Ask HN: What marketing channels are working for you in 2019? - <AUTHOR> We have seen the decline of free channels in the past decade and more and more I hear of startups buying FB and IG ads to gain initial traction for their products and services.<p>What marketing channels are currently working for the HN community in a sustainable way? <comment><USER2> We sell open source security keys: [https://solokeys.com](https://solokeys.com)

Paid: Amazon, the thing I like is that their dashboard clearly shows marketing cost and revenues, so you can very easily say whether it's worth or not.

Non-paid:

\- Github: [http://github.com/solokeys/solo](http://github.com/solokeys/solo)

Last time I measured, we had 1% of our traffic coming from Github, and 1% of that traffic converting to a sale. This is pretty awesome I think, especially because having a baseline we can improve. We're not making any strong sale- pitch on Github, we simply put links to our store at the top and bottom of the readme.

Right now we're running a crowd funding campaign, and because we knew Github was bringing high quality traffic we're advertising it there.

\- Twitter. This is our 2nd social in sales. We're not doing anything special, just clear profiles (personal and business) with links to the store, and clear call to actions when you tweet.

\- Pinterest. This is the social that bring us most clicks the the store. I know the platform very well, of course. For SoloKeys specifically the audience is not right, so there's little to zero conversions to sales, but it's good learning nevertheless.

\- Medium/Hackernoon. When we blog, we typically get spikes of traffic and sometimes sales. But it requires time to write posts, so it's not really as scalable as the other channels.

(We're barely using Facebook, and zero Instagram, so I can't really talk about these).

</comment><comment><USER3> I think many are a little too ad-averse. For a little bit of $ you can get traffic that would take months to build organically. Nowadays I'd first validate with ads and THEN go for organic channels.

<comment><USER4> I think you're right, but Ad blockers complicate matters and make it necessary to have organic more than ever. Google adwords works but my previous employers standard issue install, blocked ads, including on Google, which for a b2b business especially is bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> In my experience, I have found email marketing as one of the most underrated and under-utilized channels.

Your email list is the most vital piece of data that you truly own. Everything else depends on the respective platform's algorithms and uncontrollable factors to a large extent.

Source: I'm a copywriter and have worked with several e-commerce stores.

</comment><comment><USER6> Maybe cause I am marketing, but I would say all major channels work in for the right product, message and goal.

I see some people scoff at Adwords not being useful. Trust me, there is a reason companies pay collectivly $100+ billion to this platform. This goes the same for many other channels.

For free channels, YouTube, Facebook, Google Search and Google Maps do a great job here for the right product and message.

For paid, all the major channels work well if aligned to their strenght. The one channel many people look past is affiliate models. That said affiliate tends to suit certain product and pricing. Also there is huge amounts of snake oil in the affiliate business so get someone who knows what they are doing set up campaigns. This applies to most marketing channels but affiliate/SEO are probably the worst of having wool pulled over eyes.

Am happy to answer a few specific quesitons if your digging for information.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I'll try to contact you through your website.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What password manager to use for IT team? - <AUTHOR> We have a lot of credentials that we store in a shared semi secure location right now. We need to share credentials inside teams and with customers. We need a browser plugin and command line access would be awesome. What saas password manager should we use? <comment><USER2> We've been using 1Password and have had no issues. Additionally, it gives each employee a free license to the home edition.

<comment><USER3> Same, 1Password has been pretty awesome.

I used 1Password at home first then we started using it at the office and it makes life much easier and cleaner.

<comment><USER4> Thirding 1Password, seems to destroy LassPass, Dashlane, etc from a usability and shareability perspective.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I used to manage a small IT department. I used LastPass as my personal password manager and purchased licenses for my team. It worked so well that we rolled it out to (most of) the rest of the organization. It made credential sharing (which is beginning to seem like an unsolvable problem) much more secure and gave admins tools to enforce strong password policies.

I still use LastPass for personal use. I haven't been an admin in a few years so I couldn't tell you if it's still a good option. I want to check out Bitwarden soon; it's been highly recommended to me.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm in same position and evaulating bitwarden_rs[0] which is self-hosted like Bitwarden itself, but with almost all premium features of Bitwarden.

I also had brief review of Hashicorp's Vault [1], but seems it doesn't have official browser extensions. I'll probably use it for service accounts though.

[0] [https://github.com/dani-garcia/bitwarden_rs](https://github.com/dani- garcia/bitwarden_rs) [1] [https://learn.hashicorp.com/vault](https://learn.hashicorp.com/vault)</comment>


The 'Frequent Flier' Program That Grounded a Hospital's Soaring Costs - <AUTHOR> https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/12/18/parkland-dallas-frequent-flier-hospital-what-works-216108 <comment><USER2> Some folks (nonprofits and gov types) in the District of Columbia have long wanted to do something like this data sharing for the breadth and depth of social services. But we immediately ran into "We can't because of FERPA and HIPAA." We also ran into "we can't because (fill in the blank with a BS reason)." The latter a lot.

What there wasn't in DC is what there was in Dallas: A wholly committed leader and an environment that made collaboration and connecting super appealing. It would be interesting to know more about the behind-the-scenes work that took place to make this project work. That information would benefit organizations and governments across the US.

Note: DC does have a "frequent flyer" effort for those using 911 services. Don't want to suggest nothing good is being done.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sounds like the approach taken in every other country that has a national health service.

<comment><USER4> No, this one here is way, way more extensive. No country I know of directly connects e.g. hospitals and food banks or homeless shelters like here.

<comment><USER5> Some hospitals are even going further than this: [https://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2016/06/29/4829940...](https://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2016/06/29/482994000/a-hospital-offers-frequent-er-patients-an-out-free- housing)

It's cheaper to just pay for a patient's apartment rent than keep treating disease caused by exposure.</comment></comment></comment>


ProjectLocker Introduces No Credit Card Required Trial For All Plans - <AUTHOR> http://blog.projectlocker.com/2014/02/17/projectlocker-goes-completely-free---for-30-days/

<comment><USER2> As a customer, I don't understand why you didn't do this earlier... ;-)</comment>


Launching soon - Social referral platform - <AUTHOR> http://www.earnsocial.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Show HN: we'll have the best UX, self servicing platform with loyalty rewards features built in. Those can be configured while creating social promotions. Analytics will also have intelligent algorithms to show useful & relevant reports. Feel free to send your queries and spread the word around to gain free access. If any question, please reach out via feedback form on earnsocial.com.</comment>


What a Tesla looks like after 100,000 Miles - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@SteveSasman/how-i-used-abused-my-tesla-what-a-tesla-looks-like-after-100-000-miles-a-48-state-road-trip-6b6ae66b3c10#.6m9e2wsc9 <comment><USER2> reading this makes me want to buy one</comment>


A strong defense of Clifford Stoll - <AUTHOR> http://www.articulateventures.com/articulate-blog/category/a-rabid-defense-of-mr-clifford-stoll <comment><USER3> This seems like a glass half empty / half full situation. "Why The Web Won't Be Nirvana" got a lot wrong, true, but it also got a lot right. His prediction of books not being sold on the web was incorrect, but his explanation of why (cold, less fun at the beach) still applies. Yes, the Eternal September happened, but it wasn't as bad as some feared. I haven't read Silicon Snake Oil but I did read the original The Road Ahead. Silicon Snake Oil can't be much worse than that, can it?

So... Many years ago my Tek 7904 oscilloscope fried itself. Again. I realized I just don't have the time to keep it limping along. I bought a soulless DSO then posted a Craigslist ad for my whole setup (12+ plugins including 7CT1N, probes, cart, ...) at an absurdly cheap price. This machine that I had been trusting for a decade, it had to go. Quick, because this was depressing.

One person responded to the first ad. Cliff complimented the squigglescope and chatted about how great these old tools can be and how he uses them in high school classes because the new stuff just doesn't teach as well. He said he couldn't do anything about mine but offered some suggestions and that he'd keep an eye out for a suitable home.

That made my day.

The scope sold second try. Hope it's fixed and keeping someone's bench warm somewhere. No doubt Cliff is still resisting technology and doing his part to make the world a more welcoming place.

<comment><USER4> He definitely got a lot right. To pick 3 of his "predictions":

1\. "No online database will replace your daily newspaper" OK, he's wrong here. (Well, wrong, soon. Although clearly newspapers are struggling, they're not extinct, yet.)

2\. "No CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher" How is this wrong? To the extent MOOCs replace face-to-face teaching, they might require _fewer_ competent teachers. Anyway I took his point to be that learning is about more than viewing static content like a CD-ROM.

3\. "No computer network will change the way government works" How is this wrong? It's overly optimistic to say that computer networks have transformed government. (For the better. They've clearly transformed the efficacy of tracking people.) You could argue that money in politics is worse than ever, and actual democracy is weaker than ever. I don't see how technology has improved this substantially or is likely to in the near future. We can hope and try, and kudos to civic hackers chipping away at this from the bottom up.

Although I love the internet and disruption, I don't see how we can laugh at him for being unduly skpetical.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I posted this in the comment section of that article when it was posted here earlier, his response in 2010 made me love the dude, even if he couldn't see 15 years into the future:

"Of my many mistakes, flubs, and howlers, few have been as public as my 1995 howler.

Wrong? Yep.

At the time, I was trying to speak against the tide of futuristic commentary on how The Internet Will Solve Our Problems. Gives me pause. Most of my screwups have had limited publicity: Forgetting my lines in my 4th grade play. Misidentifying a Gilbert and Sullivan song while suddenly drafted to fill in as announcer on a classical radio station. Wasting a week hunting for planets interior to Mercury's orbit using an infrared system with a noise level so high that it couldn't possibly detect 'em. Heck – trying to dry my sneakers in a microwave oven (a quarter century later, there's still a smudge on the kitchen ceiling)

And, as I've laughed at others' foibles, I think back to some of my own cringeworthy contributions.

