Comparing Arrays of Structures and Structures of Arrays (2013) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://software.intel.com/sites/default/files/article/392271/aos-to-soa-optimizations-using-iterative-closest-point-mini-app.pdf <comment><USER2> Apart from Jai [1], are there any languages which support transparent conversion from one format for the programmer (who will prefer AoS) to the other for the compiler/cpu/cache?

This feature - plus the inversion of the `inline` keyword (specify where the function is used, not where it is defined) - was what I remember most from the writeup.

1: [https://sites.google.com/site/jailanguageprimer/](https://sites.google.com/site/jailanguageprimer/)

<comment><USER3> GCC, ICC, etc, will actually do it with profile guided feedback in whole program optimiation mode, when they determine it is valuable.

(Actually, GCC removed it a few years back, whoops)

<comment><USER4> Last I heard it was a fragile benchmark stunt, and compilers would enable the optimization in only very limited circumstances. Has there been progress since?

<comment><USER3> Yes, in the sense that they can do a lot more. It was implemented initially as a fragile stunt.

The real problem with it in C based languages is that it requires the real, true, whole program, because it is impossible to not break the ABI of the structure :)

In general, memory locality/etc optimizations are more focused on reorganizing loops to walk the data optimally, instead of reorganizing data so normal loops walk them optimally.

(See, e.g., polyhedral loop optimizations, which XLC and others ship with. A good paper to read is PLUTO and PLUTO+)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The conclusions are not much of a surprise here, but nice that someone took the time to verify it.

This is comparable to the difference between row stores and column stores in the database world. When only looking at one column a column store is faster due to the memory locality, but when fetching a whole row the row store will beat it for the same reason.

<comment><USER6> Well said. This is the classic latency versus throughput tradeoff.

Game developers are right to prefer SoA. Web developers are right to prefer AoS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is cool, but trying to reason about compilers may not an individual developer as far as simply profiling changes to the sections of code the program will spend the most time in.

Don't guess, profile. Don't talk about something being faster until you load it with production (or production like) data and run it a few times.

</comment><comment><USER8> tl;dr?

<comment><USER9> Conclusions:

What can we conclude from all this? The software world is complex enough that anything you can say will almost undoubtedly have counter-examples. While we haven't proved it here, one of your take-aways should be the following:

It is almost always better to vectorize than not to vectorize on Intel SIMD capable hardware.

If you are vectorizing ("LOOP WAS VECTORIZED"), then it is almost always better (faster) to vectorize with SoA "stride-1" data layout than the AoS data layout simply because your chances of the compiler doing something wonderful for you are much better. This is because there are fewer instructions needed (less work) in the SoA case. It is possible that SoA may not be dramatically faster than AoS for a given code depending on how a program exercises the memory subsystem, but it is unlikely that you will see many examples where AoS code would execute significantly faster than SoA code. So when in doubt or unless you can prove otherwise, prefer SoA to AoS, specially on Intel Xeon Phi. This tends to go against how many of us were trained to arrange data structures, but for quadruple-speed single precision execution and double- speed double precision execution over the alternative, you will want to consider it.

tl;dr:

So when in doubt or unless you can prove otherwise, prefer SoA to AoS

<comment><USER10> > quadruple-speed single precision execution and double-speed double precision

FYI Xeon Phi supports AVX512, i.e. 512 bit SIMD registers (8 doubles or 16 floats). In the consumer CPU world there is AVX2 which has 256 bit registers (4 doubles or 8 floats). AVX also has a 'fused multiply with add'(FMA) instruction which is useful for matrix multiplication amongst other things.</comment></comment></comment>


Why usage-based billing is a threat to the internet, what can be done to stop it - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/backchannel/big-cable-s-sledgehammer-is-coming-down-2c6854e8bea9#.z78912mml <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10677465](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10677465)

</comment><comment><USER3> When you have an unregulated monopoly, usage-based billing is just one tool in their book for extracting more money from customers.

If internet service in the US were not effectively unregulated or not effectively a monopoly, usage-based billing would not be a problem.

Consider the lowly restaurant. Say a buffet restaurant comes out to $20 per diner. If you're not a top-10% eater, you could probably go to a menu-based restaurant and eat as much food as you would care to for just $10; or you could go to a $40-a-plate restaurant for food of a quality you simply don't get at either of the other choices.

In my scenario, unless the quantity itself is what you want (and, with data as well as with food, trust me—it's not), you get neither the cheapest product nor the best product when you buy the unlimited-quantity product.

If we had a working market for broadband in this country, you would find the same thing: the cheapest ISP will be cheaper than the unlimited ISP, and the unlimited ISP will not have the best quality of product available.

</comment><comment><USER4> Nonsense. We pay for water and electricity and gas on a usage basis. If you pay a fixed price for such utilities, what incentive to you have to use it efficiently?

Paying by usage will encourage responsible usage of a limited resource.</comment>


Facebook, I just can't quit you - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-daum-facebook-20101007,0,2696276.column

<comment><USER2> To summarize: If you're not on Facebook, you're invisible, irresponsible, not modern and uncivilized. Wow. Not having a Facebook account makes me a horrible person apparently.</comment>


BitTorrent dumps sales staff, to work more closely with MPAA in anti-piracy efforts - <AUTHOR> http://www.p2pnet.net/story/16626

<comment><USER2> Where does this say that BitTorrent is working closer with the MPAA? It mentions that in _2005_ they were working together to remove pirated content.

It does mention that in _2008_ a deal between BitTorrent and Best Buy fell apart due to external situations (the comcast thing).

Also, it might be noted that Akamai bought out Red Swoosh ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Swoosh> ) last year to compete with BitTorrent.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder what Bram's plan is.

It ought to be obvious that none of this is about piracy. It's about new sources of revenue. It's divix again, but this time mandated by law, because people refused to buy it. It is about charging extra for _extra_ functionality like pause and fast forward. That's what DRM is about, not piracy.

<comment><USER4> Bram isn't running the company; he's not even the CTO. Worst-case, Bram gets to collect a salary for five years and then walk away from the smoking wreckage.

There's still time to sell to Adobe. (I don't think Amicima's technology is comparable to BitTorrent.)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Machinable – open-source Back end-as-a-Service - <AUTHOR> https://email@example.com/introducing-machinable-6afdfe824308 <comment><AUTHOR> Hello everyone!

Machinable is a passion project that I've just open sourced. Built as a custom BaaS to bootstrap apps, Machinable let's you create projects, then define API resources for that project using JSON schema. Automatically generate OpenAPI documentation, create web hooks to POST back to your own servers to handle business logic, and manage user sessions. I ultimately decided to open source it to see if others would find this useful as well.

Feel free to register and play with the demo site here: [https://machinable.io](https://machinable.io)

GitHub org with all repos: [https://github.com/machinable](https://github.com/machinable)

User documentation: [https://www.machinable.com/documentation](https://www.machinable.com/documentation)

Blog post introducing Machinable here: [https://email@example.com/introducing- machinable-6...](https://email@example.com/introducing- machinable-6afdfe824308)</comment>


Brightcove Granted Broad Patent For Online Video - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/02/brightcove-700-million-videos-patent/

<comment><USER2> Why would they issue such a broad patent? They've essentially patented video content distribution. What are providers like YouTube, Vidyard, Vimeo, Ooyala, 23Video, etc. going to do?

Software patent law needs to give it's head a shake. This is going to cause nothing but grief for the semi-competitive landscape.

</comment><comment> mkr-hn I'm doubtful that a 27,000 word patent can be accurately described in a three paragraph blurb.

</comment><comment><USER3> 1 year ago they did 400,000 vids/month, now it's 700,0000,000 vids/month? Is that a typo?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, they just posted a correction, it's up from 400 million/month.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In all fairness, Brightcove was first on a lot of this stuff. Hard to believe they're 7 years old, older than Youtube.

The content distribution model was what they did from the start, too.

(Former BCer)

<comment><USER4> That was a low-class downvote....</comment></comment>


Show HN: OptKit v2.0 released (CRO tool) - <AUTHOR> https://optkit.com/blog/optkit-version-2/

<comment><AUTHOR> If anyone from the HN community has any feedback (I like it raw) please let me have it. Things are very far from perfect, but this is just the beginning. :)

</comment><comment><USER2> Great tool. Reminds me of Sumo.me.

Are there plans to release other site optimization widgets?

<comment><AUTHOR> Bramm-

thanks a lot for the comment! Right now I see SumoMe as a great way to get things up and running, and pick and choose the pieces you feel you want. Super great service, fantastic team, products that just work.

OptKit has a different trajectory. It might look quite similar now, but soon things will take a more powerful and customizable turn. We won't be offering more "widgets" per-say, but we will be constantly building for a very specific goal..

This may sound a little drastic, but soon after a few more big pieces get into place, the next phase is going to be introducing real-time trained machine learning models, in hopes of finding some predictable patterns. This would mean we could potentially predict the conversion rates of a visitor, in real time.. In theory we can possibly achieve a 100% opt-in rate, if this is actually feasible ;)

I see OptKit becoming more of an automated personalization tool, as opposed to a simple widget. With a lot more emphasis on the segmentation, personalization, behavioral triggers, actionable analytics.

I want OptKit to become the data driven marketer's dream tool.. Their swiss army knife. For example, our reports will tell you simple mean/median/mode of the temperature of your converted traffic. This might make it easy to extrapolate some really great tests at a glance at a graph.

Have a hunch? Run a test! Have a doubting boss? Run a test!

This is the vision as of now, at least :)

Thanks for the comment feel free to ask me anything else :)

<comment><USER2> Sounds awesome! How far do you plan to go with personalization? Will the site change depending on the user? Or will it constantly morph based on the habits of the average user?

