Ask HN: What browsers do you use everyday? I use 2 simultaneously - <AUTHOR>

I just read an article on HN about how Chrome made an 8.5% gain last month. And had to wonder why. I was wondering if anyone else works like I do. While at work, all day long, I use 2 browsers all day long: minefield (firefox beta 8, latest trunk) and Chromium 9. Sometimes I am forced to use IE 8 for corporate stuff, but I really don't like that. I am stuck on windows XP because I work for a corp. But at home, I use Firefox and chrome on my Ubuntu.
When I do HTML coding I test in every browser I can, using variants of the big 3 engines, gecko, Trident, and Webkit.
So what does everyone else use? <comment><USER2> Wish this was a poll so I could vote and then see others' voting as well. I use all four of the biggies daily - Firefox on my own computer, IE on my PC for sites that just don't do well in Firefox (there are three that I visit), Chrome on my wife's PC (so I can have my own sessions w/o affecting her Firefox sessions), and Safari on my iOS devices.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's inconvenient (not to mention a resource hog) to have another browser open most of the time.

I use Chrome for development. Then I confirm that everything is similar in Firefox, which it usually is.

Then I fix IE's numerous errors in every single version. Immediately after that, I restrain the urge to cry myself to sleep.

</comment><comment><USER4> Chrome (unless I really, really need to use firebug for something, in which case I'll escape as soon as possible).</comment>


Private tweets are messages that can only be viewed by the people you mentioned - <AUTHOR> https://pvttwt.com/

<comment><USER2> _" Private tweets are messages that can only be viewed by the people you mentioned"_

If I wanted to send a private message to a list of people, why not just use e-mail?

<comment><USER3> Because not all people in Twitter you know, and you can not get their mail.

When there is a famous person, and you want to send him a private message, what do you do?

Are you should follow everyone they follow you until they send you or you send him a private message?

You can write a long letter in Twitter.

You can not attach a file in Twitter

If the message does not want to be seen by anyone and you can not put it in public.

Private tweets will help you to do that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Apparently someone hacked your site and I get redirected to some other website.. :\

<comment><USER3> This means we can not be trusted in any site on the internet, because all the sites can be redirected.

Private Tweet has private server.

Private Tweets followed Twitter's best practices for security to ensure that their API. That means that if you can trust Twitter to send something, you can trust us.</comment></comment>


John Carmack discusses the art and science of software engineering (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.uw.edu/ajko/2012/08/22/john-carmack-discusses-the-art-and-science-of-software-engineering/ <comment><USER2> Very good essay. However, Carmac's view that there is very little quantified info about what works and what doesn't overlooks the work of software engineering practitioners, such as Capers Jones, who has long studied projects quantitatively and published detailed statistics on the effectiveness of different development approaches. His book "The Economics of Software Quality" is an excellent summary of his findings across thousands of projects.

Reading it is like the first time you run a profiler and you realize that what you think you knew is true in part, but that other factors you'd not counted are have an outsize effect that you've misestimated.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the reading suggestion!

That said, it seems that his last practical experience in the field was better than two decades ago ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capers_Jones](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capers_Jones) ).

A criticism of that sort is available to other folks as well--I feel compelled to ask, "Interesting results, _but what have you shipped recently?_ "

<comment><USER4> Don't you think this is a bit like not listening to coaches or sports medicine experts because they haven't been professional players in two decades?

<comment><USER3> Well, when software engineering is as good for one's personal social life as being an athlete, perhaps I'll buy your argument. :)

More seriously, I see what you're saying--that said, there is a huuuuge difference between how we develop software now versus even five years ago, much less ten or twenty.

Github. Stack Overflow. Agile methods (ugh). Lean methodologies. Various testing methodologies. Changes in the funding structure of companies. Order of magnitude increase (comfortably) in debugging tools for web and network applications. The entire single-page browser app movement. The entire GPGPU movement. Truly convenient and open collaborative coding platforms.

The field, and the people in it, have changed a great deal, and we've learned a lot. I'm increasingly skeptical of professors of professional software engineering who don't, as a day job, professionally engineer software. This applies to other folks--and I mean this nicely--like Uncle Bob or Martin Fowler as well.

Folks like Carmack who have been pushing the envelope and getting scarred the hard way for 20 years are probably simply better sources of learning.

<comment><USER5> TDD and agile are both about 15 years old, and both built on well-established pre-existing development patterns. Github doesn't change many of the fundamentals of how software improves in quality or how development works.

What I've observed in the industry has been a shocking lack of self-awareness about application of best practices, and decidedly half-assed attempts to improve. The state of the industry is not dev shops on the bleeding edge of the best tools, best methodologies, best policies, etc. It's almost universally a tale of failing to even get to "ok" in terms of well-known best (or even better) practices. There are a ton of dev shops that don't do any code reviews at all, and formal code reviews (which have been shown to be one of the best methods for improving code quality) are almost unheard of. Even at places that take testing seriously or do TDD they still typically don't do it very well.

That's why folks like Uncle Bob and Martin Fowler continue to have so much traction in the industry, because simply following good advice that was old 20 years ago is _still_ a huge step forward for the average, or even above average, dev shop in the industry today.

Saying "we've learned a lot" just tells me that I shouldn't take you seriously, because clearly we haven't. Software dev. is still a shambles. Security is still a nightmare. Performance is still a nightmare. Quality and robustness is still a nightmare. Work/life balance is still a nightmare.

Reading books like "The Mythical Man Month" (which is 40 years old!) still holds a ton of lessons that have yet to be taken to heart by the majority of the industry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _" I would like to be able to enable even more restrictive subsets of languages and restrict programmers even more because we make mistakes constantly."_

This seems to be very much the direction Rust is going in.

</comment><comment><USER7> > It's about social interactions between the programmers or even between > yourself spread over time.

There's nothing quite like looking at some code and saying "who in the hell did this?", then looking at the blame and realizing it was you, years ago. Learning from those moments is super valuable.

<comment><USER8> I call that guy "Yesterday Joel" ... I'm constantly cursing that imbesel in normal conversation. Today Joel hates that guy. But Today Joel really looks up to Tomorrow Joel and hopes someday to be just like him.

<comment><USER9> Tomorrow's his day to shine!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A great talk, pithy and full of insights gleaned from a lot of experience. Thanks for posting it.

</comment><comment><USER11> _> And it's nice to think where, you know we talk about functional programming and lambda calculus and monads and this sounds all nice and sciency, but it really doesn't affect what you do in software engineering there, these are all best practices, and these are things that have shown to be helpful in the past, but really are only helpful when people are making certain classes of mistakes._

We're looking for the right set of constraints on the programming activity based on patterns of common mistakes.

<comment><USER12> I find that best practices are a bit like design patterns. They are emergent in that a successful team will undoubtedly be using many of them. However, they are not something you can prescribe directly. Just like you can't use design patterns like ordering off of a menu (I'll have a bowl full of factories, a side order of singletons and a large bridge, please), you can't pick a handful of "best practices", sew them together and expect that, in itself, to make you successful.

Being aware of best practices gives you the ability to move in that direction when you see opportunities. It is a mistake, in my opinion, to try to force the opportunities by dictating best practices (something that is done far too often in software process engineering). The best practice you choose depends a lot on the situation and the people involved.

Having said that, I have all too often been in situations where I'm thinking, "I know how to be successful if we could do X, Y, and Z. I have _absolutely_ no idea how to be successful doing the things we are doing now." It's tempting to try and force people's hands, but I have never seen it work. It's usually much better to search for an A, B, and C that will work instead. Not always easy, but it's I suppose it is how you demonstrate that you deserve the big bucks ;-)

<comment><USER13> You've described exactly how I feel about these things.</comment></comment></comment>


Silk - Filter and Visualize Data in Seconds - <AUTHOR> http://www.silkapp.com/ <comment><USER2> I was very excited by the link title and disappointed by the site. Here were my reactions, roughly in order:

* Why would they show a hobo on the home page? (I'm not trying to be funny here, that is honestly what popped into my head.)

* I'm at the office, therefore I'm not going to play that video.

* Sign up for an invite? No thanks. I wish you had told me in text and images what silk is.

* I should go back to HN and write about how incredibly disappointed I am to not get any useful info from the home page. Data visualization is near and dear to my heart, and I would have liked very much to see a new app for that domain.

<comment><USER3> I don't think most people would associate casual clothes and long hair with hobo. I understand that's your reaction, but it doesn't seem fair.

<comment><USER2> I'm not trying to imply that it's a socially/morally correct reaction. I just wanted to write candidly in case it's helpful to the folks who made the site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cool stuff! If it works as advertized, it's basically wget plus a lot of perl/bash hacking, but then for non-programmers. I think it solves a very real problem. Basically voids a whole bunch of the infamous REBOL oneliners (<http://www.rebol.com/oneliners.html>).

I guess data export options would be very important.

I wonder to who they want to market this. I think the target audience willing to pay for it is very much used to working with installed enterprise software only (MS Office plus some CRM/ERP that they hate), and might be reluctant to switch over to a web application. Freemium model?