Now, whenever I think I know what's happening, I temper my thoughts: Might be wrong, Cliff…

Warm cheers to all, -Cliff Stoll on a rainy Friday afternoon in Oakland"

[http://boingboing.net/2010/02/26/curmudgeony-essay- on.html#c...](http://boingboing.net/2010/02/26/curmudgeony-essay- on.html#comment-723356)

</comment><comment><USER6> A bit strawperson-ey

No one hates him, he wrote a very funny book on catching a computer hacker.

But he's just totally hopeless at predicting the future. Nothing to do with that article but he's one of the first non fiction authors I read (Silicon Snake Oil) and realised he just doesn't get it. He's a bit of a Luddite(In a non offensive way)

<comment><USER7> I still think much of what he said in _Silicon Snake Oil_ is right on the mark, particularly the part about computers in the classroom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I read his books when I was young and impressionable, and impress upon me they did. Wrong or not, I think his alternative perspectives about technology are more than healthy. For all the good, there's definitely a lot of snake oil out there, and there's definitely a lot of good in enjoying life's simple things: friendships, food, gardening, music.

Negroponte is a freak of nature (a compliment). I read an older book of his recently, and he was incredibly accurate about so many predictions. Interesting to go back and read predictions (both the wrong ones and the right ones) and try to understand the frame of mind that those with insight possess. Steve Jobs (by way of Wayne Gretzky) called it "skating to where the puck is going to be". Paul Allen called it "reading the chips" (like "reading the tea- leaves", you could say).

Anyway, it's really worth reading Stoll's books. They're entertaining, well- written, and are a nice counter-balance to the hype we ingest on a daily basis.

</comment><comment><USER9> Thank you. He's a great man.

</comment><comment><USER10> I reread the Cuckoo's Egg only last week, it's still very enjoyable. One striking thing, given recent relevations, was the role of the NSA - Stoll had slight counterculture suspicions of what they were capable of, but generally they were treated as trustworthy security experts. This line - when Stoll hears about a vulnerability in VMS 4.5 - is especially funny in retrospect:

"Wait a second. That operating system was certified by NSA. They tested it and certified it secure."

<comment><USER11> As a 40 year old who was hacking in his early teens (by both meanings of the word), this isn't that striking to me. It was common for people back in this time frame (the events of Cuckoo's Egg) to half-jokingly make "Echelon keyword" lists where they would insert dubious words as postscripts in email or on usenet posts. I spent quite a bit of time hanging around the MIT Media Lab building (where GNU/FSF was located at the time) and it was an open secret (and source of lots of joking) that one of the always-locked doors there lead to a "spook closet" where some guy nobody there really knew would come and pick up mag tapes once in a while (with the implicit assumption that the tapes were a traffic dump of data going through the routers there).

The NSA revelations of late aren't really that surprising in context with my prior experience, other than that it was surprising that the leaks so thoroughly confirmed a lot of suspicions and showed that their tentacles into commercial service providers were even more extensive than originally thought.

<comment><USER10> Yup, I used spook.el back then too. And as I said, Stoll had suspicions - <USER2> thought the NSA listened to all the traffic, and why not - it was all unencrypted telnet sessions.

But the common impression then was that the NSA knew how to crack ciphers because they had the researchers, and that their unexplained changes to standards were improvements (for example, they changed DES to resist differential cryptanalysis 20 years before that technique was "discovered"). The notion that the NSA did more than just restrict key lengths to weaken crypto is recent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's spelled "silicon", and "klein bottles".

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> But what about Martha?

</comment><comment><USER14> Cliff Stoll is a fantastic guy: warm, creative, super genius smart, and a truly giving human being.

Makes fantastic Klein bottles too.</comment>


YouTube TV will be huge. Apple must respond - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/06/google_youtube_tv_apple_response/ <comment><USER2> I am sceptical about that.

I've always had the feeling that Youtube had bad management. If they weren't the biggest library of videos online they'd probably be out of business by now (Thats my personal opinion).

Take youtube streaming for example, it can't take over Twitch . I find its hard to fiddle with youtube's UI changes.

I don't know really, I think we'll have to wait and see, but still $35 a month for 40 channels that seems a hefty price.

<comment><USER3> $35 a month for 40 channels at launch and likely more later, that you can watch on anything that can access YouTube? Don't underestimate the value of convenience.

<comment><USER4> Depends on 30-40 channels of what -- if Showtime, HBO and Stars are in that price then it's competitive with buying those a subscriptions from Amazon. Thirty-fourty channels of non-premium content like reality TV shows and sports is a non-starter for me, anyway. Reading the article which claims "...including ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, ESPN, Bravo, Disney Channel, Fox News, FX, MSNBC, Sprout and USA Network." I can definitely say at least for me it ain't worth it.

A cheap antenna will get the broadcast networks and Bravo, Disney, Sprout, etc don't have any compelling content for me. Far cheaper to buy one or two shows off of Amazon if I want to see them semi-realtime, otherwise it's just fine to wait until they are available to stream off of Netflix or Amazon Prime.

Just one nerd's opinion.

<comment><USER3> I don't care about that stuff either, but I know a hell of a lot of people who do.

In particular, I suspect you overlook access to sports content, in particular live games. That by itself matters enough to a whole lot of people to sell the service at this price point.

<comment><USER4> You say that, but it's my understanding that sports-only subscriptions would be far more expensive than they are today because all cable subscribers subsidize things like ESPN.

This is my complaint about unbundling: content creators want to charge the same or more than their offerings cost on cable. Back in the heady days of Big Ugly Dishes (BUDs) the providers were unbundled and far cheaper. The price creep we've seen has been aggregators (cable companies and small dish providers) charging a premium + markup simply because they could. Content providers would like to decouple from cable whilst retaining the premium.

I remain skeptical of someone like Comcast ever unbundling ESPN because they'd lose ESPN customers in droves when the real costs were exposed and most likely they (Comcast) would simply set the new base package price as the old one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If anything, Netflix with its huge affordable worldwide available library is going to be huge. Broadcast TV is rapidly dying and Google's decision to support linear broadcast content instead of expanding YouTube to be a VoD provider is utterly baffling.

<comment><USER6> > instead of expanding YouTube to be a VoD provider is utterly baffling.

Do we really need another one?

<comment><USER5> Good point, fragmentation of VoD services isn't a good thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It'll be interesting to see if Google can work with traditional media companies to find a price profitable price point and offer the flexibility which many people today seek.

It's clear to see that a company such as Netflix can clearly benefit from moving away from these companies, as they tend to be priced highly (thus reducing the ability to make any serious margins) and be hugely inflexible when it comes to DRM and placing geographic and device restrictions.

Surely the deciding factory in YT TV's success will be in it's ability to wade through this ugly maze and convince the rights owners that their future success hinges on their ability to keep with the times...

<comment><USER8> > _reducing the ability to make any serious margins_

That's a rather euphemistic way of putting it; the rightsholders know they have a monopoly on each specific item of content and don't see why any other business should make a single penny along the way.

(Orlowski is a known pro-DRM contrarian on this subject!)

As they say, the real success is if they can make this as frictionless as Youtube already is. Pay $35, get everything everywhere on all devices, end of story.

<comment><USER7> Yeh. I guess you can't knock a company for taking advantage of its monopoly power by maximizing their own profits, but it does feel like there's a gap in the market for someone to really innovate the (live) TV space in the way that Netflix/Spotify have innovated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's worth keeping in mind that there is no love lost between Apple and the Register; the latter deliberately contravenes the "reality distortion field" at every turn, and the former permabanned them from its press and release events years ago, a decision rumored to have originated with Jobs himself.

That said, the Register's Apple reporting, while no more directly informed than anyone else's, often stands the test of time quite well, and Orlowski is as close to a star reporter as anyone writing under their masthead. Thus the choice to disregard a piece like this I think merits some hesitation, whatever distaste one may have for the publication, which I gather is not well loved in all quarters here.

</comment><comment><USER9> Unlimited cloud DVR is a big win and with YouTubes infrastructure experience you can expect it to near flawless. However, Google are terrible at marketing most of their products and this pitch is slightly confusing for the YouTube audience.

However, it does seem to be addressing a real need. Which is native multi device support for live TV with the features the modern consumer expects and a price point that Netflix only crowd won't loathe. With streaming services like Netflix moving towards original content, I can see YouTube TV complimenting Netflix nicely to provide the majority of content that consumers desire.

</comment><comment><USER10> Why does specifically Apple has to respond to this and not any other TV providers?

<comment><USER3> Apple's trying to lead in the space with their Apple TV product. The trouble is that getting actual TV content that way is difficult or impossible; news and premium channels have fragmented and incomplete offerings, but there's no good way of which I'm aware to get content from the broadcast networks, and certainly no option to pay a flat fee for content from all of them.

That's a huge drawback for Apple's offering, because a whole lot of people want to watch that stuff. If they want to keep their product relevant, they have to address it - but they now have a huge new problem in that every Apple TV has a YouTube app, and so do a lot of competitors in the space. They could've had first mover advantage on this, because up to now no one has managed it - but now it seems YouTube has, which leaves them playing catch-up.

<comment><USER11> ???

Apple doesn't give out Apple TVs for free. The beauty of owning the hardware and platform like Apple does is that they still make money from other peoples services.