Thanks for the response. Installed on my site [http://gumwall.com](http://gumwall.com).</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Node.js CRUD template with users, password resets and permissions - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cris691/servedata <comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing your project. I think the Node.js ecosystem could use more examples and templates, to demonstrate commonly needed features. It's also good programming practice to create a template project like this, to learn how to build such server functionality.

For constructive feedback - I got the feeling from the codebase that it's a bit too opinionated for my use case. Aside from idiosyncratic naming (use of constant case, or folders starting with underscore) and formatting (inconsistent indentation), I think the template could benefit from using common building blocks already available in the ecosystem, rather than every aspect being custom made.

There are common libraries and patterns that are "idiomatic" in Node.js (or any other language ecosystem for that matter), and most boilerplate projects consist of a curated selection and combination of such common building blocks.

For example, Handlebars or EJS are typical solutions for templates. (More typically these days, React rendered server-side.) Mocha, Jest, Ava are often used for testing. There are popular modules for JSON document database.

A big advantage of using "community standard" libraries is that each project becomes more consistent and predictable, in organization/structure and how features work together. Having each module developed, documented, and maintained by the wider community is more efficient too, so that we can all benefit from - and contribute to - the open-source ecosystem.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for taking a look and for the extensive feedback. I really appreciate it.

you're right from your point of view. I also think this project is probably too custom to get extensive interest. although you never know. some really cool projects did start out as custum hacks someone made. JS, redis, Dropbox and Perl (I think). not that I'm comparing it to those in terms of impact. and I certainly don't want the lonely and underpaid burden of being a popular project's open source maintainer.

anyway, for me some reasons that contributed to my choice to make it by hand almost totally from the ground up were:

\- learning experience. I just kind of wanted to learn about databases since they're so widely used. good to build one to do that \- desire to simplify. those apps are everywhere and there's a lot of complexity and opinion that goes around that so I wanted to see if I could have my stab at simplifying for myself the conceptual model. I figured that would make it easier for me to use and build those kind of apps in future \- desire to use tools that fit me. I really find myself more productive if I can use tools that are well suited to how I think and work. so often I like to build my own tools. and having whole stack like that give me a sense of satisfaction that I've touched all parts of the project in a sort of craftsmanship manner. \- ownership for quality. doing it that way meant I could create everything to my own standard and specification and not have to rely on other people for quality. if something went wrong then I knew that it was my responsibility and I could fix.

I'm quite scared to look foolish by sharing the following and that's sometimes I wondered when doing this that maybe would have been easier just to use someone else's database or someone else's templated feature equivalent app. and I was really about to kind of give up on this whole project when something's not working, I almost chucked it all the way but that sort of "last straw bug" never happened and I just pushed through.

I suppose what I hope to achieve by releasing it publicly and posting it here is mainly just to mark the moment for myself that I have achieved this and that it's in a state where I feel okay I can stop an intense period of work on it. because i could achieve most of what I originally set out to do.

and I'm somewhat aware that there's not that many examples of templates like this, common as these apps are, and if somebody wants to inspect the code at least it can sortof maybe give them a starting point to understand how one person anyway thinks about solving these problems.

I'm not even saying that that can be helpful for other people very much but it can probably help some people some of the time.

<comment><USER2> Nice, I especially agree with this part:

> ..find myself more productive if I can use tools that are well suited to how > I think and work. so often I like to build my own tools.

To be honest, I'm the same way. Over the years, I've always had a collection of custom libraries for common needs. I often enjoy writing my own library from scratch too, to understand how it works. Routers, databases, template languages, builders.. Sometimes, after developing it to satisfaction, I understand the value of a popular library that does the same thing, better designed or documented than what I built - in that case, I'm fine with transitioning to a better tool.

There's definitely something to be said for well-crafted custom tools that work just how you want, intuitively. And you're right that's how popular projects all start out - so, if everyone used only what's available, we would never make progress. :)

So what I wrote about using "community standard" libraries, maybe it was a kind of advice to myself..

> I was really about to kind of give up on this whole project when something's > not working, I almost chucked it all the way but that sort of "last straw > bug" never happened and I just pushed through.

Right, I see, this is a kind of record of your journey to solve all the functionality you wanted in such a template project.

> mark the moment..that I have achieved this

Yes, congratulations on releasing it - that is an achievement worthy of itself. I think many of us can relate to being "scared to look foolish", and we should all feel encouraged to make things public, whether we're experts or beginners.

I also agree that, we never know if something can be valuable to other people. Since your code is now open source, anyone can learn from your experience, and use it as a starting ground for their own applications.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Couple things that stood out: code is not in a "src" folder separate from configuration. Views have just an "html" file extension - usually you would at least have the templating language extension there too. Didn't see any indication of test coverage. Also it looks like you have your own test runner?? Using Jest for ex. gives you a lot.

First thing in the readme is lines of code. I would start with what this is, what problems it solves, and why it's better than the alternatives.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good feedbacks. those all sound like changes I'm happy to make. If you want to contrib I'm happy but don't expect that from you at all obviously.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What I really wish for is a database migration ready app boilerplate & Ops.

<comment><USER5> Check out [https://github.com/xgenecloud/xgenecloud](https://github.com/xgenecloud/xgenecloud) \- it scaffolds backend boilerplate with database migrations creation and management via a GUI tool. It supports : MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL server & SQLite.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This create CRUD templates for stubdb.

Happy to learn more on Stubdb - how does it differ compared to Sqlite (also from issues in stubdb - it wants to support IPFS)

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a very simple, 500 line JSON DB, with extremely simple indexes. It's meant to be very lightweight people can just set it up and modify it easily.

Somehow just the idea of using the filesystem tree for record lookup was cool. And I liked the idea that each record is a separate file so if you want, your can edit and view by hand or using tools. also want to add git repo to db to do versioned backups and change log etc.

IPFS BTFS issues are just considering a way to use a directory that's mounted into some p2p network. just for curiosity I suppose. it could be cool for applications of that</comment></comment>


Ask HN: how do cold calls/emails work for you? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I don't do many cold calls, but sometimes I reach out to people on email based on their online reputation, blog posts or similar if I feel I can help them or they can help me. A lot of these people are busy but many actually give a reply, at least if you're being short and to the point about your message.

Ironically enough, the guys who sign their blog posts with "what do you think", "drop me a line", "I'm always available on email" etc, are usually the guys who never reply :-)

<comment><USER3> Probably because everyone is emailing them, and they can't keep up.

<comment><USER4> I have a way to describe this. I call it "they need everybody yet they need nobody".

They have decided that they would rather have contact from as many people as possible and be the filter that decides if what someone is offering (or wanting) is desirable to them or not.

The other side of this is (back in the day) people who would do a version of "serious inquiries only" which would surely scare off all but the hardiest people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've found they can work well and are generally not despised in two situations: 1) if you're inviting someone to speak at an event, 2) if you're asking to interview them.

You're not guaranteed a "yes" by any means, but people generally seem to feel flattered by such requests, and I know people who've tried to increase their profiles in niches by attempting to interview many of the big names there.

I guess my hidden point is that if you want to achieve a business aim with cold calling and e-mailing, it might help to hang it off of something else that the callee might find desirable or at least non-annoying.

<comment><USER6> wow, I kind of disagree. I don't know what businesses you've been in but I find that if you think your "business aim" is something that it "might" help to "hang off of something else the callee might find desirable" \- then your approach is really tough.

Businesses exist because customers love paying them. There are few to no business aims that you could possibly fulfill without being inherently interesting to the people you're writing or being in touch with.

If you don't have an offering that is interesting, it's not that you should hang your offer on something that is of interest - it's that you need to fix your product/market fit!

That said, there are appropriate and inappropriate venues. As shown by my shopping habits, I love buying groceries, or paying for utilities - but that doesn't mean I'd like to see emails about either.

So I can see that you might have to overcome the limits of your channel. Overall, however, you should be able to find channels where your business aims align easily with what customers want.

<comment><USER5> In my main day to day business we do no outbound marketing or cold e-mailing/calling as we are overrun with business from companies who randomly find us. That said, if were to use outbound, I'd still come up with a separate, more intrinsically intriguing Thing™ to talk about than the nuts and bolts of the business.

In my original post, I was just pulling on experiences with ancillary projects, particularly content driven ones (e.g. interviews are a great way to launch a blog) or in my role as chair of a a commercial O'Reilly conference, where e-mailing potential speakers or inviting them to give interviews, etc, is a common technique that works well.

As ever, YMMV.

<comment><USER7> The major part of my company prospective customers came from the web but I really want to tackle the outbound marketing/sales "mistery". They are two different beasts, we can close a USD 20K sale in less than two weeks in the first case but it can take months or years to close a sale with someone from an outbound channel.

Obviously if you are working for an O'Reilly conference the inbound flow can make you forget the other side of the problem. Our company participated in the MIT G-Lab program [1] to help us in the outbound part. They helped us a lot, mainly because they can interview prospective customers as MIT students and in this way people are less reluctant to talk.

[1] [http://mitsloan.mit.edu/actionlearning/labs/g-lab-info- for-h...](http://mitsloan.mit.edu/actionlearning/labs/g-lab-info-for- hosts.php)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've never made a cold call but I've had 100% success with email in 2 scenarios:

1\. I've just started a digital magazine with curated articles. I emailed 6 contributors (5 of whom had never heard of me) and just asked clearly and politely for permission to reprint their articles. I gave them the option to say yes or no. I used a similar flow for each but they were personal and focused on the reader.

2\. I emailed the local Mac dealer to offer some webdev services (email marketing and SEO). Just as a test, really to validate cold email as a customer acquisition tactic. Again, it was all about the recipient. The polar opposite of the generic emails I get from Indian agencies every week.

