Photo tour of Facebook's new datacenter - <AUTHOR> http://scobleizer.com/2011/04/16/photo-tour-of-facebooks-new-datacenter/ <comment><USER3> Very cool, but why in the world would he use Instagram? All it did was crop the photo down to a square, so we couldn't see parts of the datacenter that weren't within that square.

<comment><USER4> I use Instagram because I have about 10,000 followers on that service. I go where my friends are.

<comment><USER5> It seems silly for the quality of the photos in your article to be impacted by the way you share them on a social network.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Rackspace are building a datacenter based on the opencompute plans, very cool. Exactly what I had thought about based on the announcement of open compute. Hosting companies, large companies and all sorts will be leveraging this information to increase the scale of computing in datacenters as a whole. I hope more companies will contribute to opencompute so we continue to see improvements like this. The facebook datacenter looks awesome, as you can see they are serious about being a long term company rivalling the likes of google.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is absolutely fantastic. I've been following the Google datacenter efficiency project for a while, and an opensource competitor will only make things better for the world. I can't wait for the day when more large companies either embrace this concept for their own datacenters or outsource to datacenters built on these technologies.

</comment><comment><USER8> How can this be more energy efficient than systems using cold ocean water to dump the heat surplus? E.g. The datacenters in iceland, where Opera has its datacenters. Would love some more details.

<comment><USER9> Discharging heat into nature is considered pollution by many countries by now, and in particular discharging it into bodies of water. You might simply not be allowed to do that, or you might have to pay hefty pollution taxes.

<comment><USER10> "Discharging heat into nature is considered pollution by many countries by now" - Citation please. I'm not doubting you, this is just the first I've heard that discharging heat into nature is considered "pollution.", and I'd be interested to hear the context. I suspect it's in rare scenarios where the water it's being discharged into has a limited heat sink (small lake/river?) Regardless, I find it highly dubious that discharging heat _from a data center into an ocean_ is considered pollution by any country in the world. And I'm willing to wager no country in the world charges hefty pollution taxes for doing so. In fact, I'd be surprised if anyone, ever, has been charged pollution taxes for discharging heat into the ocean. The ocean is pretty big. The United States, in an entire year, uses enough energy to only equal 1% of what the Sun does every day in terms of heat loading.

From: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_energy#Energy_from_the_Su...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_energy#Energy_from_the_Sun)

"The total solar energy absorbed by Earth's atmosphere, oceans and land masses is approximately 3,850,000 exajoules (EJ) per year."

1/365 of 3,850,000 exajoules = approx 10,000 exajoules.

From: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joule>, " Energy in the United States used per year is roughly 105 EJ."

<comment><USER11> In the US, the Clean Water Act covers thermal pollution (well, "thermal discharges"), and based on the language it looks like the provisions have been present since 1972. <http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/33/1326.html>

Actually I'm a bit surprised this isn't that well known with the recent focus on nuclear power, since thermal pollution and cooling system intakes that kill fish have been a minor source of controversy for some plants, including Indian Point and Vermont Yankee. Recent news on the latter: [http://vermont4evolution.wordpress.com/2011/04/07/anr-to- rev...](http://vermont4evolution.wordpress.com/2011/04/07/anr-to-review- vermont-yankee%E2%80%99s-water-discharge-permit/)

And just for convenience here are the first few results off Google for thermal pollution:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_pollution>

<http://www.pollutionissues.com/Te-Un/Thermal-Pollution.html>

[http://www.rpi.edu/dept/chem-eng/Biotech- Environ/Environment...](http://www.rpi.edu/dept/chem-eng/Biotech- Environ/Environmental/THERMAL/tte1.htm)

<comment><USER10> Thanks - I think it's important to note that the citations you mentioned don't treat the discharge as "Pollution", per se, but instead discuss what the impacts of the discharge is. That is, there's no limit on what you can discharge (as there is with pollution), but instead a limitation on the damage you can do to the local ecosystem.

I'd be interested in knowing if any country has adapted statutes with regards to treating thermal discharges as pollutants that need to be regulated. I'm guessing, based mostly on the pre-existing scale of heat loading from the sun, that thermal discharges are not considered to be a pollutant by any country, and you are free to discharge as much of it as you want, just as long as you don't damage the fish/shellfish/wildlife in the area. This also suggests if there are no fish/shellfish/wildlife in your discharge area, you are free to discharge as much as you want.

<comment><USER12> The EPA defines "pollutant" for the purposes of the Clean Water Act as:

Pollutant means dredged spoil, solid waste, incinerator residue, filter backwash, sewage, garbage, sewage sludge, munitions, chemical wastes, biological materials, radioactive materials... heat... 14 C.F.R. § 122.2 (definition of "pollutant").

EPA discharge permits, which are required to discharge any pollutant in any amount into US waters, certainly do regulate thermal discharges.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _Which brought up the question: why Prineville. ... low tax rates and friendly climate to business, etc._

In other words, whatever labor is needed is considered unskilled. You found a tech company in the Valley, NYC or Boston because, even though the costs are high, that's where you can attract the talent. When the quality of employees is a non-issue, you may as well place it in a place that's economically depressed, i.e. desperate.

<comment><USER14> I would imagine they will be importing most of the talent -- either from Portland, (inter)nationally, or at least from Bend or Eugene or Corvallis. My guess is that it really is the taxes + land costs + electricity costs + environment (cool high desert is great for evap cooling). Also Oregon has good business taxes, if high income tax. Finally, there is good skiing nearby at Bachelor, nearby Redmond has a great airport, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Just a note: In the high desert, "evaporative cooling" (all those water jets, fans, and filters) are refered to as "swamp coolers". Much more poetic.

<comment><USER15> Y'all should know that we good ol southern folk calls em that too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Note the dual axis solar trackers in the field adjacent the facility. They are from Bend, OR solar startup PV Trackers <http://www.pvtrackers.com/>

</comment><comment><USER17> Being from Oregon, I always get a kick out of seeing this... Facebook, in _Prineville_. It's a small town that's not much of anywhere. Previously, it was known as the HQ of Les Schwab (free beef!) Tires, but even they moved over to Bend.

<comment><USER14> I knew someone who worked at the Les Schwab HQ. She said that as soon as it was seemly after he passed away, they moved the operation to Bend. I can imagine an interview -- "Look, we want to hire you from Stanford Business School to run this multimillion section of our company, but Les is 85 and as soon as he goes we PROMISE we are moving to Bend."

Note -- this may seem sort of horrible, but I am under the impression that Les was the sort of guy to be completely face forward, and could say "Look -- I know you all want to move to a town with a Starbucks, but you just have to wait until I die. And then please keep donating money to the local football team when I go."

<comment><USER17> Looks like he was a pretty good guy: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Schwab>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wonder why there are at least two ridiculously big (like, 4096 pixels wide?) embedded images that are forced to width=500 in the HTML? Ever heard of thumbnails?

</comment><comment><USER19> So this is fun to look at, but considering how datacenters are supposed to be secure, isn't this counterproductive to them?

<comment><USER10> Two facts:

#1. Nobody attacks data centers. No, really, they don't. Have some solid concrete walls, a man trap for people entry. a secure receiving area, and make sure your external doors are locked and you now have more security than is required for any data center short of critical infrastructure (nuclear/air- safety) - and probably enough for that as well.

#2. Even if people attacked data centers (which, honestly, they don't) - <USER2> was nothing in these tours that would increase their odds of successfully doing so. Much easier to just get a job there if you really had some desire to cause damage.

<comment><USER19> I know of two datacenter "attacks".

However they were inside jobs by disgruntled former employees which I know disqualifies my original concern.

<comment><USER10> Oh, I've been involved in several incidents in Data Centers -but they all were a result of people who had been legitimately been let in to the data center. Contractors, Electricians, Customers, Telcos.

In the entire history of data centers, I'd be surprised if there's been more than a dozen external penetrations on a data center that had the following:

      o Solid Concrete walls.
      o Man Traps w/security that vets all entry.
      o External Locking Doors that are always Locked.
      o Secure Shipping and Receiving (Basically Rolling Doors
        that lead into a "Package Trap" for gear where it is
        deboxed)
      o And, I should have also mentioned, customer cages.

On the flip side, I'm betting we could find thousands, and more likely tens of thousands, of incidents related to people who had been let in through proper channels. If you want to invest effort in securing your data center, that's where you'll get the biggest payoff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> would be even more interesting if a tech person could do a tour/photoshoot instead of a non-technical buzzhound.