Now, whether they have a compelling enough TV hardware + OS/software for people to buy and watch Youtube TV over... that's another question. But I think that question exists regardless of whether Apple makes a linear broadcast TV streaming service or not.

<comment><USER3> That's the point I'm making - Apple isn't really out to sell YouTube boxes, and never has been. If that's all they can do, they may as well exit the space, because there are cheaper, better-spec'd YouTube boxes which will eat so much of their lunch that it'll be uneconomical to continue manufacture and marketing.

<comment><USER11> I disagree.

The "reports" earlier, when Twitter was bidding for NFL (or NRL? I'm not American or into sport) Apple considered a bid but ultimately decided not to because they realised that whoever got the rights would just still stream it on Apple TV regardless.

I definitely acknowledge that Apple TV at the moment is Apple's compromise of not being able to put a better _service_ out there, but I still think they're very happy selling people their hardware for other people To make software services over the top.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> People need to stop telling Apple what to do, they are not going to listen. They got to where they are by themselves, and they are either going to dig a hole or do something better by themselves.

As for Google, good, that doesn't harm Apple. It means we can still access it on Apple platforms as Google still develop their services on both Android and iOS.

If not, there is still Vue, Sling, and other similar ones.

Apple might benefit from an open-minded media content providers seeing the success of the streaming services and they might ease up on the deals that Apple want.

</comment><comment><USER3> How can Apple respond? They already have all the incentive they need to partner with content providers, and have for quite a long time; the opportunity to pay a flat rate for access to TV content linked to Apple ID, so available on any Apple device and only Apple devices, would have been a very strong differentiator for Apple's products, especially mobile.

But they haven't made it happen - and now they've probably lost that chance for good, if indeed they ever had it.

<comment><USER11> The story goes is that they've been trying for a _very long time_ , but they're unable to get the content owners (TV channels and movie studios) onboard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have Playstation Vue, which contrary to the name does not require you to have a Playstation (although I do). It also works on Apple TV, mobile, and PC.

It has local stations and a cloud DVR as well as Showtime (for Homeland and Billions) and HBO (for Game of Thrones, Westworld, and Last Week tonight).

The price is a little high but overall I've been extremely happy with it. When I saw YouTube's new service my first thought was that it was awful in comparison.

</comment><comment><USER14> I see no reason to believe YouTube TV is going to be huge. $35/mo isn't a great bargain. Hulu used to offer a lot of the same channels for only $8/mo and while successful it wasn't "huge". Hulu has been dying since Comcast got ownership, but I see no reason to believe something priced at over 3x what Hulu charged for the same thing is going to be "huge".

</comment><comment><USER15> Tried Sling.tv, which starts at $25 for some set of broadcast channels. The value wasn't there for me. Netflix + Prime is cheaper and has more content.

</comment><comment><USER16> Remember when netbook will be huge, and Apple must respond?

<comment><USER3> It was, and they released the MacBook Air and then the iPad. Then tablets gutted the netbook market, and thanks to their foresight, they were well positioned to ride that wave. They haven't done the same with TV.

<comment><USER11> To be completely fair, I don't think anyone really has 'solved' TV yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Apple can easily become large enough by simply making it easier for iPhone users to upload camera-captured content to Apple's own silo than to upload content to youtube.

<comment><USER3> Which people won't do, because YouTube is where the viewers already are, and also because Apple has what might charitably be called a checkered history with its first-party cloud services.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> TV must die.

</comment><comment><USER19> Nope.</comment>


A tutorial on learning with Bayesian networks (1996) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/69588/tr-95-06.pdf

<comment><USER2> Can someone tell me if the following makes sense? I want to use Bayesian networks for sysops. What I have in mind is hooking logging, process information (e.g. resource usage), and other information as nodes to a Bayesian network and then training it in a production environment. From my admittedly small understanding, it seems like a properly configured network like that will be able to triage issues and even infer causes and take potential actions to correct them. Of course you would need to limit it's ability to act so it doesn't decide to hose your entire system. Since it has the power in some sense to observe, it can even train itself by observing the results of its actions.

Anyone know of anything like this being used or have ideas why this would be stupid to do outside of it being difficult to get right?

<comment><USER3> A Bayesian network will update probabilities based on evidence - You can use data to learn conditional probabilities and an algorithm will update the joint probability distribution. However to suggest actions or further diagnostic tests you will need decision and utility nodes. This is called an influence diagram or decision model. With these extensions you can determine the best action and value of information (test vs act).

The actions are based on utilities (cost/benefit) so if you have a potential very bad outcome of an action and an alternative (eg messaging to someone) then the system will act in a rational way consistent with the utility model.

I suggest you look at a package that can handle both Bayesian networks and influence diagrams, such as Hugin, Norsys or Genie. There are others but I haven't tried them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> See also Bayesian Networks Without Tears[1]

[[http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~murphyk/Bayes/Charniak_91.pdf](http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~murphyk/Bayes/Charniak_91.pdf)]</comment>


Is this the future of fast food? - <AUTHOR> http://thehumbleking.tumblr.com/post/58908548635/unusual-experience-at-my-local-fast-food

<comment><USER2> what the heck</comment>


Show HN: Babbly – point the camera and learn a language - <AUTHOR> https://www.velebit.ai/products/babbly/ <comment><AUTHOR> My colleagues and I have decided to publish Babbly Android app to help people make most out of the isolation by learning a new language.

Babbly is one of our side projects we have been developing for the past few months. Our team has a lot of expertise in Computer Vision and we have always wanted to test if in-the-cloud real-time inference is possible with AI. Babbly can process up to 5 pictures per second which demonstrates this approach is more than viable. The main advantages of the in-cloud model are seamless AI model updates, reduced battery consumption, and much lower restrictions on the model size which results in better accuracy.

The model was trained on ImageNet and OpenImages public datasets which are not perfect for this kind of computer vision task, so the accuracy is not stellar. We plan to work on this issue in the future :)

We realize this app doesn't offer much feature-wise, but we think any form of fun/knowledge can be helpful during this pandemic. And yeah, any kind of feedback is more than welcome :)

</comment><comment><USER2> Feels like a solution looking for a problem. As an avid language learner, i really see no need for this, nor could figure out who could have a use for it. Reminds me of google photo auto tagging or google lens, but without any real usefulness.

Here's a completely different problem for the same solution : let people auto- tag their local photo library using your cloud classifier. Some utility software would tag photos one by one in a folder, adding the tags directly as exif data. You get their raw data to improve your model (without keeping it), they get free tagging.

I'm thinking about the photographers with hundreds of thousands of photos in their local archive that would like to be able to search for keywords like "wedding", "portrait", "beach" ... without giving away all their pictures to google.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback!

Automated photo tagging seems like a good idea and we will certainly think about it more.</comment></comment>


Show HN: A site I made that lets you browse shoes Tinder-style - <AUTHOR> http://shoezilla.co/ <comment><AUTHOR> It's my first project using clojurescript and reagent. Probably not the most common type of website posted on HN, lol, but I gave it a shot anyways.

Would greatly appreciate any feedback you got :)</comment>


Apple should pull the plug on the iPhone (2007) - <AUTHOR> http://www.marketwatch.com/story/apple-should-pull-the-plug-on-the-iphone <comment><USER2> > It's the loyalists who keep promoting this device as if it is going to be > anything other than another phone in a crowded market.

Fanboys, cult of Apple, blah blah.</comment>


Passing on exceptions - <AUTHOR> https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2012/09/26/exc/ <comment><USER2> Speaking from experience, that post is a good summary of the things that come to mind when you're used to good old-fashioned error codes and you're faced with exceptions for the first time. There should be a FAQ with good answers to these questions.

</comment><comment><USER3> Let me start by addressing the GNU Radio example Rachel shared:

try { foo = new foo_bar(a, b, c, d); return foo; } catch (...) { delete foo; return 0; }

In this snippet we don't know what the original value of foo is. At first glance that seems to be unimportant because foo is about to get assigned. But actually, whether or not foo is zero is the difference between just bad code and undefined behavior.

In this example, the only thing in the try block that can throw is the expression "new foo_bar(a, b, c, d)" Since the code behaves in the expected way if that doesn't throw, let's only consider the case where that does throw.

Note that if a new expression throws it is the responsibility of the runtime new operator to clean up anything that has been allocated. (There is one small caveat here which isn't consequential.)

Also note that if the new expression throws, the value of foo is unchanged. This means that in the case that we are considering here (the new expression throws) the "delete foo" is deleting the original value of foo. This means that what happens depends on that original value. There are three cases, foo was NULL, foo pointed to an existing object, or foo was uninitialized memory. (The case where foo points to a deleted object is really just the same as foo being uninitialized memory.)

The cases:

 _) foo is zero. In this case "delete foo" is harmless and the only bug is that it does nothing, can lead to confusion in readers, and should be removed.

_ ) foo points to an existing object. If we assume that this code doesn't leak, then there is another pointer somewhere that also points to that object. In the case we are considering (the throw case) this code is going to delete this object (the one that foo originally pointed to, not the one that new was trying to create--that one has already been cleaned up). This means that when the code tries to access this object (which it will eventually, even if just to delete it) we will invoke undefined behavior.

 _) foo is uninitialized memory. In this case we invoke undefined behavior as soon as we attempt to "delete foo"

_ __

I think that using exceptions is _the_ way to write C++ code, but I don't think anyone should use them until they understand the fundamentals of exception-safe code.