There's a great I Love Marketing podcast that talks about a play they call "the cats whiskers". It's worth a listen if you plan to do cold emails. It's episode 24.

Actually, I just thought of a third -

My girlfriend is an artist and had gifted a painting to some friends for their wedding. They hung it prominently in their restaurant and had a few enquiries about it from their customers. They collected a few email addresses.

About a year later, my girlfriend decided to do a limited edition print run and sent 9 emails (just as a test really, to see if there'd be any takers).

Basically said "You saw my painting in Ord Ban. I'm doing a ltd edn print run. Send £100 to my paypal email if you'd like one". Next morning there was £700 in paypal which covered printing/shipping and a profit margin. Not 100% cold because the recipients had expressed an interest but there'd been no prior contact at all.

<comment><USER9> Did you get a reply back form Mac dealer? Would love to see a sample text of the email you sent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Receiving: I get a lot of mails from Indian companies for outsourcing work; I delete them. I sometimes get mails from EU freelancers; I don't delete them. So depending on the content they seem to work. Calls never work for me; if I see an unrecognized / blocked number i'm not answering.

Sending: works fine if you write a targeted mail / make a targeted call. In software consultancy my experience is that companies you call are more often than not looking for a new 'partner' to have software developed with as they will commonly rotate the companies they work with because the grass could be greener elsewhere. Same for products; if you have a good/better proposition of something they need or already have they'll want to listen.

I think cold whatever works unless it's perceived as spam. That's why you need to be careful in composing and timing such communication. For instance; it is 4.5 hours later in India, so i routinely get mails/calls from outsourcing companies at around 5-6 my time which is 9:30 for them. That is automatically spam to me; if you want to make me a business proposition, you have to do it on my time.

<comment><USER7> I agree and the main problem with the received e-mails is lack of focus. For example, they offer me software development services when my company works on extremely challenging software issues.

The lesson is: before contacting people do your homework.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This summer I did several hundred cold calls and several thousand cold emails.

On the sales front, I found emailing a much better use of time. While sales were marginally easier on the phone, getting the right people on the phone beyond difficult. And even when people agreed to chat - they often bailed last minute or never called me.

With emails I found two techniques -

For sales emails, I found the best response rates when I was the weirdest. For example, in a moment of exasperation after emailing the same guy 4 times (and getting no response), I wrote "Maybe you're like the wizard of oz, everyone lists you as a media contact, but you don't exist." I heard back within 30 minutes.

For intro cold emails, I found people incredibly receptive. The more specific the emails (specific to the person), and the more concise the email, the more warmly I was received. Perhaps common sense.

</comment><comment><USER12> Cold calling via phone is a not an effective use of a smaller team's time in my experience-- you will rarely reach the right person within an organization, there are lots of 'gatekeepers' for high level executives, and voicemails just don't generate responses. You can only make so many dials per day, and it is exhausting getting rejected all day. Where I've seen it become more effective is for larger inside lead gen teams for products like credit card terminals, or energy efficiency services where a quick pitch can be made to almost any business person who picks up the phone.

Email however, when done correctly (and legally!! don't spam!!) can be very effective. Instead of focusing on making a sale via an email, try instead to focus on getting a referral. Consider it a "win" when you get a referral to someone in the organization with whom you can have a "warm" conversation.

If you are honestly looking for feedback on your product/service, the sales will come. Your cold email will get forwarded to the right person and you can get some conversations started. For us, these campaigns have been extremely low cost and have yielded some great partnerships and repeat business in our niche industry.

A couple rules we laid down:

1\. No attachments, no pricing, no selling

2\. Make no more than two attempts over 30 day campaign

3\. No more than 5-6 sentences with 1 embedded link and a clear request for a referral

Some recommended tools and resources include:

[http://www.amazon.com/Predictable-Revenue-Business- Practices...](http://www.amazon.com/Predictable-Revenue-Business-Practices- Salesforce-com/dp/0984380213)

[http://www1.toutapp.com/](http://www1.toutapp.com/)

[http://www.data.com/](http://www.data.com/)

<comment><USER4> Agree with all you are saying above.

"Cold calling via phone is a not an effective use of a smaller team's time in my experience-- you will rarely reach the right person within an organization, there are lots of 'gatekeepers' for high level executives, and voicemails just don't generate responses."

Along these lines I'm amazed at the amount of times don't use postal mail to break the ice.

I don't mean a canned direct mail piece. I mean a personal letter, signed in ink, that makes the point.

With that their is no (direct) rejection and it's possible to send many at a very low cost (even if they don't end up in the right place).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't do it but I have friends who have built successful companies just because of cold calling. Their products and services are not unique or anything special but it works because they're not afraid of selling to strangers on the phone.

</comment><comment><USER14> many times it gave me surprising (good) results...even when I cold emailed some "hot shots" (Guy Kawasaki, Fred Wilson, etc.)

Here's a great post I found by a seasoned entrepreneur about this: [http://www.startupmoon.com/how-i-got-meetings-at-twitter- lin...](http://www.startupmoon.com/how-i-got-meetings-at-twitter-linkedin-and- github-using-cold-emails/)

I also wrote about my experiences with cold emails: [http://blog.jhaniv.com/cold-mails-to-hot-people](http://blog.jhaniv.com/cold- mails-to-hot-people)

</comment><comment><USER15> I get sent emails from a guy offering to do web development work. He has emailed me a number of times but I have never met him, contacted him or communicated with him. Trouble is, he sent the same emails to a number of recently registered domains. All exactly the same. They arrived in my spam folder and then I delete them.

I also get telephone calls from people/business I've never contacted before. I get so many, I just let the machine deal with it.

You have to remember if you cold call or email, then you are just one of a number that people get every day at home or at work. They will assume its junk, spam or your selling something they don't need. The ideal way is to not to bother people with cold calling/emailing but rather be the person they are looking for. The solution to their need. The useful thing they don't know they want till they need it.

I am sure, cold calling, emailing works for some but for me I just ignore them and I believe many people do. May be different in Enterprise.

<comment><USER16> I'm pretty sure that OP was asking opinions of those who _make_ calls, not those who receive them (as these are obvious).

<comment><USER15> You're right. I was wrong. I was a bit too quick with the reply. Sorry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I made the mistake several years ago.of subscribing to finance/technology magazines. I get an average of 2 cold calls per day as a result. Asking them to stop calling you doesn't work. The only thing I've found that succeeds is to tell obvious salespeople they have the wrong number. I really hate anyone that makes cold calls.

<comment><USER15> In my ye olde business days, I made the mistake of having my startup listed in a certain "yellow" directory here in the UK. As I used the same number for home and work (it was a low volume type business and YES I was stupid and I will never make that mistake again), I then got more businesses trying to sell me stuff then customers by a large margin.

I lost track of the large number of people who asked for the "Webmaster" or person who owns the website. That was in 2001/2002 and way before Google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Cold emailing has worked out well for me in a research context. I needed help and some leads from a couple archaeologists and linguists, reaching out directly, yet demonstrating knowledge of their research in the area worked out well. I'm not an archaeologist, myself, at the time I wasn't even with the Ronin Institute, I was just a Barista with an interest in their field, but each got back to me within 24 hours with the information I needed to move forward in my research.

Conversely, the cold emails I've received have always been very welcome, though I do encourage people to reach out to me for expert opinion or whatever else.

Finally, the cold phone calls I've received have always been a very negative experience for me. A lot of that is on me, but the immediacy of the phone is a major inconvenience most of the time, especially when there are so many time- delayed methods of robust communication now.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm Director of Sales for an open source consulting company (EU based with a small staff here in the US) so I do this a lot. It really is a crap shoot. I get a quick response of some sort about 3/10 contacts. However I don't contact anybody unless I see something about their company that gives me a specific idea of where we might be able to help them. I never, ever call / email somebody for an appointment to learn more about business. I call because I noticed their website isn't responsive to mobile devices and 35% of their target market is mostly online via mobile devices, or their site is mostly flash, or I met an employee at a networking event who told me how much they all hate Sharepoint, or whatever.

That said, we just landed a new client that called me back out of the blue months after I initially contacted them. So you never know...

</comment><comment><USER20> It's just like the saying at Harvard Business School - "Life is a cold call". I've definitely done a lot of cold emails (and still do today). As a matter of fact, my very first internship came from cold calling, it ultimately landed me a job on Wall Street, coming from a none-top tier school.

</comment><comment><USER21> Cold emails have worked well for me for customer development and interviews (problem/solution interview. I'm following Ash Maurya's Running Lean approach.)

You can find tons of blog posts about cold emails with different techniques, etc. For me, I had some key takeaways. (FYI, I don't have any hard data to back my claims, only my experience and feelings.)

\- If the market sees value in the problems or solutions that you're pitching, the market will respond.

\- When I start my emails being open and giving about myself and background, I seem to get more responses. I usually open up with "Hi, my name is Minto. I'm a software engineer in Austin, TX, developing X."

\- I'm very specific about the person's niche. ie. "I'm developing X for <Y niche>."

\- My emails are very laid back and unpolished. I try to come off as informal as possible, as if I was writing to an old friend.

\- I approach from a place of learning instead of selling. I think people, myself included, don't like being sold to, but like to help a fellow human being out. The fun and exciting thing is that if you hit on the interview with the right problems and solutions, you've pretty much sold them.

\- I put a timeframe on my ask, "30 minute coffee", etc.

\- Adding your social identity seems to help. I add a link to my LinkedIn profile in my signature. I can only imagine that this adds credibility and many people I email will ask to connect with me on LinkedIn.

\- Referrals get high responses. Not really a cold email, but the technique of having a subject line of "Referred by X", gets a high response rate. I only do this if I was really given a referral by someone.

\- Be short and sweet. I'm not a very verbose person as it is, but I think people will tend to read your emails if they're short.