<comment><USER5> I have a friend at a place that would pay $X0,000s for it assuming it worked well. This friend's business has a roster of scores of these types of research tools and resources, many of them web-based.

Care to share your login so I can check it out?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Bad illustration in the video, Sarkozy has never been Prime Minister of France (he is the President of the Republic, which is quite different).

</comment><comment><USER7> Anyone know how they managed to make an youtube video look so... seamless without the usual youtube chrome?

<comment><USER8> They seem to be using YouTube's Player API via JavaScript. [http://code.google.com/apis/youtube/getting_started.html#pla...](http://code.google.com/apis/youtube/getting_started.html#player_apis)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like it the same way that I liked the promise of Powerset when I first heard of it. I'm not sure how often I look for information that structured though and whether google doesn't still solve those queries.

</comment><comment><USER10> So it's a metadata visualisation tool. Interesting but in no way groundbreaking. The problem isn't visualising metadata, that's easy. The problem is automating the creation of metadata.</comment>


Build your Android projects inside Docker containers - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/soygul/android-docker <comment><AUTHOR> Docker Hub image: [https://hub.docker.com/r/soygul/android- docker](https://hub.docker.com/r/soygul/android-docker)</comment>


Alibaba Sinks $215 Million Into Messaging App Tango - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2014/03/20/exclusive-alibaba-sinks-250-million-into-messaging-app-tango-valuing-it-at-more-than-1-billion/ <comment><USER2> Is it just me, or are many of the recent acquisitions relatively senseless?

Facebook do search, google do social, amazon do streaming video, alibaba and ebay do messaging - I really do not understand why all of these big players seem to feel the need to increase their competitive surface area, and therefore compromise on their core businesses.

We're going to end up with a bunch of corporate jacks-of-all-trades and masters of none, to nobody's benefit, not even theirs.

I mean, from TFA, Alibaba regard themselves as "social media giants". They're a marketplace. If that's not a profound misunderstanding of ones own business model, I don't know what is.

<comment><USER3> I think the amazon one makes most sense actually. They already sell movies, so they can do better recommendations than anyone else. They also have massive, distributed infrastructure and uplinks without additional cost. They just bought themselves the tech/licenses/customers via lovefilm in the UK.

<comment><USER4> They also own IMDb... a slight annoyance for me because it's integrated with Amazon's streaming service rather than being a neutral platform for movies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "200 million registered users, 70 million of whom are active on a monthly basis"

That sounds high to me. Does anyone know how they count MAU? I just launched the app and enabled push notifications. Would I count as active this month (and the month in which I joined) even though I've never made/received a call?

Which groups of people (communities or countries) use Tango more than Viber/WeChat/Line/KakaoTalk?

<comment><USER6> I can't speak for everyone who uses Tango, but I can tell you I used to use it as an alternative to Skype when I was in a long distance relationship. Both Tango and Skype offer video chat, neither was perfect, but Tango seemed to handle connection slowdowns in a less disruptive way than Skype did. YMMV.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I feel that "Sinks" isn't really conveying how Alibaba sees this investment and perhaps does a disservice to the announcement.

Given that these investments (WhatsApp, WeChat, Tango, Viber) aren't acqui- hires, there is still a relatively long term horizon over which these investments will play out.

Perhaps if certain areas are completely blanketed in wi-fi/connectivity these apps will make calling / messaging completely independent of cell phone providers (such as ATT, Sprint, etc) which is a massive industry to displace. But then again these providers might be the only ones providing wi-fi access.

<comment><USER8> I wouldn't include WeChat as an investment in the same way the others are. Tencent developed WeChat (then called Weixin) themselves. Also, the interesting about WeChat and its difference between the others you mentioned is it functions more as a platform for mobile games and mobile commerce. Tango, Viber (which finally got stickers a few months ago), and Whatsapp are all exclusively about communication. No doubt all of them have looked at folks like WeChat (from China), Line (from Japan), Zalo (from Vietnam) and KakaoTalk (from South Korea) for profitable business models. All of the Asian chat apps are headed in that direction.

<comment><USER6> > Tango, Viber (which finally got stickers a few months ago), and Whatsapp are > all exclusively about communication

That's not quite true. Tango has a limited selection of games too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Isn't Tango a Jerry Yang project? That might explain why Alibaba would buy into it.</comment>


Solar Storms Strip Air from Mars, NASA Says - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/06/science/space/mars-atmosphere-stripped-away-by-solar-storms-nasa-says.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=photo-spot-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0 <comment><AUTHOR> Fascinating</comment>


Why I won't apply to your job offer. - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/4ad97f666978

<comment><USER2> yep any good developer can learn new tech quickly for example I taught my self node.js and mongodb well enough to produce a mvp in less than 7 days it ran for over a year with i think one crash in that time.

Back when I was younger my boss came to me and said oh we have just brought a new piece of exotic kit (about 3x my salary) go and hook it up to one of our pdp's get it interfaced (no drivers available so I had to work out how to do real-time device drivers and then write the calibration software)

Then go and talk to one of the senior engineers and work out with him how we can best use it to do 3d digitizing of droplet clouds.</comment>


Files Are Hard (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://danluu.com/file-consistency/ <comment><USER2> I strongly recommend using Sqlite for your own document format. Sqlite is one of the most well-tested pieces of software on earth and ACID-compliant. You can even make it safer than the default if you don't need maximum performance only need it for storing documents. It is very crash and corruption proof, especially with the full sync option and if you use it from one thread only.

<comment><USER3> It has been a while ago so maybe things are better now but I have seen sqlite being a disaster when the times comes to upgrade the schema. Not all of the common operations like deleting/renaming a column are supported. Since it has been a while I don't remember exactly which ones. Then someone writes an sql script to provide this functionality. Then it turns out that a freshly created database using the latest schema is subtly different from one that was created from an older schema and then updated. Things like a column that has a default but only in one of these two cases. Lots of fun, but not really.

<comment><USER4> For most uses of SQLite it's acceptable (or even advantageous) to copy the entire database for doing an upgrade, instead of the more RDBMS-y way of using DDL.

<comment><USER5> Which brings you the additional challenge of how to overwrite the old database file with the new one atomically in the face of crashes.

<comment><USER6> [http://man7.org/linux/man- pages/man2/rename.2.html](http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/rename.2.html)

> If newpath already exists, it will be atomically replaced, so that there is > no point at which another process attempting to access newpath will find it > missing.

<comment><USER5> Did the original article not specifically make a point about Linux's `rename` to be atomic only in the happy case and not when a crash happens during the rename?

<comment><USER7> Rename is the most atomic you can get on Unix. Original article talks about partial file updates. New SQLITE file + rename should be as failproof as possible. And I'm any case nothing is 100% safe, so redundancy is a hard requirement for real safety.

<comment><USER5> I was referring to the last section of the article, the part where it says rename isn't atomic on crashes. Why not migrate traditionally via DDL in a transaction?

<comment><USER8> It's not clear to me if they're correct about that. The way it's written, it seems to be saying " _my read_ of the POSIX standard suggests rename may not be atomic on crashes", rather than "there are POSIX implementations in common use that have been observed to have non-atomic renames on crashes".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have no idea on how many mails the author receives, but anyway I would suggest to take a look at Claws Mail. [https://www.claws- mail.org/](https://www.claws-mail.org/)

I have all my mail since forever online, that is, tens of thousands of posts including attachments in multiple inboxes belonging to multiple accounts: everything since my Internet day one (20+ years), the earlier messages imported from Eudora before moving to Linux. It's all in my $home, and searches are damn fast: fractions of seconds for header searches which are indexed, tens of seconds to minutes for searches into the body. As far as I recall, I never lost a single file.

      ~$ du -chs Mail
      3.7G Mail
      3.7G total

Might post some spam from the late 90s if anyone is interested:)

<comment><USER10> > Might post some spam from the late 90s if anyone is interested:)

Would love to see a few (:

I've had email@example.com since 1995 but sadly I haven't kept the stuff older than 15 years.

<comment><USER9> There were very few of them at that time. About once a month I received a newsletter from Programmer's Paradise which I probably signed for somewhere, then some "adults only" links (message was empty) from a members.xoom.com address, then the usual "enlarge it" spam. Here's an example (addresses probably fake or long dead, but redacted anyway):

      </comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--

      From: firstname.lastname@example.com
      To: "email@example.com"<>
      Subject: YeS It Works!.....Gotta Have  It          15643
      Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 02:53:45 -0500
      X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.1

JULY SALE

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To be removed from our mailing list, Click Here

      </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----

That spam contained also some quoted text coming from a yahoogroups list I was part of with a bunch of old friends, so either some of them or the server were compromised and spitting out our addresses.

Spamming was occasional at that time, and I probably deleted most of them, but in a few years it became unsustainable and I installed IpCop to identify junk and redirect it to its own folder.

