem is that this completely misses the point.

When a company faces steep competition, the CEO, like a famous general, is absolutely worth whatever they earned if they succeed at keeping the company alive. A properly functioning market should have lots of dynamic competition. So the mere fact of some CEOs earning lots of money is not by itself alarming to me, because it may simply be an indicator that smart, talented people are competing to best serve the needs of an important competitive market.

However, when a company is not facing any competition, I concede that the CEO may not be adding much value. If fat CEO paychecks are happening in a static, uncompetitive market, then I would agree that we have a problem.

Nonetheless, the central question is about markets and competition, not half- baked moral judgments about how much someone "deserves". This article frames the question in completely nonsensical terms.

<comment><USER3> The article mentions that CEOs make 300 times what the typical worker makes. Do they provide 300 times the value to the company? In most instances, I think probably not. However, I would say the amount of responsibility the CEO has is in excess of 300 times the average worker. That responsibility must be worth something, and I think this could justify fat paychecks even in noncompetitive markets.</comment></comment>


Start to scale - <AUTHOR> http://highscalability.com/blog/2009/10/7/how-to-avoid-the-top-5-scale-out-pitfalls.html

<comment><USER2> It is always good on the power points, how mysql will scale for terras of data will this replication over 4,5 or 10 servers really survive.

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks, good for the beginners</comment>


Stormpulse showered with tips. - <AUTHOR> http://tipjoy.com/joy/57378/

<comment><USER2> Too bad Stormpulse can't actually get their money...

<comment><USER3> First of all, I think tipjoy is a fantastic idea. We initially saw tipjoy as a perfect fit and also appreciated Ivan's communication with us.

However, as the graph shows we ended up deciding against continued use of tipjoy as a revenue stream. This wasn't because we were worried that we'd only ever be able to get an Amazon gift card (although I did spend a few minutes one day thinking what we could buy). I truly believe that the tipjoy team will get the legal taken care of and allow users to withdraw cash.

So why did we take it down? Ultimately there was some confusion around tipjoy's functionality and benefit ... and no, I'm not referring to the man that told us he would be passing our site on to his attorney that keeps a list of abusive web practices. Rather, I'm referring to actual emails from users that were concerned about our financial well-being and wanted to make sure we were compensated in some more tangible, verifiable way.

While we don't let our users decide things outright, this turned out to be a move we don't regret, given the number of direct donations we have received (we managed to trigger a flag inside PayPal and got a phone call). However, I will use this opportunity to add that if the tipjoy team made a few changes (being able to change the default payment amount, not asking users to ante up $5), I think the service would be a no-brainer for many a website.

<comment><USER2> Any idea what the legal hangups are? Trying to avoid being part of the regulated banking industry? They have been around a while and not letting people have their money seems like a huge deal breaker to me (I wouldn't have launched the site without it honestly).

<comment><USER4> I'd guess the PATRIOT Act is involved. What's to prevent a terrorist organization from tipping large sums to their American sleepers? Our government really, really hates that sort of thing even being possible.

This is why on Draftmix, we do not allow people to do interaccount transfers. And it's been one of the things the DoJ has been using to justify their persecution of online gaming.

I imagine TipJoy would be exposing themselves to all sorts of legal woes, and that would just be one of them. The are certainly going to have to iron that out at some point.

<comment><USER5> Amazon FPS claims to enable interaccount transfers. Do they take care of the legal requirements?

<comment><USER4> Amazon probably does a lot more to identify the people using it than would be practical for TipJoy. It's certainly not illegal to do transfers, it's just asking for trouble to do so without knowing who both parties are. That could pose a serious problem for someone like TipJoy who is all about ease of use.

I'm sure they'll find a way.

<comment><USER6> The account identification routines were a big part of what sunk egold as well. If you can't positively identify the owner of an account, then you are on the hook for illegal scams and money laundering activities. It's ugly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wow, that's really cool for both Stormpulse and tipjoy. Maybe Stormpulse will be the first official YC-rejected "success".

</comment><comment><USER6> It looks like tipjoy is positioned to grab a lot of this flashmob-style payment. I had only previously thought about it in terms of recurring content updates, but this behavioral style could also be lucrative.

</comment><comment><USER4> This kind of stuff is where services like tipjoy just might change the economics of the web.

</comment><comment><USER8> Make it rain.</comment>