</comment><comment><USER21> do all/many queries to facebook go to Prineville and how physically? shouldn't datacenters be in the middle of some thick cable hub?

<comment><USER22> The article explains that Prineville is a railroad town.

Some time back most railroads switched to using fibre optics for signalling purposes, not least because copper requires more repeaters and is more likely to be dug up by dickheads.

The amount of bandwidth needed for railroad signalling is pretty minimal, so many railroad companies now moonlight as telcos.

Also, back in the 1990s, a lot of firms laid additional fibre along the railroads because of the existing rights-of-way. Laying alongside a railroad is much faster because the legalities are settled -- you only need to negotiate with one organisation, not every little county you happen to cross.

Consequently there is a lot of spare capacity running along railroads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> _By the way, why did Rackspace send me there? For those who don't know, I'm a full-time employee of Rackspace which is the world's biggest web hosting company._

Scoble has a day job at Rackspace?

<comment><USER4> Yes. Here's what I do at Rackspace: [http://www.quora.com/What-does-Robert- Scoble-do-at-Rackspace...](http://www.quora.com/What-does-Robert-Scoble-do-at- Rackspace?q=Scoble+Rackspace)

<comment><USER23> Nice query-spam suffix. Nothing personal, but it sounds less like a day job and more like a retainer for you to give RS presentations/info based on your normal travels.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Why is a corporate guy wearing a jacket showing the datacenter ? Doesn't represent the startup spirit IMHO.

<comment><USER25> Because that's how Tom dresses. He's not a "corporate guy" but manages the team who runs our data centers and was directly involved in building this one.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do you follow TDD at work? - <AUTHOR> I am learning about TDD and one of the TDD principles I come across again and again is `Test behaviors and not implementation details`. This seems very abstract to me. The behaviors are often very broad in practical use  cases. How do I go about modelling the expected behaviors as tests? Most of the tutorial example revolve around toy problems- which is difficult to map to real world scenarios. Can anyone provide few examples from their experience on how to go about writing TDD with some real-world examples ? <comment><USER2> First and foremost, I does not treat anything as gospel. TDD, like everythingthing else, might not make sense in all scenarios.

I often use TDD for microservices. It forces me to define REST service interface from the perspective of consumers, and only then jump into implementing it. So I write tests that call the service for various use cases, and asserts for returned status code, pay load, and any invariances. All tests fail initially.

It is indeed cumbersome, requires disipline, but it becomes easier with practice. I find, it particularly useful for for microservices. Earlier I would implement, then test, and while doing both will keep figuring a better API and keep changing. With TDD, I upfront get the clarity what functionality I want to implement, so counterintuitively TDD makes me faster.

I use it mostly wherever interfaces are involved. For example, if my service is using a DB, unless the use cases are too simple, I write tests for that API.

Parts that does not have (external) interface, and I want it to be fluid/evolve, I write tests only after implementing. But service level (TDD) tests provide some safety net.

I can see this approach can be extended at all levels, but I am not sure about costs vs. benefits tradeoffs. I think if I do TDD only for macro (process/service/subsystem interfaces kind of things) and some leaf library type modules, tradeoffs are favourable. And if you have TDD for those, the returns of doing it for rest diminish.

Disclaimer: I haven't done detailed study, I am telling my experience, so only one data point.

</comment><comment><USER3> In the real world, most people don't do TDD at work.

In my opinion it's a good tool in some cases, for simple algorithms or when you know exactly what you want. But most of the time it's too cumbersome or totally not practical. So you should not force yourself to do TDD for the sake of it. That's also why you only find toys examples, where TDD is a good idea for them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting perspective. I was watching this talk and thought there should be a way to do this [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZ05e7EMOLM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZ05e7EMOLM)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How do you know what to code if you are not clear about the code's expected behaviour?

This is one of the principles of TDD: be clear about what your code should do (i.e. it's behaviour) before you start coding.

<comment><AUTHOR> I know the exact expected behavior before I start coding. But I am having trouble translating that expected behavior into my TDD test cases. For example. an expected behavior could be the functionality I am building should periodically look into database, compute some metrics and then generate a report. This is a broad piece of expected behavior, unlike a unit test when you test small functionality. As per the TDD principles, it is advised to write tests at your interface and avoid any dependency on your implementation details as these may change in future. I am having a hard time trying to understand how do I do this for the use case I just mentioned ?

<comment><USER4> You can do TDD at any level. You can do TDD for unit tests.

From what you're describing your issue might not be TDD but defining and implementing the right tests for your systems.

I would say, look at your functions. How can you test them? Look at your interfaces. How can you test them?

TDD is just doing that before you code.</comment></comment></comment>


The End of Firefox Windows XP Support - <AUTHOR> https://chuttenblog.wordpress.com/2018/09/05/the-end-of-firefox-windows-xp-support/ <comment><USER2> Wow, hats off for supporting xp until now!

</comment><comment><USER3> Seems to be the last 52 esr for Vista as well as XP. Is it a bit sneaky to just announce the older OS?

When I click on the download for firefox 62 on this old Vista laptop, I just get sent the install file 52.9.0 esr with no warning or explanation.

52 works nice for now for you know, old dog tricks.

<comment><USER4> Vista's market share is a rounding error - it never overtook XP. Today XP adoption is still almost 5x higher. They could have mentioned it, but XP support is by far what people care about.

<comment><USER5> Vista felt incredibly half-baked, and no one I know kept it once Windows 7 became an option.

<comment><USER6> My understanding is basically vista was a huge step forward in the security and stability of the OS, but those changes made traditional backwards compat harder to maintain (eg old software was more likely to break), and the driver model changes made the entire windows driver system waaaaymore secure, at the cost of requiring either substantial rewrites (especially for the gpu drivers) or slow compat layers. After a couple of years drivers etc had settled down so performance horrors had been fixed, and more software was actually doing the right thing, but by then win7 was out.

Because of the problems with it people (incl oems) didn't sell it :-/

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The same goes for Vista, I presume?</comment>


My Rapist Apologized - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/23/opinion/abortion-legislation-rape.html <comment><USER2> The title is vacuous click bait. The subtitle is _I still needed an abortion._

I don't know what would be a good title, but this is super bad for a long list of reasons. At a minimum, adding the subtitle in addition to the actual title would at least indicate what the article is actually addressing, which this title does not do.

Really good quote from the piece:

 _What I did say to my daughter, as she sat perched on our kitchen stool, is that I am filled with gratitude for the women who came before us — women who fought for the right to choose, who dared to imagine that we had the right to control our bodies and who said loudly and proudly that we should not be forced to bear children against our will. Roe v. Wade is rooted in a basic understanding that women's lives matter and that we have rights, needs and interests that don't vanish when we become pregnant. Pregnancy and childbirth can be extremely difficult — emotionally and physically painful — and bringing a child into the world is an enormous responsibility. Deciding whether or not to give birth may be the most important decision a woman will ever make, potentially changing the course of her life forever — or ending it. Black women, in particular, have high mortality rates during pregnancy. In some areas of Mississippi, black and Latina women are more likely than women in some of the poorest countries in the world to experience a pregnancy-related death. Forcing any woman to see a pregnancy to term may be risking her life as well as her physical and emotional health._

It's unfortunate that the title is so very bad. It's actually quite a good piece written by a woman who was in law school when she ended up pregnant due to being raped and chose to end the pregnancy.

<comment><USER3> Send an email to the mods, firstname.lastname@example.com . They sometimes agree to change the title, specially when the alternative is the subtitle. (I've done this a few times before. It's a manual process, so use this only when the title is very bad.)

<comment><USER2> _so use this only when the title is very bad._

My standard: I only email the mods about such when the title is very bad _and the piece has also gotten some traction_. Otherwise, it's an excessive and pointless burden on their time.

I made my opinion clear. It stands here for the edification of whomever happens to see this post on HN. I made the remark when the article was newly submitted, so the submitter was still able to make edits to the title if they wished. They didn't do so.

/my line of thinking as to why I chose to handle this the way I did.

<comment><USER3> OK. I agree. An exception is when the article is interesting, but it has a bad title.