One more example:

      </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--

      From: "firstname.lastname@example.com" <firstname.lastname@example.com>
      To: "email@example.com" <firstname.lastname@example.com>
      Reply-To: <firstname.lastname@example.com>
      Subject: Fwd: Investor's Alert
      Date: Sun, 9 Jun 2002 21:07:41 -0400

Immediate Release

Cal-Bay (Stock Symbol: CBYI) Watch for analyst "Strong Buy Recommendations" and several advisory newsletters picking CBYI. CBYI has filed to be traded on the OTCBB, share prices historically INCREASE when companies get listed on this larger trading exhange. CBYI is trading around $.30¢ and should skyrocket to $2.66 - $3.25 a share in the near future. Put CBYI on your watch list, acquire a postion TODAY.

REASONS TO INVEST IN CBYI • A profitable company, NO DEBT and is on track to beat ALL earnings estimates with increased revenue of 50% annually! • One of the FASTEST growing distributors in environmental & safety equipment instruments. • Excellent management team, several EXCLUSIVE contracts. IMPRESSIVE client list including the U.S. Air Force, Anheuser-Busch, Chevron Refining and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, GE-Energy & Environmental Research.

RAPIDLY GROWING INDUSTRY Industry revenues exceed $900 million, estimates indicate that there could be as much as $25 billion from "smell technology" by the end of 2003.

ALL removes HONERED. Please allow 7 days to be removed and send ALL address to: email@example.com

Certain statements contained in this news release may be forward-looking statements within the meaning of The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements may be identified by such terms as "expect", "believe", "may", "will", and "intend" or similar terms. We are NOT a registered investment advisor or a broker dealer. This is NOT an offer to buy or sell securities. No recommendation that the securities of the companies profiled should be purchased, sold or held by individuals or entities that learn of the profiled companies. We were paid $27,000 in cash by a third party to publish this report. Investing in companies profiled is high-risk and use of this information is for reading purposes only. If anyone decides to act as an investor, then it will be that investor's sole risk. Investors are advised NOT to invest without the proper advisement from an attorney or a registered financial broker. Do not rely solely on the information presented, do additional independent research to form your own opinion and decision regarding investing in the profiled companies. Be advised that the purchase of such high-risk securities may result in the loss of your entire investment. The owners of this publication may already own free trading shares in CBYI and may immediately sell all or a portion of these shares into the open market at or about the time this report is published. Factual statements are made as of the date stated and are subject to change without notice. Not intended for recipients or residents of CA,CO,CT,DE,ID, IL,IA,LA,MO,NV,NC,OK,OH,PA,RI,TN,VA,WA,WV,WI. Void where prohibited. Copyright c 2001 ________*

      </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--

edit: formatting to make headers readable.

</comment><comment><USER11> What kind of email volume are you dealing with. Middle to higher level execs routinely receive 500+ legitimate emails, and an equal amount of spam everyday, and they use Outlook without issues

<comment><USER12> I do desktop support for a medium size office, we use O365, outlook sucks at managing emails and I regularly find that people who moved emails to a folder can't find it months or years later.

<comment> AA-BA-94-2A-56 When I worked in marketing, I had Outlook search flat out refuse to find emails in my Inbox, through both header searches and body searches.

Totally undeterministic behaviour, because it would turn around and work on other searches.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The sane old-school way to store mail is using directories and files. Mozilla Thunderbird does this and I've never had a corruption issue. If need be, you can index or open individual files in text editor, as they're all plain text. Would hope for revitalization of the application, but works for my personal use cases.

Yeah, files, are hard.

<comment><USER14> I wish there'd be a native e-mail client that utilized a RDBMS properly, I want a really fast full-text search, I want fast filters. The current ones have all been very unsatisfactory, mostly because the file-based approach doesn't allow them to. It really isn't sane in my opinion.

<comment><USER15> Have you tried notmuch? [https://notmuchmail.org/](https://notmuchmail.org/)

It uses a Xapian index, not an RDBMS, but it's impressive. RDBMSes aren't known for producing good natural language search results.

<comment><USER14> I have not, I am tempted however, I really dislike the power Google has over me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'd be interested to see a current version of ZOL (zfs on Linux) in that table. I suspect it would hold up quite well.

</comment><comment><USER17> Why?

      creat(/dir/log);
      write(/dir/log, "2,3,foo", 7);
      pwrite(/dir/orig, "bar", 3, 2);
      unlink(/dir/log);

and not?

      creat(/dir/new);
      write(/dir/new, "foo", 3);
      rename(/dir/new, /dir/orig);

<comment><USER18> Check the update at the bottom:

> Update: many people have read this post and suggested that, in the first > file example, you should use the much simpler protocol of copying the file > to modified to a temp file, modifying the temp file, and then renaming the > temp file to overwrite the original file. In fact, that's probably the most > common comment I've gotten on this post. If you think this solves the > problem, I'm going to ask you to pause for five seconds and consider the > problems this might have.

> The main problems this has are:

> rename isn't atomic on crash. POSIX says that rename is atomic, but this > only applies to normal operation, not to crashes. > even if the techinque > worked, the performance is very poor > how do you handle hardlinks? > > metadata can be lost; this can sometimes be preserved, under some > filesystems, with ioctls, but now you have filesystem specific code just for > the non-crash case etc.

> The fact that so many people thought that this was a simple solution to the > problem demonstrates that this problem is one that people are prone to > underestimating, even they're explicitly warned that people tend to > underestimate this problem!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> > With that tool, they find that most filesystems drop a lot of error codes:

I recently switched my work notebook to XFS, so looking at this table makes me kinda happy, even if I had bad experiences with XFS in the past (a forced turnoff thanks to a crash in X11 was sufficient to put my system in a unbootable state, trying to recover it with xfs_repair broke it completely; also I suffered with 0-size files randomly appearing after forced reboots quite constantly).

I know for a long time that XFS is probably one of the most well written filesystems for Linux, even if the user case seems to be more focused in servers with uninterrupted power supply than desktops and notebooks.

<comment><USER20> Well, I don't have very good experiences of XFS in the presence of system crashes; you are not alone to get irreparable FS. And even without crashes, the tooling is not very good.

And the thing is that _even_ with uninterruptible UPS, you better handle crashes more gracefully than what XFS is apparently able to do, because e.g. kernel panics can occasionally happen.

So on my side, I'm moving from XFS to ext4. I'm not even sure this will be better, I'll see...

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Too much of the storage industry has been consumed by the performance at any cost metric. Even when that means making engineering decisions that put data at risk.

Back when the original POSIX specs were being worked on, a common assumption was that anyone serious about their data ran all disks/raid controllers/filesystems/etc in writethrough (or equivalent) mode. Combined with what the spec doesn't guarantee leaves us in a world where its pretty much impossible to really make any data retention guarantees. A large part of this is that write() style api's should never have been allowed to be anything but synchronous with the data being commited to non-volatile storage. Thats because if you move the error handling to when fsync() or close() (or pick your place) if one of the writes fails its impossible to report accurately to the application what failed sufficiently to know how to recover it. This goes beyond just filesystems these days, there is a major raid chipset vendor that is/was shipped by a couple tier 1 vendors which only ran in write-through/FUA mode if it wasn't provided a battery, the performance was so abysmally bad that nearly everyone ended up buying the battery to enable write back. The problem with this controller in write back mode is that it didn't honor any kind of fencing or FUA when in writeback mode, instead depending on a intermittent timer flush based system to force the data to disk. If there was a disk failure on write, it was impossible to know what had actually been flushed and depending on firmware it would go from either reporting the error to silently dropping the data. Neither helps the end application that might have quit, and had definitely passed its close/rename/flush/etc sequences by the time the error occurred.

Bottom line, there is an API mismatch from top to bottom of the storage stack. Starting with the simple idea that if a filesystem operation doesn't provide an async completion notification it should be forced to be consistent at completion. Anything else _WILL_ create the opportunity for data loss over even simple power loss, much less the more complex cases of delayed writes in raid controllers/async replication/etc.

Put another way, like this article points out and others linked here reference, there are a ton of "bugs" in most OS's storage stack. Enough that they generally behave badly in the face of actual failures.

</comment><comment><USER22> Related to the post, some disk and filesystem reliability research in chronological order, including things from the author.