I haven't done any cold calls yet, when I do, I would approach it in a similar way. I am pleasantly surprised at the responses I've gotten and the willingness of people to help.

<comment><USER22> Your approach would definitely work with me. (Side note: very off-put on Ash Maurya's page by the autoplaying video, so I immediately closed it. But I'm guessing it converts better for him.)

Your approach answers the following questions in the recipients mind:

* why is this person contacting me?

* what is it going to cost me (time/money/etc.)?

* what's in it for me?

* is this some sort of scam?

[edit: formatting]

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've had some success with cold calls.

I'm uncomfortable with the scattergun approach, so I research the business before calling and use LinkedIn to see who I should be talking to. I use the call to ask them about pain points, and while talking try to figure out a solution tailored for that individual.

This takes _much_ more time per prospect than cold emailing or phoning through a list, but figuring out something for each target already narrows the field down a lot and increases your chances.

</comment><comment><USER7> I use LinkedIn InMail to pass spam filters and it works in the ~15% of the cases. This means having an interaction.

The messages are very focused and I study people (LinkedIn/Blogs/etc) one by one.

Do you prefer to receive an e-mail than a LinkedIn introduction? personally I don't care where the message is coming assuming the proposal was directed to me and can be of value.

</comment><comment><USER24> If you do a lot of cold calls our beta app might help you track and manage them... check this out: [http://www.getinch.com](http://www.getinch.com)

</comment><comment><USER25> Not very well.

</comment><comment><USER26> We have had some success with them.</comment>


A Deeply Unsettling Time Lapse Of Every Nuclear Explosion On Earth - <AUTHOR> http://abiggersociety.com/a-deeply-unsettling-time-lapse-of-every-nuclear-explosion-on-earth/ <comment><USER2> I, for one, am not deeply unsettled by nuclear weapons.

As weapons of peace, they have made war a strongly negative sum game between advanced nations. The only way to win is not to play.

The drawback of nuclear weapons isn't the actual threat or consequences of war, but using the nature of the game by a government to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt amongst its own people to consolidate power. That, in itself, is not a problem with the weapon, but with the lack of enlightenment amongst the people and their government.

<comment> vezzy-fnord In addition, a lot of people have completely warped, fantastical and exaggerated perceptions of how powerful nuclear weapons are.

<comment><USER3> You are clearly someone who has never even been mugged much less dealt with war and violence in any real sense.

Your post reflects an incredible naivety about what true death and destruction means. A weapon doesn't have to be able to break the planet apart in order for it to be terrifying.

Sure, maybe media depictions of nuclear weapons are sensational, but that is hardly a reason to doubt their destructive power.

<comment><USER4> You are clearly the type of person who describes the ignorance of another person as a way to obviate all meaningful dialog.

</sarcasm>

Your tactic is so terrible that it renders your argument idle. Seriously, your brain is running, but you are moving no newtons. Please reevaluate your attempt at discussion.

I think you might have an interesting point somewhere in there, but your opening gambit is a shart. Nobody want to stick around for it when you open up insulting everyone who disagrees with you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The vast majority of these detonations occurred after the US, UK and USSR signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty in 1963, which permitted only underground detonations. Ideally, underground detonations don't release radioactive material into the wider environment, but there were of course failures to contain along the way.

<comment><USER6> My favorite example of an underground nuclear explosion was project gasbuggy, near where I grew up. They thought it might be useful if they could perform nuclear fracking:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Gasbuggy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Gasbuggy)

Where they performed the test is a very beautiful area.

Part of a larger project to actually perform nuclear terra-forming:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plowshare](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plowshare)

[http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,899941,...](http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,899941,00.html)

> _Someone shouted: "We did it! We did it!" Hand shakes were exchanged all > around. The U.S. had successfully set off the first nuclear explosion > sponsored jointly by the Government and industry._

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Previously on HN...

Nuclear Explosions since 1942 (map) (datavis.tumblr.com) 3 points by transburgh 4 years ago | 1 comments | cached

Animated History of Nuclear Explosions (ctbto.org) 2 points by brianmckenzie 3 years ago | 0 comments | cached

Animated map of nuclear explosions, 1945-1998 (pinktentacle.com) 58 points by gnosis 3 years ago | 26 comments | cached

<comment><USER8> If you want to contribute to the thread, link to the comments on the previous posts. Otherwise, the fact that this has been posted before (apparently 3 years ago..) doesn't make it less interesting now.

> Animated map of nuclear explosions, 1945-1998 (pinktentacle.com) 58 points > by gnosis 3 years ago | 26 comments | cached

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1586544](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1586544)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Site appears to be down. Here is the Google Cache link:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Nt4zfUy...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Nt4zfUyuG1kJ:abiggersociety.com/a-deeply- unsettling-time-lapse-of-every-nuclear-explosion-on- earth/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

<comment><USER10> The animation is a youtube video. Here is the direct link.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9U8CZAKSsNA](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9U8CZAKSsNA)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The number of tests is not what bothers me. The number of times we have had accidents is what does. Thankfully, none has ever resulted in accidental detonation- but this involved a lot of luck.

Eric Schlosser's book Command and Control, which just came out this year is a pretty comprehensive treatment of every accident the US has ever had, from decades of filing Freedom of Information reports. I'm halfway through it right now, it's pretty chilling.

Book: [http://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident- Illu...](http://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident- Illusion/dp/159420227)

NYT review: [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/15/books/review/command- and-c...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/15/books/review/command-and-control- by-eric-schlosser.html)

<comment><USER12> the number of tests should bother you, especially the atmospheric ones. People do epidemiological studies of industrial chemicals and their effects on cancer rates. Nobody does the epidemiological study of how the atmospheric tests affect cancer rates. Because there is no negative control.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9U8CZAKSsNA](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9U8CZAKSsNA)

</comment><comment><USER14> Why am i not suprised america has the most explosions, and still they try to ban other countries from producing nuclear fuel. The future generations will probably like the fallout on us soil. Congrats, this is a wondefull vid.

<comment><USER15> It's been 50 years since the US did a non-underground test. What do you think we use all these supercomputers for? Nuclear testing.

<comment><USER16> Yup. The test partial test ban treaty was signed in 1963 by all the nuclear powers at the time - everything after then, US or otherwise, has been underground, with the exception of, I believe, India, who was not a nuclear power when the treaty was drawn up - india set of a series of undersea tests late in the century.

This was done specifically because they realized they would collectively make the planet uninhabitable if they continued.

<comment><USER17> > india set of a series of undersea tests late in the century.

underground. [1] [2]

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pokhran- II](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pokhran-II)

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smiling_Buddha](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smiling_Buddha)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Deeply unsettling? Because they did 2k tests over a period of half a century?

<comment><USER19> I think it is difficult for most people to conceptualize how short a time period that is since they haven't even lived that long.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Description of artist and the video [http://www.ctbto.org/specials/1945-1998-by-isao- hashimoto/](http://www.ctbto.org/specials/1945-1998-by-isao-hashimoto/)

</comment><comment><USER21> Reminds me of "Rise Of The HFT Machine":

[http://imgur.com/DxWer](http://imgur.com/DxWer)

</comment><comment><USER22> "Error establishing a database connection" :(

</comment><comment><USER23> The brits tested a bomb on U.S. soil?

<comment><USER24> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julin_Bristol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julin_Bristol)</comment></comment>


Modern use of the word 'moonshot' mocks Apollo - <AUTHOR> https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2019/1/233518-hey-google-whats-a-moonshot/fulltext <comment><USER2> Quote:

> _Teller 's pragmatic, iterative, product-driven approach to innovation is > the exact opposite of what the U.S. did after Kennedy charged it to "commit > itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on > the moon and returning him safely to the earth." Letting Silicon Valley > steal the term "moonshot" for projects with quite different management > styles, success criteria, scales, and styles of innovation hurts our > collective ability to understand just what NASA achieved 50 years ago and > why nothing remotely comparable is actually under way today at Google, or > anywhere else._

</comment><comment><USER3> Alternative explanation: it's a hyperbole that recognizes, rather than mocks, the Apollo program.

<comment><USER4> I agree it isn't mocking. It is an appeal to the goodwill the Apollo program had, though. Often used to gain extra respect for whatever someone is doing, even in failure.

Worse, it is used to excuse and invent new practices that are not tried and true. Which is, ironically, exactly the opposite of how we got to the moon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why am I not surprised that X is run by the grandson of the guy who tested the idea of using atomic bombs to dig canals and shooting down missiles with bomb- powered X-ray lasers.

</comment><comment><USER6> Haigh is right. Unicorns, Moonshots, ... these days it's even considered "disruptive" if you offer a couple of scooter for rent. Whom are you disrupting exactly?

<comment><USER7> Normal flow of traffic?

</comment></comment><comment> d--b It's not that they mock Apollo, it's just that they're not talking about Apollo at all. Had the expression been "starshot", or "uranusshot", it would have been understood as mocking the Voyager story?

</comment><comment><USER8> ACM just got the HN hug of death

<comment><USER9> Indeed: [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https%...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https%3A%2F%2Fcacm.acm.org%2Fmagazines%2F2019%2F1%2F233518%2Dhey%2Dgoogle%2Dwhats%2Da%2Dmoonshot%2Ffulltext)

It's an interesting article built on a flimsy premise IMO. Languages evolve, expressions evolve. It's like those people who insist that "3rd world countries" still should only refer to countries that weren't aligned during WWII.

A "moonshot" is generally used nowadays to describe a very ambitious project with high risks of failure. Nothing more and nothing less.

Still, I always enjoy reading about the Apollo project and the Space Race so once I got past the hair-splitting premise it made for an enjoyable read.

<comment><AUTHOR> The point the article is making is that a true moonshot is a project of incredible scale and ambition, and that we're loosing something by allowing the modern usage of the word.