Anyway, I have also posted similar complains in the past without emailing the mods. For example: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18523326](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18523326) (warning: read the comment first :) )</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bing delivers its largest improvement in search experience using Azure GPUs - <AUTHOR> https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/bing-delivers-its-largest-improvement-in-search-experience-using-azure-gpus/ <comment><USER2> Anyone compare Bing vs Google for searches recently?</comment>


Redditor Does 'I have Cancer' AMA & Gets Over $9k in donations - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/urwq3/redditor_with_cancer_does_an_ama_goes_to_bed/

<comment><AUTHOR> Reddit is amazing community for this type of 'grass roots' fundraising. Moving story, and kind of overwhelming response. Hope it turns out well for the guy.

<comment><USER2> An attractive girl is flying out to have sex with him. That's definitely a plus.

<comment><USER3> Is it?</comment></comment></comment>


Bad UX: How Booking.com deceives clients - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@ilyadoroshin/bad-ux-how-booking-com-deceives-clients-5dc9e9485f32 <comment><USER2> Booking is the website with the highest density of dark patterns per pixel I've ever seen.

Red texts hurrying you to make a reservation in virtually every <div> on the page ("only 2 rooms left", "someone just made a booking", "12 people looking", "Booked N times today", "You're lucky to see this room, normally it's booked!", "You're lucky to see it for $50, normally it's more expensive" etc.).

All of those texts are flashing/animating so there's a lot of moving things on the page.

When you're idle for a while and switch the tab in the browser, after coming back you get a popup urging you to make a reservation. Basically you're sweaty after the process.

I reserved my hotel lately with Booking and I will actively try to avoid in the future if possible.

<comment><USER3> I see booking.com's BOT posting the same multiple jobs on @whoishiring's thread every month. Ex: Sept 2017 => [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15148950](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15148950)

Looking at all the negative observations about booking.com here, I'm curious. Has anyone from here actually applied to any of their job postings on @whoishiring ?

How has your experience been?

The one positive thing I've seen is that they mention that they sponsor work visas for their successful candidates (in Europe / Amsterdam location only I think).

<comment><USER4> I've considered applying but I didn't like the idea of becoming a Perl developer to be honest. If they were looking for Go or Python developers I would probably have applied by now as I think Amsterdam is a great city.

<comment><USER5> When I was contacted they where looking for over-all experienced developers. From listening to some of their developers podcasts they found most developer picked up Perl development and didn't have any problems with the language.

At the time was following `Damian Gryski` presentations how they used redis for their cookie management for such a large web-site. Also was reading into their back-end systems and over-all cultural inside the business.

Though was super excited about the interview with them although froze up during the interview process.

Nice to see other people here went through the interview processes and had a great time. I just suck at interviews.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Try searching for a hotel room 6+ months ahead. Oslo end of February 2018.

"14 people are looking right now. In high demand! Booked 124 times in the last 24 hours. Latest Booking: 3 minutes ago"

"In high demand – only 3 rooms left on our site!" "Someone just booked this In high demand!"

"Limited supply in Oslo: 3-star hotels. 4 hotels like Best Western Karl Johan Hotel are already unavailable on our site!"

"3 other people looking now"

While all true it has no connection to how much the hotel might be booked next February.

<comment><USER7> Basically exactly this. I looked at Oshkosh WI for the middle of October next year. Middle of the week, in fact, a Wed night, 1 night, 1 person stay:

"Only 1 room left!"

"Booked 14 times in the last 24 hours!" \- Oh yeah? This hotel in Appleton WI, with 80 rooms, had FOURTEEN rooms booked for a random Wednesday in September 2018 through booking.com ALONE in the last 24 hours.

Screw dark patterns, that's outright deception, if not fraud.

(edited, I originally said October 2018, when in fact my example was for Wed September 19, 2018).

<comment><USER8> To be fair, it said the room has been booked 14 times in 24 hours...not that it had been booked for that specific date 14 times in 24 hours.

<comment><USER9> To be reverse-fair, they know exactly how people will understand it.

<comment><USER10> You'd be surprised. Keep in mind it's a Dutch company, Dutch are very direct and explicit in communication.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I booked a room on booking.com a few weeks ago. There was an accident and I booked a smoking room---technically my fault. But since booking.com is just yet another internet middleman, their response is "you should have looked closer" and the hotel, which didn't have any non-smoking rooms that night, let me know there's no refunds for same-day online booking and told me to get bent (after hours on the phone trying to talk to people). I did not stay in the room, but they already had my money and I'll never see it again...

I really dislike how companies like booking.com (and others) plus physical merchants enable "gotcha capitalism" like this, where each party points at the other and they both keep my money.

booking.com: 'talk to the hotel for a refund'

hotel: 'talk to booking.com for a refund'

<comment> dyu- ``` booking.com: 'talk to the hotel for a refund' hotel: 'talk to booking.com for a refund' ```

Yea I experienced this last March. Charegbacks are not easy for regular consumers. Their customer service are trained to never give refunds (based on first-hand experience).

You'd have to be a valued client of your bank to have a successful dispute. And it is the only way I believe.

Both parties (booking.com and hotel) simply won't budge.

<comment><USER12> -

<comment><USER13> Europeans can charge back just fine.

<comment><USER14> Not always. If a firm wants to avoid that, it's not too hard to do so - it's got to make sure that the transfer was customer initiated, because those aren't necessarily reversible. There are other exceptions too, some of which are probably regional, non-EU-wide. SEPA isn't implemented identically across the EU, incidentally, so not just are the rules locally interpreted, the tech is too; so none of this is quite as simple as it seems it should be.

And then of course there's the fact that reversing charges doesn't change legal liabilities, so this isn't a protection you can rely on if the receiver feels they're in the right and are willing to take (sometimes fairly simple) legal steps.

It's definitely still a nice protection to have, since at least it places some burden of proof on the recipient.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> These dark patterns are the result of successful A/B tests. They don't do it because they enjoy it. They do it because the data says the platform performs better. And I know this because I met dozens of Perl developers at conferences and I asked them explicitly about the FOMO spreading.

The question is: how can one measure the long term impact these dark patterns have on future sales?

I do my best to avoid using booking.com precisely because of these dark patterns. I love Perl, there are just a few big companies that are still using Perl as their main backend technology and whenever I can I try to give them money. Especially when they're getting involved in the community and are trying to grow the ecosystem like booking does. But when their web site tries to apply the cheapest manipulation tricks on me, I avoid them.

<comment><USER16> You let the backend stack of a site determine if you visit it or not?

<comment><USER17> Why not? I'd be more inclined to give my money to a company too, if I knew they were playing nicely in the community, and contributing positively to the ecosystem of one of my own personal pet projects.

It's not a standard that most people will use to decide, but most people don't love software... but if you do love your software and it's not leading-edge anymore (or even if it is, I don't know much about modern Perl development and I assume that is because it's unfashionable...) you want companies that also love that software to do well, and keep putting their improvements back into the upstreams.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "looks like some kind of ab testing bug or round-robin servers."

Definitively AB testing. The website runs hundreds of experiments simultaneously, on a few pages. Although in theory all the experiments are independent in practice it is often not the case and some bugs show only in some combination of 2 or more experiments. Especially, in such crowded web pages, even technically distinct experiments influence each others UX wise, which can cause bugs of their own (like, two distinct experiments displaying two seemingly contradictory messages). Eventually, the mix of experiments a given user is subjected to can look a lot like an outright lie or bug or scam or deceptive practice (especially when it's a combination of small dark patterns of course), and I think that's what's happening here.

</comment><comment><USER19> I was booking a place in Budapest this summer on Booking.com, and there was a specific area I wanted to be in. I searched for that area and found a place that was marked as having a certain location that was perfect for me. Upon arriving, it turns out this was just where their "main office" was, and the specific apartment I was renting was situated in a different area, several tram rides away. I tried to get my money back for this clear deception but to no avail.

Their excuse? The real address was available to me in my _confirmation email_ , i.e. after I had already paid. If you can't trust their map, it serves no purpose whatsoever. A few weeks later I was trying to find the listing but it appears to have been removed.

I'd switch in an instant if someone built a useful alternative to Booking. Agoda is the same deal as far as I can tell, and it is owned by the same parent company.

EDIT: Airbnb is great - I use it a lot, more than Booking - but sometimes you just want a more professionally run hotel, hostel or apartment. In fact, after cancelling that place I ended up booking a studio with Airbnb at the last minute.