Disks:

An Analysis of Latent Sector Errors in Disk Drives (2007) [https://research.cs.wisc.edu/adsl/Publications/latent- sigmet...](https://research.cs.wisc.edu/adsl/Publications/latent- sigmetrics07.ps)

Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population (2007) [https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.c...](https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en//archive/disk_failures.pdf)

Cycles, Cells and Platters: An Empirical Analysis of Hardware Failures on a Million Consumer PCs (2012) [https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp- content/uploads/...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp- content/uploads/2016/02/eurosys84-nightingale.pdf)

Flash Reliability in Production: The Expected and the Unexpected (2016) [https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/fast16/fast16...](https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/fast16/fast16-papers- schroeder.pdf)

Filesystems:

IRON File Systems (how filesystems behave on disk errors) (2005) [https://research.cs.wisc.edu/wind/Publications/iron- sosp05.p...](https://research.cs.wisc.edu/wind/Publications/iron-sosp05.pdf)

EIO: Error Handling is Occasionally Correct (2008) [https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/fast08/tech/full_papers/...](https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/fast08/tech/full_papers/gunawi/gunawi.pdf)

SQCK: A Declarative File System Checker (2008) [https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events/osdi08/tech/full_papers...](https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events/osdi08/tech/full_papers/gunawi/gunawi.pdf)

All File Systems Are Not Created Equal: On the Complexity of Crafting Crash- Consistent Applications (2014) [https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/osdi14/osdi14...](https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/osdi14/osdi14-paper- pillai.pdf)

Filesystem error handling (2017) [https://danluu.com/filesystem- errors/](https://danluu.com/filesystem-errors/)

Files are fraught with peril (2019) [https://danluu.com/deconstruct- files/](https://danluu.com/deconstruct-files/)

And a DRAM reliability paper, for a more complete picture:

DRAM Errors in the Wild: A Large-Scale Field Study (2009) [https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~bianca/papers/sigmetrics09.pdf](https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~bianca/papers/sigmetrics09.pdf)</comment>


Ask HN: How do you write API documentation? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> For Web APIs OpenAPI Specification has been a great resource for internal and external projects. With viewers like [https://github.com/Rebilly/ReDoc/](https://github.com/Rebilly/ReDoc/) it gets pretty easy to take the spec and generate something pleasing for a consuming developer.

Unless you are talking about native code APIs ...

</comment><comment><USER3> In a text editor. Why?</comment>


HP to buy Aruba Wireless for $3B - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/article/hp-confirms-aruba-networks-purchase-eyes-bulked-up-networking-unit/

<comment><USER2> I'd buy a company with $792 Billion in annual revenue for a lot more than $24.67 and $2 B in debt. That's 5 times the size of GE.</comment>


Plan to split California into three states earns spot on November ballot - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-california-split-three-states-20180612-story.html <comment><USER3> The only real merit of the plan in my opinion is increased Senate representation to be more representative of people - land doesn't vote. However that would probably cause contagious state Balkinization instead of doing the proper thing and doing away with the colony uniting artifact of fixed representation - which is politically pretty unviable.

But this is at the cost of probable administrative efficiency to redundancy and loss of their large size leverage. The sponsors are naked about their bad intentions however - wanting to disrupt bargaining power for sheer selfish reasons. Preventing Medicare bargaining was bad for everyone except special interests.

<comment><USER4> If I remember correctly, the senators were originally not elected, but chosen by the state to represent the states' interests, while only the representatives were elected to represent the people's interests. That's why the number of senators doesn't jive with the populations. Each state is then equally represented and of equal importance in the senate.

<comment><USER5> IMHO we really ought to repeal the 17th Amendment and return to state appointment of senators. The states need a voice in the federal government, and that voice is supposed to be the Senate.

But then, I'd also like to see legislatures appointing electors to the Electoral College …

<comment><USER6> >we really ought to repeal the 17th Amendment and return to state appointment of senators.

This sounds good in theory, but the reason they passed the 17A in the first place was because of widespread corruption in the Senate.

>But then, I'd also like to see legislatures appointing electors to the Electoral College …

That's not going to fix anything either. What they need to do is replace the Constitution and adopt a Westminster parliament like every other decent democratic republic out there. How many countries have a presidential system like ours? Only a few, and they're ones like El Salvador, not exactly countries you want to emulate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The plan is a gerrymander that maximally concentrates people likely to vote Democratic into one state along the coast.

Democrats have had enough of gerrymandering, and California is pretty blue these days. This won't pass.

<comment><USER8> Sure but if I'm not mistaken they would gain 4 additional Senators (collectively) which would theoretically 'balance' the fracturing and likely loss of democrat house seats and/or electoral votes. Democrats have a greater disadvantage in the Senate currently so this could be good for them in the short term- they could swing the Senate under the current Congress which is a huge deal.

I don't have an opinion on whether that's better or worse, but there are pros and cons. I doubt it will happen but it's a more plausible debate than succession at least.

<comment><USER7> The issue is not just Senators. Splitting California is also an electoral college win for Republicans, and a state government win as well.

Secession would be a cowardly abandonment of those who are treated poorly in other states.

<comment><USER9> Bingo. It fractures a powerful adversary for the parties pushing this. This comes up all the time with NYC/Long Island and New York (but, curiously, not for Texas or Florida) for the same reason. There are advantages to controlling the largest state in the country, and that advantage would shift to Texas. Since in either outcome this causes distraction and dissension, it's already a victory.

<comment><USER10> There has been talk of splitting Texas into 5 states. Florida has had a South Florida split talks in the past.

New York City would be interesting because it seems like a split would really need to cross state lines which would make it really, really difficult.

<comment><USER9> _" There has been talk of splitting Texas into 5 states"_ \- 1845

 _" Florida has had a South Florida split talks in the past"_ \- Municipal level

NY and CA are on a whole different level than anything else in recent history.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "States will be more accountable to us and can cooperate and compete for citizens." Translation: a corporate tax race-to-the-bottom that ensures lower tax revenues for all three states with zero net-new jobs.

</comment><comment><USER12> If California does split into different states such that Los Angeles and its water supply are in different states then you have an instant, protracted, bitter, and expensive interstate water rights dispute to pay for. I'm not sure either prospective California would be looking forward to that unless there is a plan in place to share water.

</comment><comment><USER13> "Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism."

Does anybody have a copy of the article?

<comment><USER14> [http://archive.is/dL6iE](http://archive.is/dL6iE)

Yay GDPR nonsense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I lived there 10 years, and it was obvious the state had multiple different interests. The south wants the north's water, and doesn't pay anything for it. The south is farming; the north, technology. The far north is radical environmentalism; the rest only mildly so.

I always used to suggest they split it in two - at Monterey right down the middle, since both halves would want Monterey. There's a fault line splitting it already, so its a natural division as well!

<comment><USER16> I woke up a bit late today because I figured the other 14 million in Los Angeles and San Diego had today's farming chores covered.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> As a 5-generation Californian, I will address this in my native language:

"Dude, this is totally lame."

</comment><comment><USER18> Why not go one step further and just create their own country, Republic of California. United States is too large as it is. Less is more.

</comment><comment><USER12> If the state does split in three I think it will only take about five minutes for the counties who want to split off and form Jefferson to submit an initiative to split Northern California. Likewise, Orange County and San Diego, while more similar to each other in ideology than Los Angeles or San Francisco, will be chomping at the bit to disassociate from each other as well.

Honestly, I don't think the state will ever split, but if it does a simple split like the 3 Californias proposal would make the most sense.

<comment><USER19> As someone who grew up in Orange County - most of Orange County by land is closely culturally tied to Los Angeles, not San Diego.

The dividing line is the 55 freeway - everything south of the 55 is 'behind the orange curtain' everything north is part of LA, culturally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> > Three states will get us better infrastructure, better education and lower > taxes

Note that "us" in this case refers to different states: the state containing SF will get better infrastructure and education (because of both priorities and money, and, in the case of education, even if it maintains statewide equal per-pupil funding, it won't be equalized with as many poorer regions.)

The bright red state that doesn't have SF or LA in it will get lower taxes, at least in the near term, but not better infrastructure or education (safety net programs with federal, state economy driven funding, will get bigger subsidies, though.)

The one with LA will probably see the least political change, because LA already dominates the unified state.

</comment><comment><USER21> This has come up multiple times over the years and doesn't have a chance. Good luck!

<comment><USER9> It will pass this time for the same reason that Brexit and the US presidential election had the outcomes they did.

<comment><USER21> Shall we place a wager? I'm willing to escrow money on this.

<comment><USER9> Gentleperson's wager. I hope that I'm wrong too much to want to benefit from it. I very much hope it doesn't pass, but I also don't know who is out there working to prevent the sort of tactics that achieved Brexit. It is astonishingly low hanging fruit for anyone that would benefit from this strategic outcome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I would assume that if it ever happens, it would break into two states: Northern California and Southern California, divided roughly at the 36°30' North parallel, keeping existing county borders.

That would place San Francisco, Sacramento, Monterey and Fresno in Northern California, and Los Angeles, San Diego, and Bakersfield in Southern California.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_36°30′_north](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_36°30′_north)

<comment><USER19> Yeah, this makes sense - though I'd shift Inyo and Mono counties to Southern California to prevent contentious two state discussions about water rights.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Also as a Native Californian - I question the logic of any proposal that splits the LA area into two states. Orange County is an integral part of the Los Angeles region.

If they were just talking about splitting in to two states - <USER2> California, and Southern California it might be more viable, as there are distinct cultural lines in the state to be drawn - but three states makes no sense to me, especially with the boundaries drawn as they are.

</comment><comment><USER23> As an outsider and someone who is not even remotely close to the situation this sounds like a politically motivated move that is justified by unfounded claims.