I have an entire talk about why to use exceptions and how to use them safely in C++. My site at exceptionsafecode.com has a video of both my Classic C++ talk given at last year's Silicon Valley Code Camp and my "two-parter" that includes the C++11 information that I did for C++ Now! (BoostCon). I'm giving the two-part talk again in a few days at this year's Silicon Valley Code Camp.

Information about Silicon Valley Code Camp (which free and in just a few days) is here: <http://www.siliconvalley-codecamp.com>

My session is here: [http://www.siliconvalley- codecamp.com/Sessions.aspx?SessionI...](http://www.siliconvalley- codecamp.com/Sessions.aspx?SessionID=952)

The C++/C++11 Track that I put together is here: <http://www.siliconvalley- codecamp.com/Sessions.aspx?track=33>

My website with videos of my talks is here: <http://exceptionsafecode.com>

And I can be contacted at "jon@" the exceptionsafecode domain.</comment>


Django vs Rails - <AUTHOR> http://beta.feedmagnet.com/blog/django-vs-rails/

<comment><USER2> The answer to this question hasn't changed. Choose one or the other based on:

      Language knowledge (Python v. Ruby)
      Availability of developers
      Amount of third party code specific to your needs

This topic has been thoroughly gone over a number of times, this article doesn't really bring anything new to the table.

<comment><USER3> The "magic" versus "timesaving" differences of philosophy is a new way of putting it. It encapsulates a gut feeling I had about the two but hadn't put my finger on until now.

Especially when starting from scratch, learning RoR is kind of like "ooh, shiny, magic, wow!" and learning Django is like "so you do _this_ , which does (this and this and this behind the scenes), then do _this_..". I love magic as much as the next gal, but not being able to fully grok RoR from the start was partly why I chose Django as well.

<comment><USER4> It's open source. Start groking.

This basically just says Rails has a better user interface than Django (not necessarily something I agree with).

Django makes you feel like a power user because it forces you to learn more in order to use it?

<comment><USER3> There's a limit to how much I want to try to read up behind a tutorial when I'm just trying a new framework out. If my natural desire to understand what magic lines of code does causes me to break focus, tab out, google a bit, find some explanation that may or may not even be correct... yeah, I get put off a little.

<comment><USER4> And yet the argument here in favour of Django is that not as much is hidden from the user... which may cause some users to lose focus as you put it.

I find this this statement hypocritical.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure where you managed to conflate my use of the word "I" with generalisations about "some users".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _There are many more Rails developers out there, but there are also a lot of hacks in the community. There are probably close to as many good Django developers as there are good Rails developers - you just don't have to hunt through the bad ones as much to find them._

Sorry, what? How could one possibly know there are more hacks in the Rails community than in the Django community?

I'm all for comparing the merits of various languages and frameworks, but this article is more about gut feelings than facts.

<comment><USER4> I agree entirely. My impression was that he feels rails is too _accessible_ and hence there are too many hacks using it.

He wanted to feel more like a hacker, and rails hid (of course by hide he means publishing the source code) too much of it's magic.

In fact, I think publishing an article on Rails v.s. Django and posting it to Hacker News stinks of SEO.

<comment><USER6> Hi there - this is Jason - the guy who wrote the original post. I just found this forum with comments via a Google search. Actually, the only place I posted a link was on a moderated Django Google group. The linking and commentary came as a surprise to me - I wasn't really sure anyone would read it! Not sure who posted it to Hacker News.

<comment><USER4> My bad Jason. Your article struck a sour note with me that day for some reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Before you go any further, you should know these things:

1\. Deployment and scaling is a lot easier on Rails b/c of several dedicated hosting providers that specialize in Rails. Engine Yard is the one we use, it makes scaling extremely easy. I'm not sure if Django has similar companies.

2\. Rails-specific SAAS are super awesome. Newrelic/Hoptoad, etc. They make tracking your software and errors a lot easier than the less supported Django.

3\. Speed is a non-issue; scaling is 100% about making the DB scale. Furthermore Ruby 1.9 is going to be faster than Python 2.

4\. Training a developer to learn Django is not as trivial as you think. There are a lot of "tricks" in these frameworks that make working in them very fast, these take time and experience to pick up.

<comment><USER8> For #1 - There is Google App Engine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "It approaches the problem of building a web framework in a unique way and doesn't even attempt to share terminology with Rails for things as basic as model-view-controller (Django uses the terms model-template-view instead). "

I can't really agree with this being a good thing. The MVC pattern has been around much longer than Django or Rails, thus Rails is using an existing nomenclature where Django is not.

<comment><USER10> Django doesn't call itself MVC because it isn't MVC.

<comment><USER11> Could you elaborate on that? I've used both and the difference (apart from the naming) is too subtle for me (not trolling - honest question).

<comment><USER10> [http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/faq/general/#django- app...](http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/faq/general/#django-appears-to- be-a-mvc-framework-but-you-call-the-controller-the-view-and-the-view-the- template-how-come-you-don-t-use-the-standard-names)

<comment><USER12> That's a specious distinction, even if I can understand their interpretation. It's just easier to say that:

1\. Django Templates correspond to Rails Views (they both define how data is presented to the client). The biggest difference is that it's easier to include business logic in Rails Views because the Erb template language is as expressive as Ruby itself, while the Django template language is deliberately restrictive.

2\. Django Views correspond to Rails Controllers (they both process requests). The biggest difference is that data is passed explicitely from a Django View to its Template, while data is passed implicitely from a Rails Controller to its View.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What's also important, but not addressed in this article is the _kind_ of app you are building. I'm generalizing a bit here, but Django seems to focus more on the CMS-y content type of applications whereas Rails shines more for non- traditional kinds of web apps.

<comment><USER14> I think it's important to note where these frameworks come from. Rails started as a means to build a web app. Django started as a CMS for online newspapers.

I toyed with Django for a while before I moved to Rails. The main force driving me to Django first was that I already knew Python, whereas I'd never really used Ruby. I chose Rails over Django _because_ of the magic. It seemed like I had to learn a lot more up front to get a web app working in Django, where I could get things working first in Rails while learning what the framework is doing over time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The article has a very reasonable tone, but a headline like this is unlikely going to spawn anything but the relaying of subjective experiences on why or why not the authors points are or are not total bullshit.

</comment><comment><USER16> The references section could benefit from including why's classic Ruby vs. Python video:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXZ_htL1rOI>

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't really know into deep the Rails community but what you say regarding Django's it is true. I really like the average mindset of the folks in that community.

</comment><comment><USER18> The article seems to be just generalizations and hearsay.

<comment><USER6> Yeah - I'll go ahead and address this here since a couple people said something similar above. I suppose I could have prefaced the post with a note on the "gut feel" nature of my arguments. I spent a month or so evaluating the platforms, interviewing developers who were proponents of one or the other, talking to friends and colleagues who had strong opinions, reading lots of other blogs, and diving into tutorials and documentation for both frameworks. In the end, I formed my own opinions shaped by the people I talked to, the things I read, and my own experiences. In the post, I'm not even attempting to provide concrete data - and most of my points are about things that you'd have a hard time measuring anyway, like philosophy and culture.

I'm not trying to stand on a soap box one way or the other here. Maybe a less combative post title could have helped tone down the commentary. The reason I wrote the post was that I had found myself explaining my decision to a handful of people and I thought maybe more folks could benefit from the "research" (intentionally in quotes to designate that is was not "real" research) that I did while getting ready to make the decision.

If you want to fire arrows back and forth at each other, feel free. I'll probably not get too involved though since I don't always find those discussions productive.

\- Jason (author of the original post)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> can we kill this thread before it devolves?</comment>


Show HN: Site Command – Simple construction management for small teams - <AUTHOR> https://sitecommandapp.com <comment><AUTHOR> I spent my evenings and weekends over the past several months building a construction management product for small home builders / general contractors.

It's a bit of a niche market, but a friend of mine owns a small contracting company and as I got to learn about his challenges, I realized there wasn't anything purpose-built for companies just like his.

I know this is a bit of random product, but I thought it'd be fun to get feedback anyway or share it in case the problem set resonates with anybody :)

 __* I created a demo user for hacker news, so feel free to login and play around: email@example.com / icrhtmTBqijtezh9cpYUzVmy

In case anybody's interested, the stack is primarily Laravel/Vue/MySQL. I also wrote a blog going into more detail about why I built for this specific niche, happy to share that if anybody wants it!

I'd love your thoughts/feedback!

</comment><comment><USER2> It's interesting that you share this project to Hacker News. This community probably is not very familiar with this field - I know I'm not :-D

That being said, it's refreshing to see an app that addresses this market.

Have you validated the idea with general contractors? If so, is the tagline (currently: Simple construction management software for small teams) the right one?

I also appreciate that you've indicated a login for our community. Good idea. So I tried the app, briefly: it looks great and super polished. Apart from that, there are some parts of the app that I didn't understand, so I can't comment on them. But good luck with this app, I salute the effort as I know how much it takes to ship something on nights and weekends!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I really appreciate the thoughts and the fact that you tried it out! :)

I have validated it with a handful of contractors, but I feel like my reach is limited. I also feel limited by my ability to sell / distribute. I'm a product guy/engineer, so I'm comfortable there, but I have much less experience selling.

I'm still not sure about the tagline, I don't feel like I have enough data points one way or the other.

It's been a really fun project to work on, and brings me back to when I would work constructions in the summers during university.

Again – thanks for trying it out and sharing your thoughts!</comment></comment>


Pinterest S-1 - <AUTHOR> https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1506293/000119312519083544/d674330ds1.htm <comment><USER2> Pinterest is one of the worst things to happen to my search experience in the last decade.