<comment><USER20> When you reserve with Booking.com, they don't even charge your credit card. At least that's how it has been the last 100 times when I used them. How come it was different this time?

<comment><USER21> They offer both types of bookings. Some are paid online immediately, others are paid at the hotel in checkout.

Generally speaking if it's not a flexible/refundable rate you will probably pay online from what i noticed but don't quote me on that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've been burned by booking.com's 'Free Cancellation' UI shenanigans a couple of times. In both instances I swear that I saw the free cancellation banner next to the room I'm reserving. Instantly after reservation, I receive an email saying 'non-refundable', or $400 fee for cancellation. The first time I thought I made a mistake, but when my wife saw the same thing... well, something fishy is going on.

<comment> dyu- It is deception at it's finest. My siblings experienced this first hand and I told them, no more booking.com, ever.

Also, the cancellation was 1 month away from actual booking but they do not care. They just want to decieve (scam?) you and get your money.

Luckily, the bank sided with us. The dispute is a sure process as long as they value you as a customer.

<comment><USER23> Hm hm. Chrome extension that takes a screenshot of every page you visit on certain sites (and adds the hashes to a blockchain for further proof).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Using the online travel gangsters has been the worst part of travelling for years. Extorting business practices against small hotels, high fees, and when you check the small print/certificate you understand that profits go to a tax evasion paradise. If something goes wrong for whatever reason their so-called customer service is of no help whatsoever. Only one room left is not even technically lying. It just means that small hotels give rooms only one by one to the extorters, hoping to sell as many of them via a cheaper channel. Unfortunately it is not easy to find a small hotel directly on the web, search results a completely polluted by booking sites. In that context dark patterns on their sites are just a minor detail, I don't expect any better from companies with such ethics.

</comment><comment><USER25> The only time I used booking.com, the hotel wouldn't honor my reservation, even though I showed them the booking confirmation number. They were sold out and simply said "not my problem, third party and we never got it". Who knows who's fault it was but with something as crucial as a hotel in a specific location/date I tend to just book through the actual hotel site from now on.

<comment><USER26> If you are booking with a chain you usually get better perks by booking through their site, especially if you are a loyalty member (even the most basic level often gives perks so it's worth signing up). Some are even cheaper by booking directly (e.g. Accor group).

The place where booking.com really shines is for individual hotels and smaller properties like bed and breakfasts - often they only use one provider and it's usually booking.com/Priceline (at least here in Europe). You could just call them directly once you've found it though...

<comment><USER27> They're cheaper directly because booking.com takes 15 or 18% comission.

<comment><USER28> You would think so, but I travel a lot and it's been extremely rare that the price in cash at the hotel is less than Booking.com's price.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I gave up online vacation reservations this year. This is the second time I wasted hours on several portals before I've found one that worked in a decent way and had a useful choice. When I've finally found a destination, I tried to book the trips I've found and they all have been "sold out". When I tried the same criteria again, I got the same results but more expensive. Again sold out when I clicked any of them. Did it one more time, same results.

Went to a travel agency in a mall nearby. Got a better price and even some useful hints as where to go to when I'm there.

I'll be back when you have that AI travel agent...

<comment><USER30> Given the state of affairs with online reservations, going to your local travel agency is is undeniably the future. Oh the irony.

<comment><USER31> I tried to book my honeymoon with a travel agent. We figured we could use some good advice, and (at least in canada) when you book with them you get some bonus insurance.

They basically told me it wasn't worth their time unless we were booking a cruise.

<comment><USER29> > They basically told me it wasn't worth their time unless we were booking a > cruise.

How is this even possible? Did you take away their time? Were there people waiting who would book a cruise?

My experience above is from Germany.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Even as a host using booking.com I dislike many shady things they put you through but at the end of the day these dark patterns must work in practice as there is no other platform that delivers even closely as many guests as booking.com.

<comment><USER33> What are some alternative sites that send you guests? I have used hotels.com sometimes (has dark patterns too, but fewer of them). I would definitely prefer using something that was more...sensible.

I would naïvely think that booking directly with hotels would be cheapest, but I have definitely seen deals on these aggregators that were unavailable on the same hotel's own site – which is the only reason I even think about using them.

<comment><USER30> Oh, don't get me started on hotels.com. It's seems to be quite common for hotels.com to sell you the room _with_ breakfast (in countries where breakfast typically is included) but when you get the confirmation, there's no mention of any breakfast and the booking code is for a room without breakfast. So when you arrive at the hotel and they say: "Nope, breakfast is not included" you have nothing to prove that you booked _with_ breakfast, in fact, to the hotel your reservation is the very definition of a no-breakfast reservation.

This happened to me and we had to run through a lot of hoops to eventually get hotels.com to reimburse us. It helped that we had called them for parts of our reservation because all calls are recorded and the operator clearly stated that breakfast was included.

The same thing happened to my father who was a bit more alert and noted the missing breakfast from the confirmation. He then had to call them something like five times for a confirmation that _actually_ said breakfast was included. Each time they sent him a new reservation but it wasn't until the last call it did say breakfast was included.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> slipstream- What do you expect, from an entity that advertises via spreading malware/PUPs?

[https://blog.malwarebytes.com/detections/pup-optional- bookin...](https://blog.malwarebytes.com/detections/pup-optional-booking/)

<comment><USER34> " _Potentially_ Unwanted Program"? That's a polite way of putting it.

> PUP.Optional.Booking

> This is the detection for a family of potentially unwanted programs (PUPs) > that show advertisements hailing from the booking.com domain. This PUP > predominantly uses scheduled tasks to trigger the advertisements.

Wouldn't mind seeing that looks like. Regardless, "scheduled tasks" definitely sounds like unsolicited EXE execution, which is firmly on the "no thanks" side of shady.

<comment> slipstream- as InfoSec Taylor Swift once said, "potentially unwanted programs" are just malware with a legal team.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This happened to me with Expedia. They advertised a lower rate on a different room at the hotel I was looking at... Didn't catch until after I checked out that the advertisement was for a different day than my search results. (Because obviously I'm just as happy to stay at a random hotel just off the interstate in rural Ohio a week after my trip as during it?)

Thankfully, Expedia has good customer service and fixed things for me, even though it was not a cancelable reservation.

<comment><USER36> Same issue. Went up to Dallas for a few days to avoid Harvey floods, and the $99 site rate increased to $147 on the weekends.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> It's a FOMO machine.

I use it to find places, filtering by "wifi available", and then contact them directly.

<comment><USER38> Basically this. I use booking as the yellow pages, you search for the hotels you want and give them a call directly.

Cheaper prices and no cuts for parasite middleman.

<comment><USER39> So parasite middleman is for you a company that enables you to find those hotels in the first place?

Do you find all middleman parasitic or is there something else booking should do to stop being in this group?

<comment><USER37> I've had some bad experiences with third parties (middlemen) when booking hotels online. Anytime there is a problem, the other two parties point the fingers at each other, and you, the customer, is left to deal with it. I don't find all middlemen parasitic, but in this case, it's less risk for me to deal directly.

Sometimes only booking.com has rooms and the hotel site itself doesn't, and in that case, I will still use booking.com.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Can someone actually comment on the issue in the article instead of dropping random anecdotes? Sounds like a bug rather than a dark pattern?

EDIT: The submission title said something about Booking.com using dark patterns but it has been changed now.

</comment><comment><USER41> I think that I've faced a similar issue with a non-cancelable room. The date was changed into a random one.

Not a big loss, but I've stopped using their services since.

<comment><USER42> I've noticed they switch between DD/MM/YYYY and MM/DD/YYYY in the date boxes and so it'll look right but be there wrong date due to the alternative format

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> My wife and I use Windham Group, and use their app. Very nice booking experience. And if we're driving late we can push a button on the app and a reservation specialist finds us the nearest available room and calls us with the booking. The app also gives a maps link.

</comment><comment><USER44> Obviously I'm an odd one out – I quite like booking.com. Sure, it'd probably be a bit nicer if it didn't have all the flashing red shit everywhere, but broadly speaking I've found it's pretty useful for locating hotels and getting the details in a consistent manner. I've never had a booking made through it cancelled or anything like that, and the prices haven't been obviously inflated versus those offered booking directly with the hotel.

Obviously it sounds like other have had a worse experience…

</comment><comment><USER45> How about calling it malicious UX? Bad is not a strong enough word. Or maybe hateful, or exploitive.