<comment><USER24> Likewise. The whole idea seems to be based on the current California government failing its citizens. And yet California is arguably the most prosperous and successful state in the nation. Why mess with that?

I'm pretty sure the answer to that rhetorical question is, because that success and prosperity has happened under liberal policies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> So what will be the economic engine of Southern California, without LA or SF? Fresno?!

<comment><USER26> San Diego is pretty Dynamic but Fresno would make sense for the inland empire.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Why not include San Francisco in the coastal state?

<comment><USER28> Because this is nothing more than attempt to add 4 more Senators that have a chance of being won by Republicans. It's the same reason why "Southern California" includes OC.

<comment><USER29> That doesn't make sense...

This would add a net of four more Senators, which only _might_ go Republican. Considering that California is generally considered solidly blue as it stands, this would almost certainly result in the balance shifting toward the Democrats in the Senate.

<comment><USER30> Parts of California are reliably red. If you split them into their own state, their Senators, Representatives, and electoral votes would likely go red.

<comment><USER29> I totally get that - I'm very interested in gun rights, and have been at least cursorily aware of the issues in getting carry permits in various California jurisdictions.

My point is that the way the state is divided in this proposal all but guarantees that all three will be blue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Reminder that the prime supporter of this is the same person still vociferously defending Theranos and its odious leaders.

</comment><comment><USER32> Splitting LA and OC is idiotic. OC is the suburbs of LA. Of course the whole thing is fairly unlikely and not really a good idea.

<comment><USER26> Not really, DC and Virginia are well integrated (economically). Northern New Jersey and NYC are integrated, despite state borders, so much so they even have common government bodies like the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

I'm all for states to split if it makes sense. Texas, New York (upstate vs downstate), and of course California. The needs are too disparate and varied and could be better served by more attuned regional governments.

I know I'll seriously consider voting for the split. The politics are way too dysfunctional at the state level.

<comment><USER33> I wouldn't call Jersey and NYC well integrated. If Jersey City was part of New York we'd be able to take the subway to Newark . Instead we get to deal with fake traffic on the GW because Jersey decided to elect Chris Christie.

As a New Yorker I'd be all for trading upstate NYC for part of north Jersey.

<comment><USER26> I more or less mean economically. The issue you illustrate exists in the Bay Area, San Mateo county didn't sign on to Bart in the 50s and 60s when things were being planned out. We are still experiencing the ramifications of that. No state borders involved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Sounds good to me. Approved

</comment><comment><USER35> Which of those three states has the water resources?

</comment><comment><USER24> Russian trolls have pushed the Calexit secession campaign. I wonder if they're involved in this as well.

<comment><USER36> I can't tell if this is /s or not..

<comment><USER24> Not at all. Russian involvement in Calexit is pretty well supported, just search. They're out to weaken this country by exploiting existing political fault lines. Supporting a plan to split up our most successful and prosperous state fits right into their MO.

<comment><USER37> I know who you are (at least as an HN commenter), which is why I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt here. But when someone says "X is well known, just search", they're usually peddling some complete nonsense that happens to have a web page that Google knows about. The way you phrased that (and didn't actually supply any evidence) trips the BS detector, at least for me.

As I said, I give you the benefit of the doubt, because you don't post that way, and I don't think you meant to here. It's just an unfortunate phrasing, but I thought I'd mention it.

As to the substance of your statement: Yes, this fits the pattern. But I don't think they care whether they split California or not. Splitting it doesn't change things very much. (Unlike, say, presidential elections. And on that topic, it occurs to me that we got handed an absolutely horrible choice in 2016. Maybe we ought to be looking more closely for interference in the primaries, not just in the general election.)

I think the real goal is to create conflict. This is a nice topic to get everybody all wound up about. I think they'll try to amplify that. Whether or not they're behind the proposal, they'll try to rile up both sides.

One of the things to watch for is the _reasons_ that are presented for people to become agitated. Since agitprop is not "organic" (for want of a better word), the reasons given for becoming outraged seem a bit... off. Foreign, even. You think, "everyone's freaking out about this, but it doesn't quite resonate with me". That's a hint that it may be manufactured outrage, rather than real.

<comment><USER24> It's as easy as googling "calexit Russia" and seeing the parade of sources from reputable outlets. What's the right phrasing for something like that? Or do I need to source everything?

<comment><USER37> You're right, it is that easy. The first one I found came from the BBC, which is generally regarded as reputable, by almost everybody on both sides of the Red/Blue war: [https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs- trending-41853131](https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-41853131)

What's the right phrasing? The way you phrased it fit a pattern in my mind. That's not much of a concern if other people don't share that pattern. (Judging by the downvotes, not many do.) To placate me, you might say "just search, and pick a source that you consider reliable" \- that eliminates the possibility of some fringe view whose only sources are fringe. But that's me - that works for a sample of one; any further applicability is uncertain.

> Or do I need to source everything?

That might be the answer. Posts are read more than they are written. If you google it, you save 10 or 1000 readers from having to google it. (Of course, if some of your readers consider BBC to be "fringe" or "part of the deep state" or whatever, the link you choose from the search may not satisfy them...)

<comment><USER24> I see what you mean. I'll keep this in mind.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Does the Internet Make You Smarter?  - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704025304575284973472694334.html <comment><USER2> "the cumulative time devoted to creating Wikipedia, something like 100 million hours of human thought, is expended by Americans every weekend, just watching ads."

That's a striking comparison. What really matters in people's lives is how they spend their free time, when they could be doing anything from something totally time-wasting to something incremental and productive. (I have just recently become a Wikipedian. I essentially never watch TV.)

<comment><USER3> I wish Shirkey would start comparing Wikipedia creation not to TV watching, but to the jobs that the people who write Wikipedia are (theoretically) doing while they're writing Wikipedia.

One could say the same thing about OSS, at least in the context of OSS which management does not know about.

If you think 10 hours of TV a week is a waste of human potential, you should see what some people do for 40 hours a week. (Or vastly, vastly more, in some cases. Why hello, Japanese salarymen...)

<comment><USER4> Much agreed. It was just as all the people who truly believed that google pacman contributed to millions of hours of lost productivity. Really?

In most cases, people at their jobs probably just substituted one "time waster" with another (whether it be job related or not.)

The people running around screaming how google pacman cost valuable time are probably the same ones who also idlely sit in far more costly pointless meetings all day long.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "The decade the pessimists want to return us to is the 1980s, the last period before society had any significant digital freedoms."

Who are these pessimists?

<comment><USER6> I'm guessing he's arguing against people like Nick Carr and Andrew Keen, who've gotten a great deal of press in prominent places. Certainly, Keen seems to have the point of view Shirky is describing. Carr is more nuanced, but still seems to be arguing for something pretty close to that point of view. These points of view are uncommon amongst hackers, they're quite common in other parts of society. Certainly, many journalists seem to want a return to the 1980s.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is a video where Clay Shirky discusses a similar issue -

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyoNHIl-QLQ> (Part 1 of 2) <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNCblGv0zjU> (Part 2 of 2)

Link to the transcript of the video above and HN discussion

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=174410></comment>


Bernays and the Roots of Consumer Culture - <AUTHOR> http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8953172273825999151

<comment><USER2> Also, check out the amazing documentary about libertarianism/government/game theory by the same guy who did the posted video, The Trap: [http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-142285137762134414&...](http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-142285137762134414&ei=TtDGSbbXOJKurgLOpsDsAg&q=fuck+you+buddy+The+trap)</comment>


Caustic Graphics 100% Raytracing - <AUTHOR> http://vimeo.com/4240520 <comment><USER2> Proud dad: my son is one of the three founders of Caustic. In the video James (someone else's son :-) demonstrates the developer version done in FPGA. A 10x version in custom silicon is due out next year.

The founders raised their nest egg by cashing in their Apple stock. They created a software emulator and then raised $5.5M from angels, not VCs. They did use a VC to find a CEO whose function was to raise the capital. He got no salary and no stock until he got the funding. Even after funding the founders still had control. Take heart, it's possible to do hardware, even these days.

<comment><USER3> Well, you're right to feel proud.

It's a fine and refreshingly hype-light product. The only change I'd like to see is a simple application included that takes a common 3d file format (blender, pov or something) and spits out a rendered bitmap.

Instead of waiting for developers to add Caustic support to their 3d apps over the summer, this would allow a 3d artist to start saving time tomorrow, even knowing that that it wasn't optimized. The little app displayed in the video demo would be more than sufficient, it just doesn't seem from the website like it comes with any ready-to-use tools for the non-programmer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Impressive technology, they will certainly gain a lot of speed by turning their FPGA architecture into a fixed chipset. This is the kind of hardware/software that would be interesting to see in next generation consoles. Video games production would require the same amount of modelers/texturers/animators, but way less shader/graphic programmers as a lot of the material hacks from the current GPU generation would be obsolete.