I've started wondering if they're using something like StyleGAN to general endless image variations that exist nowhere else (and have no source or context on pintrest) in order to pollute google image results.

<comment> Tuna-Fish Add -site:pinterest.com to your default search.

<comment><USER3> Is there a goolge overlay site, that allows for auto-adding filters to the search fottages- to await the usualy stockfootage cruft for example?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am genuinely curious, how does the year-over-year growth of 60% come together with the pretty consistent "death curve" according to Google Trends [0]. Could they have deliberately lowered the revenue in 2017 through some clever accounting in order to come up with this number? As they have been around since ~2012, are there any prior financial metrics publicly available?

[0] [https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=p...](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=pinterest)

<comment><USER5> Facebook has the same trend. [https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=f...](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=facebook)

<comment><USER6> Instagram doesn't [https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=Instagram](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=Instagram)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If I'm reading their MAU charts correctly, they have way more MAU outside of the US than inside (82m vs 184m last quarter), not only that but international user growth is relatively strong compared to the US. That said, 94% of revenue last quarter was from the US, so they are not monetizing internationally really at all. If they can improve international monetization then there is a lot of room for revenue growth it would seem.

<comment><USER8> "If they can improve international monetization then there is a lot of room for revenue growth it would seem."

A universal truth in the social network space. Unfortunately, not even FB can really extract much value outside of North America.

<comment><USER9> I think you simply fail to recognize just how far ahead North America is from the rest of the world financially.

<comment><USER8> I pointed out the obvious failing in every major social media company to generate revenue outside the USA. How is that me failing to recognize? I am quite explicitly recognizing just that.

<comment><USER9> It's not a failing if the global revenue is representative of the global economy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _We depend in part on internet search engines, such as Bing, Google, Yahoo! and Yandex, to direct a significant amount of traffic to our service. For example, when a user types a query into a search engine, we may receive traffic and acquire new users when those search results include Pins, boards, Pinners and other features of our service that cause the user to click on the Pinterest result or create a Pinterest account. These actions increase Pinner growth due to signups of new users and increase retention and engagement of existing Pinners.

Our ability to maintain and increase the number of visitors directed to our service from search engines is not within our control. Search engines, such as Google, may modify their search algorithms and policies or enforce those policies in ways that are detrimental to us, that we are not able to predict or without prior notice. When that occurs, we expect to experience declines or de-indexing in the organic search ranking of certain Pinterest search results, leading to a decrease in traffic to our service, new user signups and existing user retention and engagement. We have experienced declines in traffic and user growth as a result of these changes in the past, and anticipate fluctuations as a result of such actions in the future. For example, in the first quarter of 2018, Google de-indexed our keyword landing pages, which negatively impacted traffic and user growth in the quarters that followed. Our ability to appeal these actions is limited, and we may not be able to revise our search engine optimization ("SEO") strategies to recover the loss in traffic or user growth resulting from such actions. Changes in policies or their enforcement may not apply in the same manner to our competitors, or our competitors' SEO strategies may be more successful than ours._

Seems like a horrible business to invest in when you're so utterly at the whim of someone else you have no control over.

<comment><USER11> So many businesses failed before which relied on SEO. This one could go really bad if Google pulls the plug.

<comment><USER12> And I hope Google does. I curse under my breath every time an image search comes back with Pinterest bullshit.

Google is probably petrified of fixing problems like this because the EU will ding them for another few $billion if they do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Pinterest continuing the trend of teach companies IPOing with dual class share structures:

"Following this offering, we will have two classes of common stock: Class A common stock and Class B common stock. The rights of the holders of Class A common stock and Class B common stock will be identical, except with respect to voting, conversion and transfer rights. Each share of Class A common stock will be entitled to one vote. Each share of Class B common stock will be entitled to 20 votes and will be convertible at any time into one share of Class A common stock."

<comment><USER14> The verdict on dual class shares is not as unfavourable as is frequently made out in the press as attested to by a recent study in the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation:

"The limited empirical evidence on the technology and emerging growth companies that are the target of these regulations is insufficient to support the adoption of new regulations, as the evidence that is available indicates that the most recent group of dual-class companies may have performed as well, if not better, than those with a single class of stock". [0].

[0] [https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2018/04/15/are-dual-class- co...](https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2018/04/15/are-dual-class-companies- harmful-to-stockholders-a-preliminary-review-of-the-evidence/)

<comment><USER15> Frankly, as a long term buy and hold investor, I actually prefer to invest in companies where the founders are solidly in control, assuming I believe in their abilities. It seems like it should free them from some of the pressure to optimize for the short term at the expense of long term success.

<comment><USER16> But if they aren't predicting profits any time soon you won't be getting dividends. And you'll only have weak voting rights with which to nudge corporate strategy.

So, why invest at all?

<comment><USER15> Why do people pay so much for Berkshire Hathaway shares, despite their declared intention not to pay dividends?

I trust that they still want to increase their enterprise value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> "For the year ended December 31, 2018, we generated revenue of $755.9 million, as compared to $472.9 million for the same period in 2017, representing year- over-year growth of 60%. For the year ended December 31, 2018, we generated a net loss of $63.0 million and Adjusted EBITDA of $(39.0) million, as compared to a net loss of $130.0 million and Adjusted EBITDA of $(93.0) million, respectively, in the same period in 2017"

<comment><USER17> Curious how this would change if R&D was capitalized. Of course it would just make ebitda a less accurate proxy for cash flow but we'd still be looking at it very differently.

<comment><AUTHOR> R&D was $208M in 2017 and $252M in 2018, which was about 45% and 33% of revenue, respectively.

<comment><USER17> Thanks on my mobile. So revenue grows at 1.5x while R&D grows at 1.2x. Having that asset on your B/S looks pretty good over a few years.

<comment><USER18> assuming that the R&D expenses largely convert into some kind of assets.

edit: is anyone able to comment how the accounting for this kind of thing usually works?

e.g. if a company spent $1m on R&D, can it arbitrarily add a line item on its balance sheet for around $1m of research outputs as some flavour of intangible asset? (this is obviously not a very accurate way to account for things in cases where the R&D failed to produce anything of utility, or produced much less utility that the R&D cost) or are the assets produced by R&D (if any) meant to be fairly valued in isolation from the cost to produce them?

<comment><USER17> This is called capitalizing. Companies are not allowed to do it with R&D under GAAP. But it gets tricky when one company can build a factory, call it capex, and spread the expense over 10 years. Whereas another builds software infra and must expense 100% immediately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> For those who don't seem to understand what Pinterest is aside from appearing on search results in Google, it's essentially a more photo-centric version of sub-reddits. If you're not into arts, crafts, design, or curating things, you probably wouldn't really use it.

<comment><USER20> I've clicked on Google results several times, but every time it asks me to sign up or login before I've seen much of anything - eh... no.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I hate what Pinterest does to google image searching. Sometimes I really just want to paste an image src in an online discussion without having to drill into devtools.

<comment><USER22> How does it manage to rank so well? I'm not a user of it but whenever it appears in searches it feels like endless popups and walled content that tries to make you sign up. I would have thought Google would discourage links like this.

<comment><USER23> I think it's pretty clear that almost everyone that uses hackernews is in a bubble and this bubble does not include people that use Pinterest.

<comment><USER22> True, but Google is already meant to penalise pages that have intrusive popups so what's the difference? [https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/08/helping- users-easi...](https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/08/helping-users-easily- access-content-on.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> There is something junky about Pinterest and Quora— the experience of using it while not logged in is bad. Facebook has users in a strangle hold— afraid of alienating and being out of the loop on family affairs if they leave. Can someone convince me that Pinterest is not suceptible to an overnight diaspora if another service becomes more useful or fashionable? It's great that Pinterest is making money but how will they defend themselves? If not, perhaps Pinterest would be a good long term short?

<comment><USER25> Plenty of folks have years worth of recipes, fashion ideas, etc. saved, so you'd need a good Pinterest-to-new-service importer, which I suspect Pinterest's API (which is, in my experience, actively hostile to developers) makes quite difficult.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> > As of December 31, 2018, we had 1,797 full-time employees, an increase of > 32% compared to December 31, 2017.

Why do you need so many people? A breakdown for each department would be interesting

</comment><comment><USER27> Does pinterest count impressions from google images as active/distinct user? Wouldn't surprise me if they did that atrocious image search seo to juice up the MAU numbers. I probably live in a bubble but nobody I know uses pinterest.

<comment><USER28> "We review the number of monthly active users ("MAUs"), which we define as a logged-in Pinterest user who visits our website or opens our mobile application at least once during the 30-day period ending on the date of measurement [...]"

<comment><USER29> hah, jynx

<comment><USER30> I read this as "hah, lynx" and was wondering why anyone would visit pinterest in a text-only browser.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I think they're going to end up flat like Twitter and Snapchat in 2 years at most. Smart to IPO now though.

</comment><comment><USER32> smart, taking money off the market when there's still money on the market. that's the fourth notable S-1 in a month or so. if smart money cashing out doesn't signal that there's real volatility ahead, I don't know what else would.

</comment><comment><USER33> It's weird how HN has become so negative about every recent tech companies IPO. You would think this would be the one place on the internet where people would be excited and positive about this sort of thing. I don't get it, is it jealousy about missing the boat?

<comment><USER34> There is a surge of awfully unprofitable businesses with poor business outlooks that are going public with very large valuations.