<comment><USER10> Modern usage of words are abused in all sorts of formats. I don't think moonshot is going to get any special treatment here any more than "all out blitz", "hate", "nazi", "socialist", etc.

Social media in today's culture is almost built to destroy the meaning of words by overusing them for everything.

<comment><USER11> The fact that the word literally means itself and its opposite based on use for emphasis is another good example of this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The issue in my mind is that Teller didn't really understand what the challenge was. The author of the article was pretty good in stating that it was a seemingly impossible task with a unrealistic deadline that got pulled off by a lot of engineering heroics.

</comment><comment><USER13> Let me make sure I'm understanding this right: It's not merely enough for it to be culturally taboo to criticize spending $20 billion a year on space missions -- we now have to watch out for accidental microaggressions?

<comment><USER14> It's 2019, if you breath chances are you're pico-aggressing someone. People spend more time being outraged about something than time actually trying to solve (or even understand) the underlying issue.

The best part is that people are sensitive about topics that have nothing to do with them. Ask Buzz Aldrin what he thinks about "moonshot" he'll probably tell you he doesn't give a flying fuck. Let's call it outrage by proxy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> And here I thought this was going to be a better way to to test my gql components...

</comment><comment><USER16> It is a misleading metaphor. I work in cancer research where the current endeavor is called the Cancer Moonshot. Then again, it is probably better than in the 1970s when it was called the War on Cancer.

<comment><USER17> >War on Cancer.

would probably get more funding that way..

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Archived version [https://archive.fo/TRUSa](https://archive.fo/TRUSa)

</comment><comment><USER19> I don't think an article with this clickbait headline should be on HN to be honest. Horrible "journalism".

<comment><USER20> It's generally considered to be "the rules" that what should not be on HN is questioning what should and should not be on HN.

<comment><USER19> Fair enough, it really annoyed me for some reason.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> All meaning is saved and spent in equal measure.

</comment><comment><USER22> The Valley is currently dead-set on spending all the good will "tech" has built over the decades and running away with the profits before people wise up to the fact they were promised tools but got Skinner Boxes and a corporate surveillance state.

<comment><USER23> And you're getting voted down because the truth hurts.</comment></comment>


US apps send thousands of private photos to Swiss police - <AUTHOR> https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/pornography-screening_whatsapp-facebook-photos/45263836 <comment><USER2> > _The algorithm detects the content whether it's posted online or shared via > a messaging app like WhatsApp._

That statement contradicts Whatsapp official statement that all content is end-to-end encrypted: "WhatsApp ... we built end-to-end encryption into our app. When end-to-end encrypted, your messages, photos, videos, voice messages, documents, and calls are secured from falling into the wrong hands. Only you and the person you're communicating with can read what is sent, and nobody in between, not even WhatsApp."

In this case, I believe Whatsapp more than I believe a technically illiterate writer on a government website that failed to understand some nuance. Maybe some Whatsapp users forwarded questionable content they've received to the authorities, then the algorithm scanned that content. That's very different than secret scanning happening _within_ Whatsapp.

<comment><USER3> My guess is that even if a photo is secure within Whatsapp once that photo is displayed on the screen of your phone then it's available to Android to scan. Yes, that's a creepy thought and not only that but presumably such a function would be using quite a bit of the phone's battery to be doing this continuously.

It's not clear though why all this stuff would be going to Switzerland particularly.

<comment><USER4> You wouldn't notice that feature using battery if every phone does it though.

I'd also really like to know why it goes to Switzerland. Are there also other countries that get photos like this and prosecute based on them?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The article that this article links to says that the FBI has shared thousands of photos with Swiss Police.

</comment><comment><USER6> You might as well flag this since there is no way to access the referred to data sources (and I am pretty sure there is quite a lot of actual information lost in translation).

Source: I'm Swiss, read everything I could find, nothing even comes close to "apps like Whatsapp send pictures to the Swiss police". More in the direction of: pictures get sent by US LE to Swiss LE and the volume is growing over the last couple of years.

</comment><comment><USER7> > In an effort to combat child pornography, providers like Facebook and Google > automatically screen all photos for the presence of children and bare skin.

The presumption that childhood nudity needs to be screened in such a way is, itself, cringey and creepy and perhaps not without a hint of pedophilia.

> The algorithm detects the content whether it's posted online or shared via a > messaging app like WhatsApp.

OK, so what is "the algorithm?" Where can it be tested and audited?

And how do authorities acquire content send in a WhatsApp message? We just went over this yesterday, didn't we? wcathcart, any response to this?

<comment><USER8> Our daughter had _serious_ skin issues for years, and my wife and I shared numerous photographs of her.

The idea of a pack of ... auditing my personal messages and photos to my wife is abhorrent.

What we need is actual police doing actual police work, and actually judges putting actual pedophiles away for life. Not stalking normal people.

But, I guess cowardice is alive and well - normals don't shoot cops and judges in the face, so they're easy targets to satisfy the "just do something" vote.

<comment><USER9> And i was a competative swimmer. Nobody should fault my parents for posting images of me in a speedo, nor should i hesitate from posting them myself.

<comment><USER10> They're not screening for kids and bare skin specifically. It's just a first heuristic to narrow down the pool of photos that conceivably _might_ be child porn to something that human investigators can feasibly check.

Per the article, 90% of the kids-and-bare-skin photos received are found to be totally innocuous once a human looks at them; no action is taken, and the photos and associated personal info are removed from police computers.

<comment><USER11> Except I'm not comfortable with my families photographs being screened by a third party that I don't know or have met, and this occurring explicitly without my knowledge.

So to stop child pornography an all-seeing third party vets my families photographs even when shared privately via WhatsApp or similar? That's fucked.

<comment><USER12> Stop using Facebook.

Like.....what do you expect?

I'm not trying to blame you here but since you're on this website I assume you're more generally knowledgable about stuff happening. We've known about variations of this for so long.

<comment><USER13> There is a difference between knowing that Facebook posts are screened and thinking that private, "end-to-end encrypted" messages are being screened (if true).

<comment><USER12> They've basically provided no proof it's end to end encrypted properly.

Heck even Facebook has a private message system they claim it's e2ee.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This article makes no sense.

<comment><USER15> Here's the link to the NZZ am Sonntag article (I think) this is referring to: [https://nzzas.nzz.ch/schweiz/kinderpornografie-das-fbi- stoes...](https://nzzas.nzz.ch/schweiz/kinderpornografie-das-fbi-stoesst- auf-9000-faelle-aus-der-schweiz-ld.1451009)

sadly I don't have a subscription :( but if anyone does, this might make more sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Does this only apply to the Swiss government, or is Facebook sharing any pictures that hit their filters with law enforcement agencies of whatever country you happen to be living in?

</comment><comment><USER17> Giving your photos to a lab to be developed sometimes resulted in police being alerted...although this is based on my hazy memory.

</comment><comment><USER18> I wonder if Apple and Google employees review my photos stored in my cloud accounts?

<comment><USER19> I had thought I'd seen some articles long ago that Microsoft was doing this with everyone's one-drive cloud thing that is auto installed with windows 10(?) and added to windows 8 if you install office (still?) -

that Microsoft's onedrive system auto-detects pics with X% of skin showing, and when it does, all of your nudie (and semi-nudie) pics were sent to humans to look at automatically - and those humans could forward your pics to other people and agencies..

So I have always assumed that google would be doing the same, as I recall some articles about them leading the way in detecting and censoring pics, and providing detectives with things like bed sheet matches for hotels, and tracking phone numbers and pics of hookers that changes cities (that one was a google employee on 6 month leave or something?)

I have not seen anything about Apple getting into these things, would be quite interesting if they do the same - it would mean all of the fappening celeb victims had already been peeped on before hackers release them to the public right?

<comment><USER13> > all of your nudie (and semi-nudie) pics were sent to humans to look at > automatically

That is insane and, if true, reason enough to never use Microsoft software.

<comment><USER20> It's not all, but a sample, yes.

They typically use hashes of files and only check files which have been shared between users though.

<comment><USER19> are you 100% on "only check files which have been shared between users though." ? \- I do not recall seeing that in the info I read some time ago.

"typically use hashes of files" \- I don't think this changes anything as far as msoft employees and others looking at pics of your kids or wife /gf / bf, etc; if you have taken the photos or he/she did and sent them to you right? This would only remove some of the internet shared/saved photos from the pile right?

Privately taken pics saved on the windows computer are / would still be sent to employed humans to look at, from what I understand.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Android took the world by storm in 8 years - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slRKYZHixfk <comment><USER2> How to be an overnight sensation in 10 years !</comment>


How I Made $600K in the iOS Education Market (2012 update) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.lescapadou.com/2012/12/my-sales-experience-in-education-app.html?p=5 <comment><USER2> I didn't realize that Montessori is considered a generic term and not trademarked [1]. Since people buy apps before they try them, the name is probably a big driver of the app's success.

Similarly, the guy who generated 800,000 books uses "Websters" in the book titles for his best selling books, which is also not trademarked [2] and can be used freely.

[1] American Montessori Society, Inc. v. Association Montessori Internationale, 155 U.S.P.Q. 591, 592 (1967), referenced in the Montessori Education Wikipedia article.

[2] <http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Websters_Dictionary>

<comment><USER3> Indeed, the key to success seems to have been finding a high brand recognition word that could be used without actually having to be licensed or whatever. (The apps may be fabulous, but the name is gold.)

<comment><USER4> word wizard app has not the Montessori keyword and it works pretty well !

<comment><USER3> Yeah but once you have one successful app you get cross-fertilization.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Pierre, thanks for sharing this information. It's nice to see a post on HN that does not talk about making hundreds of thousands of dollars after throwing something together over a weekend. The vast majority of successful business ventures --of any kind-- take time. Generally years.