I've explored a bit with real-time raytracing on this project : <http://www.jrbedard.net/projects/C/raytracer/raytracer.htm> It worked in real-time with a simple scene and basics reflective/refractive materials. But I had to rely on OpenGL speed up some of the transformations and blitting. Trying to fit raytracing on current generation GPU/APIs is a pain and feels like a hack, even with Cuda. Their product seem to resolve that problem of more easily reaching photo-realistic real-time performance.

</comment><comment><USER5> Very cool. Does anyone know what level of global illumination they are able to reach? I noticed they did have an ambient occlusion setting which produced some noisy-looking shadows (though that could've been a video artifact). Obviously difficult (i.e. highly indirect) lighting situations will seriously impact the framerate, but it would still kick ass if they could hardware accelerate it. Given that they use GLSL to define their surface properties, I'd be interested in how they figure out where to cast their random rays.

Baking this into an ASIC instead of an FPGA would be awesome. But I'm sure they're already onto that.</comment>


How cold calling (properly) works better than AdWords - <AUTHOR> http://blog.asmartbear.com/cold-calling.html <comment><USER2> "It won't scale."

That's not true.

If cold-calling doesn't scale it's usually the underlying business that's not going to scale, not the method of marketing.

Marc Benioff (Salesforce CEO) built his company around "inside sales" which is essentially cold-calling with a fancy wrapping.

A recipe to scale cold calling for an entrepreneur is:

a) Get very specific about who your customer is, and how you're finding them. For instance if you're selling small business websites to dentists maybe that's "go type in "dentists" on Google, and see who's advertising, and then click through and hit the "contact" button".

b) At scale you can then pay somebody else to do the work for you, large list brokers like InfoUSA have millions of consumer and business records for you to reach out to.

c) Get caffeinated, find your courage, and pick up the phone to start placing phone calls.

d) Based on your interactions build yourself a script (or at very least bullet points) that gives you an outline of how to contact the customer including FAQ that you encounter.

e) Build with the end in mind of bringing in your first "inside sales" person. You want to literally turn over a handbook of how you're working this process. Throw out a juicy commission on orders, and then rinse and repeat.

This takes work, but it's an extremely efficient way of building your business particularly for B2B.

<comment><USER3> Great point, well made.

To counter-point, for _some_ businesses, the cost to acquire a customer even with the efficiencies you describe is still too much. For example a consumer product that's $99 per year with 50% gross margin needs acquisition costs lower than even your plan will provide.

In that case -- which is common in high-tech startups -- cold-calling can still be an effective way to start, because the learning you get is more valuable than revenue at the start.

Still, more companies could succeed with your strategy than who are willing to try, and you're right they're missing out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Scripting the cold call and iterating on it like it was a Google Adword ad is such a simple idea, but it had never occurred to me.

This is a great, great post, one of the more useful things that's hit HN in the past few months. I don't know what it is about the Smart Bear blog, but man, it's one of the only things that hits HN regularly that I find myself sharing with non-HN people.

I would love some more discussion about better cold-call call to actions. I feel like my particular market, while way better addressed by calls than Adword ads, already has its hackles raised on the prospect of being linked to a blog. What else has worked for people?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've also tried whitepapers or ebooks with limited success. On the phone, people often assume they are marketing pamphelets and hold no value.

I have had success with inviting people to educational lunches with catchy titles. Name dropping competitors you are speaking with is something you can try to pitch attendance. The effectiveness of that varies by market. I think educational marketing works...you just need to find the right vehicle. I highly recommend Chet Holmes's 'Ultimate Sales Machine.'

Depending on your price point and geography I think simply setting up a meeting is a great first step. Most businesses are secretly relationship businesses. Taking an interest in a set of ideal customers and really building a relationship pays dividends in my experience.

edit: Thanks for the kind words. I am happy to chat about it. I hope more people take something away from it. Forgive me for losing focus and not putting the thank you in the original comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This passage alone was worth the read:

 _I decided I would offer to write them up on my customer-focused blog in return for a tour of their facility and a short interview. It gave me blog content, a personal chance to add customers, and a way to learn a lot about my prospects. It gave them some traffic, a relevant link, and a blog mention they could point to for social proof._

He contacted people only after doing research and asked if they wanted to be featured on his blog. He gave value first and built connections. This isn't a story about cold calling so much as a story about how relationships, and by extension business, work.

</comment><comment><USER6> One of the biggest problems here is that $150 is far too small an amount to test Adwords for a b2b situation (generally, low conversion / high value per customer.) If he's figuring on a $50 or so cost of acquisition when optimized, he's going to need to budget at least $1,000 or more (that's just _20_ conversions) to even start figuring out if Adwords will work for him.

Cold calling makes sense, but he's comparing apples to oranges in saying he didn't get sales via adwords but he's getting leads via calling. He's spending an order of magnitude more at any reasonable conversion of time to money, and he doesn't know yet if these cold calls are going to convert, either. It's just that it's "cheaper" to do because he's not paying himself to do it, whereas AdWords is cash out of pocket (a valid issue but not one he's making.)

If he tested Adwords and found a formula that worked to create conversions, he'd have a scalable solution. Even if he gets great at cold-calling, it's unlikely he'll have a scalable solution unless he intends to hire a raft of salespeople (who will probably not be as good as he is as selling the product, and who have to be paid.)

It's entirely possible this is simply not a product that will do well on SEM, because people aren't actually out there searching for it, while potential leads are relatively easy to obtain and call. That's true of a lot of middleware products. But it might also just mean you haven't figured out what your target users are out there searching for (i.e. maybe not "Deer Management Software", but instead things like "Hunting Rifles.")

<comment><AUTHOR> These are all good, valid points.

For my specific situation spending $1000 to get 20 conversions didn't make mathematical sense.

I spent several hours cold calling to get my first 10-15 conversions and if I paid myself for that activity it would certainly be far from 'free', but you are missing the main point of the calls. Personal attention creates relationships. These people talk to each other. Relationships matter to them. Those calls paid dividends beyond individual conversion.

Besides that, there isn't a way to create an AdWords formula for every product X and market Y.

<comment><USER6> That's true, but it's not mutually exclusive. Lots of businesses use Adwords to generate leads that are then pursued using phone sales, and it also means you're no longer making "cold calls", because you're calling in response to a request. Adwords doesn't always have to funnel directly into a checkout.

I'm also not sure how you're defining "conversions." Do you mean people being willing to meet with you, or are you saying you had 10-15 sales from the cold calling (cash in bank account.)?

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with your first point. I left it out in implicit agreement.

In the article I am talking about meetings...essentially just warm lead generation. I called it conversion because that was the goal I was attempting to convert them to.

I don't think cold calling can be as effective for instant sales as AdWords because with AdWords you are targeting people searching for a solution to a problem (you already know this). I still don't have a system that can tie networking efforts to later sales (cash in bank), but maybe someday I'll pursue it.

<comment><USER6> Having done a /lot/ of cold calling in the past (sometimes up to 200 in a day), I'd warn that you can't tell how effective any system is until you actually have people breaking open their wallet or writing a check. Folks will take a meeting just to be polite.

There's a saying in cold calling: you haven't really started selling until they say "no". Everything up to that is small talk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have to express similar experiences with the blog post.

While I have Adwords experience for 5 years now (with my MMO guild hosting system), with my newest offering (Plug: Sports League Management - <http://www.bracketpal.com>), I knew that I'd be facing a much more established market with higher PPC and I'd be up against more established players with bigger budgets.

So, I faced my fears[1] and began a sample of calling Volleyball leagues in the Milwaukee Area, expecting rejection after rejection. So far, it's proven to be well worth it. Not knowing how to structure these kind of things, I pretty awkwardly and directly opened with something like:

 _Hi, My name is Jesse Gumm, I'm a software developer in the Milwaukee area and I'm in the process of getting a new product off the ground for running sports leagues, with a particular emphasis on volleyball leagues. It was used to run the leagues at Bradford Beach this summer, and I was wondering if you would be willing to sit down with me for a few minutes to try and see if maybe this would be a good fit for your company._

That (terrible) pitch landed me around a 60-70% success rate for setting up meetings, and of those, the majority of them _sound_ like they'll be buying from me this coming summer, and at the very least, has turned into referrals for other leagues and other sports (since I'm much more active in the Milwaukee volleyball scene, it helps getting those referrals for other sports for which I've very limited information).

I'm gearing up for a massive cold-calling spree (just finishing a few critical features for a few Winter leagues I've got lined up), making an effort to call every volleyball league within 200 miles to see if they'll set up a personal meeting, before I start calling to try to sell the (what I think will be much harder to get) remote-desktop meeting. The article above and (the article linked in the comments: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3234286>) looks to be extremely valuable towards getting a better success rate, and is consistent with what I've been reading in sales and cold-calling books, regarding the success rate of setting up a conversation to find out the prospects pain points before pushing a product in their face.

[1] And fears they are. I have to psyche myself out before every call, despite the fact that all of my calls have been pleasant, and most of them have produced meetings. And after the call, while I'm energized to launch my product and work, I still have to psyche myself out AGAIN for the next call. It's really a difficult thing for me. I'm definitely not the kind of guy that approaches someone at a party and strikes up a conversation.