<comment><USER35> The unfortunate thing about this thread (so far) is that almost every comment is either projecting the commenter's feeling about Pinterest or a few numbers on the first page. So much pessimism without citing the source within the S-1 that we're all reading!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> "We have incurred operating losses in the past, anticipate increasing our operating expenses, expect to incur operating losses in the future and may never achieve or maintain profitability."

Says it all, really.

<comment><USER37> This is standard and required language by the SEC for each IPO prospectus for companies without a clear history of profitability.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Surprisingly good financials here. Hmmmm.

</comment><comment><USER39> I continue to be amazed that Pinterest is still a thing.

<comment><USER40> We can surmise your gender from this comment :-D

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> "We currently depend on the continued services and performance of our key personnel, including Benjamin Silbermann and others. Mr. Silbermann's employment, and the employment of our other key personnel, is at will, which means they may resign or be terminated for any reason at any time."

Genuine question: is it normal for _the CEO_ of a company in the US to have no notice period?

<comment><USER42> To be more accurate California is an at will state (for everybody: low level employees and CEO's) and non-compete are illegal. Other states are different. It exists to protect the interests of employees. The flipside is if you do resign you don't have to wait 2 months before you leave. It is good practice though to give at least a two week notice.

<comment><USER41> My understanding was that in At-will states, an employer-employee relationship could be terminated without reason or notice _unless_ there is a contract in place that says otherwise. My (naïve) presumption was that companies would _want_ to put these kinds of contracts in place for their senior leadership.

<comment><USER42> Those contracts are not enforceable. I guarantee you a win 100% of the time in California.

There are several exceptions:

1) you are the CEO or a top exec in a VERY large company. In that case your personal lawyers are involved in the negotiation of the contract, and it is assumed that you know what you are doing. But even in those rare cases, the law in on your side. 2) a non-compete COULD be part of the sale of your company (I wrote YOUR company, you own it, and your are not merely an employee, even senior employee).

Don't confuse that with the IP rights you give up to the company (legales like like we own EVERYTHING you have created or will create). You can still quit tomorrow with no notice given and work for whomever you feel like. Don't use that IP, and don't take ANYTHING with you (no files, no customers lists, no lines of code, no presentations, no emails). Then you are fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I didn't know pinterest was a thing, I'm not sure anyone in France use it, is that only used in the US?

<comment><USER44> I don't know anyone in the US using Pinterest. It seems like a search engine gaming scam to me.

<comment><USER45> My wife uses it daily. She's a crafter and also big into using her instant pot. Both groups use Pinterest as an online gathering place.

I used it just yesterday to get some ideas for landscaping my yard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Is there like an S-1 team that does graphic design for everyone's S-1 these days? Lyft's S-1 has the same designs: pages of pictures of happy people/drivers, a full page mission statement in a sans-serif font on a solid background of color, similar page with numbers on it...

<comment><USER28> that's everyone's branding, not just the S-1 :)

<comment><USER46> Somebody in Silicon Valley needs to hire David Carson.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> How does tech IPOs even with very poor outlook and no potential to become big actually go through anyway? I can't imagine myself buying stock of many recent filings but apparently tech IPOs seems to be rarely failing even though many seem to be designed purely as VC escape hatch. So who really buys all these stock?

</comment><comment><USER48> Anyone going to pick up stock at IPO?

<comment><USER49> Nope. But will short after 2-3 weeks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Pinterest is basically one Google update away from having half its traffic wiped out

</comment><comment><USER51> 3rd most relevant brand? That's ridiculous.</comment>


Debunked: Your SSD won't lose data if left unplugged after all - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2925173/debunked-your-ssd-wont-lose-data-if-left-unplugged-after-all.html

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure why anyone would think this was the case. If SSD's lost data that quickly, wouldn't you expect to see data loss/corruption in a laptop if it happened to get uncharged?

Surely there would have been reports of data loss already.</comment>


Website grabbing stackoverflow results - <AUTHOR> http://goobbe.com/

<comment><USER2> It's the old "Rip off other sites' content, puff up your search ranking, and make show your own ads instead" ploy.

There are also those assholes running "Looking for <software>? Here's a trojaned copy!" sites designed to attack your less-computer-savvy relatives when they try to fix things on their own.

</comment><comment><USER3> You can report it to Stack Exchange:

[http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/200178/167210](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/200178/167210)

I just reported this one.

</comment><comment><USER4> There's lots of those floating around out there, and this is apparently by design.</comment>


Bitcoin Visa debit cards are cancelled - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/7oabzl/all_bitcoin_visa_debit_cards_are_now_cancelled/?st=JC1T42EL&sh=5284687c <comment><USER2> > We're being oppressed!

Oh dear. I hope that was said with tongue firmly in cheek, because anyone who truly believes that their Bitcoin Visa card being cancelled is a form of "oppression" needs a reality check.

<comment><USER3> I am sure when the card was introduced these same people would have said - See, bitcoin is so great it is now accepted by Visa and Mastercard.

Now we get this.

Sometimes it seems the thought process has evolved to - Heads I win, Tails you lose.

<comment><USER4> Huh. I didn't know Bitcoins could be flipped.

<comment><USER5> They can be flipped, but it takes three hours to know if it was heads or tails.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A few thoughts from a CEO in this space:

1\. There are very few issuing banks for crypto <> fiat debit cards. Internationally there has been 1 WaveCrest; which as of a few months ago decided to discontinue support.

2\. Even when a bank will sponsor a crypto <> fiat debit card into one of the payment networks, the company offering the card will face constant pressure from their own bankers.

3\. This happening is from my perspective just a quick look behind the curtain of the Digital Currency infrastructure problem as it exists today. There is no _good_ way in, or out of digital currency at the moment, and the ones that exist are tenuous at best. The base truth is that Traditional banks are not capable of supporting new methods of value transfer. That means that the companies that build and provide infrastructure for those methods are currently at the mercy of a partner who basically wont help them.

I always try and make the charitable assumption about the motives of others and my take on the banking <> digital currency relations is basically this: Banks have a business model that has worked well for generations; they do a little fractional reserve, they extract as many fees as they can invent, and they centralize the control of wealth. The promise of digital currency is that everyone will have the capability to do that for themselves. So, its not surprising to me that it is hard for them to work with those of us who are building bridges and on/off ramps between the two systems.

With all of that being said, I am sorry for all of the debit card users who are currently without an off ramp, and I can assure you that the folks at BitPay, Xapo, and all of the other companies that lost access to the EU are working as hard as possible to bring those programs back online.

<comment><USER7> The irony of making it difficult to exit crypto means traditional banking will long-term be on the losing end as people who buy into crypto (even as novelty) won't want to "cash out" due to difficulty while realizing how convoluted the fiat process is when viewed from the outside. They'll find ways to stay in crypto and get things done.

<comment><USER8> This is false.

When you find that you can't sell your tulips for dutch guilder, you don't set up a mirror economy that uses tulips for currency. Instead, you find tulip prices collapsing, and yourself broke.

Why would my landlord, who is not vested in crypto, want to exchange goods and services for bitcoins that he can't cash out to pay his contractors, taxes, etc? Nobody wants to be paid in illiquid assets, what on earth would possess him to get into that horror show.

<comment><USER9> Maybe that's what _you_ do, but that's not what _I_ do, and that's certainly not the hacker way.

So instead of saying "this is false", you should be saying "well, this is just, like, my opinion, man."

<comment><USER10> Your comment adds nothing to the discussion and only serves as an attempt to disregard every point without any reason or fact, and simply because you prefer not to face the facts.

<comment><USER9> It adds a datapoint (my own behavior) that contradicts the parent's claim of what people will do.

I think what you really mean is "your statement does not contribute to _my argument_ ," not "your statement does not contribute to _the discussion_." There are arguments besides your own, and I am living proof that they live in people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder why this happened. Visa is primarily a technology company - not a financial institution. It's incentivesed to keep fraud on visa cards low (so that merchants continue to accept it) and keep its ecosystem of issuers + acquirers happy.

If I'm not missing anything, I believe this must have happened because of unusually high levels of fraud on Bitcoin visa cards. Certain acquirers might've complained about abnormal amounts of "shady" volume from WaveCrest BINs.

Alternatively, Visa might have seen a settlement risk on WaveCrest's end. I.e. Visa might be worried that fluctuations in BTCs price would put WaveCrest in a position that they wouldn't be able to settle funds with Visa (and consequently the acquirers + merchants).

Any other ideas on what could've prompted this? I think if this was anti-BTC regulatory action, the prompt to turn off these cards would've come from WaveCrest's banking partners and not Visa.

<comment><USER12> Tether

<comment><USER13> Exactly. The SEC has said they consider crytpos securities. That would mean the fraudulent price manipulation in the crytpo space (Bitfinex treating tether as USD and pushing up the bid) is securities fraud. This is probably why Wells Fargo stopped clearing Dollar transactions for Bitfinex.

<comment><USER14> Wire transfer fraud.

I am an insider in the Bitcoin industry, and within 1 day of opening a new bank account we started seeing fraudulent wires flooding in. When we dug deeper, it was shocking to see how many Americans' bank credentials have been hacked. It takes almost no effort for a EEU/RUS hacker to send a wire from a hacked bank account.

Once the fraudulent wire is sent, rest of the wire transfer system is tediously manual. So wire network participants simply choose to block bank accounts that receive repeated bad wires. This is why Wells Fargo cut out Bitfinex and Visa has decided to stop working with Bitcoin companies.

ACH fraud is even more rampant because you can pull money from someone's account without their consent (as long as they don't notice/contest within certain number of days). Coinbase profit margin is 0.5% per trade, so they need to keep their ACH fraud rate below that number to not lose money. ACH fraud rate is well over 1% industry-wide. This is why I strongly believe that Coinbase has to be losing massive amounts to ACH chargebacks.