</comment><comment><USER46> What are the realistic alternatives to Booking.com though?

When I'm planning a journey the reviews and search by area features of Booking.com make it possible for me to gain some understanding of going rates and hotel quality, but the process leaves a lot to be desired for both me, the customer, and the hotel.

I can search with Booking.com yet book directly with the hotel, but that means I can't review the property and help others.

</comment><comment><USER47> One time we canceled a hotel with free cancelation but the hotel chared us 1100$ anyway. (why the hell did the hotel had our credit card details?!) We contacted booking.com and asked to get a refund, and they said we are right but it takes time... So we contacted Mastercard and said that booking.com won't refund us. Mastercard checked with the hotel and when they didn't get a good enough answer from them they refunded us 1100$. Then booking.com followed up on our earlier request for refund and also didn't get a good enough answer from the hotel so they refunded us 1100$ from their money...

Sometime after that we got charged 1100$ by Mastercard... I think that booking.com got a complaint from the hotel that Mastercard reverted the charge and then opened a dispute with Mastercard to get their 1100$ that they refunded us...

At least now I know to just go and tell Mastercard every time I get a little resistance from some business who won't rightfully refund me.

</comment><comment><USER48> Could someone explain to me any reason why it would be better to book through any third party instead of directly through the hotel?

<comment><USER49> It's frequently cheaper through the aggregator. The aggregators force the hotels to sign a contract stating that they won't sell cheaper on their own site and since you seem specifically interested in their hotel (maybe you're a business traveler with a points card) they have less reason to compete on price.

<comment><USER10> This is no longer true anymore as EU regulations recently forbid that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Besides dark patterns, there is something else that annoys me even more: the cluttered and inconsistency of the UI itself.

It is not possible or really not intuitive to do something like entering a couple of places you would potentially want to go to, select 2 adults and 3 children, filter them on criteria like free parking, free wifi and sort the results on price.

While this sounds like a pretty common pattern, the experience is really bad. Sorting is messed up by sponsored hotels, not consistent on the price of a room or the room I configured or the price is the cheapest room without wifi...

On top of it, they run all kind of experiments. This causes more confusion for me, because I just learned to do something in a specific way.

I still use it, not because of the great usability or great service but because there are no real better alternatives.

</comment><comment><USER51> Ha. As someone on the other side of this, we used to spoon feed availability to OTAs that do this. Set up a competitive price, and it worked wonders. Now they just took it to another level, which would make that technique work even better, Booking sites never know the exact availability of any property. It could look like only a couple left, but there could be blocks, cancellations, who knows why the hotel decided not to give all the rooms. That is part of the inspiration behind priceling getting hotelnija and expedia releasing its own. Even hostelworld had their own PMS for years. So dont believe when there is only a few left.

</comment><comment><USER52> The annoyances described by the author sounded like they relied on Javascript and graphics.

This made me wonder if the site relies on Javascript or graphics.

As an experiment, I just wrote a small POC command line script for

      1. searching for hotels by keyword

      2. obtaining the hotel ids

      3. searching availability using the hotel id

      4. printing prices, etc.

If anyone wants this I will share it.

Easily adaptable to bulk searching, producing CSV, etc.

Again, this site _does not_ require Javascript or graphics for getting price lists.

Easy to avoid the "dark patterns" and just retrieve the desired data.

I use a text-only browser.

</comment><comment><USER53> I just did a booking through them and noticed that the price changed per the selected language, the difference was 124 vs 169 (eng).

Booking in english gives you quite the disadvantage.

</comment><comment><USER54> I have heard from some people that booking.com takes such a high percentage that you can call some hotels and get a better price going directly.

</comment><comment><USER55> Sadly I fell for the various tricks described here and hastily booked a room on holiday recently.

Having said that, my family of 4 adults with different credit cards made excellent use of their generous £15 referral reward kicking back both ways to save a significant amount on the total booking cost.

</comment><comment><USER56> I tried to book a holiday last year and had the feeling basically all booking sites are broken.

No where did anyone show me the real price of what I was buying.

</comment><comment><USER57> booking.com is a deliberate scam. Their business model is to lock customer into reservation that he would have to cancel and booking.com will keep the money.

Booking.com puts a lot of pressure (through dark UI patterns) to make a reservation ASAP promising that you can cancel at any time. In many cases cancellation simply isn't possible - too late etc.. They are just keeping the money and this is exactly what their business model is after.

<comment><USER18> No this is ridiculously far from the truth.

They make an awfull lot of money selling actual room nights (think Google- scale a lot, per employee, although the money culture in both firms are opposite to each other), and actually do cancel bookings and even sometime refund non cancelable ones. They are definitively harsh on the business side, especially when negotiating commissions with hotels, especially since it's always easy to justify ("that's for our users"). But this is not a scam.

You might have had a bad experience. No amount of money spent on customer care will ever balance out a big firm being 100% money driven as opposed to reputation driven, and fundamentally not caring for an individual user. So yes when you are that one user who felt through the cracks it feels bad indeed.

<comment> dyu- ```No this is ridiculously far from the truth.```

Easy to say for someone who haven't experienced their deception first hand.

GP is correct. That is part of their scheme to extract more revenue.

<comment><USER18> I had actually. Once, because of their website insisting on showing dates for which there are availabilities, I ended up booking for the wrong days, something that I could not cancel. At the time I though I made the mistake so didn't complain. Only later did I realize that's how the website works (they force a date in the web session because it converts better). Had I given them a call at the time, chances are that they would have refund me, but this also I learnt only later.

I've also been "stolen" a car booking on rentalcars once, another company belonging to Priceline. I'm not as familiar with rentalcars as I am with booking so can't be as confident but even in that case I doubt the business plan is based on such erroneous bookings. For sure, the incentive to fight fraud they are victim of is bigger than the incentive to fix the UX dark patterns that are causing the erroneous bookings and eventually bring them some extra profit.

Also, let's not forget that companies abusing dark patterns or being slow to fix "bugs" when they convert well, are not merely soulless organisations driven by profit. They are made of teams driven by OKRs, which are made of individuals driven by their desire to fit in the culture (or their perception of it).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Never use booking.com not only dark patterns but when you finally get it "right" (I was nearly caught out) their price is way higher than everyone else anyway. Scumbags

<comment><USER10> This isn't true, I've used it since 2011 and for more than 30 reservations and even compare using meta-aggregators like HotelsCombined and whenever Booking has the room and it's same price or cheaper than others. It may happen that they don't have a room while other websites do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> in my previous trips i have never seen a room rate at one of these booking type websites that i wasn't able to get by going directly to the hotel website or by phoning them.

they are parasites.

</comment><comment><USER60> Is 'dark UX patterns' the new meme for something that has already been around for >15 years? <insert bold red marquee here></comment>


Idea validation: How to find users to talk to? - <AUTHOR> The best way to validate your idea is to talk to your potential users. Where do I find them and how do I approach them? <comment><USER2> This sounds simple, and in theory it is, but go to where your potential users are. A lot harder to execute than to do, to be honest. So what do I mean by that - I mean if your product is B2C then go to where those consumers are. But wait - segment your target users first. What demographics are they? Where can you find them when they're in their idle time? Is it a park? Is it a pet store? Is it in at the gym?

If you're looking for tips in how to approach, I like to reference [http://www.designkit.org/](http://www.designkit.org/) for practical steps and directions. If you're nervous about finding users still, and want them to come to you, you'll probably have to pay for that privilege but luckily you can use something like ([https://www.userinterviews.com/signup/MTI3Ni0x](https://www.userinterviews.com/signup/MTI3Ni0x)) Full disclosure - if you sign up for that link you'll get 3 free user interview sessions (but you'll still have to pay the users themselves) and I'll get 3 free participants too for referral.

End of the day though, you've got to just suck it up and just walk to someone and put yourself out there. I like to think of it as you're acting like you're a confident, approachable person who's got a really interesting thing to talk to them about. It helps me overcome my shyness that's my "normal" self.

Also, a must do though, is think through beforehand what you want to ask them. Create a script that way you can standardize what you want to cover. You can do some test runs of these scripts with friends who would most resemble your users. That way you can build up confidence in your delivery and content.