<comment><USER8> At my first company, I was thrown in the deep end of having to do cold calling, and it's amazing how simple pitches you can get away with if your product is actually something people see value in, and you sound genuinely interested in providing value.

I also think this is severely under-utilized. Especially since you can often get hold of people on the phone that you'd never get an e-mail reply from, if you're just friendly but persistent with assistants etc..

I'm in the same situation as you with respect to being an introvert. It was agonizing work, but it also drove a significant portion of our revenue. An alternative if you can afford it is to talk to a professional lead generation company (though be careful that they reflect your brand well - this is one of those areas where it definitively does _not_ pay to skimp and end up with some cowboy). The downside of the latter even if you find a good agency is that nothing beats getting direct feedback on what is right and wrong with your pitch.

<comment><USER9> Got any recommendations for a lead generation company?

<comment><USER10> I've worked closely with Dave @ Client Acquisition Partners ( <http://teleleadsonline.com/> ) - I know he's worked with some tech companies, so it might be worth a shot.

FWIW, they are redesigning their website!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> great article. we ran an experiment over the summer with cold calling as well, as many people thought it would be a successful sales strategy for us. being in the payment processing world, we knew business owners were constantly being cold called and most likely did not want another point of contact. however, we wanted some data to show people who made that suggestion in the future.

our hypothesis was correct: our conversion rate was nill, even when tinkering with the sales script. i think the variation is due to the fact that the target customers in this article were not as heavily cold called as our target market. so, it made them more open minded. here's a link that shows our data:

[http://feefighters.com/blog/950-and-1500-calls-tales-in- tele...](http://feefighters.com/blog/950-and-1500-calls-tales-in- telemarketing/)

<comment><USER8> Those are absolutely horrible pitches. I'm surprised they didn't bomb worse.

My first job was to cold call on behalf of a charity for the blind, and I've also done a telesales job for short time, and got training in it.

First thing we learned the first day in both jobs was the way of structure a call to get interest. There were of course big differences, but a few very significant common takeaways. Incidentally there's a lot in common with this and being a good conversationalist or even generating attraction:

* You need to offer value. That means, you never ask to get anything off the bat. On the contrary, you seek to get them to feel that you're going to offer value.

* You set up drama that they want resolved. E.g. you offer insight about some situation that is emotional to the listener. For the charity for the blind, this was of course about creating sympathy. For the telesales, it was about describing some scenario that corresponded to a need the customer felt strongly about, such as spending more time helping their children read (the company sold children's books).

* You get the listener invested and hopefully make them contribute details to the scenario from their own background; e.g. explaining the problems with their business, for example, and starting to look for ways you can help them.

* You make statements that gets implicit buy-in from the listener unless they object. People don't like to object, and if this is done subtly, people will find themselves accepting your statements even when they initially disagreed with them.

* Then you give the customer hope that you can _help them_ make things better. You've established yourself as having high value to _them_.

If you do it right _they will ask you_ what they can do or how they can buy your product.

The overall structure is to start on a friendly high note, create drama and tension and bring the emotions down, then resolve the tension and offer up a solution while bringing the emotions up. Think Hollywood tear-jerker.

The scripts you quote on that page fails in that they don't set up a conflict or any tension that you can resolve for them. Just some bland statements about "cutting the nonsense".

I'd have done something more along the lines of "I'm sure that like lots of other [small,big, type-of business] businesses (implicit buy-in to your statement, putting them in a group they identify with), you've been hit with chargeback fees that were totally bogus [addressing a conflict] and have had to fight with your processor to recover funds and (more similar stuff)... (ask how it's impacted their business, and show them you sympathize). What do you think you can do about it? (listen to their feedback). Well, we have a report that helps you solve some of these problems. (wait for them to ask what it costs) We'll e-mail it you for free."

On top of this, voice, intonation and the level of excitement you manage to project makes a massive difference - the biggest problem in the training at both jobs was to go from sounding like you read from a script (because you did) to projecting well enough that you came across as believable. In my own experience, this latter is so much easier when you call yourself, rather than outsource it.

(EDIT: fixed formatting)

<comment><USER12> I'm in a similar situation - comfortable with the product, uncomfortable selling. These tips were excellent, do you have further information or some more examples?

<comment><USER8> I didn't do this very long, so I got the basic crash course. It did make an amazing difference, but there's a lot more to learn. Generally, though, if you're selling a product you believe in, you're halfway there - for these telesales companies so much of the training is down to getting their staff to project enthusiasm for products they have no connection to.

Largely it's down to doing the same things that make you a good communicator in general. A couple of very simple examples:

Sit upright when you call and _smile_. You want to be relaxed but alert (sitting upright) so you breath calmly and have plenty of energy behind your voice. And smiling when talking changes the entire character of your voice. Make an exaggerated smile - in general people come across as smiling less than they think they do, and this is even more the case over the phone. It really does come across as much friendlier and relaxed. Try it and record your voice with and without a smile.

And listen to any cue you get about their business and parrot it back to them either as statements or questions. "So you feel your payment provider don't understand your side of the story?". The more they talk, the more likely they are to talk themselves into buying your product, because the more people get to talk about themselves with only small interjections that shows you've listened to what they say, the more they feel you understand them.

If they start talking a lot, you often only need to very subtly tie that to your own experience (creating shared experiences creates a connection) related to providing your product or services. E.g. "I feel the same way - when I started building X, it was because I'd done Y in a previous job and I kept running into the same problems; once we ...; I think we have a good solution, but how are you solving that for your business?"

Generally, I'd say a foundation to get comfortable with this for someone who is uncomfortable selling, is not a sales book or course, but a conversational skills book. Look up Leil Lowndes - she has a lot of easily digested conversational skills books and most of the skills are directly transferable to making your more comfortable with sales. And especially if you're selling your own product that you can muster excitement about, coming across as confident and a good conversationalist brings you 90% of the way there. Get that in place and you can top it up with some general sales skills later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A successful entrepreneur I know impressed upon me once the importance of just picking up the damn phone. He wrote about it here:

[http://www.mcstartup.com/blog/2008/2/23/ive-got-an-idea- shou...](http://www.mcstartup.com/blog/2008/2/23/ive-got-an-idea-should-i-use- an-invention-submission-service.html)

and here:

[http://www.mcstartup.com/blog/2011/8/13/where-do-i- start.htm...](http://www.mcstartup.com/blog/2011/8/13/where-do-i-start.html)

You get the idea...

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm planning on going "out of the building" very soon and go talk to some potential users, so the part about refining the opening phrase is very useful.

It won't be cold-calling but going to talk to people on the street so I'll be interrupting them somehow, so I'll have to pay attention to what works and what doesn't…

On the "this does not scale" part, this is a recurring theme: Alexis Ohanian commented with multiple accounts at the beginning of reddit, IIRC Facebook was getting the class schedules more or less manually, Airbnb's CEO slept at many people's homes to understand their needs, I believe the guys at Quora were answering questions themselves, etc. This doesn't scale but it gets things moving and you learn what really works.

</comment><comment><USER15> I really like two things about this article:

1) His approach would have worked with me.

One job I had, I used to have to filter calls from everyone trying to get through to my boss. Polite honest quick callers got the chance to mail details, or let me web-search their company. But the amount of pushy idiots! Some of them really gave "their" product a bad name. Scare quote around their because unlike the author in OP these sales people were just low-wage employees of some big company.

2) Some aspects of the job are easy. (Coding.) Some are going to appear really hard, but you just have to do them, and learn as you do them. (Selling, to real humans, face to face or over the phone.)

</comment><comment><USER16> Like AdWords, cold calling has its place. I am sure that cold calling about deer hunting was more effect than Google AdWords, as (forgive the stereotype here), I am assuming, your audience preferred high touch and is not all that tech-oriented.

I would like to see the effect of cold calling vs. AdWords when you are marketing an app for an urbanite and cold calling in a major city, like New York or Chicago.

Your pitch may be carefully crafted, but between people like myself who'll hang up before you reach your first breath intake point and Do Not Call Lists (in Canada), I think that the success of your marketing campaign was a little circumstantial.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the success of (nearly) every marketing campaign is circumstantial, but your points are valid. Marketing is highly dependent on context.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> _"At this point in my company it was far more valuable to land a dozen orders... This part doesn't need to "scale," it just [needs] to happen."_

A thousand times this. I think this is the biggest takeaway from the article. I think as entrepreneurs, we see something both scary and mundane like cold- calling and think "I don't want to do this. There's no way I'm going to make $1MM+ calling people from the phone book." I know I suffer from this frame of mind, and the above quote is a good dose of reality.

</comment><comment><USER18> I was looking around your site trying to find your products:

<http://whitetailcensus.com/>

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

One of them doesn't even seem to have a stylesheet or a _single_ picture or video of your product. Sounds a cool product but I have no idea how hard it is to use. Is it like facial recog software?