<comment><USER15> Regarding CB ACH, They had/have a huge exploitable hole in their ACH system that a friend discovered by accident. Long story short, they credited them for a large sum that they never took from his/her account. I won't put the exact detail of how to trigger the error but suffice it to say it was shocking to learn how a system that deals with large sums of real money could fail in such a way (and likely in a repeatable manner although my friend didn't try as repeating it would likely be seen as stealing).

It's really quite shocking how a ecosystem that touts decentralization has a glaringly centralized failure point - the fiat exit exchanges. When one or two of them goes, it will bring down the whole house of cards. And given how shitty CB's software was (or maybe still is) I just hope I can get my gains out before the whole thing comes crumbling down.

<comment><USER16> man, gender-neutral pronouns are confusing.

<comment><USER17> No, they're not.

The Discorientating Use of the Word "They": [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_xVAqJ- NY0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_xVAqJ-NY0)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> WaveCrest seems to be the card provider for all major crypto debit card offerings. Its actually so popular among top searches for 'btc debit card' that I'm starting to think they are actually running the show and just have a few different front ends. Initially, they only closed visa cards for holders that were outside of EU, but now it seems to include everyone. The issue seems specific to EU-based Visa issuers. US ones seem unaffected, for now.

<comment><USER19> The major exception is Monaco, although this is only hypothetical since they haven't actually issued any cards.

It's also, ahem, a house of cards for its investors, but that's another story told on my blog: [https://gyrovague.com/2017/06/16/monaco-doing-the-math-on- an...](https://gyrovague.com/2017/06/16/monaco-doing-the-math-on-an-ico-where- the-house-always-wins/)

<comment><USER20> I have always classified Monaco as one of those ICO projects where they don't even plan to actually implement the business model. Because why would you when you can just party 10 years in Ibiza with the raised ICO funds?

<comment><USER21> Welcome to the world of cryptocurrency in general. It's the new dot-com boom. How did that turn out last time?

<comment><USER22> Very well for scammers and serious businesses, not so good for naive people.

There are more naive people than the other kinds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Most interesting thing here is that this came without any prior notice to any parties in the process, effective immediately.

Sure looks like someone pressed a panic button.

<comment><USER24> Seems like it was a very bad business idea in the first place, and I'm surprised it wasn't cancelled sooner. Before you downvote me consider the business model of credit card processors, and how volatility and rapidly deflating currency would effect their cash flow.

<comment><USER25> > how volatility and rapidly deflating currency would effect their cash flow.

Not at all? You obviously don't understand what a bitcoin debit card is. It's just like a normal debit card, but you fund it with bitcoin. The company you get the card from sells your bitcoin for fiat currency at the time you make a purchase (or at the time you top up the card, depending on how they do it).

The properties of bitcoin are completely irrelevant to the mechanics of the card.

<comment><USER12> The liquidity to sell to fiat is drying up after many are realizing the valuations for crypto are completely fraudulent. There is an astronomical amount of centralized crypto printing going on that has corrupted the entire crypto ecosystem. Tether just wrote in their legal terms that as a of January 1st tether can't be redeemed or used by Americans even though it backs USD. Corrupt exchanges inflated the prices and issued worthless tokens to buy bitcoin then sell it to main street. This is Bernie Madoff x 10,000.

<comment><USER26> This is not true. Liquidity in these markets is steadily increasing. It is easier now to sell large amounts of Bitcoin than it was two years ago, and it was easier then than two years prior.

<comment><USER12> Have you tried to sell millions of dollars worth of bitcoin to USD? As soon as there is a down day the exchanges shutdown and stop people from trying to withdraw. The money to cash out billions doesn't exist. All these headlines of founders being billionaires is false. $1.5 billion fake USD pumped crypto. Good luck to anyone holding millions of dollars trying to cash out when the market turns downward. This is adult musical chairs. There will be millions of bag holders and rich exchange criminals.

<comment><USER26> Moving the goalposts, are we? The question here was if "liquidity is drying up", which is the opposite of what's happening. While you probably couldn't move a billion, you never could and that's not a sign of anything drying up.

A million dollars perhaps used to be problematic, but is now a drop in the bucket on any exchange's daily volume. A normal bank transfer will suffice, but check with your bank if you aren't moving those amounts regularly. For bigger volumes there is a quite functional OTC market as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> All bitcoin visa cards? My understanding is that bitcoin Visa was already restricted to European countries since September:

[https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-debit-cards-non-european- re...](https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-debit-cards-non-european-residents- visas-new-rules/)

Mastercard joined:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/75gu4d/mastercard_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/75gu4d/mastercard_joins_visa_to_ban_issuing_btc_prepaid/)

So, now only Bitcoin Mastercard remains for European countries?

Edit: Added "Bitcoin" to make sure the gentleman below is not confused.

<comment><USER27> Correction: Cards issued by bitcoin services were terminated.

Visa works perfectly fine like it always did. Let's not mix things up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Bitcoin is currently not what Bitcoin was when it was created. Slow peer-to- peer transactions and high processing fees.

Average fees are hovering around 30 dollars. That's an average. Unconfirmed transactions has been at over 100k for months. The mempool is also hovering around an ATH. The Bitcoin is crippled. Sentences like "store of value" are now the term used to describe Bitcoin. Very far from what the Bitcoin used to be.

I think there is a real possibility of a "death spiral of the blockchain". Fees will increase and it will become impossible to move coins on the blockchain besides the upper 10% of bitcoin holders. For traders on exchanges bitcoin seems fast; because no transactions are taking place. When you actually decide to move your bitcoins to a wallet you own you'll pay high fees... if not your transaction could take months to clear or never actually clear.

No wonder Visa cards are being cancelled.

The fork that occurred on 1st August created Bitcoin Cash. This fork is much closer to what the Bitcoin was. Bitcoin Cash is this today. Removal of the segwit code (which hasn't solved anything), disabling of RBF (replace-by-fee) enabling 0-confirmation transactions again. A new DAA (difficulty adjustment algorithm). Finally increase the block size to 8MiB.

The Bitcoin has been crippled on purpose by Blockstream deep in the pockets of bankers and insurance companies. Blockstream is the main contributor to the Bitcoin development. Look at the sponsors; [https://www.blockstream.com/about/#investors](https://www.blockstream.com/about/#investors)

Before the bankers, and their followers, got indirectly involved in Bitcoin development there never was any discussion about limiting the block size to 1MiB; in fact the opposite was discussed. See; [https://twitter.com/adam3us/status/636410827969421312?lang=e...](https://twitter.com/adam3us/status/636410827969421312?lang=e..). [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1314.msg15143#msg151...](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1314.msg15143#msg151..). [https://np.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/71h884/pieter_wuille_im...](https://np.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/71h884/pieter_wuille_im..).

Now all of this has led to a complete divide and clusterfuck of the community. It is an very ugly and toxic environment and is sad to look at. On top of that we now have thousands of alternative coins and blockchains.

<comment><USER29> "death spiral of the blockchain" or death spiral of Bitcoin? There's an army of alt coins waiting to take its place. A lot of them are garbage, most are OK, but a handful of them are brilliant.

Bitcoin was the proof of concept and it was very successful in that light, but as a consumer product it is quite flawed. The survivors of the current bubble will be the ones that change the world. I'm not sure Bitcoin will be among them.

<comment><USER30> which do you consider brilliant?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Only Wavecrest issued cards. For example, TenX will have Wirecard as a new card issuer until they get their own banking license.

"Visa have today instructed us that we must close all WaveCrest issued Visa Prepaid Cards."

This is Wavecrest specific, nothing to do with crypto.

<comment><USER32> There appears to be a statement from /u/WirexApp stating it's more than Wavecrest?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Cryptopay pronounced: "Unfortunately, our card issuer instructed us to cease all Cryptopay prepaid cards starting January 5th, 2018. All funds stored on cards are safe and will be returned to your Cryptopay accounts ASAP. Sorry for all the inconvenience caused, we're working on the solution!"

[https://twitter.com/cryptopay/status/949243633911332864](https://twitter.com/cryptopay/status/949243633911332864)

</comment><comment><USER34> Just a general AML clampdown ?

I can't imagine payment services are actually worried about bitcoin (yet at least) ?

<comment><USER35> I can't imagine they wouldn't be. There's a lot of gray/black money in bitcoin, and it has to get on the grid somehow. A debit card you can spend anywhere is a dream come true for that.

<comment><USER36> Big payment networks do not want to appear complicit in money laundering.

<comment><USER37> HSBC/RBS/Citi were fine with it; and given the amount of the fines, it was plenty profitable and they're likely still doing it.

<comment><USER27> That's not correct. There is always some amount of fraud that manage to go through all the checks. That doesn't mean it's intentional. And that certainly doesn't mean that any financial service can stop doing any verification and become a paradise for fraudsters.

<comment><USER38> > That doesn't mean it's intentional.

Except that of course it was:

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hsbc-probe/hsbc-to- pay-1-...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hsbc-probe/hsbc-to- pay-1-9-billion-u-s-fine-in-money-laundering-case-idUSBRE8BA05M20121211)

<comment><USER39> This is a great bit from the article:

"Mexican traffickers used boxes specifically designed to the dimensions of an HSBC Mexico teller's window to deposit cash on a daily basis."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Also, FWIW none of us make any money on offering these debit card products. We actually do it to give people that have digital currency a quick off ramp. Here is how the programs technically work:

1\. Infrastructure company pre funds an account with an issuing bank.