Best of luck!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> any insights?</comment>


Ask HN:  What's with all the Vim posts lately? - <AUTHOR>

It's great; we get it. <comment><USER2> I hope Vim isn't becoming a false icon, a part of some sort of hipster / brogrammer paradigm for what to look for in or symbols that a person is a ninja/rockstar/neckbeard/ or whatever the hell else they are calling it today.

I realize startups are HOT again and this sort of thing is bound to happen. I just hope that this too shall pass.

<comment><USER3> I thought we already found the minimum standard when it comes to judging ones editor of choice:

Textmate/Sublime/Notepad++(if on windows)

Being snarky past that is really uncalled for, no?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I seems to me as it's "making a comeback". Although it never left, for years I didn't hear much about it. Maybe the new generation of programmers are seeing the old guys use it and are just blogging more about it.

I personally use Vim and love it, so I don't mind reading the posts or watching the screencasts.

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't use it, don't want to use it, don't need to use it.

I use my hands to type. Greatest editor there is.

<comment><USER6> That doesn't make any sense... You just "type" and it "magically" works and goes where it needs to?

<comment><USER5> For one project is Sublime, for one is Aptana, for another it could be VS. Who cares? In the end, as I see it at least, all it comes down to is you getting the job done.

<comment><USER7> Finding a great tool and sticking to it means you're then free to focus on work, not process. While I completely agree one shouldn't be enslaved to their tools (and, thus, capable to work with nearly anything and everything) it isn't true that any tool is a good tool. Mastering one means you're vastly superior at the work you do when using said tool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> most active discussion groups have "firework" issues where one post triggers a burst of similar posts that flare up briefly and then sink back into the background noise. vim happens to be the topic du jour.</comment>


2M for a personal flying device - <AUTHOR> http://goflyprize.com <comment><AUTHOR> I would love to join a team and participate</comment>


SpaceX reports raising a billion dollars for Starlink and Starship projects - <AUTHOR> https://finance.yahoo.com/news/spacex-reports-raising-billion-dollars-193047911.html <comment><USER2> Hopefully this will help break the hellish monopolies imposed now by the big cable companies!</comment>


Ask HN: Why is AllRecipes.com so fast (Featured in those new Chrome Ads)? - <AUTHOR>

After watching the Chrome Ads, i jumped over to the site and by golly, it really flies. Do you have any idea what they're running? I checked google/stackoverflow/linkedin for clues but came up with nothing. <comment><USER2> Looks like ASP.NET from the .aspx file extensions

See Netcraft: [http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://allrecipe...](http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://allrecipes.com)

Presumably this is some of the hardware they are using: <http://www.f5.com/products/big-ip/>

Content Delivery Network for media (images, css, js): [http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://images.me...](http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://images.media- allrecipes.com) <http://www.limelightnetworks.com/>

You are correct, it is quite fast.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good idea in using Netcraft. This certainly makes some sense. As AllRecipes is almost a decade old and based in Seattle, i can understand why they are on a Microsoft Stack.

Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> One big thing: it doesn't seem to have much in the way of off-site ads/analytics: almost everything on the page is from allreciptes.com.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yeah, that's interesting. One thing to note is that they don't sprite their small images, which is one of the first things people recommend for improving page load time.</comment>


Why are true and false so large? - <AUTHOR> https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/419697/why-are-true-and-false-so-large <comment><USER2> > Alas, the direct question to the answer why are true and false so large? > could be, because there are not anymore so pressing reasons to care about > their top performance...26KB for the kind of hardware we have nowadays is > insignificant. Space is not at premium for the typical server/desktop > anymore, and they do not even bother anymore to use the same binary for > false and true, as it is just deployed twice in distributions using > coreutils.

As a web developer on HN, I'm experiencing some schadenfreude right about now.

</comment><comment><USER3> Actually kind of surprising that they're around 28KB.

But the TLDR is "almost 90% of the size of the binary, is indeed extra libraries/elf metadata."

and also that the executables are rarely used because true and false are shell built-ins.</comment>


The Beginner's Guide to Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://www.michaelhyatt.com/fromwhereisit/2008/05/the-beginners-g.html

<comment><USER2> Looks kind of like social bait/content text generation for the blogosphere. He's probably hoping to become THE article for Twitter noobs in Google search. Smart move I would say, verbose articles like this appeal to the 'learn from a book' people.

<comment><USER3> Oh yea, they definitely have appeal up until the very point where they start putting out more noise than beneficial information when the attention goes to his head. Which is just where I think this guy is headed.

Hate to sound like a pessimist, but sometimes it's a necessary evil.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Pointlessly verbose rewrite of the Twitter FAQ? Looks like it.</comment>


New Coke Didn't Fail. It Was Murdered - <AUTHOR> https://www.motherjones.com/food/2019/07/what-if-weve-all-been-wrong-about-what-killed-new-coke/ <comment><USER2> The crime scene was a sticky mess.</comment>


How to Start Your First Podcast (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://www.hanselman.com/blog/HowToStartYourFirstPodcastEquipmentEditingPublishingAndMore.aspx <comment><USER2> As someone who records a lot of different amateur voice people daily for language courses, I'd have to disagree with some of this.

It's generally an OK guide, but I would suggest the mic recommendations are incorrect. I'd like to see an AT2020 USB in the mid-range and Heil PR-40 on the higher end. It's cheaper and significantly better sound. I own the H4N for mobile recording, but the quality really doesn't come close to a proper broadcast mic like Shure SM7B or the Heil. You can hear the Heil from a lot of pro podcasters and the SM7B on Marc Maron's WTF and a lot of radio hosts.

It also glosses over the use of mic arms, pop filters in getting pro sound. It's geared towards on-the-go recording and the quality will be nothing like a studio result.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think Hanselman does a lot of his recording outside of a dedicated studio these days. In studio recording of podcasts is a whole nother level of commitment and cost.

<comment><USER2> Sure! But the two mics I mentioned don't require a studio environment to sound good. Almost any reasonable room will do. They can be had for around the same price as the setup mentioned in the article.

Sound quality is king in podcasting! Anyone thinking of doing a solo podcast from home/office would be better steered towards something like the AT2020 for mid range or PR-40 or SM7B for a comparably equal investment compared to the mobile gear mentioned in the article.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wasn't clear. I was responding to "nothing like studio quality".

I listen to a fair amount podcasts while I drive. My belief is that though poor sound quality can turn listeners away, poor content will insure that there are few listeners or none. I am willing to put up with sound quality issues for good content. I'll skip episodes with mediocre content.

YMMV.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is pretty useful. I've considered starting various podcasts on occasion just to improve my own presentation skills, and it looks like this would be a great way to optimize that process.

<comment><USER4> For an easy podcast production tool that can record interviews with WebRTC, check out Epishow:

[https://www.epishow.com](https://www.epishow.com)</comment></comment>


Double Dip: Would China Bail Out the Global Economy Again? - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2011/08/08/double-dip-will-china-bail-out-the-global-economy-again/

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405311190448090457649...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904480904576497962651886944.html)</comment>


Today: Palo Alto Startup Moving Sale - <AUTHOR>

Our landlord just told us that we need to move in a hurry, so we're considering selling a bunch of things to make it easier. Our office is located (at least for a few more days) near the corner of Junipero Serra and Page Mill Road.
Here's what we've got:
- (6) Aeron (B) Chairs of various colors: gray, black, teal, blue @ $450.00 each
- (5) All-in-one 6'-tall touchscreen kiosks @ $400.00 each
- (1) HP LaserJet P4515n printer (http://www.staples.com/HP-LaserJet-P4515n-Printer/product_740115)
- (2) HP LaserJet 2055dn printers (http://www.shopping.hp.com/product/printer/LaserJet/1/storefronts/CE459A%2523ABA)
- (1) Peru Jazz Beach Double Coil (Napa) Beige Futon (http://www.thefutonshop.com/Sofa-Bed-Peru-Jazz-Beach-Lifestyle-Solutions/p/656/2774) @ $475.00
- (1) Pop-Up Trade Show Display Booth @ $300.00
- (1) Sony Trinitron WEGA 24" 24FV12 CRT TV @ $30.00
- (1) Sony DVD Player @ $20.00
- (1) Sony VCR @ $15.00 - (9) Dell 17" LCD Monitors with stands and VGA/DVI cables @ $60.00 each
- (3) Gateway 17" LCD Monitors with stands and VGA cables @ $60.00 each
- (2) 17" Black USB Elo Touchscreen monitors @ $160.00 each
- (2) 15" Black USB Elo Touchscreen monitors @ $125.00 each
- (2) 15" White Serial Elo Touchscreen monitors @ $125.00 each
- (4) Metal Folding Chairs
- (3) IKEA White GALANT tables with adjustable-height gray / chrome legs @ $120.00 each
- (2) IKEA White GALANT corner tables with adjustable-height gray / chrome legs @ $180.00 each
- (1) Xerox Phaser 6180MFP/N multi-function color laser printer / scanner / copier / fax
- (1) Samsonite 6' folding table
- (2) 4' folding tables
- (3) 4' x 6' Whiteboards @ $50.00 each
- (2) Staples Beige 4-Drawer Filing Cabinets
If anything above seems interesting, let me know at aarong at thinkcomputer.com. <comment><USER2> What's the story behind the move? Out of business or just moving somewhere else?