It's also nice to see an example of a lifestyle business rather than a mega- million-dollar exit startup that so often dominates the headlines in these communities. Quite a few developers would be more than happy to earn a third of what you have earned on a regular basis. And that would be considered to be an absolute success.

I too am delving into the educational-app-for-kids market inspired by my own kids. I'd enjoy the opportunity to get some feedback from you if you are open to it. My email address is in my profile.

<comment><USER6> I think there is a good balance in discussion between hot startups and bootstrapped businesses now.

In fact, there's been a large number of exit-focused threads filled with guys who are mad at the whole situation, while I don't see too many "lifestyle business" jibes being thrown around nowadays.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hi Pierre, nice blog post. Thanks for sharing your insights.

I was looking at your AppStore SEO. Like you mentioned, your position for "spelling" has dropped a lot. But there are other phrases where your positions are rising nicely...

For "crossword game for kids" you've gone from 10th to 7th in the past few weeks.

[http://www.straply.com/app/apple/l-escapadou/montessori- cros...](http://www.straply.com/app/apple/l-escapadou/montessori-crosswords- spelling-with-phonics-enabled-alphabet)

And your Android version has a few phrases moving up too...

For the phrase "kids words" you've risen 6 places, from 23rd to 17th. I know 17th isn't awesome, but that's a fairly popular search phrase, so at least you're moving in the right direction.

[http://www.straply.com/app/android/l-escapadou/montessori- wo...](http://www.straply.com/app/android/l-escapadou/montessori-words-for- kids/sort-trending-down)

<comment><USER4> thanks ! I have to check SEO more precisely, I'm really not an expert..but you understand that losing #1 on "spelling" had a great impact

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is a follow-up from Pierre's 2011 numbers post: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3157739>

</comment><comment><USER8> This is a real inspiration for all indie developers. I currently work for a startup but I have a ton of projects on the back burner I plan to unleash when I move on in a couple years. Although I understand that success in the app store is subject to variance, this helps validate the idea of a one-man shop (with outsourcing as needed of course).

<comment><USER9> No doubt OP's apps are good, but I'd think a lot of his success can be attributed to being early (as he himself states in the post as I recall).

As a current App Store indie developer, I'd say you should consider the counter-examples also. I enjoyed a book called Buttonless ([http://www.amazon.com/Buttonless-Incredible-iPhone- Stories-B...](http://www.amazon.com/Buttonless-Incredible-iPhone-Stories- Behind/dp/1439895856)) which discusses indie games and discloses sales figures.

The average picture is not the rosiest.

<comment><USER8> Cool thanks for that post I'll check that book out. I have very high profile apps on the app store I wrote for others and I can completely relate to all the hassles and insanity surrounding the market. It's very finicky and totally unpredictable. Honestly I attribute a lot of successes and failures to simple market variance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Pierre, my question: The income tax rate for high earners in France is crazy high. Have you considered moving?

<comment><USER11> Believe it or not, high income earners in other parts of the world are very happy to pay "crazy high" taxes.

Those countries provide a hell of a lot to their citizens, and the citizens are happy to pay.

For most of his life in Australia, my Dad, a teacher, paid very close to 50% income tax on what he earned over about $60k. He was extremely happy with this, as Australia had provided a lot for him and his family of 3 kids. We had a very good uppder-middle class life.

EDIT: A couple of examples of what "crazy high" income tax gets you.

1\. My brother broke his leg horribly, required multiple surgeries, ambulance rides, helicopter rides, multiple hospitals and close to 2 months in hospital. There was never a bill.

2\. My 5 years of university for Software Engineering were paid for by the Australian government, and I now have a interest-free loan for the ~$24k. Whenever I earn over $40k/year, I just pay 3% more income tax to pay off the loan. If I don't earn that much in Australia, I never pay back the loan and that's fine. (actually, my Mum and Dad are angry about this - for them, university was free like High school.)

3\. The Australian government will pay a "wage" to low-income students going to university/college (approx. $176/wk)

4\. The Australian government pays unemployment benefits to any adult out of work (approx $228/wk). It does not matter if you have ever had a job or been fired or not. This payment will continue forever.[1]

They will also help to pay your rent, with a program called "Rent Assistance"

Despite what you might be thinking, Australia has a very strong economy - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Australia>

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment_benefits#Australia>

UPDATE: Dole is $228/wk

<comment><USER12> >Believe it or not, high income earners in other parts of the world are very happy to pay "crazy high" taxes.

>Those countries provide a hell of a lot to their citizens, and the citizens are happy to pay.

When you have a $600k per year income, those services aren't necessarily as valuable as they are to someone who makes $60k per year.

Seems that I've upset some people. Have you forgotten that international business does exist?

<comment><USER13> Try getting a serious sickness in the US and watch your $600K melt away, watch your insurance company dropping you, or refusing to cover you because you forgot to mention some minor thing when you signed up.

Intestine transplant costs more than $1 million. Heart transplant - $700-800K. Bone marrow transplant - $600-700K.

<comment><USER12> When did non-government sponsored benefits equate to no health care at all?...especially if you're making over half a million dollars per year.

<comment><USER11> When your insurance company drops you.

<comment><USER14> If you make half a million a year, you have options for paying for services yourself instead of relying on someone else (like an insurance company) to pay it for you. You can just, you know, buy healthcare.

<comment><USER15> Note that some of the life-saving operations listed above a) cost significantly more than $500k and b) are related to ailments that will likely stop you from working on AwesomeApply.io or whatever it is for a potentially indefinite period of time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Thanks for sharing, PierreA. I started on iOS at around the same time as you, and became profitable this year (not quite as successful as you, but still doing well). It sure looks like it does take that long (2+ yrs) for an indie developer to gain enough experience to do well!

<comment><USER4> happy to know that! Yes that's a long road and the experience you gain help you to know what you have to do . You can be more or less lucky (I was pretty lucky with the education market) but most of all you have to be persistant and learn from mistakes (I think I've already heard that somewhere else...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Nice post, but what's left unsaid here is exactly how much he spent on marketing. His gross revenue might have been $417k for the last 12 months, but what's his gross profit?

<comment><USER4> that's a good point, and I will add this in the report. I work at home so my expense are only a little bit of marketing, some devices and I've made a trip to a conference this year in california, and a very important thing is that I have to give some royalties back to the speech engine company for the word wizard app. So according to my files, it is about $35K. I would say that marketing is not very expensive but takes a lot of times (anyway buying ads don't work well) EDIT: updated the expense (bad euros/dollars conversion before)

<comment><USER18> Hi Pierre,

Would you be able to comment on how your process and decision on picking a speech engine company?

Thanks

<comment><USER4> it was simple - I tried all the major engines on the market and take the best one for iOS. All companies almost offer the same license (20 to 30% of your income).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Watched your videos on montesori numbers. Very impressive. Have you thought of doing iphone aps with arithmetic for the older kids and/or prodigies ? I learnt to add three digit numbers when I was like 6-7. I didn't understand what I was doing...like I didn't know why 7+4 was 11...but understanding can wait. Its very useful to nevertheless pattern match your way to addition & multiplication. You can learn multiplication tables upto 20 or so simply by osmosis...not repetition, but intelligent pattern matching. You look at 3 and 7 and just automatically write 1 in units place and carry over 2....reasoning can come later. There were various tricks for remembering factorials & summations & the like...it was a real blast.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm happy for your success, but as a developer, having one app for each of {French, German, Swedish} sounds like spam. It reminds me of "auto wallpaper" apps or the like.

The actual question of course is: how does establishing a unifying brand fare compared with a bazillion of generic apps?

<comment><USER4> and actually for the Word Wizard app, I can't release a single app with all languages because it uses a text to speech engine and each voice is 90M ! In addition, due to the contract I have with the text to speech company, I can't release an app with several languages...

<comment><USER21> How many words do you have in total? Is it possible to record most or some of them?

90M is a lot; maybe we could work something out? :)

<comment><USER4> text to speech engines do not work like this. They built the pronunciations of any words on the fly using their phonetic sound library. so 90M is for the sound library I think

<comment><USER21> If you had 2-300 words, it would be much cheaper to just record the words.

Otherwise, if it's still just dictionary words, it's just a lot easier if the dictionary already breaks down the word into phonemes, and the speech engine then collates the phoneme sounds together. You're not actually using most of the features of a text-to-speech engine, so I don't see why you'd have to pay for the full price tag.

So: how many words? And what's a price that would make you want to buy a license to a simpler engine? :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Pardon my newbiness, but what generated your charts? Is it part of the iOS Store, or a third-party dashboard?

<comment><USER4> appfigures.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Does this sound ironic to anyone else? Do educators ever post about how much money they made teaching children?

<comment><USER4> Ironic that I get more money than an educator ? Yes it is in a way. But it is the world we are living, no ? (and we should not start to talk about bankers) On the other hand, there is no comparison between a software developer and a educator (I teach nothing except to my kids)

<comment><USER24> An educational App writer has much better operational leverage than a single teacher of 30 kids. The App also has to compete on a global stage, so the rewards to the winner are likely to be higher too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Congrats! That is awesome. Thanks for sharing.

Having said that, every time I read one of these types of success stories I'm reminded of Jacques Matthieu's "So you're making good money. STFU" post. [http://jacquesmattheij.com/So+you+are+making+good+money+now+...](http://jacquesmattheij.com/So+you+are+making+good+money+now+STFU)

<comment><USER26> I hadn't read that STFU piece before, but it is truly awful. It basically argues "Don't talk about your success because you'll give away your secrets and increase competition, lower the barrier for competitors." One presumes this goes double for actual code: don't open-source! You'll give away all your secrets!