The other, the scout product, the 'reasons to buy' are the worst I've _ever_ seen. And I still don't know what you're selling! But it has _rapid record retrieval_. Wow. Marketing 101 man, that's not a reason to buy, customers don't care about that.

I didn't want to be negative but on the other hand I honestly think you could do more harm than good with this article.

Firstly it seems that online selling is not at all your forte. Let me be frank, you cannot write marketing copy. Worse you've presented yourself disingenously, as if you had some skill with adwords, _I thought I understood AdWords pretty well. I even worked on the AdWords API team as an intern at Google_.

What has working on a technical product at Google got to do with writing marketing copy? Quite obviously nothing.

Secondly, cold calling can be a _very_ expensive way to acquire customers. And you've hand waved your way through it. You converted them because you drove out there and sold.

At $29.95 a _year_ , the price you're listing one of your products, you _cannot_ buy a list of phone numbers, call the customer and then drive out and visit them and still make money.

The premise behind the article seems a great way to validate your ideas, but that's _not_ what adwords is for. Adwords is for selling. And you haven't mentioned any sales costs associated with the phone process in the article. The fuel? The time?

Having worked in industries where we did buy leads, the mortgage industry, it was £75 a number. They weren't even cold and we still had a conversion ratio of 1 in 10. Could you make money paying £750 per customer? Our product sold for £2500 so it was worth it.

And say you go b2b instead, companies give away their numbers on websites all the time. Can you get to the decision maker in a couple of minutes? Or are there barriers?

Overall I just think this article is badly titled and you shouldn't have mentioned adwords _at all_. This is a great idea for getting to know your customers. For selling, I doubt its benefits.

I want others to _think_ , is cold calling really worth spending your time on? Can you actually afford to?

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right. Something is wrong with the Census site, but there are images on the tour page. I'll take a look. The Census product uses Mechanical Turk to recognize deer in trail camera photos and determine herd statistics using capture-recapture. You upload images and get emailed results. That is it.

I never managed to sell the Scout product online. It is incredibly bad marketing copy that I modified from some examples I found around the web. Any sales of that product required calls or in person handling. I did best at a trade show. There is no online audience I could reach for it. I underpriced the product and marketed it poorly. I found some success in higher-touch sales, but you are correct that the price point needs to support that effort level and you should target your market accordingly. That particular product also has an entrenched and highly likable competitor.

Phone numbers (business listings) from a service like Hoover's are free at your public library.

You're also correct that working on a technical product has nothing to do with writing marketing copy, but I'll bet that not everyone in this audience knows that. Hopefully my story lent them some perspective.

I'm working on another product at the moment. I wrote the article about my experience developing those products hoping that people would think about what might work for them and be open to ideas that aren't commonplace. I'm glad to have your perspective as it may help everyone consider their options from every angle.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, that's true.

In the end you did totally the right thing, which is go where the customers were. As you say you couldn't find your audience is online.

And it's good to remind HN that there are other marketing methods they might not have tried.

I just thought the article wasn't fair on comparing a $150 adwords spend to a bunch of customer visits, which once you get past being a sole founder will cost you a lot of real money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Wasn't there another article like this?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah. This builds on <http://bit.ly/oeZDzC>.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> _software for deer management_

Software for... what? Is this some kind of idiom or is it some kind of wild animals control? Please, could anybody drop a line of explanation?

<comment><AUTHOR> Whitetail deer hunting is a 6+ billion dollar industry in the US.

Many ranches sell hunts on enclosed ranches for trophy animals and you pay a sliding scale of how good a trophy you kill. This is so popular that many people are getting in the business of breeding deer to sell to other breeders and those ranchers. There is still a lot more demand than supply.

On top of those segments, there are many hunting clubs and individuals with land that wish to manage the animals responsibly or in accordance with state guidelines in exchange for special privileges and tax breaks.

All of these people need record keeping and analytics to measure what they are doing and report it to their state.

<comment><USER20> Thank you, very informative!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> _Hi, I'm Robert ... I am looking for a few people to visit, tour your facilities, and talk with you about your business. I can then write up the experience and link you up on the blog._

I'd be inclined to think you were stopping by to case the place which is why professional networking is so important. Not fool proof, but helpful nevertheless.

</comment><comment><USER22> He addresses scale but only scaling up. What he neglects to realize is that AdWords et al are elastic, if I want to get 10x impressions over the weekend I can do that. With cold calling, not so much...

<comment><USER23> This is not true in all cases. Adwords has plenty of niches where the number of clicks per day is very limited, no matter how enticing your ad.

If you already have a good idea of who your customers are the shortest path to those customers is likely a much more direct one than waiting until they happen to see your ad and click on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Very useful follow up to your previous article on 100% conversion rate cold calls. Thanks! By the way, how did you hear about your deer management niche?

<comment><AUTHOR> I grew up in Texas. I've been hunting and fishing since I can remember anything. When I couldn't walk through the marsh because I was too little for the sucking mud I'd float on top of a mesh bag filled with plastic duck decoys.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Couldn't there be a complementary article titled "How Adwords (used properly) works better than cold calling?

</comment><comment><USER26> Does cold calling produce better conversion rates than emailing? What are everyone's thoughts on this?

<comment><AUTHOR> The answer to nearly any marketing question is 'it depends.' My experience in a couple of markets suggests that it does for me. You will have to test it for your context.

<comment><USER27> You also have to consider that emailing to non "opt-in" targets can run afoul of CAN-SPAM.</comment></comment></comment>


It's official: even recruiters won't read your LinkedIn profile anymore - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/40533516/this-chrome-extension-matches-linkedin-profiles-to-open-tech-jobs <comment><USER2> Yep.

I just got a LinkedIn invite trying to tempt me with a contracting gig at my current employer, whose name was also miscapitalized.

Some time ago I created a fake LinkedIn profile with a bogus name and no work description (except currently employed as a senior software engineer at a local company). I got recruiter spam _exactly_ like my personal LinkedIn account, which has actual experience listed from an old copy of my resume.

LinkedIn is trash. I don't even know why I still keep my profile up.

<comment><USER3> My recruiter found me through LinkedIn, and helped me move into a position making 2x compared to my previous role.

YMMV, but definitely not trash to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Don't clickbait headlines to promote your startup.

</comment><comment><USER5> Actual title: "This chrome extension matches linkedin-profiles to open tech jobs"</comment>


Show HN: Easy SVG charts for your static site, no JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://www.chartspree.com/ <comment><USER2> "no Javascript" is very misleading. There are several


CSS Front-end Frameworks Comparison - <AUTHOR> http://usablica.github.io/front-end-frameworks/compare.html

<comment><USER2> This site has been shown here several times over the last few year(s), and it still looks pretty useless. No UI improvements, no Stylus frameworks, no framework size or mention of stuff like CSS resets.

It's pretty useless considering the fact that most of all frameworks already will work with the modern browsers, and thus why would anyone begin their selection based off of browser compatibility? I will say that knowing whether it's open source, and whether it's responsive-ready is nice.

At the very least a preview picture for each framework's common elements would make this kind site useful.

</comment><comment><USER3> Being able to filter by browser requirements would be useful, i.e. I need IE8+, what can I use?

edit: here's a filter for IE8+

        jQuery(".parent").filter(function(){ return $('.ie', this).data("version") > 8 }).hide()

</comment><comment><USER4> Shameless plug, but we've been working on a very mobile focused framework and UI library called Ionic which some people might find interesting (also uses AngularJS): [http://ionicframework.com/new/](http://ionicframework.com/new/)

</comment><comment><USER5> It's missing multiple frameworks. I didn't see [http://gumbyframework.com](http://gumbyframework.com) or [http://semantic- ui.com](http://semantic-ui.com).

<comment><USER6> "Gumby" is there on the page, just not called "gumbyframework"

<comment><USER5> Somehow I missed that - I blame being sick :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I would like to see the total size of each framework in this list as well, it would be beneficial when comparing front end frameworks.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm missing Pure ([http://purecss.io/](http://purecss.io/)) in this list. Was it excluded because of the lack of directly included JS?

</comment><comment><USER9> would be nice to see [http://susy.oddbird.net/](http://susy.oddbird.net/) and [http://topcoat.io/](http://topcoat.io/) as well

<comment><USER10> It's simple enough to make an addition. It's a Github repo ([https://github.com/usablica/front-end- frameworks/](https://github.com/usablica/front-end-frameworks/)) after all.</comment></comment>


What future for the Macintosh? - <AUTHOR> http://www.mondaynote.com/2011/02/13/what-future-for-the-macintosh/ <comment><USER2> Gassee has insightfully observed that something important is happening in great detail but after his brilliant survey of the trees, he completely loses sight of the forest and predicts Apple will come out with some 2001-era Windows Slate complete with keyboard and stylus. Huh? All of these trends he highlights -- the de-emphasis of desktop computers, the app-ification of software, the convergence of Apple's iOS and Mac OS X -- are leading somewhere else. It's a future, super-powered and acceptably priced Motorola Atrix that's the key.</comment>