<comment><AUTHOR> We're still in business.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Log based forms for static sites - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/knowblcluster/log-based-static-contact-form <comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys, looking for as much feedback as possible, to improve not only this repo, but generally as well.

Thanks.</comment>


Handling 100,000 pins on an iOS map at 60fps - <AUTHOR> http://applidium.com/en/news/free_those_pins/

<comment><USER2> Totally misleading headline. This is using clustering so there are not 100000 pins displayed but low numbers of them. I don't mean to belittle the speed of the clustering algorithms (I have no idea) but I expected something much different.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, 100'000 pins displayed simultaneously on a map wouldn't be very readable, would it? Out of curiosity, what did you expect?

<comment> shock-value Yeah I was initially thinking of something like desktop Google Maps where if you search "food manhattan" you get hundreds of clickable points. Obviously as you said that wouldn't scale (in a user experience sense) to hundreds of thousands though!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> For another approach to this problem, see the Urbanspoon iPad app. It shows every restaurant in a city, drawing them as dots in a map overlay then swapping for pins when you zoom in enough that a manageable number would be shown.

This doesn't deal with clustering, of course. It's a different UI solution.

</comment><comment><USER4> Which specific dataset from Paris' Open data are you mapping?

<comment><AUTHOR> This one: [http://opendata.paris.fr/opendata/jsp/site/Portal.jsp?docume...](http://opendata.paris.fr/opendata/jsp/site/Portal.jsp?document_id=96&portlet_id=102)

<comment><USER4> You should package an app out of that. iTrashcan? :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Good to see companies sharing great code! Thanks Applidium!

<comment><AUTHOR> You're welcome! Don't hesitate to submit bug reports or enhancement requests :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is fantastic. Opens up all kinds of new ways to use maps when you can have this much location specific data without cluttering or slowing the UI.

<comment><USER7> There is also Marker Clusterer for this: [http://google-maps-utility- library-v3.googlecode.com/svn/tru...](http://google-maps-utility- library-v3.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/markerclusterer/docs/examples.html)

I very much like this fresh solution though, particularly fond of the animation.</comment></comment>


Blockchain Will Revolutionize the Commercial Real Estate Industry - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/realcrowd/blockchain-will-revolutionize-the-commercial-real-estate-industry-6031a11f4e48 <comment><USER2> It had better. Realtors are just middlemen anyway.</comment>


Facebook Data Team: What's on your mind? - <AUTHOR> http://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-data-team/whats-on-your-mind/477517358858

<comment><USER2> I love this OkCupid-esqe postings although I think Facebook could do a lot better but maybe they're concern about people's reactions to what they know.

<comment><USER3> (I work on this team at Facebook)

There are definitely sensitive issues, but IMO the limiting factor to putting out more cool analyses is that packaging these up for public consumption takes time and effort, and there is a _lot_ on our plate for a small team. Lisa (the author) was a very smart and productive intern.

If you're qualified and want to help, drop me a line or go to facebook.com/careers

<comment><USER4> _Slightly less intuitive is the fact that positive emotional updates receive fewer comments (perhaps there's nothing more to say) whereas negative emotional updates receive more comments (perhaps as a consolation)._

This is not so unexpected, given the like button. If I post a message about getting a new dog, my friends can just like it without saying anything. If I say my dog is dying, the only way to show support is by writing something. There is no sympathise or dislike button. This confirms that if you give people shortcuts for being nice, they will gladly take them.

I'm making a tool which might help your team do such analyses faster. I just sent you a message on Facebook. My contact details are also in my profile.

<comment><USER3> Not sure why, but I didn't get your message on Facebook.

<comment><USER4> That's strange. It is showing in my sent messages. Anyway, here's what I wrote:

Hey Venky,

I'm the founder of Pretty Graph (<http://prettygraph.com/>), a simple web- based tool for making graphs.

I noticed that your data team uses R for their analysis and graphs. Making good looking graphs can be a big time sink in R. When you are trying to publish blog posts, you want to make your graphs look nice and web-friendly.

Pretty Graph also uses R on the backend, but makes creating complicated graphs a lot easier and faster. You can import data in various formats and get a graph ready to publish in a few minutes. So your team can spend more time analysing the data rather than adjusting margins, title sizes and colours.

If it's something that interests your team, I'd love to hear from them.

Thanks, Hrishi

Feel free to reply to firstname.lastname@example.com.

<comment><USER3> Thanks, that's cool. I'll post it on our team group.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm sure those graphs are interesting, but they're so small that I can't read them, at all.

<comment><USER6> It seems that if you open them in a new window and they will be their true (larger) size.

<comment><USER7> Why can't I middle-click on them then?

My eyes hurt from trying to read them. :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What's the deal with Tumblr, GoodReads et. al no longer being allowed in Facebook?

</comment><comment><USER9> hmmm... are they trying to do Google (and loose their social mojo)?</comment>


ASK HN: Help name an IT consultancy company - <AUTHOR> He everyone! We are a group of developers from Russia planning to establish an IT consultancy firm. And we are stuck with the name. We want to build an internationall company and it should sound good for english-speaking audience too. Any short, fancy, memorable, catchy, related to tech and not very boared name suggestion will be very approciated. Thanks everybody in advance! <comment><USER2> KGB</comment>


Daytum iPhone app collates your personal statistics - <AUTHOR> http://daytum.com/about/daytum

<comment><USER2> <http://mybew.com> (my startup) does this too (in french only for the moment) but I think we made a better job at making simpler interfaces. Plus on MYBEW, you can compare your statistics to other groups of people (all men, all women, etc).

<comment><AUTHOR> Too bad it's in french only. How hard would it be to have a simple english version of the site?

<comment><USER2> We are actually working on an english version but the translation is very bad for the moment, and needs a lot of additional work. If you are curious you can check it out here : <http://mybew.com/login/lang/en>

<comment><AUTHOR> Not bad! At least I got the gist of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> What this product needs is random polling, such as asking you between specified intervals a specified question such as, "what is your mood?". This would prevent selection bias and probably yield surprising insights about times of day.

</comment><comment><USER4> There's this other app called Dayta which basically does the same thing, although I'm not sure if the person that made it is actively maintaining it. What I'd really like is some way to do interesting correlations between some of the plots I make. Simplistically, lets say I plot exercise, caffiene, hours worked and amount of sleep, we could see some interesting correlations emerge. The app doesn't let me do that yet!

</comment><comment><USER5> Used daytum for about 6 months last year. Worked well for me, but my advice would be to keep it simple for two reasons.

1) The more you try to track, the harder it is to remember to update it. I started spending more time updating Daytum than I did trying to complete the things I was tracking.

2) Staying simple keeps you in the free version of the software. :)

</comment><comment><USER6> Wonderful. This and WakeMate track data that are immediately relevant to the user. The app is simple but the visualizations are a nice touch. Great free app.

Data from the consumer, for the consumer. Interesting stuff!

</comment><comment><USER7> I recently started using it and so far I like it. 1 feature I'd like to add to it is a calendar like interface a la Streaks app on iPhone.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is my eventual goal for www.thoughtplot.org - right now, it can track your mood, but I am working to extend it so you can use it to track arbitrary variables.

<comment><USER4> Really neat! I wanted to do the exact same thing when I started using this other tracking app called Dayta. Any chances of a mobile app?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> A year or so ago a mate of mine had a startup that wanted to do this exact same thing. That whole team eventually decided college was more important.