It's that kind of selfish, greedy outlook that makes life suck. Jealously guarded secrets retard the growth of industries - and presumably, if you really care about your customers, and you're building good stuff, then you want more good stuff in the world. Of course it sucks if you get undercut, or your product gets cloned. And you can't rely on your market to know the history and do the right thing.

The saving grace, and why Matthieu's post is horse shit, is that software is a lot like art. People don't want clones. They want Plants vs. Zombies not a clone. It's music, it's art, and guarding your secrets about how you make your art is unhealthy.

One of the things you get, too, is influence and respect from your peers. Pierre certainly has mine. He's put together an excellent resource for those who want to follow in his footstep writing and selling apps having realistic expectations about what it takes, and some great links to resources for doing things like promotion. It's still a lot of hard work, clearly, but he's increasing the size of his community, not giving away the _secret sauce_.

<comment><USER27> "Don't talk about your success because you'll give away your secrets and increase competition, lower the barrier for competitors."

This is the truth. I know I've gotten ideas from posters like the OP talking about how profitable an app is. If I have a bigger team or more resources, I could take away your customers pretty quickly.

"Jealously guarded secrets retard the growth of industries"

Really? Rather than everyone using the exact same idea/code base and branching off from it, we have completely different products. It helps the growth of industries and ends up being better for the consumer (more choices, etc).

"They want Plants vs. Zombies not a clone. It's music, it's art, and guarding your secrets about how you make your art is unhealthy."

Don't blame anyone when you can't make any money because you gave all of your best stuff away for free.

Making money from the app store (or any startup) is hard enough as it is.

Do you really want to take a chance and give away any competitive advantage that you may have had?

<comment><USER26> Do you realize that the exact same argument can be made against honesty in government? "If you're honest, look at all the money in bribes you're giving up! Everyone does it, it's almost impossible to get caught and even if you do, it's a slap on the wrist. It's _stupid_ to not take bribes."

And sure enough, everyone starts taking bribes. The corruption spreads to every level of government, because every individual makes the same calculation: take the bribe, more money for the family, don't take the bribe, less money.

Secrecy is a bribe.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Think Quarterly: Innovation  - <AUTHOR> http://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/quarterly/

<comment><USER2> I was critical of an earlier edition (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2362741>) so thought it only right to say Google has done a far better job making a high-quality magazine website with this one.</comment>


Perceptual computing competition from Intel: $100k+ grand-prize - <AUTHOR> http://intel.ly/13eq0Zw Starting May 6th, Intel wants to inspire developers to forge new ground by integrating voice control, gesture control, facial recognition, and augmented reality with apps and games on PCs in the second phase of its Perceptual Computing Challenge. With a grand-prize of $100,000 USD and thousands of dollars in prizing available in 4 different categories, Intel is looking for the most unique, innovative, and bar-raising uses of Perceptual Computing possible. Participants have six weeks to submit ideas for games, productivity tools, user interfaces, or generally innovative uses of the Perceptual Computing SDK. If your idea is accepted it will be selected by the panel of judges to progress into round two, where you'll receive an interactive gesture camera in order to turn the idea into reality. Good luck to all participants! <comment><USER2> Download the SDK from intel and you will get a f___ing exe ... basically you need Windows sh__ to do anything with it.</comment>


Show HN: Social Commerce - New wave of social networks... Feedback appreciated - <AUTHOR> https://www.hangtrend.com/

<comment><USER2> A clear headline stating why someone should have a second look will help. Looks like any other web shop.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks rushabh; That's something we've heard since we launched Friday and we'll have something like that up soon! Val</comment></comment>


Eavesdropping Encrypted LTE Calls With ReVoLTE - <AUTHOR> https://revolte-attack.net/ <comment><USER2> Seems like an awfully large oversight to reuse the encryption key between subsequent calls.

I wonder if this works when leaving voicemail in the second call? Since the approach requires a long call for a long decryption, dialing straight to voicemail would be non-cooperative and avoid alerting the victim until after.

<comment><USER3> It's something so stupid I have to imagine it is deliberate.

<comment><USER4> The argument typically is that good encryption causes the call setup time to be too long and costs battery life, but this indeed is an exceptionally dumb flaw.

Unless you know what you're doing it's hard to test for though, and if you know what you're doing you wouldn't make this kind of mistake.

<comment><USER5> Somewhat true, but standards could assist developers with adequate test vectors, explanations and reminders why X or Y is important.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The illustrations are very charming. Here's the android app to test if your station is vulnerable: [https://github.com/RUB- SysSec/mobile_sentinel](https://github.com/RUB-SysSec/mobile_sentinel)

</comment><comment><USER7> Wouldn't you get into massive amounts of trouble for running this on an operators commercial network?

<comment><USER8> This doesn't run _on_ the network at all, so no. You're just listening to radio signals that are already out there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Whats with the alternating caps in the title? Is it to be sarcastic?

<comment><USER10> FWIW, its not in the title of the article, just the HN title. Mods should change it probably.

<comment><USER11> True. I emailed the mods.

<comment><USER12> Changed now. Submitted title was "Call Me Maybe: EaVesDropPing EnCrypTed LTE Calls with ReVoLTE".</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Are you using too many technologies in your projects? - <AUTHOR> http://www.makinggoodsoftware.com/2010/03/31/are-you-using-too-many-technologies-in-your-projects-the-7-anti-patterns-for-technologies-frameworks-and-other-technicalities-in-software-development/

<comment><USER2> Disagree a bit with "Anti-pattern 3: Overusing a technology". If you decide to use a technology, embrace it (even as you recognize the lock-in potentials). You often stand to gain more by making the most of what you're already more- or-less committed to (but usually haven't yet acknowledged just how committed you really are). The point is to use that dependency wisely. If it's a solid library you'll be saving yourself a lot of time in the long run.

Of course, if you've chosen poorly, there's no helping that.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a great list, but I especially like #1. Any time I see a job ad that wants "1-3 years experience with _x_ " I groan.</comment>


Investing in SP500 from overseas which broker? - <AUTHOR> We are based out in Hong Kong. We want to invest in sp500. Which broker do you recommend? <comment><USER2> [https://www.interactivebrokers.com/](https://www.interactivebrokers.com/)

<comment><USER3> They have the best API as well and 2FA.</comment></comment>


Desktop Linux: The Dream Is Dead - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/207999/desktop_linux_the_dream_is_dead.html?tk=hp_new

<comment><USER2> Credit to the guy, when he trolls he doesn't do it half-arsed. A whole article of linux FUD and crud.

Desktop linux will probably never match Windows' or Mac's market share, but it is not dead.

<comment><USER3> From the article:

 _modern Linux distributions such as Ubuntu have utterly transformed the open- source desktop user experience into something sleek and simple, while arguably surpassing Windows and Mac OS in both security and stability_

Hardly sounds like he's anti-Linux. Truth is it's been "the year of the Linux desktop" _every_ year. Maybe it's time to move on.

<comment><USER4> This is because someone else comes up and proclaims that it's the year of the linux desktop every year. This should be taken about as seriously as "x is dead" posts until it's the consensus of the majority of the industry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This article is a solid block of FUD. It reminds me of the arguments made by IT industry types against Windows 3.1, fancy fonts and graphical user interfaces in the early 1990s.

For me desktop Linux happened about five years ago. The main reason why it doesn't have much market share is simple: Windows is still shipped by default on nearly all new PCs. However, if Canonical does a decent job with its software store I think things could change quite rapidly and they could be in a similar position to do deals with box shifters as Microsoft has traditionally been.

</comment><comment><USER6> Nope. It's coming. Now more than ever. Why? Because of Android.

For the longest time people tried to get linux from the server market to the desktop market and failed. But now we're seeing the opposite starting to happen. We'll start to see Android tablets and netbooks, and when that starts to become accepted...mini computers wil follow. Will it ever dominate? Probably not. But it isn't a fantasy either...

<comment><USER7> I don't think of android as a "desktop". I don't see it as being useful for workaday stuff -- in the same way my iPad isn't really great for that. I'm doubtful, but I hope I'm proven wrong -- just because it'll be interesting to see it evolve towards that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've always found the competition for the "linux desktop" to be somewhat weird. It will never "win" -- and who cares?

If you're not sold on the Free Software manifesto or not dirt poor (or just cheap), why bother when the non-free alternatives are radically better (and they are IMO)? If you are, why do you care if your desktop is popular, as long as it's "Free"? If you're cheap, then stop complaining about your free shit.

I sort of understand: Most of the success of the free software movement is based on not having to pay for it -- e.g. getting a free compiler. Turns out that's a good way to go for some software for many other reasons, but it has nothing to do with this "us vs them" crap I see when people talk about the linux desktop. You get what you pay for, and the GNOME desktop is pretty damn good for the price of a download. However, it's nowhere near even windows XP, except at the most surface levels, IMO.

"The" Office and Steam (its games) run better on windows. Mac Office, iLife and the thousand little accesories (dashboard stuff, writeroom, etc) run better, in a more integratedfashion, on a mac. None of these run well on GNOME. Instead of iTunes, you get 3 music management apps that are supposedly "better", but in truth, they were designed by ADD teenagers (or not designed at all). And iTunes isn't even _that_ great as a target. Oh, and don't forget OpenOffice, which, being completely free, is also completely crap.

And if the future of "desktop" linux is web apps, that really isn't any future at all is it? It simply means that Linux may or may not be running under that snazzy Web Terminal you're running. It means you might as well install windows, 'cause at least you'll be able to run good native apps _in addition_ to the marginal web apps.

Paradoxically, the linux "desktop" wins in a key area: command line "apps", research and dev. I can literally download ubuntu and with a single click, install whole dev environments, for various different targets, in various different laguages. This is also true for research envs, not particularly related to dev.