2\. User sends digital currency to infrastructure company to add to their card.

3\. Infrastructure company receives that currency, and alerts bank to debit their account for fiat.

4\. Infrastructure company has to find an exchange to trade OTC as often as possible to protect against as much volatility as possible, while keeping in mind the minimum OTC trade size is generally $250k USD.

5\. Infrastructure company has to wait 3 days for a wire to then add more funds to the pre funded account.

<comment><USER40> > _Infrastructure company has to find an exchange to trade OTC as often as > possible to protect against as much volatility as possible, while keeping in > mind the minimum OTC trade size is generally $250k USD_

One can loosely think of an appreciating cryptocurrency as a short-term loan. You're out cash up front. Later, and only later, you get it back plus a little more.

The infrastructure company in your example is thus, by turning cryptocurrency's promise of cash tomorrow into cash today, providing maturity transformation [1]. This is one of the core services of a bank. It is also an inherently risky business on account of the asset-liability mismatch.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maturity_transformation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maturity_transformation)

<comment><USER6> The "appreciating cryptocurrency" part is tricky though, right?

Speculating on currency prices is a business; it is *not however the business that digital currency infrastructure companies are in.

<comment><USER40> > _Speculating on currency prices is a business; it is not however the > business that digital currency infrastructure companies are in_

Yes it is. It may not be how they market themselves. But it's the principal risk they take and, directly and indirectly, the principal determinant of their profitability.

<comment><USER6> I am literally the CEO of LitePay, I know the CEO's of the other infrastructure companies, and it is NOT what our business are doing with the Debit Card product.

We take the risk as a service to the community, and the product is a cost center.

<comment><USER40> > _We take the risk as a service to the community, and the product is a cost > center_

JPMorgan Chase could just as well say it issues mortgages and accepts deposits as a service to the country, that its retail operation is a cost centre for the real business of this or that. (It was popular, before the crisis, for banks to claim mortgages were simply a cost centre for winning wealth management and investment banking business.)

The business you're in is the business from which you earn profits and in respect of which you hold risks. Railroads and trucks [1], McDonald's and real estate [2]...this is an adage in business as old as commerce.

[1] [http://www.lessonsoffailure.com/tag/railroads/](http://www.lessonsoffailure.com/tag/railroads/)

[2] [https://qz.com/965779/mcdonalds-isnt-really-a-fast-food- chai...](https://qz.com/965779/mcdonalds-isnt-really-a-fast-food-chain-its-a- brilliant-30-billion-real-estate-company/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I wonder if this affects Monaco. I was interested in their value prop, especially the ability to receive a low foreign transaction fee while traveling.

</comment><comment><USER33> Sad news. I used cryptopay.me, but they haven't pronounced yet.

</comment><comment><USER42> Just noticed WaveCrest is based out of Gibraltar. It seems quite easy to start a company based in Gibraltar. What are the advantages or disadvantages? Just curious.

<comment><USER43> \+ ~ 10% corp. tax rate (no VAT, gains tax etc.)

\+ the legal system is based on English law

\+ English is the first language

\+ time zone is central to Europe

\+ lots of things are allowed such as gambling (hence why online gambling sites are located here often),

\+ Part of EU yet self governing. (well technically an UK Overseas Territory but they are far from listening to anything the UK says).

\+ No exchange control...

etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> ... and that's when credit card duopoly starts to bite.

</comment><comment><USER45> its a specific company that had non bitcoin products too

</comment><comment><USER46> That weird. Bitcoin has been on up swing the last 3 months since the insider trading scandal has been dying down.

[https://www.coindesk.com/price/](https://www.coindesk.com/price/)

Maybe there's a crack down from EU on Bitcoin backed cards WaveCrest didn't want to deal with it yet.

<comment><USER38> The pricing news on that page reads like a parody of what you read about ordinary stocks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I think this will be good in the long run. If VISA (and Mastercard) end up allowing Bitcoin affiliated payments through their platform, then merchants will end up not providing native support for crypto payments, as they can just use their current infrastructure.

If we want to destroy these payment monopolies in place of a (more, but I understand not completely) decentralized system, we need to encourage merchants to just implement payments directly.

edit: typical hackernews. any pro bitcoin comments result in downvotes.

<comment><USER48> I can't wait to wait 3 days and spend $30 in transaction fees to buy a Big Mac.

<comment><USER49> Right now I top up 10USD worth of Bitcoin with bitrefill.com.

I pay ZERO fees and it is instant (due to Segwit and the Lightning network).

<comment><USER49> Why the negative reaction to this?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> First bitcoin was insignificant.

Then people made fun of it.

Now current institutions will have to choose between embracing it and fighting it. Some of them do one thing, apparently VISA chose another.

<comment><USER50> VISA most likely cares above all else about making money for VISA. Likewise, Steam probably doesn't care _how_ people pay for their games : they just want to be paid. If they move away from bitcoin, it's probably because they deem it unviable / unprofitable / too much of a pain in the ass.

Not everything is a grand ideological battle, and there's no need to go looking for complicated explanations when the simple and naive interpretation makes eminent sense.

<comment><USER51> It's part of the general problem that bitcoin isn't really fungable for goods. Maybe it was back when the value was more stable or grew slowly, or the transaction fees were cheaper. But you're totally right. Currently it's barely worth the effort compared to traditional payment system in many contexts.</comment></comment></comment>


49-page NSA research paper on how to crack Tor - <AUTHOR> http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/world/nsa-research-report-on-the-tor-encryption-program/501/

<comment><USER2> "Unfortunately , we were not able to find any good way to discover a new hidden service or to find where a known hidden service is hosted. For more discussion, see sections 7.2.2, Locating known hidden services and 7.3, Discovering unknown hidden services."

Yet there was an attack (on an older version of Tor) published openly not long before this paper was written. ([http://www.onion- router.net/Publications/locating-hidden-ser...](http://www.onion- router.net/Publications/locating-hidden-servers.pdf))

<comment><AUTHOR> At the end of the abstract of your paper: "We recommend changes to route selection design and implementation for Tor. These changes require no operational increase in network overhead and are simple to make; but they prevent the attacks we have demonstrated. They have been implemented."

So the NSA was unable to independently discover what's in the above paper. Or they discovered it, but it was at a higher cleared level than this leaked paper.

The "Locating Hidden Servers" paper has a .mil author too.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This paper is from 2006, so there's almost certainly more developments since then.</comment>


Computers That Teach by Example - <AUTHOR> http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/pattern-recognition-systems-convey-learning-1205

<comment><USER2> There are two papers by Julie Shah in NIPS 2014.

"The Bayesian Case Model: A Generative Approach for Case-Based Reasoning and Prototype Classification" by Been Kim, Cynthia Rudin, Julie A. Shah

[http://papers.nips.cc/paper/5313-the-bayesian-case-model- a-g...](http://papers.nips.cc/paper/5313-the-bayesian-case-model-a-generative- approach-for-case-based-reasoning-and-prototype-classification)

"Fairness in Multi-Agent Sequential Decision-Making" by Chongjie Zhang, Julie A. Shah

[http://papers.nips.cc/paper/5588-fairness-in-multi-agent- seq...](http://papers.nips.cc/paper/5588-fairness-in-multi-agent-sequential- decision-making)</comment>


How to Hack a Rails MVP & Test Primary Business Risks - <AUTHOR> http://kevindewalt.com/2013/04/04/how-to-hack-a-web-mvp/

<comment><USER3> Couldn't agree more! MVPs are about plumbing, not about architecting. Grab whatever you can get your hands on and plumb it together to serve your test needs. MVP coding reverses many of the 'be a good coder' doctrine - <USER2> example:

• DRY vs. Cut & Paste (it's faster than abstracting and creating a common interface etc...)

• Avoid Glue Code vs. Duck-tape Code to hold open source components, hacked sample code and other code fragments together

Fast MVPs ftw!

</comment><comment><USER4> Great post Kevin! It's good to understand _why_ one is building something and not confuse that with _how_ to build it.</comment>


How Dr. Terry Wahls Cured Her Own MS with Dietary Changes - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLjgBLwH3Wc&feature=youtu.be <comment><USER2> Wow, I feel like this is the most interesting thing on HN right now by far.

<comment><USER3> It is amazing how many major medical breakthroughs come through physicians experimenting on themselves. For instance, 2 doctors shared the 2005 Nobel Prize for proving that ulcers were caused by bacteria by first infecting themselves with bacteria and curing it with an antibiotic.

[http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/20...](http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2005/press.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> <http://www.terrywahls.com/about-Terry-Wahls>

</comment><comment><USER5> Eat food, not a lot of it, mostly plants.

<comment><USER6> Roy Walford "proved" that calorie restriction with nutrient supplementation does nothing for ALS. So I'd want to look at the details.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This should stay on the front page!</comment>


Next-Level Augmented Mobile Gaming - <AUTHOR> http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ed443d56-b09a-11e3-8058-00144feab7de.html#axzz2wuMGvB8y

<comment><AUTHOR> "Meanwhile, Swedish computer-vision company 13th Lab was showcasing Rescape, in which a smartphone strapped to a toy gun turns the real world into a game of virtual paintball. Its iPhone app scans the room then recreates a digital version that superimposes enemies and fantastical environments over the real- life furniture, bringing Call of Duty out of the screen and into the living room." \- Tim Bradshaw

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Curse wrapps it up pretty nicely:

[http://youtu.be/kHggAz-ndZI](http://youtu.be/kHggAz-ndZI)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's the creators:

[http://13thlab.com/](http://13thlab.com/)</comment>