I'm glad someone finally made this, because I sure as hell have been wanting it for a while.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just wondering, what would be the most vital things you'd track?

<comment><USER9> Right now I'm using something to track how much time I spend on things and an app to track expenses.

I'd love a simpler way to track time, Daytum unfortunately doesn't look to be it, but seems like a good way to monitor the amount of drugs I consume (caffeine). Mostly to try figure out whether my hunch that stress increases my caffeine intake is correct.

Another thing I'd love to track is how many situps/pushups/etc. I do per day.

Other than that, who knows, I've never done serious data collection about myself before :)</comment></comment></comment>


BigCommerce S1 - <AUTHOR> https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1626450/000119312520191966/d844671ds1.htm <comment><USER2> I actually helped my previous company migrate from Magento to BigCommerce, and found their offering incredibly compelling compared to Shopify. I do think BigCommerce is focused more on medium-sized businesses whereas Shopify is targeted towards smaller businesses or businesses that aren't really focused on their e-commerce side. My favorite feature of BigCommerce was the ability to run the site locally for development, using live product data from the site. I even made a few open source contributions to that framework, which was a nice change of pace compared to Magento development.

</comment><comment><USER3> The main issue with BigCommerce is that they do not offer any compelling advantage over existing open source system. Moreover being a loss making entity like Shopify without any sticky system like marketplace which drives traffic, I doubt there is much value in it except that investors wants to cash-out given the current unrealistic stock market.

In case a company use magento [1], Saleor [2], Sylius [3], Shuup [4], Solidus [5], Spree [6] combined with vue-storefront [7], storefront UI [8] and openflutttercommerce app [9] the amount of efforts to build a highly resilient and functional system is cheaper with complete control over customer, supply chain, pricing, product, marketing, sales and promotion data. Also the efforts will be similar to using shopify, bigcommerce with more cost-savings. Indeed shopify itself use many components from rails eco-system built by Spree and Solidus community.

Its very easy to build a highly customized and resilient system using cloud offering combined with these open source systems. So I do not see why a mid- size business will choose shopify or bigcommerce. They are good for mom-pop shops and simple commerce, but for unique shopping experience they fall short and better to build customized one with complete control.

[1] [https://github.com/magento/magento2](https://github.com/magento/magento2)

[2] [https://github.com/mirumee/saleor](https://github.com/mirumee/saleor)

[3] [https://github.com/Sylius/Sylius](https://github.com/Sylius/Sylius)

[4] [https://github.com/shuup/shuup](https://github.com/shuup/shuup)

[5] [https://github.com/solidusio/solidus](https://github.com/solidusio/solidus)

[6] [https://github.com/spree/spree](https://github.com/spree/spree)

[7] [https://github.com/vuestorefront/vue- storefront](https://github.com/vuestorefront/vue-storefront)

[8] [https://github.com/Divanteltd/storefront- ui](https://github.com/Divanteltd/storefront-ui)

[9] [https://github.com/4seer/openflutterecommerceapp](https://github.com/4seer/openflutterecommerceapp)

<comment><USER4> Shopify is profitable[1] even with the high levels of growth they are undergoing. There's little reason to think BigCommerce would be anything else.

Most commerce companies don't want or need complete control. They want a unique look and feel (which Shopify/BigCommerce gives) but beyond they they want reliability and ease of integration with things like stock control.

[1] [https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200212005238/en/Sho...](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200212005238/en/Shopify- Announces-Fourth-Quarter-Full-Year-2019-Financial-Results)

<comment><USER3> Sorry to burst your bubble Shopify is loss making except when it was itself a small service provider. In 2020 has a loss of 132 million dollars so far. It's a listed entity so you can check Income, Balance Sheet and Cashflow. The most important thing cashflow and Incomes both are negative for shopify. Since it's listing never made a single dime of profit. So please before putting a link to news verify on their annual reports [1].

       2019-12-30:
         Total Revenue: 1.578173 billion dollars
         Operating Income : -141.147 million dollars
         Net Income: -124.842 million dollars (i.e. loss of 125 million dollars)

       To this month (TTM):
        Total Revenue: 1.727692 billion dollars
        Operating Income: -178.590  million dollars
        Net Income: -132.120 million dollars (i.e. loss of 132 million dollars)

[1] [https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/SHOP/financials?p=SHOP](https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/SHOP/financials?p=SHOP)

<comment><USER4> > So please before putting a link to news verify on their annual reports

The link I had in my comment was to their 2019-12-30 financial release to the SEC. It has the same 2019 information you have: _Net income (loss): (124,842)_

But that includes their selling and marketing expenses of over $400M, and their cash and cash equivalents at hand went from $1.97B (2018) to $2.46B (2019).

They are making lots of money and they have good accountants. Astonishing..

<comment><USER3> > They have good accountant

That's true their accountant are good at sugar-coating the bad state of company, negative cashflow along with net income loss which is consistently increasing since listing. Not making one dime in profit and still claim profitable business.

For $1 revenue they spend more than $1, so sorry they are loss making company not profitable and on top due to negative cash-flow much worse.

The numbers speaks for itself without sugar coating that shopify is loss making venture. As long as investors money through stocks will keep coming they will survive and will be bought out by someone one day to cash-out those investors. Anyways with cost of borrowing 0, sooner or later someone will acquire it.

<comment><USER4> They are a company during the high-growth phase of their business, with a proven business model where the cost of revenue is less than the revenue gained. See their accounts on the link you posted.

They are a "loss making venture" because they are investing in growth. That's why the cash-at-hand is important - if it's low then one can question if they can cut expenses quickly enough. That's the difference between WeWork (unprofitable, not much cash, unclear what they could cut to make profits) and Amazon 10 years ago (unprofitable, lots of cash, easy to see places to cut to make profits)

Shopify have over 2 years of expenses as cash just sitting there, and they can cut the marketing by 10% at any point and become profitable. That's why investors have confidence in them, and it's why customers can have confidence too.

This isn't a hard balance sheet to read - it's a rapidly growing business with plenty of resources they are investing in growth. That's the same situation Amazon was in for years - "unprofitable" because all their revenue was going into the business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Met Brent at the BigCommerce partner summit a year or so ago. I can't think of a CEO I've met who is more open and accessible. He sat down at my table during the keynotes and asked for feedback during the breaks, went around the room and chatted about the product during lunch. Definitely fostered that culture with the full team, his exec leadership team all were equally inviting and open to feedback about the product and strategy. As SEC filings go, this one certainly makes me smile.

</comment><comment><USER6> For SME/Enterprise, WooCommerce is not even listed on the Gartner quadrant [1] — so whilst the software might be fully capable and open-source, it's not represented at this level whereas BigCommerce and Shopify are.

[1] [https://ok.commercetools.com/hubfs/Images/Website/EN/Webinar...](https://ok.commercetools.com/hubfs/Images/Website/EN/Webinar/Gartner_MQ_DigitalCommerce.jpg)

<comment><USER7> The gartner quadrant is mostly pay to win, so who really cares about that one? I'd at least not make any decision solely, or to a large part, based on it.

<comment><USER8> True that, it is still usefull if you look for solutions in a field you are unfamiliar with. Doesn't replace doing your own research, so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> they say they are #2. I thought Shopify and Woocomerce were #1 and #2 and they were a very distant third, or even fourth if Magento is to be believed. Or does WooCommerce not count as SaaS?

<comment><USER10> Yeah, I can't figure out what they're talking about there. There is no "SaaS ecommerce platform" category on BuiltWith (that I can find); none of the subcategories under the eCommerce category on BuiltWith has BigCommerce near the #2 position ([https://trends.builtwith.com/shop](https://trends.builtwith.com/shop)).

They do note later in their document that their competitors include Magento, Shopify, and WooCommerce.

I almost scrolled by and didn't care except for your comment, which surprised me quite a bit. The number of Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento sites I've had to do some amount of work on over the years more or less tracks with BuiltWith's stats. I've never worked on a BigCommerce site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Just buy any of these stocks. Their PS is so high that they will always make numbers. Just buy their own product! (at 30+ price to sales, it makes sense!)

</comment><comment><USER12> how do they rank compared to Shopify?

<comment><USER13> It is third in the SaaS ecommerce behind Shopify and Wix.

<comment><USER14> Isn't Wix just a website generator? Sort of like Online Dreamweaver?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> damn - I had an opportunity to work here. My million dollar mistake, I suppose</comment>