This has no peer on windows, and mac is better, but still not as good. And the graphical "desktop"? That becomes just an excellent means to visualize my dev or research work. Even here, you get what you pay for. If you have a mac, look into some of the "Instruments" stuff Apple provides for visualizing what programs are doing. Fucking night and day vs. your typical linux fare. And.. yeah... while it's "free" to you, someone was paid to write it, and you _did_ pay them (by buying mac hardware).

</comment><comment><USER8> The main reason I am stuck with windows is because I have to reboot to play my new "windows only" games (wine cannot handle it) and, I have hardware with "windows only" drivers and I use as a freelancer CS5, gimp scribus and inkcsape just are not there as far as innovation and then people keep sending me M$ word docs and openoffice just cannot format these files 100%, in business this needs to work seamlessly.

I prefer a linux desktop but the rest of the world keeps making it "windows only."

</comment><comment><USER9> The guy states the points about why an operating system cannot generate revenue, but he misses the point that Linux distributions does not need to generate revenue.

It's total flame-bait, the guy needs the attention and tries to get it by half-ass disguised trolling.

Carefully added note under the story does not change my opinion of a barking dog under the wrong tree.

Precious minutes of my life wasted on reading unworthy crap.

</comment><comment><USER10> "common streaming technologies such as Flash ... deliver poor results on Linux"

I have a 4-year-old Dell PC running Ubuntu, and a brand new MacBook Pro running Snow Leopard. The Ubuntu machine shows Flash video content much better than the Mac.

I don't want to reopen the Adobe-vs-Apple question, or who's fault is it. Just pointing out that Flash Player works great on Ubuntu.

</comment><comment><USER11> The stage wasn't set a few years ago, even using Ubuntu was too high-level for many people, since it inevitably required at least a bit of command-line usage. I expect linux will continue to get more popular as the medium level of computer users decreases.

</comment><comment><USER12> 1# I don't believe his numbers. I don't think market share is at 1%. 2# I think it is desirable, that Linux is the world's leading operating systems. 3# The future lies in asia, Linux is much stronger there.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm surprised this piece of linkbait is on the front page of HN.</comment>


'Catch Me If You Can' Scam Artist Has a Warning for Today's Consumers - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/catch-me-if-you-can-scam-artist-has-a-warning-for-todays-consumers-1506002560?mod=trending_now_4 <comment><USER2> Why bother with check fraud that can get you in trouble, when people will give you millions willingly on crowdfuding website for 3D renderings?

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1041610927/znaps- the-9-...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1041610927/znaps- the-9-magnetic-adapter-for-your-mobile-devic/description)

$ 2,438,203

[https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ritot-the-first- projectio...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ritot-the-first-projection- watch)

$1,401,510

[https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/shiftwear-customize- your-...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/shiftwear-customize-your-kicks- technology)

$925,952

And you're not even obligated to fulfil anything, just demonstrate you've "tried" enough!

<comment><USER3> It's funny how I intuitively noticed that all 3 were likely to be scams (or just unlikely to be shipped due to a team's inability to see it through to shipping) just from:

\- a lack of consistent, high-quality brand identity; you can notice design tropes that a novice/underpaid graphic designer would use

\- use of generic/non-exclusive stock photography (this woman - [https://c1.iggcdn.com/indiegogo-media-prod- cld/image/upload/...](https://c1.iggcdn.com/indiegogo-media-prod- cld/image/upload/c_limit,f_auto,w_620/v1406857882/pgehjmdjsjzu0dmeoq5n.png) \- is a meme: [http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/ariane-the-overexposed- stock-p...](http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/ariane-the-overexposed-stock-photo- model))

\- plain kitsch: [https://c1.iggcdn.com/indiegogo-media-prod- cld/image/upload/...](https://c1.iggcdn.com/indiegogo-media-prod- cld/image/upload/fl_progressive:semi,q_auto,f_auto,c_fill,w_695/v1451174493/apojpc3r3rzdmet6peax.png)

<comment><USER4> It's funny how we have been trained into thinking a product is sub-par because the team didn't spend a lot of money on marketing material.

<comment><USER3> At that stage, the product _is_ its marketing. You're selling the promise, as there's no physical product to evaluate on your own, or widely available reviews of your product.

When a company is really invested in a product, they put a lot of work on it, often worth much more the investment (in money, time, opportunity costs, mental energy etc). Scammers just want to pick the low hanging fruit.

Good marketing can be inexpensive, but it's not easy. Perhaps it's pick 3 of: cheap, effective, tasteful, easy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > _People go on Facebook and tell you what car they drive, their mother's > name, their wife's maiden name, children's name, where they're going on > vacation, where they've been on vacation._

Also, Equifax.

<comment><USER6> Equifax gets a lot of bad press because they made a ton of money while mismanaging people's personal information. Abagnale's point is that people go throwing around most of that same personal information around with no regard to their privacy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Mr. Abagnale now puts his skills to use teaching FBI agents around the > country about cybercrime, identity theft and fraud. "Frank has a unique > ability" to communicate, says the special agent in charge of the FBI's > Charlotte, N.C., field office, John Strong, who has worked with Mr. Abagnale > on multiple occasions. "The guy is a genius."

His masterpiece scam?

<comment><USER8> You didn't finish the article. He spent age 21 to 26 in prison. That's long, and it's the years when people usually develop their life direction and opportunities.

<comment><USER9> That he didn't turn back to crime after spending that time of his life in the best school for crime is surprising. Good for him.

<comment><USER10> Not sure that it works like that in the solitary confinement of a French prison.

<comment><USER9> Good point. I need to learn more about this guy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The interview is very light on details. Is it really so plainly simple to draft from a person's bank account using only the information on a check?

<comment><USER12> Yes. If you can trick senior citizens into giving you the information over the phone, you've got a legitimate business in the eyes of the banking industry.

This was a scam that caught my grandmother 10 years ago. The New York Times did a story on the industry:

 _State regulators have tried to protect victims like Mr. Guthrie. In 2005, attorneys general of 35 states urged the Federal Reserve to end the unsigned check system... But the Federal Reserve disagreed. It changed its rules to place greater responsibility on banks that first accept unsigned checks, but has permitted their continued use.

...In all, Wachovia accepted $142 million of unsigned checks from companies that made unauthorized withdrawals from thousands of accounts, federal prosecutors say. Wachovia collected millions of dollars in fees from those companies, even as it failed to act on warnings, according to records._

[http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/business/20tele.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/business/20tele.html)

I documented my failed effort to get Washington Mutual to reverse the checks written against my grandmother's account:

[http://wamublamesgrandma.blogspot.com/](http://wamublamesgrandma.blogspot.com/)

<comment><USER13> Yet another reason to never ever use a big bank.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Are cheques still a thing? I haven't seen one in about ten years, maybe more.

<comment><USER15> I've previously noticed that places that spell it 'cheque' use the payment method less than those who spell it check.

<comment><USER16> Probably because they are no longer issued or accepted in Europe. Europay pulled the plug on them in 2002.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Cleaned [https://read.feedly.com/html?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2...](https://read.feedly.com/html?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Famp%2Farticles%2Fcatch- me-if-you-can-scam-artist-has-a-warning-for-todays- consumers-1506002560&theme=white&size=medium)

</comment><comment><USER18> This is why you should really consider having fraud insurance as a backup, like Zanders or even lifelock. Especially of you have any sizable cash in you bank account.

<comment><USER19> No point, banks are liable for fraud rather than the consumer. I believe consumer's liability is capped at $50-500 depending on how quickly the fraud is reported. Just make sure you don't wait past 60 days to report. Credit cards have even more protections.

These plans rarely pay out, and you'll likely spend more on subscription fees than they'd return to you in fraud payments.

[https://www.consumerfinance.gov/ask-cfpb/how-do-i-get-my- mon...](https://www.consumerfinance.gov/ask-cfpb/how-do-i-get-my-money-back- after-i-discovered-an-unauthorized-transaction-or-money-missing-from-my-bank- account-en-1017/)

<comment><USER18> Thanks for the feedback. You got me thinking I should be more critical of Zanders and whether they actually pay out. I'm gonna check with my insurance agent and see what he offers , at least he would be an advocate for me.

FYI: banks are liable only for PERSONAL accounts. If you have a BUSINESS Account that gets hit by fraud, the bank is not liable. Thats where fraud insurance is most important

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> >tfw you realize Bitcoin and Monero are more secure than your US banking account.

When are we going to stop the stupid practice of using serial numbers and strings for identity and start using strong cryptography to establish identity, authorized signatures, etc?

<comment><USER21> If strong cryptography is used, the customer won't get any money back in case of fraud.

Good luck proving a manufacturer key generation screwup on smart cards for example. Things like this happen.</comment></comment>


BP loses battle to trademark the colour green in Australia - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/jul/03/bp-loses-battle-to-trademark-the-colour-green-in-australia

<comment><USER2> A famous case of this sort was Cadbury, trademarking purple back in 2005 or so - but they eventually lost that last year [http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/oct/04/cadbury- dair...](http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/oct/04/cadbury-dairy-milk- purple-trademark-blocked) Many other similar cases still stand however. [http://boingboing.net/2005/03/25/cadbury- trademarks-t.html](http://boingboing.net/2005/03/25/cadbury-trademarks-t.html)

<comment><USER3> Interesting, I have seen "The colour Purple is a trademark of Cadbury (or equivalent wording) as recent as April this year on new advertising.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> "BP's most recent claim on the colour extended to fuel, car service stations and take-away food services."

Yes color isn't a Patent but color psychology means a company can gain unfair competitive advantage and abuse it to own the market e.g. yellow/red for food (association). Colors should not be patentable.

</comment><comment><USER4> Didn't T-Mobile try to pull something similar with magenta?</comment>